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Jon wakes slowly.
He’s not initially sure as to what it was that woke him. Blinking his eyes a few times into the gloom of the bedroom, awareness slowly filters in. Jon hears the door of the flat shut. The space next to him is cool, Tim must have gone out.
It’s 5 am.
Jon shivers. Now that he is awake he is all too aware of how cold the bedroom is without Tim radiating heat next to him. He curls tighter into a ball and pulls the blankets closer under his chin. Jon hopes Tim will return to bed if only so the room will warm. The flat was old, with windows which gape just that slight bit too much to retain heat almost all.
Tim’s gas bills alone used to be well over twice as much as the flats built next door 7 years ago.
It should have been a problem; maybe it was a problem. Jon wasn’t sure, and he had promised Tim not to pry. A shout of “It’s my business Jon, not yours!” echoes through his head. And well, Jon supposes, it’s not like Tim runs the radiators much these days. Jon breaks out from his musing at the slight creak in the floorboards and shuffle-shuffle of covered feet making their way down the hallway. So Tim had decided to return to bed. Good.
With a click of the door handle, the bedroom door swings open. Jon twists his head and squints, trying to make out Tim’s shadowy silhouette in the pre-dawn light. A sharp acrid smell with a metallic bite mixed with the cloying scent of dry cement dust wafts into the room. Heat is quick to follow, seeping in with Tim’s careful passage to the edge of the bed. Stretching out of the ball he’d curled into, Jon flips onto his back so he can follow Tim’s progress with his eyes. Ey has paused at the end of the bed, standing almost still, head cocked contemplatively.
Jon traces the outline of Tim’s face slowly, he no longer needs light to see the curve of eir cheekbone or the crow’s feet around eir eyes.
Tim is grinning.
Tim’s silhouette flickers and then ey is moving again, one step, two, and ey’s climbing onto the bed. Taking up space. Jon almost immediately feels warmer with Tim next to him.
The temperature had risen 3 ° C since Tim had walked into the room.
A wry feeling slips through Jon, the rise in ambient temperature is certainly enough that Jon no longer has to clutch the blankets quite so hard against his body. The bed bounces as Tim flops emself onto eir back, one arm tucked behind eir head on the pillow. Eir eyes are pointed upward but Jon doesn’t think Tim is really seeing the blank white ceiling. Ey is still grinning. Turning his head just a fraction to bring Tim fully into his eyesight, Jon watches.
Everything in the room seems muted in the soft grey of the slowly brightening light. Tim’s speckled hair looks like a dark flared outline against the cream-beige of the pillow as ey rests, looking up at the ceiling. Tim’s leg occasionally jiggles as it hangs over the edge of the bed.
An unconscious movement.
Tim finally turns eir head to look at Jon. Eir’s eyes are bright and sparkle with banked amusement. Pushing eirself up onto one arm fills most of Jon’s vision. Tim’s leg no longer rests over the edge of the bed, instead when ey had turned to face Jon, ey had swung it over one of Jon’s legs. It now rests comfortably tucked over Jon, radiating a warm soothing heat through the blankets. The twitching has stilled.
“Apologies for waking you my dear.” Tim teases, delight still flickering in eir eyes. Jon doesn’t think eir’s particularly sorry at all.
“You didn’t.” Jon replied “It was the cold that woke me.”
If anything, Tim’s grin widens. “The cold.” Eir eyes grow intense.
“Well now, we can’t have our little Archivist getting cold, can we darling?”
Jon’s eyes widen slightly. He is unsure exactly where Tim is leading. Ey has only grown more unpredictable since. Tim leans down and grips the blankets under Jon’s chin.
“Don’t snoop.” Tim whispers near his ear. Straightening up, Tim tugs at the blankets. Understanding floods Jon’s brain and he releases his grip, letting Tim push the blankets down to pool at his waist. Tim’s eyes which had been following the motions of eir hand flick back to Jon’s face for a moment.
“I thought I said no snooping.” But eir tone is too fond to make it a rebuke.
Moving eir hand from the blankets, Tim gently brushes against the sliver of skin peaking between Jons pyjama pants and shirt. An undertone of pink blooms under his dark skin in the wake of the hands passing. Tim clutches at Jon’s shirt, pushing it up to expose his belly to the now warm air of the room. Ey leaves it to rest half way up his chest, ever mindful of Jon’s preference that his breasts remain covered.
