This is part of "My Golden Triangle" and "My Future Self" universe.

***///***///***

She groans to herself when the elevator jerks to a halt – Christ, you'd think –

"—that with a brand new fucking building, we'd get elevators that worked," Perry snarls, kicking button panel.

That's when the lights go out.

"Great, way to 'fix' our problem… now we're trapped in an elevator in the dark," She grumbles, moving to sit on the floor. They're undoubtedly going to be stuck here awhile if the power has gone out, and she's not going to be uncomfortable while she waits.

She can hear him pacing the length of the cabin, a soft thump and his sneakers squeaking slightly as he turns on his toes as he hits a wall. The only problem with walking in the dark is that you can't see where you're going – she hisses when he kicks her ankle, so she reaches out to grab his hand – missed DEFINITELY missed – but it did get him to stop.

"Will you quit acting like a scared little bitch and sit down already?"

She hears him growl, but soon feels the warmth of his body next to hers as he sits down beside her.

"When are they going to get us out of here," She hears Perry grumble sourly after two whole minutes of silence.

"Are you going to start whining like Legacy, because if you are – OW! You hit my boob," she hisses, rubbing her sore chest.

"Really, I couldn't tell."

She punches him for that, and manages to hit his arm as she intended. He hisses, but doesn't strike back.

She finds herself leaning against him – not because she's feeling affectionate, just because it's chilly in this stupid elevator and he happens to radiate heat. She calls him a sissy in her head when she feels him curling slightly into her – she's doesn't want to lose her pillow when he gets in a huff and moves to the other side after all.

The darkness around her is soothing and she feels her eyes drifting shut easily. She hadn't realized how bright the lights were in the hospital until she's confronted by their absence. She's always found comfort in the darkness…

The heat of Perry's body and the rhythm of his breath on top of her head combine and soon she finds herself drifting off.

***///***///***

She likes Aunt Ellen and Uncle Jason – they let her have her own bedroom (something she rarely gets), and she's been her three months and they haven't even begun to talk about moving her somewhere else. Aunt Ellen likes to comb her hair and put her in dresses and says that she's the little girl she always wanted. Uncle Jason lets her play in the garage and hold the flashlight while he works on the car, or the plumbing, or the electrics.

The only thing that sucks about staying with them is Cousin Kevin. Cousin Kevin is about nine years older than her… in high school already, and almost as tall as Uncle Jason. He's hardly ever home, hanging out with all his friends, but he comes home most nights.

Sometimes he gets lost and winds up in her bedroom. Sometimes he's so tired he ends up sleeping in her bed.

He's never too tired to touch her though – and she hates, truly hates even though Aunt Ellen says she doesn't know the meaning of the word, how it makes her feel. It hurts and makes her feel so gross she can't sleep until she gets to use the shower in the morning.

She can't tell anyone though, Cousin Kevin says, because Aunt Ellen and Uncle Jason will get upset and throw her out.

She learns to be sneaky though, and find all sorts of hiding places, and using the darkness to help disguise her. She pulls out her nightlight, because Cousin Kevin is too afraid of getting caught to turn on the lights in her bedroom, and if he can't see her he gives up and somehow, magically, finds his own bedroom just down the hall.

She could have kept hiding in the darkness forever – been Aunt Ellen's little girl and Uncle Jason's helper forever –

Until she cried like a stupid baby when that cop came and told the class about 'bad touches' and how you had to tell a teacher.

She spends that night and the next three months sleeping on Great Aunt Gladys' couch along with her three smelly old cats.

***///***///***

She's awakened rudely when Perry shifts away from her suddenly to resume his pacing of their limited floor space. He stomps back and forth, his eyes adjusted enough this time at least mindful of her feet. She can hear him muttering under his breath – cursing the elevator, the building, the university, the city – not to mention all the repairmen and officials associated with everything in the whole universe.

She doesn't think much of it – Perry's that typical alpha male that always has to be doing something even if it is just acting like a moron juice-head.

It's when he starts pounding on the door and screaming for someone to talk to them that she starts to think that this might just be more than a little mantrum.

"That's it, I'm getting out of here my goddamn self—"

Okay, now she knows she's witnessing more than just another testosterone overflow…

"Oh, that'll solve everything; your fat ass will probably bring the whole damn elevator."

When he doesn't even dignify her cheap shot with a remark – and then she hears the scuffing of sneakers as they make their way up the wall of the cab and she knows something wrong.

She makes her way unsteadily to her feet – she'd forgotten how much one's balance depended on sight – but manages to find her feet and more miraculously find him in the darkness.

She wraps her hand around his wrist, his pulse beating a double time staccato against her fingers. She hears his breath loudly – short wheezy gasps that are just a beat too slow to be counted as hyperventilation.

"Perry, get down right now."

She gives a sharp tug to his arm and hears his feet hit the floor, his body brushing up against hers. This close to him she can feel his panic – feels it catching as she wonders what the hell is taking them so long to find them, to contact them and tell them what's going on. What's going on outside that's so important that they haven't noticed that the chief of medicine has gone missing.

"What are you, scared of the dark," She scoffs, tugging him down to sit on the floor.

"I am nawwwhawwhaaawwwt," He protests and she knows she's right because he replied so quickly and the way his body is stiffer than a board.

His panic is spiraling higher – she can feel his breathing burst into hyperventilation, his body twitching beside her.

He's going to have a heart attack right in this stupid elevator and she hasn't got any of the tools necessary to save his stupid high-strung ass if he does.

