Elias

"Probably wouldn’t be a bad thing for you to quit." Connor said after a moment. "Easy enough to get sick when it’s getting colder every day."

He reached for the seasoning Elias had given him, sprinkling in a bit before moving to the table to gather the next couple of cans that had been opened.

He had successfully just worried himself. It was getting colder, and Georgia was notorious for it’s sudden changes in weather. Without medicine or vaccines to fight infection, the common cold could turn into something far deadlier. 

Biting down on his lip, he took in a deep breath, looking back to Connor. "But you're right. I probably ought to. Speaking of the cold -- we oughta look in to...maybe settling somewhere, when it gets cold."

Curiosity killed the cat. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered, would the cold slow the dead? Maybe they could move north, and maybe the walkers would freeze in their places. Of course, that pit the weather against them, and cold weather was something Elias had never had to truly deal with.

"You’ll eat every bite or no dessert." Connor teased, taking hold of the pot and moving towards the stove to inspect it. 

"Ah…we’re in luck. It’s gas." He said as he turned one of the knobs slowly, instantly smelling the fumes that came from under the cover. "Babe, you got a match or lighter on you?" Connor asked over his shoulder, his fingers tapping against the side of the pot in anticipation.

Then, "Yea." He pulled out his lighter, flicking it until the fire jumped to life. Pushing it under the surface of the oven, the flame jumped onto the open fumes, singeing his hand only slightly. He shook the flame out. "I smoke too much to go without a lighter."

Then, looking at the lighter, he let out a sigh. "I don't know what I'm gonna do once this one runs out. I might have to quit cold turkey."

"You’re my priority now. Anything I can do to help you, just let me know. Okay?" He said softly, trying to sound as confident as he felt.

Not that he entirely expected him to. Still, some things came easier than others from Elias. But Connor was learning the signs, the small changes that flashed a warning when something might be wrong. 

He’d never cared much about people’s feelings, especially when there came times to yell in the face of some self-centered kid who thought he could get away with a little more than the others. Babysitting wasn’t part of the job, and Connor was forced to make kids fresh out of high school grow up fast, or else they join the list of countless names that had been killed in preventable accidents. 

Connor hadn’t been popular with most new recruits because of that, but eventually they wised up and realized he had been helping them from the start.

With Elias however, every fiber of how he felt and what he thought was important. Connor watched his body language, listened to the tone of his voice…the look in his eyes…

There had been nights he had stayed up with lovers, unable to do anything but cry. Few of them had much to say other than that they were sorry.

His fingers reached up over Connor's shoulders, pressing a kiss to his jaw. "I know," he let out slowly, stepping away toward the supplies they had pulled out to cook with. "Thank you."

Swallowing hard, he worked to fixate a can opener to the top of one of the cans. "Canned beans smell like shit," Elias offered, trying to nervously change the subject.

Placing the stainless steel pot on the counter next to Elias, he slowly straightened up, leaning into his lover and placing a light kiss on his neck.

"So…since now you know Simon knows about us, you’ll be sleeping next to me tonight right?" He hummed lightly.

Not only did he miss holding Elias, but Connor was concerned for him as well, ever since the night he’d woken up shaky and slick with sweat.

Smiling faintly, Elias gave a buff of his cigarette to the air. His skin burned lightly with the touch, an electric feeling that Elias wasn't sure if he had ever really known until recently.

"Si, amante," he laughed. "Gladly. I haven't been sleeping well."

"Oh yeah. This will definitely work."

Fire and a pot of some sort and the three of them were looking at full stomachs and hopefully a restful night to accompany it.

Dropping the packets by the cans of vegetables, Connor walked off towards the small kitchen. He took a moment to look around thoughtfully before kneeling down in front of the sink and pulling open a couple of cabinets, his hands rummaging around in the darkness as he sought out a pot.

His fingers found a small saucer, and so he pushed it to the side, reaching back for the next object when he felt something wet, cold, yet very much alive touch his hand.

