Chapter Text
“God, it’s so beautiful here,” Elle says, standing on a boulder and looking out over the view: the stunning expanse of aquamarine sky, the jutting rocky crags of Gariwerd, the shimmering blue of Lake Bellfield, and the forest growing over it all like distant moss. “It just makes me want to draw.”
“Well, you should!” Tao says, ever the encouraging boyfriend. “I love watching you draw.”
“I suppose we could have lunch here instead of at the lookout,” says Isaac, rolling his eyes where only Charlie can see.
They’re a few metres off the beaten track, a little down from the ridge on the edge of the escarpment, in a little copse of the kind of bendy, scraggly Dr Seuss trees that Australia seems to be entirely filled with. It’s obviously got a great view, and there are some comfy-enough-looking boulders to sit on.
Isaac, Charlie and Tao unpack their picnic lunch while Elle sketches, and actually, by the time the sandwiches are eaten, nobody really minds the detour from their plans.
Elle’s doing a sketch of Isaac now, and Tao and Charlie take the opportunity to do a bit of exploring. There’s a little trail along the edge of the cliff, snaking through the trees, and Charlie can’t help but imagine the little wallaby feet that must have created it. They’d met a wallaby, earlier that week at the zoo, and Charlie had fallen in love with the tiny, delicate miniature kangaroo, with its ever-so-soft fur.
He’s holding on to the trunk of one of the trees, looking out over the vast expanse of bushland below, when, without warning, the entire world ceases to be where he thought it was.
It all happens so quickly, but so, so slowly. He hears the cracking noise and turns to Tao to ask what it was, and catches Tao’s horrified eyes as they disappear upwards. Then, suddenly, Tao is replaced by brush, and then by the stripes of stratified earth, and then Charlie’s falling helplessly, still clutching onto the tree as though it’ll save him, even though it can’t even save itself.
A long heartbeat of free-fall ends with him tumbling wildly, the world spinning in a clatter-rumble-crash of rocks, and eventually coming to a stop. Not that Charlie’s alert enough to really register much after that, as every single part of him starts screaming at his brain all at once that everything is fucking wrong. He can’t breathe. There are a few seconds of pure greyed-out pain where all he can do is writhe helplessly, before he finally manages to suck in a lungful of blessed, miraculous air. And after that, all he can really focus on is being quite dissociatively unhappy.
It must be a full minute before Charlie can function enough to properly take stock of what the fuck just happened. He wants to just lie there and hurt, but he just fell off a fucking cliff what the fuck? And he knows he really needs to review the literal fallout.
He starts with opening his eyes. Okay, those seem to work.
He blinks in the bright sunlight, and the harsh rays almost make him want to close them again.
He’s on his back, and the escarpment towers above him. Suddenly, he realises he can hear voices calling his name: Tao, Isaac and Elle, all yelling over one another.
He tries to yell back, but his voice fails him the first, and the second time; it’s only on the third go that he can muster enough lung power to make any real noise.
“I’m alive!” he manages in a medium shout. “Get help, you bloody idiots. There’s a rock on my leg.”
Because there is, in fact, a rock on Charlie’s leg. A massive, fuck-off rock. Not quite on it, but very much mostly on top of it; it’s come down across the other rocks and soil that fell with Charlie. He experimentally tries to move his leg, and the whole massive fuck-off rock wobbles, threatening to come down harder. Charlie hastily stops that line of enquiry.
Instead, he reviews the rest of his situation. He seems to have landed on a smallish, steep patch of ground, covered in scrub and trees. The tree he came down with seems to have helped cushion his fall quite significantly, along with what he thinks might be another tree that’s jammed quite excruciatingly into his back. He’s covered with smaller rocks and dirt, and he’s got scrapes all over: his knees and elbows, his back, his sides, his hands and a broad swath of his face hurt like the blazes. But, assuming the leg under the rock isn’t injured – it feels okay, just stuck – he miraculously doesn’t seem to have done himself any major damage. All his fingers and toes seem to work. He heaves a lump of dirt the size of a basketball off his chest, and brushes more soil out of his mouth.
