Chronologically after my other RotG fics Naught and Embacle (in that order), but standalone. Merry Christmas everyone!

"You know, when I said to tell the wind if you're looking for me... I didn't realize you actually would."

Tooth turns at the sound of the familiar voice, and there he is, just as sprightly as ever, crouched perfectly at ease in the branches of the winter-bare tree she has been hovering beneath. Jack grins upon making eye contact, then resumes his mocking rant. "And on Christmas Eve, too!"

"Christmas Eve?" she repeats with a detached kind of wonder.

Jack chuckles at her words, at that endearing ditziness of hers that they underline. He can still remember her zipping around the rooftops that night, ecstatic and clumsy on her first field experience in centuries. Of course, Tooth would have noticed the Christmas decorations, having resumed personal teeth collection trips — an administratively troublesome decision that she justified to her fairies by mysteriously saying, "It's a little different up close" — but it isn't rare for Tooth to be so immersed in her work that she loses track of the precise time of year.

"Candy canes keeping your fairies busy?" he asks knowingly, climbing higher into the tree, such that she cannot look in his direction without the glare of the sun in her eyes.

For a moment before answering, she listens contentedly to the metronomic thuds of his staff inviting frost to form on the frozen wood. "The soft peppermint types are more popular this year, actually, so as long as the children remember to floss..." Her voice peters out as she's lost in thought. It's been so long, it seems, since she waved goodbye to him and the other Guardians after the restoration of her Tooth Palace. Despite her hectic duties as a Guardian, ever since she's known Jack, he's had a way of creeping into her thoughts, the way light skeins of mist gather around in winter mornings — barely perceptible at first, but soon thickening into a great fog that obscures essentially all else.

Yet now that she's asked him to meet her here, on what she regards as his frozen pond, she doesn't have a clue what she intended to say to him. She can dimly hear herself explaining how carbonated drinks can eat away at tooth enamel, and how she really doesn't approve of how children eat quite so many sugary cookies around Christmastime, especially if they sneak them from a jar while their parents are asleep and don't brush afterwards for fear they'll be caught because of the sound of water running... She actually starts to thoroughly enjoy telling him all this about her Guardian duties, and her voice lilts and dips as she speaks. All the while as she's talking, the taps of Jack's staff continue, as steady and patient as ever.

"Sorry," she finally says, stopping to catch her breath. She's been staring straight ahead over the pond, as if subconsciously afraid to look up and find the object of her embarrassingly frequent contemplation looking bored, or patronizing. "Am I rambling?"

"No, no, please," he's stunned into replying. The gentle thuds of wood on wood stop. "It's nice, listening to you talk about your work." Hearing Tooth expound such seemingly inane topics as the comparative damage done by sticky chocolates and boiled sweets, gives him a sort of pleasure, in that it's beyond doubt that unlike himself, she does not speak merely to ease the terrible haunting silence. "You really love what you do."

"Mm," she replies, a little unsure of how to respond to such a compliment. "Hey, you've been busy too. I heard you got the grumpy postman in Jamie's neighborhood to build a snowman with the kids." She pauses, reminded of something she's always wondered in the back of her mind. "What is that... thing you do?" she muses to herself.

She hasn't spoken very loudly at all, but the wintry wind carries Tooth's question within her companion's earshot. In a flurry of admittedly showy leaps, Jack descends to the bottommost branch of the bare tree he's been up. Reflexively Tooth shields her eyes from the snow that falls due to the brief disturbance; at the same time, Jack lazily lets himself dangle upside down from the bough, knees bent, so that when Tooth looks up again, their faces are a mere two inches apart.

He can't explain it, but right then and there he gets an irresistible urge to nip at her nose. Weird.

"What thing?" Jack inquires mirthfully, cocking his head to one side while peering at her with an air of intrigue. Tooth exhales deeply and slowly in an attempt to calm herself — but the movement of air makes those thick eyelashes of his flutter oh so delicately, and like a skittish horse she spooks. Rapidly losing her nerve, Tooth pulls backward with swift wing beats, an ability unique, Jack knows, to the hummingbird half of her.

