Written for msmoocow for Yuletide 2008. Title is from E.E. Cummings' "silently if,out of not knowable." Set Season 2-ish. Contains some mild adult situations.
The snow fell in great weightless flakes around the Pie Hole, drifting lazily through the air. Chuck stopped just short of catching one on her tongue; she was alone on the roof, and though the traffic made its steady way around the town, the car horns and carols were too far away to reach her. In a fit of homesickness she had made a Santa for the bees; his cheeks were still rosy, but his black suit was trimmed in yellow fur. She placed it near one of the hives, suddenly aware, again, that the decorations were only for her. Ned was the only other visitor, and, as with most other customs she had happily taken for granted, he had to be coaxed into reluctant bursts of holiday cheer.
She couldn't help but feel fondly disposed toward Bee Santa. Antennae next year, she decided, wrapping her scarf a bit more firmly around her neck before heading for the stairwell.
Downstairs, Chuck watched, suffused in a proud glow, as Olive served a pair of chocolate-pecan cup-pies to an older couple, who bent over them immediately, steam rising to brush their cheeks. Olive herself was decked in a more traditional Santa-hat, the white fur trim and her lovely grin standing out against her tan.
Ned, positioned so he could see out into his restaurant, was just finishing the filling for a batch of apple-raspberry pies, his sleeves rolled above his elbows, apron dusted in flour. She watched him, unobserved for the moment, as he hesitated, then picked up the star-shaped cutter, peeling out the shape before placing the crust and giving the tops their egg wash. He turned and she instinctively stepped back, even as his eyes lit up.
"How did Bee Santa go over?"
"Swimmingly," she smiled, unwinding her scarf. "How have the new cup-pies gone over?"
He gave her a glowing look, warm as a hug, and she thought again of how unfair it was that the only arms she wanted to hold her, almost always couldn't. "So well that they'll have to be on the holiday menu next year," he said.
Sometimes, when Chuck couldn't sleep, and especially now that she wasn't sleeping three feet away from Ned, she imagined all the ways she would touch him, if she could. She imagined running the tip of her tongue against the hollow at the base of his throat, and how he would tilt his head back, closing his eyes. She was overwhelmed by how fiercely she simply wanted his fingers laced between hers, just the feel of skin tight against her palm.
The particular expression on his face, that precise angle of his eyebrows, told her that he was feeling something similar.
When Emerson barreled through the front door, sending the bell flying, his bald head covered by a rakish fedora and a muffler wrapped tight around his throat, Chuck sighed to herself, thinking that he always seemed to know. Olive, frozen in the act of placing an empty cup and saucer on her tray, turned to gaze at him, the ball of her cap whipping in the air.
"We have some work to do," he announced, pointedly ignoring the interested gazes of the other patrons. Then he sniffed. "Those pecans?"
Five minutes later, Emerson was bent expectantly over his cup-pie, fedora tipped back, muffler loosed, with Ned, Chuck, and Olive gathered expectantly around him. "So what's the what?" Olive began, nails tapping gently against the tabletop in rhythm with the only holiday-themed CD Ned allowed to be played.
"Missing girl," Emerson replied, then motioned for silence as he rapturously enjoyed his first bite.
"And--" Chuck began to ask, but was silenced by the swish of his hand through the air.
"Missing girl reporter," Emerson clarified. "Her daddy came looking for her, says she was working on a story at Cosy Cottage Ski Lodge."
"So where do we come in?" Ned asked, already glancing back at the kitchen, to where his pies were bubbling.
"I found a girl," Emerson explained, shooting Ned an impatient look. "Frozen stiff as a nosy reporter who's put her nose where noses shouldn't be. Looks like her, but anyone would, with blue lips. So we go work a little magic, I find out where the nose was stuck and then promptly punched in, and nice fat Christmas bonus for us."
"Now that's the kind of Christmas spirit I can get behind," Olive said eagerly, before sliding out of the booth to refill a customer's coffee.
