• Can't Smile Like You Mean It When You're Tongue Tied by Sockhead_42 (HiJack, HTTYD, RoTG, The Big Four, and a lot of other fandoms, crossover fanfic)

╰┈• He shrugged as he exhaled. “Yeah, but he was just like that. North used to call him a tinkerer. Hic was always making stuff or fixing broken things. One time, Emma’s favorite music box had stopped working and North was having the hardest time fixing it. You should’ve seen his face when Hic swooped in and got it to work.” An eleven-year-old Hiccup popped into his mind. The look of pride on his young face was just as clear then as it is now. Jack ached at the memory.

“Relax your jaw,” Vanellope said as she popped an orange slice in her mouth. “You’re gonna break your teeth one of these days.”

He rubbed his face as he rested his elbows on his knees. He wasn’t sure how to fix that. He wasn’t sure how to fix anything about himself. Maybe nothing about him could be fixed. This was just his life now. He ran a hand through his hair and let out a long-tired sigh. “I wish I could take my brain out of my head and kick it to the curb.”

“Why?” she asked with a breathy laugh.

“I just,” he said as he looked for the right words. “I need a vacation from it. It bombards me with all these dumb memories I hadn’t realized I’d been holding onto. I think they’re starting to fuck with me a little.”

“So, let them go,” she suggested through her orange slice.

He rolled his eyes at her. Sure, why hadn’t he thought of that? She said it so simply, like it was easy. “You don’t think I haven’t tried that?” he asked. “Being back home sucks, dude. I’m surrounded by nothing but memories…I wish I could forget about them.”

“Do you really?” She asked.

Of course, he didn’t want to forget. He just wished it wasn’t so painful. She walked over to him and handed him an orange slice. He held it in his other hand and in return, he held the cigarette out for her.

“You know,” she started before she took a drag of the cigarette. He chewed on the slice slowly as he waited for her to continue. He grimaced at the taste. “I used to have this friend called Taffeta. She was a real piece of work when we met and even by the end of our friendship, she was a pain in my ass. Honestly, I’m glad we’re not friends anymore, she was a total bitch. Anyway, the point is she was a shitty friend, but she was my shitty friend.”

She gestured to the cigarette for another drag. After she exhaled, she said, “I know it’s not really the same as you and Hiccup or even the girls, but I still miss her sometimes. I can’t listen to Grimes right or eat taffy the same anymore and the worst part is I think a part of her sticks with me. Sometimes she pops up in the way I talk or the way my eyeliner comes out. Yeah, it fuckin sucks but it’s kinda cool that the fun parts of her are still around. Like when I look back on it all I’m glad she was in my life even if she didn’t stick around.”

Her last statement opened that old wound that had been festering since his return. He understood what she was trying to say. It was a painfully beautiful thought and yet, something in him came undone as he thought about how fleeting life was. Nothing in his life would stay. Maybe not even her. “I’m gonna miss you,” he said before he even knew what he meant.

Her mouth fell open and her eyes widened. “Dude, what the hell are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere.”

His face got hot, and he looked down at the cigarette in his hands. “No, I know, I just- I meant one day it’s not gonna be like this and you’ll just be another person I’m gonna miss.”

“Aw, Jack,” she said as she grabbed his face to look at her. Her hands were cold and smelled citrusy. “Even if that was the case, sidenote you’re stuck with me forever, how great is that! What’s that Shakespeare quote about how it’s better to have loved and lost or whatever?”

He jerked his head back and quirked a brow at her. How could she fuck up that most iconic line? It wasn’t even by Shakespeare. “Vee, you’re thinking of Tennyson. The line is ‘tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.’ How could you even mistake him for Shakespeare?”

“Whatever, dork,” she snorted. “The point is even though you don’t talk to Hiccup or the girls like you used to, aren’t you glad you did at some point? It's the same with your uncle. Wasn’t it nice to love and be loved by him? By them?”

He looked around and then after a brief moment asked, “Dude, where is this wisdom coming from?”

“Do you like it?” she asked and then pointed to her head. “It’s straight off the dome.”

A chuckle escaped him. He held the cigarette out for her and watched as she leaned over and took a drag. She had managed to nab one of the beanies Rapunzel had made for him. It was the navy blue one with the snowflakes. The red streaks from her hair peeked out from underneath it.

“For what it’s worth,” she said as she exhaled. “I’m gonna miss you too.”

They sat in the comfort of each other’s company as she fed him the rest of their orange and finished the last of the cigarette. He knew she was right. As much as they pained him, he was glad to have all these memories. He felt an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for Vanellope’s friendship. It scared him how quickly he came to care about her. She inserted herself into his life so seamlessly and now he didn’t want to imagine it without her. He loved her. He loved her so much that he already missed her. It was the damnedest thing. It all was. To love and be loved. He found himself grateful for it. For all of it.

• Icarus; or, Look Who's Digging His Own Grave by DesdemonaKaylose (JTHM, JohnnyJimmy)

╰┈• Fish hunches his shoulders. “Your name’s too complicated,” he says, mimicking someone Jimmy’s never met. “Why don’t you pick an easier name, like John, or Steve. Well if they want easy, easy is what they get. A good, solid English word. If you can’t pronounce Fish, you’re hopeless.”

The record spins, pouring its reedy omen across the stacks, the leaves are trembling on the tree, trembling on the tree…

“That’s the thing about people,” Fish says. “They don’t care about you, really. They just care about what they can get out of you. It takes too much effort to learn somebody’s name. It takes too much effort to take an interest, not when they can just shake you down to get what they’re after. Half the people who talk to me just want access to my record collection, and ever since I started working here, the other half is angling for discounts.”

Jimmy feels a pang of a pain that isn’t quite his own, like the reverb off a plucked string.

“I know why you come here and talk to me,” Fish says, a bitter curl to his lips. “You’re sad and pissed off and I’m a target that will stand still for you while you bleed on me. And I don’t mind most days. Even bad company is better than no company.”

Jimmy’s mouth is dry. He doesn't know what to say. All this time he’s thought of himself as a pinball bouncing into dumb obstructions, unseen except in the moment of collision, barely noticed even in the moment of retribution. It never occurred to him that someone else was watching him, even as he was drifting through their lives in a haze of unexamined impulses.

• Hate to See Him Leave by Winddrag0n (Hannigram); lmao omg pfffff

╰┈• Will turns away. To Jack, it’s a rejection, but to Hannibal, a kindness.