Robin is used to sleeping in the cold. Temperatures in Sherwood Forest drop below freezing every winter, and he's accustomed to burrowing under furs and capes, to sleeping three men to a tent to pool heat, to moving closer (but never too close) to the fires. He's used to the bite of wind, and to having a nose that's always a bit red.
What he's not used to is waking up in the middle of the night, in shorts and a vest, sprawled across a soft mattress, and shivering.
You'd think he would be with how often it happens, and yet.
Regina, his darling soulmate, his wonderful love, is a blanket hog. Unused to sharing her bed after so many years alone, she somehow always manages to cocoon herself in their cotton sheets and their down comforter, creating a warm little burrow to keep her toasty throughout the night—and leaving Robin out in the cold.
He wakes tonight, like so many other nights, gooseflesh on his arms, blue moonlight pouring in through the windows, and not a scrap of bedding to cover him.
He sits, he scowls, scrubbing a hand over his face and squinting at her beneath mounded warmth beside him. She doesn't make it easy to find a way into her fortress, but then, she never has, has she? The blankets are piled and twisted and tucked, and after a few minutes, he simply gives up and molds himself to the outside of it, curling himself around her back.
He'll glean whatever warmth he can manage that way.
It wakes her. Not right away, but after fifteen minutes of a heavy arm across her torso, just as he's dropped back off into sleep himself, he's vaguely aware of the way she stirs against him. A warm sleeper she may be, but not a light one. She groans and stretches and turns from her side to her back.
She's still for a moment, and Robin hovers in that place between sleep and wakefulness, that twilight place where one has a foot in and out of dreamland. Then he feels the soft press of her lips on the bridge of his nose, and a slow unfurling between them. She shifts, wriggles, and suddenly there is warmth, blessed warmth, a pocket of access beneath the blankets between them.
Robin moves toward it with a grateful moan, slipping a knee inside, both of them moving sleepily until he's managed to worm his way into her cocoon. Legs weave together, and arms wind and encircle. Regina lets out a contented sigh, and Robin presses a kiss into the bit of shoulder that peeks out at him, his voice sleep-graveled as he murmurs, "And you call me the thief…"
She laughs, a soft, sleepy breath of a thing, a slurred apology on her lips.
He's warm now, all wrapped up in her, the cold forgotten in the wake of her proximity.
In moments, they're both sound asleep.
