Would You Love a Monsterman

by ChiefPam

I love kissing R. He's not an expert, but he learns fast and he shows his emotions so plainly. I feel… cherished. I love that.

Do I love him? Yeah, probably do. The thought is scary, but in a good way. At least he's not dead anymore.

We probably ought to slow this down. I just know Dad or Nora are going to come along and interrupt us soon. Plus, he's only just come back to life. I pull back a little bit, softening my withdrawal with a shorter kiss before I go. R opens his eyes and smiles at me

He is so adorable. "I can tell you're alive," I mention, smirking at him. "All the way."

His smile widens. "Me, too."

He clearly wants me, but seems perfectly willing to lie there just looking at me. I take the opportunity to study him, too. "Hey, I just noticed… your eyes. They turned blue."

"Like yours," he says, happily.

Craning my neck back to see him is starting to be a pain, so I gently roll him over onto his back and settle in against his side. He takes the opportunity to adjust his hold on me.

I have no idea how he's alive again. It makes no sense whatsoever. But then, the plague in general never really did, either. I mean, how does a virus turn dead people into walking corpses that are compelled to eat human flesh? I decide that the whole thing was basically magic, so reversing it doesn't have to be any more rational. "Dr. Borsa was on the wrong track," I mutter.

"What?" R asks.

"Oh, just thinking. If love is the cure, then the guys at the camp never had a chance at finding it."

"Love?" he asks softly.

I lift my head and look at him. I really hadn't thought it through before saying it, but on reflection… I smile, slowly, and lightly kiss him. "What would you call it?"

He smiles automatically, looking down at me with the same awestruck wonder I'm feeling for him. "Connection?"

"Love," I correct him firmly. "You loved me from the moment you saw me, didn't you?"

He tilts his head, thinking that over. Looking a bit vulnerable. "Yeah, guess so."

"Well, it took me a little longer, but I caught up with you." I'm feeling just a little euphoric, and it's making me silly, but I really don't care. "You won me over by being adorable."

I don't know when I fell in love with R, exactly. One of the times he saved my life? Might have been when we were relaxing, talking, and playing Go Fish. Or maybe it didn't come together until I kissed him. Doesn't matter.

I wanted the chance to get to know him better, to explore where this could go, and now… I think I have it.

I tilt my head up to see R, just watching me with a soft smile. "Hey," I say quietly. "You know what we were talking about, right before the camp guys showed up?"

His smile fades, and he looks uncertain.

"Let's not tell anyone about that, okay? They don't need to know."

He looks at me for a moment, then slowly nods.

"You are a good person, R," I tell him. Forgiving him without stating it aloud. Putting it into words would make it too real. From the way his body relaxes, I know he understands.

"Thank you," he says, with heart-felt emotion.

I lay down on his shoulder again. I know we'll still have to discuss it, and I'll keep having to work through my feelings about the whole matter, but not forgiving him is not an option. He saved my life, he loves me… I love him. Everything else, we'll just have to figure out as we go along.

I wonder if it was this hard learning to read the first time around. The squiggles on the page hold meaning, I know that. I just can't unlock it all yet.

Julie's been teaching me. Wonderful, beautiful, magical, patient Julie. She keeps telling me it's just symbols, like when we play cards. I admit, I learned my numbers from that. Of course, at first I thought J, Q, K, and A were numbers, too, but then I found out that they're not.

We practice daily. Me reading, I mean, not playing Go Fish. Although we do that a lot, too. Julie says it has sentimental value - we got to know each other over that game, and that day we spent in the suburbs, just the two of us.

But right now, I'm staring at a page and it's refusing to talk to me. "This isn't working," I grumble.

Julie reaches out to hold my hand. "Let's do something else then."

I look at her and smile hopefully. "Make out on the couch?"

She laughs. "Later, loverboy. When my dad's safely at work."

I've been staying in her house, these last two weeks, although the Colonel insisted on me having my own room. I even sleep in it sometimes. But most nights I'm in with Julie. We both prefer it that way. Even though I'm not supposed to have any vigorous exercise until my body's fully healed, which means sleeping is all we do. Well, that and a good amount of kissing and cuddling.

"By something else I mean attack this from a different direction. I'm going to teach you to write, instead."

So, she teaches me how to form the letters, and I learn what they sound like. She tells me how to put them together to make words, and I start to recognize the words. It's another week before I realize that I can read.

That's when I start on my secret project. I've been here in the city for month, fully human. Julie and I have spent most of that time together, and Kevin says that if she hasn't gotten sick of me yet, she probably never will. My project takes me a while to complete, which is frustrating, but that's mostly because of all the time I'm with Julie, and I'll never complain about that. I finally finished it last night, though, so now I'm ready.

I think I probably should be nervous, but I'm not.

I look up from the magazine I was reading, after her dad leaves for work. "Julie?"

"Yeah?" she asks from the other end of the couch.

"I have something to show you."

She looks up from her book and smirks at me. "Oh, yeah? What's that?"

"Something I've been working on." Carefully, I pull the folded slip of paper out of my shirt pocket and pass it to her.

She accepts it with a smile, and unfolds it. And stares at it.

Okay, now I'm nervous.

It seems like forever before she looks up at me with a trembling smile. "Yes."

I let out the breath I've been holding and smile widely.

She carefully sets the paper on the end table, giving it one more look. "You're amazing," she says, almost to herself. Then she launches herself at me, and it's awkward in the corner of the couch but we're kissing and don't care. I have got to be the happiest man in the world. I know for a fact I'm the luckiest.

