Chapter 2: Can I Clear My Conscience
Hiccup woke up slowly as his alarm blared music at him. He instinctively went to slap at his phone, but someone else laying right next to him yelped and jumped, sending the covers flying off and allowing a rush of cold air in over him. That sent every hair on his body to stand on end and making his morning wood shrivel up and try to crawl up into his body cavity to hide.
He blinked and saw a stark naked Astrid Hofferson standing in a crouch, her arms raised ready to strike, right in front of his bed.
Then last night came flooding back.
Astrid had called him for help. Shown up at his door. She was pregnant. With his baby. And they'd had wild-monkey 'we don't have to stay quiet anymore' unprotected sex until they'd passed out on top of each other.
"Astrid…" he said, reaching out gently. "It's okay. You're safe."
She was breathing hard, like she was ready for a fight, and Hiccup tried to keep his eyes on her face, instead of on the perky boobs whose nipples were quickly pebbling in the chilly morning air and going up and down as she breathed… Oh, fuck. He focused back on her face, and smiled. "It's okay."
She nodded, still breathing heavily, bent down, picked up the blanket, and came back to the bed, pulling the down-filled coverlet over them as she settled back next to him. "I'm sorry. I got startled."
He put his arms around her. "Are you okay?"
She shook her head. "No. I… I wake up fast. If I don't get out of bed and start on my morning schedule when the alarm goes off…" She shivered, and he was pretty sure that it wasn't from the cold.
He reached over and shut off the alarm-music just as Imagine Dragons were singing about the warriors who built this town, and then put his arm back around Astrid.
"So… now what?" he asked quietly.
"What time does your dad get back?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Don't know. Here, let me check. I usually get cc'ed his itinerary—" thank you, Gobber, "—but those can be subject to change in an emergency."
She nodded. "And I should… I should check the messages."
They reached for their phones. Hiccup flicked through the pass-screen and checked his email, looking to see if there were any updates to when his dad would be getting back. When he couldn't find any, he flicked over to the social media accounts to see if the gossip about Astrid had started to spread yet.
A cursory search didn't reveal anything from their schoolmates. He was setting up to make a quick anonymous check of Astrid's dad's accounts when she cringed in front of him, and he made a questioning noise.
#
Astrid shivered against Hiccup as they laid together in his bed. Gods, how had he not freaked out when the sound of an unfamiliar alarm had been enough to send her into a fighting stance out of a sound sleep?
But he hadn't freaked. Instead, he'd reassured her, and calmed her.
She didn't deserve him. If she'd been braver, she would have stood up to her father—and the social expectations of their school—and made their relationship public. Instead, he'd tolerated being her 'guilty secret' for months, and still, when she showed up in the middle of the night with news that shattered both of their worlds, he didn't just take her in… he had fed her and taken her to bed.
And her father thought that she'd go for one of the muscle-headed, self-centered sports players, like Snotlout or Eret.
She stretched herself out against her boyfriend's wiry frame and felt… safe.
Safe enough to face the dozens of notifications that her phone's lock screen was showing her.
Bracing herself, she keyed in the unlock code.
Dozens of messages through the night. Messages from Heather. Messages and emails from her father's email. Messages from Camilla, Ruff, and Merida.
She looked at Heather's messages first.
Your dad just came back spitting mad. Screamed at me to tell him where you are, was the first message, around the time when Hiccup had been feeding her rice soup.
I'm purging my message history with you, just to be on the safe side, was a minute later.
Ast, when you said that your dad was a control-freak jerk, I thought that you were exaggerating. Wow, had come when she'd been polishing off the last bowl of soup.
Wow, am I glad that I'm on the other side of a locked door from him, had come about when she'd had Hiccup's cock in her mouth, or at least that was her guess.
After they'd fallen asleep, there had been one final message.
Sorry, but I had to give up the contact info for your account or be grounded, locked out of the wifi, and sent off to a nunnery. If you don't contact him back ASAP, I'm in deep shit. I didn't give him the phone number, though, because can't they trace those?
The rest of the messages had been from her father… and were pretty much what she expected.
The last one, though, made her cringe.
Hiccup made an inquisitive noise, so she showed him the picture attached to the email.
