Archive of Our Own

Maybe there are worse things in life than tasting one of Garrett’s Eat It or Yeet It experiments.

At least, that’s what Angela muses to herself as she kicks Olivia square in the jaw. Her head snaps back on impact, putting her off balance long enough for Angela to scramble to her feet, but not before her assailant lets out a rageful cry in response.

Sorry, Liv.

Unholy screams of terror fill the air, the tinnitic cacophony bouncing off the walls of the Smosh office and piercing Angela’s ears with distraction as she attempts to make her next decision with even an ounce of strategy.

Angela’s since lost Courtney in the chaos at her insistence that Angela keep running while she splits off to hide somewhere with an injured, bleeding Shayne. If Angela wasn’t in complete and utter panic, she may have told Courtney that she wasn’t going anywhere and wanted to stick together. Unfortunately, Angela’s fight or flight response had other plans, and she felt her body move before her lips could protest otherwise.

Soaring down the hallway, Angela’s primal brain continues to operate on her behalf against her will, solely honing in on physical sensations and baseline facts.

She didn’t have another person to suffer alongside. She didn’t have the energy to run much longer. She didn’t have the bravery to search for a companion.

Her stomach growls.

She also didn’t have anything to eat other than a few spoonfuls of soup today.

She flicks her head towards the kitchen, which stands ahead of her. Bingo.

Sadly, it also catches the attention of a quite ravenous Ian, who foams at the mouth and lunges violently in Angela’s direction just as she registers the extent of his proximity. Figures.

Angela shrieks, veering towards the long tables across from the kitchen. She finds the common sense to pick up a chair as Ian swipes a hand at her, veins blackened and skin a sickly pale. He groans, almost to indicate his frustration at his inability to grab her.

Angela’s grip tightens on the back of the chair. In a split second of hesitation, her breath hitches in her throat as she makes eye contact with her boss. Her colleague. Her friend.

This is Ian. At least, it’s supposed to be. The biting and scratching and the desire for flesh over breast milk is new. It’s Ian, but feral.

As Angela contemplates whether or not she can bring herself to attack him, a ceramic mug shatters against the side of his head. Jolted, disoriented feral Ian barely registers the elbow that rams into his chest and knocks him to the ground.

“Bring the chair!”

Angela obliges, unable to comprehend the identity of her unidentified protector until she recognizes the brushstroke tattoo spread across his arm. They bolt across the office and into the kitchen.

“Damien! Where-”

“The electrical room.”

Damien moves into the corner of the kitchen adjacent to the fridge, throwing the door open.

“Go!”

Angela yelps as her body forcibly drops to the floor against her will and the chair clatters through the doorway, her chin hitting the ground with a painful click of her teeth. Feral Ian is back with an iron grip on her ankle. Apparently, he’s quite unhappy with his unfinished meal.

In a swift motion, Damien reaches for the container of seasoning salt nestled on the built-in shelf attached to the side of the fridge. As feral Ian unhinges his jaw, eager to break Angela’s skin, Damien rams the bottle into his mouth and jams his head back. The points of feral Ian’s teeth sink into the plastic and the vessel bursts, sending salt into his eyes.

Angela uses the distraction from the makeshift smoke bomb to drive her foot into feral Ian’s face, the crash of her kick causing his fingers to unfurl from her ankle. She stumbles through the doorway and Damien trails quickly behind her. He moves to slam the door, but feral Ian’s relentless hand plunges through the crack, leaving him unable to shut it completely.

Damien presses his back to the surface and bores the entirety of his weight against it, still wobbling as their intruding coworker continues to throw his body against the other side. Wordlessly, he fixes his gaze to Angela and then a broom propped beside the breaker box.

Angela immediately understands and picks it up, extending the end of it out the door to shove feral Ian’s arm with a hearty push. Damien rams his shoulders against the door once more and forces it shut with a click.

They stare at each other apprehensively as they still hear a low growl. There’s a slam and a discordant shattering of glass that hits the floor, then an enraged snarl as the sound of footsteps slowly fades.

The tension leaves Damien’s shoulders as he picks up the chair from earlier and wedges it beneath the doorknob at an angle to prevent anybody else from opening it from the outside.

Angela drops the broom and swallows thickly. Damien drags a hand across his face to wipe the sweat beading at his forehead, turning to her now that they finally have some sort of reprieve.

“Are you alright?”

There was absolutely nothing in Angela’s morning that could have prepared her for the preceding hours.

Her day starts out like any other shoot day at Smosh, with some extra unease built in due to the layout of her schedule.

Her primary concern is her presence in the latest entry of the Culinary Crimes series. Garrett has been workshopping ideas with Courtney to figure out if a deviation from the format is necessary nearly two years after its inception while also coming up with something appropriate for Halloween. The result is something truly terrifying: A version of the show that takes place in reverse.

More specifically, a version of the show where Garrett feeds the cast a base version of a dish. Then, he bastardizes it into something sinister, a la Eat It or Yeet It, that the cast has to pinpoint. For every incorrect guess, they take a bite of his mystery blend of ingredients from every dish on the menu, combined into a horrific slop.

He’s delightfully dubbed it The Ghost of Eat It or Yeet It: A Culinary Crimes Halloween Special. They all couldn’t be more mortified for their impending doom.

Angela makes a retching noise as Courtney narrates the breakdown for the video at the start of their week. Trevor frowns, shivering in the adjacent seat in disgust.

“Tell me why WE got saddled with this one?” Trevor whines, “I wanted to play Phasmophobia…”

He gazes longingly at the desk near the Games stage. Damien, Shayne, Courtney, and Arasha are slated to give their best shot at the game later in the week. Angela feels a slight pang of sadness on Trevor’s behalf, but not enough to overtake the sadness she feels staring at Arasha and Damien’s casual high-five at Jacqi’s mention of their call time.

She huffs to herself and reminds herself to squash the sting down like a Mormon crushing a gay, gay box. This…infatuation for Damien has since gotten out of hand. At least, it was supposed to just be an infatuation. Just a collection of misguided feelings because they’ve been in close proximity for the past few shoot weeks.

Frustratingly, misguided feelings for Angela have a way of guiding themselves if they linger for a little too long, and, also frustratingly, those feelings have overstayed their welcome far beyond the week they initially cropped up months ago. She was well past being able to convince herself that she was just confused from the karaoke livestream back in January.

Sure, the karaoke itself was part of it. Damien’s voice was clear and strong, but that was a given. He’s a voice actor.

No, the true kicker was how earnestly he praised her performance, though she hesitates to call it that. He smiled at her in genuine interest and awe, and it completely knocked the wind out of her. Her brain was on a giggly autopilot for the remainder of the stream.

Hence why it feels gut-wrenching in the moment to see Arasha take that spot at the Games desk. Sure, Arasha was in a happily committed relationship with Fabian and had no interest in Damien whatsoever, but it didn’t change the fact that Angela would have killed to spend an hour next to him playing a scary game and bantering with him back and forth. Especially when her alternate option is eating creations from Garrett’s twisted mindscape. 

