They’re hiding in one of the several cubicles scattered around the building.  They’re hiding, crouched beneath a desk that grants them little to no vision and barely any cover. Yet they still haven’t moved for the past hour, waiting with bated breath as the low moans of another wave of undead fill the room.

Various office tools are strewn across the floor, mapping out a path from their escape route to their hiding place. Their palms are stained with blood, different weapons clutched in their hands. Jonghyun has never thought ballpoint pens could amount to anything apart from making his handwriting look bad.

Then again, he’d never thought he would have to use them to combat zombies.

The desk starts to tilt, something knocking into it in a repeated manner. Jonghyun covers his mouth, muffling the gasp almost escaping his lips. Taemin snorts, grabbing one of the many pens lying near them. He clicks the button, exposing the tip before leaning out. Jonghyun wants to pull him back, to reprimand him of how dangerous that simple action is in the state they’re in.

Jonghyun knows though that this is Lee Taemin. Lee Taemin, the man who has dreamt of a zombie apocalypse since childhood.

Taemin watches the zombie continue to stumble into the desk. He snorts again, grip on his pen tightening as he leans a bit further out. The zombie groans, rotting flesh clinging onto the wood as it tries to move forwards. The putrid stench grows stronger, the desk tilting even more as the zombie keeps on staggering.

“Taemin, please finish it.” Jonghyun whines, covering his nose from the smell while he holds onto one of the desk legs.

The other man twirls the pen between his fingers, sending Jonghyun a thumbs-up with his free hand. He shoots the zombie one last glance, a glint in his eyes as he jabs the pen into its rotting calf. Taemin pushes the tip in deeper, piercing through tendons as the zombie groans louder.

It falls, hitting the floor with a thud as it lands in front of them. Jonghyun scrambles back, bringing his knees up to his chest in an attempt to distance himself from the zombie. It stretches out a three- hand towards Jonghyun. The limb is close enough for him to see a large bite-mark taking up the area where two fingers should have been.

Taemin rams the pen into the zombie’s eye, driving his entire hand through the socket until the zombie stops moving. The body spasm before stilling as Taemin pulls back, a puddle of blood tainting the floor.

The limb slumps; landing near Jonghyun’s foot. He suppresses another gasp, eyes wide at the sight of the gaping hole. Taemin retakes his position next to Jonghyun, wiping off his bloodstained hand on his pants while readjusting the desk.

Lee Taemin, the man who happens to be in the same department as Jonghyun and who happens to be the man Jonghyun has been crushing on for the past months they’ve worked together.

 “Is that good enough princess, or do you want me to clean out this whole room?” He inquires, tone mocking as Jonghyun tries to calm his own breathing.

Although Taemin is ridiculously good looking, Jonghyun is beginning to reconsider his choices. They’ve only had a long talk twice, both conversations nasty enough to land him with a demeaning nickname that Jonghyun didn’t appreciate then and doesn’t appreciate now. Besides that, their interactions happened only when Taemin didn’t understand the printer, again.

Uneducated in printers and bestowing unfitting nicknames, still, Jonghyun fell for Taemin.

It took a zombie apocalypse to shake Jonghyun out of his fantasies that Taemin might possibly be a first-class maniac.

“Wasn’t that our boss?”

He receives a peculiar stare from Taemin. The latter shrugs craning his neck to achieve a better view of the corpse in front of them. A look of realization coats his face, quickly replaced with a bright grin.

“Yeah, it was,” Taemin responds in awe, sounding pleased with his handiwork. “I always hated that guy.”

Taemin might not be a first-class maniac, he is a first-class maniac.

Jonghyun flicks him on the forehead, ignoring the complaint aimed at him as he flicks him once more.

“Do you have any sense of empathy in that crazy mind of yours?” Jonghyun scolds, frowning at the other man.

“That’s a great question asked by a not so great person,” Taemin retorts, rubbing his forehead in mild pain. “It’s not as if you haven’t killed anyone, princess.”

