Blair woke himself up with a convulsive shiver. Shit, it was cold! Dawn
light, pale and empty, told him to go back to sleep, but he needed to
turn up the heat before his toes froze off. He made a dash into the
main room, too sleepy to care that he was naked, and only noticed Jim
by the balcony doors after he'd completed his mission.
The eep that escaped him didn't make Jim turn around -- not that Blair
minded Jim getting an eyeful, but right then, he didn't have much worth
displaying -- and he realized that Jim, wearing his gray robe, his feet
bare, was zoning on something.
After a dash into his room to huddle on a sweatshirt and jeans, both of
which should've been in the laundry pile, Blair went to Jim. He guessed
that Jim had been woken by the temperature, but what had distracted him
on the way to the thermostat?
The answer lay on the windows, where frost, a skim of white worked into
whorls and curlicues, had transformed glass into something unbearably
beautiful, even to Blair's eyes. What Jim saw, he could only guess at,
pushing away a pang of envy. Did Jim realize how many of Blair's
questions were rooted in that helpless yearning to experience the world
the way that Jim did, just for an hour?
The sculpted patterns only looked like fingerprints if Jack Frost was
an alien; they were more like the imprint of feathers or leaves,
pressed against a pristine sheet of white, each line furred at the
edges.
As Blair stood beside Jim, their arms brushing, their breath clouding
the air, the sun rose high enough to tint the white windows with a
thin, golden wash of light. Blair made an involuntary 'oh' of
appreciation and admiration, and Jim jerked, jolted out of his daze.
"It's okay," Blair said reassuringly as Jim turned and blinked at him,
bewilderment plain in his eyes. "Just a little zone." He rubbed his
hand along Jim's arm. "Come back to bed."
Jim frowned at him and Blair replayed what he'd just said and winced
inwardly at the phrasing he'd used. "I mean --"
"I know what you meant," Jim interrupted him to say. He took a fold of
Blair's sweatshirt between his fingers. "Weren't you naked?"
"You saw that?" Blair blurted out. "Jim, you were zoned; you can't have
picked up a reflection of me in the glass."
Jim shrugged and yawned, a fairly gentle hint that in his opinion it
was too early for research. "Don't worry; I'll make an appointment with
my therapist later."
"Hey! I have it on good authority that I look good au naturel."
"Did I say you didn't?"
"You implied --" Blair stopped talking, because Jim was kissing him, a
slow, reflective kiss, his arms twined around Blair like sleep, like
dreams.
"Come back to bed," Jim whispered into Blair's hair and the frost had
melted, so Blair did.