Day Eight: Suddenly, Kittens
Wassup sorry it's late I'm drunk, I wrote this drunk, it's been a fucking long day, and I've been listening to the HTTYD soundtrack for like two hours it's a bop. I'm sorry for mistakes, my girlfriend read over it to make sure it wasn't a total fuckshow, so yee here it is. AU where it's modern day and the dragons are cats and alsooooooooooooo idk but cat dragons. Cragons. Drats lol
Tomorrow's shit at the bottom, y'all are beautiful and talented and wonderful people and I love you and I hope you're safe and healthy and happy and trying your best and doing your best and being lovely bc you are and thank you for reading this absolute mess but also i feel like writing the twins while drunk is just the move.
"You guys sure you can handle this?" Hiccup asked, shouldering his backpack and looking between the twins with a furrow in his brow. "Cause I can call the shelter and book a last minute thing if I need to."
"We totally got this, dude," Tuff promised, draping an elbow on Hiccup's shoulder. He lifted his free hand and flattened it, dragging it across the air in a smooth line. "Nooooo problemo. Enjoy your honeymoon. Toothless and Stormy will be fine."
"Stormfly," Astrid corrected. "We haven't seen her for the last couple days, but she usually vanishes now and then. Her bowl keeps being emptied, so she's around. Just…be careful, okay?"
"Come on Astrid, when have we ever not been careful?" Ruff asked.
Astrid glanced at Hiccup, the same furrowed look coming over her face. "Maybe you should try Snotlout one more time."
"He's with his dad fishing all week," Hiccup reminded her. "And Fishlegs is helping run that scout camp."
"So maybe the scouts could come over and help him?" Astrid suggested weakly.
Ruff pushed her shoulder gently. "Hey, come on dudes, we're totally good with cats. Barf and Belch love us."
"Barf and Belch are strays," Astrid deadpanned.
Tuff raised a finger. "Strays who eat off our porch every night and occasionally bring us dead mice. Therefore, they like us. Therefore, we are good with cats. Don't worry your pretty little heads about anything."
He pressed his hand to Hiccup's shoulder and nudged him towards the door. "Onwards, my friends. A life in Nebraska awaits!"
"We're going to Alaska, Tuff," Astrid corrected.
"Really? Why would anyone go to Alaska? It's so cold and dark and snowy all the time."
"Why would anyone go to Nebraska?" Hiccup countered in mild exasperation.
"Hmm. Good point. Regardless, adieu! Auf Wiedersehen! Au revoir! Domo arigato!"
"That means thank you, Tuff."
Tuff bowed as Ruff finished pushing them out the front door. "You're very welcome. Have a lovely honeymoon."
Ruffnut all but slammed the door in their faces and dusted her hands off, twisting to face her brother. "What do you say we go find the little flea bags and let them know who the new people in charge are?"
One problem.
They couldn't find the flea bags.
Nearly three hours after Hiccup and Astrid had actually left the front stoop (instead of just standing out there trying to peek in through the windows and discussing alternate sitting options), Ruff and Tuff still hadn't seen hide nor tail of the cats. With Stormfly that wasn't a surprise – she was generally a sneaky cat, and could spend days in hiding without interacting with people. Toothless, however, was a very cuddly feline. Ruff knew first hand how much he'd purr if you scratched him under the chin.
And still, even after upending every single one of Hiccup's dresser drawers and opening all the cupboards in the house, Ruffnut and Tuffnut hadn't found either animal.
"They're fine, right though?" Tuffnut chuckled. It was a nervous laugh, one that was punctuated by his eyes darting around the room and his hands twisting together. "Like they're totally not dead."
"Oh no way," Astrid scoffed. "And if they are, totally not our faults right now."
They paused, glanced at the clock, and then at one another. "It's getting late," Tuff noted.
"We need to go home," Ruff said.
Tuff glanced at the kitchen. "So…we leave their food out, come back tomorrow, and hope for the best?"
"Works for me."
Kittens.
There were kittens.
All over the living room.
Toddling, useless little bastards with still shut eyes and pathetic meows and raggedy patches of fur and stubby legs and terrible coordination.
Okay, so maybe they weren't all over the living room, and were instead just confined to the corner by the fireplace where Astrid and Hiccup left Toothless' and Stormfly's beds, but when you left a place with no kittens and expected there to be no kittens and then there were kittens the next day, it felt like they were everywhere.
Tuff nearly dropped his bag. Ruff did, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. "Holy balls," she whispered.
Toothless blinked sleepily at them from where he was curled up next to Stormfly. "Oh fuck, dude," Tuff choked out, staring at the itty bitty kittens. "Y'all got nasty."
"Tuffnut!" Ruff snapped, slapping him in the chest. "Gross!"
"Am I wrong, though?"
"No, but still!"
Ruff dug her hands into her hair, staring at the offending balls of fluff. "What do we do? I don't know how to take care of kittens!"
"We can call Astrid and Hiccup," Tuff suggested.
They both glanced at each other and winced. "They'd totally hate us for ruining their honeymoon," Ruffnut said. She twisted her hands together, freezing as Toothless yawned and stood, stretching his hindquarters into the air. "But then again...no idea, man."
"Fishlegs is real good with baby animals," Tuff said slowly. He watched with mounting horror as Toothless stepped around Stormfly and nudged at one of the kittens with his nose, meowing at it. "Maybe he could help?"
"He's doing the dumb camp thing, bro, he's useless right now."
"I'M useless right now!"
"I KNOW, you're SO useless right now!"