Meanwhile, Garrett is happy as a clam, his mouth pressed into a menacing expression laced with excitement. Having left behind Eat It or Yeet It for over a year and a half, Angela can tell he’s absolutely not holding back with this new venture. As the crew disperses and begins setting up for Smosh Mouth, Angela gently nudges Courtney.

“I don’t think we would have signed up for this if he knew about everything involved in Garrett’s version of Culinary Crimes,” Angela says with hesitation.

“I guess Trevor’s never been on Eat It or Yeet It,” Courtney reasons, “But you’re locked in now! The only way you guys are getting out of it is if someone takes your place.”

Before Angela can respond, she hears the skidding of a sneaker across the soundstage and whips her head around in confusion. Trevor Evarts, ever the eavesdropper, bolts in the direction of his fellow cast members.

Courtney gently pats Angela’s head, “Assuming Trevor hasn’t gotten to them first.”

It turns out Courtney was right on the money about Trevor’s fervor in snatching up a replacement, as Angela later grimaces at the empty plate in front of her at the Culinary Crimes table.

She sinks into her seat, resigned to her fate. Between Amanda’s absence while she’s on maternity leave (“Sorry, babe. You know I’d consider if I was there.”) and Chanse’s sense of self-preservation (“There’s not enough money in the WORLD.”), she’s definitely stuck on Culinary Crimes duty today.

As she continues to give her plate the world’s most pitiful pout, she hears someone that she assumes to be Trevor slide into the chair across from her.

“Took you long enough,” she grumbles.

“Now you listen here, slick. I may be a good-for-nothing in your eyes, but the fact of the matter is that we’re partners on this assignment, whether you like it or not. Hear me?”

Angela flicks her head up in surprise at Damien’s unmistakable smirk. She matches his hokey Transatlantic accent with her own immediately.

“You’re on thin ice already, pal. I won’t be made a mockery by no one, especially the likes of you,” she squints her eyes in faux-disapproval, then drops her act as she fights a grin, “I thought Trevor was suffering with me today.”

“No love for me, huh?” he tuts in feigned agony.

If there was no love for you, it would make the next hour much easier for me to handle.

“No, just surprised!” she insists, “He wouldn’t stop talking about how much he was dreading doing this earlier. I can’t believe he actually found someone to take his place.”

“He talked me into it. He really likes Phasmophobia,” Damien says nonchalantly.

“But so do you,” Angela points out.

“Hey, sometimes they feed us good stuff here! I forgot to eat breakfast again,” Damien shrugs, “Besides, I tend to like the weird stuff, too. I figure it’s better to have at least one person who might like what they’re getting, right?”

She snorts, “You’re more than welcome to eat any of my monstrosities today.”

Damien holds a hand over his heart mockingly, earning an eye roll from Angela, who turns away to draw attention from her face. She can already feel it reddening over something as miniscule as a fake acknowledgment of her regard for him. She gathers that this is gonna be a long shoot already.

Angela changes the subject, hoping to cool the heat in her face, “Do I get to know your Halloween costume this year or is it a surprise?”

“Is it blasphemous to admit that I don’t think a costume’s actually happening this year?” he rubs the back of his neck sheepishly.

Angela gawks at him in disbelief, “That’s crazy. You’re our resident spooky guy!”

“Hate to break it to you, but the spookiest thing about me will probably just be how packed my schedule is,” he shakes his head, “I get back from Armageddon, like, two days before Halloween. I’m gonna be way too exhausted to put together a complete costume, let alone go out.”

He shakes his head in disappointment.

“Besides, Zelda and Freyja will need a girls’ night after me being away for so long.”

“You know, I was gonna judge that, but honestly, I’ll be back from Texas that same week,” Angela laments, “So I don’t even think I’m gonna be able to do anything in time, either…”

“Do what?”

Courtney, in an orange button-up and loose tie, joins the conversation, adjusting her hat and walking towards the lamp at the back of the set.

“Do nothing on Halloween, apparently,” Damien chuckles to himself, “Too much travel time.”

“Assuming we make it to Halloween after digesting this menu,” Courtney widens her eyes, “Let’s do this!”

“Words cannot describe how much I wish we were filming that instead,” Angela mutters.

Marcus calls action and Courtney begins to rattle off her intro. Within minutes, the trio settles into banter typical of a Culinary Crimes video, and Angela feels herself relax a bit. Damien has a funny way of helping her with that. He cracks jokes with her, “yes, and”-ing her bits to the point that Angela almost forgets about the affront to cooking about to be set in front of them. Their first course was some sort of soup, which means that Garrett has multiple avenues of torture to fuck up the upcoming dish.

Angela immediately lets out an indignant yelp in protest, “Court, I don’t think I can do this! I might have to throw in the towel on this one!”

Courtney gives her best horror movie scream as Damien pokes at the concoction with his spoon.

“Garrett, I volunteered to be here and even I’m worried about my well-being,” he smiles nervously.

Angela scoots her chair back and stands in fear, “Uh-uh. Not happening!”

They’re laughing. She’s headed straight for another crash out and they’re laughing. Well, the crew is. From behind the camera, Marcus clutches his stomach in amusement and wipes away a single tear.

“Damien, she needs our moral support!” Courtney giggles at her companion’s agony, “Angela, what if we both hold your hand while you take a bite? We’ll each take a finger.”

Angela’s heart stops in her chest.

Never mind. She’ll stomach Garrett’s nightmare dish over having a documented reaction to holding Damien’s hand, even if Courtney’s doing it, too.

Still, she can’t exactly out herself while they’re filming, and she’s an actress, so she puts on an affront that resembles a teenager that’s “over it” and extends her hand limply on the table in exaggerated defeat.

As all three of them accept their impending doom, a shriek startles Angela so hard that she drops the spoon back into the bowl and splatters liquid onto the table. Luckily, the Eat It or Yeet It bibs have been resurrected for this episode, too, so the droplets of soup don’t reach her clothes.

Across the way, Olivia runs onto the set, her shrill voice carrying throughout the building. It’s only when Marcus calls for cut that Angela notices that Olivia’s hand is clapped over a darkened maroon stain that blooms across the arm of her shirt. The trio immediately comes to her attention.

“What happened?!” Angela’s jaw drops.

Courtney takes her friend by the shoulders and steadies her voice.

“Liv, we wanna help you, but we can’t understand what you’re saying,” she states loudly over Olivia’s wails.

Despite her grounding demeanor towards Olivia, Angela can see tears pricking the corners of Courtney’s eyes.

“I don’t even know…I tried to keep him in the kitchen and I’m so sorry-”

“Who? Who are you trying to keep in the kitchen?” Courtney repeats.

The rattling of the soundstage doors causes Olivia to jump again.

“I-I couldn’t!” she sobs, “Not after Sh-”

The doors burst open and Angela finally processes an inkling of a reason for Olivia’s disoriented state. In the doorway, Shayne is knocked flat onto his back as he pushes against a convulsing, erratic shape similar to a human body. Ichor and saliva drip from the corners of its mouth as it growls and snarls and snaps at Shayne, who presses his forearm against the being’s neck. It hardly helps, as the creature tries to take another bite again, relentless in its ferocity. Nearby, a few members of production scream in shock, but none are as prominent as Erica’s.

