They bi.
Title: Falling Quickly
Fandom: The Last Man on Earth
Rating: M I think
Characters: Phil Tandy Miller, Erica Dundee, Mike Miller (most of the others also show up, but they’re the main ones)
Pairings: Erica/Gail, Erica/Mike, Erica/OFC, Tandy/Brent Junkins, Tandy/Carol
Warnings: Unsupportive families, homophobic language, homophobia/biphobia in general
Notes: I love Mike to pieces, but honestly this drags the hell out of him I think
Summary:
Tandy, Erica, a conversation, and everything that got them to that point.
Read on AO3, or:
*
Falling Quickly
*
Phil Tandy Miller loved his brother, and Erica Dundee loved
her parents, but none of that prevented these two things from happening:
In the year 2009 Phil Tandy Miller was almost thirty years
old and he found his brother’s old telescope in the attic. Mike was living at a
camp for trainee astronauts then, but when he came back for the weekend he saw
Tandy using it. “That’s mine,” he said, and then he looked down the lens. “Oh
my god, you’re spying on guys. Why’d
you never tell me you were gay, Skidmark?”
In the year 2014 Erica was sixteen years old and she started
to get interested in musical theatre. She made a list of the shows she wanted
to audition for, but her father found it and rolled his eyes. “These are all
about queers,” he said, as Erica’s
mother nodded.
Life went on. And then it didn’t.
*
Midnight, sometime, somewhere. Possibly Mexico. A campfire.
“Tandy, I’m only gonna say this once,” Erica said. “Prison
life is not actually like Orange is the
New Black.”
“Yeah, I’ve never watched that,” Tandy said. “But when me
and Mike were kids, we had this huge
stockpile of the dirtiest lesbian
porn-“
“Why,” said Erica
tetchily, “do you think I would want to know about that?”
Tandy did not have an answer.
“You ever take any sort of gender studies at college,
Tandy?” Melissa asked. She was the only other one awake.
“No. Do I look like not
a college dropout to you, Melissa? Boom.”
“Probably for the best,” Melissa said, “even the other guys
would’ve been lining up to tell you how gross you are.”
“Not your best comeback, Melissa. A-minus-minus and see me
after class.”
“It wasn’t a comeback,” Melissa said. “It was an
observation. You’re gross around women.”
“Especially around women who want to date other women
instead of your obviously straight self,” Erica said. It was a concept she had
been considering throwing in his face for quite some time. Had Gail been awake,
instead of out like a light, she would have enthusiastically joined in the
dragging.
“I’m a feminist,” Tandy said, but his heart clearly wasn’t
in it.
“Just go the bloody hell to sleep,” Erica said.
Tandy rarely took orders from Erica. She was twenty years
younger than him and more importantly the only person he had never seen kill or
set out to kill someone else. But he went the bloody hell to sleep.
*
Erica and Gail never knew what forces had brought them to
each other. First time around, it had been “hey, we could be dead tomorrow,
might as well sleep together.” Second time, it was “hey, we’re inexplicably
alive and well and surrounded by love, might as well sleep together.” Second
time had been better.
Sometimes when she lay in her wife’s arms, Erica thought
about her parents. She had not buried them. By the time she had ended up in
prison in Adelaide, they had washed their hands of her and she never saw them
again. She only saw her sister, Claudia, when she had come to pick her up from
jail. Claudia had had one hand protectively against her pregnant belly the
entire time, as if afraid that being in the presence of her wayward sister would
contaminate the baby.
It was her third baby, Erica’s third niece. She had never
met it and she never would.
Whenever she and Gail held each other, they always clung a
little too tight. It wasn’t loss which had brought them together, not exactly,
but Loss was present in their every caress. It wasn’t a bad thing. Sunny days
would look super weird if there weren’t any shadows.
*
2020-ish. Tandy slumped on a table, semi-inebriated, listing
what he missed about the old world. “Skinny jeans on dudes,” was one of the
things he came up with, but then he quickly corrected himself.
*
Brent Junkins the football player was a big fan of skinny
jeans. He was a good looking guy, tall, muscular, bore no small resemblance to
Phil Two. He was rich and lived at the Bonita Estates and was married with a
wife.
After Mike reclaimed the telescope, Tandy started sneaking
around the estates hoping to bump into him. He didn’t. After the second time he
was chased away by a security guard, he took to wearing a gillie suit and meandering
about the hills above the houses. He thought if he ever spotted Brent, who he
absolutely totally wanted to be just friends
with, he could take the suit off and dart down the hill and start a
conversation. (What would happen after that, he had no idea.)
He never did put that plan into action. Brent lived in his
wife’s place in Europe half the time anyway.
“I can’t believe you’re so obviously gay and you’re still
trying to get with girls,” Mike said. It was impossible to tell if he was
joking or not.
“I’m not gay,” Tandy said.
Next day a cute delivery girl called Christine came to the
house. Tandy vied so hard to get her number – she was every bit as smoking hot
as Brent – but it was Mike who walked away with it.
*
Erica had known a woman called Christine once too. Well,
Chris. Chris frequented the only LGBT bar in Erica’s corner of Australia. They became
girlfriend and girlfriend, complicated casual lovers. Sometimes they retreated
to the woods and did assorted recreational drugs.