"Lay down."

"Mahoney, this is not the time or the place—"

"Don't flatter yourself, old man, and don't call me Mahoney when you've seen me naked – unless we're in front of other people, because I don't want other people thinking they can call me by my first name – it makes me think of my old fat slob of a gym coach. He used to scratch his balls every time he looked at me."

He lets out a forced bark of laughter at that and she uses his distraction to push him down against the floor and pin him down as she lies across his body. She can feel his heart hammering through his chest and into hers, his breaths slowing and becoming more labored with her added weight.

"So what's got your panties in a twist?"

"I told you, nothing," He hisses, but with less conviction. "Why hasn't anyone tried to get us out of here?"

"They probably don't know we're stuck yet."

He swallows loudly at that and she can feel the wave of tension travel along his body.

"So is it the dark or is it the confined space that's sending you on this little expedition to Crazyville?"

"Excuse me, I thought you were my resident, not Dr. Hendrik's latest nutcase headshrinker wannabe?"

"Do I look like I piss myself at the sight of real medicine," She asks softly, rubbing up and down his arms gently. "Look, I don't do this touchy-feely shit but you – you don't have meltdowns – so last chance to confess whatever deep dark secret you've got."

His breath hitches, and she can almost see his mouth opening silently in her head.

"I—"

***///***///***

He's too busy trying to choke down cries (such a baby) that he doesn't really pay much attention to the loud crack of the closet slamming shut or the quiet snick of the lock sliding into place. He's far too upset about his throbbing cheek, the blood dripping from his nose and split lip, and the rapidly swelling and smarting bruises.

He gets quiet when he hears his mother begin shouting and his father yelling back – for a moment his heart soars in the hope that she's going to leave him like Aunt Kathy was telling her to the other day – until he hears her screaming at his father for knocking over her favorite vase and he remembers that nothing ever changes in this house.

He shivers in the dark, flinching as he hears something scuttle along the floor beside him. Reaching up he pulls down a coat – one of mother's long wool ones she wears in the winter – and wraps himself up in it, trying to smother the sound of his parents and the sounds of shattering glass.

Their noise grows louder and louder until three loud knocks silence everything. He hears the police officer talking quietly with his parents – not quite loud enough for him to understand what's being said.

He understands the sound of cinching handcuffs though – He jiggles the handle, hoping that they'll notice him –

He hears the door shut and then silence. He calls out to his mother – quietly at first, then louder when she doesn't respond, then even louder, pounding on door as the silence stretches on and on…

He's alone in the house, the cops must have taken his mother too – he's alone in the house, they don't even know he's locked up here –

He's going to die in here and no one's going to know about it.

He does start crying then, muffling his sobs into his mother's sleeve. He takes comfort in her for the first time, her lingering scent in the coat filling his nose, until he finally drifts off into an exhausted sleep.

He wakes up sometime later – it feels like hours, and the light he can see through the crack in the bottom of the door has grown grayer and dimmer.

He has to pee so bad it hurts.

He whimpers softly, moaning as each movement jostles his bladder. He's got to get out – he's going to pee himself if he doesn't and he hasn't peed himself since he was a baby –

Slowly he manages to get to his knees by the door, stretching up to reach the door handle to try one last time.

He feels the hot stream soak the front of his pant, run down his leg and puddle at his feet – suddenly it's too too much and the wails are ripping themselves out of his chest. He's going to die locked in this closet alone, and when they find him they're going to think he's such a baby because he peed himself.

His voice dies in his throat as the lock snicks and the door swings wide open. His mother is standing there, haloed in the light and he is so so grateful to see her lunges forward and hugs her leg tightly.

"Percival, what is all the – did you pissyourself," She lets out a loud noise of disgust and pushes him away. "And all over my favorite coat!"

She grabs him by the shoulder and turns him around, giving him three sharp swats across the backside before sending him upstairs to get cleaned up.

He realizes, sitting in the bathtub by himself, that she'd been there the whole time –

She'd heard him and left him in there.

***///***///***

"I – I'm not some precious little flower, like most of the girls that pass for 'men' today, that's going to wilt over some overblown 'emotional trauma', I just want to get back to work. I don't need any help," He snorts – but he's calmer now, and he isn't pushing her away despite the fact he doesn't need her help.

She finds herself relieved that he's not feeling in a confessional mood – because she'd have to reciprocate just so he didn't feel emasculated or something and she doesn't want to talk about her damage either.

Sometimes she hates the dark because it brings out the monsters that you need to hide from in the darkness in the first place.

They both start violently when the lights flick back on unexpectedly and the speaker crackles to life.

"Dr. Cox, Dr. Mahoney, you in there," Drew's voice buzzes over the speaker.

She crawls off Perry and gets the cabinet in the button panel open, pulling out the receiver.

"Drew, where the hell have you been? What the hell is taking so long," She snaps.

"No one believed me when I said that you two were missing," Drew says loudly, sarcasm obviously pointed at someone near him. "Or that it might have something to do with the malfunctioning elevator."

"Get us the hell out of here before we go all Donner party in here."

She hears Drew laugh, and promise them that it will be only a few more minutes (something she plans to hold him to) before hanging up.

She turns back to Perry, who is already standing and dusting off his lab coat.

"Nobody needs to know what happened in here except us," He says icily, tugging at the cuffs of his jacket.

She nods to that, leaning back against the wall (surely it's been 'a few minutes' already?) already pretending nothing happened. Because she, unlike Drew, gets it –

Some secrets are better off left in the dark.