**

The emptiness of Ryan's parents' house is deep and unnerving, the house stuffy and closed up, smelling the way it did when they bought it and it was new, like wood floors and lemon cleaner. The beds are still mussed, crusted-over dinner pans are still soaking in the sink, and the sports section of the paper is still next to his dad's easy chair. Like Vesuvius hit, and everything is perfectly preserved the way it was the night before the attacks, when his parents must have gone up to bed not knowing anything was on the brink of happening. At first, Ryan's relieved that they don't find their bodies, but as he enters each empty room, one by one, the loneliness of being left behind is almost as bad as if they did.

After they go over the whole first floor, Gil and Oscar volunteer to search the basement while Ryan, Karen and Jim look upstairs. It's creepy, the silence of the place, the only sound the occasional creaking of the floor under their feet. Everyone's on edge, expecting to find something terrible behind every door, even though the quiet and the musty air make it pretty clear no one's been in here since his parents left. Jim's knuckles are white on the baseball bat he's holding, and Karen's jumping at every little sound, which is a little nerve-wracking since she's the one Dwight entrusted with the rifle. Ryan's leading the way, and having the paranoia twins behind him is not helping.

"Okay, seriously," he says under his breath. "You guys need to chill."

"Right, yeah," Karen says, keeping her voice down but sounding annoyed. "Whereas you're cool as a cucumber, clearly."

"Shut up," Ryan says, and swings open the door to his old bedroom. There's no one there either. Jim lets out a long sigh and slumps against the wall as Ryan moves forward into the room.

His little league trophies are still on top of his bookshelf, blankets on the bed undisturbed. It's weirder than if the looters had been there, having it all preserved and everyday like this. His parents aren't that far out of Scranton proper, and even though it's only been a few weeks, it feels like a really long time since things were normal. The sun is starting to set out the window, past the trees.

Behind him, Jim starts clicking the light switch up and down, which is the new compulsive habit he's picked up. Ryan's not sure if he honestly thinks that maybe this light will be the one where the electricity works, or if it's just a nervous tic, but it's driving him up a wall a little bit, that clicking in every room they walk into.

"Could you not do that just for once?" Karen says before Ryan can.

Jim makes a face at her but he stops. Ryan and Karen exchange a look.

Ryan goes to look out the window, but all he can see is the familiar backyard stretching out in front of him, maple trees on the horizon. Nothing's moving outside, like Scranton's a ghost town.

"Nothing here," Ryan says, looking around the room one more time. "That's the whole second floor."

Jim adjusts his grip on the baseball bat nervously. "Where do you think they are?"

Ryan would rather not think about that, and it's taking all his energy to mentally avoid the question. He shrugs, looking at the Phillies poster on his wall. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Karen glaring at Jim like he's an idiot for saying that.

"Oscar and Gil are probably done searching the basement," Ryan says. "Let's go downstairs."

It's almost dark by the time they've conferred on what they should do, so they end up bunking down in Ryan's parents' living room, blankets from upstairs wrapped around them. It's kind of stupid to all sleep on the floor when there are perfectly good beds empty upstairs, but.

**

Ryan wakes up early, aching all over from sleeping on the floor and from the times he fell the day before. Everyone else is still asleep, including Jim, whose version of taking last watch seems to mean sleeping sitting up, snoring softly. Ryan lies still, blinking and watching the sky outside turn from navy blue to gray. He thinks maybe they didn't think the plan through before they left Dwight's farm, but he hadn't really expected all their families to be gone. Dead, maybe. Gone, no. How are they ever going to find them again? He pulls his cell phone out of his hoodie pocket and holds it up so he can see it, the dim light of the display still glowing softly after all this time. He only has one bar of battery life left, but there hasn't been any cell reception since two days after everything went to hell anyway, so it doesn't really matter. And it's stupid, but he feels vaguely panicky about his phone dying, like maybe the cell towers will suddenly power back up again, and if his phone is dead, he won't even know. He'll miss it, the window of opportunity to call his mom or whatever.

Of course, if the cell towers power back up, everything else probably will too, so it's not like he won't be able to charge his phone. It's idiotic to feel like your cell phone dying is a symbol of civilization as we know it ending, especially after all the times before that he let his phone die on purpose so Kelly couldn't get through. But that's still how it feels, like his cell phone is the last pointless link to how things used to be. He shoves the useless phone back in his pocket and lies there looking at the pale plaster of the ceiling, wondering if he can fall back asleep.

He doesn't. And the floor's hurting his back, so he finally pushes himself up, grabs his toothbrush and a half-full bottle of water, and goes to brush his teeth outside. The plumbing isn't working, here or anywhere. When Ryan had flipped on the tap in the kitchen, some brown water had spurted out, then stopped.

He stands in his parents' backyard, brushing his teeth with one hand, the other shoved into the front pocket of his hoodie, looking up at the tree tops and shivering a little bit in the April pre-dawn. He starts when he hears the door behind him open, but it's just Jim.

"Morning," Jim says.

Ryan nods, his mouth full of toothpaste. He spits onto the ground and goes to grab the water bottle, pouring it carefully into his mouth without putting his toothpaste-y mouth on the rim.

Jim sits down on the back steps, folding his arms across his chest to keep warm. "So," he says.

Ryan wipes his mouth on his sleeve. "Karen and them still asleep?"

"Yeah," Jim says. The sun isn't up yet, so it's understandable. Jim's looking somewhere over Ryan's head, but when Ryan turns to look, there's nothing much there. Tree branches. A sparrow. "So what now?" Jim says.

Ryan watches the sparrow fly across the yard to land on the rain gutter of the neighbor's house. "I was just thinking we hadn't thought it through," Ryan says. "No families. What's Plan B?"

Jim shrugs. "We didn't have one."

"Yeah," Ryan says. He puts both hands in his hoodie pocket and hunches his shoulders. He's been constantly cold for three weeks, which isn't much fun. He never really appreciated central heating the way he apparently should have.

"News, I guess," Jim says. "You think the paper's delivering?"

Ryan gives a small amused puff of air, which, even so, is a little more than the joke deserves.

"Maybe we can find somebody who knows what's going on," Jim says. He starts rubbing at his eye, picking the sleep out of it.

"Yeah," Ryan says. "Those guys yesterday seemed really friendly." He hadn't ever been shot at before, in his past life as a Scranton paper salesman. He could've done without.

Jim shrugs. "What else are we going to do?"

Ryan wishes he knew. He fiddles with the bristles of his toothbrush inside his hoodie pocket, rubbing his thumb back and forth over them. "Well, if you were someone who knew what was going on, or who was in charge, how would you tell people?"

Jim thinks for a few seconds, eyes going up, looking over Ryan's shoulder. "City hall?" he says, finally.

That's actually not a bad idea, and everyone else seems to agree when they go back inside. Oscar, sitting up in a nest of blankets with a crease mark on his cheek, says, "Well, it's worth a shot." Karen nods, yawning, her hair going every which way.

The car attracts too much attention, so they decide to leave it in Ryan's parents' driveway and walk into town. The neighborhood's quiet -- maybe everyone did what they were supposed to and left town when the bombing started like everyone at Dwight's farm did -- so there's a pretty good chance it'll still be there when they get back. Gil locks the car carefully and says, "If we get separated...."

"Yeah," Oscar says. Gil touches his back.

"We'll meet here," Karen says, adjusting the rifle on her shoulder. Jim touches her arm, and all of a sudden Ryan feels like a fifth wheel. Which is the dumbest thing he's ever heard. He's holding a baseball bat so he can club anyone who comes after them, because it's fucking World War III, and he's worried about being a fifth wheel.

Whatever. He hefts the baseball bat over his shoulder, and they start walking down the edges of the suburban street in a nervous clump, looking over their shoulders all the way. Nothing's moving but them.

**

They'd skirted Scranton proper the day before, taking roundabout routes, trying to avoid the main roads. They do more or less the same today; between that and how much longer it takes to walk, it's mid-afternoon before they come up on city hall. Or what would've been city hall, if it weren't a big pile of rubble. God, who would bother to bomb Scranton City Hall?

"Well, crap," Jim says, but in this weary, unsurprised tone, like he's having a bad day and on top of everything his pen just ran out of ink. Ryan and Oscar exchange looks. Karen blows her bangs out of her eyes.

They pick half-heartedly through the ruins, but there isn't much there. Walls only half standing, paper skittering across the burnt out surface. The sky's dark gray, so it barely feels like daylight, and Ryan hopes the heavy cloud cover isn't, like, fallout blowing in. He sees Gil glancing apprehensively upwards too, but he doesn't want to say the words out loud. The last they heard, no cities near Scranton had gotten nuked, but... well, that was just the last they heard. He's betting L.A. wasn't the only place that got it, in the end.

There's really no point in thinking about it, but it's hard not to. That goes for a lot of things, these days. A loose piece of paper blows up against his leg, but when he pulls it off, it's just a Wendy's hamburger wrapper. He... could really go for Wendy's right now, actually. It's funny the things that end up sucking about the complete collapse of societal infrastructure.

Ryan starts flipping over rocks with his foot, trying to see if anything interesting's underneath. But it's mostly just bugs. He picks up every little piece of paper to see if there's a map or a piece of news, but there's nothing even as interesting as a Wendy's wrapper. This picking through the rubble leads the five of them in all different directions, fanning out naturally, so after fifteen minutes or so, Ryan's pretty far away from the others. He's just leaned over to pick up an old piece of newspaper with a headline about March Madness on it when he hears the first shot.

His head immediately goes up, but he can't find the source of the shooting. Fuck, which way should he run?

"Run!" Karen yells, from across the square. "Scatter!" She's got the rifle down and is crouching behind a little ridge of wall, apparently unsure where to point the thing.

Yeah, thanks for the helpful information, Karen. But Ryan does what she says anyway, takes off running for the nearest cover, towards a burnt out old convenience store. At least if he gets out of range, maybe Karen won't shoot him by accident. He rounds the corner and just sees a flash of a bearded face and a rifle butt before his head explodes into pain and everything goes dark.

**

Ryan doesn't know how long he was unconscious. It might've only been a few minutes, but it was long enough that when he wakes up, he's been dragged into the shelter of a doorway, and his backpack, baseball bat, and shoes are missing. Great. He should probably just be glad to be alive, but he really liked those sneakers. And the supplies. Goddammit.

He tentatively reaches a hand up to the side of his face and pain radiates out so intensely from the enormous lump he touches that he feels like he's going to throw up. His hand comes back bright and sticky, and when he sits up gingerly, Jesus Christ, he's got a headache.

"Ryan," someone hisses from nearby. He looks around warily. Jim's across the street, sitting in a doorwell with his back against a wall, clutching at his leg like something's wrong. Ryan squints but can't quite see.

He figures he better go over there, but first he looks around. Whoever attacked them seems to be gone, now. What the hell? Maybe they'd just gotten spooked, and shot at them out of panic. Or something. They couldn't have been that vicious, since Ryan and Jim are still alive, but it's almost worse if they weren't real enemies. Like apparently your Scranton neighbors will go feral and shoot at you if conditions are right.

"Hang on," Ryan says. "I'm coming." He slowly gets to his feet, leaning heavily against the brick wall next to him. He feels dizzy and light-headed, his vision almost blacking out, but it steadies. He concentrates on breathing deeply and evenly and finally gets it together to the point where he can jog across the street in his stocking feet to crouch in the doorway next to Jim.

Now that he's close, he can see that Jim's pale and sweating, clenching his teeth, and when he looks down at Jim's leg, just above the knee where Jim's holding onto it, he can see blood bubbling out through Jim's fingers.

"Oh fuck," Ryan says. He stares at the blood, which is darker than he would expect. Oh shit. Oh shit. Why didn't Terry come with them? She's a nurse. Shit. They didn't think this through and Jim got shot, fuck fuck fuck.

"Yeah," Jim says. "Um, actually, it doesn't hurt as much as you'd think." He's talking in a matter-of-fact, self-deprecating tone, but his eyes are kind of glassy and his whole body is shaking, and he's so pale Ryan suddenly wonders what on earth he's going to do if Jim dies.

