#arvid hofferson
Text
Open Flames: Part 18
Alternate name for this chapter: The time Eret III invented Nuclear Deterrent (and Fuse Helped)
Ao3 (the masterpost is horribly behind...I should deal with that...but it’s all organized on Ao3 so I might...not)
00000
I would never say this in front of Fuse, but I’ve been blown up before.
A few times, really. Some of them because I hadn’t learned to duck and cover quickly enough, some because after the volcano, grenades and mining charges didn’t feel like they mattered much. Between those exposures and riding Bang for most of my life, maybe I’m acclimated to explosions and the waves of pressure that come with them.
Or, maybe, as big and hardy as everyone in Dad’s village is, they’re weak in the face of a concussive blast.
I’m the first one on my feet after the jail walls fall down, spitting metallic dust from the ancient gate out of my mouth and staggering towards the pile of clothes that I hid the sword under. It takes a couple of tries, my feet not quite listening, my shoulder throbbing from its impromptu use as a battering ram.
Arvid groans, dabbing at the blood dripping out of his nose, too red in my slightly blurring vision.
“Get up,” I try to hiss at him, but it comes out half-shout, ears ringing when my throat rasps. “Before they do.”
“Thought you said those didn’t work,” he curls into the fetal position and dry heaves, and someone under the rubble that used to be the wall around the door shifts, a crumbled brick falling to the side.
“I thought they didn’t.” I get the sword, arms aching from the weight as it seemingly drags me in a tight circle, foot catching on the something and nearly tripping me.
But I’m up. I’m the only one up.
“Idiot,” Arvid wheezes.
I look around for Bang and see Wingspark slumped by the nearest edge of the forest, shaking her head slowly, cocking it off kilter when she dares to open wide, disoriented eyes.
My nose must be bleeding too because the metallic taste in my mouth gets worse as I raise the sword into a trembling defensive position.
Berk wedding traditions couldn’t include axes, could they? That would be way too convenient.
“There!” Someone shouts and I spin, forcing my eyes to focus on the cohort of half a dozen men running at us over the nearest hill. The one in front is big, holding a spear back and aiming in what I think is my direction and it’s sheer luck when the spearhead hits the flat of the sword instead of my arm, chipping off a piece of generations old rust and sending a tremor up through my sore shoulder.
“Get up, there’s more of them.” I hiss, planting my feet in the rubble and fixing my grip tighter around the sword. “Lots more.”
“What are they going to do, put you in jail?” He rolls almost reluctantly to his knees and I’d tell him that he’s never been less intimidating, except I’m thinking of Fuse and my promise and how impossible it is to keep as the band of men starts running at us in earnest, shouting names and curses and threats.
“Since that’s off the table, I guess I’m going to have to go with plan B.”
“What’s plan B?” Arvid staggers to his feet, wiping his nose on his sleeve, black eye green around the edges, and I realize, with a terrifying jolt, that I’m the only even moderately intimidating one right now.
“Make them think the fight’s not worth it.” I decide all at once, forcing my expression serious.
“You’re going to bluff?”
“Hardly,” I grit my teeth, “I’m going to tell the whole truth.”
Because even though Fuse isn’t here, her bombs were. Even though she can’t back me up, her legacy can. No one would have to look too far to corroborate my story.
I wait until the cohort is in ear shot and swallow hard, trying not to think about how bad a spear would hurt piercing my chest as I lower the sword, one hand held towards them in a gesture asking them to stop. I’m trying for casual, even as Arvid stares at me incredulous, hand shaking, smooth tongue stuck limp in his mouth as I essentially hand us over to the enemy.
Except they aren’t an enemy.
I let them look like Dad, let myself see the origin of his features in their faces. Ingrid’s eyes. Rolf’s scowl.
“Hey,” I call out when they don’t stop immediately and a couple of men at the back falter. I raise my hand to my mouth and let out the most piercing whistle I can, wishing Ingrid were here to do the honors, but I’m still glad when it’s enough and the man at the front stops, obviously confused. “If we can just pause the charge for a second, that’d be great. Thanks.”
I wipe the dust from my hand on my pants and it comes away dustier.
Arvid stares at me in a way that makes me sure if he were holding the sword, he would have knocked my dumb ass out by now in an attempt to salvage the situation.
“Thanks,” I repeat, twirling the sword in my grip just for something to do as I take advantage of the silence, “I know we got off on the wrong foot here—”
“You were desecrating our ancestral burial ground!” The man just to the right of the leader yells and I weigh the accusation.
“Not exactly, actually.”
“You were in Eret’s grave—”
“Oh good, I did get the runes right,” I laugh, and it doesn’t so much ease the tension as it confuses everyone so much they don’t know how to respond, “Eret III, future chief of Berk.” I switch the sword to my left hand and hold out my right, even risking a step forward towards the shocked group.
None of them move.
Arvid snaps his fingers, summoning Wingspark closer, but it doesn’t work. I still don’t know where Bang is, and when I find him, we’re going to have a long talk about his rescue etiquette.
“Ok,” I take my hand back, switching the sword back to it and twirling it a couple of easy times where it hangs down by my ankles. It’s not intimidating like an axe, but maybe that’s a good thing. “Where do I start? Ok, well, you might be wondering what happened to your jail cell. And while I could claim that it just spontaneously crumbled because of bad upkeep, I’m going to stick with the truth here—”
“Your dragon, that blue blasted beast—”
“Don’t, alliteration goes to his head,” I ignore Arvid’s glare, “and it’s not quite true, he had help.” I think of Fuse and the walls I’ve seen fall, the craters I’ve seen gouge themselves into hard rock. “I’m engaged.”
“What he means is—” Arvid tries to cut me off and I give him my most chiefly look, the one that makes him puff up even as he stands down.
“I don’t know what you’ve heard about Berk, and I know that stories about us get warped and blown out of proportion the futher away they’re told,” I lower my voice, hoping that nasal can be deadly in the right circumstances, “but I’m not exaggerating when I say that your jail cell was just obliterated by the smallest arms in my future wife’s arsenal.”
“Is that a threat?” The man in front bristles, reaching for the spear of the follower at his left and I take a step back to retrieve the spear that barely missed me a moment ago and toss it to him.
If I somehow talk my way out of this, Arvid is going to kill me and enjoy it.
“It’s a warning,” I wave vaguely to the south, “either I tell you now, before you’re stupid enough to kill me, or you learn the next time you near the archipelago to trade.” I watch the leader contemplate his spear and shrug, sword waving carelessly through the air, “you might hear the rumors before she strikes, I don’t know, it all depends on how long it takes for word to get back to Berk, and with my dragon probably on his way there now, without me, it won’t be more than a couple of days.”
“Strikes?” The question is a whisper among the men, their eyes flicking between me and the pile of rubble just starting to move with their men regaining consciousness from the blast.
“I’m sure you’ve heard rumors,” I grin, “the dragon island blown entirely off of the map, whole dragon trapper posts gone up in flame and rubble.” I shrug, “not rumors.”
They look at the building. Arvid looks at me and Wingspark, and the single dull sword that we have between us against at least a dozen men.
“I’m a nice guy,” I promise, left hand held up in simulated surrender, “really, my dad’s from here, I appreciate your history so much I just wanted to borrow a little piece of it and maybe I could have been a little more upfront about it. I wish I had, given how many of your lives that would have saved.”
I feel it now, in their eyes on me, that chiefly aura that I’ve always struggled towards. The feeling that when they look at me, I’m more than just myself, I’m larger, scarier, impossible in a way that makes people wish they were behind me instead of against me.
“The way I see it, if I’m going to keep my conscience clear here, I’ve got two options.” I number them off against the rusty sword, “one, I consider you warned. If you kill me right now, there will be more than Hel to pay. Your entire village reduced to a pile of rubble so thorough that those graves will be all that’s left and even then, only the ones buried deep.” I swallow, hoping I’ve laid a big enough foundation to bluff on even as I assess the group.
The guy in the front is biggest, but looks slow, and aside from his spear I only see a short dagger. There’s a smaller man in the back row with a heavy iron axe in his hands, and if I could just get to him, I’d have a chance at some of them, maybe enough for Arvid to get to Wingspark. With a little fire on our side, the odds are better, and I plant my heels to spring in case this next line doesn’t work out for me.
“Or, I kill all of you now before you can hurt me, because trust me, even a scratch, even a bruise won’t make her happy. That’s the only way I can think of to save your families, your history.” I gesture with the sword, “our history, really.”
The pause drags on, too long, rubble shifting and crumbling as men underneath it try to sit up. The new cohort’s eyes drift repeatedly to the pile, obviously wanting to help their brethren and I watch them weigh the utility of the next few minutes.
“Aw Hel,” the man to the leader’s left swears, “let him go, he’s fucking crazy.”
“That explosion knocked down a shelf at my house a half mile away,” another man mutters, “he said it was small arms—”
“He stole from us,” the leader insists and I gesture with the sword again.
“Oh, come on, you guys weren’t using it.” I adjust my grip, preparing again to charge if necessary, “and it has my name on it.”
“The other graves are untouched,” someone else argues in a tense whisper, “what if he’s telling the truth? He said his name was Eret—”
“He’s a thief, he’s probably a liar too—”
“Trust me, if I was going to lie about my name, I would have started years ago.” I laugh, even as Arvid takes a calculated step back towards where Wing is inching forwards. She’s close now, maybe a run for it would be better.
“Let him take the damn sword,” the man to the leader’s right booms, “if there’s even a grain of truth in what he’s saying it’s not worth it. No one liked Eret that much anyway!”
“I heard that Bronn!” A shout from the sky takes everyone else’s concentration away from the stand off and the bubble of relief in my chest swells to near bursting when Skullcrusher lands on the other side of the crowd, Dad sitting on his shoulders.
Stormfly lands next to him, followed by a panicked Bang who immediately charges me, cool claws on my shoulders as he knocks me back into the dirt and starts frantically licking my face.
“Bud!” I yelp, squirming away from the piece of what used to be a prison wall digging in to my lower back, “missed you too! Missed you too!”
“Is that Eret son of Eret?” The question is bouncing around the group of men when I finally get back to my feet, holstering the sword clumsily in my axe’s place against my back.
“Hi Dad,” I call out, driving in the point as I swing onto Bang, relief flooding through me when his wings twitch to the sides, preparing for takeoff.
“Go on ahead, son,” Dad says pointedly, waving me away, “I’ll catch up.”
“I don’t think I was done talking to them,” I shrug and the man dad recognized, Bronn apparently, looks between us with wide eyes.
“I think they’re done talking to you,” Dad laughs, “I’ll smooth things over.”
I want to stay but the half-relieved, half-furious, all guilt-inducing look that Mom gives me convinces me otherwise. As I take off, I hear the first few questions echoing on the breeze, all concerning the validity of my claims that if they’d touched me, they all would have found themselves blown sky high in less than a week.
Dad’s laugh answers them for me.
Flying does little to blow the stink and dust off of my clothes, but my mind is far clearer by the time Mom guides Arvid and I down to a small camp maybe fifteen minutes outside the outskirts of the village.
“What the Hel were you thinking?” She asks as soon as we’ve landed, launching herself off of Stormfly and flinging her arms around me in a hug so tight it might as well be a chokehold, given I’m not quite off of Bang yet.
“Mom,” I wheeze and she yanks me off of my dragon and to my feet, bracing her hands on my shoulders to analyze my face.
“Flying off like that when Fuse is seven months pregnant,” she starts listing the compilation of my crimes, but all I can hear is Fuse and pregnant and the fear settles back into that collar around my heart, “getting arrested in a village you’ve never been to—”
“Is Fuse ok?”
“As of a day and a half ago,” she softens slightly at something in my expression, probably the raw desperation flooding across everything I’ve kept together for the past…however long I was in that cell, “everyone’s watching her, I’m sure she’s fine. Unmarried, but otherwise fine.”
“As soon as I get back,” I pull the rusty sword from my back and hold it out for her to examine, “I’m ready, I just needed—”
“Something of your dad’s,” she sighs, “something from where he’s from. I know.” She smiles, a little crooked, younger looking than usual with her hair windblown and her panic receding from an otherwise open expression, “and before you ask, no one told me, I guessed. I’m sorry it took me so long to guess. If I’d been more on top of it, maybe we would have caught you before you were about to fight off an army—”
“An army?” I shrug, “half a company, maybe. Hardly even a small militia—”
“Eret.” She squishes my cheeks, dirty beard itching against my face.
“I was talking my way out of it,” the words come out slightly muffled and Arvid steps up beside me, and I feel guilty for forgetting him in the rush of the reunion.
“By telling them how his future wife would blow them up if they touched a hair on his pretty head.”
“Delegating,” I clarify as Mom lets me go. “And can you please stop with the pretty?”
