Chapter Text
“ We’re done, Bryan,” she said, her voice grainy, the buzz of the hospital around him drowning her out.
“ Shit, baby, come on, don’t say that,” he replied, panicked.
He fumbled with the phone and his bag as he paced frantically in the lobby.
“ Sir, please sit down,” the stern-looking woman commanded from the desk.
“ I mean it,” said the voice from the phone.
“ Listen, I’m sorry- can we talk at home? Please?”
He heard another, angrier ‘sir’, and quit his pacing to sit down.
A green, boxy, insulated bag sat in his lap.
“ No, Bryan. I’ll drop your stuff off at Carlos’ place, ok? Don’t come here.”
“ Shit, honey, he’s not gonna let me come over in the middle of the fucking night- where am I gonna sleep after this delivery?”
He was starting to sweat under his layers: a grey sweater, a yellow/black plaid shirt, and a dark blue raincoat. There was a sheep-spotted, Princess Diana-inspired hat covering his brown hair.
The bag in his lap started to tremble atop his shaking legs.
He knew he needed to get on the road as soon as possible; the clock on this delivery was ticking away in the back of his mind, the money he was going to make was at the forefront, and his long-term girlfriend was lost somewhere in the middle.
“ You’ll figure it out. Call him before it's too late.”
Every word she spoke hurt his heart, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the heart in the box- that is, if it’s a heart. He had no idea what it was- but he knew it was important.
“ Why can’t we talk about this? Not now, though- I have a really important delivery to make. They’re gonna pay double.”
“ Is that all you care about right now? Your fucking delivery?”
“ Well yeah, it’s urgent- I mean no,- I care about you, baby, of course!”
The man sitting across from him gave him an unpleasant look.
“ I gave you so many chances, Bryan. I don’t want you in my life anymore. You don’t have any ambitions, goals, dreams- you’re a deadbeat. And I want a family. You can’t expect me to start a family with someone as unmotivated as you.”
“ I’m trying, baby.”
“ I’m done with trying.”
He heard two short beeps. The call had ended.
“ Michelle.”
No response. It was too late. He was always too late.
“ Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.
If he didn’t get over it and get moving, his delivery would be late too.
Bryan made his way out of the hospital and into the rainy night, the heat his body had worked up escaping into the cold air.
The slam of his car door reverberated into the silence of the parking lot. There was a backing track of rain falling somewhere in the distance; it had been sporadically showering all day throughout the city.
“ Man, I just fucking suck,” he said to himself, head to the steering wheel.
With the flip of a switch, his windshield wipers swept away the condensation blocking his view. And with every pass they made, he heard the metronomic countdown in his head tick away.
“ Fuck, fuck, fuck I gotta go.”
The radio hummed Del Shannon’s Runaway as Bryan connected his GPS.
Destination: Raccoon City.
“ What kind of fucking city is named after a fucking raccoon?”
He liked talking to himself. It kept him sane. The words took with them the weight of his anxiety.
As he left civilisation, trees began to sprout up on either side of the road, looming over his car and the wet road. The rain increased in strength and quantity as he drove, his windshield wipers now working overtime to clear his view.
The car started to swerve, just small jerks to either side of the road as Bryan struggled to gain traction. He regretted ignoring the lesson about hydroplaning in driver’s ed all those years ago.
It didn’t help that he had begun to fiddle with his phone, making call after call to Michelle. Not to his surprise, it went to voicemail every time.
“ Come on, pick up, pick up, pick up-”
“ Hi, this is Michelle. I’m sorry I can’t pick up the phone right now. Please call me back later or leave a message!”
Bryan’s eyes burned and blurred as he stared at the road, brightly illuminated by his blue-tinted headlights.
His phone emitted a shrill beep.
“ Listen, Michelle, I don’t know if you’re gonna listen to this, but I really want to talk. I’m in the car now; I have-” he checked the screen, “-like thirty minutes. Fuck- just- hear me out, okay?”
