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Apocalyptothon Fic: Trouble on the Way (Glee, Puck/Lauren, R)
Title: Trouble on the Way (aka Apocaglee)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rivestra
Rating: er… R? (Mature, but not terribly explicit)
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Lauren Zizes/Noah Puckerman
Spoilers: Through the end of Glee Season 2
Warnings: The end of the world and the kinds of things that go with it; 17yo het sexin'
Length: 6,560 words (+ a 550 word Coda)
Disclaimer: Written purely for fun; no profit or harm intended. All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners.
Summary: Things got worse after Nationals.
A/N: Written for Apocalyptahon 2011 (actual prompt in endnotes). I hope it suits, escritoireazul – it sure has been fun ending the world for ya! (Even if Lauren and Puck were not [oh-so predictably!] terribly interested in doing what I said!)
Many, many thanks to my darling betas snarkgoddess, denyce and varkelton - they make everything I write so much stronger (love you guys!).
Read on AO3
Lauren had flown home from nationals early, a few days ahead of the full moon.
Back in April, back when she'd first announced her intention to do this, Puck simply said, "I'll come with you," and he had. They'd taken a cab to La Guardia in the early summer sun, their loss branded across his back but not bowing his shoulders. She'd felt for him, some, and a little for the others, but mostly she'd felt the need to get home.
Puck had curled into the window seat, leaving her the middle and aisle so she had some elbowroom. As Lauren settled into the two seats, Puck glared at the plastic-perfect attendant and her perplexed little frown until the woman went away. Lauren managed to keep her snickering under her breath, even though she was pretty sure it had been her own glare that had driven the bitch off.
They'd both been exhausted; losing made for a long day without the six-hour delay at the gate. They'd drifted, dozing fitfully and playing loser-takes-all poker (and blatantly cheating at that) while their plane sat on the tarmac for another three hours. By the time their plane had started to queue in with the others for takeoff, it was after three am.
Puck woke to watch the city pull away from them, its lights reflected in his eyes. She'd been afraid they wouldn't, but when he turned back toward her, his eyes were still shining. He'd grinned at her until a yawn split through then pulled her in against his side. They were both sound asleep before they reached altitude.
Lauren woke some time later, the plane smoothly cutting through the air around her, the humanity within smothering her senses and making her head a little fuzzy. She'd been drooling on Puck's shoulder, and, when she looked down at the trail of it, it glistened back at her. The left side of her face was awash in moonlight, as was her hand where it sat on Puck's thigh.
She'd pulled carefully back into her own seat, out of the light. (The first thing Uncle Daniel had ever taught her was to always respect the moon because, while it could be an incredible lady, it could also be a crazy little bitch.) Lauren stared at Puck's face, its angles turned to shadows and its planes alight with that soft, waxing glow.
She'd tried to soak up the beauty of him, chiseled in marble before her, but she hadn't been able to shake the moon's creeping, inexorable crawl. She leaned out across his chest and pulled the window blind shut.
He jumped at the snick, waking and reaching for her hand as she'd been pulling it back. She'd let him keep her hand, but pulled his other hand away from her boob – it had landed there innocently enough when he'd jolted awake, but its intentions had not remained pure for long.
Puck had brought his offending hand up into the air between them, open-palmed and harmless, and he said, sleepy and wistful, "What? You're not gonna help me join the mile high club?"
She snorted. "Oh, like you haven't been a card-carrying member for years?"
That had come out a little sharper and a little louder than she'd intended, but Puck had just turned her hand in his, dragged his thumb across her lifeline and said, "Nope." He brought her hand up to his mouth and whispered, "Never even been on a plane before this week," into her palm.
The words tickled their way into her skin, melting her heart a little and setting off nerve bundles like fireworks up and down her arm. He'd kissed her hand then, his mouth warm and smooth. It had set her bones smoldering, turned her muscles to Jell-o and her brain – it must have turned her brain to mush, because she'd turned her head to stare pointedly toward the tiny bathrooms and whispered, "Get us some space, lover boy," into Puck's ear.
He followed her stare and his eyes had narrowed at the cramped stalls. Puck's brain had kicked on though, and no one would ever be able to fault her boy on his plotting abilities. He placed her hand primly on her thigh then rose and headed for the aisle, crowding in close to whisper, "As you wish, Zizes," as he'd passed by.
Three minutes later, she'd joined him in the plane's sole handicapped bathroom. She'd barely been able to turn around in there with him, so she'd shoved him onto the sink. He grabbed her head as he'd slid his ass up onto the tiny counter and brought her in for a searing kiss. It felt real in a way nothing else ever had - not even the rush of the wind and the slide of moonlight through the leaves at 40 miles per hour, though both left her panting and breathless, desperate for more.
Puck pulled back and smacked his head on the too-close mirror behind him. He'd laughed, low and intimate, but he'd looked a little winded too. Lauren had been pleased she was still enough herself to notice that… then the boy had smiled. One hand still on her face, he let the other run down her arm and smiled to light the whole damn plane. Voice rough and breaking, he asked, "We really gonna do this?"
She'd squinted at him a little, trying not to show how much willpower it was taking not to let go and melt into him completely. She had to clear her throat before she demanded, in a decent facsimile of her normal voice, "Do you even have a condom?"
He'd folded then - just folded right into her, pinning her into the wall she'd already been up against - and buried his face in her neck. Laughing loudly and sucking in huge mouthfuls of air, he didn't manage to get out a, "No," until she poked him in the ribs, hard. She'd had to cover his mouth with her hand to quiet him the fuck down.
Lauren had stared at the thin walls. She'd listened carefully but hadn't heard anyone in the hall. She wiggled her hips cautiously and still knocked her knee into the low toilet. Eyeing the doorknob suspiciously, she'd shifted so it was a bit to her left instead of directly behind her. Then she'd propped Puck back against the mirror and glared at him until he quieted enough that she could remove her hand from his mouth. He'd chased it with his own, but she evaded and brought both of her hands to rest on his thighs so she could lean in and loom at him properly.
It hadn't worked. He'd been waging an obviously doomed battle against his laughter, so she let her smile break through (as it had been fighting to do) and leaned in to kiss him again. He sighed into it, letting his head bang again into the mirror and drawing her impossibly closer. It had taken an immeasurable space of time for Lauren to remember that she was on a mission, damn it.
She'd managed to break away (a little) to draw her head down his neck, unable to resist planting kisses along the way. She moved her hands up to his belt buckle and let them rest there, enjoying the sudden shuddering of his breath for a moment before wrestling it open.
Hands in her hair and neck stretched out above her, Puck had gone utterly still. Lauren hadn't.
Instead, she'd gotten his fly down, hooked her thumbs into the waistbands at his hips and hissed, "Up, Puckerman." He'd lifted his ass for her like he was iron to her magnet.
In one smooth motion she pulled his pants and underwear down to his knees and slid down to her own. (No one would ever be more impressed than Lauren that it had worked smoothly, but she would never admit that.) She'd laughed at Noah's sharp intake of breath and tugged his hips forward on the ledge. He moaned, and she'd looked up at him, had caught him looking down, hungry and feral and something had clicked over in her - just snicked into place - and all of Lauren's bravado turned solid and real.
She grinned at him then, knowing she was showing too many teeth and too much wild in her eyes, but unable to bring herself to care. She watched the boy watch her for a long moment, and then she'd breathed in deep, following his intoxicating scent down until her nose nestled against the wiry hairs of his crotch. It had been the easiest thing in the world to extend her tongue and taste.
Puck arched toward her like he'd been hit by lightening. His hands shot out to brace himself with the walls, and his head crashed back, banging into the mirror again (she'd worried that the boy was going to give himself a concussion… but not much). Emboldened, Lauren had tossed her hair back and looked up at him through her eyelashes as she took him in. The pose echoed cheesy porn, but Lauren didn't care – at least not after she'd caught the dazed, open-mouthed look on Noah's face.
She'd wanted to kiss him again, right then. She'd wanted to bite her way down his neck and mark it up – property of Lauren Zizes writ large and bold over his skin – but to do that, she would have to give up the slide of him across her tongue and the musk of him in her nose and throat. She would have to let go of his attention – so complete she felt it like a second skin – if she let him slip out of her mouth (Lauren still didn't think she'd ever – Ever! Why did some girls claim to hate this? – want to do that before he'd finished), so she'd sucked in a breath and slid down further instead.
