"Where's Frank?" Bert said, and Gerard's head snapped up. "He said he was going to stay in the car."

"He's not there?" Gerard asked, and Bert rolled his eyes.

"No, that's why I asked where he was."

Gerard immediately rushed off to find the teenager, calling his name in a panicked rush. Ryan sat calmly in the passenger seat of the car, which made Bert think that something had happened between the two, something strange and not quite right. Ray, meanwhile, took off in the other direction, but came back twenty minutes later empty-handed.

There was a sniffling figure shuffling out of the toilets behind the gas station, and Gerard ran up to them, meeting Frank's tear-stained face halfway. His hand was pressed to his arm, and when Gerard grabbed his shoulders, he winced, causing the elder to pull back instantly.

"Frank? What's happened?" Frank shook his head. "Is it your arm?"

"I'm fine." He mumbled, dodging around Gerard. "I just...caught it on something."

"Can I look?" He shook his head once more. "Does it hurt?"

"A little." He admitted, stepping towards the car. "But I'll be fine."

He managed to get away and sit in the back of the car, avoiding everyone else's eyes as Gerard and Bert slipped in either side of him. Ray had volunteered to drive for a while, Psycho Ryan (as Frank had named him) in the passenger seat and glaring at Frank for at least ten minutes before looking away.

Gerard had wrapped his arm around Frank's shoulders, subconsciously or otherwise, and Frank leaned into him, grateful for the comfort and body heat. Bert almost - almost - rolled his eyes. He could see that he needed it more than he needed Ryan's deadly glances.

And the way Frank was holding his arm was anything but normal, Bert had noticed that (even if Gerard hadn't), but he wasn't exactly going to say anything aloud, what with Gerard right beside him.

"So," Bert said, as Ray drove meticulously down the road. "the dead boyfriend."

"Bert!" Gerard hissed, but he was strategically ignored.

Bert McCracken was nothing if not insensitive, hardened after the outbreak, the room he had in his mind for caring dwindling by the day. He had no time for supposedly-suicidal crybabies who took up precious oxygen. All he gave the slightest fuck about was Gerard. And maybe Frank and Ray, seeing as he'd spent the past few days with them. God, he was getting soft again.

Ryan pivoted in his seat, fixing his glare onto Bert. "What about him?"

"Tell us all about him."

His eyes narrowed, but he spoke anyway. "He was twenty when he died. I'd known him all my life. We were the perfect childhood romance. We did everything together - we even came out together. He was tall, almost taller than me, with floppy brown hair and the darkest eyes that were so easy to read. And he got mauled by zombies two and a half years ago." He either didn't notice or ignored Gerard's wince. "I couldn't do anything to save him. I ended up holding his body in my arms after I got rid of the zombies, and I watched him die. It was impossible to get his blood out of my clothes, no matter how many times I washed them."

Everyone was stunned into silence, except Bert, who didn't care for sob stories, unless they involved Gerard. "What was he like? What did he do for a living?"

Frank's face screwed up, noticed only by Gerard, who said nothing. If this boyfriend was the guy he'd taken his knife from, he didn't want to hear his life story. He felt bad enough as it was.

"He never really told me..." Ryan continued, facing the front. "Well he did, but he didn't. I never knew the specifics. He got a job as some sort of PA, right out of high school. He worked for this big business guy, totally different to where I worked, and he spent between eight and twelve hours there a day, only getting Sundays and the odd weekday off if his boss was feeling nice. And he was the sweetest guy you'd ever meet." His voice cracked, and Frank buried his face in Gerard's shirt, praying, please, don't let me hear anymore.

"Did you live together? Did you have pets? Did you have sex every night?" Apparently Bert was having a fun game of twenty questions, and Ray couldn't help but smile in vague amusement.

"Yes, no, sometimes." Ryan sighed. "I just...can't stop thinking about the day he died. All his possessions are in here." He patted the backpack by his feet, which nobody had noticed before until now. "Except the knife, of course." Frank gripped Gerard's shirt tighter in his free fist, wincing at the pain shooting through his injured arm. Ryan unzipped the backpack and pulled out a small book that looked old and tattered, with pages sticking out and falling out and thick with use. "This is his diary, of sorts. I've never read it."

