Just read. Don't ask, just read. Everything I have to say will be down at the bottom.

Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians. Those Dreamworks people are so damn lucky.

The Bennett grandparents had left on Monday, and Jack had spent the night watching the rest of the Twilight Saga, and had stayed up until one in the morning. Needless to say, he wasn't very willing to get out of bed before noon. He eventually woke up (though still half-asleep) at 2 in the afternoon, and groggily went into the kitchen to make breakfast/lunch/an afternoon snack. He was in the middle of drinking eggnog in the living room while watching this really old soap opera (In his defense, he still had yet to become fully conscious) when Mrs. Bennett and both of her children came in through the front door.

"Oh, Jack, you're awake," Mrs. Bennett glanced at him, mildly surprised.

"And watching soap operas," Jamie snickered.

"And drinking eggnog!" Sophie eyed Jack's tempting eggnog with longing.

Jack looked at the family blankly and then turned back to the TV screen.

Mrs. Bennett rolled her eyes in a playful manner and told Jamie before she took Sophie to the kitchen, "Bring him back to Earth, will you, Jamie?"

Jamie picked up a magazine on the coffee table, went over to Jack, and slapped it across his face.

"AI!" Jack yelped, suddenly fully aware of his surroundings. "Oh. Hey, Jamie."

"Yeah. Hey," Jamie smirked.

Jack held his eggnog out to Jamie. "Want some?"

"No thanks. Me, Soph, and Mom already chowed at McDonald's for lunch," Jamie grinned. "When'd you wake up?"

"Like, 20 minutes ago. Why?"

Jamie sighed. "I just knew that Mom shouldn't have let you stay up all night watching movies about werewolves and vampires."

"Your mom is more laid back than you are," Jack deadpanned. "Anyway, where were you guys?"

"Buying school stuff for you. It was the last day for the Christmas sale at the mall."

Of course. It was so like Jack to be stupid enough to forget that he didn't even have a backpack until now.

The doorbell rang and Jack went to get it. When he opened the door, he saw Zander and Spencer, both carrying one pair of ice skates each.

"Hey, nice black eye," Spencer joked once he saw Jack.

"Nice groin injury," Jack snapped in return, not in the mood to have his facial flaw pointed out.

Spencer held up his hands in defense. "You know, having a rock tossed at your groin really hurts. Don't make light of it."

Jack sighed. "I know. On Christmas morning, Scott kicked me in the groin."

Zander snickered. "I'm positive he only did that because you broke his cousin's nose."

Jack almost doubled over. "You guys know about that?!"

"Duh. Everyone does. The news about two guys getting into a fistfight in the park spread around pretty quickly."

"It wasn't really a fistfight. Only one punch was delivered from each side..." Jack muttered. "Anyway, why are you here?"

"We wanted to invite you to go ice skating with us at the new ice skating rink downtown," Spencer smiled.

"It just had its grand opening last weekend, and it's already packed with skaters," Zander added.

Jack, however, was unimpressed. "Why would I want to go to the other side of town to skate in a rink when there's a perfectly good frosted up lake in the woods nearby?"

"'Cause the rink's safer...?" Zander replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "You never know when the lake's ice isn't thick enough, and if it isn't, it'll break right under you and you'll drown if you don't know how to swim good enough."

Yeah, Jack thought dryly. I learned that lesson the hard way 300 years ago.

"I actually heard from Mom that actually happened once, like, way back then in the colonial times," Spencer looked at his brother. "This guy who was around our age drowned in the lake and they never found his body."

"Eerie. Maybe the fish ate his corpse," Zander remarked.

"Uh, from what I know, there are only small fish in the lake. I don't think they could decompose a body completely before someone goes down to look for it," Jack interjected. Oh yeah. They are so talking about me.

"Fine, then what's your theory on what happened, genius?" Zander asked caustically.

"The Moon decided to resurrect him," Jack said, before he could help himself. Crap. Oh well. It's not like they would figure it out.

Zander snorted. "The moon's not even alive."

"Ever heard of the Man in the Moon?"

"First Santa, then the Easter Bunny, and now this?"

Jack rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Sure, I'll go to the rink with you two." He looked down at his typical hoodie and pants, which were now worn as pajamas. "Just let me change first."

He went to his room, and came out a few minutes later. He was carrying a pair of ice skates in one hand and his other hand was pulling down on the beanie on his head. "'Kay, I'm ready. Let's go."

"Good. Do you mind riding in the backseat of Zander's car? I already called shotgun."

Jack looked at Zander's Galant parked at the curb of the Bennett house. "I didn't know you owned a car."

Zander shrugged. "Eh. That's only 'cause the places I usually go to are close by, so I just walk. Spencer here doesn't even have his license yet."

