WINTER WONDERLAND // PLAYING IN SNOW

[STEVE]

[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-family: arial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 1.4;letter-spacing:.1px"]Snow had been a point of fascination for Steve when he was younger, though mostly because his mother did her absolute best to keep him out of it. He could remember the first time he left their home on the fourth floor to finally touch the white fluff. Other children had been prancing around in it, kicking up billows of snow and licking at falling flakes, and he'd stood stock-still in it like a stupefied idiot, freezing and shuddering. His mother had been worried and disappointed both when she came back to find him shivering in his bed, blanket wet from melted snow, and he'd been laid up for several weeks with some awful illness. As usual. When he got older, and when snow was less mystical, more awful, he didn't try to make a habit out of staying out in it for too long.  Steve didn't have a thick pelt to keep him warm, or an immune system that liked him even a little bit, but there wasn't much of a choice, was there?

The evacuation was the best choice, of course, he just- didn't get out much. It was harder to breathe, and he found himself panting too much, his lungs quivering like they were on the verge of constricting. They hadn't yet, fortunately. Maybe he was too stubborn. He was definitely too stubborn to confine himself inside forever, so eventually, the small feline left the relative warmth to walk in the snow.

By the time he found Bucky twisting about in the snow like it was the best thing since sliced bread, he felt a bit light-headed. He squinted, wondering for a moment if he was having trouble getting enough oxygen to his brain, because that was...an actual unicorn. All right. Marina he knew, and she didn't seem thrilled to be in the snow. "I think he'd just break the rock," he commented lightly, glad that his voice was somewhat regulated, though he still sounded more out of breath than he wanted to. "Gotta be a little hard-headed to roll around in the snow."