He doesn’t hear because Mom is hugging him, chin over his shoulder, which is too bad because she misses his shocked expression, eyes wide on my face like he’s looking for help.
“And you, I expected better of you,” she jabs him in the chest with a finger when she pulls away, “going along with a plan like this. And what happened to your eye?” She pokes at the green bruise and wipes the still trickling red under his nose with her sleeve. “Who did this to you?”
She looks accusingly at me and I raise my hands, gesturing at the dried blood on my own lip, even though it’s probably far less obvious caked in my red moustache.
“The nose was the explosion.” I nod, “which was an accident, the bombs had been soaked a bunch of times, it was Bang trying to blast us out that set them off—”
“Did you ice this?” She’s back fussing over Arvid who blushes, hands in his pockets.
“I was a prisoner, Mom, no one was really offering medical care.”
“If we’d been an hour later…” she looks between us, shaking her head, and we both hug her at the same time, Arvid lifting her a couple lopsided inches in the air.
“We’re fine,” I insist, “a little deafened, maybe, but the ringing in my ears is already fading.”
“Speak for yourself,” Arvid grumbles, stepping out of the hug to twist his pinky in his ear, wincing.
“You’ve got to get home,” Mom tells me in particular, earnest instead of chastising and that makes it worse.
“I know,” I nod, “I didn’t think that’d take more than a week, but—”
“You should take Stormfly,” she pats her leg to call the Nadder over, “she’s faster. I’ll wait for your dad and fly back on Bang.”
Bang protests weakly, nudging my leg with his wing and looking up at me with big, pathetic, watery eyes.
“I’ve got to get home too,” Arvid perks up, a little frantic for the first time since the explosion, rolling his shoulder like he’s just now remembering why he pulverized it. “Aurelia—”
“Wing can keep up with Stormfly, can’t she?” Mom asks and Arvid seems to center himself on the words before nodding.
“I think so.”
“We took a roundabout way to get up here to avoid trouble,” I say a bit sheepishly, “not that it mattered, but by any chance, did you guys come direct?”
“We took as straight of a shot as we could,” Mom nods, “no trouble to be seen, seems like you guys had it all corralled.”
“I do my best,” I nod, faking somber as the weight of the sword against my back starts to mount, the pull towards home and Fuse overwhelming the desire to stay here and dwell.
“Straight home,” Mom points at me and I nod. “I mean it, if we get there before you—”
“Hel to pay, I get it.” I swing up onto Stormfly and she fidgets as I adjust my seat to her comparatively narrow shoulders. “I’m shocked you’re even trusting me after well,” I point at the sword and she sighs, a little sheepish in a way I’ve never seen directed at me.
Maybe at Dad, once or twice, when one of us broke something and she decided not to punish us for it. Never at the chief.
“I’ve got to start sometime.”
“You do?” I raise an eyebrow, trying to ignore Arvid’s impatient expression as Wingspark paces in a small circle, ready to take off.
“You’re going to be chief,” she reminds me, and it makes my negotiation of sorts at the blown jail cell feel silly and more official all at once, “and you can’t do that with your mother questioning your every move, can you?”
“Oh,” I frown, “I guess I’d assumed that was part of the program.”
“Go,” she pats Stormfly’s haunch, “you being this far from an unmarried Fuse right now is giving me gray hairs.”
“Fine,” I nudge Stormfly forward, ignoring Bang’s pathetic croon to the best of my ability, “see you at home.”
“We going?” Arvid half checks then takes off before I get an answer, flying due south through a cloud bank, pressed low to Wingspark’s neck.
We don’t talk much. There’s none of that adventurous feeling that carried us North on the way here, this feels far more like drudgery. It reminds me too much of my sleepless flights between Berk and Elva’s island and I’m glad to be on Stormfly, the different seated position keeping me focused on what’s ahead instead of reliving what’s behind.
We take a single, brief stop just before sundown to feed the dragons and Arvid helps me pull the long-healed stitches out of my forearm and wrap it in a length of cloth I rip from one of Dad’s old borrowed shirts that is still layered over my own.
There’s no talk of stopping for the night and we get back into the sky, hugging the coastline for the next part of the journey so that the dragons can glide on the updraft generated by the miles of shear cliffs, preserving some of their energy towards faster flight. The night’s colder than it was even a week ago, winter setting in with a vengeance as a few flakes start to fall on the straight just north of Berk, and I let myself have a moment’s hope for a small feast.
Or no feast. I don’t care.
That in and of itself is refreshing, the general lack of reluctance. After years of digging in my heels while people dragged me places that didn’t feel right, walking apathetically forward of my own volition is freeing. Or not apathetically, that’s not right. I can hardly think of waking up in a house with Fuse, a house that’s ours, because it feels so impossible in all of the best ways, but I can imagine the wedding.
It’s going to be…well, a wedding.
The chief is probably going to make a big, annoying deal of the ceremonial bath. I’ll have to wear whatever my mom says and sign the contract and throw the sword on my back into a rafter. I’ll have to fend off the well-wishers but then I’ll get to go home with Fuse and have some new claim on her and those babies that kick my hands when I talk too much.
“I’m headed home!” Arvid shouts over the wind, gesturing towards the far point of the island and I shake my head.
“Aurelia’s probably with Fuse.”
He hovers for a second, looking down at his clothes and then looking at me with a bright tinge of panic in his eyes barely visible through the fluttering snowflakes, which are picking up speed.
“You look fine,” I roll my eyes and he pivots Wingspark in a frustrated little circle.
“I’m covered in half a building—”
“Aurelia won’t care.”
“I…” He grits his teeth and I see the shadow of his jaw flexing from where I’m hovering on an updraft a few yards away, “I don’t know what to say to her.”
“It’s Aurelia,” I try, sighing when he doesn’t relax, “tell her I was cryptic and weird and said you needed to talk to her—”
“I don’t need you in the middle.” He draws a line in the snow and asks me to stay on my side and I nod. It feels like him taking a step back at his dad’s birth village, falling into a new boundary, and I respect it, nodding. “I’m going to go get cleaned up.”
“Should I let Aurelia know?”
He shrugs, and then rethinks the gesture, “yeah. If she’s there.”
“Alright.” I half salute, sword on my back feeling too big and out of place as Stormfly angles to catch the next draft, snow flurrying from the cliffs below, “thanks, by the way. For this.” I shrug under the weight of the sword.
“Yeah,” Arvid smiles, handsome again, huge again, the black eye a battle scar with a story worth telling, “thanks for this.” He pats Dad’s sword in its holster on his hip and then he’s gliding back towards his house.
I land outside the chief’s house and Stormfly instantly trots off to the barn, tucking herself into a pile of straw and shoving her beak into a bucket of fish. I stretch, scrubbing my hand through my iced over beard and walking towards the door before opening it to a resounding chorus of Aurelia’s frustration.
“How do you keep doing that?” She shouts, voice going shrill as she leans over the maces and talons board set up on the table. “You aren’t even paying attention!”
“I don’t know why you didn’t just do this,” Tuffnut demonstrates some move and the vein in Aurelia’s forehead twitches.
“That’s agains the rules.”
“I thought we were playing Thorston rules,” Tuffnut looks beside him and I edge a little further into the doorway to see the back of Fuse’s head, hair glowing with the reflection of the fire. “So Loki’s revenge is legal, why didn’t she just do that?”
“Because Thorston rules aren’t real, Tuff,” the chief reminds him like he’s said it a few dozen times today.
“Then why do we keep winning?” Tuffnut asks.
“I don’t know!” Aurelia snaps, tossing a game piece at his head and missing entirely. It skitters across the floor and I stop it with my boot, watching Aurelia’s jaw drop when she follows its path and sees me in the doorway. “You’re back?”
“No, of course not,” I joke, “just passing through.”
“Eret,” Fuse jumps up so fast she knocks her chair down, whirling towards me and managing a step before I’m across the room, lifting her into a hug and burying my face in her hair.
“Hey,” I say against her neck, arms tightening reflexively around her.
And she smells like home, usual soot replaced with campfire and warmth. Her hair tickles my nose as she pats my shoulders, asking to be set down, which makes it easier to rest my cheek against her forehead. I want to slip my hand under her shirt to feel her stomach, but Aurelia’s and the chief’s eyes are boring into the top of my head and I sigh and pull away, pausing to kiss her forehead and grab her hand.
Her other hand starts working up my sleeve to check my stitches and I don’t have the heart to stop her, even when the chief’s ever sharp eyes catch the motion.
“Where’s Arvid?” Aurelia asks first, one arm absently around my chest in a side hug as she wrinkles her nose, “you’re filthy, by the way.”
“Arvid went to get cleaned up,” I roll my eyes, “should be at your place.”
“Thanks,” she hustles to grab her coat and I squeeze Fuse’s hand as I turn to face Aurelia on her way out the open door.
“Ask him about the black eye, by the way, funny story.”
“Black eye?” She pauses for a second before shaking her head at me, “whatever. I’ll see you later.” She points at Tuffnut, “for a rematch.”
“Thorston rules next time,” he waggles his eyebrows but Aurelia ignores him, slamming the door shut against the blowing snow and leaving the room in awkward silence.
Or awkward for me, at least.
Fuse seems fine with the quiet, quite obviously checking me over for new injuries until I take both her hands in one of mine, giving her a look that she thankfully accepts to mean ‘later’. Tuffnut is also fine with the silence, looking between me and his daughter with a pleasant smile that grows the more awkward I feel.
Mostly though, the chief doesn’t seem to feel awkward, which is always a bad sign. Worse, it doesn’t feel like I’m in trouble this time, like the concept of trouble has lost some of its meaning. It’s worse than trouble, he’s waiting for me to explain myself, and there’s the chance that if I do it well enough, he’ll accept it.
I never thought I’d miss the fatalistic comfort of no-win situations, but here I am.
I swallow hard, tugging at the collar of my dad’s borrowed coat that should be bigger before reaching over my shoulder and pulling out the rusty sword, angling it in the firelight to show the ancient, faded runes.
“I got what I went looking for,” I start, voice a rush from holding my breath and I clear my throat before continuing. “Eret the first’s sword.”
“You were gone for almost two weeks.”
“Yeah,” I wince and Fuse squeezes my hand, encouraging at the same time as urging me to remind the room at large that she had it handled.
She doesn’t know the half of what she has handled, frankly.
“Did you anticipate being gone for two weeks?” The chief asks me like I’m a council member and it’s hard to remember how reasonable he is as a boss when I was just wrapping my head around him as a grandfather to my future children, but this is yet another chance to prove that I can still handle things and I make myself focus, exhaling as I step forward to set the sword on the table.
Fuse doesn’t let go of my hand.
“I did not, Arvid and I took the long way, traveling at night to avoid running into anyone, so I thought it would be six or seven days at the most,” I scratch my chin and decide on the truth, again, “but it turns out that people don’t necessarily like strangers robbing their ancestral tombs.”
“Really?” Tuffnut raises an eyebrow, “they weren’t happy about you taking this ugly old sword off their hands?” He runs a finger along the rust where it was recently chipped by a spearhead, “honestly, this thing is horrible, how much did you pay for it? It looks like it’s been in a grave for a hundred years.”
“Probably more like fifty,” I correct him, recognizing my own irritated expression on the chief’s face.
“You overpaid.”
“I stole it,” I assure him.
“Good old five-finger discount,” he winks at me or at Fuse, I can’t quite tell, “there’s hope for you yet, kid.”
“So, as I was saying, they weren’t happy that I stole a sword,” I steer the conversation back to the topic that might release me, “and I ended up in jail.” When the chief doesn’t answer immediately, I keep talking, patting my stomach and gesturing to the room at large, “which, by the way, was anyone going to tell me that I don’t fit between dragon cage bars anymore? I’ve been on the moldy bread diet for a week and it still didn’t work—”
“How’d you get out?” The chief asks and there’s the real question, the one that the length of my absence was just hinting at.
“Fuse, actually,” I squeeze her hand and she frowns at me, glancing at my hairline like she’s searching out a bruise or some other sign of head injury, “no, not—some smoke bombs you gave me months ago that I never used—I mean, I actually soaked them about a hundred times, I don’t know how they still worked but at some point, Bang tried to blast the cell open and they flew into a wall and…boom.” I mime the explosion with my free hand and the chief looks at me not quite doubtfully, but waiting for the rest of the story.
“And the village just let you go?”
“After some convincing, yeah,” I nod.
“What’s the body count on ‘convincing’?” The chief finally puts the rest of the question out in the open and I relax, for once confident that I have the right answer.
“None,” I shrug, “I convinced them we weren’t worth the trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Well,” I drop Fuse’s hand to wrap my arm around her shoulders, “I might have said that what blew up their jail was the smallest in Berk’s—and my future wife in particular’s—arsenal.”