Using two fingers, Tim slowly walks a path down the middle of Jon’s stomach, skipping over his belly button and walking through his happy trail. Ey stops when ey reaches Jon’s pyjama pants. Small dark redder patches of skin mark the path of eir fingers. Lifting eir hand from Jon’s skin, Tim turns eir face towards Jon though eir eyes remain glued to the slowly healing skin. Once all the red spots have faded, Tim finally also raises eir eyes to meet Jon’s, eir face is intense with no trace of the grin left behind.
“Is this ok?”
Jon shivers, but not from the cold this time. No matter how many times it happens lately there’s still something fresh and new about Tim’s scorching touch. A low pleasant hum starts up in the back of his head. It’s moments like these that Jon recalls the person who had flashed him a smile and a thumbs up when his promotion to the Archives had been announced, when others had barely managed a smattering of applause. The person who had dragged him out for coffee on his first day when ey saw just how overwhelmed he really was. Who told him to breathe, just breathe for a second, we can do this. The one who’s smile had lit up the office, who knew how to talk to Sasha, the person who only Jon seems to remember. He’s always liked it when Tim smiles, even though it’s different now warmer and yet colder too.
Realising he’s probably waited a beat too long, Jon smiles softly up at Tim.
“Yes.”
Tim beams and turns back to Jon’s stomach. Ey collapses eir arm that ey had been resting on so that ey is now propped up on eir elbow and eir chin rests in eir hand. Jon can no longer see much of Tim’s expression, covered by eir hair. Not that he really needed to see it, but Jon likes seeing things with his own eyes. Reaching out, Tim had started to draw slow, winding patterns all over the exposed skin of Jon’s belly with eir fingertips. With every sweep of a finger, a biting sharp ache would infuse Jon’s skin before slowly, maddeningly stretching out again. The tension that had permeated Jon’s limbs upon waking began to gradually melt out of him.
Jon rested his head back on the pillow. Abstract drawings of red and pink and shiny new skin appearing and disappearing under Tim’s deliberate touch. Jon can feel Tim’s eyes glued to his stomach, fascinated by the desolation being pressed into his dark skin.
Tim enjoys this.
Jon enjoys this too.
Time passes. Jon’s sure if he thought about it he could know exactly how much. But he doesn’t and so he doesn’t. It’s pleasant here among the shifting waves of searing heat and fading release. Consuming. The noiseless content hum only he can hear means he almost misses it when Tim finally looks up.
“You look good, all red like that. It suits you.” Tim’s smile is reckless and wide.
Jon’s lids are heavy and slow as he blinks in reply. A hum catches in his throat.
Tim’s face softens slightly, the grin dropping into a warmer smile.
“Look at you.” Tim lifts eir hand and gently strokes Jon’s lips. Moving eir hand softly to Jon’s cheek, Tim slowly leans down and presses a gentle, warm kiss onto Jon’s mouth.
“Look at you,” Ey says again, eir tone molten and soft. It makes Jons heart flare and he’s not sure how he ever thought he felt cold. Tim’s hand had returned to gently stroking the outline of his lips with the pads of eir fingertips.
Jon’s lips have started to blister. He nips at Tim’s fingers. Drawing a single finger into his mouth Jon gives it a brief swipe of his tongue before releasing it with a pop.
Tim laughs. Ey looks fondly at Jon before brushing eir fingers against his cheek, leaving one last stroke of red behind.
Straightening up, Tim releases eir chin out of eir hand and places eir hand directly splayed on the middle of Jon’s stomach. Tim smirks down at Jon.
“Are you hungry?”
Jon’s belly contracts, the pain from the contact of Tim’s hand turns from a sharp sting to a white hot constant whine under his skin the longer the hand remains placed there. Jon’s breath hitches. Taking a deeper breath then necessary, he stares back at Tim, deliberately placid. The noiseless noise in the back of his head roars, almost like a purr, more like the sound of a waterfall crashing down in high flood. Jon does not answer.
Yes.
Tim grins. Collapsing back onto the bed, ey removes eir hand from Jon’s stomach. Both of Tim’s hands reach up behind em and tuck behind eir head. Jon thinks ey looks like one of those paintings of a full repose, stretched out and lounging there with one foot again now dangling off the side of the bed. Tim’s head is thrown back across the pillow, eir back almost arched in a languid stretch. Staring up at the ceiling Tim opens eir mouth.
“Statement of Timothy Stoker,” here, Tim throws Jon another smirk before returning to eir contemplation of the blank ceiling, “recent avatar of the Desolation regarding…. a rather nice walk.”
Jon closes his eyes, listening to Tim talk. It’s warm in the room now. Soon, he’ll have to get up and head to the Archives. Soon he’ll have to return to those lonely corridors, to those dry, cold, stale pages.
But for now, this, this is nice.