A/N: Gift fic for miss-monako on Tumblr for officialnordic's 500 follower giveaway. Prompt: The Nordics.

His shoulder hurt more than the night before...which wasn't surprising since he actually slept on it. Sitting up further on his cot, Matthias rubbed the sore area, not too concerned because it was only a slight sprain. Running a hand through his hair, he cringed slightly at the greasy feeling, but attempted to make it reminiscent of his usual hair style. Once accomplished, he scooted further to the edge of the bed and pulled his boots on, tucking his worn pants into them. He also hadn't changed clothes in about a week. Trying not to think about the fact, he looked around the room, which held a few more coats, but only one was occupied.

Being mindful of his shoulder, he got up and went over to the occupied cot, where Emil layed, sound asleep, as usual, his head buried into his sheets and curled into a ball, one of his knives poking out from under his pillow.

"Time to wake up," Mattias said quietly, poking the teenager on the back. Emil flinched, his hand twitching towards the knife, but blinked and relaxed slightly when he saw it was Matthias.

"What time is it?"

Matthias just sighed and went back over to his cot, grabbing his backpack, few knives, and his handgun. "Well, everybody else it up. That usually means it's late enough."

Emil just groaned and pulled the blanket back over his head. As Matthias headed out, he heard a stifled "I'll be out in a minute" from the lump on the bed.

Their hideout wasn't much; it was just a small underground bunker that Lucas had found a few weeks back. It was a few minute's walk from a freshwater creek and a town was nearby that was abandoned, but they had managed to gain quite a bit of food and supplies from it.

The first room Matthias stopped in was the "main living area" that contained a cardboard box as a table, a ratty old carpet to offset the concrete, a few foldable chairs, and another cardboard box that regularly held a lantern for them. It was on it's lowest setting to preserve battery life, and barely illuminated the small room. Nobody was in the room, so Matthias went through and entered their storage room, which contained everything they had scavenged so far. The other three were in there, likely discussing inventory.

As Matthias entered, Lukas turned around, his expression shifting for a second then going back to his calmer stare.

"You slept late," He looked down at his clipboard briefly. "You're feeling okay?"

"Yeah, you should let me look at your shoulder again!" Tino commented, scooting past Berwald to get to Mattias, then pulling his sleeve up and poking it gently. "It's definitely strained. We don't have any ice...but we should get a sling for it." He walked out of the room, Berwald's eyes following him the whole way.

Matthias smacked the tall man's arm as soon as Tino was out of earshot. "You're being creepy again!"

Without looking up from his clipboard, Norway reached out and smacked Matthias. "You're being annoying. While everybody's been working, you've been sleeping. Now you're teasing Berwald."

Berwald just shook his head and called out a few more items on the old shelves, Lukas noting down each one.

"Okay! I had taken the first aid kit back into the sleeping area because of when Emil got that splinter…" He set the box on an empty shelf and rummaged through it, eventually pulling out a triangle of white fabric. Positioning Matthias' arm the correct way, Tino expertly tied the knot and stood back.

"No taking it off!" He said sternly.

"Finished," Lukas said, clicking his pen. "We have enough food for a week. We need to go do a scout to see if we can find anymore and if there are any vandrere coming close again."

Berwald nodded. "I'll go out."

Pulling out his shotgun seemingly from nowhere, Tino grinned. "I'll go too!"

Lukas and Matthias shared a look, and Lukas nodded. "Yes, you two go. We'll start packing up to leave. We should move by tomorrow."

Tino blinked. "Alright. Should I go wake Emil up to help? I checked and saw he was still asleep."

Lukas waved a hand dismissively. "I guess. He's likely still feeling sick. Too stubborn to get out of bed."

"We probably just need to tip his bed over or something…" Matthias snickered. "I'll do it!" He started inching towards the sleeping area, but was prevented by Lukas stepping on his foot and pushing past him.

"I will not have you abusing Little Brother in such a way." He disappeared into the room, so Matthias returned to the living area, bringing along a book he saw in the storage area.

