She's got a lot of names for him. And he's always been interested in what girls talk about because when they're not talking about boys and they're not talking about clothes, they tend to be more interesting than most men he knows. And what stuns him is that for all the attention she pays to him when he's around, she doesn't much care to mention him when she's alone with Astrid. He would know. He eavesdrops. A lot. It's enough to make him wonder exactly what is going on here—if she really is interested in him or if she's just messing around.
But sometimes when those girls are alone, she does bring him up. Always in passing. Always briefly. Always glazing over him like he's a minor detail in the background of something bigger. Always in a curious way.
"That Class A piece of ass."
"That chunk of hotness."
"That prim specimen of Hunksicus Majorus."
The day he decides that she must be joking is the day he realizes that he wishes her attraction was real. Because there's something terribly funny about how everything seems to roll right off her shoulder—even him. Especially him.
But he keeps all that to himself, because he can't tell her without admitting he's been eavesdropping, and listening to her talk lays bare a side of her that only a fellow female would ever have the honor of seeing—the intelligent side, the human side. It makes him wonder if there's a side of him that no one knows about. Or has he played all of his cards already?
"You son of an Eret," she calls him one day.
The only name she'd use both in private and public. If their attraction is a game, then she's the one making all the rules. Because she doesn't want him to be a Class A piece of ass. She doesn't want him to be a chunk of hotness. She doesn't want a specimen and she doesn't want arm candy. She wants a son of an Eret. And he smiles without meaning to because that's the demand that she made the least obvious, but it's still the one he sees the clearest.
"You're what we like to call a wildcard where I come from," he tells her.
"I'm what we like to call a wildcard where anyone's from," she says. "What do they call you where you're from?"
"Just my name."
"Just your name?"
"Yep. I have one, you know. A gods given name."
"I honestly didn't know that. I guess to me you'll always be a son of an Eret."
And she'll smile and dash off and go do something crazy just for the thrill of it and almost die just for the sake of feeling alive and he'll be left wondering what strange forces on earth could possibly have planned for the two of them to meet, or why it had to be him—and why it had to be her. But he takes one look at her and he knows. It's because he's a son of an Eret.
When that new Monstrous Nightmare loses it and starts firing at everything in sight, she'll push him into the line of fire and cower behind a wall because that's just what she does. And she'll laugh it off later and he probably will, too—whatever part of him isn't singed.
When the roof caves in because Snotlout is bouncing off the walls, she'll grab him and run for the exit and he'll almost be touched until he realizes that she's got her hands hiked so far down his back that it's rated X and he understands why she'd want him saved.
When the dragons carry them smoothly across the water and he's left laughing at how strange the world is—how he's riding a dragon instead of trying to sell it—it startles him at first how much everything around him has changed. And there's always a moment where none of it makes any sense to him. And that frightens him. And when he's frightened and it doesn't make sense, he looks at her. Because she'd do something crazy just for the thrill of it and she'd almost die just for the sake of feeling alive and though the strangeness of it makes him wonder, it makes sense of everything else he questions. She makes sense of everything he questions. Her answers are clear. Because he's a son of an Eret.
And while he's a son of an Eret—while he's being exactly what she wants him to be—he has no questions. For her, he doesn't need to be a trapper or a hero or a captain or a saint. Because she doesn't want him to be a Class A piece of ass. She doesn't want him to be a chunk of hotness. She doesn't want a specimen and she doesn't want arm candy.
He has a name. A Gods given name. But if she wants, then he'll be a son of an Eret.