Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The end of the world begins when Gordon decides he wants a bagel for breakfast.

Problem is, he doesn’t have any bagels just lying around within his apartment—unless his pestiferous roommate Benrey is hiding the green chile cheese bagels he bought last week in that dumpster fire they call their room. Gordon’s not willing to find out. Big mistake.

On this wonderful Tuesday morning, the usual cloudless, pristine New Mexican blue skies were replaced with an overcast nightmare. The heavy wind nearly knocks him flat as soon as he steps outside, and he has to huddle closer to a pillar as he watches a plastic balcony chair struggle for its life. It's a hassle just making it to the car, and by that time Gordon's mood has reached an all-time low.

He turns up his Linkin Park and blasts that shit as he peels out of the quiet parking lot, driving up the hill into Rio Rancho. He’s heading to the local Albertson’s with two goals, now: his bagel, and salvaging this awful day. As he waits at a stoplight, he drinks some of the McDonald’s lemonade he stashed in the middle console the night before, scrutinizing what he thinks is a car crash on the other road.

Huh. That sure is a lot of police and ambulances for one car crash! The light flicks off red to green, and he shrugs it off.

Unfortunately, there is no salvaging this awful day. It’s like the entire universe is playing some elaborate bit on him—parked in the parking lot, Gordon puts his keys down for one second to search in the glove compartment for a spare hair tie. He only realizes when he gets out of his vehicle and prepares to lock it that…he’s lost them.

For a stifling half hour of his life that he will never get back, Gordon looks for his car keys in the parking lot of the near-abandoned grocery store. He looks under the seats, squints between the seats, and kneels on the pavement to pull the rubber floor mat up. It's not there. Along with the growing, gnawing panic, and the choking humiliation at the fact that he might need to call Benrey to get him out of this, his irritation at this stupid situation grows by the minute. Especially with the wind still angrily blowing his hair into his face.

How the fuck did he lose them?

Eventually, in a fit of anger (he's reached the forty-minute mark and still somehow hasn't found them), Gordon flings his half-full McDonald’s lemonade cup to the ground and watches with a baffled expression as the keys fly out and skid across the pavement until they hit the tire of the car across from his.

Okay.

After about half a minute of stupidly staring at the soaked keys (and the rest of his cold lemonade, now slowly seeping into the concrete), and not knowing whether to laugh or cry, Gordon silently walks the short distance to retrieve them. Then he gets back into his car, jams the keys into the ignition, and slams the door so hard the entire vehicle rattles.

He's driving back down the hill into Albuquerque when he pulls up to the “car crash” from earlier, and feels dread drip down his spine at what he sees. Pulling the car to a stop, he squints through the dashboard window in trepidation. There's stretchers, and numerous body bags. No cops, no paramedics.

He gets out. Stupid idea, probably. Definitely.

As he draws closer, every quiet footstep deafening in his ears, Gordon realizes that there is somebody here, tucked just out of sight behind the tires of a flashing police car. It's a cop.

He's missing the lower part of his body.

Thunder cracks like a whip, illuminating the dim, overcast road in a pale burst of light, and Gordon clamps a shaking hand over his mouth and stumbles backwards, fumbling blindly for his car door. The cop reaches out for him, struggling through a blood-full mouth to say something that Gordon can't understand.

His hand falls to the road, digging nails into pavement, and Gordon finally tears his eyes away. Just in time, too, because he barely avoids crashing and upending a body bag strapped to a stretcher.

The body bag is moving, straining violently under the restraints holding it down. Gordon gapes, horrified, and…

Finally gathers the courage to run away like his life depended on it. He gets back to the car, closes and locks the door, and shakily puts it into drive. He carefully maneuvers past the ambulances and then slams on the gas, flying past the streetlight and down the hill. His eyes sting with tears, and he feels lightheaded.

He ignores the stab of guilt for just abandoning that guy. Someone else will drive by, someone else will…deal with it…

Oh, god, forget the fucking bagel. This is the worst day of his entire life.

Managing, somehow, to park the car and stumble up three flights of stairs to his apartment without incident, Gordon tries four separate times to unlock his front door with sweaty palms. Once he gets a locked door between him and the rest of the world, he allows himself to hook a shaking arm over his eyes, breathing in deeply to balance out the nausea.

That is, until he realizes his roommate is awake. Figures.

