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Keats groaned, blinking his eyes open — or to what he thought was open. The darkness hit him first, unable to see two inches in front of his face. He squinted until those little white fuzzy things floated in his eyes. The darkness was palpable, moving like it had a mind of its own. The second thing that hit him was the ceiling. Or, more accurately, he hit the ceiling.
Grunting quietly, his head bounced off what could only have been hard stone. It was chilly in the little cavern, and very, very dusty.
“Herm?” Keats coughed into his elbow, waving the polluted air from his face. “Herm!” He called, his voice echoing right back to him. “Herm, where are you?”
No response.
Pressing his lips together, he scratched his beard. He remembered.. a girl and a yellow robot — a Kid Cosmo bot, to be precise. And then the fucking Robot Deactivation Task Force showed up and ruined everything, their whole operation, gone. Destroyed, just like that. He must have gotten trapped under the rubble when the tunnel collapsed.
Shit, Keats thought suddenly, what about the kids?
He ran his hands along the walls, barely able to sit upright without hitting the brand new rock ceiling. Well, he’d mentioned he wanted to renovate.
“Damn it,” he grumbled, feeling around his immediate area. “Herm, you better be on the outside of this hellhole,” he complained.
“No such luck, sunshine,” Herm responded from… somewhere.
Keats’ body sagged, “oh, thank God. Where are you man? I can’t see shit.” He fumbled about in his pockets, “I think I’ve still got a flashlight, hold on—”
“Don’t.”
“Huh?” Keats blinked and squinted at where he thought the voice may have come from, his eyes adjusting to the soft, almost invisible yellow eyes peering at him. He snorted, “why not?”
“You trust me, Keats, yeah?” Herm asked, upbeat. Too upbeat.
His brow furrowed and he took pause, not because he didn’t trust him — he’d trust him with anything, everything (besides the extension cord, he thought humorously) — but Herm sounded anxious, scared. And that scared Keats; Herm wasn’t afraid of anything. Or, at the very least, he was usually much better at hiding it. “Of course I do,” he said carefully. “Why don’t you want me to turn the flashlight on? What are you…? What’s going on?”
“Our predicament…” Keats could practically hear his grimace, “it’s not looking good man.”
“Herm.”
He let out an audio recording of a melancholic sigh, “there’s not really any good way to say it, Keats. We’re trapped.”
“Trapped,” he repeated. “How can you tell?”
“Thermal imaging, dingbat. The rock encases us completely, there’s no way out, I’ve checked.”
He dug out the flashlight anyway, clicking it on.
“Keats!” Herm panicked, pixelated pupils shrinking considerably. “What the fuck, man?”
Herm was crouched low, both hands raised, feet sunk deep into the earth. In his palms, tonnes of dark, dangerous rock pushed down on him like a hydraulic press. Herm held the very sky in his palms, and dutifully kept the world from falling and crushing them instantly.
His insides froze. “How do I—? What can I do?” He asked, scooching closer until they knelt about face to face.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Herm grunted, holding back a visible flinch when pebbles tore themselves from the roof, each one clinking harshly against his head.
His hands hovered uselessly around Herm’s face. “There-there has to be something. I am not dying in this fucking hole.”
Herm snorted, fingers clenching and unclenching against the jagged rock. “That makes two of us.”
He aimed his flashlight at the walls, the ceiling, the ground, anywhere there might be a point of weakness to break through. Thick, solid walls made up the disproportionate cave. One of the wooden support beams of the mineshaft had fallen in the ceiling’s collapse, cutting through one side of their makeshift sanctuary. With the beam leveraging one end of the small-ass room, Keats rolled his cheek between his teeth, maybe there was a way to get Herm under it, so they could figure out an alternate escape route. As of currently, Keats wasn’t going anywhere, not without Herman.
He ran a hand through his long blond hair, wincing as he tugged a knot. “Okay, do you have any communications to the outside? ‘Cause I got nothin’.”
Herm frowned, “no, and before you try, I already tried shouting. It caused another collapse and cut our space in half.”
“Fuck,” Keats swore, pinching the bridge of his nose. “So what? We just wait until someone happens to come along? What about that fucking— the RDTF asshole?”
“You really think he’s going to care what happens to us? His whole thing is killing robots, and,” Herm laughed bitterly, “in case you don’t remember, he didn’t seem too keen on keeping you alive either.”
He dropped his head into his hands, elbows propped on his knees. “This is so fucked, man.”
“Keats…” Herm started quietly. He hesitated. “If I don’t make it out of here—“
“You will,” Keats insisted.
Herm watched him for a moment. “Listen to me. If it comes down to you or me, the moment there’s an exit, you take it and don’t look back. Understand?”
Keats scoffed, over the top. He refused to look at him, pretending to inspect the deeply cracked wooden beam. “If I am getting out of here, so are you, dumbass. It’s not you or me, it’s you and me.” He chewed on his lip. “Dick,” he added, for good measure.
“Keats,” Herm pleaded, exhaustion coating his voice.
Ignoring him, he scanned the area, shining the light into every nook and cranny for the third, maybe fourth time since he’d woken up.
He shuffled around with great difficulty, but with intent, crawling on his hands and knees.
“You’re not going to find anything new.”
He rolled his eyes and aimed the flashlight at Herm’s visual sensors, effectively blinding him. “At least I’m looking. What are you doing to help?”
