Title: Advent Calendar (December 13): Blizzard Games
Author: stellaluna_
Rating: PG
Pairing: Mac/Danny
Summary: It's the first heavy snow of the year.
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.
Notes: This is my attempt at a fic version of an Advent calendar. There will be 25 of these.

***

The snow starts falling in mid-afternoon. By ten, nearly six inches have fallen, and the forecast is predicting a foot or more by morning. The two of them are on their fourth beer by then, so it seems like a good idea to go up on the roof of the building and sit in the middle of the storm so they can watch the snow fall. There's not much wind, so even though the night is cold, it's not that bad. Mac brushes snow off the lawn chairs and they sit looking out over the neighborhood, watching cars and buses creep down the street as the drifts continue to pile up. The plows won't come through until morning.

"Think we'll get snowed in?" Danny asks. Snow is falling on his head and the collar of his jacket and his arms; every so often he brushes it off.

"Probably not," Mac says.

"Got supplies, just in case?"

"Sure," Mac says. "Beer, coffee, and leftover Thai."

"Food of the gods," Danny says. "What else do we need?"

"How about water and heat?"

Danny waves a hand at him. "We got all that. Worst-case scenario, we can always melt snow for water."

Mac looks surprised. "Exactly how long are you planning on being snowed in for?"

"Just speculating," Danny says. "Playing the what-if game."

"So the question here is what we would do if there were a blizzard bad enough to trap us here for some time."

"Now you got it." Danny raises his beer bottle in a half-salute. Mac shakes his head. "C'mon, it's fun. Okay, so we could melt snow for water. That's no problem. We're scientists. And, you know..." He leans over the arm of his chair so he can get closer to Mac. "We could huddle together for warmth. I'd keep you toasty."

"So in this scenario of yours, there's no heat," Mac says.

"Right," Danny says. "This is, like, a cataclysmic blizzard. Anarchy in the streets. Or, well, there would be if it weren't too cold to go outside."

"So if there's no heat," Mac says, "how are we going to do all this snow-melting you've proposed?"

"No problem at all," Danny says. He digs around in his coat pocket until he finds his lighter, then holds it up to show Mac. "Voila. Practical application of heat, and it's portable, too. That reminds me, I also got half a pack of cigarettes on me somewhere, so we'd have nicotine to get us through it, too. Or to use to trade with other Brooklyn residents for food and all that."

"I see." Mac takes another swig of beer. He looks down the street, watching a car slide along the avenue. Danny follows his gaze for a moment or two, then looks at Mac's face instead. There's something a little too set in the lines of his mouth, and his voice has been flat the whole time they've been talking, which Danny doesn't understand; he knows perfectly well by now that Mac isn't the most footloose or fancy-free guy in the world, but he's usually happy enough to engage in this kind of speculation.

Danny watches him, trying to read something in his unblinking profile. He's got a good beer-buzz on, and he figures that Mac does, too, but they haven't had enough to drink that he should be sinking into this kind of stupor, and nothing has happened today that would make things uncomfortable between them. He doesn't know what to think.

His first instinct is to just let it go, to just let Mac go on about his way without asking any questions, but instead he takes a deep breath and says, "Mac. Hey. What's on your mind?"

"What makes you think anything's on my mind?" Mac says it quietly, with no rancor, and that lets Danny feel like it's okay to keep talking.

"Usually you're all over a good doomsday scenario," he says. "Tonight you just seem, I don't know, distracted."

"It's nothing. It was a long day, that's all." Mac lifts his beer bottle to his mouth again.

"That's it?"

He shrugs. "That's it."

"Okay, then," Danny says. "Then that's all she wrote."

There's a pause, a little moment of silence. Danny watches the snow fall.

Mac's eyes are still fixed on the street when he says, "The snow makes me think of Chicago."

"Oh yeah?" Danny says. "That makes sense. You guys get a lot of snow there, too."

"It gets brutal there," Mac says. "I can remember years when the snow would be all the way up to the top of the front steps. And sometimes there would be a freak blizzard in April or May."

"Must have been nice at the holidays, though," Danny says. "Better chance for a white Christmas and all."

"I suppose," Mac says. He turns his bottle around in his hands, fiddling with the label. "If you're into that sort of thing."

Danny pauses again. He almost wants to ask Mac why he's not into that kind of thing, and what his Christmases were like back in Chicago, but he doesn't; this time, he doesn't think it's such a good idea to ask the question. Besides, between the things Mac has told him here and there and the things he's intuited on his own, he can probably venture a pretty good guess. And if that guess is anywhere near accurate, he can understand why Mac isn't crazy about the idea of Christmas in Chicago, even if it's a white Christmas, and why the memories that are getting triggered by all this snow have put him into this kind of mood.

"I don't know," he says instead. "Seems like a white Christmas is one of those things everyone romanticizes, but, really, big deal. Who cares? It's more like a gray slush Christmas by the time it settles, anyway."

Mac smiles a little at that. "True," he says.

"On the other hand," Danny goes on, "I gotta say this is pretty nice right now. Sitting up here, watching the storm...it's pretty peaceful right now." He tilts his head back, letting the snow fall on his glasses and catch in his eyelashes.

"It is, isn't it?" Mac sets his beer bottle down and holds out his hand, catching snow in his palm.

"Sure is," Danny says. "This is the good part of snow. We're not tromping around in it, it's not turning to ice under our feet or forcing us to climb over it at the curb...it's just there."

"So it is." Mac shakes the snow off his hand, then turns to face Danny. "I don't even know what the weather's been like in Chicago this winter," he says. "I haven't been paying attention."

"Why should you?" Danny says. "Chicago's a thousand miles that way." He gestures with his bottle toward what he hopes is west. "All you gotta worry about is the weather here in New York."

"That's true," Mac says. "You know, we could probably rig some kind of makeshift stove from the supplies in our field kits if we got trapped here."

Danny considers this. "We probably could," he says.

"And as long as we can still make it to the corner deli, we'll be set for months."

"Yeah," Danny says, "but what would we do once that ran out? What if we had to go out hunting or something?"

Mac laughs, and his smile tugs at something in Danny's chest. "Now there's something I hadn't considered," he says.

"You gotta work those angles, Mac," Danny says. "I'm counting on you here."

"I'm sure we can figure something out."

"I'm sure we can." Danny reaches over and brushes snow out of Mac's hair, and Mac puts a hand on his wrist.

***