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The winter sprays the tops of trees and playgrounds with fat globs of residual rain water from the reservoir, making grounds squelch under foot and drowning little children into caricatures of sewer rats. A similarly mousy man meanders from the local milk bar back home, umbrella resting lightly on a shoulder, when he sees the Creature.
Admittedly, nothing that lives here looks like that. It's not a local animal, so it could be an exotic pet from those rich families really far up in Katoomba that just got lost to lowly Lawson. He is no zoologist, but it's huge and white and would not blend in with the hot climate of Here. A mutation was debated on but seriously it just looks like a polar bear on the run from the nearest captivity institution. Pristine white fur coat with underlying silver linings, Shang Qinghua just knows that if this creature meanders anywhere further and strays into the hell that is Broken Hill, it's going to end up as a pair of mittens on display on some hunter's shed wall.
"Hey," he calls out to the Creature, because animals are intelligent and he too is just an animal, there needs to be some sympathy going on here. Also if there is a scuffle, he's going to guaranteed die, so better prepare beforehand. "Don't let other people see you. They'll skin you for mittens."
The creature has stunning, no-flaw blue eyes, intelligent and considering like it genuinely cares about what Shang Qinghua has to contribute to society, with the matter in contention of its apparent safety under the pouring rain. It stares at him, most likely criticising his choice in umbrellas - Spirited Away with the No Face chibis scattered about in a mass produced design pattern. Cucumber Bro got this for him and Doctor Man paid for it with his six figure salary, it holds sentimental value, okay? This weird arctic creature gets no say in this kiddish umbrella, he'll be buried with it in his casket.
"I'm serious," he insists, justifying himself to a judgemental animal. Inching closer, he lowers his voice, a pitch he quite forgotten he used to speak in. It's the Intern Training Voice - soothing, calm and low. The Do Not Panic, We Can Fix It voice. They haven't got any interns in the workplace for a while so he completely forwent the voice, but it's good to know that he can still speak it. "You're too pretty and exotic, urgh, for these whites. Go hide somewhere else."
The creature stubbornly refuses to budge. He sighs, rotating the handle of his umbrella.
"I'm not going to make you do anything, but if it gets weird, just," he turns, pointing to the newly erected Scare Crow figure on his front lawn, visible from this distance of three blocks away. "That's where I go to die, so knock on the front door if you ever want to hide from other people."
The Creature stares one last time before slinking away, like it is a snake with four limbs, fluid movements blending silver into the grey ambience, obscuring it from view.
He walks home, weirded out that he just Did That, but like all twenty something on the verge of dying before the ripe old age of 35, he contented with himself that whatever, it won't actually happen to him.
Blue eyes watch him from under foliage of gum nuts, as it wills snow into being. Perhaps a visit would not be entirely unpleasant.
.-.
Shang Qinghua wakes up to Lawson covered in white, wet, cold snow.
Yeah. Yeah the climate is broken, time is broken, ecology is broken, we're 4000 years ahead of schedule, the Ice Age is on my doorstep.
Snow doesn't come down to Lawson. Lawson is just this pesky little location in New South Wales that's just there, the neglected middle child between Syd-fucking-ney and Katoomba the Picturesque Tourist Paradise, with the Blue Mountains and Western Highway looming as scary ass parents in the background. Lawson gets no cred, except for being a footnote in snowing season where meteorologists go 'oh and it doesn't snow in Lawson because it's a piece of weather-defying lump of useless dirt hunk' and that would be the end of it.
But here they are. Snowing and hailing and wind blowing against the side of houses. Shang Qinghua woke up with frozen toes and almost had to pull out the emergency first aid kit to revive his frost-chewed toes. Didn't want to ring the Good Doctor because he would lose more than some toes if that path is travelled upon. But it was really bloody cold okay, he thought it would just hail some bit and be bitterly dry, not coming down with clumps of snow! That's frozen water and enough mammoths get fossilised in them for him not to freak out, okay, he doesn't want to be unearthed 50,000 years from now and be documented as 'Unknown man stiff frozen in justified fear at sudden appearance of destructive Snow Age downpour'. That's not the way to go. He wants everything that had ever recorded his existence destroyed until there was nothing left. Let him rot at the root of a tree. Leave nothing behind. Do not allow others to talk of him.
That's not a reality if he dies in his own home in the unsnowable town now will it?!
He's been hobbling around his home like he has recently acquired legs, Little Mermaid style, and had always slithered around to get by and now there are footsteps and shit, it's all too much muscle coordination for single-limbed reptilians like him. The wind howls loud enough for it to whistle through his window frame and he does not want to turn up at work today, oh no no, that's a guarantee to land himself the fossilised ending later down the road. He can afford to not get paid today. Not a lot of people would roll into work anyways, look at that road! Look at that sky! The news just said somebody died driving! He has to drive! He doesn't want to die in the middle of the road due to hypothermia because the ambulance couldn't reach him in time! That's just sad and awful!
