Buck lay in his bed and tossed. He had settled on his right side 28 seconds ago but opted to turn over to his other side while kicking at the blanket. Five seconds passed...twenty...one minute...Buck sighed and grumbled something vaguely threatening before rolling over on his stomach. Thirty-six seconds later, he was on his back staring at the ceiling. Well, he would've been staring at the wooden beams if the room hadn't been shrouded in darkness. Now, his field of vision was encompassed by the black night.
Stray, unfinished sentences, half-words flitted on the surface of his thoughts. A swarm of waterbugs on a pond, quick, intangible, off. He was unable to catch them, grasping at them, at their meaning. They were worry, worried...about JD.
Buck didn't even know why JD entered his thoughts all of the sudden. He was pretty sure he'd been meaning to think about that sweet gal he'd seen yesterday, so why was JD on his mind?
A current of cold rippled over his skin and he shivered. Pulling the blankets a little higher, he glanced at the closed window and frowned. A part of his mind went off on a tangent about the state of wooden buildings, badly closing window frames and gaps in the walls while the basest part of him kept drooling all over that pretty missus.
JD's face intruded on all those thoughts again.
Buck's frown deepened. Now why was he thinking about that boy? Kid was holed up all warm and toasty in the Eagle Bend boarding house.
In the cold, hurt, freezing...
He gasped loudly. Damn! Where the hell did that come from? The swarm of flittering thoughts grew denser, buzzing like enraged bees. He reached out, straining to reach them, grasping wildly at them.
Cold, cold, pain , fear
His raw lungs pulled at the air. He tried to concentrate on JD, laying all his love for the boy into it.
Cold...Numb now...Peace...Sadness, so much sadness...Dying, dying, dying...
Buck sat bolt upright in bed. In a frenzy, he pulled on clothes and gunbelt haphazardly and stormed out of the dark, fear drenched room.