Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Life before the cataclysmic event was fine.

Not great, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been.

He didn’t care for the house, but it beat sleeping on the streets with the drunks and whoever else roamed at night. Even if the house carried bad memories, he still had a roof over his head.

The solitude was nice. For the short while he had it.

Begrudgingly, he decided to take in other people. Not out of the kindness of his heart, but because it was getting harder and harder to pay bills on a house that wasn’t his to begin with. Just an extra burden of his to carry, packaged with love from his family.

Roommates were a hit or miss. Some months he’d end up stuck with some asshole who didn’t have any decency or common sense. Sometimes two if he was in extra hot water with his finances.

Recently, it seemed as if he had gotten lucky. A surprisingly normal person had moved in and taken up the pull-out couch. A very tall, slightly chubby man with dark, neatly combed hair. He paid his rent on time, helped clean up, and the homeowner could barely tell he was there most days.

Though he would never admit it aloud, the homeowner was sort of… enjoying the company. He had someone to talk to and crack a few beers with; someone just as down to earth as he was. When he was buzzed and joking around, he realized he didn’t necessarily hate the idea of someone living with him.

They might’ve hit it off a little too well, the homeowner thinks as he wakes one morning to his bed way too warm for his liking.

“You need to start sleeping on the couch again.” The homeowner grumbles, lifting his arm to wipe sweat from his brow.

His roommate curled up next to him barely budges; only lifting his head slightly from the homeowner’s shirt to speak groggily. “Huh? I thought you liked having me in your bed?”

“Yeah, well,” the homeowner turns in his roommate’s arms, earning a soft grunt from the other man as his elbow accidentally collides with his nose, “That was before you turned into an oven every night.”

“I can’t help that it's summer,” his roommate murmurs, unbothered. He pulls the homeowner back into his arms once he’s settled, his nose against the nape of the homeowner’s neck. “…Time is it?”

The other man glances up at the clock on the bedside table. “You have four hours before work.”

His roommate hums in response.

They lay quietly together for a few more minutes, the only noises the homeowner can hear are the crickets outside and the soft breathing of his roommate behind him.

He felt strangely… at peace. His life hadn’t always been easy, but it seemed like now he could finally lose some of his tension and his edge. He no longer needed to be on high alert all the time.

The silence is interrupted by a weight that hops onto the bed, and a heavy paw immediately connects with the homeowner’s chest. He groans as the air is knocked from his lungs, nudging the furry beast off of his body.

“Callie.” The homeowner sighs. The downside of his current roommate — his dog. The homeowner had never been much of a dog person. “The sun isn’t even up yet.”

The border collie doesn’t seem to care, wet nose sniffing over the homeowner’s face and then trailing over to her owner. Her tail wags vehemently and ends up smacking the homeowner in the head as she assaults his roommate with wet licks.

His roommate finally rouses, the dog jumping backwards excitedly and letting out a high pitched bark. “I’m getting up, Cal. Hang on.”

The homeowner listens as the dog leaps off his side of the bed and his roommate shuffles his slippers on. The sound of a drawer opening makes his head turn.

“You’re leaving?”

“I’m just going to take her on a walk.” He replies from the foot of the bed. The dog shuffles expectantly at the ‘w’ word. He pats her head and grabs ahold of his sweater. “Shouldn’t take too long. We’ll go around the woods and then come back.”

The homeowner raises an eyebrow that his roommate can’t see. “In the dark?”

“It’ll be light out before we get back.”

The drawer closes and the homeowner hears his roommate quietly scolding the dog for trying to play tug-of-war with a pant leg. Then, the scuttling of nails across hardwood as Callie gallops down the hallway.

He shuts his eyes and readily awaits the pull of sleep again, only to be met with a quick kiss pressed to his forehead. It’s impossible to control the flush that spreads like a plague through his cheeks, and he can only hope it’s dark enough to hide the warmth in his face.

His eyes flutter open to look at his roommate, already expecting the soft curve of a smile on his face. He’s greeted by big doe eyes as well; the contrast between the stoic homeowner and his smiling roommate might’ve been almost comedic, if the homeowner’s face hadn’t taken a pinkish glow of its own.

“See you in an hour or so.” His roommate tells him. The homeowner only grunts in response.

The tall silhouette turns and slowly disappears down the hallway. It’s almost like he takes away his warmth with him, because the homeowner’s bed feels much colder now. The empty space next to him becomes even more prominent.

The front door swings open and then shuts, rattling the old house with it.

The homeowner sighs lightly, glancing at the clock one more time. Telling himself that he’s not trying to make the hands move faster.

…

He didn't come home that day. Or that night.

The first thing on the news that morning was a public safety announcement, the reporter practically begging the people not to go outside for their own sake. Something about solar activity. People crawling up from beneath the earth. The homeowner couldn’t listen to it anymore. He turned it off and stared at the black screen for a long time.

He thought maybe there would be some stroke of luck, his roommate would make it back home and they would hole up in the house together. Maybe this was the universe punishing him for finding peace. He hoped it was all just a fucked up nightmare; that he’d wake up in a few minutes and forget about this.

He hadn’t prayed in years. But he was praying now to anyone who would listen.

That night, he went out onto the street. Something in his mind told him to at least look, make some kind of effort. But there wasn’t a point.