Springing up and feeling all degrees of pain shooting through his thighs to his ankle, Qinghua hisses, flailing sideways and barely slams onto the floor on his arm, before imprinting the shape of his nose onto his front door. No, hardwood flooring isn't a great idea for winter, but he's not putting socks on, otherwise the blood will just ditch him and leave forever. He already doesn't have a brain. He can't have his blood ditching him too. They're stuck in this hell together. If they go, he goes too, and he can't go yet, he hasn't published the novel he's been working on.
It's snowing so hard outside that all sides of his house sounds like it's under attack from ruffians throwing beer bottles against the wall, which had happened, but he's about 8000% sure this is not a human throwing things at his house when those kids started crying and running when he erected The Scarecrow by the letterbox. He's not stepping out, he doesn't have a death wish, but he has to confirm that there isn't a tree three seconds away from Vlad Impaling his front door, then it's going to be Pompeii, Frozen Edition down at unsnowable Lawson. Honestly. Fuck the anthropocene.
Qinghua almost got there where he feels a distinct chill down the back of his neck, where he knows that cold wind shouldn't be slithering down it and gripping his spine in a wet fish grip.
Shuddering and trying to shake off that eerie, horror movie foreshadowing feeling, he places a hand onto his front door, doesn't feel the rattling that he definitely heard and wonders if the cold had reached his head and froze whatever failsafe procedures that's left up there. It sounds like somebody is ramming a bollard into his not-metal grille door. This is not Troy. There is no rock foundation. This door will break. It is made up of plastic and painted to look like hardwood. It's going to be punctured through like a sheet of thin paper and he's going to cope the damage along with being a frozen fossil for the ages to come -
Whoosh, comes the wind, as he tiptoes to the peephole to see into the beyond - that is, his front porch and snow-covered lawn. Nothing. No stray tree in sight. The sight does not reconcile with what he is hearing and he slowly begins to question if he is losing the last straw on his sanity and this is the snow in before he emerges as clinically insane from his hermit cave.
"Ah," he scrubs an eye with the heel of his palm. "Maybe I need to go back to bed."
He opens his eyes to lights and hexagon flaring behind his eyelids, to a pair of crystal clear eyes staring into his, through the peephole. He doesn't blink, staring into the deep blue orbs. They're so clear - not a flaw to the shape or form. Like they have been blessed by the Upstairs Authorities™.
Blinking again, he comes to the appropriately chilling realisation that there are no eyes. They weren't there at all. Perhaps…bed is a good answer. Heater on the highest setting.
(The eyes blink back into existence once he turns his back to the door, pausing at the threshold and hissing as unseen boots step onto protective talismans, burning the frost this entity brings.
Perhaps another time.)
.-.
Shang Qinghua wakes to nobody's surprise - more snow. It's been consistently - a shock - snowing this entire week. The intensity definitely eased up since that first snow in and at this point, nobody even bother with questions or concerns about the incoming Ice Age claiming their collective souls before sweeping to Melbourne. He's been lugging a bag of salt around, to ease up the ice congestion situation on his driveway and on the front porch, lest he slips and crack his head on the cruel, hard ground. Peeling off the socks like one would an onion - with great reluctance and tears - he hobbles into a boot, then the other, silently cursing himself for being too lazy to turn on the lights before he slept, so now he wouldn't be stumbling around in the dark.
He pulls open the front door and slides outside on the sole of his boots. The movements fall less on the ice skating side of things and more on the it's slippery and I'm gay so I guess I'll just glide my way to death.
In that particular phrasing. Nothing more or less.
The salt throwing commences, with no less enthusiasm than one on rice duty at a wedding would participate wholly in. It's almost therapeutic as well, seeing ice eases into puddles of freezing water before his eyes, because destruction of nature brings about calmness in a human soul, but seriously, it's good fun! Salt goes pshh, ice goes splish splash and then turns into sploshy water. Brilliant.
It's because he worked himself in such a frenzy that he doesn't see the person appearing into view, seemingly from the snow all around them, and he, like a dedicated gardener would, throws a handful of salt onto this poor bastard too, realising too late that he had thrown salt at someone else and not ice.
"Uh," he opens his cursed mouth, because he's intelligent like that. "Oh my gods, are you okay? I'm so sorry!"
He wants to cry. He really does. Here he is, spraying handfuls of salt grains to melt the ice congestion his home and bam! Now he threw salt at a whole person, tall as a tree, like he is an evil that needs eradicating. Baptism, bro! See you in hell!
"Shang. Qinghua," the person rumbles, managing to perfectly pronounce everything in his non-English name.
He flinches. "How'd you know my name?"
The person only inclined their head to his letterbox, where the Chinese inscription along with the romanisation still sit, like a neon sign that broadcasts his existence to everyone in the neighbourhood and beyond.
