MZAT - What is love

[Returning to the saga of my zombie apocalypse team, I'll figure out the order later.]

Bella found me in the kitchen, I was quick make a guess as to her question, "You're probably wondering why I'm eating your chocolate chips by the handful while we're stuck in a dystopian future where the main form of sustenance is soy food and the only replacement source of chocolate may or may not contain people as an ingredient."

"No," she said. "I often gorge myself on them when I'm feeling depressed, hungry, and too low on energy to eat anything that requires preparation.  I figured you were doing the same."

"You know, they say eating a lot of chocolate produces an emotion indistinguishable from love."

"And?"

I hung my head. "I think I'm incapable of feeling love."

"I'll get back to that in a moment, but first there's something I have to tell you and a question I have to ask."

"Shoot"

"Ok, what I have to tell you is that I got bitten and since the anti-zombie vaccine is still in the "works but fucky" stage of development I'll be out of commission for weeks to months.  I won't even be able to walk from my room to the bathroom which, because the truck has an odd sense of appropriate architectural arrangement, involves three hallways and two flights of stairs.  You'll have to carry me."

"Will I have to..."

"No.  Hell no.  Once I'm in the room I should be fine, but anything that requires me to move from point A to point B will involve you carrying me around."

"Ok."

"And you will have to clean up the vomit, of which there will likely be a lot.  And prepare every meal, and preform all the maintenance, and generally speaking do everything."

"Great," sarcasm, I can haz it.

"Are you going to do all of that?"

"Of course I am but-"

"You're fully capable of feeling love."

"That's friendship, it doesn't count."

"Friendship is love.  You said love, you're not weaseling out on a technicality."

"You know what I meant."

"If you're looking for infatuation you'll have to look elsewhere, I've had more than enough of that pointed at me for six lifetimes where I came from, I've never experienced that emotion either, and I'm ten years younger than you."

"I wasn't saying-"

"It's not important, can I get to what is important?"

"Sure."

She pulled back her jacket to reveal that her shirt was stained with blood on the right side around her abdomen, "I wasn't kidding about being bit."

"Did you-?"

She pulled up the shirt to reveal not skin but bandages, "I plugged the leak, and took the vaccine, but I figure I've got about twenty minutes before I lose the ability to stand for more than thirty seconds at a time."

I had no good response to that, so I opted for a bad one, "You want to watch a movie?"

"TV show."

"Firefly?"

She nodded, "Out of Gas."

"I'll grab the reel."

"I'll be in the theater."