And as Hiccup awkwardly tried to move back, Astrid realized her hand had found his bad knee.
Astrid grabbed the back of his neck and kissed him anyway. After a moment she released him.
He still looked awkward. His eyes were focused on her lips even as his hands inched backwards.
"Do you think it will get any easier for you?" Astrid asked, taking her hand off of his knee.
"It's just sensitive. You said yourself that its healed."
Astrid brushed light fingers over the skin at the end of the stump. It was covered in fine gravel. Just like most of Hiccup and herself. It was still a little pale from the extremes of heat and cold it had been subjected to.
She tried to put her hand on top of it. He flinched again.
"I really don't like remembering it's there." Hiccup said, "Could you just... maybe... not?"
Astrid pulled her hand back. "You do know there's nothing about it that is going to put me off."
"... what do you think of when you touch it?"
There was a loaded question. Astrid had thought about many things as she had noticed the stump over the years. Not all of the things she thought of were exactly... good.
"Astrid. Please be honest."
"Fine. What did I see, or what do I see?"
"Both. Either. Something." Hiccup said, "But be honest."
"Honesty might take a while."
"I need to hear it anyway."
"Well. I used to see death."
Hiccup pulled away, Astrid used his stump to pull him back.
"You were out for three weeks after the battle." Astrid told him, looking away. "And I visited you a lot. And you were so still. You never moved. You were just as limp and lifeless as you had been when your father pulled you out of Toothless' embrace. The healer didn't know if your mind was still in shock or had gone to sleep. And even when I talked to you, you didn't respond."
Sighing, she ran a hand over the back of her neck before she continued.
"When things looked really bad I tried to tell myself it would be OK if you died. That you had finally become the person you'd always wanted to be, and that this way the village would always remember you as a hero. But it wasn't true. I could never make myself believe it. It only made me feel worse. So every time I visited you I tried to focus on your face and tell myself that you looked OK. That you'd be OK. But I'd see your leg eventually. I every time I did, I was scared you might die.
"And then, after that, I used to see pity."
Astrid stopped and looked up.
"Hiccup, do you want to start talking anywhere in here?"
"I'm good," he said. "Pity?"
"Not pity for you. You were back on your feet and walking around like nothing had happened. And we were feeling each other out. But each time I saw you walking away, I started pitying myself. If only you had been a nit to the right or left, you would have come out of it all unscathed. Why had the gods put that in my path? Why would they nudge you over one inch or the other and take away a complete sense of happiness?
"But after a few months passed, I started to become ashamed of myself. After you woke up... you weren't the same Hiccup. You were so confident. So precise. So solid in your thinking. It made me want to be around you. And the more I was around you the more I realized how many things about you I had overlooked. Chalked up to you just being weird. And the more I realized who you actually were, the more I fell for you. Like I said... I saw Hiccup the Useless when he was dragged back home by his father. And I may have admired and thought about Hiccup the Foolish who walked into the arena without any intention of attacking the dragon that was about to be sicced on him. But this Hiccup? This is the man I love. Without doubt or question. And he wouldn't exist if you had both of your legs."
Astrid placed both her hands on Hiccup's kneecaps. The twitch was less severe, but Hiccup was eyeing her, waiting for her to tell him something else.
"Then, since six months before you decided to go noble on me, whenever I saw your leg I see what I see today."
Astrid looked and Hiccup. He still seemed to be waiting for something.
She shrugged. "I told you being honest would take a while."
"But what do you see now?" Hiccup asked.
"I see us in bed..."
Hiccup swallowed.
"And it's morning. We're in our nightclothes and holding each other in our sleep. Sometimes Toothless is there, snoring just a little too loudly. We kiss when we wake up, no matter how bad our breath gets.
"Then as we realize the reasons we might actually need to get up, we start talking about what we need to do We start planning when we can spend some time together alone. Or, if our day is busy we start talking about how soon we will make it back home. There's some planning, scheming and complaining.
"But when we finally get up its always the same. You grab your leggings. I grab your leg. And after you have the leggings on, I help you attach your leg."
Breathing deeply, Astrid leaned forward and looked into Hiccup's eyes.
"I want to spend every morning for the rest of our lives reattaching your leg. I want to spend every evening taking it off and tending to it. I want you to feel comfortable with me touching you in places you don't like to think exist. And whenever you feel your stump shift inside your leg, I want you to remember I was the last person who touched it. I want this, not because still I pity you. Not because I think you need looking after. I want to do this so every time you take a step you think of me. Because everywhere I go, I do the same."
Hiccup looked at her, speechless.
