Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kirk wasn’t ready for the end of the world. That’s the thing they didn’t tell you about the apocalypse. It wasn’t a bio-terror attack or a zombie outbreak. No loud sirens or emergency broadcasts. Kirk had simply awakened on an empty planet.

The buildings, cars, and manmade structures were all there. It was the people that were missing. Except for Kirk.

There was dead air on every radio and TV station. No way to know what the fuck had happened.

Only Kirk could sleep through the rapture.

After spending a day holed up in his apartment, Kirk decided to venture out. If he had survived whatever happened, it stood to reason that there must have been other survivors out there as well.

He locked the door as he left, thinking how silly that was in a world where there were no longer burglars or intruders. Just Kirk.

His car still started up, and he made the short drive to his mother’s house. Her car was in the driveway. There was no answer when Kirk knocked, so he used his key and let himself in.

The house was just as Kirk remembered it from childhood. The decorative plates with colorful leaf patterns. The teal trim of the kitchen. The dining table with the wobbly leg.

But his mother was gone, as if plucked from the house by a divine hand.

In her bedroom that still smelled of roses and lavender, Kirk laid across the bed and let fear settle into his bones for the first time since waking up alone in the world.

People didn’t just disappear. He had to be dreaming. Maybe he had some sort of accident and ended up in a coma, and this was his brain’s way of fucking with him.

The alternative was too terrifying, and yet with every second it seemed as if it would be his new reality.

It took two days camped in his mother’s house for Kirk to realize she wasn’t coming back. Neither was the rest of the world, for that matter, but Kirk had a very short list of people he cared about, and his family was at the top.

His siblings were likely gone too, else they would have stopped by or made a phone call to the house.

Kirk hauled himself out of the bed and packed a small rucksack of mementos. One of his mother’s soaps, her recipe book, the knitted blanket on her bed, and some photographs. He could return for the rest later.

He brought the bag back to his apartment and was gripped by a wave of existential panic the likes of which he’d never felt before.

Just what the fuck was he going to do now?

He’d always imagined the world ending with a zombie apocalypse, but there was a vast difference between the world being overrun by the undead and most of the world’s population just being, well, dead. In a zombie scenario, there would be a clear objective: survive (and shoot a ton of the undead). There would be other survivors to round up, rations and ammo to collect, safe houses to be fortified.

But here … there was nothing. Should he bide his time and wait for the possibility of the world’s inhabitants just reappearing? Was this a worldwide crisis, or just the US? Maybe just the state of California? Or even just the city of San Francisco?

Yet Kirk somehow knew if this was a confined incident, he would have seen groups of people by now. Survivors looking for friends and family. A military force swooping in to do who knows what. Even journalists desperate for a first-hand account of the mass disappearances.

But there was nothing. No one.

What, then, was there to live for?

Maybe he should look for other survivors. There had to be more. The likelihood of Kirk being the last human being alive was ridiculous. Just as he was holing up in his apartment, maybe other survivors were too.

He would need a way to flush them out of hiding.

He loaded up his car with supplies, clothes, and an armful of heavy metal cassettes. He drove slowly through his neighborhood, blasting Iron Maiden with the windows down. Someone would hear it, even if they angrily shouted at him to turn it down.

He drove up and down his familiar streets, then pushed on across the highway to San Rafael.

Stopping for gas was bizarre. Kirk felt strange just taking fuel without paying, but there was no attendant to give him shit for it.

Weary and discouraged, he pulled into a decent-looking hotel for the night. He helped himself to a key and a room, still feeling incredibly odd for this unconventional self-service.

After a mediocre dinner (instant ramen from the coffeemaker) and a shower, Kirk laid in bed for forty-five minutes until he fell asleep.

The sound of a dog barking at his door roused Kirk around ten. At first, he thought the events of the past few days had been an awful dream, and he’d woken up in the real world full of people.

But his surroundings torpedoed that line of wishful thinking. If this was a dream, he would be in his apartment instead of a hotel room in a strange city.

The dog. A dog meant something else beside Kirk was alive! Even if it was a rabid Cujo sort of dog, at least Kirk could let it maul him and put him out of his misery.

He hurried out of bed and opened the door. Standing on the other side was an actual human person, and, of course, the dog.

Kirk was so shocked to see another person that he almost forgot he’d answered the door in a T-shirt and his underwear.

“Holy shit!”

It didn’t hurt that the man standing at Kirk’s threshold was the hottest person Kirk had ever seen in real life.

“Is that your dog?” Because that was clearly the most important question Kirk could have asked.

“She is now. I found her a couple days ago.” The stranger’s smile punched straight through Kirk’s chest. “It’s so fucking nice to see another person! Holy shit.” He peered past Kirk at the inside of the room. “Do you, uh, live here?”

“Just passing through,” Kirk said. It took him a moment to remember how to interact in polite society. “You want to come in?”

Kirk let the stranger and the dog inside. The room was just big enough for the three of them.

Kirk hurriedly stepped into a pair of jeans. “Um, I’m Kirk, by the way. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Lars. This is Tama. You said you were just passing through. Got a destination in mind?”

“I was hoping to drive until I found someone else. Guess that worked out for me.” Kirk could have hugged Lars just for existing, for rescuing him from this lonely hell.

“Sure did. I never had a dog before, but I thought she’d be helpful tracking scents, you know, finding other people.”

“That’s a good idea. I wish I’d thought of that. I’ve been playing loud music in my car to attract survivors. It hasn’t worked. But I just started yesterday.”

“What were you doing before?”

“Going insane, mostly,” Kirk said with a laugh.

Lars had the sweetest smile Kirk had ever seen; it made him wish he’d met Lars before the world had ended.

Aside from their shared tastes in music, they didn’t have much in common. Kirk loved horror movies; Lars preferred art films and action flicks. Kirk was born and raised in California; Lars immigrated from Denmark when he was a teenager. Kirk preferred the company of cats, while Lars was clearly a dog person.

But they were the last two people on earth, so camaraderie came easily. It helped that Lars rarely stopped talking, which meant Kirk didn’t need to step too far outside of his own quiet introversion.

Despite not being Lars’ dog, Tama happily obeyed his commands and stayed close. She quickly accepted Kirk as a friend, sensing Lars’ vibes toward him and understanding there was no threat here.

“Where’d you find her?” Kirk asked, scratching Tama between the ears.

“She was loose around my neighborhood. I’d seen her before, but I couldn’t remember who she belonged to. Or what her name was. So I gave her a different name. I don’t think she minds too much.”

There was a collar around the dog’s neck, but no name tag.

“I guess she was looking for her owner,” Lars said.

Something cold settled in Kirk’s stomach. How many dogs like Tama were out there, homeless and ownerless in a lonely new world? How many pets were trapped in their homes, slowly starving to death without an owner to feed them?

Lars must have noticed the bleak expression on Kirk’s face. “What’s wrong?”

Kirk swallowed. “I was just thinking about — Maybe all the people are gone, but what about the animals?”

Tama laid her head on Kirk’s lap, as if to comfort him. But the gesture only made emotion clot in his throat.

Sad creases appeared on Lars’ brow. “We can’t save them all…”

“We could save some of them.”

It wasn’t as if they had anything better to do.

They packed up Kirk’s car (Lars and Tama had walked to the hotel) and drove to the nearest residential area. They entered houses in search of pets. When they found live animals, they fed them, gave them water, and left a window open so the animal could leave if it wanted to try its luck in the outside world.

