There’s a hint of resigned, broken humor in her voice, and he snorts. “Yeah, me either.”
“Thank you for helping me. Areyouokay?”
“I think so. Everything aches, but it all works. You rest a bit. I need to see what else I can find in this mess.”
“I can help.”
She’s defensive with a bite to the edge of her words, as if he assumes she’s useless, and he’s not sure where that’s coming from. It’s out of place for the situation they’re in, considering she’s losing enough blood that a donation center would be giving her orange juice and cookies right about now.
“I know you can, but you’re hurt. I got this for now. Okay?”
She sighs. “Okay.”
He sets about searching what remains of the cabin. Ducks outside for a few brief moments, hoping to spot a town in thedistance they could hike to, and seeing nothing but mountains and miles of endless snow.
“We won’t be able to close up both ends,” he yells out absently, holding up a few large blankets. “Maybe use these to section off a small area? Keep the wind out?”
She nods, noticeably more relaxed now that he’s including her, so he keeps on telling her what he finds and how they might use it in a running commentary that fills the silence.
“Hey, you need a coat,” she says suddenly.
It’s only then that he realizes he’s still in that t-shirt he grabbed absently this morning. Adrenaline has kept him warm in freezing temperatures until now, but once his brain catches up to the reality of his situation, all he can feel is the biting cold.
Ten minutes later, he has a pile of items spread out before them after ransacking the luggage. Three flashlights. Enough snacks to last a few days if they’re careful. Four blankets, some travel pillows, phones with no cell service, one crossword booklet, and various clothing that thankfully look warm enough to endure the Alaskan winter. More than a few people had plans to go skiing.
He pulls his new coat around himself tighter after helping her into a smaller one.
There is zero water, but they’ve got plenty of snow.
“Quite the haul,” she says. “I saw you fling that vibrator across the cabin like it bit you. It could be useful.”
He raises a brow at how bold she sounds, his face going hot at the mental image of her using a pink vibrator on herself before he can stop the thought from forming. His pants are already going tight, and he couldn’t find a reply if someone paid him for it.
“For the batteries,” she clarifies, with a knowing smirk. “Using it for anything else would be unsanitary.”
“Right. Yeah. Batteries. Good idea.”
He can’t tell if this sudden teasing is just a cover or not. Suspects it might be. She’s gotta be just as stressed as him, even more so with her injury, and maybe she deals with it by being flippant. That’s fine. He’d rather talk about vibrators all day long than the horror of what’s really going on.
Her shivering triggers his to go up a notch, and all at once, the tolerable cold during daylight, when the sun was still streaming through broken windows of the cabin, becomes unbearable as it begins to sink down past the mountains. His head starts to throb in a familiar pain that threatens to panic him. He can’t have a migraine in the middle of fucking nowhere without his usual medication.
“There’s no radio,” he offers in a pointless statement of the obvious, pinching the bridge of his nose as his eyeballs start to flare hot. Of course, there isn’t. It was in the front half of the plane that’s probably miles behind them.
His teeth chatter as he hands her one of the blankets, helping her wrap it around her shoulders when she winces at lifting her arms, and then he starts walling them in between the seats that are still bolted in place on either side of them with more blankets.
It’s a tight fit, but that’s better for retaining heat, anddammit,he’s going to have to sleep right next to her, squished into this little space. The longer the adrenaline starts to wear off, the more he remembers who he really is. Just some socially maladjusted screw up.
He’s mellowed out some since he hit forty. Not so quick to anger anymore. Not so antisocial that he can’t make conversation if he must. His fiancée leaving him weeks before their wedding did plenty to blunt his emotions, and he feels decently relaxed most days without the constant chip on his shoulder he had when he was younger. He’s sure most of that has to do with his fatherfinallykicking the bucket a few yearsago, but some shit just sticks forever. For him, that’s his inability to be close to anyone. Not his brother, who he came out here to watch get married. Not any of the women he reluctantly dated to meet social expectations. Definitely not a stranger after a plane crash. The two of them, in their makeshift shelter, are going to experience a flood of closeness on all levels. There’s no escape from that.
His heart rate speeds up as all that shyness he forgot about while focusing onjust the next stepsrapidly comes back full force. If he got any redder, she might ask him if he has some sort of contagious illness.
Task completed, he sits there on his knees, hesitating to move in too close without her permission. He remembers what he did before they boarded the plane, nearly feeling her up like a jerk while trying to brush the coffee off her shirt…as if that would help. If he makes another wrong move again, she may decide he’s not to be trusted at all and send him to the other end of this broken plane alone. Her survival odds will be a lot higher if they stick together. His will be, too.
Nora watches him a moment, wrapped up in her blanket with the ghost of her breath puffing out in soft clouds. “Are you coming in here? This is for both of us, right?”
“Yeah. For sure. Yep,” he replies awkwardly, unsticking to carefully take up the small square footage left over at her side, and wincing as his head begins a steady throbbing tempo.
“I always liked blanket forts as a kid,” she says. That teasing tone is gone now, replaced with a tired weariness he can feel in his own bones. “Are you still okay? Did you get hit in the head after all?”
