Hot and Cold

Pairing: Anderson Cooper/Jeff Corwin
Word Count: 4500
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Anderson is kind of slutty and Jeff is kind of smitten.
Author's Note: I wanted to call this "Anderpants in Peril" but, wiser heads prevailed. I've taken some liberties with Planet in Peril's shooting schedule. I don't know anything about Jeff Corwin's personal life, and I don't want to know. This is all incredibly fictional anyway.
Disclaimer: This is so incredibly fictional.

It took a year of planning before the shooting on Planet in Peril even started, contract negotiations and carefully worded agreements about who would get more screen time, who would cover what story, until Jeff's agent balked at the details of what colors CNN would allow Jeff to wear when sharing a screen with Anderson. CNN pays the bills and pulls the strings, that much is clear.

He met with Anderson around their schedules: Jeff's specials, Anderson's appearances in places made dangerous by politics more than climate. They both wear baby blue, but Anderson looks better in it.

When they shoot the markets in Thailand, Anderson is abstracted, not self-conscious undercover, but looking like he wants to be, chin angled slightly down, eyes up. Anderson has friends among the cameramen, people whom he can ask intimate questions about family and it doesn't seem rehearsed. Jeff wants to get closer, to be the one who gets a look right in the eye, a strong hand on his forearm. He does sometimes, when they're scripted close together, asking and answering each other's questions.

"What do you think it's going to be like?" he asked his agent when CNN first proposed the idea.

"I think it will be great. Anderson Cooper will have his charm, his persona, and you . . . have your own style."

That's not why Jeff got a new agent, but it helped make the decision easier. He always hates watching the dailies, but never more than when he was to watch Anderson's picturesque frown and effortless gravitas as he delivers some bit of bad climate news, and then his own more goofy narration.

Anderson is well versed in how to dress in hot climates, something, Jeff knows, that only years of practice can teach: when to wear the thinnest of layers to wick sweat away, what brand of polo shirt both brings out his eyes and breathes in 110° heat.

Jeff can appreciate that because he had to learn it himself, over years of shooting in the hot, wet places of the world—much less sexy than it sounds, he says when he's interviewed. And you do get used to the heat eventually; it's still hot, but after years of being hot and wet and itchy and uncomfortable, it doesn't matter as much. You'll survive to reach a cold shower, and an air-conditioned van, a cold beer, and eventually a plane to a cooler place.

The day they finish shooting in the markets, he and Anderson take one of the river barges up from the overstaffed palace of a Sheraton where they're staying to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. All of the hotel shuttles give out face towels and water. The Mandarin boat gives out scented face towels. Jeff takes one gratefully; just because he knows how to deal with the heat doesn't mean he has to wallow in it.

Anderson takes his and pats his forehead with it, then folds it up in a square and turns it over in his hands. The sun is setting over the river, breaking through the rain clouds that threatened and spat at them all day. They have a reservation at one of the more casual terrace restaurants so they can watch the long tail boats go by in the gathering dusk. Jeff glances at Anderson. The scenery will be beautiful no matter where he looks.

"You ever get tired of saying ‘lemur'?" Anderson asks out of nowhere, like it's a normal question.

Jeff grins. "Nope."

"Me neither."

Jeff watched Anderson for years on TV, and can list the few times when they met before at various functions. He fell a little in love during Hurricane Katrina like the rest of the world did, and failed to fall out of love again, also like the rest of the world.

Anderson looks even better close up, out in the field, than hidden behind layers of staff and makeup, polished smiles, and what Jeff thinks of as his New York defensiveness. In the field Anderson is bright and sweet, vain and moody, and just as charming as Jeff always thought he'd be. His crush has now reached dangerous proportions, but he doesn't know Anderson any better than he did when the fourth wall separated them.

A uniformed porter with a placard that bears their names meets them at the dock and leads them to the restaurant. Their table is right on a balcony railing so they can watch the cargo barges go by, so heavily laden that they're almost submerged. Anderson orders one of the signature cocktails, bright, fruity and umbrella-ed, so Jeff doesn't feel self-conscious doing the same.

"This is the best way to experience the outdoors, I always think," says Anderson. It sounds like something he's rehearsing for talk shows.

"Not a fan of tents?"

"Give me a hotel any time. Even in Lebanon, when Israel was bombing—well, they pride themselves on their service, and they love the news guys."

"Do they?"

"The right hotels." Slight frown, as if Jeff posed the question seriously, not just to keep the conversation going. "Reporters drink a lot, and they've got expense accounts."

Jeff takes a sip of his drink. "And what's not to like about that?"

