fic: Between the end and where we lie (mcr/fob/patd/ths/cs/tai) AU
I... have no idea how this happened.
Title: Between the end and where we lie
Words: ~10,000
Rating: PG13
Pairings: Gerard/Frank, others implied.
Summary: Apocalypse fic, in which people start dying/disappearing, Pete meets his imaginary friend, and Frank and Gerard are cute. There's also lots and lots of cameos thrown in.
A/n: At the end of the fic.
I.
It starts out in New Jersey and Nevada, spreads at a relatively high speed from the two hotspots and wider into the world infecting state upon state, continent upon continent.
That's what the news says.
Millions of people missing, thousands found dead, causes unknown, unidentified creatures in the streets, survivors advised to find shelter, stay inside, keep doors locked at all times-
Don't open your goddamn doors if someone comes bangin' on 'em!
Gerard thinks it's fucking bullshit. Locking the door isn't going to keep you alive. Hiding under the bed waiting for the boogeyman to go away won't make it go away.
Gerard knows this, and he's going to make sure they won't get him, is going to save some lives while he's at it.
He's going to live, and he's making sure Mikey, Frank and Ray make out of it alive as well, without a fucking scratch on their skins.
-
Frank's sitting on the bed in the dark, watching static on television, arms hugging pulled-up legs, jaw bouncing gently against kneecaps like he's hearing music in his head. Gerard watches him from the doorway, tries to lock the cozy, domestic scene into his mind forever, knowing he will want to return to it soon enough, wants to go over the moment until his head swirls.
He scratches his blunt nails on the doorjamb until Frank snaps his head up from his knees and turns to look at him. Frank's smiling softly like it's a regular Sunday evening, like there aren't things roaming and raging outside. Scary things. Things that make people die and disappear, and are just blatantly ruining their pretty decent lives day by day.
"Hey," Frank murmurs. "The TV's gone."
Gerard shrugs, says, "Was just a matter of time I guess."
Frank hums, extends his hand so Gerard pushes himself from the doorway and walks up to him, curls his index and middle finger around Frank's allowing himself to be pulled down on top of Frank, between Frank’s spread legs.
Gerard feels like sagging, finds it hard to move anymore now that he's finally lying down, resting with Frank. Always with Frank.
Something amber and pretty is wrapped around Frank’s wrist and it presses gently on Gerard’s cheek when Frank touches him. Gerard lifts Frank’s hand up to look at it.
“It’s a rosary”, Frank says in a soft voice. “Found it in mom’s drawer when we…” His voice breaks just a little on the fourth syllable, “When we-“
“Hey, shh, I know. It’s okay,” Gerard hushes, finds it hard to swallow around the sudden lump in his throat. It’s not okay though, nothing’s okay about it. He wishes the Iero household had been empty when they visited some weeks ago. Empty would have been easier on the eyes. “It’s okay,” he says.
"I think I'm gonna miss this the most," Frank says after a while. He's palming Gerard's head where it's resting on his chest, Gerard’s mouth just a soft sigh away from his heart.
"Mph, no you won't," Gerard mumbles trying to lighten the mood that’s become thick like pea-soup fog in their little bedroom. He smiles against Frank's skeleton t-shirt, nipping on the fabric wetly, making Frank’s fingers entangle in his hair. "You're gonna miss your stupid tofu ice creams and showering in the middle of the night s'what you're gonna miss."
Frank laughs his chest rippling, causing Gerard's head to bounce uncomfortably for a while. "You're right," he grins and tugs at Gerard's hair affectionately.
Gerard crams his hand under Frank's back, pulls them both to their sides, hand moving up to Frank's cheek. He thumbs it for a while, pushes at Frank's skin before leaning in to kiss him. I think I'll miss this the most, he thinks meaning the wonderfully normal, wonderfully quiet and soft moments together with Frank. Those he thinks he'll miss.
"Oh hey," Gerard says against Frank's lips when he remembers. "I found myself a kickass weapon, is a fucking killer that one, you wanna see?" he asks, smiling, fingers gripping Frank's hip, warm palm against rough denim.
Frank licks his lips, chuckles a little, hand moving down to grope Gerard's crotch. "Is it somewhere down here?" he asks with a small smile of his own. "Tell me when it gets hot."
Gerard snorts pressing into Frank's hand. "It’s hot already but that's not it, not what I meant. Keep doin' it though."
It can all wait for a while, can wait until tomorrow. There are more important things in his life than kickass weapons and ugly monsters and apocalypses or whatever the fuck it is that's happening to the world.
The static snowstorm makes the magnolia-white linen sheets appear light grey; Frank's tattoos stand out in the dark.
-
They lose the house two days later. Things Gerard is sure he has never seen before (not in comic books or creepy Japanese movies even), take it by storm.
Gerard doesn't get a last glance of it, of the house he, Frank, Mikey and Ray rented not even six months ago.
It's okay though.
Frank's okay, Mikey's okay, Ray is definitely okay swearing colorfully under his breath as they're walking down the empty streets of Belleville. It feels like they're the only people left in the world but Gerard doesn't want to think about it. The switchblade he took from a derelict antique shop a while ago is heavy in his grip, and it makes him feel like this is not really the end at all.
II.
Bill cocks his hip at Ryan's face. "Do you think this makes me look fat?" He frowns and tweaks the fabric of his black commando outfit with his thumb and index finger. Spencer snorts on Ryan's left side where he's curled up and leaning his jaw on Ryan's shoulder. It's warm where their bodies connect even as the rest of the warehouse feels unpleasantly cold and unwelcoming. On the crappy sofa by the crappy heater, Ryan can almost pretend that he's come home.
Bill clicks his tongue impatiently. Hip still cocked to the side, a rose-patterned bandana around his left knee giving a speck of color to the otherwise monochromatic ensemble, Bill looks like an arrogant fuck. Ryan thinks it's about right, it's about how he's always looked.
"If I say no will you leave me alone?"
It was obviously not the right thing to say, Ryan realizes when Bill rolls his eyes at him and drops down to his empty side, the side where Spencer isn't warming him like an overgrown puppy.
"I don't get why you insist on wearing that stupid thing," Bill says eyes on Ryan’s velveteen rose vest, hand coming up to play with the knot-ends of Ryan's bandana that’s carefully wrapped around his messy head. He tugs gently on the faux silk, turning Ryan's head, making Ryan look at him. "It screams eat me, if you ask me."
Ryan thinks Bill looks almost concerned: brows drawn, mouth a thin, neat line, eyes dark-- it takes him by surprise.
He and Spencer have known William casually for most of their lives, but Ryan never imagined he would become a real friend, real friend like Spencer is for him, and he is for Spencer. But considering how much they have been through together for the past month or so, he really shouldn't be that surprised.
"We've had this conversation before," Ryan says. And they have, they really have, at least twice a week since they decided to dress themselves up in costumes and fight back, fight the motherfuckers who took normalcy away from their lives. "I don't think it makes a difference. I don't think they can see you any better whether you're in all black or wrapped up in say, a rainbow or Christmas lights or whatever."
See, Ryan has a theory. He thinks the monsters (there’s a whole bunch of different ones), sense emotions, fear maybe but it could just as well be happy emotions, can smell them like bloodhounds. And it doesn't matter how well you hide yourself from them, they will find you because you're human and you reek.
Besides, if they want to kill them, what's the point of hiding, anyway?
Bill opens his mouth looking like he wants to protest, but Spencer gets there first. "Can we not. Can we not argue about this any more. It's getting fucking old." He scoffs indignantly, but his outfit matches William's.
-
They're patrolling one night near the warehouses when they get besieged by five of them. Ryan isn't overly worried though. These ones look like regular zombies, which is really not a big deal. Ryan has seen a lot worse.
One of them makes a swoop on him growling and drooling like his old neighbor's dog. Ryan hated that dog. He swings his weapon, a scythe he found carelessly wrapped up in a piece of sheet the first night they quartered in the warehouse, and watches as the thing's head makes a sickening thud dropping to the ground. It rolls down the asphalt but comes to a halt when it collides against Spencer's foot.
"Egh, gross," Spencer whines when he's slain two of them. He lifts his foot to check if the head left a stain on his shoe, and when he sees that it did, he groans and decapitates a third one.
Spencer's fucking ace at killing things when he gets angry enough.
Bill's already made a disgusting, gooey mess of the last one when a trio walks to the opening. They're humans, the one in the middle a girl.
"Impressive," she says, wisps of her long honey-blond hair flying on her face when a breath of air catches them. She's wearing black combat boots and a lovely flower dress, the colors matching Ryan's vest like mint juleps and the Derby.
Ryan notices that they all have similar motifs painted on their right cheeks, and feels rather self-conscious about his scarf. The motifs make him think of vines, how they wind and intertwine curving near the ears and coming to a stop just at the corner of their mouths. They look pretty nice.
It's the first time Ryan meets another ''gang'' and wonders why he had never considered the possibility of him, Bill and Spence not being alone in this. Not fighting alone the endless nightmare that's wrapped its sticky tentacles around the world. He should have guessed. He should have.
Her name is Greta. Her companions are Chris and Bob.
III.
On the fifth day after losing their home, Gerard, Mikey, Frank and Ray return to the old Way house in the heart of Belleville.
It’s empty, but Gerard isn’t surprised. After all, his parents haven’t answered the phone in over two weeks. The place is how he expected it to be.
They aren’t supposed to stay for long, but once Mikey’s descended down to his old room in the basement, it’s hard to get him to leave again.
“Mikey,” Gerard tries. He sits down on the steps watching Mikey sit on his old bed clutching something in his hands. “Mikes, we gotta get going. Frank and Ray are already in the van waiting.” That’s what they came for, came to get the van from the garage in need of a good vehicle that would get them moving. Staying put is the last thing they should do.
Mikey frowns, teeth pulling a lip into his mouth.
“Do you remember when we were kids and there was some sort of wandering circus in town?” Mikey asks raising his head to look at Gerard. “And like, we ran off to check it out, check out the clowns, and it was already late in the evening when we got back. All dirty and high on cotton candy…” he trails off with unfocused eyes.
Gerard cracks a smile. “Yeah, yeah, and mom got so mad at us she swore we’d be grounded forever?”
“Yeah,” Mikey smiles. “Grounded forever.”
“What made you think of that?” Gerard asks curiously when Mikey stands up from the bed still smiling at the stupid memory.
Instead of giving him an answer, Mikey shoves a childish watercolor of a clown into Gerard’s hands and starts making his way upstairs. It’s bright and happy and sad all at once, and Gerard remembers Mikey telling him to paint it. “Come on you freak, hurry up,” Mikey says. “Frank and Ray are waiting.”
Gerard folds the picture carefully in two halves before pushing it into his jacket pocket. Just a reminder, he tells himself. Just a memento.
IV.
folie a deux folie a deux folie a deux, Pete writes on a napkin. shared madness. Maybe this is just all in their heads, in everybody's head. Like a disease that makes them all see closet-monsters, and under-the-bed-monsters, and cellar-monsters, just everything they once imagined as kids.
"Kids have fucked up minds," Patrick agrees when Pete shares his thoughts with him napkin crumbled up and hidden in his palm. "But this," he continues, gesturing around the small hotel room they have locked themselves up in. It's dim enough to make Pete's sight blurry, his head hurt. "This is not. Nobody's imagining it Pete, it's all real." Something scratches the door on the other side just as Patrick finishes his thought.
And Pete knows, God he knows, but he thinks he needed to hear it from Patrick. It's real and it's happening and Patrick's there with him in the middle of it all. He is grateful that he isn't alone, but he would send Patrick as far away from the madness as possible had he the choice. He would do it in a fucking heartbeat, no questions asked.
