Uh wow, where to begin. This stems from when I was babysitting this morning. The kids were watching BTR and all I could think about was writing porn and then, instead of porn, I ended up with zombie apocalypse, which led to this entire thing being created. I can't explain it, not really. I like it better than straight porn, though there is some light sex in here, nothing too bad, however. I save the hardcore stuff for livejournal.

Warnings for noncon, implied noncon, violence, gore, homophobia, and adult language and scenarios.

1.

There are fewer and fewer bodies to find these days. The bloated and rotting corpses are little more than piles of bones picked and licked clean. The stench of death and decomposition is gone from the air, replaced with the false scent of freshness, of wind as it blows through the trees, through the waist high grass of the mountains, through the golden California hills. The city is a wasteland and everything is dying or dead or wishes it was.

"Jackpot!" Carlos yells loudly from the other room, his voice happier than James has heard in months. James jumps over the partially eaten remains of a secretary, her long, dark hair spattered with gray lumps of brain and pulpy gore. They tore her skull right open to get in and the hole is wide and gaping against the white bone of her exposed scalp.

"Dude." He can't help but smile too, so wide it hurts his face, so wide it feels like betrayal. It feels wrong to find moments of happiness in the apocalyptic world. "I can't believe it."

"We're going to have chocolate." Carlos' eyes are bright and alive and it's like being sixteen again, not nineteen going on forty. It's strange to see them be this way, Carlos still with his helmet but now with a short beard because razors are few and far between. Carlos who is filled out, a gun strapped into a holster on his thigh, a knife tucked into his belt, and his rifle carefully slung over one shoulder, always always within reach.

"I haven't had a candy bar in over a year." Carlos beams at him as he slams the butt of his gun into the vending machine glass. It splinters, cracks, gives way and then they are both in elbow deep, grabbing bags of chips and cookies and powdered donuts, chocolate bar after chocolate bar. They aren't low on supplies yet but it's a small miracle to find a treat. Most grocery stores have been ransacked by survivors or raided by the zombies. Zombies go for flesh and bone, marrow and blood, but they'll eat anything with a trace of meat, so most of what's left is stuff like canned vegetables and fruits, dried pastas and sauces. Chocolate is manna from heaven, a gift from the kinder powers that be. James doesn't believe in God these days, only the raging fury of the universe and the temporary compassion of luck.

"We're going to eat so good tonight." They stuff Carlos' backpack full and get their guns ready. The only thing more dangerous than entering a building is leaving. Zombies are stupid things but they have the sense of smell of a bloodhound and inhuman hunger in their bellies, the strength of something powerful and dead.

"Let's hurry up and head back to base." Maybe they're sentimental about the whole situation, but the Palmwoods has been thoroughly secured and fortified. It's still home, even after all that's happened, even after the plague swept through and those that died of it didn't stay dead. It was a place of refuge in those times and now it's their only place of solace. The rooms used to be full of survivors, the sound of children laughing in the halls. Now the place is quiet as a grave and it's just him and Carlos. It used to be the four of them but Logan and Kendall went down on their last raid and James feels the loss so strongly it aches every second of the day. They were trying to save a little girl but the zombies were quicker than they'd anticipated. Kendall had tossed the child to Carlos and told him to run, as fast as he could, and James couldn't shoot accurate enough. They got Kendall first, tore him apart while he was still alive, in a hot, burst of blood and awful screams. Logan tripped on his way to the door and took himself out before they could, one efficient bullet to the temple.

"We're back!" Carlos calls out as soon as James double bolts the main door, tosses vinegar outside to cover up their scent.

Minnie runs out to meet them and attaches herself to Carlos' leg. James wants to hate her sometimes, the four year old girl who cost him two of his best friends. Two of the best men left in the world. He can't bring himself to, however, not when Carlos picks her up and spins her, not when she throws her arms around his neck and kisses each of his cheeks. She's tiny, just a baby when the zombie plague started. All she's known in life is fear and the patter of bare feet slapping against concrete as the zombies chase you. She has neat black hair that James cut for her and dark, almond shaped eyes. They found her in what used to be the Chinese immigrant part of LA and she's probably the last Asian left south of Big Sur. The population is dwindling down to three now, set to dip down to zero. "I brought you a present."

"We both brought you presents." He breaks open a candy bar and hands her a square of chocolate. He doesn't think she's had it more than once or twice in her life because she savors it, licks it with her little bubble gum pink tongue like it's a lollipop. "Good, huh?"

