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When a plan invariably went to shit – as tended to happen fairly frequently in his life and Gordon was still undecided as to whether this was a reflection on his own skills or if he was simply a magnet for chaos – it tended to derail within a matter of seconds. Before you realised anything had gone wrong suddenly you were partly crushed beneath several metric tons of rubble in a tiny pod which only sort of fitted two people but particularly wasn’t intended for a duo in which one of them could be considered a bear in human form.
In this scenario there would be no light save for the controls, the inbuilt lights in your suit and the glowsticks your brother carried around claiming they were a backup in case an EMP took all tech offline but were actually intended to distract scared kids because Virgil was a softie like that and Brains was incapable of saying no to him. Oh, and it was also worth noting that in this scenario you could do nothing except sit there - slowly getting light-headed because the pod had flipped over - and wait for your youngest and eldest brothers to prep another mole pod to come dig you out.
Did this scenario sound suspiciously specific? Maybe because it was the exact predicament in which Gordon had just found himself. He was partly convinced he’d been knocked out for a second there because it seemed like only a heartbeat ago that everything had been going swimmingly.
“Ow,” he announced aloud, just to hear his own voice and thus convince himself that he was not concussed given the distinct lack of slurring or pounding headache or hearing loss. He scrabbled vaguely at the seat in front of him, unnerved by the suffocating darkness until he glimpsed the familiar green of a glowstick. Good to know that Virgil still had his head in the game.
“Ow?” Virgil caught his hand before he could accidentally whack the poor guy in the face. “What d’you mean, ow? Are you okay?”
“Oh, I am fine.” Gordon mentally assessed his body’s various aches and pains and decided that a few bruises weren’t of concern. “My pride on the other hand… mortally wounded. Might never recover. Requires a night on the town and a lot of free drinks.”
“I’m not going clubbing with you.”
“Spoilsport.” He hauled himself upright – or at least in the vague direction of where he guessed the surface should be – and immediately whacked his head against caved glass. Several razor-sharp shards littered the seat where debris had shattered the reinforced window. “Oh, shit.”
“You good?”
“Nearly brained myself on the roof but yeah, I’m still kicking.” He brushed broken glass away from his seat. “Jeez. Thank you Brains for reinforced visors.”
Virgil cracked another glowstick into existence. The pale green light cast the pod in a sickly hue, exaggerating the anxiety threatening to overthrow his forcibly calm expression. He twisted to face Gordon, hooking an arm around the back of his seat to keep from losing his balance.
The pod was listed at an odd angle which threatened to destabilise the entire debris pile at any second and Gordon was not a fan. He eyed the bulging roof which let out a suspicious groan and then caved in a little more. Several pebbles skittered in the distance. Faintly, water was rushing, dripping, trickling through the rubble to fill the cavern below.
“They’ll reach us before we drown, right?” Virgil echoed his thoughts.
Gordon double-took. “Virg, my man, what the actual hell?”
“It’s a valid concern!”
“You’re not wrong, but this isn’t… being overly dramatic is my thing. You’re totally-” He flailed for the right word and landed upon it with a smug smile. “-encroaching on my territory.” He propped his elbows against Virgil’s headrest and leaned forwards until he could spy his own reflection in technicolour across his brother’s visor. “So? What gives? You normally have your shit together better than this.”
Virgil cringed as another shudder ran through the hull. “I don’t like being trapped.”
“Wrong answer – you once got stuck in an elevator with me for an entire hour and didn’t freak out.”
“I nearly lost my mind.”
“Well, yeah, but that was because you were stuck with me in an elevator. That kinda thing drives anyone insane. Including Scott that one time. Anyway, try again and maybe aim for the truth.”
Virgil took a deliberately deep breath. “It’s a very cramped space which is only getting smaller. It’s a little… disconcerting, let’s put it that way.”
Gordon blinked. “I didn’t know you were claustrophobic?”
