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Jack runs hot in his sleep, Nathan has learned in the past year. And because of that more nights than not Nathan wakes up with chilled because Jack has kicked the duvet to the floor, overheated from the extra body in bed, his mussed hair sticking out at right angles, damp with sweat.
They’d tried asking Sarah to keep the bunker cooler at night, but that hadn’t stopped Jack kicking off the duvet and, once he had, Nathan just woke up even colder. So, in the end, they’d gone the low-tech route whereby Jack slept naked and Nathan usually wore a tee-shirt and boxers to bed. Or (if the night started out more, shall we say, active) kept an extra layer on hand for the inevitable duvet-flinging and resultant cold.
What Nathan hasn’t told Jack yet -- hasn’t found a way to tell him without sounding like that creepy stalker vampire from Twilight -- is that a part of him actually likes being woken up this way, in the dark and quiet of the early morning (on those nights when he actually makes it to Jack’s place instead of just falling asleep at his desk at GD), with Jack beside him. Jack sleeps restless as well as hot. Even if he’s started out the night in the circle of Nathan’s arms, or curled up against Nathan’s side, he flops over, twists around, rolls back again, until he’s spread-eagle across three-quarters of the Queen-sized bed, one arm torqued awkwardly behind, or flung out across the pillows. More often than not, Nathan wakes up huddled in the shoals of the comforter and can feel Jack’s body radiating heat like a meteor that’s just burned through the ozone layer. It’s then he gets to lie in the dark, considering the man next to him and think: mine.
He hadn’t been sure at first, not at all sure, that they’d find their way to each other. Hadn’t even been sure they’d work well together. Nathan knows he isn’t the easiest person to get along with -- oh, he can turn on the charm for members of Congress or the DOD policy wonks, but as Allie would be the first to attest that sort of charm doesn’t have much staying power.
People always got tired of him, in the end.
But in the middle of the night he can wrap himself in the rumpled duvet, smelling of skin and sweat and sex and sleep, and watch his lover’s shoulders rise and fall with every breath, and imagine that this time he’ll be able to do it right.
And sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly sentimental, Nathan leans up on one elbow and bows his head to place his lips against the nape of Jack’s neck, tasting the echo of Jack’s shampoo and the salt of sweat.
Jack stirs, but does not wake.