Herm glared at him, incredulity seeping into his tone, “I’m the only thing keeping the roof from collapsing on your ass. Now would you stop that?”
“Well, okay, fine,” Keats huffed, sitting cross-legged where he had kneeled, next to the wooden beam. “What would you rather have me do?” He asked, setting the flashlight on the ground, tilting it away from either of their faces.
In the dim lighting, Keats could make out Herm inclining his big ass head, looking him up and down. He hummed, “well, you could always sit there and look pretty.”
“I see,” Keats narrowed his eyes playfully, leaning back on his palms. “You just want some eye candy.”
“What else would I keep you around for?”
He snorted and let their banter taper off. Herm was, quite literally, doing the heavy lifting. He wanted to help in some way, to get them out of there, but he didn’t know how. It was always Herm saving Keats’ ass, never the other way around.
Herm was watching him, something inscrutable in his LEDs.
“What?”
“Nothin’,” Herm said defensively. “Am I not allowed to admire you?”
Keats opened his mouth to retort but nothing came out. “Shut up,” he muttered, glancing away, hoping Herm didn’t have his thermals on to catch the flush to his ears. The cold, hard-packed dirt seeped through his jeans, into his legs, leaving him slathered in goosebumps. “Seriously, though, man. What should I do?”
“I don’t know. You’re only human.”
“Ouch.”
He rolled his eyes, “you know what I mean. You’re not built to withstand eight tonnes of rock and dirt pressing down on you.”
Keats’ brow dipped, “how long can you stay like that?”
Herm seemed to mull it over. He had no muscles to strain, so it came down to how long before his frame bent and snapped. “A while,” was all he said.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Sure, it is! You asked how long and I said ‘for a while’, that’s an answer!”
Keats scoffed, “a real answer, dumbass. Two hours? Eight days? How long?” He glared, eyes widening as the realization dawned on him. “You don’t know, do you?”
“I could last a week,” he admitted quietly. “I could last five more minutes, my body isn’t substantial for this kind of strain consistently. My 20-footer, sure, easily, but not this model. Not for that long.”
“Great,” he laughed nervously, running a finger across his extensive collection of keys, each one shifting back into place like it hadn’t been touched. “So we could die any second and we wouldn’t know when until it happens.”
Herm frowned, “yeah, basically.”
“Okay, alright, well, someone’s gotta come by before then right?”
He snorted bitterly, “don’t get your hopes up. You know how dead this area is.”
He rolled his eyes, “whatever man. Hope’s important, or whatever,” he said, dragging himself closer until the ceiling began to slant, every boulder, slab, and beam adding to the miraculously compressed pile, the majority weight centered on the load-bearing slab Herm desperately held above his head. Herm’s strength acted as a support pillar. Keats switched to sit on his knees, stretching his back out as he folded himself forward like a fucking lawn chair, arms resting on his thighs. “Hey, Herm?”
Herm hummed in question. It seemed effortless, the way he held that point of tension, keeping it from turning himself and Keats into paint splatters.
“When we get out of this, I hope you know that I am never walking again.”
Blinking in surprise, Herm laughed, “what?”
Keats sighed as if it were obvious. He waved at where Herm made contact with the ceiling. “If you’re strong enough to carry fucking however many tonnes of this shit, you’re far by strong enough to carry me around.” He scratched his scruff, tilting his head thoughtfully, “I don’t know how I didn’t think of it before.”
“I’m not carrying you around, dipshit. I’m not a horse, or your damned chauffeur.”
“Ah, come on,” he insisted, grinning widely. “What, you think you aren’t strong enough to carry ‘round all this muscle?” He flexed his arms, in that over the top way that always made Herm roll his eyes.
“Oh, I know I’m strong enough to carry you around, sweet cheeks,” he winked.
Keats’ smile stretched impossibly. He opened his mouth to say something incredibly witty but was interrupted by a full body shudder. “Fucking hell, it’s cold in here,” he huffed a chuckle, rubbing his calloused hands up and down his bare arms.
“Don’t be such a baby,” Herm rolled his eyes.
“Hey, fuck off, man!” He grabbed the flashlight and shone it in Herm’s face tauntingly, “it’s just a little chilly in here is all. Any chance we can get a fire going?”
Herm stared hard at him. “Sure, if you want to die from asphyxiation or carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“Wh—” Keats spluttered, “okay, listen, it’s been one hell of a day.”
“Being pretty sounds exhausting.”
He set the flashlight down. “First of all, I drove for ten hours, that guy Wolfe botched our deal, and then we had to deal with stowaways, being tossed around like a fuckin’ ragdoll by the RDTF, and now the roof is collapsing on us; I think I’m entitled to a little brain fog.”
“You’d be dead,” Herm said factually, having perfected the tone like the nerd he is, “if it weren’t for me.”
“I know, dickhead,” he scoffed. “You don’t have to keep informing me.”
Herm implied the raising of a nonexistent eyebrow. “But I do. You know, just in case your ‘brain fog’ makes you forget.”
“Ass,” he grumbled, ignoring Herm’s smirk. “I’m tired, not a goldfish.”
“You’d be the cutest little goldfish,” he teased.
“Tch, little?”
He chuckled, “yeah, little!”
“You’re smaller than me!”
“But if I wanted to, I could be six times your height!”
Keats flicked a pebble at him. “But you’re not right now.”
