Jason, the Giant Killer
Title: Jason, the Giant Killer
Author: Left_of_Weir
Fandom: Bare
Rating: PG
Pairing/Character: Jason/Peter, Matt, Lucas, Tanya, Ivy
Timeline: After "Ever After"
Warnings: Apocalyptic Fiction
Summary: When the Apocalypse comes, it’s always good to hide out in a well-stocked kitchen.
Notes: Not in the same light as Roll the Dice, Matt Planned the Party. Had a little trouble with Part 2 of that story, so I wrote this first instead as I try to clean that up.
The last time Peter had ever spoken to Jason, it was to call Jason a hero and a giant killer. Granted, he also called him a coward in the same breath, but Jason didn’t want to focus on that. Right now, the trick is to keep a tight hold on the crowbar. As long as he had a crowbar in his hand, they might stand a chance.
At least that’s what Jason kept telling himself. He had caught himself nodding off a few times during the night, and the sound of the crowbar clattering on the tile floor would startle him awake. Those moments were the worst, when he would open his eyes and be faced with so much space around him, with the lights from their few guttering candles penetrating only a few feet into the darkness. He understood that St. Cecilia had to have a huge kitchen to service the school and that it was the safest place to be right now, but it didn’t make him feel any better. He hated not knowing what was out there beyond the kitchen walls, and hated not knowing what was in here with them as well.
He stood up quietly, careful not to disturb his friends. Lucas and Tanya were lying together on a plastic sheet they had found somewhere, using sacks of rice for pillows. Matt was sitting up against the far wall, with a sleeping Ivy cradled on his lap. Peter was huddled some distance away, shivering slightly underneath a short jacket. Jason wondered if covering him with a blanket was allowed. If there were any blankets to be had, that is. Kitchens are not known for storing blankets.
Jason decided that the best thing against the cold was to get some circulation going. He went to check to see if the barricade held. He was careful not to dislodge the pots and pans that he, Matt and Lucas had balanced precariously on the steel shelves that blocked the entrance to the kitchen. Lucas had thought it would give them a few moments notice in case They were able to break in. Jason refused to think of that possibility. He was all thought out. As far as he was concerned, he had only one plan: herd his friends into the safest place that he knew, barricade themselves in, and defend them against Them. With a crowbar. Yeah!
“Keep away from the defenses, Jason,” Matt growled, whose turn it was to stand guard.
Jason ignored him. After all, he had the crowbar while Matt only had a ceramic knife. Ceramic knives shatter, Jason knew from painful personal experience. And he doubted if Matt had the balls to stab anyone, least of all, Them. And Matt shouldn’t even be here anyway, if he didn’t follow Ivy around like a puppy all the time. When Jason made up the List, Matt didn’t even make it to his top ten. Hell, Diane would have made it on the list even before Matt. If he had found her in time.
He didn’t even know he had to make a List, least of all, that he only had a few minutes to do it. If it wasn’t for his father disowning him - in the middle of the schoolyear, as a matter of fact - he wouldn’t have had to work in St. Cecilia’s kitchen as clean-up crew. Well, he had to do something to make sure he had money for Notre Dame. He wasn’t about to give up college now, especially since he realized how hard manual labor could be. And there will be a Notre Dame in his future, Jason swore. Just you wait.
Working in the kitchen didn’t pay much, although overtime helped somewhat. Thus, he was usually the last person to turn in, and that night, the first person to know how almost overnight, everyone who had come down with the flu - a bug had been going around for the past week - suddenly transformed in their beds into something the Bible promised would come only at the end of the world. And while he hadn’t exactly been paying too much attention to the Sunday sermons - exhaustion can do that - he was pretty sure nobody said anything about having Apocalypse delivered on a Friday.
On a Friday night, he corrected himself.
The only good thing about the timing of the outbreak, he thought, was that many of St. Cecilia’s students were gone for the weekend. Strictly speaking, there was probably only a handful of Them prowling St. Cecilia’s hallowed halls. But it was a handful too many for him and his friends to handle. They were only kids, for goodness’s sake, and their only weapons were copper pans and assorted steak and meat knives. The best thing to do was to barricade themselves inside until help came.
He was glad Nadia wasn’t out there with Them but was back home for a weekend visit. At least, that’s what he liked to believe. He hadn’t been seeing a lot of Nadia since he took this job, and he hadn’t been allowed back home since he had that talk with his dad. Where previously he had spent his Friday nights at a rave and his weekends at home or at a game or with Peter, he now spent it on kitchen duty. Which was a good thing, wasn’t it? he thought. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be here right now with a crowbar, helping keep his friends safe. Jason, the Giant Killer, he thought. Whooop!
“Shut that yowling, Jason! Do you want them coming after us?” Matt hissed.
