Attention Seeking

Jack slowly drifted through the air over Burgess, eyeing his handiwork. The light from the Man in the Moon made the freshly fallen snow sparkle. Jack grinned slightly, then turned and zipped off towards the south, heading for Antarctica. He didn’t want to be anywhere around when Bunny found out what he’d done.

****

“What the bloody ‘ell—JACK!” Bunnymund roared, his ears flattening in rage. One of the eggs bumped against his foot, almost falling in the snow, and absently Bunny reached down to right the egg. Taking a deep breath, he held a paw to his brow, covering his eyes before growling, “Fine. Easter first, then kill Jack. Sounds like a good plan.”

****

Jack was sitting on an ice cliff, idly drawing shapes in the air with his staff when he heard a loud WHUMPH come from behind him. Grinning slightly to himself, Jack stood up to face the Easter Kangaroo. The Angry Easter Kangaroo.

“G’day, mate,” Jack mocked as Bunnymund stalked closer. The intimidating stance was ruined when Bunny tripped over a deep pocket of snow and fell on his face. Jack laughed gaily, and walked over to offer Bunnymund a hand up.

“Geroff, you blighter!” Bunny growled, picking himself up and dusting snow off of his coat. “Now. Tell me. Why, in the name of all that’s holy, would you want to repeat the blizzard of ’68?” The green eyes of the large Pookah narrowed angrily, and Jack idly thought of how nice it would be to see those eyes widen in surprise, or narrow for an entirely different reason.

“Cause,” Jack replied, feigning indifference as he walked around the Pookah, heading for the path that led to the home Jack had carved for himself out of a nearby glacier.

“No, that’s not—oomph.” Bunny, trying to hop around Jack to try and intimidate him some more, but the Pookah’s large feet, normally good for giving him speed and power, failed to perform, sending him face-first into a snowdrift. Jack barely contained his laughter as he extended the path over to where Bunny was currently struggling to remove himself from the snowbank. “Bloody snow, bloody cold, bloody freaking remote place…” The Pookah’s grumblings reached Jack faintly through the snow.

“You can tell me what’s not what if you manage to get up to the house,” Jack called as he walked down the path, his staff over his shoulder and his other hand in his pocket.

****

Bunny extricated himself from the snowbank before Jack had gotten halfway down the path. Ha, Bunny thought smugly. Jack really shouldn’t have given him a good, solid footing. Frostbite’ll realize his mistake soon enough. Bracing himself for take off, he aimed squarely for the middle of the ice spirit’s back.

With a powerful thrust of his back legs, Bunny took the air. Whump. He connected solidly with Jack’s back, bowling the smaller Guardian over and rolling them both off the path and into the snow. They tussled for a few minutes before Bunny finally got the staff away from Jack, tossed over the snowbank, and pinned the spirit to the ground. “Now,” Bunny huffed, his paws holding Jack’s hands above the young Guardians’ head, and Bunny’s lower half pinning Jack’s to the ground, “why did you make that bloody blizzard yesterday morning?”

Jack grinned up at the elder Guardian, the sunlight reflecting off his pearly white teeth that Tooth obsessed over. Bunny idly thought how Jack wasn’t half-bad-looking, then shoved the thought from his mind as Jack said, “I wanted to get your attention,” the spirit said cheekily.

“My attention?” Bunny sputtered, unable to believe what he was hearing. “You wanted to get my attention, so you caused a blizzard big enough to cover half the United States on Easter Sunday?!”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Jack said, laughing. The Kangaroo’s pretty cute when he’s mad, Jack thought admiringly. When that thought had first occurred to him several months ago(which was almost a year after Pitch had been defeated), Jack had fought it, and had continued to fight all those feelings that were coming through. A couple weeks back, though, he’d decided that he was done running from his feelings. He was gonna face them, and Bunny, and the sooner the better. What better way than reenacting the first time they’d met? Well, almost reenacting. Back then, Jack hadn’t had a home in Antarctica to go to, and Bunny had caught him the next day only a couple towns over from the scene of his “crime.”

Bunny’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Jack. There was something weird on the young Guardian’s face. Something bordering on tenderness, or maybe hopefulness. It had been a long time since Bunny had purposefully looked Jack in the face for this long, and the longer they looked at each other, the more Bunny felt... something… spreading across his body. “Jack…” he said uncertainly, looking into the spirit’s deep blue eyes. Slowly Bunny could feel the position they were in shifting from one of restraint to one that was more… intimate. Almost without realizing it, Bunny brought one paw down to cup Jack’s cheek.

