Marrying the Dead

FOR BERNA HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALTHOUGH I'M A WEEK OVERDUE! ENJOY!


13th October 2004

And it is today, that I can hear your silvery, almost non-existent sheen-like words, but I can't understand-

Pietro Maximoff & St. John Allerdyce

Their Wedding Death Anniversary

Darkness pervaded their tomb. Black lightning cut the sky into halves, illuminating a silver crucifix decorating their grave. Muted hazy objects take on sinister shapes in the graveyard, and something, just something, moved beneath the split moonlight, catching glimmers on an oily black surface. A gray-shouldered angel sat forlornly, petrified, on the tomb, her unlived legs cemented, embedded, welded.

Crimson blood artistically graced the non-descript gray stone like colorful spots of bright red paint on a pure and plain canvas.

It was their grave.


13th October 2002

It's today that I noticed that your eyes are like pretty cerulean-blue flames caressed with edges of silver fire.

He looked on.

He looked on as a half-naked St. John Allerdyce struggled, with delicious olive-hued arms, decorated with tantalizing velvety warm wet muscles, fighting a losing battle with a pair of wet underwear.

Damn, nice legs. Pietro lusted, passing his tongue over his dry lips, his alabaster knuckles gripping the wooden doorframe. The grunts and sighs coming from John were almost erotic, Pietro noticed hazily, his eyes drinking in the beautiful sight that greeted him, his own aristocratic fingers raking through pale blonde tresses.

John was obviously trying to get his briefs and VERY tight and wet briefs off, but whenever he tried to yank one side down, the other side rode up, and Pietro could see a tantalizing glimpse of cock, and a sweet curve of his ass.

Pietro felt himself twitch with a spasm of longing.

"Want help?" the 18-year-old blond crooned provocatively, one perfectly poised eyebrow raised. John gave a small shriek and tripped over his own legs, but Pietro swiftly supported the orange-haired boy by his arms.

"Mmmm now you can't say no," the speedster grinned, voice like light silk, getting down on his knees, his fingers already caressing the edge of John's hot-red briefs.

Another squeak emitted from the 22-year-old, a faint blush cresting from the tops of his cheek bones, his sky-colored eyes glittering oddly.

"I promise to be gentle…" Pietro smirked, his left hand immediately cupping John's butt-cheeks, and with a violent yank, successfully pulled down one side of his briefs. In lightning speed, his right hand flew to the front, and with another rough jerk, the briefs fell to John's ankles.

Great, now what do I do, Pietro thought, his mind into continuous spurts of burning sensation when he came face to face with John's half-erect cock.

"Nice going, Einstein. You move your little finger and I get hard," John whispered, little spots of color flaming in his cheeks, but the pyromaniac didn't move away, his blue eyes alight with a sheen of desire, complimenting perfectly with Pietro's dizzy-looking aquamarine ones.

Pietro's breath came in hot and sharp gasps, making John's erection even more pronounced.

"Well," Pietro pursed his lips thoughtfully, "I guess there's only one thing to do now."

And with that, Pietro took John by the mouth and swallowed him whole.

27th December 2002

And it is today, that you teach me how to manipulate me like how you manipulate a dice.

The both of them lay naked in bed, their limbs entwined together like vines. The intoxicatingly sweet scent of sex lingered, hanging with them like private, personal secrets that weaved in between them, as they breathed in shallow, furious synchronization. They felt the heat melt, fizzling away at the edges, the magical apocalyptic tension tangible and electrifying.

Pietro gave a huge, ravenous yawn, before stretching like a feline to grab his clothes and adjourn to his own room.

John bit his lip, his mind in paradoxical states.

"Pietro."

"Yes?"

"Is this… is this going to be all?"

"You want more, you naughty animal?" Pietro gave a little rousing moan, dropping his clothes like hot potatoes and climbing back into bed.

