Author: Kate
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
lets_go_to_romeRating: PG-13ish, probably.
Pairing: Ryden dirty. Haha, a pun.
POV: Third omniscient.
Summary: Apocalypse AU. Need I say more?
Disclaimer: I made every word of this up, the people mentioned are not associated with me in any way, and I am definitely not making money off of this, although it I would like to point out that through dint of considerable effort (i.e. dashing about asking people who know these things) this little story is scientifically accurate and indeed possible.
Author Notes: As stated above, the end-of-the-world scenario is actually possible and I have described it properly. This took some time and some running around. But yes. At one point I went around all gleeful because I'd found out about secondary impact, which would ensure a destruction level that satisfied my intended rate of survival without wiping the planet clean. Huzzah for science! Additionally, I would like to tell you all that I did actually turn this bitch in for a short story project in the English class I am taking, but with Ryan's name changed to "Ross" and Brendon's to "Jason," which incidentally is the name of Brendon's first boyfriend in Arsenic Jade's Wednesday Night Boys (a story you should all read if you haven't already). Thank you to my beta, Krista, for dealing with me and my little issues. Couldn't have done it without you.
(cross-posted to slashatthedisco)
ADHDing to the Noise
There are fires. There are a lot of fires. Spencer is mildly surprised that there are so many fires, given how hard the snow is coming down. He would be more surprised but he's too busy calculating various odds, laying complex plans, cataloging their scant supplies, and forcing Ryan to keep moving to spare the fires more than a few snippets of distracted thought. At this point, Spencer is more grateful for the heat pouring off the burning buildings than angry that resources are being incinerated. Blankets are becoming a desperate priority, even here near the fires. He needs blankets very soon. Ryan hasn't been getting enough food lately and something twists low in Spencer's gut to see how Ryan' thin frame keeps shaking.
There are many things wrong with Ryan. There were a few things wrong with Ryan' head before the world ended, and now there are many more things wrong with Ryan' head and a lot of things wrong with Ryan' body. The most pressing of these things, Spencer feels, is probably either the pneumonia or the hypothermia. He is having trouble deciding which.
*
Spencer is not sure where they're headed. He just wants them to go somewhere. Possibly to warmer climes, if there are still any. Making lists and plans and things is Spencer's special little way of dealing with things, because it makes him feel like he actually has some control over the situation.
While Spencer strides and Ryan shuffles through the ruined town, Spencer calculates. It distracts him from the dead child Ryan just stepped on. (It wasn't Ryan' fault; the poor boy is barely conscious, there's been a lot of debris in the roads they've been walking, he hasn't noticed what he's been stumbling over for the past two miles; it's only when he hears the crunch of small ribs through his diseased stupor that he realizes.)
Spencer calculates that it's Tuesday. He's been obsessive about timekeeping; he stocks up on batteries every chance he gets. The front pocket of his oversize backpack is full of them. He hates not being in control, he feels very out of control recently, and what with the sun not coming up these days it's difficult to pretend otherwise. So he uses his little clock that he'd rescued—not stolen, they're rescuing things. It's not stealing—from the first store they'd scavenged. They don't loot. 'Loot' implies that there's someone still alive who might have a claim to the supplies they're grabbing. Other than the water bottles, Spencer thinks that the little clock may be his most precious possession.
Ryan has a coughing fit. It sounds like someone shot wet concrete at his chest. Spencer really, really wants to find antibiotics. Now. All he can do is hover nearby as Ryan leans carefully against a brick wall that hasn't collapsed yet and tries to catch his breath. Spencer thinks that he would give up his clock and all of his water bottles if he thought it would make anything any better for Ryan.
Spencer almost wants to find people who can give him some damn directions to a hospital or a pharmacy or something, anything that would have antibiotics for Ryan. The fires are warming Ryan up, so the hypothermia is probably going away, but Spencer has no way to tell. Ryan' shaking all the time now and Spencer is no doctor. He is majoring in Chemistry at a university that no longer exists, and he harbors dark suspicions about the chemical content of the smoke they're inhaling.
Spencer doesn't actually want to meet other people. There is far too much for him to worry about as is. He doesn't want to have to worry about some new person's temperament, or if they'll help or hinder, or if they'll betray him to—to whatever there is to be betrayed to. Spencer has no doubt that there will be gangs.
