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The walls are closing in, quite literally.
This is how it ends, it appears: with the two of them being crushed to death in a ridiculous booby trap, without backup to even know where they are.
It’s practically an oubliette by now (Dylan’s mind not-so-helpfully runs a whole mini-lecture in the background hum of his thoughts on the history of oubliettes) and there’s nothing they can do about it. They’ve tried.
It only seems to be getting faster. Creaking, shrill grinding of metal on metal. The box getting smaller. Ceiling coming down, walls coming in. It will kill them quite gruesomely, Dylan’s sure. Perhaps even crush them into each other.
“You know,” Julian says, voice almost a croak—hoarse from shouting, unheard—“I never understood why in films and the like, people confess secrets and love and such in these sorts of situations.”
“Adrenaline, probably,” Dylan says. “Near-death experiences release all sorts of—”
“Dylan, I love your lectures, but I was going to make a point,” Julian says, and he says it so plainly, so baldly—I love your lectures—that Dylan actually does fall entirely silent.
And after a moment: “I get it now,” Julian says, far softer, and another creak rips through the air and they both flinch just a little. They’re quite close now, though not touching. “It’s a bit of a self-destructive urge. Like throwing yourself against the wall, hopelessly, just because it’s all you can do. The only thing left. Some hopeless hope.”
“You have a secret to share?” Dylan asks, a little breathlessly. He feels a little dizzy. He should be trying to find a way out, but they’ve tried everything. The trap is too cleverly designed. The only hope is someone interfering from the outside. And yet part of him isn’t just dizzy because of the rapidly waning hope, but for the excitement of more puzzle pieces. Julian’s always liked to remain mysterious; Dylan is happy to know him more.
“Of a sort,” Julian says, and he’s looking at Dylan all funny, eyes sad, and part of Dylan wants to just throw caution to the wind and hug him, they’re going to die, or they might die, there’s still time—
And then Julian’s hands are gently cupping his face and Julian’s kissing him.
It’s—soft, chaste, but painfully, achingly tender, and Dylan. Dylan doesn’t push him away. He should, he knows he should, but he doesn’t.
He slowly, tentatively kisses back.
He can feel Julian’s beard, Julian’s lips parting, Julian’s hands. And it’s Julian, his friend Julian, his Julian, who Dylan has, of course, never kissed. Julian whose lips are soft and hands are gentle and—
He pulls away, and when he does, for only a moment, those big, dark eyes are trained on Dylan, sad and soft and also full of love, oh—oh god, he—had he—how long—
(Dylan has no idea what his face is doing, what sort of expression he’s making, what feelings are showing on his face when he can barely make sense of what feelings he’s feeling—)
His hands are still on Dylan’s face when he glances away like he’d been burned, goes to draw back, which is of course when the ceiling screeches and everything grinds to a halt.
The trapdoor begins to slide open and they jump apart, light spilling down from above, Dylan’s back hitting the wall, and Lizzie peers down at them from the gap.
“They’re here!” she calls out behind them, and the walls have stopped moving and Dylan’s eyes fly to Julian—flushed and pressed back away from him, lips just a little reddened. Almost embarrassed in a way Dylan’s never seen from him.
For a moment, just—those big, brown eyes, huge and dark and hurt.
And then Julian looks away. And all those tall stone walls slide up again, closing in in a whole new way.