I'm okay, is what she's pretty sure she should say. It's not like the snow and ice is new, even if the wind feels chillier than it did yesterday. But she's not about to pass up being a little closer to Gabranth, and she's definitely not going to brush off an offer of warmth.
So she scoots over until their sides touch and his arm can settle around her narrow frame. It's the nearest she can remember being to him, at least outside of a fight, and that realization comes with the sense of pleasant embarrassment she associates with stupid crushes on people who aren't interested. But it does, at least, make her cheeks feel a little warmer to think of it.
"In Georgia," she says, because the things she'd say to a normal guy she liked probably wouldn't do anything except make this awkward, "it hardly ever freezes. And I thought that was bad. You seem used to it, though."
His arm now encircling her finds the drape of his heavy cloak, drawing it across between gauntleted knuckles so that it curls just around her shoulders, held in place by his own fingertips. An idle adjustment, nothing he seems to take notice of, his gaze set straight ahead towards flickering flames.
"The cold suits me more than heat. But I've no true experience with hunting, building shelter— survival, as you call it."
Only executed humans, huh is on her tongue. She knows better than to say it. But it's hard not to think of, the way he's been relegated to bringing death all over again. Tomorrow, I'll try and catch something.
"This is all we did sometimes." She says it quietly, but they're so near that the wind can't catch the words and blow them away. "Lived in the woods and ate snakes. And it sucked--sometimes I woke up and I didn't even wanna move. But the company was good."
A glance up at him. He'd probably be warmer, at least a little, with the helmet covering his face. And his face is its own kind of mask, sharp features that don't always convey what's going on behind them. But it's nice to be able to see it, all the same.
It is the truth, in fact, whether she voices it or not. His killing hadn't been done for petty sport, but he'd never strayed from duty for its sake either, and justice was ever swift in its demands.
"I make for poorer substitution in that regard." He exhales, bearing no self-pity in the truth of it: he does not laugh, he does not sing or tell jokes— he can do no more than keep her warm, and perhaps that is not near enough for what she needs to continue pressing forwards through this frigid squall.
With someone else, maybe she'd laugh. Gabranth's not exactly here to entertain anyone, but he'll talk back when she talks to him, and she's figured out some of the ways to keep the conversations from shuddering to a halt. (The safest approach is don't talk about who he is, just what he does. Actions, not feelings.) And he's not usually a jerk on purpose--as far as she can tell--when he's being a jerk. That's already better than a lot of people she's known.
But there's I'm laughing at the idea that you suck at this, because you actually don't, and then there's I'm laughing at you, and Beth's not about to risk the possibility that he interprets it as the latter. Instead, she tilts herself in against him, so her cheek's resting against the cold metal of his chestplate. "Nah. This is pretty good."
It is a lie, that. Or he thinks it is, the difference matters little: she works to assuage him, and possibly for both their sakes— he permits it.
The wind beyond their encampment is noisy, loud and hissing against the snowy bank dug to shield their fire: between it and the open entrance of their tent (all fenced in by deep snow), it forms a sort of funnel for heat. Yet if the flurry opts not to subside, he imagines they’ll need to raise tarp and fully sequester themselves soon. If she is as versed in this as she claims, he imagine she knows that as well, and how bleak another long, cold night in darkness will feel.
He says nothing. His eyes drift closed, he hasn’t the will to offer her words, only tips his head slightly lower without ceremony, pressing the base of his chin somewhere along her scalp— the heat from his exhaled breaths warm.
It's the kind of nearness that brings comfort with it--for Beth, at least--and the quieting of everything else around them. The crackle of the fire is muffled, but so is everything that exists without real sound. Is there anything nearby what's the point of this I'm cold I'm tired was that a wolf or the wind tomorrow we do this again and I'm still dead where are we is there anything nearby--part of her might still be ready to go on alert, but the rest can relax into someone else's presence. Everything's just a little easier.
She stays where she is, like she hasn't noticed how his breath fogs itself against the curve of her ear and isn't wondering what he's thinking. Maybe it doesn't matter, when the end result's the same, but with just about any other boy in the world, she thinks she'd try to kiss him right about now. And maybe if Gabranth was a boy, you could. With a man who does everything like he's pulling the world's troubles behind him on a rope, she's not sure if any of this means what it would from someone else.
