![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
*snort* No, this is not the zombie musical that was discussed by a certain hilarious member of my f-list. Nor does it involve necrophilia, unless you happen to take your interpretation a little further than most. FireElemental, darling? You couldn't pick a better favorite movie than this one.
Plus, in light of the upcoming zombie-quiz results (which I have been BAD about posting! *cringe*), I figured I'd get everyone back into the mindset. ^_~
Title: The Closet
Author: me
Pairing/Fandom: Peter/Roger, Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Rating: let's go with light R
Summary: He had a day or two. A day and a day, and there was nothing to build within that.
Warnings: SPOILERS for the film, impending character death, zombie sensibilities, and remember this is based on a horror film about walking dead people; thus you have been warned.
Dedicated to FireElemental79, who asked me for this long ago. Alas, the bunny itself took its sweet time nibbling on me (*snerk* nibbling...). Okay, okay. On with the zombie.
Also posted on AO3.
The Closet
The room was too much like a closet.
Peter stared down the length of it— for closet it was, recently the abode of boxes and crates and food, food, food— at its opaque pasty-yellow walls and the flat, stale sense of ‘not for humans.’ Dried goods. Canned goods.
They, all of them, Fran and Stephen and the two of them in here, were all canned, lately.
“Fucks better not find a can opener,” he said.
Roger shifted on the floor beside him, a feeble turn toward his right side, forgotten almost as soon as it was attempted. Peter felt a glimmer of regret for speaking aloud in the closet, but it faded as Roger’s wakefulness did, his moist breathing sounds lengthening again. Roger’s hand had slid further across his own stomach, almost down his opposite side, and there it dangled, limp and white as fish, with blue veins running through the wrist just in the shadows and the bruise-color in the hollows of his fingers. He looked as though he’d been rolled with his arms trailing, and now he lay on his back and breathed and slept.
Peter thought the walls a better view just then, and fixed his eyes on the one across from him, down the way with the door on the right and his gun nestled there in the corner, out of reach.
Stephen thought they had time. Fran would have taken that gun and bashed sense over Peter’s head with it if she knew he’d left it there.
Roger was a warm weight against his right thigh, curled without being curled in two of their nondescript wool blankets. The closet was stuffy, and Roger shook like a leaf when it was most hot. Peter realized his lips had curved upward on their own and grimaced them straight again. His ass ached from the hard floor beneath. The flimsy mattress under the other man could not have been much of a godsend, but then, God had sent a lot of things lately, and Peter didn’t consider any of them comfortable, even the ones that let them lock glass doors with bolts and padlocks, and provided them with ammunition from their own private gun shop, and a wheelbarrow so they could all be together in this.
Fran and Stephen were in the so-called kitchen, or Fran was, her still-flat belly pressed to the wash basin as she scrubbed mechanically at the spaghetti pot with the noise of the television serenading their quaint little home. Stephen was never far from Fran. Even with this whole empty mall, they were all within thirty square feet, and it never got tiring, not to Peter. It was enough for him now, especially.
It was enough that Roger couldn’t go out at all anymore. It was enough that he had morphine shoved up his veins almost constantly now. It was enough that he coughed whenever he was awake, and regularly emptied his stomach contents onto the unforgiving floor next to them all as often as he ate. It was enough, it was, it—
“It’s enough, damn it! Enough!”
This time, Roger’s stirring was pronounced. “Peter?”
He sighed and looked down, eyes skipping over the soiled bandage encircling Roger’s forearm once again. His smile came when summoned. He was glad to feel it this time. “Sorry, Rog. Go back to sleep.”
Roger let out a heavy breath, sounding winded and lost at the same time. “Awake now.” He lifted that pale hand and let it drop. “I was having a dream. Fran’s baby was a girl.”
“She’ll be interested to hear that.”
Roger stared upward for a moment and then rocked his head from side to side. “Don’t tell her,” was all he said.
Peter frowned and smoothed the blanket, looking back at the wall. “Have a drink, brother.”