“You wanna get outta your parents’ house, don’t you?” Chris
asked one day, as the sun was setting.
“More than anything,” Erica said. Her family was homophobic
and her hometown was racist. Wherever she went she felt isolated. And she
worried constantly that the drugs were becoming more than just recreational.
“My older brother’s in a criminal gang,” Chris said.
“Right, okay,” said Erica, deciding that the best bet was to
treat this like it was totally normal.
“Not like a drugs cartel or anything. They’re only
interested in money, nothing else. It’s barely even organized crime. But y’know
what they’re always looking for? Hot girls. Like you.”
“Oh?” said Erica.
“They hire ‘em to distract store tellers and bank clerks
while they rob the place. They have guns, but they never use them, they never
need to.”
“I’ll think about it,” said Erica, “but I dunno.”
*
“Mike,” Tandy said one day, mere months before the first
cases of the Virus were reported, “I wanna call dibs on Christine.”
“You can’t call dibs on an actual human woman. That’s
sexist.”
“You do it. I’ve
seen you. Anyway, when we were all at the football game last night she was
looking at me the whole time. The whole time, bro. Every time I raised my corn
dog to my mouth, she was looking.”
“She was grossed out by seeing you eat.”
“That’s as may be. I still want dibs.”
Mike shook his head. And then he smiled. “See, me and Christine
actually have something in common? We both like football. You were only there
cos you have a boner for that Junkins guy. Why don’t you go after him instead
of trying to take over my territory?”
“Now who’s being sexist, Mike? Now who is?”
“You know where he lives. Go to his house and serenade him.
Sing him Falling Slowly with one hand
on your weiner. Do friggin’ something.”
Tandy wanted to punch him, but they were at their parent’s
house and their parents hated to see their boys fight. Their parents were very
good people, and they would have accepted their children no matter their
sexualities or genders. But in a few years they would be dead.
*
As Erica’s child grew inside her and as the Virus grew
inside Mike, the pair of them had their one and only one in-depth conversation.
They sat in an abandoned restaurant in an abandoned town. It was on the edge of
a cliff and one day soon it would fall.
It was Mike’s last good day on Earth.
“I bet you had the ladies queuing up for you when you were
in prison,” Mike said. He actually didn’t mean it offensively. That was one of
the weird things about Mike. If he had ever been asked why he was making fun of
his brother for having a clear crush on another man, he honestly would never
have thought in a million years that “casual homophobia” was anywhere near the
answer.
Mike was smart as hell. He was captain of a spaceship, the
consultant on many a science experiment, an actual expert on oligochaetology. But he was also pretty stupid.
“Prison isn’t like that,” Erica said. “I’ve actually only
slept with two women my entire life. One of them was this girl I knew from my
hometown, and the other one-“
Mike interrupted her. “Wait, you actually did – I mean, you
are?”
“Well that was what you were implying, wasn’t it? And it’s true. I’m bi.”
The thing was, Mike hadn’t been implying it. He hadn’t been
doing anything, just saying the first compliment on her hotness that came to
mind. Now he felt uncomfortable, which was an almost entirely new feeling for
him.
“Sorry,” he said, “I just meant-“
“That I’m hot? I know. Thanks.”
To prevent the problem of an awkward silence, Mike said,
“The other one?” He realised too late that that, too, may not have been the
best tack to take.
“Gail.”
“What, Gail Gail?
The Gail who’s in a weird threesome thing with Todd and Melissa?”
“I don’t think she’d call it that.”
Once again Mike was silenced. He was starting to feel
guilty.
*
2019. A parting shot. “So long, skidmark. I’ll be back in a
year’s time, probably to a hero’s welcome. Until then, I fucked Christine.
Sorry. Love, Mike.”
“I do wish you boys weren’t so crude with each other,”
Tandy’s mother said.
2020. An opening remark. “Another person! Another woman! Oh
my god, you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
*
The thing about Erica was that she was a very forgiving
person, almost too forgiving. She had long since forgiven her family, and often
hoped that someone had taken the time to give them proper funerals. She forgave
Tandy most of his obnoxious transgressions, because he was Tandy and he probably had reasons for it buried somewhere in his
brain. She forgave Phil Two for almost ditching her, and even forgave him for
dying while she carried their child.
“I didn’t mean to be weird, sorry,” Mike said. “I don’t
think I’ve ever actually hung out with someone who was bi.”
“Oh, you definitely have,” said Erica. She meant that
statistically there was no way he hadn’t, she didn’t mean Tandy specifically.
She had no idea about him. Mike’s spiel to the whole group about Tandy and Brent
Junkins should’ve tipped her off, but it hadn’t done.
“Sorry.”
“S’alright, you’re forgiven.”
The fling with Mike was the only good thing that would
happen to Erica for a long while, until she found Gail again.
*
Mike soon would’ve grown into a much more mature and humble
person. He and Erica wouldn’t have lasted as a romantic couple but he would’ve
been best man at her wedding to Gail. He wouldn’t have taunted his brother about
his sexuality any more, having realised that that was what he was doing. He
might even have come to different conclusions about his own sexuality, met a
man, married him. But none of that stopped him dying.
