a/n: So this story was originally part of the collection of stories I'm writing for the 2dozenowies challenge on Livejournal, but it's sort of sprawled into its own monster, so I've decided to make it its own story. Sorry if I screw up anyone's favorites lists or alerts. It contains slash (of the Cox/JD variety) and zombie-related violence, so if either or both of these things makes you squeamish it's probably best if you don't read it. :D

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i. the end

It was raining when you showed up at Dr. Cox's apartment. A day after the TV and radio stations stopped broadcasting, and a few hours after all communication was silent. Two days after the outbreak.

"Hey," you said while you stood dripping wet in the hallway, your eyes a little puffy and red around the edges, "maybe we should get out of here."

He didn't open the door all the way, kept the chain lock on and studied you through the three-inch opening. "You haven't been ... exposed. Have you?"

You shook your head. "Is ... is Jordan with you?" you asked, trying to look past him.

He didn't reply for a moment. "She went to the supermarket."

"The supermarket."

"Two days ago. With Jack and Jennifer."

"You haven't heard from her."

"No," he said, letting the lock off its track and opening the door properly, standing aside to let you in.

There was a gun in his hand, probably trained on you through the door the whole time. Oh, Christ. The thought of it sent chills down your spine.

"So, um," you began, wondering how best to put the fact that you both needed to get the fuck out of the city now, to somewhere where this thing hadn't reached. "I've got a bag packed." You gestured at the backpack on your shoulders. "I mean, it isn't much, 'cause we've got to pack light, but it's enough. On the way over here I went to the hospital and took some first aid supplies when no one was looking."

He nodded. "What else have you got?"

"Well, um, my shovel," you said, holding up your shovel, still with a little blood and brains on it, "some water, some clothes, batteries, walkie-talkies. Some granola bars. A couple of pocketknives."

He looked inside your backpack. "Jesus. Have you been looting, Newbie?"

"Well, not really. It's not like I've been taking TVs or anything. Just stuff we needed." Yes, you had been looting, and it was horrifying, being stuck between panicking people and intermittent zombie hordes. You kept a low profile, sneaking into smaller abandoned convenience stores and gun shops instead of supermarkets and warehouse stores, and you still encountered crazy people with guns and zombies that looked at you like the main fucking course.

Zombies. You hated to call them that because it sounded too much like those awful movies that Dan loved so much when you were teenagers. Night of the Living Dead. Day of the Dead. Dawn of the Dead. Mid-Afternoon of the Dead. Late Morning Coffee Break of the Dead.

But what other kind of monster moans like that, tearing people apart and devouring them?

"Have you heard from Carla and Gandhi?" he asked you while he was packing a backpack for himself.

"Yeah. They took Izzy and left yesterday. They were going east somewhere. He said he didn't really know where." You didn't tell him that you'd cried then, clinging to Turk and Carla and Izzy and bawling like a little kid, like you'd never see them again, because you had the feeling that you probably wouldn't. The phone lines were down and they'd come to your place (you were lucky that you were back from foraging or they'd have been gone and you'd never know what happened to them - not that you do now, because the phones still don't work and you've tried every day since they left but all you get is that cold mechanical woman's voice telling you that your call did not go through, and to please try again later) and Turk did all the talking because Carla looked like she couldn't because she was probably seconds away from crying herself, and Izzy just stared at you. "We're leaving, JD. It's ... it's dangerous here, you know?" You'd nodded, and you weren't able to stop your tears, and then the weight of all of it just hit you and you held onto them and they'd asked you to come with them but you said no.

"Bambi, we love you," Carla called out as they left your building.

"What about Barbie?" You didn't answer at first, because oh, Jesus, Elliot. "Newbie?"

"I called her a couple of days ago and she ... something happened on her end. The last I heard was ..." You couldn't finish.

Dr. Cox nodded. "Why didn't you go with the Turkeltons?"

You watched him for a second before you said anything. "I wanted to make sure you were okay."

He looked up at you then, and asked, "Where should we go?" and you were in awe that he thought that you had any idea about any of this.

"I don't know. Past the Rockies?"

"East, then."

"Yeah. I think it hasn't hit out there yet. At least that's the last thing I heard from the TV or radio."

"Right. And you wouldn't happen to know how to siphon gas, would you?"

