Whoa, I wrote this chapter in a day. All because I was super excited for what happens in this one :) ENJOY!
They drive slowly up the winding curves of the driveway leading to Hiccup's house. Lindsay's relinquished control of the radio, and now they're listening to something from the sixties. Well, she is. All Hiccup can hear is his pounding heart. She stops in front of his huge, empty house like every other day; she's waiting for him to grab his stuff and tell her he'll talk to her tomorrow. Like every other day. But he doesn't. He asks, hesitantly, "Do you… want to c-come in?"
She's stunned for a moment. But only one. "Okay, sure. Let me call my mom and tell her I'll be here a while." She pulls out her bulky, at least to him, cell phone; she hates touch screens, and so she has stuck with the same phone she's had since she was 13. At leats it's not a flip. Hiccup, on the other hand, has the super-sleek, super-cool iPhone, the latest model. One thing about his dad being off running his company all the time is that they can afford anything. His dad doesn't even make him ask; he set up a loaded bank account for him when he was fourteen. If it ever runs low, he replenishes it. In his more bitter moments Hiccup's thought Stanley "Stoick" (named for how he never showed pain playing football in college) Haddock is just trying to minimize the time he has to think about his son.
"Excuse me a sec," Lindsay's voice says, breaking into his thoughts. She turns the key in the ignition and slides out of her car. "Hey, Mom, it's me…" Hiccup hears her say as she shuts the door.
Hiccup inhales, and unbuckles his seat belt. He moves like he's in slow motion as he picks up his backpack and climbs out. He catches Lindsay's eye and mouths that he's going in; she nods. "Yes, I've got most of my work done already," she says into the phone. Her words fade behind him as he runs into his house; the closer he gets, the more speed he puts on. He slams the door behind him like a gunshot and bounds up to his room, where his secret waits. He ignores the mess; he should've cleaned this place up yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that…
But right now he doesn't care. There's one thing he's looking for, and he doesn't know exactly where it is. And he has to find it before Lindsay comes in the house.
Lindsay cautiously opens the door and wipes her feet on the mat. "Hiccup?" she calls. She figures he's upstairs absorbed in something; when he's concentrating, he hears worse than a dead person. She could sit and wait for him, but she feels like the paintings of axe-wielding, roaring Vikings on the walls are about to leap out of their frames and charge. She drops her purse and backpack by the door and neatly lines up her shoes next to them. Maybe because this is the home of two guys, the house is a complete mess. Lindsay's fingers are literally twitching to clean it.
Hiccup will be laughing about this for months, she thinks as she riffles through the cabinet. Do they even have Clorox? Windex? Anything?
She hears the gentle padding of feet approaching, and a weird clink. Must be Hiccup, maybe dragging something; strange he hasn't asked her what she's doing yet. She says without taking her head out of the cabinet, "Hiccup, when was the last time someone washed your windows? They're disgusting. I swear, your fingerprints from when you were three are still there."
He doesn't answer her, just waits while she clinks around the glass jars stored under the sink. She withdraws from the cabinet, shaking her head; she hasn't found one cleaning product except half shriveled sponges. "Hiccup, where's the—" she starts to say, looking to where he's supposed to be standing.
Except, he's not.
Someone else is.
Something else is.
"HICCUP!" She screams, and the panther roars.
Hiccup hears her shrieking and realizes what he's forgotten:
He let Toothless roam the house this morning. There was no chance of his dad being home; he's on a business trip to Iowa. No one else ever comes over. It seemed unfair to lock him up in such a cluttered, cramped room until Hiccup came home.
Now it seems unfair to have left his best friend at the mercy of his very protective tame black panther.
The most unathletic kid in his gym class, he figures he breaks about ten track records as he flies downstairs. He skids into the kitchen; Toothless's green-yellow eyes soften as they land on him, but switch back to Lindsay and they narrow again. Hiccup slides between his only two friends, holding his arms up in a peace gesture, and says to her soothingly, and then to him, "It's okay. It's okay—she's a friend." He runs his hand over the silky fur of Toothless's back and turns to her. "You scared him." It comes out reproachful, but he doesn't mean it unkindly.
