#I wrote this one inspired by 'Jos mä kuolen nuorena' by Heli Kajo

[veterveter]

I'm looking for a way to drop that funeral planning ficlet on tumblr, maybe this would be a "fun" way to do that?

“Everyone should wear black.”

“Of course they will, it’s a funeral.”

“Not because it’s a funeral. Because it’s stylish.”

“Whatever. I’ll write it on the invite. Wear black, it’s stylish.”

“Thank you. White roses, white lilies. You’ll play a white piano. You should play Bella Ciao, that could be my requiem. I think it would be fitting.” He imagines how Martín would make it sound – he would doubtlessly turn the joyful rebellion into something haunting. “Nevertheless, everything will be white, except for the guests.”

“Duly noted.”

“Have everyone bring red roses to lay on my casket. You’ll curse God as you stand there, for a while. I hope rains.” He leans back, and it doesn’t ache too much, and that feels like a blessing. “And afterwards, you’ll go clubbing.”

This makes Martín pause, finally.

Andrés makes sure to have eye contact as he continues, “You and Sergio. Dance. Drink. Start with wine, then whisky, then shots of tequila. Get drunk, forget about me and live.”

Martín sneers, an ugly little thing. His face was made for joy, not… whatever this is. “You won’t have any control over me anymore, Andrés.”

Andrés continues to look at him. An ugly little thing he has always loved. “I will always have control over you. You will do as I ask of you.”

____________________

A week ago, he said, “One last plan, Martín.”

It was the first time he had seen Martín’s eyes light up in three months.

It was the first time he truly felt cruel in his life, when he followed it up with, “The funeral. We need to plan it, you and I.”

The light behind Martín’s eyes faded, and Andrés knew he would never see it again. He wished he had cherished it when he still had the chance, when it took nothing at all to coax it out of him. When that light was his default expression, when Andrés’s presence brought him joy – instead of everlasting pain, a suffering that would surely stay with him for the rest of Martín’s life.

Martín does it, of course. Martín is dutiful, so he clears out the blackboard, without a moment’s hesitation, wipes away the plans they had. He doesn’t say, not even once, this is morbid, Andrés, even though he must be thinking it. Andrés hopes that someday, Martín might think back to these days and find them cathartic. Or that he’ll find it in himself to be proud.

Proud of himself for being brave enough to watch Andrés wither. Proud of the depth of his love. Proud of the gracefulness of their plan, Andrés’s swan song.

Together, they plan the setting. Privately, Andrés plans everything else.

He plans futures for his loved ones.

Tatiana will look pretty as she cries, a woman too young and alive to be a widower. Martín will comfort her, will wrap his arms around her as she shakes with tears. He has never held a woman like that before, but he will do it, if only to distract himself. She will bring him comfort, because she will understand a shard of his suffering, the thinnest sliver of it. Because Martín will be able to look at her and see her love for what it is: inferior.

Sergio will be fine. He has Raquel, and Paula, he has already started building a life that doesn’t include Andrés. It’s just as well. He’s finally growing up, doing what he has to. Taking care of himself in a world that has never cared about him.

Maybe Sergio and Martín will finally bond, over their shared pain.

Or maybe they will become strangers, incapable of meeting each other’s eyes, unwilling to see their own suffering reflected back in them. Andrés can’t do anything about that. He’s not God. Gods are eternal.

For Martín, Andrés has only one plan, but his is the most important one.

Martín will live.

____________________

If it weren’t for Martín, Andrés would have simply killed himself. Truly, he would have. He would have crafted an elegant death for himself, something poetic and needlessly cruel.

The only reason he deems it necessary to cling to life so desperately, even as his body withers, is to give Martín this. He wants Martín to have closure. He wants Martín to grieve beautifully.

Even though Andrés is technically still alive, he misses what life used to feel like. What life was meant to be like. He misses stealing priceless jewels and irreplaceable paintings. He misses drinking tea and going on walks. He misses feeling untethered by the confines of his mortal body.

He misses Martín.

Other people will doubtlessly go on walks and steal jewels, but Martín will eternally be but a shade of himself. Andrés is taking Martín’s heart and soul to his grave, and leaving behind this sad little puppet, his strings pulled by mourning and hatred.

Some part of Andrés is quietly pleased with that. There’s a certain beauty to be found in everlasting suffering.

And if he can’t have Martín in all his glorious brilliance and destructive grace, then no one should.

____________________

“You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” Martín asks, in a falsely casual manner, studying his cup of coffee.

Andrés sighs. He had been thinking, foolishly, that Martín will have finally gotten the hint, but of course not. Martín never truly stops, he just reschedules. Anything he ever feels or thinks willcome back, again and again, until he finally finds something to do with it.

“No. And I won’t, so you can stop asking.”

“You won’t even know what I do. You’ll be dead.”

