A/N: Here's the other half of the old chpt2, now legitimately a chapter all on its own.
Now, before I completely forget (again), there's a fanart link in my profile. A wonderful individual drew me lovely art of Marie. Have a look at it, please!
Also... Fuck you, Tumblr. Fuck you very much.
Disclaimer: I do not own How to Train Your Dragon. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.
How to Train Your Marching Band
Chapter Three: The Importance of Chalk
Hiccup stared briefly death in the eyes.
More accurately, he stared into the eyes of Astrid Hofferson (his long-time crush and equally long-time best friend). It was like staring death in the eyes because the colorguard captain personified the expression: "If looks could kill".
She also had killer looks.
"Astrid!" Hiccup yelped, very un-manly-like, suddenly finding a need to wipe his palms on his trouser legs. "Hey-- Astrid! Hi Astrid! Hi-- Astrid!" He looked away briefly. "We weren't talking about you."
Marie giggled. "And if you believe that, I know a place that buys and sells used magic carpets."
"Would you go away?" he requested.
"Aye-aye, mon capitan!" Marie saluted him and flounced off in the direction of the vending machines, coins rattling in her hand.
"So..." Astrid turned those incredibly blue eyes of hers back to him and narrowed them even further. It was even worse because her voice remained unassuming. "What were you two talking about?"
Hiccup would have back-pedaled frantically if he'd had anywhere to go. His back was to the railing and Astrid wasn't standing far enough away for him to make an easy escape. She must have arrived while they had been contemplating the painting of the school mascot and then followed the voices.
There wasn't "much" to Astrid. She had been an amateur dancer for longer than Hiccup had known her (apparently, she was now too tall to dance professionally as far as the local companies were concerned) and this regime had aggressively shaped her body to what most people would consider "slender". She wasn't big, but it was indisputable that she was still bigger than Hiccup (who was two inches shorter than her and proportioned exactly like a whippy tree sapling).
And that whole personifying "If looks could kill" thing? Yeah, that just made it seem much more likely that she would be able to snap him down the middle.
"Not you." Hiccup replied quickly. "I mean, we were sort of talking about you, but not really. Your name just sort of came up in the conversation, but we weren't talking about you-you-"
"Hiccup!" Astrid said sharply. Her tone alone was enough to put a stop to his babbling. "Stop talking. Before you confuse yourself. Now, did I or did I not hear you say that you'd kiss me for free?"
Hiccup hesitated for half a second as he contemplated various ways out of this conversation. He had been friends with Astrid since forever; since kindergarten, when she had declared him "Hiccup" and then punched him on the arm for hogging the black crayons (he had been "Hiccup" to everyone ever since). This made it simultaneously easy and very difficult to talk to her, knowing very well how she would react to the things he said.
"No matter what I say, you're still thinking about punching me." he concluded after the moment was up.
"Well, that depends entirely on your answer." Astrid replied cryptically, casually examining her knuckles.
"So if it doesn't matter what I say, I just won't-- say anything." Hiccup decided. It seemed like the safest option. Sometimes, silence was his very best friend. (Other times, it was his worst enemy.)
"Not good enough." Astrid told him, extending her fingers to take a quick look at her nails. "I want to know why you kissing me for free is such a big deal. For that matter, who wants to pay you to kiss me?"
"Marie. Kill her instead!" Hiccup replied quickly, eager to get that laser-focused attention off of himself.
"I'm not killing anyone. Not today." Astrid said assuringly, her aggressive body language backing down into something much more approachable. "If it makes you feel better, I'd kiss you for free."
Hiccup felt his face flush. "R-Really?" His voice squeaked with some last remnant of puberty. Astrid smiled sweetly and Hiccup felt something in his ribcage turn to mush. He loved her smile. He had never seen another girl smile the way Astrid could. Anytime Marie or Ruffnut smiled, it gave the impression they were about to engage in sadistic and/or depraved activities, something that would probably end with his boxers around his ankles and glue in his hair (it had happened before).
"But if you ever tell anyone I said that," Astrid growled, her demeanor turning threatening. She poked a warning finger hard into the flesh of his shoulder. "You won't have any lips to kiss with."
Hiccup almost said something in reply that would have suggested that Astrid was implying herself to be either a paid prostitute or an easy lay. He almost said something like that. The words were dangerously close to the tip of his tongue.