He jerked his arm away quickly, his hand banging on the side of the cabinet hard enough to leave a nasty bruise as he growled out a pained ‘fuck’. A rat, frightened by the intrusion on its hiding spot, scurried out of the cabinets and ran by Connor, it’s fur slick and glistening wet.

Connor was not bleeding, he noticed first, and that was a positive, and he was laughing. Turning, he saw the rat, and felt a bit of relief flood through his veins. 

Elias let out a deep sigh, looking back to Connor. "Mi hai spaventato," he breathed, offering a half-hearted and playful smack to Connor's arm. "I thought you were hurt."

Odd, how he seemed concerned entirely with someone else's wellbeing now, how quickly and fully the apocalypse had taught him to fall in love and accept it.

In a resigned way, he hefted himself to sit up on the counter, lighting a cigarette.

"Fuck," Jojo muttered under his breath as he scanned the shelves of the small store. The place had been picked clean, leaving behind only a few melted tubs of ice cream in the back and a handful of badly dented cans. He ran a hand over his face, growling curses at the sons of bitches who’d gotten here first. He’d have to move out tomorrow; no point in staying in a town where the best he could hope for dinner was a tin of pineapple that looked like some kids had used it to play soccer.

As he walked out of the store and headed for the rundown motel on the edge of town where he’d set up camp, his mood darkened at the sight of dark grey clouds overhead. Thunder rumbled ominously in the distance, and he picked up speed, jogging down the main street to keep ahead of the weather.

He reached the motel just as it started to rain. Ducking under the awning, he glared up at the sky. “Nice timing,” he said grumpily.

He headed towards the room he’d broken into, only pausing to swipe a water-stained, crumpled up map from the display near the main office. He studied it for a moment, noting that Atlanta was about two weeks away on foot, before crumpling it back up and shoving it into his backpack. He could work out a plan later. The rain showed no signs of letting up, so he’d be stuck here in the middle of nowhere for the whole damn night.

As he climbed the stairs to the motel’s second story, he heard the noise of something behind knocked over. Instantly on alert, he crept up the rest of the stairs and down the hallway, gun at the ready. Biter or survivor, it didn’t matter. At the first sign of trouble, whoever was up here was gonna get a bullet in the head. He wasn’t here to provide some kind of home for wayward stragglers. Not unless they had something worth his time.

He stopped outside the door to the room he’d been living in. The door was ajar, and he could hear someone moving around in there. They were on the other side of the room, and from the sound of it they were rummaging through the small amount of food he’d stocked in there. Jojo stepped into the room, gun trained on the intruder. “Sorry, but there’s no room left at the inn,” he drawled.

Each time Weston asked him to use himself as bait, to lure a victim in and hone his skills, Elias was reminded of things he didn’t want to remember. He wanted to give himself scars, make himself ugly so he would never hear the words pretty boy ever again, force himself to speak English until he lost his Italian accent entirely, to do everything in his power to never feel even the slightest lascivious glower from a sick or deprived man again. Today was no different, though today, he had left the situation feeling wholly satisfied with his own actions.

The bandit Weston had sent him after had been at least twice his size, somehow well-fed in this apocalypse, and someone Weston had witnessed murdering several innocents. Elias had only to cast a few looks in his direction and a smile, and he had the upperhand. Weak he might have been, dull the knife might have been, but the slow carving at the bandit’s neck, ignorant to the gush of blood that touched Elias’s front, was relieving and satisfying. He was ending the life of a sick person.

Nearly an hour ago, with his new trophy gnashing ceaselessly away at the inside of his backpack, Elias had done little to clean himself of the heady, dark substance, and ducked inside a hotel to search for a few things he could bring back to Weston before he had to return to Simon once more. He was in luck; there were quite a few things stocked up in ehre, and he realized, these were not left. These were someone else’s. Which meant he could have been committing two murders today.

Body going rigid at the sound of a voice, Elias turned slowly, showing that his hands were nowhere dangerous. The other man vaguely resembled his cousin, far away in Italy, but he shook it off as a sad mark of nostalgia. With clean adrenaline in his heart, he couldn’t even bring himself to feel threatened by the other’s gun.

