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“Raise the gates!” Sam called through the open door to the comms shack. “Come in Five, fast as you can!” He spoke frantically into the microphone, scanning the screens in front of him. Normally they would be switching between the views from the field cams; today there was nothing. “Not that I need to tell you, but we can hardly see anything out there and we can’t risk having the gates open for long! Run!”
He could hear the runner’s heavy breathing through their headset. He didn’t expect a response – Five never responded on a mission. “I… I think I can see you, Five! Close the gates!” He stuck his head out into the downpour and called to whoever was manning the gates at that time. “Close the gates!” A clap of thunder sounded overhead to drown out his command. Frantically waving his arm up and down seemed to get the idea across, though he was surprised that they could see him through the rain. “Five… Five just come to the comms shack. I’ve got blankets and you can wait out the rain in here for a bit.”
A flash of lightning lit up the night enough that Sam caught the runner’s silhouette darting for the small building. He caught himself smiling as he opened the door further for Runner Five to enter.
They were out of breath, face red from running through the wind and rain. A thud echoed through the room, dulled only by the sounds of the storm outside, as Five dropped their waterproof pack in the corner. How the runners managed to go so fast with all that extra weight on their back, he would never know. A soaked, white shirt hugged their frame as they toed off their sodden trainers and kicked them to the side. Next came the socks, mismatched and darned in several different places.
It was hard to tell in the dim light of a single light bulb and several computer screens, but it looked like Five’s feet had pruned up like they had just spent hours in the bathtub. Five pulled their hair out of the ponytail holder that they had managed to scrounge up during their last mission. Carefully, they stretched it around their wrist – those things were worth more than gold to the runners these days.
Sam had no idea if Five had kept their hair long or short before all of this, but there was no denying that it looked good on them. The runner gathered all of their hair to the side and twisted it tightly. It added even more water to the puddle they had created on the rough, wooden floor of the comms shack and he should have said something to them, he really should have. “Hey, watch out for the electronics!” or “Oh don’t do that in here!” or literally anything, but the sight of Five running their fingers through long, wet hair left him oddly speechless.
After a few more seconds of hair wringing Five looked at him with a bemused smile. They must have caught him staring. Fantastic. “You okay over there, Sammy?” they asked, finger brushing out their hair one last time and letting it fall onto their already soaked shirt.
He blinked a couple of times and nodded before finally forcing himself to turn away from the runner and stop thinking about the way their soaked running clothes hugged their body. Their wonderfully attractive body. Van Ark had been right – the Zombie Apocalypse had been very good to Five. “Y-yeah, I’m fine, Five,” he stammered, acutely aware of the sound of each of his footsteps as he walked back over to the computer screens. “Just… erm… just a little chilly is all. Yeah…” The screens were flickering lightly again, the images on them severely distorted by the downpour outside.
There was a small pile of blankets near his normal seat, dry and warm. Janine herself had secured the building against leaks when they decided to put a large amount of electrical equipment in there. He pulled out the top one, hoping there weren’t too many holes in it, and turned to face Five. “Here… you can use this to warm up a bit,” he explained, handing the moth-eaten blanket to the runner. It smelled slightly of sweat and probably hadn’t actually been cleaned in ages, but it was all he could convince Rajit to give him. Well, without reading the man’s novel. “It’s not much, but it should help.”
The runner accepted it gratefully. “Thanks, Sam,” they said, shaking out the blanket as he turned around. He heard them cough from the dust that had probably collected on it. “I can always count on you to look out for me, can’t I?” He felt a smile return to his face and hoped to god he wasn’t blushing.
“Well, I try!” he replied. There was some shuffling behind him that he chose to ignore, probably just the runner getting more comfortable anyway. He moved quickly over to the opposite corner. This would be the perfect time to get into his secret stash of Curly Wurlys and whisky. Something to occupy the time, he supposed.
Another clap of thunder echoed through the room as he looked for the small, indistinct box that he kept hidden just for times like this. Or for when he was drunk. Or bored. Or sad. Well, he really just kept it hidden so that Jack and Eugene wouldn’t get into it.