Roger’s eyes glazed a bit. His nose wrinkled, a weak, sickly reminder of the joy-fervor his face had held before. Such a child, an enchanting child in a man’s body. Peter wanted to cup his hand over Roger’s nose. It was a joke; he didn’t want to be reminded.
“Really not thirsty.”
“You think I care about that?”
Roger’s head swiveled and his hollow eyes looked up into Peter’s face. After a moment, they skittered away, a restless jag through the air to whatever. “Don’t want to lie here, though. Help me?”
The plea was inappropriate. Roger didn’t need jostling, he needed a damn cure. Peter wanted rather insanely to cut the troubled leg off, now, now while there might still be time. Stupid. It was all in Roger now. All through his blood. “Yeah. Yeah, here—”
Peter got up on his knees and bent over, and Roger lifted his arm again and slid it over his back, palm pressing into his shoulder. Peter kneaded a hand carefully under the slightly raised torso, hitching once— Roger hissed— and gripping firmly around the other’s waist. Roger’s hand slipped upward and fingers closed thinly over the nape of his neck. Roger’s skin was dry, calluses tracking faintly across Peter’s delicate skin. Peter heaved Roger’s body up, so thin, too thin, it came so very easily off the mattress, and found himself a mere inch from his friend’s face.
Roger’s eyes were riddled with pain, muffled in the mist of it, and yet they pierced straight through the most fragile hollow in Peter’s throat. His breathing clotted, stopped altogether.
Roger stared at him, fingers a soft knot at his nape. “Gonna die,” he whispered. “Pete?”
Peter couldn’t speak, but he could shake his head, and he did, and Roger made a noise like a beaten animal and pulled with his one hand. Peter hitched him up one more time, and then forgot what he was doing. Roger’s gaze skipped from one of his eyes to the other, then down to his mouth. His tongue came out to wet his lips.
Peter leaned forward as if pushed, hugging the other man’s thinning frame to him.
His mouth touched down on soft, unshaven skin. Roger turned his head just a tiny bit and skin turned into a mouth that opened immediately. Peter shut his eyes. Roger’s tongue was thick and sluggish in his mouth, moving weakly, tasting like nothing but warmth and water. Peter’s shoulders went limp; he felt them go, a gentle release, and he imagined a hushed sound floating along with it, the whisper-sift of silence falling.
The bite, when it came, was subtle and small, right on the curve of his lower lip. Teeth pricked. Slid. Clenched.
Peter jerked back, hitting the wall before his instincts told him he was far enough away and rebounding again to find Roger’s milky eyes staring up through half-lowered lids. His mouth was kiss-reddened, lips deceptively plump with life and blood. Roger blinked. A pained moan issued from between his parted lips. His hand clutched at Peter’s nape, struggling to remain there.
Peter tasted his lip before thinking, running his tongue over tender skin, inside his mouth over the tracks of Roger’s teeth there, and outside, where the touch of the other man’s mouth lingered. Stubble just beneath his lip, no iron. He lifted a shaking hand and rubbed his fingertips against the place, dipped a thumb inside his mouth to feel. There were no tears in the skin.
The color of Roger’s irises beamed through the morphine fog that buried them, muted and still desperate, as if just waiting to bloom back into the relief of childlike blue. There was nothing in his face, no recognition of what he’d done with his mouth and teeth. Nothing in his eyes but a wandering fever. The change was utter and complete, and Peter sought for the proper amount of air to keep himself from toppling.
Roger didn’t see him. If he ever had. He had… Peter thought. Maybe the word was ‘wished.’
Maybe it no longer mattered.
A few days, he thought, before he knew. Dinners with Fran and Stephen, breakfasts with himself, four trips down to check the doors and remind himself of what was outside, but not inside yet. Maybe a death in the family. If he hadn’t begun to feel dizzy and sick by then—
Peter lowered Roger back to the floor more quickly than he’d intended, feeling the incumbent sickness in him, wanting insanely not to feel it, not to see far enough into the future for the closet to be empty again. Or filled with boxes again.
