I had a dream that my favourite actor proposed to me with a plastic ring. So you may thank (or blame) my dream for the existence of this.
There will be 3 chapters :)
Nobody knew when and how exactly the tradition had begun at Berk Gymnasium. It had been ongoing for years and it didn't seem to be in anybody's interest to put an end to it, because A) it was funny and B) once people heard about it on their first year, they were so eager to participate that there would be loads of rioting if it were banned.
At the end of each school year, the third graders came up with zany pranks to end their studies at Berk Gymnasium with a blow. Everyone wanted to be the best; the one to pull the prank that would be talked about even at the start of the next school year. Last year, the best one was undoubtedly done by Eret who one day had brought ten chickens from his parents' farm to school, and that had created a slight chaos, to say the least. Chicken feathers had still been found in the oddest of places when they had been a couple months into this school year.
So yeah, the expectations were high, and nobody that planned to participate wanted to underperform. This was also the case for Hiccup and Astrid. Currently on their third year at Berk Gymnasium, they had been best friends since kindergarten and were essentially, not literally, inseparable. They did everything together and there was nothing they didn't know about each other. Or at least that was what they both thought to be true.
One day after school they were walking home together as always. They took the same route they always did and dodged the little ponds that last night's rain had created on the gravel road that went through a pine forest that was near the part of the town where they lived. Everything was pretty much the way it always was, except for one thing.
They were discussing what type of a prank they should pull in order for them to go down in Berk Gymnasium's history. There had been ideas, many of them in fact, but they hadn't come up with any good ideas. They knew for sure that the Thorston twins would do something crazy. Like 'let's put everyone's lives on the line and receive detention for the rest of the school year' type of crazy. Everyone else's plans they hadn't the slightest clue of (mostly because others knew how to shut their cake holes meanwhile the twins seemed to lack of this ability).
"What if we dress up as vampires and throw fake blood all around school?" Hiccup suggested as he took a jump to cross a big pond. His backpack hit against his back once he landed on the other side.
Astrid thought on it and shook her head. "No, that isn't something that people will remember. There are also people that faint at the sight of blood, and unlike the twins, I do want to avoid detention."
"Yeah, you're probably right," he replied.
They kept on walking in silence, their brains desperately trying to come up with something. There were only two months left until they would graduate, and they needed to start preparing their prank as soon as possible. It felt like all the good ideas had already been done, was the problem.
Sure, they could copy someone from previous years and just alter the prank slightly, but it wouldn't feel like it was their own creation. Neither would anyone be impressed by a recycled idea.
"I feel like having something sweet," Astrid stated suddenly. "Let's go to the market."
There was a small grocery store at the end of the road they were walking on. It was Friday, so it actually made sense for them to buy some sweets – they had been planning on watching movies all night anyway, and if there was something that made movie nights better, it was sweets.
On they went and by the edge of the forest they could already see the market. It was one of those small, local stores that were a little more expensive than the big grocery stores but still perfect for urgent occasions, like when you ran out of milk or flour, or you got a sudden craving for candy and chips.
They entered the shop and instantly headed for the aisle where all the good stuff was. Astrid grabbed a bag of her favourite chips and proceeded to the candy section.
"What do you feel like having?" she asked Hiccup as she eyed the selection. "And please, not anything sour because that just sucks into my lips and ruins the entire night for me."
Hiccup raised his eyebrow. "You're forcing me to watch two horror movies in one night and now you're banning my favourite type of candy from me? What is this cloud of superiority that you're walking on today?"
Astrid tore her eyes off the candy bags and gave her best friend a smile that revealed her upper teeth. "Horror and sour don't go well together. I'm sorry but I don't make the rules. It's a fact proved by millions."
"Of course it is," Hiccup said and nodded. "How could I be so uneducated?"
"Shame on you," Astrid responded and bent down to see the selection on the lower shelves. Her eyes landed on something and she took two Kinder eggs in her hand and showed them to Hiccup as she straightened up. "What do you think? In honour of Easter? We could have them now and save the chips for the movie night."
Hiccup just shrugged. "Works for me, haven't had one of those since I was like ten."
"Neither have I. So Kinder it is," she said in a 'case closed' tone and turned around to go to the cashier.
They paid for their snacks and headed out of the store. Astrid took her backpack and shoved the bag of chips into it, first breaking the packaging so that all the air would come out and it would actually fit in her small backpack.
It was such a lovely weather after so many days of nothing but rain, and it would've felt like such a waste to go inside. They both agreed to go to the nearby café to eat their Kinder eggs while enjoying a cup of coffee or, in Astrid's case, a cup of tea.