Kirk didn’t know if that was a good idea — domesticated animals might not fare well in the wild — but it seemed better than the alternative. The food would run out eventually.

One of the animals, a short-haired black cat named Vincent, took a liking to Kirk. While most of the animals hid when Kirk and Lars showed up, Vincent kept his distance until he understood the humans meant no harm. He crept from behind the couch and warily approached his newly-refilled food bowl. After he ate, he meowed and tentatively moved toward Kirk, as if to thank him.

“I think he likes me,” Kirk said. “Can we keep him?”

Lars chuckled, probably imagining the difficulty of keeping a dog and a cat in the same household. “You’ve said that about literally every animal we saw today.”

“So that’s a no?”

As they left the house, Vincent trotted after them, meowing insistently. Kirk turned to see this sad-eyed cat watching them go.

“Look at him,” Kirk pleaded, a surge of inner pain welling up inside him. “He wants to go with us.”

“See if he’ll hop in the car,” said Lars.

Kirk went back inside and found a cat carrier in the garage. He set it in front of Vincent, the door open in invitation.

“If you want to come with us, you have to get inside,” Kirk told the cat. He only felt a little foolish for conversing with the animal, since he’d seen Lars talk to Tama. “If you do, we’ll take good care of you.”

Kirk left Vincent to appraise the carrier. He packed up the cat’s food and bowls, and some toys that lay strewn across the living room floor.

Lars helped him load the car with the cat’s belongings. “You can’t just adopt every cute thing that gives you sad eyes.”

“That’s how I ended up with you,” Kirk said, halfway flirtatious.

Lars smiled and blushed, glancing away. “That’s — Alright, you can keep the cat.” He seemed as if he wanted to say something else, though, and Kirk wondered what that might have been.

Vincent crawled inside the carrier. Kirk shut the door and hauled him inside the car. The carrier sat in the backseat beside Tama, who let out a low “boof” sound at the cat. Vincent gave a lackluster hiss, and that was as aggressive as they got.

They stopped for the night in another hotel, this time much fancier than the last.

Lars grabbed them a key from behind the front desk. “Why not live large at the end of the world?” His grin was enchanting, and Kirk would have followed him into battle if he’d asked.

Their room was a suite with a water view, large enough to comfortably accommodate the two of them and their pets. Vincent crawled beneath an armchair, while Tama laid across the loveseat.

Lars tried the TV, but the stations had gone off-air long ago.

“I could probably hook up a VCR to this thing,” Kirk said. “We could raid a video store next.”

“Fuck yeah. And we should get some supplies at the supermarket. I bet the meat and dairy’s all gone to shit, but canned goods and cereal should be okay.” Lars went to the window that looked out at the water. “It’s nice here. We could stay for a while.”

Kirk’s mind immediately wandered to thoughts of their future. How long did they have before all the food ran out? They could probably grow crops somewhere, but was there a point to surviving when civilization couldn’t continue? They were only two men, with no possibility of proliferating the species. Humanity would die with them.

“Yeah…” Kirk swallowed back the grief threatening to drown him.

Dinner consisted of granola bars, potato chips, and lukewarm beer. The animals ate better than Kirk and Lars did that night, but that was okay. They’d make a grocery run tomorrow and have better options than snacks they’d stolen from the various homes they’d broken into today.

In the before times, Lars had been a writer for a music magazine, and over dinner he happily chattered about the bands he interviewed. Kirk loved listening to Lars, the rhythm of his words, the unique timbre of his voice.

Was Kirk falling for Lars? It was possible the likelihood of being alone was too frightening, so Kirk latched on to literally the last man on earth. Lars could have been anyone, and Kirk would have still felt a pull.

Maybe that was true, but that didn’t make his feelings any less real.

After dinner, Lars went out to walk Tama and get a feel for the surroundings. Kirk slipped into the shower, his tears mixing with the spray. He cried for the people he’d lost, for all the animals that would die slow, painful deaths without food or water. He cried from the oppressive weight of a new world that was even more uncaring than the last. At least before there had been people around to make life a little easier.

Even in a goddamn zombie apocalypse, they would have met other survivors with different life experiences and knowledge. A doctor or a nurse to teach them about medicine. A farmer to teach them about growing crops.

Now it was just the two of them.

If Lars noticed Kirk’s red-rimmed eyes when he returned with Tama, he didn’t mention it. Kirk slid into bed (of course the suite only had one king-size bed), his spirits lifted when Vincent hopped in alongside him, purring loudly.

Animals are too good for this world, Kirk thought, petting the head of a cat who saw him as a complete stranger just twelve hours ago.

Later, Lars joined him in the bed. Kirk couldn’t sleep, his head throbbing from his crying jag. He rolled over, turning to his other side.

“Did I wake you?” Lars asked softly.

“No. I can’t really get to sleep.”

“It’s not like you gotta go to work in the morning. What did you do before, by the way?”

“I worked at a record store.”

“That explains your fuck-ton of tapes.” Lars ran a hand through his damp hair, which was a shade or two darker when wet. He sighed and looked at Kirk. “You wanna give this a shot? You and me at the end of the world?”

“What do you mean?” Kirk blushed, as if his blood knew before his brain.

Lars turned on his side to face Kirk. “You called me cute earlier. Was that just a joke, or do you really…”

Kirk’s heart thumped madly behind his ribs. He glanced away from Lars’ curious gaze. “I — of course I meant it, but —”

“But you want to take things slow?“ Lars gave a soft laugh. “We’re probably the last people on earth. At least in the state. What exactly are you pacing yourself for?”

It made no sense, really, when Kirk thought about it like that. There was no real reason to sit on his feelings if Lars reciprocated.

Kirk smiled, a bright supernova brewing in his chest. A point of hope. Something to make the dark future less scary. “You want me to be your boyfriend?”

Even in the dark, Lars’ blush was adorable. “Yeah, I do. You got a problem with that?”

Kirk moved closer until he could smell the spearmint on Lars’ breath. “If you’re my boyfriend, you should kiss me.”

Lars did. For a long time, Kirk forgot that the world had ended and was waiting for them to catch up. All that mattered was Lars, kissing and touching him and sending fireworks bursting behind his eyes.

In the morning, Kirk awakened to the scent of coffee. Lars was already up, brewing up a pot.

“Good morning,” he said with a lilting smile when Kirk sat up. “Do you even drink coffee? There’s no cream.”

“Not the kind of cream I’m interested in,” Kirk said, blushing madly.

“Wow!” Lars laughed, his face pinked. “Look at you, flirting hard!”

“I have my moments.”

“You know, we could spend all morning in bed,” Lars said as Kirk fussed with the tangled mess of his hair. “Not like we have anywhere to be.”

“Tama needs a walk,” Kirk said, shying away from the desire in Lars’ voice that sent a thrill up his spine.

“I can take her downstairs while you recuperate.” Lars abandoned the table and joined Kirk again, mouthing kisses over his throat and chest. Eventually his perfect mouth sank lower.

One good thing about the end of the world: no one was around to complain about Kirk’s loud cries as Lars sucked him off.

Eventually, they ventured out to a nearby grocery store for supplies. They filled the cart with dried rice and pasta, canned soups, cereal, chips and pretzels, soda and beer. The fridge in their room wouldn’t fit a carton of milk, so Kirk grabbed a small bottle for cereal and macaroni purposes.