Instead, he gave a half of a grin, not realizing he probably looked out of place, soaked in blood the way he was, white shirt ruined. “Sorry. Your, uh, no vacancy wasn’t lit, and the concierge  was bein’ an ass.

He was happier once upon a time. Joking, laughing, mostly smiling. But then it was one hell after another, each one chipping away from him and leaving him nearly a shell of his former self.

“If he starts asking too many questions, I’ll give him ‘the look’. Evidently I had one of those back on base and it scared the junior marines.”

Looking over his shoulder at the cans of food, Connor paused thoughtfully a moment. “If we can find a small pot, I can maybe put together some vegetable soup of some kind. Would be a bit more filling than just scraping from one can each.” There was also a can of tomato sauce in there, something that was pretty much useless unless used for cooking. With what he had, Connor figured he could make a relatively nice dinner for the three of them. 

The apocalypse changed people. He knew he would never know who Connor was before this all had happened. He knew things would never be the same. Part of him was grateful; Connor would never know the mess he had been. He wouldn’t see the ways Elias had traded partners constantly at parties, the nights he would trade sleep for crying, the drugs he did. But where Elias would also never see the person Connor had been, perhaps how cheery he might have once been, Elias knew he himself would never be the frat boy he had once been.

He could dredge it up, though, the remnants of who he was at heart, so long as he was comfortable. The reminders of a college fraternity breathed once more through his smirks and jokes.

“Oh, you have a look, alright,” Elias breathed, rummaging through his backpack, his prurient tone fleeing as quickly as it appeared. The idea of a soup had set his stomach into somersaults, and he hunted curiously, setting aside cans of vegetables. “Maybe by the time that Simon gets back, we could have a full soup roiling, eh? I think I grabbed some spices…Ah! Here you go.” With that, he extracted a few packets he had found, very simple little spice mixes. His nose would have turned up at them before, but they seemed invaluable now. “I don’t know how to use them, but, it’s better than nothing.”

"Now… Now you sound like my father," one finger extended to point at him, she wiggled it up and down as she spoke between her giggles. "My parents… They hardly ever spent time at home, but when they did, stupid things happened." Yeah, stupid things, indeed. Like when her father came back from work just in time to save her from the wrath of an old hag who broke into their house, only to slap her soon after when he figured out that apparently, her then-green daughter sleeping with the woman’s husband was the ugly truth behind the whole mess. Just a glimpse of the memory was enough to quickly wipe the smile off the brunette’s face, but thankfully, Elias’ question brought her back right before she was too absorbed by the past.

"No, no! Hell, no!" shaking her head with a disgusted expression, she raised her hands and flipped it back-and-forth in front of him.

A brief moment of the past came into his eyes, just a gleam of retrospective sadness, but it was small. Elias had had days when he needed something from his parents more than anything – a word, a touch, some sort of praise to know he wasn’t crazy like all the others said he was – and one such day had gone too far. He had wasted the day away on the sofa, somewhere between smoking illegal things and crying, and this day had been one of the most telling. By the time Monica had come home from class, he had spent nearly two hours having a conversation with Gloria.

It had been a year after Gloria’s murder, and while Monica didn’t know what he had done, she had to know he had more hallucinations than he cared to admit.

Shaking it off, he turned, leaning one arm on the side of the chair as if he were really interested in her. A lovely shape meant nothing to him now; his eyes found nothing interesting now that he knew Connor, now that there were lovelier shapes missing from his life.

“Signornina, I should be the least of your worries. I’m not particularly interested in girls anymore. You’re pretty and all, but…” Then, his eyes seemed to light up when her words retreated back to Monica. “Yea, I have a sister. I—I don’t know where she is, though. I hadn’t seen her for about a year before this all started anyway.”

“Pravda, pravda, moy drug… Da blagoslovit vas,” she mimicked the boy’s action and took another sip in one fluid motion.

