#ans.*

     crane blinks, like the question throws him off. like it should have been glaringly obvious — or would have been, to anyone else. anyone outside the garrison. anyone who isn’t under the thumb of a man so far removed from what he used to be that not even the barest trace of a conscience is left behind.

     this guy’s young, but his eyes are already cold.

      “— because your boss is a fuckin’ monster, that’s ‘how come.’”

     flashbulb memory of a severed hand on a blood - splattered crate, and that was rais being merciful. that was rais on a good day.

     "more like disappointed you’re still vertical. i thought for sure rais would’ve killed you for that fuck - up at the garrison — if i didn’t know any better, i’d say he’s losin’ his touch.”

     because of course it could never be simple. of course a run for crayons had to turn into another round with the butcher brigade. jade radioed them with the intel, said some of rais’ thugs were seen moving crates in and out of the school, but roman was the last person crane wanted to see. 

     well. maybe second to last. 

     the urge to empty his clip into the guy’s face is strong. he fights the impulse, as he’s done before, but not for his own sake. not for roman’s, either. it’s for deanna. they don’t know she’s with him, and he intends to keep it that way. 

     a few more minutes. that’s all he needs. after that —

     “i’m startin’ to get bored of this dance, roman. you and i both know, it’s only gonna end one way.”

     but not here.

     not yet.

     he wets his lips. lowers his sidearm and slides it back into its holster. a gamble, no worse than any he’s rolled the dice on before. roman hasn’t made a move. why, crane can’t begin to guess. maybe his leash is just that short these days. his muscles give him away regardless: coiled tight, tension radiating across the set line of his jaw, and still, he hasn’t moved.

     a few more minutes. just buy her a few more minutes.

     “no — no, maybe i don’t, but you know somethin’ else? if i’m in over my head, then you’re right fuckin’ there with me.” 

     the low scoff, the subtle curl of roman’s lip, it’s a reaction that crane expects. it’s in line to darken, to escalate, the more he pushes on; this is dangerous ground, he knows. but roman hasn’t reached for a weapon. hasn’t moved to strike.

     not yet.

     “you think suleiman gives a shit about you? seriously?” suleiman. not rais. his voice is steady, for once lacking a hostile edge toward his present company. “he’s lying to you, roman. he’s been lying to you, because he’s good at that — at playing people, using them for his own fucked up gains. when was the last time you asked him about your sister?”

     a twitch. roman is listening, but the ice beneath crane is thin. 

     he keeps going without more than a beat of a pause, quick to close the cracks left for an interruption.

     “when was the last time he gave you a real answer, huh? jesus, you’re too goddamn smart for this. in your gut, you can feel it — that nasty, nagging feeling? damn near makes you sick half the time? yeah. that’s doubt, man. you can’t look me in the eyes and tell me that whatever bullshit story he’s been feedin’ you adds up. don’t you wanna know the truth about what happened to her? after everything you’ve done for that motherfucker, don’t you at least deserve that much?”

     “he said he was a what — ?”

     spike actually sets down the beer can and leans forward, like he must have misheard. it casts this whole fucking afternoon into an even more surreal light. crane downs half of his own beer in two swallows. 

     “‘licken - thrope.’ spike — seriously, you think i can make this shit up? hand to god, man. he said he was the victim of an ancient curse, and that, uh — that he had to leave his safe zone because one of the survivors there was a —”

     “vampire?” 

     “nope.”

     “then what, fuckin’ bigfoot?” 

     “colder.” he grins. “a ghoul. wanted me to help him grab, uh, wolfsbane, and — fuckin’ cinnamon? for some bullshit ‘cure’ dahlia told him about.”

     “dahlia — that’s the one who thinks she’s a witch, right?”

     “i’m not so sure she isn’t. or that she isn’t batshit enough to really believe it, anyway.”

     “jesus, mary ‘n joseph, every time i think the world can’t get any crazier.” spike snorts a disbelieving laugh and shakes his head, picking up his beer again to gesture at crane with it. “what is it about you, man?” 

     “what d’you mean?” 

     “you attract crazy. you got this whole all - american, white - boy - former - military thing, you got most of the people in this city looking to you just as much as brecken, but — still, here you are, talkin’ to me about werewolves and ghouls ‘cause you managed to run across the one crackpot left who can’t even pronounce the word ‘lycanthrope.’”

     “— lycanthrope?” comes deanna’s voice from the doorway. “damn. what’d i miss?”

     crane looks over at her, the amusement in his grin softening around the edges. “oh, nothin’ much, just a guy —”

     “crackpot,” spike corrects with a lift of the beer can.

