Sorry for the long delay, I have some real life stuff on the go at the moment keeping me away from my writing. Next up will be a chapter of What Doesn't Kill You, followed by another chapter of Hope and Ruin, and well, you get the idea :) If it take a couple weeks though, rest assured I'm working on it, and I have no intentions of leaving either of these fics abandoned!
The blue hoodie plunged into the wash water with a force usually reserved for throwing a hard right hook, and then began jerking up and down the washboard with extreme prejudice. The fabric, darkened to a deep shade of navy by water saturation, frothed with a rich lather, the scent of lemon and patchouli in the air. Aster knew he should ease up; now that he had the fabric in his hand he could feel how worn it was, how threadbare and thin it had become after years, perhaps even more than a decade of constant wear. While it was butter-soft to the touch, he could see the places where the stitches were loosening, threatening to come free at any moment, probably when Jack was spinning carelessly through the air, the harsh tug of the wind carrying him shredding the last vestiges of the seams until the whole thing fell apart, exposing far too much pale skin to sweet sunlight...
Aster snarled, giving the shirt one last furious scrub before rinsing it more harshly then required. When he finally deemed it clean and yanked it out of the tub, he found himself wringing it with an almost violent and completely unnecessary forcefulness. Done with the shirt, Aster chucked it into the basket he'd brought just to hold the cleaned laundry and snatched up Jack's pants instead. Sturdy linen, they looked much older and far more worn then even the hoodie. Setting them to the washboard, Aster resolved to be gentler, but found it difficult to reign in his temper when the act of washing just begged to be used as an outlet for his frustrations.
Let it be known that, for all the times that Jack has aroused Aster's frustrations, never before had those frustrations been sexual. Heh, aroused was right, all puns intended, and Aster felt the scowl stretch across his face at the insistent but unwanted throbbing between his legs. Stuffing down the physical reaction as best he could, Aster mentally smacked the little voice in his head that was finding the whole thing hilarious. Really, E. Aster Bunnymund, last of the Pooka, Warrior, Scholar, Guardian of Hope, reduced to busying his hands with mindless dirty work in an effort to still his overactive imagination. The very same imagination that kept reminding him that only a couple of hours ago Jack had been naked; wet and warm and soapy in this very tub. Aster remembered the boy pressed against the side of the tub; defensive and yet defiant as always, sneering at Aster with all the considerable force of his personality behind him, pale and far too thin and frail, water droplets cutting interesting pathways over the sharpness of his exposed collarbones. The boy was underfed, sickly, yet his eyes shone with cold fire, his thin lips curled enticingly with his anger, even as the water matting his hair to his scalp made prominent ears stand out further. For a moment, Jack had looked both fierce and ridiculous in ways that Aster had never, could never have imagined the Guardian of Fun to look.
Suddenly it was like the world had changed, or maybe shifted two steps to the left and all the things Aster had thought he'd known now sat slightly off centre to him. Previously, Jack had always been an awkward creature, socially clumsy and over-enthusiastic in mostly all the wrong ways, at least as far as Aster had been concerned. Sure, the kid was fantastic with the children, perhaps better than any of the rest of them, but Aster's hadn't considered him much good for anything beyond that. It hadn't mattered anyways, they weren't required to be best bosom buddies to work together at Guardians, so now that they had a grudging truce in place Aster figured he was in the clear to ignore the little hellion until he either A) messed with Easter again, or B) an emergency cropped up that required all hands on deck.
Then the boy had waltzed into his Warren, looking sullen but determined and Aster had found himself with a snowy little shadow. Their fragile ceasefire had been put to the test, and more than once Aster had thought that the moment had come to call an end to the cessation of hostilities, if only to have an excuse to punch the smug little bastard in his smirky little face. Yet, Aster had rode out the urge, holding himself back because Jack had held himself back, and Aster refused to be the one to cave first. But then, without consciously deciding too, Aster had found himself, watching, listening, and paying attention to the boy instead of just happily ignoring the extra body slouching about his Warren. There was something about Jack, some feeling he inspired beyond the negative ones Aster had begun to associate with him, something that he couldn't quite put his finger on but it intrigued him. Aster had put it off as simple curiosity, now that he'd uncovered the other side of Jack, the one that ran deeper than just fun and games, something that stretched almost dangerously close to responsibility and accountability and restitution. Something that made Aster... well, uncomfortable wasn't quite the right word, but some form of disquiet had settled upon him like an itch whenever he thought too hard about Jack and his motivations and reasons for being here, for driving himself so hard, for pushing and pushing and pushing until he'd almost broken himself, like all that had mattered had been proving a point. Like all that Jack had cared about was Aster and what he'd thought of Jack and damn everything else including the consequences until Jack had either won some unspecified contest between them or killed himself trying. Quite literally kill himself; with how weak he was Aster was surprised Jack hadn't keeled over days earlier. He'd been coming to the Warren for a little over a month before his collapse, and at the time that Aster had first drug him into the nest to care for him it had been made clear that Jack was still suffering from wounds delivered by Pitch's hands, wounds that should have long healed, except Jack hadn't spared the energy to do so. No, he was too busy fighting a war on all fronts; against himself, against his own body, against the energies of the Warren, so unlike his own and against Aster, too. No wonder the dumb kid had conked out face first into the dirt; he'd spread himself so thin he'd come up empty handed on the other side.
