Chapter Text
The workshop of North Pole never slept, but today, it felt unusually loud.
Jack leaned against a carved wooden pillar, arms crossed, watching North boom across the room, laughing as yetis scrambled under his commands.
“Jack! You come, you help!” North called, tossing a half-finished toy his way.
Jack caught it easily, spinning it once in his fingers. “You’ve got, like, fifty yetis. Pretty sure you’re covered.”
North approached anyway, boots thudding. “Da, but they are not you.”
Jack shrugged. “Lucky them.”
North didn’t laugh this time. He studied Jack, really studied him. Jack shifted, suddenly aware of the way his fingers tightened around his staff.
“You are… quieter,” North said. “Storm without thunder.”
“I’m always like this.”
“Nyet.”
Jack scoffed, stepping back. “Okay, Dr. Feelings, relax.”
North stepped closer, slower now. “When spirit aches, sometimes body must remember…” he opened his arms slightly, voice softer, “warmth.”
Jack froze.
For half a second- just half, something flickered across his face. Something uncertain.
Then his expression snapped back into place.
“Yeah, hard pass,” Jack said lightly, stepping back. Frost spiraled at his feet. “I don’t do…whatever this is.”
Before North could respond, Jack dissolved into a gust of icy wind and vanished through the open ceiling.
North lowered his arms, frowning.
“…Storm running from fire,” he muttered.