Coffee and Fruit Snacks 20
Title: First Date
Series: Rise of the Guardians
Characters/Pairings: Jack Frost/Pitch Black
Genre: Humor, Romance
Rating: T, probably
Comments/Warnings: Dating is weird and Jack is not used to this.
Jack had felt more uncomfortable in his life, but he hadn’t been planning to revisit those feelings so soon. This had to be the fanciest restaurant he had ever been in. There weren’t even prices on the menu. Jack was terrified. Of the menu. He was terrified of the menu. He wasn’t even sure he could afford the water.
He was just wondering if it would be worth the embarassment to clarify to the waiter that he wanted the free water when Pitch spoke up and broke him out of his thoughts, “I’m not sure if I feel like beef or pasta tonight. Anything standing out to you?”
Jack was so nervous, he answered honestly, “The lack of prices.”
Pitch started to laugh, but cut himself short when he looked up and saw the wide-eyed fright on Jack’s face. Oh. He was serious.
“You don’t have to worry about it,” Pitch soothed, “I’ll cover it.”
“But that’s not right. I should pay my half,” Jack argued.
“Why?” Honestly, Pitch found that thought ridiculous, “Because I have nearly endless funds and you work for every penny? Because I don’t even think about money but you can’t stop? That means I definitely shouldn’t just handle this so you can relax?”
The slow blush creeping up Jack’s neck was adorable, as was the half-shocked, half-stubborn look on his face. He was actually going to argue this, Pitch realized.
“It’s not about that.”
“Then what’s it about?”
“It’s about… independence. About taking care of myself.”
His tone was so sure, so absolute in his certainty that he was correct. Pitch didn’t know the whole story, but he imagined this was very important to Jack. He should probably handle this carefully, if not delicately.
Because he definitely wasn’t going to handle it seriously. “You mean the way you cook all my meals, clean my dorm, file my paperwork, and organize our schedules?”
“Uh,” Jack started uncertainly, “I mean, I do a lot of that for me, really, so…”
Pitch rolled his eyes, “You know most people get paid for that kind of work, right?”
“...If it’s their job, maybe…”
“It practically was, Jack. We traded services for food and living space; that’s a kind of job. But nevermind that,” Pitch waved his hand dismissively, “because we’re dating now, therefore I owe you nothing for the sweet gesture of cooking me breakfast, except that I would be an asshole if that meant I wouldn’t even buy you dinner.” Pitch gave him a pointed look and continued, “So stop worrying about it and let me buy you dinner, Jack. The money doesn’t matter to me, but you enjoying yourself does. Get whatever you want. I’ll cover it.”
“Fine,” Jack conceded, turning away to re-read the list of potential dinners in front of him, “but I’m not doing the bratty thing and buying the most expensive thing on the menu.”
“I hardly care, Jack,” Pitch rolled his eyes, “I’m not trying to flaunt my money. I’m saying the money doesn’t matter. Get what you want.”
“I heard you, I heard you. Stop ordering me around.”
“I will when you order your food.”
“Promises, promises. What’re you having?”
“I think the pasta I was considering before.”
“Good. That sounds great. We’ll have that.”
“Both of us?”
“We’ll split it.”
“...You aren’t trying to trick me into going cheap, are you?”
A mock gasp, “Pitch! Now would I do that?”
“Just for that, we’re ordering every dessert.”
“Now you’re just flaunting your money…”
Arguing aside, once Jack got over the surprise pricing, dinner went as it always did, minus worrying about the dishes later and the undergrad had to admit, that was a plus. He did make a point of swiping the check just to see what the damage was and openly winced in pain before handing it back. Those desserts had really hurt.
Jack supposed having a sugar daddy for a boyfriend wasn’t so bad. He didn’t feel like the no good leech he thought he would letting someone else pay for him, the way he had every time in the past. Jack could easily think too hard about it, but he would rather enjoy the rest of his night, so he looped his arm around the crook of Pitch’s elbow and allowed himself to be led home, instead.
But on the way, flashing, colored lights made sure Jack looked up. They were the kind of garish you couldn’t ignore, then brought a smile to your face when you saw them. There was longing in his expression, even as he rested his head more resolutely on Pitch’s shoulder and kept moving.
The lights couldn’t be ignored, however, so Pitch saw them too, and the look on Jack’s face.
“Do you want to go inside?”
Jack blinked out of the daze the arcade lights had put him in. They were mesmerizing, but he was on a date, “I thought we were going home?”
Pitch chuckled, “We were, but we don’t have to be. It’s still early and we’ve both done class on less sleep, so.” He paused, and gestured with his free arm at the bright entrance through which countless games could be seen, “Do you want to go in?”
Jack was not used to this. The idea of spending so much money and then, on the way home, choosing to spend even more money. There had always been a lot of planning to the way Jack spent his money on past-times, a finite time and spending limit to keep him within the bounds of being able to eat the next week.
But Pitch was footing the bill, and Pitch had no such limits.
With a little smile and an uncertain nod, Jack answered, “Yeah. Yeah, I do. C’mon!”
