✨🌟✨

           Piper herself is pacing the kitchen, using a weathered, stained coffee brewer to make a pot of coffee. It’s better for her than whiskey, supposedly, but she usually ends up adding whiskey to it regardless. She shuffles around, her movements lackluster and her expression blank. Get coffee and then get to work. Get coffee and then get to work…

           The ragged detective stoops to retrieve a bottle of spirits from the cabinets, and when she straightens up and turns around, there’s someone at the creaky kitchen table. She stops, her brain snapping into action at the abnormal sight. The air suddenly feels electric around Piper, and she blinks slowly as she examines this… Dame. The woman at the table is- Well, Piper’s absolutely certain they’ve never met before, but she doesn’t seem like a stranger, either. Her dark eyes are shining, clever, and the corners of her bright red lips have a tilt to them that is entirely too familiar. The kind of familiarity that has Piper’s fingers curling, aching for a gun. Her grip on the bottle of whiskey tightens, and her lips press together into a thin line as she debates between several courses of action.

           The smile of the woman at the table grows to show her teeth.

           “Hm… So, this is the great Piper Solitude,” she says, leaning her chin into her hand as her elbow rests on the table. She looks entirely too comfortable in Piper’s kitchen, despite the fact that Piper knows that she’s never been here. “And how far you have fallen.”

           Piper’s eyes narrow, and she tenses up further before taking a moment- just a moment –to force herself to relax. When she speaks, her words are a growl, and her voice is hoarse from lack of use. “How’d you get in here…?” Her dialogue is not smooth, not disguising her hostility. She is out of practice. “Who are you?”

           The woman sits up, folding her hands over each other on the table. She speaks sweetly, in a way that’s supposed to be soothing but just sets Piper’s hair on end. “Perhaps you left your door open… Do you greet all of your clients this way, Miss Solitude?” She leans back in her chair, crossing her ankles. “No wonder you don’t have any business… How long has it been? 50 years? 100? Do you even know?”

           Piper’s eyes snap to the newspaper on the counter before returning to this mystery broad. She crosses her arms slowly before saying, “That’s my business.” She pauses and then continues with, “You gonna answer my questions or give me more jaw?”

           The woman sighs in a very put-upon way, pursing her lips. “I’m a friend, Miss Solitude. I wanted to drop in to say hello…”

           “Really?” Piper shifts her weight onto one foot, her expression becoming less angry and more irritated, “Usin’ the ‘I’m a friend’ line?” Her voice becomes more confident as she talks. More real. “Cut the chatter and give it to me straight, sunshine. Who’re you, how’d you get in, and why the hell are you here?”

           There is a moment of silence before the stranger stands up from the table and walks around behind it. Piper steps a little closer, now that the table is properly between them.

           “I have had many names,” the woman says, not looking at Piper as she says it. “Many, many-”

           “Then give me your real one,” Piper says impatiently, cutting her off. Geeze, so much malarky from this one. “And, speakin’ of monikers, how’d you know mine?”

           The woman releases a peal of laughter like the shattering of a plate on the floor. “Oh, but you are a breath of fresh air, aren’t you? Ah…” She wipes her eye, her crocodile grin wide as ever. “If you like to call me as I should be called, then, call me ‘Your Majesty.’”

           “…” Piper blinks. “Yeah, that’s not happening. Got any other real names?”

           The woman’s smile sinks and she sniffs. “Some have taken to calling me Regina.”

           Latin for queen. This dame has an ego on her, doesn’t she? She shakes her head again. “Okay, Prima Donna, that’s one question down. You’ve still got three more. And you better start answering them, or I’ll-”

           “‘Fill me with daylight,’ I presume?” Regina says, starting to slowly pace around the table. Piper matches her stride, keeping the same amount of distance between them. “With the gun that you don’t even have in your hands?”

           “You don’t know where I keep my metal,” Piper growls, clenching her fists. Even though she doesn’t… Have any guns on hand. She hasn’t for a while. Not that she’s really needed them… Her mistake, obviously. Regina just laughs again. Piper wants to punch her in the face, except now the table she had put between them is in the way.

           “Don’t I?” Regina says, and Piper’s quickly growing tired of the insufferable smugness that permeates every word that leaves her mug.

           “Just- Answer the questions, Juno.”