"How's your room?" Jeff asks, after their food comes. Anderson shoots him a look, and Jeff feels foolish. He didn't mean anything by it, but he should have remembered that the quality of the talent's rooms served as a way of measuring stature. "Fuck it. I didn't mean it like that."

Anderson smiles, crinkling up the edges of his eyes and replacing the word "handsome" with "cute" in Jeff's mind. "Good, because if you don't have a view, I'm going to be embarrassed."

"You have a view? I mean, so do I." Jeff added, joking. Anderson clearly feels self-conscious about being the bigger star.

"You can come see it, if you like. It's—"

"Not that great?"

"I was going to say ‘totally awesome.'"

Jeff's stomach flip-flops, and he changes the subject, leaving the invitation hanging out there. He doesn't mean . . .

"How do you think it's going to do?" Jeff asks when dessert arrives. He doesn't have to specify the "it." The "it" is what is on everyone's mind during expensive shooting like this.

Anderson's love for chocolate is almost painful to watch, as he sneaks tiny bites of the rich cake. Jeff wants to tell him just to dive in, but that sentiment is probably why Jeff's pants feel kind of tight and Anderson is still perfectly trim.

"People really do care about this stuff. Gore's movie won an Oscar." Anderson puts down his spoon and puts on his newscaster frown again, the frown of important subjects reported seriously. Then he picks the spoon up again and licks some traces of chocolate from it. "And even if they don't, it's good-looking people in exotic places." He shrugs.

"Like James Bond," says Jeff, waiting for Anderson to break character first.

"Except environmentally conscious. And no naked women."

"No naked men either." Jeff blushes when he says that, and Anderson smiles, more to himself than at Jeff, but it's not his made-for-TV grin either, but something impish. Not yet, anyway, Jeff thinks.

On the way back to the Sheraton, Jeff turns the water bottle over in his hands and looks across the bank at the other big hotels, the restaurants built on boats permanently moored in the river. Other nights he braved the streets and bundled his camera crews into tuk-tuks to find local eateries, but tonight he welcomes the luxury that wraps around them.

He doesn't ask for the invitation to be renewed, just follows Anderson up to his room. Gifts, corporate and native, are littered, half-unwrapped over the desk. Anderson sees Jeff looking at them. "I usually work in bed," he says, without a trace of irony. "My mom says that's why I never sleep."

Jeff makes a noncommittal noise—the casual, intimate detail Anderson shared makes him feel shy—and pulls aside the curtains covering the sliding glass doors that lead out to the balcony. "This is your view?"

Instead of saying the, "duh," which seems to Jeff like the appropriate response, Anderson says, "Mm-hmm. I'll show you in a sec. Have you tried a rambutan yet?"

Dare to eat a peach. Jeff's been all over the world and eaten much stranger things than the spiny little fruit, but Anderson wants to be the one to tell him this, so Jeff plays along.

"Not this trip."

"I always thought they were more photogenic than tasty." But he opens one anyway with a pocket knife, deftly cutting the flesh away from the pit. His hands move, graceful and clever, as if he's done this a million times before. The sight of his slim fingers flipping open the knife goes straight to Jeff's dick. Anderson tips half of the fruit from the knife into his mouth with those same neat, economical motions.

Jeff doesn't have time to think of that mouth around him because Anderson holds up half of the fruit for Jeff, at a height that is somewhere between mouth and chest height. Jeff doesn't know if Anderson's expecting Jeff to eat it from his fingers, or what so he chickens out and takes the white piece of fruit with his hand, but lets his fingers linger a moment too long.

If Anderson expected any different, he doesn't show it. "My view," he says, as he pulls back the curtains and opens the glass doors. They're fogged on the outside from the air conditioning running full blast. Between the two deck chairs is a bottle of wine, uncorked and chilling in an ice bucket. Anderson rolls his eyes. "They keep doing this."

Jeff suppresses the unworthy thought that no one's sending him wine. And he's not quite sure if he believes it either; Anderson projects sincerity almost all the time but Jeff's seen him lie with a perfectly straight face several times already on this trip.

Instead of sitting in one of the chairs, Anderson rests his forearms on the railing. Jeff stands next to him. "It's a nice view," he says. He and Anderson are of a height; he could just lean over and kiss him. But it's Anderson-fucking-Cooper, and maybe he doesn't do that, or maybe Jeff's misunderstanding everything about tonight.

Anderson turns around and leans back on the railing instead, half-turned toward Jeff, his shirt stretched across his chest. "You didn't come up here for the view. Or the fruit," he says, not asking.

