Celebration
Pre-Hitchups: Missing movie scene
Something was amiss in the village of Berk. Hiccup knew this even before he crossed the threshold of the forest for no deep, bawling voices carried in the winds to greet him as per usual. His first steps into the village revealed darkened doorways and unattended sheep. No one pushed creaking wagons along the grassy knolls or hammered amidst raid repairs. No one turned to give him an appraising stare for emerging from the forest yet again.
Hiccup continued on, more wary than usual. He snuck around Old Slipshod's farmhouse and tiptoed beyond the usual back paths, hoping, as he always hoped in such moments, not to be noticed. He showed greater vigilance towards the covert travels between his house and the cove with every passing day, and on a day such as this—when the usual hubbub of village life was suspiciously absent—he had to be cautious.
But Hiccup found it hard to keep vigilant this particular evening when all he wanted to do was jump and dance and turn around and run right back to Toothless so they could fly some more.
He had flown. He tasted air unbreathed by man before and felt winds no sails would ever ride. It was exhausting and exhilarating, frightening and fantastic, and absolutely, inexplicably, unnaturally natural. For the first time in Hiccup's young life, he felt like he belonged somewhere—like he was meant to be exactly where there: a hundred faðmr above the ground.
A dull ruckus drifted from the center of the village and it pulled Hiccup from his remembrance. The first sign of community life demanded that he keep his wits. If Hiccup's ears heard correctly, he'd say the entire village had gathered to one spot on the island.
Curious, the boy altered his course. He still kept his guard up and his eyes sweeping for movement, unable to relax his caution even when this far from the forest's suspicious parameter. And it was not only because of Astrid's troublesome interest in him, but his father would return any day now and—
Hiccup's face slackened, his feet stumbled to a stop and his eyes riveted on Hooligan Harbor. None other than his father's ship bobbed among the line up in the sun's fading rays. He knew he was not mistaken; the ship was obvious in its damaged state—torn sails, cracked masts, and chunks missing from the hull as though bitten by a very large jaw.
But most worrisome was that only one had returned. Only one, when they had sent out so many...
"THERE YEH ARE!"
Hiccup screamed—no other word could be used to describe the high noise that tore from his throat. He turned, his hand fisting the fabric above his heart.
Gobber, in all his heavyset, off-balanced glory, had somehow managed to sneak up on his apprentice. The blacksmith had been drinking; his cheeks were ruddy with the very tip of his nose and ears a bright red. He hobbled over to Hiccup, his mug-appendage secured and sloshing pale amber with every limp.
"Hey Gobber—" Hiccup greeted nervously once his heart had slid from his throat back into his chest.
"Where th' devil have yeh bin, boy?" Gobber inquired loudly, and without waiting for an answer said, "Never mind, never mind! Whit matters is that yeh get tae make an appearance at yer party no matter how late. Come along—"
Gobber's intact arm encircled Hiccup's shoulders, herding the boy towards the now identifiable mesh of laughter and music.
"A p-party?" Hiccup's eyes followed the dotted trail of spilled drink up to the Meade Hall, where the doors were open and warm light spilled into the birth of twilight. "For what?"
"Fer you. Didn't I just say that?"
A curdled weight settled at the very base of Hiccup's stomach.
"Why?" he croaked out, but he already knew. He knew what the village thought of him now, and he hated it a little more each day.
Gobber didn't answer. Instead he called into the distance of their direction: "Here he is you lot!"
Hiccup tried to squirm from the large man's grip when he saw the oncoming crew bounding down the uneven rock steps.
"Gobber," he pushed at the wide belly, "really—this isn't—"
He didn't want this: all this undeserved attention. He thought he did—he once did—but now...
"Yer classmates have bin waitin' fer yeh," Gobber continued in that overly boisterous voice. He hugged Hiccup closer in what Hiccup assumed was an act of appreciation, but it only ended in spilling mead on his shoulder.
"Gobber," Hiccup grunted in his continued effort to dislodge the arm. "Gobber let—"
Gobber let go. For one shining moment Hiccup believed it to be a feat of his own strength. But then he found himself surrounded by the other trainees, and his face fell for the second time that night. There truly was no escape.
The twins pounced on him first.
"Where have you been?" Tuffnut shouted in his ear. His breath was rank with sweet alcohol. Hiccup couldn't answer even if he had thought of a suitable excuse; he had been jerked in another direction, the entirety of his left arm caught in a vice by Ruffnut.