“Eh, maybe you’re bigger than me right now, but.. only in height,” his eyes flicked down suggestively, mouth curved at two ninety-degree angles, one at each corner.
Keats spluttered indignantly, beat red.
Herm’s smirk widened.
Smug bastard.
According to Herm’s clock, it’d been four hours since they ended up essentially buried alive. Part of him wished the roof would collapse already so they didn’t have to sit there, anticipating the very real threat, waiting for their demise. So. Much. Waiting.
Keats laid on his back, hands laced over his grumbling stomach. He inhaled until his lungs expanded to the point he thought they might burst, and then let it all out in one big miserable sigh.
He didn’t get a response so he sighed again, deeper, longer, more obnoxious. He dragged it out for a solid fifteen seconds straight. Was it dramatic? Only a little.
“What?” Herm whirred, agitated.
“Nothing!” He said defensively.
Herm made a disbelieving noise, something similar to a scoff but not quite the same. “Really? Because that’s the fourth time you’ve sighed in the past three minutes.”
Keats splayed his arms out perpendicular to his body, as if he were opening his arms for a hug. “I’m just so bored.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Herm said sarcastically, “would you like a turn at this?”
He pretended to think about it, rubbing his chin. “Nah, I’m good. Thanks, though,” he smiled sweetly. Or, as sweetly as a conman could, anyways.
Shooting Keats a glare, he grumbled to himself; “‘m keeping the ceiling from collapsing on us and he’s complaining about being ‘bored’.”
“I never asked you to,” Keats pointed out, raising a finger in the air.
“I’d always hold the sky for you.”
Keats blinked. The sentence was void of Herm’s usual flirtatious teasing, or even a mildly joking tone. He pushed himself onto his elbows, peering at the bot that had whisked him away from danger those years ago, and continues to do so still. Over the years, Keats got pretty good at deciphering Herm’s moods, but there would always be something to catch him off guard, something to make him start all over; Herm frowned, mildly annoyed but an uncharacteristic vulnerability engulfed his demeanor. The bastard meant it.
The saliva glands in his throat worked overtime. He wet his lips. “That’s so sappy,” he said, shaking his head.
Herm laughed, short and loud. “Anything for you, bootylicious,” he winked.
Keats raised his eyebrows, unimpressed. “Don’t tell me you’re going to add ‘bootylicious’ to your regular vocabulary.”
“Why not?” He grinned. “It’s work of genius, truly.”
“Yeah. ‘Genius’,” he rolled his eyes and laid back down. A full body shiver racked his body as the cold seeped through his denim on denim.
“Maybe I will let the ceiling crush us,” Herm said thoughtfully.
Keats shot him a thumbs up.
“Oh, oh nooo,” Herm exaggerated, making artificial creaking sounds through his speakers. “The ceiling— fuck, it’s too heavy!”
His head lolled to the side, and watched his best friend make a fool of himself pretending to be crushed by the weight.
“It’s coming down! Keats! Save yourself!” He cried out. “Ooooughhhh— Wow, really? Nothing?” He blinked wide-eyed at him, his voice switching from a mock tormented with a flip of a metaphorical switch.
Keats snorted. “You’d never.”
He tutted, disappointed, not unlike a teacher who caught someone cheating— not that Keats would know. “You put too much trust in me.”
He pushed himself into a sitting position, wary of the low roof. “Or, and just food for thought, you haven’t let me down yet. Why wouldn't I trust you?” He paused. “Excluding the extension cord. Can’t trust you with that.”
Herm groaned. “Okay, first, the extension cord was.. okay, yeah, that was my fault. My bad. But the good news is that there probably isn’t even an extension cord to fight over anymore!”
“Goodie,” he deadpanned.
“Second, that’s the worst kind of thing to say to someone who literally holds your life in their hands, man. It’s a lot of pressure.”
Keats’ brow dipped, frowning as he thought back, analyzing his friend. Unless Keats had been speaking to him, Herm had been dead silent, not in an overexerted kind of way, but in contemplation. A quiet Herm was a worried Herm, or worse, a scared Herm. He was thinking himself sick. “You don’t think we’re making it out of here.”
He grimaced. “Think about it: there’s no one coming. We’re out here by our lonesomes, and anyone who had been out here is either dead by the rubble or long gone.” A pebble skittered across the solid dirt. “We’re on our own this time. Just like we’ve always been.”
He pressed his lips together at the thought of that teenage girl and her friend being crushed by the very rock he and Herm were sanctioned beneath.
“It’s been hours, man. We’re going to die down here.”
Propping his elbows on his knees, he dropped his chin into his palm. Herm was right. It’s been hours. No one was coming and there was no way out. They’d already scoured the room top to bottom in sonar, infrared, thermal, regular ol’ sight, all the ways they had available to them, which — surprisingly enough — was a lot. Hard granite corralled them in rough hands, keeping them captive within its confines like a personal bubble, or a prison cell.
Herm had tried to tell him from the start that it was useless to search, hopeless to hope. It didn’t deter him from doing it anyways, to be entirely, one-hundred percent sure that there was no way out. And sure enough, all of their methods had been exhausted. They were, for all intents and purposes, trapped.
His bad leg ached from the residual chill and his eyes hurt from squinting in the dim light, but he wasn’t afraid. Okay, that was a lie; he was terrified. But it was different, this time. The terror entwined with something Keats might call acceptance, a far cry from the sobbing man on the battlefield. The main difference, he thought, was Herm.
