DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN HTTYD!

Hiccup was going to kill him.

The brunette was currently in the land of his dreams: holding Astrid Hofferson within his arms while she held onto him as if her life itself depended on it. The only problem was that she was crying.

Astrid never cried.

But now she was and Hiccup was determined to do two things. Comfort her until she was over the breakup, then murder the back stabbing, foul mouthed, troll of a human that had hurt the most beautiful girl in the world.

"Shhhh," Hiccup whispered for the hundredth time that night as he held her close with one arm while brushing through her hair in a comforting manner with his free hand. "It's alright."

Though they had never really been close friends—or friends at all for that matter—Hiccup and Astrid had known each other for years because of two facts they shared. Well, one they shared and one they were now bitterly bonding over. They both had attended the same local high school for the past seventeen years.

And they had both been unimaginably hurt by Snoutlout Jorgenson.

"He didn't even face me..." Astrid said softly as she buried her head deeper into Hiccup's comforting chest. To her surprise, there was a layer of muscle there. It was soft, but strangely comforting in a way that she had greedily been taking advantage of for the past hour. She had never felt safer.

Hiccup nodded silently and continued to stroke her hair in a soothing manner as he mentally replayed the events that had occurred only a short hour prior.

"H-Hiccup?" Astrid said softly, her sobbing already threatening to return in full force.

"A...A...Astrid?" Hiccup said, completely shocked that the blonde beauty would call him on her own accord.

"Can...can you come over to my house?" She asked, unknowingly fulfilling one of Hiccup's greatest dreams.

"O-Of course!" Hiccup half shouted, half squealed into the cell phone before his face became a portrait of pure terror and shame. "I-I mean, if I have r-room in my sch-" Hiccup began to say, trying to act cool in an attempt to impress Astrid, but it backfired terribly.

"It's okay," Astrid assured him suddenly as Hiccup suddenly sensed he was about to be hung up on. "I knew this was a bad idea," she muttered. Hiccup opened his mouth immediately to resolve his wrong, but he never got the chance.

She hung up.

Hiccup had wasted no time in barging out of his house. Night had barked at him and tried to follow; Fury had hissed at him as only a feline could when it was concerned for its beloved master. Both were left behind in the dust of Hiccup's battered old pick up truck.

"Astrid!" Hiccup cried as he burst out of the driver's side of the truck and ran towards her home. He had only been there twice; once for a party that had become the worst night of his life and once, more recently, for a history project that they had been paired together for.

"Open up!" He demanded as he hammered on the door's wooden frame. He knew her parents were out of town for the week on their anniversary weekend and did not hesitate to take advantage of it. "I know you're in there Astrid!"

Hiccup banged on the door for a good thirty minutes—the entire time he was worried the neighbors would call the cops on him—before he gave up and simply opened the door and walked inside.

The Hoffersons were a wealthy enough family to live in Hiccups neighborhood—his father was the mayor of their town, so he had money to spend—but they never bothered with conventional security measures like alarms, locks, or even fences.

There was simply no one stupid enough to think they could attempt to rob a household of former commandos. Astrid's father had spent the majority of his adult life in the Swedish Särskilda Operationsgruppen. Her mother had been a German born Captain in the Royal British Commandos. Astrid's older sister had just returned on leave from a multinational operation overseas.

The sheer insanity required to bother such dangerous people was probably the reason no one had bothered to call the cops on Hiccup. He was probably the weakest male within a hundred miles.

At least that was what he had been told.

"Astrid?" Hiccup called as he quickly searched the main floor of the somewhat spartan abode. Career soldiers had a habit of collecting trinkets from battle, but other than that they rarely decorated their homes. They never had to worry about tiding up before guests came over though.

After he had finished searching the main floor, and he doubted Astrid would hide in the basement, Hiccup climbed the steps to the top floor and headed towards Astrid's door. Though he had entered the Hofferson's home with a near casual air, Hiccup could not bring himself to barge into what he considered sacred ground.

Scratch that, he thought, it was holy ground surrounded by sacred ground.

"A-Astrid?" Hiccup asked, tentatively, as he knocked gently on the wooden frame. It was a sharp contrast to his previously frantic actions over the last thirty five minutes.

He received no answer.

