Gideon stares at me like I’m a pet who’s about to talk, or grant him wishes, or something.
“What,” he finally says. Good lord.
“How bad is it?” I ask, nodding at his left leg.
“It’s fi—”
“Gideon.”
We glare at each other for a moment. Glaring isn’t exactly my specialty, but he’s being enough of an exasperating dick that I’ve got no problem right now.
After a moment, he huffs out a short sigh.
“It’s not that bad,” he says. “I just need a minute.”
I, a human being with eyes and a brain, don’t believe him, so I reach out, grab the cuff of his pants, and start rolling it up. His leg jerks and he hisses again, but he doesn’t manage to move it much, and I wrap my hand around his ankle, right above his boot.
“Does that hurt?” I ask, glancing up at him.
“Not really.”
“Does it really not hurt, or are you still lying about it because you think—”
“You barely touching my ankle actually doesn’t hurt, believe it or not,” he snaps, one elbow still leaning on the arm of the couch, his hand in his dark wild hair, and it would be a relaxed pose if every muscle in his body weren’t so tense right now.
“How about this?” I ask, pressing just above his ankle bone with my thumb. His leg twitches again and he inhales sharply, so there’s my answer.
Gideon meets my eyes when I look up, his face resigned and wary, his eyes steady on mine. The cabin has plenty of windows, and even though it’s a cloudy day the blanket of snow outside diffuses the light and even inside it’s bright as anything, the perfect all-around glow of Christmas morning or a magazine shoot.
Seated at his feet, a hand around his ankle, gazing at each other, I feel like a Renaissance painting. Some sort of supplicant, except we’re both tired and muddy and bitching at each other on a couch that’s probably older than either of us.
“I’m taking your shoe off,” I tell him, and he grunts in response. When I look up, he’s rubbing his hands over his face, finally relaxed back against the couch. It takes most of my self-control not to roll my eyes and sarcastically tell him that he’s welcome, so I settle for just rolling my eyes where he can’t see.
“My feet are gross,” he says once I get the knot in his laces undone and start unwinding them.
“You’re gross.”
“Your face is gross,” he mutters, like we’re eleven again, and I snort.
He’s right, though. His feet are kind of gross, once I get both boots and socks off, but worse things have happened to me. Including a couple of times that I bled all over Gideon, so this is fair.
“It’s swollen,” I say, comparing it to his other ankle. His feet are several shades paler than his legs, even in December, the dark hairs on them surprisingly soft. I wonder if his beard is also soft, which isn’t a particularly useful thought.
“Yep,” he offers, still draped over the couch.
“Can you move it?”
“I’d prefer not to.”
I prod a little more, gently, and he grunts a few times but doesn’t kick me in the face or anything.
“It’s not broken,” he says, after a bit, his big toe twitching. “It’d hurt worse if it were broken.”
“Where’s the First Aid stuff?” I ask, standing, and Gideon points at the tiny coat closet. He lets me wrap his ankle in an Ace bandage and fasten several ice packs from the freezer around it as well as around his knee, which he begrudgingly admits he wrenched a little when he fell.
Finally, I sit back to admire my handiwork, such as it is. Most of my expertise in this sort of thing is limited to drunk friends who did something dumb, and it’s been several years since an incident of that sort, so I’m out of practice and also boring now.
“Thanks,” he says, when I scoot backward across the floor and settle against the armchair, because I don’t feel like going through the effort of getting all the way in. He leans his head over the back of the couch, the tendons in his neck obscured by the bright light, though his Adams’ apple moves when he speaks again. “I might not be able to drive you into town tomorrow. If the Parkway’s even cleared. We’re not very good at snow around here.”
To my credit, I don’t say no shit, Gideon.
“Well, it’s Christmas,” I point out, a fact I’d kind of forgotten until right now.
“Right,” he says. “That.”
He doesn’t move from where he’s flopped: one pant leg rolled halfway up his calf, ice packs wrapped around his knee and two on his ankle, leaned against the back of the couch, head tilted back over the cushion. The sleeves of his plaid flannel shirt are pushed up and he’s got something black and long-sleeved on underneath it, his hat on the couch next to him, melted snow soaking into the blue fabric.
I must be exhausted from the last couple days, because I suddenly find it appealing in a way I don’t find Gideon appealing. There’s something insouciant in the way he’s draped on the couch, like a mountain lion relaxing at the top of the food chain. Gideon’s not particularly tall—five ten, maybe five eleven?—but looking at him now, I realize he’s solid, wide-shouldered and powerful in a way that feels impolite to think about.
So, I don’t.
“Why are you here on Christmas?” I ask, suddenly loud in the quiet cabin, trading one awkward thought for another.
“Ruffed grouse census,” he tells the ceiling, then swallows. “You?”
“I told you, Chloe Barnes needed company,” I say.
Gideon lifts his head just enough to give me a look, and I shrug, like his answer was any better of an explanation.
“Lucia and Frank went on a cruise to Mexico because, and I quote, fuck this performative capitalist nightmare, see you in January,” I say. “And my dad just started a new job and doesn’t have much time off, so we figured it made more sense for me to visit in the spring, when I wouldn’t be battling holiday traffic.”
“Ah,” Gideon says, and goes quiet again.
I stretch my legs out, cross my ankles and arms, and frown at him, not that he sees it because he’s either asleep or staring at the ceiling. On Christmas. In an off-grid cabin that can’t be more than five hundred square feet, in the middle of nowhere, with a busted ankle.
I don’t really mind missing Christmas. To be honest, it’s kind of nice to skip Christmas once in a while—I don’t have to think about presents, or a tree, or decorating, or hosting people, or cleaning up afterward, or whether I’m making the season magical enough or whatever. It can really be a whole thing.
But Gideon’s family was always a big Christmas family, at least when I still lived here. The whole month of December was usually Christmas Month: kids making and putting up decorations, Gideon having to go to one church social event after another, repairing whichever precious old ornament had broken this year. A flurry of costumes for the nativity play his church did every year, mending white robes and gluing together tattered, ancient angel wings. I never did find out which part he played.
I wonder if that still happens. Gideon’s youngest siblings are probably in their late teens by now, so I doubt they’re the baby Jesus, but he’s got tons of nieces and nephews. I wonder if he still glues together angel wings and ceramic mangers.