FSE

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You ask if I'm scared and force a winning smile

Gods above and below, I think I'm in denial

But hell or high water you've got style

So yeah I think I could stay a while

I miss you so much

---

They'd chosen, somewhat grimly, to stay in the bunker, at least as long as it took for Hartley's leg to heal and allow the pair of rodents to process their situation. And of course the storm outside certainly informed their decision making process as well.

Though, Mariner was having none of it.

Every echo, drop of water, and flickering light got his heart racing. Sounds, both real and imagined, danced and warped in his imagination. The rat even swore he was hearing voices whenever he started drifting off to sleep, only to sit up in a panic and hear nothing. They were clearly just auditory hallucinations, ostensibly brought on by stress and a lack of sleep. Probably.

He was barely sleeping at all in fact, curled up at night on the floor of a secluded, dead-end hallway. Hartley suggested at least trying a guest room that had been set aside near the entrance, one often offered to the mouse in the past. Mariner had rather sternly refused the offer, of course. He wasn't some kind of looter who could just take over someone's home. Especially a great many someones who could just reappear at any moment.

l"If there's anyone alive in the first place to come back here at all." The rat had said, snapping at Hartley in a state of near panic. Which, it turned out, was the wrong thing to say to the mouse.

It turned into a fight with Hartley shockingly quickly. The mere suggestion that the shrews and moles of the bunker hadn't merely walked out the front door got the mouse shouting, squeaking and frantically waving his arms about. It got Mariner shouting back too, followed by both of them storming off to their respective corners. Mariner to his hallway, and Hartley to his familiar guest room.

The rodents settled the argument later that night, with the help of a liquor cabinet in Hartley's chosen space. On a couch, sitting together they talked about comics and movies and people they knew. Mariner was only half paying attention when Hartley started talking about the inhabitants of the bunker.

"I just, I dunno Mariner. There should be more, like, sound in this place. There should be shouting and fighting. Things moving. Doors closing. Laughter." There was a sniffle from the mouse as he took another drink from his bottle. He wiped clear liquor from the corner of his muzzle and then pawed at his eyes, followed by a cough and then a quiet little whimper. Mariner was half drunk himself and it took a moment to register the tears flowing down Hartley's cheek.

Without thinking, Mariner wrapped an arm around the smaller rodent and pulled him close, because mice were delicate little things and Mariner didn't know what else to do. Then the mouse started sobbing in earnest, which for some reason got Mariner crying too.

Maybe they were both just incredibly lonely creatures, but-

When Hartley looked up into Mariner's eyes it was heart melting. The mouse tilted his muzzle up to Mariner's and they briefly brushed whiskers before leaning into an absolutely whisker curling kiss. An awful, lonely, sucking thing in the dark of a place where Mariner felt anything but comfortable. Having a warm friend so close certainly helped though.

Both rodents pulled away with a smack of their lips. Hartley started laughing and wiped at his eyes. He wiggled away from Mariner to the other end of the couch with a nervous mousey chirp, "Sorry."

Mariner sank back into the faux leather couch with his tail flicking at his feet and his whiskers twitching, "Don't be. I'm not."

"You're right. I'm just feeling down on myself. Feeling down on all this." The mouse said as he motioned to the open door to the room they were in, out to the hall, "I needed that, but I don't think-"

"Yeah. I understand. We're both drinking. We're both depressed. We're both, uh, here. In this place, you know. I don't think now is really the time."

"Right. Not a healthy decision." There was quiet for a few minutes, though it wasn't an awkward silence at all. If anything it felt like a good reprieve from all the thinking and worrying the pair had been steeped in since they met. The mouse cleared his throat and tried to start the conversation up again, "Mariner. Can you tell me about your mate? You've mentioned him a few times since we met. I wanna hear about him."

"Oh. Well, he was my mate. He was kind and wise. Had the best smile on Veles, and a great ass. I-" Mariner took his turn to wipe at his cheek, "It's not hard for me to talk about. It's not a dark secret of mine or anything. I just don't know how to describe him in a way that's really, uh, worthy of him."

"Just, tell me a story about him."

And the rodents got back to talking, back on track, back to the bitter drinks.

The rat woke up on the floor the following morning, alone in the room. It only took a bit of wandering for the rat to find Hartley, who was busying himself with clearing stacks of crates from one of the longer walls in the entrance corridor. He'd started hanging photos of various shrews and moles along the length of it.

