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Elim Ryder cranked the ignition one more time, his gloved hands squeezing the steering apparatus when the engine refused to turn.
“Come on,” he growled.
He pumped his foot against the pedal while flicking the console off and on. He even slapped at the screen with the side of his palm.
“Ryder,” said the calm, deep voice beside him. “This isn’t helping. The engine is likely frozen over by now.”
“Correct,” said SAM, and if Elim could punch an AI in the face right now he would.
“Aghgh!!”
He punched his fist against the dash instead, his hand bouncing off cold, hard metal and sending a hard jolt up his entire arm.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” said Jaal.
“I think I already have,” he said, grumpily cradling his hand against his chest. Fortunately, half the nerves in his body seemed to have frozen over by now, so it didn’t hurt as much as it should.
“SAM,” he said after a moment, “How long have Vetra and Liam been gone?”
“One hour and twenty-seven minutes,” came the prompt reply.
“They will have made it back to the daar by now,” said Jaal. “It will not be much longer.”
“We’ll probably freeze to death by then,” Elim grumbled.
“That is not likely,” said SAM, “As the residual heat in the Nomad should sustain you. However, sensors indicate that a severe storm is about to cover the area. It is possible that any assistance has been delayed.”
Elim blinked. He turned and looked at Jaal, who looked equally stunned. Or maybe pensive? He was still trying to get a handle on angaran facial expressions.
“SAM,” he said, “how long will it take the storm to pass?”
“Approximately three and a half hours, Pathfinder, give or take a few minutes. Even then, the way back will probably be blocked by snowfall. I estimate a seven hour delay.”
“Seven hours?!”
He looked at Jaal again, and now the other man definitely looked pensive.
“There is a place not far from here,” his companion finally said. “A resistance hideout. It’s not large—a small cave, at best. But it has a heat lamp. Assuming I can get it to work—
“Assuming?” Elim scowled. Just then a shiver racked his body, and he folded his arms instinctively around himself.
Jaal frowned.
“Come,” he said. “We must try to locate it. Evfra will not like it if I allow the human Pathfinder to die on my watch.”
“I thought Evfra hated me,” grumbled Elim.
“He does,” came the cheerful reply. “But he sees that you are useful, and he is not the sort of man to so easily discard what he might otherwise use.”
“Well that makes me feel loved,” Elim muttered under his breath. “SAM, how long can we survive out there?”
“Not more than a few minutes, Pathfinder.”
“It should only take a few minutes to locate the cave,” said Jaal. He was frowning down at the angaran version of an omni-tool on his wrist, his gloved fingers twisting and examining a small map, presumably of the area.
“Are you sure you can find it?” asked Elim. The thought of wandering through the cold darkness of Voeld until death finally overtook him was not particularly tempting. “Because I definitely didn’t travel two and a half million light-years only to freeze to death after my car breaks down.”
Jaal’s low, rumbling chuckle actually managed to bring a smile to his face, and he couldn’t help the little feeling of mild triumph that temporarily overshadowed his anxiety about their situation. Sara was always ragging him for his inappropriate attempts at humor. At least someone doesn’t seem to mind it so much, he thought.
“Do not worry,” said Jaal, “I will not let you die. Now come.”
They both packed up as much as they could before disembarking the Nomad. Even with their gear and helmets on, the cold was a smack in the face. The coming storm had the wind whipping and howling around them, nearly obscuring their vision.
“This way,” said Jaal over the comm, and Elim kept his eyes on the other man’s omni-tool as he followed him through the darkness.
The visor of his helmet was beginning to freeze over by the time they finally located the cave. He felt Jaal’s hands on his arms, pulling him inside—he couldn’t see anything in the almost total darkness.
“Sit,” came the firm command, so he sat.
He wrapped his arms around himself and hoped he wasn’t being too obvious with all his shivering. A twist at the cave’s entrance must be preventing the wind from reaching them, but the cold was still all too present, as was the darkness. But luckily light began to flicker back into existence—Jaal must have gotten the heat lamp to work after all.
He felt hands around his neck, fumbling a little before pressing gently, so that his helmet could be removed. He blinked in the low light, his eyes meeting the glowing blue eyes of his companion.
“You d-did it,” he said, inwardly cursing his continued shivering.
“Yes,” said Jaal. “Come, closer.”
He was all too willing to scoot closer to the heat source. He was tempted to press his hands directly against the lamp, but that would mean pulling them away from the rest of his body.
“These things take a while to charge up or what?” he asked.