“yo. you went to the store? didja get my uhhhhhhhhhhhh my uhhh what was itttttt. my peanut butter em and emmies,” Benrey says conversationally, not looking up from their Splatoon 3 Turf War match. Gordon drags two fingers through frazzled curls and ventures further into the apartment, three seconds from a mental breakdown. His keys and wallet are unceremoniously dumped and abandoned on the coffee table.

Then he starts pacing. “It's—they're called M&M’s, Benrey, and no. We're in the middle of some kind of—” He thinks again of the many body bags, and shudders. “Zombie apocalypse.” He glances at Benrey and their lethargic countenance, and quenches the sudden, all-too-familiar urge to throttle them. “You know what? Just shut the fuck up for a few minutes, let me think.”

Benrey finally spares him a disinterested look, but that shifts into a contemplative expression when they see firsthand how tightly wound up Gordon is. “zombies aren’t real, yo,” they say, carefully putting their switch to the side. “psych ward’s just, uh. ‘round the corner, though. if you need…that?” They stare, nonplussed, as Gordon abruptly stalks past them to search through his armchair cushions for the television remote. “what's wrong with you.”

“What the fuck did I just say?” Gordon snaps at them, grimacing as his fingers brush up against a few crumbly cheeto puffs before they close around the slightly sticky remote. Straightening up, he points it towards the flat screen the two could barely afford and presses the power button.

The Albuquerque news channel is still rolling. Thank god. Gordon patters closer to register what he’s seeing, only half aware of Benrey tearing their eyes off him to fix their bored stare on the television. A man with shoulder-length finger braids stares back at them, dark circles under his eyes and a microphone clutched tightly in a hand as he reports on the unfurling situation.

“Disturbing news here in the Albuquerque area tonight, folks. We’re witnessing firsthand reports of the dead apparently coming back to life—” The screen then flicks between shots of thrashing body bags and military picking off shambling corpses on Central, and Gordon has to look away, “—authorities advise all uninfected to stay in your homes until further notice, and to be mindful that, like in traditional media, infection seems to be spreading through bites—”

“ohhh this is just like night of the living dead,” Benrey stares in awe at the carnage flickering across the screen. Quizzically, they turn to Gordon. “wwgrd: what would george romaro do?”

Gordon throws his hands up, exasperated and bordering the edge of hysterics. “Do I fucking look like I watch zombie movies in my free time, Benrey? Some of us have lives, you know!”

Benrey blinks, surprised. “you have a life?” Ignoring how Gordon’s hands immediately curl into enraged fists and his eye twitches in muted fury, they look back toward the television screen and study it. “wood,” they announce after a few seconds of blissful silence.

Gordon’s rage quells just the slightest bit. “What?” He manages to choke out through gritted teeth.

“wood,” they repeat, impatiently, ticking off on fingers that were sloppily drenched in hours-old black nail polish. “nails. could prolly use that ugly ass bookshelf in uh, office—”

“My dead grandmother gave me that,” Gordon interrupts, reaching up to delicately pinch the bridge of his nose. Oh, wonderful. He now has a migraine.

Benrey rattles on like Gordon hadn’t said anything at all. “gonna hafta go raid stores for supplies, needa make a mad max escape car for, uh, em-er-gen-cies, and…backup plan. cabin in the woods.”

Gordon nods sluggishly, unimpressed. Because of course they had everything right at their disposal (in this tiny apartment complex, mind you) to make a Mad Max inspired vehicle. What the fuck did they think the two of them were, mechanics? “Right. I have full confidence that we won’t be dead by the end of the week.”

He knows Benrey’s two brain cells hear the sarcasm in his reply, because they flash him an ugly grin and say sardonically, all teeth, “got any nerd books we can use for kindling?”

Seconds away from an aneurysm and completely done with this excuse of a conversation, Gordon stalks off towards his bedroom. He will not give them the satisfaction of yelling, because that means they'll fucking, win the argument, or something.

Shoving Benrey into a horde of undead freaks sounds more appealing every second that ticks by, however. Miserably, he rubs his eyes. He needs a drink—and, frankly, during the apocalypse, does his sobriety really matter?

Their elderly next-door neighbor is turning, or has already turned, into a zombie. And Gordon feels fucking sick.

The entire apartment has turned into the equivalent of a fallout shelter in about three hours. They live on the third floor of this building, but Benrey forced Gordon into barricading the windows anyway, citing yet another zombie movie Gordon had never seen as inspiration. “what if they’re the, fuckin’—world war z zombies?” they’d asked, peering out into the dark streets. “piling on top of eachother like ants, gordo. shit’s wild.”

