Helena Chu (lostchu) wrote in thefield, @ 2009-06-17 23:42:00 |
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Entry tags: | cross, helena, z - 1st tribe - day 24 |
Things Can Be Accomplished Without Talking Them Out
Who: Helena and Cross
What: Winding down toward bed
When: Well after dark and the last meal
Where: At the campfire, where their bedroll is
Rating: PG for kissing.
Sighing with relief, Helena stepped back in to the circle of light cast by the crackling fire in the firepit. The flames were high tonight and fed on hardwood that Cross had lugged back from wherever he'd ventured. Ken had spit a thick haunch of the grazer meat and it had roasted well on the fire that evening. Most of it had been nibbled away but she'd cut some well done slices and squirreled it on a clay plate into the deep corner of Cross's second lean-to attempt. The roof still needed to be thatched but other than that, it was coming along. Cross hadn't said as much but Helena had sort of claimed this one as...well, theirs.
They'd given up their first lean-to, the one they had built together, to Jasper and the kids without complaint or even comment. Helena sort of felt as though they were owed this second domicile and she had every intention of spending the following day thatching the roof and weaving the water resistant roc feathers in. She was curious if they would make a difference in the rain.
Earlier that afternoon she had tucked their bedding inside of it before anyone else saw fit to claim it. Their blankets were neatly folded, their pillows resting on top of them. Her basket of yarnball yarn and her various tools were tucked in there as well. When she'd come back with her bits of bones and enormous feathers, she'd snagged the portion of food as well, intending to put it aside to be nibbled as she listened to the camp settle into sleep. To her surprise there had been something almost as bright as her eye-watering comforter laying across her pillow. Just touching the candy pink garment had made her gasp in pleasure. It was that soft, wonderful microfleece that made you want to snuggle deeper into your own clothing. As she'd straightened up and shook it out, she'd found it to be a bathrobe! Belt and everything!
She'd practically skipped into the bushes at the back of the lean-to frame and had stripped out of her chilly, damp clothes. She didn't hesitate a moment to swathe her lithe little body in what amounted to pure bliss. The robe smelled fresh and clean and she even thought she caught the faint aroma of fabric softener on it. The gift certainly uplifted her, even though she swam in it. It was easily two sizes too big for her but Helena thought it only made it better. Carrying her wet clothes over one arm and her sandals by the frayed straps, she arranged everything out of the way but near enough to the fire that they might dry out quickly.
As wonderful as the robe was, and touching as the gift she assumed it was meant to be, Helena really just wanted to retreat into the half built lean-to. She wasn't tired. How could anyone sleep with Quinn's body lying still and waiting to be buried? She didn't feel like she could really talk to anyone about it, though. She didn't want to have to recount what she'd been told from Thorne and Sophie. She just didn't want to have to deal with the death of that young man until she attended his service in the morning. By then, Thorne will have satisfied his needs as their only coroner and it would be time. Pausing to pick up her half-full water bottle Helena debated walking out to the spring to fill it up but decided against it. Turning back toward the lean-to, she decided she'd get a little bit of quiet knitting done before Cross joined her for sleep.
Cross had accepted the tragic news that there'd been a death early that morning with the same unreadable expression and equanimity with which he accepted just about everything that occurred. Some might take his demeanor as a lack of concern, but that was not the case. He had learned to guard himself from a very early age, to keep his feelings to himself, not to allow anything to matter too much. A calm exterior could subvert the maelstrom of vivid, uncontrollable, sometimes painful emotion within. To him, it didn't matter if it was there. It mattered that it was well-hidden.
He'd gone about his business, a grim set to his jaw being the only real indication that it wasn't an afternoon like any other one here. He'd stored the bundles of thin branches still tied together with the vines he'd gleaned from his half-day away from camp, had put the bathrobe he'd found for Helena on her pillow-- and he'd had to hunt for their bedroll, finally locating their things in the partially completed lean-to he'd built. He'd stood in front of it for long minutes, a faint line between his brows as his pale-blue eyes scanned over the items she'd put there as if maybe he wasn't quite sure what they were. Then he'd nodded, the merest lowering of his chin, before turning and plodding away.
Cross had been filthy from his day of hard work, and early evening had seemed to be a good time to slip away from the gloomy miasma that was beginning to settle over camp. Armed with soap pods, he'd found a relatively secluded bit of lake in which to strip and wash himself thoroughly. The day had been so warm that the water was bearable, heated by the brilliant sun still, and he'd taken his time. He was beginning to grow stubble again, which meant he'd have to shave soon, but he hadn't felt like bothering with it tonight. He made his way back to camp dressed in his khakis, the battered t-shirt hanging from one hand.
