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elladreams · 9 months ago

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The Perfect Setup (Zandvoort) // LN4

summary: Zandvoort '24. A young engineering prodigy, recruited by McLaren to solve complex F1 challenges, grapples with media scrutiny and an undeniable chemistry with driver Lando Norris. As tensions rise during a crucial race, they must balance professional duty with their growing personal connection.

warnings: she/her reader, smut (18+), unprotected (shower 😳) sex, size kink.

words: 6.9K

The roar of engines filled the air, a symphony of power and precision that reverberated through the paddock. The smell of burning rubber and gasoline mixed with the salty breeze from the nearby coast, creating an intoxicating atmosphere that signaled another race was about to begin. The McLaren garage was a hive of activity—mechanics making last-minute adjustments, engineers poring over data, and drivers mentally preparing for the challenge ahead. Amidst the controlled chaos, you stood, a pillar of calm in a world of speed.

You have always stood out, a prodigy in a field where experience often outweighed talent. But here you were, at the heart of one of the most prestigious teams in Formula 1, your hands and mind guiding the finely-tuned machinery that could make or break a race. At just twenty-two, you were already a respected figure in the paddock, known for your brilliance in engineering and your unyielding dedication to the sport.

Your family had sacrificed so much to help you reach your potential. You were always miles ahead of the other kids. While they were playing with dolls or video games, you were more interested in how those things worked. At six years old, you were already taking apart remote control cars, not to play with them, but to understand the intricate systems that made them move. By the time you were ten, you were building small engines from scratch, fascinated by the power and precision of mechanical systems.

Your parents quickly realized they had a prodigy on their hands. They encouraged your curiosity, enrolling you in expensive science and engineering programs meant for kids much older than you. You thrived in these environments, always eager to learn more, to push the boundaries of what you could create. By the time you were a teenager, you had already won several national engineering competitions, earning a reputation as a young genius in the world of mechanics.

When you first discovered Formula 1, everything changed. The speed, the technology, the sheer complexity of the cars—it captivated you like nothing else. You devoured everything you could find about F1 engineering, learning about aerodynamics, power units, and the delicate balance between speed and control. While other teenage girls were dreaming of prom dresses and much older boyfriends , you were dreaming of being in the garage, fine-tuning the machines that drove the world of motorsport.

Your parents knew that pursuing a career in F1 was a long shot, especially for a young woman, but they supported you every step of the way. They worked multiple jobs and sacrificed their own dreams so that you could chase yours.

Thankfully, your talent didn’t go unnoticed. By the time you were 16, you had caught the attention of several top engineers in the F1 world, earning an internship with Mercedes. You quickly made a name for yourself as a technical genius, capable of understanding and improving complex systems that seasoned engineers struggled with. The paddock buzzed with stories of the young girl who was instrumental in Mercedes' dominance.

With your newfound fame came an onslaught of media attention. Reporters from major news outlets were relentless, hounding you for interviews and prying into every aspect of your life. They asked invasive questions about your personal relationships, sought your opinions on the sport's latest controversies, and even pressed you to address misogynistic rumors linking you romantically with certain drivers. The spotlight, once a place of professional pride, had become a battlefield where your every word was scrutinized, and your achievements were often overshadowed by baseless gossip.

Zak Brown fought tooth and nail to bring you to McLaren, recognizing that you were the missing piece they needed to conquer the new regulations. When it became clear that the team was struggling to master the latest specifications, he knew they needed someone with your unique blend of technical expertise and innovative thinking. Zak saw in you a mind that could bridge the gap between theory and practice, someone who could not only understand the intricacies of the new rules but also translate them into real-world performance on the track.

But today, on the day of Max Verstappen's home race, there was an unmistakable charge in the air—tensions were higher, the stakes more personal. It wasn’t just another race; it was a proving ground, not only for the car but for you, the team, and especially for the driver who had become both your greatest challenge and your fiercest ally: Lando Norris.

Lando, the young, fiercely talented star of McLaren, had a natural charm that made him a media darling, but it was his relentless drive to win that truly defined him. From the moment you joined the team, your relationship with Lando had been anything but smooth. Your strong wills collided over every detail, every decision. He saw you as a nuisance, someone who constantly questioned his instincts and pushed him beyond his comfort zone. To you, Lando was stubborn, even arrogant at times—a driver who needed to understand that perfection on the track wasn't just about raw talent but about achieving the perfect synergy between man and machine. And today, that’s exactly what you were trying to achieve.

Standing in the garage, you reviewed the data on your tablet for what felt like the hundredth time. You had pulled an all-nighter, fine-tuning an experimental setup that you believed could give Lando the edge he needed on this notoriously challenging circuit. But convincing him to trust your untested approach was another matter.

Lando stormed into the garage, the top part of his race suit hanging low on his hips revealing his fire proofs, his expression a mix of frustration and determination. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, glancing at the setup specs displayed on the screen. “This is what you’ve been working on all night?”

“Yes,” you replied, meeting his gaze without flinching. “This setup could give you the downforce you need through the corners without sacrificing speed on the straights. I’ve run the simulations a dozen times—it works.”

“Simulations?” Lando scoffed, running a hand through his curls in agitation. “Simulations aren’t the same as the real thing. We can’t afford to take risks like this, not here, not today.”

“This isn’t a risk, Lando,” you shot back, your voice steady despite the tension. “This is a calculated decision based on hard data. I wouldn’t be recommending it if I didn’t believe it would make a difference.”

He crossed his arms, his jaw set in that stubborn way you’d come to recognize all too well. “You’re asking me to trust a setup we’ve never used in a race, in front of Max’s home crowd, no less. What if it doesn’t work? What if it costs me the race?”

“And what if it wins you the race?” you countered, stepping closer to him. “You know as well as I do that playing it safe isn’t going to cut it against Verstappen on his home turf. We need every advantage we can get, and this setup is that advantage.”

Lando stared at you, his eyes searching yours for any sign of doubt. But you didn’t waver. You believed in this setup, and more importantly, you believed in him.

Finally, he relented, nodding slowly. "Fine. But if this doesn’t work, I swear I will never let you live it down."

“It will” you interrupted, a small tired smile tugging at the corner of your lips. “I’ll be right there with you, making sure it does.”

A ghost of a smirk played on his face, his eyes betraying the glimmer of a sparkle. For a moment, the garage was silent, the two of you standing closer than you realized, caught in the intensity of the moment. The intoxicating blend of his dark, amber-scented perfume mingled with the unmistakable and familiar scent of the paddock, created a heady aroma that threatened to cloud your senses entirely.

Your breath hitched as his gaze dropped to your lips, lingering there for a fraction of a second before flicking back up to your eyes. You could feel your cheeks burning as his gaze caressed you.

Lando cleared his throat, breaking the spell and stepping back.

"Well, let's get this done." he said, his usual light tone returning as he ran a hand through his hair again. "Wouldn't want to keep the adoring crowd waiting." He winked.

You rolled your eyes and smiled, thankful for the change in energy.

You both turned back to the screen to finalize the setup adjustments. As you worked side by side, the air between you felt different—not just charged with the usual tension, but with a deeper, more intimate connection. It was almost as if a switch had been flipped, and you had moved from being teammates to something more.

The race was minutes away, but for the first time, you felt like you were truly part of a team—Lando’s team. And that, more than anything, was what mattered. The moments before the race were a blur of final checks and hurried conversations. You stood by Lando’s car, your heart pounding with adrenaline, not just from the intensity of the race but from something deeper—something you were trying desperately not to acknowledge. As the sun dipped lower in the sky, casting a golden hue over the Zandvoort Circuit, you caught Lando’s eye. He was already in his race suit, helmet in hand, but there was a softness in his gaze, a silent acknowledgment of the connection you’d both been dancing around for months.

The starting grid was tense with anticipation. Lando had secured pole position in a spectacular qualifying session, and the team was buzzing with excitement. But everyone knew this race wouldn’t be easy—not with Verstappen starting right behind him, eager to impress his home crowd.

The lights went out, and the roar of the engines filled the air as the cars launched off the line. Lando got a good start, but so did Verstappen. As they barreled into the first corner, Verstappen made a daring move, diving down the inside and taking the lead. The crowd erupted in cheers, the sea of orange on its feet as their hometown hero took charge.

“Hold steady,” you whispered under your breath, your eyes glued to the screen. Lando had lost the lead, but the race was far from over.

The next few laps were a blur of precision and strategy. Lando stayed close to Verstappen, not letting him get away, but it was clear that the McLaren’s setup was allowing him to conserve his tires while maintaining pace. The tension was palpable, every corner, every straight a testament to the fine-tuning you and the team had worked so hard to perfect.

As the race approached its midpoint, an opportunity presented itself. Verstappen, pushing hard to maintain his lead, began to show signs of tire degradation. You watched the data closely, your fingers gripping the edge of the console.

“This is it, Lando,” you said over the radio, your voice steady but laced with anticipation. “His tires are gone. You’ve got this.”

Lando didn’t respond, but you knew he’d heard you. His driving became more aggressive, more precise, as he closed the gap to Verstappen. And then, on lap 47, the moment you’d been waiting for arrived. Lando set himself up perfectly coming out of Turn 9, using the slipstream to his advantage. As they approached the hairpin, he made his move, diving down the inside with the confidence of a driver who knew his car—and his own abilities—were more than a match for the challenge.

He retook the lead, and this time, he wasn’t about to let it go.

“Nicely done, Lando!” you cheered into the radio, unable to keep the excitement out of your voice. The entire team erupted in applause, but your focus remained on the car, on the driver who had just reminded everyone why he was one of the best.

The final laps were a masterclass in control. Lando maintained his lead, keeping Max at bay and managing his tires to perfection, while also building a substantial gap. As he crossed the finish line, taking the checkered flag, the McLaren garage exploded in celebration.

“You did it, Lando! You won!” The words burst out of you, the relief and joy evident in every syllable.

Lando’s voice crackled over the radio, filled with the same emotion. “We did it. The car came alive.” A flush of pride warmed your cheeks. This was your win, too—your idea, your hard work, your dedication to perfection.

As Lando pulled into the pit lane, the world seemed to slow down. He stepped out of the car, removing his helmet to reveal a smile that lit up his entire face. You had joined the team to celebrate alongside Lando. Before you knew it, he was walking toward you, his eyes locked onto yours. The team was cheering, clapping him on the back, but Lando didn’t stop until he was right in front of you. He reached out, taking your hand in his, the contact sending a jolt through you.

“Thank you.” He said simply, the words full of meaning.

Your smile widened as you squeezed his hand, the rush of adrenaline and pride filling you with a new kind of certainty. In this moment, the only thing that mattered was him, and you. You squeezed his hand, your heart racing not from the adrenaline of the race, but from the intensity of the moment between you. “Thank you for trusting me, Lando.”

There was a brief silence, the noise of the celebration fading into the background as the world narrowed to just the two of you. Then, with a quick glance around as if to check that no one was watching too closely, Lando leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to your cheek, his breath warm against your skin.

“Couldn’t have done it without you,” he repeated, a whisper that sent your heart into overdrive.

You smiled, feeling the warmth spread through you. “And we’ll do it again.”

The race had been a victory, but this moment—standing with Lando, the connection between you undeniable—felt like something even more precious. It was the start of something new, something that went beyond the garage and the racetrack.

—-

The podium celebration had been nothing short of electrifying. The roar of the crowd, the spray of champagne, and the sight of Lando beaming as he hoisted the trophy high above his head was a moment you knew you would never forget. As the McLaren team gathered to celebrate, you found yourself on the podium alongside Lando, representing the team that had worked tirelessly to secure this victory. It was a whirlwind of emotions—pride and undeniable joy.

But as you made your way back to the garage drenched in Ferrari champagne, the adrenaline of the win still pulsing through your veins, you rounded a corner and nearly collided with Chiara, McLaren’s senior PR manager. Her usually composed expression was tense, and you could tell immediately that she had something on her mind.

“Great job out there,” Chiara started, her voice measured but tinged with concern. “The team couldn’t be happier, but we need to talk.” Your stomach sank as a sense of foreboding crept over you. Chiara had been your main point of contact for media communication since joining the team, and you knew that if she was this worried, it must be something serious. You felt a knot form in your stomach. The way she was looking at you told you that this wasn’t just about the race. “What’s on your mind, Chiara?”

She glanced around, making sure no one else was within earshot, then pulled you aside into a quieter corner of the garage. “Look, I don’t want to rain on your parade, but we need to be careful about how things appear. The media and fans are already buzzing about you and Lando, especially after that little moment after the finish.”

Your mind flashed back to the celebration, to the kiss on the cheek Lando had given you, the way his hand had lingered on yours just a bit longer than necessary. It had felt private, special, but of course, nothing was truly private in the world of Formula 1, especially not when the cameras were always rolling.

“You know how it is,” Chiara continued, her tone softening slightly. “Fans are passionate, and the media loves a good story. They’ll spin anything to make headlines. I’m not saying you can’t have…whatever it is you have with Lando, but we need to manage the optics. The last thing we want is for this to distract from the team’s success.”

You nodded, understanding her concerns. The last thing you wanted was to give the press ammunition to turn your hard-earned victory into tabloid fodder. But the idea of keeping your newfound feelings for Lando hidden, of pretending there was nothing between you, felt like a bitter pill to swallow.

“I get it, Chiara,” you said finally, meeting her gaze with determination. “I’m not going to let them turn this into a scandal. Lando and I…we’re professionals first. We’ll handle this.”

Chiara smiled, relieved by your response. “I know you will. Just keep in mind that perception is everything in this sport. And right now, you both have the world’s attention.”

With that, Chiara gave your arm a reassuring squeeze before heading off to her next order of business. You stood there, rooted to the spot for a moment, letting her words sink in. The exhilaration of the victory still buzzed through you, but it was now tinged with the sobering reality of the situation. The weight of her advice pressed down on your shoulders, reminding you that nothing in this world came without its complications.

You sighed, running a hand through your hair, dislodging tiny droplets of champagne that sprayed out like glittering confetti. The sticky remnants of the podium celebration clung to you, a tangible reminder of the night’s highs. What you needed now was a serious shower—something to wash away not just the champagne, but the lingering tension from your conversation with Chiara.

As you made your way toward the team’s private quarters, the hum of activity in the paddock slowly faded, leaving you alone with your thoughts. Chiara’s words echoed in your mind, a reminder of the reality you both lived in—a world where every glance, every gesture, could be dissected and spun into a narrative you had little control over. The media would indeed be relentless, and the fans, always watching, would be insatiable in their curiosity. But how could you distance yourself from something—or someone—that had become so central to your life, to your happiness? The chemestry you shared with Lando was undeniable, and no amount of PR maneuvering could erase what you felt for him.

As you reached the lockers, you turned on the shower, eagerly anticipating the soothing warmth of the water to ease the tension knotted in your muscles. The promise of relief was a welcome thought after the intensity of the day.

You let out a small sigh, beginning to discard your champagne-soaked clothes. The polo that had clung to your skin now felt heavy, both physically and metaphorically, as you peeled it off and tossed it into the laundry bin. The day’s victories and challenges seemed to weigh on you all at once. The exhilaration of the win, the tension with Lando, the quiet moments where everything between you felt so effortless—they all mingled in your mind, creating a cocktail of emotions that left you feeling both intoxicated and exhausted.

You stood there for a moment, stripped down to your underwear, the cool air of the locker room a welcome contrast to the heat of the day. Lost in thought, you hadn’t even noticed Lando entering until you felt his presence, a subtle shift in the air that made the tiny hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. The realization of how exposed you were hit you all at once—half-naked and vulnerable in more ways than one.

Your first instinct was to cover yourself, but something in the way Lando looked at you made you pause. His eyes, darker now with an intensity that was impossible to ignore, roamed over your body, lingering on the curves and lines revealed by your lack of clothing. The heat that flushed your cheeks had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with the way his gaze set your skin ablaze. You couldn't meet his gaze fully, not when you were absolutely sure it would burn you from the inside.

He murmured your name, his voice low, vibrating with a tension that matched the fire in his eyes. The way he said it, the way his gaze traced over you, made it feel like a caress. “Look at me.”

There was a challenge in his tone, and you met it head-on, your breath catching as your eyes locked with his. In the fluorescent lighting of the locker room, his features seemed more defined, his jawline sharper, his lips fuller.

There was no mistaking the desire that simmered just beneath the surface, a reflection of the same need that pulsed through your veins. It was as if the world had narrowed to just the two of you, the space between you crackling with a chemistry that had been building for far too long.

Lando took a step closer, his gaze never leaving yours, and with each inch he closed, the air around you seemed to thicken, heavy with anticipation. He was close enough now that you could feel the warmth radiating from his body, the scent of his skin—champagne and amber with a hint of the adrenaline that still lingered from the race—filling your senses.

The silence stretched between you, and yet, it was as if an entire conversation was taking place, unspoken but understood. Every fiber of your being was attuned to him, the tension between you palpable. "I can practically hear that big brain of yours working overtime." he said, his voice even lower now, almost a rumble. His hand reached out, fingertips brushing lightly against your arm, leaving a trail of electricity in their wake. The touch was gentle, but it was enough to make you shiver, your skin hypersensitive to every point of contact.

The last remnants of your resolve began to crumble, and you could see the same struggle playing out in Lando’s eyes. There was a flicker of hesitation, a silent question hanging in the space between you—whether to cross this line, to take what you both so clearly wanted.

But then he stepped even closer, his hand sliding up your arm to your shoulder, his fingers tracing the curve of your collarbone. The touch was light, almost reverent, but it carried the weight of everything unsaid between you. His eyes followed the path his hand made, and when he looked back up at you, there was no more hesitation, only a hunger that mirrored your own.

“You have no idea what you do to me,” he whispered, his voice rough around the edges, as though he was barely holding himself back.

