Hiccup was starting to put some things together.
He'd wanted to see her apartment and he liked it. The walls were mint green and none of the décor matched. It flippantly defied the aesthetic aspirations he'd been coached to revere, and he needed more defiance, it appealed to him.
"Do you like to ski, Astrid?"
They sat under the harsh lights of a scuzzy, fast Mediterranean place. She hadn't been able to think of another quick meal in the neighborhood that met his dietary restrictions, but he didn't mind and she didn't apologize. She didn't say much of anything at all, actually. They had spent the last two and a half hours since his arrival in relative silence; it would kill him before any disease did.
Astrid looked up from her gyro. "What?"
"In your room. You have a couple of things, they looked like ski trophies." They'd shared a shower before going out, where she shoved him back against the tile and finished what he hadn't let her finish before, and then she turned her back on him and washed her hair like he wasn't even watching. Hiccup got out and toweled off, and while he waited he sat on the end of her bed and stared at the photographs and accolades crowding the room.
Her brow furrowed in annoyance. Mad that he'd noticed. He was sort of mad he'd noticed, too. "I used to ski competitively. It's how I ended up in Colorado for my B.A."
"That's cool," he said, earnestly, but it sounded stupid. Everything he said around her sounded stupid—even all the stuff he'd only considered saying sounded stupid. He felt insecure; he felt fifteen again. He kept trying to climb back toward the new self he'd carved, toward the reckless cocky fast-talking, how he'd won over every woman in his life since he was a junior in college and Heather took him under her wing. But something about this afternoon had shaken his confidence, and considering he'd never quite seen someone eat a gyro angrily before, he thought it might have shaken Astrid, too.
He'd realized was he didn't just want to know what Astrid's apartment looked like. He wanted to know more than that, he wanted to know everything, because a part of him insisted he couldn't be feeling what he was feeling until he did. "Do you have siblings?"
"Uh, a brother."
"Older or younger?"
"Younger."
"What's he do?"
"He's a senior in high school. He's a lot younger."
"Oh yeah? Where'd you grow up?"
She glared at him. "What, are you putting together a file on me or something?"
"Come on, Astrid," he said, pleading, trying his best to communicate with desperation what he couldn't quite find the words to say outright.
Still glaring, she threw the rest of her pita back to her plate, like she'd lost her appetite. "Come on what?"
"I think we should get to know each other better!"
"Why, why should we do that?"
He stabbed a falafel, struggling to stay levelheaded when he could see so clearly willful ignorance in the way she stuck out her chin and stared him down. "Astrid."
Bizarrely, she laughed. It was a sad sound. "You say my name too much, you have to stop doing that."
"You…" She met his eye, she dared him to say it and let her tear him apart. He thought he could bear that. She had the most delicate features, a petite nose, a plump lower lip fit for biting. "I figured it out," he announced.
"Figured out what?" she said slowly.
"How to tell the difference, between wanting someone sexually and wanting them romantically. You know how you know?" Hiccup leaned over the table, intent, and saw a blip of hesitation in her steely exterior. "You just do. And maybe it hits you when you first meet them in the airport, and maybe it hits you when you're in bed with them, feeling…" Sucking his lip, he sat back, curbed by what had rushed him two hours ago when she'd lain beneath him, the realization that the sex was better than any sex he'd ever had and still not good enough. "It doesn't matter. When it hits you it does and after that point, there's no use pretending it didn't. There's no use pretending you don't know what I'm talking about."
Astrid stared across at him, eyes wide, nostrils flaring, mouth hard. And that was—whatever, he had nothing else to throw at her, he'd run out of pathetic attempts to reason. "All right, then," she said, finally, lifting her head. "You want to get to know me better? I've cheated." His stomach went hollow. "I cheated on my college boyfriend. I haven't been in a serious relationship since. I suck at them. I'm lonely but I've never met anyone who didn't make me want to be alone, after a while." With her chest heaving and her bright blue eyes so round, she looked like she had transcended sanity, somehow manic but blindingly lucid. "I'm not a nice girl, Holden Haddock. I am not going to save you, or—or heal you. Or distract you. I'm going to make things worse."
