'Oi,' Jean said. There wasn't a reply, excluding his own echo. 'Oi. Hey, Marco.'
It was dark, standing in a room that had once been a wine cellar but was now repossessed as a mortuary. It stank, the fluid that had leaked out of the dead bodies staining the wet and slimy floor. The flickering torchlight made the stonework look black.
Marco lay slumped against the wall, all alone after everyone else had been carted out to burn. Jean stared at him, a dark figure among the crumpled sheets used to wrap the bodies in. Marco should have gone too, but somehow Jean hadn't managed it, somehow had nodded and said nothing when he'd been asked if that was all.
Jean sat down on the bottom stair and put his head down into his hands. What was he meant to do now? The thought of carrying Marco up the stairs to put on the wagon to go to the pyres make him want to throw up. Or perhaps that was just the stench working its way into his skin, into the inner tissue of his lungs and mouth. They hadn't had enough wood to burn everyone at once, that was what Reiner had said, wasn't it. So they'd had to wait for more to arrive, why Marco's body had been sitting around for days now. Jean coughed then gagged as the cloying, clotting air tickled the back of his throat.
He should do something, at least. Jean shuffled forward on his knees to where Marco lay, much the same as he had been when they'd found him. What should he do?
Without thinking Jean reached out and touched the skin of Marco's forehead. It felt slightly damp, soft and unpleasantly cold, with a give like touching a rotting fruit. Wasn't there supposed to be something romantic in dead bodies, like heroes who kissed their slain beloved farewell before returning to battle?
Marco's face, where it had been bitten in two, still seeped. His skin looked moist and pale even in the orange firelight. His single eye had sunk, lips pulled back to expose the shattered remains of his jaw, bone fragments protruding and teeth hanging on by loose flaps of meat.
Jean bent down and kissed to the right of the mouth, where it was more or less intact. It felt spongy, slick, and the putrid taste managed to seep up into his own mouth despite his lips having been firmly pressed closed.
Jean straightened. The kiss hadn't made anything better – but then, he hadn't really expected it to. The hollow feeling in his chest, tight and painful and heavy to carry, hadn't loosened. There was no sense of release.
'Damn it, Marco,' Jean said. He wiped his lips on his sleeve. No reply.
Jean leant over Marco's chest and gripped the back of his head. His fingertips sunk through the matted hair and into the cavity, the gaping hole in his skull, cold and wet and meaty. Then he dipped his head and kissed Marco again, properly.
Marco's teeth were damp and cold. His slimy tongue felt hard, a solid lump, far from the flexible muscle Jean had expected it to be. Marco's lips were cracked, feeling puffy. The taste of his saliva and the stagnant air in his mouth made Jean gag again, a fetid and persistent flavour.
Jean gagged but didn't lean away, instead forcing his tongue to explore, making it run over the wet and viscous fluid collecting in Marco's intact cheek, tasting the lumpy blood setting in from the missing one. The teeth on the edge of his ruined jaw wobbled, one falling out to drop down his throat. Jean shuffled closer, straddling Marco's waist without breaking the kiss. There was a dripping sound, a squelch as the movement knocked a watery clot out of Marco's open head and onto the floor.
Jean's breath shuddered as he sat up. Marco didn't move or object to his treatment. He almost looked like he was grinning.
Jean kissed him again. He moved his hands to Marco's collar, stiff and crusty, which he unbuttoned. He kissed down Marco's neck, the soft skin feeling fragile beneath his teeth, cold and moist, tasting like old sweat as well as the blood. He shuffled backwards to run his lips down Marco's chest, the curling hair there, and finding a nipple Jean sucked at it, lapping the hard flesh with his tongue. Under his mouth it grew warmer.
Jean swallowed then fell still, lips and tongue unmoving from where they remained cradling Marco's nipple. What was he doing? The thought ran fuzzy through his mind. What sort of person did this to their best friend? To the body of their best friend, unmistakably dead and foul in every way?
Jean closed his eyes, feeling the burn of tears behind them, far too familiar these past few days. He was disgusting and wrong and still couldn't take his mouth from where it suckled at Marco, now warm and supple.
His hands ran down to Marco's waist, under his shirt, the undone buckles of his gear clattering as they knocked against the floor. He shuffled down again to sit on Marco's lower legs, back bent as he fumbled with the gear, trousers and underwear beneath, unfastening the buttons. He kept his eyes tight shut as his nose brushed Marco's cock, wrinkled and soft and stone cold. It smelt of piss, tasted of piss and decay as Jean's tongue flickered out to lick the tip, quick and light. Another lick and the taste didn't change. He took the whole of it into his mouth, letting it rest on his tongue and waiting for it to warm. Limp, it felt too small. Jean tightened his lips around the base and sucked, hollowing out his cheeks and bobbing his head. Up and down, up and down. He swallowed the saliva that collected under his tongue, flavoured like piss and dead things. Then he licked down Marco's balls, cock still in his mouth, and managed to take them between his lips as well.
