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English
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Published:
2023-12-05
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1,044
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1/1
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Hot Water Bottle

Summary:

— “Hawk?” He calls, the sound rubbery and weak, like a first step into fresh snow.

The latch answers, knocking back on the wood solidly, scraping and hissing. The door yawns half-open, Hawk standing in the hollow of its lamp-lit throat. He doesn’t say anything, he looks wet, almost dripping. A lock of hair collapses into his eye. He doesn’t blink. —

(Tim goes to Hawk’s apartment in the middle of winter.)

Notes:

I’m posting this in my work break because the brain rot is real and I can’t last till next Friday guys i need more of them
Please come scream about them with me on tumblr <3 @CarrotCakeCrumble

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

The night’s cold and the frost has dulled everything to just a shade less colourful than it was before. It grips metal like a weed, growing vascular around front door handles, lamp-posts and parked car windscreens. Even the hidden crucifix scolds against Tim’s collar bone. The sky is dark and the white moon pools on the pavement in lavender bleach stains, it cracks bright against puddles and divots of black ice. He forgot to bring a coat. It’s the middle of winter and he forgot to bring a coat and his jumper is an old one, with loose threads and holes.  He had managed, up until now, to ignore a particularly large one on his left shoulder. The exposed slash of skin itches and aches. It’s painful, and he’s grateful when the cold digs it’s way in deeper with two fingers and the itch subsides. The numbness that follows is better, but hardly, and only if he believes a good can be squeezed out of the comparison of two bads. 

 

He couldn’t say what he believes anymore.

 

He’s been standing outside of Hawk’s apartment for a long time. Long enough to turn his hands into claws and lips into dead scabs. He wishes, not even really conscious of the desire, for a hot water bottle. It’s really a wish for smaller, maybe even simpler, times. His mother would always make up the hot water bottle when the winter settled in. It was an old one from when she was young, he supposed, once he had grown old enough to understand there was a time when she could have been young. Just as young as him, just as cold as him, just as human. It was a side of her he had faith existed because of stories and logic, not because he had ever seen it.

 

The hot water bottle was an actual bottle,  small and tin, which would be filled with boiling water straight from the stove and then wrapped in a wobbly patchwork of knitted squares. A blanket she had started and never finished. Of course, she had taken the time to tie up it’s corners and find a purpose for it. He had half formed, hazed memories of the colourful knit work;  the warmth, the colours, his mothers marble hand delicately  rolling and wrapping it into a little, patchwork pill. She would tuck it beneath his arm, leaning close enough for a kiss but never offering one, and smooth the wrinkles from his duvet haph-hazardly. She liked things to be perfect, but had the tragic habit of only being able to give herself to half the task. A half blanket, a half wrinkled duvet, and a half loved son. 

 

His skin sticks to the metal as he wrenches the door open. It’s warm inside. After a jagged sprint up the stairs, he’s almost sweating. God he’s sweating. There’s frost on the tips of his fringe and he’s sweating. 

 

He knocks. The sound is hollow, the wood is cold. It doesn’t open but there’s noise from inside, feet shuffling on the floor like a whisper, furniture creaking with a tired voice. 

 

“Hawk?” He calls, the sound rubbery and weak, like a first step into fresh snow.

 

The latch answers, knocking back on the wood solidly, scraping and hissing. The door yawns half-open, Hawk standing in the hollow of it’s lamp-lit throat. He doesn’t say anything, he looks wet, almost dripping.  A lock of hair collapses into his eye. He doesn’t blink. 

 

Tim swallows pure grit and croaks, “Hawk.” 

 

He hit’s the k like a shovel piercing ground and then stops, digging his own grave, he thinks, right down to hell. Shut up now and leave. Just leave and never come back and right now nothing feels more hopeless and more painful then to do just that. So he stays, with nothing to say, he stays and he’s glad he does because a hand as seering as a hot water bottle sweeps out and grips him around the arm. He see’s swirling moonlight on black ice as he’s pulled inside, the blazing lamp-light engulfs his peripherals and then it’s dark, dark because his eyes are closed and he’s flat against the wall and his hair is being pinched by the light-switch. He doesn’t care. There are lips on his, hands searching him like they might find all the dropped stitches and weave them back into place. He runs cold fingers through wet hair, still warm from the shower and as he grips and pulls he feels it flood the front of his jumper, finding all the holes to dribble through and soak his skin. Soon, he’s half wet himself, it steams him. He shivers away the last of the cold, embracing the heat with a shuddering groan. It’s ripped out of him by the hot breath of the man on his mouth.

 

“Hawk.” It’s gasped out as a full mouthful, mumbled against lips and cheeks.

 

Hawk says in a concerned voice that Tim will think about when he leaves, “ you’re freezing. Why’d you come out without a coat ?” But he doesn’t wait for an answer. 

 

You’re the answer, Tim thinks, you. You. And you know it. That’s the worse part. 

 

The sex is quiet; as tender and private as if it were words exchanged in confession. There’s breath, and quick bursts of laughter, and sometimes something more grounding like the squeal of springs or the slam of a headboard. It’s hot under the covers, and there’s sweat on places where Tim’s insides feel cold. They’re laying half wrapped in the other and Tim thinks, as his hand swirls in still-wet hair, that Hawk’s love is hot but hot like boiling water in a tin bottle and patchwork blanket, not hot enough. He warms you from the outside-in, only on one side and never for long enough to reach the raw, shivering centre. 

 

Tim takes it, a bit like he takes the almost kiss from his mother or the half knitted quilt. He takes it, and he burns on it as he tucks it under his arm, near his heart, right where the little silver crucifix has slithered. 

 

His arm is around Hawk and as they silently drift to sleep, his right side grows frost.



Notes:

Thanks for reading!!! Sorry nothing happened I’m slightly allergic to making something not boring, anyway comments are always so appreciated!!! <333