"Maybe you should read it." Bert suggested, and Ray inclined his head in agreement.

"Maybe I should..." He murmured to himself, and then he sat back and began to read.

~

"Stop the car."

Ryan had been reading for hours, it seemed, and everyone had been quiet, letting him get on with it. Ray passed him a look of confusion as he spoke, but didn't stop.

"Stop the fucking car. Now."

Ray did as he was told, and Ryan threw the door open, tossing the book onto the seat and storming from the car. He was in the middle of the field nearby when he screamed, loud and clear, dropping to his knees. All anyone could do was watch as his agony as projected for them to hear, even though they didn't know what he'd read. He punched the grassy floor, beginning to sob, ugly and desperate.

Ray licked his lips before making the decision to get out also, slowly heading towards Ryan, whose entire body was shaking. He helped the sobbing man to his feet, and then said sobbing man promptly punched Ray in the face.

"Okay, what the fuck is going on." Bert said quietly, as Ray staggered back, clearly shocked. "You two wait here." He said to Gerard and Frank, who nodded as he climbed out of the car, walking over to Ryan and Ray.

"What do you think it is?" Gerard asked, his voice soft, and Frank shrugged. Against his better judgement, he leaned over and picked up the book, opening it to the more recent pages and setting it in his lap.

"Should you be reading that?" Frank was Gerard's guilty conscience, looking up at him with tired eyes and the most angelic innocent expression.

"Probably not, but he doesn't look like he's in a fit state to tell us what's going on." He replied, before beginning to read.

'Fuck. I don't know what to do. Everything's screaming at me to tell Ryan, that talking to him now would make him less angry than leaving it. But I can't. I love him too much to do that to him. Besides, I don't know what I'd say. How do you tell someone your boss kissed you?'

'The way he touches me is electric. I can't stop thinking about it. He just...he sets my insides on fire. His mouth works wonders. I can't explain it. I know I can't do this again but I want to, I need to. Ryan would kill me if he found out. One simple phonecall to the receptionist downstairs would reveal everything.'

'Oh my God. This is getting worse. Once you add sex to things, you can't undo it. There is no control-z when you're in real life. There is no cut-and-paste system when you're having sex with your boss, Dallon Weekes of Weekes Enterprises (to this day I still don't know quite what this company makes), in his office after work. There is no 'I'm so sorry, honey, I'll be another hour - there's some work I have to finish up'. There's just him, and me, and the desk, and the crushing realisation that he is not my boyfriend.'

'Sometimes I forget I'm lying to Ryan. It feels more like a fairytale than my life, as if I'm Cinderella. I told him this time I had to stay over to get us extra money. I don't know if he bought it, but I was so desperate to see Dallon again that I had no choice. It was a quick call at 8pm, while he was cooking dinner, and a dejected sigh down the phone. As if I'd let him down, yet again.'

'I don't know how much longer I can keep this up for. Everything he does drives me insane. He's so different to Ryan. Except Ryan loves me, I know he loves me.'

'Dallon's angry. He wants me to leave Ry. He knows I can't, that Ryan is everything to me. He keeps threatening my job, promising me a better life with him, but I love Ryan, so much. Yet with each day that passes, I fall further for Dallon too.'

'I can't do this anymore. I can't keep lying to people. I told Dallon I'd run away with him. I told Ryan I'd marry him. I can't do either. I just can't. I just can't.'

'I sat in the garage with Ryan's father's gun in my mouth the other day. I was in there for two hours. I couldn't pull the trigger.'

'It says on the news that something's happened up at one of the labs, and all these people are walking around like zombies. Ryan's talked about zombies being real before, but I didn't think it could ever happen. It wouldn't be possible, would it? It would be an interesting way to die, though. Gruesome, but interesting. You could walk into a horde and make it look like an accident. It would be so easy.'

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