“As the winter snow blooms ❄️”
2.7 schpood x 2.7 saparata
This is a fanfic abt 2.7 schpood & saps where saps actually threw a snowball at schpood and what happens next.
for context both of these (art and the writing) are commissioned by me!!
Credits to (please go support them they're amazing!!)
art by @ 24_7jellybloop (on TikTok)
writing by @ crystamoon (on TikTok)
The first snow of the season had come down overnight like a confession nobody asked for-thick, heavy, and impossible to ignore. By morning, the entire landscape had been buried under a blanket of white so pristine it almost looked artificial, the kind of snow that existed in paintings and dreams and commission pieces that people weren't supposed to repost.
Saps stood at the edge of the courtyard, mittens pulled tight over his hands, breath curling in the frozen air like little ghostly question marks. He tilted his head.
Twenty-three feet of open ground between him and the bench where Schpood sat.
Twenty-three feet of perfectly packed, freshly fallen ammunition.
This is going to be great.
He crouched down and started packing a snowball with the careful precision of someone defusing a bomb. Not too loose-it'd disintegrate on impact and give away no satisfaction. Not too hard-that was just rude, and more importantly, it'd make Schpood actually mad instead of fun mad, and there was a universe of difference between the two that Saps had mapped out with scientific accuracy over the months he'd known him.
The snowball came together perfectly. Round. Firm. Beautiful. A masterpiece of winter warfare.
He peeked over the low wall he was using as cover.
Schpood hadn't moved. He sat on the bench with his arms crossed, scarf wound high enough to cover half his face, looking for all the world like a statue that someone had specifically commissioned to embody the concept of do not interact.
His eyes were half-closed, his posture stiff, and the general aura radiating off him could have frozen the snow around him a second time.
He noticed the way Schpood's scarf was wrapped-not in the efficient, practical way someone who actually hated the cold would use, but in a slightly loose, slightly messy way that meant he'd probably let someone else adjust it for him earlier that morning. He noticed the way Schpood's foot was tapping-barely, almost imperceptibly-against the ground, which meant he wasn't as still as he wanted to appear. And he noticed the way Schpood's gaze, hidden behind those half-lidded eyes, drifted every few seconds to the exact spot where Saps was hiding.
He knows I'm here, Saps thought, grinning behind his scarf. He absolutely knows I'm here.
That was the thing about Schpood. He projected this impenetrable wall of indifference, this fortress of I don't care about anything least of all you, and most people took it at face value. Most people saw the crossed arms and the sharp eyes and the clipped responses and thought, okay, this guy wants to be left alone.
Saps was not most people.
Saps had seen Schpood leave a cup of hot chocolate on his doorstep last week with no note and no explanation, the foam still perfectly swirled. Saps had noticed that Schpood always seemed to be in the same vicinity whenever Saps went anywhere, which was statistically improbable unless Schpood was following him, and if that wasn't the most backhanded compliment in the history of human behavior, Saps didn't know what was. Saps had caught Schpood-once, exactly once, for a fraction of a second-smiling at something Saps said before the expression was violently swallowed and replaced with a scowl so aggressive it could have curdled milk.
The soft spot was there. Saps could see it the way a jeweler could see a flaw in a diamond-small, hidden, but undeniable once you knew where to look.
And Schpood would rather swallow his own tongue than admit it.
Which, honestly, was half the fun.
Saps adjusted his grip on the snowball. Rose slightly from his crouch. Took aim.
Twenty-three feet. Slight wind from the east. Target is stationary but aware. This is a one-shot opportunity.
The snowball arced through the cold air in a perfect parabola, spinning lazily, a white comet against the grey sky. For one glorious second, it hung suspended in the space between them-between the prank and the consequence, between the laugh Saps was holding in his chest and whatever expression was about to explode across Schpood's face.
It hit Schpood square in the shoulder.
The impact was satisfying. A soft thwap, a burst of powdered snow, and then-
Schpood didn't move. The snowball's remains slid down the front of his coat and landed in his lap. His arms were still crossed. His scarf was still high.
Saps couldn't see his expression. The scarf covered too much of his face. But he could see Schpood's eyes, and those eyes had gone very, very wide.
Oh no, Saps thought. Oh no, I actually did it.
He'd been planning this for twenty minutes. He'd run the simulation in his head a dozen times-Schpood's reaction, his own escape route, the follow-up banter, the whole choreography of the moment. But in every simulation, there'd been a gap between the throw and the response where Saps could read the situation and adjust.
There was no gap. Schpood was just staring at him.
"Hey," Saps said, raising both hands in a gesture of innocent surrender, mittens and all. "Before you say anything— that was objectively a great throw."
Schpood uncrossed his arms. Slowly. The snow in his lap crumbled as he stood up from the bench, and Saps noticed-with the same careful attention he noticed everything about Schpood-that there was no real anger in the movement. Tension, yes. The coiled readiness of someone about to retaliate. But not anger.