"Mrow."
They both looked down from their helpless head clutching to find Toothless casually leaving a kitten at their feet, turning and trotting back to the litter, presumably to grab another one. The kitten made a pitiful squeak and Ruffnut echoed it, dropping to her knees and carefully wrangling the little sucker in her fingers. It squeaked again and Ruff's nose wrinkled.
"It's so cute and stupid and useless. I'm gonna accidentally kill it, Tuff."
Tuff sat down on the floor next to her, squinting at the tiny kitten. "Nah, he's a tough bastard. Bet. We should name him."
A lump dropped into his lap and he shrieked as Toothless trotted back to the litter, leaving another squirming, naked kitten in their care. One by one, he brought every kitten over and deposited them into one of the twin's laps. As each one arrived, the twins grew a little more relaxed yet simultaneously more anxious.
"Seriously, Tuff, I don't know how to take care of babies."
Tuff, holding one of the kittens up to his nose to gently boop it, shrugged. "I can't even take care of me half the time."
"Good point. I'm naming this one Cheeto."
"Perfect. This one….is Prince Thorplton the Great."
"Think Hiccup and Astrid would mind if we named all of them?" Ruff wondered.
"Probably not. They got enough shit going on."
"Perfect. This little lady here is Bone Crusher."
Somehow, amidst everything, they forgot to call Hiccup and Astrid and let them know that their two cats had had a litter of seven kittens and that they would now be coming home to nine animals. The day they were due back, Ruff and Tuff got the kittens ready in a large basket wrapped with a giant red bow.
"All right, in you go Bone Crusher," Ruffnut cooed, scooping the baby into the blanket at the bottom. Her eyes had opened a day ago, early, from what the twins could tell, and she squeaked at Ruff as she was deposited. "Tuff, hand me Thor next."
"Here he is."
He had been the chunkiest of the kittens, so the name had come easily. Now, he squawked angrily as Ruff dropped him in next to his sister. "Okay, Cheeto, then Mariachi, then Punxatawny, and theeennnnn Brighton Montgomery the Third, and THEN Prince Thorplton the Great."
Tuff handed over the kittens in said specified order, pausing now and again to pat Toothless and Stormfly, who were watching the procession with calm demeanors (save for their flicking tails, which Tuff assumed meant "We're watching you, bitches."). "All right, we good?"
"We good, fam."
Tuffnut stood back, eyeing the squirming pile of fur and squeaks, and pulled out his phone. "Snapchat, here we come," he muttered, grabbing several pictures of the lump and then promptly diving into editing, his tongue poking out.
Ruff, meanwhile, filled Toothless' and Stormfly's bowls one more time before following Tuff's lead and snapping about three dozen photos of the kittens (not like they hadn't been taking pictures all week, of course, but they'd refrained from posting them in order to keep a surprise for Hiccup and Astrid. That, and they just plain forgot). "Ope, just got a text from Astrid. They're five minutes out."
"Fuck."
They spent the next five minutes wrangling Toothless and Stormfly into the basket alongside the kittens, winding up with several scratch marks, a few bites, and a solid chunk out of Ruff's thumb, but they did it. Once the cats were actually in the basket with their kittens, they mellowed out and curled around them, prompting about thirty more photos each.
Hiccups car was noisy in the driveway, a perfect alarm, and Ruff slapped at Tuff, the twins scrambling over each other to sit down on the sofa and flick on the TV to the first channel, showing something that looked like a True Crime documentary. The cats and kittens, to their credit, stayed in the basket, though Toothless had his head up and was watching the twins like he thought they were complete idiots.
"Hey guys!" Astrid called as she unlocked the door. "How was cat sitting?"
Ruff and Tuff glanced at each other, then down at the basket, which was partially hidden from the front door. "Interesting," Ruff finally said. "Your cats suck at abstinence."
There was a long pause.
"What?" Hiccup finally managed.
"Abstinence," Tuff said with a shrug. "Not good."
Astrid was the first to understand, and she shrieked, darting around the sofa. Her hands clapped to her mouth, much the way Ruff's had when they first spotted the kittens, and she bolted to the basket, dropping her purse on the floor. Her face was lit up in a wild grin. "Oh my god, that's why we weren't seeing you as much!" she cooed, rubbing under Stormfly's chin. The cat purred, her eyes squinting shut in delight. "What a good girl."
Hiccup finally came around the couch, his lips parting in surprise. "Oh my god."
"We named all of them for you," Tuff informed them. "So don't worry, you're covered there."
Astrid and Hiccup glanced at one another, frowning. "Can we ask…what you named them?" Hiccup asked slowly.
"Cheeto."
"Thor, Bone Crusher," Tuff said, pointing.
"Mariachi," Ruff followed, pointing at the noisiest of the bunch. "Punxatawny."
"Brighton Montgomery the Third," Tuff said, pointing to the chubby one with a dark patch over one eye that nearly resembled a monocle.
"And Prince Thorplton the Great," the twins chorused, gesturing to the tiniest one.
Hiccup bit his lip and looked at Astrid. "I don't…mind…some of them," he said slowly. "Plus, you guys did do a really good job taking care of them – thank you, by the way – so we can keep some of the names. Astrid?"
"I'm okay with that," she said, her nose already pushed against Brighton Montgomery the Third's face and her eyes shining in delight.
Ruff and Tuff high fived and whooped, making Mariachi let out a wild squeak. "Perfect," Tuff said with a grin.
"That's all we could have ever asked for."
Tomorrow's fic: Trivia Night, Arrowverse