Someone come over here and force me to stop updating so quickly. Will there be more Taylor Swift lyric chapter titles? At this rate, probably.
"Astrid."
"Yes?"
"Astrid."
"Shut up, we're having a staring contest." Toothless's great green eyes remained trained on her. Astrid lay on her belly across Hiccup's bed, the cat curled opposite her, atop his pillow. Her eyes began to water. In her periphery she spied Hiccup at his desk, where he was finishing up sketch of her Black Cat costume. It was a Wednesday afternoon, she had stopped by after class, not even announcing herself with a text.
"No one can beat Toothless in a staring contest," he told her wisely, but Astrid didn't move. She could beat this cat—it was just a cat.
And then said cat whacked her on the nose with his paw, and she jumped back, eyes closing reflexively.
"Cheater," she gasped, covering her face. Hiccup was laughing.
"He didn't blink!"
She sat up, scoffing. "I call foul play."
Hiccup raised his hands. "He didn't blink. You know the rules. I never said he plays fair."
Toothless got up and started rubbing against Astrid's shoulder, purring. She felt herself smile. "Apology accepted," she told the cat, and began to stroke his head. "How old is he, again?"
"Three. Three and a half."
"And you got him…"
"When I was fifteen."
She almost didn't ask, but Detective Astrid won out over Privacy Respecting Astrid. "That was the same year as the accident, right?"
His pencil slowed on the sketchbook paper. He didn't look up, and in a second, he was drawing at the normal pace. "Yep. He was my therapy kitten."
"Therapy kitten." Toothless laid himself against the warmth of her thigh and began cleaning his paws. His sleek back invited petting, and she didn't even think she liked cats. "I can see that. It was the same year you started making costumes, too, right?"
Astrid had been collecting bits of Hiccup's biography even more attentively since the incident in the bathroom stall. It felt maybe a smidge counterproductive, but what that night had told her, among other things, was that Hiccup Haddock constituted a fascinating tableau of a person. Playing a little Nancy Drew, she stitched together a better portrait of the freckled boy with the big secrets—putting aside her thoughts of sex somehow came easier than putting aside her strange obsession with the realm of undiscovered geekery to which Hiccup held the key. And Astrid really liked sex, so that was a first.
Finally, Hiccup met her eye, a bemused but guarded smile on his face. "You been taking notes or something?"
"Maybe."
He sighed, and set down the sketch. "So I spent a lot of time by myself afterwards. And what had been a casual interest in comic books and tabletop roleplay became… a very serious one."
Astrid tried to couch her grin with a wink. "And here we are."
"And here we are," he agreed, then tossed the drawing to her. "Making you a Black Cat costume." She spread the sketchbook across her lap: the costume was tight fitting, revealing, and entirely kickass. She beamed down at it.
"This is awesome. And you can really draw, did you know that?" When she looked up, he turned away, shrugging.
"I doodle a lot."
It seemed like it—she could tell he'd already filled the first half of the sketchbook, the pages were dog-eared and thicker. Checking to make sure his back was still turned, she lifted the Black Cat page, flipping to the previous one. Six little portraits of Toothless, attacking a stuffed toy, licking his paw, balled up sleeping. The style was more cartoonish than photorealistic, but he used bold lines and clean shapes. Astrid grinned, enthused, and turned another page. She recognized the long, clean lines of their apartment building, and in the corner a smaller sketch, the profile of a face she knew—her face, holy hell, he had been—
"Hey," came Hiccup's voice, and the sketchbook vanished from her lap. He was staring at her, open-mouthed, affronted.
"Sorry." She had gone red, either from the embarrassment of being caught snooping, or from the embarrassment of being—well, she didn't really want to consider the second option. "Hiccup, I'm…" He was red, too, he shut the sketchbook and shoved it into a desk drawer, starting to fumble through stacks of paper. Toothless got up from Astrid's side and leapt to the floor, stalking over to Hiccup, trying to get his attention. She asked, shutting her eyes, "Did you draw me?"
Something slammed against the desk—her eyes flew open. Toothless had scattered. "You're gorgeous, Astrid, okay?" He was still glaring at his papers, she would've thought he was ignoring her if not for the apparently furious way he commented on her physical appearance, which was so… weird. "If this were Paris in the nineteenth century, people would be dying to draw you, you know?"
