Disclaimer: I do not own Left 4 Dead or the characters/world therein.
30 Day Challenge 8: Shopping
Before leaving the mall, Zoey insisted on getting a few other supplies. Francis had been alright with the thought of getting something more interesting than medicine- like maybe find a bike in the parking garage to steal or something- but he hadn't exactly expected it to turn out as it had. He had never before felt that he was dating Zoey in any kind of old-world sense. They had great chemistry together and had each other's backs all the time, but he wasn't that guy that got dragged to the mall to carry boxes and bags and shit while the little miss picked out girly shit to buy. Until the time that he was.
The two went through clearing out the mall as Zoey grabbed items to throw into the duffel bag. They swept the entire mall, stopping to look over items and talk about whether or not they needed them- usually meaning Zoey grabbing it and Francis talking her out of taking up room in the duffel bag with it or making fun of her for grabbing it in the first place. It was the most normal thing the two of them had done together, but part of that scared the biker. He wasn't a normal relationship kind of guy. The last steady thing he had had was with a stripper who was probably married to another guy. It hadn't been a very loving relationship in anything but the physical sense, but that was what Francis was comfortable with. The lovey dovey crap was better left to other people. Horrified thoughts of Zoey trying to get him be that guy who worked a boring job and went home to the hot dinner she had slaved over the oven all day to make drifted through his mind, prompting him to cut their mall visit short, despite the fact that the part of him that thought with logic was calling him a jack-ass for thinking she would do that. Of course... they had never known each other outside of a do-or-die lifestyle. He was only guessing that she wouldn't want that.
Francis hurried the two out of the mall and towards the medical center with the excuse that he didn't want to listen to Bill's bitching. They wasted enough time at that damn church, they didn't need to waste more looking through stupid crap. It had earned him a glare and a smack to the arm, but he could handle that no problem. That was the kind of thing the girl he had fallen for would do, not Betty Home-maker. The biker could only hope that their trip get wussie medicine shit would be normal- apocalypse normal, not normal normal- and drive any thoughts of housewife Zoey getting after him for not keeping with the Joneses or whatever the fuck cagers did. The journey from one building to the other succeeded in that very well; they had a good sized horde and more than a few boomers and even a witch in the back of an ambulance. She was crying next to a very small body on a stretcher. Neither of them commented on it.
Neither of them said much of anything aside from calling out if they saw a special until they were in the town's hospital. Zoey tried to lighten the mood by treating it the same way she had treated picking up things in the mall. Just another trip to the store. Francis tried to play along without doing anything that might let her know that more than anything, more than zombies, having to settle down to a white picket fence relationship that involved trips out shopping and cuddling and two point five kids terrified him much more than zombies. At least zombies were fun.