A faint voice comes from above:
“We’re getting you help, Charlie! Isaac found a park ranger!”
Charlie resists the ridiculous urge to reply with a thumbs up.
“Great,” he half-shouts.
“Are you injured?”
“Think I’m basically okay,” Charlie manages. “Not happy, though.”
The next few minutes pass painfully. Charlie’s pretzelled up on an unstable pile of dirt and rocks and half-buried trees, and every time he tries to readjust his position, the massive fuck-off rock loses worrying skids of dirt and pebbles from underneath it. It wants to keep rolling down the hill – Charlie’s leg is probably the only thing in its way – and if it chooses to continue its journey, it’s going to go over Charlie’s tibia like a steamroller over a Monster Munch. So he does his best to stay calm and still and not count his many extremely painful bruises and scrapes. He’s just starting to freak out a little bit about internal injuries and spinal fractures when Elle’s voice floats down from above.
“How are you doing, Charlie?”
“I’ve been better,” Charlie says. After a moment, he grimaces and adds, “Still better than that hot yoga class you dragged me to.”
He hears Elle’s silvery laugh.
“Hang on, Charlie, they’re on their way,” she yells.
It’s weird. He’s lying here having a spectacular emergency, but around him, he can hear the trill of birds, the creeeek of distant cicadas, he’s surrounded by shady trees, the weather is beautiful, and the sky is a perfect bright blue dome above him. There’s even a fluffy white cloud, straight out of a cartoon.
“Homophobia,” he mutters.
After a few more very uncomfortable minutes, in which Charlie practices his times table and recites several poems under his breath – though Wordsworth can fuck right off right now – he hears the unmistakable sound of competent people doing competent clanky things above him.
“Charlie, how are you doing down there,” comes a man’s voice.
Charlie rolls his eyes.
“Just absolutely peachy, thanks for asking,” he snarks.
A laugh rings out above him.
“Just hold on tight, try not to move, and we’ll have you out of there in two shakes,” the man says.
“I think I’ve had about all the shaking I can handle, thanks,” Charlie says. He doesn’t really know why he’s being so unnecessarily snarky; maybe crisis brings out his inner sassy bitch? Or maybe the whatever-it-is digging into his kidneys is just getting the better of his instinctive politeness. But the man laughs again.
“That’s the spirit,” comes the voice.
There’s more clanking, and more voices. Then a head pops over the edge, a bit down from where Charlie’s landed. Charlie can’t see much in the glare, other than making out the gleam of bright high-vis orange; it’s a good six or seven metres up, he guesses, maybe more.
“Any serious injuries you’re aware of?” yells the head.
“No. But my leg’s stuck under this stupid thing—” Charlie waves towards the M.F.O.R. – “and it’s threatening to roll down and flatten it.”
“Right.” The head looks back behind it. “Bruce, we’re going to need to get the winch truck up here!” he hears faintly.
A few moments later, a rope drops down to puddle on the ground past the boulder, and the head appears again.
“All right, Charlie, I’m coming down, and there’s a winch truck on its way to get this little pebble off of you,” the voice echoes down.
It’s followed shortly afterwards by the owner of the voice, who turns back and appears over the edge of the cliff, clad head to toe in the most lurid orange and reflective-striped outfit Charlie’s ever seen. The man looks like a human traffic cone. Well… maybe an upside-down traffic cone, given the breadth of those shoulders… what. Charlie, he reminds himself. This is no time for perving.
Except that, as the man finalises his preparations and begins to walk backwards down the cliff-face – getting closer and coming into sharper focus – it gets worse.