“Roger?” he said softly, and his voice shook.
Roger’s eyes had rolled up, his eyelids fallen shut. His chest rose and fell with each audible breath.
The closet felt like a coldly lit tunnel, strangely long. Peter swallowed and felt the impossibility of silence.
“Why in hell didn’t you listen to me?” He gripped Roger’s shoulder, too hard, the flesh thinner and bonier and weaker than before. Resisted the urge to shake and shake. “Why in hell’d you go after that bag when they were all over it?”
He felt completely impotent. Like he could do nothing, there was nothing he could ever do, and all he wanted was to turn back the clock just a little and drag Roger away from that blasted semi loading dock and back inside where they could lock the doors and put their considerable smarts together and come up with something just as good for the unblocked doors that were left.
But that felt more useless. Fuck. If he was going to turn back time, why not turn it all the way back to the beginning, and stop any of this from ever happening?
Except then he never would have run into Roger at all.
He leaned back against the wall and shut his eyes, listening to the inhale-exhale beside him, wondering if zombies breathed. If their lungs worked. If any fragment of memory survived beyond instinctual recollection.
He wanted to be remembered by Roger. He wanted the last few moments to be remembered.
He opened his eyes and found the dark, innocent outline of the gun against the far wall, and knew that it wouldn’t fucking matter if he were remembered.
He had a day or two. A day and a day, and there was nothing to build within that. Peter found Roger’s hand without looking and slipped his fingers around still-warm flesh. Squeezed.
~fin~
A/N: Okay, so. The homoerotic tones in this movie are most definitely not nearly as subtle as in most movies. There is an entire philosophical study on this particular pairing, or so I understand. Pretty much blatantly conceptualized within the film itself, though no one comes right out and says anything. I cannot recommend this movie enough. Seeing as it is a Romero zombie film, I will warn you and say that it has gore and destruction and dead people eating and dismembering living people, of course. But the commentary, OH, the social commentary! Not to mention the homoerotic under/overtones.
Plus, in light of the upcoming zombie-quiz results (which I have been BAD about posting! *cringe*), I figured I'd get everyone back into the mindset. ^_~
Title: The Closet
Author: me
Pairing/Fandom: Peter/Roger, Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Rating: let's go with light R
Summary: He had a day or two. A day and a day, and there was nothing to build within that.
Warnings: SPOILERS for the film, impending character death, zombie sensibilities, and remember this is based on a horror film about walking dead people; thus you have been warned.
Dedicated to FireElemental79, who asked me for this long ago. Alas, the bunny itself took its sweet time nibbling on me (*snerk* nibbling...). Okay, okay. On with the zombie.
Also posted on AO3.
The Closet
The room was too much like a closet.
Peter stared down the length of it— for closet it was, recently the abode of boxes and crates and food, food, food— at its opaque pasty-yellow walls and the flat, stale sense of ‘not for humans.’ Dried goods. Canned goods.
They, all of them, Fran and Stephen and the two of them in here, were all canned, lately.
“Fucks better not find a can opener,” he said.
Roger shifted on the floor beside him, a feeble turn toward his right side, forgotten almost as soon as it was attempted. Peter felt a glimmer of regret for speaking aloud in the closet, but it faded as Roger’s wakefulness did, his moist breathing sounds lengthening again. Roger’s hand had slid further across his own stomach, almost down his opposite side, and there it dangled, limp and white as fish, with blue veins running through the wrist just in the shadows and the bruise-color in the hollows of his fingers. He looked as though he’d been rolled with his arms trailing, and now he lay on his back and breathed and slept.
Peter thought the walls a better view just then, and fixed his eyes on the one across from him, down the way with the door on the right and his gun nestled there in the corner, out of reach.
Stephen thought they had time. Fran would have taken that gun and bashed sense over Peter’s head with it if she knew he’d left it there.
