"It's the most wonderful time of the year!"
The dulcet notes of Andy Williams played out across the street from where some builders were listening to the radio at full volume.
"Oh, I like this song!" Suzy laughed gleefully as she pulled at Jin-kyu's hand, drawing him closer towards Sammy with a jerking movement.
After a characteristically flustered Lebedev had dropped her off, Suzy had insisted that both men hold her hands as they walked to the park.
Thankfully, Lebedev had been in too much of a rush to notice that Sammy was in fact a living breathing version of Jin-kyu's missing artwork and Suzy hadn't seemed to notice anything amiss as the younger man had complimented her pink hat with knitted cat ears.
"I'm Suzy the pussycat!" she had exclaimed, holding her hands up in front of her like paws and scratching at the air. Sammy had nodded sagely at her with widened eyes, "That's cool - I'm not a boring old human either!"
So far, they had also had to stop no fewer than eleven times for either Suzy or Sammy (at some points both of them) to inspect the snow.
"There'll be snow in the damn park," Jin-kyu muttered through gritted teeth, cursing for the hundredth time that he hadn't yet gotten around to purchasing new gloves.
"Can we build a snowman?" Suzy asked excitedly, tugging on Jin-kyu's ice-block fingers with her purple paw-print mittens and why did everyone have mittens?
"Sure," Jin-kyu replied uncertainly as he quickly put a hand over her eyes as they hurried past a group of teenagers sculpting a snow penis.
"What's that smell?" Sammy asked suddenly, sniffing the honeyed scent in the air.
"Roasted chestnuts," Jin-kyu replied, gesturing to a street vendor.
"Can we get some?" Sammy asked with a wide hopeful grin. Jin-kyu sighed but before he had the chance to answer, Suzy huffed beside him,
"Don't be silly Sammy - everyone knows not to buy food from the street in this part of the city! Only tourists would do that!"
Jin-kyu suppressed a laugh as he squeezed her hand, "You know Suzy, Sammy is a tourist."
Suzy frowned thoughtfully at the other man, "Still no reason for him to get an upset tummy. It's okay Sammy - Uncle Jin-kyu will buy you something else if you're hungry."
"I will?" Jin-kyu asked before seeing Suzy's face and realising that she was mimicking the same expression Sun-hee and Camille bore when they were telling him he would do something.
"I will," he sighed defeatedly.
Two hot chocolates and a 'Christmas in a Cup' latte later and they finally made it through the icicled gates into the park.
"Looks like a lot of people had the same idea," Jin-kyu commented as a group of children scurried past them, hurling snow balls.
"Do you think all their school pipes burst?" Suzy asked.
Jin-kyu shrugged, "Nah, they're probably just skipping - come on let's go find a good spot."
In the end, it was Sammy that led them towards a patch of untouched snow under a large bare-branched tree.
"Will this do?" he asked, looking up at Jin-kyu as his bobble hat slipped down over his eyes again. Jin-kyu chuckled as he reached forwards, pulling it back up, his cold fingers brushing the heated flush on Sammy's skin.
"This will do Sammy," he said gently.
"Right," Suzy suddenly shouted, making them both jump and causing Sammy's hat to fall down again. Jin-kyu looked across to where Suzy was stood with her arms crossed and a decisive look on her face.
"Uncle Jin-kyu!" she announced, pointing at him. "You're on snow duty! You are in charge of going and rolling up the biggest balls of snow you can to make the snowman."
She paused, "Uncle Sammy! - You're on scavenger duty with me. We have to go find everything that the snowman can wear, I've got a carrot in my bag but we still need buttons, arms and eyes."
*
Ten minutes later and Jin-kyu was huffing and panting as he rolled his fifth giant snowball under the tree.
"Still not big enough Uncle Jin-kyu!" Suzy laughed from where her and Sammy were looking for arm-like twigs on the ground. "Needs more snow!"
"Maybe Uncle Sammy could be on snow duty as well?" Jin-kyu asked through gritted teeth as he checked that he was still in possession of all his fingers and toes.
