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Hobbes wakes Calvin the next morning by licking his face.
"Fuck," Calvin splutters, pushing ineffectively at fur and too much muscle underneath it, "I fucking hate it when you do that, what - "
Then he remembers that the world ended yesterday and stops pushing. He lies there for a minute instead, staring up at the hardcore canvas he'd decided to go with instead of nylon, because it's easier to repair. "Fuck," he says, a lot more weakly, and Hobbes licks his face again - this time just a flick of the tongue - and then lays his head down beside Calvin's, tiger-breath hitting Calvin's neck.
"Calvin?" comes Susie's voice edged with the anger Susie did instead of fear. "What the - "
"It's okay," he manages to yell with only a little crack in his voice, "I was just having a dream, I'm just awake, it's fine." Hobbes snorts, the sudden puff of air tickling. Susie doesn't answer.
The world ended yesterday.
It settles on his chest like a lot of weight, the kind that doesn't let him breathe. He knows what that is. He's felt it before. It's grief, and actually, this one isn't bigger than anything that he's already felt, maybe because he's felt as much as he can feel and once you've filled a cup it never gets fuller, it just spills over the side. Or maybe because he's bigger now than he was with those griefs.
Whatever.
One of his hands grips Hobbes' fur really tight, but Hobbes doesn't complain now any more than he did the night Calvin's parents died, and he kind of had more cause then seeing as Calvin had been ignoring him for a while. This time Hobbes nudges Calvin's face with his muzzle while Calvin works on making himself breathe and Calvin's eyes leak a bit.
Dr Phan had always insisted that crying was a release, but Calvin's never felt that. It always just leaves him feeling empty and cold. So he's not going to do it now. Instead, after a little while of careful breathing, hands full of tiger-fur and breathing in mostly-clean tiger-smell, he rolls over and rubs Hobbes' tummy for a bit before he sits up.
"You still didn't need to lick my face," he mutters. Hobbes looks aloof.
"Well excuse me for extending a little tigerly comfort," he says, haughty. Calvin pushes at the side of his tiger's head.
"Jerk," he says and then extracts himself from his sleeping bag and crawls out of the tent.
It's impossible to tell if Susie went back to sleep or if she just lay around in her tent, but she doesn't come out until Calvin's already made eggs and bacon and siphoned the bacon-grease off carefully into an opaque and covered container and sealed it. He stops right when she comes out and has a horrible thought.
"You didn't, like, go vegan or convert to, um - well, I guess any religion with a food restriction because I totally was not thinking about that when - " he starts, but she shakes her head.
"I'm an omnivore," she says, in a tired voice. "I'll eat whatever."
"Oh good," Calvin says. Then he remembers and hauls the camping-toast-clamp off the grill he put over the fire just in time not to burn the toast. "Uh," he says. "I've got margarine not butter because it lasts longer but if you want it to melt you could butter those?" Susie's mostly just standing there with her arms wrapped around her waist, and it's making him nervous.
But she does take the toast-clamp from him and open it, carefully picking up the toast and putting it on a plate and, after Calvin points her to where he's keeping it, slathering margarine on each piece. By then the coffee's made, too, and it's kind of a cosy little breakfast.
"You didn't turn the radio on," Susie observes, as she takes her plate and sits down, balancing it on her knees. Calvin licks his lips.
"No," he admits. And then admits more, "I . . .wasn't sure I wanted to hear what it had to say."
Susie stares at it for a minute and then nods. "After breakfast," she says.
She's still in yesterday's clothes and he wonders how much she packed in the clothes department. They'll be okay no matter what; he got both of them a bunch of really useful clothes from this place he'd found on line, Tilley something, that are super tough and easy to wash and dry in no time - pants, shorts, shirts, coats, even underwear except for bras because he has no idea what Susie's size is - but they all look, well. Pretty old people dorky. Pretty soon he figures they won't care, but it might not be pretty soon for Susie yet.
He tried really hard to think of everything.
They eat in silence except for the clack of cutlery on plates and the dull thunk of coffee mugs being picked up and put down, until Susie's eaten everything but her toast and the liquid yolk on her plate. Calvin watches her cut the toast into little squares like she's done forever before she says, "Hobbes told you the world was ending."
Damn, Calvin thinks. He'd sort of been hoping she'd leave that one alone for a while. He sighs. "Yeah."
"How?" she asks. She's totally matter of fact, but Calvin knows it's a lie. He winces.
"He just told me, Susie," he says. "Like you talk to someone."
"Except he's a stuffed tiger you carry around in your hood," she points out, sopping up yolk with her toast.
"Yeah. Well." That gets even more complicated and Calvin rubs his forehead. "Sort of. In a way."
Susie's still looking at her plate and meticulously wiping it clean and drinking her coffee. Calvin feels like he's on a British soap opera. A little, anyway. "And what," she says, "in another way he's, I dunno, pacing around the campsite because he's a giant tiger?"
That being exactly what Hobbes is doing just now, Calvin can't help but glance at him and try to get a read on his expression, which for a tiger is a whole body affair. It doesn't help much, though. Calvin can't tell if Hobbes is slightly smug, or if he's ignoring them completely, or if the fact that Susie picked that particular action is total coincidence.
"Something like that," he temporizes. "It's hard to explain."
"I bet." She eats the last piece of toast, finishes her coffee, puts down the mug and only then looks up. "You know how crazy you sound right now." It's not a question.
Calvin sighs and stares up at the sky for a minute. Something in the clouds shakes loose an idea and he says, slowly, "Look at it this way, okay? This isn't new, right. This is how it's always been, with Hobbes and me. You've never known me any different, I just didn't tell you. I wouldn't tell you now except I swear to any god you want this is the only reason we're here. Okay? I'm the same. So if you weren't scared of me before, you shouldn't be scared of me now."
"Now there's some first class reassurance," Hobbes says from his stalk, and Calvin restrains the urge to give him the finger on the basis that it won't help.
Susie looks at him for a long time. Calvin tries not to look nervous. He kind of wishes he had the talent Hobbes seems to have for looking into people's thoughts, because he has no idea what's going through Susie's head.
"Okay," is what she says, eventually. And then, "You can turn the radio on."
The radio tells them that they're an afternoon's hard drive away from a pile of rubble that's also more or less a mass grave. Susie pours herself more coffee with a hand that shakes so much she spills on her wrist and doesn't care, and Calvin wishes that he - that Hobbes - could have been wrong.
When the radio starts directing people on the right way to evacuate, Calvin switches it off. Susie's standing with her coffee, leaning against the jeep, because she got up and walked away when they were talking about the damage in Tokyo.
"So what's the plan now?" she asks. Her voice wobbles just a little bit. Calvin shrugs, even though she can't see him because she's turned away.
"I didn't really have one," he says. "You can't really plan for the end of the world."
"Then I want to go find my parents," she says, and she turns back like she expects to have to fight about it. Hobbes huffs a put-upon sigh, but Calvin just nods.
"Yeah," he says. "Okay."