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“Warming up?”
Astrid sat atop her Nadder, calling out to Hiccup. She’d caught up with him after he had ducked out with Toothless after an early breakfast; they now glided side by side, high above sea, with the island of Berk a mere speck on the horizon. Hiccup had, over the years, trained himself to listen for Astrid’s voice among the roaring winds, to recognize the familiar wingbeat of a Nadder catching up with him.
“Just getting some solo-flying in before all the pomp for the big race today,” Hiccup called back. “Not like I really need to warm up, anyway,”
Astrid crossed her arms, shooting him a playful look. “That so?”
It was all but a direct challenge.
And the corner of Hiccup’s lips twitched upwards into a smirk – “That so,” he confirmed.
Challenge accepted, then.
Here’s how it was: Toothless was known to be made of stealth and shadow; he was a blur of midnight with a flash of blood-red tailfin and a teasing warble for your trouble.
Stormfly, though – Stormfly was a tempest of razor-sharp spines and iridescent blue. She was pure speed; just faster than him by a hair.
And she’d never let him forget it.
Toothless sped ahead, trilling happily, and Stormfly followed, only seconds behind, with a pleased squawk. Astrid’s laughter carried on the wind, but Hiccup, determined to remain undistracted, kept his eyes forward, guiding Toothless in a loop above her. He surged further, but Astrid and Stormfly stayed close behind.
The route was agreed upon; they’d done it countless times by now. It was a pre-race race, a tradition between the two of them – to speed back to Berk in time for the actual race to begin, and it slowly became a competition amongst themselves. The pair flew neck and neck, weaving through the seastacks surrounding Berk, circling above dense forests and arcing massive loops in the clouds.
The goal was, as usual, the rooftop of the forge (much to Gobber’s annoyance, who shook a hammer at them in place of a fist every time they interrupted his work). The first to touch down was the winner – both Hiccup and Astrid took it almost as seriously as they’d take the actual dragon race, later. Hiccup ducked and weaved through cabins and huts; the control and precision of a Night Fury’s wings meant he could turn and veer at a moment’s notice. He hazarded a glance behind him – no Nadder, no Astrid to be seen, and he chuckled. Winning this was a good omen for the larger competition to come. He almost relaxed – almost – until he saw from the corner of his eye a flurry of blue and yellow, diving from above.
Hiccup launched his dragon further, Toothless bellowing with amusement as they accelerated, but just as they did, a young rider – new, still yet uncontrolled on their adolescent Scuttleclaw – darted forwards; called to Hiccup apologetically as he swerved to avoid them, detouring around another set of buildings before he could make his final approach to the forge. He watched as Astrid dismounted on the rooftop, making a large, exaggerated yawning motion in his direction.
Good omen, indeed.
It should have come as no surprise, therefore, when she snagged the black sheep from right under his nose, taking the game with 14 points to his 5.
“I suppose that’s the reason,” Astrid teased, much later, when the real race was said and done, the decorations dismantled and the fanfare long since died down, “that you don’t really do the Dragon Races too often anymore, right? It must be pretty embarrassing,”
“Oh?” Hiccup questioned.
“Yeah, I mean,” Astrid shrugged – she sat cross-legged, Hiccup’s head resting in her lap, and absently carded her fingers through his hair as they watched the sun dip below the horizon from their spot on the rooftop of the forge. “For the chief and his fearsome Night Fury to be shown up by his girlfriend every single time,” Astrid sucked in a sharp breath, began twisting another strand of Hiccup’s windswept locks into a short, stubby braid. “It can’t feel good,”
“‘Every single time!’” Hiccup repeated, throwing his hands up in mock dismay. “I believe, miss future chieftess, that we’re tied for wins, actually. I seem to recall the last race when I snatched the winning sheep from you in mid-air with mere seconds to spare,” he made a swift, sweeping motion in the air with his hand, reenacting the manoeuvre.
The village was quiet – as quiet, Hiccup supposed, as a village inhabited by vikings and dragons could be – and Toothless and Stormfly played together in the twilit plaza below, relaxing after the race. They fought over Hiccup’s prosthetic, flinging it this way and that. Sometimes, they’d drop it at the feet of a passing viking, who would laugh and toss it back again for them to fetch.
