A/N: I had a guest reviewer who was confused by the age gap between Hiccup and Astrid, so I'll do my best to explain it here. There are a lot of things that mirror my school district's policies. Entry year into kindergarten is based on one's birthday, the year you turn five, and there's a cut-off date midway through the summer. I calculated Hiccup's birthday to be in 1993 (August), whereas the rest of the gang was born over the latter half of '92 and the early half of '93, before the summer cut-off date. They were already five going on six when they began kindergarten and I figured that Astrid was one of those who was born late in '92. Because Hiccup was born after the summer cut-off date of 1993, he should have been shuffled into the graduating class of 2012, but Stoic pushed the matter. It's not like Hiccup wouldn't have been clever enough to keep up.
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 Eighteen: The Life Domestic
With the onset of a proper thunderstorm, the band was promptly dismissed for the day. Many parents had been lurking in the parking lot since the first few rumbles of thunder. Somehow, Hiccup got his friends to their respective homes without drifting into the other lane and made it safely back to his own driveway despite the way his eyes occasionally crossed. He heaved himself gratefully into bed and slept away most of the afternoon with rain battering his roof.
He spent Sunday doing nothing overly physical. Mostly, he caught up on the news (because he hated being the last person to hear about things), doodled his way through an art-dump, and made a token effort to organize some of the chaos in his room.
His room wasn't a mess, exactly. To the untrained eye, it did look like it could stand to undergo a thorough cleaning. He wasn't the person who made the bed every morning. Not all of his clean laundry made it into the closet and not all of his dirty laundry made it into the hamper. His bookshelf needed reorganization and dusting, and mopping the floor wouldn't have gone amiss.
It was a large room with gorgeous hardwood flooring and four tall wide windows, two on each outward wall. The loft bed occupied the immediate left-hand corner. Underneath it were two bean-bag chairs and a decent-sized television mounted on old milk crates. In the other left corner was the L-shaped desk that Hiccup had gotten for Christmas because his father favored practical gifts that could be made useful instead of getting put aside a few weeks later. Hiccup liked it because it made him feel professional, like he was sitting in a corner office with a view (even if one of the windows had a view of the garage's slanted roof).
On the right-hand side closest to the door was the closet, the ceiling of which reached up into the sloping roof, with plenty of shelf space and while he tried to keep it organized, he always seemed to be running out of hangers. In the far right-hand corner was a couch that Stoic had deemed as reaching retirement age, but it was still in good shape and he had been loathe to go through the trouble of dragging it out of the house and to a Goodwill store. The front door was jammed good, but the stairs were a lot closer and that was how it had ended up in Hiccup's bedroom.
There was a tall bookshelf between the east-facing windows and two corkboards above the desk, all overly cluttered and in need of being thinned out. Posters of all sorts were taped to the walls and a collage of photos covered up the exterior closet wall, showing the progression of ten years and four seasons of marching band. His waste-basket needed to be emptied and there was quite a stack of filled sketchbooks beside his desk.
It wasn't a mess, not really.
Well, it wasn't the worst it had ever been.
When Monday came, Hiccup was startled awake by the rip-roar of the lawn mower.
"--the fuck?..." he mumbled, jerking half-upright onto his elbows, sleep still clinging to him. He stared blearily at the windows across from him, his ears full of the sound of the lawn mower's noisy engine. It took him a moment to actually recognize what he was hearing.
"Ugh..." he groaned.
He reached up to the shelf behind him and dragged his phone off to check the time.
It was a quarter to nine.
"Fuuuck..." he moaned, rolling over and dragging the pillow over his head. After a moment, he gave up on the idea of going back to sleep and started the process of getting out of bed. Better that he kept getting early. School started on Wednesday.
Once he was dressed, he felt more motivated to actually hang up the clean laundry in the closet, and pitch the dirty laundry in the hamper. The amount of dirty laundry far outweighed the clean.
"Uh, I think it's laundry day."