Minnie doesn't talk, not since her mother handed her screaming to Kendall, begging him to save her daughter, please oh please save her baby. Minnie smiles sometimes when Carlos tickles her belly or James brushes her hair, but otherwise she's silent except for at night when she screams her way through terrible nightmares.

"We found tons of candy, quierida." Carlos calls her quierida and he says that it means dear and darling and that's a pretty good word for what Minnie is. She's their dear, their darling, the only person left to cherish and protect. "It's getting dark, we should head upstairs."

Zombies are most active at night; it's when they really go on the prowl for food. It used to be so bad James could hear screams every night. The silence of the nights is even worse, because now there's no one, not a sound, proof that he and Carlos are truly alone.

"What would you say to leaving the city? There's no one here, Carlos. We should head north, try to see if there's anyone in San Francisco." They've never talked about leaving before. Los Angeles has always been their home, their city and their people. The city is theirs but there are no people left. "It's not good for Minnie if we stay here. She needs someone who can take care of her, someone with more to offer." Carlos knows it's true. They have to leave Minnie alone to go out looking for food and they can't give her more than food and shelter and all of their pent up affection. They don't know what to do if she gets a fever, if she ever has questions about her body, if she wants someone with soft hair and hands to stroke her cheek.

"Might as well." Carlos shrugs, unbuckles his helmet with one hand and hangs it by the guns at the door. "We can leave at sunrise."

The roads are hard to navigate but they make it out of the city after four hours. Most of the cars have been cleared from the highway thanks to one of the Army's final sweeps. Minnie sleeps buckled into an old car seat they found in the back of a minivan, a withered, gray child inside it. The toddler was dead from strangulation, if the hand shaped bruises around its neck were an indication. It's the kindest thing a mother can do to kill her child in a time like this, it's better than the alternative.

They stop in Bakersfield for the night. A fire station looks promising, its windows are boarded up and the doors are fortified with steel. It looks like it could have people and if not; it will provide more than adequate shelter for the night. The only way to get in is up the fire escape and that's if Carlos climbs up on his shoulders and then offers James a hand up.

The sun is setting on the coast, the sky a wash of purple and orange and blue. The wind starts to blow, towards the inner part of the city and away. It's a bad omen and he tries not to think about the way it'll carry their stench to whatever has a nose strong enough to smell them on the breeze.

"We need to get inside ASAP."

Carlos has just managed to grab the end of the fire escape ladder when a gunshot rings clear and loud in the quiet. Carlos screams and blood immediately soaks his blue sleeve dark. The blood will attract zombies faster and James can almost see them sprinting across the pavement, their sunken, decomposing faces contorted in hunger, saliva frothing from their mouths.

"Oh fuck, oh fuck." Carlos gasps on the pavement, left hand pressed tight over his wound. Blood seeps out beneath his palm, thick and red. A shoulder wound isn't life threatening so long as the bullet passes clean through but they need to stop the blood. "Who shot me?"

"Up there." A woman hops out onto the fire escape, a gun on each hip, another in her hands. She's beautiful, dark skin and dark eyes and a darker expression. She thought they were zombies or maybe she didn't, people do what they have to do to survive. James can't fault her one bit. "Help us, please." She darts down the fire escape and stops just above them, gun pointed at his face.

"What did you come here for?" Not every person still surviving is a good one. He knows that better than anyone because he had to watch and Carlos had to live it. They don't talk about that, it hasn't happened in two years, but if he closes his eyes he can still remember it, every sight and smell and sound.

"We just wanted somewhere to stay the night. We have a kid."

"You shot me!" Carlos shouts up at her, scowling, a few droplets of blood glistening in his beard.

"And I'll shoot you again if you don't shut the fuck up. Screaming attracts them."

Sure enough, the sound of a horde of footsteps starts up and there's the rattle of a metal trashcan being trampled by feet. The first zombie comes into view, an emaciated, scraggly looking creature in scraps of a green shirt, completely naked otherwise. The zombie will close the distance in fifteen seconds. James looks to Minnie, who is sitting on the roof of the car, a juice box clenched in her fists, and he thinks of Kendall and Logan.

"Take her!"

The woman extends her hands and James picks Minnie up and throws her with everything he has. She lands square in the Woman's outstretched arms but she's reaching for James and Carlos, talking for the first time since they've had her. She's screaming no no no.

He cocks his gun and waits. The zombie gets within a hundred feet and he puts a hole in its head, another in its neck. It dies in a burst of arterial spray. More follow, nearly four dozen of them, and James knows the odds. He has enough bullets to take down twenty-eight of them, Carlos too, but Carlos' shooting arm is shot to hell and he can barely pull the trigger let alone hold his gun steady.

