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The first snow of the year was always Dimitri’s favorite. Just watching the earth get blanketed in a sea of white, the snow settling in a crisp sheet and making everything look untouched and beautiful… there was nothing better than staying up late and watching it come down. Considering his notorious streak of insomnia, watching the falling snow as midnight approached while he read by the light of a single candle… it brought him a tranquility he often didn’t get. It seemed like even his ghosts had a certain level of respect for the first snow of the year, and did not encroach on his peace.
He still couldn’t sleep, but Dimitri found he didn’t exactly mind. He’d made a good effort at it, just to satisfy Dedue who he knew would ask him in the morning if he’d even laid down in bed the night before. But about an hour ago, the long stretch of just staring at his ceiling while waiting for sleep to come had been interrupted first by the light patter of sleet against his window, then snowflakes hitting near-silently on the glass. Dimitri had sat up and watched it come down for a while, the ice and snow settling over the walkways below and coating the foliage in the garden and frosting up his window within a matter of minutes. It wouldn’t be the best snow to walk about in tomorrow morning, and Dimitri had definitely seen prettier snowfalls, but it was still snow despite the way it made the ground slippery instead of soft. He had gotten up and gone to his desk and lit a candle after the first ten minutes, occupying himself by thumbing through a reading for class as winter descended on Garreg Mach.
After an hour of reading, Dimitri got up to stretch his legs. He paced around the room, rolling his shoulders and instinctively going over to the window to look out and see just how much the snow had piled up. It was already at about two inches now, though Dimitri knew that if it had been a fluffy snow instead of a wet one, it’d be piled much higher. Come morning they might have four or even five inches of wintry mix upon the ground. It’d be cold and dreary and not at all fun, especially for the people from farther south who weren’t exactly used to wintry weather. Garreg Mach straddled the line between the cold north and the warm south, and Dimitri wondered if this spattering of sleet and rain was about the best the Ohgma Mountains could do. In Fhirdiad, the first snowfall always piled up to four feet or more. When Dimitri was little, he could remember the snow being taller than his head, and his father scooping him up and tossing him over the balcony to land in a soft, fluffy cloud of cold as he laughed and ran back inside and demanded for Lambert to toss him again, higher this time! His father had laughed and scooped him up and they had kept playing until his step mother had caught them and given his father the tongue lashing of a lifetime for throwing that sweet baby boy off the second floor of the castle, never mind how Dimitri had kept asking for it…
It was so rare to have such fond memories filter back to him when he thought of his parents, but the first snowfall just had a magical effect like that.
He returned to his desk to read for a few more minutes, not at all tired. The plink of sleety snow eventually became the patter of freezing rain, and Dimitri gave a little frown. Seemed like there really wouldn’t be a fun snow day tomorrow. Everything was just going to be wet and cold and gross, especially once people started tramping around in the snow. It would no longer be a pristine white – Dimitri bet that by the time the second bell rang that morning, the Academy grounds would be covered in a mire of mud that everyone would track everywhere. The pretty, snow-covered image Dimitri had all to himself as he stayed up through the wee hours of the morning would be completely ruined in the span of minutes once everyone got up.
With that thought in mind, Dimitri actually got back up again, bringing his book with him over to the window. Looking down, he could see a solitary pair of boot prints in the snow below him, and he gave a sympathetic little smile for the poor guard who was on patrol in the freezing rain tonight. Dimitri found the weather delightful and relaxing to view from his warm room, but if he were out in it right now, he knew that he’d have a far different opinion. For now he just cozied up by the window with the desk chair he’d dragged over, posture quite excellent even though he was sitting in his pajamas with a book in his lap and a solitary candle on the windowsill. No one could see him but some habits were simply too hard to break, even in the name of relaxation. He picked up where he had left off, re-reading the assignment they’d been given to prepare them for tomorrow’s lecture from Professor Hanneman. They’d be talking about Crest properties tomorrow, and while Dimitri wasn’t overly interested in the subject, he at least found it interesting to listen to people talk about things they were passionate about.
Dimitri’s lack of interest in perusing the subject on his own showed, however. He read the section on his Crest of Blaiddyd with some curiosity, but once he’d gotten through those four pages of tiny text he leaned back in his chair again. The book was arranged by alphabetical order, starting with the Crests of the Apostles, then the Elites, then finally the Saints. The next section was the one on Charon, which he knew he should probably have a look at, but then the next two sections were on Daphnel and Dominic and Dimitri had no doubt that Ingrid and Annette would absolutely devour those sections and come to class with plenty of questions to fill the heads of their classmates with more information than they ever needed on the subject, so it wouldn’t be so bad if Dimitri went a little lax on the reading tonight. Besides, the sound of the rain distracted him again, thrumming on the roof above him in steady droves. He had to reconsider his original assessment – if it kept raining like this all through the night, then it might very well wash away the little snow they had gotten. If that was the case, Dimitri might end up being the only one privy to the sight of the snow-covered monastery that night; well, Dimitri and the guard on patrol.