"Yeah."

"And you're sure about this? Sure we shouldn't just go to Oregon, to the mountains and just wait it out?"

You laughed then, an ugly fucked-up laugh. "I'm not sure of anything."

"Well then leave your high heels and your ballroom gown here, Anastasia, 'cause you won't need 'em where we're going."

You wanted to smile then, but you realized quickly you didn't have it in you. You tried to tell yourself that at least you'd gotten someone out, that you wouldn't have to do this alone like you thought you would, but all you could really think about was the people you care about. You kept remembering Elliot's screams on the phone (and how your calling her might have alerted the zombies to her presence), the way Turk kept looking back at you as they were walking away, the look on Dr. Cox's face when he told you Jordan and Jack and little JD were missing and presumed eaten.

You thought about all of them, and you smiled weakly and excused yourself to the bathroom, and tried really hard not to let Dr. Cox hear you crying again.

ii. sink

It's only been a couple of days since you left and you still cry every once in a while, but at least you don't sob anymore (you're not sure you really have the energy for it anymore). You look out the window and sniffle, mostly because you saw a Mini Cooper on the side of the road yesterday and you screamed at Dr. Cox to stop, stop, because it looked like Turk and Carla's car and what if -

"Alright, Newbie, calm down." He put the car in reverse and backed up to the Mini Cooper that may or may not have been the Turks' car. You got out, running over to it, stumbling a little because you'd been sitting for so long and you hadn't stretched your legs and your foot was asleep. You tried the handle on the driver's side door: it was unlocked, and the keys were still in the ignition. You took them in your hand and realized it wasn't their car: the key ring didn't have the little medicine vial filled with mineral oil and shiny confetti that Carla had made attached to it, no car seat in the back for Izzy, and the registration in the glove compartment said that the car was registered to Sammy Matsuura.

"Find anything?" Dr. Cox's voice was right behind you, and you started, bumping your head against the steering wheel.

"No. It's not theirs."

"Anything we can take with us?" Dr. Cox went around to the passenger side, opening the door and pulling the seat forward, rooting through the things on the back seat. "Couple bottles of water. Better than nothing, right?"

You nodded, opening the center console and finding a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol, some caffeine pills, and a few joints in a plastic baggie in the center console. "Not bad," you said, holding up the baggie so Dr. Cox could see.

You cried then, pushing your fists into your eyes, hiding your face. "Oh god, it's not theirs," you muttered, and you heard Dr. Cox close the passenger side door of the Mini and go back to his own car, and you didn't know whether you wanted him to say something or to just keep saying nothing like he was doing.

Every once in a while he'll put his hand on your shoulder, and you'll keep looking out the window but you'll lean into his touch a little, and you cringe, preparing for another Dr. Girl Name barb, but nothing ever comes, and you always think that out here in the middle of nowhere you'd never know what was happening. There are no zombies out here, because they stay where the food is, and cities like L.A. and Sacramento and even little cities like Sherman Oaks are still packed with people.

It's the middle of the night when Dr. Cox tells you to hunt through his bag for Sammy Mastuura's caffeine pills and you stumble across his gun. You recoil at first, jumping back like you've just seen a snake or something, and then think to ask why he didn't bring any bullets.

"I did," he replies, and you dig around some more and you come up with two.

"Two? What, are you hoping they'll just line up in single file so you can -"

"They're not for them," he says calmly, cutting you off, and his voice gives you chills.

iii. store

You hit a small town somewhere between Carlsbad and El Paso - it's actually not a town so much as it is a strip of gas stations, convenience stores and drug stores and corpses stacked up along the highway.

The smell is awful.

It gags you a little, but Dr. Cox wants to get whatever you can from the gas pumps and the stores. "No perishables, Newbie," he tells you, directing you toward the drug store. "And make sure to grab a can opener."

You're amazed and disturbed that the store is as clean as it is - amazed that you should be so lucky to find something like this, and disturbed at just how quickly things must have escalated here.

