fic: deadened streets, and other songs (cloverfield)
deadened streets, and other songs
cloverfield. they beat the odds - there is escape; that's really just the beginning. AU. marlena; marlena/rob. 4424 words. rated r.
notes: friends, I don't even like this movie very much, haha. but somehow thisisironic talked me into writing this, lol. I blame finals week.
something ain’t right
and if they ever find me
tell the papers
(cold wind; arcade fire)
It starts and ends like this -
Beth’s dead when they get there.
And, it’s like, surprise, surprise is on the tip of her tongue but she must be getting soft or getting tired or probably both because Marlena doesn’t say it. She just thinks it, and on a karmic level that’s totally bad enough, she’s sure of it. She tries to stifle the sarcasm and general ill-will this dead girl totally doesn’t deserve, and then she thinks about rubble and ceiling tiles and broken shit squashing them all like it squashed Beth a couple hours ago.
And you know, there’s a lot of blood and from where she’s standing she can only see half of Beth’s face, which is bad enough, and there are flailed arms and she’s like a portrait of a Hitchcock heroine, only like 3-D and more than Technicolor and totally not pretending and totally dead. But that’s not what’s getting to her. It’s her fucking party dress that is really creeping Marlena out. Sure, there’s the way it’s still trying to sparkle and shit against all the debris and blood and dark and the way Rob keeps reaching a hand out but can’t really bring himself to touch her, but there’s also the fact that earlier this evening Marlena had been mocking both the dress and the girl in it silently in her head. It’s making her feel guilty, which is stupid, and Beth only has one shoe on. It’s stupid.
It’s fucking depressing, is what it is.
-
There are shattered picture frames where Marlena is standing.
And is that, like, really, all that’s left of Beth? There is some broken glass and over-priced Pottery Barn frames and scattered family photographs, a picture of Rob, a landscape that might have come with the frame itself, and that’s it?
She shudders, a little, enough, whatever, and takes a step back. Her feet hurt; she totally chose the wrong footwear for high-speed, life-or-death chase on foot, but you really can’t predict these kinds of things, can you? She thinks not.
There is a roar outside (though the roof to the apartment is pretty much gone so inside is outside and outside is in, kind of like Beth’s guts, but that’s just gross, really, really fucking disgusting) and it is close, way too close. Hud starts to stammer about how they need to go, man, they really need to go - “dude, Rob, man - we gotta bail.”
Marlena toes the corner of a frame that has, seriously, pearls or some shit emblazoned and bedazzled on it. It’s really tacky. But you’re not supposed to think ill of the dead, and she’s really starting to doubt that Rob will come with them; it scares her, more than a little, and she doesn’t like that.
It’ll just be her and Hud then - Jason is immortalized on, under, a broken bridge and Lilly is in pieces in a subway tunnel and Beth is here and dead, and if Rob stays, that makes four.
Hud is still talking, getting more anxious by the second and he’s holding the video camera all lop-sided, long past the point of artistic expression, Blair Witch bullshit, whatever he was going for.
There’s that roar again, only this time accompanied by bright explosions she can spy through hollowed windows. The crooked floor of the apartment shakes a little and there is the horrifying sound of metal creaking. There are sparks shooting from the broken television, a pipe or something square through the center, DVDs scattered everywhere. Sarah Jessica Parker smiles up from the rubble, like, eight times over, cosmo in hand each time.
Oh, God. She is so not going to die here.
“Dude!” Hud yells, but Rob’s totally catatonic or grief-stricken or both, who cares, at this point. He just sits there, dust from all the white plaster smeared on his dark pants, a huge sweat stain on the back of her shirt, not that she’s one to judge, but he’s completely nonresponsive. “We need to leave! Like, right the fuck now,” and Marlena agrees.
She wades over through the rubble, grabs on to something that looks like the former arm of a couch. She stops behind him; she reaches down and her hand brushes the back of his neck before it stops on his shoulder. She can feel him shaking, tense muscle quivering and though she can’t see his face she’s sure that he’s crying. Her fingers curl and squeeze, and she hopes this is somehow at least a little reassuring.
She leans farther forward, her chest flush with his back, her elbow brushing the top of his ribcage.
“Hey. Hey, Rob,” she says against his ear, and he bows his head at that. “Hud’s right, man. There’s nothing…there’s nothing we can do here. I’m sorry. Okay? But we can still…if we hurry, the three of us…”
She has absolutely no idea what the fuck to say. Sorry the girl you love bit it? Sorry you don’t even get to mourn her properly, monsters have invaded the city? Sorry I suck total ass at this?
“We have to go,” she says as firm as she can manage, but there’s still a bit of tremble there.
The apartment shakes again, and she kind of pitches forward. Her nose bumps against the top of his ear and her lips meet the whorl of it.
He reaches up and squeezes the hand on his shoulder.
“Yeah…”
He moves to get up; another stomp and roar make the building quake.
-
Hud gets caught between a pair of jaws, and when there is a crunch she thinks she screams.
Rob grabs her by the waist and throws her down out of sight, his body weight twisting her shoulder funny and it really fucking hurts.
Her ow! gets lost in the beat of helicopter blades.
-
After the rescue, the first thing they are told is to take off their clothes.
