Andy being in charge of most of the gang's planning meant that their town visit days were usually errands-free, not that his stupid friends ever gave his organizational skills the appreciation it deserved. So since they had no goals other than to kill time together, the boys headed to Litwak's Arcade for a healthy dose of humiliating the shit out of each other through arguably non-violent competition. 'Arguably' because their naturally explosive group dynamics were hugely affected by unhealthy amounts of sugar, and there was no telling what could happen when emotions were running high and the synapsis were running low.

"I can't believe Hiccup ditched us. That fucking traitor..." Jack grumbled as he punched buttons on the vending machine.

"You're just jealous because he's on a date with his girlfriend and you still have to pretend you hated yours in front of other people."

"Nah, pretty sure I'm pissed because Hiccup is a fucking traitor, actually."

"Whatever you say, Jack," Andy conceded with a sigh as he shoved the other guy out of the way to buy his own drink. "I can cover for you if you wanna go meet her."

"Don't worry your beautiful head about it, Davis. We're not supposed to be seen in public anyway." Jack shrugged. "And I think she was hanging with Anna today. No point in jeopardizing that."

Andy nodded. "I gotta say, for someone who's such an attention whore, you sure managed to keep that one on the down-low until now, didn't you? A very impressive feat."

Jack smirked. "What can I say? I'm a very impressive person."

"That you are."

"And I also happen to possess amazing acting skills."

"Please," Andy mocked with a snort. "You were all over the place. One moment, you're sulking like you found out Santa isn't real—"

"He isn't?" Jack gasped, his eyes filled with horror.

"Next, you're grinning like you're in a damn musical and you're about to start singing out of fucking nowhere."

Jack rolled his shoulders back and threw a pointed glare at the other guy. "I don't sing. You're just saying that because you know."

"Speaking of, when are you letting the rest of the team know?"

Jack hummed as he scratched his chin in thought. "Guess we do need to tell people, huh?"

"Jesus Christ," Andy hissed. "I'm really considering that offer to punch you right now."

"I'm not saying I won't do it!" The silverhead grumbled defensively. "It's just that… things will change, y'know?"

"Change is an inevitable part of every life."

"Alright, wiseass." Jack rolled his eyes. "Be honest with me, Andrew: are you okay with..." he trailed off, making circles with his hand.

"As long as you're both happy it's cool, I guess?" Andy mused in part to convince his friend, but another part also to convince himself.

Jack hummed. "What happens when that changes?"

"I don't know if I should be proud that you're thinking ahead or concerned that you're going into a relationship already planning for when it goes bad..."

"Great, less than two weeks in and I'm already becoming an overanalyzing psycho like her."

"You're adorable," Andy stated with a chuckle.

"And you're a massive pain in the ass."

"You're really gonna give Hiccup a run for his money in the lovesick dweeb department."

"That statement offends me on so many levels I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear it," Jack grumbled, making his way back to where Wilbur and Hiro raced against each other to put an end to their conversation.

"Just wait until Violet hears about it—"

"I will kick you, Davis."

"Aw, love you too, Frosty."

One of the downsides of rooming with two early birds was that sleeping in on days off usually meant having to go down to the refectory by her lone self later in the day. Eating alone wasn't a problem per se, and sometimes, she could even catch one of the boys and they'd sit together and idly talk about whatever, but when that didn't happen, it just meant that Violet was stuck with a lot of time with her own thoughts and no one to bounce them off of.

On top of that, her body weighing like lead thanks to what she presumed was an incoming cold did little to improve her mood. She'd rather bite her tongue than admit she was unwell, but the truth was that the freezing AC in the girls' room, paired up with stress, sleep deprivation, and a guilty conscience was starting to get to her. The shivers running down her arms did little to ease the tightness in her chest.

Drowning in self-pity, Violet dragged herself to one of her usual hiding spaces. Climbing up the stairs was more strenuous than expected, and she found herself heaving with sweat clinging to her skin. Exhausted, she dropped herself on one of the steps, curling up and burying her face between her knees. She shrank against the wall, hiding in the corner, invisible to the rest of the world, and shut her eyes tightly as if surrounding herself with darkness could help clear up her mind.

