“Okay,” Nick says, brushing his hands together, dusting chalk from his skin. “I have it marked off.”

“It's a five by five, right?” Blaine asks, looking at the square area marked off by Nick's vibrant orange, eco-friendly chalk – his own homemade recipe, patent pending.

“Right. I measured it twice.” They hear a distant rumble, the threat of oncoming rain. Nick looks up at the darkening grey sky. “And you better get to it, quick,” he remarks. “If we get smacked by another rainstorm, not only will we have to start over, but we might get washed straight into the basin.” Nick glances up the mountain to his right, follows the slope with his eyes, then gestures with his chin to the ledge behind Blaine, and the nearly three hundred foot drop beyond that leads straight down to the trees below.

“Yeah, well there's a rainstorm here every five minutes,” Blaine says, focusing on his clipboard to avoid looking at the view behind him, an ocean of trees stretching on for miles. It's a spectacular view, truly, but it makes Blaine somewhat queasy.

He's never been a big fan of heights.

“Remember” – Nick picks up his pack from a flat rock outside their target area and opens it, pulling out a case of brand new test tubes – “we have to make up yesterday's lost numbers before we can even start on today's.”

“No pressure,” Blaine smirks, starting on the first of their labels. 8:15 a.m. Lichen specimen sample A, he writes. He glances at the GPS tied to the clip on his board, and jots down the coordinates.

“About that” – Nick lowers his voice – “keep in mind that there are a few animals up here who might not be too thrilled with us invading their territory.” Nick looks up at the trees surrounding them, peering through the dense foliage, getting the vague impression that something nearby is watching them. Their professor used to say that the jungle has a thousand eyes; whether you see them or not is the question.

If they're there, and Nick has no doubt they are, he can't see a single one, and that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. This isn't the first time Nick's been in the jungle. For the past five years, he and Blaine have spent more time in various rain forests around the world than they have in their own apartments.

But this one – there's something about this one that makes Nick believe he'll be glad to put it far behind him.

“There always are.” Blaine huffs. “And yet, here we are, alone,” Blaine grumbles, holding out his clipboard to Nick, exchanging it for a scalpel. “I don't understand why the university couldn't find us more competent guides. I mean, we've got three guys sitting back at camp, each getting a hundred dollars a day to lead and protect us, and they won't come within a mile of this place. What's up with that?”

“Apparently it has to do with some local legend,” Nick says, labeling a test tube while Blaine crouches and carefully collects their first lichen sample.

“God,” Blaine groans, rising back to his feet, “if I have to hear another stupid legend.” He scrapes the sample into the test tube. Nick fills the tube halfway with purified water and caps it. “Such a frickin' waste of time and money, sending us to these remote places where no one's willing to help us. I wish they'd tell us this crap before we agree to trek all the way out here.” Blaine watches Nick switch out test tubes and clean the scalpel, paying little mind to what he's doing, working mostly on autopilot. “I'm sorry this trip screwed up your anniversary plans with Jeff.”

Nick shrugs, not meeting Blaine's eyes. This expedition was extremely last minute. The university got an unexpected surge of funding before the end of the fiscal year, and as senior researchers in their department, Blaine and Nick had to jump at the opportunity or they'd lose out on a perfectly good grant. Jeff was cool about postponing. He understood. But Nick had special plans, ones that included an expensive dinner, imported champagne, and a platinum and diamond engagement ring.

Blaine felt like the lowest of the low when he found out, four days ago at 35,000 feet in the air, when he couldn't do a thing about it. Nick hadn't said anything earlier because he knew that Blaine, slightly more senior than Nick and a true romantic at heart, would have put Nick's relationship over the good of the department. Nick wasn't sure that would be the right thing to do, so he didn't put his friend in the position to decide. But Blaine still vowed to make it up to Nick, no matter what it took.

“It's all good,” Nick lies. “I'm pretty sure he'll still want to marry me when I get back.”