“You shut up. You’ll wake everyone up,” he whispered over his shoulder. “Don’t you ever go to sleep?”
It was a reasonable question. Since they had locked themselves in the kitchen, Matt had spent all his time using his heretofore-undiscovered engineering skills erecting the barricade and making sure that the area was secure. The rest of the time was spent trying to distract Ivy and keeping her from slipping into hysteria, a job that Jason admitted was getting harder and harder the longer they were cooped up inside. The gang soon realized that cooking wine could have uses other than as an ingredient in pasta.
“Don’t you ever go to sleep?” Matt retorted.
Jason pondered the question. He hadn’t been sleeping a lot since he applied for this job, and what with school and the basketball team and theater rehearsals, he realized that he was lucky if he got even four hours of sleep a night. His body had learned to adapt to the lack of sleep. He was fine with the few catnaps he took when Lucas, Matt or Peter took turns standing guard against Them. A hero doesn’t go to sleep, he thought. Take that, Peter! He glared at his sleeping friend.
Jason closed his eyes and immediately opened them again. When he led his small band of friends back to the kitchen for refuge, he had caught fleeting glimpses of Their diseased faces as he tried to avoid their grasping claws. Even though they were safe for the time being, he could still see them. Man, Sister Chantelle looked fierce even in the grip of the killing fever. Jason didn’t want to tangle with that. Father, on the other hand, was as hollow in sickness as he was in life. Jason was sure he could take him. Unconsciously, he tightened his grip on the crowbar. The steel bit into his fingers and seemed to give off a comforting heat.
He made his way back to the small lit circle and sat down beside Matt. After three days, they were in no danger of running out of food and water but they were running out of candles. Jason decided that there may be something to Matt’s suggestion that they fill mason jars with oil and water and create makeshift oil lamps. Jason would never tell anybody but Peter this, but he was terrified of being alone in the dark.
Of all the things he hated about kitchen duty, it was having to lock up alone that he hated the most. He hated being assigned the worst jobs, like scouring the heavy copper pots and pans that left a layer of grease beneath his fingernails that no soap seemed to remove. He hated having to separate the recyclables into the non-recyclables because he was afraid that somebody he had offended in his long short life of offending people would push him inside the composting bin and seal him inside with the pig slop. He hated having to bring out the heavy garbage bags into the battered garbage cans outside the yard that smelled of sick no matter how much he tried to clean things up, because sometimes the bags would split and dripped refuse on his shoes, and he would have to spend the rest of his shift trapped in icky wet shoes that felt like what worms would feel if worms were shoes. He hated losing his Friday nights, his party nights, to this deep cavernous kitchen that never felt clean enough no matter how hard he scoured, no matter how his hands burned from the bleach and other cleaning fluids that gave off an ominous white smoke. He hated how his schedule meant that he now had to eat most of his meals alone.
But most of all, he hated being left behind by the rest of the staff late at night and walking alone along the darkened halls of St. Cecilia and coming back to his dark room where there was nothing to do and no one to welcome him home since Peter decided that he wasn’t Jason, the Giant Killer but just a coward actually. And Peter doesn’t talk to cowards.
It’s not fair, Jason thought. Don’t I get some points for my deeds for the past days? When I realized that the sick were becoming feral, didn’t I fight my way through the halls to Lucas’s room where he knew Peter was staying to bring him to a place of safety? And since Lucas was Peter’s roommate, and Tanya was Lucas’s girlfriend, and Ivy was Tanya’s friend, and Matt was Ivy’s puppy dog, he brought them along. After all, it wasn’t as if there was any danger of food running out. And he should be glad, Jason thought, that everyone was there in Lucas’s room and everyone was healthy and glad to see him and willing to go along with his plan. Because if there had only been Peter and Peter was still not talking to him, then where would he be right now?
Jason wondered if he could arrange a trade - he could do something nice for Peter, and Peter could reward him with a few words. But that didn’t seem to be forthcoming. After all, in Jason’s scoresheet, he had already saved Peter’s life and Matt’s and Ivy’s and Lucas’s and Tanya’s and he still hadn’t gotten anything except Peter’s implacable unforgiving silence.
He wondered what else he could do to top his midnight rescue. Perhaps he could cook up something special, and Peter could tell him, Thank you. Jason could try to sneak out to the dorm rooms and bring back much needed blankets and Peter could pretend to listen to him as he choked out the apology that had been burning on his lips since Peter called him a Giant Killer. Jason could fight it out with Them, make his way to Father’s Office, find a working phone, and call for help and Peter could tell him, All is forgiven. Let’s go back to the way we were.
But Peter was fast asleep, as far away from Jason as he had ever been, and not even all the monsters beyond the kitchen doors or all the barricades in the world could bring them back together again.
