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‘You’re late.’
Hiccup freezes where he’s standing, caught red-handed in his attempt to sneak in.
‘Ah,’ he turns and gulps at the look on her face. Somehow Astrid’s features manage to look sharp and stony even in the soft light of the dying fire. It doesn’t help that she’s currently sitting in front of the fireplace, axe over her knee and whetstone in hand as she methodically sharpens the blade.
Great. He’s in trouble. And worse, he has no idea why.
‘Sorry, I thought you’d be asleep. You’ve got an early morning tomorrow.’ He steps out of the shadows and into the middle of the room. ‘Toothless and I, we were just flying but we got caught up in this huge changewing migration.’ The dragon in question makes a soft noise in agreement. ‘It was actually pretty interesting,’ Hiccup continues, tone picking up. ‘I mean I have never seen changewings migrate in such huge numbers, and at this time of year! Although I suppose you don’t always notice them moving what with them being invisible and all—’
‘Hiccup.’ Her voice cuts through his ill-timed rambling.
‘Yes. Shutting up now, sorry.’
Something shifts in her expression, a tiny almost imperceptible change, like she’s disappointed or maybe sad? He can’t tell in the low light and his ignorance as to what could be causing this shift in mood leaves him more confused than ever.
Astrid sighs, dropping her axe to rest against her chair and placing her whetstone on the table in front of her with a thunk. Their table. The one Gobber had given them as a betrothal gift when they first returned to Berk. Hiccup had carved little dragons on the legs.
‘It’s fine,’ she says standing up.
It’s definitely not fine. He can’t get her to meet his eye, no matter how hard he tries.
‘I’m going to bed.’ She walks past him towards the stairs, giving him a wide berth. His eyes chase after her fruitlessly as she crosses the room, brow furrowing with confusion and distress as she disappears out of sight, stairs creaking a little as she makes her way up.
In the silence that follows, his mind stalls as he tries to wrap his head around what just happened, leaving him stuck to the spot in the middle of the room. He looks down to find Toothless looking back at him, whether in equal confusion, hidden knowledge or just plain impatience to get a late night snack, he can’t tell. He’s too exhausted to decipher Dragon right now. Especially when he’s having enough trouble understanding Human.
He finds himself turning in circles, looking for any clue of what he’s missing. While he does, Toothless seems to give up hope of a snack with a huff and slinks off to bed. Or maybe he’s just irritated that Hiccup didn’t figure this whole thing out by staring into his inscrutable scaly face.
Left completely alone, his confusion starts to turn a little desperate. He knew they had plans; loose plans. In the same way eating dinner together every evening could be termed ‘plans’. But there’s no way Astrid would be this upset about loose plans. Only last week she’d been the one who missed dinner after a training session ran long, slipping in quietly and waking him from his almost-sleep with a kiss on the forehead before she climbed into bed. He’d thought nothing of it. They had busy lives, it was by no means certain that they’d both be back home for dinner everyday.
Something was wrong. Something he couldn’t put his finger on. Could he have forgotten something? Things in the village had been particularly hectic lately. Days seemed to run into one another like one very long day with naps in between and he’d leaned heavily on Astrid to help him keep their little village afloat. He had no idea how his dad managed it all by himself.
His eyes catch on the table. He’d been too distracted before by Astrid and her axe to notice much else in that general area (but then what else was new?). Now he notices the candles burnt down to stubs, the flowers, the two beakers of what appears to be on closer inspection, actual, honest to Thor, wine.
Shit. It has to have been a special occasion for Astrid to track down the only alcohol on the whole island that doesn’t taste like Mulch’s foot played a part in the brewing process. She set this whole thing up and he has no idea why. He racks his brain, trying to figure out when they made plans for tonight but he comes up empty. It was for all intents and purposes a completely normal day.
But Astrid wouldn’t pick flowers for a completely normal day. So what could—
Oh.
Oh no.
He takes the stairs two at a time, not a wise decision when you’re one leg short and chronically uncoordinated, but some things are more important than worrying about falling to your death and this is one of them.
‘Astrid?’ he pants, winded from the stairs and heart racing with panic.
She turns to face him where she stands at the foot of their bed, her eyes still cold and distant.
