Buckle your seatbelts. Shenanigans ahead.
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Miss Hofferson,
First off, we are sorry to hear about your knee injury. We are also sorry to report that we've found someone else for the advertising campaign that was posed to you in Buenos Aires.
However, despite your current slowed condition, we believe that we might have a proposition geared towards your talents. We have an advertising representative currently in Boulder, and he has expressed interest in speaking with you sometime next week. He has been copied on this e-mail and is eagerly awaiting a response.
Good luck,
Charles Smith – Level 2 Advertising Representative
Astrid stares at the e-mail, brief but definitive, and grins, reaching down and scratching Spike's ears. The pit smiles at the attention, panting and licking her owner's calf below the restricting brace.
She turns back to her computer and types a quick reply to the preferred e-mail address, reading it twice for errors and hitting send. This might still happen?
Yes, it might still happen. Miraculously, against all odds.
"Hiccup!" She calls, lurching to her feet at his silence and half skipping down the hallway to his bedroom, where he's been hiding with his homework all night. She knocks on the door, waiting momentarily for a response before opening the door and peeking in, barely polite enough not to barge in entirely.
Toothless raises his head from his post curled near the foot of the bed and smiles, thumping a wiry haired tail against the sheets and turning slightly to expose his chest for attention. Hiccup is asleep, face pressed into a massive and miserable looking textbook as he snores into the pages, hair charged with static and sticking stubbornly vertical. Astrid softens, slipping inside and offering Toothless the open door with a quirked brow.
The wolf thinks on it for a second and accepts the offer, climbing off of the bed with a long, slow stretch, and pausing to give her knee a caring lick on the way out into the hallway where Spike greets him with a wag and a smile. Closing the door behind her, Astrid flicks the overhead light off and crosses the room quietly and aggravatingly slowly, carefully tugging Hiccup's impromptu literary pillow from under his face and tucking his homework into it as a bookmark. He grumbles and curls up further on his side, metal foot dragging across the sheets with a rasp that almost sounds like ripping and Astrid sighs, stepping forward and pushing the hem of his pants up far enough to get at the straps of his prosthetic, releasing it with practiced fingers and setting it on the ground next to that bulging textbook.
She perches on the edge of the bed, hand hovering over the sliver of exposed skin between his sleep-twisted tee-shirt and the leather line of his belt, contemplating waking him up. If he fell asleep like this, he obviously needs it, and she wonders just how much sleep her neediness has cost him over the past few weeks. She knows from years of his grueling college experience that three am is his good friend and near daily companion, and that's when he doesn't have someone else to take care of.
Also, if yesterday's activities…she blushes at the memory of his absolutely gob-smacked face as he cataloged every change in each inch of her skin with carefully firm hands…
She definitely didn't help him get any sleep last night.
And now she's thinking about moving forward.
If his reaction to her riding the exercise bike was any indication of his opinion towards her running more…she's worried about this deal coming so soon after her injury. He was the one to suggest it, but she's sure that he meant something more along the lines of using the already recorded footage with the contract that she'd already been offered. That's what she thought too, but if this is requiring a meeting and a none too subtle acknowledgement of her injury, then this is probably more extensive and work intensive.
She's realizing that she's probably going to have to run. And she's probably going to have to start learning how to again sooner rather than later.
Hiccup is going to hate that. So far, he's dragged her through all of these lazy slumps with just enough gentle pressure, just enough spur in her sides to get her over and through one at a time. She thinks about all those little hurdles in her future. Walking longer distances without the crutch. Getting rid of this horrible, leaning new limp.
Jogging. Running. Jumping.
She's not going to take them one at a time anymore, is she? It's going to be all at once, simultaneous and absolute. She's got to show up to that meeting next week without a limp, without a crutch.
She's got to look like a true prospect, and not a charity case.
Hiccup lets loose a chainsaw snore, drooling against the comforter and rolling onto his back, eyebrows furrowed even in dream land and Astrid sets a gentle palm on his thigh, thumb stroking over his pulse point as she bites her lip. This has been harder on him than she'd imagined. Too many late nights in his already rough schedule, too much carrying her around and tending to her while she's needed more than she should have ever had to ask for.