Roger was a warm weight against his right thigh, curled without being curled in two of their nondescript wool blankets. The closet was stuffy, and Roger shook like a leaf when it was most hot. Peter realized his lips had curved upward on their own and grimaced them straight again. His ass ached from the hard floor beneath. The flimsy mattress under the other man could not have been much of a godsend, but then, God had sent a lot of things lately, and Peter didn’t consider any of them comfortable, even the ones that let them lock glass doors with bolts and padlocks, and provided them with ammunition from their own private gun shop, and a wheelbarrow so they could all be together in this.
Fran and Stephen were in the so-called kitchen, or Fran was, her still-flat belly pressed to the wash basin as she scrubbed mechanically at the spaghetti pot with the noise of the television serenading their quaint little home. Stephen was never far from Fran. Even with this whole empty mall, they were all within thirty square feet, and it never got tiring, not to Peter. It was enough for him now, especially.
It was enough that Roger couldn’t go out at all anymore. It was enough that he had morphine shoved up his veins almost constantly now. It was enough that he coughed whenever he was awake, and regularly emptied his stomach contents onto the unforgiving floor next to them all as often as he ate. It was enough, it was, it—
“It’s enough, damn it! Enough!”
This time, Roger’s stirring was pronounced. “Peter?”
He sighed and looked down, eyes skipping over the soiled bandage encircling Roger’s forearm once again. His smile came when summoned. He was glad to feel it this time. “Sorry, Rog. Go back to sleep.”
Roger let out a heavy breath, sounding winded and lost at the same time. “Awake now.” He lifted that pale hand and let it drop. “I was having a dream. Fran’s baby was a girl.”
“She’ll be interested to hear that.”
Roger stared upward for a moment and then rocked his head from side to side. “Don’t tell her,” was all he said.
Peter frowned and smoothed the blanket, looking back at the wall. “Have a drink, brother.”
Roger’s eyes glazed a bit. His nose wrinkled, a weak, sickly reminder of the joy-fervor his face had held before. Such a child, an enchanting child in a man’s body. Peter wanted to cup his hand over Roger’s nose. It was a joke; he didn’t want to be reminded.
“Really not thirsty.”
“You think I care about that?”
Roger’s head swiveled and his hollow eyes looked up into Peter’s face. After a moment, they skittered away, a restless jag through the air to whatever. “Don’t want to lie here, though. Help me?”
The plea was inappropriate. Roger didn’t need jostling, he needed a damn cure. Peter wanted rather insanely to cut the troubled leg off, now, now while there might still be time. Stupid. It was all in Roger now. All through his blood. “Yeah. Yeah, here—”
Peter got up on his knees and bent over, and Roger lifted his arm again and slid it over his back, palm pressing into his shoulder. Peter kneaded a hand carefully under the slightly raised torso, hitching once— Roger hissed— and gripping firmly around the other’s waist. Roger’s hand slipped upward and fingers closed thinly over the nape of his neck. Roger’s skin was dry, calluses tracking faintly across Peter’s delicate skin. Peter heaved Roger’s body up, so thin, too thin, it came so very easily off the mattress, and found himself a mere inch from his friend’s face.
Roger’s eyes were riddled with pain, muffled in the mist of it, and yet they pierced straight through the most fragile hollow in Peter’s throat. His breathing clotted, stopped altogether.
Roger stared at him, fingers a soft knot at his nape. “Gonna die,” he whispered. “Pete?”
Peter couldn’t speak, but he could shake his head, and he did, and Roger made a noise like a beaten animal and pulled with his one hand. Peter hitched him up one more time, and then forgot what he was doing. Roger’s gaze skipped from one of his eyes to the other, then down to his mouth. His tongue came out to wet his lips.
Peter leaned forward as if pushed, hugging the other man’s thinning frame to him.
His mouth touched down on soft, unshaven skin. Roger turned his head just a tiny bit and skin turned into a mouth that opened immediately. Peter shut his eyes. Roger’s tongue was thick and sluggish in his mouth, moving weakly, tasting like nothing but warmth and water. Peter’s shoulders went limp; he felt them go, a gentle release, and he imagined a hushed sound floating along with it, the whisper-sift of silence falling.
