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Sazahk dropped his hand into his lap, his purple and blue morphing abruptly into orange as he blinked. “Oh. Good.”
“And you’re right. We should share the one dry sleeping bag we have, and I…” Garin inhaled and released a deep breath. “Should remove my clothing.”
And stop being weird about it. Garin had huddled for warmth before without it ever being anything more than a survival tactic. His Vanguard buddies would give him such hell if they saw him blushing as he pulled his shirt over his head.
“Yes, you should.” Sazahk turned to his samples again, but he glanced back at Garin enough times that Garin blushed harder as he popped the button on his pants.
Sazahk’s eyes flickered across his bare torso and hipbones as Garin shoved his wet pants off. Light green rippled over his cheeks and Garin bit the inside of his mouth to keep from making any facial expressions. Light green was the color Sazahk turned when he took samples of strangely colored hot springs. Meaning Garin’s body was at least as interesting to him as rare geological features?
Garin left his underwear on, too uncommonly body shy to strip down completely, and crouched to clear the rocks from the flattest surface. Screw finding the ration bars. He wasn’t hungry, and Sazahk never seemed to be.
At least the cold kept his cock from doing anything untoward. Like perk up at the feel of those dark, intense eyes on his exposed skin. Garin glanced at Sazahk and saw that the patch of green over his throat had darkened to the color of the pine tree Garin bought the family every Christmas now he had the money.
Shit. He focused on prying out a very stuck and very large rock. Maybe the cold wasn’t quite as much help as he’d thought. At least without a fire and with the sun set, the only light came from Sazahk’s lantern, so the dark gave him some cover.
“We should turn that off.” Garin pointed at the lantern with his chin. “Save its battery.”
“It’s solar-powered,” Sazahk muttered, but he packed up his supplies, nonetheless. “And I thought you’d rather find the rocks with your eyes than your back.”
“I did, thank you,” Garin replied quietly as he retrieved Sazahk’s messily bundled sleeping bag from his chaotic pack. Nudity had an amazingly detrimental effect on one’s willingness to pick a fight.
He laid out the bag.
He straightened it. Shifted it to the side. Shifted it back. Rotated it slightly.
Sazahk cleared his throat. “I don’t think you’re going to find a more comfortable spot in the rocky dirt than you have currently found.”
“No, you’re right.” Garin unzipped the bag, glanced down at his wet underwear, then at Sazahk.
“You’re remarkably self-conscious for a soldier.” Sazahk looked up into the stars. “Bar’in couldn’t care less who saw his genitals. He, of course, had a previous occupation that inured him to nudity, but neither Tar nor Fal’ran are picky about who they expose themselves to either. Patrick may be, but as a human among klah’eel, I’m sure he has other reasons, not to mention his feelings for Fal’ran, which I’m sure present all sorts of uncomfortable anatomical reactions.”
Garin stripped his underwear as Sazahk rambled, trying to avoid an uncomfortable anatomical reaction of his own, and slid naked into the sleeping bag as quickly as possible. He let out a sigh as the covers closed over him. Even before he’d warmed them up, they were a relief after the biting cold of the desert night. “Alright, I’m in.”
Sazahk toed off his boots before crawling in with him. After a paralyzing moment of indecision—Toward or away? Toward or away? Toward or away?—Garin turned away to give Sazahk his back and crammed himself as far into the edge of the sleeping bag as possible.
Luckily, Sazahk was a slender man and they fit without too much tangling, though it was tight. Garin lay on his side with his back to Sazahk and—judging from what Garin felt through the solid line of contact between them—Sazahk lay facing up to the stars.
That wasn’t the most space-efficient way for Sazahk to arrange himself, which meant he must have decided spooning Garin was too much for him, but that giving Garin his back was equally unacceptable. Garin bowed his head and buried his face in the soft interior of the sleeping bag as Sazahk flicked off the lantern. Now he felt bad again.
He was making Sazahk uncomfortable. He definitely was. If only he’d chosen the stupid Kevlar pack. That one wouldn’t have ripped so easily and dumped things into the hot spring. He’d considered it, but that pack didn’t have as many pockets and couldn’t be organized as well, and they weren’t going to be under attack, so he hadn’t thought he’d need the Kevlar pack.
Foolish. He should have been better prepared. Now he had Sazahk stiff and still against his back like he was afraid if he moved, Garin would blow up. The poor man probably wouldn’t even be able to sleep.
“Are you warm enough?”
Garin blinked at Sazahk’s murmured question and his chest loosened. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Sazahk didn’t sound so horribly uncomfortable. He sounded concerned, which was new. And nice.
With his guilt mitigated by Sazahk’s tender tone, Garin’s baser instincts crawled back out of the woodwork. The juxtaposition of the softness of the sleeping bag with the rough fabric of Sazahk’s clothes against Garin’s bare skin heated Garin’s lower belly.
He was naked in bed with a fascinating, and frustrating, but attractive man. They were all alone. Lying under a veritable tapestry of stars. And they’d had a stressful day. They could both use?—
Garin cringed as he plumped up, and his cockhead brushed against the inside of the sleeping bag. God, he did not want to smear pre-cum all over Sazahk’s blankets. He shifted his hips back to make a little space and pressed his ass against Sazahk’s thigh.
Sazahk shifted away. “Do you need more space?”
“No.” Garin cringed as he snapped his hips forward again and his cock found pressure that felt a little too good against the side of the sleeping bag, pulled taut from the tension of a single-person bag holding two people. “No, sorry, I’m fine.”