"I thought you had some . . ." Some guy in New York. Jeff spreads his hands helplessly.

"Not when I'm traveling." Anderson pushes himself up off the railing, and is suddenly standing very close.

"You travel a lot," Jeff whispers. Anderson smiles at that, and then they're kissing, and Jeff can't remember who made the first move. Anderson tastes like chocolate and the light sweetness of the rambutan. He presses his hand against Jeff's cock through his khakis. Jeff wonders why he hesitated so much. This is easy.

The structure of the hotel hides the guest balconies from one another, so Jeff doesn't feel too self-conscious pressing Anderson up against the wood-paneled wall as Anderson's hands work themselves into Jeff's trousers. He gasps against Anderson's lips when Anderson's fingertips touch bare skin.

Jeff wants to say stupid things like I didn't think you noticed me and thank you, but instead hisses when teeth nip the skin of his neck. Anderson's hand teases him, but not enough to put off the end long enough, and he shudders his orgasm into Anderson's hand while the cool breeze from the river lifts the hairs on the back of his neck.

Then they stumble in through the sliding doors. Later, Jeff realizes that they left the doors open, pumped air conditioned coolness out into the clammy night, not so good for an environmentally conscious production. But he's too busy tugging Anderson's clothes off, wrapping his mouth around Anderson's dick, making Anderson's fingers curl in his hair to worry about that.

Jeff isn't particularly graceful when he sucks Anderson off, but it's messy and hot enough to make him hard all over when Anderson comes on his lips. He gets a lesson in the perfection of that skill when Anderson straddles him and returns the favor.

Watching Anderson's lips wrapped around him is almost as good as feeling them there. His eyes are closed, brow slightly furrowed in concentration, just like his serious newsman face, and imagining him in his anchor suit is what puts Jeff over the edge.

He tries not to be disappointed when they go back to the balcony and have a glass of wine, and instead of doing it all again only more so, Anderson seems to turn inward. He doesn't kick Jeff out, but he doesn't need to; the reserve is back.

Wrapped in a bathrobe, Jeff carries his clothes back to his room. It's down the hall, on the side of the hotel overlooking the tourist market that abuts all of the river hotels. He has a good view of the Sofitel Hotel and the other towering modern buildings that make up Bangkok's downtown. Nothing to complain about.

The next day they record a frustrating meeting with some higher-ups in the Thai police. They don't get much of import, and Jeff thinks it's likely they won't end up using this footage.

Anderson gives him a pleasant handshake at the airport and a genuine smile, with a touch of mischief in it, if Jeff wants to look for it. Anderson flies back to New York while Jeff goes to Madagascar.

He doesn't think about Anderson too much, except when he needs some extra special jerk-off material. It was fun, it was special, he'd do it again in a heartbeat, but if he doesn't get the opportunity, it's not going to kill him.

***

Three months pass before they meet up again in Greenland. Anderson shakes his hand abstractly, asks after Jeff's family and projects, but then it's too loud to talk in the helicopter that takes them over fjord-slashed islands to the inland camp.

Neither one of them has spent much time in cold weather like this, and it shows. Anderson pulls his hands up into his sleeves whenever he's not on camera, and walks around in little circles, pacing away the cold. The air turns warm the first day when the wind dies down, which seems pleasant but makes it so much worse when the wind comes up and dries his sweat.

Anderson is touchy here; he swears like a sailor here in the cold, when the cameras don't work properly and the tips of his ears turn red, and then white when he pulls his hood off for filming and has to wait like that.

"What the fuck—," he says ten, twenty, thirty times a day, and gets even more creative when his zipper gets stuck after having to take a leak in the lee of a huge snow cliff, when the hand-warmers the camp's set-up crew give them fail and have the opposite effect, when nothing works like it's supposed to in -40° weather.

It's late spring in Greenland when they start shooting. The sun's glancing rays shine almost all day, delivering little heat but too much light. Even in the wee hours of the morning, the sun sits half-submerged on the horizon, robbing everyone of sleep.

Elsewhere on the trip, in the Cambodian jungles, Anderson had his own tent; they all did, for privacy, and so Anderson could indulge his insomnia. Jeff often woke in the night to see the purplish nimbus from Anderson's laptop screen shining through the tent's fabric, or the glow of a flashlight silhouetting a book. If he listened carefully, he thought he could hear the pages turning, slow and steady, through the night.

There, Jeff slept well. Here is a different story. Here they share a tent, for warmth and in case of emergencies. If they had more on-air talent, they'd probably all pile into a tent together, but here it's Jeff and Anderson, rank separating them from any other sources of body heat.

