(no subject)

[dilithium]

fandom; left 4 dead
title; let's all go to the lobby
characters; nick, ellis
summary; ellis is stupid, and nick is himself - oh, and there's popcorn

“Nick. Nick. They got a movie theater here, man!”

 

“Well considering we're not hanging out with the goddamn swamp people anymore – are you really that surprised? You wanna check and see if they have indoor plumbing, too?”

 

The look that lingered in blue eyes beneath the brim of that ball cap was not at all amused. “You always gotta be such a fuckin' smartass?”

 

The older man just snorted and repositioned the sniper rifle strapped to his back. “What can I say? It comes naturally. Or maybe you just bring it out in me. I'm thinking it might be the latter, myself.”

 

To his credit, he managed to keep a straight face when he said it – and the unamused glare from Ellis turned downright sullen for all of five seconds before he shrugged it off and shifted over to stand in front of the theater's main door. The signs that advertised what was playing had been torn down, but that didn't keep him from pushing the door open and shining his flashlight inside.

 

He was pretty sure that his curiosity would eventually aid in his downfall – and if it wasn't that, it'd just be something else – but until then, he was going to keep on pushing the proverbial envelope until it pushed back.

 

Behind him, Nick sighed, a long-suffering thing that was far too heavy to be anything but exaggerated. “What the hell are you doing?”

 

“Y'never know when y'might find somethin' cool in a place like this, Nick.” Ellis' flashlight swept over the main lobby, briefly illuminating the various arcade games that now stood silent before it settled on the concession stand. There was a moment of silence, and then he was stepping forward again, eyes trained on the popcorn machine built into the counter.

 

“Hey, y'think there might still be popcorn back there? M'starvin'.”

 

“... Are you serious?”

 

“Do ah sound like ah'm kiddin'? C'mon, help me look!”

 

“Ellis, we don't have time–” But before he could even attempt to finish that statement, the other hopped right over the counter and started rummaging through anything he could find, opening drawers at random, the end of his flashlight held precariously in the corner of his mouth so he could use both hands. Nick just … decided to stand there for a moment, allowing him to take a few minutes to satisfy that damn curiosity of his. (If anyone ever thought it was out of some kind of courtesy, he'd make damn sure they knew it wasn't– it was just because he knew Ellis wouldn't leave well enough alone until he was ready to move on. Stubborn asshole …)

 

It was too damn quiet. Where the hell were the zombies? He almost wished he hadn't let Rochelle and Coach go off to look around by themselves – not even just for the fact that they were always safer when they stayed together. He'd been stuck with the country bumpkin for all of fifteen minutes and what had happened? He was in a damn movie theater lobby, constantly looking over his shoulder because he thought he heard the telltale growl of a Hunter while Overalls over there looked for something to put in his stomach –

 

“– hory shi' ah foun' th' moth'rload!”

 

“ You wanna take the flashlight out of your mouth and try that again?”

 

There was an exasperated noise, but Ellis obliged him, and the light filtered around the room a bit as he picked himself up off the floor and set what looked like the biggest tub of unpopped popcorn kernels Nick had ever seen. And the way he was grinning? (Well, as much as he could around the flashlight still in his mouth.) One would have thought it was freaking Christmas.

 

“And just what are you planning to do with that?”

 

“Wha' d'ya think ah'm –” There was a brief pause, and he finally remembered to remove the flashlight before he tried again. “What do ya normally do with popcorn, Nick? Ah'm gonna pop it. An' then ah'm gonna eat it. Oh man this shit's gonna be the best ever –”

 

“Have you completely forgotten the fact that we're in the middle of the damn zombie apocalypse?” It was Nick's turn to be Very Unamused, and by the look of that scowl? That was putting it pretty mildly.

 

“What's next, an adventure to find the last goddamn twinkie on the –”

 

… Was that a popcorn kernel that just bounced off his forehead?

 

That had better not been a fucking popcorn kernel that just bounced off his forehead.

 

“... Ellis, you better hope you didn't just throw a piece of popcorn at me. Or you better hope I start thinking that the fucking zombies have suddenly sprouted senses of humor –”

 

“Jesus , would ya get yer panties out of a knot for five minutes?” Blue eyes were unblinking beneath raised eyebrows, and Ellis just whistled low under his breath and shook his head like this was the simplest thing on the planet to figure out, and Nick was just fucking it all up by … well, being himself.

