[08:09 PM]
When you finish work—snatching and paying for some late-night snacks to take home, before bidding goodnight to the clerk that relieves you from your shift—the biting cold of the night air is the first thing your body registers as you step out of the street mart and into the night. A shiver immediately passes over you, and you reach down to adjust the sleeves of your jacket, tugging them as low over your wrists and hands as you can manage while still holding the plastic grocery bag. The nights are getting cooler now, autumn shyly making its greeting as the evenings set in with each passing day, and the warning of winter lingering just beyond.
You suppose you didn’t mind, at least not much. While you weren’t the biggest of fans for the dead of winter, dry cold weather—this chilly evening night was much more manageable than the sweltering heat of the summer. Summer, paired with the monsoons and sticky humid season where rain clouds danced on the horizon; tantalizing, yet never quite bringing the rain. Still, you weren’t really prepared for it to be as cold as it currently was, and your thin jacket barely helped to ease the goosebumps slowly swarming across your skin underneath your clothing where the wisps of cool air crept through the threads.
Thankfully, the walk from work to home was short and simple. It was a straight shot, completely lit by the yellow overcast of the street lamps and the bright neon glows of store signage. Your neighborhood was friendly and just busy enough that you never worried too much getting off late, though the quiet of a mid-week night made the streets seem almost eerily quiet, paired with the chill of the night. Although it only took you about ten minutes to arrive home safely, you naturally could practically be considered cold blooded—at least for a human. You fumbled a bit with your keys to unlock your apartment, fingers stiff from the night cold. By the time you had your apartment door unlocked and swinging open, you were quick to discard the plastic grocery bag in your hand onto the floor at your feet.
Busying yourself with pulling your hands out of your thin jacket, rubbing them together to create some sort of friction of warmth, you hardly notice the door of the bathroom click open and Juyeon enter the room. In fact, he moves as quietly as a cat—feet padding lightly against the wooden floor, to the point that you don’t hear him at all. At least, not until his large hands wrap around yours, engulfing them in the instantaneous warmth of his own.
You glance up in surprise, words lost on the tip of your tongue as Juyeon’s smiling face leans down, claiming your lips for his own before he leans back with an even broader smile. “Hey, welcome home,” he greets, his voice rumbles, reverberating through the depths of his chest and back of his throat. He sounds like he’d just woken up.
In fact, as you study him a bit further, you’re certain he had just woken up—at least, not too long ago. He’s in loose hanging sweatpants and a gray hoodie, and his damp hair clings to portions of his forehead and temples where strands haven’t quite started to dry yet, telling you he’d just gotten out of a shower not long ago. Despite being damp, Juyeon radiates warmth—whether from his being or the fact that his shower was warm, you weren’t certain. His hands, swallowing yours, feel like a space heater.
“Were you gaming all night and slept the day away again?” You ask, and the smile that widens on his face into a soft grin, causing his eyes to also smile with the rest of his features, confirms your guess.
You let out a tsk, smiling in amusement and maneuvering your hands around in Juyeon’s grasp to idly play with his fingers.
“Chilly night?” He wonders, watching your hands tangle languidly. The feeling of your fingertips ghosting along his own digits causes his stomach to softly flip, content yet nervous. He loves the soft, tender touches like these. Ones filled with warmth and love. Yet the way it causes his heart to clench in his chest always feels foreign to him, despite how familiar he is with it.
“Your hands are freezing cold,” Juyeon comments, suddenly intertwining one of his hands with your own, pulling you toward the couch.
“It was, yeah. I can’t believe autumn is almost here, the year flew by...” Without a second thought, you follow him, and the two of you settle on the couch. He hums in agreement with your statement as he rests with his back against the arm, legs propped up, and you nestle between his legs, before laying on his torso to gather more warmth from him and his hoodie.
Juyeon quietly works at warming your hands, humming a tune softly that you’re sure is one of his songs. But you feel yourself and your mind melding into his warmth, and a fuzziness taking you over, and so you can’t quite place it despite it being familiar. As he rubs his hands over your own, long fingers massaging warmth back into your own smaller ones, you idly twist and turn your hands among his grasp, playing with his hands—loving the calloused yet soft feel, though ultimately making his job of warming you up harder.
You don’t remember falling asleep, but Juyeon watches you do so with a small smile on his face, interlocking fingers and pulling one of your hands into the sleeve of his hoodie. Slowly, he lifts his other to allow fingertips to dance along your temple and brush hair out of your face, before resting his palm against your head, slowly and rhythmically petting you until your breathing deepens even further.
He’s not quite sure how to sum up just how much he loves you into words; but moments of shared warmth like this are almost a good way to describe it. Like home.
