jagged jaws

It had been a while since he’d done this. Last time was before anything was official, at least in his mind, back when the group were just bystanders to him, complications to how he imagined his and Eli’s reunion going. He didn’t have time to care about the group’s well-being over his own desires then, and Justin was starting to feel that disconnected again as he rifled through the group’s medical stash for purely selfish means.

They were good people, here. He could use that. No one would look twice at him because he was supposed to be part of them and no one knew how little that actually meant to Justin, honestly. They were good conversationalists. Good fighters, good in general. But it didn’t matter whose wounds might have been soothed in the future by this medicine if it meant he didn’t have to spend another painfully-dull hour sober. Only, no matter how aggressively he rifled through things, nothing good appeared that he could use. Justin clicked his tongue, irritated.

“Fucking useless,” he mumbled, furrowing his brow and starting to pick through individual pieces, trying to find something he might have missed.

The monastery’s wearing on him, every second spent inside those strong walls another second that Eli wishes he were outside of them. Finding something more useful to do with his time than smoke and glare at replicas of Jesus on a cross. 

He can’t keep himself occupied, but if he thinks Justin might be any kind of a distraction, he proves too much of one the second Eli finds him.

It’s like a mirror to his own desires, fingers rifling through medical supplies, discarding the necessities that in this case were deemed useless. How many times had Eli been tempted, how many times had he ignored that urge? Just so he could pretend he wasn’t a junkie anymore, still trailing after those more capable. He’d rather count himself among those ranks, and his mouth still goes dry just watching Justin, that warring sense of dread and hope in his chest that he might find something stronger than a bottle of advil tucked away.

“Let me guess," he starts. The humor never quite comes through, it feels like poison sitting on his tongue, a festering rot in his chest that mimics the black lines taking up residence there.

“This isn’t what it looks like?”

She leans forward excitedly in her seat for a better look at his expression. His jaw works, lips shifting, a sign of thoughts she’s quite desperate to learn. Give it time, is that right? “Are you going to try to change what I think?” She loves when people do that. It’s a very sweet sort of concern, she thinks, going to any sort of lengths to ensure that other people think the right things. It’s an endeavor near and dear to her heart these days.

Watching him hungrily, she traces a fingertips over the letters in front of her. He doesn’t seem as excited by the question. She doesn’t mind. A triumphant little smile dances into place when he answers, and she scrapes and scoops the raisins into one neat pile once again, peering down at them in thought. She likes this system. She should carry raisins with her. And maybe it was raisins she was tasting - raisins, these raisins, that brought her to this place, sharp and sweet and easily mistaken for blood. 

“Would a spoon have a very gentle personality, do you think?” Maybe he’s offering it as a natural inverse of a knife. “It doesn’t seem as sharp, I think, as the knife and the fork.” She tilts her head in thought, her mind already rushing to debate itself. “But it could probably stab all the same, if you were strong enough, or maybe if you used the handle.” Her eyes don’t stray far from his face as she considers the prospect. “But I think that, if I were any utensil today, I might be a slotted spoon. Scooping, not stabbing. Things are slipping through that shouldn’t. It’s very frustrating.” She rubs at the eyes scarred across her arm, tracing over the raised lines. “I would rather be tongs today, maybe. Or a garlic press, even. It would be nice, wouldn’t it? Being a garlic press?”

Eli doesn’t have to think long or hard about the question. It’s never been worth the effort to try and change what anyone thinks about him, and in the end he doesn’t believe it’ll make a difference. If she likes him after first impressions, all he can think is that she’s setting herself up for swift disappointment. The only thing that really hinges on is whether they’ll be around each other long enough that it’s even worth learning her name. “Nah. Doesn’t matter to me."

There’s a quiet snort of amusement at how strangely violent the conversation shifts, and if it doesn’t bother him it’s still interesting to hear it from someone who looks like her. “Sure you could make a shiv out of all of the above. Prison rules apply, right?”