"I think it'd be plusieurs," Patrick says after being quiet for minutes. "You know, if it was in everybody's head." He smiles sheepishly when Pete focuses his eyes on him again. "Not that. Not that it matters, but." He coughs dryly and swipes his palms up and down his jean-clad thighs. He looks tired, a look Pete has gotten accustomed to seeing in the mirror, not on Patrick, never on Patrick.
"God, 'Trick. God," Pete says coming to wrap his arm awkwardly around Patrick's head, holding him tightly against his chest, then cramming himself into the small gap between Patrick's back and the armchair, fingers petting his sideburns and hair around the stupid trucker hat. He buries his head in Patrick's neck and breathes in the smell of clean skin, hints of soap lingering behind his ear. The perks of hiding in a hotel, at least you're always clean, at least you die clean.
"Hey, it's. No one's going to- We're gonna make it, okay?" Patrick says turning around a little, so that Pete sees his eyes. They're clear, honest, genuine, Patrick-like. "Okay? Pete- Pete, okay?"
"Okay, yeah, sure," Pete says. He smiles but it's thin and doesn't spread out on his face. "We'll make it," he agrees.
-
folie a deux folie a deux folie a deux
folie a deux is the idea of shared madness- the scientific term for romeo and juliet
-
They're sitting on the balcony railing because Pete has a plan.
"Oh God, we're not gonna make it," Patrick whines beside him. He is gripping the railing so hard Pete thinks his hands look ghostly. His own hands look about the same.
"Yes, we are," Pete says from behind gritted teeth. "We have to. Because, you know why? Because you promised, you said we would so we will." Pete wishes his voice would stay the fuck even but it's hard to get anything out when his heart pounds somewhere between his Adam's apple and adenoids.
"I hadn't heard your stupid plan then," Patrick says huffily. Pete gets a set of images flashing under his lids when he shuts his eyes. Images of him pushing Patrick down the railing. They make him gag. He would never… His nerves are all over the place.
"I need you to do this, need you to trust me." Pete watches as something moves in the far distance, can barely see it but knows it's there. It's quiet, too quiet. They're in New York City and Pete can hear his own fucking heart thudding wildly, like it wants to tear its way out of him and escape somewhere, where ever it is cowardly hearts escape to.
Patrick nods beside him, though. "Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, okay, sorry. I do. I do trust you. It's just, we're on the fourth floor Pete, how are we gonna-"
"We aim for the pool," Pete says as if it's the first time they go over the plan. "We aim for the pool and then we swim to the edge. We get out and then we run." Pete turns his head towards Patrick, needs to see his clear eyes, his genuine eyes; needs him to understand. "Then we run, Patrick," he says and grips Patrick's hand.
"Ready?" Pete asks.
Patrick nods blindly,
“You and me, ‘Trick, you and me,” Pete whispers, squeezes Patrick’s hand,
And then they jump.
V.
Jon and Brendon run for their lives. Neither really knows what it is that's after them, neither really sees the figure, neither really cares at that point. It moves smoothly in the air, on their heels like black smoke but more solid, still being able to push its way into everyone that stops, everyone not quick enough to escape. This much Jon knows.
"Come on," Jon gasps out, catches Brendon's hand in mid-step pulling him faster towards a dark parking lot. "Just a little more, just a little longer."
They find a van, with people in it. "Holy shit," Brendon exclaims. "Are they-"
"They're asleep," Jon says as he knocks on the car window. At least it looks like they're asleep, please be asleep, Jon thinks. Running burns in his throat and his hands shake as he tries to fix the people's attention on them.
The people in the van stir and then they're all inside, Brendon squeezing in the front seat between Jon and a guy who looks like he knows what he's doing, like he's fucking dealt with this kind of situation before. The guy starts the car just as the figure, the figure Jon still has no idea what it even is, makes a swoop on the van.
-
"Aw man, do you think it left a dent on the hood?" The guy, the driver -Gerard, Jon has found out- says when they're driving down empty streets, the figure long lost to their view.
Guy with glasses huffs in the backseat.
Gerard glances at him through the front mirror. "What's that s'posed to mean, Mikes?" he asks frowning, waves his right hand near Brendon's face so that the cigarette he's holding ashes messily on his lap. "You know, you fucking know whose van this was, Mikes. It was grandma's van," he huffs sounding awfully displeased with the other guy.
"What does it matter anymore," Mikes asks but his voice wavers and it's quiet. "She's not, they're all dead, so what does it fucking matter."
"That's just it," Gerard says softer this time and pushes his cigarette between his lips. A dull, orange light on the tip gives the air around his fingers a gentle glowing halo.
"There's probably no dent," Brendon offers after a moment of shared silence. He’s still gripping his hand, Jon realizes, painfully, so painfully hard, but fuck if Jon cares. Gerard glances at Brendon before fixing his eyes on the road again. It's still empty and dark but Jon can't help but imagine someone appearing in the middle of it any minute now. "Since, you know, the thing wasn't all, wasn't all there," Brendon adds flailing his free hand a little bit. "Wasn't all solid or whatever."
"Do you think. Was it a ghost?" Someone in the middle seat asks. He is leaning his head on a shoulder that belongs to a guy with huge frizzy hair and calm, friendly eyes.
Gerard glances at the small mirror again, a pair of soft, swollen up dice dangle from it like it’s the 60s or something. "It wasn't- didn't look like a ghost, Frankie," he says.
Frankie shrugs and tugs his chin up a little to look out of the window. "Ever seen a ghost before?" he asks.
VI.
When Pete and Patrick jumped, they didn't die.
They aimed for the pool, hands interlaced all prettily as if they did that all the time, and they made it, they damn well made it. It was wet and terrifying, and pretty damn splashy, and they made it all right.
"Oh my God," Patrick says when they're out of the pool, jeans heavy and clinging wetly to their legs, hoodies soaked to the skin, chlorine clumping lashes together like salty tears tend to. "Oh, my God," he says again, doesn't know where to take that sentence, keeps rolling it on his tongue, repeating it in his head to the dizzying beat of his heart.
Pete echoes him, eyes on the balcony they jumped from not even five minutes ago. There are things, there. Ugly things. Things Patrick is pretty certain even Pete can't come up with. Things that give rise to unpleasant shivers in the back of his neck, the bumpy length of his spine.
"Aren't you fucking glad we jumped?" Pete asks. He sounds hysterical, and he doesn't seem to be able to turn away from the monsters, can't look away if he tried.
-
They forget to run, but it doesn't seem like they need to, anyway, not at that moment.
Patrick can't help but think, or more like wish, that maybe Pete is right. Maybe it's just all in their heads, like a really bad drug causing them to hallucinate, to see horrible things that they can't really explain. Shared madness, he thinks, mouths it quietly when Pete is walking ahead of him, every now and then pushing at doors trying if they would open for them. None of them do.
Shared madness. Folie à deux, folie à deux. It tastes like a lie on his lips, so he stops trying.
-
The sky looks pregnant, dark clouds ready to break over their heads, when Pete pulls him into a diner. There's a ‘closed’ sign hanging crookedly on the door and Patrick can't help but think it's just a really halfhearted attempt at protection, like a made up spell that won't keep bad things outside but comforts all the same.
The diner isn't empty.
"Whossat," someone croaks from behind the counter when the bell on top of the door clinks cheerfully like Christmas mashed up with cowbells. Patrick can't see them, but they don't sound like something he should be afraid of.
"Um," he says.
"Who's there?" Pete asks voice unnecessarily loud. It's not like there's any other noise that would stretch in between them and devour their voices. It's been quiet for days.
There's a pause, and then Patrick hears what sounds like bickering, hushed, quiet bickering. It makes him think of squirrels in comic books.
Eventually, two men peek their heads from behind the counter. They look like hobos, or college students, the ones with bongs and whatnot.
And this is how they meet Andy and Joe.
VII.
Andy liked waking up before the alarm, liked walking around the small apartment in boxers taking pleasure in the way sunbeams petted his toes.
Andy liked black coffee in the mornings, the sound of a toaster when slices of bread sprung from it. He even liked the steady snoring that poured from Joe's room and carried throughout the apartment, all unashamed and like he might die any minute, choke on his fucking mucus.
He liked it all.
What he didn't like, were impatient customers on the street, banging the diner door so loudly that it might give out. That, Andy didn't like.
The snoring died out, and then Joe was there all fuzzy from sleep, his hair all over the place, his homemade MOTHERFUCKING JOSEPH t-shirt rising up on his belly. "Do. You. Mind?" he asked gesticulating as another loud thump sounded from downstairs.
Andy rolled his eyes. "I'm not doing it, man." sometimes Joe was dense as fuck.
"Well who the hell is then?" Joe gritted his teeth, walked towards the front door picking up a striped umbrella from its stand before marching down the stairs to see what the fucking problem was. "WE'RE NOT OPENING TILL NINE SO GET THE- WHOLY SHIT," Joe shrieked and ran back to the apartment, slammed the door shut and pushed a chair below the doorknob for good measure.
Andy blinked. Joe looked like he had seen a ghost. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I. It. It was." Joe opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. "Wasn't a ghost, was something else," he croaked eventually.
-
Whatever it was that had scared Joe shitless, Andy watched nose pressed to the window as it crawled down the street two hours later, seemingly having grown tired of banging at the door.
They ventured downstairs when it was quiet again, both feeling like the air in the confined space of their cramped apartment was growing thick and harder to breathe.
Andy went outside for a while eager to fill his lungs with fresh morning air. Nothing looked abnormal, nothing looked like it shouldn't have, except there were no people. None. It chilled Andy's bones, raised up the hair on his arms, made his stomach churn. Maybe the program he saw on TV a week back wasn’t a joke after all.
He decided to leave the door unlocked, just for a while, in case they didn't turn out to be the only people left in the world.
Some time after noon, the bell clinked.
VIII.
There are two people left in the world Gerard is ready to die for.
One of them is talking to Ray in the front seat, head neatly hidden behind the new kids, Josh and Brett or whatever.
The other one's pressing into his side in the back of the van, hand tugged inside the layers of his shirts, fingers rubbing vague patterns on his side. "Frank, Christ," Gerard whispers when Frank nips gently on his neck, nosing the spots after, heavily breathing in the smell of his skin.
"Miss you, miss this," Frank murmurs against his ear quietly, so carefully quietly, neither wanting to draw their friends' attention on them. "Miss you so much."
"I miss you too," Gerard breathes out voice drowning in the hum of the car but Frank hears him, can't not. They're so close, so close, but it isn't enough, not even. So Gerard wraps his arms all around Frank's waist pulling, pulling until their chests, stomachs, hips are flush against the other. It's a little awkward and uncomfortable so Gerard eases them along the leathery seat making it so that they’re both lying down, Frank mostly atop, snugly tugged under his arm.
Frank sighs softly, his fingers finding an easy path down Gerard's side all the way to the hollow of his hip, rests it there all solid and heavy causing Gerard's stomach tighten, his eyes flutter. "Frank, Frankie, we can't." Gerard says against the corner of Frank's eye. He pulls Frank up a little trailing his lips down Frank’s face until he's finally able to reach his mouth, kisses him sloppily for a while.
Frank scoffs against his mouth, says "I know, I motherfucking know that," before licking Gerard's lips and teeth and gums, the insides of his cheeks. His hand slides to the waist of Gerard's jeans, fingers knotting around a belt loop. He tugs at it restlessly.
Gerard whines when Frank begins to rock his hips against his lower stomach, but the sudden halt of the car makes them quickly pull apart. They sit up, Gerard's heart pounds loudly in his ears, Frank's hand still clenching around the loop on his hip.
Mikey coughs a little, says they're going to go find something to eat at the gas station but that Gerard and Frank can "stand guard" in the van as long as they promise to stay in the backseat.
Ray and the new kids are wearing matching smirks when they get outside, out of the van. Gerard thinks, okay then.
IX.
