UNITY

Chapter 16

A/N:

When I said I'll update every Monday but then one of my favourite authors decided to read this so I gotta put out as many chapters as possible- ahsjdkgkgnd anyway, enjoy the update!

~

I thought fortifying the gates would be a piece of cake.

Nope, it wasn't.

Turns out, all of us don't know jack-shit about it. At all.

"What even is the main problem with this gate?" Olliver, not seeing the broken, creaky, not to mention noisy, hinges, peeling paint and a huge hole on the underside part of the gate, asked.

"Bitch, you did not just ask that." I facepalmed.

I was carrying on my hip my favorite child, Tilly, which I come to know was short for Matilda, who was fidgeting with a butterfly comb we stole from one of the bodies. Of course, I made sure it was safe and clean before giving it to her. Wouldn't want to give her an oily comb full of lice and dandruff now, would we?

What she didn't know was that the butterfly comb came with a knife replacement, which I hid until I know she was fully ready to hold one, let alone use one.

"Here." I taught her how to flip the butterfly comb open, to her amazement. "Wow!" She had stars in her eyes as she looked at me, and then she tried to attempt what I did.

The twins were behind me, as always. Ever since yesterday, they haven't left my side. There's always some sort of physical contact, with Quartz preferring to touch my hip and Onyx regularly nearing his bicep towards my shoulder, which I found a bit comforting, given that they're showing me that they're there for me.

Both of them even agreed to sleep on the same bed together in the master's bedroom, right in front of my room. Tilly and Oliver decided to stay with us for the night as well, sleeping in the other room while I slept on my own. It's amazing how all of us automatically became a family, trust and all. I guess a huge part of it was Oliver helping us during the raid situation and Tilly's cuteness, giving us a sense of normalcy as we took care of the two.

"...How about we fix the noisy hinges first? That's priority number one. Do you have petroleum jelly or any kind of lubricant in your house, Unity?"

I know Onyx didn't pertain to the water-based lube he saw in my bathroom, but it still made us crack a smile at each other.

What? Don't look at me like that. I found it inside one of the few houses I scavenged. Besides, even before the apocalypse, there's no reason I'd buy one for myself, duh.

"Nope, none. at. all..." I fake-whistled.

"Would WD-40 work? I think we have one in our house." Ollie said.

Onyx took Tilly from my uninjured arm and carried her as we all decided to go with Oliver to his house to get the WD-40. Even though he was insistent on going there alone, and I'm surprised they lived near me, only a block away.

"So that's how you knew we needed backup, you guys also lived near the gates," I said.

"I also knew your house, even before you left." Oliver said while inserting his key to his house.

"How?"

"I saw you from time to time, even before shit hit the fan. We didn't want to disturb you, let alone burden you with taking care of us, and you left. But I guess fate works in mysterious ways." He shrugged.

He finally opened the door to his home, a different layout greeting us when we went in.

"Wait for me, my dad's tools are located in the storage room behind the house."