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“So, what movie are we watching tonight? Home Alone? Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?” Jess asked.
The residents of apartment 4D were walking home after Joe Napoli’s holiday party, all a little tired and all a little tipsy. It had been snowing since early in the afternoon, coating the entire city in a blanket of white. The city looked nicer than usual, the street lamps highlighting the flurries still swirling in the air and casting a golden glow on the snow-filled streets and sidewalks.
“We’re living in a snow globe!” Jess had exclaimed earlier that day.
“I sure hope we’re not. I don’t like the idea of someone turning us upside down and shaking us all around to make it snow," Winston had replied.
“What about Frosty? Frosty the Snowman? I love that little guy,” Nick suggested. He was currently hanging off of Schmidt, a goofy grin spread across his face.
“Nah, I don’t trust him. Do you really want a pile of snow to gain sentience?” Winston asked.
Nick took a moment to consider the question. “I mean…no. Not really. That’s actually kind of a scary thought.”
“Oh, please, if a talking snowman appeared in front of us right now? We’d all be more delighted and joyful than we’ve ever been,” Schmidt scoffed.
“How is a talking snowman any weirder than a talking reindeer?” Jess asked, turning to look at Winston.
“I never said that the talking reindeer weren’t weird,” he replied, “but at least reindeer are supposed to be alive. Snow isn’t.”
Jess went silent for a moment before shrugging. “Huh. Fair enough.”
The group kept strolling down the snowy sidewalk, Jess and Winston passing Schmidt and Nick, who were practically falling over each other at this point. Jess was admiring the way everything looked in the snow, the beauty of it distracting her from how cold she was, even with her favorite hot pink peacoat fastened snugly around her.
“Hey, Jess!” Schmidt yelled up to her.
“Yes, Schmidt?”
She turned around to face her roommate only to be greeted with a snowball in her face. She gasped, stopping in her tracks and moving to frantically wipe the snow out of her eyes.
“Not cool, Schmidt!” Jess yelled back, flinging the last of the snow off of her face.
“Yeah, totally not cool…” Nick grumbled. Jess turned to see that he had a snowball of his own in his hand and was trying (and failing) to hide it behind his back.
“Oh, come on, Nick! Do you really want to do this?”
“If this is a snowball fight, then count me in,” he said with an almost wicked grin.
“Snowball fight!” Schmidt yelled, letting go of Nick and diving towards the nearest snow bank.
“Oh, please leave me out of this…” Winston grumbled, attempting to duck away. However, before he could get very far away from his roommates, Nick hurled an extremely lumpy snowball at him.
It hit Winston in the back, exploding into a flurry of white powder. The other three froze as he slowly spun around to face them.
“Congratulations. It’s on.”
He rushed back towards the group, reaching out to scrape the snow off the top of a car and ball it up in his hands. Jess shrieked, moving swiftly out of the way and towards the building to their left so that she could pick up snow from the nearest window sill.
Meanwhile, Schmidt was hovering beside the snow bank, quickly forming snowballs and stacking them up next to a street lamp. Nick was shoveling up a massive amount of snow into his arms when he was hit by a densely packed snowball thrown by Winston.
“Hey, not cool! I’m defenseless! Defenseless, I tell you!” Nick yelled.
“Yeah? Well, so was I!” Winston yelled back.
“Good thing I’m not!” Jess exclaimed as she jumped into the fray and hit Nick’s arm with a rather large snowball.
He shrieked. “Not fair! You’re hitting me while I’m down!”
“Hey! I’m the only one that’s allowed to throw snowballs at Nick!” Schmidt exclaimed, rushing over and swiftly hurling snowballs at both Jess and Winston.
“Why is that? Who made that rule?!” Winston asked indignantly.
“I did, Winston! I did!”
“Oh, well…” Jess started, diving down to scoop up more snow from the sidewalk and packing it into a ball, “there’s no rule about who’s allowed to throw snowballs at you!”
