by Amy Lane
He came back and put the metal box up over the fire again, then started setting up everything he’d need. He gave Damien two ibuprofen tablets, which Damien washed down with his final mouthful of broth. And then he had a thought.
“Mal?”
“Yeah?”
“Remember when I hurt my wrist last year?” It had been a reactivation of his Olympic injury—painful, but not crippling.
“Yeah?”
“I just remembered I might have a few codeine tablets in my bag. If you can help Damie sit up and look through the zippered pockets….”
Mal found them while Tevyn was slicing a clean spiral cut around one of the T-shirts—one of his favorites, advertising Mal’s company, and sky blue.
“Give them to him now with the ibuprofen,” Tevyn said decisively. “We want him to be good and stoned when we open that bandage up.”
Damie grunted, settling back down as Mal positioned the duffel bag. “Good friends,” he said softly. He’d been quiet all morning, awake and lucid, but obviously consumed with pain. Tevyn missed his acerbic banter, but even more, he missed the buffer between himself and Mal.
Everything they wanted to say to each other, it had all been stifled these years by other people in the room. His trainer, his physical therapist, whoever he’d bedded the night before.
His grandmother.
The helicopter had spun through the air, and Tevyn’s first thought—his only thought—had been Mal.
Not his grandmother.
Not his career.
Not his own life.
He’d wondered how they could die, Mallory Armstrong right across from him, and they’d never even kissed.
What was he doing wrong in his life that they’d never even kissed?
And here Mal—calm as a cucumber—was about to go into the howling storm to collect firewood because it was the most logical thing to do.
And they’d still not kissed.
Tevyn, who’d never claimed to be anything but king of the hill, wanted to claim Mallory, to kiss him, to make him so thoroughly Tevyn’s that the storm wouldn’t think about taking him.
Stupid.
So stupid.
Romantic in a way Tevyn had never known. Sex? Yes. Fantastic. Physical, fun, playful. Tevyn had friends all over the world—a good kiss with a hand down his pants was a perfect greeting.
But romance? Making someone “his”? Expecting a person to be there beyond the night? The event? The season?
Except… Mallory had been. For five years, Mallory had been there, and not even Tevyn’s coach had been there that long. Gretta had replaced Turk Collins, who’d retired after Tevyn got his gold medal because, as he’d said, he was going out good and Tevyn couldn’t give him a heart attack anymore.
Romance meant hearts, flowers, gifts, surprise visits—
Mallory showing up at three-quarters of his competitions when he didn’t do that for his other clients.
Mallory risking a helicopter in a storm to tell Tevyn his grandmother was sick, and risking it again so Tevyn could visit before she died.
Mallory coming into his room because Tevyn had been crying—and staying because he was asked.
Maybe romance started with being a solid presence in a life that had become a merciless revolution of travel and the slopes. With being the guy who was there for everything, including sticking close to a scared kid in pain who had just won the Olympics and was wondering about life.
Maybe it was time for Tevyn to do something about romance and not leave Mal to do all the heavy lifting.
He finished spiral cutting the third T-shirt, leaving the other three for bandages and whatever else they’d need, and then tied the ends together before coiling the whole lot of it and setting it aside. He estimated around forty yards of rope there, all told. Given that they couldn’t see five feet in front of them outside, that was more than enough.
“How you feeling, Damie?” he asked gently, and Damien gave him a loopy grin.
“This is as good as it’s gonna get,” he confirmed, eyes at half-mast. “It’s gonna suck, but with any luck, I won’t remember a damned thing.”
Tevyn had set the T-shirt sleeves aside, and now he put them in the boiling water on the fire. Mallory took a deep breath and started unwrapping the person-burrito that Damien had spent the night as, stopping when they got to the blood-soaked pressure bandage around his leg.
“Four things we need to do,” Tevyn said so they could get it out loud. “Need to strip the old gauze off, wash the wound, pack the wound with snow again, and wash the pressure bandage.” The vinyl of the pressure bandage should be easy to sterilize with the boiling water, and so should the wound. “Then we can wrap the whole thing back again.”
