Author's Note: Some one slipped creative juice in my coffee this morning. :O I dedicate this nonsense to Erin, who needs to SMILE.
Prompt Table: Cliché
Prompt: Sharing Body Heat
Mercury Rising
Throughout Stephen Connor's life there were moments when he realized he'd made incredibly stupid decisions. You know the sort. The ones that leave you dragging your unconscious roommate up five flights of stairs because he can't stomach his alcohol, picking up garbage on the side of a freeway because the Judge didn't think that it was that funny, mowing the elderly next door lady's yard because while yes, your father did think it was funny, your mother had a stick permanently shoved up her... that earned you three more weeks of hard labor.
Sometimes stupid decisions could lead to being kidnapped by a group of terrorists, getting caught under a foot of ruble, or actually being forced to apologize to Kate for misplacing that report she needed ten weeks ago. Those sort could be felt for weeks afterward, namely because the scrapes hadn't healed yet and the ringing in his ears had yet to diminish.
None of them compared to this.
Because this one, this one he should have seen coming.
Never volunteer to help a colleague watch a crate of medicine in Siberia while another colleague chases after the gibberish speaking morons who stole the second crate.
"You remember Greenland... t-this is worse." Natalie had this way of trying to lighten a mood that only made it worse.
He grunted.
They were sitting side by side on the four by four wooden box, looking nearly identical in their heavy black winter coats with fury lined hoods and goggles. Where Stephen's feet could touch the ground, however, Natalie's could not, which to the probable spies a hundred yards away, might have looked a little odd.
"If I said I was cold, would you yell at me?" She shouted over the violent wind.
He grunted.
"Good, because I'm cold!"
He wanted to point at the icicles growing from his eyelashes and tell her to stop complaining, but the goggles were in the way and he was pretty sure that she'd let him know that her icicles were longer. He couldn't help it, sometimes he just felt competitive when he was around her. God help them, but a barn missing two walls was not enough cover for winter in a tundra. They should have just cut their losses and limped back to the hospital with what little treatment they had in the crate. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, though, Stephen thought with no mirth.
Natalie shouted something he didn't pay attention to. Seconds later, when he felt the frozen curve of her nose pressed against his neck, he realized that maybe he should have tried hearing her just a little better.
"What are you doing?"
Her answer sounded oddly enough like, "Keeping my nose from falling off." Which was a very legitimate thing to say, considering the circumstances and the fact that her nose did, indeed, feel like it had turned into ice.
Stephen wasn't necessarily fond of the chill that hijacked his body, but he shook it out in his fingers and patted what he was hoping was her arm, "Frank will be back soon!" They both knew that was a terrible lie, but he couldn't have done any better. Frank would probably get lost in all of this snow and turn up sometime just before noon the next day, just in time to see his two colleagues frozen completely solid, huddled like penguins.
While the imagery of the term 'huddled like penguins' was not very pleasing, Stephen knew that Natalie had the right idea when it came to pressing her very cold face against his semi-warm neck. Soon enough her nose had thawed and the ninety-eight degrees of warm breath against his neck had raised the mercury considerably. His mood was still frigid, like the rest of his body, but he no longer felt it was necessary to dislike her close proximity. In fact, he found himself very nearly instructing her to lose her coat and join him in his; but that would have sounded awful coming from his position, and he wasn't quite sure if he was immune to sexual harassment charges just because they were on foreign snow.
He debated whether the outcome of freezing to death would be as horrible as the outcome of Natalie's frozen hand making contact with his cheek and decided that some stupid decisions were still worth making.
Needless to say, he was marginally shocked at how easily they fit into one coat while flailing off the side of the crate.
The probable spies a hundred yards away had enough audacity to be amused.