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"I bet you – " Miguel began, leaning forward on his knees to look across the fire at Chel.
"No." Her eyes darted up to his for a second, then focused on the fire again, poking at it with determination. "I'm not making any bets with you."
He pouted. "Why not?"
"You cheat."
"Well, yes," he allowed. "But that's part of the fun, isn't it?"
"No," she repeated. The fire gathered some strength, sputtering and growing between them.
He eyed her. "Considering how we met," he pointed out, "you don't exactly strike me as the type to play by the rules."
She frowned up at him and shifted a stick slightly to the right, igniting it. "You don't know anything about me." The words were flat and calm.
He considered for a moment, and shrugged. "No," he agreed. "I don't." He opened his mouth to continue, but before he could think of what to say, he felt the first drop fall onto his arm. "Hey," he said, looking upward. "Did you – "
The rain was instant and torrential, and Chel cursed under her breath as the struggling fire instantly washed out. They both ducked into the shelter of a nearby cave, and Chel settled down to build a new fire hidden inside the mouth of the cave, muttering angrily while Miguel settled onto the dusty floor and tossed pebbles around idly for the armadillo to chase.
They didn't talk, for a long while.
"How do you think Tulio's doing?" he asked finally. "Is catching fish any easier in the rain around here?"
"Catching snakes is," Chel said shortly, glaring out into the driving sheets of rain, and Miguel winced.
"Think he knows his way back?"
It was a joke, but as the sky darkened and night fell, it became less and less funny, until Chel was pacing circles around the cave, bouncing on her toes at the very edge of the overhang, her nose just inches from the pouring rain, tiny splashes ricocheting up off the ground to catch her in the legs.
"You want to go after him?" Miguel asked finally, coming up behind her and wanting to lay a comforting hand on her back, but not quite as much as he wanted to keep all his limbs intact.
"No," she said, "that would be stupid," but when he stepped out into the rain, his hair dropping instantly limp into his face, it was only seconds before she was following.
She led the way down a path, peering around for signs of Tulio at every bend in the road, and Miguel followed a few paces behind, feeling useless and concerned, calling out Tulio's name every so often and having the sound cut off, dulled by the rush of water almost as instantly as he'd gotten the word out of his mouth.
They walked endlessly, until they were both exhausted and hoarse, his voice cracking and giving way as he called out into the darkness. When Chel tried to turn them back around, though, he shook his head, squinting forward into the thick jungle.
"He can't have gone that far," he said stubbornly, walking on, and she held her ground, standing there in a puddle and glaring at him. For a moment, he thought she was going to let him walk off, to be rid of both of them in the endless woods, but then she was letting out a great sigh and striding toward him, taking his arm.
"Miguel." Her voice was quiet under the incessant pounding of the rain, but her fingers were strong and steady through his sleeve.
He shook her off. "I'm not just leaving him out there, Chel. He could be getting eaten by a jaguar or something right now."
"And if he was? I don't imagine you're particularly qualified to help him with that problem." She sighed and shook her head, blowing water from her bangs impatiently. "Look, this is Tulio we're talking about. He's not dumb. He probably got stuck in the storm, found a cave of his own, and he and Altivo are waiting out the night just like we should be." She reached for his arm again, and this time he let her take it. "I mean," she said, pausing to think about it. "He is dumb. But not that dumb."
Miguel wanted to pull away from her, to leave her to return to their cave and make his way further out into the jungle, yelling for Tulio until his voice wouldn't come out anymore, but his throat was already hoarse and sore, and their torches had long since sputtered out uselessly, leaving them cold and exhausted and wet in the middle of an endless jungle, no closer to finding Tulio than when they'd ventured out. He drooped, letting her tug him back in the direction of the cave.
"He wouldn't leave me out there," he said dully, and she looked back at him.
He was startled by how loud and easy her laugh was. "Oh, Miguel," she said. She slid her hand down his arm to tangle her fingers with his. "Of course he would." He opened his mouth, offended on Tulio's behalf, but closed it again when she looked back at him knowingly, her hair dripping into her eyes, her mouth twisted up in a smile that was almost fond. She reached up to push his hair back, cupping her hand against his face briefly. "Come on," she said. "Let's dry off."
He could see the mouth of their cave flickering before they reached it, and was suddenly bone tired at the thought of stretching out beside the fire, cozy and dry in the relative shelter of the rocks. The thought of doing it without Tulio made him feel sick, though, and it was only Chel's hand wrapped firmly in his that kept him moving forward, propelling himself until he was standing under the overhang, shivering in his soaking clothes.
