Bunny revealed his marriage gardens to the rest of the Guardians, to general joy – something Jack was pleased to find he could sense easier and easier in others as time went on.
Jack was pretty sure the others celebrated the completion of the garden in a very adult manner after he left, given the way they'd been looking at each other before he'd left.
Jack wasn't quite ready for that – didn't think he would be until he said 'yes' officially. He was still at the kissing and cuddling stage of physical affection, and happy to be there.
Given the way the others had been acting, it didn't look like he'd have to give that up once they moved on. He'd been a touch worried about that. Some people seemed to think that kisses and cuddling were a step towards sex that was left behind after that stage was hit, which was very silly to Jack's way of thinking. It was too much fun – and gave him too much peace and joy – to quit just because there were other options available.
Kissing them was an experience. Bunny didn't care to – his mouth wasn't shaped for it – but he liked nuzzling and cuddling. Tooth and Sandy couldn't seem to get enough of it, very eager to spend a long time with slow, often giggly make outs that left them all breathless.
Kissing North took time to get used to – a tiny voice kept yelling at Jack that "That's Santa Claus you filthy pervert!"
Once he got that voice to be quiet, it was really, really nice, though.
Katherine's kisses were sweet, as sweet as sitting and talking with her for hours, and kissing Nightlight left them both glittering with frost and glowing with starlight.
The meeting after Bunny revealed his gardens was held at the Tooth Palace, at Tooth's request, so she could show them all the mural Bunny had helped her to re-paint – a mural that put Jack in his proper place with the rest of them, in the spot she'd seen that seemed to have been left just for him.
Katherine brought up the letters at that meeting – Jack had just been going to prank some of them for what they'd written, without bothering anyone else with them. A little return for the manipulative, nasty things they'd managed to hide under formal, polite language.
It seemed there were a few spirits still harboring grudges or no pleased about Jack's sudden rise to prominence, and a few more who thought he'd still be unbalanced enough to be used, or even thought that being with the Guardians meant that he had to at least pretend to be too mature to retaliate.
Well, he'd had his feet under himself before he met the Guardians, and now he had an anchor to return to after a flight of fancy, so they were wrong.
And if they'd thought the Guardians would stop Jack from getting them back, they were even more wrong. Maybe they weren't going to help with the pranking itself (most of them...Nightlight was almost certain to tag along) but they had information Jack didn't that was going to make this so much more effective.
Most of them were spirits that took themselves very seriously at all times, and they all woke up to the most juvenile, ridiculous pranks over the next week. Ice down their backs, little paperclips with googly eyes taped to notes all over their homes, short sheets, tickled faces and hands full of shaving cream. Silliness, in lives that were proud of their solemnity.
There was little Jack could have done that would have angered them more, and left them with fewer ways to retaliate. It was one prank apiece, each prank something silly and light that did little more than make them look silly briefly and mildly disrupt their day. It was their overreactions that drew attention and made spirits laugh at them.
