Inspired by Emily Carroll's comic "His Face All Red".
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Jack laughs as easily as ever, lets himself be carried out of the bar, be scolded for over-indulging. There are smiles on every face around, whether hidden in bright eyes under supposedly disapproving frowns, or worn openly with laughter as loud and hearty as Jack's own. There are smiles on every face except one.
Pitch knows the boy they call Jack is not Jack.
Jack Frost is a pale slip of a boy with eyes and hair the colour of autumn. He's a friend to anyone who needs company, whether they pay him attention in return or not, full of jokes and games and stories, and he never takes himself too seriously.
Jack flirts with the village women, giving the young someone harmless to crush on and flattering the old with his affection. In the dark, in necessary secrecy, he sometimes offers a word of kindness to men who need one too.
He offered Pitch much more than a word. He offered the warmth of his hands and his mouth and his thighs, and Pitch was greedy for it, cornering Jack in any shadows that would hide them so he could steal more. With every kiss, every sight of Jack's face contorted in ecstasy, Pitch grew addicted to Jack, to the escape from loneliness Jack offered him. Pitch bit bruises into Jack's chest, scratched welts into Jack's thighs with his fingernails, needing to know every hidden inch of Jack bore his mark.
Pitch knows the boy being carried out of the bar isn't Jack, because Pitch watched Jack drown.
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Pitch had caught Jack between the legs of the blacksmith's daughter, confronted him when they were next alone, and Jack had laughed, tried to grab him and kiss him, and rolled his eyes when Pitch slapped away his hands. "Don't be so sour. You're not the only one who gets lonely."
Pitch imagined his hands around Jack's throat, even as they lay useless at his sides. He saw the girl's hands on Jack, saw Jack's head thrown back, Jack's face as he came inside her soft, willing flesh. She was young and pretty, someone worth marrying, worth staying with for good.
Jack let Pitch walk with him deep into the woods, following a stream that had turned to slush up to the lake it fed, let Pitch kiss him and bite him and mark him as if nothing had changed between them. He whispered all the words Pitch wanted to hear, all the lies, want you, need you, love you, and Pitch had lifted Jack up, Jack's legs hooking around his waist. "It's cold," Jack had said, "We should go home."
Pitch nodded, kissed Jack again, and carried him over to the lake.
"Pitch?"
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No one asked Pitch why his fingertips were blackened by frostbite when he came back from the woods. When people started asking where Jack was, Pitch had shrugged, wondered out loud along with everyone else if he had perhaps run away, or if he had met with an accident playing one of his games.
If the blacksmith's daughter cried over Jack's absence, she did so in secret.
It was easier to be lonely when Jack wasn't there to remind him why he had hated being lonely in the first place. It was easier to ignore his addiction when its source was gone.
Three days later, Jack came back from the woods, and Pitch was the only person who didn't celebrate his return with laughter and drink.
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Pitch can't remember the last time he slept easily. He tried once, since Jack's return, and dreamed of a silhouette under water that was as white as the moon. He could not see its eyes, but he knew it saw him as clearly as he saw it.
Twice he has gone to his window in the night and found it coated in frost, the pattern abstract but Pitch's eyes seeing what they know to look for, the outline of a pale slip of a boy.
He thinks he heard laughter when he looked at the image, but he finds it harder to trust what he thinks these days.
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Pitch listens to Jack's stories like anyone else would, watches him play his games, and he remembers what it was like to mark Jack's chest with his teeth, how Jack's thighs fit into his hands as he scratched them, and he hates his loneliness once more.
But Jack doesn't notice him now. Jack notices everyone else, attends to the blacksmith's daughter with soft words and stolen kisses when no one else is looking. He flirts with the women of the village, young and old alike. He shares kind words with men in the dark.
Jack sees through Pitch as if Pitch were invisible, as if Pitch were the one who should not be there, who should not be walking. Pitch has only his blackened fingertips to tell the tale, and no one would believe him if it passed his lips.
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Pitch hasn't slept for a week when he walks out into the woods, following the stream and finding the lake. The weather has remained cold and still, and it has frozen the lake solid; Pitch steps out onto that frozen surface carefully, taking each step one at a time, listening for a crack, watching out for thin ice.
He wonders if Jack's body should still be at the bottom of the lake, or if he should be floating by now, swollen and bloated by rot regardless of the cold.
He sees nothing beneath the ice, lifts his head up, and finds wet footprints leading to the shore.
It stands there. A pale slip of a boy with eyes and hair the colour of winter.
It laughs.