A/N: As if this was popular enough to leave notes, but hey! This was longer and honestly different than I thought, but it just flowed like this. Sorry for all the grammar mistakes, I wanted to translate it quickly and I may have missed something, so sorry. Enjoy reading!-tsuki...
Chapter 6
He was quieter, strangely. Jerry was usually a rough man who once he started yelling he hardly stop.
Astrid shifted as gently as she could in her seat to not draw his attention to her. She stared at the cold, empty streets of Berk going by probably faster than they should go.
Without even realizing it, more out of habit, she reduced her breathing, quieter and slower.
The scent of alcohol in the car flooding her nose. She hated that van with all her might.
"Who was that guy?"
The blonde blinked without taking her head from the window. Her mind fluttering at the auburn figure of Hiccup Haddock saying goodbye to her with that crooked smile on the stairs.
"What guy?" she asked anyway defensively.
She heard the dark-eyed man growl, used to her games.
"You know what I'm saying" he replied forcefully.
Astrid shrugged giving him a sidelong look. "What's with him"
"Is he your boyfriend?"
His question bristled her and made her look at him suddenly with indignant fury.
"That's none of your business" she faced him, raising her voice.
Jerry turned to look at her, his eyes twinkling helplessly and his brow always deepening even more deep.
"Don't talk to me like that, little girl" he spat.
Astrid grunted into her teeth.
"He's not my boyfriend, but you shouldn't care whether he is or not " she clarified, crossing her arms, looking again at the streets.
The man squeezed the steering wheel hard, and as if it had just occurred to him, he pulled a worn packet of cigars from his military jacket, took one in one hand, and raised it to his mouth. Astrid looked at him absently without turning her head, thinking that he shouldn't be smoking behind the wheel, but she shrugged. If that made him die sooner...
He flicked it roughly on with the half-broken car's automatic cigarette lighter, and when he was done he turned it off with a careless bang.
"I don't want you near him" he announced suddenly with a somewhat more serious voice.
Astrid turned her head toward him, her arms crossed and her shoulders tense.
"Excuse me?" she said slowly "You don't order me. You can't tell me who to see. You're not my father" she finished with a lethal voice and narrowed eyes.
Jerry didn't even look at her. That missed her, normally he would have yelled at her or tried to slam her against the window pane.
"That boy is not good ink"
She gave a sarcastic laugh.
"Now you know who is good ink? Sure..." she commented with acid humor.
"He's a Haddock" he mumbled in a deep voice "Am I wrong?"
He didn't give her time to respond.
"Get away from him. He's a felon, I don't want you getting home with the bastard of that guy, crying about him abandoning you and that he doesn't want to know anything about you"
Astrid was stunned.
What the actual fuck?
She sat up straight in the seat, the air taut as a rope.
"Stop the car"
Jerry waited a few seconds, confused. "What-?"
"Stop the car" she repeated this time more confidently.
"What the fuck is wrong with you little bi-"
"Stop the fucking car!"
Jerry didn't have time to stop with a sharp, curt stop before she unlocked her door and opened it.
Astrid staggered to her feet on the asphalt as the van came to a complete stop.
She slammed the door shut. She could feel his blood burning through her veins.
She began to stride away from the car, the angry and confused screams of the man walking away.
Miss Perfect? A shit.
Cold air blew through him even trespassing his thick leather jacket.
He closed it with a quick movement, the zipper brushing his chin with a shaky breath.
Who would go out at 11:43 at night? A Berk night, the temperature plummeting like Snotlout's notes in the first quarter of the year.
"Ah yes, his friends" he answered annoyed.
They left in his cousin's beat-up car a good two hours ago.
They went taking turns smashing mailboxes, scarecrows, and basically anything they could find and reach with the car, with Camicazi's inseparable nail-studded bat.
Not to mention that Hiccup was stuck in the passenger seat the whole way, with the window down for safety before being hit by a mailbox.
Hearing the excited screams of Thuggory and the blonde as they hit their next target, with their body half pulled out of the back of the van; sometimes going over to the driver's seat when Snotlout wanted to join the game and hit some too.
When the things to hit ran out, determined not to return for, according to Camicazi, the night was young, so they parked on the side of the road on a remote, deserted road surrounded by forest.
They come up with the splendid idea of getting out of the warm atmosphere of the car to sit in the cold, chilly gutter with a few beers Thuggory stoled from his father later that day.
Hiccup still preferred the van even though it reeked of Snotlout's potent deodorant, the kind advertised on TV that attracted women like magnets. Of course
Camicazi handed him the second can of beer with a distracted look, still sipping from her third, the boy deduced.
