Campfire Night

The fire was crackling lazily, long tendrils with orange tips and blue bottoms flicking in and out of the charred wood. It wasn't smoking much, but the small amount it did emit caressed the rough surface of the overhanging ledge before sliding past it and rising towards the sky in a thin grey pillar, indicative of the complete absence of wind. Small, glowing sparks drifted up and flickered against the velvety black sky, sharing space with the stars for a moment before fading.

On the other side of the campfire, Nooj and Paine were lying quietly. The recorder was fast asleep, one arm under her head and usually neat hair falling in her face. With Nooj it was difficult to tell, since all that could be seen of him were the back of his head, his shoulder and the mechanical arm, which glinted with the reflected firelight. They were huddled close; despite the windstill, the night was a cool one. Cool enough for breath to mist and skin to rise on goosebumps where it was not protected by a warm layer of fabric.

There was much to be said about their blankets, to be sure, but 'a warm layer of fabric' was not part of it. Gippal shivered. Two layers of blanket and still it was cold. And there was an unpleasant draft on his ankle. He shifted, pulling his legs closer to his body and tugging the edge of the blankets to cover his knees.

Next to him, Baralai made a sound that was halfway between distress and annoyance, and pulled the blankets back. They slithered away, leaving Gippal's knees unprotected.

"Hey," he protested. "Don't hog the blankets. I'm freezing here."

"You're the one hogging them," came the mild reply.

"My knees are turning blue."

"My midriff is turning blue," said Baralai, and Gippal laughed in spite of himself.

"The blankets'll hardly help with that," he pointed out, tugging on the said garments. Baralai tugged back, and the fabric almost slipped from Gippal's grip before he got a better hold and yanked them to himself, only to have them stolen from him again a moment later. They continued this for a while, until they both were snickering so hard they could hardly hold on to anything. They settled down, back to back, attempting to achieve some sort of a fair division.

The four of them had been spending a good number of nights out under the sky already, having left the base camp several days ago on a training mission. Currently they were somewhere east of the Thunder Plains, which they had decided to avoid in the end. In addition to it being a bad idea to mix Nooj and a thunderstorm, there were a number of lightning-wielding fiends – including elementals – roaming the plains, and none of the four of them was particularly well versed in black magic – or in defence against it. In result, they had decided to stick to the mountains.

It was a bit late, though, that they'd realised that the mountain region was apparently the choice habitat of solitary, but rather large and aggressive drakes.

Just that afternoon, when they had been fighting off one, it had unexpectedly charged at Baralai and, catching him by surprise, rammed its horned head into his stomach. Nooj had got the beast on the back of its head, but Baralai had still spent a couple of minutes on the ground, wheezing and groaning and trying to get his breath back. He had fortunately come out of the experience without any serious injury, but Gippal was guessing that he would have a spectacular bruise to show for it later on.

The night, albeit cold, was a peaceful one. Everything living in the mountains, including fiends, seemed to be of the opinion that leaving their safe and warm tunnels or nests was not worth the bother. The only things that would have been encouraged by the drop in temperature were snow flans and ice elementals, and neither were indigenous to this area.

The cavity they'd found was an ideal campsite, protected from above by the ledge and accessible from below only through a narrow path, which they'd blocked with rocks that balanced precariously on top of each other. If anything tried to climb over their makeshift barricade, it would likely end up tumbling downhill with it.

Although it had taken their combined powers of persuasion to convince Nooj, he had finally agreed not to post watch for the night. They hadn't seen a single flying fiend in days, and it would have been difficult for something large enough to be truly dangerous to reach them where they were. Besides, they all sorely needed the rest.

Feeling the blankets slide away from him again, Gippal grunted. He propped himself up on one arm and turned to cast a mock glare at his bedmate. Baralai, however, had closed his eyes. And curled into a ball. It looked like he'd fallen asleep.

"Ball up again, will you?" muttered Gippal peevishly.

This was something that had happened frequently since the decision to share blankets.

The temperature had begun to cool days ago, dropping steadily as they got closer to Macalania. When you added to that the fact that the air in the mountains wasn't very warm to begin with, it didn't take long until they reached a point where one blanket and their small campfire wasn't enough to keep them warm during the night.

Instead of building a bigger fire, which would have been like a beacon to the fiends, they'd opted to sleep in twos to stay warm. The sleeping arrangements had been quickly settled the way they were now. Paine had announced – quite bluntly – that under no condition would she be sharing blankets with Gippal. This likely had a lot to do with the show Gippal had been putting on, smirking at them all and tossing comments concerning the outstanding bedroom talents of the Al Bhed. The other remark, about occasionally tinkering with things in his sleep, had made Nooj hastily claim that since he was the biggest of them, it only made sense that he'd share blankets with Paine, who was the smallest. So Gippal was left with Baralai, who fortunately had enough experience with his teasing to not be very bothered. Gippal had had no protests to it, either.