“Of course, he will,” Blaine says with unbridled enthusiasm in his voice at the thought of Nick and Jeff becoming husbands. God, he envied their relationship so much. It was almost like a fairy tale. “He loves you with a passion. He's wanted to marry you since kindergarten. I don't think a few weeks is going to change that. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's going to miss you so much, he'll want to marry you even more.”

“You're probably right,” Nick says, his throat becoming uncomfortably tight. “Well, did you want to hear it?” he asks, changing the subject as swiftly as he switches Blaine's used scalpel for a clean one.

“Hear what?” Blaine asks, moving on to the next lichen.

“The legend?”

“Why not?” Blaine agrees for his friend's sake. “But it'd better be a good one if it's the reason we're risking our lives up here.”

“Meh, it's fair as far as primitive jungle legends go,” Nick says, repeating their hand-shake routine – test tube, specimen, water, cap, scalpel. “Apparently, there's some psychotic, man-eating jaguar in this part of the forest that's been terrorizing hunters and villagers in this area for decades.”

“Is that so?” Blaine mutters, collecting another sample and depositing it in another test tube.

“Yup,” Nick says with a pop on the p, “but that's not the best part.”

“Do tell.”

“Apparently, it prowls the forest as a cat by night, but by day, it sheds its coat and takes the form of a savage, bloodthirsty man, eight feet tall, with ghost-pale skin, and the light of the Monsoon moon in his eyes.”

“Really?” Blaine responds, only half listening at this point as he pulls out his iPhone to photograph the three inches of ground he's covered.

“Supposedly, his eyes are an ice blue,” Nick continues, “and he's been known to drive people insane with a single glance.”

Blaine stands up to take another picture, then looks over at his friend, staring back at him in anticipation, waiting for a reaction.

Blaine shakes his head and laughs. “Have you been drinking your breakfast with the porters?”

“Hey,” Nick says, slugging Blaine on the shoulder, “it's not my dumb legend. I'm just the messenger. And I never touch the stuff. You know that.”

“But I can see it in your eyes,” Blaine teases. “I think you kind of believe it.”

“You hear enough of these stories, and after a while, you have to admit, they all seem so similar,” Nick says. “They all have bits and pieces in common.”

“Yeah,” Blaine agrees, handing over his sample, “they all accompany vast amounts of questionably brewed alcohol.”

“Blaine!” Nick laughs.

Blaine glances up at the sky above them, checking the status of the clouds moving in.

“Agree to disagree,” Blaine says, returning to their patch of flora, knowing time is of the essence.

“Fine,” Nick says, also noticing the speed of the encroaching clouds. They hung so low, pregnant with rain, Nick thought he could touch them, brush them away with a swipe of his hand. “Did you ever think, after all those show choir competitions, all of us dreaming about ending up on Broadway, that you and I would be here, studying lichen and bryophyte density in the middle of the jungle?”

“No.” Blaine bends for another sample. “It's like we're trapped in some strange alternate universe, and someone's writing this out for us, making up the most asinine stuff they can as they go along.”

“Do you regret it?” Nick asks.

“Nah.” Blaine stands and scrapes the sample into a new tube. “I mean, there are days when I wonder how my life would have turned out if things went differently, but I'm good where I am. I enjoy what I do. And I get to spend most of my time with my best friend.” Blaine bumps Nick's arm with his elbow, and Nick gives him a genuine smile.

“I concur, Dr. Anderson,” Nick says. “But those were the days, weren't they?”

“They sure…were…”

Both men become quiet, hyper-aware when the air around them shifts, pressure building in their ears, fogging the sounds of the jungle. They look left and right, realizing at the same time that they're both suddenly in danger.

There is no thunder, no lightning where they are, but they can hear the rain falling, starting as a light drizzle but getting progressively louder, moving towards them.

But that's not the alarming part.