At first Aster had resented Jack the care he required to get better. Aster, for all his love of children wasn't thrilled about having to play nursemaid to an immortally snot-nosed teenager. Jack had enough attitude to kill with a glance, and his rough edges were downright dangerous to others, but Aster had chosen to endure because he did owe Jack for the consideration he'd shown and the help he'd been providing, and Aster paid his debts, always. Also, he was nothing if not a good host and having one's houseguest swoon away like a medieval maiden was a poor reflection on himself at the very least. But then, Jack had defied him, mouthed off in the way he'd done a thousand times before, and okay Aster had probably started it as he was wont to do, sue him for goading the boy that loved to needle him right back, and suddenly his whole paradigm shifted until Aster couldn't see things straight any more. Out of the blue the things that would have made Aster turn his nose up before seemed more sylvan and ethereal than artless and inept, and definitely no longer signs of a boy caught in the tumultuous throes of puberty. Sure, Jack needed to be fed well and sent to bed early until he filled out some and the shadows faded beneath his eyes, but his large hands and feet could be taken as a young bucks would, on the edge of the final push into maturity, when the mind was an adult and the body not quite caught up to the fact. His long limbs were no longer gangly but elegant, like a good doe's should be, and his slim frame may have been weakened by his sickness but Aster could see the bone structure and the way that, properly restored, Jack would be all lean sinews and delicate muscle, just like most Pooka. It was a misconception that Pooka Warriors were burly and muscular. Sure, they were stronger than most humans of comparable size owing to a difference in muscle density but Pooka's, like earth Rabbits, were fine-boned, slender creatures disguised by the length of their fur, and only owning their durability to harder skeletons and the aforementioned difference in muscle composition. Truthfully, Jack Frost naked, or at least as much of him as Aster had seen, was by human standards no more attractive than the next gawky teenage boy. Viewed through the lens of Pookan standards though, Jack, while forever trapped in the months before full physical maturation, was of a somewhat uncommon beauty. In Aster's mind it was easy to imagine Jack as a young Buck, winter-white furred with delicate silver markings like his frost ferns curling over his upper arms and down the ruff of fur at his chest. His blue eyes would be perfectly offset by a proper muzzle, not those silly flat faces that humans sported, and the unrefined jut of his ears would be transformed into the graceful sweep of long, lightly furred ears.
Aster had long ago pushed many of his Pookan ideologies to the background, content to ignore them forever. He was the last, there would be no more, so there was no use stifling himself with old instincts and cultural trapping that could do him no use. Sure he'd kept some of it, not willing to let it all lapse to time and forgetfulness, as his people deserved better than that, but he'd long ago let go of Pookan ideals of beauty, as there were no other Pooka left, so they would serve no purpose but to disappoint. Over the centuries he'd adapted to the more Human-oriented ideals, differing and constantly changing though they were, as most spirits he'd met were human shaped. It had worked to the point that Aster had found himself attracted enough to end up with the occasional casual lover over the years. Nothing serious owing to his commitments as a Guardian and a general lack of interest in something permanent in general, but human bodies had long since stopped being a stumbling block for him. Also, since many humans, spirit or otherwise, came with such a variety of sexual tastes and desires, Aster had found that his own shape was usually not enough rule him out right off the bat, at least not for those he'd had trysts with in the past. Jack was different though, and Aster's keen artist's eye could, for the first time in centuries, draw up the roadmap of Pookan beauty, lay it over the boy like a blanket, and not find him wanting.