 

“Look. There ain't nothin' in here. If there was, they'd've heard you bitchin' 'n come runnin'. Ah got popcorn, ah got butter, ah got salt. Ah'm makin' me a damn snack, an' if ya just shut up for a bit, ah might share.” Once he finished, he crossed his arms over his chest and just stood there with the set of his mouth practically daring the other to challenge his decision.

 

It was dead quiet for a full three minutes. And then Nick huffed, held up his hands in resignation and turned away just so he wouldn't have to look at the grin threatening to split Ellis' face right in two.

 

It took a minute, a few mumbled curses and a light smack to the side of the machine to get the damn thing working, but he did, and it wasn't long before the smell of popcorn filled the lobby. Ellis was practically dancing back and forth in front of the thing, watching intently as it filled itself up. (A little slower than he would have liked, but beggars couldn't be choosers, could they?)

 

Nick snorted as he passed by the counter for a third time. “Didn't your ma ever tell you that a watched pot never boils?”

 

“Shut up! S'done now. Go grab the salt!”

 

He didn't move an inch. Which came as no surprise at all – and the younger of the two simply shifted over to get it himself, along with one of the jumbo-sized tubs to fill up. (He was damn intent on filling it to overflowing, too. No way in hell was any of that going to waste!) Once he got back to the machine, he started shoveling the stuff into his tub, pausing intermittently to add a bit more than a dash of salt and enough butter to choke a horse.

 

Tub full, he set it down on the counter next to the machine. He was going to admire it for a moment, if no one terribly minded. (And even if they did, he was going to do it, anyway.)

 

It was glorious.

 

It was beautiful.

 

It was perfect.

 

And he was going to consume every last bit of it.

 

Every last bit of it except for the handful Nick reached out and swiped with a self-satisfied little smirk. “Hey! Ah said ah might share. But ya gotta ask first.”

 

“Sorry, my mom never taught me any manners. Think that makes her a bad parent?”

 

There was no answer outright – just a roll of blue eyes as he grabbed his tub of popcorn and made his way back around to the other side of the counter. If anyone else had happened upon them at that very moment, it would have been almost funny to see them together; Ellis, with his popcorn tub tucked under one arm while he used his free hand to shovel the stuff into his mouth, pistols carefully stowed away in the folds of fabric about his waist, SMG strapped to his back like it wasn't at all out of the ordinary. And then there was Nick, frown lines turning his mouth down into another scowl, arms folded his chest and just watching the other as he passed to the other side of the lobby.

 

“What are you doing now?” came the probably-more-than-expected question, more annoyed than genuinely inquisitive.

 

“Explorin'. What's it look like?”

 

Well. At least he'd had the common decency to answer before he stuffed more popcorn into his mouth.

 

“You really think right now is the best time to take a tour of an abandoned movie theater?”

 

“Ya want me to make an appointment? Come back in about six months or so?” Pause. Crunchcrunchcrunch. Swallow. “Might as well, while we're here. Ain't got nothin' else to do 'til Ro an' Coach get back, anyway.”

 

“We could always, I don't know, go find them and tell them there's nothing here. You know – so we could get out of here and get on with our lives.”

 

Ellis almost looked horrified. He'd paused with a handful of popcorn halfway to his mouth just to gape at the older man like he'd just suggested they … blow up Jimmy Gibbs Jr.'s stock car or something. Unthinkable.

 

But instead of raising a fuss? He just ducked his head and kept right on walking. Kept right on munching.

 

“Ah get the feelin' ya didn't get out to play much as a kid, didja Nick?”

 

“The hell makes you think something like that?”

 

Just a hunch – hey! Ah think ah found the projector room!”

 

He pulled open a door that didn't exactly want to cooperate on the first few tries, its “employees only” sign hanging just a little bit skewed. Ellis brought out his flashlight again, wielding it with one hand while the other practically kept a death grip on his popcorn. That grin was back, and he was already halfway up the set of rickety old stairs before he spoke again. “Man ah've always wanted a bit of film reel. Just for the hell of it, y'know? So ah could show it to people an' have 'em try t'guess what movie it's from …”

 

Behind him, still at the base of the stairs, Nick didn't even bother huffing this time around. Too much effort to go unnoticed, and he was already lucky that he hadn't quite managed to make himself lightheaded with how much he'd been doing it recently.

 

“Do you even realize how weird that is, Ellis?”

 

“... What's so weird about it?” Ellis had turned back around, still holding on to his bucket of popcorn, brows raised just beneath the brim of his cap to show that he was expecting a real answer.

