#ryanwriting

Hey there! So, ah, funny story. I wrote the whole thing and then uhhhh never published it. Got cold feet. But your ask gave me a bit of courage, and so:

Here is chapter one of o2nwas! I'll be posting chapters as I edit them, roughly a week at a time. It'll be three chapters long, plus a fourth of bonus content I cut, but really enjoyed writing. My ao3 os Hyryraeth. Happy reading!

Jack is going to catch his secret admirer this time.

He ate dinner long after sunset to keep his energy up. He made a pot of coffee and downed half of it with a grimace, despite his mother's complaints. Hell, he was even out in the field in the dead of night barefoot, his toes turning numb with the cold press of dirt. 

He’s starting to regret that last one. He glances down at his toes, wiggling them to check that they still listen to him. Indeed, they wiggle.

Jack isn’t sure how long he’ll have to wait or if his admirer will come tonight at all. But seeing Hiccup the other day, holding the flower meant for him, had filled him with some feverish desire to finally catch the person in the act. Hiccup was proof that this person did exist. For whatever reason, there’s someone who holds affection for Jack.

The thought warms his face (though, regretfully, it does nothing for his poor feet). Someone holding affection for him. He, Jack, the shepherd boy, who’s made the mistake of biting Hiccup once when they’d gotten too into their wrestling match. 

Someone holds affection for him.

The moon is just a skinny slip of light, itty bitty in the inkblot sky. Jack tilts his chin up to it regardless, leaning a little heavier on his staff as he watches shadows of midnight black cross the sky. Likely clouds, but maybe a flock of birds or a late-night dragon hunt. Jack scans the shadow for any indication it’s a group of dragons, even as his thoughts tumble away from the present.

He’s been thinking about his admirer, sure, but ever since he’d caught Hiccup with the flower, he’s also been struck by the realization that he’ll have a chance to spend more time with Hiccup. A trip to the mountains, or even to the dragon village, would surely be easier if he asked his admirer to take him there. 

Not that he hasn’t asked Hiccup before. He has, on several occasions. But Hiccup tends to get stuttery anytime Jack hints at finally meeting the dragon riders Hiccup talks so fondly of, so Jack doesn’t push.

Well. He pushes a little. But not too much, or too often. Just a bit of pushing here and there, especially when he isn’t being trailed by Emily. 

The thought of Emily makes him frown.

Emily is—well. She’s Emily, which means she’s always saying things, and not all of them are truthful. So when she’d told Jack it was Hiccup leaving him all those gifts, he’d immediately assumed she was messing with him. Hiccup is a friend! A friend who has important things to do for his tribe, important responsibilities. (Besides that, Jack has seen how Hiccup talks about his “friend” Astrid. He’s pretty sure she’s more than a friend, but he doesn’t have any theories as to why Hiccup would be shy on that one.)

The moon whispers out from behind the moving shadow, and Jack’s spirits sink a little at the wispy shapes that pass over its crescent form. Just a cloud. 

Blowing his bangs from his forehead with a huff, Jack leans further against his staff, his spine giving a small pop between his shoulder blades as he adjusts his weight. “You think they’ll come tonight?” He asks the sheep. The sheep don’t respond. Jack is sure one day he’ll get them to crack. Hiccup doesn’t seem to think so, but Jack is on a mission to prove him wrong.

Jack lowers his eyes from the moon, gaze pulled like a leaf on the wind to the crook of his staff. He’d taken the flower Hiccup had half crushed and woven the stem of it around the wooden crook, mostly as a way to preserve the flower since it was too damaged to last more than a day. Staring at the stem, Jack lets his thoughts turn idly.

There’s something weird about the whole thing.

Why would Emily lie to him? She’s never tried messing with his feelings before. Getting out of chores and passing blame is her usual MO. They rib one another, but at the end of the day, they’re siblings; Jack sneaks her extra cookies from the cookie jar after dinner, and Emily double checks his bed decoy is still in place on nights Jack sneaks out to the pasture to lie under the moon. She’d never lie to him about something like this.

