Work Text:
It feels hot when he's around and it has always been this way. The first time, flaming with embarrassment from standing tall holding out a firm hand quickly growing cold—as cold as you should have been and forgot to be—then flushed with hurt and filled with searing tears threatening to fall the moment prying eyes finally closed. There is a façade you're told to wear, to never let slip but sometimes you're blustering inside instead and it is never coincidence who's there.
The real problem is that you like it. You like the warmth that bursts on your wind bitten nose after chasing him around the pitch. You like the pyretic glares after you've hurled your razor sharp words and the burn in your cheek from your smug satisfaction in seeing the steam pour out of his ears that dissipates into his silhouette now warped by tensed shoulders for the rest of the day. But you know that heat rises, so he's off to his tower and you're skipping down dampening steps as the fog rolls off you.
It is just good fun goading him, that's all it ever has been—you’ve been sure to maintain to anyone who asks, even though they don't—so you keep pushing and the momentum carries but now you've let yourself roll fast into a full boil—those reddened knuckles flashing white twisted in a familiar knit the same glaucous shade as your eyes. The promise of comfort rushes boldly to your side once again only this time it is presumptuous and what used to soothe is bubbling over escaping through your fingertips, threading into his hair to find the slide of his mouth is the most oppressive heat yet.