*cracks knuckles* ok who is the smingrid second child tell me everything (please..... pls....)
I kept trying to answer this all weekend but kept getting distracted but yes, I need to talk about this, because it’s ridiculous. And super long.
So we know that Ingrid is baby crazy, and she was lucky to stumble across a baby and even luckier that her girlfriend and girlfriend’s dad was cool with that, but her baby crazy doesn’t go away, especially when her siblings start having multiple children and like…she wants more.
And then it’s interesting because while Ingrid has no interest in being pregnant or associating with any of the activities required to get pregnant in like 1000AD, upon bringing the topic up with Smitelout it is discovered that she’s not quite of the same opinion. In fact, she’s a Jorgenson, and as the only Jorgenson, it’s kind of weighed on her for her entire life that it’s the end of the line because it was always assumed that she’d get married and change her name and that would be that. But she’s with Ingrid, still very much a Jorgenson, and Finn is great and she loves him and he’s her son, but she was also raised with a very deep and unique sense of family pride and she wouldn’t mind one of her own. In fact, she’d like that, but wasn’t going to risk making Ingrid feel bad about it by bringing it up, but as it comes up organically, it’s good that it’s out there.
So then it gets even more ridiculous, because once Ingrid gets a scent there’s really no chance in deterring her, and this is a unique opportunity because Ingrid has brothers so it’s even possible that the kid could be blood related to them both, which again, loves Finn, not about that, it’s just a thing Ingrid also thought she’d never get to have ever since she realized she was gay and even more after what happened to her.
And Eret III is only Ingrid’s half brother, plus the line of succession is wild enough already and also no one wants Fuse to murder them at the insinuation so he’s out, leaving Rolf and Arvid. Who are both married. But it’s Ingrid and she’s gonna ask anyway. And it’s Smitelout, who is relieved by the instantaneous exemption of Eret, because eww, and who immediately rejects Rolf as an idea too, because Super Eww.
So that leaves Arvid. Who, again, is married. And it’s 1000AD, there are no clinics with weird little rooms full of supposedly stimulating posters. There are no turkey basters. There is one delivery method. And Ingrid, being Ingrid, is going to ask anyway.
And then as for what’s been going on with Arvid and Aurelia, they’ve just had their first kid and it was a tumultuous time full of surprise and unwelcome visits of long lost mothers and the complications that arise from a general incompatibility of the size of the partners. Not a good time for Aurelia in particular. She’s pretty dead set on not doing that again and she feels guilty about it every time she sees Arvid with the feret litter, which is probably coming up on 4 now.
And Ingrid isn’t an idiot, she knows to ask Aurelia first, and they’re pretty tight because when Eret was dealing with all those warlords, Ingrid was pretty exclusively on Aurelia guard detail, given they were the only two without dragons. Aurelia was there shaking her head when Ingrid obtained a baby, she gets that Ingrid has the motherly compulsion Aurelia doubted she herself had for a long time. And maybe it shouldn’t, but it kind of seems like an idea…
Arvid is less convinced, initially, because this is stupid and absurd and shouldn’t his wife like…not want him to do anything like this? But it’s Aurelia and she’s flippant at all the wrong times and probably says something like it never bothered her before that he narrowly avoided procreating with every other girl on Berk their age (which it did bother her, but whatever, this is the time to project wifely guilt away from herself). And Arvid wants more kids, so much, because he’s the fixer who wants to do the big family thing right and it’s for Ingrid and Aurelia is devoted to her solutions past the point of rational and he agrees to talk it out with Smitelout and Ingrid.
Which is the funniest fucking thing I’ve ever imagined because Arvid and Ingrid are attempting to have an emotional conversation about him doing her the biggest favor he conceivably could but they’re both these big murder jocks hiding behind their bravado so it probably goes like:
Arvid: “Mostly, I’m just worried Smitelout will fall in love with me”
Ingrid: “really not worried about that”
Arvid: “Aurelia can back me up here–”
Aurelia: “not going to do that”
Ingrid: “Trust me, I could not be less worried”
All the while Ingrid is just hoping and Aurelia is trying to stick to this decision because she doesn’t know what will happen if she stays so averse to having more kids and Smitelout is just…the most embarrassed human on the planet because she had a crush on Arvid for like a decade before she realized the source of her antagonism with Ingrid or the fact that being bi as hell exists. But she can’t be embarrassed in silence, so she’s probably insulting him pretty much non stop and somehow, despite all the stupid concentrated in one room, they come to an agreement.
And so Smitelout and Arvid bang Once. Which is just so deeply hilarious to me on so many levels. Because it’s so awkward. Ingrid and Aurelia are probably chilling in the other room having a drink. It’s super silent. Smitelout doesn’t know what to do when she has to stop being mean because apparently dudes aren’t just constantly armed with the ability to impregnate people, you actually have to be compassionate with them when they’re nervous (being a lesbian is so much easier oh my gods). They both love their wives a lot and that makes it even weirder, because they’re both doing this in roundabout ways for their wives and also their shared desire to make more kids. Smitelout probably thanks him for being tall. They vow not to make eye contact for a decade, probably.
Then, because this is so fucking stupid and Aurelia left all her braincells at home while making all of these decisions, everything blows up. She has to come clean about how guilty she felt but at the same time she doesn’t like the feeling that he was with someone else, however emotion-less and awkward (and hilarious) it was. And they have to actually talk shit through and all that mature stuff, but also, can’t take back the past and it totally worked, Smitelout is totally pregnant.
Ok, this is an insane roller coaster of a weird ass chapter and I think I love it and also, it has the funniest slapstick I’ve ever written and I don’t even care, that is correct, objectively.
(<5 days until I see httyd3......probs need to write like 20k to finish this.....I’m going to try, we. shall. see.).
Masterpost | AO3 (AO3 is better, it’s organized, sorry)
I can't say traveling with Arvid is just like old times, because I don't think we ever had a multi-day trip just the two of us with no real danger hanging overhead, but it's like I wish old times had been. We sleep a few hours in the afternoon and fly mostly at night, because campfires are easier to avoid than people hidden in dense pine forest. On the morning of our third day, pine gives way to ice and occasional brush land and Arvid signals that we're getting close. I don't know how he knows, considering the only other time he came here it was by boat, but after only a couple false starts and wrong turns, he zeroes in on a tiny village at the mouth of a river alongside an icy bay.
We land on a nearby hill where a small copse of trees can at least mostly hide the dragons and he points at a shallow valley behind the village.
"Dad disappeared that direction for a while last time we were getting tattooed, said he had to pay some respects and because no relatives came to meet me, I assume that's where the tombs are." His tone is somber in a way I struggle to place, until I remember what else was going on in our lives the last time he was here. Mom had just married the chief. He wasn't talking to me because I'd jumped him for insulting Mom.
Maybe this adventure can heal that too, or at least smooth out some of the scar tissue that might be left.
"Alright, let's get to it."
"Wait a second," he stops me and points at the Berk insignia holding my furs on. "I grabbed some of Dad's old clothes."
"Good plan." Even if all of the clothes aren't from here, most of them aren't from Berk either. They're covered in patterns I only vaguely recognize and none of them are that distinctive Berk green or red or blue that so much of our clothing is dyed. Everything seems to be more of a natural wool, and my hair stands out like fire against it. I pull up a furry hood and tuck as much back as possible, but there's no helping the beard.
What I don't expect is for the clothes to almost fit. Sure, they're baggy, and I almost don't mind that because it'll be easier to slip a sword underneath, but I would have expected to be swimming in Dad's clothes. Arvid must notice the same thing, because he looks at me strangely as he yanks at a jacket that's a little tight on him.
It makes me feel older, somehow, more ready for what I'm about to do, both here and back home. I wonder if Mom is freaking out yet, but I'm sure Fuse is handling it fine. I miss her, of course, but the fact that I won't have to for much longer makes it easier, like I'm racing towards a finish line after months or years spinning out in the last leg of the race.
"Trade?" I offer my own borrowed layer and he nods. The switch is a bit better on both of us, and I think I still have room for a modest armory of a single ceremonial sword. Arvid looks bigger somehow, foreign in a way he doesn't feel anymore and I nod. "I hope the runes look the same, because that's the only way we're finding the tomb."
"We'll just open them all until we see a family resemblance," he jokes and I snort.
"Yeah, I'm sure that'll go over well." I hadn't truly thought through the implication of showing up outside another village and rooting through their grave sites, but it's too late to think about that now. Or it won't help anything. I just need to get the sword. "Let's go."
We briefly skirt the edge of the village, and Arvid risks a nod at a few almost familiar faces as I pull my hood down further over my face. They wave back and I shake my head at him when we're clear of the last few houses. He shrugs, that easy grin that's the perfect accompaniment to Aurelia's easy diplomatic lies stretching across his face.
The first tombs aren't very far from the village but they're old, the runes on the small plaques in the hill face worn almost smooth. It's more like they were placed far away hundreds of years ago and in the centuries since, the village has slowly crept closer. The newer tombs are a little harder to see, placed more creatively around rocks and set into shallow caves. Arvid is curious, tracing over names and with a gloved hand, but I feel very strongly like I'm not supposed to be here, like I'm being watched. I don't see what I'm looking for so much as I feel it, around a small corner that heavy forbidden feeling relaxes. I look almost directly at a carved stone half hidden by some dry branches.
It's my name. The runes a little different, angles less sharp, words underneath it spelled so that I don't quite recognize them, but my name is clear. Nothing after it.
"Over here," I wave at Arvid, crunching through the knee high snow and breaking the branches off to get at the age-sealed edge of the stone. It feels weird to do this in the middle of the day, on Berk it's always the night before the wedding, and I wish I had a torch for ambiance or something.
"Let's hope Eret wasn't as common of a name a few decades ago," Arvid jokes, the edge he lost on the flight up here reappearing for a brief second as he hands me a sturdy branch to pry with. I wedge it against the edge of the stone and it takes a couple angles until it shifts. Then it moves too fast, falling on the ground and cracking a wedge off of the corner. "Sorry grandpa," Arvid mutters to himself, taking the branch back and carefully picking up the plaque.
The skeleton in the tomb is covered in mostly disintegrated cloth and I touch it with a careful hand before looking over my shoulder. The tombs on Berk are opened from the top or they're large enough to enter, I'm not sure how to get at what is inside of this one. Arvid shrugs and I look back at the half rotted away boot on a skeleton foot before sighing.
"I'm just going to stick my head in and see if there's a sword." For the first time ever, I miss my previous scrawniness as I edge carefully into the tomb beside the bones, leaning hard on my elbow and trying to ignore the pull of nearly healed stitches in my arm. There's a glint, barely visible and blocked when I move my head just wrong, but a definite glint. I reach for it, wincing when I wobble and accidentally grab a long dried arm bone for balance.
Thank you, namesake. Grandpa doesn't make sense without context, but I appreciate the support all the same.
"Eret," Arvid hisses, smacking my hip as my feet lift slightly off of the ground in my attempt to reach for the sword.
"Just a second, I've almost got it." I barely avoid planting my face into a ribcage covered in stringy, cold preserved leather, "and don't jostle me when I'm snuggled up against a dead guy."
He says something else but I don't quite hear it because my arm is against my ear as I stretch to grab...a blade. Yes. I've got it. I pull it carefully towards myself, ancient fabric tearing around a worn and battered blade. It's corroded in the middle, pockmarked with rust that makes it feel more historic as I carefully slide it into the collar of my coat, tucking the point into a seal skin lined pocket by my waist.
"Ok, you can pull me out--"
Arvid takes the suggestion with unnecessary force, yanking me by my leg and throwing me face down into the snow. He lands on top of me, straddling my waist and gathering my wrists in his hand behind my back. The sword in my coat digs into my layers of shirts and if it were sharper, it would be cutting where I don't want to be cut. As it is, it's just bruising me, making it hard to breathe where it digs into my ribs. Was he this jealous about Dad's sword? I don't think so, especially because I handed it over.
"Got him!" He announces to someone else before leaning down and whispering in my ear, "did you get it?"
"Yes, if you're going to steal it you'd have to roll me over." I kick at him but all the heavy clothes are in the way and he's securely seated, one hand on the back of my neck, pressing my face into the snow.
"Keep it hidden, we got caught, play along."
"Is it playing along if I tell you to stop crushing me?" I wheeze, trying to kick him again and getting a mouthful of snow for the trouble.
"Hey, don't worry, I've got him." Arvid announces, standing up and yanking me to my feet with his grip on my wrists. It's tight but nothing I couldn't break out of and I resist the urge to do exactly that. I should trust him, plus, if I tried anything, the sword might fall out of my furs and get abandoned if we had to flee. I have to blink a few times to see the group of men approaching us clearly through the ice encrusted on my eyelashes. There's eight or nine of them, maybe and they're holding spears in our direction, but they lower slightly when they see Arvid, his tattoos almost matching some of the group's. "Trying to hide in my grandfather's grave after I chased him down here."
"Your grandfather?" One of the men raises their spear, "I don't recognize you."
"I do," another frowns and scratches under his chin with a short sword, its craftsmanship familiar to the one under my coat that's currently cold on the bruise it made. I think my cheek might be scraped too, from stone or ice I'm not sure, and I'm going to personally make Arvid explain himself to Fuse.
"My father, Eret son of Eret brought me here a few years ago," Arvid lets go of my wrists with one hand to point at his chin and I almost throw him again. He seems to sense my plan and tightens his grip, giving me a warning look.
"What are you doing here now?" The guy in front with the largest spear, presumably the leader, asks and Arvid stands up straighter, flaunting the inches he has on the man.
"You're asking me what I'm doing here when I just caught a thief in my grandfather's grave?" He says it with such conviction that apparently none of them think to press the issue further, which is a relief for all of a couple minutes of frozen marching, until it becomes obvious where they're marching me to.
"That looks like a dragon cage turned jail cell," I hiss at him, tugging experimentally on his grip. I don't want to break it if he doesn't want me to, because then my other captors might tie my hands with something more serious.
"Just play along," he whispers, "I promised Thorston I'd get you home un-injured, and I don't think that's going to happen if we take on eight men without our dragons."
"So you're going to lock me up?"
"If I have to," he pushes me forward a little harder than necessary, just to make me trip, and I catch the men looking at us. I struggle for a moment, just for show, and Arvid yanks me back upright with a hand on my shoulder. "I'll grab the keys and get you later. Keep the sword hidden and don't do anything stupid until then."
"Stupid? When am I stupid?" I elbow him, probably harder than I need to for show, and he coughs before handing me over to two of the guys who try to be rougher than he was. They half succeed, mostly they just grab handfuls of layers of Dad's old clothes as they toss me into the cage. I'm glad I'm wearing so much now because the room has a hard rocky floor and the late fall sun isn't anywhere near as high as I'd like it to be.
The front door of the converted jail slams shut behind the group, Arvid included, and I sigh, hitting my head on the bars in frustration and aiming to hit the lock before realizing how wide the warped, rusty metal would split my knuckles. Fuse doesn't make exceptions.
Even if this is going to be a long, cold night.
00000
The first and only time Aurelia got kidnapped, I found her in a dragon cage on some asshole trapper's boat. Everyone else thought it was the crony we'd been dealing with, dancing around in the non-fatal chief style for months, but I had a hunch things were escalating. Well, it wasn't so much a hunch as it was the fact that Arvid was inconsolable and liable to get himself killed if he stepped up the chain of command, so I did it.
That was the first day I realized that only some people will talk. Some people just aren't made for compromise, and when I was alone on a boat with one such person who was in command of about twenty who might listen to reason, my decision to...end discussions came more easily than I would have thought it could.
Aurelia threw up, I still think it's why she dove so stubbornly into diplomacy. If she talks fast enough, she doesn't have to see inside of anyone's lung, theoretically.
Anyway, the reason that this stupid stony jail cell has me thinking about that day is I remember so clearly being irritated when I landed that Aurelia was still in the cage. It was built for Nadders or maybe Gronckles, and the bars were practically as far apart as her shoulders were wide. She could have turned sideways and gotten out at literally any time, but I had to explain that to her while she dry heaved and tried not to look at the bloody puddle that used to be the biggest up and coming dragon trapper in the archipelago.
She later explained that she stayed in the cage because the trappers couldn't get in, and she didn't have a weapon or a dragon so there was no point in escaping, but I don't have either of those concerns now. I have Dad's dad's old corroded sword, which probably couldn't cut anything, but it's heavy enough to bludgeon with, and if I could just get outside, I could call Bang. Even if I couldn't, we didn't leave him that far away, I could make a run for it.
But I don't fit.
The bars look far apart. I didn't even wait until nightfall to try at first, pressing my shoulder against a gap and expecting the layers of clothes to compress and bunch and ultimately let me through, but I had no luck. Now, it's finally late enough that I don't think anyone is dropping by to give the poor prisoner some dinner, so I start taking off layers, folding them carefully to hide the sword and shivering as I get down to my undershirt. I push my shoulder again against the space between two bars and get a little further, arm slipping through past my armpit until the cold, rusted metal introduces itself to my collarbone and back, not quite at my spine.
I turn my head and press my face between the bars to push harder. My head fits, barely, but it does. My chest doesn't move, though, and the rust bites into my collarbone, scraping enough that my shirt starts to tear and I yank my arm back. There's no blood in the hole, just a little reddened skin I won't have to explain to Fuse, and I sit down on my pile of clothes with a huff.
Picking the lock with the sword is a no go and I can't get enough of a running start to bust the gate open, as rusty as the lock is. I get excited for a second when I find Fuse's gifted smoke bombs in a deep pocket of my original clothes, but I think they've gone bad or something because the color is different. I still try and light them, first by sparking the sword against the wall and then by ripping off a piece of my sleeve and laboriously getting it to light, then holding the fire to the unraveling wicks. They fizzle out almost immediately with a rotten smell but no smoke and I throw one at the wall in frustration. It sparks, uselessly, the place it impacted chipping off to reveal a red clay color underneath, which I take to be the definite sign of a bomb gone bad.
