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Nick has been what he is all his life, but he didn't realize it for himself until the first time he played a hand of Hold 'Em.
He was seventeen and he hadn't been home in three months and the chips represented desperation as much as they did money he didn't have. But still— fresh out of puberty and brimming with ambition, anger— he wasn't the aggressor, wasn't the one rushing to raise the stakes. Instead, he was content to sit back, calling the raises with a suitable degree of nonchalance, exactly the right amount of feigned insecurity to keep those chips stacking up.
It was just instinctual for him, natural from the start. A flash of eyes, down-right, from the beer-bellied opponent opposite him, as the flop spread across cheap imitation of Casino-green velvet in the back room of that dingy Jersey bar. He can't explain how, exactly, he knew his hand was the winner, but he knew it sure as he knew his own name.
He still remembers the euphoria when the river came through for him, a high he's never quite been able to match despite years of trying.
See, that's the secret to winning just about anything. A bet, a heart, a game, someone's trust— doesn't matter. Just let them think it's their idea, let them believe they're the one in control. Nick is good at what he does because he's mastered the art of being the shadow, the puppet master. Pulling the strings behind the scenes.
And he's got as far as he has doing it— bluffing, manipulating, conning— by being the perfect opportunist. It’s less about actively hunting for the prize as it is simply knowing what to do with the cards you’re dealt. When to call, when to raise. And sometimes, when to fold. (It happens, and that's part of being a smart player, too).
And the end of the world is no exception.
He stumbles into the company of three strangers made primal by their fear, and when he tells them he doesn't plan on sticking around long, he doesn't mean it. At thirty-five, that natural instinct has long since been honed and perfected; he knows it's best to keep your distance, at first, when playing a game you aren't yet familiar with.
And surreal, exhausting, utterly dismantling as the apocalypse is— Nick forgets a lot of things, but he never forgets himself. However arbitrarily horrifying the situation may be, he knows he feels nothing where the others feel something crushing and traumatic; shooting, hacking and burning things that are trying to kill him first isn't a hard decision for him even if they were once human.
The stench of death is everywhere, but unlike the others, this isn't Nick's first time looking his mortality in the eye.
*
Ellis had called them zombies. Nick had scoffed.
"What, you really still think this is just some sort of flu?" Rochelle had said, incredulous.
"Gimmie a break," Nick had snorted. "Obviously not, but motherfucking zombies? Really?"
"Infection coulda mutated for the ones that are, y'know, different," was Coach's suggestion. "Different strains of the virus or some shit."
"Infections and viruses are two separate things, moron."
Nick had ended up being banished from the room that night, forced to sleep alone on the mattress with the large jagged hole ripped out of it.
He didn't care. He'd been expecting the quiet knock that came a little while later.
"People have always been rotten on the inside," Nick had said. "Just now most of their outsides match. Monsters don't even have to exist."
"Maybe the folks you keep company with," Ellis had retorted, stubborn as a child. "But my buddy Keith ain't rotten, and I ain't neither."
Nick had smiled. "Ellis, for enough money, or pussy, or whatever else that dumbass hick could want— I guarantee your buddy would leave you to be eaten alive."
"That ain't true."
"Bet your life on it?"
Ellis had said nothing, which was as good an answer as any.
*
They hole up in anything with four solid walls, mostly old warehouses and ransacked buildings. True safehouses are rare and undependable and Nick doesn't feel that much safer inside them anyway. The heavy metal doors might do well at stopping things from getting in, but they also make it that much harder to get out. He never sleeps when they stay in them overnight.
Ellis insists, like he always does, on leaving some supplies behind for the next visitors.
"Decency don't cost a penny," he says.
"Beg to differ," Nick says, and rattles off the barely half-true story of when he pretended to be a homeless cripple.
Ellis shakes his head but smiles at Nick's douchiness, which he never used to do. A week ago it would have been a scrunch of the eyebrows, maybe even a noise of disgust. A week ago he never would have laughed as Nick scrawled obscene replies to heartfelt messages left on a wall. A week ago he wouldn't have looked so upset when Nick snapped at him to shut the fuck up.
Nick smiles too. A lot can change in a week.
"We got a lotta ground to cover before nightfall," Coach is saying, sliding shells into his shotgun, but Nick isn't really listening. The Plan is always changing, always edited after the latest dead-end or disappointment.
The car had been a fucking good idea and Nick doesn't mind admitting it, because he's positive he wasn't the only one surprised it came from Ellis; he'd caught a glimpse of Coach's face in that elevator. But they've been living on a wing and a prayer since they had to lose it, too many close calls and near-misses to not feel like their luck is running out.
Nick can practically smell the desperation coming from Coach and Rochelle recently, but Ellis—
Ellis is young and impressionable, secure in the illusion of his immortality. And Nick?
Well, Nick just can't ignore that kind of naivete. It's how he makes a living, after all.
*
"You gotta be pretty fucked up to actually enjoy being a bad influence," Ro had scolded him.
She's nice enough to look at and her intuition is something to be admired, but Nick knows she doesn't particularly care about him, even now after saving each other from death a good few times. Going through tough shit together doesn't bond people who wouldn't have bonded anyway.
"You ain't his mother," Nick had said.
"Yeah, I know. He had to kill her, remember?"
"We kill people every goddamn day."
*
The apocalypse is sort of like jail: dangerous, dirty and thoroughly demeaning. They travel for days, hours at a time in the southern heat and constant rain of claws and teeth, barely able to see where to shoot through the sweat and sun in their eyes.
All of them are filthy to the degree it doesn't even feel unusual anymore. Nick's seen Rochelle picking skin and hair out from under her nails as casually as if she were getting a manicure. Coach waxes poetic about food but all Nick dreams about are showers and bathtubs; water is a scarce, precious resource, and first priority is always for drinking.