Ned pulled a face. "Cosy Cottage is an hour away," he pointed out.
"And? Thought you were going to close this place for a few days, seeing as everyone'll already be gorged on pie," Emerson pointed out, ignoring Ned's pointed sweep of his nearly-full restaurant. "Besides, she's a reporter. Easy as," Emerson shrugged. "Easy as a mug of pie."
Two hours later Ned and Emerson were hovering expectantly over the stiff, frozen corpse of a girl who bore too close a resemblance to Chuck for Ned's comfort. He gingerly pulled his hand out of his glove and pressed the tip of a bare finger to the girl's bare shoulder. She glanced around, her eyes narrowing, and, as he saw a selfish purse settle to her lips, Ned felt that familiarity drift away.
"So he didn't show."
"You Brandy Branson?" Emerson asked, looming over Ned's shoulder.
"Of course," she snapped back. With every movement of her lips, Ned was fascinated to see another crack form in the ice shimmering in fragments on her skin. Even her eyelashes were glazed. "Last thing I remember, I was on the ski lift, waiting for my source to show up... and you can't have him," she was sure to add.
"Source about what?" Ned put in.
"Whoever's behind the sabotage at Cosy Cottage," she sighed, exasperated. "Millions in tourist revenue lost! Huge story. But now I'm dead?"
Ned checked his watch nervously while Emerson stepped in. "Who were your suspects?"
Brandy shot them both a suspicious look. "And have you scoop me?"
Emerson gave a grunt of growing impatience. "Girl, if we wanted to scoop you, all we'd have to do is find an ice cream scoop. You dead. It's a little late to be worried about a byline."
Brandy crossed her arms, sending another shower of ice crystals to the floor. "Fine. Sam and Simon Sanford, who own Luscious Landing, looked good for it. My source said he-- or she-- had evidence, but..." Her shrug sounded like the first bite of a candy apple.
"And how did you reach your source?" Emerson put in, eyebrows raised.
"I didn't," she admitted, looking defensive. "It was a note, in my purse! Which, now that, well..." she gestured to her current semi-frozen state. "Who knows."
Ned glanced at his watch and bit his lip. "Do you have any last requests or words?"
"When you find whoever did this to me, I want you to take one of my stilettos and jab it right into him, or else I'll haunt you--"
With a flash of blue she was back to just plain iced and dead, and Ned let out his pent-up breath.
"I don't know about you, but she ain't the kind of ghost I'd want hanging around," Emerson said, heading back out.
Luscious Landing Lodge and Lift was perched on the opposite hill from Cosy Cottage, the two facing off like feuding stepchildren. Chuck and Olive lingered, car idling, at the fork in the road between. A steady stream of SUVs and sleek towncars toiled up the mountain toward Luscious Landing; the road to Cosy Cottage was traveled only by a few, mostly in rusty Beetles and aging minivans. Chuck sighed, her heart going out to the quaint little gingerbread house of a lodge, while Olive, her breath forming visible impatient gusts, twisted the steering wheel to the right, toward the sleek and imposing steel and glass facade of the modernized competitor.
"We should go to the Cottage," Chuck pointed out, blowing warm breath against her mittens to warm her freezing hands. Her mittens matched her brand-new ski suit; she had to give Olive props for her spot-on, split-second costuming choices. "Kitty Pimms" was in buttercup-yellow and "Patty Boots" was in candy-pink, though the effect was spoiled as Olive's brow furrowed in frustration over the traffic.
"If anyone should be sabotaging anyone, the Cosy Cottage people should be over here with boltcutters and a good socket wrench," Olive declared as the car in front of her inched forward a few more feet. "So we go over to Luscious Landing and figure out if they'd have a good motive."
"Maybe they want a monopoly," Chuck pointed out, gazing around in undampened interest as the crawling sweep brought them to the crest of another hill. All around them, in smooth unbroken drifts, lay a perfect expanse of snow, the kind that begged for snow angels and faked Sasquatch prints.
