Winter

“What movie do you wanna watch then?” Leela asked, voice low and soft from under the folds and folds of her woolen rainbow scarf; she tucked her chin closer to her chest in attempt to help her face escape some of the biting November cold. Mikey shrugged non-committedly, bumbling alongside her through the meandering streets of seasonal shopping rush, their shoulders bumping gently on occasion as they walked. Neither moved to give the other more room though.

“Isn't there any Christmasy kinda shit on tonight?” he mumbled. His face was paper pale, even more so than his usual tone of alabaster, but the wind had whipped of endearingly candy pink across his cheeks.

“I'm not sure.” Leela replied. “Guess we'll have to see when we get home.”
Mikey reached out a long arm and caught her gloved hand in his as she said the “H” word: a shared one bed apartment in London’s Notting Hill was a brilliantly terrifying new endeavour for both of them, but he really liked it when she said home. Like he quietly couldn't quite believe it was real: its mention sent a pulse of excitement through his tired body, compelling him to give her hand a small squeeze of delight. She bit back half a smile at the gesture, allowing him to thread their fingers together properly, interlaced and locked close.

The avid colours of passing faces, boutiques and advertisements melded into a mess of one big comforting cocoon, one that perhaps they both supposed they could get used to together. These new surroundings were just a happy, childlike amusement, a device to entertain them when their thoughts weren't already quite gladly occupied with the other.

“Your nose is red.” Michael stated, a hint of teasing nature in his tone. “You look like Rudolph.” Leela glanced at him, giving the tall young man a mock scowl and sticking out her tongue.

“Shut up, you frigging moose,” she replied, “us reindeer are magical creatures.”

“I wasn't debating that,” he chuckled, tugging her arm like an insistent child for attention, “in fact, it's a great look on you.” She rolled her eyes and turned her face away, their apartment now in sight. He remained intent on mischief though, and rooted his feet to the ground, hand still gripping hers so she couldn't walk away; she looked at him, questioning his immobility with a concerned raise of the eyebrows. Instead of speaking, he caught her free hand in his other and pulled her close in an abrupt motion, their chests colliding.

For a moment, the bitter frost and numb weather-ghosted skin wasn't an issue, nor the fact they had stopped walking in the middle of a pavement under the softly lit late evening sky. Michael lowered his head a little to level with Leela, his heavy-lidded eyes fixed on hers as he brushed the tip of his nose over the bridge of hers. Their hot, small breaths gathered and rolled past their barely touching lips and into the frigid air to create delightful little white clouds that bore against the grey-blue above them.

“No, really,” he murmured, pressing his lips to her cold forehead, “you always look beautiful, so don’t worry about those dresses.” Her embarrassment stained her cheeks a little and she pushed her weight onto the clumsy toes of her boots to reach as high as she could in order to kiss the warm crook of his neck.
She had brushed it off well and disregarded the matter of a few dresses she had her heart set on so casually, he almost might have missed how much it bothered her if her didn’t know her so well. Despite his protests, she insisted they looked all wrong on her and decided she didn’t want them anyway.
He wanted to tell her that he couldn’t care less what she wore but something gave him the feeling she wouldn’t believe him just yet.

“Mike?” she whispered, drawing his arms around her waist to pull him in. He hummed quietly in reply. “Can we go inside now? It’s fucking freezing out here!” He pulled his face away abruptly, scowling at her amused grin as it spread across his face.

“Ruin the goddamn moment much, you little shit.” he snapped, pulling his arms away from her and sulking off. She laughed lightly and with a wonderful sense of purposeful mockery, hurrying after him to catch up with his long-legged strides. He was already half way down the street and at the door of the apartment.
The glossed black wood was quickly unlocked and pushed open; every windowsill of their home was spangled and lit with the romantically untidy sprawl of christmas lights in ice blue and hot gold that were never really turned off.

He strided through the long corridor and kicked off his sodden Docs outside the living room threshold. Leela attempted to curb her giggles by biting her lip, stepping in and promptly shutting the door to lock out the bitter cold behind her. Her floral print Docs were quickly toed off and discarded too, and she followed him into the softly lit room, spying him now having shed most of his outer layers.
The happy warmth of of fairy lights cast a multitude of uneven glow over every corner of the room, and odd, soft grey shadows in counterpart. Tugging off her icey gloves, she tossed them on top of the pile where all of his wet thing already were. Leaning down to where he had thrown himself amongst the cushions on the sofa, she brushed the chill tips of his fingers through his fine blue hair and pressed a quick kiss to his temple. He scoffed slightly and turned his face away.

“Mikey…” she coerced, her hands moving to his shoulders to give them a gentle squeeze.