So you get a cart and start grabbing the most nutritious food you can find - drug stores don't have much - and stay away from the soda and junk food since that's likely to do more harm than good. You find some tuna, some wheat bread, raisins and dried apricots and peaches, jerky, peanuts, lots and lots of bottled water. Vitamins and Pepto-Bismol and more extra-strength Tylenol (Sammy Matsuura's bottle was over half-empty). In the pharmacy there's all the pills you could ever need, great big bottles of azithromycin and vancomycin, sleeping pills, stimulants, muscle relaxers, pain medicine. You start hauling it all out to the car and see Dr. Cox filling little red plastic gas cans. "I've got fifteen gallons so far, Newbie," he says, and you worry aloud what hauling all this crap might be doing to your mileage, which wasn't really that good to begin with.

"What are you saying?" he asks, looking up at you.

You shrug. "There's other cars around here, is all. Quieter cars that get better mileage."

"So along with petty thievery and looting, you want to be a car thief too?" he asks you, sounding amused.

"I wouldn't call it thievery. Just survival."

"Point taken." He looks back down at his gas cans. "I'll see what I can do. Keep foraging."

So you keep foraging, pushing all the stuff in carts out next to the car. In the gas station you find a couple of Mag-Lites under the counter, along with a shotgun.

It freaks you out, of course, just sitting there, and it's even scarier because unlike Dr. Cox's little pistol you've got no idea if this monster is loaded or not. You always were afraid of guns. (There was that one time when Mom's third husband got drunk and fired a round right into the vinyl siding of the house, less than a foot away from your head. You were twelve.)

"Hey," you call out to him. "What do you know about shotguns?"

"Next to nothing," he replies, still kneeling down, filling gas cans. "Why do you ask?"

"I found one."

"Is it loaded?"

"I don't know." And I'm not particularly eager to find out, you add silently.

"I'll check it out in a second."

Eventually, you've both decided that it really couldn't hurt to have something like this with you, and it's not like it's that difficult to use - for Dr. Cox to use, anyway. You refuse to touch it, and he smirks and calls you Polly and tells you that it's time to go and it'd probably be best if you made a last run-through to make sure there's nothing you missed. You remember the can opener, that you almost forgot to get one. Good thing he reminded you.

You've made a general mess of things in the drugstore (since you doubt anyone's around to care whether things are neat and tidy or not), but you find a couple of can openers (thinking that it probably wouldn't hurt to take more than one, since it'd be just your luck that if you only took one you'd lose it or break it and then you'd be stuck) and start to make your way out.

But first you pass by the "family planning" section (a euphemism that always made you put mental quotation marks around it because it's just so ridiculous). You stand there for a second, holding your three stupid can openers (three because after you'd decided that you could be just unlucky enough to lose or break the first can opener, you figured you could be unlucky enough to break or lose both of them, so you decided to take another one, because losing or breaking three can openers is just unlikely; even so, you were just barely been able stop yourself from taking the entire shelf of can openers), and you find yourself looking outside at Dr. Cox, searching for car keys, swearing and grousing, running his fingers through his hair.

You watch him, see him smile a little when he finally finds a medium-sized blue sedan whose keys are apparently in the ignition, and that smile makes something inside you jump, and you figure what the hell, and you grab a couple boxes of condoms and a big bottle of lube and shove them down into your backpack.

You get back out to where Dr. Cox is siphoning the gas out of his Porsche's tank. He's got ten five-gallon gas cans on the ground next to him. "It'll have to do," he says when he sees you looking, "that's all the gas cans I could find. I've filled the new car up."

You nod, and start filling the trunk, being careful not to look at him.

The sedan is much quieter, and you find that you can't feel every single little bump in the road anymore. Dr. Cox seems a little annoyed that he had to give up his Porsche, but he says that he might as well get used to making sacrifices, since this could go on for a long time. He pauses at the word sacrifice, and you try to ignore the way his voice seemed to crack a little.

iv. bored

You're glad you convinced him to get a different car, because it's easier to just fall asleep in this one - probably made even easier by the fact that you took one of the muscle relaxers you jacked from the pharmacy. You don't dream while you're on these pills - it's like someone hits you with a sledgehammer and then you're out for several hours. It's dawn when you wake up, and Dr. Cox is scrolling through the radio stations, wondering if somewhere out here there's a signal, but of course there's nothing but static. You watch him sigh in defeat and turn the CD player on again.

"Hey, Newbie. Feeling alright?"

