Chapter Text
Astrid waits in the cove, sharpening her axe. Stormfly is nearby, examining her reflection in the clear water of the lake, grooming herself as she does. The sunlight reflects off of her scales, glints off the edge of the axe Astrid sharpens.
It’s been two months since Hiccup rebuilt his sword and Toothless’s tail and both of them left to be away from Vikings for a while. Astrid doesn’t blame them; she knows that Hiccup is not adjusted to life with humans, and Berk hasn’t given him the best memories. She knows he’ll come back for her, and that’s all she needs.
Hiccup told her that he’d be back in a month or so, and Astrid had waited for a month before starting to visit the cove twice a week for three weeks. The fourth week, she’d started visiting three times a week, and now into the first week of the third month, she’s visiting every day.
No, she doesn’t blame them, but she misses them. She misses Hiccup.
She hears wingbeats above her, a familiar roar, and Astrid breaks into a grin, looking up as Toothless dives down, landing in the cove, giving his dragon-smile at her with a happy rumble. Hiccup, pressed against the saddle and barely noticeable until he straightens, jumps down and smiles at her, starting to walk towards her.
He glances towards Stormfly - Astrid pretends she doesn’t see the glance. Hiccup had barely relented on letting her train Stormfly, let alone Fishlegs, Snotlout, and the twins, not trusting Vikings in the least, and even now he can’t help but make sure that Stormfly is happy. She knows he has a much deeper bond with dragons than she does, having spent eleven years being practically raised by one. She can see it now, as he walks towards her and Toothless follows beside him, both of them swaying with the steps of the other so they don’t bump into each other, and when Hiccup stops Toothless stops, his tail curving in a wide circle around Hiccup almost naturally.
She sets the axe down and stands up, walking forward, Hiccup straightening from his slight crouch. He’d told her he’d try to walk more like a Viking when in Berk, if only because she’d told him it would lessen the stares he got, but with her and every other time the majority of Vikings can’t see him, he’s in that draconic half-crouch. Astrid doesn’t mind; it’s part of who Hiccup is, through no fault of his own, and she finds it kind of adorable. Besides, she’d be a terrible girlfriend if she tried to separate Hiccup from his draconic traits, or from Toothless. She’s pretty sure she’d get incinerated, by Toothless, Hiccup’s sword Inferno, or simply verbally.
Hiccup smiles and pulls her close, kissing her softly until she pulls away, breathless and grinning. She loves meeting him like this - one of his other draconic traits is touch. Dragons communicate love through touch, and so does he; by kissing her, by holding her close, by just brushing his fingers along her arm or her hip or her leg. Considering how he interacts with every other Viking, she doesn’t need the blessings of Odin or Freya if she has this blessing from Hiccup.
“I missed you,” Astrid says, a slight frown to her tone. She loves meeting him, but a full two months is a little far, even for him. Not without talking about it beforehand, and especially when they had just gotten into their relationship - though she feels like she’s known him forever.
His smile fades and he glances down. “I missed you too. I’m sorry, I just-” he runs a hand through his hair anxiously, “-it was all too much, and I needed to leave. I should’ve told you how long beforehand.”
“Yes, you should’ve. Or visited me between,” Astrid says firmly, and then her face softens and she puts a hand under his chin, lifting it so he meets her eyes. She smiles. “But I’m not going to begrudge you your time away. I know you’d go insane if you had to stay in a village of Vikings for months on end, especially after what they did to you. What I did to you.”
He pulls back, but his fingers trail down her arm until they reach her wrist and curl loosely around, as if subconsciously, and she smiles at the lingering touch as he starts pulling her to a nearby rock, sitting down and leaning against her when she sits beside him.
“I don’t blame you for that,” he starts, glancing over at her. “I know how Berk can be, and I’m not exactly the friendliest person they could’ve found. Especially with Toothless,” he says, and they both glance up to see Toothless rolling with Stormfly, batting playfully at her tail until it flicks and the spines stick straight out. Toothless yelps and flinches back, shaking his head and glaring without heat at Stormfly before pouncing on her. Stormfly chirps and slips out from underneath, standing up and giving small, playful jumps, lashing her tail. Toothless bows and lashes his own tail, growling in short, nonthreatening bursts. Stormfly raises her chin and Toothless’s paw flicks out, claw grazing along the underside of her chin. Stormfly drops with a chirp of pleasure and Toothless laughs, looking back at Hiccup for approval of the move he learned from him.
Hiccup smiles at Toothless, who turns back and meets Stormfly’s counter-attack, and then Hiccup’s smile fades. “They would’ve killed him,” he says quietly, and he looks back at Astrid. “You did your best to save both of us.”
Astrid smiles, feeling a weight lift off her shoulders. She’d told him the whole story during the week he’d rebuilt his sword and Toothless’s tail; everything she’d done, said, everything she’d lied about and what she was planning. Hiccup had smiled and said he’d forgiven her, but he hadn’t talked about it much, and she’d lived with the remaining guilt and uncertainty for all the time he’d been gone.
She leans in to give him a short kiss. “You two are plenty friendly. The unholy offspring of lightning and death likes to play with your prosthetic like it’s a stick,” she starts untying the rope and his eyes widen in realization; she smirks, “and you set the forge on fire.”
