Dare you not to speak?
Love, we are the lark and nightingale
Against the warmth of the sun
We are the cold void encompassing us
We are the things we fear and find comfort in
When our blood spills onto the snow
It is the blackest ice
The beauty of life splattering the serenity, cheek of a Seraphin
Is it you? Is it I? For where can we begin
But at the beginning of the centre
Where our ends meet and join to one
Away from the goods of Yesteryear and Tomorrow's Sorrow
We are all we need and desire
Listen to our voices, my dearest darkling
Let's go back to where it is as black as ice

- "Black Ice"

His mind was supplying him with words from the moment he came into awareness. Ideas, such as 'cold' and 'dark,' were already being processed into his mind from his senses. He felt a pang in his chest, though his mind whispered to him. Don't breathe. Hold your breath for just a bit longer. Whatever these words meant, he listened to them. Where was he? And what was he…

Who-

He opened his eyes and saw a large white disc through a translucent wall. As he floated up towards it, he hit the wall. It was cold, just like he was, but it was not like his 'cold'. It was hard and did not give way to any pressure that he used against it. He saw the disc begin to float away from the distance it had on the wall.

No!

His mind began to panic, his hand coming to pull back into the –water, he learnt, as his mind aided him – and came up to hit the wall. A searing pain came through his hand. His head began to feel… compressed. Something was entering and it was crushing the dull throbbing in his chest. Throbbing… Beating. Suddenly, a sound echoed.

'No.' A voice filled his mind. It was warm, but definite. Finite.

The word.

From the large disc that he could see through the… Ice.

'No.'

His mind gave in completely to the voice… from the Moon. He let his brain take over, the water rushing into his lungs as he parted his lips and let the cold liquid into his body. From the disc, he felt a certain type of shame. Disappointment. It burned. That was the only way to describe the feeling. It was the only word his mind would supply.

Burning…

Cold…

Dark…

Nameless…

Stay nameless! You have no use! You ruin everything! You're worthless! Every thought coursing through his head had the edge of something sharp – a knife – and he let his breath go completely, no longer holding onto the –Disgusting! – bit of air still in his – Stay dead! – lungs.

He vaguely wondered why he woke up in the dark at all…

If his only purpose was to suffer.

Blue eyes opened and the burning sensation at the back of his throat was still there. He turned to his side, mindful of the dark sheets, and made sure that he could see the floor before he opened his mouth and letting the spasms in his stomach to push the bile from his body. It splattered against stone floors and smelt of rotten things, the smell triggering his body to repeat the action. The cycle continued, until the puddle of acidic juice was large enough that Jack was pretty sure a towel wouldn't cover it. His body began to heave however and it wasn't until a warmth placed itself on its back that his body suddenly calmed itself, and shook in a strange sense of fear.

"What are you frightened about?"

Jack turned and caught gold in his gaze, looking down. He felt cold, though not complete.

"… What if… he made a mistake?"

The warm appendage came up from his back and came to his shoulder, caressing him through the blue hooded sweater he always wore. It felt strange. The nightmare had left him numb to the touch, but not the warmth, the heat, the feeling of the other. He closed his eyes as the hand travelled to his cheek and cradled it softly, as though it was precious.

"He does not make mistakes. If he does, they are about the smallest things, like the worms and bugs he lives with." The tall, dark man – his former enemy, Jack's mind chimed – leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "He thought long and hard about you… He watched you and hoped to gain you as a Guardian as an adult, like the others." The lips trailed down and peppered kisses down the side of his face, burning his nerves as though they were brands.

"Why didn't he just take me then? Why wait?"

Pitch pulled away and continued to cradle him. Why? He wasn't precious. He wasn't worth anything. He only messed things up, like with Bunny, recently and in 1968. When he went to find his memories, putting them over the children. Not checking the ice. Letting his sister go first. Not seeing where he was standing-

"Hush…" Pitch pulled the boy close and lifted a corner of sheets to wipe a bit of bile from the corner of his lips. He gently coaxed the frost spirit's mouth open, pushing in the cloth despite the younger one's unintelligible protests.

"Only cloth, Jack. There's more of it." He wiped the bile out, watching Jack submit to his care and his blue eyes hide themselves beneath pale eyelids. Tears – small, from the force of his vomiting – were gathered into small hailstones, gems on dark lashes. He pulled the cover away and set it down on the mattress again, the dirtied cloth the least of his concerns.