He hissed when he saw it—her room being methodically destroyed, with the attached message of I'm sure there's a clue in here somewhere. I'll find it. Or you can come home now.
She showed him Heather's messages, and he nodded. "Yeah, they can triangulate on the cell towers. Good job, Heather." He hauled himself out of the bed, and a part of Astrid—the lower part, mostly—immediately missed his comforting warmth behind her.
He yelped at the chill in the air and grabbed his pyjama pants from where they'd been left on the floor during the night, hauling them up onto himself. "Gods, it's cold!"
"So come back to bed…" she said, stretching languorously, trying to tempt him back in.
His eyes latched onto her chest where it peeked above the top of the blanket, and then he ripped them back to her face. "I need to use the bathroom. And we need to eat breakfast, and figure out what our next move is." He scowled. "There's no way in Hel that I'm letting him get his hands on you again, but that means we need a plan."
Her stomach then gurgled and growled.
She glanced down at it. "Traitor."
He smirked. "Shower?"
She blinked. "Together?"
His smirk deepened. "Saves water, right?"
She shook her head and rolled out of the bed, clutching the covers around her for warmth. "When you put it that way…"
He laughed. "Come on. I'll set the thermostat to warm up the house while we get cleaned up." They quickly took turns using the toilet; Hiccup, true to his word, started getting the house warmed up while she emptied her bladder.
The bathroom was gorgeous, at least. Occupying half of the floorspace was a giant bathtub—appropriately sized, she realized, for Hiccup's imposing father—with two showerheads built into the walls behind the glass shower screen that divided the room in half. The walls and floor were done with earth-tone tiles that had Norse motifs on them of spiraled and knotted ropes, animals, and plants. The effect was beautiful, and was so different than the soulless living room downstairs that she wondered what the reason for the contrast was. A heatlamp built into the ceiling offered a wonderful sense of warmth as she did her business, and she fiddled with her phone, looking over the messages.
Judging by the time stamps, her father was probably asleep now; he'd been up until the wee hours of the morning searching for her and trashing her room. She composed a quick email to him so that Heather wouldn't get into trouble.
Just letting you know that I'm safe with a friend. But I'm not coming home. And you can destroy my whole room if you want. You won't find any clues and it'll give me that much less reason to come home.
She looked it over three times, swallowed, and, after hesitating long past the point where she had finished her business, sent it.
Her hands shaking, she put the phone down on the sink's countertop and finished up. As she washed her hands, she heard Hiccup knock.
"You okay?"
She nodded, and, realizing that he couldn't see the motion, she said, "I sent an email to my father letting him know that I'm safe… but not telling him where."
Hiccup was silent, and then he said quietly through the door, "I won't let him get you or hurt you, I promise."
"I know," she said, and let herself look at herself in the mirror above the sink. And winced. The handprint on her left was a vivid black and blue, making a clear outline of her father's right hand; the tip of the middle finger had bled into her eyelid, giving her an oddly lopsided black eye.
She sighed, and braced her hands on the sink's countertop, and bowed her head. Her hair drifted down over her shoulders, and she stood like that until Hiccup cleared his throat and asked politely, "Can I come in?"
"Yeah," she said tiredly. She felt drained.
Hiccup opened the door; from his angle, he wouldn't be able to see the bruise on her face. As he entered, she didn't turn towards him.
"What's wrong?" he asked gently.
"Hiccup… I…" She balled her fists and punched at the wall. Not hard enough to break anything, but hard enough that it hurt her knuckles.
Instantly, he was there and holding her, making soothing noises. "It's okay… it's okay… I'm here…" he whispered as he put his hand on her arm and gently made her lower it. He hugged her, and she turned and cried into his bare chest.
"Why does it hurt so much?" she sobbed. "I hate him… why do I feel like going back? He won't change. He never does. I hate him…"
Hiccup stayed silent and held her as they swayed together, helping support her as her knees grew weak and unsteady. She always had to be strong, always had to be the best, always had to be the top of the class, because otherwise nothing else was acceptable. But even when she lived up to those expectations, there was that edge of dismissal, of constant put downs.
Astrid! Top grade! Good job, kid! I didn't think that you could actually do it!
That had been one of the few times she'd beaten Hiccup in the class rankings.
