epidemic ➳ payne / apocalypse a.u

three

Harry and I spent three days preparing and packing. Currently, I was checking over everything for the third time just to make sure - Harry was in a different room apparently doing something more important than packing.

In the zone, the population had dropped to such a small size that you could have a whole apartment to yourself, although most people shared with someone. It made you feel somewhat normal to have a room mate. Harry and I had been sharing the whole time we knew each other. Literally. When they first sorted out the zones, it probably had around five times the amount of people there were now. Maybe even more. So they did their best to find someone else that someone knew at least a little bit to share a room with. Unfortunately, Harry and I had been in the group of people who had no one left, and when waiting to get given someone to share a room with he'd approached me saying he liked the book I was reading. I'd just found it on the ground and got sick of waiting, so I'd used it to pass the time. But to this day I was glad I'd picked up that book. Harry told the soldiers that we'd went to school together (even though we didn't) so we'd end up sharing a room - his logic was that we were the only teenagers so we were bound to get along. He was right.

Curiosity took over me, and I decided to go and check up on Harry to find out what was so important to him to avoid helping me pack our supplies. I made my way towards his room as quietly as I could manage. When I reached the door, muffled puffing noises could be heard from outside. The door was pushed open quietly and realisation struck me when I laid eyes on Harry on the ground doing sit-ups. He always did that when he was feeling stressed - worked out. That boy had a killer body - especially his arms. With the amount of looting and walking across states that we did, you needed to be fit. My shoulder rested lazilly on the doorframe as I admired the way he looked doing situps. He was shirtless, which made the view of the many tattoos he'd squired from from the black market system in the zone even better. After he completed a few more, he stopped and reached across the floor where his shirt was placed, and used it to wipe his curls from his face and the sweat which had been glistening on his forehead.

"Damn, I was enjoying that." I stated, surprising Harry and causing him to jump.

His head whipped round in my direction to grin at me, "Sorry. I wasn't exactly expecting you to watch me work out. What a creep."

I rolled my eyes at his comment. "Stressed about the trip, huh?"

"Little bit."

"Little bit? Those sit-ups looked pretty intense, more than a little bit."

"Okay, okay. Maybe a lot. But it's no wonder, we're transporting the cure for mankind. It's all dependant on us right now; that's stressful as fuck."

My teeth dug into my bottom lip, "Are you having second thoughts? Because we could still drop out - "

"No, no! It'll be fun. Plus, I'd never take this from you. I know you're excited, don't even deny it. I know you - you thrive for this kind of responsibility. You're loving every second of this."

"Maybe not every second..." I tried to defend myself but Harry playfully punched my arm before grabbing a new shirt and pulling it over his head. "But if you think I'm not feeling stress - "

"Oh, I know you're stressed. That's another thing you thrive off - stress. Weird, as it is. If I remember correctly, back in that shitty school they started in the zone and made us attend, you know before they realised it was a stupid idea, you would always leave your assignments until the last minute so that you'd feel stressed."

My lips twisted into a smile at this, "I do my best work under stress. That's why I put myself under it."

"One more sleep in the zone until we leave for nearly a year. I'm feeling kind of nostalgic." Harry explained, glancing around his bedroom, which was literally just a bed in a room.