That hadn't worked out quite like she'd hoped. She'd held Puck in place while she coughed, and her mildest glare had stopped him from trying to put space between them (as if that had even been possible, there in the close confines of the bathroom). He'd stroked her hair while she recovered. Once she had, once she'd taken him back in and started to find a rhythm, Puck's hands had tightened spasmodically, fingers clutching almost painfully at her scalp. Lauren didn't mind (not at all!); the poor boy clearly needed something to hang on to.
He'd been too polite to thrust, and that had maybe driven her a bit mad. She'd growled at him when she'd realized he was holding back – an inhuman rumble that had bubbled right out of her core – and had nipped his thigh with no thought to the sensitive nature of human flesh.
Then a lot had seemed to happen all at once.
Noah shouted (yelped really, at least in her memory) and spurted, thick and rich, all over her face and chest. It had startled her, and she'd slipped back, the toilet roaring to life as her elbow knocked the flush knob and her head smacked into the door with a loud thump. The door had smacked her back, jolting rudely against Lauren's skull and seeming to shout, "Get the hell out of there!" at them loudly.
This, of course, had resulted in the both of them dissolving into giggles. Once Lauren had checked to make sure she hadn't made Puck bleed (thank whatever gods looked out for horny teenagers!), they'd untangled themselves enough to get the door open… and were greeted by a pair of unreasonably grumpy flight attendants who'd banished them to separate seats.
~~oOo~~
Twenty minutes later, the pilot announced that they'd been diverted to O'Hare. He blamed "minor mechanical difficulties," but Lauren hadn't believed him and neither had many of the other passengers around her. The flight attendants whispered nervously to each other and shut down the internet and in-flight phones. They swooped in like angry hawks when anyone dared even to check the time on their cell phone.
Lauren was sure she could have sneaked a message through, but she didn't have anyone to call; her parents were in Costa Rica, forest running.
Puck rejoined her as they began their second hour of circling for landing. He'd glanced at the flight attendant, obviously prepared to turn on the intimidation, but she just nodded, obviously exhausted and not about to get in his way. He silently slid in close to Lauren and pulled the window shade back up. Together they watched the moonlight sweep and glide across the dozen plus planes circling in pattern with them.
Hardly anyone had watched Vin Diesel on the big screen, but the plane stayed quiet anyway. People coughed nervously and muttered lowly to each other, watching the sky or the official faces of the plane for news. Lauren buried her face in Puck's shoulder, breathing him in instead of the fear stink indelibly attached to the recycled air.
The moon lingered in the sky after dawn. It hadn't dropped behind the horizon until sometime after nine am, leaving Lauren disoriented above it, truly uncomfortable in the air for the first time in her life. Her skin had crawled with the altitude, breath becoming uneven and feet itching for the ground. She almost wished she'd gone to Costa Rica after all, even though her parents were unbelievable pains in her ass. Even though she wouldn't have traded this time with Noah for anything.
He chose that moment to squeeze her hand. She picked a fight with him, debating the relative merits of WWF vs. NFL players as ninja-spies. It had settled them both, even if it did little for the nerves of the passengers around them.
She and the WWF had won, eventually (their undeniable flare for the dramatic would be quite useful, after all), and if their debate had grown loud as they'd come in for a short, bumpy landing, no one complained. (Well, out loud, anyway; looking back Lauren is pretty sure some of them were complaining under their breath, into folded hands or rosary beads.
Fuck 'em all.)
~~oOo~~
The airport had been in chaos.
People had crowded into every available space, angry and exhausted, sweating their fear into the insufficiently conditioned air. The stink was making people much less sensitive than Lauren cough, and the staccato barking of it hit her fear centers like gunfire. People sat and stood and slept everywhere. Shoving was the only way to move through the throng, and every time someone shoved at Noah, Lauren couldn't breathe. (That was new and worrisome, but she'd shoved it off to analyze later; it didn't seem so important anymore.)
The restaurants hadn't opened even though it was nearly lunchtime. They'd discovered, after waiting in a line from hell, that Security wouldn't let them out of the airport; they were both minors and this wasn't their destination, blah-blah, liability, yada-yada. They seemed to have a different excuse for everyone.
The pay phones didn't work. The internet was down. The TVs wouldn't turn on. No one could get a cell signal.
There'd been no information to be had on connecting flights or accommodations or on anything at all. Lauren's ability to be polite fled, and she'd screamed at them over their nonsense. Puck had dragged her off by her collar.
Together, they'd set off the sprinkler system in the security lounge (and the rest of the terminal, but that hadn't been their intent). Her rage had melted along with the already-sagging-but-once-perfectly-coifed hair that surrounded them.
Puck was smart that way.
~~oOo~~
About two, the airline had started passing out sandwiches. There weren't enough to go around, and it was the first food (other than tiny packets of goldfish) they'd been offered since boarding in New York. Some people hadn't roused to wait in the huge lines, but she and Puck had. They shared a squished mass of cheese and white bread, made barely palatable by the stash of pepper Puck had swiped from a poorly secured condiment stand.
About four, some smarty-pants started shouting that no planes had taken off for a very long time and that security wasn't actually letting anyone out at all. They'd been right, and the wet, miserable passengers had roused themselves. Rumors, already quick to fly, took off like windswept wildfire, random and nonsensical, spreading so thickly over the map that there was no pattern to see: aliens had landed; China had invaded; the Swine Flu was back; we shouldn't have eaten the chicken; there was a suitcase nuke or a dirty bomb in the airport…
Puck stole them some sodas and a box of granola bars. They'd intended the bars as a stockpile, but soon caught each other distributing them to kids on the sly. Puck broke into a rousing rendition of Danke Shoen as a distraction while she went back to loot the rest. Lauren pocketed a couple then gave the rest away while he segued into Twist and Shout.
The crowd Puck had accumulated didn't want to let him stop. She planted herself in front, between him and the most touchy-feely of his pre-teen admirers (she looked to giving him hell about that later, but in the moment, she'd simply been trying to keep her growls sub-audible). The moon had risen just after seven, its pull near-tangible - even though she couldn't see it, even thought it hadn't been quite full yet, not until the next night. Lauren had stayed where she was, well away from the windows.
When Puck's voice had started to break on the highs, she'd rolled her eyes and joined him on his makeshift chair-stage, slipping into the chorus of Walking in Memphis. He'd moved behind her, leaned in long against her and guzzled the coke one of his admirers had slipped him.
About nine, Lauren had seen the guys in hazmat suits for herself over the heads of their audience. Maybe, she'd thought, the coughing wasn't about allergens and wet, wretched, stinky humanity (though hers certainly was). Maybe the number of people sleeping through it all actually was as unusual as it felt to her. She pointed the yellow-suited figures out to Puck.
He'd grimaced, then egged her into a full-on-diva version of I Will Survive.
~~oOo~~
The airline had managed more sandwiches about ten. Lauren had no idea if there were enough to go around this time or if their fans were just that generous, but they each got a Swiss and turkey, an apple and a couple bottles of Sprite. They'd eaten surrounded by grateful parents and rowdy children, the mood of their little group decidedly lighter than the moods of the surrounding passengers.
Someone produced a guitar after dinner. Puck had groaned quietly into her shoulder; it sent shivers down her spine, but all she'd said was, "Celebrity's a bitch, Puckerman," and he'd pulled himself up. She tucked their extra Sprites away for later and followed him.
Puck played on into the night. Sometimes she'd sung along quietly - lullabies to settle the children, classic rock to distract the adults - as masked medical staff began to make the rounds in the pre-dawn hours.
Puck knew a surprising amount of Creedence.
~~oOo~~
Morning had brought juice and pills and the smallest bit of news to make getting them down more palatable: there'd been some kind of bacterial outbreak, but they didn't need to worry, the antibiotics would help. They could go home after the Department of Health had cleared the area (Lauren mentioned only to Puck that the earliest suits she'd seen had been branded CDC). No one seemed to know where it had started, or why they, specifically, had been quarantined. Symptoms included cough and fever.
Duh.