He smirks as Jonghyun splutters, avoiding yet another incoming flick. Jonghyun glares at him, gesturing to the mutilated zombie.

“At least I finish them off in a swift manner,” he huffs. “You on the other hand, you’re going to get us killed sooner than later.”

As if on cue, something tumbles into their desk. The action causes the table to topple over, crashing against the floor while spilling an assortment of office equipment. Jonghyun hears his own heartbeat amidst the abrupt silence, the beats pulsating in his ears as the footsteps of the undead begin to move towards them.

He curses loudly, Taemin laughs.

“Why did I come with you?” Jonghyun wails, grabbing a nearby office chair before hurling it at an incoming zombie.

“Princess, coming with me was the best decision you could have ever made.” Taemin calls over his shoulder while using another ballpoint pen to stab a zombie through the throat.

Jonghyun grits his teeth. He maneuvers himself away from the swarm by utilizing the toppled desk to act as a wall in between while he tries to snatch a weapon from behind his back. Beads of sweat coat his forehead as his hands fumble, fingers meeting nothing but air.

The zombies edge closer, pushing against the table with a surprising amount of force. It takes Jonghyun off guard, sending him stumbling backwards until his back hits the cubicle’s wall. One zombie collapses on top of the table, head lolling to the side as it starts to drag itself forwards. Jonghyun watches in fear, each passing second bringing it closer.

He can’t take his eyes off of the dismembered corpse coming nearer, can’t remove his gaze from the chunks of ripped off flesh to search for Taemin.

He doesn’t even know if he has the strength to scream, voice stuck in his throat.

Jonghyun pushes his back further against the wall, trying in vain to remove distance between them. Something pricks his shoulder. The contact stings jolting Jonghyun out of his stupor. He stops, breaking the staring battle with the zombie as he chances a glance over his shoulder.

A colorful disposition of thumbtacks is arranged slightly above Jonghyun’s shoulder, right next to his head.

Nothing unusual, except for the clumps of blu-tack holding the thumbtacks in place, sharp metal tips protruding outwards

Jonghyun reacts without thinking.

He turns around, yanking the board from the wall before facing the zombie in one fluid motion. The zombie drones, as if confused upon seeing Jonghyun’s sudden change of emotions.

The noise is cancelled when he bashes the board against its face.

Bits and pieces of flesh are torn off as the wooden material connects, blood splattering onto his clothes, his skin, his face. The adrenaline rush spurs him to continue, to keep going until there’s nothing left but a cracked skull.

The noise of the cracked skull is what jerks him out of his trance. Jonghyun pants, he can barely believe his own eyes much less what he has done as he observes the twitching zombie. Its head is bared for the world to see, a couple thumbtacks sticking to the remainders of its flesh.

The board feels heavy in his hands, the frame having snapped since the first hit.

A low whistle followed by a short applause snaps his attention from the scene in front of him.

“Damn, princess,” Taemin comments in awe. “Never expected that coming from you, can’t say I’m disappointed.”

“That,” Jonghyun begins, steadying his uneven breathing. “That was an accident.”

The look Taemin gives him makes him want to smash the board into his face.

He decides not to when he sees the letter opener Taemin’s holding, extending blood along with various other bodily fluids from his entire hand to his forearm.

Jonghyun notices, although begrudgingly, that the small horde that crowded his table has dispersed or rather has been annihilated. Taemin seems too pleased for someone who is standing in the middle of a pile of dead, brought back to life, and then dead again bodies.

“Done by yours truly,” he says, looking proud of his handiwork.

As he picks at the pieces of skin clinging to the blade, Jonghyun drops the wooden board. It lands with a low thud, spilling thumbtacks onto the floor. Watching Taemin acts as if he’d simply taken a walk in the park ignites a flicker of fear within him, yet at the same time Jonghyun can’t help but be proud of standing on a somewhat equal footing with him.

He’s unsure what scares him the most.

