On Top of the World, at the End of the World

The desert is dark as he watches a fire die in the distance, the whine of engines speeding off into the blackness as the sound of music and laughter slowly started to fade. He zips his jacket up further and pulls the collar closer to his neck as he watched the night end from the roof of the old diner that the crew had been hiding out in for the past couple of months. They have all long since learned never to grow attached to one place in this life of constant running and wandering, sleeping where they could find a place to lie their heads. But Ghoul has started to fall in love with this place with its faded vinyl booths, bright, 50’s themed decor and a roof that could easily be accessed by a ladder near the exit that allowed him to get a better view of the sky.

Of all the different things that he has allowed himself to call home, the only one that always seems to follow him are the stars. They always look the same, no matter where you were in the desert. Now that he’s free from the harsh glow of the city, the horizon is covered in lights. Ghoul lays back with his head resting on his arms and starts trying to remember the names of the different constellations. His head is filled with fog and his body desperate for sleep, but whenever he closes his eyes he can only hear the screaming of children, the flash of light just before the bombs dropped. No matter how much he tries to calm himself down, he always ends up breathing like he’s still running, trying to catch his breath.

He woke up in the middle of the nightmare this time and managed to get himself out into the roof before he woke Kobra or Jet. Poison was off at a party another group of ‘Joys was throwing. He’d tried to convince Ghoul to come with him like he always did. And like he always did, Ghoul had politely declined. He’d never been one for parties. People were intimidating and groups were overwhelming. He figured if he was going to be awkward and miserable, he might as well do it alone where it was safe… Solitude was his natural state. In fact, he’d survived alone in the desert for months before Poison and Jet had saved him from being ambushed by a bunch of Dracs. He could still remember how he’d felt when he caught sight of Party Poison for the first time, unduly red hair flying in the wind as he shot at the enemy with reckless abandon, his face obscured by that silly yellow mask of his, his maniacal laughter ricocheting through Ghoul’s skull.

He thought he knew how to be brave until he met Party, who didn’t seem to be afraid of anything as he blew hair out of his face and offered Ghoul his hand. His face was smeared with dirt and there was Drac blood splattered on his jacket but he’d looked like a dirty, neon angel lit up by the glow of the setting sun as he said, “You alright, Kid? Haven’t seen you around before.” Party offered him a place to crash for the night as the light continued to quickly fade. It was a temporary offer that had somehow turned into a permanent stay. Much to his own surprise, Fun Ghoul hadn’t minded.

He’d never known what it was like to have somewhere, someone, to belong to. Like every other child orphaned by the War, he’d escaped to the desert with nothing left to lose. Most ran to find others like them, wanderers united in their desire to make a connection before the world finally crumbled beneath the weight of its own suffering. But Ghoul hadn’t hoped or even expected to find anything when he ran away to the Zones. Past the outskirts of the city, the desert stretched endless and unforgiving, and his only desire when he got there was to be swallowed whole by it.

But then along came the Killjoys, with their stupid hair, love for life, and penchant for danger. The three of them moved like a unit, completely in sync with their chaos. It was impossible not to be drawn to them, to want to listen to their stories and share in their laughter.

“So what’s your name, Kid?” Jet had asked that first night as they were all huddled around a sloppily constructed bonfire. At some point, Poison had put his jacket around Ghoul’s shoulders when he noticed he was shivering in his thin cotton t-shirt. It’s a memory that’s still so fresh and vivid in his mind, years later.

“M-my name?” Ghoul had stammered as his shaking hands brought the mug of shitty instant coffee to his lips.

“Yeah. You know, what your crew calls you?” Kobra chimed in.

Party who was twisting the aluminum from an empty soda can he’d mutilated with his pocket knife, looked up at Ghoul gently. “It’s okay if you don’t have one. We all give names to each other when we leave the city as a way of… breaking free from it all. Who we used to be.”

“Oh and here I was thinking all along that “Party Poison” was your given name,” Ghoul murmured to himself. Much to his surprise though, Party heard him and let out a goofy laugh.

“Nah, it started as more of a reputation than a name. All of ours did. We earn our titles out here,” Jet replied.

Ghoul wouldn’t officially become “Fun Ghoul” until he was rolling with the Killjoys for at least a year. They mostly called him generic things like “Boy” or “Kid” which caused much confusion when Kobra was in the same room. Jet was determined to find a fitting name for him and workshopped many ridiculous titles, much to the bemusement of Party and the utter mortification of Ghoul. It was eventually his penchant for appearing suddenly behind his friends in dark places that got him dubbed “Ghoul.” “Fun” was tacked on one night after a particularly nasty fight with Party Poison who had remarked that Ghoul “sucked all the goddamned fun out of the room” whenever he walked in. It was harsh, but the irony made it stick, oddly enough. And just like that; without even looking for it, Ghoul not only had a family but a name.

