Who: Jim Moore and Matthias Graves What: Matthias has been dead for over a month, Jim is waiting for him to rise again (with some flashbacks to before his death) Where: Woodlawn Cemetery (Las Vegas) When: November 19th/20th, 2016, midnight (and the first week of October) Warnings: Brief, violent zombie-related deaths
Anyone else in Jim’s situation would have been in mourning. Perhaps there was a part of Jim that was. The man he loved had succumbed to a horrific, deadly virus, not a fate that someone like Matthias Graves deserved. A man with the face of an angel didn’t deserve to die, delirious from fever and coughing up his own blood, somewhat robbed of his own dignity. Jim had been with him right until the end, of course. He wasn’t a man who felt much loyalty to anyone outside of himself, but like everything else, Matthias had always been an exception to the rule. Jim had stopped pretending he wasn’t a long time ago. Of all the men and all the people that had come through Jim’s life that were forgettable and expendable, Matthias had never been either of those things. Not to Jim. Of course, to death, everyone and everything was still expendable.
He’d taken care of Matthias even though they both knew there was nothing Jim could do to stop the inevitable. He’d stayed by Matthias’s bedside when Matthias didn’t have the strength to walk anymore, remaining eerily calm in the face of death for Matthias’s sake while all the while his insides boiled. Jim wasn’t a man who handled being helpless well, he was the sort of man who always had a back up plan. Someone he could pay off, someone he could blackmail, someone he could have killed if necessary to get what he wanted. There was no amount of money or blackmail or murder that could stop what was happening to Matthias, and that was maybe the hardest pill for Jim to swallow. He was going to lose this man and be completely helpless in stopping it. The only thing that saved him from going off the deep end after was knowledge.
Standing inside a cemetery, Jim remained perfectly poised, silent as the graves around him as he waited, watching a marked grave with intense eyes. There was never any real guarantee, of course, that everything in a person’s reincarnation would get passed down to them, but there was the distinct possibility, and that was enough for Jim. Before Matthias had passed, he’d given Jim the day, the time, even the location he wanted to be buried. For a man of Jim’s caliber, hope wasn’t really something he was built for, but he thought that he might be experiencing it now, as he stood here in the cemetery with the frosted ground under his feet, cold enough that he could see his own breath in the air. The cold didn’t bother Jim. Nothing got to him, except for the one thing that had ever crept past his razor sharp exterior, straight past his rotten insides and worm its way into the beating human organ some called a heart.
Shoving his hands in the pockets of his coat, Jim ignored the men standing close by, waiting for their orders if and when anything happened. Something would happen, eventually. Jim was sure of it. Matthias wouldn’t leave him here like this, that would just be incredibly disappointing, and if there was one thing Matthias never did it was disappoint him. Not even once. Unwillingly, with nothing to distract him, Jim’s thoughts again turned to a moment, before Matthias died. A moment he’d been turning over and over again in his mind ever since, no matter how much he tried not to dwell on it, it was always there in the back of his head...
***
“Matthias…” Jim’s voice was deceptively gentle as he approached the door to the bedroom, more gentle than he’d ever spoken to anyone, perhaps Matthias included. Jim had never before had the capacity to be so careful with anyone, so mindful of their well being, but circumstances and Matthias’s hold on him had made it so that even a man like Jim was capable of change. Maybe nothing earth shattering, and it was only for Matthias’s benefit, no one else’s, but it was still nearly miraculous that Jim could find it in himself to care so much about another living thing. If this was what caring felt like, anyway. It wasn’t as if he’d had a lot of practice with it.
Things weren’t as bad as they could be, yet. Jim had already heard some horror stories about how bad it got for reincarnates before they finally succumbed to their symptoms. Matthias could still walk, at least, though he often needed Jim’s help supporting himself. Jim was too focused on how bad he hadn’t gotten yet, and he knew it, but for once he was allowing himself to indulge in something as juvenile and short sighted as denial. He was fooling himself, if he honestly thought there was a chance of Matthias getting well again. Jim was no doctor, and the actual doctors had no idea what to do with this virus anymore than anyone else did. There were those in the Resistance with powers of healing and other things that Jim had already had drop by to see Matthias, but so far, nothing. There wasn’t anything that anyone could do at this point.
After he called out once from the other side of the bedroom door, he knocked softly before entering slowly, not wishing to startle the other man if he hadn’t heard Jim coming. The virus had made it so that Matthias wasn’t exactly himself anymore, understandably, but sometimes there were still glimmers of the old Matthias. The Matthias that Jim remembered, and that made it even harder for Jim to accept their reality. He found it impossible to fully accept that the beautiful, passionate man he’d come to know so intimately could be taken down by something so… unpoetic. If anything, a man like Matthias deserved a death as beautiful as he was, or he didn’t deserve to die at all. Jim didn’t want him to die. Funny, coming from someone who had previously held so little regard for death and who did, or did not deserve it.
He had a cup of tea in his hands, though he didn’t actually expect Matthias to take it. It was just something to do, instead of sit helplessly by him while he withered away into nothing. “I’ve made some tea, if you feel like drinking anything.”
There had been times that Matthias had thought, and thought deeply, about whether he would rather die quickly or slowly. The first had been when Simon had crept into his mind, undead thing that he was, with his scars and his poetry, his memories of deadened nerves and changed tastes. Matthias had felt vividly alive, after that, his own flesh and blood and bone frantically living with the memory of being dead haunting him. He'd been oversensitized, then, in spite of the fact that nothing had changed. Ill at everything, with Simon's certainty that the food that Matthias needed to sustain him, to keep him alive, would do nothing but make them sick. It had made him sick. He'd vomited up almost everything he ate that first year, become gaunt and weak with it, fending off concerns from family and well-intentioned fellow students that he'd developed some sort of eating disorder, or that the stress of school had started wearing on him.
