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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 9 months ago

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Dancing 'til the break of dawn - Pt2

<Pt1

(TWST zombie apocalypse au for all your crack-fic needs)

As a kind of ‘sorry for almost stabbing you, please do not sic your zombie cat on me’ gesture, Ace gripped Yuu’s hand and dragged him into the back of the convenience store so they could share a nice little meal together.

Well… it would be nice, if Yuu wasn’t approximately 99% sure that Ace was a cannibal. After all, he hadn’t had any supplies on him that would have been worth stealing, much less killing over, that was why he had come into the convenience store in the first place. And it wasn’t like the store had been openly claimed in any of the traditional ways, with a blackened zombie corpse out front or a big bar over the window and a handwritten sign telling people to stay out ‘or else’.

And Grim had accepted Ace’s mystery meat. Yuu had lived with the zombie for quite a while, now, so he knew for a fact that Grim was very particular about his diet. Much to his chagrin, might he add. It was a little gross to watch his cat feast on the corpses of what had once been humans. He only spared so much of his innocence by turning his face away whenever the zombie needed to eat.

All of this to say: Yuu did not like the look of the bowlful of mystery meat he was offered. Especially since it wasn’t really all that much of a mystery.

He took it gingerly, but was reluctant to actually eat any. He tossed some to Grim when Ace turned away to prepare himself a bowl, and winced when Grim snapped it up without the slightest trace of hesitation.

Well, that confirms that theory.

Ace settled down a few feet away and started digging in. Without even cringing. Maybe it was good?

Yuu poked at the meat with his chopsticks, frowning a little. When cooked it, frankly, didn’t look that different from any other meat. Though it looked bland. Did Ace not know what spices are? Yuu was pretty sure he had seen a few spice jars scattered around the shop, couldn’t he have spared at least a couple?

Beyond that, though, he was… less than eager to learn if everything really does just taste like chicken.

Would it be rude to refuse, though? Ace had cooked it for him…

He cleared his throat awkwardly. “So, uh, why didn’t you just… eat the food that was here?”

Ace didn’t seem to know what he was talking about, so Yuu motioned to the aisles upon aisles of food that he was using as bait.

Ace seemed to buffer for an entire minute.

“Well… it’s not sustainable. I mean, we’re going to be stuck like this until… who knows how long. I don’t know how to tend to plants or – anything.”

Yuu gave him a flat look. “Y’know, I’d believe that if it wasn’t very clear that you’re making this up on the spot.”

Ace scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, what do you know? You befriended a fucking zombie.”

“It was really dark, okay?!”

Grim glowered at Ace. And then snapped at his knee.

“Get your fucking cat!” Ace screeched.

Yuu sighed. “Grim, just because you don’t like someone doesn’t mean you can kill them. We’ve been over this.”

Grim, for lack of a better word, sulked at the reminder.

Ace, however, looked horrified. “... how many times has Grim killed someone you made ‘friends’ with?”

“I try not to think about it,” Yuu admitted.

Ace looked like he wanted to die… well, actually, like he very much did not want to die. “Well, you – you scold him afterward, right?”

“Of course!”

“You’d scold him if he killed me, then?” Ace sounded a little bit desperate. He looked at the zombie. “You hear that? You’ll get told off if you kill me!”

Grim looked like he was very much ready to take that risk.

“You – you have to start doing more,” said Ace. “Like, at least say you won’t talk to him anymore if he kills me.”

Yuu frowned. That seemed a little bit extreme. Grim was his special little guy. He couldn’t just stop talking to him.

Ace would claim until the end of time that he did not whimper. That the sound he made was actually very cool and manly. Ace is a liar.

Yuu, however, is not. Which is why he never agreed to abandon his beloved cat.

His beloved cat was, technically, a murderer, but we all have our flaws. Yuu didn’t care that much. Though… he seemed to be an exception – people always stressed when Grim’s kill count was brought up, it was so annoying. And hypocritical, in Ace’s case, seeing as he was a serial killer/cannibal.

Yuu didn’t need to deal with this.

“I’m going to grab some spices,” he decided, pushing himself to his feet. “If I’m going to be eating this, it needs to actually taste good.”

Ace yelped and jumped up as well, almost running to latch onto Yuu’s arm, squinting at Grim with open suspicion. “Here, I know where they are, let me take you there!”

Grim narrowed his eye right back at him. But, upon receiving a warning look from Yuu, settled down on his front paws and glared at nothing.