They make do with perfunctory washes and whatever toiletries they can loot, but the worst is finding somewhere even remotely private to take a fucking piss, or do anything else, and having to suffer through that indignity while also knowing you could have your face ripped off at any moment just for being a slave to your own goddamn biology.
After the firework burns and the fucking swamp and almost drowning in that goddamn hurricane, Nick doesn't have any fucks left to give.
And that's probably a problem, because Virgil's boat is the first little piece of real sanctuary they've found (unless the hillbilly goes the same way as the helicopter pilot) and if he can't summon an inch of hope here, he doubts he can do it anywhere.
The others seem blissfully oblivious. Nick leaves them sunbathing on the deck and goes to smoke at the bow.
The packet of cigarettes he found in a dead guy's pocket a couple of days ago is rapidly dwindling. He leans on the railing, watches the water roll over in waves, and misses bourbon with every inch of his body.
After a while, Ellis comes to him. Nick can't quite set his watch to it yet, but it's getting there.
"You okay?" Ellis asks, leaning next to him so their elbows are almost touching.
"Sure, kid," Nick says.
"I ain't a kid."
Nick chuckles. "Ellis, I am… a lot older than you. Trust me. You're a kid."
"Just 'cause I'm younger than you don't make me a kid," Ellis says stubbornly. "I own my own auto shop, y'know. Can fix just about anythin' with a motor."
"That just makes you a hillbilly, not a man," Nick says, smirking when Ellis elbows him.
"So what, you just gotta be a sad old gambler in a ugly suit to be a man?"
If he'd said it when they first met, Nick would have punched him in the fucking face.
Now, he's not sure he's hiding his delight well enough when he says, "Fuck yourself, redneck faggot."
Ellis spits into the water. "Don't know why I even bother tryna be nice."
Nick sticks another smoke between his lips to keep his smirk busy. "Me neither."
"I ain't a fag."
"My suit ain't ugly."
Ellis goes quiet, but the placation that would have been there before never comes.
Nick blows smoke rings at the sky, enjoying the fact Ellis isn't shuffling away. Either he's getting more or less comfortable the more of these encounters they have; both are equally fine.
"Where'd you learn to do that?" Ellis asks.
"Jail," Nick answers. Sometimes the truth is more fitting than a lie.
Ellis snorts. "I ain't even surprised. What'd you do?"
"The first time I went?"
"Damn," Ellis grumbles. Nick doesn't miss the grudging admiration. "How much time you done?"
"Longest stretch was three years," Nick tells him blandly. "Extortion."
"Oh," Ellis says. There's another little silence. "You never killed nobody before this shit, then?"
"What, you figured I would have?"
Ellis shrugs. "You're just damn good with a gun, is all. And I ain't never taken you for no deer hunter."
"You don't think killing someone made you a man?" Nick asks, instead of answering the question.
Ellis looks down at the water. "I just… did what I had to."
Nick doesn't say that compared to living on the inside, killing your mom is a walk in the park. "Well, that's the law in prison. Hell, that's the law of life itself."
"You reckon jail made you a man?"
Nick smiles, watching his smoke catch on the wind. He can feel Ellis looking at him out the corner of his eye.
"Well, let's just say it did a better job of it than greasing engines would have."
*
He'd actually attempted to teach the kid to play cards one night, when the boredom had reached the degree of brain-deadening where he thought he might as well present his throat to the horde, since he was practically one of them anyway.
"Just sayin', it seems stupid as all hell to me," Ellis had said. "If I'd called you woulda lost everythin'."
"But you didn't, did you?" Nick had said, smiling. "Bluffing is part of the game, Hayseed."
Ellis had shook his head, eyes on Nick's fingers as he shuffled the battered deck with ease only years of practice could bring. "I don't like lyin'."
Only because you're not any good at it."
"I don't wanna be good at it."
Nick had shrugged like he didn't care. "Then you'll always lose."
*
They're not off the boat even an hour before things finally fall apart.
It's long overdue; if Nick had placed a bet on it at the beginning he would have lost his money. And knowing that feels somehow worse than the horde that rains down on them, worse than the fact it's fucking him that trips the goddamn car alarm, of all people.
He doesn't feel guilty because he never does— it's an utterly useless emotion— but he does feel angry, pissed off that he's about to die in the bumfuck south just because he was exhausted and sloppy enough to lose track of a bullet.
Maybe it's that anger that drives him to pump nine more into the head of the shrieking, emaciated, hideous fucking creature that's slashing wildly at the mess of sobbing Ellis on the floor, he doesn't know. But that's what Nick does.
Ellis doesn't move even when the thing crumples down on top of him, leaving it up to Nick to slide an arm under Ellis's and pull him to his feet. Red soaks alarmingly fast through Ellis’ shirt, smearing over Nick’s suit. He still remembers when this thing was white as goddamn snow. He still has to wince every time he looks at it.
"Nick?” Ellis says blearily as Nick hauls him away, towards the closest open doorway, popping off shots as he goes.
They were doing a pretty good job at taking out the bulk of them, but then Ellis went down and suddenly Coach and Rochelle weren't there anymore and now the stragglers are regrouping, realigning their rotten little brains back into prey drive mode.
"Yeah," Nick grunts. "Just hang on, okay? I'll patch you up once we're out of the open."
"'Kay," Ellis slurs. He's totally out of it, head lolling on Nick's shoulder. They’ve moving at a snail's pace.
Nick grits his teeth and doesn't pray. No sense in tempting fate.
But they make it inside— an abandoned apartment building, it turns out— and Nick lays Ellis down in the first bedroom he finds with a mattress, barricading the door as quickly as he can. When he's satisfied it's secure as it's going to get, he sits down next to Ellis and shrugs his med kit off his shoulder, not wasting any time getting some water and painkillers down him.
