Inspired by the word 'hair' as a part of Fic Challenge 3!

An Awkward Angle

"Look, I'm sorry I had to put so many buckles on the suit, okay? But I need each and every one of them."

Astrid groaned dramatically and threw herself upon Hiccup's bed, face planting it and moaning into the blankets. She had planned everything down to the very last detail. First, she snuck into his house. Not a difficult thing to do, it was something she did almost everyday. Then, she took off her clothes and left them on the floor. Again, not a hard task. Neither was crawling into his bed into the warmth of his blankets.

She had expected to rouse his sleeping body, eager to feel his naked skin with her hands and her fingers. She even unbraided her hair for him – something she didn't do too often, even though he loved it – and she was yearning for his touch. Only, when she went to touch his body beneath the blankets, she was dismayed at the feel of his leather riding suit, and not his skin.

He woke up to her sulking next to him, half his suit unbuckled with belts tangled here and a wing unravelled there, laces half-untied. She had given up, and completely lost interest in making love, replacing the desire with angry pouting. She got up to argue with him before she returned to the mattress with her face.

"Why would you go to sleep in your suit?" she groaned, her voice muffled by the mattress. Hiccup sighed and shrugged, resting a hand on her bare back.

"I flew in late last night. I don't remember coming home, I was too tired. I put Toothless in the pen and next thing I know, you're in my house tearing apart my suit! Not that I'm complaining, I mean, I really appreciate that –"

"Just drop it," Astrid muttered, rolling to her side, spitting a lock of hair out of her mouth. Hiccup frowned.

"Astrid, I'm not saying I don't want to have sex with you – because I do, I really, really do, please believe that – I'm saying that I can't take any of the belts out of the design."

"Hiccup!" Astrid scolded, lifting her head up so more hair spilled over her face. She growled and combed it out of her face with her fingers, covering her breasts with his blanket. "I don't care about the belts!"

"But you said –"

"I know what I said but that wasn't the point!" she groaned again, falling onto her back. She looked up at him as he sat up, his back against his headboard, half his chest showing as he untangled the knots she had made.

"I let my hair down and everything," Astrid mumbled. "I even washed it."

Hiccup sighed through his nose before he glanced over at her through his bangs.

"I'm trying to get undressed as fast as I can, but you made things really difficult."

Astrid scowled at him playfully. Hiccup rolled his eyes and abandoned the task, sliding his arm around Astrid's waist with one hand and pulling the blanket down with the other. He kissed her collarbone as he settled his body between her legs, nuzzling into her neck and kissing his way down to her chest.

Astrid purred as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, burying her face in the crook of his neck. He lifted his head and held her close, smelling her hair with a deep inhale, filling his lungs with her comforting scent. He exhaled and smiled, kissing her cheek and her mouth. She coyly pushed him back, wriggling her hips.

"You can't really do much with this suit on," she whispered, grinding her hips against his while maintaining strict eye contact.

"You weren't patient enough," Hiccup countered.

Astrid rolled the pair of them suddenly, pinning his back to the bed. She straddled him as he looked up at her, bewildered and anticipatory. She trailed the tip of her finger down the skin of his chest – at least, the skin she could reach – before she kissed the soft spot beneath his chin, the curve of his Adams apple, the divot of his décolletage. She snuck a peek through her hair and mischievously caught his eye, slinking down his body slowly.

"What are you doing?" he asked, though it was clear in the sound of his voice that he knew the answer.

It took Astrid only a couple of extra seconds to figure out how to untangle the laces of his trousers. She pulled them free and pulled his waistband down, teasing him with a smooch to his lower abdomen. Hiccup let his head fall back, his hand resting on the top of her head, fingers tangling in her hair as she reached into his pants and –

"Uh."

Astrid felt the uncomfortable tug of her hair.

"You okay?" Hiccup asked.

"I'm fine, just be careful with my hair."

He knew full well that she hated – hated – having her hair pulled or tugged or manhandled in any way. Her scalp was sensitive and any little pull, tug, snag or catch would set her teeth on edge.

"Oh, sorry," he said, lifting his hand. "Was I pulling your hair?"