So, with little additional fanfare, Yuu and Ace grabbed a few spices from the shelves, and Yuu worked at making a spice combination that would go with something he had never tried before and didn’t even really want to eat now.

He managed to make something that tasted… fine. On its own, at least. He had no clue how well it would work with human flesh.

So, Ace was to be his test subject.

(Should he trust Ace as a test subject? He was already eating people, his taste buds might not have been all that normal… whatever. Yuu was having a day. He was officially tired of parsing out things like logic and morality.)

He spiced up the meat and then gave it to Ace to try.

Ace glanced at him, slightly wary. But he had watched Yuu grab all of the spices, so it wasn’t like he could have poisoned it. The worst it could be was gross. He took a careful bite.

He almost dropped his bowl.

He looked at Yuu with stars in his eyes.

“Never leave me,” Ace said.

Yuu’s eyebrows raised just slightly. “Not scared of Grim anymore?”

“It’s worth it. I can’t cook for shit. I’ve been dying here.”

Yuu snickered into his hand.

Grim narrowed his eye at Ace. Ace – who was definitely a little more concerned about the zombie cat than he had originally tried to claim – hesitated, before scooping a little bit of the meat out onto the floor for him.

The zombie sniffed the peace offering for a moment before eating it.

Grim was enlightened.

Yuu realized, dully, that this was probably the first time the zombie had ever had seasoned food. He felt… strangely guilty about this.

He rubbed the zombie’s head, scratching behind his cat’s ear in just the way he liked it. Grim purred and, apparently, decided that Ace could live for another day, so long as Yuu continued to love on him for the rest of the night.

“I guess the food was a hit,” Yuu joked lightly.

“It’s really good,” Ace said, nudging the bowl towards him to try.

He picked it up gingerly and blew on the… ‘food’.

… in the end, Yuu only managed a few bites before he had to stop. It tasted fine, but he couldn’t get over what it actually was. He resolved himself to make a run to the store sometime within the next week or two for something he could eat without feeling physically ill – or mentally ill, for that matter.

(He wanted to use what they already had in the store, but Ace insisted that his bait was not to be disturbed. Remind him why he had chosen to be friends with Ace, again?)

Yuu stubbed his toe on a can of beans of all things. Ace had taken to trying to drive him away with petty inconveniences, since anything too openly hostile would end in him getting killed. It was kind of funny, when it wasn't happening to you.

He punched a shelf out of frustration.

Great. Now his hand, hurt, too.

"Sh-ugar," Yuu hissed.

Ace snorted. "You can swear, man, it's the apocalypse. I do it all the time. Watch: fuckshitbitchdamnhellIcan'tthinkofanymoreshitshitshit! See? No one to get onto my case about it."

Yuu scowled. "Nope. I'm perfect and virtuous and -."

"Your best friend is a zombie."

He threw up his hands in frustration. "You befriend one zombie and suddenly all of the good things you've ever done are null and void!"

Ace raised an eyebrow.

Yuu scowled. How was he supposed to have known that helping out a random stray would end the world as he knew it? Grim was the very first zombie, it would have been weirder to assume that there was something wrong, in his opinion!

"I'm never doing anything nice ever again," Yuu decided.

"You've done nice things before?"

"Shut up and go cut up that body at the front of the store so I can start making dinner."

"Very nice of you," Ace teased.

"It is," Yuu said flatly. "I don't have to feed you, you know."

Ace, to his surprise, didn't back off. Instead, he grinned widely. He clapped Yuu on the shoulder. "You're already getting the hang of it! I'll corrupt you in no time."

Yuu fought the urge to curse, if only because he didn't want to further prove Ace's point.

After all, he hated Ace and didn't find him at all funny. Ignore the little smile that threatened to tug at his lips the moment Ace was safely out of sight. Yuu was certainly ignoring it.

Yuu squinted at the veritable forest that had grown in the garden section of the old, abandoned grocery store.

Man, things go to the dogs fast in the apocalypse.

Or should he say they went to the cats? Since it was a cat that had started this all?

He looked down at Grim. The zombie had been clinging to his side even more than usual. Yuu wasn’t sure if it was because the almost-murder had spooked the cat, or if him becoming kinda-friends with his almost-murderer had made the cat decide that Yuu absolutely could not at any cost be left alone ever again, or if Grim was jealous that he no longer had Yuu’s undivided attention anymore, or if the zombie just really liked the texture of Yuu’s new baggy sweatpants and would take any opportunity to rub up against them. Really, all of those options were equally likely.