You could feel the heat pooling between your legs, a familiar ache begging to be satisfied. With every brush of his fingers, you felt your resolve crumbling.

You tilted your chin up, your lips parting in invitation. The look in his eyes was pure need, a reflection of the desire coursing through you. He leaned in, his breath warm on your lips, his scent simply intoxicating now that it was mixed with the sharp fruity champagne.

It was as if time had slowed down, and all you could focus on was the heat of his body, the anticipation of his touch, the promise of everything that would come next. And then, finally, he closed the distance between you, capturing your lips in a kiss that sent a jolt of electricity through your body.

The feel of his lips on yours was electric, sending sparks racing across your skin. His mouth moved against yours, hungry and demanding, his tongue tracing the seam of your lips, seeking entrance. You opened for him, letting him deepen the kiss, savoring the taste of him. It was like nothing you had ever experienced before—the combination of the champagne, the adrenaline, and the sheer relief of finally giving in to the chemistry that had been simmering between you was enough to make your head spin.

As his hands roamed over your bare skin, igniting a trail of heat wherever they touched, you could feel your body responding, the desire building with every passing second. He kissed you like a man starved, and you met his hunger with your own, matching his pace. Your hands found his chest, feeling the rapid beat of his heart under your palms, the heat of his skin drawing you in like a magnet. He was solid and real beneath your touch, and you pressed yourself against him, the sensation of his body against yours igniting something primal and uncontrollable inside you.

Lando’s breath hitched at the contact, his hands splaying across your back, fingers digging in just enough to send a shiver down your spine. His mouth hovered just inches from yours, his breath warm against your lips, and you could feel the tension coiling tighter between you, ready to snap.

“Lando,” you whispered, your voice barely audible, more a plea than anything else.

That was all it took to break the final thread of restraint. There was no gentleness now, only the raw, urgent need that had been simmering between you for what felt like forever.

You kissed him back with equal fervour, your hands sliding up to tangle in his damp curls, pulling him even closer as his hands roamed over your back, your waist, every inch of skin he could reach. The heat of his body, the taste of him on your lips—it was overwhelming in the best possible way, drowning out every thought that wasn’t about him, about this.

Lando’s hands found the clasp of your bra, and with a practiced flick, he had it undone, the fabric slipping away as his hands moved to cup your breasts, his thumbs brushing over your nipples in a way that made you gasp against his mouth. The sound seemed to fuel him, and he deepened the kiss, his tongue sweeping into your mouth as he backed you up against the lockers, the cool metal a sharp contrast to the heat between you.

You could feel the solid press of his body against yours, his arousal evident as he pinned you to the lockers, his hands never ceasing their exploration. Reaching your panties, his fingers slid under the band, tugging them down in one smooth motion, his movements sure and confident, as if he knew exactly what he wanted. The sheer contrast of standing before him completely naked while he remained fully clothed amplified the raw vulnerability of the moment, making it feel intensely intimate and charged with a potent, almost primal, energy.

Your own hands moved lower, sliding down his clothed chest, his hard abs, until you reached the waistband of his pants. The feel of his muscles tensing under your touch sent another wave of desire through you, and you wasted no time in slipping your hand beneath the fabric, finding his impressive length and trying to wrap your fingers around him.

His forehead resting against yours as he sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes closing as the friction elicited a rush of pleasure that had him breaking the kiss to let out a curse. For a moment, he just stood there, his breath ragged, his hands tightening on your hips, as if trying to steady himself.

“You’re driving me crazy,” he muttered, his voice thick with desire, and the raw honesty of it sent a thrill through you.

“Good,” you replied, your own voice husky with need, your hand beginning to move with deliberate strokes that had him groaning, his head dropping to your shoulder as he tried to keep himself in check. He reached for his fireproofs and pulled them off, his movements almost frantic. You helped him, pushing the fabric over his hips, revealing the perfection of his physique.

You couldn't help but stare at him, taking in the lean, sculpted lines of his body, the taut muscles that flexed with each movement. You inhaled a sharp breath as your eyes finally landed on his cock, hard and swollen with desire. You were no stranger to the male anatomy as your hormones and curiosity had gotten the best of you in the past, but you were starting to become nervous about taking his impressive size inside of you.

Before your brain could spiral too far, you felt Lando's hands on you, his touch firm but gentle, his calloused fingertips sending shivers of pleasure through your body as he traced patterns along your skin, as if he was trying to memorize every inch of you. The chemistry between you had ignited into a full-blown inferno, and neither of you had any intention of putting it out.

In a fluid motion, Lando lifted you, your legs wrapping around his waist as he carried you over to the shower that had been steaming in anticipation. You giggled as the warm water hit your skin, the tension between you melting away as the shower cascaded over you both.

"I've been wanting to do this since the moment I saw you," he said, his voice low and rough, the sound of it sending a shiver of anticipation down to your core.

"Then don't make me wait any longer," you replied, a challenge and a plea, and the heat that flared in his eyes at the words was enough to make you burn for him.

He lowered his mouth to yours, the kiss slow and deep, a delicious contrast to the urgency. His hand reached between your legs, finding the wetness there and stroking with just the right amount of pressure, his thumb circling your clit and making you gasp into his mouth. He seemed to know exactly what you needed, and he used it against you, building you up slowly but surely, the pleasure coiling tighter and tighter with every expert movement of his hand.

You clung to him, your nails digging into the slick skin of his back, a desperate attempt to anchor yourself against the waves of pleasure that threatened to consume you. He entered two of his thick fingers making you whimper at the stretch. His free hand was on the side of your face, tilting it up to capture your lips with his, kissing you with a tenderness that belied the urgency of the situation. You knew he was trying his best to prepare you for his cock, but it was a lot. He was a lot.

"I don't think you're going to fit," you whispered, feeling embarrassed, but he just smiled, his fingers still working their magic.

"Oh, I will," he promised, and you felt a jolt of desire shoot through you at the certainty in his voice.

The words sent a rush of heat through you, and you felt yourself clenching around his fingers, the pleasure intensifying as he stroked your g-spot with precision. Lando swallowed your moans, the feel of his body pressed against yours, the warmth of the water surrounding you, and the expert movements of his hand bringing you closer and closer to the edge. He was relentless, his fingers working you relentlessly until the pleasure became too much, the tension snapping and sending you crashing over the edge.

The orgasm tore through you, leaving you trembling in its wake, and Lando held you close, his hands gentle now as he supported you. You were gasping for air, the feeling so intense it was almost overwhelming. He murmured your name, his voice soft and low, the sound of it making something inside you ache.

You looked up at him, meeting his gaze, the intensity of his eyes almost enough to make you forget how to breathe.

"I've got you," he murmured, his voice full of emotion, and in that moment, you believed him.

Slowly, the haze of pleasure began to clear, and you became aware of the tension coiled in his body, the way his muscles were taut with restraint, the evidence of his own desire pressed against your thigh. He was still rock-hard, and you suddenly wanted nothing more than to feel him inside you, to experience that connection on a deeper level.

"I'm ready," you breathed, your voice laced with a need that you could no longer deny.

He nodded as he turned you around, pressing your face against the cool tile, a sharp contrast to the warmth of the water. Your breath hitched as he lined up his cock with your entrance, the blunt tip already threatening to breach you. He gathered some of your moisture by rubbing his tip against your folds, sending jolts of pleasure through your body.

"I'll go slow," he whispered, as his other hand grabbed your neck, forcing you to arch your back. He took a moment to burn this very image in his mind. He had thought about this moment countless times before, but now that it was happening, it was even better than he could have imagined.

With a slow, deliberate push, he was able to get the head inside. Your eyes shut as you felt the stretch, his girth much more than you were used to. You let out a whimper as you reached for the hand currently holding your neck, seeking his support. You could hear him mutter under his breath, the words too quiet for you to make out. You assumed it was a string of curse words, but you didn't dare look.

With his hand gripping your hip, he pushed deeper, slowly but steadily, inch by inch. You could feel every vein on his perfect cock, the stretch dancing on the edge of pain and pleasure. He kept stopping, pulling back a bit and then pushing deeper again. You could tell he was doing his best to let you adjust to his size, but it was still a struggle.

Once he bottomed out, he groaned as you let out a sound that you've never heard yourself make before. A mixture between a moan and gasp. His hands traveled up your body, finding your breasts and giving them a squeeze, before settling on your shoulders. You could feel the water trickling down your back as the steam created a haze around the two of you. You were both panting, trying to catch your breath. You could feel his hot breath against your ear.

"Are you okay?" he asked, his voice rough, a mixture of desire and concern.

"Yes," you answered, not even recognizing your own voice, "I'm just a little...full."

He chuckled at that, his cock twitching inside you. He slowly started moving his hips, the drag of his cock against your walls lighting up every nerve in your body. You couldn't string two thoughts together as he started creating a torturous rhythm. One of his hands travelled down to your bundle of nerves, pinching it with every thrust.

"Fuck," you cursed, "fuck, fuck, fuck." You couldn't believe how drunk you were on him.

He chuckled as he grabbed you from the now warm tile, resting you flat against his front. The new angle allowed him to reach deeper, making you whimper and whine with every thrust. His hands reached for your jaw, tilting it so he could stare deeply into your eyes. He was watching every reaction, every change in your expression.

"Tell me what you feel." he demanded, his voice hoarse, and you forced yourself to open your eyes, meeting his gaze. The intensity of his stare was almost enough to send you over the edge again, but you clung to the last threads of your self-control, desperate to prolong this moment.

"I feel...I feel everything," you gasped, the words barely more than a whisper. “I’ve never felt like this b—"

He silenced you with a kiss, swallowing the rest of your words. It was a clash of tongues and teeth, a battle for dominance that neither of you could win. The heat between you was unbearable, the need for release consuming every thought. You knew he was close, could feel the tension coiling in his muscles, the way his thrusts were becoming more erratic, less controlled. But you weren't ready to let go, not yet.

You pulled away from the kiss, forcing him to meet your gaze. "Please don't stop," you begged, your voice rough with need, "I need you, Lando."

That was all it took. His eyes darkened, and he let out a growl, his grip on your jaw tightening as he captured your lips again, the kiss almost violent in its intensity. It was as if a switch had been flipped, the raw hunger between you reaching a new level.

He fucked into you with wild abandon, his hips snapping as he chased his release. The pleasure was blinding, the sensation of his cock filling you, stretching you, sending you spiraling toward the edge. You could feel the tension building, the pleasure coiling tighter and tighter until you could no longer hold back.

The orgasm crashed over you like a wave, stealing the air from your lungs as your body shuddered in his arms. Your eyes closed, the white light behind your eyelids pulsing in time with the waves of pleasure washing over you. You couldn't breathe, couldn't think, could only cling to him as you rode out the storm.

Lando buried his face in the crook of your neck, his lips finding the delicate skin there, sucking and nibbling. You could feel the pleasure building again, the combination of his cock inside you, his hands gripping your hips, his lips against your neck sending you hurtling toward another climax.

"I'm close," he panted, his voice rough with need, "so close, fuck."

The words sent a surge of heat through you, and you clenched around him, feeling him shudder as his own release washed over him. You grabbed as his curls, forcing him to look at you, the intensity of his gaze pushing you over the edge again, the pleasure so intense it bordered on pain.

"Fuck, I can feel you," he gasped, his cock twitching inside you as your core milked him, the sensation of his release triggering another wave of pleasure.

You both clung to each other, riding out the waves, the intensity of the moment rendering you speechless. You were both gasping for air, the aftershocks of pleasure coursing through your bodies. Lando buried his face in your neck, his lips ghosting over your skin, the sensation almost too much to bear.

You stood there for what felt like an eternity, wrapped in each other's arms, the only sound the steady beat of the water as it cascaded over you. You couldn't remember the last time you'd felt so sated, so utterly spent.

Finally, Lando pulled back, his eyes searching yours, his expression a mix of emotions—relief, contentment, and a hint of something else, something that sent a thrill through you. He brushed a strand of hair from your face, his touch gentle, almost reverent.

"That was...fuck," he said, his voice rough, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

You grinned, the joy and satisfaction evident in every line of your body. You could feel him slowly softening inside you, and you reluctantly unwrapped your legs, letting him slide out of you. You gasped feeling yourself become sore already. He chuckled as he noticed, turning off the water and wrapping you in a towel, gently drying you off before lifting you up in his arms.

"You're gonna kill me," he muttered, a spark of humor in his voice, and you laughed, the sound echoing off the tiles, the sound carefree and light.

You kissed him, slow and deep, the kiss full of promises and possibilities. This was only the beginning, and you both knew it. You pulled back, gazing at him with a mixture of awe and admiration, your heart full of the realization of what you'd found, the connection between you now undeniable.

"Get that perfect ass to media duty before they start sending out a search party," you teased, a chuckle escaping as you watched the realization of his looming responsibilities flicker across his face.

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, giving you a quick peck on the lips before setting you down, "but just know, this was the best shower I've ever taken."

You smirked, unable to hide the blush creeping across your cheeks. "I'll keep that in mind."

As he left, a sense of calm washed over you, the satisfaction of the moment lingering in the air like a sweet perfume. The memory of his touch, the weight of his body against yours, the deliciously filthy sounds he had coaxed from you, would stay with you forever, a private treasure. You sighed, reveling in the warmth and comfort that seemed to envelop you, the afterglow of your tryst still humming through your veins.

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pandolfo-malatesta · 3 months ago

Text

After rereading “I’d Build You a World” I started thinking about what other modern AU would work for a Mericcup fic of decent length. When I began plotting this several months ago it was originally intended to stay in my head, but then I liked ideas for it so much I wanted to write at least some of them down. What follows is almost 25,000 words in a mixture of background, ideas, plot points, in-universe memes, and entire scenes.

Any similarity to an archetype in fiction is unintentional.

This came about because I realized that I’ve never written about all of Merida’s family visiting Berk. I’ve written her going there, and Hiccup and Stoick going to Scotland more than once, but I haven’t taken the rest of the DunBroch family up north yet.

Therefore in this AU, pre-movies, Fergus, then a member of the military, went to Berk for a special joint training exercise. While there he met Stoick and Gobber, also soldiers. They all got on like a house on fire, and Fergus liked Berk, too, and hoped to bring his family back to visit in the near future. He returned home from training just in time for Merida’s fateful birthday. In the aftermath of losing his leg, all thoughts of returning to Berk are forgotten. Years later, he sees a TV program that mentions Berk, and books a holiday there for the whole family.

The conflict between Merida and Elinor came to a head when Elinor decided it would be best for Merida’s future prospects if she attended a boarding school for her secondary schooling. It went badly. Eventually they worked it out, improved their communication skills, mended their relationship, etc.

When Fergus plans the holiday, Merida has just graduated university and finished an internship at a heritage body like Historic Environment Scotland or the National Trust for Scotland. She enjoyed parts of the internship, but isn’t sure what she wants to do next. She does know she’d prefer to do something outdoors, rather than being stuck inside all of the time.

Little does she know what adventure awaits her on Berk. The community has a closely-guarded secret: there are still dragons, though in far fewer numbers than in the past. Most of them stay on other islands in the archipelago, but Toothless spends a lot of time on Berk.

As in the original story, Hiccup injured Toothless and then rehabilitated him. At this point Toothless is able to get around by himself and likely could survive just fine on his own; he’s loyal to Hiccup, though, and doesn’t spend too long away from him.

Hiccup was in turn injured by a rogue dragon that was threatening the population, both human and dragon alike. As in canon, Toothless helped Hiccup and saved his life, with the same loss of limb.

This being the 21st century, the line of thinking in conservation seems to be to keep as many animals as possible as wild as possible, so they don’t ride the dragons. Except Hiccup has ridden Toothless—just in order to make sure the dragon can fly after fitting his prosthetic, of course. No other reason than that.

Hiccup has a helicopter pilot’s license, though. It’s practical! They need a way to be able to get off the island when the seas are rough, or in emergencies when a boat might take too long.

Despite Hiccup’s desire to protect the dragons from the outside world, something had to be done to keep Berk thriving. To diversify their economy from just fishing and sheep, the islanders decided to branch into ecotourism. Their remoteness means they’re able to control who visits and when; the weather keeps their tourism season to just the summer months, and would-be visitors have to apply for permits to visit, must stay in specific lodging, and only have access to certain wild parts of the island with a guide.

Hiccup and the gang are rangers. They have general wildlife and forestry management duties, but their main task is to make sure that there are no dragons on the island when visitors are scheduled to be there. They’re able to relocate or temporarily hold any dragons that show up at inopportune times.

(I don’t want to have to address this so in my head I’m basically not but for the record the Astrid Situation is that she’s still there but at some point they both realized that they’re not 14 anymore and there’s no spark between them. They’ll always have an important bond; it’s just not a romantic one, and that’s okay.

I also pretty much always just work from the first movies and don’t take into account much from the sequels or shows, so Stoick is alive and Valka is just...not there.

(I have the vaguest of ideas that Valka had gone off to be a marine biologist or Arctic researcher or something else very remote that could also be a cover for dragonkeeper. The only problem with this is that unless she changed her name, if she was out there employed then she’d likely be findable via the internet, so there wouldn’t be the same ~mystery~ about whether or not she was still alive. Maybe when she disappeared she got amnesia! and by the time her memory came back she figured Stoick and Hiccup were better off without her, and the dragons were better off with her, so she just stayed away. Not really relevant to this story, though.

(And Eret is her assistant.)))

Since Berk is so remote, they’re able to play it off to visitors as having really sporadic Internet access (which is not entirely untrue, but somehow the residents don’t have as many problems connecting as guests seem to). That way, just in case there are any dragon sightings, visitors won’t be able to plaster them all over social media immediately. They also market the lack of connectivity as a positive: they encourage visitors to unplug for wellness reasons, and to really connect with nature.