Hiccup looked at it for a few seconds thinking about rejecting it, not used to drinking more than one.
He didn't like the feeling of dizziness and tingling it gave him, he learned it the hard way after one of his first outings with his cousin where he was glued to the toilet all night.
Not wanting to speak, he took it with a nod and wrapped his hands around it without opening it.
The auburn listened in the background to the banal conversations of his friends with his eyes fixed on the dark and cloudy forest on the other side of the road, when he saw a familiar figure approaching from the opposite side of the road. What the...?
Could that day get any worse?
Thanks to the stupid outburst of her jumping out of a half-moving car, she arrived work almost an hour late, and not passing her by house, out of uniform.
Then she received a long reprimand from the short, sour manager of the cafe where she worked. The third in two weeks, she celebrated ironic.
Thanks to that, she had to stay up late cleaning all the dishes, tables and floors of the cafe. Alone.
Just perfect
It was almost eleven at night when she turned the open sign over and locked the place. What cafe had full service at night?
Astrid growled as she felt Berk's chill vibe creeping through her thinner than reccomendated coat. She shoved her hands into her pockets and tried to hide her nose behind the raised fabric, puffing out white mist in an attempt to keep her nose from being as red as she imagined it should be by now.
Her way, which seemed longer than usual after all the work, home was slow and stumbled on the frozen gravel floors. She didn't wanted to go home.
Jerry would be there. Or worse, her mother. Or even worse, both.
She snorted out loud not caring through the almost deserted streets. She dazzled her house in the distance, the lights on the first floor behind the battered curtains closed.
That meant Jerry was home. Even better.
Jerry was the only one who stayed in the living room.
Her mother and she had the same habit of locking themselves in their rooms since, well, always.
Her mother's boyfriend simply threw himself without pants in his self-proclaimed shabby armchair, in front of the TV full of white stripes, beer in hand and cigar in the other.
She stood a few feet from the beige house, dark except for the light behind the corytines and the rusty streetlamp of greenish light that practically lit the entire neighborhood by itself.
Astrid wrinkled her nose. She didn't like her neighborhood.
All of Berk knew that no one would want to walk around here alone, less at night. She just shrugged.
She was more afraid of her house.
Astrid took a few breaths before getting ready and walking to the door with the keys on her hands.
She pushed to open the door three times trying not to make too much fuss, heard the somewhat distorted and tinny voices from the television before entering.
As expected, Jerry's large figure was sprawled in front of the television, the living room already smelled of smoke and beer, and she held back from coughing as she entered.
She stood in front of the door like an idiot. Did he realized she was there?
With her hands strangling the straps of her backpack, she took a careful first step behind the armchair, pressed against the wall. She waited a few seconds,
and a little more hopeful, she took the second step towards the stairs.
"Where were you?"
Well, fuck her
The man's gruff, demanding voice tempted her not to answer and just go up to her room with dignity, but she didn't want more trouble than she feared she already had, so she stopped and looked at the man's head.
"Work"
There was no reply or nod.
Was it over?
She was about to take another step, Jerry spoke.
"Your time passed"
Astrid held back from laughing. Now he controlled her like a daddy? For Thor
"I didn't know I had an arrival time"
She heard him settle into the seat and for a moment she was afraid he would get up, but nothing happened.
"Were you with him?"
Fuck, again. After having the insolence to threaten her not to come home pregnant, which Astrid wouldn't even think of, and ordering her not to see Hiccup, simply ordering her what she could or couldn't do, he goes and bring up the fucking topic again.
Gods
Who in helheim did this man believe he was?
He had been dating his mother for almost three months now, and Astrid had been hating him with all her bones for, well, three months.
He was disrespectful, he drank too much, did what he wanted to do, he was fired from four out of three jobs, he smoked like a wheelbarrow, even more than his mother, and he walked around her house like he owned it, her mother, and her, when he hadn't seen a fucking bill in his life.
She couldn't count the times she'd heard her mother cry in her room at dawn, only to hear a slam of the door and Jerry's fierce voice walking away from the house.
But what could she do? Report him? As if someone were to believe a seventeen-year-old girl over a white grown man.
Astrid gulped, knowing that no matter how hard Jerry insisted, his head was harder than a yak.
"No"
Her voice soft and nervous. Astrid hated herself more than never.
Jerry finally glanced at her, his dark, indescribable gaze. Astrid watched him rise with alarm in her eyes.