He picked his way around the fire, not speaking to anyone who was nearby, his gaze distant. A short distance away from it was the lean-to, and he saw that Helena was there, bundled up in the bathrobe, some of her knitting in her lap. He felt something inside him relax just at the sight of her. "Hey," he said quietly, nodding to her. "It looks nice." Not that it mattered for anything, but pink was a good color for her, making her skin look rosy.
She tilted her face up to look up at him and a bit of her haunted reflections (if it had been her with Quinn this morning, could she have done anything to save him? Was it the right thing to do to redistribute all of his worldly possessions? Should she put it to the council to ban the use of the weed that had killed him even though that book of Thorne's claimed it was useful?) were swept away out of her face. "Hey, thank you." She tucked a loose tail of the fuzzy fabric under her knee. "It's wonderful. Where did you find it?" She kept her voice hushed, not really wanting to draw any attention to this reunion, which she'd been looking forward to all day.
Cross toed his shoes off, lining them up against the outer edge of the lean-to, to one side so neither of them would trip over them if they got up during the night, draped his t-shirt over them and then lowered himself down to sit on the bed she'd spread out so neatly. "I crossed the lake to the south today," he told her, his eyes on her face as if searching for something there, "and walked to a grove of trees to get wood and vine for the lean-tos. It was draped over a branch out there." He found that very odd, and even though he wasn't particularly an imaginative person, he'd realized he was dreaming up possible scenarios for how it might have gotten there even as he worked. "Didn't make much sense, but there it was."
Helena breathed out just the faintest sigh of appreciation for his story as he finished it off. "I found something today too," she told him, turning her body toward him but casting her face into shadows as she turned away from the pit. "I crossed on the west side with that new guy Adnan. We walked for a bit and found another one of those strange rockpiles and a spring like ours here. From up there, we could see a void in the grass and when we investigated it turned out to be the body of one of those massive birds. Long dead, just a skeleton and most of the bones were broken. Like it had fallen out of the sky and landed there. Adnan found a map on what looks like parchment paper. He's keeping it tonight but I'm going to show it to Alex and Ken tomorrow." She put aside her knitting and leaned toward him a bit more. "What a strange day. Everyone is finding odd things today. Ken said Quinn found a shotgun and a box of shells. Lucien found a goat with a rope lead around its neck. Aaron stopped me when I was on my way back to camp to tell me that he found a tool belt and tools. Even nails. None of it rusted."
"Would've been interestin' to see," he remarked about the bird skeleton. He would never forget the sight of that first roc they'd seen soaring across the sky, looking as big as a plane. He figured the bird bones would be reminiscent of the dinosaur bones in museums, in a way. His expression darkened when Helena mentioned that another gun had been found-- he supposed that was fine as long as it didn't stray into the wrong hands-- but the frown eased when she mentioned the discovery of tools and nails. "Nails would've been helpful when I was building this," he said ruefully. He half-turned in her direction, leaning some of his weight on one hand as he sat there, the shift in balance putting him closer to her. "Hope more people found things we can use." His thoughts almost always turned to immediate practicalities; that was just how he was.
She heard that and immediately it brought a battered smile to her face. Her heart was heavy all day long and Cross in one moment of careful observation banished all of the fears and creeping paranoia that was beating around in her heart. "Me too," she told him honestly. "I hope so as well. I was going to say that it's awfully strange that all of us are finding things today. I really should just take a page from your book and be glad we've caught a break today." A break in the shape of an extra weapon, a warm bathrobe and tools to build with. "Maybe we can ask him if we can knock a few nails into the frame tomorrow, just to give it some extra sturdiness?" She reached up and lightly touched the smooth wood that made up the frame over her head. It wasn't a permanent home for them but it was a soon-to-be-roof over their head and that made her content.
Cross watched her, thinking that he wasn't so sure how much of a break they'd caught considering that someone had died, and it could have been any of them. It could have been her. That was a thought he could not entertain for long, because it caused a black hole to yawn in the center of his stomach, a thought that brought back memories of what it had felt like to hide beneath the bed or in closets when he'd been small, hiding from everything that frightened him even though he could not have expressed what those things were. He didn't verbalize this, but a certain somberness had crept into his eyes as he nodded to her. "Maybe we can," he said very softly. Maybe we can forget there's nothing solid to cling to here, that you could die, I could die. We all could. We all might.
