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Minghao knows what Jeonghan is up to, but he lets him be up to it anyway. He’s always so transparent. The way he leans in close to whisper nothing at all, covers Minghao’s shoulder with his hand and doesn’t move. It’s only hard to see if you have both eyes closed. Somehow, though, that makes it harder.
“Come with me,” he says. Of course Minghao is going to come anyway, but there are reasons he wouldn’t want to. For one, it’s freezing cold, and his coat isn’t thick enough to keep him warm. There are also reasons he definitely ought to go, though, like the suffocating way Junhui keeps staring at Jihoon and how Mingyu sits blissfully ignorant in the middle of all of them, focus locked on Tim Allen. It’s better to be a third wheel than a fifth wheel, at least as far as Minghao is concerned, so he doesn’t put up much of a fight.
“It’s a beautiful night,” Jeonghan whistles as they descend the steps to the sidewalk.
Beautiful is certainly a word for it, but not the one Minghao would choose. Even before they’ve reached the sidewalk, the chill is sinking in through his hat, his sleeves, stiffening his fingers as they sit balled up in fists and shoved deep in his pockets. Gloves would have been a good idea, but he forgot them, so now he’s doomed to lose his fingers to frostbite. His breath fogs up in front of him when he sighs, a thin gray cloud against the navy black of the sky surrounding them.
“That store better be close by,” he huffs. Now that he’s feeling the cold on his lips again, Chapstick would have been a good idea, too—why does he forget everything he needs? They’re already chapped enough as it is.
“What, you don’t want to spend some quality time with me?” Jeonghan’s smile is in his voice. “I’m wounded.”
“Of course not,” Minghao deadpans. “I only came to the party because I wanted some free snacks.”
“So cold.”
While they walk, Jeonghan kicks at the rocks on the sidewalk, sends them skittering forward until they meet again four paces later. Their shoulders bump together more than just a little often, always because Jeonghan keeps coming too close, breath coming in misty clouds that disappear into nothing. If it weren’t for the way the nerves in his hand feel like they’ve died and gone into the next life, Minghao might be inclined to say it’s a beautiful night out, too. Even through streetlamps and the odd bush covered in lights, stars are still visible high up, twinkling in their silent work so far away.
Exactly how big is this block? Minghao can’t feel his ears anymore, which doesn’t surprise him, but they’ve definitely crossed two streets, coming up on a third. If they don’t turn this time, he’ll say something. Jeonghan looks both ways when they get there, eyes catching the lights off the heavily decorated house beside them, and with bold steps, he continues forward across the street.
“What gives?” Minghao asks.
“Pardon?”
“I thought the store was only a block away.” He throws his arm at the unfamiliar buildings surrounding them and tucks his hand back into his pocket immediately. “We’ve gone way more than a block.” Jeonghan wheezes out a laugh, collecting on the air before him and melting away.
“Yeah, there is a store that’s only a block away,” he says, “but it closes”—he checks his phone—“an hour ago. We’re going to the next closest one.”
“You think Jihoon doesn’t know what time it closes?”
“I know Jihoon forgets things when he’s distracted.” He grins and follows a passing car with his vision, taillights shining in his irises. “And Junhui’s still over, so of course he’s distracted.” At the next intersection, they turn left. Now they’re getting somewhere.
“You think anything’ll happen?”
“Not if Junhui doesn’t say anything stupid,” Jeonghan sighs, “but I trust him to say something stupid.”
As they continue their walk, soft flurries begin to fall around them, small and feathery. They flutter to the ground and stick weakly to the frosted grass. Minghao blinks. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky a minute ago. Where the hell is this coming from?
“Oh, look at that!” Jeonghan sticks his bare hands out, palms curled into a bowl to catch some of the flakes. It takes them a few seconds to melt after touching his skin, and he looks to Minghao with an excited grin. “Snow!”
The warmth in his smile almost tricks Minghao into getting excited too, but he remembers he can’t feel his hands. “I swear to god, if we get dumped on while we’re going to get this stupid eggnog—”
“It won’t be so bad because we have each other.” His eyes crinkle. “Is that what you were gonna say?”
Minghao heaves a breath. “You know it wasn’t.”
