Butterfingers are S tier candy

“Don’t worry, Ams,” he declared as soon as they turned the corner and the house came into view, pressing a hand over his heart, “I’ll protect you.”

“Wonderful.” Aimé snorted, pulling his scarf more securely around his throat as they approached the building. “Hopefully this goes more smoothly than the last time you tried to do that.” Light and music spilled out across the dry lawn, interrupted by shadows darting past the windows and screams both real and poorly recorded. 

A shrug, a sharp-toothed grin, dismissing the concern. “I barely broke any of that clown’s bones.”

“Right, well perhaps this time you don’t break any.”

The grin didn’t shift. “We’ll have to see.”

They had almost made it to the driveway when Henri spoke up again, just a half block pause. “Can I hold your hand?”

Aimé blinked a little up at him. “Of course.” 

As soon as he took it, lacing their fingers together, his brow wrinkled. “You’re freezing.” A shift of his step brought him pressed close to Aimé’s side, some sweet attempt at warming him for whatever few minutes they had before they made their way in. 

Aimé only hummed his agreement. Henri always seemed overly affronted by the fact that he ran so cold. Always tried his best to remedy that, which he certainly never minded. 

The attendant who ran over the rules with them was dressed in a lab coat that had been splattered heavily with red dye. That boded well, for sure. She went through the rules, all fairly standard. Play along, please. No violence towards the actors, please. At that, Henri fidgeted next to him. 

The first scare was fairly standard, some zombie that lumbered from a dark corner, wearing a hospital gown that was honestly more concerning. Henri made a sort of squeaking noise before quickly ushering them along.

There was a nurse strapped to a gurney next, thrashing and screaming for them to get out. Something about them using up all the patients. A disease that had gotten loose. The usual. He had mostly stopped paying attention, because Henri’s grip had tightened painfully as soon as she had started yelling at them to try to escape. A reminding tug got him to move towards the door.

Then came the lab. It was nearly silent in there, some kind of soundproofing keeping the rest of the house tucked mostly away. Blood splattered up the walls onto the drooping ceiling tiles, cherry red and dripping. Body bags lay silent in rows on either side of them. “Looks like yours,” muttered Henri, relaxing fractionally next to him. 

He drove his elbow into his waist, managing a reasonably offended tone. “Mine is much cleaner than this.” He couldn’t remember the last time blood had gotten on the ceiling of his lab. And he never let it get so cluttered with corpses. 

Their voices must have alerted whoever was supposed to run the event in the room. The lights flickered. The body bags started moving, jerking all at once, all around them. Some kind of alarm blared, suddenly, the flickering of the fluorescents above them getting more violent. All around them the bags started groaning, more zombies. The sounds were muffled, which hid the tinny tone of the recordings. 

Henri swore, loudly, when one of the body bags nearby sat up and began to unzip from the inside. He kicked the gurney, nearly sending it toppling, the wheels saving whoever was inside the body bag from spilling onto the floor, and started pushing Aimé towards the next door. 

He had delayed the chase sequence apparently, because they were largely unhindered in the hallway that followed. There were some doors, closed, windows barred, where more zombies groaned or nurses screamed for help and threw themselves against the wood. 

“There’s some political stance underlying this that I’m not sure I’m enjoying,” he told Henri, leading the way down the hall. Trying to lighten the mood so he would perhaps loosen his grip. The bones of his hand were beginning to grind unpleasantly. 

Henri only laughed, the sound undeniably strained. But he still jumped when the sound of a chainsaw revving to life came from the lab, ushering him forward. Why would a zombie be carrying a chainsaw? Why would it have the chainsaw in the body bag? 

Heavy boot falls grew louder, the distance closing. The hallway ended in a T, and as they reached the intersection a bloodied surgeon stepped out towards them from the left, that section of the building left dark so they couldn’t have seen him. Fake blood had been splashed down his front, and he must have freshly dipped his hands in the stuff, because it dribbled onto the floor. 

“Just one more trial,” he rasped, reaching one arm out towards them. “It will succeed this time, surely.”

Aimé almost started to say something rude, but before he could Henri nearly yanked him off his feet to move in the other direction. The chainsaw zombie still lumbered their way down the hall behind them, a bit unnecessarily. 

They came to a dead end, the door to a much more brightly lit room closed. The light was blocked somewhat by the figure of a nurse, her smile pulled almost unnaturally wide. Aimé wondered peripherally how she was managing to hold that expression so well, and with so many people coming through the house. Surely her face would be sore. Pressed close against him, Henri’s body coiled tight, braced. 

A final, sudden cackling as she reared back and then slammed her head against the glass, the noise making Henri jump, making Aimé throw an arm out in front of him to hold him back. A flash of a camera came from somewhere close by. And then her smile relaxed, she pulled away from the door so she could open it. 

She ushered them through into a much cleaner room, though the set dressers had still flicked some blood around for good measure. “Good job, guys!” She turned to the back end of an old camera, which was in the process of spitting out the photo that had been taken, whirring overpowering the sounds from the rest of the haunted house for a moment. She handed the notecard sized piece of paper to Henri, then gestured to the other end of the room. “Exit’s that way, feel free to take some candy on the way out.”

The bowl had already been a little picked over, but Aimé found a bag of sour patch kids to pass to Henri, taking a butterfinger for himself. His hand still ached a little from how hard it had been gripped. 

Henri handed him the photo as they walked back out into the cold, using his other arm to hold the door. “You look cute,” he tried.

“My eyes are closed.” He looked back up at him, offered the photo. “You look like you’re about to leave a Henri-shaped hole in the wall.”

He smiled, folding the photo carefully, taking out his wallet to tuck it into one of the card slots. Next to the other pictures he had of the two of them. “I would have dragged you with me, don’t worry.” Opening his candy, he offered Aimé one of the green ones, which he took. “No laffy taffy?”

“I wasn’t going to let you try those jokes on me.”

Henri hummed, laying an arm over his shoulders to pull him a little closer to his side. “Good thing I’m pretty sure I can remember some off the top of my head.”

Aimé groaned, but he leaned into the warm bulk of his body anyway as they made their way back to the car. The difference in their height did a lot to hide his smile. “Fire away.”

“What do you call a fancy sea creature?”

“You’re lucky I’m in love with you.”

“Sofishticated.”