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Samael tightened the scarf around his neck as he pressed his back against a large tree. Despite digging his face into his knees and wrapping his arms around himself, it barely helped against the harsh, freezing winds that constantly breezed past them.
Rayne shot him a look of sympathy and simply sat beside him, mimicking his position and wrapping her own arms around her knees, shoulders slumped.
The two of them had spent hours looking for anywhere - or anything that would bring them warmth to help them through these cold nights, and in the end found nothing. Samael was beginning to believe there was no hope, and if the winter kept going on like this one of them would end up waking up just to find the other suffering from hypothermia and on the brink of death.
If there was one good thing to come out of this, it was that murks didn't like the cold, and many of them would hibernate until spring. Now would be a great time to start exterminating them if they didn't have their own lives to worry about.
Samael flickered his gaze over to the girl beside him, and he jolted in surprise when he met a pair of eyes staring directly at him.
"What?" he quietly said as he averted her eyes, his voice muffled by his scarf.
"We're going to be okay," she whispered. "We've gone through so much, we can survive another night."
Samael scoffed, saying nothing. She was such an idiot for even following him like a lost puppy all this way here, all he ever did was drag her back. Rayne was healthy, intelligent, fast to react to danger, and for some reason always managed to quickly heal through all her injuries. Meanwhile he was just a sickly delinquent who didn't belong in an apocalypse, it was a damn miracle he even made it this far.
"I know that face," Rayne whispered, reaching for his hand. Samael flinched but let her grasp it anyway. "Stop thinking so lowly of yourself, you ... you're so strong and such an amazing person, I wouldn't be here if you weren't."
"You're a such a fucking sap," Samael muttered, his face betraying him as his lips upturned to the smallest of smiles.
"Yeah, I know," Rayne replied with a smile of her own, her voice soft as she scooted closer to him, bodies now pressed together, slowly beginning to break the barrier they had established.
She wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him tight, and Samael leaned into the warmth she brought.
"You're going to be okay," she whispered into his ear, "I'm here. I'll always be here."
Samael shivered and cuddled in her arms. "...Thank you."