“I don’t know that,” Fuse mutters, biting her lip as she does some mental calculation, brows pulling together, “now that I think about it, saltwater curing a smoke bomb might produce…maybe with some black sand—”
“Fuse,” I break her concentration and she glares at me briefly before her expression softens and I’d say about anything to get away from our dads right now so that we can actually greet each other.
“I’ll test it out later,” she blushes, noticing the room’s attention on her and flanking down at her stomach, smoothing a warm sweater over it and shaking her head, “at some point.”
“So, instead of killing them,” the chief raises an eyebrow, “you convinced them that Fuse would kill them if they didn’t let you go?”
“It didn’t take much convincing,” I run a hand through my tangled hair and come back with a palm covered in jail dust even after a day and a half in the wind and snow, “not after the explosion.”
“A ceremonial wedding sword and a diplomatic solution,” the chief lets himself smile and I’d ask him how long he was faking a stern face to freak me out if I weren’t so relieved and impatient with the conversation, “I never thought I’d see the day.”
“Well, it’s the day,” I shrug, unsure whether to accept the teasing as praise or push it off and ask for my next assignment. Whether it’s my empty stomach or aching back or the fact that the dust is really starting to itch, I can’t be sure, but I’m suddenly exhausted enough to go with the first option. “If that’s all, I think I’m going to go wash the prison off before the snow dilutes the hot springs…”
Fuse nods, cold hand slipping under the back of my shirt, and as hard as I try to keep my expression neutral with the repeated self-assurance that she’s only checking for injuries, I’m not sure that it works. Especially because as much as I hate her worrying, I like her checking me over, all thorough attention and meticulous fingers.
And her dad is here. And the chief is here. And I’d throw that stupid sword into the chief’s ceiling right now if it meant house keys in my hand.
“And tomorrow is Frigg’s day,” the chief says, voice sing-song, and I blink at him.
“Ok.”
“Everyone else is on-island and you didn’t mind a small feast,” he looks between Fuse and I, “unless that’s changed…”
“What? Oh!” I stiffen when his meaning clicks, “tomorrow. The wedding? Tomorrow?” I look at Fuse, semi-relieved when she’s startled too, wide eyes flicking between her dad and me. “As in we go to sleep one time, wake up in the morning and get married?”
“Unless ‘tomorrow’ has changed meaning…” The chief smiles at me, embarrassed for me and proud of me in equal parts and I don’t know why everyone is being so nice to me after I went to jail, but I’ll take it.
Especially because it feels different than pity, different than a token kind word to make up for a secret.
“Wait, like tomorrow tomorrow?” Tuffnut jumps up and I nod.
“That’s what I just clarified.”
“It’s your last night in my house!” He yanks Fuse away from me by her shoulders, and I wish I hadn’t set down the ceremonial sword as my own territorial instincts react. “We have to celebrate. Or cry. And tell your mother—”
“The new house is just down the road,” Fuse rolls her eyes, looking pointedly at her dad and apologetically at me like she already knows it doesn’t matter and the offer to throw the sword into the ceiling still stands.
“Wait, you’ve seen the house?” I ask, heart clenching when her otherwise irritated expression twitches into a tiny smile.
“Your mom showed me.”
“Is it—” I stop the flood of unimportant questions and try for the only one that matters. “I mean, did you like it?”
“You’ll have plenty of time to talk about how much you love your new house once you’re done abandoning your old dad!” Tuffnut starts dragging her towards the door and I’m unsure how real his tears are and even less sure how much I care.
“You knew this was coming—” Fuse tries one last feeble time to shirk his arms off, and I get the feeling that as reluctant as she is, she might need this. Especially after the last few months of distance from her dad, and I nod at her that it’s ok.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I tell her, even as everything in me rejects the distance, some new level of chiefly composure thinking of tomorrow and consequences instead of right now.
Or maybe it’s not chiefly composure, maybe it’s the kind of composure that might let me become chief. The sign that I’m thinking of what I want in the future instead of what I’m running from in the present.
Or maybe that’s a load of dragon dung I’m telling myself because braving the snowstorm to the hot springs alone doesn’t sound very appealing after considering the alternative.
“At the altar,” she bites her lip, a little pale but still excited, eyes bright as the door shuts behind them with a gust of snow and the chief and I are alone.
“I’m not going to cry,” he jokes, and all I can think about is how we’re standing right where we were when I hugged him, “I’ve been looking forward to your last night in my house for years.”
“Yeah,” I snort, “finally going to be rid of me.”
“It’s just down the road,” he says, more to himself than to me and my chest feels a little tight. “Stoick will finally stop bugging me that your room is bigger than his, I’m really excited for that—”
“I should go wash up,” I point at the door, barely biting my tongue against blurting out ‘alone’ in Midgard’s most disappointed tone, if only to break the moment. “And get some sleep, big day tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” he nods, “good plan, it’s going to—exhausting, weddings are exhausting.”
I make it all of two steps towards the door when he calls my name and I turn back around, impatient eyebrows raised.
“Just one more thing—”
“Yeah?”
“Where’s your Mom?” He asks, worried in the way that never meshes with my mom in my mind. Then, before I can answer, he winces and catches himself. “Where’s Eret? Also. I mean, Eret—not you, obviously, I mean…”. He swallows hard and shrugs one shoulder, embarrassed as he probably should be, “where are your parents?”
“Oh,” I point vaguely North, “Mom insisted I take Stormfly, because she’s ‘faster’ than Bang,” I roll my eyes and he laughs, “and she was sure that Fuse was going to be having unclaimed heirs any second.” My heart stutters at that and I pinch the outside of my thigh, forcing my focus back to tomorrow and only tomorrow, “she and my dad should be on their way by now.”
“Great.” He waves me off and I make it one more measly, shuffled step, “Eret?”
“What?” I regret the edge in my voice and clear my throat, “sorry, what?”
“I’m proud of you,” he doesn’t sound like the chief and he doesn’t sound like he’s trying to step in as my father either, and I remember how ‘grandpa’ felt right for a second and my throat tightens, “for going after what you want and—”
“And not chopping off a bunch of heads to get it?” I joke, but he doesn’t laugh.
“That’s one way to say it,” he waves me towards the door, “I’m done now, really. Go do what you need to do. Big day tomorrow.”
#eret iii#festerverse#open flames#arvid hofferson#the gang's all here ok#more of the gang is going to be here soon
14 notes
·
View notes
Text
Okay now.
Another post about our AU
We are introducing the Hofferson siblings.
Astrid has lived in a middle of a family of 5 boys : Arvid (28), Haleth (26), Einar (24), Astrid (23), Bjorn (21) and the little late Soini (9).
They are a love and broken family. Every brother can have is own story written because they are so different from each other and yet they can't live without the others.
They are our babies.
#Httyd#httyd fanart#httyd 2#httyd fanfic#httyd3#httyd fandom#how to train your dragon#Fanfiction#Fanart#Illustration#Character design#Sketch#It's rought#DreamWorks#Original character#Astrid#astrid hofferson#Arvid#Haleth#Einar#Bjorn#Soini
63 notes
·
View notes
Text
Eret III Drabbles
read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2r9pP8l
by tysonrunningfox
Drabbles that take place during the story of Eret III, multiple POVs. Chronological Order.
Words: 8441, Chapters: 7/?, Language: English
Series: Part 7 of Festerverse
Fandoms: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Categories: F/F, F/M
Characters: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, Original Child(ren) of Astrid and Hiccup, Original Children of Eret and Astrid, Original children of Hiccup and OFC, Eret III, Fuse Thorston, Arvid Hofferson, Aurelia Haddock, Ingrid Hofferson, Smitelout Jorgenson
Relationships: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III/Astrid Hofferson, Eret III/Fuse Thorston, Arvid Hofferson/Aurelia Haddock, Ingrid Hofferson/Smitelout Jorgenson
Additional Tags: eret iii - Freeform, festerverse, if you don't know who eret iii is this won't make any sense, like this goes with eret iii, in festerverse, not a stand alone, angsty, Kidfic, everyone's an oc
read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2r9pP8l
2 notes
·
View notes
Note
Fic Title: A Berkian Tragedy
this one won’t be astrid-centric but:
spitelout killed stoick and married valka. hiccup is furious when stoick’s ghost tells him this. he has to avenge his father.
arvid hofferson tells astrid to stay away from hiccup even though he’s been courting her.
hiccup starts to act crazy to throw people off his track and berk hosts a play and hiccup makes sure it’s about the murder of a king and spitelout gets all nervous and leaves, confirming that he did kill stoick.
astrid drowns after hiccup accidentally kills her father and is a dick to her.
snotlout battles hiccup (actually it’s supposed to be astrid’s brother but astrid doesn’t have a brother in httyd so) with a poisonous sword but they both get slashed by it.
hiccup kills spitelout before he dies. valka drinks poison.
i don’t know who fortinbras is let’s make it the twins. the twins take over. the end.
i’m sorry i just love this.
9 notes
·
View notes
Text
@tysonrunningfox You tagged Fuse as a sinamon roll and that made me do a thing because this dumb AU has taken over my goddamn life. Feedback and corrections are welcome.
Looks like a cinnamon roll but could actually kill you: Fuse Thorston
Looks like they could kill you but is actually a cinnamon roll: Arvid Hofferson
Looks like a cinnamon roll and is actually a cinnamon roll: Stoick Haddock II
Looks like they could kill you and could actually kill you: Ingrid Hofferson
Looks like a cinnamon roll and actually is a cinnamon roll but could also kill you: Aurelia Haddock*
Burnt cinnamon roll: Eret III
Soggy Cheerios: Rolf Hofferson
Sinnamon roll: Smitelout Jorgenson, Fuse (honorary)
*I know Aurelia can't exactly fight, but I have no doubt that if she wanted you dead she could make it happen
#festerverse#you have taken over my life i hope you are happy#i had too much coffee this morning so now im shitposting#sorry
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
On this day I’m just thinking about how low key delighted Arvid is going to be when new dad Eret iii loses his anxiety muscles and he can be king thot again.
#eret iii#festerverse#arvid hofferson#just suddenly shirtless at all times#while eret cries about lack of sleep
1 note
·
View note
Note
Okay no listen I love Arvid so much. He’s a much more complex character than Eret in my head. Eret is so out of touch with his emotions but like when he feels them he acts on them. Arvid seems a little more calculating and he tries SO HARD and he’s a responsible boy who I just LOVE. Also Smitelout. I love her. The Ingrid/Smitelout drabble might be my favorite because she’s just an incredibly gruff character that is able to show and process emotions and I think that’s so rare.
Yesssss I get to talk about Arvid.
I think you’re right in a way, I wouldn’t call Eret III necessarily “complex”. I think his situation is continually complex and he has a lot coming at him all the time, and he’s really altruistic and empathetic by nature, so he’s constantly putting other people first in a way that kind of blurs his own internal conflict. Hell, his internal conflict is external a lot of the time due to the fact it often focuses on what path he wants to follow or what role model he wants to aspire to.
But Arvid…oh Arvid. It’s funny, because he grew up so in Eret’s shadow. Because Eret was Mom’s favorite, Eret was sheltered, and Eret needed more training to keep up with the rest of them. But more than that, Eret was smart. He’s dense occasionally, sure, but he was always a smart little shit. He was always figuring things out and learning too fast and Arvid grew up feeling so stupid and so bad about it and he deflected in all of the ways he knew how. He just…lied his ass off about being confident his whole entire life, and then he finds himself married and settled and…as it turns out, lying is a skill and no one suspects the big handsome bruiser to play them.
Like Arvid in Open Flames? I don’t think he’s told a single grain of truth, he’s like benevolently manipulative and it’s My Life now. It’s amazing. Big old puppet master who loves his friends and family and wants what’s best for them, but he’s also a bit inclined to decide what’s best for people whether they like it or not. I love him. He’s so good.
And yes!!! Smitelout. She’s…amazing, I love writing her and I’m so happy that it comes across that she’s so gruff but also emotive. She’s really only so gruff because she’s sensitive as hell, it’s a big old defense mechanism and Ingrid sees through it, especially when she’s going through constructing her own defense mechanisms. Ugh Smingrid. Ugggghghghh my lowkey favorite (or how lowkey considering the like 20k+ words of smut and relationship drama I wrote for them? Highkey. I can admit it. I’m big enough.)
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
Open Flames: Part 17
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.
#open flames#eret iii#festerverse#arvid hofferson#feret#arvelia#two boys on a road trip without their brain cell#am I gonna make it before httyd3#with some self loathing and lack of sleep just maybe#maybe just maybe#I'm very close
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
Open Flames: Part 10.5
So I want to finish this really bad, so I’m just going to be flinging parts of it out there with impunity. Also, I don’t think you realize that Festercup gets to be cute and moral and a good dad moving forward and I am so stoked, tbh. And why is middle aged Hiccstrid all cute, grow up guys.
