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starsscarmyceiling · 1 year ago

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ooo um I want to know about this merrical zombie fic 👀

Aww, thanks anon!

WOW, well, where do I even start with them?? THEY. The idea for this fic came from having an already started Reylo TLOU fic from my post TROS and TLOU 2 pains, and one day I sat down with myself and was like…but what if also Merrical though (much like I did with my neighbors AU bahahaha I have no self-control). Then the image of Cal wielding around two machetes fell into my brain and I was like OKAY THIS IS HAPPENING…

BUT THEN—I was like KATIE for the love of GOD please do not start another WIP, so it went on the back burner…for like a WHILE. I barely had an outline really, and then for quite some time I knew it was just going to be something I wanted to do down the line—but THEN—

Last October I got COVID for the first time, and well, I got into my TLOU 2 feels again (of which, that game was very hard for me) and was like UGHHHH WHYY, and idk I had a lot of time to kill…and oof well then started the absolute FEVER dream of me then writing the first 130k of this fic in two months. That was just insanity I cannot account for so much of that time. Everything just FLOWED out of me fuck have these two ruined my life.

Cal is traversing aimlessly (and has been for quite a few years) with his very well trained German Shepard, Beedee (who helps him hunt and kill infected), and he is in these woods realizing there are like not a lot of resources around…but he’s just hoping to find something…when he happens upon some featherfern he can harvest and is like OO!

Then he hears a sound snap and he only has milliseconds to react as a net is being set off around him, to which he ofc parkours himself out of it and was like damn that was close. He was going to leave, but then he’s like well actually what if I stick around for a minute and see who’s trap this is. Sitting up in a tree, Cal realizes he might just be lonely and want to see another person, and just before he’s about to give up—guess who comes onto the scene…

And GUESS how Cal decides to approach this situation??? It’s absolutely ridiculous I will tell you that:

“Sorry, that would have been me,” he said as she whipped around, and he supposed it wasn’t totally unexpected to be staring down the barrel of her rifle. Cal held up his hands.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t shoot you right now,” she demanded.

“Uh, well, I know you don’t know me, obviously, but…I swear we mean you no harm,” Cal insisted gently, still focusing on her weapon.

“We? How many of you are there?”

He let out a breath, tilting his head, “Just me and Beedee.”

Beedee barked, but the woman didn’t dare move, “This is your animal?”

“Yeah, yup,” Cal offered, sort of regretting the way it came out, “so…if you’re planning on killing me would you at least take care of my dog?”

Instead of entertaining anything he just said, she opted to scoff instead.

“So you just go around,” the woman said, stepping closer to him, “with your dog, and set off people’s traps? Why?”

“Uh,” he said as the gun was only inches from his face now, “I mean, I didn’t do it on purpose or anything.”

For the first time, she broke her focus on him, and looked over at the net again, but before Cal could fully relax, she grunted and reignited her ire.

“Did you tear a hole in it?”

“Well…I kind of, cut myself out of it when I was in midair—”

“You what?”

“What? Did you expect me to just lay back and let myself get caught in that thing?!”

She shoved the rifle at him again, “It would have made things a lot easier for me.”

Inhaling, his eyes flitted over to Beedee, who was now approaching them, “It’s fine Beedee, stay down.”

The dog did as he was told, sitting down once more, and Cal looked back over to the woman, “I really am sorry, alright? I didn’t even realize there would be anyone out here at all, let alone someone setting traps.”

“Do you have any idea how long it will take me to put it back up?”

“Well, I wouldn’t really suggest that because a torn net isn’t going to do you much good—”

She cocked the rifle’s chamber and narrowed her gaze, “Is this how you always talk to people who are literally brandishing a rifle in your face?”

In what was probably poor judgement, Cal nervously let out a chuckle, “Not…exactly, but…usually by this point the person would have made a decision whether or not they were going to shoot me—”

“And you think I won’t?!”