Berwald was more than slightly nervous to be going out of the hideout. All it was was a metal bunker in the ground, small and the ceilings nearly brushing his head as he walked around (the doorframes always gave him trouble, however) but it was safe, with no windows, a nondescript entrance with locking mechanisms only opened from the inside unless you had the key to about three different locks (which Tino kept secured in one of his inside jacket pockets).

He wasn't nervous of being outside necessarily; his nervous stemmed from the gun in his hands and the fact that he may have to kill people - arguably dead people - himself. However, he would do anything to protect Tino, who could easily fend for himself. But Berwald was always there, watching the smaller man, making sure he was alright.

They were in the nook that led to the singular door, going over their supplies for their mission.

"You have a backpack, flashlights, some food, water, your own medical kit, the flare gun, your actual guns and knives…" Tino rattled off several more, to which Berwald simply nodded to each one, trying not to focus into how cute his Finnish accent sounded. Tino checked his bag, adjusted the rifle on his shoulder, and gave Berwald a bright smile. "Let's go!"

They both had to work to get the old, rusty metal door open, after unlatching and unlocking it. Berwald, before it was completely opened, stuck his head out, squinting in the bright light. Once his eyes adjusted, he looked around and listened for anybody or anything else around. Keeping a hand on his handgun, he turned around and nodded to Tino and they pulled the door open the rest of the way, then worked to close it behind them.

Once it shut, they could hear one of the others on the other side locking and latching the door back.

"Little Brother, how do you feel?" Lukas asked Emil, hovering over his bed. The teenager just smacked his pillow over his head.

"I still feel like crap," came the muffled reply.

Lukas sighed, knowing there was little he could do. The past few days, Emil had been sick with a severe cold, and had moped around, since there was little they had in the way of medication.

"Can you at least eat something?"

Emil slowly brought his head back from under the pillow and sniffled. "Only if you bring me tissues." He commented, and laid his head back down.

Lukas shook his head and went to the storage room. Before he got in, however, a hand grabbed his arm and pulled him into the sitting room, where he was pulled against Matthias, who was grinning widely.

Nonplussed, Lukas shook the other man's hand off but didn't move back. "Now what do you want? I have to bring Emil food and tissues."

Matthias' expression changed slightly, and he reached out to brush a finger across Lukas' face. "I think you work too hard. I miss you."

Lukas raised an eyebrow. "How can you miss me? We've been crammed in this hole for weeks together. I'm about to go crazy. And I do not work too hard!"

"You check the inventory every day and you clean all the time. You didn't let anybody else take care of Emil while he was sick. I don't even think you sleep enough." Lukas' heart wobbled a little bit at Matthias' concerned expression. "I just wish this was all over."

Lukas backed away slightly and looked away. "Well, unfortunately that can't happen. We're just going to have to deal with this...'situation'." He looked back to Matthias, and quickly stepped up and pressed a kiss to his cheek, quickly hurrying out of the room and into the storage room for food and tissues.

Tino peeked around a corner and, after determining nothing was around, he waved to Berwald and he followed slightly behind Tino, constantly scanning their surroundings. They were in the abandoned town, but they had cleaned out what little supplies were in this part of the town closest to their hideout. Luckily, they had found a closed off closet of canned foods from one of the smaller houses. It looked as if they had been preparing for the apocalypse, ironically.

They were nearly to the other part of the town where they might find more supplies. Apparently, they were running low on batteries, but Lukas said they needed supplies for the road. Canteens, ropes, new shoes, and new clothes. As usual, they were pressed to find weapons, but those were understandably hard to come by.

About midday, Tino pulled Berwald into a building and they checked it thoroughly, before pulling out a small lunch and eating on the floor next to the door, their weapons ready.

"I haven't seen a single monster yet! Maybe they moved from the area." Tino said as he ate. "We don't have much ammunition to waste." He patted his rifle lovingly.

"Maybe." Berwald said, not really believing it. They didn't have good enough luck to not run into any gengångare before long.

However, their lunch passed smoothly, and they headed back out to the main street, walking in the middle to be aware of any attack quickly. Only a few minutes later, they ran into one, which was messing with a trashcan. It looked nearly human, except extremely emaciated and sickly. The main indication that it wasn't alive anymore were the black blotches all over its skin, indicating the deadly disease it carried, and had affected so many others around the world.

