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“When I told you we should go somewhere, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind.” Hallan looks over his shoulder at Eris, who’s still standing at the console, a look of sheer excitement and delight on his all-too-adorable freckled face. Hallan isn’t quite sure what he was hoping for, but he knows, as he peers out the door at the world in front of him, he knows this isn’t it.
Eris meets his eyes, the delight fading somewhat. “Why?” he asks, immediately sounding concerned. “Is there something wrong? It isn’t actually a war zone or anything, is it?” The smile has faded completely now, and there’s only worry in those brown eyes. “I tried to avoid any war zones,” he adds helplessly. “There’s been too much fighting with the Time War.”
Hallan runs a hand through his still-too-long-for-comfort hair, making it stand up in dirty-blond tufts. “No, that’s not it,” he reassures Eris, trying to figure out how to phrase his… issues with their destination. “It looks almost deserted out there.”
Eris’s face relaxes, much to Hallan”s relief. The smile reappears, but it’s still subdued. “What’s wrong with where we’ve landed, then?” he asks. There’s something like hurt in his eyes, and Hallan wishes he hadn’t said anything. He likes it when Eris is happy.
“It’s just… cold?” Hallan tries. In his seven hundred years as a presidential guard on diplomatic missions and retreats, he’s seen snow before. A few times. Once, when Flavia was president, he had accompanied her to the planet Arakelonia, which was entirely frozen tundra, caught up in an eternal winter storm. The only creatures to survive the never ending dark of the planet were small, fluffy creatures, with fur of the purest white. Gallifrey had done some clandestine deal there with an emerging temporal power, but Hallan couldn’t recall which or the terms of the deal. He was only a guard, after all. He’d been stuck in the poorly-heated outer corridor, shivering underneath his Chancellery Guard uniform, wishing he’d brought the ceremonial cloak to use as a blanket. Looking back at it now, it seems almost like a cruel foreshadowing of his centuries in cryogenic suspension.
“Oh.” Eris seems confused, like he can’t quite puzzle out why the cold is a bad thing. He walks over and peers out the door himself.
The world outside is one of rolling hills and scattered groves of pine trees. The sky is a weak blue, and a pale sun is shining, reflecting off the sparkling snow to create a bright, cold world. His face lights up with a grin. “What do you mean?” he asks, his voice filled with a sort of incredulity. “This is incredible! Winter’s my favorite time of year! It’s a shame the Capitol is in the middle of a desert.”
Hallan manages a smile, if only at Eris’s childlike enthusiasm. He always smiles when Eris gets excited. He can’t figure out why; it just happens. He’s not used to seeing Time Lords get so excited so easily. Eris is always excited about something: some obscure control on their “antiquated” TARDIS (Hallan always has to bite back a retort when Eris refers to it as such; it would only highlight how many centuries he was frozen), figuring out how to plunk out the tune to a Gallifreyan lullaby on the alien instrument in the ballroom, dancing with Hallan, watching alien movies, teasing Hallan. Eris has somehow figured out how to get excited by almost everything he does, and Hallan isn’t sure whether he should be jealous or scandalized. Perhaps a bit of both.
“I just have some bad experiences with cold,” he replies. With anyone else, he’d use his commanding tone of voice, and that would end the discussion. The only people who have ever argued with him even when he’s put on his commanding voice are the president, her bodyguard, Darkel, and a certain CIA Coordinator. He wonders whatever happened to Darkel, but doesn’t ask Eris, because Eris probably wouldn’t know. And he’d probably make some remark about not paying attention in history, and Hallan doesn’t like the past that he’s lived through, that still feels like it happened only a few months ago, referred to as history.
“Oh,” says Eris, and then a moment later, in a much different tone, “Oh.” He pauses and glances at Hallan. “I didn’t even think about that. Sorry. I should have realized–”
“It’s alright,” Hallan replies. And it is alright. It isn’t Eris’s fault. Hallan didn’t even realize how much he now hates the cold until he opened the door and got a blast of it to the face. And now that he knows the cold terrifies him like this, it makes him angry. This is a weakness, and a stupid one. He shouldn’t feel helpless or afraid or anxious because of a temperature. “You know what?” he finally says, looking anywhere but Eris’s face. He might show emotion if he looks at Eris. “I should get over that.”
“We don’t have to,” Eris says softly. “We can go somewhere else. Anywhere else. Anywhere in time and space.” He pauses, thinking. “A beach! We could go to a beach! Or go to some historical period that you were interested in when you were in school, or something. I don’t know. We don’t have to go out there.”
