To Drive the Cold Winter Away
Disclaimer: The characters and show do not belong to me; if they did, well, let's just say some things would've turned out differently.
Rating: T
Spoilers: Takes place well before the end of last season. There are really no mentions of anything that happened on the show beyond the establishment of their relationship.
Author's Notes: Six drabbles that I wrote as a birthday present for one of my dearest friends, and fellow writer-in-crime, Heather. She was kind enough to edit it for me (and not just because this year's story didn't make her cry). A special thanks to her for the gentle push to get me to post once again, and all her patience in the meantime.
Detective Jess Angell has always loved winter. Growing up amongst a pack of brothers, the first snowfall meant it was time to work on your snowball sharp-shooting , and the art of dodging, sure-footed on ice or in slush, the onslaught of spheres directed back at you. Winter in New York meant skating in Central Park, scarfing your street dog before it cooled, and burning your tongue on your hot chocolate because you couldn't wait to taste the sweet warmth. Now it means sharing your duvet with a certain blue-eyed colleague, naked, and it really is the best time of year.
*
Ice-cold toes curling around his calf rouse Detective Don Flack from his deep slumber as surely as if a gun muzzle had just been pressed to his neck. When he half-sits up at the shock of it, blinking and breathing hard in the darkness of the late winter predawn, Jess mutters in her sleep and curls into his vacated warm space. She doesn't stir when he leans over to grab the wool socks stranded on the floor. He carefully recovers her icy feet, and then lies back down to pull her close, calves safe once more, crisis averted once again.
*
Sharing your bathroom in the morning with your boyfriend is a lot like getting ready while dealing with a bunch of hairy, smelly, half-brained brothers. Jess considers this as she sets her coffee on the vanity next to a bottle of after-shave and some hair gel and uses the toes of her right foot to nudge the toilet seat back down again to its proper position. There are some perks, however, that blow any comparisons out of the water. She strips off the over-sized NYPD shirt and joins her warm, willing partner in the shower under the hot, pounding spray.
*
Memories of an amazing morning with an even more amazing woman are far from Flack's mind as he leaves the perp cooling his heels in Interrogation and heads for the coffee, hoping for something more than dregs to wash out the bitter aftertaste in his mouth. He is intercepted at his desk by the sight of a steaming cup of joe from Rinaldi's, the nearby hole-in-the-wall diner that makes the best coffee in the city. However, it is Jess, holding the coffee, which stops him in his tracks, red-cheeked, snowflakes on her lashes; he has never seen anything more beautiful.
*
Jess is icing her temple when Don bursts through her apartment door. He hasn't seen her since she brought him coffee earlier, and there's been a lot of chasing, falling, and paramedics since then. It's not the first time either has been injured on the job, and it won't be the last, but today he has a hard time reconciling the image of her unconscious on the ice with the one of her all wet in the shower this morning.
"You know I love you, right?" He lays a tender hand against her cheek and kisses her soft, smiling mouth.
*
"How is reading to me from Sports Illustrated supposed to keep me awake?" Jess ignores his smirk and attempts to settle her head more comfortably on his shoulder.
"Well, I'm not reading Cosmo, and I don't think you're up for my other idea." This earns him a retaliatory kick that only jars her head a little.
"I already said I don't mind watching the game." She flicks on the TV and he drops the magazine readily, not minding in the least. "You know I love you, too, right?"
He smiles, and the winter night closes like a cocoon around them.