"I scared him?" She yelps, an edge of hysteria creeping into her voice. "Wait. Who is him?"
"Lindsay, Toothless. Toothless, Lindsay," he says carefully. "Remember, bud? This is the girl I was telling you about, my friend?" Toothless, as a response, growls. Lindsay rises from her crouch on the ground slowly, clutching the counter so hard her fingernails are white. For a second, it looks like she's torn between running for her life and giving Hiccup a black eye. "Please explain to me," She says, her voice trembling, "why you are cuddling with a freaking black panther." Her voice rises into a squeak on the last word.
"My dad used to hunt bears."
She seizes a cell charger plugged into the wall and throws it at him. "How is that relevant!" she shrieks.
"No, it is!" Hiccup yells back as he dodges. "My dad sort of fell out of it, and he sent me to get all the old traps out of their hiding places in the woods by the house." He swallows, putting his hand on Toothless's head. "But I forgot one." He breathes in; the guilt is suffocating, and will always be. "And when I remembered, it was too late. I got there and Toothless' back leg was caught in the trap." He turns the cat gently, and Lindsay gasps at the stub of what was once a thigh, that drifts into a prosthetic. Hiccup closes his eyes. He wishes he had gotten there sooner… "It's their instinct, to try to escape."
"He chewed it off?"
"The trap did most of it," Hiccup says bitterly. "He just helped it along." He gnaws the inside of his cheek and continues. "He was just lying there, and I thought he was dead. But his eyes opened, and he was looking right at me. I thought about killing him. My dad had guns. He was injured. Heck, my dad might like him stuffed, since they're so rare. But he just looked at me. And he was so afraid, so regal…so wild.. I couldn't do it." He strokes Toothless's jaw line. "I broke apart the trap."
She throws another phone charger. "You idiot! He could've killed you!"
"He almost did." He remembers: the slit of the green-yellow eyes widening, the mouth opening into a snarl as the beast lunged into him, digging his huge clawed paws into Hiccup's shirt, pinning him to the ground. He was weak prey. An easy target. The beast locked eyes with him; Hiccup saw raw fierceness in them and fear in the reflection of himself. Suddenly, abruptly, as Hiccup's heart stopped, as his breathing paused, as his world started crumbling, as he thought about how he'd never become the son his father wanted, the panther roared in his face and bounded away, limping. "He almost did, but didn't. He just…didn't. He roared, and vanished in a second."
"But panthers," Lindsay says slowly. "They hunt with stealth. If he was limping, he wouldn't be able to sneak up on his prey. He wouldn't be able to feed himself…he would star—" she stops.
"Exactly." Hiccup says. "When I woke up from passing out in my yard—don't look at me like that, you've never been pinned down by a 150 pound panther; it was shock— I went on my laptop and did some research. Once I figured that out, I realized it would've been better to kill him, because he couldn't hunt. He was as good as dead. I tried to forget him, what happened. But I felt so guilty."
"You should've," she snaps. "They're critically endangered, by the way!" Lindsay is a die-hard conservationist. It shouldn't surprise him she's yelling. "What was he doing here anyway? They're not found in America."
"Illegal exotic pet, probably. I figure he escaped. They're very resourceful in hunting; they can survive anywhere."
"Except when they can't hunt," Lindsay finished.
Hiccup nods. "So I went back."
Lindsay goes to the outlet again. "Crap! I'm out of chargers!" She opens a cupboard, grabs a sponge, and hits him square in the face with it, with massive force, so it hurts way more than it should.
"OW!"
"That was for being AN IDIOT!"
She bounds over and hugs him tightly. He sort of can't breathe. But still.
"That was for being an idiot that's still here to tell me this." She glances at Toothless and carefully sits down by him, her motions gentle and deliberate. Toothless narrows his eyes but tolerates her closeness. "So, you went back," she says.
