#rapnuzel

“There’s no way you’re comfortable.”  She says in her Scottish lilt, ripping some grass from the ground and shoving it in his face.  He falls off the curb, chuckling and brushing it off.

He shrugs, “It goes to show that I’m just that much cooler than you.”

All three of them groan and even Hiccup’s dog, Toothless, seems annoyed. 

“She has a point.  Just looking at you is making me hot.”  Hiccup scratched Toothless’ head to appease him.

Jack opened his mouth, probably to make another joke, but Merida grinned and shoved some of the fallen leaves they’d collected in his face.  Rapqunzel laughed, despite knowing they’d have to find some more ‘perfect’ specimens of fallen leaves for the project she was working on.

But she laughed and picked up those leaves, even though a few of them were ripped and cracked now.

“Leave’ em,”  Merida said, ignoring the way Jack grinned, “we’ll find some better ones later, Punzie.”

“But these one’s mean more.”  She held one up to the sun, looking at the pattern in the leaf.  Like it held some truth.  “The cracks are like…um…cracks in ribs from laughing.”

“I’m going to write that down for when you’re famous and they’re interviewing me and ask when I knew you were pretentious enough to be an artist.”  Jack said, pulling her close as he did and following her gaze.

“Or, it’s the cracked ribs from you mysteriously being thrown off a cliff.”  The blonde said, scarily serious.  Both Hiccup and Merida snorted.  Jack held his hands up in surrender.  Rapunzel broke and started laughing, throwing her hands around him.

Jack looked surprised for an instant (he always looked surprised when anyone hugged him—which is why they always did, especially Punzie) but hugged her back.  And then started tickling her.

“Jack!”  She squealed, beating his back.  He then knelt, basically throwing her over his shoulder.  “Put me down!”

Merida moved to help her but stopped, just for a moment.  The sun was setting behind trees with leaves tipped in gold.  Toothless was joining in on Jack and Rapunzel’s fun, barking and running around them.  Hiccup was doing his best to make sure the black dog didn’t trip Jack and kill his friends, his prosthetic leg—the one he won some engineering award for—glinting in the sun.

It was beautiful in the way her family was. Transcending the awful things that built them. 

They were on Repunzel’s family’s land.  Her real family, who loved her to death but never locked her up.  There was a small cabin they’d given to their daughter and they’d all commandeered it, as friends do.

It was where they were headed for the night before the real world called them back.

“Put me down!”

“Nah.”

And then he stalked off like he wasn’t carrying another person like a sack of potatoes.

“That’s gonna come back to bite you later, you know.”  Hiccup said as Toothless leapt after Jack, staying at his heels as he looked adoringly at Rapunzel as she went between demanding to be let down and giggling madly as the dog barked at her.

“Nah.  She’s enjoying it.”

“I was talking about Eugene—when Merida tells him.”  Hiccup snapped his fingers and Toothless ran back, running a circle around his master before running back to Jack—past him to the cabin.

Jack turned, staring at Merida—who was smirking.

“No, no.  You’d start it again?  Don’t you remember what happened last time?”

“He has a point.  We nearly all got expelled.  There are about fifty new rules because of that prank war.” 

Merida laughed.  “It was worth it, wasn’t it?”

Jack grinned wildly and started off at a run, Rapunzel screaming.

  --

  The best part of the cabin was the porch roof.  You could either stay up there or you could climb up to the very top.  Both the porch roof and the actual roof were slanted shallowly enough that it wasn’t hard to stay up there.  Even Toothless could get on the roof, it was so accessible.

It was their place even more than the cabin.  Staring at the sky for hours while talking—or not talking.  No one could make fun of them for their platonic hand-holding or how Jack would flinch away from people or how Hiccup constantly would fidget with his prosthetic leg.  Or Merida’s accent.  Or the way Rapunzel still wasn’t used to her short hair or the way she wasn’t used to hair that wasn’t blonde.

When Jack stood up suddenly, his feet bare even though the roof was cold.  He moved fluidly, like he wasn’t on a roof, and jumped down to the porch roof.  Climbed through the window.  No one objected because it was Jack and he would come back.

And he did.  Holding a bundle in his hands.  The jerk didn’t have to use his hands to climb. 

“What’cha got there?”

Merida got a heavy piece of cloth thrown at her face for her troubles it took only a moment to recognize the sweatshirt she’d bought him for his birthday (they all had because they were dorks) with the Scottish flag plastered on it. 

“You’re all cold, right?”

They didn’t say thank you, they only put on his sweatshirts and pulled him back into their puddle.

Hiccup named the stars for them.  And then they made their own.