           Regina leans on the table, her eyes fixed on Piper as she answers, “Let me answer them with a question of my own, Nightingale.”

           Piper’s heart skips a beat and she suddenly very much wishes that she did still keep a gun under the table. She grips the edge of the table as Regina- whoever she is –continues to speak.

           “Where do you think we are? Look around. Look around and really think…”

           Piper doesn’t want to take her eyes off of this stranger, but she feels almost as if her gaze is dragged away from her, to the rest of her apartment. To the cabinets that seem ready to fall off of their hinges. The paint that’s starting to peel from the wall. The couch sagging into the ground. The newspaper decaying on the table. Everything is crumbling before her very eyes, beneath her feet. The world is moving at a million miles an hour, spinning and aging everything on it. Everything but her. Her stomach churns and she looks back at the stranger in her kitchen but- She can’t hold in a noise of surprised disgust at the sight of a corpse leaning against the counter, skin gone and flesh rotting so that she can see clear to the bone. She takes several steps back, and the body continues to disintegrate. The table beneath it falls, too old to hold up the stranger that is nothing but a skeleton. Piper’s mouth is pressed into a thin line as the world around her falls apart, trapping her as the ceiling starts to cave in. She throws her arms over her head, unable to run. Unable to do anything but let the decaying building crush her. She closes her eyes against the dirt and the dust, heart hammering in her chest.

           After a few moments, she opens her eyes and finds herself surrounded by darkness. Someone hissing softly in her ear, hissing sweetly. Have you figured it out yet, dear Piper? Have you figured everything out? Figured it out, like you always do, too late?

           “Stop,” Piper says numbly, afraid. Afraid… The realization takes her by surprise. She’s alone and she’s afraid. She’s never afraid…

           But isn’t this what’s inevitable, sweet Piper? Isn’t this where everything is going? With every day, you hurtle toward an ending where you are alone and you are afraid and you have nothing left to live for, but you cannot leave it behind. Piper shakes her head, trying to clear it of the hissing voice. Of the whispering voice. Don’t you know who I am now, lovely Piper? Don’t you know that I am the truth?

           “My life isn’t going to be like this-” Piper speaks, but her voice sounds too loud, too foolish in the empty darkness. She shuts her mouth, looking around. The hissing voice has stopped. She swallows, curling her fists, and turns to see two white eyes and a gaping smile. Hands move to caress her cheeks, gripping them with all of the unyielding gentleness of a snake.

           “It was lovely to meet you, Piper,” the face murmurs. “I look forward to many, many, many more nights with you.” The hands on her face start to tighten, the nails digging into Piper’s pale, clammy skin-

           Piper sits up from the table, panting. She looks at her computer, the screen dark. She must have fallen asleep working. There is a vague sense of panic gripping her chest, making her feel cold. She stares at the fridge as the feeling ebbs. Ace is making coffee, and for some reason that floods Piper with relief. She rubs her neck, thumb tracing the spot that had become sore overnight.

“You know, I wrote that play.”

Samuela looks up from where she is sitting on Vir’s couch to see the man himself standing a few feet away, his green eyes glittering behind his glasses. She rolls her eyes and brushes a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Please, Vir. You’re not William Shakespeare.”

Vir smiles his slight crooked smile and sinks onto the couch beside her, one arm stretching out to wrap around her shoulders. She scoots around to lean her back against his torso, and he kisses the top of her head, his nose resting in her hair as he murmurs to her.

“How would you know? You weren’t alive in the 1600s…”

It’s always jarring to her, his casual reminders that he’s not human. That he’s anything beside human, really. She sets her copy (well, okay, his copy that she’s borrowing) of “Hamlet” aside before turning her face slightly to try to look him in the eye, squinting and pursing her lips.

“No, no… See, I don’t take your bullshit like most, Mr. Cinereus,” she says, poking his jaw, “And I can tell when you’re fibbing. And you are most certainly fibbing about being Shakespeare.”

He chuckles and runs his hand lightly through her hair, his smirk stinking of mischief. She can practically smell. At length, he lets out an aggrieved sigh and  looks away from her.

