Who: Jim Moore and Matthias Graves What: They finally find a vaccine that works, and Matthias comes back to life. Sort of. Where: A secure, offsite facility for Jim's private use When: Friday, April 21; evening. Warnings: Dead people. Mad science. Intense evil love. Technically references to necrophilia, if you want to get picky about it, their love just defies death.
Jim had been waiting a long time for this day to come. Three months and some change, that is if you were only counting the time he'd been waiting since November, when Matthias had dug his way out of his own grave, undead and ravenous for human flesh. Even longer, if you're counting the time before that, between when Matthias had officially breathed his last breath and the night that Jim had come to his burial site to wait for him. It had been a little over a month, between those two points, and in that time alone Jim had already felt like he'd spent too long without him. That he couldn't possibly wait one day longer for the night that Matthias had told him about, the night he had been given instructions to come to this exact grave. To wait for Matthias to claw his way out from under the earth, so Jim could cut his life short a second time. For the final time.
At least, that's what Jim had promised him. If you knew Jim at all, you knew that he wasn't always one to keep his promises. In fact, almost rarely. Maybe even Matthias had known that, had known at the time that he'd delivered his last request to Jim, that there was every chance he wouldn't fulfill his end of the bargain. Not exactly. If he had known, or at least suspected, Matthias hadn't said anything. He wouldn't have. But Jim's reasons for not keeping this particular promise were also not particularly in line with why he usually went back on his word, double crossed someone, or otherwise screwed someone over for his own benefit. This wasn't like that. He wasn't ignoring Matthias's request to make sure he stayed in the ground because Jim had anything to gain from it personally, other than the fact that selfishly, he was no more willing to let Matthias go now than he had been on the last day Matthias had been alive.
He would never admit such a thing to anyone else, of course, unless they were ready for that to be the last thing they ever heard. Jim wasn't a man who would ever readily admit to something as human as weakness, but he could no longer deny to himself that Matthias was exactly that to him. A weakness. And not one that he wanted to eagerly shed. No, when it came to Matthias, Jim was more intent on keeping him around as long as possible, no matter in what form. Alive, dead, or somewhere in between. The simple fact was, when Jim thought of Matthias, his Matthias, rotting away underground? Just that thought alone was enough to send Jim into a tailspin of unchecked rage. He couldn't accept it. But he was willing to accept the consequences of betraying Matthias's trust, even if he was angry with him, if it meant getting him back.
So far, they hadn't had much luck. After that night, the night Jim had watched with a morbid fascination as Matthias fought his way above ground, all sickly pale skin and gnashing teeth, those of Jim's men that were left after Matthias had his first meal managed to transport him to a private facility that Jim kept hidden from the Resistance, specifically for this kind of thing. As invested as he was in the organization and the respect he held for Robert, there were still going to be some things he'd prefer to keep to himself, this included. Until they figured out what Matthias needed to retain some sentience, Jim would rather no one else knew that he was even back from the dead, figuratively speaking. Less messy, that way. No one knew, not even Lucien, no one outside of Jim and the specially trained chemists that he'd brought in specifically to figure out whatever this chemical was Matthias described that he would need to stay less rabid. And of course, they'd all been threatened within an inch of their lives regarding confidentiality.
It felt like all he had been doing lately was waiting. Waiting for Matthias to come back from the edge of death. Waiting for these quacks in labcoats to come up with the magic sequence that would produce the correct formula needed to bring his Matthias back to him, as much as was even possible in his condition. At the very least, Jim understood that it would mean Matthias would regain the very human function to speak. Right now it was just a lot of monosyllabic growls and snarling where he was separated by a thick wall of glass, locked in a secure room for these last three months while countless men in coats risked their lives to stick Matthias with needles in the hopes that their latest concoction would finally be the one that did the trick.
Though it wasn't completely clear what was more dangerous to them, the undead monster foaming at the mouth or the very living monster who often got fed up with the failed attempts and had some of the unlucky fools killed for their troubles. In Jim's defense, he'd more or less been isolating himself from most human contact for the last few months, his already lackluster people skills weren't exactly up to par. In fact, they were worse than ever. Already agitated, Jim stood on the other side of the glass from his beloved while a group of nervous looking chemists went into Matthias's holding cell along with a few men armed with high voltage stun guns, in case Matthias tried to take a bite out of them while they performed their latest trial run. Jim was already preparing himself for another failure, mentally ticking off which of the self-proclaimed 'scientists' he was going to kill next when he spoke into the intercom with gritted teeth. "Begin."
The scientists had already worked out that any injection they gave to the rabid creature in the holding cell had to be delivered straight into the spine. There wasn't any blood pumping through the pale body; it lay, dark and stagnant, in his veins, unable to circulate and carry anything to another part of his body. At the base of his neck, though, where there was already a circular scar, it was close enough for spinal fluid to carry it up into the most primitive parts of his brain, enough to spark a reaction. If, of course, they'd found the right formula. If they were wrong, but lucky, there would be no reaction from the undead thing that was so important to their employer. If they were wrong, and unlucky... no one had said that hurting the zombie would mean they got hurt. No one had to. They'd met Jim, after all.
It meant being careful, letting the men with the stun guns distract the zombie while they all tried to circle around behind him, so that someone could get into position to deliver the injection in the right spot, helpfully outlined by the scar that was growing darker every time they jabbed another needle into it. It was a tricky move, requiring as much agility as it did brains. Some of them were better at getting the angle just right while the zombie tried to turn and grab at them than others. Being the best at it made them valuable. It meant that they were the least likely to suffer the consequences for disappointing Jim again. No one wanted to suffer the consequences for disappointing Jim, even if it meant putting yourself within biting range of a monster that skulked and lunged, a predator just intelligent enough to resent its cage and its captors. The zombie might kill them. Jim definitely would. He didn't even have to be hungry to do it.
One of the youngest of them was the one to hit the mark... but not well. Not cleanly. He depressed the syringe piston, injecting the thick liquid filling the cylinder into the zombie's spine, deep enough that none of it would get lost, wasted, in fragile skin or meat. He hadn't managed to pull the needle free when the zombie turned, ripping free from the sharp pain and hitting at the one responsible for it. The man flew back, landed on the ground and scrambled away, the plastic part of the syringe still in his hand. The needle had snapped off, stuck out of the back of the creature's neck like a bizarre decoration, the kind of piercing more at home on a particularly aggressive member of an alternative crowd than the elegant, poetry reading man that Matthias had been in life.