"Why not?"

"During my driving test, I may have hit a puppy and its owner..." Spencer chuckled guiltily as Jack gave him a horrified look. "Anyway, Zander, you owe me 5 bucks."

"Ah, crud," Zander groaned. "I was hoping you would forget about that. I already owe you $10 for losing that bet on whether or not the world was gonna end."

"Wait, I'm lost. What'd you bet on to make Zander owe you $5?" Jack asked Spencer as he was getting into the car.

"Whether or not someone would answer the doorbell this time."

The first impression Jack got of the rink was that it was huge. It was four times bigger than the rink, and, as Zander had claimed, it was crowded and the three boys had to wait in line for a few minutes to buy tickets.

"Zander! Spencer! Over here!" a girl called happily to them once they were on the ice. She skated over to them.

"Cici!" Zander grinned, while Spencer's face flushed. He hid himself behind Jack, earning an eyebrow-raised look from the latter.

"You must be Jack. I've heard so much about you! Especially about how you broke Samson Fisher's nose. Poor you! You've got a black eye to suffer from."

Cici's enthusiasm and outgoing personality instantly reminded Jack of Tooth.

"So what're you doing here?" Zander asked her. "I thought you had work at Starbucks."

"My boss gave me the day off," Cici giggled as she played with her long blonde hair, which was tied up into a high ponytail. "So I came to check out the new ice skating rink."

"Hey, Cici!" one of Cici's friends called out to her. "Get back here!"

"I have to go now, guys. It was nice meeting you, Jack. Bye!" Cici then skated away.

"Spencer, get out from behind Jack and suck it up," Zander said once she was gone.

Spencer did so, his eyes on Cici's distant figure.

"What was that all about?" Jack questioned.

"Little Spencey here has a huge crush on Cici," Zander grinned as Spencer's face turned even redder.

"Zander! Shut up! She's standing right there!"

On the drive home, Zander had stopped halfway and announced that he was hungry, so all three of them stopped at a Starbucks (the same Starbucks Cici worked at) near the park. Zander ordered this banana chocolate chip coffee cake, Spencer a blueberry scone, and Jack a simple blueberry muffin. The twins got lattes while Jack got hot chocolate (It was actually pretty good since he didn't have warmth-phobia anymore).

They were all seated at a table next to the giant glass wall that cut them off from the outside world. Bored, Jack gazed at the white landscape while the twins got sucked into a heated debate about something called Gangnam Style. For some reason, Jack had a feeling that they wouldn't expect him to not know what that was, so he kept his mouth shut. He reminded himself to look it up once he got home.

Suddenly, a snowball was thrown in their direction, hitting the glass barrier that separated indoors from outdoors. Jack looked outside, curious to who was the thrower. He eventually spotted Jamie, who was waving and grinning at him. Smirking and completely forgetting his food, he immediately ran outside, scooped up a snowball, and threw it back. It hit Jamie spot on, and once the younger boy recovered, his grin turned mischievous and evil. He put two fingers into his mouth and whistled; Cupcake, Pippa, Claude, Caleb, and Monty all appeared out of nowhere and started pelting Jack with snowballs. Jack was laughing so hard, he was at the brink of tears. He desperately tried to shield himself from the countless snowballs, but to no avail. When the kids all stopped to catch their breath, Jack, sensing his chance, started making and throwing a bunch of snowballs at superhuman speed, never pausing once.

"I think hanging out with Bennett and his friends has contaminated his brain to go back into 11-year-old mode," Zander said flatly, as he and Spencer watched the fight from inside.

"It's really been a while since we were part of snowball fights." Spencer winced once he noticed that none of Jack's snowballs were complete misses; all of them were at least grazing one of the children. "I don't know how he does that. I would really hate to be against him. Those poor kids..."

"I think he forgot all about the guys who took him out today in the first place."

As if on cue, Jack looked their way, and, still grinning, he went inside again. "Hey, guys, come on! It's a perfect day for snowballs!"

"Uh, no thanks," Spencer declined. "I'd rather stay inside, where it's warm."

"And me and Spencer have kinda outgrown snowball fights," Zander added.

Jack's smile faded briefly, but immediately came back. "Suit yourself," he said, shrugging dismissively.

He ran back outside, but he couldn't help but think to himself, And I thought I was able to instill fun into everyone...

"Oh my god, that was so much fun!" Jamie laughed as he and Jack entered the house.

Jack grinned. "You said it. Zander and Spencer were being a pair of killjoys though. I can't believe those two can sit through all that fun and think it's childish."

"But childish is fun!"

"Exactly!"

They went to Jack's room and sat down on the bed. Jack's new phone was on his bedside table, and he picked it up to see if he had any missed calls. He saw he had one text message, and frowned.