And, though Yuu was definitely the one with all the power in this scenario, he wanted his darling subordinate’s opinion:

“Do you approve of this?” he said, smiling wryly as he motioned to the mess of plants.

Grim squinted suspiciously at the plants, as if he was half-convinced there would be another Ace hidden in the shadows.

He didn’t seem to see anything, for he didn’t start growling or puffing up like he did when he was trying to be menacing, so Yuu took a cautious step forward.

Grim sunk his teeth into the fabric of his pant leg.

Yuu’s life flashed before his eyes. The zombie’s teeth didn’t touch his skin, but they could have if he had moved even the slightest bit unpredictably, and he did not appreciate that he had almost been killed.

He looked down at his cat, disapproving.

Grim didn’t look cowed (or… cated?), instead tugging on Yuu’s pant leg, trying to physically drag him away from the forest.

Yuu sighed.

He supposed that it was unlikely that he’d find any useful plants in the brush, anyway.

“Alright, plan B, then,” he said, somewhat reluctantly.

He grabbed the nearest plant pot filled with soil, and then walked right back into the store proper.

Yuu stepped into the convenience store, still frowning just slightly over his gross bag full of rotting fruits. It was wrapped in as many bags as he could physically tie around it, plus some, but it was still a miserable thing to carry.

You would think he’d get used to the smell of rot and death, but no. It’s a surprisingly varied smell. Just when you think you’ve smelled it all, another, worse smell will make itself known.

He hates his life. And his bag, right now. Ugh, he would never get the smell out of these clothes.

At least these seeds would, probably, sprout into something useful once he planted them. He wasn’t sure, since the plants themselves were rotted and therefore there was a very real chance that the seeds would be useless. He, frankly, did not have much knowledge about gardening, because he was a normal teen boy… but he could figure it out! He grabbed a couple of books on the subject, he’d be an expert in no time. By sheer force of will. He was determined to eat as few human beings as was physically possible.

Speaking of.

His cannibal friend.

He would… prefer not to catch the boy by surprise. For hopefully obvious reasons.

“Aaaaaace. I got that bell and string you wanted,” Yuu called, ringing the bell once for emphasis, before making his way further inside.

He could hear a flurry of movement, but he wasn’t entirely sure where it was coming from. Maybe Ace had been asleep and was scrambling to get himself back into order before Yuu could see his bedhead…?

Ace cursed, loudly. This did not necessarily disprove that thought, but Yuu did end up remembering that Ace’s hair always looked like a bedhead, and there was no reason for him to suddenly care about it.

So… the sound was probably…

Yuu looked down at Grim, betrayed. “Did you send a zombie after my friend?!” he hissed.

Grim looked like he had only just now realized that that was an option. Which meant that it wasn’t a zombie that Ace was fighting. But then… what?

“Ace?” he called, standing on tiptoes to try and see over the shelves, trying to figure out where the scuffle was coming from. “You good?”

There was a loud banging sound from somewhere in the back of the store, and a shelf wobbled uncertainly.

Well, that answers that question.

He rushed towards the back of the store, and… well, he wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it really wasn’t to find Ace sitting on top of the freezer, looking for all the world as if he was entirely innocent… with a backpack and bat that Yuu had never seen before at his feet, and what looked to be a bruise forming on his cheek.

“Oh, hey. Yuu. You’re back. Thanks for the. Bell,” the boy said, entirely natural in his cadence and definitely not doing that thing you do when you’re entirely out of breath and trying to keep quiet about it because someone is passing you and you don’t want this random stranger to know how inactive you are.

Yuu raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re… welcome?”

There was a banging sound from inside of the freezer Ace was sitting on. Ace tried very hard not to react, but his fingers curled tighter around his knife anyway.

“There’s a person in there, isn’t there?” Yuu said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Noooooo,” said Ace, batting his eyelashes.

The not-person-inside-of-the-freezer screamed something that sounded distinctly like the word ‘yes’. This did not convince Yuu of Ace’s innocence.

Even Grim seemed to give Ace a look that screamed ‘who do you think you are fooling?’

“So, if there’s no person in there, then you’ll have no problem opening it, right?”

Ace’s smile strained at the edges. “... c’mon, man, don’t do this to me.”