Olive gasped and pointed. "Or that view."
Cosy Cottage, tiny and quaint, did have at least one advantage over its competition, Chuck found when she followed Olive's gaze. The perfect view into the picturesque valley beneath. With the Cottage gone, the Landing would have the best ski slope for miles around. Even those who stayed at the Landing still went over to the Cosy Cottage, to pay to ski their trails.
"Motive down," Chuck agreed. "Means and opportunity to go."
While Olive and Chuck were checking in, beaming bright smiles and burdening the bellboy with stacks of matched luggage, Emerson and Ned stood in the steadily deepening snow, staring at the frayed ends of the ski jump rope.
"See that?" Emerson touched the smooth, even edge of the otherwise ragged ends. "Someone helped this little accident along. Someone who wanted to keep Brandy's mouth shut for good."
"The saboteur," Ned nodded.
"But Brandy didn't see anyone," Emerson mused aloud.
"And the note's gone."
"Which implicates the Sanfords."
"Or does a really good job of making it look like the Sanfords."
Emerson heaved a huge sigh, tugging his hat down lower on his head. "Hate all this backtracking twaddle," he grumbled. "Let's go check in before the storm kicks up and the power goes out."
The woman behind the desk at Cosy Cottage, who introduced herself as Priscilla Powers, looked like the perfect cheerfully buxom and plump German serving wench, complete with a frilled skirt and laced boots. From the neck up, though, she was all steely-eyed and sharp-cheekboned, and her measuring glare, Ned was sure, could see all the money in his pockets and every impure thought in his head.
"I'll show you to your room," she intoned in crisp, accented English.
Ned heard the familiar click of Emerson's knitting needles as the detective tossed his overnight bag onto one of the bunks in the low dormitory-style room. "We alone for the night?" he asked the hostess, her thin lips pursed, lemon-sucker style.
"Just the staff and the Dobermans," she replied, swinging the door shut behind her.
"Dobermans," Emerson repeated.
Ned wrinkled one voluminous eyebrow. "Wonder how that works," he mused.
Very well, he discovered, sneaking out just after midnight. The storm had howled for hours, punctuated by the comforting rhythm of Emerson's stress-knitting, but the kitchen had been closed and Ned had been left to puzzle out how a saboteur had managed to get to the chair lift and set up Brandy's untimely death. Ned timed his exit between the dogs' rounds, but even so, nearly had his ankle snapped clean in half before he nervously vaulted himself over the rustic but deceptively sturdy fence. He was sure none of the Cosy Cottage attack force was named Digby. Probably Butch and Rabies-On-Wheels, he decided, dusting himself off and ignoring the savage barking behind him. A light came on near the kitchen, but Ned couldn't wait.
Chuck had somehow found time to make three snow angels while waiting for him, and was still stretched out in the silhouette of the third, snowflakes catching in her hair. She grinned up at him and he returned it immediately, dropping to sit at her side, out of the constant whirling drone of the wind.
"Brandy said it was the Sanfords."
"They have the motive," Chuck agreed, dragging her arms even higher, her silhouetted wings spreading. "But they have all the business they can handle."
"And there are Dobermans, which, I can definitely tell you, mean business." He shuddered at the thought of getting back in.
"So where does that leave us?"
"Sitting in the snow at midnight," Ned smiled. He ran the tips of his gloved fingers over her side and she squirmed, laughing with delight, her breath coming in visible puffs in the cold air.
"Wearing a ski mask, Ned?"
"Of course."
He had found, through sheer panicked accident, that he could touch her hair, and when he carefully peeled the ski mask over his face he thought of how her hair had felt against his cheek that one time, the way the heat of her body could so clearly radiate through the thin barrier of a single cotton bedsheet or length of flimsy plastic, and how awful it was to know that it was all they could have, and it would never be enough.
