Even when they climb back through the window, their clothing soaked through, their teeth chattering, their feet sharply aching, and the tips of their noses numb, they don't quite depart. They linger and shiver in the room once the window is closed. Maverick is the one who makes the call.

"Are we still doing hot chocolate?" he asks, glancing at Moonie with a smile. "I have a projector, and a movie downloaded onto my computer. If people want to change and bring down blankets, we could make a whole thing of it!"

"As long as I can spike my hot chocolate," Elodie tries to crack a joke.

Benedict would say something that they all learned in their training. Alcohol doesn't make you warm; it only makes you think that you are warm. Drinking actually puts you at increased risk for hypothermia. Believing in something that isn't true might be a close second to experiencing it, especially when the snow is this painful.

"Meet back in ten?" Darlington suggests.

Then, everyone separates. Marcellus and Ro try to shower, the water even lukewarm shocking against their cold bodies. Callie heats a hot water bottle and tucks it between her third and fourth layer of tops. In the basement, Moonie shivers beneath her large wearable sweater blanket as she makes the hot chocolate. Galilee carries down all of the fuzzy blankets she owns (she bought four extras when she became an RA, so she could offer them to students on the movie nights she had planned). While waiting for the projector to boot, Maverick even runs back and forth down the hallway, trying to get the blood to pump through his veins.

Then, once ten minutes is up, they all make their way downstairs. Galilee has helped set up the couches and chairs so that they form a semi-circle in front of the projector. She is about to move over the final couch, to make room for an extra two people, when Moonie comes in with the hot chocolate and brushes her off.

"I don't mind sitting on the floor," she smiles. With everyone around her, it will almost feel like a fort.

While she sets up the station for everyone to make their drinks, Maverick is trying to rush the computer. It too is too cold to function well. He wants to hurry so that he can be the first to sit with Moonie.

Galilee sits on a couch at the edge. When Callie enters she tries to wave her over. Callie stiffens and turns to Moonie.

"That looks cozy," she smiles.

She prepares her hot chocolate and sits down. Maverick closes his eyes, hoping the curse in his head doesn't show on his lips.

In the end, Tempest decides to sit with Galilee. The two exchange pleasant smiles. There is some comfort in sitting with someone who believes in the Gospel so close to Christmas, even for Galilee who is quite disillusioned with the whole thing. Tempest doesn't hide her Christianity. Galilee admires the way she carries it. There is no judgmental eye in the storm that is Tempest. Only Tempest knows that Galilee is Mormon. There is some familiarity between the two of them that no one else shares.

"Here," Jerry says, interrupting their shared glance. "You're still cold."

Tempest looks up. Jerry is offering her a large sweater. She finds herself taking it. The fabric is quite scratchy. She is about to thank him when he starts to walk away. He joins Darlington, who looks at her puzzled. Her hands squeeze around the fabric, tightening as she pulls it in toward her chest.

"He's nice sometimes," Galilee offers. "Other times, he's confusing."

"I think he means well," Tempest turns back to her.

When Ro gets in the room, she purposefully positions herself next to Marcellus. It means being stuck next to Jerry, but she doesn't care all that much. She's armed with a question.

Maverick decides to sit next to Benedict, but mostly because he is positioned above Moonie and Callie. It's unfortunate, because then Maverick realizes he hasn't checked in on Benedict since the events of the afternoon. Really, he hasn't checked in on Benedict at all. He feels quite terrible about the whole thing. So, he forces himself in tight.

When Elodie is the last to arrive, and the only spot is beside Darlington, she wants to go back upstairs. Instead, she pours herself a hot chocolate that is half rum. It's the terrible liquor she forced upon Darlington last night. She can handle herself better than him. As she sits, and the movie starts to play, she thinks about all the things that she can handle better than anyone.

~~~

Ro lowers the brightness of her phone while the movie is on. She puts the app she uses for notetaking in dark mode, and tries to figure out how to word what she is about to say to Marcellus. In all her time putting together the puzzle pieces, she hadn't thought about how to move it. She solved the puzzle in an awkward spot, and moving it might make the whole thing crumble.

Finally, she types on her phone.

Why didn't you unscrew the window?

She passes him the phone. Theoretically, she could text him, but she is fairly certain that he wouldn't appreciate the paper trail. It's for that reason that she brought her phone and not an actual notepad.

Marcellus looks at the comment. He tries to shift his weight, to hide his face. Marcellus nearly failed drama class in high school. His parents were too busy with their divorce and his sick sister for him to need to lie about his whereabouts. Marcellus betrays himself constantly, not just in the expressions which dominate his face, but his actions and words too.

Lazy

He passes the phone back to Ro. She scowls when she reads it. Marcellus, the same guy who is building a Rube Goldberg machine with nothing but construction paper, recycled pancake boxes, and will, just because he is bored, says he is lazy.

No. You've also stopped smoking in your room. During exams. I passed it during rounds.

It's a bit embarrassing to Marcellus that it could be smelled that strongly. He didn't think anyone had noticed. Obviously, they had, and he would have digested that information more easily if he didn't know that every other staff member probably knew.

He doesn't answer, just passes her phone back.

Ro, for the first time maybe ever, persists.

Probation?

Marcellus doesn't take the phone. He stares at the word, which has haunted him for three weeks. Probation. With one slip up, he's out. It's not just his work he loses, and maybe a semester of classes, but his home too.

It's enough for Ro to stop probing.

~~~

Darlington is done shushing Jerry. He rarely will acknowledge that something is futile, but every time he shushes Jerry, the guy repeats the sentence he just said only a bit louder. It won't dive him crazy anyway. It can't. He's already there.

How has the day been so long when he woke up at noon?

