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Bert lay awake in bed, staring at the window and the street light which flooded the room. The hotel’s large, silver garland-decorated alarm clock on the bedside table told him that it was three am. The night seemed uncharacteristically still to him. Even for New York City, there seemed to be very little traffic sounds. He turned to look at Quinn’s sleeping form next to him, curled up in the blankets like a burrito, his hair sticking up in multiple directions across the pillow and his lips parted slightly. An involuntary smile tugged at the corners of Bert’s lips as he remembered how Quinn’s kisses had tasted like candy-canes earlier in the day, and then he turned his eyes back to the window. As he stared up at the dark blue sky, a thought struck him and he ripped the covers off and climbed out of bed, pulling the window open and holding his face close to the screen.
The air was cold. Very cold. Just cold enough, Bert thought. No, Bert knew. His eyes scanned the navy sky once more and he took a deep breath, inhaling the crisp December air before he decided that he knew of it with certainty.
Bert pushed the window closed again, this time with a bit of desperation, and ran back over to the bed, jumping on it with full force and pulling the blankets off of Quinn as the other man startled awake. Quinn gasped, looking around the room sharply for a possible intruder or danger which would warrant such a violent awakening, but to no avail.
Bert jumped off of the bed and grabbed Quinn’s wrist, attempting to pull him excitedly out of the bed, but Quinn was very hard to budge. Once Quinn was, at the very least, sitting up on the edge of the bed, Bert let go of the man’s wrist and ran to his suitcase laid out on the floor. He pulled sweatpants haphazardly over his boxers and a hoodie over his head, smashing his sockless feet into his sneakers. He grabbed one of his hoodies for Quinn and was glad that the other man was already wearing pants so that they would be wasting less time. He picked up Quinn’s sneakers from the floor and bent over in front of Quinn, pushing the other man’s feet into the shoes and shoving the sweater against Quinn’s chest before beginning to pull on his wrist again.
This time, Quinn groaned and allowed Bert to pull him toward the hotel room door, attempting to pull the hoodie over his head with only one free hand. Once they stepped out of the room and into the hallway, Quinn squinted at the bright lights and managed to get his free arm into the hoodie, the other sleeve flapping behind his back as Bert yanked him down the hallway into the staircase.
Bert was running so quickly down the stairs that he was pretty sure he was actually flying, and the weight that he was pulling behind him in his hand could have been anything at that point—a lamp, a vacuum, some random person he didn’t know—since he hadn’t looked back at Quinn since grabbing his wrist in the hotel room. Since they were on the 9th floor, he had considered taking the elevator down to the lobby, but he had decided that it would have taken too long, and his excitement would have felt much too contained in such a small space. Besides, it only felt like mere seconds before they had made it to the bottom floor and burst into the hotel lobby, receiving some strange looks from the sleepy attendant at the front desk, but nothing more. Bert ran across the sparkling expanse of tiles and flew through the sliding doors, the cold air hitting him like a wall as his sneakers slammed against the pavement of the New York City sidewalk. He stopped running and turned to an irritated looking Quinn, grinning like a small child at a toy store and waiting for Quinn to finally pull his other arm into the free hoodie sleeve before lacing his fingers with the other man’s.
“What is this, Bert? What are we doing out here?” Quinn asked loudly, his voice cutting through the air like a knife and Bert immediately placing a gentle finger against Quinn’s lips.
“Shhh. Wait,” Bert replied simply in a whisper, moving his hands to Quinn’s shoulders and pressing his body close to the other’s for warmth. Quinn gave into this and wrapped his arms around Bert’s waist, releasing an annoyed sigh. Bert ignored the other’s irritation and closed his eyes, resting his head against Quinn’s chest. He listened to Quinn’s heartbeat, quick from running, in combination with the perfect silence of the night. They stood there for a full three minutes, Quinn shivering against him and occasionally sighing into Bert’s hair before Bert finally felt it on his face.
A snowflake.
He gasped and opened his eyes, looking up at the sky to see the millions of tiny white flakes slowly making their way toward the pavement. He felt a few of them falling on his cheeks before looking down at Quinn again.
Quinn was smiling the softest, cutest, most charmed smile Bert had ever seen, like the man had just seen the world’s cutest and tiniest kitten, only he hadn’t; he was only staring at Bert, the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkling in the most beautiful way.
Quinn moved his hands to rest against the sides of Bert’s face, his thumb brushing a snowflake into the other man’s stubble. “I love you, Bert,” he whispered with no attempt to kiss the other or change this moment in any way. He was just trying to stay as still as possible in order to handle the amount of love he had in his heart for this beautiful, wonderstruck man.
Bert’s smile softened from awe to gratitude and he bit gently at his bottom lip. Bert’s face conveyed a speechlessness to trump all, but Quinn already knew. Quinn pulled the shorter man as close as he could, breathing in the lovely scent of Bert’s hair while snowflakes melted against his nose.
When Bert could finally speak again, he shifted his head on Quinn’s shoulder so that his words were not muffled against the other’s skin, instead spoken plainly into the night air. “I love you like seeing the first snow every day.”
FIN