She's walking now, even if it's not particularly well, or particularly quickly. As much as she loves seeing him every day, it's obviously more effort than he has for her right now. It's been changing since Sophomore year, since she was done with science and consumed with interesting classes while his curriculum got more banal and further from what he wanted to do. Somehow, no matter how much she ran or wrote or tried, he was always sleeping less and stretched thinner, dozing off against her shoulder when she came home for the weekend and sleeping past noon every chance he got.
He loves what he's doing, nothing gets him more excited than a long productive day at his internship, where something started working like it should. But she hates seeing him so…done, so tired. He never seems to catch a break, what with the tests every other week and Spike and Toothless and the never ending homework and…and she's been making it worse for almost three weeks now.
She leans down and kisses his forehead, her hair tickling along his jaw and waking him. He smiles in the diffuse light filtering through the blinds, sleepy hand finding the small of her back, solid and impossibly warm against her.
"You fell asleep doing homework," she tells him quietly, lips ghosting over his cheek, impossibly fond and seeping silent apology. "Go back to sleep."
"Shit," he groans, pushing up onto his elbows and wiping his eyes, blinking and trying to deposit sharp lines to the blurry space around him. "I had to get that done."
"It's only five thirty," she tells him, nudging his shoulder with a practice gentled hand. "Finish your nap, I'll wake you up in a few hours."
"You don't have to do that," he insists, low voice slightly slurred as he lays back down, shifting to get comfortable and wrapping long fingers around her waist.
"It's not a massive favor," she laughs, stroking a thumb over the wrinkled and twisted sleeve of his shirt. "Just take a couple of hours to sleep." She can see deep shadowed pits under his eyes that have somehow flown under the radar until this second and frowns, "you look like you need it."
"Thanks," he snarks, eyes falling fully shut. His fingers stroke against her side through her shirt, warm and lulling. "At least stay. We'll set an alarm."
And it's so tempting. So many long nights, cold and half asleep in her own too big bed, resenting all of those awkwardly placed pillows keeping her knee up and her sleeping solo. She wants nothing more in the moment than to curl up next to him, bad leg elevated across his hips, head on his shoulder. It's always been shockingly comfortable, no matter how bony he was, and his hand is so sweetly warm, his chest must be a concentration of that saccharine balminess.
"Ok…" she gives in, biting her lip and standing cautiously, grabbing her phone out of her gym shorts pocket and kissing his forehead again. "I've just got to make a call, but I'll be right back."
"Who are you calling?" He pouts, fingers clenching in the fabric at the side of her shirt and attempting to drag her back down.
"Ruff," she rolls her eyes and reaches down, prying his hand away from her and backing away from the bed. "Just a couple minutes." He nods grudgingly and she slips out into the hallway, shutting the door behind her and dialing Ruff's number. Her friend picks up on the second ring with a gruff greeting and Astrid exhales before speaking. "Hey, so I need to come back."
"Yeah?" Ruff asks, and Astrid can hear her wolfish smile through the phone. "Got bored of sexy gimp?"
"No…Nike wants to meet with me next week."
"No shit?" Ruff pounds on something excitedly on the other end of the line. "That's fantastic. How soon can you be up and running again?"
"As soon as possible," Astrid nods grimly at the wall, thinking of her future and Hiccup and Spike, and everything that needs her to run. "I'm already on a stationary bike…so just give me a couple of weeks."
"Will Nike give you a couple of weeks?" Ruff voices Astrid's inner concerns, callus and almost bored with the monumental prospect. She's right, Astrid needs to be running whenever Nike tells her to be running.
This is possible, and all that's between her and familiar solidity is one impressive meeting with some executive, and lots of hard work. If she's good at anything, it's working impressively hard.
She can do this.
"I'll learn when I meet with them. But I need to get going again."
"Good," Ruff is smiling now, genuine and clear, free of all that destructive glee. "It's good to hear you talking like this."
"Can you pick me up on Sunday?" She asks, potential welling above that horrible fact that she's going to miss being home. "I'm going to need the training center."
"Sunday? If you feed me dinner, I'll pick you up anytime," Ruff laughs, and for the first time in weeks, all this potential feels absolutely real.
"I'll have pizza here at six. I can't guarantee I'll save you any though…"
"Right-o fatty, it must be even harder to get a bite in edgewise now."
"Not for long," Astrid grins, brushing off the friendly insult. "So Sunday at six?"
"See you then," Ruff pauses for a second. "And I'm really happy for you."