"Yeah, where do you go?" Snotlout asked, crossing his arms. "I had to look for you forever. And I searched under the docks."
Again, Hiccup had no chance to answer, as Ruffnut had taken to hauling him up the steps she just descended from. His legs felt leaden, stumbling with the move—a subconscious act of defiance, perhaps.
Ruffnut hardly seemed fazed by his resistance.
"Why are you wet?" she asked. Her nose wrinkled as she examined the hair plastered to his temples and the damp ring around his collar. Hiccup opened his mouth, but he didn't think admitting to washing the remains of dragon fire from his hair would help his situation.
"I—I was just...washing up," he answered, dully.
"Were you training?" Fishlegs blurted the question as he huffed, trying to keep up with Ruffnut's fast pace. The girl's hold on him was iron, and she continued to drag Hiccup up the steps to the Meade Hall like he was nothing more than an empty scabbard. Hiccup could no longer feel his littlest finger and he quickly lost sensation in the next one.
He pretended he didn't hear the question as they leveled out before the Hall's entrance.
Snotlout jogged to the front of their fast moving group in time to lead them into the Meade Hall and his gait took on an air of importance. The noise and heat of a hundred partying Vikings assaulted Hiccup nearly as powerfully as Gobber had just moments ago. Smoke from so many torches had created a hazy atmosphere and Hiccup felt sticky just looking at the dribbled mead staining tunics and beards.
A thick hand patted Hiccup's shoulder. Gobber started to say something about taking Hiccup to see Stoick but Winifred the Wiggly passed by in the next moment and the impaired man followed.
The teens continued to move into the crowd, taking Hiccup with them, and paying no heed to Gobber's inattention. A few faces turned towards them and brightened upon seeing Hiccup. Mugs were raised in his direction; greetings shouted in the only volume a Viking knew how to address someone.
Hiccup could not see his father, but he saw Spitelout and Phlegma clanking pints, no doubt starting another one of their heinous bets. He saw Glume and Axel, arm-in-arm, laughing, and Kernella and Thorst spiting swears at one another.
One voice—though disembodied—stood out above the rest to him.
"I knew it, yeh see!" Stoick's bellow carried beyond the walls of the Meade Hall, his boasts reaching the shores of Bashem for sure. "He's th' offspring of me 'n' Val! Never really worried myself over it—just a bit of a late bloomer, that's all!"
Hiccup ducked away. A shame he couldn't quite understand had taken hold of him, leaving his conscience so shaken that he didn't care where Ruffnut guided him. He only knew he was not ready to face his father. He was not ready to received undeserved praise from that particular Viking.
"Hey Astrid!" Snotlout exclaimed jubilantly.
Hiccup decided that he might care where Ruffnut led him.
They arrived at one of the tables. The immediate spaces around Astrid were unoccupied, places held by unmanned drinks, which told Hiccup the others were seated here before and only left to find him. Astrid looked bored and more annoyed than usual. Her fingers drummed against the metal of her tankard. Hiccup had a sinking feeling her mood had much to do with the nonsense of this party being for him.
Ruffnut pointedly sat Hiccup on the other end of the table from Astrid, for which he was thankful; Astrid sent him such a scathing look upon spotting him that he thought she might attack him should he come any closer.
"We found him," Snotlout went on. "It took a while, because he was off doing that secret thing you can't really figure out—"
"Technically it was Gobber who found him," Fishlegs interjected, happily saving Snotlout from digging himself into an unseen grave. Hiccup gave Astrid one of his signature nervous smiles, which went coldly unreturned. Fishlegs turned to rest his weight on his forearm. "But you never told us what you were doing. Seriously, Hiccup, no one could find you for half the day."
"Yeah, Hiccup," Astrid said, her face pointed and shrewd. "What were you doing?"
"I..."
Flying, he wanted to say. Reaching heights Vikings had never dared hope to reach. He wanted to tell someone, gush about it, even, but he had no one. People crushed in around him, Ruffnut had her arm slung around his shoulders, his peers showered him with so much attention that it made his head spin—and in the midst of receiving everything he'd dreamed of from the shop's window, a profound sensation of melancholy crushed his heart. The truth of his isolation suffocated him.
He didn't know these people, just as they didn't know him. For the first time in his life, Hiccup was forced to admit that he was a stranger in his own village. He had no confidante among these people with whom he had spent his entire life. He could not trust them. Not with his secrets and not with the truth.
He could never trust them.
