Blight 20/?
The end of the world party is one of the best that Tyler’s been to. They sacrifice one of the bottles of liquor and everybody gets just a little easy, a little loose. Jamie has enough that he doesn’t object when Tom brings the guitar out and puts it in his hands. He strums idle chords while Tyler hums along, Nikki sings.
A few hours before sunset, Loui and Alfonse and Tyler get up from the gathering and get to work. Kara cooked, so they clean, washing the dishes and leaving them to drip dry in the dishwasher’s racks.
It starts to get dark, and people drift off to where they’ve been sleeping-Mikaela and Loui in the old master bedroom, Akshaya to her little bed in their room. Nikki, Kara and Ofelia take Kate through the wall and into the bedroom of the neighboring apartment, where the dogs in the living room are between them and the door to the outside. The most-crowded is the room the men share-- Jamie and Tyler, Alfonse, Tom, Dion and Eduardo, Darius, all packed in on the most compact mattresses, piles of pillows.
Tyler lets everybody else head to bed, tugs on Jamie’s hand when he would follow them, draws him back down to the couch.
“I thought…” he says, and Jamie looks at him like he has no idea what Tyler’s thinking, no idea what he’s planning. And to hell with that. Tyler leans in and bumps their lips together, waits for Jamie’s sigh, waits for his lips to part and then he teases his tongue against them.
Jamie makes a little gasp, the sweetest sound Tyler’s ever heard. Relief pushes against his breastbone, that Jamie is on board with this, that Jamie still wants him. He hadn’t really thought, but…people get fucked up, turned around, change their minds.
“Yeah,” Tyler breathes into Jamie’s mouth, “Yeah, there you are. Missed you.”
Jamie’s hands grab at his waist, too-rough and just-perfect, a groan in his throat like he’s trying to hold back.
Tyler planned to do this slow, gentle. But he burns with wanting, aches with too many nights of being close and not together. He nips Jamie’s lower lip, harder than he intended; Jamie hisses and jerks back.
“Sorry, sorry,” Tyler whispers. The sky gets darker, and the room with it; the subtleties of Jamie’s expression get lost in the shadows.
Jamie holds him back when he leans in to try and lick where he bit.
“We can’t…” Jamie starts, and frustration fills Tyler’s guts, that he let Jamie have time to think, time to deny himself this. “What if somebody comes out?”
“Why?” Tyler asks. “There’s nothing out here.” And okay, maybe one of the guys would need to use the toilet in the night, but how likely is it that they’d need to use it now?
“They are grown damn people; they’ll survive if they catch an eyefull,” Tyler grits out, reminding himself that this is their good time, and yelling at Jamie will make it a bad time instead.
Jamie’s breath catches, and when Tyler leans into him again, he doesn’t lock his elbows to keep him back. Tyler slows it down, hands drifting Jamie’s sides, letting Jamie touch him back.
They make out like teenagers on the couch (the kind of teenagers that Tyler has never been, fifteen and wild and horny and dumb. Sixteen and hollow, broken. Seventeen and this, hungry and sure). Tyler pushes Jamie back, inch by inch, until he’s shoved into the corner with his shoulders over the arm of the couch, his neck awkward and bent.
“Let’s…” Jamie whispers, like the others are listening, like they care. Shifts around and gets flat under Tyler and yeah, that’s okay, that’s good. He covers Jamie with his weight, presses him down, hips against each other, denim and dress pants between them, too much, too many stupid layers. He wants Jamie’s skin, wants Jamie’s dick in his hand. Wants. Wants Jamie’s dick inside of him, fuck. Fuck, it’s going to hurt, spit for lube and Jamie’s short fat dick that’s not made for ass-fucking.
“I want. Want you to fuck me,” he pants against Jamie’s neck, presses his lips so hard against Jamie’s shoulder that they bruise against his teeth. Wants to bite but the act has lost a lot of its sex-appeal in the past few days.
Jamie goes still under him, hands holding Tyler’s shoulders, not pushing him away, not pulling him close.
“Nobody’s coming out,” Tyler reminds him, trying to shut down the flutter of dread in his stomach. He wants. To give this to Jamie. Wants to be marked and made-different by it.
“Why?” Jamie asks, and he’s looking now, trying to see Tyler’s face in the fading light, trying to read him. “Why that? You said. Said you weren’t into it. Didn’t like it.”
Tyler rolls his hips against Jamie’s, tries to distract Jamie from this line of thought. Jamie frowns up at him, and it’s pretty obvious there’s going to be no more of anything until he’s heard Tyler’s reasons and is satisfied.