It might leave him studying her for a moment too long, and his gaze settles into something duller in an instant. Nothing to do with the words, barely registering as he watches her hands move, the piles collected before her, and then her fingers rubbing at her arms. Attention it draws to raised skin, and he’s not sure if he’s supposed to notice or not. Whether they’re covered or not, scars seem like a private thing, and he’s too quick to wonder who put them there. 

“You lost me,” he says bluntly, no opinions one way or the other on the life of a garlic press. He jerks his chin at her. “Okay, so if you’re not a nun, who are you?”

Her eyes glitter when he laughs, a dark mirror fixed on him with her usual intensity, her usual reluctance to tear her gaze away. When she finally does, it’s only for a quick glance down toward the raisins she’s sorting carefully atop the table, pushing them into shape. “I like you, I think,” she tells him. He’s interesting to her, at least, but she imagines that must be all the same. Maybe he’s very small inside himself, too far away from other people. “Come sit with me. Just for a bit, maybe, if you really do have somewhere else to be soon.” Leaning back in her seat, she stretches her leg out beneath the table, pushing out the chair across from her in invitation.

It’s not the first time she’s gotten that question from these new people, but it’s no less entertaining this time around. Not the idea that somebody like her might be a nun - nothing is so outside the realm of possibility, after all, something she might know better than most - but the thought that being within the walls of the monastery might be enough to make her a nun.

“Are you a priest?” she counters, then, pleased by the balance. Her hand flutters over the raisins, her gaze falling to see what shape she’s made. K-N-I. Unfinished, but she can feel the letters burning against her skin, the complete word stuck beneath the surface of her palm. “Or are you a knife?”

The reaction surprises him, blunt, and unexpected considering how rarely he hears those words. Or believes they’re ever warranted, and that gives him more pause than anything as she nudges out the chair. For a moment his teeth scrape against the inside of his mouth in a nervous habit before he just shrugs. “Give it time.” He doesn’t answer with words, but after a moment he shrugs. Fingers grabbing the back of the chair, turning it around so he can straddle it. Settling in with arms across the back, watching her over the table. Easier not to say either way, though if he wants to leave, he doesn’t need an excuse.

He makes a face at the question, just the idea of it distasteful. The reverse was probably just as true, turning himself into everything his father and his church would hate, just out of some petty vengeance. But he doesn’t think she needs that answer, the humor evident in her tone, and he huffs out a laugh. So she’s not a nun; he wasn’t banking on it anyway. “Point taken.” 

That question stalls him. Amusement fading, watching her from across the table. It felt random, part of him wanted to bite back as soon as it’s past her lips. Ask her what she’s on about exactly, as if he didn’t taste the memory of blood on his tongue the second she asked.

“Probably,” he finally says, the words a slow drawl. “Are you a spoon?"

Thanks for being honest, she wants to say. But even now, Patty can’t be sure that he is. He resists her everywhere he can, it feels like, face screwed up in conflict. He reminds her of those boys she wanted to fix in high school and the thought alone drags a dry, endeared smirk back to her lips. There it was. The root of the issue, why Patty still felt fond of his stubborn ass even after his jeers and sneers. He was who he fucking was, she guessed; as determined to be angry and alone as she was to be happy and not. 

She thinks he gives in at the end, maybe. In a way that still gives him deniability. She thinks that’s the most she’s gonna get from him, and in some roundabout way, that counts as effort. Patty stops several feet in front of him and sighs, her smile dehydrated but still alive, despite itself. 

“Nah. I shouldn’t have let you rile me up that bad in the first place. ‘Got a pretty little scar trying to prove you wrong ‘n everything. Stupid.” Reaching up with both hands, Patty held the collar of her dress out just far enough to push her other hand into it, digging around her top a bit before pulling it out, a lone, rumpled cigarette now dangling from the ends of her fingers. She held it close to her face as if checking it for structural soundness before extending her arm and wiggling it towards him in offer, her free arm wrapped around her own ribs. 