Damn, the kid looks like a tattered rag doll, and he's about as cooperative as one when Nick shoves his hat off (and how that fucking thing is even still on Ellis's head, Nick has no idea) and peels the soaked shirt off of him, murmuring something he hopes is at least a little soothing when Ellis whimpers in pain.
They’re running low on supplies, which isn't ideal. But they're still mostly good for pills from the pharmacy raid three days ago, and the fact it's Ellis means Nick doesn't even have to rely on guilt when it comes to the subject of paying him back. He's always been safe in the knowledge if he ever got into serious trouble, Ellis would be the first one there regardless.
Only a genuine moron could be so purely selfless.
"Nick," Ellis says, eyes squeezed shut, face twisting as Nick does his best to clean the jagged wounds streaking his chest and arms. They're not particularly deep, but there are a lot of them, and they're leaking blood Ellis can't afford to spare. "Nick."
"Stay still."
"Hurts."
"Yeah, no shit, dumbass."
Ellis makes a wheezing, stuttering noise that Nick assumes is a laugh.
"Bad news though, Overalls," he continues as he pulls out the antiseptic, "it's about to hurt a hell of a lot more, and I can't have you screaming the goddamn building down and letting any more mouldy fuckers know we're in here, capiche?"
Ellis makes a breathless, panicked noise, but he grits his teeth and nods. Of course, he still yelps when Nick pours, which gives Nick a nice excuse to shove a hand over his mouth, which he has definitely wanted to do more than once. Ellis huffs against his palm, eyes watering, breathing fast and noisy through his nose. His fingers are twisted, white-knuckled, in the filthy sheets. He's desperate and in pain but the trust is still a heady thing, still feels like a prize.
"Good," Nick murmurs when he's done, but it's a long moment before he takes his hand away. When he does, Ellis is staring up at him, still breathing loudly through his reddened mouth. His eyes look cloudy, pain and delirium and paracetamol. Nick leans in to help him drink, a hand braced behind his bare shoulders and the other steadying the water bottle, and still Ellis keeps looking at him.
Nick plays dumb. "What?"
"Just you," Ellis says, easing himself back down with a wince. "Bein' nice."
"I'm always nice."
Ellis does the laugh noise again. "Maybe if there's somethin' in it for you."
It's all Nick can do to keep his smirk on the inside, then. Who knew the kid had such cynicism in him? He almost feels like a proud parent.
He huffs a little. "Oh, that's real nice, kid. I'll have you know you're about to get the last of my bandages."
Ellis bites his lip at that, exactly the way Nick knew he would. "Aw, hell. Maybe you shouldn't--"
"Shut up," Nick says gruffly. He offers Ellis a hand. "And sit up."
Ellis obediently lets Nick pull him up, groaning. Nick bandages him as best he can, winding the fabric around his chest in wide strips to make sure he covers all of the wounds. Ellis is quiet and tense, breathing shallow and noisy as Nick works.
He exhales harshly when Nick finishes pinning the last bandage, wincing a little. "Uh, thanks."
"No problem. Just don't waste it by getting pounced on or something."
"No, I mean." He's wearing a look Nick has seen a lot of times before, on a lot of people. Usually right before he takes their money and disappears. "Seriously, man. I reckon I woulda just died if you--"
"I said, it's okay."
Ellis takes the hint and shuts up. For a minute. "It's just, you always said you wouldn't, y'know. Go back for someone."
"We lost Ro and Coach," Nick answers stiffly. "So I gotta have someone to help keep me alive."
"Yeah, right," Ellis says, a smile in his voice even amongst the sadness.
Despite what Nick says, he's never actually thought the kid was stupid.
*
Nick had learned a lot about himself in prison. Mostly that he really did belong there; that he was, by any definition of the phrase, a Bad Man.
His drunken waste of a father had always said he'd never amount to anything - probably would have felt validated if he'd ever known where his son had ended up - but for Nick, it was proof of entirely the opposite. Sure, he could have looked at it as a failure that he'd gotten caught, but the way he saw it, it was just par the course of the business he was in. A milestone. He still knew he was good at what he did, and if there was one thing incarceration had done for him, it was inspire him to become better at what he did.
It was almost cathartic, realizing that he wasn't sorry, that he'd do it all again. It gave him an identity. A purpose.
And there is no better place - no better place - than jail to practice the art of the con. When your wits and reputation are pretty much the only weapons you have - when any possible leverage or security you can gain is stripped down to basics literally akin to the shirt on your back - you're going to learn to work with it, or you're going to be eaten alive. Nick can't pretend he's proud of absolutely everything he did to survive, but then, pride is probably the one sin that is absolutely useless on the inside.
And just because he isn't proud of some things, doesn't necessarily mean he's ashamed of them.
Doesn't mean he didn't learn from them.
*
Nick tells Ellis he's in no fit state to travel just yet, that they're going to stay in the apartment for a few days. Ellis protests, of course, always eager to be moving on, and even more eager to find Coach and Rochelle. Nick doesn't say that they're probably already dead, and he can tell by Ellis's face that he appreciates that.
But he does say that, if Ellis tries to leave, he'll shoot him in the kneecaps. Ellis's smile is reluctant, but there.
He sets Ellis up on the couch in the living room of the apartment while he scours the rest of the building for anything useful (and also not so much useful as illicit, but he omits that part when relaying the plan.) Ellis protests about that too, of course, saying Nick shouldn't go on his own - which is probably true - but on the other hand, without fresh supplies, Ellis's wounds are in serious danger of finishing him off, and Nick wasn't being entirely facetious when he said he needed somebody to help keep him alive.