As he held her, she couldn't believe that she'd resented and hated him at first. For being better than her in school… for making her father think that she wasn't good enough.
Now, as he made gentle hushing noises as tears came from her eyes, she knew that the day that her father had told her that he was hiring Hiccup as her tutor 'so that you can actually be good enough' wasn't the horrid insult and put-down that it had seemed to be at the time. It had been the first step that had led to this moment right now. She didn't deserve him… but by some miracle, she had him.
His hands stroked her bare back as they stood in his beautiful bathroom… and the fact that it was gentle and supportive and oh gods he was hard and he didn't seem to care as he made soft shushing noises as she cried. He was holding his naked girlfriend in his arms, and the only thing that she could point to as this moment being in any way erotic for him, instead of purely emotionally supportive, was something nearly beyond his control.
She loved him, and she didn't deserve him. She'd blanked him at school, and kept up the appearances that their relationship was nothing more than begrudged tutoring for her, the competitive 'have to be the best at everything' girl. He had every right to resent her. Hel, the day they'd had their accident with the condom last month, she'd been the one that had pushed for it.
And now she was here, turning his life upside down, hiding from her father… and what was he doing?
Murmuring soft and supportive nonsense words into her ear as he held her.
And that made her weep all the more.
Finally, the tears stopped coming. She felt emptied.
"You okay?" he murmured into her ear, still holding her.
She nodded. "Just… gods. It's catching up with me. All of it."
He nodded. "I understand. Do you feel better?"
She gave another mute nod, and then turned and kissed him like she was drowning and he was air itself. He reciprocated, and somewhere along the line, they ended up in the gigantic bathtub, running both showerheads on the pair of them, the water pressure and heat making her feel like she was having the noxious air of her parents' house and the cold rain from last night washed away, gurgling down the drain.
She felt clean.
He grabbed a bottle of shampoo and started to lather up first his hair and then hers. He worked the foam in gently and gingerly, clearly afraid of causing her more pain. She stood there, her arms huddled around herself, letting him work on her. She felt very pained and very raw, and not just in the bruises, and letting him take charge in this was a blessing.
She'd always been strong. Had to be strong. Had to be good. Had to be the best.
Now she didn't have to. She could just be, without needing to hold up the effort to be strong.
And that was a gift like none other.
Hiccup guided her head under one of the showerheads and started to rinse her hair clean, running his fingers gently through the strands. The care he was taking to keep her from feeling any pain almost made her want to break down in tears again. She'd never had someone take such effort to save her any discomfort—her father said that 'pain is weakness leaving the body'—and she was cursing the fact that she had to be grateful to her father for bringing Hiccup into her life.
She simultaneously barely noticed and was hyperaware of him applying the conditioner to her hair and rinsing it out, being at once dealing with her inner turmoil and yet so focused on her boyfriend's loving care of her. She wanted to go home. She wanted her life back. She wanted… gods help her, she wanted her father's approval. She wanted to hear him say that he was proud of her. She… she wanted it all back, the way that it was.
But even as she wanted that, she knew that such a desire was impossible. Not just because, if she went back, her father would march her into the hospital for an abortion by nightfall, and have her enrolled in a prison-esque boarding school by the next morning… but because those days had never really existed to begin with. 'Home' had been a place where her diet was controlled, her comings and goings were examined and watched, her bedroom was inspected for contraband at irregular intervals… Her 'life' had been a series of trials, curfews, and impossible goals that she was mocked for failing and demeaned for succeeding.
And as her father's approval…
She blinked her eyes open, feeling the stream of conditioner foam dripping down in a line over her face, to see Hiccup work at washing her hair, a look of supreme focus on his face. He looked so cute and dorky and lovable and she had to stomp on an impulse to jump him right here and now in the bathtub, kiss him until he couldn't see straight and screw him until he was reduced to babbling giddy gibberish with his tongue hanging out. While she might have started their relationship partially out of him being the only man she was allowed around unsupervised, partly as a way to rebel against her father, and partly in reaction to Snotlout's constantly passes at her… it had become so much more than that to her. As much as part of her craved her father's approval… it was barely a fraction of the part that basked in her boyfriend's support and commitment.
She didn't deserve him. But she had him. And she had caused him pain. Pain of having to pretend. Pain of being alone. Pain of being ignored in public. Pain of being treated as something shameful.
