“Are you immortal?”

She leaned back against the wall with a hollow chuckle, her head making a dull thud that punctuated how pathetic their situation was. She spared him a sideways glance, taking in how he sprawled out on the filthy, dusty floor. He seemed at home, very nearly comfortable, despite the circumstances. “No,” she murmured, “just bad at dying, apparently.”

He snorted, which only caused him to hitch up quickly on his elbow and cough into his fist. When he lowered his hand, she saw blood on it.

She said nothing.

“Bad at dying.” His voice was raspy and trembling, but he remained propped on his elbow to appraise her, bloodshot eyes blinking slowly. “Hard to believe you’re bad at anything, doll.”

She looked at him and smiled, wiping at her nose and pulling her fingers away to see them covered in the wreckage dust. They sat together, just the two of them, in the half-destroyed room, blessedly free from flames but victim to the falling building instead. “How’s your chest?”

He lay back down and sighed, closing his eyes. “Aching. A better description would be excruciatingly burning, but I’d hate to worry you.”

Deadpan, she muttered, “Right.”

The corner of his lip quirked up, dimpling his cheek. “Never caught your name. Never said thank-you, either.”

“You can say it now.”
“After I get your name.”

Pulling her knees to her chest, she rested her forearms atop them to look at her palms, caked in white and smeared with red. She resisted the urge to wipe them on her shirt, trying to retain a semblance of decency. “Noelle. I’m Noelle.” She tried to ignore how thick the air was becoming, how it suddenly became harder to keep her eyes open.

A long moment stretched before he spoke. “Noelle. Pretty name.” She looked down at him to see that he was watching her again, but the set of his face was solemn. “Thank-you, Noelle, for saving my life.”

She blushed, avoiding his eyes. “I didn’t do much,” she protested, “just pulled you into here…I might have very well condemned you to death anyway, for all you know. Besides, you probably broke your ribs from some of the other debris.”

He frowned at her. “You saved me. I’d much rather be stuck in this hidey-hole than crushed under tons of mortar and steel, thanks.” He began the slow, painful process of sitting up, and when Noelle tried to lean over to help him he scowled at her, cementing her back in her place. She watched him closely when he finally settled in a sitting position, clutching his ribs with a thin sheen of sweat on is forehead, his face twisted in a grimace.

“Should have stayed down,” she said, but he ignored her.

“You know,” he started, grinning at her, “it’s a shame I’ve never seen you around this building before. I would have asked you out in a heartbeat.”

Now it was her turn to ignore him, staring very pointedly down at her scraped knees. She inhaled, coughed a bit, and then rolled words around on her tongue before she spoke them, “You never told me your name.”

“I know.” She heard him shifting around rather than seeing him. “I’ll make you a deal. When we get out of here I’ll tell you my name…and I’ll take you out for dinner.”

She looked at him sharply, nearly glaring, with a quirked eyebrow. “What if I don’t want to go to dinner with you?”

The smile that stretched across his face was lopsided and boyishly charming. She had to press her lips together to resist the infectiousness of it.

He winked at her. “No one’s ever resisted me before.”