He does run into a few infected stragglers while he's looking around, but it's nothing he can't handle. He comes back with a full garbage bag over his shoulder and a bloody slash across his cheek and pretends he doesn't like Ellis fussing over him, swatting the kid's concerned touches away with a snarl here, an insult there.
"Come on, you took care of me," Ellis says, like it's that simple.
"I don't need a fucking nursemaid," Nick grumbles, pulling clothes out of the bag. The cleaner ones go to bandages; he starts ripping with a certain amount of satisfaction.
"I ain't bein' a nursemaid," Ellis says, uncharacteristically pissy from being restricted to the couch. "And you don't look like no nursemaid to me, neither."
"Whatever."
"It's called helpin' out a friend."
Nick doesn't deny it. He stays gruffly silent, keeping his eyes on his own hands. Ellis sighs and drags the bag towards him, pulling out his own handful of clothes.
He holds up a bright pink T-shirt and scoffs. "I ain't wearin' half this shit, just so y'know."
"Right, 'cause you're such a fucking fashionista," Nick scoffs, reaching out to smack the cap off of Ellis's head. It looks especially ridiculous with the kid practically naked from the waist up.
Ellis scowls and puts it back on his head. "Look who's talkin', Colonel Sanders," he snorts. He flicks at Nick's stained lapels with dirty fingers; Nick grabs his wrist hard enough that Ellis yelps, instinctively trying to snatch his hand back.
Nick tightens his fingers. "Never," he says dangerously, "quote that fucking grease monkey at me ever again. Got it?" Ellis starts to burble something agreeable, still pulling, but Nick yanks him closer, until they're face to face and inches apart, and abruptly, Ellis stills. Nick smirks at his wide eyes. He licks his lips deliberately, says lowly, "And don't touch the suit."
Then he lets go, going back to his task like nothing happened. It's a long, silent moment before Ellis starts to mimic him, filling the room with the noise of tearing fabric. When Nick glances sideways he gets an eyeful of the mark he's left, the angry red ring encircling Ellis's wrist.
He feels his face heat, which is not part of any plan he may or may not have, but Ellis doesn't look at him, eyes on the clothes he's ripping apart. He's strong, even with his injuries, arms leanly muscled and shoulders broad. His hands are wide and masculine, tough from his trade, skin practically glowing with that goddamn resilience of youth. Nick thinks he was about Ellis's age the first time he went to jail.
"Good," he says again, and now it's Ellis's turn to flush.
Nick doesn't miss it, but he's also under no illusions. If it weren't for the goddamn apocalypse - the death and the horror and the kind of mental stress that only the complete annihilation of his entire world could bring - there's no way Nick would even be a glancing thought in Ellis's pretty little head.
A few nights ago, Nick had heard Rochelle quietly crying when she thought nobody else was awake. In the days before they'd lost them, he'd started to notice Coach praying a lot more, raising his eyes to the sky and mouthing silent words every time they passed a pile of rotten bodies, another abandoned CEDA camp, a scrawled message of separation and heartbreak on a wall.
But out of all of their individual symptoms of their collective desperation, Ellis's was, and still is, by far the most interesting. And in a world ravaged down to the dregs of humanity, maybe simple interest is all anyone really has left.
The days pass slowly, and with Ellis immobile and the loss of their companions still hanging over them, Nick knows the kid is wearing thin. Talking more, laughing less. Nick doesn't hear anything about Keith for at least five days. He's out of the room for too long and Ellis is jittery when he returns, sometimes pacing in front of the half-bordered up window, knuckles whitening around the handle of his pistol.
One night it rains, for the first time in weeks. With both of them sick of stagnating in the same couple of rooms, Nick doesn't have to do much persuading to get Ellis up on the roof. They don't run into anything, but he barricades the door after them anyway.
The moonlight is bright and eerie, diffused by rain clouds in shadows over the concrete. Nick wastes no time in stripping to his shirt and shorts, draping his pants and jacket over a cable. He's soaked with cool rainwater in seconds, pleasantly numb in the warm southern air. The grin he shoots Ellis is entirely genuine.
Ellis is just staring at him, though, shivering with his T-shirt stuck to his body under his crossed arms. His sandy hair looks darker, plastered against his face and neck; he left his hat downstairs despite Nick's protest that out of every piece of clothing between them, that's the one that really needed the wash the most ("It'll get ruined if I get it wet," he'd said stubbornly.)
Nick rolls his eyes and grabs the bottom of Ellis's shirt, yanking upwards. "Come on, kid," he says firmly, but still grinning. "Bath time!"
Ellis yelps and practically flails in his protesting, but it doesn't take long before he's laughing too. "Okay, Jesus! Get off!"
Nick doesn't want to give him chance to think about it too much-- the moment the shirt's gone he's unwinding the bandages. "A rinse'll do them good," he tells Ellis, who just nods dumbly.
After a while though, the kid finally loosens up. He strips the overalls from around his waist so his legs can get a wash too, prowling around with that lopsided grin Nick hasn't seen for a while, shaking his hair under the water like a dog. It's a strangely pleasing thing to see.
Nick sits on the wall and laughs at him, running fingers through his own hair to scrape it back off his face. Ellis joins him, looking out over the remains of the ruined streets, empty of anything living.
"Do you reckon this is really it?" he suddenly says. "The end of the whole damn world?"
Nick tips his head back, stares at the endless blue-black of the sky. "I don't know," he admits. "Maybe just the end of humanity."
"There a difference?"
Nick's startled into a laugh. "We ain't the be-all and end-all, Overalls. The world will go on without us."
"You sound like you reckon that's a good thing."
Nick shrugs. "By the laws of nature we're pretty much a parasite. If the planet could talk, I'd bet you anything it would just tell us to go fuck ourselves."
