In his rush, the prince dropped one of his boots, but before he could stop and turn back for it, Anders caught up to him and snagged it, waving his mate on towards the cave. They arrived in time for Nysid to save his clothes from becoming *too wet and Anders waited out in the rain for him to dress before entering himself, stripping out of his sodden shirt and tossing it over a nearby rock before fishing his hard-won prize out of his pants pocket and passing them off to the prince. “Dry those for me, would you?”

Nysid glanced up from where he’d been wringing out his long, dark hair and gave him an unimpressed look, but accepted them all the same and used a dry patch on his pants to do as asked. While he did that, Anders turned back to his pack and pulled out his riding leathers. They were meant to be worn as a protective layer between his clothes and his armor, supple and durable to keep him as warm and mobile as possible adragonback, but definitely too rough to wear on their own. Desperate times called for desperate measures, though, so the captain kicked off his sodden boots, back towards his mate as he then stripped off his pants before pulling his leathers on in their place.

A soft, choking noise from behind him made Anders glance back over his shoulder as he straightened from pulling up the loose leather trousers and worked the belt to fasten them around his waist. The feel of the material was unpleasantly rough against his skin, but they were dry and they’d keep the cool night air off while he got the fire started and dried his clothes, which was all that really mattered in the moment. “What’s the matter?” he asked, confused as he paused, halfway to grabbing up his jacket.

Nysid’s face was as close to beet red as his dark skin would let him get, hands clutched tight around the pieces of flint he’d been drying. “I─ you!” he sputtered, clearly flustered as he couldn’t quite make up his mind on where to look, grey eyes darting away from Anders and back again before finally fixing on his face. “You completely lack any sense of propriety, don’t you!”

Anders blinked, then looked down at himself, and back to his mate again. “I thought you just didn’t want me to see you naked; you have a problem with me being naked, too?” he asked, baffled.

“Of course I do! What, do people just walk around in the nude in Marilderland? I’d heard strange things about the place, but I’d never given them much credit until now!”

Anders rolled his eyes, amused in spite of himself. “No, we don’t walk around naked; we just don’t really give much thought to changing in front of others, particularly in the legions,” he explained with a snort as he crossed the distance between them on bare feet and held out a hand for the flint Nysid still clutched. “Not like it’s a sex thing, or something. Bodies are bodies— we’ve all got one.”

Nysid remained very still for a moment, so much so that he didn’t even lean away from Anders when he neared, though he did tilt his head back to look up at him. For all the captain had just said his changing wasn’t sexual, he did suddenly find himself overcome by a powerful urge to lean down and kiss the prince on his upturned lips. They looked wonderfully soft and were just ever-so-slightly parted, like he might have been thinking the same thing.

Nysid wasn’t entirely sure what was going through his own head as he sat there and watched Anders work, color still high and heart racing inexplicably. It was probably all that skin─ pale and freckled with a dusting of dark brown hair down his forearms and across his muscular chest… it was very distracting. Unfairly so, to the prince’s mind, and had completely robbed his tongue of its usual wit when Anders had gotten so close, jacket totally forgotten during their conversation.

Stars guide him, he’d practically been radiating body heat and Nysid had been forced to fight an unseemly urge to lean in and press himself against his mate to better feel it. Even now, staring at the man’s back and the way his muscles shifted hypnotically beneath his skin, the prince found himself plagued by all sorts of thoughts, none of which were appropriate and all of which involved him putting his mouth on some part or other of Anders just to have a taste of him. Before he could fall too deep down that hole, however, something managed to drag Nysid’s thoughts back from the brink as he fully registered the red, ragged marks across across Anders’ back.

“What happened?” he blurted out and got to his feet, efforts to finger-comb his hair totally forgotten. There were two intersecting sets of marks across Anders’ fair skin, though neither appeared to be bleeding. One looked like a particularly nasty scrape while the other appeared to be particularly bad chafe marks where something had rubbed repeatedly against the skin, leaving it red and on the verge of breaking.

Anders made a small sound of question and twisted a little to look at the prince, then realized he was looking at his back and tried to squint over his own shoulder and down at the wounds in question. “Oh,” he said, then reached up and brushed the top-most mark that he could reach reflexively. “Rock bit pretty bad when I got stuck in the cave,” he explained, then twisted his arm around a little to brush the lower mark, feeling it out a little before explaining, “And this is from the strap I attached my pack to. The leather’s made to withstand Ghain’s scales so it’s tougher than I am, I guess.” He snorted a little, seeming more amused than bothered as he went back to carefully arranging tinder and some small twigs into the best configuration to start a fire, well back from the mouth of the cave where they might get damp.

“Why didn’t you say anything,” Nysid demanded with a frown as he lingered next to Anders, fighting an urge to reach out and brush his fingertips across the span of the man’s shoulders.

“Well, wouldn’t have really changed anything,” Anders remarked. “Had to get unstuck, and I can’t really leave the pack behind.”