"James." Carlos says, staggering to his feet.

"Yeah, I know." Drops of Carlos' blood land on the pavement.

"I'm tired." Carlos takes out his pistol, ready to shoot with his left.

"I miss Kendall and Logan." Carlos drops his gun; James grabs Carlos' blood smeared hand.

Carlos' mouth is warm against his and the sunset is beautiful.

2.

The accident is Carlos' fault. It was his idea to go out for a trip along the California coast. He knows it's his fault and he wants to apologize for it, but his mouth is full of blood and dislodged teeth, so he can't say a word.

Everyone said Big Sur was a dangerous drive; one of the deadliest in the world. There are sheer cliffs and jagged rocks and narrow roads. Navigate with extreme caution is what the signs all said. If Carlos was smarter, and there are times he wishes he was, he'd have taken that as a sign to tell James to stop for the night. He's only had his license four weeks at this point and anyone else would take one look at the hundred foot drop into churning water and slam on the break. Years of driving his grandfather's truck in the fields behinds his house make him cocky and in those boring Greek tragedies they have to read in school, the moral of the story is that hubris always comes before the fall. In this case, the fall is literal and agonizing.

"Carlos?" James' mouth is drenched in blood that is leaking from his flattened nose. James' face hit the dashboard when they fell into the rocks and then the water. His nose is smashed and broken, swollen three times its normal size and colored a dark, angry purple.

"Gngph." He opens his mouth to let teeth and blood and drool slop out wetly down his front. "I didn't see the bend in the road."

"Dat's okay." James sounds funny. Carlos tries to laugh, just to see if he can, and inside of him he feels the slide of splintered bones.

"My chest hurts." Each time he breathes there's a stabbing pain in his right side and pressure against the inside of his ribs.

"I can't feel my legs." James lets his head fall forward until his chin is resting against his collarbone and blood continues to gush out of his broken nose.

"I'm sorry." It's getting harder and harder to breathe. He feels like he's being suffocated, crushed from the outside in.

"Not your fault." The car smells like blood and urine and sweat. James lost control of his bladder when his back broke and Carlos isn't going to say anything. It doesn't need to be mentioned. There are things you can ignore in death, if he is dying, and he thinks he is. He's hurting too much to be able to live.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it." James closes his eyes and the only sound in the car is the harsh wheeze of Carlos as he tries to draw a breath.

"Guess we aren't gonna make it back in time to record another album."

James doesn't answer. Carlos' throat is thick with all the things he wants to say. James looks like he's asleep and that's what death is, really, just an eternal, peaceful sleep. "I'm sorry, James." His lungs are ground glass and fire, blinding white and hot.

He listens to the sound of his shuddering breaths, the pound of his heartbeat inside his head, the last little noises of his life. The ocean waves lap peacefully against the sides of the car and then there are no more sounds, just the cry of gulls and the hum of the sea.

3.

When you're dying, everyone around you is all smiles.

The nurses smile at him about everything: lab reports, test results, when they bring in his meals, when they come to give him yet another IV. He's tired of happy faces. They don't need to be gentle with him. He's accepted that he's doomed to die a painful death. Facing your own mortality sucks, but he doesn't need everyone to be so gentle around him, like acknowledging reality is going to break him.

"Good morning James. How are you feeling today?" The only good thing about being terminal is that all the nurses on this side of the ward are hot.

"Fine." Nurse Ng sets his breakfast tray on the table in front of him. Monday is wheat toast and scrambled eggs with a side of blueberry yogurt. Hospital food is shit, no doubt about it.

"You're getting a roommate later this afternoon." She smiles at him, smoothes her hands through her straight, rather boring hair. "It'll be nice to have some company, don't you think?"

"It'll be fantastic, I'm sure." She doesn't appear to recognize his sarcasm, because her smile is genuine and cheerful and bright.

They wheel his roommate in around two. He's a small guy with short hair who's pale underneath his natural coloring, a startling lack of pink in his cheeks. He's wearing a dark hoodie over his hospital gown and pants.

"Let me know if you need anything else to make you comfortable." The male nurse, the big, giant, beast of a man who looks like he should be working for security instead, ruffles the kid's hair and bumps him under the chin.

"Thanks! Have a good afternoon!" His roommate is one of those types; the kind that are chipper even in death, who look into that looming abyss and try to fill it with their artificial light. "I'm Carlos."