“Fine, fine… You’re right, my dear. I’m not William Shakespeare. I did, however, attend a play or two or a dozen in the Globe theatre. The good seats, of course.” His fingers twist idly in her hair as he fondly recalls the memory. “It really was… Marvelous. How they could do with only their words what I could never hope to do, even with magic…”

The two of them are quiet for a few moments, each lost in their thoughts, before Sam pipes up with a question, twisting around to face him completely.

“How much Shakespeare do you have memorized?”

The question catches Vir off guard, and he laughs and strokes his chin as he considers it.

“How much? Ah… A lot. But then, when you’ve read and seen the same stories over and over, they do tend to lodge themselves in the mind. Hm…. Perhaps not all of the minutiae of every play, but I think I would be able to recite most of the famous soliloquies and speeches and  a dozen or so sonnets… Er, and all of Hamlet, as it is-”

“Your favorite,” Sam sighs with a smile, shaking her head. “You’re crazy, gringo. Why Shakespeare?”

Vir smiles and reaches up to trace his thumb over her lips.

“I suppose he was the first human I ever encountered that made me think that perhaps you aren’t all that bad…”

-

“I inspired that book, you know….”

Samuela snorts ungracefully even as Vir’s hands trace their way down her sides, her tan cheeks flushing a dark red at the idea of Vir being at all involved with the nickname she had just called him- Casanova.

“I doubt that…” She says, biting her lip as he brushes her billowing mass of hair aside to kiss at the back of her neck. He grins, and she can feel it in the shape of his mouth.

“Doubt?” His voice behind her is unbearably smug, and she feels her mouth form a few curses in retort. “You doubt that I am, in fact, the famed Giacomo Casanova… But you do not entirely dismiss it.”

“Nevermind, I dismiss it,” Sam hisses through her teeth as she feels his breath trail up her neck to the back of her ear. “Entirely. You, Vir Cinereus, are- You’re-” She can’t rightly come up with an insult while his teeth are nibbling at her ear like that, so she jerks her elbow back in an effort to ward him off. It works, the joint colliding with his collarbone and causing him to squawk. “A culo, is what you are.”

He starts to make a noise, and Sam doesn’t realize until she turns around to look at him that he is wheezing with laughter on the bed. She purses her lips and crosses her arms, glaring at him until he sobers up and clears his throat, propping himself up on his elbows. His smirk is still on his insufferable lips, and she can’t decide if she would prefer to smack it off or kiss him into submission.

“I wonder,” he says, his voice full of mirth as he looks up at her reddened face, “If that speaks more to his abilities, or to mine.”

Samuela grits her teeth for a moment before pulling a sweet smile onto her face and leaning over him.

“I’m going to smother you with a pillow,” she announces, causing him to laugh again and lean up toward her, trying to kiss her. She shoves him back down onto the bed, and her reward is a look like a wounded puppy on his face. Her own smile turns more genuine at this, and she pats his knee.

“Also, I’m going to go take a shower,” she says, tossing her hair and standing up from the bed, “And you’re not invited.”

“Well, then it’s hardly a shower…” Vir mutters, pouting and rolling onto his stomach to watch her as she flounces away. He then calls after her. “I’ll wait for you here, mia bella signora.”

Does Vir know Italian? She isn’t sure, but she decides she intends to find out… After she showers. Maybe.

-

“What, and I guess you wrote this song, huh?”

Samuela sits in the living room, sighing at the ongoing argument between Rory and Vir. The latter had wanted to entertain them with a bit of violin music, while the former had wanted none of it. Naturally, since Rory was opposed, Vir has dragged the entire thing out for much longer than really necessary. Ariel seems to have tuned them out by focusing on her phone, and Samuela admires that. How does she do that?

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Vir snaps, snatching a page of music from Rory’s hand.

“It says Vivaldi on it,” Rory says, crossing his twiggy arms. Samuela groans and runs her hand through her hair, wanting to tear it out. Or tear their hair out.

“Well, perhaps I am Vivaldi. Do you even know who Vivaldi is?”

“Rory!”  Sam yells the redhead’s name, startling both of the men, who turn to her with almost comical expressions of guilt on their face. She takes a deep breath and makes an effort to sound like she hasn’t been getting steadily more furious over the course of the past fifteen minutes. “I thought you were cooking us dinner. Isn’t that why you and Ariel came over in the first place?”

Rory jumps up from his seat as if poked by a cattle prod, giving her an abashed, too-toothy grin.