Hiccup felt cold; the noise of a hundred shouting Vikings fell away to a buzz. He wanted to be back in the cove right now. He wanted to go back to Toothless—Toothless, with whom he could share everything. His best friend.
"...and then I was like, 'my fingers can squeeze off your fingers' and he was all like, 'my snap is more powerful than your snap' so we started snapping at each other really hard, ya' know? And obviously he backed off..."
Hiccup blinked at the decidedly odd story Snotlout regaled their table with. He must have zoned out for too long because the attention had shifted away from him, with Tuffnut listening to his friend in rapt attention and Fishlegs frowning at the lack of credibility that Snotlout's story surely entailed.
He noticed Astrid glowering at him, likely because he never answered her question, and just as likely because she really seemed to hate him as the weeks went by. He would almost prefer being ignored by her again than continue to have her look at him with such hostility, especially when some sick part of him he could hardly control continued to ache for her approval.
"Don't mind her." Ruffnut leaned an elbow on the table, which helped to block the other girl from sight. "She's just sore because she's second for the first time in forever."
Ruffnut had that dreamy smile on her face again as she gazed into his eyes, but there lie a hint of satisfaction, perhaps even gratitude. She had always seemed so caught up in competing with her twin; never before did it occur to Hiccup that Ruffnut saw Astrid—the only other shieldmaiden-in-training of their class—as a rival.
"So how do you do it?" Ruffnut asked. Her voice had lowered to an excited whisper. She leaned forward as if waiting for him to reveal a childish secret.
"Look," Hiccup sighed, thinking he at least owed her some sort of explanation since the last thing he wanted was undeserved admiration, "I'm not some dragon-fighting prodigy, alright? I'm nothing like you think I am. They're all just flukes. She's still the best fighter."
He jerked his head toward the braided blonde on the other end of the table, aware of her glare and unwilling to risk meeting it.
"Whatever," Ruffnut blew off. She sat up some, annoyed at having Astrid brought into the conversation so positively despite her efforts to block her out. "I don't care how you do it. It's what you do, when you're doing it."
Hiccup sat back as well. He didn't understand.
"Huh?"
"How do you have the guts to risk yourself like that?"
"Er...what?"
Ruffnut's smile turned wistful as she played with one of her short braids. She leaned forward so much that Hiccup had to scoot along the bench to keep her from breaching his personal space.
"I've been watching you," Ruffnut said with her voice falling to a strangely sensual husk. "You close your eyes when the dragons charge you. Sometimes you drop your weapon. You approach them barehanded. You touch them. You do everything that should get you killed and you don't—you survive."
She drew in a shuddering breath, her lips curling at whatever she currently pictured in that terrifying imagination of hers.
"I..."
Hiccup's voice seemed to have failed him, as did the reason for Ruffnut's fur vest to suddenly not be on her shoulders. When had that happened? He only noticed because her shoulders curved inward as she pressed her advantage. He could see how smoothed they looked, softer than he thought anything on her could be and with freckles a shade lighter than his own...
Ruffnut leaned in closer and Hiccup realized he ran out of bench to shuffle back on.
"I like that you have the guts to do that in the first place," she said, her voice going softer and softer. "I never knew you had a taste for risks before."
There was nothing but the space between their faces left for her to cross. Hiccup swallowed with great difficulty. He must have forgotten to breathe for a while because he felt dizzy and unable to think. His eyes and body were not obeying him, for if they were he surely would have gotten up and looked anywhere but her lips.
She was going to kiss him. Her eyes had closed, her breath had stilled, her long, slender neck stretched out with the intent to bring their mouths together, and Hiccup just sat there, frozen.
Well, he thought with an air of defeat, Ruffnut was pretty enough.
And he was long overdue for his first kiss—one that wasn't from a demanding and inquisitive seven-year-old Camicazi (because she was a Bog and his father told him that they should not even be counted as women for all their barbaric tendencies).
"Hey gorgon!" Tuffnut yanked Ruffnut's hair back and her lips jerked away from Hiccup's before they ever made contact. Suddenly, Hiccup could move again; he could breathe and think again.
"Tuff!" Ruffnut shrieked. All her feminine wiles fled from her body language. She leapt off the bench like a crazed Terror and shot after her brother. Tuffnut managed to give Hiccup a subtle thumbs-up before he turned tail and disappeared into the thick press of large bodies.
Hiccup remained unmoving for a moment longer with no idea of what he should feel. Largely relieved, in control, perhaps a tiny-bit disappointed... seriously confused about Ruffnut's sincerity...even more so about her reasoning.