Sleeping isn't an option. Not only am I not tired, but there's nothing remotely comfortable in this cell. The couple of slices of bread that a sullen kid drops off at first light could be a pillow, I guess, because the moldy crust prevents them from being food. Maybe I’m spoiled from living in the chief’s house, but I’m not keen on a moldy bed either.
Mostly I have too much time to think. About Fuse and the fact that we're engaged and the fact that for the first time in a long time, there's a future that I want to get back to. About the chief's advice and going after what I want and how horribly it is currently going for me. Except I also wouldn't be where I am without it, there wouldn't be a house and a future on the horizon and...well, it's a vortex I can sink some thought into. Approximately two days of thought, judging by the volume of my stomach's growls when I assess each morning's moldy bread as I watch a tiny square of sun make its way across the floor, even though the light makes me feel colder.
Where is Arvid with the fucking keys?
Briefly, on the third morning, I wonder if he left without me, especially with the sword and the tackling. Nothing in the last four years would lead me to that conclusion, but the last four days? Maybe. I don't know. Maybe I don't want to know. Maybe I don't count on anyone but Fuse to be bedrock during changing times, but she's understandably not up to it so I'm drifting. I want to be wrong.
I jump up when the door slams open, rattling rust off the bars over the tiny window.
"I didn't do it!" Arvid shouts as the same kid who brings my bread shoves him through the makeshift prison door, his hands bound with thick rope, his eye swelling a shiny pink.
"Tell that to my dad," the kid grumbles under his breath as he gives me a wary look, one hand flitting to the keys on his belt.
Arvid could get out of that hold, but he doesn't. I hope it's part of a plan and hold my hands up in silent surrender, taking a step back from the gate. I could dash out, but I don't think I could take the kid with how easy it would be to use Arvid as a shield. I can also hear voices outside, and as much as my clearing out the Thorston pantry and then sleeping a solid day in Fuse's bed perked me up, the last few days without food or sleep are catching up to me.
My brother's stumble isn't necessarily exaggerated when the kid pushes him into the cell and locks the door behind him, but I freeze until we’re alone and the voices outside go silent.
"Moldy bread?" I gesture to one of the plates still by the gate and my stomach growls. So helpful.
"I'm good, thanks."
"No keys, I take it."
He blinks, "I'll pull them out of my ass if you untie me."
I laugh at that, the tension half-melting. It's not quite the bottom or top half though, it's one of the sides and obviously asymmetrical, because the atmosphere teeters and finds a new upright.
"These knots are...a mess," I struggle with the rope, pulling a little too hard and flinching as Arvid's vaguely blue thumb jolts. He was struggling as they tied him up, apparently, "I'd cut it loose but we might need the rope."
"Planning a grand escape?"
"Always," I sigh, "looks like a rope-less one though." The corroded sword cuts a surprisingly effortless path through the rope and the shreds fall to the floor as Arvid flexes his hand. Honestly, the pile is a more appealing pillow than the bread and I almost contemplate it for a second. "Better?"
"Not really," Arvid half smiles, exhausted as he turns away to press his swelling face against the hard stone wall, "almost as good as ice, right?"
"I guess," I lean by back against the wall next to his face, glancing casually at him. I'm mostly glad for someone to talk to, but I'm also really glad that it's him, weird tension aside. "Who did that?"
"Jailer's wife made a move," he snorts and I roll my eyes. "I'm serious, I was trying to get the keys and she offered a deal. Apparently, I'm still pretty good looking by Dad's hometown standards." There's that jealous look again, but it's hollow. Not even tired, just...expired, like a log that's too charred to keep burning.
"Did you do it?" I ask even though I already know the answer and it's his turn to dismiss me, standing up to carefully poke at his swelling eye.
"She told her husband I did because I didn't, so...no luck with the keys, do you have a plan?"
"Time travel about five years into the past and fit through the bars," I shrug, "I tried a few times, but no luck. Maybe another week avoiding moldy bread and cutting off an ear would do it, but Fuse would never forgive me." It's meant to get a laugh but Arvid deflates instead, slumping down against the wall, staring at the ceiling.
"It's really hard to be pissed at someone so clueless, you know?"
"I don't," I shove cold hands into my pockets, fiddling with Fuse's ruined smoke bombs. "I'm usually the most clueless."
"You and Mom," he sighs, "you two trade off."
"How hard did you get hit?" I laugh.
He looks at me seriously, exhausted, and I recognize some version of Aurelia's most cutting, honest face. The one that only comes out when she's too preoccupied to unpack my nonsense in to neat piles. Arvid's version is more mallot than dagger though and I steel myself.
"You know, sacrificing yourself isn't without casualties."
"Aren't you the one who tackled me and lied about your involvement in my scheme and it led to me being here?" I raise an eyebrow but he doesn't notice or more likely, doesn't care. "What's your problem? You've been weird ever since Dad gave me his sword. Am I facing another coup, because if so, you need to starve and not sleep for a couple days before I'm willing to call anything even--"
"I know my place," Arvid cuts me off, sharp and definite, "trust me--"
"Sorry if you ordering me to trust you doesn't have the desired effect--"
"It's not an order," he sighs, probing the swelling under his eye, "it's just hard watching you get everything, alright? I'm over it--I mean, I'm dealing with it." He swallows hard and shrugs a broad shoulder, "badly."
"Watching me get everything?" I snort, gesturing to the cell, "right, a dank, freezing jail, everything I've ever wanted."
"Before you go back to your life and your family and your future marriage to the woman you love," he hits his head against the wall and sighs like it's the last ounce of deflation. “And your job that’s neatly waiting for you, all responsibilities listed out.”
Oh.
"That wasn't umm, what I was expecting," I sit down next to him, back against the same wall, one leg extended with my hands folded over my knee. I don't feel as casual as I'm trying to look and I clear my throat, "do you want to talk about it?"
"About your future chiefdom?" His lip curls and the muscle under his eye twitches, which brings him right back to sad. That's going to be a nasty bruise and I passively worry how big the jailer is.
"I talk about that enough," I shrug, bumping his shoulder with mine, "whine about it, mostly. So much that I forgot to ask if you were upset about anything, apparently."
"You do that."
I think about Fuse and rub my eyes with the heels of my hands, "yeah. I'm working on it."
"It's not that you do everything wrong," Arvid thumps a heavy hand on my shoulder, "it's that somehow, I do everything right and it doesn't seem to matter."
"What are you talking about?" I laugh, "you're the only one of us that Mom trusts to be an actual adult."
"Is it trust?" He doesn’t want an answer and I don’t nod, “or was Mom just the first one to forget where I fit?”
"She trusts you," it comes out flat and Arvid sees right through me to what I haven't fully verbalized yet.
“It doesn’t matter.” He sounds like Fuse, and I hate that I’ve become someone that people are scared to lean on. “Not—it’s good that she trusts me, it makes it easier. For you.” He laughs, “which is what matters, I know—”
“From where I sit, nothing seems very easy,” I gesture at the wall in front of us, the sun dipping below the small, dingy windowsill and shepherding in another long, cold night. “It’s funny though that you say you don’t know where you fit, because I just told Fuse that you’re co-chief’s wife, because she’s nervous about that, apparently.”
“I’ll be a Thorston-Mom translator,” he snorts, miserable but at least talking, “that sounds like a full time job.”
“It’s yours whether you want it or not.” I follow his lead and relax a little bit, “you’re already kicking ass at managing all of us, which is basically Mom’s job aside from being married to the chief, and unless there’s something you need to tell me about your feelings…” I joke, gesturing to myself and he sighs.
“I hate that Dad gave you his sword.”
It’s better than another confession but it still hits me like a physical blow.
“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
“Well…uh, do you want to talk about it?” I prod, trying not to look at the empty sheath where Dad’s sword was. I saw him leave it with Wingspark before I got captured and I’m assuming it’s still there, but it’s absence is like a presence in and of itself.
“Not really,” Arvid scoots closer to me, notching his shoulder over mine against the wall. “I’m tired, it’s cold.”
“You aren’t too mad to huddle for warmth, that’s a good sign.” I’m more relieved than I let on when I scoot closer, the bubble between us where Dad’s sword should be the only warm patch I’ve felt in days.
“I’m not mad,” he shuts his eyes, obviously not asleep but not daring me to call him out either, “there’s no one to be mad at.”
“I get that feeling.” The place I used to use to deflect everything at the chief is as empty as Arvid’s belt and I let my eyes close, at least for a few hours.
00000
I dream about cribs in a prison cell while Dad’s sword glows red hot from a fire I can’t see, emanating from my side where Arvid hit me all those years ago. When I wake up, Arvid is slumped over my lap, arms too tight around my legs as he uses my thighs as a pillow. My nose is numb from cold and my toes are numb from my brother’s massively heavy head and I try to shake him loose, my breath foggy in the gray morning light.
“Arvid.”
“Mmph,” he presses his face into my leg, “five more minutes.”
I shake his shoulder and he looks up with a sleepy squint, staring at me for a second before remembering where he is and frowning. He sits up a little too quickly, brushing dust from his front and trying to straighten his hair. The bruise around his eye is fully black in the corner and blue-purple around the edges and it makes him look younger the way his sheepish expression does, like he’s been caught after picking a bad fight.
“I would have let you sleep, but chances of keeping all my toes are already less than ideal, considering what serves for a blade right now,” I joke, awkwardly standing up and pacing to get warm. Arvid examines Eret the Original’s sword pensively, tracing a battle-faded inscription along the flat of the blade.
“Don’t worry, I don’t want this one too,” he says when he catches me staring.
“I wasn’t worried,” I shrug, “that one, I’ve definitely earned.”
“You chose it,” he sets it down, “you could have had any Hofferson or Haddock sword on Berk, but you chose Dad.” His smile is sad and pensive, and a little sheepish still, daring me to cut him off. “And as always, he chose you.”
“Well,” I swallow, gesturing at him and seeing nothing more than a young version of Dad, less heroic in reality than he would be in the story when he retold it later. Or not less heroic, just more real, more alive instead of a living legend. “He doesn’t have to choose you, it’s obvious.”
He shrugs.
We both look so much like our dads that sometimes, when I look at him, all I see is Mom. I hope he feels the same.
“I guess I know what obvious feels like, and I’m not a fan of it either.” I sigh, running my hand back through my tangled mess of hair. Somehow, needing a bath is what makes me miss home. Or maybe it’s the feeling of being assumed, and I’m a hypocrite for missing it right when Arvid is explaining how he doesn’t have it. Mostly though, I suddenly miss Fuse, everything I’ve held off due to necessity threatening to knock me back. “I’m sorry—”
“And then there’s the house,” he smiles, “which is ironic, because I’m the one responsible for spoiling you there.”
“The house? What’s up with the house?” I cock my head, “does it have an interior hot spring or a never ending bread cabinet or something? Axe storage for twenty?”
“It’s not going to feel empty,” he shakes his head, the last of the tension melting into a miserable fog around him, hovering above the frozen ground. “Four years with two people in a house meant for six starts to get a little quiet.”
All of the sleep and time to think has meant something, because the concept clicks immediately.
“The babies.”
“Right? Plural. Two of them.” He sighs, “it’s not that you do everything wrong, but when you do, it always turns out so right for you.”
“And you do everything right.”
“Well, I don’t think there’s a wrong way to do that.”
“What do you—oh Gods, no, I’m trying to have a heart to heart with you and—”
“I had to,” he tosses a pebble at me and it bounces off of my forehead, “you should see your face.”
“I don’t need to, I’m betting it’s projecting horror and disgust and I just meant you got betrothed and then married in that order, not—can you throw up after not eating for however many days? Because I might try—”
“Who else am I going to talk to about this stuff? Rolf?” He’s a little pleading, a little joking, and I can’t deny that I owe him after apparently rubbing something like this in his face, even if I didn’t know. “He’d give me a pamphlet in Latin or something.”
“You could try Ingrid, she’d give you…I don’t know, a map to nearly abandoned boats with free babies on them.” I sit back down next to him, doing my best fake placid and hoping it’ll translate inward eventually. “How long have you felt like this?”
“Finn didn’t help things,” he scuffs his toe on the ground, “how is it that Ingrid rejects absolutely everything she’s supposed to do and somehow, she’s happy with Smitelout and a two year old?”
“Because she’s Ingrid,” I laugh, “you talk about me getting everything.”
“True, she’s the real favorite.” He lacks the weight of his secret, “I hate to break it to you but I think she’s even the chief’s favorite. Well, and Snotlout’s.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” I laugh, “I kept wondering if Snotlout would take in another unconventional duo just so that Fuse and I could sleep in the same bed. And I bet if I threw in grandpa bragging rights, he would have done it.”
“Aurelia says we have time.” Arvid’s voice carries a dismal hint of sarcasm that’s more mine than anyone else’s and I remember my own conversation with Aurelia, offering her my kids if I start messing them up too bad. “Maybe this will change her mind, at any minute I could be locked up for life and she’ll want someone to remember me by.”
“Uh, I know that we’re having brother time right now and pretending you didn’t remind me that you’re married to my sister—”
“I’m not pretending.” He teases and I shake my head.
“No, I—that’s something you need to talk to her about—”
“What did she tell you?” Arvid’s reaction makes my heart throb for Fuse, because it’s the same obsessive worry I feel whenever I let myself think about her. It’s the same pull, the one that makes the prison bars look like rusted matchsticks. “She talked to you? About kids?”
“We share issues.”
“What did she say? Is she ok? Why isn’t she telling me?” The pain is familiar too, the shame-tinted grief I felt when I learned Fuse hadn’t been telling me everything.
I shake my head, “that’s all I should tell you, it’s not—you know, as much as my history surrounding Aurelia still perturbs me,” I tread lightly, “mostly it seems really messed up for me to moderate relationship talk as both your siblings.”
He doesn’t hear me, not in any way that would matter, because he’s on his feet, rattling the bars with force that makes the rust flake to the floor.
“Have you tried to pick the lock?” He takes the ceremonial sword and gouges the tip trying to shove it into the lock.
“Hey, be careful with that.” I try to take it back but he drops it on the floor, narrowing his eyes at the gate.
“I could bust that open.”
“I tried that, yes, after picking the lock didn’t work—“
“Youtried it, alright,” he plants his foot against the wall to build up more speed as he takes two running steps and slams his shoulder into the rusty gate. It clangs like an orchestral sentry, the lock taking the high notes as the tumblers inside clatter around.
“That’s really loud.”
“Well, I hit it really hard,” he rolls his shoulder and sets up to try it again.
“Whoa there,” I put a hand on his shoulder and he nudges it off, a little too hard, “hey!”
“You might be content to let Stoick claim your kids while you—fuck!” He cuts himself off, “I don’t mean that, I just—”
“You’re worried, it’s fine,” I kick a plate of moldy bread and it skids harmlessly under the bars, clattering against the door, “thinking about Fuse is killing my appetite as much as the potential food poisoning. We need to get out of here, I just think doing it without drawing the attention of multiple people massive enough to do that,” I gesture at his eye, “is probably a good idea.”
His jaw flexes and he glares at the door a second before nodding, “you said you tried to fit.”
“I did, I don’t fit,” I assure him and he cocks his head.
“I bet I could make you fit.”
“I…don’t know if I like the sound of that,” I stare at him for a second before starting to take off layers. “But I don’t see any other options at the moment.”
“Take off the sweater,” he holds his hands out to take my clothes, tossing them on the floor to cover the ceremonial sword. Fuse’s ruined smoke bombs fall out of my inner pocket and roll to the back corner. “Wait! Those are Thorston’s, you had them the whole time?”
“I’ve had them for months, they’ve been soaked about half a dozen times,” he grabs my arm when I don’t move fast enough, maneuvering me against two of the wider set bars. It’s different than where I tried and maybe a few days without food will matter. “You think bombs wouldn’t be the first thing I’d try if I had them?”
“I never know with you,” he laughs, waiting for me to get my foot against the base. My feet aren’t going to be the problem and I can kick off my boots as need be, but the first squeeze I feel mid-foot still makes me nervous.
“If I say stop—“
“I’ll stop,” he pushes gently when the gap introduces itself to my collarbone again, “it’s so close.”
“Yeah, how close is close if I leave my nose behind and Fuse kills both of us?” I squawk when he shoves on the back of my head, “bad angle, that’s not gonna—ouch!”
“You’re being louder than the gate,” he grunts, knee against my hip and the gap pinches my pelvis where I don’t want to be pinched. I squeak and kick backwards at him.
“If you want nieces and nephews—”
“I’ll already have a spare,” he eases up when he jokes but it makes me laugh anyway and my chest expands into the gap, pinching my stomach. I squeak again. “Exhale—”
“That won’t get my ribs out of the way, fuck—”
The door opens and the jailer’s son drops a plate of moderately more moldy bread than usual on the floor, teenage face wide eyed in shock.
“Uhh,” I cough, “I don’t fit.”
“Yeah,” Arvid yanks me back with a tug that feels like it scrapes all the hair off of half of the front of my body and I yelp. “He’s been bulking up on the bread.”
“Yeah,” I wheeze, “it’s dense. Nutritious.”
The kid slams the door behind him as he presumably runs to get bigger guards.
“Well, they know now,” Arvid says quietly before flinging himself against the gate again. It breaks partway free of the roof, along with the whole strip of wall. “Help me,” he tosses me my coat for padding and I shrug into it, counting to three with him and throwing my own shoulder against the wall near the corner, where it’s stubbornly holding on.
Once. Twice. Three times makes my whole arm sing, my no bruises rule falling away as I remember the stitches I haven’t dealt with as they yank and sting.