~~oOo~~
About one that afternoon, when their promised breakfast still hadn't shown, Lauren sniffed out an unmolested storage closet. Hot dog buns and relish might make for an unusual breakfast, but at least their group ate. All the exits Lauren passed were tightly chained shut. Where she could see out the windows, armed National Guardsmen glared back at her.
A bunch of the kids were shaping up into pretty good singers. (Noah was a great teacher. That wasn't false pride, because she didn't even like kids – not even ones who stole food for her.)
The moon would pull itself over the horizon right before sunset. Its pulse thrummed in Lauren's veins, inexorable. Lauren had looked at Noah, completely absorbed in strumming American Pie while a trio of eight-year-olds sang along. She'd looked down at the toddler asleep half in her lap, and out across the crowd of similar tableaus... and realized she was going to have to make a run for it soon, regardless of the odds.
She'd stroked the kid's hair (because it had seemed like the thing to do), leaned into Noah's side a bit harder, and given herself until six or the dinner rush, whichever came first
~~oOo~~
About five-thirty, Uncle Daniel had appeared in the crowd.
Puck had just strummed the opening chords for Proud Mary, but Lauren started to sing Bad Moon Rising instead, just as soon as she'd found the breath for it. Puck followed her lead.
Daniel had grinned at them, but it hadn't really reached his eyes.
~~oOo~~
There'd been no arguing with Daniel.
He'd planted himself in front of Puck and offered his hand. Puck had shaken it, but he'd looked questioningly at Lauren while he'd done it and had offered a distracted, "Nice to meet you, Daniel."
"Let's go with 'Mr. Osbourne' for now," he'd said, watching Lauren watch Puck. "Lauren, we need to go."
"Right," she said. "I just need to…"
"Now,” he said with more fire than she'd ever heard in his voice before. "We can talk about the rest later." He'd been watching Noah when he'd said that last.
She'd taken Noah's hand and said firmly, "Fine, we're ready, then." (Even now, she had no idea what had possessed her to do that. It hadn't been like she didn't understand.) Noah squeezed her hand, in total agreement with any insubordination, even though he'd been utterly clueless.
Uncle Daniel had looked at his watch, then out at the sky. "Lauren, now is not the time to explain things." He'd leaned in close to her. Puck leaned in too. Daniel didn't bother to glare; he just shook his head. "Look, it's a lot worse out there than you know."
She'd nodded solemnly. From understated Daniel, that was quite a statement, still… "All the more reason for us to stay together, then." She'd used her best immovable voice. Puck had nodded emphatically, but Daniel hadn't been buying.
"Fine," Daniel had said and rubbed a hand over his forehead in an uncharacteristically verbose gesture. Lauren had suddenly been certain that it must be really, really bad out there if she was getting to him that easily. Daniel's calm was legendary in her family.
"Fine," he'd repeated. "You come with me now, and we'll come back for him after sunrise." He'd looked Puck up and down in open challenge. "If he's still here."
"I won't be. I'll be with Lauren." Puck's voice had been thick with bravado.
Lauren's head was starting to hurt. She pulled Puck away a few feet, just enough to give him the illusion of privacy. She'd started to feel the moon's pull for real, the collar of her shirt tighter, the crowd more unbearable… Puck's hand in hers was grounding and necessary. She was starting to feel like a Regency heroine and that was not acceptable.
"You have to stay here," she'd said with steel in her voice. She utterly failed not to look in his eyes, but she affected indifference to the hurt she'd seen there. Still hard, she'd said, "We'll be back for you in the morning," and then ruined it completely by kissing him.
When she could stand to pull away, she did. "I promise we'll be back." She kissed him again, and he turned it sloppy and wet. "Sunrise," she panted into him when he'd let her get a breath. Uncle Daniel's expression warned of an uncomfortable talk to come, but she hadn't cared. (She still didn't care.)
She took Daniel's offered hand and let him draw her away. "Right here at Sunrise," she repeated. Letting go of Noah's hand had been the hardest thing she'd ever done (until this).
"Sunrise is at 5:33," Daniel had said. "We'll be here by ten to six."
And the crowd had swallowed Noah up behind them.
~~oOo~~
They'd spent the night in a baggage cage, just a few hundred yards away from the overcrowded terminal but so quiet, it was eerie.
Lauren hadn't thought it was going to be strong enough, but Daniel had reassured her that it - like book cages and her - was surprisingly tough.
As usual, he'd been right.
~~oOo~~
She hadn't been able to spot Puck at first.
Masked relief workers moved through the crowd, passing out more pills and juice. Most of them had been coughing too, and there were quite a few passengers they weren't able to rouse. Stretchers moved amongst the restless passengers, taking the unconscious to a triage area on the western side of the terminal. The coughing was a thrumming constant, a solid wall of white noise, like sea lions at the zoo.
It wasn't surprising that she couldn't see him, she'd told herself.
She'd breathed in deeply and hadn't been able to smell him, either. Her nose informed her, in an oddly detached sort of way, that some of the people on the stretchers were dead. She tried again for Puck's scent, and still couldn't find it. That's when her pulse had started to race and her hands had started to shake. Physiological signs of panic, she'd thought distantly.
She wasn't a panicker, damn it.
Uncle Daniel's hand had settled on the small of her back, grounding. She settled her breathing and pushed the panic back.
"Listen," he said, and her body followed his lead automatically. Lauren closed her eyes and shut it all out, just like Daniel had trained her. Slowly, she let the cacophony back in, one piece at a time.
Someone was playing Tequila Sunrise off to her left.
Relief had hit Lauren like a full body slam. She'd sagged back into Uncle Daniel, and he'd stared at her, his expression calculating. She resolved to deal with that later; first, she had to find Puckerman.
She'd cut through the crowd, cowing people with her bulk until she reached their little group and all of a sudden they parted for her, welcoming. Everyone she passed was coughing, and heat radiated off some of the adults – at least they were all still standing.
The music stopped abruptly, but that had been okay, she had Puck's scent by then.
She hadn't tried to learn their names, but still she knew that it was 12-year-old Muriel from Orange County (shamelessly into Justin Bieber) who'd passed her a snickers bar and then another when she saw Lauren split it in half and hand the other piece to Daniel. Lauren took a moment to inhale her share, as did he; they'd been running on fumes even before the added stress of changing.
Muriel's father had pressed a cup of pills and a bottle of water on her then turned to Vivian (a neo-natal nurse and native Chicagoan). Fever sweat surrounded them both. They communicated silently for a moment before Vivian pulled another pill cup out of her pocket for Uncle Daniel, just because he was with Lauren.
Lauren wasn't being polite, but they were nice anyway, looking out for her - happy to have her back. (She still didn't have time to be confused by this.)
Daniel had followed her as she zeroed in on Puck. She hadn't stopped until she'd spotted him, sitting high on the back of a row of chairs, guitar propped on his knee – doubled over in a coughing fit.
She'd been standing squarely in front of him when he got his breath back and looked up.
"You're coughing." Fear had made her tone aggressive.
He'd smiled at her. "You're not."
"I'm not," she agreed, still defensive. Still terrified. "I don't think I'm gonna," she'd admitted.
"Good." He pulled her in close. "You gonna explain that at some point?"
She'd mumbled, "After we get out of here," into his neck, breathing him in. He was looking out at their group.
Quietly, he asked, "We taking them with us?"
"Yeah," she'd heard herself say. "I think we are."
~~oOo~~
Convincing all of them to either come along or leave the group quietly hadn't been easy, but it hadn't exactly been hard, either. In the end, they'd lost only two (six-year-old Sadie and her father, a Clorox executive with a passion for Elvis and entirely too much respect for the rules).
Uncle Daniel was amazingly persuasive, but that hadn't been it, really; he'd had a radio.
They took over some sort of small conference room to talk privately, as a group. Daniel had sat in the back, listening to the arguments for a while: it wasn't that bad; they'd all be released soon; the medications were working; the government had things under control. Their people were largely optimistic - they hadn't lost anyone yet.
They were also all getting sick.
Daniel had waited for a lull then he'd walked up to the front of the room and pulled out a military-looking radio. Together, they'd huddled around it and listened.
Lauren had watched them, stomach growing tighter and tighter, sick on their fear and her own creeping dread.
