Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The redhead blinked.

“...What?”

The blonde girl sitting opposite the redhead had her legs woven together in a pretzel design on the yellowing grass. She had a look on her face that would have made a passerby think she had just won the lottery.

“It would be perfect, Merida!” The blonde cooed, her long hair flowing over her shoulders and down her back in perfect sheets. Her eyes glistened with a almost princess-esque sparkle, a look that Merida, herself, could never pull off (despite how much her mother wished it).

The redhead raised her fiery eyebrows. “I seriously doubt it, Punzie.”

“Well I don’t!” Rapunzel grinned brightly, leaning forwards with the flyer between her delicate, artisan fingers. “I’m sure it’ll be fun!”

“You don’t play sports, Rapunzel. Drawing and painting are nothing like playing any sport. Sure, I’m better than you at sports and I enjoy them but... I don’t even know how to play this damned sport! So, any fun that could have existed is… It’s nonexistent. And, I’m not going to.” Merida crossed her arms tightly across her chest. “I’d just make a fool of myself. My answer is no, Rapunzel. It’s not going to change.”

“What is she saying no to this time?” A freckled, rather awkward, brunette haired boy took his usual seat between the two girls, finishing their semi-circle of friendship. His school lunch balanced atop a stack of books that he was reading. After he sat down, he pushed his crooked, taped together glasses back up his nose.

“Ah Hiccup, you can stop this madness, can’t you?” Merida looked desperately at her friend.

“What am I stopping?” Hiccup looked between the utterly irritated redhead to the overly bubbly blonde with a slightly bemused expression on his face. “What’s happening?”

“Powderpuff.” Merida groaned, lying back against the grass. Her red hair fanned out to form a sort of vibrant halo around her head.

“Powderpuff?” He turned to Rapunzel for an explanation.

“The Powderpuff Game? You know, the girls football game? The Rosie Bowl? They’ve been talking about it all week on the school announcements.” Hiccup gave her a blank look. “Do you listen to the announcements at all, Mr Haddock?”

He gave her a look that promptly said, I’ve told you before, please don’t call me that, I’m not my father but, she ignored him entirely and kept talking.

“Honestly, Hiccup, I would have understood if Merida didn’t listen to the announcements but, you? You’ve thrown me a curveball, Mr. Haddock, a true curveball!”

“Well, I listen… I just don’t retain any of the information.” He paused. “It’s not really of any importance to me so I sort of forget the stuff they say.”

Rapunzel waved her hand in the air as if to brush the topic aside. “Whatever. It’s basically a girls play football and boys cheerlead football game. Messing with the gender roles, that sort of thing.” She smiled brightly to the brunette, tucking a strand of her long hair that had gotten loose back behind her ear. “I suggested that Merida enter.”

“Merida playing girls football?” Hiccup laughed, a short burst of air and sound, slight dimples appearing in his cheeks. “She’d annihilate the other team.”

“That’s what I thought too!” Rapunzel clasped her hands together happily.

The redhead sat up to face him and scoffed. “Don’t take her side on this.” She narrowed her eyes and glared at the brunette. Between her wild hair and her truly evil expression… If looks could kill, she would have killed him. “I’m warning you, Hiccup.”

The brunette jumped back slightly in fright before stopping and grinning from ear to ear. “We just have to get her to play. The other team would take one look at her and they’d be scared out of their wits. Just look at her, Punzie, look at her face.”

The mischievous duo turned to look at their Scottish friend. Merida had a look of bitter anger embedded on her face. Eyebrows pressed together in a horrible scowl. She was like a storm that was brewing, the type of storm that would last for days on end. The type of storm that would blow everything in the surrounding area to pieces in seconds.

Hiccup and Rapunzel looked at each other and grinned.

Merida thought it was absolutely no use attempting to putting a stop their fantasy. With Punzie’s imagination alone, there was no stopping them. Merida tuned out their excited babbling as she laid back down in the grass. Her eyes unfocused, looking at the bright sky and the leaves of the tree that hung in swaying bunches above.

They just did not get it.

Merida couldn’t play football. She practiced archery for a reason, after all.

Archery, as her mother put it, was one of the only sports that allowed a woman to not perspire. Her mother would have preferred that her daughter not play a single sport at all ever but, her father had recommended it and after quite a bit of bickering, her mother had given in.

And so: Merida had learned to use a bow and arrow.

Sure, it required muscles but, it wasn’t as aggressive as say… Football, was. Which meant that the chances of her mother actually allowing her to participate in the Powderpuff game was practically nonexistent. All the convincing in the world from her father wouldn’t change that.

(Besides, the last time she had actually touched the so called ‘pig skin’ was in middle school. Or perhaps even elementary.)

She wasn’t sure if she even remembered the rules to the damned sport.

And Punzie and Hiccup… She knew how determined they were. How willing they were to succeed. Rapunzel was dedicated. Hiccup was smart. Together, they were practically unstoppable. (Well, unless it came to the eight minute mile run. Hardly anybody could do that successfully. And if they could? Well… They were something else, and Merida was sure it, whatever it was, wasn’t human.)

Merida’s eyes flicked to the bright blue sky, to the bright green leaves and lavender colored flowers that filled the trees. Only a couple minutes earlier she had been lying in the grass daydreaming about what she and her two friends would do over summer vacation. (It involved an advanced plan of sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night and buying a lot of toilet paper.)

And then Rapunzel had come up with this plan…

They would not understand. Not really.

Sure, she could sneak out in the middle of the night to go study at Hiccup’s house, or model for one of Rapunzel’s paintings but… This? This was different.

Powderpuff was during the day. Out in the open. Her mother would know, she would find out, she would realize what was happening. And then Merida’s summer vacation would vanish like a blown out candle. All her plans, everything. Gone.

A summer without Rapunzel Corona’s glimmering smile. Her light laughter. The smell of her paint fume filled bedroom. The way her dress flowed around her calves when she danced. The flowers that she braided into her hair. Her blatant innocence. The way her face lit up when she spoke about things that she loved.

A summer without Henry “Hiccup” Haddock the Third’s stuttering mannerisms, awkward timing, and unstoppable swooning over the ever so ominous Astrid Hofferson. A summer without the tangled braids that wound themselves tightly at the back of his head. The slight freckles that dotted his cheekbones and nose, like constellations in the night sky.

She couldn’t let that happen.

The redhead loved the quirky blonde and the awkward brunette too much to lose her summer with them for a stupid football game.

“Merida?” That was Hiccup.

“Earth to Merida!” Rapunzel was practically singing. “Are you still in there?”

The redhead’s eyes focused to see her two best friends leaning and looking down at her. There was a strand of Punzie’s blond hair in her mouth, and Hiccup had a booger in his left nostril. She decided that she wouldn’t tell him. (What else are friends for besides embarrassment?) “What?”

“Weren’t you listening?” That was Hiccup again. The redhead did not answer. “Didn’t think so. Anyway, we were saying, since you don’t know that much football, we should get someone to teach you.”

That was logical. But that could be expected between the two of them.

“Who?”

Rapunzel glanced at Hiccup, who--Merida could have sworn--managed to blush and grimace at the same time. Was the faint hint of pink at his cheeks because he thought she was attractive? Merida doubted it. Hiccup had been head over heels for a different blonde of the name Miss Astrid Hofferson since the beginning of time. So it had to be something else.

The grimace on the other hand. It was just one of Hiccup’s usual expressions. She wasn’t exactly sure if it meant anything or not. However… If Hiccup was cringing, that meant that it was possible that Hiccup had something to do with what they had decided upon. And perhaps he wasn’t happy about it.

Maybe it was Hiccup’s idea to have someone tutor Merida in the ways of football. Perhaps he had suggested someone in particular. Someone… Someone…

Rapunzel grinned roguishly at her. And suddenly she knew exactly who they had decided on to tutor her.

“Oh bloody hell.”

For the average person, contacting Jack Overland Frost was like trying to get tickets to a sold out concert.

Sure, the lucky few had the lanky, white haired football player in their classes. Or they saw him in the hallways, meandering from class to class. Few knew his locker number. Even fewer, where he sat at lunch.

Well, actually…

Nobody knew where the infamous Jack Frost would be sitting at lunch.

Henry “Hiccup” Haddock, however, was the only exception. Being best friends with the star football player had its perks, and one of those perks included text messages as early as three in the morning telling the brunette gentleman exactly where Frost would be eating for lunch.

In the beginning, way back when the two of them were both in ninth grade, Hiccup had enjoyed the texts from his friend, it made him feel special. He would wander through the school, meandering past where Jack sat, and smile to himself. Because it wasn’t an accident, coming upon the white haired sports superstar and his clique. It was something that he knew, and he alone. The only one in the whole school who knew… It was incredibly exciting!

But now…

Now, they were in their junior year of high school and the excitement that he had felt as a freshman had disappeared into blatant annoyance. He did not exactly care where his friend was most of the time, he wasn’t Jack Frost’s babysitter, caretaker or whatever other word anyone wanted to call it. All he knew was that as long as Hiccup didn’t have to be the person to pull Jack’s dead body out of the gutter, he was completely alright with whatever the white haired nuisance wanted to do.

However…

Today was different.

Today, the dark haired junior was on a mission. A mission that involved a certain fiery redhead, and a game of girls football.

A mission that he had spoken about with Rapunzel the night before. The plan that they had perfected. He remembered their conversation vividly. Rapunzel must have said “You have to ask him, Hiccup! It’s the only way!” about a hundred times, at the very least, before he had agreed.

His relationship with Jack Overland Frost had deteriorated over the years.

It was just difficult to continue a relationship when the two participants were in completely different levels in the ladder of popularity.

Sure, Hiccup would have been fine with a simple “hello” or a “how are you?” from his white haired friend in the hallway. That would have been enough for the freckled brunette. But it hadn’t happened. In fact, Jack had promptly refused to acknowledge Hiccup when they saw each other in the hallway.

A fact that Hiccup Haddock the Third disliked with all his heart.

Which was, after all, why he was so reluctant to go find Jack Overland Frost and ask for his help.

By saying such a thing, he wouldn’t only be showing that he needed Jack’s help, he would also be showing that he couldn’t do anything without him. Hiccup wanted to be independent. Someone who wasn’t a babysitter, or a wallflower, or anything that any of Jack’s clique wanted to think of him. He could function perfectly fine without the help of a Jack Overland Frost.

It was a fact that Hiccup wanted to prove to the world.

He was perfectly capable of functioning without Jack Frost.

Of course, Rapunzel, Merida and Jack himself knew none of this.

Hiccup had chosen long ago to keep his problems to himself. It wouldn’t have helped either of his two closest friends to know about issues that they could not do anything about. And he certainly wasn’t about to tell the man who had caused all his problems in the first place.

So he had eventually agreed to Rapunzel’s begging and gone to bed with knot in his stomach.

Hiccup stood in the middle of a secluded area near the back of the school. It was a perfect place for couples to stay hidden from… Well, the world. Tall trees hung everywhere, light flowing through the spaces between the leaves, casting a romantic feel to the atmosphere. (That was, if schools could be considered romantic places.)

“Jack?”

His face appeared out of nowhere. Hanging upside down, his light blue eyes staring directly into Hiccup’s green ones. He had been perched out of sight in the tree above where Hiccup was standing. The brunette jumped backwards.

“Henry? What are you doing here?” Jack’s white eyebrows raised, questioningly.

Henry Haddock never visited Jack Frost. Jack himself had come to the conclusion that they were meant to be in different friend groups, different circles of people. Henry was part of the intelligent, gentle spirited, imaginative group. He took classes in engineering, and higher level maths, and headed the robotics club. He spent most of his spare time studying and trying to make his father proud. And some--Jack included--thought that next year the school would name him valedictorian.

And Jack, on the other hand, took on all the sports that his schedule allowed. His intense, fun-loving, light-footed personality allowed him to balance much more than the average person. Good grades, better muscles, the lot. He volunteered at the middle and elementary schools in the area. He was the star of the football team but, he spent time teaching younger kids how to throw a football correctly. How to do this and that. He inspired them, made them want to achieve greatness.

And so… Jack had thought it best that they had left each other alone.

(Henry was much too smart to hang out with the likes of Jack and his group of friends anyway. He would probably say something clever and accidentally insult one of them, ending up with a black eye.)

But…

“I feel like that should be my question, Jack, not yours.”

The white haired gentleman forced a grin, the blood had begun to rush to his head, making his forehead a lot pinker than usual. “You’re a little late on asking it, then.”

Henry rolled his eyes. “Anyway, are you busy? I need to talk to you.”

“I’m not busy right now, no. I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” Hiccup smiled, and Jack offered his hand down to the brunette boy. “Take my hand.”

“Why?”

Jack snorted. “Just do it, Haddock.”

Henry took his friend’s hand and the taller, stronger boy pulled him up to the tree branch that he was sitting on. It was fairly easy for the white haired boy, seeing as his friend was only slightly heavier than a hundred pounds. (And Henry had helped by using his feet to help him climb his way up the tree. Not that Jack would tell anyone that.)

They sat on the branch for a moment in silence.

It was quite beautiful, Hiccup decided. They were completely surrounded in leaves and branches, a small amount of light had filtered through the leaves, giving the weird tree nest a sort of warm, yellow-green glow. It was like Jack’s own personal tree house. But without the house part. It was much more nest-y.

“So…” That was Hiccup.

“So?”

“So… Why are you up here?”

“Does it matter?” Jack pulled a paper bag from behind him. It was a school lunch, a rather bland looking salad. Jack sighed.

“I guess not.” Hiccup crossed his legs and balanced against the leaves and the branches. He took an apple out of his pocket and bit into it.

They ate for a moment in silence.

Hiccup looked at his friend carefully as the man ate his lunch. Sure, they saw each other every here and there but, blinded by his dislike, Hiccup had never realized how tired Jack looked at school. His ruffled, suave hair seemed more droopy, and he had dark circles under his eyes. His lips were chapped and cut in places. There were fingernails on his right hand that had dirt crammed impossibly under them.

Jack noticed Hiccup looking at him and met his eyes with a warm, sort of forced, smile.

Hiccup blinked, coming to the realization. Jack Overland Frost only looked exhausted when he thought people weren’t looking.

“So. Why are you here, Henry?” Jack finished his lunch, tucking it back behind him and out of sight. He rearranged his body so he was leaning precariously on his toes, his knees tucked under his chin. How he managed to balance… Hiccup had no idea.

“Well… I guess it’s a bit of a long story…”

Jack looked at his friend’s stiff pose, the nearly finished apple core held delicately in his hand. Henry was certainly older, now that he looked at him close up like this. His chocolatey hair was longer, and certain sections were braided at the back of his head. He had now, incredibly, more freckles than Jack could remember him having previously. His baby-cheeks had thinned out, revealing a rather sharp jawline and high cheekbones.

Jack Overland Frost smiled genuinely. There was so much time he had missed. So much time that he was never getting back.

“I’ve got the time.”

Chapter Text

Merida DunBroch was boiling with anger.

No… There were better words for how she was feeling.

Merida DunBroch was livid. Practically steaming out of the ears. She felt like the guy with the fiery red hair in that one Disney movie that Rapunzel had forced both Hiccup and herself to watch. The one about the really strong Greek guy. (She couldn't exactly remember the name of it due to her absolute anger. Though she did remember that there had been lots of singing, and the guy with the fiery hair was really sassy.)

In fact, she would have yelled, quite loudly to be specific, if she hadn't been in class. That didn't mean that she was actually paying attention to what her chemistry teacher was blabbering on about. It mean that she was simply sitting in a burning silence. It just meant that if she was called on in class she was just more likely to yell an angry, incorrect answer than anything else.

And she was clenching her fist around a pencil so tightly that the chances of it breaking were incredibly high.

Or at least Rapunzel, the blonde sitting in the seat to her right, thought so.

Rapunzel Corona had been keeping a keen eye on her best friend ever since she and Hiccup had whispered to her what the plan was. She had a few notes on the current predicament of Merida DunBroch's emotional state of being:

The girl's horribly angry face was the same color as her hair.

Merida had been hissing a variety curse words under her breath, and Rapunzel had been gasping slightly every time she heard a particularly terrible word.

But now… She had gotten eerily quiet, quiet to the point where if anyone were to attempt to talk to her now, she would probably scream.

Well… The list was ongoing.

And, in a way, Rapunzel couldn't blame her.

Merida's issue had to do directly with her (and Hiccup but… Mostly her).

According to the message that Hiccup had accidentally sent to Merida instead of Punzie, Jack Overland Frost was entirely onboard with their plan. Mister Frost apparently loved the idea of tutoring Merida achieve her dream of becoming a football player and playing in the Powderpuff game. He even looked forward to it. Hiccup had thanked Rapunzel for her pep-talk and said he was looking forward to informing Merida that afternoon.

That hadn't gone according to plan. In fact, the fact that they had achieved such an accomplishment without consoling her made the redhead even less happy than she already was.

A particular fact that the redhead was incredibly unhappy about.

If Merida didn't love them as much as she did… Well, they would probably have been dead by now.

Rapunzel tried to pay attention to their teacher, her eyes fixed to the whiteboard. Though, in all honestly, she was not paying attention. She was too worried that Merida was going to snap, turn around in her seat and proceed to strangle Hiccup who was sitting in the row behind them.

Rapunzel glanced down at her friend's knuckles, which were white as a ghost. And then up at the clock that was counting down the seconds that the three of them had until school was out. The clock that was counting down the seconds until her immediate destruction.

Carefully, the Punzie tucked a strand of her blonde hair behind her right ear and glanced quickly back at Hiccup who was seated, incredibly still, behind them. There was a muscle in his jaw that was tightened much more than usual. His eyes were staring directly ahead of him though he didn't seem to be focusing on anything in particular. (Though... Perhaps, he was just focusing on staying alive.)

It had been his mistake, after all, that had caused this entire event of Merida's anger to be necessary.

The bell rang, stinging Rapunzel's ears. It had always been a horrible sound, or at least she thought so. Much too piercing and aggressive for a school, let alone a group of children. At the same time, Merida snapped the pencil that she had been squeezing in her hand, and one of Hiccup's books fell off his desk onto the floor.

The blonde swallowed and watched the brunette scrambled to gather his fallen books. Both were waiting for the shot, the metaphorical gunshot that would release their friend's unavoidable anger. The redhead carefully brushed the splinters off her hand and got to her feet. People were exiting the classroom, their chattering voices blending together in the background. Unaware of the bomb that was Merida DunBroch that was going to go off any second.

"Ye tois. Wi' me. Noo."

The funny thing about Merida DunBroch's accent was: it only truly came in full when she was angry. Her words became harder and harder to hear as the color of her face grew to a horrible pinkish-red. (On the phone one night, Hiccup had told Rapunzel that he didn't think she knew it was something that happened when she got angry. He said it was her Scottish blood. Rapunzel had disagreed, she said that Merida put on a sort of act just to scare people when she was angry.)

But now? Right now, she couldn't tell. Perhaps they were both right. It was both her Scottish blood and her desire to scare the two of them.

Merida had grabbed her backpack, slung it over her shoulder and was halfway to the door when Hiccup whispered the translation. He had always been the one able to understand Merida's thick accent out of the two of them.

"She said, 'You two. With me. Now.'"

"We should go then." Rapunzel had pulled her backpack over one shoulder, and was beginning to reach for half of Hiccup's stack of books.

"Probably."

The walk from their desks to Merida's locker was practically a death march. The duo could see her flaming hair bounce as she walked, backpack slung haphazardly over her shoulder. She stuck out like a sore thumb. Merida had such a rather punk sense of style: lots of plaid fabrics tied about her waist, jeans or tights with shorts, and baggy, loose, faded t-shirts. Her style was like punk threatening someone to question if it was punk or not.

Perhaps that was what both Hiccup and Rapunzel liked about her.

She was different and special and interesting.

She wasn't willing to give up without a fight. Without one final call to action. Against her mother, father, teachers, friends. Anyone. It didn't matter to Merida DunBroch who she was fighting, it only mattered that she won.

Hiccup glanced over at Rapunzel's frightened face. He gently pressed his hand awkwardly to her shoulder, trying (and failing) to comfort her. She smiled back at him.

"Let's get this over with, shall we?"

"The sooner the better." Rapunzel swallowed and walked headlong into the storm.

Merida did not have to turn to notice that they were standing behind her.

No, she took her time. The redhead had opened her locker by the time they arrived to stand in uncomfortable silence behind her. She traced her forefinger upon the titles of the ratty, old textbooks that were stacked within the messy abyss of her locker. Figuring out what she would need for homework. There were crumpled papers stuffed in the spare areas between the books and the metal, old assignments, bad test scores, the lot.

(Rapunzel could have sworn she saw the legs of a spider but, she didn't say anything.)

But on the inside panel of the door to her locker, there was a photograph of the three of them. It was in ninth grade, just after they had first met. Rapunzel remembered the photo perfectly. She had been the one to ask for it, after all.

It was the third week of freshman year. And the sun had filtered down through the clouds, as if to create the perfect lighting for a memorable photo. They had been standing in the freshman locker hall. There were large, perfectly spaced, nearly floor-to-ceiling windows that let midday light in. And it was the type of light that if one spent too much time looking out out the windows, it would make the indoors difficult to see.

Summertime light. Magical light.

Little Henry, his face still pudgy from adolescence, was carrying three textbooks in his arms, and checking his phone by tilting his head to look at his wrist instead of the other way around. He looked awkward to be seen with two rather strong-willed young ladies. He was wearing a brown sweater-vest, with a green button down underneath it. And his freckles didn't even bother to hide the slight blush he was sporting on his cheeks.

Whether it was from embarrassment or nervousness or something else entirely, it was difficult to tell.

Little Merida, her long, bright hair tied back in a perfectly elegant ponytail at the top of her head, did not have any books in her arms, in fact she barely had anything in her backpack at all. Her unruly curly hair had been straightened (per her mother's request) and fell perfectly down her back. She was leaning up against the lockers, watching both Henry and Rapunzel.

Little Rapunzel was fiddling with the camera that Mother Gothel, her caretaker while her actual parents were away, had bought her. Gothel had called it a "polaroid camera" and had told Rapunzel that it was "incredibly expensive" and "not to break it". However, she had completely forgotten to mention how to use it. So, the little blonde girl stood by the window, desperately trying to figure out how to work her camera (as well as not embarrass herself in the process).

"Do we have to take a photo?" Henry's voice hadn't dropped yet-that happened sophomore year-so it squeaked and squirmed as he spoke. "Class is going to start really soon and I really don't want to be late!"

"What's so bad about being late?" Merida raised one vibrant eyebrow, questioning the brunette.

"I want to make sure my teachers have a good impression about me, that's why!" Henry would have put his hands on his hips, (rather regally, he might add) if they weren't full of books. So instead, he proudly raised his chin upwards. "Don't you care about what your teachers think about you, Merida?"

"Of course not. My teachers can believe whatever they want to believe about me, that doesn't change who I am." Merida offered the both of them a toothy grin. "Besides, it's a lot more fun making them angry."

Rapunzel giggled at Merida's statement and nodded. "It might be fun getting them all mad but… I'm going to have to agree with Henry on this one. I really like having good grades."

"Grades over fun? I can't believe you two!" Said Merida. But she laughed, and her hair bounced as she did so, making her look much more lion than girl.

Rapunzel had then accidentially snapped a photograph of a rather unattractive below angle of her face. The photo came out the top of the camera and her two new friends crowded around to watch the image develop. It was a slow process but all three were completely enthralled by the image as it took its time appearing.

It slowly faded into the white frame, all at once. There were no particular sections that appeared darker or more vivid or anything. It was just all, slowly, carefully… There. It eventually appeared within the white square eventually and the trio leaned in a little closer to take look. There was a flash of color in the corner of the picture, which was Merida's blurry hair. And a smudge of dark that must have been Henry's hair. But, what took up most of the image was the rather unappealing angle of the young Rapunzel's face.

Henry snorted. "That's quite the shot. You're quite the photographer, Rapunzel."

