By the time they were safe enough that Jack could spare a moment of focus from just keeping the plane in the air, Calder's sobs had subsided into a numb silence. Jack glanced back at the other man, worrying a toothpick to splinters between his teeth. Calder stared at his own feet, seeming crushed under the weight of leaving the mountain.

“So what's your plan?” Jack asked, half just to get the man talking. “What now?”

Calder shifted but said nothing. After a moment, he ran a hand over his face and up into his auburn hair. He looked years older.

“Get another plane,” he said. “Keep searching.”

“Do you really think that's the best idea?” Jack asked. “I mean, for your own sake. Don't you think it'd be, I don't know, healthier, to go home and try to move on with your life?”

Calder took a deep breath in through his nose, then turned to look Jack in the eye. His eyes, the tawny golden brown of something wild, seemed to look right through Jack.

“If I went home now,” he said, “I would never sleep again.”

Jack wanted to tell him that everyone in these situations felt that way. That it would pass with time and one day, eventually, he would be all right again. But the look in those eyes made it clear he would never hear it. Jack shook his head and focused his attention back on the flight, but worry nagged at him. Calder had been ready to stay on the mountain, with no supplies and no plan, even with the storm coming in. The way he’d answered “I don’t know” when Jack had asked if he wanted to die echoed in Jack’s ears, making his stomach twist uncomfortably. He’d felt it that first night, seeing Calder standing unmoving in nothing but a sweater on the freezing tarmac, but now he was certain. If he didn’t do something, Calder was going to kill himself.

***

It was late when they reached the base. Too late for Calder to get another plane back to Anchorage. And at any rate, Jack didn't think he was in the shape for it. He'd probably just start begging the pilot to leave him on the mountain. Jack didn't trust all the pilots in Ptarmigan enough that he didn't think at least one of them might do it. So he checked in, gave the others the short of what happened on the mountain, and brought Calder back to his home.

The mostly empty guest cabin they'd stayed in the night before was right on the edge of the tarmac, squat and ugly. Jack's place was further back in the woods where the pines could insulate him from some of the noise of the planes taking off and landing all day and night. It was wood, not the corrugated metal of the other buildings. Good solid pine log construction, made of the trees that had stood where it was built. Jack had built it himself, with help from Otis and some of the other guys, when he'd lost patience with the metal cabins. A few of the other pilots who'd been here for years and planned to be here well into the future had built more permanent residences as well. Jack had helped run electricity for a few of them.

It was a simple one room structure, but it wasn't awful to look at. The planks of the wooden floor creaked as they stepped inside and Jack flipped on the light, a single yellow bulb from the high peak of the bare beamed roof. He dropped his coat over the back of the worn but comfortable old sofa. A native patterned blanket—a gift from Horace in Tahltan and genuine, not one of those tacky gift shop knock offs made in Thailand—was draped across the cushions. A book lay on the seat, one of many from a bookshelf next to it, crowded with books of trivia and assorted volumes on a range of disparate subjects from the obvious, mountain climbing and wilderness survival, to the less so, such as several on beekeeping and American history.

“It's your turn on the couch tonight,” Jack informed Calder. Unresponsive, Calder followed Jack into the little kitchen area, sitting down at the unvarnished wooden table without taking off his coat. The table bridged the gap between the living area, little more than the couch, an armchair, and a coffee table, and the kitchen area, a line of counters against one wall, a sink and a wood burning stove. Jack stirred up the coals in the stove, warming the place up as he began digging up the things for coffee and maybe dinner.

“You don't have a fridge,” Calder observed. He seemed pretty out of it, so Jack took it as a good sign.

“Don't need one,” he replied with a grin. “You're in Northern Alaska.”

He opened the kitchen window above the sink. There was hard packed snow built up against it that didn't melt all summer. His groceries were pressed into the ice. He pulled out the milk and a package of sausage. He warmed up a cast iron skillet on the stove and got the sausage sizzling in it while he made coffee.

