Work Text:
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“No, but… fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“This is why I moved to London.”
“I don’t think it is.”
“How are you so fucking calm?”
Tosh doesn’t look up from where she’s leaning over the back of the seats, rummaging around in the boot of the car. “Oh because panicking is really helping.”
“I’m not panicking.”
Tosh can hear the irritation in Ruth’s voice, and she grins to herself, and then her hand lands on what she’s looking for. “Got it!” She drags the emergency bag out from under some muddy wellies and considers that it might be time to clean out her car soon.
Ruth eyes the scruffy duffle bag from her place in the front passenger seat. “So that’s it, is it, we just give up, settle in, weather the storm out here in the middle of fucking nowhere?”
“Pretty much.” Tosh starts to fish things out and lay them on the seat next to her, making sure she has everything they’re likely to need. She does check the bag every now and then, but not as often as she should, and she has to admit it’s been a while. Cereal bars, water, blankets… ah, good, the big torch. She flips the switch, and nothing happens. Shit.
She shakes it a few times. Still nothing. “Ohhh kayyy.” She lets out a long sigh and turns to Ruth. “No torch, but we’re all set other than that. Hopefully by morning things will have calmed down and we’ll have better visibility to walk to the emergency phone.”
Ruth is making a face. Tosh knows that face. She’s normally pleased to see it, but in this circumstance she’s not so sure.
“What if I gave us a wee push, and you try the engine again at the same time.”
It’s not a question. Tosh knows it’s not. She still tries, because someone around here has to have some sense. “Ruth, it’s freezing, and it’s pitch dark, and we’ve tried to start the car so many times now. You’ll just get wet and then you’ll be freezing. The car is dead. There is nothing we can do unless you’re secretly a mechanic.”
Ruth gets out of the car. Tosh sighs and scrambles back through to the driver’s seat.
Of course it doesn’t work. Ruth pushes with all her considerable might, and Tosh turns the key and listens to the engine splutter and cough sadly for the umpteenth time, and Ruth yells her some useless instructions that get whipped away in the strengthening wind, and eventually even Ruth has to admit defeat.
When Ruth opens the door to climb back in, in a spray of icy rain, the gale does its level best to rip the door wholly off its hinges, and she has to wrestle with it to close it again.
Ruth’s hair drips quietly onto her clothes and the car’s interior. She tries her phone again, and there’s still just as much absence of any kind of signal as there was the last five times. Tosh doesn’t say I told you so, but she thinks it as loudly as she can.
The long, annoyed silence that follows is punctuated mostly by the howling of the wind, and Ruth’s grumpy huffing and shuffling. Tosh stares out into the darkness beyond the windscreen, pitch black anywhere further than the light from the car, and that light is really only picking up that the rain has turned into sleet. She wonders if there might be snow by morning, though hopefully the wet ground will keep it from settling too much.
“We should have taken my car,” Ruth says, after a bit. “We’d be home by now.”
“Maybe,” Tosh agrees mildly, refusing to rise to the bait.
“We’ll use it next time. I’ll drive.” Ruth purses her lips and glares, at Tosh or at the universe.
Tosh loses the ability to resist. “You won’t, you love being a passenger princess.”
There’s a moment where she thinks she’s gone too far, where she’s met with icy silence instead of whatever barb she expected to be thrown back at her.
Then Ruth starts laughing. “All right, very good.” She looks at Tosh from under lowered lashes in a way Tosh doesn’t like to consider that she would read as flirting from anyone else, and gestures at herself. “Definitely a princess, me. Can you not see the sparkly tiara?”
Tosh’s grin fades when she realises Ruth is shivering. “Shit, you must be frozen.”
“I’m all right.”
“Mmm, seems like it.”
There’s no remaining trace of coyness in Ruth’s answering glare.
Tosh does, after a moment's vehement persuasion, convince Ruth to get into the back of the car with her. Outside the car is just as awful as it was, if not more so, and they both make the transition at a frantic dash, throwing themselves into the backseat at such speed that they collide in the middle of it, tugging the doors shut after themselves.
Tosh immediately starts pulling the blankets back out of the emergency bag. They smell a little musty but they’re clean and warm and they’ll do. She drapes one around Ruth’s shoulders without asking first but notes that Ruth doesn’t complain, so she takes the opportunity to hand Ruth a cereal bar for good measure, and wishes she’d had the good sense to accept a thermos of tea for the road when Billy had offered her one earlier.