He would have said that she'd already made them better, but he didn't want to reinforce her point, because she was wrong, she was so wrong, he couldn't figure out how or why but he could tell by the twisting of his gut when she'd said it. "I told you, I like mean. And I like women, not girls."
"You have no idea what you're doing," she said, shaking her head.
"So what?" he managed, smiling hysterically. "Your solution is to do everything the same but tell me to shut my mouth while I'm on top of you?"
"What, you want me to save you from me, too? I guess that's more reasonable than expecting me to cure cancer."
He raised a finger. "First of all, go fuck yourself." A second finger. "Second of all, sorry I told you about the cancer, sorry I haven't told anyone else—it was an accident, I swear. It just fell out of my mouth." That bar seemed worlds away from here. He sort of wanted to go back, if only because he could experience everything with Astrid a second first time, and make it clear that he didn't kid when he said he liked her.
"Then why haven't you told them yet?" she cried, raising her voice loud enough that he remembered they were in public. The only other patron was seated across the room with his headphones on, but the woman working behind the counter glanced away from them uncomfortably. "If it's not important that I'm the only one who knows, then why am I the only one who knows? It's been over a month, right? I mean, what the fuck!"
Hiccup swallowed hard. "Because!" Discomforted by—all of this, the whole conversation, really—he fell back in his chair, frowning. Hysteria straining his throat. "Once I tell them… it's happening, my future is set, and I don't fucking want that, do I? I don't want to be… I hate that this is happening to me, so much." This was the most honest thing he'd ever said about the cancer, to anyone, even to himself. It made him sick, the thought of turning around to face reality made him sick. Or maybe that was the painkillers, it got harder to tell everyday.
A long silenced passed between them. Hiccup stared at the saltshaker on the table. His eyes started to water. You were born early, you were so small, his mother liked to remind him, but you grew up tall, and strong, look at you. What was he going to say to her? Sorry, Mom, you were wrong!
"They can mourn with you," came Astrid's voice, back to its normal volume, or even quieter. She seemed tired. He rubbed his face.
"Why is this so important to you?"
"I don't guess it is that important to me." He wonder if that was true, and then he wondered if he only hoped it wasn't because the thought of being important to her in any way made his chest swell. "I just don't know how you can expect me to believe you when you say none of this—" She gestured loosely at him, maybe indicating the wetness of his eyes, maybe indicating the two of them. "—has anything to do with the fact that I know and nobody else does. It seems… I don't know, it's just really fucking hard to believe, when you've got no one to talk to and you show up at my door and…"
"And make love to you?" Astrid practically jumped out of her seat, somewhere between hilarity and horror.
"Don't call it that!"
His face—the fuck, it felt warm, was he blushing? "How would you describe it, then!" Not just sex, she had to give him that, and maybe make love was a little cloying but it was… close, he could admit. Though he wasn't used to being the romantic in the relationship, to exposing his heart. He wasn't used to relationships where hearts got exposed, really. Perhaps that was why this, with her, felt so radically different.
Astrid seemed to recognize the difficulty of naming what had happened, she shifted in her seat and pursed her lips. "I'd describe it as intense, all right?"
"Intense." Well, yeah, it had been. His eyes drifted to the floor, thinking what the rest of the evening might have in store for them. "You should believe it," he told her. "I don't know how to convince you. But I'm not—it's not about the cancer, I fucking swear." He looked up at her. "You don't even have cancer. And I know it's not just me." Astrid's eyes fell to her lap.
"I don't think you should read too much into it. It's just chemical."
"Chemical," he echoed.
"Yeah. Something about our pheromones that clicks, or something."
"Yeah, it's just an instantaneous physiological connection, I'll make sure to write that one off." He was going to lose it, he really, really was. It fell quite between them again, and he finished off a cold falafel, scowling at the plate.
"If I were them, I would want to know." Astrid was addressing him intently. "Your family, I mean. And your friends. And it would hurt so much that you didn't want me to know. Because I'd want—to be there for you, if you needed it. I would want you to trust me. People don't like it when you shut them out." She tried to smile. "I know this from personal experience."