It's the roar, like a freight train barreling towards them; the cracking and snapping of branches that they know are actually the trunks of thick trees; the shuffle and squeal and cries of animals racing to higher ground; that makes Blaine and Nick stare at one another, subconsciously holding their breath.

Blaine tries to run, but his feet are stuck, having sunk into the mud up to his arch as he stood too long in one place getting samples. He'll have to pull his feet from his boots if he wants to move…and he doesn't have the time.

“Go!” Blaine yells at his friend, knowing there's still a chance for Nick to get out of the way. “Run! Now!”

“Blaine!” Nick screams, simultaneously reaching for his friend and leaping to the side, hoping that somehow Blaine will grab his hand. But they're that few inches away from one another that turns out to make the difference between life and death. Nick lands on the forest floor, in the moss and shallow mud, but Blaine gets swept up by the slide – a rapid stream of mud shooting down the mountain, carrying with it rocks, branches, and other debris, knocking him off his feet, onto his back. Head over heels he rolls, tumbling off the ledge.

“Blaine!” Nick screams. “Blaine! Blaine! Oh my God! Blaine!”

Blaine hears his friend call his name once.

After that, he only hears himself scream.

Nick, lying in the mud, too paralyzed by shock to move, his heart pounding hard with a need to break free from his body and the pain that will erupt inside him in a few seconds, is certain he's just watched his best friend plummet to his death.

***

Blaine remembers falling.

He remembers feeling weightless, the wind beating against him, twirling him in the air like the blades of a windmill. He felt dizzy and sick, his brain blacking out between twists and the wind battering his limbs.

He remembers thinking that if he didn't die when he landed, which seemed entirely inevitable, then every bone in his body would be shattered.

He can no longer keep his eyes open, the wind buffeting him during his flailing freefall trying it's best to tear them from their sockets. They dry out, they burn, and his lids become cemented shut.

Seconds split, flash by, and being the scientist he is, he tries to determine how far he'd gone, and how much farther he has to go before he reaches the forest floor.

But then he stops.

He doesn't stop falling, per se, because he's still moving, and logically that should mean he's falling, except he's traveling sideways, not down. Something has him. He caught on something while he fell – a rock maybe, jutting out from the cliff-face, or the branch of a tree. But then, why is he moving through the air?

He could have snagged himself on a vine, kinked an arm or a leg in its woody tendril. That would explain the swinging sensation. The odds of that happening have to be a million to one. It isn't impossible, just highly improbable.

He's just finished considering that option when he lands on his back in a bed of earth and green leaves, scared out of his wits but otherwise alive. He smells it, the clean, earthy scent filling his nostrils and chilling his lungs. He dares not move, imagining his body a jumble of irreparably broken bones poking through his skin. He can't feel anything, everything from his neck to his toes numb. That could mean nerve damage, a severed spine.

Or the euphoria of death taking over, ushering him into the stages of active dying.

His body has to be fractured in dozens of places. After a fall like that? His current state of relative calm could be an illusion created by his brain, protecting him from the reality of his situation. He'd been taught that in school, when he'd started out in medicine with his eyes on a PhD in oncology, before he decided to transfer over to a specialty that had nothing to do with human physiology.

He'd had it drilled into his head years earlier, when his grandfather passed away, after bone cancer ate through his cells and organs, leaving him in constant agony until the very end, when a potent combination of morphine, hormones, and decreased oxygen levels kept him in a tranquil lull as he expired.

Blaine had fallen hundreds of feet onto solid, albeit soft, ground. Nothing could save him. No one could put him back together.

But even with death fast approaching, he can't get his mind to shut off. He wonders how long it will take for the porters to find his body. Since the guides don't want to come out this way, probably days, and even then, only if scavengers don't drag his corpse from this spot and eat him first.

That's when he decides that he doesn't want to be conscious when he finally becomes disoriented and starts slipping away.

Or when the predators lurking nearby come out of hiding and start picking him apart.