It had passed, that illness, that sensitivity, but Matthias had thought, clinging to a porcelain bowl while the cheap, bland noodles he'd thought he might be able to tolerate were being rejected, violently, by the memory of the black bile that had risen every time Simon had tried to eat normal food... he'd thought that he would want it to be quick. He was certain, then, that Simon was going to kill him, that the two couldn't coexist with one living and one dead. Certain that it would be a drawn out death, that he would suffer through to the end. A quick death would have been better by far than suffering.
The second time had been when his sister had died, quick and bloody and violent, alone in an alley surrounded by men who thought she should die because of what she was. Because she was a reincarnate. Everyone had told them, told the whole family, that she was lucky that it had been quick, that she hadn't suffered long. Matthias hadn't been grateful. Matthias had burned, every time someone said it, burned at the thought that Therese had died so quickly, so soon, before there'd been any chance for someone to step in, for someone to find their backbone and stop what was happening. Perhaps if she'd lived only a little longer, one of those useless mundies that came forward as a witness would have been unable to stomach seeing a young woman beaten to death a moment longer and stopped it. Better a death slow enough for someone to stop it.
That was the death that Matthias had been given, a slow one. It had given him time to reflect again on his own mortality, on death and what came of it, what came after. He'd read, at first. Stacks of books, moved from his bookshelves to the nightstand, where he could reach them more easily. Matthias could walk, still, but it had been easier by far to have them there, next to him, where all he had to do was stretch out his arm. He could still read, now. Sometimes. He hadn't told Jim how the words had started blurring, when he stared at them too long. How it was harder to focus on even the most familiar poems, the ones that he had loved. The ones that he had wooed Jim with. The ones that Jim had wooed him with. It was a loss, knowing that he couldn't keep the words straight, that his own readings of them had become stilted and inelegant. He'd simply told Jim that he was getting tired of them. Of reading. Had moved to audio versions, instead, listened to other people recite the words that he'd learned by heart. They read them all wrong.
He heard Jim's voice outside the door. Heard the knock. He paused the book he was listening to on his phone with fingers grown clumsy as his fever climbed. Jim... the one thing worth holding on for, for as long as Matthias could manage. He'd thought about the alternative, of course. Of, while he could still move, finding a knife, finding a bottle of pills. Finding anything that would let him draw this to an end with dignity. On his own terms. Jim might have helped him, he thought. If he asked. If he told his lover, his beloved, that he wanted to go before he suffered more, Jim might have brought him the knife. Might have brought him the pills. Might have held him while he finished what the virus had begun.
Matthias hadn't asked. He'd thought about it. He'd almost asked, almost let the words leave his lips, and then he'd looked at Jim and known that he couldn't. Known that he wanted every second that he could with this man, this beautiful man, this man who wore violence close to his skin, who kept himself barely leashed most of the time, who had found it worth his while to lay down in Matthias's arms and trust, as much as he could trust.
He didn't want the tea. The thought of it made his stomach turn, but he pushed himself a little more upright in the bed, held his hand out for the mug. "Yes. Please." He could hold it, if nothing else. Take a sip or two before he let the rest of it grow cold. As cold as his body would be, soon. Matthias knew what death felt like. He knew how it crept in with frigid fingers, how it grew from the core of you. Losing his appetite, his taste for anything, that was a part of it. The blurring vision. The way his mind had begun to wander, the way he couldn't focus, it was his body telling him that it was finished. That it was shutting itself down, bit by bit, until in the end all that would be left was a breath, a heartbeat, and then not even that. It could come quickly, now, or it could wait, wait for days. Death didn't work on a schedule, he thought. Death worked as it pleased.
"Jim..." Matthias forced a smile. It felt more like a grimace. "Thank you, for the tea." For everything that Jim had given him, the tender care that he'd not even known Jim capable of. He'd found it, within himself, for Matthias, something that made emotion swell in Matthias's chest. "Come sit with me?"
Jim hesitated, though only for a fraction of a second, and not because he didn’t want to sit with Matthias. For a man who didn’t do well with feelings of helplessness, Jim always felt like he needed to be doing something. Some small thing, to make Matthias more comfortable, or make another phone call in a last ditch effort to find something they hadn’t discovered yet that could help him, or cure him. Jim wouldn’t allow himself to indulge in useless things like hope, but he still made those calls anyway. Did everything that he could, everything he could think of, going to such efforts for one man that he’d never even lift a finger for with anyone else. Only this one man, and apparently even a man like Jim still had things left to learn about weakness. That even he was capable of this kind of weakness, something he’d always scoffed at and looked down on other people for. How things and one person could change absolutely everything.
He was callous about a lot of things, including the death of others, but not where Matthias was concerned. He didn’t want Matthias to die. Everything in Jim violently rebelled against that idea, even now, when it was very much a reality. Matthias might not be as bad off as some yet, but even Jim could see how much he was already fading, no matter how much he tried not to see it. He was still his Matthias, but there was a light gone from his eyes already. That certain spark that made the man so unique to Jim, someone who had managed to worm their way underneath his own skin, a feat no one else had ever attempted to achieve and lived to tell the tale. If Jim was capable of recognizing it, he would have realized that it was the pain of loss he was already feeling. He was losing Matthias, and yet he’d already lost him in some ways. It was enough to make him endlessly angry, but Jim couldn’t bring himself to be angry here with him. Not when Matthias’s soul was still presently tied to his physical body, and he still needed Jim.
