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Everything changes on a cold Thursday in January, the kind of day when summer seems a distant memory and spring a forlorn hope. The world is cold and silent and still, the grass silvered into sharpness by the frost; and not even the birds are witness to the three men who hold Vin down beneath the icy water, hands strong and brutal on his back and head.
He doesn't know them, doesn't know their names or who sent them or why, and he never will. Chris leaves them where they fall and doesn’t look back.
Later it will come back to Vin in incomplete snatches, the fear and the panic, the burning in his lungs, the pounding of his heart, the sheer frantic desperation of the drowned, and he'll be grateful when the memories remain blessedly incoherent, hazy at the edges. Some things he doesn’t need to remember, doesn’t want to remember.
He'll never remember the sharp ring of Pony’s hooves on the frozen ground or the strangled cry that ripped from Chris’ throat. He knows three shots were fired, but he'll never know the way the crisp air made the sounds echo and multiply, or the sight of the ice at the edge of the river thawing in patches from the hot spurt of blood.
He'll never know how Chris’ hands, so steady and sure on the hilt of his gun, shook as he heaved Vin from the icy water, how Chris’ every breath was a sob and his voice broke as he shook Vin’s limp body, as he pounded on his chest and breathed for him in some obscene parody of a kiss, as he screamed at him to just breathe, dammit, breathe.
Vin will only remember opening his eyes and seeing Chris’ face framed against the sky, eyes wide and fearful, and the water clinging in tiny droplets to his cheeks, sliding down his jaw and landing softly, one by one, like raindrops. Like tears.
***
Three days. Chris waits by Vin’s bed for three days.
Vin opens his eyes the day the rain begins, falling without end from the troubled, leaden skies. It falls and falls; the streets turn to rivers and the rivers turn to floods, and still it rains.
Chris sits by the bed and watches Vin, watches as he lies quiet and still, head turned to the window, face turned up to the sky. His eyes reflect the roiling clouds above, and there’s something there Chris can’t read. His hands still shake, and when he clenches his fists Vin’s eyes follow him.
The rain continues to fall on Tuesday, shielding both sins and signs, and Vin is restless. He paces by the window and watches the raindrops slide down the glass, traces them with his fingertips.
When Chris wraps his arms around Vin's waist and rests his chin on his shoulder, Vin starts suddenly, a full body jerk, and Chris backs off, hands raised. His fingers tremble a little, helplessly. Hopelessly.
By Wednesday Josiah is making jokes about Noah and his ark, marching two-by-two, and Vin smiles uneasily and won’t meet Chris’ eyes.
On the fourth day the rain turns to snow and Chris wakes to an empty bed. He comes to in silence and stillness, to a strange half-light filtering through the dirty windows, and an empty bed.
It's an hour yet until dawn, but the falling snow lends an unnatural brightness to the world and he hesitates for a moment, the confusion of sleep still clouding his mind. Everything is white and frozen, and the only thing that seems real is the faint tracks in the snow, already disappearing.
It’s not a shock, or it shouldn’t be. Vin comes and goes as he pleases, slipping away with barely a word and a smile, and sometimes it’s days before Chris sees him again, days before he feels the touch of Vin’s hand and the tug of his fingers across his scalp.
Sometimes he’ll appear at the shack with no warning, slipping in with the starlight, smelling of freedom and the open air, and Chris will wake to warm breath in his ear and the curve of Vin’s lips against his skin.
He never asks Vin where he goes, on those days when the sheets cool too fast and the bed seems too big, and he never asks him to stay. Vin will stand in the doorway, framed by the sun, backlit by the moon, and he’ll glance over his shoulder and smile goodbye. The words in Chris’ throat stay there, choked down like bile and regret, and the sound of the door closing is quiet. Hollow.
It’s not a shock. It shouldn’t be a shock. And yet.
Something cold settles in his chest, a sharp tight knot of fear, and he can’t breathe.
***
Time passes. Chris sits on a tree stump, watches the drift and swirl of the snow, the small red-breasted birds hopping from branch to barren branch. Tries not to remember the balmy heat of summer, Vin stripped down to his waist, swinging an axe with a grin and a laugh, the sweat-slick skin of his back hot against Chris’ chest.
