Fic: and I feel fine (Mikey/Ryan, Gen)
So, ages ago I asked people for ficlet prompts and I actually have a bunch of them half-finished and at the top of my to do list, but I maybe should have mentioned at the time that I'm the slowest of all slow writers to ever be slow.
In said long dim distant past turps33 asked for 'Mikey and Ryan being friends' and because she's awesome and it was her birthday yesterday I thought I'd make an attempt at getting hers finished in time to post it as a b'day offering. Um, it should probably also be noted that I suck at deadlines /o\
Anyways, all that aside... Happy (belated) Birthday, turps33! ♥♥♥
Title: and I feel fine.
(vaguely implied) Pairing: Mikey/Ryan
Rating: Gen
Word count: 2180
Summary: After the apocalypse, Ryan meets a new friend.
Warning: Post-apocalypse fic. Non-graphic mention of the offscreen death of a minor character. If you would prefer to know who dies before you read the story please highlight the following text: Alex Greenwald.
Thanks and all the cuddles in the world to cmonkatiekatie for the beta.
Ryan stopped trying to keep track of the days two weeks after the power flickered out and never came back on again. It seemed somehow trivial to know whether it was a Tuesday or a Sunday when it was more important to know if he could scavenge enough food to survive in the empty apartment block or if he’d finally have to venture outside into the now unfamiliar streets.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed as he sat there wrapped in blankets to ward off the chill of a slowly dying city, listening to the rough rhythm of Alex’s breathing as he coughed and wheezed and muttered in his sleep. Outside the windows smoke hung in the air like fog, creeping thick and heavy from fires that went unattended because there was no one left to put them out. Ryan fell asleep at night to the sounds of screams and crying, and woke up the same way.
The morning that Ryan woke up to silence was the morning he knew it was time to leave. He picked up the case he’d packed a week ago and the backpack full of what remained of his scavenged food, then walked out of the apartment and down the stairs to the street without looking back. He had a feeling that if he did he would lose his nerve and never find it again.
~
Ryan had a half dozen sets of car keys that he’d picked up from bowls by doors and from kitchen tables as he’d hunted through the apartment block for food. Each one had a little square of plastic attached with a button in the center to turn off an alarm. He’d never paid much attention to what cars Alex’s neighbours drove but he figured he’d know which was which by the flash of the headlights and the beep of the disengaging alarm.
He worked through them one by one, standing on the steps of the building, pointing the little squares in every direction until he was sure there was no car nearby that would answer the invisible call. He was on to the last one, the step beneath him littered with discarded keys, almost resigned to having to walk his way out of Manhattan, when he heard the beep of an alarm echo loud in the too silent street. He turned to look in time to see the last flash of headlights on one of those too large SUVs he always thought looked ridiculous crawling through the downtown traffic. But it didn’t look ridiculous now, it looked like shelter and a bed for the night and escape all rolled in to one shiny black package.
Ryan grabbed his bags, took one last look at the street and hurried to the car. He didn’t know if the noise had attracted attention or if it had what kind, and he had no intention of hanging around to find out.
~
Manhattan’s streets were clear and empty. The end had been slow and stealthy, no sudden event to cause a mass exodus that would have ended in a gridlock of abandoned vehicles. By the time people had begun to realise how bad things were, travel was already restricted and the curfew was in place. And by the time the survivors realised there was no one left to enforce the restrictions there was nowhere left to go.
Ryan tried to see that as a positive thing, tried to focus on how it made getting out of the city easier than he feared it might have been. He kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead of him and very carefully did not look at the stores and cafés and apartment blocks as he passed them by, or think about the people lying dead inside them.
And as he made his way across the Washington Bridge he tried not to think about how much gas he had left or what he would do when it ran out. He figured he’d just find another car and then another after that. Make his way across the country by hopping from one ride to the next, like hitchhiking but without the company.
~
Ryan talked to Alex as he drove, even though he’d left him far behind; laid out like a sacrifice to an absent god on the cold metal of a fire escape with pennies resting on his eyelids.
"Carrion for the crows." Alex whispered in his head, "Sounds like a lyric, man, you should write that down."