You nod and sit up, glad for the reclining seats. "I could drive, if you want." You mostly say it out of politeness. You have no desire to drive and you know he has no desire to let you.

He needs to feel like he has control over something. You need to feel safe. So he drives. You're basically along for the ride. He shakes his head. "I pulled over and got some sleep a few hours ago. I'm fine."

You're bored. You used to play car games whenever you and Turk were on a long drive (or even a short drive), but no way will Dr. Cox be up for that. So it's just you and him and the Rolling Stones on the stereo, which leaves your mind too much room to wander.

You have been seeing dead bodies everywhere. Long open stretches of highway are pretty much the only place where you don't see them, but everywhere else ... they're there. Some just dropped dead on the side of the road (which is good, isn't it, if they're zombies and they're dying so quickly? At least they're not like the movie zombies), some have been devoured.

He catches you looking out the window sometimes, at the corpses. "Don't look," he'll say. "All you'll do is keep yourself awake."

You almost say it's too late to be worried about that, but you don't. You don't say much of anything lately.

You start to dig through your bag for another muscle relaxer, intent on knocking yourself out for another few hours because you're going crazy with the boredom, and when you open your bag, one of the boxes of condoms stares up at you and you balk, and you feel heat rising to your face.

"I think you've taken enough downers for today, Anna," Dr. Cox says to you, putting his hand across your chest, his eyes still on the road (thank god). "Save some for the rest of us, yeah?"

You zip your bag closed, hoping he doesn't need to go into it for anything, and fling yourself back against the seat, still looking out the window, wondering if it'd be worth it to whine about the Rolling Stones CD which has been playing since yesterday.

v. dirt

He's watching you now to make sure you don't take anymore pills. So much for your newfound escape.

You whined enough and got him to change the CD, and even though Neil Young kind of bores you, you keep your mouth shut because at least it isn't Mick Jagger yelling about clouds or satisfaction or women or whatever.

It's been several days since you showered, and you can't really get your mind off the feeling that your hair is positively dripping with oil. You feel grimy all the time now. You don't even want to eat, you feel so dirty. You mumble this fact aloud - the overarching feeling of filthiness and the fact that you can't seem to sleep is giving you trouble differentiating between your internal monologue and the things that actually come out of your mouth now, which has resulted in you being the chatty Cathy that Dr. Cox knows so well. He doesn't tell you to shut up, though, just nods grimly whenever you say something.

"I feel sorry for the cows. Who's going to milk them, doesn't it hurt them if they don't get milked often enough?"

"The oil drills are kind of cute. Like those drink-y birds."

"I didn't actually know tumbleweeds existed."

"I feel really gross. I really wish I could sleep."

"Didn't we just pass that same oil field a little while ago?"

"Could you stop the car? I think I need to throw up."

vi. sick

You're not sure why you're sick, but you end up dry heaving all over the highway - well, kind of. "All over the highway" sort of implies that there's something coming out, when there isn't.

"You haven't been eating anything."

"Yeah," you say between retching.

"It couldn't have been from the food."

"No. I wasn't eating because I felt sick." You're on your knees on the road in the middle of the desert, tumbleweeds and sand and oil fields all around you (but thankfully no zombies) and you're trying to diagnose yourself. You wonder if he's worried whether you've been infected.

Shit.

You get up, your knees a little shaky, and you go back over to the car, collapsing in your seat. "Good thing I thought to get some Pepto-Bismol." You're sort of slurring a little, wiping throwing-up tears from your eyes (which are different from regular tears, dammit). You have some difficulty opening the bottle, because your hands are weak and shaky too, but you pull away when Dr. Cox tries to take it from you to open it himself. You eventually get it open, straining like you're trying to lift weights or open a pickle jar or something, and you swallow it right from the bottle.

When you vomit again a few minutes later, it's pink and thick and bile-flavored instead of that pleasant minty taste it had before. "I'm sorry," you babble at Dr. Cox, "I'm sorry. Jesus, what'm I gonna do? It could be from that piece of bread I ate the other day, what if I've got ergot poisoning or something? That thing that happened during all those witch hunts that made people crazy. If I go crazy you're going to think I'm infected and then what'll I do?"

"Come on," he says when you're done moaning and you're just rolling around on the ground mumbling. He hooks his hands under your arms and pulls you up, "We've got to find you a bed to sleep in."

vii. treatment

He's found you a bed.

