Chapter Text
It was hot. Way too hot.
The summer of 2026 had broken temperature records yet again, much to Jack Frost’s misery. There had been a time when humans mostly complained about the cold. These days, with factories and engines pumping who-knew-what into the atmosphere, snow was becoming harder and harder to come by.
Jack was lucky if he got one proper sledding day with the kids each year. Even when the snow finally decided to show up, it never stuck around for long. A few hours of sunlight were usually enough to turn his beautiful white blanket into miserable gray slush, too wet for a decent snowman and far too soft for a proper snowball fight. A genuine tragedy when you happened to be the Spirit of Winter.
Jack lay sprawled across the branch of a half-dead tree, staring miserably up at the sky. Not a cloud was in sight, only an endless stretch of brilliant, painfully perfect blue.
Eventually, he sat up, grimacing as his blue hoodie clung to his back.
"Little help here…" he muttered to the wind.
Apparently, even the breeze had been knocked senseless by the heat. It took just a second too long to answer, and Jack nearly dropped straight out of the tree before a current of air finally swept beneath him. He decided not to take it personally. Nature had been acting weird lately.
Jack let the wind carry him toward Burgess University, too drained to bother with any of his usual flips or spins. With any luck, he might catch Jamie between classes. His first believer was twenty-two now and had just started his senior year. He wasn’t much of a kid anymore, though Jack had never entirely accepted that. Some part of him still saw the gap-toothed little boy.
Jamie was studying meteorology now, a career choice Jack took full credit for whenever the opportunity presented itself.
He landed on the roof of one of the university buildings, a place Jamie had apparently decided was perfect for smoking between classes. His Guardian strongly disagreed.
"Throw that thing away," Jack said the moment his bare feet touched the concrete. "You know those are killing you, right?"
"Yes, Mom."
Jamie crushed the cigarette beneath his shoe. Jack narrowed his eyes. He knew perfectly well another one would appear the second his back was turned, but he kept his mouth shut.
He could count himself lucky he had made it through Jamie’s teenage years without losing his mind. Keeping one particular human in his life had never been easy. The other Guardians had told him more than once that he should let Jamie go. It wasn’t healthy, they said, being so attached to one believer. Children grew up and eventually stopped believing. That was simply how things worked. No matter how much it hurt, one generation eventually made way for the next, allowing the magic to begin all over again.
Jack had never been particularly interested in the rules of the spirit world.
"So," he said, hopping onto the railing, "how bad were classes this morning?"
He walked along the narrow edge with his arms slightly spread, pretending much harder than necessary that the heat wasn’t getting to him. The sun beating down on his head certainly wasn’t helping the dull headache that had followed him around for most of the summer.
"Could be worse." Jamie leaned back on his elbows. "My math professor gave us enough homework to ruin the entire weekend. Great start to the semester." He sighed and looked out over the campus. "Wish summer could last forever."
Jack stopped dead.
"Don’t put that kind of thing out into the universe. Summer’s already overstayed its welcome."
Jamie was still smiling when he looked up at him, but the smile faded almost immediately.
"Dude, you look terrible."
"Thanks."
"No, seriously." Jamie sat up properly. "Are you okay? Shouldn’t you go recharge at the North Pole or something? Somewhere you don’t get cooked alive the second you step outside?"
"I’m fine."
"You’re the Spirit of Winter, not the Spirit of Climate Change." Jamie got to his feet. "Come on. Let’s go inside. They have air-conditioning."
Jack looked personally offended.
"You want me to stand in front of one of those soulless machines that spits out fake cold? That’s insulting."
"You’ve been miserable all summer. You need to do something fun before you spend the next month sulking until Halloween."
Jack immediately perked up.
"Now you’re talking. We could go bother Samhain. He’s probably already harvesting pumpkins."
"Yeah…" Jamie looked away toward the Burgess skyline. "That’s not exactly what I meant."
Jack tilted his head.
"What did you mean?"
"Nothing. Forget it."
Jamie picked up the cigarette pack lying beside him and turned it over between his fingers. Jack watched him for a moment. Jamie had gone strangely quiet, and then, as though finally working up the courage to say something, he looked back at him.
"Can I ask you something?"
"You just did."
Jamie rolled his eyes.
"Very funny."
Jack grinned, but Jamie hesitated before continuing.
"You and the Tooth Fairy… are you together?"
Jack nearly fell off the railing. His arms windmilled wildly before he managed to catch his balance, and then he stared at Jamie as if he had just asked whether Jack planned to marry the Easter Bunny.
"Me and Toothiana? Where did you even get that idea?"
The look of genuine horror on Jack’s face made Jamie laugh.