“Not usually, no. But I believe this one is malfunctioning.”
“Great,” he muttered.
“The heat should be sufficient to keep you alive, Pathfinder,” said SAM.
“So I won’t die; I’ll just wish I were dead. Great.”
“Negative nelly,” said Jaal, pronouncing the words with strangely careful ease.
“What?”
Elim half-choked the word out as he took the blanket the other man passed him.
“Negative nelly,” Jaal repeated. “That is what you are. A negative nelly.”
And it was funny how he could be sitting here freezing his ass off in a cave on a planet over two million light years away from home—and somehow think a hairless, cat-eyed, bluish-purple-colored man saying the words “negative nelly” cute.
He gave himself an inner shake, rolling his eyes while pulling the blanket closer around himself. “Let me guess. Liam taught you that, didn’t he.”
“Yes. I have been waiting to use it around you, preferably when you are incapacitated and cannot retaliate.”
“You—hey!” He scowled at the other man, somewhat aware that his indignation was partially feigned.
He watched as the other man continued to move about the little cave, checking and cataloguing the rest of the items in the emergency cache, probably rations and medical supplies and likely a weapon or two as well. After a moment, Jaal pulled out a large piece of canvas and went to fix it over the cave opening. It wouldn’t insulate them totally, but it would hopefully help to retain some of the heat.
“You are… grumpy,” he finally said, settling back down beside Elim. “Like an old hidagi.” His lips twitched, as if he were trying not to smile, though it was difficult to tell in the low lighting—and angara weren’t supposed to be the type to suppress their emotions, right?
“An old hidagi?” Elim repeated.
“Yes. Like a… I believe it is similar to your cat. A small, furred animal often kept as a pet. When they are old, they tend to become very ornery and set in their ways. Not unlike some people, I suppose.”
“Oh, well. There are worse things to be compared to, I guess.”
“And they are cute.”
He blinked—and hoped that angaran eyes didn’t see through the dark any better than human ones did because he could feel the color rising to his face. Though, then again, maybe Jaal wouldn’t have a clue would that even meant.
“Cute,” he said, his voice a little strained.
“Mm, yes. Very cute.” Jaal sighed, leaning back on his hands a little. “I had one when I was a child. His name was Orek. I used to let him sleep in my bed with me. My mothers were not very pleased with me. His hair used to get everywhere.”
Elim cleared his throat. “Well, I never had a cat, but I did grow up with a couple of guinea pigs. They were supposed to be for Sara and me, but she never really cared for animals. So I ended up taking care of them both.”
Jaal frowned. “A… guinea pig?”
“It’s a kind of large rodent. Uh, with sort of floppy ears and soft fur. They’re pretty cute, too.”
“Are rodents not pests?”
“Well, yeah. But not the domesticated ones.”
Jaal shook his head and made a sort of rumbling sound deep in his throat.
Great, now he felt ridiculous for basically admitting he’d kept a couple of rats as pets. Surely it couldn’t be wrong to want what was for all intents and purposes the ambassador for the entire angaran people to not think humans were weird. Especially this particular human right here. He was the Pathfinder, after all.
“I guess we both still have a long way to go before we fully understand one another’s culture,” he finally said.
“No doubt,” came the deep, rumbly reply. “Nevertheless, I look forward to learning more about you.”
“About me?” He blinked at the heat lamp. It was easier to stare at the heat lamp now than at Jaal since he could feel the heat prickling his face again. “You mean about my people.”
“Hmm. Both.”
The enigmatic reply prefaced a quiet that fell between them, though the howling wind just outside meant that they hardly sat in total silence. Elim wrapped his arms more securely around his bent knees, grunting a little under his breath when his armor made it difficult to hug them as close as he would like. He glanced a little to his left, over at Jaal. The man still leaned back against his hands, the blanket resting only loosely around his shoulders. His eyes were closed, as if he were lost in thought, or meditating.
It was the perfect opportunity to study his features, or as much of them as he could discern in the low lighting. But he felt guilty about staring at the other man like some sort of creep.
“Aren’t you cold?” he blurted out instead.
Jaal opened his eyes.
“A little,” he said.
When he turned to look at Elim, his expression seemed to change. Elim struggled to read it—guilt? Surprise?
“You are still very cold,” Jaal said, and oh, yes, he could definitely tell from the tone of his voice that he was surprised.
“Uh, yeah,” said Elim. “It’s like minus 48 degrees outside.”
“Hmm. Humans do not deal with the cold as well as angara it would seem.”