"See," she eventually tells him, one of her gloved hands finding his. Her fingers close around his, bunching the edge of the cloak within them. It's the mildest flirting in the world, full of plausible deniability if he decides he's not into it or her. "You're good company."
“This proves nothing.” He counters dourly, though his hand, still laced within her own, does not withdraw. If there's something to be read in it (there is), he's utterly blind to it— no matter how his pulsebeat quickens. No matter how he doesn't hold contempt for the soft, carefulness of her grasp.
It isn't willful. Were his brother here there'd exist some small amount of context for it, the way he keeps himself blind to intent in all things affectionate. As it is, Gabranth seems more akin to a confused hound, being set to task and finding the result different than he'd previously anticipated.
"Sure it does." Gently--but a little teasing, a smile in her voice. "The person you're hanging out with gets to decide if it's fun. And I think this is nice."
It's all cautious, despite the warmth in her words, even the little squeeze she gives his hand. Talking to Gabranth can pivot in the span of a sentence or two, and this isn't territory she's crossed with him before. And beyond that--knowing what it's like to have someone's interest when you don't want it, she's waiting for some hint that she should back off. It hasn't come yet--she hopes it won't--but it might. And if it does, she'll pay attention.
"Which means you," she adds, deciding this is a good opening to get him to say something more, "get to tell me, too. D'you like this?"
He concludes, the fine lines of his face betraying whatever harsh stoicism he's clearly working to employ. Perhaps his own habits as well, as offering anything remotely neutral might indeed serve as praise enough when Gabranth is digging in his heels.
His fingers, laced tight within her own, relax by the barest number of degrees.
"Adequate," Beth repeats, the amusement in her voice as close as she'll let herself get to laughing. Her smile's directed at the fire--she doesn't want to move and risk feeling him pull away. "You think there's anything I could do to make it better?"
You are not poor comfort is a pretty solid compliment, by Gabranth's standards, one she's likely to remember for a while. But it also feels a little like being damned with faint praise.
That is all he offers regardless, condemnation with cold familiarity— with affection that hardly knows how to function. Efforts made that only pale under all wonted evaluation. But there, at least, beyond the words themselves lies his hand across hers, his arm about her shoulders, his warmth suffusing her own as he dips his chin to rest it— only just— against the crown of her head.
He is tired. He doubts she'll care.
"I've no criticisms to offer you. Perhaps sunrise will see it differently."
It feels like there's a pause before he answers, too much of one, and then the most noncommittal answer in the world. Which might as well be a posted sign, NO ENTRY. That kind of coy angling clearly isn't his kind of thing, or he's not interested, or he's too tired for any of this--it's been a long day.
"You can tell me, you know. If you do." Not that he's been shy about it before. Wherever it is he comes from, she can tell it's the kind of place where he said jump and others asked how high. But saying it is a little more direct than trying to tease his feelings out, and it makes it feel less weird when she adds, a moment or two later, "I meant it. I like traveling with you. It's kinda like being home again--without all the parts that suck."
What is he to say, that this is a comfort to him? In so many ways it is not: he is unused to companionship, to conversation, to the concept of comfort itself, and it is so often the case in regards to humekind that the strongest of salves are drawn only from familiarity alone.
But somewhere beneath the rest he can still faintly remember what it was to think shared warmth a restful mercy. Associated with his brother, true, but such perceptions can be altered with experience.
"Am relieved to hear it, then. And trust that if I had more dislike for the experience, I would make such grievances plain."
He exhales thinly, the edge of his mouth drawn tight as he thinks for a beat longer, before adding:
You don't wanna hear about it, is what she thinks, but when you say something like that, people just want to know more. And the reasons no one should want to hear about it are things she's spent all her time here trying not to talk about. Empty streets and abandoned homes, corpses everywhere--the knowledge that she would've been one of them, if she hadn't been shot in the head.
"It's gone," is what she says, trying to will the tension out of her body. (She's managed to shrink into herself just a little bit more at the thought of talking about it; she's like a stone beside him, the kind that used to be earth until pressure made it immovable.) "We lost everything, over and over. Every time it happened, I always thought...that's it, this is everything. There's nothing else I can lose. And I was always wrong."
