Chapter Text
The universe was a petty bitch, apparently. Angela and Chanse were planning this get-together for weeks. The stars aligned in such a way that six of their coworkers were actually free on the same day. Even Damien RSVP’d that he’d be there, and he’s been on one of his side quests for a month.
Their hubris was planning an outdoor activity with no contingency plan. Fortunately, there were some perks to being on a popular Internet channel. Angela’s DMs were usually a hellscape, but sometimes cool opportunities presented themselves. This is how Angela, Chanse, Shayne, Courtney, Amanda, Damien, Arasha, and Tommy ended up play-testing a new escape room opening next month.
From the moment the clock started, the group split off. The owner had boasted about the difficulty of the puzzles, which fired them up to prove themselves. They were no strangers to strategy and pretty much knew exactly where each of them were best suited.
“This place is fucking huge,” Angela muttered, mildly overwhelmed as she stood in the main chamber. It was a hexagonal space decorated like a space ship or something futuristic with chrome walls, a circular dashboard in the center of the room with all sorts of buttons, compartments, and levers. Six hydraulic doors were also present, one per wall. Two were unlocked and hissed opened when pressing the electronic panel. The other four required a bit more work on their part to learn of their contents. Angela jabbed Shayne, who was looking over every individual button on the in the dashboard, in the ribs.
“Escape room? More like escape rooms.”
“That was so bad,” he said, a smile still appearing on his lips. “But yeah, largest I’ve ever seen, I think.”
“That’s what she said!” Courtney yelled from the other side of the dashboard.
“Are we making corny jokes or solving puzzles?” Chanse called out, mild annoyance in his tone. It was the most locked in she's seen him all week.
Feeling a little overwhelmed by the largest room, Angela decided to start in the sub chambers. Arasha and Tommy had one of them covered. Amanda had taken up the role of jumping from group-to-group to collect any clues they had found and report back to the others. She was leaving the second open chamber that Damien was occupied when Angela arrived.
“Hey babes, any updates?”
Angela shook her head. “Chanse thought he was pretty close, though. I’m seeing if my services are needed elsewhere.”
“I could use some eyes,” Damien called out. Angela peered in to find him sitting cross-legged on the floor, a bunch of metal plates splayed out in an arc around him. Damien had the same scrunch between his eyebrows he got when strategizing during games. It had been over a month since they were in a games video together-- something Angela didn't realize she missed so strongly until seeing him today. He was busy, though and that was a good thing in their business.
“Perf," Amanda smiled, "I’ll be back in a few.”
This room was the dimmest, which made sense why Damien gravitated toward it first. She stood behind him to look at his collection of objects from above.
“Don’t worry, Damien, I’m here with all my radiant genius to assist you.”
He tilted his head back to look up at her, eyebrow raised with amusement.
“That so?”
“Well we all know you tend to struggle with patterns. And recognizing them.” He snorted, raising his fist. Angela returned the fist-bump and then abandoned the bit. “So what we got going here?”
Damien explained that these panels were on the wall, each with a different symbol. “Pretty sure we have to put them back on the wall in the correct order and it’ll do… something.”
“Any working theories?” She walked in a circle around Damien and the symbols to see them from all angles. She could feel his eyes tracking her. It made her more nervous than she’d like to admit.
“Well I thought it might be a mix of symbols corresponding to letters. Like this one could be—”
There was suddenly a deafening boom and crackle that felt like it shook the entire building. This was quickly followed by the door behind them hissing shut. Angela and Damien both jumped at the sudden noise and darkness.
“Uhh, what the fuck?” Angela started to rush toward the sliver of light that outlined the previously open door but suddenly found her foot catching on something hard and her legs slipping out from under her. She prepared to smack into the hard ground, arms stretched to catch herself. It was a set of much larger, stronger arms that actually caught her though. Damien directed her momentum into his chest, putting himself between her and the floor. One of the arms that was wrapped around her waist slipped up to cradle the back of her head and neck. The sound of metal skidding across the concrete floor and pinging off the nearby walls filled the darkness— along with Angela and Damien’s ragged breaths.
“You okay?” Damien whispered. The hand he had on the back of her head slid down to her shoulder blade.
“Yeah… you?”
“All good here.”
In any other circumstance, they probably would have moved by now. Unwound themselves from this protective embrace Damien had her in. Yet, neither of them moved a muscle until Shayne’s frantic voice from the other side of the door snapped them back to reality.
“Hey you guys okay in there?”
Damien’s hands fell away from the small of Angela’s back, but he didn’t shrug her off of him. “We’re good… but why’s the door shut?”
“Dunno, but our power went out. What about you guys?”
“Same.”
