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The first time Tommy saw snow, he thought the world was ending.
The raccoon hybrid had spent most of his life indoors and had only ever been outside when it was warm, and when he had been rewarded for being good. So it was understandable that Tommy’s eyes widened and his ears flattened when Wilbur casually pointed out the flakes falling from the sky.
“Tommy?” he called, instantly noticing how the blond withdrew into himself. “What’s wrong?”
“What is that?” he whispered, fighting the instinct to dive into his burrow, the one located under his bed, and never come out again.
Wilbur exchanged a glance with his brother, Techno. Tommy’s foster father had a more thoughtful look on his face as he observed them.
“The snow?” the brunette asked hesitantly.
Tommy tilted his head. “Snow?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen snow, kid,” Techno snorted, although Tommy could tell it was more playful than mean. It had taken him a while to learn the difference, but it was a lot easier now.
“Of course I have, dickhead,” he snapped back.
“You really haven’t,” Phil breathed, surprised. Tommy bared his fangs, and various levels of amusement flashed across their faces. “Come on, we’re going outside.”
The older boys instantly got to their feet, but Tommy remained where he was, curled up on the couch with a blanket thrown over him. If he had any say, he would never step foot out of the house while the sky was falling. He’d rather stay alive, thank you very much.
“It’s okay, Tommy,” Phil tried to reassure, “the snow won’t hurt you.”
“No,” the blond protested. “I don’t trust it.”
“But it’s so much fun,” Wilbur spoke, his voice tinged with excitement, as well as sadness. “You’re not allowed to have an opinion until you have a snowball fight and build your first snowman.”
Tommy’s ears perked up, and his brother’s face softened. “What’s a snowman?”
“It’s when you roll snow into balls and then stack them on top of each other. Then you usually grab sticks and clothing, and of course a carrot for the nose, and dress it up.”
“But isn’t it cold?” Tommy asked, uncurling slightly.
“You’ll be wearing gloves and a coat. I promise it won’t be cold.”
He sniffed, still a little uncertain, but with a few more reassurances from his family, he stood from the couch and pulled on his coat, along with a couple gloves. Techno and Wilbur copied him, but Phil remained coatless.
“Aren’t you coming, too?” Tommy asked nervously. Phil gently shook his head.
“I’m a little too old to be out in the cold.”
“Oldza,” Wilbur teased from where he was wrapping a scarf around his neck. “It’s okay Toms, he’d only slow us down.”
Tommy laughed at Phil’s playful scowl and followed Techno to the door. When the pink-haired man opened it, Tommy halted at the sight of the white powder—snow—covering the grass and the road. No color was visible through the blinding white.
“Look,” Techno spoke calmly as he moved forward, and Tommy’s ears twitched at the crunching sound, his eyes following the new footprints. “See? It doesn’t hurt.”
“It’s weird,” Tommy muttered, crouching down and reaching a hand toward it. When his glove easily pushed through, he jumped back in surprise. “It’s soft.”
“It looks fluffy, right?” Wilbur asked, stepping past Tommy and onto the sheet of white.
Tommy shrugged, his eyes caught by the light dancing off of it. “Like a marshmallow?”
Wilbur grinned. “Like a marshmallow.”
As his brothers began moving further away, Tommy looked back toward Phil, where the older man was standing behind him with a soft look on his face.
“It’s alright, mate. It’ll be fun.”
Tommy wrinkled his nose and glanced back toward the yard. At another beckon from Techno and Wilbur, he finally took a step forward, gasping when his foot easily sank through it.
“Come on, Tommy!” Wilbur called to him, leaning down to pick up a handful of snow. “We’ve got a snowman to build!”
“Fucking impatient prick,” Tommy muttered as he slowly made his way toward them, easily distracted by the flashes of light. Eventually, he found himself standing next to his brothers.
“Okay, so you see how I picked up some of the snow and rolled it into a ball?” Wilbur asked, gesturing to the small ball in his hand.
“Yeah, Wil, I’m not an idiot.”
“Okay,” he continued, ignoring him. “So then you want to roll it around in the snow until it gets bigger, like this.”
He demonstrated, carefully rolling it on the ground until it started to pick up more snow and grow in size. Tommy watched, fascinated that something that fell from the sky could be used like that.
“Now you try. All three of us will make one, and we can compare afterward.”
“Oh, you’re on,” Techno chuckled, quickly grabbing his own snow and shaping it into a ball. Tommy clumsily grabbed some as well and copied him, watching the way the older boy smoothed it out before beginning to roll it.