He hung up. That would be the last of his efforts, for now, anyway.
“ Oh fuck this, fuck all of this.”
The barren road stretched on. It wouldn’t be empty for long.
Bryan saw the aberration moments before he hit it- what had appeared to be a person walked onto the road before he had time to stop. He took his foot off the gas and tried to steer- but his tyres slid wildly, the rear end of his car swinging up and spinning the whole thing around.
He screamed. The car slid to a halt. It was still on the road. There was relief mixed in with the muddy mess of emotions rallying in his head.
“ Fuck- shit-” he spat as he got out of the car.
There was an intermittent spotting of blood tainting the puddles of water, but no body.
No body, no crime…he thought. Momentarily. He was obviously going to investigate.
Bryan followed the blood as it led off the road and into the woods. He held his phone flashlight in front of him; its pathetic reach barely illuminating the path before him.
Just ahead of him lay a woman's body, twitching violently. She looked to be in one piece.
“ M’am, I’m real sorry about this,” he said as he bent down to examine her.
She was alive, at least.
“ I’m just gonna take you to my car, okay? We’re gonna get you to a hospital.”
Rain continued to fall, violently. The thick, fat droplets hit Bryan’s eyelashes and muddled his vision.
He picked the body up, with much difficulty, and stumbled back through the woods to the road. She was stiff, bloody, and still twitching.
The woman didn’t speak. She only groaned from time to time. When he reached the car, she was tucked away into the passenger seat, the delivery bag now buckled in the back.
“ Right, Raccoon City, here we come. Yeah. Oh god.”
It took far too long for Bryan to turn his car around, the whole hitting-a-woman-with-his-car endeavour having scared him into driving incredibly slowly.
The woman would occasionally extend her arms towards him, and he would (politely) bat them away. He swerved plenty.
Then, the worst possible witness that could happen upon Bryan’s reckless driving appeared in the rearview mirror. As he slowed down, a cop car reared its ugly head out of the darkness and into the red of Bryan’s brake lights.
With a loud doo-whoop, the familiar red and blue lights flickered on and began to flash, commanding Bryan to pull over.
“ Oh, fuck, great. Great.”
The cop car followed suit and parked right behind him.
Bryan sat, nervous with anticipation, trying to figure out how he’d explain the bloody, shell-shocked lady beside him. He turned off all the lights and leaned into the window, trying to cover up the view of the passenger seat.
A figure walked up to the window; Bryan promptly rolled it down and was met with a friendly, handsome face. The cop was young, probably his age, with blonde hair and blue eyes.
“ You okay there, buddy? You’re swerving an awful lot,” the cop remarked.
“ Yeah, I uh-”
His eyes scanned the dark blue uniform in front of him for a badge or name tag.
“ Leon Kennedy,” the cop told him, having understood what Bryan was searching for.
“ Like the president, cool, okay.”
“ Sure-”
“ Mr Kennedy, the name’s Bryan. And I gotta get going-”
“ Do you know why I pulled you over?”
The woman next to Bryan began to grunt- he attempted to cover up the sound with a couple of loud, dry coughs.
“ No, sir.”
“ You’re speeding and swerving.”
“ Right, right, you see, about that, I have a reason.”
“ Don’t care. Have you had anything to drink tonight?”
“ Nah, fam.”
“ Fam?”
Bryan shook his head to dismiss Leon’s confusion. He wasn’t about to explain modern lingo to a cop that could very well arrest him and put him in jail for life.
“ Please step out of the vehicle; I’m going to have to run some tests”, Leon directed, then backed away from the window.
“ Yeah, of course.”
Bryan unbuckled and did what he was told. The outside air was bone-chilling; he missed the warmth of his car heater.
Leon stepped forward, and Bryan backed up until he was right up against the car door. Without warning, the cop took a firm hold of Bryan’s jaw and examined his eyes. A pen came out of the cop’s pocket, and Bryan was instructed to follow the light.