Rob just stands there, shoulders slumped like he hasn’t heard a word, but she’s pretty sure her mouth is gaping and she looks like a poorly gutted fish or something, all that blood on her and the flapping mouth.
“What?” she manages to stammer and Rob’s, like, fascinated by the ground or whatever because the dude will not stop staring at it. She elbows him, not very subtly, and he glares at her.
The men in the hazmat suits just watch and when they talk, their voices travel muffled; one of them says something about decontamination. The other repeats the order to take off their clothes.
Her hands shake on the button of her jeans and her boots stick clammy to her calves; she’s really starting to freak out here, okay. Because what if they are “contaminated”? What would that even entail? Are they going to die? All that work and all that running and all those people they left behind, and the two of them get to die, naked, in some sterilized shower with bright blue tiles everywhere? Or, do they die later? Sick and miserable in some hospital bed, or maybe when they die they die like those people they saw earlier, at the triage center or whatever, the people that blew up behind curtains, and she seriously thinks she might vomit.
Instead she shivers under cold water and the hazmat people spray chemicals on her that burn and make her eyes water.
She hears Rob gasp somewhere over to her left, but she doesn’t look.
She squeezes her eyes shut and sighs in relief when the water shuts off and a stranger passes her a towel.
-
They say the word quarantine (as well as some others) and then they shut the door.
There are two beds and his squeaks when he sits on it. Hers doesn’t and somewhere that probably means something. She thinks. But she’s tired and there’s a giant cut on her wrist that feels really raw and she rubs at it a little, sinks against the mattress.
There’s, like, chain-link on the window and it makes her nervous. She thought this was supposed to be a dorm or something, not like there was an orientation or anything when they first got here. There are bars too, but she doesn’t notice them until they’re an afterthought and she’s shivering, she’s fucking shivering, and if Rob notices he doesn’t mention it, but that figures, you know?
“I don’t think I like you very much,” she says, and as far as non-sequiturs go, this one’s rather impressive, she thinks. Then she snorts. She’s, like, killing two birds with one stone or something. If he ever thought her polite she’s completely dashed those hopes and any sort of illusion that she’s lady-like or whatever.
What she thinks she means is that she’s proving something here, proving she’s not someone - the rest is just too self-deprecatingly awful to continue. So she won’t. She’s too awesome for that. Or, she was, at one point, because at one point she actually managed to score and own a pair of Christian Louboutins and she was so planning on hitting Fashion Week this year and sometimes she fucked wannabe rock stars, and that’s sort of slutty, sort of bad-ass, but whatever. She liked her life, she liked it a lot. And now it’s gone, or being digested by aliens or left to rot in this makeshift prison cell.
“Yeah well feeling’s mutual,” he croaks, but he doesn’t look very pissed off. If anything he looks amused but she really kind of doubts that. There’s almost a smile all the same and she chalks it up as a victory.
They don’t talk much after that. She’s okay with that.
-
On the second day they bring them breakfast and it’s completely gross but not entirely inedible. It’s not even fifteen minutes after breakfast that she realizes she is totally bored.
And, well, if this was a normal day she’d probably be at work or something and that’s not much better than this. So she’d be bored there too, bored, but there’d be a paycheck next week. But she doesn’t have a place to pay rent on anymore or places to shop. So, really. It’s sort of a wash.
This is kind of irrelevant, since it is the weekend. Or supposed to be - she kind of lost track of time in tunnels and sideways buildings and explosions and stuff. But normally she wouldn’t be doing anything much more strenuous or taxing than watching bad Law & Order reruns and eating microwave popcorn, leftover Thai, maybe Starbucks, or if she was feeling really adventurous, sharing a bowl, a blunt or some shit with some friends and maybe trying to do wacky Tim Gunn and Christopher Walken impressions, or something interesting at the time.
There’s this giant lump in her throat and she kind of clutches at her chest a little and she isn’t going to cry, she’s not going to start crying here or in front of him and it’s not even eight A.M. and that’s too fucking early for a meltdown or whatever.
She takes a deep breath and Rob just cocks an eyebrow her way, lidded eyes masking his expression.
She’s glad he doesn’t ask her if she’s alright.
She doesn’t think she’d be able to answer.
She swallows hard and hopes all her friends are already dead because, seriously. That has to be better than this.
-
Five minutes later she retracts the unvoiced wish, because, right, karma. What goes around comes back around, blah blah blah, she always thought that yoga instructor was full of shit, but still.
You don’t wish people dead.
That would just really be the same as asking for even more bad news, and well. They have enough of that already.
She moves over to the window but can’t really see past the chainlink or the bars.
Rob starts to snore.
-
They won’t let them use the phone.
Rob’s face gets all red with anger, and it’d be kind of funny if it wasn’t scary because are they prisoners or survivors? She doesn’t really get what’s happening here, and when she spies soldiers with guns when the door is opened for dinner, she isn’t really sure she wants to.
Instead, she joins Rob in his chorus and shouts that she wants to speak to a manager.
“Seriously?” Rob asks when the door is shut and locked again.
She shrugs and picks at a piece of bread.
“It was the first thing that came to mind.”
He just shakes his head.