Antibiotics. Antibiotics are something that Spencer really does want to find. But they stumbled upon the hospital after two days of exhaustive wandering through this particular town. It turns out that even now, two weeks after the meteor shards hit, the hospital is still burning. Spencer the Chemistry Major doesn't even want to think about what biohazards are being released, so he hurries Ryan away. At this point he's just trying to keep Ryan from dying.
Spencer is so, so drained. He hasn't been getting much sleep. He's getting anxious about his weakened state because he thinks he's starting to see things. This is not good. Spencer is supposed to be the sane, healthy one here. Spencer is the one who has to be finding all of the food and water, who has to carry the brunt of their shared luggage, who has to be conscious and coherent and make good decisions. If they find other people it's really best for Spencer to be operating at optimum capacity.
The constant snow, and Spencer thinks of it as 'snow' only for lack of a better term, isn't sticking properly. Spencer is definitely not pondering what monstrous chemical menace must be hidden in the flakes to keep them from accumulating. He's pretending that it's simply because the fires have warmed the area. There's just shy of an inch on the ground, but it has been 'snowing' on and off (mostly on) for two and a half weeks. Fortunately, the not-snow hasn't corroded their sneakers and doesn't burn when it touches skin. It does, however, show tracks. Spencer has spotted no less than eight different tracks, although he calculates his error to be short two to four people; there may be more than one individual wearing the same type of shoe. Spencer is worried. He's seen those post-apocalyptic movies and knows there are inevitably scores of vicious gangs who randomly prowl abandoned cities, such as the one they are in, and kill people. Spencer is thinking at this point that he and Ryan are the ones who will get ruthlessly slaughtered right before the leader has a sudden change of heart and spares the attractively smudged main character survivors. Spencer figures that Ryan' hacking cough and bloodless lips sort of detract from the attractiveness of the smudging. Spencer can't find a mirror and he doesn't want to make Ryan speak to describe his appearance, so he can't really comment on himself.
Spencer is concerned about the effect the toxic gases pervading the area around the hit sites is having on Ryan' already battered lungs. Every day Ryan breathes with more difficultly and Spencer is constantly afraid that Ryan will die during his elongated coughing spasms. Spencer has made the decision to lead them away from the city center and into the residential area. There are fewer fires there, meaning more supplies and less smoke. Spencer has calculated the town's distance from the blast site--it's enough that he probably won't die immediately from the noxious gases released on impact. The town isn't exactly on high ground, but it's no valley settlement, either. Spencer prays to whatever supernatural force that sent him and Ryan camping two days before the strikes, that he and Ryan will be able to hold out a little longer. He's sure that if he can just get some antibiotics for Ryan, they'll be able to get out and keep going. He's not sure what he's doing anymore or why they need to keep going, but he remembers from his apocalypse stories that survivors are often plagued with feelings of helplessness and depression and that it's important to not let such feelings overwhelm one.
Spencer would have to admit that the characters he's read about are usually fighting zombies at this point, but... Spencer doesn't even know anymore. He wants Ryan to be comfortable, he knows that. He clamps down on the adrenaline surge the protective instinct gives him, forces the surge like a flashlight through the under-the-sink murk that seems to be filling his head these days. He trudges on through the not-snow, half-carrying and half-dragging Ryan along beside him.
It is in the last few hours of Wednesday evening by Spencer's obsessive reckoning when they find the treehouse. Miraculously unharmed, the rope ladder dangles down invitingly. Spencer coaxes Ryan up the rungs and makes several trips by himself to ferry up the supplies. He settles Ryan in with a down comforter that they had found and places three water bottles within easy reach. Ryan is already asleep. Spencer resolves to find more down comforters if he can, and adds the surrounding neighborhoods to his mental list of places to scour for supplies. Spencer coils the rope ladder in a neat bundle and stores it by the doorway. He uses one of their old blankets to cover the door, hoping to keep some of the wind and snow (and fumes) out. He lowers himself off the edge of the little treehouse platform and, dangling, drops. The tree house is a good eight feet up; Spencer's praying that it's enough of a defense against whoever might still be in the city. He's also praying that Ryan will still be alive when he gets back and that Ryan will be conscious enough to throw down the rope ladder, but he suspends that particular fear for the time being. Spencer concentrates on making sure he gets back.