Maybe a bit more than a tiny-bit disappointed...
With a start, Hiccup realized that Fishlegs and Snotlout were gone, as were their drinks, and all those mixed, shallow feelings suddenly dissolved. A re-fill run was underway, which left only two at their table.
Astrid curled her lip, looking at him like he seduced Ruffnut into trying to kiss him.
Was she blind? Clearly he was the innocent party!
"Ruffnut brought up some good points—" Astrid said in a casual, easy-going voice that offset the heavy mistrust of her features. Hiccup was more surprised that she could hear them in the first place given the surrounding ruckus. "You do a lot of things that should get you killed, but it doesn't..."
Hiccup shrugged and tried to look innocent. His face felt very hot all of a sudden and he got the distinct impression it was obvious to everyone in the room. He knew he should be more concerned by Astrid and her prying but his mind insisted on clinging to the recent reception of female affection.
Had Ruffnut really been interested because of his daring and not because of the results? Had she been more interested in the guy who idiotically threw himself into danger rather than some dragon-whisperer? Giving it a second thought, Hiccup concluded that it seemed far more fitting for her crazy character than a misled infatuation for prowess.
Would that make it okay to let her kiss him?
"It doesn't," Astrid continued slowly. Hiccup started, thinking she had somehow gleaned his thoughts by sheer, intense staring. "It doesn't get you killed because you know it won't—"
Oh yes, his kill ring success.
"What? No, I—" His words jerked to a stop as quickly as they fled his mouth. How could he tell her it was the most terrifying part of every training session? Trying a new thing he learned from Toothless, facing the unknown, testing how far diversities stretched in dragons...
"You know things we don't," Astrid went on in that pace that told Hiccup the cogs were turning in her head, that she was piecing this together now. "Is someone telling you how to disarm dragons?"
"That's—" He took in a breath. He found her gaze unnerving. "That's not—"
"Is someone helping you prevent us from harming them? Because you don't. You never hurt them. You haven't hurt a single one."
Hiccup stilled. The accusation in her tone spoke volumes to him. She thought his methods as shamefully merciful towards an enemy.
"It's not our way," she said, sitting back in her chair. "You might have everyone else fooled, but I'm not buying this 'secret prodigy' thing you have going on."
"I'm not a prodigy," Hiccup said quietly—desperately—because he wanted her to believe him. "I'm just...I'm trying something new."
Astrid looked just as frustrated as he felt.
"We're not going to win the war by subduing them," she said. "They're not going to stop killing us just because we stand there and close our eyes. The only good dragon is a dead one—and until it's proven otherwise I suggest you start taking protecting our village seriously and stop...and stop playing around."
With his thoughts on Toothless, a hot flush of anger reared within Hiccup. He felt anger towards her, for being so Viking. But he was too afraid of accidently confronting her, in spurring her into taking this conversation to a more public level, so he turned his scowl to the table.
'You have no idea,' he wanted to say to her. 'Stop preaching about things you don't understand, things you've never bothered to question before.'
Gods, how he hated the way she made his stomach twist in on itself. She would be the last person he could trust, because she would be the first person to turn on him. If she ever knew...
"I will find out."
Hiccup gasped. His head snapped up to find her standing above him.
Looking up into her face—the shaded lighting sharpening her features, her jaw set in determination, her eyes cold with promise—Hiccup knew she was right. Someday, possibly someday soon, someone would find out. This charade could not go on forever.
Hiccup followed her cue and got up as well. He didn't stay to further trade words with her and he didn't bother to try and coax her into a mind frame of accepting dragons as something other than axe-fodder. Without another word he turned his back to her and walked from the Hall. No one stopped him, though a few did call out to him. It all went ignored as his feet mechanically brought him to the one place in Berk he considered safe: his cozy corner in Gobber's workshop.
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A/N: Missing movie scene! This was initially written as a spur-of-the-moment prompt for the movie line: "The village is throwing a party to celebrate!"
I have some By the Toe ideals in the Ruffnut interactions. That's honestly how I think her mental processes when during that whole See You Tomorrow Montage. She's in it for the crazies, ya'll.
Thanks to Gumdropboo for looking over this and helping with contextual edits (and some grammar). And, naturally, thank you all, so, so much for the reviews and the suggestions. I love hearing your ideas. Let me know how you found this chapter. Remember, this is a Missing Movie Scene that occurred before the Hitchups deviation, it's meant to fit in both worlds.