Arvid beats me to four by a half a second and the bars fall down, Arvid crashing onto them with me following a second behind, clutching my arm. Two things happen at once. First, the door starts to open, a single spearhead poking its way through the gap. Second, the wall of bars falls against the door entirely and bends under my brother and my combined weight, folding in a neat corner against the floor and jamming the door shut.
Guards start pounding at the door but I roll onto my back, head uncomfortable against the bars as I rub my shoulder. Arvid jumps up and starts pacing like a caged Rumblehorn.
“Hey, it’s ok, they can’t get in.”
“And we can’t get out,” he kicks the bars holding the door shut and I sit up slowly, “what are we going to do?”
“We’ll figure it out,” I might imagine the dragon sounds outside. Bang’s warble, Wingspark’s frantic squeal at the sight of weapons in the hands of people she doesn’t know. I don’t imagine the weapons against the door, clanging dully as unfamiliar voices rise into a familiar angry wave.
“How? The window?” He points at the tiny window, “Gods, I wish Aurelia were here. For so many reasons.” He tugs at his hair and my stomach hurts with how much I feel the same.
“I wish Fuse were here.”
“She couldn’t fit through there,” he snorts, gesturing at the bars, “not now, at least—”
“No, I mean I wish Fuse were here with some firepower.”
I definitely hear Bang now, his blast making the air in the cell blur in familiar rings of compression and speed. I see Fuse’s smoke bombs in slow motion, rolling with the blast to the corner of the room and leaking odd red smoke that I don’t recognize.
“What the—”
“Get down!” I shout at Arvid, clapping my hands over my ears as Bang blasts again.
The bombs slam into the wall and everything is loud and white and dust.
I don’t know if you guessed this would be anything other than a corny high school party modern au with both feret and arvelia when you asked this, but that’s what you got, and also, I missed my clueless son with a crush on his sister and slutty arvid and awkward, distant Fuse who’s heart almost bursts all the time because an individual boy is so stupid.
Kiss Prompts
If Aurelia’s dad doesn’t want her throwing parties, he shouldn’t take Stoick on his business trips and forget to tell her when they are until the morning of. He definitely shouldn’t leave a stack of money on the table for school supplies she doesn’t need. In fact, if he doesn’t want her throwing parties, he should explicitly say it, with the eye contact that her punishment probably won’t even include. If she gets punished at all, honestly, even with the mess left behind as most of the kids trickle back out of the front door the house isn’t much dirtier than it is after her dad forgets to renew the cleaning service for a couple of weeks.
Aurelia stirs the punch she made with the oldest bottle in the liquor cabinet before refilling it with the newest bottle. It’s not that late but most people are gone, a fact that doesn’t make her necessarily optimistic for the school year ahead. But Arvid Hofferson is still here, glowering in the corner, and that’s decent news. His little brother is also lurking around though, waving brightly with a deep blush when Aurelia makes eye contact. She rolls her eyes and goes back to the punch.
She could pretend not to know Eret Hofferson’s name, but of course she does. Not the way that he obviously wants her to know it, because the knowledge comes exclusively from the fact that he somehow bumbles his way to beating her score in almost every test despite never turning his homework in on time. Maybe she’ll still pretend not to know his name, at least to his face. Especially since her dad filled his internship slots and deposited an edited and rejected resume in her room without saying anything.
Fuse Thorston is still here too, looking at the wall full of her dad’s framed designs, and Aurelia is a little shocked to see the red cup of punch in her hand. She didn’t realize Fuse was human enough to eat and especially not to drink alcohol. She thought Fuse subsisted on innovation alone, or something hokey that her dad would say. She gets that she couldn’t get the internship because of nepotism, but it still stings to look between Eret and Fuse and have them both look comfortable here.
Arvid looks at the door and says something to Eret about leaving, shoulders slumped slightly like he’s trying and failing to look smaller, and Aurelia can’t help but be a little gratified to be on the same side of discomfort as him. Eret placates him and Aurelia thinks she hears something like a bribe that Arvid accepts with a grunt. And just as the uncomfortable normalcy of being a spectator in her own home starts to set in in earnest, Aurelia notices something else. Fuse glares at Arvid, like she always does, that icy, distant glare that keeps even Aurelia’s less than charitable thoughts in check. Then her eyes flick to Eret and soften slightly as she fidgets with her hair and takes a sip of her punch.
Interesting.
Aurelia looks around the room at the few remaining groups of people, mostly sitting around and talking. Probably not more than a dozen, in all, a small enough group to have a decent chance of this being very interesting. She picks up the empty bottle from the newer scotch she disguised–no, promoted–and gestures at Eret with it, watching his eyes widen and looking away when he starts slapping Arvid excitedly on the arm.
“In the nature of a true cliche last day of summer party,” Aurelia addresses the room at large, “I think we have to play spin the bottle or it doesn’t even count.”
“Good point!” Eret’s voice cracks and maybe Aurelia should have chosen someone less enthusiastic to back her up on this.
There’s a general grumble in the room, a nervous, pubescent sound that makes Aurelia feel very young and very mature all at the same time. She hasn’t kissed anyone, exactly, and she tries not to see Arvid glowering at his feet like he’s so much above all of this.
“Will Arvid play?” A girl in a small group in the corner asks, tittering to her friend when Arvid’s face shifts instantly and he winks at them, shrugging one too cool shoulder.
“Why wouldn’t he? It seems like his kind of game,” Aurelia either can’t or won’t hold back that comment, but Arvid doesn’t deny it, eyes on the girls in the corner as he takes an easy seat on the floor, legs stretched out in front of him.
“That bottle won’t spin very well,” he advises her and she hates the way he ignores her entirely for the bottle in her right hand and the girls in the corner. Mostly, she hates the way that she sees herself in him, in the way he waffles from uncomfortable and trying to disappear to holding the attention in the room like a weapon. "So you might want to sit close.“ He winks at the girls again and the effect is instantaneous.
Everyone sits on the floor in a loose circle, Eret sliding between two girls in an obvious bid to be closer to Arvid, like he can use that to his advantage, because presumably everyone will be aiming for his brother. One of the girls scoots pointedly away from him and he blushes, fidgeting and looking at his hands. That irritating familiarity is worse the more that she sees him and Aurelia struggles not to focus on it. She knows him from somewhere, somewhere else, somewhere she didn’t like him very much. She sits exactly opposite to Arvid, half as a point of pride and half to distract herself by looking at him. He looks at the bottle in her hand again, leaning easily towards a pretty blonde who looks far too happy to be close to him.
"Really, princess, blended whiskey? You couldn’t afford anything better for us?”
Aurelia snorts, “I used my dad’s thirty year in the punch and just refilled the bottle with this.”
“Waste of good scotch.” Arvid is trying to sound older and it works and Aurelia hates how easily he does it. His size can’t hurt. It can’t hurt at all, especially coupled with the arms that flex when he leans back on his hands.
“I liked the punch,” Eret contributes with an exaggerated nod and there’s that prick of something familiar about it that makes Aurelia dismissively angry.
“Wasting it was the point,” she snips at Arvid, “now I get to see if my dad can even tell the difference.”
“Are we going to play or what?” Arvid grins at the blonde next to him and Aurelia rolls her eyes, setting the bottle in the middle of the circle and gesturing at it.
She looks around, waiting for someone to grab it and notices that Fuse isn’t sitting and worse, she’s back at the wall of drawings, back pointedly turned to Eret. And that’s half the game here, it’s explosive to get Fuse to kiss Arvid, it’s revealing if Fuse kisses Eret. It’ll tell Aurelia if that awkward shift in her posture when she looked at him meant anything or if she was just being awkward. It could be either, but she wants to know, especially because it distracts her from the chances that she won’t get to kiss Arvid at all and instead she’ll be stuck watching him kiss a bunch of other girls with decent aim.
“Fuse,” Aurelia waves at the girl who turns around with a shifty, obvious side glance at Eret. "You have to play.“
"I don’t,” Fuse shakes her head.
“Come on, it’ll be fun.”
“Probably not,” she answers a bit slowly, looking at the bottle like she does at the drawings she hasn’t figured out yet.
“So there’s a small chance that it could be fun,” Aurelia points at the recently vacated spot next to Eret, “there’s room.”
“Yeah, Fuse, you can sit by me,” Eret smiles at her and pats the rug, friendly in a less hyper way than he is with Aurelia and Fuse thinks for a second, back held straight, before taking him up on the offer. He jostles her arm with a friendly elbow and she takes another sip of punch, eyes fixed on the bottle in the center of the circle.
Very interesting.
“If I get Thorston, we’re leaving,” Arvid curls his lip slightly and Eret glares at him.
“No offense taken,” Fuse’s tone is a bit cutting and Arvid grinds his teeth, trying not to respond.
“In that case,” the girl who asked in the first place if Arvid would play snatches the bottle possessively from the center of the circle, spinning it with a hopeful glance in his direction. It lands on some other boy and the two reluctantly kiss. Then he spins and gets another girl, leading to a few boring, low stakes turns. One girl swears under her breath when she doesn’t get Arvid and the boy sitting next to her, who Aurelia thinks is her boyfriend, starts in on her about it, which makes Arvid relax under the unspoken threat.
The kid clenches his fists and Arvid goes to stand up, but the girlfriend flushes and drags her boyfriend out through the front door and their bickering resumes as soon as it’s closed.
“Well then,” Arvid grabs the bottle, “since my lack of turns is causing so many problems…” He spins it and Aurelia doesn’t necessarily like how right he was about the rickety way that it spins. Or at least she doesn’t until it stops, clearly pointing at her.
“Of course,” Eret scoffs under his breath and Arvid’s flash of genuine concern at his brother makes Aurelia’s chest throb slightly. She noticed Arvid immediately for all the obvious reasons, but no matter how much of a dick he pretends to be, she can’t help but see the cracks in his facade. This one makes her think so acutely of Stoick that she hopes, vainly and impossibly, that his cracks might line up with hers.
“Come here,” he leans across the circle, moving quickly like he intends to get it over with, and before she can acclimate to the warm, undeniably strong fingers that cup her jaw, his chapped lips brush across her cheek. It’s not a real first kiss but it feels like it and she touches her cheek reflexively as he pulls away, giving Eret a sheepish look and folding his hands on his lap.
“That’s against the rules,” Eret tells him miserably, and that self-sacrificing pout ignites a flare of Aurelia’s irritation almost loud enough to drown out the tingling in her cheek.
“Why don’t you take your turn then if you don’t like how he plays?” She snaps, nudging the bottle towards him with her toe and tugging her skirt down when she sees Arvid glance at her leg. She glares at him and he thinks harder, looking between the bottle and her face with a slow sweep that doesn’t give away any of his thoughts.
“You don’t want your turn?” Eret hedges quietly and Aurelia shakes her head.
“No, Eric, I’m good.”
His face falls and looks even more familiar and Aurelia can almost place it until Arvid’s glare hits the side of her face like a focused laser and she looks at her hands in her lap to avoid it. He shakes his head at her, disgust palpable and the tingle in her cheek goes cold all at once.
“Ok then,” Eret rallies with an impressive straight face that Aurelia doesn’t expect to feel bad about, but does, “guess I’ll go.” He spins it a little slowly and for a second, it looks like it’s going to land pointing back at him, which is unusually cruel even for a game like this, and he mutters under his breath, “just my luck.”
It doesn’t stop on him though, instead just barley short and pointing directly at the cup Fuse is holding in front of her. She goes bright red and her face falls slightly, the ‘just my luck’ hitting her as hard as Arvid’s glare hit Aurelia.
“Oh,” Eret faces her, leaning on his hand and shaking slightly shaggy hair out of his face.
“You don’t have to,” Fuse lets him off the hook, shifting like she’s going to stand up and Eret stops her with an awkward, hand-waving pat on the shoulder.
“No, I didn’t mean–I thought it was going to land on me and I was going to have to do that whole thing where you make it look like you’re making out with yourself?” He demonstrates, rubbing his hands up and down his sides and making a kissing sound that makes Arvid slump forward, cradling his head in his hands when a few other girls laugh. "And I don’t know if my ego could handle that, but then it stopped on you and saved me from embarrassment. Or it would have, if I didn’t do that anyway.“
The girls laugh again and Aurelia frowns at them, a little irked on Eret’s behalf. The flailing is familiar in the way that irritates her, but he’s trying to make up for the careless thing he said to Fuse. Maybe this was a mistake, she doesn’t think she likes Eret feeling so human after he took her internship spot. It makes her feel bad about the name thing and she glances at Arvid, who’s still lamenting his brother’s lack of tact.
"You really don’t have to,” Fuse repeats and Eret shrugs a casual, clueless shoulder, risking a barely there glance at Aurelia before swallowing hard.
“I’m the one bringing up the rules, it doesn’t make much sense for me to break them now,” he grins, friendly and almost disarmingly harmless in a way that makes Arvid’s protectiveness make even more sense. Eret rests his hand on Fuse’s shoulder at the base of her neck, leaning in slightly before stopping again. "Unless you don’t want me to.“
Fuse blushes obviously and a couple people laugh awkwardly as she leans in and kisses him, chaste but direct and lingering a second longer than the boring, low-stakes kisses that transpired in the first few rounds of the game. When she pulls back, Eret is frowning at her, a little out of breath, more than a little goofy as he pats her on the shoulder and ducks his head to hide the flush on his face.
Arvid looks at Aurelia suspiciously and maybe even a little conspiratorially, like he just saw something he doesn’t quite like and wants corroboration. Aurelia shrugs, cheek tingling, glaring at the blonde beside Arvid who looks judgementally at Eret. She wishes she hadn’t feigned forgetting his name and there’s a weird feeling of ownership that comes with that, like she hit a quota and she was the only one who got to make fun of him anyway.
"My turn,” Fuse takes the bottle and spins it a little too hard, eyes suspiciously bright in a way that confirms Aurelia’s suspicions, but she finds herself lacking the feeling of victory that usually accompanies being right off of so little information. She wants to hate Fuse for getting that internship, but it’s hard somehow, harder still when the bottle lands back tilted at Eret and the small smile on Fuse’s face is smug like she did it on purpose. "You don’t have to,“ she reminds him and he shakes his head, a little bolder this time.
"It’s fine.” He leans in with purpose, hand barely touching her elbow as his lips press against hers with a cautious confidence that makes Aurelia look away. Arvid catches her eye and shakes his head, like he knows she did this on purpose, at some level, and she wants to tell him that there’s no way she could have known that Fuse was a secret spin the bottle prodigy who could bend it to her will. It only makes sense, given the way her dad goes on about her though. Maybe her dad would go on about Eret a little less, though, if he saw the clumsy but surprisingly determined way that he’s continuing to kiss his fellow intern.
“Maybe he’s had enough of a turn,” Aurelia cuts them off and it doesn’t quite make them stop, so she grabs the bottle and taps it against the floor, “I’ll take my turn now, I guess.”
“Oh,” Eret shakes his head, eyes a little glazed, that confused frown still solidly in place on his red face. "Yeah, go ahead.“ He glances sheepishly at Fuse, who is taking a long, slow sip from her cup, staring straight ahead.
Aurelia spins the bottle and it wobbles slightly before pointing obviously at Arvid.
"Come on, there are other people here,” the blonde next to him huffs and Aurelia glares at her.
“There’s enough to go around,” Arvid says it like he’s expected to, but he’s glancing back and forth between Eret’s zoned out gaze at the floor a couple of feet in front of him and Aurelia’s carefully neutral expression. Eret looks at him and waves a twitchy hand, shoulder bouncing and bumping Fuse’s, which makes his cheeks redden to almost match his hair. His hair is a familiar color and Aurelia lets herself be distracted by it instead of focusing on the fact that there’s no way Arvid is actually going to kiss her. "You sure?“
"It’s just a game, right?” Eret looks at Fuse again, wiping his hands on his knees.
“Of course,” Arvid leans across the circle again and Aurelia can’t believe that he’s actually licking his lips until he pauses, sitting back on his knees and taking his phone out. The curious, almost expectant expression she can barely believe melts into his usual frustrated glower immediately and he tosses an empty cup at Eret, breaking at least some of his daze. "We’ve got to go now, bro.“
"What’s wrong?” Eret scrambles to his feet along with Arvid, glancing back at Fuse again and shaking his shaggy head.
“It’s Ingrid,” Arvid huffs, glaring at Aurelia with a sudden understanding, “your father is at our house, princess, this party was just a distraction for him to harass our mom.”
“I didn’t know he was back,” Aurelia panics slightly, jumping to her feet and collecting empty cups for the trash.
“Likely story,” Arvid scoffs at her and Eret grabs his arm, gesturing at the door.
“Does it matter? We’ve got to go.”
Arvid looks like he wants to say or do something else but Aurelia brushes past him, opening the front door and ushering everyone towards it.
“You’ve all go to go.”
Arvid stomps out to his car without another word, leading most of the crowd with him, but Eret pauses in the doorway.
“Thanks for the party,” He says to her, tone bright but flatter than his usual over-friendly chirp. He looks over his shoulder at Fuse again and then back at Aurelia, biting his lip for a second before continuing. "Don’t let Arvid get to you, I believe you didn’t know about your dad getting back.“
"Good for you,” she snaps, a little impatient even though she appreciates it. "Because it’s true.“
"I just said that I believe you,” he looks at Fuse again and opens his mouth like he’s going to say something about her but then Arvid lays on the horn and shouts something out of the window about leaving him. "Fuck, dude, I’m on my way!“ He jogs down the front walk and Aurelia watches him slide dramatically across the hood of the old car before sliding almost gracefully into it through the passenger window. The door probably doesn’t open.
"Do you need any help cleaning up?” It’s Fuse asking, throwing away a stack of used cups and wrinkling her nose at the mess. Her lips are a little red, from the punch or from the game, Aurelia isn’t sure, but either way, it makes her want to be alone. She has that nagging feeling that she’s so close to putting something together, and Fuse is like a grain of sand between her thoughts.