He heads right back into the edges of the non-residential area, silently begging to find a pharmacy that hasn't been razed yet. He still hasn't met anyone, but he is delighted with the speed with which he is combing the streets. He knew he was traveling at a slow clip while he was dragging Ryan along, but he hadn't realized quite how slow and inefficient his searches had been. He has mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, Spencer is very happy to be traveling faster as this means he is more likely to find antibiotics before it's too late and that Ryan can escape from some of the smoke and get some much-needed sleep. On the other hand, Spencer is terrified that the people who made the tracks he is coming across with more frequency will find the treehouse and try to plunder it. Spencer is hoping that the elevation is sufficient protection if someone does try. He is semi-confident in his ability to defend himself and rock solid in his conviction that he would be able to defend Ryan, but... still.
*
He broke the glass doors with a street sign that had been strewn among the rubble in the parking lot. Thank goodness he's a chemistry major, Spencer thinks as he rummages through the pharmacy shelves, or he would have no idea what would be useful. He grabs as many medicines as he can carry and shoves them in an ugly red pharmacy handbasket. He starts to go back through the broken doors when a brilliant idea hits him. He doubles back to get assorted candy, playing cards, band-aids, and soft braces for various joints. He spots a display of notebooks and shoves those in as well, along with handfuls of pencils and pens. He also grabs a big plastic storage bin; he figures they can use that for storing water. In the meantime he uses it to store his rescued items.
As he awkwardly maneuvers himself and his prizes through the broken glass in the door frame, Spencer calculates that they can definitely stay at the treehouse until Ryan finishes his dose of antibiotics. Spencer wouldn't dare do otherwise, not if it would put unnecessary strain on Ryan. After the course is through, well, Spencer's not sure. He firmly believes they should keep moving so they don't deplete each city they come to. Spencer doesn't want to meet any of the other survivors, at least not until Ryan is well enough to survive a brawl, but he thinks it's only fair of them to leave resources for whatever unfortunates happen to wander through after they do. Spencer and Ryan have only been taking what they need, and that's how they intend to continue.
He heads back to the treehouse with both arms strung with baskets stuffed full of supplies and clutching the huge plastic bin in front of him. His lungs burn with the effort. He ignores it. Spencer really, really hopes that he doesn't meet any of those roving gangs. Spencer really, really hopes that Ryan is going to be all right. Spencer really, really hopes he knows what he's doing.
*
It has been precisely five weeks since the meteor hit, by Spencer's obsessive reckoning, and during his food-foraging he finds a fetching new friend. This new friend is not part of a gang, much to Spencer's relief. Much to Spencer's consternation their new friend is not part of himself, either.
Spencer had found this person at 1:47 pm on Eighth Street, one of the choicest rummaging routes in the area. Spencer had been strolling sedately down the cracked pavement, noting which houses he had been to and which had yet to be liberated of their worldly goods when he saw a person swinging on a two-seater, four houses down. Spencer stared. The person hadn't noticed him until he had been standing on the porch in front of the swinging seat. The person, finally noticing Spencer, had promptly burst into tears, began babbling to friends who, had they ever existed, had been dead for weeks, and offered Spencer some ice cream.
*
Spencer brings this person to the treehouse, and leaves Ryan to kindly interrogate. Spencer stands outside, catches his breath. He feels strangely old.
He listens in until the person, Brendon, calls him on it. Spencer learns that Brendon is about their age, that Brendon had been playing video games in his unusually deep basement the day the world ended, and that Brendon's basement was so unusually deep because it had been built in the 1950's by a couple terrified about the possibility of war with Russia. Brendon hasn't seen real people since the strikes and Brendon has consequently gone a little crazy. It's as Ryan (psychology major at a university that no longer exists) is attempting to determine the extent of Brendon's psychoses that Brendon somehow finds out that Spencer is listening at the door. Ryan later tells Spencer that Brendon claimed one of his 'friends' told him. Ryan never does fill Spencer in on the rest. Brendon brought a tub of strawberry ice cream, as a gift. He simply sat and watched Ryan and Spencer eat it, hugging himself. Ryan develops a studied dislike of seeing Brendon in such a state and takes to rocking him like a child when Brendon's head starts playing tricks. It seems to drive the dead voices off. That is, Brendon doesn't talk back.