It would make things a lot easier if Tyler had good reasons, had more than this ache that needs to be filled, that has little do do with his ass and a lot to do with his heart.
“I need…” and that sounds so soft, sounds like he couldn’t do without it, without Jamie. “I want to. To be that. To be that close to you.” He clenches his jaw, tries to keep whatever is coming after that behind his teeth.
Jamie’s hand moves from Tyler’s shoulder, up behind his neck, squeezing, cupping the base of his skull. “No,” he says, gentle but sure. “I’m not. I won’t. Won’t hurt you like that.”
Jamie’s kiss is so gentle. The complete opposite of what Tyler asked for. But perfect, and he sinks down into it. Loses himself in the scent of Jamie’s skin, in the brush of their lips against each other.
Tyler was so ready, to be tough and take it. Jamie’s gentleness breaks him open, sends him shaking and blinking the blurriness from his his eyes.
“Hey,” Jamie says, soft, petting Tyler’s short hair, stroking his neck. Tyler takes a slow breath and gets his head back in the game.
“Yeah,” he says, means it I’m here. I’m okay. “I want. Want to touch you.”
Jamie draws in a gasp through his teeth. Tyler takes that for encouragement, rolls to the side just enough to work one-handed at Jamie’s jeans button, Jamie’s arm around him keeping him from falling off of the couch. He slips his fingers inside the opened fly and finds Jamie’s skin, finds his dick, hard and thick.
“Ty,” Jamie moans, his hips jerking forward as Tyler wraps his hand around his dick, as he strokes.
“Yeah,” Tyler gasps back. He’s hard too, still in his dress pants, but he trusts Jamie not to leave him hanging if they don’t come together. This, Jamie in the dark, his soft gasps and moans as Tyler jerks him off, it’s a hell of a sexy thing. Feeling him, hearing him, eyes struggling to piece the shadows into a face.
Jamie comes quiet, pressing his forehead into Tyler’s shoulder, hands tight on his back. Gasping and choking back his cries.
“Yeah,” Tyler says again, wipes the jizz on his hand off on his pants, works the zipper down while he’s there. Pulls his dick out while Jamie is still catching his breath.
He barely gets three pulls in before Jamie has recovered enough to get in there, to slip his hand around Tyler’s, so fucking big, big everywhere, broad palm and fingers that wrap around him and then some. He arches into Jamie’s grip, finds it spit-slick and wet and warm. Hears himself, whining and panting and groaning. Comes in Jamie’s hand, in Jamie’s arms. Is held and safe and done, done in the best ways.
He huffs and all the strength goes out of him. He flops against Jamie’s chest, limp and spent, nothing left of him.
They lay like that. Tyler isn’t sure how long. Thinks he might drift off for a bit, comes back with Jamie stroking his back. They’re sticky and gross. He can’t quite get up the enthusiasm to go get a cold wet cloth to clean up with though, so he tucks himself back in his pants and lays his head back on Jamie’s shoulder.
“We can’t do this every night,” Jamie murmurs, half-asleep.
That-okay, that hurts a bit.
“You got something against orgasms now?” Tyler snipes, and Jamie tenses.
“What? No, no. Not that. The slacking off. Sitting around half the day.”
That doesn’t thrill Tyler either, because he can see Jamie working himself down to nothing, never taking a rest, getting so exhausted he starts to make mistakes.
“Not every day,” he agrees, “But enough. As much as they need it.”
Jamie doesn’t answer, and Tyler is pretty sure he’ll be able to bully Jamie into resting, into letting the team rest.
But not right now, and he closes his eyes. Thinks he’ll have to get up in a little while and get the blanket off of their palette, but not right now. Right now, he is safe and warm-enough. Right now, Jamie is with him, and that’s plenty.
===========
Jamie wakes up with Tyler in his arms, a blanket thrown over them. His crotch is itchy with flaking come and his neck stiff from sleeping on the couch with Tyler on top of him. His left arm is completely asleep and he makes the mistake of twitching, sending pins and needles of sensation down to his fingertips and back.
He groans and can’t stay still any longer, and Tyler shifts against him, makes it worse.
“Mm. Babe. Ow, my arm,” Jamie mumbles and Tyler nuzzles into his neck one last time before he sits up, kisses Jamie’s jaw and then goes off to the bathroom.