Hiccup took a moment to turn this advice over in his head. It made sense, didn't seem revolutionary. She was right. Not that her being right didn't made it any easier, but she was. And it made him wonder. "Why'd you cheat, Astrid?" he asked.
"Why," she snorted. Covering up a real emotion.
"Yeah. Isn't there usually a reason, if you're not a bad person? Which you're not."
The forced humor fled her face. She gulped, shrugged. "I didn't love him. I was twenty and I didn't know how else to say it."
"Did you tell him?"
"Yeah. And," an ironic smile lighted her face, "you know something? He said we could get through it. And that was when I was like, 'shit, I've been trying to get out of this all along, haven't I?' So I said he deserved better."
Hiccup pushed his soda cup an inch across the table, smirking. "Did he?"
"Probably. But he was boring."
"At least I'm not boring."
"No, you're—" Astrid glanced at him and started to laugh, eyes skimming back out across the restaurant. "No. You're not boring."
He raised a fist in mock victory. "Yes. Point Haddock."
"Yeah, okay." Smiling, she balled up her napkin and threw on to the paper plate with the remains of her dinner, and he did the same. "Are you ready to go?"
"Sure."
She stood and grabbed his plate along with her own, balancing it neatly on her arm to carry it to the trash.
"Wow, look at you."
Astrid dumped the food and threw him an unmoved look. "I'm a waitress." They headed for the door.
"I thought you were a doctoral candidate!"
"I'm that too. But I'm also poor and TAing doesn't cover everything, so."
"You're a TA." It was a lovely, cool night, cool enough he pulled on his blazer as they went out on the sidewalk. "You help the professors and grade papers and have students, then?"
"That is what a TA does, yes," Astrid replied flatly, unimpressed by his knowledge.
Flirting, he leaned toward her. "What if I were one of your students?"
"You? Gender studies?" She gave him a once-over. "Sounds like a good idea, actually. Providing it stuck."
"Hey! I could learn."
"Sure," she said, sounding skeptical, but they were both grinning. On an impulse, he closed the gap between them, kissing her lightly. When he pulled away her expression had darkened.
"Bad?" he muttered, as though that were impossible.
"I think when we get back to the apartment you should probably go check in to your hotel," she said efficiently, and turned away from him to walk into the parking lot. He caught up with her in a stride.
"Are you going to come visit me after I'm settled in?"
"Maybe. Isn't your meeting super early tomorrow? You should get some sleep."
Their eyes met over the top of her car, as they prepared to get in. Astrid's expression read clearly, Don't fucking try it. But he wanted to whine. After everything they'd said and done tonight, didn't it just make sense? Weren't they past calling this a hook-up?
He tried it. "Can I sleep at your place?"
She looked to her left, jaw clenched. "No."
"Are you—"
"I meant what I said, okay?" Astrid wrenched open the driver's side door and fell into the seat, so he heard her voice as he mirrored her slowly. "Maybe you don't see what you're doing, but I can't take the risk that you're going to—"
"Die?" he asked, plunking down beside her.
She gave him a hard look, and then shoved her keys in the ignition. "Next time you're in town, I'm meeting you at the hotel."
Today's flight is oversold. We are looking for passengers willing to give up their seats, if your travel plans are flexible.
Hiccup sat by the gate, leaning on his fist, eyes half-closed. He hadn't slept well. The hotel bed was too cold and empty and clean. Not lived in. He'd only spent half an hour in Astrid's, but he was sure of its superiority. He thought of its smell and inhaled deeply.
We can have you on the earliest flight tomorrow, and hotel vouchers are available.
He'd come out of his meeting this morning to find a text from her, wishing him good luck and a safe flight. He stared at it for too long. The bosses liked his presentation, though he felt distracted and nervous through the whole thing. One of them drew him aside afterward and said they were considering more projects for him. That meant more time here, more visits to Astrid. If she'd still want to see him after the surgery. Considering her attempts to buck him up about the cancer situation, he doubted she'd reject him on any shallow basis, but—but he didn't know what to expect from anyone after the surgery.