It was hard to watch someone so closely for so many days and not start to catch little ticks. She almost asked him what had shifted to darken up his blue eyes but she knew. She knew the hopeful banter and all of the planning that they did in their quiet time was cover for much more powerful stuff. She bit back any questions and just shook one of her hands out of the sleeve of the robe and rested it on his shoulder, close enough to his neck that the pad of her thumb could stroke lightly against the tell-tale tense cord of muscle there. "Ok," she told him. Ok, they'd do that tomorrow. Ok, their life here was going to be what it was. Ok, she could be here to offer whatever comfort he might need.
It was the simplest and most basic of words, but it told him that she understood. There were times when words were so far from being enough, and she did not see the need to fill the air with them when an expression, a sigh, a touch could say so much more. Cross lifted his free hand to the one she'd put to his neck, gently covering it for mere seconds; it was the hand that lacked two of its fingers, but still it was so much larger than hers, much more blocky than her delicate, slim one. His gaze lowered as if for thought, and then he lifted his eyes to hers again. "D'you think we could lay down?" he asked. He wanted to be close to her, and that was the only way he was really able to state it.
When he touched her back it was really all of the conversation she really needed from Cross. She knew well by this point that if she wasn't on the right track he just wouldn't have responded. Nodding, she let her hand fall away from him. "Sure. I snagged a burnbutter bulb earlier. Wasn't sure what sort of shape you'd be in. How's your hide?" she asked in their hushed bedroom voices as she packed her knitting into her basket. "Also, there's some slices of the roast grazer on a plate near my pillow," she told him so that he'd mind where he put his big mits but also so that he'd help himself if he was hungry. The meat was dry by this point, and cold, but it was still food.
"It's alright," Cross said of his back. "I was in the shade most of today." He flexed his shoulders as if to test what he'd just said and then nodded. It was fine. He sat up straight and leaned over to pull off his socks, tossing them in the general direction of where he'd left his boots and t-shirt, then replied to what she'd said about the food, "I had somethin' before I went to wash." He could usually always eat, but right now he was more in the mood to lie down, to find the sense of peace and stillness that could descend when he and Helena were in their bedroll. He'd never before truly understood what it could be like to have somewhere to feel safe with another person, even if said safety was completely unspoken. It was something he'd begun to realize that he craved ever since they'd been here on the island. He rolled to one side and pulled back the top comforter to slide underneath it and settle his head on his pillow.
Quickly and quietly, Helena ducked out of the lean-to in order to retrieve her mostly dry clothes and set them back into the deep vee of their shelter. She'd heard there were curious little monkey-like animals on the island and it had her worried about losing her few precious items. She set aside the meat after popping a chunk between her lips and chewing. When she could finally settle she slid into the bedroll carefully, mindful of the opening in her belted robe. She was comfortable, dry and tired. Helena had every intention of sleeping in the thing, whether it fell open in the night or not. It reminded her of her conversation with Alex at dawn and it brought a smile to her lips as she scooted in close against him. Maybe she wouldn't have 'the sex talk' with Cross but there was always his perfectly refined sense of touch. Still smiling to herself she slid her palm over his middle as she got comfortable.
Cross had been watching her without comment as she got herself settled and then slid beneath the covers to join him. He'd been content in the solitude in which he'd spent the majority of the day, but he knew he would have missed this if he'd not had it. He supposed it was like having someone to come home to, though that was an experience he'd never before had. He was lying on his side, and when her hand slid over his stomach, he draped his arm around her, his palm resting on the soft pink material of the robe just below the nape of her neck. He exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Camp was mostly quiet, except for the faint cries of the laughers from across the lake, something they'd learned to tune out by this point.
With his gently urging pressure just between her shoulderblades, Helena settled right against his chest, tucking her head beneath his chin. Her arm tightened around his body and one of her knees slid between his. The robe bunched up a little between them but she was comfortable. The words to tell him that she liked this closeness stuck in her throat.
Cross was comfortable and yet slightly restless at the same time. He had no idea how it was possible for someone to be as tired as he was and yet be unable to really settle down. Helena was warmer and softer than usual considering what she was wearing, and the little corner of his mind that had seen her bring her pajamas back into the lean-to was acutely aware that she had nothing on under all that pink plush. That might be the cause of his restlessness, or it might be her leg pushed between both of his, or it might be the cumulative effect of this much closeness night after night. He sighed, trying to keep it quiet, and the wandering fingers of his hand on her back found the back of her neck, beneath her hair, and rubbed across it.
