All You Zombies Hide Your Faces, 2/?
Title: All You Zombies Hide Your Faces, 2/?
Rating: PG-13, I think.
Pairing: Winn, natch. Also some Santana/Brittany and Quinn/Rachel.
Warnings: Violence, swearing, some very minor man-on-man action. And cliches. Lots and lots of cliches
Summary: Written for the following prompt- Several months into a zombie/virus style post-apocalyptic scenario Will, Finn and whoever else you wanna bring along are surviving. Finn has an injury that might be a bite/symptoms that might be the virus and confides in Will. The impending doom causes one to confess their feelings to the other.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, etc, etc.
Notes: This chapter is zombie-lite, but heavy on angsty!Will.
Night had come quickly to McKinley High. Most of the light bulbs that had once brightened the halls had either been broken or burnt out. The few that had worked had been salvaged by the Glee Club during supply runs, and with the clouds coming in thick tonight, they didn’t even have the moonlight to guide them down the halls. Before long it would be pitch black. Their only illumination was the beam of Rachel’s heavy-duty torch gliding back and forth across the linoleum.
‘Where’d you even get that?’
Santana immediately regretted asking the question as Rachel’s face brightened. Literally, it was almost glowing.
‘When we were setting up our base of operations in the Choir Room, I had the brilliant idea, if I say so myself, of placing emergency supply crates in strategic areas on school grounds. Each one has torches, a first aid kit, matches, condoms…’
‘Condoms? Seriously?’ Santana interrupted. ‘You honestly think that anyone fleeing from the walking dead is gonna worry about getting laid anytime soon?’
‘A girl never knows what she might need in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.’
‘I think we can safely say from experience that contraception isn’t exactly a major concern.’
‘I even made a map!’ Rachel continued, ignoring Santana’s sniping. She pulled a piece of folded poster paper out of her pocket and unfolded it, revealing a meticulously detailed floor-plan of the school grounds, drawn with a variety of coloured markers. ‘The gold stars mark the locations of the emergency supplies!’
Santana rolled her eyes and kept walking. A crestfallen Rachel trailed behind, struggling to re-fold the un-cooperative map.
* * *
Finn was feverish now, his temperature ricocheting back and forth between volcanic and glacial. Earlier, he had been sweating and shivering, doubled over in pain. The cord they’d used to bind him earlier had snapped during one of his fits. It had taken the combined efforts of Matt, Mike and Puck (with Mercedes sitting on his legs) to keep Finn from thrashing around so that Will could give him a heavy dose of morphine. His hands had trembled as he pressed the hypodermic into the young man’s neck, praying that he hadn’t given him too much, too little, gotten it mixed up with the anti-venom, missed the vein entirely and any number of horrible things that he could imagine, which was a lot.
Finn had passed out almost immediately and after a few tense moments where he couldn’t find a pulse, Will had satisfied himself that Finn was still breathing and covered him in every blanket that could be spared.
Now he sat beside him, in a corner of the room that was afforded a small amount of privacy by the bulk of the piano. His knees were drawn up to his chest, chin resting on a hand. He watched Finn’s face as it twitched, perhaps reacting to whatever he was facing in his dreams.
The disease seemed to be advancing slowly, which was unusual. Will had no idea if it was a good or bad thing. Every part of him rebelled at the thought of Finn enduring any pain, let alone the intensity of infection. He had wondered if it would be preferable to be consumed quickly, like most victims. To have no time to think or fear, or feel, before you were assimilated. Knowing what Finn was enduring, and what he would become, perhaps it would be an act of mercy to end his life before it got to that point. But he quickly quashed such thoughts. It was selfish, but for his own sake, he couldn’t bear to hurt Finn anymore than he had already.
Will scrubbed a hand over his tired face, hating himself so much for failing. He was a teacher. He had a duty of care to these kids, his students. It was his job, in the absence of any other adults, to protect them. Maybe nobody else in the world cared about that right now, what with being reduced to unthinking, pustulant, cannibalistic walking disease-bags, but that only made it all the more important. And now Quinn was missing, probably dead, and Brittany along with her. Santana and Rachel were out there on their own, under-prepared.
He never should’ve let them leave the choir room in the first place, ever. He should’ve been the one to take it all on, be responsible, a guardian. But they needed to get out, and they needed supplies. He’d sent Finn to find any working vehicles, thinking he could handle himself, while he went to the nurse’s office for medicines, bandages, anything they could use. He’d sent Brittany and Quinn out for food, and look what had happened. He was lucky that Rachel and the others had found Finn while searching for more light bulbs, and luckier still that Puck had taken it into his head to perform “reconnaissance” in his absence. He could feel them again, the icy claws that had reached into his chest and stopped his heart when he’d returned to find only three of his charges in the room.
He should be out there right now, he knew. Dragging Santana and Rachel back here and locking them in before going out to find Brittany and Quinn, or whatever was left of them, on his own.
But what if Finn woke up, driven mad by the pain, or fully-turned? What if Puck decided to stage another daring mission while he was out? No, he couldn’t leave. The majority of his students were here, the majority of his responsibility was here. He had to keep as many of them alive for as long as he possibly could.
‘Mr. Schue?’
Finn was awake, if only just barely. It would take a keen observer to notice that his eyelids had cracked open but the tiniest fraction, and that his dry, chapped lips were gleaming from having been licked a moment before. If Will hadn’t been staring at Finn for the last god-knows-how-many hours, he’d never have noticed the changes himself.
‘What is it, Finn? How are you feeling?’
‘Tired, sore.’ It came out as a sort of gasp. ‘And cold. Really cold.’ He couldn’t keep the shiver out of his voice.
Will, brow creased with worry, ran the back of his hand over the young man’s forehead. He shuddered at the touch; his mind drew a particularly unpleasant comparison to frozen chicken. He shucked his jacket and rolled it up, sliding it under Finn’s head. He peeled black the blankets and wriggled in under them, wrapping his arms around Finn, rubbing his back vigorously to try and generate some heat. Almost has an afterthought, he untied his scarf and wrapped it around the younger man’s neck, tucking it into his sweater.
‘Here, wrap your arms around me.’ Will guided Finn’s hands around his waist, to join in the small of his back. ‘We need as much contact as possible to try and share as much heat as we can.’
‘I hear-’ Finn cleared his throat and tried again. ‘I hear it works best if you’re naked.’ His raspy words brushed against Will’s ear, sending a jolt straight to his groin.
‘M-maybe so,’ he stammered ‘but you have very little insulation as it is. I’m not about to remove any of it.’ He couldn’t pull away, he’d just have to hope that Finn was too delirious or preoccupied with impending death to notice the fairly prominent erection digging into his thigh.
‘Mr. Schue, I gotta say something.’
‘You should try not to talk, Finn. Save your strength.’
‘But-’
‘Try to go back to sleep.’
Without warning, Will found Finn’s frigid lips pressed against his own. The shock of the cold (not to mention the sudden oral assault) caused Will to gasp. Finn took the chance to slide his tongue into the older man's mouth and conquer it completely. And that was when Will realized: that wasn’t Finn’s thigh his hard-on was poking. That wasn’t Finn’s thigh at all.