After at an attempt to rappel down into a mullein that left Anderson frustrated and cursing, they take a helicopter back to their camp. They eat in the cramped kitchen of the scientist's lodge, far too many bodies in one place.

Anderson stirs his soup desultorily, and only glances at the dailies as they play on the tiny monitors set up above the sink. He wears one parka and has another wrapped around him like a blanket, hands in mittens clumsily grasping spoon and can.

"I'm turning in," he says when they're only half-done reviewing the dailies. "Cut what you can from the rappelling and, uh, lose the sound of course." He looks a little sheepish.

"Stay warm," says his assistant. "There's a storm coming tonight."

Anderson nods and quickly lets himself out of the kitchen, letting in a blast of cold air.

Jeff rubs the frost off his watch face and checks it: getting on toward midnight, and the sky still isn't remotely dark. It's easy to lose track of time here. He says goodnight to the room, and follows Anderson the twenty yards to the tent.

It's an all-weather tent, thick rip-stop nylon, in a garish yellow that turns gray and muddy as the wind whips snow into Jeff's field of vision. Anderson's already inside; Jeff can hear the rustling, the swish of synthetics against one another that somehow sounds different in this dry cold.

"Shut that, would you?" says Anderson by way of greeting, when Jeff has trouble with the zipper. Anderson reaches up and hangs the flashlight from the hook at the peak of the tent's dome, then rubs his forehead. "Sorry. I hate the cold."

Jeff sits down on his sleeping bag and tugs his boots off. He left his crampons outside, after firm instructions from the setup crew about not putting holes in their expensive tent. Snow covers Jeff's boots, and the cold makes his hands stiff and clumsy. Anderson flinches when a piece of snow lands on the outside of his sleeping bag, so Jeff brushes it off for him.

"More than the jungle?"

Anderson doesn't smile at that, much as Jeff hopes he will. "A lot more." He puts his fingers to his lips. They're chapped, same as Jeff's are.

"Chapstick?" Jeff starts patting himself down for it, but Anderson waves him off.

"It'll make the cold worse." There's a note of misery in his voice, which makes Jeff forgive the unfriendliness. "God, I hope I sleep tonight."

"I hope so too."

Anderson shifts himself down into his sleeping bag, still in his parka, still wearing mittens. Jeff's cold but it's not that bad; he's got a good thirty pounds on Anderson, not all of it muscle, and every bit of fat helps here.

"You're too skinny," Jeff says. "You should eat more."

"You sound like my Bubbe."

"You don't have a Bubbe."

"You sound like Jon."

"Jon Stewart?" Jeff asks. Anderson's good about not dropping too many names, but that's one Jeff envies.

"Yeah, he's everyone's Jewish Grandmother. Even has cards printed." Anderson sounds too tired to be funny. He yawns then inhales, a sharp hiss.

Lips cracking, Jeff thinks. No kissing here. "Sleep well." He sits up and turns off the flashlight.

"You too." Anderson turns over and faces away from him. He breathes deep and slow, but it sounds rehearsed, like he's already determined he won't sleep tonight, but if he can't will at least act the part. Jeff tries the same trick; he rarely has trouble sleeping, and almost never after a day of punishing exercise like this one, but he finds himself counting Anderson's exhalations and breathing more shallowly in order to hear the tiny shifts of Anderson's body.

He's shivering, Jeff realizes, in the quiet pause between breaths.

"Are you okay?" he asks, hardly above a whisper.

"Just cold. Sorry I'm keeping you awake."

Jeff doesn't answer for a moment. He can hear a rush in the distance, the approach of the predicted storm. Soon he won't hear Anderson shivering at all, won't hear anything above the wind battering their tent. He shivers himself as the sound grows louder.

"This is going to sound like a bad come on . . ." says Jeff, and waits a beat for some kind of response, "but if you want to zip our sleeping bags together, it will be warmer." Anderson still doesn't say anything. "I mean—"

"I'm just thinking about how much colder I'll get while we make the change."

"You won't." It's clumsy, but Jeff manages so they both stay mostly covered while he attaches the two sleeping bags.

Inside the sleeping bags warms quickly once Jeff gets them together. He puts his arm around Anderson's waist, and presses them close together until Anderson stops shivering, and starts to breathe deeply for real. It's still light in the tent; Jeff watches while Anderson's face relaxes, and he truly falls asleep before falling asleep himself.

He wakes up when the storm hits, not because of the noise but because darkness surrounds him for the first time since coming to Greenland. Anderson has buried himself entirely in the sleeping bag. Some time during the night he took off his parka, and now his back is pressed against Jeff, separated from his skin by only four layers of clothing. It seems intimate, here in the cold, even after Thailand. They've never slept together.

