A/n: Oh. Oh hai. You're still here? Wow you're patient. :,D

And what's this? A title having to do with the actual movie?! Yes well, trying to avoid some of that nonsense from before. (WTH was I thinking with "Hiccup's Quandary"? Who says quandary?)

This chapter is poorly put together BUT it does have a little bit of a treat towards the end... which gets kind of awful pretty fast. But it's something. Something that may kind of sort of push the rating limit. Eh you'll see what I mean I guess. :P

Hiccup lost track of the passing weeks. The young Vikings claimed his mornings from him, and the hungry dragon-captives took greedy bites into his nights. One day in the valley, he grew so tired that he lay back in the grass and rested his eyes – only for Toothless to plop his head down against the small Viking's stomach.

"What the—!" the boy started, staring down into the Night Fury's 'innocent' yellow gaze. He scowled. "I am not a cushion!" Hiccup groaned, pushing at the dark-haired head nuzzled into his tunic. It barely budged, only blinking at him with mild agitation and a lazy curl to the dark lips. The boy just sighed and gave up, too heavy with the swaying haze of sleep-loss to wrestle his stubborn friend. So he fell asleep with Toothless under the midday sun, one shared nap of many to follow, between all the flying, the playing, and now the Norse lessons.

The moment the half-beast learned the word "why," Hiccup's life became even more interesting than meeting the scaled man had already made it. That, and "what is it," which Toothless often shortened to "what is," instantly became the Night Fury's favorite phrases. And it drove the freckled teen to near insanity.

That Night Fury took far too much delight in watching the adolescent human fluster and huff. Sometimes he asked "why" after "why," even when he didn't care, even when he already understood, just to make those odd, cherry-blossom lips pinch together with annoyance, while the full, dappled cheeks bunched. The mild boy rarely let his patience slip far from him, but the half-dragon occasionally pushed Hiccup to fling away his notebook and just hold his head in his hands, refusing to answer his friend until his vexed nerves calmed.

Toothless learned new words quickly, but Norse grammar was a boggling knot to painstakingly unravel. It took so long to comprehend the basics of a sentence, but slowly, the Night Fury began to make himself understood to the boy. Though his husky foreign tongue still laced his Norse speech, the clumsy conjugations began to smooth, and the words finally started to fall into the pattern set out for them.

He could understand Hiccup's mutterings, about his village, about the supposed friends who thought him a warrior, about a father gone at sea – not a word about a mother. The Asgardian half-beast listened, until the boy finally saw in his friend's intent, comprehending eyes, that his words no longer wore the shroud of random, alien sounds to him.

But whenever Hiccup tried to ask the question foremost in his mind – what was this manlike creature, and were there more like him? – the demigod gave no answer, feigning confusion. He had to understand by now... why would he not tell him?

...

When the Night Fury finally learned the meaning of his nickname, he rolled with hysterics at the boy's feet.

"You know," Hiccup tried to explain sheepishly, "because your teeth, they sort of retract – they, they go back in – so it looks kind of like there's no... teeth?"

Toothless wheezed for air.

"No," he gasped, "teeth!"

Hiccup sighed, eyes rolling back as his friend nearly choked on the notion that a fearsome Night Fury, the unrivaled king of the skies, could be dubbed such a ludicrously harmless name.

"It makes sense," the boy grumbled in his defense, half a smile on his lips despite himself. He kicked at the dirt beneath his feet, arms folding at his chest – though not in the tall, prideful way his father might clutch at his thick biceps. Rather, his hands closed and tucked themselves under his sleeves, and his shoulders curved in, like he was cold.

"Well what would you rather be called? Do you... have a name?"

The thought hadn't occurred to Hiccup right away. When it did, his eyes sought the Night Fury's with a wondering frown. The half-dragon's grin slipped away.