He tries to stop her, hands moving down to retie the rope, but she bats them away and pulls the prosthetic off with a victorious grin. “Astrid-”
She throws the leg to the two dragons, above Hiccup’s reaching hand, and he groans. “I need that to walk!”
Astrid laughs and slips her arm around his waist, pulling him in for a long kiss. “And now you’re trapped with me. What a tragedy,” she says sarcastically when she pulls away, smiling.
Hiccup grins. “I’m truly suffering,” he replies, deadpan, and she laughs and kisses him again.
-0-0-0-
Hiccup walks to the forge the next day, sticking in the shadows of the Viking buildings and slipping in unnoticed. He’d agreed to sleep with Astrid in her house at night, with Toothless safe in the cove, but that was as far as he’d go. Astrid was an exception; she’s the only Viking he feels truly comfortable with, and the only reason he’d agreed to stay in Berk at all. Before her, he’d been planning on leaving permanently soon, having stolen from the Berk forge and enhanced his designs enough to be able to survive by himself away from Berk, to get past Berserker and Outcast Island. That was what his plan had been when he left after Astrid had tried to get him to come back to Berk, and, well. That hadn’t exactly turned out well for him.
He slips inside quietly, closing the shutters and the open windows in the forge until he’s left completely alone, lighting the dark forge by a few candles and the machinery as he lights the fires of those and starts pulling out pieces of metal and other tools, lining them up to the sketches in his notebook and starting his new project - a shield that doubles as a crossbow and a bola.
He doesn’t know how long he works there, immersing himself in his invention, improving it as he goes and fixing the measurements when things don’t work. It’s faster now that he has free access to the forge and doesn’t have to steal from it, and though he’s fully against every other part of Berk, the forge is familiar and the one place he was allowed freely. It hasn’t changed much in eleven years, and he knows where everything is, his small area of the forge more organized, but the notes and sketches he’d made as a kid are still preserved. Gobber had taught him here, hidden just like he is now, with every window and door closed and locked, his area scattered with notes and pieces and tools.
Hiccup didn’t lock the doors, though, and he looks quickly up at the main door as the latch clicks, his hands stilling on the shield. A familiar humming comes from beyond the wood as it swings open and sunlight streams through. Gobber steps in, closing the door, and then he frowns, turning around. “Wonder why I’m closing the-”
He stops when he looks up, seeing Hiccup, and his eyes widen. “Oh,” he says eloquently. “That’s why.”
Hiccup’s body is tense, ready to flee, shield be damned. He doesn’t blame Gobber for what Stoick did - he couldn’t exactly protest - and he actually feels closer to him than the rest of Berk, having had him as a surrogate father for the first eight years of his life, and he wasn’t the one who had exiled him.
But he’s not Astrid, and he’s still a Viking of Berk.
It’s a long moment before Gobber starts walking forward, over to his rack of spare hands. “Ye know, ye don’t need to close the doors anymore,” he says, as if Hiccup being in the forge is entirely normal. He supposes it is, but not after eleven years, not after the past year, and yet Gobber isn’t making any kind of big deal about it.
It’s kind of… refreshing.
“Ye’re a Viking, now,” Gobber says, and Hiccup gives a quiet growl involuntarily. Gobber glances back, then back to his work. “Okey, not a Viking,” he amends, casually, and Hiccup’s body relaxes, mind focusing on analyzing this new reaction to him being here. No questions, no curious glances or disdainful looks or even glares, just… acceptance.
“But ye’re not exiled anymore, Hiccup,” Gobber continues, turning around and facing him. “If ye’re anything like the boy I taught eleven years ago, ye’re going to be in this forge a lot. Well, when ye’re not flying off wherever.”
He’s accepting Toothless too, Hiccup thinks, and he starts to think that Gobber is safe. He’s a Viking he can talk to, can trust. Not as much as Astrid, nowhere near as much as Astrid, but more than the rest of Berk gets.
“Mah point is, it’ll be a lot easier to do things with more light than just those few candles. It was hard enough teaching ye that way, no reason for ye to torment yerself further.” Gobber’s turned back to his work again, not looking at him, and Hiccup finds it somehow easier that way.
He frowns. “I don’t want to,” he says quietly.
Gobber nods. “Alrighty then. Mind telling me what ye’re working on? I’m sure it’s something new. Ye always had new inventions back in the day.”
Hiccup pauses, glancing down at the metal under his hands. “A shield.” He hesitates before continuing. “It doubles as a crossbow and a bola.”
“As long as it keeps ye safe out there. I don’t want ye to get hurt.”
That’s new. None of the other Vikings have said they want him to be safe, and Astrid - well, he knows she wants it. She doesn’t have to say it.
Hiccup glances down, feeling a slight warmth spread through him, and he nods. “It will.”
He turns back to his shield, starting work on it again, and he and Gobber work in a strange sort of relaxed peace, quiet as they move around each other and trade machines to use. He notices Gobber glancing at his designs, and oddly, Hiccup doesn’t mind. He just looks back at his work and stays quiet.