"It's okay," Astrid said, abandoning the issue so she could continue her task. But she went to lower her head again, and her hair didn't travel with her.

"Ow!" she hissed. She tried to raise her head to see what was pinning the lock of hair down, preventing her from moving much of anything, but the hair was caught again. She froze, her face forced to look at Hiccup's belly. Hiccup was already investigating as Astrid fumed, annoyed and irritated and done with the day, overall.

"Uh…"

"What do you mean, 'uh'?" she asked slowly.

She heard the rapid clicking of his dorsal fin spring mechanism, followed by a sharp pain in her scalp.

"OW!" she squealed, throwing her hands up. She went to reflexively slap him away.

"No, don't move!" Hiccup cried out as he blocked a slap.

"What are you doing?" she hissed. Her head was bowed, her back arched, her hair tethered to his chest.

"Your hair is caught in the turn-piece," Hiccup admitted, clicking it around again. But it pulled a second time, and Astrid cursed an alphabetical list of obscenities his way. He, of course, desisted.

"Stop moving, you'll make it worse!" Hiccup said.

Astrid huffed, frustrated, her shoulder muscles quivering as she held herself up in the awkward position. She shoved his waistband back over his member, secured only a few inches from it. "Here, I have to sit up to get a better look."

He placed his arms under her armpits, making sure they moved together as he wriggled up and onto his rump, his lips pursed as he tried to improvise some magic solution to the strange situation. Astrid huffed and muttered under her breath as Hiccup peered into the spring the best he could. However, it was still attached to his body, just over the left side of his rib cage beneath his breast, and looking down at it did nothing much except give him a couple extra chins and a cramp to the eyes.

He swam through layers of hair to get to the belt that strapped that to his body, and tried to unclasp it. Astrid reached up to help but he flicked her fingers away. He pulled the leather strap through the iron loops and pulled on the belt to slide it around the back of his body.

Or, rather, he tried to.

"OW!" Astrid complained again. She smacked his leg and Hiccup jerked his leg back, the pair delving into a physical spat while Hiccup tried to pull the mechanism off the belt. "Stop, stop stop stop!"

Hiccup groaned and lifted his hands, saying, "Fine!" Astrid sank and buried her face in his belly, unable to go anywhere else.

"Great. The gods hate me," she muttered.

Hiccup scoffed and rolled his eyes again. "Look, if we can figure out a way to get this belt off, then you won't be attached to me."

"This is when you tell me you have a plan."

Hiccup sighed and shook his head. "I do. But you're not going to like it."

Snotlout burst into a massive fit of uncontrollable laughter, his arms wrapped around himself as his voice trailed from guttural giggles to silent shrieks. Hiccup stood in front of the pen, his hands on his hips in anger, Astrid's head still attached to his stomach. It had taken them almost an hour to figure out how to dress Astrid, let alone figure out how to manoeuvre her body when the top of her head was fused to Hiccup's belly, her nose facing the dirt.

"Really?" Hiccup asked.

Ruffnut was lying on the ground perpendicular to Astrid. She looked up at Astrid's red face and cocked her head to the side.

"What's it like up there?" Ruffnut asked.

"Oh shut up," Astrid spat, averting her eyes.

Fishlegs was behind Hiccup, trying to figure out a way to disconnect the belt from Hiccup's back.

"You secured it to the leather," Fishlegs said.

"I know, I already told you, I made that modification yesterday so the belt wouldn't move the fin, but it doesn't really help the situation if you keep bringing that up!" Hiccup groaned. Astrid reached up and grabbed Hiccup's arms to give her back a little break.

Tuffnut wrinkled his nose and asked Snotlout why he was laughing so hard. Snotlout gestured to Astrid's backside as if the answer was blatantly obvious.

"Look at the angle!" Snotlout howled. "From here, it totally looks like Astrid's sucking Hiccup's –"

Astrid kicked her foot back without a word, careening her heel into Snotlout's belly. He flew back, the air rushing out of him, and flattened himself upon the ground. Tuffnut snorted and pointed at Snotlout, replacing Snotlout's echoing laughter with his own. Hiccup stifled a laugh as Astrid glared down at Ruffnut.

