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Gavin crawls into Jack's lap one night, shaking so violently he can barely breathe.
"You're alright," Jack murmurs, "It's okay."
He doesn't say a word until sunrise, until he's stopped shaking, until they're packing up to leave. Jack stops him gently before they head out the door, and silently wraps him in a hug. Gavin looks up at him as they pull away, forces a smile, and leans up to peck Jack on the cheek. Then, just like that, he's limping out the door and trailing behind Geoff like a clingy puppy, as is normal. He never mentions it.
Jack wonders if he'd dreamt it. Except, a week later, it happens again. Then the next week, until eventually, it becomes some kind of routine. Jack gains a kind of second sense, and on the nights Gavin is just that bit quieter than normal, he sits up and reads for an hour longer. Like clockwork, Gavin wakes up with a start, and Jack pulls him close, and they work through it together. Habits form as simply as that, and ever so slowly, it happens less, and sometimes Gavin manages to go back to sleep. Sometimes in his own sleeping bag; usually curled up tight with as many contact points as possible without smothering Jack or Geoff.
Jack often wonders what would have happened if they hadn't met that day; if he'd kept up the stoic attitude and left Gavin injured in that dingy, infested hardware store. One night, the thought sends a heavy shudder down his spine, and Gavin shifts beneath him, confused. The soft jacket he’d thrown over Gavin’s back slips away, and in the dim light, Jack can just see the red splotched skin, mottled with bruises and scar tissue. Jack strokes a line down his spine, but he doesn't settle.
"What's wrong?" he whispers. His face is partly lit in streaks of bright moonlight, the shadows making his cheeks look deeper, sallow. Jack swallows the lump in his throat.
"Nothing," he replies, "just a memory."
Gavin pauses for a second, and keeps Jack's eyes. Then he settles, and rests his gentle head back onto Jack’s thigh. A calloused thumb rubs circles on Jack’s knee, absent-minded—a comfort Jack is rarely afforded these days. He focuses on the touch and their breathing, synced without thought. He carefully pulls the jacket back over Gavin’s bare back, and lets his hand return to its place, comfortably resting in the little well above Gavin’s waistband.
The next morning, as the sun spears in through a gap in the window, Geoff blearily looks at them both. He’ll deny it to anyone else later, but he smiles like a love-struck fool, and leaves them sleeping wrapped up in each other’s arms for an extra hour or two. Once upon a time, he couldn’t have imagined him-and-Jack as anything other than that, a duo. It can only have been a few months since Gavin came crashing into their lives, but Geoff suddenly realises, on this nondescript sunny morning—he can’t imagine life without him.
When they start to stir, Geoff slips out the front door quietly, and makes sure their exit and the start of their route is clear. Jack has always been a little awkward about these things, and he doesn’t want to make anything weird. He hardly spoke to Geoff the entire day after they woke up huddled so close last winter. They’re not slow to wake from then, and maybe a half-hour later, the three are on the road again. The same routine as every day this last week. C’est la vie, he supposes. The only difference this morning; Gavin walks out with Jack’s much-too-large jacket draped over his shoulders, and Jack admirably pretends he’s not cold.
“D’ya think there’s a pattern to their, like, energy?” Gavin asks, later, as they stand at the top of the hill and watch a sprawling group of zombies repeatedly walk into a fence. There’s a lone dog on the other side, obviously making enough noise or smell or heat or whatever the hell it is the things can track. Jack bends down to re-tie his shoelace, and Geoff frowns.
“A pattern?”
“Like—” he gestures broadly with his hands, “Sometimes they’re smart, right? But other days, you can be right next to one, and it won’t even notice you.”
“I’d never thought about it,” Geoff shrugs, but as he continues to watch the pack, thoughts start to form together in his head. Thoughts he’s had once, already, but now they’re starting to make sense as a group, rather than unrelated, individual observations. His stomach churns.
Jack stands up, and makes a noise from the back of his throat. “Some days we’ll find hordes, some days we hardly see any at all. Hell is just like that.”
“That’s positive,” Gavin laughs, and Jack rolls his eyes.
“Maybe he’s right,” Geoff says, still staring out. He feels both of them turn to him, and he fights back a smirk at the fact he can picture Jack’s expression perfectly. The urge disappears as quickly as it formed, and he tries to make his next words not sound insane. “They have those bad nights, and then for the next few days, it’s like they’ve used their energy.”
He adjusts his backpack, then starts off down the hill. There’s a scuffle of canvas trainers against the brush, and then Gavin is close behind his right shoulder. Jack will be following somewhere behind them both, he knows.
“We do only see those freaky ones on certain days.” Gavin scratches at the back of his neck.
“I don’t think it’s a pattern,” Jack mutters, “I think we’re reading too much into it.”
“Jack, when we figure it out, and get rich because we’ve saved the world, you’ll be sorry, Jack.”
Jack barks out a laugh, and Geoff can almost feel him shaking his head. He turns to see Gavin’s grin beside him, and the deep itching feeling that the thought had given him fades into an ignorable twinge.
“Would you kiss a zombie for a million dollars?” He asks then, and Geoff bursts into high-pitched laughter as they descend further into the city together.