Snow? Never heard of it! - 1. Chapter 1: Cold?

Liam woke before the alarm in the way he always did on important mornings, which was to say: with the exact sensation of something going wrong somewhere, and the certainty that it would become his problem by breakfast.

The bedroom was black and cold. Not poetically cold—just the pragmatic, resentful cold of someone's decision against heating the bedroom. Liam lay still, listening. The building made its usual noises: the cat snoring, a neighbor banging the door, wind pressing itself against the shutter as if it had a grievance to file.

His watch glowed dimly on his wrist, 04:40. He had set the alarm for 05:00. Like always when he didn't work at home.

In the dark beside him, Rick slept on his back with the serene focus of a man who could treat unconsciousness as a professional skill. Rick’s hair fell in a neat direction even while asleep, as though it had signed a contract. Liam hated him for this in the tender way you hate the person you love most when they are not participating in your stress.

Outside, snowlight made a pale smear behind the half open shutters. The world was brightened but not improved.

Liam turned onto his side and stared at Rick’s face, half in shadow. His partner looked younger asleep. Less like a tax inspector and more like someone who might have hobbies that didn’t involve categorizing other people’s mistakes. Rick’s mouth was relaxed, soft at the corners. Liam’s chest tightened with that familiar, inconvenient affection. He waited for it to pass, as if it were a hiccup. It didn’t. He should do something about it after work.

He reached a hand out from under the blanket and immediately regretted it. The air was a slap. His fingers were ice within seconds, turning from useful tools into a set of uncooperative sticks. He pulled them back under the duvet and tried to warm them against his armpit.

The alarm would go off in twenty minutes. If it went off, Rick would do the thing where he turned it off too efficiently and went back to sleep too successfully, like a machine that had been designed to disregard consequences.

Liam could, of course, simply wake him. But he was also a person with alternative methods.

He moved closer. The bed creaked with the complaint of old wood and older compromises. Rick did not stir. Liam placed his cold hand—just briefly—against the warm skin at Rick’s waist, where the shirt had ridden up.

Rick inhaled sharply and opened his eyes.

“What the hell, man!” Rick said, voice thick with sleep. “Are you possessed?”

“I’m just efficient,” Liam whispered. “Unlike public infrastructure.”

Rick blinked at him, then at the darkness. He took in the cold hand still pressed to him, the faint light beyond the shutters, the hour. His expression shifted through irritation toward resigned amusement, as though he had found the relevant form and was already filling it out.

“You could have used words,” Rick said.

“I could also have used a small ice cube” Liam replied. “But I’m trying to be normal.”

Rick’s rolled his eyes saying everything without comparing. His eyes flicked to the window. “Snow.”

“Snow,” Liam confirmed, with the tone of a man announcing a minor apocalypse.

Rick sighed and reached for Liam’s wrist, not unkindly, just to pull the cold hand away and rub warmth into Liam’s fingers. He did it automatically, like a routine they’d been doing for years: Liam bringing some form of complaint, Rick responding with practical care disguised as annoyance.

“Your hand is dead,” Rick murmured.

“I’m fine,” Liam said. “I’m a resilient organism.”

“You’re a paranoid lab rat.”

Liam made a face. “That’s unfair. I’m not a rat, just a lazy cat."

Rick’s mouth twitched. “You organized the spice jars alphabetically and then went crazy when I misplaced the 2 mm garlic with the powder garlic.”

“That’s domestic science.”

“That’s a cry for help.”

The alarm went off at 05:00 with the shrill insistence of a device that had never experienced winter. Liam slapped it off immediately because the sound made his teeth itch.

Rick rolled onto his side and looked at Liam properly now. “What’s the plan?”

“The plan,” Liam said, “is that we get up, we go to work, and we pretend the world is stable.”

Rick stared. “That’s not a plan. That’s a wish. I'm not a fairy.”

Liam pushed the blanket back and sat up. The cold hit him like an accusation. He swung his feet out and immediately regretted the existence of floors. The tiles felt like they had been stored in a freezer expressly to punish him.

Rick watched him with mild entertainment. “You’re making that face again.”