His work-roughened hand on the back of her neck brought an answering sigh. She lowered her head until her forehead found the bump of his clavicle. Her breath was hot, muffled against his chest but she didn't feel the least bit smothered. He lay on the dark side of the bedroll and with her back to the firepit, there was no light between them. Memories of her funny and slightly awkward conversation with Alex that morning flooded back to her. He'd assumed she and Cross were lovers and she'd told him that they weren't. At least, not yet. In that moment, she had to wonder when? Alex had wanted her to talk to Cross about their relationship but talking just didn't seem to fit them. She felt foolish, bringing up topics like those. Still, if words weren't the way... She tilted her face just a little bit more, her lips brushing over his clean-smelling skin ever so lightly.
It seemed that he wasn't the only one who was restless. In the dark, the faintest of smiles curved Cross' lips upward. Ever since he and Helena had come to this island alone, he'd felt as if something was hanging in the air, some portentous event or emotion, just waiting to happen. It was like an electrical charge, like a storm front moving across the land. It would occur, though nobody knew when. Cross was as careful with male-female relations as he was with everything else he did, and he had not been ready. He liked to be very sure that any advance he made would be welcomed, and he'd been feeling that sense of welcome more and more from Helena's direction. He could feel her breath on his skin, and it made him hold his for long seconds... until he felt her lips on the bare skin between his chest and his neck. He exhaled, and his hand slid around to capture her chin and pull it up gently, his rough hand cupping her jaw. He could barely see her, and somehow that made it even easier to carry through. He hesitated for only a few seconds before tilting his head enough to place his mouth on hers.
Helena exhaled a sigh just a moment before his lips molded to hers, just the faintest breath that he caught with his mouth. All of the restlessness went out of her limbs and she seemed to melt against him. It was completely a physical reaction to the relief she felt when he responded to her better than she'd dared to hope. The kiss certainly wasn't a frenzy but there was passion in it. The slow kind, the kind that built up steam and jacked the temperature up as it wore on. She traced the tip of her tongue like silk over his bottom lip and into the warm depths of his mouth.
Once he'd captured her mouth, Cross released his slight grip on her jaw and slid his arm around her again, pressing her firmly to him, yet not so firmly that she could not have moved away if she'd wanted to. He was always aware of his own strength, of the inherent power in his muscles that years of running wire, working outside in all kinds of conditions and the jogging he did for health purposes had built. It was an exploratory kiss that steadily warmed as his mouth opened and his tongue quested into hers. He could feel a wave of goosebumps on his bare, still-sunburned shoulders as she licked at his lower lip, and he allowed himself to consciously enjoy the press of her slight curves against his chest and lower body. His pulse beat faster, and everything else fell away to this dimly lit and intensely private space that existed between them.
Helena herself was intensely aware of the power Cross was able to summon up from his well-honed muscles, especially in that stolen moment. She was more than a little bit glad that he'd built this lean-to a little ways further from the firepit than the others were, still open to the warm glow but shadowy, even without the roof. The thought occurred to her that they didn't have any walls to keep out prying eyes but she shushed the thought with a hope that the dark would take care of that. The kiss eventually came to an end and a short breath later, Helena was initiating another.
The last thing on Cross' mind was the others in bedrolls around their camp. Once he applied himself to a situation, he was fully in it, and he didn't even open his eyes when Helena's lips broke from his for shallow breaths to be taken. What he did was breathe in, breathe out, and then kiss her back when her mouth met his again. The fact that she tasted ever so slightly of smoked grazer meat didn't deter him in the slightest; none of their mouths were especially fresh at this point. Cross' hand made a slow path down her side, over the curve of her hip and then down the thigh that she had tucked between his, staying outside her robe but resting firmly just behind her knee as the slow, sensual kiss deepened.
There was no apt way to describe how sensitive the backs of Helena's knees actually were. His hand settling there, just that almost-casual caress, that finding of a place to lay his hand, sent a bolt of sharp sensation up through her body. She shuddered and drew a breath in through her nose in surprise. How on earth had she forgotten that spot existed? She answered her own question with the logical response that it had been years since anyone but the wash cloth had touched her there. She groaned quietly into his mouth as the shock of the touch wore off and she deepened the kiss all the more. Her own hand passed up between his shoulderblades and up the nape of his neck. Like all of them, Cross's hair was starting to really over grow his style and her fingertips teased into his hairline.