No, Jack was another animal entirely; human though he was, there was a grace to him, a way of both motion and stillness that was as unfettered and wild as anything Aster had even seen among his people. Jack moved with purpose always, with an economy of motion even when he was flitting about like one of Tooth's fairies. Forever precise and never in anything less than perfect control, all tempered with the sense of balance to rival any cat. Jack didn't walk; he practically floated even when his feet were actually touching the ground, like somehow he weighed less than air. Which was untrue; take it from the guy who'd had to carry the frostling halfway across the Warren, unconscious. While light, Jack did in fact have some body weight to contend with, although perhaps just enough to coax him back into gravities arms when the flying was done.
Aster grunted his annoyance, realizing he'd lapsed into an almost poetic rant on the way the boy moved, for MiM's sake. Sure, now that he'd actually opened his eyes and paid attention it was easy to see the boy was attractive, but that changed nothing between them. There were still barely cooperative at best, and downright antagonistic to each other at the worst, and Aster knew that was unlikely to change. At least, not until Jack recovered enough of his strength that he could let down all the defensive walls he'd built up to overcompensate for the feelings of weakness and inadequacy he no doubt had swimming about in his brain right now. Aster would know, he did the same thing, and didn't that just sit unwell in his gut; the realization that he and Jack probably had far more in common with each other than either would like, or care to admit to.
With a final, snapping flourish, Aster flicked Jack's decrepit pants over the clothesline, pinning them in place with a twist of his wrist. There now, all done until morning, when the clothes would be dry enough to collect. Their wearer was long asleep, tucked into the nest and swaddled in the oversized green bathrobe that, yes, did in fact resemble some sort of fuzzy ball gown on the tiny body it encompassed, but Aster had, through herculean effort been able not to laugh as he served the kid dinner, and that alone seemed to settle the boy some. Just as Aster had suspected, a warm bath and full meal had lulled the frost spirit into an easy slumber, and Aster had chucked a quilt over the skinny body and left him to it, content to tidy up the kitchen and finish the laundry before he retired for the evening himself. Of course, he's also assumed that he'd be able to ignore the little byplay they'd had while Jack had been bathing as he did so, which turned out to be most definitely not the case as the low-grade arousal that had been simmering under the surface of his skin had welled up full force the moment he was no longer distracted by caring for the other Guardian. It was a ridiculous set of circumstances, to be honest. Sure, they riled each other up all the time, and it was really only a matter of time before something had driven their taunts into a more sexual arena, but Aster had never counted on actually reacting to Jack in such a visceral way. Unfortunately, while his mind still held firmly to the opinion that Jack was a kind-hearted disaster in the making, his body kept not-so-quietly insisting otherwise. Aster bit back a lively curse as he shuffled back into his den, the sharp, sweet burn of his unwanted arousal impossible to continue ignoring. Well, nothing for it, he'd have to succumb and take the problem somewhat literally in hand if he wanted any respite from his overactive hormones tonight. It had been too long, obviously, since he'd last indulged in the warmth of another's body. Refilling the tub for the third time that day, Aster gathered his favorite shampoos and bath oils, preparing himself for a good, long soak and a thorough wank. Perhaps, when his obligations to Jack were dispatched, he'd be free to seek out a new lover, or maybe even an old one feeling nostalgic for a few months of mutual pleasure. Someone who was as far away from scruffy white hair, haunting blue eyes and milky-smooth skin as he could find.
Slipping into the steaming water, Aster let loose a few colour curses as his groin tightened without his permission at that last thought. With an unhappy sigh, he wrapped his fingers around his demanding erection, resigning himself to the challenge of trying to bring himself off to anything that wasn't Jack fucking Frost. Assuming he could somehow manage to keep the boy from creeping into his thoughts unbidden for the next ten minutes; a nearly impossible task considering he'd been failing miserably at it since the boy had first shown up at his Warren looking to help. Of course, back then the thoughts had been tainted by anger, not lust.
White hair, blue eyes, miles of unmarked, pale skin...
Oh MiMdammitall, make that five minutes, and he'd be thinking of Jack the whole way. There were special seats in hell for people that jerked it to thoughts of bedridden jailbait, Aster had no doubt, and one of them most certainly had his name on it. The worst part though, he figured as he let his hand speed up, was that damn if this wasn't going to make breakfast tomorrow the most awkward fucking meal of the day.
The orgasm that followed was brilliant, and Aster knew he'd carry the guilt of it for longer then he cared to think about.