Here's a little sample of the BenneFrost magnum opus I'm working on. I might start posting bits and pieces of it. Saw Nose-Nippin's post and that nudged me into posting.
His first believer would get to what was on his mind soon enough. To give him time, Jack started reacquainting himself with the room. He hadn’t been able to visit since last winter. Constant communication countered his old urges for giving Burgess unseasonable cold snaps. Jamie’s bedroom was just as messy as ever, though it was becoming more a busy teenager’s mess than a kid’s debris. Gone were the stuffed animals and action figures, replaced with more books and a computer. Jack was pleased to confirm most were of a fantastical nature, though there were a few on not-pseudo-science and writing, which was new.
“Planning on becoming a writer, Jamie?” he asked, his small reserve of patience evaporated.
“Yes, but, ugh, never mind,” Jamie grouched, face falling into his hands.
Jack dropped his teasing demeanour (or at least most of it), sensing Jamie was wobbling on cracked ice – at least in his mind. Careful as spinning feather frost, Jack lifted Jamie’s chin.
“Jamie. I am here for you, to listen, to play, to do whatever. As long as you believe–” Jack touched a finger to Jamie’s lips forestalling the boy's interjection “–No, you can’t promise, it doesn’t work that way. Anyway, I’m here and you have something you need to share. You sent me two hundred and six messages asking when I’d be here in the last week. This must be important.”
“This time you are going to leave,” Jamie mumbled morosely but nevertheless walked to his computer with something approaching resolve.
“I didn’t leave when you told me you like guys a little more than girls, did I?” Jamie responded with a minute nod. “And even when I do go away, I always come back. Remember the sun behind the clouds.”
If he was honest, Jack would admit that he hadn’t been instantly accepting of Jamie’s orientation. Not that he thought there was anything wrong with Jamie. It was just something he hadn’t had to think about as a spirit – sure he’d seen people being... amorous, but no contact with anyone meant deeper relationships were beyond his concern. In fact, he’d avoided thinking about it since that led to dreams of finding someone which made the heart-break of invisibility even worse.
None of that had been helped by his newly recovered memories including sermons on the sanctity of marriage of man and wife. So it took him a little while to resolve his feelings on the matter. Well not his feelings, they’d always been supportive of Jamie but his thoughts which were much trickier.
“Well,” Jamie began, softly but growing stronger has Jack gave him his undivided attention. “School’s currently obsessed with this “Perfect Hottie” app. It shows you a bunch of celebrity pics and gets you to choose your favourite parts of each. Then it merges them together. Well I tried it, but the result kind of (though maybe it shouldn’t’ve) surprised me.” He held up a hand, cutting Jack off, “and no. You can’t see it yet.”
Jack pouted outrageously but let Jamie continue.
“Anyway, I decided to do a bit of a test. Got to search for the truth and all that, right? I got photos of my exes and crushes, and spliced my favourite bits of them together.”
“That’s kinda creepy, you know? Right?”
“Shut up.”
Jamie spun his chair round to his PC and pulled up a window. Sure Jack was basically computer literate, but he cared more for surfing the internet and sharing funny videos with Jamie. He had over a hundred followers on Tumblr! But he’d never done any photo-manipulation like Jamie. He had an idea what Photoshop looked like, but no idea how to use it.
“Wait, did you make a slideshow for this?”
“Yes, now stop pointing out my nerdiness and pay attention!”
“Sir, yes sir.”
“Better,” Jamie harrumphed. He tapped and the picture of a fairly cute girl appeared. Dirty blond, blue eyes. “First we have Alice, I met her at the party. I think you were freezing the drinks.”
“Yes, yes. Your first girlfriend. You two were sickening. Seriously, Tooth was afraid for both your teeth.”
“Anyway,” fighting down an odd cringe/blush combo, the boy continued, “The best things I liked about her were her eyes.”
