Written: 9/10/2015 - 5:39 AM
AN: So I decided to post this a day early, because i have the next two days off and I'm a little ahead of schedule on writing, I hope no one minds. This takes place two and a half years after the last chapter, during the winter of Astrid's second year of college. I hope everyone likes our new friend, she's going to be around for a little while, if not well... as i said, Hiccstrid all the way.
Hiccup sighed melodramatically from the booth he shared with Fish, casting a playful look at his girlfriend when she jerked her head up and leveled him with a glare just shy of malicious. He chuckled as she began sweeping under the tables again with more vigor than before, bordering on abusing the trash into the dust pan. He turned back to his game, smacking his keyboard on accident to hastily strafe away from a grenade Fish had lobbed at him in his distraction. "So you wanna play dirty eh?" he muttered to himself, leaping atop a stack of shipping containers and firing a short burst of automatic fire into his friend's avatar, killing him and ending the game. "Yes! I am the greatest, feast your eyes sir, this is man!" he was flexing his none existent biceps and smirking across the tablet at his dejected best friend when Astrid cleared her throat from the previously empty space directly beside him. He jumped to the other side of the booth, restricting his girlish shriek to a semi-wimpy yell of surprise.
"You know, if you helped me instead of sitting here blowing each other up we might actually be able to get out of here in time to catch the first half of the movie." Hiccup took a second to recover his composure as Fishlegs hurriedly packed up his laptop, afraid of further stoking her ire. Hiccup had a nasty habit of playing with fire and sent a chagrined grin toward his frustrated girlfriend, testing the waters before diving in.
"What do you have left to do milady?" She narrowed her eyes at him, crossing her arms broom and dust pan still in hand, and he could practically hear the unspoken 'don't give me that 'milady' crap' passing through her silent look.
"I still have to sweep the bar, put up the clean dishes and roll a bucket of silverware." She said testily, but she was definitely mad at all of her uncompleted tasks rather than him specifically, that gave him the courage to prod at her a bit.
"What was it you said to me the last time I rolled silverware for you?" He adopted a ridiculous falsetto voice and said airily, "the next time I ask you to help me, remind me that I told you the last time you helped me to tell you this." She'd shot out the fist that collided with his left shoulder before he'd even reached the end of his speech, stalking away with a mutter to herself along the lines of 'how does he even remember that nonsense.' He chuckled at her retreating back, watching the sway of her long upbraided ponytail until it whipped around the corner into the kitchen.
"One of these days you're going to fail to keep your mouth shut on the wrong topic and she's going to put you in the ground." Fish warned sagely, but Hiccup didn't reply because at that moment, as he was wiggling the charger loose from his computer a pair of keys collided with the side of his head.
"Ack! What the-" He placed a hand gingerly to his temple and looked back toward the kitchen to see Astrid smirking at him, looking very satisfied with herself.
"Make yourself useful and got get me a change of clothes, and one for you for that matter. It's a date, you're not wearing that Lord of the Rings T-shirt."
"It's Game of Thrones!" He shouted after her, but she was disappearing from sight even before he began, sharing an eye roll with his friend as they hefted all their technology and left the closed restaurant.
Hiccup's eyes snapped open and immediately the room began to spin as his brain failed to focus on the lazy circles the ceiling fan left in his vision. He groaned, tried to sit up and failed, and closed his eyes again taking deep breaths. He hadn't dreamed about Berk in months, not since... but that was best left unmentioned. He pepped himself up with a few deep breaths and wrenched himself into an upright position in bed. Immediately he felt sick, but through shear lethargy alone he managed to quell his raging stomach, even his gag reflex was too drunk today. From the shafts of light infiltrating the heavy hotel curtain windows he could tell that the sun was low in the sky already, he'd slept most of the day away. "Happy birthday to me." He sign-songed hoarsely to himself, even his own voice grating on his ears.
Well, he'd definitely missed his three-thirty flight to Stockholm, he reached around closed-eyed through the sheets searching for his phone. His finger tips brushed smooth skin and he furrowed his brow, cracking open one eye to make note of the person sharing his bed for the first time. She was a beautiful girl, petite with thick blonde hair and smooth ample curves, the sheets wrapped her body in the most alluring way, revealing the slope of her back and one long pale leg. Instantly he remembered meeting her at the kick off party, painted in a gold and scarlet dress, dancing by herself on the edge of the crowd.
