The Hollow Grove

Robert’s crouched by the far wall, breathing shallowly. When he first took the rest of his suit off, he was flushed red, but that must have changed at some point when Chad wasn’t looking—now he’s too pale. Chad doesn’t know what that means exactly, but he knows it can’t be good. 

Chad’s huddled in the corner, staring at Robert and trying to keep a lid on his anxiety. The heat doesn’t bother him, but he fucking hates small, enclosed places. The space feels like it’s shrinking, bit by bit. The air feels thin.

It’ll be fine, he tells himself. Robert sent out an SOS. The team will be here soon. 

Robert hisses suddenly, and Chad watches him collapse onto his ass and stretch his legs out in front of him. He doesn’t realize he’s fretfully tapping his fingers on the floor until Robert glances up at him. 

“Cramp,” he mutters, massaging the muscles in his thigh. His skin is so pale he looks sickly, but he’s still dripping with sweat. 

Chad looks away, his eyes falling on the scorch mark on the opposite wall of their prison. 

He tried to melt through it earlier, after Robert failed to find a way out. But the material must have a high fucking melting point, because nothing happened besides the temperature ratcheting up even more. 

At some point, Robert shouted at him to stop. 

“There aren’t any holes in the container,” he said from his spot on the floor. He must have sat down at some point while Chad was focusing on the wall. He was flushed and sweating, and swaying just slightly. “The air that’s in here right now is all we have.” 

He didn’t say it, but Chad heard the implication—by setting a fire in the container, he may have just cost them hours. 

Horrified, he sank wordlessly to the floor on the opposite side of the container from Robert. The air suddenly felt a little thinner. 

It feels thinner than ever now. Chad can feel it struggling to fill up his lungs. He feels light-headed, like he might pass out. He fucking wishes he could pass out, just to skip to the rescue part of this mess. But he has this terrible feeling that if he falls asleep now, he’ll never wake up again. That he won’t see the team rescue them, that he won’t make it to his niece’s soccer game tomorrow, that he won’t ever hug his parents or make his sister laugh again. That he’ll never hear Robert’s voice saying, “Great work today” over the comms or see that stupid freckled face or feel that pleasant drop in his stomach when they’re paired together for a mission. 

He doesn’t want to fucking die.

“The air’s gone,” he gasps.

“No it’s not,” Robert says calmly, wiping sweat from his face. “You’re having a panic attack.” 

“No, I can’t breathe,” Chad cries, clawing at his chest and throat. He can feel his heat rising with panic, sending the already sweltering box into even hotter temperatures. “Robert—”

Robert crawls to him on his hands and knees, and the bizarre sight only makes Chad panic more. Robert would never choose to crawl unless he physically couldn’t get to his feet. 

Robert’s cold hand is on his chest, right over his heart. 

“Hey,” he says lowly, slurring just the tiniest bit. “Slow breaths. You’re okay.”

“Robert,” Chad says again, unable to describe the liquid terror racing through his veins. They’re going to fucking die in here, he’s going to suffocate—

“Okay,” Robert murmurs. “You’re okay.” 

And then he does something that shocks Chad right out of his panic: he hugs him. 

Chad’s never seen Robert hug anyone. He lets people hug him—he regularly endures Phenomaman’s back-breaking embraces, and he lets other members of the team hang on him with only a longsuffering smile, but he never initiates. Every time he and Chad have touched, it’s always Chad reaching out first—fucking up his hair, shoving his shoulder, body-checking him in the hallway. 

But right now he’s willingly putting himself in Chad’s space—his arms fold around him, one hand pressed to his upper back and the other petting clumsily over his hair. 

With the sudden hysterical thought that he must be on a hidden camera prank show, Chad haltingly brings his own arms up and hugs him back, the fingers of his right hand settling in the divot of a huge scar on his back. 

It’s not a comfortable hug by any means. Robert’s body is slick with sweat, and his damp hand catches on Chad’s hair, and his skin feels cold and clammy against Chad’s elevated temperature. Chad feels hyperaware of Robert’s bare chest pressed against his own, of the shallow rise and fall pressing it closer every other second.

It’s not comfortable, but it is comforting. Robert’s here. And as much of a bitch as he is, he’d never let a member of the team die on his watch. 

They stay like that for a while, until long after Chad’s breathing has evened out again and Robert’s body has stopped feeling so cold against his. Every once in a while, Robert will murmur some nonsense encouragement, and chills race down Chad’s spine with each vibration against his ear. 

When Robert does finally pull away, Chad almost feels pretty good about their odds of survival—right up until the moment he gets a good look at him. He realizes with a sinking feeling that Robert’s body not being cold anymore isn’t because Chad’s body cooled down. 

Robert’s usually sharp eyes are hazy. He’s come back around to flushed again, his skin dangerously red, and when he reaches up to wipe the sweat from his forehead, his hand shakes just a little. 

Chad rockets to his feet and crosses the container in a matter of seconds, getting as far away from Robert as he can. “You stupid bitch, why would you do that?! I’m too hot!” 

When Robert leans back against the wall, it looks more like a controlled collapse. 

He smirks at Chad. “So full of yourself.” 

“It’s not fucking funny!” Chad snaps, folding in on himself and trying to keep his heat contained. 

The smirk softens into a small smile, and Chad’s stupid heart skips a beat. 

“I’m fine,” Robert murmurs. 

“Shut up,” Chad tells him. “Don’t fucking talk to me.” 

Robert nods agreeably and tilts his head back to rest on the wall, and the uncharacteristically easy compliance turns Chad’s stomach. 

