Body Heat

Summary: (TotA) When Luke has trouble sleeping one night as their group is forced to camp out at Mt. Roneal, he finds the answer to his conundrum in the least expected way. (Lukear)

Spoilers: Yes...

A/N: Yay! My first Tales of the Abyss ficcy! The ending... just kicked ass—a literal O-M-F-G. XD Oh, and LukexTear should now be called Lukear (LU-keer), methinks.

I dedicate this fic to my doggie. :3

If Luke were a food, he decided he would be a burrito.

His still spiky red hair stuck out from inside of his self-made shell, a creamy-yellow blanket he'd found—stolen, rather—from the bottom of Guy's traveling bag. Not that the noble particularly minded, his soft snores showed content enough.

Why were they on this stupid mountain anyway, where it was always snowing and had a high of negative ten degrees Celsius? They had heard of a legendary sword that had been long since abandoned here, formerly the left-hand blade of a great swordsman, passed down through generations of blade users until one of the descendants, in the possession of the said sword, came to the frigid mountain with only his older brother to train. The older of the two was said to carry the stronger of the two swords that made up the renowned duo dubbed 'Material Blades'.

Ravenousness and jealousy over took the younger of the two as he followed at the heel of his unsuspecting brother as they climbed towards the summit, where a fierce beast was said to make its lair. The entire way, the young one remained quiet as he formulated the plan in his head. Once they reached the lair, the creature unleashed a blood-curdling roar that trumped the wind itself.

Valiantly, they fought against the monster and became triumphant within the time of an hour. Smiling with relief as he wiped the sweat and blood from his brow, the older brother proceeded to dig through the remains in hope of finding any treasure. Behind him, his junior's eyes flashed with malice as he withdrew his sword, cold as the ice they stood in, and thrust it slowly through his backside.

Alarmed, he spun around and swung his vermillion blade at his assailant, but upon realizing the identity of he who stood before him, he stopped but inches from their neck. Weakly, as he felt the snow beneath him start to slip, the desire for vengeance greatly surpassed his gentle nature and he used all his remaining strength to latch onto his brother's arm as he dragged him down the mountain side, until they finally landed in a frozen riverbed covered by power snow.

Suffering only a few cuts and bruises from their plummet, the younger brother picked himself out of the snowdrift and proceeded to take the fiery blade from his brother's lifeless grasp. Alas, even in death his grip was firm and he was forced to remove the bloodied sword from the chest and decisively drove it through the arm and into the ground where it still stands to this day.

Naturally, this was only a story gone through the large settlement of Keterberg, but it was enough to catch the interest of Luke, Guy and even Jade, to a degree. Jade was simply out to prove or disprove an urban legend; Guy secretly wanted to re-explore the fon machinery they'd passed by last time through; meanwhile Luke was just excited at the fact of getting a new, stronger sword.

Now, however, he just wanted to get to sleep—preferably not in this stupid, cold, damp cave. Screw the sword, he was exhausted.

It had been well over a half an hour since everyone had quieted down and the soft snores started to fill the depths of the cave. As always, Jade had volunteered to take the first shift of the night watch, but had left momentarily to fetch more food for the dying flame. He remained in close proximity, of course.

Luke growled silently to himself as he rolled over for the fourth time that night, tugging at the blanket, surprised when he found a great deal of resistance. He opened his eyes to see what was causing this, but all he could see was darkness—Jade wouldn't be too happy to find out he would have to restart the fire, on the offhand.

He bit back a yelp as he felt a hand poke curiously at his leg, nearly jumping to his feet with fright. Using what little fire he could control from the effects of his 'Devils Inferno' attack, he held an orb of fire in his hand, exclaiming in a whisper, "Who's there?"

He met the equally startled eyes of Tear; she had moved from the other side of the cave over with one hand on the blanket. "Luke?" she whispered, "You're still up? I-I'm sorry, I saw the edge of this blanket and—"

"You're cold, too?"

"Of course!"

"...If you want," Luke suggested, "I could get Tokunaga from Anise and..."

As good as that sounded to her, what with snuggling one of the cutest things she'd seen for a while—excluding Mieu, who was with Natalia tonight—she didn't want to wake the girl, so she remained stubborn. "No, I wouldn't want to wake her..."

"Well what do you want?"

"I..." Tear hesitated, "I want the blanket! I'm cold!"

"I'm cold, too!" Luke pointed out.

Before she could think about what she said, Tear blurted, "Then why don't we share it?"

His facial features dropped as a (familiar) blank look returned to him. "...I don't want to rip it, and I don't think it's big enough..."

Partly angry at herself for not watching what came out of her mouth, she replied with an edge, "It's big enough. C'mon, before Jade gets back."

"A-are you sure?" he said, reluctantly unwrapping himself from the blanket. In his mind, he always had secretly hoped for some sort of opportunity like this to arise, but he never thought one would come so... spontaneously.

"Positive," replied Tear as she quickly scooted herself under the fuzzy blanket, looking down at the ground so her hair could cover the light tint of pink starting to spread across her face at a disquieting rate. Her self pride had lowered significantly and she was almost ashamed of herself for stooping down to this level, yet at the same time...

"Good night, Luke."

"Y-yeah, g'night..."

A few more minutes passed, and neither of them slept, as they laid back to back, the scrawny yellow blanket stretching to accommodate to the both of them. The Colonel had still not come back and the cave was getting noticeably colder by the minute. If either of them wanted any good chance at getting a wink of sleep, one of them would have to be the first to step down and admit something.

Minutes later, Luke was that person. "...This isn't going to work; the gap between us is letting in the cold air..."

"You're right," she relented. "I think... we'll have to..."

Luke turned and put an arm on her side and a hand on her shoulder as he uneasily pressed himself closer to her. Had there been a light with which to see, the both of them could be seen as redder than a tomato.

Tear gently took his arm and place it around her waist. "Body heat..." she whispered aloud. "Maybe it'll do the trick?"

Luke smiled, a bit more comfortable after her movement. "If not?"

She unconsciously held his hand in hers, caressing it with her thumb. "W-well... there's no reason to move, you actually make a half-way decent pillow..."

"Only half-way decent?"

Tear just murmured something inaudible in response; no later did she become quiet and her breathing at the slow and relaxed pace sleep brought. Call it hallucination from tiredness, or call it pure satisfaction, he laughed quietly to himself before finally drifting away as well...

...Little did he know, he wasn't the only one chuckling in the night...