He was better at curbing his sarcastic streak these days. Like a twenty-five percent success rate, especially when faced with the prospect of not inspiring Astrid to throw him over the railing. He was going to see her pretty much every day for the next three months and the last thing he wanted to was piss her off badly enough to turn the next three months into a rough equivalent of hell.
"So, uh... W-What are you doing here this early?" Hiccup asked, hoping this new topic wouldn't involve who would do what for free.
Astrid shrugged and crossed her arms. "Trying to be responsible." she replied, starting back towards the band suite door and Hiccup followed. "The colorguard room got turned into a pit over the summer, so I have to clean it up a little before everyone else gets here."
"And to think you teased us about cluttering up the instrument lockers." Hiccup commented.
"Hey, a couple of water bottles and some chalk dust is nothing compared to that landfill you two had going on." Astrid pointed out. "How long did it take you to clean it all out?"
"We got it done before our rookies turned up." Hiccup reminded her. "And you could have said something about us having rookies this year instead of making it a big secret."
"Aw, but the look on your face was great!" Astrid laughed. "It was so cute that you took all your little rookies down to the Dairy Barn for ice cream!"
Hiccup grumbled incoherently and crossed his arms. "We had to do something with them. Because everyone thought it would be a great laugh to keep it a secret from both of us." he snapped in a not particularly harsh tone. As far as he had been able to tell, the entire band had known that the clarinets were getting rookies this year, except for the section itself. He still couldn't figure out why his fellow band-mates had seen fit to keep it a secret. Even Gobber hadn't told them and he had certainly known weeks in advance.
"Oh cheer up, Hiccup!" Astrid whacked him across a shoulder with the flat of her hand, hard enough to make him stagger into the block wall that lined the interior hallway of the band suite. "I know you and Marie were worried about the section crumbling and dying next year."
"I was worried that Gobber would have to recruit some saxophones into the section this year. Or forcibly draft some of the eighth graders if we didn't get any." Hiccup admitted. "I really don't mind the saxophones, but I don't think either of us would survive the weirdness."
Astrid frowned. "But Marie is weird enough to give the saxes a good run." she pointed out. She lowered her voice to a whisper and added: "Remember the gummy worms?"
"Thanks, Astrid. Now I know what my nightmares will be about tonight." Hiccup did not like thinking about the gummy worms. No one liked thinking about the gummy worms, except for Marie and Ruffnut, who did so with fond nostalgia. "Look, it's a different kind of weirdness. Two different wavelengths. Clarinet weirdness and sax weirdness just don't harmonize well."
He ended this by waving his hands around one another, as if attempting to demonstrate the magnetic un-attraction between the Brand of Weird employed by the saxophones and the Brand of Weird employed by the clarinets. Astrid watched the hand-waving, mostly understanding what the section leader was trying to tell her, if only by dint of having known him for years and because of watching band members interact with one another. While all band members were inherently weird, there was a marked difference in the collective personality of each section and naturally, personalities were known to clash.
"Anyways," Astrid started, changing the subject when they hit the stairs. "Do you know who all is here yet?"
"Other than Gobber and the drum majors, I think we're the first ones." Hiccup replied. "And only because my dad went crazy and decided I needed to be responsible and got me up way too early."
"Don't you have an alarm clock?"
"The Night Fury ate it. No, I'm not kidding. It must have annoyed him too, because one morning he just stuck his head through the window and chewed on the thing for a while."
"Doesn't your phone have an alarm feature?"
"Yeah, but the last couple of times I tried to set it, it went off at weird hours. I gave up."
Astrid shook her head in resignation.
"What? It's not like I'm doing this on purpose." Hiccup pointed out. His various misadventures with modern technology and the Night Fury tended to cause his friends to question his sanity and more so the sanity of his father for letting the Night Fury stick around.
"I just can't believe you keep your windows open even though a dragon sleeps on your roof."
"My house wasn't built in a time when air conditioning came standard. It's either open my windows or marinate in my own sweat."
They reached the clarinet lockers just in time for Marie to hear the last part of the statement and she piped in: "And that's disgusting!"
"See, exactly. Thank you." Hiccup nodded, pleased with the sectional solidarity and the complete understanding of what it was like to live without air conditioning. "Anyways, it's not like the Night Fury can fit through my window."