And now that Jack is thinking about it, why had Hiccup been holding the flower? Had he seen it next to Jack and picked it up? That had been Jack’s assumption when he’d (been very rudely) woken up, but now . . .

“I’m sure he will,” Jack says to the sheep. He can’t remember what he’d been telling the sheep, but talking out loud always helps, especially when his thoughts are as scrambled as they are now. Groaning in frustration, he straightens up from his lean against his staff—

—only to stiffen at the abrupt shuffling of sheep, somewhere to his left.

Jack snatches his staff from the ground and spins on his heel, eyes straining in the darkness. 

There! A figure, too shrouded in the night for him to make out any details, but most definitely humanoid (and not a wolf, thank the gods). The moon isn’t doing Jack any favors, but it looks like they’re frozen midstep, their head hunched over their shoulders. 

Jack lowers his staff, his heart racing. About time! “Hey!” Jack calls out, putting on his best grin. If they’re a dragon, they can probably see him even in the dark, and he wants to make a decent impression on them. 

(The realization that this stranger probably knows Jack far better than Jack knows them is . . . unsettling, but Jack shoves it down. They’ve been leaving him flowers and bread. How much danger could he be in?)

The figure doesn’t unfold from their hunched position, so Jack steps forward, trying to get a better glimpse of them. What little light the moon has been offering flickers away—probably behind a cloud.

The figure bolts.

“Wha—hey!”

Jack spits a curse and takes off after them. 

Whoever they are, they’re fast. But Jack is fast too, light as the wind even on frozen feet. Jack can barely make out who he’s chasing, trusting the vague silhouette of panicked sheep parting around them to trace his path over the pasture. The moon begins to emerge from behind its cloud, and big, black leathery things snap open from the figure's back. 

For a moment, Jack thinks they’re Hiccup’s wings.

The figure crouches, like they’re about to burst into the air. In a panic, Jack lurches forward with his staff. The crook of it catches the dragon around the waist, just over what looks to be a belt—

—and then Jack is in the air, a mad gust of wind erupting over his face from the figure’s wings. It’d be enough to shock him out of his grip on his staff, had he not been so accustomed to grabbing onto Hiccup for delighted life every time he’d been snatched from the earth. Even so, he yelps in surprise as his body is flung forward. 

Their combined weight is enough to throw the figure off their flight. The two of them jolt in midair, and Jack thuds into the figure's legs as momentum catches him. Something metal hits him in the gut, knocking the wind from him. There’s a tug on his staff, and between the chaotic tumbling of it all, Jack’s white-knuckled grip on the wood slips. 

He falls, eyes screwed shut as thoughts whirl around his skull too quickly for him to grab at anything other than bracing for pain.

A second later, a body thuds into his, and he’s being flipped suddenly, everything spinning for a wild moment as the figure crushes him to their chest. It’s a rough grab, and Jack’s hands make a blind grab on instinct, frozen fingers gripping at armour—armour Jack knows by heart by now.

Jack’s eyes fly open.

Hiccup’s face is screwed together, the worried knit of his eyebrows achingly familiar in the light of the moon. It only takes a moment for Hiccup to right them in the air, his arms firm around Jack’s waist as his wings beat steady, a near-perfect partner to the night sky. 

“Gods, Jack,” Hiccup says. There’s probably irritation in his voice, but Jack’s a bit too busy having his whole world suddenly rearranged to really process the fact that Hiccup’s upset with him. “How did your staff not break? I get you’re not very heavy, but I took off at full speed, and it carried you. What is it made of—Jack? Jack?!”

Jack snaps his eyes away from Hiccup’s mouth. He’s not irritated, Jack realizes abruptly. He’s worried. 

“Are you hurt?” 

The arms around his waist adjust, and then there’s a hand on his face, strikingly warm against his chilled cheeks. Stupid dragons and all their stupidly natural furnace heat, Jack thinks suddenly and viciously as he lets go of Hiccup’s stupid armour to grab his stupid face. The thought of Hiccup dropping him never even crosses his mind. 