"Look," Hiccup said softly, his head almost leaning against the door frame as he spoke, "I know I messed up earlier, but please don't ignore me."

Still no answer.

"Astrid," Hiccup tried again, "I'm trying to help you, honest."

When it became clear that she wasn't going to let him in, Hiccup turned around to leave, his head was hung low in defeat. It was at that exact same moment that the door swung inward and the blonde beauty spoke.

"Wait," her silky smooth voice said, though there was still a tremor of pain deep in her tone. "D-Don't go."

Hiccup turned and was confronted with a sight he would have sworn to be impossible only forty minutes ago. Astrid Hofferson, the scion of her family line and the brightest, prettiest, and most dangerous female in all of Berk, was crying.

"Ast-" Hiccup started to say, only to be shushed as Astrid took a tentative step forward.

Then she ran flat out into his stunned arms.

"Just shut up and hold me please," Astrid said softly as she buried herself into him. Hiccup, despite himself, was frozen in shock and blushing redder than all of the tomatoes in the world combined.

They stayed like that for what felt like an eternity, however, eventually Astrid slowly led him back into her room—always careful to make sure her source of comfort was close by—before she sat them both down on her bed. It wasn't a romantic gesture, she simply wanted to sit down and the bed was the only piece of furniture available to them in her small room. The second Hiccup had sat down on the thin surface of the mattress he felt Astrid begin to sob through the fabric of his shirt.

He didn't know what possessed him to do it, but Hiccup suddenly found one of his arms around Astrid's lithe frame while his free hand began to stroke through her golden hair gently in a soothing manner—another dream fulfilled in the space of a single hour.

Once again time seemed to slow and the two teenagers found themselves in their own little worlds for another brief eternity. Astrid, drowning in her painful memories; Hiccup, torn between speaking—which could possibly ruin the moment—and remaining silent as his longtime crush cried.

He knew one path would be selfish, the other would be right.

He chose.

"Astrid?" Hiccup said softly, causing the girl in his arms to sniffle quickly before looking up at him, "what happened?"

To his surprise, she answered him.

Astrid told him bluntly—it was her nature—what had happened to her, but it was also clearly painful to speak about. To Hiccup's relief though, it appeared to help her; her face grew softer, calmer, and dryer as she spoke the wound tearing words of confession. Hiccup listened, but remained silent.

By the time she had finished, he would never look at his cousin or Tuffnut's sister the same ever again.

"I just can't believe he would dump me for my best friend..." Astrid murmured softly, more asleep than awake at the moment as Hiccup's affectionate gestures—whether he knew it or not—began to lull her into the land of dreams.

"He's scum," Hiccup said softly, though the hate lacing his words were easy to identify.

"He's your cousin," Astrid said, but both of them knew that meant nothing. Snoutlout Jorgenson should have been sent to prison for sentencing Hiccup to Hell. Instead, he was probably screwing Ruffnut at his house.

"He tried to sleep with me," Astrid said, her tone making it clear she had not agreed to such an idea. "I told him no. He left."

Hiccup had spent the vast majority of his seventeen years of life being abused, tortured, ridiculed, and stepped on by his larger, more muscular, jock of a cousin. The harsh beatings, cruel jokes, and brutal social scars that would forever stain Hiccup's past were testament to that fact alone.

"I wish he wasn't," Astrid muttered as she moved for the first time in over an hour. It wasn't to pull away, as Hiccup had feared she would after she had stopped crying, but rather she wrapped her arms around Hiccup's lower back. "You're too nice to be related to him."

"Thank you," Hiccup managed to say as he blushed madly while praying silently that Astrid wouldn't notice due to the dim lighting in the room. It was a vain prayer, she noticed the second the color bloomed across his features.

"Don't look so embarrassed," Astrid said, sounding like herself for the first time since Hiccup had picked up his phone at eleven o'clock at night. "You have a nice blush," she complimented, blushing herself at the statement.

"So do you," Hiccup said without thinking; both teens immediately began to blush harder as they continued to stare at each other, though their eyes hadn't locked yet.

"T-thank you..." Astrid said just before it happened.

Icy, wary blue met tortured, beaten green. An electric explosion akin to an atom bomb went off throughout their bodies as they stared at the other, perfectly frozen and terrified.