The stun guns barely discouraged the creature at all, while it tried to stalk toward the source of the pain. It had tried to bite all of the living meat that had been in its cage, but it hated the ones that pricked it in the neck most, the ones that it could reason enough to know were responsible for the cold, creeping feeling that the mixtures sometimes gave him, or the fire that ran through its spine other times. It didn't know why they had done these things. It didn't know whether there was a purpose. What it did know was that they had hurt it, and so it would hurt them. It would rip into their tender living flesh, rip them apart until it could get to the tenderest bits, the bits inside the hard cage of skull. It could break them free, easily, as long as its prey was subdued. The living meat was good, but the brains... the brains were the best. The brains sated its hunger, and it was going to have them, this time. It was going to have this one.
Awareness came not so much like a bang as a whimper. A whisper unfurling, while the injection worked its way from the fluid cushioning the creature's brain into the folds of the brain itself, absorbing into it slowly. It was waking up. It wasn't an it. It was a he. He had a mother and a father, a brother and a sist... just a brother. He had books, he had a job. He had Jim. Jim was beautiful, the most beautiful man he'd ever known. Jim was the center of his universe, the most important thing in his life. His name was Matthias, something not nearly as important as knowing that he loved a man named Jim. He worked for a man named Robert. He liked codes. He liked secrets. He was a reincarnate. He was Matthias, and he was Simon. Simon had been a monster. Matthias had been a monster. Matthias had been an it, and he remembered every second of it.
He'd stopped in the middle of a step, one foot resting in front of the other. He drew them back together, carefully, eyes dropping to the floor. He could hear people moving around him, feel the needle sticking out of the back of his neck. Matthias raised a hand to touch it, gently, then pinched it to wiggle it free. It came easily, and it hardly hurt at all. Oh, it hurt, but it should have hurt more than it did. It was long, and large, and it had been pressed deep enough that there had barely been anything there to grasp to pull it free. It didn't hurt enough. He dropped it on the floor in front of him. His hands... his hands were pale. Black veins stood out underneath white, dead skin. He was dead. He was dead, and he was walking around, and he could remember when the only thing he wanted was flesh, blood. Brains.
He still wanted it. All of it. Now... now, he could realize that he needed to restrain himself, or one of the men with stun guns was going to knock him down.
Matthias buried his face against his hands, shoulders shaking. He should have been crying. Dead things, though, their eyes didn't produce enough moisture for tears.
The results of their latest trial were so unexpected that Jim almost missed it. After months of trial and error, of waiting, of research and relying on something as infuriating as hope, was it possible that Jim was finally about to be paid off for all his uncharacteristic patience? In the beginning, Jim had been sure it would work. He'd had what information he needed from Matthias before he died, and any necessary details Matthias hadn't supplied him with (most likely because he had somehow wrongly assumed that Jim would actually obey his wishes and not try to keep Matthias for himself), Jim had personally gathered to share with those he hired to get the job done. Sadly, Jim Moore was many things, but he was no scientist. He could decode any cipher and get information out of anyone, but when it came to chemicals and measurements, he was completely lost. There weren't words to describe just how agonizing it was, that the one thing that could really save Matthias was the one thing Jim couldn't do.
He'd had high hopes in the beginning. Those hopes had been quickly dashed by each failed attempt, every time the team of scientists he'd hired didn't get the sequence exactly right, and all that happened after another needle was stuck in his beloved's neck was that it angered the beast, and a few of them died. Whether that was by the beast itself or a quicker, unexpected death later on, ordered by Jim himself, incapable of dealing with his disappointment in any other way but to take it out on others. Anyone he hired who didn't understand who they were working for, and who Matthias was to Jim, deserved their deaths when they inevitably failed to give Jim the only thing he'd ever actually asked for in his life. Jim wasn't a man who ever asked for things. He just took them. But this, he couldn't just take. It wasn't in his power to save Matthias, what was required of him to succeed in that was nowhere in his skillset, so he had to rely solely on the skills of others. There was nothing more infuriating to Jim than that.
Jim was watching the men advance and retreat from what they perceived as nothing but a monster, doing their little dance before one of them eventually landed the intended mark. He was watching, but he wasn't really paying attention, because he thought he already knew what the outcome would be. Another flop, another fuck up, someone else's mistake that Jim would make them pay for later. Probably with their lives, but he wasn't picky. Sometimes if he was in a mood, he liked to see them dangle for a little while, play with them like a feral cat might play with its food before it inevitably killed it. Those who Jim hired in confidence that didn't immediately understand who it was that hired them seemed to think that it was Matthias who was the feral one, but in reality, it would always be Jim. Even when it was his Matthias who was trying his best to sink his teeth into human flesh, Jim would always be the more dangerous one of the two. He was who the help had to answer to when they failed to fix the love of his life.
Not a phrase he'd ever use lightly. Or at all, but that didn't change the fact that there was truth at the heart of it. Jim had never been someone who loved, only possessed, but Matthias was far more than a possession to him. He hadn't been simply something that Jim could call his for quite some time. In a life where Jim ultimately had no loyalties if it came down to it, not even to the Resistance, Matthias would always have his. There was nothing Jim would do to keep that, to keep him, no lengths he wouldn't go to. Not because he liked owning Matthias, body and soul, but because he loved him. Matthias had to understand that, didn't he? He had to understand that for as long as Jim was still breathing, even if Matthias no longer was, he was never going to let him go. He would succeed at bringing Matthias back, or he would die trying.
Watching the horrific scene on the other side of the glass with some level of detachment, Jim averted his eyes only for a moment. He didn't like seeing that crude looking syringe sticking out of the back of his lover's neck, every time, so he'd looked away, and he'd almost missed when everything changed. When the universe finally shifted in their favor. Pale blue eyes shifting back to where they'd been watching them work, Jim stopped cold when he saw that Matthias had stopped too. He'd stopped, and he looked… still dead, but suddenly more like Matthias than he had in months. Still deathly pale, still very much not alive, but Jim didn't require Matthias to have a pulse to love him. Suddenly Jim felt renewed with purpose, eyes bright and cheeks flushed in barely contained excitement that this had actually worked. There was nothing that got Jim going quite like winning. He didn't go into the room yet, though. As much as he longed for Matthias, Jim still had enough self-preservation to hang back until he was one hundred percent sure Matthias wouldn't try to take a bite out of him if he attempted to get closer. Jim rested one hand on the glass, palm pressed to it and fingers spread out, his other on the intercom that connected Matthias's room to his, turning it on and speaking cautiously into it. "... Matthias?"