“It’s sad, really,” Astrid continued, ignoring him, “you have no more moves, no more tricks up those skinny sleeves,” she shook her head regrettably, like it was a real shame, this. “At least you have the humility to – waah!” She was cut off when Hiccup pinched her legs playfully – her thigh, behind her knee – she gave way to maniacal laughter, frankly quite unbecoming of the future chieftess and so-called best rider on Berk, Hiccup thought, but too utterly adorable for him to care. “Cut that out, Hiccup!” she shrieked.
Hiccup should have seen it coming; his defences were left wide open. Astrid’s retaliating attack had him flipped on his back, all the air escaped from his lungs, and in one swift motion she had him straddled, her hands bracing his wrists, locked above him.
“Now,” she smirked down at him, “who’s the best rider on Berk?”
“Well, that entirely depends on what you – okay okay okay!” Hiccup pleaded as Astrid tightened her death-grip on his wrists.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “You were saying?”
“Astrid Hofferson is a dragon master!” he gave in. “The most skilled and feared Nadder-tamer anywhere! Fastest racer from here to the furthest reaches of the entire archipelago!”
Astrid hummed, satisfied, and leaned down to press a kiss to the corner of Hiccup’s mouth. “That’s what I thought,”
Hiccup was, at this point, fairly used to tending to his own wounds. He could be clumsy, off dragonback, and he knew it – when he was young, it took him a long while to learn how to handle the tools at Gobber’s forge; he had countless burn scars from white-hot metal and more than a few lost fingernails from stray hammers to show for it. In those times, he’d figure Gobber or Stoick or anyone else in the village, for that matter, were too busy with Important Grown-up Viking Matters to be dealing with minor burns and lacerations, so he’d become adept at treating them one-handed. When metal burns and hammer bruises became dragonfire burns and claw scratches, he couldn’t ask anyone to help, least of all his father, for fear of getting disowned – or worse – he shuddered to think. So a curious Night Fury would watch as he did it himself – warbling questioningly as he wrapped up a scrape from a particularly nasty fall into a seastack (that popped up out of nowhere, okay, he’d swear it, that thing wasn’t there yesterday), when the pair were still learning to work as a team, fly as one.
“Don’t worry about it, bud,” he’d smile reassuringly, “It’s no big deal,” and before long he would be back on the dragon saddle, strapped in and ready to try again.
But then dragon ride r became dragon riders, and Hiccup found he no longer had any excuses to limp off and patch himself up, not when there were disapproving stares from his friends to contend with.
“Keep still,” Astrid instructed. He’d nearly given her a heart attack when he emerged from the training arena with a growing patch of dark red seeping through his tunic – it was either that or the fact that he seemingly would’ve tried to sew himself up with one hand if she hadn’t caught him slinking away from hatchling-training duty. “You’re so fidgety,”
“Sorry, did you just get impaled by a Deadly Nadder?” Hiccup winced. “You should try it, see how easy it is to hold still when its spines shoot directly through your arm,”
Astrid rolled her eyes, but she was gentle, hands moving with surety and skill: she was no stranger to sharp-class related injuries. “It was a baby Nadder. Its spines are a fraction of the size of Stormfly’s.” Indeed, the cut wasn’t all that deep; the hatchling’s spines were only nominally larger than the needle Astrid used to sew up the wound.
“Well, at least I’ve got a caring girlfriend to mock my wounds while she lovingly tends to them,”
“Wear better armor when you’re training sharps, next time,” Astrid said simply, not looking up from her work.
“Oh good, the blaming, too. Now we’ve got all the bases covered.”
When the blood was washed away, the cut finally stitched up, she unceremoniously flicked him in the nose. “That’s for not being careful,”
Hiccup waited. He looked at her expectantly. “Don’t you usually...?”
Astrid simply got up and left, snickering all the way.
“I hate this,”
“I know you do,”
“Astrid, I should be out there,” Hiccup motioned to the horizon; where the sea met the sky in an almost imperceptible line. “I should be helping. Instead, I’m – I’m just,” Just.