 

Nick just shook his head, moved to follow him up the stairs. “Never mind,” he mumbled to the ground, and the younger forgot all about it in under five minutes. That had to be a new record.

 

It was blissfully quiet for a handful of moments as Ellis set about exploring the room, poking around the projectors and generally just being a nosy little shit. Whatever he got into, Nick didn't much care – the point was that it was quiet, the hick wasn't running his damn mouth and maybe he could finally get rid of the headache that had been growing from a dull throb the second they stepped foot in the damned theater in the first place –

 

“Dude, they've still got th'reels in these things!”

 

Nick just snorted, leaning back against a far wall and managing to look both supremely unimpressed and supremely bored. (It wasn't that difficult for him, truth be told; he frequently looked unimpressed.) “Fantastic. Cut you off a strip so we can get the hell outta here.” He was still justifiably disconcerted by the utter lack of zombies – not even one of the ones that was always lagging behind and had a look about it that always made him think it might have been retarded before the infection hit – and he couldn't help thinking that they were just seconds away from having a Tank bust through a wall or something. And he'd get thrown down into one of those broken theater chairs with … oh, say a broken leg or something close to it and be stuck down there while the Genius of the Ages tried shooting it with a couple of pistols.

 

Pessimist? Nick? Nah, he was just a realist. In a plan-for-the-worst-case-scenario kind of way. And while he was busy calculating the probability of them getting out of the building without getting any more blood (or any other bodily fluids) on his suit, Ellis was starting up one of the projectors. Or – trying to, anyway. He was sure as hell pushing buttons like that was his intention.

 

“... Ellis, what the hell do you think you're doing?”

 

“Wanna sit an' watch a movie?”

 

“... No, I don't want to sit and watch a movie. I want to get the fuck out of here before our luck runs out and God decides we need a couple dozen more bite-marks on us.” The way Nick was looking at him, it was clear he wanted to say more, but for some reason or another decided to keep his mouth shut.

 

Ellis saw absolutely nothing. “Aw, c'mon man! This is like, th'perfect opportunity. Get yer choice a' seats.”

 

He was beaming. Goddamn it all, he was grinning pretty much ear-to-ear and Nick knew, he knew that the decision had already been made. That he was already fucked so he might as well bend over and make shit easier. “Fine. But if this attracts a horde, Ellis? I am leaving your ass here with the zombies.”

 

Ellis wasn't listening. He was too busy pressing more buttons, peering into one of the machines like it was an arcade game that had just eaten his last quarter. (Maybe not quite like that, because there would have been a fair amount of rage involved, whereas this was simple curiosity.) There was a pause, a “g'damn it!” when something pinched the tip of a finger, followed by an overjoyed “aw hell yeah!” when the machine finally started up. Only then did Ellis turn, still grinning fit to split his face right down the middle. “All set! S'go find a couple a' seats.”

 

Nick rolled his eyes. “I'm not sitting next to you.”

 

“Didn't say ya had to. Assumin' ass …”

 

He was gone before Nick could even think of a response, quick, eager steps carrying him back down the rickety stairs to the theater below. (Once he'd found the right one, that is. It took looking into three different ones to find the screen lit up.) And he took his time in picking a seat, pausing at the end of a couple different rows, gauging the distance to the screen, trying to find the perfect one. (It was an art form, he would have said if anyone had asked. There was a very delicate process involved The Perfect Seat. Distance to the screen, the degree of stickiness of the floor where his feet would be, whether it had armrests …)

 

He would have taken even longer had Nick not come up behind him, shoved him down the row he'd been contemplating and said that if he didn't hurry the fuck up and sit down he was going to shoot out his kneecaps. Ellis made a noise in the back of his throat that was somewhere between indignation and latent surprise, but he flopped down into a chair right in the middle of the row and set his bucket of popcorn in his lap.

 

Nick sat himself down a good three chairs away, slumping down and managing to look about as bored as he ever had been in his entire life. The younger of the two made a questioning sound but didn't actually say anything – and he just snorted and shook his head.

 

“I said I wasn't sitting next to you.”

 

“Won't get any popcorn all th'way over there …”

 

“I don't want any of your stupid popcorn, Ellis. It's stale.”

 

“What? Nah it ain't! It tastes like buttery perfection. Yer tastebuds gotta be … fucked up or somethin'.”

 

“... Yeah, okay. Buttery perfection.” If he snorted at that, it wasn't his fault.

