Author's Note: These oneshots are not set at any specific points within the canon timeline. The next one is probably pre-Six-of -Crows-ish and this one would be post-Crooked-Kingdom-ish (except Matthias lives because he deserves to dammit).

That's all from me folks. Enjoy :D

"Give it up Jesper!" yells Nina.

"It's six to one, you're surrounded!" adds Matthias, crouched by her side behind a stack of empty crates.

Jesper grins and readies his ammunition. "Try me, dimwits!"

The first courageous Dreg peeks out from behind an old hole-ridden barrel. Jesper's ball strikes her before she even has a chance to take aim. The two Dregs hiding by the front stairs see it as their chance to attack him while he's distracted, and they both fall to the ground plastered with a flurry of snow projectiles. The last of the Dregs takes a single look at his hapless companions and runs back inside the Slat yelling "I give up! I give up!"

Jesper laughs at that. "See Nina? Your armies bow to me!"

A snowball whizzes by his ear in response. He hides behind his own crate pile, snickering. Oh, what a pity Ketterdam gets only a few days of snow each year, and what a pity almost no one wants to help him make use of it. He tried to ask Wylan first, but the boy merely said he had some new blueprints to discuss with Raske and vanished through the front door of the Slat. Nina and Matthias came by next, and luckily they were much easier to convince – sure they scoffed at his childish ideas at first, but once he threw a few snowballs at them they were very quick to drop their mature façade. It was a matter of minutes before both sides had their own crate fort, and then Nina persuaded a few other Dregs to join her and Matthias' side, and now here they are.

Jesper leans out again, ready to immediately duck back down to avoid another one of Nina's snowballs (Saints, she's a frighteningly accurate shot when she's pissed). But, to his surprise, none come. He can hear Nina and Matthias exchange a few hushed words behind the safety of their barricade. A moment later, he sees Nina sprint out of their hiding place and hop behind the hole-ridden barrel with a devious glint in her eyes. Matthias stays behind cover, watching Jesper's crate fort like a hawk. It takes Jesper a split second to understand there's been a change in tactics; his friends have apparently realized that they're going to need more than snowballs to take him down, and that Jesper is almost within range of Nina's powers. Just a few steps closer and he's done for.

Jesper feels the rush of adrenaline kick in, and when Nina tries to close in on him again, he flings a single snowball at her and dodges Matthias' retaliatory shot. Nina skids to a halt to avoid Jesper's snowball, but it still hits its mark and knocks her hat off - just as Jesper intended.

He definitely did not intend for her to then lose her footing and land face-first in a snowbank, though he'd admit the look of outraged shock she gives him just before she falls is rather magnificent.

He doesn't have much time to savor it - once Matthias sees what Jesper did to Nina, he jumps over the crates with a roar and charges at Jesper, an enormous clump of snow in hand, probably planning to cram it down Jesper's throat, but he makes it barely five steps before he slips on the same ice as Nina and lands on his tush on the sleety pavement before Jesper can so much as raise another snowball, his breath momentarily knocked out.

Jesper's blood is still pumping wildly when he hears footsteps approaching from behind. He whirls around, determined to snipe down whichever unfortunate Dreg chose to swing by at this time, and-

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

-and freezes, because he just came this close to throwing a snowball in Kaz Brekker's face. Kaz himself, however, seems unperturbed by this fact, imposing as usual in his black coat and gloves, standing in the middle of the street and looking from the petrified Jesper to the seething Nina and befuddled Matthias to the three snow-caked Dregs observing the scene from the sidelines. His gaze is utterly unreadable.

"Hey there," Jesper drawls, going for nonchalance. He's pretty sure Kaz won't give him a hard time for distracting a few of the gang members from their work, but then again, one could never be certain with the Bastard of the Barrel.

Oh well, apologizing probably wouldn't do him any good now anyway. So, Jesper tries a different approach. "Uh, wanna join us? There's plenty of snow to go around." Even on a bad leg day, Kaz would probably make a worthier opponent than Wylan. The boy's aim is decent enough, but it's also awfully obvious that aim doesn't matter much when the things he's throwing explode on impact.

(...Huh. Exploding snowballs. He'll have to talk to Wylan about this one.)

Kaz quirks an eyebrow. "As much as I'd like to join your little game and waste an afternoon of paperwork..." Is that a smirk on Kaz's face or is Jesper just imagining things? "...I'd prefer a quick win."

That's when Jesper feels a sudden yank at the back of his scarf, followed by the unpleasant sensation of something wet and chilly sliding down his spine. He yelps and pivots to grab at whoever dared to jump him and narrowly misses Inej's giggling face.

„Not fair!" he screams, twisting and scrambling at the handful of slush she's so unceremoniously stuffed down his coat, „How did you manage to sneak up on me on snow, that's not natural-"

Nina and Matthias have finally managed to recover, and now they're laughing their asses off at Jesper's pitiful attempts to get the melting mass out of his clothes. His two assailants are standing to the side, looking colossally smug, and Jesper would snowball those cocky grins right off their faces if he didn't have freezing slush under his coat and oh Saints help him it's under his shirt now too-

Wylan and half the Slat come rushing out a moment later, probably alarmed by the noise. Once Wylan sees what the fuss is all about, he heaves a sigh, hauls his shivering boyfriend indoors to the sounds of laughter from everyone assembled and pulls off his scarf, coat and shirt. "I thought the Zemeni hate cold," he says, once Jesper is safely wrapped in a blanket on a chair next to the stove in his room.

"I'm full of surprises,"Jesper waggles his eyebrows. "Wanna know exactly how cold it is outside?"

"Not really, I should probably get back downstairs to-" the rest of Wylan's words turns into a squeal when Jesper pokes him in the side of the neck with a still-cold finger. Jesper ends up chasing him down the hallway as Wylan screams at him to stop it and you're horrible, you know that?

He says that, but he still giggles all the way.