"I went back to the area where I'd seen him last. I found him half-dead in the trees; I could see all of his ribs." Both their eyes go to Toothless's sleek, comfortably round side. No ribs now. "I gave him all the raw meat we had; he growled at me, took it, and hid again. But I kept going back. Eventually, he started to trust me. He let me pet him. He let me make him a way to walk. I used some scrap metal, some wood. It wasn't great, but he could get around. Later, I bought the kind of prosthetic they use for dogs and modified it to fit him; just added some touches to make it more comfortable, lengthened it a bit."
"Why in name of God did you name a panther with teeth as big has my freaking hand Toothless?"
"Once we got to being…friends, I guess is the word, we'd play. When he would play-bite me, it didn't hurt, like he didn't have any teeth. There's the name." He shrugs. "He seemed to like it. Eventually, I coaxed him back here. This is his home as much as mine."
"Does your dad know about this?" she asks. Of course she asks the sensible question that he really wishes she hadn't.
"Um…" he shifts. "Not exactly."
"Hiccup!"
"He'd have him killed!" Hiccup says desperately. Lindsay falls silent, looking at Toothless with an indescribable sadness, for his leg, for his heritage, for the fact he has to be hidden from the world. "You're right," she sighs. "He can never know. How…how do you keep him hidden?"
Hiccup shrugs. "When my dad's not home, he can go anywhere he pleases. When my dad's around, Toothless stays in my room. He never goes in there. Most of the time, it's not a problem."
Lindsay nods, but she's not looking at him; she's watching Toothless. She gently extends her arm to the panther and lowers her eyes to the tile. His choice now.
When she feels the warm snout rub against her palm, she knows he has accepted her.
By the time the sun's sinking past the horizon, Lindsay has befriended Toothless fully. She's scratching his belly now, half-terrified at the thought those legs kicked up so comically end in razor-sharp claws. He's tamed, but still wild. "He's amazing," she tells Hiccup. She means it.
She's never seen Hiccup smile so hard.
To the amazing:
disneyisbeautiful: Thank you! I was actually worried about the friendship not coming off as strong as I wanted. Glad to know you think I'm on the right path.
sora nii: I was so happy when I read 'You really know what you are doing.' That's the goal! And yep, I will answer every review on my next chapter (unless I have over 20.)
jack o lantern: thanks for your honesty. But in the future, please be as specific as possible if something bothers you so I can make adjustments to make the story better.
HunterNite: I LOVE Katy Perry! Not Like The Movies is my favorite :)
kazuya bridget: I always try to add a little humor to keep it fun. I promise to continue for at least 2 more chapters.
Voldyne: thanks! I understand what you mean when it comes to OCs. I'm pretty hesitant of them myself; but I decided to take a risk with Lindsay. So far, she seems pretty sucessful. I hope you enjoy the rest of this story!
void genome: thank you! to answer your question of how Astrid will take Hiccup being BFFs with our girl, let's just say for now she does not like it. He was hers first!
Thanks to a bit of gravity, Voldyne, Ella Unlimited, and crzyRENThead for adding me to their story alerts, and Ella Unlimited for adding this to her favorite stories.
As a reward to you guys, here's an excerpt from our next chapter, when all hell really breaks loose:
"He was mine first!"
"Mine, mine, mine! He's not your puppet! You can't just string him along for fun! Don't you see, can't you get that he's a person, he has feelings? Feelings for you that you use to your advantage, that you use as a weapon against him? God, you disgust me!" Lindsay screams it, and she realizes while she's always disliked Astrid because every guy is in love with her and every girl wants to be her, she hates Astrid because of what she does to Hiccup, again and again and again.
"I disgust you?" Oh, now she's said too much.
Hiccup, Toothless might be your only friend again, because I'm about to die.
But Astrid doesn't swing. She does something much more unexpected.
And I just cliffied you! Will you still review? I want to know what you think of how I incorporated Toothless especially.