Merida grinned brightly, catching the hint of his joke. "Your angle really speaks to me, Punzie."

"Thank you very much, you two!" She did not catch hint of their joke. "I think I've finally figured out how to use the camera!" Rapunzel, clasping the developed photograph between her thin fingers. It was a memory (a very weird memory) that she would treasure forever.

"Wait… You didn't before?" Henry raised his eyebrows.

Rapunzel shook her head. "Nope! This is the first camera that I've been given. Ever." She paused, looking at their surprised faces. "Is that shocking? Did you have cameras when you were younger?"

"Always!" That was Merida. "My father couldn't get his camera out of my face until my brothers were born."

"You'd be surprised how many baby photos are in my house, Rapunzel. It's really embarrassing." Henry chuckled. "Did you never have baby photos taken of you?"

"My parents were never around enough to take them." She shrugged. "And then I've never been to a real school-like this one. I've only ever been homeschooled. Well, until now, that is."

There was a slight pause. Neither the young brunette or the young redhead knew what to say. They had only just met this girl and she was practically spouting her life story to them. Neither were as open as the blonde girl standing in front of them was.

"But anyway…" Rapunzel had continued. "The lighting is so perfect right here, and I really think we're going to be best friends… So, let's take a picture!"

"Best friends?" Said Merida. "But we've only just met!"

But they took the photo anyway.

Rapunzel was to the far right, holding the camera as far away as she could manage. She was sporting a winning smile of bright white teeth. Henry was in the middle, making a weird face due to the fact that he had (rather inconveniently) gotten the hiccups only moments before the photo was taken, and had hiccuped in the middle of it. Earning his lifelong nickname. And Merida was at the end, her red hair pulled back to a thin ponytail but, there was one, unnoticed curl that had gotten free and had curled down upon her forehead, showing the world that the reckless, wild Merida still lay within.

The three of them looked, for once, truly happy.

It was a picture that Rapunzel knew, right at the moment it was taken, she would always remember, even years after she graduated. Years after she got her first job. Years after she was known worldwide for her paintings. Years after she got married. Years after everything. She would still have that same photo, that same memory of the two people who changed her life for the better.

Rapunzel blinked out of her reverie.

"I'm really sorry, Merida."

That was Hiccup.

His voice was low and almost raspy now. And his eyebrows were knit together in worry. He was starting out softly, testing the waters of her anger.

"This is our fault. We didn't listen to what you had to say and we just wanted for you to do something that you could end up liking. And… We're sorry. We won't go behind your back like that anymore."

Hiccup certainly made it sound as if he and Rapunzel were Merida's parents.

The redhead slowly turned to face them. The anger that had glowed off her face had certainly faded several notches, and she sighed towards the two of them.

"I'm really sorry Merida…" Rapunzel chimed in, and she opened her arms slightly, as if suggesting that they all go in for a group hug.

The redhead smiled at this. It was cheesy, sure but, it was just the right amount of cheese. It wouldn't help to stay mad at them forever. They were her closest friends, her only friends. What she would do without them… She didn't know. She couldn't survive the summer, that was for sure.

Besides, they had understood that they had hurt her feelings. And the chances of either of them making the same mistake again was incredibly low. They were both smart like that. That was another reason why she liked them. Not just tolerated but liked.

They weren't anything like her mother who, if given the chance, would continue to disagree with Merida until the world ended. Or her father, who meant well but, forgot people existed if they weren't staring him directly in the face.

So… A hug sounded like a good idea.

No matter how cheesy it was.

She grabbed the right side of Hiccup's shirt, and the left side of Rapunzel's jacket and pulled them towards her.

Now, back in ninth grade, she had been the tallest of the trio. Merida DunBroch with her tiny, awkward, freshman goons. Now, after both Hiccup and Rapunzel (who was only an inch and a half shorter than the brunette) had had their growth spurts, it was Merida's head that knocked into their shoulders. And it was both the blonde and the brunette who got mouthfuls of Merida's fiery mane. Merida Dunbroch now had her tall, lanky goons.

Their scents mixed. Rapunzel, who had a tendency to smell strongly of garden soil and freshly baked goods, and Hiccup, who always smelt of a mixture between the ocean and laundry detergent. It was strange. Together the two smelt like freshly washed soil and bread from the ocean. But, in a weird way, it was a nice smell.

At least, Merida thought so.

It was the smell of friendship. Her friendship. Their friendship.

But… There was something else.

It was barely detectable but, she could smell something else. (After all the years she had spent dealing with her brothers' antics, she could smell certain scents from a mile away. Especially if it involved their father's deodorant in any way, shape, or form. The memory still gave her nightmares-She couldn't get the stuff out of her hair for weeks!)

It wasn't her father's deodorant but, it must have been the same brand. Something with the title "fresh blizzard" or "mint storm". Something obnoxious and quote on quote, "manly" like that. It wasn't that it was a bad smell, it was just strong, and ridiculous. Nobody needed deodorant to smell like that, anyway.

She felt Hiccup's shoulders tense slightly, something he did whenever he realized something had gone wrong. And Rapunzel's breath catch in her throat, like it always did when she saw something she wasn't expecting.

Merida felt her stomach drop. She had put the pieces together. The obnoxious deodorant, her friends' body language. There was honestly nobody else it could be.

The redhead slowly dropped her arms and turned to face the newcomer.

"Never pictured you as a 'group hug' type of guy, Henry. But hey, you know what they say: 'you learn something new everyday'." Said Jack Overland Frost, a sly grin lingering on his pale lips. "Anyway… Who's ready to play some football?"

Chapter Text

To Jack’s surprise, it wasn’t the redhead who acted.

Nor Henry, who should have been second in line to act, since this all had to do with the one and only, Jack Frost.

No, it was pretty blonde who stepped forwards. And he had to admit, she was incredibly beautiful. Bright, light green eyes, incredibly long, silky blonde hair, and a summery dress, splattered with paint. She had the elegance and grace of royalty, her light footed steps passing both her friends to stand in front of them. Her long, flowing blonde hair falling in an array of strips over her shoulders and back. If Jack didn’t know any better, he would have thought she was being protective of them.

But he did know better. And the redhead looked like she could easily give him a black eye just by yelling in his general direction.

“You must be Jack Frost.” She smiled at him and he was unable to tell if it was false enthusiasm. If it was, she was a fantastic actress. If it wasn’t, it was just good to meet such a pleasant, happy-go-lucky person. There were so few of those in the world. “It’s a pleasure to meet another friend of Hiccup’s.”

Jack blinked. “Hiccup?”

Henry, who was standing behind the redhead with a hand on her shoulder, looked sheepish. Ah. It was a nickname.

“Oh! Do you call him Henry?” Her thin eyebrows raised in surprise. “I wasn’t aware anyone called him that anymore.”

“I don’t call him Henry anymore.” Hiccup groaned in the background. Jack smirked almost as if to say, this is your fault for getting me into this in the first place. “You must be Merida. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

That seemed to throw the miniature redhead of a metaphorical ledge. She shrugged Hiccup’s hand off her shoulder forcefully. The blonde had only a moment of confusion flicker over her pretty face before she was practically shoved out of the way by the oncoming storm of bright hair and anger.

“Ayam Merida DunBroch, thenk ye huir uv a much.”

Now that… Jack Frost knew several different languages but that… That did not make any sense.

He wasn’t stupid, he knew she had said Merida DunBroch so, obviously, she must be the Merida that Hen--Hiccup had spoken about. (Though, what he had failed to mention was that she was unbelievably tiny and incredibly, unbelievably angry. So angry that Jack was sometimes having a bit of an issue distinguishing her fiery hair from her heated face.)

“I’m sorry, your accent is rather thick. Can you repeat that, please?” He didn’t need to look over at Hiccup to know that he had slapped his hand over his forehead. This was going to be fun.

“Ayam. Merida. DunBroch. Thenk. Ye. Huir. Uv. A. Much.”

“Sorry… A little slower, please.” He leaned forwards and bent his knees slightly, as if trying to get down onto her level. Clearly, that didn’t help her mood. Her hair seemed to expand, bristling with fury.

“Jack…” Hiccup warned.

“Ay. Am. Mer. I. Da. Dun. Broch. Thenk. Ye. Huir. Uv. A. Much.” Her fists were clenched by her sides.

“Sorry I--” But he wasn’t given the chance to finish.

The redhead looked like she was about to pounce at him, and as she did so, both her friends grabbed her arms, holding her back. Her red hair flew in different directions as she tried to get free. Like some sort of wild animal. (Like Toothless, the black cat, when Hiccup tried to take him to the vet.)The three of them stood there for a moment, Hiccup struggling to hold on, and the blonde daintily making sure she didn’t go all out and murder Jack.

Slowly, the redhead calmed down, losing some of the fluorescent color from her face. She shrugged her friends arms off her shoulders and stepped towards him.

Her steps weren’t like the blonde’s. They were harsh, confident. She put her hands on her hips and looked up at him. She looked like a little, Scottish lioness staring at her dinner. He raised his eyebrows at her, and in the corner of his eye, he saw the blonde and Hiccup take a couple steps forwards, ready to grab her if she tried to attack again. (It was almost as if they were her parents, or the owners of a misbehaving Scottish dog. It was hard to tell.)

She pressed her forefinger against his chest gently. She cleared her throat and met his eyes. Light blue met light blue.

“I don’t need your help playing football, Mister Frost.”

It was a cold, frozen sort of statement. But he decided to ignore her point.

“What, are you going to learn the basics of football all by yourself? The game is in a few weeks after all.”

She opened her mouth, stopped, and then closed it again. With her brow furrowed, she paused, organizing her thoughts. If there was anything at all that Jack had realized about this girl, it was that: she liked a challenge.

“I don't need your help, Frost.”

They stood there for a moment, staring at each other. Each trying to get the other to look away. Her curls were brushing against his bare forearms. Hiccup held his breath and the blonde girl stood completely still.

But, after what must have been an uncomfortable ten seconds, the white haired football player looked away.

“Fine.”

The redhead looked smug for a moment. And Jack, with the slight look of defeat, walked past her. But he wasn't done. Not in a million years would that trickster be completely finished.

He could hear the redhead talking to the blonde (her name was Rapunzel, apparently), happily shouting her victory for all the school to hear. Hiccup mumbled for her to keep it down but, she couldn't. She liked to win. And she thought she had.

Boy, was she wrong.

Jack pulled the football out of his backpack faster than Hiccup could say his full name. None of the three had noticed but, he couldn't blame them. If he was an innocent bystander, he wouldn't have thought that anyone would do (or could do for that matter) what he was about to attempt. No, what he was about to do.

The white haired man stood at the end of the hallway, with the pigskin between his nimble fingers. Here goes nothing, he thought to himself.

“Hey Merida! Think fast!”

And he launched the football, aiming square for her round face, almost hidden within the fiery strands of her red hair.

Merida DunBroch had never been on the receiving end of a black eye.

Her had always brothers known that her face was the most important aspect of their sister, at least according to their mother, and so they always pulled pranks that never had anything to do with Merida injuring her pretty face. Sure, the redhead in question had given them black eyes. Most of the time though, it was just an accident, and they were, as she had said before, “too short for their own good”.

And nobody else had ever even tried to fight her. Perhaps it was just the look she had in her eye. Perhaps it was just the way she carried herself. But nobody went over to her and promptly said “let’s go, let’s fight”.

Well… Until now, that was.

The redhead in question was sitting in her bedroom, looking at her face. She had taken the icepack that Hiccup had pulled out of his lunchbox earlier off her face to asses the damage. As of the moment, there was nothing really obvious about her eye. Sure, her eyelid was slightly purple, and a bit of skin below was beginning to turn purple but besides that… She looked like a punk rocker that hadn’t exactly taken all her makeup off very well.

And her mother was going to kill her.

Okay, maybe she wasn’t going to kill Merida but, the redhead had a feeling that she would suffer a fate worse than death.

And it would be all Jack Frost’s fault.

He had decided to throw a football directly at her face, after all. Who else could she blame? Both Hiccup and Rapunzel had apologized profusely, and by their shocked expressions, she knew they had nothing to do with Jack or his plan of giving her a black eye. (Hiccup had yelled at Jack as the white haired menace himself had run away, and Rapunzel had promptly assessed the damage as soon as it had occurred. There was no way she could possibly blame them.)

“What have I told you about taking the ice pack off your eye?” Hiccup was pacing behind her. He had one of his hands tucked under his chin, deep in though, the other crossed over his chest, almost as if he was clasping his ribcage. “It’ll only swell more if you do that.”

“Sorry, Mum.” Merida snorted, but placed the ice pack back onto her eye. It smelt vaguely of tuna fish, which was what Hiccup had had for lunch.

Hiccup sat down at the edge of her bed, looking nervously at her reflection in the mirror. He would have usually rolled his eyes at her reaction but he was too nervous. Was he nervous about what I would say?, Merida thought to herself. If that was the case, then he had a fair reason to be nervous. He had been the one to speak to Jack Frost. To tell him what they were planning for Merida. What they had wanted her to do. And now the redhead had a black eye. So yes, technically, this was all his fault.

Of course, he didn’t know that Jack Frost would have chucked a football at the unsuspecting Merida DunBroch so, it was Jack Frost’s fault as well. But… If he had known? Well, Jack Frost would have never had made an appearance in his or the Miss DunBroch’s life. Honestly, who threw a football at someone’s head! (Well, besides Jack Frost, that was.)

And then, almost out of nowhere, he was in behind her. His thin, lanky arms wrapped around her waist, squeezing her tightly. She could feel his pointy nose against her shoulder. His wispy hair brushing her neck. It was an intimate gesture, Merida had to admit, and if it was anyone else (minus Punzie, of course) she would have flushed a faded red and socked in him the face. But it was Hiccup Haddock.

And anything Hiccup Haddock ever did was sweet. She reached her hand over and carefully patted his shoulder. He was at an incredibly awkward angle that she could barely reach him with her hand, but, it was the thought that counted.

“I’m really sorry, Merida.” His voice was soft. Muffled due to the fact that his face was pressed against her shoulder. “I got us into this… And now you’re hurt…”

“It’s okay…” She paused, almost awkwardly. “I forgive you…” What was she supposed to say to that. She couldn’t even see his face to judge if he was going to start crying or something ridiculous like that. “Just don’t start crying on me.”

He pulled his head off her shoulder and looked at her in the mirror. “I wasn’t going to start crying!”

She smiled, small laughter lines appearing around her visible eye as she did so. “I don’t know, Hiccup, you seemed awfully close to it.”

He opened his mouth, as if he was going to make a comeback to her remark but he was interrupted by the whirl of colours that was Rapunzel Corona, tumbling through her bedroom window. Hiccup jumped, letting out a rather loud yelp. His arms pulled away from the redhead almost automatically. There was a slight hint of redness to his cheeks thought, through embarrassment or something else entirely, Merida couldn’t tell.

Rapunzel was lying on the floor, her blonde hair covering her face. Her chest was heaving as if she had run a mile which, as the redhead thought about it, could have possibly been true. Merida had said to be quick about it and the blonde had a history of taking things a little too literally. There was a slight pinkness to her cheeks. Her purse--which did not match the rest of her outfit--was lying beside her, its innards spilling out onto Merida’s (surprisingly clean) floor.

She raised a small item into the air so both the brunette and the redhead could see it.

“I got it.” The blonde heaved exhaustedly. She must have ran the whole way there and back. “Hopefully it matches your skin tone, Mer.”

Merida jumped off the bed, snatched the item out of her friend’s hand, and sat down on the rather small stool that sat in front of the mirror.

“Wait.” That was Hiccup. Merida’s eyes flicked over to her two friends. “What’s going on? What did you buy?” He looked down at the exhausted Rapunzel, his eyebrows raised in question. She looked up at him happily.

“Concealer.”

“Concealer?” He paused, and both girls could practically see his mind searching for this word. “Wait. Is that a makeup thing?”

“Ding ding! Looks like we’ve got a winner.” Rapunzel laughed, and offered Hiccup her hand. “Your prize is to help me up off the floor.”

The redhead looked back at her reflection as Hiccup helped their blonde friend off the floor. Merida DunBroch considered herself… Well, she wasn’t vain but, she considered herself pretty. The DunBroch clan had always been stunning to say the very least. Bright, almost uncontrollably curly red hair, freckles, usually light blue coloured eyes, dimples in the cheeks. The redhead smiled at her reflection. To say the least, she didn’t need someone to tell her she looked good, she knew it already. She didn’t need makeup to make herself more presentable to the world. And there was nothing wrong with people who did. She just… Well… She didn’t wake up early enough to successfully apply it in the first place.

Which meant that putting concealer on her black eye would prove to be… Interesting, at the very least.

Rapunzel knew exactly how to use makeup. She hadn’t had the phase where she put too much on, or the phase where she was still figuring out how eyeliner worked or anything of the sort. Rapunzel just knew. And Merida respected her friend for that. Which was why she had sent the blonde out to do the makeup shopping and not Hiccup.

While Hiccup was good with mechanics and illustration, she wouldn’t be able to trust him to pick out the exact matching colour that her light skin tone was. And honestly, she didn’t trust herself either.

“Need some help?” Rapunzel to the rescue.

“Yeah…” Merida turned to her friend and took the ice pack off her eye. The blonde gasped. The redhead looked suddenly worried. Had something gone wrong since she had last looked at her eye? Was it swollen? Puffy? Did it clearly sing that she had a black eye? Would her mother notice? “What’s wrong?”

“It’s just so… Shocking, Mer!” The blonde giggled, gingerly taking the container of concealer out of her her friend’s hands and squeezing a bit onto her finger. “I never thought I’d see the day that you’d actually get a black eye! You always talk about getting into fights and… Well… I just thought you’d never actually do it!”

“But… She didn’t get into a fight, Rapunzel.” That was Hiccup, who was now lying on Merida’s bed, looking up at the ceiling. With his green t-shirt, he almost blended into her comforter.

“I know but if we told everyone that she got a black eye by getting hit in the face with a football, Miss DunBroch here would never hear the end of it!” Exclaimed Rapunzel. “Close your eye, Merida. Or your eyes, if that’s easier.”

Hiccup snorted from the bed.

She shut her eyes. Not tightly but, just enough that they were closed and all she could see was the faded light coming from her lids. “That’s why nobody is going to know.”

“Makeup isn’t a magical thing, Mer. It isn’t perfect.” Punzie sighed and the redhead could practically see the slight pout beginning to form on her friend’s lips, even with her eyes closed.

“I think the black eye suits you, DunBroch. I think you should keep it.”

The redhead scoffed at the brunette’s comment. It was like Hiccup’s entire personality had changed ever since Rapunzel had tumbled through the window. It was as if he wanted to agree with everything the blonde princess was saying. It was as if he wanted her to think he was a lot cooler than he actually was. It was strange. Both Rapunzel and Merida knew for a fact that Hiccup was the furthest thing from cool. He was steaming hot but not in a good way.

No, he wasn’t even steaming hot. He was just room temperature.

Sure, Hiccup had grown quite a bit since freshman year. And he had a slight hint of what could be a beard in the future. And he had a fair set of muscles from working with heavy machinery. But… He wasn’t cool. Or hot. Just room temperature.

(Besides, even if she wanted to, Merida couldn’t see her friend as anything more than a best friend. A uncomfortably tall, horribly awkward, bumbling nerd of a best friend.)

“Weren’t you apologizing earlier, Haddock?” She raised her eyebrows slightly. Rapunzel was rubbing the concealer onto her skin, as gently as she could muster. She was carefully trying to rub it into her eyelid, and although it hurt slightly, Merida tried her best not to wince.

“Well I mean, I was. But you said that it was fine.”

“So you’re making fun of me now?”

“I m-mean, I wouldn’t go as far as to--”

“Friends shouldn’t make fun of each other, Hiccup. Merida’s gone through enough today, anyway. When the day comes that you get hit in the eye with a football, then you may sass away but today… Today is not that day.” She could practically hear that Punzie was standing proudly, with her hands on her hips as she said that, a golden light falling down from some unknown location and making her glow. “You can open your eyes now, Merida.”

The redhead did so and glanced at her reflection. The slowly appearing mark was mostly hidden by the concealer. If people didn’t know it was there, then they wouldn’t know what to look for. “Thank you.”

“No problem, Merida,” said Rapunzel. “Just remember not to rub your eye!”

And then they were gone. Hiccup and Rapunzel were out the window, balancing on the perfected roof tiles that her mother had installed a couple months back, calling rushed, whispered goodbyes, before they clambered down the tree outside Merida’s window and off into the fading late afternoon light. She watched them run across her lawn, steering clear of the sensored lights, until they reached Hiccup’s nearly falling apart truck on the other side of the street. Hiccup ran to one side of the truck--the driver’s side--and Rapunzel turned back to her friend’s window to give a quick wave before she jumped in. It took a few moments for Hiccup’s car to pull itself back into the world of the living but soon, they were off.

She found herself staring out the window at the spot that Hiccup’s truck had been for the next few minutes.

Merida DunBroch was so lucky. She had friends that cared about her. Truly, truly cared. She would even go as far as to say that they loved her. The trio had been together through thick and thin, through tears and anger. They knew when they had overstepped each other’s boundaries, and they knew how to forgive each other. Sure, they may not have known everything about her mother and the rest of her family but, it did not matter to them. They were her friends and they would love her no matter what.

Lost in thought, the redhead nearly missed the sound of someone knocking on her bedroom door.

“Come in.”

The door opened and she didn’t even bother turning to look at who stood in the entrance. It could be nobody than the queen of the house: her mother.

“Merida, what have I said about cleaning your room.” The redhead rolled her eyes, still staring out the window. There had never ever been a ‘Merida, how was your day?’ or a ‘Merida, how are you feeling?’. Her mother always came with requests, demands. Merida, don’t forget to do this, don’t forget to do that. “One day you are going to pull a shirt off the floor and reveal that there’s a whole nest of silverfish below it. And when that happens? Don’t come to me because I warned you. I warned you and you didn’t listen!”

The redhead had to consciously remember to hold her tongue around her mother if she wanted to avoid a heated argument. Sometimes, she believed that her mother said certain things just to rile her up so she would, in fact, get into an argument.

But Merida was exhausted. The day’s events had gone from bad to worse. And although she had fantastic friends that stood by her side no matter what, she also had a black eye. And a mother that would absolutely murder her if she saw even a hint of it. She just wanted to eat a quick, warm dinner and go to sleep.

Merida turned in her seat to look at her mother.

Mrs. DunBroch must have been quite beautiful in another lifetime. Merida had seen pictures of her stunning mother when she was younger. Pictures of a young, beautiful woman with long, dark hair cascading down her back. A young woman with perfected features and a face that was meant for laughing. A young woman with a thin, pointed nose (not unlike the one Merida sported) and a wide, bright smile. A woman who worked relentlessly, fighting for what she thought, or more likely knew, was right.

When Merida was in elementary school, she wondered where that woman had gone. When she entered middle school, she had begun to believe that it was her birth that had caused all her mother’s bitterness. But by high school, she realized that her mother was just a bitter person and it was not her fault in the slightest. (Besides, she had three identical younger brothers, if it was Merida’s fault, her mother would not have had them.)

Now, Mrs. DunBroch just looked tired. Her long, dark hair was streaked with grey, and her eyes had slight bags under them. Not the exhausted, sleep-deprived bags that Hiccup sported rather elegantly (those were Rapunzel’s words) but, bags of age. Her forehead had the occasional wrinkle, that usually appeared when she frowned and her eyebrows pressed together. She looked like an entirely different person that the young woman Merida had seen in photographs.

Merida leaned her elbow against the windowsill. “Is dinner almost ready?”

“Yes, Merida.” Her mother sighed. “Maudie is cooking a stew of some sort.”

“Ah.” Maudie, the DunBroch maid, could be convinced to do anything by the three rascals that she called her brothers. They were like little beasts. They could tell that the poor woman was afraid of them, and they used it to their advantage.