"Yeah, I bet that's not a good sign," Ryan says. Why didn't he take a first aid class recently? God, he has no useful skills and his half-finished MBA did not prepare him for this kind of scenario.

Well, okay. He looks around the street, but can't see Karen or Gil or Oscar anywhere, and he feels really exposed, crouching here in full view of any threat that might come along. So okay. Fuck. He's got to do something.

The doorway they're crouched in is to a Borders, and even though the door's been broken into, weirdly, the merchandise looks largely intact. Guess looters don't make books a high priority.

"Okay," Ryan says, starting to pull off his hoodie and the t-shirt he's wearing underneath. Once he's got them both off, he fumbles for the knife Dwight gave him, in its creepy little leather sheath, and starts to cut the t-shirt into big strips. The April air is cold on his chest, and it's starting to smell like rain might be blowing up. Shit.

He's trying to make the t-shirt into, like, a giant gauze bandage, something they can use to put pressure on the bullet wound, and there's so much blood he's just trying to cut as fast as he can. The knife's awkward to cut the fabric with, though, and strips of it come off unevenly, trailing thread. Jim's watching him with eyes that are starting to go vacant. Fuck. "Jim!" he says.

Jim blinks and seems to get more alert. "What?" he says.

"Talk to me," Ryan says. "What year is it?"

"Two thousand seven," Jim says.

Okay, well, good. Ryan goes back to concentrating on cutting up the t-shirt. "Who's the president?" he asks absently.

"How should I know?" Jim says. That's true, that was a bad question. "Kim Jong-Il."

"That's not funny," Ryan says. "Here, okay, move your hands real fast."

Jim takes his hands away from his leg slowly, the blood sticky between his fingers. Ryan takes his knife and carefully cuts Jim's jeans, making the rip in them bigger so he can see the actual wound. It's a jagged hole in Jim's leg, seeping blood. Fuuuuck. But it could be a lot worse -- it's actually not bleeding as much as he thought it was, so it must've missed the major arteries and veins and crap. There's an exit wound on the back of Jim's leg, too, so the bullet went right through. On the one hand, holy God, there's a hole all the way through Jim's leg, but on the other hand, at least Ryan doesn't have to worry about somehow getting a bullet out. Jesus.

"Okay," Ryan says, and puts a quarter of the folded up t-shirt strips over the bullet wound on the top of Jim's leg. He puts another quarter of them on the exit wound on the bottom of Jim's leg, so the bandage is resting on the ground, with Jim's leg on top of it. "Put some pressure on that, I guess. Press your leg down so you're putting pressure on both sides at once. We have to stop the bleeding." The shirt strips are still warm from Ryan's body, which is weird, and when Jim puts his hands back down on the t-shirt and presses, he catches some of Ryan's fingers under his.

Ryan extricates himself, feeling dizzy all over again looking at the blood, and tries to take deep breaths. Okay. Okay. Maybe it'll be okay.

"Keep holding that down," Ryan says. "I'll tie it up in a minute. But first we have to get out of the open." He wipes his bloody hands on his jeans and pulls his hoodie back over his head, shivering a bit from having his chest bare for so long. "Jim, keep talking," he says, pulling his arms through.

"What happened to your head?" Jim says. That's not really what Ryan meant by "Keep talking," but okay.

"Uh, somebody hit me, I guess," Ryan says. God, it really hurts, too, but with Jim's blood all over everywhere, a little bump on the head doesn't seem that important.

"I bet you have a concussion," Jim says. "Were you knocked unconscious?"

"That," Ryan says, pushing himself up and squinting into the Borders interior, wondering if they could at least camp out there until the bleeding stops, "is neither here nor there."

"Seriously, that's not good," Jim says. Ryan looks at him, barely restraining himself from rolling his eyes. No kidding, Halpert. Jim shakes his head a little, and instead says, "Did you see where Karen went?"

Ryan closes his eyes briefly. "No, man," he says. God, he hopes they're all okay. "They'll probably just meet us back at the car."

"Right," Jim says in a subdued voice. Ryan steps over him to push the door to the bookstore, and it swings open easily. Someone's shot the lock off, it looks like, but the interior of the store seems pretty normal, not a lot of broken glass, just dark and empty, books still on their shelves. Back when there was electricity, you didn't think much about how a lot of these stores are giant warehouses without windows, but man, it's dark in there now. Once you get past the front windows, you might as well be walking into a cave.

He probably shouldn't move Jim -- it'll probably make the bleeding worse -- but he thinks it's probably riskier to just sit there out on the street where anybody could take another shot at them. And at least the dark cavern of the Borders will keep people from being able to see them.

"Okay," Ryan says. "I'm going to check inside this Borders. And then -- do you think if it's clear, you can make it inside?"

Jim shrugs. "Sure," he says. Ryan doesn't really believe that, but what choice does he really have?

"Okay," Ryan says. He looks around for his backpack before he remembers that it got fucking stolen. God. "You don't by any chance have the flashlight Dwight gave you, do you?" he asks Jim. Dwight gave them all crucial supplies before they left. It's funny how being a freak in the ordinary world apparently makes you really, really useful in the middle of a war zone.

"In my bag," Jim says, and Ryan suddenly realizes that Jim's leaning back against his messenger bag. Oh, thank God.

Jim sits up to let him get at it, and Ryan pulls out a flashlight, noticing that Jim also has, among other things, a water bottle, some canned food, extra shirts they could use for bandages. Okay. Okay, maybe they will survive.

"Okay," Ryan says, grabbing the bottle of water and one of the cans. Canned peaches. Okay. He finds Jim's Leatherman in the bag too, and flips out the can opener attachment to pry off the lid of the peaches.

"What's your favorite color?" he says, trying to keep Jim conscious. Jim doesn't say anything. "Jim!" he says, worrying he's finally passed out, but when he looks up Jim seems okay, just watching him as he opens the can.

"That's a lame question," Jim says. Ryan can see blood starting to soak through to the top layer of t-shirt, seeping dark. Swell. "Blue, I guess."

"Okay," Ryan says. He feels weird about leaving Jim, even just to go inside the store, but there's not much he can do about it. He sets the bottle of water and the can of peaches down next to Jim. "You've lost a lot of blood, so you need to eat, okay?" he says. "Eat all those peaches and drink all that water. And drink the syrup on the peaches too. It's got...." He was going to say nutrients, but that's not exactly true. "Well, sugar," he says.

Jim shakily moves his left hand off the bandage and picks up the bottle of water. Ryan watches him take a sip. "All right, be right back," Ryan finally says as Jim lowers the water bottle back down, and he heads into the Borders.

The coffee bar got pretty well looted, all the food and stuff gone, and it looks like the employee break room got hit, too. From what Ryan can see in the beam of the flashlight, anyway. But the books are all still on the shelves, and there are comfortable arm chairs around, and the whole place feels like wandering into civilization again, a world where people read romance novels and biographies of John Quincy Adams and don't shoot at you on the street. Ryan finds a dark corner with a sofa in it, and thinks it's pretty well as good as they're going to get. It's hidden, it's dark. No one cares about books. Since there's no way to block off all the windows, people's apathy is what's going to guard them here.

By the time Ryan gets back, Jim's halfway through the can of peaches, lifting a slippery section carefully to his mouth with long fingers. He still looks terrible, but Ryan thinks he's not quite as pale, that his eyes aren't quite as glazed. He smiles weakly when he sees Ryan, his right hand still pressing down hard on his thigh.

"It looks okay in there," Ryan says. "Better than a lot of places, anyway."

"Good, okay," Jim says, through a mouthful of peach.

Ryan crouches down next to him and moves Jim's hand off the bandage. Jim's skin is cold and clammy, and Ryan tries desperately to remember what you're supposed to do if someone goes into shock. He can't.

Luckily, the bleeding seems to have slowed a lot -- there isn't much more blood soaked through to the top now than there was when Ryan had left.

"Good," Ryan says. "The bleeding's stopping."

Jim's stopped eating and is watching Ryan carefully. "Keep eating those," Ryan says. "I'm going to try to tie this up."

"Okay," Jim says. He reaches obediently for another slice of peach, his hand almost too big to fit into the can. Ryan can see that he's still shaking all over, his hands and his leg shivering under Ryan's hand. God, that fucking bullet must've hurt. Jesus.

Ryan reaches for the leftover t-shirt strips he made before, folding one up and putting it on top of the soaked through bandage. He vaguely remembers something from first aid training about not changing the bandage when it might be stuck to the wound, something about not risking re-opening it. You're just supposed to keep bandaging on top of it until you can get to the hospital.

The hospital. Yeah. Well.

Jim winces a little bit as Ryan presses down. "Sorry," Ryan says. Jim's sweating again, and as he lifts the bottle of water to get a drink, he's so shaky he almost spills it all over himself. "Careful," Ryan says. Jim shakes his head a little, his face strained. "I'll try to -- sorry," Ryan says. "This is probably going to hurt no matter what. But I'll try not to press too hard."

He starts to wrap strips of the cloth around Jim's skinny thigh to hold the bandages down on top and bottom, wrapping layers around and around. It's tough to do, because it needs to be tight enough to put pressure on the wound, but not so tight that it makes Jim pass out or anything. It's stressful, and he has to keep glancing back at Jim for signs of pain. Jim's clenching his jaw so he doesn't make noise, and by the time Ryan finally has it bound up, he and Jim are both white and sweating. Ryan's hands ache from trying to pull it tight, but not too tight, and God, his head's still killing him.

He sits back on his heels and tries to breathe deeply. There's blood all over his hands, in a puddle under Jim's leg, on both their clothes, all over the place. That smell of iron, and God, how are they going to get back to the car to meet the others with Jim's leg shot? Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

He's vaguely aware that he's getting dizzy thinking about it, and puts his hand up gingerly to feel his head, and God, he could swear the lump is bigger than before. Like he has half a tennis ball sprouting out of his temple.

Jim's still watching him, concerned like he's not the one whose blood is all over the street. "Seriously," Jim says. "You probably have a concussion. You shouldn't be running around like this."

"You're right," Ryan says. "I should definitely go lie down while you bleed to death."

Jim shrugs. "I'm not going to die."

"Promise?" Ryan says weakly. He meant it like a joke, but it didn't quite come out that way. One thing, at least, Jim's almost finished with the water and peaches, and he's getting some color back in his face. Ryan watches as Jim lifts the can to his mouth to drink the syrup the peaches came in. His Adam's apple works as he swallows, and Ryan wonders how on earth he's going to get a big guy like Jim all the way to the back of the Borders.

A drop of water hits Ryan square on the top of his head. Fuck, it's finally going to rain like the clouds have been threatening. And not only does getting wet suck when you don't have a change of clothes, but he doesn't trust rain anymore -- you don't know what might be in it.

"Okay," Ryan says, watching drops start to speckle the remains of the sidewalk. "We've got to get inside." He picks up Jim's messenger bag and slings it across his body. He has to shorten the strap an embarrassing amount -- fucking tall Halpert.

"Right," Jim says, looking dubious.

"So, um, try not to move that leg much," Ryan says. "You don't want it to start bleeding again. So I guess I'm going to sort of half drag you. Try to, I don't know, crab-crawl with your hands and other leg. Okay? And, um, you're going to have to hold the flashlight. If you can."

"It's okay," Jim says. "It's okay, I can do it." Ryan passes him the flashlight, trying hard to keep the shaking of his hands minimal.

It's a horrible, awkward process. Ryan grabs Jim under the arms and slides him backwards while Jim scrabbles with his other limbs, his injured leg awkwardly sticking straight out, the flashlight beam going every which way. At least they're inside before it really starts pouring rain, but that's almost the only thing that goes right. At one stage, Ryan accidentally bumps Jim's bad leg into a bookshelf and Jim lets out the most agonized half-moan half-scream that Ryan's ever heard.

"Fuck, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Ryan says. God, he's starting to feel frantic and upset. And he doesn't even really like Jim, is the stupid thing about how worried he is. Jim's just his lame coworker who used to spend his days annoying the whole office by getting Dwight all wound up. Ryan didn't think that someday they'd be stuck together in a Mad Max, post-apocalyptic nightmare Scranton, bleeding out and concussed. That he'd ever be this scared of Jim dying. God, where the fuck did Karen and Oscar and Gil go?