In the end, Techno’s was the biggest and the most round, while Tommy’s was the smallest and the most irregular. They unanimously decided that Tommy’s was the best, and the hybrid chirped his excitement.
“So Techno’s will be on the bottom,” Tommy spoke slowly. “Because it’s bigger, right?”
“Yeah,” Wilbur agreed. “Now help me lift mine on top of his.”
Tommy snorted and moved closer. With all three of them working together, it was easy to settle Wilbur’s on Techno’s. After they finished, they moved on to putting Tommy’s on the top. He felt himself puff up with pride, staring at what he assumed was a snowman.
“It doesn’t look like a man,” Tommy muttered. “It looks like the poop emoji.”
“Tommy!” Wilbur laughed. “We have to find sticks first, for the arms.”
Tommy sniffed and glanced back toward the house. “And a carrot?”
“Yeah. Do you want to get that?”
Tommy nodded and trudged back toward the house, making it a game to only step in the footprints that were already there. As he opened the door and stepped inside, he admitted to himself that playing with the snow was a lot of fun.
“Oh, are you done already?” Phil poked his head out from the kitchen.
“Almost,” Tommy said proudly. “We need a carrot.”
“Hold on, I’ll grab one,” he responded, and disappeared back into the kitchen. He came out only a moment later and handed Tommy one of the bigger carrots. “I’ll come with you to see how it turned out, okay?”
Tommy nodded quickly, turning around to walk out the door. “I made the head.”
“I bet yours was the best then,” Phil teased, and Tommy nodded again, grinning proudly.
“Obviously. You think Wibbles and Blade could’ve done a better job than me?”
Phil laughed but stopped before reaching the snow. “You go on and finish it. I’ll be here for a bit.”
Tommy ran ahead, proudly showing the carrot to his brothers. They complimented it, and Tommy glanced at the snowman as they pushed the carrot into the place where the nose should go.
“Why are there rocks in it?”
“They’re supposed to be like buttons,” Techno explained.
“They’re rocks.”
“That’s why you have to use your imagination.”
Tommy rolled his eyes and Techno pushed him lightly, with a small smile on his face.
“Here,” Wilbur interrupted, pulling off his scarf and wrapping it around the snowman. “Look, now it’s done.”
Tommy stared at it, at the sticks protruding from the sides, the rocks for the eyes and buttons, and the carrot for the nose, and he felt an overwhelming sense of pride and happiness. It was his first time seeing snow, and he had already made his first snowman.
“We should’ve made a dog,” Techno muttered, and Tommy whipped around to look at him.
“You can do that?” he asked excitedly.
“Great, Techno,” Wilbur groaned lightly. “Now he’s gonna want to make a dog.”
Tommy whipped around to retaliate, but he was stopped by the sight of something flying toward them. He watched as it flew past Techno’s head and slammed straight into Wilbur’s face. They stood frozen for a long moment, before Wilbur slowly turned to face Phil.
“You have two seconds to run.”
Phil laughed and bolted into the house, with Wilbur hot on his heels. Tommy bent down to grab the snow, packing it in the same way he had with the snowman, and threw it at his brother. Wilbur turned around when it hit his back.
“You gremlin,” Wilbur growled, swiping up his own snowball to throw at him. Tommy squealed and darted behind Techno, but the older boy only stepped away and pushed Tommy in front of him.
“Techno!” Tommy whined, brushing off the snow on his shoulder.
“It’s your—” Techno broke off when snow erupted across his shoulder and neck. He scowled, turning to Wilbur.
“Oops?” the brunette spoke sheepishly.
“Yeah, oops,” Techno responded, and all hell broke loose as it became a three-way battle, with many betrayals and screaming and laughing. Tommy soaked it in, jumping out of the way of flying snowballs and furiously sending his own right back.
It was only when Tommy and Wilbur were laying flat on the ground, breathing heavily, that they decided to declare Techno as the winner.
“Let’s go again,” Tommy laughed breathlessly a few moments later, his tail swaying with his excitement. “I’m gonna win next time.”
“Sure,” Techno grinned, already rebuilding his tower of snowballs. “You can try.”
When they had finally exhausted themselves to the point where they were silently laying in the snow with only their breaths as background noise, and after Wilbur had shown them how to make snow angels, Phil came out with a promise of hot cocoa, fresh cookies, and a movie as soon as they dried themselves off.
Tommy was the first one inside, and definitely not because his brothers let him run past, with fond smiles on their faces.
They spent the rest of the night curled up on the couch together, with Tommy purring loudly, although he’d deny it the next day, and his hands wrapped tightly around a mug of hot chocolate.
Maybe snow wasn’t so bad after all.