-
She keeps singing the wrong lyrics to songs by The Kinks, but, like, Rob doesn’t correct her. She has some theories about this - namely, a) that Rob doesn’t even know who The fucking Kinks are (which is just sad and proves even further that she should have just ditched his ass way back when the disaster scenarios first started to spin into play), b) he doesn’t notice because he’s still busy moping and grieving dead people and dead pseudo-girlfriends, or c) he’s giving her the benefit of the doubt and doesn’t want to make a point of correcting her.
She’s like almost eighty percent positive it’s the second option, but she’s trying really damn hard to stop wishing it was the third.
It’s just, the world or New York might have ended but that’s no excuse to let herself become completely and irredeemably lame.
She breaks out into the chorus of “Lola” and Rob rolls his eyes; she thinks he’s counting the bricks in the wall.
Maybe she’ll bust out the Pink Floyd next.
-
On the third day they put them on a bus.
She’s quiet when they board, and so is he, but that’s not really anything new. They’re both still wearing the white non-descript t-shirts and the hospital scrubs for pants and the morning is kind of chilly and she shivers, though she’s not entirely sure the cold is to blame.
It’s a school bus, and that’s creepy, she thinks, and by the time they sit the whole damn thing is packed full of people. They all look the same and it’s really kind of baffling. Like, totally. They all have shell-shock written across their faces and some have random cuts and bandages and one guy has a sling and not a single one of them make eye contact.
Rob sits rigid next to her, like maybe he’s afraid to move or maybe he’s afraid of the others - maybe he’s afraid of her, and that thought alone is seriously sort of hilarious. She chokes on a laugh and their shoulders bump; she misses his, “you alright?” as she tries to swallow down air or hysteria and it’s, like, ridiculous because the bus smells but it doesn’t really smell bad it just smells like when she was younger and had lunchboxes and crayons, and now she thinks she might start sobbing and it’s then the bus lurches into motion.
She waves a hand at him when he leans in concerned. Her eyes are watering. This is embarrassing.
“Fine,” she gasps, and gravel crunches loudly underneath the tires.
-
She must have dozed off.
When she wakes, it’s mid-afternoon or late, she doesn’t know, but it’s definitely not morning and the sun doesn’t look like it’s planning on setting anytime soon.
Out the window there are only trees and they must be far from the city, so far from the city now, so far from home and her apartment and her friends and stuff and things, and something like panic jars in her, fast.
“Where do you think they’re taking us?” Marlena not-really-whispers and Rob just looks at her funny, like maybe the government was right with their initial suspicions and stuff and she really is one of those alien things or whatever.
“What?” she bites out, and his face sort of softens and it’s kind of strange to watch his features slide. He just shrugs, cocks his head a little to the left and down, and it’s then that she realizes she’s totally clinging to his bare forearm.
She doesn’t blush and she’s really proud of herself for that.
She does mutter, “sorry,” without sounding like she doesn’t mean it, and when she pulls her hand away there are five neat little half-moons indented in his skin. He looks down at them and there’s a little tic along his jaw; he turns away towards the window and watches the scenery pass by.
Okay. She might be blushing now.
-
She can’t stop asking questions. Besides, Rob isn’t really answering any of them, and that annoys her just as much as the questions must annoy him, so in her book that definitely means they’re square.
“Why do you think they brought us here?” she whispers and someone moves and there’s the rustle of thick polyester or whatever as one sleeping bag slides against another. Rob grunts, all noncommittal, says something about sleep in return.
“No, really. Like, we were fine in that building. We could have stayed there. There were beds at least. And, well. Privacy.”
In the dark she can kind of see his face, and let’s be honest: it totally catches her off guard. He’s smiling. He’s smiling and she really doesn’t get it because nothing she has said in the last five minutes was particularly amusing, at least in her estimation. She was sort of being serious here.
“Why? You planning on ravaging me in my sleep?” he asks in this completely wry and tired sounding voice, and, you know, maybe if she wasn’t death march exhausted and paranoid and shit it’d be really kind of sexy.
That is so wrong. So, so, so wrong in like a really epic kind of way.
“In your dreams, Hawkins,” she boasts, sort of loud and there’s this bray of a laugh first from her and then him, and then they’re laughing, stitch in the side, hysterically laughing, and this really isn’t very funny at all, not in the slightest - like, come on, they’re laughing about the possibility of banging each other or whatever and if she lets herself think about it, just cursorily consider it, there is nothing comical, nothing of the sort to be found in that.
Somewhere in the tent someone tries to hush them and she can feel him go still next to her; she listens while he tries to catch his breath, and she can’t stop now, she can’t stop imagining what that would feel like up against her, what he’d feel like: his chest expanding along her own and his breath slowing along her neck.
This is really, obscenely inappropriate.
She dissolves into giggles against her pillow, and eventually she falls asleep.
-
It’s a refugee camp. She feels like one of those Sally Struthers commercials on late-night or whatever, and every single person wandering around looks lost and blank and soulless.
There are soldiers there, too. Rescue or no rescue, she thinks she hates them; they make her nervous just to look at, she wants to go home.
“You should have moved to Japan a week early,” she says, a hand held up as she watches the sky. There is only gray and smoke out over the horizon.
“A little late for that,” he says.
He stands too close to her, like the guy’s never heard of personal space or whatever, and maybe she hates him too.