It must take them at least an hour to cross the store like that, staggering and dragging. They have to sit down and rest three times, whenever Ryan starts feeling like he's going to pass out. But finally Ryan helps Jim up onto that couch he found, the one in the back, settling him against the cushions. Jim props his leg up and closes his eyes, breathing deeply through his nose.

"You okay?" Ryan says. He's taken the flashlight back, and is using it to examine the bandages on Jim's leg. They're not soaked through yet, so that's something.

"Mmmhmm," Jim says, his eyes still closed. Ryan should make him open his eyes, stop him from passing out, but he feels a little bit too much like he's going to pass out himself. He slumps down, sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, his shoulders nudging Jim's arm. When he flips the flashlight off, the room is almost perfectly dark, just the looming of shelves between them and the dim light from the windows, far away.

He lets himself close his own eyes for a long moment, trying to concentrate on not throwing up, on not thinking about the pounding in his head.

"Don't go to sleep," Jim says. "You have a concussion."

"Fuck off," Ryan says mildly, but he opens his eyes. He reaches for the messenger bag, feeling for more cans. "You need to eat more."

Jim groans. "I'm not hungry, man. You eat something."

Ryan flips on the flashlight to find the can opener, but then mostly opens the can in the dark. Doesn't want to waste the battery, doesn't want anybody to see the light. In the dark, everything else is magnified -- the heat of Jim's body behind him, the sound of the can opener, Jim's breathing. The smell of books, of paper and printing, a clean, school kind of smell. A Dunder Mifflin kind of smell, actually. He never thought that memory would ever feel comforting, but it turns out atomic bombs kind of recalibrate what you find comforting and what you don't.

He gets the can open and passes it back to Jim. It's pineapple -- too much fruit, but eating baked beans with their hands is more of an operation than Ryan really feels up for.

They sit there in silence for awhile, listening to the rain outside, the sound of Jim chewing. Ryan's usually okay with silence, but this is just giving him time to think, nothing distracting him from the pain in his head, his missing supplies. Ryan wiggles his toes inside his socks and wonders where he's going to get new shoes. How they're going to travel. Fuck. Fuuuuckity fuck fuck. He's trying really hard not to have a panic attack over it, because he's got to take care of Jim, and if the others meet back at the car and he and Jim aren't there, maybe they'll leave them, and, oh God. They're going to die out here, him and Jim Halpert, and no one will ever know what happened to them.

Jim's hand comes down onto the back of Ryan's neck, and Ryan almost jumps a foot.

"Sorry," Jim says, into the darkness, but he keeps his hand there, this giant warm hand right on the base of Ryan's neck, fingers stretching out along where Ryan's neck turns into his shoulders, rubbing gently like he's trying to get the stress out of Ryan's muscles. Sort of petting him like Ryan's a dog he's trying to calm down. It's pretty fucking gay, to be perfectly honest, but, well. It's a stressful situation, is all. And Ryan's so on the verge of really freaking the fuck out that -- oh, he doesn't know, it's hard to describe. But it's like Jim's hand is full of calm, or sanity, or something. He doesn't want him to take it away. Jim just holds it there, steady, and Ryan focuses on breathing and not losing it, and it takes a long time, getting it together.

It's embarrassing that Jim can probably feel how he's shaking all over. God. It's just the concussion. Anyone would be shaking. Ryan leans back into Jim's hand a little bit and lets him pet him, and thinks about how fucked they both are, what a miracle it'll be if they survive. Jim's fingers keep moving, gentle on Ryan's neck.

"We'll be okay," Jim says, after a long time of sitting like that in the dark. Outside, it sounds like the rain has stopped. The air blowing in from the windows is wet and smells like spring. Spring and ash, which is a weird mixture.

Ryan closes his eyes again and breathes. "Yeah," he says, and starts to push himself up. Jim's hand pulls away reluctantly as Ryan separates them. "Did you finish that pineapple?"

"Yes, Nana," Jim says.

Ryan ignores him. "You need more food. And water. Can I borrow your shoes to go scavenge for some?"

Jim almost snorts. "I don't think they'll fit, man."

Ryan rolls his eyes, not that Jim can see him in the dark. "There's broken glass and nails and shit all over the place out there. Your clown shoes are better than nothing."

There's a long pause, so long that Ryan finally flips the flashlight on, pointed at Jim's face, the light like a blow after all that darkness. Jim winces, blinking in the brightness, his face all screwed up. "Jeez, Ryan!"

"Sorry," Ryan says, and points it away from him. "I thought maybe you'd finally passed out."

"No," Jim says. Ryan can just barely see him in the diffuse light from the pointed-away flashlight, and Jim's face is hard to read, the lines of it sort of tight. "Um," Jim says. "Not to point out the obvious, but what if you don't come back?"

God, Ryan doesn't want to have this discussion. "I will," he says.

"What if you don't?"

Ryan pushes his hand up through his hair, forgetting for a second about the lump. His fingers graze it and he flinches. Jesus God. Jim's watching him with his eyes bright, staring at Ryan's temple like he's saying, see?

"You lost a lot of blood," Ryan says. His voice comes out a little more gravelly than he was expecting, and he clears his throat. "If you don't eat more, you might go into shock or pass out or something overnight. And then -- well."

Jim's right hand is on his thigh, Ryan notices, sort of tracing around the edges of the bandage, pressing intermittently at the sides like maybe that helps distract from the pain. He can see Jim weighing the risks, Ryan alone with Jim dead, Jim alone with Ryan dead.

"Fuck," Jim says very quietly.

"Yeah," Ryan says.

Jim shakes his head, back and forth, very slowly. "All right," he says finally, and shrugs. "Take the shoes."

Ryan lets out a breath. "Thanks, man." He goes around to Jim's feet to unlace his sneakers. They're enormous, tied in double knots, and it takes him a little bit to get them off. He gets self-conscious, thinking Jim's watching him fumble with the laces, but when he glances up, Jim's eyes are closed and his lips are moving a little bit. Maybe they're both on the verge of freaking out here.

They really are like clown shoes when Ryan puts them on. He ties them as tight as he can, but he's still clomping around like a little kid in his dad's slippers. Jim's opened his eyes and is trying not to smirk.

"Shut up," Ryan says, and puts his knife back on his belt. So creepy, that sheath, but handy. He checks that he has everything else he might need. His cell phone, useless but still not dead, chilling in his pocket. He leaves Jim the flashlight -- he'll probably need it more, here in the cave -- but takes Jim's messenger bag, emptied out so he'll have something to carry food in.

"So," Jim says, as Ryan pats his pockets, a final check. "Um. See you soon. Right?"

"Yeah," Ryan says. "You will." He slings the messenger bag over his shoulder and clomps off towards the door of the bookstore, trying to make as little noise as possible and failing.

**

He feels ridiculous, slinking along the wet streets all hunched over. He only sees one other person while he's out, and she panics when she sees him, goes scuttling off around a corner. It's just as well, since she saved Ryan the trouble of doing the same thing. And scuttling is so undignified.

He doesn't want to go far, afraid that if he does he might get too dizzy to make it back, so his looting opportunities are more limited than sometimes. But he finds a 7-11 four blocks away that actually has some stuff left in it, so that's not bad. Granted, it's not good stuff -- it's mostly things other people didn't want. A couple of battered cans of Spaghetti-o's, three 20-oz bottles of ginger ale. The Coke's all gone from the fridge, but ginger ale, nobody takes. Better yet, he finds a half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol that he figures he can pour on Jim's leg. Ryan loads up his bag with what he can, ends with it bouncing swollen against his back, cans hitting him in the kidneys as he walks.

He goes around a different side of the block on his way back, in case there's anything there he didn't see. But most of the stores are blown out, or just offices. He figures there isn't much he'd want at an accountant's. There's a corpse in the middle of the street, though, a man about Ryan's size, recently dead.

He hates that he thinks this way now, he really does. But the guy has sneakers on, and Jim's shoes are really not cutting it for Ryan. He moves toward the body warily -- sometimes it's hard to tell when people aren't quite dead. And you don't really want to approach a body if you're not sure how it died, especially with that whole smallpox thing they kept hearing about. But Ryan can see the blood from a bullet hole spreading out over this guy's chest, so that's probably all right. Bullet holes aren't catching, last he checked.

It's a middle-aged guy, gray in his beard. He looks like he's probably somebody's dad. Jesus.

Ryan shakes his head and kneels down to take the shoes as quickly as he can. He has to disconnect himself from his body a little bit as he does it, though. He hums an REM song under his breath and tries to name all the teachers he ever had in his head, starting with kindergarten. Miss Maureen, Ms. Guthrie, Mrs. Britt.

He's got the shoes off by the time he hits 8th grade, and he immediately takes them around the corner to put them on. He doesn't want to be able to see the body while he does. The guy's ankles were cold under his hands.

The shoes do fit a lot better, and once they're on he ties Jim's laces together and slings the shoes around the strap of the messenger bag, like he's going to the gym after work. Doing that seems so far away now that it's like somebody else's memory.

**

When Ryan gets back to the Borders around nightfall, everything looks pretty much the same from the outside, which he hopes means that nothing terrible has happened to Jim while he's been gone. He's also pleased to see that Jim's not at all visible from the street -- doubly pleased when he gets halfway through the store and realizes that Jim's got the flashlight on, reading a paperback. Ender's Game, Ryan notes when he's close enough to see. His new shoes make a lot less noise than Jim's did, so Jim doesn't hear him until Ryan's almost right up to him.

Jim noticeably starts when Ryan's shoes squeak against the linoleum, but when his head goes up and he sees it's Ryan, he immediately relaxes, letting out a long breath. He closes his eyes, like the waiting's been a strain.

"Good book?" Ryan says, his voice dry.

Jim looks a little chastened. "Yeah," he says. "I know, I know, I'm wasting the battery."

Ryan wasn't going to say anything about that, but yeah, he is. "I was going to say you weren't supposed to get up. You probably started bleeding again."

"I was careful," Jim says, and gestures to the science fiction shelves, which are the closest to them. "It was just right there."

"Still," Ryan says, and takes the flashlight out of Jim's hand to inspect the bandage. The blood from before has dried, stiff and dark, and there's not any more added to it. Well, that's good, anyway.

"It feels better," Jim says. Ryan gives him a don't-lie-to-me look, but doesn't say anything, just hands the flashlight back to him and starts unloading cans from the bag.

Jim looks down at Ryan's feet. "You got new shoes," he says. "Where'd you find them?"

Ryan puts the cans of Spaghetti-o's in a row, lining them up more carefully than he needs to, the ginger ale behind them. He doesn't really want to answer Jim's question, so.

"Oh," Jim says, after a long pause. God, whatever, Ryan can't deal with him. He feels a little sick. Jim just sits there watching him until it starts to make Ryan uncomfortable.

"Stop," Ryan mutters. The last thing in the bag is the rubbing alcohol, and he pulls it out, stows the bag. "Here, let me see your leg."

Jim rolls his head around on his neck. "Oh God, please don't do that."

"Don't be a pussy," Ryan says. "It'll just sting a little." He makes Jim point the flashlight at the bandage, and starts feeling at the edges. He's pretty sure the bandage is still too stuck to the clot to really disturb, so he ends up just pouring the alcohol liberally over the outside of the bandage.

Jim, whose muscles were so tense waiting for Ryan to pour it that they felt solid, actually screams when the alcohol soaks down through, making this horrible sound like it's killing him.

"Sorry!" Ryan says. Oh God, Jim was loud. He looks around wildly, hoping nobody heard.

Jim's swearing under his breath, sweat standing out on his forehead. "Fuck," Jim says through gritted teeth. "Oh my God, holy fuck." He's rocking back and forth, rubbing at the skin around the bandage again.

"Sorry," Ryan says again, still worried someone heard and is going to come after them. "You don't want it to get infected."