“Rofflenet said a half-hour or so ago that the storm was expected to be bad for about another hour. So we’ve got some time to kill,” he said. It’s funny how he was able to speak so clearly when he wasn’t actually looking at the runner. “So… well, I thought that…” He began to dig through a pile of CD cases and old cassette tapes that the radio hosts had left lying around. “Well, maybe… if I can find it, that is…” Where HAD he put it? “I swear to god if those guys got into my stuff again…” There was some more rustling behind him that he could barely hear above the storm. “Look, Five. I’ve got a box hidden somewhere around here. Have you seen th-“ He had turned around to speak to the runner, but was stopped dead in his tracks. “Oh…”
In the time he had spent rummaging through his mess Five had managed to strip off their soaked clothing, leaving them in only their undergarments. They must have rung them out and laid them over one of the extra chairs, but Sam was too stunned to notice. The last person he had seen this way had been Alice and that had been two years ago now. Since then, he hadn’t really expected to see anyone like that again, not seriously anyway.
But there they were. A completely different Runner Five was standing in front of him, clad in only well-worn underwear and still not completely dry. “Uh… Five?” he stammered, feeling the need to put something in front of his crotch. “W-what are… I mean… erm…”
Five looked at him like he had grown an extra head before picking up the blanket and wrapping it around their shoulders. “You didn’t expect me to try to dry off in all of those wet clothes, did you?” they asked, raising an eyebrow at him. “What were you looking for?”
He felt more than slightly ridiculous. Of course! They were just trying to get dry! That made sense. He could calm down now. “Er… I…” he sputtered, watching the runner move closer to him. “Th-there’s a box… around here somewhere… it’s got-“ He held his breath as the runner reached around him.
To do so, they had to move the blanket off one shoulder, and the last thing Sam needed was to see more of their skin. He could feel their breath on him. His heart was beating so fast that Dr. Myers would have thought he had been the one out running if she hadn’t known him. The blanket slipped from the runners fingers as they leaned in closer and he swore he heard a muttered, “Oops,” under the sound of the storm outside.
And then it was all over. The runner pulled away from him, once again wrapping the blanket tightly around their self and holding out a decent sized cardboard box. “This one?” they asked, jostling it up and down until he took it. “It was literally right there…” He looked to where they were pointing. Right under his nose.
“Y-yeah. That one,” he grumbled before he set the box down and cracked open the lid. At least two dozen Curly Wurlys surrounded a half-full bottle of whisky. Without a second thought, he pulled out the bottle and took a swig that left him scrunching up his face and coughing. He was hunched over his desk when he felt a hand on his back.
“Woah, Sam!” came the runner’s voice from behind him. It didn’t exactly help. “Easy there, tiger! I didn’t mean to get you this worked up!” He could feel the runner’s cold hand rubbing circles onto his back. His eyes were watering when he turned to look at them, red-faced.
“W-what?” he sputtered through his embarrassment. “Worked up?”
It was Runner Five’s turn to blush with embarrassment. “Well, yeah. I mean, we’re alone in here, and the storm’s not going to let up for a while… so, erm, well… I just thought that…” They were starting to ramble. Runner Five never rambled. Hell, Runner Five barely talked. Yet here they were, getting all flustered and nervous around him.
“Wait…” And then, everything clicked. The hair. The clothes. The blanket. It all made sense to him now. “Are… are you flirting with me?”
There was a moment of stunned silence on both their parts. The rain continued to pour outside the shack and lightning illuminated the sky once more. Runner Five pulled the blanket even tighter around them while reaching up to brush a strand of hair behind an ear. Was this really happening? To him of all people? This was like a scene straight out of some stupid, cheesy Hallmark movie.
“Well, yeah… I thought it was kind of obvious…”
To hell with it. It was the zombie apocalypse. He would take cheesy moments when he could get them. Without another word Sam pulled Runner Five to him for a kiss.