Ellis is quiet for a while, like he's contemplating that. "I don't wanna die," he says eventually, voice barely audible over the gushing of the rain. "But I reckon I'm gonna."
"Well, we're all gonna."
"Not this soon."
"Maybe. Or maybe you would've been hit by a bus, or bitten in the balls by an angry snake or something, anyway."
Ellis sighs, falling silent again.
"You're not gonna die, kid," Nick says, surprising himself. "You're too damn stubborn."
He thinks he sees Ellis smile, a little. "And you ain't?"
Nick smiles too. "Think you know me, El'?"
To his credit, Ellis doesn't even hesitate. "I reckon I know you well enough," he says simply.
Nick smirks at the idea. "Oh yeah?"
Ellis looks at him, then. "Well, I don't suppose it matters much if I'm wrong now, does it? I just reckon I know that, if it is me that kicks it first, you won't wanna go on much longer after that."
For a brief, wild moment, Nick can't think of a single thing to say. He's never heard Ellis talk like this before; kid's always acted like he didn't notice the world falling apart around him. It's the trait that always used to annoy Nick the most.
"You obviously don't know me that well if you don't think I could handle going it alone," he eventually gets out.
Ellis shakes his head. "Ain't about handlin' it. You just don't care no more."
"Yeah, well, what do you know," Nick snaps, harsher than he meant to. He can't think to do anything, then, except retrieve his clothes. "Come on," he says gruffly. "Let's go back down."
Ellis just shrugs, obediently following him. There's an uncomfortable feeling in Nick's gut that he doesn't want to examine too closely.
But he knows it doesn't feel like victory.
*
"So where y'all from?" Ellis had asked that first night.
"Cleveland," Rochelle had said.
"Here and there," Nick had said.
The second night, Ellis had asked, "So what were y'all doin' here in Savannah? Y'know, before all this crazy shit went down?"
"Got sent down to produce a segment about the evac center here," Rochelle had said. "But yeah, unfortunately everything went to hell before we even had chance to set up the cameras."
"Nothing. Got lost on my way to Vegas," Nick had said.
A couple of weeks later, Ellis had asked again, and Nick had told him for two reasons. One, he'd asked him alone, and two, he'd actually wanted to know then-- wasn't just asking out of niceness or some misguided sense of courtesy anymore. By then, they were questions Ellis actively desired the answers to, and the answers would actually make some sort of difference to him.
Nick had had no interest in indulging something he didn't respect; only when Ellis had proved he had something more to him, only when Nick had (almost, almost) managed to bring him down to his own sordid level--
Well. Maybe that's always been Nick's problem with this kid. Something so innocent had no business existing. Not in this world, and certainly not in Nick's.
*
Nick has never been one for self-delusion; he can lie to anyone and everyone except himself. He knows who and what he is, and he knows the most likely reasons why, and though he can't care about the evils of his subconscious in the harsh light of day - in the dark, there's no distractions left.
As Ellis sleeps in the next room, Nick sprawls on the couch in the dim moonlight, smokes cigarettes from the crumpled pack he found stuffed at the back of a teenager's sock draw on the first floor. Knocks back the half-empty bottle of vodka from under that same teenager's bed.
It's the first real drink he's had since this shit began and it's probably a mistake, probably the worst thing he could possibly do in this situation, but he can't bring himself to care. He feels utterly base, out of control in a way he hasn't felt since he was a lot, lot younger. The silence is heavy and tense, broken occasionally by the creak of a floorboard, the hacking noises of an infected in the street outside. The echo of a distant scream.
And he thinks, everything and nothing. His father locked him in a closet once, smaller and darker than this living room, obviously, but Nick thinks he felt the same back then. Teeth gritted around the anger, still, hands steady even through the adrenaline. The next day he woke up early and set the neighbor's rabbit hutch on fire.
His Magnum is a solid weight against his hip. It feels good. Feels better when he eases it out of his belt and puts the end of the barrel against his temple.
He remembers that time with that girl-- can't even remember her name, the one he took for about twenty large? Thirty? Doesn't matter. He fucked her like this once, flush against her back, shoved up against the headboard with one hand twisted roughly in her hair and the other pressing cold cylindrical metal to her temple. Wasn't even his idea, but he still remembers to this day how hot it got him, how fucking hard he came.
Wow, Nick can't think of anyone who deserves his fate more than he does.
"No!"
It's an urgent, panicked voice in the dark and then Nick's gun is wrenched away from him and it takes him a moment to process that it's Ellis, and another moment to realize what Ellis must have thought, before he snorts with laughter.
"The fuck are you doin', Nick?!" Ellis hisses, and it's rare to actually hear the kid cuss like that - Nick thinks he likes it.
"Not what you're thinking I was doing," Nick says, still snickering, but it catches hard in his throat when Ellis suddenly shoves him, rough hands slamming his shoulders back against the arm of the couch.
"You taken leave of your senses?!" Ellis sounds like he's barely containing his voice, pitching up close to something like hysteria. Nick can hardly see his face above him in the dark - it's all just bared teeth and messy hair and scrunched eyebrows, fuzzy flashes in the moonlight. "What did you think I was gonna do all on my own? Did you even fuckin' care?"
"I told you," Nick grits out, anger simmering in every fucking muscle as he pushes himself upright, "I wasn't--"
"Oh, right," Ellis laughs harshly, another noise that doesn't sound right in his mouth, "you just felt like sittin' there with your damn pistol against your head for no reason at all."
"I didn't say there wasn't a reason," Nick snaps, scraping his cigarettes off the floor and sticking one between his lips. "Just that it ain't the reason you think."