“Uh, yeah, dinner… I’ll get right on that, Queenie….” Rory pauses before skulking away to the kitchen, and Sam turns her fiery gaze on Vir. The anon wilts, lowering his violin, and Sam clenches her fists. Don’t yell. Don’t yell.

“Why is it that you have to rile each other up every single time you see each other?” It isn’t yelling, exactly, but her voice is cold and clipped and full of anger. Vir rubs his neck with the bow of his violin, eyes darting from side to side.

“I…” He starts to speak, stops, and then starts again. “I’m…. I’m very sorry…”

Sam lets out a contemptuous scoff and crosses her arms. “Oh, you are? Really?”

Vir shifts from foot to foot, glances at the kitchen, and then looks back at Sam. She raises an eyebrow like an angry mother, expectant and threatening. The anon sets his instrument down before shuffling to the kitchen- To apologize to Rory, she hopes. She collapses on the couch next to Ariel, running her hands over her face.

“Was that too much?” She asks softly, looking over at Ariel. The other woman blinks, turning her head to look at Sam.

“What? Telling them to knock it off? No…”

Samuela tugs nervously at the end of her hair, her eyebrows furrowing. She tries not to be mad a lot. She tries, she really does, but she isn’t sure if she does it well enough… Her eyes flick to the kitchen and then back to Ariel. “Would you… Would you say that I’m an angry person, Ariel?”

The darker-skinned woman sits up completely, setting her phone aside with pursed lips. “Angry? No, Sam… You, like… You know when to put a stop to people’s bullshit, yeah, but that’s not anger, that’s, like… Assertiveness? Or something. But, yeah, no, you’re not angry…”

With a small sigh, Sam leans back on the couch. “I was raised in an angry household… Sometimes I’m afraid it rubbed off on me too much.”

Ariel doesn’t say anything for a few moments, but she reaches out to take Sam’s hand. “…Nah, I think… As long as no one goes to bed angry, you’re good. Y’know?”

Sam smiles softly, and listens for a few moments to the muted sound of the boys talking in the kitchen. “Do you think the two of them are ever going to get along?”

Ariel blinks. “What, Heckle and Jeckle? Yeah. They’re just stupid boys. Eventually they’ll be cool. I mean, they’re our stupid boys, so if they don’t then we can put them in time-out, yeah?”

Sam laughs and shakes her head. “I guess so.” She stands up. “I’m gonna go check on them.”

“Godspeed, Cap’n Rojas,” Ariel says, mock-saluting her.

Samuela just snickers and walks to the kitchen to make nice with the boys that she had scolded.

-

“You know…. I met Jane Austen once.”

Vir’s voice is sudden and sad as the two of them sit together on the couch, Pride and Prejudice playing in the background. Neither of them are really paying attention to it, though. They haven’t paid attention to movies in months.

“Yeah?” Sam asks, jumping on the nugget of conversation. She feels like the two of them talk so seldom these days, to hear him say anything makes her feel like jumping with excitement. The sound of his voice is so precious to her…

Vir rubs the back of her hand with his thumb, and she feels the vibrations of a small chuckle through their touching skin. “Indeed. She danced with me, actually. At a party.”

Sam sits up and crawls toward him. He scoots to make space for her, and the two of them shift until they are laying together comfortably, his arms circling her and he forehead resting against his chest. She can hear him, really hear him like this. She can hear the different sounds his body makes, the rustle of his clothes. His heartbeat and his breathing. The gentle rumble of his voice. She wraps her arms around him, not wanting to leave this spot. This spot is safe.

“What was she like?” She asks quietly, wanting him to talk some more. Please, please. She wants to hear him.

“She was nice, I suppose…” Vir says, reaching up to play with her hair like he used to before the war. “It’s hard to remember, exactly… There was a lot going on at the time, and I don’t know that I realized who she was until the dance was already over.”

He lapses into silence, and Samuela swallows a small set of tears. It scares her, the way he acts now. He’s so reclusive all the time, and she isn’t sure how much of that has to do with the war, and how much of it has to do with… Her. And the way she is now. She takes a shaky breath, trying to come up with another question, but he speaks again.