"Even so..." Astrid rolled her eyes. Sane people weren't keen on having dragons hanging around just outside of the house. They were far less keen to throw open their windows and let the dragon stick its head in.
"Sanity is overrated." Marie commented, as if she had read the colorguard captain's mind. She had climbed the instrument lockers for the clarinets and was shoulder-deep in her own locker, rummaging around presumably for her charts.
"Hey while you're up there, grab my charts, will you?" Hiccup requested. His locker was right next to hers, after all.
"Get them yourself. You're not an invalid." Marie complained, finally extracting a roll of half a dozen pages stapled together and an empty water bottle caught between the pages.
"You're already up there." Hiccup pointed out.
Marie promptly jumped off. "Now I'm not." She chucked the empty water bottle into the back of the locker. "Y'know, it's starting to look like we didn't clean at all. Astrid, sleep well?"
Like the phrase was magic, Astrid smothered a yawn. "First day of band camp, who does? Just hope all my rookies get here on time with chalk and water and everything." she said. Rookie members made up the majority of her section this year and she was mostly convinced that they were going to forget the important things.
"Hey Marie, you brought chalk right?" Hiccup asked, while Astrid dug into her bag for her sunscreen (despite being colorguard and having a room of their own, Astrid liked to invade the clarinets' section).
"Oh Hiccup, you should know me by now." Marie reached into the bottom of her bag and unearthed a large tub of chalk that had to weigh at least ten pounds.
Hiccup did a double-take. He was used to his section-mate pulling items out of her backpack that shouldn't necessarily fit, but it always worth a second look or three whenever the larger items came out.
"How the hell did you fit that in there on top of everything else?" Astrid asked incredulously, her eyes wide.
"Like I said, you should know me by now. I'm good at this." Marie replied. She set down the tub with a thud that shook the bench and pried up the lid. "This thing has just about every color of the rainbow and some I think the rainbow rejected on the account of being too obnoxious. Toxic biohazard colors, neon, pastels, these hurt my eyes to look at them too long..." She held up a stick colored an unusual shade of pale green. "And I think this one glows in the dark."
"Dude!"
A blonde blur that was roughly human-shaped slammed into Marie at a dangerous speed. When it settled, it had wrapped lanky arms around the clarinetist and was identified as Ruffnut Thorston.
"If that chalk really does glow in the dark, I want it." she said, twitchy fingers already reaching for the chalk stick. "Because I am your best friend and you love me."
"No way!" Another blonde blur with the same proportions as Ruffnut darted in and swiped the chalk out of Marie's hand like a dive-bombing bird of prey. Tuffnut held it up proudly. "She's gonna give it to me 'cause I'm her best friend!"
"No she's not! That's my chalk!" Ruffnut shouted and leapt on her brother (the relation would be denied until the world exploded).
"Ow, let go!"
The Thorston twins, Ruffnut and Tuffnut (they did have real names, but no amount of poking around had ever led Hiccup to finding out what those names were), were the sort of siblings who expressed affection for each other by concussing the other. From the outside, they seemed to hate each other to a violent extreme and sometimes the group had to assure complete strangers that no, it really wasn't what it looked like. They fought over everything for the sake of fighting over everything.
The twins looked quite silly grappling over something that was barely five inches long and would be used up before the end of the month, but none of the assembled were going to tell them that.
"Get your own, asshole!"
"Take that one; it's pink. Girls like pink."
A self-proclaimed tomboy to the bitter end, Ruffnut did not take kindly to someone suggesting she should be visibly girly by owning things that were pink and/or frilly. She yanked the coveted piece of chalk free and smashed her brother savagely over the head with her fist.
"Oops! Now this one has blood on it."
Both of the twins must have been born with the thickest skulls on the planet because Tuffnut didn't even looked remotely dazed from the blow, but Astrid stepped in anyways and snagged the chalk out of Ruffnut's hand.
"Hey! Astrid! That's mine!" the female twin protested, lunging after the chalk that was rapidly disappearing behind Astrid's back.
"If you two are going to fight over it, neither of you gets the chalk!" the colorguard captain said firmly, passing it to Hiccup while easily holding Ruffnut off. "Technically, it belongs to Marie. She should get to decide who uses it."