Ellis snatches the smoke out of Nick's mouth before he can light it, and clearly the kid has a fucking death wish. Nick's not playing anymore; he's on his feet in a second, grabbing rough handfuls of Ellis's shirt and backing him up, shoving him against the wall, not giving even one single shit about his injuries.
"Don't screw with me, Hayseed," he hisses into Ellis's face. "I will fucking hurt you."
"I bet," Ellis spits, not fighting but not backing down either, eyes wild and angry and - wet, Nick realizes - tears he's trying to blink back. "Bet you do it all the time, right? Bet you ain't never cared about nobody except your own damn self!"
"Yeah, don't act like that's fucking news to you," Nick snarls, shoving him into the wall again to emphasize his point. "Don't act like you didn't fucking know that the entire goddamn time you were following me around like a sad little puppy, and don't try and pretend like you didn't get a sick little thrill out of being corrupted by the big bad gambling man--"
"Screw you," Ellis snarls back. "You don't know shit about me, Nick."
"Oh, you think so?" Nick sniggers. "Let me tell you something, sweetheart. I know everything about you that's worth knowing-- and that ain't much, by the way. But you know why I know? Because it's my job to know. Because that's how I make a living, by making pathetic fucking losers like you think I actually give a shit about them."
"Bullshit," Ellis says, and he's not even being aggressive any more, voice flat, eyes hard even through the tears. "There ain't no livin' to be made no more, Nick! The goddamn world is over and so is my life and I ain't got shit left for you to take!"
Nick shakes his head. "There's always something left to take." He can't look away from those eyes, water and fire all at once, catching the moonlight. "And y'know what, El'? I think you'd let me have it, whatever it was."
"I'd sooner you kill me," Ellis says, suddenly quiet, not looking away either. His hands are fisted in the front of Nick's shirt-- when did that happen? "So I can be with my mama and my friends, and then you can pick through my damn bones without me botherin' you."
There's a heavy silence. Nick wets his lips, tongue tight from the vodka. "Ellis," he says, quiet too, "they're dead. They ain't there. They ain't anywhere." His suit is still drying in the tub; Ellis's hands don't look right against the generic fabric he's currently wearing, somehow. "All that's left is this. Here. Right now."
"You dunno that," Ellis whispers, but he's already leaning in, a counterpoint to pulling Nick forward. Nick doesn't stop him. Ellis's wrist isn't red anymore.
Nick thinks a part of him knew this was inevitable from the start, but he still never quite anticipated the reality of it. Ellis kisses messy, desperate, a little rough; Nick lets him have it his way for about fifteen seconds before he's pulling back to show the kid how it's really done, crowding him against the wall, pressing him back against the plaster with a firm hand around his throat.
The huffing, angry noise Ellis makes is swallowed by Nick's kiss; his is deliberate, dirty, possessive. He's older and wiser and he's well practiced in this, every trick in the book, but that isn't to say he isn't doing exactly what he wants to.
It's never been about the fucking money, not really. Even before this, deep down Nick knew it to be true, but now there is nothing - absolutely nothing - for him to gain from this. Nothing except feeling alive for the first time in fuck knows how goddamn long. No satisfaction, no victory, nothing he thought he'd feel. Nothing but the bare bones of it, boozy breath and frantic hands and death waiting just outside.
"Nick, I ain't never-- I mean, with a guy--" Ellis is stuttering between huffs for air, but Nick has no time for those useless words, he never has. He gets rid of them with a thigh shoved up roughly between Ellis's legs; much prefers the high, shocked gasp that sounds only half like shame.
"Don't think about it," he murmurs, grabbing a handful of Ellis's ass, yanking him further up on his thigh, thankful as all hell for the loose pair of sweatpants he's wearing instead of the overalls. "Just feel it."
Ellis shakes his head but does it anyway, hands landing on Nick's shoulders as he starts to grind, already panting, eyes squeezed shut and head tipped back against the wall. His throat is bare and Nick can't resist putting his mouth there, his teeth; Ellis grunts and pulls harder and Jesus. Suddenly Nick wants every filthy thing his mind can come up with, right here and now - doesn't even matter that he's never really been into guys much either outside of cons and prison - he just wants to fucking take this kid, any way Ellis will let him.
He'd been turned on since he put his gun against his own head, but now it's something else. Something hotter, darker. He's sweating in his goddamn too-big looted clothes.
"You wanna come like this?" Nick asks lowly, mouth under Ellis's ear. Ellis's hair is everywhere - or maybe it just seems like it in the absence of that damn hat - slicked against his nape, stuck to his face. "Or you gonna let me show you something else I learned in jail besides those goddamn smoke rings?"
"Jesus." Ellis's sweat-damp neck vibrates under Nick's lips. His fingertips are deep in Nick's shoulders and his cock is pressed hard against Nick's thigh. "God help me."
"God has left the building, Overalls." He pulls back - not too far - enough to force Ellis back onto solid footing. He makes sure he looks him in the eye as he goes down on his knees. "So you're just gonna have to put up with me."
Ellis's face is an intoxicating mix of fear, arousal, disgust and something Nick can't quite name despite the fact he recognizes it: he's been seeing it on his own face enough in windows and broken glass. Ellis's hipbones are sharp enough to slice through paper after a month of nothing but looted food and scraps, and they're hot under Nick's palms as he pushes his ass back firmly towards the wall, in between his hands where he's flattened them against the plaster, of his own accord.
His breaths get tighter, more panicked when Nick peels him out of his sweatpants, but he has yet to look away. Nick likes that, he wants that. Wants Ellis completely present, unable to ignore what he's doing and who he's doing it with.
