Counting Bodies Like Sheep by rightonthelimit (underxmyxumbrella)(NC17)
Fandom: HARRY POTTER
Pairing: (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter)
Length: (70589 words)
Author on LJ: http://rightonthelimit.livejournal.com/
Author Website: Rightonthelimitin AO3
Why this must be read: A Tom/Harry love story its certainly not always sweet... it can have and a very dark side by its own nature... This story is anything but abusive but very certainly dark and seasonal: Zombies do I need to add something else???
Still its an awesome story dark and apocaliptic but oh so hot and passionate!!! honestly one of the most intriguing stories ever and the hottest I ever read... Not only that but it holds you there, incapable of leaving, until its over...
The end whille different it will not didapoint... promise:)...
Summary: They had been driving around aimlessly, raiding supermarkets, fighting for their lives. Killing people who were in reality no longer actual people.
His name was Harry Potter.
He was 16 years old and didn't really have a home right now. Most people didn't.
He wasn't very tall, his skin was pale and his hair was messy. He had vivid green eyes peeking out from behind his glasses, and his attractive face was bruised. His swollen lip was healing, though, and it no longer hurt to smile though admittedly he rarely found reason to do so anyway. The cut on his bare arm was gone and the only evidence of the limb ever having been hurt were the pink scars that stuck out almost brightly, cheerfully. It was as if the scars on his body were simply decoration, instead of a map that pointed out exactly what Harry had been through to obtain them.
There was a knife hidden in one of his army boots and a gun strapped to his leg. In the backpocket of the worn, slightly oversized jeans he was wearing were a couple rolls of coins that jingled when he walked and the tank top that kept his chest from being exposed to the warm air was stained with dirt, and had a tear on the side from when Harry had gotten stuck while climbing over a fence.
It was summer; the sun was making his exposed arms and neck stick to the worn leather of the car they were seated in, and his eyes drooped shut every now and then before he'd shoot back up and tried to force himself to stay awake.
Harry was tired. It had been weeks since they had actually found a place safe enough to sleep, besides their car. They had been driving around aimlessly, raiding supermarkets, fighting for their lives.
Killing people who were in reality no longer actual people.
The breakout had been 4 years ago now if Harry should believe what he had been told. He himself had lost track of time - to him it was simply summer or winter, and everything else didn't matter. He had learned to tell the time by checking the position of the sun and he could read the stars, but he didn't very often use that skill. Knowing what time or month it was didn't get you far in this world, anymore.
There had been a virus, and it had spread like a wildfire. The virus made decent people turn into animals - made them lose all sense of things that were important and forced them to rely solely on their basic instincts.
Made them ruthlessly kill other people.
Harry had been 12 years old when he had found out just how horribly cruel these creatures really were. The virus had just started spreading and the local radio station had warned people to keep from leaving their houses after dark. By then, people had just thought it had been rebels of some sort. Hooligans, even.
How wrong they had been.
Harry's parents had known this, too. Harry's parents had known that they weren't safe and that they needed to leave town - needed to get themselves into safety before it was too late. Harry's mother had been a doctor, and Harry's father had been a police officer. They had seen with their own eyes what people got like after they had managed to get away with just a bite mark.
Those who got infected, changed. Their wounds healed faster whereas their intelligence seemed to wither and die. The infected, or as Harry's companion called them 'fuckers', didn't move as fluently as they had before. They could run and their bodies still functioned the same, but there was always something about them that was just off. Whether it was the dead look in their eyes or simply the way they held themselves… There was always something that gave away that they were no longer really conscious of who they were, of what they were doing to families, the world even.
They weren't human anymore.
Harry had just been going upstairs to get one of his favorite books when it had happened. His mom had told him to hurry, told him to get everything he wanted to take with him but not too much because they probably wouldn't be coming home anymore. Harry hadn't understood a thing about the situation but had obeyed anyway, because his parents had never let him down before.
He had been so scared when he suddenly heard screams and the sounds of things breaking downstairs.
'Harry, run!' his mother had screamed when he ran down the stairs and Harry had done just that - one of the things he still remembered so clearly was that he hadn't been wearing any shoes and that the grass on their front lawn had felt cold and wet underneath his little feet. He had been crying, and he had heard grunts and groans behind him. There had been a couple of men looking at him, and their faces had been covered in blood. Harry had wanted to ask them if they were okay, but they had just scared him so much that he wound up turning around and running again.