It's one on a long (and continually growing) list of things that make her so special.

"Where you sort of blow on a snowflake, or snowball," Tooth begins to elaborate, though from a safer distance now, "and it makes people... happier, I guess? Like with Bunny in the Warren on Easter. With Sophie. How... how do you do that?"

Instead of a reply, however, Jack gives her a smile. It's playful and languorous and spreads from his lips to his eyes, where she finds it again as an intelligent twinkle that dares her to Guess.

"What, do you have mood-altering breath, or something?" Tooth blurts out at his look.

Jack bursts into a bout of laughter so violent that he almost falls out of his tree.

"It was the first thing that came to mind." Her tone is reproachful but her eyes are dancing. "Really unusual toothpaste," she tries again quickly.

"Seriously?" Jack gasps out in between chuckles. "Toothpaste? Toothpaste can make people wanna have fun?"

And there's that nose-nipping urge again, a sort of niggling at the back of his remains firmly seated there while Tooth giggles along with him. In the frigid air, her breath comes out as little puffs that condense on his cold skin. Jack lets out a final peal of laughter, more of an airy exhalation really, and his gaze focuses on her properly.

He sees, as if for the first time, the way her feathers are an eclectic hybridity of humming blue and sighing green. Against a winter backdrop of white snow and dark tree branches, she seems something so very lovely and iridescent, no matter what terrible tale she is the end-product of. Paradoxically, Toothiana — a grand name for a complex person — is to him simultaneously shrouded in mystery, and utterly trusting, keeping no secrets.

And she hears, as if for the first time, the echoes of his laughter in the light snowfall that begins. It's almost shy, dusting her with miniscule crystals that melt on her arms and trickle down in rivulets of delicious cold. For three hundred years, she reflects, not a single person knew what Jack Frost's laughter sounded like. But he never stopped.

"What if it really was toothpaste though?" Jack finally says, clearing his throat as if to put behind him the moment of mutual study.

"What do you mean?"

"Guess."

"Guess what?" She seems completely unconscious of her intrinsic beauty, the delicate way that her lips part, how her eyelashes flutter in endearing confusion.

"The flavor of my oh-so-special toothpaste."

The hook of his staff is suddenly around her waist. He waits a second as if checking her expression, or asking permission, before pulling her gently towards his lips. He kisses her, upside down, and her wing beats pass as vibrations from her own body into his. In the short duration of contact Jack realizes she's humming, the sound bubbly and enlivening — much like Tooth herself. He slides his hand to the crook of his staff so it cups her waist. She shivers, then, fluffing up her feathers as though to keep warm.

Immediately Jack pulls away, refusing to meet her gaze. "Sorry," he says, the word a grimace. "Sorry. You're cold, aren't you?" The emphasis makes the question sound like he's accusing himself of some heinous offence.

"It's alright," Tooth stalls, trying hard to stop herself from shivering. "You taste like ice cream," she says lightheartedly. It happens to be true, though she knows in that moment she would have said almost anything to wipe away the guilt on his face.

"Ice cream's not a flavor," Jack corrects her, the seriousness still darkening his look, but with a widening smile to counter it. "You're going to have to be more specific."

"Let me guess again," Tooth finds herself ready to say. He's only too eager to comply.

It's years later that Jack realizes he never got a proper answer out of her.

"Really?" Tooth seems surprised, but then her expression turns to one of smugness, and she drily notes, "Well. I did get sort of distracted from guessing when you nipped my nose, did a happy dance in midair, and then flew off, whooping incoherently." There's a beat as they both relive the moment — Jack looking only a little sheepish about his barely concealed ecstasy at the time — then she says, "You'd be a fun sort of ice-cream flavor. Something sweet and crazy."

"'Rainbow Snowcone'?" Jack suggests the first thing that comes to mind.

He's expecting at least some amusement at the spontaneity, but Tooth merely looks thoughtful and declares, "Sounds about right."

(She doesn't tire of guessing though. He'll always be a puzzle, and she's his missing piece.)

'Tis the season to be cheesy, fa la la la la, la la la la. Look out for Frozen fics from me!

m.e.