"I'm not touching it if it's got Tuffnut's blood on it." Marie muttered, her expression faintly disgusted.
"But it glows in the dark!" Tuffnut pointed out, shoving his twin out of the way. "Gimme the chalk, Astrid."
"Astrid, I'm your friend! Give me the chalk!" Ruffnut wheedled, kicking her brother in the shins. "We have to stand united against the stupidity of boys!"
"I'm not stupid, you're stupid!"
"You take the pink one!"
"I'm not a girl!"
"Your hair's long enough!"
And then they were off again, grappling and growling over another stupid thing, like usual. It was just the way it happened to be. The twins couldn't go two minutes without finding something to fight about: who did better on the last test, whose butt was encroaching on the other's seat or who could eat more of a hamburger in one bite. It was the way they bonded and frankly, Hiccup would get worried that, if one day, the twins failed to get snippy at each other over the little things. And since the twins were pretty much incapable of brutally injuring each other (bumps, bruises and scrapes were ignored so long as they didn't interfere with marching and playing abilities), Gobber let them go about their business.
Someone cleared their throat in a decidedly disapproving manner and the twins froze like icy water had been thrown on them. The assembled band geeks looked to find a lone trumpet rookie busy staring at his joint section leaders caught in the act of attempting to strangle each other.
"It's -- just a piece of chalk, you guys." he said, his eyes darting around, uncertain in the faces with half a dozen seniors.
"Just a piece of chalk? Did you say this was just a piece of chalk?" Hiccup asked, an eyebrow arched sharply. He was feeling a little dramatic today. "It's hardly a piece of chalk. Don't you know what chalk does to you?"
The trumpet rookie shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving the senior. His expression suggested two things; one that he thought the older teen was completely mental and two, if he came any closer, the rookie was going to run for the hills. But Hiccup sidled into arm's length without the rookie bolting for it and waved the chalk stick under the kid's nose.
"This week, you're going to learn something very important. Chalk isn't normal." he intoned, putting arm around the kid's shoulders when the rookie made a motion like he was going to run. "You wouldn't think-- See, you just have to use it. Just once. And then it's got you in its clutches. But you don't realize it and you go on using it to mark your charts like everything's all fine and dandy. Until one day... You lose it. Or use it up. And then you freak out, because it's only when you lose the chalk that you finally realize that there's more chalk dust in your veins than there is blood. You don't control the chalk anymore. The chalk controls you!"
Hiccup thrust the stick into the air with a melodramatic flair.
"And this is glow-in-the-dark chalk. This is a god among chalk pieces. All hail the mighty glow-in-the-dark chalk!"
His friends obliged him fantastically and flattened themselves to the floor, proclaiming that they were not worthy to be in the presence of the lordly chalk stick. Despite looking quite freaked out, the rookie was otherwise unimpressed.
"You guys are -- kind of weird." he said. He said it politely because he was trying not to offend, but it was clear he thought they had lost their minds. He pushed Hiccup's arm off and walked off to find someone who still had their sanity.
"You're the only rookie here right now!" Marie called after him warningly. She looked at twins as they all stood back up. "What's wrong with that kid? We had our rookies warped by the end of June and that's coming from the section that went without rookies for three years."
"Whaddya think we've been trying to do?" Ruffnut said in an aggrieved tone. She rolled her eyes. "I mean, the others are coming along fine, but with him, it's like trying to get a brick wall to make a face."
"Yeah, I never thought it would be so hard to get someone to crack a smile." Tuffnut agreed, scowling in the direction the rookie had left. "Marching band is serious business, but you can only take it so seriously. And seriously, who gets the chalk?"
No way was his sister getting that awesome piece of chalk.
"If we're worshipping it now, no one gets to use it." Marie decided.
"Ah Berk County, the only place in North America that still holds the Norse pantheon in some reverence." Hiccup commented, trying hard to smother a laugh. "'Course, it's only some reverence if we're dumping them for something that falls apart in the rain."
"What are we doing this time? Did Astrid have another bad idea?" asked a voice that was more welcome than the too-serious trumpet rookie, but only marginally more so. Strolling towards them like he had just been declared king of everything was Snotlout Jorgenson. He was Hiccup's cousin on his mother's side, but the resemblance was hardly obvious as both cousins took after their respective fathers.