Privately, Gordon thinks that if zombies used eachother’s bodies to climb to hard-to-reach places, wooden slabs from his poor bookshelf wouldn’t do much to stop them. He decides not to argue, however—Benrey seems very assured in their game plan, like they were just biding their time until this day came. They pushed the dishwasher (don’t ask) in front of the door, turned all lights off to not garner any unwanted attention, and are now working by candlelight to stick nails into the baseball bat they kept in the storage closet.

Gordon’s homework? Watching Benrey’s hand-selected zombie films to catch up on the “lore”. Night of the Living Dead was first per Benrey’s insistence, followed closely by Planet Terror. The two of them are halfway through Zombieland when there’s a loud crash next door. Gordon pauses the movie immediately, looking towards his roommate with a panicked expression. “Benrey,” he starts, heart pounding in his ears.

“no,” Benrey hisses back immediately. “rule number one: never leave the safe house at night.”

“You just fucking made that up,” Gordon snaps back in a beleaguered whisper. “It’s Maria. She’s in her eighties!”

Benrey shrugs, unbothered. “she survived cancer. she can survive anything.”

Gordon stares at them for a second, dumbfounded. “Fine. I’m going alone, then,” he says in lieu of an answer, standing from the couch and wiping sweaty hands on his jeans. Benrey fumbles with the baseball bat, dropping it to the floor in an attempt to swipe for his arm and yank him back. They miss.

“gordon,” they say warningly, tone uncharacteristically solemn as he rounds the back of the couch to stride to the front door. Gordon’s not deterred by the use of his full name. As he attempts to move the dishwasher, they throw their head back and groan like a petulant child before finally coming to his aid. “if we die—”

“We’re not going to die,” he cuts them off, though the confidence in his voice teeters, bordering on false bravado. “It’s Maria! She’s harmless.”

“this one time i saw her rip coupons out of the newspaper,” Benrey insists, and they both wince at the screech the dishwasher makes as it’s yanked away from the door. Great, now the entire building knew they were in here. “she looked like she had rabies—!”

“Benrey, for the love of god,” Gordon groans, thunking his head to the closed door. But when he turns to squint through the darkness at them, he’s surprised to note the dread in their eyes. They’re pale, practically ghostly, and the apprehension in their expression is so plainly illuminated by the paused television and flickering candlelight. Maybe apprehensive isn’t the right word to use, here—they’re scared.

Yeah, well, join the club! Gordon thinks bitterly. I’m scared shitless.

Still, his face softens just a minute, indiscernible bit. Sometimes it’s hard to remember, despite all the nonchalance and animosity they show him daily, that Benrey is someone who cares. “Give me the bat,” he says with this in mind, in a considerably softer tone. “I’ll take care of it.”

What “taking care of it” really implies, he has no idea, but he’ll cross that bridge in about two minutes. At their dubious look, he sighs explosively, jutting a hand out between them. “Seriously, Benrey. The faster this gets done the faster we can finish Zombieland.”

Somehow convinced by that, Benrey wordlessly passes the bat over. Gritting his teeth, Gordon opens the door and steps out into the hallway, his roommate on his heels. What he sees immediately makes him wish he stayed inside the apartment: blood stains the opposite wall in fresh, messy handprints, and there’s an unmoving corpse at the far end of the hallway, right next to the elevator. Benrey inhales sharply, and Gordon tenses, squinting through the darkness and wishing he brought the stupid candle.

Gordon doesn’t let his eyes wander from that corpse as he inches down the hallway towards Maria’s room, baseball bat positioned awkwardly out in front of him. The twenty feet between their apartment and Maria’s takes centuries to close, and Gordon feels sweat bead his forehead as the two of them pause right outside her front door. It’s unlocked. There’s a stone in Gordon’s throat.

Stepping inside doesn’t inspire much hope in him, either. Fresh groceries are spilled all over her entrance hall, and a bloodstained walking cane is wedged in between the bathroom door and its frame, keeping it held slightly ajar. The kitchen and living room are clear of any zombified old ladies, but there’s still two rooms at the end of her hallway to check, and suddenly Gordon’s not feeling all that brave.

Bait her out? Gordon mouths to Benrey, who stands in contemplation for a split second before facing the eerily dark hallway.