They spend the next however long like that, sitting on opposite sides of the container. Chad tries hard to keep his ambient heat pressed as close to his body as possible, but he can’t stop looking at Robert. And the more he looks, the more upset he gets. And the more upset he gets, the higher his temperature rises. 

At some point Robert closes his eyes, and the sight of him propped up limply against the wall—breaths so shallow Chad can barely make out the rise and fall of his chest—makes Chad snap at him to keep his fucking eyes open. Robert obeys with hardly even a side-eye, and that only makes Chad spiral worse. 

Eventually, Robert hauls himself up to sit on his own, and the sudden movement startles Chad so much he jumps. 

“You have to melt the wall,” Robert tells him. 

“I already fucking tried, bitch,” Chad says incredulously, trying hard to stay calm. “It wouldn’t work.” 

“The melting point can’t be that high,” Robert says, and he’s slurring his words a little. “If you can just burn hot enough, you can melt through it and get us out.”

“But the heat has nowhere to go,” Chad argues. “It’s just gonna get hotter and hotter in here. And it’s gonna use up all the fucking air! If I don’t get through the wall quick enough, you’ll—”

“We’ll both die anyway if we just sit here,” Robert tells him bluntly. “Whether you use your fire or not, the oxygen’s gonna run out at some point, and we don’t know when the others will be here. Our comms aren’t working. We don’t even know if the distress signal got through.” 

“The mech,” Chad says desperately. “Someone will see it—”

“I left it in standby mode at the entrance to the shipyard,” Robert says flatly. “Even if someone comes to investigate, there are a hundred other containers between here and there.” 

Chad gets to his feet again, pacing in tight circles on his side of the container.

It’s a fucking gamble, either way. If Chad can’t get through the material, he’ll have burned up all their oxygen for nothing. Hell, even if he does get through, there’s no way of knowing if Robert will survive the heat. 

But if he doesn’t try and they run out of oxygen anyway, both of their deaths will be on him. And even if they did still have enough air to wait for rescue, Robert won’t be able to take this heat for much longer. 

As if hearing his thoughts, Robert suddenly leans over and heaves, coughing up bile onto the floor beside him and then almost pitching over into it. 

On instinct, Chad starts to approach, wanting to put a soothing hand on his back or sweep his soaked hair away from his face or just sit near him. 

Instead, he stops himself. The only thing he can do to help Robert is stay as far away as possible. 

Well, not the only thing. 

Robert catches him eyeing the scorched wall of the container, his foot tapping with restless indecision, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“Time’s ticking down, Flambae,” he says hoarsely. 

“Call me Chad, we’re definitely there,” Chad tells him, and then scrubs his hands over his face. “Fuck.” 

“You can do this, Chad,” Robert says. 

Chad looks down at Robert, half-dead with heat exhaustion and still trying to encourage him, and suddenly feels hopelessly sorry. 

“It’s my fault,” he says bitterly. 

Robert hums, squinting his eyes in confusion. 

“That we’re in here,” Chad clarifies. “It’s my fault. I ran in without thinking. I got myself trapped in here. I got you trapped in here.”

Robert just looks at him for a moment, and Chad has to turn away from the empathy on his face. If Robert dies in here, it will be Chad’s fault. 

“I forgot my utility belt,” Robert says suddenly. 

“What?” Chad asks, his eyes flying back to Robert. 

“I got distracted tinkering before the call came in,” Robert says. “I left it in the workshop, on the table. If I’d had it, I could have found us a way out. I could have—” 

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” Chad hisses at him. “It’s not your fucking fault.”

“Then it’s not yours either,” Robert says firmly, and his eyes are the clearest they’ve been for a while. 

“Bitch,” Chad mutters, turning away and blinking quickly against the sudden burn in his own eyes. “Always the fucking mind games with you.”

Then he takes a deep, shuddering breath, stands in front of the scorch mark, and hovers his hands just inches away. 

“As hot as you can, as quick as you can,” Robert murmurs. 

If this was any other time, Chad would’ve made a stupid joke. But he looks back at Robert’s flushed, sweaty face and drooping eyes and can’t find a single fucking thing funny about this situation. 

Instead, he nods. And then he starts. 

Chad can burn extremely hot, but it always takes some build up to get there. This time, he tries as hard as he can to hurry it up, to skip over the first ten levels and get straight to eleven. He keeps the flames concentrated on the wall in front of him, but he can feel the entire container filling with their heat, and it only makes him more desperate to burn hotter, to get this done as quickly as possible. 

He feels light-headed and sick with the sudden surge of power, but he can’t stop. This is their only chance. If he fails now, that’s it.

He can’t look at Robert. If he sees him suffering, he’ll stop, and if he stops, they die.

He doesn’t know how long it takes, but he sees the moment the wall begins to warp and glow, and he presses his hands against it and burns hotter, as hot as he can, until finally, finally, it begins to give way. 

Chad pulls at the material and it parts beneath his fingers until daylight floods in. The sudden burst of fresh air into the container feeds his flames, and with restored strength, he tears the wall apart until the hole is big enough to squeeze out of. 

He immediately douses his fire, and the sudden stop is enough to have him swaying on his feet. But he did it. There’s air flowing into the container, and they can get out. 

“Hah!” Chad says breathlessly, turning to grin exhaustedly at Robert. “I fucking did it! Ready to get the fuck out of here?”

Robert doesn’t respond. He doesn’t grin back and make some dry comment about ‘better late than never.’ He doesn't pull his mask back over his head and zip up his suit. He doesn’t haul himself up and stumble out into the fresh air, calling for his mech suit and for backup. He doesn’t hug Chad again.