Chapter 7 | Adam
His whole body ached and once he stopped moving Adam fell asleep fast, huddled up by the fire. Considering the day he had, he was out cold.
Cold was also how he woke up. And kept waking up.
Despite being tired, sleeping heavy wasn’t going to be an issue. Every sound, every rustle, every pop of the fire startled him awake, and his eyes snapped open again.
When they opened, they’d fixate on Wade’s back. Turning over, Adam focused his breath and his mind. Thoughts bombarded him. Just like on the plane, Adam knew not to push them away.
Let them come, acknowledge they were there. From there, determine which of his current set of worries weren’t tainted by emotions and were things that were beyond his control. Then release useless energy back into the universe.
Wade and he had gotten off on the wrong foot on the plane, but once the other man settled and focused, they seemed to work well as a team. Wade had knowledge and skills that would help them stay alive. Adam had a different set of skills to bring to the table. Between the two of them, Adam hoped they’d be able to weather through this until they were rescued.
That particular worry kept cropping up.
For all of Adam’s bright outlook, the negativity of perhaps never being found would find a way in. If he had been alone, the despair would set in quickly. Knowing he had someone with him made the prospect brighter, but not much.
Adam needed that focus now and would draw on it.
When his eyes peeked open again, he saw the first strains of light filtering from beneath the wall of their lean-to. Morning brought a moment of disorientation, which hit him in a wave of vertigo. Was it the next day or had they slept through it for days on end?
He shook off the sluggish sleep-brain and shifted.
He felt something heavy draped over him. Adam looked down.
Wade’s arm. In fact, now that he focused, he felt body warmth to his back.
A feeling of comfort and familiarity settled over him.
It’d been many months since his last hook-up; before he left to study with Sehela, in fact. The memory was rather dim now, colored by the time away. Adam liked that feeling, however fleeting it had been, of snuggling with someone in the early morning. Snuggling, the morning after a night of crazy-wild sex with someone he barely knew.
Having Wade hold him like this was much nicer. They already had a connection. Adam felt it when he first boarded the plane. The way their energies seemed to click into place, even if Wade could be a jerk and had brushed him off.
Adam risked turning over so he could burrow his face against Wade’s throat. The man shifted, moaning and tightening his hold on Adam, drawing him closer still until they were pressed together from chest to knees.
This was a very nice way to drift back to sleep as well.
The next time Adam woke, Wade had started to stir in his sleep. Blinking the sleep back again, Adam took a deep breath.
“Hnnh,” Wade moaned as he rubbed at his eyes. “It’s morning. We’re still on the island, aren’t we?”
Adam slid an arm over Wade’s waist to get more comfortable and snuggle closer. “Yeah.”
Wade stiffened in Adam’s embrace. Looking up into Wade’s face, their mouths were tantalizingly close together.
Wade’s eyes told a different story. “Uh!” Wade pushed Adam off, using that motion as leverage to roll and scoot back. “Whoah. Okay. Um. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry about that.”
With his hand over his heart, Wade struggled to his feet. “I’m really sorry about that.”
That was a bit of an extreme reaction, and Adam sat up slowly, his hand out to hopefully keep Wade calm. “It’s fine, Wade. I guess we both got a little cold last night. It was a good way to conserve body heat.”
“Right. Still. I… am not like that.” Wade’s breath came hard and fast. Almost panicked.
“Like that? What’s that?” Adam smiled, but he didn’t feel as confident as it probably indicated.
“Um. You know. Into guys. At all. It’s just…”
Dawning on Adam what Wade meant, he scooted out of the lean-to. “It’s fine, Wade. I didn’t mean to…” He waved a hand. “I’ll go get some more firewood. You can do whatever it is you need to do to start the fire.”
Adam needed to get away before he blew his cool.
He took his search further from their current camp to find suitable dried timber. Not because it was hard to find but because of the extreme reaction Wade had to waking up wrapped around Adam. It was less as if Wade was a homophobe—although that was a possibility, in which case it was going to be a lot more tense when Wade found about Adam—and more like having been taken off guard and simply reacting impulsively. Probably behaving in the way he'd learned to as one of the jocks at school years earlier.
There was this niggle in the back of Adam’s head that wouldn’t shut up. That for a brief, fleeting moment, he genuinely thought Wade had been comfortable with Adam in his arms. Adam certainly believed he’d been quite comfortable, which was a surprise in its own right. He barely knew the man.
The naturalness of their position had a surprisingly calming effect on him.
So Wade’s over-the-top negative reaction took him aback.
Once he had an armload of wood, Adam took his find back to the camp and placed it on the pile. “I figure if we keep adding to it a little at a time, that will keep it well stocked,” Adam said.
Wade hunched over the fire pit, spinning a stick on a piece of wood. A small waft of smoke drifted up. Once there was a low flame, Wade carefully padded it with the tinder until a small fire erupted, he then started the slow process of feeding it until it was a larger flame. Soon, they had a roaring fire going.
“That should hold for about half an hour,” Wade said, rising to his feet. “We should look for water.”
Adam stood with his hands on his hips to watch Wade. The man wasn’t even looking at him. “All right. How should we do this?”
“How would I know?” Wade said with a large arm wave. He covered his eyes and took a deep breath. “Sorry. I… I don’t know. What do you think?”
What did he think? Adam thought that maybe they needed to talk, eventually, but that could wait. “I think if we move in a general direction together and stay at least within shouting distance, we’ll get more coverage over a wider range.”