He found his phone and checked his lock screen, squinting as the harsh light assaulted his abused eyes. Three missed calls from his manager, seven texts, and an email. He read the texts, and even the email, chuckling to himself at the man's increasingly frantic messages leading up to his missed flight. Only after he brushed his teeth and downed a couple glasses of water with a handful of Advil did he text his boss back, telling him he would be in Sweden by morning, then he turned his phone off and ventured back to bed.
On second inspection the girl was not as pretty as she'd appeared the night before when the vodka was still flowing. Her nose was a little to big for her face in his opinion, not delicate enough to match the rest of her features. When he shook her slightly though and one eye cracked open their deep blue hue was so close that he found he could ignore her nose completely, and the few inches she was missing.
"Morning, Hiccup" she said, and the roughness to her voice was cute, she smiled at him shyly but stretched languidly bearing all to be seen as she kicked off the sheets.
"How did you hear that name?" He asked her, far to entranced with her body before him to care all that much that she'd somehow found out his old pet name.
"You told me last night," She said, giggling at his blank look and the laugh threw him off, too girlish and high pitched. "Don't you remember?"
He rubbed a hand through his mussed hair and gave her a roguish grin. "There's a lot I don't remember from last night."
"You didn't forget too much, I hope." Her voice was husky now, and definitely by design, she sat up too with much more grace than he had been capable of and placed a slender hand on his chest. He accepted the slow kiss she delivered to his lips. She still tasted like the cranberries from her drinks the night before and her name came back to him in a hazy memory of leaning over the bar and ordering her a drink.
"I think I've got the gist of it." He assured her sneaking in for another quick kiss before he stood again to a pouty sigh from her. "I'll get you some water," he offered and he could see the promise of hydration beating out the growing lust in her eyes, she fell back with a sleepy smile and a nod. When he got back to the bedroom glass in hand she was sitting up on the edge of the bed, still naked, pulling her hair up into a ponytail, he stopped in the doorway to take in the scene and in the back of his mind made a decision.
"I've got to take a train to Stockholm tonight," he told her, handing over the glass which she downed greedily. Her brow furrowed over the rim of the cup as she continued to gulp it and his lip twitched up into a smile.
"Why?" She questioned when she'd set the glass down on the nightstand, turning to face him on the bed with her legs curled underneath her. He found himself asking the same question as the silence stretched between them and his eyes raked up and down her front hungrily.
"I uh... I have to test the new brake fluid Kawasaki wants all their teams using this season, there's an R&D track there." She pouted again, he could tell she wasn't too sad, mostly just trying to be cute and it was working well enough.
"But it's your birthday!" She exclaimed in dismay, Jesus how much talking had he done last night? "How can they make you spend your birthday on a train all day?" He climbed into bed, crawling up to her and fingering her hair distractedly.
"By paying me eleven million dollars a year." He said and smiled at her dropped jaw, "Do you want to come with me? To Stockholm I mean." He continued to rake his fingers through the cascade of golden hair, it was soft and fruity smelling and he found it much more appealing to watch it instead of her face as he waited for an answer.
"Do you really want me to, Hiccup?" The hope in her voice was real, even he knew that much, and the bright look in her too-dark blue eyes seemed genuine to him. He met those eyes and studied them for a minute before he answered.
"I think I do Cami." She squealed in delight and jerked him down to the bed on top of her, pressing her lips to his with fiery passion. Hiccup was startled but enthused, deciding as he slipped a knee between her thighs and fisted a handful of her hair that they could take the next train out, whats an extra hour or two really?
He still needed to talk to her about using his real name, the stigma of Hiccup was something he'd worked hard to leave behind in the States, but that could wait, they had a long train ride ahead of them. He'd never spent more than a night with the girls he met at the track parties, he'd never met one that seemed worth more than sharing a night of passion with. There was something about this one, something he was very aware of but had zero intention of acknowledging, that set her apart. He didn't know what he was getting himself into yet, inviting her onto the road with him, but that was yet another thing that would have to wait. She'd started calling out his irksome nickname in time with his thrusts and when he closed his eyes he could imagine another's voice and he lost himself to pleasure soon after.
He was surprised with how easy it was to be in the girl's company, the train ride was spent lazing in his stateroom, drinking tequila and watching a Romanian movie neither of them could understand. They adopted their own voices for the characters and filled in the plot as they saw fit as they got drunk well into the night. It was... refreshing. He couldn't recall the last time he'd spent so long in the presence of someone that wasn't strictly work, or strictly pleasure. While she did technically fall into the latter category he could see himself actually liking her, the thought was more appealing now than it had been in the last three years. He watched her as she stared ahead, delivering a long winded diatribe in a flawless British accent that didn't at all fit with the dingy alley where the woman on screen was actually standing. He wondered if she was from England, if that were her actual accent, and found he wouldn't mind finding out. Again he decided to think about these things later, instead clearing his throat to do his next lines in a high pubescent voice for the burly man pressing the woman deeper into the alley. In the wee hours of the morning, droopy eyed from their drinks they curled up in the small bed and napped for the last few hours of the trip.