"God, I think infected would hurt less," Jim mutters. He seems to be finally getting it together, his face less pinched, but apparently is trying to distract from the pain by sounding angry. "That's great. And now I smell like a wino."

"You kind of look like one, too," Ryan says. Jim's wearing a ball cap, has two days worth of stubble, and there's blood all over him.

Jim rolls his eyes, finally letting go of his leg and wiping some of the sweat off his face. "Here," he says, apparently wanting something else to think about. "Let me see your head."

"I'm fine," Ryan says. He hasn't felt like he needs to throw up for at least twenty minutes, which is some definite progress.

Jim points the flashlight at him. "Come on," he says. "Crouch down."

Ryan just looks at him.

"Come on," Jim says.

Ryan rolls his eyes a little bit, but finally crouches so his face is level with Jim's.

"Closer," Jim says. "I can't see."

Jesus. Ryan moves in closer, until their faces are so close it's practically like they're about to kiss. Luckily the flashlight's so bright in his eyes he can barely see. He stares vaguely forward, trying not to think about Jim's face right there. Clinical, like he's at the doctor's.

Jim puts two fingers along Ryan's jaw, turning Ryan's head so he can see the lump. Jim's fingers are warm, and Ryan hadn't thought about it before, how intimate touching someone's face is. It's weird.

Jim sucks in a sympathetic breath when he sees the lump in all its glory. Oh great, it's that bad? Jim carefully runs one finger very lightly around its edges, but even that hurts. Ryan tries his best not to wince, but Jim's watching his expression carefully.

"Sorry," Jim says. Ryan shrugs a little. "Okay," Jim says. "For a concussion you, like, check someone's pupils, right?"

"I don't know," Ryan says. "I guess." But he lets Jim turn his face back and shine the flashlight right in his eyes. After a long moment, Ryan says, "What are you looking for?"

"I don't know," Jim says doubtfully. "I think... I don't know, they look okay to me."

"Then get that light out of my eyes," Ryan says. When Jim does, he slumps back down to where he'd been sitting before, his back against the couch, and starts to open one of the cans of Spaghetti-o's.

Jim groans.

"Shut up," Ryan says. "You need to eat." He wrenches the can open and hands it to Jim, along with one of the plastic spoons he found in the 7-11.

Jim looks at it. "Oh, cold Spaghetti-o's," he says. "My favorite."

What a baby. "Sorry," Ryan says, opening a can for himself. "Did you want me to cut the crusts off for you?"

Jim's hand floats down in front of Ryan's face, middle finger extended. Ryan lets out an amused breath through his nose despite himself.

**

There's another couch halfway across the store, and Ryan would sleep on it, but doesn't want to be so far away. Whether not wanting to be far away is for his benefit or Jim's, he couldn't say. Finally, after some discussion, Ryan ends up pushing it over next to Jim's couch, his muscles straining while Jim holds the flashlight. He finally gets it to within a couple of feet of where Jim's lying, and figures that's close enough. If something awful happens during the night, at least they'll be together.

They bunk down, each wrapped in one of Dwight's lightweight silver space blankets, Ryan curled up so his legs barely fit on the short couch, Jim with his giraffe legs sticking off the end of his.

"You know I'm going to have to wake you up every two hours, right?" Jim says, his voice thick with sleep. "My college roommate played lacrosse, I know the concussion drill."

"I don't have a concussion," Ryan's pretty sure he says then, but he's almost asleep so it's hard to tell.

"I'm setting my watch," Jim says, and Ryan hears the little beeps of him doing so. He wonders vaguely how long it'll be until all their watches finally die. He falls asleep wondering it.

**

Ryan wakes up, groggy and disoriented, when a warm hand settles gently on the uninjured part of his forehead. His immediate reaction to someone touching him is flight-or-flight, and before he's consciously thinking about it, his right hand grabs the wrist as hard as he can, while his left hand scrabbles for his knife. I'll kill the fucker, Ryan thinks, like a crazy person, before Jim's voice comes out of the darkness and whispers, "Hey. Hey. It's just me."

Oh God. Crap. Ryan stops reaching for the knife, glad for once that he couldn't get to it fast, and lets go of Jim's wrist. He can barely breathe, and his heart's pounding. Jeez.

"Sorry," Jim says. "It's just me. Do you know where you are?" He's still got his hand on Ryan's forehead, his thumb stroking back and forth soothingly. Ryan doesn't know when Halpert got so touchy, but when he's all sleepy like this, he's okay with it. It feels like his mom's hand, checking him for a fever.

He closes his eyes for a second to try to slow his heart back down, to calm down. He focuses on the movement of Jim's thumb, soft against his skin. "Borders," he says.

"Good," Jim says. "Who am I?"

"Jim fucking Halpert," Ryan says. Jim laughs and moves his hand. For a second, Ryan feels it as a loss, but then he realizes Jim's just shifted to run one finger over the lines of Ryan's face, tracing how much swelling there is. Ryan can feel that it's getting a lot worse since he's been lying down -- he can barely open his left eye.

Jim's finger traces lightly over Ryan's forehead, down his nose, over his cheekbone. It's the kind of thing Kelly used to do in bed, actually, trace Ryan's face and kiss his shoulder, and without his meaning to, the memory makes Ryan shiver.

Jim stops his finger where it's feeling out the swelling around Ryan's eye. "Sorry, does that hurt?"

Ryan swallows. "Not yet," he says, trying to shake off the memory of Kelly's body, of being in his own apartment, safe and sound.

"Okay," Jim says, but he stops and takes his hand away. Ryan's face feels cold without it.

"Careful with that leg," Ryan says, as Jim hops the two steps back to his own couch.

"I am," Jim says, and then it takes a few minutes for Ryan to fall back asleep. He keeps thinking about the light touch of Jim's finger over his face, about Kelly. He wonders what she's doing right now, back at the farm, and wishes he'd stayed there. He wishes a lot of things.

**

It's a bad night. In the early stages of it, Ryan's dreams are awful. He's dead and cold and someone's taking off his shoes, or he's gotten shot in the leg and is bleeding out, like his subconscious has decided that a review of recent trauma is in order. Jim wakes him up every two hours, and Ryan just hopes that he's not making any frightened noises, not moaning in his sleep. Ryan doesn't try to knife Jim again, though, so at least that's something.

But later in the night, Ryan's dreams shift and he dreams about his mother, about Kelly, about warm hands in the dark. The last time Jim wakes him up, he actually leans into Jim's hand, almost nuzzling it, and shit, that's embarrassing. He hopes they're both so half-asleep they won't remember it in the morning. But Ryan remembers it, at least, though they never talk about it, even later.

Anyway, it's a bad night. Finally when Ryan wakes up, there's gray daylight seeping in the distant windows, so he can see his surroundings dimly through the one eye he can manage to open. Morning. Thank God. He's not rested, but he's glad the unsettling night's over. His left eye is swollen shut, crusted and disgusting when he runs his hand over it. Great.

Jim's still asleep, his face quiet in repose, his chest gently rising and falling. One of his hands is dangling off the couch, and Ryan looks at it, remembers it settling heavily on his head. He wonders if Jim will wake him up like that the next night too.

Jim needs to shave, needs to wash the blood off himself. He has a little smear of it on his cheekbone, and he looks like death. Ryan imagines he looks roughly the same; he runs his hand over his chin experimentally, feels the itchy scrape of stubble. The right side of his face feels normal, but when his hand touches the left, he can feel the swelling even way down his cheek. No wonder he can't open his eye. Fantastic.

He's still looking at Jim in a vague way and prodding at the edges of the swelling when Jim's eyes blink open. Ryan jerks his head away so Jim doesn't catch him looking at him, which... well, it's a weird thing to do, and Ryan doesn't want to think about it much more than that.

"You look terrible," Jim says, his voice low and rough from sleep.

"Good morning to you, too," Ryan says.

Jim ignores his tone. "Your head must be killing you," he says.

It is, but it's not like they have aspirin or anything -- morphine, codeine, God, anything --, so what's the point of talking about it? Anyway, Jim looks pretty pinched and white from pain himself.

"How's the leg?" Ryan asks.

Jim half shrugs. "Feels like someone took a shot at it," he says.

Ryan sits up and Jesus, his head hurts more upright. For a second he seriously feels like the pain's gonna make him throw up.

Jim's eyes have widened a little bit. "You okay, man?"

For a second, Ryan's concentrating too hard on not barfing to answer. But his body adjusts to sitting up eventually, and the pain goes back to a semi-manageable throb. "Yeah," Ryan says. He puts his elbows on his knees and tries to think. How are they going to travel? Fuck. Fuck. Apparently he's almost as bad as Jim, if just sitting up makes him want to puke.

Jim reaches down to grab his ball cap and pulls it on while he's still lying down. His leg's propped up on the end of the loveseat, which is probably good for it. Elevation and all that. "So," Jim says, his eyes now hidden by the brim. "We've got to get back to the car."

Ryan slides off the couch to sit cross-legged by the pile of supplies, putting him right next to Jim's head. "Yeah," he says, rummaging for their map of Scranton. "Somehow."

"I can walk," Jim says.

Ryan throws him a look, pulling the map out from under Jim's extra shirts.

"Okay, hop," Jim says. He reaches out a finger and lays it gently on Ryan's swollen cheekbone. For a second the touch makes Ryan feel like crying, like all the stuff he purposefully isn't feeling is about to come bubbling up. His missing parents, how he and Jim are probably going to die. Jesus. His cheek feels hot and swollen, the skin pulled too tight over the swelling.

"Are you going to be able to make it?" Jim asks, his voice low and concerned.

Ryan shrugs and moves his head away from Jim's hand before he loses it altogether. "Yeah," he says.

Jim looks doubtful, but Ryan gets the map unfolded and holds it between them, figuring business-like is the way to go. "We've got to figure out a route," he says, and he finds city hall, putting his finger on it. "We're here," he says, and then puts his other index finger on his parent's house, up in Jessup. "And we've got to get here," he says.

He and Jim stare at the space in between Ryan's fingers.

"Before they decide we aren't coming and leave without us," Jim says.

Ryan nods. "And avoiding highways," he says, thinking about the tanks they'd seen on their way off Dwight's farm. Jim nods, giving a barely perceptible shudder. They -- well, they hadn't really looking like American tanks. But it's hard to say, these days, what anything is.

They spend the next hour bent over the map in the dim light, arguing over their options. Ryan thinks they should go as directly as possible, because of Jim's leg -- adding extra distance seems stupid to him -- but Jim insists he'll be fine walking and they should go around the most dangerous areas. Head straight towards Lake Scranton and then skirt the city up towards Dunmore, walking in places that are more out of the way. He says going straight won't be faster if they end up dead, and in the end he argues Ryan down. Whatever. It's probably a bad decision, but there's not really a good decision to choose, so.

After an incredibly disgusting breakfast of cold baked beans and applesauce, they pack up their stuff and get ready to go. Ryan insists on pouring more rubbing alcohol over Jim's leg -- Jim shakes and gasps, but doesn't scream this time --, and then he rebinds the bandage, tighter this time. Jim keeps up a constant stream of swearing under his breath, but when Ryan stops pulling it as tight, Jim says, "I'm fine, I'm fine, don't ease up." God, it sucks, though, hurting someone like that. But once he's done Jim says it's easier to stand on, so maybe it's worth it.

Once they have everything packed up, Ryan wears the messenger bag slung across his body, and Jim puts his arm over Ryan's shoulders, so Ryan's his human crutch. It's not easy, but they do manage to walk that way, Jim leaning heavily on Ryan to take the weight off his bad leg. But limping along like that is hard on both of them, and they're already breathing raggedly by the time they hit the street.

Fuck, Ryan thinks as his left foot steps, and shit, he thinks, as his right foot steps, and the rhythm of profanity keeps up in his head as they go, fuck, shit, fuck, shit. Jim's weight is really heavy, making his shoulders ache, and Jim's clearly gritting his teeth against the pain.

They rest a lot, but even so, it's a bad day. Ryan doesn't know how much more there is to say about that.

