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“FUCK it’s cold” Kent burst into the apartment with a huff, followed by his husband, whose face bore an amused smirk. Kent was bundled like a newborn, his face and nose barely visible under his hat and scarf. The angry wind whipped red of his nose, a stark contrast to the bright blue Falconer’s winter wear with which he was adorned. He trailed into the hall, shedding layers as he went. First the hat and gloves fell to the floor, then a scarf, a large puffy coat, a smaller, less puffy coat, and finally a hoodie which seemed several sizes too big to be his own, fell to the hardwood.
Just as the clothes fell to the floor they were scooped up by the larger brunet man, significantly less bundled. He grabbed each shed layer like picking up a breadcrumb path to his grumpy, temperature sensitive husband “котенок, you cannot just drop clothes on floor.”
“You usually seem to like that!” Kent retorted from the other room with a chuckle. He walked back into the entry hall, now just wearing a pair of dark grey joggers, and an under armor Aces shirt “I couldn’t stand being bundled like that for one more second. God I felt like I was gonna suffocate.”
“You professional hockey player forever and cannot handle cold day?” Tater walked up to the blond man, carrying the bundle of winter wear which had been discarded to the floor only moments before, and kissed him on the nose, feeling the chill of the pink skin.
“Fuck off you overgrown potato, rinks are like, sixty degrees, fifty max! It’s like negative balls out there. AND we’re skating in a rink, not taking a leisurely stroll through the park.”
Alexei just continued to put his fiance’s outer wear in the respective bins and on the hooks in the hall closet, rolling his eyes with a smirk as the shorter man spoke. When Kent finished his sentence, Alexei turned around, and swooped to pick up his husband into a fireman's carry.
“You like little baby.” He punctuated his sentences with a poke to Kent’s butt and deposited him on the living room sofa. “What happened to ‘I am from New York I can do winter!’ bragging you say this morning? Years in Vegas make you soft котенок. Take away edge.” He posted, plopping down next to Kent on the sofa.
“Vegas did not make me soft! Vegas gets cold at night!” Alexei rolled his eyes. “And, Providence is not the same as New York, its farther north!”
“Bah, you soft. Soft, soft, soft!” Alexei wrapped his arms around Kent, bringing the shorter man into a hug, and squeezed, punctuating each of his words with a kiss to his cheeks, forehead, and finally lips.
The thing was, January was objectively Kent’s least favorite month of the year. It was cold, and grey and there weren’t even any fun holidays. Kent refused to count new years because it was objectively a December Holiday, and January 1st was just full of annoying people claiming they were going to do new things, but never really did, and the gym was always packed so he refused to go those days. Instead he usually opted to spend the day in bed, nursing his hangover from the night before, and watching holiday movies. The NHL didn’t usually have too many break days during the holidays so he didn’t travel much.
That was back when he was younger of course. Things had changed over the years. As he got older, he partied less, and spent more time with teammates. The past few years, he had made an effort to spend New Years with his boyfriend on the year coast if both their schedules allowed it. But things were different this year. Kent had finally joined Alexei in retirement, and moved to Providence with him. The pair had gotten married in the summer, and spent the fall making the new place their own through renovations. Both Kit and Purrs had their own space, there was plenty of room for a home gym, and of course, the living room. Every gaming counsel and too many DVDs all along the entertainment center because Kent didn’t like that he didn’t own the movies with streaming and Alexei was a self declared “gamer boy” despite being well on his way to 40, and, more importantly, very bad at video games. Life was good.
The holidays had been fun, merging both of their traditions together and making a few new ones with plenty of compromise and bickering. They made traditional Russian dishes for Alexei and ordered Chinese for Kent, sharing the food on the living room floor and watching old movies while cuddling with the cats.