He flipped the lid closed on the hamper and picked it up to carry it all the way downstairs to the basement.
The basement was partially finished. Stoic and Val had been the fix-it couple when they had first moved in, painting every room, restringing half the electrical wiring in the house and re-shingling the roof themselves. But the basement had gone unfinished. The dry wall was unpainted and the carpet was still oddly rough, the kind that would give you rug-burn. Hiccup suspected the basement was supposed to have become a rec room. The presence of a dusty poker table suggested as much.
But mostly, it was just storage. They didn't have an attic. Old pieces of furniture and boxes both labeled and unlabeled littered the floor. Somewhere, concealed among them, were Stoic's dragon traps.
One of the traps had been sprung by a young Terrible Terror. It must have been not long out of the nest. Terrors were sociable and typically traveled in large flocks, but the youngsters were known to go solo for a while. The little dragon was gnawing ineffectively on the wire mesh of the cage trap suspended off the floor. It chittered angrily at Hiccup as he passed with the laundry hamper. He ignored it as he sorted out the lights from the darks, then dumped a full load into the washer. It was only once he had gotten the wash cycle started did he walk over to the cage. The Terror cowered a little and furled its wings, making itself a smaller target, but Hiccup thought it looked more ashamed than afraid.
"Just because it's dark and smells a little like dry-rot doesn't mean it's a good place for little guys like you." Hiccup told the Terror, pulling at the clasps that would unhook the cage from the wire. How 'bout you try staying out of houses from now on, okay? Not everyone is going to be as courteous as me."
He carried the cage upstairs and outside. The summer air was muggy and the air hit him like a furnace. The August heat was really starting to settle in. He crossed the street to the empty field where he undid the springs and jostled the Terror out. The little dragon hit the air with its wings unfurled and flew off towards the trees with a kind of shame-faced expression. Hiccup watched it until it had disappeared among the green leaves. Then he folded the mesh cage down and grabbed the mail before he went back inside.
About an hour later, the mower finally cut out and Stoic walked into the house, wiping the sweat from his brow. He had carved out the usual ten-by-ten square in the back yard and had completely mowed down the front yard to the road-side. He went straight for the fridge first for a bottle of water and twisted the cap off, chugging half the water in a single gulp.
"Your car's looking dusty, son." he commented, walking into the living room where Hiccup was folding up the load of laundry that had been sitting in the dryer for the past week. "Is that my laundry?"
"Your circus tents? Yeah." Hiccup held up the massive shirt in front of him. He could have worn it as a dress. "There's a load of my stuff down in the washer. Could you remember to get it in the dryer?"
"You goin' out later?" Stoic asked.
"I gotta do some shopping for school. I need folders and notebooks, the usual crap." Hiccup replied. "And a new bag. My backpack's on its last legs. The straps are fraying and one of the zippers is definitely broken." He put the folded shirt down on the pile. "How 'bout you? Any plans for the day?"
"The usual round of complaints to look into." Stoic replied, sinking down onto the couch. "Overturned trash cans on the outside of town. Could be raccoons or Horrible Screechers."
"I hate Horrible Screechers."
"Everyone hates Horrible Screechers."
Horrible Screechers were dragons roughly the size of large dogs and were far more annoying than they were dangerous. They traveled in groups of three to five and were scavengers that knocked over trash cans and had learned how to undo the locking lids. Garbage-men were never surprised to find concrete blocks on the bins on trash day.
They also produced the most unholy sound in the universe. Like jet engines, grinding metal, and crying babies all at once. Draconologists described this ear-searing noise like an audial heart attack.
It was loud and sustained.
Worse, Screechers didn't make the noise at any predictable interval and they were nocturnal. Draconologists believed that the noise was the Screechers' way of marking territory, as their trademark vocalization could be heard for up to two miles.
They were definitely not allowed to stay in town.