"James." Carlos' hand is cold when they shake. "Obligatory 'what are you in here for' question." It's standard patient procedure to find out what the person you're living with is in for. All there is to talk about most days are diseases and how many months or weeks or days a person has left. "I have leukemia, it's metastasized and I've got another two months tops."

"Congenital heart defect. I'm finally at the top of the transplant list but if I don't get a heart soon I won't be healthy enough to survive the surgery." Carlos doesn't appear sad to say it, just shrugs it off. James would be pissed in his place, if he had something that could so easily be cured. Two bone marrow transplants, a brief remission, and he's still going to kick the bucket.

"That sucks."

"Nah, it's not so bad. Someone else will get the heart if I don't. I might die but someone else will live. It's like the circle of life or something." Carlos walks back to his bed slowly, chest rising and falling rapidly after only a few steps.

"Dude, you okay?"

"I've got a bad heart, so no, I'm not okay." It should sound mean and nasty but Carlos is laughing while he says it. "If I was okay I'd be home playing hockey."

"You play hockey?" The roommate thing should work out. Carlos is nice enough and he's been dying to find someone to watch hockey games with.

"I wish." Carlos takes the oxygen mask hanging by his bed off the hook, puts it over his mouth and draws in a deep, shuddering breath. "My doctor said the exertion could kill me, whatever that means. I had to play with the girls during lunch. The girls! I know how to braid hair; no guy should ever know how to braid hair when he's six."

"That is pretty crappy, not gonna lie." James doesn't know how to braid hair, per say, but he's a god with a straightening iron in his hands. Not that he has much hair to mess around with these days. He lost it after chemo round number one and was finally up to something resembling peach fuzz when he had to get round two. His hair is slowly growing back but at this rate he'll be dead before it's back to its former luster. "How long are you here for?"

"'Till the end." Carlos lays back, kicks off the ugly hospital slippers.

"Like, the end?"

"My parents work and I can't be left home by myself anymore. Aren't you here until then?"

"No! I'm here for the weekend, I just got the diagnoses."

"Oh, yeah, how'd that go? I don't remember getting it, 'cause I was so small. There's really nothing to be afraid of, most of my friends died and it didn't seem so bad." James can't imagine watching his friends die and now he gets why Carlos takes this whole death thing in stride. It's normal to him; he's been introduced to the idea that he's going to die young since he was a few days old. It must be fucking normal to him at this point.

"I can't change it, what am I supposed to do? Cry? Yeah, I could cry, it wouldn't make my mom feel any better, and I'm not going to go out like a pussy."

"It's fine to cry, it's the first stage of death." Carlos pulls a paper bag out of the front pocket of his hoodie. When he opens it there's the distinct, lovely odor of fast food and grease. "Want a corndog? My cousin Yesenia works as a candy striper and she brought me these."

"Hell yes."

He and Carlos spend the weekend watching cartoons and sports on TV, spitting out the window and dropping water balloons made out of surgical gloves. The hospital room feels homier with another person in it, not quite so cold and clinical. Carlos adds the smell of his house to the scent of disinfectant and latex, something warm and sweet with a hint of spices. Carlos' family comes to visit every afternoon and his mother smuggles him in Tupperware filled with soup. Saturday's soup is red with chunks of meat and corn-things Carlos calls hominy and Sunday's is rich orange with thin noodles that tastes like tomatoes.

"It was fun having you around." James doesn't know what else he's supposed to say as he gathers his stuff into his bag, tugs off his stupid, paper-thin hospital gown and replaces it with his favorite shirt. He looks disgusting these days, so pale and unnaturally skinny.

"You too."

"I'll stop by and um, maybe, you know, towards the end—"

"I'd like that." Carlos hugs him, a full-on hug, their chests and shoulders and hips touching. It's strange to be hugged that way by someone he's just met, strange and comforting. He likes it more than he's probably supposed to.

"I'll see you soon, I promise."

Visiting Carlos becomes an everyday thing. His mom drives him to the hospital before she has to leave for work, runs her hand over his too-short hair and kisses his forehead. She thinks visiting Carlos is helping him cope with the fact that he's going to die so soon and maybe it is, maybe that's part of why he likes Carlos as much as he does.

"Who was the first girl you ever kissed?"

They're lying together on the roof, their backs against the sun-warmed concrete, staring up at the blue-blue afternoon sky.

"Uh, there isn't one." Carlos blushes and for the first time there's color in his cheeks. For a brief instant James sees what Carlos would look like healthy.