“Need to wash my hands first,” Mallory said, his voice remarkably steady. “I’ll strip the gauze and wash the leg. You wash the bandage and get the snow.”
They exchanged a grim look and without another word got to work.
Damien, flying high on the codeine, was compliant and stupid, and Tevyn had to laugh to himself as he heard Mal being patient with him.
“Just lie back, Damien. That’s it. Back. Lie back. Put your head back. That’s it. Back. No, no, don’t sit up. Don’t sit—”
“Motherfu—”
“Yeah, it hurts. Just lie back. Let me deal with the leg.”
“Leg doesn’t work, Mal. Doesn’t work. You’re cute. But you’re not Preston. Why aren’t you Preston, Mal? I woke up this morning and wanted Preston. He won’t even look at me if I’m not a Labrador retriever.”
“Well, we’ll have to get you back home so you can be a Labrador retriever for Preston! Okay?”
“Can’t,” Damien said glumly. “He’s Gecko’s little brother. No touchin’ the little brother, Mal. That’s a rule.”
“Tell that to Blake Manning,” Tevyn said, because Mallory was busy fishing out a strip of T-shirt from the water.
“Who’s tha’?”
“Guy who plays for my favorite band,” Tevyn told him, taking his own strip of T-shirt to wash the vinyl now that Mal had stripped the old gauze. They were working closely, head to head, and Tevyn suddenly wished he was clean. He wanted to smell like shampoo or cologne instead of fire smoke and sweat. “Three guys in the band are older brothers, and he just got engaged to the fourth, the baby brother. You gotta be honest about it, I think.”
He’d seen interviews—the way Cheever Sanders had looked at Blake Manning had made him yearn for things he’d never voiced to himself before.
“He’s young.” Damien sighed. “Likes dogs more’n people. Don’ blame him.”
“That’s hard when they’re young,” Mal said, eyes glued to his task. “You can want and want and want when they’re younger, but you’re afraid to make a move because what if you’re taking something from them you can’t give back.”
Damien made a wordless howl then, because Mal was being thorough and relentless with the hot water, and then he went limp again, muttering to himself under the brain blanket of drugs.
Mal finished cleaning the wound, and Tevyn finished cleaning the vinyl in the sudden silence. Using pieces of T-shirt to guard his fingers, Tevyn took the pan of soiled water to the trench coat and stepped outside briefly to dump it on the rock wall, wipe it down, and fill it with fresh snow.
He was shivering hard when he got back in, and Mal took the container from his numb fingers and packed and rewrapped the wound without comment. He continued on by wrapping Damien back in layers of clothing Tevyn had used the day before, and finishing off with the fire blanket.
In the meantime, Tevyn had brought back more snow to melt. He handed Mal a wet clean T-shirt sleeve to wash his hands off on and then moved to his parka, stretched on the ground to insulate his bottom, and patted the spot next to him.
“Firewood,” Mal said into the silence.
“Just rest here for a minute.” They were both sweating and shaking, because doctoring didn’t come easy to either of them.
> “I had no idea he had a crush on Preston,” Mal said softly. “Sweet kid. Shitty with people.”
“Good with dogs.” Tevyn smiled slightly, because they’d picked that much up.
“We have to get him home.” Mal leaned against him, giving Tevyn a little bit of his weight.
“All of us,” Tevyn insisted.
“Okay.”
“You’re not stealing anything from me. I’m twenty-five years old.”
“Weren’t when you walked into my office,” Mal said, voice softening. “You were nineteen and cocky and had so many plans.”
“And you helped me carry those out.” He had. Tevyn and Missy hadn’t had much to offer back then—but Mal had spun it into Tevyn’s travel money, his equipment, his supplies. Tevyn could jump on a helicopter with a duffel bag that would keep three men alive for a week because Mallory Armstrong had worked overtime trying to keep Tevyn’s little one-man corporation afloat until sponsors started gluing names to the back of his ass.
“So much promise,” Mal mumbled. “Had to make sure you got to do everything you dreamed about, right?”