Eduardo and Dion come out while Jamie is trying to massage the feeling back into his hand. Eduardo gives him a sly grin and a waggle of his eyebrows. Jamie guesses they weren’t exactly subtle the night before. It keeps throwing him, that he’s out, that he’s out as Tyler’s boyfriend, and it’s okay. And then he feels a wave of guilt-it’s okay because the NHL is gone. Because the tabloid reporters are dead. Because it’s the end of the fucking world.
Dion limps into the kitchen, puts water into he coffee maker, hits the button. Waits and stares. Jamie’s mouth waters and he could sure as hell use a cup.
“God damn it,” Dion sighs, and Jamie remembers. That the room is only light because the sun is shining. That there will be no hot coffee today.
He groans and sits up, reaches under the blanket Tyler left on him to zip up his jeans. Other people are coming out of the bedrooms now, Kara disappearing with Eduardo. She’s got a plan, a system for exactly what they eat and when, and nobody is willing to mess with it. They come back with cereal (bags that were opened before they got there), milk from multiple fridges, (still cold, packed into freezers when the power went out).
They eat, and Tyler comes back out of the bathroom and sits at his side.
As people finish their meals, they set aside their bowls, look up at Jamie.
“I need to know what everybody thinks is the most urgent projects to work on,” he starts, when everyone is done eating. He looks to Kara, since she’s been the one in charge of feeding them all.
“Um, as far as food goes, we should be okay for about eight to ten days on frozen food, hopefully as much as twelve. We’ll eat out of fridges today, and I’ll open a freezer when we come in for the night. Let it defrost overnight. Today and tomorrow, we might find some good food in freezers or fridges I didn’t pack. There will be stuff in fridges that really didn’t need to be. Peanut butter and jelly have enough preservatives they should be fine for a few weeks even if they’re open. Block cheese should be safe to eat for a little while. Stuff like that. I can make a list. We should move it all into one kitchen up here, if we can.”
Eduardo and Ofelia talk quiet between them, and Eduardo catches Jamie’s eye.
“Ofelia has been saving all the scraps that will grow new plants. Lettuce and carrots, potato, onions. If we could get some help, we could take some of the empty fridges up to the garage roof, lay them on their backs. Put clear plastic shower curtains over them, use them for little greenhouses.”
Jamie nods. That’s fucking brilliant.“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. We can get a couple people on that.”
“The thing we have the least of,” Eduardo says, “is dirt. So she had us shredding paper before the power went out. If we mix it with food from the kitchens. Vegetables. It’ll rot down. Give us something to work with. For now though, we can start with the little bit we got from the flower pots.”
“We’ll have to start planning another full sweep of the place,” Jamie says. The first pass was looking for high-value items. They can go back through, look for anything of any use at all, move it all upstairs and sort it out. Toilet paper. They need to bring up all of the toilet paper. “How long are we looking at before we can start harvesting even a little of our food?”
Eduardo and Ofelia have another conversation in Spanish. “Couple weeks on the greens, celery and onion-greens,” Eduardo says. “Potato and sweet potato, maybe four months. Carrots and pumpkin, she doesn’t know, planting them this time of year. We’re hoping we can use the door of the fridge to turn more sun on the plants, but we aren’t sure yet if it’ll help enough.”
“Fair enough,” Jamie says. It’s not a quick fix, but it should be a resource stream that starts to pick up about when the stored-food starts to run out. He can’t imagine them growing enough to completely feed twelve people, but every little bit will be one more day between them and starvation.
“The food we have,” Kara starts, catches herself and stops. “There’s a lot of it that’s not really edible in the state it’s in. Like-bags of flour. Pancake mix. Even. Even rice, I’m not sure how to make it without a stove.”
“Making a stove is easy,” Alfonse says. “Feeding it’s a whole ‘nother thing. Most of the wood in here’s treated. Can’t burn the cabinets or the doors. Could pull studs outta the walls, but there ain’t a lot of days worth of that. Not enough.” He says it like he’s been thinking on it for a while, turning the problem over and over in his head, searching for a solution.
“I have an idea for that too,” Eduardo says. “In my internet research, I found instructions for solar ovens. That’s what the foil is for. Or if we can find some of those foil sunshades in the cars. That might work too. Anything shaped like a big bowl, a big curve, would shortcut building it.”
“This time of year?” Tyler asks, and Eduardo shrugs like they’ll have to try it to see.
Jamie files that away.
“Okay, what other problems do we have? We’ve got probably close to ten thousand gallons of water right now, counting what’s in the water heaters, but that won’t last us forever. Could we pull some more of the fridges up to the garage roof, lay them down and catch rainwater in them?”