He’s making things more complicated than they already are. And that’s sort of really saying something, all things considered.
Her fingers accidentally brush his as she turns to go.
She joins the rest of the aimless masses, and he joins her.
-
Joking aside, she really didn’t expect him to slip her hand into his pants the next night. Seriously.
But he does.
But that’s later.
-
“She died alone. She died alone, you know.”
“Beth,” and it’s all she says, not even a question. More like an assertion of fact or an objective review of past events.
“She died alone,” he repeats, and then he kisses her.
The kiss is completely one-sided. It’s his mouth moving against hers, him trying to suck on her bottom lip and his tongue aiming to slick the entrance to her mouth. They’re his hands on the outside of the sleeping bag, pressing against where he must imagine her hips would be (he’s off by a bit at first, too high, his hands push against her belly a little, but then he adjusts).
She pulls back when her lips start to part, like, of their own volition, which he really shouldn’t be able to do to her. It isn’t fair.
“I’m not going to be a stand-in for -” she whispers sharply, and then stops herself. She’s learning to bite her tongue, and he’s, like, trying to bite her tongue and she really needs to stop, now, with all this thinking about biting and tongues.
“What the fuck…” he mutters, then swallows and aims to restart, but she beats him to the punch.
“I get it - you miss her and you’re sad and you’re scared and you really miss her, but -”
“Shut up,” and she totally did not expect that, and she really doesn’t expect the hand that comes up to cup the nape of her neck, his thumb quickly running over her jaw.
“Shut up I need you,” and he says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, then kisses her again.
This time she kisses him back.
Maybe he’s lying, she thinks.
She still kisses him back.
-
He’s pretty fucking good at this.
He doesn’t stop kissing her when he unzips her sleeping bag; when he slides inside of it with her he nips and licks the skin beneath her ear and she pulls at his t-shirt in fists, trying for silence and probably totally failing, but whatever. It pretty much feels amazing and they’ve probably earned that much.
And it’s totally ridiculous, right? Prehistoric creatures came and ate New York and their lives and shit, and then first they were thrown into some Orwellian subplot of governmental doom followed by Third World communal dwelling, and now she’s making out with Rob Hawkins. It seriously doesn’t make a bit of rational sense, but she lets him slide a hand up her shirt and wrap a leg around his hips.
When he palms her breast she gasps a little and her hips grind against his.
Then he slides her hand into his pants.
-
She twists her fist again and Rob’s hips buck and her hand slips the length of him a little and he bucks again, this sort of strangled noise almost escaping him; she’s close enough that she can see him bite his lip, hard, and Jesus Christ what the fuck are they doing? He’s making these breathy little pants and what sound like whispered versions of her name, the syllables pulled taut and tight, some of them cracking. His hands slick sweaty under her t-shirt, on her waist, her hips, her breasts, and there’s, “Mar-lay-nah,” again, then just the “Mar,” like some botched nickname, so he has to be close, he only keeps getting louder.
Suddenly, she feels totally self-conscious. Like, the entire tent (holy fuck she’s jerking Rob Hawkins off in a fucking tent in a tent and there are people and she has his cock in her hand and the world has, like, ended) can hear them or they’re listening, something.
Just as quickly, he groans stop and grabs her wrist, tight. She freezes; “what?”
He can’t really catch his breath, and there’s a swell of pride there on part, because damn she’s still got it. His hands grab shaky at the waistband of her pants, his fingers catch on her panties underneath and his forehead bumps against her own as he babbles, “Inside - I want to - fuck - I need you to - ”
She pushes his hands aside and slides her pants, her underwear past her hips.
This is really stupid. This is really fucking stupid, and she can’t stop repeating that like a goddamn mantra in her head while she tries to untangle her legs from her sweatpants and her underwear, all under the guise of their now shared sleeping bag. Her bare legs keep knocking his and the flannel feels warm, worn, on the backs of her thighs.
His hand slips between her legs and she has to shut her eyes; she can feel his cock bare against her hip and it’s almost too much.
He thrusts into her, and she has to open her eyes.
His eyes are just as big and just as wide, the muscles of his back tense as he holds himself over her.
She moves first, then him, then there is the rhythmic sound of her sleeping bag sliding against his empty one; there is his gasping and her own small noises lost in his collarbone.
He thrusts, hard, then groans with just as much force.
She claps a hand over his mouth because he’s too loud, he’s too loud and someone will hear them, and he bites it. He bites the palm of her hand and nudges it away, his head dropping to the crook of her neck. Where her neck meets her shoulder he bites her again; he bites hard and she can’t stop her hips from arching up, pulling him deeper into her and his groans and moans and every ridiculous, hot and ridiculously hot noise he is making is muffled against her skin.
He comes first, on what sounds like the start of a sob and collapses warm against her.
She comes on his fingers, and for a moment there, for a good, solid and strong moment she forgets everything. There is a party and there is him and there is her, and maybe they’ll drink, maybe they’ll have a great time. He’ll leave for Japan and she’ll leave for whatever and perhaps they’ll tell their friends about each other, laugh behind each other’s backs over brunches or pitchers of beer, but they’ll still have this, this stupid private quiet moment for themselves.
Her eyes drift shut a little, his t-shirt damp against her cheek, his skin. He holds her.