If he had been polite and asked them how they were doing he wouldn't have been alive at this moment.
They had started chasing Harry down and everything had been a flurry of colors and emotions when Harry ran into the streets. Houses in his neighborhood were on fire and people were being chased just like Harry was - Harry had seen his neighbor getting torn apart and eaten alive. There had been broken glass on the asphalt ground he had been running on and later on, it had taken his companion about an hour or so to get all of the little pieces out of the soles of Harry's feet.
They had been running far faster than him and it had all just happened so fast. Harry still remembered how cold the wind had felt on his flushed cheeks and how his body had ached when he had collided with something.
It had ended, with a couple of bangs.
Harry had sniffled and screamed when someone took hold of his arm, but a hand had clamped over his mouth quickly before he had made too much of a noise. 'Shut up and come with me,' someone twice his height had told him.
Harry had been found by a man named Tom Riddle.
Peculiar man, he was. He never said much, but Harry had always thought that maybe Tom had saved him because he was lonely. Harry had become an orphan that night and Tom had never mentioned any family, girlfriends... nothing. He had been alone in this world before he had found Harry.
But then again, most people were nowadays.
Harry had never grown quite as tall as Tom Riddle and he had given up hope on doing so a long time ago. Tom's shoulders had grown broader as the years had passed with all the lifting he did and Harry had learned that Tom had just been 18 years old when he had found Harry. Harry didn't know why Tom knew how to work a gun, but he had been taught not to ask too many questions. Not because he was afraid Tom would harm him, mind you - it was simply because Tom wouldn't reply to his questions at all.
He'd just grunt something and walk off.
Harry had learned how to handle a gun as well, knew exactly where to shoot them ('If you can't get a good aim at their heads shoot them in the kneecaps first, that way they won't move as fast and you'll have more time to get closer without getting hurt.'), knew what places to avoid, knew what places to try and find food…
Sometimes the world seemed almost normal. Sometimes, when Harry was sitting next to Tom in the passenger's seat of a car they had stolen in the last town they had been in, he found himself humming songs and closing his eyes and just pretending he had met Tom through school or something (he could've been a senior) and that they were just on a road trip. When he dreamt, he dreamt of his mother's gentle smiles and playing soccer with his dad. If he inhaled deep enough he could still smell the scent of her cooking.
But when he dreamt, he also dreamt of wet grass underneath his bare feet, his mother's screams ringing in his ears. Tom often had to shake him to wake him and press a hand against Harry's mouth to stifle his screams - he had more than once attracted danger because of it.
But Tom still didn't get rid of him.
Tom's brilliant blue eyes were currently hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, and a frown was set on his attractive face. His hair was usually parted, but now with the hot weather the soft curly strands had become messy and they framed his face. He had recently cut it to keep it from getting into his eyes.
Harry resented how Tom still managed to look sophisticated.
There were bodies rotting on the asphalt road and several deserted cars, but Harry tried not to focus on it too much. Instead he worried for when it would be winter, again - the infected could stand the cold far better than the heat. The nights were hard enough to survive when they couldn't get through a city in one day because of blockages on the road and the like, but during the winters…
Harry closed his eyes and slumped into his seat, yawning. They hadn't had much sleep last night either. A couple of infec- ah, who was he kidding, a couple of zombies had been slamming up against their car, trying to open it. Like Tom and Harry were some sort of canned food. It had ultimately resulted into a couple of crushed zombies on the dirt road and a very satisfied Tom Riddle behind the steering wheel.
'Tired?' Tom asked and Harry hummed, sighing when Tom's hand smoothed Harry's hair behind his ear.
That was another thing that was troubling Harry.
He supposed it was very easy for Tom to forget that Harry was only 16 years old, even if they did celebrate his birthdays because Harry insisted on doing so (he just wanted to feel normal a couple of times a year, which was why he really wanted to celebrate Christmas every year as well). Harry had lost his parents at the tender age of 12, had been chased down by fucking zombies who wanted to tear him apart, he has had to shoot people who had once been someone's kid and clean the blood off his face after doing so… But he still had things that teenagers always worried about, even if he was jaded beyond his years.