Ryan snorted and rolled his eyes even though there was no one to see him do it. He felt less alone with Alex whispering to him all the time. More crazy sure, but right now Ryan was willing to take crazy over the wave of isolation that was threatening to overwhelm him.
And anyway, Alex had never stopped talking in life, so it made sense that he wouldn’t now he was dead.
~
He met the guy on the forecourt of a cheap motel just outside of Newark.
Ryan had been aiming for the gas station a little further down the block but the engine had started spluttering and cutting out before he could get that far. He’d pulled in thinking he could maybe find a hose and steal some gas from one of the cars that still sat parked neatly outside of the motel’s rooms.
The guy was walking towards one of the rooms, his hands full of plastic bags from the convenience store across the lot. It looked so normal, so mundane, that Ryan blinked a few times just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.
"Dude's hot, in a geeky kind of way." Alex whispered in his head.
Ryan muttered, "Shut the fuck up, asshole." under his breath, and then moved to lean against the hood of the car to get a better look.
Alex laughed. "Oh man, the world's in its final death throes and you're still thinking with your dick."
Ryan ignored him.
The guy didn't notice him at first, too lost in his own world to see anything outside of it. It gave Ryan a chance to take in the little details, like the way he walked with an awkward kind of graceless gait like he was one step away from tripping over his own feet. Ryan couldn't help but smile at that, he recognised the signs of someone who'd been hit with a growth spurt before he was ready for it and had never really managed to fully regain his balance. Ryan knew that feeling all too well.
It was that, the tiny shared connection, that made Ryan move away from the relative safety of his car and plaster his best 'I'm mostly harmless' smile on his face when the guy finally noticed him and stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes open shock-wide and his bags swinging by his sides like they hadn't noticed the lack of forward momentum.
Ryan lifted a hand in a half-hearted wave and said, "Hi." It wasn't the greatest of openers but Ryan had been alone for a while now and he'd kind of forgotten how to have a conversation that wasn't in his head.
"Hi." The guy made an equally abortive attempt at a wave then nodded his head in the direction of Ryan's car. "That yours?"
"Yeah, but," Ryan shrugged his shoulders, "I'm out of gas."
"Where're you headed?"
"L.A." Ryan said, "via Chicago"
The guy nodded again and said. "Me too. You have family there?"
"Friends. In both places. You?"
"Friends in Chicago, brother in L.A. I need to know if…" The guy paused like he was searching for the right way to say what they were both thinking. Eventually he just sighed and said. "I just need to know."
Ryan understood that, the urge to find out if the people who meant the most were dead or alive. He needed to know if Jon was holed up somewhere with his cats and his dog, and maybe, hopefully, Tom to keep him company. He needed to know if Spencer was alive and sitting on a beach in L.A. waiting for the perfect wave.
Ryan tried not to think about how the last time he spoke to Spencer it ended in an argument that they never had time to resolve. The thought of Spencer never knowing he didn’t mean any of the stupid spiteful things he’d said in the heat of the moment was too hard to even consider.
The guy was staring at him, his head tilted a little to the side, like he was sizing Ryan up and trying to make a decision about him. Ryan had the sudden urge to stand a little straighter, or maybe raise his hand like a kid in gym class and shout out, "pick me! pick me!" He managed to not do either, but it was a close call.
After what seemed like hours but was probably more like the span of a few seconds, the guy seemed to make up his mind, because he pointed towards the motel and said, "This place has a back-up generator that still has some power in it. I was going to heat up some food if you're hungry."
Ryan thought about his backpack full of dried out crackers and half-eaten bags of stale potato chips and tried to remember the last time he'd eaten hot food.
"Ask him if there's a movie to go with the dinner date." Alex whispered.
Ryan hissed at him to shut up. Then realised he must have said it aloud because the guys' eyes flared wide.
"No, not you. I was telling my friend Alex to shut up." Ryan flailed his hands a little as the guy arched an eyebrow in question. "He's...not here. It's just I. I talk to him sometimes. In my head."
The guy smiled a little and shrugged a shoulder. "I talk to Gerard all the time. My brother. The one who lives in L.A." Then he gestured towards the motel again. "So. Food. You coming?"
Alex sniggered, Ryan ignored him. Instead he nodded and said, "Yeah. Please."