Ruffnut crossed her arms and wriggled her eyebrows up at Astrid.

"So… how did you get your hair caught?" she asked coyly.

"I told you, I went to pick something up," Astrid sneered.

"With your hair down?" Fishlegs joined in, pulling a file from his satchel. He wriggled it under the overlaying layer that protected the gears (though it didn't do a great job of protecting them from Astrid).

"And with Hiccup's clothes all messed up?" Ruffnut added. Tuffnut circled around the pair as Snotlout choked down a breath, sitting up groggily. Tuffnut dropped to his knees and lied down like Ruffnut was, bumping the top of his helmet with hers. He glared up at Astrid.

"Oh, for the love of Thor and all things holy," she muttered.

"You have a good point, sis," Tuffnut agreed. "One can deduce from the facts."

"I digress," Ruffnut said incorrectly. "You claim this happened an hour ago. Which places you at the scene of the crime just before sunrise."

Tuffnut nodded, narrowing his eyes in a rare, deep thought. "Hiccup's house, which begs the answer of why you were there, and not in your own house."

"Guys, c'mon, we can talk about this later," Hiccup said, trying to stop the conversation.

Ruffnut promptly ignored him. "And your hair is down, which, for a vain person like you –"

"Excuse me?"

"– means that you abandoned your usual style. A special occasion, perhaps?"

"Or a passionate encounter?"

"Guys!" Hiccup yelled.

Tuffnut and Ruffnut laughed and sat up, running away, singing "Astrid Loves Hiccup" over and over.

"Hurry up and get my hair unstuck so I can clobber those two," Astrid spat.

"Almost there," Fishlegs mumbled, twisting the file around. "We could cut it –"

"She hasn't cut her hair since her dad died, we can't do that," Hiccup said for Astrid, which elicited in the twins changing their song to "Hiccup Loves Astrid".

Snotlout stood up as the twins stopped their little jive, the two of them watching with giggles sneaking out of their nostrils. He rubbed his belly and groaned, and Astrid barely saw him from her vantage point.

"I kicked you pretty hard," Astrid called to him. "Did I make you shit your pants?"

"Hah-hah, very funny," Snotlout replied, though he frowned and wrapped his arms around himself.

"Seriously, did I?" Astrid quipped.

"Guuuyyyyyys," Hiccup groaned, letting his head drop back in defeat.

"Everybody knows that you two are a thing," Snotlout suddenly said, gesturing to them. Fishlegs didn't look up, but Hiccup saw the blood in his cheeks rise. And Ruffnut and Tuffnut's faces went stone blank. Hiccup flicked his eyes down to Astrid, whose shoulders went rigid under the large blouse she had borrowed from him, the only garment large enough to pull on over her legs rather than her head.

There was a tense moment of rare silence.

Snotlout looked around, suddenly abandoned of all support. "Right? We were talking about it… right?"

Hiccup gave him a look. Stop talking, stop talking, stop talking.

There was a click, and Fishlegs gave Astrid's hair a gentle tug, and to everyone's relief, her hair came free.

And all of a sudden, Snotlout was running.

Hiccup watched and sighed as Astrid shoved away from him, her focus on the back of Snotlout's head, her fists up.

"Get over here!" she yelled. And Hiccup did nothing except for readjust his suit so the skin of his chest could no longer be seen, mumbling under his breath that it was only a matter of time.

Later on, when Astrid snuck – though she apparently had no reason to sneak, since everyone on the Edge knew what they were doing – into Hiccup's house, he was dismayed to see her hair tied into a tight, stiff braid.

"But I love it when your hair is down!" Hiccup argued lovingly. "I took off the suit, I'm all yours, it won't get caught in anything."

But Astrid's arms remained crossed over her chest as she glared at him, the events of the day still burning in the back of her mind.

It didn't last, though. Hiccup reached over and pulled her to him, kissing her forehead and laughing against her skin.

"You have to admit," Hiccup murmured to the top of her head, as she lied upon his chest, "the angle was a little obvious."

And when Astrid groaned and her face grew hot, he couldn't help but laugh until she had no choice but to join in with him.