 

And if a rampant piece so-called stale popcorn was suddenly flying through the air and ended up kamikaze-ing itself against the side of Nick's face, well, that sure wasn't Ellis' fault, either. Even when he had to turn his head to keep from laughing when the other shot him a glare across the chairs that sat between them.

 

“... Ellis? Buddy?” The tone of his voice was nowhere near as amiable as it should have been when he was saying things like that – and to his credit, the threat he was trying to pull off was pretty convincing. And considering it was Nick?

 

“If you throw another piece of popcorn at me, I'm shoving every bit of it up your ass. One piece at a time.”

 

He was probably serious. But Ellis was so damn used to it, it didn't faze him. At all.

 

“Gotcha. Shit ton a' popcorn up mah ass. Hey! Lookit that, th'screen's tellin' ya t'shut up. Movie's startin'.”

 

Nick would have said something witty had he not been suddenly blinded by the opening credits flashing across the screen. Damn their shit timing! It would have been good, too. But no, his life just had to be compiled of a series of bad-fucking-timing moments and less-than-stellar luck, if his current situation was anything to go by.

 

And he wasn't thinking of the whole zombie apocalypse thing here, either.

 

When the title of the movie finally came up, he cursed himself for thinking that at least it couldn't get any worse.

 

“Sleepless in fucking Seattle?”

 

“... Man, how old is this theater that they're showin' shit from th'nineties?”

 

“I don't care what decade it's from. I'm not sitting through a goddamn chick flick. Not when nobody even gets naked.” Nick huffed in annoyance, and Ellis turned his head to shoot an inquisitive sideways glance. “... An' ya know that how, exactly?”

 

“You'd be surprised what some people would do to get laid. 'Specially when she could tie double-knots in cherry stems with her tongue.” Never mind that she hadn't believed in wearing any kind of underwear and that tiny dress hadn't left much to the imagination. Shit, that had to have been one of the best nights of his life – right next to doing a line of coke off a stripper's stomach in Vegas that one time … “Point is, I'm not doin' it again. No reward for that level of torture unless you're gonna put out, and – don't you even open your damn mouth, Ellis.”

 

The younger man seemed to wilt for all of ten, maybe fifteen seconds before his face lit up again, making him look almost deranged in the flicker of shadows bouncing off the theater walls.

 

“We c'n throw popcorn at th'screen an' see who can nail Meg Ryan in the'forehead th'most. Ah'm willin' t'donate some t'th'cause.” He picked up a kernel for emphasis, angled his aim for the screen and whooped when it hit the image of the blonde in front of them square in the nose and bounced off into the floor. He turned his gaze back to Nick, goddamn beaming ear-to-ear again. “C'mon! That was good fer at least two points. See if ya c'n get her in th'eye or somethin'.”

 

“No.”

 

Another unfortunate popcorn soul martyred itself on the side of Nick's face.

 

“Ah'mma keep throwin' this shit at ya 'til ya get that stick outta yer ass an' start havin' a little fun. Ah gotta whoooole bucket, Nick. Consider yer actions.”

 

His answer came as nothing but silence, and he just huffed a small sigh, reached into his bucket to reload on ammo, pulling his arm back to throw –

 

And then he was pinned back into his seat with the weight of the other man above him, pistol pressed nice and snug against his left temple. Let it never be said that the suit couldn't move fast when he wanted to; and now Ellis was backpedaling faster than he ever had in his life.

 

“Okay! Okay! Jesus, we'll get outta here! Just don't fuckin' shoot me!”

 

More silence, save for the dialogue on the screen that neither of them were paying attention to. Ellis' bucket of popcorn had tipped itself over with the sudden movement of being shoved against the back of his chair, and there were kernels littered all over the floor and in his lap, but he didn't seem to notice. Apparently, shit like that was secondary compared to having a gun pointed at your head.

 

His eyes were as round as dinner plates, and after a few more moments' contemplation, Nick just shook his head and dropped down into the chair next to him, slid the pistol back into a pocket on the inside of his jacket. Damn thing hadn't even been cocked.

 

He picked the popcorn bucket up from where it had landed on its side on the floor, plucked a kernel from the top layer and aimed right for Meg Ryan's forehead.

 

Why the hell not. No zombies – gotta do something to pass the time.

 

Oh, and there was an upside –

 

Ellis had been stunned into complete silence.

 

Nick didn't think this had turned into such a bad trip, after all.