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It’s almost three in the afternoon when Vanitas finally makes it to the cafe.
“I’m not late,” he says, plopping down next to her. He is, by almost half an hour, and he immediately begins dripping melting snow everywhere. Snow. Snow, which she is very much eager to look into.
“Uh huh,” says Jeanne, taking a sip of tea that’s only mostly not lukewarm, and staying nonchalant. “What do you want to drink?”
“Nothing, nothing,” he says, waving a gloved hand. “Why should I waste my time eating when I can watch you?”
“Hm,” says Jeanne, feeling her cheeks warm. So silver-tongued. “But I’m eating. And I’m still staring at you, aren’t I?”
She is. Now that they’re more of an...thing, she doesn’t feel the need to pretend not to look at his face. It’s really not a bad face.
“You are staring,” he agrees, widening his eyes perfomatively because he likes to be annoying. It has the desired effect. She’s annoyed. She wants to drag him away and spar with him just so he loses, make him a warm drink, undo the bow holding his hair back.
Instead, she hands him the cup of tea and stands up. “Drink that, and then we should go out.”
He pulls a face, but drains the tea anyway. “This is lukewarm,” he informs her. “And it’s cold out.”
“I know.”
“ Really cold.” He pauses, examining her face for a long moment before breaking into a wide grin. “Ah, I see. You’d really drag me out and expose me to the elements like that? All to play in some snow?” He doesn’t look particularly upset about it.
“I’ve never been able to before,” she admits, and his smile dips a little bit.
“Then we’ll just have to fix that, Mademoiselle ,” he says, popping to his feet and spreading his arms wide. It’s stupid and dramatic. He’s stupid and dramatic. Jeanne’s cheeks hurt from smiling.
She grabs him by the hand and tows him out of the cafe, doing her best not to just run out into the square. It’s cold enough that there aren’t many people out, and the snow is mostly interrupted; just one thick blanket of white. It’s amazing. It’s the best thing she’s ever seen aside from Vanitas’s face, which is currently doing a weird scrunching thing so he can demonstrate his unhappiness at the weather.
It is cold. She shivers with great delight; he shivers with significantly less delight but holds his hands out to catch a few falling snowflakes so he can show them to her.
Those are also amazing and perfect, like little feathery stars that vanish if you look too hard or get too close. She keeps breathing on them too much, but Vanitas keeps catching them for her. She likes the way they stand out starkly against his gloves.
“They aren’t just nice to look at,” he says after several minutes of them staring fixedly into his palms. “You can make things with them too.”
Jeanne’s never considered that. In the past, snow had only served as an obstacle, something to wade through clumsily on the way to complete an errand for Lord Ruthven. She knows it packs together, logically, but she’s never thought of it as something that can be molded. This is the best day of her life. She sticks her tongue out to catch a flake. “How do you make things with them?”
Vanitas smiles a bit too widely, which should tip her off that something is wrong. “Like this,” he says, kneeling down to gather some snow together, crushing it in his hands until he’s formed a vaguely spherical shape.
Entranced, Jeanne steps closer as Vanitas turns toward her, the little ball of snow cupped in his hands, and then something is flying right at her, too fast for her to get out of the way and it’s going to hit her and she can’t move—
She blinks the snow out of her eyes, too startled to do anything more than stare at Vanitas, who is quite literally crying with laughter and rolling around on the ground. The indignation is almost too much to bear. That she , the Hellfire Witch, was caught off-guard by a human .
Jeanne drops to her knees, starts sweeping snow into her lap, and begins her counter-attack. It’s very effective. She is, after all, one of the Church’s best, and Vanitas, for all his strengths, is only a youngish human.
—
“Truce?”
“Truce,” she agrees, pushing her sweaty bangs out of her eyes. “No more sneak attacks?”
“I promise,” says Vanitas, a smirk playing on the edges of his lips. He looks awfully smug for someone who’s just spent several minutes being knocked down into the snow.
It tugs a memory to the surface of Jeanne’s mind, of crouching over Vanitas on the little couch, the smoothness of his gloves on her cheeks.
“I promise,” he’d said.
A safeguard. Vanitas gritting his teeth, the chords in his neck standing out starkly against his pale skin.
The memory is reason enough to fling herself at Vanitas and tumble them down together back into the snow.
“Ow,” he says, frowning up at her in a way she’s only seen him do with Noé. “That—”
He pauses, voice taking on a much more teasing tone as his lips curl into a full smirk. “Why, Jeanne, if you wanted such things, you could’ve just asked me!”
Jeanne pauses, considering her position on top of Vanitas. Then, remembering the way he’d been in Gevauden— posturing, nothing more, she folds her arms neatly atop his chest and kisses him soundly. He makes a strangled noise that’s deeply gratifying to hear, and as much as she wants to stay like this, she relents and gets back to her feet, holding out a hand for him to take.
He does, after a moment of silent sulking, and she tugs him up. He really is shivering, she notes. And his nose and cheeks are flushed with cold. “We should go back,” she says, rather pityingly. “Noé was going to join us around now.”
Vanitas nods, looking a little more cheered, and so they set off. Jeanne laces their fingers together as they walk, and she feels him give a surprised little jolt, but not attempt to pull away. He doesn’t quite know what to make of her, not now that she’s more confident. She likes that; being something of an unknown variable.
Noé is already inside the cafe, sitting at the same table they’d had before leaving, gazing absently at the elaborately patterned tiling on the floor. His gaze snaps up to land on them as soon as the door opens, and he breaks into a small smile.
“Hello,” he says, getting up and inclining his head politely to Jeanne. “Vanitas, Domi needs us to do something for her.”
Vanitas narrows his eyes. “Really? I would’ve thought Mademoiselle De Sade had better manners than to invite me over when I’m still enjoying someone else’s company. Doesn’t she have people to run errands for her already?”
Before Noé can retort, Jeanne quickly steps forward, carefully treading on Vanitas’s foot as she does. “That’s perfect timing. I was going to stay here for a while anyway. You two have fun with Domi.” It would be nice to have something that’s actually warm to drink, especially after their time in the snow.
Vanitas looks less than thrilled with this turn of events. “Jeanne, he starts, making no move to step away from her side. Noé sighs and neatly sweeps him up to hold under one arm.
“Goodbye Mademoiselle ,” he says with another dip of his head. Jeanne mirrors him. To her surprise, Vanitas is just letting himself be carried, lips pursed in resignation. She wonders how much of it is fake.
“Goodbye,” she says, a beat too late. “Tell Domi I love the dress she got for me last week.”
“I will,” says Noé with another faint smile.
“Take care of him,” Jeanne says, unable to stop herself from smiling. She likes the way Vanitas fits in Noé’s arms.
“I will,” they say at the same time, because they’re like that.
“Good,” she says, and moves aside to let them pass.