Chel wasted no time before striding towards the fire, stripping off her clothes as she went and leaving them strewn out in a trail leading into the cave. She pulled a few sticks out from under the armadillo, who was curled up asleep on top of them, and he made a squeaky noise of protest as she added them to the fire. She patted him absent-mindedly on the head, and looked back over her shoulder at Miguel, who was still hovering in the doorway, shivering and watching the way the building flames cast shadows across her skin.
"Come on, then," she said, crossing to him and tugging at the edge of his shirt, and he only hesitated briefly before pulling it off over his head and stretching it out beside the fire. She turned for the pack of meager supplies they'd managed to gather and pulled out their only blanket, wrapping it around herself and settling down beside the fire to coax the flames higher. Miguel looked down at his wet pants, considered his options, and left them on, sitting beside her and reaching into the pack for some of the vegetables. He skewered two ears of corn and propped them up in the fire, turning them slowly and trying not to jump at each sound from outside the cave.
"He's fine," Chel said finally when he startled visibly at a gust of wind, and Miguel focused intently on the corn. "He'll be fine. He's probably out there worrying just as much about you."
Miguel looked up at her, startled. "Me?"
"Well, sure, he's met you, hasn't he?" she asked. "Do you mean to tell me you wouldn't still be out there walking yourself to death in the rain trying to find him if you hadn't had a voice of reason with you?"
"Well." Miguel shrugged.
"So yeah," she continued. "He's worrying about you. It's kind of a full time job, with him."
"You said he'd leave me out there," he reminded her.
"He would. He'd spend hours lying to himself that he wasn't worried, until it was too late and too dark for searching to do any good. That doesn't mean he wouldn't be pacing circles around the cave all night trying to come up with the most elaborate plan in the world for finding you."
Miguel smiled fondly. "Yeah," he agreed. "That sounds like Tulio." He looked at her. "He'd do the same for you, you know."
She gave him a withering look. "He wouldn't need to," she said. "Some of us can handle ourselves in the woods."
He shrugged. "He'd want to anyway," he said. "He likes looking out for people."
She made a face. "Must be why he keeps you around," she said. "To give himself something to do." But she smiled companionably at him when he passed her one of the ears of corn, and tucked her cold feet under his leg to warm them.
She curled up on her side shortly after they'd finished eating, closing her eyes, her hair falling softly across her face as the lines of worry and exhaustion slowly drained away from it. He watched her for a while, before deciding he probably shouldn't, and turned his eyes to the fire instead.
"Are you going to sleep, or are you going to sit there and stare until the rain stops?" she asked eventually, long after he thought she'd fallen asleep.
"Sit here and stare until the rain stops," he responded without hesitation.
She sighed and scooted closer to him. "Come here." The blanket dropped over his legs, and he felt her hands tugging at him, pulling him down beside her.
"I'm not – " he began to protest, but the feeling of being horizontal and still was a sudden relief, and he let out a great yawn.
"Mmhm," she agreed sleepily. She was warm against him, still entirely naked, her arms coming easily around his waist and her breath tickling his neck as she pressed to his back, tucking the blanket around both of them.
"If you sleep now," she said reasonably, "we can go looking for him again as soon as the rain stops."
"Yeah?" he asked.
She nodded against his back. "Yeah," she agreed.
"We'll find him," he said, his voice sounding smaller and more uncertain than he'd like, "right?"
"Do you honestly think I can't track a Spaniard and a horse through the jungle?"
He smiled. "You're worried, too," he said decisively. She made a dismissive sound, but when he rolled to look at her, she looked faintly embarrassed. He smiled softly at her. "You would have looked out for him, wouldn't you? In Spain?"
She laughed. "We were never going to Spain," she said. "We wouldn't have made it a few miles out of port before he was turning around for you." He felt his face go warm, and she reached out to touch it, her fingers cool against his skin. "You know that, don't you?"
"I…suspected," he hedged.
She smiled, her face pillowed against her arm. "See, he absolutely wouldn't get himself eaten by a jaguar," she said. "He'd never trust you to look out for yourself without him."
Miguel couldn't help but smile in response to that. "Probably true," he agreed. He eyed her. "What about you?" he asked.
"What about me?"
"Well, we must be slowing you down, right? You had grand plans to get out of this place, see the world. And here you are, in a cave not very far at all from where you started, walking in circles looking for someone dumb enough to get hopelessly lost." He smiled. "It could be part of your plan, right? Wait until we both wander off, and take off into the sunset?"
