A/N: Please heed the warnings for this chapter. Dub-con, sexual content, underage.

Jack, however, was now very aware that there was something under Pippa's bed. He wasn't sure as to what it was, because describing something as a shadow with very gold eyes would get him nowhere. If he were to tell his sister that 'oh, well look at that, there is a monster under your bed.' he was certain she would never be emotionally okay again.

Pitch was confused at first as to why he was not ripped from beneath the bed and beaten within an inch of his not-life. He entertained the thought that maybe he had imagined the shock in those large eyes, even deeper up close.

No, Pitch was convinced that he had been seen, the strength in his limbs stood as a reminder that there was someone who believed in him and if he had anything to go by, it wasn't Pippa.

Not anymore.

The next morning while the young girl slept, Pitch found Jack awake with eyes that suggested he hadn't so much as blinked since their encounter.

"Can you see me, Jack?"

And there.

The brunette's back stiffened ever so slightly, the way it might have when Pitch would caress it for a bit of fun.

"You can." He croaked in wonder. But what was Pitch to do with a boy that did not fear his presence? What point was there in being seen when all he could do was glower and spit out whatever came to mind?

He wasn't about to make pleasant conversation with him, so, what?

Jack turned around as if he heard nothing, saw nothing... but the Nightmare King knew better now. And even if Jack didn't acknowledge him, he saw him and heard him and that meant that to one person in the world...

Pitch was real.

He could see it in Jack's gritted teeth and whitening knuckles.

That changed everything.

Although it was Pippa's fear that kept him strong, Pitch found himself abandoning her side for Jack's.

That is, he followed him everywhere.

"You're going to have to talk to me sometime."

He would say just as Jack scaled a rotten old tree branch. His voice would make the boy tense or lose his footing for half a second, spiking the fear in Pippa as she and the other village children watched (cheered).

When Jack would fetch fire wood, Pitch would be beside him, dropping comments such as "Oh no, that is far too damp." and "it would be wise to avoid that, it is riddled with rot." until Jack would become more irritated than anything else.

It wasn't that Pitch was looking out for the boy or anything, that was something a Guardian would do.

Not a Nightmare King.

But he could not deny the cheap thrill he got from grinding on Jack's very last nerve.

It had become his favorite past time.

Although it was fun and games at first, Pitch was slowly beginning to resent that Jack pretended he did not exist.

Most of all, he feared that Jack would one day convince himself such was true, and Pitch would once again be invisible to the world.

Pitch with a grudge was an ugly thing. He would lean against the counter while Jack fed his sister lunch in the absence of their parents, he would mock Jack by flapping his hand in time with Jack's words.

When that didn't work, he would flick a cup over or a napkin off the table and grin when Jack had to pick it up.

It was only when the brunette boy's jaw would clench that Pitch felt the closest he could to reassurance.

"You are getting clumsy, Jack." Pippa would scold. "What am I going to do with you?"

At which Pitch would stand over her and reach slowly, with one finger, to jab her in the neck.

He never did though, because it was in those moments and those alone that Jack would meet his eyes, a look that said more than words could.

Pitch did not lower his hand because he felt any sympathy toward either of them, it was because he had already gotten what he wanted.

Just for a moment.

Jack was many things, but he was in no way stupid.

When he realized that between his sister and himself, Pitch had a tendency to stay closer to him, he began to put distance between them.

Pippa was not happy with this at all. She would beg Jack to take her with him and always be offended when he told her in a sharp tone, "No."

"Oh, would you look at that." Pitch would coo in his most sardonic voice. "She's sad. What a pity." And he would cringe as Pippa cried and her face turned red and swollen. "How unbecoming, don't you think? Jack?"

If the boy was irritated at Pitch's verbal abuse, he gave no sign of it. It must have taken a hero's strength to turn his back on his ward the way he did, to ignore her wails as he stormed off into the woods.

Jack lead Pitch in circles through the trees for hours, going nowhere and painfully slow about it.

"We've already been this way, Jack."

"I've noticed you enjoy passing that particular stump, then."

"If you're lost, I could direct you back the way we came. You only have to ask."

"Do you suppose-"

Pitch was promptly shut up by a wad of snow, crashing into his face.

He wiped away the frozen chunks and stared, bewildered at the smile Jack wore.

Pitch could tell that the boy was desperately trying to withhold it, but Jack really was no good at something like that.

