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Hiccup’s heart thumped wildly in his chest, so loud he worried she could hear it in the confined space.
Astrid Hofferson fiddled with her phone in the darkness of the closet, lighting up the flashlight so they could see. She was so close he could smell the clean flowery scent of her shampoo and hear the cursing under her breath.
He had to admit, in all his wildest fantasies, he never thought he’d end up in a situation like this.
He wasn’t even sure how he had gotten into this mess. His parents were on a week long cruise for their anniversary, so Hiccup and his cat were staying with his cousin. Everything quickly went downhill when his aunt and uncle went out for the evening and Snot’s friends showed up with a bottle of tequila, apparently acquired by shady underage means.
His anxiety didn’t get any better when he discovered Astrid was among the group. He was sitting at the kitchen table, trying to study for his calculus midterm exam when Snot directed everyone to the finished basement to consume said bottle of tequila.
Hiccup had no intentions of following, uncomfortable with half of the company and the choice in beverage. He really didn’t want Snot and Tuff teasing him over his inability to hold his liquor, but Ruff dangled bait right in front of his face and like an idiot he walked straight into the trap.
“Hiccup, are you going to come down too?” Heather asked, giggling. Ruff elbowed her.
“What? No!” Snot said, turning around on the stairs. “He’s studying, he doesn’t drink.”
“Shh, Snot,” Heather chided. “It’ll be really fun. You should come.”
“Ah, I- um…” Hiccup deliberated.
“Don’t you want to hang out with me and Heather? And Astrid?” Ruff asked innocently.
Hiccup raised his eyebrows and before rational thought kicked in his body was moving on its own accord, stumbling over the chair leg as he followed the rest of them into some good old peer pressure fun.
Something was going on between the three girls. Ruff and Heather were gleefully whispering behind Astrid’s back while they headed downstairs.
As the group settled into chairs and couches, Hiccup didn’t miss the way Ruff lounged next to Astrid on the sofa until everyone had a seat but him. When he approached, she slid over to the other side, purposely leaving the middle seat open. He sat down next to Astrid self consciously, careful to leave a respectable space between them. She appeared agitated and he didn’t want any of that ire directed at him.
Tuff was digging behind the basement bar looking for salt and shot glasses when Ruff and Heather suggested a fun little game of Truth or Dare. Astrid glared daggers at them.
Hiccup was regretting coming down with every passing second and this suggestion almost sent him into a full blown panic. He felt entirely out of his element.
“Oooh, Truth or Dare, nice, nice,” Snot said, rubbing his chin and kicking back in a recliner. “Just, nobody dare me to do anything embarrassing with Astrid, okay? Like that would be super uncool, guys.”
“Not transparent at all, Snot,” Astrid muttered, rolling her eyes.
“Alright,” Tuff said, bringing over the glasses he found. “Rules are, you can choose truth or dare. If you don’t want to do the dare or answer the question, the asker can designate a certain amount of shots you have to take. There is no opting out.”
“Sounds good to me,” Ruff said. Heather nodded.
Fish chewed on his fingernails anxiously and Hiccup had a bad feeling about all of this.
That feeling was compounded when Ruff went first and dared Snot to drink three shots or wear Tuff’s underwear on his head for the duration of the game.
“Ew, fuck that! I’m not wearing his nasty ass tightie whities on my noodle. Give me the shots.”
Tuff passed the bottle and a shot glass. “Really, I’m offended. I wear neither the tightie whities nor are they nasty.”
“Oh yeah?” Snot challenged. “When’s the last time you changed your underwear?”
“Uh, a week ago, duh,” Tuff said, rolling his eyes. “Perfectly good.”
Snot blanched. “Wha- a whole fucking week ago?! That’s so gross!”
“What? Isn’t that normal?”
“No!” Ruff said, throwing a couch pillow at him. “It’s disgusting.”
“I might need an extra one,” Snot complained as he licked salt off his hand and downed the shots. “So, my turn then? Mmmmmmm Astrid.”
Astrid growled under her breath. “Whatever. Truth.”
“Take ten shots or answer the question. Do you, like, totally have a crush on me?”