There's something about that terrible moment when Robert falls that takes Ryan's breath away.
The clouds seem to move on slow motion, plushy and flushed with color. Pink and yellow and orange, a little bit of weak gray on the soft edges where the sun is hidden.
It's quiet, no monsters around,
No traces left of them,
Except for...
Greta's curled up over his body, her lovely flower dress soaking in the blood that pulps from the seams of his neck. Her tears fall soundlessly onto his cheeks smudging the vine motif on the right side. They roll down Greta's chin, her collarbone, disappearing in her deep cleavage. Chris looks like he doesn't know whether to hold her or clutch Bob's grimy shirt in his hands so he does both, skinny arms a soft comfort in the frighteningly gorgeous aurora.
-
Here's what Ryan knows about the Hushies (a name Greta so airily let pour from her rosy lips the night they met):
In the beginning, there were four of them. Darren they lost in the heat of battle a little over a week before they crossed paths with him, Bill and Spence. There's not much Ryan knows about Darren, nobody really wants to mention him and Ryan isn't stupid enough to ask.
They paint their faces as a mark of unity, and Ryan wonders why he never thought of that. He likes to blame it on Bill's stupid obsession with bandanas, but it's not like he refused the scarf when Bill offered it to him.
The Hushies used to find shelter in a wooden shanty, but they have been staying with Ryan, Bill and Spence in the warehouse these days saying how there's just more room, warmth and people there. And it's not like they're above refusing an offer to join forces with another group of vigilantes. They have a world to save.
Before it all began, Chris's favorite pastime activity was to play Guitar Hero. Word on the street is, he was pretty damn good at it. The kid quotes King Crimson and Elliott Smith every chance that he has, and makes Greta laugh with wild over the lines colored stories from his childhood. He talks about how his fingers itch for fancy tar/chemical free ciggys, a luxury that's becoming increasingly difficult to find. Whenever they break into empty shops, the first thing Chris goes to is the tobacco shelf.
Greta is a classically trained pianist. Her fingers itch to play. There isn't much she likes to say about her past, reminding them of how it's the future that everybody should be focusing on. She agrees with Ryan's theories about the monsters being able to smell people, track them down through their emotions, telling him about the time a swarm of eyeless things surrounded them. After that incident, she’s stopped trying to resort to wearing earthy monochromes. There's just no point in it and she likes colorful clothes. Ryan likes her. He thinks she's pretty smart.
And then there is, was, Robert.
-
Spencer's palm touches Ryan's shoulder, William's arm draped around his waist, as they watch the scene close by. Ryan isn't sure what to do; doesn't look like Bill and Spence know either, so they let the moment stretch until it can't anymore, until Ryan feels like if they don't leave right now, running away will be much harder to do. He hates running away, but sometimes there's nothing else left they can do.
X.
It turns out it is in their heads after all.
In a way, anyway.
It's kinda fitting that Pete's the one who ends up discovering it.
It's an early evening and he's walking through the mosaic jungle of a shopping mall -on his way to Patrick, Andy and Joe after having relieved himself in the restroom- when he comes face to face with the same creepy little boy his mind created like twenty years ago.
He blinks.
Then he freaks out.
"Hi Pete," the kid -the should be figment of his imagination- says, smiles widely like he's happy to see Pete after so long. He has black, shaggy hair, hollow, white eyes and sharp, saw-like teeth. He's wearing a black corduroy suit, patent leather shoes and a crimson bow tie. Pete would maybe think of him as endearing had he not been fucking traumatized by this little imaginary fiend at an early age.
"You. You? What the. Holy fucking- PATRICK," Pete gets out before he takes off running down a set of stairs, turning a corner and another and then bumping painfully into Patrick causing them both to topple over on the cream-white ceramic tile floor.
"Pete, what the hell?" Patrick groans picking himself up. His hand moves to his backside, rubbing away the pain. Andy and Joe raise their heads from the comic book they’ve been leafing through ever since breaking into a newspaper kiosk.
"It's. He's here- he... Maurice is here," Pete says just as the kid walks up to them. He looks a little sad, rejected, head pressed down and hands in the pockets of his neatly ironed slacks.
"Why did you run away?" he asks voice all small, quiet, and is Pete seriously supposed to feel guilty for not asking him to come with?
"Uh. Pete?" Patrick asks tentatively beside him, eyes fixed on the kid. "Who's your little friend?"
The kid -Maurice- raises his head up at Patrick, mouth twisting into a fucked up smile. Pete quickly moves to stand between them trying to shield Patrick from whatever it is Maurice decides to do to them.
"You know who he is. I've told you about him. Don't you remember?"
Patrick's quiet for a while, then he huffs a laugh. "He's- that's the scariest thing little Pete could come up with?"
"Shut up." Pete snaps.
The kid laughs too, brightly and with all of his heart, hand pushing against his mouth to muffle the sound until it's reduced to soft giggles. Cute, Pete thinks grimly. Really fucking cute.
Andy and Joe share a look.
-
Maurice follows them around for a few days, but he seems like he's growing tired of it.
He tried to bite Patrick’s leg with his saw-blade teeth, but ended up tending his own head when Pete hit him with a metal pipe. After that, he hasn’t tried anything else.
They get him thrown off their scent on the fourth night. It doesn't take that much effort and Pete would be happier about it if Patrick, Andy and Joe had taken him more seriously to begin with.
"At least now we know," Andy says. He's sitting cross-legged on the mosaic-decorated edge of an indoors water fountain, gulping poorly concentrated orange juice. Shopping malls have become their overnight accommodations on their way to- where ever it is they're trying to get to. Pete doesn't think anyone really has a plan, staying put without doing anything just feels a little bit more meaningless than wandering aimlessly around empty streets (the lack of people is what still manages to freak Pete out the most).
Joe blinks. "Know what? What do we know?"
Andy rolls his eyes. "Where the monsters came from," he says exasperatedly and pokes Joe's head with his finger as if to demonstrate what he leaves unsaid.
Pete's eating a chocolate bar, letting the bites melt between his tongue and palate before swallowing. He leans his head on Patrick's shoulder, ear snug in the shallow precipice of Patrick's collarbone until Patrick swats his head halfheartedly telling him to give him some room. Pete shrugs and moves a little to press his ear on Patrick's chest instead, just above the heart. A steady beat thrums against his ear and he decides he will make sure the thumping never stops.
Folie a deux folie a deux folie a deux. What frightens him a little, makes him shudder when he thinks about it, is that he was right, was right all along.
XI.
Sometimes days turn into nights with a blink of an eye, a tick of a nerve; like a star falling in the distance, barely caught before it's much too late, wish still rolling down in the curves of minds and tongues.
Ryan is having one of those days.
They left the warehouse early in the morning and before he knew it, it was dark and the scene had changed.
In the city center of Las Vegas, neon lights should shine in their eyes, color their hair hot pink and yellow and blue; they should be twined in the sounds of music and cars and people, star-studded streets full of life. Instead, instead it's like the whole city has turned into a ghost town in the course of mere weeks.
Ryan's sitting on a upside down turned dumpster on the roof of some casino, swinging his legs against the sheet metal, trying to drown the dull ringing in his ears by making noise.
What ends up wrecking his nerves, makes it all ten times worse, are the quiet gaps between storms and fights and running away and not running away. When he's supposed to take a minute to breathe again, but all he can do is keep wondering where the hell has everyone gone off to.
The thing, the thing that's happening, it's like a breaker that massacres within minutes. It sweeps the bodies away to sea leaving only small traces of humanity on the shore. A tiny strawberry-red strap shoe, ripped-in-half leather purses, expensive wristwatches.
A breaker in the desert. In houses of smoke and mirrors, in gambling dens, casinos, restaurants and behind bars. Over barstools, unmade beds, staircases and elevators.
Ryan hates it all; doesn't want to get swept away by it but doesn't necessarily want to keep living this way either.
"Penny for your thoughts," Greta says behind him. She's good at sneaking up on people. A true Hushie, he thinks. She goes to lean against the railing, eyes not very happy but doing something to sparkle anyway.
"Oh you know," he says slowly, cracks a smile, "Just wallowing in my misery."
She smiles back at him, shakes her head. "How very gloomy of you."
"Well, you know me."
The thing is though, she doesn't really know him, doesn't know anything about him. She doesn't know that he ran away from home more than once to experience the nightlife of Las Vegas, or that he’s never seen the ocean even though the Pacific is relatively close to him. She doesn’t know that Spencer let him practice kissing on him before his first date, and that it was the only kissing he got that day.
For her, he's just a fellow vagabond rebelling against the deepening darkness of the world. One of the few survivors on the edge of an apocalypse. Apocalypse, because Ryan is sure that it is where they’re all headed. It's like waiting for a huge, overgrown rogue wave on the shore of a restless sea.
"Right, sure," she says, turns around to look into the dark, quiet, desert city. There are stars in the sky.
XII.
It's sometime after noon on a clear, sunny day maybe on the edge of August that Patrick meets Victoria Asher. That's how she introduces herself, big smile and big eyes, hand extended over a stack of roadmaps in her lap. She's sitting on the lonely step of a truck stop, sunbeams in her warm, autumn-brown hair.
Patrick shakes her hand smiling stupidly when Pete huffs and pushes past them into the dilapidated building. Patrick shrugs. Pete's been a little... tense lately, at least ever since meeting his little imaginary friend.
Andy and Joe say their hellos but once their attention focuses on a lonely arcade cabinet inside, they're gone.
She says Gabe's gone somewhere to look for abandoned vehicles while Ryland's inside stocking up on foodstuffs. Patrick has no idea who these people are so he says "Cool, that's, yeah that's smart," and continues to smile stupidly at her.
Pete and someone who Patrick figures must be Ryland come out just as Patrick is trying to wipe the smile off of his face because, hello, creepy much?
"Vicky, dah-ling," Ryland says with a mock British accent. "These gentlemen friends of yours?"
Pete rolls his eyes, Victoria laughs heartily, Patrick's smile has finally flagged and Andy and Joe are fighting over the game they're spending the rest of their pocket money on.
Bus with random toothpaste ads on the sides moves from behind the building and parks just a few feet away from them, tires puffing dirt clouds into Patrick's face.
Out comes a lanky guy with lazy eyes, a self-satisfied smirk stretching his face.
"Gabe! That's perfect!" Victoria exclaims jumping up from where she was sitting. She goes to high five Gabe grabbing his hand then and pulls him with her around the bus examining it like it's the first time she sees such a thing.
Ryland grins happily and lets a sack -- where Patrick guesses the foodstuff is -- drop from his shoulder down to the ground.
"Where are you guys headed?" Pete asks just as Victoria and Gabe walk back from the bus.
"Down south of course," Ryland says no longer talking in an accent. They're all pretty strange, Patrick thinks, but Victoria looks like the end of summer and Patrick likes that. He likes it a lot.
"Uh," Pete says. "Okay. Why do you wanna go south? I thought one of the hotspots was in like Jersey or whatever?”
"Dude, the monsters are everywhere by now so what does it matter,” Gabe says. “Besides, we’re not going to stay in Jersey, we’ll just drive through it. We're gonna do some sightseeing before... well, that's not really important, is it Vicky?" He casually wraps his arm around Victoria's shoulders giving her upper arm a firm squeeze.
"Nope," she says, and then, "You guys wanna tag along? There's plenty of room in the bus. We can give you a ride somewhere before we-"
Gabe coughs and runs his hand up and down Victoria’s shoulder.
"Fuck yeah," Ryland hops in. "You should totally come with!"
Something about the trio makes Patrick a little uncomfortable. He doesn't know what it is, can't quite figure it out, but the feeling in his gut isn't all that encouraging.
They decide to go with them anyway. It's not like they have anything better to do. Victoria, Gabe and Ryland are the first people Patrick even meets after walking into Andy and Joe's diner a couple of weeks ago.