“mariaaaaaaaaa,” Benrey coos. Gordon strains his hearing to catch any sounds made within the apartment that weren’t from the two of them. “guess what i got, maria? coupons! we got, uh, sooo many cat treat coupons, buy one get one free…!” They glance nervously at Gordon when nothing happens, but he just shrugs helplessly. Looking desperate, Benrey cups their hands around their mouth. “b7? b7??!! you sunk my battleship!”

Gordon's blaming the genuine laugh that bubbles out of his throat on the hysteria this situation has imposed on the two of them and nothing else, because Benrey making Gordon laugh during the worst day of his life feels…weird, for some reason. Still, he can't help but press for an elaboration. “The fuck does Battleship have to do with coupons?”

Benrey opens their mouth to reply, probably with something equally as asinine, but a low groan from the hallway has the words dying in their throat. Gordon’s death grip on the bat manages to tighten as she steps forward.

Maria looks every bit the traditional zombie; cloudy eyes, rotting teeth, graying skin. Her mop of white curls is matted, and dry blood trails spiral down her temple. She smells like roadkill left baking in the sun for half a day, and it's so revolting that Gordon has to swallow down nausea. As she hobbles forward, Gordon notices the bite wound on her neck. “Oh,” he breathes. Next to him, Benrey exhales, a miserable little sound. “What do I…”

“brain,” Benrey mumbles automatically, looking terribly queasy. “you have to,” they gesture ineffectually, and Gordon nods like he understands. He takes a half-step in her direction and raises the bat high above his head. She stumbles towards her closer target, mouth cracking open in the beginnings of a snarl. He feels like he should say something, but nothing really comes to mind.

He brings the bat down on her with all the power he could muster up, and watches his neighbor's head crush like fresh papier-mâché under careless fingers. Her body crumples and falls, and his bloody baseball bat falls out of trembling fingers and clatters to the tile. He stares, unseeingly, at the growing puddle of blood pooling under her head.

Half a minute passes in complete silence. “What did I do,” he says eventually, in a tone almost as flat and monotone as Benrey's. “Benrey, what did I just—”

A hand comes up to yank at Gordon's shoulder, forcing him to look away. “you're in, uh. shock, i think,” Benrey says with all the confidence of a lost puppy. “let’s go—let's go home?”

“I—” His gaze is drawn back, once again, to Maria's corpse, motionless on the floor. What he just did to her registers excruciatingly slow in his brain, wracking near-constant disgusted shivers from his body. Benrey peers up at him with unmistakable concern, and for some reason this pisses him off. “Yeah,” he agrees, forcing his mouth to form the words. “I’m gonna cover her, first.”

He’s almost daring Benrey to say something in opposition to this, looking for an excuse to shout at them again. Yelling would absolutely put the two of them in danger, but maybe it could help displace some of this strange energy brewing inside him. But Benrey just nods, stepping away and off to the side to give him the room to work. He sighs, weirdly disappointed.

There’s a bloodstained violet throw blanket on the couch, and he snatches it up without too much thought and spreads it over Maria, trying not to inhale too deeply and catch a whiff of her roadkill aroma. This feels, somehow, like the humane thing to do, after making her head impl—

Gordon doubles over, vomiting all over her spotless tile. His head throbs with an intensity that has him near tears, and he's barely aware of Benrey's deft hands gathering up his long hair, holding it away from his mouth. Though he's mad at them right now for a reason beyond him, he's also deeply grateful.

He can't fucking do this, christ. The urge to wallow in his sorrow grows exponentially by the second, but Benrey's presence keeps him from completely giving up and flopping into his own vomit. “Sorry,” he manages.

“don't worry ‘bout it,” Benrey replies easily, and pulls him up by an arm. Gordon doesn't have the energy left to bitch at them for it. “you wanna be, soggy paper bag, wet, pathetic? s’fine. not here tho. this place is,” they glance towards Maria, “ew. yucky.”

Despite the shittiness of this entire situation, Gordon can’t resist an exhausted snicker.

Chapter Text

Benrey peers through lidded eyes at the shadows on their ceiling, struggling for the umpteenth time to focus their vision. The sun steadily rises outside the frost-covered window, the third dawn after Maria's very…untimely end.