*
Spencer's condition worsens by the day. He's having trouble breathing and Ryan carries him more and more as they move through desolate towns. Brendon reasons that Ryan' pneumonia protected him from the worst of it. Brendon has no hypothesis as to why he himself is not suffering the same fate as Spencer. Ryan is of the opinion that it's best for Brendon to repress the five weeks of trauma and that as long as Brendon is okay, the hows and whys don't matter very much.
*
Brendon talks to Spencer about Ryan, about the thing between them at one point, when it's Ryan' turn to forage. Ryan takes extra shifts so Spencer doesn't have to go out as often. Spencer considers the question, has a small coughing fit, and does his best to explain.
"We're not in love, Brendon. At least, not the romantic kind. We're more like...like platonic true loves, get it? I love him more than a brother, but I definitely don't want to kiss him or anything."
Brendon looks down and flushes, a guarded but hopeful look plastered across his face. Spencer laughs.
"You have my permission, don't worry." Spencer is silent for a moment, reflecting. "You know, Brendon--and don't ever breathe a word of this to Ryan--I'm glad it's me. I'm glad I'm the one dying. I--" Spencer looks down as he coughs.
Ryan returns at this point and the other two slam their conversation shut. Spencer volunteers nothing more and Brendon does not bring the subject up again.
*
It's seven weeks and two days after the meteor struck and precisely nine in the morning when they come to a city that's still partially burning. They aren't even a quarter mile inside the limits before they're surrounded by a gang in gas masks. Spencer thinks they look like giant bugs, from that one post-apocalyptic movie he saw, and just like in the movie they're carrying two human carcasses along with them. Ryan and Brendon, slinging Spencer between them, feel Spencer tense up. Ryan brings his outside arm around to rub Spencer's back, hoping a coughing fit isn't on the way. The leader of the group jerks her insect head and the circle crushes closer. Ryan wrenches his hands skyward, yanking Spencer's arm limply along.
"Dude! I mean, madam!" he yelps, jumping up an octave in mild terror.
"Yes?" The leader spits out around the mask.
"We don't want any trouble! Just passing through," Ryan repeats frantically as one of the henchmen nudges what feels like the business end of a crowbar between Ryan' skinny ribs.
The leader levels them with a cold stare. Spencer's ruined lungs choose this time to chime in with an extended bout of coughing. Ryan glances down at Spencer and winces--Spencer's coughing out blood. He tries to exchange a worried glance with Brendon, but Brendon won't look at him, too busy trying to stare down the gang leader.
"Look, we've got a dying man here. You gonna let us through or send us to join him? Cause we really don't have the time for this." Brendon interjects, bouncing almost imperceptibly from foot to foot with what could be nerves. Ryan suppresses a hollow laugh--what are they rushing toward? A hospital, medicine? What sort of medicine can you give someone with chemical burns in their lungs? They're only moving from city to city because it makes them feel like they're doing something. Ryan still hasn't been able to find any gas masks and neither he nor Spencer nor Brendon has any idea if they're heading toward the meteor sites or away. Spencer keeps them moving anyway, swearing that false hope is better than none at all.
The leader tilts her head to the side. Her expression would still have been unreadable had the others been able to see past the grime on her goggles. She stares at the bodies her gang members are cradling, then at Ryan.
"Please," says Ryan simply, without any idea why. "Please."
*
Her name is Vicky and she rules this part of town. Opponents join or die. Sometimes they die anyway, because Vicky is a woman of principle and it's expected of one to keep up one's reputation. Brendon wonders if she plans to take over what is left of the world; she is well on her way to doing so.
They're given gas masks and sorted into temporary sleeping quarters. It turns out that Vicky and her 'boys,' as she calls them, were just returning from a clash with an opposing gang. Vicky's boys suffered two casualties and several injuries, but decimated their rivals and returned with three bags' worth of loot.
Brendon eats with Vicky's best boys in the mess hall. Vicky gets some of her makeshift medics to take Spencer to the improvised infirmary along with her injured soldiers. Ryan comes along; he claims he isn't hungry. The infirmary is on the third floor of an abandoned office building.
She surveys the scene before them and her eyes smolder, even behind the filthy goggle lens of her gas mask.