Such as who was Harry really, and what was his place in this world? Admittedly he no longer had to worry about what he wanted to be when he grew up or what college to go to considering surviving was just a difficult task on its own, but still… Sometimes, when Tom was asleep and it was Harry's turn to keep watch, he wondered what the point in all of this was. They were bound to die anyway, weren't they? No matter how many zombies he killed and how much hate he felt toward them, it didn't bring his parents back. It didn't change the world. It didn't solve anything.
Tom's hand pulled away from where it had been lingering on Harry's face, curling around the steering wheel again.
Harry has seen and done things that should qualify him as an adult (because killing zombies counted more than smoking or drinking alcohol, right?) but he still felt like such a stupid child. He always felt like he wasn't doing enough, like he wasn't doing something. Also, he may very well be having an identity crisis while he was at it.
Harry thought he was in love with Tom.
Harry had never really had anyone explain to him what it meant to be in love with someone, so he couldn't be too sure, but it must be love when he just felt this stupid need to stare at Tom constantly, right? When he felt this happy when Tom touched him it couldn't just be affection, could it? It was weird because girls were supposed to like boys… Yet Harry was really, really sure he wasn't a girl and he was really sure Tom wasn't one either, so it was just… He didn't understand. It were times like these where he just missed his mom so much. His mom would've understood. She would've known why Harry would fall for a man.
It was just difficult.
It was difficult and strange because his body just had this strange reaction sometimes, where his manhood would suddenly ache and feel hard between his legs. He had never told Tom because he didn't know if it was normal or not and it usually just went away on its own accord anyway.
Tom sighed and Harry opened his eyes again to look at him.
'What is it?' he asked and he quickly glanced out of the window in worry. There seemed to be nothing outside that could possibly cause that look on Tom's face. Tom glanced at him and Harry's face was reflected in his sunglasses.
'We need to talk,' Tom said and he glanced in his rearview mirror. The road was completely deserted; Harry could only suggest they were far away from the main cities, because there were no cars or bodies either. Harry felt dread, somehow. Tom couldn't possibly know about that right?
'We do?' Harry asked and Tom pulled over. He took off his sunglasses and ran a hand through his hair. Tom's eyes were incredibly blue in direct sunlight, and they looked fucking amazing. Harry stared at him, before awkwardly clearing his throat and turning to him in his seat. 'About what?'
And even if he knew that Tom wouldn't leave him when all they had were each other and when they were each other's protectors (Harry had always desperately fought to make himself useful and he had more than once saved Tom's back too) it didn't take away that fear of being left on his own. He wouldn't survive on his own - Harry was too reckless and didn't think things through as well as Tom would.
'We've been travelling for four years,' Tom said and Harry nodded slowly. Tom stared at him for a bit longer as if he was trying to look into Harry's soul, before he leaned back in his seat. 'I think it would be best if we were to settle down somewhere.'
Harry blinked in mild surprise. 'Are you serious? But you always said that settling down somewhere could be dangerous because they are always on the move, and that we have to keep on the roads as well for supplies and -'
'I know what I said,' Tom interrupted him and when he saw the look on Harry's face his own face relaxed somewhat and he ran another hand through his hair. 'I know,' he repeated, his voice now a bit gentler. A silence fell upon them and Harry just stared at Tom for a short while. His eyes traced his high cheekbones, those small beads of perspiration that had gathered on his smooth forehead, his eyebrows, down his straight nose to his pale lips…
'We can't always be on the road,' Tom started, and his voice made Harry snap up from his thoughts. Tom rested his head against the his seat and his pale neck was stretched out completely, his adam's apple bobbing up and down when he swallowed and spoke again. 'We are dependent of one another, for as much as I'd dread to admit it, considering you never use your head and I am not quite as creative as you are. The chance of one of us dying is… There, if we keep taking risks like this.'
Risks as in driving around aimlessly. They had never really set up a plan as to where they wanted to go, simply because they would just go wherever they thought would they could find food and maybe shelter. There had never been a goal besides surviving another day, and just driving into unknown territory… It has been dangerous, in the past. Sometimes the places they ended up in looked like ghost towns, and sometimes they just walked straight into the home of countless zombies. With the years having passed, zombies no longer stuck around in the cities. There was nothing left to eat for them, there, and they traveled as well.