Anderson stirs too. Jeff tries to will him back to sleep but Anderson's jaw works and then his eyes open, pupils big and black in the stormy twilight. He pokes his tongue out to wet his dry lips, but then realizes that will make it worse and stops.

It's a tiny, intimate thing, and it turns Jeff on more than he thought possible in this cold. He drops his head back to the pillow and tries shifting slightly onto his back, but the space really won't allow it, so he stays frozen there, as Anderson's, yes, that's his ass, shifts and nudges against Jeff's dick, making it stand even more at attention

"Oh," says Anderson, sounding full awake. He turns over so his face is level with Jeff's neck, and Jeff's dick digs in somewhere around the vicinity of Anderson's stomach. If it had any shame at all, it would go back into hiding from the cold, but the air between them is warm, and growing warmer with the heat of Jeff's embarrassment.

"At the risk of sounding like a bad come on . . .," Anderson murmurs, head still half covered by the sleeping bag. His fingers are deft on the fly of Jeff's trousers, probably because they're both wearing the same thing, standard issue CNN cold weather gear, or something. The zipper is easier to work in the warmth of the sleeping bag.

That's right, think of zippers and clothing, and the crew of thirty all within earshot. Or maybe not. The storm grows louder as the minutes pass. Anderson's hand is warm also; Jeff didn't realize quite how much he'd been thinking about this since Thailand until the first touch of Anderson's fingers makes him press his lips together over a moan.

"Has anyone ever told you you're easy?" Anderson smiles puckishly, as his hands move on Jeff's dick. "I'd hoped for more this time around, but this sleeping bag is really small."

Anderson's urbane voice sounds out of place as his hands do naughty things under the cover of the sleeping bag. Jeff thrusts clumsily against him, movement hampered by the tight fit of the mummy bags.

Still . . . . "More?" The word comes out an embarrassing mix of a squeak and a gasp as Anderson's finger moves behind to brush against sensitive skin. Jeff fantasies have thus far been limited to Anderson sucking him off, and occasionally him fucking Anderson, but suddenly other possibilities look just as good.

"There really isn't room in this sleeping bag for me to fuck you," he says, still in that conversational tone. It's a good thing Anderson stops stroking him then, because the visual alone is enough to make Jeff come.

"It's not that cold," Jeff finds himself saying, even as a gust of air chills his skin. Their lips are too chapped to kiss, and the lube that Anderson has with him is freezing. Jeff wants to giggle at the thought that Anderson brought lube here, that he is really so predictable. He unzips the top of the sleeping bag a bit—the air is very cold—so there's room for him to put his leg up.

Anderson opens Jeff up gently, still stroking him, and then rubbing his dick along the cleft of his ass. The cold air that whispers along his hot skin makes him shiver with pleasure as he presses back against Anderson. The angle doesn't allow much depth of penetration, but it feels like plenty when Anderson is inside him, wrapped around him.

He moves slowly, like they have all the time in the world, here cocooned against the harsh storm outside. Jeff could stay like this forever, rocking back and forth, pressing back as Anderson pushes in to meet him, but it's not quite enough to make either of them come. He turns carefully onto his hands and knees, not wanting to disengage, and Anderson follows.

Now the sleeping bag only warms their feet, but they're both still wearing most of their clothes. Anderson's hands are cold now when they grip Jeff's hips, but he's sweating under his clothes, flushed and hot and ready to come. Anderson thrusts harder as Jeff fucks his hand and they finish about the same time, moans lost in the howl of the wind.

After they clean up with washcloths Anderson stole from the kitchen, Jeff zips up the sleeping bags again. Anderson settles in, letting Jeff wrap around him. "You warm enough?" Jeff asks.

Anderson's eyes start to close again. The wind's shaking of the tent seems less violent now, the hiss of snow against the nylon walls quieter. "Yes, warm." Anderson pulls the sleeping bag up over his head, and soon he's breathing deep and even again.

He's gone when Jeff wakes up, off to explore another part of the island, the new islands breaking off from the mainland as snow bridges melt away. Jeff takes a helicopter to the airport, then onto Anchorage via Toronto.

He doesn't see Anderson again until an ad in the Anchorage airport startles him: Anderson's eyes dyed a vivid blue. They're grayer than that, he thinks. How many chance encounters Anderson's had like that in how many corners of the world? They're shooting together in the Amazon again in a month, where they'll be hot and sticky, sweating in their tents. Maybe he'll help Anderson sleep there, too.


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