Chapter Text
Lucy Miller gave a last little nudge to her shelf of snow globes (that sat next to the bookcase of snow globes, which stood guarding the curio cabinet of snow globes and the end table that held several snow globes that didn’t fit anywhere else) adjusted her plum-colored knit cap, and locked the apartment door behind her. It was December, which was her favorite month in New York. Not just because the heaps of snow hid the heaps of less pleasant things that usually populated the sidewalk. December just had a magical property to it that made her feel like anything could happen at anytime. Cars could turn into sleighs. Snowmen could come to life.
There could be a short man waiting immediately outside her building’s security door.
Lucy couldn’t slow her momentum in time to keep from bumping into his back. The man fell slightly forward, exclaiming, “Hey!” when he turned to look at his assaulter, however, his look of indignation turned to pure joy.
“Lucy!” he said.
Lucy stared at him blankly.
“It’s me!” he held out his arms expectantly. The short, impish man with hair parted extremely to the side looked no more familiar to her than anyone on the street.
“Jack?” he prodded.
Lucy continued staring.
The man’s smile wilted slightly. “Jack? I’m a...an associate of your uncle?”
“Uncle Scott up in Canada? I haven’t visited him in ages,” Lucy blurted. Jack’s face fell.
“Oh I guess...well, silly of me to think you’d remember.” Jack scuffed some snow with the toe of his shoe. “San—Scott said you probably wouldn’t. I just hoped…” he sighed, and then suddenly the elfin grin was back on his face. “So where you off to now?”
“Erm, work.” Lucy’s hand crept secretly to the pepper spray she’d hoped she’d never need.
“Great, I can walk you!” Jack proffered his arm, which Lucy carefully stepped around. He drooped in disappointment but recovered nicely, bounding like a dancer to walk beside her. He started snapping his fingers. “ And it’s nutty-coo-coo weather outside ,” he burst into impromptu song. He had a large voice for such a little man.
Lucy stared studiously at the sidewalk before her feet as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening as if that would make him go away. She racked her brain but just could not come up with any memory of who this guy was. She had vague if pleasant memories of Uncle Scott, who was a big toy tycoon somewhere up north. She hadn’t visited in ages, but Uncle Scott still thought enough of her to send her an allowance that let her live alone on a meager shop girl's salary. So why hadn’t he sent word that one of his associates was stopping in?
“So, Jack?” The little man shivered slightly at her use of his name. Oookay… “What brings you to New York?”
Jack smiled, bouncing his shoulders. “Well, your uncle offered to send me on vacation this year, said we were overstaffed. I said I wanted somewhere warm, and he sent me the warmest place I could think of, which was…” Jack waved a vague hand.
Lucy barely suppressed a laugh. “New York? In December?”
Jack’s looked put out, like she had purposefully dropped something he threw to her. “ No. ”
They crunched on in silence for a moment.
‘So...Jack?” Lucy asked.
“Yup.” Jack smiled.
“I mean, Jack what? Can I get a last name?”
He slowed a bit. “...Frost.”
“Okay.”
He did a double take. “Jack...Frost? That doesn’t ring any sleigh bells?”
“Should it?”
Jack grumbled a bit.
It was three more blocks to the bookshop where she worked. Lucy was seriously considering flagging a cab at this point, only stymied by the fact that no cabs were going down the road this morning. She regretted deleting Lyft from her phone to make space for Pokemon Go.
Jack didn’t seem that much like a creep anyway...right? Sure, his unblinking smile was beginning to wear on her nerves, and he looked at her with an intensity usually reserved for dogs eyeing a plate of bacon on a high counter, but…
Jack walked into a pole he hadn’t seen because he’d been looking at her. He flinched back, flapping his hand and scolding the inanimate object. “Aw, come on! How does something like that happen?”
Lucy hid a frantic giggle behind her mitten. It was things like that. He didn’t seem to have enough together to to be really threatening. Jack noticed her smothered grin and acted hurt.
“Taking cheer in my pain are we?” He put a hand to his heart. “I guess I can take succor in the fact that I have brought at least one person cheer this season, although my doctor says I should really take succor for my blood pressure.” He giggle-snorted at his own joke, and Lucy gave him a weirded-out smile.
“Sooo, Lucy-goosey, what do you do for work?” he asked, slightly put out at his failed attempt at humor.
“Oh, um, antiques. Collectibles.” Lucy wondered if it was safer to duck in some other shop and then exit out the back, or dart inside her work and have her coworkers cover for her.
“Collectibles? That would include snow globes, I imagine,” Jack said suavely.
Lucy nearly stopped right there on the sidewalk. “Snow...how’d you guess?”
“I remember you had a yen for them.” Jack looked down. He seemed to be looking not at the sidewalk, but at something projected inside his own head. “Way back when. Loved ‘em so much that—”
“WellthisismyworkI’malittlelatesoIgottagobye!” Lucy blurted out as she darted in the door of the antique shop, leaving the bell to tinkle agitatedly behind her.
Deanna, the only other person on shift, looked at her oddly. “Lucy, you all right?”
Lucy removed a mitten to stab a finger outside. “There’s this creep that followed me all the way from my apartment.”
“Creep? Where? Is he outside?”
“Yeah, he’s—” Lucy shoved the shop door open. The sidewalk was empty of everything except the usual pedestrians.
...and something that glittered like spun sugar amidst the muddy footprints. Barely daring to breathe, Lucy stepped forward and picked up a rose made out of pure frost. The flower was so delicate it didn’t seem like something that could exist in the first place and, when it melted from the touch of Lucy’s fingertips into nothing, felt like a dream.