But Benrey’s not thinking about Maria. Benrey's not thinking about much at all. They've got a nicotine patch tucked under their bottom lip, and the high from that is transporting them to some astral fucking plane. Far from thoughts of Maria’s rotting corpse, far from thoughts of their disaster roommate, and far, thankfully, from thoughts of the hellish nightmare right outside these thin apartment walls. All they can focus on is keeping the nausea at bay.

The ceiling inevitably gets tiring to stare up at, so they gingerly turn onto their side and gaze at the wall instead. They breathe deeply, closing their eyes so the world stops spinning. Flinging an arm out blindly, their clammy fingers curl loosely around their phone, and they fumble with the cold metal until they get it to play whatever they’d last been listening to. It starts up immediately.

I was nothing before,

So I couldn’t have asked to be born—

I’ll be nothing again,

so what am I between now and then?

Is there nothing to fear? ‘Cause shit’s getting weird!

So to God who made this man—

Quickly, they peel an eye open and skip the song. Will Wood is not somebody to listen to while tripping out, much less during a fucking zombie apocalypse. They feel as if that’s almost begging to get their throat ripped out by some, some bloodthirsty undead ghoul—

It’s like a floodgate’s been ripped open against their will, and all they can think about is their current…predicament. They pull the covers over their head and try to find solace in the dark. As much as Benrey appreciates their affinity for the zombie genre, they could never admit to Gordon how utterly small they feel when such a monumental, world-shifting catastrophe knocks upon their door. The thought of even leaving the apartment right now puts a stone in their throat, impossible to swallow.

All they want, truthfully, is to lay here and pretend none of this exists, to be comforted by the headrush that chases these grim nightmares away. But they couldn’t even get that. Annoyed, they throw the covers back and fling their phone to the floor with as much force as their body can muster up, which isn’t much. Then they shut their eyes again, vowing to get at least a few more hours of precious sleep before their ruinous roommate comes and rips it all away from them.

Sleep comes in fitful waves, and they miserably pick their head off the pillow to squint when Gordon inevitably comes and raps twice on the door. “Benrey?” He calls, being considerate for once and minding his volume. “Come eat, we need to get rid of this cereal before it expires.”

They consider rolling over and ignoring him, but they’re finding out that rotting in bed isn’t making the zombie apocalypse disappear. And, unfortunately, they’re starving. They haven’t seen much of Gordon since they got back from their grandma-killing-escapade, shutting themselves away to process the downfall of mankind.

They’re sure Gordon’s been doing something similar, hooking those obnoxious neon orange headphones over his ears and blasting something so dreadfully corny. But this is all baseless speculation, of course—apathy feels like it’s choking Benrey from the inside out. Thoughts of Gordon are gone just as quickly as they appear.

Well. Except: “better not have given me, fuckin’, lucky charms or sumn’, real stupid a’you!” they tell the door, unsure if he’s even still on the other side. What’d he say, again? “shove that expiration date up your ass…”

Unbeknownst to them, their lower body is all tangled up in the labyrinth of their sheets, so as they attempt to climb out of their safe cocoon to eat a good hearty breakfast for the first time in days, they faceplant into the carpet instead. Clearly, their life can still get worse.

Peeling their body off the floor with a faint, but dramatic groan, they abandon the mess they left their bed and scoop their phone off the carpet. A quick glance at the time tells them it's almost four in the afternoon, which has them sighing and tucking the phone into their hoodie pocket. Under normal circumstances, they’d be getting off their afternoon shift right about now.

“kinda sad, missing jefferem,” they say in a deadpan tone to the one plant they haven’t managed to kill yet, a small venus fly trap that they, in a decision that was bizarre even to them, impulsively named Chicago. It seemed funny at the moment, naming such a tiny plant after such a sprawling city.

Chicago doesn’t reply, but that’s okay. They’re not crazy yet, they know plants don’t talk.

Before leaving, Benrey glances towards the small, circular container on the desk shoved up against the wall, barely hidden under another plain black sweatshirt. God, they want another one. So, so badly. They’ve practically gnawed the packet still in their mouth past the point of usability in their sleep, and their breath stinks of wintergreen mint. Gordon knew all about it, and while he disapproved…surely he’d understand, right? It’s been a rough week, and…

“Benrey!” Gordon raps on the door again, louder than before. Exhaling shortly through their nose, they spit the used packet into the trash and straighten up, wiping their mouth and finally opening the door.