How big would Marco be when hard? Jean sucked and tracked the folds of skin with the tip of his tongue. He nudged up Marco's foreskin and rolled his tongue around the head. When he pulled away it was with a wet, sucking pop.
Jean's jaw clenched hard enough to hurt as he tugged down Marco's trousers and underwear to rest barely half way down his thighs. He crouched, pulling Marco's legs out from underneath him to bend at the waist and knee. There was no stiffness left, Marco's body as pliant as if he'd been sleeping, or unconscious. His booted ankles rested on Jean's shoulders.
Jean looked down at him, blurred in the shadows and through the tears. He bit the inside of his lip, pinching the skin hard enough to bleed. What was he doing? What the fuck was he doing?
With one hand holding Marco's legs in place the other reached down to his crotch, touching the cooling wet skin of his cock and balls. It trailed down, traced around hip and thigh to come back to between Marco's legs, from below. Jean's index finger found his arsehole and pressed inside.
The muscle was loose but still not permissive to intrusion beyond a single finger. The inside was coated in thick fluid, smelling like shit but with a rotting aftertaste, a rancidity that couldn't be ignored.
Jean pushed another finger in, forcing it right to the knuckle of his fist, then withdrew it half way to scissor with the first. A little more of the sticky fluid leaked, squeezed out by the movement, dribbling down Jean's hand to soak into his shirt sleeve.
Jean withdrew his hand. The guys in training had used mechanical oil, he knew. He didn't have any on him.
The air was thick and quiet, but he couldn't really taste the stench any more.
Jean lent forward and placed his hand in the mess of Marco's shoulder, or the flesh and shattered bone where Marco's shoulder should have been. The meat sucked at his skin, bone shards poking into his flattened palm. Blood clots squeezed out between his fingers, black lumpy shapes.
It was sticky and viscous, the bones moving in unnatural ways as he pressed down. Fluid pattered to the floor. Jean clenched his fingers and the patter became a flow. Then he withdrew his hand numbly, chilled from the sustained contact, and put it back to Marco's arse.
There were clots between his fingers, slimy and slick, easily squashed into Marco's limp body. They mixed with the thick fluid already present, turning the consistency from glue to merely mud-like.
Jean shuffled Marco's legs a little higher on his shoulders. He put a hand on his own cock and found that he wasn't hard at all. His fingers were trembling, he realised, as he pulled at himself. The blood and mess on his skin made squelching noises. It took a long time to lose the flaccidness, to grow an even half hearted erection.
When he pushed into Marco, despite the bloody fluid leaking out around him, it still hurt. Jean bit his lip harder than before, trying to calm the erratic shake of his breath. He could do this. He could.
He pushed further, forcing himself in all the way as he gripped Marco's hips for leverage. It was so tight. Marco was cold, lax and dead.
A sob burst from his chest and Jean couldn't stop it, nor the next, nor the one after that. He bowed his head even as he withdrew and thrust, setting up a slow rhythm. His eyes stung with tears, his lungs clogged. The decaying taste regrew in his throat and tongue like mould. Marco slumped to one side with the motion, his head lolling and spilling droplets, lumps of meat and blood. A tooth clattered to the floor, loud over the steady dripping.
It was growing too sticky to move, the pain making it impossible to stay hard. Jean reached forward again and placed his hand on the open side of Marco's face, thumb in his mouth, fingers sinking in the skull to break into the brain, more of a slippery pulp than muscle meat. His fingers, returning to slick his cock, glistened with black blood and clear fluid. Jean thrust a little harder, faster with the lubrication. Both almost entirely clothed, the sound was rustling and the stick of soggy fabric, chinking buckles, Jean's heavy, tear wet breath. They seemed to stretch out into the dark corners of the room, filling it up to the brim.
The orgasm, when it finally arrived, was almost a relief.
Jean shook as he wiped himself off on the corner or a body sheet, cock and hands and face. He pulled up Marco's trousers, redoing the shirt buttons and gear buckles, straightening him as best as he could. Then he crawled up to lie by Marco's side, grasping his remaining arm tight in his hands.
Words failed. Jean leant in and kissed him instead, sloppy and open mouthed, not caring about the precipice where face stopped and raw meat began, the beginnings of rot around the edges.
He couldn't get up from Marco's side. He couldn't stop crying. What was he? What had he done?
Jean lay there until the torch went out, until hours later when other soldiers came in and found him. They pulled him to his feet, wrapped up Marco and took him away themselves.
.
The pyres burnt harsh enough to blind. Or perhaps it was just the thick black smoke.
Jean trembled. His mouth still carried the taste of blood and cold saliva. His mind couldn't leave the question behind: what had he done?
'Hey... guys,' he said, as he turned to huddling group that was what was left of them. His lips felt like a rictus. Like Marco. They were meant to choose their legion now, weren't they.
'I've made my decision.'