"Thanks," they say bye one more time before hanging up. Astrid pauses in the hallway and sets an alarm for eight o'clock before sneaking back into Hiccup's bedroom, leaving the door cracked open for any interested dogs and crossing the room in three slow but purposefully even steps.
When she manages a comfortable position beside him, and his snoring disrupts long enough to kiss the top of her hair, it feels like everything might actually be ok for the first concrete instance in weeks.
00000
The funny thing is, Astrid thought she'd be deeply excited to share her news with Hiccup as soon as he woke up, but something snatched her tongue. It's Friday, and while she'd say that her imminent departure isn't exactly a secret, Hiccup isn't exactly up to date on the situation either. For some incomprehensible reason, the thought of telling him that she's going back to Boulder with intent to train on Sunday awakens something festering and obnoxious in her gut.
He won't like the idea, and she doesn't want to think that he has reason.
It's mid-afternoon on Friday, and Astrid has finally convinced Hiccup to take an afternoon off from nurse duty to visit the shelter that he's obviously starting to miss. She's curled on the couch watching Iron Chef, pretending to edit her latest essay that doesn't seem to get any better with each additional pass when the knock on the front door sends the dogs into a barking tizzy. After sighing and heaving herself off of the couch with an almost embarrassing grunt, Astrid limps through the house and peers through the peephole.
Robert Thuggory is making an immensely stupid face at Spike through the front door's side panel.
Astrid looks down, trying to decide if it's immensely obvious that her sports bra is dangerously tight and creating cleavage she'd only stupidly dreamt of before. It's not obvious through her shirt and she opens the door, stepping to the side to let Toothless and an especially eager Spike rush the young man and say hello with flapping tongues and frantically wagging tails.
Spike jumps up enthusiastically, planting her paws on Thuggory's stomach and wagging so hard it could be confused for a seizure. It's hard to feel anything bad towards someone that makes Spike this happy just by showing up.
"Hey Thugs," Astrid greets, patting her good leg to summon the dogs back inside. "Hiccup isn't here right now, he's volunteering at the animal shelter."
"Oh, he's still liking that, is he?"
"I think he's starting to like the cats a little too much," she shakes her head, "and if he comes home with one of those hairballs, I'm letting Spike eat it." Thuggory laughs at that, bending down to pet the pit's smiling head.
"I'm not a cat person myself," he assures and Astrid agrees with an animated grimace.
"Does Hiccup know you were dropping by?"
"Yeah, we've got some homework to get done tonight," he shakes his head mournfully and Astrid can't help but grin at his affinity for theatrics . "Don't tell him that I said this, but he's a genius."
"Your secret is safe," she takes a careful step away from the middle of the doorway, welcoming him inside with a casual wave. "He should be home anytime." It's impossible not to be wildly self-conscious as she limps away from the door, but it's surprisingly easy to fake pride with rigid shoulders and a stiff upper lip.
"You're moving a little slower than the last time I saw you," he comments, perpetually genial, and Astrid scowls at the wall in front of them, wishing that he'd walk at a normal speed and not worry about politely trailing her.
"So observant," she compliments with sarcastically raised eyebrows.
"Yeah, and you've been spending too much time with Henry."
"Oh, how could you tell?" She snips, gesturing to her brace, "our matching hardware?" Thuggory shakes his head at that too familiar tone.
"As if one Henry weren't enough for the state."
"Is it really that bad?" Astrid asks with a grin, happy to flop back onto the couch and rest her bad heel on the coffee table.
"Yeah, you might want to get out more," he suggests with a wary nod and Astrid laughs. Thuggory is Hiccup's consummate school friend, the homework compatriot and project partner, but the two boys seem to have gotten closer than that over the past few years. Astrid is just glad that she's always been able to talk to Thuggory, rather than struggling through conversation with some over-her-head nerdy type that Hiccup could have just as easily brought home .
Not to mention that the droves of Scott Nout-esque charm that makes the conversation sailing familiar waters.
"I've got a few more weeks with this thing sixteen to eighteen hours a day," she pats her encased knee, a frown slipping under her jovial tone. "Getting out isn't exactly part of the program."
Not to mention that she's saving her energy to strut into that Nike meeting, feigning perfection before the real work begins.
"Then what?" Thuggory asks, and it's very clearly one of those jock questions, revolving in a jock circle where it's ok to bring up ice baths and tape like normal people talk about the weather. She glances down at his Mines Rugby shirt and frowns.