"Okay, okay. This lingo sprains my tongue, so let’s pretend we’ve sobered up," she smiled, her accent was now back to her usual American one. "To be honest, you’re probably the only person I’ve ever allowed to hear me speaking Russian. I’m always too embarrassed to do it in public because whenever my mom did that, she always sounded so dumb! It was as if she couldn’t accept that we’ve been too western to ever show off our Russian blood anymore. And it’s not like I know too many words in that language, really," the brunette admitted. Angie herself didn’t fully understand what suddenly made her exceptionally chatty around someone she had only known for less than five minutes, but aside from the nonchalance the two had been sharing, it was mostly because deep down, she knew they wouldn’t stick together for too long and anything she was about to say now wouldn’t matter anymore to him soon enough. After all, with everyone she had ever talked to remained missing or assumed dead, there was no reputation she needed to protect anymore — and this talk just happened to be the first thing that brought her to this realisation.

"Anyway," the woman leaned back as she spoke, gesturing that she began to get comfort conversing with Elias, "It seems to me that you, boy, are the one who needs help, instead,” Angie protruded her jaw, pointing at his hands, “That’s quite a lot of blood you got there. You weren’t bitten…,” she paused, train of thoughts racing in her mind, “…were you?”

“My parents did the same,” he explained, glancing down. “Always insisting I speak only in Italian, me and my sister both, but we’ve always lived in America.” Shaking his head, he sucked his cheeks in. At her word – boy – he flinched.

She was a girl. A dark haired girl, with a smile, pleasant appearance, a kind voice, and she was Russian of some sort. She was far from blonde, far from male, far from unpleasant, rude, with a dark grin, far from the lips those words fell from in his nightmares, but it brought Elias’s free hand to clench into his jeans regardless.

Still, he tried to give her a smile. “No. I’m not bit, I’m…beh, I was ‘taking care of business,’ so to speak.” Licking his lips, he tried to give a vicious snarl, but the effect was mostly lost on his slight appearance. Leaning toward her, he faked a Hollywood-esque Italian accent, like a mafia boss, and he whispered to her humorously. “I knew a guy, yea? See, he owed me a lot’a money. Now he’s sleepin’ with the fishes.” As he leaned back, he took another sip of water, fake accent entirely replaced by his own real one.

“Or the walkers, I suppose, but that defeats the purpose of the joke.” Then, eyeing her in a sarcastic manner, praying she took his humorous admission as a joke and nothing more, nothing close to what it really was, he restrained a smirk. “You weren’t bit, were you?”

He realized he couldn’t fathom it. His mind simply couldn’t place where he would be and how he would feel if Elias had never come into his life. It was terrifying and wonderful at the same time.

“I love you too.” He answered, eyes opening ever so slightly. “More than anything.” And it was true; Connor didn’t like people. He hadn’t before the apocalypse and he sure as hell didn’t favor them any more than he did after it began. People were dangerous, whether they intended to be or not. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe…because if something happened to you…Christ, I‘d have nothing left.”

Connor's presence left Elias without the desire for those words, it left him wondering why the words had been there in the first place, and it left a warm sinking feeling in his chest, an openness in his lungs. Connor's presence left him wanting more and less all at once: more, for he wanted Connor to never leave, to never go, to always stay there where Elias could know he was there; less, for Connor took away those familiar walls he had built around himself, destroyed each little barrier and wall that Elias had built up to keep out the people around him, and he was wholly without control -- and enjoyed it.

Tipping his head against Connor's collarbone, a sly smirk crept onto his face, voice soft.

"So Simon knows. What else does he know? You didn't tell him my favourite colour, did you? Or, the real identity of Jack the Ripper? Or who put up Stonehenge?" Pulling away, he let the smirk take over. "These are very importnat things, amante, I need to know if I can trust this man, and if he knows the truth about Stonehenge, well...it's debatable."

Gunfire, explosions, cries….

Connor looked haunted for a moment, afraid even, but he could never ask Elias to keep moving through the countryside like this.

“Of course we can.” He whispered, tongue running over his dry lips. “We’ll find a nice place to call our own, right by the water. Maybe we’ll get lucky and score a vacant beach house.”