Angela’s entire body shakes as she cranes her neck and confirms the suspicion she didn’t want to have. Shayne’s not fighting off some random creature. He’s fighting off Spencer.

Spencer with some changes to his body, that is. In any other context, somebody probably would have cracked a joke about him finally hitting second puberty to compensate for his lack of height, but…you know. Time and a place.

No, this is instead a deeply concerning transformation. Blackened veins. Pallid skin. Milky white eyes.

“What the FUCK?” Marcus yells appropriately.

It’s the last thing Angela can make out coherently before the lights in the entire facility power down.

In a cruel twist of fate, Angela curses whatever force or deity decided to teach her to be careful for what she wishes, as she sprints off the set of Culinary Crimes alongside Courtney and a disoriented Shayne, her bowl of soup still untouched yet somehow significantly less horrific in only a matter of minutes.

“Are you alright?”

Damien’s voice brings her to the present.

She breathes slowly, “Depends on what type of alright you mean.”

She rolls her ankle around and squints at it curiously.

“Everything’s good here, at least,” she shrugs. “Might be a different story in the dome-”

She’s cut off abruptly by Damien wrapping his arms around her, shocked at his forthright embrace. It’s the first bit of non-violent human contact she’s had since the start of all this. No yanking at her arm to keep her from falling behind. No clawing at her legs to keep her coworker from devouring her flesh and bones. No kicking to keep herself alive.

He’s warm from the exertion of fighting but also just because he’s always claimed to run warm. Pressed against him, she can feel how rapidly his heart is still beating from their skirmish with feral Ian.

“I’m really glad you’re okay,” he admits, his voice low and threaded with pity barely above a whisper, like the words will break if he utters them too loudly.

On any other given day, she would have been more cautious, too scared that her feelings would get the best of her and give her away, but this day has been hell on Earth. Regardless of how she feels, she hasn’t had respite in hours, let alone with a friend.

So she relents and wraps her arms around him in return, squeezing tight.

“I’m glad you’re okay, too,” she rasps.

The moment hangs in the air, and Angela can’t bring herself to let go. Damien doesn’t seem to mind, though, and they remain enclosed in the other’s space until Angela’s stomach bellows in hunger, desperate to be satiated.

Angela releases her hold on Damien, face red in an embarrassment that she furiously hopes Damien assumes is from her body’s cry for food and not the fact that she wanted him in her arms for the rest of her waking life, however long that may be considering the circumstances.

“…I may have forgotten to eat breakfast, too.”

Damien looks at her earnestly, then turns to the ladder that leads to the crawlspace and starts to climb.

“I tried snagging as much as I could from the kitchen but had to stop because Trevor almost jumped me,” he reaches through the square hole in the wall, “Heads up!”

A bag of chips hits Angela’s head, “Ow!”

“I gave you a heads up,” Damien shrugs, tossing an assortment of snacks from the crawlspace and stepping back down.

Angela fiddles with the plastic wrapper cased around a muffin and sits in the free stretch of space next to the ladder, “I think I’m just happy to have a functioning head, at this point.”

Damien gives a sad smile and slides against the wall until he’s seated next to her.

“I still haven’t figured out what‘s going on,” he pries open a bag of chips, “I was with Chanse for a bit, but we had to split up. There was no way I was reaching his hiding spot. Too high for me in too short an amount of time.”

“I mean, he’s a twink. What can you do?” Angela jokes, eliciting a small cackle from Damien, “…It makes me feel better knowing you saw him.”

“It was earlier in the day, but he seems relatively secure on top of those rafters in the art department,” he reassures her, “I think he’s pretty safe.”

Angela stares at the snack in her hand, worry still evident on her face.

“You should put something in your stomach,” Damien encourages her, “Better that than whatever Garrett had planned for us today, right?”

Angela huffs, raising an eyebrow at him, “You would’ve eaten it anyways.”

“Hey, I resent that!” he holds a finger up in protest, “Whatever was in that soup he Frankenstein’d smelled foul. Even I have my limits.”

She laughs and finally takes a bite of the muffin in her hand, savoring the crumbs of it like it’s the best thing she’s ever tasted.

“I don’t think I wanna be the one to say it, but…if you were to…describe what this is…”

Damien pauses awkwardly and Angela prevents herself from choking on the food in her mouth as she swallows.

In an instant, the catastrophes of their entire day are completely irrelevant as Angela relives the fear that her emotions are an ugly, exposed wound. She didn’t think he’d be so privy to her feelings that he’d call it out this quickly within proximity to each other.

In hindsight, it makes sense that Damien would want to establish boundaries early. She clearly misinterpreted his own comfort with the hugging situation and overstepped, and he’s doing this now so he doesn’t have to worry about her putting the moves on him while they fight to stay alive.

She psyches herself up enough to begin speaking. They have to rely on each other, after all. She can get over the feelings, no matter how much it hurts her.

“I mean…it sounds like you know about as well as I do. There’s no need to beat around the bush. I just don’t know if I have the heart to say-”

“Zombies.”

Angela blinks. 

He’s talking about…he means feral Ian. And feral Spencer.

She’s just inserting too much of herself into his words because she can’t un-feel the warmth on her skin from hugging him or keep her pulse from beating fast like it’s going to burst from her chest.

No, he just means the end times. Thank fucking Christ.

Her silence must concern him in some capacity, because he immediately backtracks upon saying it.

“Sorry, maybe that’s too insensitive of a word considering whatever’s wrong with them. Infected?”

“No, I’m on board with you,” Angela nods, grateful for his clarification on the subject matter, “I just don’t even know how it happened.”

“According to what Olivia said, I think it’s safe to assume that Spencer was patient zero,” Damien says between chewing his chips, “It didn’t become an issue until he broke out.”

Angela crumbles her now empty wrapper and pockets it, “Well, we need to do our own breaking out if we want any chance of helping them.”

As Angela stands, Damien tugs at her sleeve to stop her.

“I don’t think either of us are in a state to do that,” he bemoans, “The doors won’t open. I’ve already tried.”

“What the fuck?” Angela questions.

“Chanse and I tried at least 3 exits but it won’t work without power. That’s why I came here, but resetting the breakers didn’t do anything,” Damien explains, “We need to find another way, but it’s too risky right now.”

She pulls away from him in determination, “Listen, you’ve been at it all day, so I get if you wanna wait, but I can check for-”

Damien takes her hand.

“Angela, you’re shaking.”

She examines her free hand and sure enough, it’s trembling as she lifts it. Angela casts a sympathetic glance at Damien as his eyes plead for her to reconsider.

“I promise I’ll lay off when the morning comes, but we need to rest.”

Damn him and those eyes that make him look like he was forced to eat fucking cement. She’d commit murder for them if he asked even if she knows he never would.

“There’s room in the crawlspace if you wanna sleep somewhere dark. You’ll just have to, you know, push aside all the snacks I threw up there,” he points at the hole in the wall sheepishly, “I’ll watch the door.”

