Chapter Text
It wasn’t like the new year was a surprise when it came, but the frost that followed was a sharp and welcome change to the endless, dreary rain that had left even the solstice grey and miserable.
Zolf held his mug in his hands and sat at the open back door in his chair looking out on the garden. Ferns of frost had spiraled up the window pane, pretty enough but not the same as the breathtaking sculpture that looked back at him.
True ferns curled with iced tips as clearly as the ones on the windows and even the grass beneath the apple tree stood cast in white, almost all the way to the sheltered trunk. The vegetable beds were largely fallow, though the onions and the winter greens stood proudly alongside the rest: hardy and resistant to the frost that Zolf knew full well he was letting into the house.
It didn’t touch him though, not under the thick, hideous blanket that Oscar had knitted for him when he took up the hobby and stubbornly stuck it through. It was the warmest thing Zolf had ever worn and glared out at the white of the world in a riot of colour that made him smile even in the depths of the winter. The mug helped too, of course: tea with sugar enough to rot teeth that was hot and sweet and, importantly, keeping his hands as snug as the rest of him.
“Do you know,” Oscar said without ceremony, moving to stand at Zolf’s side and look out with him in little more than a dressing gown and fine silk pajamas, “if you had asked me before the bear what I might’ve thought the afterlife looked like it could’ve been this.”
“Mornin’ to you too, sunshine,” Zolf replied, teasing but not cruel. Oscar had died twice, after all, it wasn’t like talk of death was exactly unfamiliar ground, “sad it weren’t?”
Oscar shook his head, staring out into the middle distance with a soft smile and a mug of his own. He sipped it slowly, more resistant to the heat of it than Zolf, and plenty warm without the radiating comfort.
“You’d know better than me, I’m afraid, but perhaps next time it’ll be more peaceful.”
The words lingered between them, hanging like their breath in the air: no weight to them at all, just a contemplation. An acceptance.
They had time now, after all, for such frivolous things as death, should it come upon them. No urgency in their days save that which they put there themselves.
“You’d get bored.”
“Can’t argue there I suppose. Just peaceful enough to be interesting then,” Oscar grinned at him, neither of them moving from the open door as the heat of the cottage curled up like smoke into the crisp air, “do you suppose they have scandal in the afterlife? Perhaps I could write a column.”
Zolf snorted, nudging Oscar in the hip and rolling his eyes.
“Tell you what, if you manage to engineer an’ afterlife paper I’ll take a subscription here.”
“My first customer!” Oscar gasped, pressing a hand to his chest, “don’t go spreading it around but I hear he’s quite fond of the racy articles. I’ll have to add something salacious to titillate my audience.”
“You’d do that even if I didn’t ask, dead or otherwise.”
“Yes but darling, I’ve read your prose, you can’t pretend anymore than you wouldn’t love it.”
“True enough,” Zolf nodded agreeably, “was just thinkin’ about the garden. Could be a photo - all black an’ white. Almost wanna paint it.”
Oscar turned, finally, away from the garden, and bent until he could press a soft kiss to Zolf’s cheek.
“Any time you decide to pursue the hobby I’d be delighted to recreate it for you. I’ll even set it up as a scene in the bedroom if you’d like to indulge in the beauty without the temperature - I’m rather taken with the idea of being taken in the frost, not that I particularly want to get my c-“
“You’re an absolute nightmare.”
Oscar grinned again as Zolf turned his face to meet Oscar’s and pull him in for a proper kiss, deep and warm and tasting of tea that lingered on Zolf’s lips as they parted.
“I was only saying that I wouldn’t want to get my clothes off, what did you think I was implying?”
Zolf just looked at him, then kissed him again for good measure, before shifting his chair back and setting his mug on the table as Oscar closed the door behind them.
“Can do what you want with your clothes, love, but I know when you’re talkin’ about gettin’ your cock out.”
Oscar sipped his tea, smiling obnoxiously into the mug.
“In January? In the garden? That sounds like a terrible idea,” he said, false contemplation in every word, “I don’t know why you’d even consider such a thing.”
“I hate you.”
“Evidence dictates to the contrary.”
Zolf rolled his eyes, then looked up, taking in the sight of Oscar’s full height, the softness that age had gifted him and the lines of his laughter no longer concealed with magic and artful makeup. He smiles, seeing Oscar smiling, and pushes himself over to the counter where dried fruit sits next to a mundane jar of oats that promise with barely any effort at all to become breakfast.
He thought about the garden, the bright life slumbering beneath its icy blanket and the promise of fresh green shoots below.
”Shame, that,” he said after a moment, measuring scoops into a pan, “guess I’ll have to bury the evidence.”
”I’ll help,” Oscar said brightly, “it’s been far too long since I’ve been engaged in a scheme.”
He could try and pretend it was serious; try to hold the moment in his palm and commit to the falsehood of his distaste, but Zolf was always bad at lying, except to himself. He turned back to find Oscar at his side, a bottle of milk offered from the cool box.
“Sounds like a good enough plan for a Tuesday. After breakfast though, yeah?”
”Whenever it takes your fancy, darling.”
Zolf smiled, pouring milk into the pan, and glanced again out the window at a world frosted over: no one in it, for the moment, but the two of them.