“Right. That sounds good.” Still not looking at Adam, Wade looked up among the trees. “If we could find a higher elevation, I’d think we stand a better chance of finding running water. Water moving downhill and all that.”
“Gravity. Makes sense.” Adam searched the treetops as well. “Short of climbing a tree though, I’m not sure how we’ll find anything. So let’s do a low-level search first, see how the land pitches and rolls, or if it stays flat. That’ll give us a lot of information right there.”
“Okay, let’s head east first.” Wade pointed in that direction and started walking.
At least Wade wasn’t apologizing anymore.
The sun had risen much higher in the sky, and by Adam’s estimation, they’d covered a fair amount of distance from the camp. There was no sign of water. They’d have to ration what Adam had in the bottles if they were going to make it last. When they decided to turn around, Wade suggested they shift to the north and make their way back south again. Once they hit the shore, they would only need to head west to get back to camp, and they would still have covered a large search area.
Adam stopped to empty the debris out of his shoe, hand resting on a tree trunk to keep his balance. When he shook his shoe out, he noted a round ball on the ground. A round, hairy, brown ball. “Wade!” he shouted. “Wade, I found something!”
Wade crashed through the vegetation towards Adam’s position, and when he approached, Adam held out the coconut. “Looks like there’s a couple of these. It’s not perfect—”
Taking the coconut from Adam, Wade turned it over in his hand. He used the knife to pry and hack the outer shell off. Holding it to his ear, he shook it, then grinned at Adam. “I think it may be good.”
Score. This was perfect. “Coconuts and Cheezbitz for breakfast. Nutritious.”
“I don’t care,” Wade said with a chuckle. “Anything to keep my stomach from thinking my jaw has been wired shut.”
They gathered as many as they both could carry and headed back to camp with their prizes.
Adam lined them up outside their lean-to. “We’ll have to be careful not to drink too much of the milk. Depending on how sensitive your stomach is, it might rip your stomach up if you drink too much. Diarrhea in the middle of nowhere and no toilet paper?”
Wade laughed. “Not a good idea. Still, it’s better than nothing, and we can ration the water a little closer until we find a water source. But the meat should be good, right?”
Rolling one of the coconuts over, Wade proceeded to hack at it until he could get the coconuts open. Breaking it in half, he managed to salvage most of the milk and split it with Adam.
Adam drank the milk and scooped out the meat. Wade followed suit. Whether it was objectively good or not, Adam was merely relieved to have something with calories. He’d deal with the consequences later if he had any.
They opted to put the rest of the coconuts to the side for dinner later.
Adam drew near the fire. The air temperature wasn’t all that hot at the moment. It was humid. There was rain in the air, and the breeze blew off the ocean. Huddling around the fire was something to do and more of a bonding thing. As they sat there, Wade placed a few more sticks on the fire to keep it going, and they began to plot out their plan of action.
They hoped the search and rescue crews would find them soon. Adam’s gut instinct told him that wouldn’t be the case. His instincts were hardly ever wrong, which was distressing in and of itself.
To take advantage of their situation, Wade suggested they try to find a better shelter-slash-camp further inland to cut down on getting hammered by surf spray during inclement weather. Hopefully, they’d find a water source soon, and that would be settled.
Other plans included scavenging along the shore again for anything that might be useful to turn into a tool or a makeshift piece of equipment to make their lives easier.
“One final thing,” Wade said as he stretched out on his side to face the fire. He rested on one elbow and tapped a small branch against the ground. “We need to build a signal fire. Actually, three, which is the international signal for ‘send help.’”
After Wade’s reaction that morning, Adam was very careful about doing, saying or even looking at Wade in any way other than a comrade-in-arms at this point. A resolve made more difficult when Wade stretched out like that. The man had legs for days. And Adam liked that in a man.
“Okay,” Adam said, keeping his thoughts hidden and his gaze focused on Wade’s shoes. “What is needed for that?”
“A lot of timber, pretty much anything flammable that will catch quick and send smoke up in the air. I think it will be visible about a couple of miles out at sea.” Wade tossed his twig on the fire. “Then we would need to make sure we have a fire burning all the time.”
“So wood gathering is going to take up the bulk of our day,” Adam said. He drew his legs up and rested his chin on his knees.
“As well as food gathering. Which we didn’t do today.”
“Hey, I bought lunch today. You can get it tomorrow.”
Wade laughed softly. “Fine. My treat tomorrow. I thought about trying to get some fish.”
Adam held his hands up in surrender. “I’m not a fisherman. My brothers tried to teach me, and I couldn’t get past the worm.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
Wade stared into the fire. The glow of the flame softened Wade’s expression. It made the man look less severe. Worldly cares dragged at Wade, like a heavyweight. But at least now, he wasn’t in fight-or-flight mode.
“I’m sure we can come up with something. And by we I mean you,” Adam said.
“I’m winging this just like you. You’ve been full of ideas yourself, though.”
“Yeah, but you have a head start with all your Boy Scout experience.”
A fat raindrop plopped on Adam’s shoe. Around them, he could hear as a shower hit the vegetation. “Will the fire be all right?”
“I hope so. I have it sheltered enough it should be.” Wade stirred and grabbed extra wood to put in their shelter. “This will make things a little tight, but if we can keep the wood dry, it’ll help with the fire.”
Adam joined Wade in getting as much as they could before the heavens opened up. He shuffled into the shelter and hugged his knees as the rain came down in a sheet of water.
He had his doubts the fire would last, but at least Wade had the foresight to try to keep the wood dry as possible.
Here was hoping it worked.