Angela sighs, “Fine, but what about you? You can’t do that all night.”

“I’m an insomniac, so I don’t know how much I’ll be able to sleep anyways,” he states plainly, “but I promise I’ll get you in a couple hours to trade off.”

Angela pulls away from his grip and tries not to think about the way his thumb brushes over her knuckles. She clutches the ladder and begins climbing, then ceases for a moment to make eye contact with him.

“I mean it, Damien,” she reinforces her point with the furling of her brow, “This only works if we work together.”

“Cross my heart,” he pats a hand against his chest, “Get some rest.”

Angela bids Damien goodnight and clambers up the rest of the way, shoving his snack stash to the side as she curls onto a spot in the corner of the barren space. The floor is hard and uncomfortable.

Her mind is also still racing. Even if they make it out of the office, what’s next after that? She still can’t bring herself to know why this all happened in the first place.

Angela flips over a few times, wanting to put herself to sleep. She takes off her overshirt and balls it up like a shitty pillow.

Surprisingly, that manages to help enough. Despite how awful of a day it’s been, the small cushioning of her head helps her feel slightly more human. The exhaustion in her body finally wins over her discomfort, and she dozes off, uncertain of the morning to come but hopeful that they’ll find answers at the very least.

It’s quite possibly one of the dumbest fucking catalysts to the end times imaginable, actually. Truly absurd and straight out of a satire. Smosh couldn’t write something so cruelly poignant if they tried.

Angela and Damien investigate the kitchen the following evening for anything that could help them. Their morning patrol only resulted in further failure, so they at least wanted to make a run for provisions if they couldn’t make a direct escape. Every door to the outside is locked, useless without electricity. They narrowly avoid feral Trevor on their way back to their self-proclaimed hideout, but not without checking the kitchen counters for anything that could be of use. Damien opens a first aid kit on the wall and begins picking supplies to stuff in a spare backpack they found abandoned in the bullpen.

As Angela pockets a spare Twinkie, she nearly trips over a stray can that rolls into her path. She squints in confusion as she scans the surrounding area, then frowns.

“Spence, you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

Damien walks over to Angela, “What’s up?”

Angela’s eyes roll so fast that she’s convinced she’ll tip over from the speed and velocity of the motion. This cannot be fucking real, yet here she stands with the proof.

Because the stray can blocking Angela’s way is specifically a can of Pineapple Orange Mango Mountain Dew Kickstart, leaking a thick sludge that oozes out of the opening. It rolls and hits the corresponding box containing the remaining unopened beverages.

Damien grabs the note attached to the box, helpfully left by Selina warning the Smosh cast and crew (especially Spencer) not to drink it due to a recent recall issued by Pepsi. If that wasn’t enough, she slapped bright red stickers across the surface labeled “RECALLED” for good measure.

Apparently this wasn’t enough to deter Spencer. Damien gapes in utter bewilderment.

“You’re joking.”

“What other explanation is there?” Angela points out, “He was alone in the kitchen when he tried to attack Olivia and Shayne. He’s the only one addicted to this stuff enough to risk drinking a recalled box of it. It’s also leaking mucus.”

At the sound of feral Trevor’s erratic footsteps once again, Damien and Angela rush back to the electrical room, noiselessly closing the door so as not to give their position away. 

“Why the hell is he back again?” Angela whispers.

Damien makes a disgruntled face, “Old Mythical habits die hard?”

She snickers at his corny joke.

They each press an ear to the surface, listening to the sounds of rustling, grunting, then sprinting again until the padding of sneakers against the vinyl soundstage floor fades out.

A sigh of relief leaves one of their mouths - at this point, Angela struggles to distinguish whose with how often they anticipate calamity and ruin - and Angela stands to shove the chair under the doorknob again. Damien rummages through his backpack and pulls out a camping lantern they plucked from the art department. He flicks it on, illuminating dusty space.

In the fluorescent light, Angela can see the bags under Damien’s eyes. He wasn’t lying about his insomnia. Under other circumstances, she might consider it a little hot, but right now it’s just concerning.

…Actually, scratch that. It’s Damien, so he’s always a little hot. It’s his bare minimum, but it’s concerning, too.

She slumps against the wall next to the ladder again.

“Well…hollow victories.”

Damien tilts his head to the side inquisitively.

“I proved Chanse wrong,” she beams at him halfheartedly, “I wasn’t the zombie that started the apocalypse.”

The expression Damien gives in response is a mix of disappointment and amusement. Angela just considers it a win that she gets to see him actually smile. If he did at all the day prior, she wasn’t able to see because of their limited light sources.

“Sorry we doubted you,” he sits next to her, offering her a fist bump that she returns.

Time passes for an unmeasured amount with neither of them able to continue the conversation. She can feel the sting of reality behind it and can’t bring herself to continue, no matter how silly it seemed initially.

Angela squirms awkwardly in her spot on the floor. Even though she’s capable of handling it, she’s not as privy to silence as she is to dialogue, doubly so when she’s in crisis. She’s itching to talk about something that’s not connected to a disaster. She and Damien have spent most of today talking shop. Searching for manuals for the electrical room, marking down exits, grabbing emergency supplies.

She clears her throat.

“You know, movies never talk about how boring the apocalypse is,” Angela digs the Twinkie out of her pocket and tosses it next to her, “I wish we at least had something to do in our down time.”

“Yeah, if we had functional technology, you finally could have shown me Wicked,” Damien quips.

Angela glowers at him, “Don’t tempt me. I don’t care if I’m supposed to preserve my phone battery to call for help if our service comes back, Damien. If you mention Wicked, we will be watching Wicked, end times be damned.”

He holds his hands up in surrender, “Listen, I’m not opposed if we can find a source other than your phone.”

There’s a levity in her chest at how casually he falls into a playful wit with her again, but it still feels uncanny. They’re both avoiding the bigger questions. At least, Angela believes so until Damien speaks up.

“I really hope Zelda and Freyja are okay,” he allows his fear to enter the atmosphere with his statement, “…Mom, too.”

There’s a hesitation that hangs in the air before he continues.

“I sent her most recent call to voicemail. I was in the middle of recording an audition and told myself I’d call her later in the week…and now I don’t even know if she’s alive,” he chokes on the last part of his sentence, the ghost of a sob on his lips.

He doesn’t break down, but Angela can see that he’s still holding the regret in his chest. He lets out a slow and gentle breath. An attempt to deflate the remorse.

“I get it,” she takes the same leap as him, putting her dread out in the open, “I didn’t go to Sunday night dinner with my family for the third week in a row because they needed me at rehearsal again.”

Angela knows that both her and Damien’s schedules have always been relentlessly busy. In the past, they’ve bonded over the fact that they test the boundaries of what they can squeeze into waking hours.

“Do you regret it?” Damien asks her, glancing at her as she digs her nails into her palms, “Not saying that you should, but I don’t know if I do or not.”

Angela contemplates the weight of Damien’s question, “…I don’t think I regret all the stuff I do. I like being busy, but if I knew this would be where we would be right now, I think I would have maybe tried to slow down a little more. I spend a lot of time building my career and I don’t always pay attention to my life outside of it.”

