Chapter Text
Jamie ducked out of the way of a snowball, then proceeded to run for cover, slipped and landed on his back. The impact briefly knocked the air out of him, but he was soon laughing and shielding his face from snowballs.
“Okay, okay, I’m down!” he shrieked, curling up into a ball.
Pippa appeared at his side with a satisfied grin, her cheeks flushed with the December cold, her hat and shoulders covered in white. It had been snowing all day.
“There,” she said, pulling Jamie up. “You’re not invincible.”
“It only took five against one,” Jamie mumbled.
“Five against two!” Sophie protested, jumping out of her hiding spot under the porch, where she had been valiantly hiding for most of the endurance of the snowball fight, except for the couple of times she’d peeked out to check if Jamie was still dodging snowballs.
Claude snorted. “When did you get so proud?” he asked, without any real mockery in his voice. “Look, we all know you went on some magical journey—”
“Which he still hasn’t told us about,” Cupcake noted tartly.
“I have!” Jamie protested.
“Not everything,” Monty argued.
“—but that doesn’t mean you suddenly have superhuman speed,” Caleb finished for his brother.
“I’m not—” Jamie started, sending the front door a nervous look. He lowered his voice. “Look, I’m just not sure if I should tell you everything. It seems, you know, like the kind of thing that would be classified in a sci-fi book. Besides, my mom would freak if she found out some of the stuff that happened back there.”
“She already knows you went back in time,” Pippa said. She no longer commented on it with a tinge of doubt – by now, they all knew that story was just as much a fact as the existence of Jack Frost.
“And lived with Vikings, I mean, it doesn’t get more dangerous than that, does it?” Claude added.
“They were actually a lot more civilized than I thought Vikings would be,” Jamie said, then grimaced. “Well, civilized might not be the right word. But still, I was never in danger because of the people who lived there.”
“You were in danger?” Sophie asked, mouth falling open.
Jamie cringed. “Um. No…Jack was always there, so it was fine,” he reassured her.
It seemed to be enough for Sophie.
It didn’t seem to be enough for the rest of them, but for Sophie’s sake, they kept quiet. Their faces, however, made it clear the topic was not dropped yet.
“Speaking of,” Pippa said. “Is Jack coming today?”
Jamie looked up, blinking snowflakes out of his eyes. “Looks like he’s already been here,” he said. “I hope he will, but I think he’s helping out at the workshop. Maybe he’ll visit tomorrow, after presents.”
“As long as we don’t play hide and seek,” Caleb snickered.
Jamie snorted. “You’re just mad you can’t beat my record,” he said. “What was it, four months? Five?”
Pippa lightly slapped the back of his head. “That’s not funny,” she scolded, even while laughing.
“If Jack comes, you have to tell us,” Cupcake said, with a sort of hopefulness in her voice that Jamie, thanks to hanging around both Hiccup and Baby Tooth, recognized very well. “He’s not just yours, you know? Even if you did go time traveling together.”
Jamie wondered if he should mention something about Jack’s boyfriend, but decided this wasn’t the first time someone had developed a crush on Jack, and it wouldn’t be the last – Cupcake would probably move on at some point.
“He’s not any of ours,” Jamie argued, a bit defensively. Sure, he hadn’t mentioned to his friends the fact that he and Jack were related precisely because he didn’t want them to feel like Jack had a favorite…but he would’ve been lying if he said he didn’t want to be Jack’s favorite. (And he had a feeling he was, but he wasn’t arrogant enough to admit that out loud). “And of course I’ll tell you. He’ll probably tell you himself. I just think he might be a bit busy this Christmas, because of his—” He caught himself, glancing at Cupcake. “Um. Friend.”
The others sent him weird looks.
“Santa?” Monty asked.
“Someone else,” Jamie said. “It’s his first time celebrating Christmas.”
Caleb snorted. “First time celebrating Christmas? How old is that friend if they’ve never celebrated Christmas before?”