Afterwards, they stopped at a nearby video store. Lars grabbed a VCR, while Kirk chose an armful of movies. He picked a few newbie-friendly horror flicks and some titles Lars had mentioned liking.

On the drive back, Kirk asked, “What were your friends like? Did you ever — Maybe they survived.”

Lars shrugged. “They would have called, right? Or shown up at my door. They lived, like, fifteen minutes away. But, uh, they were cool. James was into metal and skateboarding. He wasn’t very good at it, but he was passionate. Must’ve broken his arm ten times on that stupid thing.” Lars chuckled in fond remembrance. “Jason looked up to James, always tried to impress him. I didn’t know him too well ‘cause he was more James’ friend than mine, but we all hung out. He was quiet, like he didn’t want to say the wrong thing.”

“Just those two?” Kirk wondered. It seemed odd that someone as sociable and likable as Lars could only have two friends.

“They’re the two I miss the most.” Lars glanced at him. “What about you?”

“Cliff worked with me at the record store. He liked all kinds of music. Classical, jazz, metal, oldies… He was really smart, and he read classical literature for fun.”

“Were you two together?”

“No way. It wasn’t — Were you and James…?”

“James is so fucking deep in the closet he’s in Narnia.”

Kirk laughed. “But if he wasn’t?”

“I know being the last two people on earth is kind of an omen, but c’mon. Does it really matter? I’m with you.” Lars smiled, effortless and sweet, the way he always did, and Kirk’s heart felt a bit lighter.

It was easy to fall into a routine as the days went on. Led by Kirk’s aching heart, they fed and freed all the animals they could find, ranging from pet stores to houses.

Some days they’d replace their supplies at the grocery store. Other days meant a trip to the video store for more VHS tapes.

Kirk often went with Lars on walks with Tama, gazing at the natural beauty around them. Being amongst nature was calming, and it was nice to breathe fresh air no longer polluted by tailpipe exhaust or factory emissions.

In bed one night, Kirk said, “I wish I’d met you before all of this.”

“Why?”

“So we could have had a shot… So we could have a real date.”

Lars huffed good-naturedly. “What’s your idea of a real date?”

“Dinner somewhere nice? Where the food isn’t instant ramen cooked in a coffeemaker? Doing something fun together?”

“We have fun,” Lars said, skimming a hand down Kirk’s bare torso to emphasize the point. “Lots of it, judging by the sounds you make.”

“You know what I mean,” Kirk said with blush filling his cheeks.

“Yeah, I do.” Lars sighed, then he laughed. “I thought ‘we could go to Disneyland,’ but then I remembered the rides won’t work.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Kirk said, covering Lars’ mouth with his own.

The next evening, after a walk with Tama, Lars left Kirk alone in the room for a bit, claiming he had an errand to run. Kirk didn’t think much of it, assuming Lars needed some alone time. They did spend almost every moment together. It was probably healthy to be apart sometimes.

Lars entered the room about two hours later. He wore a familiar, mischievous smile Kirk knew very well.

“Come downstairs with me,” Lars said.

Kirk had no reason not to. They rode the elevator to the ground floor. Lars led him to the hotel restaurant, which had lay dormant since the vanishing.

At least it had been before tonight.

Soft candles shimmered atop many of the empty tables, painting the dining room in a warm glow. A familiar aroma filled the air. Near the window with an oceanside view, one of the tables was set with dishes, flatware, and a bottle of wine. That was where Lars guided Kirk now.

Kirk sat at the table, knowing what he would see when he glanced at the plate in front of him. It was easy to recognize his mother’s embutido recipe; he’d eaten it for years during his childhood, and the hardboiled eggs inside were a staple. Served with white rice and sweet and sour sauce, it was undoubtedly his mother’s pork meatloaf.

Lars must have swiped the recipe card from the cookbook Kirk kept in his luggage. He’d shown Lars the cookbook a few days ago.

“How did you …”

“This kitchen has a ton of shit!” Lars said. “And a freezer, which means meat that’s not expired!”

His happiness was contagious, and Kirk found himself smiling. “I can’t believe you —”

“You wanted a real date,” Lars said, as if his only desire was to make Kirk happy. As if Kirk could have asked for the moon, and Lars would have found a way to give it to him.

Something hot and tight pressed inside Kirk’s throat. His eyes burned, and tears spilled down his cheeks. He turned his head, ashamed and overwhelmed by how much he fucking loved Lars in this moment.

“Sorry, I just — Thanks… This is really …” Kirk brushed the tears away with the back of his hand. “Thanks.”

Lars opened the wine and poured them each a glass. “Don’t thank me until you taste it. I could have fucked it up.”

“I doubt that.”

Kirk cut a piece of the meatloaf with his fork and gave it a taste. It was salty-sweet with lush, carmelized undertones, though he could tell there was something missing from his old childhood recipe. Maybe Lars couldn’t find some of the more obscure ingredients or swapped them for something else.

It was still delicious, though, and Kirk’s taste buds rejoiced after a week or two of unremarkable food.

“It’s good! It’s great, actually.”

Lars grinned. “Oh, thank fuck. There was some stuff I couldn’t find so I just left it out.”

“I can tell. But it doesn’t hurt. Just tastes a bit different.” Kirk cut the loaf slices into smaller chunks he could mix with the rice.

“Not bad for my first try.”

Over dinner, Kirk talked about fond memories from his childhood. Lars happily listened, refilling their glasses when they ran low on wine.

During the lulls of conversation, Kirk found himself staring past his reflection in the window and watching the moonlight shimmer across the water. It was soothing, and Kirk could almost fool himself that the world was unchanged. Nature carried on so easily, unbothered by the drastic shift in population.

“So, answer me this,” Lars said, noticing Kirk’s reverie.

Kirk faced forward, chagrined that Lars had caught him spacing out.

“What’s on your bucket list? Any places you wanted to see? The world’s pretty much ours. Well, just the continental US, Canada, Mexico, and South America. But that’s a lot of options.”

“There’s only a few states worth seeing,” Kirk said, dismissive until he recognized the genuine curiosity on Lars’ face. “Well, okay. I guess New York would be cool. Miami. Vegas. Boston.”

“Only one of those are states,” Lars said. “And I’m pretty sure you meant New York City.”

“You asked for places, not states.”

Lars shrugged as if conceding the point. “Why bother with Vegas if the entertainment is gone?”

Kirk thought about it. Without the casinos and the live shows, was there really a reason to go? “Okay. Scratch that one.”

“Then we head for Miami?”

Kirk stared at him. “You’re serious?”

“It’s not like we’re busy. What else are we gonna do?”

He had a point, but Kirk still felt like he was imposing on Lars. And yet he couldn’t find a single reason to justify that feeling. Lars was crazy about Kirk and wanted to make him happy. That was the opposite of imposing.

“Alright!” Kirk grinned at the sight of Lars’ bright expression. “Let’s do it.”

After dinner, Kirk thanked Lars with his mouth and hands in their bed.

They packed up and headed east the next afternoon. There were empty cars on the highway, but they were easy enough to maneuver around, though the obstacles meant Kirk and Lars couldn’t speed down the interstate.

Not that they needed to. What was the hurry?

Kirk found himself enjoying the smooth roll of the road underneath him, the breeze whipping his hair, the killer tunes on the tape deck.

“Is this really that bad?” Lars asked one evening while Kirk drove them through Arizona. “The whole ‘last people alive’ thing? Which we can’t even prove, by the way, because other countries might still be thriving. How would they know what happened here? But let’s just assume we’re all that’s left. Is it really so bad?”