The heat of her breath touched his lips and his mouth was full of the taste of processed wool when she pulled back, panting, and he was very careful to make sure none of his skin was exposed as he touched her hip. He had been shivering from the second he had opened the window.
Definitely not anymore.
Her ski goggles were fogging up. "Ned..."
"Hmm?"
"Digby's never aged, has he."
She was perched on his lap, and he thought of how foolish he had been, to call his teenage years frustrating. She moved very gently against him, her hips against his, and it had been embarrassing the first few times but now, all he had to do was think of how little separated them, and groan at how much was still between them.
"Not since." He gazed up at her, sighing, tracing his gloved hand over curves he would never be able to actually touch.
"Do you think, that when you die, I'll die too? Me and Digby?"
He blinked. It was hard enough to think when she wasn't this close. "I don't know," he managed to stammer out, his fingers pressing impatiently against her ass.
"I don't either," she said. "So promise me something."
"What," he murmured, the wind low and mournful in the trees, the snow gently settling around them, and, her eyes large and luminous, Chuck, fingers drifting over his shoulders, the back of his neck, as she ground against him and he clamped his mouth shut to keep from crying out.
"Kill me with a kiss," she whispered. "I can't stay here without you."
Immortality, he thought, again. Immortality but you can never touch her again.
What a cruel price.
"Oh, Chuck," he gasped. "I couldn't bear it either."
--
"And what were you-- oh, never mind," Emerson said disgustedly, stirring another packet of sugar into his morning coffee. "I know exactly why you'd be sneaking out after hours like some whacked-out teenager. So the skinny--"
"Is that the saboteur is skinny," Ned put in, shivering as he splashed his face. "And not a peep from the dogs, and, trust me, it's impossible to creep around this place at night."
"Serve you right," Emerson replied, complete with an eye-roll. "So what's been sabotaged?"
"Don't know," Ned admitted. "I tried to follow, but it started snowing again."
"Boy, you ain't cut out for this life," Emerson chastised him, tucking his gun into his knit holster. "Now, you know who is, is--"
Their door burst open, and Chuck stood in the doorway, panting, her cheeks pink. "It's Olive!" she cried out. "Come quick!"
The three of them, alternately struggling into clothes or with skis, raced out to the slopes. Halfway down a trail marked green for novice skiers, they found Olive, clinging to a sapling, her skis helplessly tangled, shouting desperately for help.
"Oh, hell no!"
Ned ignored Emerson's disbelieving shout and left Chuck picking her way down the trail as he cut his own way, in swaths of flying snow. He planted his feet and grabbed Olive's arms, matching her adoring smile with a reassuring one of his own, and as they waited he wondered yet again why it couldn't be this simple. He loved Olive, dearly, and the Pie Hole was never the same when she was off duty. The brush of their bare hands wouldn't kill her. And if he offered, he knew, she would be there, that open beaming face staring up into his.
If not for Chuck, maybe. But now there was no going back.
He sighed and shifted his grip, as Chuck and a girl he had not met before, in a ski suit trimmed to look like a German barmaid dress, approached. "Just hang on!"
"Way ahead of you!" Olive hollered back, her ski slipping as she tried again for some kind of purchase against the track.
Between the three of them they managed to get Olive, who had at least lightly sprained her ankle during her tumble down the mountain, back up to the head of the trail. The girl, who had the name Beatrice embroidered on her staff ski suit, hung back to apologize profusely while Chuck and Olive hobbled toward the medical hut.
"This is one of our most advanced trails," Beatrice fretted, wringing her hands. "I don't know what we would've done..."
"I've heard there have been a lot of strange things going on here," Emerson prompted.
Beatrice glanced around. "It... it's nothing, really. Pranks."
"You call that a prank?" Ned burst out. "Olive could've been killed!"
"No, I mean... like the banner that said 'Get Cosy with the Bedbugs at Cosy Cottage,'" Beatrice mumbled, looking down.
"That's good," Emerson chuckled, his face turning deadpan-serious again immediately. "What about Brandy Branson?"