"I hope I'm jogging," she nods resolutely, crossing out the fickle hope in her mind and wondering when she'll be able to say it with certainty to anyone but the ever-supportive Ruff. "And then…I'll see where my prospects lie."
Would it feel better to tell Thuggory about Nike? Would the secret cease to be a dramatic weight on her chest, forcing her to hold her breath when all she wants to do is taste the refreshing possibility?
Probably not. She'd most likely just feel horrible for telling someone else before Hiccup.
"My sister blew her knee in a soccer game in her second high school season," Thuggory contributes with a sympathetic nod, and Astrid resists the urge to turn up the volume on the TV and drown him out.
"Is she ok?" Did she have any sort of career after that? Did she want one? Was she walking in a week, or did it take her two?
"She was back on the team Junior and Senior year," he shrugs. "But I don't think she wanted to play in college anyway."
It's a falsely happy ending, and Astrid smiles in convoluted thanks anyway. She wanted to hear some insipid sports movie summary where the down and out underdog came back against all odds and led a ragged group of dreamers to gold.
Or that she healed to be as strong as she was before.
It's amazing how little constitutes a fairy tale these days.
"It was my last season anyway," she reminds herself, making a mental note to tell Hiccup tonight, so that all of this can cease to be some looming secret. Something bad she's decided and just hasn't followed through with yet.
"Plus, pretty girl like you, it's not like you're going to have problems getting a job." Astrid arches an eyebrow at the sideways compliment, feeling anything but pretty with her old tee-shirt and immensely sloppy braid.
"Me being pretty," she spits the word, "has nothing to do with it. I'm graduating Magna cum Laude."
"But I mean, looking like you do isn't going to make things more difficult for you," he grins, that Thuggory default. Astrid rolls her eyes and turns up the television volume.
"You forget, Thugs, I'm not going to be grading anything of yours anytime soon, so you can lay off the charm."
"I'm just pointing out that your face perfectly exemplifies the Golden ratio—"
"Oh good, nerdy flirting, let me try," she grins and leans towards him. "Your face perfectly exemplifies a giant douchebag."
"Oh, I see how it is," he sits back with an almost competitive grin in the easy chair, and it sparks that too long abandoned craving for rivalry within Astrid. "Your eyes are opalescent," he comments in a smooth tone so impossibly far from the nasal that actually works.
"Your eyes are a plain shade of brown."
"The ladies call it sullen ochre," he prattles indignantly.
"The ladies sound like idiots."
"Well they aren't half as smart as you are," he compliments and she mimes a slow clap before falling stony and shaking her head.
"Nothing."
"Nothing?" He asks, aghast at his one true talent being cheated the respect that it deserves. "I'd like to get to know you better," he tries with a soft but empty smile.
She likes gapped teeth and lofty promises and the occasional stammer.
"You do know me," Astrid rolls her eyes and turns back to the TV. "And you're distracting me from Iron Chef."
"So you admit that you're drawn to me," he calls her out, some strange mix of casa nova and Hiccup's friend who she has personally seen down an entire family-sized bag of Cheetos in one sitting.
"I do keep glancing over," she lets her voice drop and Thuggory grins at his anticipated victory, "to see if you're still a bonehead."
"You aren't charmed at all, are you?" He asks incredulously. "I'm stepping out my best material here, and you are unaffected."
"Your best material just isn't every good," Astrid laughs.
"Hotter girls have fallen for that!" He insists, before his tone levels again. "But none of them had the inner beauty that I see in you."
"Oh God, where'd you find that one?" She downright guffaws, gasping solidly for lost breath.
"You're a freak!" He claims too loudly and Spike jumps halfway into his lap in attempted comfort.
"Only for Hiccup," she reminds him with a cheeky grin.
"How did he get you anyway?" Thuggory shakes his head. "Do you just go for that whole 'I only have one leg and understand spring constants' thing?" He gestures wildly and puts on a nasal accent.
"Is that supposed to sound like Hiccup? Because it's way more like—"
"Er…what's going on?" Hiccup asks from the doorway, frowning and holding his backpack against his shoulder with a single strap.
"Your girlfriend is a freak of nature, man!" Thuggory excitedly jumps to his feet, an anxious Spike dancing around his heels. "She doesn't find me charming at all."
"Why were you trying to charm my girlfriend?" Hiccup asks, obviously more baffled than annoyed, and Thuggory shrugs, stepping closer to his friend and whispering too loudly.
