A/N: Hi, y'all. This is my version of how this conversation might go, based on my headcanon. I haven't got a post-"Firsts" plot yet, so don't expect this to turn into anything. Yet.

Winter's Gift

Astrid leaned over the steaming pot of boiling mutton and vegetables and gave it another stir. She breathed out hard and turned her face away as the mixture gave off a particularly unpleasant gaseous belch. It looked done. One couldn't be sure. No matter how many times she'd sought her mother's input in the past, her impression of the correct version of the dish always seemed to flee her mind when it was needed most.

It didn't smell very good, that was for certain. But that wasn't much of an indication either. Everything had been smelling horrible to her lately, except herbal tea, and she'd lost so much weight that Hiccup had gotten worried and made her promise she'd go to Gothi. She finally had, this morning, and she now knew why she'd been off her food. She felt stupid for even having wondered. Hiccup would owe her big for cooking something like this in her state.

She pulled the pot away from the fire slightly to reduce the temperature and sat down to wait for her husband. He was in another interminable meeting; the sort of thing he'd spoken of to her with such dread just a few months ago on Itchy Armpit. He always came back tired and stony-faced, and she'd tried to get him to clue her in on the details of the meetings but he was never up to giving her more than a brief overview before picking through his supper and falling into bed.

She could usually hear his stomach growling when he came in the door, but she couldn't figure out why he always left so much of his food uneaten. And he was still such a twig, too, despite her best attempts to put some more meat on his bones. Most Viking men filled out in their late teens and early twenties, but Hiccup had retained his slender, slightly elfin build. He had finally achieved a few inches on her in recent years (a fact which gratified him to a degree that amused her a great deal), but when she hugged him he still felt narrow, almost fragile, in her arms, even though she knew he possessed a depth of strength and will that rivaled that of even the most gargantuan Viking warrior.

She reached over for the bag that held her needlework and pulled out a skein of worsted yarn and a needle. She opened her fingers up and curved them as though holding a large ball, trying to picture the approximate size of the item she'd be making. She'd need to make a lot of things. It would be boring. Maybe her mother still had some pieces she could have as hand-me-downs. She sighed and started working the yarn around, creating a flat disk that would serve as the top of the—

Hiccup came in through the door suddenly, followed by a gust of wind and snow. Astrid shivered and put her little project back in the bag. She stood up and walked around the hearth to the entrance of the hut; she reached out and took her husband's heavy mittens and hat as he removed them. She gave them a gentle slap to remove the snow and hung them on the pegs near the door.

"Hi, babe." She combed her fingers through his flattened hat hair, fluffing the choppy strands and pulling out bits of ice at the back. "Long meeting?"

He nodded and winced, and started to undo the fastenings of his coat. "Worst of the season. Jorgenson's insufferable, keeps trying to throw his weight around like usual. Now I understand why my dad kept him close by. It wasn't because they're related—it was to keep an eye on him."

He pulled off the heavy coat and hung it up. Astrid stepped closer to him, inspecting his face in the reddish, flickering light that came from the hearth. He smiled at her tightly; she could tell he was glad to be home but that he hadn't yet been able to shake off the lingering worries of the meeting. She wrapped her arms around him and leaned into his chest, resting her face into his shoulder, feeling the chill that had reached his clothes even through his heavy overcoat. Devastating Winter would be upon them soon; by Snoggletog they'd be close to snowed in.

He gave her a firm squeeze and kissed her forehead before pulling back, turning away suddenly and coughing into his arm.

"Oh, no, you don't," she said sharply. "Not this year." She grabbed his hand, tugged him toward the hearth and pushed him into a chair, throwing a blanket at him on her way to collect a bowl and spoon from the corner where they kept their cooking supplies.

"Wouldn't dare," he said. "Loki only knows who I'd find running the show after I'd recovered."

He bent forward to peer at the mess bubbling in the pot. "Is that…mutton?"

Astrid shot him an exasperated look. "Of course it is. Can't you tell?" His lips gave an uncertain twitch; his eyes looked around the room everywhere except at her and she growled under her breath as she dished up a chunk of meat and covered it with broth and cooked carrots.

He took the bowl, and she sat down and retrieved her new project from the bag. She worked the yarn around and around, watching him suspiciously as he blew on the bowl's contents way longer than he should have needed to. Finally he took a bite and gulped it down.

"How is it?" she asked.

"It's…not your best," he answered, his attempt at diplomacy falling flat on her ears. His careful, reserved pronouncements might be effective in negotiating a truce between feuding sheep farmers but she knew him too well to be fooled by his hedging.

"Hmmph," she said, aggrieved. The smell was making her feel horrible too, but she wasn't going to say it. "I tried, okay? I'm sorry, I spent my teen years learning how to throw an axe, and following you around on our stupid adventures…"

His expression crumpled a bit and she knew she'd said too much. Something about Hiccup just destroyed the filter between her brain and her mouth. She loved him…maybe that's why she couldn't seem to stop sticking her finger into the cracks in his ego. Sometimes it resulted in spurring him on to feats of greatness…and sometimes it just made him look weary and deflated.