"Yes," he said simply. His brows met, and he sat upright as his coal-black pupils narrowed and turned upward, silently traversing the Norse language for the match to his native tongue. Then he spoke, slowly, carefully laying out each sound with surprising coherence. "With your words, it's..." He thought some more, before finally choosing the closest foreign brother to his name.

"...Windwalker."

Hiccup blinked, and his parted lips spread with a little grin. "Windwalker, huh?" he murmured.

But the Night Fury shook his head. "No," he said, rising sprightly from his seat. "You say Toothless."

The boy's tilted head followed his friend's movement with confusion creasing at his forehead. "What? But-"

"It's," the creature interrupted, then paused, "...funny." He had to settle with that, even though it didn't quite capture the right meaning. Toothless hadn't yet found the Norse equal to that one word, that perfect fit for every wry mumble from the human's odd, pinkish mouth; every guileless jump or pinch in the lines of his roundish face; each spontaneous, almost marionette-like gesture of his small hands and skinny arms.

He didn't know the word for adorable yet.

The Night Fury just smirked playfully at Hiccup, who looked no less confused but nonetheless shook his head and sighed.

"Um, okay..."

...

The bee swerved between narrowing yellow eyes, humming away with oblivious bliss, and found its perch upon the scaly mass of the Night Fury's nose. Toothless growled, fixing his cross-eyed glare on the striped beetle. Then he shook his head furiously, batting at his nose until the bee buzzed frantically out of his clutches. The half-beast glowered after the insect, a little shaken from the encounter, but victorious, nonetheless.

He turned when a strange, strangled sound rose from the boy at his side. The human's eyes were huge, and his lips held together so tight that dimples emerged near the curving corners of his mouth. He made the sound again, like a choke, and his chest lurched. Then Hiccup's eyes fell shut, and slow, airy huffs of laughter shook him until he actually collapsed, and his lips opened with hysterical giggles.

For once, Toothless did not share his friend's amusement. He huffed, watching crossly as the boy gripped his sides as though they were splitting.

"Y-your – face!" he gasped, looking near tears.

The half-dragon growled slightly at his friend on the ground, laughing away at him. He'd bettered the beetle – what could Hiccup possibly find so silly? But as he glowered, an evil thought possessed him.

"Wha – hey!"

Hiccup's gleeful noises abruptly ceased, as he found himself suddenly flung over the Night Fury's shoulder like a potato sack.

"Hey!" he said again, squirming against the scaly hide. "Put me down you dolt! What do you think you're—"

When he finally caught a glimpse over his shoulder at the Night Fury's destination, the boy halted.

"No," Hiccup said firmly, struggling harder in his friend's iron grasp. "Do not – don't even think – no, no, no, no, n-aah!"

And with that, Toothless tossed his little friend into the lake.

The boy re-emerged a few moments later, sputtering, hair in his eyes and sopping sleeves hanging from his outstretched arms. Toothless cackled, and Hiccup glared at him through his drenched bangs. He kicked at the shallows towards the half-dragon, just missing him, so the beast retaliated in kind with his tail. Then to Hiccup's surprise, the fire-breather leapt at him suddenly, knocking them both into the water, and the juvenile battle continued from there.

Half-a-dozen teasing games later, Hiccup staggered out of the lake with his arms around himself. Shivers crept through his small body, and he pushed out shaky breaths between clattering teeth. But the boy had fallen into the water so often, now, this time he was prepared. He darted clumsily to his bag, where he knelt down and unknotted the belt at his waist, peeling the green tunic from his torso.

Water trickled from the boy's pale neck down his slender back, dappled like his face with little brown freckles. The droplets shimmered in the sun against bare skin, shifting with every minute motion he made. He pulled his head out of the wet shirt with clenched eyes and a pursed smile, shaking darkened auburn locks out of his face. When his arms were free of the fabric, his palm pushed back sticky bangs, smoothing his disarrayed hair down from his forehead to the base of his neck. The boy's pale, slight chest rose and fell with quick breaths as he leaned over his satchel, searching it with cold clumsiness.