“No,” she deadpanned, and Snot grumbled to himself.
Hiccup held in a sigh of relief. Astrid never gave any sort of indication Snot’s feelings were requited, but it was encouraging to hear the confirmation nonetheless.
“Fish, truth or dare.” Astrid nodded at him.
Fish squirmed in his seat. “Um… ahh… oh goodness, um?”
“Not that hard, Fish,” Astrid said impatiently.
“Fine, oh goodness… truth!” he said, hunching in his seat.
“Have you ever stolen any of the VA club equipment? If you don’t want to answer take a shot.”
Fish looked extremely guilty. “Ah… oh alright! I did! Please don’t tell anyone, it was only a voice recorder, it was old and they wouldn’t miss it anyway-”
“Fish, no one cares about your stupid audio equipment,” Snot said grumpily, still bitter about how quickly Astrid had answered his question.
“Okay, um, Heather,” he said shyly. “Truth or dare.”
“Truth,” she smiled at him.
“Did you enjoy our first kiss?”
Snot and Tuff audibly groaned.
“I did,” Heather said. “A lot.”
“That’s even more gross than the thought of wearing Tuff’s week old underwear on my head.” Snot stuck out his tongue. “Also boring. Spice this up guys, I’m falling asleep here.”
“Astrid,” Heather said. “Truth or dare.”
“What? Why me, I just went!” she protested.
Heather shrugged. “I pick you, there aren’t any rules saying I can’t.”
“Fine! Whatever. Truth.”
“If you don’t have a crush on Snot, who do you have a crush on then?” Heather said slyly.
Astrid narrowed her eyes at Heather and Hiccup was certainly glad he wasn’t on the receiving end of that. His heart pounded against his ribs, wondering what she would say.
“And if I don’t want to answer?” Astrid said icily. “How many shots.”
“Five.”
“What? Why five?!”
“Maybe because I really want you to answer the question,” Heather said.
Astrid shook her head. “No one.”
“That’s a lie,” Ruff said, jumping in.
Astrid turned her ice glare in Ruff’s direction. “Yeah? You can’t prove it. No. One. Moving on.”
Ruff just shook her head at Astrid and steepled her fingers in an alarmingly conniving way. “That’s fine. The game’s only just begun, sweet cheeks.”
“Tuff. Truth or dare,” Astrid said irritably.
“Oh! Dare!”
“Dare you to streak around the house or take three shots.”
“Oh, whoa! First of all, no one want to see that-” Snot proclaimed, but Tuff had already stood up and was taking off his pants. “Ah! Oh my God, at least go upstairs first!” He hid his eyes with his hand.
“Is he actually going to do it?” Heather asked, eyes shining with excitement. Tuff pulled off his shirt and headed up the stairs, the rest of them following.
He shed the last of his clothing in the front hall, flipped them off with both hands, and ran out the door whooping.
“Holy shit,” Snot said. “He’s actually doing it.”
“I did not need to know what Tuff’s penis looked like,” Heather said, shaking her head.
“Eh, you get used to it,” Ruff shrugged. “When he’s not wearing dirty underwear Tuff treats our house like a nudist colony.”
“I am so, so sincerely sorry,” Heather said, patting Ruff’s shoulder.
Tuff somehow managed to avoid arrestment and settled back into the basement, fully clothed.
This last dare made Hiccup incredibly nervous. So far everything that had been asked or dared would’ve made him downright embarrassed if it had been his challenge. He was extremely thankful he wasn’t popular enough to warrant much attention. In fact, they probably didn’t remember he was there at all and that was just fine with him.
The next round went quick, as Tuff dared Ruff to make out with Snot, and Ruff willingly downed two shots to avoid it.
Once it was her turn, Ruff grinned like the Cheshire Cat at Astrid.
“No,” Astrid said, shaking her head. “Don’t. Don’t you do it-”
“Astrid, truth or dare.”
“Ruff, what the fuck. This is my third turn. Some people haven’t even gone once.”
“Truth or dare, Astrid,” Ruff sang.
Astrid threw her hands up. “Fine, dare.”