“ Breathe out for me.”
“ What?”
“ Do it; I don’t have a breathalyser.”
Bryan breathed out, just inches from Leon’s face. His breath probably smelled like Mountain Dew. He was embarrassed; there would be a noticeable flush in his face if it were lighter and warmer out.
“ Sober, then. Are you used to slick roads?”
Thud.
Leon directed his gaze to where the noise came from: the car’s passenger side.
“ Is there someone else in the car?”
“ Well- fuck-”
Think Bryan. Think.
As Leon tried to peer into the car window, Bryan put a hand to the wandering face and pulled it in towards his own.
“ What-” Leon contested.
Bryan thought about the delivery he was supposed to make, the woman whose injury he caused, a prison cell, and then Michelle. He pictured what he’d do if he got to see her like he wanted to, after all this was over and done with. He would kiss her, and she’d forgive him. That’s just how good the kiss would be- it’d express all the emotion he couldn't put into words- and she’d fold instantly. She’d be hesitant at first, but her mouth would give way to his, and he’d kiss his apology into every pore. The hand on the back of her head weaved its way into her hair, the strands shorter than he remembered, her body pressing into him. He was cold and hot at the same time, with a strange feeling burning a hole somewhere between his pelvis and his stomach.
Another loud thud interrupted his daydreaming.
Bryan opened his eyes, unaware they had even closed, and was startled by the eyes looking back at him. He tried to get away, but his back was already up against the car. His mouth tingled. The tip of his nose brushed Leon’s before the cop backed away.
“ Ah- what the hell?” Leon exclaimed.
He proceeded to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand.
“ Are you drunk? You’ve got to be drunk, right? Or are you on something else?”
The confusion on his face only grew as it began to mix with concern.
“ No, sir, I’m not on anything, but I gotta-”
“ Look, I don’t know who you are, but don’t- don’t kiss people like that.”
“ Dude, I’m so sorry, I thought I was kissing my girlfriend.”
“ What? Never mind that- just- stay there-”
The tone of Leon’s voice implied he was scared of another kiss-attack.
Bryan was starting to question if he had accidentally roofied himself at some point early in the day. Maybe Michelle was right, and he was slowly poisoning himself with his daily Mountain Dew intake.
He watched as Leon’s face turned from concern to shock as he finally laid eyes on the dilapidated woman inside the car.
“ She needs help, urgently, obviously. I might’ve hit her with my car…I’m trying to get to Racoon City- I’m hoping there’s a hospital open-”
Mentally, he cursed himself and his word-vomiting honesty. Bryan couldn't tell if it was his snowballing anxiety and fried nerves that caused this blip, or the blonde man’s disposition.
“ I was on my way to Raccoon City; I’ll take her in my car. I expect you to follow behind me, and if I lose sight of you, I’ll have no choice but to apprehend you.”
“ Got it,” Bryan affirmed, giving him two thumbs up.
“ This is not how I imagined my first day.”
“ First day, huh?”
“ Get in your car.”
“ Yessir.”
Their cars dotted the street as they drove towards their shared destination. The road may be linear, but the night’s events were not, and impending doom was fast approaching.
“ I walk along the street we used to walk, two by two, lovers pass…” a soft, male voice sang on the radio.
The only station that would connect out here was 105.7- the oldies station. Bryan didn’t hate it.
“ And as they're passing by, I could die.”
He hoped the music would calm his spirits.
“'Cause you're not here with me…”
Bryan thought back to Leon’s face, his voice, and the sternness he exhibited. Then it dawned on him; Leon could probably press charges.
“ Now the trees are bare, there's Sadness in the air and…”
“ Oh God, I’m gonna get put on a list,” he spoke aloud.
He smacked his forehead with his palm.
“ I'm as blue as I can be!”
When he pulled his hands away from his face, he watched the car ahead of him begin to swerve violently.