Author: Left_of_Weir
Fandom: Bare
Rating: PG
Pairing/Character: Jason/Peter, Matt, Lucas, Tanya, Ivy
Timeline: After "Ever After"
Warnings: Apocalyptic Fiction
Summary: When the Apocalypse comes, it’s always good to hide out in a well-stocked kitchen.
Notes: Not in the same light as Roll the Dice, Matt Planned the Party. Had a little trouble with Part 2 of that story, so I wrote this first instead as I try to clean that up.
The last time Peter had ever spoken to Jason, it was to call Jason a hero and a giant killer. Granted, he also called him a coward in the same breath, but Jason didn’t want to focus on that. Right now, the trick is to keep a tight hold on the crowbar. As long as he had a crowbar in his hand, they might stand a chance.
At least that’s what Jason kept telling himself. He had caught himself nodding off a few times during the night, and the sound of the crowbar clattering on the tile floor would startle him awake. Those moments were the worst, when he would open his eyes and be faced with so much space around him, with the lights from their few guttering candles penetrating only a few feet into the darkness. He understood that St. Cecilia had to have a huge kitchen to service the school and that it was the safest place to be right now, but it didn’t make him feel any better. He hated not knowing what was out there beyond the kitchen walls, and hated not knowing what was in here with them as well.
He stood up quietly, careful not to disturb his friends. Lucas and Tanya were lying together on a plastic sheet they had found somewhere, using sacks of rice for pillows. Matt was sitting up against the far wall, with a sleeping Ivy cradled on his lap. Peter was huddled some distance away, shivering slightly underneath a short jacket. Jason wondered if covering him with a blanket was allowed. If there were any blankets to be had, that is. Kitchens are not known for storing blankets.
Jason decided that the best thing against the cold was to get some circulation going. He went to check to see if the barricade held. He was careful not to dislodge the pots and pans that he, Matt and Lucas had balanced precariously on the steel shelves that blocked the entrance to the kitchen. Lucas had thought it would give them a few moments notice in case They were able to break in. Jason refused to think of that possibility. He was all thought out. As far as he was concerned, he had only one plan: herd his friends into the safest place that he knew, barricade themselves in, and defend them against Them. With a crowbar. Yeah!
“Keep away from the defenses, Jason,” Matt growled, whose turn it was to stand guard.
Jason ignored him. After all, he had the crowbar while Matt only had a ceramic knife. Ceramic knives shatter, Jason knew from painful personal experience. And he doubted if Matt had the balls to stab anyone, least of all, Them. And Matt shouldn’t even be here anyway, if he didn’t follow Ivy around like a puppy all the time. When Jason made up the List, Matt didn’t even make it to his top ten. Hell, Diane would have made it on the list even before Matt. If he had found her in time.
He didn’t even know he had to make a List, least of all, that he only had a few minutes to do it. If it wasn’t for his father disowning him - in the middle of the schoolyear, as a matter of fact - he wouldn’t have had to work in St. Cecilia’s kitchen as clean-up crew. Well, he had to do something to make sure he had money for Notre Dame. He wasn’t about to give up college now, especially since he realized how hard manual labor could be. And there will be a Notre Dame in his future, Jason swore. Just you wait.
Working in the kitchen didn’t pay much, although overtime helped somewhat. Thus, he was usually the last person to turn in, and that night, the first person to know how almost overnight, everyone who had come down with the flu - a bug had been going around for the past week - suddenly transformed in their beds into something the Bible promised would come only at the end of the world. And while he hadn’t exactly been paying too much attention to the Sunday sermons - exhaustion can do that - he was pretty sure nobody said anything about having Apocalypse delivered on a Friday.
On a Friday night, he corrected himself.
The only good thing about the timing of the outbreak, he thought, was that many of St. Cecilia’s students were gone for the weekend. Strictly speaking, there was probably only a handful of Them prowling St. Cecilia’s hallowed halls. But it was a handful too many for him and his friends to handle. They were only kids, for goodness’s sake, and their only weapons were copper pans and assorted steak and meat knives. The best thing to do was to barricade themselves inside until help came.
He was glad Nadia wasn’t out there with Them but was back home for a weekend visit. At least, that’s what he liked to believe. He hadn’t been seeing a lot of Nadia since he took this job, and he hadn’t been allowed back home since he had that talk with his dad. Where previously he had spent his Friday nights at a rave and his weekends at home or at a game or with Peter, he now spent it on kitchen duty. Which was a good thing, wasn’t it? he thought. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be here right now with a crowbar, helping keep his friends safe. Jason, the Giant Killer, he thought. Whooop!
“Shut that yowling, Jason! Do you want them coming after us?” Matt hissed.
