A/N: So. This was supposed to be part of a Christmas gift for Fer, but because I can't write on a schedule to save my life, it's a little late.
This is just something silly I came up with after some post on tumblr went around, detailing some common situations peoples' OTPs end up in. One was "screw or die", and then... this happened. I realize it's completely ridiculous and it doesn't figure into my personal headcanon of events, but it's fun, so what the hell? I hope she enjoys it :)
Dirty Little Secret, Pt. I
East of Port Farrall, thirteen days after the evacuation of Jacinto, 14 A.E.
Baird absolutely hated the cold. He hated the way that, no matter how many layers of sweaters he put on, the cold always seeped down into his bones. He hated how his face went completely numb after being outside for five minutes. He hated how the snow that blew into his scarf would get stuck there and turn into ice crystals. He especially hated how, the second he walked inside, his nose would start running.
Evacuating Jacinto at the drop of a hat hadn't exactly been planned. Baird understood that. But the Locust could have at least had the decency to wait until the summer before they tried to sink the city. Now the remnant of the COG was stuck in a rundown city that had been abandoned for nearly thirteen years.
And it was fucking freezing.
The wind was particularly forceful today, so of course it was the perfect day for a patrol. There had been some unconfirmed reports of Locust sightings from a couple of civvies. Hoffman had freaked out, naturally. Only a few days ago a frigging Berserker had showed up, so everyone was still on edge. Now that the tunnels had been flooded, there was only one place for the grubs to go: the surface.
Hoffman had sent out two small patrols to confirm the sighting. Marcus, Dom, Bernie and Dizzy had taken off west, while Baird, Cole and Rossi headed east. They'd been saddled with a new girl, fresh from Major Reid's EOD unit: Sam Byrne. Baird had seen her around before, but he'd never been put in a squad with her. She wasn't Delta, but Hoffman seemed to have a soft spot for her. If the colonel was trying to wrestle her away from Reid, she couldn't be completely useless.
Cole had warmed up to Sam quickly enough, but Cole got along with everybody. Baird, on the other hand, wasn't shy about expressing his dislike of female soldiers. That probably explained why Sam was sticking close to Cole and Rossi. Baird couldn't care less about her, though. He just wanted to get this stupid waste of a patrol over with so he could get out of the damn cold.
"How much do you want to bet that we won't see shit?" Baird asked, catching up with Cole.
His friend shrugged. Sometimes Baird questioned Cole's sanity; he had bare arms despite the frigid wind. "Never hurts to check."
"Yeah, speak for yourself."
Sam looked at him for the first time that day. "What's the matter, Blondie? Can't handle the cold?"
Baird wouldn't give her the satisfaction of a glare. "I can handle the cold, just doesn't mean I enjoy it. And only Mataki gets to call me Blondie."
"Par-don," Sam grumbled, turning back to Rossi.
"Still, I can't be the only one who thinks this is a waste of time." Baird watched the back of Sam's head, hoping that she wouldn't turn around and butt into the conversation again.
Again, Cole shrugged. "We lost a lot of people evacuating. Hoffman doesn't want to lose any more."
They'd been searching for a couple hours and the sun was now starting to set. This was the worst time to go on a wild goose chase. At this rate, it would be dark by the time they got back to Port Farrall. And it would be even colder than it was now. Although, on the off chance those two civvies were right, it was better than being ambushed while most people were asleep.
Baird was just about ready to suggest heading back when Rossi abruptly stopped moving. Everyone was instantly alert, sighting up their Lancers. For a few moments Baird couldn't see what had spooked Rossi, but then there was a flurry of movement in the trees. Two dozen Drones exploded into view, and Baird could hear the hideous chanting of a Kantus somewhere further back.
As the grubs charged forward, the squad split up. Cole and Rossi ran left while Baird and Sam went right. Baird had barely gone a few paces before he began to lose sight of Cole through the blizzard. Panic gripped at the edge of his mind, but he pushed it away. Cole was a big guy, he could handle himself.
Bursts of fire from the grubs' guns drove Baird and Sam further away from the other Gears. The swirling of the snow in the wind made it hard to see much, but Baird could make out the dark shapes of the Drones a few feet ahead. He sighted one up and squeezed the trigger. With a deep cry, the grub went down. But Baird hadn't killed it; the grub crawled around through the snow for a few seconds before the wailing of the unseen Kantus brought it back to its feet.
