Baby, baby, looks like it's gonna hail
Baby, baby, looks like it's gonna hail
You better come inside,
Lemmie teach ya how to jive & wail
- "Jump, Jive, & Wail" watch?v=EZhrWfbdbzQ
Although Jack loved so many kinds of dance, some of them could only be done properly with a partner, and though Jack used to have to create them out of ice, it was slowly growing easier to swoop down on unsuspecting spirits and whirl them into a dance.
It was almost like they were hoping for him to do it. Well, some of them at least. Some spirits were so prim and stuffy they wouldn't know fun if it ran up to them starkers. It was still odd, but...it meant fewer spirits were attacking him on sight. If anything, they were pausing to wait – and he could talk things out with them, which seemed to scare most of them.
Of course, no one really expected a Winter spirit, even if he was the Spirit of Winter – or perhaps especially if – to seek out company for anything other than a fight, it seemed. And to try and talk – or dance – things out? Unheard of, if their reactions were anything to go by. Jack wasn't sure – he'd been rejected so many times in the first hundred years, he didn't stay to find out after the dance was over.
Sometimes it worked out better than others – Cupid, who he'd expected to be a dainty little thing, had turned out to be a man almost as huge as the famous North, and had been incredibly enthusiastic with the much smaller winter spirit, bodily picking Jack up to swing him around to the strains of a polka coming from the wedding they'd crashed, roaring with infectious laughter, while the less said about the time he'd tried dancing with Baba Yaga, the better.
Still, it usually worked out. Usually.
He'd found he loved the 'hot' dances, like the tango or flamenco – and no one expected a Winter spirit to be able to do those dances, full of heat and fire, challenge and fight, which made their surprise all the sweeter.
In fact, he loved every dance he'd tried, be it slow or fast, salsa or waltz or rumba, sweet and romantic or hot and defiant, any style or speed or taste. At the moment he found himself loving swing dancing the most for the sheer joy and exuberance of the dance, sharing his fun openly as he spun the selkie he'd surprised into a dance into a jumping dip, her legs locking around his waist as she bent backward, her hair nearly touching the ground before she snapped her body back up to face him, grinning almost as widely as he was.
All too soon it would be over and he'd have to fly away before the spell was broken, but for now, he was touching another spirit, held another's hand in his, and for the moment it was enough.
They kept dancing to the enthusiastic music pouring from the converted warehouse by the docks they'd met at until near dawn, when the humans themselves were exhausted and the music trailed off. Jack kissed her hand, as he had every partner, male or female, since that first dance, and she blushed furiously as she slid back into her sealskin and into the water, giggling and glancing back over her shoulder at him as he flew away quickly.
It seemed like he was finding partners more and more often lately, almost like they were seeking him out, and he wasn't quite sure what to think of that. On the one hand, the attention was good…on the other, it was odd. They didn't have conversations, not really, and he didn't stick around after the dance to be chased away. Maybe someday, but until then, he'd been rejected enough to not bother waiting around for it to happen.
A/N: "Jump, Jive, 'n Wail" is one of my favorite big-band swing songs. I know next to nothing about swing dancing except that it looks like a hell of a lot of fun, and this song never fails to get me on my feet.
Jack, baby, spirits are starting to be curious about you, if you'd just stick around and take a risk. :(