Work Text:
December 22nd, 2011
“...and why are you doing this again?” Mike asked, an amused yet slightly concerned smile on his face as Tim was bent halfway out of the open window, stringing Christmas lights around the frame, “you realize that you could just line… the insides, right? Or just, I dunno’, not?”
Tim looked back at him with mock hurt in his brown eyes, leaning back inside if only to throw his arms out, gesturing to the room around him.
“I’ve already decorated the rest of the flat! It might not be as easy as my mum’s house– but I might as well complete the look.” He said, his overzealous explanation ending with an anticlimactic shrug as he returned to what he was doing.
Mike simply shook his head to himself with a sigh, hunching his shoulders so he could retreat further into the scarf he was wearing– a heavy woolen one, a scarf that had most likely been living in the basket where it was folded since college. He’d gotten more cold resistant since he’d fallen to the vast (not that Tim knew that, of course), but having a very large window open on the twentieth floor, in the middle of December, was enough to send most people shivering.
Okay, maybe not Simon, but most people.
“Okay… if you’re sure.” Mike said, a small and slightly exasperated sigh leaving him as he crossed his arms, trying to bunch into his sweater as well, “I’ll be sitting in front of the heater in the bedroom then. Don’t accidentally fling yourself out the window.”
“If I get flung from the window, you’ll be the first to know!” Tim answered back, his tone jovial.
Despite his joking nature, it still wedged a needle into the base of his spine. He was trying to get better about it– if the skiing trip had taught him anything, it was that Tim was very not afraid of heights and quite durable– but he still couldn’t help the occasional paranoia that clutched him. That maybe, for some reason unknown to him, his master would try to claim Tim.
He quickly shook off the thought though, turning on his heel and putting his back to the drafty living room. He was halfway down the hall when his horrible memory, as it often did, popped in to taunt him, posing the question of whether he remembered to close the door to the office or not.
Well– even though they called it an office, as that was its original purpose, by all terms and purposes it was more of a pet room. Mike had let Tim have full claim of the space, as he already had his own office at the foundation, and preferred to stay in bed with his laptop on days he had to work from home (horrible for your work home balance, Simon had told him, but that was before Mike had ever so politely informed him that he usually couldn’t move much from said bed on days he wasn’t in, he had the lightning strike to thank for that). What Mike hadn’t expected– but honestly should have, in retrospect– was for Tim to shove his desk into the far corner and line the remaining walls with tanks. They were mostly filled with frogs, mainly varieties of which Mike wasn’t even aware that you could legally own. Tim took painstaking measures each day to keep them all happy– but, although he wouldn’t admit it, Mike knew his favorite was by far his reticulated python, Queenie, who often lay happy and content in her large tank along the right wall.
Mike had never been much of a snake person, but she wasn’t bad. If anything she seemed like a sweet creature.
He specifically checked the middle door on the right of the hall, seeing it closed, much to his relief. He cracked it open a touch, popping his head in to check the temperature. He found it well insulated enough– the animals still looked lively, Queenie even raising her head and giving him what he could construe as an inquisitive look as he glanced at her enclosure. Mike closed the door again behind him as he left, half tempted to grab a book and sit in the warm room while he waited for Tim to finish. That said, he didn’t trust himself alone in a room with a python nearly twice his size– he found Queenie endearing, but not endearing enough to trust her that much.
He walked the rest of the way down the hall, easily pushing the bedroom door open and slipping inside, quickly shutting it behind him again in some feeble attempt to keep the hellishly cold draft from creeping in again behind him– which it still did, but thankfully only through the crack under the door. Mike quickly shoved a blanket over the opening to block it, sighing and shaking his head to himself before quickly making for the bed, barely grabbing his book from the night stand before burrowing under the duvet, curling up in the mild warmth it provided.
He really didn’t get why it was such a big deal– well, he never celebrated Christmas growing up, so that might be why. It made Tim happy though, so he could deal. It was cute, even, watching the excitement that permeated him as he dashed around their flat, stringing up garlands and even setting up a whole Christmas tree he’d dragged through the door– with some difficulty– one night (“Charlie’s family owned a Christmas tree farm, did you know that? Said they had some surplus this year so I got one for free! So… Surprise!”).
Of course the traditions weren’t entirely alien. He still had a few fuzzy remnants of memory from parties his mother took him to before they moved from the city– some of the only ones he had from that early in childhood, actually. Maybe it was the glittering, multicolored lights that made them stick. Or maybe it was his mom getting trashed drunk enough that her friend had to take the tube back home with him to their small flat.
He had been deep enough in thought he hadn’t noticed the draft in the house slowly dissipating– his haze broken by the soft creak of the door swinging open. He didn’t need to look up to know it was Tim.
Mike put the book back up on the nightstand before sitting up, an eyebrow raising as he looked at his boyfriend. His tanned cheeks were tinged with pink– most likely from the cold, his turquoise dyed hair mussed and windblown.
“So I did nearly fall out the window.”
“Oh lord– Tim!”
Mike felt a jolt of adrenaline hit him at the admission, immediately getting out of bed with his exclamation, uncaring of the still mild cold settling in the room as he stopped to look up at his boyfriend, before burying his face in the other’s chest with a groan.
“Don’t– don’t do that!”
He felt the vibrations in Tim’s chest as he laughed, gently running a cold hand through Mike’s hair.
“I’m fine! Just keeping good on my word– you are the first to know.”
Mike sighed. There were so many things he wanted to say– so many things Tim didn’t know.
But he didn’t want to lose him.
So he just held him.