New York doesn’t seem so far away.
fin.
cloverfield. they beat the odds - there is escape; that's really just the beginning. AU. marlena; marlena/rob. 4424 words. rated r.
notes: friends, I don't even like this movie very much, haha. but somehow thisisironic talked me into writing this, lol. I blame finals week.
something ain’t right
and if they ever find me
tell the papers
(cold wind; arcade fire)
It starts and ends like this -
Beth’s dead when they get there.
And, it’s like, surprise, surprise is on the tip of her tongue but she must be getting soft or getting tired or probably both because Marlena doesn’t say it. She just thinks it, and on a karmic level that’s totally bad enough, she’s sure of it. She tries to stifle the sarcasm and general ill-will this dead girl totally doesn’t deserve, and then she thinks about rubble and ceiling tiles and broken shit squashing them all like it squashed Beth a couple hours ago.
And you know, there’s a lot of blood and from where she’s standing she can only see half of Beth’s face, which is bad enough, and there are flailed arms and she’s like a portrait of a Hitchcock heroine, only like 3-D and more than Technicolor and totally not pretending and totally dead. But that’s not what’s getting to her. It’s her fucking party dress that is really creeping Marlena out. Sure, there’s the way it’s still trying to sparkle and shit against all the debris and blood and dark and the way Rob keeps reaching a hand out but can’t really bring himself to touch her, but there’s also the fact that earlier this evening Marlena had been mocking both the dress and the girl in it silently in her head. It’s making her feel guilty, which is stupid, and Beth only has one shoe on. It’s stupid.
It’s fucking depressing, is what it is.
-
There are shattered picture frames where Marlena is standing.
And is that, like, really, all that’s left of Beth? There is some broken glass and over-priced Pottery Barn frames and scattered family photographs, a picture of Rob, a landscape that might have come with the frame itself, and that’s it?
She shudders, a little, enough, whatever, and takes a step back. Her feet hurt; she totally chose the wrong footwear for high-speed, life-or-death chase on foot, but you really can’t predict these kinds of things, can you? She thinks not.
There is a roar outside (though the roof to the apartment is pretty much gone so inside is outside and outside is in, kind of like Beth’s guts, but that’s just gross, really, really fucking disgusting) and it is close, way too close. Hud starts to stammer about how they need to go, man, they really need to go - “dude, Rob, man - we gotta bail.”
Marlena toes the corner of a frame that has, seriously, pearls or some shit emblazoned and bedazzled on it. It’s really tacky. But you’re not supposed to think ill of the dead, and she’s really starting to doubt that Rob will come with them; it scares her, more than a little, and she doesn’t like that.
It’ll just be her and Hud then - Jason is immortalized on, under, a broken bridge and Lilly is in pieces in a subway tunnel and Beth is here and dead, and if Rob stays, that makes four.
Hud is still talking, getting more anxious by the second and he’s holding the video camera all lop-sided, long past the point of artistic expression, Blair Witch bullshit, whatever he was going for.
There’s that roar again, only this time accompanied by bright explosions she can spy through hollowed windows. The crooked floor of the apartment shakes a little and there is the horrifying sound of metal creaking. There are sparks shooting from the broken television, a pipe or something square through the center, DVDs scattered everywhere. Sarah Jessica Parker smiles up from the rubble, like, eight times over, cosmo in hand each time.
Oh, God. She is so not going to die here.
“Dude!” Hud yells, but Rob’s totally catatonic or grief-stricken or both, who cares, at this point. He just sits there, dust from all the white plaster smeared on his dark pants, a huge sweat stain on the back of her shirt, not that she’s one to judge, but he’s completely nonresponsive. “We need to leave! Like, right the fuck now,” and Marlena agrees.
She wades over through the rubble, grabs on to something that looks like the former arm of a couch. She stops behind him; she reaches down and her hand brushes the back of his neck before it stops on his shoulder. She can feel him shaking, tense muscle quivering and though she can’t see his face she’s sure that he’s crying. Her fingers curl and squeeze, and she hopes this is somehow at least a little reassuring.
She leans farther forward, her chest flush with his back, her elbow brushing the top of his ribcage.
“Hey. Hey, Rob,” she says against his ear, and he bows his head at that. “Hud’s right, man. There’s nothing…there’s nothing we can do here. I’m sorry. Okay? But we can still…if we hurry, the three of us…”
She has absolutely no idea what the fuck to say. Sorry the girl you love bit it? Sorry you don’t even get to mourn her properly, monsters have invaded the city? Sorry I suck total ass at this?
“We have to go,” she says as firm as she can manage, but there’s still a bit of tremble there.
The apartment shakes again, and she kind of pitches forward. Her nose bumps against the top of his ear and her lips meet the whorl of it.
He reaches up and squeezes the hand on his shoulder.
“Yeah…”
He moves to get up; another stomp and roar make the building quake.
-
Hud gets caught between a pair of jaws, and when there is a crunch she thinks she screams.
Rob grabs her by the waist and throws her down out of sight, his body weight twisting her shoulder funny and it really fucking hurts.
Her ow! gets lost in the beat of helicopter blades.
-
After the rescue, the first thing they are told is to take off their clothes.