This morning, Alexei had insisted on waking Kent up early on New Years day, to see the holiday displays and Christmas Village in the park before they took it down. It had been busy being the first day of the New Year, and cold as all get out. It was the first truly cold day of the official winter, and Kent had been unfortunately dealing with adjusting to moving back to the East Coast after years spent in the Nevada Desert. Kent did Not like the cold one bit. Even if he was a hockey player. You don’t think about the cold too much when you’ve got a game to focus on. And there’s no wind in hockey rinks. That was one thing Kent did not miss about living on the East Coast; the wind was merciless, hitting the skin and stinging it like a face full of icicles. But Alexei had insisted and Kent could hardly say no to a face as cute as his. So they went to the Christmas Village, frozen their asses off, and were now pseudo wrestling/ cuddling on the couch.
Kent was brought back to reality by the rumbling of a stomach. The rumble was audible even through their laughs and play fighting.
“Pause pause. I am hungry. Cannot fight you on empty stomach.” Alexei’s stomach punctuated his complaint by growling again, as if to prove a point.
“Shit babe, we haven’t had a full meal like, all day.” Kent pulled out of Alexei’s bear hug. “Let’s get pizza. I’m too lazy to cook today.”
He pushed off the couch and crossed the floor a few steps to where his phone had fallen out of his pocket during the hallway abduction by his husband. “Vocelli’s okay? We can get garlic knots.”
“Absolutely! We get pineapple and ham too! Hawaiian pizza is best pizza.”
“I knew there was a reason I married you.” Kent retorted.
“For my pizza taste? You sure it wasn’t my c-” Alexei was silenced by a pillow to the face and a blushing Kent.
“Shut the fuck up! The phone is ringing.”
Kent ordered the pizza, while trying, and failing to laugh at the lewd or bizarre faces his husband made, in an attempt to distract him from his pizza mission. When Kent hung up the phone, he flipped Alexei off and tackled him on the couch, reigniting their play fight from moments before. After a bit they finally settled down to sit together and relaxed until the food arrived.
Soon after, a ring on their doorbell alerted the pair to the arrival of their much awaited dinner. Alexei held the cats from rushing outside while Kent answered the door, and tipped the delivery person what would seem like an obscene amount to any normal person, but to two retired hockey players, was menial. After fetching some paper plates and napkins, the two returned to the living room, food in hand and ate on the couch while watching Home Alone 2. Kent always found it amusing the way movies portrayed the city he grew up in.
“Ya know the Rockerfeller tree isn’t that big a deal-?”
“Shhhh Kenny! Little Kevin is running in city alone!”
“It’s not that scary if you have any sense of direct-”
“He is lost in New York!”
“Lost in New York? The streets are numbered! It’s a grid system! You’re on 24th and 5th? Wanna go to 35th and 6ths? Eleven up and one over you bagel-!” Kent’s mouth was covered by his husband’s hand which he proceeded to lick, causing him to move his hand away rapidly. Kent cackled at his husband’s disgusted response.
“Augh! Котенок you act more like child than Kevin.”
“You’re just mad I licked your hand and not-”
“Shhh you rat. I want see Sticky Bandits get hit.”
Kent tried to keep quiet, lest he be silenced with a hand to the face again, but every once in a while, he just had to babble. The movie seemed a lot longer than either of the pair remembered, and both men fell asleep towards the end, exhausted from a day spent in the cold, and the subsequent food coma they had acquired from eating two large pizzas and an ungodly amount of garlic knots.
The TV was still on when Kent was awoken by a particularly loud snore from the man next to him. The screen in front of him displayed the repeating image of a DVD home screen for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Quietly, Kent stood up and, after a few moments of shuffling through the leftover pizza debris in search of the remote, he found it, and picked it up off the coffee table, shutting off the image of Macaulay Culkin and Catherine O'Hara in Times Square. Lord knows how long that had been going.