Sitting there, Astrid's words echoed inside her head. Stop sticking your nose on everybody else's business. Was it okay, though? To simply sit by and do nothing? Violet didn't like that. Taking a passive stance was never her thing, but the longer the situation at hand dragged on unresolved, the harder it was to decide which cards to play next.

"You still come here?"

The universe hated her. Even without seeing, she could recognize that voice with ease. Her head sunk even lower as she groaned. "What do you want?" she snarled.

"Stand down, soldier, I just stopped to say hi." Footsteps, and then a presence dropping right next to her on the stairs. "So what got you all sulky this time?"

Violet's head jerked up. William Robinson, with his haughty demeanor, smirked at her, so she saw fit to glare back at him. "Who says I'm sulking?"

Wilbur snorted and simply gestured to her face with contempt.

She rolled her eyes. "Don't you have anywhere else to be?"

"I don't, actually."

"Sucks to be you then," Violet scoffed.

Wilbur chuckled, leaning back on his elbows and stretching his legs. "And? What's wrong?"

She tried to ignore the boy, but his silent presence alone was enough to unsettle her. Violet half expected Wilbur to leave once she paid no attention to him, but he didn't. He just stood there, glancing at her from the corner of his eyes, expecting, idly waiting for her to snap and make a fool out of herself.

Her lower lip pressed between her teeth, Violet tried to keep her thoughts to herself, but the tightness in her throat won over and she found herself unable to hold her tongue any longer. She stumbled with her words, "Do you… do ever realize that you've maybe made the wrong choice but have no idea what to do next?"

"More often than you think," the guy mumbled, frowning at his shoes.

"What does that mean?"

He turned to her, an odd smile on his face. "Aren't we supposed to be talking about your problems right now?"

"Fine, keep your stupid secrets to yourself."

Letting his shoulders relax, Wilbur nudged her with his elbow. "Mistakes happen, Vi. You just gotta keep moving forward when they do."

"... Keep doing what now?" the girl repeated with skepticism.

"That's my dad's motto."

"No offense to your dad, but that's one of the stupidest things I ever heard coming out of your mouth. And you've dumped me to tour with your wacky family on a trailer bus before."

"Glad to know that's how you recall what happened—"

"What does that even means anyway?" Violet snarled with a stoic firmness to her voice. "Moving forward. How the fuck do you do that?"

He hummed. "See what went wrong and try to find a way to make it right?"

"You're full of phony advice today, aren't you?"

"Can't do much if I don't know what we're talking about," said Wilbur with a shrug.

She grumbled, "It's not my story to tell."

"Then I rest my case. You're a smart girl, you'll figure something out." He winked with a gleeful grin on his face. "And then you keep moving forward."

Violet groaned, rolling her eyes. "You say that one more time and I will push you down these stairs."

Smile not faltering the slightest, he got up and held out a hand to her. "I think you need a distraction."

"If you think I'm going anywhere with you—"

"Come on, Hiro was looking for volunteers to test his new toys," Wilbur interrupted her nonchalantly.

She raised her eyebrows. "Being lab rats to a precocious boy genius is your idea of a distraction?"

"He probably has snacks too."

Violet's eyes narrowed. She glared at his outstretched hand as if it could attack her. Part of her wanted to tell him to get lost, but another part of her also didn't want to do nothing anymore. Unable to find any valid reason not to accompany the boy, Violet sighed before accepting his help. "Just so we're clear, I'm only going because I'm hungry."

"Sure thing, Parr. Whatever you say…"

Rooftop 3 o'clock

It was as if the short text on the screen mocked her, and she could oddly sense his smirk burning the back of her neck even with the thick concrete walls between them. Elsa was trying to do some light reading before bed, but that unnecessarily cryptic message had made her completely lose focus of the narrative. She played with the pendant on her phone strap, rotating the snowflake between her fingers as she pondered whether she should just ignore him altogether. Albeit understandable, considering their individual schedules, not being able to meet up at all the entire weekend stirred a restless feeling in her chest.