The bite, when it came, was subtle and small, right on the curve of his lower lip. Teeth pricked. Slid. Clenched.
Peter jerked back, hitting the wall before his instincts told him he was far enough away and rebounding again to find Roger’s milky eyes staring up through half-lowered lids. His mouth was kiss-reddened, lips deceptively plump with life and blood. Roger blinked. A pained moan issued from between his parted lips. His hand clutched at Peter’s nape, struggling to remain there.
Peter tasted his lip before thinking, running his tongue over tender skin, inside his mouth over the tracks of Roger’s teeth there, and outside, where the touch of the other man’s mouth lingered. Stubble just beneath his lip, no iron. He lifted a shaking hand and rubbed his fingertips against the place, dipped a thumb inside his mouth to feel. There were no tears in the skin.
The color of Roger’s irises beamed through the morphine fog that buried them, muted and still desperate, as if just waiting to bloom back into the relief of childlike blue. There was nothing in his face, no recognition of what he’d done with his mouth and teeth. Nothing in his eyes but a wandering fever. The change was utter and complete, and Peter sought for the proper amount of air to keep himself from toppling.
Roger didn’t see him. If he ever had. He had… Peter thought. Maybe the word was ‘wished.’
Maybe it no longer mattered.
A few days, he thought, before he knew. Dinners with Fran and Stephen, breakfasts with himself, four trips down to check the doors and remind himself of what was outside, but not inside yet. Maybe a death in the family. If he hadn’t begun to feel dizzy and sick by then—
Peter lowered Roger back to the floor more quickly than he’d intended, feeling the incumbent sickness in him, wanting insanely not to feel it, not to see far enough into the future for the closet to be empty again. Or filled with boxes again.
“Roger?” he said softly, and his voice shook.
Roger’s eyes had rolled up, his eyelids fallen shut. His chest rose and fell with each audible breath.
The closet felt like a coldly lit tunnel, strangely long. Peter swallowed and felt the impossibility of silence.
“Why in hell didn’t you listen to me?” He gripped Roger’s shoulder, too hard, the flesh thinner and bonier and weaker than before. Resisted the urge to shake and shake. “Why in hell’d you go after that bag when they were all over it?”
He felt completely impotent. Like he could do nothing, there was nothing he could ever do, and all he wanted was to turn back the clock just a little and drag Roger away from that blasted semi loading dock and back inside where they could lock the doors and put their considerable smarts together and come up with something just as good for the unblocked doors that were left.
But that felt more useless. Fuck. If he was going to turn back time, why not turn it all the way back to the beginning, and stop any of this from ever happening?
Except then he never would have run into Roger at all.
He leaned back against the wall and shut his eyes, listening to the inhale-exhale beside him, wondering if zombies breathed. If their lungs worked. If any fragment of memory survived beyond instinctual recollection.
He wanted to be remembered by Roger. He wanted the last few moments to be remembered.
He opened his eyes and found the dark, innocent outline of the gun against the far wall, and knew that it wouldn’t fucking matter if he were remembered.
He had a day or two. A day and a day, and there was nothing to build within that. Peter found Roger’s hand without looking and slipped his fingers around still-warm flesh. Squeezed.
~fin~
A/N: Okay, so. The homoerotic tones in this movie are most definitely not nearly as subtle as in most movies. There is an entire philosophical study on this particular pairing, or so I understand. Pretty much blatantly conceptualized within the film itself, though no one comes right out and says anything. I cannot recommend this movie enough. Seeing as it is a Romero zombie film, I will warn you and say that it has gore and destruction and dead people eating and dismembering living people, of course. But the commentary, OH, the social commentary! Not to mention the homoerotic under/overtones.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 07:59 am (UTC)From:I will read this later and comment some more, but i just wanted to comment first!