You don't wanna hear about it. Beth forces her back to uncurl a little, her head to lift. Their brows nearly touch, or her brow and his cheek, and God, he's so handsome. This close, it's impossible not to notice. She doesn't draw back--she'd stay there, foreheads bumping against each other, if he let her, though she has the feeling he'll straighten up, too, back into the Gabranth who hides his sad eyes and sharp nose inside a helmet whenever he can. "But it was nice while it lasted."
“That is the way of it.” He concedes, comprehending that she has told him of little aside from the pain of concurrent loss, something he understands all too well. They are scars that do not mend, that do not fade, and perhaps it is always the dead that recognize this simple truth more than the living ever possibly could.
Yet he does not retreat. The opportunity is there, the weighted pressure clinging to the air around them— frigid as death— but he only listens, refusing to mask what has already been revealed.
“Was there nothing else worth remembering from your own world?”
The question surprises her, but maybe it shouldn't. Maybe, she thinks, what he wants is to hear about it, all the parts of their lives that weren't ruled by fear and death. Judith's smile and the ring on Maggie's finger, fresh berries along a path and the snap of a campfire on a cold (if not this cold) night. They're all twined up with the worst things, though, shot through with stories she can't or won't tell--not with the kind of detail that would explain why any of them happened.
It's hard to explain a disaster when you don't want anyone to know what caused it in the first place. She's been letting everyone think it was a war, or a famine, or whatever they want to imagine. One of these days, she might try out telling someone it was a Blight. Not yet, though. Talking about it feels like digging up the dead.
He's still there, so close that she can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, and she probably shouldn't, but she goes on instinct: she closes the distance between them and kisses his cheek, just a little too close to the corner of his mouth to be entirely platonic. (Just kiss him, part of her says, but it's answered immediately with You know what it feels like when someone kisses you and you don't want them to, don't do it.) "Maybe I'll tell you tomorrow."
She’s so small. She has always been small. In voice, but not presence. In build, but not strength.
There is a difference between the space she takes up, and the space she takes for herself. And near as she is to him— her breath the only warmth that battered, frigid space provides— he is possessed of too little restraint: she controls herself, and he does not.
His head turns, his mouth fully upon her own, feverishly hot compared to the blanketing storm outside, grip gone tight around her shoulders.
It is not his place to impose upon her. To take what she has not given. Yet he has never been a decent man. A good man.
What really matters is that he lets her get away with not telling him more than I'm not going to tell you. He could've kept on with it like a hound treeing a raccoon - she's seen him like that before - but he doesn't.
Of course, it isn't actually saying anything that does it; it's not the promise of another day, maybe that sways him. And that's no minor shock in itself.
Maybe she just didn't expect him to want to kiss her back.
But he does, and she makes a little sound against his mouth - surprised, not upset - before kissing him back, meeting and matching his intensity. (Or trying to, anyway. Beth's not sure anyone in the world - any world - is as intense as Gabranth.) She's about to reach up and touch his cheek; there's hesitation in her frame as she changes her mind and pulls off her glove first. Her bare fingers are probably cold against his skin, but the reverse is true, too. Everything's cold tonight. But she can rest her hand against his jaw, fingertips brushing over his weird old-fashioned muttonchops, without wet wool getting in the way.
It sees them through the night, the warmth they trade throughout the storm. The intermingling of hands and breath across skin. Come morning, Gabranth is the first to stir— one arm draped heavily about her shoulders, cloak tucked in a shroud across it, to keep her warm as she sleeps against unyielding metal.
An uncomfortable resting place, but somehow, he doubts she finds fault with it given the heat still clinging to the both of them. Outside the snow has settled above the edges of their tent, forming a sort of visible pit in breaking daylight.
With his thumb and forefinger he nudges her, almost pinching the edge of her shoulder.
She sleeps all right that night - cold, but not as cold, and though she keeps waking up, she can get back to sleep. (It's being outside - some old instinct assumes she has to keep watch, since she can't hear the jingle of trash strung up around her.) One time, she lies there in the dark, trying to see if she can catch the outline of his face. She wants to see what he looks like asleep, if it makes his face less severe. But the moons don't shine brightly enough to come through the tent's fabric.
In the morning, she starts awake, sucking in a sharp breath. She's reaching for her knife before she realizes she doesn't need it.
"Jeez -" she mutters, tipping her head away from him, like that might get the stiffness out of her neck (or her neck out of his reach). "What was that for?"