And they also knew that Merida hated stew.

God, she was going to kill them.

Well, that was, if they didn’t kill her first.

Merida focused back on her mother, whose eyes were searching the room, as if trying to find the hidden forms of something. Anything.

“Maudie said she heard something coming from your room earlier in the evening. Voices.” But that wasn’t what she was asking. She was practically stating: Did you have people over, Merida? Specifically after I told you not to?

“Oh yeah?” The redhead kept her cool. “That might have been my music. I was listening to music earlier.”

“I see.” Her mother did not believe her.

There was an uncomfortable pause. Merida stared at her mother, and her mother stared back. The young redhead was practically begging her mother to ask again. She didn’t want to fight but, it was much more fun to say something that her mother knew was a lie but, had no proof against it.

But her mother said nothing.

“Dinner will be served shortly.” She headed back towards the door. She stopped in the doorway and turned back to her daughter. “Don’t play any more music, Merida. Your upcoming exams are more important than whatever music is in right now.” She paused again. “In fact, give me your headphones. And your speakers.”

And with that, her mother exited.

The woman knew that Merida would follow her orders. And if she didn’t? Well, they would get there if (or more likely, when) they got there. The door shut quietly, and the redhead listened to her mother’s footsteps fade slowly down the hall.

She would have yelled, and probably thrown something, if she wasn’t so tired. It had been a long day. And she had wasted all her anger on her friends--something she was sure she would never do again (if she could help it). She didn’t have anything left for her mother.

Merida got up off of the small stool that she had pulled over to the window, and collapsed into her bed. The redhead thought her room was quite clean. Sure, there was clothing on the floor but, it wasn’t so intense that she couldn’t see the floor. Her mother was overreacting. Besides, that was really the only thing wrong with her bedroom. Her papers were stacked neatly on her desk, organized by class period. Her bed sheets were tucked perfectly, making the whole dark green rectangle look like it had never been slept in at all.

The walls were bare, no posters of pictures or anything. Well, at least, that’s what it looked like during the day. Rapunzel had spent most of their sophomore year taking glow in the dark paint--stuff that she had created from scratch--and using it to paint an entire mural in Merida’s room. If the redhead turned off her lights, she could have probably seen stars scattered across her ceiling, the willow-the-wisps dancing across her walls, and tiny versions of her friends interacting with their surroundings, and much, much more. (Rapunzel had drawn a tiny version of herself painting the mural by her desk, a tiny version of Hiccup surrounded by books by her door, and a tiny version of Merida shooting a bow and arrow near the redhead’s headboard.)

It was as if they were always with her, no matter what happened.

The redhead snaked her hand under one of her pillows and pulled out the football that had been chucked at her head earlier in the day. She didn’t exactly know why she had kept it. Perhaps it was the fact that he had chucked it at her, or perhaps she felt that if she popped it, it would make her feel better. But she didn’t know for sure.

The material of the so called pigskin was rough between her fingertips. Bumpy. Football was such an odd sport. It was nothing compared to archery. There was an elegance to archery. A calmness that football lacked. Football was all action and tackling. Archery was all focus and precision. She turned the ball in her hands, looking it over until--

Wait.

That couldn’t have been there before.

Maybe she hadn’t looked at it closely enough but, she could have sworn that the black sharpie writing that she was currently gaping at had not been there earlier. Her eyes flicked over the scrawled handwriting, reading it for what must have been the sixth time.

This… This couldn’t be real.

And below that was his phone number.

So had planned it. The argument, and then the football being chucked at her head. He had planned everything down to a T. She felt the rage that she had thought she had lost for the day returning fiery and nearly uncontrollable.

She was going to kill him.

No. Merida DunBroch grinned, a horribly contorted expression of both anger and almost what seemed to be evil. The idea had popped into her head out of nowhere. Killing the man wouldn’t do her anything. He was way too popular and she wouldn’t be able to get away with it. Nor, most likely, would she actually be able to successfully pull it off without anyone realizing it was her. She looked at the text, and then the number that had been hastily scrawled below it. She wasn’t going to just kill Jack Frost.

She was going to give him a black eye of her own.

Chapter Text

“Aren’t you going to get that?”

“No.”

Jack’s cell phone had rung eight times in the last six minutes. And the both of the young women sitting on the rather worn out couch beside him were starting to get annoyed. No. That was an understatement. By this point, they were both rather irritated. The significantly older of the two looked like she was ready to grab the phone in question and break it in half.

“If you don’t get the phone,” said the older woman, her cropped brown hair shaking slightly out of anger as she spoke, “ I’ll sneak into you room in the middle of the night and yank out one of your teeth.”

Jack swallowed. “Won’t you get your license taken away if you do that, Toothiana?”

“It’s Tatiana, Jack.” she paused for only a moment, composing her words. “And it’ll be worth it.”

Both Tatiana and Jack knew that older woman was bluffing.

But the girl sitting between them did not.

“No! Jack’s teeth are really nice! Don’t pull them out! He has better teeth then you do, Tati!” Tatiana’s biological younger sister, who went by the name Baby, despite how much she despised it, looked shocked and frightened at her sister’s words. Her short, cropped brown hair shook and mimicked her sister’s perfectly.

“He has better teeth than I do?” Tatiana looked menacing. Baby shrunk backwards, pressing up against Jack to better get away from her sister.

“You’ve started a war, Baby!” The white haired football player grabbed Baby and flung her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Baby squealed with delight.

Jack jumped to his feet upon the couch and proceeded to hop out of Tatiana’s reach. This didn’t give Tatiana very long to react but, soon she was up, a slightly menacing look on her petite face. Although Jack had had a head start, she wasn’t far behind, leaping over furniture with a surprising amount of grace and elegance, considering the fact that she was literally jumping over furniture. Her fingers kept brushing the back of Jack’s shirt, only not able to grasp anything by a mere millisecond.

“Get back here you white haired jerk!” Tatiana called, jumping over the coffee table. “Your long legs are giving you too much of an advantage!”

Jack, who was standing at the other end of the room, balancing on the armrest of one of the many chairs that filled their living room, grinned mischievously at her. “I’m sorry! I can’t hear you over the incredibly long distance that separates us!”

Baby giggled from over Jack’s shoulder.

The sisters were basically identical. Or they would have been if they were the same age. Tatiana, who was nearly twenty-five now, had dark, seemingly perfect skin, which contrasted the splash of bright green that her nearly eyebrow length bangs sported. She had a feather that had been attached somehow to a couple strands of her hair. (When Jack was younger, she convinced him that she had once been part bird, and he believed her.) She was almost an official dentist. By next year, when she graduated, she would be. (It was something that she never let the inhabitants of their makeshift home forget.)

Baby, whose name wasn’t actually ‘Baby’ and who had just turned eleven, looked like a mini version of her sister. With the same chocolatey skin, and the same vibrant green splash across her bangs, perfectly in place feather, and the same deep, puppy dog eyes. Their only difference was in both age and the fact that she hated teeth. Baby had never been convinced by the chain of baby teeth that her sister wore diligently around her neck.

In fact, she would even go as far as to say that it creeped her out. But she would never tell Tatiana that. She didn’t want to be a dentist. If anything, she wanted to be a veterinarian. Or something like that. She loved animals.

The sisters were practically inseparable. And they had been ever since their parents died several years back. Tatiana had taken care of her sister ever since she was thirteen and had grown up a lot quicker than most kids had at that age.

Their story had made Jack’s heart sink when he had first heard it. It was just too horrible, in his mind, for a woman as wonderful as Tatiana to take on that much responsibility so early in life. He believed that a person’s childhood helped mold them into the type of person they were later on in life. And if one had no childhood, what type of person did that make them?

Jack Frost did not know.

All he knew was that he was determined to not let Baby deal with the same conditions as her sister did. If he was going to be around, he was going to be helpful. He was going to give Baby the childhood that she deserved, and in turn, she could help her sister relive a slice in time that she had never experienced.

Tatiana tackled Jack and Baby back onto the couch.

So far, his plan was working quite well.

He grinned brightly at Tatiana, who was laughing loudly, out of breath on the couch beside him. Quietly, he pulled his arm up onto the back of the couch and let her lean into his shoulder. It was a common motion. Her head on his shoulder, the familiar feeling that he had come to know as happiness warming him. Baby was squished between them, interest lost in their miniature war, and focused back on the horror movie that she had originally been so afraid of.

One of the young women on the television screen screamed, and Baby hid her eyes. Just in time too, as blood spurted from her body, coming from places that blood shouldn’t have been coming from.

He didn’t flinch. And neither did Tatiana’s head on his shoulder. Nothing shook that feeling of family from his heart. Not even some blonde lady getting her intestines ripped out of her torso.

Jack and Tatiana had always been trying to gross each other out with the scariest, goriest movies they could find. The first to flinch, lost. And neither had flinched so far. Baby had been flinching enough for the both of them.

“Are you two seriously watching that stuff again? You’re gonna give Baby more nightmares than she actually needs.”

The front door slammed shut with a bang. Both Jack and Tatiana’s faces swiveled around to look at the man who had just walked into their home. Although he was the tallest out of their messed up family, he was certainly not the oldest.

Twenty year old Aster Bunnymund towered over the rest of the family. His muscular shoulders and thin hips gave him an strange greaser look. His pulled back dyed grey near-mullet made him look even more terrifying, if that was even possible. Like an extra in a gang movie. And his bushy grey eyebrows and thick Aussie accent really did not help much. Nor did the fact that their whole household had no idea what Aster did during the day. (The strange stains he got in his clothing was really not comforting in the slightest but, nobody had the courage to ask him what he did during the day.)

“Bunny!” Baby gasped and wiggled out of the grasp of both her sister and Jack alike.

It was amazing how quickly Aster’s features melted. His eyebrows were angrily pushed together, and then suddenly they were high up on his forehead. The darkness in his eyes disappeared entirely. And his hardened jaw line became giddy with excitement. There was nobody that he loved more than Baby. And nobody wanted to question it.

No.

It was more like, everyone was too afraid to question it.

Aster hugged Baby tightly, lifting her clean off her feet, and spinning her around. Baby giggled. “I missed you, Baby!”

“I missed you too, Bunny!”

“I wish I had a camera.” Tatiana mumbled quietly.

“He’d kill you if you took a picture.” Jack mumbled back.

Tatiana glanced over at her white haired friend. “I could die in peace knowing that this moment was preserved, Jack.” Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Don’t test me.”

Jack’s cell phone rang again.

He didn’t answer it. The four of stared at the quietly vibrating object.

“Who was that?” Aster had let Baby climb onto his shoulders as he rummaged around, putting his bag and jacket away.

“Nobody important.” Jack shrugged, turning back to the movie.

“Not important, he says, so not important that they’ve been calling me all night.” Toothiana snorted, crossing her arms.

Aster collapsed onto the couch beside Toothiana, letting Baby climb off his shoulders and claim her seat between Jack and her sister again. “What does Nick say to that?”

The older woman sighed. “Nicholas isn’t home yet. You know how busy he is.”

“Right.”

The four sat in silence, staring at the television screen as an unseen monster attacked another victim. The music grew more intense, hitting a climax. Blood splattered the camera. Baby jumped, hiding her eyes behind her hands. Both Toothiana and Jack didn’t move. Aster grimaced.

Jack’s phone rang again.

“I’ve had enough.”

In a series of well put together movements Tatiana paused the film, leaned over Jack, swiped his phone from the armrest beside him, and answered the call. Jack did not have a second to react before the phone was pressed onto Tatiana’s ear.

“This is Jack Frost’s cell phone. What is so important that you’ve been calling all night?”

The redhead was at a loss for words.

There were several different things going through her head at that moment. They weren’t in a particular order but essentially, they went a bit like this:

Jack Frost had a woman at his house--someone Merida automatically presumed to be his secret girlfriend. Somebody had been calling him earlier, consistently. Perhaps another secret girlfriend. Jack Frost had a secret girlfriend that nobody knew he had. She could use that against him.

Merida DunBroch grinned.

Oh, this was going to be so much more fun than she had originally thought.

“I haven’t been calling all night. That must’ve been somebody else.” She paused for a moment, finding her words. “I’m looking for Jack Frost? He gave me this number and told me to call him.”

That wasn’t exactly the truth. He had chucked his phone number at her head and given her a black eye.

“What’s your name?” The woman on the other end of the phone sounded strangely defensive about the whole thing. She just had to be his secret girlfriend.

“DunBroch. Merida DunBroch.”

She heard something clink against the phone, probably the woman’s earrings or something. There were mumbled words. She heard her name. The phone was handed over, and she heard the soft exhale that she was sure had to be Jack Frost.

“I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. You’re just that eager to--” He was cut off by what sounded like a whack from some unseen object on his end of the phone. “OW! Tooth! No she’s… She’s… No she’s not my girlfriend!” Another whack and some more mumbled words. “Stop attacking me! Fine, fine! I’m going to my room, calm down!” Another bunch of mumbled words. “Aster can take my place. I’m counting on you, Bunnymund, don’t let us lose!”

The sounds from the room slowly faded into the distance as she presumed Jack left the first room and went into another. A door closed. He was alone.

“So.” He stated.

“So?” She replied. “Is that all you have to say?”

“Yep.”

“No apology?”

“Nope.” He paused, and she felt he could sense that she was at a loss for words. “Obviously, you must’ve overlooked the fact that I hit you in the face with a football if you’re calling me now. And so soon, too. I at least thought you’d call me tomorrow at the very earliest.”

She opened her mouth and closed it.

Opened it again.

And then closed it.

He had a point. But at the same time, she didn’t care. She was too angry to care. Too determined to care.

“Apologize.”

“I’m sorry to tell you this but, you need more from me than I need from you right now. You’re in no place to demand anything.”

“I could tell people that you’re a horrible person.”

“Nobody would believe you and besides, that’s not true. I’m not being horrible to you.”

“You hit me in the face with a football!”

“How was I supposed to know you wouldn’t catch it in time?!”

“Did Hiccup seriously tell you nothing?” She sighed, leaning her elbow against the windowsill. Who knew the school’s prince would be such an irritating person to deal with. “And he calls himself the smart one…”

“Does he really?” Jack sounded surprised.

“Sometimes. He’s got the grades for it.” She stopped, her hand clenching slightly on her phone. “But that’s not why I called. As I was saying, you have an older woman, or at least what sounds like a secret girlfriend at your house. I’m sure the school would love to hear about that.”

He paused for an extended amount of time. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“So it’s the truth?”

“No. No! Of course not.” She could practically hear him biting his lip. “Besides, nobody would believe you. In fact, nobody would ever believe the fact that you would come within a fifty foot radius of me. It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Rapunzel’s really good at Photoshop. You’d be surprised how believable her work is.”

He took a moment to respond again, trying to find the words. Merida grinned out the window and into the night. She had him. She totally had him. “Rapunzel?”

“My blonde friend. You met her this afternoon.”

“The pretty one?”

“...I guess.”

Rapunzel Corona was pretty, there was no doubt about it. But Merida never quite saw her like how Jack saw women. She preferred not to sexualize her friends to no end. If anything, she would protect Rapunzel from men like Jack Frost until the day she died. The blonde did not deserve what gruesome deed Jack Frost had to offer.

“Yeah, if I met her this afternoon with the two of you, that would be her. There was Henry, The Angry Lioness--that’s you--and The Pretty One.” He took a deep breath into the receiver. “I bet I could convince her not to. She seemed pretty interested this afternoon.”

“That was before you hit me in the face with a football.”

“Well… Everyone can be persuaded.”

“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself, Frost.” Merida leaned her chin on the palm of her hand. “But I didn’t call you to listen to you swoon over my friend.”

“Oh? I thought that was your single reason for calling. That’s why most people call me.”

“Ha ha.” Merida rolled her eyes. “You’re going to teach me to play football. Really well.”

“And if I say no?”

“I’ll kick your ass.”

“I seriously doubt that someone as tiny as you could be able to--”

“Try me, Frost.” She paused, making sure her tone was menacing. “Go ahead and try me.”

Jack didn’t respond.

There was an incredibly long pause as Merida could only guess at what the white haired football player was thinking. Perhaps, it was something to do with his mystery girlfriend. Or perhaps it had something to do with his strange attraction to Rapunzel. Or even because he didn’t want his reputation damaged by any information that she did or did not know.

Merida could only guess.

“I’ll help you.” He took another deep breath. “On one condition.”

“What condition is that?”

“Don’t tell Rapunzel and Hiccup about anything you think you know.” Jack’s voice was almost scared sounding. She couldn’t tell if that was just the phone making him sound weird, or if it was something else entirely. She decided to not question it.

“Mister Frost,” said Merida, determination filling her body, “you’ve got yourself a deal.”

Chapter Text

Rapunzel Corona had mosquito bites on her left hand.

There were six bites in total, presumably from the same bug. She kept kicking herself internally. If only she hadn’t left her window open last night, then she would be able to brush her hand up against whatever she wanted to brush it up against, and it wouldn’t itch. Of course, at the very same time, if she hadn’t left her window open, her paintings wouldn’t have dried, and she wouldn’t have been able to hide them from Mother Gothel—not that Mother Gothel would have been able to do anything about it. It was just that Rapunzel always got the sinking suspicion that given the chance to ruin her paintings, Mother Gothel would take it.

Perhaps it had something to do with a dream she had a couple years back. Or maybe it was a conversation that she had had with her two friends. Merida (The Menace, as Gothel called her), being the one who drilled thoughts of sabotage into the blonde’s mind. (Gothel called Hiccup The Pushover but, Rapunzel would never tell him that.) However, it did not matter because… Well, she had no proof. And the chances were, she would never have any proof. (Despite what Merida and Hiccup had said. She just wasn’t as sneaky or clever as they were.)

Only proof would make Rapunzel’s parents believe her. They were all about real facts, and all against simply believing and trusting their daughter. Besides, Gothel had them wrapped around her finger. The Menace, The Pushover and The Princess (that was Gothel’s nickname for Rapunzel) would never prevail from something that the blonde wasn’t even sure was the real truth to begin with.

But, there was nothing that she could change about that now. Right now, all she had was the truth: her paintings were dry; Gothel hadn’t seen them; and she had six bug bites on her hand. Rapunzel had suffered for the greater good. And honestly? Considering how brave she thought she was, she might as well have started calling herself a superhero.

“Are you listening to me?”

The blonde blinked, returning to focus on her friend, who had stopped in front of her on the sidewalk. Hiccup and Rapunzel always walked to school together, ever since they had found out that they both lived within a block and a half of each other. Or they had been walking before he had gotten the truck from his father—they usually took the truck after that. However, that day, the poor thing had broken down, and no matter how much Hiccup had fiddled with it the night before, it was simply not working.

(He had a bit of mysterious dark substance high up on his left cheekbone that Rapunzel was almost sure was grease from his car but, she hadn’t said anything.)

The brunette boy’s equally dark eyebrows were pressed so closely together that they might’ve been one singular line across his forehead. She silently scolded herself for not paying attention to Hiccup. If only she hadn’t spent so much time making sure her paintings were in safe places to dry. If only she hadn’t vowed to not drink coffee. Maybe then, and only then, would she not be in the horrible scenario that was playing out in front of her.

“Of course I am!” That was a lie and both of them knew it. She held out for only a moment longer under his look before she cracked and looked down at her shoes. “...Sorry…”

Rapunzel’s friend in question—Hiccup, The Pushover—sighed, and she didn’t even have to look up to tell that he was running a hand through his dark hair out of annoyance. It was one habit that Rapunzel was sure he would never break. “You really are something, Punzie.”

“What do you mean?” She looked back up to meet her friend’s eyes curiously.

“Well, I’m actually, for once, talking about something you should be interested in, and you keep looking off into space.” He paused, sighing quietly. “Don’t you care about Merida’s wellbeing?”

“Of course I care! It’s my fault that she’s in this mess to begin with.” The blonde crossed her arms and looked up at him. “Just tell me what you were saying and don’t guilt trip me, Haddock. Or I’ll…” She stuttered, trying to find a cruel enough punishment. “I’ll walk up to Astrid and tell her exactly how you feel!”

Hiccup went a bit pink at the cheeks. His dark eyes flitted around the barren courtyard, trying to find anyone who was listening in. Nobody was. Well, at the very least, he couldn’t see anybody that was. Neither could she, to be entirely honest. But the threat still stood. He stammered, trying to find the right words to say to counter her attack. A weak, “Don’t,” was all he could muster. He opened his mouth, and then closed it again before giving up and sighing. “Fine. I’ll start at the top. But you better be listening.”

Rapunzel raised her eyebrows. “I promise.” She paused, meeting his eyes. “I pinky promise.”

“We’re not in grade school anymore, Rapunzel.” Hiccup rolled his eyes, but Rapunzel could tell he was getting less and less irritated with her. “You don’t have to pinky promise me anything.”

“It’s too late for that!” The blonde grinned, and linked her arm with her friend’s. “Start from the top, Haddock.”

Eugene Flynn Fitzherbert Rider thought he had the strangest name on the planet.

It wasn’t the fact that there was four separate names within his name; or the fact that there were only eight syllables in total that made it weird; or even the fact that it was twenty seven letters in total. Oh no. Eugene Flynn Fitzherbert Rider thought he had the strangest name on the planet simply because his first name was well… Eugene.

Honestly, who names their kid Eugene?

(Besides his parents, apparently.)

It was outdated—overused. A name that kids saw in storybooks. A name that matched that matched the character’s gruesomeness. A character that was the scapegoat of the whole story, one that may have had a disgusting wart on his face or something. It was a name that kids laughed at when it was read aloud.

Flynn, on the other hand, Flynn was the name of a superhero. The name of a knight in shining armor. The name of a man who cared more about helping others than he did himself. The modern day Robin Hood. Pity his parents hadn’t chosen wiser. Flynn Eugene Fitzherbert Rider. That wasn’t that much different.

But no.

Eugene it was.

And Eugene was what it would probably always be.

(Well… At least, until the end of high school. After that he could change his name all he wanted. But the end of high school seemed so far away. A whole lifetime.)

The blonde snapped her fingers in front of his face.

“Anyone in there?”

He pushed her hand out of his face.

“No. I’m just an empty skeleton of a man, Hofferson. My soul has left my body, thanks to you.” The Hofferson in question rolled her eyes and looked away from him.

They had been awake since four. No. That was an understatement. Astrid Hofferson had been awake since four. Eugene Flynn Fitzherbert Rider had been stumbling around in Astrid Hofferson’s wake since four in the morning. Catching words here and there as she rambled on and on and on. He wondered how much coffee she had inhaled that morning. And then he thought better of it. That, in itself, was a scary thought. It was probably more than the amount of hours he had gotten in last night. Honestly, as a senior, he should have been able to sleep in. He managed to plan his schedule solely around that idea. He didn’t have first period for goodness sake! What didn’t she understand about that?

Apparently—by the way she was still wide awake and he was nowhere near that state—nothing.

Hofferson rolled her eyes, looking back out at the courtyard.

They were sitting off to the side, under a rather low hanging willow tree. It was one of his favourite spots to sit and watch people because, of course, they couldn’t see him, but he could see them. He had shown it to the blonde a couple weeks into their friendship and she had fallen in love with it. She had originally said that she liked the peace and quiet of the tree, but now? Now, she used it to spy on passerbys just as much as he did.

He really wasn’t a good influence on Astrid.

“Shut up! Shut up! I can see him!”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“Shut up!”

In a matter of seconds, Astrid had scaled up the willow, linking her thighs securely around one of the thicker branches of the tree, a pair of worn binoculars between her fingertips. The tip of her tongue was visible as she focused on both balancing and on the young man (and his stunning blonde companion) that were making their way across the courtyard.

Haddock. That’s what she had been calling him.

It was one of the words that he had heard most frequently of all that she had been repeating since four that morning. Haddock this, Haddock that. If he didn’t know any better, he would’ve assumed that she was stalking Haddock.

Which she couldn’t possibly be doing.

Right?

He squinted at her form up in the tree.

Eugene wasn’t sure.