It was easy enough to help Hartley move some of the larger obstacles before Mariner excused himself and left the mouse to it. Though he briefly lingered in the doorway at the sight of the mouse staring morosely into a photo of a shrew. One with particularly pronounced greying on their muzzle. That was a little worrying.

The rat felt the mouse's grief, almost as acutely as he felt the presence of all the people that should have been in the bunker around them. He was really starting to pick up on all the little ghosts inhabiting it. There was no way Mariner could ever be comfortable in it's tunnels.

Mariner went for a shower to try and clear his head. There was a communal bathroom with shower stalls that Hartley had pointed out to him within their first couple of days inside.

Stripping near a row of lockers, the rat tossed his clothes on a bench in a haphazard pile. Normally he would try to be a bit more orderly about it, but gods above and below he was just a little too tired to care.

All he really had on his mind as he stepped into a shower stall was the feeling of...

Hot water! The rat let out an unconscious little coo, deflating as he let the water course over his chest and belly. Which was kind of an issue because, well...

To actually shower he had to crouch quite low to get under the shower head. It was a little hard on his back, especially after carrying Hartley for so long and sleeping on the concrete floor the builders had used in the construction of the halls. Eventually he resorted to just sitting on the floor of the stall, at least to spare his back from the crouching. Even then he found himself tucking up a bit to fit into the space around him.

Nothing in the labyrinthine, poorly documented network of mole and shrew tunnels had been built with a rat in mind. The hallways were narrow and often low enough to make Mariner have walk at a stoop or scurry on all fours. The furniture was also comically small for him.

Remembering he was actually trying to bathe, Mariner shook himself back to reality and took a look around. Shampoo! There was a bottle in reach so the rat swiped it. The smell of it tickeld his nose as he rubbed it in, finding it to be rather oily and stubborn to remove. Mariner doubted it could exactly get into his waterproof undercoat either.

Ugh.

Suddenly, without having heard anyone make an entrace, there was a familiar squeak from just outside shower stall "Mariner?"

The rat jumped from the surprise intrusion. Still sudsy with the clinging, oily fur shampoo that definitely wasn't made for his coat, Mariner stood to his full height and peered over the stall at Hartley, "Yeah?"

Hartley took a deep breath and cast a nervous look around the room, "I officially can't figure out where everyone went. There's just nothing. No clues. No signs of struggle. It's like everything here just stopped."

Mariner draped his arms over the low wall and rested his chine there, "I noticed. It's... very scary. It's like a bad movie. This is like the setup for a horror film's first act."

"So what do we do?" Chittered the mouse.

"I say we leave as soon as we can."

"I was hoping you'd have something else to say. I-"

"Hartley-"

"No! I gotta figure this out. These people aren't just strangers to me. I know them. What happened to them matters."

There were a few beats where neither rodent ventured another word, the quiet that took hold accented only by the sound of running water. Mariner relented inwardly and sighed, "Okay. We'll try to solve this, but if we end up getting murdered by a cryptid who's lurking in the shadows I'm sacrificing you first. The cutest character always dies first."

Mariner wasn't the cutest creature in the bunker, he knew that. That only left Hartley, because as everyone knew, mice were the cutest creatures in all of existence. It was honestly only a tossup between competing mice.

?l"Thank you," Hartley whispered as he started limping his way back to the door, "It means a lot."

And without another word the mouse slipped back into the hallway. Maybe back to his impromptu memorial wall. No, his remembrance wall. Remembering for the just in case. The mouse wasn't going to let this go without a good answer and Mariner was starting to realize the true depth of that.

Hartley really loved the shrews and moles of the bunker.

Which was kind of inspiring.

Mariner, briefly lost in his thoughts, finally flopped back down to the floor with a huff and let the water run over him, "Fucking mouse. I knew I should have read more detective novels. Or watched more mysteries. I'd at least be armed with the tropes."

They talked about it more over dinner that night. For some reason they'd chosen to have it in the bunker's rather undersized cafeteria. Probably just because it was closer to the pantry. Hartley was nibbling at a cracker with some kind of pepper spread on it. Mariner was technically eating canned soup, but really he was just stirring it around with his spoon. He didn't have much of an appetite.

"If there's no clues here," the mouse said as he finished off his current cracker, "Then I was thinking maybe one of the nearby towns knows something."

"Nearby towns?" Mariner echoed blankly. Sleepily even. He wasn't really processing information at the moment.

"Yeah. There are a few towns farther into the region. Pretty spread out, but they're close enough. Someone has to have some kind of idea what happened right?"

"One would hope." Came Mariner's dull response.

