No Monsters in the Snow

Author's Note:

Heyooo! Here's a quick, fun, sci-fi piece fleshed out from a dream I had recently. Like most of my inappropriate dreams, I woke up before things got good. Even my subconscious is cock-blocking me - hehe. Hope you like!

Thank you to the Great and Powerful LaRascasse for his editing voodoo, and to WaterBurn and karaline for taking time out of their ass-kicking and name-taking to beta-read.

Enjoy!

~Eris/D&T

* * * *

The throng of people packed into the airport surged in a panic when I vaulted the rope and bolted for the door. A few grasping hands thrust through the opening, trying to catch hold of my jacket, but none of them were fool enough to follow when the door slammed shut behind me.

My feet thudded down the ramp so fast I thought I might trip and roll the rest of the way down the defunct jetway in a ball. When the tunnel ended in nothing but blinding white and a wall of cold, I didn't even pause to process the height. I jumped.

That wild luck allotted to fools and babies was with me then: the drift piled against the north face of the terminal was substantial enough to break my fall. I thrashed my way upright, no time for reflection or gratitude, and began to wade out into the desolation. The bite of the air in the shade of the building was far worse than anything I'd been able to imagine, but I was committed now. I'd made my choice.

Running through snow is difficult enough, and growing up in Phoenix hadn't given me a childhood of winter wonderlands in which to practice. Nor did my gross lack of surface hours after the disaster. Now as I stumbled and flailed my way through knee to waist-high drifts, my lack of experience showed. And worse, it was slowing me down. He was out here. Somewhere. I just needed to find him.

Muffled yells from the crowd and the softened pounding of fists on the glass windows now overhead came at me still as I floundered my way out into the open. Perhaps they thought to holler some sense into me. That I might hear them and turn back. But we had turned back too many times already. Everyone in that building, myself included, had paid the price of fear.

I squinted my eyes against the ferocious glitter of sunlight on the snow-covered tarmac, or what was left of it, sweeping my gaze in an arc over the silent, heavy expanse of nothing in front of me.

Where are you? Fuck! This is only going to work if I don't freeze to death before I find your ass!

I left the blue shadows and tromped out into the cold light of morning, all too aware that the dark shades of my coat and jeans made me an easy target against the white. Not that there was time now for things like strategy or camouflage.

"Hey!" I screamed, "It's me!"

Does he even know who 'me' is? Can he even hear you?

Something in my chest shrank when I heard how quickly the sound of my voice died. It seemed to stop right in front of me when I needed it to travel. The silence of the perfect, snowy blanket ate it up, like it had everything else. There were no jet engines roaring anymore, no traffic shushing by on the freeway, no seagulls calling to each other from the roof of the building like they had before the disaster. Things were already awful, and this last little rebellion of mine was perhaps a naïve attempt to save just one thing from the ruin. Stop them even one time from more needless destruction.

"Where are you?"

I was yelling again, desperate, and had managed to force myself through the drifts all the way out to where the broken runways were probably underfoot. My feet were starting to sting with cold. Low-topped tennis shoes had no business carrying anyone out into a mess like this, and my jeans were damp and icy to at least the knee.

"Please! It's me! You have to come out!" My voice was beginning to crack, and I turned in almost a complete circle, numb hand shading my eyes as I squinted back in the direction of the airport. Distant faces stared at me with wide eyes through the wall of glass. The fingers of my other hand clenched and unclenched trying to maintain circulation.

From somewhere deep under the terminal, there was a massive thud. Metal grated on metal behind thousands of tons of concrete in some sub-basement in the bowels of the facility. Dead planes decayed in the snow above ground, and live fear churned below. It may have been my imagination at this point, but I thought I saw some of the remaining unbroken antennae on the roof quiver.

Shit! Oh shit! We're just about fucked here if you don't —

Snow crunched behind me.

I whirled about, but there was nothing.

What the ...? Maybe I just —

White powder exploded six feet from where I stood. I jumped and my hand flew to my chest as though, once startled, I became some swooning vaudeville damsel against my own will. A square cover from one of the access tunnels spun up and out in a crazy metallic arc before landing in a

whump

in the snow.