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’ He steps forward quickly but hesitates to get too close to her. He wants to give her her space right now; he certainly doesn’t deserve to invade it. ‘I’m an idiot,’ he says. ‘I can’t believe I forgot.’
Guilt churns inside him. How could he forget? He hates himself right now. Today was supposed to be special forever. It was supposed to be something he’d never forget. The day he and Astrid had gotten betrothed had been one of the most terrifying and wonderful days of his life.
‘Hiccup, it’s fine. Really,’ Astrid says, her words clipped as she crosses her arms and stares at the floor. ‘It’s not even like it’s a real anniversary.'
‘No, it is! I should have remembered! I’m so sorry. Please, Astrid.’ He wishes she’d just scream at him. The quiet is killing him.
‘Fine,’ she says and finally meets his eye. Her face is ice cold. ‘It’s not ok.’ Anger sparks in her eyes as her eyebrows pinch together. ‘I did all this stupid stuff to set this up and you didn’t even show up! I picked flowers, Hiccup! I don’t do shit like that! And you left me sitting alone feeling like an absolute idiot! I didn’t even need you to remember, I just needed you to be here!’
‘I know, I—’ he starts, but she’s on a roll now, pacing back and forth.
‘And it's not even like I can really be mad at you for being busy. You’re running a village for Thor’s sake! I just hate feeling like this. I hate being that pathetic girl who gets angry and picks a fight because of something so stupid.’ Towards the end she gets more animated, arms cutting through the air.
‘Astrid, it’s not stupid! This was important— It is important, and I totally screwed it up. I’m so, so sorry.’
She turns away and he reaches to catch her hand, hoping he can somehow make this right if he can just touch her. But before he gets the chance, the sudden movement makes him wince and hiss through his teeth, the shallow cut he earned himself earlier in the changewing scuffle sending a shooting pain through his side.
Astrid clocks it immediately, eyes snapping to his side as his hand automatically covers it.
‘You’re hurt,’ she says, her tone only slightly softer than the stony anger it had been filled with seconds before.
‘Um… no, I’m not?’ he tries, not wanting to add his own reckless stupidity to this already difficult conversation. It’s not even that bad. Especially in comparison to wounds he’s had before. He barely felt it on the flight home.
‘Hiccup,’ Astrid says, eyes meeting his with a look that tells him he doesn’t want to lie to her right now. ‘Let me see.’ It’s not a request.
He sighs. ‘Fine.’
He manages to pull the buckles of his flight gear loose fairly quickly, hands used to the fiddly fastenings. He’d have to repair the panel that got shredded, but it at the very least saved him from a much more serious cut.
Astrid steps forward as he shrugs off the leather, leaving his bloodstained shirt exposed as she tugs it upwards with impossibly gentle hands, peeling it away from the sticky skin where the blood is still drying.
He sucks in a breath when the shirt pulls at the cut, tearing at the scabs that had just begun to form. She stops immediately, eyes flashing up to his face in concern.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ he tries. Her expression doesn’t change, eyes still fixed on his. ‘I’ve had a lot worse,’ he offers an unconvincing smile, hoping she’ll laugh with him. She doesn’t.
‘I know,’ she says and it’s barely more than a whisper. Something in it makes him drop his smile.
She pulls his shirt off the rest of the way slowly, giving him time to raise his arms. He tries to hold her gaze but the shirt gets in the way, and by the time it’s off, she’s looking away, moving towards where they keep their basic medical supplies.
He shuffles over to sit on the bed, falling heavier than he means to and sighing with relief when the weight is off his leg. It started to ache hours ago.
A moment later, Astrid is kneeling in front of him, cleaning the cut and rubbing something that smells like Gothi’s hut over the skin before she begins wrapping a strip of bandage around him with practiced hands and sharp eyes.
He finds himself staring. He doesn’t mean to, but she’s so beautiful, so strong and gentle as she patches him up the way she has a hundred times before. He doesn’t deserve her.
‘I’m still mad at you,’ she says quietly, tying the bandage off with a tight knot.
He watches her with a small, sad smile. ‘I know.’