Arcades weren’t run on quarters, anymore. Jack felt rusty even just buying tokens, but Pitch was right at home. Getting off the ground was a little awkward as Jack tried to remember what games he was even good at, but flitting from game to game to game became half of the fun.
Jack was still terrible at skeeball, but he didn’t remember that until he was terrible once again at skeeball. Pitch was unfairly good at the basketball, until Jack started poking him in the side in the middle of throws just to fuck him up. They found an ancient relic of a game, based on a movie, that had been around at least fifteen years and as soon as Jack sat in the seat, he remembered how much he loved it and just how good he used to be at it.
He played the whole thing all the way through, Pitch generously paying to bring him back to life every time it was game over. Caught up in the action, the challenge, the way he played on despite the ache in his hands, Jack didn’t realize until the credits scrolled that he was actually kind of… lonely, playing all this time by himself.
He let the euphoria of a game well-played feed the smile on his face as he rested in the seat, but as soon as his heart slowed down, as soon as his hands were capable of free movement again, he looked up to the man he owed this night to, “How about we find something we can play together?”
“Sounds wonderful,” Pitch answered with an excited grin, and that was when Jack knew his boyfriend must have been bored even if he said nothing about it and let Jack continue to play. Fuck, he was lucky. “Any good at mowing down dinosaurs?”
“No idea,” Jack replied as he hopped out of the seat, freeing it up for the next obsessee, “Let’s find out!”
The first thing they found out was that Pitch didn’t really fit. Jack snorted a laugh as his boyfriend folded himself damn near in half trying to crawl into the little egg of a theater, nudging the curtains closed behind him. Pitch took up three-quarters of the bench, but Jack really didn’t mind that there was a leg between his legs and he discovered soon enough that it didn’t effect Pitch’s ability to aim, so what was there to complain about?
Jack turned out to be pretty good at mowing down dinosaurs, if not as good as Pitch, but the real winner here was every time one of them died and the spectacular ways in which they might have done so. It would be a special memory between them, when Jack straight up missed everything and collapsed laughing on Pitch’s knee to a mantra of, “Press the button. Press the button! God damn it, Jack, I can’t do this without you! Press the fucking button!” as the timer to continue playing ominously counted down.
Pitch got him back by leaving an entire room of dinosaurs to Jack alone for the full ten seconds that he could, but by the time they were both dead near the end of the game, it seemed they’d had their fill. Pitch laid his arm along the back of the bench and Jack took the cue, leaning into his side when he asked, “Time to move on, you think?”
“My hands feel pretty fucked,” the older man nodded, “How about yours?”
Jack laughed as he shook his out, snuggling closer since they weren’t playing on, “I could use a rest, yeah.”
As Pitch’s second arm left the plastic gun to wrap around him, Jack closed his eyes to appreciate the carefree comfort he had never had before. It was rapidly becoming obvious to him why some people spent every free moment of their lives looking for this. Jack still had obligations that were more important to him, but Pitch…
Warm lips pressed against his, and Jack leaned eagerly into that, too. They left as fast as they came, but Jack’s eyes were open now, staring up into a metallic gaze that reflected the changing colors of an intro screen. Pitch was being absolutely amazing tonight and Jack didn’t think twice about climbing his boyfriend’s chest, about tangling one hand into that dark hair to pull him back down for a longer, hotter kiss.
Jack still didn’t think he was any good at this, but Pitch seemed plenty enthused, so he didn’t worry about it. Worry belonged elsewhere in his life, but not here. He licked into Pitch’s mouth, testing out the feel of pressing his tongue against Pitch’s, against his teeth, against his lips. It was all still so new, but Pitch, he was so great, he made Jack feel as if they’ve been doing this forever. And he lost himself to it, for the first time that he could remember relying on someone else to keep aware and have his back just in case anything went wrong.
Which turned out to be a lesson of its own kind when an awkward voice interrupted them, “Um, I, uh… Are you gonna play, or…?”
Jack shot to the other side of the bench, except his legs were still tangled with Pitch’s, and he looked like an idiot.
But Pitch was unphased, extracting his feet from Jack and picking up their bucket of tickets with a pleasant smile, “No, sorry, we’ll move out of your way.”
Jack did not have that kind of grace, “Sorry! We’re sorry,” apologizing at least five times as he fled the scene, tripping over the step on his way through the curtain. He was mortified. He didn’t do things like this. He wasn’t the kind of teenager to be caught making out in a dark corner of an arcade, and as he rubbed his face to remove the last traces of the daze Pitch’s lips had had him in, he wondered how that could have changed.
To Pitch, it was one of the cutest things he had ever seen. Jack, who always handled everything like a professional, was freaking the fuck out over making out, of all things. It was hard not to smile, so he didn’t try. That is, until Jack turned on him.
“How could we let that happen?” he demanded, crowding up close so he didn’t have to raise his voice. Pitch was sure it would look like furious whispering to an outside party. “Why weren’t we paying attention? I can’t believe we just let that get away from us.”
Here was where the lesson was, when Pitch merely wrapped an arm around him to steer him away and explained, “I was a little bit busy kissing you, but what’s the worst that happened, Jack? So a couple people saw us.”
