Work Text:
When Yuki wakes, she’s warm, snug, and comfortable tucked beneath a mountain of blankets. She has no reason to consider the weather outside, where she is not. Instead, she cherishes sleeping in for the first time in ages, since the semester had started and she’d taken up the mantle of Disciplinary Committee Member One of Two. Nine A.M. kisses her awake, and she sighs with great content at a head that didn’t ache and a body that felt as it should – well-rested.
For a few moments, she stays as she is under the covers, but eventually she knows the day, even the first of winter break, must start at some point, so she wiggles her toes and feet, flexes her fingers, and turns over to look out the window and let the sunlight help wake her further, but there isn’t much sun to be seen – rather, there is snow.
The call of her bed no longer loud enough, she jumps and rushes to the window to take it all in: a foot, maybe a foot and a half of snow blankets the campus as far as she can see.
“Zero!”
She runs from her room in the chairman’s quarters and across the hall to his. “Wake up, there’s –”
“I saw,” Zero says, from behind her, having just exited the bathroom, and not on his bed where she’d expected to find him.
“Can you believe it? There’ve gotta be two feet out there!”
Zero scoffs. “It probably looks that way to someone as short as you.”
Yuki feigns offense for a moment before moving on to her main objective. “Hurry and get dressed – we’re making a snowman.”
Again, Zero scoffs, and heads toward the kitchen. “You enjoy yourself out there.”
In a flash, or at least it seems that way to a still half-asleep Zero, Yuki is fully dressed and pulling a hat over his head.
“No way. We haven’t even had breakfast yet, and it’s your turn to cook.” Not that he minded cooking, and she was actually kind of terrible at making anything required more than hot water, but it was fun to watch her try.
Undeterred, she’s dragged him halfway to the door before even finishing her next protest. “It’ll melt soon! And I’ll make you breakfast later – three course meal, I promise!”
He looks down at her, wide eyes and wild bed-head, and frowns before shaking her off to throw on his coat and snow pants. She watches, beaming, and he thinks he’ll just make her take him to dinner somewhere expensive instead.
“Where’s the chairman, anyway?” he huffs from across the courtyard where they’re rolling snow balls into the head and chest pieces for a class, three-part snowman.
Yuki, whose snow sphere is more like a snow lump that’s lost as much surface area as it picked up, calls back,
“He’s meeting with someone in town for lunch, he said. Wonder if it’s your teacher.”
The last part she says with serious innuendo and Zero isn't having it. In one smooth movement, he grasps a handful on snow, molds it with one squeeze of his fist, and launches it in her direction. Comically, it hits her in the back of her head.
She rubs her head but when she turns to face him, she’s grinning.
“Why Zero, does the thought of your father and teacher marrying not elate you?”
“He’s not my father and they’re not getting married.”
He holds the bloated chest of the snowman above his head and threatens wordlessly to throw it until Yuki takes it back. She waves her hands in remorse and tries to look serious.
“Alright, alright, they’re not getting married. They’re probably just off having a tryst in the tropics.”
By now, the snowman’s halfway built, and Zero decides to leave it alone. Instead, he grabs another fistful of snow, takes Yuki by the hood of her coat, and shoves it down the back of her shirt.
She squeals and squirms, attempts to tackle him and he lets her. Frenzied, she gatheres snow at his sides and is moments from stuffing it down his throat, but he isn’t feeling quite that generous, and quickly puts her flat on her back in the soft, deep snow.
“You only won this round because you’ve had years of combat training,” she pouts. “From Toga. Wholovesourfather –”
Zero covers her mouth with his gloved hand but can’t help it. He snickers, and she laughs, and he hasn’t felt this human in years.
He stands from atop her waist and holds a hand out. “Did you bring a carrot for the nose or not?”
She takes one out of her pocket, sticks it on the snowman’s head, and they step back to admire their two-tiered, eyeless and mouth-less creation.
“Kinda looks like you.”
She smacks his shoulder.
“Let’s go inside. You look cold.”
“I wonder whose fault that is! Hey, where’re you going?”
“The cafeteria.”
“But it’s closed for break?”
“And we, the off-duty members of the disciplinary committee have the keys to the kingdom.”
Inside, it’s nearly as cold as it is outside because the heat’s been turned off while the students are away and the building isn’t in use. The electricity is still on, for the fire alarm, however, so they’re able to heat milk over one of the industrial stoves for hot chocolate.
“We could have done this in the chairman’s suite and not frozen to death,” Yuki says with her hands outstretched over another burner.
Zero stirs. “We don’t have cocoa powder in there.”
Still, she does look kind of pitiful, shivering in the dark, Zero thinks, and he had been mostly responsible for that.
“Aren’t you cold too?” She reaches a hand behind his head. “Your hair’s all wet in the back.”
Zero swallows, abandons the cocoa, and steels himself. “Here.”
He unzips his coat, takes her hands and places them on his hips, and pulls them flush together with his arms around her shoulders.
After a moment, she relaxes, and he feels the warmth of a sigh on his chest through the fabric of his shirt.
For a second, she pulls back and looks up at him. He looks down at her as he had earlier: big eyes, pink cheeks, and the genuine smile he saw so rarely these days.
“You’re doing this is much for you as you are for me, aren’t you?”
He wants to kiss her.
“Yeah.”
“Then I won’t feel guilty about this!” She sticks her ice-cold hands beneath the barrier of his shirt and presses them flat on his back. He jumps, and she laughs, and they stay there like that still the milk burns and triggers the fire alarm.