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Diego sits with his knees drawn up to his chest. Eyes on an off-kilter rock on the outer rim of their excuse for a campfire, barely able to keep alight. Risotto is poking at it hopelessly to try and coax the fire into life with a stick he miraculously found despite the fact Diego hasn’t seen a tree in the past two miles. Yes, their fire is made up out of paper scrap and a bit of cloth that they could spare. So much for their maps. The sides of his face begin to itch and when he raises his hand he finds he’s grimacing.
The fire stirs a little, growing—coaxed—before letting up just as quickly. Risotto huffs and falls back on his haunches, reaching for the dreary copper flask on his belt that has surely seen better days. Shinier days.
“Maybe,” Risotto mumbles under his breath, turning the flash over in his hand. There’s a smudge in the condensation on the flask, which is surprising given the fact it had been on his person. Then again, Risotto doesn’t seem to emit much heat. “I could use this.”
“No.” Diego speaks up, and the rough skin where his face is still healing from the incident in the mountains. His mouth is dry. Everything is dry. “We need something to drink.”
Risotto looks over his shoulder in the direction of—darkness, really. It’s too late to determine much beyond the light of their fire. He looks back and blinks slowly. “There’s a stream.”
Diego’s eyes narrow and he shrinks a little, trying to conserve his warmth.“I don’t like the river water around here.” The fire is truly pitiful right now—and the gust of wind that comes through thereafter nearly does it in, and bites Diego to the core in the process. Shivering, he continues, “it tastes weird, even boiled.”
“I like it, actually…”
Risotto looks off, tilting the flask in his hand. His hair is caught up in the wind for a moment and he looks almost picturesque, with the prairie grass, the firelight. Diego, for some reason, imagines him on a cigarette card. He wouldn’t mind having that in his pocket… that’s weird, isn’t it?
“Do you want this before I use it?” Risotto breaks his silence after two minutes of prodding the fire which still seems to dim despite his efforts.
“Hmh…” Diego snaps out of it. One of the embers that jumped up into the breeze lands just an inch shy from Diego’s foot. It burns despite separation from its master. Diego blinks—then he moves to smother it with a push of his foot. Drops his legs, crosses them loosely. Glancing up at the clear night sky—full of stars and all sorts of things, really—he questions, “when did it last rain?”—a beat passes—“also, yes.”
Risotto looks down at the ground and then back up at the sky. He’s thinking—the ground is still kind of wet, so within the past few days, at least—“a day ago,” he supplies. Then, he twists the cap off of the flask and stretches out his arm in Diego’s direction—much closer to his face than he would have expected. It makes him jump. Just a little. “Here.” He says after a moment, shaking it like he thinks that Diego is unfocused.
“Um,” Diego looks past the flask at Risotto. Normally, he would have just taken it—but he’s holding it up to his mouth. Almost as though he means for Diego to drink from his hand. That sits oddly with Diego. In a way that makes his stomach twist a little. In the way that feels as good as it does nauseating. So he speaks simply. “Risotto. What are you doing?”
“You wanted this?” Risotto asks like he thinks Diego is dim. Or, at least, in a very flat, slightly impatient fashion. He visibly fights a shiver, though he does not win.
“Yes—” Diego swallows a very sudden amount of saliva. Last he felt, his mouth had been dry to the point of a slight sting. He almost feels like he’s being made a fool. He almost feels like—“am I meant to?” And then he flicks his eyes in the direction of the flask pointedly. Trying to ask without asking.
“I don’t know what you’re asking. Do what you want.” Risotto says and he makes an effort to look past Diego rather than at him, which stings slightly. Diego swears he sees Risotto’s tongue dart over his bottom lip. His heart does something. Then, “don’t take too long, though. My arm is starting to tingle.”
Do what you want.
Diego takes a second—just a second—to close his eyes and think about it.
His first thought is to crane his head forward and take a sip from it. Like some manner of pet. Phantom spines tingle on his back. There’s the twitch of a limb at the end of his spine that isn’t there—and cold against his lips, and liquid in his mouth—and when he opens his eyes, Diego finds that he’s gone and done what he was thinking. Idiot—and Risotto’s eyes are on him.
His eyes, Heavens above, his eyes. Diego doesn’t understand how they could look like that—black instead of white, red instead of brown or blue—but ever since he first saw the man, he’s been entranced. Even when he was trying to shake the man from his trail—even when he was willing to take a risk just to ensure he’d place ahead of him in the race. He felt…
Pierced, by his gaze, so to speak.
The fact that Risotto is even here, now, with him, is a miracle.
Diego has come to see his fair share of miracles over the course of this race. He thinks this moment might be one of them—and he swallows the bitter drink. The burn is nearly that of what’s begun to grow on his cheeks. He must be flushed. Can the other man tell? Maybe.
The other man’s throat shifts as he swallows. The grass rustles with another gentle breeze rolling through the plains. The October chill bites, yet the cold of the whiskey bites harder—and the burn that follows as it goes down his throat moreso. It makes Diego wonder if Risotto tried cooling the bottle in one of the rivers they stopped by. Or it’s simply that cold.
Diego is not too concerned with that. Moreso the heat building in his face. Risotto pulls the flask away rather suddenly—and as if the act of drinking from his hand wasn’t humiliating enough, a drop of whiskey rolls down his chin, he feels it—and Risotto averts his eyes quickly.
“Why did you—do that?” Diego snaps though he does not mean to. “What was that?’
“Nothing.” Risotto replies, now staring at Diego out of the corner of his eye. He moves to pour some of the flask onto the fire—but he pauses, and for a long moment, he stays like that. “I just remembered something. I heard a story about a guy who did this once.”
“Oh?” Diego groans, wiping the drink from his chin with the ball of his hand. He tries to ignore the way his gut burns and twists and—no, he ought to keep that to himself. “And what happened to him?”
“Fire flared.” Risotto bites his lip—just barely, but enough for Diego to notice, and it does him no favors. “Might not be a good idea to burn through what’s left of our kindle in five minutes.”
“Yes,” Diego says, a little dumbly. He’s not exactly listening. Just looking—but, then, the sudden huff of one of their mares behind them brings him back to reality. He jerkily looks over his shoulder at them—unsurprisingly, Elisabeth and Silver Bullet both don’t even spare him a glance. Silver Bullet is too occupied grooming her companion’s coat. He feels—odd, maybe embarrassed, or maybe just disconcerted that the horses had seen him with Risotto like that.
Whatever that is.