So...  Did you like the bromance in the last chapter?  I'm sorry if you were expecting more, or something more intimate.  I'm sticking to my initial warning (that this won't be a romantic Markson fic and that you shouldn't expect too much in the romance department), so I hope you all aren't too terrible disappointed.

“Mark,” she whispered.  His fingers curled around her waist and he pulled her closer to his chest, their bodies woven together underneath the covers.  “Mark.”

“What,” he grumbled, tired and blurry-eyed.  Nonetheless, Madelyn was beautiful in the dim lighting, her round face speckled with freckles and shadows.  Her lips were full, slightly parted, and she was smiling.

“You’re so handsome.”  He grinned like a dork and stretched, holding her closer still.  “Really, I mean it.”

“I know.”

“So you know that you’re handsome.”

“No; I know that you meant it,” he breathed, and let a lethargic palm cup her cheek gently.  She leaned into his touch and her eyelashes brushed the heel of his hand so butterfly-soft that he shivered.  “You’re beautiful.”

She was frowning.

“No, you don’t mean that.”  Her tone was so unexpected that now he was frowning too.

“Of course I mean it.”

“Liar.”

His eyebrows crinkled and his fingers dug themselves into her hair.  He shifted closer and pulled her body beneath his own.  He leaned down and let his lips graze her jaw before fitting his mouth to hers.  She let him kiss her, but when he leaned back, she didn’t look breathless, she didn’t look happy.

“I’m not beautiful anymore, Mark,” she whispered, and he felt shudders crawl down his spine.  Before he could ask what she possibly meant, she repeated it.  “Not anymore, Mark, not anymore.  Mark, not anymore, not anymore, not anymore Mark.”  He pulled away, a trick of the light across her face making him recoil.

Then it wasn’t a trick of the light, and her cheek was gone and blood was curdling in her hair and her lips suddenly weren’t as full as they were full of flesh and bone and blood and blood, oh God, the blood.

And then she reached up for him with grasping fingers and kissed him square on the mouth, only this time he didn’t kiss back because instead he screamed, as she bit down hard.

Mark woke up, sweaty forehead, sweaty palms and sweaty bed.  It took a moment for him to realize it had been a dream, and when he did, he held a hand to his mouth, revolted and disgusted and nauseous.  He felt tears trickle from his synched-shut eyes and through his fingers, and he tasted salty blood.

He sobbed into his hands, letting the nightmare seep out of his head and onto the trailer’s grimy floor.  In a moment of realization, he remembered where he was, who he was with, and whipped around to see Jackson curled up in the corner, legs twitching and head rolling from side to side.  He was mumbled something too soft to hear, but Mark knew that he’d just found something else that they had in common.

They were each haunted by something in their past, something so defining that it prowled their dreams and their waking moments.  He was relieved in knowing that he wasn’t the only one affected by such things.

What he wasn't relieved in was the darkness and the creaking of metal as Jackson kept shifting.  He could practically see Madelyn in the far corner, huddled and crying and bleeding; he let out another sob.  When he was more relaxed, he looked over at the other, and tried to imagine who he saw in the corner of the trailer, who he saw in the corner of his eye, who disappeared every time he turned.

He wondered if he once had a Madelyn of his own; someone who would invade his side of the bed whenever she felt like it, someone who loved the way his hair felt through her fingers, someone who in the past-world, the pre-apocalypse world, could've made the world into a Hell worse than even this one, just by leaving.  He knew Jackson had someone in that corner, and that was another reason they were similar.

The list of their common traits went a little like…

• Young
• Crazy
• Orphaned

Now he could add, ‘damned to remember.’  A little long, but he wouldn’t forget that one, because for the love of God almighty, he couldn’t find it in him to forget anything anymore.

Forget the heat, the trek to find the rowdy band of survivors was difficult enough with the constant fear of attack and the reminder every hour that it was one less hour till nightfall.  They had been caught twice in the last three days of traveling just before dusk, rushing to find somewhere to camp out safely.  In the end they were okay, but their individual luck had never proved to be worth the wait, and combined it seemed only to push them towards greater, more dangerous things.

They’d been wrong in guessing how long it would take to find the others; either they’d passed beyond them, or they never slept.  It was stressful to say the least.

“Mark,” Jackson started, and he hummed to show his attention.  “There’s this game I used to play with Mason.”  It had been three days since he last said his name, even mentioned him, and Mark looked up in rapt attention.  “Would you?”

“Of course.”  Without hesitation.  Jackson blew a raspberry.

“Okay, so we go back and forth asking questions about, about what the other wants to do after the apocalypse ends.”  Mark felt a hint of surprise rise in his gut; the other had always seemed to be so pessimistic, so apprehensive of a day of salvation, but he was beginning to grasp the idea of what the pre-Jackson had been like.

He’d been caring and kind and protective and brave, and he was hopeful that the end of suffering would come for those he loved.  Mark felt like that him was starting to resurface, and wondered, if he was right about his predictions, that he might be the reason for it.  It would’ve been a little too fantastical a week ago, but now was different.  The present was different, always changing.  The past was what couldn’t be reversed.

“Okay.  Who goes first?”