"She seemed kind of down, and I doubted anyone else was fulfilling that—"
"Are you insinuating that Hiccup isn't fulfilling?" Astrid lurches to one steady foot, hopping towards the boys in the most intimidating way possible.
It's not incredibly intimidating.
"I'm just saying that being doctored probably doesn't soothe that feminine side."
"Women love doctors! We want to do doctors!" She retorts, fired up and alarmingly geared to win. "And you just aren't charming. That's why I'm not charmed."
"But Henry is charming?" Thuggory gestures to his friend and Hiccup rolls his eyes.
"And the gesturing…"
"Hiccup is crazily charming. Insanely charming." Astrid insists, hopping closer and jabbing a finger into Thuggory's chest. "I'll bet he can charm way more girls than you can," she proposes, offering her hand. Thuggory grabs it and shakes, gripping entirely too hard. Astrid returns the excessive pressure with far too much glee and he squeaks.
"You're so on," he taunts, rubbing his palms together menacingly.
"Does anyone care that I really don't want to do this?" Hiccup asks, receiving no verbal answer as Astrid snatches his hand and starts dragging him towards the garage with slow but surprisingly forceful steps, glaring at Thuggory the entire way. "Guess not…Thuggory, we have to…and you don't care either. Great."
Twenty minutes later, they're in the parking lot of the downtown Golden bar that Thuggory frequents. Astrid sits in the passenger seat while Hiccup drives, palm on his knee and spouting advice.
"Buy her a drink, but don't be forceful, just offer…tell her you like her shoes, it means you aren't staring down her shirt. We're going for nice guy here, ok?" Astrid asks to make sure that he's still listening to her diatribe.
Thuggory is impatiently kicking the back of her seat like a six year old who knows just how badly he's about to lose.
"I am a nice guy."
"That's why this plan is genius," she pats his leg bracingly. "You've got this," and she yanks him in by the back of his neck, planting an anything but gentle kiss on his lips before pulling back and looking him dead in the eye. "For luck."
"You're going to regret this Astrid…" Thuggory taunts and Astrid sticks her tongue out at him like the adult that she is.
As soon as they disappear into the bar, and her heart clenches fitfully at the mental image of Hiccup in the bar swarmed by a throng of beautiful women, she realizes what a horrible idea this is.
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"Just how much will I regret it if I stand by the door and avoid eye contact with everyone until I can leave?" HIccup asks his friend, already uncomfortable in the noisy, crowded building.
"You'll never hear the end of it from me, and neither will Astrid." Everything about Thuggory's mischievous face is overwhelmingly honest.
"And then I'll never hear the end of it from Astrid either," Hiccup nods curtly, annoyance welling under his trepidation as he reluctantly pulls his hands out of his pockets, thumbing the folded twenty that Astrid slipped him in the car.
His girlfriend is giving him money to flirt with girls, and he's never felt more like he's walking into some elaborately orchestrated trap.
"Good luck," Thuggory flashes Hiccup his winningest grin and saunters off towards the bar.
Hiccup makes a mental note to get some friends without competitive sides so large they're gravitationally significant.
He approaches the bar, half tempted to order a very strong drink for himself and call it a night, but he doubts Thuggory is staying sober and it's not exactly like he can trust Astrid to drive them home without her brace getting stuck on the steering wheel and sending them careening into a ditch.
He's never picked up a girl before, there was no need to keep searching once there was Astrid, and it's not like his searching ever got off of the ground in the first place. And he doubts anyone in here will be miraculously charmed by Star Trek like he somehow managed unintentionally with Heather. This is truly useless, isn't it?
Astrid should be happy to have a boyfriend with absolutely no game.
A woman in her mid-twenties sidles up to the bar beside him and he scoots over to leave more room. She smiles in thanks before staring searchingly towards the end of the bar, looking for the bartender. Hiccup follows her gaze, again fiddling with his handful of Astrid's dirty pride money before leaning forward against the din and trying to get the woman's attention.
"Er, can I buy you a drink?" He asks and she glances at him with half-speed double take.
"Did you say something?" She almost shouts and Hiccup clears his throat to try again.
"Can I buy you a drink?" He repeats more loudly and her eyes flit down briefly before she smiles wider.
"Sure, I'm Bridget," she offers, twirling a long sandy brown curl around her finger.