His eyes briefly turned up, and he jumped a little to find the Night Fury's yellow stare right in front of him. But the dark, very round pupils were not on Hiccup's face.

Leather-like fingers brushed Hiccup's shoulder, running gently down his back. The boy froze under the touch, staring at the grass beneath them awkwardly as his face burned with rising blood.

"What is?" the draconic being murmured.

"Ah," Hiccup said, trying to just stay calm and still while the Nightfury's hand grazed over him. "Skin?"

Toothless kept staring at the first human he'd seen shed of their outer layers – if only partway. Hiccup was a bony youth, but hacking wood and molding metal had firmed his shoulders and trimmed his arms. The baggy clothing gave the appearance of being a little smaller than he truly was. Though he was short and thin, it wasn't the shapeless skin and bones one expected to find underneath.

Hiccup pulled slowly back from his friend's touch, throwing a dry shirt over his head and yanking it down over him, looking anywhere but into the half-dragon's burning eyes. Toothless withdrew his hand and tucked his fingers into his palm, folding with it the feel of soft, moist warmth.

...

One day everything changed.

It began long before that day, somewhere in the games and the laughter and the touches that were starting to linger. Something thickened in their eyes when they met. Something was starting to swallow them both up, spreading its jaws around them, poised to crash down on the human and the demigod at any moment.

They ventured off the island that day, flying over sea and rock. Hiccup fell from the Night Fury's back, but found his hand before they reached jagged stones below. The two put themselves back together like pieces of the same whole, and when Toothless' wings opened again, they weaved through the canyons in their path with ease. Weeks of practice taught them to read the meanings in one another's nudges, the quick glances between their eyes, the brief word here and there, and the small squeezes on one or other of the half-dragon's shoulders. So well did they fly together, never would you guess they were two separate creatures, and not one.

Hiccup spread his arms into the sky around them, letting his eyes close out the wind and his lips part with a wordless call, throwing it to the waters and the cliffs, laughing as they threw it back. Toothless' own unearthly cry followed the human's, and the giddy boy's outstretched limbs fell loosely around his friend's neck. The demigod could hear the grin in Hiccup's voice, could almost feel the smile pressing over his dark locks...

The pair found land again beneath their feet on a beach far from the island's center, far from any other human's watch or care. Once Hiccup leapt down from the Night Fury's back, not a second passed before his friend had him in his arms, and the human had him back, and the laughter had no known end.

Toothless didn't know the words, couldn't remember if he knew, couldn't speak them if he remembered, could only lean into his little friend's smiling face to thank him for this miracle he'd worked.

Hiccup had asked once, absent green eyes falling to the grass, why had Toothless ever been afraid of a boy with twig-like limbs and tripping feet? The demigod could snap the human in two. Where was the threat in a much weaker being?

The Night Fury's impish face had turned solemn. "You... took the sky," the draconic man had said slowly, drawing the boy's round eyes back to his. "You gave it back." The fledgling human was caught in the steady yellow stare, startled to stillness like a fawn as Toothless touched the Viking's arm. "Is not – threat is not... here," he'd murmured with difficulty, before moving his dark hands past Hiccup's ears, sinking into the auburn locks on either side of the boy's head. "Here is threat..."

Nothing had ever struck the divine being down before. Nothing was more dangerous than the skinny little human. But with that same power that downed a demigod, the boy returned what he'd taken from the Night Fury, and brought a lopsided smile and a gentle touch to every grounded day. He was a creature unlike any the descendant of gods had ever known.

The air between the embracing friends seemed to thin, and somewhere the laughter slowed to quiet pants.

Since the Night Fury first touched the hidden layer of skin beneath the human's furs, every brush of scaly fingers stretched longer than the last. Every grasp over the human's slim shoulders, every shrouding fold into the demigod's sinewy chest, every closing breath between slightly parted mouths – it all threw a fog over Hiccup's eyes. It pushed back his voice and locked it in his throat. It sealed all sound but the violent thrum of his own heart.

