[closed] And when it's time for you to die I'll let you know

[samson]

Who| Brock Samson and Molotov Cocktease
What| Hunting season
Where| Arena 13: Birch Forest and Meadow
When| Some day during Week 1, morning

In the Northeast section of the Arena, between meadows that were once filled with scrub grass and winter flowers but are now craggy with churned ice and snow over permafrost, there is a forest of white-barked birch trees. There are animals there, deer and elk and things like that. Smaller ones too, but they're not as useful -- Brock's planning on catching one of the big ones and then opening it up all Tauntaun-style.

He has some traps and weapons halfway constructed for this purpose. For twine he needs for traps, he's skinned the boots he came in with, having swapped them out for more suitable ones from the bag he snagged at the Cornucopia. The gifts from Swann completed the set, and he has the windbreaker bundled up with the rest of his supplies, near the broken-down camp. He's trying to make it without a tent, camping in the shelter of the trees instead -- it's equal parts stubbornness and paranoia, since staying in a tent seemed dangerous and claustrophobic without somebody to keep watch. (It was moot anyway, though; he'd been gifted with a great many things -- water, food, booze, a really great knife -- but not a tent.)

His camp is halfway broken down as he prepares to pack up and move on to find game. But, you know, nature doesn't wait for any man, so with his breath visible in the air, Brock retreats a little ways away from his camp to relieve himself. It'll take all of a few seconds, so he's not too worried.

Comments

[samson]

Brock is still holding onto the strap, but he freezes when he sees it's her, the gears in his head almost visible on the dumbfounded look on his face. He feels a little stupid for not recognizing her earlier, and just lets the pack hang there suspended between them for a moment, just like the silence.

Then: "What the fuck, Molotov!"

[molotov]

"It's a fucking Arena!" she yells back, tugging on the backpack. "You leave your shit lying around, it's fair game!"

She's not sure how this has passed over his head, because she thinks it's pretty obvious how all this crap works. She saw supplies, she took them, end of story.

[samson]

"I was taking a leak!" he shouts, giving the backpack one hard tug to try and trip up her balance and pull her back toward him so he can grapple with her that way. Is nothing sacred where a man can't take a piss! Honestly.

[molotov]

"It's a backpack, why did you even take it off!"

They're yelling back and forth like children, playing tug-of-war with a knapsack. She doesn't trip but she is yanked forward a bit through the mud, and she growls angrily about it.

[samson]

"Because I'm not going to sleep with a --"

He cuts himself off, looking up sharply beyond her, eyes focusing on something in the distance. He thought he heard something: a twig snap, mud squelching underfoot, whatever. Even through their babyish screaming, he was still on the highest alert possible. But on the other hand, he probably would have heard it a lot sooner if he hadn't been busy acting like a six-year-old.

"Shut up," he hisses at her, eyes darting around. When he hears another telltale sign of movement somewhere in the trees, he sees no other option -- he yanks hard on the pack and swings his balance to the side, trying to send her into a tree. If it works, he's going to pin her there against it and shield her from view. Birch bark is white, but Brock's parka is covered with mud all along the back, and if he keeps still it should passably work as mud-splattered tree, as long as nobody looks too close.

If it doesn't work and she still digs her heels in, then he's just going let go and hope she falls from lack of tension. She'd be better hidden on the ground.

[molotov]

Molotov doesn't yell back, because she sees him perk like an animal, knows that face instinctively, and her own hearing focuses away from him and outward, listening for all the same things he is, although she squints indignantly when he tells her to shut up because she hadn't even been talking.

She's ready to climb when she hears that second noise, ready to dart back up into the trees and away, but he pulls her before she can even let go of the pack and scurry up into the branches, and she is suddenly blind as he presses her back to the tree, his chest blocking out her field of vision. The smell of him wraps around her, lacking the tobacco smoke element but everything else is there, and it gives her a sense of comfortable familiarity that lets her sharpen her senses and her guard, listening as intently as she can, given her visual blindness to what is happening around them.

[samson]

Brock has to bow his head to hide his hair, keeping his shoulders tensed to help. Molotov is closer to her actual height like this, since they didn't supply anyone with stiletto winter boots (as far as he could tell, anyway), and it makes it easier for him to hide her, giant as he is. He can smell her hair from the way his face is angled down, and his fingers curl a little against the birch tree -- one hand still holding the strap, the backpack sandwiched between them.

He keeps his eyes open, staring at the top of her head as the footsteps draw closer, twigs snapping. There's a slim chance it's just a very heavy, very clumsy animal, but Brock's chased enough people through the woods to know with almost absolute certainty that it's not an animal.