“No, I’ve got it.”
“Alright.” Fuse leaves without anymore fanfare and Aurelia sets about throwing things away and stashing the empty bottle at the bottom of the recycle bin, Eret’s parting words oddly swirling around in her head more than the fact that Arvid almost kissed her. Or maybe it’s the way he runs, or the jerky little twitch of his shoulders. It was easier to focus on him when he wasn’t staring at her and the irritation with him lessened enough to feel more like a habit than an actual feeling.
She’s about to give up, or at least try to sleep on it, when she’s putting the punch bowl back in the closet at the end of the hall and notices her dad’s dusty college graduation picture on the wall next to his diploma. Her eyes widen and she freezes, shutting the closet door slowly and leaning against it. Oh God.
But not forever because I’d die like...please keep talking to me about the boy? And the siblings? And the Fuse, my girl, and fifty one year old second chance Hiccstrid who stole my heart and just...that’s an open door, alright? Like, please keep it open? I know I need to write something else but damn, I can’t have a complete separation here. I can’t.
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The noise in the Mead Hall hits me like a physical weight after almost two months in the chief’s house and I pause in the doorway for a second, searching the crowd and maybe even waiting for a lull. For the crowd to pointedly look away like they all know something I don’t and confirm that the last year has been an elaborate dream during a coma from some unrelated head injury. At some level, it still makes more sense for me to have knocked myself out in that forest fire a year ago than it does for me to be at Arvid and Aurelia’s wedding feast with the Haddock crest on my pin. But the Hofferson sword he dug up this morning remains firmly planted in the center ceiling joist above me.
“I figured you might need this,” the chief appears out of the crowd beside me, holding a mug of what smells like mead towards my left and only unbandaged hand. The smell turns my stomach with its sickeningly sweet familiarity and I shake my head.
“Nothing hurts. Promise.” I try to show him by lifting my bandaged right arm as much as I can against the sling and the thick wool shirt and cape combination that Mom insisted I had to wear, but I don’t get too far. Stupid fancy clothes. Pouting got me out of some of the jewelry, although I’m still not sure how worth it that was, given how Ingrid was glaring at me the whole time from under her own pile of new clothes.
“No, I just--I mean, good, that’s good news, but I thought you might need it because your half-siblings just married each other.” He shrugs, wincing slightly like he’s not sure it’s something he should say, and it probably isn’t, but his daughter just married his wife’s son so I’m not judging the word vomit too much.
“That’s not the hardest thing I’ve made peace with lately.”
Maybe it’s temporary, but I can’t get annoyed at him the way I want or even the way that I used to. Maybe being stuck inside the last couple months with a rotating shift of family who all worked together to make sure I didn’t do anything myself or have any fun at all made the chief feel more like part of that family. In some strange, annoying, non-parental way, but part of it just the same.
Like Rolf keeps saying, it’s a documentation nightmare, and like with all documentation nightmares, I’m trying and succeeding at not getting too hung up on it.
“Are you sure?” He offers the mead again and if I’m not crazy, he’s swaying a little bit. “Might be your last wedding feast for a while without people pestering you with advice the whole time.” He raises an eyebrow at me.
“Whatever that means…” I laugh, brushing him off. As little I’ve been allowed out, it’s not really at the top of my freedom agenda to figure out whatever cryptic thing the chief wants to talk about.
“Well, are you going to see Fuse tonight?” This eyebrow wiggle is definitely drunk and it looks dumber against silver hair that it looks like he tried to comb. More likely Mom insisted on combing it, considering how many times today she threatened to trim mine. “Liquid courage in case you need to have any big conversations…”
I saw Fuse at the ceremony, but she was further back in the crowd. And I know she comes by the chief’s house almost every day, but seeing her will be different when she’s not taking care of me. Even though I haven’t needed that much care, because I’m fine and I’ve been fine for weeks.
“I spent enough of the last two months drunk, chief, I think I’ll sit this one out.”
“That makes one of us,” he sighs and the red shade of his face is sneaking past jubilant, heading quickly through tipsy and coming out somewhere in trashed drunk, “I avoided it for years, but it finally caught up to me.”
“What are you talking about?” I resist the urge to laugh at the way his head is bobbing slightly off center, even though it’s kind of my turn, given that everyone has repeated the greatest hits of my drunken sleep talking back to me for months now. But sometimes, a future chief is the bigger person.
Well, that and I’m hoping he says something ridiculous. I’m not chief yet.
“I have a married daughter,” he drinks from the mug he brought for me, “I’m old.”
“Is that how that works?” I snort, “I hate to break it to you, but I think you’ve been old for a while.”
“That’s what Astrid said,” he shakes his head, “guess I should just accept it as truth at this point.” He raises his mug in a sad sort of cheers and something over my shoulder catches his eye. Before I can check what it is, a familiar hand slides into mine.
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” Fuse squeezes my fingers and drops them and no matter how comfortably she’s been touching me, somehow it’s never enough.
It’s definitely not enough when I look at her and she’s smiling at me unguarded, her hair pulled back from her face with soft, pink-hued braids.
“Huh?”
“You know,” she tugs on the edge of my bear skin cape and bites her lip like she’s looking for the right words. “In actual clothes.”
“Oh,” I slide my arm around her waist, the ends of her hair tickling my wrist, and it’s still thrilling that she leans into me. “You should have seen me trying to get a shirt on over this,” I hold up my bandaged arm and the armpit of my crisp new shirt tugs at my skin where it’s not hanging quite straight. “It took me three tries. Ingrid was laughing so hard I thought she was going to pass out.”
“Maybe you need help out of it,” the chief says and I’d entirely forgotten he was standing there. I jump, reflexively pulling Fuse closer as she flushes, looking down at her feet. The blush adorably reaches her earlobes and stretches partially down her neck in a way I never get to see when her hair is in it’s usual messy braids and my chest tightens.
And of course, in parsing through that, I realize that the chief just has to make me sound like an idiot who can’t take care of myself when Fuse is around. I try to tell him to go away with my eyes but unfortunately, the last couple months have vastly depleted the potency of the Hofferson glare and he wasn’t ever that susceptible in the first place.
“I can get it off by myself,” I huff at him and he snorts. Fuse looks at me and blinks like Aurelia does when she’s waiting for me to catch up and I freeze.
Oh gods.
“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that,” my face feels like it could light the forge from a distance and he still looks so smug and drunk and oh gods, that even worse. “But you did, that’s...disgusting, for one--”
“Eret,” Fuse laughs, tips of her ears bright red as she pats me on the shoulder with a rare, unbandaged hand.
“It’s just,” I look up at the chief, “not funny. And none of your business. And I’m going to go find Arvid and Aurelia now so…” I try and tug Fuse with me but of course the chief has to keep talking.
“Wait, just a second, while you’re here there’s something I actually wanted to ask you about,” he looks at Fuse, patting his pockets and spilling mead down his arm, “I don’t have my notes right now, but there’s a cliff over on Bogsbreath island that looks like good granite for the sea wall that we talked about--”
“Sea wall?” I hate being out of the loop with everything that’s going on. I keep hearing snippets and seeing half finished drawings, but apparently a broken arm means my head is useless. “What sea wall?”
“With that volcano gone, waves are higher from that direction. Last week’s thunderstorm had them breaking about five feet below the hanger.” The chief is one of the only people who can talk to me about what happened without staring at my arm or my scars and I appreciate it even more when Fuse flinches, eyes darting to my sling as the corners of her mouth tilt down. I pull her closer to my side with the hand on her hip and she lets me, her shoulder curling under my arm. “I was thinking a kind of primitive sea wall a couple miles off of the coast might fix it without getting in the way of the thermal vent.” It’s the chief’s turn to be sheepish, but it’s different, because it’s about him being wrong not me being hurt, “dragons are still migrating towards it. Mostly old ones, and numbers are stable but--”
“It’s probably best we stay out of their way.” I’ve earned the right to be smug about it but the chief sighs at my tone anyway.
“But, as I was saying, we don’t really have the material available right now so…” He looks back at Fuse and she’s surprisingly silent, leaning into my side a little harder and staring flatly at him. “Ok, I’ll spell it out, I was wondering if you could try to break down this cliff I found on Bogsbreath island into usable material.”
“I…” Fuse exhales and shakes her head, oddly stiff, “a whole cliff? And granite? I…” She looks up at me, fully regrown eyebrows knitting together, “that might be a little...out of my abilities, Chief.”
“Fuse,” the chief chuckles, “it’s not like it’s an entire volcano.”
“No, I mean it.” Fuse shrugs and definitely doesn’t sound like she means it. Her voice is thin, like her usual firepower isn’t there to back it up, “I’m not sure how to take down a cliff. And Eret needs me here--”
“I’m fine.” I’m not really, I’m worried that there’s none of my favorite giddiness on her face at the prospect of taking down an entire cliff. “You should go.”
“I really don’t think I know how to do what you’re asking.” She shakes her head, shoulders stiff under my arm.
“You just blew up an island, I bet you can figure it out.”
“Really, Chief,” she shakes her head, her hair tickling the back of my hand, “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
That’s even more obviously a lie. And a lie she sounds sad about, like there’s something in her way she doesn’t think she can ask for help with.
“Do you need parts or something?” I look around the room, “is Smitelout giving you trouble? I’ll--”
“No,” she steps out from under my arm, “I just don’t know if I can.”
That’s honest. I look between her and the chief, who’s drunk enough he seems content to watch us talk with that weird smile on his face, like all his plans are working out.
“I’ll go scout it out with you.” Those are truly the magic words, or more likely, any words suggesting I do anything fun or more than ten feet off of the ground, because Mom chooses this moment to walk up next to the chief, leaning her head on his shoulder. Her mug of mead looks less than full and her face is almost as red as his is. “Hey, Mom,” I try to act casual, “great feast, right?”
“You look suspicious,” she smacks her lips and takes a drink, “what’s going on?”
“He wants to come scout a cliff with me,” Fuse crosses her arms, making eye contact with my mom, I’m assuming to avoid my betrayed expression. “That I’m supposed to blow up.”
“And who told you that you were supposed to blow it up?” Mom glares at the chief and he’s drunk enough to be brave enough to tap her chin with his knuckle in answer. She sighs, nostrils flaring and eyes sappy and fond and I look away because that’s still gross. “Hiccup...”
“I want to go, Mom.” I look back at Fuse and her eyes are oddly, pleadingly wide. “It’s been two months. Imagine what a pain in the ass I’ll be if you try to keep me locked up any longer.” I point at my arm, “these bandages? Coming off next week, allegedly, just try keeping me inside when I’ve got two arms at my disposal.”
“Locked up? Uh huh, I can see how shackled down you are right now.” She shakes her head and the chief grins at her again, all lovesick and gray-haired and irritating and I should have walked away when I had the chance.
“Doesn’t seem like he minds that much.”
“I’m right here,” I look at Fuse for backup, “I want to go with you.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mom drunk, but I hope she actually is as I weigh my next tactic. “I mean, I’m still the future chief, I’m pretty sure I can go without asking anyone, but I’d rather go with you.”
Fuse’s cheeks color a little more and I jut my lower lip out like worked when I was newly injured. I thought at some point, she’d realize how stupid it looks and stop falling for it, but that hasn’t happened yet. Hel, maybe she does know it’s stupid, but still likes it for some reason because she sighs, tucking her hair behind her ear and looking back at the chief and my mom.
“I really don’t think I can do it, but I’ll scout it out.”
“And I’ll go with you,” I nod, waiting for my mom to shut me down. She’s tired when she sighs and takes more of a gulp than a sip out of her drink.
“I know how trying to stop you works out.” There’s a strange moment of that terrifying female telepathy that I’ll never understand when she nods at Fuse.
Even with the look, it doesn’t feel like permission and I relax. After months being chief or at least partly in charge, going back to being someone who had to ask for water was more shocking than I could have anticipated. And this is just another piece of proof that things have changed and the changes are sticking. Mom can’t tell me not to do things. She can give advice and I should probably take it the majority of the time, but they aren’t orders anymore.
“In that case, I should go tell Stoick I’m taking my dragon back tomorrow,” I offer Fuse my hand and the escape from the chief’s weird attention that it implies and she takes it. She follows me towards the other end of the hall but more importantly, away from the chief and my mom before they can make any more gross faces at each other. Or comment anymore on Fuse and me. Especially that one. Especially the chief.
But I also need to talk to her, because Fuse not wanting to blow something up is unheard of and she has some reason she wouldn’t say in front of the chief. I pause in a slightly quieter bubble next to the line of ale casks against the wall and Fuse drops my hand to pick up a mug for herself. I can’t help but notice that her long pale fingers are uncharacteristically soot free and unbandaged and I feel bad that she’s spent so much time with me that she hasn’t had any in her workshed.
It’s silly, but I miss the soot. I like how her bandaged fingers leave streaks on me that I find later, like greasy little souvenirs.
“Do you want some?” She offers, voice brightly off kilter and I narrow my eyes, leaning back against the edge of the table.
“You’re trying to distract me.” I gesture at her and my eyes follow, lingering for a second on the deep green belt around her waist before flicking back to her face. “Why don’t you want to blow up that cliff?”
“The chief said it was granite,” she shrugs one shoulder, not quite holding eye contact.
“You love blowing up granite.”
“No,” she sighs, mouth twitching to the side slightly and I try not to smile at what a profoundly bad liar she is. She avoids me for her mug for a second before looking back at my face and shaking her head. “It’s my third favorite, maybe, but how did you know that?”
“I just knew you liked it, I didn’t know you had a definitive ranking.” I tease her and she blushes, always unsure if I’m insulting her until I smile. This is better than being so drunk it reoccurred to me that I was nearly naked every few minutes and sputtered about it all over again. Sometimes, I almost hate how much I remember more than I hate the long fuzzy periods that I can’t quite put together.
“I don’t,” she shrugs, a strand of shiny pink falling over her shoulder, “I should have said in the top five, but—”
“But what?” I reach out and grab her wrist, sloshing ale on the ground between us but pulling her in anyway. I don’t know why it’s cute that she has a ranking system or cuter that she’s defending it. I do know that it almost makes me more concerned that she’s so hesitant to blow something up, because that means something might really be wrong. “I’m sorry, I’m just going to need an actual, scientific reason to believe you can’t at least try to obliterate something.” My hand slides from her wrist to her shoulder and I kiss her forehead.
“Eret,” she sighs, almost chastising, and it makes me all too aware of my knee against hers and her shoulder blade that’s obvious against my palm without the vest I haven’t seen in weeks. And as overwhelming as the crowd was when I first walked in, now the background hum is only making it easier to focus on her, even if being this close makes it hard to focus on anything except the fact that she’d let me kiss her.
More than that, she’d kiss me back. Maybe I could use my fully clothed disguise to convince her that I’m not hurt and she’d keep kissing me instead of acting like I’m going to break.
“What?” I pull her closer and she freezes when her arm bumps against my sling, pulling back slightly. “It’s fine. It doesn’t hurt.”
“You wouldn’t tell me if it did.”
“Probably not,” I look down at my pale hand sticking out of the linen and wiggle my fingers, “but it doesn’t.”
She looks up at me through her eyelashes and if it weren’t for my brother appearing in my peripheral vision, I could almost pretend that we were somewhere more private.
“There you are!” He points at me, the new silver ring on his finger startlingly obvious in a way I wouldn’t have expected. I stand away from the table and Fuse shifts away from me, tucking her hair behind her ear like she can hide her red face behind her hand. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” He’s too loud and I almost expect everyone to be irritated at a Hofferson acting up, but the people who glance over at us laugh and shake their heads. “Thorston!”
Fuse opens her mouth to respond but doesn’t get the chance because Arvid hugs her, pinning her arms to her sides and lifting her a good foot off of the ground. She yelps, looking at me with adorably wide eyes and he squeezes her another second before setting her down and turning to me. He wobbles slightly and I raise my eyebrow.
“Are you drunk?” I ask and he shakes his head.
“I’m married.” He shows me his silver band. I recognize a ring of Wingspark’s scales inlaid in divots that are Smitelout’s obvious handiwork. It doesn’t look half bad, not that I’m going to tell her that. “Look at this, I’m completely married.”
“As opposed to partially?” I look at Fuse, who still seems a little startled, and pat her shoulder. “You’re actually drunk, aren’t you? I didn’t think that was possible.”
“You’re my favorite brother,” he grins and claps his hand on my shoulder hard enough that my teeth clack together. “Where’s Rolf? Fuck that guy, you’re my favorite.”
“He’s drunk,” Aurelia walks up next to Fuse and shakes her head, sighing with obvious fondness at my brother. Somehow, it’s weird that she doesn’t look any different than she did this morning, and it occurs to me that my younger sister is someone’s wife. “He’s so drunk.”
“I’ve never seen him drunk,” I laugh, “I didn’t think it was possible, honestly.”
“He’s a friendly drunk,” Fuse frowns, patchy red clinging high on her cheeks. I’d guess she’s used to being explosive and even after a couple of months defused -- ok, that’s funny-- she’s probably not used to bear hugs sweeping her off of her feet. I’m just glad she and Arvid have reached some kind of truce after a decade of stinkbombs and glaring at each other.
Arvid kisses Aurelia on the temple, picking her up with one arm and swinging her in a circle. She’s resigned to it but smacks his forearm after a second, signaling for him to set her down and he does, remarkably gently considering how hard he squeezed Fuse. Aurelia shakes her head at him and looks at her own ring with an almost calm smile.
“Apparently,” Aurelia sighs, “and he chose a great day to do it. Really,” she looks at Fuse for another of those confounding female moments. “I’m guessing he’ll fall right asleep tonight.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” I look him up and down, taking in the slow sway of his shoulders relative to his feet. Being the only drunk one is miserable, being the sober one while my drunk siblings make a fool of themselves isn’t as bad.