He straightened up and looked out his window again just to see the progress of the rain. When he did, he was surprised to see many more footprints, trotting back and forth between the dorms and the greenhouse. If they were from a guard, Dimitri would have seen the light of the knight’s torch passing his window, but he hadn’t noticed any light besides what was coming off his candle. Granted, maybe the flickering of the candle had been enough to mask the flickering of a torch, or maybe the guard hadn’t been able to keep it lit through the downpour. But Dimitri absolutely would have heard it when that guard fell down; the clatter of armor would have been unmistakable. And yet, he hadn’t heard any such thing despite the evidence that someone had definitely bitten the sidewalk very recently. There was a long line, which Dimitri recognized as a skid mark that was about three feet long. There was a little scuff beside it where the person had tried – unsuccessfully – to catch themselves. At the end of those marks was a nice butt-print, right there at the top of the stairs. It looked like the person had been about four inches away from having an impromptu skiing session down the steps. Dimitri was caught between laughter and concern; seeing the evidence of that spectacular fall he’d likely just barely missed witnessing for himself was quite funny when he recreated the event in his mind, but he was also worried that whoever had slipped like that might have hurt themselves. If they hadn’t been carrying a light, and knocked themselves out or something with that fall, it could very well be morning before they were found. By then, hypothermia would have set in and it would be very, very bad.
So Dimitri didn’t laugh as worry won out. He snapped his book shut and hopped up to his feet and immediately started throwing on clothing, sliding into his socks and boots and tugging on a heavier tunic and finally adding his woolen winter cloak over his shoulders. He tugged up his hood as he exited his dorm and began walking down the hall.
He didn’t get very far at all before his boot went splash, and he looked down to find himself standing in a large puddle. Squinting down the dark hallway, he could make out wet footprints coming all the way to where Dimitri now stood, reflecting just the little bit of light that was filtering in from the windows to make them visible to his eyes. Dimitri’s gaze followed them right to his feet, where they ran into this large puddle that he was standing in. It was as though the person who’d made them had also stood here for a few minutes… fumbling with the doorknob that was now right next to Dimitri’s hand. He turned to look at the door, then back down the hall to his own room, counting.
This was Claude’s room. Dimitri had thought so immediately; he’d been inside this room more than once by now, after all. But he’d had to count and check all the same. These wet footprints led directly to Claude’s door, and though Dimitri could not make out the size nor the shape of the footprints due to the lighting and the fact that they were mere puddles, he knew that they had to belong to Claude.
But what on earth was Claude doing out in the middle of the night, drowning himself in horrible weather for a visit to the greenhouse that could have surely waited until morning?
That question, and any others that Dimitri may have thought of, were purged immediately as he heard a muffled, tiny cry from the other side of Claude’s door. His mind went back to the evidence of the fall he had seen from his window, and it no longer seemed so funny. Whatever Claude had been doing out there didn’t matter; he was back now. Back in his room and crying.
Dimitri’s heart clenched in his chest and he could only imagine the most terrible things. That Claude had slipped and broken something – his arm or his wrist, likely, from catching himself improperly. Or maybe he had cut himself on the freezing cobble – Dimitri hadn’t seen any dark patches in the snow or in the puddles in the hallway that indicated bleeding, but if Claude had wrapped the wound or had been applying pressure to it maybe it was just soaking his fingers and clothes. Or perhaps Claude had turned his ankle – perhaps he’d had to limp back up here, freezing and injured, forced to climb the stairs all on his own and balance on one leg while his shaking fingers slipped on the metal latch barring his room. Dimitri surely could have come up with a thousand more terrible sights to witness in his mind’s eye, and he likely would have, standing there as frozen as ice outside of Claude’s door. But then there was another cry, higher pitched and almost frightened sounding and Dimitri was yanked into action. His heart clenched as all the dreadful images swirled into one bleeding and broken mess of a boyfriend inside his mind. He needed to get into this room right now, even if he hadn’t been invited. He grabbed the handle to Claude’s room and twisted it, snapping the lock (on accident, he swore it was an accident but he couldn’t control his strength at the best of times and right now he was freaking out) and thrusting the door open.