Alfonse shakes his head. “Nah, not worth it. That one, I got. There’s a gutter up there, so the rain water don’t run down the sides of the building. PVC pipe, comes down in the middle of the garage, down to the sewer. We tap that pipe, funnel it into those fridges direct, should be enough to keep us in water if we work hard. We’ll have to carry it up for the garden, and down here to use, but we’ll have it.”
Jamie guesses that’s another couple days work.
“Sooo…we should stop walking the dogs up there?” Darius asks, and Jamie adds another day of work, using the spring-scent bleach and the last days of running water to clean that up before it becomes their source of drinking water.
“Okay, what else?”
“Winter,” Tyler says, and Jamie realizes he’s been avoiding thinking about it. “We’ve gotta figure out how to keep Mikaela and the kids warm. Us too, but mostly them.”
“Put them in a small room,” Alfonse suggests. “Closet even. Hang blankets on the walls, wrap up in fuzzy blanket to keep the warmth closer to their skin.”
“If we got keys and cars to match,” Dion says, the first time his low voice has spoken in a group meeting. “I could rig up a couple batteries and headlights. Not sure they’d last all night, but it’d be a little warmer. I could charge up the batteries during the day off of the cars, as long as we have gas.”
Those ideas beat Jamie’s first plan of burning something in the apartment to warm them up. Not like yuppies in Dallas have kerosene heaters sitting around.
“The rest of us, we go back to sleeping in one bedroom,” Tyler says, and as much as Jamie’s been appreciating the increase in breathing room, it’s a solid suggestion. “We can cover the windows with blankets, make a bigger nest.”
“Yeah. Okay. Anything else?”
“I think we should go across to the grocery store sometime soon,” Tyler says, and Jamie has to bear down on his gut reaction to say absolutely fucking not, are you serious?
“Why?” is what he manages to prune his response back to.
“Baby needs diapers,” Tyler answers. “We need to see what’s there that we can use. We need to get what we can before someone else does. Need to get what we can before we run out of supplies here and get desperate. We can’t go into the office here, but we could check out the back room there, see if there’s tools or stuff.”
It’s not that Tyler doesn’t have good reasons. Just. Jamie can’t see them doing it now, taking those risks before they settle the water problem, or get the gardens moved up to the garage roof, or get Mikaela’s nest situated.
“How are we on diapers?” he asks Mikaela and Loui.
“We should be okay for a couple of weeks,” she answers, pats Elle’s back when she starts to fuss. “Maybe not that long.”
“I think we should wait,” Jamie tells Tyler. “We need to figure out how to get in and out without drawing the blighted to the gates. Get some of these immediate projects taken care of.”
He expects a fuss, but Tyler nods, presses his lips together. “Yeah, okay. We were talking about making the halls harder to get through too,” he adds, and Jamie nods.
“That too,” he agrees.
============
They work, all of that first long coffee-less day without power. Check the gates and then split up. Alfonse and Tom work on cutting into the pipe with a hacksaw. Jamie and Tyler and Loui start emptying out and moving the refrigerators, a couple up to the roof so Ofelia and Nikki can start moving the plants in one of the carts. Eduardo brings up the plastic and some tape and starts making them into greenhouses, carefully turned to catch the most sun possible.
Twice, Jamie looks over and sees Tyler looking out the window of whatever apartment they’re in at the time, looking over the dead-filled street, looking down on the grocery store on the other side, quietly calculating.
“I think it should be us to go out,” Tyler says when Jamie comes to stand at his shoulder the second time. “We’re strong, we’re fast. We won’t be splitting up a couple. Won’t be risking all of our good fighters on it.”
Jamie doesn’t answer, and Tyler doesn’t say it again.
At night, they go to bed just as tired as they did when the electricity was still on, tired but feeling like it was a good day again. Nobody died, Jamie tells himself. They made progress. Little steps that should add up to not having to choose between starving and leaving.
Jamie wakes in the moonless black, Tyler slipping out of his arms, standing up, moving away.
“Hey,” he whispers, trying not to wake the rest.
“Shh,” Tyler whispers back. “Just going to take a piss.”
Jamie waits, wide awake. Listening to Tyler’s stumbles through the room and into the bathroom, terrified that he’ll hear the front door opening, that Tyler will try to slip out on him, try to go outside, cross the road. More scared that he won’t hear it. That he’ll wait too long for Tyler to come back to him and miss him leaving.
He’s just about to stand up, to rush out, to wake the house, when the sink turns on in the bathroom, Tyler washing his hands before he stumbles back to bed.
“Promise me,” he whispers in the darkness. “Promise me you won’t go grocery shopping by yourself.”