Immediately, Tino took aim and hit it dead center in the head. Waiting a second to make sure it was dead, the pair moved closer, still cautiously looking around for any others. However, there didn't seem to be more.

"This is the worst looking one so far," Tino said, sadness tinging his voice. "Do you think the disease is getting worse?" He looked up at Berwald. "What should we do with the body?"

Berwald started back at Tino for a second, and then turned back to the body. The blood leaking out of it's shot wound was black and thick, hardly any getting on the concrete around it.

"We can't leave it here." Berwald grumbled. "Animals'll eat it and get infected." He looked around. "I'll find something to carry it on. Then we'll burn it."

Tino nodded and hefted his gun, following Berwald and keeping watch. Across the sidewalk from the body was an alleyway. In it, Berwald found a piece of sheet metal, which he drug out to the body. Taking a broken wooden post, he almost gently rolled the body onto the metal, then drug it to the middle of the street, away from the buildings.

"Maybe we should come back and burn it," Tino commented, looking up at the sky. "We still have things to get and sending up smoke won't be a good idea."

Berwald looked down at the body again, but nodded and followed Tino further into the town.

Lukas sat, curled up on one of the more comfortable chairs in the sitting area, nibbling at a plain granola bar. The chair was the only one with any sort of padding, and had armrests just wide enough for Lukas to pull his knees up into the chair with him without being too uncomfortable.

Now, he sat in the chair nibbling at a granola bar and thinking. His conflicted feelings about Matthias were difficult to suppress when one was stuffed in an underground bunker with barely enough room to breathe. He admitted he liked Matthias; he was cheerful, teasing, and brave. The two of them and Berwald had been friends for years, so they practically grew up together.

Lukas was preparing to start his third year in college to go into environmental sciences when everything happened. A lab experiment across the country gone wrong turned into an epidemic. Apparently they were trying to find a permanent cure for the flu virus, which mutated every year. But instead, they created an infectious disease that caused a person's bodily functions to shut down so far that they sustained life, but just barely. The brain was the most affected, rendering the infected capable of much. They weren't dangerous in the sense that they attacked people. At first, they just, with what little brain activity they possessed, wanted help, and sought people, inadvertently infecting them.

However, the disease mutated, and the half-dead humans actually sought to infect others. The disease allowed more brain activity and function, but the people were compelled to infect others.

And that was where they were today, hiding in a hole in the ground, hoping the they could survive and live the best way they could in a world full of dead people.

He sighed. His feelings towards Matthias didn't matter, he decided. He just needed to take care of the rest of them. Getting up from his chair and eating the last bit of his granola bar, he went into the storage room and started packing, yelling at Matthias to help him.

"BERWALD!" Tino yelled from around the corner in the store.

Berwald panicked for a second, before realizing that it was his excited scream, and went to investigate.

"Look what I found!" He held up a jar of pickles. "There's a ton right here!" He pulled Berwald the rest of the way around, and he blinked at the jars on the shelves. There were at least six jars, nearly hidden under some rubble from the store's ceiling.

They stuck two in Berwald's bag, leaving the rest. They didn't find much else in the store (which was a small, rundown Walmart) except some clothes, a pair of shoes that might fit somebody, a few flashlights and a couple of bungie cables.

When they got out of the store, Tino zipped up his bag and swung it back, adjusting his rifle next to it. He smiled up at Berwald. "That was great, huh!" Berwald just mumbled something and blushed slightly, leading Tino across the parking lot and street to a pawn shop. Inside they only found a few pocket knives that had fallen to the ground, but they took those.

"We need to head back." Berwald said quietly, and they started heading off towards the body they still needed to burn.

"Do you think this will ever get better, Berwald?" Tino wondered lightly. "I think it will."

Berwald stopped walking for a second. "It's fine as long as all of you are safe" He blurted out, paused for a second, and then walked quickly past Tino.

Sensing he wasn't going to talk anymore, Tino just sighed and sprinted to catch up to him. They burned the body and walked back in silence.