It was still dark in the room, but white early-morning sunlight shone through the gaps in the window curtains. John slipped out of bed, shivering as his feet hit the cold floor. He was an early riser most mornings, but it felt more freezing than usual today. And it didn't help that he was wearing just thin flannel pants and a T-shirt. Sleeping next to living furnace Karkat Vantas every night made you really used to being warm all the time. At least he had the fuzzy blue socks Dave had alchemized for him. Cold feet were a problem, Dave was warm, seemed like an obvious course of action to put one on the other. For some reason Dave hadn't gone for it. The socks were nice, though.

He padded across the room to the window. He didn't care what Jade had to say about atmospheric impossibility and the lack of a significant water cycle, he'd grown up in Washington and knew when snow was on its way. And snow had been on its way for about two weeks now.

Behind him, Karkat grumbled and rolled over in his sleep. John smiled. He was so much less shouty when he wasn't awake. It made for a nice change.

Awh, now Dave and him were snuggling, Karkat turning to Dave for more warmth to combat the sudden cold absence of John's body. How sweet. Wouldn't it be a shame if something were to –

John yanked the curtains open, flooding the room with sunlight.

-HAPPEN!

He grinned back at the bed, bracing for the barrage of groaning and expletives and Karkat throwing Dave's shades because they were close. But there was no response.

John frowned. They were both still asleep. Wow. He glanced back out the window and gasped.

Jade wasn't always right. Even about her own creations. He'd known that, of course, nobody was perfect…There had to be at least a foot of it. Untouched. Practically blinding. Some deep and primal instinct buried deep within his subconscious stood up and screamed snow day!

He raced to the bed, leaving the curtains to fall back into place over the window. "Guys! Guys, wake up! Look!"

Karkat rolled over, blinked at him once with sleepy yellow eyes, and pulled the covers up over his face.

Dave, somehow, hadn't even had the decency to wake up. John huffed. Desperate times called for desperate measures. He pulled his pillow off of the bed and whacked Karkat and Dave soundly in the heads. "Guys, there's snow!"

Karkat yelled loudly and sat up, holding his head with both hands and glaring daggers. "Nothing can be worth this, Egbert!"

Dave blinked mutely and groped for his shades. Once he had found them and woken up enough to process John's words, an expression of awe spread over his face. "You're serious?"

John grinned. "Would I joke about snow, Dave?"

"Dude."

"I know."

Karkat groaned and fell back on the bed, yanking the pillow out of John's hands and burying his face in it. "So some frozen water fell from the sky. So what? Why should I care? Maybe now you can stop harping on about it every hour of the day, and now apparently night."

"You've never actually seen snow, have you?" asked Dave.

"No. And I don't intend to. You two can go frolic or do whatever one does with useless frozen water. I will remain here, hopefully retaining some vestige of the warmth you provided before abandoning me so callously."

John bounced on the bed beside him. "Karkat, come on dude. At least just look out the window," he whined.

"Ugh. Fine. If it'll shut you up about it." Karkat flung the pillow off in John's general direction and sat up, rubbing his eyes. Dave reached out to smooth down his ridiculous troll bedhead and was met with a disgruntled hiss. "Try it again and I'll bite you, Strider."

"Chill, dude. Love you too."

Karkat flushed and scooted out of bed, trotted to the window and flung open the curtains. "There! Can I go back to sleep nnnn….oh." He squinted, blinked once and rocked back gently on his heels. His eyes grew wide and his mouth drifted open in barely disguised awe.

"Jegus," he breathed, almost too quietly for John to hear.

He leaned forward, slowly, slowly, splaying his fingers on the frosted glass. His breath fogged up a patch in front of his face, and he wiped it away hurriedly. "What is it?" he murmured, nose pressed to the windowpane like a child's.

John grinned unabashedly. No matter how well Karkat thought he kept up that prickly-insensitive-asshole façade, underneath, John knew, he was nothing more than a marshmallow in troll form. He tried to keep his reply nonchalant but couldn't stop some smugness from slipping through. "Just frozen water. Nothing to get excited about, really."