“No,” says Hallan. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life—my lives, maybe—afraid of snow or cold. I won’t be utterly useless.”
“If you insist,” says Eris slowly, full of doubt. His brown eyes meet Hallan’s blue, and for a moment, Hallan isn’t afraid of anything, because the world has narrowed, and he isn’t feeling the cold air from outside, and he isn’t seeing the bright snow on one side or the warm console room on the other, he’s only seeing Eris’s eyes, his warm, brown eyes, full of concern, gentle and caring and loving. In this moment, Hallan can do anything, he’s sure of it. He can brave the worst the universe could throw at him, he can stop Pandora herself, as long as he has Eris with him.
And then Eris blinks, and Hallan looks down, and the spell is broken. But Eris grabs his forearm with an ungloved hand—Hallan still can’t get over that, the fact that Eris voluntarily goes without gloves as often as he can—and says, “I think I have an idea.”
—————
Three squabbles and several spans later, Hallan steps out of the TARDIS and out onto the surface of an alien planet. He feels like this should be a momentous occasion, but his centuries of guard duty to Davidia and other, altogether less pleasant planets, has numbed him to the sense of terror that he used to get whenever he stepped out onto the surface of another world.
He doesn’t really walk out of the TARDIS. It’s a bit more of a waddle. Eris went hunting through the wardrobe, which Hallan didn’t even know existed, and found every warm item of clothing that he could: jumpers, thick socks, gloves, mittens, hats, scarves. The works. Not everything was quite sized for someone of Hallan’s height and… physique, but they did what they could to make it work.
Despite the many, many layers of thick, warm clothing protecting Hallan from the elements on this planet, he feels a bit naked. This is the first time since joining the Chancellery Guard fresh out of the Academy that he isn’t wearing a single article of clothing or an accessory that’s standard-issue for a guardsman. He likes the uniform. It feels wrong to not wear it. But it’s too thin for a planet like this. Hallan remembers Arakelonia, how cold he was the entire time, how, after three days of negotiations, his fingers and toes and lips were turning purple with cold, how inadequate his uniform had been in keeping him warm.
The boots he’s wearing are three sizes too big, but his feet fit in them snugly, thanks to the five pairs of woolen socks Eris made him put on. He’s wearing two pairs of trousers underneath the heavy snowsuit Eris somehow hunted down, and he’s got a coat on over that. He’s wearing two pairs of mittens over a pair of gloves, and he thinks it might be three scarves and two hats that are currently keeping the majority of his face out of the cold. In fact, only his eyes are exposed to the elements. Eris did a good job bundling him up, even if Hallan isn’t quite sure how to feel about the heaviness on his skin.
And he feels warm. So it’s a success, at least for right now. He turns around, his many layers forcing him to take several tiny steps just to do so, and looks at Eris, who is locking up the TARDIS (which is disguised as a pine tree) and shoving the key into a pocket recklessly. Everything about Eris is reckless, including Hallan’s feelings for him. He can’t figure out why he cares so much about this odd, socially inept Time Lord, but it’s stopped bothering him, and now he’s just accepted that he does care about this odd, sweet, beautiful, caring, socially inept Time Lord.
“How is it?” Eris asks. His face is also mostly covered by a purple scarf, but Hallan can hear the concern in his voice.
“I’m fine,” he replies, more gruffly than he’d intended. “I can barely move, but I’m warm.” He pauses. “What do you even do in snow?”
Eris stops for a moment, and then Hallan can see his eyes crinkle into a grin. “There’s loads you can do in snow!” he exclaims. “Build stuff, start a snowball fight, eat it, uh…” His voice trails off as he tries to remember what else one can do in the snow.
“Why would you build things with snow?” Hallan asks. “It makes no sense! It’ll melt once the weather warms up. How does that make any sense at all? Why would anyone go to the trouble of building an impermanent structure?”
“For fun?” Eris suggests. “Come on, you haven’t even tried it. Every winter I stayed on Ysalus, Knyla and I would go outside in the middle of the night and build a massive snowman. I mean, properly massive, taller than me. And then we’d take two scarves and tie them together and wrap it around its neck. And then…” His voice trails off, his mind on happy times with Knyla.
Hallan still doesn’t know who Knyla is, just that Eris knew her and loved her. And that she wasn’t a Time Lord. He still doesn’t know what happened to her, just that every so often, Eris gets very withdrawn, the opposite of his usual self, and it always has to do with Knyla.
“Come on,” Hallan says. He bends down and scoops up some snow, trying to form it into something. He’s not sure what he’s making yet, but it has to be something. “Let’s make one of these giant snow people.” He flings the snow at Eris. “I have no clue what I’m doing, so you had better help.”