She spoke hesitantly, growing redder still, "You're saying it doesn't mean anything. That you drew me."
Finally, he swung around in his chair to look at her. He had a hard expression on his face. Defeated. "It doesn't mean anything. I draw lots of people."
If she kept going through that book, would she find portraits of Fishlegs and Tuff and Ruff as well? Would she find more of herself? Was she the only one—gorgeous enough to be worthy of this honor?
"I was working on visualizing your costume," he added, as an afterthought explanation, which would've made it suspect if she hadn't wanted to believe him so much. Wanted to believe that it didn't mean anything. Because she didn't want that, some touchy-feely geek doodling her face and hearts around her name and pining for her because she just—wanted to fuck him, for one drunken second. A few drunken seconds. That's mean, she thought gently. But Astrid didn't need the attention; she wasn't ready for it. It tugged at the stitches of the wound in her chest. He'd drawn her—was she meant to protect his feelings now, over her own? Wasn't that what men expected?
"Please don't draw me anymore."
Hiccup yanked a tailor's measuring tape from beneath a pile of papers. "I won't," he said gruffly, and tossed the tape at her. "Measure yourself, please. It's got to be perfectly fitted, so you'll have to do everything."
Everything. Astrid got to her feet, and stared down at herself. Everything? Not knowing where to begin, she started winding the tape around her waist, and then did it again, sure she had been wrong—
"For fuck's sake," Hiccup muttered, and the tape slipped from her fingers—suddenly he was there, close to her, measuring an arm, making a note on a scrap of paper; her heart quickened.
"Sorry I looked at your drawings without asking."
He shrugged and didn't meet her eye. Kept about his business. "It's fine. Sorry I creepily drew you, I guess. Also, sorry for admitting it was creepy just now, I didn't—" Hiccup took a step back from the work, shutting his eyes.
"Don't worry about it," she giggled, in spite of her best effort. "If you draw me again, I want you to show me, though."
"I thought I wasn't allowed to draw you anymore."
"You weren't, but then you made a fool of yourself and now I feel guilty."
At her grin, Hiccup started to laugh—a kind of pathetic, exasperated laugh, half at her joke, and half at his own idiocy—and then shoved the tape at her. "I probably can't make this any worse by telling you that I just—I cannot measure your… bust, so you're going to have to do that. At the widest point, please."
Smirking, Astrid wrapped the tape around her chest, eyes trained on Hiccup's—until she caught herself, realizing this was a little more come-hither than she had hoped, and focused her attention on the measurement. "Thirty-four inches. How's that?"
"Don't ask me, I just make the outfits. What's your shoe size?"
"A seven."
Hiccup jotted this down too, and then nodded resolutely at her. "Okay. Give me a week, and you're Black Cat."
Astrid dragged her feet home from a late practice the next day to find Ruff and Eret making out on their couch. This made Astrid the only one in their apartment not to have made out with someone on that couch, but she had decided she was on a romantic hiatus, so fine, fine.
"Disgusting," she commented as she went through the living room to her bedroom, intending it to be just a passing dig, but Eret quickly extracted himself from beneath Ruff to talk to her.
"Hello, Astrid!"
God. He was going to be this obvious, with Ruff right there? Shameless, this guy.
"Hey, Garbage," she replied, with a broad grin. He only grinned back in reply—unfortunately he seemed to enjoy her outspoken distaste for him. Like some kind of cute combative flirting. She, of course, didn't feel the same. Of course.
Ruff, checking her phone, groaned loudly. "Fuck. I gotta call my mom."
"Just call her later, babe," Eret crooned, an arm around her waist.
"I can't, Tuff told her I got arrested." Astrid snorted in surprise, covering her mouth. "I mean, he did it because I told her that he got a girl pregnant, but still." She raised the phone to her ear and, climbing off of Eret, started down the hall. "Yeah, Mom, Tuff is an asshole…"
Which left Astrid alone with Eret. He smirked at her, lounged on their sofa like a fucking underwear model. If he were a little less ugly, maybe he'd have made a good model, actually—wasn't as if he had the brains for anything else. "Don't sit like that," she reprimanded, and struck out at his feet, propped up on their armrest.