“Eat up,” he said as he set the coffee down in front of Calder. Calder reached for the warm beverage automatically, presumably wanting the heat in his hands, but he didn't drink it. Jack set a plate down next to it.

“Venison sausage and homemade bread,” he said. “I get both of them cheap from the towns I deliver to. It's ninety percent of my diet honestly.”

“What's the other ten percent?” Calder asked, staring down at his plate. Jack sat down across from him with his own food.

“Alcohol and canned spaghetti,” Jack replied without missing a beat.

“That's kind of sad.”

“It's good sausage,” Jack said with a shrug.

Jack ate while Calder poked listlessly at his food.

“So,” Jack said, not knowing how else to broach the subject. “Avery. What was he to you, really?”

Calder didn't look up from his sausage.

“I told you, he's my business partner.”

“Nobody asks to be abandoned on a mountain in a storm over their business partner,” Jack said in flat rejection. “Even I don't buy that.”

“Why do you need to know?” Calder said, frowning into his untouched coffee. “Why do you care? It's none of your business.”

“It is if I'm going to keep helping you.”

Calder looked up sharply, surprised.

“You said it yourself,” Jack pointed out, sipping his coffee. “You're going to keep trying. You'll be out on that mountain again by tomorrow I wouldn't be surprised, trying to get yourself killed. I don't trust anyone else to make sure that, when the time comes, you get back on the plane. So wherever you go, I promise I'm going to be there, dragging your ass back home at the end of the day.”

Calder smiled, touched, then looked away as he lifted his coffee at last. He scrunched his nose in distaste at the bitter taste and stood to get the milk.

When he sat back down he took a deep breath.

“He isn't just my partner,” Calder admitted. He hesitated for a moment before continuing. “He was my boyfriend.”

Jack didn't bat an eye. He'd expected as much.

“Was?” he repeated.

“We split up about a year ago,” Calder continued, watching the milk make spirals in his coffee. “It was amicable. We'd been together a couple of years and kind of drifted apart. Then he met Dan and wanted to make a clean break before, you know, moving on.”

He shrugged, sipped his coffee, which was apparently still bitter. He started to get up and Jack waved him down. Jack fetched the sugar from the cabinet and put it on the table between them.

“We stayed on good terms and still talked regularly,” Calder went on as he loaded his coffee with sugar. The tink of his spoon against the sides of his mug was a steady rhythm. “Because of the business and everything. And, I don't know, I guess I just kept expecting things to go back to normal. To snap back into place. I kept thinking of it as a road bump rather than a dead end.”

He sighed deeply, frustration and shame. He leaned over his coffee without tasting it, hand to his brow, shielding his eyes like he wanted to cover his face. Outside, the wind howled low among the trees and the wood stove sputtered.

“Have you ever had someone like that?” he asked, voice small in the quiet cabin. “Someone who's been such a big part of your life for so long that you don't... You can't even tell who you are without them? Like your life was a tent with them at the center and then they moved on and everything falls in, shapeless and foundationless and...”

He trailed off, still slowly, mindlessly stirring his coffee. Jack sat back from the table, partly to combat the urge to reach across it.

“No,” he said. “Never had that. Sounds like a bad idea, building your identity around someone else like that.”

Calder laughed, bitter as his coffee.

“Yeah, probably,” he agreed. “Anyway, I was there when they started planning all this.”

He gestured ambiguously to the air like he was evoking Alaska in its entirety.

“I saw how happy he was with Dan.” His nostrils flared and he leaned back, unconsciously mirroring Jack as they both tried to disengage from how personal this conversation had become. “And it just- it kind of hit me finally that it was over. He was better off. He was fine. I was the only one feeling lost. I said some nasty things at the departure party. I think I, uh, dumped a glass of wine on Dan.”

He winced at the memory, face coloring in retroactive shame. Judging by the befuddled way he wrinkled his nose at the memory Jack could only assume he'd drank a lot of that wine before he'd started throwing it around.