“It’s a cultural thing,” Jamie said, waving his hand and dodging the question.
The way his friends stared at him made him think of Brant, Undis and Hildur. He missed them, but he didn’t miss having to carry so many secrets. He doubted he’d be able to keep schtum for long, which was why he’d decided to just stick with the truth in the first place. But fortunately, his friends had the decency to let him come out with that truth in his own time, so they eventually went back to the snowball fight, until they were called back home to get ready for Christmas Eve and spend time with their families.
Jamie hoped to see Jack again soon; it was much safer to let him tell the story. But mostly he just wanted to see Jack again – and Hiccup and Toothless, of course. Maybe they’d even bring Baby Tooth. You were supposed to spend time with your family during Christmas after all.
The night was dark and cold far above Reykjavík, with only thin streams of moonlight filtering through clouds from which large, fluffy snowflakes descended. It was early in the morning – around 5AM, though Hiccup didn’t own a clock and couldn’t know for sure – which meant it was almost time to head across the Atlantic Ocean. He could only assume Jack was aware of that as well, judging by how lovely the winter weather was.
Also judging by the scene unfolding just a few meters below Hiccup. Jack and Bunny were racing – probably for the twentieth time tonight – back to the rendezvous point, now that Iceland was covered
Hiccup wondered, probably for the fiftieth time tonight, what he’d gotten himself into. He’d been right in thinking North was in charge of handing out Christmas presents, but he hadn’t been aware that after the debacle two Easters ago, the Guardians had started helping each other out. Even Sandy, whose multitasking skills were unmatched; even now, golden tendrils rose from his cloud and disappeared into the sky, stretching across the world
Anyway, Jack was in the middle of telling Bunny he must be getting old, because why else would he be so slow? So Hiccup decided to intercept. He dived down, camouflaged in his own wind, but Jack still whirled around, eyes widening.
“What the—No!” he yelped, before a gust of wind suddenly yanked him backwards. The last Hiccup heard of him was a faint “That’s cheating!” as he spun away like a snowflake in the wind.
Bunny was so distracted he almost ran into a chimney, but he dodged it last second and barked a laugh.
“He deserved that,” Hiccup snickered, appearing beside Bunny.
Bunny leaped over to another roof and, in midair, gave Hiccup a high five. “Glad someone’s more defensive about their age than I am,” he jeered.
“Hey, that’s not it!” Hiccup protested. “And by the way, Jack might be out of the game, but I’m still gonna win.”
“Maybe next Christmas, kid,” Bunny said, before his eyes widened. “Look out!”
Hiccup thought he was trying to distract him with the oldest trick in the book, which was the only reason why he didn’t dodge the giant snowball aimed straight at his face, cannonballing him off course. He thought he might have shrieked on the way down, before landing on something soft, and he opened his eyes to find himself surrounded by gold.
“Sandy,” he croaked, sitting up. “I owe you one.”
Sandy rolled his eyes good-naturedly. Despite his obvious rush to the finish line, he looked awfully peaceful on his dream cloud, as always.
Hiccup brushed snow out of his face and was about to kick off just when Jack barreled into him from thin air, and they both went sprawling back onto the cloud.
“You’re supposed to be on my side!” Jack yelled, trying to sound indignant despite the laughter in his voice.
“It’s a race, Jack, and I’m gonna win it,” Hiccup argued, and tried to get up, but Jack held him down. “Which we’re both losing right now!” he added.
Beside them, Sandy sent them an unimpressed look.
“If I go down, you go down with me,” Jack grinned.
Just then, Hiccup saw a shadow on the night sky just behind Jack, and he smirked. “How about up instead?”
Jack’s brows twitched, trying to get the joke. “What—”
Hiccup grabbed onto his hoodie just as Toothless’ claws locked around Jack’s shoulders and yanked him off Sandy’s cloud. Jack yelled in a mix between surprise, frustration and delight, and Hiccup could only laugh.