Kirk found himself smiling at Lars’ motormouth. “Yes. It totally sucks.”

“No waiting in line,” Lars countered.

“No friends to play cards with.”

“Free gasoline.”

“No radio stations.”

“No traffic!”

“No TV.”

“No work!”

“No parties or baby showers or weddings or graduations.”

Lars frowned, like Kirk was taking this a bit too seriously. “No prejudice. No climate change. No nuclear war. No world hunger.”

While that was all well and good, it was sad the entire human race had to go extinct for those things to happen.

Kirk sighed. “Animals dying slow, lonely deaths because their owners are gone.”

“Okay, so there are pros and cons,” Lars ceded.

“Wait, I thought of a good thing,” Kirk said. “You and me.”

Lars grinned. “See? It’s not so bad.”

Things went from bad to worse quickly.

There was no power when they stopped for the night in Flagstaff. It was too hot to settle there, even indoors, so Kirk had to siphon gas at the next station to refill the tank. His mouth tasted of gasoline the rest of the night.

Lars drove them into Colorado, where they grabbed a second-floor room at a nice hotel. It was still too warm to be comfortable, but better than the literal desert.

“Should we go back?” Kirk asked, his stomach growling, unsatisfied with the granola bars he’d eaten earlier. “If the power grids are down, California has milder weather, at least.”

Heading north would put them in the crosshairs of frigid cold come winter, and heading any further east would be too hot and muggy.

Gas required siphoning now that the electricity powering the pumps was gone. Too much driving wasn’t a good idea.

“Yeah, we’ll head back in the morning,” Lars said, but Kirk heard the first traces of uncertainty there.

That scared Kirk more than anything.

As they headed back toward the west coast, a sonic boom in the distance made Lars slam the brakes.

“What the fuck?”

Kirk couldn’t tell how many miles away — or how many states away — the black, blistering mushroom cloud was, but generally anything that exploded wasn’t a good sign.

“Did a bomb go off?” Kirk asked, trying to make sense of what the fuck just happened.

“No, I don’t — oh shit…” Lars raked his hands through his hair. “Fucking shit!”

“What?”

“The fucking nuclear plants! Without anyone to keep them working, they’ve gone fucking Chernobyl!”

Kirk stared at the smeltering toadstool billowing into the sky. He’d seen news reports about the nuclear meltdown, how millions of people had to be evacuated from the radius of the blast. How anyone who got near that kind of concentrated radiation died horribly, skin sloughing off the bones like the Incredible Melting Man.

“Are we far enough away?”

“I don’t know. Fuck. Who knows how far that shit travels if they don’t try to counteract it,” Lars said, visibly shaken. “They used helicopters in Russia to dump shit on the reactor and cool it off, but the pilots couldn’t get close enough to do much. And Chernobyl was bad enough, even with a whole country trying to fix it.”

So how’s this going to end with exactly no one tending the reactor?

“There are more, aren’t there?” Kirk asked, even though he knew the answer. “And when they blow…”

Lars chuckled humorlessly. “The people who vanished got lucky.”

Kirk never really considered killing himself before, but against the likelihood of dying by toxic radiation exposure, a bullet to the head probably wasn’t a bad way to go.

He knew the odds. An untended explosion would cause fires, fires that wouldn’t be put out, fires that would spread across the country, engulfing everything. California was a goddamn tinder box on a normal day, when firefighters existed to fight the blazes.

If the flames didn’t get them, smoke inhalation would poison the air. And what the fuck else would explode once the fires reached California?

None of that accounted for the radiation that was undoubtedly spreading across the country like an invisible cloud, permeating the water and soil and contaminating everything.

They had no power, no water (save for bottled water on store shelves, which would inevitably run out too), and no fucking future. There was no escape from the hell of this new world. If any reinforcements were coming, some type of foreign militia or government, Kirk would have seen a helicopter or a plane by now. But the skies had been clear ever since the vanishing.

So Kirk sat in the car, staring at the pistol he’d taken from a gun shop sitting on the passenger seat. He didn’t have it in him to poison his pets, kill Lars and then himself. But what other choice did he have? If he didn’t, he was signing them up for something worse down the line. Deaths filled with agony and fear and pain. Wasn’t this better?

Lars often joked that he wished James were here, because James was into all that underground bunker survivalist shit that might have helped them out. But an underground bunker was only ever meant as a temporary shelter; it might buy them some time, but there was no one above ground making things better, fighting the fires or counteracting the nuclear cloud. They would stay down there forever, unable to take Tama for a walk or restock supplies.

Kirk rested his head on the steering wheel and sobbed, his head wracked with pain, his chest wrapped tight with dread as the world closed in on him.

None of it was right. None of it was fair. And yet he had to face it, one way or another.

Maybe he could find the wherewithal to shoot himself, and maybe he could poison the animals, but Lars? Kirk shuddered away from the thought of ever hurting Lars, much less killing him. Even if Lars asked him to, there was no way…

Kirk thought of Lars alone in their hotel room, forced to take his own life. Could Lars do it, with the corpses of his loved ones surrounding him? With all that he loved in this dead world gone? Or would fear win out?

With a shaking hand, Kirk took the gun off the passenger seat. He got out of the car and tucked the pistol into his waistband, hidden under his T-shirt. He would give Lars a choice. Kirk could spare him that much.

Something cold hit him with a splat, wet and frigid against his face, suffocating —

Kirk screams, eyes springing open in a dark room. He gets tangled in something and hits the ground. Wet curls stick to his face. He’s freezing.

“Sorry! You okay?” Lars says from somewhere above Kirk, holding the hotel ice bucket. “You weren’t waking up, so I threw water on you.”

Waking up? Did Kirk dream the reactor explosion and the power outages? Was the dark, hopeless future just a nightmare?

Kirk scrambles to his feet, kicking away the tangled bedsheets and the thin hotel blanket. He looks around the room to get his bearings. It’s a hotel room, albeit different than the one he remembers. He doesn’t find Tama or Vincent anywhere, but maybe he scared them in the throes of his nightmare.

“Where’re the pets?” he asks, drying his wet face with the flimsy blanket.

Lars looks at Kirk as if he’s lost his mind. “What pets?”

Kirk hurries to the window and shoves the curtains aside. It’s dark out, but city lights twinkle and glow. He switches off the balcony lock and slides the door open.

“What are you doing?” Lars cries, following Kirk outside. “Jesus fucking Christ, don’t jump.”

But Kirk isn’t going to jump. He wasn’t even considering it. He sees moving lights down below, headlights and tail lamps belonging to cars on the streets. A siren howls in the distance. Faint horns blare in traffic.

People. Life.

From inside the room, someone bangs on the other side of the wall three times. Then a gruff voice shouts, “Lars! Kirk! Shut the fuck up!”

Kirk’s heart leaps into his chest, startled and comforted by the sounds of another human.

Lars stomps back into the room and pounds on the wall. “Fuck off!!” Then his voice is incredibly soft, the way Kirk remembers from that other world. “You okay, man? You were having some serious night terrors.”

A cool breeze chills Kirk, a welcome respite from the heat he felt in the dream.

Dream. None of it was real.

He takes a deep breath, reminding himself that the world is back to normal. He’s Kirk Hammett, guitarist of Metallica. One of billions of people on earth.

Lars’… friend.