“I can dream.” A distant stoplight changes from red to green before an audience of zero cars. “Anyway, you don’t need to worry about that because we’re almost there and then we’ll go straight home.” It sounds like a lie, or at the very least a generous stretch of the truth, but Minghao hunches further into the lukewarmth of his coat and keeps walking.
The store comes into view before too long, bordered on both sides by unkempt student houses. As they approach, Minghao finds something conspicuously off about it, but he can’t tell just what until they’re closer. Standing on the sidewalk directly in front of the entrance, it becomes apparent: no lights are on inside.
“You are fucking kidding me,” Jeonghan breathes. Minghao is feeling about the same. “How can it be closed?”
They creep closer to peer at the sign pasted to the door, eyes straining in the dark. Emergency closure, it says. Regular hours tomorrow. What an incredible stroke of Christmas luck. Jeonghan pulls out his phone and starts tapping at it with fingers that are surely numb, bright white glow from the screen falling in lines over his face that make him look like a painting.
“Let’s go back,” Minghao says. He’s willing to forgive Jeonghan this time and forget how much his hands are stinging for warmth, if only because he looks so sad. The phone light turns off, and they stand again in the dark.
“You can go back,” Jeonghan tells him. “I don’t want to make you walk to Walmart in this.”
“Walmart?” Minghao squawks. “That’s 20 minutes away!”
“Which is why I’m giving you permission not to come.”
“It’s just eggnog.” Minghao looks for his eyes, but the closest light post is too far away. He can’t find them. “It’s not that big a deal.”
“I know it’s not a big deal,” Jeonghan says, “but I said I would get it, so I’m getting it.” And he turns on his heel and starts walking. So Minghao follows.
“You’re a dumbass,” he grumbles.
“But you’re still coming with me.”
“Yeah, well.” Minghao looks up to the sky, at the tiny dots of stars he can just barely see poking through an incoming blanket of clouds. “What if you freeze to death by yourself?” Jeonghan laughs, loud and ringing, and someone shouts at them from a house ten steps after they pass it.
“I knew you liked me,” he hums. It’s way too simple to just tell him yes, so Minghao doesn’t say anything.
While they walk, he notices the snow starts to pick up, flakes larger and faster and falling in droves. They pile up on his hat and melt more slowly than they ought to, but it doesn’t stop the moisture from trickling in to sting the tips of his ears. It gets harder to tell whether he’s seeing his own warm breath or fuzzy puffs of snow with every step forward. The only sound is that of their feet, soles clicking on asphalt with each step, interrupted only by the occasional car as it passes by in a beam of headlights. Jeonghan walks close by.
“Hey, check it out,” he says, nodding his head at a few houses down the block, fully decorated in extravagant lit displays. They’re pretty, and Minghao has always had a weird soft spot for lights on houses at Christmastime, but the distant glow is giving him just enough light to see how bright red Jeonghan’s nose is. It’s distracting.
“Oh, yeah, they’re great,” he says with a low whistle. “Lovely weather for a stroll.” He looks around at the sky, or tries to, but the snow is coming down too hard now for him to take a glance up. “Lovely time of night, too, wouldn’t you say?”
“No need for all the salt.” His shoulder slams into Minghao’s without apology, smile decorating his lips. Probably also chapped. Minghao pushes the thought away for now. “I thought you liked pretty Christmas lights.”
“I do like them, but, you know.” His elbow jabs at Jeonghan’s twice as hard. “This isn’t my ideal setting.”
“What is your ideal setting?” Jeonghan asks. He blows at the snow that falls in front of his lips, but it doesn’t go anywhere, just gets lost in a cloud. “Describe it for me.”
“Well, for one, it’s in a car.” Jeonghan hums his assent, hums to say go on. “The heat’s up, and Christmas songs are on the radio. It’s snowing a little, but not this much. We’re going slow and stopping in front of the best houses.”
“Am I there?”
“If you want to be there, I guess.”
“I want to.”
“Fine then, you’re there.”
“Who’s driving?”
“Does that really matter?” Minghao spits. In the distance, he sees a very tiny rendition of a glowing Walmart sign, and it looks like heaven. His limbs scream in premature relief. “It’s just the ideal. Anybody can be driving.”