Scouts had reported evidence of dragon hunters, not far from Berk: traps hidden in dense forests around the archipelago, cages wrought in that sickly green – dragon-proof metal. It had been weeks – months, even – since they’d heard of any hunter activity, and Hiccup had begun to allow himself to hope that maybe they’d seen the last of them.
A stupid mistake.
“You can’t take down every dragon hunter in the world on your own,” Astrid told him, as though it weren’t the hundredth time she’d said it. “Especially not now.”
“Because I’m chief?” Hiccup asked. “Astrid. Those dragons out there are in danger. They’re being exploited, they’re being sold and slaughtered. They need help.” Hiccup stormed from one end of the Great Hall to the other, over and over since they adjourned the village meeting over an hour ago. Snotlout, Ruff and Tuff, and Astrid were to lead two teams of auxiliary riders to dispatch the nearby cell of hunters, but it was decided that Hiccup should stay on the island to attend to his duties as chief.
He should have gone with them. Should have fought harder, should have delegated his duties to someone else – “Toothless can help them. I can help them,” he whispered, desperately. “Isn’t that the duty of a chief, too?”
Astrid sighed, watching him pace around the Hall from her spot perched atop the table as she sharpened her axe. Right about now, her team would be preparing to head out. “Your duty is to your people, too, Hiccup,”
“I can do it, though,” he sounded helpless, like he still needed to prove himself. “Helping those dragons is what I’m good at. This – being chief?” he motioned all around him, to the empty chairs and tables – indicating his village, its people. “It’s been months and I still barely know what I’m doing,”
Astrid narrowed her eyes. “Do you think that dragon training was all you had to offer?”
“I-it’s not that, I just – ”
“Hiccup,”
He studied the floor. He still didn’t feel like a leader – still felt like, beneath the taller, leaner frame, there was still a scrawny, inferior outcast who didn’t have the confidence to do what needed to be done.
Astrid hopped off of the table and approached him, resting her hands on his slumped shoulders. “Do you trust Snotlout?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“In the heat of battle, do you trust him to make a good decision? Rely on him?”
Hiccup considered. “I... I guess so?” he said. “He’s my cousin,”
Astrid nodded, smoothed down his hair, brushing away the wild strands that fell in his eyes. “And when Johann and Krogan had you cornered, did you trust the twins to get you out?”
It was a moment he’d never forget – Viggo sacrificing himself so that Hiccup and Toothless could escape. And Ruffnut and Tuffnut could be difficult to work with at times, but gods, they were there for him. “Yes,”
“Do you trust me?”
Hiccup didn’t even hesitate. “With my life,”
And then Astrid’s lips were on his, and Hiccup melted into her; looked at her like she was the only thing in the world worth seeing. “You know,” she said, “I didn’t fall in love with you because you knew how to ride a dragon.”
“Um, thanks?”
“I fell in love with you,” she pressed on, “because you’re stubborn, and tough, and capable, and you know how to do the right thing, even if it’s hard,” She kissed his nose, the scar on his chin. “You are a chief,” she said against his skin; “You’re a leader. You rallied us to fight against the Red Death when no one else believed in us. You did that for your people,” Astrid stepped back, searched his eyes. “You don’t have to have every solution, Hiccup. Just enough trust to let the rest of us help you find them,”
Hiccup’s hands tightened on her waist. “I love you. Have I mentioned that recently? Because I really, really do,” He kissed her again and it was an anchor, a calm in the eye of a storm.
Astrid hummed happily against his mouth. “You can tell me more when I get back,”
And Hiccup nodded: “Go get ‘em,”
The thing about Hiccup and Astrid – having been betrothed since they were teenagers – they both knew exactly how to make the other come apart. Hiccup was always deft with his fingers in the forge, and in the bedroom even more so – knew exactly how she liked to be touched, where to pinch, caress, and tease to make her come completely undone. They made love like dragons, in the winter when the cold air dug its claws into the village for months at a time and they didn’t have much to do at home aside from think of ways to keep warm.