“You’re my admirer?” He asks, his voice erupting from him far louder than he’d intended. “You’re the person who’s been leaving me bread and—and flowers and—and—!”

Hiccup’s eyes widen, pupils enormous. His ears flatten against his head, and beneath Jack’s hands, he feels the heat that rises to Hiccup’s cheek. It’s an absurdly nice feeling. 

“Uhm,” Hiccup says, when Jack fails to splutter any further. “Surprise?”

Surprise, he says. Surprise.

Jack can’t help but laugh.

It burbles out of him, gently at first, but then he starts to shake with it, something delightful like sizzling bacon or the crash of a hot spring erupting inside of him. He lets go of Hiccup’s face so he can tuck his own into Hiccup’s neck, utterly consumed by the laughter that’s sending him into shambles.

As he slowly regains control of his laughter, Hiccup lowers them to the ground. By the time his feet touch solid earth, he’s dizzy with how happy he feels, and it’s only Hiccup’s arms around him that keep him upright. 

“Jack?” he asks. He sounds nervous, or—well. Nervous isn’t quite a strong enough word, or maybe it’s an understatement. He sounds like he’s making that face he gets when Mary catches him off guard by offering him food, or the first time one of the sheep randomly appeared at his side, its bored expression insanely comically next to the utter panic that had made Hiccup’s shoulder rigid as rocks.

The memory is enough to finally make Jack’s laughter subside. He pulls his face from Hiccup’s neck, and sure enough, Hiccup looks halfway between miserable and delighted. It’s a look only he could pull off. Not for the first time, Jack wants to kiss him stupid.

‘Oh, I’m stupid,’ Jack thinks.

“Sorry! Sorry,” he says as he catches his breath, his face sore with the grin that’s completely overthrown his face. “I’m not laughing at you, I swear.”

Hiccup nods like he doesn’t believe Jack, which is fair. “Uh-huh,” he says slowly. 

Jack brings his hands back up to Hiccup’s face. Before he can lose his courage, he leans forward, and is greeted by a mouth as warm as the cheeks under his hands as he kisses Hiccup quickly.

When he pulls back, Hiccup looks utterly dazed. And then he grins, pupils enormous and ears straight as sugar cane as he leans forward and thumps his forehead against Jack’s. Jack leans into it, into the soft brush of Hiccup’s fringe and the bump of their noses. “You could have told me,” Jack says, and delights in the feeling of Hiccup’s brow screwing together, even as smile lines appear at his eyes. 

“Yeah, that’s. Well. I tried telling you the other day? With the—”

“—The green gambler! Oh Gods, I’m so dumb.”

Hiccup barks out a laugh. “Maybe a little,” he says. Jack jabs him fruitlessly in the ribs, which hurts his finger way more than it hurts Hiccup. But it makes Hiccup laugh against him, his tail making a swish noise in the grass as it sways behind him, so it’s entirely worth it. 

Hiccup pulls away from him, arms loosening from Jack’s waist. Before Jack can begin to complain, he sees why—his staff, and a handful of green gamblers clenched tightly in Hiccup’s fist, the stalks crushed in Hiccup’s grasp. “I brought you more,” he starts, his ears doing an odd flutter against his head. “I was trying to make up for the last one I crushed. Which went swimmingly, as you can see so clearly by the evidence.”

Jack wonders how he hadn’t pieced it together before, the little fact that he’s so stupidly smitten by Hiccup, when all he wants to do is kiss the downturned corners of Hiccup’s mouth to see them turn back right side up. 

He takes the flowers, and his staff, and then gladly slides back into Hiccup’s personal space like it’s his own. Hiccup’s tail curls around the backs of his heels. “You could always take me to see the village,” he suggests. He’d had a blank image of a figure flying him to dragon village earlier. His mind fills in the shadow with Hiccup’s silhouette, and Jack feels a little breathless. “Show me the mountaintop you’ve been getting them from.”

