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Oscar stumbles. Cliff surprises them both by pulling him closer.
“Eyes,” he says, when something other than blood gleams behind the man's glasses. The gleam vanishes.
(”Sorry about the blood.”)
Cliff remembers tasting it.
It wasn't horrible, he thinks, vaguely surprised. It wasn't good either, no, but it's just... stuff.
Everything is just stuff.
I won.
Every shallow breath from the body beside him proves that.
I-won I-won I-won.
The realization sinks into him like a heartbeat. Critical. Constant. Soon unconscious but always present.
“They're not as tough as they look,” he says, in case Oscar doesn't understand that everything is all right now.
“Wouldn't know.” Oscar's voice is barely there.
He's ok enough to joke. He's ok. He's fine.
“Hah hah,” says Cliff, like the joke isn't funny enough to laugh at. Because Oscar is a dork, and it isn't. He smiles anyway. Shows his teeth at the dark because Oscar is a dork.
“I can handle them,” he says, to make sure.
Oscar says nothing. Oscar is being so, so quiet.
He should be, comes a thought that thinks itself. Foreign. Like a presence hovering with its chin on Cliff's shoulder and satisfied smile on a level with his ear. He's afraid.
Earlier today Cliff would have thought “Of course,” and “What did I expect?” Bitter. Angry. Misjudged.
Tonight is different. His hand curls under Oscar's bicep. The human warmth should be intolerable but instead it's like the blood. Not bad. Not good. It just is.
Oscar's uncertain footsteps follow his lead. Relying on him. Needing him.
But he'd pull away if he could.
Oscar should be scared.
Oscar should be careful.
Something skitters across the back of Cliff's hand. He looks down and finds eight perfectly round eyes observing him from the man's shoulder. He bats the spider away.
Oscar stops breathing.
“Cliff?”
“Nothing,” Cliff tells him, “just a spider. We're almost there," he adds because they are, and they're fine. Oscar is still acting like he doesn't understand that.