If Matthias had asked, Jim would have done it. He didn’t want Matthias to die, but if the man he loved had asked Jim to help him end his life, Jim wouldn’t have denied him that, no matter how he felt. He would never deny Matthias anything, but especially that. He was selfish enough not to bring it up himself, because Jim was still only human. He was selfish enough that a large part of him wanted as much time with Matthias as he could get, but if Matthias had asked him, Jim would have agreed without hesitation. As the man Matthias loved, Jim owed him that much. That was the kind of love you couldn’t fake, or buy. Being willing to kill them? Not out of anger, or revenge, but because it was their last living wish? Because it would save them some dignity, as much dignity as anyone could have when they were dying? That was real love.
Handing Matthias the mug of tea, knowing deep down that he would only be drinking any of it to appease the man who had made it, Jim took a seat on the edge of the bed, still facing Matthias and placing a hand on the man’s thigh, covered in blankets. That forced smile was hard to endure, knowing that Matthias was only doing that for his benefit. Jim didn’t smile back, but the sincerity was all in his eyes as he gazed at the other man, almost like he was attempting to put Matthias back together with just a look. Where his hand rested on Matthias’s leg, Jim offered a gentle, reassuring squeeze, and tilted his head. “For as long as you can stand me.”
They had been lovers for a year and eight months, had courted one another with words for another four months before that. All told, it was just short of two years that Matthias had been enamoured with Jim Moore to the exclusion of noticing that there was any other man in the world. There hadn't been, for Matthias, since the first day that Jim had spoken to him... October 13th. He still remembered the exact day, as etched into his mind as every other day that had changed his life. Simon. Therese. Jim. Three days in his life that he could point at, point at and say that he hadn't been the same man as he had the day before. Matthias was a man built for devotion, after all, a man who, at his very fundament, needed to be devoted to someone else to survive. Until Jim, there had been no one that had struck him to his core, no one that had swept him away, that he could say of that there was everything else in the world, and then there was him.
All of that meant a lot, but at the moment, it meant that Matthias knew that Jim wasn't ready to settle, yet, wasn't ready to surrender. He wanted to do something else, anything else that might have some hope of speeding them to a cure before Matthias grew worse, before he slipped away entirely. Jim was a man of action, for all that his every action was carefully planned beforehand. Matthias had never known him to not be in the midst of his next move, with the three after it already plotted in explicit detail. Matthias didn't have the energy for the fierce, possessive love he'd felt, thinking of Jim's quirks, the things that made him different from everyone else in the world. Not anymore. No more than a flicker of it, and it ached, feeling as if he loved Jim the less now, as if the virus had already stolen away that part of him that had become a part of his core.
There were no moves left. Nothing that Jim could do. Nothing that Matthias could do, except wait... but there were plans to be made, still. Not plans for Matthias's life, but plans for his death. Safety measures that he'd hoped he wouldn't have to take for decades more. "I'd have loved you forever," he told Jim, dry lips painful as he stretched them in speech. "But 'til death is all I can give you."
It was all that anyone could offer, really, to love until death, but Matthias would have made the vow for longer, regardless. Theirs, he thought, was the kind of love that ought to be immortal. The kind of life that should last through the ages, if only he'd ever found the words to put it down in writing for generations to come to read, to aspire to. It was a humbling thing, to be loved by a man like Jim. Humbling, and yet at the same time, it had always made Matthias feel powerful. He was worthy of claiming the love of a man like Jim, and that was something that no one else could ever say. He'd have made certain that anyone who tried to steal that from him regretted it.
A selfish part of him still hated the thought of Jim moving on, past him. Of Jim loving someone else after he was gone. You were supposed to hope for the opposite, that your lover would move on, be happy again after you were gone, but Matthias couldn't bring himself to it. The only comfort was that he wouldn't be around to see it, to see Jim look at another man with the same burning in his eyes that he had when he looked at Matthias.
"I need you to do something for me." Matthias wished he could have put it off longer. A day. A week. Forever. Another burden he didn't want to put on Jim, but there was no one else to trust.
Jim was a master of many faces. For as much as he was often an eruption waiting to happen just underneath his surface, when he wanted to, he could make his face a mask and have it look however he wanted it to. He could make people see whatever he wanted them to see written on his face, as much a master of deception as he was a napoleon of crime. Jim very rarely ever wore his own face for other people, the one Matthias saw a majority of the time, unless Jim was in the middle of some form of business that Matthias happened to walk into. He was perhaps the only one who saw Jim’s true face, who Jim let see it. That required a certain amount of Jim’s walls to be broken down first, and thus far, Matthias was the only person still living who had succeeded in doing so. As far as Jim was concerned, he was the only one who ever would.
It was easy to be the cold, heartless crime lord with no regard for anyone, Jim wore that like a second skin, and he was completely ruthless in it. That Jim made allowances for no one, had sympathy for nothing, and wouldn’t stop until he got what he wanted, no matter who got thrown under the bus along the way. That Jim was cruel and conniving, a snake in the grass with enough money and power to bring down entire cities and make them cower in the face of his reach. By now his web of criminals was so extensive and still impressively undetectable that Jim could order a hit on the President of the United States tomorrow and the job would be done before anyone could blink an eye. His henchmen were trained to act as if part of the shadows, after all, and they excelled at it, or risked facing his wrath. Jim wouldn’t tolerate failure.
That wasn’t the Jim that Matthias usually saw, at least not directed at him. This Jim was different. Still just as deadly as a viper hiding, ready to strike, but a more controlled one. Not bloodthirsty and teetering along the edges of his own sanity, but the calm before the storm. Jim was the storm, but not with Matthias. Except perhaps now, he could feel those instincts boiling just underneath his own skin at the thought of losing Matthias. There would be no recourse left if Matthias died and left Jim behind, Jim would go back to being only that hard outer shell of a calculating sociopath, all unchecked rage and mercilessness underneath. But Matthias was still here, so Jim held the storm back. He let those things fall away from his exterior and look at Matthias like he’d always looked at him, too raw and intense for any mere mortal to stand.