Hiccup’s smile is achingly sweet, made all the sweeter by the way he hesitates for just a moment before bringing his hand back up to Jack’s face. As if Jack wouldn’t immediately lean into the touch, which he does. “Is that what it takes to make it up to you?” he asks.

“Oh, that’s a hard one. I was pretty bummed about the flower bit. That, and getting rudely woken up, and now that I think about it, you sort of kicked me with your prosthetic, but I guess I did sort of attack you with my staff? Sorry about that, by the way, but you were running and I drank coffee earlier, which is gross, just so I could catch you, so, really, that’s also on you.”

Jack recognizes the look on Hiccup’s face now, the one that’s escaped him forever—its fondness, and it’s almost enough to warm Jack against the cold of night.

“Kiss me?” Jack asks.

Hiccup obliges.

__________

@aura2023 I DID IT. PART THREE, LIKE I PROMISED. Holy shit, I did NOT think this semester was going to be as demanding as it was, so I apologize for the wait! But I loved the ending you'd put in the tags about Jack recognizing Hiccup in the night by his hugs, and I was determined to bring it to life. I really hope you like this!!

Hiccup does not trust Emily.

(With his life? Sure, of course. She was an Overland, after all, and one of the brightest kids he’d ever met. She could guide him in an electrical storm. It doesn’t hurt his conscience that Jack has guided him through an electrical storm before, and Hiccup knows she inherited the same steady hand as her brother.

So, yes. Hiccup would trust her with the membrane of his tailfins.

With his heart? Never. Not in the slightest.)

“I don’t know about this.”

Emily scoffs beside him, tapping her fingers idly against the trunk of the tree they’re somewhat hidden behind. It’s a weirdly loud noise from such a tiny girl, like she can somehow summon the dragon slumbering in her bones. “Relax. He’ll get it this time.”

“No, not—” Hiccup vaguely waves the hand not holding Jack's flowers. Predictably, it clears up nothing, if the deepened deadpan on Emily’s face means anything. It always does. “I mean, are you sure he’s sleeping?” 

A good ten tails away from them, Jack is laid sprawled in the grass under another oak, one knee propped and his ankle swung lazily over it. Maybe Hiccup’s spent too much time around Jack when he’s napping, but he’s not entirely convinced Jack is nearly as deep asleep as Emily says.

. . . which, on rewind, sounds very creepy, Hiccup realizes with no small amount of shame, his tail flicking in irritation against Emily’s legs.

Emily rolls her eyes. It’s alarmingly reminiscent of Astrid. “Would I lie to you?” 

“Probably.”

She kicks at his tail. Hiccup barely avoids the blow, instinct being the only thing that saves her toes from bruising. It wouldn’t have hurt him. “Well, I’m not,” she insists, poking at his side. “Now go give him your stupid flower.”

With that, she tucks her tiny arms behind his back and gives him a shove. Hiccup stumbles, his tail thwacking her in the torso as he fights not to fall over. 

“Ow!”

“Serves you right!”

The glare she gives him should kill him on the spot, but it doesn’t. He must have earned a god’s favor. He’s not sure which one, but he sends a vague prayer to all of them and scurries away from their tree before she can retaliate.

By now, the sheep are fairly used to his presence. They used to scramble anytime he got near, but now they don’t even bother batting a sheeply eye as he makes his way over the pasture to Jack. The sight of it makes his heart constrict—how trusting they are of him now. 

The sight of Jack makes his heart clench worse.

His hair is a shock of white on his forehead, like all his time spent with the sheep made him blend into his flock. His mouth is open, face slack, and staff crooked idly against the base of the oak, as though Jack were completely content when he settled down in the grass to bask under the shade of the tree. It’s a sweet thought, one that Hiccup turns over in his mind like a syrup stick, something chewy and delightful buoyed in his chest at the idea of Jack being so at ease that he could trust Hiccup (and Emily) to keep an eye on the sheep without his staff clenched tightly in his fist.