(This is not terribly relevant but I’m pleased that I thought of it. Berk has its own language, which is mostly closely related to Faroese; scholars debate whether Berkian is a distinct language or a dialect of Faroese, with some going so far as to call it proto-Faroese or a transitional phase between Old Norse and Faroese. Berkian isn’t far removed from Old Norse, and Hiccup tends to speak the older language to the dragons, especially Toothless.

Most people speak English in addition to Berkian, with Icelandic and Norwegian the most common third languages. The reason the older inhabitants of Berk sound Scottish is because when they were growing up, most of the English-language TV and radio they got was from BBC Scotland. By the time the kids were growing up their media options had expanded, so the accents faded from subsequent generations.)

Hiccup is busy when the DunBroch family arrives, so he doesn’t run into them for a while. But he keeps hearing things about them, and especially about the daughter, over the rangers’ radios. For instance:

TUFFNUT: This girl is going hog wild on the archery range. It’s hot. RUFFNUT: Snotlout, stop whimpering.

and

SNOTLOUT: She was going to go climbing today, right? How’d she look? I bet she looked good. ASTRID: She knows what she’s doing. FISHLEGS: She said there’s this cliff back home with a waterfall, and she free solos it!

In addition to the ecotourism (trekking, rock climbing, ziplining, and so on), Berk also has a living history park with a Viking village. They demonstrate all things sheep- and wool-related, martial arts—including archery, of course—woodworking, and smithing, among other things. It’s at the smithy that the DunBroch family run into Gobber.

He and Fergus recognize each other; Gobber is the first to bust out their old nickname for Fergus, “Fergie,” which the kids love hearing. (Fergus has to stop himself partway through Gobber’s nickname, “Gobshite.”) Gobber tells them that Stoick is the governor, and invites them to dinner at Stoick’s house. Elinor is aghast at this breach of etiquette, of course, but it’s fine.

It’s not a state dinner, Elinor, it’s grilling on the deck. To fancy things up Gobber serves canapés: sliced smoked eel with sheep’s milk crème fraîche on toast rounds. No one enjoys them but him, and Merida just barely stops the boys from flinging the discs of eel around like tiny frisbees. Stoick apologizes that his son isn’t able to be there, but the rangers are busy during the high season. Gobber manages to wait until they’re done eating to ask to hear the story about how Fergus lost his leg; afterward, Stoick mentions that Fergus and Hiccup should meet and talk.

Gobber also clues in Merida to where the gang hangs out in the evenings, and gets Elinor to allow Merida to join them. When she does Snotlout, Fishlegs, and the twins are there; they’ve had a bet going on about whether or not her hair color and style are natural, which Tuffnut wins. Merida admits that it’s worse than usual at the moment because of the wind and the humidity, to which Ruffnut suggests,

“We should give you an undercut.” Starting from just below the top of Merida’s left ear, Ruffnut traced a finger around the back of Merida’s head to her other ear. “Take out some of the weight and volume. It’ll still look full, ’cause of the curls, but you’ll feel lighter and cooler.” Not that it was especially warm on Berk; but the prospect was tantalizing.

“You’ve done it before?”

The other young woman nodded. Her twin said, “We do it sometimes on the sheep.” Merida guffawed, glad she hadn’t been drinking when he answered.

She looked at the company, then out at the slow twilight of Berk around them. She wouldn’t trust them with her life, or with more than about ten pounds; but hair would grow back. This would be a memory. “Let’s do it.”

Luckily, Elinor does not notice the new hairstyle in the aftermath of what’s to come.

Because guess who wanders away from the path and discovers Toothless?

No furtive glances here: without breaking stride she slipped past a sign permitting access to authorized persons only. If caught, she’d claim not to have seen it.

Besides, how dangerous could it be? There was a little track, faint but apparent enough, meandering through the underbrush before her, and not a wild animal in sight. As she followed the path she felt the tension in her shoulders ease with each step.

It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the holiday, or enjoy the activities, or think Berk beautiful. But it was all so regimented, so constrained. She appreciated the importance of keeping idiots from spoiling fragile environments, but she was far from an idiot. She’d practically been raised in the woods. Alright, not these particular woods, but similar ones, and she knew how to move through them quietly and lightly so that hardly a fern frond nodded in her wake. No one would know she’d been here, so it shouldn’t matter that she had.

The serenity of the forest seeped into her as she walked. The fresh, vital smell of it, the wind soughing through the canopy far ahead, the shifting shadows over bark and bough, all of it soothed her. It was little surprise when she found herself further along the path than she’d meant to go. The path carried on through a cleft in a rock; on the opposite side something sparkled. It was too alluring a summons to refuse. The cleft was wide enough that she only had to angle herself slightly to pass through.

When she emerged she understood why this place was off-limits. If the Vikings had believed in a less rowdy kind of afterlife, this could surely have been a heaven. She stood in a steep-sided hollow, with a placid lake catching stray sunbeams and reflecting them back onto the rocky walls rising above her. Moving carefully, reverently, she stole away from the rocks she’d passed through and toward the lake. It was enthralling. She felt herself smiling a little around a sigh, and as she stepped into a patch of sunlight her eyelids fluttered.

They didn’t close all the way before she caught a movement on the opposite shore of the lake. There was something in the shadows there—something now slinking beneath a rocky outcrop. She squinted and shuffled forward, trying to discern a shape in the darkness. And then she froze, a gasp lodging in her throat, as a pair of brilliant green eyes opened wide in the black.

The gasp tore free when a voice came from behind her. “You’re not supposed to be here,” it said, and it wasn’t a voice she’d heard yet. She whirled to see a young man standing between her and the entrance to the hollow. He was dressed in the shorts and boots that all of the young staff wore, though he was the only one whose trouser length revealed a prosthetic leg. It hadn’t stopped him from sneaking up on her. Instead of the polo shirt the others wore, he had on a t-shirt, stenciled with LIGHTNING & DEATH and stained with what she hoped was motor oil. After what she’d seen on Berk so far, she was surprised to see anyone look so cool.

“Oh. Am I not?” she replied innocently.

“You’re not,” he assured her. Though his tone was mild and his expression unreadable, his eyes never left her. “Miss DunBroch, right?” At her nod he went on, “You know you can be asked to leave Berk for trespassing. Why would you risk your family’s vacation?”

Put that way, her actions sounded utterly selfish. The implication needled her, so instead of answering she shot back, “Why are there so many rules here? If I wanted to be told where to go and what to do all the time I would’ve just stayed at home.”

Something softened in his expression at that. His head tilted a fraction and his eyes caught the light as he studied her; she met his gaze, though it was a struggle not to raise her chin in defiance. After a moment he said dryly, “Be sure to include that in your customer satisfaction survey.” A little puff of laughter escaped her at that, and one corner of his mouth ticked up minutely.

“Look, Miss DunBroch—”

“Merida. And you’re the governor’s son.” His head dipped to acknowledge it, but didn’t offer a name, and she couldn’t remember what his father and Gobber had said.

“Merida. I can’t say I don’t understand how you feel. But there are reasons for our rules here. They’re here to keep the guests—you—safe, and to protect the ecosystem. So let’s head back to the ranger station and we’ll figure this all out.”

That was fairer than she probably deserved, and it sounded like there was a chance she wouldn’t ruin her da’s long-awaited holiday. Still, the condescension from a lad her own age rankled. She pressed her lips tight to keep from answering back and nodded.

He stepped back, about to pivot away from her; just before he turned his attention finally left her, flicking over her shoulder. The hair at the back of her neck stood up. She suddenly had that feeling she hadn’t in the forest: that there was something else there, something watching her. She caught a frown darken his face before she spun in place. Now behind her, the young man muttered a curse.

Standing on the near shore of the lake was a creature she’d only seen in books or on screen. There hadn’t been any noise or movement and yet it had just appeared, as if coalesced out of the shadows. It was dark and scaled and winged and long-tailed in a way that didn’t add up to any animal in real life; and yet she was certain that this was no dream or hallucination, no hologram or animatronic. It was the eyes: the same eyes she’d seen from the shadows were in its head, electric and curious.

“That’s a dragon.” It was not a question; she was as certain of the fact as she’d been of anything in her life.

“Funny, it looks like a pain in my ass,” he muttered, stepping up beside her. Nothing in his tone or posture, with hands planted on narrow hips, suggested they might need to flee for their lives.

She spared him a sideways glance. “You’re not going to try to convince me it’s not? Or that I’m imagining things?”

“That’d be easier if he’d go away.” He sounded more exasperated than anything, and she marveled at it.

“He?”

The young man nodded. “What gives, bud? I didn’t give you a big ‘come on out’ wave, so why did you?”

He was talking to the dragon. He was talking to the dragon like he expected it to understand, maybe even like he expected it to respond. And stranger still, it looked like the dragon could understand. If it—he—spoke, she didn’t think she could be held responsible for her reaction.

“Were you feeling left out ’cause nobody was paying attention to you for two seconds?” he continued in a mocking lilt. The dragon snorted and tossed its head, not unlike Angus did; Merida felt a hysterical giggle bubble up in her chest at the comparison, and fought to keep it down. “Well, come on; you wanted to be included in this conversation, so get over here.”

And he did: he ambled straight up to them. Merida held her breath as she watched him move. He wasn’t anything like a horse, or like a big cat, or like anything else on earth. He spared the young man at her side a sneer, narrowed eyes and all, before turning his attention to her with nostrils flared and eyes intent. He sniffed at her, his snout encroaching into her personal space until she was fighting her every instinct not to step back. The inspection paid particular attention to her hair, and that was familiar enough scrutiny to return some ease. Then he sat back on his haunches.

“Satisfied?” the young man murmured. The dragon shook his head, and, sighing, the young man stepped forward and scratched his neck. “So melodramatic.” He sounded fond as he scratched, using both hands to reach around the wide head. The blissful expression on the dragon’s face was at odds with the glint of light on the talons that tipped its paws, the sheer deadly size of him.

“This is why you have all those rules! Because you don’t want people seeing that there are dragons!”

“Bingo.” He stopped ministering to the dragon and turned to her, leaning his weight against the beast. “And now we have an even bigger problem than before. Before it was just that you broke the rules, and I was going to have to let you get away with it because your dad and my dad are old buddies.” She bristled at that, but did not interrupt. “Now because you broke the rules, you know our most important secret.”

She raised an eyebrow and nodded at the dragon. “He didn’t have to come out. If you’d trained him better and he’d stayed hidden, I’d just think I’d seen some small wild animal, or that it was a trick of the light. I don’t think that I should get all of the blame here.”

The young man and the dragon exchanged incredulous looks at that. A distant part of Merida’s mind shrieked that none of this was possible, was real, was happening. To drown out that part she went on, “Listen, laddie— What is your name? You never said.”

“It’s Hiccup. And this is Toothless. Toothless, this is Merida.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you both. Now listen, I’ll not tell anyone about you. I’ll keep your secret. I swear it.” She traced an X above her heart to seal the vow.

“No offense, but we don’t know you. Your word alone’s not enough to go on.”

It was her turn to narrow her eyes and cross her arms over her stomach. “How about this word, then? If there’s any more talk of sending us home, I will tell everyone about your dragon. Nothing means more to me than my family, and I’ll do anything to protect their happiness.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Sure. Anything but stay where you’re supposed to! You could’ve done that one easy little thing and we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. And for the record, nothing means more to me than protecting these dragons.”

That was definitely a plural. Her arms dropped to her sides. “There are more?”

Toothless seemed to smirk. Hiccup, on the other hand, sighed raggedly. “Not the point, but yes. The point is—”

“Do they all look like him?” She’d imagined them spikier, more brightly colored. Toothless looked like a stealth fighter jet, all smooth lines. “He’s so sleek.”

You’d have thought she’d complimented the young man himself, he looked that pleased. Toothless’ preening, while deserved, was the more disconcerting, as it suggested he understood what she’d said. Or maybe, she reasoned, it was like with dogs: you could say anything you liked as long as it was in the proper tone.

“No, they’re not all like him,” Hiccup said. “Toothless is one-of-a-kind.” A shadow passed over his face and he glanced at Toothless, who still stood with head high and limbs straight, showing off his majestic form.

“But that’s not the point,” he repeated. “The point is, even if we don’t send you home now, who’s to say that you won’t splash it all over the internet then?”

“Me! I’m to say! That’s what I’ve been saying! I’m not going to tell anyone!” When he opened his mouth to protest once again that he couldn’t trust her, she scoffed, “What are you going to do, then, keep me prisoner here?”

He stilled, his eyes going distant. “That’s not a bad idea,” he said slowly.

Her jaw dropped. “Are you mad? You cannae keep me here!” Great, she’d gone full Scottish now. “Do you think my family won’t notice me gone missing? They won’t just go home and leave me locked up here.”

He had the temerity to look at her like she was the one out of their mind. “Locked u—who said anything about locking you up?”

“You did!” she shrieked. “You said keeping me prisoner here wasnae—wasn’t a bad idea.”

He waved away her concerns. “Not the prisoner part, just the keeping you here part. I guess you staying here would be a better way to put it.”

He could stand around talking all the bollocks he wanted; she didn’t have to stay and listen. She turned and bolted. Clods of sandy soil flew from beneath her boots as she pelted toward the gap, ignoring the groan of “Oh, come on, really?” from behind her. Above the pounding of her feet and her own breathing she heard a whoompf in the air; then a shadow fell over her, a pair of paws grasped her upper arms, and her feet left the ground. She yelped and scrabbled at one of Toothless’ forelegs, wrapping her arms around it, not sure he wasn’t planning to drop her. As he dipped a wing to wheel, her legs swung wide and she clutched tighter, her cheek pressed to his scaly skin, the alien smell of him filling her nostrils. He set her down between Hiccup and the lake; she stumbled a little as she unwound her arms from his leg, ending up in an ungainly crouch, her fingers digging into the damp dirt.

“You okay?” Hiccup asked. “His claws can get a little pinchy.” Toothless grumbled in protest. Hiccup spared the dragon a sideways glance, saying, “What? It’s a fact, not a criticism. Human skin is delicate.” While Toothless rolled his eyes, Hiccup returned his attention to her, looking her over from head to toe. “I don’t see any blood, so no puncture wounds. How about vertigo? Nausea?”

Though it had only been a brief, low flight, her heart thundered. She’d flown with a dragon. Not on a dragon, which would have been more heroic and frankly more dignified; but she’d been borne aloft by a mythical beast, and that was more than most could say.

She looked up at him in silence. In the midst of her pounding heartbeat and the whirl of questions within her, there was an island of still certainty: that she wanted to learn more of this place’s secrets, and above all that she wanted to do that again.

“Merida?” he prompted.

She licked her lips. “I think,” she said a little hoarsely, “you were saying something about me staying here.”

By the time they get back to the village they’ve come up with a plan. Hiccup is surprised to learn that Merida’s education and experience will actually be relevant; she shoots back that she’s neither witless nor useless, and he says he’d never said she was, and that clearly this is a terrible idea. She says that if it’s such a terrible idea then she’s more than happy to just go home, and he scowls at her. Because it isn’t a great idea and it is what he was worried about happening with the whole ecotourism thing and now he has to deal with it and she’s not making it easy, watching him with that mocking twist to her lips. It’s the light in her eyes, the excitement and wonder dancing there, that makes it seem worth doing, terrible idea or not.

Hiccup has to meet with Stoick first to explain the whole deal; Stoick is very reluctantly on board with hiring Merida.

Then they have to sell it to her parents, which is harder. Elinor and Fergus are more confused and have many questions that Hiccup and Merida manage to BS their way through decently. The jobs—she’ll be working both at the living history park and as a ranger—aren’t so far off from what she’s done so far and what she enjoys doing, so that helps convince them. The reason she has to stay and start right away, Hiccup explains, is because of the weather; if she went home to pack, there’s no guarantee that the weather would stay clear enough for her to get back, and even though the tourist season is short, she’ll have a lot to learn to get ready for it. So the sooner they get home and gather up some winter gear to ship her, the better.

At least one parental unit suspects infatuation is at play. It’s not (yet), but it’s understandable why they’d think it—Hiccup watches her, ready to redirect the conversation if it seems likely she’ll spill the secret, and Merida keeps glancing at him, somewhat awed by what she’s learned about him.

Obviously she’s not really trapped there. She could go home if she wanted to. Stoick is pretty reasonable, and there are non-disclosure agreements and laws and treaties and attorneys and INTERPOL and any number of things that could be brought to bear if she truly desired to get away from Berk. She wants to be there—or she wants to be somewhere that makes her feel alive, and for now, Berk is it.

So while her parents are a little apprehensive about leaving her there, even though they trust Stoick and Gobber to look after her, Merida is more excited than sad when her family leaves.

Ever year at the end of the tourist season they have a big community party. Merida hangs at the periphery of where the rangers sit, because Astrid is not pleased about her staying, especially since Merida gets to stay because she broke the rules. That is, admittedly, ass-backward and you can’t really blame Astrid for being upset about it. Hiccup tries to convince her that she should make nice and be welcoming, and that it was his idea for Merida to stay and she’s like “Oh, don’t worry, I’m capable of being annoyed at more than one person at a time.” Astrid is also rightly concerned about Merida’s ability to do the job without being coddled or having her hand held; they have to start getting ready for winter the Monday after the party (they all need at least a day to recover from it), and it’s hard work, much of it technical.

Merida does in fact need more information than the other rangers tend to give her—they’ve all done these tasks for years and don’t have to think through the steps, much less think about explaining them to someone else, and this leads to some shouting at each other and a few minor bruises. But when people take the time to explain things she’s able to pull her weight, and, as one of them notes, the whole process takes less time with another set of hands around.