"No! Not that! I mean… It's going to be… just sex? Nothing more?" His eyes, oceans of deepest blue, were soft with disappointment and affection as he reached over and gently started to stroke Pietro's slim wrists.

Pietro sighed. "John we've talked about this. I… I'm not exactly what you call perfect boyfriend material. I'm not a fucking doll for you to cuddle and make sweet pure love to, I'm not going to bombard you with sweet nothings-"

"Pietro, I don't want perfect boyfriend material, I only want you."

"Then what's wrong-"

But his voice was cut off when John drew Pietro closer, wrapping his arms tightly around him that it almost hurt, his legs slipping between Pietro's, cutting off any means of escape or movement.

Pietro stiffened immediately at the implications of this simple action, at the sudden closeness and proximity of their bodies that wasn't made up of sex. Slowly, hypnotizing, he relaxed fractionally, as he felt John's thumb slowly caressing the small of his back, coaxing him to sleep.

Outside, an owl rustled in the half-hidden trees, hooting ominously.

13th January 2003

And it is today, that I see the silver, unclear puddles in your eyes. That you want to be loved, but you're just petrified.

But it's today, that I'm here.

"I told you I'm not suitable for all the fucking cuddly and snuggly shit that you want and need! It was just for the sex, we cleared this up before!"

"But you're not trying! You're not fucking trying! Whenever I hug and cuddle you you cringe and flinch! And I don't like it!"

"Well, maybe that's because you're just forcing me to be lovey-dovey! And I hate it!"

"I don't give a damn about this! Because I'm sick of all the fucking! We've been going to bed together for almost three months, and I'm sick of that! Because I-"

"Then you should have told me! I could find another guy to-"

"Because I love you, for fuck's sake!"

"I… I think I need to go and lie down."

15th January 2003

"I'm sorry I shouldn't have said that to scare you. I… I understand if you don't want to be with me anymore-"

"Did you mean what you said? About the… love… thing?"

"I… yes. I meant that with my whole heart."

soft footsteps tread over to another shadow

a smaller pair of hands grip, slipping elegant fingers in between the crevices and crannies of another calloused pair of hands, gently playing.

"I'll try… I'll try to make this work then."

28th June 2003

And it is today that I'm afraid. Afraid of for us.

"What's wrong with you! You come back late and I smell chocolate on you and the last time I checked, your bank account is so much emptier than before! John, are you cheating on me!"

"No, sweetie, I'm not-"

"And you have no time to spend with me-"

"It's work-"

"No it's not! It's not work! It's not work, John, please don't lie to me!"

"I'm not lying-"

-sound of a door slamming

"Pietro!"

30th June 2003 (And it is today that I ask you to dream of pinned butterflies. For me.)

Walk three steps to the right, then two steps in front, fifteen huge steps at an angle of 180 degrees. Look up!

Pietro followed the instructions on the last clue-card religiously, his mind whirring to calculate the possibilities of the surprises that was possible. Maybe John finally realized his mistake and decided to humour him; he knew that Pietro always liked surprises.

With a small teasing grin playing on his lips, Pietro looked up-

and gave a small astonished scream, his jaw dropping as his eyes absorbed the monumental display before him: A gargantuan replica of himself made up entirely of chocolates.

The base and the structure of the figure was supported with strong metal, and in between the little holes, little pieces of chocolate were squeezed into it. White chocolate was used for his hair, and slightly darker chocolates, but still white, were used for his skin and face. His trademark clothes, a brown shirt, a black belt in between the loops of his faded blue jeans were all replicated as accurately as possible, even up to the minutest detail.

Under closer examination, Pietro noticed that for structures like his blue eyes and blue jeans, chocolate wrappers were used, which glittered like sun on frost under the soft sunlight.

"Hey." A pair of strong arms from behind slipped around his slim waist, and Pietro didn't need to know who it was. He turned around, and instantly kissed the pair of lips in front of him.

