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“CAL! PAPA! LOOK!”
Kata’s shriek yanks Cal out of his doze with a lurch. His instincts splinter out, taking in the quiet room, the familiar bed, the odd grey-blue light coming in through the window.
Grey-blue?
Cal swings his legs out of bed and pulls the curtain aside, revealing a swirling sky filled with small, unmistakable white flakes.
“...the fuck?” comes Bode’s grumpy rumble behind him. Cal hears the sheets stir and turns around to appreciate the view of a shirtless, sleepy Bode with a truly epic case of early-morning bed-hair.
“PAPA! CAL!” Kata’s even louder this time, probably right outside their door.
“It’s snowing,” Cal explains, laughing, to Bode. He gives Bode a second to make sure his modesty is covered by their bedding (luckily Cal himself feels the cold too much to forgo sleep shorts at this time of year) and opens the door on one very excited seven-year-old girl.
“IT’S SNOWING OUTSIDE!” Kata yells again, practically bouncing. She’s already got a winter hat and scarf on, though is still barefoot and in pyjamas.
“It’s also dawn, sweetheart,” Bode tries, smudging a hand across his face then back in a futile effort to sort out his hair (to be fair, Cal’s fingers had done a number on it last night, not that anyone else needed to know that).
“But it’s snowing,” Kata repeats, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Just like in the holos! Can I go play in it? Can I? Can I?”
“Sure you can, just wait for us, alright?” Cal says “We just need a minute. Go find your outside clothes, your coat and boots.”
“Okay!” Kata grins at him, too excited to pout like she normally does when Cal tries to ‘sound like papa’. She clatters off down the landing to her own room and Cal shuts the door behind him, turning back to Bode and the bed with a big sigh, mouth quirked up at the corner into a grin.
“Guess there won’t be a lie-in today.”
“Mmmmrrrrph.” Bode stretches and flops back on the pillows, loose and lithe as a nexu. “Do we have to?”
“Come on.” Cal crawls back onto the bed, straddling Bode over the covers and stooping down to give him a kiss on the forehead. “She’ll love it, and probably thrash us in a snowball fight. I might even let her cheat with her Force powers.”
“Gimme a minute.” Bode accepts the kiss but doesn’t sit up. One hand, however, wanders out from under the covers, settling on Cal’s hip. A thumb strokes where Cal’s waistband meets his bare skin.
Cal, who knows this game, laughs again and wriggles forward, giving him a kiss on the lips this time. “Just an hour, love. Then, once we tire her out, maybe we can plop her down in front of a holo movie and come back here to… nap.” He feathers little kisses out from Bode’s lips, across his cheekbones and the curve of his nose. The hand on his hip is back, lower this time. Cal continues kissing a little longer, until Bode’s mutterings turn into a rather-too-interested growl and Cal has to swat him off before they get distracted in entirely the wrong way.
“It’s just snow,” Bode says as he shrugs on a base layer. “Just weather. No one gets this excited by rain.”
“Pah!” Cal, who’s already adding his second set of socks, scoffs and rolls his eyes fondly. “But this is so much prettier, and rarer than rain. Plus, Kata’s not the only one who hasn’t seen real snow! Lighten up, old man.” Cal swats him on the arm.
Bode pretends to flinch away, and swipes playfully back at Cal. His face is serious, however, when he asks, “You’ve really never seen snow before?”
“Yeah. I mean, no? Not really.” Cal’s mouth twists. “We got it sometimes, on Bracca, but it was usually so full of chemical shit we couldn’t exactly enjoy it. And it definitely didn’t stay white for long. And Ilum was more ice than snow.”
“I wish… I wish that hadn’t been true,” Bode says, with some of that mute, shadowed sadness that haunts him whenever they bring up the past.
Cal catches him by the back of the head and pulls him in for a firm, almost bruising, kiss, then nips his bottom lip until Bode has to laugh. “None of that,” he grins into the space between their mouths. “Today is a good day. Let’s go play in the fuckin’ snow.”
There’s a scrabble for thermal layers, coats and boots, then a thunder on the stair as all three of them rush out of the back door. They have a small, private patch of land - not much in the grand scheme of things, but it’s already blanketed in a hand’s depth of fresh, crunchy-squeaky snow. Kata throws herself out onto it with a mad giggle, boots cracking into the fresh crust, leaving perfect little tracks through the smooth whiteness.
In the doorway, Cal nudges Bode. His eyes dance like candlelights, and his grin is all mischief.
“Race you to the end of the garden?”
“You’re on.” Bode ruffles his hair, throwing Cal off balance, and sets off at a sprint, hearing the Jedi cursing and following him a split second later.
“Cheat!”
“I need all the head start I can get!”
Cal beats him to the back wall of the garden, of course, and by that time Kata’s discovered the joy of the snowball. Several of them whizz past Cal and Bode as they stand, panting gusts of breath into the freezing air. Cal catches one and redirects it, using a flash of the Force to send it twirling around Kata in a dainty swirl instead of hitting her. Kata giggles in delight, spinning too, arms wide and tongue out to taste the flakes. Cal grins and lifts his chin to the sky too, tongue out to catch the delicate flakes on his tongue.
Bode’s warm arm snakes around his back, pulling him a little closer. Cal nestles easily into Bode’s broad shape, feeling Bode’s gaze on him long before he turns to look. When he does, those dark eyes are meltingly warm, full of affection and unabashed wonder.
“You look good like this,” Bode says, picking a flake from Cal’s hair. “Happiness. It suits you.”
“It’s not a bad look on you either,” Cal murmurs back, and rocks up onto his tiptoes so that he can kiss the rosy flush that the cold has left on Bode’s nose. Kata is making her own snowballs spin now, waltzing in a mini storm of her own, laughing and free. Snowflakes land on her hair, white against the dark, like stars. In this moment, she is the perfect image of what her father must have been, and of everything he deserves to become again.
Bode must have sensed something through his Force-Bond with Cal, because he leans in to plant a kiss on Cal’s temple, muttering “Sap,” against his flushed skin.
“Too right,” Cal agrees, carefree, and leans into the touch. Together, they watch the flakes fall and Kata dance, and Cal thinks that life has never been quite as perfect as this.
He can’t wait for the next snow day.