“So I guess what you said was kinda true. It’s gonna take something like drowning a sack full of puppies before I ever get really mad at you.”

It’s easier to tell himself there’s no sense of relief at her answer, no sensation at all except clearing the air. She’s not mad, he’s not sorry, and none of it quite feels familiar when he doesn’t have something stronger to drown out any possibility that he cares either way. For once he’s quiet, lips pressed together as he watches her settle in front of him, before her fingers are searching inside the top of her dress. It has him raising an eyebrow, but nothing escapes him until the cigarette appears, and he’s letting out a short huff of air that’s almost a laugh.

Rocks scuff beneath his heels as he presses forward, fingers reaching for the cigarette. It feels like a peace offering, crumpled or not he doesn’t feel like wasting either of those things. Quietly grateful for just the thought of smoke in his lungs that he offers it up around a mouth already muffled by the filter between his lips. “Thanks, bonita.” 

It only takes him a second to get the lighter from his back pocket, another to get it lit, and by the third he’s inhaling deeply. There’s no real satisfaction in anything else she says, not when he turned it on her like a weapon. Still, he’d rather curl up in his self-pity where no one else can play witness to it than admit he felt any real regret for it. The closest he can manage is a confession mouth half beneath his breath. “Got a couple trying to prove it to myself too.” 

More sarcasm. More biting edge to his words. It might be fascinating if it wasn’t a little sad, and Patty felt anxious even just feeling like he was determined to fight with her again. She speaks up before he’s totally finished speaking, trampling over his last few meaningless words that he’s only saying to make certain she knows she’s unimportant.

“I’m asking, Eli, not telling–’cause I honestly have no idea,” she fights it, but laughs, slightly at his expense. Whatever makes him feel like this is something that has to be this way, she can’t help but feel sorry for him. What he wants is a complete enigma; whatever it is, she suspects he isn’t really even trying for it. If only she had more self-control. Or sense. Frustrations does bleed in at the end. Why did things have to sour for no good reason? 

She starts to walk out of the maze, towards him. “I don’t have any expectations for you. I feel like I just turn around sometimes and there you are, ready to fight. Maybe that’s what you want. Maybe you get off on it. Am I close?”

Eli scoffs in annoyance, he wants to say fuck her, fuck those questions, fuck whatever assumptions she’s making about him right now. Whatever it is looking back at him, whether it’s genuine, whether it’s pity, fuck all of it. His lip curls, he feels like an animal with teeth bared, and the only reason he doesn’t spit all of that at her is because it's exactly what she’s expecting. She even says as much, calls him out on words he hasn’t said yet, and instead his teeth end up grinding together, gaze shifting away from her, staring at the outline of the maze instead.

What he wants is to forget every single awful thing that was ever done to him, every single awful thing he’s ever done. He wants to be high again, he wants that to be an option without worrying if it’s one more thing that’ll destroy him from the inside out. He wants to claw the poison from his veins, every form of it, even his own tainted blood. He wants to forget that anyone ever saw him try and do exactly that.

The list just gets longer, and none of it has anything to do with her. Maybe she could help him forget, maybe he blew any chance of that a long time ago. Maybe it’s better that way, and after too long staring anywhere but at her, his gaze flicks back up and he shrugs his shoulders.

“Yeah. Maybe.” It’s an exhausted admittance, and part of him thinks it would be easier if she’d just fight him back. He’d know what to do with it at least. Anger was easy.

“Are you still mad at me or not?”

Part of Wes likes entertaining this idea. A big part, actually. The satisfaction of him being right about such a religious place being wrong and evil would be worth it all. He’s picturing a bloodbath inside and the mere thought of it has him feeling better about…  everything.

The concern, the judgment, for that thought hits him immediately. Wes shakes his head, like it’ll knock that thought out of mind. Eli’s comment is enough to ignore it for a second. “The mediocre lookin’ brunette always makes it to the end. So you can have that.”

