The Mount, Ex-Los Angeles

[spin_kick_snap]

The last time anyone from Fandom had been in Kathy's LA, the heroes had been living inside the walls that surrounded Paramount Studios, with the exes and the South Seventeens laying claim to everything else. Since then, they'd expanded; the Big Wall pushing the borders out almost a mile in all four directions. In some spots, it was hard to tell that there had ever been a zombocalypse; the streets were clean, the buildings repaired, the blood all scrubbed away. There was a proper school, lots of farms and gardens, several churches, and even a small library. The studio was still the heart of the community, but people had started to spread out and settle. It was still a tight fit, several thousand people into one square mile, but honestly not much worse than Los Angeles used to be, back before the world died and reanimated again.

Life had fallen back into a rhythm again. People got up, got ready for the day. Kids were sent off to school, adults took themselves to various jobs, though there were fewer sales people, baristas, and aspiring actors and a lot more guards, scavengers, and farmers these days. There was a brewery down on Larchmont and a still over on Monroe. Burns Park let people enjoy a bit of nature where the kids could run around and burn off steam and a Gold's Gym practically against the Big Wall. That was where the Unbreakables spent most of their free time, with curious gawkers watching them put more and more weight onto the machines.

It was a bustling little community of survivors, as safe as a place could be, surrounded on all sides by millions of undead waiting to find a way inside to devour them all.

[For them that are there! NFB, and please wait for the OCD is up! Previous entry Next Entry]

Comments

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

It'd probably be curfew soon, if they still had that, Dante reflected at some point between the 'Mmh' and the rest of it.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "It'd be so easy to just give it up. Die, or crowd each other out, or something. Instead it's almost normal out here."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[smilestopscars]

Ezra snorted. "I vote for purging the word 'normal' from vocabulary," he said, drawing out the words in a soft drawl that was somehow reminiscent of some of his more seductive purrs, yet somehow the complete opposite of that. "It doesn't actually mean anything."

After a pause, he added, half just to himself, "Never has."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante thought about it.

"Not sure that's true," he said, his own tone even, thoughtful even.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[smilestopscars]

"Well, hasn't meant much to me," Ezra amended.

He didn't sound like he could muster up much caring, either way.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante chewed on that thought another little while.

"It probably means something different to everybody," he said. "When I say normal, I just think about... a day, you know? A day where nothing particularly bad happens, and nothing particularly good. I wake up, I eat, I hang, I go to bed. Baseline. Normal."

A beat.

"But five years ago, a day like that would've been weird as shit."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[smilestopscars]

"That's what I meant," Ezra replied without much color to his voice. "For something that's supposed to convey ordinariness, it's too mutable for me. It means... nothing."

He'd never felt like normal applied to him, anyway.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

"I probably woulda said the same back then," Dante said.

Still thoughtful, but now halfway to himself, like he was trying out a thought.

"I guess I just mean they're getting back to doing as humans do when there's not so much shit going on," he said. "You could almost forget about all the fucking zombies."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[smilestopscars]

Ezra shrugged. "Never disagreed with the principle."

No, he got it. Grasping at semantics just came naturally when his thoughts were a jumble.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

"I know," Dante said.

He blamed Kathy; he'd never narrated his thoughts this much before he met her.

"Just thinking, I guess."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[smilestopscars]

"It's okay."

Not much of anything else was. But that was.

Ezra brushed some hair away from his eyes. But it didn't really stay there.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante's mouth curved, just a little, in spite of himself.

"Maybe they have hairdressers now."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[smilestopscars]

Ezra rolled his eyes.

It was a little half-hearted, but still. "I'm too worn down to listen to half-assed insults to my hair, so please stop immediately. Thank you."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

"It's a joke, not an insult," Dante said, with an easy lightness.

He blew a long strand of his own unnaturally vibrant white hair away from his face to demonstrate his point.

It practically reached his jaw now.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[smilestopscars]

"That you think you can joke about the glory of my hair is an insult, darling."

It was very dry, but at least he'd added the endearment there. Made him sound a little more normal.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

But normal wasn't real, right?

"Touchy, touchy," Dante teased gently. Then dropped it. "Looking forward to getting a shower for mine."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[smilestopscars]

Hey now, wasn't the narrative who'd made that claim, now was it?

Ezra sighed. Almost wistful. "Oh, a shower will be nice."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

"Right?" Dante said. "I don't wanna smell of zombie gunk all week."

It'd also make him feel - there was that word again - normal.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[smilestopscars]

"And I don't want to keep smelling the gunk on all of you."

Please spare a thought for your friendly neighborhood werefox's supernatural senses.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

"Sorry," Dante said wryly. "Didn't think about your nose."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[smilestopscars]

Ezra wrinkled his nose. "Neither did the rest of this world."

This, right here, was relatively okay. But he could feel the smell of rot wafting in past the Big Wall.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

"Let's hope we blast our way out of here fast," Dante said, his hand bumping against Ezra's for no reason at all, really.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[smilestopscars]

It was still reason enough for Ezra to wait for a beat, and then try and take Dante's hand into his.

"Yeah, hope so."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante let him, squeezing his hand in recognition. "At least we found her."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[smilestopscars]

"At least we found her," Ezra agreed, squeezing his hand back.

He sighed.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

"Penny for... whatever that was?" Dante asked, voice ever so light.

An invitation for Ezra to talk, but also an invitation to let it go if that was what Ez needed right now.