Ghoul’s mind was wandering and he didn’t even notice the creaking of the ladder until a shadow was looming over him.

“Pssst!” The figure says and Ghoul sits up with a start.

“Party what the fuck?!”

He chuckles softly as he plops down next to Ghoul on the ground. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. But after all the times you’ve snuck up on me, I think we’re nearly even…”

Party has his mask on and lipstick marks all over his neck and face. His hair was more of a mess than usual and the collar of his shirt was horribly uneven. “So, good night huh?”

Party just shrugs as he pulls up the mask and lets it rest on his hair so Ghoul gets a good look of his eyes, even in the low light. Green and bright, a shade that strongly reminded Ghoul of spring. Or at least what he imagines spring to feel like...

“It was okay. Kind of lonely,” he admits with a shrug.

Ghoul shoots him a skeptical look. “You sure don’t look like you were lonely.” He gestures to the marks covering Party’s upper body.

“Oh, these? Show Pony got drunk and we were both really fucking bored. We just made out for a while. Nothing serious.” He knocks their knees together and stretches his arms above his head. Ghoul wasn’t surprised. Poison and Pony had fooled around a lot in the past but then who in the Zones hasn’t with Show Pony, honestly?

“I mean I don’t care what or who the fuck you do.”

Poison chuckles. “You sure do sound like you care quite a bit, Ghoulie…”

“As if! Pony’s mouth probably tastes like the bottom of an ashtray.”

“Yeah, wasn’t talking about them, Sunshine.”

Fun Ghoul feels his face getting hot and he huffs, turning away from Party. “W-what— whatever!”

Poison sucks his bottom lip behind his teeth as he rummages in his pockets. “Okay, Okay, here- peace offering.” He holds out something in his palm and Ghoul eyes it suspiciously. Poison rolls his eyes and makes a big show of unwrapping one of the lollipops and sticking it in his mouth.

“Shit! You got candy?!” Ghoul grabs one from him, rips off the wrapper, and sticks it in his mouth in one fluid motion. The minute the artificial cherry flavoring touches his tongue, his eyes slip closed and he moans in contentment. “Fuck, it’s been so long since I’ve tasted something with sugar. Or color. Or flavor at all. Where’d you get these?”

“Tommy had a shit ton he found the last time they went looting. The bastard was trying to sell them for fifteen carbons a piece! I stole a handful when he wasn’t looking…” Poison crushes the rest of the candy between his teeth and tosses the empty stick over the edge of the roof. His lips are now stained red and Ghoul can’t stop staring at his mouth.

“So, why are you up here in the middle of the night? Nightmares again?”

Ghoul hugs his knees to his chest and sighs. “Yeah… the same ones as always. Do they… ever get easier to deal with?”

Poison hesitates and Ghoul just chuckles. “I know you’re going to tell me that they don’t. That out here you just find more things to haunt you and shit. But for once I’d like you to tell me what I wanted to hear and just fucking lie to me.”

Poison smiles softly and shakes his head. “I may be an asshole but I’m nothing if not honest. We’ve all been lied to and cheated enough. Besides, I especially don’t lie to the people I love.”

Love. What a strange yet powerful word. It’s something Ghoul wasn’t used to hearing or even feeling until he’d met the other Killjoys. But now he knows what love is. Love is Kobra bringing him coffee in the morning and asking how he’d slept even though they both know he hasn’t. Love is Jet chewing Ghoul’s ass for riding too fast on his bike whenever he goes out on his own for a supply run. Love is what he feels whenever he looks at Party Poison- but it was a different kind of love. He doesn’t know how or why, but the way he feels about him was different from the way he’s ever felt about anyone else. Like the radiation slowly deteriorating his body and mind, Ghoul’s love for Party is eating away at him.

Emotions aren’t something he is exactly used to feeling. His entire life he’d been in a constant state of numbness- doing, thinking and feeling what he was told to. But when he left the city, the ability to feel had started to come back all at once, first like a small bruise that lingered just below the surface of the skin. It quickly turned into a full body ache as he was overcome by bouts of intense happiness, anger, fear. During his first few months alone in the Zones, he’d learned how to ride out the waves of feeling as they came until nothing felt unfamiliar anymore. But love was the strangest of all of them. Of all the things he’d felt since he left the city, love was the most persistent and the most confusing.