XIII.
The best thing that's happened to Jon Walker since finding Brendon hunched up in a dark alley somewhere in Belleville -a lonely vampire circling him, teeth poking out of its mouth and all (Jon had struck a wooden broom through its chest like in Buffy and finally gotten himself a real friend)- has got to be running into these guys.
He's been pretty damn lucky considering everything.
It's not like he's on easy street but things could be a lot worse.
Jon is an optimist.
Mikey and Ray are silently sitting in the middle of the van, staring at their own reflections in the windows. They're eating HoHos and Ding Dongs or whatever it is they grabbed from the gas station earlier in the day.
Frank and Gerard are talking quietly in the back, Gerard's arm curling around Frank's shoulder, fingers playing with the cord of Frank's hoodie. It's such a wonderfully normal, everyday scene in the middle of abnormality, Jon thinks and feels the corners of his mouth tug up.
Brendon's drumming his hands against his thighs next to Jon, while Jon gets to drive. It's the first time they have let him, and it feels like he's finally become part of their group.
He's loving it.
"I'm loving this," he grins at Brendon before turning back to let his eyes rest on the even white stripes against black road. Brendon snorts telling Jon what a big freak he is for saying something like that when the roadsides are probably swarming with creepy things. It makes Jon squint his eyes trying to see if Brendon is right, but all he can make out is black night all around them.
"You're just being depressing, stop being depressing, Brendon Urie!" Jon gives Brendon's thigh a friendly squeeze before ruffling up his hair.
"I'm not being depressing, idiot," Brendon says smoothing out his hair. He gives Jon a mock frown but his voice is all smiles and easiness. He sighs a little and says he's just really fucking bored is all, and Jon can understand that. They have been driving for hours and Jon doesn't even know where they're going. The vague drive south he got from Gerard didn't really give him any answers, but then again, Gerard probably doesn't know any better. It’s not like Jon minds though since he can’t come up with anything better he could be doing. Going to work at Starbucks, serving zombies with mint mochas, doesn't sound like a feasible alternative for him, doesn't sound very appealing at all.
Brendon starts fumbling with the radio buttons changing channels, empty frequencies pushing irritating noise from the speakers into the van. Just as Jon is about to tell him it's futile trying to find any programs since the senders are probably all dead or hiding out the very least, they hear voices from the speakers.
XIV.
“Steve Smith here with Brian Schechter,” Steven starts the practiced sentence for the umpteenth time. “And you’re listening to Monster Radio, broadcasted straight from the back of Brian’s mother’s bitchin’ van.”
Brian chuckles in the front, speeding up on empty freeways as Steven sends music into the air.
Someone’s got to be listening.
XV.
It turns out Patrick's gut was right.
It dawns on him on the day they cross the New Jersey stateline.
Vicky is lying on the long backseat of the bus studying her roadmaps. Patrick’s sitting by her feet, writing PATRICK WAS HERE on the back of the seat in front of him with a yellow felt-tip pen. He’s considering asking her out, like seriously, in the middle of an apocalypse and everything, when she pokes his thigh with the tip of her big toe.
"Hey, Patrick?" she asks so he turns to look at her. "You ever seen that movie... what's it called? The one where a group of people rents a bus to drive it off a cliff?" She shifts a little, her short silky dress rising up her thighs.
"What?" Patrick asks because, really, what?
"It's like a mass suicide thing. You haven't seen it?"
"Uh, no, wh- why?"
She smiles calmly, easily, whispers, "That's kinda what we're going to do."
Well. Shit.
"What- Are you fucking crazy?" Patrick's voice goes all over the place but it's not like he's concerned about that at the moment. She sits up, eyes searching for Patrick's, her hand gently touching his arm.
"Maybe we are," she answers. "But let me ask you this," she continues sifting closer to him, voice barely audible through the steady hum of the bus. "How long do you think we have time before the world ends? And additionally, do you honestly want to be here, see everything, when it does? It's already started happening, started falling apart at the seams."
"Fuck you," Patrick snaps breaking away from Vicky's grip. He's seething, scared, worried, outraged. "I knew, I knew there was something... Is this how you’re gonna show your gratitude for still being alive? For surviving when pretty much everyone else didn't?"
She frowns, shakes her head, asks him "Do you really prefer this to being dead?" Her voice wavers and she isn't smiling anymore. "I'm just tired of hiding, wandering around without a purpose, running away from things that someone's sick mind created," she says and really does look tired. It’s the first time Patrick notices the twin circles under her eyes.
Patrick would maybe feel sorry for Vicky if he wasn't still so angry at her, at all three of them. "We're all tired," he says. "But we fucking deal with it."
"And we've found a solution," she says, and there is nothing short of resolute in her voice.
"Patrick?" Pete asks. He's standing on the aisle near them, frowning, hair sticking out from having rubbed it on the back of his seat sleepily for hours.
Patrick stands up, staggers slightly when the bus changes lanes. He gives Vicky a disappointed look grabbing Pete's hand. "Come on." He pulls Pete towards the middle seats. "I'm in the mood for some fucking hangman," he says and pushes the felt-tip pen into Pete's hands.
Morons, he thinks. All three of them.
XVI.
“This is the lamest fucking apocalypse ever,” Spencer says. He’s standing over the body of a headless… mucus… thing, tutting at the mess Bill’s made of it.
Ryan kicks its green, slimy head a little, makes it crash into a dumpster with a sad, wet thud. He agrees.
XVII.
Gerard’s sitting outside by a gas station with Mikey. The others have gone inside to look for various supplies.
If Gerard is completely honest with himself, he’s starting to get a little worried. The amount of monsters seems to be increasing while edible food is running short. It’s been the hardest for Frank because he’s stubbornly clinging to his principles of not eating meat products. He’s looking sick and thin and Gerard hates it, hates how he can’t do anything about it.
Mikey has been surprisingly adaptable to everything that’s happened considering all the times he screamed blue murder about the tiniest changes. Like when Gerard decided to move his room from upstairs to the basement and Mikey wouldn’t stop complaining until he was allowed to move as well. Gerard snickers at the memory.
“What?” Mikey asks. His head is cocked back and he is looking at Gerard through his thickly framed glasses that sit on the tip of his nose. He looks exactly like he did when he was younger.
“Laughing at you, little brother,” Gerard says and grins when Mikey swats him on the back of his head. “Ow, motherfucker,” he chuckles and rubs the sore spot.
“Stop laughing, you ass,” Mikey sniffs indignantly but the corners of his mouth slope up. He adjusts his glasses and stands up just as a bus with random toothpaste ads on the sides drives past them. The windows are slightly open and loud 90s disco music blasts through them. The people inside, two of them maybe, look like they’re dancing while a third one drives the bus at full speed.
“Holy-“ Mikey gasps.
“Whoa,” Gerard says getting up. “What the hell… Why didn’t they stop? They must have seen us.”
Mikey shrugs staring intently at the shrinking dot on the road in the horizon as if he’s trying to pull the bus back with the power of his mind.
It doesn’t work.
XVIII.
So the apocalypse comes and it goes, nobody survives in the end but that’s just how it works.
It gets really bad at one point when something blocks the sun for a while making days as dark as nights. Creatures go crazy, of course and multiply like flu bacteria in a cozy environment.
Pete guesses it’s the moon eclipsing the sun, but really, what does he know.
He’s walking down a set of stairs in a shopper’s paradise in New Jersey one evening, trying to squint in order to see, when he stumbles over something hard and lanky. His first thought is Gabe that crazy bitch but then he remembers that Gabe’s probably driven off a cliff already, so it can’t be him.
Pete pushes his hand on the thing’s face in his haste to get up and notices that it has glasses and soft hair.
Groans and obscenities pour out of its mouth in a cute, warm voice that doesn’t sound like Patrick but somehow manages to make his stomach somersault regardless.
Pete wants to hear more of that voice so he pokes his finger on the hollow of its shoulder, just above the armpit grinning when it tells him to fuck off.
Someone’s yelling MIKEY WAY WHERE THE HELL DID YOU RUN OFF TO in the distance, so Pete wraps his hand around a bony arm and helps Mikeyway up.
-
Patrick thinks about Victoria sometimes, how sunbeams glittered in her hair and how her body curled up over her roadmaps, mouth pouting prettily when she concentrated.
He wishes he could have changed her mind, made her stay with him and the boys, but it just didn’t happen, and he doesn’t like to dwell on failed opportunities.
He has Pete, and he has Andy and Joe and a bunch of new guys who kick ass at fighting. One of them, Gerard or something, he’s got a real weapon and everything so Patrick thinks maybe they can win this thing.
-
Ryan kisses Greta in a dirty gutter in the heart of a battle.
Her lovely flower dress is soaking up in grime and blood that Ryan thinks might be gushing from the flesh wound on his arm. She smiles gently when Ryan sticks the curving blade of his scythe into a dying werewolf’s back, and her smile is the last thing he sees before he closes his eyes.
The steady murmur of Bill, Spence and Chris swinging their weapons, shouting nonsense battle cries everywhere around him, fills his heart with immense pride, and at that very moment, he is sure they will make it alive.
-
Jon suggest they drive towards Vegas when the guys from Monster Radio announce in their program that they have heard there are people there, struggling for the future of the world with raised fists and sharpened blades.
Brendon’s eyes light up when Jon voices it, and no one seems to have heart to deny him this small sparkle of hope in the dark new world.
Ray says they should get a bigger vehicle since they got addition to their group and everything. Joe suggests they find a bus but Jon doesn’t think Gerard looks very happy about the idea of leaving the van behind. Mikey takes it much better, and Jon can’t help but guess it’s because of the prospect of having Pete Wentz with them that does it for him.
-
Andy pokes Joe harshly on the back telling him to shut the fuck up when the guy makes a disgusting snore in the middle of the night. Or it could be day. It’s been hard to tell ever since the total eclipse and all. Joe swats Andy’s fist away from his back and continues to sleep.
Much to Andy’s nuisance, Joe doesn’t choke on his fucking mucus.
-
Gerard's nosing the twin swallows on Frank's stomach, kissing and licking and nuzzling the feathers, when beams of light peek out of the edges of the clump covering the sun.
“Fuck yeah.” Frank exhales, yanking Gerard up by the hair and crushes their lips together.
The pretty amber rosary digs comfortably into Gerard’s skin when Frank’s hand presses against his spine, and he pulls Frank closer, hands clenching around the skinny fabric of his t-shirt.
Fuck yeah, he echoes in his head enjoying how the pulsing sunshine seeps warmth into his skin, how Frank’s nails dig crescent shapes in the curve of his back.
-
folie a deux folie a deux folie a deux, Pete thinks later, when Mikey asks him who the kid by the water fountain is.
-
Ray looks sullen when he says that it’s really the people who end up destroying themselves, their minds having created the monsters and all.
Gerard rolls his eyes at him saying that it’s old news, everybody’s already figured that one out ages ago. He swipes at a big spider with his switchblade half-heartedly, goes to tug calmly on Frank’s dirty hair, the hood of his oversized sweatshirt, not caring that the spider is oozing disgusting grime at their feet. Frank makes a face at the dead thing and shudders muttering how much he hates those fuckers.
It doesn’t matter where the monsters came from, who ended up bringing this upon the world; none of it makes any difference to Gerard. Absolutely none of it. It’s happened and they learn to deal with it. That’s all there is left to do. That’s all they can do.
---
a/n: sequel in the works! this is the longest fic i've ever written. i have no idea how it got so long. the sequel is so far 8000+ words, mostly gerard/frank stuff because... i kinda lost my interest in the others. :S what can you do! i'll try to finish the sequel asap, and stop ignoring people that aren't frank or gerard.
a huge, huge thanks to turnyourankle for the beta and encouragement. <333
folie a deux quotes from pete wentz.