She let the snowball fly, it hitting Schmidt in the square in the face.
“Hey! I got you back!” she exclaimed, turning to high five Winston.
“Oh, Jessica…we’re only getting started.”
From there, it was all out war.
Schmidt ran back to his snowball reserves and started flinging them indiscriminately, some hitting and exploding on his friends while others hit the ground or the building in front of him. Nick’s strategy wasn’t quite paying off as he kept trying to scoop up large amounts of snow that were impossible to pack into compact balls. Winston continued scraping snow off of the cars parked next to the curb, making one snowball at a time and hitting one of his friends with most of them. Jess was partaking in the most active strategy, running all over the area instead of staying in one place as her roommates were. She continued harvesting snow from the windowsills, ambushed Schmidt to steal some of his reserves, and hit one of her friends with about half of all the snowballs that she threw.
“Can we just all surrender at the same time? I’m getting tired,” Schmidt asked, practically collapsing in the snow next to a streetlight.
“No! Surrendering is for losers!” Jess yelled, hurling a snowball in his general direction.
“Yeah! Losers!” Nick chorused, throwing a poorly constructed snowball at him as well.
“I don’t know…I’m with Schmidt. I could go for a good mug of hot cocoa right about now,” Winston said, dropping the snowball that he was in the middle of forming.
Jess huffed. “But we have to have a winner! You can’t have a snowball fight without a winner.”
“How about we have a lightning round? From now on, if you get hit, you’re out. Last man standing wins,” Schmidt suggested.
His friends considered this proposition, all eventually nodding in agreement.
“Alright, lightning round!” Jess cheered.
Before she could even turn and gather up more snow, a snowball hit her right in the leg. She looked in the direction that it had come from and met Scmidt’s smug gaze, narrowing her eyes and stomping her foot in frustration.
“Not cool, Schmidt! Not cool.”
While the others were distracted, Winston used the opportunity to hurl a snowball at Nick, hitting him in the chest.
“Ah, would you look at that?” Nick muttered, looking down at the white powder all over his coat.
“Guess that just leaves you two,” Jess said, crossing her arms and leaning back against the building. Nick stumbled over to join her, crossing his arms as well and leaning over to rest his head on her shoulder.
“I guess it does,” Winston said, turning to look right at Schmidt. He ducked behind the nearest car as Schmidt began throwing snowballs in his direction. However, his reserves were quickly dwindling, and he soon returned to his snowbank to make more.
Winston used this as his opportunity to strike, forming a compact ball and throwing it at Schmidt. It was a hit, exploding as it made contact with his arm.
“Ohhhhhh!” Jess squealed, throwing her arms up in the air. Nick jolted upwards and attempted to stand on his own as she ran over to their roommate.
“Winston! Winston! Winston!” she began chanting. Nick joined in as they clung to their roommate’s arms and jumped up and down in excitement.
Schmidt stood up and brushed the snow off his shoulder, striding over to the rest of the group. “Congratulations. It was a match well fought,” he said, holding his hand out for a hand shake.
Winston reciprocated, moving his other hand to clap Schmidt on the shoulder.
“Thank you. It was, my friend.”
“Can we go watch Rudolph now? I’m kind of getting a little cold,” Jess interjected.
Nick scoffed. “No? We’re watching Frosty!”
“No, we’re not! And I won the snowball fight, so I get the final say!” Winston shot back.
“Whatever. I agree with Jess, it’s getting cold. Let’s head home,” Schmidt said, pushing past his roommate to continue down the sidewalk towards their apartment complex.
“Can’t argue with that,” Nick said, turning to join him. Jess quickly ran up beside him and looped her arm around his shoulders, attempting to help steady him. Winston shook his head as he watched his roommates for a moment, eventually running around Nick and Jess to walk next to Schmidt.
Whatever came next for the residents of apartment 4D, one thing was for certain: the argument over what Christmas special to watch that night was going to be epic.