“But I want to know who’s driving.” The tone of his voice makes Minghao frown, incredibly earnest about something so stupid.
“You’re driving.”
“But my car doesn’t have a heater,” Jeonghan whines.
“Does that matter?”
“Yes!”
Minghao sighs. “We’re in my car, then, but you’re still driving. I’m not driving.”
“You really trust me behind your wheel?” Jeonghan asks through a violent chuckle.
“Not when you ask me like that, no.”
Jeonghan keeps chuckling. Instead of bumping shoulders again, this time he threads his arm through Minghao’s and tucks his hand back in his pocket to preserve the link. When he does it, it reminds Minghao that he’s taller, and somehow that makes him feel more responsible. Usually, it just seems like Jeonghan is pulling him every direction, and he’s following like a string of cans on a newlywed’s station wagon. His cheeks are the only warm part of him.
“Anything else?” Jeonghan asks after a few minutes of silence. That beautiful sign is only growing closer. “What about after we go back home?”
“We drink hot chocolate,” Minghao tells him. Inexplicably, he starts to choke up. It’s gotta be this damn snow, which is well on its way to burying them by now. “And eat cookies.” He looks up to the sky to keep his eyes from getting wet, but the snow falls into them instead. “Maybe watch a movie?”
“Which movie?”
“Does it matter?”
“Stop asking if it matters and just answer the question.”
“Jesus, I don’t know. I’m not thinking about it that hard.”
A pensive silence stretches on before Jeonghan asks, “Is Rudolph okay?”
“What?”
“That’s the only one I have, I think.”
“I mean, I guess it’s fine.” Minutes have passed quickly; they’re so close now Minghao can almost feel the heat radiating through the glass doors. Maybe that was Jeonghan’s plan all along. “I don’t think the movie really matters.”
“Good.” Minghao feels an elbow squeezing around him like a halfhearted hug, and then Jeonghan’s arm snakes back out. It leaves him feeling a little too cold. “Well, I can’t make any guarantees about the snow, but how about we do it tomorrow?”
“Sorry?”
“I know a neighborhood that always has a lot of really good houses,” he says with a smile thrown back, and Minghao can only look at him. Right back to following.
“Jeonghan—”
But he’s already stepping through those friendly glass doors and into the sanctuary. When did they get this close? Rather than ask that, Minghao follows him inside, and he nearly cries with relief when he feels how warm it is inside. All he wants to do is curl up on the floor and revel in the warmth, but Jeonghan picks up a basket and looks at him like he’s waiting for something, so he follows deeper.
At this hour, there aren’t many people hanging out in the aisles of the Walmart, a smattering of other college types roaming around the shiny new liquor aisle in search of something to dull the pain of finals. Jeonghan skips right past them—he doesn’t like the aftertaste of alcoholic eggnog, he says—head swiveling in search of the blessed nog. Minghao spots the cartons first, but he wants to let Jeonghan have the satisfaction of thinking he did, so he doesn’t say anything. Sometimes, he thinks that’s what growing up is all about.
“Damn it,” Jeonghan spits at the refrigerator door, hand hovering near the glass but not quite touching it. Minghao sidles up to him and tries to spot the problem, but nothing sticks out.
“What’s wrong?”
“They don’t have the good kind.”
“There’s only one kind, Jeonghan.”
“I know that.” His mouth curls into a frown as he inspects the meager rows of identical cartons. “But I told Jihoon I would get the good kind, and they don’t have it here.”
“Who cares?” It stings a little bit to grab the cold carton, but Minghao does it anyway, pushes the door gently back to a close. “I’ll tell you who. Not Jihoon.” He holds it out for Jeonghan to take, but all he does is look at the eggnog and then look at Minghao silently, back and forth. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever kind you bring back is the good kind.” For a long moment, Jeonghan just stares back with soft eyes while the moisture gathers on Minghao’s aching fingertips. Then he coughs. Then he smiles. Then he takes it.
“You’re right,” he says proudly, taking one step forward. His breath dusts over Minghao’s chin. God, isn’t it a little too warm in here? “Let’s go.”
