*wistful sigh* I've missed writing for this AU. Chapter a-la Snotlout for y'all.
Snotlout sighed as he shucked his bag and sunk into the worn, brown leather sofa. Their garish Christmas decorations had started to come apart, as he'd told the four eager Christmas fanatics that lived with him they would, but as usual, he was ignored. He cast his eyes over to the navy blanket with a tuft of auburn hair sticking out that was vaguely shaped like his cousin. A slight glow emitted from the centre.
"You're not fooling anyone, Hic. We know you're on your phone."
The blanked squirmed a bit and mumbled something before humming and one socked foot appeared before disappearing again. Snotlout smiled. He'd been doing that a lot lately. As cliche as it is, he had never been happier. Honestly!
School was... interesting. He'd never really bothered with it before, boring teachers and boring subjects, half the time he didn't know or care whether he was in maths or history or something in between. He was also pretty sure that he had skived more secondary school than he had attended. Well, that was until Mrs Ingerman.
She was a no-nonsense kind of woman, but she was far from intimidating. She wasn't strict or mean, the woman baked cookies in heart shapes and had her own bloody advent calendar for goodness sake! Even so, she had this inexplicable power to make you want to comply with her. On the surface, she seemed rather ditsy, girly and giggly but it soon became clear that her fluffy, wispy exterior was build on rock solid foundations.
So, he attended school and didn't do too bad, really! It was hard connecting with other boys his age though, listening to them talk about rugby and watches and 'doesn't Holly look hot today?' when all he could think of was how bloody trivial. In what universe is any of this important? You wouldn't survive a day on the streets, pussies. Bet you're all blushing virgins who've never seen a drug or a real knife before. Don't get me started on guns. Oh, nice trainers, Tom. Which was one reason why his relationship with Hiccup had improved dramatically.
He had spent his entire life thinking they were polar opposites, but being thrusted into the normal world had shown him just how frighteningly alike they really were. At first he hadn't liked it at all, (go away, useless) but as he integrated more into the world (hey, guess who's going to Tenerife?) he realised that Hiccup may be the only one (spoilt brats, aren't they?) who truly understood him (yeah, they're weak.). Hiccup knew what it was like to wake up in a cold sweat three times in one night, to see members of your family distorted into frightening monsters and have kinship by blood to be a foreign entity, something always just out of reach. Family brought pain, a pain more potent than the rest. He was weaned from that rule. Hiccup knew fighting for your life as a daily ritual, and saw breathing as an accomplishment, a gift, not a commodity to be taken for granted. They don't know how much they take for granted. Hiccup knew mouldy food and rotting teeth set into scarred faces with quick, dark, evil eyes. Eyes that would swallow you up and place you gently into a roaring inferno of a cold, blank stare and pain that screams too loudly to be heard. But of course, he must forget all that and pretend to be normal, pretend like he's totally played 'games' before (normal, innocent games, not a euphemism for something much darker) he absolutely knew what a Rolex was and weren't profiteroles great?
He could only pretend for so long, that he knew money to spare and he took staple foods for granted, that this was his world and he didn't feel alarmingly naive in this foreign place. He could cover his fluttering insecurities and cover over the fact that he longed for nothing more than comforting dark clothes and feared alleyways, for the cold, reassuring weight of a silver blade or a silver bullet and he could barely quell the urge to run and hide someplace familiarly dark, where he knew he was at the top.
He could kill a man in two seconds flat, get in a fatal hit from twenty meters away and survive fourteen years in his raw, rough, dirty world but he felt like nothing more than a stumbling, sprawling baby taking his first steps in this world. This world of new clothes and new money, of holidays and sugar, of laughter and smiles. It was a fragile world, he soon realised, with a sparkling front to cover over a dusty web of insecurities, inadequacies and failings. It was one that must be trodden lightly, and one that he had squashed with a heavy, clumsy boot more than once. There was a whole network sewn with fine lace of social intricacies, all based around emotions.
They ranged from the friendzone (wtf? Just fuck already) to liking posts on social media ('oh, so he's going out with you but he liked Stacie's post? That slut. He's toats cheating on you hon') to what music you like (fucking emo) to 'I'm fine' (a bloody minefield) and everything inbetween. It was a little worse now Hiccup wasn't there, him having been pulled out after he nearly starved himself to fucking death (while adamantly insisting that he was fine, thank you very much and drilling that damned smile on his face) and so he was pretty much alone. He had learned quickly that Fishlegs wasn't considered 'cool' and if he went within a five mile radius of Astrid people would start wolf-whistling. Hiccup had been benign enough - if a little odd - and the girls had thought he was cute.
He had discovered a new favourite pastime though, the first being to say iffy things to innocent people and see how much would go right over their heads, the second being to say downright hardcore things to innocent people and watch them squirm. (Although admittedly, Hiccup was better at the sex ones than he was.) They had made bets on who could get the funniest reactions, one of which had ended in him having to eat a sandwich covered in a mixture of food colourings to make it look mouldy infront of everyone. Well, the reactions were funny, to say the least.
Having spare time (another foreign concept) had given him a lot of time to think, which he was doubtful was a good thing. He had pondered on the fragility of human mortality, which he had seen firsthand, and how it had become a taboo subject within the society he suddenly inhabited. He hadn't had much time to develop anything akin to social skills, his only interactions with girls having been 'a little to the left', 'harder right there' or 'are you sitting on my bra?' And for males it was mainly fragmented conversations consisting of euphemisms for drugs, threats and murder, none of which were understandable to a normal person and so none of which prepared him for this kind of life. Even with Hiccup, any semblance of conversation had mainly been insults or requests for bandages and his father just barked orders to which he said 'Yes, Sir.' Therefore, he had nothing to say most of the time and most of the things 'on his mind' were incredibly dark and crass. So, he had developed a reputation (of which he was unaware until recently) of being quiet, brooding and mysterious. He didn't like this at all, but the female population seemed to, so he let it be. He had nothing to say anyway. The flip side of that, however, meant the he had no real close friends (friendship: the next instalment in the bestselling Alien Concepts series) and just tagged along with a generic group of Jocks.
