The Life of Thieves

Sobriety

Warnings: underaged drinking.
"What do you mean, 'dead'?" Jack asked. Merida walked over to Jack, almost as a mother would for comfort.

Rapunzel, still drunk, didn't take this information well. She turned to hiccup, putting her hand over her mouth. She was the only one of the four to have ever seen the man. It was only a few short days ago. And now he was dead.
She wanted to cry, but her feelings were too jumbled and Rapunzel didn't want to look vulnerable as she was still sober enough to not want to make a fool of herself, but sick enough to where everything felt gross and wrong. She did not look at him. He didn't understand.
When he'd reached out to her, she only ran out of the room, the front door of their lofty apartment abruptly slamming shut quickly after. Rapunzel probably couldn't get anywhere teleporting that drunk, but they trusted her to stay out of danger enough to walk off into the night because it was Rapunzel. Even so, Hiccup chased after her. It was what he wanted to do. Jack would catch him up later.

Jack and Merida had spared them a glance and shared a look of concern, but stayed on the line with Nicholas.

He replied, "He was found in his mansion by one of his employees. The painting was reported missing by another member of staff who had no idea where the painting had come from, and correctly identified it as the Vo painting that you sold him."

Jack grew tense. He knew that he was a smart man who knew how to cover his tracks so that nothing would lead to us, and, in turn, they didn't leave anything for them to be identified with, anyway. But why would this man have been murdered over that painting?

They pondered, wrapping things up with Nicholas as they could not think at such a time to figure out just what it meant. Had someone come after that painting, was it their fault? It was too much. Their stomachs couldn't process it.
As the call came to a close, Jack sat down in Hiccups swivel chair. He rubbed his face with his hands, pushing his hair back. The stress was too much, and Jack didn't want it. No one had ever died. This was new ground that they were walking on. The Big Four has had many, many successful robberies, even if just the ones that the press was aware of, but they were not murders to anyone.

"is it our fault?" Merida said. She looked so small to jack. Merida wasn't a small person, and she never carried herself that way. But, with shame in her eyes, she shrunk down a size.

"I don't know." It was all he could say.

"What if they think we murdered him?" Jack didn't want her to keep asking these questions. Of course they were all thinking it. Of course these were big issues. But he needed to rest. Just for a moment, so that he wouldn't explode.

"Merida. We've never been caught for thieving. Convictions don't mean a thing until they put a face to it. You know that." Although it was true, he understood her worry. It was all he could feel.

"I'm still scared," she said.

"me too."

___________

Hiccup hadn't taken too long to catch up to the girl. Although she could teleport and he had been missing an entire damn foot, she was awful at navigating this drunk. When he had caught up to her, she immediately hunched over and clung to a nearby tree on the edge of the sidewalk, and vomiting onto the empty road. The city was quiet, and it was hard not to hear the disgusting sounds.

He reached to gather hair from her face, but remembered it wasn't much of a problem for her. Instead, he rubbed her back as she continued to spew alcohol and last nights dinner from her system.
He waited for the gagging to stop. For what felt like hours but was only a few minutes, Rapunzel started breathing heavily in replacement of her normal vomiting sounds. She took the sleeve of her long-sleeved sweater and wiped away the extra spit from her mouth. She let herself fall back onto the pavement, and sat on the side of the road with a concerned Hiccup not knowing exactly what to do.

"Punz-," he began, not really knowing what he was going to say after.

"This was my fault." She whispered.

"Punz, this is in no way your fault." He stated.

She began crying, as if she weren't already too dehydrated to do so. "It doesn't feel like it."

He sighed. He didn't know what to do, but he figured being there was enough.

Rapunzel has always had a big heart for living things of all sorts. Death wasn't something she could handle from any point. Not even a near stranger she'd met briefly on a dock somewhere. Not even someone as sleazy as this man.

She cried into her hands on the pavement, the sun still an hour away from rising. He finally sat next to her, pulling her closer, and she allowed herself to cry into his shoulder, even if she smelled awful.

Her hair was a mess tucked under his chin, and, in efforts to comfort her, he placed a hand on her head and stroked her short brown locks, and placed a kiss on the top of her messy head of hair.

The crying stopped suddenly. She sat up slowly to look him in the eyes for the first time since she'd woken up. 

Her green eyes were that of emeralds. He was absolutely mesmerized. It was nothing new, but she'd never let him look for so long before. 

It was a magical moment when he sensed her leaning forward, and he didn't need the man on the moon to tell him that. 

And on the curb that night, Hiccup found out what her lips felt like. He put his other hand that wasn't stroking her soft messy locks onto her cheek, taking in what she'd felt like. It had been soft, warm, and beautiful.

Rapunzel quickly pushed him away, and although Hiccup did not deny her request for space, he was questioning her.

"What the-" With a push of his chest from her small frail hands, Rapunzel vomited once more onto Hiccups shoes.

So, If you guys haven't noticed, this chapter was more for Hiccunzel than anything else. I know I'd asked about Hiccunzel or Eugene and Rapunzel, but the story kind of just called for it to go this way. It's funny because I'm not an avid shipper of Hiccunzel, but it just seemed... right?

Vote and comment!

-Li