It's been a while, but he still remembers how to do this, and even if he didn't, it's not like he'd have too much of a hard time imitating what he already knows feels good. He doesn't mess around, doesn't tease, just circles his fingers tight around the base of Ellis's cock and sinks his mouth down around it until he meets his fist. He pulls back before Ellis can choke him, because he knew the buck was coming, but he doesn't give him chance to catch his breath before he's going down again, and then again - a slow, deliberate rhythm of dragging lips and tongue firm on the underside - deliberately sloppy.
Deliberately filthy, looking up and meeting Ellis's eyes again, making sure he's still watching. And he is, albeit reluctantly, Nick can tell-- eyebrows screwed up and face flushed with equal parts embarrassment and heat, panting through his open mouth.
Nick knows what he probably looks like - he doesn't give a shit, he's never been too proud to act like a whore if it served him - but this is the first time he's ever found himself actively liking it. In the past, this was always just a tool, a means to an end. But after their shower earlier they're both the cleanest they've ever been and all Nick can taste is skin and sweat and sex, and he's straining against his own pants and he knows Ellis can see it, and ultimately, the kid was right:
He doesn't care anymore.
He pulls off open-mouthed, letting his own spit drip over his fingers and Ellis's cock. "You can pull my hair," he tells a stuttering Ellis. His voice is strained, throat raw. "And fuck my face, if you want."
"Jesus. Fuckin' Jesus, Nick," Ellis says, chest heaving. "I can't. This is just--"
"I also think you should know," Nick says, stroking him almost absentmindedly as he talks, "that I really, really wanna fuck you, kid. I'm not gonna," he adds before Ellis can panic any more, "I mean, I ain't that kinda asshole. But yeah, just wanted to tell you. Sorry if you didn't wanna hear it."
Ellis suddenly grabs a handful of his hair, yanks his head back, and Nick had told him to do it but it's still somehow the last thing he ever expected. His breath catches hard in his throat.
"You ain't never once apologized to me before," Ellis grits out, jaw clenched. "Why you startin' now?"
Nick's own breaths are shallow, looking up at him. Christ, how did he even end up here? It really is the end of the whole goddamn world, isn't it? "You can fuck me instead, if you want," he hears himself say.
Ellis pulls on his hair again, hard. Nick hisses, hands grabbing automatically for Ellis's thighs. "That ain't what you want, though, is it Nick? And ain't that always the most important thing?"
"No," Nick's voice says. "No, kid, honestly, you can do whatever you want."
Another harsh tug. Nick chokes. "What if I want you to do what you want?"
Nick thinks about it. Turning Ellis around, taking him standing up against the wall, hard and fast; or maybe on the couch, the kid's strong legs hooked over his shoulders, slow and grinding with his ass flush in Nick's lap, in as deep as he could get--
"Yeah," Nick says, already scrambling up, "yeah, okay--"
Ellis yanks his hair so hard Nick actually hears it rip; he snarls as Ellis pushes him back down to his knees. "I never actually said that's what I want," Ellis snaps. "Just sayin' what if."
"Oh, fuck you," Nick spits, semi-struggling now, but Ellis is pulling him firmly back forward, and for whatever fucked up reason, Nick goes.
He just fucking goes.
"Yeah, it ain't nice bein' screwed with, is it?" Ellis says quietly, bitterly, and something lurches behind Nick's eyes, cracks under the surface. The hand in his hair doesn't loosen even an inch. "Now, finish what you started."
So he does.
*
He was around thirteen the first time he ripped somebody off. Samuel Corgan was a quiet, scrawny little kid; used to walk down the hallways with his eyes down, turn up to school an hour late with purple smudges littering his throat and wrists. He was friendless, a victim. Weak. He was everything Nick could have been-- would have been, if he hadn't made the conscious decision not to be.
Nick had cornered him alone in the boys' bathroom, left him without his lunch money and another angry bruise staining his face. That money hadn't even added up to enough for a pack of smokes, but it didn't matter. That wasn't why he did it.
Couple of weeks later, they'd found Samuel in his mom's basement, hanging from the ceiling by his neck. When Nick heard about it, he'd puked in their kitchen sink. Of course, that had caught him another beating from his father. It was the only time he ever fought back. He'd ended up in the ER with five stitches in his head; he remembers sitting alone in a bathroom stall and wishing for twenty more.
But over time, it got easier. He knew, even then, that it was just something he had to get used to. Like an acquired taste-- coughing after his first cigarette, chugging beer until it didn't make him gag anymore, not immediately coming in his pants the first few times anybody let him touch them.
The way he saw it, his conscience was just the price he had to pay to not be a chump nobody like everyone else, everyone else who did nothing but eat shit from their parents, their bosses, their significant fucking others. Slaving away day after day just for that same repressed, mediocre, miserable suburban existence enjoyed by the likes of his useless punchbag mom and her equally stupid friends.
Nobody ever had the balls to just take what they wanted, really make something of themselves. Make their lives worth fucking living.
It was unnatural, Nick had always thought so. There exists no other species in nature so timid, so blindly accepting, so pathetic as human beings. In the animal kingdom, it's hunt or be hunted. The lion doesn't give a shit when it's tearing apart the zebra foal. It's just the goddamn food chain, and Nick was - and still is - determined to be at the top. He refuses to be ashamed of that.
But even so, when Samuel's mom anonymously received a large sum of money a decade or so later, Nick would be lying if he said it hadn't made him stop thinking about it so much.
*
He wakes up on the couch with a throbbing head and a rotten stomach and he can feel just how fucked up he is in every inch of himself before he's even fully conscious. Every vein, every pore, every goddamn molecule of his body aches with it. Reeks of it.
He sits up and the room spins, his vision a kaleidoscope of early morning light. He can hear birds chirping outside, blissfully oblivious. Blearily, he feels around on the floor, the couch-- his belt, before he remembers.
"I got it," Ellis's voice says.