After a bit, Tosh realises that Ruth is still shivering, and she reaches out, almost without thinking, and takes the fabric of her sleeve between her fingers. It’s still wet, right through the layers under her coat and all, and it’s cold enough in here that it’s not drying any time soon.
“Ruth…” she begins.
“I know.” Ruth looks deeply resigned.
“You’re going to have to take these off.”
Ruth raises an eyebrow. “Aye, you buying me dinner first?”
Tosh feels like she walked into that one face first. She knows it’s a joke, she knows. It’s a very Ruth way to deal with the inherent awkwardness of the situation, and she could have predicted it. Would probably have made the exact same joke herself if things were reversed. And she still can’t help the heat that rises in her cheeks, and she knows she’s gone pink, and she hopes to god it’s too dark in here for Ruth to have noticed.
She suspects Ruth has noticed.
“I’ll have to owe you,” is what she manages to say, after a moment, and it doesn’t come out as jovial as she’d like, but it’ll have to do. There’s a silence between them that’s just a hair more awkward than it should be. They spend a lot of time together; a lot of long car journeys, a lot of late nights at work, they’re used to silences - Tosh finds silences with Ruth deeply comfortable in a way she rarely ever has with anyone. Not this silence, this silence has tiny little needly claws that prickle at the back of Tosh’s neck.
“Look, hypothermia’s no joke,” Tosh begins again, with a carefully neutral tone that she knows Ruth will also pick up on, because Ruth is so sodding perceptive, damn her.
Luckily, Ruth is, in this one instance, kind. Or maybe she can’t bear the weirdness any more either. “I know,” she says. “I know. It makes sense.”
And she shrugs off her coat and starts to wriggle out of her jeans, and it’s awkward in the small space, and Tosh has no idea where to put her eyes - she looks away because it seems polite, but she’s also really aware that she wouldn’t have bothered if it was one of her other friends, because, oh, something about all-girls-together or whatever.
“Got to say, I don’t feel much warmer.”
Tosh looks back, and Ruth is mostly safely hidden by the blanket again now, but has clearly divested herself of all her layers under it, right down to her bra. “Even that was wet through,” Ruth adds ruefully, gesturing at her t-shirt, now draped over the back of the seat in front of her.
“Hold on!” Tosh remembers something, suddenly, and scrambles up onto her knees to lean over into the boot again and rummage some more among the various bits of useless detritus back there, until she pops back up, triumphant, holding a crumpled sweatshirt.
Ruth eyes it, and Tosh, doubtfully.
“Look, I know it’s not pretty, but it’s clean, and it’s dry, and it’s a damn sight warmer than what you’re wearing right now.”
Ruth gives in, and Tosh even gets a “thanks” which feels a bit like a miracle given the general circumstances.
By the time Ruth is wearing Tosh’s sweatshirt over her underwear, she’s also ended up sitting a bit nearer to Tosh, and the blanket has spread onto Tosh’s lap too. Tosh tries to give it back, but Ruth stops her. “Warmer this way,” she says, and Tosh realises how cold she must really be.
Without allowing a single thought to cross her brain, Tosh shuffles over to Ruth until their hips are touching, and puts an arm around her shoulders. Not one single thought, else she wouldn’t have done it. Definitely not, just like she’s definitely not overthinking it now that it’s done and too late to take it back, or considering how she wishes she could just do this like a friend would and not be hyper aware of every single tiny point of contact between them.
She doesn’t wish that though, actually, not really in the secret centre of her. She can’t imagine being the kind of person who wouldn’t be hyper aware of Ruth. Who wouldn’t have thought, in fleeting moments at work after Ruth says something brilliant, or at the pub when Ruth’s grin was particularly infectious, or at some length while alone in bed during the odd long, overly bright Shetland summer night, who wouldn’t have thought about what it would be like to kiss Ruth. Someone who wouldn’t ever consider what Ruth might feel like, sound like, taste like. Tosh would have to be someone else entirely.
Ruth leans back against her. Sort of, relaxes, into Tosh’s embrace, with a long sigh, like she’s comfortable there.
Tosh is so surprised she almost freezes up. But it is comfortable, is the thing. If she could just fucking get over herself, it’s… nice. Having Ruth’s weight against her side, her chest, Ruth’s shoulders under her arm like they were made to fit there, close enough that Ruth’s damp hair is tickling Tosh’s cheek. It’s so, so nice.