“It’s not.” Aurelia shakes her head and Fuse grabs my hand.
“Why not?” I try to intertwine our fingers but she seems more interested in steering me than actually holding hands. “Sleeping it off is usually a good tactic.”
“You wanted to find Stoick, didn’t you?” She tugs but I don’t move, looking between her and Aurelia. It feels like another secret and I narrow my eyes.
“Well, yeah, but I wasn’t done with the rare opportunity to make fun of Arvid while he’s drunk.”
“Hey,” Arvid frowns. “I’m not that drunk.”
“You’re drunk enough, husband,” Aurelia smiles through what seems like secret-associated irritation when she uses the title and I get a little stuck on the fact that Arvid is someone’s husband. Arvid has a wife. “Drunk enough that I don’t think that title will actually be official until you’re done nursing your hangover.”
“What?” I look at Fuse for clarification and her nostrils flare slightly as she tugs on my hand again. That’s the face she makes when she’s embarrassed for me, and I’m more familiar with it than I should be comfortable with, but I don’t see what I’m doing right now. If anyone should be embarrassed, it’s Aurelia, of course he’s her husband—“No!” I glare at her, my sling straining against the reflex to point at her, “no, don’t talk about…that—”
“It’s my wedding, it’s kind of a part of a wedding,” Aurelia rolls her eyes, apparently too irked with my drunk brother to be embarrassed, “the consummation is implied—”
“I’m your brother. He’s my brother,” I take my hand from Fuse’s to point at Arvid and he laughs, sharing a mushy, mutual expression that makes fun of me in a context I don’t want to think about. “You guys are so gross.”
“Gross?” Arvid snorts and Aurelia shakes her head at me before looking at Fuse.
“Good luck with him,” she scoffs, a tinge of the chief’s joking suggestion in her expression and I shake my head.
“I’m going to go find Stoick, who isn’t gross—”
“Because he’s nine?” She has to try and get in the last word and I scratch the back of my reddening neck where it’s chafed against the strap of my sling. Fuse links her elbow through mine and I let her tug me away this time, shouting over my shoulder.
“And congratulations, by the way, because at least one of us has manners!” I shake my head when Arvid laughs and look over at Fuse. “I didn’t need to think about that. I was doing so well not thinking about that.”
“I tried to interrupt,” she must see Bang’s tail slash above the crowd when I do because she changes direction towards it without me nudging her, “but you were determined.”
“I’m too stupid for you to protect, apparently,” I sigh, bumping my shoulder against hers and grinning when Bang spots me and warbles, shaking his wings and making Stoick laugh from where he’s perched on his back. “Hey bud,” I untangle my arm from Fuse’s to set my hand on Bang’s nose and he croons, tail whisking across the wood floor.
“Hi Fuse,” Stoick greets her before me and I can’t really blame him, especially when she seems so pleasantly surprised, her eyes lighting up even as her shoulders stiffen slightly. She still doesn’t quite know what to do with him and she waves, chewing on her bottom lip. “Hey Eret.”
“I’ve got some news, dude,” I lean on Bang’s head with my left hand, scratching behind a short frill on his neck. Mom hasn’t been letting him inside enough because she has some crazy belief that if Bang and I were left even momentarily in the same room, I’d suddenly be in the sky and far away from the chief’s stuffy house. She’s right, but it’s still not fair. “Do you want to hear the news? Oh hey, guess what, I’m telling you anyway. I’m cleared to fly,” I pat Bang’s head again, “so tomorrow morning, you’ve got to give me my dragon back.”
“No,” he whines, laying down across Bang’s back and hugging him, “who am I going to take to class?”
“It’s terror training,” I nudge his back, “you have your own terror—”
“But then I can’t fly there,” he sits up cross-legged, “you could just fly with Fuse and I could keep him one more day? Pretty please?” He asks Fuse more than me and she shrugs.
“He could, but I think he’s been missing Bang as much as he’s been missing flying.”
“Fine,” Stoick puts his biggest, greenest eyes on, “could you give me a ride to training then? Please? If Eret is taking Bang away?”
“Squirt, I already told you I’d take you to training,” Ingrid walks up behind me and when she doesn’t give me her usual punch in greeting I look and see her holding Rolf’s baby. My half-nephew, or whatever the term for that is. He’s been around the house a couple of times since I’ve been coherent enough to help Rolf flesh out a few pages in the dragon manual and it’s not as awkward as it could have been. Rolf even let the chief help, some, likely because he was constantly pre-occupied with the fact that Ingrid kept practically stealing his firstborn.
“I’m hurt,” I put my hand over my sling in the vague location of my heart, “squirt is supposed to be my nickname. You’re replacing me?”
“Don’t be such a baby,” she rolls her eyes, bouncing her nephew on her hip and cooing at him. He takes her metal hand in his pudgy, tiny one and starts gumming at it. “We’ve got enough of those around here.”
“Speaking of that, does Rolf know you have him?”
“What? Are you going to tattle on me to Rolf?” She laughs, “that would make your Uncle Eret a traitorous little twerp. Yes, it would.”
“Ingrid,” Stoick clambers off of Bang’s back and adjusts his stiff new clothes, standing in front of Ingrid and tugging on the baby’s sock. “Fuse can take me to training tomorrow, you don’t have to.”
“I didn’t actually say that,” Fuse looks at me a little panicked, like she’s not sure how to get out of it, “Eret and I are supposed to go scout something for the chief.”
“Mom’s letting you leave the island?” Ingrid raises her eyebrow at me, “are you sure that’s safe?”
“I’ll be with Fuse.”
“That didn’t protect you last time,” Ingrid doesn’t snap but it’s not gentle either and the baby hiccups around her metal finger, his little face crumpling like he might cry that easily. He looks like Rolf more than his wife, I think, and maybe I’m projecting but there’s something like Dad’s brow there above warm brown eyes.
“That’s not fair,” I sigh and Bang presses his face to my leg. Stoick gets bored with the lack of attention and runs off and Ingrid and Fuse stand tensely opposite each other for a minute.
They didn’t hit it off right away, or so I heard. I was mad when I first heard it, because Ingrid owes Fuse more than anyone except for me, because Fuse was the one who talked her down when I didn’t know where to start, but they came to some kind of an arrangement after a couple days. Or I think it was a couple days. I don’t remember much except it was a lot easier to be quiet when Fuse was holding my hand instead of a family member looking at me like I was going to break.
“It kind of is,” Fuse says simply and I shake my head at her.
“No, it’s not—”
“I’m not even bringing any bombs.” Her voice is as serious as the determined look in her eye as she looks between me and Ingrid so quickly I’m not sure who she’s trying to convince.
“Dad’s been out a few times,” I add, “he hasn’t seen any signs of trappers anywhere nearby.”
“You don’t have to convince me that I can’t change your mind,” Ingrid shakes her head, adjusting the baby’s weight against her hip, “that’s why I have a new squirt. He still thinks I’m cool enough that he listens to try and impress me.”
“I still think you’re cool,” I make some stupid face that makes the baby smile and tug on her fingers. I haven’t minded having him around. Maybe that’s because no one makes me hold him or change his diaper, and he always laughs at my funny faces. Not that it means much, he laughs at the chief too, but I like to pretend it’s nicer when it’s me.
“Really Hofferson?” Smitelout spills half a mug of ale on Bang’s back when she stomps over, pointing at Ingrid’s hand, “you’re letting the best contender for this year’s ugliest baby contest chew on that?”
Bang nips at her heel and I nudge him away with my foot, glaring at her.
“This is my nephew,” Ingrid rolls her eyes, taking her metal fingers out of his mouth and wiping them on her new dress. Mom made her dress acceptably too and I think she hates it as much as I do if the way she’s really rubbing that baby drool into the wool is any indication.
“Well,” Smitelout blushes and stutters, taking another gulp of her ale before continuing, “look at him, how could I have guessed that?”
“Oh my gods,” Ingrid cocks her hip, ignoring her nephew tugging on her loose hair as she turns on Smitelout. “You can’t walk around insulting people’s babies.”
“I knew it wasn’t your baby,” she rolls her eyes and Fuse raises her eyebrows at me in a way I read as her wanting us to make our exit.
“Ok, but you still shouldn’t really insult babies—”
“There you are,” Rolf steps nonchalantly over Bang’s tail and holds both his hands out, lifting his son under his armpits and cradling him comfortably with a glare at Ingrid. “You can’t just walk off with him.”
He sounds worried and that just reminds me that Rolf is a dad and Ingrid is an aunt and Arvid is a husband. I’d say I’m the only one lacking a new title but it hits me that it’s future chief and I really wish I’d been allowed into the public before this because all of these changes at once are overwhelming for all the right reasons and that’s a phenomenon I’m not used to at all.
I’m good at dealing with parallel lines of sadness, but tonight feels like so many happy strings weaving with the ends of the sad and towards a future I hope is better than the last year has been. And I know that making it better is more my responsibility than ever because my title carries a different kind of pressure than anyone else’s.
“Oh, it’s Rolf’s kid?” Smitelout snorts, “the ugly makes sense.”
“Always a pleasure,” Rolf sighs, his voice taking on a deep, bitter character like he thinks better of himself than to stoop to this level, “Jorgenson.”
“Yeah sure,” Smitelout waves him off.
“No, not yeah sure,” Ingrid doubles down on the argument with her hands empty, poking Smitelout in the shoulder, “that’s my nephew.”
“And that wasn’t enough to overwhelm the Rolf in his appearance, that’s all I’m saying…”
“Let’s go,” Fuse takes my elbow and scratches Bang with her other hand. He accepts it as a temporary goodbye, snuffling against her palm and crooning at me as we walk away from Ingrid and Smitelout’s escalating argument.
“At least they sound like they’re having fun,” I lean back on the table when she pauses to get herself another drink. I can’t tell if it’s affecting her at all, but then again, she hasn’t really had a chance to drink much without the next interruption.
“Who does?”
“I don’t know,” I shrug, “Ingrid and Smitelout in particular, but it seems like everyone is having fun.”
“Yeah,” she looks around and then back at me, the corner of her mouth twitching into half a smile. Her lower lip is damp and the shine makes it hard to look anywhere else, especially because the longer I’m out of the house, the less I feel like an invalid.
I know that the last few hundred times Fuse kissed me, it wasn’t strictly out of pity. She did want to. She wouldn’t have kissed me at all if she didn’t want to, but I can’t say that they all felt like kisses. A lot were trying to keep me grounded and more were in an attempt to keep breathing worth the pain while my ribs formed back into one piece, and I appreciate them, but they didn’t do anything to quell the constant heat in my chest whenever I’m around her.
And now I feel like I’m at a feast with Fuse and she looks beautiful in a clean, nervous way that I hardly ever get to see and my wrist tingles from where her hair has been tickling it all night. And no matter how close to me she’s been, she was never wearing a dress that makes it so obvious how well the curve of her hip fits in my hand.
“What?” She cocks her head at me and I shrug. “You’re staring.”
“You just look really pretty tonight.” Out of all the things I’m thinking, it’s the right thing to say out loud because she steps closer to me, resting her hand on my ribs on one of my fireworm scars. They’re still sensitive, not in a bad way, but I shiver slightly at the drag of clean wool against the edges of it.
“You too.” She says quietly, biting her lip, and I frown.
“Did you just call me pretty?”
She blushes, stuttering slightly like she’s worried I’m actually offended. I don’t think I am, but I’ve also never been called pretty before. Not that I’m drowning in praise about my appearance, but it still strikes me as weird. I’m not sure I want Fuse to think I’m pretty.
“I meant you look good tonight.”
“But you said pretty. I’m pretty?” I scratch my chin, “not that I don’t like a compliment but aren’t I a little...bearded to be pretty?”
“What would you prefer, then?” She sets her drink down and cups my jaw with her now free hand, fingernails scratching through my beard. I rest my hand on her hip and her fingers curl slightly against my ribs.
Maybe she meant that we should leave further. I’d be ok with that, I made my appearance.
“I don’t know. Handsome, maybe? Rugged?” Gods, I want my other hand back. Next time I almost die, I’m breaking my left arm. I feel like every time I touch Fuse, I’m getting inferior information. “Because you’re pretty, and if you’re pretty, I’m definitely not pretty.”
She kisses me, soft lips lingering a little longer than she usually lets them as she cups my jaw more firmly, her fingertips grazing my ear with a tickle that sends lightning down my spine. I follow her as far as I can when she pulls back, getting in one last peck before my arm gets in the way.
And I don’t want to be here, I’m sick of sharing Fuse with families and crowds. She’s finally looking at me like I might be durable enough to kiss again and I really want to convince her that she’s onto something there.
“When you said let’s go…”
“What do you mean?” She cocks her head and picks up her drink, her blush highlighting freckles across the bridge of her nose.
“I just…I don’t know, we could keep talking somewhere that my crazy family doesn’t keep appearing.”
She narrows her eyes at me, the tips of her ears going a warm, pale pink shade that almost matches her hair.
“What do you want to talk about?” Fuse is awkward and pretty and sweet when she asks questions she doesn’t know the answer to. It makes me want to hug her and again, this stupid sling is in the way of absolutely everything.
“Not much. I’d just like to be alone with you,” I shrug, stroking the line of her hipbone with my thumb and smiling when she bites her lip. Her house is empty, I bet.
“I figured you’d want to stay out as long as possible.”
“Eh, crowds are overrated.” I kiss her forehead again and kind of miss her hair’s usual acrid smell. I hope she does bring bombs tomorrow, I’m ready for some action and for her to be sooty again. “And it’s a lot, you know, no one let me out of the house and suddenly the whole village is here. I think I have a legitimate phobia that Mrs. Ack is going to spring up next and pinch my bicep.”
“The bandages should deter her,” Fuse looks at my sling again, frowning.
“It doesn’t hurt.” I remind her, rubbing the side of her waist and stepping back to lift my arm as high as the sling will allow. “Really. No pain.”
I’m not lying. Worse than that, I’m scared about how my arm is going to look and feel when I finally get it back. I tried not to care when the healers tightened the bandages but there’s that looming feeling that when it comes off I’m going to look scrawnier than I did a year ago, like the chief’s influence finally found a crack to manifest in.
She doubts me. Then she looks over my shoulder and sighs, her cheeks puffing out with a momentary roundness that makes me want to kiss them.
“My dad’s walking over here.”
I drop her hip and stand up straight, tugging at the seam of my shirt that isn’t quite right against my side. She shakes her hair behind her shoulders and takes another sip of her ale before raising it in a feeble toast.
“Just the adorable young couple I was looking to interrupt,” Fuse’s dad—and he feels like Fuse’s dad and not Tuffnut right now when I’m thinking so hard about how good her side feels under my hand—sizes me up like a dragon he doesn’t know is threatening yet or not. I stand up straight. The sling digs into the back of my neck and I swallow, fidgeting to shift it sideways.
“Dad,” Fuse glares at him, shifting half a step away from me and crossing her arms.
“Uh, good evening.” I hold out my left hand and he shakes it with is right, grinning like the awkwardness of the grip is a good thing and not like it’s making my heart drop. “Sir.”
“Pretty sweet feast,” he looks around and nods and then looks back at me, “a wedding feast, even.”
“Uh,” I look at Fuse, wondering if there’s some secret way to answer her dad and she shrugs, “yeah. It is.”
“You said you were looking for us,” Fuse prompts him and he looks at me another second before shrugging. He’s not hostile, like I guess I was scared of after seeing some fathers’ opinion of Arvid. If anything he kind of reminds me of the chief in that he’s happy to see us standing together. This is more of a vicious happiness, like he’s thriving on the awkward anxiety I can feel leaking out of my pores, but I’ll take it.
“Yeah.” He nods.
Especially because I keep thinking about how many times Fuse and I have napped in the same bed and I didn’t ask her dad’s permission and I don’t know how to do this. He’s staring right at me, does he know how much I want to kiss his daughter? Did he see us kissing a second ago? Does he know that I’ve been in her bedroom? And that she talked like she was planning to get me there again even after I well...was really happy to be there. Or parts of me were.
He’s staring at me. What if he can read my mind and I just gave away everything? I’m not really sure what to do with my hand. The sling is finally making a positive impact on my life because I only have one arm to flail around.
“Is there anything I can do for you? Like, do you need me to do anything or talk to the chief about anything or--I can weapon?” I cough, “I mean, I can make weapons. Theoretically,” I point at my sling, “when this comes off. If my arm still works.”
“You don’t know if your arm is still going to work?” He raises an eyebrow and looks more like Fuse than usual with the expression.
“I’m assuming it is.” I shrug, “hoping, really. I guess.”
“Hmm,” he strokes his chin and looks between Fuse and I again before laughing, reaching over and trying to ruffle her hair. “That was fun. Ok, that was really fun.”
“Not for me,” Fuse glares at him, straightening her hair.
“I just had to make you squirm a little bit,” he explains with another shrug, “it’s tradition. Or it is now, because that was hilarious, you look like you think I’m going to beat you up. Or hang you upside down off of some precarious perch. Which I’m not. Probably.” He narrows his eyes and I shake my head.
“No, uh, sir, I wouldn’t do anything to make you have to beat me up. Or...the other thing.”
“Sir? That’s funny, kid.” He pats me on the bad shoulder and I’m relieved when my arm doesn’t throb. “No, really though, if you weren’t good enough for my Fuseykins, you not only wouldn’t be standing here, you would have ceased to exist in solid form long before I ever got the chance to threaten you.”
“That’s not funny,” Fuse says with that vulnerable edge I can’t quite place and her dad scoffs.
“You think I’m funny, right Eret?”
I think that this is bizarre and uncomfortable, but in a very real way I want him to like me. I want him to like me the way that I wanted the village to like me when I was first trying to fill the chief’s shoes, but it’s more important because it’s about Fuse. If I’ve learned anything about romance, it’s that for everyone around me, it ends up being filled with hard choices, and I want to be the easy choice. I want to make things easier for her, finally, after so much time tangling her in my impossible problems.