“Hot blonde?” he says, pointing at himself, mockingly, “Gets all the good lines and the cool fucking heroic death moment. Better than the final girl.”

The mediocre comment pulls Eli’s lip up in a sneer, but it’s nothing he can pretend to be offended by for very long. It’s been a while since he’s seen a mirror, but it doesn’t matter. He’s been worse, he’s been a wasted, strung out version of himself, and if he carries scars now for a wholly different reason, right now he’s trying to convince himself it’s worth it just for the power.

For the assurance it grants that if anything here does go bad, he won’t just be hoping that he’ll survive it. He’ll claim it with bloodied knuckles and bared teeth.

The joke might be stupid, but it’s a slight distraction from that, from just how desperately he’d like to do exactly that right now. “Heroic my ass. Hot blonde’s the one that gets slaughtered in her underwear in the first ten minutes.” He holds his hands up, happy to surrender the role.

“You want that gig, be my guest.”

It takes a moment. She doesn’t particularly care what people think about her beyond an indifferent sort of curiosity, and so she doesn’t linger much on the words as she continues to sort through the trail mix. It’s not until she looks up, studying the man with that intrusive kind of focus in her eyes, that she realizes what’s happened - and a delighted smile is quick to spread across her face.

“Is it really?” How exciting, that he found a meaning in her words she didn’t intend. He must have done it on purpose. Maybe it’s a habit of his, turning people’s words into something else. Maybe she should test him on it sometime. “Even with people you don’t know? It could upset them, I think, to be on the receiving end of a topic like that.” Not that it makes her very uncomfortable. The subject matter doesn’t stand out to her as anything particularly sensitive, and her skin is quite thick regardless. Or made of something else entirely.

“You must be very forward, too.”

She smiles at least, even if it takes her a minute to catch on. It’s a moment he has to study her, long enough to wonder just how long she’s been here and for the much more literal meaning of her question to settle in. Trail mix separated in front of her, divided up into sections. His brow lifts curiously before she starts talking and it draws his attention back to her face.

“So what?” A short laugh comes out with it, incapable of imaging a world where he cared about whether or not something out of his mouth upset someone. Justin would probably be on the floor right now if he’d heard her ask Eli that question. After a moment he just shakes his head, because there was nothing about it worth considering. If it was offensive, if it was just a line that got shot down too quickly, either way he didn’t care. Rejection didn’t mean anything if the outcome didn’t matter to him either way, and he’s made it a point to keep it that way. “Worst they can do is say no.” 

Eli laughs back. He’s really a kind of sad enigma of a man. But Patty has to admit, he’s got a strange talent for spouting words that make him seem both proud and ashamed at exactly the same time. Smiling slightly at her feet, Patty starts to walk out of the maze when she picks her head back up, glancing at him pointedly with her brows up high.

“And how’s that working out for you so far? ‘You…getting the most of what you want, that way?” She asks, honestly curious. Different folks, different strokes, sure. But she couldn’t help but feel like no one could ever really be happy with pushing people away on a whim. 

A more derisive laugh is all that greets that question at first. Eli’s eyes narrowing slightly as if that’ll help him pick up any trace of sarcasm in the question. It sounds like it should be, which only makes it confusing when it sounds more genuine than anything else. His teeth tear at the inside of his mouth, before he answers with a short “great.” 

As if he placed any real expectations on the people around him. They could treat him just as badly and he wouldn’t care. And the only thing that comes too quickly to his mind the second he starts considering what he wants, is heroin. An abrupt craving for it, years of habit making it his first answer, his first and only love. “What exactly is it that you think I want? ‘Cause I’ll tell you now, people and their bullshit expectations don’t have fuckin’ thing to do with it.”