When Tom spoke of creativity, he was referring to the makeshift traps Harry created that had more than once saved their lives. The fact that Harry didn't come up with plans often and just rather did things instead of planning them beforehand was something they could sometimes use to their advantage. Harry made trip wires, for example, and fastened bottles and bottle caps to them. They'd clink together when the wire was stepped upon, making a sound loud enough to wake them when they had been asleep or bathing so they knew that something was coming.
They had run out of bullets and only had had their knives one time, about two months ago, but there had been too many zombies outside to fight by hand. Harry had cut open his hand and soaked a couple of teddy bears, which the original owners of the house had left behind, in his blood and thrown them out of the window - zombies could smell blood from a long distance. While the zombies had been busy fighting each other and ripping the teddy bears apart, Tom and Harry took their chance to escape.
It wasn't that Tom was too stupid to come up with things like that. He just thought himself to be too intelligent to have to rely on his imagination and he was more the kind of person that liked to plan things ahead. Tom could react fast, and he had come up with plenty of traps and ways out in the years that had passed, but Harry was no longer a little boy. He could help too, and voice opinions or ideas that Tom may had looked over or brushed off.
Tom's eyes turned to him again and Harry licked his lips.
'But why do you think now wouldn't be as dangerous?' Harry asked softly, finally. The thought of being capable of living somewhere, growing old… He had pushed forced hopes out of his head a long time ago. This simply wasn't the kind of world where that was possible anymore and it already shocked Harry enough that they had managed to get this far, for so long.
'It's still as dangerous as it used to be,' Tom replied calmly, 'it just depends on the location we chose to stay at, and I'm not saying we should stay there for the rest of our lives. But we could stay there for a year, and then move forward again.'
'There…? That almost sounds like you already have a place in mind,' Harry murmured. Tom's head turned to him, and Harry instantly realized that Tom did have somewhere in mind. He had this look in his eyes that he always had when he had come up with something, and Harry found that he liked it. Tom used to say nothing at all and he wouldn't discuss a thing with Harry before making decisions, but now that Harry was slowly growing up Tom was starting to see him as more than just someone that came along him - someone to talk to every now and then.
Harry was Tom's companion, now. Not just a little boy that was following him around.
Counting Bodies Like Sheep
Pairing: (Tom Riddle/Harry Potter)
Length: (70589 words)
Author on LJ: http://rightonthelimit.livejournal.com/
Author Website: Rightonthelimitin AO3
Why this must be read: A Tom/Harry love story its certainly not always sweet... it can have and a very dark side by its own nature... This story is anything but abusive but very certainly dark and seasonal: Zombies do I need to add something else???
Still its an awesome story dark and apocaliptic but oh so hot and passionate!!! honestly one of the most intriguing stories ever and the hottest I ever read... Not only that but it holds you there, incapable of leaving, until its over...
The end whille different it will not didapoint... promise:)...
Summary: They had been driving around aimlessly, raiding supermarkets, fighting for their lives. Killing people who were in reality no longer actual people.
His name was Harry Potter.
He was 16 years old and didn't really have a home right now. Most people didn't.
He wasn't very tall, his skin was pale and his hair was messy. He had vivid green eyes peeking out from behind his glasses, and his attractive face was bruised. His swollen lip was healing, though, and it no longer hurt to smile though admittedly he rarely found reason to do so anyway. The cut on his bare arm was gone and the only evidence of the limb ever having been hurt were the pink scars that stuck out almost brightly, cheerfully. It was as if the scars on his body were simply decoration, instead of a map that pointed out exactly what Harry had been through to obtain them.
There was a knife hidden in one of his army boots and a gun strapped to his leg. In the backpocket of the worn, slightly oversized jeans he was wearing were a couple rolls of coins that jingled when he walked and the tank top that kept his chest from being exposed to the warm air was stained with dirt, and had a tear on the side from when Harry had gotten stuck while climbing over a fence.
It was summer; the sun was making his exposed arms and neck stick to the worn leather of the car they were seated in, and his eyes drooped shut every now and then before he'd shoot back up and tried to force himself to stay awake.
Harry was tired. It had been weeks since they had actually found a place safe enough to sleep, besides their car. They had been driving around aimlessly, raiding supermarkets, fighting for their lives.
Killing people who were in reality no longer actual people.