The airport was in better condition than most places. It had been isolated early (when they thought they could still contain things) and allocated resources. Nothing else would be coming though; there were no new supplies.
The National Guard was gone, dissolved and absorbed into the Army. The Army had their hands full in the urban centers. The death toll there was estimated at 55% and clearly rising. There was no effective treatment. The Army was calling it the Shakes, for the convulsions that set in a few hours before death. A person had two or three days from the onset of coughing to death.
They pills they'd been issued were broad-spectrum antibiotics. There was no evidence they worked against the Shakes, but they'd likely suppress secondary infections and slow the course of the contagion. They were all alive because of that, but there were no more pills, not in O'Hare, and not in Illinois - probably not in the whole US. Maybe they'd made enough of a difference, maybe not.
Uncle Daniel reached up and clicked off the radio. They'd been listening for hours, mesmerized, but the information had stopped being new to them a while ago.
"They think it started in China," he'd said gently. "There's no way to be sure though." He'd grimaced then, before adding, "We lost communication with most of Asia about the time they shut down the skies."
He didn't have to gather their attention, but he'd stood anyway and caught the eyes of the most verbal amongst them. "There are too many people here to sustain. Your group has done better than most, but your resources are almost gone." He swallowed thickly.
"It's time to leave."
They hadn't shifted. They hadn't exchanged glances or murmured or questioned. They'd just nodded.
Lauren released the breath she hadn't been aware of holding. Blood had rushed back into her hand as Noah relaxed his death grip.
"Most people haven't realized how bad things are yet." Daniel's words were met with more nodding. "The airport's been an oasis, but that's going to change very soon."
Into the silence, Vivian had quietly asked, "So… what do we do?" with a tremble in her voice.
Every eye had been on the three of them. She and Puck had stood at Uncle Daniel's side, unified in solid support, however much Daniel didn't really need it any longer.
Daniel hadn't sighed; he was too disciplined for that. Still, Lauren knew that was the moment he'd accepted the group as his responsibility. It had been inevitable – she wasn't leaving them, and he wouldn't have left her - but it hadn't actually happened until that point.
He'd spoken to Vivian directly, not to the group. He sounded calm, like he always did. He sounded calm and like he had a plan. "There are vehicles out there, on the tarmac. They're designed for baggage, but they'll be better than walking, and we need to get some distance before the rioting starts."
We head east, into the countryside. We find supplies and a place to shelter."
There'd been no discussion; the group had simply started to gather up their things.
It wasn't much of a plan, but it was a place to start.
~~oOo~~
Late afternoon had found them in sheltering in a Dominick's Fine Foods warehouse a few miles south of O'Hare. They hadn't made it nearly as far as they'd wanted, and the surrounding area was far too quiet, but they hadn't investigated.
She and Uncle Daniel spent the night in a walk-in freezer. When they'd woken after sunrise, ready to pry the door open with shaking, frozen fingers, Noah had been waiting for them.
He'd been burning up.
~~oOo~~
They'd lost five people overnight.
Lauren wasn't pretending not to know their names anymore: Janice, Sunetta, Rudy, Frank and Vivian.
Noah had been looking for a place to put the bodies when he'd found her and Daniel in the freezer. Fortunately, it had already been light.
"You were going to explain," he'd said, and she had.
He'd taken it surprisingly well.
She supposed lycanthropy wasn't the most alarming thing he'd had to deal with right then. That, and it was a better reason than he'd been able to come up with on his own for why he'd found his girlfriend curled naked around a man she called Uncle.
He'd held her close while she'd warmed up and fed her a huge breakfast. He'd let her listen to the empty static coming through Daniel's radio and explained that even those who'd received pills had started dying. He explained that the Army was dying in droves and that the death rate was indistinguishable from 100%. He'd told her that all of their people had fevers now, even the kids.
Everyone except her and Daniel.
Then Noah had looked out at the group, and surprised her again. "You have to bite us." He'd cupped her face in his hand. "All of us, right now, before we're sicker."
~~oOo~~
Daniel had tried to explain: they had to do this changed, in order for it to take for sure. It was insanely dangerous - if their wolves didn't kill them, the lycanthropy itself probably would.
"Probably is a hell of a lot better than certainly, Mr. Osbourne," Noah had pointed out, in between hacking coughs.
She'd stopped arguing the point a while ago, though she still couldn't stop trembling.
Daniel hadn't had any arguments left either. "Call me Oz," he'd said instead.
~~oOo~~
The day was agonizing.
Five people left when they heard. Lauren was amazed that it hadn't been more. There was just no way to break this kind of idea gently, though they had tried. They hadn't said we're going to maul you and your kids tonight, but don't worry, turning into a monster is your best chance to survive, but they might as well have.
Maybe the fact that the group lost another eight to the Shakes had something to do with it.
Daniel had pushed food on the remaining 23. He wanted their metabolisms high, their systems in the best possible shape to handle what was to come. They voted to lock themselves in – Lauren had been horrified, but Daniel had just nodded.
After that, she'd stopped paying attention; Puckerman had started to shake.
Lauren sat and cradled his head in her lap. She stroked his hair and tried to will the fever away with cool water and sheer Zizes stubbornness. She held him though the coughing fits, easing him back into quieter sleep when they finished with him, pretending he would still wake if she didn't.
When Noah's body grew too weak to manage the hacking, Lauren counted his breaths until she couldn't pretend she was helping anymore.
She felt Daniel's eyes on her and didn't know why his nod should steady her, but it did. She followed Noah's breaths like a meditation, reaching deep down for every candy-assed Zen technique Daniel had ever taught her to commune with her wolf. She chanted, Bite, Don't Kill over and over into Noah's scalp, breathing in the sharp scent of his sweat with every inhale.
The moon crept slowly toward the horizon, omnipresent in its invisibility, impossibly slow. When her voice grew hoarse, she started to pray, silently. Maybe Noah's God would help – plagues were more his kind of thing than any god a wolf would follow.
Daniel came for her at sunset. The moon pounded in her veins, throbbing like a bass drum even though it wouldn't crest the horizon for a bit longer. She pillowed Noah's head on her jacket; her heart bunching up against her ribs and her whole body aching. Noah is strong, she thought at herself. She watched the labored rise and fall of his chest a few more times before she managed to let go and move off with Daniel.
Together they talked to everyone who was still capable. Lauren didn't roll her eyes as each one hugged first her and then Daniel. The contact was important; it offered reassurance and comfort, and – more importantly – sealed each one's scent into their hindbrains.
These people belonged to them, their Pack. They would not kill them.
Desperate to stop the angsty PDAs all around her, Lauren pulled three buckets in front of Daniel and handed him a pair of paint stirring sticks. Settling down next to Noah, she tugged the heat of him close, right up into her lap. She leaned in close and sucked in his scent; it blossomed across her tongue and deep into her lungs. Mine, growled the wolf from just beneath her skin.
After a deep, shuddering breath, she began to sing We Are Family (not actually being as immune to the mood as she'd like). Moonrise was so close, she could feel it stirring the small hairs at the base of her neck. Daniel stared at her for a long moment before taking a ragged breath and picking up the bass line with his improvised sticks.
It's oddly comforting to know he's rattled too.
Daniel moves them on into Werewolves of London - the beat pulsing through her in time with Noah's ragged breathing against her side - before the moon finally shows itself. Lauren's vocal cords cramp and she has to stop singing almost immediately; Daniel manages to continue drumming while she starts to thrash and contort.
Pack, she thinks as hard as she can at the moon, feeling the bitch slide though her veins. PackPackPack, in time to Daniel's drumming, in time to Noah's breath and her own.
Silence falls before the feral oblivion claims her completely, and certainty rushes her in its wake. My Pack. They can do this. Together.
Bring it on, crazy bitch.
~fin~
On to the Coda
~ Complete Fic Index (LJ) ~
The Soundtrack:
- Danke Shoen
- Twist & Shout
- Walking in Memphis
- I Will Survive
- American Pie
- Proud Mary
- Bad Moon Rising
- Tequila Sunrise
- We Are Family
- Werewolves of London
escritoireazul's Prompts: I particularly love Lauren/Puck, characters being werewolves, people finding happiness together even through the horrors of the world, and full moons for atmosphere. Please no character bashing, noncon or dubcon, loads of angst, or m/m slash.