You don't really remember getting in it, or even getting out of the car, although you know you must have, because you just can't picture him carrying you at all.

You're in a double motel room - Dr. Cox is in the other bed, sleeping (snoring a little, and you realize that's what woke you up), an open book resting facedown on his chest. You stand up (slowly - you don't really know if you're up to moving around much yet) and stagger to the bathroom, looking at yourself in the mirror. You're normally pale, but this is ridiculous. You look like you've died and oh Jesus what if you are a zombie?

"Newbie?" You turn, and Dr. Cox is moving toward you, frowning. "How are you feeling?"

"Better." Kind of. You still feel disgusting and you were kind of hoping for a shower before you had to talk about anything.

"You should. You slept for two days." He takes you by the shoulder and leads you back over to your bed. "Here," he says, giving you a can of ginger ale. "Drink that."

You shake your head, putting it down on the nightstand and starting to get up again. "No. I don't want anything, just a shower."

You get a little annoyed when he pushes you back down on the bed, putting the back of his hand to your forehead and telling you that you were running a high fever for those two days and that seeing as how you've eaten nothing for even longer than that, you're going to drink the damn ginger ale even if he could drill for oil on your scalp. "I know you're gross, Courtney, I've been looking at you and smelling you for days. If I can live with it, you can. Drink the god damn soda. Not too fast."

So you do, and you hurry into the shower after you've finished, standing under the hot water for at least an hour. Thank god there's power here, and water and soap and shampoo and toothpaste and everything, really.

There's no hair gel, and it pains you, but at least you're clean and your mouth doesn't taste like an animal crawled down your throat and died. You giggle a little at the image, falling backward on your bed and looking up at the ceiling.

"Thanks for the ginger ale," you say, still giggling, "I feel a lot better."

"Sure," Dr. Cox replies. "Look, I was thinking we could stay here for a couple of days. Driving has lost its charm, and this place has electricity and running water and a distinct lack of zombies."

While you're here, you learn quickly to knock on doors before you go into rooms. There aren't many zombies here, but there are enough, because it only takes one to bite you.

There are a few other people staying here, people fleeing California and Arizona and Nevada. Apparently half of the town's residents have stayed, and the owner of the motel is letting people stay for free. You're basically refugees.

One woman swears that the bite won't infect you, but someone else asks how it could be so widespread if that weren't the case.

Still, it gets you thinking. Particularly because you saw bite marks on Dr. Cox's arm and hand and you wonder whether he's going to turn.

viii. storm

You're jumpy lately.

And no wonder. Even though it's been a couple of days since you noticed that Dr. Cox had been bitten, and the marks looked a couple of days old then, you still worry. You don't want him to be a zombie, and you don't want to become a zombie yourself. You don't want to have to kill him.

So you don't say anything, but you watch him carefully, and you listen carefully. When he leaves the room, even just for some air or to get away from you, you follow him, your shovel in your hand.

Eventually, of course, he notices, and he turns around and snaps at you, demanding to know why the hell you're following him everywhere and can't he get two god damn minutes alone without you looking at him like some fucking puppy or lovesick schoolgirl?

He's yelling, and it makes you nervous, so you tighten your grip on your shovel and move backward, away from him.

He notices that, too, sees your discomfort and follows you, moving toward you, and before you know it you're backed up against a wall, his eyes boring into yours, studying you. Without really meaning to, you look down at his arms, crossed across his chest, at the wounds on the left one.

He snarls a little, grabs you by your jacket and pulls you back into your room. "Alright," he says, "so you know. Excellent work, Nancy, you've been following me around with your shovel in case you needed to kill me."

You nod.

"You could have said something," he says, leaning against the door.

"When did it happen?"

"The same day we got here. You were sleeping."

"What ... what did you do?"

He doesn't say anything for a moment. "Well, what do you think I did?"

You shudder and look away. "So it's been, what, four days?"

"Yeah."

"You don't feel any different?"

"No."

"So that lady was right. I don't think it's communicable."

"It doesn't seem like it. Still, don't want to take any chances there, Newbie."