Ruff pretended to deliberate, tapping her chin with her index finger. “Hmmm… what to do with this golden opportunity, what to do… Twenty shots, or you hit up the closet for Seven Minutes in Heaven, with…”
Snot sat straight up in his chair, waiting for Ruff to name Astrid’s partner in the challenge.
“Hiccup.”
Snot flopped back into the chair with bitter disappointment.
Astrid’s mouth dropped open.
Hiccup’s stomach plunged into his toes and his heart leaped into his throat.
Astrid just barely contained a snarl. “Bitch,” she whispered at Ruff.
Hiccup’s heart deflated and his face fell. “Ruff, can’t you make the shots more reasonable?”
“Yeah Ruff, can’t you make it like, half a shot? I mean, I don’t blame her, clearly she would’ve rather done this with me,” Snot boasted.
“In your fucking dreams, Snot,” Astrid shot at him.
Ruff raised her eyebrow and smirked. “The challenge has been decided. Twenty shots or she locks lips with Hiccup for seven minutes in a dark confined space.”
Astrid stood up with a frustrated growl and stomped over to the basement closet. Hiccup followed reluctantly, like he was being sentenced for a crime he didn’t commit.
“Oh, wait!” Ruff said, grabbing something from her purse and jumping to her feet. She held up a tube of red lipstick. “Just so we have proof. I want his face covered.”
Hiccup’s cheeks flushed hot and he avoided making eye contact with anyone. Astrid snatched the lipstick out of Ruff’s hand and whipped open the closet door.
Ruff held up her phone and started the stopwatch app on it, wiggling it at them. “I’ll tell you when. Get in there, Hiccup.”
He stepped in cautiously around Astrid, still afraid to look her in the eye, and Ruff shut the door.
“Go!”
Hiccup listened to Astrid growling in the dark and winced.
Of all the things that could happen to him, being dared to kiss Astrid Hofferson would normally be his luckiest day ever, but her obvious irritation was a sucker punch to the self esteem. The whole thing fell flat in a rather lack luster way.
“Astrid?” he said softly. “I’m sorry- if you’re angry at me-”
“I’m not angry at you, Hiccup,” she said, an edge to her voice. She set her phone on a box to light up the small interior.
“Are you sure? Because the look on your face reads more like ‘strangle anyone within arms’ reach’ rather than ‘kiss tenderly with no intention to injure or maim’,” he tried to joke.
She breathed out a chuckle and he felt the tension soften just a hint. His chest tightened in elation- he made her laugh.
“I’m sure. This isn’t your fault, it’s all Ruff and Heather’s doing. It’s a setup, and I’m not falling for it.”
He tried not to let his chagrin show on his face. “We don’t have to do this, you know. It’s okay.”
“They’ll make me take the shots if we don’t,” she said tersely, uncovering the lipstick and painting it across her lips. Then she kissed the back of her hand.
“Astrid?”
“Let me see your face,” she said, gripping his chin with one hand and turning his head to the side. She pressed the back of her hand with her lip print against his cheek and held up her phone to examine the result in the light.
She huffed. “That’s not going to work.”
“Look, it’s fine,” he said lightly, desperate to keep the disappointment out of his tone. “We’ll just go back out there after it’s done and you can tell Ruff to drink the shots herself if she wants alcohol poisoning that badly.”
Astrid laughed again, shaking her head as she started applying more lipstick. “I don’t know if you know this about me, Haddock, but I don’t back down from a dare.”
She grasped his cheeks in her hands and tugged him forward. She started peppering his face with quick little kisses, lingering only long enough to transfer a print.
Her hands felt warm on his face, her mouth velvet as the makeup smeared on his skin.
She stopped and applied some more lipstick, then hesitated as she wrapped her hand around the back of his neck, pulling him in and stopping just short of a kiss on the mouth.
In that instant, something changed. His eyes widened and she looked off to the side. Seemingly gathering her courage, she closed her eyes and pressed her lips against his.
He waited for her to inevitably pull away, expecting it, but the seconds ticked by and instead she was… kissing him.
