The hours tick by, and it soon hits 8pm. Ryan sits at the dining table, picking at his meal, which is cold by now. Opposite him is an empty seat and another cold meal, with flowers wilting in a vase in the middle of the table. Ryan has this lump in his throat, and he's fighting tears as he sadly stabs a softening potato with a fork his mother bought.

He should've been home two hours ago. This night is supposed to be special. It's not their three-year-anniversary for nothing. Maybe he's forgotten. But Brendon wouldn't forget, Brendon remembers everything.

The door opens another half an hour later, and Brendon walks in, tired but pristine, his briefcase stuffed full of papers. Ryan's head snaps up, his eyes full of tears, and Brendon rushes over, apology written over his face. It seems so genuine that Ryan could never see him lying.

Ryan sobbed against the side of the car, knees brought up to his chest. Everyone else was sleeping inside the car, blissfully unaware to the fact that he wanted to rip his own heart out right about now. He yanked at his hair, throat raw from screaming, his stomach blistering from the inside.

Brendon's knees shake as Dallon bites at his neck, smiling as he does so. He doesn't think about Ryan, nor how he's missing dinner just to be here. His boss' fingers fumble at his ugly work slacks, pushing them down to his knees and grinding their crotches together. Floor meets knees and mouth meets cock as Brendon's back arches and his fingernails scrabble at the desk, wooden edge digging into his asscheeks. He can only think about how good it feels to have Dallon's mouth around him. He doesn't think about Ryan at all.

Ryan couldn't breathe. His wracking sobs made it difficult for him to get air into his lungs. Everything was hitting him at once. The diary, the affair, the apocalypse, the fighting, Brendon, the zombies, the job, Brendon, the dinners, Brendon, the silence, Brendon, Brendon, motherfucking Brendon.

Brendon was consuming him, even from beyond the grave, and he couldn't do it anymore. He just couldn't. He was breaking, crumbling, dissolving, and nobody was holding him together. But it wasn't as if there were a horde of zombies to -

Wait.

He wiped his streaming eyes, standing up on the shakiest legs he'd ever had. He quietly opened the car door, looking at Frank and Gerard, who were sound asleep in the back, and his eyes drifted to the gun that lay on the dashboard. Gerard's gun. With a single bullet in it. Saved for Gerard.

His hands trembled as he leaned over Bert, the sleeping lion, who had drifted off in the driver's seat several hours before, to pick up the pistol. It was heavy in his hand, cold and unforgiving, and he withdrew from the car, closing the door behind him. He sat back down again, turning the gun over and over in his hands, before screwing his eyes shut.

"Where have you been?" Ryan asks, swallowing heavily.

"I'm so sorry, baby. I'm so, so sorry." Brendon cups his face, biting his lower lip. "Dallon made me stay behind to finish off some stuff." Only a half-lie. He glances towards the table, and his face falls further. "Oh, fuck. Oh my God, I totally forgot. Baby, I'm so sorry."

Sorry. If only Brendon were here to say it now.

Sorry.

.

He staggered to his feet, stumbling into the pitch-black field, the moon hidden by clouds above him. It was cold, and if he wasn't shivering then, he certainly was now. It didn't take long for the car to vanish behind him, with four alive, sane people inside. Four alive, sane people that had never been cheated on, that were whole and able to deal with what was happening much better than he ever could.

He eventually fell to his knees when running became too much, when he ran out of energy and hope and he just crashed. He gasped for breath, the grass thin and chilled beneath his fingers and dirt crumbling beneath his palms. He sat back, pulling his knees to his chest, and he listened to his heartbeat slowing as the night lay still around him. No zombies, no...vampires, nobody.

Sorry.

A million useless apologies, spoon-fed and swallowed without complaint or question. Ryan had trusted Brendon so much he'd take anything he fed him, even if it were poison. He'd let Brendon sit there with a gun to his head, even if he was planning on pulling the trigger.

Before he knew it, the icy barrel of the gun was in his mouth, and Ryan Ross was way past choking on his tears. Everything hurt, and his mind flashed back to one of Brendon's last pre-zombie diary entries: '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.'

