Author's Notes: Written for the prompt on the rotg_kink meme that asked for kid Loki and Jack hanging out and being friends. Now with AMAZING art by the very talented beanclam!

EDIT: The fantastically amazing beanclam drew art for this series! Check it out here: beanclam dot tumblr dot com post/40242832248/ok-so-housemate-is-very-good-at-enabling-stuff This scene comes in part two of the series, guys - make sure you read both!

In Which Two Creatures of Ice Without Any Friends Find Each Other

He does not know the boy that lingers around the high places of Asgardia. For a long time, he has thought that he knows them all, for surely they all know him. He is Loki the Liesmith, Loki the Silvertongue, Loki the traitor, and they make no secret of it when they hurl their unkind words his way.

But the wiry boy with hair like snow never has insults for him. The boy never says anything at all, but comes and goes with the wind, diving in on icy gusts and settling on tree branches, curling bare toes around for purchase and leaning on a crook of a shepherd's staff. Sometimes he does not stop at all but only carries on overhead, on his way to some other place, laughter trailing out behind him.

It takes Loki longer than he wishes to admit, to realize that the others do not see him. It takes until the day he turns to the bird that sits upon his shoulder and asks, "Have you any idea who that is?" And the bird looks at him with its strange beady eyes, and it says, "Who?"

The next time the boy that comes with the wind settles upon Asgardia's wall, Loki slips away from bird and dog and brother. He finds his way outside, climbs five flights of stairs until he stands, panting, at the top - peers through an archway to spy upon the figure that skates over stone slicked with ice. He moves like the wind itself, the picture of unrestrained joy. He wears no shoes, and yet he does not seem to feel the cold upon slim, pale feet.

Loki recalls stories of frost giants, hideous monsters that bring the ice, as he takes in this creature of simple pleasure. He recalls that the people of Asgardia say he is just such a horror of winter – but here and now, watching this boy play upon the walls as though nothing else exists in the world, he does not see how it can possibly be a bad thing.

Loki sits down, carefully, and he unlaces his boots. He sets them out side by side, and he rolls his leggings up beyond his knee. He has learned that people in Asgardia do not like him – do not trust him. But this boy is not of Asgardia. This boy, he thinks, may be something closer to what he is.

And so the little god of mischief walks, barefooted, out upon the ice that coats the stone. He, too, does not feel the cold. He does not run, or whoop, or shout; the hostile attitudes of his countrymen have taught him restraint. He does not announce his presence, and – despite the showmanship with which he landed – it seems as though the boy does not expect to be interrupted.

The smile that plays about the corners of Loki's mouth is an expectant thing. He bends to gather snow and pack it together, forming the ammunition that the internet has taught him is time-honored by all Midgardian children. And when the ball of snow hits the boy that comes with the wind, splattering against the back of his neck, the surprise that spreads across his face is enough to make Loki laugh aloud.

There is sputtering; the boy raises a hand to touch the place where the ball of snow has hit, an odd, half-dreaming look upon his face. He abandons his play – turns to stare at Loki as though a chasm to Niflheim itself has opened up beneath him - slips and slides across the surface to bring him nearer, his grace suddenly gone.

"Did you do that?" says the boy, and the careless laughter has been chased from his voice. He sounds as though the world has shifted beneath him and rewritten everything he's ever known. He sounds desperate.

And for an instant, Loki regrets. For an instant, he thinks to himself that this was a mistake – that he should know, by now, that none are like he is. Even the advances that he makes in fun are ill-perceived, and it is folly to believe that this will change.

"As a game, you see," the little god of mischief finds himself explaining. "The scribes of Wikipedia say that it is a tradition of Midgard. When snow is upon the ground, it may be gathered and formed into balls, which can then-"

He has lost the boy, who is sounding more than a little stunned. "You can see me?"

The words bring Loki up short, and he considers the one that comes with the wind - the pale of his eyes and skin, the white of his hair. Not a frost giant, perhaps, after all. Another of the Midgardians' legends? A ghost – or a wendigo? "Am I not meant to?" he asks at length, and favors this boy of the elements with a considering look.

"No," says the boy. And then, "Yes," says the boy. And then: "No one ever has before," says the boy, and the admission falls from his lips in a rush, as though he is afraid it will not be heard if he does not hurry. The words are like a revelation; they herald the grin that spreads across his face, a flood of brilliant, unrestrained joy.

Loki is considering the creature before him now, logging what he knows of the legends of Midgard. "Are you a wraith?" he asks, with the interest of a scholar finding a hidden final chapter in a book long-loved. "A ghost? Not a giant, after all, I think - nor a wendigo. You haven't eaten any people, have you? I rather prefer to avoid being eaten."

"I – no. No, no, I'm not-" The boy's face shifts through an array of emotions that flicker and are gone, but the surprise and then the understanding are drowned out by the evident pleasure that still eclipses all else. "I'm Jack Frost," says the boy that comes with the wind.

Loki wrinkles his face up in thought, turns his mind back to late nights scrolling through page after page of the tales that the people of this world tell to their children. He recalls the one that brings the winter. "Aren't you meant to be blue?" he asks. "And wear an unsightly hat?"

"An unsightly-" the boy begins to echo, but he breaks off midway and laughs, instead. He laughs as though it is the best joke he has ever heard. His laughter catches in the air, rings from the walls, relieved and ecstatic and so very alive. "Wrong," announces the spirit of winter, but it is a gleeful correction. "All wrong – did they ever mess it up. But you believed it anyway!" And the boy, this Jack Frost of Midgardian legend, does not sound at all offended. The delight overflows him, like a child on the morn of Yule.

Loki draws up to defend himself – to claim that the information from the realm of the internet has been collected by only the most knowledgeable of scholars - but before he can begin, the boy that comes with the wind has bent to scoop snow from the walkway, has packed it with a motion at once impulsive and very, very practiced. The projectile catches Loki between the eyes.

"There's more to snowball fights," says the boy called Jack Frost, "than what you can learn from some old scribe."

And the look on his face, exultant and hopeful and wickedly mischievous all at once, is a challenge if Loki has ever seen one. He bends at the waist to collect ammunition of his own, gathers snow to lob it back toward this creature that he has, apparently, gotten all wrong. And as simply as that, the battle is underway.