Eta: Sequel here
Title: Between the end and where we lie
Words: ~10,000
Rating: PG13
Pairings: Gerard/Frank, others implied.
Summary: Apocalypse fic, in which people start dying/disappearing, Pete meets his imaginary friend, and Frank and Gerard are cute. There's also lots and lots of cameos thrown in.
A/n: At the end of the fic.
I.
It starts out in New Jersey and Nevada, spreads at a relatively high speed from the two hotspots and wider into the world infecting state upon state, continent upon continent.
That's what the news says.
Millions of people missing, thousands found dead, causes unknown, unidentified creatures in the streets, survivors advised to find shelter, stay inside, keep doors locked at all times-
Don't open your goddamn doors if someone comes bangin' on 'em!
Gerard thinks it's fucking bullshit. Locking the door isn't going to keep you alive. Hiding under the bed waiting for the boogeyman to go away won't make it go away.
Gerard knows this, and he's going to make sure they won't get him, is going to save some lives while he's at it.
He's going to live, and he's making sure Mikey, Frank and Ray make out of it alive as well, without a fucking scratch on their skins.
-
Frank's sitting on the bed in the dark, watching static on television, arms hugging pulled-up legs, jaw bouncing gently against kneecaps like he's hearing music in his head. Gerard watches him from the doorway, tries to lock the cozy, domestic scene into his mind forever, knowing he will want to return to it soon enough, wants to go over the moment until his head swirls.
He scratches his blunt nails on the doorjamb until Frank snaps his head up from his knees and turns to look at him. Frank's smiling softly like it's a regular Sunday evening, like there aren't things roaming and raging outside. Scary things. Things that make people die and disappear, and are just blatantly ruining their pretty decent lives day by day.
"Hey," Frank murmurs. "The TV's gone."
Gerard shrugs, says, "Was just a matter of time I guess."
Frank hums, extends his hand so Gerard pushes himself from the doorway and walks up to him, curls his index and middle finger around Frank's allowing himself to be pulled down on top of Frank, between Frank’s spread legs.
Gerard feels like sagging, finds it hard to move anymore now that he's finally lying down, resting with Frank. Always with Frank.
Something amber and pretty is wrapped around Frank’s wrist and it presses gently on Gerard’s cheek when Frank touches him. Gerard lifts Frank’s hand up to look at it.
“It’s a rosary”, Frank says in a soft voice. “Found it in mom’s drawer when we…” His voice breaks just a little on the fourth syllable, “When we-“
“Hey, shh, I know. It’s okay,” Gerard hushes, finds it hard to swallow around the sudden lump in his throat. It’s not okay though, nothing’s okay about it. He wishes the Iero household had been empty when they visited some weeks ago. Empty would have been easier on the eyes. “It’s okay,” he says.
"I think I'm gonna miss this the most," Frank says after a while. He's palming Gerard's head where it's resting on his chest, Gerard’s mouth just a soft sigh away from his heart.
"Mph, no you won't," Gerard mumbles trying to lighten the mood that’s become thick like pea-soup fog in their little bedroom. He smiles against Frank's skeleton t-shirt, nipping on the fabric wetly, making Frank’s fingers entangle in his hair. "You're gonna miss your stupid tofu ice creams and showering in the middle of the night s'what you're gonna miss."
Frank laughs his chest rippling, causing Gerard's head to bounce uncomfortably for a while. "You're right," he grins and tugs at Gerard's hair affectionately.
Gerard crams his hand under Frank's back, pulls them both to their sides, hand moving up to Frank's cheek. He thumbs it for a while, pushes at Frank's skin before leaning in to kiss him. I think I'll miss this the most, he thinks meaning the wonderfully normal, wonderfully quiet and soft moments together with Frank. Those he thinks he'll miss.
"Oh hey," Gerard says against Frank's lips when he remembers. "I found myself a kickass weapon, is a fucking killer that one, you wanna see?" he asks, smiling, fingers gripping Frank's hip, warm palm against rough denim.
Frank licks his lips, chuckles a little, hand moving down to grope Gerard's crotch. "Is it somewhere down here?" he asks with a small smile of his own. "Tell me when it gets hot."
Gerard snorts pressing into Frank's hand. "It’s hot already but that's not it, not what I meant. Keep doin' it though."
It can all wait for a while, can wait until tomorrow. There are more important things in his life than kickass weapons and ugly monsters and apocalypses or whatever the fuck it is that's happening to the world.
The static snowstorm makes the magnolia-white linen sheets appear light grey; Frank's tattoos stand out in the dark.
-
They lose the house two days later. Things Gerard is sure he has never seen before (not in comic books or creepy Japanese movies even), take it by storm.
Gerard doesn't get a last glance of it, of the house he, Frank, Mikey and Ray rented not even six months ago.
It's okay though.
Frank's okay, Mikey's okay, Ray is definitely okay swearing colorfully under his breath as they're walking down the empty streets of Belleville. It feels like they're the only people left in the world but Gerard doesn't want to think about it. The switchblade he took from a derelict antique shop a while ago is heavy in his grip, and it makes him feel like this is not really the end at all.
II.
Bill cocks his hip at Ryan's face. "Do you think this makes me look fat?" He frowns and tweaks the fabric of his black commando outfit with his thumb and index finger. Spencer snorts on Ryan's left side where he's curled up and leaning his jaw on Ryan's shoulder. It's warm where their bodies connect even as the rest of the warehouse feels unpleasantly cold and unwelcoming. On the crappy sofa by the crappy heater, Ryan can almost pretend that he's come home.
Bill clicks his tongue impatiently. Hip still cocked to the side, a rose-patterned bandana around his left knee giving a speck of color to the otherwise monochromatic ensemble, Bill looks like an arrogant fuck. Ryan thinks it's about right, it's about how he's always looked.
"If I say no will you leave me alone?"
It was obviously not the right thing to say, Ryan realizes when Bill rolls his eyes at him and drops down to his empty side, the side where Spencer isn't warming him like an overgrown puppy.
"I don't get why you insist on wearing that stupid thing," Bill says eyes on Ryan’s velveteen rose vest, hand coming up to play with the knot-ends of Ryan's bandana that’s carefully wrapped around his messy head. He tugs gently on the faux silk, turning Ryan's head, making Ryan look at him. "It screams eat me, if you ask me."
Ryan thinks Bill looks almost concerned: brows drawn, mouth a thin, neat line, eyes dark-- it takes him by surprise.
He and Spencer have known William casually for most of their lives, but Ryan never imagined he would become a real friend, real friend like Spencer is for him, and he is for Spencer. But considering how much they have been through together for the past month or so, he really shouldn't be that surprised.
"We've had this conversation before," Ryan says. And they have, they really have, at least twice a week since they decided to dress themselves up in costumes and fight back, fight the motherfuckers who took normalcy away from their lives. "I don't think it makes a difference. I don't think they can see you any better whether you're in all black or wrapped up in say, a rainbow or Christmas lights or whatever."
See, Ryan has a theory. He thinks the monsters (there’s a whole bunch of different ones), sense emotions, fear maybe but it could just as well be happy emotions, can smell them like bloodhounds. And it doesn't matter how well you hide yourself from them, they will find you because you're human and you reek.
Besides, if they want to kill them, what's the point of hiding, anyway?
Bill opens his mouth looking like he wants to protest, but Spencer gets there first. "Can we not. Can we not argue about this any more. It's getting fucking old." He scoffs indignantly, but his outfit matches William's.
-
They're patrolling one night near the warehouses when they get besieged by five of them. Ryan isn't overly worried though. These ones look like regular zombies, which is really not a big deal. Ryan has seen a lot worse.
One of them makes a swoop on him growling and drooling like his old neighbor's dog. Ryan hated that dog. He swings his weapon, a scythe he found carelessly wrapped up in a piece of sheet the first night they quartered in the warehouse, and watches as the thing's head makes a sickening thud dropping to the ground. It rolls down the asphalt but comes to a halt when it collides against Spencer's foot.
"Egh, gross," Spencer whines when he's slain two of them. He lifts his foot to check if the head left a stain on his shoe, and when he sees that it did, he groans and decapitates a third one.
Spencer's fucking ace at killing things when he gets angry enough.
Bill's already made a disgusting, gooey mess of the last one when a trio walks to the opening. They're humans, the one in the middle a girl.
"Impressive," she says, wisps of her long honey-blond hair flying on her face when a breath of air catches them. She's wearing black combat boots and a lovely flower dress, the colors matching Ryan's vest like mint juleps and the Derby.
Ryan notices that they all have similar motifs painted on their right cheeks, and feels rather self-conscious about his scarf. The motifs make him think of vines, how they wind and intertwine curving near the ears and coming to a stop just at the corner of their mouths. They look pretty nice.
It's the first time Ryan meets another ''gang'' and wonders why he had never considered the possibility of him, Bill and Spence not being alone in this. Not fighting alone the endless nightmare that's wrapped its sticky tentacles around the world. He should have guessed. He should have.
Her name is Greta. Her companions are Chris and Bob.
III.
On the fifth day after losing their home, Gerard, Mikey, Frank and Ray return to the old Way house in the heart of Belleville.
It’s empty, but Gerard isn’t surprised. After all, his parents haven’t answered the phone in over two weeks. The place is how he expected it to be.
They aren’t supposed to stay for long, but once Mikey’s descended down to his old room in the basement, it’s hard to get him to leave again.
“Mikey,” Gerard tries. He sits down on the steps watching Mikey sit on his old bed clutching something in his hands. “Mikes, we gotta get going. Frank and Ray are already in the van waiting.” That’s what they came for, came to get the van from the garage in need of a good vehicle that would get them moving. Staying put is the last thing they should do.
Mikey frowns, teeth pulling a lip into his mouth.
“Do you remember when we were kids and there was some sort of wandering circus in town?” Mikey asks raising his head to look at Gerard. “And like, we ran off to check it out, check out the clowns, and it was already late in the evening when we got back. All dirty and high on cotton candy…” he trails off with unfocused eyes.
Gerard cracks a smile. “Yeah, yeah, and mom got so mad at us she swore we’d be grounded forever?”
“Yeah,” Mikey smiles. “Grounded forever.”
“What made you think of that?” Gerard asks curiously when Mikey stands up from the bed still smiling at the stupid memory.
Instead of giving him an answer, Mikey shoves a childish watercolor of a clown into Gerard’s hands and starts making his way upstairs. It’s bright and happy and sad all at once, and Gerard remembers Mikey telling him to paint it. “Come on you freak, hurry up,” Mikey says. “Frank and Ray are waiting.”
Gerard folds the picture carefully in two halves before pushing it into his jacket pocket. Just a reminder, he tells himself. Just a memento.
IV.
folie a deux folie a deux folie a deux, Pete writes on a napkin. shared madness. Maybe this is just all in their heads, in everybody's head. Like a disease that makes them all see closet-monsters, and under-the-bed-monsters, and cellar-monsters, just everything they once imagined as kids.
"Kids have fucked up minds," Patrick agrees when Pete shares his thoughts with him napkin crumbled up and hidden in his palm. "But this," he continues, gesturing around the small hotel room they have locked themselves up in. It's dim enough to make Pete's sight blurry, his head hurt. "This is not. Nobody's imagining it Pete, it's all real." Something scratches the door on the other side just as Patrick finishes his thought.
And Pete knows, God he knows, but he thinks he needed to hear it from Patrick. It's real and it's happening and Patrick's there with him in the middle of it all. He is grateful that he isn't alone, but he would send Patrick as far away from the madness as possible had he the choice. He would do it in a fucking heartbeat, no questions asked.