Herm wasn’t a sixty-foot enemy bot, looming over him, their mutual fear turning into something wary but relating. Herm was a friend, this time, their relationship deep-seated. Keats didn’t have friends outside of his platoon before they met, and honestly, they weren’t even really friends. Keats hadn’t wanted to die alone.
He wasn’t alone now, and while he prayed Herm wouldn’t, if Keats died in this little cave, shut off from the world, it’d be okay because he had Herm by his side.
“We’re so fucked,” Herm muttered amongst other anti-affirmations, an anxiety inducing mantra running on repeat through his speakers like script lines.
“Herm—”
He ignored him, too caught up in his own mind, soaking in misery. “Everything we’ve been through and one asshole comes along and bam, now we’re dead!”
Keats chewed on his cheek. Exhaling softly, he crawled within arms reach. He had to duck his head further, straining the muscles in his neck, but he didn’t let that stop him.
“—and not to mention the—”
“Herm,” he interrupted, intently. Kneeling at the center of the concaving air pocket, the lowest point being held by Herm and Herm alone, he braced a hand against a jut in the rock. It was a mockery, a futile attempt at sharing Herm’s burden.
Herm paused, his eyes shifted to meet Keats’, blinking as if noticing him for the first time. “Keats,” he murmured quietly, only inches away.
The muscles around his mouth tightened. “Listen, man, you spent far too much time and energy saving my ass over and over to give up now.”
“But what else is there?” Herm demanded. “We’re by our ourselves.”
“We’ve got each other,” he pointed out helpfully.
Herm chuckled humourlessly, swivelling his head back and forth. “And how’s that working out for us? We’re in the exact same position we were in several hours ago.”
“It’s helping me,” he admitted honestly.
The LEDs forming his eyes flickered.
He wet his lips, glancing around the small room. He hoped for one last chance, one last reason to keep Herm going. His gaze caught on the giant wooden beam. “Look,” he nodded in its direction, “the beam is holding up that end of the room. If we can somehow get you under there, you can use all your little gadgets to dig us a hole or something.”
A thoughtful frown wormed across Herm’s face. He hummed, eyes widening, “it could viably work.”
“See? I’m more than a pretty face and great hair,” he grinned, jokingly tossing his hair.
“I never said you weren’t,” Herm said absently, inspecting the beam with whatever the fuck sensors he was using. “It’s just your best qualities.”
Keats spluttered, unsure if that was a compliment or an insult. “Fuck you..?”
He looked at him, one eye cut in half, giving the impression of a lowered eyebrow. “Was that a statement, or an invitation?”
“Herm,” he scolded, banging a fist on his chest casing. He hoped Herm would take his flush as irritation, but Herm knew Keats better than Keats knew himself, so he wasn’t exactly confident.
Herm waggled his nonexistent eyebrows, as if agreeing with the statement.
He tugged his vest closer to his torso, glancing away. “Shut up,” he grumbled.
“I didn’t say anything!” He smiled widely.
He rolled his eyes, “yeah, right. Okay, so how do we get you over there? The second you let go, it’s all going to come crashing down.”
“Give me a couple minutes, sweetheart, I’ll think of something.”
Keats froze, and not because of the cold. Herm didn’t seem to notice, too focused on getting them out of there than the butterflies using Keats’ stomach as a fucking trampoline.
Sweetheart, that’s a new one.
—
At some point during his examination of the likely unusable wooden beam, Keats had conked out hard. It was unusual how quickly he fell asleep considering the circumstances; Herm figured it must be a human thing. Or perhaps it was just a Keats thing. Probably a Keats thing.
Without much left to do, his metaphorical wrung until every last idea splattered on the dirt beneath his feet, he watched over his friend’s slumber. Keats laid on his back, only two feet away. One hand had gravitated to his stomach, sliding his shirt up slightly to show a sliver of pasty pudge. He snored softly, peacefully, like he wasn’t trapped in a fucking underground void space.
Herm had nothing. He simply wasn’t fast enough to duck and dodge, to sprint to the wooden beam’s offered sanctuary. Built sturdy, Herm’s speed was in his hands, in his tools. Say he did manage to make it: the chance that the lack of Herm’s support would apply too much pressure to the crack-embedded beam, causing it to bend or snap and kill them anyway, splayed out comfortably on his mental pie chart, not unlike someone trying out a king-sized bed for the first time.
“How long’s it been?” Keats yawned and stretched his arms out in front of him.
Herm took one look at him, hopeful and well-rested, and forced his face into neutrality; “you were out for about six hours,” he said light-heartedly, pushing a note of unbotheredness into his voice.
“Only six? Feels longer than that,” Keats’ eyebrows raised, glancing at him as he shifted on his front to do a popular yoga pose: the downward dog. Herm watched with something a little to the left of curiosity as Keats pushed his body into the stretch, his white graphic t-shirt riding up to reveal his lower stomach. The waistband of his boxers peeked out from his jeans.
He looked on in appreciation. “You didn’t sleep very long.”
He’d slept for ten hours. It’d been twenty-one since they originally got trapped, and Keats wasn’t going to find out the real number unless they got out alive. The lowered time, currently eleven hours, was giving him hope. If it helped, Herm would let him— would deliberately make him believe the chances to be found were higher.