“Yeah,” I nod, “I bet I looked really scared.”
“I like you,” he claims, pointing at me, “and I mean, I’m like the lowest possible bar here. You’ll have to talk to her brothers. And her cousins. She’s all of our little girl--”
“Stop,” Fuse cuts him off, voice hushed and almost nasal, like it’s half a whine. And that’s cute the way that all cracks in her calm exterior are and I try not to look like I’m thinking about how cute she is. “Just invite him for dinner like we talked about, this is all unnecessary.”
“But also fun,” he turns back to me, “tomorrow night?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Right, good answer,” he points at Fuse, “now I’ve got to talk to you about something, oh daughter of mine.”
“Can it wait?” She leans back into my side, glancing purposefully at the side of my face, “I’m a little busy.”
“Nope.”
“Dad, please.”
“It’ll only take a minute,” he scoffs at her, “and there’s a certain ambiance of the space right now that--”
“Fine,” she looks back at me and sighs before walking away with him, “I’ll see you later.”
“Or tomorrow morning. Either way.” I hope it’s later tonight, but from the way her dad puts his arm over her shoulders and starts telling her something about ‘The Island of Thorstonton’, I kind of doubt it.
Without Fuse, the room is instantly overwhelming and even though I see my siblings sitting together, I almost think about grabbing Bang and going home. Maybe I could even fly, considering Mom appears pretty busy with Rolf’s baby--her grandbaby, because she’s a grandmother now too-- and the chief and isn’t watching my every move. Then again, there’s something kind of exciting about my first flight in two months being off island with Fuse tomorrow. Waiting would make it more of an event, I guess.
I yawn, looking around until I see Gobber sitting in the corner, tapping his foot and looking bored. Or maybe me being bored makes him look bored, whatever. Either way, he gestures at the bench next to him when I walk over and I take a seat, leaning my good elbow on the table and resting my chin on my hand.
“It’s good to see you up and about.” He pats me on the back and I sigh.
“Oh trust me, I’ve been up and about for a while,” I shake my head in my family’s general direction, “it’s just that I haven’t been allowed out. It seems like everyone’s very sure I’ll spontaneously combust if I see the sunlight or an ounce of freedom.”
“Well, you did give it your best shot,” he looks at my arm, “how much longer are you stuck in that thing?”
“I get it off next week, thank Thor,” I wiggle my fingers, “I’m worrying what’s left under it at this point. I thought I was skinny before.”
“Well, if you need to help out at the forge to get back up to well...I was going to say strength, but you’re still you. I shouldn’t expect too much,” he laughs at his own joke and I roll my eyes.
“What a kind and generous offer, rife with opportunities to make fun of me. I’ll think about it,” I sigh, “I probably won’t have time though, I’m assuming, the chief needs someone to help him hold this place together.”
“Now that all the drama settled down around here, I’m sure there’s something else on its way. It’s never quiet for long.” He looks at me strangely and I refuse to acknowledge that he’s aged from the image of him I have in my head, the one who scared me into showing up on time every day and kept me honest with a steady hook hand.
“This is Berk when it’s quiet?” I look back out at the crowd, now more adult than child, the liquor flowing a little more freely. Arvid and Aurelia are kissing and a few rowdy voices usher them towards the door with suggestions I don’t want to think about. “I’m not sure it’s ever quiet.”
“You’re starting to get it, lad,” he uses my shoulder to stand up, “I should be getting to bed. Have to save some energy for the next wedding. Coming up soon, I’m assuming...” He laughs like that has something to do with me and pats my back.
“I have no idea, the chief hasn’t told me anything.” I shrug and he shakes his head at me before limping towards the door, peg thudding on the wood.
I hear him mutter something about me being clueless, and that’s something I’m glad hasn’t changed.
“I didn’t want to interrupt your date, but I wanted to say goodbye,” my dad nods at Gobber in passing before restraining himself from helping me up. I appreciate it more than he knows.
“Date?” I laugh, “my date with Gobber? I think it was going well.”
“You know what I mean,” he adjusts a sac over his shoulder and I frown.
“Wait, goodbye? You’re leaving now?” I knew he was leaving after the wedding, but I didn’t realize he meant the middle of the night.
“The tide’s going out soon and I’ll make better time out of the archipelago,” he glances at Arvid and Aurelia. She’s dragging him away from the mead, laughing, her feet slipping across the floor. “And I don’t think they want me in the house tonight any more than I want to be in the house tonight.”
“Gross,” I wince, “why does everyone have to keep reminding me that my siblings are going to...you know, tonight? Wait, don’t answer that, then we’d have to talk about it more and...no.” I shudder, shaking my head like I can rattle the thoughts out through my ears.
“Come here,” he pulls me into a hug, ignoring the sling and squeezing a little too hard. “Don’t grow up anymore while I’m gone, alright?” He looks older too, but in a different way than Gobber does. It’s a sturdy old, like an island that’s finally stopped shifting enough to be habitable. I wonder if he still loves Mom and then kind of hate myself for even thinking that. Of course he does, otherwise I don’t know how I could be so sure that he still loves me.
“How long do you think you’re going to be gone?” I pat his back and he stands back to look at me, like he’s taking a mental picture.
“A few weeks, maybe six. I’ve got supplies for six but we’ll see how it goes.”
“Maybe I can go with you next time,” I offer and I’m looking for acceptance more than permission. I want him to be happy at the thought of me going along with him.
“If you think the chief can handle Berk without you.” He weighs the option and smiles, “I wouldn’t mind the company.”
“Really?” I grin, “I’ll try and be back in fighting shape.”
“I can’t wait,” he ruffles my hair and it feels like as much as he wishes I were a little less grown up, he’s glad to have the offered backup.
“Can the tides wait a minute?” Mom’s voice is hesitant but not unkind as she approaches with Rolf’s son in her arms. The baby laughs and reaches two pudgy arms towards Dad, fingers wiggling in the air, “someone else needs to say goodbye.”
“There’s my big boy!” Dad takes the baby and holds him over his head for a second before hugging him and Mom’s eyes go distant as she watches. I wonder how much the baby looks like Rolf did and I feel like I’m getting a glimpse of what existed before I showed up and changed everything, for better or worse. “I couldn’t find him earlier, I thought he might already be asleep.”
“Ingrid had him,” Mom scoffs, “as always.”
“You’re just as bad,” I look at Dad and think Grandpa and another thing clicks into shape in preparation for whatever’s coming next. “Let me guess, Rolf doesn’t know where he is right now.”
“Rolf knows everything, you know that,” she shakes her head at me, “and I’m just enjoying having a baby around.”
Some things I’m not too sad about leaving behind and I can tell she shares that opinion from the way she looks between me and the baby with Rolf’s sandy hair and Dad’s eyebrows.
“You got everything?” The chief is a little more sober than he was earlier but he still leans on Mom’s shoulder, tickling the baby’s foot when Mom takes him back. Now Dad is the one looking lost and I hope he finds what he’s looking for. Maybe he can show me when he gets back because I’m still missing pieces.
They feel like my ribs though, painful and slow closing, but healing in time. It’s deciding which gaps I’d like to force back open, which ones are meant to be lessons and not scars.
“Everything’s packed up, I’m looking at six weeks on the outside.”
“Write when you can,” the chief instructs and it’s almost a friendly order, like the ones he gives Fuse. Transactional, like my dad is part of the chief’s sphere again instead of being a thorn jabbed into it.
“Eret said he might want to come with me next time,” Dad squeezes my shoulder and Mom looks between us before deferring to the chief with worry in her face where anger used to rest so easily.
“Depending on what you find, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a future chief of Berk investigating whatever’s going on.” He shrugs and Mom gives me a stern look.
“Provided that future chief of Berk is entirely healed.”
“Of course, Mom. I don’t have a deathwish.”
“No, you tried one of those and it didn’t stick.” The chief holds his hand out and Dad doesn’t hesitate before shaking it, his grip just a little too firm if the chief’s white knuckles mean anything. “Be careful out there.”
“Yeah,” Mom gives him a brief, awkward side hug with a babbling baby between them, “take care of yourself, alright?”
Bang chimes in with a croon from across the hall like he’s been listening this whole time and Stoick laughs, patting him on the head. Dad hugs me one more time before walking out of the hall and Fuse catches my eye from where she’s still sitting with her dad, asking me if I’m ok with a twitch of her eyebrow. I nod and she smiles at me before going back to listening to her Dad, pink hair glowing in the torchlight.
Mom goes to give an impatient Rolf his baby back and the chief lingers, pausing for a minute before resting his hand on my shoulder. I don’t shrug him off. It would be ruining the wrong moment and I don’t have time for that.
“You know, I don’t think you getting out there is a bad idea. I have missed your help these last couple months, but maybe it’s best for you to see what you’re dealing with before I retire.” He looks at me the way that Gobber did, like I make him feel younger or older and he’s not sure if he wants to narrow down which. “I’ll work on your mother.”
He looks the same he always has, but the absence of fury about it makes him seem smaller, more human. Maybe that’s what the last year really did to us, we’re all more human than when we started.
“I don’t think she’d stop me,” I shrug and look back at my family, the big, scrambled group of them, “until then, sticking around here isn’t so bad.”
“No, it’s really not.” He squeezes before letting go and he feels just as much a part of my picture as everyone else does.
This is Berk. It’s more than the cliffs and dragons and seas. It’s the people. The people in this room, my family and friends, the ones who pretend not to rely on me as much as I pretend not to rely on them. It’s the dragons. The dragons who came back even when they could have left. It’s the collision of the two, the place where my family came together again and again until finally, one of them was right.
Because we’re Vikings, and that means danger is implied and stubbornness can sometimes win over sense and logic. It means that fights only fizzle out when we stop picking them and that only happens when someone wins or a bigger enemy brings us together. And it won’t stay calm for long, it never does, but when proverbial flaming shit hits the fan next time, at least now I know we all have each other.
I am READY to post this guys, a lot of this has existed for like literal years. Like some of this I had to update from word 2013. I am STOKED. And it’s 7400 words, I’m sorry.
Previous Parts (Updating right now I promise)
“Is that new?” The chief asked Mom over breakfast one morning, a few days after Johann leaves, and Mom paused, staring at him blankly and weirdly. “The dress. I mean.”
“No,” Mom shook her head and turned back to Stoick, who was trying to sneak his breakfast into his pockets for extra treats at dragon training.
“Oh, it looks new.”
“It’s not,” she shrugged, glancing at him in this weird, almost embarrassed way I didn’t notice until I was looking back at the bizarre encounter.
“Ok…” The chief stared for another creepy second until I cleared my throat and brought his attention back to the treaty on the table, the same one he’s still trying to respond to.
I wouldn’t have thought about it at all if it weren’t for the even weirder moment a couple days later when the chief like, completely derailed our official business at the lumberyard because Mom walked by and he started asking about her day and offering to deal with dinner.
Then, then, I really started watching and it got weirder. My mom’s axe has a shiny, newly sharpened edge and she didn’t ask me to do it and there’s a stack of new quilts on her bed the one time I go in there to ask her something.
And today? Today takes the cake for weird and uncomfortable as soon as the chief and I get home to Mom and Aurelia out front, stringing a small bow together.
“You’ll get it,” Mom’s telling her, that same sort of stern refusal to acknowledge failure that kept me learning and keeping up with Ingrid and Arvid all those years, and she smiles when she hands an arrow to Aurelia and directs her at a makeshift target on a bale of straw outside of the barn.
The chief grins when he sees it and when Mom notices him she shrugs, “she was curious.”
“Thank you,” the chief laughs, “I’ve been saying for years if she’s not going to have a dragon with her she should really learn something.”
“I’m holding a weapon, maybe don’t do that right now,” Aurelia gripes, voice straining as she pulls the bowstring back and lets go. The arrow doesn’t go far, something about her release making it float harmlessly to the ground halfway between her and the target. She sighs and Mom pats her on the shoulder.
“Try again, you’ll get it.”
The chief is looking at her like…like he doesn’t even look at Toothless. Like…
“Do you need any help?” He asks, walking up too close to Mom for her to not shift or move away. Aurelia rolls her eyes at me, like she’s asking for help and wanting me to watch the disaster unfold all at once.
Her next arrow falls out of her hands onto her feet and she sighs.
“I think we’ve got it,” Mom tells the chief, and her blank confusion is less blank confusion and more mild interest. Like she halfway wants to know what he has to say.
“Aurelia,” he holds his hand out for the bow, “can I show you something?”
“I bet Mom showed me how do it right, Dad.”
“No, this is a trick for those of us not so…muscularly inclined,” he laughs. Mom laughs. Aurelia stares at me like she can’t believe what she’s hearing and no one else is going to understand.
“Is that a dig at me?” I ask and the chief doesn’t appear, because he’s glancing at Mom every two seconds and tinkering with either end of the bow string.
“It can’t possibly be about me so…” Aurelia flexes her arm and holds her hand out for the bow.
“Just a second…there.” He takes a second to show her how to hold the arrow differently and when she tries a third time the arrow goes far enough to broadside the target before dropping to the ground.
“Not a bad trick,” Mom takes the bow back, looking at the knots at the ends of the strings and then staring at the chief with a weird, halfway impressed expression. “Where’d you learn that?”
“Gobber. It’s a one handed trick, I guess, but it also works for those of us who have one hand worth of strength spread across two.”
Mom scoffs and punches the chief in the arm, like he’s annoying, which is true, but also like she’s not wholly annoyed by it.
Today. Yep. Today is the weirdest day. The weirdest one of all.
“I think I’m done for the day,” Aurelia excuses herself from between them, leaving the bow and walking over to me.
“Yeah. Good.” The chief waves his arm at the two of us, his focus still on Mom who’s still standing there. Not avoiding him. “You’re done too, Eret, it’s getting late.”
“And they’re getting rid of us,” Aurelia hisses under her breath as we turn and start walking back towards the village. “It’s like he’s remembering how to be human. To her.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I look back over my shoulder at them and they’re still just standing there. Mom shoots an arrow and hits a little off center and the chief holds his hands out to ask for the bow and give it a try.
“Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.”
“How’s chiefing?” She asks, “I haven’t heard much this week.”
“It’s…” I don’t want to tell the truth, that it’s good but not enough but I know someday it will be, that’s the kind of thing that makes it sound like at some level I’m benefitting from these bizarre circumstances, the ones shoving Mom and the chief into a conversation that’s not yelling. “It’s whatever.”
“It’s…I…” She looks back like she doesn’t want to be heard and I elbow her in the side, urging her to spit it out, “it’s not like…dragon training day in and day out, is it?”
“What? No, we’ve only been by the academy once and that was because of some structural damage.”
“Hmm.” She tucks her hands into her pockets and kicks a pebble out of the path. “And you made an ass of yourself last week. With Johann.”
“Yes, thanks for reminding me how well that went, I always know I can count on you.”
“I’m just saying.” She shrugs.
“What are you saying?”
“Mom keeps asking me why I don’t go chiefing with you guys, and I mean, barring Toothless stalking me like prey all day, I don’t…I guess I don’t really have a good answer for her.”
“You don’t need to, it’s—you’d think it was boring.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Why are you saying any of this? You don’t want to be chief, you never have.”
“Maybe I’m just a little bitter that it was cooler for him to hunt down some crazy love child than to, I don’t know, I don’t know,” she kicks another pebble out of the way. “It’s not like I was a bow and arrow prodigy, I don’t have anything to talk about.”
“No, please, continue, you…are you thinking you have some…interest in being chief?”
“I just said I don’t know.” She stops short and tentatively reaches out to touch Bang’s nose, tracing the edge of his scales with a gentle finger. He puffs on her hand and she jerks back slightly before taking a step forward and setting her hand on his head. “I just…you’re new. That’s why you’re doing it. It’s not…merit, I guess, and I’m just realizing that and it’s not really your problem but you’re supposed to be my brother so…”
“It’s not like it’s…I mean, the job isn’t just acting like your dad all the time, it’s—”
“I think I’ve seen him doing it longer than you have.” It’s not so much her snapping at me as her telling me I’m wrong and that makes me madder.
And it puts me in this awkward position where I’m supposed to argue for why I’m enjoying this, which makes it seem so ok that I’m barely talking to my Dad anymore and that Mom is…back there practically enjoying herself in the chief’s company. I…
There’s this interesting dead space between saying what I mean and avoiding fights and it seems like silence but really it’s too many words, all disagreeing with each other and flying at once.
I nod.
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“Maybe I’ll come along sometime.”
“You’d be bored.” I say again and she rolls her eyes.
“You don’t know what I’d be.”
00000
The chief is cleaning off the table, stacking documents on a shelf and muttering to himself. Aurelia and I are looking over a wrinkled Fuse Original Design on the floor next to the fire and the chief is trying his damndest to eavesdrop, smiling weirdly at us when Aurelia bumps her shoulder against mine and mutters under her breath that he’s being creepy. Stoick is already asleep, exhausted from his special, pre-snowstorm, morning lesson with Mom and Stormfly.
Tonight’s finally the night to meet at the forge, we’re just waiting until it’s late enough that the chief won’t ask. But he’s being weird as he has been all week and I don’t think I’ve been monitored this closely since that time I got grounded for a month for following Dad on a weeklong fishing trip.
Arvid’s probably already there. So’s Fuse. We’ll probably get there and find no forge at all, just Fuse down a few inches of singed hair and Arvid terrified and trying to pick a fight he’s going to lose.
It’s funny, in my head, but somewhere beneath that humor lies the precarious balance of this stupid, probably doomed plan.
Sometimes I wish it were just me and Fuse, honestly. It’d be less complicated, but I look at Aurelia out of the corner of my eye, fixated and eager, and I can’t take this away from her. She didn’t grow up getting grounded for stupid sibling shenanigans and it’s not like her brain is hurting the operation.
