Jainan fell into a tense silence. Kiem stopped himself from talking. He pretended it was easier to keep walking once he’d started and tried to ignore the way his energy seemed to be seeping away with every step, like his soaked and freezing clothes were bleeding it out of him.
“Here,” Jainan said. Kiem stopped, pulling himself out of something close to a fugue state. He glanced around. They were some distance from any trees, under an overhang at the top of a shallow slope.
“Looks good,” Kiem said. He held out his hands for the backpack. “Let me—”
“I’ve got it,” Jainan said, already laying out their spartan camping gear. Kiem took the sleeping bags to unpack, but his fingers were numb and clumsy, even when he slipped his hands out of his borrowed gloves. He fumbled a toggle time and time again because his hands were shaking too violently to control.
It slipped out of his hand for the tenth time. “Argh!”
“Are you all right?” Jainan called.
“Yes. F-fine. Ignore me,” Kiem said. He finally tugged the string free on about the eleventh try and straightened up with some relief.
When he looked over his shoulder, Jainan already had the tent up and anchored—about twice as fast as he’d done it the previous evening—and had stowed most of their things inside. He came back around the front and handed Kiem a stim tab, already unwrapped. For all that Jainan hadn’t grown up in this climate, he was remorselessly efficient at getting things done, while Kiem fumbled around here like he had a faulty connection.
Jainan caught his expression. “Is something funny?”
“I was just th-thinking,” Kiem said, “that it’s lucky one of us reacts to danger by actually being competent, rather than f-falling into the nearest river.”
Jainan’s face went blank. “I am sorry if I gave the impression—”
“What,” Kiem said. “Jainan, you f-fought off a bear.” He tried to shove his hands back into his pockets; one of his nearly numb fingers caught on the fabric, and he suppressed a grunt of pain.
A complicated mix of emotions had risen on Jainan’s face, but that wiped them away and replaced them with concern. “You should get inside.”
Out of habit, Kiem said, “We should eat out here where there’s space—”
“Inside,” Jainan said, with an edge to his tone that Kiem hadn’t heard from him before. Kiem half grinned through another convulsive shiver and did as he said.
It was no warmer in the tent, but the two sleeping bags Jainan had laid out covered the floor and made it look so inviting, Kiem’s tiredness was suddenly impossible to fight. He gave up wrestling with the door flap and fell from his knees facedown on the cushioned fabric. It was damp with melted snow. He didn’t care.
Behind him, Jainan was politely trying to move Kiem’s feet so he could fasten the door flap shut. Kiem groaned because moving seemed like a mountainous effort, but he recognized he was being a pain. He managed to roll over, sit up, and make a half-hearted tug at his boot. His hands still weren’t working; it slipped out of his grasp. The friction hurt. That was when the tired misery he’d kept at bay tipped into something like panic.
“Let me.”
Kiem opened his eyes from his frustrated grimace to say, What? but Jainan was already crouching over his feet and freeing the fasteners. His hand slipped around Kiem’s ankle and held it while he tugged the boot free. Every movement was gentle.
You don’t have to do this was on the tip of Kiem’s tongue, but he couldn’t say it. He’d be in serious trouble if Jainan had decided not to come along on the trip in the first place. He couldn’t even make his bloody fingers work properly, and if he didn’t warm up soon, he was in the danger zone for frostbite and hypothermia. Instead he said fervently, “I’m really glad you’re here.”
Jainan stopped momentarily in the act of setting Kiem’s boots aside. Kiem worried he’d just offended him, but Jainan’s glance at him was thoughtful and somehow pleased. “Mm,” he said. “You’re not going to get any warmer lying on top of the cover.”
Kiem took the hint. He managed to strip off his wet trousers and underlayers himself—it hurt, but there was no way he was going to make Jainan feel he had to do that. Besides, pain was probably a good sign; at least his hands weren’t entirely numb. His legs felt like lead. He climbed into the sleeping bag and zipped it up behind him through sheer force of will.
That was the last effort he could make. He lay down on his stomach and let his face press into the cushioned ground. The dry fabric of the sleeping bag was smooth and warm against his bare skin, and it felt almost good. His limbs were too heavy to move. He shut his eyes.
After a while Jainan started moving around. Kiem heard the rustling of waterproof fabric and clothes, and then a click and a low buzz that he recognized. Jainan had set off one of the heating cylinders. Kiem still couldn’t get up the energy to move, but he felt the warmth on his face a few moments later, way before it could get through the insulation of the sleeping bag. He kept his eyes shut and let himself just exist. He would warm up eventually.
“Kiem!” Jainan said sharply.
It took Kiem a moment to realize that wasn’t the first time Jainan had said his name. He resented being pulled out of the fog of weariness. “Mmrf?”
“I said, can you eat something?”
Kiem managed a negative grunt. “L’ter.”
From the sound of it, Jainan was leaning over him, rustling around near the foot of the sleeping bag. “This isn’t—” he said. “How do I turn this up? The heater.”
“Don’，” Kiem said, his eyes still shut. “Runs out sooner.”
“That is not important!” There was the same edge to his voice as when he’d told Kiem to get inside the tent.
Kiem opened his eyes. “’S fine,” he said, because apparently he wouldn’t get enough quiet to sleep until Jainan was reassured. “Warming up. Bear’s gone. No reason to be worried.”
“Yes, there is,” Jainan said. “You’ve barely said anything in the last half hour.”
“Damning evidence,” Kiem mumbled into the bit of cushioning that served as a pillow. He could feel the ground through it. He was too tired to solve this; surely it could wait.
More rustling, while Kiem closed his eyes again. Then Jainan said, “Excuse me,” and he felt the sleeping bag move. The zip at the side opened, and then there was the glorious warmth of someone right next to him. Kiem turned without even thinking about it and pressed himself closer. He had a horrible, nagging feeling that there was some reason he shouldn’t give himself up to the comfort of this. He ignored it.
“All right,” Jainan said quietly, somewhere that sounded very far in the distance, though the voice was right next to his ear. “Please be all right.”
Kiem tried to tell him that everything was fine, more than that, everything was for some reason perfect, but sleep was too close to claiming him. He let himself sink into it.
CHAPTER 18
When Jainan woke, he was warm. Faint gray moonlight filtered in through the tent roof. He had a collection of small aches and pains trying to make themselves known, but for some reason he felt at peace.