Nerdy and the Beast

Liam decided to try and climb up the rocks beside the waterfall to see if he could get their bearings again; he wasn’t sure exactly how far the current had carried them. But they were slippery and it was slow going, made worse by Emma pacing below him and muttering to herself about the damn stupid treasure.

“I need to concentrate,” he said irritably. “Can you please just…sit down and let me do this.”

“Are you telling me to be quiet?” Emma asked peevishly.

“Listen, this is harder than it looks and if I fall I’m going to land right on top of you and kill us both.”

“So you’re telling me to be quiet,” she repeated. Liam rolled his eyes, though she couldn’t see it.

“You know, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place if you hadn’t decided to start yelling at me for no reason,” he told her. Emma gasped.

“For no reason? You’ve barely spoken to or looked at me in the last three days!”

“I was doing what you asked me to do.” Liam’s voice rose in frustration. “Christ, Emma, maybe you should try saying what you mean instead of what you think you’re supposed to say.”

“I…you…how dare you!” Her voice squeaked slightly in indignation.

“Yes, dare I,” Liam snapped. “You told me to keep my distance and so I did. Now you’re you’re yelling and throwing dirt at me and we’re stuck here in the middle of a fucking jungle and-shit!” Liam had been so busy arguing that he didn’t notice a loose rock, and he plummeted as it came free. He slammed onto his back on the bank, the wind knocked out of him. Emma gasped again and scurried over to peer down at him.

“Oh my God, are you all right?”

“Just a few broken vertebrae, it’s nothing,” Liam grumbled.

“I’m sorry,” Emma said quietly, looking down at her hands. “This is all my fault.”

Liam sighed, gingerly sitting up. “No, it’s not. Don’t beat yourself up. Kamon’s the one who sent us out here into the wild, as punishment. Come on, we can probably follow the river back into town. It’ll be a long trek though, so we’d best be going.”

He got slowly to his feet, and thankfully it seemed that he hadn’t broken anything. But his back definitely hurt and he was not looking forward to an arduous jungle hike.

“Maybe we should just rest here a while,” Emma said. “You’re hurt.”

“Yes, since I met you I seem to have acquired an unusual amount of bruising. My face, my back, my pride.”

Emma flushed but Liam waved a dismissive hand. “It’s fine. Let’s just go while we have daylight left.”

Liam was right. It was a long trek and a slow one, and Liam’s spine was protesting every step of the way.

“You’re not stupid, you know,” Liam said after a while. “I never tried to imply that you were. And you shouldn’t let the likes of Kamon and Natasha make you think that you are. You have more brains than the two of them combined.”

“I don’t feel very smart,” Emma mumbled.

“Perhaps if you stopped trying so hard to pretend to be a wallflower blending into the scenery, you’d realize that that’s not who you are and you’d actually see yourself.”

“Oh and I suppose you see who I am, is that it?” She wrinkled her nose at him.

“Better than you do,” Liam said with a shrug. She looked affronted, planting her hands on her hips.

“Well then by all means, Mr. Bardot. Enlighten me as to what you see,” she challenged, getting a bit of a steely glint in her eye.

“You want to know what I see? I see a girl who is vexingly stubborn and too afraid of her own judgment to say what she really wants to. And a girl who spends entirely too much time looking down at her own feet.”

Emma’s eyes went wide. “What? You stuck up priggish-“

“I also see a girl who should stop looking down at her feet because she has nothing to be ashamed of,” Liam went on, unperturbed. “She’s intelligent and brave, and exceedingly kind. And she cannot hide her own charm and loveliness even though she keeps trying to, for some reason. And a girl who is surprisingly adept at hurling things at my head.”

Emma had been trying to smack at his chest but went abruptly still. Her eyes were still wide but now they looked slightly damp. Her hands had frozen on his chest. Going against all good judgment, Liam cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently. She tensed in surprise and he drew back, lowering his hands.

“I’ve messed up again, haven’t I?” He sighed. “Okay, let me have it. If you want to throw some more dirt at me can you at least make sure it doesn’t have a rock in it?”

To his amazement, Emma gripped the front of his shirt and pulled him into another kiss. She started to wrap her arms around his waist and he flinched.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she gasped. “I forgot you hurt your back-“

“Who really needs their back anyway?” Liam ignored the twinging in his spine and kissed her again, lifting her slightly off her feet. She was breathless when he finally let go. He could see some faint lights over her shoulder.

“The port,” he said. “I can see the lights now that it’s getting dark.”

“The port,” Emma repeated. “Of course, that’s where we were going. Oh, Natasha and Kamon are going to be mad that we didn’t find anything, aren’t they?”

“You figured out the waterfall thing. And maybe now they’ll listen to you that we’re in the wrong place. I won’t let them give you a hard time. Come on, we still have a ways to go.” After a moment’s hesitation, he took her hand and they walked in the direction of the distant lights.