The sheriff's breath was heavy with exhaustion, his body worn out from shaking and shivering. Shane had collected as many blankets as he could find but it still wasn't enough. His condition wasn't improving and he nearly out of options. He wished Lori had been there to take over, to lift all the responsibilities off Shane's shoulders and instead rest them on her own. But she was away on some field trip with Carl and Rick needed to be babysat. Well, at least that's how Shane felt about it. He had been tempted to call the doctor quite a few times in the past hour, but Rick's pleading to not be left and that he didn't need to go anyway had Shane's sympathy through the roof. Rick's sudden neediness was canceling out his headstrong personality and to put it quite frankly, Shane thought it was cute. He wouldn't tell him that, of course. All those thoughts, frequent as they were, were kept to himself.
"We don't have any more?" was slowly asked through an obstacle of chattering teeth.
"No," Shane answered. Disgruntled sounds from the brunette were all that filled the air as the healthier of the two searched within his mind for ways to make it better. That's all he wanted - to make it better. He wanted his best friend stop feeling like he was freezing to death while his temperature wavered around a hundred. They had no more blankets, no more sheets, no more pillows. Shane had nothing left to offer Rick to snuggle up against.
Unless...
Rick looked at Shane as if they'd both thought of the same idea at the same time. They were out of covers but Shane had what probably seemed like an almost infinite amount of body heat. Those achingly familiar blue hues engulfed him, almost pulling him forward as if by some invisible force. No words were spoken. They knew each other well enough to read the other as if the letters made up the follicles of their skin. Rick pulled the covers up and allowed Shane to slip underneath them. He was expecting awkward. He was expecting Rick to turn his head away and simply use Shane's heat, but that wasn't the case. Things just seemed to flow and their hands were cascading down each other's bodies - slowly, roughly pushing and kneading muscles as if to invite the heat into Rick. Their gazes remained locked and fuck, Shane's stomach was in knots.
Shane's fingers trailed up Rick's loose shirt and he soon took note that his shivering had increased and his breathing was heavier than the type of heavy it had been moments ago. His best friend, whose eyes had been darting around Shane's chest as he brushed his hands all along it, didn't crack a smile and it threw him off; either he was doing the opposite of helping or he was actually turned on. Shane himself was certainly the latter.
He wanted to kiss him and for the first time in the romantic life of Shane he was torn about doing so. He was married, after all, regardless of how broken said marriage was, and Shane had never had such a strong fear of rejection as he did then. But they were cuddling, for Christ's sake, and in Shane's book that was pretty intimate. He would go for it, tilting his head forward only to be taken aback by the way Rick dodged any form of a kiss. It wasn't that, though, that surprised him, and instead what followed as an explanation.
"I'm sick, Shane," Rick's smirk had the man on the verge of tears. Maybe it was just too many emotions at once for the usually emotionless cop, but the fact that Rick was showing signs of being as interested in him as Shane was in Rick, after all this time, was a lot to come to terms with. Because hell, Shane had been harboring some type of feelings for his best friend since grade-school. Feelings he'd thought were only one-sided.
Shane scoffed. "So?" It earned another one of those charming smiles from Rick and he brought his hands to continuously mow over Shane's hair. He soon situated himself on top of his best friend and laid his head on his chest, no doubt hearing fast beat-beat-beating of an overjoyed heart.
"Maybe later. I need sleep," he dragged out the last word as if he was too tired to stop himself.
"Really?" Shane's voice squeaked and he cleared his throat; he was too old to be going through a change in hormones and that fluctuation of sound was a direct result of excitement. Rick wasn't answering; he just made a content moan and Shane pressed forward.
"Rick, really?"