“Uh… Care to explain what on earth you’re doing, Hofferson?”

She glared down at him from her position on the tree. “Were you seriously not listening that whole time?” He didn’t say anything and he heard her sigh as she looked back at the brunette and his blonde friend. “I’ll just put it simply. A little birdy told me that Haddock,” she pointed at the brunette who looked a little flustered in the distance, “has a bit of a crush on me. And I want to see if it’s true.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to go up to him and ask him?”

“You’ve obviously never been in love, Eugene.” He could hear her roll her eyes. “Although I don’t have that many classes with him this year, I’ve known him since forever. So long that my father and his father force our two families to hang out on weekends every few weeks or so. I want to make sure that what people are saying is true, and then take appropriate action to let him down gently.”

Ouch. He almost felt bad for Haddock.

Almost.

“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.” Eugene paused, looking as the blonde girl standing beside Haddock laughed loud enough for her golden voice to be heard from where they were hiding. “Remind me why I was needed?”

“I didn’t want to go alone. Besides, if I’m caught, I can say that I was talking with you. It’s hard to be really inconspicuous alone.”

“Fair point.”

She continued to stare. Haddock and the blonde didn’t look like they were going anywhere any time soon. And besides, first period didn’t start for at least thirty minutes.

“What’s the girl’s name?” he asked.

“Rapunzel Corona,” she replied almost instantly. She had been looking into this a little too much in Eugene’s opinion.

“Cool.”

And then he walked out from under the tree. He heard the sound of Astrid drop her binoculars faintly behind him, but he didn’t care. He had, after all, been awake since four. He could do what he wanted to. And what he wanted to do was entirely ruin Astrid Hofferson’s plan of what she refused to call stalking.

“Hey.”

Haddock, who had had his back facing Eugene at first jumped slightly as he turned around, faced with the older man’s charming smile.

“H-Hello…?” That was Haddock. Eugene’s smile faded slightly, it was not for him. But it made sense why Astrid was planning on letting him down gently. The poor boy looked like he was an utter mess and it wasn’t even first period.

“You’re Haddock, right?” The boy nodded, his cheeks flushed a slight pink. He looked like the type of kid who used to be shoved into lockers by kids who looked like Eugene in middle school. Eugene dropped the boy’s gaze to look at Rapunzel, letting his charming grin land on her one hundred and ten percent. He was vaguely aware that he was still dressed in his pajama bottoms but decided to overlook that particular fact. “And you’re Rapunzel?”

“That’s me!” Rapunzel Corona beamed at him, small dimples appearing in her cheeks. She was smaller than he had thought from far away, with bright blue eyes that seemed to sparkle no matter where she looked—those he couldn’t have seen from far away. A handful of freckles dotted the bridge of her nose. Her incredibly long blonde hair was braided over her shoulder in a complicated fashion that he wouldn’t be able to recreate even if he had instructions written out for him. She had a warm-looking hand-woven sweater—which was a weird thing to wear in the summertime—tucked into a knee length lavender skirt. It seemed to suit her, in an old-fashioned sort of way. To state it briefly: she was small, elegant, and rather pretty. “It’s nice to meet you!”

“I assure you, the pleasure is all mine.” He winked at her, which didn’t seem to ease Haddock’s uncomfortable tension at all. “My name is Rider. Flynn Rider.” He glanced back at Haddock. “I’m a friend of Astrid’s. She dared me to come out here and see if the two of you really were Haddock and Corona. She couldn’t tell from where she we were sitting.” Haddock seemed to calm down a little bit after that fact. He turned back to where Astrid was hiding. “You can come out now, Hofferson!”

It took a moment but Astrid revealed herself from underneath the hanging bits of their willow tree. She had the decency to put her binoculars back in her backpack—which was now slung over her shoulder—but not enough to shake the leaves from her lazily pulled-up hair. She made her way over to them, rather well-dressed in a worn blue jean skirt and a loose fitting t-shirt that was tucked into it. (He didn’t remember her wearing that before but he didn’t question it. Maybe he just hadn’t been paying enough attention.)

“Miss Hofferson, how nice of you to join us. I was just telling the lovely duo here about our bet involving them.” He grinned down at her, holding out his hand for the payment. “I believe you owe me ten dollars.”

She scowled up at him and cursed under her breath before pulling out a crumpled ten dollar bill and placing it in his hand. She was going to probably punch him later, but it would be well worth it. He noticed when she glanced at Haddock briefly, but he seemed to be acting surprisingly fine.

“So, might I ask,” although the question was phrased for the two of them, Eugene only looked at Rapunzel (she was prettier, it was easier), “what are you two doing here so early?”

The blonde glanced over at her freckled friend. They seemed to be having some sort of weird psychic conversation. “Well… We have a bit of a big test today. And we thought we’d get in some last minute studying in the library before first period.”

Ah. They were hard-working over-achievers. No wonder Astrid wasn’t fond of Haddock. They were almost polar opposites. Almost.

He pulled Hofferson’s cellphone out of her backpack and checked the time. “Thirty minutes isn’t that much time to study, Blondie.”

“You’d be surprised how much we can get done, Brunette-y.” Her attempt at a comeback was… Weak, at best, but it was still rather adorable to watch her scrunch her nose as she said it.

“Why don’t we walk the two of you over there?” He glanced over at Astrid. “You never know what people like us might learn from spending a bit of time with the likes of you two geeks.” Haddock looked like he was about to respond with a sentence similar to “we’re not geeks!” but Rapunzel cut him off by laughing rather elegantly.

“That sounds like a great idea, Flynn!”

Eugene could see Astrid giving him a weird look from the corner of his eye but she didn’t say anything. (He was glad for that particular piece of information.)

Eventually, they made it to the entrance to the library. Rapunzel and Eugene took the lead, and Astrid and Haddock followed behind them in near silence. As it turned out, the “brunette-y” senior had learned that not only was Rapunzel Corona a junior, but she also was an artist. And, based on how she spoke of it, he could imagine she was a relatively good one too. She spoke passionately, waving her arms about to demonstrate how she painted a canvas.

She showed him the six mosquito bites on her hand caused by her bedroom window being left open all night and he promptly told her that she had suffered for a nobel cause. She laughed at his somewhat dry humor and he had felt something flutter in his chest that clearly hadn’t been there twenty minutes before.

But it was nothing. He blamed it on the fact that he had forgotten to eat that morning when Astrid forced him out of his house. He wasn’t entirely sure. He couldn’t exactly remember it all very well.

Eugene hurried up the steps in front of his companions and pulled open the door. “Ladies first, Miss Corona.”

The Miss Corona in question giggled and skipped through the open door, the purple layers of her skirt floating slightly.

Astrid mumbled something about sexism before trudging in after her. The two blondes were almost polar opposites.

Haddock croaked a “thank you” and quickly stepped inside the library to avoid an awkward encounter. Eugene wondered if he actually had been stuffed inside lockers in middle school.

However, what the four of them found wasn’t exactly what they were looking for.

“Punzie?” said a distinctly Scottish voice.

“Mer?” said Rapunzel.

“You’re here already?” said Haddock.

Eugene Flynn Fitzherbert Rider knew that name. There was only one person with a name as distinctly Scottish as that one: Merida DunBroch.

The Scot in question was sitting at one of the tables in the middle of the library, her well-known, almost unmanageable curly red hair tied up in a high ponytail. She wore a lazy, worn t-shirt (something that looked like what he usually wore to bed) and, despite all odds in the heavily air-conditioned library, was sweating profusely. She looked like death itself. On top of the sleep deprived bags under her eyes, Merida had a black half-circle, that was slightly purple and slightly green, under her eye.

Merida’s eyes went from Rapunzel, who was closest to her, then to Haddock, and finally towards Astrid and himself. She raised an eyebrow slightly as if she was surprised to see a senior in their midst. (He was surprised himself, to be entirely honest.)

Rapunzel broke the silence.

“What are you doing here?”

The redhead’s eyes flicked between him and Astrid before focusing back on her friends, who had made their way to the table she was seated at.

The three of them leaned in closer, but Merida’s voice was still loud enough for him to hear.

“I’ve got a lot to tell you,” said Merida, a slight grin plastered across her exhausted face, “about Jack Frost.”

Jack Frost? Astrid and Eugene glanced over at each other, trying to clarify what they had just heard. That couldn’t be right. He was a football player, and a star football player at that. A true jock, through-and-through. Jack Frost hung out with his kind and only his kind. The nerd, Haddock, the artist, Rapunzel, and the Scot, were not his crowd in the slightest.

The look in Astrid’s eyes said one thing: What the hell was going on?

Chapter Text

“Cross my heart and swear to die.” Merida grinned at her two friends brightly. “That’s what the saying is, isn’t it?”

In order to get away from the prying eyes of a tall, devilishly handsome brunette (that Rapunzel kept making heart eyes towards) and the sour-looking blonde named Astrid, the trio had crammed themselves in Hiccup’s car. Hiccup was squished between Rapunzel and the door, and he had made it even worse for himself by pulling his knees up to his chest. The blonde in question had her back pressed up against Hiccup’s shoulder, and one of her two feet was pressed up against the dashboard. Her face was bright with anticipation. Merida was sitting in her seat facing forward like a normal person, with her feet up on the dashboard. She kept fanning herself with her pale hand. Even on that warm nearly summer morning, the car’s windows were shut tightly as the brunette and the blonde leaned in, ready for the story to be told. It didn’t matter that the redhead was sweating like a pig from riding aggressively all the way to school to find her two friends. It didn’t matter that the whole car was beginning to smell like body odor. It didn’t matter that the windows of the car had started to fog up. The trio could bear it. This was new information for their ears and their ears alone.

Merida twirled one of her loose strands of red hair and tucked it behind her ear, an almost devilish grin on her face.

This wasn’t just any information. No. This was the most top secret information from the most popular boy at school. If in the hands of the wrong person, Jack Frost could crash and burn. And Merida DunBroch wasn’t exactly sure if her hands were in the white haired football player’s favour or not. (She wasn’t exactly sure about Rapunzel or Hiccup’s hands either, to be entirely honest.)

This could even be blackmail material. Material that could get the trio anywhere they would like to be. (It was such a promising thought.)

“You’re missing the ‘put a needle in your eye’ part.” That was Hiccup, pulling his knees up even closer to his chest in fear of hitting the car horn. Rapunzel mimicked placing a needle in her eye, giggling quietly against her friend. Hiccup seemed to tense up even further.

“I’m not sticking a needle in my eye, Haddock.”

“But you’d rather die?” questioned Rapunzel, raising one perfectly arched eyebrow. “Who knew we would be such bad parents, Henry! Raising our little girl like this,” the blonde poked her friend in the chest with her shoe, “Her priorities are all over the place!”

Hiccup didn’t say anything, looking intently at Merida. His eyes were practically begging the redhead to start telling the story.

Merida paused for a moment before she ignored the question. “Nevermind that. We’ve got to talk about Jack Frost. You won’t believe what I’m about to tell you…”

“Do you even know what time it is, Frost?”

Merida DunBroch, in her sports gear, looked exhausted. She had received a voicemail message in the early hours of the morning from the star football player. The message hadn’t been eloquently worded like how Hiccup left messages, or sent texts. It didn’t have excitement like Rapunzel’s messages. No, messages from Jack Frost seemed to have no punctuation. No periods, no commas, nothing. The words simply tumbled out one after the other with no breaks or pauses. It took Merida the longest time to actually understand what he was trying to say in the early hours of the morning.

Jack looked down at his faded watch. “Five thirty in the morning. Exactly.”

The white haired star was wide awake. Merida had had two theories. One: he simply did not sleep at all. Or two: he did not have blood running through his veins, he had pure caffeine. His bright blue eyes seemed to glow with the thought of teaching her the rules of football. He walked with a jump in his step, and not with a slouch like Merida did. His hair was wet, and covered in some sort of hair gel, which really did not help her enjoy his presence. With his hair wet it meant that he had gotten up even earlier than the current time to take a shower before rushing to the public park.

“My mother would kill me if she could see where I was right now.” The redhead grumbled, fiddling with her high ponytail. There were several strands of fiery hair that had missed the elastic completely and were simply lying across her face.

“All the more reason to do it, right?” Jack grinned at her over his shoulder.

“Not really.”

“You’re no fun, DunBroch. Has anyone ever told you that?” He adjusted the football that was currently under his arm and slowed his pace slightly so he was less walking in front of her and more walking beside her.

“You don’t know me very well.” She glared up at him. It was one thing to give her a black eye, but it was something else entirely to force her to wake up at five in the morning to practice some dumb sport she didn’t really want to do in the first place. “I can be fun when I want to be. Just not to you. And not this early in the morning.” She paused, glancing over at her teacher. “Where are we going, exactly?”

“Nowhere, really. We’re here, I guess.” The white haired teenager shrugged nonchalantly.

He put the football down onto the grass of the public park they were currently standing in. From Merida’s tired perspective, the whole place seemed to be a calming, dark green. It would’ve been relaxing if it weren’t so early but, perhaps it was the fact that the sun hadn’t risen yet that made Merida feel so content. She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t awake enough to be sure.

He placed his hands on his hips and looked down at her. Through her sleepy haze she hadn’t noticed what he was wearing but as her brain began to clear ever so slightly she realized it was the furthest thing from athletic wear as possible.

Jack Frost was wearing a button down shirt and jeans. He looked more like he was about to go to prom than throw a football back and forth.

“Today, Merida…” Jack began, closing his eyes dramatically. “Today is about trust. He opened his eyes suddenly and peered down at her. “Do you trust me?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Great. Today we’ll change that.”

And before she could even ask him what the hell he was talking about, he had stepped behind her, pulled out a blindfold out of nowhere, and tied it around her eyes.

Merida opened her mouth to yell at him, but she was at a loss for words. She was definitely not awake enough for this.

“I was afraid you were going to freak out after that. You must be warming up to me already.” His voice was right by her ear, a slight, gentle wisp of his breath against her skin. If he were anybody else she may have flushed a bit pink. But he was Jack Frost, so she elbowed him in the gut.

“I’m too tired to think of a comeback.”

“So elbowing me was your comeback?” He scoffed, tightening the blindfold slightly. “Anyway. We’re going to do a trust exercise this morning. The only reason any team works is through trust. And what better way to trust me than to have me be your eyes this morning.” She felt his cold hand on her upper arm and instead of flinching away, she let him pull her slightly closer to him. His arm linking carefully with hers.

It was a weird feeling. It made her not want to be blind more than anything else. To be in somebody else’s control entirely.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t been this close to anybody before. Rapunzel had fallen asleep practically on top of her when she had escaped from Gothel’s house once in ninth grade. The trio had had to share a hotel room once in sophomore year on vacation (courtesy of Hiccup’s dad), they had had to all be fairly close then. (Merida distinctly remembered waking up in the middle of the night because Rapunzel had elbowed her in the gut in her sleep. Only then had she realized Hiccup had fallen off the bed in his sleep, and she was about to. Rapunzel was really not a still sleeper.) Her mother had forced her to practice square dancing with an uncomfortably sweaty pubescent teenage boy back in seventh grade. She was accustomed to being near her brothers constantly.

But this was different.

Being around Jack Frost wasn’t like being around Hiccup Haddock, or her brothers, or even Rapunzel. He was well built, which wasn’t a surprise to her. “Football did wonders for the teenage body,” or so the girls at her school gushed. And they were right. If he had been anybody else besides Jack Frost, she might’ve blushed. But he was Jack Frost so she just continued to look irritated from under the blindfold. (It was a pity it was so early in the morning. Her brain had yet to start working.)

“I’m going to tell you a story and walk you around the park at the same time. It’s a practice of trust, so please try to trust me.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Merida grumbled.

And then they were off.

He took long steps. It was probably on account of his height, or maybe he was just trying to mess with her. The redhead’s cautious baby steps were causing her to be partially dragged behind the star football player, against her will.

“Once upon a time, last year, I accidentally burnt half my garage down.”

Merida had to stop telling the story due to the fact that Rapunzel couldn’t stop laughing.

The blonde was curled on her side now, her head resting against Hiccup’s knee, and her feet threatening to bump the already messed up radio in front of her. She had tears in her eyes, and her nose was all red from laughing so hard.

Punzie had a contagious laugh, but it was only when she truly found something funny that her real laugh came out. It was a sort of backward duck quack of a laugh, where when she inhaled, she made a considerable amount of noise, versus when she exhaled. Hiccup, with his sort of awkward chuckle followed her, and Merida’s snort followed that. Soon, the whole car was filled with the sounds of their laughter, and the windows got so fogged up that Hiccup had to insist that he was going to run out of oxygen and thus opened his window a crack.

The brunette awkwardly patted Punzie’s shoulder, trying to stop her from laughing so hard, but he wasn’t that successful, she only ended up grabbing his hand in her own and squeezing, attempting to stop herself from laughing. (Hiccup’s laughing faltered and cheeks turned pink.) What the blonde was saying was nearly incomprehensible but Merida could make out a word or two. (“Garage… Frost… Famous… Oh my god…”. Just a word here and there.) It took Rapunzel a few minutes to calm down, wiping the tears from her face haphazardly with her sleeve.

“Okay,” said Rapunzel, taking deep breaths. “You can continue.”

“Once upon a time, last year, I accidentally burnt half my garage down.”

It was such a bold statement that Merida didn’t know what to say in return. It was an impossible image. Jack Frost, the coolest cool kid in town, burnt his own own garage to the ground? Jack Frost, turned out to be a normal human being after all this time. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. She nodded and made a quiet “mm-hmm” sound.

“You’re not surprised?” Jack scoffed, pulling her slightly towards him with his arm. “I’ve always felt as if when I told somebody this story, they’d be a lot more surprised than you look, DunBroch.”

“You’ve never told anyone this story before?”

That was a surprise. Jack Frost was the type of guy who told everybody everything. His social media told the world who he was dating, what his favourite foods were, the works. His mouth started rumours that floated around the school. Even those who did not care, like Merida, were forced to endure what was going on in Jack Frost’s life. She had to listen to her schoolmates in a group project faun over Jack Frost’s new haircut, or his new sunglasses, or his new football routine. Sometimes she found herself wondering what on earth the white haired idiot was up to when she hadn’t heard anything. It was stupid, but everybody knew everything about Jack Frost and that was just the way it was.

Well, almost.

Everybody knew everything about Jack Frost’s social life. What she had come to realize was nobody knew anything about his home. There weren’t any social invites to the Frost party at his huge mansion in the middle of nowhere, no pictures of him in his bedroom with some girl. Of course, it had slipped under the radar. “He needs his privacy,” a girl in her math class had said a couple weeks back, “everyone popular like he is needs their own privacy.” He never said anything and nobody ever asked.

Merida, the outside, had never really cared until that particular moment, linked arm-in-arm with the most popular, yet most mysterious, man her school had ever come to know.

“Nope. This is a trust exercise, so I’m going to tell you something so you’ll trust me.”

“Okay. You can continue.”

“Right.” She heard him clear his throat. “So, in my house, we have a garage that we don’t really put cars in. It’s turned into this sort of place where you go when you have to stay up late doing work and you don’t really want to bother anyone. There are desks for everybody in my family, an indoor heater, and little hammocks for people to sleep in instead of forcing them to go back to their rooms when the finish.” He paused finding his words. “Like Tatiana, my… sister, she’s sometimes up until four, five in the morning, so she sleeps down there quite often.” His pause before choosing the word ‘sister’ was a bit strange but Merida chose to ignore it.

“Okay…”

“I’m working down there, right? Doing some homework because I got home late from football practice. Eventually end up falling asleep in one of the hammocks down there at a really early hour in the morning. In doing so, I don’t set my alarm clock to wake up in order to get to school on time and by the time Tatiana comes down to check if I’ve left yet, there’s five minutes before class starts, and I haven’t even woken up yet. Anyway, there’s this mass panic, as I attempted to get dressed, eat, and brush my teeth at the same time before I raced to school.”

“Did you make it to school on time?”

“Unsurprisingly, no. But, I was fashionably late.”

Despite herself, Merida snorted. “So, when did you burn the garage down?”

“I’m getting there, don’t worry your orange head, DunBroch.” Under the blindfold, Merida rolled her eyes. “So, I spend the day at school, right? Normal day, nothing goes wrong. However, when I go home, I find the garage completely burnt to a crisp. There is nothing left of the work stations, nothing.” Merida gasped audibly, trying to sound sarcastic. “And I am in shock. Half my life was spent down in that little area, and now it is all gone.” He pauses, as if for dramatic effect. “So, I walk back into the house and I’m confronted by my family. And they all look unimpressed. You see, Merida, apparently the fire department told them that the fire had been started by the overturned indoor heater. Somebody had tripped over the wire and the whole garage had gone ablaze.”

He had to stop speaking then because Merida was laughing. Sure, it wasn’t the nicest, kindest thing she could’ve done. But, Jack Frost had dragged her out of her warm, cozy bed at an ungodly hour to walk around a forest in the middle of nowhere, so he could tell her the tale of how he burnt down his garage. He deserved her laughing at him.

“You think it’s funny?”

It took a moment for her to respond, she was laughing so hard. “Of course I think it’s funny. You’re practically the prince of the school. No one can imagine you doing anything wrong ever. The fact that you have just makes the story priceless.”

“People don’t think I can do any wrong?” He sounded wistful.

“No. You have white hair for goodness sake, people think you’re invincible.”

She heard him audibly exhale. “What about you, do you think I’m invincible?”

“If I ever did, I certainly don’t now.”

There was an extended pause as he walked her around in the dew covered grass, unsure of what to say next. The muscle in his arm had considerably tensed after she had started to laugh, if it was out of discomfort, she couldn’t be sure. It must’ve been minutes of them just wandering through the park before she broke the silence.

“Did they ever forgive you?” Merida closed her eyes behind the blindfold. “Your family, I mean. Did they ever forgive you for burning down the garage?”

“Of course they did. Accidents happen, life happens... They know that better than most people.” He sounded almost sad when he said that but she didn’t press. Perhaps she had just heard him incorrectly.

He stopped walking abruptly and wriggled out of her grasp, before he pulled her blindfold off of her face. It took her a moment before her eyes adjusted to the amount of light, but when she did, she noticed his face was a lot closer than it should’ve been. (She didn’t mention this to her two friends sitting in the car with her, there was no need. They would only tease her about it and it wasn’t something she wanted to be teased about.) She didn’t make a comment about their distance. It gave her an opportunity to study his face. He looked tired, but she had a feeling she looked tired too. His skin was incredibly pale, and he had a thin, even paler scar running along most of his forehead, right near his hairline. His nose looked as if it had been broken at least once, and there was a rectangle of skin on his left cheekbone that was quietly covered with freckles. His eyes were an incredibly pale blue, and they almost seemed sad in some strange way.

She blinked, convincing herself that eyes couldn’t possibly be sad, and shaking the thought from her brain. Eyes were just that, eyes, and no shade of blue could make them more or less sad. He was raising one eyebrow at her, almost silently asking her if she saw something that she liked.

“What time is it, Frost?”

“Time for you to get a watch, DunBroch.” He chuckled. “But on a more serious note.” He leaned in even closer, if that was even possible. Their noses could’ve bumped each other if he had gone any further. “Do you trust me?”

“I guess. Your story was pretty… Amusing.” She paused, looking up at him. Being led blindfolded through the park had meant that she had to put all her faith in him to not have her walk into a muddy puddle, or straight into a tree. She would never admit it to him, but it was a rather good trust exercise. “Although, that doesn’t mean that we’re friends.”

“Do you want to be friends with your teachers, DunBroch? Is that what you strive for?” He grinned down at her and stepped away from her. “You should probably start heading over to school. It took you forever to ride your little bike over here, it’ll probably take you awhile to ride all the way to school.”

She gave him a dirty look. “Fine then. I’ll get my bike and start riding.” She began to stomp away from him and he followed her with his hands in his pockets. They walked to her bike in silence, for Merida was too worried that she would say something that would start a serious argument--and she really wasn’t in the mood to start a serious argument. She was still far too tired.