Title is from CCR's Bad Moon Rising.
Author:
rivestra Rating: er… R? (Mature, but not terribly explicit)
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Lauren Zizes/Noah Puckerman
Spoilers: Through the end of Glee Season 2
Warnings: The end of the world and the kinds of things that go with it; 17yo het sexin'
Length: 6,560 words (+ a 550 word Coda)
Disclaimer: Written purely for fun; no profit or harm intended. All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners.
Summary: Things got worse after Nationals.
A/N: Written for Apocalyptahon 2011 (actual prompt in endnotes). I hope it suits, escritoireazul – it sure has been fun ending the world for ya! (Even if Lauren and Puck were not [oh-so predictably!] terribly interested in doing what I said!)
Many, many thanks to my darling betas snarkgoddess, denyce and varkelton - they make everything I write so much stronger (love you guys!).
Read on AO3
Lauren had flown home from nationals early, a few days ahead of the full moon.
Back in April, back when she'd first announced her intention to do this, Puck simply said, "I'll come with you," and he had. They'd taken a cab to La Guardia in the early summer sun, their loss branded across his back but not bowing his shoulders. She'd felt for him, some, and a little for the others, but mostly she'd felt the need to get home.
Puck had curled into the window seat, leaving her the middle and aisle so she had some elbowroom. As Lauren settled into the two seats, Puck glared at the plastic-perfect attendant and her perplexed little frown until the woman went away. Lauren managed to keep her snickering under her breath, even though she was pretty sure it had been her own glare that had driven the bitch off.
They'd both been exhausted; losing made for a long day without the six-hour delay at the gate. They'd drifted, dozing fitfully and playing loser-takes-all poker (and blatantly cheating at that) while their plane sat on the tarmac for another three hours. By the time their plane had started to queue in with the others for takeoff, it was after three am.
Puck woke to watch the city pull away from them, its lights reflected in his eyes. She'd been afraid they wouldn't, but when he turned back toward her, his eyes were still shining. He'd grinned at her until a yawn split through then pulled her in against his side. They were both sound asleep before they reached altitude.
Lauren woke some time later, the plane smoothly cutting through the air around her, the humanity within smothering her senses and making her head a little fuzzy. She'd been drooling on Puck's shoulder, and, when she looked down at the trail of it, it glistened back at her. The left side of her face was awash in moonlight, as was her hand where it sat on Puck's thigh.
She'd pulled carefully back into her own seat, out of the light. (The first thing Uncle Daniel had ever taught her was to always respect the moon because, while it could be an incredible lady, it could also be a crazy little bitch.) Lauren stared at Puck's face, its angles turned to shadows and its planes alight with that soft, waxing glow.
She'd tried to soak up the beauty of him, chiseled in marble before her, but she hadn't been able to shake the moon's creeping, inexorable crawl. She leaned out across his chest and pulled the window blind shut.
He jumped at the snick, waking and reaching for her hand as she'd been pulling it back. She'd let him keep her hand, but pulled his other hand away from her boob – it had landed there innocently enough when he'd jolted awake, but its intentions had not remained pure for long.
Puck had brought his offending hand up into the air between them, open-palmed and harmless, and he said, sleepy and wistful, "What? You're not gonna help me join the mile high club?"
She snorted. "Oh, like you haven't been a card-carrying member for years?"
That had come out a little sharper and a little louder than she'd intended, but Puck had just turned her hand in his, dragged his thumb across her lifeline and said, "Nope." He brought her hand up to his mouth and whispered, "Never even been on a plane before this week," into her palm.
The words tickled their way into her skin, melting her heart a little and setting off nerve bundles like fireworks up and down her arm. He'd kissed her hand then, his mouth warm and smooth. It had set her bones smoldering, turned her muscles to Jell-o and her brain – it must have turned her brain to mush, because she'd turned her head to stare pointedly toward the tiny bathrooms and whispered, "Get us some space, lover boy," into Puck's ear.
He followed her stare and his eyes had narrowed at the cramped stalls. Puck's brain had kicked on though, and no one would ever be able to fault her boy on his plotting abilities. He placed her hand primly on her thigh then rose and headed for the aisle, crowding in close to whisper, "As you wish, Zizes," as he'd passed by.
Three minutes later, she'd joined him in the plane's sole handicapped bathroom. She'd barely been able to turn around in there with him, so she'd shoved him onto the sink. He grabbed her head as he'd slid his ass up onto the tiny counter and brought her in for a searing kiss. It felt real in a way nothing else ever had - not even the rush of the wind and the slide of moonlight through the leaves at 40 miles per hour, though both left her panting and breathless, desperate for more.
Puck pulled back and smacked his head on the too-close mirror behind him. He'd laughed, low and intimate, but he'd looked a little winded too. Lauren had been pleased she was still enough herself to notice that… then the boy had smiled. One hand still on her face, he let the other run down her arm and smiled to light the whole damn plane. Voice rough and breaking, he asked, "We really gonna do this?"
She'd squinted at him a little, trying not to show how much willpower it was taking not to let go and melt into him completely. She had to clear her throat before she demanded, in a decent facsimile of her normal voice, "Do you even have a condom?"
He'd folded then - just folded right into her, pinning her into the wall she'd already been up against - and buried his face in her neck. Laughing loudly and sucking in huge mouthfuls of air, he didn't manage to get out a, "No," until she poked him in the ribs, hard. She'd had to cover his mouth with her hand to quiet him the fuck down.
Lauren had stared at the thin walls. She'd listened carefully but hadn't heard anyone in the hall. She wiggled her hips cautiously and still knocked her knee into the low toilet. Eyeing the doorknob suspiciously, she'd shifted so it was a bit to her left instead of directly behind her. Then she'd propped Puck back against the mirror and glared at him until he quieted enough that she could remove her hand from his mouth. He'd chased it with his own, but she evaded and brought both of her hands to rest on his thighs so she could lean in and loom at him properly.
It hadn't worked. He'd been waging an obviously doomed battle against his laughter, so she let her smile break through (as it had been fighting to do) and leaned in to kiss him again. He sighed into it, letting his head bang again into the mirror and drawing her impossibly closer. It had taken an immeasurable space of time for Lauren to remember that she was on a mission, damn it.
She'd managed to break away (a little) to draw her head down his neck, unable to resist planting kisses along the way. She moved her hands up to his belt buckle and let them rest there, enjoying the sudden shuddering of his breath for a moment before wrestling it open.
Hands in her hair and neck stretched out above her, Puck had gone utterly still. Lauren hadn't.
Instead, she'd gotten his fly down, hooked her thumbs into the waistbands at his hips and hissed, "Up, Puckerman." He'd lifted his ass for her like he was iron to her magnet.
In one smooth motion she pulled his pants and underwear down to his knees and slid down to her own. (No one would ever be more impressed than Lauren that it had worked smoothly, but she would never admit that.) She'd laughed at Noah's sharp intake of breath and tugged his hips forward on the ledge. He moaned, and she'd looked up at him, had caught him looking down, hungry and feral and something had clicked over in her - just snicked into place - and all of Lauren's bravado turned solid and real.
She grinned at him then, knowing she was showing too many teeth and too much wild in her eyes, but unable to bring herself to care. She watched the boy watch her for a long moment, and then she'd breathed in deep, following his intoxicating scent down until her nose nestled against the wiry hairs of his crotch. It had been the easiest thing in the world to extend her tongue and taste.
Puck arched toward her like he'd been hit by lightening. His hands shot out to brace himself with the walls, and his head crashed back, banging into the mirror again (she'd worried that the boy was going to give himself a concussion… but not much). Emboldened, Lauren had tossed her hair back and looked up at him through her eyelashes as she took him in. The pose echoed cheesy porn, but Lauren didn't care – at least not after she'd caught the dazed, open-mouthed look on Noah's face.
She'd wanted to kiss him again, right then. She'd wanted to bite her way down his neck and mark it up – property of Lauren Zizes writ large and bold over his skin – but to do that, she would have to give up the slide of him across her tongue and the musk of him in her nose and throat. She would have to let go of his attention – so complete she felt it like a second skin – if she let him slip out of her mouth (Lauren still didn't think she'd ever – Ever! Why did some girls claim to hate this? – want to do that before he'd finished), so she'd sucked in a breath and slid down further instead.
