Matthias Graves | Simon Monroe (inbalance) wrote in thereincarnates, @ 2017-10-12 23:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | callum o'reilly, matthias graves |
Who: Matthias Graves and Callum O'Reilly
What: One baby step at a time, Matthias is rejoining the world.
Where: Happy Endings in Chicago
When: Friday, October 13; evening
Warnings: TBD but probably nothing (except mentions of human/zombie romance)
Matthias had known that the world outside was still moving even though he hadn't been a part of it. Jim was still a part of it after all. Jim was still everything that he had always been while Matthias had been alive. Head of Resistance Intelligence. Owner of a club. There was too much for Jim to do for him to retreat from the world alongside Matthias once he'd come back to himself inside a cold dead body. That meant that a little bit of the outside world would always come home with him; enough of it crept in that Matthias couldn't keep himself from wondering about the rest of what he was missing. How Lucien was doing in school. Whether he and Francis were doing well together. He could have had Jim ask of course... but that wasn't the kind of interest that Jim had taken in Lucien. That wasn't the relationship that the two of them had. That was what Matthias had been to Lucien and part of him was selfish enough to want to keep it to himself.
Except how could he when he couldn't imagine facing Lucien looking like this? There weren't any centers handing out makeup carefully matched to his skintone from pictures of before he'd died or contacts to cover the dead whites of his eyes. If Matthias wanted those he'd have to get them himself; if Matthias wanted those he'd have to face Simon's insistence that he shouldn't have to hide who he was. Matthias thought that Jim might agree with Simon about that. Jim hadn't ever flinched away from the differences in Matthias. All that Jim had cared about was that he had him back. Maybe Lucien would feel the same way... but there was no one that loved Matthias the way that Jim did. There was no other man who would have loved Matthias still after he'd seen a hungry mindless monster wearing his face.
If he'd been able to Matthias thought he might have hidden forever.
When his lover still lived in the outside world there were always going to be things that drew him back into it. In this case? Delivering something to Jim's office at Happy Endings that had been mailed to his home address by mistake. Matthias wasn't entirely certain what it was; he knew that Jim wouldn't have minded if he'd opened it and looked but that was a little too much like being drawn back into the outside world for himself. It didn't matter that he was starting to get bored with nothing to do but sit at Jim's apartment and read. He couldn't reclaim the life that he'd had before. There was nothing subtle about a man as bloodlessly pale as him; spying would be nearly impossible.
There was no chance that anyone would have recognized Matthias walking into Happy Endings; it didn't matter that he'd been a familiar sight once. They all knew that he was dead. Even if the man who'd walked in the back way with the hood of his jacket pulled up to cover his face and his hands tucked deep into his pockets was the exact height and build as Jim's deceased lover no one would ever think that that lover was less deceased than they'd realized. It ought to have been easy, in and out, but once Matthias was there... he lingered. Just for a moment. Just long enough to remind himself what the world outside was like. What it was like to stand in his lover's office and be a part of his life in ways other than keeping him company in bed. Besides, it was safe. Even with his hood pulled down and his hands resting on the desk it was safe. He could wait for just a moment.
The sound of the door opening startled him, but only for a moment. "I thought you were busy," he told the person he thought must be Jim. "I wasn't going to interrupt."