“I won’t,” Tyler agrees. “Promise.”
He settles back in Jamie’s arms, and they make it through another night.
A few hours before sunset, Loui and Alfonse and Tyler get up from the gathering and get to work. Kara cooked, so they clean, washing the dishes and leaving them to drip dry in the dishwasher’s racks.
It starts to get dark, and people drift off to where they’ve been sleeping-Mikaela and Loui in the old master bedroom, Akshaya to her little bed in their room. Nikki, Kara and Ofelia take Kate through the wall and into the bedroom of the neighboring apartment, where the dogs in the living room are between them and the door to the outside. The most-crowded is the room the men share-- Jamie and Tyler, Alfonse, Tom, Dion and Eduardo, Darius, all packed in on the most compact mattresses, piles of pillows.
Tyler lets everybody else head to bed, tugs on Jamie’s hand when he would follow them, draws him back down to the couch.
“I thought…” he says, and Jamie looks at him like he has no idea what Tyler’s thinking, no idea what he’s planning. And to hell with that. Tyler leans in and bumps their lips together, waits for Jamie’s sigh, waits for his lips to part and then he teases his tongue against them.
Jamie makes a little gasp, the sweetest sound Tyler’s ever heard. Relief pushes against his breastbone, that Jamie is on board with this, that Jamie still wants him. He hadn’t really thought, but…people get fucked up, turned around, change their minds.
“Yeah,” Tyler breathes into Jamie’s mouth, “Yeah, there you are. Missed you.”
Jamie’s hands grab at his waist, too-rough and just-perfect, a groan in his throat like he’s trying to hold back.
Tyler planned to do this slow, gentle. But he burns with wanting, aches with too many nights of being close and not together. He nips Jamie’s lower lip, harder than he intended; Jamie hisses and jerks back.
“Sorry, sorry,” Tyler whispers. The sky gets darker, and the room with it; the subtleties of Jamie’s expression get lost in the shadows.
Jamie holds him back when he leans in to try and lick where he bit.
“We can’t…” Jamie starts, and frustration fills Tyler’s guts, that he let Jamie have time to think, time to deny himself this. “What if somebody comes out?”
“Why?” Tyler asks. “There’s nothing out here.” And okay, maybe one of the guys would need to use the toilet in the night, but how likely is it that they’d need to use it now?
“They are grown damn people; they’ll survive if they catch an eyefull,” Tyler grits out, reminding himself that this is their good time, and yelling at Jamie will make it a bad time instead.
Jamie’s breath catches, and when Tyler leans into him again, he doesn’t lock his elbows to keep him back. Tyler slows it down, hands drifting Jamie’s sides, letting Jamie touch him back.
They make out like teenagers on the couch (the kind of teenagers that Tyler has never been, fifteen and wild and horny and dumb. Sixteen and hollow, broken. Seventeen and this, hungry and sure). Tyler pushes Jamie back, inch by inch, until he’s shoved into the corner with his shoulders over the arm of the couch, his neck awkward and bent.
“Let’s…” Jamie whispers, like the others are listening, like they care. Shifts around and gets flat under Tyler and yeah, that’s okay, that’s good. He covers Jamie with his weight, presses him down, hips against each other, denim and dress pants between them, too much, too many stupid layers. He wants Jamie’s skin, wants Jamie’s dick in his hand. Wants. Wants Jamie’s dick inside of him, fuck. Fuck, it’s going to hurt, spit for lube and Jamie’s short fat dick that’s not made for ass-fucking.
“I want. Want you to fuck me,” he pants against Jamie’s neck, presses his lips so hard against Jamie’s shoulder that they bruise against his teeth. Wants to bite but the act has lost a lot of its sex-appeal in the past few days.
Jamie goes still under him, hands holding Tyler’s shoulders, not pushing him away, not pulling him close.
“Nobody’s coming out,” Tyler reminds him, trying to shut down the flutter of dread in his stomach. He wants. To give this to Jamie. Wants to be marked and made-different by it.
“Why?” Jamie asks, and he’s looking now, trying to see Tyler’s face in the fading light, trying to read him. “Why that? You said. Said you weren’t into it. Didn’t like it.”
Tyler rolls his hips against Jamie’s, tries to distract Jamie from this line of thought. Jamie frowns up at him, and it’s pretty obvious there’s going to be no more of anything until he’s heard Tyler’s reasons and is satisfied.
It would make things a lot easier if Tyler had good reasons, had more than this ache that needs to be filled, that has little do do with his ass and a lot to do with his heart.
