RADIATION (the sequel to "infection")

(8) almost legal activities

tw: alcohol, smoking, language

(nick's pov)

the mechanical sliding doors open creakily as we walked up to the sensor. stepping into the store my jaw dropped, i had seen stores over taken by plants but this was on another level. there were vines wrapping from the ceiling lights and drooping down the walls. it was eerily beautiful. we decided on splitting up to cover more ground, i watched y/n head forward, charlie to the right and me to the left. looking at the overhead signs i realized i was approaching the booze section. "yes!" i whispered to myself, i never drank that often but it would be nice to sit down and have a beer. assuming they weren't all expired. walking down the isle my eyes scanned over the section of alcohol, a few broken bottles scattered along the floor. checking the expiration date i found a bottle of wine that most likely wouldn't be expired. to be honest some expired wine probably wouldn't kill us, right? "yolo" i said softly before taking it along with a pack of cigarettes with me to find charlie and y/n.

 i found charlie and y/n star struck staring at two items in their hands. "what?" i asked confused. y/n smiled excitedly holding up a mac-book and gopro camera. "holy shit!" i said almost dropping the items in my hands. "do they work?" i asked. charlie nodded. "yup! we turned them on, i was thinking it may be fun to make a video diary of our journey, maybe even use some of the working cell towers to upload them?". "fuck yes!" i responded, "also check out what i got" i said with a mischievous smile. "i cant drink though.." y/n said softly looking bum out. "dude. whos stopping you?" charlie said elbowing them.". "your right! are we celebrating a special occasion or just drinking to drink?" y/n asked excitedly. "well.... i was thinking we could have a mini bday party?" i responded. "awesome! whos birthday?" they asked. "oh yeah, yours" i replied.

 y/n paused for a moment confused, but shrugged and went with it. "this is great and all but we need to make more progress getting to the pickup spot." charlie added. "true..." i paused thinking. "y/n" they turned to me. "do you think you could hot wire a car for us?" i asked. "yeah! or at least i think.." they paused. "ill definitely try though!" they smiled. 

(charlie's pov)

*time skip to an hour later*

i turned to the back seat seeing y/n's face squished against the glass of the window. i pulled out the camera, turning it on and recording. i pointed it first at nick him jokingly flipping me off, then to y/n asleep in the back seat. i recorded a bit of out the window and empty fields we were passing. "reminds me of going on road trips as a kid, if i fell asleep my dad would start swerving and wake me up." (a/n lmk if you guys know what ted nivison video im referencing lmao) i laughed. nick gave me a 'wtf' look. "why though?" i shrugged "to wake me up? i don't know". we both shared a quick laugh before falling back into comfortable silence. not to diss y/n but the quiet was quite nice. granted y/ns conversations always lightened the mood, but i missed the peaceful noise of nothing. it was nice not to have to worry for a bit. 

(y/n's pov)

*time skip to a bit later*

the soft hum of the car's engine and the occasional bump on the road woke me up from my nap. adjusting my self so i was sitting straight up i looked out the window. the sun was setting, beautiful colors of oranges, pinks, purples and reds. "its pretty isn't?" charlie said. "mhm!" i said nodding. the car slowly pulled to a stop at the entrance of a forest. "how come were stopping here?" i asked confused at the random stop. charlie pulled out a map laying out so i could see, "were here at the moment." he pointed on the map, "the pickup location is about 50ish miles from here. so were gonna sleep here tonight and tomorrow travel as much as we can via driving and walk the rest of the way." he explained.

i nodded, unbuckling and getting out of the car to stretch. "i say right about now would be a good time to break out the 'adult beverages' " nick said pulling the bottle of vine out of the car. we sat down on the pavement, charlie pulled out the camera from earlier beginning to video tape.  "okay, 3..2..1!" nick said before popping open the bottle. fizz came out the top spilling onto nicks hand. "here, you go first" nick said handing me the bottle. i took it, taking a sip of the wine. immediately spitting it out. nick and charlie began rolling with laughter. "its that bad?!" nick exclaimed laughing. "kind of yeah" i said giggling. "here switch me" charlie said hanging me the camera for the bottle. he took a sip, making grossed out face. "dang they were right, this tastes like shit." i burst out laughing. "here, here ill show u guys your just being pussys." nick said taking a big swish of the alcohol. "holy shit! ugh! that's very distasteful." nick said. more laughing followed. we sat the camera on the car to continue to record while we watched the sunset.

(third person pov)

y/n rested their head on charlies shoulder has he pulled out the laptop. "another reason we stopped here is the reception. we have a bar so if we want we could try uploading this." he said plugging in the SD card into the laptop. their was soft ding indicating a successful upload. "fuck yeah!" he fistbumped. "now what?" nick said. "i don't know, we see if anyone sees it." charlie responded. looking at the stars overhead. 

(tubbo's pov)

i was doing my regular stream, on call with  ranboo. "woah chat, chat calm down what's going on?" i said confused why chat started spamming more than usual. "tubbo did you not see what's happening on twitter?" ranboo spoke. "uhhh no?" i said confused still figuring out what chat was going on about. "..why are you all talking about sapnap?.." i said extremely confused. "and who's slimesicle?" i asked once more. "oh so basically slimesicle had been on this hiatus from like a year and half pretty much starting when, you know. and no one had hear from him until like 4 hours ago." ranboo explained. "go on.." i said. "anyway he uploaded a untitled video to his channel and it was just like a little vlog of him with sapnap and 1uio (y/ns twitch name). and everyone was talking about how they were still in amer-" i cut him off. "is it still up on YouTube?" i said searching for 'slimesicle' in the YouTube search bar. "uhhh. yeah i think so?". i found the video sharing my desktop feed with the stream. the video was called "untiled.99899" and was 8 1/2 long. and sure enough there they were. nick and y/n. i knew it was them but they looked so different. 

"ranboo i gotta go, ill talk to you later." i said quickly before leaving the discord call. "sorry to end this stream short chat but i gotta run." i spoke before ending stream. i called tommy into my room to have him watch the video with me. "that's y/n right?" tom spoke pointing to the screen. i nodded. "they're all crippled n shit.." he mumbled. i wacked him on the head. "you can't call people that! its offensive!" i yelled at him. "cmon we gotta see if clay and will have already seen this." i said standing up. 

a/n, hello! how are you all? im a bit stressed atm lmao but its alright! i hope u enjoy this chapter, i tried making it a bit longer than normal to make up for the lack of updates :)