People are scattered through the streets, frantically calling the names of their relatives and asking anyone who passes by if they've seen someone who looks like their lost loved ones — either alive along the road, or charred and barely recognizable. Those who were smart enough to recall that monsters resided on the surface now carried guns strapped across their backs or holstered at their sides. The homeowner briefly thought about the rifle stored away in his closet. Now might be the time to pull it back out.

After so long of observing the ongoing crisis, the homeowner turned around and went back to the house. He felt guilty for giving up so soon, but asking around wasn’t going to do anything for him. If anything, it put more eyes on him. What would happen to him if people knew he was alone?

He sat in the kitchen with his head in his hands for a long time. An open beer just in front of him. He cursed every higher plane of existence, wondering why everything had to go to shit just when life wasn’t starting to feel absolutely meaningless.

He took another swig of the beer, his hand squeezing the glass tightly as he stared at the table hard enough to burn holes through it. His rifle was strapped behind him on the chair.

The cataclysm had consumed any sense of normalcy he had. Not only had he lost everything he gained, but he felt like he was also losing his mind. He had the daytime to worry about along with those ‘visitors’ or whatever the news had called them.

Now he didn’t know what to do. Where to go from here. He didn’t know what had happened to his roommate.

…

Maybe he didn’t want to know.

…

He didn’t want to think about it anymore.

Chapter Text

The homeowner stared up into the sky, feeling light on his face after so long hiding away in the dark.

He lays out in the yard and lets the sun hit his skin. The grass around his body felt like nothing. It isn’t prickly like grass usually is, but it isn’t exactly soft either. Even so, he lies stretched out in it like a giant bed.

The isolation. It had been heavenly for a while, but now the homeowner’s mind was beginning to wander.

He thought this was all he ever wanted. A space for himself where he could be left alone. His mind, however, kept drawing him back to that house not unlike the one that sat a couple feet away. This newer one was bare, stripped of those he had encountered and lived amongst for the past three months.

Thinking about those survivors made his head hurt, almost like he was forcing his consciousness through a storm to reach a distant memory. He wondered what had become of them… and what would happen further down the line when they had to make decisions between life and death themselves.

He hoped he had set them up for at least some grounds of survival. Maybe they would bunker down and divide up the remaining meals they had left. They’d wait until the world didn’t scorch out every aspect of life, and no visitors would hurt them either.

Maybe they would go on happily. Live many more years.

…

Would they look for him?

The sound of footsteps approaching snaps his attention out from inside his own head.

“Hi, stranger,” a familiar voice says. Before he can look up, a figure is settling down next to him on the grass, folding his knees up.

The homeowner doesn’t need to look at him to realize who it is. “Hey.”

He tilts his head to look at the taller man, watching the way he toys with a piece of grass near his shoe as a quiet settles between them, almost like neither of them knows where to begin the conversation.

“Weren’t you… a visitor?” The homeowner asks finally, but there’s no accusation in his tone. More like a mix of confusion and curiosity.

His roommate lifts his head. “Me?” He questions as if he isn’t the only other person on the entire plane. “Probably. I don’t know. I mean… I feel like I’m in two separate places right now and one of them feels less…”

“…Human?” The homeowner finishes with a raised eyebrow.

His roommate nods.

A silence stretches between them for a long time, a breeze from a nonexistent force brushing past their hair and the grass.

“Are we dead?” The homeowner asks.

His roommate doesn’t reply, or even acknowledge that he spoke. It’s like the question had never been a thought at all. The homeowner doesn’t repeat it again. He already knows the answer, but doesn’t know if he wants it said out loud.

He had seen Her. Death. There was no way around it.

His roommate’s gaze falters away from the distant nothing that engulfs the perimeter of the field. The homeowner feels those big pupils on his face.

Now it’s his roommate’s turn to ask a question. “Did you want—“

“Please.” He doesn’t even get to finish because the homeowner sits up and suddenly there’s only forward. He doesn’t know how he already knows the question before it was asked, but he couldn’t care less. It was his afterlife, anyway.

Their lips meet in a longing kiss, but more importantly, the homeowner gets to embrace the taller man and he’s solid and he’s real. His hands come up to hold his face; the touch of skin beneath his fingers better than any drug. Hands card through his hair and the homeowner breathes out into the press of lips against his.

The homeowner wants to say so many things to him.

I missed you. How did you get here? What happened when you left?

He settles on an I love you too because his roommate seizes the opportunity to speak first against his lips. The response earns him another soft kiss, one to his mouth again and then more peppered across his face.

Suddenly the past few months don’t matter anymore because there’s nothing out to get him. No door to keep locked and no curtains to pull closed.

The answers can wait. They have all the time in the world, and somehow that’s more than comforting to the homeowner.

When his roommate pulls away, neither of them go far, resting their foreheads together. There’s an unspoken understanding between them that while, yes, life had come crashing down like a chandelier these past few months, those same hardships wouldn’t be found here.

The homeowner felt… relieved. The feeling was almost foreign when the tension drained from his shoulders. He should’ve felt it when he first arrived at this place, and yet, not being completely alone comforted him in a way he almost didn’t realize.

Staring into his roommate’s eyes, the reflection mirrored his own sentiment. The mutual relief brought on by the simple fact they were together again.

They would be alright.

Neither of them were alone.

Both of them turn their heads when they hear the sound of a dog barking in the distance, echoing off the exterior of the house.

The homeowner can’t help but chuckle, turning back to his roommate.

“No way. Callie’s here too?”