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Simon turned his flashlight out, and I lay there in the dark for a while, focusing on his breathing because the alternative was listening for things coming down the bunker steps to kill us. It belatedly occurred to me that maybe we should have taken turns to be on guard or something. No, the door would surely hold, wouldn’t it? It had for the skeleton in our own corridor, after all. Or at the very least, it would give us enough warning to – to –
Scream a little? Say a prayer? Beat the monster to death with one of Simon’s boots?
Okay, sure. Not thinking about us being horribly murdered clearly wasn’t working, so why not go with that mental image instead? Simon hopping on one leg in his fishnets, whacking some tentacled horror straight out of Lovecraft with a platform boot. For a second, I almost smiled.
Then I thought Lovecraft again, and the image of the sky straining as a vast presence from the other side of reality pressed against it came rushing back. I felt my heartbeat quicken in a way no amount of positive thinking was going to dampen, that cliff-edge canter you get right before a panic attack. Don’t think about it, don’t think about the migraine colors as it splits open the sky or the children in the school bus turned wrong way round to reality, don’t think about the chances of ever finding your own bunker again don’t think don’t think don’t think–
“Carrot?” whispered Simon, and his voice was loud as a gunshot in the pitch-black room. I jumped so hard I nearly threw the blanket off.
“Yeah?” I whispered back after a moment, trying to sound normal – or whatever passed for normal in an “accidentally opened a portal to Evil Narnia” scenario, anyway – rather than like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Actually, now that I was listening, Simon didn’t sound like he was doing so hot, either. His breathing had gone high and shallow, and I could hear the blanket rustling as he clenched it in his hands, over and over again. The dark pressed in, suffocatingly thick, making the handspan of distance between our cots feel suddenly more like miles. If I reached out, would he even be there at all? Or would the foreign night drop down between us like a curtain and cut him off for good? My own breathing sped up like it was trying to steal a march on my heart. Don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t–
“Are you–” said Simon, voice about half an octave higher than normal.
“Yeah,” I replied, before I even really knew what he was asking, and then he rolled across the gap between the beds and into my arms.
The noise I made was probably embarrassing, but I was too relieved to care. I buried my face in his hair and clung on for dear life. Simon smelled like clean sweat and drugstore shampoo, a million miles from the willow-water scent up above, and from the way his mouth was moving against my shoulder, I suspected he was screaming silently, but that was okay. That was fine. We couldn’t both panic at the same time, after all, and now that he was here – now that I knew I wasn’t going to wake up and find myself all alone in the dark–
I bit my lip so hard I actually drew blood – which until then I didn’t think was a thing that happened in real life, only in bad fanfiction – and for a little while, I refused to think about anything at all beyond the absolutely human weight and warmth of Simon against me.
By the time he stopped shaking, I felt almost normal again, for a situation-appropriate definition of normal. It was, it turned out, surprisingly difficult to contemplate the prospect of ancient evil to the scent of Head & Shoulders. Also, my arm was steadily going dead under Simon’s weight, which reminded me of all the worst parts of sharing a bed with my ex, which in turn gave me a comforting little core of familiar irritation to cling to. Just so long as Simon didn’t snore. I’d rather take my chances with the monsters up top.
“Well,” he said eventually, sounding only slightly embarrassed about the whole thing. “This is cozy.”
“Mm,” I agreed. “How’re you doing?”
“Fine,” he said, with brittle cheer. “I’m fine, and I’m going to keep being fine until tomorrow morning, and then we’re going to find a way out of here, because if we don’t, I’ll start screaming and I won’t stop till I asphyxiate.”
“Oh no, you won’t,” I told him. “It’s my turn for the screaming breakdown next. You’ll have to wait until an Elder God eats my face or something.”
“Ugh,” he said. “Alright, but try not to take too long about it, will you? My mother always told me never to put off until tomorrow the spiral of eldritch madness I could descend into today.”
“She must have been quite the woman.”
“You have no idea.” He shifted a little against my shoulder. “Uh, should I–?”
“No,” I said immediately, tightening my arm around him on instinct.
He sagged. “Oh, thank God.”
Neither of us even made the traditional joke about our wildly incompatible sexualities, that’s how dire the situation was. Simon just hauled the blanket off his cot and draped it over mine instead, forming a little tent of warmth against the cold air of the bunker.
“Should we braid each other’s hair and gossip about boys?” I asked, after we’d been lying there for a while in silence.
He snorted drowsily. “Go to sleep, Carrot.”
Half an hour ago, I’d have been prepared to tell you I was never going to sleep again in my life. With Simon’s weight warm against my shoulder, though, it suddenly didn’t seem so improbable. His free hand stole into mine, and I responded with a squeeze and a jaw-cracking yawn.
“G’night, Simon.”
“Night, Carrot. Sleep tight.”
“Don’t let the eldritch horrors bite,” I murmured.
I slid gently into unconsciousness to the sound of his laughter.