Rob just stands there, shoulders slumped like he hasn’t heard a word, but she’s pretty sure her mouth is gaping and she looks like a poorly gutted fish or something, all that blood on her and the flapping mouth.
“What?” she manages to stammer and Rob’s, like, fascinated by the ground or whatever because the dude will not stop staring at it. She elbows him, not very subtly, and he glares at her.
The men in the hazmat suits just watch and when they talk, their voices travel muffled; one of them says something about decontamination. The other repeats the order to take off their clothes.
Her hands shake on the button of her jeans and her boots stick clammy to her calves; she’s really starting to freak out here, okay. Because what if they are “contaminated”? What would that even entail? Are they going to die? All that work and all that running and all those people they left behind, and the two of them get to die, naked, in some sterilized shower with bright blue tiles everywhere? Or, do they die later? Sick and miserable in some hospital bed, or maybe when they die they die like those people they saw earlier, at the triage center or whatever, the people that blew up behind curtains, and she seriously thinks she might vomit.
Instead she shivers under cold water and the hazmat people spray chemicals on her that burn and make her eyes water.
She hears Rob gasp somewhere over to her left, but she doesn’t look.
She squeezes her eyes shut and sighs in relief when the water shuts off and a stranger passes her a towel.
-
They say the word quarantine (as well as some others) and then they shut the door.
There are two beds and his squeaks when he sits on it. Hers doesn’t and somewhere that probably means something. She thinks. But she’s tired and there’s a giant cut on her wrist that feels really raw and she rubs at it a little, sinks against the mattress.
There’s, like, chain-link on the window and it makes her nervous. She thought this was supposed to be a dorm or something, not like there was an orientation or anything when they first got here. There are bars too, but she doesn’t notice them until they’re an afterthought and she’s shivering, she’s fucking shivering, and if Rob notices he doesn’t mention it, but that figures, you know?
“I don’t think I like you very much,” she says, and as far as non-sequiturs go, this one’s rather impressive, she thinks. Then she snorts. She’s, like, killing two birds with one stone or something. If he ever thought her polite she’s completely dashed those hopes and any sort of illusion that she’s lady-like or whatever.
What she thinks she means is that she’s proving something here, proving she’s not someone - the rest is just too self-deprecatingly awful to continue. So she won’t. She’s too awesome for that. Or, she was, at one point, because at one point she actually managed to score and own a pair of Christian Louboutins and she was so planning on hitting Fashion Week this year and sometimes she fucked wannabe rock stars, and that’s sort of slutty, sort of bad-ass, but whatever. She liked her life, she liked it a lot. And now it’s gone, or being digested by aliens or left to rot in this makeshift prison cell.
“Yeah well feeling’s mutual,” he croaks, but he doesn’t look very pissed off. If anything he looks amused but she really kind of doubts that. There’s almost a smile all the same and she chalks it up as a victory.
They don’t talk much after that. She’s okay with that.
-
On the second day they bring them breakfast and it’s completely gross but not entirely inedible. It’s not even fifteen minutes after breakfast that she realizes she is totally bored.
And, well, if this was a normal day she’d probably be at work or something and that’s not much better than this. So she’d be bored there too, bored, but there’d be a paycheck next week. But she doesn’t have a place to pay rent on anymore or places to shop. So, really. It’s sort of a wash.
This is kind of irrelevant, since it is the weekend. Or supposed to be - she kind of lost track of time in tunnels and sideways buildings and explosions and stuff. But normally she wouldn’t be doing anything much more strenuous or taxing than watching bad Law & Order reruns and eating microwave popcorn, leftover Thai, maybe Starbucks, or if she was feeling really adventurous, sharing a bowl, a blunt or some shit with some friends and maybe trying to do wacky Tim Gunn and Christopher Walken impressions, or something interesting at the time.
There’s this giant lump in her throat and she kind of clutches at her chest a little and she isn’t going to cry, she’s not going to start crying here or in front of him and it’s not even eight A.M. and that’s too fucking early for a meltdown or whatever.
She takes a deep breath and Rob just cocks an eyebrow her way, lidded eyes masking his expression.
She’s glad he doesn’t ask her if she’s alright.
She doesn’t think she’d be able to answer.
She swallows hard and hopes all her friends are already dead because, seriously. That has to be better than this.
-
Five minutes later she retracts the unvoiced wish, because, right, karma. What goes around comes back around, blah blah blah, she always thought that yoga instructor was full of shit, but still.
You don’t wish people dead.
That would just really be the same as asking for even more bad news, and well. They have enough of that already.
She moves over to the window but can’t really see past the chainlink or the bars.
Rob starts to snore.
-
They won’t let them use the phone.
Rob’s face gets all red with anger, and it’d be kind of funny if it wasn’t scary because are they prisoners or survivors? She doesn’t really get what’s happening here, and when she spies soldiers with guns when the door is opened for dinner, she isn’t really sure she wants to.
Instead, she joins Rob in his chorus and shouts that she wants to speak to a manager.
“Seriously?” Rob asks when the door is shut and locked again.
She shrugs and picks at a piece of bread.
“It was the first thing that came to mind.”
He just shakes his head.