“I miss dancing.” She can hear the sad smile in his voice. “I really do… It was always fun, to try to learn the steps. Dancing with pretty girls in pretty dresses.” He kisses the top of her forehead. “I would have loved to dance with you, my dear.”

Sam feels another wave of tears threaten her, so she sits up abruptly, her hand resting on his shoulder. “We- We should. We should dance.”

His hand traces her cheek, and she leans into it. Closes her eyes as she listens to him speak. “Are you sure…? I don’t…. I’m not sure how to teach you the steps…”

Sam nearly winces, but she manages to shake her head. “No, no, we… We don’t need steps, okay? Just dance with me…” She opens her eyes. “Please?”

She feels and hears him swallow before he replies quietly. “Alright… We can dance…”

She smiles gratefully and stands up, pulling him with her. He leads her out into the middle of the living room and laces one hand with hers, the other sliding down to her waist. She’s not sure what part of the movie is playing, but it doesn’t matter, because she’s not listening to that so much as she’s listening to him. Clinging to the sound of him, humming and breathing and living. Holding her close and starting to dance them in tiny circles, not moving very much in any direction.

She leans her head against his chest, tears slipping from her eyes despite her best efforts to contain them. She grips his hand tightly, and he stops moving as he holds her.

“I love you,” he whispers softly, and brings her hands up to his face. She strokes her thumbs over his cheeks and his nose, down his jaw and across his lips. She shivers.

“Vir… Tell me more? About Victorian parties…?”

Talk to me, she silently pleads. Just talk to me…

He combs his hands through her hair, sighing softly.

“Uh… Rory?”

The freckly ginger looks up from the stove, where he is currently in the process of scrambling eggs, to see that his girlfriend- Heh, girlfriend, it still amazes him that he can call her that –is looking out the window from where she is sitting at the table, coffee in hand. She looks faintly alarmed, which makes Rory’s stomach do a little flip. What’s outside? Who’s there? Maybe Grey has finally found out about them and is coming to put a stop to it-? He clears his throat and his face, trying to look excitedly interested instead of vaguely alarmed. “Yeah? Something wrong?”

“Well… No?” Ariel continues to stare out the window as she talks, and her eyebrows knit. “But I was pretty sure that snow is fake.”

Rory nearly chokes on a laugh as he sprints over to look out the window. “Snow!! Oh, my god, snow!!” He claps his hands and gives Ariel a huge hug and a kiss on the forehead before skidding away on his fuzzy sock-covered feet to yell up the stairs. “IT’S SNOWING!”

Loud, muffled voices from multiple women sound upstairs, and Rory retreats back into the kitchen as a stampede of legs clambers down the stairs and to the living room. There is soon an assortment of his sisters pressing their faces against the living room window, chattering, and Rory grins at them all fondly before turning to scoop his abandoned eggs onto a plate.

Ariel is still staring out the window with fascination when Rory delivers a plate to her, and she thanks him quietly but doesn’t start eating yet. She can’t tear her gaze away from the window. Rory has already gobbled down most of his (larger) plate of eggs by the time she takes a single bite. He looks up at her when he finishes, noting the distant expression on her face and blinking.

“Ariel?” he asks as he swallows a bite of egg, grinning at her in the hopes that it will get her to smile, too. “You okay?”

The woman doesn’t respond for a moment, poking at her eggs with a slight frown. “Well… I’ve never seen real snow before.”

Rory’s mouth drops open in response to her statement. His herd of sisters makes their way back upstairs with a great deal of stomping before he actually comes up with something to say to that. “But, like- But, I- How would you have Christmas without snow? Or, or New Years? Or snowball fights, or ice skating, or, or- Or anything like that??”

Ariel laughs, taking a few more bites of egg. “Well, I mean… California isn’t exactly known for its snowy weather? So, yeah, no… I’ve never seen snow before… I’ve seen White Christmas every year of my life, though. The movie, that is.”

“Well!” Rory stands up, very nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Well, you’re going to see real snow today!! Go get dressed, Ari. We’re going to build-”

“Do you wanna build a snowmaaaaan?” Someone interrupts him from upstairs, and Rory realizes that he had been sort of yelling. Oops. He puts his hand over his mouth and whispers the end of his sentence.

“We’re going to build a snowman.”