The breakout had been 4 years ago now if Harry should believe what he had been told. He himself had lost track of time - to him it was simply summer or winter, and everything else didn't matter. He had learned to tell the time by checking the position of the sun and he could read the stars, but he didn't very often use that skill. Knowing what time or month it was didn't get you far in this world, anymore.
There had been a virus, and it had spread like a wildfire. The virus made decent people turn into animals - made them lose all sense of things that were important and forced them to rely solely on their basic instincts.
Made them ruthlessly kill other people.
Harry had been 12 years old when he had found out just how horribly cruel these creatures really were. The virus had just started spreading and the local radio station had warned people to keep from leaving their houses after dark. By then, people had just thought it had been rebels of some sort. Hooligans, even.
How wrong they had been.
Harry's parents had known this, too. Harry's parents had known that they weren't safe and that they needed to leave town - needed to get themselves into safety before it was too late. Harry's mother had been a doctor, and Harry's father had been a police officer. They had seen with their own eyes what people got like after they had managed to get away with just a bite mark.
Those who got infected, changed. Their wounds healed faster whereas their intelligence seemed to wither and die. The infected, or as Harry's companion called them 'fuckers', didn't move as fluently as they had before. They could run and their bodies still functioned the same, but there was always something about them that was just off. Whether it was the dead look in their eyes or simply the way they held themselves… There was always something that gave away that they were no longer really conscious of who they were, of what they were doing to families, the world even.
They weren't human anymore.
Harry had just been going upstairs to get one of his favorite books when it had happened. His mom had told him to hurry, told him to get everything he wanted to take with him but not too much because they probably wouldn't be coming home anymore. Harry hadn't understood a thing about the situation but had obeyed anyway, because his parents had never let him down before.
He had been so scared when he suddenly heard screams and the sounds of things breaking downstairs.
'Harry, run!' his mother had screamed when he ran down the stairs and Harry had done just that - one of the things he still remembered so clearly was that he hadn't been wearing any shoes and that the grass on their front lawn had felt cold and wet underneath his little feet. He had been crying, and he had heard grunts and groans behind him. There had been a couple of men looking at him, and their faces had been covered in blood. Harry had wanted to ask them if they were okay, but they had just scared him so much that he wound up turning around and running again.
If he had been polite and asked them how they were doing he wouldn't have been alive at this moment.
They had started chasing Harry down and everything had been a flurry of colors and emotions when Harry ran into the streets. Houses in his neighborhood were on fire and people were being chased just like Harry was - Harry had seen his neighbor getting torn apart and eaten alive. There had been broken glass on the asphalt ground he had been running on and later on, it had taken his companion about an hour or so to get all of the little pieces out of the soles of Harry's feet.
They had been running far faster than him and it had all just happened so fast. Harry still remembered how cold the wind had felt on his flushed cheeks and how his body had ached when he had collided with something.
It had ended, with a couple of bangs.
Harry had sniffled and screamed when someone took hold of his arm, but a hand had clamped over his mouth quickly before he had made too much of a noise. 'Shut up and come with me,' someone twice his height had told him.
Harry had been found by a man named Tom Riddle.
Peculiar man, he was. He never said much, but Harry had always thought that maybe Tom had saved him because he was lonely. Harry had become an orphan that night and Tom had never mentioned any family, girlfriends... nothing. He had been alone in this world before he had found Harry.
But then again, most people were nowadays.
Harry had never grown quite as tall as Tom Riddle and he had given up hope on doing so a long time ago. Tom's shoulders had grown broader as the years had passed with all the lifting he did and Harry had learned that Tom had just been 18 years old when he had found Harry. Harry didn't know why Tom knew how to work a gun, but he had been taught not to ask too many questions. Not because he was afraid Tom would harm him, mind you - it was simply because Tom wouldn't reply to his questions at all.
He'd just grunt something and walk off.
Harry had learned how to handle a gun as well, knew exactly where to shoot them ('If you can't get a good aim at their heads shoot them in the kneecaps first, that way they won't move as fast and you'll have more time to get closer without getting hurt.'), knew what places to avoid, knew what places to try and find food…
Sometimes the world seemed almost normal. Sometimes, when Harry was sitting next to Tom in the passenger's seat of a car they had stolen in the last town they had been in, he found himself humming songs and closing his eyes and just pretending he had met Tom through school or something (he could've been a senior) and that they were just on a road trip. When he dreamt, he dreamt of his mother's gentle smiles and playing soccer with his dad. If he inhaled deep enough he could still smell the scent of her cooking.
