at one of the many low ebbs, all sitting around dusty and hollow and silent, lovett says 'i guess at least now i don't have to feel bad about losing both of your spare keys' and tommy and favs laugh, real and loud, even though lovett's heart wasn't really in it. they're leaning against each other, against the wall, exhaustion written in the careless spread of their limbs. he can't begrudge them that, the easy comfort they can take from each other.
2/2- it seems absurd that /now/, after - everything, when their cellphones are dead weight and life is carved out of ashes, lovett can’t unpick the knots that keep him from taking it too. it feels obsolete, a relic of another time, a silly redundant thing to hang onto in this new world, like online passwords or supermarket rewards cards. still he finds himself flinching at tommy’s steadying hand at his arm when he trips over warped concrete, or jon’s friendly nudge when it’s his turn as lookout.
(they’ve started to move around each other with more and more of the same closeness and intimacy that lov*tt remembers from his grandparents. how his grandmother would forget where she put the salt when she was cooking and would just extend her hand so his grandfather could silently find and give it to her with a kiss on her forehead. he thinks about that when he’s handed his glasses from the rucksack filled with their breakables without even opening his mouth to ask. when he curls his legs under him thirty minutes into their drive on long ago ravaged and empty roads so that tommy can stretch his long legs across the shared cab of their stolen pickup. when he rouses when favs gets up to patrol their location and lov*tt reaches a hand into leo’s fur to distract him so that he doesn’t fully wake up and follow him. how even in the midst of so much destruction they’ve seem to have built this little thing on the foundation of their relationship, something strong and lasting even when so much else is ruin.)