☼ • — E L L I O T
Elliot had never been so cold in her life. Nor had she meant to be anywhere near the Country Club, but life did have funny way of pulling her towards Topher in times of need. She’d been hauling herself to the desert, her bike roaring up freeway but as soon as she hit the sights of city limits the icy grip of Cheyenne seemed to want to pull her back. The road was nothing but a sheet of ice, one lean deeper than the next and she’d end up half Ricker and half guardrail, she could feel it; they’d be intertwined and she’d be frozen til’ some adventurous anyone found her melted in the spring. She just wanted to see Vegas, to bury herself in the hopefully still scorching sands of Nevada and feel warm again. Elliot had survived the last winter by finding a cozy spot with a cozy someone, but as with change there was good and there was bad in all of it. It seemed as though her whole world changed daily and in the bone-chilling trek back into Cheyenne she wondered if she’d ever be happy again. To really feel happy, to smile honestly and not with snake-like glee at the idea of outdoing someone, wrangling whatever she needed from them and leaving them high and dry and herself alone again. She must have been frozen right down to the core of her, her brain stuck in the same cold rhythm til she finally made it back to signs of life. Which other life would her natural compass find but Topher? Paul probably, but where there was a Topher, there was a Paul. Her bike barely made it inside and she was sure that she left herself somewhere on the highway, a body to be excavated in the future like an iced someone from the caves of Everest. “I don’t n-n-need anythin’” She wanted to hug him but she couldn’t, all she could do was attempt to focus on her lacking ability not to shake in front of him. Black hair was slicked with ice and her calm snowy skin was angry, every red and blue vein trying to find heat, trying to enliven the lanky moving stalagmite she had become.
☼ • — ❛ the thankful heart, ❜ it has been said, ❛ will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessing. ❜ and okay, if he’s being entirely honest, he doesn’t actually know who said it. ( he thinks maybe he saw the quote once on one of the many pages of a daily motivational calendar, or possibly that it might’ve been on a gaudy, glittering graphic he stumbled upon in the early days of facebook. myspace, even. he’s not sure, alright? he just knows that the point of it, the poignant positivity of it, that stuck with him. ) and if ever there were a thankful heart left in the world, then surely it beats beneath faded, tie-dyed cotton and hand-carved mala beads that don the chest of christopher haas, for the b l e s s i n g s he receives are countless and invaluable. they surprise him, find him even in the bleakest of moments when his heart is too heavy ( or his body too cold ) to search for them. and to find the familiar face of one elliot ricker in the frozen tundra just beyond the walls of the country club — a face he’s not seen in, what has it been, weeks? — oh, he could pray to each and every star on a cloudless cheyenne night and it still wouldn’t be enough to express his thanks, his gratitude to the universe for such a beautiful gift. he could’ve teared up at the sight of her alone — and he very well might’ve, were he not so concerned by the ice that clung to her dark locks, to the bluish stains that bloomed on stuttering lips. he runs to her at once, nearly slipping on the snow-slick floor as he scrambles to pull his friend into an embrace.
❝ yes, ❞ he murmurs into frigid skin as strong arms envelop her shivering silhouette, and for all that the word is s o f t, it is just as insistent. ❝ y’really do. you’re freezin’, el — it’s a wonder you’re not a ricker-sicle right now. how long have y’been out there? w h y were y’out there? ❞ topher leans away from the embrace long enough to meet her gaze and he shakes his head as if to dismiss the questions before she can even bother to answer; he pulls her in long enough to give her one last squeeze and press a kiss to her cheek ( the skin feels like i c e against his lips ) before deciding to make good on his offer, whether she needs it or not. ❝ y’know what? it doesn’t — none a’ that matters. not right now, anyway. c’mon, y’can tell me about it once you’ve changed into somethin’ dry, somethin’ warm. ❞ one arm comes to wrap around her, hand settling on fabric stiff with ice, and slowly, he begins to guide her down the hall and toward the makeshift room he’s set up for the next few months. ( the van had proven far too cold a dwelling for the winter weather of wyoming, and that was before it’d been all but buried beneath the blizzard. ) ❝ you’ll catch your death a’ cold if y’don’t, and i mean, i dunno if i can think of a less badass way for the fearless elliot ricker t’go. ❞ he flashes her a smirk then, something playful he hopes she might appreciate. ❝ not t’mention, i think it would jus’ break paul’s little heart an’ i’d hate t’have to be the one t’tell him. ❞