But when he dreamt, he also dreamt of wet grass underneath his bare feet, his mother's screams ringing in his ears. Tom often had to shake him to wake him and press a hand against Harry's mouth to stifle his screams - he had more than once attracted danger because of it.
But Tom still didn't get rid of him.
Tom's brilliant blue eyes were currently hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, and a frown was set on his attractive face. His hair was usually parted, but now with the hot weather the soft curly strands had become messy and they framed his face. He had recently cut it to keep it from getting into his eyes.
Harry resented how Tom still managed to look sophisticated.
There were bodies rotting on the asphalt road and several deserted cars, but Harry tried not to focus on it too much. Instead he worried for when it would be winter, again - the infected could stand the cold far better than the heat. The nights were hard enough to survive when they couldn't get through a city in one day because of blockages on the road and the like, but during the winters…
Harry closed his eyes and slumped into his seat, yawning. They hadn't had much sleep last night either. A couple of infec- ah, who was he kidding, a couple of zombies had been slamming up against their car, trying to open it. Like Tom and Harry were some sort of canned food. It had ultimately resulted into a couple of crushed zombies on the dirt road and a very satisfied Tom Riddle behind the steering wheel.
'Tired?' Tom asked and Harry hummed, sighing when Tom's hand smoothed Harry's hair behind his ear.
That was another thing that was troubling Harry.
He supposed it was very easy for Tom to forget that Harry was only 16 years old, even if they did celebrate his birthdays because Harry insisted on doing so (he just wanted to feel normal a couple of times a year, which was why he really wanted to celebrate Christmas every year as well). Harry had lost his parents at the tender age of 12, had been chased down by fucking zombies who wanted to tear him apart, he has had to shoot people who had once been someone's kid and clean the blood off his face after doing so… But he still had things that teenagers always worried about, even if he was jaded beyond his years.
Such as who was Harry really, and what was his place in this world? Admittedly he no longer had to worry about what he wanted to be when he grew up or what college to go to considering surviving was just a difficult task on its own, but still… Sometimes, when Tom was asleep and it was Harry's turn to keep watch, he wondered what the point in all of this was. They were bound to die anyway, weren't they? No matter how many zombies he killed and how much hate he felt toward them, it didn't bring his parents back. It didn't change the world. It didn't solve anything.
Tom's hand pulled away from where it had been lingering on Harry's face, curling around the steering wheel again.
Harry has seen and done things that should qualify him as an adult (because killing zombies counted more than smoking or drinking alcohol, right?) but he still felt like such a stupid child. He always felt like he wasn't doing enough, like he wasn't doing something. Also, he may very well be having an identity crisis while he was at it.
Harry thought he was in love with Tom.
Harry had never really had anyone explain to him what it meant to be in love with someone, so he couldn't be too sure, but it must be love when he just felt this stupid need to stare at Tom constantly, right? When he felt this happy when Tom touched him it couldn't just be affection, could it? It was weird because girls were supposed to like boys… Yet Harry was really, really sure he wasn't a girl and he was really sure Tom wasn't one either, so it was just… He didn't understand. It were times like these where he just missed his mom so much. His mom would've understood. She would've known why Harry would fall for a man.
It was just difficult.
It was difficult and strange because his body just had this strange reaction sometimes, where his manhood would suddenly ache and feel hard between his legs. He had never told Tom because he didn't know if it was normal or not and it usually just went away on its own accord anyway.
Tom sighed and Harry opened his eyes again to look at him.
'What is it?' he asked and he quickly glanced out of the window in worry. There seemed to be nothing outside that could possibly cause that look on Tom's face. Tom glanced at him and Harry's face was reflected in his sunglasses.
'We need to talk,' Tom said and he glanced in his rearview mirror. The road was completely deserted; Harry could only suggest they were far away from the main cities, because there were no cars or bodies either. Harry felt dread, somehow. Tom couldn't possibly know about that right?
'We do?' Harry asked and Tom pulled over. He took off his sunglasses and ran a hand through his hair. Tom's eyes were incredibly blue in direct sunlight, and they looked fucking amazing. Harry stared at him, before awkwardly clearing his throat and turning to him in his seat. 'About what?'