And there he was.

Shirtless like a madman, and scrubbing snow out of his dark hair with a broad square hand.

Finally.

If I couldn't make them see the truth, he was going to die. They'd probably take me down right along with him, just to be safe.

Melted snow ran down his chest and arms in rivulets, as if his skin was a hundred degrees hotter than anything around him. It probably was.

His dark eyes were on me. He'd recognized my voice, or at least that's what I'd hoped.

From underground? But then that means ...

It didn't matter. I could ask my questions later, if there would even

be

a 'later'. I needed to worry about now, today.

And today there was no sea of neurobiologists and genetic engineers loitering around making things difficult. Military might show up, but that would be another story. No bulletproof plexi, no Tyvek suit. Just me. And him. I swallowed. It was now or never.

I put out my arms in the universal gesture.

Come here.

The observing crowd would be biting their nails now. Averting their eyes. They knew, or thought they knew: a slaughter was coming.

Please don't let me be wrong.

He had far less trouble cleaving through the snow than I had. In three steps, he was looming over me, massive and naked from the waist up. When he stepped between my arms, which I had to remind myself I'd put out there for just that purpose, I brought my hands to his waist without thought. I'd been right about his temperature: the heat of his bare skin made my numb fingertips prickle and ache at their first contact.

I had to tilt my neck far back to meet his eyes and, when I did, the roller coaster crested that first high peak, hovered ... and then dropped.

"Roksana."

He knows my name! Oh holy fuck, he knows my name!

His voice was deep and the first word out of his mouth jarred me to my foundation. None of us had even been sure he could speak English, or more than one word in any language at all for that matter. And here he was with my name on his lips. Where the hell did he learn it? The wheels were spinning fast in my head now, and I knew that everyone, myself included, had far misjudged what exactly it was they were dealing with. Or who.

But there was no time for any of that. There would be boots on the ground any minute now, and I had the shell of an airport full of witnesses. Scientists and accountants and janitors who'd funneled up from the test facility below, eager to gawk at the inevitable capture. I had to make them see what I'd seen these last two months. Open their eyes where fluorescent lights and a metric crap-ton of monitoring equipment had failed.

I hoped to god I was right.

My hands were at the side of his face, fingertips vibrating with cold and fear that I was treading right between the wide, toothy jaws of a horrible mistake. This first of my worries — the first of many, I feared — melted away as soon as he bent his head.

His mouth was as hot as the piled snow was cold, and at my involuntary gasp, so was his tongue, slipping against mine. Arms were around me then, and a hand gripped the back of my hood to drag it away, exposing the tops of my ears to the bite of the air. He could have crushed my ribs like a paper cup if he wanted, but the man, the "abomination" they were all so afraid of held me as if I were made of the most fragile crystal.

They'd been wrong. So awfully, terribly wrong.

And I had been right.

His fingers were in my hair now, and the hunger in his kisses was gaining momentum. Part of me quailed at his ardor, but another part had known it would be this way, if we ever had the chance. The flicker of a glance when no one else had been looking, a gesture, a quickened pulse visible in the hollow of a throat. His mind had been on the same path mine had from that first moment of eye contact: an understanding beyond language and empirical thought.

We hadn't needed words then, why should we need them now?

I felt a sliver of guilt for sliding my freezing hands up over the muscled wall of his back, but he didn't appear to mind. He was busy tugging the scarf away from my neck to expose still more places for his lips to burn. It was foolish how far he had to bend down to bring his mouth to my throat, but awkward angles were forgotten the moment he made contact.

An arm circled my waist while he nuzzled and lapped at the skin above my collarbone. Blood was rushing in my ears. Bare, male shoulders wide enough to land aircraft on were curving across my frame of vision, muscle flexing as massive arms moved hands to the back of my neck, my lower back. The reality of his touch, his body, hot and melting the snow around us, blew the flimsy daydreams I'd conjured over the past weeks away like wisps of cloud.

At the first real press of our bodies together, I slammed straight up against the gravity of the moment.