"I think it'd be plusieurs," Patrick says after being quiet for minutes. "You know, if it was in everybody's head." He smiles sheepishly when Pete focuses his eyes on him again. "Not that. Not that it matters, but." He coughs dryly and swipes his palms up and down his jean-clad thighs. He looks tired, a look Pete has gotten accustomed to seeing in the mirror, not on Patrick, never on Patrick.
"God, 'Trick. God," Pete says coming to wrap his arm awkwardly around Patrick's head, holding him tightly against his chest, then cramming himself into the small gap between Patrick's back and the armchair, fingers petting his sideburns and hair around the stupid trucker hat. He buries his head in Patrick's neck and breathes in the smell of clean skin, hints of soap lingering behind his ear. The perks of hiding in a hotel, at least you're always clean, at least you die clean.
"Hey, it's. No one's going to- We're gonna make it, okay?" Patrick says turning around a little, so that Pete sees his eyes. They're clear, honest, genuine, Patrick-like. "Okay? Pete- Pete, okay?"
"Okay, yeah, sure," Pete says. He smiles but it's thin and doesn't spread out on his face. "We'll make it," he agrees.
-
folie a deux folie a deux folie a deux
folie a deux is the idea of shared madness- the scientific term for romeo and juliet
-
They're sitting on the balcony railing because Pete has a plan.
"Oh God, we're not gonna make it," Patrick whines beside him. He is gripping the railing so hard Pete thinks his hands look ghostly. His own hands look about the same.
"Yes, we are," Pete says from behind gritted teeth. "We have to. Because, you know why? Because you promised, you said we would so we will." Pete wishes his voice would stay the fuck even but it's hard to get anything out when his heart pounds somewhere between his Adam's apple and adenoids.
"I hadn't heard your stupid plan then," Patrick says huffily. Pete gets a set of images flashing under his lids when he shuts his eyes. Images of him pushing Patrick down the railing. They make him gag. He would never… His nerves are all over the place.
"I need you to do this, need you to trust me." Pete watches as something moves in the far distance, can barely see it but knows it's there. It's quiet, too quiet. They're in New York City and Pete can hear his own fucking heart thudding wildly, like it wants to tear its way out of him and escape somewhere, where ever it is cowardly hearts escape to.
Patrick nods beside him, though. "Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, okay, sorry. I do. I do trust you. It's just, we're on the fourth floor Pete, how are we gonna-"
"We aim for the pool," Pete says as if it's the first time they go over the plan. "We aim for the pool and then we swim to the edge. We get out and then we run." Pete turns his head towards Patrick, needs to see his clear eyes, his genuine eyes; needs him to understand. "Then we run, Patrick," he says and grips Patrick's hand.
"Ready?" Pete asks.
Patrick nods blindly,
“You and me, ‘Trick, you and me,” Pete whispers, squeezes Patrick’s hand,
And then they jump.
V.
Jon and Brendon run for their lives. Neither really knows what it is that's after them, neither really sees the figure, neither really cares at that point. It moves smoothly in the air, on their heels like black smoke but more solid, still being able to push its way into everyone that stops, everyone not quick enough to escape. This much Jon knows.
"Come on," Jon gasps out, catches Brendon's hand in mid-step pulling him faster towards a dark parking lot. "Just a little more, just a little longer."
They find a van, with people in it. "Holy shit," Brendon exclaims. "Are they-"
"They're asleep," Jon says as he knocks on the car window. At least it looks like they're asleep, please be asleep, Jon thinks. Running burns in his throat and his hands shake as he tries to fix the people's attention on them.
The people in the van stir and then they're all inside, Brendon squeezing in the front seat between Jon and a guy who looks like he knows what he's doing, like he's fucking dealt with this kind of situation before. The guy starts the car just as the figure, the figure Jon still has no idea what it even is, makes a swoop on the van.
-
"Aw man, do you think it left a dent on the hood?" The guy, the driver -Gerard, Jon has found out- says when they're driving down empty streets, the figure long lost to their view.
Guy with glasses huffs in the backseat.
Gerard glances at him through the front mirror. "What's that s'posed to mean, Mikes?" he asks frowning, waves his right hand near Brendon's face so that the cigarette he's holding ashes messily on his lap. "You know, you fucking know whose van this was, Mikes. It was grandma's van," he huffs sounding awfully displeased with the other guy.
"What does it matter anymore," Mikes asks but his voice wavers and it's quiet. "She's not, they're all dead, so what does it fucking matter."
"That's just it," Gerard says softer this time and pushes his cigarette between his lips. A dull, orange light on the tip gives the air around his fingers a gentle glowing halo.
"There's probably no dent," Brendon offers after a moment of shared silence. He’s still gripping his hand, Jon realizes, painfully, so painfully hard, but fuck if Jon cares. Gerard glances at Brendon before fixing his eyes on the road again. It's still empty and dark but Jon can't help but imagine someone appearing in the middle of it any minute now. "Since, you know, the thing wasn't all, wasn't all there," Brendon adds flailing his free hand a little bit. "Wasn't all solid or whatever."
"Do you think. Was it a ghost?" Someone in the middle seat asks. He is leaning his head on a shoulder that belongs to a guy with huge frizzy hair and calm, friendly eyes.
Gerard glances at the small mirror again, a pair of soft, swollen up dice dangle from it like it’s the 60s or something. "It wasn't- didn't look like a ghost, Frankie," he says.
Frankie shrugs and tugs his chin up a little to look out of the window. "Ever seen a ghost before?" he asks.
VI.
When Pete and Patrick jumped, they didn't die.
They aimed for the pool, hands interlaced all prettily as if they did that all the time, and they made it, they damn well made it. It was wet and terrifying, and pretty damn splashy, and they made it all right.
"Oh my God," Patrick says when they're out of the pool, jeans heavy and clinging wetly to their legs, hoodies soaked to the skin, chlorine clumping lashes together like salty tears tend to. "Oh, my God," he says again, doesn't know where to take that sentence, keeps rolling it on his tongue, repeating it in his head to the dizzying beat of his heart.
Pete echoes him, eyes on the balcony they jumped from not even five minutes ago. There are things, there. Ugly things. Things Patrick is pretty certain even Pete can't come up with. Things that give rise to unpleasant shivers in the back of his neck, the bumpy length of his spine.
"Aren't you fucking glad we jumped?" Pete asks. He sounds hysterical, and he doesn't seem to be able to turn away from the monsters, can't look away if he tried.
-
They forget to run, but it doesn't seem like they need to, anyway, not at that moment.
Patrick can't help but think, or more like wish, that maybe Pete is right. Maybe it's just all in their heads, like a really bad drug causing them to hallucinate, to see horrible things that they can't really explain. Shared madness, he thinks, mouths it quietly when Pete is walking ahead of him, every now and then pushing at doors trying if they would open for them. None of them do.
Shared madness. Folie à deux, folie à deux. It tastes like a lie on his lips, so he stops trying.
-
The sky looks pregnant, dark clouds ready to break over their heads, when Pete pulls him into a diner. There's a ‘closed’ sign hanging crookedly on the door and Patrick can't help but think it's just a really halfhearted attempt at protection, like a made up spell that won't keep bad things outside but comforts all the same.
The diner isn't empty.
"Whossat," someone croaks from behind the counter when the bell on top of the door clinks cheerfully like Christmas mashed up with cowbells. Patrick can't see them, but they don't sound like something he should be afraid of.
"Um," he says.
"Who's there?" Pete asks voice unnecessarily loud. It's not like there's any other noise that would stretch in between them and devour their voices. It's been quiet for days.
There's a pause, and then Patrick hears what sounds like bickering, hushed, quiet bickering. It makes him think of squirrels in comic books.
Eventually, two men peek their heads from behind the counter. They look like hobos, or college students, the ones with bongs and whatnot.
And this is how they meet Andy and Joe.
VII.
Andy liked waking up before the alarm, liked walking around the small apartment in boxers taking pleasure in the way sunbeams petted his toes.
Andy liked black coffee in the mornings, the sound of a toaster when slices of bread sprung from it. He even liked the steady snoring that poured from Joe's room and carried throughout the apartment, all unashamed and like he might die any minute, choke on his fucking mucus.
He liked it all.
What he didn't like, were impatient customers on the street, banging the diner door so loudly that it might give out. That, Andy didn't like.
The snoring died out, and then Joe was there all fuzzy from sleep, his hair all over the place, his homemade MOTHERFUCKING JOSEPH t-shirt rising up on his belly. "Do. You. Mind?" he asked gesticulating as another loud thump sounded from downstairs.
Andy rolled his eyes. "I'm not doing it, man." sometimes Joe was dense as fuck.
"Well who the hell is then?" Joe gritted his teeth, walked towards the front door picking up a striped umbrella from its stand before marching down the stairs to see what the fucking problem was. "WE'RE NOT OPENING TILL NINE SO GET THE- WHOLY SHIT," Joe shrieked and ran back to the apartment, slammed the door shut and pushed a chair below the doorknob for good measure.
Andy blinked. Joe looked like he had seen a ghost. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I. It. It was." Joe opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. "Wasn't a ghost, was something else," he croaked eventually.
-
Whatever it was that had scared Joe shitless, Andy watched nose pressed to the window as it crawled down the street two hours later, seemingly having grown tired of banging at the door.
They ventured downstairs when it was quiet again, both feeling like the air in the confined space of their cramped apartment was growing thick and harder to breathe.
Andy went outside for a while eager to fill his lungs with fresh morning air. Nothing looked abnormal, nothing looked like it shouldn't have, except there were no people. None. It chilled Andy's bones, raised up the hair on his arms, made his stomach churn. Maybe the program he saw on TV a week back wasn’t a joke after all.
He decided to leave the door unlocked, just for a while, in case they didn't turn out to be the only people left in the world.
Some time after noon, the bell clinked.
VIII.
There are two people left in the world Gerard is ready to die for.
One of them is talking to Ray in the front seat, head neatly hidden behind the new kids, Josh and Brett or whatever.
The other one's pressing into his side in the back of the van, hand tugged inside the layers of his shirts, fingers rubbing vague patterns on his side. "Frank, Christ," Gerard whispers when Frank nips gently on his neck, nosing the spots after, heavily breathing in the smell of his skin.
"Miss you, miss this," Frank murmurs against his ear quietly, so carefully quietly, neither wanting to draw their friends' attention on them. "Miss you so much."
"I miss you too," Gerard breathes out voice drowning in the hum of the car but Frank hears him, can't not. They're so close, so close, but it isn't enough, not even. So Gerard wraps his arms all around Frank's waist pulling, pulling until their chests, stomachs, hips are flush against the other. It's a little awkward and uncomfortable so Gerard eases them along the leathery seat making it so that they’re both lying down, Frank mostly atop, snugly tugged under his arm.
Frank sighs softly, his fingers finding an easy path down Gerard's side all the way to the hollow of his hip, rests it there all solid and heavy causing Gerard's stomach tighten, his eyes flutter. "Frank, Frankie, we can't." Gerard says against the corner of Frank's eye. He pulls Frank up a little trailing his lips down Frank’s face until he's finally able to reach his mouth, kisses him sloppily for a while.
Frank scoffs against his mouth, says "I know, I motherfucking know that," before licking Gerard's lips and teeth and gums, the insides of his cheeks. His hand slides to the waist of Gerard's jeans, fingers knotting around a belt loop. He tugs at it restlessly.
Gerard whines when Frank begins to rock his hips against his lower stomach, but the sudden halt of the car makes them quickly pull apart. They sit up, Gerard's heart pounds loudly in his ears, Frank's hand still clenching around the loop on his hip.
Mikey coughs a little, says they're going to go find something to eat at the gas station but that Gerard and Frank can "stand guard" in the van as long as they promise to stay in the backseat.
Ray and the new kids are wearing matching smirks when they get outside, out of the van. Gerard thinks, okay then.
IX.
There's something about that terrible moment when Robert falls that takes Ryan's breath away.