“It was very reality-TV.” Calder's chair creaked as he set his coffee down and wrapped his arms around himself self-consciously. “Tacky shit. I wasn't proud of it. But he didn't hold it against me. Dan or Avery. Avery sent me that stupid photo from the base camp, but I never replied. I was too bitter and embarrassed. And now he's gone and that bullshit might be the last thing I ever said to him. I can't let that happen.”

He leaned forward again, story finished, and looked at Jack like he was waiting for the man's judgment on him.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Jack admitted. He leaned forward again, sliced the end off one of his sausages and ate it. He took his time chewing, thinking things over. Calder kept staring at him, not believing that was it.

“So,” Jack said as he swallowed, “here's an important question. What are you hoping happens if you find him alive? He runs back into your arms because you saved his life, grateful and repenting? Dan's dead now, so no competition.”

“Jesus, no!” Calder said, offended. “Christ, I'm not a monster. It's not about that. He's over me. We didn't work, I know that.”

“What are you after?” Jack asked again.

“I don't know,” Calder admitted, throwing his hands up. “I care about him! I spent years of my life with him. We grew up together, even before we started dating. He was the longest, most serious relationship I've ever had. Even if it's over I can't stop caring about it. I can't leave him to die when there's a chance he might still be alive.”

“But why is it your responsibility?” Jack asked. “Why do you have to be the one to die on a mountain looking for him? Did he or Dan not have families or friends? Why is his ex the one looking for him?”

“Avery wasn't on good terms with his family,” Calder said with a shrug. “Dan's family organized the official search, but when it turned up nothing they just gave up.”

“And you?” Jack pushed. “Why didn't you give up? When the official rescue team said they were gone, when their own families said it was over, why are you still here?”

“Because it isn't over!” Calder shouted, exasperated, shoving himself back from the table with an ugly screech of wood on wood. He groaned, putting his hands over his face. “It won't be over till I see him again. Till I tell him... I don't know. It's just not over.”

“And if he isn't alive?” Jack asked more gently. Calder's mouth tightened, turning down hard at the edges, his eyes squeezed tightly shut as he fought off whatever rush of emotion the thought of that made him feel. At last it abated and, relaxing all at once, he sank exhausted back into his chair.

“I don't know,” he admitted. “I don't know.”

“Sooner or later,” Jack told him, “you're going to have to draw a line. ‘When it's been this long, when I've searched this far, this is where I stop. This is where I admit it's over.’ It'll be a lot easier for you if you draw that line now.”

“You keep saying shit like that,” Calder whispered, his elbows on the table and his hands in his hair. “Why do you keep acting like it's already inevitable? Can't you give me a little bit of hope?”

“Because I've been here a hundred times,” Jack answered with a weary sigh. “I got a reputation for being the best at rescue flights for a reason.”

Calder looked up as Jack leaned back in his chair, eyes on the dark front window, lost in some unpleasant memory.

“Now I didn't usually do the talking to the families part,” he said, waving a hand like it was a troublesome fly at his ear. “Left that up to the professionals. But I heard the speeches enough. I saw it over and over, the minute someone realizes they have to start getting used to the idea that whoever they're waiting on isn't coming back.”

Calder looked down, avoiding the pointed stare Jack directed at him.

“And the sooner they started accepting that,” Jack continued, “the easier it was for them after. The ones who put it off only made it worse on themselves. They'd drag out the trauma of a search for months, upending their lives and the lives of the people around them, drive themselves into debt, exhaust themselves body and soul on a lost cause, and then eventually we'd turn up a body or they'd run out of money and it would be over. Some of them, by then they'd made the search their whole lives. Quit their jobs, dedicated themselves to it full time. Seeing it end destroyed them.”

“Can you blame them?” Calder asked. “How can you just give up on someone you cared about? What if they were still out there and you made the decision to give up right before they were found? How could you live with yourself if you didn't do everything in your power to save them?”