Like anyone who went without physical contact for a while, Cross had become inured to its lack. It had been months since he'd been kissed, had felt a yielding female body pressed against his, had heard sounds like the ones Helena was making. It was like a switch being flipped, and as he swallowed the soft moan she made, his physical drives roared back to life. He halfway rolled over, pushing Helena to her back and experimentally resting part of his weight on her. Intellectually he knew that there was only so much they could get by with here without being blatantly tasteless and infringing on the rights of the others here at the campsite. He had that in the very back of his mind, but so far it was not strong enough to stop him from kissing her some more.
As he rolled her on to her back Helena's heart started to thump faster. Part of it was, reared above her, he seemed so large. Cross blocked out all of the starlight above them. The other side of that coin was that he was so large, which translated into capable and he made her feel incredibly safe in a world that had proved to them today that it was no safe place. She felt the tail of the blanket slide over her hand and down his shoulder. By luck she managed to seize it even as his tongue delved into her mouth from this new angle and pull the blanket back up over him. At least, at a casual glance, they might appear to be sleeping. Walls, she thought, even if I have to knit them.
By the time Cross broke for air again, he was breathing heavily, becoming conscious again that if they continued this, they were going to draw unwanted attention. He hovered over her, his hand still on the back of her leg, his mouth a mere inch from hers as he drew in air, his eyes closed. The last thing he wanted to do was move off of her when she felt so good pressed against him, so soft and pliable, so tempting with the bathrobe that was tied around her. Self-control was normally not this difficult to summon. He made a soft sound of frustration in his throat and forced his eyes open to look at her. He huffed out a sigh and then smiled, shaking his head a little.
It took Helena a few moments to spin out of the reverie built up from the kisses and touches. It had been a long time since someone had kissed her so thoroughly and her head felt full of cotton. Her hand came up to cup his chin and tilt his face just enough so that the fire reflected in one of his icy blue eyes. "What?" she asked, her question carried on one of her own rapid breaths. The robe was bunched up much less comfortably now and she wiggled a little bit beneath him, trying to straighten it out.
Cross shifted, taking more of his weight onto one of his elbows, trying to swallow down the throb of his heartbeat that felt as if it were right in his throat. "Not much privacy here," he whispered to her. Not to mention that this was the first time they'd so much as kissed, and he didn't think it would be right to expect any more right then. He was probably more old-fashioned than the average person, though he could be led into temptation as much as any man could be.
Helena parted from him with a regretful sigh of her own. As much as the kisses stoked the little-known reckless streak in the tiny Asian woman, she'd also felt the need to reel it in. A gust of wind blew a chilly reminder through their sad excuse of a shelter, driving home the truth of the words. She had a wild mental image of herself whipping off the bathrobe and tucking one hem into the top of the lean-to's frame. Such a move would not only grant them a bit more privacy, but it would also create a need for Cross to keep her warm. Helena buried her face in his neck in order to smother her giddy amusement at that thought.
It was fortunate that Cross wasn't privy to Helena's mental image of removing her bathrobe, because he was already having enough trouble controlling himself. He knew that Helena would be just as aware as he was of their limitations at the moment, and that helped him to rein himself in, as well. He settled himself completely on his side again, though he didn't draw away from her. He could feel her breath against his neck, and he worked at slowing his own breathing down, regulating it. Despite how dire things had become today, he could feel what was almost a spark of giddiness roiling around inside him. Promise, possibility.
Helena sighed but it was only a marginally frustrated sound. More than anything she was relieved to have her suspicions confirmed. Cross was just as attracted to her as she was to him. That had been plain in those kisses. More than anything she wanted to be greedy and capture a few more but she didn't have the heart to keep pushing him when she knew she wouldn't have the guts to follow through. When he rolled onto his side, she did as well and Helena discreetly tucked her bathrobe back into place. She snuggled close and drew the blanket back up to her shoulder. There wasn't an inch of her that was cool now. She felt like she glowed with warmth.
Now he felt as if he could sleep. The sudden tension they'd ignited would fade, he knew. Cross got comfortable, his arm sliding loosely back around her in one of their typical sleeping positions, palm resting at the small of her back. He, too, was as warm as if he'd been standing by the fire for a while. His eyelids lowered over his eyes, leaving the smallest sliver of blue visible as he tipped his face down toward her. "'Night," he whispered.
Tilting her face up to meet his narrowed gaze in the nearly complete darkness, Helena summoned a faint smile. "Goodnight Cross," she whispered. She was nearly overwhelmed by everything that had happened that day and she was fairly certain that she needed nothing more than a good night's sleep just to process it all. In the morning, though, Helena felt very sure that his arm would still be around her. That knowledge was enough to convince her to let sleep have its way with her.