“Forever isn’t nearly long enough,” Jim murmured, voice even and not in danger of breaking, despite the turmoil currently twisting in the pit of his stomach, unwanted and unwelcome. He would be strong for Matthias, the weaker Matthias got. It was the least he could do. He still allowed himself a moment of real tenderness in the wake of the words Matthias spoke to him, more deeply felt by Jim than all the poetry the other man had ever recited to him. Drawing his hand away from Matthias’s thigh, he brushed the back of his hand gently along Matthias’s cheek.
He steeled himself for the request he thought must be coming anyway, eyes burning like blue liquid fire as he looked on Matthias, still so much like the man Jim remembered but in some ways, he was already gone. Jim set his jaw in a firm line, unwilling to admit defeat and at once ready to comply with Matthias’s wishes, no matter how much he might not like them. He would hate it, but he would do it without argument. For Matthias, he would do anything. “Name it.”
It wasn't hard to see the resolution on Jim's face, to do what he thought that Matthias might want him to do. It touched Matthias, that willingness, even if it wasn't what he was asking of Jim. Not anymore. It was, Matthias thought, too late for that. The right time for that had passed days ago; he would already be dying less of himself than he wanted Jim to recall him as. The image of him would be tarnished, already, with these last few days of waning strength, of beginning to lose himself to the illness that was destroying his body, bit by bit, cell by cell. It he had wanted Jim to only remember him as the man he had once been, the man that Jim had loved, had found worthy, he'd already waited to long. Now... now all he had left was the thought of spending as much time with Jim as he could. Of finding peace in Jim's company as he drifted further and further. Not the best of ends, but at least he wouldn't be alone.
What he had to ask of Jim now wasn't any easier, though, was perhaps even harder. After all, even until the end, Matthias would be only grow less and less of himself, until there was nothing left of him but an empty husk. Hard enough to see. Hard enough to witness, that sort of fade into a corpse. What Matthias had to ask of him, now, would have had to ask of him even if he'd asked the other, was seeing Matthias as not himself at all, but as something else. Something alien.
"My parents will want to bury me." Matthias had known that, had always known that. They'd bought a plot, once Therese had died, a place for each of them. Matthias had thought they'd been ambitious, buying double plots for himself and Desmond. Perhaps still for Desmond, he couldn't see his brother settling down with anyone seriously enough that he would want to be buried with her, but for Matthias... he'd have liked it, if there'd been time, to have asked whether Jim would be buried with him, rest next to him into eternity. There was no time. And Matthias was afraid that there was no resting.
He tilted his head, pressed his cheek into Jim's touch, seeking what comfort he could take. His lover's hand felt cool against his fevered skin, cold as the grave itself. Cold as Matthias would be, soon enough. "It would be... safer, if I was burned, but..." Jim had no control over that. There had never been anything signed, between them, any sort of document that would give Jim the right to make these decisions for him. It would be up to his parents. "Bury me next to my sister. Woodlawn Cemetery, in Las Vegas." It was what he would have wanted, if he'd been anyone but who he was. What he was. If there'd been a guarantee that he'd remain undisturbed, once he was laid into the ground. Being near Therese again... it was selfish of him to find peace in that, even knowing that there was a chance that it wouldn't last.
The next part, that was hardest. "I don't know if there will be a rising. Simon couldn't..." There was no way for Simon to know, whether Matthias would rise and walk again, as he had. It had been an event, after all, for him. Something that happened to many of them at once, called them out of the ground together. It hadn't been something that had come for just one of them, or even just a few. "Midnight. November twentieth. If there is, if I rise, that's when it will be." They could be certain of that much, at least, that it would be at the time, the day, even if it wasn't the correct year. "I need you to be there. Please. With people to control me. To put me down." It was a hard burden to hand the man he loved most, asking him to kill him again, once he'd already seen him die once. "I won't be myself. I'll be feral. I'll try to kill... anyone I come across." Surely Jim would understand that Matthias didn't want to be that. Didn't want to be an animal, when he'd always treasured his mind most of all.
It wasn't that Jim was unfamiliar with the source Matthias's reincarnate reigned from. On the contrary, he knew quite a bit about it, and not just from the things Matthias had told him. Jim was a meticulously thorough man. He always liked to know who exactly he was getting into bed with, whether that was a euphemism for a business deal or just a euphemism. Jim had done quite a bit of digging into Matthias's history, both reincarnated and otherwise, when they'd first entered into their courtship. Call him callous (and he was), but that was just how Jim operated in regards to other people, inside or outside off intimate relationships. Privacy was earned, not given.
Of course, once the nature of their relationship became something deeper, less superficial, Jim had surprised himself by finding that he didn’t feel the need to keep tabs on Matthias like he did with everyone else anymore. Of course a man like Jim could only change so much, he was still at his core a deeply paranoid person, but Matthias had reached something… past that, in him, somehow. Jim couldn’t explain it, nor did he particularly care to, because knowing it was good enough for him. He trusted Matthias with the level of devotion that Matthias had extended him, and there was absolutely nothing about Matthias’s past or his reincarnate’s that could have made Jim change his mind about that. No matter how dark and unpleasant the reality actually was.
Matthias’s skin was hot and clammy to the touch, but Jim didn’t recoil. He only asserted his hand against the other man’s cheek more as Matthias leaned into his touch, spreading fingers out to press gently into the flesh of the man’s face with surprising tenderness and support his head. There was a part of Jim that was more than willing to die with him. As much as he valued his own life and worth and accomplishments where he valued no one else aside from the man in his bed, there was a part of Jim that would have gone willingly. There was no part of Jim that was afraid for himself when he touched Matthias, no lingering fear that he might be exposed to the virus himself, with how closely he’d been caring for Matthias over the last week. He very likely already had been exposed to it and just hadn’t started to feel the side affects yet, but that didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered to him right now, nothing except for Matthias.