Masterpost
( @riverrockets I see your bribe, I stare at it to feel strength, I’m a very bribable person, I will chase the carrot on the stick)
Hiccup runs into Arvid in front of the house he's been building with Astrid.
"Hey Chief," Hiccup's step-son-in-law, step-son in-law, son-in-law and step-son--Arvid, that's easier, is bigger and more self-assured every time Hiccup sees him away from Aurelia. He used to hide, slouching and frowning, hand moving towards the hilt of his sword like he needed to protect Aurelia from the very idea of disrespect, even at home, but now he's relaxed, almost smiling, broad shoulders dusted with wood shavings as he points behind him, "Mom's inside, Aurelia's at the Thorstons."
He starts to walk away and Hiccup takes a couple jogging steps with him, weighing his options here. Arvid is close to Eret, probably closer than anyone other than Aurelia and Fuse. He might be more liable to answer the question at hand than Astrid is, but Hiccup isn't stupid, he knows how much trouble he should be in for the failed betrothal turned almost war that happened out from under her watchful eye.
Maybe Arvid knows why he's not in trouble though. He doesn't know why he feels like Arvid knows things, it's not like he's ever spilled secrets, it's just a hunch. Maybe it's something in those blue eyes that look so much like Astrid's, sometimes even more than Eret's because they're never filled with that specified irritation with him that Astrid luckily abandoned years ago at this point.
"Maybe I"m here to see you."
"Right," Arvid smiles his dad's quiet half smile. "What's on your mind, chief?" He has a face Hiccup could talk to and that makes him pause. He should talk to Astrid first. Straight lines, simple solutions, no more of this Haddock web of communication death song amber.
"After I talk to your mom--"
He cuts Hiccup off with a laugh, "I'm not going to get pissy like Eret if you're here to talk to my Mom, just don't start the game where you get handsy in front of me, then we'd have a problem."
"We only do that to smoke him out of the house," Hiccup laughs and Arvid nudges his arm with a beefy elbow.
"Well, now I know what to do if you ever overstay your welcome at my place." He waves and walks off before Hiccup can say anything else, but he feels like he told a secret anyway.
Whatever. That's not why he's here.
The front door of the half-finished house opens easily on smooth hinges and Hiccup looks around with a low-whistle, following the quiet pounding of a hammer. He's unsure of the reasons behind her newfound interest in carpentry, but it's also kind of a happy reminder that once he officially hands off the throne to Eret, he'll also have time to find some new hobbies. Then again, that exchange has seemed so Thor-damned close for almost three years, but it's like Eret's more and more determined to stall.
"Looks good," he announces to the room at large and Astrid looks up with a grin, patting one of the uprights and standing.
"About time you came and checked it out," she kisses him, again illustrating the completely confusing fact that she's not mad at him, but pulls away before he can get any concrete ideas about practicing smoking Eret out of this house. "Probably only a couple more days of work and we can get some furniture in here."
"Is there a rush?"
"Maybe," she squeezes his shoulder and starts packing up tools, setting them in one of the neatly maintained bags that Smitelout loans things out in. "What's up?"
"I talked with Tuffnut and Eret and Fuse today," Hiccup starts, ducking away from Astrid's immediate glare to count some leftover nails on a rough wooden stool.
"I thought we agreed that you meddling in our son's marriage prospects doesn't end well."
"Technically, you told me that it doesn't end well and ordered--no, well, it was more like a demand--"
"Hiccup."
"You demanded that I not do it again. Which I didn't, to be clear, I just tried to foster a little bit of discussion about why they're being so stubborn."
"How'd that work out?" Astrid crosses her arms, raising an eyebrow and looking at him positively unimpressed.
"Horribly, I don't know why I ever thought Tuffnut would be a viable ally in the conversation, but it was also illuminating." He pauses for dramatic effect and to check Astrid's expression. Expectant, a little bored, impressively uninterested given how talking about Eret getting married usually sends her into hand-wringing about Fuse. "This entire time we've been operating with the idea that Eret doesn't want to get married, right?"
"I think the amount of times he's announced to his married siblings that it's an unnecessary complication in their lives gave us a clue to that, yes."
"Well, I don't know what changed, but I'm pretty sure that it's actually Fuse who doesn't want to get married and Eret is covering for her somehow." Hiccup waits for a startled reaction and gets an eyeroll and a fond, if a little demeaning pat on the chest.
"Right, that makes a lot of sense, it's great to be an unmarried twenty three year old openly committed to the son of the chief on this island. I'm sure she's loving that pressure."
"Fuse isn't you, Astrid."
"Trust me, I know." She shakes her head, lips quirking into a barely there shadow of a smile, like she's not sure how to put a happy face on about Fuse but has new reason to. "I think twenty three year old me could have learned something from Fuse, frankly, I probably would have used an axe, but..."
"Well, for the record, it appears that I was way more determined to keep my head up my own ass than our son is."
"Why do you think this again?"
"I saw his face." Hiccup shrugs, "and he didn't have any of his own reasons, he was just copying what everyone else said. He wasn't taking the lead, he wasn't making his own decision about it." He sighs and runs his hand through his hair.
It's hard. He's almost been proud of Eret for putting his foot down about marriage. It's confusing, because he has to watch his son do his best to mimic his greatest mistake...but at the same time, it's the one thing Eret is digging in on in any real way. Hiccup never thought anyone could be too much like Astrid, that it could ever be a bad thing to have more Astrid in the world, but Thor's beard, that kid is self-sacrificing beyond a fault. It's a pathology, at this point, practically a disability, because when a people pleaser attempts to keep a bunch of Haddocks and other Vikings happy, it's a threat to their life and limb.
"Ok, but Hiccup," Astrid sighs, taking both her husband's shoulders in a firm, lecturing grip, even as her voice dips kindly, "as eccentric as the Thorstons are, they got married. They did the standard courting proposal negotiation marriage route, that's what Fuse grew up with. She never saw an alternative." She looks at Hiccup importantly, gently, sad in that confused way she doesn't think she gets to be.
Hiccup knows he can't ask her to regret those years, but Gods, sometimes he wishes he could.
"As much as we fear the kid turning into me, I don't think he sees me as enough of a role model to mimic my life decisions." He sighs, "it doesn't matter, I guess, if you don't believe me, but he changed his mind, it's Fuse who isn't on board."
"Well, that's good news, if it's true," she looks around the half-finished house, nodding to herself, "I think everything is going to sort itself out."
"Yeah," his smile is a little fake, a little pasted on, but if Astrid catches it, she doesn't read anything into it. "I guess we just keep waiting."
For what? Hiccup isn't sure anymore. If Eret is just pretending to hate marriage to keep Fuse happy, then what he thought was Eret's most solid stake in the ground is actually just a symptom of the larger problem. He wonders, not for the first time, what his dad would do about it, and the answer scares him. His dad would be thrilled with Eret, sure he's stubborn and violent and a little lacking in confidence, but what twenty year old Viking isn't at least two of those. By all metrics, he's more ready to be chief than Hiccup was when he had the title dropped on him because of his dad's own self-sacrifice. And maybe Hiccup is so worried about the next volcano that Eret might jump into that he's not ready to open up the possibilities. It makes him wonder if he's putting being a dad in front of being a chief.
#eret iii#festerverse#hiccstrid#arvid hofferson#hiccup is the only one picking up on quadruple agent arvid and it's my life now#everyone probably forgot what's going on in this#i had to reread
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
Open Flames: Part 7
I did that thing where I existed in my own head about this too long and convinced myself it was awful but then I went and reread it and I’m like, this is fluff with a dash of angst and a splash of funny and Stoick, the thirteen year old brat, and no one else knows what a brat he is so this is fun fuck it. I outlined and the next chapter is half “shenanigans”. There are multiple places where I just have to make “shenanigans”. Don’t let me take myself so seriously, it’s lame and it makes me act lame.
Masterpost
When I wake up, Fuse is gone. I panic, all the emotional rush I was too tired to feel earlier coursing through my veins as I pat across the blankets and fall off of my bed onto the floor.
“What was that?” Fuse’s voice carries up the stairs and she’s here and ok and I relax with a groan, rubbing my shoulder where it hit the wooden floorboards first.
“Eret fell out of bed,” Stoick shouts downstairs as he appears in the doorway and I blink at his silhouette. Someone opened the door at some point. Probably the chief. That’s probably what woke Fuse up.
She needs her sleep and the injustice of the chief taking that away because of some stupid rule makes me instantly, hotly angrier than I have been in a while. Because Gods, Fuse is pregnant. It’s my baby. She said she needed sleep and someone got in the way of that and I sit up, glaring in the general direction of the stairs.
“Is he ok?” Fuse asks and Stoick shrugs.
“Is he ever?”
“Hilarious,” I stand up, stretching my neck and shouldering him out of the doorway when he doesn’t move in time.
“Oh, you wanna go?” His fists hit my arm in a couple of featherweight punches that I ignore and he runs down ahead of me with a laugh, skidding into the chair beside Fuse and leaning his elbow on her shoulder. “Too slow.”
“How long have you been up?” I kiss the top of Fuse’s head, batting Stoick’s arm away from her shoulder and glaring at him. It hits me that he’s going to be an uncle, an actually related uncle and I stack that onto the feelings I don’t have time to make sense of right now.
His Stormcutter trills at me from its roost in front of the fireplace, cocking its owlish head like it’s daring me to touch him again. And I spent years thinking Toothless was entitled.
“Not long.” She looks a little better, some of her usual color back in her cheeks. I feel like I’ve spent the last four years worried about everyone and everything and it all pales in comparison to the strange protective guilt I feel now. I did this to her. She’s pregnant and it’s mine and her nausea is just the first thing I can’t protect them from.
“Do you need more tea?” Stoick asks, too chipper, like he always is around Fuse and what’s normally kind of funny is suddenly aggravating.
“Sure,” she goes to hand her empty mug to him and I reach for it.
“I’ll get it for you, really.”
“She asked me,” Stoick snatches it, sticking his tongue out at me and darting over to the fire. I take his seat, scooting closer to her and putting my arm over her shoulders.
“I’ll get you tea,” I insist as she leans her head against my chest with a sigh.
“I wanted him to give you the chair,” she whispers and I snort, fiddling with the end of a tangled braid.
“I want him to go away.” I pull her closer to me when Stoick sets the new cup of tea in front of her and lingers for a moment, like he’s expecting praise, or something.
“Thanks,” Fuse picks up the mug, her elbow digging into my thigh as she leans on me harder.
“Do you need something else?” I ask Stoick, shifting so that Fuse’s pointy elbow is gouging into a new and not yet painful part of my leg.
“Dad caught you with your door shut,” he raises an eyebrow, pointedly scratching his chin where he insisted he found a hair last month.
“Ok.”
“It’s kind of funny how that’s only a rule for you,” he looks at Fuse, “it’s only a rule for him, you know--”
“No one thinks you need that rule,” Fuse cuts him off, “thanks for the tea.”
It’s the kind of blunt dismissal only Fuse can pull off without sounding mean and I stifle my laugh in her hair, only looking up when the front door opens and the chief walks inside as Stoick slips out with his dragon, thank the Gods. The chief looks at me knowingly, like he also thinks I’m supposed to care that he caught Fuse and I sleeping behind a closed door. I don’t worry about him reading my mind the way I do Mom, but the secret still rises to the front of my mind.
Fuse is pregnant. The chief is going to freak out. I’m still waiting to freak out. I almost want to tell him to watch him freak out. I bet his eyes are going to bug out of his head.
“Good...mid-afternoon,” the chief finally seems to get that I don’t care that he caught me and Fuse sleeping, even if he doesn’t get that I have bigger things to care about. “How’s the rebuild going?”
“More of a build at this point.” I shrug and Fuse sits up, leaning her elbows over the table and sniffing at her tea. I know it’s more polite but I miss her weight against me and I also don’t care about being polite to people who don’t let Fuse and I sleep without inviting Stoick’s assistance. “It’s going fine, Ingrid gained the trust of a couple locals so I think I can trust it not to fall apart for a couple of weeks.”
Gods, how could I leave?
That thought smacks me like a war hammer at exactly at the wrong time, while I’m trying to look normal and talk to the chief. Fuse already had to put this together while alone, she already had to figure out how to tell me. It hits me that she had something half scripted because she was nervous, like talking to me had become such a phenomenon she had to plan for it, and I want to tell someone else, anyone else to take things over.
“That’s good news,” he grins, “I could use your help shoring Berk up. We had some spring flooding over on the East bay and dealing with it has been a pain.”
“It has,” Fuse agrees, sipping slowly from her mug, “I’ve been trying to help with a secondary dam but it’s slow.”