“I’m not making a face.”

“You’re making the face you make when the universe fails to comply with your expectations.”

“I expect the universe to obey basic physical laws. Why can't we heat the bedroom again?” Liam said. “Temperature should be optional. It's not healthy to sleep in warm rooms.” Rick explained softly. Liam felt the desired temperature in the mattress, the warmth of it, the small intimacy of shared misery.

They moved through the first rituals of the morning with the grim coordination of two people who had done this together in all seasons and moods. Liam brushed his teeth with the intensity of someone scrubbing evidence. Rick showered like a man who believed in water as therapy. The bathroom mirror fogged. Liam wiped a circle clear and looked at his own eyes: too alert, too annoyed, too alive.

He checked the weather app because he believed in confirming his dread with data.

Snow. Heavy. Roads partially closed. Transit delays likely.

Of course.

In the kitchen, Rick made coffee while Liam stared at the street through the window. Cars sat under snow like abandoned projects. The streetlamps cast cones of yellow light that made the snow look almost warm, which was a lie.

Rick pushed a mug into Liam’s hands. “Drink. Before you become unbearable.”

“I’m always unbearable,” Liam said, but he wrapped his hands around the mug anyway and felt his fingers thaw, slowly, gratefully.

Rick leaned against the counter, already dressed: dark trousers, a sweater, the crisp calm of a man whose wardrobe had never betrayed him. Liam looked down at his own clothes: jeans, thick socks, a sweater that was too long, because he was the sort of person whose body was only a convenient way to transport a brain to a laboratory, fashion did not exist in his vocabulary.

“What’s the transit situation?” Rick asked.

Liam opened the local transport app with the seriousness of checking a diagnosis. The app showed blinking icons, cheerful in their incompetence.

“The bus runs first at 7:00,” Liam said. “The train is—” he squinted. “The train is listed as ‘on time.’”

Rick raised an eyebrow. “on time? Are you sure?”

“Yes. It’s like Schrödinger’s commute. The train exists and doesn’t exist until we arrive at the platform and suffer.”

Rick sipped his coffee. “So we drive.”

“The roads are still partly closed.”

Rick said, very calmly, “We drive until we cannot, and then we adapt.”

Liam stared at him. “Adapt.”

Rick smiled. “Yes. It’s a thing humans do.”

“I’m a mechanical engineer,” Liam said. “I optimize. I do not adapt.”

Rick set his mug down and stepped closer. His hand brushed Liam’s hip, casual and familiar. “You can optimize later. Right now we need to move.”

Liam wanted to argue—he could feel the argument rising in his throat like bile—but Rick’s touch anchored him. It was infuriating, being soothed by a man who was right. Liam took another sip of coffee and let the warmth fill him with temporary forgiveness.

They put on coats. Scarves. Gloves. Liam checked, twice, that the stove was off though he hadn’t turned it on. He was probably going to check it later online when he was at work. He checked the door lock. He checked Rick’s scarf, because if Rick’s scarf was crooked the entire day would be structurally compromised.

Rick watched him do this and said, gently, “If you check it a third time, I’m sending you an invoice.” Then deliberately chewed on it to bring disorder again.

Liam made a noise that was not quite a laugh. “You would.”

“I would itemize it,” Rick said. “Lock verification: three units. Emotional distress surcharge.”

Liam opened the door. Cold rushed in slow, even kind. The stairwell smelled faintly of detergent from the last cleaning and someone’s attempt at cinnamon. The building’s front door stuck the way it always did in winter, swelling with cold, resisting with the stubbornness of hinges gone wrong.

Outside, the snow was deeper than Liam expected. It swallowed the curb. It muffled sound. The world looked clean, which meant it was hiding something.

Rick walked ahead, sure-footed. Liam followed, steps careful, because he had read enough lab reports to understand that one bad slip could ruin a week.

The street was quiet except for a distant scraping sound, probably a plow, possibly the last remaining municipal worker trying to make a point.

Rick pulled his phone out, checking the time. They had ten minutes to walk to the bus stop.

Liam stared at him. “Are you sure they're picking us up?”