He picked at the vegetables a bit, then looked up at her, the wavering orange glow from the fire emphasizing the tired circles under his eyes.

"Aren't you having any?" he asked.

"No…" she said. "I, um, ate earlier." Darn him, he could read her, too; he rolled his eyes and she knew he wasn't buying it.

"Nice try. What's the matter? If you don't get your appetite back, you'll be the one getting sick, and we can't afford to lose your skills, either. There are still way too many dragons crawling all over Berk unaccounted for, and my mom can't deal with all of them on her own. Not without the Alpha who knew them all best."

Astrid nodded, seizing the chance to change the subject. "Where is she, anyway? Is she coming back for supper?"

He shook his head. "She's eating at the Ingermans' tonight. Fishlegs' mom has been trying to get her caught up with what's happened on Berk since she…left. All the weddings, funerals, births…" His gaze caught on Astrid's handiwork. "What's that you're making?"

Astrid's already queasy stomach did a somersault; she gulped down saliva and took a breath.

"It's a…baby hat."

"Oh," he said, and took another bite of vegetables. He swallowed hard and grimaced. "Whose baby?"

When Astrid didn't respond for a moment, he lowered the bowl to his lap and leaned forward, sensitive brows angled downward in concern.

"Astrid? Are you okay?"

She blinked. "Yeah. Sorry. What did you say?"

"I said, whose baby are you making the hat for?"

She looked at him, feeling suddenly shy as she glimpsed the intensity in his large green eyes. He had a knack for looking as though he could see right through her, and he was turning the expression on full force.

"Ours."

His face opened in shock, then he forcibly closed his mouth. "Oh!" He looked away and flushed; he turned back toward her and bit his lip. "Well, that explains a lot."

He set the bowl down on the hearth and Astrid's heart sank as he rubbed his face with his hands. He didn't look at her.

"Aren't…aren't you happy about it?" she ventured finally. He'd better be happy about it, she thought, it was at least half his doing.

"Yeah!" he said, but it was in the tone of voice he often used when she asked him how he'd liked her latest recipe for yaknog. Based on her mentally recorded history of the behavior that usually followed his answers, she knew that its meaning ranged from ambivalent to downright negative.

"Good," she said. "Gothi thinks I'm six weeks along or so, and will deliver around the time the snow melts." She turned her attention back to her needlework, biting down hard on her tongue to distract herself from the hot tears forming in her eyes. They weren't ready for a baby. They'd only been married a few months, and still didn't see as much of each other as they wanted to. Not for the first time, she wished they hadn't let Gobber and the others talk them into moving up their wedding date. The first two days of their marriage had been a complete disaster; they'd had a week off after that…sort of…and then it had been noses to the grindstone ever since. And now this. She wasn't even totally sure how they had managed it, given the number of times they'd actually been free and alert enough to be intimate with each other. Now she was going to grow to the size of a yak, and he wouldn't want to touch her at all.

Hel's bells, she was going to cry…

Hiccup finally took his hands away from his face when he heard her sniffle. He sprung up from the chair, the blanket falling on the ground as he knelt next to her. She was still attempting to work the pattern for the baby's hat; he pushed it down to her lap and covered her hands with one of his.

"I'm sorry, Astrid," he said. He brushed her bangs behind her ear and pulled her head sideways against his chest. "I was just…surprised, that's all. I'm happy about it, I really am. Shhh…" he held her face against him and kissed the top of her head as she gulped and sucked in sharp breaths of air. "Come on, let's go to bed."

"We…can't," she hiccupped. "I have to put the stew away, and bank the fire…"

"I'll take care of it. Go on, go upstairs."

Astrid stuffed her needlework back in the bag and swiped the tears from her face using her sleeve. She trudged up the steep stairs to their bedroom, too preoccupied with her own thoughts to see Hiccup still sitting where she had left him, staring blankly into the fire.

She was nearly asleep when he came in to bed, flailing and patting a bit as he changed in the near-darkness and crawled under the covers. He spooned up against her, his breath loud in her ear as he sorted out where their arms and legs went.

His hand rested on her hip for a minute, then tentatively reached under her sleep shift, pulling it up. He caressed her belly, his palm still warm from the nearness of the fire and the hot supper kettle.

"It'll be fine, Astrid," he murmured into her hair. "Look at all we've survived so far. This will be a piece of cake."

She responded with a soft half-sob, half-chuckle. "If you say so." She breathed out heavily and was quiet.

"We're…not naming it Hiccup, okay?" he said after a few more seconds.

She wiggled a bit, pressing herself closer against him under the blankets.

"I don't know," she said, "I kind of like it."

She reached down and took his hand, pulling it upward from her belly to clasp it tightly against her breastbone. He squeezed her hand in return, and nuzzled his face into the back of her head. They lay there silently in the dark for an hour, trying to examine the future, before they both fell asleep.