It was only a two-minute walk from the market to the café. They were such loyal and frequent customers that they only needed to enter and say: 'we'll have the usual' and the lady behind the counter knew exactly what they wanted. Their town wasn't exactly big, so the number of places to spend time at were very limited. Hiccup and Astrid had crowned this small café as the best option for a casual hang-out time, which was why they were so well-known by all the workers.
"Gosh, I wish we had some wave of inspiration and the prank idea would just come to us," Astrid brought up the subject again while unwrapping her chocolate egg. She flattened the paper foil on the table and placed the egg on top of it.
"I know right? We will never come up with anything if we're trying to force the idea out of us," Hiccup said and frowned.
The lady walked up to them with their order. She put them down on the table along with the bill and disappeared out of sight. Hiccup and Astrid took their cups and blew gently into them before taking their first sips.
"I hope everybody else is struggling as much as we are. I mean, it's such a big thing and it needs to be remarkable. How many at Berk have actually got the creativity for it?" Astrid wondered absent-mindedly as she broke the chocolate egg in half and took the other piece in between her thumb and index finger.
"I can imagine Fishlegs coming up with something brilliant, but I don't think he's got the nerve for it," Hiccup said as he also put his egg on the spread-out paper foil.
Astrid nodded in agreement and took a bite of the egg. As she was munching on it, she took the plastic shell that contained a surprise toy and opened it with a small pop. When she took out the toy, her face lit up in amusement and she held it out for Hiccup to see.
"Look, a ring! The ten-year old me would've given anything to have this," she said with a laugh and put it on her ring finger. She jokingly started humming to the well-known wedding tune and stretched out her hand to see the ring better from a distance.
As Hiccup watched his best friend have the time of her life with the toy ring, the most brilliant idea dawned on him. "We should get engaged," he blurted out before he had time to think his sentence through.
"Excuse me, what the fuck?" Astrid said and looked at her friend as though he had grown several extra heads.
"No, wait, that came out wrong," he said quickly and shook his head rapidly. "What I mean is our prank should be us getting engaged."
"But we're not even dating," Astrid said bluntly but the many years of friendship told Hiccup that she hadn't completely abandoned his idea yet.
"That'd make it even more memorable. You know, we've been hiding our relationship for many years and now we're finally ready to come clean about it. Everyone would be talking about us!"
Astrid thought about it and Hiccup couldn't stop the smile from spreading across his face as he saw how his best friend started to like the idea more and more by the second.
"That's actually an amazing idea and something that could only come out of your brain, I'm impressed," she finally said and grinned at him, clearly pleased with the idea. "What are we going to do with the rings?"
Hiccup ignored the chocolate egg and went for the plastic capsule immediately. He opened it and there was a small toy car that needed assembly. He showed it to Astrid. Instead of a frown, an even wider smile appeared on her face and Hiccup couldn't figure out why.
"Do you know what this means?" she asked him in an excited tone.
Hiccup waited for her to continue.
"This means we are going to be eating lots of Kinder eggs tonight."
He couldn't help laughing. It was all so ridiculous but at the same time bloody brilliant. He couldn't wait for them to get home and start planning. On top of that, he couldn't wait for them to start practising how to be like a couple.
Because if there was something that Astrid didn't know about Hiccup, it was the fact that he was absolutely and irrevocably in love with her. He had realised that last year, and ever since his daily life involved suffering at various tempos. He tried to look for any signals that might tell him whether or not Astrid felt the same way about him, but that girl was so god damn good at concealing her feelings that it was impossible to read her if she wanted to be. And the only reason Hiccup hadn't told her about his feelings was the fear that it would affect their friendship in the worst way possible.
When they finished their drinks, they paid for them and ran back to the market, giggling at their stupid idea. Inside the market they grabbed a box full of Kinder eggs and took a few more from another box for good measure. The cashier looked at them questioningly as they unloaded the contents on the counter. There were at least 50 eggs.
"It's for science," Astrid said while trying to supress laughter, and the cashier just nodded slowly and looked totally unconvinced by the explanation.
The duo decided to go to Hiccup's place because it was more unlikely for his parents to come home while they were discussing through their master plan. They needed to rush so that the sun wouldn't have time to melt the chocolate and make the ring hunt unnecessarily messy.
"I can't believe we're actually going to do this," Hiccup said and looked at Astrid who was still smiling from ear to ear.
"I know right? This is going to beat Eret's chickens easily, we might even be crowned as the best prankers of all time!" Astrid said happily and looked a bit dreamy. Hiccup found her enthusiasm endearing and when Astrid wasn't looking, he gave her an admiring glance.
