The Plague {One Direction AU}

10. Mariana

Everyone who got sick, the news seemed to say, everyone who had this flu died. Conor was sick. Mariana wasn't good at math, but this calculation was simple. The only person who ever really loved her was going to die.

His hands tugged at her sweater urgently, pulling it over her head in a fumbling tangle of hands and arms. She unbuckled his belt and jeans, guiding him back toward her bed. Mariana tried to show him how much he meant to her with every kiss and every touch, every murmur and every moan, their bodies colliding in such familiar ways.

And then his grunts disintegrated into a series of stilted coughs, his thrusts slowing sloppily. "Babe?" Mariana ran her hand over his hair and down his back. He was shuddering, shivering, shaking. "Conor? Baby, look at me."

He lifted up on his hands, his eyes wide with fear, his head shaking back and forth frantically.  He opened his mouth as if to speak, and a splatter of dark green mucus, blood, and possibly puke sprayed over Mariana's face and chest. And then he slumped against her, smearing the discharge over her torso and hair.

"Conor," she nudged him, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. "Please, sweetheart. Please wake up," she whimpered into his damp hair. It took all her strength to push his limp, lifeless body off of her. Out of her.

In a daze, she crawled off the bed, folding her arms around herself. Mariana was usually quick to action in her life, but in his death, she was stalled, staring blankly at his crumpled form, the sticky substance still dripping from her skin, tears cascading down her cheeks as she unleashed an agonized howl of grief. She didn't know how long she just stood there--too long--before she finally showered away the remnants of his last breath, the remnants of him.

The water seemed to rinse away some of the fog, too, snapping her from the shock. She had to get out. She couldn't stay here with his dead body, so Mariana dressed with shaky hands, packed a small duffle bag with her essentials, and left their apartment, not even thinking about where she was going. She just had to get out of there; it didn't really matter where. Her feet had carried her to the front of that little club near the strip as if they had a will of their own. As if they were carrying her home. And there she had hidden, tucked away in the dingy dressing room behind the stage, eating the non perishables from the small kitchen and sleeping on the beat-up green velvet couch. But six days of inertia left her fidgety and anxious. Mariana was always at her best when she was in motion, doing something. The itch in her bones and the hunger in her gut told her it was time to leave. She had to get a move on. She didn't know where to, but it was time to go.

When Mariana stepped out into the cold street, the isolation--the overwhelming isolation--halted her progress once again. She rubbed her face with the inside of her sweater, scrubbing away tears and tiredness. Mariana had become completely stagnant like this once before, when her mother overdosed in that horrible broken down little trailer just outside of Reno. It was a little less than a year after her father died, and Mariana had gone to visit for Christmas. But instead of presents and lights and a tree, she found her mother splayed on the couch, dead in a pool of her own puke. The blank look her in dead eyes, the way her cheek was pushed up by the sofa cushion--that was an image that would never leave her. And now, as she stood in the doorway of this empty casino, Mariana realized why Conor's death had put her in this state of suspended animation. That same blank look. That pool of puke. He was like the ghost of her past dying again right on top of her, reminding her of everything she had lost.

"Fuck," she exhaled. That was totally fucked up. But in a way, now that she could recognize the specter of her mother's death, his death didn't bother her as much.

"Hi." A boy of about ten, maybe eleven stepped out of the shadows, startling Mariana out of her memories.

"Jesus!" Mariana steadied herself against the doorframe. "You scared me." She hadn't seen anyone else alive in days.