He hummed, scarfing down the lies spoonful by spoonful, sweetened to perfection by trust and time. Herm could only hope they’d live long enough for Keats to get mad at him over it. “Well, I feel great. Er—” his eyes drifted to the ceiling and back, “as great as I can be, anyway.”
Herm snorted. Keats laid on his back next, using his shoulders, elbows and heels to push his hips up, arching his back.
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?” He asked, tilting his head back to see him better.
He inclined his head, a vague gesture since his hands were kind of occupied. “Are you about to punch your way through the wall?” He squinted. “Why are you stretching?”
Something popped in his back. Keats let out a pleased noise and dropped his hips back down, resting on his forearms. “Just somethin’ I’ve gotta do, y’know? If I sit around too long, my body starts to hurt.” He shrugged a shoulder, “I get all stiff.”
The corners of Herm’s mouth lifted suggestively, “watching you stretch gets me all stiff.”
Keats stuttered, ears like they’ve been dipped in red paint. “Whatever, man,” he scoffed.
His LEDs formed a shit-eating grin, “all I’m saying is we’re all alone, in this little cave. We might as well be playing Seven Minutes in Heaven.”
His face darkened, spreading and swirling across his skin like red food colouring in water. “Maybe if you weren’t busy holding up the fucking roof,” he scratched his neck, a feeble attempt at disguising his flush. It was too easy, honestly, but every acknowledgment — physical or verbal — filled Herm with a sort of ecstatic glee he couldn’t get anywhere else.
“That’s a coward’s answer.”
Keats eyed him for a moment, before turning away and clearing his throat. It didn’t erase the beat red on his thermal cameras. “Sorry, man, but I’d rather not add getting tetanus to my list of worries.”
Herm chuckled, shaking his head, “you gotta stop with these fictional illnesses.”
“Wh—?” Keats’ head whipped around, incredulity written into every cell. “What do you mean fictional?”
Herm didn’t say anything.
“Tetanus is real!” He exclaimed defensively. “And so is salmonella!”
“I dunno, you gotta admit, sunshine, it sounds like you made them up.”
“Unbelievable,” he laughed, “unbelievable! How could you not know about tetanus?”
“Never came up?” Herm knew tetanus was real. As a construction bot, he had to be aware of the rules put in place by OSHA and why they were important. Unsanitized metal is a great risk to humans. Salmonella though…
Keats wrinkled his nose at him, “there’s no way.” He refused. “You’re lying.”
He blinked innocently, fluttering his nonexistent eyelashes, “what? Me? I would never, I am a perfect angel! Scout’s honour.”
“Scout’s honour doesn’t mean shit if you weren’t a boy scout, asshole!”
“How do you know I wasn’t?” He challenged. “I don’t know what tetanus is and I was a boy scout before the war. Prove me wrong.”
He squinted at him. “Is this fucking two lies and a truth?” He snarked, laughing in a way that could only be described as a guffaw.
“Oh,” Herm chuckled deeply. “First Seven Minutes in Heaven, now Two Truths and a Lie, I wonder what other college party games we’ll play. Spin the bottle, maybe?”
Keats’ brow furrowed and he opened his mouth — probably to say something that Herm would then make a flirtatious joke out of. The flashlight had other plans, decidedly winking out, plunging them into pitch darkness.
“Motherfucker!” Keats shouted. Herm switched cameras, allowing him to see Keats rooting around in the dark for the flashlight.
“Flashlight’s on your left,” he chimed in helpfully.
Keats fumbled in the dirt, reaching blindly in the indicated direction. Herm’s sensors indicated that the flashlight sat there innocently, just out of arms length.
“No, no, a little further. Really stretch those muscled biceps.”
His shaky fingers grasped the item, pulling it towards him. He smacked it once, twice, against his palm but it didn’t even flicker. “Fuck,” Keats sighed, “I think the batteries are dead.”
“Crap, that’s not good.”
“No,” he agreed, twisting the cap on and off experimentally, “it’s not.” Tossing the flashlight in a random direction, he groaned and fell back. “You don’t happen to have a flashlight or batteries, do you?”
Herm’s head swivelled, despite the fact that Keats’ couldn’t see it. “Nah. Well, I have a flashlight, but it would drain my battery faster and I’m already sitting much lower than I’d prefer.”
Keats scrubbed his face. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” he rationalized, spreading his hands out in front of him. On each finger, he ticked off each thing on his list: “So, we have no food, no water, no heat, and now no light. At least I’m not cold anymore.”
Herm knew humans, despite their general fragility, were stubborn. Resilient. Keats, more than most. “Could be worse,” he decided.
“Dude!” Keats exclaimed, aghast. “Don’t jinx us!
He laughed quietly, “I’m just saying! We could be going bonkers, or something.”
“Who says we aren’t?”
“Touché.”
If it weren’t for Herm’s trustworthy military-grade clock, the hours would have blended into each other much faster than they already have. His clock, unfortunately, didn't do anything for Keats.
An annoyed groan escaped his lips. “Herm, I am so tired right now,” he whined.
Herm rolled his eyes, “you just woke up.”
“Doesn’t erase my exhaustion,” he visibly shrugged. “Think I could catch another couple hours?”
“And leave me alone to die of boredom?”
He let out an undignified snort. But let’s be honest here, what about Keats is dignified? “Wow, Herm. I see how it is. So you’re allowed to complain, but I have to shut my trap?”
