Time jumped ahead like three years or so here (Hiccup is 18 before anything happens), but the past will be covered randomly, in bits and pieces (before anyone brings a list of questions).

-HTTYD-

Crouched down on Cloudjumper's back, Valka felt they'd done a good nights work as they left a dragon hunters fortress smouldering behind them, cages in tatters and the trapped dragons either flown off or following them back to her home nest. The sight of the mountain, huge and sharp and icy in the distance, was a comfort to her. Home to her, and to so many dragons.

They landed, one dragon leading any injured to her assigned spot for that while another led the ones who weren't hurt to the heart of the nest, to meet the Alpha. Valka headed to her rooms first, to take off her armour before she went to tend to the dragons.

There was a Night Fury asleep next to a flickering fire that she hadn't left lit. When she looked over to her bed, there was someone in it. Only one person was quite so self-assured as to let themselves in to the mountain, unconcerned about the sheer number of dragons there, and help themselves to her firepit and bed. Clothes and flight gear were piled next to the bed, the bare skin of his back exposed above rumpled blankets. She knew the scars by heart, and could tell by the length of hair tied back into a ponytail that he still hadn't cut his hair. The smell of soap still lingered in the air, so he'd obviously also helped himself to a bath.

Rolling her eyes a bit, Valka stripped out of her armour - he did not stir - and headed to tend to some wounded dragons. Once that was done, she checked in with the Alpha, then the nursery, before heading back to her room and undressing, climbing in to bed next to her guest. He rolled over, groaning.

"Go back to sleep."

"K."

Valka didn't miss that his arm wrapped around her middle, nor the scratch of his scruff against the back of her neck. He said nothing more though, and his breathing evened out as he fell asleep behind her.

When she woke he was gone from her bed, but hadn't moved all that far - he was sat by the fire, one hand holding a spoon to stir what he was cooking while the other petted his dragon.

"Toothless, you can't have this!"

The Night Fury warbled unhappily, then gestured with his head at Valka.

"You're awake."

Nikolás - or Nik, as she'd taken to calling him - commented, lazy and at ease as he turned to stretch out on his back, leant up on his elbows so he could survey Valka. Still not dressed, she felt his eyes roam her exposed skin. She eyed him in turn, wearing a pair of linen shorts and nothing else. He'd taken out his hair tie, red-brown hair halfway to his waist but his slightly patchy beard recently trimmed.

"You could tell me you plan on visiting, you know."

"Wasn't planned. Passing by."

He was lying, and they both knew it. Nikolás turned up far too regularly to just be 'passing by', ever since they'd met trying to blow up the same ships to free dragons. She'd offered to take him to the nest and let him stay, for he and his Night Fury to help her do what she did.

He refused. Insisted he 'didn't need anybody'. Valka left it at that... until they encountered each other again. That time, his dragon was wounded and Valka's nest was nearer than wherever it was they spent their time. He'd stayed the night... in her bed. It had been no grand seduction, nothing resembling romance, just a clash of two lonely humans in a world they didn't quite fit in with, too different to everyone else, too much like dragons to belong with humans. Barely any words exchanged after Valka asked if he was old enough; he was clearly younger than her, but said he was eighteen. His height and scars and scruffy jaw didn't disagree with that, and he'd been all man under his clothes.

Toothless was well enough to fly the next morning, and so Nikolás had left.

It sent something of a pattern to their... Valka couldn't even call it a relationship. They didn't talk about their past. They didn't talk about much, actually. Just dragons and hunters and sex. But he turned up pretty regularly, and after the first two times he'd been gone when she woke up, he'd started spending the night intentionally. After the fifth time, he'd made her breakfast in silence. That was when she learned he could cook quite well.

Valka lost count after about yhe dozenth time he'd stopped by over the last six or seven months. By now, he'd just turn up, and if she wasn't there he'd light a fire or take a bath. Sometimes he'd cook her dinner and leave it waiting (the dragons had been taught not to take food from certain bowls and pots) before he went to bed and slept there like he owned the place.

