a request on tumblr from Anonymous

"Make sure you bundle up before going out in this weather!"

Yato materializes in front of Yukine as he's heading out the door, bearing an armload: coat, hat, scarf, mittens, and earmuffs. Yukine looks dubiously out the window at the brown, wintry grass and barren trees.

"Hmm," he says.

Yato drapes the scarf around Yukine's shoulders and smashes the hat onto his head so his hair sticks out in wild tufts from beneath it.

"We don't want you"—he claps the earmuffs over Yukine's ears—"catching anything"—pushing the mittens into his hands—"before Christmas!"—throwing the whole coat around Yukine's body and buttoning it right up over his arms. Yato yanks the scarf out of the front of the coat and winds it once, twice, three times around Yukine's neck until all that pokes out of the top are his eyes, and even those are nearly hidden by the wayward fringe of hair poking from underneath his hat.

"But I'm dead," Yukine says, his voice muffled from beneath the scarf.

"You can still get a cold, can't you?" Yato asks, half-accusingly. Yukine fights an arm free of the coat, and tugs the scarf down over his nose and mouth with one finger.

"I can get cold," he says patiently. "But I'm pretty sure I can't get a col—"

"Yukine! Yato!" Hiyori bursts in the door, cheeks pinked by the cold and her eyes bright with news.

"It's snowing!"

The three of them turn to look out the frost-edged window. It takes Yukine a moment, but he finally sees what she's talking about. The "snow" is just a few tiny white freckles floating down from the sullen sky, but in a few seconds, the first of the flakes stick. The ground begins to turn patchy, the heads of dead grass poking up from the thin, thin layer of white.

"Let's go!" Hiyori says, stuffing her hands back into her mittens and nearly hopping with excitement.

Yato looks out the window, then at Hiyori, then at Yukine.

"You have to keep your coat on, okay?" he says. Out of the corner of his vision, Yukine sees Hiyori's eyes widen slightly.

He can't blame her. It would shock anyone to see Yato acting like a responsible adult.

"I'll keep the coat," he says. "But not the muffs."

Yato purses his lips. "Fine," he concedes. "But the hat and mittens stay. So does the scarf."

Yukine unsnaps the earmuffs with relief. Those really make his ears sweat. "Deal," he says, throwing the muffs at Yato, who catches them easily. Then he gives Yukine a big, beaming grin.

Yukine notices with some alarm that there is moisture at the corners of his eyes.

"Look at my kid," Yato says, half-crying. "All bundled up and—*sob*—listening to me!"

With no warning, he attacks Yukine with a bear hug, his arms wrapping completely around his body and nearly picking him right up off the ground. "Urk!" Yukine wheezes as his ribs are compressed. Yato sets him down again, then tousles his head with an enthusiasm that puts his hat askew over one ear.

"Cut it out!" he pleads. Yato steps back, still smiling idiotically. Yukine looks to Hiyori for support, but this display of affection has put her in such a state of starry adoration that he knows he can expect no help from her.

"Can we please just…?" He gestures to the rapidly piling snow outside the window, directing attention away from himself.

Yato gasps, then looks at Hiyori, his face wearing an expression of fragile hope. "Maybe we'll see…Santa?"

When she answers, her eyes shift from Yato to the wall behind him. "Yeah!" she says, her voice strained. "M-maybe we will."

Yukine hides a snicker behind his mittens.

Yato and Hiyori dash out into the snow, which is coming down with increasing speed. Yukine lags behind them, fixing his hat. Though a gust of brisk, snow-bitten air rushes through the open door, he has never felt this warm.

It is a curious, new thing to be worried over—to have someone around who fusses about him wearing scarves and mittens, and catching cold, and enjoying Christmas. It is so new, in fact, that Yukine wonders if anyone has ever bothered to care about those things before. And then he comes up sharply against it: the odd, unyielding wall inside him that won't let him look any further.

He has felt his way along this wall before, often at night, when the attic is colder then usual. He doesn't like touching it with his thoughts. It feels wrong to put pressure on it. It feels like another face of darkness.

So now, when he brushes against it, Yukine withdraws quickly: back to the snow, and the happy shouts from outside, and the snugness of the hat around his ears.

Maybe no one has ever worried about him before. Maybe that's because he resists allowing it.

Yukine tightens the too-loose coat around his body, and that's when he realizes the garment is new. So are the mittens. They seem to have been already gently worn, but they are still warm and well-made.

He thinks about a small stack of preciously guarded yen coins finding their way onto a thrift store counter, and a few items of winterwear going mysteriously missing from the shop's hangers. He feels a prickle in his throat, and in the back of his eyes.

Yukine walks outside, shutting the door carefully behind him. The sky is thick and cloudy, dumping snow by the ton. Across the yard, Hiyori has collapsed into the powder, rapturously making a snow angel. Near her, Yato stealthily scoops snow into his hands and begins packing it into a ball. With his throat and eyes still prickling, Yukine realizes that the bitter wind doesn't reach him.

Maybe this part, at least, is true: that no one has ever worried about him before.

And maybe, now that someone is, he's enjoying it.

Just a little.