Karkat scowled – but not at him, John noticed. He was too entranced by the snow to look over. "Shut it, Egbert. I know what it is. It just…it doesn't look like any frozen water I've ever seen."

Dave smirked. "That's why we don't call it ice, smartass. And I will race you both outside and win. Loser alchemizes us a sled."

By the time John had lugged the heavy sled made of some plasticky who-knows-what all the way from the alchemizer out the front door, most everyone else had discovered for themselves the excitement outside their windows. Rose was teaching Kanaya how to build snow cats, Terezi was complaining loudly and shrilly about how white and wet everything smelled, and Nepeta, Aradia and Feferi would probably start a massive snowball fight soon if no one stopped them.

Karkat stood alone a few yards from the door, hands in his pockets and gazing at nothing with a faint smile on his face. It looked like, in his rush to get outside, he'd forgotten a coat. John was surprised he'd lasted this long – he was weirdly cold-intolerant, despite being super warm to cuddle with.

"You cold?" John asked, coming up beside him.

The troll blinked out of his trance and shrugged. "Nah."

"Yeah you are, doofus. Go get a coat."

"No, John, it's f-fi-fine – " His body was racked by a bout of violent shivers and he scowled in defeat. "Don't s-say a w-w-wo-word. I'll be right back."

John shrugged and shuffled over to Dave, who was turning a snowball over in his hands and looking pensively at Terezi. "Dude, I got us a sled. Wanna try it out?"

Dave turned around and grinned, and John was reminded that it was his first time seeing snow too. "After all you told me about it? Hell yes. Is that hill big enough?" He pointed with the snowball in his hand.

"Wow, that…looks perfect, actually! That is a really good hill! Thanks, Jade!"

Jade flashed him a thumbs up before a sloppy snowball from Callie hit her in the head. She shrieked and scooped up a handful of snow, letting it grow to bowling ball size before heaving it back at the girl.

John raised his eyebrows and giggled. "This is gonna go downhill quickly."

"I could make such a pun right now," muttered Dave.

"Hey!" a voice shouted from behind them. Karkat was stumbling through the snow, moving as fast as he could while pulling on a jacket. "I have no idea what you're doing," he puffed when he caught up, "but I want in."

Karkat perched in the front of the sled, holding tight to its plasticky edges and staring frozenly down the expanse of the steep hill below them. John's arms were clasped tightly around his middle, and he could feel the troll's heart beating fast and hard through the layers of clothing. "I am not sure if I want in anymore."

"Calm down, Nubs," said Dave, settling himself in the back behind John. The sled shifted with his weight, and Karkat tensed even further. John rested his nose in Karkat's hair, trying to be as comforting as he could in this position. "Hey, it's fine. I promise."

Dave's arms slid under John's and met in front of his chest. "So we just – shove off, and then we slide down the hill?"

"Yep. It's fun. Any time you want, Dave."

"What?" Karkat squawked, as Dave began to scoot them forward with his feet. "But I'm not readyyyYYYAAAAAAAHHHH!"

Karkat's screech transitioned into a stream of half-articulated curse words that continued as they flew down the hill. Trees whipped past them on either side, wind and snow blew bitingly into John's face, and he let out a joyful yell. Behind him Dave had put his hands in the air like on a rollercoaster and was whooping with glee. Karkat didn't stop swearing until they slid to a stop a few yards away from the majority of the players.

Sollux, Aradia and Jade were gone, probably exploring. Rose and Nepeta were making snow cats, with Kanaya nowhere to be seen, and the sled narrowly avoided plowing through one of the most removed.

"Dude, that was amazing!" yelled Dave, spilling out of the sled to lie giggling helplessly in the snow. "That was so cool! I can't believe I got cheated out of that by living in Texas!"

"That was one of the most terrifying things I've done in my life," rasped Karkat, rolling limply off the sled. "I do not know how you convinced me into it or what I was thinking following you guys up there in the first place. I am now likely emotionally traumatized thanks to you and that alchemized hell-machine."

