"Don't you have anything to say?"
The orange glow of a lighter flicked on, disrupting the pale, frigid darkness of the room. He lit a cigarette, and shifted softly in the sheets, the smoke curling fluidly from his lips.
"What do you want me to say?" he muttered, eyes flicking over to the woman pressed snugly up against his shoulder. One of her arms had hooked around his bicep, and she sat up, face narrowing subtly in a half-frown.
"Anything."
He was silent, save for a long, wistful drag. She clawed a few stray wisps of hair behind her ear, and when she moved, she pulled a fold of the blanket up over her breasts; it was strange, unsettling even, for her to act so feminine. He felt her watch him, those prying, calculating dark eyes searching over and over for something that wasn't there.
"Why do you always get that look in your eye when you smoke?"
"What look?" He glanced over at her again.
She paused, the frown deepening. Now she just thought he was baiting her. "You really don't know?"
He sighed heavily, closing his eyes. Her other arm snaked around his neck, and she pulled herself even closer somehow, drawing him in like a white, bony-shouldered spider.
"It calms me down when there's a lot on my mind," he offered, in his tense growling whisper. "Maybe that's what you mean."
"What is on your mind, Snake?" He would have looked away again, but she held him fast, that pointlessly hurt, vaguely girlish expression making her lips pout. He took another drag, tilting his jaw back with the exhale, wishing he could breathe her out so easily. She certainly felt more poisonous.
It didn't matter, though, he reminded himself – what did he care what she thought? She saw only a distortion of him anyways, some hyper-romanticized hero who could've stepped right out of one of those dime-a-dozen love stories spewed out by Hollywood each year. She loved to think she was so different from them all, but no, she ate it up just as eagerly, hypnotherapy and all. Very few people could tolerate a reality as horrible as theirs, much less prefer it to fantasy.
And so she saw depth where he knew there was none. She had decided how beautiful, how profound he could be. She had anthropomorphized an animal, and when it broke her heart, she fished for pity. He wasn't sorry for her. He had tried to like her, he really had – maybe she could drag him back to normality – but her eyes were too clouded, blinded by imaginary love. It repulsed him further.
He didn't know what was different in that moment of weakness, when she'd stood by the door and glanced back over her shoulder at him, her neck framed by the fur trim of her parka. She was going into town, and asked if he wanted anything, and he felt himself edge up close to her, unconsciously, like gravity had pulled him. And in one shaky breath, they closed whatever gap remained, and he could tell, from the aching way she kissed, that she'd been waiting for him.
It was an impulse. He hoped she understood that much. She had been something much simpler, much more primal, just a lovely shape arching and intertwining and whimpering in the faint glow of Arctic dusk. Now she was Meryl again, the warm, muscled body clinging to him.
"Can't we just sit here?" He gently peeled her arm away, and she shrank back slightly, like she'd been physically wounded. "I'm not good with words."
She was quiet for a while, before she slid away from him, the lines of her body blurred by the haze.
"Go ahead," she murmured emptily, standing, half of the blanket pooling at her ankles. The soldier's sharpness trickled back into her tone, her posture stiffening, that lovelorn, lucid-dreaming part of her receding for now. "I'm going to freshen up."
It was her fault for being hurt, he told himself, as a pinprick of guilt jabbed at him. She was just like everyone else. Always expecting so much from a man who could give so little.