By the time they cruise through the self-checkout and make their way back to the door, the snow is coming down so hard they can hardly see three feet forward. Before Minghao has time to process the notion that they better not just plow right into it like idiots, Jeonghan struts outside to plow right into it like an idiot. After being inside and enveloped by warmth, it’s a trillion times worse, every snowflake its own unique insult to comfort and serenity. Piles up to their calves cover the sidewalks they crunch through, fresh and clean before twin trails of uneven footsteps weave through them. The plastic bag holding the eggnog brushes at the tops of the tallest mounds as they pass by.
“This is terrible,” Minghao groans. “I can’t feel anything. Let’s go back to Walmart.”
“As much as I’d like to,” Jeonghan sighs, “they’re waiting on us.”
“I bet they aren’t.”
“What are you implying?”
“I think you know what.”
Thin white clouds of laughter mist forth from Jeonghan’s lips. Even though he’s already said it, Minghao wonders if Junhui’s had the guts to say anything. In all likelihood, probably not. But Jeonghan’s right that he does accidentally stab himself in the back with that idiot mouth of his, so maybe there is a little hope. Definitely more hope than stomping through snow at ass midnight. Why is Minghao even here, he wonders, but then he recalls that the answer is right beside him. He looks at that answer, flakes decorating him like ornaments on a tree. Then he looks at that answer’s hand and coughs up a kidney.
“Jesus, let me hold that,” he says, swiping the bag from Jeonghan’s hand. His knuckles are blinding red, fingers frozen in a crisp fist where they clutched the handle. “You’re gonna lose your hand.”
“It’s fine,” Jeonghan tells him, clenching and unclenching his fist, restoring a heartbeat. He shoves it in his pocket quick enough, though. “You don’t have to be so brusque all the time, you know.” Minghao chews his lip.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Which is a lie.
“Liar.” Which is accurate. Minghao sighs. “It’s okay,” Jeonghan tells him, “since I think it’s cute.”
Minghao rolls his eyes. “Ah, whatever.” Jeonghan laughs at him, or maybe with him. All that matters is that he’s laughing.
It’s not three minutes before Jeonghan says, “Hey, give that back to me now,” and pinches at Minghao’s sleeve. Holding the bag doesn’t exactly feel great, but it also doesn’t feel ethically responsible if he carries it for two minutes out of thirty-five.
“No way. I just took it.”
“Your hand is gonna get cold.”
“Yours is already cold,” Minghao grumbles, adjusting his grip on the plastic. All the flurries settling between his fingers certainly aren’t helping. “Can you even feel it?”
“Totally.”
“And you say I’m the liar.”
“We should’ve bought gloves while we were at Walmart,” Jeonghan muses. “God damn it. What were we thinking?”
“Our minds were too focused on the nog.” Their chuckled laughter is muffled by the veil of snow surrounding them, dyed by filtered streetlights and faded lampposts. Minghao feels like they could be the only people in the world still alive right now even if there are still lights on. “God, they better drink this. I’m not gonna be able to feel either of my hands until next year.”
Jeonghan hums, and then Minghao feels something come inside his pocket. Surely it can’t be a snowball, he thinks, but it sure as hell feels like one. The more he feels his hand around it, the more he recognizes it’s shaped like fingers and a palm, connected to a wrist and an arm and a person. Jeonghan’s icy fingers twine between his and squeeze gently, and Minghao shivers.
“God, your hand is cold.”
“Like yours is better.”
“I feel like it has to be. Scientifically. Biologically.”
“Just be my glove for a minute.”
Minghao doesn’t know when he starts, but he realizes after they pass the next intersection that he’s tracing circles with his thumb over the back of Jeonghan’s hand. Can Jeonghan even feel it? His cheeks color, and he doesn’t know why he’s even so embarrassed when Jeonghan already knows he likes him. It always just seems so much more comfortable to not be totally transparent. Slowly, he winds his thumb to a stop.
“No, keep doing that,” Jeonghan orders him immediately. “I think it’s helping.”
“Fine, then.” When he resumes his circles, Jeonghan laughs again. He never stops laughing, that guy. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I’m just glad you came with me, is all,” he breathes. Somewhere in the middle of Minghao’s chest, his heart squeezes, just a little.