“Taxi companies enjoy money,” Rick said. “They’ll come. It's more practical than letting the bus driving around empty”

Liam wanted to object. He hated taxis: the smells, the unpredictability, the way the driver’s radio always played something that made him feel like he’d wandered into someone else’s life, the smell of cigarette and regret, and worse someone sitting too close to him who wasn't Rick, ok he was going to sit on the side and endure the cold. What was the alternative—driving their own car in snow, with traffic, on roads that might be closed—made his skin itch.

Rick had booked the taxi with the calm efficiency that made Liam want to both admire him and bite him.

They stood under the building’s awning and waited for a second before heading to the bus stop. Snow drifted in sideways. Liam’s eyelashes began to feel heavy with moisture.

Rick leaned in close and murmured, “You look like you’re plotting something.”

“I’m considering whether I could fake my death and start over as a houseplant,” Liam said.

Rick snorted. “You’d be a cactus.”

“I would be a cactus which resists cold,” Liam said. “Mutation.”

Rick’s shoulder bumped Liam’s. It was a small contact, but it warmed something deeper than Liam’s hands.

The taxi had arrived before they did, a light yellow car with a layer of snow on the hood that made it look like it had been traveling through weather rather than time. Rick knocked on the window. The driver rolled down the window, face framed by wool hat and suspicion, lowering her phone.

“You going to the station?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “A Taxi just got us? That's a luxury.” Liam whistled and moved to the other side of the car.

The driver laughed. “Get in. But I’m not risking my car on the hill. You get out at the corner.”

Rick accepted this like a man negotiating with reality. Liam glared at the driver’s dashboard clutter and tried to imagine the bacteria.

They slid into the back seat. The car smelled like pine air freshener and someone’s nicotine. Liam’s stomach tightened, as though his body was preparing to reject everything about the day.

Rick noticed and reached over to squeeze Liam’s knee through his jeans, a brief pressure. “Breathe,” he said, quietly.

Liam breathed, because Rick was not asking. Rick was stating a requirement.

The taxi crawled through snow-packed streets. Cars inched like beetles. A bus sat at a stop with its hazard lights blinking, as though it had given up and wanted to be found later.

At the corner near the hill, the driver pulled over and pointed. “Station that way. Have a nice day.”

Rick thanked without paying. Liam got out and immediately felt the cold seize him by the lungs.

The sidewalk was a mess of footprints and slush. The street was a chorus of tires spinning, engines revving, horns complaining with the futile indignation of people who believed winter was a personal attack.

They walked toward the station, heads down. The station entrance was unforgivingly cold, making almost no difference from standing next to the railway. At least it was warm enough for Liam to take off a glove to check the arrival time and possible alternative connections.

The platform was crowded for this time of day or should be called night, when even the sun stayed in bed until after 8. People stood in clusters, staring at the electronic sign, which displayed delays in cheerful orange text.

Rick leaned over and read. “Train canceled.”

Liam blinked. “Canceled? It was on time like two minutes ago."

“Due to weather,” Rick said, as if weather were a legal excuse.

Liam stared at the sign. He felt the fury build slowly, like pressure in a sealed container. The snow outside wasn’t even catastrophic. It was not a blizzard of myth. It was the kind of snow that happened every year, the kind of snow that should be accounted for in the design of a functional civilization.

“This is amateur hour,” Liam said.

Rick looked at him, eyes bright with interest. “Tell me how you really feel.”

Liam turned and faced Rick fully. “We live in a country that earns money on building cars, people can drive those cars as fast as they want and physics allow, and yet 2 centimeters snowfall turns public transport into interpretive theater. Don't tell me it's not intentional.”

Rick’s smile widened. “You’re going to have an excellent day with that attitude. Brace yourself for more disaster."

Liam’s phone buzzed. An email from the lab. Subject line: Reminder: mechanical processing of cells booked 08:00–12:00.

Liam read it and felt his pulse spike. He had booked the devices weeks before the Christmas holidays. He had planned today carefully because he needed the samples processed for an experiment sequence for the next week that, in his mind, was arranged like dominoes: touch one and everything fell in the right order. Touch one wrong and the entire month collapsed.