"Don't lie to me bitch. Running away from your superiors, running away with fucking boys! How dare you!"
"You're not my fucking dad!! WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU-!"
BAM!
She found herself staring at the dirty, worn carpet at her feet. Her hair fluttering and hiding her face from the man and her cheek burning from the impact.
She clenched her teeth trying to move her jaw a little. It hurted
It wasn't the first time someone punched her, not Jerry, far from it.
But it always hurted.
There were a few tears of anger and shock struggling to come out, but she held them back, as always.
Astrid clenched her fists until she felt them snap and practically forced herself not to raise them.
She could hear the man's heavy, rough breathing over her as if he were the one who had just received the blow.
Astrid lifted her chin straight without hesitation, her blazing eyes burning the man. Jerry looked back at her.
"Don't talk to me like that, you little shit! Don't forget who the fuck is in charge here! I could kill you with a thumb, you whore!"
Astrid swallowed again, feeling the lump of crying in her throat. She wasn't going to cry.
She looked at him with stony eyes. Shit, she knew, she already knew. She knew he could knock her down effortlessly.
Astrid was strong, but Jerry looked like a titan, she tested it first hand.
She took a step away, cursing herself for staggering, still dazed and her cheek as if an ember had just been slammed into it. She gritted her teeth until she hurted herself and before she could think it, she whirred the door open.
"Go fuck yourself"
And she shot out into the street.
One more thing to add to the list of stupid things.
And just counting that day. New record.
She come up with the perfect time to run away from home in subzero weather and well into midnight.
Astrid wasn't very proud of herself right now.
She stepped off her street at last, feeling like she could breathe a little easier.
Her cheek throbbing as hell a little grateful for Berk's icy air, more than the rest of her frozen body.
She continued walking knowing that if she stopped she would freeze to death. She didn't even know where she was going, just wanting to get as far away from home as possible.
She and Jerry had… disagreements before, terribly similar to this one, but each one hurt and infuriated her wanting to smash Jerry's skull with a bat. Made of stone. On fire.
She grunted as a strong gust shook her, trying to balance herself she kept walking, not wanting to stop unless she was hit by a car or something.
First Haddock mistaking her for hell and then the son of a bitch of her damn mother's boyfriend giving her parenthood and beating her at the same time.
She let out a steamy laugh into the air without a hint of amusement. What would Haddock and his little group give to see her as sunk as she was now ...
Well, she would find out soon.
Hiccup narrowed his gaze trying to get a better look.
It couldn't be. He had to be wrong.
It could be a ... pretty skinny bum looking just like her.
Oh man...
The boy recognized Astrid Hofferson, poorly lit by the dim light of the moon high in the already black sky.
She walked with her gaze fixed on the ground, with the same clothes from that afternoon, somewhat messy and her braid always perfect was disheveled this time.
Hiccup shrugged, checking that his friends, who were still arguing loudly about a stupid football game from the other night, hadn't noticed the slim figure approaching by the road.
He turned back to her, unable to see her expression from the darkness that surrounded them.
What was she doing here?
She must have been comfortably asleep in her warm princess bed, with her loving family in their dollhouse off after eight o'clock.
He didn't even want to laugh at his (very funny) thoughts concentrating on Astrid walking as if she was walking through the mud towards him. Towards them.
God damnit.
He wouldn't be so nervous if he was alone.
He would have made fun of her a bit, he would have secretly interrogated her and perhaps even accompanied her halfway to her dream house in the posh neighborhood (although, who was he to judge). It was midnight in the deserted streets of one of the lower Berk areas, Hiccup will be just being a good citizen, for once; he tried to excuse himself absent-mindedly.
But with his friends there, he had to pretend that he hadn't spent almost four hours with her in a library doing an school work about plants. Alone
And that he had endured it, maybe even more than endured-
Shit.
Before he knew it, the blonde was already passing in front of them, and she had seen him.
Hiccup froze. Should he get up or say hi or something?
"Hey hi Astrid, what a nice night huh? What are you doing walking down a gutter at midnight?"
He pressed his lips tight into a fine line, his friends at his side still unaware of the her. Hiccup finally saw her eyes. Electrifyingly blue as ever, Hiccup noticed a dark opaque veil over them.
He was surprised to realize this and dismissed it with a nod.
Their eyes collided and they kept their gaze steady on the other, as if daring to see who could hold out the longest, until Astrid blinked diffusely and with her gaze still lowered on her shoes, she continued on her way ready to pass by.