None the wiser, Jerry keeps asking questions about the movie. The plot is straight-forward, but all the blonde women look similar. The mother and grandmother characters look basically the same in age because of how much Botox the actress playing the grandmother has gotten. The male characters are similar too. They vary in hair colour, but all have stubble instead of beards on strong jawlines.

Darlington doesn't have the same nostalgia for Hallmark movies that he imagines Maverick possesses. Really, the time outside felt like a Hallmark movie, although a bit colder than the clothes on the characters. One of the women wears fingerless gloves and a puffy pink vest. If he could retrospectively, he would have put on every sweater he wears under his coat and toughed out the initial heat before they went outside. It's brutal out there.

Now, Jerry is whispering about the set design.

"It looks so cheap," he whispers.

Darlington nods, "it's a Hallmark movie."

"They spent all the money on the ranch rental," Jerry decides.

The ranch is phenomenal. The snow is white and pure and thin on the ground. Clearly fake. Architecturally, the house is impressive. The props inside it are amazing. Still, every time one of the characters picks up a mug or a book, Jerry wants to laugh. He can't even describe how it is fake. When something isn't quite right, he usually can't see it or even name it. Yet, here the props are in the film.

Now, Maverick is beginning to regret his choice of location. One of the fun parts of Hallmark movies is laughing at the clunky lines and the bold choices in colour grading. Jerry is having a laugh beside him about the whole thing, and that is terrible for Maverick. With the group it isn't right. It isn't like it is with Moonie.

God, he's in so deep. Almost waist deep, he might say. He doesn't know it is snowing outside, but all the same, he worries he's going to get in deeper and deeper.

Still, he turns to Benedict beside him and offers a polite smile.

"I admire what you did earlier," Maverick whispers.

Benedict doesn't want to tear his eyes away from the screen. He has trouble concentrating when there is more than one sound at a time. Without alcohol, group settings are not the place that he'd like to be. Music is different. Maybe it's because the different lines and parts fit together so smoothly, maybe it's because the beat steadies him, pinning him down in a way he expects and accepts. Regardless, he cannot listen to the movie and Maverick.

It takes a second to tune in.

"Thanks," Benedict offers.

"Wish I had your gift," Maverick smiles, "you can bring people together so easily."

Benedict cannot help but swing his head. Maverick Santiago, the Maverick Santiago who forced them all to do a cheer like a sports team, who put together this little social, and who congratulated every member of their flip cup team personally, him. He thinks Benedict is good at bringing people together?

"That's your whole thing," Benedict offers.

Maverick shrugs, "it's cool that you did it though. It took brain power to come up with the idea. You've got a killer brain."

Benedict makes himself whisper, otherwise he's going to explode. Sure, he helps Maverick with English and Education homework all the time, but Maverick managed to keep a level head when Galilee was in crisis. While Benedict was off the rails, Maverick fixed her body up enough that she had no trouble throwing on snowballs.

Benedict peers over at her hands, tucked in her lap. One is bandaged, in a way that looks old. It's not bleeding though. If Maverick weren't so passionate about teaching, he might make a good nurse.

"You're the smart one," Benedict says, and surprisingly, he means it too.

~~~

Below them, Callie sits next to Moonie. She knows something is up with her. It's obvious. Moonie is obvious. More obvious than the moon, who doesn't show its entire face far more often than it does. Callie doesn't know what to do to fix it, especially not in this room full of people.

Moonie is not so in herself that she doesn't see how Callie hurts either. It's clear. She isn't wearing makeup, which is odd for Callie. Her comfy clothes aren't even matching, which Moonie would chalk up the weather is she didn't know Callie so well. The day is hard on them both. If Moonie were up for it, she would invite Callie for a slumber party in her room.

Moonie doesn't want to tell Callie about what she did with Darlington.

All the best that Moonie can offer is a pretend makeover. They'll talk tomorrow, first thing in the morning, or at least, as first thing in the morning as they can manage. So, she uses her fingers to twist Callie's hair, pretending as if she is curling them.

At first, Callie doesn't know what Moonie is trying to pretend. She just thinks Moonie is twirling her hair, maybe even flirting with her, which is odd because they are more like sisters than anything else. Then though, from the way Moonie holds the curled hair up to Callie's head, Callie knows what she is doing.

While Moonie does Callie's hair, Callie pretends to paint Moonie's nails. It's not the gossip session either of them used to have, but memories are always distorted. The moment might not be better.

~~~

As the movie plays, Elodie tries to get comfortable. She gets another drink, and then another. A dreaded, awful, terrible thought circles in her hot chocolate as she stirs it, floating like a marshmallow would, if they had marshmallows. The movie is boring; she's barely listening. Elodie isn't a character in a Hallmark movie and she has no desire to be one. Maybe she is the love interest in some other Christmas movie, grittier, where someone is supposed to fix her humbug heart because of the tragedy Christmas brings. Her Dad didn't die in a fireplace pretending to be Santa. Christmas is just the backdrop to her tragedy, not a part of it.

Since she's not really paying attention, the room is more in focus for her. Every so often, she hears someone whisper to the resident assistant next to them. She sees the way they shift in their seats to lean in toward each other.

It reminds her of last night, when they played that stupid voting game. Everyone seemed to know each other. It hadn't occurred to her that she was on the periphery. If Maverick hadn't said what he said, it might not have sunk in either. During the day, it was a bit easier to play off, but its somehow illuminated in the dark evening.

Lots of things are. 

~~~~~

Teehee. Also not proof read, but still no computer so I don't feel too bas about it. That's the end of Day 2 (only Day 2?)! I wish I had a fun question, but I don't. Also, I'm trying to respond to comments! I find it way easier on browser so we will see!

(Also, sidebar just for my own pleasure, I got accepted into a master's program in England, and I live in Canada (big shocker, I know) so like, computer may be broken but it is a good week).