**

The only good thing that happens during that first day of walking is that they find an unopened bottle of vodka in the ruins of a liquor store. Ryan’s psyched -- three days before they left Dwight’s farm, Angela had confiscated all the alcohol and poured it out. Even Pam didn’t speak to her for a day after that, and most of the rest of them were still fuming when their little group left the farm.

It took Jim and Ryan the whole day to walk the few miles down to Lake Scranton, which is infuriating. They’re both in pain, and frustrated, and exhausted, and he and Jim are barely speaking to each other by the time they find a little forested area on the shore to camp for the night. The sun’s just starting to set, finally moving below the clouds that have been blocking it all day to show a little weak, reddish light on the horizon. It’s been a raw April day, damp and gray and windy, the kind of weather that chaps your hands and your lips. Not cold, exactly, but not warm either, and that’s with the sun up. It’s going to be freezing once it gets dark.

Jim sprawls onto the ground, propping his back against a tree and rubbing at the side of his leg, next to the bullet hole, like it aches. His jaw is clenched and he lets out a long sigh through his teeth.

"How’s that leg?" Ryan says, as he pulls the messenger bag off his shoulders and slings it onto the ground.

"Fuck off," Jim says.

Yeah, they’re both cranky. Ryan doesn’t see any fresh blood on the bandage though, so. He starts rummaging around for the bottle of vodka, and pulls it out along with one of the empty pineapple cans to use as a glass. He pours a good-sized shot into the can and holds it out to Jim. "Drink this," he says.

Jim looks at it.

"I’m going to have to retie up that bandage, so drink the fucking vodka," Ryan says. Jesus, he doesn’t have the energy for this, either.

Jim shakes his head a little bit, but takes the can and does the shot. Ryan takes it back and pours another one.

"Why, Mr. Howard," Jim says, in a terrible southern belle voice. "Are you trying to get me drunk?"

Ryan’s found that it’s best to ignore Jim when he gets like this. Instead, he hands him the second shot.

"You sly dog," Jim says. Ryan looks at him. Jim makes a face and drinks. "This is terrible vodka, by the way."

Ryan picks up the bottle and looks at the label. "Made in Wilkes-Barre," he reads out loud. He pours a third shot and hands it to Jim.

"Fantastic," Jim says, looking dourly into the can. He drinks, then shudders.

They haven’t eaten since the middle of the day, so Ryan figures it won’t take long for those three shots to start to kick in. While he’s waiting, he gets out another one of Jim’s extra shirts and starts cutting it into strips.

"I like that shirt," Jim says mournfully.

Ryan keeps cutting, and starts thinking about lighting a fire. On the one hand, it’s cold out. On the other hand, fires are pretty visible. God, he hates making these decisions.

"So Cyclops," Jim says. "How’s your head?"

"Okay," Ryan says. It still aches, but it’s feeling better, and he’s not so dizzy.

"Right," Jim says. "You probably need some vodka too."

Ryan finishes cutting the last strip, and grabs a water bottle to fill up in the lake. "After I tie up that leg," he says. He makes his way carefully down the muddy bank, crouching to fill up the water bottle. They’ve been out of drinking water since midday, which has not been a good scene.

"You sure we should drink that?" Jim calls from behind him.

He's got a point -- Dwight hasn't let them drink out of the Lackawanna River since it all filled up with ash, and if the river filled with ash, the lake probably isn't great either. But on the other hand, what are they supposed to do, die of thirst? "You got a better idea?" Ryan mutters, but so quietly Jim probably can’t hear him. Jesus. Like they have options.

Once he’s got the water bottle set full on the bank, he shoves his hands under the surface of the freezing water, rubbing them together to finally get the blood and mud off. He’s tired of being so sticky, wishes they had some soap. But it’s better than nothing, and once his hands are reasonably clean, he dips a few t-shirt strips in the water too, figuring he can maybe wash some of the blood off Jim while he’s at it.

He climbs back up the bank slowly, feeling very tired. It’s been a long day, and his head is starting to really throb. And now his hands are wet and icy, and he has to make sure Jim’s not going to get gangrene in that leg. Which really requires getting a better look at it, so Ryan sighs and says to Jim, "Take off your pants."

Jim looks at him. "Shouldn’t you at least buy me dinner first?"

Hilarious. God, he’s going to rip Jim’s arm off and beat him to death with it one of these days. "Jim," he says.

Jim rolls his eyes and starts undoing his belt, muttering something under his breath that Ryan ignores. He kneels down next to Jim, the wet t-shirt strips in one hand, and helps him wiggle his jeans down his hips until Ryan can see the bandage around his thigh clearly. He had just kept bandaging it over, not wanting to disturb the clotting, so it’s a thick lump of fabric. "Here," he says, handing the wet cloth he’s holding to Jim. Hands now free, he reaches for the knot and starts undoing it, doing his best to ignore how his knuckles scrape over Jim’s skin.

Jim winces a little bit. "Your hands are cold," he says.

"Sorry," Ryan says, but he keeps unwinding the cloth. As he gets down to the skin, there’s dried blood everywhere, brown and flaking. The last layer of bandage is really stuck to the wound, practically like it’s grafting itself in, so Ryan leaves it alone and just cuts the rest of the bandage off.

That done, Ryan takes the wet strips back from Jim. "This is probably going to be cold," he says, and starts to sponge off Jim’s skin. Jim shudders a little bit, but doesn’t say anything.

It’s weird to wash off Jim’s leg like this, him just in his boxers, the watery April sun casting ruddy light over them, catching Jim’s hair in a strange halo. Weird, but it has to be done -- there is seriously so much dirt around the wound it’s going to be a miracle if it doesn’t get infected.

"This is weird," Jim says, his voice a little slurred. Ryan’s getting the impression Jim's a nervous talker, and when he glances up, Jim’s face is flushed like the vodka’s kicking in. The blood and dirt is wiping off his leg easily, water dripping off in maroon drops. It must be tickling Jim’s leg. "I’ve never had a guy, like, wash me before," Jim says.

"Promise I’ll be gentle," Ryan says, almost under his breath.

Jim laughs. "Hey, have you ever... with a guy?" he asks.

Ryan’s concentrating more on trying to find a clean part of the t-shirt to keep using than on whatever Jim’s saying. "Have I ever what?"

"You know," Jim says, in the meaningful tone middle-schoolers use to ask if you like like someone. "With a guy. It’s no big deal if you have."

Oh. This is a weird conversation. He’s never actually seen Halpert drunk before. "Why?" Ryan says. "You offering?"

"No," Jim says. "I was just wondering." The cloth Ryan’s using is now so dirty it’s not doing much good, but Jim’s leg’s a lot cleaner, so maybe gangrene will be held at bay. "I mean," Jim says. "Everyone experiments in college, right?"

Uh huh. Well, that’s interesting. "Are we talking about me?" Ryan asks, starting to rummage through the messenger bag for the rubbing alcohol. "Or are we talking about you?"

"I’m straight," Jim says.

Ryan pulls the bottle out of the bag. "But everyone experiments, right?"

Jim shakes his head. "You," he says, as Ryan unscrews the cap, "are twisting my words. Don’t pour that on me, please. Please don't pour that on me."

"Sorry," Ryan says, but pours it liberally over the thin bandage sticking to the wound anyway, watching the alcohol soak right through.

Jim almost screams, "Jesus!" He winces away, grabbing at the skin around the wound, gasping for breath. "Motherfuck," Jim says, so pale under the dirt on his face that Ryan's briefly alarmed.

"Sorry!" Ryan says. He looks at Jim. "You want something to bite on?"

Jim glares at him, but Ryan actually hadn't been being sarcastic. Well, whatever.

"Okay, now the other side," Ryan says. "Turn over."

Jim looks at him, still white and sweaty. "That’s what she said."

"Oh my God," Ryan says, as Jim turns so Ryan can get at the exit wound. He douses that side with alcohol too -- Jim just gasps this time, more prepared for it --, and lets Jim turn back around so he can tie up the wound again with fresh strips of ironically sloganed t-shirt. Jim looks sort of small and vulnerable as he does, sitting there shivering and pale in his underwear, doing his best not to make any noise. Poor bastard.

Ryan finally gets it all wrapped up, tying off the knot and making sure it doesn’t rest on the wound itself. By this time, Jim’s shivering violently. "Cold?" Ryan says. Jim nods, his teeth chattering. Maybe they should have a fire after all.

God, the idea of gathering wood and building a fire, and getting it started, and feeding more branches onto it, all that lifting and carrying, makes Ryan’s head throb even more. But Jim’s blanched and shaking even harder as Ryan helps him shimmy his filthy jeans back up over his hips, so there’s not much help for it. At least it’s still daylight, so the fire won’t be so horribly visible.

"Here," Ryan says, as Jim does up his fly. He drapes Dwight’s space blanket around Jim’s shoulders, making sure it covers him. "I’m going to build a fire." He stands up shakily and his head pain sharpens, making him sway.

"Is that a good idea?" Jim asks through chattering teeth.

"Shut up," Ryan says, and goes to gather wood.

**

Building the fire’s hell, but once it’s going, it makes the dell more cheerful, the homey crackling of it, the heat on Ryan’s hands. Ryan puts a big log onto it, finally content that it’s going strong, then brushes his hands off and sits down next to Jim. God, his head is killing him.

Jim’s finally stopped shivering, and isn’t holding the blanket so tight around him.

"Better?" Ryan says.

"Yeah," Jim says. "Thanks."

Ryan rubs his non-swollen temple, closing his one working eye. Seeing everything without depth perception all day has been wearing on him, and probably isn’t helping with his headache. He hears Jim rustling around, but keeps his eye shut. He just wants quiet for a little while.

"Here," Jim says, and Ryan feels the metal edge of a can nudge his right arm.

When he opens his eye, Jim is holding a drink out to him, vodka bottle in one hand. "You look like you need it," Jim says. "It’s vodka and ginger ale."

Ryan looks at him. Jim’s hair is dirty and matted, sticking out strangely on one side, and his stubble has just gotten worse over the course of the day, making him look even more like a homeless guy. But his color’s come back some, and he’s got a friendlier look on his face than earlier, when they wanted to kill each other.

"Thanks," Ryan says, and takes a sip. Ugh.

"It’s terrible, right?" Jim says.

"Yeah," Ryan says. "Wow."

"I know," Jim says, and mixes himself the same combination in the other pineapple can.

They drink for awhile in companionable silence, looking into the fire as the sky gradually turns to twilight. Ryan’s head’s still throbbing, but after two of Jim’s vodka ginger ales, he doesn’t care quite as much. He’s halfway into his third drink when Jim gets some baked beans and spam out of their bag, pouring them into the Boy Scout fold-up camping frying pan Dwight gave them, and starting to get up to put it over the fire.

"Here," Ryan says, moving to take it from him. "Don’t get up."

"I’m not an invalid," Jim says, moving it away from Ryan’s hand. "I’m fine. You’re the one who needs to rest. You look terrible."

Ryan would protest, but he actually does feel terrible, and he’s mostly just relieved he doesn’t have to get up again. He’s not sure he wouldn’t fall over if he tried it. Instead, he sits back against a tree and watches Jim kneel over the fire, poking at the horrible concoction in the frying pan. Ryan’s so hungry it actually even smells good. Just goes to show, if you’re hungry enough, anything will do.

**

One thing about America’s power all going out at once, Ryan thinks, lying on his back beside the banked down fire, is it makes the stars really clear and bright. He is drunk. Comfortably drunk for the first time in weeks, and full of spam and baked beans, and Jim’s lying next to him, his side all warm down Ryan’s.

"I wish I knew constellations," Jim says woozily. Between the two of them, they finished the bottle of terrible vodka. "I just know the Big Dipper. And I’m not even totally sure about that one."

Ryan finds the Big Dipper in the sky automatically, traces the lines of it with his eye. Even the sky looks a little weird with one eye swollen shut. Flat, like looking up at the underside of a table, flat and a little too close. "I took an astronomy class in college," Ryan says.

"So you remember some?" Jim says.

"Nope," Ryan says. He knows Orion, that’s it. Because the belt is easy to find. "I know there are two stars that are really close together, though. The Romans used them as an eye test -- if you could see them as two separate stars, your eyes were good enough for... something."