And she had no idea what she'd do if he stopped. Nikolás was like an anchor, someone else who was different, who understood the intrinsic goodness of dragons. He spent much more time talking to them than he did her, and the Bewilderbeast had approved of him. If he was in a good mood, he'd talk about the dragons he'd seen and they'd swap stories about the hunters they'd defeated.

When Valka came back from the bathroom, she pulled a tunic over her head and took the bowl of food Nikolás handed her in silence. She got more stimulating conversation from Toothless, really. And he was asleep.

Of course, as soon as she looked at him sideways and said she was going down for a bath, he was right behind her. It was easy to mistake things for him using her, turning up whenever he wanted to bed her. But she'd seen under the mask of indifference he wore, and knew he needed her as she needed him, to be a tiny spark against the isolating loneliness of their lives. She'd felt him hold her even as he slept, heard those soft whimpers when he had nightmares about all the things he never told her about. Sleeping next to her was a vulnerability he wouldn't admit, and Valka didn't bring it up.

Just like she never brought up that he was the same age as her son. Her son she hadn't seen in eighteen years.

"DIdn't you already take a bath?"

Valka asked, able to smell soap on him clearly when he was so close to her. He was shameless, really, hands already resting on her hips.

"Yes, but I can always get dirty again."

He leant in, waiting. As though proving she was as weak for him as he was for her, he hovered until Valka closed the distance. It didn't take long for the slow first kiss to become their usual heated clash, her hands in his hair as his splayed on her lower back, bunching up her tunic in his fists. The tunic was gone before long, frantic hands undressing each other until Valka could feel the heat of his cock against her belly, shivering as goosebumps erupted on her skin.

There was a ledge Valka usually put her clean clothes up on, but it was also where she often ended up placed by him as he dropped to his knees, shoving her thighs apart and devouring her eagerly. There was a lot she didn't know about him - yet - but she did know he was not a selfish lover. His mouth and tongue were devilishly talented, eyes dark in the limited light when he looked up to watch Valka twist and moan and pant. His lewd whispers of how he loved the way she tasted only thrilled Valka more, his arms wrapping around her twitching legs to hold her in place, his beard scratchy against the delicate skin.

"You know we're not done til I hear your screams echo off the walls."

He punctuated his words with sharp nips to her inner thighs, sparks of pain fuelling her pleasure. She knew he absolutely meant every word; if her first climax wasn't loud enough for him, he'd keep going til she came again. And again, and again... it seemed to get him off as much as it did her. Even when Valka went down on him in return, he insisted on being able to touch her.

There was clearly something to be said for a young, virile lover. Her husband had been long in to adulthood on their wedding night, and much bigger than Valka's slight teenage frame.

"Nik..."

The young man suckling her clit between his lips was none of those things, fresh in to his adulthood, lean and wiry like her. And stronger than he looked, as proved by how her spasming legs and bucking hips didn't dislodge her entirely, her hands finding their way in to his thick hair as Nikolás took her first climax of the day.

He stood, wiping his wet mouth on the back of his forearm before pulling Valka on to still-shaking legs, growling that he needed her now. His cock curved up against his belly, thick and ruddy, bobbing as he moved them both. He stopped just long enough to bunch their discarded clothes up for something to put Valka's knees on before she was on all fours and his low voice was in her ear.

"Ready for me?"

Valka nodded, keening; he always asked, even after she'd made it clear it was unlikely he'd ever hear a no. Her body rocked back, shamelessly seeking him. Nikolás filled her perfectly, buried inside her with his stomach pressed against her backside, groaning as she shuddered. He rolled his hips in long, deep motions, leant over her to plant kisses along the length of her back, the hidden tenderness of him showing. Valka mewled and pushed back on him, back arching up in to the heat of his mouth.

His pace increased steadily, hitting her harder, deeper, faster, one hand staying braced on her hip while the other slipped down under her and pressed to where they were joined, a low chuckle rumbling in his chest when he felt her whole body shake with pleasure. But he liked to watch her when she came apart, pulling out to roll her on to her back and Valka was powerless against the heat between them, the sounds he wanted soon bouncing off the cave walls.