“By realizing that this isn't an action movie,” Jack said, setting his coffee cup down a little too hard. “In a real life rescue situation, your decisions don't mean squat. People die. Every God damn day people are dying. One day it'll be you, and unless you were murdered, chances are good it wasn't anyone's fault. It wasn't anyone's decision. It's just life. It's not even a risk we're taking. It's the basic, inevitable equation of things. We live, we do our best to be happy while we're here, and one day, probably sooner than we'd like, we die. The deaths of other people aren't your responsibility. You don't have any power there. I don't either. Even when I was doing my damn best to save them, at the end of the day I had to come home and accept that the outcome wasn't my fault, one way or the other. I did the best I was able and the rest was up to chance and the whim of nature.”

Calder stared down into his hands, the lines around his eyes tense with unhappiness at this conclusion. He couldn't accept it. Jack could see it in the white knuckled grip of his fingers around his coffee cup. Jack gave in to the impulse he'd been fighting all night and reached across the table. He put his hand over Calder's, warm and calloused and reassuring.

“Whether you find him dead or alive,” Jack said, staring at Calder with frank, serious blue eyes, “it wasn't your fault. You hear me? It's not your fault. It was never your responsibility. You never had any control over what happened. What you've done is already above and beyond what anyone could have expected of you.”

Calder looked up at him, and Jack could see he was still fighting it, but finally he closed his eyes and released a held breath.

“Thank you,” he said.

Jack slowly withdrew his hand and leaned back into his seat. Silence ticked between them with the sound of wood crackling in the stove.

“You still want to keep looking, don't you?” Jack asked. Calder nodded.

“It's not that easy to just give up,” Calder said. “Even if it would be smarter.”

Jack nodded in understanding.

“Then I'll take you out as many times as you need to,” he said. “And I'll keep telling you the truth until you believe it.”

“I appreciate that,” Calder said.

Jack stood up, taking his plate to the sink.

“Finish your dinner,” he said. “You're going to need your strength tomorrow.”

He cleaned up while Calder ate in businesslike silence and fetched an extra pillow and another blanket to throw on to the couch for him.

Finally, without ceremony, he climbed up the ladder to the loft. Like the other cabins, the bed was above the single room. Jack changed and climbed into bed, turning off the lights and closing his eyes. Below him, Calder still sat at the table, illuminated by the glow of the wood stove.

He woke a little while later to the sensation of the mattress shifting. He blinked awake and turned just enough to see Calder’s silhouette, kneeling on the bed next to him. It was too dark to make out his features.

“Hey.” The other man’s voice was rough with some emotion Jack couldn’t identify. “You know how earlier, we were talking about Johansson and how he's not gay but... Do you do that kind of thing too?”

Jack swallowed hard, his heart jumping into his throat. He took a deep breath, making several quick calculations, all of which told him quite plainly that saying yes was a bad idea. But it had been a long time and Calder was beautiful. Jack could still feel the warmth of his skin from where he’d touched his hand earlier. He couldn’t forget the way the light looked on his hair or the wild golden color of his eyes. This was a mistake, but he was making it anyway.

“Not usually,” he said, voice gruff with sleep. “But I don't mind.”

Calder slid in beside him, the only sound the slide of the sheets on his skin. Jack was sleeping shirtless and he shivered as he felt the cold skin of Calder's chest against his back. The other man's arm slid around his waist, palm against his stomach. He could still back out of this.

Jack rolled over to face Calder. Part of him wanted to do anything but look Calder in the face. The rest of him couldn't resist. Those tawny eyes were full of a desperate loneliness Jack found all too familiar.

“I don't want to take advantage of you,” he said, a hand at Calder's cheek, tracing a line to his ear.

“Don't be stupid,” Calder said with a small, miserable smile. “I'm the one taking advantage of you.”

Jack frowned and Calder shifted closer to kiss him, soft and tentative, testing the waters. When they parted, Calder kept his eyes closed, their lips close.