He didn't even have much interaction with Astrid, who lived with him! She hung around Hiccup (and fucking adored him) and fought with Fishlegs all the time, mostly over annoying and petty things. Fishlegs was still yet to 'win' an argument with her despite most of them taking place in the kitchen, around hot things. At first, he hadn't questioned Astrid's morbid fear of heat (not summer, just hot objects) and her sudden, out of character jumpiness around anything steaming. Then again, he hadn't noticed the horrible bags under Hiccup's eyes for like, a month until the pillow fort incident, which neither of them had ever wanted or needed to mention again. However, after a big, dramatic fight that Astrid and Fishlegs had (that he just had to have been present for) he realised that maybe, her fear was something more.
He pondered for (embarrassingly) the first time why Astrid was in the hospital in the first place, with apparent street smarts and an attitude that mirrored his and Hiccup's almost alarmingly. However, she was a strong character and would never be pegged as the 'victim' type, plus she had slotted seamlessly into their lives so well that she may as well have been there all along. Therefore, he had never really wondered why a stray girl in a hospital would just up and join two random boys on a rather spontaneous and very probably unsuccessful journey to escape foster care without a second thought for any family or life she left behind. That was until Hiccup had sat down with him and casually discussed why her injuries only seemed to be burns and why whoever it was chose to use (and leave it at) burning. He spoke like it was old news that Astrid was well, you know... the 'a' word (that all three of them were proper fucking cowards around and would never say) and made him feel incredibly out of the loop.
She had finally opened up about it, on Fishlegs' fifteenth birthday when they were all more than a little tipsy and in various positions on the floor of the living room. Fishlegs had started talking about his father, so Hiccup said a little bit about his while he downed the rest of the vodka, after which he said a little about his. (Hiccup miraculously 'found' some more alcohol from unknown sources after that.) Finally, when they were all sufficiently intoxicated, Astrid spoke about her controlling, burly aunt who was a glass-blower. She said she was worse around hot liquids and metals, but fine with most other things. Suddenly, her intense dislike of electronics class made sense... They had all moped about the next day with killer hangovers and boxes of chocolates from various relatives of Fishlegs, but the overwhelming silence was companionable and they all felt just a little closer than before. (Don't worry though, the next day Astrid and Fishlegs were merrily fighting over sofa, carpet and lamp positions and opinions on the colour orange with renewed vigour.)
A familiar screech signalled the return of Mrs Ingerman (love the woman, but for your own safety, please never get in a car with her) and the loosely Hiccup shaped blanket shifted slightly. The idea of safety had been another strange concept, of taking survival as a commodity and feeling relatively happy that mortality was not imminent, and could be pushed to the back of his mind. He was learning, however, to trust that he could expect many, many days of sitting in his favourite spot on the dark brown sofa (with no rips in!) opposite Hiccup's armchair next to Mrs Ingerman's. That the people he was slowly beginning to love would be around for more that just a fleeting moment. Slowly, slowly he was beginning to set his feet on the shaky ground beneath him, and trust it not to fall.
So he sat there, in a cliched firelit room with Christmas lights of red and green glowing all around him, contemplating life and safety and how if this was just a little more perfect, it would make a great novel.
Or maybe even a movie.
My friend wrote a poem for me a while back and it was so lovely! (It didn't make me cry, nope) So, I thought it may fit in here? Anyway, have a poem.
*chucks poem at audience*
You may think recovery is
Broken children being loved
Skinny children filling out
Bruises healing, scars fading.
But it's so much more than that.
Recovery is
Demons fought at 3am
Silent nightmares suffered alone
The conscious decision not to flinch
And the guilt at the apologies that follow
Always scared of touching this, drinking that
Saying those words that always set him off.
Shadows, eyes.
Recovery is
Shaking in bed waiting for the hurt that never comes
Heightened nerves, the fear of painlessness
School.
The touching, bumping shoulders.
Boys slamming your book down on the table and
something dark shattering behind your eyes
The jokes, the words.
The feeling that there's nowhere to go.
Trapped.
Cornered.
Recovery is
The strangely shaped scars that have come to mean something
The marks lining your skin in places you're sure that
No normal person would ever have
Your own body a constant reminder
Working against you ever
Feeling ok.
Looking in the mirror and getting transported back
To dark, red, broken, ugly.
Recovery is
Small rewards for small victories
Finding that food you could eat forever
Little pleasures that make life worth living
And soft, warm hands that touch yours.
Recovery is not easy.
Far from it.
But it is worth it
For just one of your smiles.
Little funny story: upon showing this to me, she employed some of the Oh-so sophisticated techniques we learnt during poetry in year 9 English, such as if you turn it to the side, the irregular structure shows the ups and downs in the battle of recovery (she couldn't be arsed to give it a proper poem structure) and the irregular, chaotic mix of proper sentences, phrases and single words show that 'recovery' isn't final, and your state can still degenerate (she couldn't be arsed to format it at all). I definitely think she has a future career as an English teacher ( I swear you could give them a dash and they'd analyse it in depth, something like 'the writer uses a straight line here to represent the linear structure of society')
Anyway, goodnight. Leave me a review, I hope that this was sequel-y enough! (Any comments about the poem will be appreciated and passed on.)