And even if he knew that Tom wouldn't leave him when all they had were each other and when they were each other's protectors (Harry had always desperately fought to make himself useful and he had more than once saved Tom's back too) it didn't take away that fear of being left on his own. He wouldn't survive on his own - Harry was too reckless and didn't think things through as well as Tom would.
'We've been travelling for four years,' Tom said and Harry nodded slowly. Tom stared at him for a bit longer as if he was trying to look into Harry's soul, before he leaned back in his seat. 'I think it would be best if we were to settle down somewhere.'
Harry blinked in mild surprise. 'Are you serious? But you always said that settling down somewhere could be dangerous because they are always on the move, and that we have to keep on the roads as well for supplies and -'
'I know what I said,' Tom interrupted him and when he saw the look on Harry's face his own face relaxed somewhat and he ran another hand through his hair. 'I know,' he repeated, his voice now a bit gentler. A silence fell upon them and Harry just stared at Tom for a short while. His eyes traced his high cheekbones, those small beads of perspiration that had gathered on his smooth forehead, his eyebrows, down his straight nose to his pale lips…
'We can't always be on the road,' Tom started, and his voice made Harry snap up from his thoughts. Tom rested his head against the his seat and his pale neck was stretched out completely, his adam's apple bobbing up and down when he swallowed and spoke again. 'We are dependent of one another, for as much as I'd dread to admit it, considering you never use your head and I am not quite as creative as you are. The chance of one of us dying is… There, if we keep taking risks like this.'
Risks as in driving around aimlessly. They had never really set up a plan as to where they wanted to go, simply because they would just go wherever they thought would they could find food and maybe shelter. There had never been a goal besides surviving another day, and just driving into unknown territory… It has been dangerous, in the past. Sometimes the places they ended up in looked like ghost towns, and sometimes they just walked straight into the home of countless zombies. With the years having passed, zombies no longer stuck around in the cities. There was nothing left to eat for them, there, and they traveled as well.
When Tom spoke of creativity, he was referring to the makeshift traps Harry created that had more than once saved their lives. The fact that Harry didn't come up with plans often and just rather did things instead of planning them beforehand was something they could sometimes use to their advantage. Harry made trip wires, for example, and fastened bottles and bottle caps to them. They'd clink together when the wire was stepped upon, making a sound loud enough to wake them when they had been asleep or bathing so they knew that something was coming.
They had run out of bullets and only had had their knives one time, about two months ago, but there had been too many zombies outside to fight by hand. Harry had cut open his hand and soaked a couple of teddy bears, which the original owners of the house had left behind, in his blood and thrown them out of the window - zombies could smell blood from a long distance. While the zombies had been busy fighting each other and ripping the teddy bears apart, Tom and Harry took their chance to escape.
It wasn't that Tom was too stupid to come up with things like that. He just thought himself to be too intelligent to have to rely on his imagination and he was more the kind of person that liked to plan things ahead. Tom could react fast, and he had come up with plenty of traps and ways out in the years that had passed, but Harry was no longer a little boy. He could help too, and voice opinions or ideas that Tom may had looked over or brushed off.
Tom's eyes turned to him again and Harry licked his lips.
'But why do you think now wouldn't be as dangerous?' Harry asked softly, finally. The thought of being capable of living somewhere, growing old… He had pushed forced hopes out of his head a long time ago. This simply wasn't the kind of world where that was possible anymore and it already shocked Harry enough that they had managed to get this far, for so long.
'It's still as dangerous as it used to be,' Tom replied calmly, 'it just depends on the location we chose to stay at, and I'm not saying we should stay there for the rest of our lives. But we could stay there for a year, and then move forward again.'
'There…? That almost sounds like you already have a place in mind,' Harry murmured. Tom's head turned to him, and Harry instantly realized that Tom did have somewhere in mind. He had this look in his eyes that he always had when he had come up with something, and Harry found that he liked it. Tom used to say nothing at all and he wouldn't discuss a thing with Harry before making decisions, but now that Harry was slowly growing up Tom was starting to see him as more than just someone that came along him - someone to talk to every now and then.
Harry was Tom's companion, now. Not just a little boy that was following him around.
Counting Bodies Like Sheep