“Lucy? Are you coming back in?”
Lucy stared at her wet hand. “...yeah.”
******
Twilight was falling as Lucy swept her hair back under her cap. Flicking a switch, she made the shop dark and locked the door behind her.
“You sure you don’t want an escort?” Deanna tucked a dreadlock behind her ear. “You could just come back to mine, Ethan won’t mind you crashing on the couch.”
Lucy scanned down the sidewalk either way. “I think I'll be okay. If he pops up at my place, I can get the super to whack him with a snow shovel.”
Deanna smiled, not entirely convinced. “Okay, be safe.”
“You too.” Lucy watched her walk all the way down to the corner, where her boyfriend waited with two steaming cups of coffee. Then she turned to walk back to her apartment.
“Lucy!”
She yelped, thrusting her keys out like a knife. Jack had popped up from seemingly nowhere, same grin on his face.
“I’ve been waiting ages and ages. Did you get my rose?”
Despite her fear, Lucy felt oddly touched. “Y-you left that? It melted.”
“I’m not surprised,” Jack said. He seemed overjoyed at the news. “You have a habit of doing that.”
Lucy waved her hands. “Jack. Mr. Frost. I get that you’re happy to see me, okay? I get that. But I don’t know you . I don’t really remember you and to be honest? You’re coming on kind of strong.”
Jack drooped. He puffed out his cheeks like a little boy with a popped balloon. “Wow, I didn’t expect you of all people to give me the cold shoulder. I guess that leaves me no choice.” He reached deep into an inner pocket of his suit jacket.
Of the many thoughts that flashed through Lucy’s head, besides oh my god I'm about to die and maybe if I punch him in the head I can get a running start , was why does this seem oddly familiar?
The round lump Jack fetched from his pocket wasn’t a gun or some kind of club, but a snow globe. Inside was a snowman, and the familiar figure of—
“Me!” Lucy gasped. Automatically, her hand reached out to the globe. “I mean, it looks like—”
“It is.” Jack seemed satisfied. “Your Uncle Scott gave this to me before I left. Said I'd probably need it. And I guess I do,” he admittedly softly.
Jack put the snow globe in her hands. A wall of memories fell on her, a tsunami of memories, a blizzard of endless memory-flakes. That was right! Uncle Scott wasn’t just Uncle Scott, he was Santa! He didn’t live in Canada, he lived in the North Pole! And that meant—
That meant—
Lucy looked at Jack. Her hand went limp, Jack just barely caught the globe before it hit the sidewalk.
“You,” she gasped.
Jack looked slightly guilty. “Me what?”
“You!” she stabbed her finger at him, backing away. “You’re Jack Frost. You stole the Santa coat— you froze my parents!”
Jack flinched. “Lucy—Lucy wait—”
Lucy turned and ran down the sidewalk. Her hat blew off her head and she nearly turned an ankle vaulting over a fallen garbage can, but she kept going. What stopped her was simply an icy patch of sidewalk. Lucy went straight down, but didn’t get the tailbone-cracking impact she was expecting. She looked down to find a cushion of snow beneath her butt, quilted and everything. She looked up. Jack frost was running towards her, hand extended.
“Slow down,” he huffed, “haven’t—been—jazzercising—lately.” He coughed and held up a finger.
Lucy tried to stand, and fell right back down again. “Stay away from me, you froze my parents!”
“Yeah, and did you forget the part where I un-froze them again?” Jack flung out his arms frustration. “The hug! The melting! Tell me you don’t remember that.”
Of course. Now that Lucy had a second to think, she remembered why Jack looked so different now, standing with his hands on his hips, than in her memory.
“Yes,” she said falteringly, “I melted you. I helped Uncle Scott save Christmas. Why am I only just now remembering this?”
Jack took a ragged breath. “Your uncle saw how hard a time Charlie had trying to live a normal life, so he offered you a chance to live without the burden of knowing. He put your memories in this snow globe, so that when the right time came you could have it all back.”
Lucy squinted. “Memory-erasing snow globes? Isn’t that a little, ah, farfetched?”
“Oh you tell me, magic hugs.” Jack dusted off his suit, which was completely untouched by snow. He offered a hand to Lucy, who hesitated before taking it.
“I wanted to see if you’d remember me without the globe...which you didn’t.” A sulky tone crept into his voice. He looked up at the sky. “I don’t know why...I just thought you’d...I mean, you did de-frost me.” he let out a weak chuckle.
Lucy was still looking at him oddly. “Okay. So why are you here anyway?”
Jack suddenly found the ground very interesting. He rocked back and forth on his heels as he searched for words.
“”Oh, erm, like I said: Santa asked where I wanted to go, and I said I wanted to go somewhere warm, and the warmest place on earth is…” he let the sentence dangle.
Lucy was suddenly, horribly warm. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” she mumbled, dropping Jack’s hand. Jack looked crestfallen.
“Well, I'm not begging you to hug me,” he sputtered, “it’s not that you have to, need to, absolutely must, I just thought...you know…” he twiddled his thumbs and forefingers, raising his eyebrows.
Lucy felt herself blush so hard she imagined steam rising from the snowflakes that fell in her hair.
“What, and then you ask me to be one of your elves?”
A shocked and guilty look crossed Jack’s face. “N-no,” he said unconvincingly.
Lucy froze, eyes wide and glassy.
“I need a drink,” she mumbled.