“Night terrors?”

“Yeah, you were — well, it sure as fuck wasn’t a good dream you were having.” Lars folds his arms over his chest. His T-shirt barely covers his underwear, and his legs are so tempting. Even more so now that Kirk has kissed them and pushed them apart, if only in a dream. “Fuck, whatever you’re taking, you need to stop if that’s what it does to you.”

“It wasn’t —” There’s no way that vivid dream was a product of drugs, good or bad.

Kirk steps inside and shuts the balcony. He feels undone. As much as his life sucked in that dream, he had something special with Lars there, something that could never happen here. No matter how much Kirk wants it to.

It’s like he’s been plucked from one world and dropped into another.

Lars settles onto the edge of his bed (two queens, Kirk notices, unlike the king they always shared in the dream). “You remember what you were dreaming about?”

Kirk nods, though he doubts Lars actually wants to hear about any of it. “It felt so real…”

Even now, he can still feel the soft touch of Lars’ hand on his face, the warmth of Lars’ legs wrapped around him. Kirk can almost taste Lars’ kiss. Remembering it sends a visceral surge along his spine.

“Was it that syringe hobo dream again?”

Kirk laughs. “Man, I never should have told you that.” He once shared a recurring nightmare he had as a pre-teen, where a scruffy hobo would ambush Kirk on his way home from school and inject him with a mystery substance.

“No, it wasn’t that. It was a post-apocalypse, only instead of zombies, everyone just disappeared. Except you and me.”

Lars snorts a laugh. “Oh man. No wonder you were freaking out. Stuck with me?”

Kirk frowns. “That wasn’t the bad part. It was kind of nice… at least until the power grids failed, and the nuclear reactors blew.”

“Shit. Is that how we died?”

“No, it was either die from radiation exposure or fire, or I kill you and our pets, and then myself.”

Lars flops across the bed in a fit of laughter. “You’re so fucking weird!”

“I was gonna ask if you preferred a slow, agonizing death by radiation poisoning,” Kirk protests. “Or if you wanted to burn up when the fires reached us. I thought you’d go for the murder-suicide option.”

Lars grins at him, upside down, his hair splayed over the mattress in a way Kirk is very familiar with. “You don’t have the fucking balls.”

“You’re right. I didn’t think I could go through with it. Killing you, I mean. That’s what I was thinking about when you woke me up.”

“Thank fuck for that. If I waited, you might have killed me.” Lars sits up and lies back against the pillows. “You said we had pets?”

Kirk explains the origins of Tama and Vincent.

“You didn’t even have your own cat in the dream?” Lars says.

“It was weird. We weren’t really us. I mean, there was no band. We had normal, boring jobs and didn’t know each other until you found me.”

The more Kirk goes over the dream, the worse he feels about his connection with Lars inside of it. Maybe they only came together as a couple because their lives were vastly different than they are in reality. Because they were literally the last people on earth.

“Dreams are weird,” Lars says with a shrug and a yawn. “Can you get back to sleep now? Or is it still stuck up there?”

“Still stuck.” Kirk sighs and lies across his own bed. The distance between them feels strange, despite being the norm. In just one dream, Kirk and Lars developed a sense of closeness that permeates their real world.

Yet Kirk knows Lars would laugh at him if he mentioned anything about their bond in the dream. Or, worse, Lars would just laugh it off as dreams being weird, like it isn’t something Kirk wants here too.

“Did I wake you up?”

“Yeah, man, you were crying and moaning in your sleep like you were dying.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I was just — I was worried,” Lars mumbles, as if he’s embarrassed.

“About me?”

“Of fucking course about you! I’ve never heard you cry in your sleep before. I didn’t know what the fuck you were dreaming about.”

“You probably didn’t imagine it was something this stupid.”

“Fuck no, that shit is terrifying. Radiation poisoning? Being the last people on earth?”

“You were actually kind of stoked about the whole ‘last people alive’ thing.”

“No shit?” Lars scoffs. “You must have dreamt about my evil twin or something. That sure as fuck isn’t me.”

Kirk feels a wallop in his chest, like he’s been physically wounded. “Yeah. Probably.” He retrieves the blanket from the floor and shoddily remakes the bed. “I guess I’ll try to sleep again. Thanks for waking me up.”

“No problem.”

Kirk crawls into the bed, curling up and facing away from Lars. He doesn’t really know why tears run hot across his face, because Lars is alive and well and the world is normal again and they’re no longer alone.

And yet…

(“That sure as fuck wasn’t me.”)

Chapter Text

Kirk doesn’t sleep well that night. He awakens from dreamless rest every half hour or so until morning creeps through the curtains. Then he lies awake and watches Lars sleeping soundly in the next bed.

In their dream life, Kirk could have roused Lars with a blow job, but here that would be at best unwelcome, and, at worst, grounds for being kicked out of the band.

Unsurprisingly, Kirk doesn’t play well the following night. Lars doesn’t call him on it, which only makes Kirk love him more.

James has no such restraint.

“What fucking planet were you on out there?” James says, elbowing Kirk playfully on the elevator up to their rooms. He’s teasing, but there’s always a slim layer of truth underneath.

Kirk slinks away. “Sorry. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“No fuckin’ shit. I heard you through the walls.” James laughs. “Thought you two were fucking in there.”

Blood boils under Kirk’s cheeks, turning him as red as a tomato. He glances at Lars, curious how he’ll respond to the accusation.

“Can’t you tell the difference between good sex and night terrors?” Lars says to James with an edge of offense.

James holds up his hands in surrender. “Hey, man. Whatever you two do behind closed doors ain’t my business.”

James would definitely have something to say about a Kirk and Lars union, and it wouldn’t be anything good. Would it be band-exile worthy? Kirk’s afraid to find out.

Lars rolls his eyes as the elevator opens on their floor. Kirk and Lars make what feels like a walk of shame to their room and slip inside.

Kirk’s too exhausted to shower. It can wait until morning. He strips off his shoes and jeans before collapsing on the bed face-first.

“You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?” Lars asks, trepidatious.

“Mhmm,” Kirk moans into the pillow. “Just tired.”

Lars makes a sound of acknowledgment, and Kirk falls asleep to the faint hiss of the shower.

“Where are we?” Kirk asked, waking up in the passenger seat of his familiar beater. He caught a glimpse of Tama and Vincent snoozing in the backseat.

Lars sat in the driver’s seat, his hair flapping in the breeze as the car rolled through some nondescript suburb. “Does it matter?”

Kirk supposed it didn’t. He saw no other cars on the road — at least none that had drivers. The overhang of trees prevented him from looking at the sky for signs of smoke or impending disaster.

Lars pulled them into the driveway of a cookie-cutter house. There wasn’t anything particularly special about it, though it was nicer than anywhere Kirk had lived before.

Kirk got out of the car and approached the front door. He figured they were here to rescue more animals, which they usually did while leaving Tama and Vincent in the car with the windows rolled down.

Kirk opened the door.

“Hold on,” Lars said, hurrying up the walk. He picked Kirk up bridal-style, though he struggled with the effort. “Shit. This looked so much easier in the movies.” He hurried them both inside, hauling Kirk over the threshold before almost dropping him in the foyer.

“Fuck. Sorry.”

Kirk laughed. “You’re a drummer. Aren’t you supposed to have strong arms?”

Lars gave him a strange look and a smile, as if Kirk was making a joke he didn’t quite get. “In your dreams, maybe.”