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 06:02 pm (UTC)From:I love the way you capture the interplay between the two characters. The atmosphere of the situation comes across very well, being confined in a space, the waiting, the dread of what to come, not wanting to be in this situation. And OMG the bite! That quite turn to fear, got my heart pounding because whoa is he eating him!?! Give another meaning to a love bite, this time including zombies. :D Yay for writing it!
no subject
Date: 2007-08-23 01:22 am (UTC)From:Thanks so much for your comments about atmosphere and characterization. It's hard to write in a new fandom... But I just love Peter and Roger. They made it very easy for me. ^_^
Hahaha, and the BITE! *glomps* HAD to do it.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 08:25 am (UTC)From:I think that's my favorite line, right there. Mostly because when I read that mind I see everything so clearly... later when he rises as zombie and his skin is so pale and wrinkled and the area around his eyes so blue. The way you described his hand is in perfect parellel to that. And it's so poetic and ghastly at the same time.
You capture they way they talk to perfectly! That "It's enough" line, I can hear him saying it. The upset growl of his voice. Damn.
Roger’s eyes glazed a bit. His nose wrinkled, a weak, sickly reminder of the joy-fervor his face had held before. Such a child, an enchanting child in a man’s body. Peter wanted to cup his hand over Roger’s nose. It was a joke; he didn’t want to be reminded. And this is my second favorite line right here because I think it gets right to the center of why Peter would like Roger. They are so very mismatched, right down to shape and size. Yet If you know the characters you know that Peter is not a boy child. He struck me as being very world-weary even before the zompocolypse, so of course Roger is this bright spirited thing that find fervor and zest in even the most mundane activities, like zombie killin'. --- More on this, system is CRASHING LIKE CRAZY. Must restart. Most post comments before system goes down. oh god!!!!aljkdfljasf
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 09:48 am (UTC)From:But since I can't, I'll just finish my comments. If you thought I would love that bite thing, you were SO RIGHT! Damn, you know me too well. There is something so desperate about that set up for both of them, a pent up passion that is felt for a moment and then completely destroyed. And you can just feel the end crashing down around them in this scene, because of course, neither of them have to die for it to be absolutely hopeless. Peter loses Roger right in that minute, loses everything with that wash of fear. So tragic because he's got so much to be angry about. I love the ambiguity in these lines: Roger didn’t see him. If he ever had. He had… Peter thought. Maybe the word was ‘wished.'//Maybe it no longer mattered. Yeah, I don't really know what the hell Peter is thinking right there, but I feel like I could read it a dozen times and feel the essence of that moment without really understanding it. But how could you understand it, right? I mean, there's too much shit there, and if our zombiefied lover bites us, do we want to go down with that ship? What no longer matters to Peter!? That's the crucial point. What is he morning the most here. It's hard to say what rises as the priority pain. Maybe all his regrets are equal when he wants to shake Roger.
I espeically love this "He wanted the last few moments to be remembered." I think that totally offsets the scene this movie is based on, where Roger keeps on weeping that he's going to try not to come back. I just love the interplay.
~shags you into eternity~
Yeah, I couldn't say enough about this. YOU ARE JUST SO AWESOME!!! ~FALLS OVER WITH MUCH CAPS~
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 09:53 am (UTC)From:I'm going to go crawl into my "embarressified" hole now. ~hides face~
no subject
Date: 2007-08-23 01:25 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-08-23 01:33 am (UTC)From:I love that summary of it. It's perfect. You and I totally need to write zombie-theory papers all over the slashy place. ^_~
As for the ambiguous lines, that is my fault. I meant that the phrase "He had..." could have been continued with the word "wished," as in "He had wished Roger had seen him." But I like the ambiguity, too. I should have been clearer. And now I am sort of glad I wasn't!
Ooh, I never thought of the contrast between Roger's statement about not coming back and Peter's wish to have him remember, even when he's a zombie. That's so excellent. I love you.
*uses your icon*
no subject
Date: 2007-08-23 08:52 am (UTC)From:Wow. I get love just for comments. Geeze. What'll I get if we really rush off into the sunset writing zombie-theory papers left and right. MARX! EAT YOUR HEAR OUT BABY.