~
The guy's name was Mikey and he was from New Jersey. He'd been due to fly out to Chicago with some friends to visit another guy they all knew but he'd been delayed and they'd gone without him. He'd planned to take a later flight but the travel restrictions had been imposed and he'd been stuck waiting in the motel while the world fell apart outside the doors. He'd been alone ever since.
Mikey was kind of quiet, but Ryan didn't mind that, he was pretty quiet himself a lot of the time. Mikey also had a wicked, dry sense of humor, and he was happy to share his stash of microwave meals and cans of soda with Ryan. Most importantly he revealed that he'd used to work in a gas station part time back in High School and he knew how to work the manual pump that meant Ryan could fill up his tank. The only reason Mikey was still stuck at the motel and not out on the road was that he hadn't been able to find keys for any of the cars outside and hotwiring was a lot harder than it looked in the movies.
Ryan figured there was only one decent thing to do to repay Mikey for the food and the company, so he said, "Chicago's like a twelve hour drive from here, right?"
Mikey nodded in agreement.
"If we share the driving we could make it in a day."
Ryan waited while Mikey thought his suggestion over.
"I could be a serial killer for all you know." Mikey said, completely deadpan like he was going to be testing Ryan on his reaction.
Ryan considered the evidence for a moment then said. "So could I."
Mikey smiled and said, "Fair point." Then he added, "We should wait till the morning to leave, though, it's getting kind of late and we haven't had dessert yet."
Ryan looked at the packet of Twinkies Mikey produced from one of his bags and smiled back.
"Dessert's pretty important."
Mikey's smile grew wider. "It really is."
~
In the morning, once they'd packed Mikey's things into the car, pushed it to the gas station and managed to fill the tank and a couple of spare gas canisters they found in the gas station store, they flipped a coin for who would take the first driving shift.
As he settled himself behind the wheel, Ryan turned to Mikey and said, "For the record, I'm not a serial killer."
"Shame." Mikey said. "It would have made for a more interesting trip."
"Hey!" Ryan said. "Are you saying I'm boring?"
Mikey smiled. "Nah, from what I've seen so far you're anything but."
In Ryan's head Alex started laughing, but Ryan just smiled and said, "You're not so bad yourself."
In said long dim distant past turps33 asked for 'Mikey and Ryan being friends' and because she's awesome and it was her birthday yesterday I thought I'd make an attempt at getting hers finished in time to post it as a b'day offering. Um, it should probably also be noted that I suck at deadlines /o\
Anyways, all that aside... Happy (belated) Birthday, turps33! ♥♥♥
Title: and I feel fine.
(vaguely implied) Pairing: Mikey/Ryan
Rating: Gen
Word count: 2180
Summary: After the apocalypse, Ryan meets a new friend.
Warning: Post-apocalypse fic. Non-graphic mention of the offscreen death of a minor character. If you would prefer to know who dies before you read the story please highlight the following text: Alex Greenwald.
Thanks and all the cuddles in the world to cmonkatiekatie for the beta.
Ryan stopped trying to keep track of the days two weeks after the power flickered out and never came back on again. It seemed somehow trivial to know whether it was a Tuesday or a Sunday when it was more important to know if he could scavenge enough food to survive in the empty apartment block or if he’d finally have to venture outside into the now unfamiliar streets.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed as he sat there wrapped in blankets to ward off the chill of a slowly dying city, listening to the rough rhythm of Alex’s breathing as he coughed and wheezed and muttered in his sleep. Outside the windows smoke hung in the air like fog, creeping thick and heavy from fires that went unattended because there was no one left to put them out. Ryan fell asleep at night to the sounds of screams and crying, and woke up the same way.
The morning that Ryan woke up to silence was the morning he knew it was time to leave. He picked up the case he’d packed a week ago and the backpack full of what remained of his scavenged food, then walked out of the apartment and down the stairs to the street without looking back. He had a feeling that if he did he would lose his nerve and never find it again.
~
Ryan had a half dozen sets of car keys that he’d picked up from bowls by doors and from kitchen tables as he’d hunted through the apartment block for food. Each one had a little square of plastic attached with a button in the center to turn off an alarm. He’d never paid much attention to what cars Alex’s neighbours drove but he figured he’d know which was which by the flash of the headlights and the beep of the disengaging alarm.