"Right, yes, silly question. How can I help?" He stashed away his salt bag, lest he caused more damage with it, as the person - tall, pale, imposing and very cold in every sense of the word - stares down at him.
"You invited me to seek your abode when, and I quote - when it gets weird and that I want to hide," the person evenly explains, tone a rumbling avalanche in motion. "I am in need of shelter."
Shang Qinghua didn't put too much brain work into deciphering where exactly they met and when he said those words, to inch closer, a foot in front of another, until their shoes touch, boot to boot.
"Are you hurt?" He asks, because that's a lot of fur the guy is wearing and he isn't about to inspect a stranger in front of his doorstep.
"That is not your immediate concern. Will you grant me shelter, Shang Qinghua?" Tall, imposing and cold repeats, blue eyes zoning in on him. Gods, they are so flawless. So blue. He wants to look into them forever.
He steps aside, you know, like a prelude before a deadly home murder scene, last moments before disaster strike style, and holds the door open for the stranger to step inside, praying for this to not repeat the details of the Dyatlov Pass.
"Do come in. Please kill me gently."
He dies hear the snort of - "If I wanted you dead, we wouldn't be having civil conversations, Shang Qinghua."
.-.
Cucumber Bro lost his shit when Qinghua called him to report on the Current Affair. Shen Yuan sure can yell like he's 6"5 instead of his 5"8 stature, a feat only short people can indulge in. Regardless, Shang Qinghua explained that there is an albino mountain of a man who is most likely lost in the raging snowstorms of Lawson and the minute they can determine where he is meant to go, Qinghua can ditch his ass.
"You're going to die before that," Cucumber Bro had hissed, and then Qinghua had told him well shit, good.
Suffice to say, that conversation went.
It's very hard to let the stranger with a name of Mobei Jun - seriously, King of the northern deserts, wow - go. He's all doom and gloom and he hates the heater that Qinghua blasts at full capacity in his home, but he also is really convenient to reach for things at tall places and generally doesn't obstruct much in terms of space. Country people really are another breed - the guy doesn't know how to work a lot of the tech in his house, so he assumes the role of caretaker and keeps the state of things to be not as chaotic as they could become, so kudos to him. He also had thrown out a lot of shit Qinghua didn't know he has in storage, and they had a whole bonding moment where they donated those to drought relief funds to transport up north.
Mobei Jun is a deceptively long term player at the murder game, or he just wants a roof to stay under. Either way, Qinghua isn't going to question it. He's getting authentic northern, hand-pulled noodles from the prettiest guy he had the misfortune to throw salt at, so he's not complaining.
"You ever going home?" He asks Mobei Jun one day, when they're folding laundry.
Tall and Handsome only reaches over for his winter coat, pressing down the collar. "I am at home."
Qinghua didn't think too much about that.
Good thing he's not sensitive to the cold, but he's still miserable. So gradually, when the weather eases up, he goes out more, dragging Mobei Jun with him. In contrast, his handsome caretaker seems to worsen in condition and health, sweating and going paler than his already pale countenance. He looks like an ice block melting in the sun and Qinghua half wants to laugh, half is worried over him. Is he...okay
"You're literally melting before my eyes," he puts down his hands, shoving Mobei inside. "Do we need to shove you into a meat locker or something? Are you allergic to the heat?"
"Snow gods don't deal well with the heat, Shang Qinghua," is the peevish answer.
He snorts. This guy, back at it again with the snow gods bullshit.
"Well you look like shit, so we should do something about that," he grouses, stepping away from Mobei Jun. He runs hot, so that must be uncomfortable, to be so close to him. But that pale hand reaches out to hook into his pinkie again, like a moth that can't bear to be apart from the fire that burns it.
He muses to himself over the next couple of days. Yeah. Yeah that could work. They can just...Do That.
"Oi," he pokes his housemate one day. "What do you think about moving further down south to Tassie or to the northern district in the motherland?"
Mobei Jun flinches, a tiny gesture, eyes going from grey to blue. "What of your friends and family?"
He shrugs. "They'll live. You won't."
Mobei Jun stares very very hard into him. He puts up a palm.
"You've taken care of me for ages, so let me take care of you too," he smiles, because he had made up his mind.
Mobei Jun only rises, dropping to a knee before him. It looks terribly like a proposal.
"This Mobei Jun vows to uphold your honour until the end of both our days. I do not hold much to my name, but once I ascend to the throne, everything I own is yours. Let this be true between us."
He nods, accepting the hand. "Alright, mate. Amicus usque ad aras." Lines their heart lines together, so that the blood in their veins and the hearts in their chests touch. "Cool."
"What does that mean?" Mobei Jun tilts his head.
"You're a god. Figure it out."
.-.
Later on, when Doctor Man hears it all, he does note one thing -
"Well, Xiao Hua, you did ask him to move in with you. And the Latin... there really is no room to say anything else. Congratulations."
Qinghua screams, but it was too late.