"Could be," she agreed lightly, but sobered almost instantly. "I don't want to run you off, Miguel."
"Well, Tulio," he allowed. "If it was me out there becoming a jaguar snack, I doubt you'd be concerned."
She frowned, looking almost offended. "You don't think I'd go looking for you," she asked, "if you were the one missing?"
"No," he said quietly. "But then, I don't know you."
She blinked at her words being returned to her like that, but her expression slowly melted into a smile. "No," she agreed. "You don't. We should fix that." She leaned in to drop a light kiss against his lips, and fit her body against his, warm and dry and solid beside him. "After sleeping, though," she said, her voice slow and tired, and he wrapped his arms around her, pressing his face to her hair and drifting off nearly immediately to the feeling of her breathing slow and steady beside him.
He snapped awake to the sound of something moving around outside the cave, and Chel was already on her feet, the blanket barely staying draped around her as she grabbed a pointy stick from beside the fire, dropping immediately into a fighting stance.
"I've got this," she said in a low voice, motioning for Miguel to stay back, and he dazedly reached for the nearest weapon, looking down to find himself holding the armadillo instead of anything useful.
The rustling got louder, and then there was a sharp whinny and a string of muttered curses. Miguel had a frozen moment of terror, staring into the brush in the dim early morning sun, imagining Cortez and his band bursting out of the trees, but instead he heard his own name being called, and he dropped the armadillo immediately.
"Tulio!" he responded, bursting out of the mouth of the cave, and Altivo appeared from behind the trees, Tulio already dropping off his back to wrap Miguel up in his arms. "You didn't get eaten by a jaguar!" he said triumphantly, burying his face in Tulio's shoulder, and he felt him laughing against him.
"No," he agreed. "100% jaguar-free camping experience, although we could have done without all the snakes." He shuddered as he pulled back, and gestured to the full pack on Altivo's back. "We do have a lot of fish, though." He looked past Miguel towards Chel, who was leaning against the mouth of the cave, holding the blanket loosely around her, but not quite well enough to hide the fact she was wearing nothing beneath it. Tulio looked between them with a dazed expression for a moment, and she breezed past him, leaning in to kiss him lightly and retrieving the bag of fish from the horse's back.
"Good to see you," she said, sounding completely unconcerned, and lightly pressed a hand to Miguel's back as she passed him on her way back to the cave. "You know, alive."
Tulio blinked after her, and Miguel grinned, grabbing him by the hand and pulling him towards the cave. "She missed you," he said authoritatively, and Tulio snorted.
"Yeah, I can tell," he replied. "Everybody here looks like they were very worried." He rolled his eyes at Altivo, who snorted. He tossed an arm around Miguel's shoulders, though, as they made their way back into the cave, and said in an undertone, "What do you think? Make Chel do the fishing next time?"
"Absolutely," she replied from beside the burned out echoes of the fire, leaning over it and trying to coax it back to life. "The only one here with any sense about anything, it seems." She made a face up at them. "You, getting lost in the woods, and this one, practically killing himself trying to find you. Useless, both of you." She dropped the towel and gestured to her clothes, lying out beside Tulio. "Pass me those, would you?"
Tulio eyed the clothes, then Chel. "Oh, I don't know," he said slowly. "I mean, if I'm going to keep up the tradition of being useless, I probably shouldn't, right?" He exchanged a grin with Miguel, both of them looking innocently at Chel as she let out an inarticulate frustrated noise and stalked across the cavern to them.
Instead of heading for her clothes, though, she dropped into Tulio's lap, kissing him thoroughly until they were both breathless, Miguel watching with wide eyes as she slid a hand around his back and smoothly nabbed her clothes from behind him.
She bounced back up, tugging her clothes on in one smooth movement, and tossed a look at them both over her shoulder. "Fish?" she offered, and headed for the fire.
Tulio blinked blankly for a few moments, and Miguel clapped him on the back. "You can never leave us alone again," he said. "Chel won't make bets with me."
"Well, no," Tulio replied reasonably. "You cheat."
"True," Miguel said.
"So?" Tulio prompted. "I'm listening."
"Hear that?" Miguel called to Chel. "That is how you respond to a bet." She cursed at him easily in a language he didn't understand, and he beamed back at her brightly before turning back to Tulio. "All right, old friend," he said. "I bet you…"