Over in the land of the living, Gordon looks like he hasn’t slept at all, but Benrey supposes he's rocking a midlife crisis fairly well. His auburn, silver-streaked hair is pulled back in a low pony, brown skin smattered with too many freckles to count. His glasses are hanging too low on the bridge of his nose, like he’s trying his hardest to pull off some sexy professor look, or something. He fixes Benrey with a tentative smile as soon as they open the door, but Benrey can barely manage a nod.

Fortunately, Gordon doesn’t seem to be too interested in pleasantries. “You got some, uh,” he snorts, gesturing towards his face. “Corner of your mouth, dude.”

Two of Benrey’s pale fingers reach up to swipe at the corner of their mouth, picking away at the dry saliva that’s caked there. Usually, they’d have something snarky to say about the whole exchange, but even standing here with him feels draining. Maybe, if they make it through this meal without incident, he'll let them disappear for another three days. “cereal?”

“Hope you like Lucky Charms,” he unsticks from the door frame and trails off down the hallway towards the kitchen, and Benrey makes a face at his retreating back. Still, they trudge after him, slumping down in their seat like a marionette with cut strings. Their soupy lunch lies innocently on the table in front of them. It’s all they can do to reach for the spoon.

They don’t remember buying this…slop. This gruel made purely for grubby little children. This is all Gordon’s doing.

…but at least the Irish-themed marshmallows are good, so can they really complain?

“So,” Gordon says after a prolonged silence, and Benrey glances up at him with their spoon in their mouth. His bowl is empty. If he wanted Benrey out here with him so badly, why the hell did he eat alone? “I wanted to…uh, talk about our game plan. Our next move.”

Benrey says nothing, just stares with the spoon in their mouth. After a second, they twist their face into an expression they hope conveys their complete disinterest. Clearly it doesn’t, because he just keeps talking. “I’ve been thinking,” he prefaces, raising a hand to scratch his budding goatee. “We should talk about raiding some stores for supplies, get some actual firepower instead of just relying on the baseball bat. And…well, I think we should secure the entire building. It'll stop any more of those fucking freaks from getting in.”

Oh, he can’t be serious. Yanking the spoon out of their mouth, Benrey says the first thing that pops into their head. “that’s a stupid idea.”

Gordon's mouth twists into a scowl, and Benrey regrets their blunt reply almost immediately. Not like they don't think it's the most idiotic plan they've ever heard, but because Gordon's gonna rattle on about it for the next hour and a fucking half, and there's nothing they'll be able to do to make him shut up.

But instead of going on some hysterical rant, he balls his napkin up and places it in his empty bowl, that same scowl practically engraved into his face. Benrey’s eyes get drawn to his large hands, remembers them stained with their neighbor’s blood. They quickly avert their gaze. “Finished watching Zombieland,” he ventures after a long silence. Benrey blinks, shellshocked as they’re thrown a complete curveball.

“yeah? what’d you think.”

“It’s like you have a talent for picking horrible movies,” he says, quirking another one of those tiny smiles as he looks up. As he catches their eyes, they feel a prickly heat blaze through their body, nauseous just from his undivided attention on them. They repress a shiver, twin flames of annoyance and affection rearing their ugly heads. Weirdly uncomfortable with this sudden mood shift, they swallow more cereal instead of replying.

For some outlandish reason, Gordon isn’t deterred by the lack of participation. Doesn’t he know the world is ending? Doesn’t he feel bleak and miserable, doesn’t he only see the world in grays and blacks, isn’t his world an echochamber of disparity? Does he think fortifying the entire building will save them when those cold, dead fingers inevitably come clawing for their blood?

Is he even taking this seriously?

They don’t register anything he’s saying, only checking back in when he snaps his fingers in front of their face like they’re a misbehaving dog. He scrutinizes them, eyes darting across every inch of their face. Like he’s searching for something, something to explain away their impassive expressions and glassy eyes. Their shoulders tense, immediately put on edge with how close he’s leaning.

Realization dawns in his eyes. “Are you high?” Gordon asks incredulously. Two of his fingers absentmindedly start drumming against the table, and he scoffs when Benrey simply blinks owlishly at him instead of providing any immediate eloquent responses. “Seriously, man, is this really the fucking time?”

“what? m’not high, idiot,” Benrey says, defensively. They regret saying even that much, despite only denying an accusation—they’ve learned the hard way that when you give Gordon an inch, he’ll take several miles. With their heart rate steadily rising, they begin to shovel more Lucky Charms into their mouth, wanting desperately to go back into their room and disappear under a tidal wave of avant-garde.