A foreign feeling rose in Jim’s chest at Matthias’s next words. Something disgustingly… hopeful. The very recognition of it made Jim inwardly recoil, but he couldn’t squash those feelings completely. Matthias wasn’t telling him that he wouldn’t rise again, but he also wasn’t telling him that he would, with any real certainty. Apparently just the possibility was enough for Jim, however, because he nodded immediately, no matter how much he disliked relying on something as flimsy as hope. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” he promised soothingly. Despite the fact that Jim certainly had no legal claim over what happened to Matthias’s body after death, he would have found a way to get Matthias what he wanted, if Matthias had asked to make sure his body was burned. Jim always had his ways. But Matthias didn’t ask, and Jim didn’t offer, because now there was a glimmer of hope. The very loose definition of a chance, and he was going to take it.
He understood why Matthias would want Jim to make sure he was put down for good, if and when he rose from the ground. Jim understood enough of what Matthias would be like that he absolutely knew, a man like Matthias would rather never see the light of day again then be reduced to something like that. He loved poetry too much to become a monster incapable of speech, let alone any understanding. Jim knew, but he couldn’t help the wheels already turning in his head as they were. Matthias wanted Jim to make sure he never actually got out of the ground, but Jim knew, because of Matthias’s reincarnate, that it wasn’t - couldn’t be the only option. Drawing himself closer to Matthias on the bed, Jim slid a little further up the mattress so he was able to hover over near the other man’s chest and look Matthias in the eyes, gaze unwavering as his hand drifted from his lover’s cheek to brace himself with it on the mattress, on the other side of Matthias’s body. “Is this really the only way? Is this what you want?”
Matthias's chest ached with more than illness, looking up at Jim's face as he braced himself over him. He could almost pretend, if he ignored his fever, the weakness of his body, that it was a prelude to Jim leaning in to kiss him breathless, just rough enough that he could feel it, lingering, long after Jim had pulled away. If he'd known that the last time they'd made love would be the last time, he thought he'd have paid more attention, savored it more. Marked every detail of it in his mind so that he could look back and recall it as special. It was alway good, with Jim, so he had no doubts that it had been satisfying, but it bothered him, not being able to recall it specifically enough that he could think... this. This was the last time, just as memorable as the first, when they'd found out in truth exactly how compatible they were physically, as compatible as they'd already known they were, mentally.
Even if Matthias had been willing to try, his body would have given out, if he'd tried to pull Jim in for one last time, now. That, and if somehow Jim had been lucky enough not to contract this from him, just from proximity, Matthias didn't want to worsen his chances with an exchange of bodily fluids. Still, he thought about it, for a moment, thought about telling Jim that was what he really wanted... but he didn't. Not physically. There was no stirring of interest in the beautiful man hovering over him. No familiar kick of desire, outside of the emotional need to be close to him. He couldn't imagine that Jim felt any desire, either. Matthias hadn't looked at himself in the mirror since he'd started worsening. He'd covered the one in the bathroom attached to his room, thrown a spare sheet from the drawer over the shining surface that laid the physical effects of his illness bare. He didn't need to look to know that he didn't look like himself, anymore.
Instead, Matthias raised a hand to reach up, taking his turn to trace the familiar line of Jim's jaw with weak, trembling fingers. Something that might have been the beginnings of a sob caught in his chest, turned into a cough instead; he turned his face away, hastily, buried it against his shoulder. It was the first time that he'd been thankful for that, the weakness of his body, the signs of illness. It would have been worse, much worse, to let himself cry over his inevitable end. Not because he thought there was anything wrong with it, that a man shouldn't show that sort of weakness. Matthias simply didn't have time for tears, and if they started, there was no guarantee that he could stop them. There was too much more for him to do, to much more for him to say to Jim, before he was gone.
"It's the only way." The only way that Matthias was aware of, could think of, at least. "There's a chemical... but it doesn't exist, here. It wouldn't be safe to wait for someone to find it." If Simon had known it... but he hadn't. The Undead Liberation Army had made their own Neurotriptyline, but Simon hadn't been responsible for making it, and even he had known that it was different than what had been distributed by the clinics, inferior. It had been what they'd had, though, the ULA, to keep them from having to answer to the government, the ones who were trying to punish them for actions they'd taken when they hadn't been able to control themselves. They'd have to experiment, anyone in the Resistance who had the skills to come up with the correct formula, and that meant subduing Matthias to do so, to risk their lives in capturing without killing, and risk them again if he broke free while they were taking samples.
Matthias had no doubts as to whether his value to the Resistance was great enough for that. It wasn't. He wasn't. He wasn't irreplaceable, except to Jim, and as fond as Robert Kingsley was of Jim, Matthias couldn't imagine him agreeing to use the kind of resources it would take, to save Matthias from what he would become. Worse yet, and a fear that Matthias was wary of mentioning, the possibility that he might decide that it was useful for him to have a feral zombie in the Resistance's control, whether Matthias would have been willing to provide that service or not. He wasn't. There was nothing in the world that could have convinced Matthias to continue serving the Resistance in any capacity that the creature that he would rise as could. The only option, the only safe option, was for Jim to make certain no one knew except for the men that he brought to subdue Matthias, and to take care of it quietly, before anyone else could learn.