“Claude!” he whisper-yelled, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the light in Claude’s room. Claude had several candles burning and it was so much brighter than the dark hallway that Dimitri had to squint. He could make out Claude, huddled up on his bed and shivering, a towel in his arms and something squirming inside.
“Dimitri?” Claude whisper-yelled back, his green eyes going wide as he met the Prince’s gaze. But then Claude’s eyes dropped to the ground and he swore. “Fuck, catch her! Don’t let her get back out!” he yelped and it was only Dimitri’s quick reflexes that had him obeying in time, snagging the wiggling hairy lump right as it made a break for freedom past his legs. Claude jumped up and grabbed Dimitri by the clasp of his cape and yanked him into his room, slamming the door behind him. He tried to latch it, found it broken, and swore again while Dimitri looked down and processed that what he was holding was a very white, very wet, very disgruntled cat.
“People usually knock b-before they come bursting into other people’s rooms, your P-Princeliness,” Claude was saying, shooting Dimitri a wary little side-eye as he collected the cat from Dimitri’s arms and carried it back over to his bed, sitting it down among a little pile of crying kittens. It had been a long time since Dimitri had been subjected to a look like that from Claude, but Dimitri didn’t think it was unwarranted. He’d just burst into Claude’s room in the middle of the night to catch the archer breaking one of the Academy’s rules red-handed. No pets in the dorms, Seteth had told them over and over. The animals here at the monastery are well-socialized and friendly, but they are cared for by the monks and nuns. No student need take it upon themselves to adopt a cat or a dog or a bird or a fish, he’d said, the last bit with a pointed look cast in the direction of his sister. And yet despite those repeated instructions that came over and over in the first days they were living at the Monastery… here Claude was with kittens in his bed. The cat, who was obviously their mother, set to grooming them immediately while Claude scooped one up and wrapped it in the towel he was holding, drying off its soaked fur as it screamed for its mama. That… that had been the noise Dimitri had heard from the hallway.
“T-To what do I owe the pleasure of this m-midnight visit?” Claude said, but his attempts at being smooth were utterly ruined by the way he was shivering and his teeth were chattering. Dimitri took in the sight of him again: huddled up on his bed in drenched pajamas, taking care of a bunch of cats even though his hair was dripping and his lips were blue. Dimitri couldn’t help but give a helpless little sigh as he absorbed the image and the story it implied. Claude had gone out in the middle of the night, in the middle of a freezing ice storm, for…
“Kittens,” he finished the thought aloud, eyes drifting back to the litter on Claude’s bed. There were four of them, so very tiny. Their eyes weren’t even open yet and their mother was fussing over them just as much as Claude was. The scene was strangely… domestic, and that thought made Dimitri’s heart beat just a wee bit faster. But it still didn’t make a lot of sense. “You went out into this weather for kittens,” he deadpanned, and Claude snorted, pursing his lips and looking aside.
“Y-Yeah, and what of it?” he asked. He was trying to play it cool but Dimitri could see how Claude’s shoulders had curled up towards his ears. Maybe Claude was just cold. Or maybe he was tensed up, worried that Dimitri was going to run off and tell Seteth that Claude had pets in his dorm room.
What Dimitri did instead was let out a small, relieved laugh, shaking his head and taking a small step closer to the bed. Claude leaned slightly away, his shoulders still hunched, but when Dimitri took off his cloak and began using it to towel Claude off the same way that Claude had been toweling off the kittens, the archer released a deep breath. Dimitri could feel him shivering, but he could also feel him slowly relaxing, his frozen body melting under Dimitri’s touch. Claude gave a little sniffle, his nose running from the cold, and sneezed once before he looked over his shoulder at Dimitri. That green gaze seemed to evaluate him for a long moment, but whatever silent test Claude was subjecting him to, Dimitri seemed to pass it by giving the other House Leader a soft smile and a delicate peck to his temple. “Your secrets are my secrets,” Dimitri murmured in Claude’s ear, turning a phrase that Claude often liked to say to everyone, boyfriend included, right back onto him. Claude laughed and scooted back against Dimitri’s chest, allowing the Prince to towel him off with his warm cloak while Claude picked up the last kitten and did the same on a smaller scale. Dimitri sighed and shook his head and pressed one more kiss to the crown of Claude’s skull before speaking again. “What on earth are you doing with them here, Claude? You’ll get a detention for this if someone finds out.”
“No one’s going to f-find out so long as you don’t go running your mouth,” Claude returned, a point which Dimitri conceded with a hum. “And besides that, I’m not scared of detention. I won’t get bent out of shape if I get a little mark on my permanent record,” he added, and Dimitri snorted again. Oh, yes, he knew that well enough. Claude teased him about his ‘stick-in-the-mud’ adherence to the rules all the time, insisting that it was much better to beg for forgiveness than ask permission in most cases. Dimitri could see Claude’s point – anyone could, when he turned that winning smile on them. Dimitri forgave Claude for the jibe immediately.