“Go, Toothless!” he cheered, and a gust of wind gave him the momentum he needed to swing both himself and Jack onto his back. Toothless turned sharply and shot past Sandy again, who, when Hiccup turned back and waved goodbye, had dreamsand standing out of his ears in outrage.
When they got to the rendezvous point, Reykjavík Harbor, Tooth and North were already there, victorious with second and first place respectively. This had been a reoccurring thing all night – North, because he for obvious reason was the best at this kind of thing, and Tooth because she’d been back in the field lately and was used to flitting around the world. Bunny was a challenger too, but Jack was good at distracting him.
“Toothless!” Tooth squealed as they landed, darting over to pet him. She’d immediately taken a liking to the dragon, and nobody was surprised. “I didn’t know you’d come!”
Iceland was not that far from the Archipelago, so Hiccup had had a feeling they’d stumble upon each other around these parts, but he kept quiet.
Bunny came soon after, but before he could get to the ‘finish line’, a tendril of gold wrapped around his ankle and yanked him back, just as Sandy thundered ahead of him. North, whose jolliness only seemed to intensify when he was stressed out, laughed so loudly Hiccup couldn’t imagine it was possible to not hear it, even for those who didn’t believe in Santa Claus.
Sandy fist bumped the air and sent Bunny a self-satisfied grin when the latter finally caught up, fuming.
“Shared third place, I can take that,” Jack said, jumping off Toothless.
“Technically, you came behind both me and Toothless,” Hiccup pointed out.
Jack sent him a long look. “Now you’re just being childish.”
“Oh? Oh, I’m the childish one—”
“Ugh, stop that,” Bunny grumbled. “Bicker when we get home, we have a job to do.”
“Are you mad, Bunnymund?” Jack asked with an elfish grin. “It’s just a game. Here, take a candy cane—”
He started to reach for North’s coat, but North poked him in the ribs before he could get so far.
“You two can go now,” he said, “before Bunny explodes.”
Hiccup shifted awkwardly. He didn’t know the Guardians well enough yet to know where the line went, but then North sent him a reassuring smile, and he relaxed again. He patted Toothless’ head. “Race you to Burgess,” he told Jack. “Come on, bud!”
Toothless kicked off back into the sky, ignoring Jack’s protest about false starts.
It wasn’t even 3AM by the time they arrived in Burgess. Jack had lost sight of Hiccup and Toothless in the kerfuffle, and he sped towards Jamie’s house like his life depended on it. He didn’t know how many times he’d lost already, but he had a feeling it wasn’t looking good. If he was on the losing side…it meant he had to wear those stupid jingly shoes the elves had made for him the rest of the evening.
He went so fast he struggled to slow down, and he tripped on the stairs up to the porch and nearly collided with the door. He softened it by making a pillow of snow, but even then there was a soft thud that he hoped didn’t wake anyone. So much for being quiet, which was sort of rule number one when it came to delivering presents or collecting teeth. In his defense, he was new at this.
Toothless landed in the yard moments later, laughing in that deep, throaty way of his at the sight of Jack sprawled in the heap of snow. Jack staggered to his feet and raised his arms victoriously.
“I won!”
Hiccup put a finger to his lips, laughing through his hushing. “These people can hear you, remember?”
Jack winced. “Sorry,” he whispered, then nodded at the door. “Let’s go!”
There were a few things Jack would never understand about magic, things that he just accepted, and one of them was the fact that security alarms never seemed to go off when they broke into a home. He guessed it was just some cosmic law that allowed them to go about their Christmas-y business, even if they weren’t actually Santa Claus. Jack flicked his wrist, and the door opened.
When it became a thing that the Guardians helped each other out with their respective jobs, North had made them all some nifty bags that could fit way more presents inside than what seemed possible from the outside. North still carried the most of it in his sleigh, but obviously even a sleigh like that wouldn’t have been big enough if it hadn’t been magically enhanced – as were Jack’s backpack and Hiccup’s satchel. Jack was sure Jamie would compare it to some fantasy novel if he ever saw it.