He didn't say anything to Pitch, just turned and kept walking.

If Pitch was silent afterward, it was only because he could not think of anything to say.

Pitch spent fewer and fewer nights under Pippa's bed. Instead he would loom at the foot of Jack's with his arms crossed and he really had to hand it to the boy, he never lost a wink of sleep over it. In fact, Pitch was sure that he got more sleeping done than when Pitch was in his sister's room.

"I find it adorable that you can take such easy comfort with me here. Adorable because I know your ease only stems from the fact that I am not able to frighten your sister."

Jack pulled the cover over himself and did nothing but stiffen as Pitch sat on the edge of his mattress.

It sunk under his weight and Pitch might have thought he saw Jack's breath hitch, but he had given up looking for the little signs.

He wanted more.

"Do I not frighten you, Jack? I am the boogeyman."

Jack was as still as the dead and Pitch thought that maybe he was losing his touch.

The silence went on for weeks.

Drawn out, wretched, and boring.

Weeks of Pitch moping and making Jack's life more difficult through the little things.

Weeks of Pippa scorned at her brother's desire to keep away from her.

It was enough to drive a Nightmare King mad.

Pitch was never really focused on anything anymore. The sun came up, he followed Jack far away from Pippa, watched him perform mundane chores, watched him put on foolish shows for the village children, watched him eat, watched him sleep...

He did a lot of Jack watching, actually.

So when Jack said one afternoon, in the chill of winter.

"Don't you have anywhere better to be?"

Forgive Pitch if it took a while to realize that Jack was addressing him.

Hell, Jack hadn't even looked at him when he said it, but it had to have been directed at him for they were alone in the winter wonderland.

"No, actually."

Pitch responded.

So went the first conversation he'd had with anyone in decades.

Pitch was not a protector. In fact, that was the last thing he ever wanted to be considered. He was the Shadow Man, the Nightmare King, the Boogeyman! He was no guardian angel and curse anyone that might mistake him for one.

He trudged through the fresh-fallen snow not as a partner or companion, but as a shadow to the wandering boy with no aim.

When Jack tripped over a particularly ugly root, Pitch only grabbed his arm out of reflex. Steadying the boy as he looked down at the rock and sharp sticks that littered where he would have fallen, Pitch didn't even realize what he had done until he had Jack back on his feet.

But Jack wasn't so steady, having managed to throw out his ankle.

Of all the stupid things he had ever done, it had taken a lonely branch to wound the boy.

"Good job." Pitch grumbled, staring down at where Jack's ankle had already begun to swell.

"Oh, shut up." Jack hissed under his breath.

Pitch thought that maybe, they were making progress.

"Well, let's get you home."

Wide whiskey eyes gazed up at Pitch and his offered hand. They held so many questions that Pitch could not answer, not even to himself.

When Jack took it, Pitch swore he felt a power seep through the touch, and he wondered if maybe Jack wasn't just a normal boy, but something special.

Pitch wasn't a protector. He told himself such as he let Jack lean against him on the long walk home.

He was neither partner nor companion, just a shadow and as often overlooked.

He could not ignore the extended glances the boy gave him.

But he tried.

After that, things were different.

The next time Pitch caused mayhem while Jack worked, instead of being crossly ignored, Jack slapped at the Nightmare King's hands where they just could not sit still.

Pitch was not very happy about that.

He tried to reassert himself, assuming that after helping Jack in his time of need, the boy thought he was soft.

He put on incredible shows of shadows seemingly from hell upon Jack's walls when the boy turned in for bed, and Jack would watch them with the interest of a child in a storybook.

He always had a look in his eyes that questioned, 'What happens next?'.

Some nights later, Pitch crept spindles of darkness up Jack's leg while they were out at night, the moon doing little to light them.

Jack would look down at them and then at Pitch and raise an eyebrow, again, asking 'is that all?'.

It did not take long for Pitch to learn that little affected Jack in terms of fright.

So he tried something else.

A particularly chilly evening in the glow of a campfire, Jack's fan club gathered around the young man, laughing as he adorned tree branches as horns and told some fable or other, complete with pathetic moose imitation noises. Just as Jack rose up before the flame and cast his great, horned shadow on the wall behind him, Pitch warped the branches into fingers, clawed and reaching out as if to swallow them all up in it's grasp.

The children screamed and their screams dissolved into peals of laughter.

Jack's was the loudest.