“I just don't want to be alone right now,” he said, then smiled crookedly. “Plus that couch is really uncomfortable.”

Jack slid a hand down to Calder's waist and pulled him closer, hearing his breath catch. He kissed the other man, harder this time, sliding a thigh between his knees. He couldn’t back out now, too far gone.

Jack kept his eyes averted as he rolled on top of the other man, as though if he could avoid eye contact this would be less of what it was. He tugged Calder's underwear down beneath his balls, his half hard cock supine against his stomach. Jack tried to avoid looking there as well, not wanting to acknowledge the way his body reacted to the sight. This was just a function of loneliness. Men taking advantage because there was no other recourse for their energy. His fingers running through the red curls of Calder's hair to grasp the silken shaft meant nothing, and carried no feeling. Or so he would convince himself before the morning.

He felt Calder growing in his hand, heard the panting labor of his breath and the creak of the mattress as he shifted his hips up into Jack's touch. Jack felt his own desire growing at just the sounds, the warmth and scent of Calder's body, and the painfully long distance between tonight and the last time he'd been this close to someone else. He fumbled in the darkness for the lube he kept on the bedside table, nearly knocking it off in his haste. He worked his own boxers down and froze with a shudder as he felt Calder's fingers on him for the first time, slim and cool, exploring the shape of him. Jack wondered how long it had been since Calder had been with anyone but Avery. Was Jack the first man he'd 'taken advantage of' since the breakup? Or was this just the next in a line of rebound hook ups? Jack wasn't sure which option he preferred.

He warmed the bottle of lube in his hand, almost forgotten as Calder stroked him, the slow shift of his fingers sending electric pulses of heat through Jack's body. After so long alone, it didn't take much for Jack to realize he was close to his limit. He caught Calder's hand to stop the other man and simply held him there for a moment, regaining his self-control before he opened the bottle of lube, pouring it out across their twined fingers.

When his cock first slid against the slick, hot surface of Calder's, he groaned, low and hoarse, the only sound in the dark cabin besides the creaking of the bed and their breathing. They both held their tongues as though they were doing something clandestine, as though they might be caught at any time. Jack knew why he carried that shame, but he couldn't imagine what guilt burdened Calder. Perhaps, despite what he'd said, he still felt he was being unfaithful to Avery.

Regardless, they said nothing to comfort or encourage one another as they groped for one another's hands in the darkness, making a hot channel into which they thrust recklessly. They fell in and out of time with one another, never quite on the same page, but the pleasure was the same regardless, rushed and intense. Calder wrapped his legs around Jack's hips, thighs squeezing tightly. Jack bowed his head to lean against Calder's shoulder, breathing hot against his throat as he shook with anticipation. They barreled toward a quick and sloppy finish.

He felt Calder's hand on the back of his neck, holding on as he reached his limit. He gasped Avery's name as he came, spilling hot on Jack's fingers, and Jack felt it like a sour stone in his throat. He finished a second and a few rapid, rough strokes later, adding to the mess between them, but there was no satisfaction in it.

They stayed where they were for a moment, catching their breath. Calder, still trembling in the aftershocks, seemed fragile and vulnerable beneath Jack. The urge to protect him warred with the urge to never look at him again.

Calder turned his head and tried to kiss Jack again, and Jack turned sharply away, then tried to hide the rejection by acting like he'd just been reaching for the tissues on the bedside table. Calder didn't try again. Jack cleaned them both up with quick, silent efficiency. When the mess was dealt with he lay down again and closed his eyes without a word. He could feel Calder behind him, still poised like he needed to say something, do something more. But after a moment, the tension vanished. He rolled over onto his side, facing away from Jack, and Jack could soon hear his breathing even out into sleep. It took a while longer for Jack to join him in slumber, his thoughts a sucking vortex of shame that dragged him down deep into an endless abyss of self-loathing.