“It would seem,” Elim agreed, and truth be told, he was feeling more and more like a popsicle, and as everyone knows, popsicles aren’t very capable of witty repartee.
“Angara appear to store and radiate body heat as a result of their dependency on solar electromagnetic radiation. Although both are what is colloquially referred to as “warm-blooded,” humans, unlike angara, lack the ability to regulate their body temperature.”
A brief silence ensued, after which Elim gave a little cough.
“I think SAM wants us to cuddle,” he joked.
“You jest,” said Jaal, “But it is a reasonable suggestion.”
He pulled one glove free from his hand and leaned over to press it against Elim’s cheek and forehead. The action was such a startling one that Elim wondered the other man didn’t feel the immediate rush of heat just beneath the surface of his skin. Talk about first contact, he thought.
“Stars,” Jaal hissed, “You are a freezing. Why did you not say?”
“Didn’t want to look lame in front of the alien I’m trying to impress?”
He’d almost said “guy” and changed it to “alien” at the last minute. So, you know. Now he looked like a complete tool.
Jaal shook his head and made his characteristic rumbling sound of disapproval.
“I do not know if that is a quirk specific to you or your species,” he said. “Come, remove your armor. I will do the same. We will share both blankets.”
And that’s about the point when he began to wonder if hyperthermia had finally set in, because surely he was hallucinating. Did Jaal just tell him to take off his armor so they could cuddle under a blanket in an abandoned cave like a pair of lovelorn outcasts in a romance vid? That sort of thing didn’t actually happen in real life, did it? ‘Let’s huddle together before the fire for warmth’ only happened in those cheesy asari romance novels Suvi and Cora read. At least he assumed that to be the case, since he’d had to listen to Suvi gush about them over coffee in the break room several times. And sure, maybe he relented and let her loan him a couple titles, but he had no intentions of actually reading them, none at all.
But no, he was overreacting, as usual. (Reason #237 why the illustrious Alec Ryder must have been severely oxygen-deprived when he decided to make his idiot son the next human Pathfinder.) For one thing, he and Jaal weren’t in love, and second—holy shit was it cold.
“Fuck me, you’re warm,” he breathed out, as soon as they were sitting close together, his shoulder brushing against the other man’s. Angara really did radiate heat.
Jaal laughed, the sound shaking them both now.
“Is that another human expression?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah. Sorry.”
More rumbling laughter. “Mm, I like it. An exclamation of surprise disguised as an appeal for sexual intimacy. Very amusing.”
“Has anyone ever told you you suck the mystique out of everything?”
“Hmm, well, the Moshae once told me I ask too many questions. ‘You want to know everything, Jaal,’ she said. ‘But if you got what you wanted, you would be left with nothing but disappointment’.”
“Strange thing for a professor to say to her student.”
He felt more than saw Jaal shrug beside him.
“She was right. My… curiosity is always getting me into trouble. After all, look where it has led me now.”
“In a dark cave with a guy who makes you think of your pet cat?”
Jaal chuckled.
“Yes. I was intrigued as soon as I saw you. I had never seen a human before.”
“But you thought I might be dangerous, too.”
“You? No. But your people? That is still a distinct possibility.”
Elim frowned, pressing his lips together. The thing was, he didn’t necessarily disagree. After all, look at what had already happened before he and the others had even arrived in Heleus. The Initiative leaders had cocked things up pretty badly, resulting in a good chunk of the Nexus being outlawed. And now those outlaws in turn preyed upon one another as well as the angara.
“Can I let you in on a little secret?” He shifted a little, trying not to be too obvious about leaning closer against Jaal—the man was a damned heater. “I’m not entirely sure I should try to convince you that we’re harmless.”
Jaal was silent for a while, and he wondered if he’d seriously erred in telling the truth. Tann would have his ass if he ultimately failed at winning the trust of the angaran people.
“That,” his companion finally said, “is a very honest thing to say.”
Elim shrugged.
“I’m an honest guy,” he joked, albeit half-heartedly.
“Yes. I can see that. You are… I suspect you are a very unique representative of your race.”
Elim snorted.
“That almost sounds like a compliment.”
The look Jaal gave him was definitely one of surprise, however mild.
“It is,” the other man said. “I apologize. It is not my habit to disguise my feelings.”
He had to clear his throat before he could respond. But then… “Oh,” was all he could manage.