“ Blue on blue, heartache on heartache…”
His foot was off the gas, but the car continued to barrel down the road. Bryan’s foot, frozen like the rest of his body, did not grace the brake.
“ Blue on blue, now that we are through…”
Leon’s car swung until it was horizontal, and then it came to a halt.
“ Blue on blue, heartache on heartache…”
The closing distance snapped Bryan out of his stupor- he slammed his foot down on the brake with as much force as he could exert and yanked the emergency brake up.
“ And I find I can't get over losing you…”
There wasn’t enough time and space to avoid impact.
He watched in horror as the front of his car smashed abruptly into the side of the other vehicle.
His car shut off.
The force of the crash had launched the cop car over, and it began to roll down the sloped side of the street and into the neighbouring field.
Bryan’s airbag exploded violently into his chest, his left leg ached like he had pulled something, and the back of his head throbbed from its impact with his headrest.
He sat for a moment.
What the fuck just happened? Why is all this happening? What? The? Fuck?
Not without some amount of pain, Bryan clambered out of the car. He hurried towards the field, stumbling but moving as fast as his (minor) injuries would allow.
The car had landed upside down, and as he approached it, he saw Leon crawling out of the broken window.
Oh thank god.
“ Fuck, man, are you okay?” he asked, diving down beside Leon.
“ Yeah, yeah, I think I’m alright.”
“ Are you?” Leon asked, “ Okay?”
“ I’ve been better.”
Bryan helped the cop to his feet, letting Leon use him as a crutch.
Leon’s dark blue uniform was stained with blood, whether it was his or the woman’s, he couldn’t tell. Probably both.
“ She’s gone,” Leon told him.
“ What?”
“ The woman, she’s gone.”
“ Shit!” Bryan pivoted his head, surveying the dark, empty field.
There was a fence not far from where they were standing, and a little ways past that, a farmhouse and barn. No sign of the woman, though.
Leon was still clasping Bryan’s shoulder, body slightly bent over, trying to regain his strength. Bryan watched his breath materialise into vapour.
“ Disappeared into thin air…how the fuck did she do that?”
A moment passed before Leon pulled his gaze from the ground and looked at Bryan.
He looked busted. There was a small cut on his forehead and the bridge of his nose, not bleeding, but a bright red in colour.
His nose was bleeding, and he must’ve felt it on his lips because he quickly wiped it away with the back of his hand.
Leon looked at Bryan again.
Then over his shoulder.
The cop's eyes widened.
Bryan’s heart dropped to his fucking ass.
“ Move!” Leon shouted as he pushed Bryan aside.
Leon’s gun was unsheathed in a matter of seconds, and he fired two shots.
Bryan clasped his hands to his ears as they rang. He could smell the combustion mix with the scent of wet grass and mud.
Leon lowered his gun.
Bryan begrudgingly turned his head around.
Behind him, in the wet bed of grass, lay a body.
Leon drew closer and clasped a hand to his mouth. Bryan came up beside him to see the victim.
It was the woman.
“ She was running straight at us- I could barely make out who it was.”
“ Leave it to the cop to shoot first, think later.”
“ I don’t do that- I’m all messed up.”
“ Maybe we’ll be cellmates.”
They both stood in uneasy silence, staring at their shared crime like George Milton and Lennie Small.
Leon was the first to move, heading back to his car to try and pry open the trunk. It didn’t come open. He dove into the car and began to rifle through the debris. Bryan stood watch.
“ Something’s not right,” he said, his head in the car, his voice barely audible.
“ Huh?”
The scoff Bryan heard in return was much louder.
Leon came out of the car and held up his findings for Bryan.
“ What is it?”
“ A shotgun. You’ve never seen a shotgun?”
“ Uh-” Bryan made a mocking noise and scrunched his nose. “ I know what a shotgun is, asshole.”
“ It’s a pump-action shotgun; that’s why it looks a little different,” he handed it over to Bryan. “ I really wasn’t supposed to have this with me, but thank god I did, because the trunk is rammed shut and that’s where everything else is.”