“But you will. And I am not giving you my blessing to put a bullet to your brain. You’ll live. It’s my last wish and you will honour it.”

“I never thought you’d be so cruel,” Martín says, his tone accusatory and wounded.

He doesn’t continue, but the implication is clear: he means not to me. He knows Andrés, knows exactly how cruel he is. He just never thought it would be aimed at himself. He’s Andrés’s foil, his mirror, his other half.

And he’s right. It was never meant to be.

“So be it. You’ll live the life I never got to have. If you must die, then it will be from something else. Not your own hands.”

“Andrés…”

“I didn’t get to make a choice, and neither will you.”

He has to ask Martín for this, despite knowing that it’s the cruelest thing to ask for. Because no one else has ever loved Andrés enough to live for him. No one else ever would have, even if he had more time. Andrés knows he’s hard to love. And anyone would be hard to love, this unconditionally.

It was only ever going to be Martín.

Andrés doesn’t allow himself to wonder if he would be willing to go through the same, were the roles reversed. He’s afraid of being bitterly disappointed in himself, on his final days.

Martín has always been his favourite part of himself: just the right kind of cruel, the correct shade of suicidal. Chaos without an outlet, manifesting in the strangest ways. A genius caged in the body of a man.

Now Martín is going to be the only part of him left. That thought doesn’t bring Andrés peace, necessarily, but it’s one of the only things he isn’t going to leave behind as regrets.

“I’m sure time will bring us back together.”

Martín glares at him, but he says nothing. Martín doesn’t believe in any kind of life after death, or absolution, or even redemption, but he’s not going to say that to a dying man. Martín is never going to be fully honest with him again.

Andrés wants to hear every single ugly and awful thought he is holding back.

____________________

“Can I stay here?”

“Martín…”

“Just to be here. I won’t do anything. I just want to—”

Andrés sighs, too weak to argue, in mind and body as well as in spirit. “Fine, come here.” He scoots over, allowing Martín space on the bed.

“You are my own personal hell,” Martín muses quietly in the dark. He stays an arm’s length away, and Andrés can’t summon the energy to question it. “All nine circles, just you, every moment of my life with you.”

Andrés feels the same way about Martín. All nine circles, every wasted opportunity. If there is life after death, he might be stuck repeating exactly that.

He would still take it. He would choose hell of himself repeating the same mistakes with Martín, over heaven without him.

“Would you do it again?”

Martín turns to look at him, doesn’t answer right away. “I would watch you die a hundred times over,” he finally admits, quiet in the way the truth always is.

How misfortunate Andrés is, to have been given a love like that. A love so desperate, so out of control. He would have much rather been loved by a woman, someone like Tatiana, softly but without the intent to burn and destroy everything around them.

If Andrés has to be loved like this, he should have at least been given the chance to truly reciprocate. He should have been given time to give Martín everything he deserves and everything he doesn’t. He should have been allowed to give Martín the entire world, with all of its beauty and all of its gore. To murder every last man but themselves, to bask in their own brilliance, surrounded by all those decaying bodies, rather than being trapped in his own.

Their love is but an incomplete masterpiece, smiting them both with its existence. It’s unimaginable cruelty, because theirs is a love most will never get to experience.

It could have been so perfect.

“You should do the bank heist with Sergio,” he says, “Take my place. Do it in my honour.”

“Sure,” Martín says, and for that one word, his tone is as amused as it is destructive. “It’s always been a suicide, that plan. It was meant to be ours.” He angles his entire body away from Andrés, like looking at him is suddenly somehow offensive. “Now it’ll just be mine.”

____________________

“Here’s what I would have done, if we had more time.”

Andrés doesn’t have the energy to do anything but angle his head towards Martín, without even opening his eyes.

“I would have married you. I like to think you would have wanted that, too. I would have taken your last name. We would have bought an island. We would have stolen all the most priceless things in the world and gifted them to each other. I would have killed all of your ex-wives. Well, maybe not Tatiana, she’s grown on me. But we would have been happy, you and I.”

He takes Andrés’s left hand in both of his, and sighs.

“Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that.”

Andrés wonders if he would have been better off not knowing all of this.

____________________

The end comes fast.

That makes it both easier and harder, but Andrés doesn’t have the energy to feel sad or grateful. He feels like he still has things he would like to say, to both Sergio and Martín, but he just feels tired. Too tired to remember the words, too tired to decide if they need to be said after all.

Every day, he’s awake less and less, to the point where there’s no longer days to speak of. There’s only moments, all of them with Martín by his side. His presence is the only thing Andrés takes notice of, even if he can’t conjure up many thoughts about it. Or anything else.

Andrés is no longer conscious as he takes his last breath, but as he falls under, the last thing he sees are Martín’s sad, sad eyes. The last thought he ever has is

unimaginable

cruelty.