"I'm Henry-Oh!" He calls to the passing bartender and the man looks at him expectantly. "Whatever the lady wants," he gestures to Bridget, who's blushing at being called a lady so casually.
"Hmm...I'll have a Sex on the Beach," she orders with a flushed grin and Hiccup swallows that stubborn stutter that won't stop asking him what the hell he's doing. He shakes his head and hands the bartender the money with an overwhelmingly awkward smile. "You aren't going to get anything?" Bridget asks after the bartender has disappeared and Hiccup shrugs.
"Designated driver." The conversation lulls and Bridget shifts nervously back onto her heels, alternating between staring at him and looking aimlessly around the room. "I like your shoes," he quotes Astrid's advice verbatim, and Bridget's eyes light up.
He's pretty sure that he's not getting out of this without Astrid wanting to kill him.
"Thank you! They're new," she twists a foot slightly and shows him the side. He's again at an absolute loss for words. He glances around, looking for anything of interest and wondering what he'll do if he spies something before the returning bartender catches his eye.
"Hey, it's your drink," he grins a little too much at the distraction, accepting his change and handing the tall, fruity drink to the woman.
They stare at each other and Hiccup finds himself wishing that he were out in the car. At least Astrid is there and the music isn't attempting to drill into his brain.
"Thank you...Henry, is it?" She double checks that she has the right name and he nods. "I'm…" A look over her shoulder. She bites her lip and frowns, once again looking a little too hard at Hiccup. "I'm actually here with a bachelorette party, so I have to go…" she smiles a little too openly and Hiccup is reassured that Astrid could not have possibly guessed what she was asking-no telling-him to do. "But hey, why don't you come sit with us?"
She doesn't wait for an answer, grabbing his wrist and starting to lead him away from the bar. He shakes his head furiously, because Astrid said absolutely nothing about dens of depravity or bachelorette parties.
"No, I really couldn't intrude-"
"It's not an intrusion!" She insists, waving to a group of women in a booth now visible through the fringes of the crowd.. One gives a thumbs up back and Bridget turns to look back at Hiccup almost pleadingly.
He doesn't remember the last time he was this uncomfortable.
"I really couldn't."
"Oh! The bride wants to meet you," Bridget smiles and waves enthusiastically to an obviously drunk woman wearing a small pink dress and a plastic tiara. "You can't say no to that!"
"Er...I can't?"
"No! Come on!" And he somehow ends up seated between Bridget, who for some reason gets the wonderfully lonely end seat of the round booth, and a girl drinking something neon colored and sweet smelling that she proudly claims is called a Screaming Orgasm. Hiccup wishes Astrid were here to beat whatever bartender named these things within an inch of their lives.
He wishes Astrid were here to glare at all the women staring at him, to kiss him fiercely and hold his hand like he's worth keeping.
She's not here though. She sent him in here without her.
"So your name is Henry?" A woman asks from across the table, and Hiccup tries his absolute best not to let his eyes dive into that absolutely astounding feast of cleavage. "That's a hot name."
"Umm…" he swallows a stutter. "Ok."
"It's like king Henry in the Tudors!" The bride realizes with a delighted squeal that makes the hairs on the back of Hiccup's neck stand on end. "The hot one with all the wives."
All the wives that he had killed.
That hot one.
"You're going to be a wife!" One of the women crows, lifting her glass above her head and drunkenly sloshing overpriced alcohol onto the floor.
"I'm getting married tomorrow!" The bride yells, standing up and chugging the rest of her very pink and very strong drink back like it's water. She turns to Hiccup and grins, intoxicated with her hair sticking out from her tiara at odd angles. "And I was getting disappointed because there weren't any super hot guys at this bar. But then Bridget brings one over just for me!" She raises her empty glass towards Bridget, who suddenly looks less than comfortable with that whole idea.
"Well, he did buy me a drink," she defends with a passive aggressive shrug.
"But it's my party."
Hiccup wonders just how much this grown woman had to make her act like a four year old, or if she's just always like this. She flips her hair cattily over her shoulder and Hiccup guesses the latter with confidence.
"But Ally-" Bridget starts, only to be cut off by the bride continuing, full of reeking bravado.
"Who here thinks that I should give Henry a little fun to celebrate still being single?" Ally crows and Hiccup takes a moment to pity whatever poor man is marrying this woman before the fear sets in.
"I don't want any fun, I hate fun," he interjects, but no one besides an obviously fretting Bridget seems to hear him.