Gordon doesn’t look convinced.

Who’s surprised?

With a clearing of the throat, Gordon leans even closer, trying to catch their eyes. Benrey pinches themselves with their free hand, hard. “Open your mouth, then,” he goads. “Show me. I want to see if you—”

“mmmnNO,” Benrey immediately interrupts, with a mouth full of cereal. Swallowing, they restate their refusal, just to watch Gordon’s eyebrows knit together with either irritation or concern. Or both.

They have a clean mouth, nothing to hide, yet their heart pounds with paralyzing anxiety. They feel like they’re sixteen all over again, and their foster mother just caught them red-handed with a joint. How did he know? Was it that obvious to him? Does their breath smell that good?

Entertaining this conversation has become very low on their priority list. Clearly, talking to him about what’s going on outside will make them fight, and talking about the nicotine and the subsequent withdrawals will reward Benrey with nothing but a lecture. Standing up before Gordon can bend any closer, they scoop the remaining marshmallows into their mouth and leave the room, refusing to linger on conflicting expressions. He calls after them, but they can’t hear anything.

Their hands quiver when they drop the bowl into the sink, watching despondently as milk leaves an ivory trail down the drain. As they stand there, trembling hands balled into tight fists, they think again about Gordon’s ridiculous request. Gordon couldn’t even kill the zombified neighbor without upending the contents of his stomach, how is he going to take on an entire building of them?

This is stupid. This is so stupid.

“Benrey.” Lovely, here he comes. Spinning on their heel, they watch as Gordon enters the kitchen, putting their back very firmly against the counter. His steps are silent, hands raised placatingly, but this does nothing to make Benrey feel at ease. They set their jaw, refusing to give him that inch. “I’m sorry you’re getting so offended with my concern—”

They sneer. Un-fucking-believable.

His jaw sets, too, and he lets his hands fall. He’s biting back venom when he speaks next: “We need to get along, and that means communicating like we’re a fucking team, not disappearing for days and calling my ideas stupid—”

“your ideas are stupid, though,” they point out, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and this man can’t come up with a good idea to save his fucking life. Gordon’s lip curls, and as it does Benrey notes how uncanny pure contempt looks on his face. It almost makes him look monstrous.

“At least I’m trying! What the fuck are you doing? Relapsing, again?”

The stoicism instantly melts off Benrey’s face, as they're now juggling fury, hurt, and appall at his audacity. As his cruel words hang silently between them, Gordon seems to reflect and takes a half step forward, reaching out toward them with an apologetic look in his viridescent eyes. But they’re not interested in his peace offering.

“go to hell, freeman.” Their words are hissed, taking vindictive pleasure in the way he recoils like a wounded animal. As they stand before him with uncompromising inflexibility, they don’t think they care about the inch they promised themselves not to proffer not even two minutes prior, about the miles he’s freely extracting from their uncharacteristic emotion. This is too much, this feels like so much.

“I didn’t mean that,” he mutters, so quiet they can barely hear him over the roaring of blood in their ears. Not like they care. They don’t care. How could they possibly care? “Benrey, I—I’m sorry, that was—”

“shut the fuck up,” they snap, eyes so hard they could split diamonds. “i never should’ve—” trusted you, “you’re, you’re so, fucking,” they can’t even think of a word that describes how much they truly detest him. Emotion claws at their throat, desperate to escape.

Right now, they want him dead. They want him sprawled out on the tile, just like Maria. But these violent thoughts send revulsion spiraling through their gut just as quickly. They want the apathy back. They need to feel apathetic, to be numb, it’s the only way to survive. But apathy eludes them, and they’re furious, and they hate him, and they need him to go away. “go away,” they spit. “get away from me.”

For once, he doesn’t argue. They turn back to the sink and the window above it instead of watching him slink away with a metaphorical tail between his legs, unable to stop the tear rolling down their cheek. They harshly brush it away, fishing for the stainless steel sponge the two of them keep over at the edge of the sink by the dish soap. Taking their bowl in hand, they mindlessly scrub away at the dirty dish until their hands hurt and the steel leaves shallow scratches.