Still, “You haven’t answered my question,” the Prince persisted. Claude gave a little shrug.
“I found them outside the greenhouse a few days ago. They’d just been born. When it started raining like this, I got worried… I had to g-go see if they were still th-there,” he said. He gestured to the little litter of white and orange-dappled kittens, implying that obviously they were. “I couldn’t just l-leave them out in the cold. There was no way they’d be staying warm under that little bush,” he said. Dimitri hummed, wrapping his arms fully around Claude and drawing him back into his chest now that he had finished toweling off the kittens. They weren’t the only ones Dimitri was worried about staying warm.
“I never took you for an animal lover,” Dimitri said, though his own expression was quite soft as he looked down at the quadruplets, watching their milky white mama curl up around them and purr. Claude gave a little shrug, and when it seemed like he wasn’t going to say anything, Dimitri just continued. “This is a new side of you. I didn’t know you were this… compassionate. I like it,” he confessed right into Claude’s ear, and the feeling of his warm breath against Claude’s skin made the archer in his arms squirm and smile.
“No comment,” he provided when Dimitri accused him of soft-heartedness. Dimitri just let it go, contented enough by the fact that Claude didn’t try to deny it, and on top of that his boyfriend’s teeth were no longer chattering. The kittens curled up with their mother and Claude curled up with Dimitri. Dimitri rested his back against the headboard of Claude’s bed and Claude turned around in his arms so that they were laying chest to chest, Dimitri’s cloak pulled tightly around his shoulders, Claude’s knees drawn against his torso and his toes right on Dimitri’s thigh. Dimitri gave a little shiver and reached down to put a hand around Claude’s foot.
“Ah! These are freezing!” he said. “You didn’t go out barefoot, did you?”
“No,” Claude said, but his tone implied he was still concealing something. Dimitri stared at him hard with an arched brow until Claude relented, letting out a little huff. “I had my socks on,” he said. Dimitri grumbled, shifting around until he had Claude’s feet under his leg, pressing them between his thigh and the mattress to warm them up more quickly. He used the hood of his cape to ruffle Claude’s wet hair again, wringing the water out of the dark locks as Claude shivered against him. The cats were taken care of, so Dimitri turned his full attention to Claude as his boyfriend pressed up against him. Every inch of Claude was drenched from the freezing rain: his hair, his clothing, his trousers, his feet… Dimitri knew that Claude should change into something warmer but Claude didn’t seem intent on moving and so eventually Dimitri just took matters into his own hands. He pushed Claude back and settled his hands on the hem of Claude’s shirt. Claude’s lips parted as though he was going to say something, but Dimitri acted before he could speak. Wet clothes were no good, especially when they were freezing wet. They had to go, and so he yanked Claude’s shirt up off of him before the archer could even make a sound of protest. Dimitri dropped it onto the ground where it landed with a wet splat, then the both of them looked at one another. As their eyes met, Dimitri realized what he had just done, acted without thinking… Both of them were blushing fiercely.
“Dimitri?” Claude intoned, his lips torn between a smirk and openmouthed shock. In their month of being together, Dimitri had never been so forward. He had kept things chaste and chivalrous and courtly because that was how things were done. But Claude was drenched to the bone, and considering he was from sunny, temperate Derdriu, he probably had no idea how to deal with cold like this. Never mind, change that ‘probably’ to ‘likely’ when Dimitri remembered that Claude had apparently run out into the downpour with sock-feet.
“You’re freezing,” Dimitri responded, leaving the question Claude asked unanswered as he drew the archer back against his chest, trying not to think about how now only one thin layer of fabric was separating his bare skin from Claude’s. Dimitri didn’t dare try to shuck Claude of his trousers – that would be far too scandalous. But his pants weren’t as soaked as his shirt had been and Dimitri could tell that Claude was warmer now. He hunkered into the cloak and smooshed every inch of himself against Dimitri, treating him like his own personal space heater as his shivering slowly ceased.
