“Can you unzip your onesie?” Theo asked frankly. He was in the corner, where a blue ice chest was solidly anchored to a support post with bungee cords. “I’ve got first aid here, and if we’ve got some stability, I can make sure you don’t bleed out.”
It was Spencer’s turn to snort. “It’s a flight suit,” he muttered. “’Cause we were up at altitude, and it’s fucking cold up there. Black Hawks don’t pressurize.”
“Ooh,” Theo said, sarcasm almost oozing through the deck. “A flight suit. ’Cause you’re a big bad pilot, right? You fell out of your helicopter. Now unzip your onesie so you don’t bleed to death.”
“Wow. You looked so sweet.” Spencer gave a drunken chuckle. “That’s fantastic. I drove you from sweet to snarky in about ten minutes. It’s got to be a record.”
Theo was on his knees, rooting through the ice chest and gathering items. “Well, it’s an unusual day,” he conceded.
Spencer peered up at the roiling clouds and the rain that was alleviated by the sheltering tree, but by no means eliminated.
“In Oregon?” he asked. “Really? Is this an unusual day in Oregon?”
“Oh dear God, could you give it a rest?” Theo snapped, slamming the lid of the ice chest shut. “I’m sure you’re considered a laugh riot among the flight-jockey set, but for those of us just glad we’re not swimming, you’re getting on my nerves!”
Spencer grimaced. “I do that,” he conceded. “It’s probably why my dog is the best roommate I’ve ever had.”
“You have a dog?” Theo asked, and he sounded relieved, like this was neutral ground.
Spencer closed his eyes against the rain, the pain, and the exhaustion. “Yeah. Colonel. He’s not that bright, but then neither am I.”
“A match made in heaven?”
Spencer nodded, absurdly wishing Colonel was there right then. “A German shepherd mix,” he said. “My boss’s brother was training him—he was supposed to be a police dog. Kept getting confused. Thought my aftershave smelled like cocaine. Go figure.”
Theo let loose a strained chuckle. “That’s… well….”
“Not bright,” Spencer said, smiling to himself. Not bright, but Colonel loved him. So hard to find in a mammal these days.
Theo was kneeling next to him now, and up close—and not blurred by rain—Spencer was as impressed by his apple-cheeked wholesome adorability as he had been on first sight. God, he’d been rescued by Junior Woodchuck here, and it was starting to turn him on.
“Well, the dog isn’t the one who fell out of the helicopter,” Theo said, and Spencer grimaced.
“Yeah. Told you we were a pair.”
“Come on, Mr. Helmsley.” Theo’s hands, wet and red from the cold, were at his zipper, and Spencer grunted.
“Here, let me do that,” he conceded. He unzipped his suit and thought that was it, but Theo started to strip off the arms. “Why? Why are we doing that? It’s cold out there!”
“Your leg is bleeding too,” Theo said, voice matter-of-fact. “We can leave the flight suit on and cut the fabric of the leg, or we can take the whole thing off. I’m gonna leave it your choice.”
Spencer’s body gave a hard, angry shudder, and his elbows clutched convulsively to his side. “Well, I guess you’re going to have to cut it off through the leg,” he said through clenched teeth. “I appear to need all the body heat I can manage right now.”
“Fair enough.” Theo parted his flight suit and pulled up the T-shirt underneath, and for a moment, Spencer had all he could handle to not black out.
“Please tell me there’s nothing jammed in there,” he muttered, trying hard not to throw up. “’Cause that would be gross.”
“I’m sure there’s splinters,” Theo said, almost absently. “It looks like your suit ripped.” He scowled. “Was this why you fell out of the helicopter?”
Spencer nodded. “Yeah. Usually those seams are pretty tight, but there was a lot of G-force there. I hooked myself to the frame, like I was supposed to, and the chopper heaved, and rip! Spencer gets to fly!”
“Aren’t you a pilot?” Theo prodded, and Spencer laughed.
“You might be a smartass after all,” he said approvingly.
“Only on days I’m sailing someone’s porch down a flooded valley,” Theo murmured. Then he met Spencer’s eyes, his own brown and intent. “This is going to hurt. And we’re apparently pretending that the hurt is all okay right now, so if that’s what lets us function, that’s fine. But it’s going to hurt, so I need you to get yourself ready, okay?”
Spencer swallowed and forced his mouth into its usual position of fuckitwhatever. “Done,” he said. “You do what you need to. I’m good.”
Theo nodded and then dumped hydrogen peroxide on the wound.
“You o—”
“Ou—”
“—kay?”
“—chhhhhhh.” Spencer breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth and in through his nose and out through his mouth. He stared up past the branches into the gray tumult of the sky and pretended he was in the air, in a chopper preferably, but he was licensed to fly almost anything. Flying. He wanted to be flying.
“Mr. Helmsley?”
“Spencer,” he said again. “I’m good. Keep going, kid. Theo. Keep going. I’m going to check out here a little, okay? Don’t want to scream and flop around like a big stupid fish, right?”
Theo’s voice didn’t have any snark in it this time. “No, sir,” he said. “You’re right. You go wherever you need to while I do this. I’ll try to make it quick.”
“That’s kind,” Spencer said, and he stared at Theo’s profile for a moment. “You do look kind.”
And Theo did something with a length of gauze and some tweezers, and Spencer had to stop looking at that appealing face and start staring at the clouds again. Far, far away, floating on the breeze, Colonel at his feet.
As happy as he’d ever been in the world.
New Skills
THEO wasn’t sure what he’d expected from the search-and-rescue guy who fell out of his helicopter and then hauled himself up on the raft, but it hadn’t been the… the… snarky a-hole who had arrived.
But then, that snarky a-hole had also done a bunch of incredibly brave things in a row, so Theo thought—now—that maybe he should cut the guy a break.
It’s just that he never shut up!
But looking at Spencer’s face—narrow, handsome, with a long jaw and stunning cheekbones and eyes as charcoal gray as the sky overhead—Theo got the feeling that with all that talking, there was something even bigger underneath that he wasn’t saying.
He sure did seem good at avoiding the subject of pain because the mess at his side was something Theo, with his limited first aid experience, had never dealt with before.
God, it was a mess. Something—probably a tree branch—had gouged him hard, and then tried to pull his insides with it as it left. The resulting disaster of skin and meat—and God, let it not be anything else—was something Theo was afraid to put back right. If there were splinters in there, the infection would be major, but on the other hand, leaving the mess as it was without repositioning it was asking for infection too.