The wood is burned and gone, ashes and embers only, but the roots remain. The stump beneath him is rough with splinters and hard as memory. He runs his fingers, reddened with cold, numbed beyond the point of pain, along the bark, again and again, and the drops of blood are vivid against the snow. I’m here, they say. I’m here.
He tucks his hands into the cradle of his thighs, shoulders hunched against the world.
It’s different now. He doesn’t know why, only that it is. The world changed when Vin was in the water, a world reborn and re-baptised, and he’s lost his place in it. A new world, Josiah would say. A flood to wash away man’s sins.
Chris shivers uneasily, and waits.
***
He blinks and finds himself standing in the street, staring at the sheet of ice across the water trough. It’s inches thick, a light dusting of snow blown into runes and sigils across the surface, and he could read them, if he had the time, if he had Vin and the time, he could read their meaning.
Chris reaches out, draws the tips of his fingers through the snow, light powder clinging to his skin. He traces a ‘V’ without thinking, without looking, his gaze drawn to the contrast of snow on the black of his arm. He’s been standing long enough that the snow is gathering across his shoulders, and when he lifts his head to look at Nathan it drifts down from the brim of his hat.
“Chris,” Nathan says, and Chris nods, just once, his mouth a thin line as sharp and uncompromising as the ice.
Nathan hesitates for a moment and turns his face up to the lowering cloud-strewn skies above. The easy cadence of his breath is loud in the snow-muffled air; Chris finds himself listening to the slow rhythm, in and out and in again, and thinks of Vin.
Vin asleep, brow smooth and unruffled, breathing quiet and easy. Vin spread beneath him, the devastating arch of his neck, the hard press of his thighs clamped around Chris’ hips, his breath rasping in his chest, fingers scrabbling roughly at Chris’ back. Vin bent over at the waist to catch his breath, white teeth and curved lips smiling, laughing. Vin at the door, hesitating, sunlight burnishing his hair like a halo.
Vin in the river, not breathing.
Nathan moves, hand warm and firm on Chris' shoulder as he passes, and when Chris turns his head to follow Nathan’s expression is unreadable.
"He'll be back," Nathan says quietly.
***
Another blink, another day, and quiet shades into silent, and he’s almost forgotten there were ever words needing to be spoken.
Chris has lost one life to fire and another to ice, and surely there’s a balance there, some meaning he’s supposed to understand, a message he’s supposed to read. One life to fire, and one life to ice – and what’s left, in the still point, in the centre, what’s left then?
Sometimes Vin feels like a memory only half-recalled, indistinct in the mist. Sometimes he feels like the only thing that was ever real. And Chris can’t help but wonder if perhaps it’s always been that way. Perhaps he only ever half-held him, half-knew him.
He thinks of Vin’s skin, smelling of freedom and the open air. Of freedom.
***
“Come inside,” Buck urges, and he gestures to the saloon beyond. The light spills out into the snow, and the laughter has a weight and a warmth to it. “It’s cold, Chris.”
“Vin’s gone,” and it’s all he can manage, all he can force past the lump in his throat and the pain in his chest. “He’s gone.”
Buck puts a hand on his arm and Chris watches the movement of his fingers, the flex of the muscle in his wrist, the bones in his hand. He’s been put back together by these hands, he thinks. He’s been broken and mended and steadied and stayed, but blood is warm beneath the surface and he only feels cold.
“I know,” Buck says, and his eyes are soft and sad. “Come inside.”
Chris sits in the saloon and shivers uncontrollably.
***
A week, and Chris doesn’t sleep. Daren’t sleep.
When he dreams at night he sees the web of frost across the frozen river, feels his eyelashes heavy with ice, and the water is so cold on his skin, so cold. He sees Vin through a glass, darkly, through the ice and the frost, and when Vin turns and walks away Chris can only close his eyes and let the water wash through him.
He can’t help but wonder which one of them drowned that day, which one of them was lost beneath the ice.
***
He haunts the streets at night, slipping from darkness to darkness like a wraith, trailing shadows in his wake. He catches wisps of Ezra’s cologne, hears the scrape of JD’s boot heels on the sidewalk, but he can’t stop, can’t rest.
The path is familiar and well-worn, the boarding house to the saloon, the saloon to the stables, the stables to the edge of town. He avoids Vin’s wagon, stands for hours outside Josiah’s church, fists curled into claws by the cold. He doesn’t dare enter.