“And while that’s taking both our time, everything else is stumbling along without much supervision.” The chief smiles at Fuse. They’ve made peace, I guess, and I’m glad, given the circumstances, especially because I’m remembering that I look like him when I smile and as much as I like to ignore it, he’s my actual father.
And even though I’ve come to respect and even like him as a chief when he’s not trying to marry me off, I wouldn’t say I’ve largely benefitted from his attempts at parenting considering they involved trying to marry me off.
There it is, the start of a freak out, at least now I know I’m not suddenly stable or anything like that.
“Aurelia is doing her best,” Fuse says a little defensively, like she’s not as cheery with the chief as he seems to be with her, “but she’s been spending a lot of time trying to track down anything about those trappers by going through the last few months of communication.”
“Yeah.” My voice cracks and Fuse frowns at me.
Oh Gods, it’s already happening, Fuse is the one pregnant and she’s looking at me like she’s worried about me and I’m going to have to leave in a couple of weeks and if she marries me, it’s all about heirs. Or it would be if the chief ever actually handed over the title. Fuse has to know that, she thinks of everything, but I’m just stumbling through the concept now. I can’t breathe. I rub my chest with my knuckles, pushing hard enough that my bruise throbs and my lungs remember what they’re supposed to be doing.
“Ouch, what happened there?” The chief asks, as if it matters, as if I’m not already making everything about me.
“Smitelout,” Fuse frowns and I squeeze her shoulder.
“No, it’s--I’m fine, chief. I’ll check in with Aurelia and get up to speed. And Fuse, don’t worry about helping him with the East Bay situation, I’m on it.”
“I can help,” she insists and it makes her look more tired. I kiss her on the forehead and stand up.
“You shouldn’t have to. I’m on it, ok?”
“Eret,” she huffs and eyebrows a straight, frustrated line as she stands up, “I said I’ve got it.”
“Ok,” I back up, gesturing between her and the chief, “just let me know if you need help--”
“I will,” she looks at the bruise on my chest again and I wish I’d paused to put my shirt back on, it just feels like another way I’m drawing attention when I shouldn’t be.
“We’ve got it,” the chief tries to comfort me with a grin I can see straight through. He’s assessing me like he’s been doing a lot lately and I can’t tell if he’s seeing something he doesn’t like or missing something he wishes he were seeing. I don’t know what else I could possibly do, but obviously, what I’m doing isn’t right or enough.
“If you need anything--”
“I get that,” he cuts me off, “but I bet Fuse and I can handle it.”
“I could handle it--”
“I know you could handle it, Eret,” the chief sighs, “and I know I messed up with the whole betrothal thing, but you can’t keep being everything to everyone all the time. Trust me, you just end up missing out and not on the things you want to miss out on.”
Fuse blanches at the mention of a betrothal and I’m worried she’s going to throw up. I hate to say it, but the chief is right, I’m already missing out. Fuse had to learn she was pregnant without me here, she had to talk to Rolf. I haven’t even apologized for that yet. I can’t imagine the dual nausea of talking to Rolf while pregnant.
The chief is staring at me like he expects an answer and Fuse looks worried, because I’m still making her worry about me instead of the other way around.
“Ok.”
“Ok, you’ll relax a bit?”
I barely bite back asking the chief why he hasn’t crowned me yet and if his reason really is that I’m doing too much and not relaxing enough.
“I’ll go talk to Aurelia,” I get out instead, turning to focus on Fuse because the idea of walking away from her right now is physically painful. “If--I mean, you’re good, right?”
“She’s fine,” the chief rolls his eyes, “you’re going to worry yourself gray at this rate.”
“Like father like son,” I mumble and the chief’s eyes light up, happy at the comparison. We’ll see about that, chief, considering Fuse is already frustrated with me and it’s still day one.
00000
“Can I have this wood?” Arvid asks me at the woodpile, one morning when I’ve been home about a week. He has Wingspark loaded up with an unusually large stack of long, straight logs, their bark removed.
“Why?”
“Because I need it for a project,” he shrugs, “Mom wants to build a house.”
“Again, why?”
He shrugs again, staring at me unblinking but bored and I look at the woodpile behind me, full despite how much he took. I guess our loggers were a little overzealous in replacing what we took to rebuild Elva’s island with.
“Fuck it, sure, just write it down, alright?”
“No problem,” he clicks at Wingspark and she lumbers along after him, pausing to sniff at my hand for a treat. I don’t have anything but I scratch behind her horn, looking thoughtfully after Arvid for a second.
I expected lying to be harder. I expected everyone to be asking after us all the time. But in reality, aside from the quiet and increasing desperation I have to check on Fuse every morning, nothing outwardly looks much different.
Yet.
I want to ask when that’s going to change, because in a lot of ways that’s a deadline for figuring out how to tell people or what to tell people, but I don’t think it’s necessarily something Fuse wants to talk about. She doesn’t seem to want to talk at all, actually, I think it would get in the way of her nap-on-me time, which has really seemed to take priority. Between that and my convince-Fuse-to-eat-something routine, we haven’t had time or privacy for anything else.
And I know I shouldn’t push her, because she’s the one dealing with more of this than I am, and I know she wants to keep it a secret just like I do, but not talking about it is killing me. And if I were going to tell someone, which I’m not, because Fuse doesn’t want to, Arvid would be very close to the top of that theoretical list, if not at the very top of it. It’s a tie between him and Aurelia, honestly. Maybe my dad is up there too, although I think he’s bound by some parental contract to tell Mom, and she’s the bottom of the list.
Only because of the way she’d look at me though, all disappointed and reserved, like she’s waiting for me to finish acting before she decides how pissed she is. I wish I had her advice right now. I wish I had anyone’s advice.
“Why does Mom want to build a house?” I call after Arvid, fighting every urge to run and catch up with him while my to do list for the day weighs me down where I stand.
“Ask her,” he shrugs again, “I just said I’d help, I’ve been getting enough practice at it.”
I have a sneaking suspicion that he knows more than he’s letting on, which honestly became a given ever since he married Aurelia and spends all his time absorbing the information she radiates like a Nightmare putting out warmth, but I don’t have time or energy to investigate it right now. Especially now that he reminded me of all the houses being built on Elva’s island and the fact that I’m supposed to go back there in a week.
It’s a thought I manage to shake until I’m home and surrounded by papers on my bed and Fuse appears in the doorway.
“Hey!” I stack all of letters riddled with Aurelia’s notes and shove them to the side, giving Fuse a place to sit. “What’s up?
“Stoick let me in,” she explains, pointing down the stairs with her thumb and lingering in the doorway, “are you busy?”
“Not that busy,” I pat my bed, “how are you?”
She deliberates for a second before shutting the door behind her and sitting down beside me, “fine.”
“Fine?” I laugh, my hand rubbing her lower back through the smooth leather of her vest, “not nauseous? That’s great!”
“I was nauseous earlier,” she puts down the letter, “but it passed and now I feel alright. How about you?”
“I’m not nauseous--wait, that’s not what you’re asking.” I wipe my forehead, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I’m--mmph.”
She cuts me off with a kiss, lingering like she hasn’t been, her hand cupping my jaw and sliding down to my shoulder. It’s the kind of kiss that makes the closed door compete with the idea of Stoick being downstairs and when Fuse’s tongue slips briefly into my mouth, the door starts winning. Fuse knows me too well because she pulls back with a tired smile and glances at my stack of papers.
“You sound preoccupied,” she gestures at my pillow, “I was just hoping to get a nap, I don’t mind if you’re working.”
“Maybe I mind if I’m working.” I raise an eyebrow at her and Stoick yells something downstairs, taking some hard earned ground back from the closed door in their eternal argument. The chief’s muffled voice answers him and I hear Mom laugh and sigh. Nevermind. Plus, Fuse really does look tired, so I pick up the top letter in the stack. “Go ahead and sleep, I’ll do my best to keep the door shut.”
“It’s not your fault if you can’t.” She lays down behind me, fidgeting to get comfortable, and I jump at her cold fingertips against my back, under my shirt. She traces the edge of the scar on my hip and over the bumps of my lower spine and her breathing slows like she’s drifting off. “I never answered your question the other day.”
“Which question?” I trace over a suspicious line of runes, an offer to deliver something to an island I’ve never heard of before but phrased in a way that makes it sound close.
“You asked how I felt about the concept of us having a baby.”
“Yeah?” I perk up, reminding myself that just because it took Fuse longer to get here than me doesn’t mean it’s going to be bad. “I mean, you answered, you said you felt nauseous, which is fair--”
“I’m happy about it too.” She yawns, cuddling closer, her knees curling around my hip. “Also I’m nervous and really want to stop throwing up soon, but I’m kind of excited.”
I grin, looking back over my shoulder at her. Her eyes are shut and her hair is draped across most of my pillow, tangled and smudged in something blue and shiny. It feels less selfish to be happy now that I know she is too and that excited voice in the back of my head reminds me of the prospect of having two of her around. I can hope, at least, I can’t imagine that even Fuse would want another Eret. There’s a surplus already.
“I love you.”
“Love you too,” she mumbles, snuggling closer and pressing her face into the pillow to block the light.
Fuse’s quiet snores make it easier to focus on reading and I get through the short stack of letters that Aurelia thinks are important more quickly than I expect to. It’s not great news. It sounds like whatever trappers that are left on Elva’s island are looking for allies or markets to sell in, I’m not really sure which. That means I need to get back out there and see what might have turned up in a week without much management. They’ve had a chance to get bold, maybe they’re willing to do or say something else stupid.
A particularly loud snore puffs against my back and I look back at Fuse. She looks pretty when she sleeps. Well, she always looks pretty, but it’s daintier when her face is relaxed and her usual aura of chaos and determination is turned down a notch.
She got in the habit of sleeping by me when we were off Berk a lot, dealing with trappers. She’s never said it directly, but I think it’s a carryover from the whole volcano incident, because in the months after that she couldn’t sleep unless I would be there when she woke up. And she just told me she’s nervous about being pregnant and I’m about to leave to somewhere she can’t follow to deal with a dangerous situation that she doesn’t like.
But I don’t know what else to do, I can’t just drop this situation on someone else, it has to be me. It’s important. It’s my big piece of proof that I can solve things peacefully and maybe the chief will finally see that I’m ready and--
“Dad told me to open your door,” Stoick flings the door open and it smacks against the wall. Fuse wakes up with a jolt, scrambling for my hand, and I don’t think before throwing the first thing in my reach at the grinning brat in the hallway.
It happens to be my boot and it collides with his face with a satisfying thump.
“Dad! Eret threw his shoe at me!”
“Get out.” I stand up and grab the edge of my door with a white knuckled grip, “I mean it, move or this is going to slam into your face.”
Stoick rolls his eyes and I flex my arm, making a show of just how fast I’m going to slam the door. I’m not actually, because I know full well that the chief would do something dramatic and irritating like take it off its hinges entirely, but it’s still fun to see Stoick scramble backwards, eyes wide.
“Fine, but…” He looks around for a way to retaliate, “I’m going to steal your shoe. Finders keepers.” He picks up my boot and waves it at me.
“Whatever,” I shut the door and lean my forehead against it as he runs downstairs. “Maybe I should come work at your house for a while.”
“I wish.” Fuse is adorable when she’s grumpy and half awake, frowning with her arms crossed. “I’ve got some stuff to get done, I’m almost out of mining charges.” She leans into my chest when I turn to face her, requesting a hug and pressing her sleep warm face into my shirt. “I just couldn’t focus earlier, I should be good now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” she backs away and reluctantly turns the doorknob, “I’ve got to get this done if you’re going to get any iron out of that other island anytime soon.”
“You don’t have to help with that.”
“I know I don’t,” she scowls and I can tell she’s frustrated mostly with the situation but probably at least partially with me, “but if I do, you’ll be done sooner and we’ll have one less thing to worry about.”
“True.” Maybe I’ll even be chief by then and I can just...decree something. I don’t even know what.
“Ok,” she steels herself, leaning up to kiss me briefly before opening the door the rest of the way. “I’ll see you later.”
“I’ll walk you out.” I follow her down the stairs and to the front door, glaring at Stoick on the way as he feeds his dragon a fish out of my boot.
As soon as Fuse is gone, the chief clears his throat, looking up from fixing his saddle and raising one graying eyebrow at me.
“You know, if you didn’t live here anymore…”
“Right, because that’s easier than telling Stoick to stop being obnoxious.”
“I hadn’t thought to compare the two,” the chief nods, thinking to himself, “but I think you’re right. Getting you married and out of the house is slightly easier than telling Stoick to be less obnoxious.”
I laugh at that and the chief looks equally tired and pleased with himself, glancing in Stoick’s direction like he’s surveying a threat. I wasn’t that bad at thirteen, there’s no way, I don’t think Mom would have let me live.