That hadn't worked out quite like she'd hoped. She'd held Puck in place while she coughed, and her mildest glare had stopped him from trying to put space between them (as if that had even been possible, there in the close confines of the bathroom). He'd stroked her hair while she recovered. Once she had, once she'd taken him back in and started to find a rhythm, Puck's hands had tightened spasmodically, fingers clutching almost painfully at her scalp. Lauren didn't mind (not at all!); the poor boy clearly needed something to hang on to.
He'd been too polite to thrust, and that had maybe driven her a bit mad. She'd growled at him when she'd realized he was holding back – an inhuman rumble that had bubbled right out of her core – and had nipped his thigh with no thought to the sensitive nature of human flesh.
Then a lot had seemed to happen all at once.
Noah shouted (yelped really, at least in her memory) and spurted, thick and rich, all over her face and chest. It had startled her, and she'd slipped back, the toilet roaring to life as her elbow knocked the flush knob and her head smacked into the door with a loud thump. The door had smacked her back, jolting rudely against Lauren's skull and seeming to shout, "Get the hell out of there!" at them loudly.
This, of course, had resulted in the both of them dissolving into giggles. Once Lauren had checked to make sure she hadn't made Puck bleed (thank whatever gods looked out for horny teenagers!), they'd untangled themselves enough to get the door open… and were greeted by a pair of unreasonably grumpy flight attendants who'd banished them to separate seats.
Twenty minutes later, the pilot announced that they'd been diverted to O'Hare. He blamed "minor mechanical difficulties," but Lauren hadn't believed him and neither had many of the other passengers around her. The flight attendants whispered nervously to each other and shut down the internet and in-flight phones. They swooped in like angry hawks when anyone dared even to check the time on their cell phone.
Lauren was sure she could have sneaked a message through, but she didn't have anyone to call; her parents were in Costa Rica, forest running.
Puck rejoined her as they began their second hour of circling for landing. He'd glanced at the flight attendant, obviously prepared to turn on the intimidation, but she just nodded, obviously exhausted and not about to get in his way. He silently slid in close to Lauren and pulled the window shade back up. Together they watched the moonlight sweep and glide across the dozen plus planes circling in pattern with them.
Hardly anyone had watched Vin Diesel on the big screen, but the plane stayed quiet anyway. People coughed nervously and muttered lowly to each other, watching the sky or the official faces of the plane for news. Lauren buried her face in Puck's shoulder, breathing him in instead of the fear stink indelibly attached to the recycled air.
The moon lingered in the sky after dawn. It hadn't dropped behind the horizon until sometime after nine am, leaving Lauren disoriented above it, truly uncomfortable in the air for the first time in her life. Her skin had crawled with the altitude, breath becoming uneven and feet itching for the ground. She almost wished she'd gone to Costa Rica after all, even though her parents were unbelievable pains in her ass. Even though she wouldn't have traded this time with Noah for anything.
He chose that moment to squeeze her hand. She picked a fight with him, debating the relative merits of WWF vs. NFL players as ninja-spies. It had settled them both, even if it did little for the nerves of the passengers around them.
She and the WWF had won, eventually (their undeniable flare for the dramatic would be quite useful, after all), and if their debate had grown loud as they'd come in for a short, bumpy landing, no one complained. (Well, out loud, anyway; looking back Lauren is pretty sure some of them were complaining under their breath, into folded hands or rosary beads.
Fuck 'em all.)
The airport had been in chaos.
People had crowded into every available space, angry and exhausted, sweating their fear into the insufficiently conditioned air. The stink was making people much less sensitive than Lauren cough, and the staccato barking of it hit her fear centers like gunfire. People sat and stood and slept everywhere. Shoving was the only way to move through the throng, and every time someone shoved at Noah, Lauren couldn't breathe. (That was new and worrisome, but she'd shoved it off to analyze later; it didn't seem so important anymore.)
The restaurants hadn't opened even though it was nearly lunchtime. They'd discovered, after waiting in a line from hell, that Security wouldn't let them out of the airport; they were both minors and this wasn't their destination, blah-blah, liability, yada-yada. They seemed to have a different excuse for everyone.
The pay phones didn't work. The internet was down. The TVs wouldn't turn on. No one could get a cell signal.
There'd been no information to be had on connecting flights or accommodations or on anything at all. Lauren's ability to be polite fled, and she'd screamed at them over their nonsense. Puck had dragged her off by her collar.
Together, they'd set off the sprinkler system in the security lounge (and the rest of the terminal, but that hadn't been their intent). Her rage had melted along with the already-sagging-but-once-perfectly-coifed hair that surrounded them.
Puck was smart that way.
About two, the airline had started passing out sandwiches. There weren't enough to go around, and it was the first food (other than tiny packets of goldfish) they'd been offered since boarding in New York. Some people hadn't roused to wait in the huge lines, but she and Puck had. They shared a squished mass of cheese and white bread, made barely palatable by the stash of pepper Puck had swiped from a poorly secured condiment stand.
About four, some smarty-pants started shouting that no planes had taken off for a very long time and that security wasn't actually letting anyone out at all. They'd been right, and the wet, miserable passengers had roused themselves. Rumors, already quick to fly, took off like windswept wildfire, random and nonsensical, spreading so thickly over the map that there was no pattern to see: aliens had landed; China had invaded; the Swine Flu was back; we shouldn't have eaten the chicken; there was a suitcase nuke or a dirty bomb in the airport…
Puck stole them some sodas and a box of granola bars. They'd intended the bars as a stockpile, but soon caught each other distributing them to kids on the sly. Puck broke into a rousing rendition of Danke Shoen as a distraction while she went back to loot the rest. Lauren pocketed a couple then gave the rest away while he segued into Twist and Shout.
The crowd Puck had accumulated didn't want to let him stop. She planted herself in front, between him and the most touchy-feely of his pre-teen admirers (she looked to giving him hell about that later, but in the moment, she'd simply been trying to keep her growls sub-audible). The moon had risen just after seven, its pull near-tangible - even though she couldn't see it, even thought it hadn't been quite full yet, not until the next night. Lauren had stayed where she was, well away from the windows.
When Puck's voice had started to break on the highs, she'd rolled her eyes and joined him on his makeshift chair-stage, slipping into the chorus of Walking in Memphis. He'd moved behind her, leaned in long against her and guzzled the coke one of his admirers had slipped him.
About nine, Lauren had seen the guys in hazmat suits for herself over the heads of their audience. Maybe, she'd thought, the coughing wasn't about allergens and wet, wretched, stinky humanity (though hers certainly was). Maybe the number of people sleeping through it all actually was as unusual as it felt to her. She pointed the yellow-suited figures out to Puck.
He'd grimaced, then egged her into a full-on-diva version of I Will Survive.
The airline had managed more sandwiches about ten. Lauren had no idea if there were enough to go around this time or if their fans were just that generous, but they each got a Swiss and turkey, an apple and a couple bottles of Sprite. They'd eaten surrounded by grateful parents and rowdy children, the mood of their little group decidedly lighter than the moods of the surrounding passengers.
Someone produced a guitar after dinner. Puck had groaned quietly into her shoulder; it sent shivers down her spine, but all she'd said was, "Celebrity's a bitch, Puckerman," and he'd pulled himself up. She tucked their extra Sprites away for later and followed him.
Puck played on into the night. Sometimes she'd sung along quietly - lullabies to settle the children, classic rock to distract the adults - as masked medical staff began to make the rounds in the pre-dawn hours.
Puck knew a surprising amount of Creedence.
Morning had brought juice and pills and the smallest bit of news to make getting them down more palatable: there'd been some kind of bacterial outbreak, but they didn't need to worry, the antibiotics would help. They could go home after the Department of Health had cleared the area (Lauren mentioned only to Puck that the earliest suits she'd seen had been branded CDC). No one seemed to know where it had started, or why they, specifically, had been quarantined. Symptoms included cough and fever.
Duh.
About one that afternoon, when their promised breakfast still hadn't shown, Lauren sniffed out an unmolested storage closet. Hot dog buns and relish might make for an unusual breakfast, but at least their group ate. All the exits Lauren passed were tightly chained shut. Where she could see out the windows, armed National Guardsmen glared back at her.