Milk and cookies stood prepared on the salon table. Jack tiptoed into the living room and picked up the glass, though he thought he’d never want to drink milk again after this. He offered it to Hiccup instead, who hadn’t moved from the doorway yet. He made a face.
“I don’t know how North stands it either,” Jack whispered. “He must be, like, eighty percent milk and cookies. Can I throw it out the window?”
“That seems rude,” Hiccup murmured, then stumbled forward when Toothless poked his head in through the door. “Toothless! You won’t fit!”
Toothless didn’t listen, and pushed himself through the doorframe, knocking down a coat stand in the process. Hiccup surged forward, but it crashed to the floor before he could reach it.
“Use your powers, you muttonhead,” Jack hissed through his fingers, barely containing what would’ve been a loud cackle. He spilled milk on the floor and cursed in Norse – he hadn’t even noticed he’d switched over. Using words like ‘muttonhead’ would do that.
“Just put the presents under the tree before we burn the house down,” Hiccup snickered.
Jack started taking out the gifts from North’s magical Christmas backpack, adding them to the other presents that Joyce must have put there earlier in the night. Hiccup propped the coat stand back up, but some coins fell out of a jacket and clattered to the floor. Jack reacted instinctively, freezing the coins in place. Frost suddenly covered the floor and partly the Christmas tree.
“Whoops,” Jack said.
Suddenly, the lights turned on.
“Jack?” Jamie said, before his eyes widened. “Hiccup—Toothless! What are you doing here? Where’s North?”
Jack decided to put the milk away. He sent Jamie a sheepish grin. “We’re just helping out a bit,” he whispered. “Also, go back to bed, you’re not supposed to see this.”
Hiccup facepalmed, then grunted in annoyance when Toothless pushed past him to get to Jamie. While Jamie greeted Toothless, Hiccup sent Jack a helpless look, and Jack could only shrug in response.
“I said we had to be quiet,” Hiccup mumbled.
“You knocked over the coat stand,” Jack argued.
“I could already hear you both outside,” Jamie said, rolling his eyes while scratching Toothless’ neck. “I thought I just imagined it at first, but you’re not very good at being sneaky. Jack – what did you do to the floor?”
“Oh, that…Don’t tell your mom,” Jack said.
Jamie raised his brows. “Sure, I’ll just tell her it was Sophie,” he said.
Jack sniffed. “How this boy speaks to his ancestors,” he said to Hiccup, shaking his head.
Hiccup just smiled and turned to Jamie. “Merry Christmas, kiddo,” he said, pulling out a present from his satchel. “You weren’t supposed to see this before tomorrow morning, but I guess you’ve long been exempt from doing these things the normal way.”
Jamie jumped over to Hiccup and gave him a hug before accepting the gift. “Say thank you to Santa for me,” he whispered, before tiptoeing over the frozen floor and putting the present under the tree. There he stopped by Jack and gave him a long hug as well. “I knew you’d come. Well, not now exactly, and I thought you might be a little busy, but—Oh!” He pulled away and bounced on his feet. “I have something for you too!”
Then he ran back upstairs.
“In any decent narrative, this would be where we mysteriously disappeared,” Jack pondered.
“But we’re not gonna do that,” Hiccup said.
“Of course not. Can’t let my remaining living family have a normal life, how boring would that be?”
Toothless made his way over to the salon table and helped himself to some cookies.
Hiccup tried nudging the coins with his foot, but they were completely stuck to the floor. “We can’t leave it like that,” he murmured. He sent Jack a fond yet exasperated look. “What did you do that for?”
“I panicked!” Jack protested. “It’ll melt before Joyce wakes up, I’m sure.”
“I don’t know about that.”
Both Hiccup and Jack jumped. Toothless glanced back at the woman standing at the base of the stairs wearing a faintly surprised expression, then went back to eating cookies.
