Cold Leather Hot Breath
Cold weather sharpens the edge of want between two men pretending not to feel it.
The Gathering Frost
You ever walk out into a corridor washed in too-bright fluorescents, shoulders hunched, pulse half an octave higher than usual, the biting cold outside still clinging to your hair and making your skin feel thinner than it is? That was me, tonight, in the staff passage that runs behind the surgical ward. Not my hallway. Not my hospital, not anymore. But old habits break late and late shifts break harder. I shouldn’t have been here. Maybe it was Shaan's voice echoing in my memories, maybe it was the unfinished business whispering from the abandoned records, or maybe it was that secret hope I carried like a talisman. If you belong to the world of after-hours men, the men who know the sound shoes make across frozen November pavement, who keep secrets curled under their coats like flasks, then you know why I came back.
I’d barely crossed the threshold from the alley, the stench of snow-piss and motor oil chasing me in, before I spotted him: Shaan. His figure was a striking silhouette against the fluorescent glare, the kind that made you keenly aware of presence before detail. He was half-disguised in a scuffed ICU jacket, gray hospital badge swinging from a lanyard, head ducked over a clipboard bristling with forms written by a dozen other hands. There was a raw magnetism in the way he moved, an energy that pulled focus. It resonated in my chest and lower. His tired look, the kind of exhaustion that seemed etched into the lines of his face, was underscored by the fierce-browed surgeon’s set, a stubborn tilt to his mouth. It created a current in the cold air between us, charging the space as if filling it with the unspoken. My body registered it instinctively. A sensation sparked, one I couldn't yet name. But it’s not that kind of story. Not yet.
Shaan looked up at me the way a man looks at a fire alarm when he’s already halfway to the exit: wary, calculating, almost hopeful. I raised a hand. Cold made every joint clumsy. No one else was around, but we both glanced anyway—each of us scanning for the invisible eyes of this place. The old names drifted through my head: Maggie, in Admin, who’d clocked my weird hours two winters back. Dr. Roseland, always citing ‘policy.’ But tonight it was just us and the hum of mechanical heat.
“Didn’t think you’d show.” Shaan’s voice had an edge—an undertone of smoke, of things unsaid and maybe unsayable in daylight. Still, he didn’t move away.
“I hate the cold,” I said. I shrugged my hands deeper into jacket pockets, key fobs digging into my palm like awkward reminders. “But I hate leaving things unfinished worse.”
For a moment, all I could hear was the building settling, the hiss of air from the ancient vents overhead. Shaan’s fingers flicked the edge of his clipboard, his knuckles shining from winter dryness. The silence was heavy, full of the ache that only builds when you have to call someone by their last name in rounds, and by their favorite nickname in the blackout of your own car. I thought about the old clipboard-ritual: every note a kind of ledger, every handoff a coded promise that care wouldn’t end with a shift. Around here, promises get broken all the time. But some men keep theirs out of the spotlight, in places colder, quieter, more honest than daylight allows.
“You look the same,” Shaan said, trying for casual but missing. “Except colder. Heart still working?”
I caught his gaze—too long, then too sharp. “How about you? Still walking around like nothing touches you? Still pretending you don’t need help or a damn night off?”
Something in his shoulders tightened, then released, a controlled exhale before he allowed a lopsided smile. “Some of us don’t get to choose when to stop pretending.” Then, quieter: “Not here, anyway.”
His words echoed down a corridor of old memories—pulling code blues with numb fingers, waiting until everyone else left the break room to unwrap my last protein bar, glaring at a ledger in the office, wishing my signature meant more.
“So,” he said, “why really come back?”
I wanted to say it was for the keys I left in his glove box, or because I’d left an old scarf in the on-call room, or because Maggie in Admin owed me an apology. None were real. The truth was need, sharp as frost and bitter as loss. It was the kind of need that sinks its teeth into you when you're walking home alone, the streetlights casting your shadow in the wrong direction. A need not just for closure, but for connection—something honest and enduring. It brought me back to the night we sneaked into the supply room, Shaan's laugh bouncing off the metal shelves as we shared that last stolen moment before rounds, when he whispered promises under the flickering light. That night, we had carved our initials into the underside of the workbench, a reckless act binding us to this place and to each other. Loneliness had followed me like a stray dog, nipping at my heels, reminding me of the spaces that once held warmth but now echoed with emptiness. I needed to stand here, with Shaan, as a testament to what was and what might never be. Sometimes we need witnesses, even if only one.