He smiled then, and effort to mask his concerns as he thought over some possible ways to prepare for an outbreak occurring within the city. One of the houses near the shore that was lifted off the ground perhaps…or maybe even staying in a boat anchored just out of reach of the docks. He would keep them away from the mainstream of people and more importantly, keep them away from the center of the city.

Maybe it would be awkward for Simon, and maybe they might find others later on whom they trusted enough to live with them, they might build a community. But they could make it work, he liked to think, if they could find the space. 

If he could just stay with Connor, he would be happy. He didn't want to run anymore. He was sick of moving around, too lonely to keep going from companion to companion, but for now, his heart was content. If he had to keep moving, he would, for Connor.

Looking up, he gave a quiet sigh and a smile, pushing a slow kiss to Connor's mouth. Connor didn't want to risk it, but he would try. "I love you," Elias breathed, fingers threading into Connor's hair. "But I know you don't like people. We don't have to be near them. We'll do this however you want to, amante. I'm with you, I'm happy."

Wallace moved in the blink of an eye, falling to the right on his knees in a sliding motion, the small aisle shelves now blocking him from view. Whether or not Elias was actually shooting at Wallace now, Wallace heard shooting. It was the battlefield all over again, he was stranded out in the middle of fucking nowhere, nothing but old stone ruins to protect him from the bullets, his enemies countless. It was hotter than satan’s asscrack. Where the fuck was his backup?

Oh, he wasn’t friendly.

Ducking down behind the counter once more, he barely managed, hearing the fwip of two bullets passing him by. Suddenly, his heart was in his chest. This shouldn’t have excited him, he knew, he shouldn’t have been enthralled by the idea of a fight. He ran the risk of panic attacks, of getting himself killed, but he had done so well so far. Perhaps killing would quell the nausea in his stomach.

Back pressed to the counter, shotgun in hand, he calculated his possibilities. He could stand, wait for the other to pop his head around the corner, or charge him, or—

Elias’s eyes followed the wrap of the counter around. The shelves were just close enough on that side, perpendicular to where the stranger was hiding and far enough from him. Elias would have a clear shot. But he wanted his hands on this kill. He wanted that feeling, the addiction Weston had given him, of the struggle leaving someone’s body, of the blood rushing from their flesh, and shooting him wouldn’t do. Weston did constantly praise him for his affinity for bashing in the skulls of his victims.

Relinquishing the safety of his shotgun, Elias quietly sat it down, senses hyper-attuned to each sound. From where he had hid behind the counter before the other man had come in, he found his bat, the nails in it scraping the ground gently. This was a risk he had to take.

He left his bag where it was, taking the bat tightly in his hand. There felt as if there was a rift in the handle where his fingers belonged, the perfect grip for the murders he’d committed. Picking his body up, he ran low and close to the ground, skidding to get behind the shelf.

“I was worried too.” He admitted. “I didn’t know if I had done something idiotic to upset you or what.”

Connor’s free hand lifted to cup Elias’s cheek, his chest falling with a heavy sigh. “I’ve missed you.” He’d missed him and they’d been less than five feet apart this entire time. Without those touches and familiar glances and words, it had hardly been enough to satisfy the needs he had pertaining to this wonderful new thing in his life. It felt like some sort of twisted romance novel; one that Connor was determined would have a happy ending.

They could make it through this. They could find someplace safe together and wait it all out, and maybe one day, the world could become something close to what it used to be.

Elias had given Connor hope. More hope than he’d had in months.

Smiling, hesitating for a long moment, Elias’s lips broke into a grin. All this time he’d spent worrying over whether or not Simon would have accepted it, worrying over if his relationship with Connor would change his friendship with Simon, and Simon had known. He had never once said anything, and though Elias was distantly aware he had caused all the problems here, relief came in exponential waves.

“I missed you, too,” he breathed, pushing a solid kiss to Connor’s mouth, his own lips stretching into a partial smile. He pulled away after a moment, reveling in the silence, simply staring at Connor. “Do you think…” Elias whispered, “if Clearwater’s clean…we could maybe stay there?”