Sometimes, though, it went like this:
Astrid bucked her hips against his fingers involuntarily. Her eyelids fluttered shut and her head tilted backwards; Hiccup grinned against the skin of her neck. He had her pinned against the wall of his bedroom, his knee pushed up between her thighs. Her braids, primped and intricate mere hours before, now were nothing but a tangle of dishevelled, crimped locks; her mouth was parted, ragged and wanton. Her skirts were rucked up to her waist, her leggings pooled in a crumpled mess around her ankles. She was beautiful, she was a mess – she was a goddess.
Hiccup’s cock twitched at the way Astrid moaned into his mouth when his lips caught hers, the way her arms snaked around his neck and pulled him impossibly, desperately closer to her. Hiccup complied – his one arm tightened around her waist, staying her as he inserted his fingers into her; first one, then two, then three, keeping a steady, pulsing rhythm against her sex.
“Gods, fuck,” she hissed. “Don’t stop,”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Hiccup murmured as he pressed kisses along her jaw, down her neck. He slowly, carefully led her back towards his bed, and she gently slid her hands under his tunic as she followed, discarding it onto the floor before letting herself be lowered down onto the furs –
where she smacked her head down against the headboard with an unceremonious thunk.
“Ow!” she cried, loud enough to wake the sleeping Night Fury by the hearth a floor below. They stifled their giggles until they heard Toothless still. “Shit, but that hurt,”
Hiccup winced, leaning forward to examine the growing bruise on her head. “Sorry, sorry,” he rasped.
“Watch where you’re going next time, Haddock,” Astrid warned, but there was no real spite behind it – her eyes crinkled and her nose scrunched, her entire face lit up in a playful smile.
“In case you didn’t notice, I was kind of preoccupied,”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, I may have had my hands full,”
Astrid gave him a devilish, wan smile, flipped them over so Hiccup was on his back, her legs bracketing his hips. He leaned up to kiss her – slow and sweet, all the heat from their earlier embrace melted into something warm, something familiar. When he leaned back, though –
Thunk.
“Ow!”
“Now you see how I feel!” Astrid laughed.
“What can I say,” Hiccup shrugged, “You’re very distracting,”
Astrid hummed. She lifted her shirt off and tossed it aside, and suddenly pain where Hiccup hit his head had all but disappeared, and the lump he was sure was growing on his skull just wasn’t a priority anymore.
Go figure.
“Don’t fucking patronize me with that yak-shit, Hiccup,”
“I wasn’t trying to – ”
“I don’t have anything to prove to anyone, least of all you,”
See – it wasn’t that Hiccup didn’t get it.
Hiccup knew better than anyone that Astrid eclipsed him in strength, in resilience and tenacity. She always had. Astrid never faltered, never carried herself with anything but confidence, authority – even long before they’d been together and she was suddenly considered the chieftess of Berk in all but name. Astrid herself was a storm, and she didn’t let the opinion of anyone in the village – or beyond – affect her swagger. She was her own hero, and if she set a goal for herself, she smashed it into splinters. She didn’t have a contingency for failure, because failure was not a concept that was within Astrid’s universe.
Hiccup also knew better than anyone, however, what it felt like to feel inferior – to feel like an outcast, a misfit. To feel like nothing you did was enough, no matter how hard you tried.
So it wasn’t that Hiccup didn’t get it.
He just couldn’t really understand it.
On the rare occasions that Astrid’s goals didn’t work out, that her plans of action fell short and she’d failed to reach the standard she’d decided for herself that she should reach – she tended to crash with all the rage of a provoked Singetail. But the thing was – Astrid wasn’t inferior. She never had been. On Berk, her name had almost become synonymous with unstoppable. She was a warrior, and she’d fought and fought through countless battles where anyone else would have given up. Even if she faltered, what Hiccup saw in her was a force stronger than a Red Death, stronger than a Bewilderbeast, and for her to see anything less than that in herself was downright travesty.
So: maybe it was true. She really didn’t have anything to prove to him, at the end of it all. But that wasn’t because he didn’t believe in her, didn’t expect her to be able to carry herself or be strong enough to be his counterpart, to be chieftess – but because she had already long since proven herself worthy of respect – worthy of honour, worthy of the title; she had done so every day for as long as he could remember, and continued to do so every single day.
Didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to hear.