So Kirk was himself in the dream now, but Lars wasn’t. The foundation of Kirk’s fantasy was peeling away like old wallpaper, revealing the grime beneath.

“Bring the pets in,” Lars said. “This is ours now.”

“Really?” Though it didn’t mean much when the world had ended and houses were free. Except Kirk and Lars were relics of humanity’s past, and moving in to a house together used to mean something. Maybe Lars was being symbolic.

Kirk brought Tama and Vincent inside and set up their food, water, and relief areas. The house was fully furnished, devoid of any personal decor. No photographs, no kid’s artwork on the fridge, nothing to break the illusion that Kirk and Lars lived here. Or that they could.

Kirk took his luggage into the master bedroom. Lars was already inside, depositing his folded clothes into the chest of drawers.

“What do you think?” Lars asked, gesturing to the unremarkable bedroom. The decor was reminiscent of a showroom, impersonal and corporate.

“I’m a little hurt you didn’t take me house-hunting.”

“Let me make it up to you.” Lars pressed Kirk onto the bed, and all of Kirk’s senses lit up like a pinball machine on full tilt. Lars’ hands were warm on Kirk’s skin; the sweet scent of his shampoo filled Kirk’s nose; Lars’ mouth tasted of honey and cinnamon.

Kirk writhed underneath him, his helpless moans filling the room. Lars inched back and studied Kirk’s flushed face with a grin.

“What is it with you?” Lars said with a fond smile, appraising. “Every time you dream about us, we’re the last two people on earth. Is your self-esteem really that low?”

Kirk blanched. Lars had acknowledged that this was a dream, which meant on some level Kirk had to be aware of it too.

More peeling wallpaper.

Fine. Kirk could deal with a self-aware dream. As long as he got to be with Lars, did it really matter?

In any case, Kirk could use this opportunity to dig for answers. Although if he was mining anything it was his subconscious.

“Would you ever consider me if I wasn’t your only option?”

Lars frowned, looking hurt. “Give me some credit. Of course I would. You just — you never asked.”

“Why would I take that kind of risk? I could lose everything.”

“So you wait until there’s literally nothing else to lose?”

“That’s not fair,” Kirk grumbled. “You’re not even my Lars anyway.”

“That didn’t matter to you before.”

“It doesn’t. But he would understand why it’s so dangerous for me to say something.”

“Well, I’m the best you’ve got. Is that enough?” Lars folded over Kirk, feathering kisses over his throat and collar bones.

Kirk’s pulse fluttered. It wasn’t enough, but it could be. It had to be.

Lars slid into him, and Kirk felt every touch and push. His toes curled; his fingers gripped Lars’ back; his thighs clutched Lars’ hips, his body opening so easily, even when Lars pushed Kirk’s legs apart to drive in deeper. Kirk howled, the edges of his vision whiting out as he came.

They slept soundly, tangled together in a mess of limbs, pets, and blankets, until a thump against the window roused Kirk.

Tama and Vincent perked up. They heard it too.

Maybe just a tree branch knocking against the glass. Except it sounded heavier, like something much bigger was out there in the dark.

Kirk slipped out of bed and fumbled for his gun. The gun he didn’t have anymore, because this was a different dream. Fuck.

Maybe the previous owners of the house had come back to oust Kirk and Lars from their cozy sanctuary. A subconscious nudge back to reality. You two don’t belong here.

Kirk stepped into his boxers on the way to the bedroom window. He peered out the glass, and terror squeezed his insides.

A horde of zombies were gathered around the house, pressing against the sides of the building. One creature had its rotting face against the window, its teeth chomping up and down as it stared at Kirk with one rheumy, unseeing eye. Kirk made a silent scream and yanked the curtains back into place.

“Lars!” Kirk dove onto the bed and shook Lars awake. “Lars! What the fuck? There’s fucking zombies outside!”

Lars made a sleepy noise and rolled over. He didn’t wake up.

“Where’s the fucking guns?” Kirk shook him again.

Heavy pounding against the house made Kirk jump. The horde was closing in on all sides.

“Lars!”

Lars opened a bleary eye. “Go back to sleep. ‘S just a dream.”

The living room window burst inward as a group of zombies crashed through. These were not the slow, shambling dead from Romero flicks. The horde came toward them, stinking of the grave and leaving muddy tracks on the carpet. There must have been hundreds of them, flooding the house like fans rushing a concert stage.

Vincent scurried underneath the bed. Tama stood her ground, barking and growling with enough ferocity to scare off a living intruder. But the dead reached out with rotting, gnarled fingers that tore into flesh, their teeth ripping and gnashing.

“No!”

Kirk wakes with a start, his heart pounding.

“Kirk?” Lars mumbles from the other bed, his voice slurred with sleep.

“Sorry, just — another dream.”

Kirk’s breath comes in quick bursts. He rushes to the window again, making sure there are lights and cars and life down below.

Everything is fine.

Except…

There’s an uncomfortable wetness in his shorts. For a moment, he’s terrified that he wet the bed in his terror, but somehow reality is even more embarrassing. It’s jizz, sticky and fresh on his underwear and his thighs.

Which wouldn’t be so bad on its own — Lars would definitely understand a nocturnal emission or two — but Kirk’s having sex with Lars in his dreams. And Kirk is apparently noisy when he’s in the throes of a nightmare. Which opens up the possibility that he’s moaning Lars’ name during the dream sex.

If Lars heard that, there’s no way Kirk’s not dying of embarrassment the next morning. Even his fucking dreams are trying to out him.

Kirk hurries into the bathroom, keeping the light off as he splashes water on his face. Though now is as good a time as any for a cold shower.

“So what was it this time?” Lars asks in the morning.

“Zombies.”

“That’s what happens when you watch all those fucking horror movies, man.”

Kirk hasn’t watched a horror flick since they’ve been on the road for this tour leg, though he doubts it would matter much. He could watch a romantic comedy, and his brain would find a way to torture him with it.

He imagines living the rest of his life this way, tormented by dreams of himself and Lars tainted with some visceral, cruel twist. Of waking in a panic every night, both comforted and disappointed to awaken in reality.

He’d rather die.

And yet confronting his feelings for Lars seems like a fate worse than death. There’s no way Lars would ever want him, not unless there was a price to be paid on Kirk’s end.

“I was teasing,” Lars says, breaking Kirk from his thoughts. “Jeez, don’t look so bummed.”

“Sorry, I was just thinking.”

“Well, don’t.” Lars gives him a playful little nudge, something Kirk might have done for an excuse to touch him.

“Y’know, dying in your dreams can mean a lot of things,” Lars says that night after the show. They’re in a loud, crowded drinking hole, and he’s sitting beside Kirk at the bar. Kirk’s ears are still ringing from the concert, but Lars’ voice is always soothing. “Are you coping with your own mortality? Putting off an unpleasant doctor’s visit? Or maybe you’re trying to escape something stressful?”

Kirk lifts an eyebrow. “How do you know all this?”

“If you talk with our roadies every once in a while, you might learn something.” Lars smiles and sips his beer. “Isn’t all this weird spiritual shit supposed to be in your wheelhouse anyway?”

“Not exactly, but I don’t need a book of dream interpretations to know what these dreams mean.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“That’s fucking bullshit.”

“That’s how it is.”

“Fine, don’t accept my help,” Lars says, scoffing. “Some people pay good money for this kind of insight.”