Even before he heard his lover's voice, even before memories of seeing Jim there, with the scientists, in the graveyard, started filtering back in, Matthias knew that it had to have been Jim who had found a way to bring him back. There was no one else who would have cared enough. No one else who would have been clever enough to find the people, the resources, that would be required to bring Matthias's higher functions back into his control. Someone else might have kept him around, a mindless zombie, to use for a particularly gruesome method of execution, but only Jim would have bothered bringing him back to himself... even when it was the last thing that Matthias had asked for, the last thing that Matthias had wanted. No, that was a lie. The last thing that he'd have wanted was to stay a mindless, rabid beast for as long as his undeath lasted, not that he'd have known any better, if that had been the case.
This, though, this meant remembering everything that he had done, every bit of indignity that he'd suffered through. Death, and undeath, wasn't a pretty thing. Matthias knew it wasn't, had known even before he'd even come close to dying. Simon had never been ashamed of what he was. Matthias wasn't... ashamed, exactly, but he knew what sort of life he would be existing in, now, a life of endless dependence on chemicals to let him stay himself. Of standing out wherever he went, unless he got makeup to cover up the pallor of his skin, colored contacts to hide the way his irises had bleached out to white. Simon had stopped wearing his, the makeup and the contacts both, but he had lived in a world where everyone knew about Partially Deceased Syndrome, where everyone had lived through it. And while they'd feared them...
They'd feared them, but there had been enough of them that there had been strength in numbers. There had been centers. There had been mantras. I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer, and what I did in my untreated state was not my fault. Oh, Matthias existed in a world where there were reincarnates, there were people who were vampires, who were just as partially dead as he was, now, but it was different. People would see it differently. Vampires were sexy. What Matthias was... nobody thought that there was anything appealing about zombies. All anyone wanted to do with a zombie was shoot it. And that was the life that he'd lead, without others. Without the centers, even if Simon hadn't gone to them voluntarily. Without the Prophet, or the other Disciples. Without the Undead Liberation Army. There were no protections, as weak as they had been. At least there had been something, at least he hadn't been alone.
Even dead, the sound of Jim's voice made something in Matthias's chest ache, the same sweet ache that he'd always felt, when he was with Jim. The love of his life. The love of his unlife, because Matthias didn't love him any less just because his heart had stopped beating. It seemed like he ought to have. It seemed like everything ought to have changed, like he ought to have been a different person. It wasn't the neurotryptaline that had changed Simon, though. It had been the Prophet. The ULA. Having a sense of purpose, when before he'd been an aimless junkie, someone who had already ruined his life. Matthias was older than Simon had been when he'd died and risen again. He'd had more time to discover who it was that he wanted to be, to become comfortable with who he was, with who he and Simon could be together. It made sense that he'd still feel like himself, but he still thought he should feel... different.
"Jim..." Matthias knew how hard Jim must have worked. How much he must have sacrificed. He wished he could be pleased. He wanted to be pleased, that Jim had loved him that much, that he hadn't been able to let him go. Instead... instead, he mourned it. "Jim, what have you done?" He'd asked, he'd begged, for Jim to end him. For Jim to make sure that Matthias never came back, that he went right back into the grave if he clawed his way out of it. He should have known, should have expected, that Jim wouldn't. That Jim wouldn't choose the easy route, that he'd do everything in his power to bring Matthias back to himself, instead. He ought to have asked someone else, anyone else. There hadn't been anyone else that he could have asked. There hadn't been anyone else he would have wanted to be there when he died for a final time.
A man with slightly more ego and slightly less of an I.Q. than Jim might have thought themselves some kind of god for what they'd been able to accomplish. Even in a world full of reincarnation, where almost anything was possible if you put your mind to it, bringing someone back to 'life' was still virtually unheard of. Oh, there were plenty of reincarnates out there with various gifts of immortality. Vampires, fables, various deities from all manner of mythology… creatures that were more or less just handed the gift of immortality, though so rarely deserved it. But to be able to bringing someone back from the brink of permanent death, like Matthias? To take dead flesh and failed organs and find the right combination of chemicals to reanimate the undead was some twisted Frankenstein level shit that any lesser man would have immediately bragged about to anyone that would listen. Jim didn't care.
Not that he didn't take a good deal of pride in his work, of just how very much work and planning and time had gone into this project. A lesser man couldn't have done what he did. A lesser man who was ruled by his weaknesses, instead of learning how to utilize them. Matthias was the only weakness he had that Jim would ever claim for himself, and among the very long list of things that Jim would stubbornly never accept despite the reality of his very mortal life, it was death. Not his own, as he might have predicted, but Matthias's. Jim could not and would not accept this man's death, so he'd gone to extraordinary lengths in order to outsmart it. He'd gone farther than maybe anyone else had ever gone in this life to cheat death, never stopping once until he finally succeeded at the impossible. But Jim very suddenly didn't care about any of that, because now Matthias was standing there, saying his name.
Jim. Hearing his name roll off Matthias's tongue again like that immediately lit him up from the inside out in a way that Jim hadn't realized he was even capable of, making him feel almost reborn. It had been over three months since he'd heard his name on Matthias's lips, and Jim knew how much he'd longed to hear it, because it had been in his head for months. It was all he'd been waiting for, now. He'd gone too many months without Matthias, and it could have been far longer. It would have been forever, if Jim and his private R&D team hadn't been able to figure out the correct formula for the serum that would need to be injected into Matthias for the rest of his undead life. He never would have heard his name on Matthias's lips again, if they hadn't finally succeeded in figuring out what Matthias needed to regain his own mind and come back to him.
"What I had to." Jim's tone was gentle, but final. There was no apologetic note in his voice, and there never would be. He had expected this sort of reaction from Matthias, at least initially. He knew that this hadn't been what Matthias had wanted, what Matthias had asked for. Matthias had asked for death, for a final release from this life, and Jim did love him. But he was incapable of loving unselfishly. Once Matthias had some time to readjust, he would understand. He had to. Matthias was the only person who had ever fully understood Jim, for all his many complexities, so he had to understand that when it came down to it, Jim would never let him go. He would keep his hold on Matthias until death finally pried it from his own cold, dead fingers.