Neither moved, neither breathed.

And then Hiccup found Astrid leaning forward, her eyes scared, but her body confident. It took him a minute to realize that he was leaning forward as well, but he made no move to stop himself.

The world exploded in a colorful display of emotion and nerves as their lips met. Hiccup felt his hand in her hair lock in place while his arm around her back slid to her waist and pulled her closer. Her own arms slid up to his neck and she gracefully pulled his head down to deepen the kiss.

The peaceful eternity Hiccup had spent holding Astrid seemed like a millisecond compared to the length of time he spent kissing her. They broke for air, of course, but that didn't end their moment; it almost increased it. The sense of leaving each other, only to immediately return was exhilarating.

Hiccup was on top of the world; Astrid wanted to kiss him, she kept kissing him because she wanted to, not because it had been a heat of the moment kind of thing.

They kept kissing for a long time, Hiccup was sure it was well past midnight when they finally stopped. That wasn't to say they separated, far from it; they were plastered together closer than ever, with Astrid straddling Hiccup while one of his arms kept her tight against his chest as their faces hovered mere inches from each other.

"Wow," Hiccup said simply, but wonder coated his voice.

"Yeah...wow," Astrid said, similarly amazed.

Hiccup opened his mouth to say something, but instead he was cut off as Astrid's phone rang. The sound was akin to a gun shot going off as both teens separated while their moment was ruined. Astrid reached down and plucked her phone off the floor and opened the device before applying it to her ear.

"Hello?" Astrid said, confused only for a moment before her face became a mask of rage and pain. "I don't care, don't talk to me. Ever."

With that, Astrid shut the phone and set it down on her bedside table. To Hiccup, it seemed as if she had suddenly unloaded a massive weight on her shoulders. She seemed a bit happier too, but he wasn't sure if it was because they had made out or if it was because of her abrupt termination of her phone call.

"I guess I should be going," Hiccup said as he realized that whatever chance he had of kissing Astrid again was gone. Most likely forever.

"Wait," Astrid said as she stared at him, her eyes slowly refilling with terror as she watched Hiccup attempt to get up. "Please...don't..." she began, only to close her eyes in acceptance.

"What?" Hiccup asked, unsure of what to do.

Astrid opened her eyes and made up her mind. "Please don't go," she said with shaky resolve.

"Its late," Hiccup said, he himself wasn't completely ready to leave just yet, "I should be going..."

"Hiccup," Astrid said softly as she reached forward and held his hand. Her voice had sounded angelic to Hiccup before, now it sounded somehow even more so as she all but froze him to the spot with the combined power of holding his hand. "Please stay with me tonight," she said and Hiccup all but fainted.

Dream number three—if slightly perverted—had just been accomplished.

"B-but-"

"Just for tonight," Astrid pleaded, her eyes begging him to stay as she scooted closer while bringing her face within mere inches of his own. "You don't have to do anything but hold me," she assured him, however Hiccup's mind ran rampant with the implications of what he was about to agree to.

"I suppose," Hiccup said as Astrid's eyes lit up in delight.

"Thank you!" She said, truly meaning it as she hugged him tightly before kissing his cheek. "That...that means a lot to me."

"Uh, n-no problem," Hiccup assured her as he turned red again.

His father would kill him tomorrow when Hiccup crawled home, but it was so worth it. It was worth it a million, no, a billion, no, a trillion times over.

The lights were quickly turned off and the window was left slightly cracked open and then Hiccup found himself in the same bed as Astrid Hofferson. Though he had dreamed of such an occasion—he was a guy after all—he had never expected it to be so...perfect.

They kept their clothes on and nothing inappropriate occurred between them. Hiccup slept with his back against the wall while Astrid curled up against him, wrapped protectively in his arms, while the sounds of the night lulled them gently to sleep.

It was the deepest, calmest, most perfect sleep either of them would ever have.

Fin.

I truly enjoyed writing this, even though I had to keep from going off into the back stories of every character I made up. I also wanted to explain what had happened with Snoutlout and Ruffnut, but I didn't feel like making this a two part fic and honestly I just felt like it would ruin the magic of Astrid being comforted by Hiccup. I hope you enjoyed this, I know I certainly did.

See you all for now!

Lostsword