It was time to move on. Wallace didn’t know why, but ever since the dead came walking he’d abandoned his modus operandi of holding onto a sleeping place for as long as possible until some piggy officer made him move. He was pretty sure police officers had abandoned their badges by now, so there were none to kick him off of “private property”, so really staying put should have been easier than ever.

Instead Wallace found himself shuffling in the same manner as the dead did, never staying in one place for long. He didn’t know why. He’d ask himself but couldn’t answer. Maybe it was all just as simple as having something to do, even something as simple as walking. God it was fucking hot today. Then again this was Kuwait, what more did you expect of a fucking desert. He had to find his squad, Captain would be pissed at him for falling behind. Or was he too far ahead? That’s right, he was a scout, and he was scouting out the territory ahead. 

A grocery store, or what was left of it, Captain would love this news. Wallace shuffled toward it, in no particular hurry, the only dead around were on the ground and no longer moving. Something about that clicked in the back of his head, it meant someone had been here recently, or still was. His right hand, which was holding a pistol, twitched. He was too hungry to care, and he was sick of eating canned beans. Wallace unceremoniously shot at the last glass window that wasn’t completely shattered, even though there were other spots to enter. If there were any dead in the store they’d hear it and stir, best to attracted them and deal with them as soon as possible. 

They didn’t frighten Wallace too much. They were slow and easy enough to kill, predictable, and smelled familiar. At first they had taken him off guard completely, who wouldn’t be taken aback? Stabbing them in the chest and heart, arteries, it did nothing. But once Wallace had figured out headshots did the trick they’d ceased to arouse any feeling at all from him.

He picked up a lone box of twinkies, surprised to find them. Before the dead came walking Wallace would have to pay for all this shit in here. The box was worse for wear but unopened. He picked up a shopping basket from the floor next to his feet and plopped it in. Mostly the store was ransacked, but there was still stuff here. He found Rubbing alcohol, his head felt sore and he realized he was hurt and need rubbing alcohol, when had that happened? It didn’t matter, he plopped it in his basket.

Wallace acknowledged the sound of shuffling behind him but didn’t attend to it straight away, he was examining a can of peaches, trying to find an expiration date. When he realized what he was doing he had to laugh, he didn’t even know what fucking day it was why did he care about a fucking expiration date?

He sidestepped the walker without turning around, backing up and setting down his basket neatly on a shelf. Wallace allowed the walker to come to him a few steps before lunging in and headbutting it with a resounding crack. The force of it sent the walker to the ground, where Wallace finished it by kicking it’s head in. 

But Weston, for an inexplicable reason, had changed the date until the next time they saw each other, until the next assignment and the next possibility for Elias to release the feelings he had in bloodlust. For now, he was on his own. Simon had been acting distant and strange, and the further he got, it seemed, made Elias feel more and more alone. Coupled with that, his stomach felt awful, heat flashes and cold chills driving worry further into his mind. If he could just ignore it, maybe it would go away. But if he was getting sick, wouldn’t it have been better to tell Simon? Still, the drive had become uncontrollable.

He had to take care of it himself. He had to kill freely.

Most survivors would wander at some time to a grocery store, often times ones who were less than competent in other fields. Shotgun in hand, he had crept slowly into the building, glass crunching underfoot, and silence met him. Hiding behind the counter, he had listened, watching through the glass display case. An older man had entered, and slowly, Elias’s brow furrowed.

He’d never killed anyone over thirty. What was it like, he wondered, to watch the life drain out of an older person? Was there more acceptance? Was there a more vibrant fear?

Silent, watching him, Elias felt a clutch in his chest at the sight of the walker. How dare it take his prey, he thought, how dare it take from him what he needed! And yet, he watched the man take care of the walker just as easily as a younger man. Impressive.

Maybe he’d be a pleasant challenge. Elias wanted to feel the adrenaline again.

Standing slowly, aiming the shotgun at the other’s head, he licked his lips, voice slow and even.

“Turn around. I want to watch your face.”