Kirk snorts a laugh. “From you? I doubt it.”

“Fuck you,” Lars says with affection.

I wish you would, Kirk thinks before drowning the thought with a gulp of his own beer.

Kirk’s made arrangements to have his own room tonight, so when he splits from Lars and goes across the hall, Lars is, to put it mildly, confused.

“What the fuck?” Lars says as Kirk unlocks his own room. “You’re too good to share now?”

“No, it’s not—” Blush rises hot on Kirk’s face. He’s never been able to keep his stupid blood vessels in check, especially around Lars. “It’s not you. With all the night terrors I’ve been having, I don’t want to bother you.”

Lars frowns like he doesn’t buy that answer. “Bullshit. It doesn’t bother me.”

Kirk shrugs. “Let’s give it a try and see if you don’t sleep better tonight.” He smiles, self-deprecating.

“Yeah, sure.” Lars glances away, turning back to his own room and unlocking the door.

“You can survive one night without me,” Kirk jokes, tempting fate, just to see what Lars will do.

“Shut up,” Lars grumbles, and Kirk thinks he sees blush in Lars’ cheeks, but maybe it’s the hall lights. Or wishful thinking.

This time, Kirk wakes up alone, and he can almost believe the world is still deserted and dying until he sees lights outside.

He sits on the loveseat by the window and watches the activity below. Apparently he’s going to dream about being with Lars in various post-apocalyptic scenarios until… what? He confesses his secret crush? If Kirk’s kept a lid on that this long, he’s not spilling it now.

But the dreams seem cruel, their faint touch of reality crueler still. How can Kirk just ignore it when he still feels the phantom touch of Lars’ fingers on his cheek?

Someone knocks on the door. Kirk jumps, not expecting a knock at three in the morning. Then he’s embarrassed, because apparently he must have been noisy while he slept, and someone in an adjacent room has come calling.

Kirk hurries to the door and checks the peephole. It’s Lars standing on the other side, so Kirk switches off the deadbolt and opens the door.

“Was I screaming again? Shit, I’m sorry. The whole point of this was for me not to bother you.”

“I didn’t hear anything.” Lars smiles with a hint of bitterness. “Your stupid night terrors are contagious. So thanks for that.”

Kirk blinks, lead settling in his stomach. “No… Seriously?”

Lars lets himself inside the room, like he’s intimately comfortable sharing Kirk’s space. Kirk wishes he could reach out and bring them together the way he wants. Maybe if he just touched Lars, Kirk could infuse him with the proper emotions to make this happen between them.

“You dreamed the rapture and zombies… Mine was some super virus that wiped out most of the population.”

“At least you had other people.”

“And they were fucking nuts! That’s how I died! Some stupid dick stabbed me while I was on a supply run. And of course he stole my shit as I was bleeding out, to add insult to injury.” Lars scowls.

“Between dying of radiation poisoning, fire, murder-suicide, or being ripped apart by zombies? I’ll take the stabbing.”

Lars chuckles and lies back on the bed, his hair fanning out. “You know what the craziest part is? You and me were, like, together. A post-apocalypse power couple.” He laughs, as if the idea is absurd, and Kirk’s heart simultaneously leaps and breaks in his chest.

“What?”

“Don’t make it weird. It was just a dream,” Lars says, misreading the shock in Kirk’s voice.

Was it? Kirk can buy that Lars’ dreams were influenced by his own, but them as a couple was never discussed. That’s not something Lars picked up from Kirk telling him about his night terrors.

There are many ways Kirk could play this, but teasing seems to be the safest bet. “Do you have a crush on me, Lars?” He hopes his dopey grin comes across as playful, the way he would needle Lars if he didn’t have romantic feelings bubbling under the surface.

“Fuck off.” Lars slings a pillow at him, which Kirk catches.

“It’s okay. You can tell me. I won’t freak out.” Kirk lies beside him, hugging the pillow as a makeshift shield between himself and Lars’ rejection. “I might tease you about it, though.”

A twitch of a smile appears on Lars’ mouth. “Of course you would. It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

Kirk has never been stabbed, but he imagines this is what it feels like: a hot flare of pain in his core that ripples outward like a nuclear blast. There are shockwaves inside him.

In this moment, all of Kirk’s fears and anxieties have been justified. No wonder his dreams take place in a world where it’s just him and Lars; that’s the only conceivable universe in which they could ever be together. He knew that instinctively, and Lars just confirmed it.

Sadness wells up inside of him, and in a rare instance Kirk wishes he was built more like his father, so he could plaster anger over the pain. But Kirk has always been the sensitive one. He’s unlikely to change now.

Lars turns his head to look at Kirk, perhaps curious why he’s fallen silent. After a moment, Lars moves off the bed. “Well, I just came by to share that with you. I thought you’d get a kick out of knowing I caught your mind virus.” He chuckles, and Kirk feels a knot in his guts.

If Lars actually had feelings for Kirk, would he act so casual about it? Revealing it here isn’t a vulnerability; it’s a joke to Lars, something he expects them to laugh about.

“Oh. Um. Yeah. That’s pretty crazy,” Kirk says, fighting the lump in his throat and the way his voice wants to wobble.

When Lars is gone, Kirk welcomes the dreams. Whatever the cruel twist, it’s worth enduring if he gets to be with Lars, even at the end of the world.

Inside the dressing room, Kirk felt something was wrong. The room looked bleached and eerie lit by the bright fluorescents while there was no one inside. Usually James or Jason were here, half-dressed and shooting the shit before a show. At the very least, Lars should have been here, yet he wasn’t.

A shadow moved in the corner of Kirk’s eye. He turned his head to catch it, and he could have sworn he saw movement behind some of the gear cases.

“Lars?”

Kirk moved closer, and he heard shuffling from the other side of the large cases. Somehow, he knew those sounds came from the clumsy footwork of the undead.

Kirk grabbed a pair of scissors from a nearby coffee mug that held various small office supplies.

“Quit fucking around,” Kirk said, clutching the scissors in one hand.

What shambled out from behind the cases had once been Lars, but any signs of the man himself were gone, replaced by a walking corpse. His skin was puce-colored, his eyes milky-white and unseeing. His mouth hung open as he made a raspy, inhuman growl. His arms reached out for Kirk, gnarled, grey-green fingers grasping for purchase.

Being faced with an actual zombie should have scared Kirk. The fact that the zombie had, at one time, been his crush should have devastated Kirk. But it was rage that fueled Kirk now, rage that plunged the blades of the scissors into Lars’ left eye socket. Dark blood spurted from the wound.

The Lars-zombie, feeling no pain now that it was undead, didn’t flinch when its eyeball exploded with a wet popping sound, but it did make a dry groan, as though acknowledging that something had happened.

Kirk drove the scissors deeper, stalking forward and shoving zombie-Lars against the wall. This momentum allowed the dull blades of the scissors to penetrate the creature’s brain, and that meant lights out for Lars. His thick, choking noises stopped like a switch had been flipped. His undead limbs fell limp to his sides.

Kirk wiggled the scissors out of the wet viscus of the zombie’s brain. The blades came free with a slimy pop. Still furious, Kirk drove the scissors in again, this time to the right eye. Fucker, Kirk thought, and then he was lost, the blades jabbing in over and over, years worth of repressed anger unleashed.