I feel like Merida enjoys hanging out with the twins and Fishlegs, because the stakes with them are low. She still has to prove herself trustworthy to Hiccup, and capable to Astrid, and uninterested to Snotlout; but letting Ruff give her the undercut convinced the Thorstons that Merida is Down For Shenanigans, and they’re cool with her.

Hiccup and Merida, though, are in the weird position of neither one actively disliking the other but feeling like there are barriers between knowing each other better. Hiccup is still a little wary of her divulging their secret, even though she’s never been very active on social media and really just uses her phone to keep in touch with her family and a few friends (the lads, occasionally), and to listen to music. Merida admires him, while being nettled by his unfounded distrust in her. If they’re going to be working together and living in a relatively small community, they can’t ignore or avoid each other; getting through the shutdown process helps, as does doing their other work. Still, there’s ice to break. One time they find themselves alone in the rangers’ breakroom, and when the silence gets to be too awkward, she loudly declares,

“Lightning and death!”

“Uh...” He glanced around: he’d thought everyone had left, and then wondered how he’d overlooked her hair. In his defense, it was in a ponytail, so less voluminous than usual.

“That shirt you have,” she clarified, “the one you were wearing when...” Her eyes skittered away as a faint flush bloomed on her cheeks.

He raised an eyebrow. “When you got caught trespassing?”

Her gaze snapped to him again, and she shot back, “When you decided to imprison me.” But then she smiled, and the flash in her eyes became a twinkle, and he relaxed his grip on the pencil. “Which seems like the kind of decision a person wearing a shirt that says ‘lightning and death’ would make, so maybe I shouldn’t’ve been so surprised.” He felt his mouth quirk up and shrugged one shoulder, eliciting a quiet chuckle. “Is it a band?”

“Nope. At least not that I know of.” He shook his head, smiling to himself, as she waited expectantly for him to explain. “It’s Toothless’ parents. An old story says that Night Furies are the ‘unholy offspring of lightning and death itself.’” He knew his grin was wide and wild—it was only fitting.

“That is much cooler than it being a band.”

Once the outdoor things are battened down for winter weather, it’s time for her to start learning the things she’ll need to know for both the ranger and living history work. One of those is Viking-style fighting.

Training sword dangling from her hand, Astrid studied Merida. The loose grip looked careless, but Merida knew it was anything but.

“Have you ever done any swordfighting, þunnkárr?”

That, Fishlegs had assured her, was “an attested Old Norse byname,” whatever that meant, that translated to “curly-head.” Though it wasn’t used with any great affection, she’d been called worse.

“Not really. Just a little fencing, years ago.”

Astrid’s eyes went wide in mock amazement and she whistled. “Fencing? That’s fancy.” Her smile turned feral as she tightened her grip on the sword’s hilt and hefted the blade with ease. “This isn’t.” And then she swung.

(Since it just came up let me throw in a resource that I’ve referred to countless times over the years, for many different reasons: this list of bynames found in the Landnámabók.)

Merida is determined to represent her homeland even from afar, so she does things like use the colors of the DunBroch tartan when she has to learn tablet weaving. She also gets her parents to ship her some of said tartan, enough to use some as a shawl, some in an apron dress, and some as an earasaid.

This determination, among other things, gets her into arguments! Like they obviously have to come up with a ready answer as to why a Scot is in this Viking village; the easiest explanation is that she was taken as a captive during a raid, to which she not at all melodramatically states,

“I would kill myself before I was taken.”

He rolled his eyes. “Maybe you were unconscious when we hauled you off.”

“I’m an archer! How d’you think you managed to knock me out without becoming a pincushion?”

“Obviously we’d want to take out an enemy firing on us, so we would have sent someone around behind you. Astrid, probably, since you’re still alive to take captive.” His grin was not particularly kind. “And if you’re gonna be so Braveheart about it, maybe the answer is that you came willingly.”

“And why would I do that?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Looking for a better life—”

Merida’s scorn was scathing. She leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. “Laddie, DunBroch is an ancient royal house. There was and is no better life than to be part of our clan.”

“Maybe, if your family was as important as you claim, you would have been part of an exchange of hostages to ensure peace between your clan and our tribe.”

That was, unfortunately, historically plausible and completely reasonable. Even without the dig at her ancestors she hated it. “We’d only need to barter for peace if it seemed like we were going to lose the fight. That wouldn’t happen.”

In his place she would have rolled her eyes, and she couldn’t help but admire the self-restraint it must have taken him not to do so. Instead he planted his palms on the table and leaned forward. “Then maybe you came out of desire.”

That suggestion, and the way the final word dropped in a near-murmur from his lips, took her aback. Without her meaning them to her eyes traveled over him; it was too much to hope that he hadn’t noticed. She tightened her arms and repeated flatly, “Desire. For...?”

“For adventure. For the unknown, and the thrill of seeing what’s out there.” He flung an arm wide, looking off into the distance despite the walls surrounding them. When they returned to her, his eyes were alight. Then it was his turn to look her over, and with a smirk he asked, “Why, what’d you think I meant?”

(I Accidentally Did Research: on Scottish-Norse intermarriage during the Viking period.

If Fishlegs were there and willing to insert himself into this conversation he would be able to point out that there is evidence of intermingling between Scots and Norse, especially in the Shetlands, Orkneys, and Hebrides. Many present-day natives of these islands have Norse DNA. Margaret of Scotland married Eirik Magnusson of Norway in the late 13th century and was therefore briefly Queen of Norway—though it’s not quite what the argument’s about, being an arrangement between two royal houses and slightly later, it points toward not everything being adversarial all the time. Also, according to an article from the National Museum of Scotland about the Lewis chess pieces, the whole isle of Lewis belonged to Norway in the like 12th century. Also also the gallowglass, via Wikipedia:

“(also spelled galloglass, gallowglas or galloglas; from Irish: gallóglaigh meaning “foreign warriors”) were a class of elite mercenary warriors who were principally members of the Norse-Gaelic clans of Ireland and Scotland between the mid 13th century and late 16th century. It originally applied to Scots, who shared a common background and language with the Irish, but as they were descendants of 10th-century Norse settlers who had intermarried with the local population in western Scotland, the Irish called them Gall Gaeil (“foreign Gaels”).”

All this to say that some medieval Norse and Scots got along just fine, if you get my drift.)

In the end her official answer is something along the lines of, “It was common in many ancient societies to take captives when you raided or invaded another land. In my case I joined a band of Norse traders for a chance to leave the place I was born and see a wider world. I may be far from my home, and I’ll always miss it, but I’ve found a place to belong here, too.” She sounds like she means it, and he smiles when he hears it.

But things are not all smooth sailing as she starts to find her place there, leading to moments like this:

Hiccup thumped away at a barely-warm iron rod, muttering under his breath.

“What’s that?” Gobber asked disinterestedly, still focused on his soldering.

“She’s—” Clang. “—so—” Clang. “—stubborn!” Clang.

“Well, if that’s not the Night Fury calling the anvil black.” Hiccup shot him a grimace at the tortured idiom. “You mean your new recruit.”

Hiccup tossed aside the hammer and all but howled, “Yes!”

“The one you demanded stay here,” Gobber clarified.

His agreement was less vehement this time.

Merida and Gobber niece/weird uncle relationship always. They just get along. Anyway Merida is at first given one of the guest cottages to stay in, but once autumn starts and the days get shorter and greyer she realizes that she is not meant to live alone, and vaguely worries about her mental health should she have to hang out in the cottage by herself all through the long winter nights. So she says something along the lines of “Don’t you get lonely, living by yourself?” and Gobber, who recognizes a fishing expedition when he sees one, says no, he’s excellent company to himself, and she says, “I s’pose it’s just what you’re used to. I’ve always had roommates or flatmates if I wasn’t living with my family,” and he says she’s welcome to come by sometimes if she wants to and after the third time she falls asleep on his sofa he starts clearing out space in the attic. Then once she starts staying there her stuff just kind of migrates, until Stoick comes over one evening to find her in what are clearly pajamas, trying to make a pie and arguing with Gobber about the music on the stereo. “It’ll save on the heating bill, at least,” Gobber says, and leaves it at that. He rigs her up a light-therapy lamp and she learns to cook something other than pasta (“How can you ruin stew?” “It’s not that bad—alright, fine, it is! You don’t need to make that face. Ach, you’re worse than my brothers.”) and they’re generally good housemates.

Vulnerability is a big thing in this story. Merida starts off thinking that she can’t be anything but strong and fine: not in front of the Hooligans and not in front of her family, the former because she doesn’t want to give them any cause to doubt or mock her and the latter because she doesn’t want to worry them. Hiccup doesn’t want to let anybody down, especially not his dad or the dragons, and he doesn’t want to go back to being the laughingstock or the disappointment. He likes that Merida didn’t know him as any of that, and at first shies away from anything that could let her know about that time.

Eventually Merida realizes that she has to be vulnerable with people for her own health. So she goes to Stoick and asks if she can ask a favor, and when he nods she asks for a hug. He doesn’t respond to that for a beat, and while she’d been ready to be resolved and mature in asking for her needs to be met, and to convince him that it doesn’t need to be weird, she ends up rambling, “Y’see, you’re the one person here who looks sort of like my dad, and you don’t remind me of him really, but I haven’t had a good hug since my family left and I think you could help with that, and it would help me. If you don’t mind. Please.” And since he learned things from almost losing his own son, he doesn’t overthink it, but just folds her into his arms. Despite their hopes to the contrary it is in fact awkward at first, but they both relax into it after a moment. When she steps away he tells her, gruffly, that she can ask for a hug whenever she needs one; she thanks him and tries not to abuse the privilege, and never ever asks when other people are around. The request breaks the ice between them, though, and they’re more comfortable in each other’s company.

Even with a new roomie being away from home is still hard for Merida, and as the winter holidays approach it becomes even more obvious that she’s struggling. She’s included in all of the Snoggletog festivities but it’s not the same as Christmas and Hogmanay at home and she becomes withdrawn. She’s also embarrassed by her feelings. She’s Merida Bloody DunBroch. “Independent” has always been an adjective that she’s prized when hearing others apply it to her, and one she’s used many a time in describing herself. She shouldn’t be greeting like a bairn over missing her family. She should be stronger than this. Right?

Hiccup starts to feel really mean for keeping her there—though at this point of the year it’s mostly the weather and not solely him that means she can’t leave, but in general he feels bad. One evening when Gobber and Stoick are both busy he goes over to Gobber’s for something and it’s clear she’s been crying. He notices a stuffed bear on the couch and she tells him that her brothers had sent it for Christmas and her eyes fill with tears that she blinks back, unwilling to let him see her cry. So he sits and tells her about growing up without his mom around and with his dad being so important and busy all the time, seeing all of his peers participate in holiday traditions with their families while not even knowing whether or not she was alive, and how incomplete that made him feel for so long.

She drew the bear to her chest as he talked. When she’d opened it she’d imagined she could smell the scent of heather on it, somewhere between the scent of the hills and that of her mother’s perfume. Now she rested her chin atop the bear’s bulbous black head and listened to Hiccup, her heart throbbing with pity that she didn’t dare show. His confession made her grateful once again for her own mother, and glad to have one to miss.

“That’s it?” she asked when he finished. “No happily-ever-after? No moral to the story, or promise that I’ll be okay?”

His head tilted as he looked at her. “You will be okay. You’re strong,” he said. His tone was matter-of-fact but unexpectedly warm, and she had to look away from the way the firelight glowed on his face. “I didn’t think you needed anyone to tell you that. Especially not me.”

“It doesn’t hurt to hear,” she murmured, more to the bear than to him.

After a moment of not exactly awkward silence he reached out to squeeze one of the bear’s paws. “So did this little guy come with a name?”

When she shook her head he did his best imitation of his dad to ask, “Should the wee Scottish bear maybe have a Scottish name?”

Her lips twitched involuntarily. To counteract it she frowned. “Was that meant to be a Scottish accent? Because if it was, it was terrible.”

“Haha, that’s where you’re wrong. That was a Berkian Scottish accent. Totally different thing.” His grin was lopsided, as if unsure.

“Obviously,” she sniffed, but there was that twitch again. “Anyway, I can’t give it a Scottish name. The odds’re too good that I know somebody with whatever name I chose.”

“What, even like...Archibald?”

Nodding, she sighed. “That’s Lord Archibald Dingwall to you an’ me. My dad gets to call him Archie, though.”

“Wow.”

“Right. So maybe it needs a Viking name.”

He let out a groan, pushing a hand back through his hair. “I’m not good at naming things. Too literal. I’d probably just call it Bear.”

“‘Toothless’ is the opposite of literal, though.”

“And yet just as unimaginative.”

They settle on Cubby.

After that interaction Hiccup goes home and does some research online. With what he learns he’s not surprised when Merida goes home from the New Year’s Eve celebrations before midnight; he hadn’t expected her to be so superstitious, but she believes in a lot of things—it’s something else she and Gobber have in common. Hiccup’s willing to indulge her beliefs for this tradition. According to the Internet, it’s bad luck for a woman or a redhead to be the first person to enter a house after midnight on the New Year, which explains why she hightails it back, to be inside before then. Good luck comes from the first visitor being a dark-haired man—or a tall dark-haired man, or a tall, handsome dark-haired man; opinions vary on which combination is necessary. He hopes he’s dark-haired enough and tall enough to count, and wonders distantly if she thinks he’s handsome enough to fulfill the tradition. But that’s not really important! He’s just trying to make sure she feels less alone. He ducks out of the big party a couple of minutes before midnight and gets to Gobber’s house just before the countdown. As soon as it’s over he knocks on the door.

She’d had enough time to take off her heavy outerwear and boots and get into warm sheepskin slippers, but she was wearing the same sweater dress (this one was designed as a dress, even Hiccup could tell that, and wasn’t just a castoff sweater of her dad’s) and leggings, the tartan headband still holding back her hair. From the television he heard “Auld Lang Syne.” She cocked her head, frowning a little. “What are you doing here?”

“Happy New Year to you, too.” He unslung the bag from his shoulder and reached into it, first pulling out the lump of coal he’d swiped from the forge. When he held it out her eyes were shining.

“Happy New Year,” she said, with a smile blossoming on her lips. That was why he was here. He found himself returning the smile unconsciously. “Please come in.” She stood back from the door and watched him step over the threshold with obvious approval.

He set down the coal on the coffee table, next to a bottle of whisky, a finger’s width of it in a small glass beside it, and a plate of chocolate-covered cookies. He waited while she hurried into the kitchen; she came back with another glass and poured a generous tot of liquor into it before handing it to him. Then she picked up her own glass and made a toast in Gaelic. “Skál,” he replied, and it set her to giggling.

Through her laughter she explained, “They say that the reason the first-footer’s meant to be dark-haired was because in the old days, a strange blond man showing up at your door was likely to be a Viking.”

Given their current location, a Viking at the door was pretty much unavoidable. All the same he glanced down at himself, then back to her with eyebrows raised. Her answering grin was playful as she reassured him, “You’ll do.”

With her eyes sparkling as she sipped her drink, she looked happier than he’d seen her in weeks, maybe even months. Guilt that he’d been the cause of her unhappiness churned in his stomach again. He tried to drown it with a healthy mouthful of whisky.

As its warmth slid into his middle he set down the glass and returned to the sack. Next out was a small loaf of bread, bought from the bakery and still wrapped in its bag; “It’s the oat bread,” he said as she accepted it, “that’s the one you like, right?” She nodded, eyes wondering. The salt was in a tiny jar—it was the thing he’d almost forgotten until the last minute, so it was just poured out of the container of coarse-grained sea salt from the kitchen at home. It seemed fine with her, though. The coin was a pound that someone had dropped in a tip jar somewhere on the island years ago; it was useless as money here, like all the foreign coins forgotten or left behind were, but the thistle on the back made her breath catch, and that was worth something. Lastly he proffered a bottle full of clear liquor.

“It’s supposed to be whisky, I know, but I figured you’d have better of that than anything I could get up here.” He nodded at the bottle she’d poured from earlier; he didn’t know much about whisky, but it had been smooth and flavorful, and doubtless something from her homeland.

“Is that that seaweed brandy?” she asked, her nose wrinkled.

He pretended to draw the bottle back. “You don’t have to keep it if you don’t want it.”

“No!” She grabbed for it with both hands, briefly trapping his in the process. “It’s bad luck not to take what’s offered.” When she’d gotten hold of it she turned to the glasses; he glanced down at his hand, half-expecting it to be shaking, so great was the sudden tingling in it. “And that means you taking a drink of it with me,” she informed him over her shoulder with a grin.

He accepted the glass and clinked it against hers softly. “Lang may yer lum reek,” she said. At his puzzled expression she explained, “It literally means ‘long may your chimney smoke’—may you always have a home and a way to keep it warm.”

“May all your ewes have twins,” he returned in Berkian. Her attention lingered on his mouth for a moment before her eyes went unfocused and she mouthed some of the words back again.

After a moment she hazarded, her brow wrinkled and head tilted, “Something about sheep...and the twins?”

That she recognized that much after only a few months was fairly impressive, and he said so.

Though her cheeks went pink at the praise she demurred, “Those are two things that tend to get talked about a lot here. Or shouted about, in the twins’ case.” Her lips quirked up, and when he translated the wish for prosperity she laughed merrily, pressing her glass to her cheek.

“Hiccup?” she said, and he paused with the glass halfway to his lips. Her eyes were soft, her tone earnest. “Thank you.”

(That Berkian wish for good fortune was inspired by an Icelandic magical stave.)

Thus begins Merida’s descent into and struggle against infatuation. Almost from the beginning she thought him aesthetically pleasing, self-assured, and competent; now she knows that he’s thoughtful and attentive and understanding, too. Though she’s determined not to let it show, she’s not entirely successful; but as it’s mostly Gobber and not Hiccup himself who picks up on it, it’s not too bad.