We'd reached that point in the encounter where one sign or another removes all doubt as to the extent of arousal, the inevitability of events to come. I noticed. And then he was aware that I'd noticed.

One of us whimpered. One of us growled. The whimper may have been mine, but I can't be too sure. Either way, between the crush of eager hips I'd felt it.

Rock hard, unmistakable.

Cock.

I went still as a prey animal, snorting steam into a snowy clearing, alert for the snap of a twig, the tumble of a pebble. He quit his kisses to catch my eyes again. The silence seemed to stretch the wide world over, taut so that if you bit and ground your teeth, it might snap like a rubber band. We were too, too far gone. I knew this and didn't care.

He gave my shoulders a nudge and I toppled back into the snow. I sank part way into the drift and he followed me down. I should have noticed the cold, should have cringed or yelped. But his mouth was on mine again, his hips were settling between my legs. Common sense was gone. I let him. I even pulled him in, hooking my calves around the backs of his knees.

He was wearing pants that on a good day were no more than glorified scrubs. I had no idea how he wasn't freezing, how his flesh was hot to the touch, but I clung to him either way. My hands slid greedy and careless below his waistband and found there still more bare skin. The flimsy pants were all he wore, and for a fleeting moment, my mind spun out dozens of questions about the events leading up to his escape.

My hips dragged me away from pesky questions of reason, though, and my body rolled against his, all shame gone as my groans filled his mouth and he answered me with his own. A warm handful of ass, muscle bunching under my palms, was more than enough to distract me from practical concerns.

His hands were pawing at layers of fabric now in a struggle to get my coat and shirt to cooperate and move the fuck out of the way. Even if I hadn't been watching, I'd have known either way the moment he achieved his end: as soon as the morning air cupped my breast and sunlight kissed fair skin, my nipple tightened up with a speed that felt like a physical pinch.

I gasped at the sting of the cold, and he stared at the flesh he'd exposed, his lips parted, breath coming heavy and visible on the air. Perhaps this was the moment for

him

. This was no foolish daydream. We were here, together. No one was leaping to stop us — yet — and I was going to let him do any damn thing he pleased. I would have liked to have bottled up the look in his eyes then and stored it for some future time when I wanted to get drunk with lust.

He had a final fierce kiss for me before he dropped down to his prize. His hot, sucking mouth pulled the diamond-hard bud inside, and with it, the heat of expectation surged between my legs. My fingers were in his hair making fists, clutching him to his task, showing him with my moans and the push of my hips how very much I approved of this turn of events.

At this point, the crowd in the terminal was getting more of a show than I'd ever intended. Most of them had probably thumbed their portables over to teleglass mode to get a far closer look at the drama unfolding out in the snow. They'd see my breast, my back arching to push it against his lips, his hands on me. My hands on him. Where planes would taxi and take off as recently as five years ago, now there was this madwoman rolling around in the freezing powder. Allowing herself to be exposed, to be touched. By

him

.

I could only hope it was enough, though I knew for my part, we were far from finished.

A warm set of fingers rolled the nipple that had just been in his mouth, and another hand moved to bring out its twin. I felt my knees shaking, but not from nerves.

The shock of what we were doing was wearing off, and I now began to sober up to the fact that I was cold. More than cold. My teeth had started to chatter, digits had gone beyond aching in places to stiff and numb. With my hood down, my hair was freezing in the snow to the back of my scalp.

I wanted this. I did, with a gut-twisting need that threatened to break my heart if I didn't have all of it right this minute. But there would be nothing to have if I froze, and with his own body melting away the snow as it did, well ... how could I expect him to know if I didn't tell him?

I needed his attention.

"Keval ..."

It was the only word anyone had ever heard him say before today. We'd all assumed it was his name, though most had simply called him 'monster' or, when in a cruel humor, they'd referred to him as The Beast. I don't think anyone else had ever repeated his only word back to his face.