All the tension seeps out of Tosh’s body. She finds her other arm has wrapped itself gently around Ruth without her sayso, and that it’s fine, actually. This is where Ruth is meant to be. Ruth seems to think so too.
Her head tilts back and rests on Tosh’s shoulder, and Tosh suddenly finds herself with the whole new problem of resisting burying her face in Ruth’s hair. It smells lovely - a bit like rain but mostly like some kind of vanilla-y, sandalwood-y shampoo, or maybe perfume. A scent she has subconsciously come to associate with Ruth, and thus, she realises now, with a lovely kind of familiar comfort. Safety, perhaps.
Shit, that’s probably not great, is it?
They’re both quiet, and the silence is comfortable too this time. Tosh finds herself not thinking about much at all, just the awareness of Ruth’s steady breathing. Ruth’s body finally beginning to lose its chill in the warmth generated by the both of them together under the blanket.
Tosh’s body warms too, a gentle haze that she’s grateful for, but also, a faint, glowing heat deep in her belly that becomes increasingly hard to pretend isn’t happening. This is comfortable, it’s true, and she’s enjoying that, but it’s also so good to have Ruth in her arms. She wants to stay like this forever, but she also wants more, wants to do a thousand other things, none of which would be sensible. She wants to start by pressing a kiss to the top of Ruth’s head. She wants to move her hands, where they’re resting gently against her own sweatshirt now, over Ruth’s stomach, and slide them under and up to find Ruth’s bare skin, to warm that with her touch, to find her breasts and cup them and feel their soft weight in her hands, and hear what sounds Ruth will make in response.
Of course, the real sound would probably just be, “What the fuck, Tosh?” and that would be the end of everything.
Tosh should try to calm herself, really, but sitting here, with all those pretty wisps of thoughts dancing in her head, she can’t see the harm. She’s not acting on them, and Ruth never has to know. There are worse ways to pass the time on this long, cold night, trapped in the back seat of the car with the woman she’s been in love with for months.
That’s the first time she’s thought of it that way, even in the privacy of her own head. She’s called it a crush, an infatuation. She’s thought about it a lot, and not enough. But now that the words have escaped and are rolling around in her mind, she sees the truth in them. She’s a little in love with Ruth Calder.
The rain outside is louder now, maybe sleet, maybe hail, maybe some mix of the lot, and it drums on the roof of the car and makes it feel even more like in here is a little world of its own, bubbled away from the rest of reality. Tosh thinks maybe that’s often how she feels in the car with Ruth. She thinks maybe Ruth even feels the same. Something about the things Ruth will talk about, will share with her, in the car, that she doesn’t seem to say out loud anywhere else. This is their space, where only the two of them exist, a tiny separate dimension of their own that they’ve created together.
She wonders sometimes if Ruth talks to anyone else at all about some of the things she shares with Tosh. If she ever has. It seems like a big bit of presumption, to think that maybe Ruth trusts Tosh with more of herself than she does anyone else. But it also feels like it might well be true.
She thinks that if she was ever going to kiss Ruth, like, actually kiss her and not just think about it, it would be in the car.
And she doesn’t kiss Ruth, not right then, not in that moment, but she does think about it. About how she’d put her finger under Ruth’s chin and gently tip her face up until their mouths were aligned. About how soft Ruth’s mouth would be, and how warm. About being lost in the scent of her, in the taste. About how she wants to so much that she can feel it pulsing in the tips of her fingers and the centre of her chest.
A tiny jolt of cold nudges against Tosh’s hand, and then she realises it’s Ruth’s hand, the edge of it brushing against her fingers, and it’s really quite icy.
“Oh!” she says, without thinking, and lifts her arm from around Ruth’s shoulders to take both of Ruth’s hands between both of her own and press them together, feeling her own warmth seep into Ruth’s chilly skin.
There’s another long moment of silence, of stillness but for both of their breathing, and Tosh gently squeezing warmth into Ruth’s fingers.
When Ruth speaks, it’s almost a shock. “This is nice,” she says, in the silly accent Tosh has heard her use before, and Tosh can hear Ruth’s smile in it. It’s a voice Tosh has come to associate with compliments from Ruth, or anything that feels a little too sincere for her to be fully comfortable saying it.
Tosh grins, and perhaps she tightens her grip on Ruth’s hands, just a little bit, overcome by a deep feeling of fondness. Perhaps she pulls Ruth just that tiny, tiny bit closer into herself, or shuffles herself closer to Ruth. Perhaps she telegraphs something, in this moment of peace and silliness, that she never really meant to.