The gun felt heavy in his hands. He had never fired a gun before- he couldn't even remember if he had held one.
“ Before we go to that house to call for help, I need you to show me you can fire that correctly.”
“ Of course I can,” Bryan lied.
“ Uh huh. You from here? Originally, I mean.”
“ Kinda- Bellingham, just an hour or two up the coast.”
Leon laughed.
“ If you’re not from the eastern part of the state, then there’s no way you know how to fire a shotgun.”
“ Well, yeah, I’m not some hick, but I think I can figure this thing out. How hard can it be?”
“ Go on then, give it a shot. Literally. There’s a live round in the chamber.”
Leon ushered to the gun.
“ Fuck you.”
Bryan held the gun up, aiming at his faraway car. The only notion of how to hold it came from blurry pictures in his mind of the games he had played growing up.
It’s like Arsenal, right?
He pulled the trigger, squeezed his eyes shut, but nothing happened.
“ Safety’s on.”
“ Shit.”
Leon stood behind him and pointed to the safety.
Bryan switched it off, strengthened his grip on the gun, and pulled the trigger.
He felt a slight kickback and watched the shell zip into the night.
“ Ok, now load another into the chamber.”
“Uh.”
“ Like this,” Leon said, making a back-and-forth motion with his hand.
“ Oh, so I’m jerking the gun off.”
“ You are so strange. Were you some homeless city bum before you came here?”
“ I’m a courier, man, and I live with my girlfriend. Well, lived.”
“ Likely story. Just do what I told you to.”
“ So fucking bossy. And anti-homeless too! Checks out.”
“ I’m a police officer; my job entails being a little bossy. And I’m not anti-homeless, I’m anti-Bryan.”
“ I’m a police officer,” Bryan mocked, “ I hate homeless people.”
“ How old are you?”
“ Twenty-two.”
“ Jesus. Fire the fucking gun.”
Bryan had equipped pump shotguns in games. He could do the ‘chh-chh’ motion.
He weakly pulled the slide back and forth and went to shoot.
The gun clicked.
“ You know what, take Matilda,” Leon said, grabbing the shotgun from Bryan.
He handed him a small black pistol in exchange.
“ Sweet.”
Leon handed him 3 magazines from his belt, and Bryan pocketed them.
“ Should be intuitive, if your brain can handle intuition.”
“ What happened to good cop? I miss the guy who called me buddy and shit.”
“ The cop inside me died today, I think.”
“ Fucking cornball.”
Bryan turned to look at the body.
It was gone.
There was an impression in the grass, a pool of blood, and no body.
“ How the fuck does she keep doing that?” Bryan exclaimed.
“ Son of a bitch,” Leon said, readying his gun.
“ Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!” Bryan cried out.
Leon looked to where Bryan’s eyes were fixated.
The woman came from behind the police car, where she must have been hiding. First on all fours, slowly pawing at the ground.
She then jumped to her feet with her arms extended, grabbing at the air. She was hurtling towards Bryan.
The bloodied mess of a creature tackled him in no time, and they began to squabble on the ground.
“SHE’S TRYING TO BITE ME, DUDE!”
Bryan pushed her gnawing teeth away from his face with all the force he could muster.
He heard a shot, and the wriggling body went still and fell to his side.
“ Took your fucking time,” Bryan sneered, getting up and away from the body as fast as he could. “ You’ll shoot her when she’s doing jack shit, but you’ll wait when she’s trying to kill me!”
“ I had to make sure.”
“ Make sure I died?”
“ Make sure she was hostile, like I thought she was before. Something’s wrong. Really wrong.”
“ Yeah, this is some Walking Dead shit. Except, she can run really fucking fast.”
“ Let’s go.”
They trudged through the waterlogged field towards the fencing. Bryan attempted to spin the pistol on his finger. Leon chided him.
They walked for about five minutes, with silence between them, save the sound of mushy grass beneath their feet.
