Chapter Text
It takes her two days to cave.
Two days to feel the frost in her joints, her perspiration crystalise, her breaths escape in clouds of bitten mist, and god, Beth thinks, staring up at the roof of the cabin, half expecting stalactites. This is not what she had in mind when Rio said safe house.
Not that she was entirely sure what she did have in mind before - - well. Just before. Had never spent all that much time thinking about where it was Rio went when everything had gone south, but if – gun to her head – she’d had to guess, she’d have thought: luxury apartments, sundrenched holiday houses, riverside lodges.
A place his G Wagon would look at home in the driveway, the parking lot, pulled up on the curb.
Somewhere he’d look at home.
The thought makes her wet her chapped lips, sink deeper into the threadbare blankets on top of her still-trembling body, and her gaze dart sideways to where Rio crouches stoking the last flickering embers of the fire.
It’s raining. or rather, it’s sleeting. Shards of ice colliding with the thick glass windows, escaping down the chimney to make the flames spit and smoke below, and when it had first started, Beth had watched Rio cuss. Watched him prod balls of tattered newspaper and sticks she’d collected and tried to dry yesterday, but it hadn’t done much good. The rain had gotten heavier and the fire smaller and she’d seen the chill find him. Pink his nose, ears, stiffen his fingers, and she’d though good, she’d thought he deserves it, but she’d still left him the last of the hot water in the flask even as her own fingers were turning blue.
Now, she holds them close to her mouth, exhales, but her breath is barely warm, and she can’t stop trembling, so she shoves them between her legs instead, and looks at him across the tiny, dim cabin, and says what she’s been saying for the last half hour:
“It’s going to go out.”
He’d ignored her the last time, and scoffed the first time, but now at least it’s enough to make him spin around and look at her, bundled upright on the only bed in the place, the look on his face like he’d forgotten she was even there, and Beth huffs, tilting her chin towards the fire.
“Poking at it isn’t going to miraculously fix the chimney leak,” she adds this time, a shiver rolling up her spine as Rio stares back at her, the erratic glow from the dying flames licking across his features – his plush lips and sharp nose and swollen eye, but god, it’s not that. It’s just - - it’s the cold. That’s all, and when his nostrils flare a little, it’s too easy to add: “Well, it’s not,” because she’s right.
Across the room, Rio finally drops the fire poker back to the tray and stalks his way towards the tiny sofa where he slept last night, tucking his arms high up into his armpits as he drops onto it, leaving his back to her as he hunches forwards, making himself as small as possible in the frigid space of the cabin.
And she doesn’t feel bad.
She doesn’t.
This entire situation is his fault.
It was him who showed up three weeks ago with a new plate, telling her to print two million dollars cash. It was him who’d had that spring to his step while he told her about a new client, and it was him who had her show up at a hotel bar with a suitcase full of fake cash to meet a guy who turned out to be an old-partner-turned-bitter-rival of Nick’s.
She still doesn’t really know what happened, just suddenly it was a few days later and Rio was back at her place with a black eye and a limp and an order.
Bring the plates.
He’d driven them through the night.
Now, across the cabin, he drops a hand to rub at his bad leg, and Beth’s frown deepens as she wriggles back into the dusty mattress, her gaze holding on the narrow line of him, and here’s the thing.
It’s not like she hasn’t thought about it.
Last night had been bad enough, but tonight with the rain and the sleet, without any real insulation and no fire, they’re practically case studies for hypothermia. For the bone chill and the frost bite and the slurred speech and the shuttered eyes and the slip towards a forever sort of unconsciousness.
And like, she knows that the best ways to avoid hypothermia are warm drinks, food, blankets, getting off the ground, and body heat, and just - -
Look.
They finished the cocoa hours ago.
Beth sniffs, rolls her eyes to the ceiling, feels a jittery tension in her body as she blinks hard and finally just says it:
“Come here.”
Rio twists his neck back instantly at that, his eyebrow arched, but he doesn’t make any indication that he’s likely to move, and right, Beth huffs. Why should this be any easier than literally anything else? Her head’s already starting to feel heavy, her thoughts tangled, and she figures the best way forwards is to - - well.
Be the danger.
With a trembling hand, Beth slowly unwraps the blanket from around herself, revealing her stiff jeans and loose sweater, the cold washing through the thin fabric like a rinse, and her teeth are already chattering when she says:
“Body heat.”
His other eyebrow raises to join the first, gaze dropping to her chest where she knows her nipples are peaked in cold, and Beth scowls.
“Not like that. Just - - we’re both freezing right and now, and this - - look. It works.”
“Yeah? You learn that at Journey Scouts?”
“Got the badge and everything,” she bites, and she’s sure she’s visibly trembling now, can feel it, and she sees Rio stare at her, shake his head, start to tell her to bundle up before she kills herself or something, and she adds: “You either come over here and get in the blanket with me or we’re both going to freeze to death right now, and what are your gang buddies gonna think of that, huh?”
Outside, the wind howls and the sleet is starting to get heavier, thicker, careen into hail, and god, it’s cold, and Beth can barely feel her anything anymore, and Rio’s still staring at her, his eyes (or, well, the one she can see below the swelling) dark, and she’s halfway to giving up and flinging herself back on the dusty mattress and trying to shiver her way to any sort of warmth, when Rio suddenly pushes up off the couch and beelines towards the bed.