-
She keeps singing the wrong lyrics to songs by The Kinks, but, like, Rob doesn’t correct her. She has some theories about this - namely, a) that Rob doesn’t even know who The fucking Kinks are (which is just sad and proves even further that she should have just ditched his ass way back when the disaster scenarios first started to spin into play), b) he doesn’t notice because he’s still busy moping and grieving dead people and dead pseudo-girlfriends, or c) he’s giving her the benefit of the doubt and doesn’t want to make a point of correcting her.
She’s like almost eighty percent positive it’s the second option, but she’s trying really damn hard to stop wishing it was the third.
It’s just, the world or New York might have ended but that’s no excuse to let herself become completely and irredeemably lame.
She breaks out into the chorus of “Lola” and Rob rolls his eyes; she thinks he’s counting the bricks in the wall.
Maybe she’ll bust out the Pink Floyd next.
-
On the third day they put them on a bus.
She’s quiet when they board, and so is he, but that’s not really anything new. They’re both still wearing the white non-descript t-shirts and the hospital scrubs for pants and the morning is kind of chilly and she shivers, though she’s not entirely sure the cold is to blame.
It’s a school bus, and that’s creepy, she thinks, and by the time they sit the whole damn thing is packed full of people. They all look the same and it’s really kind of baffling. Like, totally. They all have shell-shock written across their faces and some have random cuts and bandages and one guy has a sling and not a single one of them make eye contact.
Rob sits rigid next to her, like maybe he’s afraid to move or maybe he’s afraid of the others - maybe he’s afraid of her, and that thought alone is seriously sort of hilarious. She chokes on a laugh and their shoulders bump; she misses his, “you alright?” as she tries to swallow down air or hysteria and it’s, like, ridiculous because the bus smells but it doesn’t really smell bad it just smells like when she was younger and had lunchboxes and crayons, and now she thinks she might start sobbing and it’s then the bus lurches into motion.
She waves a hand at him when he leans in concerned. Her eyes are watering. This is embarrassing.
“Fine,” she gasps, and gravel crunches loudly underneath the tires.
-
She must have dozed off.
When she wakes, it’s mid-afternoon or late, she doesn’t know, but it’s definitely not morning and the sun doesn’t look like it’s planning on setting anytime soon.
Out the window there are only trees and they must be far from the city, so far from the city now, so far from home and her apartment and her friends and stuff and things, and something like panic jars in her, fast.
“Where do you think they’re taking us?” Marlena not-really-whispers and Rob just looks at her funny, like maybe the government was right with their initial suspicions and stuff and she really is one of those alien things or whatever.
“What?” she bites out, and his face sort of softens and it’s kind of strange to watch his features slide. He just shrugs, cocks his head a little to the left and down, and it’s then that she realizes she’s totally clinging to his bare forearm.
She doesn’t blush and she’s really proud of herself for that.
She does mutter, “sorry,” without sounding like she doesn’t mean it, and when she pulls her hand away there are five neat little half-moons indented in his skin. He looks down at them and there’s a little tic along his jaw; he turns away towards the window and watches the scenery pass by.
Okay. She might be blushing now.
-
She can’t stop asking questions. Besides, Rob isn’t really answering any of them, and that annoys her just as much as the questions must annoy him, so in her book that definitely means they’re square.
“Why do you think they brought us here?” she whispers and someone moves and there’s the rustle of thick polyester or whatever as one sleeping bag slides against another. Rob grunts, all noncommittal, says something about sleep in return.
“No, really. Like, we were fine in that building. We could have stayed there. There were beds at least. And, well. Privacy.”
In the dark she can kind of see his face, and let’s be honest: it totally catches her off guard. He’s smiling. He’s smiling and she really doesn’t get it because nothing she has said in the last five minutes was particularly amusing, at least in her estimation. She was sort of being serious here.
“Why? You planning on ravaging me in my sleep?” he asks in this completely wry and tired sounding voice, and, you know, maybe if she wasn’t death march exhausted and paranoid and shit it’d be really kind of sexy.
That is so wrong. So, so, so wrong in like a really epic kind of way.
“In your dreams, Hawkins,” she boasts, sort of loud and there’s this bray of a laugh first from her and then him, and then they’re laughing, stitch in the side, hysterically laughing, and this really isn’t very funny at all, not in the slightest - like, come on, they’re laughing about the possibility of banging each other or whatever and if she lets herself think about it, just cursorily consider it, there is nothing comical, nothing of the sort to be found in that.
Somewhere in the tent someone tries to hush them and she can feel him go still next to her; she listens while he tries to catch his breath, and she can’t stop now, she can’t stop imagining what that would feel like up against her, what he’d feel like: his chest expanding along her own and his breath slowing along her neck.
This is really, obscenely inappropriate.
She dissolves into giggles against her pillow, and eventually she falls asleep.
-
It’s a refugee camp. She feels like one of those Sally Struthers commercials on late-night or whatever, and every single person wandering around looks lost and blank and soulless.
There are soldiers there, too. Rescue or no rescue, she thinks she hates them; they make her nervous just to look at, she wants to go home.
“You should have moved to Japan a week early,” she says, a hand held up as she watches the sky. There is only gray and smoke out over the horizon.
“A little late for that,” he says.
He stands too close to her, like the guy’s never heard of personal space or whatever, and maybe she hates him too.
He’s making things more complicated than they already are. And that’s sort of really saying something, all things considered.