The contrasting black rock-climbing harness sits snugly around the guy’s waist and thighs, outlining what appears to be a spectacular arse; the kind of arse Charlie has been known to bookmark for late-night perusal. It’s never occurred to Charlie before now, but the design of a rock-climbing harness is really a kind of manly, action, tactical-nylon version of a suspender belt, and the bright orange fabric is straining as tight as any pair of stockings right now.
Then, as the man gets lower and lower, Charlie can see that the sleeves of the neon shirt are copping a similar beating from the man’s tensed biceps, as the arms they’re attached to feed the rope carefully through his rappelling gadget. Charlie catches himself being vaguely surprised the cloth hasn’t ripped, Bruce-Banner-style. The sexy little shoulder badge and epaulettes are hanging on for grim death.
I’m going to die, thinks Charlie.
“Nahhh, mate, we’ll have you out of here in no time, patch you up, bit of gaffer tape, you’ll be right as rain!” says the man, now almost on the ground, just a few feet away, on the other side of Charlie’s petrified nemesis.
“Oh goddd, I said that out loud, didn’t I?” Charlie briefly hopes the earth might open up and swallow him, until he remembers that’s exactly how he got into this mess.
Luckily, his lurid orange (and luridly hot) rescuer is focussed on landing and unclipping himself from the line, detaching some kind of metal and plastic stretcher that Charlie is only just noticing. To be fair, he had been quite distracted. Maybe they always send the hottest people on the rescues to keep people’s minds off the crisis. Charlie remembered reading somewhere that the human brain is very bad at telling apart a fear-induced raised heart rate from a boner-induced one, and right now, he’s hardly normal-panicking at all. It’s allllll gay panic.
The man is now very carefully making his way around the precarious boulder, the stretcher held in front of him like a shield.
“I’m Nick, by the way,” he says.
“Charlie,” says Charlie, just as the man puts down the stretcher, and Charlie’s gay panic crescendoes like the Ode to Joy: under the orange hard hat is a big, open, crooked smile, on the most beautiful freckled face Charlie’s ever seen.
“Hi,” says Charlie, dazedly, the chorus ringing in his ears.
“Hi,” says gorgeous, beautiful, stunning Nick. He sounds a bit out of breath. Probably from rappelling down a cliff and carrying a big metal stretcher. He’s staring at Charlie, and the other half of his crooked smile unfolds until he’s beaming like a sunray.
“I’m Nick,” the guy says again.
Charlie feels a giggle well up in his chest.
“Yeah, you mentioned that,” he says. Suddenly he feels like if his stupid leg weren’t pinned, he could very possibly just float back up the cliff.
“Oh, god. Sorry. I’m with the State Emergency Service. We’ll be getting you out of here today. We handle search and rescue operations.”
“Well, consider your search complete,” Charlie says.
“Yeah,” breathes the man. “I mean, yep. Yes, absolutely found. Purely rescue from here on in. Alright. So. Yep. Um. Quick inventory of the damage and pain areas?”
“Um, yeah, so, I don’t think I’m, like, injured-injured, but my leg is obviously well stuck under this thing,” Charlie says. “And there’s something properly shoved into my back, on the left-hand side a bit”
“Any pain at all in your head, neck or spine?” Nick asks.
“No, nothing really. I don’t think I hit my head or anything. Just about everything else hurts, but, like, a normal amount now.”
“Can you move your toes on the foot that’s buried?” Nick asks.
“I think so?” Charlie says, wiggling the toes in question. They certainly feel like they’re wiggling, anyway.
“All the other fingers, toes, etcetera, working?” Nick asks.
“All my extremities and appendages, fully functional,” Charlie agrees.
Is that a trace of a blush on Nick’s face? It’s probably the sun. The man busies himself with a two-way radio clipped to his uniform.
“Nick to Bruce,” he says.
“Go ahead Nick,” the radio crackles.
“Bruce, we’re gonna need to move a massive fuck-off rock. She’s wobbly as fuck and it’s pretty tight down here, so I might have to do this one solo. She just needs to be winched up half a foot so we can get a leg out, then you can drop her. Looks like she weighs at least half a Toyota Corolla. I’ll need at least four straps, some slings and the lifting gear. Over.”
