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the first time it's your gun and his splayed body snow-white spread eagled on the bed, like a symphony of limb and sinew gone dissonant. alien. you hear him gurgling on his own blood filling his lungs, see it fleck his lips as he coughs. his hips are still quivering, his come a white blot in the spreading red, like an exclamation point.
and dirk is looking into your eyes like he's never been more in love.
when he goes.
his last words, that first time, are etched into your memory: please, i need you to do it
the body slack.
you know it'll be a while, the brain dies slower than the corpus.
it feels like forever, those minutes you're alone in the silence.
for him the pale pink light of immortality thrums up from the inside, mending him as it goes. he is galvanized from the inside out, a slow unfurling of life. you're trembling.
you watch him cough up the bullet casing with an expression of soft surprise, his born-anew fingers curling like catspaws. the hand holding the still-warm gun feels like you'll never be able to uncurl your fingers again, a death grip. rigor mortis. ha ha. god help you.
(and the look of his face right then: the way he looked the time you fucked him until he was a mess, until he was running at the mouth completely brainless, asking you to marry him and asking you to call him your good boy and never stop and sobbing apologies for the couch cover he was ruining. or the time you told him you wouldn't leave so put down the sword and hear me out you reclusive sodding bastard.)
god help you but he's beautiful when you kill him.
and his first words: "good morning, starshine," dirk tells you, peeling himself from the sheets sticky with gore and wrapping his hand around your (hard rigor mortis) aching dick and, oh, god help you both.
the second time you use your hands.
the second time is three weeks later and he's asking you again, your twitching sorrowful madman, your anchor and chain. for all his brains and booklearning he doesn't realize how much you loved it, he approaches you transactionally, pleading, and you realize you could make him beg and feel a sick heat in your stomach, horror at the pair of you and desire so potent it feels like disease. who's the addict?
"you might - it might be easier on you this way," he murmurs, hitch in his voice, trembling with need. "like, explicitly consensual, you know, because i mean, i don't want you to think i don't want it, so you'll know, this way, you'll know i want you to keep going, and it'll be easier, psychologically, there's less duress on the -"
his hands flutter like birds, nervous.
you pin them to his sides and kiss the words out.
as if you could ever kiss away the madness in his skull or the nonsense running circles through his brain, or kiss him enough.
you press your mouths together hard and longing and desperate as he goes, lips purpling beneath yours, fingernails blanching as he digs them into your back to keep you there. his clementine eyes glaze over - you keep your thumbs pressed tight under his chin for three more minutes, until his body goes slack and his dick soft post-orgasm. as if life itself were the slow erotic undoing he'd begged you to cut short, and death the release. he was right, his lack of struggle made his consent to the proceedings very explicit. but it was already good for you.
the body leans into yours still warm. you make the worst noise you've ever made.
you can't even wait for him to get back, when he comes to you're already jerking off, and his hips spasm again and he groans and sinks his teeth into your shoulder and you spend the next ten hours tearing away at each other like utter lunatics.
still: that change in his eyes. a haunted man free of ghosts. an exorcism. seeing him glimpse nirvana. rodger mona lisa and all that, you're the only man in the world who'll ever own this image.
after the second time he knows he doesn't need to beg you. after that you kill him whenever he wants you to, whenever he lets you.
riding him while he drowns in the bathtub, for example.
another time giddily playing out a dark, film noir romance; poisoning him, fucking him on the table as his body seized and convulsed - you broke both dinner plates.
"maybe we could go to the beach sometime, and. you know. say there's a beach bonfire. and you're the brave fireman," he tells you, doodling something precious on your skin. "and you pull me out of the fire, but it's too late."
"that rotten head of yours," you sigh, swatting at his flanks, but you're game for it anyway, and he grins and kicks his feet a little like you've promised him christmas.