“The storm is broken. We can ill afford to squander this opportunity.”
Whether it is short lived or not, neither of them can say with any surety; they’ve supplies to pack, and steep snowfall to contend with while daylight lasts. If they cannot break through and finish descending the mountain slopes before nightfall, it is possible they will only trap themselves once again here—
"I'm not squandering it," Beth mutters, curling up her toes in her boots for just a moment or two before she makes herself start moving. This might be the warmest she feels all day - she wants to savor it for just a breath longer, remember it down to the soles of her boots. Gabranth lying there, his armor inexplicably warm, the stale air of the tent, all the silence of a snow-covered morning around them.
Then she forces herself to sit up, and then she decides that she can see if last night was a fluke or not. See, Gabranth, she's awake. She's so awake that she leans over and kisses him good morning, her lips brushing his just for a moment.
And then she starts untying the tent flap like she didn't do anything of the sort, talking all the while. "We've gotta be pretty close. They said it was a chateau in the mountains--" this with a bad approximation of an Orlesian accent, and then--"Oh, my God, it's so bright."
If she imagined he would shrink from the affection, she is quickly proven wrong; though he almost imperceptibly stiffens under the softer brush of her mouth, it is only the fainter influence of an eternity without touch.
And truth be told, he is a rigid man even without the matter of contact welling between them.
"Between the storm's perpetuity and the longer stretches of nightfall, your eyes will need time to adjust." Poetic. Beautiful. He speaks with the grace of a man dedicated wholly to gathering their supplies without so much as glancing towards the daylight streaming in from where she peers out into the snowpack.
That's Gabranth: he knows what he wants to do, or has to do, and he does it. No time for anything else. She rolls her eyes at the snow, then turns back to put away her bedroll.
"It's pretty, isn't it?" Even if he's not actually going to answer, she can't help but keep trying. The tone isn't pointed, but the intent kind of is. Acknowledge everything out there. Have a conversation with me. Beth figures he'll tolerate it, if he'll tolerate being kissed. "I've never seen snow like that, only in - " movies - "stories. Did they have snow like this, where you're from?"
Some of the supplies get rolled up with her canvas and bedding, some stuffed into a bag. And then there'll be the tent, and they probably won't have time to wait around and catch breakfast - they can eat some of their rations on the way to their destination. She's thinking it all through as she talks.
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no subject
So she scoots over until their sides touch and his arm can settle around her narrow frame. It's the nearest she can remember being to him, at least outside of a fight, and that realization comes with the sense of pleasant embarrassment she associates with stupid crushes on people who aren't interested. But it does, at least, make her cheeks feel a little warmer to think of it.
"In Georgia," she says, because the things she'd say to a normal guy she liked probably wouldn't do anything except make this awkward, "it hardly ever freezes. And I thought that was bad. You seem used to it, though."
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"The cold suits me more than heat. But I've no true experience with hunting, building shelter— survival, as you call it."
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"This is all we did sometimes." She says it quietly, but they're so near that the wind can't catch the words and blow them away. "Lived in the woods and ate snakes. And it sucked--sometimes I woke up and I didn't even wanna move. But the company was good."
A glance up at him. He'd probably be warmer, at least a little, with the helmet covering his face. And his face is its own kind of mask, sharp features that don't always convey what's going on behind them. But it's nice to be able to see it, all the same.
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"I make for poorer substitution in that regard." He exhales, bearing no self-pity in the truth of it: he does not laugh, he does not sing or tell jokes— he can do no more than keep her warm, and perhaps that is not near enough for what she needs to continue pressing forwards through this frigid squall.
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But there's I'm laughing at the idea that you suck at this, because you actually don't, and then there's I'm laughing at you, and Beth's not about to risk the possibility that he interprets it as the latter. Instead, she tilts herself in against him, so her cheek's resting against the cold metal of his chestplate. "Nah. This is pretty good."
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The wind beyond their encampment is noisy, loud and hissing against the snowy bank dug to shield their fire: between it and the open entrance of their tent (all fenced in by deep snow), it forms a sort of funnel for heat. Yet if the flurry opts not to subside, he imagines they’ll need to raise tarp and fully sequester themselves soon. If she is as versed in this as she claims, he imagine she knows that as well, and how bleak another long, cold night in darkness will feel.