And Ruth turns to look at her, and her face is close enough that Tosh can feel her breath on her cheek. Close enough that Tosh’s heart feels like it’s beating in her throat, close enough that all she’s aware of is Ruth, filling up all her senses, all her emotions.
“Hi,” Tosh murmurs, inanely, and maybe she should feel embarrassed when Ruth raises an eyebrow in return, but she’s too caught up in whatever this is. Whatever has turned the space in between them into a thick, taut kind of energy that’s holding Tosh absolutely motionless, utterly enthralled.
It lasts only a moment, though it might as well have been years, and at the end of that moment, Ruth closes the space, snapping the tension in one quick, purposeful movement, and presses her lips to Tosh’s own.
There’s nothing tentative about their first kiss. Nothing wary, none of the gentle awkwardness that Tosh might have guessed in advance. Tosh opens her mouth to Ruth, and they move seamlessly from that first touch of lips to something deep and wildly, unimaginably wonderful.
Outside the car, the snow is beginning to settle in earnest, blown by a howling wind into little drifts against the tyres and the windscreen. It’s cold and desolate out there, and they’re definitely going nowhere tonight, and no one is coming for them in this, not until morning, and inside the car, Tosh no longer gives even the tiniest damn about it, and she suspects Ruth doesn’t either.
She kisses Ruth like they’re the only two people on the face of the earth, and out here in the dark, they might as well be. She wants to be close, wants Ruth’s body as near to hers as it can be, wants to wrap this illusion of their own tiny bubble in space and time even tighter around the two of them - this little circle of light in the Shetland night, the car, the blanket over them both, and then their bodies, pressed tight together, and somehow Tosh finds herself sitting astride Ruth’s lap, still kissing her like there’s no tomorrow.
Ruth’s lips are as soft and her mouth is as warm and delicious as Tosh might ever have imagined. There’s still a chill to her, that Tosh can feel even though the sweatshirt and her own layers of clothing. Ruth’s fingers too, are cool, when she finally breaks the kiss, and reaches up to brush a strand of hair back from Tosh’s face. Cool but not nearly so icy cold as they were before. Tosh shivers at her touch all the same.
“Can you imagine,” she finds herself saying, “if they did come and find us now? Billy knocking on that door, all polite, to offer us tea and a biscuit and a ride home?” She giggles a bit, her breath uneven. “He’d not know where to look ever again!”
Ruth is breathing just as heavily as Tosh is herself, and huffs out a laugh. “I’d rather not think about Billy just now, if it’s all the same to you.”
Tosh looks down at Ruth, at her beautiful, wide open smile, and revels the bright sound of her laughter. “Mmm, all right. What do you want to think about?”
“You.” Ruth’s expression is suddenly dead serious, her eyes so piercing that Tosh almost isn’t sure what to make of it.
And then Ruth reaches up and pulls Tosh down towards her again, and Tosh sinks into the bliss of Ruth’s mouth without another thought. This, too, is familiar, somehow. They kiss like they know all the hidden intricacies of each other’s lips already. Like they do it every day. Like it’s what they were meant to be doing all along, perhaps, from the very first moment they laid eyes on each other, though they’ve only now realised it.
And where Tosh is pressed against Ruth, her body sings, and it’s a familiar song too, one of want and longing and pleasure and need, one that it’s sung again and again, from those first days that Ruth barrelled into her station and her life, when they fitted together so fast and so effortlessly almost despite themselves. There’s a building heat in Tosh that feels like all the built up tension that she’s been squashing down all this time, every bit of it roaring through her veins, finally, finally being allowed to break free, and god, it's almost more than she knows what to do with.
She rolls her hips, the growing, delicious ache between her thighs seeking purchase against Ruth with very little input from her conscious thoughts, and Ruth makes a low, pleased sound into her mouth, sliding her hands down low on Tosh’s back and tugging her in impossibly closer still, and Tosh can’t help the moan that escapes her in response.
She comes up for air, just for a moment, and looks down at Ruth, dishevelled beneath her, her lips swollen and slightly parted and her eyes glazed and gleaming. “You any warmer yet?” Tosh asks her with a grin, and it comes out with more of a catch in it than she’d intended.
Ruth smiles back up at her, her eyes crinkling at the corners, and Tosh doesn’t know what to do with how beautiful she is, with how much she wants her. She doesn’t know what this is going to mean for the two of them, doesn’t know what tomorrow’s going to look like, but she’s far too far gone to care overly much. They can figure all that part out some other time, surely.