That winter Merida learns a lot of Berk’s traditional stories and songs. Her storytelling skills impress the older generation. When it comes to singing she has an average voice and can carry a tune so that it’s recognizable and stay on key, which is more than can be said for some of the people of Berk. She even learns a few songs and poems in Berkian; it’s easy—so long as the words are written down phonetically—as the songs in particular are often fairly repetitive. Various locals enjoy the fact that she tends to hum their songs to herself as she does other work. It’s pleasant that someone from outside their culture appreciates it, and the older folks like knowing that there’s interest in their traditions. One of the wedding songs, she tells them, reminds her a little of an old Gaelic lullaby; when they ask her to sing it, she barely manages to finish “A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal” without her voice cracking.

When he hears what she’s up to, Fishlegs starts to tag along to write down the folklore for posterity. At one point while they’re working Merida gets cold, because it’s stupid cold up there, though Fishlegs has taken off his hoodie; she asks to borrow it and is instantly much warmer. He has to leave before she does so he tells her she can return it later. Hiccup sees her engulfed in the over-large sweatshirt and thinks that she looks cozy and cute. Then he recognizes whose it is and the fuzzy feeling in his chest sours.

So the next time he sees Fishlegs he tells him not to let his thing with Merida get in the way of their work. Fishlegs thinks he means recording the folklore and explains that it’s important and not interfering, and Hiccup gruffly goes, “No, your thing with her.” Fishlegs is now genuinely confused and is like “Our...friendship...?” like this is not coming from a guy who nearly scuttled their whole community’s future to preserve his own greatest friendship, and that not even with a human, so what are you even talking about, Hiccup? And Hiccup sneers something about yeah it’s really just friendship when you let people wear your clothes and Fishlegs is like the twins wear each other’s clothes all the time so you’re right, we could be like siblings, and also was he just supposed to let Merida freeze? Hiccup is now thoroughly mortified by this conversation but not going to show it and tells him to stay focused before abruptly leaving. Fishlegs does not entirely put two and two together at this point but he’ll get there before Hiccup does. And since Fishlegs makes the schedule for ranger duty he decides on malicious compliance: from now on he won’t be going on any more patrols with Merida, so that no one will have to wonder if he’s too distracted by her or whatever. Instead everybody else, but especially Hiccup, is scheduled to patrol with her.

During the winter she also needs things to do with her hands, so she takes up whittling again.

“Wait,” Tuffnut burst out into the relative silence of their chewing. Merida looked around to see what had prompted the declaration; seeing nothing unusual, she realized that she should know better by now. Tuff stroked his chin. “Does Hiccup get a birthday this year?”

Snotlout shrugged without looking up from his plate; Ruff made a face and a muffled noise, both uncertain. Astrid swallowed as she shook her head. “Nope.”

“Sorry,” Merida said, frowning, “are you...voting on whether or not he gets a birthday?” That seemed harsh, even for them.

They shook their heads. “He’s a hiccup,” Snotlout said, as if that explained everything.

“Do you guys use a different calendar down there?” Ruffnut wondered.

Now utterly confused, Merida turned to Astrid. She shook her head, Merida hoped at the others’ nonsensical contributions and not at her ignorance. “He was born February 29th, so he doesn’t always get a literal birthday. He’ll still get a party and presents and everything, though.”

What did you give someone who lived on a fairly isolated island and could make most anything he needed?

She sweet-talked another block of wood from Holtaskalli, then begged Gobber to sharpen her knife.

With uncharacteristic shyness she handed him a box wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. There was a sprig of dried crowberry stuck under the twine, and a smudge of something dark across her thumb. “Happy early birthday.”

“You didn’t have to get me anything.” He’d have to find out when her birthday was, to make sure they celebrated.

“I thought all five-year-olds were desperate for presents,” she teased.

“I’m five and three-quarters, thank you very much, and mature for my age.” There was the faintest rattle from inside as he took the box. “Is this what you’ve been working on?”

Her face fell, her lower lip poking out. “You knew?”

He cleared his throat, which had suddenly gone dry, before saying, “I mean, I knew you were making something that wasn’t for the gift shop. I never saw what it was, though, so it’ll definitely be a surprise.” He gave her an encouraging smile.

“It’ll be a surprise if you can tell what it’s meant to be,” she said under her breath.

Whatever it is, he’d never imagined she’d make anything for him. He’d seen her from time to time with a piece of wood in one hand and a wicked little blade in the other, squinting as she shaped, and he’d always been hard-pressed not to stop and watch, because Merida whittling was different from Merida at any other time.

It seemed safe to say that archery was her passion, and she clearly derived an immense amount of pride from her expertise in it. On the range she looked focused, untouchable, fierce; despite the resistance of the bow no tension tautened her stance when she shot, and her smile when she’d made a difficult shot was satisfied, and sometimes a little wild. No one could or would ever dare call shooting her hobby when it obviously meant so much to her.

He bet she wouldn’t claim wood carving as a hobby, either, but it seemed to fit the bill. The times he’d seen her at work on a carving—not that he’d ever stopped to watch her or anything; he’d just, on a couple of occasions, been passing through the village and noticed her, sitting where the sun slanted onto one of the low benches outside Holtaskalli’s carpentry shop—she’d looked content. Serene, even. Weirdly, it was while she was carving something that she seemed most like her mom. The resemblance to her dad, both physical and temperamental, was always obvious; you had to look harder to notice her mom’s traits, her influence. They were there in the way Merida was able to command authority without raising her voice, in her understanding of the importance of ceremony and ritual, in the elegance of her movement when she wove through the crowded mead hall. They were also in the way she could quietly apply herself to fine, detailed work. Hiccup couldn’t imagine Fergus, or her brothers, for that matter, sitting still long enough to produce much in the way of art.

“Things I make tend to turn out looking like bears.” She shrugged, though there was an enigmatic little smile to go along with it. “It’s a bit of a curse.”

A chuckle escaped him. “Sounds like there’s a story there.” Again she shrugged, still smiling, but offered no explanation; he filed the tidbit away for the future. “Anyway, I’ve seen things you’ve made, and none of them have looked like bears.”

Most of that had been the ornaments that the gift shop and visitors’ centre sold: slices of tree branches with various designs, mostly simple runes, carved into them, with a hole through which passed a length of twine or a leather thong for hanging. (The blacksmith shop made similar souvenirs, though how many they produced really depended on how Gobber was feeling. For an extra fee, visitors could have a blank wooden or metal disc personalized, usually with a bindrune of their initials.) He’d heard that she’d also branched into spoons. He was pretty sure that whatever was in the box was neither a spoon nor a rune, and excitement rose in him as he unwrapped it.

Merida was wearing what looked like another hand-me-down sweater, this one with a striped pattern that he thought he’d seen before; it had noticeable darning at one elbow and was meant for someone taller and slimmer than her, given the way the stripes stretched across certain portions of her torso. She plucked at its hem as she watched him. Once he’d untied the twine he was left with the spray of foliage; without thinking he tucked it behind his ear to get it out of the way. She made an almost inaudible noise and when he glanced up her eyes were soft, though she quickly blinked her gaze away from his face. With the paper pulled free he opened the box to find a small figurine. It was a dragon, that much was obvious, the wood stained dark. He gingerly lifted it out, a grin growing on his face as he took in the tiny green eyes and the red tailfin. It was a little blockier than the real Toothless, the body a little lopsided and the tail too long, but it was him. She’d even gotten his earflaps, which must’ve been a challenge.

He did his best to hide his grin when he looked up at her. “You have some strange-looking bears in Scotland,” he said. She snorted a laugh; that brought his grin out full force. “Really, though, he’s perfect.” Her cheeks went pink and a pleased smile stole onto her face. She tried to hide it by admonishing, “Alright, laddie, no need to exaggerate.” He laughed, delighted, turning the tiny Toothless over in his hands. “This must’ve taken forever.” It was only after he’d said it that he realized it could be misconstrued as a knock at her skill. Fortunately she just said, “If anyone asks, this was my first and only attempt.” When she tipped him a wink his heart stuttered in his chest.

Merida also comes across an old guitar in the attic. Years ago, after the piano lessons her mum had forced her to take had gone terribly, they’d compromised on guitar instead. (In the movie she seems neither invested in nor good at her harp lessons, but it was clearly another thing that wasn’t her choice; so if she got a say in the instrument she might have stuck with music longer.) She’d liked guitar better—if only on the principle that any activity that creates callouses is better than one that doesn’t—and had been better at it.

Apropos of nothing in this story but thinking about like 16-year-old Merida going through a phase where she wanted to look like Shirley Manson. Lots of dark eyeliner and bold lips (which for Merida probably just meant like the darkest tinted lip balm she could find) and absolute despair over how voluminous her hair is. Imagine her boarding school roommates and their friends surrounding her with a variety of straighteners; they’re all exhausted by the time it’s done, and no one thinks it looks particularly good, though they don’t admit it after all that work.

It takes Hiccup a while to recognize that he has feelings for Merida. He starts from “I feel responsible for this coworker’s well-being and happiness but she is so stubborn” and slowly moves to “She’s determined and I admire that even though it can be infuriating and also I like making her laugh” to “Her eyes are the color of the sky on a perfect spring day and my heart goes haywire when she smiles at me.” She is adventurous, obviously, but also big-hearted and stubborn and intelligent and more sensitive than she likes others to know and, he suspects, sweeter than you’d think. He’s relieved that Gobber takes to her so quickly—keeping her on Berk would have been more difficult if both his dad and his mentor had disapproved, and though Gobber did think it was stupid, he was willing to let Hiccup crash and burn on this one—though Hiccup just tells himself it’s good that she has a close ally, and it’s not really important that it’s someone who’s like family to Hiccup, too. It takes a good amount of hindsight to recognize that he was jealous of Fishlegs for getting to spend time with her, and for getting to see her in his clothes.

Another thing Merida misses desperately and admits to missing is riding Angus.

The wistfulness in her voice made him pause. He didn’t glance up from the logbook, but sat drumming the end of the pen against the page for a moment. Before he had the chance to overthink, he grabbed a sticky note and scribbled a few words on it. He finished updating the logbook and straightened up the desk a bit before standing; as he passed he made sure that Ruff was occupied on her phone, and then tapped the note onto the table by Merida’s hand. Though he saw her notice it and glance up at him, he didn’t stop. But at the door he peeked back in time to see her unstick it from the tabletop and study it for a moment before slipping it into her pocket.

The note was wildly unspecific. “Be ready at midnight”? To do what? And where—inside or outside? Better to err on the side of warmth; she wore a set of her thermal underwear under jeans and a sweater. It was a good thing Gobber was a sound sleeper, she thought, tiptoeing down the stairs in her wooly socks. The click of the inner mudroom door closing behind her echoed in her ears. She was just tying her second boot when there came a tap at the outer door, barely loud enough to hear; she shrugged into her coat as she opened the door. Her questioning look at Hiccup went unanswered except for a wave to follow him.

The night was quiet and still, the moon only a sliver overhead. The incessant plashing of the waves against the cliffs had become like white noise in the past few months, but now, with their footsteps the only other sound, the sea was easily heard. She followed him up a winding path she’d not yet taken; at the end they climbed a set of earthen steps and ascended onto what seemed to be a high plateau. The only thing of interest anywhere on it was Toothless.

She turned to ask Hiccup what they were doing up there, but he was already at the dragon’s side, bent down and fiddling with something on the ground. Toothless, for his part, was wriggling like an excited puppy. She stepped closer to them, for the warmth if nothing else; Hiccup glanced up at her and said, more quietly than their proximity to any other living thing warranted, “Step into this.” This turned out to be some kind of harness, and when he stood, told her to take off her coat for a minute and pulled the straps over her shoulders, she suspected it was one of the ziplining harnesses. She watched his face as he tightened the straps and checked tension; even in the darkness his eyes were bright, and when he noticed her attention he gave her a small grin. As she put on her coat again he attached the trailing end of one of her straps to what appeared to be Toothless’ back. She squinted: and as Toothless shifted, she could just make out what could be nothing other than a saddle.

Her heart began to race. “We’re not going to—”

Hiccup clipped himself in—he must have already been wearing a harness under his coat—and this time the grin he gave her was wide and wild and brilliant. Her heart tripped faster still. He looked her over quickly, then reached up and pulled off his beanie, saying “You’re gonna need this more than I will” as he tugged it gently but firmly down over her ears. The gesture, and his nearness, and the sight of his hair in adorable disarray brought a flush to her cheeks that she prayed he didn’t notice. He threw a leg over Toothless’ back; once settled he turned to her. All it took was a tilt of his head, a raise of his eyebrows, and that grin. She climbed on behind him and looped her arms loosely around his middle.

“Alright, bud,” he said quietly.

In one fluid motion Toothless rose from his crouch and shot forward. Merida’s hold on Hiccup tightened instinctively. She thought she could be excused that, and her yip of surprise when Toothless ran to the edge of the cliff and leapt off, only unfurling his wings at the last second. All the while, Hiccup’s breathing was reassuringly steady under her hands.

The cold was even more pronounced in the air, with wind rushing past them. She was glad of the hat, and glad she’d left her hair in that day’s braids; she couldn’t imagine what kind of havoc this would have wreaked on her loose curls. And she was glad to be riding pillion, knowing that Hiccup, warm, strong, thoughtful Hiccup, was blocking the worst of the chill from battering her.

Toothless skimmed just above treetops, his wingbeats bringing up the resinous scent of pine needles to warm the metallic tang of the sharp night air. The glimpses she caught of the canopy below them had her fighting the urge to draw her feet up and out of the way of any branches. Off to the left she saw amber light puddled on the streets and sidewalks of the town; far above was the slow red blink of the aircraft warning light at the highest point of the island. They veered away from civilization, heading further out into the night.

Then the land dropped away below them and they were over the sea. Toothless dove toward it, close enough for her to feel the spray on her face. He slalomed among the sea stacks, tilting this way and that to dodge the rocky formations; she tightened her hold with her thighs and leaned forward, the way Hiccup was. This was what she’d wanted all along. This was true freedom.

Once past the stacks Toothless shot forward in a burst of pure speed. Powerful flaps of his wings drew them higher and higher, and then, impossibly, they were upside down. Startled, her fingers dug into Hiccup’s stomach. As Toothless completed the loop she relaxed her hands and laughed, breathless.

This far out the sea was calmer, a rippling mirror of the sky. They were surrounded by stars. She’d thought the Milky Way looked impressive when seen from the stone circle on a moonless night, but that dimmed in comparison to this. She half expected the beat of Toothless’ wings to disturb the stars, to blow them away in eddies; his dark shape blotted out patches of light as he moved. Her heart felt enormous, like it was filling her entire chest with a joy and strength unlike any she’d ever felt before.

After what could have been hours or merely a few minutes they touched down on a small jut of land. Hiccup slid off of Toothless’ back and unclipped his tether; then he unclipped hers, but before she could dismount—not that she was at all certain her legs would hold her up—he simply clipped her in to the hook he’d been attached to. “Scoot up,” he said. At her wide-eyed look he gave her a grin. “Come on, we all know you want the view from in front.”

She grinned back for just a second before shimmying forward and then waiting impatiently as he remounted behind her and clipped in. As soon as she heard the carabiner click closed she said, “Let’s go!” and Toothless rose straight into the air.

Hiccup’s hands rested lightly above her hips as they flew. Once they were over open water again he leaned forward to say over her shoulder, “How ’bout a little firepower, bud?” Toothless nodded and then shot a blue-white fireball; with a tilt of his wings they rode over the thermal it produced, and she laughed. When he did it again she threw her hands into the air with a whoop as they bounced upward. Toothless snickered in reply. She could have sworn she felt Hiccup’s grip tighten on her hips, and resisted the urge to collapse back into him. She did lean back, though, just enough to tip her head to the sky, and sighed.

The next island they landed on was larger, and this time when he unclipped them he stood back, at the ready to help her dismount, should she need it. She slithered to the ground with a bump and leaned for a moment against Toothless’ side. Then she walked around to look him in the eye, feeling like she should say something but unsure of what it could be. She settled on something she’d learned for the old village: “Þakka fyrir.” Even that thanks didn’t seem like enough, though when she glanced up at Hiccup his gaze was heavy on her. Probably he was just trying to see clearly in the gloom.

“I don’t know how you do it,” she said, looking from man to dragon and back again. “How do you just walk around when that is what flying feels like?”

He fixed her with a look. “Officially, I have no idea what riding a dragon feels like.” She nodded her understanding. She’d had no plans to tell anyone about this anyway, and no words for it even if she’d wanted to. He ran a hand through his hair. “Between you and me, I’m not sure how we do it, either.”

They sat for a while on a boulder as Toothless rested. Though her phone was tucked in her pocket, the thought of taking it out to try to capture the star-freckled night never crossed her mind. Nothing could ever depict the sublime view faithfully; nothing could ever come close to adequately communicating the awe she felt. Her thanks to Toothless had not been enough, and she knew that nothing she could say to or do for Hiccup would be enough, either.

In a less overwhelming setting she would have felt shy sitting next to him so quietly for so long. He seemed content not to speak, one leg stretched out and the other propped on the rock as he leaned back on his hands, face tipped skyward. They left each other to their own thoughts, though awareness of him swirled through hers. For the first time she recognized how much space he took up in the world. Next to him, with Toothless nearby, under this infinite sky, she felt small.

All too soon he rose. Shielded by the dark, she let herself take in the grace with which he moved.

“It must be gorgeous out here at sunrise.” To be surrounded by water slowly turning coral as the sun crept over the horizon, to hear nothing but the waves and your own heartbeat: small wonder she sounded so wistful.

“It is.” His words were sure but soft, not quite sad but perhaps apologetic. To keep him from having to state the obvious she joined him. Somehow, despite the wonder she’d experienced, her soul still ached for something she didn’t dare put into words.