There had been a moment, when Jim had been prepared to go with him. He hadn't told Matthias as much, but it was the truth. At the very end, Jim had felt the rattle in his own chest, had known that he wouldn't be escaping this virus either. Jim wasn't exactly the suicidal type, or the self-sacrificing in the name of love, but if there really was no cure for the virus and Matthias was going to die anyway, at the time there had been no reason for Jim to try fighting it. Then the world had changed around them and Jim had been miraculously saved from death's clutches, while his Matthias was already dead and gone. He couldn't just accept that sort of unfair separation. No one could ever truly come between them, not even death. Jim's eyes were still locked intensely on Matthias while he suddenly addressed those still awkwardly standing around in the middle of the room. "Leave us."
It was one of the things that Matthias had loved about Jim, that he couldn't accept any alternatives, that he would have what he wanted above everything else. Jim's first priority was himself, had always been himself, and his own goals. Matthias had been willing to devote himself to those goals, too, to follow along behind Jim in whatever he wanted to accomplish. To bring people in line behind Jim, to kill with kindness anything Jim hadn't brought to bear with force. Matthias hadn't been devoted to the Resistance. Matthias had been devoted to Jim. That was how Matthias was, who Matthias was. Loyalty to Therese had brought him to the Resistance, but it hadn't been enough. Matthias wasn't the sort of man who could be loyal to a faceless ideal. He never had been. After his sister's face had faded, he'd needed another to take its place.
He'd needed Jim. The place where he'd been, when he'd found him, he'd been craving, desperately, someone who could embody that ideal, someone who would give him something... personal, to follow. Someone to believe in, instead of something. He'd been lucky that Jim had spoken to him, when he did. Like fate. Other fumbling, grasping attempts to find someone to connect to, they had been discarded that very second. He'd found Jim, and Jim was beautiful. The most beautiful thing in the world. He ought to have known that fierce, possessive Jim wouldn't have just let him go into death's hands easily when there was a chance he could snatch him away.
It didn't make it ache any less, knowing that he was stuck now, like this. Matthias was dead, but Jim was alive. Jim was still just as alive and beautiful as he'd ever been, even if Matthias couldn't see him for proof of it. He knew it, knew that Jim could never be any less than he had been from the second that Matthias had first seen his face. Maybe Jim would want him, then, but... but how long before Jim got tired of cold, dead flesh? Simon had loved, yes, but he'd loved someone like him. Someone else Redeemed, given a second chance at life. "You shouldn't have." It would have been easier, so much easier, if Jim had just let him go. If Jim had made sure that he stayed in the grave. Not just for Matthias... couldn't Jim see that it was for him, too, that he shouldn't be stuck with someone who was only partially alive?
He didn't care that everyone else was filing out of the room at Jim's command. Matthias barely even noticed. The world had narrowed down to him and Jim, just like it always had, when they played their little games. There wasn't any game now, though. This was all real. This was forever. There was no reversing what Matthias was, no going back to the warm, living man that Jim had adored, had owned just like Matthias had owned him. There was no reversing it, no taking this back if Jim decided that he didn't want this, want Matthias, want a dead thing in his bed, after all, and Matthias was angry. He didn't think he'd ever been angry at Jim before. "You shouldn't have." He didn't notice the last scientist out the door flinching away from the way he bit out the words, any more than he'd noticed them still there in the first place.
Yet... there was still a part of him, behind the anger, that enjoyed knowing that Jim hadn't been able to let go of him. That Jim loved him too much to accept death as an outcome. They'd always played these games, these games of jealousy, of proving that the other belonged to them, not to anyone else that might have tried to get in their way. Matthias had never been as vicious with them as Jim, had found ways to stake his claim that didn't mean shedding blood, but he'd still been willing to do nearly anything to keep Jim to himself. If they'd been keeping score of who took on the most to keep his claim on the other, on who had proven themselves against the most dangerous rival, Jim would have won their game. He'd faced down death, faced down a rabid monster that could have killed him without remorse, a monster that wore Matthias's face.
While Jim had certainly not been dumb enough not to expect this kind of reaction, it wasn't exactly something he liked witnessing. He had the advantage of being able to see Matthias from his side of the glass, but Matthias couldn't see him, so he couldn't see how Jim's expression actually fell. Just for a moment. Long enough that had anyone actually seen it for themselves, they would have known how Jim truly felt in that moment, though they probably wouldn't have lived long enough to tell anyone. As cruel a person as Jim could be, he had never been cruel to Matthias, not once, and it hadn't been his intention to be cruel now. Any cruelty applied here was an unfortunate consequence of his inherent selfishness, not because he'd wanted to hurt Matthias. Never Matthias. Jim would sooner inflict the worst kind of pain on himself before he hurt the only man he'd ever truly felt something for, but as fate would have it, Jim had come out the other side of the virus unscatched. Matthias hadn't, and Jim couldn't just let him go.
There was next to nothing that Jim wouldn't do for Matthias, in the end. He'd always been more than willing to kill for him; to have those poor, unfortunate souls who got caught up in their twisted little jealousy games killed in particularly gruesome or humiliating fashions. Murder was nothing to someone like Jim. He'd signed away on countless deaths without a second thought, but to make someone's death personal? To kill with passion? Only Matthias had ever sparked such a thing in him, no one else. Jim was not a man who was accustomed to letting go of what was his, and that included Matthias, because no one could ever inspire Jim the way that he did. No one could ever love Jim the way that he did. Sweet Matthias, who was beautiful and much more clever than he sometimes let on, who was just a little bit too soft for the sorts of lows the Resistance typically stooped to, only he had ever been brave enough to love a man like Jim.
Jim was never one to be deterred. He welcomed challenges head on, he'd faced death itself and openly defied it. How many men could say that? How many people could say that they'd cheated death for the person they loved? Not many, Jim would wager. Of course, he didn't expect Matthias to be impressed by that. At least not right now. This reaction, it was expected. Matthias had every right to be angry with him, and Jim had steeled himself for it, because at least it meant that Matthias was himself again. He was himself enough to be mad at Jim for blatantly breaking his promise, and that was enough. It wouldn't deter Jim at all, despite the momentary upset at realizing how much he didn't actually like Matthias being genuinely angry with him, a much different kind of anger from the sort that played a part in their games. Who knew that Matthias could still surprise him, after all this time. He was convinced that only Matthias could do that for him. Jim was still learning something new from him every day.
