• Alystir and Liam sat in the lounge, on back-to-back couches. Alystir with his rump in the air as he leaned over the backs of the couches to watch Liam as he dug into a black leather bag at his side, withdrawing a handful of pill bottles. He methodically dropped one pill after another into his open palm until Alystir wondered how he could swallow them all, then put the bottles away and produced a bottle of water he downed half of after popping the entire handful into his mouth.

    Alystir was wide-eyed with shock and wriggled his butt a little trying to lean over more to get a better look at him. And to sniff. "Are you sick? What is it you've got?"

    Liam smirked and shoved Alystir's head away playfully when he'd started snuffling at him like a curious puppy. "I take them so I don't become like you."

    "Like a vaccine?" Alystir was undaunted, and sat back as he was, staring thoughtfully at the blonde.

    "More like your idiot friend Nathan bit me and if I don't take these, the virus will spread and kill me and I'll become a brain-craving zombie like yourself." Liam canted his head, looking over his shoulder at Alystir. When he noticed Alystir's gaze drop to his bag, he turned in his seat so he could be nose-to-nose with the zombie, resting his warm hands over Alystir's. Alystir couldn't imagine that perfect ice blue turned sickly yellow like his own and Nathan's from that damned virus. He'd never wanted more to lean in and kiss someone than he had at that moment but he refrained, studying Liam. "Those pills are only preventative. They aren't a cure.. We cannot cure death, Alystir. I'm sorry." Alystir's heart sank a bit. He had been thinking along those lines about those drugs, but somehow knew anyway it wouldn't work.

    Reaching out, he hugged Liam around the shoulders, nuzzling into his hair. It smelled like strawberries. Must have been his shampoo. He was a little surprised when Liam hugged him back, but happy. He wondered how someone so kind and sweet could be cruel and heartless enough to lock people up in a cage..

    Their hug was aggrivatingly short as Liam's beeper blipped and they had to let go of one another so Liam could lean back and check it. Thoroughly disappointed, Alystir folded his arms on the back of the couch and sulked. Liam gave him a smile and touched his cheek gently before grabbing his bag and running off.

    Alystir huffed and flopped back onto the couch, draping an arm over his eyes. "Maybe we're the bad ones.. You ever think about that, Nathan? We eat the living, we kill people. Isn't that bad?" He could smell Nathan since he'd fallen back to the couch. He hadn't known how long he'd been watching them from the shadows.

    "We can't help ourselves, though. It's our nature, like bears s**t in the woods and fish swim upstream to spawn." Nathan slipped out of the corner he'd been standing in watching the two of them and slinked over to the couch where he laid down next to Alystir, snuggling up to him.

    Alystir sighed and dropped his arm, looking over at Nathan. "But it's in a human's nature to do what they can and use what resources they have to survive, isn't it. It shouldn't be considered cruel when they don't just roll over and die."

    Nathan smirked and slid a hand under Alystir's t-shirt, tracing fingertips over his stomach in semi-circles. "You haven't seen the cage. I'll show you. As soon as the opportune moment presents itself."

    Alystir found himself pinned between a larger zombie and the back of a couch so there wasn't a way to get out from that. Instead he shivered, then flailed his arms as best as he could. "Why can I feel that and not pain?!"

    Nathan grinned and slid his hand up to his chest. "Simple matter of what receptors in our brain were killed, pet. Some of us can't feel anything. Some of us can feel nothing -but- pain. I'm lucky enough to be like you. Wanna try it out?" He quirked a brow and Alystir stared at him with a frown.

    "We're impotent. We have no pulse, remember?" Alystir would have blushed if he could while he reminded Nathan of that little fact. "Why are you still grinning?"

    "There are ways around it, that's all I'm saying." Nathan smiled brightly and tugged at Alystir's waistline.

    Giving a shriek, Alystir leapt up, scrambling over the arm of the couch and breaking into a run down the hall.

    Nathan sighed and rolled over onto his back, folding an arm under his head. "Teenagers."