-

After the two of them have cleaned up their dishes from breakfast, Rory hops the stairs three at a time to rush into his room and pull on suitable snow clothes. Like, just… Boots and a coat and some gloves, right? Oh, and a hat. That should be good! That’ll do it.

He passes Ariel going up the stairs as he bounds down them, and she stares at him with wide eyes.

“How did you-?”

“MEET ME OUTSIDE, ARI!”

He doesn’t give her a chance to respond before swinging around the corner of the wall at the bottom of the stairs and flinging himself toward the door and- OH, geeze!! He skids to a halt just short of running into Angela, who is… Well, his mom.

“Mijo!” the rather portly, well-aging woman says, clutching the front of her shirt with surprise. After giving him a stern look, she smiles and relaxes, one eyebrow raised quizzically. “What is all of the yelling about, mijo?”

Rory smiles a bit more meekly than before, his way of apologizing for nearly bowling her over. “It’s snowing!” And he’s still yelling.

Angela’s eyes widen. “Already?” She goes to peek out the living room window and sighs. “Ay, so it is… I suppose this means you and your sisters will be expecting chili and hot chocolate for lunch, hm?”

Rory swears he feels his mouth water a little bit as he nods his head enthusiastically. His mom makes chili like no other, he swears. Like, he may be able to cook, but he can’t hold a candle to Angela Rodrigues and her homecooked meals. He bends down to allow her to kiss his cheek before bounding outside into the snow that has already accumulated a few centimeters on the ground.

The tall, lanky man giggles like a child and sweeps his hat off to tilt his head back and catch flakes in his mouth. It feels like it’s been eons since his last big snow… He shakes snow out of his red hair and shoves his hat back on his head as the door to the house opens.

Much to his disappointment, it is not Ariel who joins him, but Kiki and Wanda. Much less disappointing is how they immediately launch themselves into a snowball fight with him, despite the small amount of accumulation on the ground so far. There is much shrieking and merriment in the front yard as Rory wages snow-war upon his two sisters. The war eventually grows to include three, then four, then all five of his sisters, all of them chucking snow at each other and howling with laughter and name-calling. The snow falls harder as the battle goes on, and by the time they all collapse to the snow-covered grass, the snow is falling thickly enough to make it hard to see anything at all.

That is the moment that the door swings open, and Rory looks up to see Ariel walk outside… And immediately dissolves to the ground once more in giggles.

The ex-Californian must have put on every garment that she had packed, because she looks about as round as a marshmallow in a bulging pink coat with her head poking out the top. She has on probably two pairs of pants, with legwarmers, a hat with earmuffs, at least two pairs of gloves, and probably three sweaters beneath her coat. When he stops laughing, he gazes at her with a huge, besotted grin. She’s adorable.

“Are we going to Antarctica?” asks Kiki, and Ariel’s already dark face darkens further with a blush of embarrassment. Rory cuffs his sister over the head and heaves himself to his feet to crunch his way through the snow toward Ariel.

“Hi, babe,” he says, leaning in to give her a peck on the nose. She sighs, though it’s hard to hear through all of her layers of clothes.

“This is way too much, isn’t it?” She mumbles, gesturing to herself. He’s sort of amazed she can gesture, because it looks like it would be hard for her to move with that many layers on.

“It’s cute,” he assures her and then pauses. “But… It’s a little much, yeah. Uh, here, let’s… Come on.”

The gawky redhead pulls her onto the porch swing, grinning his over-enthusiastic grin, and starts to unbutton her coat.

“Oi,” Ariel says with a small smile of her own, smacking his hands away. “Paws off, Freckles. I can feel your mom watching.”

Rory huffs, his freckly cheeks flushing a bit more red than the cold has already made them. “I’m just trying to help…” Ariel grins and kisses his big ol’ nose before continuing where he had left off, unbuttoning her coat and pulling it off. When she moves to pull off the top sweater, Rory stops her.

“Wait, wait… Let me guess… Three layers?”

Ariel purses her lips slightly. “Counting my bra?”

Rory’s reply is a bit of a squeak. “No!! Um, not counting your- No, not counting that.”

Ariel bites her lip and then sighs as she pulls off the sweater. “Five.”

And, indeed, she had put on two sweaters, a jacket, a sweatshirt, and a long-sleeved shirt. She strips down to the long-sleeved shirt and shivers, teeth chattering. Rory, meanwhile, is goggling at how many different things she had put on.