Once the last man had filed out of the lab, Jim made his way into it, the previous tone in Matthias's voice still ringing a little in his ears. He stopped, just inside the door, trying very hard not to appear as any sort of threat to Matthias. For someone as dangerous as him, that wasn't exactly easy, but then, he'd never been a threat to the man in front of him. Not really. Even in those early days, before their loyalties to each other had truly been set in stone. It would have taken a considerable amount, for Jim to turn on him back then. And now he never would. Matthias was his, just as much as he was Matthias's. They owned each other completely, even in death. There was simply no love greater than that, so Matthias would have to forgive him eventually. Jim could wait. He'd already waited plenty, so what was a little more in the grand scheme of things? At least Matthias was around and himself to do any sort of forgiving.
Even though he'd already seen Matthias plenty from the other side of the glass, it was entirely different, seeing him up close. Jim took a good, long look at him, saying nothing, eyes raking over every inch of him while the look on his face betrayed nothing of what he was feeling. What Jim was actually feeling in that moment made him far too uncomfortable to show, but the urge to embrace Matthias was rising steadily in his chest. He only didn't because he knew that no matter his own convictions, Matthias was justified in how he felt about the decisions Jim had made for the both of them. He wouldn't invade Matthias's space until the other man wanted him to. Jim had known what Matthias would be like, if the serum worked, Matthias had told him enough that he had been prepared for it. Jim had never seen skin so white, or veins that black underneath, but he still looked like his Matthias. Maybe it was just the love sickness talking, or some darker, morbid attraction that he hadn't realized in himself before, but Jim thought he'd gotten even more beautiful. Finally closing the door behind him, so they were truly alone, Jim conceded with a small bow of his head, speaking slowly like he was actually attempting to choose his words carefully, something he usually never bothered with. "I shouldn't have. I've never been very good at not doing things I shouldn't. Forgive me?"
Even if he'd had the chance, the time, to prepare himself for seeing Jim again, Matthias knew there was no way he could possibly have been ready. Even as long as they'd been together, a couple, seeing Jim still affected him like that sometimes even under the best of circumstances. Even when they saw each other every day. Even on days when Matthias woke up next to him in the morning, Jim the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes. Jim was beautiful enough to take his breath away, even now that he didn't really need to breathe anymore. It hit him like a knife to the chest, seeing Jim in front of him again, now that he was back to his right mind. Matthias didn't want to look at him, didn't want to raise his head so Jim could see his face clearly, even knowing that he'd seen it all, already. He'd seen Matthias as ugly as it was possible for anyone to be, seen him dying, seen him dead. Seen him rise up, seen him with blood on his teeth. Not that Matthias thought that the blood would scare Jim away. Jim wasn't one to be afraid of a little blood. Seeing Matthias like this, though... he couldn't still want him. Not really.
He did raise his head, though, because he couldn't help it. He had to look at him more closely, had to see for himself that Jim was there, that Jim was in one piece, that Matthias hadn't somehow ripped him to shreds while he was feral, done something unforgivable to the man that he loved, like Simon had to his mother. He raised his head, looked him over in silence, eyes that had once been brown but that were now nearly colorless locked intensely onto his face. Jim looked... different, in the way that someone always looked different after you'd gone months without seeing them in person. There were always differences. Little bits of weight gain, or weight loss. The length of their hair. Tiny, insignificant details that you wouldn't notice, living with someone's changes day-to-day. He'd noticed them in his siblings, when he'd seen them after going away to college. In his parents, every time he brought himself to face the specter of his sister and go for a visit. Now... now, he was seeing them in Jim, all the days and weeks and months that he'd missed being by his lover's side. That ached, too.
The changes in Matthias... they were more pronounced. How much Jim have felt, seeing them in him, knowing that they were there to stay? That he'd never have the man he'd gone to bed with more nights than not, except when one of them was engaged in some sort of project for work, back in his arms, but only this pale, cold imitation of him? Jim shouldn't have brought him back, Jim should have made certain that he stayed in the grave, that he could remember Matthias the way that he had been. The way that Jim had loved him. He was angry, he wanted to be angry. He wanted to hold on to that anger, but there was Jim, right in front of him, changed, and talking to him like that. Like he meant his apology. Like he understood why Matthias was upset, and oh, Matthias knew that Jim could play the part well enough if he wanted to. He knew exactly what Jim was, exactly what he was capable of. He knew that Jim could make you believe whatever he wanted you to believe, but there was still a part of him, a clench in his gut, that told him that Jim wouldn't do that to him.
It was foolish. It was naive, to think that he was special enough that Jim wouldn't lie to him, but... he had been. Matthias knew that he had been special to Jim, that he'd been an exception. It was foolish to think that Jim could mean it, when he asked Matthias to forgive him like it mattered to him, but Matthias thought he believed it, anyway. "I shouldn't." He shouldn't forgive Jim, because he'd asked him for one thing. One simple thing, except... except he wasn't simple, was it? Asking someone to put the man they loved back into the ground, for good, that wasn't the easiest task in the world to put on his back. Matthias didn't know if he could have done it. If it had been Jim in his place, Matthias wasn't certain he could have walked away any more than Jim had, even knowing that he didn't have the resources that Jim did, the resources to bring him back to him. He'd have let Jim kill him before he'd have done the same, even knowing Jim wasn't Jim anymore. How could he have expected differently.
"Look what you've done to me." Matthias's voice broke on the demand, a painful crack. He flung his arms open wide, invited Jim to look at what he'd become. There were no scars from his death on his body, at least. That was a small blessing, dying from disease, dying with the outside of his body as flawless as it had been in life. He wasn't Simon, with the marks from needles on his arms to show that he'd died a junkie. Amy, with the sores from her long illness covering her torso. He wasn't Kieran, with dark scores on his wrists to announce to the world that he'd wanted his death the first time, and had it yanked away when he Rose. The thing that had killed Matthias had been inside him, and no one would ever be able to tell. He was still dead. Still a dead thing, still someone who had been rotting in the ground for over a month before he'd crawled back out of it. "Look at what I am."
Simon stirred, sluggish, in the back of his mind, a quiet protest that he shouldn't be ashamed. That he was special. He was redeemed. Matthias ignored him, focused only on Jim.