"Too alluring for you?"
Astrid mimed retching. He laughed again, and swung his legs to the floor.
"Fine. Happy?"
"Marginally." Another thought occurred to Astrid, this one more serious, and she batted at him again, frowning. "Hey. Ruff really likes you. So don't be an asshole, okay? Let her down easy."
A strange, wondering expression slid over Eret's face. She didn't like the looks of that. "What makes you think I don't fancy her just as much?"
"Because I saw the way you looked at her a week ago."
He spread his arms, motioning to their living room. "Ah, but I'm here now, aren't I? And I'm sober."
"Yeah. And I don't know what the fuck you're up to, so just, don't be an asshole."
Eret sat back, assessing her with a smirk that she hated—she wanted to slap that smirk right off his stupid fat face, the jerk—she took a deep breath, caught her blood boiling and managed to quell it. No letting some basic jock get to her. She was better than that. Actually, she was better than most of the drama that had found her in these first few weeks of school. He said, damnable twinkle in his eye, "I think I'd just love to prove you wrong, Miss Astrid Hofferson."
Astrid had no answer for that but a scoff; she stormed off to her room, agitated beyond her best judgment.
The costume actually took a week and a half. Astrid teased him about this wholeheartedly, but when she disappeared into the boys' bathroom to change and didn't come out for twenty minutes, he thought he might have something to one-up her with.
"Astrid," called Fishlegs from where he and Hiccup were slumped against either side of the bathroom door. There was a note of fear in his voice. "Are you okay?"
A long pause. Then she said, a little more high pitched than usual, "Everything's fine."
"How's it fitting?" Hiccup asked. Another long pause.
"Great. It fits… great."
"Can we see it?"
He heard footsteps, and what sounded like a sigh, and the door clicked, then opened inch by inch. And Astrid emerged into the hall.
This was a terrible idea, was Hiccup's first thought. Fishlegs made a noise like someone had just punched him in the groin—metaphorically, maybe they had, and Hiccup began to chant to himself, Don't be gross don't be gross don't be gross.
Astrid held her chin high, but it shook slightly. The look of someone trying to appear more confident than she felt. "Do I look okay?"
"Okay," gasped Fishlegs.
"You look great," said Hiccup, honestly. He'd tried to go with the least revealing version of Black Cat's get-up, but that still mean a neckline that came down well between her breasts, and a shiny black skin suit. "How do you feel?"
"I feel like I did not anticipate what it would actually be like to wear something… like this," she joked, a little awkward.
"You don't have to wear it if you're uncomfortable, I can make you something else—"
"No." A muscle twitched in her jaw. "I look fine, right? Like, damn fine?"
Hiccup and Fishlegs exchanged a befuddled look; the latter seemed as though he might burst into tears.
There came heavy footsteps from the living room, and Snot entered the hall, until the sight of Astrid stopped him dead in his tracks.
"Fuuuuuuuuck," groaned Snot, eyes bugging out of his head. Astrid seemed to inflate at this reaction, her entire posture changed, she grew from a sheepish girl to a brilliant woman with the tilt of her shoulders.
"Hey, Snot," she cackled, and then flipped him off. Their roommate, flustered, retreated into the living room, and Astrid turned back to them with a grin. To Hiccup, this was objectively the hottest thing he had ever seen. Don't be gross, he reminded himself, but this feeling, it was more than gross—no, not more than gross, different than gross, a bigger better emotion—a delight. A delight in Astrid. Astrid was a fucking boss.
Fishlegs was making small blubbering noises and backing away from her, down the hall, but Hiccup stayed put, hands in his pockets.
"I think I look great in fur," she told him happily, smoothing the soft white material running along the neckline. "You did a fantastic job."
"Eh, it's just… No, you're right, I did, I did a great job." They shared a smile. Astrid cleared her throat. "So," he said, turning back to his room, "Wanna see the wig?"
"Yeah, let's do it."
They returned to Fishlegs's room, where he was sitting on his bed, eyeing Astrid like some kind of unruly wild animal who might strike at any moment.
She waved at him. "It's okay, Fish. Still me, just in a skin suit."