He tries to distract himself, to rid himself of these thoughts. Jonghyun looks at the board, his lifesaver, realizing that the person who’d made it had probably been bored out of their mind. Jonghyun knows this, because he’s done the same thing before during one of their many dull hours of nothing but paperwork piled on top of paperwork.

There’s a nametag lying next to the heaps of bodies, having fallen together with the table. Jonghyun picks it up, wiping off the blood with the hem of his shirt.

It’s not as if he’s already covered in the liquid from head to toe.

The letters, once freed from the stains, spell out the name Choi Minho.

Jonghyun hopes that the man is still alive, that he hasn’t been reduced to a brain-eating, slobbering mess. He wants to thank him for his procrastination; if he hadn’t been that bored, Jonghyun wouldn’t have been alive.

Or he would be alive, just, not himself.

The statement sounds more logical in his head.

“Done celebrating your only life achievement?” Taemin wonders, tapping Jonghyun’s forehead with the handle belonging to the letter opener.

The gesture manages to stain Jonghyun’s face with even more blood.

Taemin chuckles’, leaning in to wipe off the smudge with his shirt and Jonghyun doesn’t know what surprises him more. The close proximity or how Taemin still has clean areas on his clothes.

He also doesn’t know why this sudden act of kindness has his stomach doing more somersaults than he can execute in real life.

Jonghyun knows though. He knows the reason behind the warmth creeping into cheeks, the reason why he feels light like a feather despite being in a demolished office building. He knows, yet he’s not going to accept it.

He’s not accepting the fact that he might still be harboring feelings for a first-class maniac. He is not that much of an idiot, especially not after seeing what Taemin is capable of doing when push comes to shove.

“Come on,” Taemin urges, pushing Jonghyun towards the emergency exit. “There are more zombies waiting for us.”

Jonghyun isn’t dumb enough to yearn for a man who values his life as much as Jonghyun values paperwork.

However, when he finds himself laughing at Taemin tripping a zombie out of a window with the broadest grin on his face, Jonghyun knows he’s in too deep.

When Taemin grabs his hand, yanking him back from an undead lurking behind the corner before finishing it off with a stapler through the neck, Jonghyun thinks that Taemin isn’t that insane.

The scenario is ridiculous, two office workers fighting through where one is a maniac and the other one has a crush on said maniac fighting through hordes of zombies.  

As if this isn’t a destructive environment that can have them both wiped out in every waking minute, as if this isn’t one of those over-the-top young adult novels that Jonghyun buys knowing that he’ll be disappointed and ends up being disappointed in.

They make a good couple though, an unexpected one that he thought would never have happened with their different personalities. Still, anything is possible in a zombie apocalypse. Jonghyun simply needed that one zombie to drive him into a corner, to have him slaughter with thumbtacks, for the two of them to click.

He’s not surprised when another moment similar to that one arises. When Taemin is jumped by one zombie, when Jonghyun feels a sudden surge of anger boil in him as he sees the scene unfolding. He grabs the nearest object, actions taking over rational thoughts, before hurling the item with all his strength at the undead.

The fire extinguisher makes a surprising dent in the zombie’s head, knocking it to the floor.

Jonghyun blinks, staring into Taemin’s eyes with an identical look of shock. He opens his mouth, an excuse ready on his tongue, when Taemin crosses the distance between them.

He kisses him without hesitating; all tongue with nothing graceless in between.

Similar to the predicament they’re stuck with.

Yet life becomes all the better after that event, Jonghyun catching himself smiling more than worrying about the dangers hiding in the shadows. Taemin begins to trust him, begins to let him take on his own horde of walking dead without feeling the need to babysit him. Although he doesn’t stop calling him ‘princess’, Jonghyun starts to take a certain liking to the infamous nickname.

Thus, when time has bound them together, when his crush isn’t as one-sided as he’d thought, Jonghyun notices the bite before Taemin does.

He ignores it until it’s too late.