(god can't help either of you. you're the gods, now.)
probably the most sincerely fucked-up murder - if you want to be entirely forthright - was the time he asked you to beat him to death in an alley, with a lead pipe. like a lynching, he said.
there weren't any convenient alleys for murders anywhere handy so you did it in an abandoned warehouse instead, like teenagers sneaking around in the dark, thrilled by the possibility of cops stopping you. he threw up while you were kicking him in the stomach and you paused, and felt dreadful, but when he could breathe he murmured please, please, please, and you continued.
afterward he fucked you desperately on your back, away from the mess, crying thank you, thank you, i love you, i love you, and you wrapped your legs around his back and held him close, staring up at stars through the broken ceiling.
your loony love has led you down the rabbit hole, to the antipodes of sanity. and you followed him eagerly. you could never resist an adventure.
barbed wire in a knot: your psyches warped forever by each other, helpless to stop and helpless to stay away. there are times you think you'll never get better and wonder if you'd even want to.
he slips up eventually.
tells you a little too much.
i need it, it has to be you, jake, the things i've done, he says, looking like a criminal begging to be put out of his misery.
darling, why, you ask him, tender.
and all he says after that is please, jake, please, and so you give in and oblige him. gun in the mouth this time, after which he sucks you off like your dick is his personal lord and savior. but the seed of curiosity is planted, and can only grow.
"i just want to know why you need it," you tell him over coffee at breakfast time. he's bonelessly relaxed. he seems so content, these days, so sweet and happy. he blinks at you a little. "the dying thing. a fellow gets curious, it's -"
"i've tried medication," he says, stirring the creamer in with his spoon. he states it like a forewarning. "and it doesn't - it's a god tier thing, i think, or at least that's what roxy thinks, it doesn't work on me. so i'm kinda. stuck like this." a lazy shrug. he's no longer defensive about wanting to die. he's certain you enjoy killing him.
(because i'm the only one who's allowed, you fumbled to explain, the time you caught him crying about it. allowed to see you like that. it's special. i mean i could do anything, be anything, and you'd still want it, you wouldn't hate me for it. oh, crumbs, how to say it... it's like acceptance? sort of? and because - i might not understand it but you need it, and anyway, you've no idea how good you look.)
you mull his non-answer over.
a few days later, in a bout of just-regular-sex, teasing him gently to orgasm: "i need you," he hisses, and it's a bit dodgy of you but you're acting on instinct - you pick that moment to press your chest to his back, easing into him, and whisper into his ear.
"dirk. why do you need it?"
and of course he knows what you mean, his mental encyclopedia is whirring and thrumming along with his heart beneath you.
"because it's you," he growls, rutting back up against you, frustrated and fussing.
"little wordier than that, please," you tell him, squeezing at the base of his cock, and he makes a strangled noise of protest - half sob, half yell.
" - because -"
"yeah?"
"because it's you and it's not a just death," he chokes out, " - jesus, jake, timing," and squeezes around you and you don't end up putting the pieces together until much later, in the shower.
it makes you weep a little.
your poor mad darling.
"i've fucked you up so much," he murmurs, relaxing into your arms, beneath the blankets. his fingers lace between yours. "this - it's my fault, i can't help but believe it's my fault." his voice has that odd hollow tone of a man who's lost everything. you wonder what he lost, along the way. idly he traces circles across your forearms.
you watch him breathing, ribs expanding and contracting beneath his skin, and you've seen those yellow-white ribs flayed bare and you've held his heart until it stopped, and yet here he is breathing in your arms. he'll never leave you. no matter how many times he dies, he'll come back. if you're ever alone - it's only for a moment. you've seen it in your eyes, you've held it in your fists. a promise that you'll never be lonely again.
you suppose that's what you need.
"we can stop if you want," you tell him, as he's drifting off, and he makes a little noise of protest. you shush it, smoothing his hair away from his face.
you know, like you know the sky is up and that ice is cold, that dirk doesn't deserve to die. least of all for anything he's done to your sorry person.
you'll show him, as many times as needs showing, until he knows it too.