“Glad is definitely not the word I would use,” Minghao says. “More like regretful that I’m going to have to have all my limbs amputated.”
“Hey, stop walking a sec.”
“What? No way.” But Jeonghan has already stopped, and he’s got an anchor in Minghao’s pocket, so he’s forced to back up a few steps and stop, too. Jeonghan’s eyes twinkle like the stars he can’t see. “What is it?”
“Give me the bag real quick.”
There is no giving. Instead, Jeonghan just takes the bag, and Minghao’s hand is too numb to stop it. Then he tosses it softly into a pillow of snow a foot to their right. When Minghao raises his eyebrows, Jeonghan just smiles at him, and then he is lacing the fingers of his other free hand through Minghao’s helplessly frozen ones and shoving them into his coat pocket. It’s so much warmer inside that it almost hurts. Jeonghan carves two short trenches in the snow when he shuffles closer, closer, until their noses are almost touching. Or would be almost touching, if Jeonghan were a couple inches taller.
“What are we doing?” Minghao asks him.
“Getting warmer.” Distantly, the sensation of Jeonghan rubbing circles around the back of his colder hand reaches him. “Let’s just stand here a minute.”
A lot about standing here right now makes him nervous. For one, there’s the snow. At the rate it’s falling, they’ll be buried alive in minutes, and then their muscles will be too stiff from cold to dig them back out. For two, there’s Jeonghan. He’s so close that their breaths are turning into one and fogging up the glasses Minghao doesn’t have, so close he’s sure his own heartbeat is audible somewhere among the falling snow, detectable through his fingertips. For three, there’s Jeonghan again. His shining eyes, his little smile. The snowflakes sticking like dust on his eyelashes. For four… Jeonghan. Five, six, seven, again and again. So that’s it. The snow and Jeonghan. Not as much as Minghao thought, but he’s still plenty nervous.
“Something wrong?” Jeonghan asks him. When he talks, his lips are so close to brushing against Minghao’s chin. Agonizing.
“Nope, nothing.” He tries to maintain eye contact through the snow, but it mostly just dyes his cheeks dark red. Jeonghan has to notice. “I’m having a great time.”
“Oh yeah? Glad to hear it.” His smile grows into a full beam, and Minghao feels some of the warmth leave his pocket. “Wait, look at this.”
A tepid finger brushes behind his ear, and then there is a hand right in front of his face, something small dangling from the fingertips. A little green sprig with small white berries. Jeonghan smiles from behind it. “What the fuck?”
“It’s mistletoe,” Jeonghan tells him.
“I’m aware it’s mistletoe,” Minghao sighs. “What I’m wondering is why you pulled it out from behind my ear like it’s a quarter and you’re my uncle who went to clown college.”
“I saw it hiding back there.” Jeonghan starts giggling before he even finishes saying it.
“How long have you had that planned?”
“I thought of it last week,” he boasts. Minghao exhales again, and Jeonghan wiggles his prize. “Don’t you think you’re forgetting something you need to do?”
“You think so?”
“Rhymes with piss tea.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Come on, Minghao, my arm is getting tired.” So Minghao rolls his eyes and kisses him.
Chapstick. That’s another thing that would have been a good idea to grab at the store. Chapstick and gloves. Jeonghan’s lips are scratchy and cold, but they warm up to Minghao’s readily, smile against his mouth. Instead of retreating back into his pocket, Jeonghan’s hand curls around the back of Minghao’s neck, thumb sliding beneath his ear. The mistletoe tickles his skin, warmer than it should be beneath a grid of twisted fingers, and when Minghao closes his eyes, he doesn’t feel the snow. He’s breathless when he tips his head back, and Jeonghan’s cheeks are brilliant red.
“You didn’t have to trick me into it,” Minghao mutters. The hand at his neck slides silently down his chest and back to the pocket it came from, tangles its fingers with Minghao’s again. The mistletoe brushes his knuckles, and he wonders where it came from to begin with. “You could have just kissed me.”
“I know.” Of course he knows, Minghao thinks, but he’d still like to run and hide the blush on his cheeks. “But it’s more fun this way.” He smiles. “Besides, if I do it, that’s a few inches more work on my end.”