Suddenly her eyes are on him, examining his face in that determined way that makes his heart feel like it might give out altogether one of these days. ‘But I’m going to kiss you anyway.’
He blinks at her stupidly, stunned, and a little apprehensive, but he isn’t about to turn her down. ‘Ok.’
She rolls her eyes, almost like she’s mad at herself for even wanting to kiss him. He can’t blame her; he really screwed up today, she shouldn’t even be speaking to him let alone leaning in with her hand on his knee, her eyes fluttering closed in perfect time with his.
She kisses him softly at first, sat back on her heels, her face angled just below his as she reaches up, then deepens the kiss with a push, rising to kneel, dragging him by the jaw closer to her as she does. And it’s intoxicating, dizzying, a far better kiss than he deserves given his monumental screw-up today. But it occurs to him that while he may not deserve this right now, Astrid does. It’s her anniversary too after all.
And she picked him flowers. Firecombs and scaly snapdragons.
He lifts his hand to cup her jaw, rubbing his thumb over her soft freckled skin while his other hand rests on her arm. Kisses her back the way she deserves, a silent thank you for everything she’s done. Today, this week, this year, their whole lives; there’s no real way to hold all that gratitude in a kiss but he gives it a shot anyway.
In answer, she pulls him closer. Hand running up from his knee to rest on his hip, her free arm wrapping from around his waist, careful to avoid his newly bandaged cut. She holds onto him like he’s something precious, something she’ll lose if she lets go.
He’ll never get used to this. The way she sighs into his mouth when he tilts his chin to get a better angle; the way that little sound sends wildfire through his veins.
She pulls back but stays close, pressing their foreheads together as they just breathe for a moment, his eyes open and hers closed.
‘Astrid,’ he says softly, his voice breaking just a little. ‘I’m so sorry. I wish— Gods, I wish I could just go back to the beginning of today and not be such a muttonhead.’
She laughs just a little at that, a short breath of air against his skin as she opens her eyes a fraction. Blue sparks burn into him; a driftwood fire on a cold beach.
‘I’d do anything to make it up to you.’
Her expression turns mischievous and just a little sultry. ‘I’d take you up on that if you weren’t currently injured,’ she says with a smirk.
He laughs, caught off guard. ‘Hey, I’m sure we can work something out,’ he shoots back with an optimistic grin of his own. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’
She laughs and shakes her head, glancing away.
Suddenly he has an idea.
‘Hey, how about we celebrate tomorrow? I mean, that was technically the first full day we were betrothed, right?’ It’s not perfect, but then, none of his ideas ever are.
‘I guess you’re right. We didn’t talk about it until pretty late today— I mean, a year ago, today.’
‘When you cornered me in my hut and demanded to know what my intentions were.’
Astrid rolls her eyes and irritation flashes over her face. ‘That is so not what happened.’
‘Oh really? I seem to remember you choosing to bring it up the second I’d taken my leg off for the night, thus preventing me from escaping the conversation.’
‘As if you wanted to escape it.’
‘True,’ he laughs, ‘I’d been meaning to ask you about it for weeks.’
‘I know. It was getting really annoying.’
He scoffs in disbelief. ‘You knew?’
‘Oh my gods, Hiccup, how could I not have known? You kept talking about how important I was and then running off in the middle of conversations.’
‘I wasn’t “running off”,’ Hiccup huffs, blushing at the memory of fumbling over his rehearsed speech over and over. ‘At least a couple of those times we just got interrupted. And I would have gotten it all out eventually if you’d let me.’
‘I got impatient,’ she says with a smile.
‘Which is weird, seeing as you’re the most patient person I know.’
‘Shut up,’ she says, still smiling as she gives his shoulder a light shove. He pretends it hurt more than it did.
‘Ouch! Still injured here!’
She rolls her eyes. ‘So dramatic. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you need to make this up to me. What are your big plans for tomorrow then? The day after we got betrothed where we spent most of our time on opposite ends of the island sealing up the last geysers of lava with dragon gunk and came home stinking of sweat and ash.’
‘Can’t think of a more romantic way we could have spent the day.’
She tuts. ‘I spent most of it mad at you for assigning me with Snotlout.’
‘Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about that.’
‘Conveniently,’ she notes.
