A/N: This is the first of a thirty day challenge. Any OTP could be used, so I went with one of my favorites. This pairing doesn't get enough love, in my opinion. This isn't beta'd and I doubt any of the others are going to be- sorry about that.
If you don't like FRANCIS/ZOEY you should probably turn back now because this won't be your cup of tea.
Disclaimer: I do not own Left 4 Dead or the characters/world therein.
30 Day Challenge 1: Holding Hands
There were so many things wrong with the situation it wasn't even funny. He was too old for her. They weren't from the same social cliques. He was an old biker, covered in tattoos and scars that would have made him terrifying to her if they had meet a year before they stumbled across each other. She was a college drop-out- at least, she would have dropped out if she had had the time to before the world went to Hell and drop-out sounded better than failure- who had never been in a fight or even to a real bar before. Normally, girls like her only met guys like him in back alleys and it ended with years of therapy and possibly an abortion for one of them and a bragging story over a few beers for the other. It was actually depressing to think about.
Days consisted mostly of running and fighting off- killing- things that looked so much like people in a desperate attempt to not end up a beaten and half-eaten corpse wandering around some suburban Hell or abandoned cityscape or even some backwater little hole in the wall that wouldn't even have a marker on a map. With so much shit all day, every day, there was no need to go over everything about the situation that was wrong. There was enough of that in their lives without twisting the simple things in life that made her happy into another thing wrong with world. Instead, it was better to focus on the positive.
He had told her that- or, something similar enough- once a long time ago when the wounds were still fresh. Not physical wounds. There was hardly a day when they weren't aquiring fresh new scrapes and bruises and cuts to add to their collection of 'survival badges'- he had given her that phrase, that way to look at them, during a different pep talk. It had been the psychological wounds. Scrapes in her self-worth in this world that cared more in the ability to wield a gun than the ability to recall movie quotes. Bruises to the parts of her that had been so sure she wouldn't make the same stupid mistakes everyone made in horror movies- the same stupid mistakes he had saved her from too many times to count in the beginning. Deep, gaping, bleeding gashes in her sense of morality back when she hoenstly felt sorry for those things. She had called him a murderer the first time she saw one die, when he blew her room mate's head clear off. She had called him a sociopath when he didn't break a little more every time he killed one the same way she did. She had called him many things worse than that when too many little breaks added up to a complete shattering melt-down and he stopped her from ending everything with a single bullet.
He didn't even get mad at her when she yelled that she hated him for keeping her stuck in that living nightmare or when she called him selfish and said that the only reason he kept her alive was because he was too scared to either live alone or end it himself. That had been wrong, too. He should have left her to kill herself or, at least, gotten mad. He should have done anything other than laugh it off with some cheesy line about not being able to repopulate the world without her whenever they found somewhere safe to settle down. She had been sure at that point that he was completely nuts. That had been wrong as well.
He wasn't crazy. He was a survivor. He knew that things were fucked up and that the only way he'd be able to deal with it was to be fucked up, too. That was how he explained it to her once, during of their many talks. There had been a lot of times in his life when things got fucked up. He was an expert in dealing with the fucked up. It was his forte and he'd be damned if some undead wussies would get the better of a man who had spent his life out-fuck-upping a world that had been pretty fucked up to begin with.
A year ago, she wouldn't have given that kind of man the time of day. All the wrong things about him and her and the two of them as a couple would have scared her away. Hell, maybe he wouldn't have wanted her, either. All those wrongs would have stood in the way of them being together and that thought made her frown more than the zombies the longer they ran and fought and killed in that world made up of so many wrongs because, despite all the wrong, she was happy.
Francis noticed the thoughtful frown on his companion's face- he was really good at telling her mood just by glancing at her and even better at improving it when he didn't like what he saw- and slipped his hand into hers, even though it meant having to use his pistol instead of his favored shotgun. As a large, calloused hand closed around his companion's dainty one that lost a little of it's softness with every passing day, he could see in her eyes all the wrongs slip away and feel in the way her hand gripped his the one big right that kept them both going: in middle of a wrong, fucked up, wussy infected world, they had managed to find each other and, wouldn't you know it, the happened to be just right for each other in a world of wrongs.