“Felt that,” he mutters, “It’s one of the easiest ways to feel like you have purpose. I’m sure as hell not making strides in other areas of my life right now.”

Angela blinks at him quizzically, and Damien falters.

“I think…well, no. I don’t think. I know I’ve had feelings for someone for a while now. I just haven’t said anything to her because I told myself it was never the right time.”

Ow.

Angela feels like her heart drops through her stomach. There’s somebody ideal for him, and he’s clearly smitten by her. A short glance at his expression makes it extremely evident. Despite the sadness in his eyes, there’s also distinct fondness in them as he pictures her.

Angela braces herself. The next few seconds are critical to minimizing her agony. As much as it kills her to know that Damien is clearly taken by this woman, she’s not about to let her own feelings get in the way of their survival. Or worse: their friendship.

So Angela performs. It’s what she does best, after all. She performed up until Spencer started the fucking apocalypse with recalled Mountain Dew Kickstart. She performed so she didn’t have to let Damien know about her feelings back when it was a possibility without this mystery woman in his life. And she’ll perform to her last breath now, relentlessly supportive yet in physical pain at further mention of her.

“You know, the beauty of stuff like this is that it pushes you to stop waiting for the right time,” Angela reflects, “You just make it the right time yourself. If we make it out of this, you should tell her.”

A single laugh expels from Damien’s throat, “That’s a pretty big ‘if.’”

“I’m just saying,” she shrugs, “Make it the right time.”

“If I confess to her, you’ll be the first to know,” he promises with a goofy voice, and despite the obvious snark in his tone, Angela still suffers an ache of sorrow for putting herself in this position as the helpful, encouraging friend.

Selfishly, she wants to know who it is. Slightly because she needs a place to direct the jealousy so she doesn’t risk it leaking into conversation with Damien. Slightly because the extremely insecure, unresolved part of herself - the one that still makes her feel like a serially ignored little girl obsessed with approval - wants to know what this woman is that she isn’t.

She reminds herself to swallow the feelings down once more and drop the self-absorbed mindset. This isn’t a Taylor Swift music video from 2008.

Angela settles for elbowing him playfully as they settle into a beat in their exchange.

“We should both try it,” Angela proposes, “Slowing down.”

That big “if” still hovers at the end of Angela’s sentence, and she can tell that Damien senses it, too, but she chooses to leave it off.

“Got any riveting ideas as to where to start with that?” he chuckles.

“Wicked,” she smirks, “I know it’s selfishly motivated, but it’d be nice to commit to something lowkey.”

“I’m down for it,” he agrees softly, “Halloween. Let’s do it.”

“Deal,” she extends a fist bump for him to receive, and he does like always.

At the conclusion of their night, Angela hesitates to climb the ladder to the crawlspace again and stops midway to catch a peek at Damien. His back is turned to lay the blankets they pillaged from various spots in the office onto the floor. She really doesn’t want to sleep far from another human again and almost asks if she can stay in the space across the room…

No. She just learned about his newfound paramour tonight. She’s not compromising her sanity for the warmth of companionship, no matter how cold and empty the floor of the crawlspace feels.

Angela continues up the ladder and latches onto the blanket around her shoulders, curling her body in the hopes that the comforting material will adequately substitute for the safety of having another body in the room.

It doesn’t.

If Angela could punch herself in the face, she totally would.

There’s a glimmer of hope that propels them forward on their patrol - a promise of a way out - and Angela squashed it like a bug.

No. It’s even worse. Angela squashed it like Bug. Since Bug embodies so much of who she is already, and right now, Angela can think of no worse punishment than to be herself in this situation.

Upon searching for Chanse, Damien and Angela stumble across their best lead for an escape route: a map of the air ducts that run through the entirety of the Smosh office. Damien grins in disbelief as he brushes his fingers across the layout.

“You can get out of here and find help if we think this out right,” he scans the plans with his eyes.

“Me?” she clarifies in shock, “Damien, we’re a team. I’m not leaving without you. This only works if we work together. Remember?”

“And we will, but there’s no way I’m fitting through those air ducts,” Damien shakes his head, “I think our best bet at this point is to get you out so you can get help. I’ll just have to camp out in the electrical room until then.”

He draws an arrow through the designated path and caps the marker.

“How do you know I won’t just make a run for it myself?” Angela prods.

“That’s not you,” Damien shrugs casually, and Angela’s chest flutters with affection.

She beats it down in the hopes her reality check will quell the admiration for him that still hasn’t gone away.

It doesn’t. It never does.

As Angela opens Damien’s backpack to insert the plans, she missteps through a streak of what she can only assume to be blood. She tries to clutch the straps as she tips over but misses and stumbles into a side table, knocking two glass bottles onto the floor. They shatter into pieces on impact with a resounding crash.

Damien’s by her side before she can bring herself to her feet. There’s glass in her palm and a metallic taste drips into her mouth.

“Jesus, are you okay?” he grabs her hand that isn’t covered in broken glass.

As she opens her mouth to respond, Damien’s own balance is completely thrown off by a force that yanks the strap of his backpack, jostling both of them.

Feral Ian is back.

Still gripping Damien’s hand, Angela uses it as an anchor for her to surge forward and kick feral Ian in the face again, stunning him long enough so she can stand and bring Damien to his feet. It’s becoming some sort of signature move for her.

They bolt towards their shelter but not without issue. Feral Ian, having had a few days to adjust to his undead life, is more durable than last time, which unfortunately means his recovery time has reduced from their last encounter.

It comes to a head as they re-enter the kitchen again. Damien trails behind Angela, and feral Ian launches his entire body at him, tossing both of them to the floor. Damien grabs feral Ian by the wrists to resist contact, narrowly avoiding the latter’s bite.

“HEY!”

In a panic, Angela whips an empty glass jar from the countertop and slams it at the back of feral Ian’s head with every bit of strength she has. It breaks against his skull into large chunks, thankfully distracting him just enough for Damien to shift his body weight and roll his boss’s body off of himself. Angela takes his hand to help him to his feet and they scramble into the electrical room again.

When it’s finally safe to release their hold on the door and place the chair, Angela seethes to herself.

“I’m a fucking idiot.”

Damien startles at her blunt self-deprecation.

“What?”

“You dropped the map to help me because I slipped-”

“You fell into glass-”

“We’re never getting out of here because I can’t just do something right for once other than be a burden-”

“Angela.”

She twitches at Damien’s raised tone, and he backtracks in regret at how charged it is.

“I’m alive because of you,” he states confidently, voice more tepid, “You’re not a burden to me. I would never think of you that way.”

She bites her lip in shame, allowing a silence to settle between them.

“I’m sorry-”

“For what?”

Damien studies her with genuine concern, and Angela feels powerless against the fervor in his stare. His eyes could really melt her with just one look, and she feels it happening now.

“Listen, I don’t want to make a habit out of sounding like that, especially towards you, but it’s like you said to me. This only works if we work together.”