Pitch could not figure out what he had done wrong. The fear was certainly there, he had felt the spike of it in each persnickety child, but they were not afraid.

They were having fun, and Pitch was certain that Jack was to blame.

Even when Pitch blew out the fire and swamped everything in darkness, the laughter grew louder and cut through the fear like a knife.

"Guys! The moose is gonna get us!" One child playfully jibed. "Hide behind Jack!"

"But Jack is the moose!"

There were horrified gasps and giggles and Pitch found himself burying his face in his hand at the sight.

At some point in the fiasco, Jack had stopped laughing with the children and had started laughing at Pitch. The corners of his mouth were uplifted and tight, much like before when he would endlessly tease Pippa for her worries.

Pitch would get him back.

He just didn't know how.

One night while Jack slept and Pitch was bored (as he often was), the Nightmare King considered how he was going to make Jack fear him.

And he wanted Jack to fear him, he thought to himself that Jack's fear would taste so much sweeter than Pippa's or any other child's, it had to because that was the only explanation he could come up with for why he was drawn to the boy like a beacon.

When Jack slept, it was a disturbingly peaceful sight. One might forget while watching him that there was illness and evil in the world. Even Pitch felt trapped in a bubble of goodwill and promise, and it left a bitter taste in the back of his throat.

The temptation to touch Jack's chest was great, even greater at the prospect of feeling the heart that drove him.

He did, because Pitch does as he pleases, and the soft expanse of the boy's ribcage against the drumming of his heart was exhilarating when everything else was boring.

He was always so cold to touch.

Pitch wasn't sure, but he recalled humans being warm and fleshy. Jack was more of a spring river.

Revitalizing.

He watched his hand rise and fall with each breath the brunette took, and if his hand began to slide down, it was simply because Pitch was distracted by the curtain of eyelashes that rested on Jack's cheeks.

Lower his hand went, carelessly, until a noise interrupted his train of thought.

Jack had moaned.

It was with a hitched breath and not very loud at all, but not a second after, his eyes shot open, pupils blown wide as he stared up at Pitch in horror.

They both looked down simultaneously to where Pitch's hand rested, right over Jack's crotch.

"What the hell-"

"Shhhh..."

Pitch quieted him by rubbing slow circles against the boy's pants.

"Don't want anyone to hear now, do you?"

Jack had been about to ask him what the hell he was doing.

What the hell was he doing?

The amazement in Jack's eyes said everything.

"That's why you never speak to me. Don't want to make a habit of it, do you? And if one should overhear us conversing... what might it look like to them? You are, after all, the only one who can see me."

Jack was shaking but it was not from fear and that riled the Nightmare King.

"Well Jack. You insisted on staying silent, so..." Pitch leaned in so close he could feel each quick breath from Jack's lips. "Be silent."

Jack shook in a pitiful attempt to keep his body from betraying him, but Pitch could already feel his failure beneath his gripping hand.

"You're horrible." Jack whispered.

"Good to know I haven't lost my touch."

Pitch emphasized the last word by grinding his thumb where he felt Jack grow hard.

Jack opened his mouth and the sound that came out was more pleasing to Pitch than it should have ever been.

What am I doing?

"Tut tut, none of that. What would darling Pippa think?"

Jack threw his hands out to strike at Pitch, but the Shadow Man knew by then to expect a fight from the the boy.

His elbow pinned one arm in an angle entirely Jack's own fault, while his hand gripped Jack's other wrist.

Jack had no hope of overpowering Pitch. He merely struggled and writhed to no avail.

It almost hurt Pitch to see the look in Jack's eyes, the one that scolded himself for letting his guard down around the strange guest he had acquired.

It was practically too easy to keep Jack pinned to the mattress, he hadn't even needed the assistance of his shadows.

It frustrated Jack, when he realized his defeat.

He could do nothing but lie there and worry at his bottom lip, showing off those marvelous teeth Pitch may or may not have noticed at some point.

How could he resist such a show?

Slipping his hand into Jack's pants and gripping his young but anxious erection, Pitch jerked him mercilessly, swooping down in a moment of weakness to taste that puckered, bottom lip.

When Jack came, Pitch swallowed the beautiful sound.

Pitch didn't stay after that, he slipped back into the shadows and crawled under Pippa's bed.

He didn't know what he would see in Jack's eyes, but he had a feeling it wasn't fear.