There were fewer things in this world Jack liked more than the feeling of flight.
Nothing physical could ever compare to the feeling of the wind whipping through his hair and nothing beneath his feet. Boarding downhill without control was one thing, but launching himself off a ramp into the air was another. Nothing felt better than the weightlessness just before gravity wrapped its arms around you to bring you back down to Earth again.
...Well, maybe not nothing.
Two weeks was the mark.
Jack's relationship history may have been extensive, but it certainly wasn't complicated. Two words summed up every relationship he'd had in the past five years, if you could even call them relationships. Two words: two weeks.
Jack wasn't good at relationships. There had been somewhere around twenty of them.
Alarming? Probably.
Here's what usually happened: Jack would find a new partner, and things would get physical pretty fast. The skater lived a bit of a reckless lifestyle that had started in high school during his "dirty punk" phase...emphasis on "dirty". And really, there was nothing wrong with that, unless you counted the part where the "relationships" would fizzle out because he and his partner got bored of each other in bed, and had no drive to get to know each other after banging.
That had never bothered him. He knew the major reason was himself. Jack wasn't so self-absorbed to think that all those "relationships" ended by the fault of the other out of some massive coincidence. Even if it was partially the fault of his partners for not holding onto him or putting in an effort, it was also his. And nothing could really be done about it, anyway. He'd lost interest. So had they. He never blamed any of his exes.
Hell, he barely remembered half of them. Two weeks wasn't enough to make a memory.
Not in most cases, anyway.
Some people lived their lives content to stay on the ground. They feared the open air. They feared the height. They said if humans were meant to fly, God would have given them wings like angels.
Jack felt so sorry for them.
He too had once felt content on the ground. The ground was where people existed. It was normal. It was natural. It was secure.
Even when he was learning how to board, speed was the only factor that occurred to him. How to move fast. How to look cool. He learned a few tricks, but none of them took him off the ground.
He never considered where he was; never once did he think about flying.
And then, one day, he decided to tackle the half pipe.
As he stared down at the ground from his perch, he felt nervousness tickling at his gut. Sure, he'd gotten some air before for a few seconds. He'd done some small ramps and messed around in the bowl at the local park. But this monster was three times his height - Caleb and Claude had it built in their backyard, and it was an insane structure straight out of a cartoon. He had to use a ladder to get up to where he was.
His friends cheered him on - some of them on the ground, some of them on the opposite side. They had all been nervous their first time doing this, too. They understood, and would be chill if Jack backed down. He knew that, with a little bit of teasing, he would be fine on their terms if he didn't do this and stuck to what he knew.
But Jack didn't care if he was fine on their terms. He wanted to be fine on his own.
He steadied himself with a deep breath, readied his board, and dropped down.
The day he and Hiccup met, Jack had gone home with the freckled cutie, because he still lived at home and couldn't bring his flings around. They had a hilariously cheap dinner before retreating to Hiccup's bedroom, hiding away under the covers and leaving no inch of skin untouched.
With Hiccup below him, staring up into his eyes so intensely, the whitette felt like he had been lured into the den of an incubus. And then, Jack had returned the favor, pleasuring Hiccup with his mouth until the brunet had taken a tight grasp on his hair and pulled so hard his eyes had watered. Never had he felt so satisfied.
That was all they had done that night. Neither of them had the energy to do more. Jack opted to stay the night, curling up with Hiccup in the dark. They tucked into each other, skin on skin, locked in a comforting embrace that lulled them both into a peaceful sleep.
He'd wiped out.
The laws of physics dictated his path the moment he'd dropped down into the half pipe. Jack was launched into the air on the other side, and it was as if he was an inexperienced child all over again, instead of the seasoned year-and-a-half skateboarding veteran he fancied himself. His board slipped from his grasp mid-air and after a brief moment, he found himself falling.
He came out of that experience with a few things. The first was a broken arm. His mother had been none too pleased with his friends or Jack himself for pulling such a stunt with so little experience with ramps. She lectured him, once it was apparent he wasn't in as much pain as he should have been.
The second was determination. Jack had wiped out, alright. It was a disaster. The doctor said he was lucky he landed on his arm because he could have been seriously hurt had he landed on his head. No shit, Doc. A head injury is nothing to sneeze at. Then the doctor told him he should stay off the skateboard for a while until his arm healed.
That was a 'no thanks' for Jack. He was responsible enough to keep off the extreme stuff while he was in the cast, but he didn't stop skating. Too stubborn. Too determined to get good. And as soon as he was out of the cast, he broke his arm all over again. This went for a couple of cycles and it never stopped him.
Why?
Because of the third thing he came out of that experience with.
Weightlessness.
For a brief moment, Jack no longer felt the forces of gravity pulling him down. He felt his stomach rise pleasantly. His lungs felt light, without the weight of the world pulling him down. For a brief moment, he felt like he would keep going up and up until he left the atmosphere.
For a brief moment, for the first time, Jack flew.
It filled him with a giddiness he'd never quite experienced, but the price was that he never felt the same on the ground again.
Gravity was a force he never thought about until he had escaped it. Now, it pulled at his lungs and made it hard to breathe. It made him feel heavy and uncomfortable. He craved that weightlessness again.
Never again would he be content on the ground.
He wanted to fly.
It was Jack who suggested they not have sex.
Fooling around was one thing. Actually crossing that barrier and sleeping together was another thing entirely...and Jack, as cheesy as it may have sounded, didn't want to cross just yet. Just being with Hiccup, just cuddling up to him was a refreshing change of pace for Jack, and Hiccup easily agreed. They could wait a while.
They were two weeks in now. Hiccup was sitting back on Jack's bed, leaning against the wall. Jack was laying on his back between his legs, arms propped up on Hiccup's thighs and his head back against his stomach. Blue eyes watched Hiccup from below - even from upside-down, Hiccup managed to be adorable. One hand reached up lazily to stroke lightly down one of Hiccup's cheeks.
The brunet didn't even flinch at the touch, having grown used to Jack's increasingly affectionate touches. He just turned his attention away from the small contraption in his hands that he was tinkering with and down to his boyfriend. Jack's adoring, soft smile was met with a small, amused one from Hiccup, all full of crooked teeth. Green eyes sparkled, and Jack felt something inside him that was familiar, but oh so unexpected.
As Hiccup looked back to the gadget in his hands, Jack continued to stare up at him with a look of breathless delight.
Here, static on his bed, Jack felt his stomach and lungs break free from the confines of gravity. His heart soared with his spirit and he closed his eyes, letting himself imagine being above the clouds. By his side was Hiccup, of course. Jack wouldn't have achieved this feeling of flight without him.
Never again would Jack be content with a two-week-long "relationship".
Not when he knew now what it felt like to fly.
Maybe there was something that felt better than literally soaring through the air.
And maybe two weeks was plenty of time to make a memory with the right person.
Three weeks in.
The streak was broken.