—————
The pale yellow sun is almost gone by the time Eris and Hallan finally finish the snowman. It was a good afternoon: Hallan actually found himself having fun sometimes. But now the snowman is done, and the light is fading, and the temperature is dropping. He’s beginning to feel a bit of cold through his boots and mittens, and it’s making him nervous. What if Eris loses his TARDIS key? They could get stuck outside on this cold, barren world, and freeze to death, and it would be just like cryo except without waking up again. What happens to a Time Lord if they freeze to death? Will they regenerate? Will they just continue to work their way through their regenerations until there are none left?
Hallan doesn’t know. His breath catches in his throat, and he realizes that his nose is also cold. He remembers standing guard in that corridor on Arakelonia, then remembers cryo, and coming out of cryo, so cold that he couldn’t stop shivering.
He tries to take a deep breath, a calming breath, but he can’t seem to get enough air into his lungs. He’s going to die out here, he’s sure of it. He feels weak. He hates feeling weak. This was a bad idea, he never should have convinced Eris to let him do this, he isn’t strong enough to handle this. His legs feel weak, and he sits down heavily.
Immediately, Eris is by his side. “Are you alright?” he asks.
He wants to answer, to tell Eris that he’s alright, just tired, but his throat seems to have closed up. It’s gotten dry, he can’t swallow, he can’t breathe, he’s going to die out here in the cold, and the cryo will have meant nothing. He shivers, violently.
“C’mon,” says Eris. “Let’s get you into the TARDIS. I think you’ve been outside a bit too long.” Eris doesn’t sound scared, just concerned. Hallan wants to hug him suddenly, desperately, but he can’t get his arms to work.
Eris stands up, and offers a hand to Hallan. “It’s alright, c’mon,” Eris says again. “The sooner we go back to the TARDIS, the sooner we get back into the warmth.”
It isn’t that Hallan doesn’t want that, it’s that he can’t make his limbs work. He can’t breathe, the world is swimming in front of him, his throat is constricted. He’s going to die, and it will look utterly pathetic.
“Hey,” says Eris, kneeling down in front of Hallan. “Look at me. Hallan, my love, look at me. It’s going to be alright.” He locks eyes with Hallan, and normally Hallan would get lost in Eris’s eyes, in his beautiful brown eyes, but he can’t, he’s cold and he’s going to die, and and and
And Eris is pulling him up to his feet and pulling Hallan’s arm over his shoulder, supporting him the way he’d supported him before he could walk. And he’s making his way through the snow, leaving the snowman as their monument to this cold, frozen world, and he gets them to the TARDIS, fumbles in his pocket for the key, and opens it.
Hallan falls to the floor of the TARDIS, gasping for air. The console room is warm, a golden glow suffusing the large, circular room. Eris is already unwrapping the scarves from around his neck, pushing the snowy hats off his head. “There,” he says, his voice low. “It’s alright. We’re in the TARDIS now. It’ll be okay.” He takes off his own snow things, then pulls Hallan a little further into the room.
He gets Hallan out of his snow things, unlacing the boots and pulling them off, taking the coat off of Hallan as if he’s a doll. “I’m sorry,” he says, pressing a kiss to Hallan’s forehead. “I should have paid better attention.” He wraps his arms around Hallan and brings him in close, holding him close.
Hallan blinks. Slowly. He moves his fingers, then his toes. Then his hands. He’s safe. He won’t die. He’ll be okay. He’ll survive. He returns the hug, wrapping his arms around Eris, holding onto him like he’s all Hallan has in the world, because, well, Eris is the only thing he has in the world.
They sit there on the floor of the TARDIS console room until Hallan, a Time Lord, has lost all sense of time. Finally, Eris loosens his arms slightly. “You know,” he says, his voice soft, “the best part of cold weather?”
Hallan doesn’t loosen his grip, but he opens his eyes and looks down at Eris. “What?” he asks.
Eris gently pushes away from Hallan and stands up. He holds out a hand for Hallan and he takes it, standing up. “When you go back inside, you can make these incredible drinks that warm you from the inside out. And then you can sit on the floor in front of a fire that roars in the fireplace, and you can wrap a blanket around the two of you, and then you can sit and drink your drink, and you can hug your loved one, and the world feels tiny and soft and comfortable and warm.”
“That sounds… nice,” Hallan admits, even though he knows it isn’t proper for a Time Lord to indulge in something like that. Because right now, he doesn’t care. He’s safe. He’s got Eris.