“I need…” and that sounds so soft, sounds like he couldn’t do without it, without Jamie. “I want to. To be that. To be that close to you.” He clenches his jaw, tries to keep whatever is coming after that behind his teeth.
Jamie’s hand moves from Tyler’s shoulder, up behind his neck, squeezing, cupping the base of his skull. “No,” he says, gentle but sure. “I’m not. I won’t. Won’t hurt you like that.”
Jamie’s kiss is so gentle. The complete opposite of what Tyler asked for. But perfect, and he sinks down into it. Loses himself in the scent of Jamie’s skin, in the brush of their lips against each other.
Tyler was so ready, to be tough and take it. Jamie’s gentleness breaks him open, sends him shaking and blinking the blurriness from his his eyes.
“Hey,” Jamie says, soft, petting Tyler’s short hair, stroking his neck. Tyler takes a slow breath and gets his head back in the game.
“Yeah,” he says, means it I’m here. I’m okay. “I want. Want to touch you.”
Jamie draws in a gasp through his teeth. Tyler takes that for encouragement, rolls to the side just enough to work one-handed at Jamie’s jeans button, Jamie’s arm around him keeping him from falling off of the couch. He slips his fingers inside the opened fly and finds Jamie’s skin, finds his dick, hard and thick.
“Ty,” Jamie moans, his hips jerking forward as Tyler wraps his hand around his dick, as he strokes.
“Yeah,” Tyler gasps back. He’s hard too, still in his dress pants, but he trusts Jamie not to leave him hanging if they don’t come together. This, Jamie in the dark, his soft gasps and moans as Tyler jerks him off, it’s a hell of a sexy thing. Feeling him, hearing him, eyes struggling to piece the shadows into a face.
Jamie comes quiet, pressing his forehead into Tyler’s shoulder, hands tight on his back. Gasping and choking back his cries.
“Yeah,” Tyler says again, wipes the jizz on his hand off on his pants, works the zipper down while he’s there. Pulls his dick out while Jamie is still catching his breath.
He barely gets three pulls in before Jamie has recovered enough to get in there, to slip his hand around Tyler’s, so fucking big, big everywhere, broad palm and fingers that wrap around him and then some. He arches into Jamie’s grip, finds it spit-slick and wet and warm. Hears himself, whining and panting and groaning. Comes in Jamie’s hand, in Jamie’s arms. Is held and safe and done, done in the best ways.
He huffs and all the strength goes out of him. He flops against Jamie’s chest, limp and spent, nothing left of him.
They lay like that. Tyler isn’t sure how long. Thinks he might drift off for a bit, comes back with Jamie stroking his back. They’re sticky and gross. He can’t quite get up the enthusiasm to go get a cold wet cloth to clean up with though, so he tucks himself back in his pants and lays his head back on Jamie’s shoulder.
“We can’t do this every night,” Jamie murmurs, half-asleep.
That-okay, that hurts a bit.
“You got something against orgasms now?” Tyler snipes, and Jamie tenses.
“What? No, no. Not that. The slacking off. Sitting around half the day.”
That doesn’t thrill Tyler either, because he can see Jamie working himself down to nothing, never taking a rest, getting so exhausted he starts to make mistakes.
“Not every day,” he agrees, “But enough. As much as they need it.”
Jamie doesn’t answer, and Tyler is pretty sure he’ll be able to bully Jamie into resting, into letting the team rest.
But not right now, and he closes his eyes. Thinks he’ll have to get up in a little while and get the blanket off of their palette, but not right now. Right now, he is safe and warm-enough. Right now, Jamie is with him, and that’s plenty.
===========
Jamie wakes up with Tyler in his arms, a blanket thrown over them. His crotch is itchy with flaking come and his neck stiff from sleeping on the couch with Tyler on top of him. His left arm is completely asleep and he makes the mistake of twitching, sending pins and needles of sensation down to his fingertips and back.
He groans and can’t stay still any longer, and Tyler shifts against him, makes it worse.
“Mm. Babe. Ow, my arm,” Jamie mumbles and Tyler nuzzles into his neck one last time before he sits up, kisses Jamie’s jaw and then goes off to the bathroom.
Eduardo and Dion come out while Jamie is trying to massage the feeling back into his hand. Eduardo gives him a sly grin and a waggle of his eyebrows. Jamie guesses they weren’t exactly subtle the night before. It keeps throwing him, that he’s out, that he’s out as Tyler’s boyfriend, and it’s okay. And then he feels a wave of guilt-it’s okay because the NHL is gone. Because the tabloid reporters are dead. Because it’s the end of the fucking world.
