Apparently I did end up writing the fic where Mike and Sam have miserable sex before their probable deaths. I wasn't expecting this.


Title: Still Breathing
Fandom: Until Dawn
Rating: R
Pairing: Mike/Sam
Wordcount: 1,600
Summary: Mike and Sam are alone in the basement. The others are missing or dead. All Sam wants is a distraction.



“Shit.” Mike is shaking when he stumbles down into the basement; Sam can see that from across the room. “Shit.”

“Mike?”

Mike slams the door shut behind him and bolts it. Rests his head against it for a moment. “Fuck,” he breathes.

He’s locked the door. They’re the only ones here, and he’s locked the door.

“Where’s Chris?” Sam asks. “Where’s Ash?”

“Chris is gone,” Mike says. “It got him.”

No. God, no. She’s been trying not to think about the danger Chris was going out into. But Ashley was indoors; Ashley was safe. “Ashley?”

“Ashley...” He presses a hand over his face. “God, this is so messed up.”

“Mike. Tell me what happened.”

“Ash ran out the door,” Mike says. “I think she was trying to get his...” He gestures vaguely at his neck, for some reason. “His, uh, his body.”

This can’t be happening. “Jesus, Mike.”

“I tried to stop her.” His voice sounds like it’ll shatter if someone leans on it.

“What about Josh?” Someone has to be alive. Someone has to be alive, somewhere. It can’t just be them.

Mike shrugs helplessly. “Didn’t look like he was with Chris. And... Sam, those things are right outside the lodge. They’ll have found him. And if they did—”

“He won’t have been able to do anything,” Sam says. “Because you tied him up.”

She wants him to get angry with her. She wants to have a screaming match; maybe it’d be a distraction, at least.

He just sighs and sits down on the floor, so abruptly it’s like his legs have suddenly stopped working. “I just wanted to make sure he couldn’t hurt anyone.” He’s not meeting her eyes. “I guess I fucked up.”

It would make things so much easier, but she can’t hate him for it. Not when he looks so defeated. Not when he’s the only friend she knows is still alive.

Not when he’s not the only person feeling responsible.

“I should’ve stayed by the door,” she says, quietly. “Maybe I could have stopped Ashley.”

Mike shakes his head. “Nothing you could’ve done.”

Sam runs through the death toll in her head. Chris and Ashley. Jess. Josh, almost definitely.

She hasn’t seen any bodies. It doesn’t feel real. But there are things she can’t deny. Chris walked out of the lodge and didn’t come back. Ashley’s not hammering on the other side of the door to the safe room, demanding to be let in.

“The flamethrower guy?” she asks.

“No idea. Dead, I guess.”

Sam picks up the flamethrower guy’s diary, flicks through it without really taking anything in. It had been such a relief, meeting someone who seemed to know what was going on. He was going to take over; they could just follow his instructions and stop trying to find their own way blind through this hellish night. So much for that.

“Chris said Matt and Emily went to get help,” she says.

“Mm.”

They’re dead, she thinks. “Maybe they found it. Maybe they’re bringing someone here now.”

Mike looks over at her. They’re dead, she sees in his eyes. “Yeah, maybe.”

-
They wait. It’s the only thing they can do. They wait for help or death: whichever comes first.

Mike is pacing. Sam is standing in the corner, tracking him with her eyes. Some part of her is just hungry to see someone else alive, someone breathing and moving.

She watches the pulse of blood in his throat. Maybe it’s creepy, but every heartbeat is like a reminder. I’m alive. You’re alive. They’ve lost everyone else, but they’re not dead yet, and they’re not alone.

And then he trips, or – maybe his leg just gives out, maybe he’s shaking too badly to keep his balance. There’s nothing to trip on. But he stumbles, and she darts forward to grab his arm, help him stay upright.

He’s warm. She doesn’t want to let go. She moves her grip down to his wrist, to feel the heartbeat thrumming under his skin.

Chris was just as alive as this when he left the lodge, and minutes later he was dead. How is that possible?

He looks down, at her hand almost in his. “You know, thanks, but I think I might’ve found my balance.”

She doesn’t let go. She doesn’t move.

“Not that I’m complaining.” He winks at her.