“ Bryan,” Leon said, interrupting their quiet time, “ I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot.”
“ It’s all good, really. I think I probably caused all of this anyway. Hitting someone with my car, kissing you, hitting your car with my car. You’re not gonna press charges on me, are you?”
“ No, no. It was kind of cute, really, that you thought you could kiss your way out of getting arrested for vehicular homicide. Do you pull stunts like that often?”
“ Ha, I don’t, and you gotta trust me on this- I’m not some weirdo. I’m just a guy.”
“ Just a guy who threw off my entire night.”
“ Gave you a really good story to tell to the other officers though, right?”
“ I’m sure they’ve heard worse- but we can tell them together.”
Worse than zombies? Yeah, alright.
“ Hey man, I’d love to, but I gotta get this thing,” he pats the bag at his side, “ To the hospital. It’s pretty important, I think.”
“ I gotta file a report of this incident- it's probably best you stick with me. We go drop off your- whatever it is- and then you come with me to Raccoon Police Department.”
“ Oki-doki.”
They continued walking.
“ So, ACAB, what do you think about that?”
“ Were you created in fucking lab? That’s not how you do small talk.”
“ Ok, wow, I pissed you off again. You must be a ‘back the blue’ dude.”
“ I’m not. I loved Die Hard growing up. I just want to help people.”
“ Aw, that’s adorable. But you’re more like a freak cross-breed between mall-cop and Judy Hops.”
“ Don’t talk to me.”
Bryan laughed.
They approached the fence, which, upon inspection, was an electric fence.
Leon jumped over it with ease.
Bryan stared at it in terror.
“ This is scarier than the zombie.”
“ Christ, Bryan, just jump.”
A minute later, he was on the other side of the fence, rolling around on the ground because he had made maximum contact and got electrocuted. Leon laughed.
Ha, ha, ha.
Bryan heard a dog barking.
Bryan saw a dog running towards him.
A great big German shepherd.
“ Not again!”
The dog launched itself onto him, and he was tackled to the ground once more.
His vertebrae were crying.
Leon kicked the dog off Bryan and hauled him up by the wrist. They began to run, Leon dragging Bryan along.
“ We can trap him in the barn,” Leon stated.
The big red building loomed up ahead.
“ I’ll open the door; you run in and get up the ladder; there should be a ladder to get up to the hayloft.”
All this trouble to avoid shooting a (probably) rabies-ridden dog, but a running woman gets filled with lead. This fucking guy.
They reached the barn doors, and Leon hauled them open. The dog was right behind, its teeth barred and glistening in the moonlight.
Bryan ran inside and spotted the ladder immediately, climbing up it so fast he was afraid he might slip and fall. He watched from above as Leon fought off the dog and went up the ladder.
It snarled and growled as it paced the dirt floor, plotting against its prey.
“ What next?” Bryan asked.
“ We may have to kill the dog.”
“ Is your answer to everything shooting it?”
“ Well, no, but sometimes, yeah, it's necessary...”
“ That’s pretty awesome, not gonna lie, but we could probably just slip out the big hole in the wall.”
They both turned to face the small window that opened up to the night sky.
Leon peered out the window and looked at the ground; it had to be a ten-foot drop.
“ Can you do this without hurting yourself?”
“ What kind of question is that?”
“Never mind, just try and land on your feet and bend your knees.”
Leon went first, his fall culminating in a somersault.
Stupid-ass thinks he’s black widow.
“ Here goes fucking nothing.”
He landed on his feet and then fell face-first, hard.
“ Oh, buddy.”
“ Ok, don’t call me that anymore- it’s degrading.”
THUD.
The wall of the barn was being attacked from the inside. They watched the wood palpitate with every strike the dog made.
Its head burst through the boards.
“ That’s one crazy fucking dog,” Bryan commented.
“ We should run for the house; we can make it-”
The dog's head began to twitch.