Dion limps into the kitchen, puts water into he coffee maker, hits the button. Waits and stares. Jamie’s mouth waters and he could sure as hell use a cup.
“God damn it,” Dion sighs, and Jamie remembers. That the room is only light because the sun is shining. That there will be no hot coffee today.
He groans and sits up, reaches under the blanket Tyler left on him to zip up his jeans. Other people are coming out of the bedrooms now, Kara disappearing with Eduardo. She’s got a plan, a system for exactly what they eat and when, and nobody is willing to mess with it. They come back with cereal (bags that were opened before they got there), milk from multiple fridges, (still cold, packed into freezers when the power went out).
They eat, and Tyler comes back out of the bathroom and sits at his side.
As people finish their meals, they set aside their bowls, look up at Jamie.
“I need to know what everybody thinks is the most urgent projects to work on,” he starts, when everyone is done eating. He looks to Kara, since she’s been the one in charge of feeding them all.
“Um, as far as food goes, we should be okay for about eight to ten days on frozen food, hopefully as much as twelve. We’ll eat out of fridges today, and I’ll open a freezer when we come in for the night. Let it defrost overnight. Today and tomorrow, we might find some good food in freezers or fridges I didn’t pack. There will be stuff in fridges that really didn’t need to be. Peanut butter and jelly have enough preservatives they should be fine for a few weeks even if they’re open. Block cheese should be safe to eat for a little while. Stuff like that. I can make a list. We should move it all into one kitchen up here, if we can.”
Eduardo and Ofelia talk quiet between them, and Eduardo catches Jamie’s eye.
“Ofelia has been saving all the scraps that will grow new plants. Lettuce and carrots, potato, onions. If we could get some help, we could take some of the empty fridges up to the garage roof, lay them on their backs. Put clear plastic shower curtains over them, use them for little greenhouses.”
Jamie nods. That’s fucking brilliant.“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. We can get a couple people on that.”
“The thing we have the least of,” Eduardo says, “is dirt. So she had us shredding paper before the power went out. If we mix it with food from the kitchens. Vegetables. It’ll rot down. Give us something to work with. For now though, we can start with the little bit we got from the flower pots.”
“We’ll have to start planning another full sweep of the place,” Jamie says. The first pass was looking for high-value items. They can go back through, look for anything of any use at all, move it all upstairs and sort it out. Toilet paper. They need to bring up all of the toilet paper. “How long are we looking at before we can start harvesting even a little of our food?”
Eduardo and Ofelia have another conversation in Spanish. “Couple weeks on the greens, celery and onion-greens,” Eduardo says. “Potato and sweet potato, maybe four months. Carrots and pumpkin, she doesn’t know, planting them this time of year. We’re hoping we can use the door of the fridge to turn more sun on the plants, but we aren’t sure yet if it’ll help enough.”
“Fair enough,” Jamie says. It’s not a quick fix, but it should be a resource stream that starts to pick up about when the stored-food starts to run out. He can’t imagine them growing enough to completely feed twelve people, but every little bit will be one more day between them and starvation.
“The food we have,” Kara starts, catches herself and stops. “There’s a lot of it that’s not really edible in the state it’s in. Like-bags of flour. Pancake mix. Even. Even rice, I’m not sure how to make it without a stove.”
“Making a stove is easy,” Alfonse says. “Feeding it’s a whole ‘nother thing. Most of the wood in here’s treated. Can’t burn the cabinets or the doors. Could pull studs outta the walls, but there ain’t a lot of days worth of that. Not enough.” He says it like he’s been thinking on it for a while, turning the problem over and over in his head, searching for a solution.
“I have an idea for that too,” Eduardo says. “In my internet research, I found instructions for solar ovens. That’s what the foil is for. Or if we can find some of those foil sunshades in the cars. That might work too. Anything shaped like a big bowl, a big curve, would shortcut building it.”
“This time of year?” Tyler asks, and Eduardo shrugs like they’ll have to try it to see.
Jamie files that away.
“Okay, what other problems do we have? We’ve got probably close to ten thousand gallons of water right now, counting what’s in the water heaters, but that won’t last us forever. Could we pull some more of the fridges up to the garage roof, lay them down and catch rainwater in them?”
Alfonse shakes his head. “Nah, not worth it. That one, I got. There’s a gutter up there, so the rain water don’t run down the sides of the building. PVC pipe, comes down in the middle of the garage, down to the sewer. We tap that pipe, funnel it into those fridges direct, should be enough to keep us in water if we work hard. We’ll have to carry it up for the garden, and down here to use, but we’ll have it.”
