Stupid Love - Chapter 22

Pairing: Hijack

Word Count: 3039

Warnings: Some language, Hiccup having some issues breathing

Note: I TOLD YOU I'D UPDATE BEFORE NEXT YEAR! MWAHAHA~

He felt light as a feather, his bangs blowing back out of his face as he bust through the dark pink clouds that seemed to be everywhere around him. He blinked his eyes a moment before staring down. He was...flying?

Hiccup let the thought sit in his mind a moment. Oh, right. He must be dreaming!

He shook his head, and looked down. There appeared to just be an abundance of fluffy clouds. He vaguely wondered what he might find if he flew down through them.

"Might as well…" he muttered to himself, and moved his arms, trying to figure out how to steer himself. He tilted his head back and extended his arm, and he moved to the side. Okay, now he just needed to figure out how to go forward and down…

He tried dipping his head down, and he suddenly flipped forward, diving head-first through the pink fluffiness below him. He broke through the clouds quickly, and put his arms out, trying to keep himself from moving, but nothing worked.

He kicked out his legs but only managed to flip himself around again. Now he was spinning a lot, and it was making him dizzier by the second. He shut his eyes and tried to focus back on what he was doing before. He had his arms out at his sides, like if he were lying flat on a surface...but upside down somehow. He flattened himself out, but that only seemed to make him fall even faster. The wind in his face picked up, and he felt all the fluffy clouds around him suddenly stop touching him.

He blinked open his eyes again, curious as to why.

All he saw was a flash of black in his vision before he smacked head-first into it-whatever it was. He reached out and held onto it, and it took off, zooming straight up, back into the puffy clouds. Hiccup blinked again, gaining a sense of what was going on. He felt scales under his fingers, and he could hear slow, flapping wings. He glanced back to see a long tail extended out beneath the black thing he was now apparently riding. Looking forward again, the head of the creature ducked down and they both turned, breaking through more clouds. Hiccup reached forward, touching the back of the thing's head and it looked up and then back at him a moment. The large green eyes pierced into him, and something in his brain recognized it as Toothless. His car? Oh, wait, so his car is a dragon now?

Hiccup grinned, silently thanking his imagination for being so cool.

He positioned his legs around the creature better, pushing himself ahead of the dragon's enormous wings and holding on tighter to the back of its neck. Looking around, he noticed the pink clouds slowly fading to purple and orange. They kind of seemed to be getting darker...

A loud rumble overhead makes Hiccup frown and look up, only for an instant downpour of rain to come down on him and his dragon. Toothless swayed from side to side, looking for a place to go, but there was nothing but more clouds all around them. Hiccup reached up, trying to block the rain from getting on him, but it was no use. They continued to fly forward, searching for a way to escape the storm.

Hiccup squinted as they broke through a wall cloud, the rain seeming to fall harder and faster on top of them, and he noticed a much lighter section of clouds off in the distance. It must be dry over there! He smiled and bent down.

"Alright, Toothless," he told him, "let's do this!"

The dragon's eyes narrowed, matching Hiccup's, and he huffed loudly before folding out his wings wide and the duo took off. They dodged the puffs of clouds creeping up from below them, they rushed through the rain as it quickened and fell harder. It felt like needles hitting Hiccup's face, but he kept his focus on the destination up ahead. Nothing was going to stop them now!

They kept getting closer and closer. They were almost there. That's when something in Hiccup's gut told him to look to his left side. He didn't know why he did, but he looked, only to see a blinding white light. It sharpened, shaping into a circle before turning into two lights, and they were coming straight for him.

The lights sped up and smashed right into Hiccup's side. He and his dragon were thrown back, and he flew up high while he watched Toothless roll and then suddenly catch with a blue flame before busting through the clouds and disappearing.

He awoke with a jolt and he immediately tried to open his mouth to gasp, but found his throat blocked up with something. He fidgeted, trying to cough around it.

"H-hiccup?" He heard someone say among the noise of someone moving a chair around and running away. "Nurse! Nurse!"

Was that Astrid? Hiccup tried to swallow and when he couldn't, he tried to reach up and get rid of whatever was blocking his breathing, but there was some strange tube on his arm and tape and needles, and just as he felt something covering his mouth, someone ran in and moved his hand back. He jolted upright a bit, but someone else held him back down. A woman and two men, none of which he recognized, surrounded him. The woman started talking to him very slowly.

"Hiccup. You had an intubation, there is a tube in your throat, helping you breathe," the woman told him, looking him straight in the eye. He wanted to just glare up at her for stating the obvious. "Would you like us to remove it?"

He nodded frantically, but then he felt the apparent tube rub the back of his throat and he tried to cough again, to no avail. The two people right in his vision took ahold of the contraption keeping his mouth closed. It felt like they were taking tape off of his mouth.

