One Shots

One December Day (M)

A/N: Warnings: violence and mentions of suicide (very briefly and not in detail).

                         One December Day

   The day started off much the same as any other day would, with the blinds half shut and the sharp December sunrise sneaking in through the gaps, lighting up the white sheets of the hotel bed with stripes of orange and black, laying over two sleeping bodies with too much distance between them.

   The air was nippy, even inside the walls of the one-floor hotel. It was a cheap room, the heating barely worked and when it did, it didn't travel far from the radiator.

    Often, Holsen would take his boyfriend's freezing hands and pull him against his body, wrap them both up in a cocoon of sheets and sit by the heater, backs to the heat, skin trying its best to absorb the warmth through the material.

     Holsen would tell his boyfriend, who went by the name of Fire, “What good is a nickname like that if it doesn't remotely relate to you?” a smile on his lips, a fond look gracing his eyes. Fire would shrug, eyes turned down, leaning into Holsen's warmth in silence.

    He didn't like to speak much, Fire. He was a quiet one, always had been. It was something that intrigued Holsen, made him want to see if he could open him up; learn all his secrets and know him like no other man, woman, parent or child ever would.

     He wanted to be the only one. The one and only person to really unravel Fire. It sounded like a dangerous ambition when put like that.

    They travelled a lot. No home to go to. They were runaways. Holsen would always joke about being the gay Bonnie and Clyde, without the crimes but crime was never out of reach for the two of them. Always in the future, Holsen knew that. Fire tried not to think about it.

    Survival. Survival would be the last step to crime.

    But this December day survival seemed to depend on warm bodies and icy finger tips searching each other out and blankets around shoulders, soft kisses along ticklish necks, small smiles pressed against quivering navels before bliss.

    Then it would be back to fights and fists against cheek bones, under chins and to the ribs. It would be I hate you, get out of here, fuck you; it would be anger and malice and go freeze in the god damn cold if you can't stand me that much.

    Fire would cry out of frustration, punching holes in the hotel walls and only in these moments would his name say anything about him at all.

     Security would kick them out with the few bags they had and it would lead to another tension-filled silence, walking the unfavourably cold distance to the next hotel, feet disappearing in the six inches of snow that layered the pavements and roads.

    Despite everything, they would stick together because the truth was––the truth was––that they needed each other. They couldn't live without each other. They understood each other, they were the only ones who could and it made sense. It was survival.

     Though this December day wasn't different from any other December day, there was something unspoken between the two of them that made it feel like there was.

     Things progressed as they usually would, sitting in front of the radiator until the heat died down, falling back into their shivers and chattering teeth and Fire would tighten his fingers in the sheets around them and Holsen would tighten his hold on Fire and it was love. It was love.

     There were hands around Fire's ribs and fingers seeking out every indent between them and there were lips on Holsen's chest getting lower and lower and there was a murmur of, “I know another way to keep warm,”