If he could shrug without several tonnes of solid rock raining down on them, he would’ve. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Dickhead,” he grumbled. “Can you just, I dunno, use your torch or something? I can’t see fucking shit, man.”
He chuckled. “We already went over this, sweet cheeks.”
He expected a snort or a decent try at a quick-witted barb, but Keats let the sentence hang in the air. “We did?”
Herm’s pixels shuttered, taken aback. “Uh, yeah?”
“Huh,” Keats said quietly.
He squinted at him, an anxious prickling needled the back of his mind. “Don’t tell me your goldfish brain is catching up to you already.”
Keat huffed a single-noted laugh. No pushback, no annoyed quip, nothing.
“You good, Keats?”
“Hm?” He paused, “oh, yeah. Just the uh— fuck, what’s it called… Not what you said.”
Herm stared at him. “Brain fog?”
Keats snapped his fingers to emphasize. “Yes! Exactly! That!”
Now, Herm was no human expert, but he was pretty sure simple brain fog didn’t make you sound like a lost puppy. Frowning, he asked, “you said you were cold, too?”
He hummed a vague confirmation. “Not anymore, though.”
“How long ago did you stop shivering?”
“‘dunno.”
“Keats, seriously, man.” Herm’s frown deepened. “This is important.”
He made a sound at the back of his throat, somewhere between frustrated and amused. “No really, Herm. I have no idea. You’ve been lying to me about how long it’s been, so it’s been kind of hard to keep track.
"What?" Herm stuttered some bullshit answer, and when that didn't work, he spat whatever came to mind. Waiting patiently until his excuses ran out — a rare feat, Keats clucked his tongue thoughtfully.
“You blink when you lie, asshole,” he answered the unasked question.
“Oh. Right.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not mad?”
Keats’ orange-yellow silhouette shrugged. “I’m too tired to be angry.” He exhaled softly, “a part of me doesn’t want to know, either, I think.” Shuffling close enough to touch if Herm had the ability to, Keats did it for him, choosing to lean against him. Herm’s stabilizers adjusted infinitesimally as Keats pressed his forehead against Herm’s chest compartment. “I know what hypothermia looks like,” he confessed quietly.
His visual sensors blanked briefly, sinking into the dark, the closest he could get to shutting his eyes in despair. “Don’t say things like that, man.”
“You were thinking it, though,” he pointed out, seeing right through him despite not being able to see at all.
He didn’t bother deigning a response.
They sat there for a long while, every so often Keats would make a noise to let him know he was still alive and kicking. Neither seemed to want to break the silence that cloaked them like the very rock containing them like a particularly tough-to-crack geode.
Herm’s battery flashed yellow on the inside of his screen. He had the ability to lock his joints in place, stable even when he was powered down, so it really came down to who would cave first. Pun unintended.
Keats broke first. “I was gonna die anyways,” he murmured. The sound of shifting sand filled the air, as Keats presumably dragged his legs closer. “If you hadn’t plucked me off that battlefield, I might’ve lasted another hour, if that.”
“I’m always saving your ass,” he replied softly, finding himself unable to put up a joking front, a façade. He couldn’t, not this time.
He snorted and wrapped a hand around one of the support bars making up Herm’s ankle. “I’ve been running on borrowed time. And I knew that, of course I knew that, I just… I wanted more time. With you.”
“Keats…”
“All I’m saying, man, is that if I had to go out, I’m grateful it’s next to you.”
He floundered for words, for expressions, any response at all. His face glitched hardcore in the wake of the sudden burst of unfiltered honesty. Keats lied a lot, but he did it badly. You could always tell what he really meant. Herm didn’t lie necessarily, as much as he hid his truth in jokes and teasing. There wasn’t anything he could say to make Keats understand.
He nearly jolted when he realized how long he’d been tucked away in his own thoughts. “Keats?”
“Yeah?” He yawned.
If Herm had a human heart, it’d be pounding in his throat. He figured he felt it anyway. “You underestimate how much you’ve saved me, too.”
A breathy chuckle echoed throughout the enclosed chamber. “Sure, man, no problem.” Herm could hear the grin in his voice. He thought he was joking.
“I’m dead serious,” he insisted. “There couldn’t be anyone else but you.”
“And you call me sappy.”
“You are,” he peered down to where Keats’ yellow silhouette was sitting comfortably. “One beer and you start sobbing and telling me how much you appreciate me.”
He spluttered, “I’m a lightweight! It’s a very normal thing! Very manly!”
“Bet you were tellin’ all the guys in your little army ‘bout how much you liked them, huh?”
Keats’ elbow hit Herm’s chest with a dull thunk. “Ow, fuck,” he muttered, rubbing the offending limb.
Herm laughed.
“Shut up, asshole. Why the fuck does your body hurt so much?” He groaned pitifully.
“Aww, did you get hurt?” He teased, a wide grin stretched across his face. “Do you need me to kiss it better?”
“Fuck you!”
“If you insist,” he damn near purred.
Keats was silent for a long time, the only indication he was still alive being his rough breathing and the general stability of his low body heat. Eventually, he grumbled a quiet, “at least take me to dinner first.”
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. I’m going to find a Panda Express just for you, bootylicious.”
Shaking his head, Keats turned to shove his face into what could be considered Herm’s stomach, his hands reaching up and tangling in his wires and cords. Herm resisted the urge to tell him to be careful, that one wrong disconnection could have him falter.