“I’m calling Justin,” Amanda reported. She was the designated contact in case of emergency and the only person allowed to bring her phone into the room.
Angela sighed, forgetting she was still laying on Damien until she let her head droop and rested on his firm chest instead of the cool concrete.
“Ohmygod I’m sofuckingsorry,” she word vomited while making yet another critical error. Instead of rolling off of him, she attempted to sit back, her knees falling to his side. She couldn’t see him, but the sharp breath he took followed by his hands flying up to her hips told enough of a story. The only good thing about this situation was he couldn’t see how red her face was right now. She shrieked at the realization she was straddling Damien and rolled to the side as quickly as possible.
Then there was silence. Angela put herself into time out at the opposite side of the room.
“Ang…” she heard Damien whisper, only to be interrupted by Amanda returning.
“Storm took out power to the whole block. Justin says he has a back-up generator but needs to go get fuel for it.”
“Wait, is there not an emergency exit or something? An override?” Damien asked, seeming a bit irritated. Angela could imagine how annoying the notion of being stuck in here with her was going to be.
“Seems like they high-tech’d too close to the sun.”
“Which is an unfortunate place to be flying considering it’s a massive fire hazard.”
“Well, I guess we’re holding tight for a bit. Ange, hon, you still there? You’re quiet,” Amanda said with a hint of concern.
“I’m good, mom, don’t worry,” she said, hoping Amanda didn’t catch the tightness in her voice. Or if she did, she would assume it was anxiety from being stuck in a small, dark room.
“You know I’ll always worry. Okay, we’ve set up camp in the center console area since there’s carpeting. Damien, if you need a social break, just holler and we’ll come chat with Ange.”
“Hey!” Angela exclaimed in outrage. A snort from Damien cut through the darkness.
She listened to Amanda’s footsteps get further and further and then returned to folding into herself. Her cheeks were still blazing with embarrassment. The heat of her emotions combined with the disorientation of being in the pitch-black darkness was making her start to spiral. Of course the super awesome escape room she booked turned out to be a death trap. Her friends were probably thrilled that she was locked in here so they could properly discuss how horrible her planning was.
“Marco?” Damien said suddenly.
“Are you serious right now?”
“Marco.”
“…Polo.”Angela sniffled after a beat.
“Mar— Ange are you crying?” his light tone suddenly shifted to concern.
“Polo.” she said, rubbing away the collection of tears before they could spill.
“What’s wrong?”
“Marco,” Angela stole his line.
“Polo,” he said with a sigh.
She could hear rustling of cloth against concrete. It grew closer until he repeated the call and response for a third time.
“Marco,” he was close enough she felt the breeze of his reaching hands brush past her ankles.
“Polo.”
Damien’s hand found her leg and he used that as a reference point to sit right beside her. His touch didn’t linger like hers had, but he did sit close enough that his shoulder periodically brushed against hers.
“It’s really fucking dark in here,” he said softly. Angela laughed bitterly. He pressed his shoulder against hers purposefully. “Like sensory deprivation level, dark.”
“Yeah,” she mustered, not quite sure what his angle was.
“What’s running through your head, right now?”
“That I’m fucking mortified.”
“For what?” she couldn’t tell if he was messing with her or genuinely didn’t know what she could be agonizing over.
“Are you really gonna make me say it?”
A low chuckle and another bump against her shoulder. “Sorry. Just trying to see where your heads at. Ange, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I didn’t do anything right, either. I never fucking think before I—”
“Hey— Easy there, dawg. You know, maybe in other situations if you walked up to me and straddled my lap, we might need to have a conversation about boundaries.”
“I’ll remember that for the next TNTL.”
“I—”
It wasn’t easy to render Damien speechless. Angela had a feeling he either had the look on his face when he was holding back a crash-out because everyone was playing a game wrong, or holding back laughter. She desperately wished the lights would return to see if she was right.
“…I’m sure Nate would have opinions on that,” he finally recovered. “Point is, this isn’t exactly a normal situation. We’ve lost our sense of sight. It was loud and there was lots of adrenaline. I clung onto you just as much as you did to me. We were grounding ourselves.”
“I really didn’t mean to… dismount that way,”
“I beg you to use any other word.”
She was smiling now. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” Angela said, finally returning the gentle bump against his shoulder. He let out a shaky breath like Shayne when he was trying not to laugh.
“It’s okay— and I didn’t feel uncomfortable, by the way. I’m immune to your bullshit. You’ve been telling the Internet you know what I sound like during sex for years.”
“Damien!” her bump was more like a shoulder check this time. “One time, and it was an accident.”
“Oh weird, that’s also the name of my sex tape.”
“Damien!”