“I’ve been dreaming about you since the Olympics, Mallory.” Tevyn took a deep breath, because there, he’d said it. “What are you going to do about that dream?”
Mallory’s hand, clean now, dry, came up to stroke Tevyn’s back. “I guess we’ll have to see when we get back,” he said.
“When.”
“That’s what I said.”
“It’s a promise. When we get back. That means we gotta get back.”
Tevyn felt the kiss on the crown of his head. “Sure.”
“No, not ‘sure’ like I’m delusional. Say it Mallory… there should be something between Mallory and Armstrong. What’s your middle name, anyway?”
Mallory snorted and stood up. “I’m not telling.”
Tevyn half laughed. “What in the hell?”
“No. Seriously. I would rather go out into that storm and collect firewood than tell you my middle name.”
Tevyn stood up and watched in surprise, and Mallory pulled on his hat and then his gloves, which had dried by the fire. He’d taken off his suit jacket in the lean-to that morning and put the hooded sweatshirt on over his shirts and the sweater, as well as one of Tevyn’s promotional scarves because he’d apparently given his cashmere one to Damien. Now he pulled the suit jacket on over his sweatshirt and grabbed the last set of T-shirt sleeves from the pile and shoved one in each boot before sliding them on.
And the whole time Tevyn sputtered at him, because… because….
“You’ve known my name from the very first. Tevyn Simmons Moore, because my father’s name was Mark Simmons, but he left my mom when she was pregnant. That’s… that’s half my life there, in my middle name, and you’re not going to tell me your middle name?”
“Hand me the rope,” Mallory said, his lips twisted into what looked to be a playful little smile. Tevyn paused before giving him the coil, double-checking the knots and making sure none of it was going to break because it was too thin.
“Don’t tug on it too much,” Tevyn told him, taking an end and tying it to Mal’s belt loop. He tugged experimentally. “Can you feel that?”
“Yeah.”
“Will you when you’re out in the snow?”
Mallory grimaced, and Tevyn undid the knot and slid his arms around Mallory’s waist. They paused as he retied it, looping it around a belt loop to make sure it didn’t slide off, and Tevyn skated his hands over Mal’s clothing, wanting to touch his skin.
“You need to not stay out too long,” Tevyn lectured. “Make trips. I’ll stand by the entrance—just drop the wood in, and I’ll stack it and sort it.”
“You are really bossy,” Mallory said, still teasing.
“I don’t even know your middle name. How are you going to go out into the snow and I don’t even know your middle name? That’s insanity. How can I…?” Tevyn stared up at him, and his body finished that sentence when his mouth couldn’t make the leap.
How can you go out there when I haven’t even kissed you yet?
He reached up to cup Mal’s neck and pulled him down for a kiss.
Mallory didn’t even hesitate. Like he’d been praying for that kiss his entire life, he opened his mouth and tried to devour Tevyn whole.
In Tevyn’s entire life, he’d never been kissed like that. Like every searing nerve ending, like every giant pulse of his heart might break through his skin and send him rocketing skyward. That kiss was higher than any trick Tevyn had pulled on a half-pipe, faster than any downhill slalom, more intense than any combo run. He gasped and pushed forward, wanting more, the adrenaline of finding a new high pounding through his bloodstream like surf.
Mallory gave back, cupping his waist, pulling him closer, both of them struggling to feel the other’s heat through layers and layers of clothing, through worry, through fear.
Tevyn let out a gasp and pulled back, shaking, and Mallory rested their foreheads together. “I’ll be back,” he promised.
“You’d better. I don’t even know your middle name.”
Mallory kissed him again, hard and fast, enough for Tevyn to know he’d been taken and claimed, and then he was gone, leaving Tevyn to clutch a coil of rope and stand by the lean-to entrance, checking to make sure Damien didn’t wake up.
THEY had no watches. They had no phones. The sun was obscured by clouds and trees and snow. They had no way of keeping track of time. As far as Tevyn was concerned, centuries passed, punctuated by a clatter and Mallory’s heavy breathing as he dropped branches and wood through the opening left by the flapping bottom of the trench coat.