"Hmm," Jim says. "Which star?"

"No idea," Ryan says. Jim's started jiggling his leg compulsively, and the vibrations of it are moving from Jim’s body to Ryan’s, through their hipbones and shoulders. It's annoying. "You ever stay still?" Ryan asks.

"What?" Jim says, distracted, like his mind’s somewhere else.

"Stop it," Ryan says, and bumps Jim's jiggling leg with his knee.

"Oh," Jim says, and stops. "Sorry." There's a brief pause, and Ryan enjoys the still silence of it. The ground underneath him's a little damp, soaking through his jeans unpleasantly, but that’s the least of his problems, and it feels so good to be lying down after limping along all day supporting Jim's weight. His bones creak with the relief of it, and he never wants to get up ever again.

"I think I’m going to break up with Karen," Jim says.

Jesus Christ, like he wants to be Jim Halpert’s confidante. "Okay," Ryan says, in a why-are-you-telling-me-this voice.

"Do you think that’s a dick move?"

Ryan shrugs, his shoulders shifting against the ground underneath him, against Jim’s shoulder next to him. "I broke up with Kelly."

"So that’s a yes," Jim says thoughtfully.

"Fuck off," Ryan says. He can see Jim smirking out of the corner of his eye. "I didn’t think I’d ever see her again."

"Yeah," Jim says, more sober now. The trees rustle, and at the noise his and Jim’s bodies tense until they realize it’s just the wind, high in the branches. Ryan wishes they had the rifle instead of Karen. Jim says, "Do you think if we get back and meet up with everybody, we’ll just go back to Dwight’s farm?"

The lake water’s lapping against the shore a little bit, the wind making ripples. "I guess," Ryan says.

"Will you hook back up with Kelly?"

"I guess," Ryan says again. He puts up his hand to touch his swollen face. He thinks it’s hurting less now, but maybe that’s just the vodka talking. "Any port in a storm. Or whatever."

Jim makes an amused, incredulous noise. "You’re such an asshole."

"You’re the one who’s going to dump a girl you have to see every day. For the rest of our lives."

Jim’s leg's jiggling again. God. "However long that might be," Jim says.

Man's got a point. "Yeah," Ryan says. They need a subject change. "Did you really have gay sex in college?"

"No," Jim says quickly. "Jeez."

"Just made out?" Ryan says.

"None of your business," Jim says, and he’s jittering like crazy, leg bouncing up and down. It’s driving Ryan nuts.

"Stop," Ryan says, and props himself up on one elbow so he can reach down and put his hand on Jim’s leg, holding it still. It’s Jim’s good leg, and Ryan’s hand is somewhere between his knee and his hip, higher than it probably should be because Ryan’s short enough that that’s as far as he can reach.

Jim stares up at him, eyes suddenly dark, his breath coming fast.

"You’re making me nervous," Ryan says, but with Jim looking at him like that and his hand on Jim’s thigh, all of a sudden his voice sounds kind of unsure. Jim’s looking at him like... something. His eyes flicker down to Ryan’s mouth. Fuck. They’re really drunk. Fuck.

"Jim," Ryan says. Jim looks up at him, scared, his muscles tense under Ryan’s hand. Ryan's very aware of Jim's body all of a sudden, his long arms, his pudgy cheeks. Jim looks at Ryan’s mouth again and swallows, and if Ryan doesn’t do something, something’s going to happen, he’s going to kiss Jim’s scruffy drunk mouth. Fuck. He wants to. Shit.

Ryan very deliberately takes his hand off Jim’s leg and lies back down next to him, looking up at the tree branches against the stars. Both of their breathing sounds ragged.

"Just stop jittering, okay?" Ryan says. His voice comes out all rough, and he has to clear his throat.

"Yeah," Jim says. "Um. Sorry." But he sounds like he’s apologizing for more than just the shaking.

Ryan still feels dizzy, his head fuzzy from alcohol and the concussion, and for a second he thinks he can feel the earth turning underneath him, the ground spread out and spinning, him pinned to it. The world’s less steady than he thought, just generally speaking.

**

When Ryan wakes up the next morning, the sun is just rising, bright and yellow on the horizon, and Jim’s not next to him. He props himself up on one elbow to look around, the muddy space of where they camped, the ashes of their campfire. His head hurts and his left eye still won’t open.

He finally sees Jim down on the bank of the lake, splashing water on his face, and sits all the way up. God, he feels like hell. He was sleeping with the hood of his hoodie pulled up over his head, but now he loosens the tie and pushes the hood back, standing to walk down to where Jim is. The water looks better now that the sun’s out, blue and not gray, like something that it might be okay to drink.

"Morning," Ryan says, stopping a couple feet behind Jim.

Jim turns and looks over his shoulder, water dripping off his face. "Hey," he says, rubs at his stubble.

He looks about as gross and hung-over as Ryan feels. "Maybe that vodka wasn’t a great idea," Ryan says.

Jim shrugs, going back to washing his face and hands. Ryan still wishes they had soap, but Karen was the one with that supply in her bag. Too bad. "Nice to be drunk for once, though," Jim says.

"Yeah," Ryan says. There’s a pause, while neither of them talk about the weird moment the night before. Whatever. It wasn’t anything. Just that Jim’s apparently kind of a fag, but who cares?

"Hey," Jim says. "Do you think I could shave with that knife Dwight gave you?"

Ryan raises his eyebrows, thinking about it. "You could try," he says, eventually. "Don’t slit your throat by accident or anything, though."

"Yeah, that’d be messy," Jim says, and passes his hand over his stubble again.

Ryan hands Jim Dwight’s knife and Jim hefts it experimentally, then looks up at Ryan. "Your face looks better," he says. "I mean, the swelling looks less."

"Yeah?" Ryan says. He reaches a hand up to poke at his face tentatively. It does feel a little better.

"It’s still all black and blue, but better," Jim says, taking the knife out and testing the blade with his thumb. "Hmm."

"Sharp enough?" Ryan says.

"I don’t know," Jim says. He puts it up against his cheek tentatively, and moves to scrape it down. He stops after just a tiny movement, though. "Uh... yeah, I don’t think this is a great idea."

Ryan shrugs, but is relieved. He doesn’t need more parts of Jim’s body to bandage. He bends down to wash his own face in the lake.

Jim shoves the knife back in the sheath and makes an annoyed face at it. "That sucks. I’m so itchy."

"Yeah, same," Ryan says. His three-day beard is really driving him crazy. "We can shave when we get back to Dwight’s, I guess."

Jim rubs his wet face on his sleeve to dry it. "Yeah. When we get back."

Ryan splashes some water over his hair for good measure. Head wounds always bleed a lot, and old blood from his is matting his hair down on the side, he’s pretty sure. Talk about disgusting. He rubs at it, trying to finger-comb some of it out.

There’s a pause, just the sound of splashing. Jim sits back on the bank. "Um," he says. "About last night."

Fuck. Ryan doesn’t want to have this discussion. "What about it?" he says in the most neutral tone he can muster.

He can feel Jim looking at him, but he resists the urge to look back, and keeps his eyes resolutely on the surface of the lake. "Nothing," Jim says finally, his voice a little disgusted. "Forget it."

Fine by Ryan. "My pleasure," he mutters, and cups water in his hand, pours it over his sticky hair. Jim pulls out his toothbrush and Ryan hands over the toothpaste without looking at him.

They’re ready to travel not much later, their few supplies packed up. Jim slings his arm around Ryan’s shoulder again and fuck, Ryan hadn’t even thought about how he was going to have to spend the whole day with his arm around Jim’s waist, like his fucking girlfriend or something. It’s just -- it’s awkward. It gives Ryan a lot of time to think about the night before, with Jim’s body pressed against his like that. A lot of time.

**

They spend most of the day skirting areas with roads and houses, instead mostly hiking through trees and underbrush. They haven’t seen anyone else since they left the Borders in Scranton the day before, and Ryan’s starting to relax a little bit, starting to think they’re maybe out of the woods. So to speak.

They come up on 380 mid-afternoon, the abandoned stretch of highway. There’s a flat expanse on either side of it, really visible, so the crossing is a little worrisome. Ryan makes Jim take a break before they try it, chew some beef jerky, but finally there’s no more putting it off. No one’s in sight, so they take off across the empty space, limping as fast as they can.

Just as they hit the tree line on the other side of the highway, they hear people walking, talking loudly as they do. Oh God. Any people who aren't scared of other people hearing them are probably armed like crazy.

There’s an embankment right where the trees start, and Jim and Ryan go sliding down it in a cascade of leaves and dirt. Jim ducks down behind a fallen log, and in the scuffle of sliding, Ryan ends up about 15 feet away from him, crouching behind a tree. They both watch as the loud people come into sight. About five guys swaggering down the middle of the highway, all with handguns on their belts. They might have been cops once -- they have that air of casual, dangerous authority -- but Ryan’s pretty sure they’re not cops now.

He and Jim look at each other with wide eyes, hunkering further down and hoping the group passes by without seeing them. They have bad luck, though -- the one farthest back says, "Hold up, guys, I gotta take a leak."

Ryan makes a face at Jim that he hopes signals that he should stay down, stay still, and stay quiet. Though Jim could probably figure that out on his own. The guy who has to piss heads into the trees just in between him and Jim, slip-sliding down the embankment himself.

The rest of the group keeps walking, barely slowing down. "Hurry up, Tony!" one of them yells over his shoulder.

Tony, unzipping his fly, mutters something that sounds like, "Yeah, yeah." He’s so close to Jim he could practically reach out and touch him.

Fuck. Ryan’s barely breathing, praying that he won’t see either of them -- but then Tony grabs for the handgun in his waistband and trains it on Jim. "Don’t move," Tony says. Oh God, oh shit, what now?

Jim puts his hands up over his head, keeping them where Tony can see them. Tony's got his back half-turned to Ryan, so Ryan’s pretty sure that Tony hasn’t seen him, even though he’s just a few feet from them, and he racks his brain trying to think what to do. Oh God.

"Easy there," Jim says in a very calm voice. "Everything’s cool."

"The fuck it is," Tony says. Ryan can see that his hand’s shaking. "Get up."

Jim gets to his feet very slowly, hands still up. "Okay, man," he says. "You don’t have to do this."

Tony’s still got the gun trained at Jim -- one shot, and Jim’s dead. One yell, and all five of those guys come down on them. Ryan very slowly moves his hand to his knife, pulling it out as slowly and noiselessly as he can.

"Keep your hands where I can see them," Tony says. He sounds like a cop -- or maybe more accurately, like someone who's watched a lot of cop shows. The knife's in Ryan’s hand. Jim’s being very careful not to let his eyes flicker to Ryan, but Ryan knows that Jim knows he’s there, about to do something. Jim’s very tightly controlled, still but ready, muscles coiled.

"Hey!" Tony starts to yell to the other guys, but before he gets the word all the way out, Ryan’s leaped up and is swinging at him with the knife. The knife catches the bicep of the arm holding the gun, slicing into it, and blood spurts out bright.

Tony swings around, surprised, ready to aim the gun at Ryan, but before he can quite catch his bearings, Jim’s grabbed a giant branch next to him and swung it at Tony’s head.

Tony’s brains and blood end up all over Ryan’s face and shirt, and Tony falls to the ground before any of the three of them are quite sure what’s happened. Ryan looks panicky up at the rest of the men, but from what he can see through the trees, they’re still walking nonchalantly down the highway, dawdling as they wait for Tony to catch up. They're far enough ahead that it looks like they didn’t hear anything.

Jim’s staring down at the body with a horrified look on his face. Tony’s head is bashed in, extremely dead, and fuck, they have to get out of there before those other guys come looking to see what happened.

"Come on!" Ryan whispers at Jim, grabbing Jim’s arm and putting it over his shoulder.

Jim seems to come to, finally, and they book it deeper into the woods, away from the highway, moving as fast through the underbrush as they possibly can while keeping quiet. They run and run, stumping through trees, Ryan's teeth clenched, and don’t stop moving for a long, long time, until after the sun sets. Jim’s leg must be killing him by that time but he doesn’t say a word. Neither of them say a word.