It’s a simple, understood, and unvoiced fact that it doesn’t matter what else anyone thinks of him. Including her, because she could never be capable of as much loathing as he holds for himself some days. “So if you’re waiting for an apology you’re shit out of luck.” 

It still tastes like blood.

No matter what Tali does, the sharpness seems to linger on her tongue, no less oppressive now than it was when she first came to this place. So she’s leaning into it. The wine might have been close. It was a nice color, a nice texture, but… thin, maybe. Thinner than what she was hoping for. Now she sits with a bag of trail mix spilled across the table in front of her, carefully and quizzically separating the components into piles. Raisins could be closer. There’s a linear satisfaction to it, at least. That could mean something.

“Would you like my nuts?” Her words break the silence first, the sound of footsteps reaching her ears as the question comes to a conclusion and a newcomer seems ready to join her in the otherwise empty area. She might have grinned in satisfaction, pleased with her skills in perception, pleased to see and hear and know in so many directions, if she weren’t trying so hard to concentrate. “I only wanted the raisins, I think.”

It doesn’t take long for restlessness to set in. Not only are they at a monastery, the eyes of Jesus and a half dozen saints staring down at Eli every second of the day. But they’re locked in with them, supposedly banned from going outside those gates where he knows there’s plenty of monsters that he could be ripping through without a care in the world.

He feels like a dog that’s been muzzled, ready to start gnawing his own limb off. Not to get free, but just to taste blood in his mouth again, even if it’s his own. Smoking only tempers it so much, but it’s what he has, and he’s passing through rooms looking for some way to the rough when the question comes. One that drags his feet to a stop, startling enough that a snort of amusement escapes him before he can remember that his skin is crawling.

“Well,” he drawls. "That’s forward of you. Usually that’s my line.”

Eli sure doesn’t make it easy to be around him. Patty wonders if he can even help himself at this point. Smirking wide, dry and bitter, with a hint of fondness that endures even against her better knowledge, she just hums as an answer and steps around in a circle to make her seem much more detached from this conversation than she is. 

Only, he pursues it and Patty thinks that’s the only hint that he cares at all that she’s ever going to get. When she faces him again, bringing her eyes up off the pavement nonchalantly, she shrugs her little shoulders again. “Why would I be mad? If that’s your honest opinion, there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s a shame, though. We weren’t as close as we could be but I still thought we were friends.”

It should be something he argues, or something he should apologize for, but he’ll never do either of those things. It was his honest opinion at the time. He doesn’t know that it’s changed, just that it doesn’t matter today. If he’d found her smoking out here instead of wandering a maze etched on the ground, likely he’d only feel envy. 

Because his brother wasn’t dying today and he wasn’t trying to tell himself he didn’t care.

Eli can’t tell if she’s serious or not, but it has a short laugh escaping him all the same. It didn’t seem like anything she should wish for, and maybe that summons more guilt than anything. How quick he was to lash out at people that actually mattered to him.

“You think I’m not an asshole to my friends too? It’s my only real life skill.” 

“Dumb assess,” he answers without missing a beat. He looks up to Eli, wags a finger in his direction as though imparting some sage wisdom and not talking whatever shit pops into his mind, “The dumb asses who walk into the creepy fucken building that we’d be yelling at if we saw us on TV.”

The fake seriousness doesn’t last long though. Wes is easily pleased – and getting someone to laugh at how he’d been entertaining himself in the garden? The easiest way to make him happy.

Eli laughs again, more because he can’t argue. They are dumbasses, and no small part of him is waiting for this to turn into the Exorcist. The rest is bothered enough by the oppressive piousness inherent in the building behind them. Bitterness rising in his throat every time they swore God had kept them safe, like God wasn’t already dead. The most he could offer was to keep his mouth shut, something that wasn’t easy for him even on his best days.

All in all, this place was uncomfortable either way, but at least if it turns into a more blatant version of a horror movie he’ll have something to fight. 

“Hey, as long as I’m the final girl."