One of Lars’ cold, mottled hands grasped Kirk’s wrist, and the zombie-creature spoke with Lars’ perfect cadence. “Is this how you deal with rejection? Kill me in effigy?” Lars tore the scissors from his eye-socket and tossed them aside, slinging brain matter as they went. “I always thought James was the one with anger issues.”

Lars’ eyes should have been gone, but they weren’t. Instead, they were blood red, no white sclera to be found, leaking crimson tears like a statue of the Blessed Mother. They stared through Kirk, accusing.

“It’s all a fucking joke to you!” Kirk said, shaking. “If the idea of us together is so repulsive, why did you even bring it up? Just to hurt me? You never thought I might actually want you?”

“Not like you’ve been dropping hints or anything. You keep dreaming about me making grand gestures. Take your own advice sometime.”

Hopeless, Kirk grasped the tattered remains of Lars’ black T-shirt. “Tell me what to do. I can’t screw this up. If you leave because of me — ”

Kirk tries not to think about Cliff’s death, but the guilt still weighs on him. If he’d just slept in his own stupid bunk…

To have two members of Metallica exit the band because of Kirk was unimaginable.

Zombie-Lars scoffed. “You really think I’m gonna leave the band I made ‘cause you’ve got a crush on me?” He laughed, and the sweet sound juxtaposed against the macabre sight of Lars himself was disorienting. “If anything, I’ll kick you out.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because you’d have to tell the others why you want me gone. You’d have to out me. And I don’t think — I don’t think you would do that to me.”

Lars grinned, and Kirk saw maggots squirming between his polluted teeth. “Yeah, I’ve got a real soft spot for you, Kirk: my asshole.”

Kirk blushed, blood erupting under his skin like lava. No way would Lars ever say that to him in real life.

“You’re not the only one who can flirt hard,” Lars said. He reached for the edge of Kirk’s jeans, the bony cobwebs of his hands slipping underneath Kirk’s shirt to unfasten them. “Ever thought about sticking your dick in the undead?”

Kirk’s mouth hung open, an idiot question lingering there as Lars’ cold, dank hand grasped him.

This seemed like the kind of situation Kirk ought to take advantage of, so he returned the favor, unzipping and unfastening Lars’ jeans. He watched a maggot wriggle down the length of Lars’ cock before squirming its way inside, and that was enough to wake Kirk with a shriek.

Kirk lies there in the dark, half-hard and fully awake. He has no idea what the fuck that was about, if not one more ironic twist in his dreams about Lars.

Another knock. Lars’ snarky voice calls through the door: “You got a girl in there?”

Oh, so now Lars is making fun of him?

Kirk storms to the door and throws it open. “Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?” He glares at Lars as if trying to set him on fire.

“Fuck off, you’re not the only one who has trouble sleeping.” Lars glances around Kirk, trying to see inside the room. “So that girlish screaming was you, huh? What was it this time? Alien invasion?”

“Zombies. Again.” Kirk moves to shut him out, but Lars stops the door with a hand.

“Hey. Wait. This is a serious problem for you, isn’t it?” Concern furrows Lars’ brow, and he might actually care. His voice is incredibly soft when he says, “What’s wrong?”

“Who says anything’s wrong?” Kirk says with practiced disinterest. “I watch too many horror movies.”

“And they’re only now affecting you? Bullshit.” Lars pauses, his eyes widening. “Fuck, are you dying? You better not die on me, fucker. I’ll kill you.” He jabs a finger into Kirk’s chest for emphasis.

Kirk has to chuckle a bit. “No. I mean, I don’t think I am. It’s not really the dying parts of the dreams that stick with me. And I don’t die in the dreams anyway. I always wake up before it happens.”

Lars rolls his eyes. “Well, I’m glad we got that cleared up. Are you gonna let me in, or are we gonna keep standing here like a couple of dicks?”

Kirk lets Lars in, because that’s apparently what he does now, just lets Lars walk all over him.

“So are you gonna be honest with me for one fucking second, or just keep bullshitting me?” Lars asks, sitting on the bed like he belongs — which he does. He’s always been an integral part of Kirk’s personal space, since the days the band shared dressing rooms and a tour bus. They’re so fucking close to having what Kirk wants, and that’s what kills him.

“I can see something’s fucking wrong,” Lars goes on. “And I know you don’t wanna bother anybody with your shit, but I’m asking, so — ” He spreads his arms, as if inviting Kirk to lay his troubles there. “Here I am.”

This is exactly what Kirk didn’t want: being backed into a corner about his stupid feelings. Because he knows he’ll either break down in an incredibly unmanly way, or wield his crush like a weapon. Or both. Simultaneously.

Kirk folds his arms over his middle, shielding himself. He should be fully dressed for this, not standing here in a sleeveless tee and a pair of undershorts.

“Alright, I guess we’re doing this.” Kirk huffs. “There were things I didn’t tell you about the dreams.”

“Like what?”

Kirk grips his elbows. “You should know. I gave you my mind virus, remember?”

Lars thinks for a moment, then his eyes widen in realization. “You and me? Together?”

A slight nod. Kirk can’t look at him.

“Oh,” Lars says in a small, unreadable voice.

There’s a lump in Kirk’s throat, growing into a fucking boulder, cutting off his oxygen and pushing at his tear ducts. “The worst part is… it’s nice. Until the fucking nukes or the zombies come, you and me… I wake up missing that. And I know it’ll never happen, not unless we’re the last fucking people alive.” He laughs bitterly. “Maybe not even then, y’know, because you’re not…” He cuts that one off, but Lars can read between the lines.

“Not what?” Lars says. It’s a pointed attack on Kirk’s ambiguity, daring him to directly confront this thing he’s been dancing around for months now.

Kirk sighs, though to him it sounds more like a sob. “Come on, man. Don’t — don’t make me do this.”

“I’m not making you do shit. You’re the one who said ‘I guess we’re doing this.’”

A fair point. And if they’re this deep in it already, Kirk might as well go all the way. A clean break will heal faster, or so he’s heard.

“I know you don’t see me that way,” Kirk says. The words tumble out like chopping off a limb: painful and all at once.

Lars’ features pull into a scrunch of confusion. “So you’re a fucking mind-reader now? Why the fuck else would I tell you I dreamed about us as a couple?”

Hope becomes a delirious pain in Kirk’s chest. “Do you — ”

“Yeah, I like you, dumbass. I thought you’d’ve noticed sooner. But I guess you were too busy assuming I’d have to settle for the second-last human alive. Is that how you think of yourself? You get tons of groupies.”

Kirk shrinks a bit under the shades of anger in Lars’ voice. It’s a reflex he doubts he’ll ever shake, although Lars has never (and would never) physically hurt him. But habits formed in childhood die hard.

“They’re not you,” Kirk says, glancing away, ashamed of the depths of his want.

Lars exhales an overdramatic sigh. “Oh, you sappy motherfucker. Come here.” Then he’s up and moving toward Kirk, and Kirk barely has a moment to think before Lars is kissing him.

Lars’ hands are warm and achingly familiar on Kirk’s face, but the fact that this is actually happening isn’t lost on Kirk. He feels everything: the barely-there scratch of stubble against his chin, the wet, timid slide of tongue, the slight grip of Lars’ fingers. Kirk gasps around Lars’ mouth, having forgotten to breathe.

Lars backs away, just enough to give Kirk room. “Is this weird for you?”

“No.” A grin spreads across Kirk’s mouth. “We’ve done this before, remember?”

“You’ll have to remind me,” Lars says with a wicked smile, pulling Kirk toward the bed.