You don't feel the need to follow him anymore, so you let him go alone. There's a couple of Vonnegut novels on the nightstand that he's already read, and you pick one up and try to read it - you can't quite do it, because you see the words, and you know them, but you can't seem to make them make sense together. You're thinking about how you accepted one set of rules about this whole catastrophe and now they just don't seem to be the right ones. You should have known, really, not to take advice from movies.

You're also thinking about Dr. Cox and the condoms you stole a couple of days ago.

Thunder wakes you up, and you're terrified. You sit up in bed, wishing you had your iPod or something with you so you could at least try to ignore the storm outside.

Dr. Cox is already awake, standing next to the window, parting the vertical blinds with his fingers and looking outside. He hears you stirring and looks back at you, asking, "Can't sleep?"

You shake your head. "The storm's too loud." He flicks on a lamp and you wince, blinking stupidly while your eyes adjust. You were curled up on your side, and your back feels a little weird - it doesn't exactly hurt, but it's not comfortable - so you stretch, arching your back a little, your arms over your head. He's still looking at you.

You get up and move to stand next to him, trying to see what's so interesting outside, but there's nothing. It's dark out, and the moon is casting a sick, wan glow over everything. "They haven't come for us, have they?" you ask, a little anxious, and he looks over at you again and shakes his head. You sigh, relieved.

You find yourself edging closer to him, and you figure he's getting annoyed with you because he snaps at you that this better be good, and you decide to forget subtlety, because if you don't do it now you probably won't do it.

So you turn to him and you kiss him.

And he pushes you back, shoving your hands away. Stares at you. Your breathing picks up, and for a second all you can really think about is how glad you are that he didn't punch you in the face. You come to your senses again and wow, Dr. Cox is kissing you. You're not really sure what to do with your hands, so you settle for resting them at his hips, urging him closer. He takes a fistful of your hair and pulls your head back, biting and sucking at your neck, and you shiver when he runs his tongue along your clavicle. "Oh," you murmur, your fingers clutching at the hem of his shirt.

When he pushes you down onto your bed you wonder if your lips are bruising, and you're strangely okay with it. His fingers are just above the waistband of your jeans, teasing the skin there, and is he ever going to get on with it? Your hips start pushing forward, up toward his hands, but he just snickers a little and keeps dipping lower only to come back up, his mouth still at your neck. He's got you down to your boxers when he bothers to ask you, "Have you got anything?" His voice is low and has kind of an edge to it and that doesn't help at all.

"Yeah," you say, cursing a little because now you actually have to get up and hunt through your bag for condoms and lube, and your fingers are shaking so it's kind of hard to get the plastic seal off the bottle of lube and you rip the box of condoms right open. You give them to him and you can see the beginnings of a smirk on his face, and he opens his mouth and starts to say something. You want to tell him to shut up and get on with it, but of course you don't, and you barely notice what he says. Your breath hitches in your throat when he goes back to what he was doing before, and there's thunder and lightning outside and you want to laugh at how ridiculous all of this is: you're on the run from zombies, people you care about are dead, and now you're sleeping with your mentor while there's an overblown and overdramatic storm outside.

His fingers are wrapped inside a condom and they're inside you, fluttering in a way that makes you gasp and clench your fists. Fuck. He starts stroking you, and you keep expecting him to stop when you're stretched out enough, but he keeps going. You've lost control of the words that are coming out of your mouth and your hips are basically just moving on their own now, trying to get closer, and it's like you just can't get enough contact and it's killing you. Your fists curl around handfuls of the sheets on the bed: he's moving so slowly, so languidly, like you've got all the time in the world and you're actually close to coming when he stops.

You groan a little, frustrated, still twitching and shaking, losing your mind because you were so close and now he's taking his time getting ready and you don't dare go on by yourself because that'll be it. So you sit up, you take the condom package out of his hands and you pull his jeans down yourself, licking your lips and running your tongue up the length of him and he actually moans - god, you can hardly believe what you're hearing. His fingers are in your hair again, gripping a little too tightly, but it's easy to ignore after a few seconds.

You take him as deep as you can, your cheeks hollowed. "Oh, Christ," he whispers.