"Tell me what you dreamt. I… have heard it helps to talk after a nightmare." A laugh came from the young spirit. The irony of the Bogeyman comforting him from a nightmare… It only made the words more endearing.

The frost spirit did not speak, however, turning to press himself to the older man's chest. The other did not shiver, as others did, attempting to guard themselves against the cold; no, this one welcomed it in stride and even brought his arms up to hold the other more closely than before. This wanted feeling… He desired to have it with him in every waking moment and especially in his dreams. He'd deal with the nightmares to have it, the smallest comfort that one can offer another.

The least he could do is conceding to the other's gentle suggestion.

"It's… A memory. That's how it starts. The memory of when I first woke up… When I was born like this."

As Jack Frost. Not Jackson Overland Frost. The change in his name was not large, but it made impact with his heart as something he could not get back. Just as he could never see his sister, mother, or father again…

"Go on."

Jack swallowed and tried to get the lump in his throat to disappear.

"I'm waking up and I float up to the ice, like before." He looked to down and saw Pitch's shirt, the stark contrast between the black fabric and the blue of Jack's hooded sweater that was always on his body. "It doesn't move. Doesn't crack at all…"

Pitch's hand came up and cradled the back of his head, fingers threading themselves through his hair. He bent his head down and pressed his lips to the top of Jack's head.

"You're here, here with me. You're all right." He let sweet nothings flow out of him, a burden of not being able to express it outside of the small bedroom of his layer lifting itself off of his shoulders. "Do you want to keep talking about it?"

Jack nodded, his cheek rubbing against the black shirt that the other wore. "He told me… I wasn't supposed to wake up. I shouldn't be waking up. I should be dead, in the water where I fell."

He. Pitch knew who "he" was. It was the first voice Jack had ever heard, and it belonged to the person that left Jack to suffer in silence for three centuries.

Jack let his head be pulled back gently, thin finger grabbing his hair and pulling him back to have him face the ceiling. He noticed the stalactites for a brief moment before lips made contact with his neck. Immediately, his pulse quickened, reacting to the touch on a part of his body that had rarely been touched in his lifetime.

"Pitch?" he gasped out, kicking himself mentally at the desperation behind his words. He wanted touch, to touch, and every variation of the action, but he would not let it run his life nor his interactions with Pitch. It felt… as though he didn't deserve it.

"You're here. You're mine." Pitch's voice was sultrier than Jack usually perceived it. He spoke the words against Jack's Adam's apple and he smiled at the shivers his warm breath elicited. "He chose you and I chose you, I who am even older than he is." He lifted the boy's sweater up and slipped it off of him, Jack not knowing how to respond, and he still was quiet as Pitch continued.

"You are everything, the cold, the breeze that wakens flowers and brings smiles to children, regardless of the fears I realise in them. You are the world's chance to renew itself from the snow on the ground. You are life itself." Lips came back with a vengeance on his neck, teeth burning brands onto his skin, over his neck, collarbones, and chest. He closed his blue eyes, trying to let his sense of touch remember everything that was happening. It was almost strange that the Bogeyman would make him feel so safe.

"My life."

Unafraid.

As he felt arms manoeuvre him onto the bed to lie on his back, he could feel himself sinking in the water again, but the hands that kept him grounded and kept him out of the water, keeping his legs bent as his trousers were pulled off. All of his clothing off, those beautiful hands that cradled him from the nightmares and didn't let anyone's taunts reach him if they were only for hurting him, they gently went over his body, barely brushing the skin. They were teasing touches, but they lingered and felt like love in every sense of the word that he had learnt in either lifetime.

When Pitch finished and had touched every part of him with his hands, lip took their turn, whispering little things, adjectives that Jack had heard when talking about a romantic whenever he had passed by a house or a café or wherever people talked about such things – "gracious", "gorgeous", "wonderful" – and each syllable that passed over his flesh made him want to cry. Three hundred years, and it had to be the person that knew his deepest fears, and had once tried to exploit them, would make him feel wanted, loved…

It felt like he finally existed.

Three months. Pitch remembered that it was three months after his defeat – Shameful… – that Jack came to him, wondering about fear.

"Are you tempted to join me, Jack?" His voice had been full of bitterness and spite. He could not fully hate the frost spirit. He had never been believed in until Jamie had seen him and could not be compared to a being thousands of years old.