He says nothing. His eyes drift closed, he hasn’t the will to offer her words, only tips his head slightly lower without ceremony, pressing the base of his chin somewhere along her scalp— the heat from his exhaled breaths warm.
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She stays where she is, like she hasn't noticed how his breath fogs itself against the curve of her ear and isn't wondering what he's thinking. Maybe it doesn't matter, when the end result's the same, but with just about any other boy in the world, she thinks she'd try to kiss him right about now. And maybe if Gabranth was a boy, you could. With a man who does everything like he's pulling the world's troubles behind him on a rope, she's not sure if any of this means what it would from someone else.
"See," she eventually tells him, one of her gloved hands finding his. Her fingers close around his, bunching the edge of the cloak within them. It's the mildest flirting in the world, full of plausible deniability if he decides he's not into it or her. "You're good company."
no subject
It isn't willful. Were his brother here there'd exist some small amount of context for it, the way he keeps himself blind to intent in all things affectionate. As it is, Gabranth seems more akin to a confused hound, being set to task and finding the result different than he'd previously anticipated.
Not unwelcome. But strange.
no subject
It's all cautious, despite the warmth in her words, even the little squeeze she gives his hand. Talking to Gabranth can pivot in the span of a sentence or two, and this isn't territory she's crossed with him before. And beyond that--knowing what it's like to have someone's interest when you don't want it, she's waiting for some hint that she should back off. It hasn't come yet--she hopes it won't--but it might. And if it does, she'll pay attention.
"Which means you," she adds, deciding this is a good opening to get him to say something more, "get to tell me, too. D'you like this?"
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He concludes, the fine lines of his face betraying whatever harsh stoicism he's clearly working to employ. Perhaps his own habits as well, as offering anything remotely neutral might indeed serve as praise enough when Gabranth is digging in his heels.
His fingers, laced tight within her own, relax by the barest number of degrees.
"You are not poor comfort."
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You are not poor comfort is a pretty solid compliment, by Gabranth's standards, one she's likely to remember for a while. But it also feels a little like being damned with faint praise.
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He is tired. He doubts she'll care.
"I've no criticisms to offer you. Perhaps sunrise will see it differently."
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"You can tell me, you know. If you do." Not that he's been shy about it before. Wherever it is he comes from, she can tell it's the kind of place where he said jump and others asked how high. But saying it is a little more direct than trying to tease his feelings out, and it makes it feel less weird when she adds, a moment or two later, "I meant it. I like traveling with you. It's kinda like being home again--without all the parts that suck."
no subject
What is he to say, that this is a comfort to him? In so many ways it is not: he is unused to companionship, to conversation, to the concept of comfort itself, and it is so often the case in regards to humekind that the strongest of salves are drawn only from familiarity alone.
But somewhere beneath the rest he can still faintly remember what it was to think shared warmth a restful mercy. Associated with his brother, true, but such perceptions can be altered with experience.
"Am relieved to hear it, then. And trust that if I had more dislike for the experience, I would make such grievances plain."
He exhales thinly, the edge of his mouth drawn tight as he thinks for a beat longer, before adding:
"Tell me of it, your home."
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"It's gone," is what she says, trying to will the tension out of her body. (She's managed to shrink into herself just a little bit more at the thought of talking about it; she's like a stone beside him, the kind that used to be earth until pressure made it immovable.) "We lost everything, over and over. Every time it happened, I always thought...that's it, this is everything. There's nothing else I can lose. And I was always wrong."
You don't wanna hear about it. Beth forces her back to uncurl a little, her head to lift. Their brows nearly touch, or her brow and his cheek, and God, he's so handsome. This close, it's impossible not to notice. She doesn't draw back--she'd stay there, foreheads bumping against each other, if he let her, though she has the feeling he'll straighten up, too, back into the Gabranth who hides his sad eyes and sharp nose inside a helmet whenever he can. "But it was nice while it lasted."
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Yet he does not retreat. The opportunity is there, the weighted pressure clinging to the air around them— frigid as death— but he only listens, refusing to mask what has already been revealed.