“I’m not,” Virgil muttered, flinching as a metallic thud shuddered through the entire pod. His grip on the sides of his seat was tight enough to turn his knuckles white, gloves ripped to shreds by broken glass but mercifully no injuries in sight other than a tiny graze over his left palm. “It’s just this specific scenario.”
“The mole pod?”
There was a small pause.
Virgil ducked his head, suddenly incredibly invested in picking slithers of glass out of his wrecked gloves. His voice was embarrassingly tiny, like a scared kid, and on any other day Gordon would have made fun of him for it, but right now he just wanted to give him a hug.
“Being buried. Alive. Like, uh, you know… cave ins and landslides and, um, avalanches.”
Oh.
Oh.
Well, shit.
Suddenly there was nothing funny about the situation whatsoever. Not that there really had been to begin with, but Gordon had been able to find at least a shred of humour amid the dark, whereas now he just really wanted to be free to feel the sun on his skin and breathe clean air and stretch his spine before he permanently took on the shape of a pretzel. Oh, and give Virgil a hug. That was, like, number one on his list of priorities.
He pitched his voice softer. “It’s okay. The pod’s reinforced. That ceiling won’t get any lower.”
“Uh huh.” Virgil swallowed. “Right. Y-yep. I know that.”
“Virg.”
“What?”
Gordon held out a hand.
Virgil stared at him. “Are you messing with me?”
“What?” Gordon widened his eyes in a feeble attempt to look more genuine. “No. I wouldn’t do that to you. Ordinarily, sure, but not now. I’m trying to be nice.”
Virgil cautiously took his hand. Gordon entwined their fingers and beamed at him.
“Aw, look at us, bonding.”
He dropped the joking act as the ceiling strained under the weight of several freefalling boulders. Metal shrieked. He could feel the support beam pressing against his right shoulder where he was twisted awkwardly in his seat and lurched forwards as the rear of the pod lowered under the new rubble. His suit protested but redistributed the pressure so all he could feel was mild discomfort, but it still knocked his heart racing. He clambered out of his seat and performed a series of very ungraceful contortions to squash himself into the tiny space between Virgil’s chair and the controls, just in case any further debris crushed the rear of the pod entirely.
Virgil’s grip on his hand was almost painful. He stole another glow-stick and snapped it.
“Okay?”
Virgil took a harsh breath. “Sort of.” He sounded strangled, pupils blown wide as if he’d suffered a concussion. His pulse was pounding where his wrist was pressed against Gordon’s forearm. He took another of those painful gasps. “Shit. This isn’t- Shit, Gordon.”
“Hey, hey, hey, we’re good. It’s all good. You know what shifting rubble means? Scott and Alan are getting close to our location. Means our beacon’s working nicely, just like we knew it would.”
“We’re okay?”
“We’re okay,” Gordon confirmed, rocking forward on his heels to press their helmets together. There was another unnerving rumble from somewhere above. “We’re okay,” he repeated, surprised by the gentleness of his own voice. He squeezed Virgil’s hand. “Just keep breathing.”
Virgil screwed his eyes shut for a brief moment, but clearly decided that the intrusive thoughts offered by perpetual darkness were scarier than facing his fears head-on. Still, he tried to keep his gaze on Gordon as opposed to the low ceiling.
“I hate this,” he muttered, voice damp.
“I know,” Gordon murmured, catching Virgil’s other hand too. “But it’ll be over soon. Seriously, I think I can hear the other Mole pod.”
Pebbles rattled on the roof. Virgil shuddered.
“I’ve got you,” Gordon whispered. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
Zero hesitation. Ah, man. Now Gordon sort of wanted to cry too.
“We’ll be okay,” he said instead and then silently ordered the universe not to send any other curveballs their way. And then, half an hour later, stepping into bright sunlight, he couldn’t help but add, “See? I said we’d be okay. And while I hate to say I told you so…”
Scott looked to be considering the merits of throwing him back underneath the rubble heap. Alan openly sniggered. Gordon waited for Virgil’s long-suffering reply and was pleasantly surprised when his brother simply threw an arm around his shoulders and tugged him close for a few seconds.
“Thanks.”
“Anytime.”