Because it is apparently still 2013 in my soul, I’d really like Merida to have a you’re my king and I’m your lionheart moment. I’m not sure what it would be, though. In the modern time they’re not going to have any actual physical conflict to deal with, and no opportunity for her to step between him and danger, which is what I picture happening as an expression of her care and regard for him.

LJ don’t you dare put a song in here— Too late, it’s been stuck in my head for several days and fits the mood and themes of this story. “O, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast” is a poem written by Robert Burns and published in 1800, after his death. It’s been set to various tunes (including by Mendelssohn), but the version I heard first was by RURA. It seems to me, who has no knowledge of guitar-playing, that that arrangement is probably not super hard; so Merida learns it by listening to it a bunch and finding the chords online and practicing it often.

O, wert thou in the cauld blast, On yonder lea, on yonder lea; My plaidie to the angry airt, I’d shelter thee, I’d shelter thee: Or did Misfortune’s bitter storms Around thee blaw, around thee blaw, Thy bield should be my bosom, To share it a’, to share it a’.

Or were I in the wildest waste, Sae black and bare, sae black and bare, The desert were a Paradise, If thou wert there, if thou wert there. Or were I monarch o’ the globe, Wi’ thee to reign, wi’ thee to reign; The brightest jewel in my crown Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.

The Scots is not so difficult to read, but I had to look up the words to understand them as sung. So I think it’s fair for Hiccup, when he comes upon her singing it, to say at the end,

“You’d think growing up here I’d understand Scottish stuff better, but I didn’t get all the words.”

She shrugged, and he noticed the way she didn’t look at him. “It makes sense. Some of the words are in the Scots language, and they were written, erm, two or three hundred years ago.”

“What’s it about?”

“Oh, just the usual love-song shite.” Her chuckle was forced and hollow. He sat himself in an empty chair near her stool and waited, looking up at her, until she sighed and reached for the page. Her eyes scanned the lines as she offered a translation. “O, were you in the cold blast on yonder meadow, my plaid—a plaid is a garment, not just a pattern—to the angry...direction, like of the wind, I’d shelter you; or did Misfortune’s bitter storms around you blow, your protection would be my bosom, to share it all. Or were I in the wildest waste, so black and bare, the desert were—would be a Paradise, if you were there. Or were I monarch of the globe, with you to reign, the brightest jewel in my crown would be my king.”

As she’d read her voice had grown quieter; by the end it was a gentle murmur that felt inexplicably intimate. His own swallow felt loud in comparison, but he tried to match her volume.

“I’m pretty sure the song said ‘would be my queen.’”

She looked at him then and her eyes were molten. “It does.”

Did she mean what it sounded like she did, or had his imagination, his hopes, gotten away from him? He sucked in a breath.

Leaning forward, he lifted his face to her. One of her hands held the guitar to her as she shifted, too; the other she raised to his cheek, trailing her fingertips to his jaw. A thrill raced down his spine. Whatever she saw in his expression brought out a flush across her own cheeks. She didn’t drop her hand, though. Two could play at that game: so he reached up and settled his hand on her knee and was rewarded with the softest of gasps. When he moved even closer her fingers slid across his skin; he shivered and swept his thumb along the outside of her knee. Merida’s hand skated down the side of his neck and her fingertips came to rest in the hair at the nape of his neck and he nearly groaned aloud. Her lips twitched, and then she smiled—just a tiny, hopeful thing that made his breath catch all the same.

“Merida.” His voice was a rasp; her eyes blew wider at the sound and her lips parted. “Can I—?” She was nodding before he finished the question.

It was his turn to smile. “So impatient,” he murmured teasingly, tapping his thumb against her knee.

But she shook her head. “You’ve no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this.”

He surged up, rising from the chair just enough to get a knee down on the seat; it narrowed the gap between them enough that she didn’t have to lean quite so precariously. Still he wished they were closer, wished he could throw the guitar aside to get his arms around her and twine his fingers in her curls. He settled for drinking her in, her rosy cheeks and brilliant eyes now drooping closed, as she stooped to meet him. When she was close enough that he could feel her breath on his lips she paused; their eyes met and this time her smile was full of mischief. He narrowed his eyes and let one corner of his mouth lift in a smirk, ready to wait her out, sure that she would break first. Although her lips were so close...

“Code green!” squawked Tuffnut over the radio. “Big old code green! All over my face!”

She startled back, then clutched at his shoulder to keep her balance on the stool. At the same time that his head whipped toward the offending device, his grip on her leg tightened so that she wouldn’t fall; she squeaked, her eyes dropping to his hand on her. He first loosened his hold, then took his hand away altogether as she slowly drew back hers from his shoulder.

They stared at each other in silence for a long moment. Then he cleared his throat. “I should deal with that.”

She nodded. “Right. Off you go, then,” she added, with a levity that rang false.

When he stood she made no effort to disguise the appreciation with which she watched him. He stepped in close to murmur in her ear, “You would’ve moved first.”

Goosebumps prickled the side of her neck where his breath fanned across it. Subconsciously she tilted her head a fraction of an inch, baring more of her throat. Still, she let out a quiet snort. “You wish.”

“Well, yeah,” he said, then began backing toward the door. “That’s why I asked to kiss you.”

The last thing he saw before he turned to jog off was her failing to hide a bashful but pleased smile.

After that they don’t get around to kissing and don’t even really get to hang out alone much, but they do stare and smile at each other more. The only reason everybody else doesn’t notice is because preparations for the season gear up.

They are in unspoken agreement that whatever there is between them is not up for public discussion. If it takes pretending a certain amount of indifference to keep others from catching on, so be it. But they can’t entirely ignore each other, because that would be noteworthy, too, so they have a fine line to walk.

And they also don’t get the chance to talk about it with each other. They almost kissed once, yes, but neither knows with any certainty how the other feels. Is it just attraction, or are there actual feelings? Would either be horrified or pleased to hear that the other has non-platonic feelings for them?

You cannot tell me that Hiccup doesn’t do the Steve Rogers Wistfully Watching Peggy Carter Walk Away thing with Merida at least once. And Merida nearly gets caught staring at him, too, entranced by his hands as he fixes a stuck mechanism or by his gentleness as he works with an injured dragon or by the light in his eyes when he gets an idea. She’s never been a romantic but she finds herself daydreaming about him.

She stepped into the forge, leaning on the railing that kept visitors from intruding into the workspace. Hiccup was mostly turned away from her, his heavy leather apron tied around his waist as he stood at the grindstone; she watched as he pumped the treadle with his foot and lowered a piece of metal to the stone. In the movies blacksmiths were always musclebound, thick-necked and brawny, wielding heavy hammers with ease, banging away at glowing lumps of iron. By contrast, Hiccup was lean and long, and stronger than he looked. Even with that strength, though, he didn’t rely on brute force when faced with obstacles; instead he used his clever hands and his wickedly sharp mind. Thinking about the way he might apply that combination of traits in an interpersonal relationship made her feel tingly all over.

The movies also often had the blacksmith shirtless under his apron. While she wouldn’t object to seeing Hiccup without a shirt, they both had too much common sense for it to be a possibility—at least while he worked in the forge. She held out hope for catching him shirtless some other time.

She waited until he lifted the rod from the stone and the noise of grinding stopped. Then she called, “Hey,” loud enough to be heard by anyone passing outside, “is Gobber around?”

He glanced over his shoulder, then around the otherwise-deserted forge. “Nope, sorry.”

“That’s a shame.” There was no evidence in her expression that she meant the words.

He put down the metal and picked up a rag, wiping his hands on it. “Is there anything I can help you with?” he asked solicitously.

Merida let her gaze travel the length of him. “I’m sure,” she murmured, looking up at him through half-lidded eyes. “You’re good with your hands, aren’t you?”

“You’ll have to be the judge of that.” He sauntered over to her and set said hands on the railing inside of where hers rested, his palms up. She straightened a little; then, carefully, she traced her fingertips across his skin, from his wrists across his palms and down the length of his fingers. Upon reaching his fingertips she retraced her path. As she did he curled his fingers upward so that they caressed her hands in return, and she shivered.

She lifted his left hand from the railing, cradling it in hers. They were less scarred than she might have imagined, given his habits. She smoothed her thumb over the creases on his palm. His hands might well be her favorite part of him, she thought, fighting the urge to do something unbearably soppy like kissing his palm or pressing it to her cheek. Even if there was no one around to see, she would never forgive herself if she did such a thing.

Instead she twined her fingers with his and tilted her face up. Clever as he was, he took the hint without hesitation, and leaned toward her.

Through the open door came Gobber’s tuneless whistling. By the time he trudged in, Hiccup was back at the grindstone and Merida was slumped against the wall, studying her nails.

When he saw her his eyes narrowed. “And what’re you doin’ here?”

“One of the buckles on my armguard is loose.” She pulled it from her back pocket and tossed it to him.

Gobber held it up to examine the issue. “Just needs a rivet, looks like. And he couldn’t help you?” he asked, tilting his head in Hiccup’s direction.

She shrugged one shoulder and hoped her voice stayed even as she said, “He was busy with something else.”

“You don’t say,” Gobber replied, desert-dry.

Before the season begins the gang always has an epic game of Capture the Flag. Merida and Hiccup end up on different teams and keep getting glimpses of each other running through the woods and it’s very mythical.

Oh man so I was thinking that the fam would come back on a holiday to visit Merida in Berk, but what if the young lords came too? Maybe not at the same time as the DunBrochs but at the same time as each other. That would probably be too much but the possibilities! Macintosh trying to show off for Astrid and Ruffnut. Dingwall taking an “herbal remedy” for something and instead of tripping becoming like terrifying lucid for the first time that any of them remember. (On a related subject why do I recall an episode of the show where Tuff falls under the influence of some kind of hallucinogenic? Am I making that up or did it really happen? There’s certainly no way to find out.) MacGuffin and Fishlegs separated at birth theories. All of them still kind of vaguely hitting on Merida or at least trying to get her attention and Hiccup noticing this, but not feeling like he can do anything about it, and finding himself wishing they were actually together.

That Hiccup likes Merida so much is part of the reason why he tells his dad they need to let her go home at the end of the season. Stoick is like “This was your idea to begin with, why are you like this.” As the governor Stoick would be able to offer some other job to Merida so she could stick around, but the rangers are under Hiccup’s leadership and Stoick doesn’t interfere with them. As Hiccup’s father Stoick thinks that this is a mistake that Hiccup needs to make and deal with the consequences of himself.

“Can we talk for a sec?”

She nodded, cheeks rosy and eyes sparkling with laughter at one of Tuff’s idiotic stories. There was a hint of sunburn at the tip of her nose, and the freckles that had faded nearly to invisibility over the winter were back, dusting her cheeks. Her hair was thrown up in a riotous bun at the crown of her head. She had her ranger gear on—though the shirt was actually one Snotlout had outgrown a few years ago, it’d been well laundered before it was passed on to her, and she didn’t seem to mind it being a hand-me-down—and there was a whiff of Zippleback gas about her. She looked well. It made this all the harder.

Without preamble he said, “At the end of the season, you can go.”

Her smile faltered a bit. “Go...where?”

“Home.” He tried to infuse the word with as much cheer as he could muster without sounding deranged.

Now the smile was completely gone and a frown creased her brow. This was not going the way he’d hoped it would. “Have I done something wrong?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No complaints that I’ve heard.”

“Then why do you want me to leave?” The hurt in the question stabbed at him.

“I don’t want—” What he wanted was not the point. Again he shook his head. “Merida. Don’t you remember last winter, how hard it was for you?”

“It was hard,” she allowed, “and I wasn’t prepared for it. But I know better now. This one’ll go easier.” The words were firm and confident and he knew she believed them, knew she’d try to endure whatever came until she made it through or it broke her. He couldn��t risk that.

“What if it doesn’t?”

“It will. You said it yourself: I’m strong.” He had to drop his eyes then, couldn’t look her in the face.

“You are.” Then he forced himself to meet her gaze. “But you’ll be better off somewhere you belong.”

She sucked in a breath, looking utterly stricken. The breath itself seemed to draw her a step back from him, and he wanted to take it all back. But he was right. He didn’t want her to suffer, didn’t want her to be sad.

Like she was right now.

Boy, had he messed up.

“And that’s not here.” The way her voice cracked midway through the simple statement sent a dagger into his heart.

“I didn’t mean—” he began, but she cut him off with a shake of her head. Now everything he should have said from the first, that if anything happened to her because of him he’d never forgive himself, that she’d been the brightest part of the winter, nearly the whole year, that the idea of her not being there anymore made him feel hollow, was choking him. She shook her head again, decisively, eyes closed, face wan, and then turned to go.

But at the door she paused. After a long moment she looked back at him.

“I know it was cold, and I struggled. But what I remember of the winter,” she said, “is that you were there to make sure I was warm.”

Then she was gone, and it felt like the blood in his veins had turned to ice.

She doesn’t tell anyone that she’s being kicked off the island; that would be too humiliating. To some she jokes that they’d wanted to get rid of her along, and they should be happy to hear she’s going. To others she says that her family had missed her too much, or that she had to go save her parents from her brothers, or some other silly but plausible thing.

When she hears that Merida’s leaving, Astrid looks sharply at Hiccup. They have a conversation where Astrid goes “So now it’s okay for her to leave? Now you trust her not to tell?” and Hiccup says something vague like “It’s for the best” and she gets him to actually tell the truth about why he thinks that and there is a part of her that hurts a little to hear him admit that he’s interested in someone else—not that she’s been pining for him, or wants him back; it’s just that it feels like the end of an era. Now she hopes she can still help him recognize when he’s being a complete idiot.

Merida uses some of her plaid to make a pillow for Gobber and just leaves it on the couch without saying anything as a thank-you for letting her invade his home.

At this end-of-season party Merida is right there with them. Tuffnut tries to get her to fully shave her head this time and she says she will if he does, fairly confident that he won’t do it; Ruffnut suggests Merida let her give her a stick-and-poke tattoo, like of a rune, and Merida is more tempted than she should be. Only the threat of a gnarly infection stops her from taking Ruff up on the offer.

(Sidebar: I idly searched for bindrunes and found this one by The Wicked Griffin that would be perfect for this situation. For “Friendship in the Mead Hall,” with “Gebo for generosity, Mannaz for community and human connections, and Wunjo for joy and pleasure, this bind rune fosters deep and meaningful friendships. It’s particularly suited for enhancing social bonds and creating an atmosphere of joy and goodwill in group settings, making it perfect for communal gatherings and team-building.”)

She spends time at the party with Gobber and Stoick, and with some of the older residents she worked with while learning the local folklore; Gothi prods her to sing one of the Berkian songs she’s learned. It’s nerve-wracking when people quiet down to listen to her, but then they join in on the chorus and she’s filled with pride and a feeling of belonging that she never would have expected to have anywhere but at home, despite what some people think. Hiccup watches her with his heart in his eyes and a melancholy smile, both of which his dad notices.

The rangers try to plan her a separate goodbye party, but a storm coming in moves up her departure. They settle for hugs and high-fives; Fishlegs is the only one who promises to keep in touch, and she knows he will. They’re all surprised when Stoick initiates a hug with her. To Hiccup, though, she simply offers her hand to shake and tells him, “Thank you for the greatest adventure I’ve ever had.”

Once she’s gone Fishlegs is the only one to outright tell Hiccup he’s an idiot (about this particular issue, that is). Everybody else just seems to mention how much easier this was last year, with another pair of hands, and when he reminds them of how much they complained about having to teach her last year they act like they have no memory of such a thing. “Okay, yeah,” Ruffnut finally admits, “but we complain about everything. We liked having her here, though.”

Merida makes it home, hugs her family a lot, sleeps well in her own bed, and goes on lots of long rides with Angus. That’s the best part of the whole situation. Neither of her parents press her to get a job right away, but after a while she does because she can’t just mope around the house missing Berk and everyone on it.

She’s still furious with him, and hurt, and misses his smirks and the way he said her name and a million other things. Over and over she picks up the phone to call and let him have it, only to throw it down again. She tries not to wonder what went wrong between them, or if she just imagined their connection; but every time she’s convinced she did she remembers all of the little moments between them and is certain that they meant as much to him as they did to her.

The twins very occasionally send her memes. The majority of the time she has no idea what they mean (though the ones making fun of Hiccup are self-explanatory).

At least getting them shows they remember her.

Meanwhile, Stoick calls Hiccup into his office and tells him to get his act together. His moping isn’t helping anybody, and before they know it they’ll be starting to prepare for the upcoming season, so he’d better sort out whatever’s wrong. The phrase “Do what you have to” is used and that’s how Hiccup knows it’s bad, because getting such broad permission from Stoick is unusual.

Her parents were still snogging when the knock came, so she went to the door, trying to put on a cheerful look for the first-footer as she went. Dad had said that Dougie Bell had done the honors last year, so it probably wouldn’t be him again—the local lads took it in turns to first-foot at the laird’s house, since the DunBrochs were always generous with the whisky and the cake, and Dad usually slipped the visitor a twenty-pound note as well. Merida fixed on a smile before opening the door; then her mouth dropped open.

There were snowflakes dusting his hair, which was longer than she remembered it being, and the shoulders of his dark coat. It was, she recalled distantly, the one he wore in autumn in Berk, not his heavy winter coat. At his feet was a large tote bag. His eyes lit up when he saw her, and warmth flooded her.

“Happy New Year,” he said, his voice quiet.

“What—? Hiccup?” She shook her head, then blinked up at him. “You’re here. What are you doing here?” She felt a definite sense of déjà vu.

“For goodness’ sake, let the lad in!” her mum called.

“And stop lettin’ all the heating out,” her dad added.