“For that film I actually went by the name—”
“Okay fine, you have successfully fished me out of the spiral,” Angela said, pressing her hand to his lips. “Being alone in the dark and silence was starting to mess with me,” she admits. Fingers suddenly brush against the back of her hand, gently removing it from his face. As he goes to place her hand back down in her lap, he slips his palm against hers, hovering for a moment. An offering. Angela laces her fingers with his.
“Me too. My thoughts do enough damage when I have all my senses. I’m right here, though. We’re all good.”
Angela finally lets go of the tension in her shoulders, earning an approving squeeze. They sit in comfortable quiet for a few minutes as their bodies work on “regulating”.
“My ass is going numb,” Angela was the one to break the silence.
“Congratulations?”
“Is yours not?”
“Well, I have what the kids call a dump—”
“Oh. My god. Answer the question.”
“A little, yeah.”
“I have… a proposition that would be mutually beneficial to our asses.”
“Why do I get the feeling this proposition involves you using me as a pillow?”
Well, there wasn’t much point in correcting him. His apparent mind reading abilities sucked the bravery from her reserves. She just froze, unsure how to read the steady cadence of his breathing.
Damien apparently didn’t need a confirmation, though. With the tug of her hand, Damien pulled her down to rest atop his chest similar to how they fell earlier— except this time both her legs stayed on one side of his body. His arm wrapped security around her to keep her flush against his side.
“This is okay… right?” he asked, sounding much more hesitant than his actions let on. Angela let her head relax into the soft flesh below his collarbone.
“I feel grounded.”
“Good. I was worried you might find it weird.”
Since Damien couldn’t see the accusatory finger she was pointing at him, she poked his cheek. “You quite literally just gave a whole speech to me about how this wasn’t weird. We’re regulating.”
“Regulating,” he parroted.
“You give me whiplash sometimes.”
An inquisitive hum reverberates through his chest. “How so?”
“Well, one moment you’re pulling me in for a cuddle like it’s a habit. The next you’re all bashful and apologetic, second guessing everything like I’m not laying here feeling my eyelids get heavier by the second… Your face is super red right now, isn’t it?”
“You know how I feel about being perceived, Anguhla.”
“Or if you want a more frequent example— you will whip out the most mind melting roasts and jokes straight off the dome. It’s unreal. And then you don’t even give it time to hit everyone in the room before you’re trying to diffuse things.”
“I consider it damage control,” he says softly. “I didn’t realize grounding time was also psychoanalyze-Damien time.”
“I’m just saying. You’re so fucking funny. I try to sit near during videos we’re in together so I get the hear all your jokes. Including the ones you mumble under your breath.”
Angela wasn’t sure why she was telling him this. Maybe the intimacy of their embrace was scratching a sentimental itch.
“It’s ironic,” he scoffs.
“What is?”
“Little Miss ‘Cut that’ scolding me for bailing on my punchlines.”
Angela started to trace her fingers along the grooves of his abdomen. “I’m a hypocrite, but I’m right.”
“Courtney does say we’re the same person just different fonts,” Damien chuckles.
“What font would I be?”
Damien doesn’t hesitate. “Comic Sans, bolded. Caps lock, on.”
Her head flew up in outrage.
“Comic Sans?!”
“It’s dyslexic friendly, you know. That’s why they developed it.”
“You’re on thin fucking ice, buddy,” Angela threatened, slowly returning to the comfort of the crook of his shoulder.
If Angela had anything else but Damien to pay attention to in this moment she might have missed the mindless rub of his thumb up and down her arm. She had to stop herself from whining when his thumb stilled with the probable realization of what he was doing.
It struck Angela as a bit bizarre how not weird it felt lying in Damien’s arms. Maybe it was just the situation. Neither of were particularly touchy-feely when it came to showing affection, but this wasn’t affection, per se. It was human connection to keep themselves sane. A little bit of comfort to distract from the shitty situation.
Her body didn’t seem to get the memo, though. Every movement he made riled up the butterflies in her belly even more. That was saying a lot considering Damien was quite fidgety. He twirled Angela’s hair around his finger, fiddled with the seams of her shirt. At one point he started to fidget with her ring. It fascinated Angela to see him creep out of his usual reserved shell. For him to unapologetically find comfort in her. She only wished there was enough light for her to see his face. See the serenity to match the laxity of his body.
“Helvetica,” Angela said after some thought.
“What?” Damien’s fidgeting stopped, much to her disappointment.
“You’re Helvetica. Underrated. Versatile. Reliable. The moment people meet you, they wonder if their life would be different if they found you sooner. Tasteful utilization of italics.”
The last part made Damian chuckle. “How dare you give me a genuine answer after I gave you Comic Sans?”