Its face sprang open, splayed out into a fleshy flower, with a slime-covered tentacle wagging in the wind.
Bryan had no time to react before Leon was shooting rounds into the creature's face-hole.
It went limp. They didn’t wait around to see if it would reanimate as the woman had.
The house was small and yellow. The door was locked.
“ Aw, man,” Bryan whined, rattling the doorknob.
He banged on the door, and Leon looked in the windows, but there was no sign of life.
“ Should we break in through the window?”
“ We could.”
On his record-breaking streak of doing ‘cool guy shit’, as Bryan put it, Leon quickly busted the door down.
Bryan made a face.
“ Anybody home?” Leon called out.
No response.
“ We’re looking for a phone and ammo,” Leon told Bryan.
They started in the kitchen. The landline was disconnected, and the shelves were lacking anything useful. They moved to the front room and began pulling open drawers and sifting through boxes. Is this the polite version of looting?
“ So your girlfriend- how is she?” Leon asked, removing a wall-mounted shotgun from its throne.
This guy asks a lot of questions. He’s a cop, guess that makes sense. Annoying as fuck, though.
“ Uh, she kinda dumped me earlier tonight, which is why I’m all fucked up in the head right now. I was like, fantasising about apologising to her when I uh- you know.”
He was too embarrassed to keep talking about the incident. The mouth-to-mouth one. The zombie stuff he could handle.
“ So your apology plan is to kiss her?”
“ No, no, I’d like to say something and then kiss her. I just don’t know what.”
Leon examined the shotgun. It was empty, but there had to be ammunition for it somewhere in the house.
“ Why don’t you practice? Just pretend I’m her, and lay it all out,” Leon suggested.
“ You do that for me, man?”
“ Public servant here.”
“ Right, right. Okay-” he examined Leon’s face, “ Man, this is so weird, ‘cause you look nothing like her.”
“ Close your eyes like you did earlier.”
So he did. He imagined a beautiful brunette woman standing in front of him.
“ Michelle, I am so, so sorry. When you called, I was in the middle of picking up a delivery, and the staff wasn’t helping me out much, and I wanted to give you all my attention, but it was just a bad time.”
The words felt awkward and empty; he couldn’t ignore the reality of his situation. His mind’s eye couldn’t keep Michelle’s hair brown; it kept manifesting as blonde. She looked amazing with the colour, really.
Bryan shook the doubt out of his mind and reached for Michelle’s hands, which were at her sides, and held them gently in his. He tried to concentrate.
“ You know you don’t have to-” Leon began.
Bryan continued, “ That’s not an excuse for my behaviour, obviously, just an explanation for my shitty responses on the phone earlier. I want to try again with you. I want to be a better man. Please believe me.”
All he heard in response was breathing. That’s all he would get.
Bryan let go of her hands and let his travel upwards, imagining the cotton uniform was one of her stripey sweaters. He let them rest at her shoulders, which felt larger and more pronounced than hers ever had before. The shoulders seemed tense. He squeezed lightly.
“ If you would just hear me out,” Bryan said, fighting to remain focused.
He thought about the phone call, the words she used, the anger she exhibited. He thought about the past two months, and how he had slipped away little by little. Did he even remember how her skin felt? They hadn’t kissed in a week, hadn’t had sex in a month.
“ I want to fix things between us,” he spoke, becoming aware of the intense heat radiating from the body before him, “ I want- I think-”
He was starting to get worked up, his thoughts of sexual repression mixing with his confusion and grief altogether into a wicked hot pit in his stomach.
“ What do you want?” the voice rang out, feminine and masculine, the familiar tones of Michelle’s voice mixing with a man’s.
“ I don’t know,” he panicked, his chest heavy.
God, I have a raging fucking headache.
There were no more words to say.
Using the leverage on her shoulders, Bryan pulled her forward and kissed her. His head was tilted upwards instead of down, an unfamiliar position for him. Michelle had grown considerably.