Merida stepped back automatically, pulling the door open wider. Despite her parents’ words Hiccup remained where he was. “Is this okay?” he asked. “I mean, I am a Viking.” He gave her a lopsided grin.

Her heart ached at the sight of it. She lifted one arm and rested her hand on her opposite shoulder, shielding herself. “Are you bringing trouble?”

His expression went serious and he shook his head. “I’m here to fix it, if I can.” He met her eyes evenly and she saw how earnest he was. She took a deep breath and nodded, gesturing him in. Before she closed the door she scanned the darkness, wondering if there was a dragon out there somewhere.

Dad stumped forward, a dram in each hand, but he too stopped short at the sight of their visitor. He peered at Hiccup. “Is that young Haddock?”

“Hi. It’s nice to see you again.”

“Hiccup,” Mum said from Dad’s side, unflappable as always. She looked from Hiccup to Merida and back. “We certainly weren’t expecting you for our first-footer.”

“Yeah, I heard some guys in the pub back in town talking about coming and I convinced them to let me do it instead.” He offered that charming smile.

Mum ushered him further in, toward the warmth of the family living room. He followed, carrying his bag and glancing around curiously. Nearer the door her dad gave Merida a confused look, to which she could only shrug.

Once again, Hiccup had everything: the coal, a tin of what she was sure were homemade biscuits, a souvenir jar of salt, a shiny silver coin, another bottle of the seaweed brandy. She wondered how he’d got all of it through customs. Her father exclaimed over the items; her mother looked impressed at his thoroughness. Dad pushed one of the drams at Hiccup, clinked their glasses, and slugged back his own tot before wresting open the seaweed brandy. Hiccup hid his chuckle with a sip of his whisky.

The traditional items weren’t all he’d brought, though. Her parents settled onto the couch—thankfully not both cuddled into Dad’s armchair, the way they’d been before—and she took the armchair, still off-balance by him being here. He’d said he wanted to fix things, but how could he? She supposed showing up here, hundreds of miles from his own home and family on a bitter night, was a start.

Still standing, he pulled wrapped presents from the bag. Three identical packages were set aside for the boys to open later. There was a sheathed dagger for her dad; she had no doubt it was Gobber’s handiwork, and a wistful little “Aww” escaped her when Dad pulled the blade free. Her mum chuckled over a figurine of a sheep, its wooden body covered in dark fleece and a lifelike expression of bewilderment carved on its little face.

Their gifts dispensed, Hiccup turned to her. “This is for you.” He handed her the soft bundle, then tugged the footstool closer to her chair and perched at the edge of it. As she plucked at the tape he explained, “The big news this fall was that Fishlegs discovered some kind of ancient treasure hoard in the archives. See, after you inspired him to start recording our folklore, he’s been spending more time there. One day he found an old chest full of stuff—our best guess is that it’s from the Viking era, though he’s been working on getting things dated more precisely, so that’ll keep him busy for a while. The chest had everything from brooches, beads, coins, a glass jar full of something that smelled unbelievably rancid...” He shuddered in disgust at the memory before going on, with a nod at her present, “To a small piece of cloth in a pattern that nobody down at the weaving hut had ever seen before.”

With that description, she might have expected a more complicated pattern than what she drew from the package. It was woolen, of course, and woven in diamonds—or, as closer inspection revealed, diamonds whose halves didn’t match up; that was probably significant for some textile-production-related reason she couldn’t hope to understand. Its edges were hemmed simply, and up close she could also see that its rich green hue was produced by a mixture of lighter green and charcoal yarns.

He was saying, “Geit and Kaða and the rest of the weavers were really excited to recreate it. The only reason they even let me take this was because it was for you.

“It’s not a plaid, exactly,” he said, voice now pitched so only she could hear as he took it from her, “but all the same...” He wrapped it around her shoulders, then smoothed it down her arms. His hands lingered at her elbows for just a moment before he moved away. She missed his closeness immediately, and drew the fabric around her.

After a moment her mum cleared her throat delicately. Merida blinked at her parents, somewhat surprised to see them still in the room. Elinor’s eyes assessed her daughter and their visitor, seeming to measure the distance between them, the angle at which he leaned toward her; Fergus’ smile was almost smug, but a bit too sharp.

“Have you got a place to stay, Hiccup?” Mum asked.

“I got a room over the pub.” He got to his feet and Merida felt a little wave of panic as he shuffled a few steps toward the door. This couldn’t be it. He couldn’t be leaving so soon, not after coming so far and doing so much. Not before she’d had a chance to tell him what she really thought of him sending her away. She shot a glance at her mum.

Elinor too stood, rising from the worn couch with an ease and grace that Merida could never hope to emulate. “Well, you’ll not be going back there tonight,” she said. “You can stay in one of the guest rooms.”

“Aye, what would your da think if he heard we’d sent you out to rent a room?” Fergus shook his head as he lumbered upward. “Especially after you looked after Merida last winter.”

Her face flushed. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Hiccup tilt his head to study her for a moment. When he’d turned back to her parents she stood, feeling steadier without his attention on her.

“It doesn’t sound like you’re going to take no for an answer—” They shook their heads. “—so thank you. I appreciate it.”

“You’ve got this year off to a promising start for us,” Mum said. “Merida will show you to the guest room when you’re ready.” As she passed Mum kissed her forehead and patted Hiccup’s shoulder warmly. Dad followed, but before they’d made it out of the room he’d scooped her up into his arms; her yelp of surprise dissolved into laughter around his name. Merida couldn’t help but smile after them.

The smile faded as she looked at him again. “When do you have to head back?”

“Tomorrow—well, today. It depends on the weather, but...later.”

“Then you’d best get some rest before then.” He remained in place, staring at her. When the wrap began to slip from her shoulders she hitched it back into place. He noticed, of course; he always did. It emboldened him to move toward her in a slow stalking tread.

“Can we please talk?” he beseeched. His low voice sent a shiver through her, but his words strengthened her resolve. Now he wanted to talk? He’d had months to want that—he should have wanted it months ago, when he’d told her she had to leave. You refused to talk to him after that, a traitorous whisper in her head reminded her. You could have let him explain. She shook it away.

“Later,” she told Hiccup. “I doubt it’s good luck to shout at your first-footer.”

Sleep did not come easily, and she rose and dressed earlier than she normally would have the morning after Hogmanay. From the kitchen came the smells of tea and coffee, sausage and beans and eggs and toast. Her parents were both at the cooker; there was no sign of the boys, which was no surprise since she’d heard them come in around three. Hiccup wasn’t there, either, and she felt relieved and disappointed at the same time. Then he ducked in, in jeans and a patterned jumper, giving her a hesitant smile.

She could only pick at a plate of eggs and sausage, not quite ignoring him where he sat across the table. Though Hiccup’s eyes widened at the full plate her dad set in front of him he had no problem polishing off haggis and black pudding and all. Once his plate was clean, though, he put his fork down and refused any second helpings with a hand on his stomach. “It was delicious, thanks,” he told Mum and Dad, smiling and sincere. Then he turned to her and she felt the weight of his focus, couldn’t help but give him her full attention in return. “When you’re done, would you like to go for a walk?”

She nodded and drained her mug of tea, willfully ignoring her parents’ knowing smiles. Those smiles would be gone if they had any idea what had actually precipitated her return home. It would be better for Hiccup if this conversation took place far from curious ears.

It only seemed right to lead him to the stone circle. They walked without speaking: he trusted her enough to follow him through the snowy wood, though that amount of trust seemed painfully paltry. When they reached the stones she let him explore in silence for a few minutes while she sat on a rough wooden bench at the edge of the clearing, watched him brush his fingers over the stones—no gloves for him; apparently he didn’t find it that cold here, though she had her hands jammed into her pockets, even with gloves on—and squint up at the carvings that topped them. Then he joined her, leaving a respectable distance between them.

“Why are you here?” She asked it without looking at him, tone level.

“I wanted to apologize for what happened.” At her venomous strike of a glance he corrected himself: “For sending you away. Especially with so little explanation.”

“Why did you do it?” Sorrow bled into her words. “What did I do wrong, Hiccup?”

He swiveled to face her, one leg canted onto the bench. “Nothing! It wasn’t anything you did. It was all me. I thought...” He sighed and pushed a hand through his hair. “I thought I was protecting you by making you leave. I meant what I said, that I didn’t want you to have to suffer through another winter when the last one was so hard.”

“I told you I’d be okay! Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Wha—? Of course not!”

“Then why didn’t you believe me? You’ve never trusted me,” she said, shaking her head, “not from the first time we met.”

“Maybe because the first time we met you were actively breaking the rules,” he pointed out.

Merida rolled her eyes. “Ah, this again. Did me breaking the rules really turn out so badly for any of us?”

“Well, I mean, not in the grand scheme of things, but—”

She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “But you think you’re the only one who should get to do whatever they want.”

“No, I don’t!” he protested, though feebly. He rallied, his voice lowering as he pointed out, “And the last time I broke a big rule I brought you along with me. As I recall, you didn’t say no to that.” His eyes flashed and she thought again of the stars all around them, that feeling of freedom.

She raised her chin. “Of course I didn’t. And I’m glad I didn’t, because that was...” He was watching her almost too keenly for her to bear. She looked away, toward the stone ring, through it to the woods beyond. There were things she would have to admit in this conversation that she’d never said aloud, or never before meant; the prospect of such emotional exposure had her calf muscles twitching, ready to carry her away. She gripped the edge of the bench. It took more of an effort than she cared to acknowledge to meet his gaze again, and to say, “That was the best night of my life.”

“Merida,” he breathed, leaning toward her, reaching out. But she shook her head.

“No. You can’t expect it to be that easy. Come here, charm my parents, give us gifts, and remind me of what we had once—what you took from me—and expect me to forgive you, just like that?” Her emphatic snap was foiled by her gloved fingers, and she glared at them for a second. When she looked back up there was a hint of a smile on his face, though he flattened his lips the moment he saw her looking.

“It’s not like I’m trying to bribe you guys. It’s the holidays. Gifts are traditional. And yeah, I thought it might soften you up—your parents, especially,” he allowed. “I figured it couldn’t hurt; I don’t know what you told them about anything, so I didn’t know what I was walking into there.”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t besmirch your reputation,” she said nastily. “Why would I tell anyone that I’d not only been fired, but kicked off an entire island? Do you know how humiliating that would be? My mum already thinks I’m...” This wasn’t about that. “I didn’t tell them it was your decision.”

“It was a stupid one,” he muttered.

“It made me feel stupid. I thought when we almost kissed that it meant something.” She wrapped her arms tightly around her middle, fixing her attention on a patch of snow at the base of the nearest stone. “That you might feel for me the way I felt for you.”

From the corner of her eye she saw his Adam’s apple bob. “That’s what I hoped too.”

“And how did you feel?” She dared a more direct glance at him.

For a moment—much too long of a moment for her liking—he didn’t answer, instead peeking at her through his eyelashes, his cheeks pink. With any luck he wouldn’t be able to tell how bloody adorable she found him right now.

“Did you know that I was jealous of Fishlegs?” In her surprise she let out a sort of choked snort. “You’d borrowed a sweatshirt from him one day and I saw you wearing it and I thought...”

It was obvious what he thought, but she wanted to hear him say it. “Thought what?” she asked, affecting a puzzled frown.

His expression said he didn’t buy the act. Still, he answered, “I accused the two of you of having a thing.” Apparently it was obvious that she’d been about to drag this out by asking exactly what kind of thing he meant, because he clarified, “A romantic relationship of some kind.”

“Because he considerately let me borrow a sweatshirt he probably wasn’t wearing at the time.” He nodded.

Slowly and clearly, as if explaining to an imbecile, she said, “It’s cold in Berk. You absolute bawbag.”

“He said basically the same thing,” Hiccup sighed. “Without what I assume was an insult.”

“Would you like me to translate that one, or offer some alternatives?” she offered sweetly. “There are plenty that apply.”

“I’m good, thanks. Anyway, even after he set me straight, I still told him to make sure he didn’t get distracted before I ran away.” Her snicker cut off when he caught her eye and said, “Meanwhile I was the one who couldn’t get you out of my head.”

His voice had gone low again when he said her name and she shivered. “You’ve driven me crazy since the day we met. At first it was just because I thought you were reckless and wild and hardheaded—” She smiled smugly. “—and spoiled—”

The smile dropped. “You were doing so well up until that last one.”

“Can’t you tell I’m trying to flatter you?” he returned, deadpan. “Besides, I said that’s what I thought at first. And you know, I’m not really the best judge of what spoiled or entitled or whatever looks like; I got away with a lot over the years because of who my dad was, though if you’d asked me about it when I was twelve or so I would’ve told you I was neglected and ignored, when really I had more freedom than I should have to do almost whatever I wanted, plus safety from most real consequences—”

“Hiccup. Could you get back to the point? We don’t have all day.”

“Right. What was I...”

“All the ways I drive you crazy,” she reminded him. Without meaning to she leaned toward him.

“When I saw the, the pattern drawn out for that fabric the first person I thought of was you. You’re the first person I think of when a lot of stuff happens,” he said, studying her face, “but this time I remembered you singing that song. The sound of your voice, and your fingers on the guitar strings, and the light on your hair... Do you know how many times I’ve listened to that song in the past couple months? And it never sounds as good as when you sang it.” She shivered; he took it as a cue to shift closer to her, and she did not protest. “It was just kind of torture every time I put it on, you know? Everything that reminds me of you is, and so many things remind me of you now. And with that song, it makes me think of how proud you were of your plaid and your family and your home. That’s the thing: if I liked you as much as I thought I did—if I cared about you at all, in any way—I couldn’t keep you away from the things you loved. So I had to let you go. I had to make sure you were okay.”

It took her a moment to recover from that, and to maintain her resolve. It was a challenge with him sitting so near and saying such lovely things.

She was able to master her feelings, though, and over-enunciated once again to say, “You are not my dad.” For good measure she added a poke to his arm. “You don’t get to decide what I do with my life.” She paused before asking, with a furrowed brow and screwed-up mouth, “D’you think even he tries to tell me what to do anymore?”

“I assume that’s a rhetorical question.”

“Well done.” She rubbed her forehead, then sighed. “You should’ve told me all this back then. You should’ve told me any of this back then and it would’ve kept me from feeling awful.” “Oh, yeah, that would've gone great. ‘Merida, I like you a lot, so I think you should leave.’ I can hear the argument now.” He rolled his eyes. “Because we’re having it now, but worse than it would’ve been then, because I’ve had six months to get ready for it!”

He opened his mouth to say something—likely to argue about the timeline—but reconsidered at her challenging look. What would she have said those months ago, if he had explained? Almost certainly the same things she was saying now. But hearing that he was worried, that he cared about her, would have softened the hurt. It was doing that now, though she wondered if maybe it shouldn’t be.

“For your information, and for the last time, I would have been okay. Especially if we’d gotten around to kissing,” she couldn’t help but add.

His eyes lingered on her mouth. When he’d torn his attention from it he said, “So now that I’ve spilled my guts about how I feel about you, does that sound anything like the way you feel about me? Or, uh,” he amended, scratching his jaw, his gaze darting away, “how you felt, maybe?”

With a huff she flopped back against the bench, crossing her arms again and staring resolutely ahead. “I’ve already said I wanted to kiss you. D’you need me to tell you how wonderful you are as well?” “Wanting to kiss me just means you wanted a piece of all this,” he said with a smirk, sweeping one hand through the air from head to toe. She groaned. “It doesn’t necessarily mean you actually have—had—any feelings for me.” “Oh, I’ve feelings, all right,” she grumbled. Despite what she’d said earlier about not having all day, she took a moment to collect her thoughts. Might as well start from the beginning, she thought, so began, “Almost since the moment we met I’ve been in awe of you. Sometimes just in awe of how stupid such a brilliant man could be.” At that she shot him a pointed glance, one he met with a wry smile; her eyes dropped as she went on, “But mostly of how clever and cool and handsome and kind you are. I tried not to let it show how much I liked you, because I knew the rest of that lot would take the piss.” Though she rolled her eyes, her smile was fond. Then she cleared her throat a little, the smile flattening. “But also because I didn’t think that you liked me back, and I didn’t want to make things awkward between us. When you were so thoughtful at Hogmanay last year, and then taking me out with Toothless, I told myself you were just being considerate and that you would’ve done as much for anyone. Until you wanted to kiss me. I may not be as brilliant as you, but I was pretty sure that meant you liked me.

“And then,” she said, looking unflinchingly into his eyes, “you told me I didn’t belong there. That I didn’t belong with you.” Before she’d hidden it, but here and now she let him see how much that had hurt.

Contrition shadowed his face, drew his mouth down. “You must know that that was a lie. It seemed less...selfish to say that, than to tell the truth.” “Oh? And what is the truth?” “It would’ve just sounded like what you wanted to hear, and I couldn’t do that.”

Shaking her head, she slapped her gloved hands over her face. “Hiccup—” she began, dragging her hands down her cheeks; she stopped talking when he took her wrists and gently pulled her hands away. Her mouth stayed open soundlessly for a moment until she shut it.

“The truth is that you have a home there, with all of us. Especially with Gobber, who adores you, and with the twins, who treat you like one of them, which is a questionable and frankly dangerous situation to be in, and with my dad, who cares for you, and with me most of all.”

At first she thought the faint buzz was within her, sparking along her skin and through her veins. It was when his eyes flicked away from her face to his pocket and back again that she realized the buzzing was not a reaction to his words.

“Wherever I am, you have a home.” It sounded so like a promise, like a vow. It sounded wonderful.

Her heart thudded in her chest. Above its pounding she heard another buzz, and then a third.

“I’m sorry,” he said, squeezing her hands. The overcast sky turned his eyes a darker shade of green; she felt ensnared by them. “I was wrong to push you away, Merida, and I’ve regretted it every day.”