The lines of Jim’s face didn't reflect a kindness, necessarily, but maybe something close to it. As much as he wasn’t capable of kindness, and meaning it, it was certainly a look that only Matthias could ever have seen. Jim had never thought himself able to reach this kind of understanding but he realized it wasn't pity he felt for Matthias; it was empathy. Not something that Jim had ever entertained as even a vague possibility in terms of how he operated, but there it was. Apparently miracles really did happen, and Matthias Graves was living proof of that. He'd done the impossible, with Jim, and now he was leaving him. Everything left in Jim rebelled against that idea, making him want to try anything and everything in one last ditch effort to save the man wasting away right in front of him. Save Matthias, the way Matthias had saved him.
Jim didn’t particularly like to think of it that way. He wasn’t exactly a man capable of saving, but he couldn’t think of any equivalent that did justice to what Matthias had done for him. Even the worst of men could feel something akin to loneliness, and Jim had certainly felt it too. Felt the nearly aching emptiness where he couldn’t manage to fill it himself, and once Matthias had come along, that emptiness had just simply gone away like it’d never existed. For as capable as he was of being on his own, and often preferring it that way, Jim was still only human. For as cold and unfeeling as he could be, at the same time, he almost felt too much, to the point that he always seemed on the brink of insanity. No one could understand, or withstand, his intensity.
When he was a young man, he’d battled with that confliction within himself constantly, until he’d finally chosen the former. Not before he’d hurt the people closest to him, but that number had always been on the small side anyway. Since Jim didn’t really do things like regret, it was easier for him to move past those small hiccups, and for a long time, he was convinced that he had no need for any real, constant human contact. No need to indulge in the more physical comforts if he didn’t have to, when in the past he’d primarily only used sex as a weapon. But not with Matthias. Never with Matthias. With him, Jim had found an equal. Someone who understood him, someone who could stand beside him, and reach for the impossible with him.
He wasn’t about to lose that.
Eyes closing briefly as Matthias’s fingers traced over the line of his jaw, Jim privately committed that sensation to memory, in case the worst happened and he never got to feel Matthias’s hands on his face again. He made a move to cover Matthias’s hand with his own, but stopped when the man dissolved into a brief coughing fit. Jim didn’t shrink away, simply waited until Matthias was done before he took his hand and brought it to Matthias’s chest, where he entwined their fingers together.
If nothing else, Jim Moore was an ambitious man. He was accustomed to getting what he wanted, and doing whatever he had to do in order to get it. He was the sort of man who made things happen, he didn’t wait for them to happen. He was going to live. He wasn’t going to die from this virus. He was going to figure out how to recreate this chemical with the help of whoever was still left in R&D once the dust settled, and he was going to find a way to bring Matthias back to him when he rose from the ground at midnight on the 20th of November. If Jim was determined of nothing else, he was determined of that. But he didn’t say as much to Matthias. The poor man was clearly already nearly beside himself, and Jim didn’t wish to upset him more. He would keep his clever plans to himself, and simply comfort the man he loved, while he secretly harbored thoughts of Matthias’s rebirth.
There was a small speck of blood in the corner of Matthias’s mouth, most likely from the coughing, but that didn’t stop Jim from leaning down and placing a soft kiss on his lover’s lips. It wasn’t meant to start something, if anything, it was simply a kiss of devotion. More devotion than Matthias could ever know, and wouldn’t know, until Jim had succeeded in his plans. And he would. For now, he simply leaned back and nodded, playing the part of the obedient partner with passion burning in his eyes as he unwillingly agreed to do the unthinkable. Let the man he loved die, twice. “If that’s what you want, my love… I’ll see to it that it’s done.”
Matthias could feel a tension that he hadn't even known was there leave him, when Jim agreed to do what he'd asked. At heart... at heart, Matthias wasn't like Jim. They were equals, in their relationship, but they weren't the same. They were a counterbalance, sides of a scale coming to an equilibrium. Matthias believed in what the Resistance symbolized, believed in it with his whole heart, but killing... it was necessary, sometimes. He hadn't been innocent enough to think that it wasn't necessary for a long time. He didn't have the heart for it, though, preferred the bloodless games that he played with words and codes, a man behind the scenes of a movement, rather than taking it in his own hands. He'd left the killing to those who were better at it. Left it to Jim.
It was a comfort, that Jim wouldn't let him become a monster whose only purpose was to kill. He wouldn't be conscious of it, wouldn't know at the time what he was becoming, so perhaps he shouldn't have worried about it... but if his mind ever was brought back to him, he'd remember them. That was the secret, the secret that no one had wanted to know, no one that wasn't one of the Redeemed... and they didn't have to speak of it. They all knew that they remembered. That their minds might have been gone when they rose, but the memories lingered. The memories didn't go away, any more than the memories of the human lives that they had led, any more than the memories of their deaths. Simon had made his peace with it. Matthias couldn't, not while he was still living. Perhaps he'd have felt differently, if he'd risen, if he'd been brought back to himself in a kinder way than Simon. At the moment, the thought of killing someone else's mother, someone else's little sister, haunted him until the moment that Jim said that he would see that it was done, see that Matthias's rest stayed permanent.
It eased him, the promise, eased some of the tightness in his chest, in his shoulders. He tried to squeeze Jim's fingers, where they were twined with his on his chest, but found his strength failing. The kiss, though, he could return, gentle pressure against Jim's lips. It warmed him, too, and was possibly just as responsible for the relief as the promise itself. Jim didn't need to explain what his kiss meant. Didn't need to explain why he'd done it, that it wasn't meant to be any more than that. There, tucked into bed, warm and loved, Matthias thought that, even if it wasn't fair that he hadn't had time to love Jim as much as he wanted to, as much as he had deserved, he was simply grateful that he'd had the chance to love him, to love this man who was like no other man in the world, even for a moment. His wandering mind thought that, perhaps, that had been the purpose he was placed on the world for in the first place, to love Jim for a season.