She nods, moving to rub her hands together in comfort when she recoils at an unexpected, prickling pain in the meat of her palm. A quick glimpse reminds her that she’s injured, and she reacts too earnestly to hide it from Damien. He gives her a flashlight.

“We need to take care of that. Go sit down. There’s tweezers somewhere. I just have to find them.”

She begins to protest, “Damien-”

“Angela,” he mocks her tone and frowns pointedly at her.

She huffs and obliges in quiet defeat.

Once he manages to locate them, she flicks the flashlight on, shining it at her hand.

“Hold still,” he instructs, “It’s not a lot, but the pieces are pretty tiny. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Damien cradles her injured hand in the palm of his own to steady it, and Angela thinks that death would be preferable right now. Their lack of distance makes it near impossible for her to think of anything other than him right now, and it kills the deepest part of her soul.

They don’t talk while he examines her pieces lodged in her epidermis. She can feel the softness and warmth of his breath on her skin as he lines the tweezers up with the first piece of glass. She winces at the metal’s contact.

“Sorry,” he whispers as he drops the first piece of glass onto a paper towel next to them.

His low voice leans into a soothing rasp, and Angela poorly resists dissolving into the floor.

She budges her hand a bit and tries to desperately control her blush at the contact. Damien, despite his stature, is incredibly delicate with every move he makes, gently plucking each piece with focused, surgical intensity. It’s utterly unfair how unbearably attractive she finds it.

She’s having a hell of a time trying to steady their light source for him right now. He’s extremely close. Ungodly close. She can see the scrunch of his eyebrows in concentration. Her pulse pounds so loudly in her ears that she worries he can hear it.

Having removed every shard, Damien drips a small amount of some sort of antibiotic onto a cotton round and drags it across her palm slowly. Angela feels her face heat up from the tender way he skims the surface of her wound.

“Thanks,” she speaks in the hopes that some kind of casual chatter will settle her and get her to focus on anything other than how easy it’d be to jump his bones if he were actually interested, “It was probably better for you to do this than me. I can barely put a Band-Aid on.”

“I’m not exactly nurse Joy here, either,” he quips as he calmly places a clean piece of gauze and wraps her hand with a bandage.

He presses a piece of medical tape into place, and Angela mourns the fact that he has no reason to keep holding her hand.

As she gazes at him, Angela takes notice of a cut above Damien’s eyebrow, “Shit.”

“What?”

“There’s glass in your hair from earlier,” she squints at his hairline, “That’s from the jar. I’m sorry.”

He looks up from her hand, now freshly bandaged, and gives her an incredulous closed-mouth smile in response.

“For what?” he simpers at her, “Angela, it’s not like you can control where the glass goes.”

Dizzy and a bit entranced from their proximity, Angela reaches up and runs her patched-up hand through his hair, “I can control it now.”

She brushes the sharp bits from his brown tufts of hair, studying his soft waves to ensure that they’re completely gone.

Damien has…since gone completely mute. She locks eyes with him and abruptly realizes that this entire moment has become far more intimate than intended. She slides her hand away in an instant.

“Sorry…that was weird-”

“You didn’t-”

“I’ll just-”

“Angela-”

“I should probably-”

He takes her hand. She snaps her mouth shut in confusion.

“…I’m gonna tell you something and you don’t have to accept it at all. We can just move on like nothing happened and it’ll probably feel bad for me, but I’ll get over it…” he pauses like he’s ramping himself up, “When I said that you’d be the first to know if I ever tell that person how I feel? I really wasn’t lying to you. About being the first to know.”

Angela’s brain short-circuits. “Uh-”

“It’s you, Angela,” Damien declares, and she thinks she may have been the one to hit her head against a jar because there’s no way the universe could bless her with something she wants this badly.

“And I’m sorry if that makes things weird for you, but I almost died today, so…” he trails off, “You told me to make it the right time myself. I’m making it now-”

Angela can’t restrain herself any longer. She drops the flashlight she’s holding to put her lips on his as her grip dives back into his hair.

He freezes but quickly registers the implication in her movement and reciprocates, clutching the small of her back and cradling her jaw.

She kisses him hard, desperate and wanting. Damien crushes them closer together and she moves one arm to his back to help him, voracious like she needs to absorb his skin into her own. She sighs blissfully against his mouth, tightening the hold she has on his hair. When a pleased hum escapes his throat at her tug, she curses her lungs for needing oxygen as she breaks apart from him.

“Just glad you made it,” Angela gasps, beaming at his laugh in response.

Damien’s hands hover at her sides, “As long as…I just don’t want it to be a case where it’s just the adrenaline and you feel like you made a mistake afterwards.”

She scoffs disbelievingly.

“I’ve been agonizing over your mystery woman for the past day,” she confesses, “and agonizing over you for the past few months. There are no mistakes here, I promise…Are you feeling like this is a mistake?”

“God, no,” Damien reassures her, “The exact opposite. I don’t exactly sacrifice the chance to play one of my favorite games in favor of eating Garrett’s terrible food for someone I’m worried would be a mistake.”

Her mouth hangs open, stunned and a little giddy at his admittance, “You’re lying.”

“No way. Trevor asked Arasha to do it and I intercepted her,” he pushes a stray lock of hair from her eyes, “I promise you that whatever you’ve been feeling is a cake walk compared to how it’s felt holding this back.”

“Hm. Still don’t know if I can believe that,” Angela shoots him a sly grin, “But we have all the time in the world now that you made it. Prove it.”

He recaptures her lips with his own and obeys.

Contrary to her coy insistence a day prior, Damien and Angela do not, in fact, have all the time in the world.

Rather, a day later, the universe is back to fucking Angela over, this time worse than she could have possibly imagined.

It lulls her into a false sense of security in the morning. There’s a comforting heat from Damien that tempts her to stay attached to him for the rest of her adult life. She can’t be bothered with the fact that their layers of blankets poorly cushion the vinyl floor of the electrical room or that she’s lost feeling in her arm because she fell asleep with it snaked around Damien’s torso and couldn’t bring herself to get up the night before. His t-shirt’s soft material makes it impossible to detach herself.

She feels him stir beneath her but doesn’t flinch, simply shifts her eyes to peek at him. He blinks a few times, leers back and gives her a closed-mouth smile but very evidently presses his lips together in distress.

Angela props her chin against his chest to face him, “Love to know what you’re feeling right now.”

“My age, mostly. Laying on the floor is for teens at slumber parties, not men in their mid-30s,” Damien groans, “Hopefully your night’s sleep was better.”

“It definitely was. You make a good pillow,” she pats his cheek.

“Then it was worth it,” he presses a light kiss to her temple, “…That being said, I think I need to sit up so my spine doesn’t collapse.”

They adjust so that they’re propped against the wall again and Angela reattaches herself to Damien’s side, slotting her head at the crook of his neck. Part of her feels a bit embarrassed about how physically affectionate she is after only a matter of hours but quickly rescinds her shame when he wraps his arms around her in return.

“I really don’t wanna do this,” she clutches him tighter, voice small and vulnerable, “I don’t get why I’m not allowed to just have a normal morning with you.”