He worked through them one by one, standing on the steps of the building, pointing the little squares in every direction until he was sure there was no car nearby that would answer the invisible call. He was on to the last one, the step beneath him littered with discarded keys, almost resigned to having to walk his way out of Manhattan, when he heard the beep of an alarm echo loud in the too silent street. He turned to look in time to see the last flash of headlights on one of those too large SUVs he always thought looked ridiculous crawling through the downtown traffic. But it didn’t look ridiculous now, it looked like shelter and a bed for the night and escape all rolled in to one shiny black package.
Ryan grabbed his bags, took one last look at the street and hurried to the car. He didn’t know if the noise had attracted attention or if it had what kind, and he had no intention of hanging around to find out.
~
Manhattan’s streets were clear and empty. The end had been slow and stealthy, no sudden event to cause a mass exodus that would have ended in a gridlock of abandoned vehicles. By the time people had begun to realise how bad things were, travel was already restricted and the curfew was in place. And by the time the survivors realised there was no one left to enforce the restrictions there was nowhere left to go.
Ryan tried to see that as a positive thing, tried to focus on how it made getting out of the city easier than he feared it might have been. He kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead of him and very carefully did not look at the stores and cafés and apartment blocks as he passed them by, or think about the people lying dead inside them.
And as he made his way across the Washington Bridge he tried not to think about how much gas he had left or what he would do when it ran out. He figured he’d just find another car and then another after that. Make his way across the country by hopping from one ride to the next, like hitchhiking but without the company.
~
Ryan talked to Alex as he drove, even though he’d left him far behind; laid out like a sacrifice to an absent god on the cold metal of a fire escape with pennies resting on his eyelids.
"Carrion for the crows." Alex whispered in his head, "Sounds like a lyric, man, you should write that down."
Ryan snorted and rolled his eyes even though there was no one to see him do it. He felt less alone with Alex whispering to him all the time. More crazy sure, but right now Ryan was willing to take crazy over the wave of isolation that was threatening to overwhelm him.
And anyway, Alex had never stopped talking in life, so it made sense that he wouldn’t now he was dead.
~
He met the guy on the forecourt of a cheap motel just outside of Newark.
Ryan had been aiming for the gas station a little further down the block but the engine had started spluttering and cutting out before he could get that far. He’d pulled in thinking he could maybe find a hose and steal some gas from one of the cars that still sat parked neatly outside of the motel’s rooms.
The guy was walking towards one of the rooms, his hands full of plastic bags from the convenience store across the lot. It looked so normal, so mundane, that Ryan blinked a few times just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.
"Dude's hot, in a geeky kind of way." Alex whispered in his head.
Ryan muttered, "Shut the fuck up, asshole." under his breath, and then moved to lean against the hood of the car to get a better look.
Alex laughed. "Oh man, the world's in its final death throes and you're still thinking with your dick."
Ryan ignored him.
The guy didn't notice him at first, too lost in his own world to see anything outside of it. It gave Ryan a chance to take in the little details, like the way he walked with an awkward kind of graceless gait like he was one step away from tripping over his own feet. Ryan couldn't help but smile at that, he recognised the signs of someone who'd been hit with a growth spurt before he was ready for it and had never really managed to fully regain his balance. Ryan knew that feeling all too well.
It was that, the tiny shared connection, that made Ryan move away from the relative safety of his car and plaster his best 'I'm mostly harmless' smile on his face when the guy finally noticed him and stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes open shock-wide and his bags swinging by his sides like they hadn't noticed the lack of forward momentum.
Ryan lifted a hand in a half-hearted wave and said, "Hi." It wasn't the greatest of openers but Ryan had been alone for a while now and he'd kind of forgotten how to have a conversation that wasn't in his head.
"Hi." The guy made an equally abortive attempt at a wave then nodded his head in the direction of Ryan's car. "That yours?"
"Yeah, but," Ryan shrugged his shoulders, "I'm out of gas."
"Where're you headed?"
"L.A." Ryan said, "via Chicago"
The guy nodded again and said. "Me too. You have family there?"
