WARNING: Cursing and male/male relationships. You were warned.

Oh, and lots of Nick pain and angst and all that fun stuff associated with gnarly injuries and near-death, impossible to survive instances in which the character prevails nonetheless.

Disclaimer: Don't own L4D2 and all that jazz.

"Ugh, it stinks inside my head!"

Nick hated the sewer. He hated fighting zombies, sure, but he hated fighting zombies while wading knee-deep through other people's shit in a dark sewer even more. He had his Desert Eagle tightly clutched in both hands, the fully-loaded AK-47 snug against his back. The first down the ladder, he was busy making sure the small tunnel they were putting themselves into was partially safe, at least. The report from his gun echoed down the entire length of the small corridor as he blew a hole through the neck of an approaching zombie, causing the three infected behind to stumble. They were taken care of, the last one falling as Ellis dropped down the ladder, Coach and Ro directly behind him.

"Aw man, the sewer! All right!" Nick stared at Ellis in disbelief, ready to make a comment about what a dumb southern hick he was. His jaw remained locked as he remembered a couple nights before, back in the last safe room. He turned away, facing the mouth of the corridor.

"Let's just get out of here," he muttered, moving forward. A couple of zombies funneled into the small space, and from behind Nick came immediate gunfire, bullets speeding past him and burying themselves into the skulls of the zombies. The gambler whirled around. "Y'all want to stop shooting at me?" he asked Ro and Ellis, both of whom had fired, his voice a threatening growl.

"Sor—"

"SHH."

All of them stopped and Coach held a finger against his lips. Then, from the recesses of the sewer opening in front of them came the distinct sob of a Witch.

"Lights out," Nick hissed, flicking off his flashlight with the others. This was the last thing he wanted: to face a Witch in a pitch black sewer with god-knows how many zombies waiting to tear off his flesh and suck on his eyeballs. He made sure there was a round in the chamber of his Desert Eagle. "Let's go. Quietly." He inched down the corridor. As the Witch's cries were amplified, resounding as though the team had been surrounded by the deceiving infected, Nick knew they'd reached the end of the corridor and were in the main part of the sewer. "The ladder should be straight ahead," he whispered, taking several steps forward, only to run right into an infected. It turned, angry, and Nick stumbled backward, running into Coach's broad chest. Ro killed the zombie with a well-placed machete strike, decapitating the monstrosity.

The Witch's voice rose to an angry octave, sounding like a buzz-saw in the dank sewer.

"Uhh…guys?"

Ellis' voice came from somewhere to Nick's right and the gambler turned, his palms sweaty around the grip of his pistol. "El—"

"WITCH!"

The Witch let out a confidence-shattering shriek. Ellis sprinted through the murky water, toward Nick and Coach and Ro, splashing black who-knew-what everywhere. Nick flicked his flashlight on, and it caught the red eyes of the Witch and glinted off her talons. She was only feet behind Ellis, and Nick, not thinking, surged forward toward her, raising his Desert Eagle and taking aim.

Not thinking is a very loose term. Nick was thinking, but he wasn't thinking logically and he certainly wasn't thinking about his own safety. What he was thinking that if this Witch got to Ellis the mechanic wouldn't stand a chance, and Nick wasn't about to let the one person that might have even the slightest chance of holding any feelings (that weren't anger or complete hatred) toward him be killed in a dank sewer by an enraged infected bitch with proximity issues worse than his ex-wife's.

There's a funny thing about Witches: they may go after the one that startles them, but they'll be more than happy to change targets to whoever's unloading their Desert Eagle rounds into their chest and abdomen.

The report from Nick's gun shattered the air in the sewer and the fire that exploded from the end lit up the Witch's face, her pasty skin, her sharp talons. She shrieked and brought both hands up as Nick's pistol clicked empty.

"Oh shi—!"

The Witch brought her talons down fast, breaking through the barrier Nick had tried to make with his arms, slashing deep gouges into his chest, the force from her blows dropping the gambler like a rock into the sewage below. Water—and god-knows what else—rushed into his ears, into his nose and his open mouth as he let out a strangled scream as the Witch scored his chest with her talons. Warm blood heated the water around him. Nick suddenly felt lighter, and he thought, maybe, that the Witch had torn all of his organs from his body cavity and that this is what it felt like to die.

But, he realized soon enough that the lack of weight was the absence of the Witch's slashing talons. He was being suddenly hoisted from the water, fervent hands grasping at him, frantic voices all speaking at once, furious gunfire thundering throughout the chamber; it was all too much, and Nick lost his mind to darkness.

"Nick! Nick! Oh lord, Nick!" Ellis had one arm wrapped around the gambler, crouching in the shit and trash and muck that floated around in a congealed mass beneath him. In his other hand was a smaller caliber pistol that he was using as a tool of zombie-destruction, annihilating the horde as they streamed in from the corridor and the ladder and the various outlets from the large central cavity he and the others were in.

Ellis could feel Nick's warm blood as it seeped from the gambler's chest and soaked through his own shirt, the fabric sticking to his chest with hot red glue. "Ho-lee shit! Where they all comin' from!" Ellis shouted above the deafening roar of infected, their angry cries and screams bouncing off the walls of the cavity, their numbers instantly multiplied by sound alone.

"Just keep shooting!" Ro yelled, slicing out with her machete as Coach, beside her, swung his assault rifle in a gaping arch, dismembering and decapitating and eviscerating zombies left and right. Arms flew off and dark black blood coated the survivors and the dying screams of the infected tapered off until only one sound remained: the panting of the three standing immune. Ellis dropped his pistol immediately, grabbing Nick with both arms.