Tevyn had wrapped the rope end around his wrist after the whole length had played out, and he spent his time organizing the piles.
Since they didn’t have an axe or a saw, a big stack of it would have to start burning at one end and then be pushed through the fire pit as it burned—after Tevyn skinned it with his knife.
Some of it had actually been knocked down several days before. It wasn’t seasoned, per se, but, again, there was enough decent pulp that they could use it.
It was the stuff with the long branches that caught Tevyn’s attention, because most of that was green and flexible.
That stuff he stripped the needles off of, putting them in a pile to use as insulation on the ground of their little shelter. Yeah, his coat would be covered with pitch, but they’d all be warmer for the layer of needles between them and the ground.
He spent the next century or millennium or whatever checking the rope on his wrist obsessively, making sure it indicated movement, indicated Mallory moving around to get firewood, indicated that he hadn’t just keeled over in the storm and given up on life in general.
Finally, after he dropped the fourth load at the edge of the shelter, an exhausted Mal stumbled in, the slack from the rope trailing behind him.
“Sit,” Tevyn ordered tersely. “There’s the second ration of broth in the bottle. I’ll take care of the rope.”
He coiled it quickly, ignoring the chunks of Sierra snow and ice falling off of it by the entrance, and hung it over the fallen tree bench when he was done. They weren’t finished with that by a long shot.
Then he organized and stacked the last batch of firewood and helped Mal off with his suit jacket and his hat, leaving the scarf on until the shudders stopped.
“H-h-h-hi, h-h-h-oney, I’m h-h-hommme,” Mal gasped after a minute, and Tevyn smacked him on the top of his head.
“God, could you have been gone any longer?”
Mal looked at the piles Tevyn had set up and grimaced. “Th-that’s not much wood for th-the effort,” he managed, and Tevyn’s next touch on his head was softer.
“It’ll last us till tomorrow,” he said. “If you help me strip the bark off the outside.”
“Sure. Wh-why are we doing that again?”
Tevyn smiled. He’d grown up in a small cabin with a Franklin stove as a primary source of heat. “So it
doesn’t smoke and sputter,” he said. “Outside’s got most of the water in it, and the sap.”
“Gotcha.”
“It’ll last us till tomorrow,” he repeated. He thought about the estimates of how long the storm had to run its course. “You only have to do that one more time.”
Mallory half laughed. “I’m not sorry about that.” He wrapped his arms around his knees. “What are you doing there? With those long ones?”
“Well, I’m trying to weave them together. I know it sounds dumb, but—”
“Snowshoes,” Mal said promptly. He pulled back to peel big chunks of snow off his suit pants. “Good. You finish those, and I can test them out tomorrow.”
“Have to use some of your rope,” Tevyn warned, and Mal shrugged.
“I stuck close to the rock face today. Tomorrow I can swing out a little. Seriously, if I don’t have to sink every time I step—”
Tevyn frowned. “Speaking of, take off your pants.”
Mallory sat straight up. “One kiss and—”
“No! The snow is melting, and they’re soaking. I should have made you take them off immediately. Dammit—take them off, and I’ll shake the snow off outside.”
Mal did with gratifying quickness, and Tevyn took them from him and allowed his eyes to linger.
“What?” Mal asked, meeting Tevyn’s look from under his lashes.
“You… your body’s real fine,” Tevyn said after a moment of drinking in pale skin and a scattering of black hair. Mallory’s legs were well developed—Tevyn knew he did a lot of walking and biking back in the city, and he worked out as well. But more than that, they were naturally slender but not skinny. Solid. Muscular. Leading to a taut backside.
Tevyn had to break the silence that had fallen over them, because Mal’s front side was starting to interest him too, and now was not the time. “Your ass is a little skinny, but it’ll do.”
He ventured out into the storm—grateful that between the lean-to and the rock face, they had a small foyer with a windbreak—and shook the snow off the sopping wool slacks.