He could feel Jaal’s eyes on him, and he swallowed, and tried not to blush again—it was absurdly hilarious how his face could feel so hot while the rest of his body felt as if it were encased in ice. Well, except for the parts of him that were currently pressing against Jaal.
“Perhaps, then, I must be even more forthcoming around humans than I am used to being,” the other man finally said.
“Maybe it’s all just getting lost in translation,” Elim joked.
“Mm,” his companion rumbled. “Maybe so. I told you I thought you were cute because I think you are cute.”
Elim almost choked on the air in his own lungs.
“What?” He asked, huffing a little, and confident now that there was no way his angaran companion could miss the flush to his cheeks.
“Mm, yes. Even now, your reaction to my statement is very endearing. I like the way your face changes color—it is very subtle, but I like it. I like your—what is it? Tendrils. Hair.”
“My hair?”
He could not believe this was actually happening.
“Yes, your hair. The way it falls over your eyes and curls around your neck. It’s different, but I like it. I like your spots, too.”
He forced out a little laugh.
“Okay, that one you’re going to have to explain. My spots?”
Jaal looked at him for a moment before reaching up and, ever-so-gently, touching his cheek, tapping it lightly with his lone pointer finger. He tapped again, here and there, dotting the space around Elim’s nose.
“Your spots,” he rumbled, a little smile coming to his face.
“Those are freckles,” Elim explained, and shit—this was happening, wasn’t it? It was actually happening.
“I, uh, like you, too,” he finally managed. God, where was this even going? Was he going to have to sit down with Lexi and ask permission to, er—wait, did angara even do THAT?
Way to be 22, Ryder, he thought self-deprecatingly. A guy tells him he thinks his freckles are cute and he’s already thinking about fucking.
“Yes,” Jaal said, definitely smiling now. “I know.”
Elim couldn’t help rolling his eyes, though he was smiling, too.
“Oh, you do, do you. The great keen observer of the human species. Congratulations, the human Pathfinder has a crush.”
“A crush?”
He opened his mouth to try to explain but instead found himself getting lost in the other man’s large, blue eyes—which is kind of when it occurred to him how close their faces were to one another now. He closed his mouth again.
And swallowed.
“So,” he ventured. “Do angara kiss?”
“We do,” Jaal said, and the warm hand that curled around his neck was the only warning he needed, as he was pulled gently close, his eyes lowering and finally closing as warm lips pressed against his own. It was kind of his first interspecies kiss, which was great because now Sara could stop teasing him. His sister had dated everything from asari to quarians, and never mind that Elim had only had two human partners before this; the numbers still worked out in her favor anyway.
And maybe they would eventually do more than kiss, and he could up that number from two to three—they were just competitive like that, him and Sara; they couldn’t help it. But for now he and Jaal simply kissed, though there was nothing necessarily simple about it. After their lips parted, he ducked his head a little, smiling when he felt the other man move to kiss the freckles on his cheeks; meanwhile, the fingers stroking gently against the back of his neck were sending far more pleasant shivers down the back of his spine than the cold had been doing earlier.
“See,” his companion finally murmured. “Cute.”
Elim gave a husky little chuckle.
“I’ll have to take your word for it.”
“Now,” Jaal said, his voice taking on a commanding tone—which was amusing, because he knew it was meant to sound playful. “You will stop being ‘lame’ and you will obey your AI.”
“And… do what?”
“You will cuddle with me.”
“Uh, Jaal, that’s cuddling under duress.”
“You may file a complaint with Evfra.”
“Yeah, okay, I think I’ll skip that part. Okay, cuddling it is—god, you’re so warm.”
They were leaning back against the cave wall now, and Jaal put his arms around him, pulling him tight against him, and he did the same—and it was true; Jaal was so warm, like a living furnace (then again, maybe he was just really cold.) .He buried his face against the soft warmth of the angara’s… tentacles? Neck? God, interspecies romance was weird. But it was great, too. Because he didn’t really care that they were so different, and he liked the way Jaal looked. Well, maybe he wasn’t quite ready to start matter-of-factly cataloguing his favorite features about the other man, but still. Funny, he’d never been called “shy” before, but he could see that around Jaal he was probably going to seem comparatively reticent.
Oh well, he thought. Maybe that’s what makes me so cute.
They stayed like that for a long time, huddled together but otherwise refraining from anything more, well, intimate. Any similarities to cheesy romance vids notwithstanding, the situation was still not ideal; just on the other side of that cave mouth was an utterly horrific snowstorm that would kill them pretty quickly should their heat source fail. And it wasn’t as if the environment was the only thing on Voeld to offer up a threat; kett still roamed the planet like packs of rabid dogs. They’d been on a reconnaissance mission to scout out a kett camp before the Nomad broke down.