"Have I ever mentioned how much I hate those bloody things?" Sam hollered over the chanting.
Baird ignored her, focusing instead on the armed Drones that were actively trying to kill him. He finished off the one that had just got back on its feet, only to have two more grubs come charging out of the snowstorm. Baird's numb fingers fumbled as he tried to reload his Lancer, and he jammed the clip.
"Ah, shit."
Before Baird had a chance to panic, Sam was beside him. She easily took down the two Drones. The Kantus' song wouldn't be getting those two back up. Baird could see more silhouettes getting closer, enough that they would be grossly outnumbered. Ill-aimed bullets came streaking towards them.
He finally got a new magazine in his rifle. "Back up, back up."
"Don't have to tell me twice," Sam shouted back.
The shrieking wind was beginning to drown out the sound of Cole and Rossi's gunfire. They were getting forced further and further apart, but there was no stopping it. Four of them couldn't handle this amount of grubs easily, at least not with that Kantus droning in the background. As Baird and Sam back-peddled through the thickening blizzard, Baird couldn't stop a shiver that ran through his entire body.
He really hated the cold.
They stumbled into the shack, shivering under their wet clothes. Sam had no idea how much time had passed since the initial ambush earlier that day. All she knew was that it was getting dark, and they were lost. Her sense of direction was shot in this weather, and the tac-coms were, of course, not working. The sight of the small building against the snow had put a bit of life back into her tired body.
The blizzard had battered them relentlessly, and they both had soaking clothes to show for it. Sam could feel the icy chill down to her skin, meaning her under armour garments hadn't been spared. Baird was quivering along with her though, so at least she wasn't the only one suffering.
The inside of the hovel was more or less bare. Only a ratty old sleeping bag was stretched out on the floor in front of an empty fireplace. The place looked cleared out, and had probably been abandoned for some time. Sam tried not to get upset. She hadn't been expecting a fully furnished apartment, but something to help in their current predicament would have been nice. Still, beggars couldn't be choosers. It was at least better than getting buried in a blizzard. Marginally.
Sam pressed a finger to her earpiece again, but all she got was the white fuzz of interference static. The blizzard was definitely interfering with the comms. Not surprising. Evacuating to Port Farrall had never been part of a plan, and the COG definitely hadn't expected to do it with a couple hours notice. Getting anything to work in Port Farrall was a miracle, and the comms were sketchy at best with good weather.
"We're so dead," Baird grumbled as he stepped around her.
"Oh, cheer up. At least we're out of the snow."
Baird ignored her and started rummaging around the shack. Sam decided not to point out how useless that was; she could see from the door that there was nothing at all helpful in this hovel. She could also see Baird shivering. It suddenly reminded her of how cold she actually was. For a second, she was tempted to suppress her shivering in front of Baird—he'd probably make some crack about weak women. But that was just stupid. Shivering was her body's attempt to create warmth and fend off hypothermia.
Eventually, Baird stood up, looking even more annoyed than usual. "Nothing," he announced.
"I could have told you that," Sam muttered.
If Baird heard her, he ignored it. He checked his watch and groaned. "2300 hours. And the blizzard doesn't look like it's going to let up any time soon. They won't be able to send out a search party for a couple hours."
Sam had to concentrate to keep her teeth from chattering. Her clothes felt like sheets of ice against her skin. They weren't going to last a couple of hours in this state. "Is there anything we burn? A small fire would be better than nothing."
Baird glanced around the shed. "I could probably take some pieces of the wall out without letting in a draft."
As he went to work with his chainsaw bayonet, Sam started removing her armour. It wasn't like the cold metal was providing her with any insulation. She placed her chest piece on the floor as Baird dumped a small pile of wood into the fireplace.
"What's that, kindling?" she asked, unimpressed.
Baird glowered at her. "It's the best I could do. Do you want to sleep in a wind tunnel?" He then stared at the pile of sticks.
Sam waited for ten seconds. "Well?"
"I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to light it without a flint."
"Don't they teach you city boys anything?"
"Yeah, how to fight. Camping trips weren't part of basic."