“Four straps, slings and lifting gear. Copy that. We’ll set up a second rig over you. Winch truck is on its way up,” crackles the radio. “About twenty minutes out, Bridie’s bringing it from the CFA. Over.”
“Copy that. Nick out,” Nick says, clicking off his radio. “Well, Charlie, we’ve got a bit of a wait. I’ll need to do what’s called a ‘head to toe’ assessment, just to check for any injuries or bleeding. I’ll basically just run my hands over you, I’ll let you know what I’m doing as I go, and you let me know if anything’s painful. Is that all right?”
“Um…” This man’s going to run his hands all over Charlie? “I mean… if you have to, you have to,” he says.
“Okay, so I’m going to start by running my hands through your hair,” Nick says, as he strips off his climbing gloves and replaces them with latex ones. “To check for injuries.”
“Mmmmhrmm,” Charlie says, in a slightly strangled voice.
Nick reaches up and puts his hands into Charlie’s hair, running ten strong, sure fingers from Charlie’s hairline and scalp up and over, feeling gently and tenderly. Charlie’s brain reboots, loads up, and immediately crashes again when Nick starts gently cupping the sides of his neck, his rich amber eyes looking straight into Charlie’s from less than a foot away, his mouth with its soft pink lips hanging slightly open in concentration.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Nick continues, holding up three fingers.
“Eleven,” Charlie says. “Sorry. Sorry. Apparently I deal with crisis by regressing, and am now a year ten again. Three.”
“And now?” Nick snorts, holding up one.
“One,” Charlie says.
“Almost,” Nick smiles. “It was eleven. Follow my finger.”
Nick does a few more inscrutable things, then gently starts squeezing his way along Charlie’s collarbones and arms. He takes his time around Charlie’s scrapes, but eventually seems to deem them acceptable, at which point, he slides two fingers into each of Charlie’s hands.
“Squeeze firmly for me,” he says.
Charlie chokes on absolutely nothing.
Nick, lightning-fast, produces a water bottle and helps Charlie sip from it. It would probably be more effective if Nick dumped it over his head, Charlie thinks. Or his crotch. Oh, god, is he going to check Charlie’s crotch?
“Any pain in your neck? Numbness? Tingling? Anywhere you can’t feel or move, now or when you landed?” Nick asks, Charlie shaking his head in turn to each one. “And you said you had pain in your back?”
“Yeah, but just on the left, really. Nothing really in the middle.”
“Let me just get in and check,” Nick wriggles around behind Charlie. “Yehpp, you’ve got about half a snapped-off tree wedged in back here. Looks like it broke your fall and then some. Sorry, do you mind if I just feel around to make sure you’re not bleeding, or anything?”
“Um… sure, go ahead,” Charlie blushes furiously.
Nick gently does something to the back of Charlie’s T-shirt, and he feels strong fingers running up his spine.
“No pain there at all?”
“Nope, just on the side,” Charlie confirms. He wonders if he should mention the tingles of sparkly heat Nick’s fingers are sending down all his extremities. Probably not.
“Well, you’ve got a nasty scrape – I bet she stings like an absolute bugger – but you’re basically in one piece,” Nick says, one hand carefully feeling around the injury on Charlie’s back. He’s not wrong. It does sting like an absolute bugger. It’s very confusing, given the extremely hot, bothered feeling that he’s getting from knowing this stunningly beautiful man has his hands on Charlie’s skin. At least the melted mess Nick has made of his insides isn’t leaking out.
“We don’t want to move you too much, but maybe I can get you a bit more comfortable. Can you sit up?” Nick asks.
“I haven’t dared try properly, in case I moved too much and knocked the bastard-o-lith here loose,” Charlie says. Nick laughs. It’s even more magical when it’s coming from ten inches from Charlie’s ear: a rich honeyed giggle that’s somehow completely out of place on such a muscular, brick-house of a man, but also exactly right and perfect.