"Friends. In both places. You?"
"Friends in Chicago, brother in L.A. I need to know if…" The guy paused like he was searching for the right way to say what they were both thinking. Eventually he just sighed and said. "I just need to know."
Ryan understood that, the urge to find out if the people who meant the most were dead or alive. He needed to know if Jon was holed up somewhere with his cats and his dog, and maybe, hopefully, Tom to keep him company. He needed to know if Spencer was alive and sitting on a beach in L.A. waiting for the perfect wave.
Ryan tried not to think about how the last time he spoke to Spencer it ended in an argument that they never had time to resolve. The thought of Spencer never knowing he didn’t mean any of the stupid spiteful things he’d said in the heat of the moment was too hard to even consider.
The guy was staring at him, his head tilted a little to the side, like he was sizing Ryan up and trying to make a decision about him. Ryan had the sudden urge to stand a little straighter, or maybe raise his hand like a kid in gym class and shout out, "pick me! pick me!" He managed to not do either, but it was a close call.
After what seemed like hours but was probably more like the span of a few seconds, the guy seemed to make up his mind, because he pointed towards the motel and said, "This place has a back-up generator that still has some power in it. I was going to heat up some food if you're hungry."
Ryan thought about his backpack full of dried out crackers and half-eaten bags of stale potato chips and tried to remember the last time he'd eaten hot food.
"Ask him if there's a movie to go with the dinner date." Alex whispered.
Ryan hissed at him to shut up. Then realised he must have said it aloud because the guys' eyes flared wide.
"No, not you. I was telling my friend Alex to shut up." Ryan flailed his hands a little as the guy arched an eyebrow in question. "He's...not here. It's just I. I talk to him sometimes. In my head."
The guy smiled a little and shrugged a shoulder. "I talk to Gerard all the time. My brother. The one who lives in L.A." Then he gestured towards the motel again. "So. Food. You coming?"
Alex sniggered, Ryan ignored him. Instead he nodded and said, "Yeah. Please."
~
The guy's name was Mikey and he was from New Jersey. He'd been due to fly out to Chicago with some friends to visit another guy they all knew but he'd been delayed and they'd gone without him. He'd planned to take a later flight but the travel restrictions had been imposed and he'd been stuck waiting in the motel while the world fell apart outside the doors. He'd been alone ever since.
Mikey was kind of quiet, but Ryan didn't mind that, he was pretty quiet himself a lot of the time. Mikey also had a wicked, dry sense of humor, and he was happy to share his stash of microwave meals and cans of soda with Ryan. Most importantly he revealed that he'd used to work in a gas station part time back in High School and he knew how to work the manual pump that meant Ryan could fill up his tank. The only reason Mikey was still stuck at the motel and not out on the road was that he hadn't been able to find keys for any of the cars outside and hotwiring was a lot harder than it looked in the movies.
Ryan figured there was only one decent thing to do to repay Mikey for the food and the company, so he said, "Chicago's like a twelve hour drive from here, right?"
Mikey nodded in agreement.
"If we share the driving we could make it in a day."
Ryan waited while Mikey thought his suggestion over.
"I could be a serial killer for all you know." Mikey said, completely deadpan like he was going to be testing Ryan on his reaction.
Ryan considered the evidence for a moment then said. "So could I."
Mikey smiled and said, "Fair point." Then he added, "We should wait till the morning to leave, though, it's getting kind of late and we haven't had dessert yet."
Ryan looked at the packet of Twinkies Mikey produced from one of his bags and smiled back.
"Dessert's pretty important."
Mikey's smile grew wider. "It really is."
~
In the morning, once they'd packed Mikey's things into the car, pushed it to the gas station and managed to fill the tank and a couple of spare gas canisters they found in the gas station store, they flipped a coin for who would take the first driving shift.
As he settled himself behind the wheel, Ryan turned to Mikey and said, "For the record, I'm not a serial killer."
"Shame." Mikey said. "It would have made for a more interesting trip."
"Hey!" Ryan said. "Are you saying I'm boring?"
Mikey smiled. "Nah, from what I've seen so far you're anything but."
In Ryan's head Alex started laughing, but Ryan just smiled and said, "You're not so bad yourself."