He's standing still because he has to, the nervous energy building inside his body from the chase, the revelation of the thief's identity, the person coming slowly their way. He's going to have to hit something in a minute. The yelling helped, but if this situation was any indicator, this is probably not the right place for that.

[molotov]

She shifts only slightly, looking up toward where he's tilted down, communicating with her expression, the way they've always been able to, the way that comes from knowing each other too well, being too similar.

Her brow knits and her eye narrows. What's happening?, she asks silently, hearing the steps but too in-the-dark to be able to suss out much about them. Brock has the advantage here, able to glance up if necessary.

Molotov places her hand on his chest, able to tell as much from his heartbeat as she can from his face.

[samson]

Hopefully Molotov will know well enough to take his pulse with a grain of salt, because his heart beats hard against her hand when she touches his chest, even through the metal plate. When Brock was first outfitted with the plate, he'd been surprised that his heartbeat could still be heard through it -- he assumed that it would muffle everything like lead against X-rays. But it just dulled it a little more than normal, steel for bone and skin and tissue. His face contorts for a second, brow knitting severely, until he gets himself under enough control where he can make his heart fucking stop. She is just a woman. It doesn't matter anymore.

He watches Molotov's face for a moment, his own expression carefully blank, and then he slowly, imperceptibly starts to turn his head to look over his shoulder. Molotov could very easily just peek around him to get a look herself, but he doesn't want to risk it. Her black hat is too stark against the white skin of the trees.

Turning his head just enough where he can see out his peripherals, he looks just long enough to see that it's a person. He's unwilling to spend the time on sussing out exactly who it is, and it doesn't really matter anyway; it's not a chance he's willing to take, not right now. It's stupid because logically they'd both be able to kick the ass of anyone dumb enough to be stomping around in the woods, and when he thinks about it, he doesn't quite know why his instinct had been to protect her like this.

Slowly, he turns his head back to look at her again, then shakes it in that same nearly inperceptible way. Not yet. The crunching gets louder and then, after a few more seconds, starts to recede.

[molotov]

She lowers her hand, watches him look behind himself, then nods at him in that same, barely-there way. His body is muffling the noise, and she's not fully sure if she's imagining the steps moving away or if it's just his bulk softening the footfalls to her ears, where the blood is pounding away anyway.

All she can do is wait. Molotov knows him well enough to trust this situation, knows he doesn't want to take her out this way, won't keep her against the tree any longer than necessary because it's torture for them both, and there's no honor in holding her there to try and disable her.

He wants to fight in open air, if they're going to. She knows that because she wants that too.

[samson]

Brock is still quiet, half his focus on the mysterious person in the birch trees with him, and the rest of his attention split between paying attention to Molotov while simultaneously trying not to think about her too much. Which is hard when she's looking up at him like that, and he just keeps his eyes on her face, tracking the fine lines at the corners of her mouth and her eye, any traces of windburn on her face, the structure of her bones. He's barely seen her the whole time they've been in this world, and certainly not this close (not when she wasn't insane from infection, anyway). It's not that remarkable, since they've gone years without seeing each other before, but the close proximity after everything doesn't really help.

He keeps his expression carefully placid, trying very hard not to telegraph anything to her but wait and maybe some vague assurance that he knows what he's doing. Wordless communication has always come easy to them, even when there isn't anything to say. He just studies her face for as long as he can, until he can't hear anything anymore and even the blood in his ears has faded away.

Quirking his eyebrow at her, he turns his head around again to look, cautiously scanning the area before he's willing to back away from the tree and resume what they were doing, if they're going to resume at all. As much as keeping her pinned against the tree and beating her up is unappealing to him, there is a primal part of him that wants her pinned up for other purposes, and looking at her face for so long didn't really do much to help that, so he doesn't exactly move away with any kind of swiftness.

"I think we're okay," he says quietly in something nearing a whisper, looking back down at her again.

[molotov]

She watches him but with a sense of looking past him, focusing on what she can and can't hear, and it keeps her from thinking too much about how close they are, and how long it's been since they were like this.

He whispers and she nods, glancing over his shoulder again, then tightens her fingers around his backpack, the strap she still has.

"Give me your weapons and I'll leave."

[samson]

Brock makes a noise that is part bafflement and part amusement, because that is quite a request. He shakes his head, his fingers curling around the backpack strap as well.

"Not on your life, Cocktease," he says, voice low, still not moving. "I have some food. We can share that."

[molotov]

"I don't need food, I have plenty of it. I want your weapons."

She's pretty sure they're heading toward a ridiculous game of tug-of-war, which is perhaps appropriate after that chase and then a weird round of hide-and-seek. But she's not letting go of the backpack, even though she knows she doesn't need more supplies, that she's doing this to be petty and reduce her competition.