Elsa sighed, finally dropping her phone on the nightstand and glancing at her friends for a distraction. On the other side of the room, Violet fought with her homework, grumbling obscenities to the piece of paper in front of her, and Elsa could only hope the brunette's words weren't being directly transcripted into the essay. Astrid, on the other hand, sat on the floor with her legs spread, going through a set of stretches as she loudly listened to music on her headphones. Probably noticing Elsa's attention on her, Astrid looked up with a frown.

"What's wrong?"

Elsa jumped, palms immediately sweating as her heavy conscience returned to slap her in the face. "W-why do you ask?"

Astrid shrugged. "You look distracted."

"I suppose I am..."

"You've been distracted a lot lately," Astrid added, completely deadpan.

Elsa hummed, pushing herself up to sit with her back straight. She rolled her shoulders back, loosening little of the stiffness in her muscles. "Hypothetically speaking, what would the utmost betrayal entail to you?"

Astrid scrunched up her nose. "Taking a literal ax to the back of the head feels like a pretty bad thing to me."

"In what kind of scenario would I ever do that to you?" Elsa gasped.

"Wasn't that a hypothetical question?" Astrid asked with growing skepticism. "Also, I'm down with sparring if that's what you're looking for."

Elsa chuckled. "It's not, but thanks for letting me know."

Astrid smiled as well, getting up and jumping on her bed. "So what do you need my forgiveness for?"

"Why do you think I did anything wrong, to begin with?"

"You're insulting my intelligence, Elsa—"

Before Elsa could come up with a reply, Violet was throwing her head back with a loud groan. "Would you lovely ladies mind piping down? Some of us are trying to work here," she grumbled, throwing glares at the other two.

Astrid rolled her eyes. "It's not our fault you always leave your homework until the last minute."

Eager to shift the attention to her friend, Elsa added, "Which begs the question: What have you done all day instead, Violet?"

"You know how it is. Busy Day. Lots to do."

"Like what?"

"Like running performance tests on Hiro's popcorn machine."

"... And here I was starting to feel sorry for you," Astrid grumbled.

"It worked on max power for three hours straight without blowing up, but then we ran out of kernels."

"What on earth did you need that much popcorn for?" Elsa asked with a reprimanding tone.

Violet shrugged before going back to hunching over her desk again. "So yeah, Bio was not at the top of my priority list."

"I hope the popcorn was worth the amount of detention you're getting for not turning in your homework on time."

"Uh, excuse you, we still have a whole hour before lights out."

"Please. You could stay up all night and you'd still need more time."

"Wanna bet?" Violet asked with an arched eyebrow.

Astrid laughed. "Sure, I will be your personal slave for an entire day."

Violet stopped, crossed her arms smugly, and swiveled on her chair. "Well, that oughta be fun."

"You cannot be serious," Elsa hissed, looking from one friend to the other.

"She started it!"

"But you can't just write whatever, you hear? Passing grade minimum."

"Yeah, yeah." Violet waved with her free hand, eyes already darting through her notes with renewed focus. "Now shut up, you're distracting me."

"Move your pen, dipshit. Not your mouth."

"You know, you're gonna feel so stupid when I win, Hofferson..."

The trash-talking continued, but Elsa tried to tune it out, sinking on the mattress with a pillow snuggled tightly in her arms. She closed her eyes with a heavy sigh. As if sneaking out of the room unnoticed wasn't a difficult task as it was, she now had to take that ridiculous bet into account as well...

No matter how exhilarating a secret rendezvous in the middle of the night was, Elsa knew that pretending to be asleep to deceive her roommates would likely result in her dozing off for real at some point. So it was a good thing that she had set an alarm to wake her up beforehand, otherwise, she'd surely be late for the meeting.

Her phone buzzed on her hand, and she immediately turned the alarm off. She rubbed the sleep off her eyes, letting her vision adjust to the dim lighting. Violet's desk lamp was still on, but the girl herself had collapsed over her desk, face hidden in her arms and pencil sloppily held between loose fingers. Glancing at Astrid's side of the room, she could identify the even rise and fall of her sleeping friend's figure, and Elsa exhaled with relief. It was safe for her to move.

Careful not to make any noises, Elsa made a straight line to the door. Clicking it shut behind her, she slowly walked down the corridor, nerves threatening to get the best of her with every step she took. Her ears were alert to the slightest of approaching sounds, and Elsa wasn't sure whether the silence put her at ease or increased her panic level even more.