“And that’s the end of the story?” Asked Punzie, who was still leaning against an uncomfortable-looking Hiccup.

“For the most part. I rode to school after, but I don’t think you want to hear about my path to the school. Anyway, what I really want to do now is to tell you what I thought we should do.” Merida grinned at the two of them, and they leaned forwards to listen to her.

“And what’s that?” That was Hiccup, looking awkward yet interested at the same time.

“Well, Frost has given me enough information for us to figure out where he lives.” The redhead looked over the moon.

“What?” Punzie and Hiccup glanced at each other, confused.

“He’s obviously hiding something, to have nobody know anything about his home life. He said it himself: I’m the only person who’s ever heard the whole story about him burning down his own garage.” She cleared her throat, looking incredibly devious. “Which means it’ll be easier to find out where he lives, and what he’s hiding.”

“And the reason why we would want to know more about the practical king of the school is…?” Hiccup seemed to be speaking for both Rapunzel and himself.

Merida grinned at her two friends. After retelling the story, she had come to a very distinct conclusion. “Isn’t it obvious?” They didn’t seem to think it was very obvious. “Blackmail.”

“Blackmail?” Hiccup raised his eyebrows.

“Of course. It never hurts to be in control of one of the most popular people in school. Honestly, if Jack Frost cares so much about his personal life, there must be something that he’s not telling everyone. And now that we know the general area of where he lives, and what is probably missing from his house, it’ll be really easy to find his house.”

Rapunzel and Hiccup looked at each other. Green eyes met green eyes. Light freckles mirrored light freckles.They didn’t have to speak, to discuss anything. It was obvious that they thought Merida was going a bit far, even when revenge came around. The most they were expecting her to do was throw a wonderfully aimed football and the white haired football player’s head and give him a matching black eye. Finding out the secret history of Jack Frost was a bit over the top, even for Merida DunBroch.

But now was not the time to bring that up. No, if they did, they would probably be in just as bad a boat as Frost currently was in. When she set her mind to it, Merida DunBroch was a force to be reckoned with, a force that was incredibly difficult to oppose, a force that one would never intentionally want to oppose. Never.

But luckily, they were saved by the bell. Literally. It echoed across the campus and both the brunette and the blonde jumped in unison. The time that they could’ve spent studying was down the drain courtesy of beautiful people and a certain redhead’s gossip. Hiccup tried to unlock his car door while Rapunzel accidentally locked it. They scrambled, desperately trying to get out the car so they could get at least a second of studying in before class began.

The whole event would’ve been funny to Merida if it wasn’t so sad. The duo looked at each other, mumbled something regarding tests and AP classes, before successfully unlocking the car door, tumbling out and sprinting their separate ways, calling their goodbyes to their friend behind them.

Merida sighed, fanning her sweaty face with her hand. How she had ended up with such nerdy friends would always be a mystery, one that she would never understand. She tucked a strand of her flyaway red hair behind her ear, tightened her ponytail, and climbed across the seats, exiting through the car door that Rapunzel and Hiccup had struggled to open only moments before. She swiped the brunette’s car keys from the dashboard, kicked the door shut with her foot, and locked it.

She didn’t know why she had stopped the story there. There was more to it than Jack Frost making sly comments, and Merida barely being able to counter them in her tired state. More than the story of the school’s knight in shining armor burning his own garage down on accident. He had not just waved goodbye and turned on his heel to walk away into the distance. As she began to walk to her first class, she recalled what had happened in vivid detail.

The redhead could feel the white haired football player’s eyes on her as she unlocked the bicycle lock but, neither said anything. Perhaps neither wanted to ruin the moment. Perhaps… Well, Merida wasn’t sure. She didn’t think she would ever be sure when it came to Jack Frost. He was a walking mystery, a walking sass machine, a walking conventionally attractive creature from Merida’s own personal hell. She turned abruptly, causing him to look away quickly. He had been caught, and he looked as if he was trying not to look embarrassed about it. She smirked but decided not to address his awkwardness. That could be used as a comeback in a later discussion, she was sure of it. “Shouldn’t you be heading to school too, Frost?”

“I’m not going to school today.” He snatched the football that had been sitting on the grass beside her bike the entire time and coughed really unrealistically and loudly. “I’m sick.”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course.” The redhead tucked the lock in the back of her athletic pants, and tried her best not to shiver at the cold metal against her warm back. She placed her hands on the handlebars and held the bike up with her hip. She paused, turning to look over at the white haired football player. “What about my story? Aren’t I supposed to tell you a story like you told me a story?”

“Well, no. Unless you really want to.” He gestured to her current position with her bike. “It doesn’t look like you really want to tell me a story at this point though. You’re all ready to go.”

“Why isn’t it mandatory for me to tell you a story?”

“Why?” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Isn’t it obvious? I already trust you.” He let the statement sit in the air. Jack Frost didn’t need anything from Merida to trust her, he already did. Without question, without thought. (It almost made her feel bad about trying to find out more information about him and using it for blackmail. Almost.) He cleared his throat and continued as if the statement hadn’t meant as much as it did. “Besides, we’re almost out of time anyway, and the chances were your story would be nowhere near as interesting as mine.” He chuckled softly and turned on his heel to walk away from her. “You should really wear a helmet when you’re riding your bike, although I’m not sure it would even fit over your head with all that hair.”

If she was strong enough to hit him with her bike, she would’ve.

Chapter Text

The football season had made Jack Overland Frost famous.

In freshman year, the young, white haired hero had joined the varsity football team. He had gotten a lot of hate for it. Freshmen were never allowed to join the varsity team at his school. It was considered the elite, and those who desired to be kings of the school had to start from the very bottom. They all had to work their way from the bottom all the way to greatness. But the coach at the time, an older, ex NFL player himself, he had seen his talent. He had pointed at Jack, through the layers and layers of tall, muscular upperclassmen, and he was in.

Nobody knew why he had been selected. Freshman Jack Frost was awkwardly tall, with limited muscle and lanky limbs to spare. He had a strange clump of vibrant white hair that stood out against the rest of his brown hair, and was only growing larger and larger as the days went on. He was the type of kid that one would expect to be part of the creative writing club, reciting sappy poems to all those who would listen. Not the type of kid one would expect to see catching a football and scoring a touchdown.

It had caused a lot of hate in the beginning. Those who weren’t accepted into the varsity team, refused to acknowledge him. (And if they did, it was to make rude comments, and stuff far worse.) Those who were already on the team, disliked him immediately. They had climbed the metaphorical ladder, and he had taken the metaphorical elevator. Skipped through all the hardship that they had trained, tooth and nail, for.

But then he had won their first game.

His high school hadn’t won a game in what seemed to be forever. People were butt hurt, to say the least, losing to mediocre high school team after mediocre high school team. But the day that Jack Frost had stepped onto the field, that all changed. The sky seemed to part and a golden light filtered through the clouds, landing directly on the now completely white haired freshmen. And they had won in a landslide. Sixty four points to zero. Most of said points being won by the white haired misfit who had somehow found his way onto the team less than a month prior.

There was a photograph that had been published in the school newspaper the week after the win. It depicted the football team hoisting their tiny running back into the air. Jack had cut out the photograph and pinned it to his bedroom wall. Although the picture was of a horrible and grainy quality, Jack loved it wholeheartedly. He had a smile on his face that Tatiana said was the most adorable expression she had ever seen on his face. And she had known him for what seemed to be since forever. The freshman version of Jack Frost had blushed at those words and his chest had filled with an overwhelming feeling of pride.

He had done it.

He had made something of himself, after all this time.

The varsity team had never lost a match since Jack Frost had joined their midst. There was even a plaque in a black case in the office saying it. A three year streak of winning. Some said that he was their good luck omen. Their gift of a white haired running back. That, when he left, the school’s victory streak would end and never return. Others just thought he was a good player. He made the game of football fun again. Throwing endless footballs, tackling each other, it was what they all looked forward to at the end of the day. Some of his teammates even went as far as to say they would gladly play in the thick of winter with him, that it was enjoyable even if they couldn’t feel their limbs.

It was something that Jack Overland Frost grew to be proud of, more than anything else.

He could bring fun to these people. His friends.

“They would be proud,” said Tatiana the evening of his first victory, “I hope you know that, Jack.”

The six of them had been sitting in a twenty-four hour diner; an impulsive decision made by Nicholas when he heard of Jack’s first win. (The bearded man had carried Jack on his shoulder the entire way, despite Jack’s severe embarrassment and Tatiana’s uncontrollable giggles.) They had all ordered the cheapest items they could find on the menu, allowing the white haired freshman to find the most deluxe stack of pancakes that their mismatched family could afford.

“Yes!” said the man who had been mistaken for Santa Claus by small children more than twice since they had entered the diner. Jack remembered noticing that he had bits of food stuck in his beard. He wondered briefly how long it took the man to take stuff like that out of his beard. He shivered. He didn’t ever want to grow a beard. He didn’t want to find small pieces of years old vegetables years after he should’ve eaten them. “Tatiana is right! They would both be incredibly proud!” He looked over at Jack and his eyes seemed to twinkle.

Jack had dug into his flapjacks in silence. It was such a strange thing to think about, in all honesty. He had spent years with his strange family trying desperately not to think about it . Trying not to talk about it . Ignoring it . Sometimes--when he woke up in the middle of the night--he could see them, smiling at him and telling him how proud they were of his accomplishments. Tears streaming down their faces, arms wrapped around his thin torso, pressed so tightly against his chest that he could swear he could feel them. Whispered words that were just slightly too quiet for him to understand. They always had much more to say than he did. And then it would hit him that they were not around anymore. That there would be no hugging or rambling on about nothingness. But, the young Jack Frost knew, if he took the moment to voice any of that to his friends, his family, the chances were that he would start to cry. And he had done enough of that in the past.

They all had.

He had looked around the booth at his family.

There was Tatiana, to his right, her bright green coloured hair pulled up into a loose bun at the top of her head. Although her smile was bright, she had dark circles under her eyes from studying. From making something of herself. Baby was squeezed between them, nibbling because she had stolen one pancake from Jack’s huge stack of pancakes--something that he didn’t mind in the slightest. She and Tatiana shared matching hair, even then, and it was knotted the same way atop her head. (“Sisters,” Nicholas had commented one evening, shaking his head, “if I didn’t know any better I would say they were identical twins!” Aster had scoffed and rolled his eyes, “Twins with more than a five year age difference between them? Yeah right.”)

Aster had been to his left, pushing a lone tomato--what was left of his vegetarian burger--around his plate. His bushy sideburns had seemed to stick out more than usual, and the glow of the horrible restaurant lighting made him look even angrier than usual. So angry, in fact, that the waitress who had been serving them refused to look him in the eye whenever she went to their table. It was a fact that Baby had found incredibly amusing, and wouldn’t stop bugging the angry-looking man about. His thick eyebrows were pushed close together, focusing on attempting to pick the tomato up using only his knife. (Baby had dared him to do it earlier in the evening.)

Nicholas had sat the furthest away from Jack. He had been licking his fingers of maple syrup. His bushy beard had a few braids scattered within the mess of it--probably something Tatiana had done without the man himself noticing. Unknown to her, Baby and Aster had a bet to see when Tatiana would get caught. Jack always wrinkled his nose whenever he caught her at it.  (It was the closeness, more than anything else, between Nicholas and Tatiana, that freshman Jack Frost had been trying desperately to not be jealous of. He had been failing horribly during the entirety of freshman year.) Nicholas had grinned brightly at Jack, small wrinkles appearing at his bright blue eyes.

Jack remembered Baby grabbing his hand, pulling him out of his thoughts. “What are you going to do now, Jackie?”

He had looked at the little girl, she was missing her front tooth, which made her lisp slightly as she spoke. In all actuality, at that particular moment in time, he had no idea what he was going to do. Obviously, he was going to keep playing football but, at that particular moment he felt as if he was on top of the world.

It was not something he had felt in a long time.

Being there with all those people. His friends. His family. Celebrating over sickly sweet breakfast food, with only the flickering lights of the diner and the moon itself to guide them. He had smiled down at Baby, booping her nose with a maple syrup covered finger. She wrinkled her nose and grinned up at him in the exact same fashion that her sister did.

“I don’t know yet, Baby.” Freshman Jack had said as he glanced back at his family, a content smile plastered to his face. “I don’t know, yet.”

------

Merida remembered the first time she had heard about Jack Frost.

It had been freshman year, and Hiccup just hadn’t been able to shut up about the boy. The freckle-covered, braces-wearing ninth grader had been jumping all around them, trying his best to reenact the scene at their first football game that year with his lanky limbs in tow. (Rapunzel and Merida had decided not to attend the homecoming game and corresponding dance, so Hiccup had gone alone.)

“It was a magical experience!” The brunette wheezed at them. “He was at one end of the court, and then suddenly he was at the other!”

“Don’t you mean field?” That was Rapunzel, correcting him with a cute little grin. She looked beautiful as always, and out of the three of them, she was the one who had changed the least. Her long blonde hair had been braided several times before being tied into a perfected ponytail at the top of her head. It was a hair masterpiece that Merida still couldn’t wrap her head around even years later. “Courts are for basketball, silly.”

“I’m not the football expert, Punzie. But I know what I saw out there. It was amazing. All the girls were swooning--even some of the seniors--it was intense.” He looked as if he had just met Albert Einstein which, knowing Hiccup, would have been a dream come true. “You two shouldn’t have boycotted Homecoming. It was really spectacular. I bet the two of you would’ve been swooning too! And, they had all these cool underwater decorations that made the whole gym look like the ocean! I mean, not like the actual ocean but they had tried really hard in the decoration and it really paid off! The music was so loud that when I left, I could barely hear anything but ringing in my ears!”

Merida remembered smirking at Hiccup. Her hair had been tied up in a ponytail like Rapunzels but it was nowhere near as neat. It poured out of the elastic keeping it back like electrified lava. And, worst of all, she had something Rapunzel would never have in a million years: a bunch of acne on her forehead--it was the stuff of ninth grade teenage nightmares. “Don’t blame us if we didn’t want to watch you oggle at that blonde girl the whole night. What was her name, Punzie?”

“Astrid.” Punzie wiggled her eyebrows at Hiccup. His cheeks flushed and he covered his face with his hands. Both girls laughed at his reaction.

Between the spaces in his fingers, he mumbled, “For your information, she was not there. She boycotted the event, just like you two.”

“How long did you spend looking for her?” Merida had her fingers crossed behind her back, the two girls had placed bets as to how long Hiccup had looked for her.

Hiccup gasped, his cheeks flushing a rather bright red. “It wasn’t that long! I only glimpsed around the room and she wasn’t there, and then I had a good evening!” He paused as they stared him down, waiting for an exact time. “It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes.”

Rapunzel held her hand out to Merida, who groaned. Merida begrudgingly placed a five dollar bill in the girl’s waiting palm. “See?” said Rapunzel, a rather bright grin pressed upon her face. “You have no faith in Henry, Merida. You’ve got to have more.”

“You two bet on this?” Hiccup’s jaw had dropped. “I can’t believe it!”

“You made me lose five dollars to Punzie?” Merida made a shocked face, mimicking Hiccup perfectly. “I can’t believe it!”

And so they had continued to bicker on and on. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into years as they had brought each other even closer, opening up about the deepest of secrets, their darkest of memories. Becoming the trio that their school had better look out for. They were inseparable, and in all of Merida’s life she had never experienced two people who made her so unbelievably happy.

Although he was a constant topic of discussion for their group, it certainly didn’t matter to the three of them that Jack Frost had won this or Jack Frost had won that. He was unimportant, unnecessary for telling their awkward high school story. But, that didn’t stop Merida from recognizing him in the hallways, that thin, pointed nose and the shock of white hair upon his head was not something somebody missed. Neither was the girls squealing behind him or the low grumbles of fellow football players that shadowed his every move as he meandered around the school.

It didn’t help that Hiccup would bring up his name on occasion after football games. The freckled boy’s obsession with his idol was often over the top forcing Merida to wonder how her friend knew so much about Jack Frost without spending a moment with the kid. It was strange. But, although they had shared their hearts with each other, that didn’t mean that they didn’t still have hidden memories they had yet to share. (People weren’t interesting without mysterious backstories, or so Rapunzel had told them. And besides, if Merida was a stalker, she certainly wouldn’t tell her two closest friends: it would just be weird.)

The trio would never distinctly talk about Jack Frost when Hiccup was around. And they would certainly not mention the sort of sadness that followed Hiccup whenever he mentioned the white haired star football player’s name. (Merida exchanging glances with the blonde did not count as an actual conversation but, she had a feeling Rapunzel had the same thought roaming around her head, although neither ever had the guts to ask it.)

Hiccup deserved at least a little bit of privacy.

Besides, what if they weren’t prepared for his story?

Jack Frost was called a legend at their school, and although she would never admit it to his smirking face, she agreed. Over the years, she always saw his name on gleaming trophies in the main office. His face on snippets of the school newspaper. His name whispered between girls sitting nearby, followed by the sound of giggling, and the flushing of cheeks. There were always rumors about him. Somebody had said that they had found him making out with the stunning substitute teacher that had never returned to their school. Somebody else had said that he had dyed his hair white on purpose to seem more wise and mature. And even somebody else had said that he had never done a single homework assignment in his entire life, he only flirted with people in his classes until they gave him their work.

It was hard to get that type of reputation, and Merida would know because she wanted to have that kind of mystery that followed her wherever she went.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t that lucky.

People were just afraid of Merida DunBroch, and not even by very much!

But she knew one thing: from the top of his white haired head to the rubber of his worn out sneakers, Jack Frost was one thing for certain: an enigma. A man of mystery. Nobody would ever know the truth about him, and that was part of what made him so interesting. Of course, people like Merida DunBroch and her two friends, were so low on the ladder of popularity that they would probably never find out but, that didn’t stop them from hearing everything that was going on at the time. All those rumoured scandals…

It was like he was living the cover of one of those girly magazines about actors that Rapunzel always pointed out in the coffee shop near their school, but had yet to actually buy.

(“One day I will,” the blonde had grinned at her friend, “but today is not that day, Mer.”)

He was interesting and mysterious and people gossiped about him. And she was tiny and scary and people gave her a wide berth when they saw her wild hair storming down the hallway, as if she was going to bite their heads off if they got too close. People always fawned after him, and sighs followed him wherever he went. Nobody could’ve predicted the two of them to be thrown into each other’s lives.

Least of all Merida DunBroch herself.

It was like playing an absurd game of hot potato, courtesy of her scheming friends. And yet, as she lay on her bed and looked down at the football clutched between her fingers with his note written on it in large, sharpie letters, she could only think of the Jack Frost that wasn’t a football star. She could only think of the one who had burnt his own garage to a crisp entirely by accident. The Jack Frost that did not want to help her with the rules of football because he thought she was hot, but because he genuinely cared enough about the sport and he actually wanted to help her.

Even if that did include throwing a football at her face.

Merida’s hair was spread out like a lion’s mane against her pillows, only wisps were glued to her forehead by her own sweat. The football between her thin fingers was like a lifeline to something to a dream she had never thought possible.

Not that playing football was her dream but, for the sake of sounding poetic, it was.

(Both Rapunzel and Hiccup would probably be proud. She was starting to sound like an actual teenager, head over heels in love with… Football .)

She and Jack Frost had attacked the entire sport of football from the minute school ended to late into the afternoon. He had told her--via a note in her locker--that he was determined to get as much done as possible every day and that he had made a schedule including what she had to learn which day and when, and she had sighed (loudly) before crumpling up the note and agreeing. The days may have been getting longer the closer they got to the heart of summer, but they were getting far too close to the Powderpuff game itself to waste more time.

Besides, she wanted to actually use her fancy sports outfit she had dug out of the depths of her closet. It was probably a gift from Merida’s mother that she had planned on burning in a bonfire one day but had forgotten about. According to Rapunzel, it looked cute on her and although she hated to use the word “cute” to describe herself, Merida did agree. If she was going to go all out and play a legit game of ladies’ football, she might as well go down in flames.

(Flames being clothing that was more feminine than she was used to.)

So, Jack Frost had spent the afternoon teaching her the basics of football and she had come to realize that the sport was really aggressive and the rules were really dumb. But, the look that covered his face when he spoke about every choice that had to be made in the last few seconds of a game or when a team was afraid of losing, almost made her just as excited as he was. Almost. His passion for football was so intense, it was hard not to get addicted to it just as the white haired star had done. It didn’t help that every time looked at him she heard the quiet mumble of his voice when he had told the story of how he burnt down his garage a few days prior. That raw passion and interest in something so strange and uncalled for.

To put it simply, his trust exercise had certainly worked, but she would never tell him that.

Merida tossed the football up into the air and caught in her sore fingers. That was a mistake. Everything from tips of her fingers to cold bare feet ached from learning and practicing and forcing her body to conform to the rules of football. (It was nothing like archery, not that she was expecting it to be.) But throwing the football up into the air and catching it in her bedroom just put her over the edge. However, not even the pain in her fingers could clear her memory from earlier in the day.

“I know you can catch better than that!” he had said.

“If you say one more thing, Frost, I swear I will come over there and give you a black eye much worse than mine!”

From what little Merida could see of him, Jack Frost’s face was about the same color as her hair. A wonderful curly cherry tomato. It was all the nearly setting sun’s fault. It turned the whole world as orange as her hair. Outlining parts of his hair and facial features in a faded tone of the color. She wondered briefly if his pale features turned whatever color was brightest in the sky that day, but then she disregarded that thought. It would be weird to see the man himself with a blue face. But that thought didn’t stop her from getting even more irritated towards Jack Frost, who was doing everything in his power to stop himself from falling over laughing.

Although she had only started to practice, Merida thought she was beginning to get the hang of the sport. The only thing that was throwing her off was the look on Jack’s face when he thought she wasn’t looking, which plainly said otherwise. She could see his brain ticking as he tried to come up with another approach to get her to understand the importance of the rules as well as the importance for speeding up or slowing down depending on the play. (She had heard him mumble under his breath about the fact that she really hadn’t gotten any better from their first meeting--only more angry. A fact that was completely untrue!)

“I’m sorry Miss DunBroch but I don’t think you’ll be able to reach my face with your tiny arms.”

The redhead let out a cry of pure anger. How dare he! She stomped her mud covered shoes towards him and she could actually see him brace for impact. He had the right idea, she was totally going to yell him a storm. First the black eye, now this madness? She had been trying her best that entire afternoon and she deserved at least a “good job” for her efforts! Didn’t he say that morning that he cared about her? Was this how people in the Frost family treated those they cared about? Well, he certainly had it coming because people in the DunBroch family liked to use their fists to talk, especially when it came to god awful people named Jack Frost.

“You are the most insufferable person! I cannot believe I agreed to this.” Her fist hit his shoulder, hard. She was standing close enough to him that her wild hair, despite being tied into a high ponytail, had strands brushing against his neck. She looked up at him, brow furrowed, face slightly smudged with dirt from diving to catch footballs that had been thrown “too low” or “two high” for her standards. (He had told her that that was how footballs were thrown and she had aimed a kick at his shin.) His blue eyes seemed almost white in the setting sunlight. 

“You’re standing awfully close, there. Do you have something to tell me, DunBroch?” He raised one eyebrow, smirking down at her. She presumed it was a joke but, it was hard to tell with Jack Frost. It was always hard to tell. He had thrown a football at her head for peet’s sake! She had to constantly be on edge.

The redhead’s stepped backwards, away from him. She stared at him for a moment, her mouth slightly open, unsure of what to say next. He still had that crooked smile plastered to his face that she really wanted to wipe off. But, before she could turn to violence and give him a black eye of his own, he was saved by his cellphone, which buzzed. He pulled it out of his jeans pocket (he had yet to actually change out of the fancy clothes from that morning), looking away from her. The phone couldn’t possibly have had better timing, Jack Frost should’ve been thanking the dang thing.