Wind rustles through the grass, swiping at the hair on Jack’s forehead and sending it tumbling over his eyebrows. Hiccup isn’t thinking when he crouches down, already reaching out to brush the hair away from Jack’s forehead—

—when a pair of hands land on his back and shove.

Now, look.

Hiccup may not be the most physically gifted dragon, but he is a dragon. That fact that Emily managed to sneak up on him at all is astonishing, and makes him second guess just how human she actually is. It’s his complete and utter surprise that Hiccup blames for why his wings snap out, smacking Emily in the face as he topples on top of Jack, all bones and armour and dragon-limbed weight of him.

Jack jolts awake.

“Holy—!” 

“Oh Gods, are you—”

“Hiccup? What are you—?”

Emily’s laughing. Emily is on the ground cackling like a witch, and Jack is staring up at Hiccup with huge eyes, blinking like his vision is still blurred with sleep, and Hiccup wants to set the pasture ablaze. “Are you okay?” he asks Jack.

“Uhhhhh.” Jack’s eyes dart past Hiccup, toward where Emily sounds like she’s rolling in the grass. His face settles into a frown. 

He brings his hands up, setting his palms on Hiccup’s chest plate. All thought in Hiccup’s brain whooshes straight out of his ears, confusion and delight making an emulsion where reason should be, up until Jack opens his mouth and says, “Can you please get off of me? You’re heavy and that hurt, like, a lot.”

The emulsion vanishes mysteriously. It’s replaced by an all-encompassing embarrassment that makes plasma well in Hiccup’s throat. 

He scrambles off of Jack in an instant. Jack sits up, rubbing at his chest. He squints at Hiccup, his focus darting to and fro before settling somewhere behind Hiccup. “Emily,” he says, in that tone of voice he uses when he’s trying to be the stern big brother, but whatever affection he has for his sister is making him miss by a mile.

Behind him, Emily’s cackles have died into giggles. When he turns, he sees she’s sprawled out in the grass, obscured by pampas and greens except where her knees sway side to side, rising and falling as she twists on the ground. Hiccup isn’t sure if he’s irritated by her smug facade, or amused by her childish glee.

He doesn’t get a chance to decide when a cold hand meets his, and pulls the flower from his grasp. 

He whips around, heart in his throat and every excuse in the world on his tongue.

Jack is—

—well.

He’s handsome, first and foremost. So handsome it makes Hiccup want to bang his head against a wall sometimes.

Secondly, and more importantly, is the bewildered look on his face as he twirls the semi-crushed flower between his fingers, the green petals bristling despite his gentle treatment. His eyes are huge, flickering across Hiccup, and if he doesn’t say something in the next several seconds, Hiccup’s fairly certain he’ll cave to the urge to take to the sky and never be seen again.

“Wow. Where, uh,” Hiccup starts. Stops. Swallows around the lump of panic in his throat. “I didn’t hurt you too badly. Did I?”

“Where did you find this?” Jack asks, completely ignoring Hiccup’s question. He lunges into Hiccup’s space, the hand not holding the flower landing on Hiccup’s shoulder and did the temperature rise? Did it just spike, suddenly and rapidly, or has the plasma in his bile sack somehow melted into the rest of his limbs? “Did you see who left it? Where they went?”

“Uhh,” Hiccup says, eloquently, his brain racing to keep up. Jack pulls away abruptly, standing up to pace, and Hiccup can breathe again, thank the Gods. 

“Someone’s been leaving me these—these flowers for me.” Jack waves the flower at him. As if Hiccup hadn’t been the one delivering it in the first place. Hiccup nods numbly. Seemingly satisfied, Jack runs a hand through his hair, something incredulous crossing his face. “I’ve never seen them before, I have no clue what they are, and—!”

“Green Gamblers,” Hiccup says. 

Jack stops in his tracks. “What?”

“They’re Green Gamblers,” Hiccup repeats, resigning himself to his fate as he sinks to sit cross-legged in the grass. He’d known, realistically, that he couldn’t keep delivering Jack flowers forever. He knew he was going to get caught in the act eventually. He just thought he might have a little longer to try and—and—well. His brain supplies him with the word “woo,” but that isn’t right. He just wants to be close to Jack. “They’re a type of flowers that show up on the mountains of Berk in spring.”