"No bad ideas this time, we're just thinking about building a shrine to a stick of glow-in-the-dark chalk." Hiccup informed him casually. Snotlout made a confused face and moved in for a better look.
"That thing looks like a penis." he stated.
"He blasphemes the Chalk!" Marie whispered while the twins hissed and made warding gestures.
Astrid crossed her arms and frowned. "And why do you think it looks like penis?"
"Duh! Because I got one." Snotlout said, waving a hand in the general vicinity of his crotch.
One of Tuffnut's blond eyebrows crawled up his forehead. "You go around staring at your own dick?"
"Dude, that's too much information." Ruffnut groaned in disgust. She put a hand over her lips. "I think I just threw up in my mouth a little."
"Wow Snotlout, there are things about you I could have happily died not knowing about." Marie said, disgusted. She waved a hand like she could physically banish the words.
"What? That's just what I noticed!" Snotlout said defensively. "It looks like a penis!"
"I think Freud would have something to say about that." Astrid muttered.
Hiccup raised a hand. "I don't like thinking about why you're so keen to compare your dick to everything, but if we're on that track... Does that mean yours is short and thin too?"
The twins cackled most immaturely
"Does it glow in the dark?" Ruffnut asked, grinning evilly.
"Does constant use wear it down?" Tuffnut asked, sharing the evil grin.
They exchanged celebratory high-fives.
"Marie, give me something to throw at them." Snotlout demanded, holding out a hand. His cheeks had turned a ruddy red color.
Marie checked her bag's contents. "Would you like the squishy pillow or my spare socks?"
"Give me something hard!"
"Snotlout, I don't have the equipment for that."
The twins broke into another round of hysterical cackling. Astrid raised her hand to her mouth to mostly hide the fact she was smiling. Hiccup wasn't quite so polite and grinned shamelessly. Snotlout had left himself wide open for that one. It was hugely satisfying watching his cousin get knocked down a peg or two; especially since Snotlout had liked to knock him into mud puddles when they were younger. It was karma coming back around to bite him in the ass. It was a beautiful thing to watch.
"Alright, c'mon guys. That's enough." Nonetheless, Hiccup was the first to step forward. Snotlout was fairly red in the face by this point and he wasn't known for being a gentleman. While Marie could duck and dodge with the best of them and her fighting style of clinging to her opponent like a monkey until they fell over was generally successful, Hiccup didn't want his section-mate (or his cousin, really) to get hurt. He'd rather that neither of them be out of commission at any point during the season; particularly not on the first day of band camp.
"We're seniors this year. We're supposed to set a good example for our rookies. I'm sure that's why we're all here ridiculously early." he went on. He put on a sardonic tone. "That means no maiming each other, farting in cramped places, or hazing the rookies by making them climb onto the school roof."
"Wait, I thought we were supposed to do that." Tuffnut said. He looked confused. He remembered his rookie year with great clarity and he was certain all of that had happened anyways.
"I'm being sarcastic." Hiccup said, frowning slightly. "Except for the part about setting good examples. We're definitely supposed to do that." He turned to the twins. "Ruff, Tuff, you both need to be alive at the end of the season, preferably in one piece each. Marie, no horror stories. And don't-- make more horror story fodder. Let's have at least one season where no one runs away from you screaming and traumatized. Most of the rookies think we're all scary enough as it is."
Marie held up a hand and shook her head. "No promises, o mighty section leader."
"Snotlout, Gobber wanted me to tell you that if you keep chucking your drumsticks at the trumpets, Beth has permission to duct tape them to your hands." Hiccup informed his cousin.
"What? She can't do that!" Snotlout protested. He was just throwing them at the twins because they kept flipping him off. His aim just happened to be a little bad, that was all.
"Actually, she can. Section leader, drum major, so... Yeah." Hiccup shrugged. He looked around briefly -- it looked like Fishlegs was going to be slightly less responsible and would show up at a more reasonable hour. "Astrid... You've done great so far. Keep up the good work."
Astrid smiled, perhaps a little smugly.
"Yeah, yeah, suck up to her." Tuffnut said sneeringly.
"Quiet fool!" Marie slapped a hand over his mouth, using her other hand to grab his shoulders and shake him. "He might make progress!"
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