“No, stop it. That’s not fair.” he whined, batting half-heartedly at her hands. She giggled deviously, knowing she could win him over - she always won him over, and he knew she didn’t have to do much for it. “Seriously. I’m pissed at you.” he continued, attempting to strengthen his resolve. Leela huffed in exasperation and a touch of tiredness - it had been a long day.

“Why?” she demanded, though careful to keep impatience out of her tone.

“Because,” Mike began, finally looking over at her figure and watching her drop to the sofa beside him, “you always, always mess up the romantic moments.”

She bit the inside of her cheek and fiddled with the black buttons on her thick coat, finding herself unable to hide from the blatant (and painfully accurate) accusation. To her embarrassment and Mikey’s exasperation, she was the one who tended to shy away from his romantic gestures and brush off his compliments like he was telling a bad joke. Most people often assumed it was the other way around.
Honestly speaking, she knew why and so did Mike; the occasional ghost of a long gone old day revisited her mind and did its best to hinder the blossoming of something that had the potential to extraordinary. Not that Michael didn’t do his best to fight the ghosts with her.

“Sorry.” she mumbled after a contemplative moment.

“Shut up.” Mikey scoffed, rolling his eyes and turning to face her properly. “Just...let me do my thing sometimes.” He reached out and began unbuttoning the top of her coat.

“You shut up.” she retorted, earning a wryly reluctant smile from her blue-haired boy. “Moose.”

“Rudolph.” He undid the last button and leaned in, pressing his lips to hers to stop the silly tiff; it was over now anyway. “Seriously though,” he breathed, releasing her lips for a moment and leaning his forehead against hers. “Just let me be sappy sometimes. Who else am I ever gonna want to treat that way?”
Her breathing fluttered as she felt as though someone gave her heart a tremendous squeeze beneath the safety of her ribcage. Maybe a little romance was okay…

“Alright,” she murmured, lifting her hand to cup his round cheeks and brush over the faint stubble, “just sometimes.” Kissing his mouth again, she pulled him a little closer, teeth scarcely grazing over his lovely full lower lip. Leaning in and slipping his hands under her coat, he slipped it off her shoulders. She shrugged it off and reached her arms up to wind around his neck but he broke the kiss off again, grinning and giving her another quick peck on the mouth. She furrowed her eyebrows and pursed her lips as he tried to bite back on an impish smile.

“Babe…” he began slowly, tugging the sleeves of his oversized navy sweater over his knuckles and pressing them over his mouth for a brief second to hold back a giggle, “do you know what would be really romantic?” Leela rubbed a hand over her face in order to keep back laughter at the obvious mischief in his tone.

“What?”

“Let run away and get married.”
Her lips parted as she tried to subdue her amusement at the request but the honest hope shining in his eyes denied her even the slightest attempt. Her blatant shock and wordless lips were all Michael needed to assure himself that this was the best possible thing he could have said to anyone. Ever.
“I’m taking that as a yes…?” he said carefully after a moment. She blinked her wide chestnut eyes at his pale face for a moment, mouth open like a fish, before she nodded: the movement started slow, unsure, which rapidly turned into the over enthusiastic nod of a fanatic. He grinned in victory; the idea of marriage had meant very little for a long time to him, if anything at all, so he had never broached the topic with his girlfriend despite all his friends’ insistence that he was head over heels for her.

It may have continued to remain an outdated and irrelevant tradition to him until it had occurred to him that she was never really his in the forever sense of things. She was his everything - the foundation on which he had created the rest of his life - his infinity and beyond. And he had never thought about or considered what he might be to her. Since the only time he had ever done so, the idea of getting married suddenly made so much sense.

Maybe he’d be a little to her of everything she was to him.

“I love you.” he stated suddenly after a moment of rather intense quiet. Leela looked at him, a breath caught in her tender, wildly alive chest and looked still at the odd look of unquiet, honest affection in his candy green eyes before throwing her arms around his warm neck. The impact sent them tumbling horizontally onto the creased cushions, splaying everything into delightful disarray as lips collided.
Running away to get married felt as if it was the perfect last piece of the puzzle.

“I love you too.” she breathed, pulling her swollen lips away from his cherry-red mouth. He wound his long arms around her waist, pulling her down and pressing his lips to hers again, not able to find words for this moment. Perhaps there just weren’t words for moments like these. She laughed a short breathless laugh as he continued trailing his soft, pretty kisses over her face and down her throat, before pushing herself up on her elbows to get up.

“No,” his arms tensed, cocooning to draw her in as his voice cracked softly on the third letter of a word that suddenly meant a great deal more than its single syllable, “stay.”