Sam shoved past him before he could stop her, swearing in Kashkuri under her breath. All those cold winter nights without power in Anvegad were finally paying off. She hadn't had matches then, and she didn't have any now. Squatting in front of the hearth, she went about starting a fire.
From the clunking behind her, Sam guessed Baird was taking his armour off as well. She glanced over her shoulder to see him grappling with his massive boots. Grinning slightly to herself, she went back to creating a spark. The silence didn't last long. As soon as Baird was out of his armour, he was hovering over her shoulder.
"How long exactly is this going to take?"
Sam smiled sweetly at him. "How about you sod off and let me handle this?"
He huffed, stepping back a few paces. "This never would have happened if you hadn't gone running after that Kantus."
She bristled. "Oh sure, blame the woman."
"I'm not blaming you because you're a woman. I'm blaming you because it's your fault."
She rolled her eyes. "Right, whatever."
"Fine, don't believe me. I don't really give a shit what you think anyway."
When Sam made no answer, she thought she heard Baird take a breath, as if he was about to say something else. But thankfully he just let it out in a long sigh. Why did she have to get stuck with this asshole? Cole was a sweetheart, and Rossi was nice enough. Hell, she would have preferred Marcus Fenix's stoicism to this.
Finally, she saw a spark. She quickly bent over and started blowing gently on it. Baird was back behind her now, peaking over her shoulder at the smoke.
"Don't blow too hard," he warned.
I know what I'm bloody doing. She didn't answer, though, electing to stay focused on her task. If she lost the spark, she'd never hear the end of it. There was a small whoosh of air and a flame appeared. She leaned back, making no effort to hide her satisfaction.
"Not too bad, eh?"
"Yeah, fantastic."
Her satisfied expression faded a little. Bugger it. Without her, the great Damon Baird would be slowly freezing to death. Sam shuffled closer to the small fire, making room for the surly mechanic beside her. The heat felt good against her numb fingers and toes, but she could already see that the fire would never get big enough or last long enough to keep them warm for a couple hours. She snuck a peak at Baird; from his frown, she assumed he'd come to the same conclusion.
There was only one thing left to do. It had crossed her mind when they first entered the shack, but she was only prepared to use it as a last resort. Still, if it meant mortification over dying, she'd take it.
Sam made eye contact with Baird. "Take off your clothes."
For a moment he just blinked at her, like she'd been speaking Kashkuri. Then he seemed to comprehend what she'd said. "What the hell?"
"This fire couldn't dry my socks. There's only one sleeping bag and two of us. Our clothes are soaking and we're probably close to the early stages of hypothermia. I didn't survive fourteen years of killing grubs to freeze to death."
Baird opened his mouth, probably to argue, but a shiver ran through his body. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if in pain. "I can't believe I'm agreeing to this."
Sam held up a hand. "On one condition: we never mention a word of this to anyone."
"Obviously."
"All right then."
It was better to just get it over with than be bashful. She peeled off her clothing—literally, the fabric clung tightly to her skin—until she was left in her undergarments. Baird followed suit, stripping down to his boxers. The air was icy against her damp skin and her legs began to tremble uncontrollably. As Sam made to remove her bra, Baird suddenly looked alarmed.
"What, everything?"
"Everything." She paused. "Don't look."
When Baird turned around, she pulled off her last two articles of clothing. She slipped into the sleeping bag, her back to Baird. There was a rustle of fabric, a creak of floorboards, and then a warm body appeared next to her. She attempted to subtly press her back closer to his. Bloody hell, he was warm. His feet were icicles, but the rest of him may as well have been a space heater. Her shivering calmed down, but didn't disappear altogether.
Baird shifted next to her. "Your feet are fucking cold."
"Oh, excuse me," she hissed through clenched teeth. "You're one to talk."
Another shudder ran through her body. The initial warmth of the body heat was beginning to wear off. She'd still get hypothermia and die, just in a more embarrassing position. Suddenly, Baird heaved a sigh and rolled over. Before Sam could question or protest, his arms wrapped around her body, pulling her close.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Stop being timid," he grumbled. "We might as well share as much body heat as possible. It's not like things could get much more awkward."
Sam couldn't deny that this position was a great deal warmer. But that could just have been the heat rushing to her cheeks. "Try to cop a feel, and you lose a hand."
Baird snorted derisively. "You don't have to worry about that."