It’s always been a part of their friendship, his jokey flirting. She’s never had much time for it, especially since the prank. But right now it’s just such a normal, familiar thing in the midst of all the horror that it kind of makes her want to cry.

“I actually thought about it a couple of times, you know,” she says. “Whether I’d sleep with you.”

Mike raises his eyebrows, a smile tugging at the side of his mouth. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I was trying to figure out whether it was a ‘not if you were the only guy in the world’ or an ‘if you were the only guy in the world, maybe’ scenario.”

“Ouch. Not sure I’m enjoying this conversation as much as I thought I would.”

Probably still better than their other conversations recently, the ones where they’ve been counting up the bodies of their friends. She doesn’t say that.

“It was the second one,” she says. “If you’re wondering.”

“The one where I’ve got a chance if I kill everyone else? I guess that’s better than nothing.”

Sam leans against his side.

“It kind of feels like we might be the only people left,” she says.

Mike stares at her for a moment. Shifts his weight, scrubs his free hand through his hair. “Uh, so you’re saying... what are you saying?”

“I thought you were meant to be smooth, Munroe?”

“It’s just, uh.” He scratches the side of his face. “Unexpected. If you’re saying what I think you’re saying. And I need to be really sure that that’s what you’re saying, because otherwise I’m gonna piss you off if I make a move, and I don’t think I can afford that when...” He hesitates. “Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m on my own if you leave.”

“Piss me off as much as you like,” Sam says. “I’m not leaving when those things are out there.”

“Good to know I’m better than a wendigo,” Mike says. “I can put that on my résumé.”

“I guess I could shove you out there if you really get on my bad side.”

“Understood, ma’am.”

There’s a long silence.

“So,” Mike says. “Do we... are we just play-flirting? Or...”

Sam kisses him. When she pulls back, she takes a moment to appreciate his expression. There was a time when she would have laughed at it, but she doesn’t know if she’ll ever really laugh again. Maybe that part of her is dead already.

“Well, now I know I’m dreaming,” Mike says. “I guess that’s good news. I hope everyone’s okay when I wake up.”

“I just want to forget about what’s going on,” Sam says. “Just for a moment. I can’t take it, all this standing around and thinking.”

Mike seems to realise he’s got a hand on her side and pulls it back, as if he’s not sure whether he’s allowed to touch her. “Are you sure? Are you...” He clears his throat, darts his tongue over his lips. “You’re sure?”

“Mike,” Sam says. “If you don’t stop asking, I’m going to kill you before that thing has a chance.”

He lets out a long breath. They’re so close she can almost feel him shaking.

“I don’t have any condoms,” he says. “I mean, I left them in the cabin.” The sentence seems to choke him toward the end of it, and she knows he’s thinking of Jess.

Sam’s always been the sensible one, the responsible one.

“We’ll be dead before dawn,” she says. “If we live long enough to see any consequences, I’ll take them and call them a fucking miracle.”

“Oh, and I don’t get a say in this?”

“You get a say by deciding whether or not to have sex with me.”

“That’s not a real choice,” Mike says. He kisses her, and then kisses her again, hard and desperate. “God, Sam—”

There’s a screech from somewhere above, and both of them go still and silent.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” Mike whispers, after a long moment.

“And just sit down here waiting for it to find us?” Sam whispers back. “No.” She slips a hand inside his pants, and he presses his face into her shoulder to stifle the noise he makes. “If that thing gets to us and tears us apart, I want you so far inside me it doesn’t know which of us is which.”

Mike’s breathing hitches and trembles. “It’ll hear us.”

“We’re just going to have to be really quiet.”

“It’ll be my fault.” But he’s tugging down the zipper of her jacket as he says it, agonisingly slowly, tooth by silent tooth. He doesn’t even seem to know he’s doing it, like his hands and his voice are controlled by different parts of him. “If I make a noise and it finds us, I’ll have killed you.”

“It’s a risk we’re both taking,” she murmurs. “And I was the one who suggested it.”

He gives a dry, quiet laugh. “This whole thing is so fucked up.”

“Don’t say anything.” She rocks her body against his. “We can talk through it if we survive.”

He eases her back against the desk, and maybe just for a moment, before she’s killed, she’s going to have a chance to feel alive.