Arvid is the wild card.
This is almost absolutely the only way he’s ever going to talk to me again and maybe I’m selfish and maybe I don’t care.
The door swings open and the chief freezes, smiling in that creepy please like me way as Mom strides in from the cold, shaking snow out of her hair and glaring at the weather behind her before shutting the door tight and tucking the blanket back underneath it with her foot to stop the breeze. The chief’s door is a tighter seal than ours used to be and she hasn’t adopted to this level of mandatory luxury any better than I have.
“Hey Mom,” Aurelia folds the sketch in front of us, because she knows Mom’s more likely to ask what it is.
Not to mention the horrible truth that the chief’s about to be distracted enough for us to slip out. Which is…you know, gross and uncomfortable, but I was already being selfish so I might as well continue to capitalize on that.
“What did you get up to, milady?” The chief blurts, and I almost gag, and he looks scared as Mom turns to him, wet boot squeaking on the wood floor. Her mouth falls open and he flinches, waiting for her to rightfully clock him in the face for assuming he gets to use stupid endearments around her.
She doesn’t punch him. She deflates, unwrapping the scarf from around her neck like it’s better to pretend she didn’t hear him.
Or she doesn’t mind it as much as I want her to mind it, but that’s impossibly gross and—what would that even mean? Is she just lonely after Dad and—Gods, that’s all gross. I’m never going to eat again and that’s the last thing I need.
“I—nothing. I was just at Ruff’s.”
It comes out perfectly pleasant and the chief freezes, holding a plate he’s drying with an old cloth. He laughs before he can stop himself, and she blinks slowly and barks out a weird, bizarre laugh I’ve sure never heard before, and I’m the one who used to make her laugh. The chief smiles and swallows hard and it sounds like he’s a terror choking on a chicken wing.
Mom’s staring at him like she expects him to sprout a tail.
“How was the flight home?” The chief asks.
“Cold,” she laughs again, brushing a hunk of ice off of her shoulder. “Cold and wet.”
“Uh good…well, not good, but—I’m glad you’re home.”
She pauses for a second and I recognize that face and it makes me wish I’d eaten less. It’s the face she makes when I’m lying and she knows I’m lying but she’s waiting to call me out on it until she hears whatever ridiculous thing I’m going to say next.
“M too. It’s warm,” she says like that’s not dumb and obvious and Aurelia kicks me in the shin like there’s a chance in Hel I might not be paying perfectly close attention to this.
The chief laughs again and Mom’s struggling not to smile, picking a charcoal stick off of the table and handing it to him. Their hands glance across each other when he takes it and she jolts away, giving him some soft, hardly scary at all, glare and what the Odin fearing fuck is going on?
“Close your mouth,” Aurelia hisses, like my reaction is going to ruin her show, and they both look at us at once like they forgot we were here.
“That was weird.” I announce, tucking the sketch into my pocket and standing before offering Aurelia my hand and helping her to her feet. “We’re going to the forge to finish this.”
“In this weather?” The chief asks and I shrug, grabbing my and off of the hook by the door and handing Aurelia’s to hers.
“We’re going to the forge where it’s definitionally warm,” Aurelia rolls her eyes and laughs, grabbing a too big fur hat from the shelf and tugging it down over my head like it’ll make me forget what I just say. Or what I didn’t see. Or what doesn’t exist because how could it possibly be anything other than a sunless winter enabled hallucination.
I smile and Mom doesn’t buy it and the chief is just staring at Mom, barely looking at me, and wow, this is a textbook level of distraction to sneak out but my feet are rooted to the ground like if I move something will change again.
“We’ll be back. Thanks for the hat,” I adjust it on my head and reach for the doorknob, trusting Aurelia to drag me outside. She comes through and hooks her arm through my elbow, saying something about staying warm.
As soon as the door shuts behind us I duck down, pulling her with me and crouching below the nearby window. I can’t see, but I can hear a muffled version of the conversation inside and I press my ear to the crack at the bottom of the shutters.
“What are you doing?” Aurelia shivers, looking peeved.
“Shh,” I hold my finger to my lips and press closer to the wall, wood siding cutting into my shoulder.
I hear Mom, wedging the blanket back underneath the door with a series of quiet thuds. The chief makes some awkward hemming and hawing sound that I don’t think is Norse and I want Mom to just…disappear into the bedroom and end this.
“Is Stoick asleep?” Mom asks.
“Yeah, he was exhausted. Conked out right after dinner.”
“Right,” she pauses. “I’m going to go to bed. Still sort of freezing.”
“I’ll put a few extra logs on the fire.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she sounds irritated but not louder or harsher and I know at some level that it’s false. It’s a Mom voice I wouldn’t worry about.
“I want to.”
I can hear what I think she should say in my mind. Just one solid fuck you. She sighs.
“Thanks, Hiccup.”
I grab Aurelia’s hand and pull her to her feet and around the corner of the house right as the chief opens the door to get to the wood pile. She jogs to keep up as Bang slips out of the barn and trots to our side, nosing his way under my hand.
“What was all that about?” She huffs, stealing my hat and tugging it down over her own ears. The wind whips through my hair and I scratch my head.
“I have no idea. It doesn’t make any Thor-damned sense.”
“How did you go sixteen years without learning anything if you’re that good at eavesdropping? I couldn’t hear shit.”
“Good for you.” I snap my fingers, guiding Bang to our other side to block the wind as we turn towards the forge.
“What on Midgard did you hear?”
“Nothing,” I shrug, “everything. I don’t know. He’s still being all…nice.”
“What did he say?”
“She was like ‘I’m cold’ and he was like ‘I’ll build up the fire’ and she was like ‘you don’t have to do that’ and he said he wanted to and she didn’t stop him. And...it was in their tone.”
“Even the great you can’t hear tone through a closed shutter.”
“Since when are you Olga Optimism?” I see the wisp of smoke from the forge’s chimney cutting through the thick falling snow just ahead and speed up slightly, trudging a trail through the quick drifting snow as Aurelia falls into step behind me.
“Mom doesn’t seem so miserable anymore.”
“Hmm.”
She’s never seen Mom happy. She didn’t see the truth in the easy lie, the way that Mom got excited when she knew Dad was coming home, the way she used to hum when she didn’t think we could hear her. I don’t really trust Aurelia as any sort of happy family metric, honestly, but that’s not worth mentioning when we walk up to the forge to see Wingspark and Hotgut huddling together outside, like they don’t share their owners’ mutual loathing.
“Do you think Fuse has blown him up yet?” Aurelia scoffs, stepping ahead of me and pulling off the hat, fixing her hair before opening the door.
I roll my eyes.
“Royalty has decided to join us,” Arvid pushes himself away from the counter when we walk in, chewing on a fingernail and staring at Aurelia. She scoffs and walks over to Fuse, who’s leaning over another counter covered in little metal spheres that look like Smitelout’s and dusting them with pinkish powder that matches her hair.
She looks up at me and raises a singed eyebrow in greeting, mumbling under her breath, “they’re only royalty if you insist on bringing it up.”
“And you two were getting along so well,” I wipe my forehead and walk across the room to the fire, stoking it and pumping the billows a couple of times until the coals glow bright orange and yellow and my fingers come back to life. “How goes it, Fuse?”
“I’m miniaturizing three core bomb cells that should work wet or dry, we should use that baffle you made a couple months ago and test them out. The chief wants me blowing out the wood pile next week, I figure that’s a good time…” She trails off, exhaling slowly and closing off the sphere. It doesn’t line up quite how I would have made it and I’d offer to fix it for her if she didn’t look so sure it’s about to blow.
Aurelia is nonplussed, sitting down next to her and kicking her boots onto the counter. Fuse doesn’t look at her, setting the shell aside and finally making eye contact.
“Sounds good.”
“Took you long enough to get here.” Everything about Arvid’s voice is antagonistic in every syllable and I know I could get him to bitch about the chief with me.
I don’t know if he cares if Mom’s happy. Or not miserable, at least.
“It’s a little harder to slip out of the palace than your house,” Aurelia rolls her eyes. She’s smiling, her face pink like she’s far closer to the fire than she is.
Arvid looks her up and down, frowning slightly before going back to glaring at me.
Fuse gives me an impatient, sympathetic look and waves me over, “I’ve got cobalt salt, and…well, honestly I’m not quite sure this is but when I lit it on fire with black powder, I blew half the roof off my shed, so I think it’ll pack a more even punch in solid solution with the salt.”
“And you want me to drop these things?” Arvid’s flexing like it’s not obvious that his chest is all puffed up. I don’t check if Aurelia’s looking because I don’t want to know, because I need to learn when to eavesdrop.
“Yes, this is all an impractically elaborate assassination attempt.” Fuse assembles the next bomb more quickly, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth. I rarely hear her hostile and I can’t say if it’s intimidating or deadly.
“Is that a threat—”
“No, it’s not.” Aurelia picks up a jar of Fuse’s powder, holding it to her nose and sniffing it with a grimace.
Arvid’s mouth moves wordlessly, twice, and he goes quiet, crossing his arms more tightly. He glares at me when he catches me looking at him and Gods, this is bizarre.
Fuse hands another shell to Aurelia and starts showing her how to load it and I start sifting through a pile of scrap metal in the back corner, because even if Gobber notices someone was here during the storm he’ll be glad they did something practical. There’s a dagger that doesn’t look half bad and I idly pop it into the fire, finding my old favorite hammer in Smitelout’s fantastic mess and swinging it.
I don’t feel like I’m in charge. I don’t know what being in charge is supposed to feel like.
“I’m shocked you’re here,” Arvid’s directing it at Aurelia but Fuse answers first.
“Why? Think I’d avoid you?”
“I’m not talking to you—”
“We’re all here for the same reason,” I raise my voice just enough that everyone goes quiet and looks at me, even Arvid, for half a second. “Because it’s the only thing we can think of the help the dragons. Well, the only thing we can think of that also makes sense.” I ruin that upstanding, halfway chiefly statement and everyone’s quiet for a second.
“Heard you told half the tribe about the dragons being sick,” Arvid clears his throat, “heard the chief shut you down, hard.”
“Yeah, I’m still here though, aren’t I?”
“Not helping much,” he points at the dagger I’m pulling out of the furnace and I set it on the anvil, giving it a couple of anger reducing hits before answering.
“You’re the one doing nothing.”
“Thorston won’t let me touch anything,” he shrugs, “I tried—”
“So hard, he grunted at what I was doing and then walked away.” Fuse looks at me like she wants me to laugh, glancing at the red hot dagger like she’s not sure I’m going to hurt myself or not.
“You want me to fix that?” I ask, pointing at the not quite circular shell she’s holding.
“What?” She cocks her head, braid dragging through the powder on the table and turning some odd shade of purple in the soot and orange light.
“I can fix that shell, it’s not going together right,” I swing the hammer, because it feels like something I’m doing right, “I’m all warmed up.”
“Oh my gods,” Aurelia sits forward, feet thunking to the floor as she looks at me with some weird, cryptic expression and then at Fuse, “I don’t think I’m doing this right.”
“It’s perfect,” Fuse inspects her work, “and these are fitting fine, don’t worry about it.”
“Looks fine to me,” Arvid mumbles. He’s looking at Aurelia.
“They’re looking good. Actually, as soon as we get these together, I’ve probably got to head home, the storm isn’t looking good.” Fuse helps Aurelia get the shell closed and sets it gently in a leather bag, “I got here early, I ran into Gobber actually, I told him I was locked out and he said to lock up before I left so…”
“Yeah, no, I got that.” I look at the door, shuddering slightly with the storm outside. “No problem, thanks for getting started early.”
“It wasn’t early, I could just get away first,” she glares at Arvid as she stands, “I’ll let you know when the chief wants to blow the woodpile out. He said earlier he wants it done before the snow freezes too hard so…” She shrugs and for a second I have the weird compulsion to ask her if she needs a ride home.
Obviously, she doesn’t. Hotgut is outside. She frowns at me like she notices I’m not saying something and I wave.
“Fly safe. It’s getting pretty bad out there.”
She waves back as she slips outside and Arvid gives an exaggerated, obnoxious sigh of relief.
“I might even let you fly me home,” Aurelia mutters, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t really feel like walking through this.”
“Flying would be quicker, but colder,” I keep working on the dagger, “that’s sort of making me think, we should have a final plan in place by spring. You know, because we need to do this soon but we also can’t do it while a storm like this could mess us up.”
Arvid grunts. Aurelia starts cleaning the counter. She’s looking at Arvid. I feel like I need to say something to bring this back on track.
Someone knocks on the door but doesn’t wait for me to open it.
It’s the chief, windblown, snow-covered and deeply disappointed like I should care.
“I ran into Fuse,” he looks at me and only me and I realize that being chief in training means I’m going to get blamed for everything. “She said you called a meeting at the forge. What could that possibly be about?”
“I can’t believe Thorston ratted us out,” Arvid huffs, “oh wait, yes I can.”
“She didn’t rat us out,” I snap at him and the chief is still just staring at me.
“No, she didn’t,” the chief crosses his arms, “I put this together myself thanks.” He takes a piece of paper out of his pocket and I see red.
It’s a sketch, Fuse’s wrinkled sketch of the island, the one I had tucked into my clean laundry.
“You went through my things?”
“You’re still investigating the dragon island? More than that, you’re planning to do something about it? Using tribe resources and—”
“No one’s going to starve because I repurposed some scrap metal—”
“That’s not what matters, what matters is that we agreed!” The chief makes it sound like I mortally offended his deep trust in me and I clench my fists, standing up straight like if I make my stature chiefly enough then he’ll have to listen.
“You declared, we never agreed.”
Because even now it’s like he thinks he can make my voice disappear if he’s loud enough or official enough or calls me young and stupid enough. Like if he acts like he trusts me I’ll have to behave.
Aurelia steps up beside me and I think of our conversation the other day, how she’s at some level jealous that I’m the one with all the chiefly pressure. I still think she doesn’t know what she’s talking about and I almost wished I’d pressed that further.
“It’s funny, dad, just because he’s your precious, long-lost son doesn’t mean he’s going to follow everything you say!”
“No,” I snap, “I don’t need you fighting for me, I—” I look back at the chief and force myself to deflate like Bang pulling a punch, “No. This isn’t a fight at all, I’m doing it, you can’t stop me.” It feels chiefly when I shove past him and through the door in that it feels bratty and absolute and that’s what I’m supposed to be, isn’t it?
That’s what he wants from me, that’s what Aurelia wants him to want from her.
And beyond all that, it doesn’t seem to matter who’s right or wrong, only who’s older and more famous and more willing to compromise themselves.
“Eret!” The chief follows me out and I walk faster, towards Bang, “Eret, stop. Now.”
“Is that an order from the chief?” I whirl around, pushing snow soggy hair out of my face.
“Yes.”
I stop, clapping my hands against my sides.
“So you’ll stop before treason, then, that’s the line?” He looks hurt. I don’t care. It’s not victory like it used to be but I’m not sad about it either.
“Right, because me knowing something you don’t has to be treason.”
“I’m taking you home,” he stalks past me, towards Toothless, and Bang grumbles.
“I don’t have to go with you.”
“Even if I say it’s an order from the chief?” He swings onto Toothless and points at Bang, snow falling thick on his head. It’s almost to my knees now, drifting against the wall of the forge in the wind.
“I’ll just leave again.”
“I’m still taking you home.”
“Fine.” I get onto Bang and he grudgingly follows Toothless, flying low for shelter in the trees and gliding to land in front of the chief’s house. Toothless slumps to the barn, giving Bang one last dirty look for being the current house dragon, like he couldn’t come inside too if he knew how to share.
Mom’s still awake, blanket around her shoulders in front of the fire as she sips a cup of tea.
She knows. I know that face, she knows because the chief told her and she…
She doesn’t disagree with him. I’m in trouble with her.
“He was at the forge,” the chief tells Mom because they were colluding behind my back like…
Like I don’t know. Like they’re partners in crime or they’re attempting to parent me together like that’s going to make me anything but furious because the chief has no Odin damned right to play doting dad.
“Why haven’t you told me about this?” She asks, that exhausted brand of stern that makes me want to give her a break.
I shrug.
“He wants to figure it all out himself.” The chief crosses his arms, “like that makes it mean more.”
“Neither of you care if the dragons are suffering. It’s just some stupid—you just…”
I can’t believe Mom is standing there beside the chief, arms crossed at me like I’m the problem. Like…like this entire time we’ve been a united front in the face of this shit and now we’re not and she’s shoulder to shoulder with the chief.
They used to be engaged.
There was a ‘the chief and my mom’ before there was a ‘Mom and me’ and maybe age is all that matters, sometimes.
“Of course I care about the dragons, Eret,” Mom sighs, “but I care more about you lying and scheming and—”
“Right, he’s the only one that’s allowed to do that,” I point at the chief, “it’s practically a damn myth that he hid Toothless from everyone and—”
“Yeah?” Mom shakes her head, “well, he wasn’t my son.”
“Let’s talk about this in the morning,” the chief steps between us like he’s trying to calm down the situation. Like it’s not his fault. Like he’s not the fucking flint who keeps lighting everyone else’s emotional kindling in the square.
“I don’t have to talk about anything—”
“You know what, Eret? That’s right, you don’t have to talk about anything,” Mom pours the rest of her tea out into the fireplace, a corner of the bed of coals smoking and steaming. “You just have to listen.”
She turns and walks back in the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.
“Get some sleep,” the chief sighs, “I—”
“That’s not an order.”
“It’s a suggestion,” he stares at me for a moment before his eyes widen, “I’m going to go back out and get Aurelia before this gets any worse.”
“Fine.”