Fishlegs made a sound that might've been a word but came out a whimper. Astrid only snorted, and Hiccup pulled the white wig from his cosplay box. It would need to be sprayed later, but they could get the essence of the outfit now. He helped her wrap her long braid around her head and pull on the wig cap, then the wig itself.
Even Fishlegs was distracted enough from his distress to declare, gaping, "That's an amazing cosplay."
It was pretty incredible. Hiccup tried to hide his grin, but he was proud—people spent months on their cosplays, and he'd put this one together in a few days. Granted, there wasn't much to it, but they were definitely going to draw eyes on the convention floor. He had to get a business card or something.
Astrid, in a very un-Astrid moment, clapped her hands together and hopped in place. Then, in a slightly more characteristic move, she shoved him. "Now I want to see yours."
Hiccup glanced at his own costume, lying folded in the box. "I don't know, it would take me a couple minutes to go change—"
"Just change here." Astrid flopped down beside Fish on the bed. "I won't look."
Hiccup's whole body could have melted just then. "Uh, Astrid—" He tried to communicate it to her with the urgent expression on his face, but it was hard not to glance at Fishlegs, who might catch on at any second—
Casual contentment vanishing, Astrid's jaw dropped. "Oh." She'd gotten it: Fishlegs didn't know about his leg. It was sort of a weird thing to bring up with your roommates, and he'd been meaning to, he really had, but they had their own spaces and the topic… hadn't arisen. Judging from the look on Astrid's face, this was a pretty egregious discrepancy.
Fishlegs squinted at the both of them. "What… is—"
"Hey, Fish," said Hiccup quickly, "Could you hand Astrid her pass? It's sitting on the bed next to you."
Sufficiently distracted, Fishlegs did as he was told. "This was Tuff's pass," he informed Astrid, who allowed herself to be drawn from eyeing Hiccup, "But he decided he has better things to do that weekend."
"He's going to an Avril Lavigne concert," Hiccup elaborated.
"People still go to Avril Lavigne concerts?"
"Apparently he's a big fan."
She cradled the plastic card in her hands. "How much do I—"
"My treat," Hiccup said, resolute. For a moment, he thought Astrid might argue, but she closed her mouth and nodded.
"Thank you. Thanks for letting me come along, and for the costume." She stroked the chunks of white hair running down her shoulders, smile curling the ends of her mouth. "Can I keep it?"
"I mean, it doesn't fit me."
Doing a bit, Astrid looked back and forth between the outfit clinging to her body and Hiccup. "Hm," she said, in mock thoughtfulness, "Maybe not the best look for you, you're right."
Fishlegs snorted gently. "That's weird." His voice surprised Hiccup a little—sometimes when he and Astrid got to talking, it was as thought Fishlegs wasn't even in the room. Which was sort of shitty of him, he supposed.
"I'm going to be Black Cat for Halloween for the next four years, I think," announced Astrid.
"I'm not sure NYU would know what to do with itself if you did that."
Fishlegs piped up, "I still want to see your Spider-Man, Hiccup, just go change."
So he did. He'd designed the boots to come up to just the right height, ensuring the upper lip of the left one disguised the fastenings of his prosthetic. Not a lot of one-legged superheroes. He'd considered padding the arms, but for the first time in his life he thought he might have filled out enough to avoid it—so he was maybe a little bonier than your average Spider-Man, but passable. Particularly when he'd gone all-out on the materials—this was not the flimsy fabric of Party City jumpsuits or anything. The main textile was a sporty, tight-knit weave, with sheen like scales, and he'd piped on the gel webbing by hand.
"Holy Jesus," said Fishlegs, nearly sliding off his bed.
Astrid crossed her arms over her chest, but she was grinning. "Okay, now my costume looks bad."
Hiccup stood in the doorway, smiling down at himself. He felt like he'd stepped off the set of a movie. For the final touch, he pulled on the mask, and gave a bow. Astrid and Fishlegs broke into applause.
Astrid bounced to her feet and went to stand beside Hiccup, slinging an arm around his shoulder. These costumes weren't like normal clothes, they were thinner, and formfitting, and he could feel how toned and lithe her arm was against him.
"Look at us," she was saying, "Spider-Man and Black Cat!" Somehow, his own arm fell naturally around her waist.
And he thought it again: this was a terrible idea.