Jim looked, because Matthias demanded it, and because Jim couldn't not look. It was true, he'd seen Matthias countless times since he'd risen. He'd seen him rabid and practically foaming at the mouth, covered in blood from the unfortunate souls who'd managed to get themselves within bitings reach of the monster Jim had insisted on keeping. He'd seen Matthias, feral and filthy, clawing his way out of the ground after at least a month's worth of decomposition. He'd arguably seen Matthias at his very worst, the worst that someone could ever possibly be, and he didn't care. He didn't. Other people might only say they didn't when the truth was, they couldn't help but care. Most people were too hung up on their own insecurities and shallow expectations to really embrace what most would perceive as nothing but flaws. They would only see what was broken, the imperfections of previously rotting flesh.
Other people might only see his sickly pale skin, his dead eyes or the absence of color in his lips, but when Jim looked at Matthias, he didn't see an undead thing. He just saw the man he loved. That was a very sentimental thing to think which is why Jim refrained from expressing such sentiments out loud, but it was the truth. In his eyes, Matthias was far from flawed. He might not look exactly as he did when he'd been alive, but the kind of love that Jim had for him, he didn't need Matthias to be breathing for him to keep loving him. Just so long as he didn't leave this earth without him. Jim was a very demanding man, after all, something that Matthias had already known about him. He should have known that when it came to his own death, Matthias wouldn't be permitted to cross over into the afterlife while Jim's body and soul was still tethered to this earthly plain. They either died together or they didn't die at all.
A bold claim, maybe, for someone as mortal as Jim. He hadn't been blessed with a reincarnate with any special powers, nothing so crude as invulnerability or immortality like some of these so-called reincarnated 'gods'. He was so much more than that. Jim was a man with a remarkably keen intellect, unlimited knowledge and resources at his fingertips that he could wield like a weapon, more dangerous in his ingenuity than most people were with a gun in their hands. It was Jim who hadn't let death get in the way of being reunited with his love. It had been Jim, in all his stubbornness, he had been the one to seek out what was needed to bring Matthias back to him no matter the cost. It was Jim who had persisted. Jim who had never given up. It had never even entered into his mind to give up on Matthias, the only outcome he had been prepared to accept was Matthias's inevitable return to his side, where he belonged.
It was Jim that defied death itself in order to bring Matthias back from the brink, with all his mortality and lack of supernatural gifts. No one else. He might not have been the one to figure out the right components to succeed in creating the correct antidote, the practice of science wasn't his strong suit so much as the study of it, but he'd been the one to see it through. He'd waited, he'd watched Matthias burst out of the ground and had him taken to this facility, and then he'd waited some more. So much waiting, more waiting than Jim had ever done in his entire life. He was always running short on patience, but Matthias had always been worth the wait. Now, standing in front of him after four months of being separated by glass, Jim didn't care how Matthias thought he looked to him. To Jim, Matthias was still as beautiful as he always had been. And yes, Jim did care that the choice he'd made was obviously causing Matthias pain. That was the last thing he wanted, but he was still hoping that Matthias would get past it.
"What you are…?" Jim sounded almost a little in awe as he took a few more steps forward, his tone also noticeably tender, something he was only capable of sounding to the man in front of him. Maybe he was in awe of the magnificent transformation Matthias had undergone, that the man he loved had died and risen again, a feat that not just anyone could claim. Maybe he was a little in awe of the fact that Matthias no longer needed air to breathe, or had to rely on the steady pumping of blood through his body in order to survive, after all Jim was an ambitious man who always strove for the impossible, but that wasn't why he'd brought him back. Matthias wasn't some experiment to him now. He was just… his. And Jim was somewhat accustomed to keeping what was his. "What you are is a miracle." Jim stopped directly in front of Matthias, unafraid of getting close to him, peering out at the other man intently. "I am sorry for your distress. But I'm not sorry for bringing you back to me."
A miracle. Matthias had heard more beautiful phrases from Jim's lips than he imagined anyone else in the world ever had. If there had been anyone who had heard more of them... the very thought of it made Matthias burn with jealousy, even in his still, dead heart. He'd heard Jim recite poetry to him, some of the most glorious love poems that had ever been written. It was how they'd courted. It was how they'd played, how they'd led up to the sort of lovemaking that Matthias had never known with any other lover. There had been words, so many words, more eloquent than that, in the time that they'd been together. Mostly words that had been written, spoken, by someone else first, but that had never mattered to Matthias. What had mattered was that Jim had remembered them, had selected them, just for him. That Jim was communicating with him using one of Matthias's favorite things, that he was speaking a language that no one had ever been willing to share with Matthias before, and no one else ever would after.
He'd never heard that note in Jim's voice before. He'd never heard anything like Jim calling him a miracle, and meaning it. It satisfied Simon, where he stirred, where he had been so vaguely discontent that Matthias hadn't embraced what they had become, wasn't happy to have been special enough to rise again after his death. What Matthias thought of it didn't matter nearly as much as what Jim thought about it. Not to Matthias, even. It was Jim's words that brought him up short, that left him blinking in silence, because Jim... Jim still sounded like he loved him. Jim sounded like he was amazed by Matthias's very existence. Perhaps he was. It was amazing, in a way, wasn't it? That he'd died and come back. That he'd been a feral beast, and now he was standing in front of Jim, close enough to touch. Close enough that he could tell that Matthias was cold and dead by more than look. There ought to have been body heat, between them. Any that was there came from Jim, Matthias still as cold as the grave even this long after he'd climbed out of it.
"I didn't want this, Jim." The protest was weaker, that time, though. Matthias's arms lowered to his sides, even though what he wanted, even angry, was to reach out to Jim. He was so close, close enough that Matthias could see the fine details of his face. The texture of his skin. Lines at the corners of his eyes. He was closer than he ought to be coming to a dead, ugly thing like Matthias, and he wasn't shying away. He wasn't repulsed by the fact that, this close, there was even less pretense that Matthias was something that he wasn't. That Matthias was alive. That he resembled the man that Jim had known and loved. Matthias didn't know how well they'd managed to clean him off, if at all, after he'd crawled out of the grave. After he'd ripped into the men that had helped to capture him. He probably smelled like death, like blood. Like awful things, and Jim was still so close. "How can you know you'll still want this, in a year?"
Death had never frightened Jim. Matthias knew that. He was usually the one dealing it, but he'd never been afraid to get close to it. It had been Matthias who had been too soft for that. Who had always hesitated to kill, even when he knew that it would be in the best interests of the Resistance for him to do it. That had eased, since Jim. Since his loyalties had shifted from the group to the man. Matthias would do anything, for Jim. He'd have died for him. He'd have killed for him. Living again for him... living again for him was beyond what Matthias had ever thought would be asked of him. It was too much, it should have been too much. Matthias hadn't wanted to live again. He hadn't wanted to be what Simon was, to survive the kind of prejudice, the kind of hate, that Simon had survived, without even the Prophet to give his undead life a new sort of purpose.