"Thank you," he whispered, voice a mere rasp, rough with illness and emotion, both. He'd been holding on for that, he realized, for the promise that someone would be there, someone would wait by his grave as the twentieth day of November dawned to lay him to rest one last time. Now, with the promise secured, there was nothing left to wait for. Even if Jim succumbed, after Matthias, he wouldn't let a promise to Matthias go unanswered. That wasn't the sort of man that Jim was. Jim would make certain that there were plans in place, and plans in case those plans went awry, to keep that promise. There was no one in the world that Matthias could trust more. No one that he had trusted more, trusted with everything that he was, trusted with his body and his heart and his life. There was no one else that Matthias could have trusted with his death.
Then, again... "Thank you." It was more than his death that he was thanking Jim for, this time. In case he wasn't able to thank him again. In case he faded quickly, now, in case the next time he closed his eyes he didn't open them again. There was much that he had to thank Jim for. More than anyone but the two of them would ever understand. It had been perfect, between them, for the time that they'd been together... not without their fights, no couple could avoid those, but even those had resolved in a way that ought to have left Matthias warm to think about. Jim's anger was just as attractive as everything else about him, after all.
Matthias still had every letter that Jim had wrote him, every poem that he'd recorded in his elegant hand. Every coded message that had drawn them together, that had kept the flame between them alive even as they had moved beyond a flirtation of words and began enjoying one another's bodies. It had been the perfect courtship, the perfect love, as if Jim had been made especially for Matthias. Perhaps that was why it couldn't last; nothing that perfect, that beautiful, could stay forever. The world was a jealous beast. Beauty always faded fast. He took a shaky breath, looked up to Jim and said his goodbye the best way that he could. "So dawn goes down to day..." Another cough interrupted him, a punishment for trying to keep his voice steady, even, to give the poem the best that he had to offer. He finished it anyway, as his shoulders shook with the force of the cough, frailty of his body be damned. "Nothing gold can stay."
***
Nothing gold can stay. Those words had echoed in Jim’s mind, over and over again, since the day that Matthias had died. It hadn’t been that day, not the day that he’d spoken those bittersweet words to Jim, but soon after. Too soon. It would always feel too soon, to lose someone you loved, and for Jim it felt like an ugly, angry twisting inside his stomach that he couldn’t get rid of, no matter how many fits of rage he flew into. The day Matthias died, Jim had flown into such a fit that he blacked out most of it. He and Matthias might have indeed not been the same at their very core, but it was true that they were more than equals when it came to finding a harmonious balance with each other. Without Matthias, Jim was off balance, which was something he hadn’t counted on, and he hadn’t felt this out of control with himself in a long time.
Before Matthias, Jim had never been all that familiar with the feeling of losing a loved one, but now he was made painfully aware of it. It wasn’t something that sat comfortably with him. For a man used to always getting what he wanted, this was still a hard pill for him to swallow. In the end, he couldn’t save Matthias when it counted, but Jim was determined to save him now. It was going against the promise that Jim had made him, more or less on his deathbed, but Jim would just have to live with that. Matthias could be angry with him, and Jim was assuming he would be, but Jim would live with that too, if it meant that Matthias was alive and himself enough to be angry with him about anything in the first place. You couldn’t call someone like Jim sentimental very often, but in this case, he was very much that. In the mere month that he’d been without Matthias, there had been a dull ache like a hole in his gut, and Jim had been a little lost himself.
Everything he’d done since then, he’d done with thoughts of Matthias in the back of his mind. Picturing Matthias’s face, the way he looked as he sat in bed reading, slowly wasting away against his will. Seeing Matthias like that towards the end hadn’t tarnished the image of him at all in Jim’s mind. The man had died a beautifully horrible death, and Jim thought that only Matthias was capable of such a thing. He still loved him. Perhaps even more now than he had before. After all, you didn’t make plans to attend someone’s resurrection and execute a carefully thought out plan involving capture, containment, and administering of a very rare chemical that would supposedly curb your undead sweetheart’s cannibalistic tendencies for just anybody. Or at least, that’s what Matthias had implied would happen with the substance, and what Jim’s research into the source of Matthias’s reincarnate itself had told him in the last month’s worth of studying it.
The only trick was that there was currently no such chemical yet. Oh, there would be, eventually. Very soon, hopefully. They were almost there, Jim was sure of it. He’d had people steadily working on it for the last month, and he was confident they were close to it, but Jim couldn’t exactly wait for it to be done before fulfilling at least half of his promise to Matthias. That half being that he showed up at his burial site at just before midnight on the 19th, when hopefully Matthias rose from his ‘final’ resting place. Jim was ready. His men were in position (all of which were men that personally worked for Jim outside of the Resistance with some of the crime lord’s other business ventures, but they were men with no families or personal ties so they were utterly expendable, if Matthias couldn’t be subdued in time before someone got killed in the attempt), there was a secure van parked close by. All they had to do now was wait.
It wasn't exactly midnight. It had sounded more poetic, more memorable, to say midnight, than to be accurate. The accurate description would have been 'sometime after midnight, depending on how long it takes me to claw my way out of the grave after,' which, along with not being all that catchy, would have taken longer to say, from a man running out of time to say it. Still, the clock struck midnight in Las Vegas, and there was no sign of any stirring at Matthias's grave. Nor was there at five after midnight. Or ten. Long enough that the men that Jim had brought might have started to get restless, if they weren't well aware that their employer wasn't the sort of tolerate restlessness.
