Winter
Nick looks up from his stare at the surface of his desk as he hears the swinging of the door, just audible above the usual background office chatter. Katherine's usually pale cheeks are flushed pink with cold as she pushes her way through the door, her hair unkempt and hastily brushed back from her face. Tiny flakes of snow remain in her tangled locks. She's wearing only a thin light blue blazer covering one of her usual short-sleeved blouses, and she's obviously feeling the effects of the frosty morning outside.
"Good morning," he greets somewhat sympathetically. "Is it cold out there?"
Katherine fights to hide her shivers, though it's a little too obvious what her answer would be when her arms are still folded tightly around her torso, trying to conserve the little body heat she has left. "It's not that cold," she lies.
Nick has to chuckle at her adamancy. "Right. And the reason you weren't wearing any layers, despite the fact it's quite obviously an icy January morning outside?"
"My car refused to start," replies his superior bitterly as she makes her way across the office. "And I was already running late as it was. The apartment lift froze overnight, so I had to take the eleven storeys of stairs, and the incredibly helpful weatherman neglected to mention the fact that it would start snowing halfway through my walk."
"Not a great start to the day," Nick has to concede.
"Why is it so cold in here?" Katherine wants to know.
"Unfortunately, the heating broke here as well," explains Nick ruefully. "We're basically surviving on warming our hands on scalding mugs of coffee and layering up with whatever warm jumpers we can find in the store cupboards."
"Great." Katherine sinks into a seat a desk away, looking somewhat enviously at the aforementioned cup of coffee that Nick cradles between his own palms. "Fantastic. Call ourselves a technology company, and we can't even fix our own heating."
"Here." Rather awkwardly, Nick gets up from his seat across the room and slides his jacket that had up until around five seconds ago been wrapped over the back of his office chair, over Katherine's bare shoulders. "Help you warm up a little."
Accepting the fact that she would probably freeze if she didn't at least try to raise her body temperature in the next few minutes, Katherine smiles thinly and pulls the slightly oversized jumper around her still-shaking shoulders. "Thanks, Nick."
"Well –" Nick looks slightly embarrassed as he makes his way back to his own desk, returning only moments later with a similar mug to his own that he passes over to Katherine. He must have somehow been keeping it warm on his desk for her. Katherine has to smile at the notion that Nick had thought to get her a mug of coffee as well as his own regular one every morning. "Can't have you freezing, can we?"