Part of Matthias knew already that he was going to do it anyway. For Jim. He would live for Jim, even when living meant learning to be an undead thing in a world that hated reincarnates enough already, without them being obviously reincarnates. He could get heavy foundation, for his skin. He could get colored contacts. He could learn to fake it, to mask his dead features. There was still a part of him that rebelled at the thought of it. Simon had never wanted to hide, had only hidden for Kieran's sake when he'd wanted to bring him to meet his family. Jim... would Jim ask him to hide? Jim loved him enough to hold him even after death. Whether Jim would be proud to walk with him in public, as he was... Matthias's hands curled, not quite into fists, tips of his fingers pressed against his thighs. "How can you know that you'll still want to kiss lips that will always be cold?"
It was a fair question to ask, considering their situation, though a very indignant part of Jim felt that Matthias shouldn't have to ask that of him. He had to know that Jim had already considered that part, hadn't he? Jim thought of everything, he never did a single thing without first considering all the possible ways that he could benefit from it, or any potential consequences that might arise from his actions. He was a dangerous man, but he was a careful one, cunning and cold in his calculations, there was nothing he didn't consider before he made his move on a project. Jim wasn't comfortable taking blind risks, not before he knew all the information that was at his disposal so he had the opportunity to weigh his options, and decide which route would benefit him most. In this particular case, it hadn't even required all that much thinking over, Jim had already known what he wanted from the minute he'd decided to have Matthias taken from his grave site instead of returning him to it, as Matthias had asked him to.
Maybe Matthias really didn't know. Maybe he just needed to hear Jim say it, either way, Jim was willing to set him straight, if need be. While it was true that they had shared a considerable amount together and Jim's devotion to him had been arguably unquestionable before Matthias's death, it wasn't as if the circumstances around his death and subsequent undeath were all that normal. Normal was relative, at least to Jim, but he could understand at least on a very basic level why Matthias might doubt him now. Things would be different, he knew that. Matthias would be different, he had known that too. True, there was a huge difference between knowing it and experiencing it, but Jim wasn't so easily scared away, least of all by Matthias, no matter what form he was coming to Jim in. As long as he came back to him, Jim would be satisfied, but if Matthias needed to hear that those things wouldn't matter to Jim, than Jim was perfectly willing to tell him. Even demonstrate, if that's what it took to help put his mind at ease.
"Because they're yours," Jim answered simply, as if that was all that needed to be said, but he continued anyway. "Because I've always known what I wanted, and I want you. I know I'll still want you in a year, in ten years, for as many years as we're given together, I know that like I know that the sky is blue and the earth is round." Jim loved poetry, but he wasn't exactly a poet himself. It was rare that he ever spoke this way, certainly never to anyone else and maybe only in the rare, uncharacteristically tender moments with Matthias that had occurred prior to his death, but it seemed appropriate now to lay it all bare in his own words for a change, instead of someone else's. Matthias deserved that much, to know just how dedicated Jim was to him, that this wasn't just some passing fancy and Jim would eventually tire of him, now that he was lacking a pulse. He had to know that Jim loved him more than that, but if he didn't, then it was up to Jim to make sure he knew.
Anyone else might be afraid to get too close to him, but Jim didn't hesitate to close the distance between them, something he'd been longing to do for months now. It was true that Matthias didn't exactly smell like the living anymore, but that hardly deterred Jim. They'd managed to hose Matthias down once or twice inside the lab, which at least had gotten rid of most of the blood and bits of earth that had clung to him after he'd risen from the ground, but he was still in clothes that had been in the ground with him for months, plastered to slowly decomposing skin that had now stopped in their decomposition, but it was still dead flesh. This close to Matthias now, it was impossible to miss the slight stench of death that was on him, but Jim didn't care. He didn't care because Matthias was finally sounding like himself again, and Jim was standing close enough to touch him, after being without him for long enough that he knew he didn't want to be without Matthias for a second longer.
He reached out and gingerly took one of Matthias's hands in his, ignoring how cold Matthias's skin already felt against his. It was like ice, but Jim wasn't going to be deterred by something so insignificant. Cold, it might be, but it was Matthias's hand that he held in his own, which made all the difference in the world. Jim didn't even have to crane his neck, the advantage of them being the same height, so all he had to do once they were standing face to face was lean forward until their lips met, Jim's warm ones meeting lips that were ice cold, like Matthias's hands, nothing that would make Jim flinch or pull back. He kissed Matthias gently, but firmly, demonstrating without words just how much he wanted him. It wasn't sexual, though it could have very easily become that. This wasn't about sex, it was an expression of love, one that Jim had only ever been capable of with the man in his grasp. Sex was easy, love had been the difficult mountain for Jim to climb, and he had, so he wasn't worried about his desire for Matthias waning. Matthias shouldn't be either.
That was true, of Jim. He had always known what he wanted, for as long as Matthias had known him. He'd been the one to start their courtship, after all, the one to speak to Matthias first, the one to press it further than the casual, comfortable flirting that they'd fallen into so easily. Matthias might have made his move on Jim, eventually, but Jim hadn't given him the time. He'd seen something he'd wanted (Matthias was something he'd wanted) and he'd done what he needed to in order to acquire it for himself... including getting rid of an inconvenient former paramour. One that Matthias had set him on almost without a second thought, because there was something intoxicating about being wanted by someone like Jim. Something that made you set aside the rest of what you believed in, set aside the rest of the world, because if you had their attentions, their affections, none of that mattered. Or maybe that was more Matthias, and his nature when he fell in love. Maybe it was the both of them, and all the ways that they were perfect for each other.
Matthias did need to hear it, because what if Jim had only pursued a treatment because he'd been so set on Matthias as something he wanted from before that he hadn't thought about the consequences, about whether he could love a dead thing. He needed to know that it was him, that it was now, that Jim wanted, when Matthias couldn't even imagine wanting himself. It had taken even Simon time to come to terms with it, as much as he was pressing in the back of Matthias's mind that he shouldn't be ashamed of what he was. Of what he had become. It was different, once you'd had the time to process. As far as Matthias's rational mind was concerned, he'd only been this for the space of a few minutes, even though he'd logically known for as long as he'd been a reincarnate that this could be the result, that he might become this once he died. There was a difference between knowing that it could happen and being party to it, though, one that he didn't think any amount of rationalization could overcome.