“No!” Cal shouted, moving his hands a bit in protest as he shook his head, “I mean—yes! Of course, I definitely still think it’s a possibility, but I kind of have this habit of talking too much when I’m nervous—”

“Something tells me that it is not just when you are nervous,” she said flatly.

“Look,” he tried to say as calmly as possible, “I can help you fix the net. I can even help you put it back up.”

She stood there for a couple of seconds, “Why?”

Cal thought the answer to that was obvious, “Well, I am the one who wrecked it, why wouldn’t I?”

“You’re acting as if we aren’t in the apocalypse. No one just does things out of the goodness of their hearts.”

A sigh escaped him, “I…realize that, but…I swear on the life of Beedee I have no other ulterior motive here.”

Again, she said nothing.

Cal closed his eyes for a moment, opening them again, “If I wanted to get away, I would have done it by now.”

“Oh, is that right?”

For an instance, Cal did nothing, but then he was swiftly reaching for her rifle before she could respond and had it pointed at her.

Then in what was the next few seconds, Cal watched her place her hands in the air, and now that he didn’t have a rifle in his face, he really got a look at her.

She was blonde, a few braids against her head with it all pulled back in a ponytail. Her skin was pale, and she had wide brown eyes that gleamed with amber as they realized the predicament she was in.

And as Cal stared on, her rifle in his grasp, he realized the one he was in.

She was goddamn stunning.

“Well,” she said, lowering her hands, placing them on her hips, “if you are going to shoot me with my own gun, just do it.”

She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever fucking seen.

Cal breathed shakily, “I’m not going to shoot you.”

Her eyes were still skeptical, but she didn’t move.

It was okay, he could definitely still have a conversation with this…ethereally…gorgeous…person.

It was fine.

“I told you…I would help you and I meant it,” he insisted, but she still narrowed her eyes nonetheless.

Cal relaxed his stance, “My name is Cal Kestis, and…I’m pretty handy with a knot or two.”

Her lovely countenance gave nothing away as he even lowered the gun all the way and offered it to her, “I even saw a rabbit just go by here. I can have Beedee on its tail no problem, so he could hopefully catch some food.”

She looked down at the rifle and then back at him. For a moment, Cal maybe thought that she was going to just take it back and shoot him, but, in what was probably considered a miracle, she took it back gently.

Cal let out an easy breath and smiled, “I can—”

“Cease your talking!” She demanded, to which he rapidly obeyed.

And…was that kinda hot?

No, it couldn’t have been.

“You are going to help me take this down and take it back to my home to patch up,” she said as she strapped the gun over her shoulder and walked over to the tree the trap was tied to, “and then you are going to leave after you put it back up. By yourself.”

Okay, so it was a little hot.

Oh, fuck.

“Alright,” he agreed, “let me just—”

She whipped her head at him, and he held up his hands, “Let me just get Beedee on that rabbit.”

Her head gave the slightest of nods, and she went back to untying.

Again, he let out a breath, and he had to quickly turn around himself, lest he lose himself in checking out the rest of her body, which was just downright unfair.

“Come ‘mere buddy,” Cal said softly, and Beedee trotted happily over to his master. He knelt down on the floor and let Beedee lick his face a couple of times, “alright, alright. We’re okay, huh?”

Cal gave him a few scratches behind the ears, “Good boy, now, I need you to track that rabbit that just came through here, okay?”

Beedee merely panted at him, so Cal pointed at the ground, giving the whistle that meant to track and hunt, which caused the dog to start sniffing right away.

Ever the great hunter, Beedee seemed to sniff out something right away, proceeding to follow it in the bushes, and then, he was off to hopefully find the bounty for them.

Cal turned back around, seeing her look in his direction as she finished untying the rope.

“So he is just going to hunt it?” She asked in a less hostile voice.

“Oh yeah, he’ll be fine. If he finds it, he’ll bring it back to us,” Cal explained.

“But we are going to be moving,” she pointed out.

Cal looked up, seeing that the net was caught up in the tree, close to where he was before.