Dave grabbed the sled and pulled it out from underneath John, sending him tumbling into the snow. "So you're gonna stay here while we go up again?"

"Where the hell did you get that idea, Strider?" Karkat popped to his feet and brushed the snow off his jacket. "Most fun I've had since we came to this godforsaken rock. One of you needs to sit in the front, though."

John shrugged. "Suit yourself. Called the fr – aw, Dave!" He launched into the sky after Dave, who had stolen the sled and was fleeing up the hill with it. "Finders keepers, John! Front seat is mine!"

"That's not how it works, Dave, come back here right now – Daaaaaaaave!"

After a few more runs, other players and their sleds began to appear on the hill. It got kind of crowded, but nobody got hit who wasn't being actively targeted. Which was to be expected from teenagers, anyway. A semi-organized snowball fight began at the bottom of the hill, Rose and Kanaya soon emerging as leaders of the respective sides. John, watching them after a solo sled run, shook his head. Their childish seriousness about the matter was entertaining, but it wasn't like he'd ever –

Seriously who was he kidding. No one. He was kidding no one. Grinning wickedly, John gathered an armful of snow and snuck up behind a fort to dump it on Rose's head.

Rose squeaked and smashed the snowball she was holding into John's face. John staggered back, giggling uncontrollably. "No one expects an attack from behind!"

"No one expects this!" yelled Aradia from inside the fort, and hurled a snowball the size of a perfectly generic object at his head.

John ducked and fell over, gasping with laughter, onto his rear. His hand made contact with someone's boot standing behind him, and he tipped his head back to meet the eyes of Dave and Karkat. "I'm under attack, guys."

There was a moment's pause as Karkat and Dave exchanged glances. John's grin wilted slightly. "Does that look mean what I think it means?"

"Probably," said Karkat, and Rose handed him a snowball.

"Oh, you – " John scrambled to his feet, shielding his face from the sudden hail of snowballs. "Traitors! Both of you – you're both rotten traitors, you hear me?!" He ran for the other fort, yelling "Traitors!" until he figured he'd gotten his point across. Karkat's rough, cackling laughter and Dave's undignified snorting followed him as he ducked behind Kanaya's walls. "Please shield me."

"Start firing!" ordered Nepeta, and shoved a snowball into his hand. John was too caught off guard to disobey.

The fight went on for a few enthusiastic hours, or that's what it felt like, anyway. John had really no way of telling time out here – if there was a sun, it was behind the thick layer of gray that covered the sky and might have been clouds. Kanaya staged elaborate death scenes whenever she was hit in a lethal place, once actually quoting some long, lamenting, Shakespearean-sounding poem word for word. Sollux and Terezi were putting in a valiant effort, but it was difficult to navigate when you were blind and everything was white. Blindness didn't stop them from shouting down any suggestions that they just make snowballs instead of monopolizing the front lines with derision.

Pelting each other with often supernaturally enhanced snowballs could only be entertaining for so long, though. People got bored. The armies drifted apart as the sky darkened and some humans and warmer-blooded trolls decided to call it a day. Callie volunteered to make hot chocolate for anyone who needed it.

Eventually, John and Dave had to order a shivering, soaking wet Karkat with feverishly bright eyes and red-tinged cheeks to come inside before he froze. "It'll still be there tomorrow," John reassured him.

"N-not c-co-cold," Karkat muttered in reply, not looking away from his half-finished snow crab.

"Yes you are," said Dave. "Didn't you and John have this exact conversation this morning? Now come inside and get hot chocolate before we make you."

"Y-you're gonna m-make me? H-how d'y-you plan t'do – what are y-you d-doing."

Dave leaned down and swept Karkat gently off his feet, holding him bridal-style. "Making you come in."

"Strider, what the actual f – oh. You're…this is w-warm."

"Yep."

Karkat stayed uncharacteristically silent while Dave carried him back to the complex. But if John listened hard, and concentrated on not making his feet shuffle in the snow, he could hear a very faint purring sound coming from the troll's chest.