There’s a candle in the window, flickering in the air currents, a brave solitary glow, and he doesn’t take his eyes off it. He feels Josiah’s presence at his side and speaks without turning his head.
"Is that for Vin?"
"Do you think he needs it?" Josiah answers, and Chris could almost smile, almost laugh at the cryptic response. No comforting platitudes from Josiah, no firm arm around the shoulder, no easy companionship. But the sound torn from his throat holds no mirth, and he coughs, chokes, shakes his head helplessly.
Josiah lays a hand on his back; the heat of it burns and Chris twists away from the contact, his whole body a spasm of rejection, turns away into the darkness.
“It’s not in Vin to be afraid,” Josiah says, his voice gentled by the night. “Whatever he fears that’s what he’s got to face.”
“What the hell is he afraid of?” Chris flashes back, anger flaring hot and sudden through his veins, and it’s painful, spreading through his body like a fire, the ice cracking, shattering.
Josiah says nothing for a long moment. He regards Chris steadily, his gaze measured. Pointed.
“He’s too much like you sometimes,” he says finally, and there’s something heavy and sad in his tone that brings Chris around, brings him standing square in front of the church, hands and heart empty, watching as Josiah walks slowly up the steps.
***
The wind sighs like a pair of lungs, a slow heavy exhale, a sucking inrush that whips the blood in his cheeks and brings tears to his eyes. It bites, this wind, there’s no mercy to it, no ease.
It could end here. No sound but the wind whispering through the trees and his heartbeat thundering in his ears, nothing sure in this world but the cold and the blood. Red on white, and I’m here, it would tell, I’m here.
He saw a man freeze to death once. It was a kind death. It starts with the heart.
Chris closes his eyes.
***
He wakes from a dream of Vin, the scent of summer still lingering on his skin, and for a moment Chris doesn’t feel the cold air, the icy draughts from beneath the door - he can only stare as Vin rises to his feet in front of the fire, brushing wood-dust from his palms against his thighs.
“It was cold in here,” Vin murmurs.
Chris says nothing. He watches Vin, his gaze steady, not blinking, deliberately so. The cold air pricks the nape of his neck, and he shivers. Vin’s eyes are hooded, inscrutable, but there’s a tremor to his mouth, and the deep shadows beneath his eyes speak of exhaustion and anxiety.
Vin’s hand comes up slowly, thumb sweeping across Chris’ cheek, and Chris flinches, only briefly. He doesn’t brush Vin’s hand away. The heat of it bleeds through his skin, and he wants to fall in to it, fights the urge.
Vin opens his mouth, stops. Chris can see his Adam’s apple bob and shift in his throat, and there’s a dry click as Vin swallows hard, heaves a sigh. His thumb traces along Chris’ bottom lip.
Chris props himself up on his elbow, and he sees Vin ready himself to pull back, sees the quiver of muscles poised for flight all along his back and shoulders. He curls his fingers around Vin’s wrist, tugs slightly, and Vin sinks down onto the bed like his strings have been cut, shoulders bowed, head heavy.
“I’ve never seen you scared before,” he whispers, and Chris has to lean in to hear him, has to press his chest against Vin’s back and lean in to the warmth of him, the small fierce core that he saw that first day in the street.
Vin doesn’t pull away. He twists around, his fingers wrapping around the back of Chris’ neck, warm and heavy, welcome – so familiar and like he’s discovering it anew, rediscovering it. The rough calluses on his palm, the gentle hitch of his breath, the bend of Vin over him, the lean curve of his neck, the soft touch of his skin.
Closing the gap between them isn’t difficult. It never has been.
“This is all the freedom I want,” Vin whispers, and Chris kisses him.
***
Chris doesn’t sleep. Vin is curled beside him, one arm reaching out across the expanse of bed between them, his crooked fingers just resting against Chris’ side.
***
The thaw has set in. He can smell it before he wakes, the scent of the earth waking up, the clean rush of water. There’s a quietness to the air, not silence this time, not frozen half-dead stillness, and he doesn’t need to open his eyes to listen, to know, to know.
Beside him, Vin is breathing slowly, evenly, his palm splayed out over Chris’ heart, every pinpoint of touch radiating heat like a furnace. The fire has gone out, but Chris isn’t cold.
“Why did you go?” he murmurs, and Vin opens his eyes.
“So I could come back.”