Somehow, she managed to get to the rooftop, and as soon as she stepped out into the dark, arms wrapped around her, making her almost have a heart attack.

"You're late," Jack whispered in her ear, warm breath tickling her skin.

Heartbeat slowly going back to normal, she let herself relax in his embrace and her arms moved to cover his. "I never said I was coming."

"You're here, aren't you?"

Elsa rolled her eyes. "What was the urgent message for, Frost? Wanted to summon a demon?"

"Yeah, exactly. Did you bring the blood sacrifice or should I go fetch Hiccup?"

"You're an idiot."

He chuckled, resting his chin on her shoulder. "Jokes aside, it's nice that you're finally here. I got tired of waiting."

She winced when his nose nudged her neck. "You're cold."

"Yeah, someone has my hoodie—"

"I tried to give it back," she huffed.

"You can't return a gift, silly," he mocked, spinning her around and draping his arms over her shoulders. "But I'm starting to question the point of it if you're not even gonna wear it."

"You do remember this is supposed to be a secret relationship, right?"

Jack hummed, leaning his forehead against hers and closing his eyes. "Then I guess we'll just have to find other ways to keep ourselves warm, huh?"

He leaned in for a kiss, and for a moment, she let him. But then, the fear of being caught breaking the rules won and Elsa pulled back, tangling her fingers through the hair.

"We should go back," she whispered.

"You just got here," he whined against her lips.

Elsa's hands slipped down his neck, shoulder blades, and arms, and she tugged on his hands, leading him back inside gently. "We have classes in a few hours."

"How about we ditch 'em?"

"How about we don't?"

Jack pouted. "Aw, come on, you can't say no to this cute face."

"Your cute face is not worth tarnishing my school records, Frost."

"Did you just call me cute?" He smirked, throwing an arm over her shoulders as they trod down the stairs together.

"Definitely not complimenting you," she said, rolling her eyes.

"But you did, didn't you?"

"... Still not a compliment, Frost."

Jack didn't really expect to accomplish anything with all his whining, but he kept arguing with her, mainly because he liked to watch her face scrunch up in that adorable annoyed expression she made whenever he was being a total pain. He was having so much fun in fact, that he didn't even notice the little party that awaited them at the bottom of the stairs...

"Fancy meeting you two together," Hiccup said, the venom in his voice dripping through his lips.

Jack's hand immediately let go of Elsa and they stepped away from each other at the same time. His eyes immediately went to Andy, but the latter discretely shook his head to plead his innocence.

"You sneaky little liars," Violet snarled. "you've been secretly dating this whole time?!"

"No…" He glanced at Elsa, but the girl seemed to be having a rough time, what with their entire group of friends' accusing eyes on her. "Just the last few days."

"And you didn't tell us because…?" Astrid asked, crackling the knuckles of one hand.

"We wanted to surprise you guys, but now you went and ruined it," Jack replied with a somewhat nonchalant shrug. "Thanks a lot."

Andy smirked with his lower lip between his teeth. "I don't think now's the time, buddy."

"I concur," Elsa stated firmly, staring straight ahead. Not meeting anyone's eyes, the blonde strode past the group towards the door. "Now is not the time. So I'm going to bed. As should the rest of you."

"Oh, no, no, no, Elsa," Violet laughed sardonically, storming after her friend. "You're not getting away that easily!"

"Are you trying to wake up the rest of the dorm?" Elsa whisper-shouted back.

"Why the hell not? I bet you and Frost would love a bigger audience for this little show of yours!"

Taking a long deep breath, Elsa looked at the rest of the gang and presented them with one of her polite emotionless smiles. "Goodnight, everyone."

She turned on her heels and quickly disappeared to the girls' side of the dorm, but Violet stormed after her practically yelling, "Where do you think you're going? You can't just walk away like that! You better explain yourself RIGHT NOW!"

Astrid sighed, heading back as well. "Keep your goddamn voice down, woman…"

"Well, that was fun," Jack mumbled as echoes of Violet's voice could still be heard from a distance. "But I'm beat, so if you gentlemen don't mind, I think I will be excusing myself now—"

"Don't you fucking dare think you're off the hook, Frost."