In ten years. They'd never even spoken about that, while Matthias was alive, whether the two of them would still be together in ten years. Matthias had seen that, for them, for his part at least. He would still love Jim just as violently in ten years as he had from the start, because once Matthias loved, that love didn't fade. That love became the center of his universe. He hadn't seen anything that would sway Jim once he'd loved him. Men like Jim, they didn't give in to those soft emotions easily. Matthias had been reassured, if only because he didn't think that Jim would have any interest in going through the process of wooing and falling in love a second time. Given that... given that, it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that Jim would rather bring the man that he knew how to love, that he had allowed himself to love, back. If the only other option was to open himself up to someone else, to learn to love someone else, bringing the dead back to live might have been the easier task, between the two of them. Especially when Matthias came partway back on his own.
Jim's hands had never felt so warm before. Matthias knew it wasn't that they were any warmer than usual, it was that his skin was colder. It was still amazing that he could feel anything at all, that he was aware of things like warmth. Like pressure against his skin. It was dulled from what it ought to have been, the heat making more of an impression than the contact of Jim's skin against his. His nerves were deadened, as well, after all. Deadened enough that it would take more, that it would take harder, for him to feel it the same way he always had. It was still good, though, Jim's hand grasping his. Better than that, even, Jim's lips warm against his own. Matthias hesitated to return the kiss, but it still lingered long enough for him to return it, careful to hold himself back. Just because he needed harder, firmer, to feel it, it didn't mean that Jim did. He would have to relearn these things. How to kiss Jim. How to be with Jim, if Jim were to want to take it further than kissing. Matthias thought he might.
No man kissed someone like that if he didn't mean it. A dead heart shouldn't be able to feel so full, but Matthias's did. Matthias's felt like it could burst... and it was welcome to. He didn't need it. It wasn't doing anything except sitting there like a lump in his chest. It was his nervous system doing all the work that was left, his brain and the nerves branching from it like roots into his body. Matthias's return kiss might have been clumsy, but Jim... Jim still wanted to kiss him. Jim still loved him, even close enough to smell the death lingering on his skin, close enough to feel how cold his body was. He kissed back until Jim broke the kiss, because... Matthias would never need to break a kiss again. Matthias could kiss for as long as he wished, since he didn't need to stop to breathe. He didn't need to stop for anything. One benefit, maybe, something that he could learn to enjoy about his dead body. He only had to take in a breath deep enough to allow himself to speak. "In the embrace where madness melts in bliss, and in the convulsive rapture of a kiss—thus doth Love speak."
The kiss felt a little different, of course. It had to, if nothing else but because of the change in temperature of Matthias's lips. Jim honestly hadn't even bothered to consider what else could be different. If kissing a dead person would feel strange simply because they were no longer alive. If the very texture of their lips would be changed, or the taste, even. Would Matthias's mouth taste as dead as the rest of him was? Would he have forgotten how to kiss entirely, after being in the ground for that long, his jaw muscles now unfamiliar with the movement? Would Matthias's tongue still feel the same against his if he slid his own tongue inside to explore? Maybe Jim was just blind to it, people who loved someone could often overlook the worst kind of flaws; maybe even stale, previously decomposing flesh, as nauseating as the idea was that Jim was now one of those oblivious, lovesick idiots who couldn't see what was right in front of them.
Even so, he didn't notice anything but the cold temperature and the familiar pressure of Matthias's lips against his. Not the taste, nothing different about the texture or technique. For a highly perceptive man, Jim was incredibly unobservant at the moment, the only thing in his focus being Matthias's mouth on his, their hands joined together, the impossible now quite literally in his grasp. Before, that idea would have been intoxicating enough, what Jim had managed to achieve and was now holding in his own hands. Now he hardly cared how much time and effort and brilliance had gone into making sure that Matthias had regained sentience after rising from the earth a monster. Honestly, Jim had loved him like that too. Jim had always loved every part of Matthias, maybe even especially the monster in him, when the monstrous part of Matthias had been a little less literal. Nothing about this new development phased Jim.
It would take time. Jim knew that, as impatient as he was to have Matthias all to himself again the way that he used to. There would be an adjustment period and there would never be an end to this serum, Jim already knew that Matthias would depend on it to remain himself. He would have to relearn how to be himself, but the serum, it would keep Matthias's more rabid nature at bay. Jim would have to take steps to mass produce it immediately, so it could be at their disposal whenever they needed it. There was also the matter of telling people, considering Jim hadn't shared with a single soul what he'd been doing for the last handful of months. Not even Robert knew, not Lucien, certainly not Matthias's family. Jim knew that he had a brother in the Resistance's ranks - a fairly irritating person, but still Matthias's family, so he would have to be told eventually. No one knew right now except for Jim that Matthias wasn’t still resting peacefully in the ground.
Selfishly, Jim was a little resentful at the idea of having to share Matthias right now. After everything he'd done, everything he'd sacrificed to get him back, there was a part of him that felt the others didn't deserve to know yet. No one else had gone to the lengths that Jim had in order to get Matthias back. Jim was loathe to even think of sharing Matthias in the moment, now that he finally had him again. Most likely, Matthias wouldn't want to make himself known to anyone right now, not while he was still readjusting. Jim would support him no matter what he wanted to do with his newfound un-life, but naturally, he'd encourage him to take things slow. There was still too much unknown about how someone in Matthias's situation could re-assimilate into the modern world, but they could take that one step at a time, together.
For right now, Jim was more content to keep Matthias to himself for as long as possible. Jim kissed the other man until he had to break it out of necessity, since unlike Matthias, Jim still needed air to continue breathing. An annoyance, but Matthias's words made up for it, a sly smile spreading across Jim's face. Matthias and his poetry. That, at least, was something that hadn't changed in the slightest. It was almost a relief, but then, Jim had never been worried that the Matthias he brought back wouldn't find a way back to himself, once they'd found the correct dose to help nudge him along. Jim had more faith in the man in his clutches than he did in anything else, and Jim had never been a man of faith. "Come with me," Jim murmured, stepping back and opening his eyes, but keeping his grasp on Matthias's hand. Now that he had him back, Jim was determined to never let him go again. "Let's get you cleaned up."