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Even hasn’t seen the sun in sixteen days.
Part of it is by choice: he knew the storms were coming, didn’t want to see it through, hear the birds fall from the balcony bars to the pavement in heavy, splattering echoes. The basement is soundproof, the best damn investment he’s ever made aside from the water filter and the edibles, stacked up in cautious piles in the corner of the room, bundled in clear wrapping and the best snack he has— second only to the few preserved cheese sandwiches he’s saving in the mini fridge for some day, some impending event he doesn’t have the date for.
(No one does. Still, he waits. Thinks maybe that day might be today.)
He misses smoking, but this leaves no trail. Silent, scentless, plus his lungs are already weak. He’s in no position to worsen them.
Even wakes with a tight chest, a light head, and a sheen of sweat across his body. In the reflection of cutlery, a rusted silver spoon coaxing watery yogurt into his dry mouth, he sees himself almost glitter with it. He looks tired. He is tired.
Outside, it rains.
It’s a long time coming, and it’s not even really sad anymore. The papers dated from 2023 are desperate, hopeful, dreary all at once, but they’re not accurate, just some sort of keepsake Even doesn’t know why he holds onto. He figures it’s good to have things, to have clutter, something to keep him less alone. To keep him grounded.
(Before he’s in the ground, his mind taunts, and then reminds him he probably won’t be so lucky. The collectors stopped coming months ago, at least from his understanding, though he’s stopped listening for sounds. There’s not enough time in the day for the essentials and for proper burials.)
It’s almost humorous, anyway, the headlines: Acid rain downpour rampages Southern coastline, kills 400,000. Sun expected to be blocked in January of 2024, returning February 19th.
Even doesn’t know what day it is now. His calendar fell apart a mere week into the darkness, the stress riling him up and leading him to move lower, deeper and closer to the ground, safer. In the basement. The shelter. He knows what he has, and that’s what he needs.
If he weren’t already destined to fail, his brain chemistry already pointing weapons at his throat, tipping the blade in just far enough to draw blood every once in a while, he’d be more sane. More alert.
Instead, he stays inside, hasn’t seen the sun in seventeen days.
Isak comes in like a storm of his own, clambering and scratching and landing in the center of the room with a thud so heavy and an entrance so grand it’s like he planned it— and Even would think that he did if he didn’t recognize the fear so well. In his eyes, bloodshot and dark, Even sees fates worse than pain, than grief, than losing everything and gaining it all just to lose it again.
“I’m sorry I had to break in,” Isak says, and Even didn’t expect politeness, didn’t expect the way Isak shrinks against the wall, clutches a battered arm and bites his lip until the wince at the crinkles of his eyes fades. “I need to stay.”
Even doesn’t trust it, but he also doesn’t care. It’s been a while since he’s had company. More than eighteen days, at the very least.
Even serves up crackers and minute ramen on a weak coal stove, everything else eaten or gone rotten— and still considered to be eaten because you know, apocalypse; Even quips and Isak laughs, looks at him like he’s offered him a golden feast. Their knuckles touch, Isak’s smattering of slanted cuts and purple-grey bruises against Even’s paleness, and they drink from the same cup. Even trusts him, doesn’t care if he shouldn’t, and keeps his lips pressed to where Isak’s were.
Just drinking, he thinks, but also dreaming. A luxury he can hardly afford anymore, but allows anyway. He thinks maybe Isak does, too.
There’s something pretty about the way Isak bleeds.
That sounds fucking insane, Even thinks, knows. The correct phrasing is, instead, this: Isak is a fighter, doesn’t care when he’s hurt, doesn’t grimace when Even bandages his ribs and makes him lay in the cold because the heat is broken. He doesn’t complain, not when Even rolls over, half on top of him in his sleep, and he didn’t mind being the first to make Even scoot over on the mattress, invite himself into his space and stay there. As if he was needing, knowing that Even was needing too.
It’s the goddamn end of just about everything and Isak doesn’t have the energy to waste it on nerves. He touches Even under the sheets, an arm slung around his middle as the rest of him stays on his side of the bed, half divided, so close and right there but not close enough— and Even has half a mind, enough left in him, to recognize that Isak is better than him. Stronger than him. Not scared.
So, instead: there’s something pretty about the way Isak heals. The way he never even seems like he’s been hurt in the first place.
Isak sits close. Sometimes Even worries he’ll vanish, sometimes he does, but never for real. It’s when the world spins, when everything wrong with the world flips three times over in his brain, his fucked up, deprived, overstimulated waste of grey matter that he calls his brain— and yes, the oxymorons can work out because they always do, he’s a living oxymoron, everything is both right and wrong and there’s just too much and he’s not even sure he’s real but no matter because he’s stuck here, maybe forever and maybe he’ll never even die, just live forever in this chaos and convince himself it’s good enough, or maybe not, or maybe-
He kisses Isak, knows he shouldn’t, knows he’d do the same even if he wasn’t like this. Wasn’t wrong. Wasn’t untethered.
He just hopes he’ll get the chance to do it again once he comes back down. If he comes back down. If Isak stays.
Isak stays.
Stubble on his cheeks, scratching Even’s hipbones, sinking hips into the mattress, Isak kisses like wildfire. Like the one outside, impending, so close.
“Jeg er glad jeg fant deg,” Isak says at the exact moment Even thinks it, and then he thinks about miracles too, about soulmates, about parallel universes and fate and divine intervention and god. He thinks he believes in it all, even if it looks like this: blood orange, rushing, urgent, infallible.
Not with a bang, but a whimper, some old poet had said, and Even thinks they were wrong in a multitude of ways.
He chuckles against Isak’s tongue, lets him pull him back in.
“I’m so happy I found you,” he repeats, and then repeats and repeats.