On the end table is a plain piece of white paper, with words I wrote myself, very carefully, without any help from anyone.

Julie, Will you marry me? Love, R.

All I can hear is the scuffing of our feet as we walk along the deserted road. Well, almost all. There are some birds, and in the distance I can faintly make out the sound of construction crews. Or maybe demolition crews.

It reminds me of that day three months ago. I look sideways at my fiance and smile.

He catches me at it, of course. Always staring at me, paying attention to me. "What?"

"Oh, I was just thinking," I say, swinging our joined hands. "About that first time you tried to take me home."

He smiles back. "Let's hope no one shoots at us today."

I laugh quietly. "So many things have changed since then."

"Yeah."

We walk on in a restful silence. I'm enjoying the still-new sensation of exploring the outdoors, without fear of zombie attacks.

All the zombies are gone now, we think. The army and the corpses worked together to wipe out the skeletons - none of them had seemed interested in changing; they'd lost all shreds of humanity. They were only interested in killing. We've had enough death.

The corpses, on the other hand… it took some of them awhile, but we worked with them. Helped them. Connected with them. Eventually all of them learned how to live again.

Marcus was one of the first to come back to life - after R, of course. He lives near to my house (*our* house) now, actually, and comes to visit, which is nice. Turns out he's got a wicked deadpan sense of humor. At least I'm pretty sure it's humor. Nora and Kevin come over, too, sometimes.

I smile, and laugh a little, too. R glances at me, a question plain on his face. "Oh, it's nothing. I just was thinking about how we have people over. We enjoy the party, and then enjoy being together when they leave, just like I said in the suburbs three months ago."

He smiles back. "Not an open floor plan, though."

True, but irrelevant. I shrug. "Close enough."

"Were you really thinking about me when you said that?"

I ponder the question. "Yeah, I guess. We were talking about finding a house we both liked, so… it kind of fit. But then I remembered, and… I mean, I'd feel awkward about saying that to any guy, and then you…" I wave a hand to express what I don't want to say. "You were extra challenging. And I hardly knew you."

He nods. "I liked the idea - a lot - but I never thought it would happen either. Didn't even dare to imagine it."

"Well, we did save the world. A lot of things became possible."

After we cleared out the local zombies, one way or the other, we managed to find and contact a few other human settlements, to spread the news of the cure. Even the survivors of the camp have adjusted. The world had gotten so very very small, the last few years, but now it's opening up, and it seems like it goes on forever.

I still think about Perry sometimes, but I don't feel guilty anymore. It had taken me a while to come to terms with things. R's dream had helped, actually. I mean, I don't know whether that was really some remnant of Perry, lingering on in R's brain, or if it was all R's imagination - he has a pretty good imagination - but it sounded like Perry, so I ended up deciding to take it at face value.

As for the rest… "I'm glad you finally got to share your plane with me."

"Me, too. Your dad says we can keep it, by the way."

"Really?" I look up at him and laugh. "You asked?"

He shrugs, grinning. "You liked it. And I thought it'd be nice if we had a place to go sometimes, you know, like a vacation home. I would have gone for that place we stayed in the suburbs, but some group had already asked for the whole neighborhood."

I shrug back. "Too crowded there, anyway. The airport's pretty quiet these days - we might have almost the whole place to ourselves."

"Maybe. Sometimes."

"So, a private retreat… I like that. Just you and me."

"For a weekend, sometime, yeah."

"Or a honeymoon?"

He glances at me, amused. "I don't know about that. No beds. Those are kind of important for honeymoons."

"Hmm, good point. Okay, we'll think of something else." We may end up just staying in the house for two weeks, but that would be okay. Or maybe someone will discover a luxury resort that's in good shape. Who knows? It doesn't really matter, anyway. What matters is me and R being together.

We reach our destination, and R helps me climb onto the low wall on the side of the bridge, facing the city. "R?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you remember your name yet?"

"No." He shrugs. "Apparently I never liked it anyway."

"Well, you could just give yourself one. Pick one that you do like. Anything you want."

He considers it briefly, then shakes his head. "I like R."

I smile. "Okay, that works. I like R, too."

"The name?" he asks, a smile playing around his mouth.

"Yeah, that too." I smile and stretch up to kiss him briefly. "I like the name. I love the man."

"I love you too, Julie. So very, very much."

That look in his eyes is making me wish there was a bed here somewhere.

He knows it, too, and smiles at me. "None of that, now, Julie. We came out here for a reason."

I laugh, knowing we've got the rest of our lives. All the time in the world. "Right." I lean sideways, resting my head against his shoulder. In a peaceful silence, we watch the city walls light up with sparks, and see them crumble down. "No more barriers."

He reaches for my hand. "Just connections."

It's a beautiful sunset.

THE END

A/N: Thanks for following along with this! Brigid, you are a rockstar reviewer, thank you!

For my own amusement I'm gonna list the songs that contributed the chapter titles. I was going to give links to watch music videos, but this site works hard to make that impossible...

Would You Love a Monsterman by Lordi. The song gave me titles for chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7, and of course the entire story as well. I was going to use this song for naming all the chapters, but there turned out to be a few too many chapters :)

Soldier by Samantha Jade. This one gave me the title of chapter 4.

Counting Stars by One Republic. This contributed chapter titles for chapters 8, 9, 10, and 11. (The lovely and talented NotMarge made a music vid to this one - search YouTube for "Love In a Time of Apocalypse" by StillNot Marge.)

Thanks for reading this far :)