“I am the stubborn sibling,” Stoick shrugs, “do you want your boot back?” He holds it out towards me, fish scales visible on the fur lining, and I wrinkle my nose.
“I think I’m good.”
#open flames#eret iii#festerverse#feret#fuse thorston#stoick ii#arvid hofferson#hiccup let the kids sleep you monster
18 notes
·
View notes
Text
Open Flames: Part 6.5
I needed Arvid and Astrid to chat because after all their angst in Eret III, somehow now they’re the gossip duo who keeps all those cerebral Haddocks in check and I just...need how ridiculous this whole thing is getting.
Masterpost
Arvid is helping Aurelia record the volunteer rotation for the construction crew due to leave later today when there’s a knock at the door. Aurelia uses his shoulder to stand up and go answer it, her chiefly posture fading when she greets whoever it is.
“Oh, hey, what’s up?”
“Is Arvid here?” Arvid’s mom asks and he leans over to look around Aurelia at her.
“Your mom’s here to gossip, babe,” Aurelia leaves the door open and gestures at it. “I’ll finish this up.”
“I’m not here to gossip,” Mom insists, shrugging one shoulder in a bad attempt at the chief acting casual, “I just need to talk to him about something.”
“That means gossip,” Aurelia kisses his cheek and sits back down, “go, tell me all about it later.”
“It’s not gossip,” Arvid saves his eyeroll until he’s outside with his mom, the door shut securely behind him. It’s not gossip. Someone has to keep an eye on the people around here while Eret and Aurelia are obsessed with timelines and getting things done. It’s an important role in helping the chief out. “What’s up?”
“You went on that scouting trip with Fuse last week,” his mom flashes him a knowing look, like she’s not going to ask the question because that means engaging in official speculation about something that isn’t officially any of their business.
“I did,” he points towards the trail along the coast, “I have to check in on the surveillance point, I could use a hand.”
“Sure.”
Arvid waits until they’re securely in the woods before looking around for anyone that might be listening. There’s a purple terror perched in a tree watching them, but it’s not alert to anything, and Arvid tries to figure out how little he can say for maximum effect. It’s just a guess, he doesn’t know anything concrete, but if there’s a chance of it being real, they need to be ready.
A startled Eret is like an animal just let out of a cage. Sometimes he attacks, sometimes he runs, and sometimes he darts back into the cage like it’s his den now.
“So. How did it go with Fuse last week?” His mom pushes a little faster than she usually does, examining the wall of the squat surveillance hut and plucking some moss from the edge of the roof.
“It was fine, we didn’t find much. Eret’s connection is still there selling, we aren’t sure if he knows trappers are dropping his name.” Arvid leans on the wall, arms crossed. “Fuse was tired. A little off, maybe.”
“Throwing up?” His mom raises an eyebrow, “kind of green?”
“Throwing up constantly,” a little thrill of relief at the fact he can tell someone who might believe him rushes through him, “we took two breaks on a four hour flight.”
“It could be a stomach infection, or something.”
“Of course,” Arvid debates for a second, biting his lip. This isn’t the best thing to tell his mother but it’s what really tipped his guess over the edge. This and the delayed wide eyed expression that bloomed on Fuse’s face when he suggested that she might be afflicted by some sort of sickness that would affect her in a monthly way. “I don’t know why that would make her vest tighter though.” He half gestures at his chest and his mom frowns at him.
“Why are you noticing that?”
“I don’t know, Mom, maybe it has something to do with the fact that my wife really doesn’t want to be pregnant so she freaks out two days a month listing off all the symptoms that she thinks she has, only to be relieved a couple days later.”
His mom smiles, “you’re so grown up.”
“Mom.”
“No, really, when did that happen? I was worried, you used to be so--”
“Can we talk about Fuse, please?” He doesn’t know why he was ever jealous of the attention that Eret gets. It looks good from a distance but up close it’s a bit smothering. Nice, but smothering.
Ok, he’ll take it sometimes, in small doses.
“She and Eret came over today after he got back.”
“Yeah?”
“She looked about as tired as he did, which, you know how he gets on a mission.”
“I’d put him to sleep with a chokehold if I didn’t think I’d wake up with black powder in my boots,” he laughs and his mom frowns.
“I don’t think I got how protective she is of him until...all this. I always kind of thought--I don’t know, I grew up with her dad and he never put much thought into the chaos that he caused.” His mom looks at him like she’s not quite sure if he’s actually grown up enough to hear what she’s about to say and he waves her on.
“Yeah?”
A few years ago, it was hard. Being in this family was hard, loving the people that he loves was hard. It seems like that’s still closer to everyone else than it is to him, though. He can look at it with a sort of distance, like it happened to someone else. And he guesses it really did, he was just a bystander to most of it.
“I don’t know, I just keep thinking if I’d been that...pragmatic with engagements at her age, things might have been different.” She turns apologetic before he can even react, “not that I’d change anything, you--”
“I get it, Mom.” Arvid shrugs, “I think we all get that it was complicated. Hel, look who I’m married to.”
“I thought the whole Fuse fascination was rebellion, or something.” She rubs her forehead with the back of her hand, “and I always kind of guessed she didn’t care about him the same way. Especially after he went and got so much glory--”
“Right. Glory,” Arvid pats his arm, “do you think he got that big all by himself? I know I’m not the one causing marital fights at foreign docks anymore.”
“And I can’t tell you how glad I am about that,” she sighs, “I still can’t believe you and Ingrid both beat Eret to settling down.”
“Seems like the Gods are about to force his hand though,” Arvid pauses before moving forward with the part that Aurelia didn’t even let him get to. “If she is pregnant, he’s going to have to marry her to avoid another heir fiasco. I don’t think the Thorstons would sign over kids as easily as the Hoffersons did.”
“Normally I’d be offended by someone calling Hoffersons reasonable, but in this case, you’ve got a point.” His mom starts pacing, “who else knows?”
“Aurelia, theoretically. She didn’t believe me though, she said Eret’s been gone too much and she would have known by now.”
“Well, she can keep a secret, so I’m not too worried even if she starts believing you.”
“Wait, what?”
“I’m thinking...the quieter we keep this, the better. She can’t be very far along. I thinks she just told Eret, from the way he was just fussing over her, like she couldn’t get upstairs by herself. Maybe he’ll come to his senses on his own and make it easy on us, but if not, I don’t want him feeling cornered and acting stupid.”
“What’s he going to do? Run off and jump into a volcano?” Arvid sees his Mom’s line of thinking and settles into the idea of lying, copiously, for months. It’s not his favorite thing to do but he’s gotten better at it. People haven’t forgotten their assumption that he’s stupid so they tend to take things he says at face value, especially if he’s careful about what he says to who and when.
Someone has to keep the people unified while Haddocks shove them forward.
“Exactly. And as long as we keep him close and know where he is well...worst case scenario, I march Hiccup in there with the midwife and sign the contract between contractions.” She sighs, “which I don’t want to do. I want him to come to the right conclusion on his own here, but…”
“I don’t get his problem,” Arvid looks out at the calm ocean, “he’s seen Aurelia and I be married for years and nothing changed between us. Well, things changed, but they got better. And Ingrid’s never been happier than she is since she moved in with Smitelout.”
“Yeah, and your dad seems pretty happy out on that boat.” She purses her lips.
There are some things Arvid knows not to touch, and on that scale, commenting on the hard-edged, warm way that his mom looks at his dad is right next to mysterious powder that makes Fuse flinch when sunlight hits it.
“How much time do they have to figure this out?” He changes the subject back to one he can speculate on.
“A few months, max. I’ll start looking into the terms of the marriage contract that Hiccup already has written up. Tuffnut signed it years ago, it’s really just missing the ceremony and Eret and Fuse’s signatures, so it’s easiest if we keep prices and gifts the same. It might say something about a house in there, Hiccup has teased it enough.”
“You’re the chief’s wife and I’m the future vice-chief’s husband, I bet we can get permission to build a house somewhere.”
She raises an eyebrow in question, demanding explanation with none of the threat as when he was little. He likes his mom now more that he’s an adult and she treats him like one, they get along better this way. Plus, it really doesn’t hurt that they’re both constantly roped into dealing with Haddocks that don’t like to felt dealt with even when they need it.
“We need a better place to talk than a dilapidated old watch shed.”
“True,” she nods, “I’ll talk to Hiccup about that too.”
“Are you going to tell him?” Arvid’s expression makes it clear what he thinks about that idea. As rash as Fuse’s actions were, the chief crossed a line by feigning a betrothal to push Eret into marriage. It’s not Arvid’s place to be mad, so he hasn’t brought it up, but giving him a more solid reason to push wouldn’t do anything to pull Eret back in the right direction.
“No. I mean, not yet. Not until I’m sure he’s not going to do something stupid, like try and betrothe the boy who’s scared of marriage to someone he doesn’t know to try and force his hand.” She looks pained and pauses before continuing, again, like she’s still mindful of her audience. “I just keep thinking, what if Fuse had reacted differently? What if Eret had--he could have ended up married to the wrong person and I wouldn’t have known how to help him.”
“Well, Fuse did.”
“And now we’re going to help her,” his mom crosses her arms, “and Eret, and Berk. And that kid, if she really is pregnant, I’m not going to let my grandchild go through what Eret did. And what you did.”
“I’m fine, Mom.” Arvid assures her, a little pleased to be smothered under more of that worry. “We all came out of it ok, I think.”
“Better than ok,” she sighs at him, “I don’t tell you enough, but I’m really proud of you.”
“You’re just saying that because I’m going to help Eret and Fuse keep this secret while helping you build a secret house and figure out the rest of that contract without the chief knowing.”
“That’s not the only reason I’m saying it.”
#open flames#festerverse#eret iii#astrid#arvid hofferson#astrid is like arvid get the pink wine and lets hash this out#these haddocks are too dumb to be left alone
18 notes
·
View notes
Text
Goodbyes
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.
Tumblr (Will be overhauling soon) | AO3
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.
#eret iii#festerverse#fuse thorston#aurelia haddock#arvid hofferson#feret#arvelia#ingrid hofferson#hiccstrid#smitelout jorgenson#stoick ii#i'm honestly going to cry#like...it's the end of an era#please come ask me about the boy
36 notes
·
View notes
Note
#29 Arvid
If they could choose their epitaph for their grave, what would they choose?
I want you to know that this ask forced me to confront Arvid’s mortality and realize he didn’t initially expect to live that long because he felt constantly inferior to Eret and it led him to do persistently stupid and reckless things. But then he met Aurelia. And ouch.
The Eret III love story I haven’t really written yet, man.
Joke: He’s here for a good time, not for a long time
Real: Beloved Husband, Father, Brother
OC Asks Please and Thank You
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
Feret Fluff
Kind of. I don’t know. It has angst too. I hurt the girl. I...am really struggling. My epilogue is increasingly feeling like the beginning of a story I don’t get to write. But here is feret. Because.
00000
Fuse knew Eret through what had to be the most complicated year of his life, but that doesn’t mean she knows everything about him. It’s not that she presumed to, even, but she learns a lot in the first three weeks after what illogically feels like his resurrection.
He’s more stubborn than she understands, especially because it makes things more difficult for him a majority of the time. He’s determined to be upright, no matter how much it hurts and no matter how much everyone wants him to lay down. Before he jumped, Fuse always knew him as someone who collapsed to sit at the last possible instant, but she never realized how exaggerated it was until he insisted on staying awake as much as possible, even though he’s so hurt it hurts to look at him. Fuse doesn’t understand that either but when his mom pulled the healed stitches out of his shoulder and temple, her stomach hurt like she was the one who’d been sliced open.
Most of all though, he’s clingy. Clingy in a sweet, unavoidable, flattering way. And every time she enters the room that Eret is in, it’s obvious and immediate in a way she doesn’t know how to deal with. He’s all drunk, gentle hugs and big blue eyes and beseeching requests that she stay and get closer and she gets used to sleeping on the edge of the bed, his hand intertwined with hers and his head tilted into her shoulder.
But it’s Eret, and he’s strong and stubborn and insistent and before three weeks have passed he’s on his feet and answering the door when Fuse knocks. She blinks at him and then at his chest, because instead of the crisp, white bandages she’s gotten so used to, the fireworm shaped scars across his ribs are exposed and his bandaged arm is hanging in a loose sling that looks way more comfortable than what he had before.
“Thank Thor you’re here,” he grabs her hand and starts dragging her inside, the lone fireworm scar on his arm flexing when his elbow bends. They’re red but definitely healed, the edges of them crisp against pale skin that’s losing its freckles the longer he’s stuck inside. “I’m so bored.”
“You got your bandages off,” Fuse states the obvious, looking down at his chest again and trying to get used to it. Of course pulling a shirt over his broken arm is too much effort, considering it’s summer and he’s not going anywhere. He was shy about it at first and until yesterday, bandaged enough that there wasn’t really anything exposed except collarbones and pale, ointment covered stomach.