‘Conveniently,’ he agrees. ‘Well, unless you want to recreate that wonderful day, I was thinking maybe a picnic.’
‘A picnic?’ She doesn’t sound overly impressed.
‘Yeah, we could take a bunch of food and maybe that wine you somehow got a hold of, head over to Itchy Armpit and make a day of it.’ When he describes it like that she seems more amenable to the idea. Alone time is so rare these days, especially while the sun’s up. He’ll have to ask Gobber and his mom to cover for him with chiefing duties while he’s gone.
‘Well, I suppose if there' going to be food and wine,’ she muses, pretending to still be deliberating. Her feeble attempts to smother a smile give her away.
‘How did you get your hands on that by the way?’ he asks, still puzzling over the two goblets of sweet smelling wine downstairs. 'It definitely didn’t look Berk-made to me. Unless there’s a vineyard around here somewhere that I don’t know about.’
‘Took it off a hunter ship about a month ago,’ she says casually. ‘Figured I’d find a better use for it than they would, seeing as I dropped them off at Outcast jail.’
‘Cold-hearted woman,’ he tuts, leaning in to press a kiss to her jaw.
‘Hmm, well if you’re going to cast aspersions on my methods, maybe I won’t share my cask with you.’
He pulls back with a questioning look. ‘There’s a whole cask of it?’
She smiles, smug. ‘Yep.’
‘And just how exactly have you managed to hide an entire cask of wine for a month on an island full of Vikings who drink beer for breakfast?’
‘By stashing it somewhere no one would ever look for it.’ He gives her a questioning look. ‘Mildew’s old outhouse,’ she supplies with a devious grin.
His smile echoing her own. ‘You’re a genius.’
‘I know,’ she says, flipping her hair over one shoulder. He follows his impulses and kisses the newly exposed skin at the collar of her shirt.
She hums and melts into his touch, shoulders lifting upwards. ‘Ok, maybe I will let you have some of my confiscated wine after all.’
‘Speaking of which,’ he mumbles against her skin. ‘I seem to recall quite a bit of said wine left un-drunk downstairs.’ He pulls back. ‘A tragedy entirely of my own making, and one that I’ll help rectify immediately.’
She rolls her eyes with a good-natured smile, and he’s basking in the glow of it. Euphoric over somehow having avoided the disaster this evening could have been. ‘I bet you will,’ she teases. ‘Bring the bottle up here.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ He pushes up from the bed with an awkward shuffle, weight burning on his leg once more. But he’ll happily push through the pain to bring her anything she wants.
‘But you’re not drinking more than three cups,’ she scolds him as he nears the stairs. ‘I’m not dealing with your sour hangover face all-day tomorrow.’ She flops onto the bed with a satisfying puff of air and makes herself comfy, ’Not when you owe me the best gods-damned picnic of my life, lightweight.’
He turns, mock-appalled at the very accurate accusation. ‘I am not a lightweight! How dare you.’
She props herself up on her elbows to give him a dry look. ‘Excuse me,’ she drones, unmoved. ‘Some of us remember your last birthday.’
‘“Some of us” not including me,’ he admits.
‘Exactly. Now go fetch, lightweight,’ she says, waving him off. ‘And bring food.’
‘Your wish is my command,’ he says with a sweeping bow.
‘Hm, maybe you should forget anniversaries more often,’ she muses. ‘This is fun.’
‘Sorry to disappoint, Milady, but I don’t plan on making this a habit. The pampering, however, now that’s up for negotiation.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ she says, smiling so wide he almost can’t believe that not twenty minutes ago they were fighting.
‘I’m bringing the flowers up too,’ he adds, just because he knows it’ll rile her up again. Because when he’s this happy, he can’t resist the urge to tease her.
The pillow sails through the air and nearly makes its mark before he ducks, laughing loud and carefree as he makes his escape down the stairs, so in love with her it fills his chest to bursting. All the excess sloshing over the floor like too much wine over the edge of a cup, he imagines it filling up their house until they’re both swimming in it, with no need to bring their heads above water for anything so trivial as a gasp of air.
Astrid's right, he won’t be drinking much tonight, he feels drunk enough already.