"Nuh-uh," Suzy shook her head with widened eyes, "Uncle Sammy is helping me."
"I'm not sure that looking for twigs is a two man job," Jin-kyu replied, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at Sammy who merely grinned back.
"Well we're not two men silly!" Suzy laughed back, "we're a pussycat and a Sammy."
"Of course," Jin-kyu huffed, "silly me."
"Oh and Uncle Jin-kyu?" Suzy called back just as Jin-kyu began to wheel his giant snowball back out into the open. "I think I added up wrong earlier - we actually need seven snowballs."
"I see. We're making snow-Godzilla are we?" Jin-kyu retorted as Suzy started giggling loudly.
Eventually, Jin-kyu managed to gather enough snowballs of Suzy-approved size that they could finally begin assembling the snowman.
It was at this point however, that Jin-kyu realised in order to make the torso he was actually going to have to lift the giant, ridiculously heavy clusters of snow.
"Sammy - go help Uncle Jin-kyu with his balls," Suzy sighed with a dismissive wave to Sammy after Jin-kyu had explained the problem.
Jin-kyu groaned as he ran a hand down his face, hoping that the icicles he now had for fingers would dampen the hot blush he was currently sporting.
"Wow, your balls are huge!" Sammy exclaimed upon walking over to Jin-kyu.
"Just grab the other side and stop talking," Jin-kyu snapped as he gestured to one of the spheres of snow.
"He's going to be the biggest snowman in all of the park!" Suzy exclaimed delightedly as she came over to inspect their progress.
"Argh!"
There was a strangled noise as Sammy slipped under the weight of the last snowball they had been lifting, resulting in him toppling over and, what would have been the snowman's head, crashing down on top of him, concluding in a dramatic explosion of snow.
"Sammy!" Jin-kyu shouted, rushing forwards and dropping to his knees. He immediately started brushing all of the heaped snow away, revealing a very dazed looking Sammy.
"Is Uncle Sammy okay?" Suzy asked worriedly as Jin-kyu heaved Sammy to his feet. The other man looked like he had dived into a giant bowl of cake frosting.
"He'll be fine," Jin-kyu replied, suddenly hiccoughing a laugh. He blinked, surprised at himself before another one came out and suddenly he was bent over double, wheezing with laughter.
Suzy giggled happily beside him, leaning on his shoulder, "Oh Uncle Sammy - maybe you can be our snowman!" she howled gleefully.
Jin-kyu caught his breath and looked up to where Sammy was still stood absolutely motionless, his eyes blinking with shock and his lips parted. Jin-kyu steadied himself to stand up and walk over to Sammy, pulling off one of the younger man's blue mittens and proceeding to wipe the melting snow off of Sammy's face and neck.
"Are you okay?" Jin-kyu whispered as his hand dipped under the collar of Sammy's sweater to rub off the snow that had slipped down.
"Jin-kyu..." Sammy murmured back, his eyes still wide. "Is...is snow poisonous?"
"Only the yellow snow," Jin-kyu smirked before looking up and seeing Sammy's terrified expression. "No Sammy, snow isn't poisonous - why?"
Sammy blinked at him, "Because I think I just ate a lot of it."
Jin-kyu choked on another strangled laugh before pulling Sammy's mitten back over the younger man's slender fingers. "Nope. Think you'll be good Sammy."
The look of relief on Sammy's face was instantaneous and made Jin-kyu's chest clench strangely.
A moment later, Suzy cleared her throat behind them. Jin-kyu turned round and saw that she had her arms crossed over her chest again, "This means you need to go make another snowball Uncle Jin-kyu."
Jin-kyu groaned as he gave Sammy's shoulder a further reassuring squeeze. "Okay, okay I'm going."
When Jin-kyu returned, exhausted and frozen, they finally managed to assemble the rest of the snowman without incident.
When it got down to actually sculpting the monstrosity, Jin-kyu again was left with most of the work. Not that he was complaining this time - given that this was actually his area of expertise.
Plus, it was rather gratifying when they had gathered a small circle of cooing mothers and spectators all come to check out their snow sculpture.