It would not let thought swim to his mind through the flood of sensation.

So when the curled back of the demigod's hand traveled down from the edge of the human's heated cheek, when fingertips skimmed the surface of his thin dry lips, when Hiccup laughed like a whisper and turned his face down, when Toothless slipped the scaly digits of his hand underneath the boy's chin, when he guided his roundish face back up, when his thumb swept like the sudden throb of a static shock over Hiccup's lower lip, when his face leaned in, in, nose-to-cheek, cheek-to-lips, when his mouth brushed over the edge of Hiccup's own, the human didn't push away.

He kissed him.

Hiccup barely understood what it was, didn't recognize it from the furious clash of mouths between a squirming barmaid and the warrior pinning her to him. It was only another battle he'd never learned to wage, never grasped the brutal rules – except one...

The demigod's lips gently pressed Hiccup's apart, pushed against them, along them, leading them in a foreign dance of slowly tilting faces and rolling jaws.

It wasn't a fight, so how could the Viking defend? How could he begin to know what they were doing...

Claws sank through the fabric of Hiccup's tunic, just grazing his skin. The boy's fingers clenched over the Night Fury's shoulders, palms rubbing into the wiry muscle, and when the half-dragon at last set the human's lips free, the willing captives followed their captors, brushing softly over them until the two pairs locked together again.

The demigod's hold left Hiccup's chin, and his scaly hand slid through auburn tufts to the base of the young Viking's scalp. Their bodies pressed closer, harder, and the boy's voice leapt weakly in his throat to escape its dry confines. A low, rumbling growl from the Night Fury echoed his small friend's quivering whine, devoured it. Hiccup let his hands stray, didn't care where they roved, felt them slide over the toned upper half of his strange friend's arms, arms that snapped metal easily as a grass blade, arms more powerful than any human's, than ten human's – arms that never struck or snatched, arms that surrounded, like shields to the spearing reach of humans.

In a gasping second, Toothless broke them apart, and as the boy's mouth fell open, the Night Fury's jagged teeth surrounded his swollen lower lip, and closed gently over the moist flesh with a light tug. The human's startled moan drove the half-dragon's throaty purr to a sudden, possessive snarl.

So quickly, the demigod's grasp fell to the boy's bony hips, and in one steady sweep of motion Hiccup's feet left the ground. His thighs were opened and brought around the Night Fury's middle, dark arms lifting him up until their two pairs of cloudy eyes were level. The boy's fingers raked into the knotty black hair, legs hooking about his friend while the clawed hands crept over the small of his back. Wide myrtle stared, rapt, into a sea of tiny scales, into two yellow islands, and along a chasm that blew salty gusts against the dampened brim of Hiccup's open mouth. Their faces hovered, like a pair of frail-winged moths over the flame of the other's lips, until Toothless seized his human with another round of kisses, and together they braved the fire between them.

The demigod's growls stirred a gale up from the pit of Hiccup's belly, and his voice cried out for its freedom against its prison door, sealed with Night Fury's lips, stoppered with his thick tongue – oh! The slide of the muscle inside his mouth, lightly forked at the tip, slowly rubbing down his own tongue, tasting him, oh gods above, what was this?

Before the unsaid could long be thought, the Night Fury was down on a knee, boy still wrapped around him, and then Hiccup's back hit sand, scattering the sluggishly retreating grains. Windwalker was over him, clawing through his shirt, ripping the tight-knit threads apart, bearing down on the youth with merciless attacks on his lips.

Their sounds rose with the quiet lull of waves against shore, the distant cry of gulls, the whisper of a breeze. Under it all were rustling clothes, breaking gasps, rolling dragon-moans, the sound of bodies slowly rocking together. Heat was everywhere, fingertips to toes, but the burn flared to a sudden, unbearable throb in the waking flesh between the boy's spread thighs.

