Three seconds later, there came the distinct shuffle of someone wiggling around a small tent in a sleeping bag. Followed by the sound of a tent flap unzipping.
Ben cringed. He couldn’t see him, but he could picture—
“Ben?”
Willing himself not to pass out, Ben stood and faced Alexei’s tent. Where his headlamp shone directly into Alexei’s confused, mostly asleep blue eyes. Alexei squinted, holding up a hand.
“Shit,” Ben said again, yanking the headlamp away from his forehead so it hung around his neck, throwing creepy shadows across the ground. And then, after an awkward second: “Hi.”
He stuffed his hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt.
After a few beats, a sound wheezed across the clearing between them. It almost sounded like…a laugh?
Was…Alexei laughing? Ben’s heart was beating too loudly in his ears to tell.
“Ben.” Alexei was definitely laughing. “You have really got to stop scaring me half to death in the middle of the night.”
Ben looked at the ground, scuffing a shoe in the sand. It was a good sign, that Alexei didn’t seem mad. Right?
But it suddenly wasn’t very funny to Ben at all. That he had, in fact, scared Alexei half to death in the middle of the night twice now.
“Yeah,” Ben affirmed. “Sorry.”
“Were younight hiking?” Alexei’s voice was still twinged with disbelief, a hint of amusement. Or exasperation. Or something. God, night hiking had fucked with Ben’s head. He couldn’t tell up from down.
“I…”Ben scrunched his shoulders up to his ears. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.
A silence Ben couldn’t read.
“Thanks. For leaving the book,” Ben said. “That was nice.”
“Sure.”
Finally, Ben’s legs made the decision for him. He walked to Alexei’s tent and sat down.
“Lex.”
He was going to say,Is it okay if I camp here?OrCan we talk in the morning?OrSorry for waking you up in the middle of the night. Again.OrI’m glad you’re okay.
But once he was there, Alexei right in front of him, his mind went blank. Ben couldn’t see Alexei very well in the dark. But he could smell him. And he smelled—well, Alexei had been hiking the PCT for two weeks and hadn’t washed his clothes in a long time, so mostly he smelled stinky. But it was a particularly Alexei rendition of stinky.
And then Ben’s mouth opened and he couldn’t stop anything that spilled out of it.
“I’m so sorry, Lex. I shouldn’t have been drinking with you. We should have talked more first, before…We should have talked more afterward, too, but you were soupsetthat morning and I didn’t want to push you.” Ben’s shoulders deflated. “I just…really thought I could keep myself from doing anything with you, but then you were so adorable at the restaurant, and fuck, Lex, fucking ‘Wonderwall’! It was like you were trying to kill me.”
Ben looked to the side, taking a deep breath before staring back at the ground. He bit his tongue, worried what else his fatigue would let escape.
Finally, after the silence had stretched too long for Ben’s nerves, he hazarded a glance up. Alexei was staring at him, a confused look on his face, the halo of the headlamp’s glow casting gray shadows on his cheeks.
“Can you say something, Lex?”
Another brutal silence. And then:
“You thought I was adorable?”
Ben strangled a laugh.
“Yes. You are very frequently adorable, Lex. On top of being really fucking hot. A lethal combination, really.”