-0-0-0-
Hiccup meets Stoick on the fourth day. He knew he wouldn’t be able to avoid him for the entire week he planned on staying, but… he had hoped.
Stoick’s many attempts at catching him alone were difficult to avoid in a town that he could walk freely in and Hiccup refused to go anywhere but six feet away from any nearby Viking, though, and he sighs when he hears Stoick call his name hopefully from behind him.
Hiccup glances at the forest, calculating if he’ll be able to escape and still have plausible denial that he heard him, but Stoick’s voice is far too loud to say that, and he’s right behind him anyway. He turns around slowly, meeting Stoick’s eyes as he crouches down to Hiccup’s level, body tense and not concealing the wariness in his eyes.
Stoick, on his part, doesn’t try to get closer or touch Hiccup, and he puts that towards his mental tally of trusting him a little more.
“Hiccup,” Stoick says, quieter. Hiccup nods in acknowledgment, and Stoick’s face falls slightly.
He seems to accept it, though, because he continues without pushing for a verbal answer. “I wanted to say…” he trails off, frowning a little as he thinks of what to say. “Sorry,” he adds suddenly. “And… that your room is- is still there, with all your stuff. That you didn’t take, uh, when I- well, you know.”
Stoick is shy, face going slightly red as he glances down at the ground and stumbles slightly over his words, the same way Hiccup does. It takes him off guard, and he tilts his head a little. He nods, seeing Stoick’s face fall a little more.
“I know you probably won’t stay on Berk,” Stoick continues. “I don’t expect you to. I just wanted to tell you about that.”
Hiccup is quiet for a long while, and Stoick nods to himself and turns away, glancing at Hiccup before realizing he isn’t going to say anything.
“Okay,” he says quietly, and Stoick freezes, turning around. He meets Hiccup’s eyes - nonjudgmental, clear, passive.
Stoick smiles and nods again after a long moment, and then he turns and walks away. Hiccup stares after him, then he flees to the forest and to Toothless. Stoick may not be able to regain his relationship with Hiccup as a father, but… he can be an acquaintance. Maybe a friend, in a long while.
Toothless pounces on him as soon as he enters the cove, and Astrid walks over to him, laughing as he fends off a licking attack from Toothless and rolls out from underneath him, indignantly chirping and clicking no-bad-clothes-wet-no-clean.
Toothless laughs, rumbling i-know-don’t-care, and Hiccup flicks the saliva stuck on his hands into Toothless’s eyes. Astrid laughs harder.
“Well, I’m definitely not kissing you this afternoon,” she says as she watches Hiccup wipe Toothless saliva off his face. Hiccup glares at his dragon, who’s gone over to Stormfly, but senses Hiccup’s eyes and turns to look at him.
Astrid-no-touch, he chirps, gesturing to her. Astrid watches the interaction, watches Toothless rumble another laugh before walking over. Hiccup rolls his eyes, and then-
Clean-now, Toothless warbles smugly as he tackles Hiccup into the lake and sits up, watching him stand up and groan at his now-soaked armor and hair.
Astrid grins and walks over, laughing at Hiccup’s long-suffering look at her, and she takes his hand, pulling him out of the lake. “You’ll be fine.” She gives him a quick kiss on the lips. “There.”
Hiccup glances back at Toothless with a victorious grin, and Toothless growls playfully and leaps at him. Hiccup yelps and hides behind Astrid; Toothless hits both of them and Astrid rolls out from underneath, glancing between the two.
She can barely speak through her laughs. “Toothless, quit bullying Hiccup. You already soaked him in saliva and water, I’m not sure how many other bodily fluids you can soak him in.”
Hiccup glances at her, a knowing smirk on his face, and she glares. “Don’t answer that.”
He stands up as Toothless lets him up, walking over to her, still smirking. “I wasn’t going to. But dragons do produce a lot of fluids that humans don’t.”
Astrid grins. “Like the flammable ones?”
Hiccup’s smirk vanishes. “Well… yeah. I’d really rather not get set on fire, though.”
“Don’t try to answer what draconic fluids you can get soaked in, then,” she fires back, and he sighs, but he’s smiling.
She pulls him in for a longer kiss, one that doesn’t taste of dragon saliva, and he wonders what he ever did to deserve her. She pulls back, smirking, then takes him over to the rock they like to sit by. Hiccup attempts to sit down beside her, but she puts her hands on his arm and holds him there. “Nope, you’re sunbathing. I did not come here to get soaked.”
Hiccup sighs, but he’s still smiling as he lays down on his back, staring up at the clouds. “Can’t believe my dragon is cockblocking me,” he says quietly, smirking, and he glances up to see Astrid’s murderous look.
“If you only wanted to sit beside me to fuck me, I’m going to stab you,” she hisses. Hiccup laughs, and she moves to crouch over him, starting to tickle him mercilessly.
“Okay, okay,” Hiccup gasps desperately between pants, squirming, “I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it!”
Astrid grins. “This is your fault, Hiccup!” she says, and then she starts tickling his neck and he yelps, twisting away from her hands - but they only follow him, and his laughs and yelps get more breathless and even louder as she continues relentlessly.