“You’re right,” Hiccup spat. “You don’t.” He couldn’t stop the venom that came out with it, tried not to look too much like a wounded puppy as he turned on his heel and limped away, clink-step echoing in the silence.
It wasn’t fair of him to be upset.
Astrid was upset – she’d faltered, somehow, in her own view of things, and she’d come to him with it, expecting his warm, understanding smile and reassurance – and all he’d done was trivialize it, without even looking up from what he was doing; some offhand comment about how she didn’t have to dwell on it, and why was she even worried about such a small thing, anyway?
After a while of gliding above the village, frustrated with himself, Hiccup huffed out a short sigh, signaling for Toothless to head back to the stables so he could find her and apologize before the night fell.
He found her already in the stables – waiting for him, if the way she perked up when he landed was any indication.
“I’m sorry,” Astrid said, meeting his eyes – barely giving him time to dismount.
Hiccup sighed, his eyebrows knit upwards. “Me too,”
“I,” she started, faltered – “I do care what you think of me,” Hiccup cocked his head to the side, brows twitching up. It took her a moment before she spoke again, as though she had to dig the words up from the very depths of her soul. “I just – I hate to fail. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you,”
“Astrid, listen to me,” said Hiccup, gently sweeping some of her stray fringe away from her eyes before placing his hands on her shoulders. “You are amazing. You’re the strongest, most capable person I’ve ever known.” It wasn’t nearly enough, truly, to encapsulate how awe-inspiring he thought she was – though to be honest, he wasn’t sure there were enough words in the entirety of known human language to define that.
So it’d have to fucking do.
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen, before,” he said – “tell me about it again, from the beginning. Whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish, I’ll help you. You have me, no matter what,”
And that was that.
“You’re not wrong, though,” Hiccup told her, much later. “You don’t have to prove yourself to me,” Astrid watched him, sketching a mindless pattern in the dirt with a stick. “Because I already know that you’re amazing, and I couldn’t ask for anyone better to be by my side,”
Astrid hummed. “Amazing enough to be chieftess,”
(And though they’d been betrothed for years already, the thought of that – the certainty with which she said it made Hiccup feel as though Terrible Terrors were doing somersaults inside his stomach; chief and chieftess, someday – someday soon, even.)
Hiccup nodded. “And then some,”
Before the dragons moved in, a few things were known about the island of Berk and its people: they were tough and hardy, they could shave the wool off a sheep’s back with a battle axe from a hundred yards away, and – they could throw a party like no other.
Even back before the prosthetic, Hiccup was never much of a dancer – it wasn’t as though anyone was lining up to dance with him, anyway. Sometimes he’d spend the evening of a town festival catching up on work at Gobber’s shop, pounding his hammer along with the beating drums from across town; other times he’d be content to watch, peering through the windows from the outside at the glittering firelight, gleaming against iron-wrought armour and horned helmets as vikings danced into the night. He could almost feel the vibration of the music, the stomping feet, even from the outside.
He liked it. Even if, for the majority of his youth, he’d never actually joined in the festivities, never been missed, even by his father, if he skipped the parties entirely – he always looked forward to the town festivals, when they came around. They served, if nothing else, as a reminder that his village, his people, weren’t only killers, didn’t only ever have slaughtering dragons on their collective mind: when there was music and dancing, there wasn’t maiming and killing.
And after – after everything, it started with the twins, who dragged Hiccup into the Hall, all the way from Gobber’s shop, ranting something about needing a judge for their drinking competition and Snotlout was being a stick in the mud because he wanted to drink, too, so they needed a neutral party, and what was Hiccup doing all the way at the forge, away from the festival, anyway?
In the dim firelight of the Hall, dragon horns would blend together with viking helms until it was difficult to differentiate the two; still he’d hang back and watch, from his seat at his father’s table, and listen to the warbling of contented dragons, the milling about of drunken vikings, and it sounded like a symphony he’d never dared to hope hear in his lifetime. Sometimes Fishlegs would watch with him and they’d chat about whatever dragon species they happened to be working with at the time in the training arena. Sometimes the twins would sit on either side of him, trading jokes and insults back and forth, and Hiccup would try and fail to stifle his laughter.