Pain was not weakness leaving the body. Pain was injury. Pain meant that there was something wrong. Pain meant 'This is not a good thing!'
Her father caused her pain.
Hiccup soothed her pain.
And it was as simple as that. And she could sooth Hiccup's own pain.
She almost jumped as Hiccup murmured, "That's it for the conditioner. I've got bar soap and body wash. Which do you prefer?"
She wordlessly took the body wash, and started to lather it up—and then, watching him, she started to spread the lather across her body.
He unconsciously licked his lips as he watched as she soaped herself up. Then he almost jumped in surprise as she stepped forward across the tub and pressed her front against his. "Shall we share?" she asked in what she hoped was a seductive murmur.
"Y-yeah," he stammered, and she rubbed herself against him, soaping up his front in a delicious sensation of slicked skin.
"I'll get your back if you get mine?" she asked, her voice feeling husky. He nodded, and they started to rub more body wash and foam across each other's backs. She hugged him, wrapping her arms around his body and moving up and down to get the citrus-scented body wash all over him, while he was taking great big handfuls of the soap and rubbing it up and down her back. And she was sure that it wasn't an accident that he paid thorough attention to her ass.
She returned the favor, and was rewarded with watching his dick start to come to attention. So she washed that thoroughly too.
Which made Hiccup yelp in surprise. "Astrid!"
She shot him an innocent-mischievous grin. "Hey, this way I know it's clean…" She gave it a quick squeeze up and down the shaft and gleefully listened to him give a strangled moan of pleasure. Then she got back to it.
"I wasn't… oh gods… aware that… my hygiene… was in… question…" he gasped out as she stroked him and played with his balls, being sure to heavily soap them up and get the foam into every little crevasse down there.
She continued to smile at him. "It's not." And it wasn't. He took good care of himself, and she'd never had cause for complaint when she'd blown him in the past. This was just fun. She bent in and kissed him, rubbing her front up against him. After a moment's consideration, she let go of his cock and wrapped both arms around his back, and pulled them both back under the full spray of the showerheads. As the warm water cascaded down around them, washing off the suds, she thrust her tongue into his mouth.
His exclamation of surprise was swallowed by the kiss, and then he immediately reciprocated. It was such an erotic feeling as she felt his tongue moving around in her mouth, rubbing against her own, that she felt herself grow wet inside in response.
Oh yeah… they weren't leaving this shower without them screwing each others' brains out.
A naughty thought occurred to her, and she resolved to see it come to fruition.
As the last of the soap suds vanished down the drain, she continued to kiss him, and then pushed him up against the tiles of the wall.
Reluctantly, she broke the kiss, reached down and stroked him, and asked, "Do you want to?"
He blinked. "In here?"
She nodded.
He reached down and parted her folds before sticking a finger inside. "I… I think that we need some lube before we try that in here… I remember reading that the shower can wash away your natural lubricants."
Feeling his finger in her, she reluctantly nodded. "Well, how about this instead?" She pulled his hand free, dropped to her knees and took his cock in her mouth without any hesitation or ceremony, running her tongue around the rim of his glans.
He groaned, and she shut her eyes and enjoyed the sensations of him in her mouth, his twitching thighs brushing against her cheeks as she bobbed her head up and down, the warm water of the shower cascading over them both. He had his hands braced on her shoulders, and he was gently rubbing them—and then he got some lotion from the nearby shower basket and started massaging that into her skin.
Heh.
That was amusing, giving what she had in mind. But she didn't mind in the slightest—it felt wonderful.
She worked on him, bouncing between taking in his full length, or playing with just the tip and using her hands on the rest of the length of his cock and playing with his balls. She remembered one other technique that she'd accidentally discovered the other week and started to hum. The vibration made him moan, and she upped her tempo, both in her dubious music and in the motion of her head and hands.
Finally, he gasped out, "Astrid, I'm going to come… uhhhh…"
She pulled him free from her mouth and running her hands up and down the length of his cock, pointed it at her face and breasts as he shot off a good number of spurts all over her.
Breathing heavily, he glanced down. "Why…" She rubbed it on her skin, and he actually twitched.