A bunch of the kids were shaping up into pretty good singers. (Noah was a great teacher. That wasn't false pride, because she didn't even like kids – not even ones who stole food for her.)
The moon would pull itself over the horizon right before sunset. Its pulse thrummed in Lauren's veins, inexorable. Lauren had looked at Noah, completely absorbed in strumming American Pie while a trio of eight-year-olds sang along. She'd looked down at the toddler asleep half in her lap, and out across the crowd of similar tableaus... and realized she was going to have to make a run for it soon, regardless of the odds.
She'd stroked the kid's hair (because it had seemed like the thing to do), leaned into Noah's side a bit harder, and given herself until six or the dinner rush, whichever came first
About five-thirty, Uncle Daniel had appeared in the crowd.
Puck had just strummed the opening chords for Proud Mary, but Lauren started to sing Bad Moon Rising instead, just as soon as she'd found the breath for it. Puck followed her lead.
Daniel had grinned at them, but it hadn't really reached his eyes.
There'd been no arguing with Daniel.
He'd planted himself in front of Puck and offered his hand. Puck had shaken it, but he'd looked questioningly at Lauren while he'd done it and had offered a distracted, "Nice to meet you, Daniel."
"Let's go with 'Mr. Osbourne' for now," he'd said, watching Lauren watch Puck. "Lauren, we need to go."
"Right," she said. "I just need to…"
"Now,” he said with more fire than she'd ever heard in his voice before. "We can talk about the rest later." He'd been watching Noah when he'd said that last.
She'd taken Noah's hand and said firmly, "Fine, we're ready, then." (Even now, she had no idea what had possessed her to do that. It hadn't been like she didn't understand.) Noah squeezed her hand, in total agreement with any insubordination, even though he'd been utterly clueless.
Uncle Daniel had looked at his watch, then out at the sky. "Lauren, now is not the time to explain things." He'd leaned in close to her. Puck leaned in too. Daniel didn't bother to glare; he just shook his head. "Look, it's a lot worse out there than you know."
She'd nodded solemnly. From understated Daniel, that was quite a statement, still… "All the more reason for us to stay together, then." She'd used her best immovable voice. Puck had nodded emphatically, but Daniel hadn't been buying.
"Fine," Daniel had said and rubbed a hand over his forehead in an uncharacteristically verbose gesture. Lauren had suddenly been certain that it must be really, really bad out there if she was getting to him that easily. Daniel's calm was legendary in her family.
"Fine," he'd repeated. "You come with me now, and we'll come back for him after sunrise." He'd looked Puck up and down in open challenge. "If he's still here."
"I won't be. I'll be with Lauren." Puck's voice had been thick with bravado.
Lauren's head was starting to hurt. She pulled Puck away a few feet, just enough to give him the illusion of privacy. She'd started to feel the moon's pull for real, the collar of her shirt tighter, the crowd more unbearable… Puck's hand in hers was grounding and necessary. She was starting to feel like a Regency heroine and that was not acceptable.
"You have to stay here," she'd said with steel in her voice. She utterly failed not to look in his eyes, but she affected indifference to the hurt she'd seen there. Still hard, she'd said, "We'll be back for you in the morning," and then ruined it completely by kissing him.
When she could stand to pull away, she did. "I promise we'll be back." She kissed him again, and he turned it sloppy and wet. "Sunrise," she panted into him when he'd let her get a breath. Uncle Daniel's expression warned of an uncomfortable talk to come, but she hadn't cared. (She still didn't care.)
She took Daniel's offered hand and let him draw her away. "Right here at Sunrise," she repeated. Letting go of Noah's hand had been the hardest thing she'd ever done (until this).
"Sunrise is at 5:33," Daniel had said. "We'll be here by ten to six."
And the crowd had swallowed Noah up behind them.
They'd spent the night in a baggage cage, just a few hundred yards away from the overcrowded terminal but so quiet, it was eerie.
Lauren hadn't thought it was going to be strong enough, but Daniel had reassured her that it - like book cages and her - was surprisingly tough.
As usual, he'd been right.
She hadn't been able to spot Puck at first.
Masked relief workers moved through the crowd, passing out more pills and juice. Most of them had been coughing too, and there were quite a few passengers they weren't able to rouse. Stretchers moved amongst the restless passengers, taking the unconscious to a triage area on the western side of the terminal. The coughing was a thrumming constant, a solid wall of white noise, like sea lions at the zoo.
It wasn't surprising that she couldn't see him, she'd told herself.
She'd breathed in deeply and hadn't been able to smell him, either. Her nose informed her, in an oddly detached sort of way, that some of the people on the stretchers were dead. She tried again for Puck's scent, and still couldn't find it. That's when her pulse had started to race and her hands had started to shake. Physiological signs of panic, she'd thought distantly.
She wasn't a panicker, damn it.
Uncle Daniel's hand had settled on the small of her back, grounding. She settled her breathing and pushed the panic back.
"Listen," he said, and her body followed his lead automatically. Lauren closed her eyes and shut it all out, just like Daniel had trained her. Slowly, she let the cacophony back in, one piece at a time.
Someone was playing Tequila Sunrise off to her left.
Relief had hit Lauren like a full body slam. She'd sagged back into Uncle Daniel, and he'd stared at her, his expression calculating. She resolved to deal with that later; first, she had to find Puckerman.
She'd cut through the crowd, cowing people with her bulk until she reached their little group and all of a sudden they parted for her, welcoming. Everyone she passed was coughing, and heat radiated off some of the adults – at least they were all still standing.
The music stopped abruptly, but that had been okay, she had Puck's scent by then.
She hadn't tried to learn their names, but still she knew that it was 12-year-old Muriel from Orange County (shamelessly into Justin Bieber) who'd passed her a snickers bar and then another when she saw Lauren split it in half and hand the other piece to Daniel. Lauren took a moment to inhale her share, as did he; they'd been running on fumes even before the added stress of changing.
Muriel's father had pressed a cup of pills and a bottle of water on her then turned to Vivian (a neo-natal nurse and native Chicagoan). Fever sweat surrounded them both. They communicated silently for a moment before Vivian pulled another pill cup out of her pocket for Uncle Daniel, just because he was with Lauren.
Lauren wasn't being polite, but they were nice anyway, looking out for her - happy to have her back. (She still didn't have time to be confused by this.)
Daniel had followed her as she zeroed in on Puck. She hadn't stopped until she'd spotted him, sitting high on the back of a row of chairs, guitar propped on his knee – doubled over in a coughing fit.
She'd been standing squarely in front of him when he got his breath back and looked up.
"You're coughing." Fear had made her tone aggressive.
He'd smiled at her. "You're not."
"I'm not," she agreed, still defensive. Still terrified. "I don't think I'm gonna," she'd admitted.
"Good." He pulled her in close. "You gonna explain that at some point?"
She'd mumbled, "After we get out of here," into his neck, breathing him in. He was looking out at their group.
Quietly, he asked, "We taking them with us?"
"Yeah," she'd heard herself say. "I think we are."
Convincing all of them to either come along or leave the group quietly hadn't been easy, but it hadn't exactly been hard, either. In the end, they'd lost only two (six-year-old Sadie and her father, a Clorox executive with a passion for Elvis and entirely too much respect for the rules).
Uncle Daniel was amazingly persuasive, but that hadn't been it, really; he'd had a radio.
They took over some sort of small conference room to talk privately, as a group. Daniel had sat in the back, listening to the arguments for a while: it wasn't that bad; they'd all be released soon; the medications were working; the government had things under control. Their people were largely optimistic - they hadn't lost anyone yet.
They were also all getting sick.
Daniel had waited for a lull then he'd walked up to the front of the room and pulled out a military-looking radio. Together, they'd huddled around it and listened.
Lauren had watched them, stomach growing tighter and tighter, sick on their fear and her own creeping dread.
The airport was in better condition than most places. It had been isolated early (when they thought they could still contain things) and allocated resources. Nothing else would be coming though; there were no new supplies.
The National Guard was gone, dissolved and absorbed into the Army. The Army had their hands full in the urban centers. The death toll there was estimated at 55% and clearly rising. There was no effective treatment. The Army was calling it the Shakes, for the convulsions that set in a few hours before death. A person had two or three days from the onset of coughing to death.