"I don’t know. She and all those little fairies seem pretty obsessed with…" Jamie paused, the corner of his mouth twitching. "Your beauty."
Jack burst out laughing.
"They’re obsessed with my teeth." He flashed Jamie an exaggerated grin. "Hardly romance."
"So Cupid’s never gotten you with one of his arrows?"
Jack’s face twisted in disgust.
"That giant chubby baby? No, thanks. Getting shot by him sounds more like a curse."
Jamie laughed, and just like that, something warm settled inside Jack’s chest. He had always loved making Jamie laugh, maybe because mortal lives seemed unnecessarily difficult sometimes. Humans worried about school, money, jobs, families and a thousand other things Jack couldn’t fix with frost or snow. Being a spirit wasn’t necessarily easier, only different.
Jamie had always been different too. He held a place in Jack’s life that no other believer ever had. After all, none of this would have happened without him. Without Jamie, Jack might still be drifting through the world alone, invisible and unheard. Now he was a Guardian. He had responsibilities, believers and, for the first time in centuries, a place where he belonged.
"Meet up tonight?" Jamie asked, pulling Jack out of his thoughts. "I need to get back to class."
Jack straightened too quickly. The world swayed for half a second, but he ignored it.
"Can I come?"
Jamie froze, and Jack gave him his most pathetic puppy-dog expression.
"You want to come to class?"
"Maybe."
Jamie stared at him, and Jack couldn’t exactly blame him. He had never asked before. Crowded rooms full of humans who couldn’t see him were not exactly Jack’s idea of a good time. Jamie had patiently taught him how to read a few years earlier, but being surrounded by people who walked through him without noticing was still deeply unpleasant.
Right now, however, there wasn’t a single snowflake for miles, the sun was trying to murder him, and Jack really didn’t feel like spending the rest of the afternoon alone.
"Okay," Jamie said at last. "Physics. Fair warning, though, you might die of boredom."
"I’m already dead."
"Fair point."
Jack jumped off the railing and headed for the door before Jamie could change his mind.
Inside, the air-conditioning made the heat slightly more tolerable. Jack still hated the stale, motionless air in the hallways. Buildings always made him feel a little trapped, but being trapped was preferable to being roasted alive.
By the time they reached the lecture hall, most of the seats were already taken. Jamie found a place halfway up the rows and pulled out his notebook while Jack dropped into the empty seat beside him with considerably less enthusiasm. He had never understood how humans managed to sit still for hours at a time, especially when they were doing it voluntarily.
At the front of the room, Professor Rockard waited for the last few conversations to die down before bringing an equation up on the screen : Q = mLᶠ
"This equation allows us to calculate the energy required to melt a substance," he began. "For water, the latent heat of fusion is approximately three hundred and thirty-four kilojoules per kilogram."
Jamie started writing.
"In other words, melting one kilogram of ice at zero degrees Celsius requires roughly the same amount of energy it would take to heat that same kilogram of liquid water by about eighty degrees."
Jack glanced at Jamie’s notes, then at the screen and back at Jamie’s notes. He lasted approximately thirty seconds before his attention began to wander.
Professor Rockard changed slides, and two satellite photographs appeared side by side. One showed a vast white sheet of ice, while the other showed dark open water.
"On a climatic scale, this creates two separate problems. Ice requires an enormous amount of energy to melt, but once that ice disappears, the Earth also loses part of its reflective surface. This is what we call albedo. White surfaces reflect a large amount of incoming solar radiation. Darker surfaces absorb more of it. So, less ice means more heat absorbed. More heat means more warming, and more warming leads to more melting. That creates what we call a positive feedback loop. It’s one of the reasons extreme heat events are becoming increasingly concerning. Those of you going into meteorology will probably spend your careers watching these numbers continue to rise."
Jack grimaced. Winter was going to keep shrinking year after year? He had absolutely no intention of letting that happen without putting up a fight.
"Okay," Jack muttered. "I think everyone could use a reminder that winter still exists." I just became a Guardian. I’m not going unemployed in ten years."
"Jack, no."
Jack tilted his staff toward the front desk with barely a movement. The temperature probe reacted instantly, and Professor Rockard stopped midsentence as he frowned at the display.
"Negative eight degrees?"
Jack smirked. The professor leaned down and checked the device.
"That can’t be right."
He tapped the probe with one finger, and Jack leaned toward Jamie.
"Winter is coming," he whispered dramatically.
Jamie immediately lowered his head, pretending to study his notes as his shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. They had spent half the summer watching House of the Dragon, and Jack had become far too fond of that particular phrase. Watching shows with Jamie was fun, but nothing compared to messing with humans, especially when Jamie was trying not to laugh.