But I bit back the confession. Instead, I watched the way Shaan’s jaw worked as he waited. He was always the type to wait just long enough for the other guy to fill the silence. The air in here bore traces of disinfectant and winter sweat, and a faint ghost of floral soap—a reminder of a nurse with heavy perfume, or Shaan’s own private rituals. Hospital air always tastes like longing. Especially at night.
“You want the truth,” I said. “I owed you a promise. The Ledger Night. You said we had to do it before year-end.”
His laugh surprised us both—a chuff, low and nearly tender. “You remember that dumb legend?”
“You made it up,” I shot back. “Or your uncle did. Something about the last person to sign the staff ledger before midnight would have luck for a year. Or… get haunted by their mistakes, I guess.”
Shaan’s smile kinked wider, but his eyes held shadows. "It's a real thing. Back at St. Jude's, nurses would fight for the spot. Said it cleaned the slate. Or, if they were alone, you leave an extra line for the person you couldn’t say goodbye to. The promise is: nobody leaves forgotten." There was one story about a nurse named Lila who, years ago, insisted on being the last to sign. Rumor had it she had lost her mother that winter, and every year, she'd add a line for her. They said the ledger was her way of keeping her mother close, ensuring she wasn't erased by time. Each entry Lila made became a small act of remembrance, whispered about over late-night coffees among staff, deepening the mythos of the ledger.
Standing there, the cold gnawing both in and out, I pictured my own name inked in a ledger. Too many patients I still felt under my tongue at night. Too many men who only knew my hands in the dark, not at the bedside.
Shaan handed me the clipboard, the gesture both offering and warning. I took it, our hands touching—briefly. Just skin and skin, dry and tense, but five years of unsaid things sparking in that press of knuckles. I tried to focus, to scribble my name. My hand shook like it always does when memory gets too close. I made it a ritual: write, pause, pass the pen; see if he’d linger.
He did. His handwriting was more careful than mine—loops even and bold, letters pressed deep. He looked up, eyes searching. “You remember the first time we did this?”
A blur—hospital party, too many bodies pressed in too small a space. Laughter, the rumors about two guys caught taking a break in the supply closet, voices echoing in the stairwell. I remembered the dare: sign together so nobody would ever know which name was which.
“I remember,” I said. “I remember your hand on my back when I thought I’d collapse.” I didn’t add: I remember wishing you’d never let go.
Time stretched thin. I could almost believe we were the only ones awake in the building, the night ours if we reached for it. But we didn’t reach. Not yet.
At the edge of the fluorescent circle, a shadow wheeled past—orderly on rounds, oblivious. We both stepped back, a practiced dance. Our shadows blurred together under hospital light and I thought of all the men who’d walked this corridor before us, their stories left behind in scrawled initials, leather-worn ledgers, notes that kept one another alive long after the flesh was gone.
“So what happens now?” Shaan whispered—it wasn’t a question for me, not really. It was for some unwritten rule, an after-hours code. It was the question every man in this position has to ask: Do we act, or just remember?
“I go,” I said, and the cold finality hurt. “But I leave a line. For you, in case you need to write something you can’t say. For next time.”
His eyes softened, the promise caught between protest and refusal. Outside, the wind rattled the steel exit. Inside, his hand hovered, then landed gently on my sleeve—hardly a touch, but enough to set every old bruise aching again.
“Next time,” Shaan said. Voice careful—almost careful enough to hide hope. “But you have to promise you’ll come back before the cold kills you. Not after.”
I wanted to answer—a thousand things: I never stopped wanting, not after my mother’s first cancer scare, not after the last patient coded on my watch, not after you left me freezing outside while you finished your rounds. But I only managed, “I promise. For the ledger. For us.”
And that was ritual—it had to be. We took the clipboard, the pen now our icon, and left our marks together under indifferent light. Behind us, the corridor remembered more than we did. It always would.
Shaan pocketed the ledger, not looking at me. His ears shone dark with cold. We lingered—too sharp, too aware. Both knowing tonight was rehearsal. Foreplay built from care, want, myth, and the fear of being seen by anyone but each other. But I swear, even the shadow of his mouth near mine left teeth-marks I’d feel for days.
He whispered, meant only for me: “Next time, don’t bring the cold in with you. Just bring yourself.”
We parted before the need uncoiled, but left a line behind—a promise etched deeper by the night.