He didn’t want to overstep his bounds, but this wasn’t the same as the pecks on the cheek. After an initial hesitation on her part, she began moving her lips soft and slow against his, migrating to press a little kiss to the corner of his mouth. The lipstick made the contact just a hint sticky and he knew it was probably making a mess of his face but he couldn’t find it in himself to care.
One of her hands lightly touched his side, the other curled up at her chest, and her breath was pleasantly warm on his cheek.
She tilted her head just right and something clicked into place.
He gathered himself together and kissed her back. The uncertainty that existed between them before turned into thrilling excitement and a kiss that was definitely outside the bounds of the arrangement.
The effect pressing mouths together had on his entire body felt surreal. His brain a foggy desire filled mess, heart fluttering, pulse rate rocketing. His stomach flip-flopped and he locked his weak knees, lest they give out on him. Tingles raced down his arms into his fingers and his toes felt numb.
She started taking control, kissing his top lip heatedly with the barest lick of her tongue and his hands grabbed her hips. She clasped the nape of his neck with one hand and pressed lithely up against his body and he was certain he’d remember this moment for the rest of his life, because Astrid Hofferson was making out with him in a closet and it didn’t feel like a game any longer.
“Time’s up, lovebirds!” Ruff called, banging on the closet door.
Astrid pulled back from the kiss slowly, their lips making a small smacking sound as they parted.
Hiccup hoped his face didn’t look too love-struck and dopey, but judging by Astrid’s small amused smile, he probably didn’t achieve cool and collected in the slightest.
She turned off her phone’s flashlight and opened the door. She strode out, confident and self assured, and Hiccup peeked out after.
A range of shouts and wolf whistles went around at the sight of Hiccup’s face covered in red smudges, especially around his mouth. He rubbed his nose self-consciously and went to take his seat. Astrid smirked next to him, folding her arms and crossing one leg over the other, bobbing her foot.
“Wow, looks like you two had a good time,” Heather said with a knowing grin.
“Whatever, it was just a stupid dare,” Snot said. “She had to do it, Ruff gave her no choice.”
“Think what you want, Snot,” Astrid said sweetly. “Dare completed.”
The cloud Hiccup had been floating on turned to rain in an instant.
Was that all it had been… Was she completing her dare in the most spectacular way possible, just to stick it to Snot, Heather, and Ruff? Was he only a means to an end? He could have sworn…
He barely paid attention, thoughts whizzing around in his brain, analyzing every nanosecond they spent in that closet, every signal she had sent or not sent, trying to solve the equation like their interaction was another one of his calculus problems.
He jolted out of the whirlpool his mind had descended into when he heard his name.
“Hiccup. Come on, cuz. Truth or dare time.”
That last dare had been a rollercoaster of emotion and the queasiness he felt was far from pleasant. His cousin was most likely bitter about the evidence Astrid left all over his face, and he did not want to see what kind of dare a revengeful Snot could come up with.
“Truth.”
“Who do you have a crush on? The price for silence is six shots.”
His stomach dropped again. Snot purposely chose a number of shots he couldn’t handle so he would embarrass himself even further in front of Astrid.
He had never been a smooth liar.
“I-… um…no one. I don’t have a crush on anyone.” He glanced nervously at Astrid.
“Oh, I think you do, little liar liar pants on fire. I saw you doodling a name in your notebook. Who was it, Hiccup? Say the name or throw six of em back,” Snot said smugly.
“It’s okay, Hiccup,” Heather prodded kindly. “There’s gotta be someone you like.”
“No, no there… isn’t. The notebook thing was nothing, Snot,” he said, shooting him a glare.
“Really? Cause that was a lot of hearts.”
Hiccup’s face flushed as red as the lipstick covering it. “You know what, I- ah, I’m done here.” He rose swiftly from the couch and hurried up the stairs, ignoring the concerned calls from Heather and Ruff behind him.
As soon as he hit the top of the stairs, Toothless trotted over, meowing and curling around his legs.
“Yeah, hi buddy. Lemme guess, you want food. Just, give me a second,” he sighed. He went into the bathroom and began cleaning his cheeks.