After the fourth buzz he let go of her hands to retrieve his phone, saying, “Sorry. I’d better check this” as he did.

Her mind a jumble and her heart swelling, she let her hands drop into her lap. Hiccup, on the other hand, grimaced as he swiped open his phone: clearly whatever was on the screen did not inspire optimism. She watched him scan his messages, watched his hands as he shot back a reply. When he looked up and caught her studying him, his eyes crinkled with an apologetic smile. This time the realization that he would be leaving soon left melancholy trickling from her chest into the pit of her stomach.

“I have to get going. Looks like there’s a storm coming in. And my dad is, uh...” His eyes dropped to the phone briefly before returning to her, paired with a wry twist of his mouth.

“Raging?” she ventured.

“Not yet. But he is anxious for me to get the helicopter back in one piece.”

She gawped. “You flew the helicopter down here?” How much must that have cost, in fuel alone?

He threw out his arms, almost launching his phone into the stone circle in the process. Who knew what that would have done to it?—probably sent it back a few hundred years in time. “Hey, he said that I should do what I had to do!”

She was gobsmacked—at the cost he’d incurred, at the risk he’d taken, at his father’s advice or command or whatever it was, at everything Hiccup had done for her. He stood, tucking the phone safely away again, and after a moment she gave herself a little shake and joined him.

Hiccup’s eyes roved over her face. “I wish I didn’t have to leave it like this, ’cause I know I’ve still got a long way to go before we’re back to where we were before you left. But...are we on the right track?”

He looked so hopeful and dear, and she wanted so badly to kiss him. If the storm took him to the depths of the sea or if life simply intervened, as was its way, and she never saw him again, she wanted to know what it felt like to have his lips on hers.

She reached her gloved hand up to trace her thumb over the scar on his chin, the knit fabric catching on his stubble. When she leaned in his breath stopped; with her hand laid along his jaw she gently turned his face, then pressed her lips to the scar. His Adam’s apple bobbed. No matter how much she longed to, she didn’t collapse into him, didn’t bury her face in his coat and breathe him in, didn’t turn his face back and tilt hers up and give him a proper kiss; but she did linger with her lips against his skin, her hand cupping his jaw.

Only reluctantly did she pull away, feeling that she’d stayed too long in close contact. That feeling fled when he turned his head back and dropped his forehead against hers.

(The fabric Fishlegs finds is, of course, based on actual textiles of the era. I’m amazed by and yearn for a swatch of this reconstructed design (though it's not the one described above).)

When he leaves the whole family troops out to see him off—or, in the triplets’ case, to see the helicopter off. This means no big goodbyes for Merida and Hiccup, but she tells him to message when he gets back. Once he’s gone Elinor wraps her arm around Merida on the walk home. Merida plays cards with her brothers to kill time until her phone finally buzzes with a message saying he’s home safely. That’s a relief, which she doesn’t mind telling him. He sends back that it was good to see her, and he hopes it won’t be the only time this year that he does.

When he hears where Hiccup had been, Gobber wants to know if Merida is coming back. Hiccup says he didn’t ask, as he had to apologize before he could do anything else. Gobber rolls his eyes, muttering that he better have groveled good and hard, before telling Hiccup with a sigh to let him know if his attic will be occupied again.

This whole interlude has made her current situation seem even more aimless.

With a sigh she opened her email. No responses from the applications she’d sent out recently, though that was to be expected, especially so soon after the new year. What wasn’t expected was the email from [email protected] with the subject line “Job Opening.” She clicked on it, taking a deep breath to try to ease the sudden twisting in her stomach.

After greeting her by name the message read,

We have an opening for a wildlife ranger/living history interpreter for the upcoming season. We would like to invite you to apply.

She chewed at a ragged cuticle for a brief moment before reading on.

The previous incumbent was a perfect fit for this role, excelling at both the outdoor and historical aspects. She was also well-liked by all of her coworkers, who praised her strong work ethic and determination. The fact that she was not asked to return was a mistake. The person responsible for this mistake has been reprimanded for it, severely and repeatedly, by many people.

She laughed quietly at that, though it was a bit strangled. Her leg jiggled beneath the table, an echo of the jittering in her midsection, as her eyes darted down the screen.

But even before the previous incumbent left her position he knew that he’d messed up. He is willing to do whatever it takes to rectify his error, especially since it soon became obvious that the previous incumbent was filling a gap in more than just these two departments.

Uniforms for both the ranger and interpreter roles will be provided. Housing is also provided, with a variety of options available; you may choose to live alone or with a housemate. There are multiple volunteers for that, though one has been particularly vociferous about how he’s already gone to the trouble of clearing out a room once and it might as well get used again.

A description of the role’s salary and full benefits is available upon request. Here’s a preview. Below the words was a photo. It wasn’t one that would ever appear in a brochure for the island, even if it weren’t slightly blurry, but to her it was a great enticement. In it the twins were sticking out their tongues, Ruff’s finger jammed up one of Tuffnut’s nostrils; Fishlegs was waving, and Snotlout had been caught in a genuine grin. In the background off to one side stood Astrid, Gobber, and Stoick, the top of the latter’s head out of frame. They were in the midst of conversation, and Gobber was handing Stoick a beer bottle. Evening sun glowed golden on their faces.

If you’re interested in this position, please let us know at your leisure. We look forward to hearing from you.

She pushed away from the table and strode to the door, back to the computer, again to the door. On the next pass she paused to look down at the screen, studying the photo, running her eyes over the words again, hearing them this time in Hiccup’s voice. After a moment she realized she was grinning. She whirled, biting down the smile, and crossed the room once more. This time when she returned to the table she whipped out the chair and sat.

With a few taps she opened a recent cover letter, one that had already been updated to include her job at the climbing gym, and subbed in the contact information for the main office. The last paragraph was the usual blather about how her skills would be an asset to the institution and how she was looking forward to hearing from them soon, and she was glad to erase it. She watched the cursor blink for a moment as she considered what to type in its place.

Why not the truth?

The year I worked on Berk changed my life. It was an unbelievable opportunity to learn about a new culture while employing my skills.

If hired, she typed, I look forward to resuming—no—rekindling warm relationships with the people of Berk.

She saved the file and replied to the email.

She tells her parents that they’ve offered her her job back and then comes clean about why she left. She has to; she can’t go back without letting them know about her struggles. (She keeps her promise about not telling anyone about the dragons, though.) They’re both sad and disappointed that she didn’t tell them how homesick she was, and unhappy with themselves for not noticing. She explains that this experience, all of it, was inevitable because she would have left home for good at some point. As predicted, Fergus is angry at Hiccup for upsetting his daughter so. Elinor is concerned that Hiccup’s visit swayed Merida too much, and she assures them that he’s not entirely forgiven yet.

When Merida arrives at the airport she’s surprised to see Astrid on pickup duty. She’d been hoping to see Hiccup first, of course, or Gobber, or Fishlegs, or Stoick; the twins not so much, because she isn’t sure they’ve got a valid driver’s license between them. Astrid smiles the way she does at visitors and helps Merida with her baggage and as they start the drive Merida is wary. This is not the welcome back she was expecting. Astrid chats cordially enough, asks about her flights, mentions that Hiccup got waylaid by a clutch of dragonlets, and says that they’re going to need to work on Merida’s axe skills this year and Merida is like What. “Your axe-handling needs work. We all know you prefer your bow, and your sword work is decent, but I want you able to hit the target with an axe, too.” Merida automatically responds “I can hit the target” and Astrid snorts “Barely” and Merida says “Am I missing something? You never approved of me being here, so this sudden acceptance is weird.”

Astrid drums her fingers on the wheel for a second before saying, “I still don’t think they should have bent the rules for you, and we’re not going to be best friends. But you haven’t told anyone about the dragons, even your friends when they visited—”

“We’re not that good of friends.”

“—and you work hard. I respect that. I can work with that.”

Merida can work with that, too. She settles back in her seat, feeling hope and excitement bubble up in her again.

The twins don’t really acknowledge that she’s been gone. Possibly they haven’t noticed. They just greet her like they saw her the day before.

Gobber sniffs, “So you’ve deigned to grace us with your presence again, have you?” But she notices that the attic is even neater and more comfortable than it had been before.

Just like before, she doesn’t see Hiccup right away, and when they do reunite it’s in the breakroom with others around.

“Welcome to Berk,” he said, shaking her hand firmly. “Are you ready for the greatest adventure of your life?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”

The End.

At least it should be, because that’s about as strong a closing exchange as I can imagine. But since they haven’t even gotten to kiss yet, there’s going to be a little more.

Merida of course takes the shawl with her. As soon as possible after arriving she takes it to the weaving hut and praises it to the weavers there, listening attentively to (though not completely understanding) their explanations of why it’s so special and how they recreated it. She also gets Fishlegs to show her his treasure hoard, which he is thrilled to do.

(Citation for the “weaving hut” (dyngja in Icelandic) that I keep mentioning)

The question of how to wear the shawl is one she hasn’t figured out an answer to yet. It seems too special to just keep warm in, and wearing it with her historical garb feels like a declaration, or like inviting herself into something she’s not sure she has a right to. She’s got time to think about it, though.

Hiccup knows that he can’t expect to pursue a romantic relationship with Merida as soon as she returns to Berk. He doesn’t want people to get the idea that his feelings for her are the only reason he asked her back, or to presume that she has any feelings for him that would pull her back; and he knows he may have to start not quite from the beginning, but neither from the height of their feelings.

Nobody who worked with her before she left would ever believe that she came back solely for him. They know she genuinely enjoys the work, and is fond of the island, so it’s no surprise that she’s come back. Just because most people know that he wasn’t the main draw doesn’t mean they won’t tease or insinuate, though.

(Fishlegs asks him if Hiccup can manage to patrol with her without getting too distracted, and cackles at the embarrassed glare Hiccup shoots him.)

He walks her home from the mead hall and contrives to brush his fingers against hers as they go. After the third time she hooks her pinky around his; when he glances over her cheeks are flushed. A week later she slumps against the wall outside the house and blinks slowly up at him, waiting with a thudding heart until he leans in to brush a kiss against her lips. When she sighs his name he wraps his arms around her and kisses her the way he’s been wanting to for most of the last year.

Midday’s torrential rain had abated, enough to open the attic window to a breeze warm at the edges. The mist that hung about outside after the storm gave the afternoon a glow, as light through sea glass. In the midst of that softness Merida lay on her back atop her bed, her curls spread across the old patchwork quilt. Beside her Hiccup was propped up on one elbow, his free hand gently carding through her hair, watching her eyelids flutter closed.

“I’m sorry, is this putting you to sleep?” he asked, voice low.

“Mmm.” Keeping her eyes closed, she snuggled down into the bed. “And what would you do if I said yes?”

“It’d be inconsiderate to keep you from your rest,” he said, “so I’d leave you to it.” Before he could move away her arm shot out, catching hold of his waist. His chuckle cut off when her hand slipped under his shirt and stroked his side; she opened her eyes to see him gazing down at her. She sat up enough to brush her lips against his just once before subsiding again. With admirable strength and control he lowered himself slowly, fingers still tangled in her splayed-out hair, until he hovered over her; his kiss was unhurried, by turns teasing and deep. Beneath him she trembled.

Some long moments later he moved away, lying back on his side with one arm tucked under his head. She rolled to face him, though she kept her hand exactly where it was. He reached out to sweep an errant tress off of her cheek; she nuzzled against his knuckles, then tucked her chin to press a kiss to the base of his palm.

“Tell me a story,” he murmured.

“What about?”

“Tell me...about why you’re cursed to make things that look like bears.”

She chuckled. “Alright,” she agreed, sweeping her thumb over his ribs. “But to understand that story, I have to first tell you a much older one. Once there was an ancient kingdom...” He closed his eyes and let the tale and her voice wash over him.

If this were a Real Fic I’d probably leave most of this last part out, because it’s just so typically me (oh baby baby). But it ties it all together, right.

Hiccup looked her way and asked, “That alright with you, mo bhanrigh?”

Her brain went completely blank. Whatever they’d just been discussing was gone, eclipsed by echoes of his last words. She felt more than heard her own sharp inward breath. He was watching her closely, his eyes bright.

“Merida?” he said. Too slowly she remembered Snotlout standing there; he was looking between them, some mixture of confusion and suspicion on his face. Hiccup, on the other hand, wore a tiny smirk. He knew exactly what he was doing to her, the bastard. That’s what talking about your feelings got you, she thought: a...friend who’d push your buttons in public.

Oh, who was she kidding? By now, there was no sense in pretending that their relationship was strictly platonic, especially not with all the kissing they’d been doing of late. And if that phrase meant to him what it did to her, she didn’t think he’d just throw it around.

Snotlout cleared his throat. She’d all but forgotten he was there, and when she glanced his way saw that his expression was expectant, bordering on impatient. Recalling that Hiccup had asked her a question she nodded, distantly wondering what she’d just agreed to. Snotlout cried “Great!” in false brightness, with a “Finally” added under his breath as he turned to leave; out in the hall he made a retching noise. Hiccup followed, winking as he passed.

It wasn’t until the next evening that she caught him alone. All that time she’d turned over his words in her head, wondering and hoping.

She bit her tongue to keep from snapping as he chattered about nonsense, even though she was sure he was doing it on purpose. When at last he paused to breathe she said, utterly casual, “That thing you said earlier, in Gaelic. Where’d you find that?” Someone could have given him a bad translation, on purpose or just by accident—when it came to the former, her brothers sprang to mind. But though they were tricksters, they weren’t cruel.

“I looked it up online,” he admitted.

“Aha.” She said a silent apology to the boys for doubting them.

“Yeah,” he went on, “I figured that since you’ve learned a lot about my culture and language and everything, it was fair that I do the same thing.” He said it with a sweet, hopeful smile, as if he hadn’t already made that effort—hadn’t learned enough about her culture to be the first-footer for her and her family, hadn’t given her the nearest thing to a plaid Berk had to offer. She’d tell him that she appreciated all that when she got to the bottom of this.

Because thoughtful and clever though he may have been, the people of the Internet were not known for their devotion to goodness and light. It might just kill her to hear the answer to this question, if it weren’t what she hoped, but she had to know. “And what do you think it means?”

The confidence he’d had before now crumbled. “It’s supposed to—I meant to call you...” His head dropped, poor lamb. She stepped closer and put her hand on his arm to comfort him.

No comfort was needed: his hesitation was revealed as a ruse when he looked up and speared her with a burning gaze. “My queen,” he said, low and clear.

He’d have had to go hunting for the phrase; she doubted it appeared on the lists of the usual endearments like mo ghraidh, mo chridhe, leannan, and m’annsachd. Couples didn’t much go in for affectionate terms here, she’d noticed, or at least not using any vocabulary she’d picked up. Fishlegs calling Meatlug his “little princess” was the soppiest she’d heard anyone be. No wonder Hiccup’s words—words from her home in his mouth—had surprised her so.

Her hand clutched his arm, while the other rose to fist in his shirt and she fought to breathe. His lips twitched; though from her reaction he already seemed to know the answer, he still asked, “Was that right?”

With the hand twisted in his shirt she pulled him down while she pushed up on her toes to meet him. Their mouths collided with more force than she’d intended; she hoped her lip wouldn’t swell, and he mumbled “Ow.” But then they were kissing properly and hungrily, and she was answering the question the best she knew how to.

After a moment she pulled back. His eyes were dark, darting from hers to her lips and back. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he murmured. It was not necessary for her to dignify that with a response.

When she licked her lips he made to move in for another kiss; she stayed him with the hand on his chest. “Say it again,” she commanded.

He huffed a breathless laugh, giving his head a little shake. Instead of answering right away he pushed a curl behind her ear; his hand carried on to cup the back of her head, his fingers threading into her hair. Her pulse, already heightened by their kissing, quickened further still. She smoothed out the wrinkles she’d put into his shirt, petting his chest a little before flattening her palm against it.

Hiccup pressed a kiss to her forehead, then one to her temple. He lifted her hand and kissed her palm before turning it over and kissing the back. “As you wish, mo bhanrigh.”

Though she’d literally asked for them, the words still stole her breath. His attention was fixed on her, his watching eyes expectant, keen, amused. Her legs nearly trembled beneath her; to hide it she squeezed his hand. She caught a glimpse of his smile as he lowered his head.

“If I’m your bhanrigh—” At the moment she couldn’t recall the proper declension, not with him nuzzling her neck. “—what does that make you to me?”

“Dunno. What does a Scottish queen call her most devoted, adoring servant?” His fingertips skated up and down her ribs; she squirmed, giggling, but toward him rather than away.

“Hiccup!” she protested.

“Really? That’s a weird choice.” His hands tightened on her waist and pulled her close as she shook her head.

Of course there was probably no word, in Gàidhlig or Scots or English, that meant all he’d said. The phrase that now floated up in her mind was in none of those languages; it was something ancient Fishlegs had pointed out in one of his PDFs, something unusual and rare and right.

She raised her chin and met Hiccup’s eyes. Where laughter had a moment ago bubbled, certainty now welled within her. It had been building for weeks—maybe months, at that; maybe from the day she’d stepped into the cove and met Toothless. Her feet and her heart, her recklessness and her rebellion, had led her here: to this island, and into his arms.

He quirked an eyebrow, his expression expectant. She didn’t bother to hide her smile as she looped her arms around his neck, fingertips teasing the ends of his hair. “Óst min,” she said, and his face split into the most brilliant of smiles. His arms wrapped around her, a whole world in his embrace, and once again he kissed her.

And they were happy—in that moment, and in many, many afterwards.

#Mericcup #working on this got me through the horrors last fall #so even though it's far from perfect I'm thankful for that #and I got to look up so many things while writing it :)#hope you enjoy!#(and just throwing this out there:#I have zero interest in receiving constructive criticism)

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