But then she witnessed something she had not seen all afternoon: Jack Frost’s face falling. There were suddenly tired creases under his eyes, and his whole body seemed to slump forward slightly. It was as if the life had been dragged out of him, all by one measly text message on his phone. And before she could stop herself she asked--

“What’s wrong?”

“Sorry, DunBroch, I’ve got to go.” He looked uncomfortable, which was another first.

“Back to your house?” He raised his eyebrows at her as if to ask her where else he would possibly go. She crossed her arms tightly across her chest. Her plan for blackmail was still on the table, it was only a matter of when.

“Were you planning to give me a ride home?”

She scoffed at his response, amazed on how far he was taking the whole ‘we’re friends now’ notion. They weren’t friends, if anything they were co-workers. Co-workers who couldn’t stand each other. “You do realize the point of this is so that nobody knows that we’re working together, right? That was part of the deal.” She paused. “Besides, I don’t think we’d both be able to fit on my bike.”

He paused, looking at her, brow furrowed--almost reminiscent of Hiccup. “In a way, you’re right. I don’t think you’d be able to ride with me on the back of your bike, your legs are far too weak to push both of us up a hill.” She heard a growl come out of her throat unintentionally and she watched as his grin got wider. What a horrible guy. “But, as your incredibly hot football teacher, I have one final assignment for you before I leave.”

Merida looked at him, her little red baby hairs blowing across her forehead in wisps and getting into her eyes. She imagined there had never been anybody who looked so done in the whole history of the universe. There were grass stains on her knees, elbows, and general chest area. And there was an area on her chin that she had a feeling would bruise in the near future, but she would never tell him that, of course. He would only use it against her in the future, despite what he said about trust. He could trust her all he wanted to but there was no way that she would ever trust him. “Incredibly hot is a bit of an overstatement. I’d say the words ‘football’ and ‘teacher’ side by side was just in the right range.”

Jack scoffed. “You’ve injured me with your words, Merida.”

“That was my intention.” Merida deadpanned. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to figure out something for yourself. You have to know which position you want to play. Do you want to be somebody who catches the ball and runs like a running back or some sort of receiver? Or do you want to be the person who throws, like a quarterback?”

“What if I don’t want to be any of those positions?” Merida countered, rather angrily. “What if I want to defend?”

Jack Frost grinned and let out a slightly fake sounding laugh. “Oh please.” He paused, almost for dramatic effect. “You’re fairly unpopular, your name is Merida DunBroch, I’m your teacher, and you’re playing Powderpuff. I know you to want to be something that stands out. Just let me know, we’ll focus on that.”

And before she could counter a sassy remark, he had tossed her the football and he was gone.

Lying on her back, Merida sighed and closed her eyes. Even though she would never admit it to him, Jack Frost had a point and, unfortunately, even after all she had learned about football, she still did not know which position was best for her to play in the game.

In fact, she didn’t even know where to start.

Chapter Text

Over the next two days, Merida DunBroch did not hear or see anything from Jack Frost.

Okay, perhaps that was an overstatement. Over the past few days, she heard whispers in the hallways as always. Rumors floated about this way and that. She had received a message, written in tiny awkward letters, tucked away in her locker, signed by the mysterious Jack Frost telling her to look up certain websites and information to review the rules of football while he was away, as well as to fill out the Powderpuff form (and turn it in at the front office). The form explicitly stated that she “would be participating in the girls football game this year” and that after she turned in the form there was no way that she could “get out of participating”. (In the fine print, she had also made sure that it said the list of players would not get released until the day of the game, and something along the lines of getting an all expenses paid jersey with her last name stitched on the back of it, in her school’s colors. Which she thought would be incredibly cool to wear. So, she had turned the form in, as if to say “suck it, Jack Frost”. She was going to be in exactly the same cool football league as he was with a jersey of her own.) But alas, she had yet to see the man in person.

It wasn’t that she missed him, oh no. She did not miss that white haired popular kid one bit. He was just popular and white haired and just downright irritating to share a breathing space with. It didn’t matter how much she couldn’t stand him though, because after two days Merida DunBroch had given in to the whispers that echoed through the hallways. She, too, had begun to wonder what had happened to the star football player.

No, that wasn’t right either. She just found it… Strange.

She presumed she had been the last person from school that had seen him and from what she could remember, he had seemed so peppy and awake. So alive. And then he had gotten that text message which seemed to alter his entire being. That cheerfulness that came with being Jack Frost had vanished in a puff of smoke. The redhead did not believe the rumors that he was sick. He couldn’t possibly be actually sick, they had spent the whole afternoon together and if he was sick, she would probably be sick too. (And she wasn’t, as far as she knew. Unless there was some invisible immunity that she had to all Jack-Frost-affecting viruses.) There was also the factor that he could just have really bad luck, and he had tripped while getting out of bed and broke his wrist or something, which was entirely possible. But, it was completely improbable. Jack Frost had all the good luck in the world. He had made the varsity football team his freshman year. It wasn’t a feat that was attempted by somebody who had a storm cloud hanging over their head wherever they went. (And according to Hiccup, the man could catch an endless number of footballs, even ones that seemed impossibly out of his reach. He had all the luck he could possibly need.)

And thus, like any good student would, his absence required her to do one thing. Well, one thing after she had hastily checked off all the different things on his tiny, half-assed list meant to keep her busy. She had had two days to create a plan, to build it from scratch, from the depths of her mind. She had more than enough information to go on, and with a plan fully formulated in her mind, Merida DunBroch found herself ready. She would find out what happened to that white haired football player, even if it killed her. But, she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She had a life to live, one that included getting revenge on Jack Frost for what he did to her face.

And this was only the start.

When she had first shared her plan with her friends, she had had bad luck. Both Hiccup and Rapunzel had smoothly wormed their ways out of joining her in “probably illegal” activities, to quote Hiccup’s text message from a couple nights before. Apparently they had an “AP class study session” and they were going to be “incredibly busy”, to quote Rapunzel’s bubbly voicemail from last night. It was all a huge load of bullshit but she decided not to call either of them on it. (It wasn’t her fault that they were too weak, and not up to the challenge.)

Merida blinked, pulling her mind back into the task in front of her. Despite the ungodly hour, she really had to focus.

The redhead was on her bed, tucked under the covers as to keep warm in the early hours of the morning. There was a map spread out in front of her, nearly covering the entirety of the comforter on her bed, and then some. It depicted the surrounding area, the entire school district, and a few of the communities surrounding that. She had printed it out over nine sheets of paper and taped it all together the best she could muster. It wasn’t the best map in the world but, it would do for now. There was no other way she could be discrete about her plan, to hide it from her mother. Her mother was the type of person to go on an investigative rampage, tearing Merida’s room apart until she found what she was looking for. It was a miracle that the woman herself hadn’t noticed Merida’s black eye yet. The redhead blinked and focused back on the map in front of her, now was not the time to think of her mother. (Think of the devil and she may appear!) There were several highlighted areas on the map, and the park that she and Jack had gone to had been circled several times in thick sharpie.

If Rapunzel could see Merida now, she probably would’ve probably been pretty proud. Everything was color coded—oddly reminiscent of Rapunzel’s life during finals week. The streets with (from what she had looked up online) significantly older houses were highlighted blue, for very likely. The streets with newer houses (but no garages) were highlighted purple, for not that likely. And the houses who were both old and on the hills in the surrounding area were highlighted in yellow for the most likely. She felt ready. She felt prepared.

Merida hadn’t felt like this since the night before her first riding test back in elementary school. She had known her horse, Angus, like he was an extension of her own body. They had established a bond, a trust that nobody could break. She had known the track like the back of her hand. And she wasn’t nervous, not one bit. In fact, she had felt as if there was a fuzzy feeling warming the whole of her body. It was the same feeling that she had gotten when she had boarded a plane for the first time, or the first day of school. It was the feeling she got when she knew she was starting a new chapter, a new adventure in her life. She could barely lie still, a bright, excited smile plastered to her face. Although she had not even set foot on the track, or greeted Angus, she knew it was different. It was another adventure just waiting to be lived through. It made her feel like she was part of a movie. Like she was going to wield a sword and fight off bad guys right and left, before winning with not a scratch on her body. (Or maybe one cool looking scratch that she could tell stories about.)

Merida grinned and looked out her bedroom window. The sun had just barely begun its job, lightening the sky. A slight amount of pink and blue, like a spark to a growing flame. The start of a new day, full of new experiences. And, hopefully, the truth about one Jack Frost. It didn’t matter that she had gotten little more than five hours of sleep. She had something to do, and she was going to do it, even if it killed her--or more likely, completely exhausted her.

Besides, she had already done the hard work of calling the school and telling them (in her best interpretation of her mother) that “my daughter, Merida DunBroch, will not be attending school tomorrow due to the fact that she is incredibly sick”, so she practically had the day to herself. She could even sneak back into her house and fall asleep early. All she had to make sure of was that she didn’t run into her mother.

It was a plan both Hiccup and Rapunzel would’ve been proud of, if they were around to actually see it.

Luckily, she had obtained other goons who were, surprisingly, right on time.

There was a quiet knock on her bedroom window, by a thin calloused hand. There was a moment before the head of the ever tired Astrid Hofferson appeared at her window looking even more tired than she had sounded on the phone.

Merida unravled herself from the map and her blankets before hurrying over and opening the window. Astrid pulled herself up onto the slim window ledge and heaved a sigh of relief.

The young woman’s face was flushed a light pink color, and there was a slight amount of sweat covering her bare shoulders and her upper lip. Her hair had been pulled back in a the type of braid Rapunzel would’ve gasped in amazement at. There was more than several strands of her wispy blonde locks that were covering her forehead that she quickly pushed back, out of her face and glared at Merida.

Was there ever a time when that girl looked happy?

It was a wonder that Hiccup had fallen in love with her all those years ago.

“Good morning, Astrid.” Merida smiled at her new companion, who grunted in response. The girl was no Rapunzel, but she knew full well that both she and the weird senior (that she swore had been hitting on Punzie earlier that week) shared an air conditioned car. And what she needed right now was exactly that. (The weather was said to be scorching hot the whole day, as if their entire town had been shoved into summer without warning. She was going to be needing all the air conditioning she could get.)

That’s why she had come forward to the two of them, after all.

Astrid Hofferson and (she was pretty sure his name was) Eugene Rider were the two of the most likely people to ditch school if given a plausible reason. Merida didn’t even have to know them very well to know that. There were rumors that floated through the school about them. (Not as many rumors as Jack had but, rumors nonetheless.) And, if Merida’s mother ever saw through her daughter’s plan, it would be more difficult for her to find the redhead to be found if she was hanging out with a bunch of school-ditching hooligans. They were also the perfect people to drive her places and not ask too many questions. They were, in fact, the perfect minions.

Much better than Hiccup and Rapunzel would’ve been. (Those two would’ve gone against everything she came up with, stuttering and mumbling along the way.)

And besides, with  three heads was still better than one. Even if she couldn’t talk to them about her many issues with Jack Frost. It was nice to have company, even if she had to risk them finding out about her and the football player.

“Remind me why I couldn’t just knock on the front door like a normal person?” said Astrid.

Merida shook her head at the blonde before she grabbed an elastic from her bedside table, tying her hair up into an attempt at a bun. (It looked more like her hair was attempting to defy gravity but, it kept those annoying strands out of her face and that was all that mattered.) She folded the map up into a small square and tucked it into the front of her jean shorts. The redhead sat on the edge of the window, and smirked at the blonde.

“Where’s the fun in that?” said Merida, grinning from ear to ear.

Astrid could barely contain her groan as she shut the window behind the curly haired young woman.

------

“Jack?” whispered a voice that couldn’t be mistaken for anybody but Tatiana. She had a way to pronounce everything that made it sound peachy and keen, especially when things were not peachy or keen. “How are you feeling?”

The white haired teenager did not look over at her. He was lying on his side, his head and body facing towards the window that sat directly beside his bed, with its thin, light blue curtains drawn. Everything about his body displayed exhaustion. And in Tatiana’s opinion, his hair even looked tired. His head laid on the crumpled up covers of his unmade bed, white locks splayed out, sudden against the darker fabric. Jack was practically motionless besides the slight of his ribs expanding and returning to normal with each breath.

He was still dressed in the light button down shirt and worn jeans that he had walked back home in two days ago. He had barely gotten out of bed since then, much less eaten dinner when she had called him downstairs. He had actually expelled more food out of his body than he had eaten over the past few days, and it was worrying her a considerably amount.

She had known reminding him of what day it was was a bad idea. And she had told Nicholas so, with such distinction. And yet, he had responded to her that Jack needed to know, that Jack deserved a reminder. If he forgot, he would’ve just felt worse in the long run. (She knew he had a point but everybody, especially Jack, deserved some time off from emotional turmoil once and a little while.)

Tatiana took in the sight of her friend with a sigh.

There was something incredibly sad about Jack Frost when he stopped being Jack Frost and he started being Jack Overland again. It was like that magical aspect of the boy with all his white hair, winning streak, and his charming persona had vanished overnight. It wasn’t the fact that she enjoyed him pretending to be something that he wasn’t but, more the fact her heart sank in her chest every time she had to see him like this. He looked as if he had deflated.

She stepped soundlessly over to him, past the pile of dirty laundry and the pages of miscellaneous homework that loitered on the floor and sat on the edge of his bed. It creaked slightly as she sat down but, he didn’t turn to look at her. His eyes were fixed on the now almost dark window, unmoving. They seemed even more strikingly blue than usual, vibrant against his pale complexion, vibrant against the slight red that was now inhabiting the whites of his eyes from crying.

She smiled softly and laid down next to him, turning towards his back and wrapping her arms around his torso. (It took a bit of ungraceful shuffling but she managed it.) Despite how many times she had done it, holding him while he was in his state, she would never get over the fact of how much he had grown over the years. When they had first met, she had been able to tuck his head under her chin and hold him tightly against her chest until he stopped shaking. But now… Now he was far too big for that. Far too old, far too tall.

Still just as broken.

Still just as in need of friends and family by his side. Still in need of her arms wrapped around him, holding him tightly until he promised he was okay again. Still in need of people he missed more than anything else.

Tatiana gently traced soothing, thin, meaningless designs into his chest with her index finger. She could only hope that she was coming through to him, with her nose pressed against his back, and her free fingers clutching at his ribs. She could only hope that he could hear her through the hazy memories in his mind.

He began to shake slightly, curling his body slightly inwards as he brought one of his hands to clasp hers. His head turned slightly, pressing further into his pillow. He whispered something against the fabric that she did not understand. All she could do was hold him closer, hold him until he was better. All she could do was make sure he knew how much she cared, how much they all cared.

“I know, Jack, I know,” whispered Tatiana, “they don’t blame you for what happened. They don’t blame you, I promise.”

She would whisper that to him until the end of time if she had to.

(And sometimes she felt she had to.)

------

Astrid Hofferson made a mental note to tell any girl who had any inkling of interest in the so-called Flynn Rider, that he smelt like the atomic bomb version of a fart when he was stuck in a car with no air conditioning for too long.

It wasn’t that she was jealous when girls flirted with him, or vice versa. No, that was not even close. They were friends, after all, and friends didn’t get jealous when flirting was involved.

No, it was the fact that he was trying to persuade Merida DunBroch—the redhead who had somehow convinced him (and her in tow) to wake up at such an ungodly hour to drive around their hometown, allowing her to knock on random doors to talk to random people before getting into the car again and driving to the next house—to allow him to take the Corona girl out on a date. No, that wasn’t even right. He was trying to get Merida to flirt with Rapunzel on his behalf.

There were several things wrong with the situation to begin with. For one, the way he had been approaching DunBroch with his reasoning did not make any sense. It made it seem, at least to Astrid, that DunBroch was Corona’s mother and only she would be capable of allowing the two to go on a date. Secondly, he was leaning, with his arm resting the back of the passenger seat, practically wrapped around Merida, letting the incredibly ripe body odor smell of his armpit flood around the car. If that wasn’t bad enough, his car had the worst air condition unit in the world so, there was no filtering the smelly air away from her. Thirdly, he had made Astrid, who had audibly called “shotgun” sit in the back seat, because Merida was a guest and thus she deserved better than Astrid did.

To sum the entire situation up simply: it was pissing her off.

Now, to be fair, many things that the so-called Flynn Rider did piss her off but, this had reached a new low. They were in the negative numbers at this point. She had known him for several years, and it was amazing how much he managed to piss her off when it came to the stupidest of things. And how often he managed to do it. As she sat in the backseat of his car, her feet propped up against the back of his headrest, she kept thinking about how easy it would be to let her foot slip and (gently) kick him in the back of the head. Why? Well, for one, he was wearing a wifebeater, and an unbuttoned, wrinkled, plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and if that was not enough reason, he had an aggressively charming smile plastered to his stubble covered face. (The technique he had copyrighted as “The Smolder”.) His hair was coated in sweat from the almost summer heat, and he kept running his hands through it, pushing it back for a moment before it flopped back down on his forehead again. It was like one of those nineties love-interest boy haircuts and man, did Astrid want to grab a pair of scissors to chop it off in one false swoop.

He always managed to do this. Pushing her buttons by flirting with girls in the most obnoxious ways possible. Sometimes she thought she could do it more successfully than he could. (She had yet to actually give it a try.) Astrid had seen him use that same technique on many women before but, never had he used the technique on a woman to get her to use it on another woman. It was horrendous.

She blew a few strands of her wispy blonde hair out of her eyes and glanced over at Merida’s reaction to the whole scenario. She seemed unimpressed for the most part, something that Astrid was very thankful for. Sure, the blonde could put her foot down any time she’d like to but, it never had a lasting effect on the so-called Flynn Rider. He did what he wanted to do, and he hardly listened to her when it came down to it.

He would probably run into a burning building if she told him not to, just in spite of her.

But, dealing with his sweaty stench, his horrendous flirting, and the summer heat, it was getting to be a bit too much for the already on edge Astrid Hofferson.

They had been driving around with Merida all morning. She had been pointing out certain houses on certain streets and shrieking for the car to stop, before running out and knocking on the door, talking briefly to the person who answered the door (if they even answered the door to begin with) before turning on her heel and trudging back to the car, pulling out her giant map and crossing off yet another house on the giant paper. It was rather curious.

From what Astrid knew about Merida DunBroch, which was very little, the act of the young woman ditching school to drag two weirdos around and knock on doors all day seemed out of character. Simply strange. It was as if she was training to become anything from a mormon to a older girl scout, and Astrid was completely at a loss. Merida DunBroch remained the perfected mystery that the blonde imagined she enjoyed being. The young woman’s bright, rambunctious hair, although tied up and pulled away from her face, had been expanding all morning, though through heat or sweat, Astrid wasn’t sure. It would’ve been nice to observe, nice to come up with imaginary reasoning as to why DunBroch was doing what she was doing, if she hadn’t been so irritated with the whole Eugene situation.

“…Which is why I think that blondie, your Rapunzel Corona, and I should get better acquainted,” said Eugene, winking at Merida, who continued to look unimpressed.

“You should really write an argumentative essay on the topic, Mister Rider, you certainly have enough proof for it,” responded Merida, smoothly.

Astrid was impressed. It was a good comeback.

“Did I convince you?” he asked.

“Well, you convinced me of one thing,” said the redhead, folding up her map of the surrounding area as tightly as she could, clicking the release on her seatbelt, and opening the door.

“What’s that?”

“The necessity of deodorant.”

The redhead slammed the car door quickly and turned on her heel. The only thing that would’ve made the moment any better was if she had flipped her hair over her shoulder, or if she had walked in slow motion to the next house she was probably going to cross off her list. The blonde thought it was positively epic.

Eugene, however, did not. He sat, in silence, staring at the back of the redhead’s head, before he scrambled, sniffing at his sweaty shirt. He made an awful face before glancing back at Astrid.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You’re a grown man, Eugene,” said Astrid, trying to not look incredibly bitter, but failing entirely, “I’m not your mother.”

“But you are my friend, and friends are supposed to be there for each other.”

“Tough shit.”

Eugene gaped mockingly at her for her language, pausing for a moment as he stared at her.

Astrid hated it but, she could sometimes see his appeal. The way he sort of… Glistened, in the yellow, summery light. That five o’clock shadow by his jawline. Those full lips. The way his hair fell across his forehead, and the way he pushed it back, before letting it fall again. It was dumb but, she could understand why so many girls fell victim to his charm. But, at the same time, that didn’t ever stop her from being completely and entirely irritated with him.

He smirked at her. It was unnerving and stunning at the same time. She wanted to punch him in the face.

“You’re jealous, aren’t you, Hofferson,” he said.

She kept her face surprisingly calm for someone who was so surprised.

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Well, you’re annoyed, for one,” he crossed his arms, twisting in his seat to look at her, his seatbelt digging into his shoulder, “You never get annoyed unless something really annoying happens.”

“You’re constantly annoying, Rider, that’s nothing new,” she countered. “And before we continue this conversation, we’re going to have to buy you a Sherlock Holmes hat and a pipe so you can properly pull off the deductive detective look.”

“It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it, Hofferson, but you have to at least admit that it’s there.”

He was setting up something, she could see it in his eyes. Despite being generally easy on the eyes, he was clever. She thought he should only have one useful trait but, the heavens had obviously thought otherwise. Instead, he had been given an incredibly stupid name. It evened out but, not by much. Nonetheless, he knew that she knew she was an incredibly impatient person, that it wouldn’t take very long for her to take the bait.

They stared at each other, Astrid gritting her teeth, and Eugene smirking in return.

She could almost see him counting the seconds in his head. She had barely made it to ten before she broke and took the bait.

“My jealousy towards who? Rapunzel? Merida? You wish.”

He paused, taking his time with his response, as if he had all the time in the world. She was sure he could feel her fuming from the back seat but, there was really nothing that she could do about it.

“No, not your jealousy, Astrid,” he stated, grinning at her. “Your feelings.”

“My feelings?”

“Yeah, Astrid, your feelings, y’know, for me.”

Oh, she had never wanted to kill somebody so badly.

Luckily, before Eugene Rider had time to decide what he wanted on his gravestone, or Astrid had time to stop her face from flushing bright pink, Merida peaked her head back in the window to look at the two of them, fanning her face with the folded up map.

“How does lunch right about now sound?” she asked. Astrid noticed that a strand of red hair was sticking to her forehead.

“It sounds excellent, babe,” grinned Eugene.

“If you call me that again,” said Merida, climbing into the passenger seat, “I’ll make sure Rapunzel will kick your teeth in next time she sees you.”

That seemed to shut Eugene up. His teeth were his main selling point of his charm, after all. He turned to face forwards again, clearing his throat quietly as he fiddled with the key in the ignition and the rearview mirror. Astrid grinned from the back seat, fanning her face with her hand. Hopefully she could pull off her flushed cheeks for being a factor of the summer heat and nothing else.

“Where are we going for lunch, DunBroch?” said Astrid.

“Back to my place for whatever’s in the fridge right now,” remarked Merida, turning to glance over at the blonde with a smile, “but first, we’re going to go get Rider some deodorant.”

The sound of Astrid’s laughter was audible over the squeal of the car’s tires.

------

Tatiana was unsurprised to hear Aster’s voice on the other end of the line.

As much as he hated to admit it, the sideburn covered young man cared about Jack just as much as she did, if not more. Sure, sometimes she expected that the two would strangle each other in their sleep but, that didn’t stop the fact that they cared deeply for each other. Family was family, after all, even if it wasn’t blood related.

Sometimes she wished it wasn’t Aster who called to check up on Jack, but that it was Nicholas, in his happy, carefree tone. That’s really who Jack needed, after all. Not Tatiana, not Aster, but Nicholas. It was his fault, after all, and he should be the one to comfort Jack. Any other time, Tatiana would’ve been able to survive as per usual but, what he was going through was not something that the white haired teenager could just brush off his shoulders.