The mouse tilted his head as a concerned expression crossed his features, "You okay, rat?"

"Me? Yeah. Just a little out of it all of a sudden."

"I get that. Why don't you go get some sleep. I can pack some supplies for a hike and we can go canvas the locals in the morning." The mouse patted the rat on the shoulder and made a shooing motion at him.

There was worry in his inky eyes.

Mariner rose from his undersized chair with a groan, "Sure. That sounds good."

He barely remembered dragging his feet into his improvised little nest in his dead-end hallway. Past all the empty quarters and rooms with amenities that should have been rife with activity. Down poorly lit spaces and unmarked rooms whose contents he could only guess at. This place was such a maze. So much excess for what it was on the surface.

What were they up down here, Mariner thought to himself.

The rat stripped off most of his clothes and curled up in the little space he'd made for himself at the end of the hall. His hidden place. He was barely able to get a blanket on top of himself before he fell asleep.

It was a dreamless sleep. No erratic, vivid imagery. No golden mouse to talk to.

Kind of nice actually.

Until the sound of a shrill chuckle assailed Mariner's ears and his eyes snapped open in a panic. Without moving his body his dark eyes darted back and forth, until they settled on a dark figure standing just a few meters away. It was small, maybe about the size of a mouse? Well there was only one other creature in the complex with him, so Mariner sat up in annoyance and called out to the shape, "Hartley? What's going on? There a reason you're being a creep all of a sudden?"

The figure didn't respond and Mariner found himself staring into its eye shine for an extended period of time. He got a chill down his spine and got up on all fours, ready for Gods knew what. And then the shadowy figure took off down the hall at a full sprint.

Mariner gave chase on all fours at a scurry, though he wasn't exactly sure why he was dumb enough to try. Very quickly he was almost on top of it, right on its tail, almost there. He dove for the figure as it turned a sharp corner just ahead. Mariner completely whiffed the catch and sailed through the air, skidded across the floor and smashed right into the steel wall with a dramatic thump. It only took a second or two for him to recover, but when he did there was nothing in the hallway where the figure should have been.

The rat got up on his feet and immediately ran to Hartley's room, where he beat on the door in a fantastic state of panic. Bleary eyed, the mouse opened the door, completely in the fur. Mariner didn't wait for him to speak before he pushed his way in and shut the door behind him.

"Hey! What's going on? Are you okay?"

"No. Don't wanna talk about it. Can I stay with you?"

"Sure? What's happening? Did you see a ghost?" Snarked the mouse.

"No! Yes! There's someone in here with us." It took a second for that to sink in. Then Mariner realized he nothing to follow it up with.

"I'm not gonna gaslight you; so what did you see?" The mouse was trying to be calm, diplomatic even. But Mariner was already wound completely into a tizzy, and now he was unwinding.

"I don't know. I thought it was you, but then it definitely wasn't." Mariner collapsed on the couch and realized he was hyperventilating, talking too quickly. Full of prey adrenaline and anxiety, he tried to steady himself.

Tried and failed.

Was he shaking?

What was that sound!?

Hartley locked the door, quietly sat beside Mariner, and let out an airy, fragile exhale. He crept into Mariner's bubble and wrapped his arms around the rat's neck, forcefully gnawing at the base of one of the rat's ears and holding him in place.

"Y- you're naked." Mariner stammered, suddenly aware of the fact that he'd willfully ignored in his panic. He'd have blushed if he wasn't already red in the face from freaking out.

"Who cares? Gods above and below, I'm not trying to fuck you, rat." The mouse stroked the back of Mariner's head and nibbled at his neck, "It's called power grooming darling. Isn't that a rat thing? Just relax for me. Deep breaths. Your burdens are my burdens, friend."

The last phrase sounded familiar for some reason. Mariner racked his brain to remember where he'd heard it, but came up short as he was wrapped in a blanket by Hartley, who was suddenly clinging to him rather tightly. And the mouse was warm and soft and the rat couldn't think of a better friend to have. It had been a while since anyone had been so tender with him.

It was difficult to accept.

"I-"

"Need to relax. You'll never find someone in here without some rest. We'll look in the morning. The door's locked for now. Nothing's gonna happen. I won't let it. I won't let anything happen to you." The mouse pressed his head into Mariner's chest as he curled into a little twitchy ball.

Hartley fell back asleep quickly.

Soft rhythmic breathing.

A steady, rapid heartbeat.

And though it took a while, Mariner was eventually able to calm down and close his eyes as well. A little bit of heart in a cold place could go a long way.

He'd almost forgotten that.