But that was okay. They both seemed content to let a comfortable silence lapse between them, too, and before he knew it, his eyes was closing. Might as well rest while they waited for rescue—what had SAM said, seven hours from now? Christ.
And so it wasn’t too surprising when he fell asleep—there was no reason not to. He knew SAM would wake him if it were truly necessary. It was the sound of way too energetic laughter that finally did wake him up, his eyes blinking blearily open. The cave was no longer dark, and he turned, half-aware of a pair of arms instinctively tightening around him as he did so. He had to bring one hand up to shade his eyes from the light flooding in through the mouth of the cave.
He frowned at the person standing over him now.
“Liam?”
His friend grinned.
“Morning, Pathfinder. Hey, Vetra! Looks like I won.”
Elim breathed in and sat up, rubbing his eyes irritably. Behind him, he felt Jaal doing the same.
“What did you win,” he said, turning the question into a statement.
“He bet you’d still have your clothes on by the time we found you,” said Vetra. She had to stoop a little as she entered the cave. “Damn your shyness, Ryder. You just cost me 10 credits.”
“You two bet on whether or not I’d be naked with Jaal?!” he blurted out, and this time, he was pretty sure his indignation was genuine.
“Ryder,” said Jaal, resting a hand discreetly on the small of his back and trilling the ‘r’ of his name in a way that always made something inside him tingle, “Calm down. They are only teasing you.”
“It’s so easy,” said Liam with a grin.
“Is everyone all right in there?” an angaran voice called from without.
“Yeah, they’re both in here,” Liam replied over his shoulder. “Healthy as a pair of horses.”
“…Great,” came the reply, and Elim and Liam couldn’t help exchanging a smirk and a little snort at the poor angara and their struggles with Milky Way idioms.
* * *
“Not so bad, I guess, as far as first dates go,” he joked to Liam, once they were back at the daar, the Nomad still undergoing repairs.
Liam looked up from the plate of military rations they were both allegedly enjoying—the angara didn’t have food for humans, so they had to pack their own—and looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“You must be really good in the sack,” he finally said, shaking his head.
“Liam!” Elim blurted out before lowering his head a little and keeping his voice down. “Geez. We haven’t even done that.”
“So what, you two just canoodled and kissy-kissed in that cave for seven hours?”
“Uh… yes?”
Liam snorted, shaking his head. “Sad.”
“Oh, and I suppose you would’ve made your move already.”
“Wrong. Would’ve made my move yesterday, Pathfinder.” He gave Elim a cheeky little wink. “You snooze, you lose.”
Elim huffed, even though in the back of his mind he could imagine Jaal telling him to relax again, that his friend was only teasing him.
“Well, snoozing is all we did, and that’s good enough for now.”
His eyes wandered past the other diners, then—they were sitting outside some sort of angaran hostel, apparently—past Vetra, who was speaking to one of the shopkeepers, and over to where Jaal was standing. He was talking to another member of the Resistance, his arms folded over his chest. He was too far away for Elim to guess what he was thinking, plus there was still that whole bit about angaran facial expressions—he guessed he’d get better at interpreting them over time.
“It’s going to be all right, Pathfinder,” said Liam.
He looked back at the other man. The confusion was probably written all over his face, because Liam just grinned.
“What I mean is, you did good. And you’re doing good. And having some sort of, uh, romantic attachment to Jaal of all people can only be a good thing. So stop looking so damned concerned all the time. Learn to relax and live a little.”
Elim grumbled. “I’ll ‘relax’ when we’ve defeated the kett.”
“Well, yeah. But you know what I mean. There’s all the in between time, too. And you deserve to be happy, if you don’t mind my saying. Plus, now you’ll have someone to cuddle with on movie night.”
When Elim picked up a piece of dried meat and tossed it at his face, he only laughed. But then, he wasn’t wrong. Suddenly he found himself looking forward to movie night, even knowing it would probably be another dumb action adventure C-movie picked out by either Liam or Drack. But then maybe he could also arrange to have a more private showing, just him and Jaal, maybe in his quarters? Maybe borrow a romance vid from Suvi or Cora.
“Yeah,” he said after a while. “I guess I do. I mean, deserve to be happy.”
“I know it,” said Liam, grinning again.
* * *
Cheesy ending is cheesy. Hope you enjoyed :P
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