“Well, how about I give you a nice gentle lift?” Nick suggests. He gets up and slides both hands down Charlie’s back, and before Charlie knows what’s happening, Nick’s effortlessly and smoothly lifting his weight off the tree.
Charlie hisses in a weird combination of pain and blissful relief as he’s finally freed from the jagged tree branch. As smooth as silk, Nick, somehow, holds Charlie upright and supported with a single hand, and with the other, slides the stretcher in sideways and backwards behind Charlie. Under normal circumstances, he suspects it would be about as fun as lying on an ironing board, but right now, it’s better than the most cushy upholstered sofa he can imagine.
His relief is swiftly replaced with more Nick-related panic though, as the exam continues, Nick pressing first his sides, then his abdomen, then cupping his hands behind both his hips, which is the precise moment when Charlie resigns himself to the fact that this particular life-threatening crisis situation is going straight to his spank bank, a fact immediately reinforced by the feeling of Nick’s strong hands squeezing their way down his thighs one after the other.
“We’ll have to leave your lower legs for now,” Nick says apologetically. “Don’t want to risk getting to close to this big lummox.”
“Hmmmmfmmmm,” Charlie agrees.
“Coo-eee!” comes a voice from above.
Another orange head pops over the edge, waving a bundle of something.
“Bruce, you bloody idiot, you better have a harness on,” Nick shouts. “If that cliff collapses under you, I’m chucking you a muesli bar and a Cooper’s and leaving you here.”
“Don’t worry, I’m all trussed up like a pork roast, boss!” comes a voice.
Charlie hears the click of Nick’s radio behind him.
“Nick to Bruce the bloody idiot,” Nick says.
“Go ahead for Bruce the absolute legend,” comes the reply, along with a tiny distant thumbs up.
“Next time just radio me, you bloody idiot. Have you got my straps? Over.”
“Chucking them down now. Over.”
“Nick out,” Nick says, in a long-suffering voice. In fact, Bruce lowers the bundle carefully on a rope. Charlie’s glad to see the lack of professionalism appears to be limited to giving each other shit, not actual amateur hour.
“Sorry about that. Are you okay for the moment? I’m gonna get your – what’d you call it? – bastard-o-lith? tied up, then we’ll haul it off you and get that leg out.”
“No problem, yeah, I’m fine here now, absolutely peachy, just missing a nice frosty margarita.” Charlie can’t seem to stop saying stupid shit, but Nick laughs again and pats him on the shoulder.
Charlie watches the straining back pocket of the orange uniform make its way around the rock again, on Nick’s spectacular arse.
Carefully and competently, Nick manoeuvres the straps around the boulder and each other, binding them in arcane ways, and swiftly assembles a giant string bag around the offending menhir, which he clips to a rope Bruce lowers from a big metal rig that they apparently got into place while Charlie was busy being medically felt up.
“I bet you have the best macrame pot plant holders,” Charlie says, trying to stay focussed.
“Hah, well, I’ve never tried macrame,” Nick laughs, blushing again, “but I do do a bit of knitting here and there.”
Charlie feels a warmth spreading across his chest that has nothing to do with the sunshine. Why is it so hot that this ridiculously buff specimen of manhood knits?
“It helps pass the time in school assemblies and things – I’m a primary school teacher when I’m not fishing people out of gorges,” Nick continues, oblivious to the fresh firestorm of gay panic this revelation has unleashed in Charlie’s heart. He’s a primary school teacher? “We’ve got a few minutes to wait until the winch gets here. Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself?”
“Um, well, I’m a mentally ill gay chronic-overthinker from Kent, and apparently I’m now the kind of idiot tourist who falls off a bloody cliff and needs rescuing,” Charlie blurts. “Oh god, and now I’m going to have to overthink everything I just said.”
