A/N: Jackrabbit week is going again on tumblr! This was my fic for the 4/6 prompt, "Hunting".
As far as declarations of war went, this one had to have been one of the prettiest Jack had ever gotten. He blinked once, twice, then ran a hand through his hair, sending a second small shower of flower petals and bits of eggshell down around him.
"Oi, Jack."
Jack looked up from the debris still clutched in his fingers to see Bunny standing there before him, grin as cocky as ever as he threw another egg up in the air and caught it. "You up for a little game?"
There was an actual reason that Jack had come by the warren to talk to Bunny, he knew there was—but he'd never let that challenging look in Bunny's eyes go unanswered before, and he wasn't about to start now. He grinned and gave his staff a little midair twirl. "You're on, Cottontail. What're the terms?"
Answering him with a low chuckle that sent heat straight to the pit of Jack's stomach, Bunny threw the egg at Jack. Jack fumbled with it for a moment, but managed to catch it without breaking it all over himself and gave Bunny a questioning look. "What are these?" he asked, putting the tiny green egg up to his ear and shaking. Yep. This one was definitely filled, too.
"Well, Jacko, looks to me like you've already cottoned on to what's inside. I've got a few baskets of these little beauties hiding 'round my warren. They make a right mess if you aim 'em just right—think you can hit a rabbit?"
"Think I can?" Jack asked, and let his egg fly.
But Bunny was already gone, and the egg smashed against the tree behind where he'd been, exploding into a riot of colors and perfume.
Jack cursed, and the words had barely even left his lips before another egg hit him in the back of the head.
"Language, Jack! Now would you want all the littlies hearin' that kind of blue outta that pretty little mouth?"
And that was it. Jack was off like a shot, before he could think another thought, before Bunny could launch another one of those eggs, and definitely before Bunny had a chance to see the violet climbing up over his cheeks. "Pretty little mouth", indeed. He'd show him.
It was another few minutes before Jack managed to find his first basket, hidden away in the hollows of something that looked like it might have been an oak once, before Bunny's magic had gotten to work on it. He pulled the basket from the tree and looked inside to find about a dozen brightly dyed eggs. Now that he had a chance to look more closely, he saw that each had a small, wax-sealed hole at the top. That explained how the flowers had gotten inside. Jack might have wondered at the amount of effort that had gone into this, but he knew Bunny well enough by now to know that no amount of effort would be too much for one of their prank wars.
There was a knowing chuckle from behind him, and he was whirling around, hurling an egg before he could even think. There was an answering "oof!" from behind one of the trees, and Jack didn't bother stifling his grin. Bunny may have been a rabbit, but Jack had flight and instincts borne from long centuries living alone and unsheltered. He wouldn't go down without a fight.
A retaliatory egg whizzed past his ear to crash into the ground just beyond him, and Jack didn't give Bunny another chance for a throw. Again, he was off.
Jack quickly learned that Bunny's greatest defenses were camouflage and knowledge of the terrain. It was almost impossible to even catch sight of the bastard between trees and around stones—but Jack definitely had the height advantage. Bunny was used to looking down, not up, and Jack managed to get the jump on him from the branches of more than one tree before he caught on.
It was great fun, jumping from tree to tree, eyes wide open and looking out for tufts of fur and the bright ribbon tied around each new basket. It was more than a game for them; almost immediately it had become clear that if anything, this was a hunt. It was chasing and being chased, exhilarating and just a little bit dangerous, and if Jack had been a little more poetic, he might have thought that it was a pretty good metaphor for their entire relationship.
As it was, he mostly just thought about the way that Bunny had spluttered so ridiculously when he'd been hit square in the snout with an egg—and the way that those rose petals had really brought out the green of his eyes.
In the end, Jack lost track of how many eggs he'd been hit with, and how many he'd successfully lobbed at Bunny. To his credit, though, he was pretty sure Bunny didn't know, either.
"So," he asked, dropping down next to Bunny to spread himself out on sun-warmed grass. "Who won?"
Bunny, who had been sitting waiting for him in the meadow, gave him a little grin that was nothing but wicked. He leaned over Jack so he could pick a few errant flower petals from his hair. "I dunno, mate. Seems to me that we both did."
Jack only had time for a breathless, surprised little laugh before Bunny curled in close and pressed a kiss to his lips. He hummed in pleasure and reached up so he could card fingers through petal-strewn fur, stroke along long ears, pull him down and in, in, in.
Several long moments later, Jack pulled away just far enough to kiss a violet petal off of Bunny's nose. "Sneaky. You know you could have just asked if you wanted a kiss, right?"
Bunny purred somewhere deep inside, and Jack knew with a sudden certainty that he wanted to hear that sound again. He wanted to hear that all the time. "And miss a battle like that? Not on your nelly."
A/N: If you've ever played with cascarones, you probably know exactly what the inspiration for this fic was. Cascarones are eggshells filled with confetti, and they're really fun to crack over people's heads! They're common now during celebrations in Mexico and the southwestern USA, but way before that, Marco Polo brought the tradition of filled eggs over from China (or so the stories go) and filling eggshells with perfumed powder and throwing them at your intended became a courting ritual in Italy! I tried to tie both of these traditions together in Aster's flower-filled eggs.