     “crackpot,” crane amends. “thought he was under some werewolf curse. don’t worry — i helped him find a cure. just in time for the full moon.” 

     she lets out a chuckle of an exhale, almost like it’s more to herself than to them; almost like she gets the joke better than they do.

     there must be something all too plain in the way her eye contact holds crane’s, because spike clears his throat, pushing himself into a stand and arcing his empty beer can into the trash. 

     “you kids catch up,” he says, the uptick of a knowing smile at the corner of his mouth. “be easy, crane. see ya ‘round, dee.”

     deanna moves slightly to the side to let him pass, then promptly takes his unoccupied seat. not before she snags herself a drink and pops it open with a satisfying fizz. “so,” she says.

     “so,” crane echoes back. 

     “ain’t you a sight for sore eyes. y’know, starin’ at so many zombies makes me appreciate the finer things in life.”

     he laughs and there’s a softness to it. genuine. heat touches the exposed skin on the back of his neck. she always does this, and he can rarely tell if it’s accidental or calculated or some combination of both that even she doesn’t know the finer points of yet. it started off small. subtle enough to overlook, to brush off and compartmentalize when there are a million other things coming at them from all sides, all the time. 

     moments like this, it’s harder to pretend nothing’s going on. moments like this where it’s just the two of them and the maelstrom outside is quiet. 

     “you’re good,” he says, but there’s more to it than that.

     more in the constant friction between them than just a little heat.

     he raises his beer can.

     canned fucking beer. go figure. remind him to bust into brecken’s stash next time. 

     here’s the thing about ‘normal’: it’s subjective. crane could argue, for his entire adult life, that ‘normal’ went a little off script for him when compared to most. border wars between pakistan and uzbekistan. live - fire and biological warfare in fallujah. ops in libya, syria, somalia, kuwait, north korea, and the DRC, to name a few; he’s seen active combat in war torn countries and the ruthlessness of human depravity since long before the viral outbreak. 

     maybe he’s just good at adjusting. 

     but even surrounded by civilians, sometimes it’s easy to lose perspective. 

     peter is a good kid, and that’s just it: he’s a kid. a teenager with decades upon decades in front of him, a million things he hasn’t yet done, places he hasn’t seen. he’s a kid without training. a kid in the middle of a warzone who’s talking as if he doesn’t think he’ll ever get out of it again. 

     “you sound like you’re ready to make this place home, kid.”

     that doesn’t sit right, somehow. in a certain light, that looks too much like resignation. and resignation, in his experience — accepting fate and washing your hands of free will — is tantamount to giving up.

     “i’m gonna level with you, alright? man to man.” he’s not spinning fantasy worlds to a toddler. peter is 17. only a year younger than crane when he joined the marines. still a kid, but old enough to bypass the sugarcoated placations. “two things, actually — first and foremost, don’t get too comfortable with all this. i know it’s pretty hard to believe, especially when shit just keeps flyin’ in every direction, but we’re not gonna be stuck here forever. you know zere, right — ? guy camped out in that trailer, across from us?” 

     peter nods. earnest. 

     “he’s workin’ his ass off,” crane says. “him and another doc, over in old town — doctor camden. they’re gonna find a way to beat this thing, and then we’re all gonna get the hell outta here. trust me — once we’re on the other side of this, it’s gonna be a hell of a lot weirder to talk about than anything we did before.” 

     he pauses for the words to settle. leans forward a little, elbows on his knees, holding the kid’s gaze to keep talking. 

     “secondly,” he almost smiles, “don’t gimme any of that ‘normal’ bullshit. normal’s overrated. usually boring, totally unfulfilling. you’re better than that. so do me a favor and don’t ever settle, huh? not here or anywhere else.”

     offering a fist, he wonders when that habit stuck; rahim gets the blame, or the credit, for that one. peter bumps it with his own. 

     "friendly?” kyle parrots back with a little bemusement, as it takes a special breed of scumbag to get friendly with people like this and he wonders, briefly, not for the first time, just what kind of a person brecken thinks he is. “fuckin’ hell, man, tell me how you really feel.”

     brecken waves him off. impatient, but not necessarily with kyle. with the whole situation, maybe. he’s been restless and agitated ever since he came back from that night run gone so horribly, and so fatally, awry. “you bloody well know what i meant, crane. you have to be —”

     “no, actually, i —”

     voices overlapping, they both stop. crane quirks a brow and brecken continues like there was no interruption.

     “you have to be on your guard, every step of the way. they’ll have you jumping through plenty of hoops, god knows what —”

     “hey, whatever it is, i can handle it. we need this, brecken. these people, your people, need this. they won’t survive without it.”

     “i know we fucking need this,” brecken says, but it’s quiet. it’s under his breath and coupled with a hand dragged down his face. he eventually looks at crane, and the fading daylight does nothing to downplay the sleepless bruises under his eyes. “just ... christ, just come back in one piece, alright?”

     the other part’s unspoken: we’ve lost too many people already.