Even with his arm in a sling, there’s more to look at now.
“Yes, and he’s obsessed with his new scars,” Aurelia says out of nowhere, startling Fuse enough that she looks away from Eret. “I’ve got to go check on Stoick, apparently he was being a show off at dragon training yesterday. You got him?” She points at Eret, who rests his forehead on Fuse’s shoulder, his hair tickling her jaw.
“You could tell him to bring Bang back,” his breath still has an edge of mead to it but he seems clearer than he has.
“Why?” Aurelia pauses in the doorway, “you aren’t flying until your ribs are healed. Healer’s orders.”
“Mom paid them off to say that,” he huffs, standing back up straight and glaring outside.
“They still said it.” Aurelia shrugs, “see you guys later.” She shuts the door and Eret groans, staring up at the ceiling for a second before looking back at Fuse.
“I’m not obsessed with my scars,” he clarifies, like that matters, and all it does is make Fuse look back down at them. She reaches out and touches one without thinking, her thumb tracing the warm edge, against his rib and he hisses.
“Sorry--” She jerks her hand back and he catches her wrist.
“No, it’s fine, it just--they kind of feel funny, I guess, and I think the ointment made my skin sensitive or something.” He laughs, shifting his sling to the side and looking down at himself. “They are kind of cool though, right?”
She looks up at the crescent of barely healed dragon tooth marks around his shoulder, each ringed with a yellowing bruise, and at the line across his collarbone and its twin on his temple.
“I don’t like you being hurt.” Her voice seems too small under the high ceiling and Eret takes her hand, gently placing it flat against the scars and pressing it to his skin.
“They don’t hurt anymore.” He’s smiling at her and she keeps waiting to get used to the warmth in her chest and the way her heart stutters, but maybe it’s not something she can get used to because she feels herself flush. “Turns out whatever Rolf said about Fireworm mucus or whatever is actually probably true, they healed faster than my other burns.” He frowns and moves his hand from the back of hers to her upper arm, rubbing lightly. “Not that I’m happy about mucus, because that’s weird.”
She can feel his heartbeat in her palm and the unscarred skin under her fingertips is smooth and warm over his ribs. It takes self control she hasn’t been using much lately to pull her hand away, especially because Eret starts playing with the end of her braid, his finally focused eyes drifting over her face.
“If it helped you heal faster, I’m happy about it.”
“But it’s mucus,” he shudders, rolling his shoulder and wincing when it nudges his ribs. He blinks against the pain and shuffles closer to her, bare foot nudging the toe of her boot. The lack of boundaries that was endearing when he was nearly incoherent is different now that he’s upright and making sense. “Which I’m still talking about for some reason. Mucus. Blech. I’m going crazy in here,” he tucksher hair behind her ear and looking out the window, fingertips lingering against the side of her neck. “And it’s such a nice day,” he pouts, jutting his lower lip out and looking at her meaningfully, his hand sliding down to her shoulder.
“What?” She swallows, glancing at his lips. He’s still hurt, even if he’s doing better. And he’s stubborn and in pain and refusing to admit it. And the idea of kissing it better is absurd, and not based in logic, and he just keeps asking because he wants to kiss her. It wouldn’t actually make him feel better.
“Can we go outside?” He sighs like she missed something obvious and his lips quirk into that uneven smile he got in the habit of when the bruise on his jaw was still black and blue instead of the nearly faded yellow it is now. “Please? It’s not like I’ll explode if I set foot across the threshold,” he gestures at the door and she misses his hand on her shoulder as the guilt she can’t seem to shake swirls in her stomach. She crosses her arms and takes a step back.
“You’re just asking me because you think I’ll let you.”
“I’m asking you because you’re logical,” he reaches for her waist and pulls her back closer to him. He bats his eyelashes like it’s a joke and Fuse can’t figure out what part of this is supposed to be funny. “And pretty.”
None of it is funny. Not the way he’s looking at her or the fact that he can bring up blowing up so casually. Or his bare chest covered in scars reminding her that he came so close to not being here at all. Or his gentle hand on her waist and the way that he keeps touching her while looking a lot less hurt than she knows he actually is.
Everything about him makes her want to act before thinking about it.
“Who told you that you couldn’t go outside?” She forces her full attention back to his face and that doesn’t really help anything. Oddly, he’s better rested while healing and there are no dark circles under his eyes to distract from that focused blue. It’s darker around his pupil and maybe that’s why he can seem so intense even while he’s goofing off.
“That’s the thing,” he lowers his voice like it’s a secret, “no one has explicitly told me not to go outside, they’re all just very adamant that I stay right here. So, to go outside and get some sun on my pasty, pasty face is only violating the spirit of the thing.”
Fuse purses her lips and swallows, glancing down at his sling and the scattered deep red scars and the way that they almost match the strip of red hair leading down from his belly-button. And it’s quiet and the weight of her vest doesn’t remind her to move slowly or carefully, because the roof isn’t going anywhere.
So maybe they should.
“Fine.” She steps away with a full chest exhale and opens the door, squinting at the suddenly harsh light.
“That was easier than I thought,” Eret walks past her, holding his good hand up to block the light. The bruises on his back stand out against the pale glow of his skin and that sends another pang through Fuse’s chest, because those have to still hurt. Either he’s pretending they don’t or everything has hurt so bad it warped his perspective. “And see?” He turns and grins at her, looking down at his arm, “no spontaneous combustion.”
“That’s not funny.” It comes out more harshly than she intended but she doesn’t want to take it back either, even when Eret’s smile fades and he cocks his head at her, corners of his mouth downturned.
It was hard to be mad at him after Snoggletog. It’s harder now, because he’s hurt and she was more scared than she was mad, anyway, but the fear is fading faster than the anger.
“Fuse,” he says her name gently, like he’s the one comforting her, and she feels as bad for bringing it up as he should for making her.
“No, it’s not funny. You shouldn’t make jokes about blowing up.” She clears her throat because seeing all those scars in the sunlight makes them look like they’re still burning. “Because you almost did.”
“But I didn’t,” he reaches for her hand and folds their fingers together, because his first instinct when either of them is upset is to touch her and she wouldn’t have known that if he’d…blown up.
“You did your best.” She pulls her hand away and crosses her arms, like he won’t read her quite as well if he’s not touching her. That doesn’t make sense, but he started answering questions she hadn’t asked yet right around the time he started touching her at every opportunity. And it is Eret. Logic and science haven’t ever applied to him the same as they do to everyone else.
“Look, I get—that was bad phrasing,” his hand flails by his hip for a second like he’s not sure what to do with it if she’s not letting him hold hers, and that piles onto the guilt in her stomach like a glaze that’s meant to set and hold. “I won’t say it again,” he snorts to himself, that little half laugh that means he thought of something funny at an unexpected moment. Usually, she wants to hear what it is, but when he opens his mouth to keep talking, her stomach drops again, “Odin knows if I actually wanted to get blown up, all I’d have to do is piss you off. Which I’ve done,” he blanches, reaching halfway for her hand before stopping himself, “I’m sorry.”
She knows he’s not being literal. She knows that.
But she also knows she hasn’t been able to think about lighting anything up without imagining him in the way of it. She hasn’t thought about getting a new knife in case it leads him to something else as dangerous as the first one did.
And somehow, he’s going to be ok. In spite of her, not because of her. She came to terms with the fact that accidents don’t matter with explosives years ago, the first time she took off an eyebrow because her hands were shaking. But until Eret was dumb and brave and determined enough to jump straight into the path of her biggest explosion yet, it was only ever her risk.
And her risk was always calculated and rewarded and worth it. His wasn’t. Isn’t.
How could he ever trust someone who blew him up? Why does that feel like something she can’t ask him?
Part of her thinks it’s the first time since he was clueless about the chief that she’s ahead of him on something. She’s thought of an angle that he hasn’t and she really doesn’t want him to catch up.
“You really scared us,” she clears her throat, looking back up at him and sighing at the way he’s standing, like it’s difficult for him to give her space but he’s trying. It makes her giddy and furious and guilty and she feels like one of the bombs she isn’t making right now, all powerful feelings mixed in unknown proportions, liable to explode. “You really scared me. I thought...I thought you were gone.”
“I guess I wasn’t there for that part,” he frowns, looking at his feet, and she puts two fingers under his chin, lifting it until he looks at her, eyes sheepish. She’s happy that he’s listening and guilty that she brought it up and the two mix with the anxious flutter in her chest when he bites his lip and exhales. Something about Eret makes it impossible to keep things separate. It’s like all the walls inside of her turn to mesh and the space in her own head without boundaries almost scares her. “I...my family used to think I was so fragile that they wouldn’t tell me the truth about anything. I didn’t--I mean, I still don’t want them to start thinking that again. I can’t...I don’t think I can convince them again, you know, it was really painful the first time and...” he waves his hand around like it can speak for him and she takes her fingers off of his chin, catching his flailing fingers in hers.
He squeezes her hand and looks relieved and it makes her want to say something. She doesn’t understand it yet, but the more he talks to her just for the sake of talking, the more she feels like she should say things to him. She doesn’t know what she’d say, honestly, because everything in her head is dark and sad and muddled but he’s looking at her like he wants her to say something encouraging. Or do something, maybe.
And he’s hurt. But he’s vertical. And mapped out with scars and ribs and muscles as landmarks and looking at him is almost as confusing as touching him.
“You’re not fragile,” she tries and his eyes light up like he’s been waiting to hear it. And he expects her to keep talking, because that’s the only reason he wouldn’t start talking himself.
A silent Eret isn’t really something she should waste, especially when he’s also upright and mostly sober, so she leans up onto her toes and kisses him. He makes a surprised, muffled sound against her lips and she leans into him, placing the hand he isn’t holding on his chest, her thumb against one of those new smooth scars.
They’re warmer than the skin around them, almost as warm as Eret’s lips moving sweetly against hers and he’s so alive and himself that she can’t stop worrying about him. She’s scared he’s going to go do something like that again and she wants to give him a reason to stay. He’s got enough scars, he doesn’t need any more of them. She slips her tongue into his mouth and must lean against his arm too much because he grunts, pulling back slightly.
“Sorry,” she drops her hand from his chest too quickly and jostles his sling. He winces again and her palm tingles where it’s not touching him anymore.
“No, don’t be. What was that for?” He tries and fails not to smile, his joking tone warmer than usual. “Because I want to be sure to repeat whatever I did to make you kiss me like that.”
Her heart thuds and she shakes her head.
“You don’t have to do anything.” Especially not repeat anything that makes her remember how miraculous it is that he’s still here with her. “Just keep getting better.”
He grins and raises an eyebrow, “is it the scars?”
“No,” she frowns, her face heating up when he narrows his eyes at her like he’s got her all figured out. She looks down at his chest again and shrugs, shoving the urge to touch him again down and pressing her free palm against the side of her leg. “I’m just glad you got the bandages off.”
“Me too,” he’s authentic and then nervous, his hand stiffening in hers, “oh. I--I mean, I don’t know how I’d get on a shirt over my arm, so I just didn’t.” He shrugs and winces, the motion pulling on his ribs.
“It’s fine,” Fuse looks at his shoulders, the pale freckles asserting themselves already after only a few minutes in the sun.
“Gods, Eret,” Arvid appears out of seemingly nowhere, Wingspark walking behind him with her scaly head hung low. “There should be a warning, I tried to fly over and your pasty chest practically blinded Wing.”
“No, it didn’t,” Eret drops Fuse’s hand and tries to cover himself, squirming for a moment before giving up and slouching.
“She’s traumatized.” Arvid scratches Wingspark’s chin and gives Fuse a lukewarm nod in greeting.
“What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be working with Dad?” Eret shuffles halfway behind Fuse, like he’s hiding, but he rests his chin on her shoulder and wraps his arm around her waist too, like he’s enjoying it. Fuse blushes and Arvid either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. She bets it’s the second, given how many times he’s caught them close to each other in the last few weeks.
She’s not sure why she still cares, honestly. But she does, and as with everything Eret influences, she’s learning to accept it as it is.
“Looking for Aurelia.” Arvid shrugs. “Fish ran dry, all the dragons are really hungry, apparently.”
“She went to pick up Stoick, I think.” Eret sighs, “you want to wait for her?”
“Sure,” Arvid points Wing to the barn.
“If that’s ok,” Eret mumbles nearly in Fuse’s ear and she jumps, her hand landing on the arm around her waist.
“It’s fine,” she shrugs, twisting gently out of his grip. He checked with her because he wants to be alone and he’d ask Arvid to leave if she asked him to. She knows that.
And she wants him to, almost, except she’s not sure what she’d do and she doesn’t like that feeling. As much as she’s fine with Eret overwhelming her, she hasn’t really accepted the idea that she’ll end up overwhelmed.