"What's the problem?" Jamie looked over.

"I have this text message. There's just this red square where it's supposed to say who it's from."

"It's probably just one of those annoying spam messages. You should just delete it."

"Wait..." Jack opened the message, and this was what it said:

Hello, Jack! Do you like your new phone? :D

-North

"..."

"What's the matter?" Jamie looked again, and burst out laughing. "Santa sent you a text?! I didn't know he had a phone!"

Jack ignored him, and called North back. Several rings were heard before St. Nick finally answered in his heavy Russian accent.

"Jack, is something wrong? Has anything happened?"

"No, nothing's happened," Jack eased North's panic, albeit in a flat voice.

"Oh. Well, can you call back later? I am a bit busy right now."

"This'll only take a sec. I saw that I had a text. From you."

"Ah, yes. So, do you like your phone?" North asked, completely missing what Jack was getting at.

Jack frowned, even though he knew that North couldn't see him. "No! I mean, yes! I meant no as in 'No, that's not what I meant!' Why are you in my contacts?! Why is there a red square where your name is supposed to be?! Why do you even have a phone?!"

"I cannot answer all those questions at once, Jack," was North's simple reply.

If looks could kill, Jack's phone would've been reduced to smithereens at that moment.

"But I will try to do so. All of Guardians have phone and have each other as contacts."

"Why?"

"To keep in touch, of course. Do not forget that there is immortality monster out there."

Right. Jack wasn't going to say it out loud, but he admitted in the back of his mind that he kind of did forget the weight of his situation. "Okay, so why are you represented by this random red square thing?"

"These things are extremely private, so our identities are hidden by certain symbols, in case someone looks over shoulder or something. I am red square, Bunny is green triangle, Tooth is purple diamond, and Sandy is yellow circle."

"And what am I?"

"Blue hexagon."

"...Why am I a hexagon? I've always hated hexagons."

"Jack, please, this is not good time to say that."

"Right. Sorry. Wait, one last thing: Why are we using phones when we could be using something more... Guardian-worthy?"

"I did that for you," North said, with slight weariness in his voice. "You teenagers are always on your phones now, and if I used something more 'Guardian-worthy,' then that will make you look strange, no?"

I think Zander and Spencer already think I'm strange, was what Jack wanted to say back, but instead, he said, "Fine, you have a point."

"I know I do. Plus, you can still use it as a normal phone if you wish. One thing though, don't call Bunny unless if you are sure that he is not in the Warren. Because he is underground, his phone will be glitchy."

"Right. Thanks. I'll stop disturbing you from whatever you're doing now, alright?"

Once he hung up, he turned to the still-oblivious Jamie and sighed, "I should've known better than to think he actually gave me a normal phone."

Okay, this AN is gonna have a lot of important stuff that needs to be said. So prepare yourselves.

First off, I don't know how many times I need to say this, but Jack and Christine are not a couple. It's just a one-sided crush. Seriously, I know some people don't bother reading author's notes, but my author's notes can carry some important information at times, so please start reading what's written in bold (Though the people I'm addressing right now probably aren't even reading this). I don't enjoy having to say the same stuff every other chapter. Thanks for hearing me nag, guys. I appreciate it.

Two, I...somehow knew that I wasn't going to get a lot of people to say yes on making Jack bi... Darn. But I wasn't going to make him get together with another guy or anything like that. Though Hatsu Yukiya pointed something out to me: Everyone is bi when it comes to fandoms, with all the slash pairings and whatnot. Very excellent point made there.

Third, you guys are probably expecting the first day of school chapter to be the next one, because I said so two chapters ago. But then, in the middle of typing this, I thought up something... Would you guys enjoy one more chapter of winter break fun, where Jamie's family and Jack go on vacation? If you guys don't want any more filler chapters for now, I won't make another one and I'll skip right ahead to the school chapter.

And, if any of you don't know, the symbols North uses for their phones are the actual symbols used to represent each Guardian. I'm sure most of you are aware of that already though, so I don't even get why I'm talking about this.

Also, on a side note, I forgot to tell you guys the last chapter, but I was on vacation for the last three days. I finished this thing yesterday, and I would've uploaded it using the copy-and-paste method, but Internet was down. On the bright side, I was at the Grand Canyon, and Jack Frost paid a visit. And I can swear that the frost on the car's windshield in the morning had similar patterns to Jack's own frost (The fact that my dad had to buy one of those mini-snow shovel things to scrub off all the ice is completely beside the point). :D As a Californian, I have absolutely no experience with snow, so I was pretty hyper. And on the way home earlier today, in San Bernardino, it was hailing. Lolwut.

I will love you guys forever if you review. And I hope all of you have had a wonderful Christmas (if you celebrate it)!