“You shut up. You’ll wake everyone up,” he whispered over his shoulder. “Don’t you ever go to sleep?”
It was a reasonable question. Since they had locked themselves in the kitchen, Matt had spent all his time using his heretofore-undiscovered engineering skills erecting the barricade and making sure that the area was secure. The rest of the time was spent trying to distract Ivy and keeping her from slipping into hysteria, a job that Jason admitted was getting harder and harder the longer they were cooped up inside. The gang soon realized that cooking wine could have uses other than as an ingredient in pasta.
“Don’t you ever go to sleep?” Matt retorted.
Jason pondered the question. He hadn’t been sleeping a lot since he applied for this job, and what with school and the basketball team and theater rehearsals, he realized that he was lucky if he got even four hours of sleep a night. His body had learned to adapt to the lack of sleep. He was fine with the few catnaps he took when Lucas, Matt or Peter took turns standing guard against Them. A hero doesn’t go to sleep, he thought. Take that, Peter! He glared at his sleeping friend.
Jason closed his eyes and immediately opened them again. When he led his small band of friends back to the kitchen for refuge, he had caught fleeting glimpses of Their diseased faces as he tried to avoid their grasping claws. Even though they were safe for the time being, he could still see them. Man, Sister Chantelle looked fierce even in the grip of the killing fever. Jason didn’t want to tangle with that. Father, on the other hand, was as hollow in sickness as he was in life. Jason was sure he could take him. Unconsciously, he tightened his grip on the crowbar. The steel bit into his fingers and seemed to give off a comforting heat.
He made his way back to the small lit circle and sat down beside Matt. After three days, they were in no danger of running out of food and water but they were running out of candles. Jason decided that there may be something to Matt’s suggestion that they fill mason jars with oil and water and create makeshift oil lamps. Jason would never tell anybody but Peter this, but he was terrified of being alone in the dark.
Of all the things he hated about kitchen duty, it was having to lock up alone that he hated the most. He hated being assigned the worst jobs, like scouring the heavy copper pots and pans that left a layer of grease beneath his fingernails that no soap seemed to remove. He hated having to separate the recyclables into the non-recyclables because he was afraid that somebody he had offended in his long short life of offending people would push him inside the composting bin and seal him inside with the pig slop. He hated having to bring out the heavy garbage bags into the battered garbage cans outside the yard that smelled of sick no matter how much he tried to clean things up, because sometimes the bags would split and dripped refuse on his shoes, and he would have to spend the rest of his shift trapped in icky wet shoes that felt like what worms would feel if worms were shoes. He hated losing his Friday nights, his party nights, to this deep cavernous kitchen that never felt clean enough no matter how hard he scoured, no matter how his hands burned from the bleach and other cleaning fluids that gave off an ominous white smoke. He hated how his schedule meant that he now had to eat most of his meals alone.
But most of all, he hated being left behind by the rest of the staff late at night and walking alone along the darkened halls of St. Cecilia and coming back to his dark room where there was nothing to do and no one to welcome him home since Peter decided that he wasn’t Jason, the Giant Killer but just a coward actually. And Peter doesn’t talk to cowards.
It’s not fair, Jason thought. Don’t I get some points for my deeds for the past days? When I realized that the sick were becoming feral, didn’t I fight my way through the halls to Lucas’s room where he knew Peter was staying to bring him to a place of safety? And since Lucas was Peter’s roommate, and Tanya was Lucas’s girlfriend, and Ivy was Tanya’s friend, and Matt was Ivy’s puppy dog, he brought them along. After all, it wasn’t as if there was any danger of food running out. And he should be glad, Jason thought, that everyone was there in Lucas’s room and everyone was healthy and glad to see him and willing to go along with his plan. Because if there had only been Peter and Peter was still not talking to him, then where would he be right now?
Jason wondered if he could arrange a trade - he could do something nice for Peter, and Peter could reward him with a few words. But that didn’t seem to be forthcoming. After all, in Jason’s scoresheet, he had already saved Peter’s life and Matt’s and Ivy’s and Lucas’s and Tanya’s and he still hadn’t gotten anything except Peter’s implacable unforgiving silence.
He wondered what else he could do to top his midnight rescue. Perhaps he could cook up something special, and Peter could tell him, Thank you. Jason could try to sneak out to the dorm rooms and bring back much needed blankets and Peter could pretend to listen to him as he choked out the apology that had been burning on his lips since Peter called him a Giant Killer. Jason could fight it out with Them, make his way to Father’s Office, find a working phone, and call for help and Peter could tell him, All is forgiven. Let’s go back to the way we were.
But Peter was fast asleep, as far away from Jason as he had ever been, and not even all the monsters beyond the kitchen doors or all the barricades in the world could bring them back together again.