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The sky is a maze around them, twist-currents and high-warmths, clouds seeping cold, and Toothless trills in delight.
Hiccup, on his back, in his wings, in his heart, laughs right alongside.
They dive without a thought, wings drawing in scale-tight, tail fins shifting, the wind snap-snarling in their ears. Blue meets grey meets blue, sea and sky and storm-to-be, but Toothless does not care. Nor does he care for the sea stacks they dodge, the first or second or third pillar of stone-meets-air-in-talon, or the way that the waves rise up to grasp at them, hands vaster than any human's, water spread wider than dragon wings.
Hiccup speaks, words caught away by the air, but Toothless knows what he says. (He understands some of the human tongue, the words that combine to mean different things with different tones, but he understands all of Hiccup. All of the knee-tense and the finger-clutch, the rise and fall of his words and the way that his face twists or smooths or wrinkles. Toothless can smell it, taste it, feel it. Hiccup is his, a heart-brother and soul-sharer and wing-catcher, his sea and sky and stone.
Hiccup is his, he is Hiccup's. That is all there is to understand in the world.)
He rumbles in return, deep enough that Hiccup will be able to feel it as much as hear it, because his human hearing is not as good as Toothless', but he's pressed low to his back, skin-leather-cloth against scales, and the acknowledgement between them is enough.
They need no more signal for Toothless to twist, snout-first, tail-last, curling around like a lick of flame, and for Hiccup to follow, staying close, not-paw clicking once, twice, giving Toothless the maneouvrability he needs to bring them to bear, skimming over the waves instead of plunging into them. It's too cold today for Hiccup's no-scale self to be able to handle the water now, still a sun-pass from their destination, at least not without stopping for Toothless to warm him through with fire and pressed-close scales, licking away the salt-seared chill.
(Toothless knows the terror of his human shuddering, lips the colour of the sea that has poisoned him with cold, and he has no wish to see it again.
He knows the slur-words of it, the almost-paws that tremble until they go still like a dead thing; he will never allow that to happen again. No, he would burn them both up in his flames first, because the metal-shiny red fades over time, but Hiccup has never held at his spines or straps or face as strongly since the shivering days, and he stands just-wrong on the white-falling, frost-sharp days, hissing at weight on his not-paw and murmuring apologies when it takes him three tries to get Toothless' saddle on.)
They keep on flying as slate gathers in the sky, far on the horizon ahead of them. They'll have to shelter somewhere before they reach it, because Toothless doesn't need to be a human to feel how the metal edges of Them attracts lightning, how the physical connections of them brings the sky closer, grinding its jaw around them if they let it.
But for now they can continue flying, staying close enough to the sea that it splashes its salt up against Toothless' belly. Down here, away from land and sea-stone-talons the rising-warmths are further apart, weaker, but that's fine, because Toothless is following the wind's path, wings wide and steady, catching the swell of sea-spat air to keep them forward-flying, Hiccup barely needing to use his not-paw like this. It's easier on them both.
They fly on for a few more sun-shifts, the storm rumbling closer, the sounds deep and grating like a rival dragon, but Toothless knows that it is far harder to dodge lightning than any snap of teeth or swinging tail, that a storm is far more dangerous than any other creature. And he will not risk Hiccup or himself like that, not the one he loves.
(It's a human word, that one: love. One that Toothless has learnt. But Toothless really does love his human, his soul-sharer, from the face that smiles with no-threat teeth, to the not-paw that is part of their connection, part of how they fly together as they were always meant to, his weight the perfect balance to Toothless'. Hiccup is the cleverest human there is, the most dragon-kin, the most belonging to sea-sky-stone, and Toothless will forever revel in the heart-flames of their shared belonging.)