“Why don’t you tell me?” Ruth says, and takes one of Tosh’s hands in hers, pulling it down between their bodies. She guides Tosh’s hand against her lower stomach, under the sweatshirt, with her own hand on top of it, and slides them on and downwards together, under the waistband of her knickers.
Tosh’s brain shorts out entirely. She stares down at Ruth, unable to tear her eyes from her face, and Ruth looks straight back at her, pinning her there in the intensity of her gaze, as she moves Tosh’s fingers exactly where she wants them.
Ruth is so very wet under Tosh’s fingertips. There’s soft hair, and slick, soaking heat, and Ruth presses Tosh’s hand down into it and shudders, and Tosh can feel her shifting under her thighs, can feel her seeking movement but she’s not quite able to find it with Tosh there in her lap, holding her down. Tosh knows exactly what she wants, but she holds her hand still there for a moment longer, resisting Ruth’s grip on it, revelling in a little thrill of control.
“What…” Ruth starts to say, broken up by a gasp as Tosh flutters her fingers, just the tiniest bit. “What do you think? What are your… oh, fuck… what are your findings, DI McIntosh?”
Tosh wriggles her fingers again, with an experimental air, in the tiny space between Ruth’s body and her hand, and Ruth makes a very gratifying noise in response. “Hmm,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “You’re definitely warming up a bit, but I just can’t say for sure.” She moves the tip of her index finger until it lands on what is unmistakably Ruth’s clit, and makes an exploratory swipe over it. “I’m going to have to do some further investigation.”
The sound Ruth makes now is somewhere between a groan and a whine, and she nods, wordless, her breathing ragged. She lifts her own hand away, giving Tosh a bit of room to manoeuvre - not a lot, but enough - Tosh knows what she’s about with this kind of thing.
And Ruth is wonderfully, beautifully responsive. She can’t move much, held where she is by Tosh’s weight, but within the limits of that, she bucks up into Tosh’s touch, and she’s not quiet either - rewarding movements she likes with a stream of increasingly insistent moans and sighs, gasping Tosh’s name in a tone that makes Tosh’s entire body flush in turn, with shivering, nagging, delicious heat.
Just like kissing, just like their friendship, just like working together, the sense of familiarity, of comfort, of the rightness of it all that has been their through-line from the moment they met, follows into this too. They find the rhythm of it together, and it’s easier than it by any rights should be, in the cramped backseat of a car on a horrible winter night.
Tosh feels Ruth tensing against her, the sounds she makes taking on a frantic edge, and she’s so slick under Tosh’s fingers that Tosh almost struggles to keep her place. Almost. Tosh has always loved this exact moment, with anyone she’s ever slept with - this soaring feeling of power and absolute joy that courses through her as she holds her partner at the brink of orgasm, as she tunes in to their body, their reactions, with her entire self. And she knows Ruth. She knows her so very, very well; better, she’s sure, than Ruth ever intended herself to be known. She knows exactly what Ruth needs from her.
When Ruth comes, her eyes closed and her whole body shaking, she clings to Tosh like she’s her only lifeline in the storm.
Tosh has never seen, never felt, anything more beautiful.
And Tosh is moving against Ruth’s thighs almost without meaning to, her hips setting a desperate, stuttering pace of their own as she presses herself down into Ruth, seeking as much friction as she can find against Ruth’s lap and the seam of her jeans.
Breathless in the aftermath of her own orgasm, Ruth takes hold of Tosh’s hips, steadying, supporting, encouraging, and Tosh keeps moving, half leans, half falls forward into Ruth, burying her face in the crook of Ruth’s neck and breathing in perfume and salt-sweat and the warmth of her there.
“That’s it,” Ruth murmurs into Tosh’s ear. “I’ve got you.”
Tosh couldn’t stop it she tried, god, she needs this, and the feeling of Ruth’s hands, holding her, and the sound of Ruth’s voice, so very, very, very close, and it tips her over the edge, with one more desperate thrust of her hips. Everything else fades out and for a glorious moment the world narrows further still and there’s nothing but relief and pleasure, tumbling, dancing, ringing through her body.
She collapses onto Ruth, her face still hidden against Ruth’s skin, a little pocket of safety to recover in. She has a feeling that when she looks up, her world will have to expand again, just a little, just enough that she’ll have to think about what’s just happened between them, and she’s not ready for that yet. She rests there while her breathing evens out, and her heart rate slows, and her muscles purr with the fading aftermath of tension. She thinks about nothing at all, just lets there be nothing but her body, and Ruth, all around her.