Then Hiccup knew.

Finally, a desperate thought clambered through the onslaught of his feverish senses. He recognized the mad symphony to which this prelude belonged.

A chill stabbed through the heat, ran up his bones, turned the beat beneath his ribcage frantic.

In his village, a man only took another man like a woman for one reason – to shame him.

To hurt him.

The boy pushed his palms up between them, shot open his eyes and reclaimed his lips just enough to work words from them.

"S-stop," he whispered, and it became a chant, said over and over until the Night Fury stilled.

His friend – his only friend – blinked his bemused yellow eyes at the terrified face below his.

"Hiccup?"

The half-blooded Asgardian's brow shifted with worry. He reached for the boy's cheek, but the human squirmed away from Toothless' touch.

"Let me go."

Something laced the boy's voice when he said it, something cold and sharp as a knife's edge, slipping between them to make one last formidable barrier. And neither could cross it.

Toothless let his friend wriggle out from under him, clambering to his boot-clad feet to distance himself from the creature that so nearly... Hiccup breathed, clasping his arms to rub out the shiver climbing his limbs like a venomous insect. Head bowed, eyelids batting back the burn welling beneath them, the boy finally spoke again.

"Why?" asked the troubled human, turning to the one he thought was a friend, before that cruel trick he tried to play, the kind of trick that could always be held over him, that even his father couldn't fight if it were found out, that stripped a man of rank, of name, of worth, beyond that of a worm's. "I thought... why would you do that?"

But the Night Fury, standing slowly, wore nothing on his face but the purest bewilderment. Could he... not know?

What must that be like, Hiccup wondered, not to know? He couldn't remember a time ever in his life when he wasn't surrounded by that truth, in one shape or another. The lesson was always clear – weakness kills. And in the stories told by drunken warriors round the night fires, when a battle was lost, when a conquest was made, when a vanquisher drove the last nail into his victim's defeat... death was a mercy. The conqueror might instead torture, enslave, do any terrible thing. And sometimes, he would take him like a man takes a woman, tell the story again and again, laugh and claim that the defeated warrior whimpered and begged for more, as though a man relishing submission were the maddest notion in the wide world. It was the way of the weakest, and they had no home here.

What was it like... not to know...

The boy shook the question from his head, keeping his eyes to the windswept sand at his boots.

"Let's... let's just go home."

A/n: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...

Okay.

So maybe this is extremely random and unwelcome in this story, but some research suggests that the way Vikings viewed homosexuality depended mostly on whether you were submitting or dominating. Kind of like the Romans. If a guy screwed a guy, meh, no big deal. If a guy gets screwed by a guy, it's a different story, because then they're demoted to a womanly level, and women got no rights. -_-

I know, in this particular rendition of the Berkian Vikings, women do have a fairly equal place in their society... but I think I mentioned somewhere that they haven't really had a woman leader yet? Planning to explain in later chapters that, while chicks are better off here than in some societies, they're still lower on the ladder than guys in general. Also some implication that in their courtship, there's usually a struggle of some kind. No struggle whatsoever would be ludicrously submissive by their standards, from either gender... I guess.

Yeah I don't actually know what I'm doing durrrrr XP

I guess the bottom line is that Hiccup is very, very inexperienced, and his only understanding of homosexual sex is the barbaric, non-consensual variety. Only his sense of consensuality is a little... vague? When they made out, Hic literally did not know what the crap they were doing at first, because his only exposure to sexuality in general is a pretty rough and tumble impression. And all he knows is that when guys do it with other guys, the purpose and the result is shame. Sooooo once he realized wait, this is a sex thing, he just kind of assumed that's what was happening. :(

Complain away to me! It's okay, I know it's a bit dramatic, and what isn't kind of dire is just straight up cheesy~

Thanks for reading though!