Jack fumbled with his staff. “Mrs. Bennett,” he croaked. He found himself straightening his back.
Joyce stood very still, her eyes trained on Toothless for many seconds, before glancing at Hiccup and then eventually, reluctantly, at Jack. She tried for a smile.
“Jack,” she said. “It’s been a little while. Could one of you tell me why there’s a…”
“A dragon,” Hiccup supplied helpfully, his English faintly accented.
“Right,” Joyce said.
“He’s helping us deliver presents,” Jack said, then added after a moment: “Because we’re helping North. I mean Santa. You know Santa?”
“Mom!” Jamie yelped at the sight of his mother, and thundered down the stairs. Seemed now that she was awake too, he saw no reason to keep quiet; Sophie slept through anything. “I can explain. Uh…Well—”
“No, they’ve already explained themselves,” Joyce said, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Alright. You…You go ahead and do…whatever you’re doing. I’m going back to bed.”
“Sorry about the noise,” Hiccup mumbled.
Joyce paused, looking at him, then at Jack and back again. “Jamie’s told me about you,” she said. “Hiccup the Viking. Look, I’m still not entirely convinced this isn’t all just a long, elaborate hallucination, but I’d love to hear what happened with you three sometime.”
Jack swallowed.
“Why don’t you come over for dinner sometime?”
Jamie looked at his mom like she’d just fallen from the sky. “Really?”
“Mhm. Dinner with Jack Frost and a real-life Viking. Why not?”
Hiccup sent Jack a look that said, I think we broke her. Jack agreed, but he felt himself smile anyway. As weird as this situation was, Jamie had kept his promise in the end, and Joyce was slowly adjusting to it.
“Sounds good!” he said before he could think twice. “Sorry again. We should get going.”
“Wait!” Jamie sprang up to Jack and held out a new drawing. This one depicted Jack, Hiccup and Jamie on Toothless with Baby Tooth flying above them, in the middle of escaping from the snow eagles. Jamie’s drawing skills had improved since last time too. Jack took it gingerly.
“I love it,” he said earnestly. He handed the drawing to Hiccup before hugging Jamie tightly. “I promise not to lose this one. I’ll hang it on the wall in the workshop once we get back.”
“Workshop,” Joyce muttered. “Oh, I’m too old for this.”
Apparently not, Jack wanted to say, but she already seemed so overwhelmed, he kept quiet. He wondered if she would regret inviting them for dinner in the morning, or even remember that it had happened as anything but a dream. Still, the deed was done. The Bennett family had always been extraordinary.
All the presents were delivered in time.
They always were, but North was still so relieved, as if it wasn’t a close call each year. But maybe this time his relief was warranted, since his team had suddenly expanded and grown a little bit more chaotic than it already was. Either way, they celebrated in the workshop with a huge feast, live music by a group of yetis who’d taken a liking to jazz, of course presents, and over the course of the evening, an increasing amount of eggnog.
Hiccup teased Jack for having to argue his way into drinking it, reminding the Guardians that he had in fact had a grow spurt and was probably physically over eighteen and either way he was over three centuries old so why did it matter?
Towards the end of the evening, Tooth was having an animated conversation with Baby Tooth and Toothless, regularly getting distracted by Toothless’ teeth – Jack knew how he felt – while Sandy snoozed by the fire, and North, Bunny and Phil seemed to be performing some sort of drunken circle dance.
Jack and Hiccup watched it all from a distance away, hidden in the rafters. Hundreds of years old or not, they were both teenagers at heart, and still not at a point where they could kiss in front of the others without feeling somewhat embarrassed about it. They would get there, someday. But right now, hiding in the rafters, even if everyone knew where they were and what they were doing, seemed the better option.
They both thought it was strange how things turned out in the end, but not a bad strange – which in many ways had always been the definition of their friendship and relationship. And they were both looking forward to the very strange, but not a bad strange, future that lay ahead of them.