The adolescent sighed and looked at the globe that Pitch had in his lair here, spying all the bright lights that were the children he was meant to protect.

"Jamie was doing something… I don't want to say 'stupid'. Any other kid I've ever seen trying it has been afraid of it – I guess 'cautious' is a better word." Jack let out a frustrated sigh. "He wasn't afraid, not at all cautious, and he almost got hurt – He would have hurt himself if I hadn't been there!" Pale fingers threaded themselves through white hair and Pitch felt fear from Jack. Not one of his not being accepted; that fear was constant. It was concern for the children and the child that Jack cared about more than others, even if he was slightly ashamed for confessing it.

Jack looked up at Pitch after a few moments of not speaking; the only sound in the lair the sound of breathing from both the frost spirit and Bogeyman.

"Fear is necessary, I guess. Just a bit." The boy turned to the globe again. "It helps the kids stay safe and helps them believe in us when the world gets a bit too scary."

Pitch did not miss the rueful smile on the boy's face when Jack turned to him again. Blue eyes were swimming with a pleading emotion. They were eyes that were looking for help.

"What do you want, Jack?"

"Help me…" The words spilled out hurriedly, as though Jack had been afraid to confess them and rushed them out before he lost the courage to. When he collected himself, Jack gripped his staff more tightly and spoke again.

"He's all I have."

"Pitch!" The Bogeyman chuckled and gathered the other in his arms, Jack clinging to him as though he was afraid that the other would leave. Jack was afraid, and he was glad that he never had to confess that whenever he was in his room, this room where anything happened.

Jack shivered and felt himself relax, his body ready for whatever the other male planned. He nodded and felt Pitch pull back and thrust back in, that sweet spot inside of him being hit again and making him gasp out the other's name as though his world was falling apart. They rocked against each other, hands grabbing and holding steady, lips catching on skin and marking everything that was caught in their grasp.

Jack was burning up and it was wonderful. It wasn't like summertime, when he would have to leave to the mountains in the west or even to Antarctica, just because it was the one place where he could be alone and it was like a home to him. Every slow, hard thrust was making him melt inside, even if his breath was getting cold, probably making frost go over his lips and Pitch's whenever they caught themselves in a kiss.

"You're beautiful like this…" Jack opened his eyes, feeling Pitch's lips at the shell of his ear. "All of your defences down and you're bare to me…"

Jack tensed a bit at another thrust right to his prostate. "Only you," he replied, just as softly into the older man's ear.

A growl was his response, as well as Pitch's head going lower and a sharp, but strangely pleasant, pain making itself apparent on Jack's neck, Pitch's teeth cutting into his skin and making a mark that Jack vaguely realised would be hidden by his hooded sweater. How thoughtful…

Because nothing can leave this room.

Jack shuddered when Pitch pulled away, but he reached up and pulled the other close again, capturing his lips with his own and tasting his blood there. The iron-scented fluid passed into his mouth and he ignored the strangeness of the situation to savour its metallic quality. He bit gently on Pitch's lower lip, asking. He got a soft "yes" and he shivered with a dominant desire, biting into Pitch's lip, letting the blood flow into his mouth.

It tasted like his, but it wasn't. It was all Pitch. They were both alive and lovely and here.

Pitch pulled away and kept a hand to Jack's chest, keeping him on the mattress. Jack saw golden eyes with blown-out pupils, lust and love swimming in them, and he knew his sky-blue eyes looked the same. Their bodies had shuddered in orgasms already, but they hadn't been released from their lustful activities yet, no white fluid, just because they wanted – needed – to drag it out.

Soon it would be Christmas and Jack would have to do his Guardian work.

They wouldn't see each other, because this was their secret.

Sadly their bodies did not agree. A few words were exchanged and Pitch was soon hunched over Jack, ramming into the cold body that he adored, Jack keeping his legs as close as he could together to let Pitch get in as deeply as he could. They arched towards each other, each gyrating motion making them let out obscene noises that Jack had heard while standing in a teenage boy's room while the boy watched a DVD. He hadn't understood that this is what people wanted, that he was like others, and…

"Pitch!" he cried out, letting the dam in his belly finally break and spilling his seed onto his stomach, some landing on Pitch. He moaned just as loudly as Pitch groaned out his name and filled him with his cum.

… That he was like others, and he was loved.

The gentle kiss to his forehead was not overlooked and Jack fell asleep, his head on Pitch's chest, with no nightmares to haunt him.