Page 26 of Rarely Pure and Never Simple
He regretted the words when Damien turned away with a soft, wounded sound, taking his own meal to the far corner of the truck bed to eat cross-legged, head down.
Blaze shrugged and shoveled down a few bites. It hit his system like a water hammer in an underused steam pipe, and he was glad he was sitting. Okay, fine. He was a little more depleted than he wanted to admit.
"Are we getting warmer?" he offered as a change of subject.
"Yes."
Well played, moron. You shoved him right back into one-word answers. "How warm?"
Damien shrugged without looking up.
Exasperated, Blaze waved his spoon. "Look. Maybe I misjudged a little, but I'm not falling to pieces. I'm sorry I'm snarly."
"You're always snarly."
Better. "Yeah, well, more snarly. Snarlier. Extra snarly. You were looking at me like I was some consumptive opera heroine."
"You were white and shaking." Damien finally lifted his head. "And rubbing your chest."
"I'm fine. Tired. Not dying."
"You worried me." Damien finished off his stew and collapsed the container into its half-inch-diameter, post-meal, recyclable cube. "I hate that you were shot trying to protect me. This is why I work alone."
"You work alone because you're an irritating twit."Ha! An almost-smile twitch.
"Yes." Damien crawled forward to sit on the tailgate beside him, apparently to take off his boots and coat. "I'm going to sleep. Please close up the car when you decide to turn in. Some of the critters out here aren't nice to wake up to."
"Not my first time out here, you know."
"Maybe not. But I live off grid. Used to this stuff." Damien burrowed into his side of the sleeping bag bed, turning his back to Blaze. He was certain that was the end of their conversation until one more muffled sentence reached him. "And no one uses the word consumptive in conversation."
Blaze chuckled and finished his dinner. He cleaned up, closed the car, and climbed into his own side of the makeshift bed. The ache in his chest made him restless. His inability to get warm made it worse.
He didn't think he was shaking the vehicle too much or making any noise, but the heavy sigh from across the cab told him otherwise. In the star-flecked dark, an arm extended out toward him.
"Come here."
"What?"
"Blaze, come here. You're shivering."
"So?"
"It's keeping me awake."
"Well, we can't have that, your majesty."
In a dreamlike haze, Blaze moved across the folded-down seat beds, under the held-up sleeping bag, and into the crook of Damien's waiting arm. He settled his head on a surprisingly solid shoulder and let out the breath he didn't realize he held when Damien's arm settled around him and pulled him close.
Lying next to Damien was like curling up beside a furnace. His shivers soon subsided into an occasional shudder, but Damien kept him close, making no move to roll away or push him off. The world was full of weird shit. Nice when some of it turned out to be good every now and then.
5
MCKENZIE'S REDOUBT
Blaze had lost both the pallor and the wheeze the next morning, but Damien still worried. The morning was cold as a brass brassiere, breath ghosting from them both in dragon-steam curls. The Raptor's interior warmed once it was running again as Damien repacked their supplies and bedding, unpacked, and repacked again.
He tried to hurry, wanting to get out of the shadow into the relatively warmer sunlight for Blaze, but he only made himself more anxious and had to start over when he lost count of how many times he had tightened one of the straps. His hands shook as he began unpacking again.