“That’s why we have to do this: So I can have even the possibility of more normal mornings like this with you,” Damien places his hand at her jaw and thumbs at her cheekbone.

Angela leans in to put her lips to his one last time, brain determined and cognizant but heart still needy and fragile. She swears she’ll quit messing around after this. They have a goal. Still, it doesn’t prevent her from deepening their kiss, desperate to maintain the illusion that their world isn’t collapsing in every other way for just a little longer. Luckily, she gets the sneaking suspicion that Damien wants to do the same when he follows her lead before they separate to prepare their supplies.

Their plan is straightforward. Retrieve the map of the air ducts. Escort Angela to the drop-off point. Get help while Damien waits it out in the electrical room.

When Angela reaches to pull the chair from the knob as they’re about to leave, she hesitates.

“What’s wrong?”

Angela turns to face Damien.

“I just…I don’t know. Maybe there’s another way that we can both get out-”

“Angela, we talked about this-”

“I don’t wanna leave you here,” she entwines their fingers.

“Hey,” he squeezes her hand in solace, “You’re not leaving me anywhere. You’re going for help.”

“I don’t know how long that’ll take,” she laments, “What if something goes wrong?”

“We can’t stop it from happening if it does,” Damien says truthfully, “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”

She makes a disgruntled face at him. It’s not the answer she wants to hear, and he knows that, but it’s also one of the reasons why she loves him: He’ll be honest with her. He’s gentle with her but he doesn’t coddle her.

“You’re right,” she agrees, “Let’s go.”

“Wait a second,” Damien tugs lightly at their connected hands, “I just wanna say before we go out there-”

“I love you, too.”

She’s possibly a little lovesick from this morning, but Angela’s heart swells as she utters it. Yeah, they’ve only confessed less than 24 hours ago, but she’s never felt as sure of anything in her life. It feels like there’s magic in the air. Like the stars are aligned. Like the birds are singing for her despite her irrational fear.

Like Damien…has not said a word in response. Angela stops daydreaming long enough to see Damien’s eyes bulging out of his head. Comically so. Eyes that communicate how much he clearly doesn’t expect her to articulate such an earnest declaration of love.

“Actually, I was…gonna tell you to make sure your backpack is zipped because it almost snagged on something the last time we were out,” he explains awkwardly.

Never mind. The magic in the air is actually the smell of paint fumes she huffed a little too hard. The stars’ supposed alignment is actually a constellation of a dagger that Angela only hopes she can twist and thrust through her own heart. The birds are actually laughing at her. And Angela wants to fly into the sun.

Well, it’s been a nice 18 hours. Too bad she just slammed the lid on this relationship’s coffin. Jesus.

She facepalms, hiding her face as it reddens.

“I…misread that like a maniac.”

“I’m really not upset about it, Angela. For what it’s worth, I, uh-”

He clears his throat. Waits a beat.

“Love you…Too.”

Angela snorts. She’s a disaster but at least he’s flustered, too.

“You don’t have to say it back just because I jumped the gun.”

“There was no gun to jump,” Damien shakes his head fondly, “I meant it.”

Her pulse skips and the universe feels a little less unfair.

Their trek back to where they dropped the map admittedly takes longer than either of them realize. Sure enough, the sheet is still somehow intact, rolled up and rolling around on the floor. Unfortunately, multiple infected Smosh cast and crew members are also intact and mindlessly stumbling around each other.

Damien and Angela duck behind a desk - Damien’s own, actually, not that it matters now.

“How the hell are there so many of them here?” Angela whispers in dismay.

“I have no idea, but we need a distraction to get them away from that map,” he contemplates his options as he grips the desk, making contact with something bulky.

It’s his bottle of Nin Jiom.

They both leer at it and an unspoken agreement forms between them.

He sighs, “I’ll get a new one once the dust settles.”

He hurls the bottle in the opposite direction and the crowd of infected sprints towards the sound of the shattered bottle in a frenzy.

Upon retrieving the map, Angela unfurls it and scans the layout of the air ducts.

“Head for the rafters,” Damien points to the starting point he marked yesterday, “It’s the most straightforward way out of here.”

She traces the path with her finger, “I’m gonna need to hold onto this. There’s no way I’m-”

They’re cut off by a violent screech.

In tossing Damien’s cursed bottle of mushroom goo, they forgot to account for feral Spencer, who apparently hovered at the back of the swarm and happened to turn around to see fresh meat.

His unholy scream alerts the rest of the bodies, who mad dash towards Damien and Angela.

The duo takes off towards the art department.

It’s terrifying. If one infected Smosh employee isn’t traumatizing enough, the lot of them speeding towards Angela is enough to set her up with the type of PTSD that would give Sarah Christ a run for her money.

She turns a corner. Then another. Then turns again.

She falters. Realizes she has no idea where the fuck she’s going.

Then realizes that Damien has stopped to pull a laundry cart of rejected props from the side of the hallway and barrels towards it shoulder-first to push it through the swarm. It knocks over feral Spencer and the other employees at the front of the horde, slowing them down long enough for Damien and Angela to regroup.

The map flutters in her hands, “I think it’s this way.”

As Angela prepares to launch into another sprint, she turns when she realizes that Damien remains where he is.

“Come on, we don’t have a lot of time. We need to get on the rafters.”

Damien hesitates, “…We said we need to get you on the rafters.”

Angela stops dead in her tracks.

“Damien, there’s absolutely no way-”

“I’ll throw them off your path-”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“It should give you enough time to start climbing-”

“I don’t care if we talked about it. I’m not leaving you like this!” she stomps.

Tears streak at the corners of her eyes and anger bubbles in her core. Leave it to him to flip this on her. She would have killed to know he cared this much about her when it wasn’t life or death.

There’s another wail from the direction of the herd.

“We don’t have time to argue,” he pushes a flashlight into her hands, “Angela, no matter what happens, you need to climb.”

“I can’t-”

“You can,” Damien insists, hands at either side of her face, “I love you.”

He pulls her in to close the gap between their mouths. The kiss sears on Angela’s lips and she clenches the neckline of his shirt.

Discordant cries grow closer and Damien forces them apart.

“I love you, too,” she trembles.

She scrubs the tears from her face, steeling herself to run but not before casting a final glance at him.

“Climb,” he repeats.

Angela nods, racing towards her path.

Left. Down the hall. Left. Right. Rafters in the corner.

She tears her sight from the map and glimpses at the orange shelves in front of her. Angela stuffs the map haphazardly into her backpack, jumping at the sound of the impending stampede. She leverages her entire body on top of the lowest wooden shelf so she can readjust and begin gripping the holes in the metal support beams to scale the side of the rafter.

Left foot. Right hand. Pull. Right foot. Left hand. Pull.

As she hooks her foot on the hole in the next section of the metal beam, she hears an unmistakable scream of agony that ceases her ascent. It rattles her entire being and her blood runs cold as she misplaces her hold and slips, crashing to the floor. Her bag softens the blow to her back but does nothing to prevent the pulsating ache at the base of her head.

Angela claws to her feet, mind disoriented and vision blurry from the impact of slamming her head on the ground. Before she can grasp at the support beams, she senses something grab her and toss her backwards by the opening in her backpack.