Leaving it in the sink, they absentmindedly move back into the dining room and try to retrieve Gordon’s abandoned bowl. They’re not completely sure how it ends up as a shattered mess of glass at their feet, if they dropped it or knocked it off the table or what, but they can’t find it within themselves to care about the various cuts that now litter their shins and ankles. Blankly, Benrey stares down at the porcelain clutter and thinks about sweeping it up.

They don’t. They don’t know how long they stand there. The blood itches when it dries on their pale skin. Still, they don’t move. One might think they’d rejoice at the numbness finally returning to flood their body from head to toe, but only one thought runs violate loops through their head.

This can’t be real.

This isn’t real. Not Maria’s corpse next door. Not the apocalyptic gloom they could see settling over Albuquerque between the wooden slabs covering the kitchen window, not the deteriorating landscape or the putrid clouds, not the thrashing corpses in body bags on Central or the poison in Gordon’s tone.

It’s not real.

Hours, years, eons later, they slowly blink back to awareness when they register Gordon speaking. The room is dark. The only light comes from the candles they’re assuming he’s lit. The glass around their feet is gone, and his voice is full of abject compassion. No traces of that earlier anger, no malice dripping off his tone. “Benrey?” He asks, voice so soft it couldn’t be coming from Gordon. The masquerader looks up to catch their eye—he’s kneeling directly in front of them, presumably examining their injuries—and their breath hitches. “Are you…”

They wonder what he doesn’t dare to utter aloud. Are they okay? Are they present, here in this moment with him? They don’t have an answer, thoughts traveling through molasses as they struggle to formulate one. But Gordon takes their vacant stare as a response, standing and gingerly reaching for their hand. He gives them, they notice, plenty of time to back away, plenty of time to refuse the help that he’s silently offering. But they don’t refuse. They just stumble after him as he leads them down the hallway towards the bathroom, every step sending jolts of pain through their weak legs.

They’re sitting on the edge of the bathtub moments later, expressionless as Gordon heats up a rag and gently scrubs the blood trails away, eyes occasionally flicking up towards theirs. Oddly enough, they can only think about the hot water prickling their skin through the rag. How long before they lose water? Electricity? How long before—

“I’m sorry,” Gordon murmurs, and Benrey refocuses on the man at their feet, who’s putting such meticulous effort into caring for them. Eventually the rag gets soaked through with blood, and they watch as he stands to get a replacement. “I’m sorry,” he repeats as he returns to his task. “Fuck, Benrey, I’m so…so scared. I feel like you aren’t listening to me, and that fucking, it terrifies me, man. Nothing makes sense, anymore. I don’t have control, anymore.”

They listen quietly while he talks, watching the candlelight flutter faintly over on the far side of the sink. Their attention jumps from that to the auburn of his hair, to his sharp jaw and the growing stubble on his cheeks. When he glances up again, Benrey doesn’t flinch away from those green eyes. “I was worried about you,” he breathes, like it’s a confession he’s offering at an altar. His authenticity keeps taking Benrey aback—masqueraders couldn’t feign emotion like this.

He continues, words tumbling out of his mouth like he couldn’t hold them back any longer. “You didn’t come out of your room after we got back, back from her, and I was so worried. And I know, I know that the nicotine, helps, but—” He cuts himself off, briefly closes his eyes, and then draws the rag under the arches of both feet, searching for glass splinters.

“If it’s any consolation,” he says, bitterly, “I’m relapsing, too. I haven’t been able to sleep sober.”

Benrey’s eyes widen, shocked by this revelation. Gordon took his recovery from addiction very seriously. He’s attended AA meetings and everything; it isn’t something he talks about very frequently, but Benrey knows he wore his sobriety coin in a necklace. If the apocalypse threw all of that out the window, then…

With their cuts cleaned, Gordon helps Benrey across the hall to their bed, and brings in the candle from the bathroom. It’s such a minuscule gesture, the candle—Benrey’s not afraid of the dark. They’re far more enraptured by the sliver of light outlines the emotion painting Gordon’s face. And instead of his concern being jarring to Benrey, like it was initially at the table where they ate together, the sight now puts the ghost of a smile on their face.

As he turns to leave, they reach out to grab his arm. He pauses immediately, looking down at them with widening eyes. “stay,” they beg in a whisper, the first word they’ve spoken in hours.

Despite craving nothing but the silence and solitary of their room earlier that day, being without him now is simply unfathomable.

And he isn’t protesting, looking downright relieved as Benrey pulls the covers back in a silent invite, so clearly he feels the exact same.