The girl paled, mumbled something about getting back to work, and skied off as fast as she could. Ned and Emerson stared after her.
"She knows somethin'," Emerson said, stabbing the snow with his pole for emphasis. "Somethin' she afraid to tell. Somethin' you're gonna get out of her."
"Me?" Ned squeaked, glancing at Emerson in disbelief.
"She was shootin' you the eye. And she wants to get it off her chest. And at least this way maybe you won't be sneakin' out to see Dead Girl at all hours."
Ned narrowed his eyes. "Ever think maybe Beatrice is the skinny saboteur?"
"She ain't that good an actress," Emerson said baldly. "Go bake her a nice guilt-filled pie and let her cry on your shoulder. Go on." He shooed the piemaker off.
Even though Ned was grumbling under his breath the entire time he made the pie, and hiding his face whenever the pinch-mouthed Priscilla glanced into the kitchen, Beatrice did indeed open up with her fifth bite of Mississippi mud pie, though she kept shooting that same wary glance over her shoulder.
"It was just... teasing, you know?"
Ned nodded slowly, pushing a cup of coffee toward Beatrice, and the girl, delicate eyebrows knitting, began to tell the story.
The facts were these.
Cosy Cottage and Luscious Landing had been feuding from the moment the latter had cast its steel-beam girders into the sky. If Cosy Cottage offered ten percent off a visit, the Landing offered fifteen. The day after the horribly kitschy but tourist-friendly barmaid outfits arrived, the Landing had a hot tub installed. Then that petty banner had gone up over the road, and Priscilla had declared war.
"And believe me," Bea said, stabbing the air with her fork for emphasis, "she's not one to dilly or dally around, when it comes to such."
"No dilly or dally," Ned agreed, thinking that Brandy's threat of a stiletto paled in comparison to what those pale, sharp eyes of Priscilla's could insinuate. "Then the ski lift rope broke?"
"There were a few other things," Bea admitted, her gaze dropping to her empty plate. Ned hurriedly served her another slice. "Thank you. Our generator was sabotaged."
"Oh, no!"
"Oh yes," she said mournfully. "Priscilla had Barnaby Booth, that funny little insurance man? Come out to see the damage."
"Huh," Ned replied.
"It's been awful since we found Brandy," Bea confessed, her eyes shining. "I was so glad we had some guests, but my nerves are shot, wondering what's going to happen next!"
Across the valley, Olive, scowling and making the most of her twisted ankle, was complaining to Sam Sanford. "Please tell me you're going to buy that little ramshackle cottage and burn it to the ground, after this!" she demanded, wincing as the square-jawed beefcake of a medic applied gentle pressure to her uninjured ankle. She paused in her scowl to shoot him a thousand-watt grin, then set her face back to stony as she turned to Sam.
"What's so hard about putting the right markers on the trails?!"
"You're right," Sam said, but she looked worried. "Honestly, if we had that property, there would be plenty of instructors watching out for cute little snow bunnies like yourself."
Olive grinned, unabashedly.
"But they can only afford the one over there, and part-time," she mused aloud. "So it's no wonder. Patty, I must insist that you take a complimentary massage, as our heartfelt apology for what you've suffered."
Olive patted the medic's arm. "Only if Jorge here can squeeze me into his schedule," she said, batting her eyelashes.
Chuck passed on the intelligence Olive had gathered when she met Ned and Emerson for dinner. "Why would Sam be worried?" she wondered, after she had finished.
"'Cause it's bad luck to get your guests injured on a ski trail," Emerson pointed out.
Ned shrugged. "Bad publicity could hurt them both," he said, blushing a little when Chuck's knee gently nudged against his, under the table.
"Besides, she'd hardly clap her hands and do a dance," Emerson said scornfully. "'Oh goody, my sabotage has paid off, finally,'" he falsettoed.
Chuck raised a warning eyebrow at Emerson, who, as usual, completely disregarded it. "I think they're telling the truth," she said firmly.