It was early afternoon, and the tall, arching upstairs windows bathed the upstairs hallway Tatiana was standing in harsh cutouts of light. It was strange, that hallway. When they all had first moved in, everybody had claimed a wall. It was going to be their most used hallway, the real estate agent had said. It connected with most of the bedrooms after all. So, they had all decided to choose a wall and paint it their chosen color. Now, it wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing thing to look at but, she could just feel the love emanating from those very walls. Jack had claimed the ceiling, he said it would be best a cream color—somebody had to be boring and normal, after all. Tatiana had decided on a pastel green, a shade that matched her hair exactly, Nicholas a light red that Aster had commented was more pink than it was red. Sandy, the ever quiet, the ever wonderful, had gone with a early morning sun yellow, the calmest, kindest of all their colors. And Aster had chosen light blue, prompting Jack to tell him it looked like the type of paint that somebody would paint a baby’s bedroom. His comment had started yet another argument between the two but, nonetheless, it was perfect. The whole hallway was so full of love, even if the owners weren’t around.

She leaned against the light green of her chosen wall, it was the closest to Jack’s bedroom, allowing her to glance occasionally over at the open door to where she could see the white haired young man, fast asleep. If she had to choose a favorite place in the whole of the house, it would’ve had to have been that hallway. It had nothing to do with the mismatched paint on the walls, or the fact that she could have a moment to breathe while still checking on Jack. No, she loved it there because of the photographs. Countless school photographs, mostly of younger versions of Jack and Baby, lined the walls—trailing the space down the stairwell to the lower floors—mostly a number of family photos they had paid far too much money to pose for. The green haired young woman thought it was bittersweet, looking at how much their mismatched family had aged over the years. The progression of Aster’s sideburns, the slow expansion of fluff that made up Nicholas’s beard, the slow switch of Jack’s hair from dark brown to pure white.

She smiled, wearily, before focusing on one photograph in particular. The oldest of all their photographs.

She and Aster were teenagers in the faded picture. His hair was longer, dirtier, and although he had pulled it back into a ponytail at the base of his neck, he still seemed angry and out of place. His eyebrows were furrowed downwards, and he wasn’t looking at the camera, focused instead on his shoes below him. His crisp white button down was untucked, and there was a smudge of grey on the front of it, as well as the sleeves, where he had fiddled with the material and rolled them up. He looked uncomfortable. She was standing to his right, with Baby asleep in her arms, sporting a bright, slightly forced smile. Her hair was jaw length, almost school-girl-y, and although the dyed green on her bangs was ever present in the photograph, it seemed strange. As if she hadn’t quite grown into the color. She was wearing a slightly too tight black dress with no sleeves, something that must’ve fit her a handful of years back but, no longer did the trick. Her cheeks were rosy and flushed, both from holding her smile for so long, and clutching Baby in her arms. Nicholas stood behind both Aster and Tatiana, with a wide, toothy smile. He even had a beard then, although it was not white, and he looked a lot younger—Tatiana couldn’t remember how old he had been exactly but, the man himself never really seemed to age. Sandy stood beside him on a rather tall stool, his erratic, almost Einstein-like locks of strawberry blonde untamed, even for the photograph. He was the oldest man in their little family, and he sported a charming grin, with one hand on Aster’s shoulder, and the other placed kindly in his lap. He wasn’t looking at the camera, his eyes were glancing up at Nicholas. Both men had lines around their eyes, but they both, for once, looked happy. The smile on Nicholas’s face wasn’t something Tatiana had seen in a very long time.

Finally, standing below both Aster and Tatiana, was the young Jack Overland. He was missing a tooth, and his ears looked too big for his head. His dark hair had a streak of white right down the middle, splitting his head in two, and there was strands of white here and there down by the sides of his head as well. He had several scars, fresh scars, on his face but, that didn’t stop him from looking completely and totally overjoyed. He was looking at the camera, his bright blue eyes wide with excitement, his cheeks flushed with happiness.

She could practically see the words imprinted in his mind.

I’m going to have a family. I’m finally going to have a family.

That’s what they had all been thinking.

Tatiana smiled, almost tearing up. The little boy, her little Jack, he looked so innocent, despite everything that had happened to him. He looked so happy. As it was with Nicholas, she hadn’t seen him smile quite like he had been in that old photograph, in an incredibly long time. She glanced at the form of the sleeping teenage boy in his bedroom and sighed. There was really nothing she could do for him now that he was asleep.

Aster was saying something through the telephone but, Tatiana only caught the end of it, too lost in the photograph in front of her.

“…Nonetheless, I dropped Baby off at school successfully,” he started, his voice rumbling quietly in her ear, “All the teachers and parents alike were really impressed that your ‘boyfriend’ rides a motorcycle. Which may or may not come back and bite us both in the arse.”

She laughed quietly but, immediately felt bad about it.

How could she laugh when their friend was in such pain just a couple feet away? Tatiana sighed and leaned her head against the wall. Both of them knew why he was really calling, and it wasn’t to make fun of what teachers and parents at Baby’s school thought. It was about Jack, and Aster wasn’t the type of person to just come out and say so.

“You know, normal people say hello when they call somebody on the phone,” she stated.

“Do you honestly think we’re normal?” he countered.

“Fair point,” she sighed, and she could hear him chuckle softly, but it sounded much more like a hiss from the telephone. She bit her lip for a moment before continuing, “he’s fine, Aster, thank you for calling.”

His reply was immediate. “Has he eaten anything?”

“No, he’s just fallen asleep. I think it’s a start, at the very least. I don’t think he’s slept in awhile.”

“Well, that’s good, I suppose,” he sighed breathily before continuing, “Baby asked if he was going to be okay.”

“What did you say?”

“I told her that Jack was just not feeling very good and that you were going to take care of him.”

There was an extended pause, and Tatiana tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

She and Aster were the closest in age, the closest in everything, really. Sure, they both would take a bullet for Jack if the opportunity presented itself, and they both respected Nicholas despite everything that had happened but, their relationships with the others wasn’t the same. Aster always had her back like none of the others did. He always picked up after her, and took care of Baby in the same way that she did when she had her head on straight. It was like co-parenting with her best friend. Which was a weird way to put it but, she couldn’t think of a better way to raise Baby, to tell her about tough topics in the safest, most careful way possible.

The youngest person in their makeshift family was just too young to truly understand what Jack was going through. And it would’ve hurt Tatiana to explain it. It probably would’ve hurt Aster to explain it as well, although he would probably never admit to it. Neither truly understood what had happened to Jack, after all. It would be like the blind leading the blind. Tatiana could only ever be there for Jack, as his friend, the two of them as his family. To force him to eat and drink and stay alive whenever he fell into the state that he currently had fallen into.

Baby wouldn’t have truly understood.

“Thank you, Aster,” she whispered, her voice cracking slightly under the weight of tears she hadn’t even realized were bubbling up inside of her.

“No problem, Tati,” said Aster, “I’ll always be here for you.”

And like all the other times he had ever said those same words to her, Tatiana knew he meant it.

------

“Are you sure this is the last house of the day?” said Astrid.

Eugene blinked out of his haze and looked over at the blonde and the redhead, who were both looking out the passenger side windows at a house. The redhead looked down at her map, which had been folded down for size, focusing directly on a certain house that had been circled a number of times in blue felt pen.

“Yeah, I’m almost positive,” said Merida, who was leaning out the window, looking up at the house. She grinned at Astrid before adding, “Wish me luck!”

“Good luck,” Astrid deadpanned but, Eugene wasn’t sure she had actually heard her, because the redhead had already climbed her way out of his car, and was strutting up to the front of the building. It was only then that he got a good look at the house.

Sure, if he had been paying attention earlier, he would’ve seen it but, he hadn’t. So he didn’t.

Eugene was no expert on architecture or design or anything of the sort. No, he wasn’t the type of person who wore a turtleneck and slicked his hair back in order to discuss some sort of modern art design. He was a rough kind of kid who wore lots of plaid and dark colored jeans, almost a spitting image of what one would expect from the nineties grunge era. But, he had to admit the house that Merida DunBroch was making her way towards was something unlike any other house that he had ever seen.

The first thing he noticed was that it was huge: a three story building in dire need of repair. It was old, the type of house to be considered haunted in a horror movie. There was a faded light blue paint that seemed to cover most of the exterior of the building, aside from some parts that just looked so worn by weather that it was impossible to tell. The roof was slightly slanted, more than it should’ve been, making it uneven, and almost to the point where Eugene thought it was going to just collapse at any moment. The windows, although near the same size on every floor, seemed to be slipping slightly more on the left side than the right side, which reminded Eugene (strangely enough) of a cake, that was melting.

It also had a sort of victorian aesthetic, with lots of high points and spikes accenting them. Despite the fading paint, under each sloping roof there were a number of cut out wood panels, like one would see on a gingerbread house, or a dollhouse, each panel covered in intricate designs of triangles or dots or something, Eugene was far too far away to tell for sure.

The front lawn was overgrown, covered in all sorts of miscellaneous bright green plants, or bushes with lilac flowers. There was no order to any of it. A barely visible stone path could be seen, meandering through the bushes and shrubs, looking out of place but perfect at the same time. The whole lawn seemed to mirror the whole of the house, beautiful and falling apart all the same. It was all gated in by a rusty black metal, barely holding the overgrown plants in. The whole area seemed to want to break out and tumble onto the sidewalk.

Beside the victorian house there was a rather modern garage, something that didn’t fit the rest of the aesthetic in the slightest. It had been painted the same light blue but, the paint was more fresh than not, only making it look even more out of place. There were tire tracks from the garage, through the overgrown plants, down to the street.

There was a staircase at the front of the building, adorned with swirly railings, that made a slow rise to a small landing and the front door, where Merida had made her way up to. She stood out against all the cool colors of the house, her red hair glowing, her face flushed from the heat. Even her folded up map that she was using as a fan wasn’t really helping at this point. It was like they had all been thrust into summertime, something he wouldn’t have complained about if his car’s air conditioning had been working.

“I didn’t know you took such an interest in architecture,” said Astrid, who had climbed her way into the passenger seat, looking at him with a bitter expression, “I thought today was all about perfect artist girls with long blonde hair?”

“Why can’t today be about both?” he countered.

Astrid scoffed and said nothing. He was surprised that she had been the person to speak first. Usually, when they got into an argument—one that more often than not tended to be a one-sided argument courtesy of some unspoken conversation Astrid had had within her own mind—Astrid would never straight out talk to him. She would ignore him, before lashing out three or four days later. So, for her to just come out and start speaking to him so soon after their one-sided argument, well, she deserved to be in the Guinness Book of World Records. Though, if he told her that, she would probably just lash out three of four days later in spite of him. Something had happened in the time during their shared lunch break, which had been courtesy of the DunBroch family fridge, something that he couldn’t quite figure out. Maybe it had even started before then, he wasn’t exactly sure.

Astrid Hofferson was a fairly hard-headed person, so she was going to be the last person in the world to actually tell him what had happened. But, that didn’t mean that it wasn’t worth a shot asking.

“What do you think of the house?”

Astrid blinked, and for a moment it looked like she was confused by his question. But, she turned away from him instead of holding onto her confusion, and looked out the window.

“It’s interesting, I guess,” the blonde shrugged.

“It looks like that house from the television show from awhile back. The one about the imaginary friends,” he stated because, in fact, it did, “I can’t remember the name.”

“Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends?” Astrid said, almost immediately.

Eugene grinned. Of course she knew the name of the show. No matter how hardcore Astrid tried to make herself seem inside, she truly did remember the strangest of things. If Eugene knew anything about her, it was that for certain. Astrid turned to her friend and mirrored his smile, her anger momentarily forgotten.

“That’s the one,” he said.

She blinked, remembering her previous irritation with her friend, before turning away from him again and crossing her arms.

There was a moment of silence as the duo watched as the antique front door of the house opened, and a young woman with a rather sudden splash of dyed green hair was revealed to be standing inside. Merida began saying something to the young woman, but neither could hear her. Both Eugene and Astrid simply watched her as she tried to get her point across by waiving her map hand, tucking a strand of red hair that had escaped her hair tie behind her left ear every once and a while.

After a moment Eugene spoke, trying to get Astrid to follow suit. “What do you think she’s doing?”

The blonde had pulled her knees up to her chest, arms wrapped around her knees as she looked at Merida from a distance. She looked as though she was overheating, a slight line of sweat dotted her upper lip. Her blonde hair was stuck to her skin at the back of her neck, as well as partially to her forehead. The lack of air conditioning had affected all three of them in horrible ways. He made a mental note to make sure he didn’t take girls out on dates during the summer if he didn’t know how hot it was going to get, or he was just unprepared for the consequences that his body had to offer when dealing with summertime heat. (The deodorant that Merida had forced him to purchase would help with smelling less like body odor but, the summer heat also seemed to hate him so, it was hard to predict what would happen.)

Astrid looked at him, her clouded blue eyes seeming to storm quietly.

“I don’t know, but she seems pretty desperate about whatever it is.”

Merida was waving her arms around wildly to the green haired young woman, and something about the motion made several facts click into place in Eugene’s brain at once.

Now, he wasn’t exactly an unintelligent person. Eugene could slip by in classes with average grades, and he could worm his way through sticky situations like a snake. Sure, he could probably do better in school if he tried harder but, he didn’t care too much about it. But, what mattered was that he understood people. He could figure them out. And after spending a morning with his best friend and the mysterious redhead, he came to a conclusion. A very shocking conclusion, but one that he was amazed he could’ve possibly missed previously.

And that conclusion was Jack Frost.

“I bet it has to do with what she was telling her friends the other day.”

Astrid furrowed her brow and looked at him carefully. “When we met Henry and the blonde girl?”

“Rapunzel Corona, yeah,” he replied instantly, and Astrid scoffed.

“Yes, I remember. How could I possibly forget. You were swooning so hard people thought you were going to faint.”

He blinked. “Did they really?”

“Of course not. I’m making an exaggeration,” she paused, blowing the strands of hair on her forehead, that hadn’t already been glued there by sweat, away. “But, you were saying?”

“Don’t you remember who they were talking about?”

“Uh. No?”

“Two words, Hofferson. Two words.” He held out two fingers in front of her face, positioned in a ‘V’ shape. He pointed to the first finger, “Jack,” and then to the second, “Frost.”

“Jack Frost. The football player, Jack Frost?”

“Who else would have a name that obnoxious?”

Astrid snorted, letting out a smile that she quickly hid by turning away. But, he had seen it. He grinned at the back of her head. Fantastic. He had started making his way into the clear. He had spent enough time with the blonde girl that he could easily figure out what he needed to do to pull himself out of her line of fire. Astrid could always be persuaded to forget why she was angry if he put something more interesting in front of her. And Merida DunBroch’s sudden interest in the white-haired star football player was the perfect distraction.

It was like dealing with a toddler, or a puppy. Although they would probably get into another argument entirely if he told her that.

Astrid turned back to face him, unclasping her hands from around her knees, and sitting more comfortably. She stretched slightly, flexing her muscles in both her arms, before placing her flip-flop wearing feet up on the dashboard. She placed her hands behind her headrest, clasping them tightly. The blonde grinned at him, and the dual storms in her eyes seemed to subside slightly.

“We’re going to figure it out. Whatever’s going on, we’re going to figure it out. It’s the Hofferson-Rider way.”

“Why can’t it be the Rider-Hofferson way?”

“Why? It’s simple: I’m better,” She smirked at him. “Do I have your word?”

He glanced past her head to where Merida was coming back from the house, a bright smile plastered to her face. An almost mischievous smile, like she had won a million dollars but, she didn’t want anybody to know about it type smile. The green haired woman was gone, vanished back inside the lopsided house.

“You know me, I can’t resist a challenge.”

Their mirrored grins would’ve given the cheshire cat a run for its money.

Chapter Text

Rapunzel had been wearing Hiccup’s glasses when it happened.

It had been the middle of winter, almost the exact middle of their tenth grade year. Snow had covered the ground in heavy sheets, making it impossible to get anywhere without the proper winter gear (which both Hiccup and Rapunzel were lucky enough to have). The brunette remembered Merida complaining about how cold it was constantly that winter, as if the heavy snow was not enough, Mother Nature found it necessary to make their hometown a frozen wasteland. She had complained so adamantly that Rapunzel had gone out of her way to knit three scarves with scraps of wool that she had salvaged from past art projects.

All three scarves were about eight feet each, it had been very impressive.

Hiccup still had his scarf, tucked away within layers of sweaters, growing dusty during the summer. It was a deep green, a lavender purple, a fiery red, and it had a design near one end that looked vaguely like a smiley face. It matched absolutely nothing that he owned but, he cherished it endlessly.

The scarves had been the first of many handmade gifts from Rapunzel, who found countless hours to knit her way to the moon and back.

But, that winter Hiccup remembered Rapunzel. He remembered how bright her cheeks had been, flushed against her pale skin. The way her smile was practically covered by the layers of her own multicolored scarf which had been wrapped several times around her neck, and how her oversized hat slumped down over her eyes if she wasn’t paying attention. He remembered how her breath puffed out from beneath the layers of color, in precise, neat little clouds, and how he could tell she was smiling, even when he couldn’t see her grin. She had been smiling so much that winter that he thought her cheeks must’ve gotten pretty sore. But, he never asked.

That winter had also been the first year he had gotten his glasses. They were these terrible, thick, pitch black, rectangular things that made him look even less cool than he actually was. His eye doctor, and his father in tow, had promptly forced the spectacles into his hands, and insisted that he wear them constantly. That was, unless, he wanted his eyesight to get worse. Of course, Hiccup couldn’t have possibly taken his father’s word as truth. The spectacles were horrendous. They made his eyes bug out, and they slipped down his greasy, pubescent nose every few moments, forcing him to push them back upwards, looking even nerdier than he needed to. He remembered staring into the mirror for ages, thinking only that his reflection looked like it was about to break out and start schooling him on the rules of Dungeons and Dragons.

Those glasses, those thick, black annoyances were going to take his already terrible reputation and make it even worse.

So, despite what experts (and his father) had stated, he began to do some research. And somehow, had come to the conclusion that his eyes could get better if he didn’t wear his glasses. That they would heal on their own. That he didn’t need those terrible spectacles for the life of him. Sure, he kept them in his backpack for safe keeping, so his father wouldn’t know he wasn’t wearing them but, he was sure nobody was ever to know the wiser.

Of course, that’s when everything went from bad to worse.

The first thing to go was Hiccup’s straight A’s. The amount of time he spent squinting at the board, trying desperately to understand the material through practically useless pupils, made his studying time longer, and made the information make less and less sense in his head. He began to scramble, attempting to copy off notes, and stay up later and later at night to make up for his lack in eyesight but, nothing worked.

The second thing to go was his dignity. He had always been somebody who stumbled over his own feet, but without his eyesight, he fell. Well, it wasn’t just that either. Without his eyesight, he couldn’t see the ground in front of him, causing his feet to trip over something, sending the rest of his body down with it. He had fallen, his arms filled with books, papers, and balanced delicately on top, his school lunch, all items ending up sprawled out in every direction, in the middle of the cafeteria. It had been something from a movie, something that seemed cliché, and yet it had happened. Hiccup hadn’t been with Merida or Rapunzel at the time, so neither girl could help him scramble for his papers and books. Neither girl could help him scoop his projectile food off the floor, back onto the paper plate that it had come off of.

But, it didn’t matter. It had been his final straw.

He had gone to Rapunzel, of all people.

It had been that winter that she had thrown her coat on, barely waiting for him to get his own on, before she linked her arm with his and pulled him out into the cold afternoon air. She had wrapped the scarf several times around her neck, and pulled her woolen hat far down over her ears. Her long, loose blonde hair seemed to loop and flow in every direction, making her look much more like a Greek goddess than a teenage girl but, Hiccup did not tell her that. Who knew what her reaction would be.

The frozen wasteland was as frozen and wasteland-y as ever, and yet Hiccup felt warm with his friend by his side, caring for him no matter what. They had walked for several blocks, the blonde’s brain whirring and clicking as she figured out what to say, her breath curling out from behind her scarf. Her hair had floated behind her perfectly as she had walked, an occasional strand making its way to end up within Hiccup’s mouth. (Which had been gross but, once again, Hiccup had said nothing.)

“Well, I don’t see what’s wrong with wearing glasses, Henry,” Rapunzel had stated, breaking the silence. She had never really called him Henry, especially after Hiccup had been set into place so perfectly. She had always thought his awkward nickname had suited him so much better—something that he had constantly rolled his eyes at.

“You would if you looked horrible in them,” he had grumbled in return.

Although, it would be impossible. Rapunzel had always looked good in everything.

“Why don’t you just ask your dad for another pair?” He remembered being able to feel her breath against his cheek when she looked at him. It had sent a shiver up his spine.

“He wouldn’t let me, even if I begged him. Getting the glasses was a hassle enough in itself,” he had paused, pondering his own comment, “I don’t think he likes me very much.”

She had laughed, a light, airy sound erupting from the back of her throat, throwing her head back, letting her hair float for half a second before she turned abruptly to him, eyes wide and excited.

“I don’t believe that for a second, Henry!” Rapunzel seemed to glow as she stared at him, “And, I know you want me to side with you but, I want to see the specs first. Only then will I be able to make a full analysis!”

Hiccup had sighed, giving in to her grin, before sliding his backpack off his shoulders, placing it on the crunchy, snow covered ground. He fumbled, with numb fingers, searching aimlessly until he eventually found the spectacles, allowing Rapunzel to snatch them out of his hands without a peep, and rest said spectacles upon her face.

“How do I look?” she had asked, making a dorky face that would’ve made Merida laugh but, it only managed to make Hiccup blush.

There was just something about the way she looked: giant specs nearly falling off the point of her pink, elfish nose, dark eyebrows poised high as she waited for a hopefully positive response, blonde wisps of hair drifting meaninglessly across her forehead, green eyes so vividly bright amongst the frozen wasteland. She smiled at him, and his heart skipped a beat. Something had begun to come into focus at the back of his mind, slowly, carefully appearing out of the gloom.

“You look beautiful,” Hiccup had said, the words simply slipping off his tongue without warning.

He remembered Rapunzel freezing, a brief look of shock clouding her features before she recovered, and smiled warmly at him. He had only the decency to chuckle uncomfortably in return, only guessing at how red his cheeks were.

“Thank you, Hiccup,” she had said, smiling at him for only a moment before taking his glasses off, and carefully placing the specs so they rested carefully against the bridge of his nose.

It was almost as if they had made a silent deal. He promised her that he would wear the glasses to help him see, and she promised him that she would always be there for him if he needed her. It was a bit lopsided, in hindsight but, it was just the start of many unspoken deals, unspoken promises, unspoken closeness. The start of something new in their friendship. He had wondered, looking back on the whole moment, how much he had blushed, how red his face had gotten. But, he could never quite bring himself to ask her. He could never really bring the moment up again, after he had realized what he had realized.

“You look beautiful too,” she had said, before pausing and realizing what she had said. They stared at each other, each processing her words.

If Rapunzel had been anybody else, Hiccup’s awkwardness would’ve made the whole situation ten times worse. He would’ve made sure that neither party ever spoke again for fear of further embarrassment. But, before him stood Rapunzel, whose perfect hair cascaded over her shoulders. Rapunzel who made him laugh, even when he was upset. Rapunzel who never made fun of him, not even in a joking manor like Merida did. Rapunzel who laughed in a ridiculously perfect way, which was a weird enough statement to think about.

Rapunzel, whose very essence, standing in her frumpy winter jacket, wrapped in her multicolored scarf, was bringing that thought from the back of Hiccup’s mind into clear focus.

Rapunzel, who Hiccup had unbelievably, incredibly, and wholeheartedly fallen head-over-heels for.

They had both stared at each other for another moment before bursting out into laughter, laughter that had followed them all the way back to Rapunzel’s house, where Hiccup had left her side, before he had made the lonely journey back to his own home. Laughter that hadn’t been able to block out the conclusion that he had made so abruptly within the confines of his own mind.

He was in love with her. Henry Haddock was in love with Rapunzel Corona.