He calls you a tease when you pull away and look up at him through your eyelashes, tracing swirling patterns with your tongue. "Get up here," he says eventually, and pushes you over on your stomach. You start to protest because you kind of wanted to be facing him but then you figure that you either do this his way or not at all, so you shut up and just hold onto the headboard of your bed. He positions himself behind you, and even though he goes slow it hurts, Jesus Christ it hurts, and you squeeze your eyes shut so hard you see stars. You can't breathe for a second.

"Stop." It takes him a moment to ask you if you're alright. You nod. "Yeah." But he doesn't go on yet, and asks you again. "Okay. Yeah. Okay," you say, your breathing a little harsh.

"Okay?" he asks, and you nod again, and he pushes back in and it gets easier this time, but you're still gripping the headboard like your life depended on it. He does it again, and again, and again, and eventually it doesn't hurt anymore, but you're still squeezing your eyes shut and holding onto the headboard and crying out sometimes. "Oh god," you murmur, and the mattress springs are squeaking and groaning beneath you and distantly you hope there's no one trying to sleep in the rooms around you, but you can't really help the noises you're making, he's moving so hard and deep and fast, stroking you again, his fingers warm and strong, a little out of rhythm, his lips occasionally on the back of your neck, sucking hard, probably leaving marks.

You come first, so hard you thrash around a little and your head bangs against the wall. You're still mumbling a little, your eyes closed and your head resting against the headboard. He's not moving as frantically anymore, but his fingers are digging into your hips a little painfully. He lets go when he comes, and he pulls you to him, his grip tightening around you, so hard you almost can't breathe.

You feel boneless as you lie down, and you hate to get up but you really want to clean yourself up. There's kind of a mess on your bed and you're really not looking forward to sleeping in a puddle of lube and come, but it looks like you don't have much of a choice: when you leave the bathroom, Dr. Cox is back in his own bed, probably already asleep.

You feel a little resentful as you pull the sheets off the bed and spread the comforter over the bare mattress, stumbling around a little because it's dark in here (he shut the lamp off) and your bones feel like jelly and your knees are still shaky. The springs groan as you lie down, trying to avoid wet spots (ew), when you hear Dr. Cox mumble, "Newbie."

"What?"

"The hell are you doin'?"

"Um. Going to bed?"

"Over here."

So you climb into bed next to him, nervously lingering over by the edge. You fall asleep quickly, despite the storm outside, but you wake up a little later and his arm is across your hips, and you breathe a sigh of relief.

ix. exeunt

You've been trying to get in touch with Turk and Carla since the day after they left, and you've been getting Turk's voice mail every time.

Today the message is different.

"We're okay for now. We were trying to go east, but our car broke down. Someone picked us up on the highway, and we set up a camp, but we don't think we'll be able to hold them off for much longer. The phone lines are back up but the power isn't. Things are still pretty bad.

"We could really use some help." You scramble to try to find a pen so you can write their location down. Dr. Cox watches you.

"They're in Texas," you say, staring down at the paper on the desk. You can hardly believe they're still alive. "They need help." You look over at him, and you already know he's going to refuse.

And why not? This is as good as it could possibly get - safe, with power and water and food. It would be stupid to leave to try to play the hero.

"Okay," you say. "You can stay. But I have to go. I can't ... I can't just leave them. I have to try."

You're bluffing, really. How are you supposed to leave one for the other? But you start packing up, hoping he won't call you on it, because if he does ... well, it's not like you'll be choosing between them then. You just won't be able to choose. This is not a decision you can make. You swipe your sleeve across your eyes, annoyed with yourself.

He leaves the room after a few minutes of watching you pack, and you guess that's it. You sit back down on his bed, defeated, staring at your bag lying half-packed on the table. After a minute, you sigh and get back to it. At least Dr. Cox will be safe here. Maybe if you manage to pick up Turk and Carla you can just bring them back here instead of continuing east.

You wonder if he's even going to give you the keys to the car or if you're going to have to steal another one.

He comes back as you've finished packing, and says, "Let's go."

"What?"

"You're ready, I'm ready, the car's ready. Let's go."

"Oh." There's a lot you want to say, but there are more pressing issues. "What do we do if we find them?"

"Keep going east, I guess. Might as well, right? If it's not out there. We're in the middle of it here, from what I've heard from everyone else."

"Okay."

"Besides," he adds as you're bringing all your crap out to the car, "I don't want to have to find where they keep the clean sheets."