"Also a report of someone keeping a dragon in their backyard. Gotta look into that. Could be another pet. Hope it's a small one again." Stoic prayed. He didn't want to investigate the claim and find out that some fuck-nut had been trying to keep a Gronckle in their backyard.
"Yeah, that Cheesepuff the other week was adorable." Hiccup grinned.
Cheesepuff dragons were eight inches in diameter, impossibly cute and perpetually cheerful. There was little reason to wonder why they had been so popular as pets back in the day. They were usually yellow and orange and that off-white color cheese sometimes came in; an observation that had led to their name. 'Puffball' had been considered, but that implied a certain amount of fur-related fluffiness.
The dragon had been a sweet little thing. Playful and cuddly. Obviously well-loved by its former owners, but keeping dragons as pets was very much illegal. The owners had complained and their young daughter had thrown a tantrum, but their only choices had been to either give up the dragon willingly or face a heavy fine and still give up the dragon.
"I still don't get why people even try. They know it's illegal to buy dragons like that and they still do it." Hiccup shook his head. He had never found a sufficient explanation for that.
"Because they think the law won't apply to them." was Stoic's answer. He had run into many owners, usually with very small children, who had tried to plead with him to let them be the one exception to the law. It would break their kids' hearts to give up the beloved dragon.
Stoic had taught himself not to be moved by the doe eyes and the hopeful pleading. The law was the law and as a Hunter, part of his job was to enforce the actual legal part of the Dragon Laws.
They had been created by Lady Geneva van Lier, of some faded British nobility. She had spent the Roaring Twenties calling herself the Voice for Dragon Rights. They were intelligent beasts, but had no means of communicating with humankind, so someone had to speak for them.
She would set up anywhere that she might draw a crowd and started ranting passionately about how people were cruelly separating hatchlings from their mothers and enslaving them to mankind. About how the treatment of dragons by humans degraded them, lowered them and made them something less than draconian. She had put together the list later known as the Dragon Laws.
Support for it and her campaign had swayed back and forth over the course of three decades before it had finally caught a firm hold in the early 1950s. New parents, especially -- G.I.s who had returned from the war to settle down and start families -- had pushed for the Laws to become common knowledge and even taught in schools. In 1955, three particular points had been signed into proper law.
The first: It was illegal to purposefully kill a dragon if you weren't a licensed Hunter. Not every dragon was invading a human space because it felt like being a territorial ass. Sometimes they were sick or injured. Sometimes they were nesting mothers. Sometimes they had just gotten lost. Hunters were required to perform an evaluation to determine whether or not the dragon was actually being a threat. The only exception was made for the Frilled and Hooded Whipspitters, which would never not be a danger to humans.
The second: Dragons were not to be raised as instruments of war. This law had been met with a lot of protest, as people felt it dismissed the courageous actions of the famous Nightmare Brigade, the messenger Terrors, and the very famous pair of Sergeant Olympia and Corporal Chester. The exact wording of the law unpleasantly implied that every service dragon had been little better than simple automatons and it went against the grain of what Lady van Lier had spent three decades working to accomplish.
The third: it was illegal to own dragons as pets. The buying and selling of dragons as pets was illegal. An industry that supported such a trade was illegal. It had once been a lively trend in the Roaring Twenties, the sale of Featherwing and Cheesepuff dragons to the children of the well-to-do. Small friendly dragons who didn't grow very large and were sweet-tempered enough to be kept indoors. But the real problem were the people who decided to bring home a baby Nadder or a Monstrous Nightmare, only to realize a year later these dragons were too big for their backyards.
It was illegal for the purpose of preserving the health and safety of the dragons.
It was the independence of dragons and the respect thereof where Lady van Lier had made her first stand.
Naturally, there was a black-market trade for pet dragons. Just because it had been made illegal didn't mean it had stopped.
Those who kept dragons for commercial use (the hide, horns and meat) had slipped through on a loophole, as they were not being kept for companionship and were not sold for the same reasons. The only thing Lady van Lier could really do was push for a regulation on flock size and an addendum to ensure that these "dragon wranglers" treated their stock humanely.