“Don’t do that!” says Nick, apparently genuinely concerned. “We rescue all kinds of people. Even very experienced hikers and climbers can get into all kinds of pickles.”
“It’s very kind of you to describe this grade-A clusterfuck I’ve gotten myself into as a ‘pickle’,” Charlie snorts.
“Well, we didn’t have to call out the chopper, so grade C at best,” Nick says, smiling.
“I’ve never gotten a C for anything in my life,” Charlie says, offended.
“Must try harder,” Nick says, in a horrifyingly authentic, caring, concerned teacher voice, then bursts out laughing.
Charlie finds himself laughing too, but then they both stop as more pebbles shower out from under the boulder.
“So what about you?” Charlie says hastily. “I know you’re a teacher. What else?”
“Um, nothing much else to tell, really? I live in Ararat, teach at Ararat 800 Primary, grade five-sixes, I live with my dog Nellie, grew up in Melbourne, started volunteering with the SES a couple of years ago after I moved here for work.”
“Do you have to fish a lot of moronic tourists out of crevasses?” Charlie asks.
“Every now and then,” Nick says. “Lots more in the season after a bushfire. But mostly we just chainsaw up fallen trees after storms, find lost or injured hikers, we’ve even rescued a couple of cats stuck up trees.”
“Big sticks, chasing cats, retrieving lost things? So you’re a semi-professional golden retriever?” Charlie smiles.
Nick laughs. “That’s what Tara calls me! The golden retriever! I guess the accusations must be true.”
Tara. That must be the girlfriend. Nobody as hot and lovely as this guy could possibly be single.
“Well, I’m beyond grateful for being retrieved myself,” Charlie says, to cover his sudden pang of totally irrational disappointment.
“All part of the service,” Nick grins. “What about you? What do you do when you’re not falling off cliffs?”
“Oh,” Charlie says. “Um. Well, not much at the moment. I’ve got a classics degree, but what the fuck do you do with a classics degree? I thought about staying in academia, but it’s surprisingly cutthroat, so I’m taking a bit of time off and just travelling. I’ve been teaching English in Korea for a few months, just making some money and doing a few little trips to Japan and China, then I came down through Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore. My friends finally got their shit together and came to join me for the first few weeks of the Australian leg of my little gap year.”
“Wow, that’s so cool!” Nick says. “A brainiac! And you must have seen some really cool stuff!”
“Angkor Wat was pretty fucking amazing,” Charlie admits. “Ironic that, after all the warnings everyone loaded me down with about crime and wood alcohol and road accidents in Cambodia, it’s nice, safe, Australia where I nearly get myself killed.”
“Well, I for one am glad you’re in one piece,” Nick says. He seems embarrassed all of a sudden. “Are you reasonably comfortable? Can I adjust the stretcher?
“No, no, I’m fine, the service is unimpeachable,” Charlie jokes.
“Oh. Good.”
There’s a slight awkward silence.
“You know, the technical term for a rock like this in the SES is a ‘BFR’,” Nick says suddenly. “It stands for—”
“—big fucking rock?” Charlie guesses.
Nick laughs delightedly. “Nailed it! We also have BFTs, which are Big Fucking Trees. Got to locate one or the other to secure our rigs to, on every rescue. But the BFRs are traitorous. I’d pick a BFT every time.”
“You mean they don’t just throw a rope around you and tell you to flex?” Charlie’s mouth says, without any input from his brain.
Nick gives a strangled little giggle and blushes. Charlie kicks himself for making this perfectly lovely heterosexual man uncomfortable.
“Maybe I can clean up some of your scratches while we wait?” Nick suggests hastily. “I’ve got the first aid kit. It’s not exactly urgent, but they can always redo it later if they need to.”
“Oh! Um. Sure! Yeah. Why not,” Charlie says. Because apparently you didn’t get enough of letting this smoking hunk of straight boy put his hands all over you earlier, you absolute hot gay mess, Charlie’s internal monologue informs him. He shushes it ruthlessly.