"I've always considered it romantic," she tells him almost wistfully.
"Wait, what?" He's somewhat bewildered.
"A city burning down," she explains. "I've always thought it romantic." Her tone is strange. Ryan can't tell if it's the mask that renders it oddly sterile and muffled, or if she means it to be that way. He isn't sure if that's a bad thing. She turns to him. "Don't you think?"
Ryan thinks: If I were a better liar, I'd probably tell you that your most insignificant throwaway glance holds more fire than the whole of the end of the world we seem to be standing in. Because it does. Madam, I am honored to have met you and so I thank the apocalypse for occurring when it did even while I curse it for robbing you of what is rightfully yours. I am merely a poet, and I can tell you now that Achilles would have taken a knee before you, Aeneas taken a cloven foot to the stomach for you, and if I mix my histories it is only because there are none anymore. You spoke, however, of romance. I'm afraid I don't go in for that sort of thing these days.
He thinks carefully, nods slow, grudging agreement. He gazes out to where her eyes point, sees a treehouse. It's not their treehouse, but it's very much like it. Behind them, on the floor under blankets, Spencer lets out a low, racking set of coughs, trinkets handmade and exported from some ruined city. Ryan doesn't know if they will buy Spencer any time, but he takes them anyway. These days, Spencer's silences frighten Ryan far more than his coughing.
"Yeah, yeah, I can see how it's romantic," Ryan offers up. Poe's crackling dry tone runs through his head, ignites: nothing more beautiful than a dead nothing more beautiful a beautiful dead woman nothing more beautiful than a dead beautiful woman beautiful woman a dead a dead woman a dead porcelain woman o broken beautiful woman, Poe wails and peters off, sobbing in a dry and most literary fashion.
O Raven scholar, he shouts in his head, visions of corroded lungs beneath pale boy-skin dancing through the fumes over the city, O how almost-wrong you are.
*
"Last chance, boys," Vicky offers when Brendon is brought up to them after dinner. "Join my little group. I can offer you protection."
"Thanks, but no thanks."
"Then get the hell out of my territory by tomorrow morning." She turns her attention back to setting one of her boy's wrists, injured in the battle. "Ahh, there you go, Gabe. Not broken, my lovely, not broken. What a brave, brave boy you are!" She coos.
"Hospitable, aren't they," Brendon mutters to Ryan as they carry Spencer out.
"I'm looking after my own," she calls clearly to their retreating backs, authority and stability in a gyroscope world. "You might want to do the same. And you may keep the gas masks."
*
Precisely eight weeks after the first strike, almost to the hour, Spencer ceases to struggle. His quiet death-sigh is muffled by the gas mask and somewhat ruined by the fact that his lungs are hopelessly corroded, but Ryan hears it anyway.
*
The morning Spencer dies is a curious one. They are camped out in a yard that is still green, the astroturf soft and oddly comforting in its plastic resilience. There is a fence around the yard, and the house it belongs to has not yet collapsed and is, from their vantage point, intact. Ryan can almost pretend anything he wants. As if by some ancient magic, out of the grey, ashen sky there flutters a wren. It pecks, starved, at the discarded seed spilled from the cracked bird feeder four or five yards away. In a sudden rage, Ryan hurls a rock at this mangy wretch who chirps not twenty feet from Spencer's befouled lungs, killing the impudent intruder stone dead.
Brendon starts a fire and they roast the bird. Ryan cries into his meager little share. Brendon pats Ryan' hand, a man caressing a land mine.
"Um. I know I'm not much and I know I'm not Spencer, but, um, I sort of want to say that you have my, you know, sympathy." He says 'sympathy' like he wanted to say something else but stumbled.
Ryan stares at this boy who came up from the basement to find his city dead, who Spencer found talking to himself on a porch swing, who dares to treat Ryan like lead glass
"I have your sympathy?" Ryan scoffs. There is something insulting about the pity of someone pitiable.
"Well, I mean, it's harder, you know? Having the sun gone." He tilts his head skyward, squints at the ever-present sky-blanket of ash. He can't tell if he's struggling to explain. "It's not so bad, the end of the world, really. The meteor strike, that was radical and all-at-once and just so crazy, so completely crazy, I can totally handle it. Well, yeah, it takes adjusting, a lot of adjusting, but at the end of the day, the end of the world's not the end of the world. It's too different.