"They're stupid. They should know better." Hiccup complained. "I mean, the law is pretty darn clear on that point. Don't buy dragons as pets. Even I never asked. Of course, I've had a Night Fury following me around all my life and that's pretty cool."
He had also grown up all his life knowing exactly what the Laws were.
The rest of the "Laws" was more of a document that outlined proper behavior around dragons so neither the human nor the dragon got hurt. It boiled down to not approaching a dragon if you weren't a Hunter.
The only thing the laws didn't cover was what to do if the dragon approached you.
"People like to believe they're entitled, Hiccup. They want to be special. They want to be the one person in the entire world who understands dragons better than anyone else." Stoic explained.
"Ah, like Lady van Lier?" Hiccup said wryly. If he had been living in the 1920s, he might have been the voice to speak out against the noblewoman. Call her out on the fact she was spewing some total bullshit.
"They said she was a bit touched in the head." the Hunter agreed.
"Yeah, she did say that dragons and humans can never get along." Hiccup said, scowling.
"Son--" Stoic started, sensing where the topic was going.
"She said it a lot but it wasn't true. There have been a lot of recorded instances where--"
"Hiccup--"
"Where humans and dragons have been cooperative with each other--"
"Hiccup, those were isolated occurrences--"
"Don't give me that argument, Dad. The first half of the twentieth century alone suggests--"
"And the second half of the century reinforces the argument that human-dragon cooperation can't happen, as well as the preceding few centuries." Stoic said firmly, his tone stern enough to make Hiccup's momentum for the argument falter.
The sixteen-year old scowled. He was never able to get beyond opening remarks before his father shut him down.
"Don't give me that face son. There's five hundred years worth of history against you. It's not my fault." Stoic said in that light, almost joking tone he used when he wanted to assure that there were no hard feelings.
"Well, maybe if you just let me finish laying out my argument first..." Hiccup muttered, tossing the folded shirt down. He didn't speak so loud that his dad heard him; he timed it for when Stoic was inhaling another gulp of water.
"You say something?" the man asked, having caught the tail-end of the mutter.
"No, no. Just thinking out loud." Hiccup paired up the last set of socks and put them down on the pile. "Okay, actually put these away this time, Dad, and don't leave them lying around like I usually do."
"Stop trying to sound like your mother. You can't do the nagging tone right." Stoic said. He scruffed a hand over his son's hair, leaving it mussed and sticking up. "You clean up your room?"
"It's cleaner." Hiccup replied, smoothing down his hair with a hand. "Do you need me to grab anything while I'm out today?"
Stoic thought for a moment. He was pretty sure he was well-stocked for the new two weeks, having gone to the store just Friday. But it was usually inevitable that he would miss something.
"Nothing off the top of my head." he answered after a moment. "But I've got to head out myself. About a dozen people, I'd say, phoned in to tell me there was a Thunderdrum in the river."
"Wai- What?" Hiccup almost dropped the laundry basket on his foot. "Thunderdrums are-- They're Tidal-class dragons. They live on ocean coastlines. Tide pools, sea caves. They don't go more than twenty miles from the water! What's a Thunderdrum doing this far inland? We're well over a thousand miles from the ocean!"
"No idea. Could have gotten lost in a storm. Could have been picked up and got dropped by another dragon." Stoic shrugged. His job wasn't to figure out how the Thunderdrum had made it to the Berk River. It was his job to get it out of Berk River. "Could have deliberately swum down the Saint Lawrence Seaway and through the Great Lakes. The river system is pretty well-connected through this area."
Hiccup frowned. "Don't they live in saltwater too?"
"They can survive in freshwater. As long as the hunting's good."
And the trout fishing was pretty good in this area. They had a glut of salmon every year, so much that swimming was not recommended. A stranded Thunderdrum would not want for food.