He let his arms wrap around her neck as he pressed kiss after kiss onto her mouth, switching between adoration and frustration.
It felt too different, too wrong- but he was getting lost in the feelings bubbling inside his body, and he was too weak to deny the desire he had to keep going.
He paused and whispered, “ I’m sorry,” and then Michelle kissed him again.
I’m done with trying.
Michelle disappeared. He opened his eyes.
“ Leon,” he said.
The blue eyes stared blankly.
“ You have got a real problem, Bryan.”
“ Sorry?”
“ Got it out of your system?”
“ No, I don’t think so,” he admitted.
This wasn’t about Michelle.
Within moments, Leon’s mouth was back on Bryan’s. The rookie’s hands slid under Bryan’s shirt and seized the soft waist below them. Bryan twitched from the sudden, cold contact on his skin.
Bryan pulled back and covered Leon’s mouth with his hand.
“Whoa. What the fuck are you doing?”
Leon pulled Bryan’s arm down.
“ I’m doing exactly what you were doing to me- what do you mean, what the fuck am I doing?”
“ Oh, so like reverse molestation.”
“ There’s something deeply fucking wrong in that head of yours.”
Leon glared at him. Bryan leaned back in.
Leon tasted like bitter blood. All Bryan could smell was blood and dirt and, frankly, a little wet-dog. He was also sweating immensely under his rain-soaked clothing.
These factors didn’t make it any less enjoyable.
It had been a long time since he kissed anyone other than Michelle. He hadn’t kissed her like this in months. He felt a wicked sense of relief flooding into his body.
Much to Bryan’s initial dismay, Leon left Bryan’s mouth and started to kiss his neck.
Bryan tried to suppress a moan. It would be wrong to moan right now, right?
The feeling on his dewy, sticky skin was driving him crazy.
Leon’s mouth returned. Bryan felt a firm hand grasp his hip. He was extremely confused by this sudden reciprocation.
Bryan stumbled backwards, released from Leon’s hold, and gripped the table behind him for stability.
“ Do you want to stop?”
“ No,” he said instantly, “ Is that wrong?”
“ Yeah.”
Leon hoisted Bryan up onto the table and spread his legs apart. He kissed him harder.
“ Leon- fuck-”
Bryan was now convinced he had died and gone to heaven.
“ Leon,” he gasped.
“ Shhh…”
But Bryan didn’t want to shhh.
“ You know you’re taking advantage of an emotionally vulnerable man right now,” he joked.
“ You’re crying out my name, not hers, so I think we’re okay.”
“ What the fuck? How are you so nonchalant about this, dude?”
“ It’s been a while since I’ve been with someone. Guess I’m excited.”
“ No, yeah, I get you. I’ve been bricked since I rolled my window down.”
“ You’re gross.”
“ You’re the one saying freaky shit! Trying to act like Mr Sex over here…”
“ I’m not normally like this.”
“Yeah, and you think I’m weird,” Leon kissed him. “ You’re so weird, you’re a weird cop guy,” Bryan mumbled as Leon unzipped the fly of his pants. “ Just out here kissing people you pull over,” he shimmied Bryan's jeans down, “ So fucking crazy, I mean, we just saw a zombie or some shit-” the waistband of his underwear was pulled away, and suddenly Leon was reaching inside.
“ Fuck-”
“ You’ve got a mouth on you.”
“ You’re grabbing my dick!”
Bryan recounted the night’s events.
- His girlfriend dumped him.
- He was being paid extra to deliver a mysterious item.
- He hit a woman with his car.
- He got pulled over.
- He made out with the officer that pulled him over.
- He t-boned the officer, and he rolled his car
- The woman he hit might be a zombie
- They were attacked by an alien dog
- They broke into someone’s home and started stealing their shit
- He was getting a handjob from the officer he had kind of sexually-misconducted earlier (but they were even now, so it’s ok?)
Oh, and there were probably more zombies and zombie-adjacent things out there.