Double, Double Toil and So Forth...

[defystereotype]

He isn't certain when it happened. Or how, or why. He can't even be certain that he simply isn't hallucinating this whole disturbing affair but, whatever the cause or reason behind it, he knows that his shirt shouldn't be pooled around him like this, completely swamping him in untold amounts of coarse linen. Strange, he'd never thought the weave

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[headofapin]

For the past two days it had been snowing, covering the ground with a thick layer of powdery white snow, and it was snowing still. Gabriella loved it. She loved winter, odd as it was, but she liked the nip of cold, she liked the atmosphere it brought with it, and most of all she liked the holiday season that came in winter, especially this year

[defystereotype]

Barefoot and wrapped in a scrap of what was once his shirt, William stumbles forward more from the shock of the experience than anything -- nothing ever bumps into him, at least nothing that isn’t at least the size of a car -- and only just about manages to catch himself from sprawling headfirst into the snow. But her voice is unmistakable, as sweet and warm and kind as he remembers it, and, in his vague sense of panic, it’s all he can do to restrain himself from grabbing at her.

He doesn’t say anything, so stunning and unusual is the experience of looking her in the eye, of standing next to her in the snow without a great chasm of disparity between them. He just stares at her, too bewildered to do much else except grasp at the improvised toga he fashioned for himself, flush with cold but too dazed to shiver.

Finally, he takes a breath, the air clouding his words. “Hello.”

[headofapin]

Naturally from the state of his dress she at first thinks that he's some poor homeless man, and so the first thought that pops into her head when she sees him is that she should spare him a blanket, so that he has something to wrap up in to keep warm.

For a minute, and a very long minute at that she stares at him. Gaping. Before there's a shriek. One of delight, and her bags fall onto the ground as she throws her arms around him, a tight hug that she can finally give him instead of just his thumb. She presses her face against his neck, too, smelling him to make sure that it's really him, because while not the most pleasant of smells, it's him, she'd recognize it anywhere, and it makes the hug just a little bit tighter.

"...hi."

[defystereotype]

He grunts as she barrels into him but, for reasons he can’t fully comprehend, he wraps his arms around her shoulders nonetheless, pressing her tightly to his chest, his nose buried in her hair as he breathes her in. Standing here like this, he can almost ignore the feeling of snow slowly melting between his toes.

“Gabriella. Oh, Gabriella,” he sighs near her ear, “I - I’m sorry to barge in. Like this.” He isn’t. Not in the least, but it seems only polite to say it. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

But, if he were honest with himself, even if he had a number of choices at his disposal, he’s not sure he would have chosen to go anywhere else. He leans further into her, all propriety forgotten in the face of his humanity. “You’re so warm…”