For an almost-octogenarian who'd spent most of his life in New York, Charles had an appalling disregard for the weather.
"Really?" he said, in response to Erik informing him that they were to have a blizzard tonight, and that everyone else in the Northeast had known about it for the entire last week. "How are we on bread and milk? Maybe we should run to the store..."
As if there would be any bread or milk left on the shelves by now. "I went yesterday for milk and everything else we needed," Erik said. He'd spent years making sure various safe houses were well-stocked so that whoever needed them could lie low for a month or longer as necessary; he wasn't about to do anything less for the house he shared with Charles, stuffing the fridge full of perishables in the same way he'd stuffed the pantry with canned vegetables. "And I made bread this morning."
"Oh. So we're all set, then," Charles said. "That's good. Thank you."
***
Despite having been told multiple times how much snow they were expected to get overnight, once Charles was on his way to bed, Erik caught him setting his alarm as usual.
"What are you doing? You can't think you're going in tomorrow," Erik said, bracing himself for Charles' reaction, if he were to decide that Erik was being overly controlling again. He didn't care if Charles did think so; he was a fool if he thought Erik was going to allow him to drive off into the howling white inferno.
"—Why not?"
Charles didn't sound particularly offended or annoyed, but Erik was annoyed enough for the both of them. "You're not driving to the school during a blizzard! We're supposed to be getting two inches of snow an hour by the time you usually leave!"
Charles considered this. "All my classes will still be scheduled. We've never really had snow days, you know. Not much point to them when everybody lives in the same building."
"You don't live in the same building as the school anymore," Erik pointed out. Charles had a twenty-minute commute on a good day with no traffic. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, considering how much both of them liked this house and how much Erik liked the idea that Charles wouldn't be so immediately available to everyone at the school—that his time spent in their home would be time apart from that, allowing him to feel more like Erik's. That had been before winter arrived. If Erik had thought about the possibility of Charles freezing to death in a ditch somewhere while they had been house hunting, he probably would have insisted they build a house in Charles' former backyard. Or maybe he would have doubled down on New Mexico, instead. There was a lot to be said for the desert, really. There was as much to be said about the southern hemisphere, at this time of year. He'd never fretted as much about anyone else in the southern hemisphere. He'd never fretted about anyone else at all, in fact. Now, as soon as he stopped fretting about this weekend, he was liable to start fretting about next weekend, when his granddaughter Luna was meant to visit them.
"I am very well aware of that," Charles said. "There's no need to scold like I'm some child." Before Erik could respond that he needed to start acting like an adult with some awareness of his own limitations, in that case, Charles added, "So, you think I should stay home tomorrow?"
"Yes," Erik said, bracing himself again for Charles' resistance.
"All right," Charles said, instead of resisting. "I'll give myself a snow day tomorrow. A three-day weekend sounds like just the thing."
It did to Erik, too.
***
Erik woke up at his usual time, an hour before the time Charles' alarm would normally have initially gone off. Since Charles was going to sleep in today, there was no need for Erik to get up ahead of him, but he did anyway, sliding out of bed and into his robe and slippers.
The first thing he did was pull the curtain away from the bedroom window and look outside. It was supposed to be snowing, but although there seemed to be a few inches on the ground, it seemed otherwise peaceful outside. If it were snowing at all at the moment, it was little enough that Erik couldn't make it out in the dark.
Puzzled, he checked the weather report on his phone, and learned that the forecast had changed after the fact; now, they weren't going to get more than a few more inches on top of what had fallen overnight, for a total of no more than five or six inches throughout the entire day.
It still sounded like a lot to Erik, but he knew it would be practically nothing to Charles. He'd have no trouble getting to the school in his SUV as long as Erik went out with the snowblower to clear the driveway beforehand.
Erik didn't even consider doing as much. Instead, he padded out of their bedroom and into the living room, where he turned up the thermostat a few more degrees. On his way back, he checked the fridge and the pantry, just to be sure, and then picked a blanket out of the hall closet to bring back to bed. You could never be under enough blankets on a day like this, he'd already discovered.
***
Charles didn't wake up until it had already been light outside for over an hour. He took one look at Erik, obviously picking up on everything, and said, sleepily, "You're a terrible person, you know. Just awful."
Once, it would have upset Erik to hear Charles say as much, even in jest. He had spent so much of their time together in the past reading into everything Charles said, convinced that Charles, too, thought he was a monster. Now, though, it didn't bother him. It didn't sting. Perhaps it was because of Charles' affection, filling the room and softening his words. Or perhaps it was the matching rings on their fingers, and the knowledge that whatever else Charles had chosen, he'd chosen to be here, too.
"You said you wanted a snow day," Erik said. "I didn't want to disappoint you."
Charles laughed. "Yes," he agreed. "I'm the one who wanted a snow day. That was me. It had nothing to do with your personal preferences."
"I prefer you here," Erik said, not seeing the point in denying it. "I'm always going to prefer it."
If Charles didn't like it, he could learn to pay a little more attention to the weather on his own. As for Erik, he thought New York winters would be considerably more tolerable if there were more days like this in their future.