He curls his tail over his legs, getting comfortable for the inevitable rejection he’s about to receive. Jack’s bewilderment hasn’t exactly felt positive or negative, so he can’t be sure what to expect, but—

He feels the rush of Jack’s movement moments before Jack appears two inches from his face. 

“So you know these?” He asks, breathless, eyes shining. 

. . . Huh? “What?” Hiccup asks.

“You know these,” Jack repeats, more confident this time. “So the person delivering these is a dragon.” Jack sits back on the balls of his feet, looking beyond pleased with himself, which—huh? “I mean, I didn’t think they were human, but it’s nice having confirmation and all.”

Hiccup blinks at him. Jack . . . can’t be that dense. He can’t. “Jack,” Hiccup tries, a new sort of panic rising in him, but Jack steamrolls ahead. 

“Did you see who left them? Or catch anyone leaving the field? I haven’t been asleep long.”

What does Hiccup say to that?

Behind him, there’s a stirring in the grass, and then Emily appears in his line of sight. Her face is scrunched like she’s in pain. She reaches out a hand to Jack. “Jack, that’s not—”

Something clicks in Hiccup’s head.

“No!” He blurts suddenly. Both Emily and Jack whip their heads to him, but Hiccup hardly takes notice, seized by the gift horse being presented to him. “No! I–I didn’t see who it was. I just saw a silhouette fly off. I thought maybe you had other dragon friends aside from me, but now I know to, uh, stop them. Interrogate ‘em for you.”

Hiccup knows he’s an awful liar. Every word he says stutters drunk off of his tongue to land in a sheepish heap at the Overland sibling's feet.

Jack visibly perks up. 

Emily sends him a deadpan look that would make Astrid cry with pride.

“Well, you don’t have to interrogate them,” Jack drawls, even as a pretty smile lights up on his cheeks. “But, yeah. You think you could get a name for me?”

Hiccup swallows hard, and does his best to smile in return. “Sure thing, Jack.”

__________

@aura2023 Ehehe one more part to go! This was based on the scene Aura wrote of Hiccup being pushed by Emily while trying to deliver flowers. Part Three will be about hugs at night : ) You can read a preview of the plot summary Here!

Also, Green Gamblers, because my partner suggested a green flower as a way for Hiccup to present something rare and cool to Jack:

Hey! Thanks for the ask (and your interest lmao). It'll be roughly 40k! And sure, here you go :)

[CW for animal death/semi-graphic gore]

-----

Hiccup slowly slid his hand along the rabbit as if checking for injuries. Despite the awful twisting in Jack’s stomach, he turned his head toward Hiccup, a drumming need in him to know what Hiccup was thinking, feeling, anything about his body language that would clue Jack in. All he found was concentration in the careful lines of Hiccup’s outstretched arm, the gentle pinch of his downturned mouth.

Hiccup caught his eye and, easing up on his frown, nodded his chin forward. He had tilted the rabbit on its side and was gesturing towards its head, which Jack could see was twisted oddly now that it wasn’t curled into itself. “It looks like something snapped its neck,” Hiccup explained, and although his words were matter of fact, his tone was gentle, like he knew what was going on in Jack’s head. Sometimes, Jack had half a mind to ask if that had been one of the gifts he’d been given by Manny. “Cold alone couldn’t have done that.”

Jack swallowed thickly, waving at the obvious frost patterns on its fur. “I could have iced it, or the ground,” he began, even as the words tasted acidic in his mouth. “Maybe it was running and slammed into a tree, or something.”

Hiccup only shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been curled up like that if it’d died from impact. It’d be sprawled on its side or slumped against the base of whatever tree it hit.”

Leave it to Hiccup to point out the obvious.

Still, Jack’s stomach twisted unpleasantly.