“What were you thinking?” Dimitri asked, fond but exasperated as he petted his fingers through Claude’s damp locks. Claude huffed and gestured to the kittens again with one arm that flailed out from beneath the cloak for only a second before withdrawing back into the warm shell. Dimitri gave a little shake of his head. “I know, I know. And that was the noble and right thing to do. But you could have put on a cloak, or a scarf, or at least some shoes…” he muttered. Still, he could envision why Claude hadn’t. If he had fallen asleep before the precipitation started and then awakened to the sound of the downpour and the sight of ice all over the ground, he’d likely run out in a panic and not stopped for anything. Claude grumbled into Dimitri’s shoulder as a response, chewing on the collar of his boyfriend’s shirt in mute protest. Dimitri chuckled and gripped Claude’s hair a little bit tighter, tugging on it like he was scruffing a cat to get Claude to lift his head and speak up. “What was that?”
“I said, what I want to know is how you found out about me sneaking out in the snow in the first place,” he responded, and Dimitri let out a full laugh that was loud enough to make the mama cat’s ear flick toward him. He released Claude’s hair to allow him to nuzzle back into his neck while he answered.
“I saw the tracks you left in the snow,” Dimitri answered.
“How’d you know it wasn’t a guard?” Claude asked. Dimitri felt another laugh rumble out of his chest.
“I would have heard a fall that spectacular if it was a guard in full mail,” he said, and Claude’s head snapped up, his eyes wide.
“You didn’t see me, did you?” he asked, his voice pitched about an octave higher and his cheeks flushed. Dimitri stared at the sight in surprise. He had never seen Claude even so much as flustered before. But now, Claude was full-on embarrassed, his blush extending over his cheekbones and up to his ears, down his jaw and neck and turning even his chest pinkish-
No, no, nope, Dimitri couldn’t let his vision stray any further south than that. His gaze snapped back up to Claude’s face, and some of Claude’s embarrassment had already given way to amusement when he noticed that Dimitri had been checking him out. Claude ducked his head, chin tucking towards his chest as he smiled a shy, knowing sort of smile. Dimitri was now the one who had been caught red-handed. Red-faced, more aptly. The Prince cleared his throat quickly and shook his head. “Just the evidence,” he answered, to which Claude nodded.
“Well, thank goodness. I daresay you’re seeing enough now,” he said. Dimitri bit down on his lower lip and loosened his grip.
“I… apologize. Th-this was very forward of me, was it not? I was only thinking that you must be freezing in that soaked clothing of yours,” he said. “It was my intent to try and make you a little more comfortable, but it seems I have achieved just the opposite, haven’t I?” he asked, trying to laugh it off. His laughter was wiped away when Claude’s response was to lean back in, chest to chest, cuddling up and humming softly.
“No,” he answered. “No, Dimitri, I’m quite comfortable right where I am. Thanks for the consideration,” he said. “I feel quite… quite warm, in fact. You’ve done exactly what you set out to do.” As Claude settled in with one more content little hum, Dimitri wrapped his arms back around his boyfriend. One hand busied itself by rubbing up and down his back; the other by combing through Claude’s hair. If he didn’t know better, he might have thought that the purring he could hear was Claude, too. He just looked so comfortable and content and… goddess. Dimitri had it so bad for this boy he did not know what he was going to do with himself.
“Will you stay?” Claude asked him, and Dimitri died a little death on the inside.
“Here? With you? In your bed?” he asked. Claude simply nodded, and Dimitri scrambled to think of something to say so he could laugh this off. It was a joke, right? But… Claude wasn’t laughing. “Do… do you want me to stay?” Dimitri inquired cautiously, and Claude chuckled.
“I wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t what I wanted.”
Dimitri turned so red that he got a head rush from all the blood that came up to heat his cheeks. Share a bed? With Claude? Oh, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d slept with someone, but he’d only ever slept with people in the most innocent sense. Between his parents when he had a nightmare. Cuddling with Felix when he spent a night in Fraldarius territory when they were children. Sharing a tent with one of the other Lions when they went out on missions. But Claude… Claude was his boyfriend. And that meant there were implications here, right?
Claude seemed to realize exactly the thoughts that struck Dimitri stupid, because he drummed his fingers against the Prince’s collarbone to get his attention. “You don’t mind sharing with the cats, do you?” he asked, and Dimitri relaxed. For some reason, sharing a bed with Claude did not seem so intimidating when they were also sharing it with kittens. Dimitri glanced down once again to where they were all curled up near his ankles and smiled.
“…I will stay,” he decided. “I do not know how much sleep I will get, but… if you want me to stay, then I will,” he said, and Claude gave him a smile that made Dimitri’s heart beat double in his chest.
“Good, because you’re too warm to go,” he said. Claude settled his head on Dimitri’s shoulder, and the sleet played a lullaby on the window. As Claude began to doze, Dimitri turned to watch the rain coming down. It wasn’t quite snow, but it was close enough. It counted to Dimitri, anyways.
The first snow of the year was, and always would be, Dimitri’s favorite.