Yuu looked at the freezer, mentally debating whether it was worth it to even get involved. Frankly, it was the apocalypse, and everyone that was still alive kind of sucked, and there was a nonzero chance that the person would not take being shoved into a freezer lightly and would try and kill them immediately upon being let out.

He sighed.

“How old did they look?” Yuu asked.

Ace hesitated just a hair longer than would typically be to Yuu’s liking.

He groaned. “Open it.”

Ace looked like he would very much prefer not doing that. But, when Yuu prodded him with his foot, he reluctantly stood and, holding his knife out in preparation for a possible attack, allowed him to unlock the freezer.

Another person, maybe about their age, emerged from the freezer like a vampire might emerge from a coffin, grim expression and all. This effect was ruined by the fact that his hair was… blue? Maybe he was a blond who had dyed his hair black with shitty dye and it had washed out weirdly without touch-ups. Or maybe he was just really into blue hair and was working to maintain it even throughout the apocalypse. Who knows?

The boy groaned and stepped out of the freezer, scowling at Ace. “Thank you,” he grumbled, immediately picking up his bat again. He stepped between Yuu and Ace, raising his weapon. He pointed it at the redhead, which is, really, not what you’re supposed to do with a bat. “You should run, he’s dangerous.”

Ace looked somewhere between flattered and offended. “Hey! That’s my –...” Ace trailed off, unsure. Yuu wondered, absently, what he would say. Would he call him a friend? Partner? Fellow survivor, even? “Chef!” Ouch. “He’s not leaving here, he’s mine!”

Grim growled.

“And Grim’s!” he added hastily.

The blue-haired boy, though, paused. He looked for the origin of the sound. Yuu nudged Grim into a shadowed area so he looked more like a normal cat. Because the boy seemed well-intentioned, and therefore was very likely to be against Yuu having a zombie for a pet.

What does that say about Yuu’s relationship with Grim? Well, he’d rather not think about it!

Yuu sighed, stepping around him carefully, holding his hands up placatingly. “I appreciate it, but it’s fine.”

The boy looked incredulous. “He’s killing and eating people?! He doesn’t even act like he likes you?! You’re his chef?!”

“Listen, man, it’s the apocalypse, I don’t have that many options.”

“Dude…” He offered Yuu a hand. “I’ll be your friend. I’m Deuce Spade. What’s your name?”

Ew, pity. He didn’t want a pity friend. He could take Ace talking to him out of fear of Grim or respect for his cooking prowess, but pity? No thanks.

Ace snatched up the outstretched hand before Yuu could even try to shake it (not that he currently wanted to), squeezing with way more force than was entirely necessary. “Ace Trappola. Nice to meet you.”

Deuce looked disgusted. And then mildly terrified when Ace made as if to slice off his hand.

Yuu was quick to grab Ace by the arm to stop him from murdering someone for the high crime of daring to suggest that he was not the safest person to be around. How could he not see that this was proving Deuce’s point?! You’d think he’d refrain from killing for the sake of being petty, at least, but no!

Deuce’s eyes looked strangely misty. Not even because of the almost-dying thing, that was pretty much par for the course when running into other survivors, he looked so upset about Yuu’s situation. Yuu wondered what kind of soap-opera-esque backstory the boy was dreaming up for him.

He didn’t get to ask, because Deuce quickly derailed the conversation before he could: “I guess I’ll have to stay here until you’re ready to leave.”

Ace spluttered. “No?! We let you live, you’re supposed to go, now?!”

Deuce scoffed. “Why do you get to make that decision?”

“This is my base?!”

Deuce, apparently, was not going to be swayed by Ace’s facts and logic.

Ace gave Yuu a pleading look. “Yuu, can we please kill him now?”

Yuu thought about it. And then shook his head, a tiny grin threatening to steal across his lips. “Nah, letting him stay is way funnier.”

From the look on everyone else’s faces, they vehemently disagreed.

But this isn’t about them! So, Deuce got to stay. Much to the chagrin of everyone. Including himself!

~~~~~~~

Pt3>

#ace trappola #deuce spade #grim twst #twisted wonderland #yuu twst #deuce: i should do this guy a solid and help him escape from his weird cannibal friend #yuu: no its fine actually idc #deuce. severely misunderstanding the situation. tearing up: i see i must save him from HIMSELF #he... tries #twst #twst fanfic #twisted wonderland fic #zombie apocalypse au