Jack pointed his staff at the probe again. Negative eight became negative fifteen.
Professor Rockard stared at it, then at the computer and back at the probe. Clearly annoyed that his equipment had chosen the beginning of the semester to fall apart, he checked every cable, restarted the program, switched outlets and eventually unplugged the entire thing.
Jack’s grin widened. Maybe this day wasn’t going to be so terrible after all.
"You know what this room needs?"
Jamie slowly looked at him.
"Don’t."
Jack was already pointing his staff at the ventilation grilles.
A cold breeze swept through the lecture hall. At first it was barely noticeable, just enough to make a few loose pages flutter, but then the temperature dropped. Students began rubbing their arms, someone pulled on a sweater and another student looked suspiciously toward the ceiling.
Professor Rockard abandoned his broken probe.
"Did someone change the thermostat?"
He started toward the controls when a single snowflake drifted past his face.
The professor stopped. Jack bit his lip while Jamie stared straight ahead, determined not to react.
Another flake fell, then another. Within seconds, snow began spilling from the air vents, softly at first, with only a few scattered flakes floating lazily through the room. Then more followed until a curtain of white was pouring over the seats.
The lecture hall erupted. Students grabbed their phones while others held out their hands, laughing as snowflakes landed in their palms. Jack watched with growing satisfaction.
Professor Rockard stared at the ceiling with the expression of a man who had just watched the laws of physics personally betray him.
"I’m going to ask everyone to leave the room calmly," he said at last, adjusting his glasses.
Nobody needed telling twice. Bags were packed, chairs scraped back and students crowded toward the exits, still filming the impossible indoor snowfall.
Jamie shoved his notebook into his bag and began to stand, but Jack grabbed the back of his shirt.
Jamie looked over his shoulder.
"What?"
"What?" Jack echoed innocently. "You seriously want to leave now that it’s finally getting interesting?"
A few minutes later, the lecture hall looked completely different. Snow covered the stairs, gathered between the rows and buried the seats beneath thick layers of white. More importantly, the steep rows of the auditorium had created a nearly perfect slope. They had stolen a sheet of plastic from beside a noticeboard.
The first attempt ended with Jamie crashing sideways into a row of seats. The second went considerably better, and by the third, Jamie had stopped pretending this was a terrible idea.
They flew down the snow-covered steps, yelling like lunatics, bounced off the side of one row, shot across the center aisle and finally crashed into a heap of powder at the bottom.
Jack landed flat on his back and spent the next few seconds trying to catch his breath, not because he was hurt, but because he was laughing too hard. Beside him, Jamie was in exactly the same state, and the moment their eyes met, they both dissolved into laughter again.
"I’m going to get expelled if someone finds me in here," Jamie finally managed.
Jack turned his head toward him. Jamie made absolutely no effort to get up. His cheeks were bright red from laughing, and snow had caught in his hair.
"You have to admit," Jack said proudly, "this is a pretty amazing start to the year."
Jamie watched the snow drifting down around them.
"It could be...But it’s missing one thing."
Jack immediately pushed himself up onto one elbow.
"Oh yeah? What?"
Jamie sat up too, while Jack was already imagining possibilities. Maybe he wanted a blizzard, an ice sculpture, or even the entire building frozen solid. Whatever it was, Jack felt fairly confident he could manage it. Jamie looked at him, properly looked at him, with an intensity Jack had never noticed before.
Before Jack could understand what was happening, Jamie leaned forward and pressed his lips to his.
Jack jerked back, his heart slamming against his ribs. For once in his life, absolutely nothing clever came to mind.
"Jamie, what are you… you…"
The words died somewhere between his brain and his mouth as the ringing in his ears suddenly grew louder. Jack swallowed. The lecture hall was buried in snow and he should have been freezing, yet he had never felt so hot.
His heart, which he could have sworn had stopped properly working three hundred years ago, was pounding so violently it almost hurt.
Jamie’s expression changed immediately.
"I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that."
Jack stared at him before taking a step back, then another. He needed distance. He needed enough space to think. Except the heat was getting worse, far worse, and this had nothing to do with embarrassment, the room or the sun outside. The heat was beneath his skin now, spreading through him and burning all the way down to his bones.
"Jamie…"
Jamie’s face blurred. Jack blinked several times, but it only made things worse. The walls seemed to move around him, the room tilted sideways and the ringing in his ears grew until it swallowed every other sound.
He tried to take a step and call Jamie’s name again, but his knees gave out.
"Jack!"
Jamie lunged toward him, though Jack could barely see him anymore. One last wave of heat tore through his body, and then everything went black.