He cracked his back and stretched, yawning like a cat. He wasn’t getting any younger, and sleeping on the couch like this, slumped against his large hockey goon of a husband was probably not the best thing for his back. Kent’s chiropractor and Physical Therapist were going to ream him a new one. At some point in the night, the cats had taken their place sleeping on the plush ottoman on the other end of the room, near the heater and the large window which would normally let in sunlight during the brighter days. Kent stalked over and crouched low, delicately petting each of their heads for a moment, before looking up through the window, his eyes catching on something reflective outside.
He squinted his eyes and pushed aside the curtains, to see their street, freshly dusted with nearly a foot of snow. The eerie darkness of the night, lightened now in the presence of the fresh drafts of snow. It looked magical, with the low warm light of the streetlamps reflecting off of the undisturbed surface of the snow.
“Lexi!” Kent whisper yelled over his shoulder, so as to not wake the cats. “Psst. Lexi, look!” When the Russian man didn’t stir, Kent quietly tiptoed over to the couch, shaking the brunett's shoulder slightly in an attempt to rouse him. Still, Alexei kept snoring. Kent resolved to pinch his husband’s nose, causing him to startle awake mid-snore.
“Augh huh? Whaaat?” Alexei moaned, rubbing the grogginess out of his eyes.
“Look” Kent motioned over to the window, curtains now fully drawn back, to reveal the beautiful snowy scene which had transformed the street outside their apartment.
“Ahhh I see. Very pretty. Just like you. Now, we go back to sleep.” The taller man’s sentence punctuated by a yawn, and a weak grab to pull Kent back onto the couch.
“It’s just so…peaceful.” Kent walked back over to the window and pressed his hand against the glass. The warm heat of his breath and skin fogging up the window pane somewhat. Like in a trance, Kent stared for long moments which seemed like hours.
Seeing as he wasn’t going to be able to get Kent to acquiesce to his requests for sleep and cuddles, Alexei pushed himself off the couch, and walked over to the window, placing his hands on his shoulders. “Come, I show you something.” He then walked away, towards the hall, slipping on his boots, and a hoodie. He tossed a hoodie to Kent.
“What?”
“First snow of year is like magic. Let’s play”
“Outside? But it’s cold?” Kent questioned, but pulled the hoodie over his head, and began slipping on the boots his husband had tossed in his direction.
"Bah, not so cold. Cannot be too cold to snow.”
The pair then finished dressing quietly, and Kent followed Alexei out the front door. It was the middle of the night, or possibly very early morning. Before the plows, before the snow trucks. Everything seemed so still, and peaceful. It took Kent’s breath away.
“Wow…” Kent took a few steps off their porch and onto the sidewalk, the soft crunch of the snow seeming to echo in the silence of the night.
“See? I tell you, is like magic.” Alexei took a few steps to stand beside Kent.
Both men stood quietly, watching the snowflakes silently fall, and blanket the road, sidewalks, and buildings around them.
After a few moments, Alexei took a few steps back, crouched down, and, with an ungloved hand, scooped up a handful of the freshly fallen snow, and lobbed it at the back of his husband’s head.
“Augh fuck!” Immediately, Kent whipped around to see his husband, cheekily grinning. “You bastard!” He scrambled to pick up some snow and return fire, missing the Russian’s head by several feet.
“You call yourself professional athlete and cannot hit big target with snowball?” Alexei chirped, laughing to himself.
“Screw you. We shoot pucks not baseballs you dick.” He bent down again, scooping another handful, this time, landing the shot directly in the other man’s face, cutting off the mocking laughs.
Alexi wiped the remaining snow off his face, then ran several feet back. “Now, is war!” He began to form several more snowballs, attempting to hit Kent again.
The two threw snowballs back and forth for what seemed like hours. No sense of time, nor chill, interrupting their fun. Missing some, and landing some, the pair kept going until the plows showed up to clear the street. Maybe Kent could handle the cold after all. It was at that time the two resigned themselves to a draw, and headed inside to warm up for real this time, laughing and panting all the way.