"So how's Marie doing?" Stoic asked. "She looked a little- awkward when I saw her Friday."
"Oh, I sort of kneed her in the ass on Wednesday. She says the bruise is huge." Hiccup shrugged. "She's still alive and kicking and I still can't tell if the world is worse off for it."
"And how's Astrid?" Stoic asked in the would-be casual tone that said: 'Don't mind me asking and pretend I'm not invested in the answer.'
"You mean 'how I am doing with Astrid'." Hiccup corrected. He could see right through his father. "If you must know, traitorous parent betting on my love life, Astrid and I are still friends."
Stoic canted a bushy eyebrow. "Still just friends?"
Hiccup expected to be able to throw out a witty reply, but instead his shoulders slumped and he mumbled out: "Yes." Then he turned and flopped down onto the couch beside the pile of laundry, putting his hands over his face.
"Son..." Stoic just placed his hand on the boy's shoulder in solidarity. This wasn't quite teenage heartbreak, but it was clear that the road for Hiccup was a lot more twisting than it had ever been for Stoic.
"What seems to be the problem?" he asked.
"I don't know!" Hiccup threw up his hands. "I mean, we're friends and I like that, but how do I tell her that I want to be a little more than just friends and how do I tell her that in a way that doesn't offend her?"
"Are you worried about offending her by expressing your feelings?" Stoic asked.
"Yes! What if she laughs? What if she throws it back in my face?" Hiccup asked in horror, gripping his face so hard his knuckles turned white. "I never know what she's thinking! She gets -- fight-flirty."
"Fight-flirty?"
"She starts flirting and then it's like she suddenly realizes what's going on and has to either threaten me or punch me in the arm to reassert that she in fact a big strong woman who don't need no man." Hiccup explained. "It's weird. It's just weird. I don't know what to make of it. I mean, how did you and Mom...?"
He trailed off uncertainly. Talking about his mother wasn't a taboo thing, but Stoic always got this look on his face, half-nostalgia and half emotional pain. Seeing it hurt and that made Hiccup loathe to bring up the subject more often.
Stoic shook his head. "It wasn't like this for me, son. Val and I, well... I don't think there was any epiphany. I think we just grew into it. Like we were always supposed to."
"That really doesn't help me." Hiccup said. He huffed, sinking into the couch cushions. "I swear I've done everything short of actually telling her-- I would tell her, I mean, but I don't think I can get the words out, so how the hell do I say it without actually saying it?"
"Take her on a date." Stoic suggested
Hiccup froze. "A date?"
"Yes, then call it a date. Not your usual 'it's not a date, I swear' night out. Call it a date. Make an evening of it. Meet her at the door, bring her flowers and stay out past midnight." the hunter advised. "If nothing else, that will tell Astrid that you're interested in taking things a step further. Then the next move is hers."
Frankly, Hiccup thought that sounded like a very bad idea. When it came to Astrid, he always felt like he needed to have the upper hand just to survive those moments where she decided to flirt with him.
"Well, it's a thought." Stoic shrugged, slapping a hand down on Hiccup's knee, and then pushed himself up. "I've got a Thunderdrum and some Screechers to deal with. You need to kit up for school, so get a move on."
He collected his laundry from the other couch cushion and kicked the laundry basket out of the way, leaving Hiccup to turn the idea over in his head. Take Astrid out on a date. A proper date-like date thing that boyfriends and girlfriends did. Like an actual date where he asked her to go on a date with him in those exact words and they would keep calling it that all night.
A DATE.
Hiccup shivered, furiously stirring his fingers through his hair like it was full of spiders, and tried to shake off the oddest feeling of impending doom. It wasn't a big deal. People went on dates all the time and they didn't act like the idea was a ball of molten lava. Surely, the act of just asking Astrid wouldn't cause the world to implode. Really, the worst she could do was say 'no'.
No, wait... The actual worst she could do was say 'yes'.