It wasn’t long before the computerized environmental systems of the bunker had determined that Adan had used the ‘appropriate’ amount of water for his shower and cut the supply off once more. He sighed and pushed wet locks from his eyes before stepping out of the stall again. He retrieved the towel and wrapped it about his waist yet again. He then gathered his discarded clothing into his arms and stepped out of the bathroom.
Assuming Aura had made her way back to the main room, he glanced at the first of the other two doors down the left side of the main hall. With a breath he tapped lightly upon the door, just in case she had hidden herself away inside there instead. Upon receiving no response, he pushed the door open to the first of the two bedrooms. His eyes moved around the room, which looked pretty similar to any normal bedroom in any normal home, except for the decided lack of windows and the monochromatic metals that pervaded the style of the place. He sighed again and made his way toward the sturdy white dresser.
Having found several one-size-fits-all tee shirts and sweatpants stored there, he set aside his much more stylish black v-neck designer sweater and leather pants from the day before, as well as his towel, and slid the sweatpants over his narrow and well tanned hips. Grasping one of the t-shirts in his hand rather than sliding it on while his shoulder length locks were still dripping, he moved out of the bedroom again and back in the direction of the glass doors that led to the main room.
As he stepped back into the room, he found Aura burying her face against the knees which were once again pulled up to her chest. It appeared that she was once again trying her best to fight back the latest of her anxiety attacks, which had become even more frequent in the last twenty-four hours.
He sighed softly, sadly, knowing that her anxiety had to be ten times worse than his, which was already pretty strong itself. He then swallowed and tried to think of anything he could say in an attempt to distract her from her own thoughts right then.
“Guessing the news isn’t back on yet?” he asked.
“What do you think?” she mumbled against her knees, not looking back at the sound of his voice as she tried to get her breathing under control once again.
Another soft sigh and a sad look over at her. “So, the shower didn’t work.”
Still not lifting her head to look back at him, Aura furrowed her brow. “What do you mean it didn’t work?”
“To wake me up” he replied, hoping that maybe she’d find the slightest bit of humor in him recalling his earlier comment to her. Not that humor was even remotely easy to come by after the horrors they had watched unfold on the TV screen the night before.
“If you really wanna know what’s happening out there, feel free” she mumbled, finally lifting her head just enough to gesture to the computer in the corner of the room.
But when Aura allowed the slightest glance in his direction to see the questioning look on his face, another hard lump formed in her throat. Her eyes moved over his bare torso as tiny rivulets of water dripped from his still wet hair, gliding down over his smooth tan chest, only to die upon contact with the waistband above where the sweatpants were almost obscenely clinging to his body.
Though her face must have said more than her voice could at that moment, as he changed his next statement from asking her to clarify what exactly she was telling him about the computer and instead gave her a worried look.
“Seriously, Aura, are you OK?”
“Seriously, Adan, have you suddenly developed an allergy to wearing a shirt?” she bit back, her frazzled nerves leading to a harsh defensive tone to force down any of her current inner thoughts before they could become even more apparent.
“What?” he replied, then added, “my hair’s still wet so I...” She simply glared in response to his excuse and dragged her eyes away from him again. With another sigh, he pulled the shirt on over his wet locks, wrinkling his nose as he did. “OK, my apparently extremely offensive body is now covered. So what were you saying about the computer?”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Offensive?” she scoffed loudly, then just shook her head and quickly moved on before he could say anything more. “There used to be cameras outside. If they’re still there, and functioning, you can use that to see the feed” she told him sharply, her tone not matching her words at all right then.
It was then Adan who swallowed hard as he was beginning to wonder if there was going to be a whole new level of difficulty inherent in their current living situation; one that hadn’t even occurred to him to worry about before seeing her obvious reactions to him that morning.
Trying to compose his thoughts and move past the new worries he now had, he moved back to the other subject at hand. “Well don’t you wanna know what’s going on outside too?”