At thirteen after midnight, the dirt over Matthias's grave began to heave, something pushing its way from underneath the soil. A hand broke free first, nearly milk white in the waning moonlight, thrusting up out of the ground like a macabre flower seeking the sun. The rest of the arm followed, bending to try to find purchase on dirt that still hadn't quite settled into place, hadn't packed down completely in the month that Matthias had been buried. No grass had started growing on top of it, yet; one less layer between the monster that wore Matthias's body and freedom, when it clawed its way up through the dirt and roots that were starting to take hold as nature tried to reestablish itself, where it had been disturbed.
It pulled itself out of the ground slowly; there would have been plenty of time to put it down, if that was what Jim and his men had been there to do, while it worked free first arms, then head, torso, hips. It heaved itself out of the hole it had made, forearms braced against the solid ground beside it, crawling in the dirt until it could get its feet under it, until it could crouch, braced on the balls of its feet, its hands pressing into the ground as it looked around, head cocked to the side when its eyes found the nearest member of the living.
The thing that came out of Matthias's grave looked like him, but a pale, washed out mockery of him. Its hair was still as brown and curly as it had ever been, matted with dirt now from its hard fought rebirth from the ground. Its skin, though, was ghostly pale, entirely bloodless, pallor even more pronounced in the moonlight than it might have been in the sun. The gray tone, though, might have been a trick of the moon, in the light that they had. Its eyes, though... its eyes had faded from the warm brown of Matthias's to a shade as pale as its skin. They stared, unblinking, at the circle of men watching it emerge, no sign of awareness. Even as they landed on Jim, there was no sign that there was any recognition, before they scanned on to the next man in the line, and the one after that.
Then it moved.
It was faster, now, than it had been scraping its way out of the grave. That had been deceptively slow, that struggle against the earth pressing down onto it. When it lunged for the nearest man, reaching with dirty hands and broken nails, it was quick enough to get its hands around his arm before he could jerk away, before he could bring up any weapon to defend himself. The teeth were next, ripping into the fragile skin of his neck, where the blood pumped closest to the surface. It sprayed over Matthias's face, the red bright against bone-white skin, painting its lips like a version of Snow White that you'd never see in Disney. The rest of the men were forgotten; it wasn't thinking, wasn't planning. All it wanted was to eat, to gorge itself on living flesh. Any living flesh would do.
Despite how long they ended up waiting, Jim’s patience never wavered. It certainly wasn’t at the stroke of midnight, as Matthias had implied, but even when the clock reached ten minutes after, Jim didn’t get discouraged. He wasn’t always a patient man, but when it came to Matthias, Jim was prepared to wait forever if he had to. What was thirteen more minutes in the grand scheme of things? Jim wasn’t a man who was easily deterred by challenges. If anything, he thrived on them, but this was different. He wasn’t reveling in the cheap thrill of the near impossible, or enjoying the rush of a near success. Perhaps he could spare a moment to be smug about the latter once this was all said and done, but not a moment before. This was too important.
He was mildly aware of the restlessness of his men spread out throughout the site, but Jim hardly paid any attention. His eyes were fixed intently on the grave he knew to be Matthias’s, almost as if he was attempting to coax Matthias into rising by sheer force of will alone. If anyone could do that, it would probably be Jim. He wasn’t one of those reincarnates with supernatural powers or a mutation that allowed for him to perform miracles, he was just a man. A man with an affinity for crime that could be argued was very nearly a super power in itself and unique influence over people when it came to getting what he wanted, but he was still just a man. In the end, he didn’t have the power to make Matthias come back to him, but no one would have been surprised if he’d managed to do it all on his own, purely out of sheer determination. That is if anyone even knew what he was doing; Jim had neglected to share his plans with anyone, and wasn't planning on divulging anything until he was sure Matthias could be saved.
It felt like an eternity passed before those thirteen minutes were up. Jim’s eyes were so focused on the uneven earth over Matthias’s grave that when there was finally some movement, he nearly missed it, before a pale, white hand burst through the ground and Jim’s entire body was wracked with relief. Even though Jim had been sure that Matthias would rise tonight, because he was completely unwilling to accept any other outcome, Jim couldn’t help the relief that he felt in that moment. A month wasn’t that long in the grand scheme of things, but after a month of being without Matthias, and planning for the possibility of his return while also knowing deep down that there was also a real possibility that he would stay in the ground, that moment when he actually saw Matthias’s hand burst from the ground made it all worth it.
Jim hadn’t known what to expect, in the end. He hadn’t wanted to indulge in anything as crude as undead stereotypes when it came to thinking about what Matthias might be like when he rose. When it came down to it, all of that seemed beneath the image of the man that Jim had built up in his head. He didn’t know what was going to come out of the ground, but Jim had a hard time picturing Matthias reduced to some grotesque, bloodless, rotting monster stereotype that dominated your television screen. And in some ways, he was right. What came out of the ground still looked like his Matthias, enough that Jim felt a sharp pang in his chest at the sight of him, while at the same time it was very clear that he was something other than human now.
When its eyes fell on Jim, he felt breathless, frozen to the spot. The lack of recognition in Matthias’s eyes was obvious to Jim, but that didn’t matter, he thought to himself. Matthias would remember him soon enough. There had been plenty of chances to put Matthias down by the time the creature had actually pulled itself completely out of the ground, but Jim made no move to give any orders to his men, who were all looking nervously between each other and Jim until the very moment Matthias lunged for one of them. Then all hell broke loose, the night suddenly filled with the spray of blood and screams as two more of Jim’s men were killed, before Jim calmly barked an order and the men still alive were able to subdue the creature while it was busy tearing into the pulsing neck of its third victim. Jim watched the scene with a cold, impassive expression, unafraid of what his love had become and unmoved by the deaths of his own men by the bloodthirsty creature wearing Matthias’s face. They were eventually able to get the creature chained up in the back of the van secured by metal bars on all sides, and only then did they drive off, leaving the bodies of the newly dead behind. Jim had what he’d come for.