The clouds seem to move on slow motion, plushy and flushed with color. Pink and yellow and orange, a little bit of weak gray on the soft edges where the sun is hidden.
It's quiet, no monsters around,
No traces left of them,
Except for...
Greta's curled up over his body, her lovely flower dress soaking in the blood that pulps from the seams of his neck. Her tears fall soundlessly onto his cheeks smudging the vine motif on the right side. They roll down Greta's chin, her collarbone, disappearing in her deep cleavage. Chris looks like he doesn't know whether to hold her or clutch Bob's grimy shirt in his hands so he does both, skinny arms a soft comfort in the frighteningly gorgeous aurora.
-
Here's what Ryan knows about the Hushies (a name Greta so airily let pour from her rosy lips the night they met):
In the beginning, there were four of them. Darren they lost in the heat of battle a little over a week before they crossed paths with him, Bill and Spence. There's not much Ryan knows about Darren, nobody really wants to mention him and Ryan isn't stupid enough to ask.
They paint their faces as a mark of unity, and Ryan wonders why he never thought of that. He likes to blame it on Bill's stupid obsession with bandanas, but it's not like he refused the scarf when Bill offered it to him.
The Hushies used to find shelter in a wooden shanty, but they have been staying with Ryan, Bill and Spence in the warehouse these days saying how there's just more room, warmth and people there. And it's not like they're above refusing an offer to join forces with another group of vigilantes. They have a world to save.
Before it all began, Chris's favorite pastime activity was to play Guitar Hero. Word on the street is, he was pretty damn good at it. The kid quotes King Crimson and Elliott Smith every chance that he has, and makes Greta laugh with wild over the lines colored stories from his childhood. He talks about how his fingers itch for fancy tar/chemical free ciggys, a luxury that's becoming increasingly difficult to find. Whenever they break into empty shops, the first thing Chris goes to is the tobacco shelf.
Greta is a classically trained pianist. Her fingers itch to play. There isn't much she likes to say about her past, reminding them of how it's the future that everybody should be focusing on. She agrees with Ryan's theories about the monsters being able to smell people, track them down through their emotions, telling him about the time a swarm of eyeless things surrounded them. After that incident, she’s stopped trying to resort to wearing earthy monochromes. There's just no point in it and she likes colorful clothes. Ryan likes her. He thinks she's pretty smart.
And then there is, was, Robert.
-
Spencer's palm touches Ryan's shoulder, William's arm draped around his waist, as they watch the scene close by. Ryan isn't sure what to do; doesn't look like Bill and Spence know either, so they let the moment stretch until it can't anymore, until Ryan feels like if they don't leave right now, running away will be much harder to do. He hates running away, but sometimes there's nothing else left they can do.
X.
It turns out it is in their heads after all.
In a way, anyway.
It's kinda fitting that Pete's the one who ends up discovering it.
It's an early evening and he's walking through the mosaic jungle of a shopping mall -on his way to Patrick, Andy and Joe after having relieved himself in the restroom- when he comes face to face with the same creepy little boy his mind created like twenty years ago.
He blinks.
Then he freaks out.
"Hi Pete," the kid -the should be figment of his imagination- says, smiles widely like he's happy to see Pete after so long. He has black, shaggy hair, hollow, white eyes and sharp, saw-like teeth. He's wearing a black corduroy suit, patent leather shoes and a crimson bow tie. Pete would maybe think of him as endearing had he not been fucking traumatized by this little imaginary fiend at an early age.
"You. You? What the. Holy fucking- PATRICK," Pete gets out before he takes off running down a set of stairs, turning a corner and another and then bumping painfully into Patrick causing them both to topple over on the cream-white ceramic tile floor.
"Pete, what the hell?" Patrick groans picking himself up. His hand moves to his backside, rubbing away the pain. Andy and Joe raise their heads from the comic book they’ve been leafing through ever since breaking into a newspaper kiosk.
"It's. He's here- he... Maurice is here," Pete says just as the kid walks up to them. He looks a little sad, rejected, head pressed down and hands in the pockets of his neatly ironed slacks.
"Why did you run away?" he asks voice all small, quiet, and is Pete seriously supposed to feel guilty for not asking him to come with?
"Uh. Pete?" Patrick asks tentatively beside him, eyes fixed on the kid. "Who's your little friend?"
The kid -Maurice- raises his head up at Patrick, mouth twisting into a fucked up smile. Pete quickly moves to stand between them trying to shield Patrick from whatever it is Maurice decides to do to them.
"You know who he is. I've told you about him. Don't you remember?"
Patrick's quiet for a while, then he huffs a laugh. "He's- that's the scariest thing little Pete could come up with?"
"Shut up." Pete snaps.
The kid laughs too, brightly and with all of his heart, hand pushing against his mouth to muffle the sound until it's reduced to soft giggles. Cute, Pete thinks grimly. Really fucking cute.
Andy and Joe share a look.
-
Maurice follows them around for a few days, but he seems like he's growing tired of it.
He tried to bite Patrick’s leg with his saw-blade teeth, but ended up tending his own head when Pete hit him with a metal pipe. After that, he hasn’t tried anything else.
They get him thrown off their scent on the fourth night. It doesn't take that much effort and Pete would be happier about it if Patrick, Andy and Joe had taken him more seriously to begin with.
"At least now we know," Andy says. He's sitting cross-legged on the mosaic-decorated edge of an indoors water fountain, gulping poorly concentrated orange juice. Shopping malls have become their overnight accommodations on their way to- where ever it is they're trying to get to. Pete doesn't think anyone really has a plan, staying put without doing anything just feels a little bit more meaningless than wandering aimlessly around empty streets (the lack of people is what still manages to freak Pete out the most).
Joe blinks. "Know what? What do we know?"
Andy rolls his eyes. "Where the monsters came from," he says exasperatedly and pokes Joe's head with his finger as if to demonstrate what he leaves unsaid.
Pete's eating a chocolate bar, letting the bites melt between his tongue and palate before swallowing. He leans his head on Patrick's shoulder, ear snug in the shallow precipice of Patrick's collarbone until Patrick swats his head halfheartedly telling him to give him some room. Pete shrugs and moves a little to press his ear on Patrick's chest instead, just above the heart. A steady beat thrums against his ear and he decides he will make sure the thumping never stops.
Folie a deux folie a deux folie a deux. What frightens him a little, makes him shudder when he thinks about it, is that he was right, was right all along.
XI.
Sometimes days turn into nights with a blink of an eye, a tick of a nerve; like a star falling in the distance, barely caught before it's much too late, wish still rolling down in the curves of minds and tongues.
Ryan is having one of those days.
They left the warehouse early in the morning and before he knew it, it was dark and the scene had changed.
In the city center of Las Vegas, neon lights should shine in their eyes, color their hair hot pink and yellow and blue; they should be twined in the sounds of music and cars and people, star-studded streets full of life. Instead, instead it's like the whole city has turned into a ghost town in the course of mere weeks.
Ryan's sitting on a upside down turned dumpster on the roof of some casino, swinging his legs against the sheet metal, trying to drown the dull ringing in his ears by making noise.
What ends up wrecking his nerves, makes it all ten times worse, are the quiet gaps between storms and fights and running away and not running away. When he's supposed to take a minute to breathe again, but all he can do is keep wondering where the hell has everyone gone off to.
The thing, the thing that's happening, it's like a breaker that massacres within minutes. It sweeps the bodies away to sea leaving only small traces of humanity on the shore. A tiny strawberry-red strap shoe, ripped-in-half leather purses, expensive wristwatches.
A breaker in the desert. In houses of smoke and mirrors, in gambling dens, casinos, restaurants and behind bars. Over barstools, unmade beds, staircases and elevators.
Ryan hates it all; doesn't want to get swept away by it but doesn't necessarily want to keep living this way either.
"Penny for your thoughts," Greta says behind him. She's good at sneaking up on people. A true Hushie, he thinks. She goes to lean against the railing, eyes not very happy but doing something to sparkle anyway.
"Oh you know," he says slowly, cracks a smile, "Just wallowing in my misery."
She smiles back at him, shakes her head. "How very gloomy of you."
"Well, you know me."
The thing is though, she doesn't really know him, doesn't know anything about him. She doesn't know that he ran away from home more than once to experience the nightlife of Las Vegas, or that he’s never seen the ocean even though the Pacific is relatively close to him. She doesn’t know that Spencer let him practice kissing on him before his first date, and that it was the only kissing he got that day.
For her, he's just a fellow vagabond rebelling against the deepening darkness of the world. One of the few survivors on the edge of an apocalypse. Apocalypse, because Ryan is sure that it is where they’re all headed. It's like waiting for a huge, overgrown rogue wave on the shore of a restless sea.
"Right, sure," she says, turns around to look into the dark, quiet, desert city. There are stars in the sky.
XII.
It's sometime after noon on a clear, sunny day maybe on the edge of August that Patrick meets Victoria Asher. That's how she introduces herself, big smile and big eyes, hand extended over a stack of roadmaps in her lap. She's sitting on the lonely step of a truck stop, sunbeams in her warm, autumn-brown hair.
Patrick shakes her hand smiling stupidly when Pete huffs and pushes past them into the dilapidated building. Patrick shrugs. Pete's been a little... tense lately, at least ever since meeting his little imaginary friend.
Andy and Joe say their hellos but once their attention focuses on a lonely arcade cabinet inside, they're gone.
She says Gabe's gone somewhere to look for abandoned vehicles while Ryland's inside stocking up on foodstuffs. Patrick has no idea who these people are so he says "Cool, that's, yeah that's smart," and continues to smile stupidly at her.
Pete and someone who Patrick figures must be Ryland come out just as Patrick is trying to wipe the smile off of his face because, hello, creepy much?
"Vicky, dah-ling," Ryland says with a mock British accent. "These gentlemen friends of yours?"
Pete rolls his eyes, Victoria laughs heartily, Patrick's smile has finally flagged and Andy and Joe are fighting over the game they're spending the rest of their pocket money on.
Bus with random toothpaste ads on the sides moves from behind the building and parks just a few feet away from them, tires puffing dirt clouds into Patrick's face.
Out comes a lanky guy with lazy eyes, a self-satisfied smirk stretching his face.
"Gabe! That's perfect!" Victoria exclaims jumping up from where she was sitting. She goes to high five Gabe grabbing his hand then and pulls him with her around the bus examining it like it's the first time she sees such a thing.
Ryland grins happily and lets a sack -- where Patrick guesses the foodstuff is -- drop from his shoulder down to the ground.
"Where are you guys headed?" Pete asks just as Victoria and Gabe walk back from the bus.
"Down south of course," Ryland says no longer talking in an accent. They're all pretty strange, Patrick thinks, but Victoria looks like the end of summer and Patrick likes that. He likes it a lot.
"Uh," Pete says. "Okay. Why do you wanna go south? I thought one of the hotspots was in like Jersey or whatever?”
"Dude, the monsters are everywhere by now so what does it matter,” Gabe says. “Besides, we’re not going to stay in Jersey, we’ll just drive through it. We're gonna do some sightseeing before... well, that's not really important, is it Vicky?" He casually wraps his arm around Victoria's shoulders giving her upper arm a firm squeeze.
"Nope," she says, and then, "You guys wanna tag along? There's plenty of room in the bus. We can give you a ride somewhere before we-"
Gabe coughs and runs his hand up and down Victoria’s shoulder.
"Fuck yeah," Ryland hops in. "You should totally come with!"
Something about the trio makes Patrick a little uncomfortable. He doesn't know what it is, can't quite figure it out, but the feeling in his gut isn't all that encouraging.
They decide to go with them anyway. It's not like they have anything better to do. Victoria, Gabe and Ryland are the first people Patrick even meets after walking into Andy and Joe's diner a couple of weeks ago.