Jamie tapped and Alice’s eyes faded. Being replaced by–
“Pippa,” Jack growled, glaring at the picture of a hatless Pippa. He couldn’t ever remember seeing her like that himself. Something about the hair bothered him.
“Relax, jeeze. It’s been a couple years now.”
“She hurt you.”
“Maybe we could have broken up better. But she dumped me for the same reason Alice did. They got sick of not being my first priority. Perhaps we shouldn’t have got together. We’d already drifted apart once, it happening again shouldn’t be surprising.”
Jack huffed. That girl, she’d hurt Jamie. And he couldn’t forgive that. But, that was old news. “So what did you see in her?”
“Well besides wanting to be friends again. Two things mainly. I thought her nose was really cute. And the rare time she took her beanies or caps off, her hair.”
Another tap and fade. The third picture was of a very boyish boy (was that redundant?) and Jack thought he probably always would. Big cheeks, dorky sticky out ears but a fairly hard expression. If the winter sprite recalled correctly, the kid had a bit of a complex about not being taken seriously or being mistaken for younger than he was.
“Max next.” Jack snarked, then complete with air quotes, “the “let’s just be friends” break up.”
“Yep, and don’t be like that. He is a good friend. Honestly looking back–”
“–It’s been three months, not three decades Jams.”
“I know that. Anyway, pairing up just because we both liked guys was probably a bad idea. We are better as just friends.” Jamie shrugged and offered, “for Max, I guess what I liked most were his ears.”
“Really? Those dishes?”
Jamie smothered a laugh, but carried on, “And his jaw. Very kissable.”
“I know what you're doing.”
Jamie just gave his best innocent expression and a “What? Me?” kind of noise.
“Yes, you. Now can we speed this up? I want to see what your “Perfect Hottie” looks like already.”
“Okay, okay. Well it’s hardly a face yet. So I just went looking through what pics I could get my hands on.”
“Definitely not creepy, at all.”
Jamie started paging through more pictures, going pausing long enough to name them and mention a couple of things. Each favoured aspect flying to wait at the edge of the screen.
“That’s Eric, I liked his smile. Besides being a senior when I was a sophomore, he was a bully.
“Jasmine, well actually it was more her legs but her neck too. Closeted lesbian for sure.
“Mr Spruce–”
“–Your swim coach? Should I be calling someone?”
“No. I think with him it was, well, he’s only thirty but has white hair.”
“I still feel I should be concerned.”
“I thought you wanted me to hurry up?”
Jack zippered his lips and threw away the key. Just a couple more faces and it was time for the big reveal. He could tell that Jamie’s nerves had returned, especially now his first believer was staring at the screen rather than him. So he reached over to squeeze a shoulder in support. He had a suspicion where this was going.
Tap. The pieces arranged themselves.
Tap. They resized to fit together better.
Tap. The colours changed to match.
“Okay, that’s more than kinda creepy.”
“What, only being attracted to the bits of people that remind me of you?”
“Uh, no that’s flattering.” Jack leaned one way and another. “I meant the way it doesn’t look quite right. Like I melted or something.”
“Do you know what this means?”
“I’ve apparently ruined you for all mortals?”
“Jack, please be serious. I wrote out a similar list about things other than looks and got the same thing.”
He spun around to meet Jack’s for once serious look.
“I'm fairly sure I'm in love with you Jack Frost.”
Jack had been expecting that as Jamie’s presentation continued. He could easily say that he loved Jamie. His First Light was basically the most important person in the world to him. But he’d never really thought of him like that. Brother and best friend? Naturally. Romantically? That had been a banned line of thought.
What could he say? He could see them fitting together, and staying that way until they grew old. But, Jack wouldn’t, would he? He was going to lose Jamie someday. It would hurt even worse if he gave Jamie this.
Jack leant toward and grabbed his favourite’s shoulders. Jamie was looking at him with an understanding yet hopeful expression.
“I'm sorry,” Jack whispered, unable to offer anything more, “I’ll be back, I promise.”
“I know.”
The locked window proved no great barrier to his flight.
