I began writing this because a snowstorm hit my area last night, and I became terribly inspired for something new…

So here is my something new! I just had to start with Aizawa since I hold an undying love for his character...

Enjoy! I don't own Death Note, snow, or e.e. cummings.

aizawa.

the snow doesn't give a soft white damn who it touches. - e.e. cummings.

On a dismal early morning between the hours of five and six, before he can even think about coffee or Kira, Aizawa realizes that it has snowed in Japan. It's minute, it's still coming down in vague little flakes, but it's there.

It must have been overnight, he conjectures, because he can't recall seeing snow before he passed out into sleep before he could hit midnight. Then again, he wouldn't know either way; he doesn't look out windows much anymore now that he works on this case.

Nevertheless, he curses under his breath and scratches the stubble growing along his jaw. Why he curses, he needs no reason. He never needed a reason before, and the sight of snow somehow drags a low and mumbled "shit" before he can swallow it back down.

He doesn't remember it snowing last December, or the December before that, and the very thought of it suddenly snowing now makes him cringe. Perhaps it had in February, but for two years straight his wife had complained about Japan's lack of a white Christmas or New Year's Eve, and now that it finally does, she is at home with their daughter while Aizawa slaves away at stacks of data with the rest of the task force.

He leans one shoulder against the hotel suite's living room and thinks of Yumi.

Three hours from now, his child will greet the morning and rush to the front door, palms pressed against the glass and call out to mommy that it snowed last night. Eriko will probably stroke the girl's hair and nod a little too quickly, then bustle off in search of warmer socks for her daughter and prepare breakfast for two. And he will not be there.

This thought makes Aizawa frown, something that his face has taken a liking to nowadays. He steps away from the window, turns, and sees a disheveled Matsuda-shaped figure standing beneath the arch of the living room, his hand through his hair and a brainless, sleepy grin on his face.

"Oh, morning, Aizawa," he mumbles blurrily, scratching his scalp. "Not sure why I woke up so early, but…"

Aizawa doesn't expect the younger man to finish his sentence and turns back around to the window. "Morning, Matsuda," he grumbles.

He hears Matsuda approach the window, pause, then suddenly increase his pace. "Did it really snow last night?" he asks. Aizawa takes annoyance out of the fact that he sounds breathless, disbelieving, like a six-year-old instead of a police officer. "Wow, I didn't know we were supposed to get snow…or at least not for another month, you know? Wow…"

Aizawa grunts out a response, his mind still on what could be occuring at his home once the sun fully rises. He doesn't enjoy idle conversation, never has, but the shaggy-haired man beside him seems to live off of it, breathe it in and exhale it into everyone's face until they are forced to join in. He knows that making a coffee break, even only five minutes after waking up, will distance the two long enough for a shard of his limited patience to bloom, but then again, Matsuda is asking him something that he didn't bother paying attention to, looking at him with expectant round eyes.

"What are you talking about?" he asks irritably.

Matsuda seems not to notice the edge to his words and repeats himself with an itching cheerfulness. "Do you like the snow? I've always thought it was kind of relieving."

Relieving? Aizawa nearly reaches over and gives the boy a good smack to the back of his head, but he clenches his fists and puts the urge on the back burner. His idea of relieving is a half-hour shower without having to worry about someone yelling through the door to hurry up, or a second cup of coffee, completely black, and not having to see Ryuzaki shoveling absurd levels of sugar cubes into his just feet away. Or taking a walk through town without a time limit before he has to be back to headquarters and sit on a couch, sifting through papers and attempting to make sense out of them. The world, minus Kira.

Not…snow.

His string of thoughts has put him in a bad mood, and he relishes the idea of making a pot of coffee all for himself. Yet, he stays by the window, staring out at the generous inches of dusty white that Japan has been blanketed with. "When I was a kid, yeah," he says tiredly. "But I don't see why I thought that now that I'm an adult, Matsuda."

He says this last statement with an exasperated bite that he is not surprised Matsuda doesn't catch. "You don't?" the younger officer asks, his voice trailing off. "Well, Japan sure does look pretty now…I hope it doesn't melt by the end of the day."

Aizawa begs to differ, but keeps his mouth shut. He doesn't feel like talking anymore, he doesn't feel like being annoyed with this man because it is all so routine these days. The only difference now as he grits his teeth and listens to Matsuda buzz words into the air and fog up the glass of the window is that there is snow outside, raping the ground and embracing buildings with arms that cannot be thrown off, like a thick white garrote.

He doesn't feel like being here at four-thirty-six in the morning looking out onto this crime of weather, but he is here, and he is biting his tongue, and he is wishing to cut off Kira's head and set it on a plate for Ryuzaki to stare at and just be done with it already.

How any of this relates back to his hatred for snow, he fails to see. Then again, his hatred for anything can't seem to connect like it used to, perhaps just two or three years ago when he had a reason to curse or a reason to grumble about waking up too early to find endless, endless white waiting for him outside the window.

As Matsuda asks for his opinion on snowmen, he brushes off the world and goes in search of coffee. Black, black coffee.

I'm quite sure I'll write for Near next…depends on what mood I'm in. And the snow is steadily falling outside…we're up to eleven inches. I love it.

Review, please!