Jamie guesses that’s another couple days work.
“Sooo…we should stop walking the dogs up there?” Darius asks, and Jamie adds another day of work, using the spring-scent bleach and the last days of running water to clean that up before it becomes their source of drinking water.
“Okay, what else?”
“Winter,” Tyler says, and Jamie realizes he’s been avoiding thinking about it. “We’ve gotta figure out how to keep Mikaela and the kids warm. Us too, but mostly them.”
“Put them in a small room,” Alfonse suggests. “Closet even. Hang blankets on the walls, wrap up in fuzzy blanket to keep the warmth closer to their skin.”
“If we got keys and cars to match,” Dion says, the first time his low voice has spoken in a group meeting. “I could rig up a couple batteries and headlights. Not sure they’d last all night, but it’d be a little warmer. I could charge up the batteries during the day off of the cars, as long as we have gas.”
Those ideas beat Jamie’s first plan of burning something in the apartment to warm them up. Not like yuppies in Dallas have kerosene heaters sitting around.
“The rest of us, we go back to sleeping in one bedroom,” Tyler says, and as much as Jamie’s been appreciating the increase in breathing room, it’s a solid suggestion. “We can cover the windows with blankets, make a bigger nest.”
“Yeah. Okay. Anything else?”
“I think we should go across to the grocery store sometime soon,” Tyler says, and Jamie has to bear down on his gut reaction to say absolutely fucking not, are you serious?
“Why?” is what he manages to prune his response back to.
“Baby needs diapers,” Tyler answers. “We need to see what’s there that we can use. We need to get what we can before someone else does. Need to get what we can before we run out of supplies here and get desperate. We can’t go into the office here, but we could check out the back room there, see if there’s tools or stuff.”
It’s not that Tyler doesn’t have good reasons. Just. Jamie can’t see them doing it now, taking those risks before they settle the water problem, or get the gardens moved up to the garage roof, or get Mikaela’s nest situated.
“How are we on diapers?” he asks Mikaela and Loui.
“We should be okay for a couple of weeks,” she answers, pats Elle’s back when she starts to fuss. “Maybe not that long.”
“I think we should wait,” Jamie tells Tyler. “We need to figure out how to get in and out without drawing the blighted to the gates. Get some of these immediate projects taken care of.”
He expects a fuss, but Tyler nods, presses his lips together. “Yeah, okay. We were talking about making the halls harder to get through too,” he adds, and Jamie nods.
“That too,” he agrees.
============
They work, all of that first long coffee-less day without power. Check the gates and then split up. Alfonse and Tom work on cutting into the pipe with a hacksaw. Jamie and Tyler and Loui start emptying out and moving the refrigerators, a couple up to the roof so Ofelia and Nikki can start moving the plants in one of the carts. Eduardo brings up the plastic and some tape and starts making them into greenhouses, carefully turned to catch the most sun possible.
Twice, Jamie looks over and sees Tyler looking out the window of whatever apartment they’re in at the time, looking over the dead-filled street, looking down on the grocery store on the other side, quietly calculating.
“I think it should be us to go out,” Tyler says when Jamie comes to stand at his shoulder the second time. “We’re strong, we’re fast. We won’t be splitting up a couple. Won’t be risking all of our good fighters on it.”
Jamie doesn’t answer, and Tyler doesn’t say it again.
At night, they go to bed just as tired as they did when the electricity was still on, tired but feeling like it was a good day again. Nobody died, Jamie tells himself. They made progress. Little steps that should add up to not having to choose between starving and leaving.
Jamie wakes in the moonless black, Tyler slipping out of his arms, standing up, moving away.
“Hey,” he whispers, trying not to wake the rest.
“Shh,” Tyler whispers back. “Just going to take a piss.”
Jamie waits, wide awake. Listening to Tyler’s stumbles through the room and into the bathroom, terrified that he’ll hear the front door opening, that Tyler will try to slip out on him, try to go outside, cross the road. More scared that he won’t hear it. That he’ll wait too long for Tyler to come back to him and miss him leaving.
He’s just about to stand up, to rush out, to wake the house, when the sink turns on in the bathroom, Tyler washing his hands before he stumbles back to bed.
“Promise me,” he whispers in the darkness. “Promise me you won’t go grocery shopping by yourself.”
“I won’t,” Tyler agrees. “Promise.”
He settles back in Jamie’s arms, and they make it through another night.