If Schpood were actually angry, he would have been different. Sharper. Colder. Saps had seen Schpood actually angry once, and it had been like watching a door slam shut on an entire room-sudden, total, and terrifying. This wasn't that. This was something else.
"You," Schpood said, and his voice came out muffled behind the scarf but unmistakably his-low, flat, carrying the particular cadence of someone who was choosing their words very carefully to avoid saying something they'd regret. "Threw a snowball. At me."
"You packed it. Aimed it. Threw it. On purpose."
"Incredible deductive reasoning."
Schpood took a step forward. Then another. The snow crunched under his boots with a sound that echoed off the courtyard walls like a countdown. Saps held his ground-mostly because running would mean admitting he'd miscalculated, and Saps did not miscalculate, and even when he did, he certainly didn't admit it.
"You're standing there," Schpood continued, each step measured, "with that look on your face-"
"That look. The one that says you think this is funny."
"I think this is hilarious."
Schpood stopped. Three feet away now. Close enough that Saps could see the way his eyes narrowed-not with malice, but with something far more dangerous.
Calculation. The same kind of calculation Saps had been doing all morning, except Schpood had been doing it longer and better and with the added advantage of looking like he wasn't calculating anything at all.
He's going to throw one back, Saps realized. He's been planning this since the second it hit him.
Schpood bent down. Scooped up a handful of snow. Packed it in approximately one and a half seconds-faster than Saps had managed in twenty minutes— and hurled it directly at Saps's face.
Saps dodged left. The snowball missed his nose by an inch and exploded against the wall behind him in a spectacular shower of white.
"Okay, okay-" Saps was already scrambling for cover, laughing now, the sound bubbling up from somewhere deep in his chest where he kept all the things that were too honest to say out loud. "That was fast, that was really fast, how did you do that so fast-"
Schpood was already making a second one. And a third. Saps dove behind the low wall just as the second snowball whistled over his head, grabbed a fistful of snow, and threw it blind over the wall. He heard it connect-another satisfying thwap-followed by a sound he'd never heard before.
It was quiet. Almost inaudible beneath the wind and the crunch of snow and the ragged sound of Saps's own breathing. But it was there-a short, startled exhale that couldn't quite commit to being a full laugh, like it had escaped against its owner's will and was now trying to sneak back where it came from.
Saps froze behind the wall, one hand already reaching for more snow, and just... listened.
The laugh was gone as quickly as it had come, replaced by the sound of Schpood brushing snow off his coat with aggressive precision. But it had happened. Saps had heard it. And now he had a new piece of evidence to add to the ever-growing file in his head labeled Things Schpood Will Deny Under Torture.
"Are you hiding?" Schpood called out. His voice was flat again, but the flatness had a different texture now-less like a wall and more like a blanket thrown over something.
"I'm regrouping," Saps corrected, peering over the wall.
Schpood stood in the middle of the courtyard with snow in his hair and on his shoulders and dusting the dark fabric of his coat like powdered sugar. His scarf had slipped slightly, revealing the edge of his jaw, which was-Saps noted with clinical detachment that was absolutely not clinical at all-slightly red from the cold. Or possibly from something else.
They looked at each other across the twenty feet of trampled snow between them.
"I can't believe you actually threw it," Schpood said.
"I can't believe you packed one in under two seconds."
"Practice? You practice making snowballs?"
Schpood's eyes narrowed. "No."
"I didn't say anything. You misheard."
Saps grinned so wide his cheeks hurt. The cold was biting at his exposed skin, his mittens were soaked through, and there was snow melting down the back of his neck where a near-miss had gotten caught in his collar. None of it mattered.
Because Schpood was standing in the snow with his perfect composure cracked open like a window, and Saps could see through it-could see the warmth that Schpood kept locked away like a fire in a room with no chimney, burning and building and never quite allowed to escape.
He has a soft spot for me, Saps thought, not for the first time. He definitely, absolutely, unquestionably has a soft spot for me.
And he will take it to his grave before admitting it.
"Truce?" Saps offered, holding up his empty mittened hands.
Schpood looked at him for a long moment. The wind blew between them, sending up little spirals of snow from the ground like tiny ghosts dancing.
"Truce," Schpood said finally.
Saps walked over, and they stood side by side in the ruined snow of their battlefield, shoulders almost touching. Almost.
"If you tell anyone about this," Schpood said quietly, "I will end you."
"Tell anyone about what?" Saps asked, all wide-eyed innocence.
"What snowball fight? I don't recall any snowball fight. Did you have a snowball fight? I didn't see one."
Schpood turned his head away. But not before Saps caught it-the smallest, most reluctant upturn at the corner of his mouth. Gone in an instant. Swallowed back behind the scarf and the scowl and the carefully constructed armor of indifference.
Saps looked up at the grey sky and smiled at no one in particular, snow falling softly onto his upturned face, melting on his warm skin.
Winter this season was off to a pretty good start.
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