He isn’t interrupting, but only because he can’t. Patty focuses intently until she reaches the middle, doesn’t even notice Eli until she’s made it there. And when she does, she stares back, wondering if there’s some reason for it. He isn’t who she would expect to appear; she isn’t really holding any grudges, but she hasn’t forgotten the last time they’d spoken. And she can’t help but be a bit petty about it. It was so like men to just steamroll past things they’d said, hoping no one would bring it up again.

“No idea. They could have a field of cabbage patch dolls out there for all I know.” She quirked her brows high. “Maybe someone less useless would know better.”

It takes him a long moment to remember why the comment has a bite too it, the whole conversation a half forgotten thing. Left somewhere in another state, before he’d taken out his vengeance on a monstrosity, ripping teeth from it’s skull to take home as a trophy. And even if he hadn’t had bigger monsters on his mind, he’d never been good at either watching his tongue, or apologizing when he couldn’t.

His nose wrinkles, he can’t resist throwing a comment back, a lazy shrug of his shoulders following. “Maybe. Know where I can find them?"

Since arriving, Patty had found herself drawn to the sisters. Maybe it just fascinated her, the fact that they claimed their belief kept them safe through all this. Whatever the truth was, it was strangely easy to just sit and listen to some of them as they lovingly recounted tales of their monastery. After getting somewhat of a lecture about one of the attractions hidden in the garden, Patty made her way out there alone until she found it, a paved section surrounded by thick trees. 

The sister had called it the Labyrinth. It was a large maze drawn in chalk along the ground, one large symbol that, after a while of curiously staring, drew Patty to walk forward, following the imaginary walls until she came to stand in the previously-empty center. 

Outside was preferable to inside, regardless of how many monsters were milling around the front gates. At least they were unmistakable in what they were. Not like the sisters inside, some ever present hypocrisy in that claim of holiness. He’d never seen a single trace of it in his life, let alone in some aging building with aging, pious women.

If he’s on edge, Patty looks at peace, gliding by white lines until she reaches the center, and for once Eli keeps his mouth shut until she does. The vague feeling like he’s interrupting something, even if it’s just the reminder that not everyone feels their teeth set on edge every time they have to walk by a hanging crucifix.

He just doesn’t hold his tongue for long, shifting to stand at the edge of the maze before he nods his head at her. “So you think they’re gonna have a giant sudoku puzzle on the other side?”

The Lord protects us. Bullshit.

Wes hasn’t stopped scowling since the group stopped in this so-called safe haven. He moved straight through the building. Short and curt with all of the ‘sisters’. The only place that felt even slightly untouched by God was the garden. Well looked after and so very much alive compared to every other part of the world. Wes hates it. On principle. 

There were no crucifixes but there was a statue. Some saint. Wes had a sharpie in his bag but he definitely was not the one who graffitied the statue. He would never write something so obscene or draw something so childish across the forehead of a Saint.

“The sisters are sick fucks, aren’t they?” 

There was nothing comforting about this place. Maybe some others would disagree, but the only thing Eli had learned since this started, the only lesson he’d taken to heart from any of this, was that the only thing monsters didn’t fuck with were other monsters. The fact that this place is kept whole and unmarred by the world around them only screams that there must be something worse buried here than there is out there.

If he’s biased, he’ll accept that. It doesn’t make his laugh any quieter when he walks out into the garden and sees what’s been left there like some childish retribution. He can only assume Wes is responsible, but that only makes it funnier.

“Then what the fuck does that make us?"

Ladi isn’t sure what to make of the man. He invites himself over like he owns the place and while there’s a certain annoyance there at it, there’s a certain admiration too. It’s not someone he’s spoken to before, not anything more than a comment in passing here and there. But he’s seen him around. Enough, now, to know that if the man wanted to be here, he’d be here and nothing Ladislav was going to say would change that. So he didn’t try, just accepted it. 