Astrid danced. Hiccup would watch, charmed and fascinated every time, as her golden hair whipped from one side to the other, braids loosening, flyaway strands matted to her sweat-slick skin. She’d tilt her head back and laugh in the middle of the dance floor, and suddenly that would be the only sound Hiccup heard echoing off the walls of the Great Hall; she was the only other person in the room – everything else melted away. She was wild, dragon’s fire roiling beneath her skin.
When their eyes met amongst the crowd, she’d motion for him to join her – come on, come out here, dance with me – and he’d motion to his prosthetic leg, shrugging apologetically as though she just happened to call him over when the thing was particularly bothering him; sorry, maybe next time? and Astrid would do a lousy job of hiding her disappointment, but she’d give him a sympathetic smile, maybe a wink, and go on dancing with her family and friends, and Hiccup was still just as content to watch, utterly enchanted by her even from a distance.
When she finally got him out onto the dance floor, this is how it went:
It was nearing Snoggletog, and almost everywhere in Berk was covered in snow, the frigid air as sharp and biting as the barbed tail of a Razorwhip. Vikings and dragons alike gathered in the Hall, huddled around the roaring fires, sharing stories and fresh-cooked meals, singing songs of adventures on great ships and dragons the size of mountains – with old, morose lyrics about slaying the beasts changed gaily to new ones about rescuing and befriending them. Even Hiccup couldn’t stay away; the warmth of the forge couldn’t compare to the warmth and atmosphere of the Hall – not tonight.
Music and ale gave way to dancing, as it so often did, and Hiccup tapped out a drum beat with his fingertips on the sides of the untouched mug of ale in front of him. Vikings flitted about in tune with pleasant flute melodies like pieces of wrapping paper on the wind, uncharacteristically graceful. Curious dragons lingered behind him, gesturing to the revelling crowds and then back to Hiccup, trilling questioningly.
“Don’t worry about it, guys, I’m all good right here,” he’d reassure them, patting pleasantly to his spot at the head table with a thin smile. “You all go have fun,” and the dragons would hop along, barely in tune with the music, skipping merrily this way and that in what Hiccup had to assume was some kind of dragon approximation of dancing, an imitation of their viking counterparts.
Hiccup greeted vikings as they walked by, trading polite well-wishes for the Snoggletog season and the coming new year, the same way he’d watched his father do every Snoggletog before this one. He decidedly did not think about how this would be his first Snoggletog as chief, first Snoggletog without his father. Instead he watched his mother waltz with Astrid, watched Gobber, Eret and the rest of the riders form a circle in the middle of the floor and link arms, dancing a giddy sort of kick-step and laughing all the way.
“Dance with me?”
When Hiccup looked up, Astrid stood before him. A fine layer of sweat on her skin, she panted, pleasantly out of breath. “I don’t know, Astrid,” he glanced down at his leg, the metal prosthetic reflecting the twinkling lights around them, “I’m not sure I’m much of a dancer,”
“Yak-shit,” Astrid replied. “Sorry, but yak-shit. I’ve seen you manoeuvre that thing with more dexterity than Snotlout has in his whole body,”
Hiccup laughed. “That’s not saying much,” but when she held out her hand, he took it, letting her lead him to the floor, just as a joyful, whistling melody began.
The last time he had seen this dance was in an ice cave in Valka’s sanctuary.
“Astrid, I – I don’t know if I,” Hiccup couldn’t exactly say that the steps to the dance were what he paid all that much attention to, that day.
Astrid hushed him, pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I’ve got you,” she said, “You have me.”
In the end, Astrid did most of the leading, and when Hiccup faltered – forgot the steps or slipped on a prosthetic that wasn’t used to the rhythm – they improvised, making it up as they went. One dance bled into two, then three, and vikings danced with them and clapped along, singing songs of brave young viking warriors and their dragon companions, who sacrificed everything to end a war spanning generations.
Somewhere in the Great Hall, a Nadder and a Night Fury circled the dance floor happily, warbling as their riders – the chief and his future chieftess – sang and laughed the night away, and somewhere in the Great Hall, Hiccup Haddock danced, and found that his leg didn't hurt him one bit.