She grinned, and licked around her mouth. "Why? Because that was something we never could have gotten away with in my parents' house."
He blinked. "Oh. Like the wanting to make me loud last night?"
She nodded. "Exactly. I'm tired of living by their rules. I want to make our own rules, for us." She walked over to the showerhead and washed herself clean as he stared and unconsciously pumped himself. She then walked over and gave him another kiss. He leaned into it, and, groping blindly, turned off the showerheads. They stood there, dripping dry, as he drifted his fingers down to her clit and folds, and started to dance them over the sensitive, aching skin.
It came as a shock when she realized that he had backed her against the wall, never having broken the kiss, her breath through her nose coming hot and panting as he skillfully brought her up… and up… and up, her pulse thrumming in her ears.
He then broke the kiss and worked his way down to her breasts and started to lavish attention on them, nipping and licking them, and she was so far gone that she couldn't do anything more than moan.
Her orgasm came like a wave over an overtopped dam, and she was washed away with it.
When she surfaced a little bit later, Hiccup was standing over her, a towel wrapped around his waist, his robe—blue and patterned to look like the TARDIS—held out for her to put on. He looked insufferably smug. "Good one?" he asked cheekily.
She slipped the cotton robe on and tied it shut with a roll of her eyes and a fond smile. "Yes… but we need to buy lube. Because I want a proper fuck in here at some point. Maybe with the two of us having a bath together."
He blushed a bit, but bowed and said, "As milady wishes. So… breakfast, and then planning our next move?"
She nodded, and her stomach growled.
He laughed, and they headed downstairs after throwing on some more clothes. Her stuff was sitting in the dryer unit, having finished sometime in the night, and she paused for a moment as she realized that there was a real chance that the basket and backpack of shirts, pairs of underwear, pants and skirts were all that she had in the world. Her father might have already destroyed the rest.
Hiccup was puttering around in the kitchen as she folded the scant remains of her clothing and placed it carefully in the basket.
"If you want," he said as he rummaged in the cabinets, "we can order you some more clothes online."
"What, you have a credit card?" she asked, incredulous.
He nodded. "Well, it's my dad's account, and I wouldn't exactly buy sex toys with it, but I explicitly have access to it for buying food for myself, plus stuff in an emergency." He set a jar of something down on the countertop. "I think this qualifies."
She nodded, and they set to work. She got out Toothless's kibble and refilled his water bowl, and then went and got Hiccup's laptop as he cooked. Reentering the kitchen a few minutes later, her stomach rumbled at the mingled scents of apples, honey and ginger. She took up her seat at the the breakfast bar, the closed laptop in front of her, and watched, her heart filled with love, as her boyfriend made her breakfast. She went over the remaining notifications on her phone as she waited, in between watching Hiccup, in his ridiculously nerdy t-shirt—this one featuring the words Cobalt, Manganese, Zinc, Copper, Cadmium, Lead, Bismuth and half a dozen other chemical elements written in the fonts for heavy metal rock bands, a pun so bad that it had made her throw her panties at him when he'd proudly shown it to her upstairs—cheerfully work at the stove. It looked like her father had worked his way down her list of close friends; she'd also gotten messages from Cami, Ruff and Merida, all concerned and trying to check in on her.
She fired back vague reassurances to each of them that she was okay and safe and that they shouldn't worry about her, and that she'd explain later. But since none of them knew about her and Hiccup—only Heather knew what the full deal there was—she kept quiet on that part.
While she was ashamed that she'd kept their relationship a secret, there was no question that that secrecy had given her a safe place to flee.
Hiccup came over while something was simmering on the stovetop; he flipped open the laptop and unlocked it for her, promising her that they'd set her up a profile of her own soon enough. She started assembling a shopping cart of essentials as he finished up, and then a bowl of something delicious-smelling was put in front of her.
She looked down—it was clearly oatmeal of some kind, but it smelled heavenly. "What is it?"
"Simmered oatmeal in milk mixed with diced apples, and berries and raisins, all cooked in honey, brown sugar, ginger and a bit of cinnamon," he said, and sat down next to her with a bowl of his own, and a mug of tea with milk for each of them. Toothless came up between them and was clearly intrigued by the People Food, even as Hiccup laughed and told his dog that he couldn't have any.