They pills they'd been issued were broad-spectrum antibiotics. There was no evidence they worked against the Shakes, but they'd likely suppress secondary infections and slow the course of the contagion. They were all alive because of that, but there were no more pills, not in O'Hare, and not in Illinois - probably not in the whole US. Maybe they'd made enough of a difference, maybe not.
Uncle Daniel reached up and clicked off the radio. They'd been listening for hours, mesmerized, but the information had stopped being new to them a while ago.
"They think it started in China," he'd said gently. "There's no way to be sure though." He'd grimaced then, before adding, "We lost communication with most of Asia about the time they shut down the skies."
He didn't have to gather their attention, but he'd stood anyway and caught the eyes of the most verbal amongst them. "There are too many people here to sustain. Your group has done better than most, but your resources are almost gone." He swallowed thickly.
"It's time to leave."
They hadn't shifted. They hadn't exchanged glances or murmured or questioned. They'd just nodded.
Lauren released the breath she hadn't been aware of holding. Blood had rushed back into her hand as Noah relaxed his death grip.
"Most people haven't realized how bad things are yet." Daniel's words were met with more nodding. "The airport's been an oasis, but that's going to change very soon."
Into the silence, Vivian had quietly asked, "So… what do we do?" with a tremble in her voice.
Every eye had been on the three of them. She and Puck had stood at Uncle Daniel's side, unified in solid support, however much Daniel didn't really need it any longer.
Daniel hadn't sighed; he was too disciplined for that. Still, Lauren knew that was the moment he'd accepted the group as his responsibility. It had been inevitable – she wasn't leaving them, and he wouldn't have left her - but it hadn't actually happened until that point.
He'd spoken to Vivian directly, not to the group. He sounded calm, like he always did. He sounded calm and like he had a plan. "There are vehicles out there, on the tarmac. They're designed for baggage, but they'll be better than walking, and we need to get some distance before the rioting starts."
We head east, into the countryside. We find supplies and a place to shelter."
There'd been no discussion; the group had simply started to gather up their things.
It wasn't much of a plan, but it was a place to start.
Late afternoon had found them in sheltering in a Dominick's Fine Foods warehouse a few miles south of O'Hare. They hadn't made it nearly as far as they'd wanted, and the surrounding area was far too quiet, but they hadn't investigated.
She and Uncle Daniel spent the night in a walk-in freezer. When they'd woken after sunrise, ready to pry the door open with shaking, frozen fingers, Noah had been waiting for them.
He'd been burning up.
They'd lost five people overnight.
Lauren wasn't pretending not to know their names anymore: Janice, Sunetta, Rudy, Frank and Vivian.
Noah had been looking for a place to put the bodies when he'd found her and Daniel in the freezer. Fortunately, it had already been light.
"You were going to explain," he'd said, and she had.
He'd taken it surprisingly well.
She supposed lycanthropy wasn't the most alarming thing he'd had to deal with right then. That, and it was a better reason than he'd been able to come up with on his own for why he'd found his girlfriend curled naked around a man she called Uncle.
He'd held her close while she'd warmed up and fed her a huge breakfast. He'd let her listen to the empty static coming through Daniel's radio and explained that even those who'd received pills had started dying. He explained that the Army was dying in droves and that the death rate was indistinguishable from 100%. He'd told her that all of their people had fevers now, even the kids.
Everyone except her and Daniel.
Then Noah had looked out at the group, and surprised her again. "You have to bite us." He'd cupped her face in his hand. "All of us, right now, before we're sicker."
Daniel had tried to explain: they had to do this changed, in order for it to take for sure. It was insanely dangerous - if their wolves didn't kill them, the lycanthropy itself probably would.
"Probably is a hell of a lot better than certainly, Mr. Osbourne," Noah had pointed out, in between hacking coughs.
She'd stopped arguing the point a while ago, though she still couldn't stop trembling.
Daniel hadn't had any arguments left either. "Call me Oz," he'd said instead.
The day was agonizing.
Five people left when they heard. Lauren was amazed that it hadn't been more. There was just no way to break this kind of idea gently, though they had tried. They hadn't said we're going to maul you and your kids tonight, but don't worry, turning into a monster is your best chance to survive, but they might as well have.
Maybe the fact that the group lost another eight to the Shakes had something to do with it.
Daniel had pushed food on the remaining 23. He wanted their metabolisms high, their systems in the best possible shape to handle what was to come. They voted to lock themselves in – Lauren had been horrified, but Daniel had just nodded.
After that, she'd stopped paying attention; Puckerman had started to shake.
Lauren sat and cradled his head in her lap. She stroked his hair and tried to will the fever away with cool water and sheer Zizes stubbornness. She held him though the coughing fits, easing him back into quieter sleep when they finished with him, pretending he would still wake if she didn't.
When Noah's body grew too weak to manage the hacking, Lauren counted his breaths until she couldn't pretend she was helping anymore.
She felt Daniel's eyes on her and didn't know why his nod should steady her, but it did. She followed Noah's breaths like a meditation, reaching deep down for every candy-assed Zen technique Daniel had ever taught her to commune with her wolf. She chanted, Bite, Don't Kill over and over into Noah's scalp, breathing in the sharp scent of his sweat with every inhale.
The moon crept slowly toward the horizon, omnipresent in its invisibility, impossibly slow. When her voice grew hoarse, she started to pray, silently. Maybe Noah's God would help – plagues were more his kind of thing than any god a wolf would follow.
Daniel came for her at sunset. The moon pounded in her veins, throbbing like a bass drum even though it wouldn't crest the horizon for a bit longer. She pillowed Noah's head on her jacket; her heart bunching up against her ribs and her whole body aching. Noah is strong, she thought at herself. She watched the labored rise and fall of his chest a few more times before she managed to let go and move off with Daniel.
Together they talked to everyone who was still capable. Lauren didn't roll her eyes as each one hugged first her and then Daniel. The contact was important; it offered reassurance and comfort, and – more importantly – sealed each one's scent into their hindbrains.
These people belonged to them, their Pack. They would not kill them.
Desperate to stop the angsty PDAs all around her, Lauren pulled three buckets in front of Daniel and handed him a pair of paint stirring sticks. Settling down next to Noah, she tugged the heat of him close, right up into her lap. She leaned in close and sucked in his scent; it blossomed across her tongue and deep into her lungs. Mine, growled the wolf from just beneath her skin.
After a deep, shuddering breath, she began to sing We Are Family (not actually being as immune to the mood as she'd like). Moonrise was so close, she could feel it stirring the small hairs at the base of her neck. Daniel stared at her for a long moment before taking a ragged breath and picking up the bass line with his improvised sticks.
It's oddly comforting to know he's rattled too.
Daniel moves them on into Werewolves of London - the beat pulsing through her in time with Noah's ragged breathing against her side - before the moon finally shows itself. Lauren's vocal cords cramp and she has to stop singing almost immediately; Daniel manages to continue drumming while she starts to thrash and contort.
Pack, she thinks as hard as she can at the moon, feeling the bitch slide though her veins. PackPackPack, in time to Daniel's drumming, in time to Noah's breath and her own.
Silence falls before the feral oblivion claims her completely, and certainty rushes her in its wake. My Pack. They can do this. Together.
Bring it on, crazy bitch.
~fin~
On to the Coda
~ Complete Fic Index (LJ) ~
The Soundtrack:
- Danke Shoen
- Twist & Shout
- Walking in Memphis
- I Will Survive
- American Pie
- Proud Mary
- Bad Moon Rising
- Tequila Sunrise
- We Are Family
- Werewolves of London
escritoireazul's Prompts: I particularly love Lauren/Puck, characters being werewolves, people finding happiness together even through the horrors of the world, and full moons for atmosphere. Please no character bashing, noncon or dubcon, loads of angst, or m/m slash.
Title is from CCR's Bad Moon Rising.
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And the ending? Totally rocks now. I love the last couple of lines.
Also? Your icon is totally awesome! \o/
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(And I am totally, inappropriately in love with my icon. It makes me more sad that so few people will get to see it then that same fact makes me about my story - which is kinda ridiculous, given how hard I worked on the story! The icon took, like, 10 minutes!)
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