Okay, so Jin-kyu may have gone a little overboard with turning the snowman into a work of art but Suzy seemed to be enjoying the attention as much as him.
And that was weird...since when did Jin-kyu like attention?
"When can I put the arms on?" Sammy garbled as he ran up to Jin-kyu, the older man growling as Sammy waved a spiked twig precariously close to where Jin-kyu was now sculpting a sprig of holly to go through a carefully sculpted buttonhole.
He acknowledged that he went overboard okay?
Jin-kyu turned to look at Suzy with a pleading expression, some random snapped off twigs were going to look rather incongruous as the arms of this masterpiece. However, Suzy just nodded sagely, "Uncle Sammy found the best arms Uncle Jin-kyu."
Jin-kyu sighed, "Fine - give them here," he began to stick the twigs in either side and then proceeded to add the random stones Sammy and Suzy had scavenged for further features.
With each new one he added, Sammy's face lit up further, his smile now nearly extending from ear to ear. Jin-kyu huffed a laugh as he brushed the snow off his hands before grabbing the last of the rocks off of Sammy.
"Sammy."
"Yup?"
"This is a piece of frozen dog shit. You just handed me frozen dog shit."
"Oops!" Sammy exclaimed, hurriedly reaching out and knocking the offending item from Jin-kyu's fingers whilst Suzy howled with laughter in the background.
"He needs a hat," Suzy announced a moment later, "no snowman is complete without a hat."
"He can borrow mine!" Sammy exclaimed, tugging his green bobble hat off and proffering it to Jin-kyu with a hopeful shrug, "It's a bit big for me, so it should fit Mr. Snowman perfectly."
Jin-kyu nodded as he bit down a smile. He had to go precariously up on tip toes and stretch painfully far in order to place the hat on top of the towering snowman's head.
"What a lucky little girl!" a nearby mother exclaimed, beaming at a proud looking Suzy, "having such talented fathers to help you make a snowman!"
Jin-kyu gasped as he managed to lose his footing and slipped backwards.
"Jin-kyu!" He heard Sammy cry out before Jin-kyu crashed into the snow in a pile of frosted limbs, half of which he was sure weren't his own. He could only hope and pray that they didn't belong to Suzy because he didn't fancy explaining to Lebedev's wife that he had flattened their child.
"Uncle Jin-kyu! Uncle Sammy!" Suzy called out, but it sounded like she was laughing.
"Mnugh," came a muffled moan from below Jin-kyu as he quickly scrambled upwards, realising that it was in fact Sammy who he was crushing.
"Are you okay?" Jin-kyu frowned as he helped Sammy to his feet. Sammy grinned in response, patting himself down as if checking for injury. Suddenly, Sammy's hand froze perilously close to his own crotch area.
"Oh no!" He cried out, looking aghast as Jin-kyu took a confused step backwards.
"I think I broke it!" Sammy wailed as he grabbed his crotch again.
Jin-kyu's eye twitched violently as the world around him began to tilt. "Um...Sammy? Was...was there some part of you that was still ceramic that you didn't feel you could tell me about?"
Sammy's hand slipped inside one of his jeans' pockets, reaching deep down and pulling out...a broken carrot.
"Oh no!" Suzy exclaimed, running over before turning on Jin-kyu with a scolding look, "Uncle Jin-kyu you broke the carrot!"
Jin-kyu was only just remembering how to breathe when he slumped down beside the snowman.
"Oh we have a spare!" one of the mothers called out, coming forwards and proffering a bag of expensive looking organic carrots, "The store didn't sell them individually so we bought a whole bag!" she winked at Suzy who quickly thanked her.
"Uncle Sammy will you lift me up so I can give Mr. Snowman his nose?" Suzy asked after choosing a carrot that she deemed worthy.
Jin-kyu finally managed to haul himself to his feet again and offered a grateful smile to the helpful mother. He then turned to see Sammy lifting Suzy up onto his shoulders, allowing her to unceremoniously stick the carrot into the centre of the snowman's painstakingly crafted face.
"There!" Suzy announced happily, "he's finished!"
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