He looked up and met Rick’s gaze. Rick’s expression softened—just a fraction. He understood. Rick didn’t do lab work, but he understood Liam’s relationship to planning that went wrong: it was like a religion.

“What now?” Rick asked.

Liam swallowed and said, through clenched teeth, “We walk home.”

Rick blinked. “Home?”

“It’s just four kilometers,” Liam said. “It’s fine.”

Rick looked around at the crowd, the canceled trains, the general helplessness. He made a careful face. “It’s going to be unpleasant.”

Liam shrugged, because he refused to admit weakness aloud. “Everything is unpleasant.”

Rick’s mouth twitched. “Fair.”

They left the station and stepped back into snow. The wind hit them immediately, sharper now, as if offended by their return. Liam’s cheeks began to sting. His nose ran. He hated his own face.

They walked.

At first, Liam tried to treat it like a study in endurance: steady pace, controlled breathing, minimal complaint. This lasted approximately three minutes. Then his socks began to feel damp, and the dampness turned into cold, and the cold crawled into places Liam did not want to think about at six in the morning.

Rick, maddeningly, seemed fine. He trudged forward with the steady gait of a man used to paperwork and long lines.

Liam fell into step beside him and said, “If my balls freeze solid, do you think I can claim it as a workplace injury?”

Rick glanced at him. “Depends on the line of work”

“Prepared sperm donation,” Liam said. “I probably can add it to my taxes.”

Rick laughed, short and bright, and Liam felt a small surge of satisfaction. Making Rick laugh was a hobby Liam pretended not to have.

The streetlights faded behind them as they reached residential blocks. Snow piled in corners. A man with a shovel worked with the resigned expression of someone doing penance for a sin he did not commit.

Liam’s feet felt like blocks of ice, making it difficult to move. His breath refused to form any shapes. His hands turned into fists inside his gloves trying to keep the warm, a losing war.

Rick slowed slightly and asked, “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Liam said automatically.

Rick nodded, because he was not an idiot. “Your face says you’re composing a lawsuit against winter.”

“I’m composing a dissertation,” Liam said. “On the failure modes of urban planning.”

Rick’s hand found Liam’s elbow, guiding him away from a patch of ice. “Save it for peer review.”

They reached their building again, twenty-five minutes later, and Liam felt both relief and fury. They had walked out into the world, found it incompetent, and returned. It was a perfect circle of wasted effort.

Inside the apartment, warmth wrapped around them like an apology. Liam stripped off his wet coat, boots, scarf. He stood in socks on the warm kitchen tile and felt sensation return to his feet in painful prickles.

Rick hung his coat neatly and rushed to the bathroom.

Liam checked his phone again. Another transit update: partial service restored, except it wasn’t, because the app had now replaced “cancelled" with “good luck.”

Rick watched him. “We take the car.”

“The roads—”

“We take the car,” Rick repeated, with the voice he used when he had finished negotiating.

Liam swallowed his argument. Rick was right, and Liam hated him for it in a way that tasted like love.

Rick stepped close, careful, and tugged Liam toward him by the front of his sweater. Their foreheads almost touched.

“You can stay home,” Rick murmured.

“I’m coming,” Liam said tightly. "Now?" Rick asked mischievously then kissed him—brief, warm, familiar—then pulled back. His eyes held Liam’s. “Get dressed again. You can complain in the car. I’ll allow it.”

Liam’s mouth twitched despite himself. “Generous.”

Rick’s gaze dipped, playful. “If we survive today, I’m claiming a reward.”

“Put it in writing,” Liam said, and felt heat bloom under his skin that had nothing to do with radiators.

They left again, a second departure, and it felt different. It felt like defeat disguised as persistence.

"We're not gonna make it out of the underground car park."

“Of course, we can. I’m going to hold your shaft and you drive." Rick said trying to look serious.

"You're horrible. " Liam tried to kill Rick by looking at him.

"I drive, you just sit there looking cute."

Liam bit his lip and didn't say a word.

Rick smiled like he’d won something.

They drove anyway.