"SIEG!"
Something hard hit him mid chest and he sprung up into 2003 coughing and spouting water like a fish fountain. He was wet too, dripping so bad his bones must've been soaked in the stuff—where was he?
Lips all red, he huffed and puffed and the more he did, the more his eyes took in 'til he came to recognize the river bed he'd been washing up in before that dream...Only he wasn't in the riverbed anymore, he was laying about twelve feet away from it and looking round he saw the reason why.
Before him crouched Alice, her eyes were mad with something foreign, fear perhaps? she peered out at him all winded. He winked at her. "Couldn't get enough of me, huh?"
She slapped him.
"Hm." He said tasting metal. "I'm not sure I deserved that."
"I found you!" She screamed. "Face down in that river and bleeding black!"
"So you thought you'd add to it?"
"Sieg, this river leads to Alaska's deepest waterfall. Even you wouldn't have survived that drop—not now that you're-" she jumped as if only realizing what she was saying and when she had, she switched to another. "You have to be more careful. Come on then, let's get you out of the air. You must be freezing."
Sieg agreed...he was hard, not fully thank fuck, but enough to leave a noticeable print in his boxers. And worst? He tried to stand and couldn't. There was a pain akin to a charley horse in his side and the more he tried to stand, the further it spread across his chest.
Alice, who'd long gotten to her feet, returned to his side. "You're hurt?"
"Cramp." He didn't tell her where, but he could still see the doubt in her wandering eyes and when they started falling to his side, Sieg put his arm over it and cleared his throat. "You know what I think it is though—that slap you passed me. Oh I think it did some damage, Chickadee. I think I'll have to sue, clean house."
"I thought you liked your women feral." She smirked at him and the shock that this sent through him made little Sieg jump and toughen—Alice saw and when he put his hands over it, she laughed. "Hm. For some reason, I remember it bigger."
He flushed a pomegranate red. "It's cold!"
"Then we better get you outta here, huh Casanova?" Alice laughed, then she turned and crouched.
Watching her form, Sieg shrugged. "What is that, a turtle? No! No, A kangaroo."
"An Alice! Climb aboard."
"Like a girl?"
"Stow your masculinity. I've still a bit of strength left and with a bitta luck, I can probably reach us to the estate. So get on your knees and climb on my back."
"Yes, daddy."
"Urgh." And though she rolled her eyes at him, Alice couldn't help the smile there at the corner of her lips. She felt his weight add onto her own like lumps of gold to a scale and adjusted her arms accordingly. "Hold on!"
"Wait!"
"What?"
"My clothes! You don't want your boyfriend to think I'm jumping your bones again, do you?"
"I told you, Jasper and I are family. Nothing more."
She brought him over to the big pine he'd hung his belongings onto, but Alice was terribly short, she had to go all tippy-toed to even allow him to reach the first branch and as he swung his jeans up in an effort to knock his long sleeve loose, he said. "You know if I had Niles, this would be a fuck load easier—blow this bitch right off."
"Then what would you wear?"
"Oh yeah."
And off they went like Koda and Kenai.
"You know...when we were in love, I use to carry you all the time." Sieg laid his chin on her shoulder and leaned his face to hers like she use to. "Oh yeah. I'd carry you to pick apples, carry you to reach your window—ha! This one time, you broke your ankle climbing out your window to me in the dark, I carried you day and night for two months after, remember?"
She didn't...but she could feel his breath slowing...Sieg was hurt. How bad? She didn't know, but he was hurt. So she swallowed and blinked away tears. "I remember. I remember, Sieg, I-"
He went dead still.
