Library Afternoons & Midnight Parties - Completed.

6 years later.

Through the half open curtains Austin could see that it was snowing lightly when he woke up early that morning, suffering from the jetlag he'd had since they came back from Syria last night. Austin had been send there for work, to write a report about human rights in the refugee camps – for almost a week he and Alan had seen the misery and the grief in one of the biggest refugee camps near the border with Turkey. It was an experience they both wouldn't forget, and if by some miracle they did they would still have the photos Alan had taken that week. But the photos didn't even do the situation back there enough justice, even though Alan had captured every right moment, as usual.

They made a great team, Alan and him. Austin had graduated cum laude for his master's degree in journalism studies the year after he met and tutored Alan, which was also the year Alan finally decided to take a photography course and pursue his dream of becoming a photographer – and becoming one he did. They had never been apart anymore; when Alan was kicked out of college, he moved to Boston for three months with Austin, and after that he had gotten a job and rented a small studio above Gio's that John had owned. Alan didn't have a lot of contact with his father in that time, but his mother was dedicated on trying to restore the relationship with her son. She had accepted Austin with open arms because she knew he made Alan happy, and on his turn Austin really liked her.

In the past years he had only seen Alan's father three, maybe four times when they went back home in California for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Harold hardly ever spoke to them, and when he did their conversations were short and about daily topics. Austin had accepted the fact that he would probably never have any kind of normal relationship with the father of his boyfriend, but at least he could say that he had tried.

He shivered a bit when Alan made some incoherent noises in his sleep and turned around, pulling most of the covers with him, leaving Austin uncovered and cold. It was a habit that Alan used to show a lot and that Austin hated, especially at five thirty AM on a very cold morning in December. But when he turned on his side and wanted to snuggle up to the ginger that was still the only person he would ever love, Alan seemed so relaxed and so comfortable that Austin didn't want to wake him up. And he was too awake to be lying in bed any longer anyway.

It was even colder when he got out of bed, trying to find a pair of socks and something warm in the messy wardrobe in their small bedroom without waking Alan up. When he was dressed against the cold – a checkered pyjama pants, a hoodie and some socks that were a bit too small for him so it were most likely Alan's – he softly closed the door and walked into their living room.

They had moved to New York five years ago, when Austin had graduated and got offered a job at the New York Times. He didn't hesitate for a minute, and luckily neither had Alan and so they had moved to the Big Apple. Their apartment was small and old, but it was big enough for the both of them and they had made it their home. Alan worked as a freelance photographer and accompanied Austin on most of his field trips; together they had seen a lot of the world already, from South America to South Africa, and from Europe to Asia. Every place in the world where something was going on, Austin would be send to write a report and Alan would be at his side to take photos of the situation. Sometimes the events were good and they would come home with a lot of happy memories of a beautiful place they had been, other times the situation they were send to was tense and critical.

The refugee camps in Syria had literally been horrific, even more now it was winter and over there it was just as cold as it was here in New York. It had even been dangerous, and Austin and Alan hadn't been allowed into the camp without security and an interpreter.

While making his routine through the kitchen – putting on the coffee machine, popping a bagel in the toaster, filling Nugget's bowls with fresh food and water – Austin overthought what he had witnessed in the past week. The people in the camp had been beyond poor and robbed from everything that they had ever owned, and their situation was heart breaking. There had been tents made from plastic and everything else that could be used for as far as the eye could see, children were playing around in the mud as their mothers were hiding in their tents or behind their burqas; and it had been so damn cold. He would never forget the sound of parts of tents flapping in the icy wind and the miserable look on people's faces.