"We gotta get outta the sewer, man," he said, his hands gripped tight around the soiled fabric of Nick's blazer.

Ellis may have been born an uneducated Southern boy, but he knew about infections (all his times with Keith had taught him that) and he knew that sewer water plus open chest wounds wouldn't make for a pretty heal. Coach and Ro both faced him and the former came forward. "Let me take him," he offered and for a moment, Ellis' grip on Nick's blazer tightened. He sucked in his lower lip.

"I kin carry him," he said, voice quiet, nearly drowned out by the sound of rushing water elsewhere in the vast sewer system.

"Not up that ladder you can't." Coach pushed his rifle beneath his arm, pulling at the strap until the still-warm barrel rested against his back. "Once we get up that ladder we'll see about findin' some pills or something, but he ain't gonna last if you pussy-foot around." Only with this statement did Ellis loosen his grip on Nick, relinquishing him to Coach who picked him up with cautious ease. Ro was already standing next to the ladder, and she motioned for them to hurry.

"Before another horde shows up."

Ellis nodded and followed Coach. His gaze fell to his shirt and he felt sick immediately. A large red stain made the yellow seem a dark orange and it covered the printing across the mechanic's chest. Ellis wouldn't have felt so sick if it had been his blood, but it wasn't his; it was Nick's. Nick, who called him 'Overalls' and 'Hick'; Nick, who made funny of Jimmy Gibbs Jr. and the Midnight Riders; Nick, who saved his ass more than once from Jockeys and Smokers and Hunters; Nick, who Ellis had shared with the single, happy event that had happened this entire apocalypse—a kiss on the cheek; Nick, who threw himself in front of a goddamned Witch to save him.

Nick, who was probably going to die.

Ellis clambered up the ladder, his boots slipping on the metal rungs more than once as he hurried up after Ro and Coach. He popped his head up.

"Look at all those cars," Ro whispered, staring at the few zombies that meandered through the maze of cars, all primed, waiting for a response so their alarms could blare. The infected hadn't noticed the survivors yet.

"Just use yer machete," Ellis said as he pulled himself all the way out of the sewer. He whipped his head around, searching for—

"Over here, boy." Coach motioned with his arm to the bed of a small pickup, the tailgate down. Ellis almost tripped rushing over to him and he ran into the side of the truck, using the momentum to lean halfway into the bed, blue eyes searching. "I ain't promisin' anything, Ellis. He took a beatin' back there." Biting his lower lip, Ellis nodded.

Sure, he may have let Keith talk him into wrestling with a gator, and sure, he may have let Keith talk him into swinging from one of the bayou trees on a less-than-reliable rope out over a bog of indeterminable depth, but Ellis wasn't dumb. At least, he liked to think he wasn't as dumb as Coach and Ro and Nick thought he was. He knew, however, what a bad wound looked like (he'd seen them enough times on Keith) and this was one bad wound.

It didn't look as though Nick's shirt had ever had a front to it. His shirt was some fashion designer's Frankenstein creation, shreds of fabric clinging by literal threads to the rest of the navy blue button-up, the color made a full shade darker by the blood that covered Nick's chest and abdomen and everything. The gauze and tape—the same that Ellis had wrapped around Nick's side not two days prior—was a sickly brown. Everything on Nick held a glistening wet film of sewage water. The only solace Ellis found was the slow and shaky rising of Nick's bloody chest.

"Aw, Nick," Ellis muttered, brushing the tips of his fingers against the gambler's cheek lightly.

"I'll help Ro look for a med kit," Coach offered. "You gonna be fine by yourself?" Ellis nodded.

"I got my axe," he said. "And my pistol and a bile jar, so if they come anywhere near, I kin distract 'em for at least a little bit."

Coach gave him one nod. "We'll be back quick." With that last statement he disappeared behind one of the support columns for the highway above and into the maze of cars.

Ellis pulled his cap off by the bill. His almost-blonde hair was curly and flyaway, messed up in more than one place by his cap and matted with dirt and old blood. He ran his hand through it, trying to loosen it up a little bit; it failed horribly and his hair ended up looking like his head had been sucked on by a giant squid. He grumbled in irritation, running both hands furiously through his hair until it nearly all stood up on end.

Then, from behind him, he heard the coughing and hacking and sputtering of a Smoker. Shoving his cap back on his head, he reached for his axe as the slick, slimy tongue wrapped itself around his abdomen and chest. "N-no!" he shouted, grabbing frantically for the edge of the truck-bed and missing by centimeters. The Smoker dragged him back and he screamed, screamed for help as he tried to pull the tongue from his chest in vain. "HELP!"

This was it, Ellis knew. He'd had his shares of close-calls with Keith before the infection hit, but he knew (mostly) that he would make it through being burned and run over by an ATV and swallowing about a gallon of bayou water. This was different, and once that Smoker got to him and dug its claws into Ellis' back, he knew he wouldn't be making it back, wouldn't be going home, wouldn't be seeing Nick again.

The gunshots echoed off the walls of the impound yard, each successive round blending into the last into a deafening stream of gunfire. The tongue around Ellis' waist went slack and he jerked it off with such ferocity that it tore in more than one place. The mechanic fell onto his hands, panting. He looked up for Coach or Ro, sure that they must have heard him and took out the Smoker.

Then his eyes fell on the truck and Nick, supported up on his elbow, Ellis' pistol clutched in one hand. Even from twenty yards, Ellis could make out the tightness of Nick's jaw from clenching his teeth and the sweat on his brow, cutting lines down his face as the droplets rolled through the grime.

"Nick!" Ellis was on his feet, stumbling and tripping over the Smoker tongue as he ran for the truck bed.