Hiccup made the gesture of getting up when he saw her start to walk away from him, his mind racing thousand an hour. Shit shit shit
"Hey! It's none other than Hot-fferson!"
Double shit
Hiccup and Astrid both turned to the black-haired man, who with a smile full of crooked teeth was looking at her in a mixture of mockery and strange emotion.
Camicazi and Thuggory sitting next to him smirked, Hiccup saw the blonde close her eyes and stop in her tracks. He even felt sorry for her a little.
"Hofferson!" exclaimed Camicazi jovially, clearly glad that her young night was finally coming alive.
Astrid turned to them, hands in pockets, red-half-purple nose and cheeks, and cold eyes in full pack, but said nothing.
Camicazi leapt to her feet like a tiger cub hunting.
"What are you doing around here, girl? I thought your bedtime was 6:00 pm!" she laughed amusedly walking dancing towards her. She clunged to her neck too tightly, but Astrid held herself stoic and after swaying a bit she straightened up trying to separate her body from the blonde.
"Little Miss Perfect disobeying her little parents, that is fucking new!" Snotlout laughed loudly, getting up behind the disheveled girl.
Hiccup and Thuggory looked at them with totally opposite expressions still sitting in the gutter. Hiccup was alert ready to jump at any moment without taking his eyes off his co-worker, while the brunette was simply smiling still taking sips from his sixth can of beer.
Hiccup noticed, distracted, that half of her hair loose from her not so perfect braid, a soft and wavy lock hiding her left profile, it made him strange to always see her face clear in school.
Before she could get on with his millions of internal questions, Camicazi followed by Snotlout was practically dragging the poor girl into the gutter, right where they were. Oh. Oh
Camicazi felt her with a force that slightly shocked Astrid who was off guard after all the dizziness of the day, right next to the auburn. She saw Hiccup sidelong looking at her with wild eyes and she couldn't even answer him.
The crazy blonde put an arm around her shoulders again. "What about this girl and physical contact?" she wondered in passing annoyed.
"This wasn't at all what I expected! Perfect Hofferson over here on the side of the derailed" she balanced her a little "See to belive!"
Her light, amused tone only made Astrid's mind spin more.
Snotlout flopped down on the hood of his truck parked in front of them, right in front of Astrid, with a satisfied smile almost as if his night had just improved infinitely. His cousin looked at him questioningly without a good feeling.
He glanced at Thuggory, who didn't take his eyes off the girl next to him, an indescribable look that confused Hiccup, he almost seemed like he wanted to absorb her.
Astrid tried not to look in any particular direction, practically surrounded by the troublemakers. Even if she wanted to run to the road again, Snotlout sitting across from her would cut her off and the girl choking her and swinging her like a doll would catch her in two seconds. She sighed.
Could the night really get worse? Not to mention Hiccup Haddock, her suddenly helpful co-worker sitting eight inches from her.
Suddenly, a can of beer flew past Hiccup, right at the girl next to him. Before he could lift his hand away from hitting her, Astrid caught it without looking with a small clang drowned out by Camicazi's chatter and Snotlout's interventions.
Hiccup stared at her in amazement as the blonde inspected what she realized was a beer.
"Haven't you seen a beer before Hot-fferson?" Thuggory commented with a mocking smile.
Hiccup and Astrid looked at him with the same expression, Hiccup thinking of the little name that only his cousin used with her that the brunette just used. Strange.
Astrid stared at it silently, Hiccup wondering what was on her mind and waiting for her to throw the can at Thuggory's head. He'd pay to see that.
But she just stared at the can for a few seconds, before opening it easily and taking a long sip for someone who was supposed to be tasting her first beer.
The gutter was silent until Camicazi and Snotlout celebrated the blonde loud and exaggerated as always. Hiccup looked at her and then at the open can with what he hoped wasn't an open mouth.
Wow
"Who knew? The perfect little girl had balls!" exclaimed the blonde laughing.
Hiccup saw a grimace resembling a sad smile and forced to purse her lips with her gaze fixed on her hands encircling the can. He looked into her eyes, darkened and suddenly crystallized.
Hiccup knew that expression by heart and experience. She was holding back the tears.
How bad was she feeling with them? He was about to get up and tell his friends that it was time to go home to get them away from Astrid, including him from her, when she brushed her hair away with one hand.
It was a smooth and swift movement, automatic and clearly not on purpose, the lock on her left profile, right on Hiccup's side, swaying back and a few seconds later it was back on its feet place as if nothing had happened.
But it was enough for Hiccup to catch a glimpse of the red and purple bruise staining her cheek.