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It’s winter dawn. The air is sharp and cold even in the bedroom, and Gheorghe wakes up sweating with Johnny’s hair in his mouth. Johnny’s leg lies heavy across his own, arm snug around Gheorghe’s waist, face buried warm against his neck.
Gheorghe shifts a little, only for Johnny to pull him even closer—something Gheorghe did not think was possible.
He lays awake in bed for the next twenty minutes until their alarm goes off, and Johnny finally peels himself away from him to turn off the alarm.
“Morning,” Johnny mumbles and presses a kiss against Gheorghe’s jaw. “You up for long?”
Gheorghe almost tells him: approximately one near-death from overheating.
The third-day-rain promises another morning of cold and damp. Gheorghe peers out the kitchen window as he scrapes scrambled eggs off the frying pan onto their plates. The fields blur softly behind the rain-streaked window, and Gheorghe can almost feel the mud under his shoes already.
The kettle whistles on the stove. Johnny makes his way to the kettle but stops as he passes Gheorghe. He pulls Gheorghe against him and buries his face into his back. “Cold,” Johnny says, voice muffled against Gheorghe’s sweater. Usually, Johnny steals warmth in passing. A brief hand at Gheorghe’s waist, a shoulder bump, a kiss before work. This morning he stays.
Gheorghe reaches over to turn off the stove and lets Johnny cling to him while he fills the teapot.
“Morning you two,” comes Deirdre’s voice behind him, curt and clipped yet comforting all the same, and Johnny straightens at once.
“Good morning,” Gheorghe says and watches Johnny go pink all the way to the ears.
He hides a smile in his tea.
The heavy clouds live up to their promise, too much so, as Gheorghe wipes away rain from his eyes. In weather this unfortunate they usually take it easy, but three days of rain has left the sheep needing checking, fencing sagging in places where the ground has turned soft beneath it.
Gheorghe’s socks are damp in his boots, gloves useless in this miserable state of matters, and he remembers briefly the day he once considered leaving farming behind. Johnny says little. He only blinks rain from his eyes and hammers another nail into the fence, jaw set hard against the weather. When lightning first cracks across the sky, they take the cue and duck into a small shelter some yards away.
Johnny swears as he slips on the mud, and Gheorghe steadies him by the elbow before he can fall. Beneath the shelter they stand close without meaning to. They’re both shivering, harder now that they’ve stopped moving. Gheorghe fishes a cigarette from his pocket. Somehow it’s barely damp. “One?” he offers.
Johnny simply shuffles closer. Gheorghe draws his first breath from the lit cigarette, the sudden warmth a pleasant welcome. He exhales, watching the smoke drift between them, and absurdly Johnny leans into the fading warmth of it. “Fucking freezing,” Johnny mutters. He takes a drag from the cigarette, so sharply he coughs from the force of it. “Fucking hate it.”
Gheorghe hums in agreement, tips the cigarette ashes off. “You are used to this, no?”
“Aye. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.” His voice nearly disappears behind the rain.
After another inhale, Gheorghe gestures Johnny closer. Johnny obliges, looking mildly confused, but lets Gheorghe tilt his chin up to kiss him on the mouth. Slowly, but certainly, Gheorghe exhales into him, warm smoke and breath passing between them. “Better?” Gheorghe asks.
Johnny’s eyelashes flutter. He kisses Gheorghe this time. “Again.” He pulls Gheorghe closer, shoving one hand deep into Gheorghe’s jacket pocket. With the other, Johnny takes another drag and breathes warmth back into Gheorghe, gentler now, just as Gheorghe had done.
They smoke the rest of the cigarette like this, shoulders touching, trading brief scraps of warmth between drags. Johnny stays close. Closer than usual. One hand remains buried in Gheorghe’s pocket long after warmth should have been found. “Don’t laugh,” Johnny mutters, his forehead against Gheorghe’s shoulder. “Can’t feel my bloody hands.”
“So now I am a heater?”
“Shut up.”
They come home soaked.
“Christ alive, look at the state of you,” Deirdre says, eyeing them both up and down as they drip water onto the kitchen floor. “Change out of those things before you keel over.”
Gheorghe shrugs off his raincoat and immediately puts the kettle on. Johnny follows him close, like he’s still trying to siphon warmth off of him. While the kettle is running, they change into dry clothes in the bedroom. Gheorghe removes his damp sweater and undershirt, only for Johnny to pull him close with his icy hands.
“Get off,” Gheorghe says, but doesn’t move away. “You are cold. I am also cold.”
“Why?” Johnny complains. “We’ve been cold all day together.”
Gheorghe can’t help but laugh softly. “That much is true.”
Later that night, after their shower, Johnny immediately curls into a ball in bed with three layers of blankets on him and it’s barely nine o’clock. “You only do this when something’s wrong,” Gheorghe says.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Johnny says from somewhere beneath the blankets. He pokes his head out and pulls Gheorghe to bed by his wrist. Gheorghe lets him, and only smiles to himself when Johnny holds him tight, his breath hot against his throat.
“What’s the point of a bloody shower if it can’t warm you up,” Johnny mumbles against his skin.
Gheorghe laughs lightly through his nose. “You are clingy today.”
Johnny remains silent for a beat. Then, quieter: “Cause you let me be.” He takes Gheorghe’s hands, still cold at the fingertips, and breathes into them.
“Mm,” Gheorghe says, warmth gathering slowly in his palms. “Very clingy.” Still, he gives into the urge to shift closer, tucking himself against Johnny until his head rests over the slow, steady beat of Johnny’s chest. There are moments when it feels to Gheorghe as though Johnny has placed something fragile and wordless in his keeping, something he wants suddenly, fiercely, to protect with his life.
“Who’s the clingy one now?” Johnny murmurs, fingers drifting through Gheorghe’s hair.
Gheorghe only presses closer. Sleep pulls softly at him, along with the familiar thought that he’ll wake overheated come morning, tangled up in too much warmth and too little space. And it seems to him, sleep-heavy and warm, that this must be what it is to stumble into something good and find it waiting.