When he didn’t say anything, Hiccup reached out to take Jack’s hand—the one he’d been motioning with, he realized belatedly, and then left to point vaguely at his mounting fear. Hiccup brought it to his own chest, running their callouses together absentmindedly. Jack knew he’d worked for years in the forgery for his village, and even longer on his own inventions. Knowing this didn’t stop his wonder at Hiccup’s hands, clearly wrought with labor, and how they fit so oddly against his own callouses, the ones he’d built from his staff.

“You didn’t kill it,” Hiccup said firmly, a decisiveness in his voice that left no room for argument. Jack caught Hiccup’s eye, and Hiccup gave his hand a squeeze. “Your magic is good, Jack. This is just . . .”

“A weird accident?” Jack finished uneasily, the theory sitting wrongly in his mouth. Something crossed Hiccup's face, like he was uncomfortable with the idea as well, even as he nodded.

“Yeah. Something like that,” Hiccup said unconvincingly.

“Oh, wonderful. Glad to know Bunny’s offspring are just as accident-prone as he is,” Jack joked dryly. The situation wasn’t really something to joke about, but he’d mostly said it to hear Hiccup snort, or watch him roll his eyes. Anything to ease the tension that had settled between them.

Hiccup let out an entire chuckle, and Jack considered his inappropriateness worthwhile.

It was quiet for a long moment, with the only break from Jack’s increasingly concerned train of thought being Hiccup's steady thumb trailing over his knuckles. “Jamie’s worried,” Hiccup said at last, quietly. “Said he was scared you’d gotten sick again.” 

Jack let out a sigh. “I promised to hang out with him before our dinner with Joyce to prove I was alright,” he mumbled, not exactly in the mood for fun at the moment. As Jack Frost, he didn’t really have much of a choice. 

He turned back towards Hiccup with what he hoped was a convincing smile, but with how well his boyfriend knew him, the odds were slim to none on that front. “You fly on ahead of me. I’ll be right behind you.”

Hiccup frowned. “I can stay with you,” he offered, sliding his legs out from under himself to sit proper, wincing as his prosthetic scraped at the frost coating the ground and nearly shot out from underneath him. Fondness surged through Jack at the sight, at Hiccup trying to take care of him, emotion making his throat tight. It took him a moment to gather his words and then another to ensure that when he spoke, it wouldn’t come out as a mangled mess.

“No, seriously. I’m just gonna take another minute or so, and then I’ll catch up, I swear,” Jack promised. Maybe he’d take a little more than a minute, but he already felt more stable, and he knew he could go to Hiccup for help, even if the words got caught in his throat when he tried to express it.

Hiccup didn’t look convinced in the slightest, but he nodded, slowly, like it pained him to do so. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he tugged Jack towards him by the hand, kissing him softly. It didn’t solve any of Jack’s problems, but Gods, if it didn’t do momentary wonders for his unease. 

“I’m here if you need me,” Hiccup said as he pulled away, giving Jack’s hand a final squeeze before he got to his feet. Jack watched him go, giving Toothless a little wave when the dragon didn’t immediately fly off at Hiccup’s go-ahead, his head still cocked in worry towards Jack.

Finally, though, they did leave, and Jack closed his eyes, taking a deep breath to steady himself. Despite the gnawing at his chest, he opened his eyes and reached forward, petting the rabbit more firmly this time, as if to conquer his fear through touch. Like Hiccup had taught him. The rabbit was still cold and lifeless under his hand, but the feeling of its well-kept fur did put Jack’s mind somewhat at ease. At least it had lived a good life.

Pulling his hand away, he got to his feet. He twirled his staff twice, ensuring he felt stable enough to fly. The clearing was already beginning to feel warmer just from exposure to the sun, and without Jack’s emotions lingering in his magic, the frost had begun to melt. Nothing else could be hurt because of him here, intentional or otherwise. 

With a conviction to go spread some good, Jack went to kick off. Just as his toes lifted off the ground, there was shuffling behind him, and when Jack turned around—

—the rabbit was gone.

-----