“You’re getting that cute little crease between your eyebrows when you’re thinking too hard,” Party muses as he presses his thumb gently between Ghoul’s eyebrows, taking him out of his head once again. “What are you thinking about?”

A lump the size of a small asteroid is forming in Ghoul’s throat. Why does Party have to have such gentle hands? And why does he have to keep looking at him like that with those big green eyes? Why does he have to make him feel so much all at once? Why does his head start to spin the minute they get close to each other?

“What does um… what does love feel like? Like… not the kind of love you have for Kobra. But like-“

“Romantic love?” Ghoul nods.

Party thinks for a moment then says, “Well, it feels different for everyone but for me… I know I love someone when they walk into the room and I get the urge to drop everything just to be next to them, even if it means just being in their orbit for a minute. Love mostly feels like your guts are being ripped out over and over most of the time because when they hurt, so do you. But when they’re smiling and their eyes are so full of joy, your chest fills with pure fucking sunshine. And you know that you’d lie to, steal from, or slit the throat of any motherfucker who tried to hurt them or keep you from each other.”

“Oh…”

Party Poison slips an arm around Ghoul’s waist and pulls him closer. He rests his head on his shoulder and is quiet as he looks up at the sky.

“The stars are so clear out here. I don’t think I’d ever even been able to see them within the city limits. It makes me think about if there’s more out there. If there’s a world other than this one. Sometimes, I want to shoot myself through the atmosphere just for the hell of it, see where I’d land if the sun’s radiation didn’t cook me alive first. But then I think about all I have here, all that I have to fight for and I think, maybe the moon can wait, you know?

“I guess that’s what love is- having something to stick around for. Having something to fight for.” He says it softly, his words just barely a whisper. Poison’s thumb is lightly grasping Ghoul’s chin when their lips softly meet. Poison’s lips are chapped and his mouth tastes like cherry lollipops and coming home. Of all the things that he isn’t sure how to feel, the press of those gentle lips against his is something that isn’t even a question. This closeness, this feeling, comes as naturally to him as breathing.

Poison’s hands tangle themselves in his hair as his chest starts to ache and Ghoul pulls away gasping. They don’t say anything, they just look at each other silhouetted by a backdrop of stars, panting yet hungry for more. Neither can tell how long they make out on the roof, but by the time they both pull away, Ghoul is covered in what remains of Poison’s (or Pony’s? He’s not even sure at this point…) lipstick and they’re both shivering uncontrollably.

They end up tangled up in the back office Poison claimed as his own the second they’d made this place theirs. There’s a bare mattress on the floor covered in ratty, yet comfortable blankets. A shelf overflowing with old books and trinkets takes up space next to the bed, the walls are decorated with Poison’s art, cut-outs from magazines, and pictures he’d taken with an ancient Polaroid he’d paid way too much for before it ran out of photo paper. A string of battery powered fairy lights hangs above the wall over the bed and reflects in the plastic of the photos, allowing Ghoul to see them properly.

Most of them are photos of Jet, Kobra, Ghoul all messing around and making stupid faces. One photo in the center of the collection is of the three of them posing in front of the diner, guns drawn and masks on, all in dramatic poses. His favorite though, is of just him and Poison, both looking tired but happy and much younger than they really were. The flash of the camera had washed them both out, but Ghoul’s smiling face as Poison kissed his cheek could still be made out clearly. He can’t remember when that photo was taken, or if the two of them had even been sober enough to remember it.

“I know it’s stupid to keep shit like this. It just gives you more to carry when you eventually have to leave again but I’ve been… getting comfortable, I guess,” Poison says as he sits down on the edge of the mattress.

“It’s not stupid to try to make a wasteland feel like home,” Ghoul murmurs as he sits down beside him. It was the nature of being on the run to travel lightly and to never pick up anything you couldn’t easily carry with you. The more we leave behind, the less we have to lug around with us, Poison was always reminding them. But was it so bad to want a place to feel safe in? To call your own?

He thinks about Ghoul’s comment for a moment and then just smiles as he puts a hand to his cheek. “You make a wasteland feel like home,” he murmurs.

And then they’re kissing again and before he can even react, Ghoul is on his back with Poison in his lap. They’re both exhausted so the kisses are sloppy but so sweet and so gentle. Eventually, Ghoul falls asleep tangled up with Party underneath the thin blanket. That night he sleeps soundly for the first time since he got to the desert.