The water cleaned his mess from her belly and the dirt from their sweaty skin, though even as they washed his hands wereon her under the water, his mouth at her ear; sex made him a lot chattier, though it was largely filth that made her cheeks fill with warmth. The young woman who married Stoick the Vast had been a blushing virgin bride, but now Valka was older and disillusioned with the romance attached to sex, and Nikolás was a talented, generous bedmate (when they actually made it to a bed) who was never too tired for another round, and Valka never had to worry he wouldn't hear the word no, which had been a deterrent in her early years of solitude.

Mellowed out by sex, Nikolás washed her hair for her in silence. It was his way of seeking intimacy after the fact, Valka had realised, and so she always let him do it, because he held her when she needed it.

Hiccup sighed to himself as he watched her putter about her nest. He really needed to stop going there. It wasn't fair on her, he knew, because he'd severed himself in two and she only ever got Nikolás, the half a person he dared display. The boy who had run away from Berk because he cared too much for dragons was buried deep, under blood and battles and loss in the last few years fighting the dragon hunters.

Perhaps if they'd met sooner, Hiccup would have agreed to her offer to stay, to help her. But he refused to give himself such a blatant vulnerability, because he knew just from the stolen moments between them that given half a chance, he could fall in love with the feral dragon lady. And if he did, he'd lose her. That was just how his life went.

She didn't push too hard though, and Hiccup felt guilty for how it clearly rankled her to let him be so secretive. He wouldn't be surprised if she knew Nikolás wasn't his real name. He picked it on a whim, the first name in the first book he opened one night in his cave, Toothless snoozing behind him as dragons curled up by the fire. Hiccup was too obvious, too recognisable.

Not that he expected his father, or Berk, to look for him anyway, but Hiccup dreaded the thought of trying to exist with his fathers shadow over him, and so he'd shed the name. He couldn't stop thinking it as his name in his head though, annoyingly.

By the time he'd let his hair grow out and some patchy auburn stubble sprouted on his cheeks and chin, nobody would have recognised him anyway.

He was rabidly curious about the dragon lady sometimes, wondered how long she'd spent out there and whether he was going to see the next twenty years of his life unfold in much the same way. But Hiccup didn't share about his life, so it would have been hypocritical of him to demand her life story in turn.

As Toothless stretched next to him, done with his third nap of the day and looking as though he was considering going for nap number four, Hiccup heard Cloudjumper's distinctive wing-claw walking. Nightmares walked the same sort of way, but they were a fair bit lighter and their walk softer, probably owing to the gel their scales secreted.

"You've got some new battle scars."

"So?"

He winced inwardly even as he said it. She was only trying to be nice, it wasn't her fault he was bitter.

"You should be more careful."

Something about the softness of her voice stirred something up in him. A longing for someone he'd never known, and that buried guilt for choosing dragons after they'd taken her away.

"I don't need a mother! I've done fine all my life without one."

She recoiled as he stood in a rush, Hiccup already heading over to his flight gear. He needed to stop letting her get to him.

"What do you mean?"

Hiccup wasn't sure what made him answer her that time, after all the times he'd turned away at the first hint of a prying question.

"My mother was killed when I was a baby. By dragons, no less. It's why I left home when I realised I couldn't kill a dragon."

Her eyes, so bright and green and curious, narrowed.

"Where was home?"

Once he'd started, he couldn't stop.

"Berk. Tiny little place, raided by dragons all the time and-"

"Nik... what was your mothers name?"

He scowled.

"Why do you care?"

"Just... answer me."

He sighed, fingers slackening their grip on the leather in his hand.

"Valka. Her name was Valka."

He heard tentative footsteps. Turned to see her looking at him as she never had before, like she was seeing him for the first time all over again.

"Hiccup?"

-HTTYD-

Personally, I think this chapter is a hot mess, but it was a necessary hot mess to get us to the good stuff!