"Guy?"

"No." Carlos turns his face away.

"You've seriously never kissed anyone? Chicks love the whole dying-guy thing. It makes you vulnerable."

"I've never had a girlfriend! I'm probably going to die without ever kissing anyone, how sad is that? I mean, it's bad enough I'll die a virgin, but a kissing-virgin?"

"I could help you out with that. There are girls around her, whaddya say?" Carlos turns back to face him, his face still flushed but his eyes empty.

"No, that's alright. There are more important things to worry about."

He kisses Carlos one morning when they're wrestling over who gets the last of the popsicles the nurses brought in. James is getting steadily weaker but Carlos doesn't have the stamina to subdue him, so he ends up pinned on his back, glaring up at James with all the fake hatred his little bad heart can muster.

James kisses him and Carlos' tongue is ice cold and tastes like cherries and grapes. It's not bad but it isn't great. Carlos doesn't know what to do with his mouth, there's tons of excess saliva and fumbling with their hands. James wants to cup Carlos' jaw but Carlos wants to curl both sets of his fingers in James' collar and tug him closer. They compromise somewhere in the middle and then things get better, they fit together better.

"I guess I won't die without ever kissing someone." Carlos pants when they break apart, his heartbeat fluttering fast as a hummingbird's winds at his pulse points. James is afraid right then that the kissing might kill him, but Carlos' heart calms down and they lay together cheek to cheek.

The nurses don't kick him out when Carlos sneaks him in to sleep over. They know James is only a few days away from checking in himself. He's tired all the time these days, like the effort to keep his body alive is too much. It's only a matter of time and his mom cries alone in her room when she thinks he's gone to sleep.

The nurses check on the terminal patients every hour so he and Carlos don't have much time. Carlos has the condoms that he got from the third floor where they give them out for free. Carlos has to roll it on James because James' fingers tremble if he tries to use the muscles for too long. He's starting to shut down, slowly but surely. They use the lube Carlos got from the third floor and it goes worse than their first time kissing did. James has never, not with a guy, and Carlos has never ever and by the time James slides home Carlos is clinging to him tighter than a baby monkey grips its mother's back.

Once he's inside it's easier. All he has to do is shift his hips, get himself going in a good, steady rhythm. Carlos lets his thighs fall into a wide V so James can shift closer, gain some more leverage to make this whole thing work. Carlos is tight, tighter than James thought anyone could be, smooth and virgin-warm. Carlos makes soft, breathless noises and then it's over, quicker than he'd hoped. He can't last as long as he wants, he can't even get hard as easily as he used to, which is probably just as well. The blue tint to Carlos' lips never leaves, even when he has the oxygen cannula in his nose.

The day he finally has to be checked in, Carlos' bed is empty.

"I'm sorry." Nurse Ng's eyes are red rimmed and watery.

"Thank you." His heart literally hurts.

Carlos' black hoodie is folded neatly on the end of his bed. He picks it up, runs his fingers over the soft cotton material.

"Are you going to be okay, sweetheart?"

Carlos' hoodie is too small but he's never going to take it off.

"I think so."

He isn't afraid anymore.

4.

James feels the knife pressed to his neck before he hears Carlos scream.

The blade is cold as steel and sharp enough to nick his skin without any excess pressure. The knife is all he can focus on in the dark, the gleam of streetlight off the metal, the sound of skin shifting around the hilt of the weapon.

"There's money in the dresser." Something like ninety percent of all home invasions are robberies. He and Carlos can handle that.

"We don't want your money."

The lights flip on, revealing three guys in thick plastic masks that warp their features. They're nothing but layers of plastic the color of flesh from their skin underneath and tiny holes for eyes.

"Why are you here?" Carlos is bleeding from the mouth. One of them must have punched him; it explains his scream.

"This is a neighborhood with family morals. We don't like having you two here."

James is the one who wanted an apartment in the city, somewhere in the middle of everything, where restaurants and movie theaters and malls are within walking distance. They're only here because Carlos' grandmother left the house she and her husband saved forty years to buy to him on her deathbed, her favorite and only grandson. Carlos said it would be insulting not to take it, even if they both preferred the bustle of the city to the slow crawl of the 'burbs.

"Is this a gay or a Mexican thing?" Only Carlos is blunt enough to come out and say it. Logan warned them about something like this when they first discussed moving in. Logan and Camille have lived on the block since they were married seven years ago and they're raising two healthy, beautiful kids in a house with a white fence and a green lawn. James was never the type of person who wanted that, but it seemed possible. They could get a dog or a baby; if that was something they wanted, if they're crazy enough to dream.