They arrived with the rising sun in Sweden. Hiccup's bags had all been taken from the hotel for him and delivered ahead of him but Cami had only a small leather purse and the dress she'd worn the night before. They climbed into the sleek black Cadillac waiting for them at the curb, the stoic driver saying nothing to the haggard looking couple. The two of them talked in quiet voices to each other for the short ride, making plans to get lunch at a pub Hiccup always visited when he came to the city. When they stopped at the gate house out front of a large office complex Hiccup reached up and handed the driver his credit card. "Take the lady shopping for a new wardrobe." The mystified look on the girl's face when he handed her a second sleek black credit card was reward enough in his eyes.
"Just try to have her back by noon," he told the driver, still looking at her, she lunged forward and kissed him fiercely breaking away with a blinding smile.
"The hell have you been?" Eret demanded when he made the it up the long drive to the complex doors, "Jesus, you look like you've been fucking whores since I saw you last," he checked his watch "thirty hours ago."
"Just the one, thank you," he said dismissively, as they fell into step together and headed straight through the building to the track that was visible through the glass walls on the far side. "And she's less of a whore than the women you pull off the track and take back to your room." He grouched defensively.
"She must've been quiet the lay," He said suggestively, a lecherous grin making its way onto his face. "I saw you leave the party with that blond girl before midnight. It was almost eighteen hours before you texted me back yesterday, and you still have sex hair."
"She was a good lay, that's why I brought her with me, so in my defense my 'sex hair' is left over from the train ride, not Barcelona."
"Fucking hell Haddock, don't go soft on me now, you're the best wingman I've had in years."
"Yeah, yeah, you'd be lost without me I'm sure." He said sardonically.
"Well... let's not get carried away now, I'm just saying the loss would be felt is all." Hiccup rolled his eyes and ducked into the bathroom to change into some lighter clothes, Eret waited outside and fell on him with a new round of questions as soon as he stepped out in a thin T-shirt and basketball shorts.
"What about that girl back home?" He asked, immediately Hiccup was weary of the conversation. He didn't talk about his life in the U.S., not in any significant way at least, he felt like a different person here than he had in Berk and mixing the two felt like a dangerous game. Whether the man he'd grown into was better or worse than the boy he'd left in Washington was up for speculation, all he knew was what he had now didn't hurt. Not like thinking about her had.
"There is no girl back home," he said flatly, deciding in that moment that he was not going to have this conversation with his womanizing best friend. "You should know, you've been there for half my sexual misendeavours over the past two years."
"What about that blond girl that's on your phone? The one on your lock screen?" Hiccup froze, one leg in his leather racing suit.
"You're in my lock screen picture," he said harshly, presenting his phone as proof, showing the picture of the two of them piss drunk in an English pub. He hoped he made his silent threat clear, stop talking. Now.
"Not that phone," he said exasperatedly, "the other one that you never use, just carry around with you all the time." Hiccup leveled his friend with the blackest glare he could manage.
"There's no girl back home," he said with finality, ripping the zipper up on his suit, he crammed his helmet over his head, and glared through the tinted visor. "Not anymore." Hiccup didn't like the new break fluid. It worked, it was amazing actually, and in theory he could appreciate it's practicality on the track, faster breaking meant less time for decceleration before the heavy turns. He could see himself shaving a whole two or three seconds off his lap time with this, which in motorcycle racing could mean the difference between first place and last. Still he was used to the old stuff, he could take his ZX-10R down a mountain road at eighty miles an hour, he had in the Swiss Alps last spring. It was good enough for him, but Kawasaki wrote the checks and so got what they wanted.
"You want to run it again?" Eret called from the pit as he propped his bike up on the kickstand and removed his helmet. "You came out at a second and a half under your best time for this course, but I saw you take the third turn too wide for sure, we can get a better time." Hiccup was already shaking his head, propping his helmet up under his arm and unfastening the buttons at his throat to let some air into the infernal suit.
"Save something for the race," He said, grinning at his friend to try and show him he wasn't upset anymore, riding always cleared his slate. "If they get all the impressive results in practice they get bored during the races." Eret smirked and swaggered over to him.