The chief doesn’t get it. He just…he’s stuck in some other time, when wild dragons are as common as ants on apples in summer. He won’t listen, and everything’s suddenly worse because Mom appears to be siding with him. That she won’t go after him for me because he’s annoying because he’s making her laugh and so insidiously worming his way into my life like if he gets close enough I’ll have to lie down and let him walk all over me.
I’m curled up on my stack of furs in front of the fire, leaning back against Bang’s broad side when the door opens and slams shut and Aurelia walks in, conspicuously wrapped in an almost familiar scarf and dusted with powdery snow.
“The chief’s a real dick, you know that?” I scoot, expecting her to come and sit by me like she almost always does. She prefers Bang’s tail, a little further from the teeth, and she hogs the furs as she grouses about the chief and Mom and the general injustices of the day. Aurelia makes me feel like a sunny personality, and I need that sometimes. Especially now. After…that.
She lingers by the door, hands stuffed in her pockets as she glances towards the stairs.
“What? Did you expect me to magic myself home from the forge?”
“Oh,” I stand halfway, arms held out towards her like she needs a hug or a ride. “I left you at the forge without a ride, didn’t I? We didn’t talk about that, I just…stormed out. Shit, I’m sorry, I just—”
“Threw a tantrum because I tried to defend you?” She simplifies, “and then my dad left and chased after you and I was stuck with Arvid—”
“Did he leave you there too?” It’s easier to be angrier at Arvid than to be mad at myself and I cross my arms and step over Bang’s tail towards her. “Because I’ll—”
“Shut up, you’re going to wake everyone up. Arvid gave me a ride home.”
That stops me short.
“You rode Wingspark?”
“She’s sort of sweet,” Aurelia smiles, one of those little sideways smiles, and Bang lifts his head, an offended whuff ghosting against the back of my legs.
“The chief is still out looking for you.”
“Oh,” she shrugs, eyes narrowing. “At least he didn’t forget me—”
“I didn’t forget you!” I cut her off, wracking my brain for the moment she fell out of it. “The chief wasn’t listening about the dragons, there’s less of them every day —”
“I didn’t ask you about the dragons. You forgot me.”
I pause.
“Not on purpose.”
“It…I guess that’s what families do, they forget people,” she says it with a sigh, like it exhausts her to cut so deep, and I think of her riding Wingspark with Arvid and gossiping about me. About how I don’t fit in anywhere.
I did storm out. I stormed out like the fucking chief, and I let him chase me, and I didn’t think about what I was leaving behind.
My heart pounds a little too hard, making me nauseous as I realize the million fights between my parents that I’ve come to understand over the past few months. How Mom would yell and the chief would run and here I am, doing both. In one night. And forgetting people on top of it.
“Eret, I’m sorry, that was mean—” Aurelia steps forward and puts her hand on my arm, and I wonder just how shitty I must look for her to back down from the fight. My hands are shaking when I shrug her off and fumble for the fur on top of my stack, holding it numbly in her direction.
“Here, it’s my warmest one, but I have the fire. Are you ok? I—” Thor, why the Hel do I even exist? All of this dysfunction in one human should be impossible. “And Arvid wasn’t too much of an asshole? Odin, I’m the asshole, I’m sorry—”
“What did I say to get such a rise out of you?” She laughs nervously but accepts the fur, unwrapping the thick scarf halfway around her neck and I recognize it as one of Arvid’s that Nana knit him back when we were kids. “Go to bed, you can fight Dad about dragons in the morning.”
“He’s still out looking for you.” I repeat, because none of what she’s saying makes sense and maybe she didn’t hear me. This is Aurelia, she should be yelling and screaming and making me grovel, but she’s just staring at me like I’m one of Fuse’s experiments left willy nilly on the table.
“Then it’ll be a cold night,” she smiles, and there’s a bit of her in there, tempered by the cold and probably the fact that I abandoned her at the forge in the middle of a blizzard. “He’s got Toothless, I’m sure he’s fine. Why don’t you get some sleep and we can fight about this in the morning when you’re acting less like a crazy person? Thanks for the extra blanket.”
“No. No, someone should let him know you’re home safe.”
“I wouldn’t be too upset if he came home short a couple more toes.”
“No, just because he’s an asshole doesn’t mean I have to be.” I clap my hand over her shoulder and narrow my eyes at the thick scarf still wound halfway around her. “Let me guess, I can’t borrow the scarf.”
“I told Arvid I’d get it back to him tomorrow.” She shrugs, another uncharacteristically demure smile tugging at her cheeks.
“I…ok,” I wrinkle my nose. I know, I know, I told her to go for it. I told her it was something I’d have to cope with, and it’s still true but...it hits me again, repeatedly, off and on like a Nightmare’s skin that I’m both of their blood relatives and my ick-factor is the only reasonable stumbling block besides like, taste.
They’re something else that would work perfectly if I didn’t exist.
“Ok, do you have any idea where he’d look for you?” I start pulling on my coat and patting my leg, coaxing a grumpy Bang towards the door. He looks awfully cozy, curled up in front of the fire, but I point towards the door anyway. I’m not going to be like the chief, not like this.
“The dragon barns, probably.” She rolls her eyes and looks towards the stairs again, hugging the blanket closer to her chest. “Nowhere I’d actually be.”
“Thanks for all the help,” I roll my eyes at her and soften one last time, “I’m sorry. I owe you one, but—but don’t make me cover for you and Arvid, alright? I’ve spent sixteen years covering for that asshole.”
“Nothing happened,” she shakes her head and slumps towards the stairs, “goodnight, Eret.”
“Yeah, nothing happened my ass,” I mutter under my breath as I slip into my boots. I don’t want to think of it the way I don’t want to think about Mom and the chief.
It’s colder than when I got home, one of the few times I curse Bang’s cool core and broad, quickly cooling back, but I tuck myself close to his neck and try and scan the snow for the now familiar night fury smudge.
There’s a flurry of fresher footprints outside of the forge and a strange peg-shaped puncture in the snow catches my attention. Not as inventive as the legends would say he is, it looks like the chief stopped at the forge. I land Bang on the roof and slide into a snow drift with a quiet crunch before yanking the unlocked door open. The chief is inside with Toothless, staring at my anvil, a few long, straight rods in front of him.
He turns to look at me, so different from the raging would be father figure he impersonated earlier and I speak before he can ruin the quiet.
“Aurelia is home. Arvid gave her a ride after we both left her here,” I glare at him and he pushes his snowmelt wet hair away from his face.
“Arvid did?”
“Thank the gods, look outside,” I gesture back towards the snow and pause, “I’m going to go home and sleep now, unless—”
“Can…can you step in here for a moment?”
“Why?” I freeze, “I’m not changing my mind—”
“I just want to talk for a minute,” he points towards the door. “And you’re letting all the snow in.”
I could run. I could go get on Bang and fly to some cave over on East Beach and make a fire. It’d be cold. I would be fine, probably. I grit my teeth and step into the forge, slamming it shut behind me with a little too much force. Bang coughs on the roof above us, a snow drift clomping onto the ground outside with a soft thud.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I—there’s something weird going on with the dragons, you’re right.” He starts and I roll my eyes.
“Oh, and you can only say that in private, of course—”
“It’s the middle of winter, we don’t have resources to look into it right now. I—I want to figure out some way for us to smooth out a bit, I know that you don’t like—”
“I don’t like you sucking up to all of us like it matters.” I snap, and he purses his lips.
“I’m sorry that’s what you think I’m doing.”
“You’re not supposed to apologize, you’re supposed to be a dick.”
“I’ll re-read the script when I get home,” he smiles like he knows it’s funny and he knows I think it’s funny.
I don’t want it to be ok that the chief shattered my family because he felt like it. I don’t want anyone convincing me I’m part of some weird, important family. I bite my tongue.
“How are things going with you and Arvid?” He asks in that quiet, careful voice like he wants to care without me yelling at him.
I shrug and almost tell him that Aurelia talks to Arvid all the time now, apparently, that they’re best friends. I don’t think I’ve ever almost said this many things without anything slipping out.
“I…It’s at least partially my fault that you two aren’t talking.”
“Wow, so you aren’t actually stupid.” I snip because it’s easier than accepting the statement. The chief smiles.
“And you’re sort of funny sometimes. Wow, who knew?”
I scoff and shake my head, glancing up at him through my overgrown hair. It’s almost long enough to tie back, and still not gray, thank gods.
I hate it when he does that. I hate that I had to accept him as a person and I hate that he keeps shoving it in my face like it’s a trick I should reward him for. I hate how it makes me feel, like I’m the stubborn one when it really feels like I’m the best chance of maintaining logic against this…onslaught of stupid, decent little gestures.
I look at him and I see the worst of myself all rolled up in a sense of humor and master dragon trainer and…
And there’s got to be another way.
“I don’t have to be like you,” I stare at my feet, “I look like you and somehow—somehow without ever knowing you, I fucking act like you, but I don’t have to be like you. It was…Aurelia and I both thought it was hilarious, the idea of you wandering around all night in a blizzard looking for her but—” I clear my throat, probably too loud, and Bang shifts on the roof, like he’s worried about me. I’m worried about me. “But that’s what you’d do. You leave people, you left my mom, you left…when I was a baby, you left me. You left her here and I’m not going to be like that.”
“Eret,” he holds his hand out towards me and I shake my head.
“Can you make it home alright? Or do you want me to hold your hand?” I curl my lip and turn towards the door, “consider yourself found.”
And I have Arvelia because I’m not a monster and they’re also my life so here, imma force it on all of you.
Everything Else
Arvid’s heart skips like a pebble on a pond when he sees Aurelia, hair glinting almost red from the top of a rickety ladder leaned against the chief’s house. And it’s not his turf, it’s quite literally the epicenter of Eret’s side of the island, but he jogs up the hill anyway, Wingspark trotting at his heels and crooning when he grabs the base of the ladder. Splinters instantly bite into his hands and he ignore them, gripping tighter when the ladder sways.
“What are you doing?” Aurelia looks down at him, faint smile playing at the edges of her frown.
“I don’t think this ladder has been used in a decade,” he says something, anything, to cover the heart-stopping realization that he can almost see up her skirt from this angle.
She’s been his friend for weeks, ever since that night he gave her a ride home. It’s not any sort of solid arrangement, they chat occasionally. She not so jokingly uses him as a shield from the wind when they’re walking and somehow, Eret’s oldest, lamest jokes are funny again when she tells them.
And at some dangerous point, he stopped staring at her expressions and moved to the face beneath. He stopped marveling over just how tiny he is, a terror to his nightmare, and started taking in just how tiny she is, how seamlessly she could meld into him. He stopped focusing on the strong set of her jaw and his eyes trailed downwards, captivated by the uniquely charming lean curves of her tiny waist, the slope of trim thighs always poking a bit too far out of too short skirts.
It’s not what Eret saw, not what Arvid had to sit through hearing about for years. There’s nothing pure or sweet about Arvid’s gaze and it worries him.
He squints his eyes shut and tries to forget the gentle notch between the curve of her rear and her thigh. How can leggings be warm at all when they hide so little? It’s so easy to imagine the creamy, ruddy skin underneath and—
“Probably longer than a decade,” she grunts and he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry about how the puny sound resonates in his chest. “And before you ask, no, I don’t want to borrow your dragon.”
“I wasn’t going to offer.
“Good,” another grunt, the ladder creaks and she steps down a rung, one small foot on tiptoe between his hands. “I don’t need a dragon.”
Arvid looks at the decorations on the ground, and thinks about Snoggletog preparations at his own home. The lack of them. It’s bare and mostly dark, absolutely cheerless without Eret and Mom giggling about presents they won’t reveal. Without Ingrid and Spitleaf accidentally ending up under the mistletoe every few minutes. Dad said something last night, something like ‘at least there’s no yaknog to hide this year’ and just for a second, Arvid thought that he’d drink all the yaknog Mom could make just for a night of normal.
“You know, I can practically reach the roof from here,” he reaches up and swipes a handful of low-hanging snow from the edge of the lowest shingle, “if you wanted me to do it—”
“Mom asked—sorry, your mom asked me to do it,” she shrugs, the ladder creaking with the motion, “My dad never trusts me with anything and it’s my chance to prove…” She trails off, stepping back up the ladder and laying her chest flat on the snow dusted roof, stretching to fling a decorative chain over last years’ nail.
It misses and she leans sideways to catch it, her skirt flapping up slightly. He swallows hard and stares at the side of the house, white knuckle grip shoving splinters deeper into his palms.
“I don’t care if you call her Mom. She is your mom now.”
“I do call her Mom,” Aurelia steps down, interrupting his view with her heels because that’s just how she works. As soon as he’s thinking about something else, even for a second, cramming herself into his thoughts like it’s possible he’d forget her.
“Then call her Mom, you don’t have to change it because I’m here.”
“Don’t I?” She laughs, hooking the chain onto another nail along the eve and turning around to lean back on the ladder. He wills himself to maintain eye contact rather than look up the front of her skirt and it’s a mistake. Her almost shy smile leaves him more dumbstruck than any legs ever could. “It’s sort of…confusing if we have the same mom.”
“She isn’t my mom,” he insists and Aurelia frowns, taking two careful steps down the ladder to stand at his eye level on the second rung. Her shoulders are directly between his arms, but she’s not touching him, and he almost drags her back to Wing for a ride, just to put his hands on her without question.
“She’s the best mom I’ve ever had.”
“She’s better at parenting the chief’s kids,” he scowls at his feet, bitterness blooming on the back of his tongue. Just because it’s true and obvious doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt.
Aurelia’s hand lands softly against his chin, ice cold and insistently tilting his head up to look at her. She frowns, her thumb tracing the line of his tattoo and sending sparks through his skin.
“And that’s what I am to you? Just one of the chief’s many brats?” Her hand drifts away from his face, landing limp and bright red from cold against her thigh. “You know, Eret and I—we didn’t ask for this family or this shitty timing and neither did you, but—but it’s not our fault who our dad is.”
It’s the least confrontational think he’s ever heard her say, and he sighs, making eye contact and acquiescing with a tiny shrug. She smiles and thinks for a moment before reaching out and resting her hands on his shoulders.
“So this is what it feels like to be a giant,” she looks around like she’s seeing the sights, braid falling in a thick plait over her shoulder and resting against her front.
“Your hands are freezing,” he’s too quiet, and she’s too close, icy hands folding together on the back of his neck and pulling him closer, her warm breath flitting against his cheeks.
“I forgot my gloves inside,” it’s barely a whisper, barely a sound at all and then she’s kissing him, lips warm and electric against his own.
He leans into her, his hands sliding down the ladder and falling to her waist, fingertips touching behind her back as he tugs her into him. And it’s different, it’s different than some conventional first kiss at the end of some first date that only mattered for making Eret jealous. It’s better and warmer and deeper, and her arms fold around his neck, her nose puffing frantic breaths against his cheek. And she’s clumsy, clumsy and raw and sweet, and his dad is going to kill him.
Because this kiss isn’t a one time thing. It’s not a one off against a rickety ladder, it’s something he wants to do again, better, right. He needs a hundred more chances to kiss her first, he needs to do it until it doesn’t take his breath away and he can think. He needs to do it until it’s second’ nature.
His tongue slips between her lips and she stills for a second, terrifying him that he did something wrong. Because Aurelia is different and the same tricks won’t work. He’s as out of luck as he was when she first stormed into his head. Her tongue twitches shyly against his, her fingertips curling in his jacket and holding fast.
She groans against his mouth, and he leans against her, the ladder creaking loudly enough to snap him out of his haze.
This is bad. If he doesn’t stop now, he’s not going to stop. She deserves better than this, she’s not just…she’s not just someone he can shove up against the wall and kiss. And even though the thought of just how furious this would make the chief flits across his mind, he ignores it, breaking the kiss with a damp, panting pop.
“What?” She’s nervous, eyes wide and distracting above kiss swollen lips and her arms tighten around the back of his neck. “Why did you stop?”
“I—” He’s saved from having to answer.
“Am I interrupting something?” Eret stands at the corner, of the house, eyes wide.
“Just decorating, isn’t the house beautiful?” Aurelia shouts back to him, her arms going slack around Arvid’s neck as she turns towards Eret and sighs.
Eret flushes and there’s obviously some sort of communication above Arvid’s head.
“Nevermind. I’ll just—”
“What is it?” She sighs, her hands falling from his shoulders entirely, trailing briefly along his chest as her back flexes against his palms.
“Nothing just…the chief drank three mugs of yaknog and he’s outside puking.”
“Oh.” Aurelia smiles, too red lips quirking to one side as she steps down from the ladder unannounced, pushing Arvid casually, gently out of the way with a hand on the center of his chest. “We should probably get Wingspark out of here before she has to put up with my dad trying to charm her—”
“That’s probably...” Eret interrupts again, disappearing mostly around the corner. “Oh shit.” He gags.
He disappears and Arvid shoves his hands in his pocket, torn between being upset that Eret didn’t even look at him and thrilled about everything that just happened. Aurelia seems shockingly unperturbed, turning back to the ladder and lifting it an arduous inch, scooting it down the wall.
“That could have been worse,” she muses, stepping onto the creaky ladder and fumbling for the decorative chain. “We should go. I’ll finish this later.”
Everyone is gagging and he shrugs, “sounds like that’s going to take them a while. I can help you finish faster.”
Maybe he wants to stay and fight. It’s better than being alone.
“I’m not letting you do it for me,” she snaps and he thinks for a second before stepping forward and picking her up by her waist, lifting her over his head and sitting her on his shoulders, one leg on either side of his neck. She squeals, gripping his hair painfully tight and smacking the chain against the side of his face. “What the Hel are you doing?”
“It’s easier than moving the ladder,” he steps up towards the edge of the house and she tosses the chain over the next nail, thighs twitching distractingly on either side of his neck.
“Smart,” she tugs affectionately on his hair and his face flushes at the compliment.
