“It’s so very dark in here,” his voice came out in a hushed whisper, all breath and all on my neck. I inhaled sharply.

“Yeah,” I matched his tone, but deliberately leaned away from where I knew his body was in the darkness. “And...cold.”

“Yeah,” I heard him take a shaky breath. “Freezing.”

I blinked for more than a second, but nothing changed. Wherever we were was pitch black and filled with nothing. I found myself sitting upright, leaning against some sort of wall--or another sturdy surface--legs sprawled out in a mess of a configuration. My neck and back were stiff and sore like I had been here too long, but I would never know how long. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t even know how Skylar was positioned, all I knew was that he was inches away from me and breathing shaky, shivering, but comfortingly warm breaths up against my neck. 

I was afraid to reach out and try to touch something, afraid of both poking Skylar’s eyes out and making contact with something I didn’t want to touch. Something that was hiding from me--from us--somewhere in the darkness. Where were we? How did we even get here? I lacked any kind of memory that could give me even a semblance of a clue. I wonder if Skylar knew something.

I rubbed at my arms in an attempt to warm up, and based on the sounds of cloth against skin coming from before me I knew Skylar was doing the same. I inched my foot up against the rough ground, only now noticing how utterly numb and asleep my legs were. I winced, every muscle in my lower body filled with the tight, aching pain that stemmed from a lack of motion. How long had I been stuck sitting like this?

I made some kind of grunting noise, halting my warming attempts to reach down to where I knew my legs were. It was at that point where I couldn’t bend my knees without feeling the need to make noise, and I just had to grab my leg and force the joints to do their job. My chest hit against Skylar’s when I moved, so I pulled back a little but kept trying to rub at my legs to see if that would help any.

“Sorry,” I muttered, keeping the low-whisper voice from before. This time, however, I made no attempt not to breathe on him, and I could hear him hold his breath when I spoke.

He didn’t respond for a moment, only moved to put his head on my shoulder, and wrap his arms around me. “You’re warm,” he spoke softly in my ear.

He, unsurprisingly, was also very warm. It felt nice to have him pressed against my chest like that, as if he were some kind of space heater, except he was breathing and alive and also freezing cold. I gave up on my legs and leaned back against the surface behind me, careful not to crush his arms or hands behind my back. I, too, wrapped my arms around him, pulling him closer until he eventually crawled into my lap and turned his face into the crook of my neck, almost as if he were hiding.

“Archer, I’m scared,” he whispered, somehow with a voice softer than before. All I could think to do was squeeze him harder.

“I know,” I whispered quietly into his ear, brushing my lips against it in hopes that would comfort him. “I’m scared too.”

He took fistfuls of my sweatshirt and pushed his face harder into my neck. I could feel his lips, his nose, his eyelashes against my skin and it was equally comforting as it was upsetting. I wish I could help him more. I wanted so desperately to be better with comforting words, but all I could offer him was sympathy, a tighter hug, and my lips softly glazing over his neck. 

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He was shaking in my arms--vibrating, almost--and I wasn’t sure if it was from the cold, his fear, or both. I turned the brushing of my lips into quiet little kisses, almost nothing but still something. Though his body radiated the warmth of a person, his neck was cold like ice. I could feel my fingers getting numb as I rubbed comforting circles into his back, and I wondered if his felt the same.

“Where are we?” he asked in a shaky, quiet voice, and I could hear the tears welling up inside him with every syllable. 

I leaned my head on his shoulder while I considered my answer. I finally settled on, “I don’t know,” out of pure honesty and a lack of a better answer.

“Archer,” he spoke into my collarbone, voice somehow shakier than before. “What if we die here?”

“We won’t die here,” I said reassuringly, though quite honestly I knew it was a possibility. “Skylar, we’re not gonna die. It’s gonna be okay. We’ll be okay.”

Maybe I was lying, but it made me feel just a tiny bit better to hear those words, even if I was the one saying them. I hoped they were having a similar effect on Skylar, who was still shaking, hot, wet tears starting to make contact with my skin.

I slid one of my hands up his back and to his head, where I entangled my numb fingers with his hair and pulled him in closer. I finally found it in me to bend my knees up as to cradle him with my body more, and his grip on my sweatshirt had tightened with the onslaught of his tears. I shoved my face into his neck as well, trying my hardest to bite back the tears I could feel deep in my throat and behind my eyes. I screwed my eyes shut, though it didn’t change much in the real world. It was still dark, but it was a much more known darkness. It was my eyelids, and not some scary, cold room.

I wanted to whisper any more comforting words I could muster into his ear, even if they didn’t work that well, but I kept my mouth shut out of fear of allowing him to hear my shaky voice, afraid that tears would spill and dampen his shirt. My shoulder was already damp, and my ears were full of the heart-wrenching sounds of my own boyfriend muffling his cries into my shoulder while I sat, defeated, useless, and chewing on my lip. 

“Shh…” I tried, hoping what little I could say would do something. “It’ll be okay.” my voice broke, and I knew that he could tell, but he didn’t say anything. He only gathered my shirt tighter into his hands and squeezed his thighs against my waist.

He pulled his face out of my shoulder, which made me do the same, and when I opened my eyes I knew it was his face in front of me but I still couldn’t see it. 

“But what if it’s not?!” he protested, voice significantly louder than it had been before. I blinked, though it still changed nothing. “I just--” he started to speak, then sobbed, and his forehead hit against mine. 

My head fell back against the surface behind me, and I heard another sob slip past his lips, and I felt it against mine. I ran my fingers through his hair and tried to think of something, anything I could say to make him feel better. I had never felt so useless, hopeless, and like nothing in my entire life. I didn’t know where we were. I didn’t know how we got there. I didn’t know how to get out. 

I didn’t know anything.

“Skylar, I love you,” I whispered, moving both hands to be on his face. “And I don’t want to die anywhere, ever, no one does, but if I have to die with someone then I want it to be you.”

“Archer,” he whispered, his voice fallen back down to the scared softness of before. “I love you too.”

And so he kissed me. He kissed me with lips slick with salty tears, and it was a mess, but I needed it. It was the only thing in the world that could make me feel even the slightest bit better. It was soft, sweet, and full of so much love, yet it remained sloppy and wet with all the wrong things. I pulled him as close to me as I could get him, and his lips slipped from mine for just a second, but neither of us would let it last any longer. I wanted to get us out of here--wherever here was--so I could kiss him like this forever.

Well, maybe I could kiss him like this forever. Because it seemed that our forever wasn’t exactly as long as we had dreamed it would be. But at the very least, we were together. Maybe that was all that mattered. Him and me. Me and him. Alone, scared, cold, and in the pitch black abyss of nothing.

Forever.