She scooped up a spoonful slightly dubiously—she hated breakfast oatmeal—and ate it.
And immediately resolved to marry Hiccup just for his cooking and the sex. It was amazing, and the sharpness of the ginger actually helped settle her stomach, as the sweetness of the apples, raisins and sugar counteracted the dull chewy blandness of the oats. She quickly hit the bottom of the bowl and got a refill, which Hiccup watched with amusement.
"How do you do it?" she asked, shoveling in great heaping spoonfuls of the stuff and washing it down with gulps of tea. "I mean, this is like something I'd expect at a restaurant."
He chortled. "Because I'm a guy, and guys can't cook?"
"Well, yeah, wait, no, not that! I mean, that's part of it, but, Hiccup, you're sixteen. How the Hel are you a gourmet cook, on top of everything else?"
He drummed his spoon on the bowl and smiled at her. "Well, you see, it was all part of my cunning plan. I had to be effeminate and unmasculine enough to make your dad's testosterone detectors give off a false negative so I could get close to you and—" She swatted him with her spoon, and he laughed. "One of our neighbors is an old friend of my dad's, and she comes by a few times a week to help with raising me. She taught me how to cook when I was a kid. You think that my stuff is good, hers is better."
"Amazing," she said, stealing a spoonful from his bowl. "And Hiccup?"
"Yeah?"
"I don't buy into my father's bullshit about 'men can't cook'. Is that why you never told me before that you could?"
He shrugged. "A bit. I'm enough of a Hiccup as it is, y'know?"
She nodded unhappily at the reminder of his nickname. The runt of the litter. The aberration. She scowled, and then forced a smile to her face. "Well, you know what? This is more than just talent. This is art. And I'm amazed at what you can do, and grateful that you aren't one of those 'alpha males'. And if you were… we wouldn't be together."
"And you wouldn't be…" he nodded his chin towards her belly.
She shrugged. "And I wouldn't be being fed awesome food and feeling the afterglow from equally awesome sex. You're definitely a Hiccup… but you're an outlier on the high end, not the low," she said, saying this last with a wide, loving grin.
Hiccup paused and her heart sank and her smile faded. She hoped that he hadn't just hurt him with what she'd said.
"I… I guess," he said. "I… I'm just tired of being an outlier."
"Don't be. You are who you are, Hiccup… Henry," she said, using his real name. "You're a better person, and a better man, than any of those muscle-bound thickheads in the median. And I… and I appreciate that more than I can say." She almost said that she loved him… but she had the feeling that would scare him off.
He nodded, a small smile coming to his lips. "Yeah, I can see that. Thanks, Ast."
Toothless came up with his leash in his mouth; Astrid realized that she hadn't noticed when he'd gone, but he was clearly itching for a walk. As he sat there, his tail wagging, she noticed that his rear left foot was made of black plastic and blinked in surprise.
"Hiccup—"
"Yeah, Toothless is sporting some aftermarket parts, just like his owner, aren't you boy?" he said, crouching and running his hands through his dog's thick fur. "C'mon. I'll take you for a walk!"
Astrid grinned at the pair of them, and then felt her heart melt more as Hiccup turned to her. "Wanna come with?"
She shook her head. "Want? Yes, dammit. Can? No. All I have are these slippers, and I walked, what, a few kilometers in them last night? My feet are still killing me and I need new shoes."
He looked disappointed, but nodded in agreement. "Well, hop online and order what you need. We'll be back in a bit." He went and got on his shoes and running jacket, and before he left with the bouncing dog, she caught him by the door, and gave him a kiss so intense they were both breathing heavily at the end of it, and Astrid was feeling dizzy.
"What was that for?" Hiccup asked.
"Everything. Taking me in. Taking me to bed. Making me scream your name. Feeding me. For giving me a safe place. For being… you."
He blushed. "I don't know what to say to that… but you're welcome, milady."
Toothless, clearly having had enough of waiting, barked once, and the moment broke. "All right, all right, c'mon, yah mutt," Hiccup said fondly, and they left.
She watched them go, heading for the nearby park, and she clasped her hands over her heart, and muttered out loud to herself, "Henry 'Hiccup' Haddock… I love you. And when you get back, I'm going to say that to your face."