“Two sweaters and a coat?” He says, holding up the first sweater with wide eyes.

“I didn’t want to get too cold,” she mumbles, scooting closer to him. He grins and pulls her in with a quick scoop of his arm, beaming. She lets out a tiny “oof” as he presses her against his torso and drapes her pink coat over her.

“Well, I’ll make sure you’re nice and warm,” he says, still looking down at her with his bright eyes and bright smile. “…. And,” He adds after a pause, “That was not an innuendo.”

The snow starts to become less thick as he helps her pick out which of her several garments she should put back on, and they eventually settle on the sweatshirt. She starts to stand, but he wraps his spidery arms around her and pulls her back down onto the swing with him, half-draping her over his lap as he buries his face in the crook of her neck.

“You smell good,” he mumbles, snuggling her like the happiest teddy bear this side of the North Pole.

“You’re creepy,” she says fondly, turning a little bit to steal his hat and set it on top of her earmuffs.

One of his sisters wolf-whistles from the lawn, and Rory decides it’s time to wage a second snow-war on them, this time aided by his lovely girlfriend, who has never thrown a snowball in her life.

-

Rory and Ariel sit together on the porch’s front steps together, each holding a mug of hot chocolate in gloved hands. All of the sisters are helping Angela clean up after lunch- which had been just as good, if not better, than Rory had excitedly told Ariel it would be –but Rory’s mom had practically shoved the two of them outside to have a minute to themselves. They aren’t saying much, really, but Ariel is glad that it’s just the two of them. She sets her mug aside, biting her lip and starting to lean toward him, but then Rory turns to her with a rush of words.

“We should build a snowman!” He says, and then catches the look on her face. “Oh, were you… Going to say something?”

Ariel blinks and then shakes her head, standing up and holding out her hands. “Show me how to build a snowman, Freckles.”

His incomparable grin overtakes his face as he leaps to his feet, spraying both of their legs with snow. “Okay!! Okay, so, first thing’s first. We gotta make the snowbutt.”

“That’s… The bottom, right? And it’s just a big ball of snow?” Ariel says, jabbing her thumb at the ample snowman-building supplies surrounding them. Rory nods and they start in on the process, which is much more difficult than Ariel had thought it was going to be. Snow is much heavier than it looks when one has a huge ball of it… Eventually, Rory starts to do all of the rolling and the hefting, and seems all the happier for it. However, when he starts to single “Let it Snow,” he receives a sharp swat on the rear from her, and he straightens up with a yelp, affronted.

“What was that for?” he asks, a childlike pout on his face as he rubs his bottom.

“It’s not Thanksgiving yet,” Ariel says, her cheeks tinged darkly with pink. She seems a little bit embarrassed. “Bard family rule- no Christmas carols before Thanksgiving.”

Rory scowls for a moment before continuing what he was doing, which was rolling up the snowman’s head. “Alright, music sheriff, geeze…”

Ariel stands off to the side, the two of them now awkwardly silent. She shoves her hands into her pockets, kicking a tiny clump of snow. She shouldn’t have told him not to sing… She just. She hasn’t listened to Christmas carols in so long. Not since the winter that he family passed… Tears fall from her eyes when she blinks them, and she looks up at the sky as she wipes them away with a gloved hand. Christ, first she had snapped at him, and now she’s crying. She just ruins everything, doesn’t she?

“Ari?”

She looks at Rory, who is standing with the snowman’s head in his hands and looking at her with concerned, earnest blue eyes. She stiffens, shoving her hands back into her pockets.

“Sorry, I’m sorry-” She says, trying to sound okay. “It’s nothing, it’s- I’m fine.”

“No, it’s not nothing….” Rory says, setting the head down and walking toward her. “It’s never nothing…”

Ariel shies away at first, but allows him to hug her close after a moment. “I guess…”

“Wanna talk about it?” He asks, resting his chin on the top of her head.

“Not really…” She mumbles, wrapping her arms around him. She stays like that, listening to his breathing through his coat, until she looks up into his sunshine-bright face. “You can sing Christmas carols, if you want…”

He smiles softly and leans down to kiss her nose. “Not until after Thanksgiving, I can’t! C’mon, let’s give this snowman a head…”