Drabble things.
Set within Dragons: riders/defenders/GotN timeline but some of these were written before they existed.


Because absolutely no one knows me better.

"No!"

Astrid snarled as she walked away from the latest mounted-weapons practice, she entered the saddle store and heaved the heavy saddle from her shoulder onto a stand.
"Aw, c'mon Astrid!" Snotlout ducked under a cloth as he chased after her, dumping his specially modified saddle in the process. Astrid whirled instantly at the sound, teeth bared in a snarl;
"For the last time no, and pick that up!" She gestured threateningly at the dropped saddle, "Hiccup will not be happy to see his hard work all over the floor and not being looked after properly, like you promised, instead of paying him."

She turned back to her previous task of finding and grabbing a usable cloth for polishing her own saddle leather, Snotlout hastily picked his own saddle out of the dust and shoved it on a stand:

"Yeah, well…uh…anyway, you never tell us anything about yourself!"

He scrambled to her side as she draped her saddle cloth over the bench and began picking burrs and twigs out of it with a brush.
"It's only your favourite colour, I mean all I want to do is…get to know you better!"

She slammed the brush down hard on the wood with one hand and looked at him. He whimpered quietly at her proximity and stepped away from the irritated Viking.

"Oh really?"

Her eyes drilled into him with the force of gimlets.

He began to bite his nails and backed off a little further, she turned back and rummaged on a shelf.

"So this has nothing to do with a bet with Tuffnut about who knows me better?" Her words were deliberately over-bright and casual as she moved back to the saddle, a jar of polish in one hand and began rubbing the paste into the saddle with the cloth. Snotlout spluttered.

"No! No, er, why would you think that Astrid? How could you think so low of me-" He followed her again as she finished, still making excuses as she picked up both saddle and cloth to move them.
"-I mean I'm not even the betting type, unlike…uh, Hiccup! Yeah, he bets on you all the time." She crossed the room to her designated stand and paused to glare expectantly at the haphazardly placed saddle on it. He popped up at her left elbow like a malignant wasp, still grasping at straws to cover his tracks.

"I try to put a stop to it personally, but you know what they're like- oh, sorry." He quickly removed his saddle from the stand and clutched it under one arm. "Anyway, so yeah I wanna know, is it blue or is it red? 'Cause Tuff's got a lot riding on red an' Fishlegs has suddenly gone in with purple, which I personally don't understand but-"

She turned and looked at him flatly for a moment and he instantly flinched but kept talking. She internally shuddered at how close she had come to nearly saying yes to this boy out of sheer exasperation. Raising a blonde eyebrow at him (dear Thor was he still talking?!) and folding her arms she interrupted his seemingly endless diatribe;
"Snotlout,"
"-Yeah?" he stopped the tide of useless twaddle, jerking to look at her directly as she leant towards him slightly and smiled.

"I wouldn't tell you my favourite colour if your life depended on it." She said all saccharine sweet and patted him on the cheek. "However I will say; it's not blue." She swept out the door, leaving him in the dust as she listened gleefully to the muffled and getting distant curses now spewing from the saddle store.

"-Damnit!" Snotlout roared.

Not much later that evening, she found Hiccup and Toothless at the ledge watching the stars. Both offered a rumbling greeting as she settled herself in close proximity to them, dangling her feet off the edge. After a moment she worked around the stone in her throat, 'you never tell us anything about yourself' ringing in her ears.

"Hiccup?"
"Hmm?"

He looked at her from his reclined position on the planks, smiling contentedly.
"What's my favourite colour?" She clutched at her knees, sitting upright. He looked back at the stars, his smile wider;
"Oh, that's an easy one: Green." He replied confidently, seeing as she was all too prepared to correct him; she was pleasantly surprised he got it right without even thinking about it.

Wriggling closer she lay down and snuggled into his warmth, she kissed him on the cheek.
"Hm? What's that for?" he questioned, arm automatically going round her.
"Knowing me." She replied sighing happily.

Green.

The colour of his eyes.


Okay I'm back. For a bit.

Saint over and out.