In his mind, he says goodbye to his life, to his family and friends. He tries not to think of how they'll react when the university tells them. He shivers violently, fear of death taking hold. Threads of cold steal the heat from his skin, seeping in him from the wet ground, causing his muscles to twitch out of his control. His teeth chatter, the sound echoing, an alert to his location since there is no other sound like it in the jungle. He clamps his jaw tight, begging his body to stop, frightened that he'll attract attention.

A sensation of warmth stretches over him, climbing on top of him, comforting him with its weight, its concealment, its unspoken promise of protection, and as completely unadvisable as it is to do, Blaine passes out.

When Blaine comes to hours later, the weight and warmth are still there, settled on his chest.

Hesitantly, he opens his eyes, blinking to remove the dirt so he can see. Overhead, segments of blue sky peek through the lighter grey clouds, and fingerling rays of previously absent sun wink through the branches and leaves.

If he's not dead, then it's going on twilight, and the whole day has passed him by.

He doesn't know where Nick is, or if he's still alive, doesn't know if another mudslide didn't come by seconds later and sweep him off the ledge, too. If he's alive, did he make it back to camp? Would he send someone to go looking for Blaine, to be sure he's dead? Or would he accept Blaine dying, sight unseen?

A part of Blaine has to keep believing that Nick will go for help, that he won't rest until they save Blaine, or can bring his body home for his parents to bury.

Blaine starts to feel again, and not only the cold underneath him. There's a tingling in his skin, a stinging in his right shoulder, an ache in his knees, and a throbbing in his head. His neck and back are sore, but he doesn't think they're broken. He can roll his eyes and look around.

And he's not alone.

He's trapped beneath something, compressing his chest and abs, pinning him to the ground.

And it's growling at him.

Blaine's heard a growl like this one before, on a trip to Argentina. Hiking through the forest, Blaine and Nick found a jaguar caught in a poacher's trap. The animal had been there for days, become a victim of the elements, its leg nearly gnawed off in its attempt to escape. Injured, starving, ready for a fight, the creature growled deep in its throat, the sound resonating in its chest, amplified inside it like a drum. It was a warning for them to keep their distance, and it sounded exactly like this.

Blaine doesn't move an inch, he barely breathes. His thoughts stray to the story Nick told him, and the man-eating predator prowling the forest.

Oh God, he thinks. It's not a story. It's real. The beast is real, and it's going to rip him to shreds, devour him while he's still alive. Blaine's eyes flicker down to get a glimpse of his death before it pounces. He expects wide, amber eyes; sharp, cruel fangs; hideously long claws; and a hide of golden fur, mottled with black rings. But instead, he finds a pair of blue eyes, clear and bright as the sky above him, set in the face of a man who could be around his age, maybe a few years older. Blaine gasps in surprise, and the man watches, his eyes immediately drawn to Blaine's parted lips. Blaine swallows. He opens his mouth to speak, but the man curls his lip and growls louder.

So he doesn't want Blaine to talk. That's fine. Blaine won't say a thing, but he can't help staring.

The man's hair hangs to about the nape of his neck. The dried strands around his forehead look like they could be wavy, but the rest is weighed down by mud and leaf litter, giving it a brown hue if it isn't brown already. Caked mud coats his body, but the rain has cleaned parts of it away. Blaine can see that the flesh underneath the grime is surprisingly fair, and on his face, a sprinkling of freckles thrown across the bridge of his nose.

Blaine doesn't let his eyes roam too far from the man's gaze. He doesn't want to be caught off guard if, for some reason, he decides to attack. But from what Blaine can see, the man has a muscular build, trim, with biceps the size of sturdy branches, thighs like trunks.

And he's completely naked.

Whoever he is, he has to be the reason why Blaine's alive right now and not currently becoming an integral part of the jungle ecosystem. He just wishes he could find a way to ask him how he did it, how he caught Blaine mid-fall and carried him down a slick mountainside during a torrential downpour.