Her fingers accidentally brush his as she turns to go.
She joins the rest of the aimless masses, and he joins her.
-
Joking aside, she really didn’t expect him to slip her hand into his pants the next night. Seriously.
But he does.
But that’s later.
-
“She died alone. She died alone, you know.”
“Beth,” and it’s all she says, not even a question. More like an assertion of fact or an objective review of past events.
“She died alone,” he repeats, and then he kisses her.
The kiss is completely one-sided. It’s his mouth moving against hers, him trying to suck on her bottom lip and his tongue aiming to slick the entrance to her mouth. They’re his hands on the outside of the sleeping bag, pressing against where he must imagine her hips would be (he’s off by a bit at first, too high, his hands push against her belly a little, but then he adjusts).
She pulls back when her lips start to part, like, of their own volition, which he really shouldn’t be able to do to her. It isn’t fair.
“I’m not going to be a stand-in for -” she whispers sharply, and then stops herself. She’s learning to bite her tongue, and he’s, like, trying to bite her tongue and she really needs to stop, now, with all this thinking about biting and tongues.
“What the fuck…” he mutters, then swallows and aims to restart, but she beats him to the punch.
“I get it - you miss her and you’re sad and you’re scared and you really miss her, but -”
“Shut up,” and she totally did not expect that, and she really doesn’t expect the hand that comes up to cup the nape of her neck, his thumb quickly running over her jaw.
“Shut up I need you,” and he says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, then kisses her again.
This time she kisses him back.
Maybe he’s lying, she thinks.
She still kisses him back.
-
He’s pretty fucking good at this.
He doesn’t stop kissing her when he unzips her sleeping bag; when he slides inside of it with her he nips and licks the skin beneath her ear and she pulls at his t-shirt in fists, trying for silence and probably totally failing, but whatever. It pretty much feels amazing and they’ve probably earned that much.
And it’s totally ridiculous, right? Prehistoric creatures came and ate New York and their lives and shit, and then first they were thrown into some Orwellian subplot of governmental doom followed by Third World communal dwelling, and now she’s making out with Rob Hawkins. It seriously doesn’t make a bit of rational sense, but she lets him slide a hand up her shirt and wrap a leg around his hips.
When he palms her breast she gasps a little and her hips grind against his.
Then he slides her hand into his pants.
-
She twists her fist again and Rob’s hips buck and her hand slips the length of him a little and he bucks again, this sort of strangled noise almost escaping him; she’s close enough that she can see him bite his lip, hard, and Jesus Christ what the fuck are they doing? He’s making these breathy little pants and what sound like whispered versions of her name, the syllables pulled taut and tight, some of them cracking. His hands slick sweaty under her t-shirt, on her waist, her hips, her breasts, and there’s, “Mar-lay-nah,” again, then just the “Mar,” like some botched nickname, so he has to be close, he only keeps getting louder.
Suddenly, she feels totally self-conscious. Like, the entire tent (holy fuck she’s jerking Rob Hawkins off in a fucking tent in a tent and there are people and she has his cock in her hand and the world has, like, ended) can hear them or they’re listening, something.
Just as quickly, he groans stop and grabs her wrist, tight. She freezes; “what?”
He can’t really catch his breath, and there’s a swell of pride there on part, because damn she’s still got it. His hands grab shaky at the waistband of her pants, his fingers catch on her panties underneath and his forehead bumps against her own as he babbles, “Inside - I want to - fuck - I need you to - ”
She pushes his hands aside and slides her pants, her underwear past her hips.
This is really stupid. This is really fucking stupid, and she can’t stop repeating that like a goddamn mantra in her head while she tries to untangle her legs from her sweatpants and her underwear, all under the guise of their now shared sleeping bag. Her bare legs keep knocking his and the flannel feels warm, worn, on the backs of her thighs.
His hand slips between her legs and she has to shut her eyes; she can feel his cock bare against her hip and it’s almost too much.
He thrusts into her, and she has to open her eyes.
His eyes are just as big and just as wide, the muscles of his back tense as he holds himself over her.
She moves first, then him, then there is the rhythmic sound of her sleeping bag sliding against his empty one; there is his gasping and her own small noises lost in his collarbone.
He thrusts, hard, then groans with just as much force.
She claps a hand over his mouth because he’s too loud, he’s too loud and someone will hear them, and he bites it. He bites the palm of her hand and nudges it away, his head dropping to the crook of her neck. Where her neck meets her shoulder he bites her again; he bites hard and she can’t stop her hips from arching up, pulling him deeper into her and his groans and moans and every ridiculous, hot and ridiculously hot noise he is making is muffled against her skin.
He comes first, on what sounds like the start of a sob and collapses warm against her.
She comes on his fingers, and for a moment there, for a good, solid and strong moment she forgets everything. There is a party and there is him and there is her, and maybe they’ll drink, maybe they’ll have a great time. He’ll leave for Japan and she’ll leave for whatever and perhaps they’ll tell their friends about each other, laugh behind each other’s backs over brunches or pitchers of beer, but they’ll still have this, this stupid private quiet moment for themselves.
Her eyes drift shut a little, his t-shirt damp against her cheek, his skin. He holds her.
New York doesn’t seem so far away.
fin.