“Well, he’ll be able to find me as long as you don’t live too far.”

She stood there, crossing her arms, “I live about one hundred yards to the east.”

“Oh, see! That’s like nothing, hey,” he said, “the net’s caught up there I can go get it down.”

Before she could say anything, he jumped up and grabbed the nearest branch, pulling himself onto it. Then, it didn’t take him long to find where it’d gotten stuck, so he quickly identified and solved the problem, to which the rest of the net fell to the floor.

He descended the tree, and then was jumping down again, his feet hitting the ground with another thump. For a moment when he looked up at her, he thought that she might have her rifle out on him again, but she was just standing there with her arms crossed.

She was staring at him, her eyes briefly looking up and down him, which made him nervously alert for more than a multitude of reasons before she was kneeling down and gathering the net.

Cal was immediately going to do the same, but then his eyes landed on the featherfern he was planning to harvest.

“Oh right, I was going to—”

“Do you have something better to do, monkey man?”

She was looking up at him incredulously, and he shook his head, his heart beating at the nickname she had suddenly given him.

“Uh, no,” he said, blinking a couple of times before he decided he could just come and get it later.

As Cal also now knelt on the ground, he felt anxiety spike through him, and he knew that he was never going to be able to shut his stupid mouth.

“It’s Cal,” he said out of nowhere.

Her head lifted to him with a raised eyebrow and he shrugged.

“In case you forgot—”

“I remember your name Cal Kestis,” she said, and then it did other things to him to hear his own name come out of her mouth as she stood with her side of the net, to which he quickly followed. She appeared to be about half a foot shorter than him, but she was still exceedingly intimidating, “I just prefer to compare you to a monkey due to your affinity for flouncing about in trees and your incessant chittering.”

She finished her sentence with gathering what she had of the net and slammed it into his chest.

His mouth was hanging open stupidly as he stared down at her. Their eyes met for the briefest, terrifying moment, before she was turning around and promptly walking off in a direction she obviously seemed confident in.

“Right,” he said, not sure if the whole ‘monkey man’ thing was meant to be an insult or not, but he just let himself breathe in and out before he was following her, presumably to where this beautiful, mysterious woman lived.

WE LIKE TO HAVE FUN HERE.

ALSO—I feel like I kind of have to put another preview in here…it’s kind of become a Thing™ in the Merrical server to say “giving someone a haircut” is to express care for someone as a metaphor. After Cal and Merrin have been traveling together and have grown close, Cal still has a difficult time like ever advocating for himself or anything he needs. It’s very easy for him to take care of everyone else instead, and he again, never even knows how to ask for anything in return. So one day, Merrin comments on how Cal's hair has grown longer, and he's like oh yeah I guess it has I've been meaning to take care of that, but then Merrin just--offers to cut it for him, which just like makes his mind explode. It just meant so much to him that she would offer without even having to ask. SO…I suppose I wanted to share some of that scene too considering what it’s meant to all of us…✂️💕✂️💕✂️💕

Both of her hands were on either side of his head now while she was still in front of him, and she seemed to be testing the length of hair out with her fingers from what it felt like.

For some reason, he thought it was pertinent to open his eyes now.

There she was, practically eye to eye with him as her fingers sought purchase on his scalp, and it was only made worse when she flicked her gaze to his.

Despite all of the anger she had just been projecting, Merrin’s countenance seemed completely softened now. And her coffee brown eyes were scanning all over his.

What he felt in that stare was the most beautiful sunset cresting into the distant mountains, and up until this point in his aggrievedly ambivalent existence, those mountains always felt like they were so impossible to reach, too far to even fathom before the darkness settled over.

But now?

With her here with him?

He was there, at the summit and letting the last of the sun’s rays warm his skin, like she was his guide, his refuge, in the night.

What a simple change, it seemed.

Or, at least it did in this moment.