While Blaine looks at him, the man looks at Blaine, crouched over Blaine's chest, inching closer and closer toward his face. The way he stares at Blaine, creeping right up on him, with no respect for his personal space, might be considered indecent. But the man seems wary, curious, terribly confused. He narrows his eyes, examining Blaine's face, his hair, his nose, his eyes, like he's never seen another man before.

Never seen someone else like him.

Who is this man? Blaine marvels as he comes nose to nose with him, sniffing around his hairline and the collar of his shirt. And how did he end up here? Why did behave this way? Why did he choose the depths of the jungle, of all places, to make his home, and not the village? Why wasn't he wearing any clothes, and why did he growl like a jaguar? Why did he not want Blaine to talk, and why did he make no effort to speak? Was there no language in him?

Blaine realizes he was partially correct before about the legend. It is true. This man is the legend. He's both the jaguar and the savage. There's no way he can be more than a few decades old, but Blaine knows the way those legends work, how they become stretched and manipulated to encompass events going back generations, as a way to explain things that cannot be explained. If Blaine had to speculate, from a darting glance of the man's tibia and femur, he'd say he stands about 6 foot. Not eight feet tall by any means, but with many of the local residents averaging a little under five feet, and only seeing this man from a distance, he could see how that might be overestimated.

As for the jaguar part of the legend, the man moves like a cat, crouches like a cat, growls like a cat. Is there a chance (and at any other time, Blaine would laugh at this theory, call it foolishness) that this man might have been raised with the local jaguar population?

It's a ludicrous notion, but then again, Blaine should be dead. He's not going to rule out anything anymore.

The man raises a hand to Blaine's face and traces his lips, his eyebrows, his cheeks with a single thumb. Then he brings a hand to his own face, traces his own lips, eyebrows, and cheeks. He threads his fingers through Blaine's hair, lifting the drying curls away from his scalp and watching them fall through his fingers, then he touches his own hair, bunches it in his hand, scrunching his nose at the feel of it compared to Blaine's. While the man continues to examine Blaine, Blaine patiently waits, wishing he had a notebook and a pen, or his phone, to document this moment, though he's certain he'll remember it, every detail, till the day he dies. The calloused pads of the man's fingertips drag down Blaine's cheek to his jaw, raking along his scruff, then down his neck to his collarbone. He pats his palm down Blaine's chest over his shirt, kneading here and there, feeling his muscles, his ribs, his stomach.

Blaine thinks he might touch lower, and he sucks in his stomach, holding his breath, but the man stops at his belt, fingering the clasp, scratching the leather. He brings his hand back to Blaine's breast and presses it flat over Blaine's heart, keeping it there and sitting silently, feeling Blaine's heartbeat. With fingers curled under like a paw, he taps over Blaine's heart, an inquisitive expression on his face.

Blaine lifts his right hand cautiously, struggling not to hiss with the pain thumping in his shoulder, making no sudden or jerky moves. He touches his shirt in the same spot, pointing to himself, and the man nods, grunting affirmatively.

“Blaine,” he says slowly, enunciating his name with over-exaggerated emphasis. Then he points at the man crouched over his chest. The man raises an eyebrow, looking at Blaine's finger and then back into his eyes. Blaine tries again. Pointing to himself, he says, “Blaine,” and then points to the man above him.

The man's mouth moves, working in strange shapes, trying to copy the way Blaine's mouth produces the name, but he doesn't come close to making the correct sounds. He trips over that first consonant blend, the bl not something he's used to, so he gives up on trying to pronounce Blaine's name in its entirety. He pats Blaine on the chest and grumbles aine, the sound rough in his throat, a grunt more than a word. Then he pounds on his own chest and mutters a collection of gravelly consonants that make up a possible name – “Krrrt.”

Blaine's eyes pop open, but he resists smiling. Among many animals, showing teeth is a sign of aggression. This, whoever he is, is a man, but he acts like an animal. He might think like one, too.

“Krrrt,” Blaine repeats, and the man grins, his lips lifting at the corners with his mouth closed.