"Come on Bridget, trade seats with him," Ally looms over her friend from the end of the booth.
"He doesn't want to-"
"You know, your sister was just telling me yesterday how much she wanted to be a bridesmaid."
"Alright," Bridget scowls, looking hopefully at Hiccup before half standing and sliding over his lap, entirely too close. He blushes and flees to the edge of the seat, pointedly avoiding eye contact with the less than sane bride to be.
"Come on Henry," she urges him, starting to shake her hips far too seductively considering she's not marrying him.
"I'm really good-"
"Henry!" The welcomed cry flies over Hiccup's shoulder and he whirls to see Thuggory standing with his arms crossed, a picture perfect sore loser.
Hiccup has never been so happy to see his friend before in his life.
"Excuse me, this is a private party," the cleavage on the other side of the table says snootily.
"Henry, how could you do this?" Thuggory continues, apparently ignoring the obvious dismissal.
"I'm just doing what Astrid told me to," Hiccup defends, confused by his friend's hurt tone. "Admittedly, it got a little out of control." He leans away from the downright aggressive woman in front of him, shooting Thuggory a distressed look.
"Astrid doesn't know us, Henry," Thuggory scowls, and Hiccup really didn't realize how seriously his friend was taking this bet. "How could you do this to me?" He rests a hand over his chest, ever theatrical. "How could you do this to us?"
"Er...what?" Hiccup blanks.
"I'll be in the car if you decide this relationship is worth saving."
"Thuggory!" Hiccup calls out as his friend bizarrely turns to abandon him. All the women at the table are staring at him like he sprouted a second head.
"He did...he did say that he liked my shoes," Bridget mutters, looking shocked and more than a little disappointed.
"Have you ever even been with a woman?" Cleavage asks, leaning forward and twirling her hair around her finger.
"It was nice to meet you," Hiccup stands, carefully sliding against the side of the booth so as not to touch the still looming almost bride. "But I've umm...I've got to go," he turns to exit with what's left of his pride but Bridget grabs his hands and digs in her purse, producing a pen.
"Call me if you ever switch teams," she scrawls her phone number on his hand and embarrassingly encircles it in a heart.
"Ok…" he stands awkwardly still until she lets go of his hand, then he's out the door into the refreshingly cool and silent night air.
Astrid and Thuggory are in the car, heads hunched close to each other, talking urgently. They shake hands earnestly and when Astrid turns and sees him, her eyes light up like it's been months. As soon as he's in the car, she kisses him, shoving her tongue eagerly into his mouthing and holding tight to the back of his neck like he's trying to escape.
Because Thuggory is in the car, and he is still working out how he feels about this whole situation, he tries to pull away, but she slides her spare hand down the back of his jeans and gropes, moaning against his tongue. And he remembers just how tight her bra is under her thin shirt, clamping down on all that still new fullness. His hand finds her waist and he kisses her back, nearly dragging her across the center console towards him.
"I would like to get to that homework at some point," Thuggory announces from the backseat, embarrassed face clashing with Astrid's somehow relieved grin. She and Thuggory share a subtle look that he doesn't understand before Astrid readjusts her seat and buckles her seatbelt. Hiccup shifts the car into drive and her eyes widen, staring at his fingers like they're strangling her.
"What's on your hand?"
"A phone number," Hiccup tells her flatly, remembering why he's annoyed, no matter how nice it is to be greeted by earnest, excited lips.
"Whose phone number?" He looks at his hand and reads the bubbly letters, despite the fact that he remembers the name perfectly, branded in an aura of embarrassment on his brain.
"Bridget's."
"Come on, dude," Thuggory steps in, looking nervously at Astrid and leaning between the two over divide in the seats. "Homework. I have an eight o'clock tomorrow."
"I'm getting new friends," Hiccup chastises, rolling his eyes in Thuggory's general direction and pulling out of the parking lot.
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Yes. I love this chapter, so freaking much. I was cackling alone the whole time I was writing this, I want Thuggory and Ruff in my brain all of the time.
Please tell me what you thought of the hilarity, because I need to hear what you guys thought of Thuggory's awesome flirting attempts, and Hiccup's terrifying flirting attempts.
And Astrid's sad, lonely competitive streak. Oh, and of course all of those plot thingies with Nike and what not. I'd love to hear about those too.
Next chapter will be out on Friday, as I am switching to every other day updates to speed this thing up and get it out before June!
