From then on they sleep together out of necessity.

---

Sometimes people come through, wanting a place to sleep, offering food or water to trade in order to get past Tina and her now-stained length of broom. Sometimes people come by wanting more than a place to sleep. The first time Mike has to threaten a grimy, wild-eyed man with a butcher knife from the kitchen – has to throw him against a wall and hold it to his neck and tell him if he puts one more filthy finger on Tina, he’s going to get it cut off – he hunkers down under the duvet in their room and stares straight ahead for hours.

Surprisingly, it’s Blaine who goes to him first, while Tina and Kurt are locking down the motel. They come to bed to find their boyfriend’s curled up together, Mike shivering in Blaine’s arms, clinging to each other.

And after a moment, they join them, arms and legs tangling, breath on shoulders and hair in eyes until they lose track of where reality ends and they begin.

---

The canned food is almost all gone, and even the old radio in the manager’s office doesn’t pick up any news anymore. Blaine sharpens the last of the knives and wraps them in cloth to keep them safe, while Mike and Kurt divide the food equally between four bags and Tina flings her sharpened broom handle at a target over and over and over, muttering
to herself – “between the eyes, between the eyes, between the eyes…”

It goes without saying that they head west. Towards Lima.

---

Survival horror doesn’t look good on anyone, really, but Mercedes’s tired, dirty face is nothing short of gorgeous. The pistol she’s toting is even more so, especially when smoking after she blows a zombie’s brains out, five seconds before it gets a taste of Blaine’s.

Santana, on the other hand, feels like nothing but bones when Tina hugs her, her long dark hair hacked nearly to her scalp – “More practical”, she says grimly. But she laughs off the concerns and tries to hide how ravenous she is while gulping down a can of cold green beans.

---

It’s after dark when Kurt is taken aside by Mercedes, when she gives him a look that’s part sorrow, part anxiety and presses the faded, blood-stained baseball cap into his hands. She could lie and say it happened due to exhaustion or sickness, but Kurt can recognize the congealed, blue-black look of zombie gore by now.

“Who?” is all he asks.

“He did it himself. There was an attack, he was trying to save Sugar and me, one of them grabbed him and bit and…” She shrugs, slightly, pressing her lips together hard. Tears are a luxury they can’t afford anymore, but her voice is still choked. “He said if we found…if you were still…he was thinking about you. All the time. Especially at the end.”

A luxury and a quiet one, tearless and strained, just Kurt screaming soundlessly into Mercedes’s shoulder, clutched in her arms, the hat held in both his hands.

---

They head west.

---

It’s a full moon when Tina kisses Santana for the first time. It’s a hot summer morning when Blaine wakes up in Mike’s arms. It’s the day after when caution is thrown to the wind, when hands and kisses fill up the emptiness that aches inside all six of them constantly.

A week later their three tents become one once more.

---

“I love you so much,” Kurt gushes, ducking his head under the water of a probably-polluted river and groaning as the suds in his hair carry away weeks of grime. Santana just laughs and works another handful through her own shorn hair, while Blaine lets Mercedes form his soapy hair into a mohawk. Tina just smiles and combs through her tangles with her fingers. Mike watches the hard-won bottle of shampoo rapidly disappear, and decides that fighting his way through six zombies had been totally worth it.

---

Tina’s allergic to bees. They learn this the hard way, and Santana cries for the first time since Lima, even though it’s a mild allergy, not life-threatening at all. It takes Kurt cuddling up to her, rubbing her back and humming under her breath for her to stop screaming at Blaine for aggravating the hive in the first place.

She makes it up to him, though, fitting her roughened hands over his and teaching him the wrist-flick-throw that’s her own particular trademark.

---

Something that used to be a janitor surprises Mike in a gas station one day, and he’s being knocked over and dragged before he has time to scream. Mercedes knocks over a display of stale Rice Krispie Treats to get to him, fury in her face and one of Santana’s knives ramming into the zombie’s eye within seconds. But it’s almost too late, and she knows it. They all know it.

That night she dreams about Sugar and Lima and Burt for the first time in weeks.

---

It’s never about being kinky or experimenting. It’s about Tina’s hands soothing away cuts or burns or scrapes, and Blaine’s eyes when he smiles. It’s about Mercedes warm and cuddled close early in the morning, and Santana’s lips like sin in the middle of the night. It’s the sound of Kurt’s laugh. It’s the taste of Mike’s skin.

They talk about the others sometimes – Sam and Brittany are shadows from a life that’s over, mentioned in hushed tones – but when the fires are out and the doors are locked, who they have is each other.

---

In Oklahoma they hear that what was left of the government headed south, that there’s a border being maintained, that zombies don’t make it past without being blown to bits.

In Nevada they hear that there are colonies, that armies are being trained to retake the north.

In Arizona they hear about a blonde soldier named Brittany Pierce.

---

“I waited for you…”

Her voice is so soft, but her smile is brilliant. It’s like seeing the sun again, after months of darkness. She lifts a hand and touches Santana’s face, seemingly heedless of the deep bite marks in her shoulder. “I knew you were coming.”

She pauses, then frowns a little at the others. “I didn’t know about you guys, but it’s pretty cool you’re here too.”

And then she shudders and groans and her skin is turning gray and ashy and Mercedes has seen this a thousand times before, but Santana won’t let go, won’t stop stroking back bloodstained golden hair and whispering, “No, no, no, stay with me, please, I-I found you, I found you, it isn’t fair, stay with me, please…”

They have to drag her away when the thing that was Brittany opens its eyes again.

---

The colony dorms are sterile and clean and ordered by gender. Blaine’s room is two halls over from Mike’s, and Kurt’s in another building altogether. They don’t even know where their girls are.

Life tries to go back to normal – school, part-time jobs, drills in case of attack. They see each other less and less.

But one night Tina dreams about nights spent out under the stars, of baths in rivers and bloodshed in 7-11’s. She dreams of falling to sleep surrounded by five others who are as much a part of her as her skin and bones.

When she wakes up, it’s to Mercedes and Santana in the doorway, bags in hand, hopefully smiling.

---

The six of them head north.

---

Tina names their first daughter Rachel.