“Mmm,” the man hums, nodding his head. “Krrrt. Aine” – He pounds Blaine on the chest, making him cough, then pounds on his own chest – “Krrrt.”

“Yes,” Blaine says, mimicking the man's close-lipped smile. “Aine,” he says, touching his shirt. “Krrrt,” he says, pointing to the man. The man watches Blaine's hand move back and forth between them. He grabs it at the wrist, strong fingers wrapping around a bit too tightly. Blaine doesn't give the man any indication that he's causing him discomfort, but the man seems to know that he needs to be more gentle and loosens his grip. He doesn't pull on Blaine's wrist, but rather moves toward it, presses his chest against it. Blaine feels the man's heart beneath his palm, beating fierce and steady, speeding up the longer they gaze at one another.

For a man that lives the way he does, by means of his body and his wits, always on the move, with the strength to scale a rock cliff while carrying the dead weight of another man with him, he should have the heartbeat of an athlete, so this picking up of pace, the subtle skips every so often between the beats, can only be the effect of one source.

“Aine,” the man says.

Blaine nods. “Krrrt.”

“Blaine! Blaine!” The chaotic cry rattles the forest, sending birds and small animals scurrying for a place to hide. “Blaine! Where are you? Blaine! Can you hear me?”

“Well, I'll be…” Blaine murmurs in astonishment at the loyalty and persistence of his best friend.

The man drops Blaine's wrist, his head snapping up. He growls, his menacing snarl the curse of an apex predator, giving Blaine's heart a jumpstart. The man glares at the trees, angered by that voice ringing through the forest, his forest, calling out Blaine's name.

Thank God for it, though. Blaine feels indebted to Nick, searching the forest for him, the way he had prayed Nick would. Nick's determination is Blaine's salvation, and yet, Blaine doesn't answer right away. He wants a few more minutes with this utterly intriguing man. Once Nick finds Blaine, he'll call the university for an emergency airlift out of the jungle, and Blaine might never see this man again.

The man looks down at Blaine, conflict brewing in his eyes, turning them from an uncluttered blue to a storm-riddled grey, then up at the trees again. The bushes quiver as a search party of five uneasy-faced men bursts carelessly through. The man springs off Blaine's chest with a bark of frustration, and heads for the closest tree, leaping up to the first row of cover in five vaults along the trunk, climbing it vertically from the ground.

Nick breaks through the tree line, a sight for Blaine's sore eyes that he was convinced he'd never see again. Nick sees Blaine lying on the ground, trembling, alone, and undoubtedly in distress. But when Blaine turns his face toward him and gives him his signature charming smile, Nick almost leaps straight out of his skin.

“Blaine!” Nick races for his friend, wide-eyed stare growing at the sight of his shredded clothes, the scratches on his arms and legs welling with blood, and the mud staining his skin.

“What the he---Blaine! Are you okay?”

Blaine looks up at the canopy above them, catching a glimpse of blue eyes before the branches sway, as if touched by a breeze, and the man disappears higher.

“Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine,” Blaine says, stuck between reality and what has to be a fantasy. But if that man is a fantasy, a trick of his mind to keep him from slipping into shock, or some similar survival coping mechanism, what is the truth? He got away from the mudslide on his own? Made his way down the cliff by himself? Right – Dr. Blaine Anderson, rather a decent boxer and a mediocre handball enthusiast, managed to survive a fall off a sheer cliff and got away with only minor scratches?

Not in this lifetime.

“Blaine!” Nick takes his best friend's hand and stares at him, relief brimming in red-rimmed hazel eyes. “I can't believe it! How did you…” Nick's shaking voice fails him, and he's left shaking his head, hoping that Blaine will fill in the blanks for him.

“I…I don't know,” Blaine admits, eyes bouncing from his worried friend's face up to the trees, watching the branches, the canopy, the sky for any sign, but as far as he can tell, the man has gone. “I think…somebody was watching out for me.”