There are shadows shrouding them, hugging them, curling around them like a dark blanket of tendrils, and they like it. They like it here.
The older one does all that he can to cloak the younger inevitably day by day, to keep him hidden and shielded from the blinding, raging dust storms that are the evil of the world. The darkness is his colleague now, protecting his charge alongside him.
The younger tries to prove that the protective nature of his elder is unnecessary, that he can fend for himself. That he doesn't need saving. But it's a charade. Always has been. And he's grateful to the darkness for masking him; for allowing him to drop it, just for now. It's only in these moments that he finds peace.
Above all, the darkness aids them in being alone. In being together. In the darkness, their rough, calloused hands can grasp and touch and pull-their lips, spit slick from the slide of their tongues, can catch and release and then catch again, slipping in and out of perfectly un-synchronized tandem. They're safe, alone in the darkness. Safe together. And for that, they are both more thankful than anything else.
The darkness squeezes and holds firm until boundaries are broken, pushing and straining and forcing so that finally, two souls are bound as one. They can't ever be separated from such a unity. And as the older finds sanctuary within the younger's body, the only home that either of them has ever truly known, he finds himself praying to the darkness. Praying that it never lets them go.