“When we get out,” he promised. “I’ll give you the greatest fucking time of your life.”
He could feel Keats’ shoulders shaking, his laughter sending vibrations up Herm’s body like espresso shots of strength, enforcing Herm’s position. “Do you even know how sex works?"
“Pfft—!” His voice did not raise an octave, and whoever says it did is a flat-out liar. “Do I know how—? Yes, I know how sex works!”
“Uh huh.”
He scoffed, “I do! There’s uh, your dick, obviously, and you… um,” he winced. “Well, we can always experiment! I’ve been told I’m pretty good with my hands!”
“Sure, man, sure,” the grin was evident in his words.
“Whatever! Everyone’s got flaws!” He groused, borderline pouting. “Besides! When’s the last time you got some?”
“When’s the last time you got any?”
Maybe it would be kinder to let him go to sleep.
“Not gonna threaten to drop the ceiling again?”
Herm frowned indignantly. “No!”
“You were thinking about it though, weren’t you?”
He hurled a slew of muttered insults under his breath, sending Keats into a fit of drowsy chuckling.
“Quit your bitching, big man. You promised me a good time, didn’t you?”
“The best time,” he corrected. “When I’m done with you, you’re going to be on your knees, begging for more.”
In case the extended pause wasn’t evidence enough, when Keats finally decided to use that big mouth of his to tell him off, all that came out were flustered stutters.
Herm wished he could see Keats in the sun, one last time, to see that cute as fuck blush painting the tips of his ears pink. He could picture it clear as day: Keats, the sun lighting up his tangled hair like gold, the roll of his eyes, even though they both knew playing it cool was like constructing a house using wet cardboard. Useless, unsustainable, a floppy defense.
“You can do whatever the fuck you want to me,” he breathed.
The permission alone was enough for Herm to bluescreen. “Fucking shit, sunshine. You can’t just say things like that!”
“Like what?” Keats crossed his arms, propping his elbows on Herm’s hip joints, head tilted up. Herm’s eyes rounded. “Do your worst? Undo me?”
“Keats…”
Herm could feel the raised eyebrows directed at him. “Don’t tell me after all this time, you’re just talk.”
“Never.”
“‘s what I thought,” he rested his chin against his forearms.
“Hey,” his mouth dipped at the corners, “stay awake, man.”
He exhaled softly. “‘m tired, Herm.”
“I know, sweetheart, but c’mon, you’ve gotta keep your eyes open.”
“Just a couple minutes,” he mumbled into his skin.
Herm shook his head rapidly, “no, no, Keats, man, come on.”
“Please?”
Herm had already lined up dialogue to speak in preparation, but nothing could’ve prepared for how small Keats’ voice came out. How vulnerable. He wiped the queue without a second thought. A quick glance to his internal clock told him it had been over twenty-four hours since they’d gotten trapped. The nearest town was four hours away. If anyone was coming, they’d have been here by now.
What if he said no? Would Keats stay awake, just for him? How long could he keep Keats awake until he either loses his mind or dies anyway?
Any answer refusing acceptance was cruelty.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Yeah, okay.”
Keats hummed sleepily, shoulders sloping instantaneously, as if the permission made way for his exhaustion. “I’m going to take a quick nap. Wake me in a couple hours, man.”
It wasn’t a secret what came next. Herm knew it, and Keats knew it, but he wanted it to be like any other night. Who was Herm to deny that?
Herman shook, and it wasn’t from the weight of the sky. His voice strayed into dangerously shaky territory, “sure thing, sunshine.”
He snorted, “goodnight, Herm.”
“Goodnight, Keats,” he said quietly. “Oh, and one more thing?”
Keats made a soft noise to let him know he was listening.
He hesitated. “I love you.”
“Mmph— ‘ove you too, H’rm.”
“Like romantically. Sorry for not saying anything earlier, I was.. scared, I guess.”
“Mhm,” Keats mumbled something unintelligible, that maybe could have sounded something like me too.
Herm watched as Keats’ body shifted, leaning his head on its side, for a more comfortable position. Or, as comfortable as he could get, using Herm as a pillow. Then, like a switch flipped, his head lolled and his body sagged, solely being held up by Herm’s stable stance.
“Keats?”
He didn’t get a response. Not even a telltale snore.
“Keats?” He asked again. If it weren’t imperative to keep the ceiling from collapsing, Herm might’ve shaken him.
With no answer, Herm began to panic.
“Keats,” he ordered, voice shrill, “answer me right now, damn it!”
Carefully, hands not once moving from their brace on the rock itching to crush them both, a capped fingertip unlatched. It emitted a light, bright and all consuming. It took Herm’s regular visual sensors only a moment to adjust, but when they did, he would forever wish they hadn’t.
Keats laid there, draped almost like fabric, more relaxed than Herm had ever seen, his muscled arms wrapped around Herm’s waist loosely. He looked tiny like this, so tiny he was worried Keats would fit into his four-foot model’s hands. It was reminiscent of the position he’d taken on the battlefield, Herm hovered over him then, just as Herm hovered over him now. This time, however, he couldn’t save him.
What really shocked him wasn’t his best friend’s pale, pallored skin or his sweat-stained shirt, his vest useless for heat entrapment, tucked around his torso and shoulders, no. Instead, it was his expression. Keats’ eyes were partially open, dull, glassy, staring at nothing. He was…
He was dead. Keats was dead.