And fuck he felt like Beedee whenever Cal scratched at just the right spot, and the dog turned into a melted mess on the floor, belly up and ready for all the pets.

Cal was certainly belly up now with her hands still so gently trekking their way through his hair.

“Hm,” he let out in a completely unwitting manner because he really was a fucking mess, and his eyes blinked slowly at her.

“Sorry,” she whispered softly with a bit of a lift in her voice, “I am just trying to see if everything is even.”

Cal practically wheezed at her. Apologize? She was apologizing?

He was about to lay down on the goddamn floor and tell her she could do whatever she wanted to him.

His mouth was a bit ajar as a brief exhale escaped it.

“It’s fine,” he finally attempted to convey, “take your time Mer…”

In another practically perfunctory action, he offered her a smirk. And he probably looked like an idiot, but—

He felt, for once in his whole miserable goddamn life where he thought for so long the only good place he had any more was in his memories…too special to care.

People just simply—didn’t do things like this for him, even before when he was at the base.

And it wasn’t their fault, really. It’s not like Cal knew how to ask for anything pretraining to himself or of his needs ever at all. That is another reason why taking care of everyone else came so easily to him.

So to see Merrin here now, so delicately weaving herself into his soul, it could have practically brought him to tears if he wasn’t careful.

This whole experience was certainly surging him through quite the myriad of emotions.

And Merrin was just giving him a fucking haircut.

But he wanted to reach for her now, turn his head so he could kiss at her wrists, slide his hands over her arms and slowly beckon her to sit in his lap now for an entirely different reason, so he could just hold her, show her his gratitude.

And if that led to him being able to lay his face gently on her cleavage, then that was just something he was willing sacrifice for the greater good of such an expression of thanks.

“Alright,” Merrin gently concluded as her hands, much to Cal’s dismay dropped and fell away from him, but they ever so briefly fell to his upper chest, where he was seriously about to raise his hands to place over hers in order to return the sentiment, but then she was actually standing up straight again.

Her eyes seemed to be taking him in, or more than likely examining her work, even though they lingered in certain places that Cal wished he could know so he could meet her there.

“I think it is complete enough,” she resolved now.

He was going to need about five to fifteen hundred business days to recover from that.

“Mm, okay,” he said, feeling like he had almost fucking disassociated for an actual positive reason for the first time in his life, which he honestly didn’t know was a possibility for him.

Cal did live in and inhabit a body, that’s right.

Why didn’t he just slide his way back into that thing, that ginger thing on the chair that was completely at this woman’s mercy.

Luckily, Merrin seemed to be able to pick up the slack when it came to human interaction.

“Would you like to go see it?”

He would like to go do literally anything she suggested.

His head trailed up her form as he breathed out though his nose. Their eyes met, and hers seemed to be surprisingly not impatient, but just waiting. Waiting for him to finally figure out how to be a person again.

A slow grin formed on his face, “Yeah. I’d like to see it.”

Finally, he recalled that he possessed leg muscles and used them to stand up.

Merrin was there, and he felt like he was drunk. Fucking inebriated off of her presence.

“Come on Cal Kestis,” she stated, taking him by the arm as she picked up one of the candles on the counter.

I am going to follow this woman to the end of actual time, he thought to himself.

And he would—he would stand there with her, until the sun rose again.

OOF, Cal Kestis, you are fucking in for it.

Yeah, idk what it is about these two in particular, but dear LORDT. They have…they have really fucked me UP.

Buuut, yeah, a lot of moving parts in the works rn before I post this. But believe you me, so soooo very eager to share…you DON’T even fucking know.

This was so much fun guys!!! Thank you SO much for all of your asks in this game

#WOW okay i got through them guys!#thank you so much for all of the asks this was so much fun!#i cannot wait to show you guys all of these #and...btw...incoming haircuts are under the cut 😏#✂️✂️✂️#y'all are awesome i love us!#also these two are HELLA dumb fr #fanfic #my fanfic #merrical fanfic #merrical #wip title game #ask #scitpq

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