"And who, Junior Miss Marple, would be the culprit, if not them?" Emerson said in his patent patronizing voice.
Ned drummed his fingers on the table. "Priscilla got an insurance man out here," he said, slowly. "Bea told me. After the pranks turned into something more malicious."
"And this place sure ain't making money," Emerson added, glancing around.
"Sounds like we need a stakeout," Chuck said with a wide grin.
Emerson groaned. "Long as we ain't on the same side of the hill," he insisted.
--
"Are you all right?"
Ned and Chuck sat side by side in the starlit dark, hands to themselves, self-conscious as chaperoned prom dates. Chuck had her chin propped on a gloved hand, staring off into the distance, waiting for something to happen.
"I..." She shrugged. "Well as I'll ever be."
Ned glanced away, itching for his kitchen back at the Pie Hole. He liked the security of knowing what would be in any drawer he opened, of the running tally he kept in the back of his mind of every pie in the oven, display, or refrigerator. He liked knowing that if he needed to, he could retreat upstairs, to the order of his apartment, to his bed and the plastic rigging through which he and Chuck could almost, but not quite and not ever, touch.
He was acutely aware, with a second of heart-throbbing intensity, that he could peel his glove off and hold his hand out and they would stare at each other, fascinated, hypnotized by the flame, the distance, the killing depths.
She would be so much better off without him.
"I mean what you were asking about last night."
She turned to him with a little smile. "You almost killed me again with a kiss," she reminded him, and some mornings the sheer enormity of what he had done, and with so little regret, seemed to make the earth tremble beneath him. He was very aware of how he had brought her back. He was very aware that he was powerless to her, and while he hated being powerless, one night, in the midst of a grand round of self-flagellation, had examined his conscience and found that even if her continued existence had meant that another person would drop dead every sixty seconds, he still couldn't have brought himself to touch her again.
"I just liked the symmetry."
He was staring at her mouth and there was no plastic wrap in sight, so he settled for running the tip of one gloved finger lightly over her lips. "Here?"
She nodded, speechless, spellbound.
And then Olive and Emerson were practically stumbling over them, heading for a figure barely visible through the trees. Ned and Chuck scrambled to their feet and joined in the chase, and Ned took his first full breath, murmuring silent thanks.
Then Olive banged her injured ankle and hopped away in pain, releasing a sharp pained cry, and Ned doubled back to help while Chuck, on Emerson's heels, vanished through the trees.
"You all right?" Ned gasped, grasping Olive's arm to help support her weight, and he didn't miss the slight melting in her glance before she gestured at him impatiently.
"I'll be fine! Go! I'll catch up!"
The sound of shouting and the pop of a pistol reached them, and Ned, running blindly through the trees, almost burst through and into the line of fire before he realized what he was doing. By then, of course, she had heard him, and paused mid-soliloquy, to gesture for him to come out, with a jerk of the hand holding the gun.
The facts, she continued to tell them, were these, as Ned disbelievingly followed the lines of the shapely, trim body, up to the sharp cheekbones and glittering cold eyes of Priscilla Powers.
Cosy Cottage had managed to keep afloat before Luscious Landing installed its sleek new facility on their doorstep. With the coming of Sam and Simon Sanford, Cosy Cottage saw all its former guests fall for the promise of hot tubs and hot toddies, while the Cottage's ski lifts were abused and grounds littered upon.
"They've wanted this place ever since they bought the land," Priscilla declared, gesturing with her gun for emphasis. "Tried to force us out."
"With the hot tub, and the discounts," Chuck nodded knowingly.
"And the 'accidents'?" Emerson made air quotes with his fingers, which twitched a little when they rose to the level of his shoulder holster.
"Yes," Priscilla said, nodding vigorously. "Those are all their fault, too."
"Except they aren't, are they," Ned said slowly. "You're the slender saboteur. You decided to make these all look like sabotage by your competition so you could cash in on the insurance money and bring the Landing down with you!"