"Oh god, I'm so… I'm so sorry I thought… I thought that you were cheating me and you spent all the money and time and sweat and energy doing all this and I didn't know… I'm sorry…" Pietro muttered in between kisses and licks, his hands gripping John's fore-arms tightly, going further down until he felt a bandage.

"Oh! When it was half-done, I guess I didn't support it properly, and it just collapsed on me. It's no big deal though, it's just some physical damage, but seeing you so happy makes it all the more worthwhile."

Pietro gave a famished growl and pushed John onto the grass of the small forest. "I want to see you naked now, St. John Allerdyce, I want you to make sweet love to me right here, and then after everything, we'll sit here until evening eating half of the chocolates and then after that we'll have sex all over again-"

"No wait before that…" John hesitated, gently calming Pietro down, who had an insanely hungry and sadistic look in his eyes and was already yanking away his own slippery belt and flinging it somewhere in the trees.

The pyromaniac's wrists slipped around Pietro's tense neck, and, with his thumb gently tracing his jawline tenderly, whispered the magic words.

"Will you marry me?"

The change was remarkable, from a horny Pietro immediately changing to a solemn and quiet one. "John… this isn't a game. Marriage is… marriage is serious."

"I know! That's why I did all this, that's why we've been together for almost a year and I know I want to spend my whole life with you, wake up with you every morning and cook you breakfast and do everything that we can do because I can't get enough of you, Pietro, I can't fucking get enough of you!" John was babbling now, his Adam's apple throbbing up and down with emotion.

"This is just so unexpected…"

"Pietro, it's really okay if you say no, I just wanted to see whether you were comfortable with it. It's okay, I can wait another year, or even five years, or even ten years, I don't care I just want to be with you!" And then, stilling the emotion and tumult in his voice, John picked up Pietro's hands and began to lovingly kiss each finger.

"I don't care… I just want you, Pietro. I don't fucking care. And it hurts so bad sometimes, you know, when I'm not with you, and when you're somewhere else, it just aches physically and mentally. Do you know that, Pietro? Did you know that!" His voice rose with pure fervor, and with each word, he kissed each of Pietro's fingers.

Pietro was like a fly caught between a delicate web, suspended in that small evasive place between consciousness and unconsciousness: He wasn't ready, but he felt like-

"Yes."

"What?"

"I'll marry you, John. I'll fucking marry you! I don't care what they say about us, John, I don't care I just want you only and only you-" Pietro couldn't go on, a simplistic smile of true happiness dominating his lips.

"So." A small smile inadvertently lighted up Pietro's sharp face, a lick of blonde hair tickling John's nose. "So, John the husband, can we have hot insane butt sex now?"

"Hell yeah!"

31st June 2003

And it is today that I finally realize that you aren't the ice sculpture of untouchable elegance and sophistication that everyone says you are.

Do you know why?

Because today, I realize that you're finally mine.

John opened the bathroom door, he had just reached home from work; his puzzled mind going through the Pietro MIA options. Did he go for his evening run? Or did he go to the mall to get a hot dog? Or-

Fuck.

Pietro lounged completely naked, a devilish tilt to his eyebrows. Half of his body was sensually submerged in the sexy and scintillating candy, the chocolates that John used to build the lovely monument. His hair described silver scribbles, flowing in a silver corona in the molten chocolate.

Pietro was pure sex, he was silver, shadow, sensuous and seductive, so good that John felt the ground turn into quicksand, sinking him further into the mire. He urgently suppressed the memories of wet dreams rising to the surface of his mind like violent bubbling in a pool.

"Well… I couldn't finish it all, and I didn't want to get a tummy-ache, so I decided to melt the remaining and use them for this… Oh! And I spent the whole day melting all of these… Maybe I deserve a reward." Pietro whispered relentlessly, lifting up a chocolate-coated hand and slowly, suggestively, salaciously, drew his hand across his chest, splaying chocolate all over his chest.

"You don't need fire to burn all that, honey. Just doing a fucking striptease, you'll be so hot, those teeny chocolates will fucking combust by themselves."