The man settles onto the edge of the building, swinging his legs over the edge like he’s not afraid of the drop down to the floor and Ladislav just leans on the edge a bit more, inhaling deeply as he takes the smoke into his lungs. 

When the man asks for a light, Ladislav digs out his lighter and hands it over to the man nonchalantly. “Comrade,” he repeats with a huff, though there’s a smirk on his face as he says it because he thinks it’s funny that most American’s think his accent is Russian, like there’s no other possibility that anyone from that region of the globe is from anywhere else. Hell, there were a couple of guards in the prison who had dubbed him as The Ruski. 

“Typical American,” he spouts, blowing smoke at the man, but it was done in more of a playful manner than anything. He leaned further against the concrete divider that separated the roof from the drop down to the ground. He let his arms hang down, head dropping as he looked down at the ground and spit, watching it’s descent to the ground below.

If Eli annoys him, the man doesn’t give any real sign of it. He just hands over the lighter, which is about all Eli needs to know. There’s a quick nod of thanks as he perches the cigarette between his lips and lights the end of it. Offering it back with a muffled ‘thanks’ before he takes a long drag, always too grateful for the sensation of smoke in his lungs.

The man settles against the wall next to him. Maybe there’s real judgement in the comment he throws out at him, maybe it’s genuine humor. Eli can’t tell the difference, but he snorts out a short laugh of his own, because he’s not offended by it either way. 

“Selfish asshole?” He nods his head, watching small, gray chunks of ash drift away to the ground below. If he fell he’d probably smash his head open, break his legs, either way it could make for a bad day. But he watches those shadows track beneath the car, and all he can think is how easy it would be to pull on that power now, just because he can. Because he’s capable of it, and he doesn’t honestly need a better reason.

He doesn’t. He just agrees with the stranger before glances back at him. "Come on man. That’s not just Americans. That’s everyone.” 

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” she snorts in return, uncaring how it sounds to him– whether or not he believes her but she doesn’t think he would. From what she’s gathered, Rachel recognizes a fellow observer in Eli. Keep to themselves, watch what’s going on around them, read people. It’s what’s helped keep her alive the past year and change, knowing who to bargain with– who to tell off, who to win over. Though, if she’s being honest: Rachel doesn’t think she’s won anyone over. “As long as you don’t go dying on my watch and ruin my “cred”,” she snickers, “I’ll stop worrying.” It’s obvious she isn’t really worried but her words hold some humor that the doctor doesn’t try to conceal.

“Nice try but,” she rolls her shoulders, smirking, “doctor’s not buying it. I guess you’ll have to find another.” Rachel leans back, arching a brow at him as she looks down at the notebook before her, her store of medical supplies. “Or,“ she doesn’t realize she’s making the suggestion until she does, “you can come on the next supply run. Whatever you find is yours.” She hates the unwritten “buddy” rule that has been established since she joined the air force base group. She gets it, she doesn’t think she needs it, but she gets it. And if she has an extra pair of hands, it does make for getting supplies back easier–– less likely to crack or smash any bottles if she encounters anything nasty and has to fight them off single-handedly. 

Something between a laugh and a scoff escapes Eli’s lips, but there’s genuine humor behind it. Amused by the thought that as much as she says it as a joke, that selfish motivation is probably closer to the truth than any real concern. Not that he has any intention of testing it either way, and it’s answered with a quick grin, his own answer carrying just as much buried sincerity. He was too stubborn to die. “Dying is for bitches.”

He doesn’t expect the offer. It catches him off guard in a way that’s both pleasant and dangerous, a spark of interest as he looks up at her. He likes the idea of being out there more than he does being trapped in here, a violent urge to cut his teeth that he can’t seem to shake and doesn’t try all that hard. And he can’t tell if that’s better or worse than that idea of ‘finders, keepers’ that she’s implying, how easy it could be for him to find a little something just to take the edge off. It probably says enough about her that she suggests it, but it’s nothing he can summon any judgement for.