And yet, his mouth, of which he was never afraid to run, even when it got them in trouble, curved into a permanent half-smile, something small and real and pleased. His face was upturned, as if to look directly at Herm.
He shuddered, a couple small stones falling and skittering across the floor.
Keats died cold, died hungry, died in the dark, but he died with a smile on his face. He died happy.
“Keats, you dumbass,” Herm choked out, a heavy feeling settling in his chest. “I hate you, man, you.. you’ve left me here all alone. What am I supposed to do now?”
For the first time since he decided to take a chance on this human, several years ago, he was completely and utterly alone.
What would he do? Where would he go? He couldn’t continue this work, Keats’ work, even if he wanted to — and frankly, he never really cared about the job. He went with it because it made Keats happy, there wasn’t much in it for him. Money had little use when you couldn’t spend it.
He supposed if he got out of this little personal circle of Hell — a big if, he would take Keats’ body and give him a proper burial, like the one Keats had mentioned giving his sister when she’d died. Herm didn’t understand it much, burying the dead, but who was he to question human customs?
Herm would build a monumental shrine to his friend. Keats might not have had many people who loved him — that is, only Herm sits on the much-too-short list, but it didn’t matter because the burial sight would be grand so everyone, humans and robots alike, knew just how much he was loved. He’d work day and night until completion if he had to.
Keats was worth the effort and it wasn’t fair. It’d have been easier to let him die on that battlefield than continue like this. If Keats had died earlier, the outcome would have been the same, except that Herm might be somewhere in the Exclusion Zone with some proper friends, however that meant Herm would have never have made the connection he had to Keats, to know what it was like to exercise free will to the fullest, to hate and to love and to be human.
And wasn’t that what they were fighting for? The right to be human? To be themselves? To be more than the labels slapped on them by the authorities that be?
Listen, it was never in doubt that Keats was a fucking dick that got on Herm’s last nerve, but damn it, he was Herm’s dick.
“I lied,” he grumbled softly. “I don’t hate you. I’m incapable. You…” He looked away, unable to shut his light off. It didn’t matter now that Keats was dead. “It’s okay,” his voice dropped to just above a whisper. “I’m not mad.”
Not for the first time, he wished himself a full sensory system, like sensory bots do, or like humans themselves, if solely to wrap Keats in his arms and actually be able to feel him. Skin on metal, hair through his fingers, even just the pressure of Keats' body pressed against his would've been nice.
“You said we were getting out of this together or not at all, man.”
Or not at all.
“Fuck,” he chuckled painfully. “Fucking shit. You asshole, leaving me here. Always have to have the last laugh, huh.”
Or not at all.
Who was he kidding? He was never getting out of here. And honestly? Maybe that was okay with him. He didn’t need to build a grand monument as a gesture of his love; the world didn’t need to be privy to their profoundness. A human and a bot. Keats wouldn't be there to see it anyway, so what was the point?
Instead, here they were, Keats and Herm, how they’ve always been. But Keats was dead, leaving just Herm, alone and with a low battery.
Maybe this was how it was always going to end. Herm looking down at Keats, having saved him one last time, a direct parallel to their first meeting. Only this time, Keats died, and Herm wasn’t far behind. Only this time, they’ve had years of knowing each other, of banter and arguments and companionship. Only this time, instead of fear, Keats’ glassy eyes marked him with love.
It was uncanny to see it so blatantly plastered across the usually gruff, even embarrassed, man’s face, but no less Keats. He suppose being endlessly trapped would — and did — lower those needless walls. For both of them.
His battery light flashed red.
This was it, the endgame.
He had only an hour or two before shutting down, likely for good, and the two would be officially buried alive in their own little makeshift mausoleum. A temple of their friendship, of their companionship, and what ifs. Let them be fossilized. They were would-be lovers encased in an eternal embrace, entombed in the place they’d previously called their home, however temporary they thought it’d be.
He’d never been the type of guy to wax poetic, especially over something so sentimental, but hey, the occasion called for it.
Call it a eulogy. A scripture of his own making.
Here lies two men who could have been, who were, who will never be again. Friends, lovers, some might have even said soulmates.
Fuck.
He was making himself sick. Keats would’ve made fun of him if he’d repeated any of these thoughts out loud, and then, in the same breath, would have thrown him a notebook, telling him to keep it to himself, regardless that they'd both know he’d have snooped the first chance he got. It was the thought. Keats cared, even if he made an effort to hide it.
He’d call Keats an obvious man, if he wasn’t painfully aware of his own obviousness perceived by Keats.
A sizeable rock knocked his head, shoving reality into his arms, into the weight he desperately carried. “The fuck?” He glared at the ceiling. He was trying to die in peace.
His hearing tuned into an odd sound he’d been too lost in his mental maze to take note of before. It sounded… almost like machinery.
The red light of his battery blinked out.
He frowned as the machine's humming grinded to a halt.
Muffled, an unidentified female voice broke through layers and layers of rock. “Hello? Anyone there?"
Oh. That sucks.
They were too late.
Peering down at the man whose life Herman revolved around, he found his only regret in the entirety of his existence is not telling Keats he loved him sooner. His last thought, before his battery gave out and the whole world hushed, was a simple murmured: "thank you."