With a lithe shake of his body, and with a flurry of material, John was nude.

"And after everything, I want you to lick it all off me, inch by fucking inch."

"Well, we'd better get started then, don't you think?"

18th Jan 2004

And it is today, that my heart is like water splattered on a still-wet canvas, the paint is running, destroying everything that's happened, the colors are bleeding mascara, they're changing too fast for me-

I hope you won't forget my name.

"What's wrong with you these few days? I don't understand, you've been shying away from me and everything! You don't even go out for your morning jog anymore!"

"Fuck you, John."

"Hell, you don't even let me do that anymore!"

"Just go away."

"There's something that's not right with you! Please, just tell me, I want to know because it's hurting me-"

"Leave me alone!"

19th Jan 2004

No more liquorice kisses.

It's all done now.

And it is today that I found with you another man on your bed.

And it is today, for the first time, that my eyes swim with that familiar, colorless hue of tears.

And when you saw me, you said in that voice, that hateful sing-song drawl, passionless and precise like homework, "Wanna join?"

And it is now, that I sit here and think, after I had lunged up to a stumbling run, my feet slapping, echoing against the floor, with pouring horror-

that you had forgotten my name.

I'm leaving.

20th Jan 2004

I'm not a fucking plaything for you to buffet around.

He was like the plague that smote the innocent. His eyes were gray and darkening, and the razor edge he was treading on was thinning into nothing, either falling onto the side of suicide, or to the side of loving obsession. Shadows were dragging at his feet, and his eyes were two blank empty pits that seemed nevertheless to stare straight into his terrified soul. His eyes, that were once filled with passion and desire, were now dead, two swathes of cold blue, wells of slippery shadows that John could never fathom of catching.

He was like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

John was throwing clothes and necessities expeditiously into his mouldy old suitcase He's changed into something else I can't understand why did I do something wrong no I don't think so but why but why but why but why- when Pietro stepped into their no, I'm sorry, his bedroom. He didn't do anything, just stared at John with narrowed burning little icicles.

A silence that deafened sheathed them; a sense of danger that hung like shards of glass enshrouded them.

"Goodbye."

And with that single, stabbing sentence, Pietro fled.

John screamed.


Found under a silver crucifix-embossed lighter named Lenny-Wenny, locked in a mahogany magic jewel box tied with copious pink ribbons:

Name: Pietro Maximoff

Age: 20

Sex: Male

HIV Positive/Negative: Positive

John surrendered to the welcoming blackness away from the horrible laughter.


"You didn't tell me!" He stormed into the living room, where Pietro was draped over a couch. John threw the slip of paper in Pietro's face with nerveless fingers, a peculiar hot sickness rising in John's stomach like realization.

It was as if a chink of self-denial in his protective shell was ripped off. A sudden chill crept over his skin, and he felt a horrible empty feeling, choking the very air he was breathing. Pietro crumpled the paper into a ball, and tossed it away.

"You weren't supposed to find that… Oh God you weren't supposed to- You were supposed to go away and find someone else and then live happily ever after with him-" Pietro blurted, his thin, emaciated form appearing ghostly in the pale moonlight invading the windows.

"I don't want anyone else! I want only you, Pietro I fucking only want you!" John cried, his tears falling like snow. "It was hell, Pietro, it was fucking hell when you ignored me and when I found you with him-"The pyromaniac made a move to touch Pietro, but the blonde squirmed away from him.

"I don't want to hurt you. I'm sick I'm going to die, and I don't want to drag you with me. I don't want to fucking hurt you! Remember that night at that club? The both of us fucked a young brunette? He passed it to me, he fucking passed it to me," Pietro mumbled, his words screaming with chilly emphasis, but John could see train-tracks of tears glistening on his beautiful, ashen-colored face, the firelight from the fireplace playing along the edge of his cheek, dancing across his pale features.