"Give it back," Nick says.
"No," Ellis says simply.
"You can't stop me," Nick says recklessly, feeling like a petulant child in spite of himself. "If I wanna fucking do it, I will."
"Nick," Ellis says, suddenly appearing in his fuzzy vision, crouching down in front of him. He's back in his overalls, that damn cap, as though nothing ever changes. Maybe it doesn't. He puts his hands lightly on Nick's knees and the contact feels muted, far away. "I'd sooner kill you myself, before I let you do it." He says it calmly, like he's just stating facts. Nick only has to meet his eyes to know he's serious.
"Damn," Nick says, smiling weakly. "I've created a monster."
Ellis smiles too. "Thought they don't exist?"
Nick tips his head back against the couch, stares at the ceiling. He doesn't know anything anymore. "Come on, kid," he says flatly. "You must know it's only a matter of time."
"I dunno shit," Ellis says, still in that matter-of-fact tone, "except I ain't about to lie down and let 'em win."
"So what, you wanna go out in a blaze of glory?" Nick snorts. "You'll never take me alive and all that shit? Gimmie a break. This ain't the goddamn movies."
Ellis sniffs and stands up, pulling Nick's pistol out of his overalls. "Well I gotta say that sounds like a damn sight better way to go than eatin' your own bullet, Nick." He offers Nick the gun, holding it by the barrel. "And if you wanna talk about lame movie cliches and shit, that one ain't much better, now is it?"
Nick stares at him. There's a serious flaw in that logic somewhere, he knows it-- but right now? He can't summon the strength to argue. He sighs, taking the gun. Checks it's still loaded, re-cocks it.
And then he flicks the safety on, slides it back into his belt. "Fine," he says. "But we're gonna need to find some more ammo. Running low."
"My thinkin' too," Ellis says, smiling. "I reckon there's gotta be at least one gun store on the way outta the city."
"Right." Nick stands up slowly, grunts as the world lurches. "Whoa, ugh."
"I gotcha." Ellis is suddenly there, in the form of a solid body against Nick's side, a strong arm under his. "You gonna puke?"
Nick allows himself to lean on him, shutting his eyes. "Possibly." The nausea has actually taken a back seat, with the kid so close. "Uh, last night--"
"Let's not get into all that right now, 'kay?" Ellis interrupts smoothly. He doesn't sound particularly awkward, but then again, Nick's not sure he'd be able to tell right now anyway. "We got plenty of time."
"Do we?" Nick mutters, grunting his displeasure as Ellis hauls him towards the bedroom.
"Yeah," Ellis says, firmly. "We do. Now go on and lay down while I get you some water. And a bucket."
Nick sniggers, but does as he's told. "I'm fine."
"You're lyin'," Ellis says.
Nick closes his eyes so he doesn't have to look at him. If he did, he thinks, he'd probably lose it for good, right here and now. "Yeah," he admits, throat dry. "I am."
When he opens them Ellis is crouched by the bed next go him, water bottle in hand. "Thank you," he says.
Nick doesn't ask what for. He just takes the water, drinks deeply. His hands are shaking, a little. "Just so you know," he says slowly, "I'm not gonna open up to you now. You don't get to know all about my troubled past and shit just because I sucked your dick."
Ellis just chuckles, "Never even thought about it, Nick."
And despite everything, Nick can't help but laugh too.
*
Military custody is hard, but compared to everything else Nick has been through, it's practically fucking luxury. It's easy enough to navigate; elements of jail in the boundaries, the restrictions, the shady business. It's familiar, safe, grounding. And unlike jail, his cellmate here is no way near as much of an asshole.
In his dreams, sometimes, Nick is back on that bridge, fighting tooth and nail-- fighting with fire in his veins he didn't even know he had, breath in his ears and heartbeat pounding harder and louder than even the whirs of the copter blades. But then there's a swarm of bodies and blood and suddenly it's a nightmare, because Ellis isn't by his side any more - he's gone, taken - ripped apart like tissue paper on the ground below as the chopper flies Nick away, getting smaller and smaller, nothing he can do except watch.
When he jerks awake, drenched in sweat, Ellis is always there. Nothing more or less than that, just there in the bed next to his, but it's enough.
In the morning they run through the agenda for the day, and in the evening, after they've finished sorting out the various profits of their labor, they'll grind and kiss and rut and fuck until neither of them can remember their own names. Even after months together in the Carrier Zone, this weird limbo of not-quite living the apocalypse has left them in, Nick still has yet to grow tired or bored of anything to do with this guy - this random fucking hick kid he met in a burning hotel full of goddamn zombies and accidentally stuck with - the longest he's stuck with anyone.
Maybe it's because Ellis is different now, older and harder, actually taking pleasure in things like dirty deals and hustling idiots out of their allowance. Maybe it's because Nick is no different than he's ever been-- a fucked up narcissistic asshole that just can't get enough of watching an angel fall on his account.
Or maybe it just is what it is, and in the privacy of his own head Nick can admit to himself that what he feels about Ellis is less obsessive and more protective with each passing day, and that if it really came down to it, he wouldn't want to be here without him.
"You ain't a bad person," Ellis tells Nick one night, still breathless, still underneath him. "You just did some bad things."
Nick wants to prove him wrong. He wants to tell him about Samuel, the dying woman he married for the inheritance, the fact he was once worth over a million purely in manipulated, blackmailed and outright stolen money. Suddenly, he wants to tell Ellis everything.
But he doesn't, because it's pointless. He doesn't want absolution, and he wouldn't get it anyway. More than anything, he doesn't want Ellis to hate him.
And maybe that fact, in and of itself, is as much absolution as he'll ever need.
He sighs, drops his forehead against the nape of Ellis's neck. "If you say so, kid."