“You can,” Jackson said, and whipped the stick in his hand across the street.  Mark nodded to himself and thought, trying not to conjure up too personal a question.  Thinking hard, he came to the conclusion that goddammit, every question was personal.  So he winged it.

“What kind of car do you want to drive?”

“A pickup truck.  You?”

“Hmm…”

With every question Mark had to answer, he had to allot himself a solid five minutes to think.  Everything mentioned deserved to be mulled over, from the style of his house to of his hair.  It all mattered in the past, unlike how nothing like it mattered now.  He decided at some point that was exactly why he liked to think about it.

“You really want to go to Paris?”  Mark nodded and Jackson laughed.  The former glanced over, and smiled despite himself.  Jackson laughing; it was absurd, it was unexpected.  It was beautifully laughable in itself.  It was the craziest laugh he’d ever heard, ringing clear and loud, and higher than he’d have thought.

Mark noted that even the empty street they were strolling through liked it, evident in the bird calls somewhere far away and the lack of fleshies.

“Isn’t that a bit, I don’t know, romantic?  Girly?”  Jackson’s teeth were straighter and whiter than even Mark’s, and his lips were stretched farther than he thought lips could stretch.

He looked over at Mark, self-conscious with the look he was receiving, with the silence that neither of them were filling.  All he’d asked was why such a girlish vacation spot; was he not supposed to ask?  Their game had morphed into something it never had done with Mason, and he kind of liked it.  He also kind of wished he could stop comparing them.

There was nothing alike between the two worth noting, nothing physical, nothing philosophical.   Yet he couldn’t help but act like who he used to be, the him that he often debated about bringing back.  He could move on, which had meant at one-point killing Mason, but now meant killing the him that had worn a mask and built a wall around himself.

Mark had done the work of breaking that wall, but it was his own job to pull the false eyes, false heart, false emotionless persona off.  His friend was helping with that too, though, and it was appreciated.

“I just,” Mark tried to begin, looking forward and sticking his hands into his pocket after shoving his gun into its holster.  “Someone I knew wanted to have her honeymoon there.”  Jackson swallowed and didn’t have to wonder, didn’t have to think about it, because he knew that this was the rumored past girlfriend, dead and gone to all but Mark.  To her still aching lover.

Jackson might’ve spilled his life story into the other’s hands and received enough trust to build a wall taller than the Eiffel Tower, but that chapter of Mark’s life was still a mystery.  He gathered that she was dead, but while he got the vibes that she’d been gone for a while, he also saw the signs of constant abuse on the other’s heart.

“I told her it was girlish too.”  He grinned and looked at the ground before looking up at Jackson.  “I guess it doesn’t seem too bad a vacation spot anymore, does it?”

“Not at all,” he said, and looked down an alley they passed to see a group of three rotters munching on a body.  He ducked his head and held back the nausea.

“Madelyn…”  Mark nodded to himself and held his head up high, higher than the other had ever seen it.  “Madelyn was such a good person; she would’ve been able to cheer you up much better than I’m able to.”  They both nodded, to each other and to themselves, because words weren’t needed.  Still, Jackson couldn’t help but think.

No, she couldn’t have.

“LEAVE ME IF YOU WANT, BUT I’M NOT CRYING!”

The both of them whipped around.  Their eyes searched for the source of the music-less karaoke, startled and finding new motivation to their steps; maybe they’d just found the group.  In front of them was laid a rotting school, complete with rotting schoolyard and rotting schoolchildren in that yard.  And in a first-story classroom window, framed by the grasping hands of a dozen students against the glass, was a young man screaming a song at the top of his lungs.

“WE WEREN'T MEANT TO BE, BUT WE KEPT LYING!”

The two of them shared a glance before racing over and across the street, the thought that at one point they were once told to look both ways sounding crazy in their heads.  They hopped the short, brick fence and ran to the window, taking out rotters left and right.  There weren’t a lot, though, the bulk of them crowding to try and get to the singing boy.

“YOU TOLD ME TO LEAVE, I SAID PLEASE NOT THAT!”

Jackson sliced a path with his machete, his smaller knife tucked into his belt.  Mark was less efficient, but less terrified that usual, and seemingly eager to reach the new boy.  The group slowly fell one by one, their slim numbers already almost gone before any took notice of what was happening.

“YOU SAID IT'S FOR THE BETTER IF I DON'T LOOK BACK!”

“Hey!” Mark shouted, their only communication being through an empty pane up top.  “Are you okay?”  The boy turned around so fast he stumbled and collided with a desk.  He steadied himself before launching across the room to press hands and face against the glass.  His nose became a blob and smeared the already smeared window.  Mark asked again if he was okay.

The man laughed, almost louder than he’d been singing, and continued to chuckle as he spoke.

“My name is Youngjae!”

Guys, I love you all and please don't think I'm trying to write short chapters.  It's like, I type them up on word and them I paste them here and they look so much shorter than I thought they were.  I'm so sorry, but still, I hope you're liking it so far.  I know I am.  But come on, your opinion matters more in this situation, so comment what you think (anything, from criticism to praise), and I'll try to repond.  I'm usually pretty good at that.  But anyways...  HAVE A GREAT DAY MY BEAUTIFUL, LOVELY, FANTASTICAL READERS!