John's eyes were glazed with worry and tears. "What happened to you? We can get a cure, it's not going to be difficult-"

"What the FUCK do you mean there's going to be a cure! The fucking Institute people checked me out! My cells, they're dying too fast to be generated! My speed is killing me! The medicine isn't helping, nothing's going to help and here you are, telling me that oh everything's going to be okay they just haven't found a FUCKING cure yet. John, there isn't going to be a fucking angel that's gonna come down and grant me the gift of life again! I'm going to die! Leave me alone! I don't want you to see me like this! Please! Leave me FUCKING alone! I'm going to die… I'm going to die…"

And with that, Pietro curled up into a ball, singing his little song of death, his hysterical sobs threatened to shatter his body into aching pieces.

"They say that when you love someone, you hurt them," John murmured faintly, his palm brushing Pietro's cheek like a ghost. "But I don't believe in that. Because when you love someone too much, there's no space for hurt. I'll stay with you, Pietro, I'll die with you. Besides… we're already bound to each other. For eternity," John whispered, tenderly plucking Pietro's hand from his waist. "Because of this," he said, planting a butterfly kiss on Pietro's wedding ring, and another one on his own, nestled on his ring finger.

"I was so scared that you'll leave me. I was so scared, John, I was so scared…"

For the whole night, the both of them held each other, their shadows mingling intricately on the marble tiles.

In the roaring fireplace, the angry tentacles of the fire devoured the medical slip, the harsh black words drowning in the intense heat, the crackling heat tearing the once tear-stained page apart, the venomous words losing form and meaning as it crumbled beyond recognition.

16th October 2004

I guess this is what they mean by marrying the dead.

They lay in bed, after all the festivities and celebrations, with the sheets saturated with semen and melted chocolate. Surrounding them were packets of unopened and unused condoms, under John's assurance, Pietro became convinced that they didn't need them for the big night.

"I can't believe we're… officially married tonight. I can't believe it," Pietro giggled school-girlishly, nuzzling closer to John. John smiled, a smile that was bright and quick as silver, letting Pietro's excited bumbling wash over him like the soft caress of the sea.

"Pietro… If we're not going to do it now, we'll never do it," John murmured, his eyes closely lidded, as he reached over to the drawer, pulling out a lighter named Lenny-Wenny and two small pistols attached with silencers.

Upon glancing on those weapons, Pietro immediately kept silent. "Yes… I understand… It was what we agreed upon and I… I'd rather for us to go this way. I hope they… they never separate us even when we're gone."

John held Pietro just a bit tighter as he flicked the lighter, and with a convenient click of his mind, a fire-shaped female appeared out of the flames. She took form, dressed in a long, ruby-red flowing dress that reached to her ankles. John handed the two guns to her, and in that split second when her artificial flame eyes collided with his sure, aqua ones, she understood.

"I love you."

"I love you."

The two men gazed into each other's eyes, just like what they had done the first time, on that fateful day in October.

Their separate thoughts unknowingly intertwined in parallel – two silent rhapsodies in imperfect counterpoint…

- before the two shots from the gun tinkered out.

Outside, the wind and thunder and rain swept in the ravaging sheet across the grey land and water alike; subdued and flattened and unloved, and tiny, almost negligible rebellious ripples reverberated on the earth of the world.

17th October 2004

Lance stepped into the bedroom the next morning, took a look at the couple, and gave a blood-curdling scream.

13th October 2005

Darkness pervaded their tomb. Black lightning cut the sky into halves, illuminating a silver crucifix decorating their grave. Muted hazy objects take on sinister shapes in the graveyard, and something, just something, moved beneath the split moonlight, catching glimmers on an oily black surface. But today, it wasn't a gray-shoulder angel that appeared. It was a wedding pair, a blond and a redhead. The blonde was dressed in a neat tuxedo, and the redhead? His wedding dress, which used to be pure satin white, was soiled with mud and blood, and the dress was so long that it sneaked past his ankles, past the earth, deep, deep down into the swirling, bubbling recesses of hell…