Nick changes his gloves again and unclips a first aid kit from his belt, unzipping it and retrieving a variety of mysterious bottles, tubes and packets.
“Let me start with that elbow,” Nick says, settling in close to Charlie’s side. Charlie can’t quite see what he’s doing from this angle, but he feels the cool wash of something as Nick cleans him up, then the weird relief of having a wound covered. Nick quickly and efficiently processes all the scrapes he can reach, putting dressings on each one by one. Charlie tries not to shiver as Nick carefully cleans and dresses his back with strong, sure fingers.
“Um… is it all right if I touch your face?” Nick says. “You’ve got a nasty scrape all down your forehead and cheekbone.”
“Well, good to know that wasn’t just me being so embarrassed that I blushed so hard it literally made my face hurt,” Charlie says. Why can’t he stop it with the jokes? But Nick laughs again, and Charlie steels himself. “Yeah, go ahead.”
Nick squeezes some saline on a gauze pad and starts to clean Charlie’s face.
It’s shockingly intimate. The feel of the cool, wet gauze on his face, gently wiping his filthy skin and carefully cleaning debris out of his grazes. Nick’s face is so close to his own, staring intently at him, but not at him, the golden honey brown of Nick’s gorgeous eyes flicking up and down as he works. Unless… did Nick just sneak a look at him? The man hastily looks down to retrieve the antiseptic cream.
“They’ll probably redo all this at the hospital,” Nick says. “They’ve got some super-fancy dressings these days.”
“Hospital?” Charlie says, nervously. He’s not the world’s biggest fan of hospitals.
“Yeah, we’ll need to get you checked out. X-ray at the absolute minimum. You did fall off a cliff. Ambos are already on their way from Ararat Hospital, actually.”
“Oh, right,” says Charlie. He tries not to think about it. Luckily Nick is still caressing patching up his face, which helps him not think about it. Who knew gay panic could be such an effective tool in a crisis?
“That should hold you for a bit,” Nick says, taping the last dressing on.
“Which is my best side?” Charlie turns his head one way, then the other. “I know they’re both good.”
Nick laughs. “Definitely the side without my handiwork,” he affirms. “I’m not going to be applying for any stylist jobs anytime soon.”
“Your little injury check earlier definitely put the last nail in the coffin of my curl pattern,” Charlie says.
“I don’t know, your hair looks pretty good to me,” Nick smiles.
“Thanks for that,” Charlie says, looking up at the big, freckled face, just inches from his own. There’s another silence. It definitely feels awkward. Or something.
“So are you—” Nick starts, when his radio crackles to life.
“Bruce for Nick,” the voice comes.
“Go ahead, Bruce,” Nick says.
“Winch is here, Bridie’s just getting her clipped on, over,” Bruce says.
“Copy that, over.” Nick releases the button on his radio. “Alright, Charlie, so here’s the plan: Bruce and the crew will yank this little fella up a foot or so, and you and I will skittle you out from under it and onto the stretcher. I’m going to lift you away from the rock. Best you do as little as possible other than moving your leg out, in case of any fractures. Try and go downhill with all the soil and rocks that are going to come loose, then twist away from the rock. I’m going to move the stretcher now, and we’ll get you straight onto it.”
Nick demonstrates how he wants Charlie to swivel.
“Slide my leg out downhill once the rock’s off, then twist out of the way,” Charlie agrees as Nick repositions the stretcher and produces a lining blanket that Bruce must have lowered with the straps. “And you’ll lift me.”
Moments later, the message comes through to be ready. He can see Bruce’s head over the edge above.
“When I blow this whistle twice, we’re off,” Nick says, getting into position and fishing up a little plastic whistle on a string. “You ready?”
Charlie nods, and Nick blows twice, slightly deafeningly, on his whistle. There’s more yelling from above, and Charlie allows himself to flood with adrenaline again as the rope holding the rock goes taut.