You do realize that the only reason why I'm able to comment a freaking novel is because you're just that good. You're too good. Your radience blasts me. I am left all charcoaled and crispy and smelling like burnt Crisco here.
GENIUS!!!
no subject
Date: 2007-08-27 04:21 pm (UTC)From:SWEET! I carmelized Fire! *runs around screeching happily*
On a more sober note, thank you for this comment. Thank you so much. I treasure the writing rapport we share, and I love being privileged enough to view your stuff before anyone else. *squeeeeeeGLOMP*
no subject
Date: 2007-08-23 01:25 am (UTC)From:I'm SO GLAD you liked their voices in this! *sighs with relief* I made a few changes once I'd refamiliarized myself with the film. Gawd, I love that movie... *sigh*
"Zompocalypse." *SNORT* PERFECT.
And I definitely agree about how well they compliment each other. They are great together. Like the moon and the sun.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 08:56 am (UTC)From:beautifully done, sweets. i don't even know this characters or the story (well other than generic zombie apocalypse) and i still got all verklempt.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-23 01:19 am (UTC)From:And definitely, that's a movie to watch. I love it so much. So many facets!
no subject
Date: 2007-08-23 12:39 am (UTC)From:You really created the atmosphere of Dawn of the Dead for me right here. The sense of hopelessness, of futility, of desperate hoping and yet not knowing for what, of knowing that whatever you do, you can't do anything because once infected...
That emotional bog was so artfully rendered here that I swear I was listening to the more somber notes of the soundtrack in my head as I was reading. Oh Peter, you and Roger make my heart break! I love that the gun is in the room, that Peter keeps contemplating it and Roger, and how you've shown us Roger's deterioration and...that kiss/bite. *flinches* Dude, it was so sad and so damn creepy and guh, I'm freaked out and yet I can't look away.
*wants to go off and cry now/watch Dawn of the Dead* Seriously, I could spend hours upon hours discussing zombie stuff like this. O.o But this fic...I really, really enjoyed it! *is still creeped out though by almost!zombie kiss*
no subject
Date: 2007-08-23 01:17 am (UTC)From:Thank you SO MUCH for reading it! Hahaha, I didn't expect this fic to get such a big comment response. (Big, with consideration to the smallish following I expected on my f-list). If you ever want to discuss zombie theory, I would LOVE to do that. I think it's fascinating, especially the way it's been morphing over the last decade.
I'm so happy you liked the kiss-bite! Heh, that was something I REALLY wanted to write. So squicky, and so toeing the line between love and necro... Ew. I had to do it. I love the gloom of that movie, the impending doom. It makes me feel wonderful to hear that you think I captured it.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-23 08:48 am (UTC)From:Okay, maybe I'm being dramatic. But I had to comment because, well, I'm obviously spastic.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-03 09:34 pm (UTC)From:Ok...now I've had a bit more time to think. I don't know if (or I should say, I don't think) you intended to, but you've also quite nicely captured the claustrophobic feel of that cabin in the woods from the original Night of the Living Dead with your closet descriptions.
I love your capturing of these all too human relationships and emotions, so at odds with the collapse of human reasoning, human wants and needs, human civilisation.
And the ambiguity, though it may not have been intended, certainly works very, very well.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-18 01:57 am (UTC)From:LOVE that, Tip. Thank you so much. That movie is a favorite of mine partly because of the mood, the incredible futility of it all no matter how much the characters fight to stay alive and to help each other (though naturally, there are several characters all out for themselves, so...).
The ambiguity... I am curious which ambiguity you are talking about. ^_~ I read a fantastic article on homoerotic subtext for Dawn of the Dead involving the bottle of champagne that Peter pops in a gush of foam over Roger's grave, and it's one of the most overt examples of that that I've seen in movies. So unapologetic. I really need to locate that paper again... If you mean Roger being dead yet or not, or Peter being infected, I really like the idea of ambiguity in either of those places, haha. ^___^
Thank you again for reading it! I'd no idea you were a zombie fan! I still maintain there are way too few of us. *laughs*