Shifting from one foot to the other, arms crossed over his chest, Nysid said, “I could have carried it for awhile, at least.” Anders gave him a skeptical look and the prince quickly amended, “Before I hurt my shoulder.”

Rather than make excuses, Anders simply said, “The balm in the med kit will help, it’s in a little compact in the bag,” and nodded towards it meaningfully.

Catching the hint, Nysid went to the bag and, after a moment’s rooting around through the small case of emergency medical supplies within, found what he was looking for. As he returned to Anders’ side the other man, apparently satisfied with the arrangement of twigs and tinder, took up the rocks he’d had Nysid dry and struck them together. They sparked immediately, making the prince’s eyebrows shoot up as he came and crouched next to his mate, careful not to let his hair fall forward lest it drip and impede Anders’ efforts.

A few more tries and then the sparks successfully caught the dry moss and set it smoking, at which point Anders bent down and carefully blew on it, encouraging it into a proper flame that quickly started consume the twigs piled up around it.

“So, they really do spark,” Nysid mused as he watched.

“Told you I wasn’t spying,” Anders said, eyes bright and expression downright pleased when he glanced at the prince before turning his attention back to his work.

The prince crooked a brow at his mate in response and, in his blandest tone, remarked, “You could have been doing both.” Anders shot him a look, but rather than frown, Nysid allowed a smile to curl the corners of his lips, amused that he’d gotten the man.

“By the First,” Anders said, eyes widening fractionally as he stared at Nysid.

“What?” the prince asked, immediately concerned as he looked around, wondering what had caused the man to react so.

When he looked back at Anders on finding nothing had changed around them, though, his mate was grinning. “Nothing. I just realized you have dimples.”

Caught completely off guard, Nysid stared at the man, whose grin only widened, and felt his cheeks begin to heat again. Flummoxed, heart pounding, an incoherent noise escaped the prince and he raised a hand as though to shove the man, but restrained himself at the last minute and demanded, “You─ why do you keep saying things like that?!”

Anders held up a hand to ward off a blow that never came. Then, still smiling, he turned his attention back to feeding the fire and said, “Well, you do have dimples, you know.”

“Yes, I know! That’s not what I mean,” the prince growled and raked one hand down his face, then over his beard, as if to smother the dimples he knew did, in fact, appear there any time he smiled.

Calloused fingers brushed his own as Anders took the balm from him and Nysid glanced up from under his furrowed brows, but the other man’s attention was on the compact, which he flicked open to unleash a pungent, aromatic scent that filled the air around them. “Say things like what?” Anders asked as he dabbed some of the paste onto his fingers and gestured for his mate to remove his shirt, then applied it carefully to Nysid’s shoulder once he had reluctantly complied.

His touch was gentle as he brushed over the sore area with his fingertips and the tenderness with which he carried out the task caused a riot of emotions to bloom within the prince. Embarrassment, longing, confusion… Nysid ducked his head and allowed his long hair to fall forward to mask his face while the other man worked. He couldn’t bring himself to mention the time Anders had called him beautiful, or when he’d offered to cuddle by the fire, so he focused on finger-combing the damp locks of his hair and didn’t answer. “What is that stuff made out of?” he asked instead, hoping the other man would go along.

Out of the corner of his eye, Nysid saw Anders cast him a sidelong look, but instead of pressing, the blond answered, “Bunch of herbs from back home, plus some kind of wood ash, I think. Helps with inflammation and should numb the pain at least a bit.”

It did seem to be taking an edge off the dull, throbbing pain, for which Nysid was grateful. His soak in the pond had helped, and with the balm on top, he harbored some hope that he’d be back in at least passable shape by morning. As long as he could at least keep up with Anders—

“Hike down your pants, let me see your hip.”

The words sent a jolt up Nysid’s spine and he snapped his head around to look at Anders. “I can do it myself,” he said and reached out hastily to take the balm from his mate, only to have the man hold it back out of reach unless he wanted to climb up onto his lap. The prince refused to consider if that was something he wanted or not.

“Just let me do it, you’ll set your shoulder off again trying to get at it,” Anders pointed out and sighed. “You don’t have to take your pants off, just pull them down a bit so I can see what I’m doing and we don’t waste this stuff. After that, you can do my back.”

Nysid tried to stare the other man down, but Anders just stared right back, seeming un-swayed and unimpressed by his mate’s princely glower. Realizing he wasn’t going to win the argument (again), Nysid made a sound of disgust and shifted so he could undo the lacing at the front of his breeches, then rolled down the waist band to expose the swath of badly bruised skin that covered the upper half of his hip. As he did, Anders got up and fetched his bag and his jacket, then placed the former next to Nysid and gestured for him to stretch out against it, and set the latter on the ground near at hand. The prince hesitated for a moment, then did as he was told, wrapping his arms around the pack so it was mostly under him, allowing him to stretch out without laying flat on the chill cave floor.