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In his 1948 short story Tomorrow's Child Ray Bradbury writes about a cis het couple welcoming their first child who turns out to be a blue pyramid due to some interdimensional shenanigans that Will hadn't bothered to remember back then and didn't care to brush up on later. The couple of course suffers — but not because their child is a blue pyramid, no, they're quite accepting of that, all things considered. The court of public opinion and sensationalist press are much more bothersome to them. Eventually the couple is transported, willingly, to their child's dimension where they assume lovely colourful geometric forms which the story's doctor/scientist observes happily. Will might be vague on the details, it has been a long time after all, but the point still stands. Will enjoyed all of Bradbury's stories and eagerly retold them to his father who had neither time nor desire to read but obviously enjoyed Will's interpretations, yet that blue pyramid was something he'd identified so strongly with it took an entire Hannibal Lecter to unseat it.
In all honesty, Will hadn't thought about it that way until a few years into their Cuban life when he suddenly got hit with the feeling that his limbs were so very heavy he couldn't lift them. He remembered then that as a child he'd felt that way fairly often and never mentioned it to his father because hellish as it was, it was also peculiar, and interesting, and made his body into something curious and not the nonsense it was most of the time with his tripping over everything and walking into a few posts. While reading Ray Bradbury.
The sensation keeps returning at random. Even Hannibal had to admit it's random. Neither of them found any rhyme or reason to it, but then again you've always been a vers libre, Will .
It happens in bed, at the dinner table, during breakfast, on one particularly scary occasion while Will was skinny dipping at their private beach.
"It's just how gravity works," Hannibal told him as he carried him to the shore, solid and reliable, the only proper constant, the only next of kin, another blue pyramid. Will clings to him with light touches and heavy limbs, Will sags into him when being overwhelms him to the point that nothing else can be sensed or makes any sort of sense.
At the moment, it's getting darker, the evening following Will's limbs and going heavy, heavier and heavier, ripe with gravity and weight, and Will is resting upon Hannibal in the hammock, arms hanging off of it, almost touching the sand, and Will's legs barely there, but if he thinks about them, he knows his feet must be enormous with how enormously he can feel them, so he doesn't let himself wander there. His arms and hands are Jupiter and Saturn pulling his shoulders down. His face is pressed into Hannibal's chest and is covered with Hannibal's shirt. He's heavy and he's happy and he can't move and doesn't know if he wants to.
He thinks in shapes and weights. He thinks that the shape of the hammock is formed by gravity and mass, he thinks that Hannibal is Saturn. He thinks they're floating above the ground held by two measly ropes, all things considered. He feels it all too, viscerally, fiercely. This is my design, the Lord whispers in his head. This is my design, Laplace whispers in his head. This is my design, Einstein and Hawking whisper in his head.
It's too loud, and he shakes, trembles, hisses. Hannibal's hand is on his ear, his hands are in the sand.
"Battling gravity again, Will?"
"Battling you," Will lies affectionately and turns his head to kiss whatever he can kiss. "Only want to battle you."
Hannibal hums.
"Whatcha reading?" Will asks.
"Bradbury. I have some catching up to do, and I've been quite neglectful of it."
It's heavy as well, that Hannibal is reading science fiction. He hadn't as a child or a young adult or an adult. Will mentions Bradbury a lot.
"What do you think?" Will raises his head. Hannibal is holding a thick pink tome containing Bradbury's collected short stories.
"I'm happy you had a friend."
"Even if it wasn't you?"
"These are not the stories I'd tell you," Hannibal argues, turning a page.
"No, I don't think they are," Will echoes and settles back. He thinks of the synonyms of heavy . He ponders them. Ponderous is an option too.
The wind carries along a tune, a trumpet solo, he thinks. It stumbles down the beach, wobbles into the waterline, staggers towards their hammock. It's heavy too. Weighty. Hefty. Substantial. Impenetrable.
It ends and something else begins. Something new.
The drums are to die for.
They march straight to Will's sand-grasping time-space-bending hands. A Colombian band must be performing in town because it's cumbia and it's amazing. The sea turns into a guacharaca, both the instrument and the bird.
"We should go to Colombia."
"We indeed should," Hannibal agrees easily. He turns another page.
"What is it now?" Will has to close his eyes. The music is louder inside his head than it is outside and his hands could bend galaxies into whatever he feels like doing.
"Bradbury? This one is called My lover just cares for me and drools on my chest as a cumbia is playing ."
Will can hear Hannibal's smile, can feel the gravitational pull of that smile overcoming his own gravity. Hannibal is the heaviest object in sight. It's very polite of him.
"And more seriously?" Will tries again.
"More seriously? Why would I waste my time on anything more serious than your spit?"
Will giggles with his entire body. His mouth is full of Hannibal's chest hair.
"I don't see how it's funny."
"You are being short-sighted, my love."
"Fuck, Hannibal, whatcha reading?"
"Your moods," Hannibal retorts. Will bites him because he loves him and because he's insufferable. Hannibal doesn't even flinch. "You're heavier than Saturn, aren't you?" Will mutters. "And just as beautiful. What are you reading?"
" There Will Come Soft Rains ," Hannibal replies after a short pause. His voice is lacking in gravity.
"Oh. Oh, Hannibal. Is this. Is this how you feel? Like an old and abandoned and awfully poetic house?"
"Definitely. No one appreciates me," Hannibal adds and pointedly looks at the book. Will pointedly doesn't reply. His limbs don't feel heavy anymore.
"You don't mean that." Will lays his head back on Hannibal's chest, upon his heart. He's no seal, but his ear is sealed alright.
"I don't," Hannibal agrees. Will feels him lower a foot on the sand and push the hammock. They're swinging now, and all gravity is lost.