Eventually, and too soon, Ruth shifts underneath her. “All right?” she asks, quietly.
Tosh lifts her head a little, though not quite far enough to see Ruth’s face. “Yeah, fine.” She thinks she should probably get off Ruth’s lap, but she can’t quite manage it. “You?”
“Aye, I am. Yeah.” Ruth sounds stilted, awkward. The sound of it jangles against Tosh’s nerves.
There’s a silence that goes on too long, and for all the many, many things they’ve found so easy with each other, Tosh wonders if this one is going to be hard, is going to be something that hurts. She remembers a day not so very long ago when she found out Ruth had lied to her, and she had told Ruth to go home, that she was no longer needed on their investigation. How much it had hurt, because it had been their investigation, it had all been so easy, despite all either of their misgivings, they’d slotted together like they were meant to be. It had been easy until it was hard.
Tosh wonders if this one is going to be impossible.
And then she takes a deep breath, and realises, sod that, she’s not going to let it.
They got through it before, didn’t they? Ok, it was roundabout but they came back to each other then, and afterwards they understood each other all the better for it. And this is Ruth. Ruth, who Tosh can laugh with until her eyes water. Who she can debate and discuss and, all right, argue (even if Ruth doesn’t want to call it that) with, secure in the knowledge that they both get it, get each other, even when they disagree. Ruth who supports and encourages her. Who is difficult and awkward and abrasive sometimes just a complete pain in the arse, and also brilliant and tenacious and fun and caring, and not like anyone else Tosh has ever known.
Ruth who Tosh has grown to love.
Tosh meets Ruth’s eyes, and she realises that she knows what she can see there - a tangled mix of fear and hope and… care? affection? Things that Ruth can’t work out how to voice but isn’t actually trying to hide from her either.
There's really only one choice here. Tosh leans down and kisses Ruth again, very gently, just a brush of lips. “We’re all right,” she says. “You and me, yeah?”
Ruth smiles back at her, with a softness in it that wasn’t there a moment before, and she knows she’s right.
And Tosh, infused with a bone-deep, glowing warmth, can’t help but kiss her again. One kiss turning into another, and another, turning into wandering hands and wandering mouths.
The car really isn’t the most comfortable place they could be doing this - the angles are terrible, and there’s a lot of laughter this time, as Tosh gets wedged against the seat in front, and Ruth smacks her knee on a door handle, but they make it work, and it’s wonderful.
Eventually, they doze, their bodies pressed close together under the blanket, and Tosh knows her back will be sore, and probably a lot of the rest of her, but Ruth is in her arms, and she can’t bring herself to care too much.
When morning comes, the storm has eased and the snow mostly melted. The rising sun is entirely hidden behind a thick bank of cloud, but the sleet has slowed to a thin, cold drizzle, and the wind has dropped to a stiff breeze.
Ruth’s clothes are fairly dry, so she puts most of them back on, though she keeps wearing Tosh’s sweatshirt, under her coat.
Leaving the car feels incredibly strange. The world really is still there, but once they’re out in it, Ruth takes Tosh’s hand. She looks a little embarrassed about it, but Tosh smiles at her and tightens her grip around Ruth’s fingers, and Ruth grins back.
They walk the couple of miles to the phone together, through the rain, and they’re mostly quiet, but the quiet feels just as comfortable as their silences usually do. Neither of them lets go of the other’s hand.
“You’ll be needing this back,” Ruth says, plucking at the sleeve of Tosh’s sweatshirt, after they’ve made the call for rescue.
“Come round to mine with it,” Tosh says, on an impulse. “Tomorrow. I’ll make you dinner?”
Ruth looks at her for a long moment, and for the most fleeting of seconds, despite everything and despite herself, Tosh wonders if she’s got it all wrong after all.
“Ok,” Ruth says. There’s a weight to it, like she’s come to something important in the privacy of her own head while they were walking. “I’d like that.”
Tosh can’t stop smiling, not even when the sleet picks back up and her nose goes red with cold, though Ruth is glaring and stomping and huffing about living on stupid icy rocks again long before Sandy arrives with a flask of Billy’s coveted tea.
There’s a hot shower waiting for her, and Ruth says several unnecessarily grouchy somethings during the car ride back that make Sandy raise his eyebrows and Tosh laugh. Everything has changed and nothing has at all, and all is right with the world.