They finally collapse in a little secluded clearing in the twilight, more because their legs won’t seem to work anymore than because they’re making a rational decision to stop. Their breath is coming in deep gasps, so desperate Jim sounds like he’s sobbing. But when Ryan looks at him his eyes are dry; he just can’t catch his breath.

"Fuck," Ryan gasps out.

Jim reaches out and rubs at Ryan’s hair, and when his hand comes away, there’s something grayish pink on it.

"Oh God," Ryan says, remembering the splatter, how it felt when it hit him, how hot it was, how wet. "Get it off me." It’s all over his shirt too, all over everywhere. He tears his hoodie off -- he has to get it off.

"Okay," Jim says, and he grabs the stained hoodie from Ryan’s hand, uses the cleaner part of the sleeves to start rubbing at Ryan’s face and neck.

"Get it off," Ryan says, and he thinks he might be freaking out, just a little bit. The one corner of his brain that can still think is thinking, I am freaking out. I am having a real meltdown.

Jim’s hands are shaking as he rubs at Ryan’s head. "I didn’t mean to," Jim says. "I thought the branch was more rotted, I didn’t mean to. I was just going to knock him out."

That one lucid corner of Ryan’s brain thinks, Jim is freaking out. Then it thinks, we murdered that guy. Me and Jim murdered somebody. His hand can still feel the bite of the knife into muscle, like cutting a piece of meat, the sick clean carve into someone’s arm. The sound of the branch hitting Tony’s head.

He wishes he didn’t know Tony’s name. "I didn’t mean to," Jim says again. He’s saying it over and over, like it makes a difference, scrubbing Tony’s brains out of Ryan’s hair.

"Get it off," Ryan says. He can feel his whole body shuddering, and when he looks down at his bare chest, he can see pink stains where the gore soaked through to the skin. Jim’ll never get it off, he thinks, irrationally.

Jim finally slows down as the hoodie sleeves are more and more of a mess and Ryan’s head, presumably, is less of one. He ends up tossing the sweatshirt aside with two fingers, too disgusting to be salvaged, and looking carefully at Ryan as though he’s trying to see if there’s any still left on him. Jim puts his hand on the back of Ryan’s neck, turning his head a little bit so he can see all the angles, and they’re both still breathing like they’ve been running.

Ryan reaches up and holds onto Jim’s forearm, desperate for something to just grab. He’s still shaking all over, and so is Jim, and he can't catch his breath.

"I didn’t want to kill him," Jim says.

"I know," Ryan says. He does know, but he -- the brains got all over him, the brains and the blood, and it’s not -- he. It just. His knife blade is still all covered with Tony’s blood.

"Oh God," Ryan says. He holds onto Jim’s arm tighter, his fingernails digging in a little bit, but Jim doesn’t wince. Jim’s hand is hot on the back of Ryan’s neck, and none of Tony's blood got on Jim at all, not even on his hands, not even under his fingernails. Jim’s face is flushed, and he’s holding onto Ryan like he’s terrified.

"He was going to kill us," Jim says. "We almost died."

"Yeah," Ryan says. He doesn’t know what to do with his other hand, and he reaches out half blindly, touching Jim’s chest, his shoulder. He just -- he wants to touch. He’s still shaking.

"I didn’t think I could...," Jim trails off. Ryan knows what he means though. You think of yourself one way, as a nice guy, as someone civilized. And then. Jim stares over Ryan’s head, eyes vacant.

"I know," Ryan says. Jim focuses on him again, on his face. He brings his other hand up to touch Ryan’s swollen cheek. "Ow," Ryan says as he presses lightly.

"Sorry," Jim says, almost whispering now. His eyes flicker down to Ryan’s mouth. Ryan can’t stop shaking. His chest is bare and stained pink.

Jim kisses Ryan, pulling him in by the hand on the back of his neck, rough and shaky and desperate. Ryan doesn’t kiss him back, and then he does.

The ground under them is soft and muddy, and Ryan’s hands press down into it as he tries to get his bearings. His body’s still freaking out from the murder, weak and trembling, and the surge of arousal feels strangely steadying, warm in his muscles. Jim’s stubble scratches at his face, and his mouth is wet and hot. He puts his hand on Ryan’s bare chest, on his shoulder, fingers scrabbling against Ryan’s skin.

Ryan doesn’t wonder if Tony had a wife, had kids, if he really was a cop, if his parents were proud of him. He doesn’t think about anything at all.

Jim’s pressing Ryan back, hands everywhere, mouth on Ryan’s neck, on his chest. Ryan’s got his hands in Jim’s too-long brown hair, fingers catching in the tangles. "I’m sorry," Jim’s muttering into Ryan’s skin. "I’m sorry."

Jim’s fingers move lower, along Ryan’s abdomen, skimming across his fly where Ryan’s hard. Ryan’s whole body’s thrumming, vibrating at too high a frequency, the whole thing too much for him. He doesn’t think he’ll survive this, thinks he’ll probably fly apart. Jim’s breathing is still loud, gasping.

Jim’s fingers move under Ryan’s waistband, undo Ryan’s zipper, and then Jim’s got his mouth on Ryan’s cock. Ryan lets his head and shoulders fall back onto the soft ground behind him, his body sprawling and loose, his breath catching as Jim works his tongue. "Jim," he says, and his voice sounds strange. "Jim, fuck."

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see his stained sweatshirt in a lump, dark blood splattered all over it. He turns his head to the side so he can’t see it anymore. Now all he can see is the darkening sky through the trees, a firefly lighting up, the small buds of spring on branches. Jim takes him further into his mouth and he hears himself moan. He doesn’t think about anything at all.

**

That night Ryan wakes up to the sound of Jim crying in his sleep, tears slithering out from behind his shut eyelids, eyes moving in a REM cycle. Whimpering noises like a baby, or a dog.

"Shh," Ryan says, putting his hand on Jim’s forehead, palming his cheek. "Shh."

Jim doesn’t wake up, but he presses into Ryan’s touch and after a minute stops crying, his breathing becoming regular again, deep and even. Ryan can feel the damp of Jim’s tears on his hand, and he falls back into an uneasy sleep himself. He wakes up a lot, keeps thinking he’s hearing something. But nothing’s ever there.

**

He wakes up with his limbs tangled with Jim’s, chest still bare, both of them under both blankets. He feels like hell, and when he lifts his head, Jim’s looking at him with roughly the same expression, self-loathing and guilt and anguish. The sky’s barely getting light. Jim’s hair is sticking up, and they disentangle themselves without saying much. Ryan can open his left eye today. So that’s something.

He gets one of Jim’s spare t-shirts out of their bag and puts it on so he won’t freeze to death, though the thin cloth isn’t nearly as good as his hoodie. The shirt’s too big for him, hanging down too low, and Ryan feels vaguely ridiculous, like a little kid playing dress-up. He doesn't know why he couldn't have split up with Oscar or someone else human-sized, instead of with a monstrous giant.

Not monstrous. He didn't mean that.

He goes over to his hoodie to get his cell phone out of the pocket, prods at the filthy shirt with his toe, but that's not the most effective way to find something. Finally he has to lift it up and search through the pocket, but when he does, the phone's not there. He checks three times, even though with just one big pocket, it's not like there's anywhere it could be hiding. Fuck, it must've fallen out sometime when they were running. For some reason, losing his phone makes him feel like he's really going to lose it, like he's on the verge of having a complete and total breakdown.

"I lost my phone," he says to Jim, and his voice sounds uneven.

Jim doesn't really react. He's just unsuccessfully trying to push his hair flat with his fingers, his pants still undone from the night before. He doesn't even look at Ryan.

Ryan tries to take deep breaths. It's just a phone. It wasn't doing anybody any good, and it's not symbolic. It's just a phone. He drops the stained hoodie in a little indentation on the edge of the clearing, and kicks some leaves over it so he doesn't have to see it anymore. He was trying really hard not to look at the gunk on the sleeves, but some of it got on his hands, and he has to wipe them off on the grass. God, his phone is missing, and he's covered in a murdered guy's blood, and he thinks he might be about to hyperventilate. No, you're okay, he thinks, and breathes. Think about something else. As he counts to ten and tries to calm down, it occurs to Ryan that he hasn’t checked Jim’s leg wound since the morning of the day before.

"Let me see your leg," Ryan says.

Jim finally looks at him, his eyes still sort of dead looking, and then wordlessly pushes his jeans down.

Ryan kneels next to him and starts undoing the bandage. When his knuckles first brush Jim’s leg, Jim winces but immediately stills, trying to hide his reaction.

"Sorry," Ryan says. He can’t tell if that hurt, or if Jim’s just... well. Anyway.

The edges of the wound, Ryan can see once he’s got the bandage mostly unwound, are red and swollen, getting infected. "Oh no," Ryan says.

Jim looks down at it but his expression doesn’t change. Ryan thinks it’s oozing pus a little bit, under the layer of cloth stuck to it. Oh God.

"Does it feel worse?" Ryan asks.

Jim shrugs. He still hasn’t really said anything.

"Fuck," Ryan says, and gets out the rubbing alcohol. There’s barely any left, and they need antibiotics or something anyway, and Jim definitely shouldn’t be walking on that leg -- or running on it, like yesterday. But what are they going to do? Dear God, he thinks, panic throwing atheism to the wind, if we make it back, I'll do anything. I'll be nice to Kelly. I'll be nice to Michael. Anything you want, I swear, I'll do it.

He pours the rubbing alcohol over the wound as best he can, using the last of it, but Jim barely reacts, just winces and jerks away a little bit. It’s worrying Ryan, how expressionless Jim is, like he’s not really there.

"You okay?" Ryan asks.

Jim shrugs again.

"Jim," Ryan says.

Jim’s face tenses a little bit, annoyed. "Sure," he says. "I’m great. Let’s get going."

Once Ryan has him bandaged up again, Jim slings his arm over Ryan’s shoulder and they start limping along again, north and east, the sun a little bit to their right.

They’ve been walking for about an hour when Jim says, out of nowhere, "It didn’t mean anything." The sky in front of them is getting very blue, and the wind is sharp. A bright April day.

Ryan walks a few more steps before he answers. Finally he says, "The sex, or the killing?"

Jim’s arm tightens on his shoulders, and when Ryan glances up, his face is twisting. "Either," he says. "Both."

"I know," Ryan says. He can still feel Tony’s blood in his hair, over his skin, like some horrible miasma. Jim’s arm along his shoulder blade is hot.

**

They hit a reservoir sometime just after noon, the water blue and sparkling and no doubt freezing cold. Ryan shrugs out from under Jim’s arm. "I’m going in," he says, starting to strip off his clothes. He tosses the t-shirt of Jim’s that he’s been wearing off to the side. The day’s really not warm enough to swim, but he has to get the rest of the blood off him, he can’t stand it anymore. He can feel it, sticky, lingering on his skin.

"It’s going to be cold," Jim says. He’s standing unevenly, not putting weight on his bad leg.

"I know," Ryan says, undoing his belt and shucking off his jeans. "But I have to get clean."

"You are clean," Jim mutters, and sits down with a thump, very carefully not watching Ryan undress. The air is cool on Ryan’s bare shoulders, his ass, but he doesn’t care. He’s got blood all over him, he can feel it. He hurries into the water, and the cold of it almost takes his breath away but he doesn’t stop. When he plunges his head under the surface, it’s cold and quiet, like another universe, still and calm. He stays under for too long, until his lungs are burning and he almost breathes in water.

He rubs and rubs at his chest and arms, rubs at his hair, threading his fingers through it, splashing until he thinks he’s gotten all of the residue that he can without soap. His hair feels less grimy, less full of clotted blood and gore, so that’s something. When he comes shivering back to the shore, Jim’s staring blankly out over the lake, not paying any attention.

Ryan shucks the water off his arms and legs as best he can; he hadn’t thought about how he was going to get dry afterwards. He just thought about being clean, and though he’s naked and freezing he feels washed, scrubbed, better. As he comes up to Jim, Jim blinks and seems to notice him again.