“You… are something else.”
“So they tell me.” He leans forward and backward, swaying with the wind. “So we’ll go see all the lights tomorrow, right? You’re not allowed to say no now.”
“You’re so underhanded for no reason,” Minghao tells him. “Yeah, we can go. You already planned it all out anyway.”
“You planned it,” Jeonghan corrects. “I’m just putting the plan into action.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Jeonghan kisses him one more time, too low to count as the lips and too high to count as the chin. There’s something pure about that location, its innocent ambiguity, that makes Minghao’s heartbeat struggle to gain its footing. Then he gives one last squeeze of the hands and says they better hurry on and head home. Which Minghao agrees with, even though he was just starting to get warm, just edging on fondness for this frozen wasteland they’re wading through. Jeonghan turns around to pick up the eggnog and lets out a muted yell.
“Fuck,” he’s able to articulate.
“What?”
“The eggnog,” he says, then drops to a squat and plunges his hands into the snow. “It’s buried.”
“Jesus Christ.” And Minghao joins him immediately in a frantic dig through the snow pile they thought had the eggnog in it but is starting to seem empty. Jeonghan breathes out a mirthless laugh.
“I try to be romantic one time…” Now is Minghao’s turn to laugh. Loud and manic, lungs threatening to burst at the seams. Under the snow, his fingers are screaming for help.
“Next time, just kiss me,” he says. Jeonghan grins at him.
“Sure thing.”
Finding the lost carton of eggnog takes ten minutes of searching, by the end of which they are both ready to perish on the spot, and the bag’s handle is mysteriously torn, so they’re forced to pass it back and forth like an iced potato for the remainder of their walk, fingers nearing death. Ideally, the snow would frame itself, peter out as they make their way home the same way it tiptoed in as they left, but they have no such poetic luck. Even when they must only be feet from the steps they came down earlier, it’s still snowing so hard they can’t see whether the lights are on upstairs.
Jeonghan snakes his arm through Minghao’s right before he sets foot on the step he thinks leads up to the right place, holds him hostage in the middle of time. If he takes the temperature out of the equation, it hasn’t been such a bad night—he got to go to a party, got to see some nice lights, got to kiss the guy he likes. There are worse things. But as it stands, the temperature is part of the equation, and Jeonghan is forcing him to stay in it longer.
“What gives?” he asks.
“Are you going to stay over tonight?” Jeonghan asks.
“It sounds like you just asked me if I plan on staying alive.”
“Well, do you?”
“We have a date tomorrow,” Minghao reminds him.
“Right.”
He tries to take the step up a second time, but Jeonghan is still rooted to his spot, three inches over his ankles in the snow. The carton of eggnog is frozen solid in Minghao’s unfeeling hand, and all he wants to do is go inside. A muffled groan ekes out of his lips.
“Something else bothering you that we can’t talk about inside for some reason?”
“I mean, I’m just afraid Jihoon gave Junhui the couch already.”
“Maybe,” Minghao hums. He taps his fingernails on the carton. “Do you think Junhui made a move?”
“I don’t know.” Once again, the wind sways him back and forth, but this time he moves Minghao, too, another link in a very short chain. “I was sure he would earlier, but right now I think he probably didn’t.”
Minghao cracks a smile. “Wanna bet on it?”
“You think he did?”
“I think so.” He cranes his neck to look up at the window, but all he sees is falling snow and a faint yellow square with nothing behind it. “Ten bucks says he finally bucked up and confessed.” A crystalline flake lands on the tip of his nose and doesn’t melt, and Minghao feels a little more daring. “Thirty says they’re making out right now.”
“Pretty brave,” Jeonghan says. “You’re on.”
He unhooks his arm from Minghao’s to forge his way up the stairs, trying unsuccessfully to dust off the snow that’s plastered itself to him, shaking his arms to get the feeling back. They both stomp their feet gently on the welcome mat, bright green and embroidered with red and white lights, and then Jeonghan turns around to face him, key poised to unlock. He kisses Minghao one more time before they go inside, sweet and long, and Minghao finds he doesn’t care so much whether he’s going to get those thirty dollars or not.