You, my friend, he had groaned to himself, are so screwed.

------

One year and a few months later, Hiccup Haddock—otherwise known as Henry Haddock—was still screwed.

There were times that he didn’t think he was that screwed. Times like when Rapunzel took Merida’s side over his own in argument, even though Merida’s side was less than logical and even though it was a stupid, petty fight. Times like when Astrid would smile at him in the hallway, and Rapunzel would make a cute little “aww” sound beside him, before nudging him in the ribs. But those times, they had begun to diminish from his memory. Soon, the brunette’s mind would only be filled with his stupid, entirely unnecessary crush on one of his best friends.

And from there, it was only a matter of time before he slipped up and said something he shouldn't have.

And saying that thing that he hoped he wouldn’t say but, knew he was probably going to say anyway, was not a fun thought to linger at the back of Hiccup’s mind. He had almost slipped up a couple times, although he doubted anybody had noticed. Rapunzel was oblivious as ever. He knew how she treated people who liked her, that she didn’t like back. The distance she created was unending. He didn’t know if he would survive anything like the blonde’s distance.

It certainly didn’t help that he had to hear about Flynn Rider all the time.

Perfect Flynn Rider, who had swept Rapunzel off her perfect feet, with his perfect hair, and his perfect jokes. Sometimes, the sickly sweet words that would tumble out of Rapunzel’s mouth as she told him about her latest interaction with the senior, would make him want to bang his head against a perfectly solid wall until it perfectly bruised.

It was hard to like someone when the person themselves didn’t know.

Especially if one knew that the person they were up against was as majestic as Flynn Rider.

Just knowing he was up against Flynn Rider had taken his chances from zero, down to the negatives. It was great, and Hiccup had spent the last few days wondering why on earth he hadn’t said something sooner, stepped in before Flynn Rider appeared out of thin air.

He wondered if Rapunzel thought her liking Flynn was good for Hiccup. Perhaps, she thought she could convince Astrid Hofferson—childhood friend and ex-crush extraordinaire—and him to go on double dates with herself and Rider. Perhaps, they would spend so much excess time together that Astrid would fall for Hiccup and they would all live happily ever after.

But, knowing Astrid and knowing himself, that was never going to happen.

“Well, it could still happen, technically,” said the little voice in the back of his head that sounded an awful lot like Astrid, “Of course, that would be when hell freezes over, when pigs fly, when men start raining from the sky…”

In short? Never going to happen.

Henry glanced over and looked at his friend. Rapunzel was lying on his bed, her blonde hair flowing out around her peachy face in a blonde halo, her bottom lip clenched between her teeth in concentration. There was a book in her hands, held up over her head. It seemed to shuffle in her grip every few minutes, and he kept holding his breath, waiting for the book to fall and land on her face but, it hadn’t done so yet. Her warm, green eyes scanned over the text like her life depended on it—although it was more likely her grades—but, she looked content. Happy and probably overheating (even with the AC on) and at home. She didn’t look too different from when they had been walking together on that cold winter’s day when he had realized. Well, there was the fact that she was wearing less layers of clothing but, besides that there wasn’t that much of a difference. She hadn’t really changed.

He, on the other hand had changed, evolving like a Pokémon—as Merida so eloquently put it—from a pudgy face little boy with oversized glasses, decked out in freckles and messy brown hair, to a young man with a sharp jawline and a dusting of five o’clock shadow, as well as a considerably deeper voice, and thick frames that just vaguely gave him an intellectual look. He still had the nickname Hiccup but, with his taller frame, and his generally less awkward manor or existence, he had made the name Hiccup seem cool. The brunette had by far surpassed Merida and Rapunzel in height, although he hadn’t quite reached Jack’s football player height status but, he was fine with it. (If he had had to hear Merida make one more comment about his tiny stature, he was sure he was going to tackle her, and not in a fun way.)

But, none of that changed the fact that he liked Rapunzel. None of that changed the way she felt about him. None of that changed the way their relationship functioned.

It didn’t matter if they were eating lunch together, or getting coffee in procrastination of doing their shared AP classes, or even just lying side by side on Hiccup’s bed watching a television show that neither of them would remember anything about in ten years. She was still strange, and quirky, and blonde. And he was still awkward, and sarcastic, and severely nearsighted.

“Punzie,” he said. It took a second but, she moved her index finger up to the line where she had stopped reading and glanced over at him. “I’m going to get something to eat from downstairs, do you want anything?”

She paused, still biting down on her lip in thought. “Maybe just a glass of water? Preferably with ice cubes in it?”

He grinned at her, and she grinned back.

It was all so normal.

Sometimes Hiccup wasn’t sure he even wanted it to change. That was the main reason he hadn’t said anything for such an extended period of time. He didn’t know if he could survive a world where Rapunzel wasn’t a part of it. Well, okay, sure he could technically survive a world without Rapunzel. She wasn’t like oxygen, water, food, or shelter. She was just a girl. A very pretty, very intelligent, very perfect girl. His body could survive without her but, he wasn’t sure his heart could.

It was all so stupid and it had all gotten out of hand so quickly.

Crushes were stupid, and he should know. He was the king of unrequited love, after all those years spent pining after Astrid.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

“I’ll be here,” she said.

The Haddock house wasn’t exactly modern but, it had that homely feeling that came with hard wood floors, and lumpy furniture. There was an almost maroon colored carpet right outside Hiccup’s bedroom that ran the length of the upstairs hallway (Hiccup had always felt like the carpet was like having worms under his feet) which was nice to walk along in the wintertime, but in the summer time it was like wearing sweaty, stringy, wool socks. He meandered through the hallway, eventually reaching the landing, before padding quietly downstairs. Who knew if his father had gone to bed already, or if he was just waiting in the shadows to give his son, who had a pretty girl in his bedroom, The Talk.

He slipped into the living room without a sound. There were large, floor to ceiling windows that faced the somewhat groomed backyard, and the darkening sky along with it. There were so many memories that lived within the space of that backyard. Memories of Henry’s mother, who was long gone, happy memories that Hiccup was constantly forced to face every moment he spent in his own home. Sure, the memories were faded but, they were still present, still sitting there like a heavy weight on his ribcage.

Sure, the furniture was lumpy and new and comfortable but, the room would always be the same. All the rooms would always be the same. Same, and missing something terribly important. Something that could never be gotten back in a thousand years. Hiccup didn’t like to think about how is dad slept in the same bed after she had left.

But, nonetheless, he made his way into the kitchen, his feet squeaking on the ceramic tiles, and rummaged around until he found something worth eating. The kitchen was a spacious room, courtesy of Mrs Haddock and her love for dancing while she cooked and vice versa. It had a large, granite island, and matching granite counters around the edges of the room. The fridge stood to the side, tall and illuminated by one of the many lights in the kitchen. Hiccup strode towards it, determination on his face. It had to be something cold, and preferably sweet but, he wasn’t one to judge. He opened the fridge and stared into the abyss of cold, white shelving. He could make lemonade, he had enough lemons for it but, it would take too long.

“It would also not be cold enough,” said the little voice in his head that sounded an awful lot like Astrid. “Also, you should stop talking to yourself in my voice. It’s weird.”

The little voice in his head that sounded like Astrid was right. It was weird to talk to himself (too much).

He shut the refrigerator, and opened the freezer, pausing for a moment as the frozen air hit his overheating skin. There was nothing quite like cool air when everything was hot. How he and Rapunzel were going to survive their testing in the heat—some of their classroom’s air conditioning had died after the afternoon—was a question he seriously did not want to think about in the slightest. He would’ve shivered, but it was too hot for that.

And then he spotted the ultimate studying snack.

Popsicles.

He grinned and grabbed the warped cardboard box from within the confines of freezer. He placed the box against his slightly sweaty forehead, as he shut the freezer door. And, of course, it was then that he spotted his father.

Stoick Haddock was lying on the grass in the backyard. It was a miracle that Hiccup hadn’t spotted his father earlier. The man was so abrupt against the grass, and general greenery, that he looked like a small hill. He had his eyes closed, from what Hiccup could tell, letting his bushy beard fall off into the grass around him. The man was dressed in a rather lazy pair of pajama pants, and a wife-beater, exposing his muscular—and probably sweaty—arms.

Hiccup could only imagine what his father was thinking about. The chances were, it had something to do with Hiccup’s mother. She had, after all, left around the summer time, and it wasn’t uncommon to find his father curled up with a photograph of her, drenched in sweat, trying to revive a future that would never truly come.

Part of him wanted to approach his father, lie down beside the man and sew their relationship back together. Part of him wanted to give his father a hug, and promise that everything would be okay in the end, that everything would turn out just fine. Part of him wanted the father he remembered having in his childhood, a father as tall as a skyscraper, a father who could do no wrong, a father who would protect him at any cost.

But, it was impossible to get that father back, his family back. So, in Hiccup’s mind, it was useless trying.

His father may have been his family by blood but, the girl upstairs reading on his bed, she was his real family. She cared about him, more than he felt his own father did.

Hiccup sighed.

He took a single popsicle out of the box, and placed it in the fridge, where he was sure his father would see it. A sort of peace offering, in his father’s trying time. It was more than what the man would ever do in return. After all, he had been right, on that fateful snowy day with Rapunzel, his father truly didn’t like him very much.

With that, he meandered back upstairs, holding the now-room-temperature box of popsicles, his heart feeling heavier than it had when he had descended them.

------

Merida had decided that what she was doing was a bad idea.

Now, if Rapunzel had been there, Rapunzel wouldn’t have let the ginger get anywhere near the Frost house in the late evening. No, the blonde would’ve been the voice of reason, and she would’ve accusatively pointed her finger in Merida’s direction until the girl herself gave up for the night. She would’ve sighed, and placed her dainty, manicured nails against the bridge of her nose, wondering what on earth Merida had thought she was doing, hoping that the girl would never attempt anything like it ever again.

If Hiccup had been present, he would’ve laughed at Merida, and called her crazy. He would’ve sarcastically noted that the likelihood that she was to fall, and ultimately injure herself, was incredibly high. And then, he would’ve noted that Jack Frost would most likely be the first on the scene, and he would never, ever, ever let her live it down. Ever. She would have to graduate knowing that the story of how she fell three stories, and Jack Frost—football hero extraordinaire—had to run all the way to the hospital, carrying her in his arms, would live on at their high school until the world ended. She would be known as the princess in distress, and somehow, even her college professors would end up knowing the full story. And, Merida would’ve sighed, and eventually gone to bed, a little irritated, but considerably safer in the long run.

Unfortunately, both Rapunzel and Hiccup were not present when Merida came up with her brilliant plan.

Neither were Astrid Hofferson and Flynn Rider, for that matter. The duo had dined and dashed, leaving Merida alone with her thoughts for the evening.

Nobody was present when she rode her bike across town, and ditched it in the bushes in front of one of Frost’s neighboring houses. There was no voice of reason when she sprinted across the front lawn, and hid in the shadows, leaving Merida-sized footprints in the muddy garden that had gone unnoticed during her first visit. Neither the blonde nor the brunette had been there to whisper for Merida to stop, as she began to climb the side of the building. Up the wooden criss-crossed skeleton for the vines that lined the side of the building, up the grimy paneling with sore fingernails, up the shadowy, hidden, peeling paint that always gave her a heart attack when she peeled a section off.

Now, however, half way up the said Frost residence, clinging delicately to one of the balconies, feeling her fingertips starting to slip, Merida was starting to think her decision to climb the side of the building was a terrible one.

It wasn’t that she didn’t have a lot of upper body strength. No, Merida DunBroch was made of upper body strength (and she didn’t trust anybody who told her otherwise). It was the fact that the house was covered in a combination of sharp corners, or ninety-degree angles, and nothing else in-between. And although she would never admit it to anyone, it was very difficult to climb the side of a building in near darkness, when it was made of sharp corners and complete ninety degree angles.

Her fingertips hurt, and she had knocked her shin into more than she had ever thought possible, and it was only now, hanging preciously off the edge of Jack Frost’s almost victorian house, every muscle in her shoulders exhausted beyond belief, every free strand of her fiery hair glued to her forehead, that she realized what she was doing was a poor decision.

Why?

It was simple.

She didn’t know where Jack Frost’s bedroom was.

Sure, riding over with such intense tunnel vision, she didn’t see what was missing, the specific image of finding Jack Frost, pointing an accusatory finger against his chest, and questioning him until her voice got horse had been overwhelmingly exciting, it had been what she had been looking forward to do all day but, in hindsight? It was one of the many poor choices she had made in the last few days. And she had made many poor choices in the past few days.

Unfortunately, she had come too far to turn back now. It was as if Jack Frost himself was laughing at her, and she couldn’t give him the satisfaction of coming this far and not succeeding. The DunBroch family were winners, dammit! She was going to jab her index finger at his chest until her muscles stopped aching, even if it killed her!

Although, she was really hoping it wasn’t going to come to that.

Where she was frozen in place was an okay spot to be frozen in place. Sure, it wasn’t the most comfortable place to be in the world, her feet positioned between two exterior windowsill ledges, quite a long distance apart (dangerously close to the two planters that had been sitting carefully on the edge of the windowsills), her fingertips just barely pressing against the cool roof tiling. But, for the moment, she was safe, and that was saying a lot.

But, what really made it okay, was that she could hear some of the conversation that was being mumbled through the window to her right.

Now, if anything, Merida DunBroch was no snoop. She wasn’t one to go out of her way to figure out the truth if it didn’t matter in her own mind. But, when it did? There was nothing that could get in her way. Not her mother, not her father, not even her own grades could get in the way. If something got under her skin, it would stay there until—through tooth and nail—she dug it out. And, if an opportunity arose that allowed her to snoop on people who had knowledge of her person interest (Jack Frost, if it wasn’t clear from all the snooping she had been doing earlier in the day), she was going to take it.

“…and I knew this would happen! I just knew it!” started a voice, shrill and clearly irritated. “He can’t ever take a moment to realize what it means to anybody but himself! He’s so selfish and irresponsible and I could not stay there for another second!”

“I know,” responded a second, gruffer, deeper voice.

“We’re all supposed to be a part of this family together, he can’t just decide to join it and leave it whenever he sees fit!”

“Tati, I know,” the second voice was oddly calm against the first one’s irritation. Merida wasn’t sure but, she could’ve sworn there was a slight accent hidden in the gruff man’s voice. “But, Nicholas has been suffering just as much as we have, you can’t blame him for everything, for how he’s acting.”

“Yes I can! And I will! He’s a grown man and he must act like it! I’m not giving him a free ticket just because he’s going through something, Aster. We’re all going through something!”

“Please, could you just calm down?”

“Calm down? I’m completely calm! If anyone should be calming down, it’s Nicholas! He started all of this, and I’m completely calm!”

“Tatiana, please…”

The woman—the shrill Tatiana—Merida recognized as the woman who had answered the Frost household door earlier. She had seemed so kind, dimples appearing in her cheeks when she spoke. Obviously, she had been too young to be Jack’s mother, the woman herself seemed barely older than Flynn to begin with but, to hear this side of her? It almost made Merida regret listening in to their conversation.

Almost.

Jack Frost wasn’t about to get the better of her yet.

Something within the room creaked, and someone let out a long sigh.

“We’re all he has now, Aster. I’m not about to let that fall apart because Nicholas thinks he’s risen above comforting people he clearly cares about.”

“I get that but, shouting at him in the middle of dinner?” the gruff man, Aster, sighed. “Did you see the look on Baby’s face? She looked like she was going to cry. If you should be looking out for anyone, it should be her. She’s your flesh and blood, more than the rest of us are, anyway.”

“Overland’s just as much my flesh and blood as you are, as Baby is. I’m not about to sit idly by and watch him suffer.” Tatiana made a strange noise, one that Merida assumed was a choked back sob (she’d heard Rapunzel make a handful of those through the years). “I don’t mean to put him in priority to Baby. They’re equally as important in my eyes. But, he needs more help right now, and Nicholas is perfect for that. I just, I don’t know. We’re supposed to be a family, we should at least try and support each other.”

“I’m sure Nicholas knows that,” mumbled Aster.

“He’s certainly not acting like it.”

“Well, he’s just as lost as the kid is. After what happened with Sandy, it’s a miracle that the man hasn’t reached Jack’s state yet. He’s pretty damn close, if you ask me.”

Tatiana sniffled and let out a quaint little half-hearted laugh.

“I don’t know what we would do if they were both like that.”

“We wouldn’t be able to pay for this palace of a house, that’s for sure.”

Tatiana let out a heartier laugh, something more along the lines of a giggle. But, then she paused, and a long silence ensued, filled occasionally with soft sniffles.

“I don’t know what I would do without you,” she said.

Her comment seemed to catch the Aster guy off guard.

He paused for a moment, as if thinking over the right words to say in the right order. Part of Merida wondered what he looked like, with such a strange manor of speaking. Tatiana was strange enough as it was, with her dyed green patch of hair, and her glowing smile. Jack was second in line to the weirdness, with his pristinely white hair. Perhaps Aster was tall and spindly, and he looked like he could be confused with a human spider. Perhaps he was tiny and terrifying, with a voice that didn’t match his body. Perhaps he was Jack’s genetically related brother, just taller and older but, equally as white haired.

It was weird to think about anybody else with the same striking features that Jack Frost had.

“You won’t ever have to imagine a world without me, Tati,” Aster said. “I’m going to be here forever.”

“You’d better be,” responded Tatiana, “or I’ll find you, or bring you back to life, and then I’ll kick your ass.”

There was a pause, and both Tatiana and Aster laughed. Her shrill, staccato pop of a laugh contrasting his low mumble perfectly. I guess opposites really do attract, thought Merida.

And then Merida pushed the planter by her right foot, clean off the windowsill, letting it land in the unkempt grass in a crash.

Every muscle in the redhead’s body froze, keeping her glued in the strange position she had spent the last few minutes listening to Aster and Tatiana’s conversation in. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears, like rain against a tin roof, fast and overly excited. Her heart skipped a beat or two in her chest. Clenching her tongue between her teeth, she waited, baiting her breath.

The laughter stopped.

“What was that?” said Tatiana, her voice verging on frightened.

“Hold on,” said Aster, and then Merida heard movement.

Merida only had a second to figure out what to do. It was a fight or flight situation. She quickly reviewed her options. There was no way that the redhead wanted to fight anybody in her predicament. Her inner Rapunzels and Hiccups gave her just enough sense not to immediately go to fighting when slipping off the side of a building was at an all-time-high. That would just lead to some sort of conversation with either the residents of the house, or the police and there was no explanation that she could come up with that didn’t make her seem like a stalker.

Flight was her only choice.

And the only place left to go was up.

With what little body strength she had left, she heaved herself upwards. Pulling herself further and further across the wooden tiles, her fingers leading the way, since her eyes had been rendered useless by the nighttime. She couldn’t tell what was going to appear next in front of her, all she knew was she had to get out of there. It didn’t matter if she got splinters in her hands. She wasn’t going to get caught.

She made her way up to the highest window on the side of the building. She braced herself with shadowy footing, as she looked down to witness two heads peeking out of the windows below, looking around.

“Oh, it was a flower pot!” Tatiana sighed. “It’s just that sort of night, isn’t it.”

“Unfortunately, it seems that way.”

“Baby’s going to be crushed, Aster.”

“I’ll take her to the movies this weekend to make up for it, okay?” He paused, thinking, “I can take you, too, if you want. We can see that sci-fi film she’s been talking non-stop about.”

“You know it’s R-Rated, right?”

“She could pass as an eighteen year-old, right?”

Merida heard Tatiana laugh, before both heads disappeared back inside the house, and their conversation was officially out of earshot. And then, the redhead was capable of letting that breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding out of her lungs.

She sat incredibly still, legs propped up against a shadowy pillar, her back pressed up against another shadowy pillar, catching her breath. There was a slight pain in her legs and arms for being forced to act so quickly in such a short period of time, but she took a moment to look at her limited surroundings.

The Frost house was one of the tallest on the block. Three stories of wooden paneling and stained-glass windows. Perhaps she would’ve had a better view if the moon wasn’t up in the middle of the sky, and the ground wasn’t covered in a blanket of shadow. She could see the stars from her position on the side of the building. Tiny dots of yellow light, a million light-years away. (Hiccup would’ve made a comment about how depressing that the stars that they could see were most likely dead but, Hiccup wasn’t there.)

Merida sighed, her heart-rate finally decreasing back to normal. She moved her arm slightly, and it bumped into glass. Another window. Her heart skipped a beat and she froze, looking through the glass.

It was dark inside, not a single light turned on. Merida would’ve thought it was the attic but, there was just enough light coming from outside, that she could see a couple of notebooks and dusty textbooks scattered over what she thought was a desk. There were curtains that looked blue in the darkness, but in all actuality could’ve been an entirely different color but, she couldn’t tell in the moonlight.

Whoever’s room it was, it didn’t look like they were there.

Perhaps, everything she had done, climbing up the side of the shadowy building, was in vain. She didn’t know where Jack Frost’s room was in the house, let alone what she would even do if she confronted him. Her anger had blinded her, as it usually did. She sighed, and looked in the window again. One last look before she started her trip downwards.

Which was, of course, when she spotted it.

She didn’t know how she hadn’t recognized it earlier.

In the slice of light that lit up the section of the desk, there was also a sock covered foot. It was nearly hidden in the darkness, completely unmoving. But, Merida recognized the sock.

A few years ago, she had gotten into a heated argument with one of the many boys on the football team. Her school had cut some of the art programs in order to further their football team’s pay. It would’ve bothered her anyway but, what had pushed her over the edge was that Rapunzel had called her in tears the night before. As an artist, the arts were so important to her, and there was nothing she could do. Oh, and they were using all that money for merchandise, and not any merchandise: a pair of socks for each team member with the logo of the school on it.

The arts apparently equalled a pair of sweaty, football socks.

Merida was, in short, pissed.

So, Merida had decided to act. She had gone to the captain of the football team, in the middle of the cafeteria, and she had started arguing with him. She was barely a sophomore, absolutely pint-sized in comparison to the senior captain’s towering frame. He hadn’t taken her seriously at first, but when people started listening to what she had to say, she gained people who otherwise wouldn’t have stood up against the football players.

Of course, getting so fired up with rage in support of Rapunzel and her arts program, she had punched the captain square in the face.

And then they had all been sent to the principal’s office.

She was suspended for a week, and the arts at least got some of its funding back. Rapunzel had been thrilled. Hiccup had told her she should’ve done it another way. But, to Merida, it didn’t matter. She had succeeded, at least somewhat, even if the football team looked like they wanted to beat her up at their every waking moment. She had broken two bones in her hand but, it had been worth it.

So, to think that anybody but a football player would be wearing those socks was an understatement.

It was Jack Frost.

Without hesitation, she slammed a closed fist against the window. That tunnel vision of anger that she had been calming down from was back, and she was ready to flat-out fight Jack Frost like she had fought the football captain years back. She slammed her fist again, making the pane rattle.

The foot stayed motionless.

She grit her teeth and slammed her fist once more. There was no way he couldn’t hear what she was doing. Maybe he was just ignoring her, so she knocked several times more, until the foot began to move.

It slipped into the darkness, and after a few more seconds of incessant banging, the window opened. The curtains swooshed backwards, and the window bounced against the walls that were covered in shadows, and Jack Frost stood in the center of it all, looking as though he didn’t recognize her.

His eyes were glazed over, his usually upbeat, blue irises seemed almost grey. His hair was standing up in every direction, his pale skin looking even more pale than before. He was wearing the same outfit he had been wearing several days previous during their last meeting, but the clothing was wrinkled and unwashed. Had he really been wearing that same outfit for three days?

“Jack?” said Merida, her anger fading just a tick.

It took a moment but, some realization flooded Jack’s features. Something deep in his throat cracked, and he let out something that seemed just vaguely like a sob.

“Emma,” he said, his eyes practically filling with tears, “oh god, I thought I’d lost you forever.”

What, thought Merida, have I gotten myself into?