Jesus fucking Christ, he was scared. He'd never been so scared in his life, not even when Brendon died and he had to face this all alone. He was shaking so hard the metal kept bashing against his teeth, making him wince. He almost bit his tongue. He took the gun out, wiped his mouth, and tried to breathe. Just once or twice more.

Someone had ripped out his heart for sure, throwing it to the floor and stomping on it. That person had been Brendon.

"I love you." Stuttered, as he comes into the wrong man's mouth.

"I love you." Whispered in the dead of night, on an apparent business trip.

"I love you." Sobbed into his arms, after realising how wrong everything's gotten.

"I loved you." Whispered in the middle of a field, one half gone, the other half soon to go.

A gunshot echoed in the night. Frank woke with a start, glancing around. All was quiet. He leant against Gerard and fell asleep once more. He even didn't notice that Ryan was missing.

~

"Bert. Bert, wake the fuck up."

As much as he didn't want to, Frank needed to wake Bert the fuck up, and if it weren't for the zombies that had appeared, gathering around the car, he would've let him sleep a little longer.

"Fuck off, pirate boy." Bert grumbled, and Frank punched him. "What?!"

"You might wanna fucking drive." He pointed out the windshield, and he could swear Bert paled considerably.

"Ah, shit - yeah -"

"What's going on?" Gerard mumbled, eyes peeling open to see a zombie, one-armed to say the least, mere feet from the car. He swallowed heavily, his grip on Frank tightening until the younger could practically feel bruises forming. "Bert..."

"I'm driving, I'm driving." He buckled up, turned the engine on, and froze. "Wait a sec." He turned around, doing a mental headcount of Ray, Frank and Gerard in the back, and then his eyes fell on the empty passenger seat. "Where's Ryan?"

They looked around frantically, trying to see him in among the zombies (even though there really weren't that many), to no avail.

"Where's my gun?" Gerard cut in. "I thought I left it on the -"

A heavy silence fell over them all, in which they glanced at each other and let the truth of what happened hit them all in the chests. But there wasn't time to sit there and cry, even though Gerard had already fulfilled half that task, and Bert quickly drove away without a second thought.

The zombies passed in a blur as Bert all but screeched around the corner, knocking one aside. Blood spattered the windshield, but he only grumbled, turning on the wipers in an attempt to get rid of it. It only smeared across the glass, so he was forced to wash the windshield, and doing that while navigating rows of gathered zombies (seriously, how were there this many left? It had been four years, dammit!) wasn't the easiest task in the world. And his eyes flicked to the rearview mirror at the wrong moment, so seeing tears rolling down Gerard's face kind of broke his stone-cold heart.

Gerard was sad, of course he was sad. It wasn't even that he missed his gun, which he was actually planning on using at some point; he missed Ryan, who never deserved any of this, possibly even less than they did, and he didn't have to turn to...that.

Especially in the night, alone, probably with tears streaking his face and grass-stains on his knees and -

"He stabbed me in the arm." Frank's voice sliced through his thoughts, and his face almost went into the back of the passenger-seat headrest as Bert slammed the brakes.

"Show me." Bert demanded, and Ray, who had been awake only five minutes, frowned.

"What?" He cried.

"Show me, Iero."

"It's not that bad."

"Show me!"

"Frank -"

"Show him, Frankie." Gerard said softly into his ear, and he sighed, reluctantly slipping his arm from the sleeve of his jacket, before unwrapping his makeshift bandage to show them all what Ryan had done to his arm.

Gerard winced, Ray groaned, and Bert just looked at it, expressionless. All in all, it wasn't as bad as they were expecting, and nowhere near as bad as Ray's side, but it was something Frank could really do without. Bert glanced towards the back window, his lips thinning further (if that were possible).

"Keep it bandaged." He said. "I'll look at it properly when we get somewhere safe."

Then, saying nothing more, he continued to drive, leaving everyone else to think that he was much more scared than he liked to let on. And if Bert was scared, then they were absolutely fucking screwed.

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