A/N: I don't remember when I wrote this, but I found it on my computer and I thought it was kinda cute, so why not?
"Please. Just a few minutes…I'm very tired."
The man in the doorway frowns at her, golden light behind him catching the ends of his hair. His silhouette flickers fire-bright, as she feels the outside grow darker.
"You have any money?"
Curling in on herself, head tucked into chest, she repeats: "I am very tired. And I feel very cold." Pale hands flash out of her coat sleeves to show how cracked they are. Her face is white and scraped thin over her bones.
Sympathy stirs in him, unwillingly, and he looks back at his cosy home fire with the extra red armchair, with the tea in a small glass cup and the leakless roof above it. That's his tea, his shelter. Home is pure: he doesn't let ugliness from other parts touch it.
"Look," he tells the girl. "I know it says I rent out rooms, but there are certain processes," he says. "Make an appointment, take care of the finicky details, pay up front…"
She looks perplexed. "But I don't have money. I'm cold and tired and I want a few minutes to melt the ice off my bones. It's so dark out there, I can't think; but you're kind, and I'm pitiful." She smiles thinly. "So I know you'll have mercy."
"I do feel bad for you," he snaps. "But you should leave. I don't let strangers drink my tea." Of the moment he only wants to close the door: the hearth-warmed air is funneling itself out and the cold numbs his face.
But she's numb, too. Ice frosts her lashes like Christmas beads. Her veins are thin, bulging, and blue channels of tired blood, carrying lungfuls of fishy, cold air — yet even the air is tired. Bitter gusts of it tug at her skin, and she shivers.
"Fine," he sighs. "I'm not going to have a body on my hands. Don't touch anything, don't smoke anything, don't—"
"Drink your tea?" she quips.
"...Yeah. Don't do that, either." A pause, as he looks a little discomfited, then: "But...I suppose, that is, if you're staying awhile you're not, uh, exactly a stranger anymore. And...and I do have a whole pot. So y'know." Casual shrug. "Might as well take some for when you go. Which better be soon," he adds more severely.
Smiling, she salutes him. "Aye, sir!" Then suddenly her face turns wistful, eyes far beyond him. (Her eyes are brown. Soft brown and big and wet, like a mourning child's.)
"Something wrong….?"
Her eyes refocus; her head jerks sideways in a defiant no. As if to convince herself, she says it aloud, too: "No. Nothing is wrong; I'm being silly, that's all." Before he replies, she ducks under his arm and hurls herself into a chair near his fire.
"Just silly. Maybe I'm just lonely. Loneliness is silly, though, isn't it?" Her pale lips quirk into a sad half-smile. "After all, my gracious host, I have your excellent company. If not your name...?"
He tells her.
"Like the sky today," she says. "Lovely name. Miserable sky."
Some color, leeched from the wind, returns to his face as he closes his door firmly behind him. He hands the girl his tea, winds his coat around her shoulders, and crams his long body into the chair next to her. So the outside world mutes; there is only firelight, drinks, strangers, only silence and the sound of bones thawing, blood melting.
And they still could be frozen statues. They are silent as ice the moment before it shatters.