"We aren't racists." The biggest of the bunch backhands Carlos hard enough the sound of the slap makes James flinch.

"Got it."

"This is the 21st century; I thought we were beyond beating the shit out of the neighborhood faggots." He says it to get their attention away from Carlos and for one of the blows to finally land on him. Carlos' mouth is a bloody mess and James can't bear to look at it.

"We're not gonna beat you that bad."

"Yeah," the shortest of the bunch chimes in and his voice is surprisingly deep. "We're just going to teach you a lesson."

It's not the first time someone has tried to beat him up because they think he's weak and gay, but it's the first time that someone is actually going to succeed. He's always been able to take care of himself. He's a tall guy, six foot one and he works out all he can. He can hold his own in a fight. Carlos can too, he's small but he fights dirty if need be and his dad was a police officer.

James braces himself for it, for the impact of hands and fists and feet. He gets a boot to the belly, another to the chest. Carlos isn't as lucky. A pair of hands tug at Carlos' flannel pajama bottoms and it's enough to get James fighting back, twisting and punching with everything he's worth because they can't, they can't. He won't let them. There isn't much he can do, other than close his eyes and block out the sounds of slick skin and the iron scent of blood. He feels like the world's worst coward who should be shot and left to die and rot in the sun. He let Carlos down and the knife to his spine isn't enough to ease his guilt. Carlos takes two stab wounds to the belly. They're deep and bleed like geysers, soak the bed in red.

They lie together in that sodden, blood stained bed until the neighbors report an awful, nauseating smell coming from the open window.

5.

Cold air gets into his bones and makes his joints hurt, his body creak. He's reminded of skeletons from horror stories, the brittle squeaking made by their dust-dry bones. He feels like a skeleton these days, his skin stretched too tight and too thin, more wrinkled than seems fair. Eighty years of life are hard on the body.

"Breakfast!" Tonzi calls him from the kitchen, her voice echoing through the hallways. He sleeps in on Sundays, the one rare day his grandchildren don't come tumbling into his bed yelling Buelo at the tops of their little lungs. "Morning Papí." Carlos had never thought about being a father for the first thirty-three years of his life. Parenting was too much responsibility and out of reach. He and James were living together by that point in a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment on the East Side of LA. A kid didn't register on either of their radars, not until they agreed to go with Kendall on his ridiculous hike through the Amazon rainforest adventure for his thirty-fifth birthday. They'd gotten lost, as was expected, and ended up at a local orphanage. They hadn't been planning on doing more than asking to use the phone when they saw a three year old trying to carry her baby brother on her back. It just sort of happened and they left Brazil four months later than anticipated with adoption papers and a new family.

"Good morning." Tonzi and Ramón don't look like him, naturally. They're both dark as dirt, as Tonzi put it when she was six years old and she announced that she was really a flower that had come out of the ground.

"I put your medicine by your oatmeal." Tonzi kisses his cheek and she smells like the hair products James picked out for her as soon as she turned thirteen.

"Thank you, mija." He takes three pills in the morning and two more at night. High cholesterol and blood pressure are just some of the many curses of old age. He swallows them religiously. James hated the doctor's, didn't go more than six times in his life, and maybe because of or in spite of it, he died at the age of seventy-four of a brain aneurysm. "I'm not feeling very hungry this morning." He takes the pills anyways, gulps them down with some orange juice. "I think I'm going to go sit on the porch."

He sits on the outdoor furniture and watches his grandchildren run around on the front lawn. It's going to be a lovely summer day, the kind that are warm without being stifling, that offer the promise of ice cream and outside fun. Joaquin, his oldest grandson, is washing his new bike with the garden hose while the younger kids, Lauren, Cora, and Matteo splash in puddles on the grass in their swim suits. Carlos wishes James could be here to see this, enjoy the warmth of the sun and the pleasant cool of the wind. He wishes for many things he can't have, for another chance to be young again, for his favorite, treasured helmet he lost years and years ago, for the precious moments with James on early Saturday mornings, Tonzi and Ramón snuggled between them in bed. He wishes for the happiness of the past and present and future to remain perpetual, to carry on forever.

The joy of life is overwhelming, so much so that he has to close his eyes.

BTW, if any of you have ideas for five things memes, don't hesitant to comment with them. I can't guarantee that I'll write all of them(lol or even any of them) but if I see one I like you can bet that I'll churn something out.

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