“Bunny,” Jack breathed, reaching up with his free hand to run his thumb along the fur that lined the Pookah’s cheek, smoothing the whiskers out before moving to Bunny’s shoulder. Slowly Bunny leaned down, his face coming closer to Jack’s. Jack hardly dared to breathe as the Pookah’s face came closer to his own, the emerald-green eyes slowly drifting shut.

Bunny didn’t realize he was going to kiss Jack until he did. And even then, the reality still didn’t fully sink in until Jack moaned and wrapped his free arm around the back of the Pookah’s neck. When Bunny finally realized that he was kissing Jack, and holding him much more closely than was appropriate(Then again, what about the situation was? some part of his mind wondered.), the Pookah exploded off of the young man. Backpedaling furiously, he sought to get away from the feelings that were swamping him.

Jack sat up, and looked at Bunny cautiously. The Pookah’s large ears were flattened backwards, his eyes dilated and widened to an almost alarming size. Carefully, Jack moved to his feet, holding both hands out, palms up. “Easy, Bunny,” Jack said, careful not to use the nickname “Kangaroo.” Didn’t need Bunny to bolt down one of his rabbit holes, after all. “Easy,” Jack cooed, slowly working his way towards the spooked Pookah, taking a step, pausing, and then taking another step.

Bunny stopped trying to run away, but his ears didn’t lift and his eyes didn’t return to their normal size. What the bloody hell had he been thinking, kissing Jack? There was no way that anything good could come of them being together; for one thing, they were immortal. For another, they were both Guardians. How could they protect the children of the world if they were busy trying to make their own? Even as the thought crossed his mind, Bunny could have slapped himself. Both he and Jack were… well, were males. No children.

“Easy, Bunny. Easy. It’s alright.” Jack’s voice slowly penetrated the panicky fog surrounding Bunny’s mind, and he shook his head furiously, trying to clear the rest.

“No, it’s bloody not all right,” he argued, focusing on the approaching figure. “I… I…”

“You kissed me,” Jack said simply, kneeling in front of Bunny, only a foot away from the Pookah’s large back feet.

“Yeah, that.” Bunny’s ears, which had been starting to perk up, flattened in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Jack, I didn’t mean to do it.”

“I know you didn’t,” Jack said, still not making a move to move closer. “But I’m not saying I didn’t like it.”

“You… Wait, what?” Bunny was now extremely confused. If he didn’t know better, he could have sworn Jack was admitting—

“I liked it,” Jack stated, meeting the Pookah’s eyes steadily. Bunny could see the sincerity in their blue depths. “I… Well, I won’t deny that I’ve been wanting you to kiss me for a long time,” Jack said, a faint pink tinting his pale cheeks. “I just… Well, I tried to fight it when I first realized, then I finally gave in.” Now Jack’s eyes moved away from the Pookah’s gaze. “That’s why I made the blizzard yesterday,” Jack admitted, looking to the side.

Bunny froze. He knew he hadn’t misheard Jack; his hearing was too good for that. “You’re saying that you… That you wanted me to kiss you, and that you have for a while?” he repeated carefully, not wanting to be misunderstood, and not wanting to misunderstand Jack.

“Yeah,” Jack muttered, still not looking at Bunny. Jack sighed and shoved himself to his feet, turning away from the Pookah. “This was a stupid idea,” the ice spirit muttered to himself, starting to walk off.

“Wait!” Without thinking of the possibility of falling into a snowbank(again), Bunny bounded to his feet and around Jack, stretching to his full almost-seven-foot height in front of the spirit. Jack stopped and looked up into Bunny’s face, and the look on his face, a mix of hurt, embarrassment, and shyness, was enough to make Bunny’s heart melt. Or break. Or maybe both.

Hesitating only a second, Bunny put his paws on Jack’s shoulders and then leaned down quickly, kissing the spirit and then pulling back before the younger Guardian had a chance to react.  Jack looked up at Bunny, stunned, and Bunny’s ears went back half-cocked, partly embarrassed. “I guess I’ve kinda been wanting to... ya know… kiss you, too,” he said, making himself look Jack in the eye.

This time, the look on the young man’s face was one of joy and hope. “You have?” he asked in the tone of one who dares not to believe that maybe, just maybe, his dreams can come true.

“Yeah,” Bunny said, pulling the young spirit close, “I have.”