"Yeah, well they put about half a billion dollars into this brake fluid, I think they may want a little excitement from the test results too." Hiccup just shrugged.
"And a second and a half should be good enough for them, I'm fine with the old formula." Eret sighed dramatically.
"I swear, sometimes you're more trouble than you're worth, these corporate execs don't want to hear that they've wasted their time. Do me a favor, just if someone does ask about it, don't tell them that you'd just as soon use the stuff they sell at Autozone, please?"
"Don't worry," Hiccup soothed, waving away his manager's concern, "I'll play nice, talk up the new formula and show some excitement. It's not my first day you know."
"Yeah yeah, so what're we doing for lunch then?" He was about to going into the drawn out process of selecting something they could both agree on when Hiccup headed him off.
"I'm actually meeting up with Cami, she should be here any second." he looked up at the sun, as if he had ever been any good at gauging the time that way, but it might as well have been midnight for all the information that gave him.
"Cami." His friend said chuckling, and trying to give him a high five, Hiccup quirked an eyebrow at him and made no move to return it.
"What are you on about?"
"Mate," Eret clapped a hand on his shoulder and began to steer him back toward the office building, "There's not a broad out there named Cami that isn't a slut." He said it so matter-of-factly that Hiccup actually had to laugh at the ridiculousness of the statement.
"You know whats sad is a think you actually believe that." Eret was nodding solemnly.
"I've come across two Camis in my travels," he began, with the air of someone who was about to share a grand nugget of wisdom, "fucked 'em both." Hiccup barked out a laugh and shook his head, not quiet sure why he was surprised.
"Well I have to give you credit, you remembered their names at least." Lord knows he didn't. "You're about to meet a third," he said, spotting the black luxury car waiting far off at the end of the drive, "so now your statistics all wrong, only sixty-six percent of Camis are sluts."
"We'll see, I bet Cami wouldn't mind a little Ménage à trois." Hiccup shook his head again,
"Your french needs work," he said flatly, "and that is not happening. Her feelings on polygamy aside I don't think I want to open that door in our relationship just yet."
"If ever there was a man's prick I would want entering a woman at the same time I was, it would be yours."
"Aaand on that note, I'm going to go have burgers with a woman... alone." He shirked his way free of his friends hand on his shoulder, turning when the man stopped and shouted out:
"You better not be taking her to the pub!" At his shout of 'yep!' Eret stamped his foot and whined in a pathetic shout "That's our place!" Hiccup laughed.
"You need to get out mate, find yourself another Cami, you're coming off a little too strong for me right now." He didn't walk immediately out to the car when he was free of Eret at the door. He lingered out front, debating silently for a second before he took a few steps off the path and out of sight of the vehicle in the distance. The weight of the phone in his pocket was unrecognizable after so long without use, but when he reached in it was there. The technology was severely outdated, the case all scratched and scuffed from his years of use but when he hit the lock button the screen lit just fine and there she was smiling out at him from underneath the ever uncooperative bangs over her eyes. He spent a second drinking in the image, relishing in the now familiar hitch it in his breath it caused then unlocked the phone with a practiced swipe of his thumb.
He couldn't use the device anymore, it hadn't been connected to a service plan in years but he navigated to the music player, bringing up a long list of audio files. He threw a hasty glance toward the car as he selected one, reassured when he saw that it hadn't moved yet. He held the phone up to his ear and listened.
"Hey Hiccup," his eyes fell closed of their own accord, her voice washing over him caused a physical change in his state of being, he leaned against the wall of the building and listened. He'd heard the message at least a hundred times, he'd heard all of them, could recite the words with her and count the seconds in her pauses, hear the words left unsaid in her sentences. "I leave for Colorado in a little over a week," pause, "call me? If you get back in town before then, that is, I'd love to see you... before I go." She stopped for a second here, it was one of the only things he wondered about in the call, was she crying? Or was she simply giving up on ever getting a response out of him? It was one of the last voice mails she'd left, and probably the shortest, after a few seconds of silence that they shared she heaved a deep breath and said "I love you." then she was gone. He stared at the list of all her missed calls for a minute after the recording ended, then on a whim held the button down and turned the phone off, slipping it back in his pocket. With a deep breath that matched her own he kicked off the wall and set out for the car. He had a pretty blonde waiting, and a date with the best burger he'd found this side of the Atlantic.
AN: I'm really digging both Cami and Eret in this chapter, as a reader i hate it when authors present a valid rival love interest but i think I'm going to spend a little time with her, she's not the bad guy here and this story has the potential to flesh out nicely i think. That's what makes fanfiction so great anyway right? The emotional torture.