When he left the closet he was prepared to never wash his face again, leaving the evidence Astrid had kissed him like a proud badge of proof. Now the crimson splotches on top of all those freckles looked garish and ridiculous. He wanted to forget this terrible night ever happened.
He flicked the bathroom light off with a bitter frown and spooned kitty kibble into Toothless’s dish.
On his way to the back porch he passed the table where his calculus notebook sat. The page with the damning name surrounded by hearts laid open for all prying eyes to see because of his haste to follow Astrid into the basement. He snapped it shut, ripping one of the pages on accident, but he was too upset to care.
Once outside, he leaned on his arms over the porch railing. The sun had set and a gray twilight settled over the trees. Crickets chirped and fireflies blinked in and out of the tall grasses at the edge of the woods behind Snot’s house.
The sound of the patio door sliding open and shut behind him made him exhale through his nose in frustration. Had Snot come back for more teasing? Heather and Ruff come to gloat?
“Hey.”
The sound of her voice stabbed a dagger through his chest. He remained passive, staring out into the darkened trees and watching the little lights wink on and off. The scenery was peaceful, but he felt anything but peace when she joined him at the railing, copying his position and gazing ahead too.
“I’m… sorry, about what happened back there,” she said softly.
He shrugged. “Not your fault.”
“No, I guess not… but Snot was mean to put you on the spot like that.”
“It was Truth or Dare, I should’ve expected something like that anyway.”
“It’s a horrible question,” she said, fiddling with her fingers. “Everyone’s staring at you, expecting you to just admit something like that.”
“Yeah, well. You know, when it’s nothing more than a challenge for a stupid game, you’re not really putting yourself on the line,” he said, hating how standoffish he sounded but unable to help the place of hurt it came from.
He wasn’t even angry at her, he never expected anything from her to begin with. The frustration with himself caused constriction in his lungs, the lump in his throat to sting, because he was stupid enough to hope for a hot minute, only to crash right back down to reality like he didn’t see it coming.
It wasn’t her fault he read into a kiss that ended up being just a game after all.
She stood up straight, hands on the rail and picking at the wood grain with a fingernail. “The thing about that is… I lied, you know.”
He glanced at her, then turned away again. “About what.”
“Not having a crush on anyone,” she admitted.
He furrowed his brow. What was he supposed to say to that?
“Yeah?”
She nodded. “It’s hard to tell the truth about something like that, when the person you like is in the room.”
Curse his stupid heart, picking up its rhythm and drumming against his ribs. “Know the feeling,” he said lightly.
“Technically, it’s still your turn,” she said, leaning her hip against the rail and facing him. He stood up straight to face her too.
“You want me to tell the truth?”
“That’s the point of picking truth, isn’t it?” she said, smiling. “So, what’s with the name and all the hearts?”
He exhaled nervously. “I might have been doodling instead of studying…”
“Anyone’s name in particular?”
He grinned sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. It really was the moment of truth, yet he couldn’t get her name to leave his lips.
“Still too shy, huh? Well, fine. Ask me truth or dare.”
“Um- but… well, okay. Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
“What was that in the closet? I… I know I shouldn’t have read into it, but I can’t help but think…”
“That, was a girl putting herself on the line and letting the moment speak for itself,” Astrid said honestly.
The breath left him.
“Truth or dare, Hiccup.”
“Truth,” he responded without thinking, he couldn’t, his brain was fuzzy and the lights twinkled in his peripheral vision like a dream.
“Whose name was in the hearts?” she asked, stepping up to him and whispering in his ear, her breath fanning over his skin.
“Yours,” he whispered back.
She beamed and kissed him on the cheek, the remaining lipstick on her mouth leaving a sticky print.
He tugged her into a real kiss, a hand cupping her cheek and the other slinking around her waist, his heart back at the top of that rollercoaster as crickets serenaded their mutual confession.
When they parted, the haze in Astrid’s eyes cleared and she giggled.
“I have lipstick all over my mouth again, don’t I.”
“Yup!” She nodded.
He grinned, slipping his hand into hers as they headed back inside. “That’s okay. I guess it’s a good thing you don’t back down from dares.”