#keep going?

It’s a Tuesday in April nearing noon. Veronica is supposed to be getting ready for a conference call with Paramount when she looks up from her desk. She’s about to yell out to her secretary Sandra to get her a copy of Rod Taylor’s contract when she sees him. In Los Angeles. In her office.

She hasn’t seen him in a nearly a decade. He looks just like he did the last time he was twenty-five. It hurts to look at him and remember what happened the last time they were twenty-five, together decades from now. Or decades from now in another dimension, whatever that was.

ohhhh this is right in the feels

Slash doesn’t remember anything before The Day. That’s what Duff started calling it when they figured out that ‘The Day’ changed their lives. And it’s not because they can remember their old lives, it’s more of an empty feeling that they used to have something. It’s the feeling he gets when he looks at a creased picture that was tucked into his wallet in his back jean pocket. In it, he looks happy, so does Duff, standing together with guys that look their age; one with blonde hair like Duff’s back when they just woke up, one with red hair and a look that never seems to fade even if the rest of the picture does, and one with dark brown hair and a little smile, his arm around the redhead. The only other thing is the date scribbled on the back, numbers that mean little to them now. 

They had looked for them on The Day. Slash had screamed and cried, everything was so wrong, and things were missing. But Duff was the only one with him, and Duff is the only name that could ever fit the man he woke up with. When they woke up- when Duff’s hair was still brighter colored than the brown it grew into now and they still wore t-shirts with things that seemed familiar, but alien at the same time. 

Now they have their house. Which of course, Slash figures, isn’t actually their house, but there’s so many of them, and there’s no one to live in them anyway. They never stay in ‘their’ house either. Their house is just whichever one happens to be near where they scrape and scavenge for food and water. They had stayed in one once, for a long time, the one they woke up in on The Day, but he’s not sure how long. He and Duff had made a nest of soft things that they liked and slept in it together, and stockpiled water bottles and food. It was almost nice. 

That was until the ground shook. And shook, and shook, and didn’t stop even when they cried, and that’s when they left. They ran with almost nothing but each other, until the shaking stop and rolled away like thunder on a summers night. They found another house then, and then another. It was good to keep moving. There was always more places to find things if you kept moving. 

He walks with Duff’s hand clutched in his always, never letting that one last piece slip away through his fingers. And Duff holds his hand just as hard and rubs his thumbs over his knuckles when he jumps at a noise. Slash doesn’t like to leave the cities too far behind. They’re familiar (even if he’s never seen them), at least more familiar than the open strips of road and dead stretches of land that seem so daunting at the edge of the clusters of buildings. 

They stopped once at a place that was a huge arena. It was more open then they liked, but something about it seemed right. It was empty like all the other places. But they sat on what looked like a stage, and hung their legs over the edge, kicking out into the air, and Duff laughed and asked him what it would look like if it was full of others. 

Duff doesn’t call them ‘people’ when they find a picture or some other scrap of evidence from before The Day, he calls them ‘others’. Because ‘people’ makes it sound like something that’s real. The only real things are each other. Anything else would just be an ‘other’. So Slash shakes his head and Duff tucks an arm around his waist and kisses his temple and they sit together until the sun goes down and they crawl off into some nook to sleep.

They look at the pictures every night. And they talk. They tell stories and make up jokes and adventures for each other.  They talk about their scars. Even if they don’t remember how they got them since they marred them long before The Day, they spin stories around them because they have to carry the marks anyways, why not give them a meaning? Slash falls asleep with his head on Duff’s chest while Duff hums something hauntingly familiar in his ear and strokes his hair.

The next morning they pack up the blankets and pillows, and Duff digs out something to eat. Then they walk and out the stadium doors and something makes Slash look back. It’s like the roar of a crowd, but it’s probably only thunder he tells himself. Duff pulls him along, not wanting to stay for a reason Slash can’t name.  

It’s the brightest part of the day, a glow emanates from behind thick clouds when they stumble into another store. Most things went bad soon after The Day, but many things didn’t. And they’re smart, Duff even caught a rabbit once when they strayed too far from any buildings with a snare he made himself, out of a book Slash had found and stuffed into his pack. So food is something that they can find.

Even within the relative safety of the store, they don’t drop hands. Slash helps pry the doors open and they wander through, snooping around shelves and isles. Slash figures if there were others, they would want these things too. So he never takes too much, but there’s already so much, he wonders if it matters. He wonders if it matters that he even thinks about others in the first place if he’s never seen any. 

When they walk down a row, Duff runs his fingers over little boxes of hair dye. Slash doesn’t know why he looks at it in the way he does. With his nose scrunched a little and eyebrows pulled together like he’s trying to remember something. They never think of things like this when they try, and Slash has given up for the most part. Besides, Duff’s hair is nice without any other colors. Slash could barely remember it before if not for the picture.

Slash bites his lip and doesn’t stop walking, pulling Duff with him. They leave with some canned food and a restocked first aid kit (and of course some stale candy bars they sneak into each other’s pouches). Then they run. Not because they’re scared, which is relative at this point, but because they can. Their packs thumb against their back and their hands gripped tightly together. And Duff whoops, throws his other fist into the air, and Slash laughs and pushes his legs till his lungs scream at them to stop. Duff’s hair whips in the wind and they only stop when Slash almost trips. 

They walk the rest of the day, stop to eat under a dead tree before trecking on. Things are going so well, Slash thinks, the sky and ground are quiet and the back of his neck stops pricking at some point. But for every up, there’s a down. 

He has to stop walking when his stomach twists so hard that he almost falls over. Duff is in front of him now, asking him questions, but Slash’s vision blots black at the corners and he can’t hear him well enough. Duff looks scared now.

Duff must drag him into a building, because he’s leaning against a wall pretty soon, and Duff helps him to the ground. He clutches over his stomach, a stream of curses leaving his lips. Duff’s fingers cradle his face and Slash knows he’s trying to calculate what to do. Breathe, breathe, breathe. He tells himself like he tells Duff when he’s scared and his breath comes too fast and his eyes won’t focus on him. But he can’t- it hurts. 

Duff lays him down, running his hands up and down his body, looking for something physically wrong with him, an answer to something right now. Slash bites the back of his hand until he tastes blood and Duff’s shaking hand presses against his cheek. 

They wait. They wait, while Slash’s body shakes and his eyes water and spill over, with Duff crying with him sometimes, until it’s night for sure and it goes dark. Duff sets up their lanterns and gets out their blankets, but he can’t hold Slash because it hurts. So Duff keeps a hand on his forehead and tries to get him to drink.

That night they don’t sleep. The living hell they’re in seems to have been amplified exponentially. Duff sings to him, doesn’t hum like normal, really sings. He sings songs that remind Slash of before The Day, but fit them better now. 

By daybreak, it hasn’t gotten better and Duff’s eyes are bloodshot from crying and lack of sleep. If his face is anything to go by, he doesn’t look much better. He’s so scared, so fucking scared. Even more than The Day, even more than when the ground shook. And Duff scoots closer and tells him that he needs to go look for something to help him, back at a place with medicine they saw the day before. And Slash sobs, and screams to not leave- please, please, don’t fucking leave him- but Duff shakes his head with tears running down his cheeks and tells him he has to try.