He might as well start practising now, right?
They reached his house after about ten minutes and they agreed on putting the plastic bag full of Kinder eggs in the fridge for a moment just in case the chocolate had melted a bit. In the meantime, they went upstairs where Hiccup's room was located and they closed the door; even though it was unlikely for his parents to appear until night time, they still didn't want to take risks. It was important that only they knew it wasn't real.
"So," Astrid started once the door was closed behind her. "When should we start?"
"The sooner, the better, I'd say. We need to keep up the pretence for at least a couple weeks before we tell the truth."
Astrid nodded. "Everyone needs to get used to the idea that the school now has an engaged couple."
"Exactly," Hiccup said excitedly. "I wonder if our friends are going to believe us, though."
She leaned onto the closed door as she thought about it. "We just need to be convincing. We have to make up a fake story about how we started dating and why we kept it a secret so that we both tell the same thing to people. If they hear two different stories from us, our prank will be ruined."
"I like the way you're thinking," Hiccup said and winked without thinking. Astrid raised her eyebrow in confusion but didn't give voice to the question that was clearly written on her face. When he realised what he just did, he quickly came up with something to say so that the conversation wouldn't be led to a dangerous territory: "So, how should we do it?"
Astrid moved from the door and walked up to Hiccup's desk. It was messy but his best friend still knew how to navigate through it, and in no time did she find a notebook and a pen and jumped on Hiccup's bed. He followed her lead and sat next to her, looking at the blank piece of paper in front of them.
"We started dating soon after starting at Berk Gymnasium," Astrid said and wrote that down. "We've been friends since forever so it all just happened…naturally?"
"Sounds good."
"I was the one to confess first."
"You absolutely weren't."
"Why not? It's not like you'd ever have the guts to do it," she said teasingly and laughed.
Hiccup made a face at that. Only if she had an idea how right she was…
He recovered quickly so that Astrid wouldn't notice the expression written on his face. "Alright, so you were the one to confess, that's fine, but I was the one to propose. This is my idea after all," Hiccup demanded and tried his best to sound like there was no room for discussion.
Astrid just chuckled. "Fine, however you want it," she said and wrote it down.
They spent half an hour writing the made-up story of how they became a couple. The result of their brainstorming was quite impressive, and they promised each other that they would learn it by heart by Monday. And after that they fetched the Kinder eggs that they would have to start unwrapping. Once the contents of the plastic bag were on Hiccup's bed, they just stared at the pile and shook their heads in amusement.
"I can't seriously believe we're doing this," Astrid repeated Hiccup's words.
He laughed. "What are we going to do with the rest if we find a ring from one of the first ones?"
"Well, I don't know about you, but I don't mind eating these bad boys," Astrid said without missing a beat and unwrapped one chocolate egg. "For good health," she said and 'toasted' the egg in the air before breaking it and putting the half into her mouth as a whole.
They worked their way through the eggs, the pile of toys becoming bigger and bigger. At some point they stopped eating the chocolate because there was too much of it and they had begun to feel sickened by it. They kept up their friendly banter and it could've easily passed for a casual hang-out if it weren't for the occasional comments about what was coming for them on Monday and that making the conversation between them slightly awkward for a second or two.
They both were excited but also uncertain. Neither of them had ever dated – Hiccup was sure he had never found anyone else because Astrid was the one for him, but what they were about to do was going to be the closest he'd ever be to actually dating that girl. He had told himself several times to stop pining, but he couldn't help it. Astrid had everything. She was everything. Hiccup loved her too much.
"I found it!" Astrid cried excitedly and held a new toy ring up in the air in her outstretched hand. "Try it on!"
She tossed the ring to Hiccup and he almost missed it. He tried it on his ring finger, and to his surprise, it fit. Of course it was a bit tight considering it was designed for small children, but it didn't feel uncomfortable at all. He raised his head to meet Astrid's eyes that gleamed with elation. She grabbed Hiccup's hand and put it next to her left hand where she had her ring. Hiccup hadn't noticed that she had not taken it off since she put it on at the café.
And, okay. Looking at their hands, with a plastic ring on each, was definitely not on the list of things he had expected to witness today. Or ever.
"Oh my god, for toy rings they look perfect," Astrid said and looked up at Hiccup. Hiccup did the same and they just looked and grinned at each other for a moment.
"This is going to be the prank Berk will never forget," Hiccup said, sounding fully convinced.
"I couldn't have said it better myself, Hic," Astrid agreed.
Monday couldn't come any sooner.
Please let me know what you think, reviews always motivate me to write! :)