Jack let himself be tucked into Pitch’s side, turning his mortification outward again when he twisted his fingers in the hem of Pitch’s shirt, “What if they’d been upset?”
“Then that would be their problem,” Pitch declared, finding a spot between consoles to stop and regroup for a moment, “What we were doing is not illegal and it is not our life’s mission to be inoffensive.”
Jack chose this time to bury his face in Pitch’s chest. It was still a carefree comfort, whatever else, “What if it had gotten back to the college?”
“What we were doing is not illegal,” Pitch reminded, “and you can bet that I would hire the best lawyers to ensure there were no negative repercussions for you from being with me. Not only would that be unfair, but I would feel like a dick, so.”
Jack laughed against Pitch’s collarbone. It was so like him to end an eloquent argument with the word, ‘Dick.’
Amused as he was, Jack had to point out, “It isn’t right for me to change who I am because I can hide behind your money.”
“You’re changing nothing,” and Pitch was surprised that Jack even thought he was, “You’re relaxing the reins because your situation isn’t as dire. You’re enjoying life,” Pitch emphasized, tilting Jack’s chin up because this was just as important as making out, if not more, “and you just happen to be enjoying it with me.”
For silent seconds, Jack let himself admire how Pitch looked in the dark. The way the bright lights deepened the contours of his cheekbones and reflected off of his hair. But his boyfriend got away with everything; Jack couldn’t let him have it easy here, too. “Are you a secret romantic?” he teased, “I think you’re a secret romantic.”
Pitch’s eyes widened, “It’s not a secret.”
Jack laughed again, but hid it by pressing his face into Pitch’s neck, “That’s all so easy for you to say. You’ve had money all your life. You’ve done nothing but enjoy. How can I take advice about being responsible from you? Honestly?”
Pitch’s long arms wrapped tightly around Jack’s shoulders. It was hard to admit, but, “I wish you didn’t have such a good point.”
Fuck it all, but Pitch conceding somehow just made his argument sound better, “You have a good point, too.”
“So then,” Pitch ventured, resting his head against Jack’s, “can we at least agree that, for now, it’s not a problem?”
It was a bridge they could cross when they actually came to it, “For now.”
“And play more games?”
Of course. Jack smirked. “Air hockey?”
Suddenly Pitch had Jack at arm’s length, staring deep into his eyes.
“Jack Frost, I think I love you.”
After an intense mini-tournament Jack held against himself on the beer pong simulator, the worst teamwork video games have ever seen taking down zombies, and far too much money spent gambling with tokens on a hypnotic chance game, they took their tickets to the counter and discovered they didn’t have enough for anything a person would actually want.
So they settled for the stuff nobody wanted.
Pitch picked himself up a mug with the arcade’s logo on it and Jack spent the rest of the tickets on multiple ‘build your own straw’ kits that did not look like they would work at all. Jack maintained that wasn’t the point.
When they settled down to build straws and split a milkshake for second-dessert, Jack was struck with a feeling of deja vu that left him breathless. When he was sitting down in that fancy restaurant earlier that night, thinking that was all this date would be, he had no idea that a few hours later the entire experience would be flipped on its head and he’d have the best night of his life so far.
The awkwardness had melted away, the potential guilt was completely gone, there was milkshake dripped all over the table, and the night wasn’t even over yet. This time, when they finally decided to start heading home, Jack didn’t find himself rationalizing that it hadn’t been so bad. He found himself smiling, exhausted, a little sore, and excited for next time.
Dating had never been like this. Jack remembered nothing but pressure and money he didn’t have. Expectations that weren’t worth his time when he had his future and a little sister to worry about. Sex had never been a good enough reward for putting up with the circus, but the pure, simple happiness that Jack felt in that moment was hard to beat.
Clearly, Jack’s high school had been doing relationships wrong.
(Or maybe Jack had just been waiting for someone like Pitch.)
Pitch, who upon reaching the dorm spun on his heels to lean against the door with his hands trapped behind him in a mockery of bashfulness. Pitch, who after a night full of fun and laughs and joy wasn’t done being silly. Pitch, who batted his eyelashes and looked down shyly, but gave himself away by the smirk on his lips, and shrugged, “Well, this is me…”
Jack bit his lip to keep down his smile. There wasn’t a thing in the world that could keep him from playing along. “I guess this is goodnight, then.”
“Can I invite you in for coffee?”
Something changed in Pitch’s gaze and it took Jack a second to realize he was being seduced. Holy shit, how was he doing that? The man had barely moved and yet Jack knew, could read it all over him, that Pitch’s invitation was for a whole lot more than coffee.
A fact that might have bothered Jack if he didn’t know in his soul that Pitch was only showing off that he could.
So Jack showed off that he wouldn’t fall for it, all the while pretending to fall for it. With a half-step closer but a glance back down the hall, Jack tentatively replied, "I can't stay long. I really have to get home..."
The spell broke when Pitch’s arms latched around Jack’s body and pulled him in with a wide grin. If nothing else, Jack knew he’d passed the test, but honestly, who was keeping score? Somehow he got the door open and the next thing Jack knew, they were falling backwards into the kitchenette, warmth at his back and soft breath at his ear.
"Don’t be silly, Jack. You are home.”