Alone in his room at the Miller house, he made some drafts
of letters to his brother. They all were detailed, and apologetic. Mike taped
them to the telescope next to his bed, and he coughed up blood, and he thought.
The last thing in the world he wanted was for his brother to find his body,
because he loved him more than anything else alive.
So in the end he pulled himself from house to house until he
found a gun in someone’s drawer. He took it, and he went to his own backyard
and sat by the grave that was already made for him and that’s how it happened.
But he did die as the best person he’d ever been. Sometimes
that’s all you can ask for.
*
“Erica. Erica. Erica. Erica.”
Erica awoke.
“I’m used to being woken up by my own baby,” she hissed at him, “not someone else’s.”
“That’s harsh,” Tandy said. “I just wanna talk to you.”
“Why?”
“I’m not gross around women.”
“What?”
“I’m gross around women and
men! Haven’t you noticed?”
“What?” Erica said again.
“I don’t mind it when women who want to date other women
instead of me, because there’s been men who’d I’d rather date instead of
particular women!”
It was very late at night.
“You touched a nerve,” Tandy said. “Y’know?”
Erica sighed and got up. She grabbed Tandy very hard by the
wrist and led him away from their sleeping family.
“What are you on
about?”
“I’m not straight,” said Tandy. “I think I might be whatever
you are.”
Erica rubbed her temples with her fingers. She should never
have gotten out of bed. But the thing about her was… she was a good person.
Probably too good. But that’s sometimes what the world needs when everything
else is too bad.
“Bisexual,” she said.
“Yeah!”
“Why do you think that?” she asked.
“Because I used to like guys as well as girls and I think I
still do. Like I only wanna have sex with Carol,” and here Erica marvelled,
just a little, at how much he’d changed since they first met, “but if for
whatever reason I had to have sex with a dude I would totally have sex with a
dude! Todd, anyone, within reason! And I would enjoy it! You know, if it didn’t hurt Carol.”
“Okay,” Erica said. “Okay. I never knew. I’m sorry.”
“What’re you sorry for?”
Erica blinked. This would be a difficult conversation, she
thought.
“Because I wouldn’t have said you were gross around
non-straight women if I’d known you also weren’t straight. Although you kind of
are gross, constantly. Oh, I don’t know.”
“I don’t mean to
be gross though.” Erica gave him a pointed, tired look. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Erica never knew why she did the next thing. Maybe it was
the memory of Mike, who she had truly liked. Actually, it wasn’t that. It was
the memory of Mike’s cheerful face when he outed Tandy to the whole group,
without a single one of them knowing he had done so.
Perhaps it was his ghost, begging her to help him make up
for his mistakes, that made her reach into her pocket.
“I had a sister once, you know,” she told Tandy. “She’s dead
now.”
“Sorry,” he said again.
“Everyone is. The whole society that thinks it knows what
your sexuality ought to be, who you ought to marry, all of this… it’s gone.
We’re all that’s left.”
Tandy didn’t say anything, which was extremely rare for him.
“See, my sister, she was like my parents. Soon as she found
out I had a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend, that was pretty much it. When I
moved to America I figured I’d never hear from her again. But, she found out
one of my addresses somehow, when the postal service was just about still
running. And one day, it was around the time you and Lewis went on that
roadtrip, me and Gail went round my old apartments and I found this.”
Tandy tried to take the letter but Erica whipped it away.
“My hands only. And Gail’s. But I’ll read it to you.”
Tandy nodded and Erica read. “Dear sister. As you may know,
our parents are dead. My children are also dead. There’s nothing left for me. I
don’t know yet whether I should wait to die, or take matters into my own hands.”
Tandy flinched.
“Either way, I hope you remain on earth at least long enough
to read this. I was wrong to ever judge you for who you wanted to love. It
never occurred to me how much my slightest gestures hurt you. If there is a
world after this one I hope it will be kinder. I’m so sorry. Claudia.”
Silence.
“Claudia…was your sister?” Tandy said eventually. Erica
suspected he was playing dumb on purpose.
“Yes. Obviously.”
Another long pause. “Thank you for showing me that,” Tandy
whispered. “That was really… thanks.”
Erica didn’t know why he was whispering. No-one would’ve
heard him at normal volume.
“It’s okay,” she said.
Whole worlds are forged by Ericas.
*
“Carol,” Tandy said in the morning when she’d woken up, “would
you think any less of me if I told you I was bisexual?” He thought he knew the
answer but he wanted to check.
“Of course not, Tandy,” Carol said cheerfully. “I mean, I
probably am too. Me and my roommate Bernice did have a bit of a fling long
before I met you.”
“Oh.”
“I would’ve told you, but it would’ve been like telling you
my eyes are blue.”
Tandy loved her a lot in that moment, and for many more
moments to come.
“Well, I love your eyes, and your bi-s. Boom.”
“Awww, you’re so cute,” Carol said. “Hold Mike for me.”
Tandy took the baby. It was a sunny day. And there were
probably ghosts in the shadows, but that was okay too.