"Okay, we're going to count to three. When we get to three, I want you to take a deep breath, okay?" the woman continued to speak slowly and he honestly just wished she'd hurry up.

"Alright, one-" the woman moved out of his line of sight and a man on the other side of him gripped the contraption over his mouth.

"Two-"

He shut his eyes, exhaling just a bit before he could finally breathe in.

"Three!"

Hiccup constricted his throat, trying one more time to breathe. The tube that was there was yanked out through his mouth and a trail of spit connected it to his tongue as they continued to pull it away. He choked as he took another, deeper breath, and then started coughing. He went to sit up, but his elbows didn't do well to hold him up and he fell back. One of the men pushed on his shoulder.

"We need you to stay lying down for now. Stay as still as you can."

The woman was still down near his feet, checking something. The two men appeared to be doing the same for his arms and his head. One held up a flashlight and asked him to follow the light with his eyes. The other told him to wiggle his fingers and toes. As far as he could tell, they seemed to be satisfied with his answers. He felt gross and sweaty, especially around his head. The man with the flashlight told him there was a bandage around his head and that he wasn't to touch it.

"Wh-" his throat was incredibly dry as he tried to speak. "Where- Astrid?"

What he was finally able to get out got the attention of his best friend and she pushed her way past the woman at the edge of the bed and stood over him.

"Hiccup! I'm so glad you're okay!" She smiled with tears in her eyes. "I can't believe an idiot like you could be in a coma for three days-"

"Wh-what?" Hiccup scrunched up his nose. A coma? What?

There was a bustle from the people watching over him as they mentioned something about Hiccup needing to recover before he got information "like that."

But, as expected, Astrid argued with them. Hiccup closed his eyes. Typical Astrid.

But the thought still weighed on his mind. He was in a hospital? He'd been in a coma? He had some sort of head injury? Three days?

While he'd admit it was a bit of a shock, it wasn't like it was too much for him to process. He just needed a minute to get everything pieced together…

The doctor had eventually made his way to Hiccup's hospital room, only to leave because he just wanted to talk to Astrid about what exactly had happened. He was rather surprised that he actually left when he told him to.

With Astrid's help, he was able to sit up and properly talk to her. Unfortunately, the first thing he noticed was the utter lack of foot he appeared to be having. It sparked a bit of a panic, but Astrid told him that it was fine.

Missing a limb was not something he'd label under "fine" but she was determined to keep him from thinking on it. She informed him calmly that it was just something that he couldn't keep after the accident.

Well, that immediately gave way to a whole spiel of questions from him, some of which Astrid was apparently not ready to answer...

"What happened?" he found himself asking, over and over. He had very little recollection of what she seemed to know about the situation, but she didn't seem very comfortable telling him regardless of that.

"You have to at least tell me something, Astrid," he told her. She had to know just being stubborn about this wasn't going to help, right? He's dealt with enough crap today as it is.

"Alright, fine…" she sighed, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back in her chair. Didn't sound like she was actually giving in, but he'd take it. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Hiccup narrowed his eyes. The last thing he remembered…

"I was driving...to Gobber's. With Jack," he replied softly. "Yeah, we were in my car and Jack fell asleep or something."

"And you stopped for gas," Astrid added.

Hiccup looked back at her.

"Right," he nodded. "We stopped at that place down the road from Gobber's and…" His eyes widened as he remembered walking out the doors of that gas station to see his car gone. "Jack took off with my car!"

"No, someone stole it," Astrid corrected him. "That moron just didn't stop them, apparently…"

Hiccup furrowed his eyebrows together. Flashes of what happened next crossed his mind, but it all seemed out of place.

"You were there…?" he started again, confused.

Astrid sat forward.

"You called me up, worried about your car, so I drove up to get you. We went around looking for it."

"Did- did we find Jack?" Hiccup asked. His brain didn't have that answer.

Astrid huffed, looking towards the door.

"Yeah, I found the asshole. And then the fuckin' Guardians showed up for some reason. Next thing I knew, you and him were climbing back in his car to go get Toothless back, and then by the time I saw you again, you were already on your way to missing a limb and were barely conscious!"

She crossed her arms again, refusing to look at him.

Hiccup frowned. Why was she so upset with him?

"What happened?" he asked yet again.

"Men are all complete imbeciles," she remarked angrily. "THAT'S what happened."

Hiccup rolled his eyes and sat back. She wasn't happy with him and there wasn't anything he could do to change that just yet. Great. His best bet now was to change topics…

He glanced around the rather large hospital room. Everything was white. The floor, the ceiling, the doors, the bedsheets, the chairs. What was with all the white? The only things that had any color in the room was Astrid herself and that vase of flowers sitting on the windowsill behind her. Wait, were those cards behind her, too?