Any passenger willing to give up their seat will automatically receive ten thousand frequent flyer miles with no blackout dates.
Tell his parents. He had to. He could only wait so much longer. The procedure was scheduled for just after Thanksgiving, he couldn't go there for Christmas with a surprise like that. Ha, ha. He already missed her, he was already sorry to be home. He could already feel the misery of the office tomorrow morning. Of having to see Heather. Of having to act like he didn't feel screwed over by that whole company. And he wanted Astrid. Fuck, he had to stop thinking about her, it wouldn't make the next couple of months any easier. The PA rang out again, starting to get on his nerves.
Again, the flight is oversold. We're looking for passengers interested in giving up their seat for miles and arranged rebooking.
Finally, he heard what they were saying, and he woke up.
"The next person who calls Gender Trouble a 'novel' is getting a D," she announced.
Unsurprisingly, the paper in Astrid's hands did not respond to her threat. She threw it down on the kitchen table and rubbed her eyes hard—she'd been at this for three hours now, all the letters were starting to blur together, and her red pen grew meaner the crabbier she felt.
"Are you talking to yourself?" rang Ruff's voice from the living room.
"No, I'm talking to a bunch of college students who think the word 'book' is too good for them."
"You know they're not here, right?"
"Yeah," she grumbled. "I need a break. I'm opening some wine."
"Sounds smart!"
Astrid pulled a bottle of white from the fridge and set about uncorking it. After yesterday, she'd donned sweatpants and a huge t-shirt and had her hair braided sloppily to the side. A day of being watched and wanted by the truly insatiable Hiccup—she was ready to recede into herself. She'd woken up this morning and looked at her face in the mirror and thought, perfect, I look like shit. Now she yawned hugely and started to pour out her drink, glug glug glug.
Pounding from the hall: someone at the front door.
"I've got it, Ruff," she called, quickly corking the wine.
"No, let me, I think it's Eret." Her roommate's voice moved from the living room into the corridor. "I've been leaving our garbage by his door so he'll be forced to come and talk to me." Astrid nearly spit out some wine laughing, and carried her glass back to the table. She heard the front door swing open, and Ruff went, "Oh, it's… you."
Grinning, Astrid peeked her head out of the kitchen. "Hi, Eret—"
Except it wasn't Eret. Her face fell.
Hiccup squinted at Ruff. He had his bag slung over his shoulder, wearing the same jacket as the day before. The stubble on his neck and jawline a little thicker. "Sorry, do I know you?"
"No, but I sure do know you." Ruff turned slowly to look at Astrid, talking through a pained smile. "Oh my god. I just remembered I wanted to go over to my brother's place tonight. How convenient."
Astrid raised a slow hand to her face. She wasn't wearing any make-up, not a drop, her hair… fuck. What was he doing here?
His eyes were on Astrid, but he spoke to Ruff: "No, I'm sorry, you don't have to leave on my behalf. I'm Hiccup."
"Hiccup," Ruff repeated, tossing Astrid a hilarious look.
"Holden," he elaborated glumly.
"I'm Olivia, but people call me Ruff, because that's how I like it." She winked and grabbed her keys from the side table. "And I'm definitely leaving. If Eret comes by tell him to hold on to that rage, I want to see it. Buh-bye!" Ruff pushed past Hiccup into the hall and disappeared. The front door sat wide open. He hadn't even come inside.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, her throat feeling like she hadn't spoken for hours.
"My flight was oversold. I gave up my seat." He inhaled and pulled out his phone, waving it at her. "I'm going to call my mom and dad. I was kind of hoping I could stay here tonight." Astrid shut her eyes. Stupid. So fucking stupid, all of this. He was stupid for coming back when she'd made him leave for the greater good of them both, and she was stupid for being glad to have him. Even for a night. They made a night together last like a year in the lives of other people.
"Just get inside, already." She moved to shut the door behind him, not meeting his eye. "You can have the couch."