Which - - right, Beth thinks. This is good, this is what she wanted. In her head, there are vague flashes of real warmth, his body pressed into hers, a memory of heat and desire twisted up and around and over and over, and something drops through her like a lick of flame, and she swallows only to suddenly find herself being gripped around the waist and pushed sideways. Within moments, Rio’s slipped his body beside hers and laid them both down, the mattress frigid beneath them, as Beth desperately tries to adjust the thin blankets back across them both.
She inhales sharply when she feels Rio’s leg press sideways against her own.
His arm against hers.
Both of them suddenly pushed like fish fingers against each other on their backs.
Or like corpses.
The thought makes her swallow.
Makes her gaze flick up to see his swollen face, his pink nose, his unusually pale features.
God, it’s cold.
Beth sniffs, looks down as she wriggles further beneath the blankets, curling her socked-toes to try and hold the blanket to them.
“So,” she tries. “How long are we going to be here?”
“I dunno,” he answers instantly, voice light, like he’d been waiting for her to ask. “How much holiday leave you got?”
Beth scowls, twisting to look at him, and then away, and then back, fixing on the way he hasn’t taken his gaze off the ceiling. It leaves her with little to look at but his swollen eye, the skin darkened with bruises around his temple, and she can’t quite keep the edge out of her voice when she asks:
“Did your brother give you that?”
“Cousin.”
He sniffs as he says it, nose wrinkling, and if she didn’t know any better, she’d swear he winced too at the motion of it. Pressed against her own, his arm feels tight, stiff, his leg cold against hers, and fine, if that’s the way he wants to play it.
“Oh, sorry. Did your cousin give you that?” Beth asks, correcting herself, and at least now, Rio does twist his neck to look at her, his eyes wide in the dark, the whites of them near luminous, and god he is - - he is too close. So close she can feel the cool of his breath against her cheek.
He doesn’t reply, and Beth swallows, something in her gut twisting, fingers trembling as the silence pulses between them, and she doesn’t know if it means yes, or if Rio’s insulted she’d even think that (Nick had just seemed - - and Rio - - something. There was something, that’s all), and it makes her look away. Makes her stare up at the ceiling like he’d been doing, like she had earlier too, watching the timber roofing tremble and listening to the shatter of sleet.
She thinks her toes are going numb.
She thinks her lips are.
She thinks the cold is starting to wrap its fingers around her ankles and pull her into its clutches, starting to leave her tired, and suddenly she’s grasping at anything to distract herself. Anything to keep her head above the threat of frigid oblivion, and she’s halfway through the chorus of Do You Wanna Build a Snowman? before she even realizes what she’s humming.
It’s not until Rio snorts beside her that it means anything to her slow turning head.
Beth’s gaze fixes back on him, and it’s sudden then – the memory of Jane and Marcus singing it to each other through the laundry room door while they played, back when Rhea still came around, back when Beth thought - -
After - -
Beth blinks.
A shiver wracking her chest as she clutches the blankets a little tighter.
“Does Marcus like Frozen?” she asks, like she doesn’t know, and from the way Rio makes a low noise of affirmation, she knows that he doesn’t.
Something in Beth loosens, tightens, loosens again.
“He really likes that snowman,” Rio says, sniffing again. “Olaf.”
His lip twitches – something between a smile and a grimace, and Beth can’t help but grin in reply, her own gaze holding now on the twist of his mouth.
“Jane had a stuffed one that sang the song from the movie. The Summer one. I took out the sound box and stitched it back up.”
Rio barks on a laugh, even as Beth cringes at the memory. It probably wasn’t her finest parenting moment, but after hearing the same song for the thirtieth time in a day, she was about to start tearing at the wallpaper.
“I told her he just wasn’t feeling well,” she adds. “But secretly I’m hoping she forgets he ever sang.”
It’s weird, the voice in her head that tells her it’s not a secret anymore.
Not now that she’s told him.
She doesn’t know why that leaves her pressing her arm to his a little tighter.
“Damn, you’re doin’ better than me,” Rio tells her, his voice low, a little slurred, hoarse with cold. She thinks that’s one of the symptoms of hypothermia, isn’t it? God, she can’t remember. “I gave Marcus’ to one of his cousins.”
Beth laughs.
Looks at him.
Vaguely, something in her head tells her to listen to his chest. Check for a rattle. Is that for hypothermia? No. Pneumonia, she thinks. Tries to summon up her badge training. God, she feels drunk suddenly. Woozy. She lifts her head and places it on his chest anyway, and if he’s surprised, he doesn’t act it. Instead, his arm circles around her shoulders, pulling her into him, which is silly, she doesn’t need the rest of her to hear the ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum of his heart beneath her ear. Doesn’t need to drop his mouth to the crown of her head, doesn’t need to inhale either, but she shivers at the warmth of his exhale there when he does that and when his freezing hand finds her shoulder, it’s too easy to reach back.
To pull it around her arm and under, squeezing his fingers into her armpit to warm them, and when his fingers creep forward to squeeze her breast, she doesn’t move them, couldn’t, she doesn’t think, not with his heartbeat so close, and his chest isn’t rattling but it might, she thinks, and god, it’s so much warmer like this, so she shouldn’t move her head just yet.
Just to be sure.
Just to warm them up a little.
Just for now.