"Are those 'get well soon' cards?" he asked. Astrid blinked, looking behind her and then back at him.

"...yeah," she replied half-heartedly. "They're from Fish, Snot, and the twins. There's one from Heather, too."

Hiccup let out a quiet laugh. That didn't surprise him much.

"And did you go out and get me flowers or are those from Heather, too?" he smirked.

"Actually, they're from your dad," Astrid told him a bit matter-of-factly.

His eyes widened, looking between the flowers and his best friend.

"My dad was here?" he wondered aloud.

"Well...uhm," Astrid shifted in her seat, turning back to face him. "They were delivered."

Hiccup's face fell.

"Oh," was all he could say.

"But I did call him. He ended up making all the arrangements for you to have this room at the hospital and he even upgraded your insurance so you could get a prosthetic foot once you're- uhh, good enough to leave here."

Hiccup glanced down at the lumpy blanket over his legs again. The missing foot thing was going to be hard to adjust to, wasn't it? He sighed.

At least it wasn't his right foot. He just won't be able to drive a stick-shift for a while. It could be worse, he supposed.

Then he remembered, Toothless was gone. Right, the accident Astrid had said. Did that mean he needed to go get a new car? He grumbled quietly to himself. How was he supposed to do anything without Toothless to get him anywhere?

And now that he was thinking of the accident…

"So...where's Jack? Doesn't look like he left anything here like everyone else…" he asked nonchalantly. It was a little bizarre to have a lack of Jack for some reason.

"Well, maybe if he wasn't a moron and didn't get himself banned from the hospital, he might have," Astrid told him, sounding extremely spiteful. Hiccup raised an eyebrow.

"Do I want to know how he got himself banned from here?"

Astrid shook her head.

"Let's just say that the guy apparently can't take 'no' for an answer," she told him, "and that this room happens to be on the FOURTH floor and these windows are SEALED from the INSIDE."

Hiccup made an incredulous expression, not even sure what he was meant to understand from all that. Did Jack seriously try to break into a hospital? Is that what she was saying? Geez, why would he do something so stupid? ...oh, right. Because he's JACK.

He snickered a bit, but was stopped when Astrid continued,

"The asshole should have KNOWN I wasn't going to ever let him come see you after everything he put you through. And, OBVIOUSLY, you are never going to be seeing him ever again."

Hiccup opened his mouth to speak, but he wasn't even sure what to say to that.

"And since your phone was destroyed in the explosion, I won't have to worry about that crazy idiot calling you, either," she finished rather proudly.

Hiccup suddenly felt uncomfortable and slid down a little in his seat. He couldn't just NOT see Jack. Crazy or not, he was his friend! Well...sort of.

'This was all YOUR FAULT!'

The last thing he remembered saying to Jack immediately echoed in his head. He'd blamed Jack for everything that had happened. Everything that happened to him, to his car… He had told Jack it was all his fault.

He grimaced, the guilt slowly consuming him, catching in his throat as Astrid started to speak again.

"I mean, this all happened because of him, you know?" she grumbled.

Hiccup sat up instantly, despite the sudden pain that ran up his side, he defended Jack, saying,

"Th-that's not true! I...I was the one who...I snuck in to get Toothless back! ...at least, I think that's what I did…"

His memory was still a bit fuzzy, and what he had been able to piece together still didn't all make sense to him.

Astrid glowered at him.

"That asshole let your car get taken, Hiccup."

He bit his lip. While that was technically true…

"But the guy who took it...he was actually planning to take YOUR car because we always go down there! Jack specifically told me that!"

He remembered that rather clearly, for whatever reason. He remembered feeling sick to his stomach for a second when Jack had said it, too.

"That idiot was the one who suggested you two go down there in the first place!" Astrid countered.

Hiccup made a face.

"Well, I was the one who fell asleep at his place the night before, so…"

Astrid groaned loudly, saying,

"It's his fault for always dragging you everywhere!"

Hiccup furrowed his eyebrows, feeling himself cringe at those words. She can't just keep blaming him like that!

"Well, technically, if you hadn't DRAGGED me to the bar that one night and then bet me to get him to leave there, then, really, NONE of this would have ever happened."

Astrid was glaring at him intensely by the time he finally stopped talking. Seeing that look on her face made him instantly regret ever saying that.

"Oh, so now this is all MY fault?!" she shouted, her voice shaking. He could see tears welling up in her eyes.

Okay, it was really harsh to say that, he'd admit, but this was NOT Jack's fault. He wasn't just going to let her keep blaming him for this. He obviously had a hand in a lot of it.

"Fine! Then it's all MY fault, Hiccup! It's all...it's-"

She sobbed and stood up so quickly and ran out of the room, Hiccup didn't even know what to do. He frowned. That wasn't how that conversation was supposed to go…