Except that Baralai had the habit of curling up in his sleep. This wouldn't have been much of a problem, if not for the fact that both of them were relatively tall and consequently had long limbs, which required a lot of fabric to cover them up. The result was that unless both of them were lying stick-straight, somebody was going to miss out on the blankets. Gippal glared across the fire at Paine and Nooj. They hardly had that problem, because Nooj was as damn stiff in his sleep as he was while awake, and Paine just turned completely limp and stopped moving.

He shifted his attention back to his irritating bedmate. Normally, when this situation occurred, he would have poked Baralai in the ribs, alerting him to the fact that Gippal. Was. Cold. And wanted his end of the blankets back, thank you very much. But doing so now would probably have caused Baralai a not-insignificant amount of pain. That had been a pretty decent hit he'd taken today – and it had looked darn painful, too.

It wasn't like Baralai to complain, though. Even when there was something that wasworth complaining about, he'd usually just bear it in silence and try to act like nothing was awry. Smile on it and the like. It had taken Gippal a while to start noticing, but he fancied that he was getting quite good at spotting the changes in Baralai's tone and expression that betrayed weariness and pain.

Thinking about how the man hadn't said a word of complaint today – even after being used as a head-butt bag by an extremely hard-headed fiend – Gippal studied Baralai's features in the fading firelight. He spotted the small crease between the brows, the tensed upper lip, and deepening of those minuscule crinkles at the corner of the eye. Most of Baralai's face was perfectly smooth, though – you had to know where to look to see it, but when you did, he seemed much older all of a sudden. Although he was neither, Baralai sometimes reminded Gippal of a strange cross between a little kid and an old man.

His teeth were starting to chatter. Damn, but the night air was cold. Baralai had taken enough of the blankets to leave Gippal's feet and other shoulder at the mercy of the elements, and retrieving them in the usual way – poking at him until he uncurled – was out of the question. Well, if the blankets would not come to Gippal, Gippal would have to go to the blankets.

He squirmed to his other side with some difficulty, since he was trying to keep himself covered as far as he could. Baralai's bent legs left plenty of room for him to pull up his own, but the blanket still hung above the ground behind his back. He moved closer to the other man, until he could finally yank the blanket all the way to the ground behind himself.

"I'm doing it again?" Baralai asked, rather groggily. Apparently he wasn't quite asleep after all, or else Gippal's squirming had woken him up.

"Yep," he affirmed. "Considered jabbing you in the ribs, but then I figured a change of position'd work a lot better."

Baralai chuckled. "Thanks."

"Don't thank me yet," Gippal warned, "'cause you're gonna have the honour of being my hot-water bottle for the night."

Baralai snorted at this, but the sound was obviously an amused one. "Hopefully that doesn't include getting personally acquainted with the famous Al Bhed talents."

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm way too tired." He emphasised this with a huge yawn. "Peak performance requires a certain amount of stamina, and I wouldn't want you to think you've been sold short."

Baralai's soft chuckling was there again, wrapping itself around Gippal like another blanket, just much nicer and warmer than the ones already in use. Feeling mighty comfortable and suddenly very, very sleepy, he closed his eye.

The chuckling eventually died, but the warmth remained. The only problem that really was left was his arm, which was stretched uncomfortably along his side. Nooj could sleep like that – his arm was made of metal after all, and therefore would not spasm up or get rigid, or at least none more rigid than it already was – but it wasn't something Gippal could manage. Putting the arm behind his back would've been even more uncomfortable, while dropping it between them would have made him feel squeezed, bringing the lack of blanket-covered space to sharper focus. Over his head was out of question, because there was – again – not enough blanket. So, because there was really no other place, he put his arm on Baralai.

His hand landed on Baralai's sleeve, while the rest of his arm lay on the man's side. It was only after he'd done it that he stopped to wonder if he should have thought twice about it. After all, Baralai had a big bruise in the making, and his arm was dangerously close to where he suspected it to be.

Baralai didn't seem to mind, though. In fact, he leaned back until his shoulders bumped on Gippal's chest. The warmth that radiated from him was wonderful. Gippal, still cold, scooted closer, first tightening his hold and then quickly loosening it after having provoked a small sound of discomfort from Baralai. He muttered a nearly unintelligible apology and received an equally vague noise in return. Warmth was seeping into his arms, his face, his stomach, and his thoughts were getting disconnected. It felt like he was enveloped in a cocoon.

That was the whole point of doubling on blankets, wasn't it? Sharing body heat.

Face buried in Baralai's hair, Gippal slept.

fin