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Minsc hardly notices at first when Imoen starts paying more attention to him than to the rest of the party. The journey to the gnoll fortress is proving to be longer than originally anticipated and he thinks she’s merely acting like a bored child; she’s certainly less subtle than he usually expects a thief to be.

That she is a thief is something he figures out the first time he reaches for Boo and Boo’s not there but instead is six feet away sitting on Imoen’s head. Minsc breathes in deeply, breathes out carefully, and holds his cupped hands out in a silent request. Imoen obediently lifts the hamster down and hands him over.

‘I just wanted to see what he’d do if I picked him up,’ she says, not a hint of a sorry in her voice.

‘You’re lucky he didn’t bite you. Boo is not to be taken lightly.’ Minsc ooches the hamster under the chin. ‘Right, Boo?’ He’s wondering how the hell she managed to get even one hand on him to take him away. She can be spooky-quick sometimes.

Boo squeaks. It’s anyone’s guess what that means.

They’re three days out from Nashkel. Jaheira carps about getting back to the mines as soon as possible and iron shortage and blah blah blah, and Minsc lifts his chin and nods at their Fearless Leader’s sword and says, ‘Doesn’t look broken to me,’ and Jaheira snorts and drops the issue.

Later on she comes to speak to him privately, in the few moments between the party stopping for the night and actual sundown, when he’s trying to pick a spot to sleep that doesn’t have tree roots or stones everywhere.

‘I think I understand your quest,’ she says, her voice going up in pitch a little at the end of the sentence like it’s a question. Which it isn’t. Jaheira doesn’t question; she tells. ‘It must be most distressing for you to have someone you care so much about taken from you.’

‘Um,’ says Minsc, eloquently. ‘Yes?’

‘I too would be distressed were I to be separated from Khalid.’

Minsc wants to say, I think you’ve got the wrong end of the quarterstaff, lady. He wants to say, It’s not like that; she’s my ward and I’m her guard and everything went wrong. He wants to say, You wouldn’t be all that distressed considering what I’ve heard you’ve been getting up to with Garrick.

He breathes in deeply, breathes out carefully, and says, ‘I know.’

Jaheira smiles at him like she understands, and then goes off to do something druidy like bellow at their Fearless Leader to not put any meat in the stew, and Minsc kicks a few rocks away and then decides the ground’s never going to get any less lumpy and just spreads his bedroll out any old how and sits on it and feeds Boo some carrot.

Imoen bounces over (she never walks anywhere; it’s either sneaking or bouncing) and holds out her hand to reveal a palmful of parsnip pieces. ‘Here. I thought he might like something different for a change.’ She kneels beside them and Boo sits on Minsc’s hand and alternates between carrot and parsnip and his whiskers twitch happily.

Minsc looks at the top of her head as she leans over to skritch Boo behind the ears, and she lifts her head and flashes him a bright smile, and he feels his own lips move into a return smile. He’s been doing anything but smile thus far, mostly trying not to grind his teeth every time they’re held up by wolves or kobolds or other random encounters keeping him from the gnoll stronghold and Dynaheir. But there’s something about the expression on her face that makes it contagious.

After dinner Garrick sidles up to him and asks him whether he thinks ‘hamster-handling’ is an appropriate euphemism for anything in particular and can he think of anything to rhyme with it?

‘What?’ says Minsc, not acting bemused.

‘I saw you let Imoen play with Boo before. How come you never let the rest of us have a turn? He’s so cute!’

Minsc is having trouble answering this because he’s also wondering how the hell Jaheira can be doing anything with this buffoon considering that he is clearly gayer than a caravan full of xvarts at a spring carnival.

But then Garrick reaches for Boo, and Minsc’s instinct kicks in, and it’s only sheer luck that he’s unarmed and Garrick doesn’t pull back a bloody stump, which would be fairly inconvenient for a lute player and especially inconvenient considering the other things he allegedly plays with.

‘Do not touch the hamster.’

‘I was only—’

‘Do not touch the hamster.’

‘I’m sorry,’ the bard stutters.

Minsc breathes in deeply, breathes out carefully, and adds, ‘He doesn’t like it.’

It’s not an apology, but it’s as close as he can manage.

He watches Garrick go around the fire back to Jaheira – back to Jaheira and Khalid, oh dear – and then there’s a shadow between him and the fire and it’s their Fearless Leader, glaring.

‘You’re on first watch for that crap, Minsc. If it turns out you broke the bard, the cost for a healer comes out of your pocket.’

‘It’s okay, I’m fine,’ Garrick calls.

‘Shut up, you... twee little bugger.’ She makes her way to her own bedroll and proceeds to ignore the rest of them, blithely letting them sort out the rest of the watch order for themselves.

It gets to around midnight, time to wake Imoen for her turn on watch, but she’s already awake. Minsc can hear her up a tree not far away from the high rock he’s sitting on; she’s quiet, but she’s no ranger. Especially not when he softly calls her name and she slides down the tree in a rustle of bark and leaves.

‘You need to be quieter,’ he says when she lands.

‘Sorry.’ Her cheeks are glowing like the last embers of the fire. Jaheira, Khalid and Garrick are one big pile over the other side; Fearless Leader’s a black bundle, snoring. ‘I was lookin’ up at the mountains. They’re so big, so endless. Not much like that back home, nuh-uh, not ‘less you wanted to walk for days and maybe get eaten by somethin’.’

As if on cue, but actually just because they’ve been doing it on and off all night, a winter wolf howls somewhere off in the distance. Imoen shivers; when its mate howls a hell of a lot closer, instead of climbing the tree all of a sudden she’s climbing into his lap, and Minsc lets out a little squeak of surprise that sounds sort of like a noise Boo would make.

‘S-sorry,’ she says again, although she makes no move to get back off him, and instead curls a little closer, and his arms go around her purely out of instinct so she won’t fall off his lap onto the ground, because if lying on rocks hurts then falling on them would be worse. ‘Those ones just creep me out, the way they breathe ice, and they’re so pretty for something so dangerous...’ Her voice trails off and she tilts her head back up and touches his tattoo. ‘Usually dangerous things you know when they’re dangerous,’ she remarks as if it’s completely irrelevant to the lines her fingers are tracing on his face. ‘Sometimes there’s in-between things, and you can’t tell.’

Minsc wants to say, But I’m not dangerous. Not to you. He wants to say, Boo likes you, so you can’t be dangerous to me. He wants to say, Why aren’t you shivering anymore? It’s still cold out here; am I really that warm?

Instead, he breathes in deeply, breathes out carefully, and kisses her.