Jim pulls his sweatshirt off and holds it out to Ryan. "Towel?" he says.

Ryan looks at him, shivering. "Thanks," he says finally, and uses it to dry himself off as best he can. Jim again very pointedly doesn’t watch him do it. Ryan’s teeth aren’t chattering quite so much by the time he gets dressed again, jeans sticking to his damp skin. His hair’s still dripping.

"Better?" Jim says. He doesn’t look like he feels better at all -- maybe he could’ve used a swim too.

"Yeah," Ryan says. He shakes his head like a dog and water droplets fly out. Jim winces when they hit him. Ryan kind of hopes that Jim’ll show some emotion, gets annoyed at least, but Jim just sits there. "How’s the leg?" Ryan asks. He sits down next to Jim, their shoulders touching. Which, after last night, gives him a little charge. God, it’s like everything’s upside down, killing some guy, sleeping with Jim. He needs to get off this nightmare trip and back to somewhere like normal -- or what normal is, now. Dwight’s farm. Great.

Jim just shrugs.

God. Ryan rubs at his good eye and tries to decide what to say to keep Jim from going catatonic. But that means thinking about what happened the day before, which he’s been resolutely avoiding. He pictures Tony’s body for a horrible split second and shudders. The sound of his head breaking, the look on his face just before, when Ryan cut him.

"We didn’t have a choice," Ryan says in an undertone, and then clears his throat. This would probably be more convincing if he believed it himself.

When he glances over, Jim’s expression hasn’t changed. "Right," Jim says.

Ryan breathes in, out. "It’s okay," he says. "We’ll get back to the farm, everything will go back to the way it was. It’s not -- it wasn’t anything."

Jim turns slowly to look at him, blinking a little bit too much. He looks at Ryan for a long moment. "Right," he says again.

Jim’s eyes are shadowed under his ball cap, and his scruff of beard is dark, and he looks terrible. As a last resort, Ryan reaches out and grabs a fistful of Jim’s t-shirt, pulling him down to kiss him as roughly as he can. Jim takes in a breath through his nose and then kisses him back, his mouth opening, his tongue moving. Ryan nips at Jim’s lip, just lightly with his teeth, and when he pulls back, Jim looks a little more alive than he did before.

Jim opens his eyes and says, "Back to normal, huh."

Ryan shrugs and gets to his feet. "More or less." He reaches out a hand to help Jim up, and Jim takes it. They limp on.

**

They’re moving faster than they were that first day, even with Jim's leg infected, so that’s something. For a little while around five, Ryan thinks they might even make it back to his parents’ house in Jessup that night, before it gets dark. But twilight comes on while they’re still a ways out, and they’re forced to take shelter in a copse of trees on the wrong side of route 6.

They’re getting a routine now, what they do when they stop for the night. First, check the injuries, while it’s still light enough to see. Jim’s leg is even more swollen, pink and hot to the touch. Ryan prods at the edges, hoping he won’t see pus, but it comes out anyway.

"That hurt?" Ryan says. When he looks up, Jim gives him a what-do-you-think look. "Sorry," Ryan says.

"Yeah," Jim says. "It hurts, thanks for asking."

Jim was limping more as the day went on, and Ryan noticed it, but there’s not a lot he can do. There’s nothing left to put on it, so Ryan just has to bind it up again and hope for the best. At least by tomorrow they’ll be with Karen and Oscar and Gil again. Or, they better be. Ryan’s trying not to think about what they’ll do if the car’s gone and they’ve been left.

"How’s your head?" Jim asks. He puts his hand against Ryan’s good cheek and turns Ryan’s head so he can see the swelling. It’s still going down; Ryan can see out of his left eye okay, so that’s good. Jim looks at it for probably a little longer than he needs to. His hand feels warm against Ryan’s cheek.

"Better," Jim says. "I think it's starting to turn green."

"Attractive," Ryan says, and Jim’s mouth twitches, a rueful half smile. His eyes flicker down to Ryan’s mouth, and Ryan’s stomach drops, just a little. Once they get back to Dwight’s, they won’t, but tonight, well. They’re just upset; no one could blame them. This whole trip is starting to seem unreal, like some kind of weird dream Ryan’s having. Jim bleeding on the street, reading Ender’s Game in the dark, Ryan pulling the shoes off a dead guy. Jim going down on him. Like something he doesn’t have control of, like something he’s going to wake up from, something happening to someone else. When they get back to Dwight’s, things will shake themselves back out and he'll be himself again. But until then, he’s not. He looks at Jim’s mouth for just a second.

He really doesn’t want to be practical right then, but it’s getting dark, and they’ve got to eat before they can’t see at all. "Um," Ryan says, pulling back. "We should eat." Jim sighs and drops his hand.

They’re almost out of food. Ryan gives the last can of peaches to Jim, and they split one of tomatoes and one of green beans. Jim’s stomach rumbles audibly even after they’re done, but that’s the end of what they’ve got, so. Ryan hopes Karen managed to scrounge something, so they can eat when they get back. When, he's telling himself, not if. When they get back to Karen and Oscar and Gil.

By the time they’re finished eating, it’s full dark, the nearly full moon rising over the trees. The pale light leaves Jim’s eyes in shadow, shows stubble thick on his cheeks. This time when Jim reaches out for him, Ryan doesn’t pull away.

**

When Ryan wakes up the next morning from a nightmare, Jim is poring over the map. He looks up when he sees Ryan getting up to take a leak and says, "We’re almost there."

"Yeah," Ryan says, his voice gravelly from sleep. It’s a gray, oppressive day, clouds low, and it smells like rain. Great.

"I bet we can get there before noon," Jim says.

Ryan was going to walk further into the trees to pee, but what the hell, it’s not like he can be shy around Jim now. He pulls up at the nearest tree and unzips. "Yeah," he says. "I bet we can."

He hears the map rustling behind him, focuses on patterns in the bark in front of him.

"You think they’ll be there?" Jim asks. Godfuckingdammit, why does Jim always have to bring up things Ryan isn’t thinking about?

"Sure," Ryan says. "Of course."

He finishes peeing and zips himself back up. "Right, of course," Jim says when Ryan turns around.

"How’s your leg?" Ryan says.

"Fine," Jim says, but even from a few feet away Ryan can see that it’s swelling. God, motherfuck. It’ll just -- well, they’re almost there. Someone else will take care of it, once they get there. Ryan just has to get him back. "How’s your head?"

Ryan’s pretty much gotten used to the low-level headache he’s had since that dude hit him, so he shrugs. "Fine."

"Yeah, we’re a couple of fine guys," Jim says, voice thick with irony.

"Shut up," Ryan says, pulling out his toothbrush. Everything that’s happened, and he’s managed to hang onto it. Ridiculous.

Jim grabs his own toothbrush out of his pocket and holds it out to Ryan for toothpaste, like asking for a light. Ryan squeezes some out for him, and they brush their teeth in silence, watching the sun come up over the horizon. This is the day, they get back or they don’t.

"What do we do if they’re not there?" Jim says, through a mouth full of foam. "What’s Plan B?"

"Fuck off," Ryan says, and spits onto the ground. "They’ll be there." He wipes his mouth on his sleeve and tries not to glower at Jim.

Jim shrugs and keeps brushing his teeth. All of Ryan’s muscles ache from walking, from Jim leaning on him, and he thinks he can barely face another day of traveling. He lies back down on the soft ground and lets his head rest. He listens to the rustle of leaves, the sounds of Jim finishing brushing his teeth.

"I think I’m going to turn myself in," Jim says from where he’s sitting next to Ryan.

Ryan blinks, looking up at the roiling clouds. "Turn yourself in?" he says blankly. Um. "To who?"

When he sits up, Jim looks a little perturbed, and Ryan can practically see him shuffling through his options. He finally says, "Dwight?"

"Dwight," Ryan says, "would probably just congratulate you."

"Yeah," Jim says, and rubs his hand over his face. He looks miserable and sort of old, lines pronounced on his forehead and beside his mouth. The pain from his leg’s made his face look white and pinched all week, and now this -- he just looks terrible, like a mirror of how Ryan feels, the same guilty desolate look. Jim leaves his hand over his forehead, covering his eyes.

"Jim," Ryan says, and reaches out a hand to touch Jim’s knee. Jim doesn’t move for a long second, then drops his hand and looks at Ryan, a long, measuring look. Then he’s leaning in and pushing Ryan back, all tongue and teeth and wanting, and neither of them have to think about anything for a little while longer.

**

Neither of them notice when it starts to rain, but it’s really pouring by the time they’ve both gotten off, lying panting side by side with big rain drops coming down on their faces.

"Gross," Jim says up at the sky, and Ryan agrees. It’s cold, and the t-shirt of Jim’s that Ryan’s wearing is already soaked through, and it’s going to be a long day without umbrellas. Good thing they don’t have to go far.

They lie there for long after they’ve caught their breath, neither of them wanting to get up. The sooner they get going, the sooner they’ll get to the car, and the sooner they’ll find out if they’ve been left or not. And maybe it’s easier not to know, like putting off looking at your grade on an exam.

Finally Jim sits up, wiping rain off his face. "We better go," he says.

Jim hauls his arm around Ryan’s shoulder for one more day, and all wet like this, it’s nice to have the body heat. They start slogging through the wet underbrush, up a ridge, down the other side. Jim’s walking even worse than the day before -- Ryan’s worried about that infection. If Jim loses that leg -- well. No point in thinking about it. Rain’s slicking Ryan’s hair to his forehead, getting in his eyes.

After an hour or two, they come out of the brush and into the suburbs, all dark houses, broken windows like gaping eyes, empty streets. Ryan starts getting really nervous, and instead of walking in the street, he and Jim cut through backyards, over old vegetable gardens and past swing sets. They don’t see a soul.

Soon they’re on streets Ryan recognizes, in the backyards of kids he went to elementary school with. Emily Irwin, whose parents got divorced in eighth grade and whose dad married the music teacher. Bryan Schultz, whose sisters let him drive when he was in fifth grade.

Jim’s breathing heavily. "Almost there," Ryan mutters. "You can make it."

"I know," Jim says, sounding irritable.

Then they’re turning onto Ryan’s street. Ryan’s heart picks up, beating faster, and God, he hopes the car is there.

He sees it. It’s there. No coworkers, though. It hadn’t even occurred to Ryan that they might get back and Karen and them wouldn’t be there yet -- that something might’ve happened to them, too. He doesn’t know -- what do they do? How long do they wait?

He and Jim limp up the driveway to the SUV and stand there next to it. Jim puts out a hand to touch it, like he’s not sure it’s really there, then leans against it, so Ryan can step out from under his arm. They look at each other. Well, then.

Just then, Ryan hears a noise behind him and jumps, turning so fast he almost gives himself whiplash. It’s Karen, coming out of Ryan’s parents’ house, with Oscar and Gil behind her. Oh, thank God. Oh God, they're there. Ryan's knees go weak with relief, so he almost falls over, and he hears Jim's breath go out with a whoosh. They're there, they waited, and Ryan's almost on the verge of tears, he was so worried. Karen's still got the rifle, and none of them look very badly hurt. God, he really never thought he'd see them again.

Karen beams when she sees them, but when she gets a little closer, her smile fades and she just looks concerned. Ryan tries to picture how they must look to her -- bedraggled and soaked, unshaven and dirty, blood everywhere, swollen and obviously in bad shape. "What the hell happened to you?" she asks, obviously rattled. Behind her, Oscar and Gil have matching horrified looks.

What happened to them. Ryan and Jim look at each other.

Jim clears his throat. "Let's never do this again, okay, guys?"

Karen nods, and comes over to give Jim a hug. "Are you okay?" she says. "I was really worried. We were going to leave tomorrow if you guys didn't show up."

Oh, thank God they made it. Oscar claps Ryan on the back, and Ryan lets himself finally relax, feeling a little shell-shocked. Karen kisses Jim on the mouth, then hugs him some more, and Ryan stands back with Oscar and Gil telling him they're glad he's okay. Over Karen's shoulder, Jim's giving Ryan the guiltiest look he's ever seen. Ryan looks away and tries to breathe.

**
END