"And how did Brandy Branson fit into all this?" Emerson demanded.
"She was snooping around, asking too many questions," Priscilla dismissed her with a wave of the hand. "Cozying up to the Sanfords when she was staying at the Cosy Cottage! So, two birds with one stone. It was only fair," she agreed with a cold grin.
But that grin froze on her face as Olive, hobbling quietly through the muffling snow, smacked her a good one across the back of the head with a fallen tree branch.
"Fair, my ass," Olive said, shaking her injured ankle at the unconscious woman.
--
Bea gave them all coupons before they checked out, beaming as she took the reins at Cosy Cottage. Emerson kept his for a possible bribe to an informant, visions of dollar signs dancing in his head on his return to the city and the close of the case. Olive took hers happily, winking at a square-jawed man gathered with the rest of the crowd, to see Priscilla Powers taken away.
"What?" she scowled, when Ned elbowed her gently in the ribs, then went back to bestowing her thousand-watt smile.
Chuck tugged at Ned's sleeve, and he, grateful to leave the circle of flashbulbs and clamoring reporters, followed. She grinned at him from under her customary disguise of headscarf and sunglasses.
"Yes, mysterious stranger?" he asked, smiling.
She brushed her gloved thumb over his lips in what passed for a kiss, between them. "I keep hoping that someday, it will have worn off," she admitted, studying his eyes.
"Your notoriety?" he returned, trying and failing to keep his voice light.
"Not being able to touch," she said, sighing. "Wouldn't it be awful if we were on our deathbeds, and you reached out to take my hand as we slipped away..."
"I thought we agreed on a kiss," he said, half-smiling, gazing at her mouth.
She gave him her annoyed-but-charmed look. "And nothing happened," she finished.
"I can't take that risk. You know that."
"I know," she sighed. Then she glanced up at him from under her lashes. "But do you dream about it?"
"Every night," he said, brushing her lips again, shivering a little from the inside as he mentally added, when I'm not imagining that I accidentally kill you again.
"Me too."
He slid his arm around her waist and led her further away from the band of reporters and cameras, secure in the knowledge that only his face was exposed. "You know, there's something I've wanted to do to you since I was ten," he began.
Chuck glanced up at him, mildly scandalized, but with a small smile on her face. "Oh?"
"Get you back for that time you kicked my ass in that snowball fight," he said, all in one breath, and by the time she had bent over to gather her first handful, his initial volley was already in the air. Within two minutes Olive had followed the sound of their muffled shouts and was frantically scooping snow to amass her own missiles, and Emerson, rolling his eyes, did nothing but point out how ridiculous they were all acting and how his leather conditioner wasn't meant to stand up to this kind of treatment, when the first snowball exploded against his temple and sent him lumbering into the trees for cover and his own snowball supply.
In the confusion and adrenaline rush, his hair wet and dusted in ice crystals, his cheeks stinging from the cold, Ned tackled Chuck after one especially furious assault, and she gazed up at him, laughing uncontrollably and begging for mercy, her cheeks flushed and her hair curling in wet strands.
And he knew he would never be able to let her go, without feeling some part of him die again, and he didn't have enough of himself left to spare.
"Truce?" he demanded, grinning, and she squirmed and protested under him, out of breath from laughing so hard, as Emerson bellowed and Olive squealed.
"Truce," she gasped out, still smiling, and then she brought her hand up, her hand that he realized too late was bare, and held it just a hair's breadth from his cheek, so close he could feel his fear rising like waves.
And yet he wanted it.
He had dreamed once that they had accidentally touched, but he had been the one who had fallen to the ground, stiff as a board, gone forever.
It would be true, he knew, but in a way, in a very small way, it would be a relief, to no longer fight this unanswerable need.
Their gazes held a beat too long and he pushed himself up, off her, then offered her his hand.
"Come on," he said softly. "Time to go home."