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He’d never felt that helpless.
Garin shook himself and shrugged off his sodden pack, letting it hit the ground with a squelch. He’d made it. He was alive. That was one more day down in the Dead Zone, twenty-five more to go.
Unfortunately, that was still twenty-four nights and fuel pickings were slim. Given the buildup around some of the pools and geysers, this area had likely been dead long before the qesh had done whatever the fuck they’d done to kill the rest of the Dead Zone. There wasn’t a tree, branch, or shrub to be found.
And Garin was already shivering in his wet shirt. Despite the heat of the sun, Garin’s clothes hadn’t dried and with the cold of the night settling over them, he was in for a supremely uncomfortable time.
“You can share mine.” Sazahk’s voice startled Garin as he opened his pack to take an inventory of what he’d lost to the depths of the hot spring.
Garin hadn’t expected Sazahk to speak to him at all that evening. Sazahk had been reasonable all day after the geyser fiasco, but not exactly chatty. The most he’d talked to Garin since they’d set up camp was to ask him to take his nightly blood test. Then he’d set up his sample kit and even now had his face buried in a microscope. “Share your what?”
Sazahk squeezed a droplet from one of his samples onto a slide without glancing at Garin. “My sleeping bag. Judging by the diminished size of your pack, you no longer possess your own. And your spare clothing is likely soaked, so even were you to wear it all in layers, the night will still be too cold. You risk hypothermia.”
Garin rocked back on his heels. “That’s really not necessary.”
By which he meant it was out of the question.
Twice now, Garin had laid his hands on Sazahk to protect him in a life-or-death situation and twice Sazahk had lashed out in a panic. To say that the qesh didn’t like to be touched was an understatement. The first time, Garin had assumed Sazahk was just a foolish, arrogant prick who couldn’t accept help. But the wide eyes and the red that had engulfed Sazahk’s pretty face as he’d struggled out of Garin’s hands under the spray of the geyser told Garin it was something much deeper than that.
Constraining Sazahk triggered something primal in him. Garin wasn’t about to stuff them both into a tiny sack together.
Sazahk sighed and leaned back from the microscope to fix Garin with a bored stare, the tiniest bit of purple peeking out from under his collar. “It is necessary, actually. The temperature will drop to something unsafe for your wet attire. In fact, you’ll have to take it all off or it’ll have a cooling effect on both of us.”
That was even farther out of the question. So far, far, far away Garin ducked his head and focused on pulling out every article of clothing and exposing them to the air, hoping god would have mercy on him and dry them after all.
Sazahk continued in a dispassionate tone, “I’ll already have a cooling effect on you, seeing as the human body temperature is higher than the qeshian body temperature, but between the close proximity and the insulating blankets, we should both be kept to a reasonably safe temperature.”
Garin’s ears went hot. “I am not stripping down and sharing your sleeping bag, Sazahk.”
With a frustrated growl, Sazahk turned his whole body to face Garin, test tubes forgotten. “And why not?”
Garin glanced in Sazahk’s direction and wanted to throw himself into one of the boiling pools when his eyes traced down the qesh’s straight nose, plush lips, lean chest, and narrow hips before he realized what they were doing. He yanked them back to his bag and searched for their nightly ration bars, hoping they’d gotten tossed to a different part of the bag in the day's chaos and not tossed in the hot springs. “Because it’s not necessary.”
“You realize that my political toxicity and social ineptitude cannot be transferred via skin-to-skin contact, don’t you?”
“What?” Garin snapped his head up to see a horrible gray crawling across Sazahk’s lovely face as the qesh crossed his arms. “Of course I do.” The gray spilled down Sazahk’s throat and Garin’s desire to throw himself into boiling water intensified. “I mean—that’s not—I don’t want to not share your sleeping bag because I think you’re toxic or weird. I don’t want to share your sleeping bag, because I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
Or himself uncomfortable. Garin’s cock twitched. Or himself too comfortable? No, uncomfortable. The whole thing was uncomfortable, and if a certain part of Garin’s anatomy liked it too much, then it would be unbearably uncomfortable.
The gray cleared from across Sazahk’s nose, but he still scowled. “I just told you I don’t think our body temperatures are different enough to present an issue.”
“I’m not worried about our body temperatures.” Garin had had enough qeshian lovers to know he didn’t mind a cooler body beside his. Dammit, that wasn’t a helpful thought. “I’m worried about the fact that you panic when I grab you.”
The gray surged back across Sazahk’s face along with stripes of blue Garin knew were never good. “Are you planning on grabbing me tonight?”
Garin recoiled. “No! Of course not.”
“Then we shouldn’t have a problem.”
“That’s not…” Garin pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s not the point.”
Sazahk tapped his thumb rapidly against the base of his microscope as he frowned, blue still rippling over his cheeks. “I’d ask if the prospect of sharing a bed with another man, or a qesh, or whatever else I may be that’s difficult for you to accept in fact makes you too uncomfortable, but frankly, considering the temperature has already dropped to concerning levels during this conversation, I don’t think it matters.”
It had gotten fucking cold. Garin suppressed his shiver and buffed his palms over his forearms. “Male qesh are not a problem for me.” Not in the slightest. And certainly not the particular qesh glaring at him now. Not in the way he implied, at least. “But I won’t put you in a situation that’s too much for you?—”
The blue scoured the gray off Sazahk’s face and Sazahk jabbed a finger into his own chest. “I am the one that offered. I am the one that knows what is and is not too much for me.” Purple added to the bruising mix of color across Sazahk’s throat as he snarled, “Do you think so poorly of me you don’t trust me to know even my own boundaries?”
“I…” Garin opened his mouth, but the words died in the air in front of him. Didn’t. He didn’t trust Sazahk to safeguard himself and now that Sazahk had called him out on it, he felt like an asshole. Shit. The man was a grown adult who had survived this long through what Garin suspected were some fucked up circumstances. “I’m sorry.”
