Dystopian/post-apocalyptic romance? Too dark? Condoms have all expired probably and hormonal birth control is worth more than its weight in gold so I could see that being somewhat impractical. But danger around every corner? Desolate world and the only person you have to cling to during the cold nights is the wanderer-stranger you’ve been traveling and scavenging with for the past few weeks? Both of you have secrets you’re not willing to share because secrets are as valuable as birth control and trust is as rare as other people, not to mention the trauma (my god, the trauma). But maybe sex is okay, maybe sex isn’t what it used to be. Maybe the politics of sexual interactions are pointless now that nobody has a home to go to or a job to keep or anything to worry about really, other than getting from one day to the next.
Maybe you and your traveling companion have spent days only speaking when it’s needed, and maybe they’ve only told you their first name and you’re suspicious that they gave you a fake one, but that would be okay because you gave them a fake one too, but they’ve saved your life twice and you’ve saved theirs. Maybe at some point the two of you encounter a dog, some ragged, skinny thing that was clearly once loved, and you make eye contact with each other - and Jesus, is that the first time you’ve made eye contact? - and silently agree that despite your lean rations and waning supplies and the inherent danger of your travels, you can’t just leave this dog here, and it follows you.
And now it’s just the three of you, and the nights are getting colder, and you found a can of baked beans, the best find in days, and you catch yourself humming with happiness while you cook it over your tiny fire - small enough not to attract too much attention - and you notice your companion is smiling at you, but it could be a frown, you’re not sure because their eyes are right on you, and did you notice they were so green? There’s deep sadness there that’s in everyone’s eyes these days, but there’s also a yearning, not sexual necessarily, but emotional, and you get the sense that they’re glad you’re with them. So you start talking about loneliness - not yours or theirs but loneliness in general, maybe a study you read in the before times that found that even though all people experience and understand feelings of loneliness, everybody experiences it differently; it’s a connective tissue that is universally understood but is also heartbreakingly lonely in the experiencing of it. They listen, rapt, not saying anything, as if you are a deity delivering a prophecy, and when you ask them what they think, they simply nod and eat their beans, but something has shifted.
And that night they touch you for the first time as you huddle together under the single blanket you’ve been sharing for days now, and it’s not a sexual touch, just a gentle, tentative touch, a hand on a back or an arm, and you realize you’ve been starved for human contact and hadn’t noticed how badly it was affecting you, so you scoot a little closer and fall asleep in their arms, and it’s the first time you’ve been warm in as long as you can remember. When you wake up, you realize it was the first time since It Happened that you didn’t dream.