At the sound of my voice, he tore himself from my breast to stare at me in shock. His brows came together and dark eyes were on mine, heavy with an exquisite sadness. I reached up numb fingertips to trace along the side of his jaw, his lower lip. There was so much more here than any of them had suspected. Perhaps they'll listen now.

"K-Keval," I began again, "I can't ... h-here. 'S too ... c-cold."

I hoped between that and my pleading glances at the snow on either side of us, he'd understand. I couldn't assume he'd know more than his name.

He looked around, blinking as though he'd forgotten we were writhing about in an icy field of white, and made some decision. He pushed himself up on his arms and pulled the halves of my shirt and coat back together before levering completely up to a standing position with a grunt. Eyes scanned the white expanse of airfield as I struggled to my feet, and if we hadn't been moments away from certain military intervention, I would have laughed at the sight of his erection tenting his loose pants.

I didn't know what it was that caught his eye, but his gaze flicked back down to me, assessing. He bent at the waist and I let out a squawk as my feet came off the ground. An arm like a steel girder curled behind my knees, and another circled below my shoulder blades. No sooner than he hefted me into the air and against the wall of his chest then he had us plowing through the snow toward some unannounced destination.

My guess was that he carried me because he knew I'd be all day if left to flounder along on my own two numb feet. There was no shirt to cling to, and I found myself having to lock my fingers behind his neck to maintain any sense of security that I wouldn't tumble into the snow. This arrangement brought my shoulders around and my face into the crook of his neck, and again I found my blood heating, despite the cold.

I tasted him as he carried me across the field of dead white, teeth grazing and lips pulling at the salted skin of his throat.

How can he be sweating out here?

A low rumble welled up from somewhere in his chest at my hungry insistence, and I felt the pace of his steps quicken and his fingertips curl into a tighter grip on my body.

He came to a halt some distance closer to the terminal, to the scores of watching eyes, and I turned my head to squint into the sun at wherever it was he'd brought us.

A drift piled higher than either of our heads surrounded something angular and metallic. Some left over piece of equipment from the airport's better days, no doubt. There were any number of abandoned vehicles, broken jumbles of unsalvageable machinery, scattered around the last standing wing of the terminal, the ruined control tower.

How did it all go so wrong, so fast?

He set me down. I was loathe to put my feet back into the maw of cold on the ground, but now his hand had found mine, closing over it in a painful warmth, and he made to drag me up onto whatever buried hulk of machinery he'd found here under the snow. It was far too small to be one of the planes. Maybe a ground power unit or a fuel truck.

We were climbing. Or rather, he was climbing while pulling me along behind, any sense of control of the situation given up to the man whose life I was trying to save. When our steps took us above the rest of the airfield's snow level he released my hand and began to scrabble and dig, flinging powder aside in great handfuls to expose the surface where we stood.

The crunch of his digging was the only sound breaking the heavy silence, and I saw now, as he scraped away enough of the snow that we were on some sort of ramp. Probably what was left of a belt loader? Any surface, even an exposed one like this, would be an improvement over drifts and ice.

But now another noise joined us in the glare of morning and, with it, my heart dropped like a stone. Despite the crowd watching our every move through the glass, the world had shrunk for a time to just him and me. Now we were no longer alone.

The distant clatter of a chain grating over a pulley rattled out in a shockwave from the far side of the terminal. The grumble of a roll-up door, complaining as much as any live person about the cold, told us there was very little time left. More than one diesel engine snarled to life, and I knew then just how far the situation must have escalated for them to be willing to waste combustible fuels on a single lab tech.

And on the monster.

On Keval. And me.

"Roksana."

My name from him an unbelievable second time yanked me straight back to reality. He had a hand out, waiting for mine.

Some cliché involving the phrase "or die trying" darted through my head then, and I took his hand. With a heave of muscle, he had me pulled into the circle of his arms again. And it was a good thing I had the support.

"Roksana," he said, "you came for me."

I swallowed, staring up at him. My knees threatened to give out, and now I was the one who had no words, just as we'd all surmised about him. Violent need sailed from his eyes to mine and back again, the exchange launching steel cables and grappling hooks to catch somewhere deeper than flesh and muscle and bind us together.