Chris spent three weeks watching JC's lips and wondering if they really would taste like sunshine the way that he thought they would. It was so easy, in the middle of the cold and dark European winter that reminded him so much of the cold and dark days when no one could tell him where his next meal would come from, to forget that he'd lived for so long where all you had to do to get warm was walk out the door and tip your head back to face the sky.

JC felt like late spring, like the time when you could smell the ocean in the air and everything was just starting to bloom. He smiled like sunrise and sang like the breeze on a cloudless day. Chris watched him and thought of slipping on his sunglasses, lying on the beach, dipping his toes into the chill shock of water that was always colder than it looked like it should have any right to be. Chris thought of leaning over and kissing, tasting, drawing that little bit of warmth into him and holding it tightly.

When JC kissed him, it was like being splashed with a wave, cool and bracing. JC drew back and smiled. "I wanted to see if you tasted like snow," he said.

Chris spent two days wondering what he'd meant by it, until, sitting on the curb of a hotel in Austria and watching as the flakes whispered gently out of the sky to transform everything they touched into something new and strange, he finally began to understand.

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