"The part that really sucks, the part that's probably going to kill more survivors than anything, is how the sun's gone. It's always been there, and now it's not, and without the sun...I mean, no one knows what to do. It kept time for us and showed us the way, you know, sunset and always rising in the east and everything. The sun was dependable. And, like, I'm no Cicero, but I gotta say that now that the sun's gone, that's the part that makes this the end of the world, you know? The sun not coming up in the morning." Brendon offers a weak, watered-down smile. Ryan takes it and flings it back in an undiluted mirage.
Ryan curls up to him that night and cries them both to sleep.
*
The next day, Ryan decides it's time to take care of Spencer. It takes him all morning to decide whether to burn or bury his best friend, and decides in the end to burn him. He and Brendon make a pyre out of everything that's left of a house. Ryan wishes it were his house. He salvages Spencer's second favorite outfit from Spencer's pack and dresses Spencer's body. Ryan keeps Spencer's favorite shirt for himself because, he claims, there is a rip in it. Ryan' almost afraid to touch it, afraid to imprint any of his own scent on the soft fabric, terrified that it will wipe out the remnants of Spencer's. Ryan wishes fervently that he had a plastic bag to seal it in, so he could take it out and bury his face in it precisely when he wants to, so he wouldn't feel so rushed, so he wouldn't feel so much like this really is the end of the world.
Ryan stares at the fire until the last flakes of Spencer-ash settle.
"You'll go blind," Brendon mutters, nudging Ryan' hip. Ryan shakes his head.
"I already watched the sun go out," Ryan says flatly. "Twice."
The world is silent for a little while. Brendon draws a breath. "Well, no good staying here, is there?"
Ryan says nothing.
"Which way, then?" Brendon bounces back and forth from the balls of his feet to his heels, restless.
*
They pass through Ryan and Spencer's hometown. Ryan would've barely recognized it if it weren't for the gang leaders; he sees his next-door neighbor bludgeon an elementary school teacher's head.
They're hiding out in what turns out to be the detritus of Spencer's grandmother's house, waiting for the gang battle in the street to be over. Brendon's worried. He doesn't think they'll be able to go much longer without a gang spotting and killing them.
Brendon moves over to Ryan, who has found a miraculously unharmed photo album under some of the debris and a dead cat. Ryan has taken out one picture and holds it like the Holy Grail. Brendon eyes Ryan like a suicide.
"You don't think we should've taken her offer, do you?"
Ryan grips the picture like a drowning man, clutches the rest of the album to his malnourished chest.
"No. No, I don't."
*
"So where do you want to go? I'm thinking international," Brendon declares as they step over the recently slaughtered.
"I've always wanted to see the world," Ryan replies dryly, fastidiously avoiding a puddle of spilled brains.
- Location:somewhere under the rainbow
- Mood:
accomplished - Music:devil's haircut - beck
Author: Kate (<lj user="lets_go_to_rome">)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Nothing overt; Brendon/Ryan, Brendon/Spencer, Pete/Patrick, Spencer/Brendon, Spencer/Jon can be read into this, among others.
POV: Third.
Summary: Death and redemption, in a manner of speaking.
They get the results back from Ryan’s blood test. Worst fears confirmed: it is indeed AIDS. Spencer’s face is terrible and blank. His arm is around Ryan, who can’t stop staring at the floor. Brendon is trying to remember everything he can about RENT and still listen to the doctor at the same time so he can be Helpful when they get back to the bus.
Disclaimer: Very definitely not mine. Lyric belongs to the Panic! boys, and the Panic! boys themselves belong to Pete Wentz. As does practically everyone else mentioned. Not mine, you know? I'm just a slasher. None of this is true, to my knowledge. Et cetera.
Author Notes: This is about the third time I've tried to post this. I accidentally deleted it once and then my computer spazzed. In any case, this was only partially beta'd because my beloved Krista has rather a lot to worry about at the moment. So I kind of stuck this up without her going through this last draft. Therefore all screwups are mine. (Also: wtf? Aparrently "Girlfriend" is one of my comfort songs...? How the hell did that happen?)
- Location:home
- Music:grace kely - mika
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- I do believe in fairies, I do! I do!
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