“Just the first thing that came to mind,” Angela said, finding Damien’s usual fidget ring and deciding to give it a spin. With her ear against his chest, she could hear his heart rate start to intensify, especially as she lazily moved from twirling his ring to fiddling with his fingers. Tension between them rose with the frequency of lub-dubs pounding in Angela’s ear.
You’re getting into dangerous territory, the logical part of her brain warned.
I wonder what his lips taste like… the irrational (but more fun) Angela brain wondered.
Before the angel and devil on her shoulders could rock-paper-scissors, the sound of mechanical whirring and the buzz of electricity suddenly booted up. A red light suddenly filled the room. Damien’s hand immediately cupped around her eyes and pulled her face into his chest so she could properly adjust to the light. Out of the darkness, Angela and Damien now had to face the little world they’d been living in.
When Damien fell asleep last night dwelling on the hope that the day would bring plenty of quality Angela time, he didn’t think it would happen as literally as being locked in a room with only her. He wasn’t complaining, though. Getting to bask in Angela’s undivided attention felt like the equivalent of when he was a functional caffeine addict.
While Damien could have done without the complete darkness, it did have the benefit of giving them a strange sense of security. He didn’t have facial expressions to overthink or outside influences creating distractions. Though Angela surprised him with unexpected observations she made about him, it wasn’t her words that struck him. It was her touch, her responsiveness to him. Her willingness to partake in his selfish endeavor to be near to her in the name of ‘regulating’.
The irony was, minutes before they regained electricity, Damien was anything but regulated. Her touch was tip-toeing the narrow boundary between platonic affection and budding desire. He could feel her teetering toward the latter when her breath hitched with just a faint graze of her jaw.
Sexual tension is not feelings, Damien reminded himself. He was down bad with both. While their time in the dark reinforced that at the very least, she had a physical attraction to him, he still doubted whether the subtext of her kind words were rooted in anything other than friendship.
Damien considered following through with his claim that he liked to be straight-forward about his feelings and intentions with women, but decided against it. He didn’t want to confess his feelings to Angela in a pitch black room without an exit. That felt like something he’d chastise someone doing in a Reddit story.
Since Damien was on his back, he saw the initial glow of the overhead lights as they warmed back up before they fully turned on. Knowing this was about to be sensory hell, he threw his arm over his eyes and used his other hand to protect Angela from The Big Light. The red tint encasing the room was a little unexpected, but Damien didn’t have time to think about the significance of color when he could now see Angela again.
He snuck an indulgent peek before letting his hand fall away from her eyes. She was slotted securely into his side, one leg draped over his thighs and an arm across his abdomen. It took her a few moments of squinting to adjust to the crimson light, but like Damien, her attention almost immediately turned to the person she’d been cuddling for the past half an hour or so.
Her eyes grew wide, like reality was setting in. He prepared himself for her to screech, like she tended to do in uncertain situations. Angela was full of unexpected surprises, today, though. She let out a deep breath and settled her forehead back on his chest.
“We will never hear the end of this if those assholes find out about this,” she said with a soft laugh. She didn’t unravel from him, though. Didn’t move a single muscle. It wasn’t a profession of her feelings or desire to jump his bones, but it wasn’t repulsion or regret. Damien could handle neutrality. Another boundary for them to walk, but that seemed to be the theme of the day.
“It’s none of their business anyways,” he agreed with a small smile. In an attempt to chip away the tension, he threw on a quick dramatic accent, “They didn’t know what it was like in there. No light for days.”
“We slept on the concrete,” Angela joined with an equally ambiguous accent.
“And we fucking liked it. In fact, I still sleep on a slab of concrete.”
“I hear it’s good for the joints. Pillow?”
“Pile of nails,” Damien said, as deadpan as he could manage until Angela’s laugh rang out. It was impossible not to smile when she full-belly laughed like that.
“If more boys these days just sucked it up and slept on their nail piles maybe we’d actually have men.”
The bit went on a few jokes too long, but they were too deep into their fits of laughter to care. Chanse was the one to finally put an end to the incomprehensible impressions with an abrupt pounding on the door. Angela jumped like she’d been shocked in the ass, instantly grabbing Damien’s hand again. The next moment, she was yelling at Chanse for scaring the shit out of her.
All he could focus on was her fingers still intertwined with his.
“So like, you guys wanna finish the room, or bail?”
Damien and Angela looked at each other. He shrugged, somewhat eager to not be trapped, but also indifferent to how they accomplished that goal.
“Fuck it, I vote for finishing.”
“Werk. Then we’re all on the same page.”
Angela finally let go of his hand, her eyes slowly meeting his and then quickly flickering away with a bashful smile.
God, I’m so screwed.