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Punz has never cared much for the snow.
It only looks pretty outside a tight-shut window, cold air sealed on the wrong side of glass while heat meanders inside. It only looks pretty when it’s fresh and untouched, before the plows come and meddle it and animals leave footprints forged across blankets of white.
For the moment snowbanks become dirty and piled, they lose their charm. And all it becomes is another shove of something filthy, another skate of dark brown-black to plague every corner of the street without forgiveness. A hover, a reminder, something sick and unbitten to sit like a creature against the asphalt.
And there is no way around it, for the plows and busy street-clearers will always push it all to the edges. It will always gather, and pile, and grow to unmanageable heights, and it will always take the dirt of the road and some neighbor’s front yard along with it.
Clean snow is far too temporary, far too fleeting. The moment it’s touched it becomes muddled, messed with and ruined with the tear of greedy fingers.
As it melts, it rushes down the gutter, dirty snow turns to dirty water. As it melts, Punz re-discovers long dead grass, covers of frost still finding a way to coat forgotten viridian in the forever-stiff of hardened winter.
There is no rest for a blizzard, for a snowstorm, for the dirty tracks of a start-cap season. There is no rest for clouds, or melt, or unique and tumbling snowflakes to catch against the heel of his palm.
Punz has never cared much for the snow.
George, however, loves it more than anything.
“Do you want to go ice skating?” he asks, and Punz knows—even without having to clarify—that he means out on the frozen pond, where the snow drips over the ice.
Punz ponders, even if only for a moment. Punz ponders, and he thinks of how skate blades scrape against the ice, and he thinks of how this is all too temporary to waste, and he thinks of the giddy smile George wore last time it was something like this.
He still does not care much for the snow, but it must be a dislike capable of overpowering. For even if winter is his least favorite season, and even if he hates the way his ears go pink with the cold, Punz’s hesitation does not last nearly long enough for him to call himself in-character.
“Sure,” Punz answers, exhales blossoming in the cold wind before his lips. “I’d like to go ice skating.”
George laughs, and it’s excitable, and he takes the blond’s elbow to whisk him away. Punz is falling on the cold asphalt—feet falling, not face—and his boots kick at the dirty snow along every edge, the very snow he waits to melt so he no longer has to look at its displeasure anymore.
But he follows George. And he is distracted. And he lets his arm be pulled against the socket, gloved hands slipping along his puffer jacket, a hasty rush off to someplace he hasn’t been in far too long, someplace hidden behind bird-riddled trees and the shake of falling snow.
George promises, in the form of a whisper against Punz’s neck, that he has skates for both of them. Punz doesn’t bother to ask where in the sparse woods he bothered to keep ice skates, for he knows George isn’t one to be predictable, and he just follows her by the heels at the drag of gentle hands on his arm.
Asphalt turns to dried brown pine needles, snow along the sidewalk melting into the gaps. The ground is soft, an outdoorsy dampness to the presence beneath heavy boots, murmurs that feel more like rain than snow warring with the bitten cold still sitting in the air. Skin turns pink without sunburn—even if the UV rays can still power themselves to injury—the reflection of golden light from stark blanche searing blinding.
There’s a plane of ice hidden at the center of it all. It sits empty, at least for now, untouched aside from scratches against the surface promising former signs of life. It’s almost surprising to find solitude on the ice on a day like today, when the weather patterns mix to perfection in dappled light.
George looks at Punz softly. The winter’s sun drools light down the curves of the brunet’s cheeks, sticking heady to the corners where his lips meet. Punz smiles back at him, and he wonders ardently if a cold afternoon can make him look so ethereal.
With the way George tips his head to the side when he looks at Punz, he figures it might be doing something favorable.
“You have skates?” the blond prompts, barely any more than a whisper.
He’s entranced by the smile that splits George’s face.
And he nods excitedly, running off into the trees while Punz stands at a once-sandy shore, the wind kicking at his hair shifting nothing of flattened water. It all appears frozen in time, and perhaps that’s the thing Punz is meant to care for, for in a world where everything always moves, shouldn’t he be grateful for this momentary pause?
It’s temporary, he reminds himself. Just as I am fleeting.
Perhaps temporary is the beauty of the world. Punz smiles, out at nothing, the horizon gazing back at him in soft winter sunlight. He’s quiet until he hears footsteps behind his back, a turn tugging at his shoulders that reveals where George stands hunched, two pairs of skates dangling from his glove-covered hands where he holds them by the laces.
The brunet frowns, a scrunch rising to his pink nose. “I was trying to scare you,” he complains, the meander of a whine caught below her tongue.
Punz laughs, clouds of cold vapor ebbing past his lips. “Sorry,” he says, and it’s honest.
Persistent in his frown, George thrusts a pair of skates out to the blond. “Put them on,” he mutters, and it’s more of a demand when coupled with his slow-creased face, but there’s laughter in Punz’s cheeks despite the fact.
When he takes the skates from George, he lets his fingers drag over his hand on purpose. Punz can’t tell if the color on his cheeks is only for the cold.
Punz has never cared much for the snow.
Only this time, it’s for the way it steals George’s blush, the blossom of stammered pink beneath freckles no longer attributed to just his twitching fingers. Only this time, it’s for the way it carries George’s laughter, for it steals his likeness along snowflakes that gather in a heap.
Punz ties his ice skates too tight. George drags him out to the ice with fingers on his palms, unsteady knees growing obsolete the moment ice skates are scraping against the ice. But even with shared stability, George doesn’t let Punz go, hands working up the length of his arms until he’s gripping the bend of his elbows once more, cold breath on colder skin with a fog that lights Punz golden.
When George looks at him, there are snowflakes echoed back at me amongst his pupils. Punz smiles, and he wonders if his own eyes fill with winter, too. From the way George’s lashes flicker back at him, he thinks there must be something.
“Don’t fall,” the brunet whispers, a giggle on her tongue.
He pulls Punz closer as if he didn’t just cast a warning. “Don’t pull me, then,” Punz argues, but it’s through a stippled grin, displeasure so obviously feigned it’s almost pointless.
Punz has never cared much for the snow.
But he cares for these moments, however fleeting they are, and he would drown in a thousand blizzards if it meant they’ll all stay his.