“Was there nothing else worth remembering from your own world?”
no subject
The question surprises her, but maybe it shouldn't. Maybe, she thinks, what he wants is to hear about it, all the parts of their lives that weren't ruled by fear and death. Judith's smile and the ring on Maggie's finger, fresh berries along a path and the snap of a campfire on a cold (if not this cold) night. They're all twined up with the worst things, though, shot through with stories she can't or won't tell--not with the kind of detail that would explain why any of them happened.
It's hard to explain a disaster when you don't want anyone to know what caused it in the first place. She's been letting everyone think it was a war, or a famine, or whatever they want to imagine. One of these days, she might try out telling someone it was a Blight. Not yet, though. Talking about it feels like digging up the dead.
He's still there, so close that she can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, and she probably shouldn't, but she goes on instinct: she closes the distance between them and kisses his cheek, just a little too close to the corner of his mouth to be entirely platonic. (Just kiss him, part of her says, but it's answered immediately with You know what it feels like when someone kisses you and you don't want them to, don't do it.) "Maybe I'll tell you tomorrow."
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There is a difference between the space she takes up, and the space she takes for herself. And near as she is to him— her breath the only warmth that battered, frigid space provides— he is possessed of too little restraint: she controls herself, and he does not.
His head turns, his mouth fully upon her own, feverishly hot compared to the blanketing storm outside, grip gone tight around her shoulders.
It is not his place to impose upon her. To take what she has not given. Yet he has never been a decent man. A good man.
And she knows this already.
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Of course, it isn't actually saying anything that does it; it's not the promise of another day, maybe that sways him. And that's no minor shock in itself.
Maybe she just didn't expect him to want to kiss her back.
But he does, and she makes a little sound against his mouth - surprised, not upset - before kissing him back, meeting and matching his intensity. (Or trying to, anyway. Beth's not sure anyone in the world - any world - is as intense as Gabranth.) She's about to reach up and touch his cheek; there's hesitation in her frame as she changes her mind and pulls off her glove first. Her bare fingers are probably cold against his skin, but the reverse is true, too. Everything's cold tonight. But she can rest her hand against his jaw, fingertips brushing over his weird old-fashioned muttonchops, without wet wool getting in the way.
no subject
An uncomfortable resting place, but somehow, he doubts she finds fault with it given the heat still clinging to the both of them. Outside the snow has settled above the edges of their tent, forming a sort of visible pit in breaking daylight.
With his thumb and forefinger he nudges her, almost pinching the edge of her shoulder.
"Wake."
no subject
In the morning, she starts awake, sucking in a sharp breath. She's reaching for her knife before she realizes she doesn't need it.
"Jeez -" she mutters, tipping her head away from him, like that might get the stiffness out of her neck (or her neck out of his reach). "What was that for?"
no subject
Whether it is short lived or not, neither of them can say with any surety; they’ve supplies to pack, and steep snowfall to contend with while daylight lasts. If they cannot break through and finish descending the mountain slopes before nightfall, it is possible they will only trap themselves once again here—
And if that occurs, they’ll not survive.
Or at the very least, she will not.
no subject
Then she forces herself to sit up, and then she decides that she can see if last night was a fluke or not. See, Gabranth, she's awake. She's so awake that she leans over and kisses him good morning, her lips brushing his just for a moment.
And then she starts untying the tent flap like she didn't do anything of the sort, talking all the while. "We've gotta be pretty close. They said it was a chateau in the mountains--" this with a bad approximation of an Orlesian accent, and then--"Oh, my God, it's so bright."
no subject
And truth be told, he is a rigid man even without the matter of contact welling between them.
"Between the storm's perpetuity and the longer stretches of nightfall, your eyes will need time to adjust." Poetic. Beautiful. He speaks with the grace of a man dedicated wholly to gathering their supplies without so much as glancing towards the daylight streaming in from where she peers out into the snowpack.
Which is precisely what he is.
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"It's pretty, isn't it?" Even if he's not actually going to answer, she can't help but keep trying. The tone isn't pointed, but the intent kind of is. Acknowledge everything out there. Have a conversation with me. Beth figures he'll tolerate it, if he'll tolerate being kissed. "I've never seen snow like that, only in - " movies - "stories. Did they have snow like this, where you're from?"
Some of the supplies get rolled up with her canvas and bedding, some stuffed into a bag. And then there'll be the tent, and they probably won't have time to wait around and catch breakfast - they can eat some of their rations on the way to their destination. She's thinking it all through as she talks.