Saliva drips from feral Spencer’s teeth. Angela can see the blackened veins embedded through his skin. His eyes are a milky white, bloodied and soulless.

Stricken with fear and heartbroken, Angela feels something in her break as she resigns herself to her demise.

In another life, she would have reached the air ducts in time. In another life, she would have spent her Halloween on Damien’s couch loudly singing along to Wicked. In another life, she would have told him how she felt months ago so she could spend every morning waking up as blissfully as she did this morning.

But as for this life, she can’t gather the strength to carry on.

Feral Spencer seizes her by the shoulders and squeezes her eyes shut tightly, bracing herself for the inevitable bite…

…which never comes.

Instead, she jostles around as feral Spencer shakes her repeatedly.

“Ange? Ange.”

Wait…what the fuck?

“Ange-”

Angela’s head flies from the top of the couch as her entire body spasms from her slumber.

“Woah, woah. Ange, it’s okay.”

She blinks a few times for good measure as her vision refocuses and brings Damien - living, breathing, non-zombified Damien in a committed relationship with her on the non-derelict Smosh soundstage - into view.

“You’re not a zombie…” she breathes in relief, absolutely no forethought in her sleep-addled brain about how ridiculous she sounds.

Damien raises a baffled eyebrow for a moment, then decides to be fucking hilarious and plasters an over-the-top expression on his face as he juts his jaw out and holds his hands up, akin to Zombie Man on the hit Disney Channel show So Random!, complete with apologetic grunt.

“Oh my God,” Angela pushes his face away as he giggles at her exasperation.

“Old habits,” he beams cheekily at her, “We gotta go film the Halloween episode of Reddit Stories. We slept through our post-Tapple alarm.”

Angela groans, sitting up. She sloppily pats his forehead, then shoulder, then arm to reorient herself with the real world. Were it anyone else, Damien would immediately recoil in discomfort. Being his partner, he tolerates it lovingly.

“Please come with me to get coffee. I feel like I lived an entire lifetime and I need to wake up.”

Damien offers his hand to her - a true gentleman, nothing like the unhinged ones back on the teat raising children back from the mines at 8 - so she can stand. She trudges into the kitchen and groans.

“What the hell were you dreaming about? I haven’t seen you that distressed since the night you tried to sit through all of the Dear Evan Hansen movie with me and had that dream you went to high school with Ben Platt.”

She shivers in disgust, “Somehow, this one managed to be way scarier.”

“Scarier than Ben Platt playing a teenager at age 27?” Damien places a cup under the Keurig machine and flicks the button to turn the machine on.

Angela nods, transferring her attention towards the electrical room taunting her near the fridge. She stalks over to the door and pushes it open, flipping the light on.

Damien steps into the room, “Whatcha up to?”

“Checking the breaker boxes,” she surveys the metal panels.

“Right,” he accepts nonchalantly, “…I take it this was part of the dream?”

Angela faces him and huffs, “You’re gonna laugh at me if I tell you.”

“Probably,” Damien responds truthfully, “but you make me laugh all the time. That’s nothing new.”

She smirks at him. Yes, he’s blunt, but he also knows how to lay it on thick. Not that she’s complaining.

She takes a deep breath, “Spencer started the zombie apocalypse because he drank recalled Mountain Dew Kickstart.”

Damien bites his lip to desperately stifle his laughter.

“See, I knew you were gonna laugh!” she rolls her eyes and he fully breaks, the sound of his cackles already sobering her brain up from her nap and allowing her to take it less seriously, “I know it sounds dumb now, but it felt super real and scary.”

He shakes his head, “So why are you in the electrical room?”

“Because I’m checking that there’s power to all the doors,” Angela squints at the text scrawled on the small door to the breaker box, “In the dream, the power was out and no one could escape through the doors without turning it back on.”

“That’s completely illogical since there’s at least, like, 3 emergency exits that lead to the outside without using a scan.”

“Oh, my mistake. I’ll forward it to the writers so they can take notes for next time,” she quips sarcastically, “This is also where we camped out.”

“We?” Damien emphasizes incredulously, “I was in this one?”

“Yeah,” Angela tilts her head at the crawlspace, “We used this room to hide from feral Ian. And feral Trevor.”

“Was it graphic?” he grimaces, “I deal with dreams like that sometimes. I know it’s not fun.”

“Graphic? Not really,” she reviews, “Scary? Yes. Extremely.”

“Zombies scare you that much, huh?” Damien ponders, “I didn’t realize.”

“Zombies scare me a normal amount,” Angela insists, “but the idea of you dying and us not being together scares me more than anything else that dream could have thrown at me."

Damien is uncharacteristically quiet, and Angela can tell it knocks the wind out of him to hear her express her fear so openly.

“You told me how you felt and kissed me in this room, and then you died, like, basically right after,” she explains, a hint of a pout in her words.

Damien softens at her earnest confession and Angela once again finds herself endeared by his compassion. If anything, her dream is a reminder of how grateful she is that their relationship isn’t bogged down by earth-shattering disasters.

“Guess we have to prove your anxiety wrong, huh?” Damien takes her hand and leaves a delicate peck on her lip, “There. I told you how I felt. I kissed you in the electrical room. Let’s go film Reddit Stories so I don’t die basically right after.”

“I mean, it was way more intense than that, but good start,” Angela mutters bashfully.

He nudges her playfully, “Well, I guess you really can’t deny it now.”

“Deny what?”

Damien lets his beautiful pause hang in the air with his shithead grin, “That I’m the man of your dreams-”

“Oh, get over yourself!” Angela nudges him back.

They exit the electrical room, both feeling a bit guilty because they realize they’re holding up production, when Damien genuinely turns to Angela.

“Does it feel less scary now that we talked about it?” he asks with authentic concern.

He closes the door behind them.

“Honestly, yeah,” Angela sighs in contentment, “I think it woke me up, too. I don’t even know if I still need the coffee.”

As Damien removes the now filled mug from under the coffee machine, Spencer pops into the kitchen and reaches into the fridge.

“‘Sup,” he greets, “You guys still got Reddit Stories?”

“We’re a little late to it, but yeah,” Damien shrugs.

Angela takes another deep breath. She’s about to go film Reddit Stories with Damien. Damien’s about to make her laugh on that couch for an hour with Shayne. Spencer’s about to crack open a can of Mountain Dew Kickstart.

At least, that’s what he thinks.

Her real world brain understands that there is no threat of Spencer ingesting recalled Mountain Dew Kickstart. Her dream brain sees the can and treats her dreamscape like a premonition from a Final Destination movie.

Unfortunately, Angela’s dream brain works faster than her real world brain in this moment and sends a signal to her muscles to slap the can out of Spencer’s hand with an undignified yelp.

Spencer jumps at the impact of the can hitting the floor, the fluorescent carbonated liquid pooling in the spot in front of the fridge. Spencer and Damien turn to Angela in stunned silence for at least 3 seconds.

She cringes.

“Actually, I think I still need that coffee.”

Damien hands it off to her without a second thought.