XIII.
The best thing that's happened to Jon Walker since finding Brendon hunched up in a dark alley somewhere in Belleville -a lonely vampire circling him, teeth poking out of its mouth and all (Jon had struck a wooden broom through its chest like in Buffy and finally gotten himself a real friend)- has got to be running into these guys.
He's been pretty damn lucky considering everything.
It's not like he's on easy street but things could be a lot worse.
Jon is an optimist.
Mikey and Ray are silently sitting in the middle of the van, staring at their own reflections in the windows. They're eating HoHos and Ding Dongs or whatever it is they grabbed from the gas station earlier in the day.
Frank and Gerard are talking quietly in the back, Gerard's arm curling around Frank's shoulder, fingers playing with the cord of Frank's hoodie. It's such a wonderfully normal, everyday scene in the middle of abnormality, Jon thinks and feels the corners of his mouth tug up.
Brendon's drumming his hands against his thighs next to Jon, while Jon gets to drive. It's the first time they have let him, and it feels like he's finally become part of their group.
He's loving it.
"I'm loving this," he grins at Brendon before turning back to let his eyes rest on the even white stripes against black road. Brendon snorts telling Jon what a big freak he is for saying something like that when the roadsides are probably swarming with creepy things. It makes Jon squint his eyes trying to see if Brendon is right, but all he can make out is black night all around them.
"You're just being depressing, stop being depressing, Brendon Urie!" Jon gives Brendon's thigh a friendly squeeze before ruffling up his hair.
"I'm not being depressing, idiot," Brendon says smoothing out his hair. He gives Jon a mock frown but his voice is all smiles and easiness. He sighs a little and says he's just really fucking bored is all, and Jon can understand that. They have been driving for hours and Jon doesn't even know where they're going. The vague drive south he got from Gerard didn't really give him any answers, but then again, Gerard probably doesn't know any better. It’s not like Jon minds though since he can’t come up with anything better he could be doing. Going to work at Starbucks, serving zombies with mint mochas, doesn't sound like a feasible alternative for him, doesn't sound very appealing at all.
Brendon starts fumbling with the radio buttons changing channels, empty frequencies pushing irritating noise from the speakers into the van. Just as Jon is about to tell him it's futile trying to find any programs since the senders are probably all dead or hiding out the very least, they hear voices from the speakers.
XIV.
“Steve Smith here with Brian Schechter,” Steven starts the practiced sentence for the umpteenth time. “And you’re listening to Monster Radio, broadcasted straight from the back of Brian’s mother’s bitchin’ van.”
Brian chuckles in the front, speeding up on empty freeways as Steven sends music into the air.
Someone’s got to be listening.
XV.
It turns out Patrick's gut was right.
It dawns on him on the day they cross the New Jersey stateline.
Vicky is lying on the long backseat of the bus studying her roadmaps. Patrick’s sitting by her feet, writing PATRICK WAS HERE on the back of the seat in front of him with a yellow felt-tip pen. He’s considering asking her out, like seriously, in the middle of an apocalypse and everything, when she pokes his thigh with the tip of her big toe.
"Hey, Patrick?" she asks so he turns to look at her. "You ever seen that movie... what's it called? The one where a group of people rents a bus to drive it off a cliff?" She shifts a little, her short silky dress rising up her thighs.
"What?" Patrick asks because, really, what?
"It's like a mass suicide thing. You haven't seen it?"
"Uh, no, wh- why?"
She smiles calmly, easily, whispers, "That's kinda what we're going to do."
Well. Shit.
"What- Are you fucking crazy?" Patrick's voice goes all over the place but it's not like he's concerned about that at the moment. She sits up, eyes searching for Patrick's, her hand gently touching his arm.
"Maybe we are," she answers. "But let me ask you this," she continues sifting closer to him, voice barely audible through the steady hum of the bus. "How long do you think we have time before the world ends? And additionally, do you honestly want to be here, see everything, when it does? It's already started happening, started falling apart at the seams."
"Fuck you," Patrick snaps breaking away from Vicky's grip. He's seething, scared, worried, outraged. "I knew, I knew there was something... Is this how you’re gonna show your gratitude for still being alive? For surviving when pretty much everyone else didn't?"
She frowns, shakes her head, asks him "Do you really prefer this to being dead?" Her voice wavers and she isn't smiling anymore. "I'm just tired of hiding, wandering around without a purpose, running away from things that someone's sick mind created," she says and really does look tired. It’s the first time Patrick notices the twin circles under her eyes.
Patrick would maybe feel sorry for Vicky if he wasn't still so angry at her, at all three of them. "We're all tired," he says. "But we fucking deal with it."
"And we've found a solution," she says, and there is nothing short of resolute in her voice.
"Patrick?" Pete asks. He's standing on the aisle near them, frowning, hair sticking out from having rubbed it on the back of his seat sleepily for hours.
Patrick stands up, staggers slightly when the bus changes lanes. He gives Vicky a disappointed look grabbing Pete's hand. "Come on." He pulls Pete towards the middle seats. "I'm in the mood for some fucking hangman," he says and pushes the felt-tip pen into Pete's hands.
Morons, he thinks. All three of them.
XVI.
“This is the lamest fucking apocalypse ever,” Spencer says. He’s standing over the body of a headless… mucus… thing, tutting at the mess Bill’s made of it.
Ryan kicks its green, slimy head a little, makes it crash into a dumpster with a sad, wet thud. He agrees.
XVII.
Gerard’s sitting outside by a gas station with Mikey. The others have gone inside to look for various supplies.
If Gerard is completely honest with himself, he’s starting to get a little worried. The amount of monsters seems to be increasing while edible food is running short. It’s been the hardest for Frank because he’s stubbornly clinging to his principles of not eating meat products. He’s looking sick and thin and Gerard hates it, hates how he can’t do anything about it.
Mikey has been surprisingly adaptable to everything that’s happened considering all the times he screamed blue murder about the tiniest changes. Like when Gerard decided to move his room from upstairs to the basement and Mikey wouldn’t stop complaining until he was allowed to move as well. Gerard snickers at the memory.
“What?” Mikey asks. His head is cocked back and he is looking at Gerard through his thickly framed glasses that sit on the tip of his nose. He looks exactly like he did when he was younger.
“Laughing at you, little brother,” Gerard says and grins when Mikey swats him on the back of his head. “Ow, motherfucker,” he chuckles and rubs the sore spot.
“Stop laughing, you ass,” Mikey sniffs indignantly but the corners of his mouth slope up. He adjusts his glasses and stands up just as a bus with random toothpaste ads on the sides drives past them. The windows are slightly open and loud 90s disco music blasts through them. The people inside, two of them maybe, look like they’re dancing while a third one drives the bus at full speed.
“Holy-“ Mikey gasps.
“Whoa,” Gerard says getting up. “What the hell… Why didn’t they stop? They must have seen us.”
Mikey shrugs staring intently at the shrinking dot on the road in the horizon as if he’s trying to pull the bus back with the power of his mind.
It doesn’t work.
XVIII.
So the apocalypse comes and it goes, nobody survives in the end but that’s just how it works.
It gets really bad at one point when something blocks the sun for a while making days as dark as nights. Creatures go crazy, of course and multiply like flu bacteria in a cozy environment.
Pete guesses it’s the moon eclipsing the sun, but really, what does he know.
He’s walking down a set of stairs in a shopper’s paradise in New Jersey one evening, trying to squint in order to see, when he stumbles over something hard and lanky. His first thought is Gabe that crazy bitch but then he remembers that Gabe’s probably driven off a cliff already, so it can’t be him.
Pete pushes his hand on the thing’s face in his haste to get up and notices that it has glasses and soft hair.
Groans and obscenities pour out of its mouth in a cute, warm voice that doesn’t sound like Patrick but somehow manages to make his stomach somersault regardless.
Pete wants to hear more of that voice so he pokes his finger on the hollow of its shoulder, just above the armpit grinning when it tells him to fuck off.
Someone’s yelling MIKEY WAY WHERE THE HELL DID YOU RUN OFF TO in the distance, so Pete wraps his hand around a bony arm and helps Mikeyway up.
-
Patrick thinks about Victoria sometimes, how sunbeams glittered in her hair and how her body curled up over her roadmaps, mouth pouting prettily when she concentrated.
He wishes he could have changed her mind, made her stay with him and the boys, but it just didn’t happen, and he doesn’t like to dwell on failed opportunities.
He has Pete, and he has Andy and Joe and a bunch of new guys who kick ass at fighting. One of them, Gerard or something, he’s got a real weapon and everything so Patrick thinks maybe they can win this thing.
-
Ryan kisses Greta in a dirty gutter in the heart of a battle.
Her lovely flower dress is soaking up in grime and blood that Ryan thinks might be gushing from the flesh wound on his arm. She smiles gently when Ryan sticks the curving blade of his scythe into a dying werewolf’s back, and her smile is the last thing he sees before he closes his eyes.
The steady murmur of Bill, Spence and Chris swinging their weapons, shouting nonsense battle cries everywhere around him, fills his heart with immense pride, and at that very moment, he is sure they will make it alive.
-
Jon suggest they drive towards Vegas when the guys from Monster Radio announce in their program that they have heard there are people there, struggling for the future of the world with raised fists and sharpened blades.
Brendon’s eyes light up when Jon voices it, and no one seems to have heart to deny him this small sparkle of hope in the dark new world.
Ray says they should get a bigger vehicle since they got addition to their group and everything. Joe suggests they find a bus but Jon doesn’t think Gerard looks very happy about the idea of leaving the van behind. Mikey takes it much better, and Jon can’t help but guess it’s because of the prospect of having Pete Wentz with them that does it for him.
-
Andy pokes Joe harshly on the back telling him to shut the fuck up when the guy makes a disgusting snore in the middle of the night. Or it could be day. It’s been hard to tell ever since the total eclipse and all. Joe swats Andy’s fist away from his back and continues to sleep.
Much to Andy’s nuisance, Joe doesn’t choke on his fucking mucus.
-
Gerard's nosing the twin swallows on Frank's stomach, kissing and licking and nuzzling the feathers, when beams of light peek out of the edges of the clump covering the sun.
“Fuck yeah.” Frank exhales, yanking Gerard up by the hair and crushes their lips together.
The pretty amber rosary digs comfortably into Gerard’s skin when Frank’s hand presses against his spine, and he pulls Frank closer, hands clenching around the skinny fabric of his t-shirt.
Fuck yeah, he echoes in his head enjoying how the pulsing sunshine seeps warmth into his skin, how Frank’s nails dig crescent shapes in the curve of his back.
-
folie a deux folie a deux folie a deux, Pete thinks later, when Mikey asks him who the kid by the water fountain is.
-
Ray looks sullen when he says that it’s really the people who end up destroying themselves, their minds having created the monsters and all.
Gerard rolls his eyes at him saying that it’s old news, everybody’s already figured that one out ages ago. He swipes at a big spider with his switchblade half-heartedly, goes to tug calmly on Frank’s dirty hair, the hood of his oversized sweatshirt, not caring that the spider is oozing disgusting grime at their feet. Frank makes a face at the dead thing and shudders muttering how much he hates those fuckers.
It doesn’t matter where the monsters came from, who ended up bringing this upon the world; none of it makes any difference to Gerard. Absolutely none of it. It’s happened and they learn to deal with it. That’s all there is left to do. That’s all they can do.
---
a/n: sequel in the works! this is the longest fic i've ever written. i have no idea how it got so long. the sequel is so far 8000+ words, mostly gerard/frank stuff because... i kinda lost my interest in the others. :S what can you do! i'll try to finish the sequel asap, and stop ignoring people that aren't frank or gerard.
a huge, huge thanks to turnyourankle for the beta and encouragement. <333
folie a deux quotes from pete wentz.
Eta: Sequel here