She didn't think he even breathed for one moment, just sat there, sitting naked on the dirt floor of the cave, staring. He looked like he had just been blasted apart.
She held his gaze. "And I will not avoid any part of you."
He finally looked down. His bad leg had ended up on top of her crossed legs. It had automatically curled up, like a newly born infant trying to protect itself. He slowly ran a hand over his stump, one of the first times she had seen him touch it without a clinical hand.
He didn't want to touch it now, but he still treated it carefully. He touched himself gently, as if heavy handing of the skin would reopen the long-since healed line of scars across the base of it. He had said it was sensitive. But how much of the sensitivity was his desire not to touch it like he was doing now?
He stretched it out between them, then, with a slightly shaking hand, he took her hand by the wrist and placed it on his knee.
It couldn't be treated as a prop now. Or as an excuse. This wasn't a dare to scare her off. This wasn't a time to make a pass. It was in spirit what it was in flesh - a part of him stripped bare just for her.
She tried to move her hand against his skin but his hand hadn't stopped gripping her wrist. It hadn't stopped shaking either.
She waited patiently for him to let her wrist go.
And in time, he did.
He placed his hand over hers, though. Not putting any pressure on it, just resting on top of it as she touched his skin. In return, she touched him gently, carefully. She did not wander into more enticing areas. She just let her hand drift very gently and very slowly down to the end of the stump.
The skin there got a strange texture when it started to get goose-pimply. She couldn't help remembering the rest of Hiccup's skin reacting to the cold. His knee hesitated when she bent it back and forth. Was it his nerves, or was there something wrong with it?
Nerves most likely. The more she did it with careful rocking pressure the looser it became. He might have serious problems if he didn't tend to himself though. If he didn't know when to step back and call his Viking Stubbornness what it was.
The bulb of his knee fit perfectly in the palm of her hand. She reached behind it and gently picked the knee up with her hand behind the calf. Tens of thousands of mornings and evenings, looking at it from this view. Touching him before he left, or welcoming him to their rooms.
For the first time in so long it felt like a real possibility.
Still supporting it with one hand she took one hand and ran it, ever gentle, over the dome of the stump. His hand, which had ended up rest on his knee, slowly pushed forward, lacing his fingers in with hers.
Scooting up so she could lower his stump onto her lap Astrid squeeze the fingers interlocked in hers. When she set the stump down, she felt a butterfly kiss ghost over her cheek. She turned to see Hiccup pulling away, lips twitching at a smile, still scared but understanding. She smiled back.
Rubbing their joined hands over his kneecap, they ended up bumping noses. It transitioned into nuzzling against each other's cheek quickly. His free hand found the back of her head and pulled them even tighter together.
Then he pulled his other hand free so that he could hold her tightly.
A few moments later they realize how awkward things had gotten.
"Umm." Hiccup muttered, his mouth still pressed against her hair.
Astrid shifted a bit, trying to give them some room to move away and get closer. But with their legs locked together, they only ended up more tangled up.
"This isn't exactly..." she mumbled.
"Maybe if we just...?"
"Mmmph."
Astrid tried to shimmy a leg free. But in doing so she knocked the both of them over on their side. Fighting their way free of each other for a moment, the two stayed lying on their sides and held each other close. Hiccup's short leg began to rub a little circular path against Astrid's hip.
"Were we talking about something?" Hiccup asked as Astrid reached down to stroke the stump.
"When?"
"Before we had to talk about my... " he considered his word choice. "leg."
Astrid kissed him, purely on general principle. [22]
"We had just wrapped up."
"It sounded like you had a lot of questions before." Hiccup pointed out, "Just the way you said it."
"Must have forgotten about them during, then."
"Oh. All right."
Astrid snuggled into Hiccup's chest. No, huddled. Huddled you could at least do for warmth. A Viking did not snuggle. At least not when there was an excuse to be had for snuggling. No, this was merely affectionate huddling.
"Astrid?"
"Hmm?"
"What... er... what if I've got some questions?"
NEXT SATURDAY: Hiccup learns that moments of intense social awkwardness can strike at any time.
[22] I just wanted to mention that what Astrid and Hiccup are doing for each other is what modern-day therapists and psychologist recommend for other amputees. Well, OK, maybe not the part about trapping the amputee in the bottom of a pit and riding them like a race horse...
On top of the new self-esteem issues they now face, amputees also have to face the fact that people who want to be with them might be 'devotees' or people who have a fetish for partners with amputations. (And depending on the level of 'devotion', dating a devotee may come with an overwhelming 'Ick' factor. See Profile Notes.)
The healthiest relationships amputees can find themselves in are with people who know and accept who they really are, and accept that the amputation is a natural part of the package.