“I think that was pretty apparent from the news last night. Wasn’t it?”
Adan sighed again as he took only a few steps further into the room. “They only showed what was happening in the big cities. We’re three hours from the nearest city. Things might be OK here.”
“OK?” she replied with a loud tone of disbelief.
“Well, maybe not ‘OK’ but probably better than it is in the cities.”
“Former cities” she mumbled before curling herself back into that tight little ball of anxiety again. With another sigh, he moved over to the computer to find out once and for all how ‘OK’ things really were right outside this new home of theirs.
After nearly half an hour of watching the feeds from the four cameras hidden in the forest outside the bunker Adan let out a sound of resignation at not having found any more answers on the monitors either.
“Well, I don’t see any smoking craters or mushroom clouds. That’s promising, right?” he asked as he looked back at where she still sat on the sofa, Though now she was at least no longer curled into a ball, and instead just staring at the floor through watery eyes.
Speaking in a numb tone, Aura managed a reply, “I’m sure everything’s fine now and they all went home. Not like they had a reason for trying to wipe us all out with a virus. Sure they were just visiting and it was all a big misunderstanding. And all those people and buildings getting blown into nothingness on the news last night? They’re all fine. And you can go back to filming first thing Monday morning.”
“Now you’re just abusing sarcasm” he returned as he glared back at the monitors once more.
“What do you want me to say, Adan? What’s even left to say? You saw the same things I saw. It’s all gone. And oddly, you should be even more upset than me right now.”
He looked back at her with another confused expression at that particular statement. “When have I ever been more upset than you about like, anything?”
“The end of the world might be a good time to start.”
Adan scoffed softly as he rose from the desk and moved toward the sofa. “Pretty sure the end of the world would be pretty upsetting to everyone equally, wouldn’t it?”
“Pretty sure you lost a hell of a lot more than I did,” she sniffled sadly.
----------------------------------------
A few hours later, the two found themselves sitting across the dining table from one another after having had a somewhat bland lunch. The silence of their meal continued well after they were both finished, though neither of them made any move to rise from their seats. It’s not like they had anywhere else to be, or anywhere else they even could be.
As was usual during any awkward silence between them, he was the first to speak. “So, just tell me.”
Aura looked up at him questioningly. “Pardon?”
He let out a soft sigh and decided to try a subtler approach. “I’m your best friend, right?” Her only response was narrowing her eyes at him from across the table. “I’ve been your best friend since my parents moved and I started going to daycare with you, right?”
She shook her head over at him. “Why the recap, Adan?”
“I’ve been your best friend for fourteen years, right? All through all the craziness of my career and becoming famous and moving to the city, and everything, haven’t I?”
She continued to give him a puzzled look before finding a response. “Are we breaking up or something? Cause I gotta say, if so, your timing kinda sucks.”
Adan couldn’t help a smirk, sad though it was. “I’ve told you any time anything has ever been bothering me. It’s the whole reason people even have friends. So why is it that you can’t seem to tell me what’s bothering you so much, right now?”
She swallowed and tried to keep what little composure she could. “You mean, aside from the whole apocalypse thing?”
“You’ve been way off, way upset, ever since lock down started, Aura. Even before whatever the hell is going on out there now.”
“Pretty sure the whole virus, lock down, quarantine thing had a lot of people acting ‘way off’” she responded, though she could feel that anxiety bubbling underneath, ready to explode at any moment.
Adan just looked down sadly as she continued to evade and deflect his every attempt at getting her to open up to him. “You still can’t tell me, even now, can you?”
Forcing back the urge to run, or cry, or both, she made herself speak, “tell you what?”
“Why are you so scared to just be honest with me? Isn’t your best friend supposed to be the one person it’s OK to be honest with? What the hell are you so scared of now? Like you said earlier, what the hell’s even left to lose now?”
She took a long moment before she forced an answer, “everything.”