#eret iii#festerverse#feret#fuse thorston#aurelia haddock#arvid hofferson#she is so...herself and i love hr
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
After
I...know this isn’t the ideal time to post this. But...it made me cry today, so, here we are. I’ll reblog as I deem necessary. This is not the end, actually, this is the straight up rock bottom, and it’ll get better from here, but it’s still so hard.
Tumblr | AO3
Fuse
The North wall of the volcano splits vertically. Perfectly. Exactly how it’s supposed to.
Sheets of granite fall into the sea, which seems deeper than it was a minute ago, boiling with the force of lava pouring upwards from underneath. A wave surges outwards, barely dampened by the teeming sea dragons all fighting to get closer to the island.
Fuse’s ears ring. She wasn’t close enough to the blast for that, but they ring anyway.
The volcano is all lava and crumbled rock and she doesn’t see Eret anywhere. The spot where he landed doesn’t exist anymore, it bubbled away and he probably went with it.
Into the lava that went into the ocean that’s boiling with the newly opened thermal vent.
“Where is he?” Arvid shouts, panicked like he already knows the answer, his dragon crying out and tugging to fly lower. The island is so packed with dragons that they can’t see the ground, but Eret isn’t on the ground. Eret isn’t anywhere. “Do you see him anywhere?”
“No,” she shakes her head. She stares at the thermal vent but feels cold anyway, the wind from a few thousand sets of flurrying wings licking across her. Some of the dragons are flying away from the island. The ones still crawling all over it are mostly white, the sickest of them all.
The volcano is gone and so is Eret.
“Help me look for him!” Arvid yells, diving down through the swarm. A bright green gronckle runs into him and he ignores it, dodging and weaving around a couple of Hobblegrunts that look downright young.
They aren’t going to find him. There’s nothing to find.
She follows anyway, slower, circling the island below the thinning swarm, staring at the ragged edges of the island. The blast was perfect. A whispering death that’s entirely covered in chalky scales slithers into the sea.
Seventeen silent laps of the island later, it’s almost empty, a few fireworms skittering over the volcanic rock. It’d be the right kind of rock for stink bomb substrate. Thinking of bombs makes Fuse nauseous and Hotgut lands with a heavy thump on the edge of the rock. Fuse climbs off of her and pats her head, her hand still clammy even against warm dragon scales.
“Eret!” Arvid lands, leaping off of Wingspark and cupping his hands to his mouth. “Eret!” He turns to her, “do you see Bang?”
“No.” She crosses her arms, chest feeling oddly hollow. It’s like she’s a drum and her heart is rattling around inside her, bruising her lungs but making noise that she feels but can’t make come out of her mouth. Her nose is numb like the weather’s colder than it is and this would have been worse in winter. It would have worked differently in the winter. The blast couldn’t have gone if all that lava had solidified.
That was the only way this could have gone. Eret didn’t have to be the one to jump.
“Little brother!” Arvid sobs like he’s the one boiling in a thermal vent. “This is when you choose to shut your giant mouth?” He picks up a boulder and chucks it with a frustrated grunt and it tumbles off what’s left of the cliff and into the sea. “Eret!” He calls again.
He’s crying. Fuse blinks, eyes dry and prickly.
“He’s gone,” she croaks, her voice coming out almost dusty. Like she already forgot how to use it because Eret isn’t going to hear it anymore.
“He’s probably just hurt somewhere,” Arvid shakes his head, “we’ve just got to find him—”
“Where he was standing—it’s gone. He’s gone. He was too close to the edge.” She doesn’t recognize her own tone above her still ringing ears. Her nose is numb and her teeth start to chatter. It’s not cold and nothing makes sense. Nothing except for the fact that Eret’s gone and she handed him a knife. That she can still feel the imprint of his touch on her shaking hand.
She swallows even though her mouth is dry and her eyes are dry and she feels preserved. Like someone is freezing her so that she doesn’t go bad before she’s needed again. Fuse jerky ready for a long period of hibernation.
“He jumped where you told him to,” Arvid points at her, furious. Still crying. Shaking with a huge feeling she doesn’t have room for next to all this empty, cold numb. She can’t bring herself to care.
“I didn’t want him to.”
“He still did it with your bomb—”
“Yeah.” She gestures at the ruins of the volcano, “and it worked. And the dragons flew away.” She starts hiccupping. Or maybe it’s shaking. She’s not entirely sure and her eyes are so dry that the sun looks too bright. Her knees wobble and Hotgut steps up next to her, offering her head to lean on. “And he’s gone.”
“Shit,” Arvid deflates, “you don’t look so good.”
“He’s gone,” she repeats in that tired voice that doesn’t sound like her. The island spins, the ragged shore blurring against blue water. No more dragons are thrashing, the sea is almost calm. The island is calm now. It’s not a bad place, it’s not its fault.
“Hey, Thorston,” Arvid walks up to her, shaking her shoulders with hands that might as well weigh as much as the baffle. The baffle that’s gone too. Not that it matters, it did its job. “Look at me.”
“He’s just…gone.” She stumbles even though she’s standing still and Arvid catches her. He hugs her and it’s more of a bandage than anything as he starts crying, chest shaking and making the rattle in hers louder and worse. She should comfort him. She doesn’t know how.
“Stubborn Asshole,” he lets her go, wiping his forehead, “always had to be the fucking hero.”
Had. Like in the past. Fuse’s stomach lurches again.
“The chief’s going to be here soon.” She doesn’t look at the water because it’s still spinning. Only her feet seem still. “We’re going to have to tell him. We’re going to have to tell everyone.” She doesn’t say that they’re going to have to live with it because she’s not really sure how she’s going to.
Aurelia
The dragons come all at once. It looks like a cloud, for a moment, when the wave of them first comes over the horizon. Aurelia doesn’t remember being this happy to see dragons, ever, but something feels right about Nadders crowding the feeding stations, grayish scales flaking off to reveal new, shiny ones underneath.
“Get inside,” her mom calls from behind her.
“Aren’t you seeing this?” Aurelia gestures at a trio of young monstrous nightmares soaring up above the house. One lands on the roof and Stormfly squawks, scaring it off. “The dragons are back.”
“Hiccup did it?” her mom appears in the doorway, pushing her hair behind her ear and staring at the dragons like she’s looking for a Night Fury.
“Or Eret was right.”
“You can’t know that,” she shakes her head, “your dad has an alpha dragon, that’s more likely to work than—”
“Whatever.” Aurelia scoffs and walks back inside, avoiding a swarm of terrors eagerly drinking from the watering station. They’re shedding too, and small. Most of the dragons look young, or at least they do in her narrow understanding of dragon biology. There aren’t many big ones, but it’s still not exactly her crowd.
“Hey,” her mom steps back inside, “we’ll talk when everyone gets back, alright? But I have to ask now, did you…coach Eret or anything in speaking against your dad that way?”
“What?” Aurelia scoffs, “no—this isn’t about being chief, it’s about helping the dragons. And it looks like it worked so…”
“We’ll talk when everyone gets back, you don’t know what worked.” She shakes her head and looks tired, “and I do know you tried to stall your chief’s plan—”
“My dad’s plan.”
“It’s both, you don’t get to pick.”
Aurelia knows what that means. It means that a bunch of kids spoke out of turn and the real adults are going to have to remind them that they’re kids. It means rewriting the past few months. It means she can get married, apparently, but nothing about that says anyone is going to listen to her yet. She’s shocked it extends to Eret too, honestly, after he did such a decent job basically leading the whole village, but the lack of favoritism in the negativity is refreshing.
The dragons are louder than she remembers, their wingbeats and squawks and the way they scramble across the roof. Aurelia doesn’t know how she picks out Wingspark’s cry in all the noise, but she does, and she knows that it’s not a happy cry.
Eret offered for Arvid to stay back. It could be dangerous out there, after what happened to Ingrid, and after the last year, Arvid wouldn’t let Eret do the dangerous thing. It can’t happen like this, not now, not when they’re so close to everything they’ve talked about.
“Oh no,” she runs back outside, expecting Arvid to be hurt, or even worse Wingspark to be alone, but Arvid looks fine, if pale. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“How’d you know something’s wrong?” He jumps down off of Wing’s back and pulls her into an almost bruisingly tight hug. He smells like smoke and anxiety and she pushes on his chest until she can see his face.
“Wing sounded sad, what happened? Where is everyone else?” She looks around, “did my dad catch up to Eret or something?”
Arvid sighs and takes a second to make eye contact and when he does he’s guilty. Guilty like he was when they went too far and realized they’d stuffed all their blame in exactly the wrong direction. He cups her cheek in his clammy hand and shakes his head.
“What’s that mean?” Her eyes prickle because her brain is going faster than it will let her accept. “Where’s Fuse? Where’s Eret?”
“Fuse is riding back on the boat with her dad and the chief,” he sighs, “Eret is…he’s…”
“You’re back? Where’s Eret?” Her mom runs outside and freezes.
“Mom, I…” He stumbles over the title and she’s clearly his mom right now, not Aurelia’s, because he’s biting back tears. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see what he was doing, I tried to find him but—”
“Arvid, where is he?” She whistles and Stormfly glides down from the roof, landing neatly beside her. “I’ll go get him, just tell me where he is—”
“Oh no,” Aurelia’s heart drops and her knees tremble as she shakes her head. “No, that’s not possible.”
“He didn’t make it out,” Arvid shakes his head and swallows hard.
The dam breaks and Aurelia doesn’t recognize the sound coming out of her throat or the fact that it makes her more upset, more heavy. More confused.
He was just here. He was just flying too fast and making a fool of himself in front of everyone. He was just making her so proud and embarrassed and tired, because she thought she talked fast. She presses her face into Arvid’s chest and he cradles the back of her head, sobbing quietly himself. Arvid doesn’t cry. If Arvid’s crying, it’s real.
Her mom left her, but her mom wanted to. Eret didn’t want this. He wanted things to be better. That’s all they wanted.
“What are you talking about?” Eret’s Mom asks, her voice trembling, “he didn’t make it out of where? Where is he, Arvid?”
“He’s gone, Mom,” Arvid sobs. He’s shaking. Aurelia’s shaking. The world is shaking.
“That…no, it—Hiccup will bring him back. Hiccup will find him, it’ll be ok.” She’s crying too though, shallow little sniffs that Aurelia can barely hear.
Arvid shakes his head and holds Aurelia closer, stooping down to cry into her hair. She doesn’t know what to say. Hel, she doesn’t know what not to say. Her mind is as silent as the forests were yesterday.
Hiccup
“Why isn’t anyone helping me?” Hiccup jumps off of Toothless as soon as he lands on the lead ship, pointing up at empty skies. The dragons left, thousands of them passing overhead when they were about three quarters of the way to the island. “We need eyes in the sky, now!” He uses what’s left of his biggest voice and Snotlout shakes his head.
“We need to think about getting back.”
“What in Thor’s name are you talking about?” Hiccup clears his throat so that other boats hear him, “we need to start sweeping the island, I’ll start in the northern caves but let’s break it up into sections—”
“That won’t help.” Fuse cuts him off from where she’s sitting with her gronckle, paler than he’s ever seen anyone and wrapped in her dad’s outer fur. “He’s gone.” She stares at her lap, back stiff and straight.
“I’m going to get him back,” Hiccup tells her, voice starting to shake even though he believes it. He has to. This isn’t how this ends. There has to be another way for this to end.
“He’s gone,” she shakes her head.
“If everyone would just help me, we’ll find him and get him back!” Hiccup isn’t sure when he decides to yell it, but the last word tears out of his throat like it’s reopening an old wound he’d forgotten about.
“No, there’s nothing to find, he’s gone.” Fuse’s voice is smaller but no less flat and the fur around her shoulders starts to fall off until Tuffnut sits down beside her, readjusting it and putting his arm over her shoulders.
“Snotlout might be right, Hiccup,” Fishlegs steps forward, wringing his hands together and looking at Ruffnut for what looks like encouragement. “Those dragons that passed over us looked like they were headed towards Berk—”
“I know that!” Hiccup snaps, because Eret was right, at least some of it was right. And he didn’t listen. And now he has to bring him back, that’s how these things go. He has to get his son back. “It’s Berk, it’ll be happy to have its dragons back, we need to be here, now—”
“Hiccup,” Fishlegs tries again and Ruffnut puts her hand on his shoulder, “they could still be sick. They could need us.”
“I don’t care about the dragons right now,” Hiccup stares daggers into everyone who’s just…standing. They’re all just standing. Shoulders slumped and dragons sad, their heads hung low. And it’s quiet except for the waves lapping at the sides of the boat. Hiccup’s words echo in his head and off the sails and Toothless nudges his hand as if accepting a wordless apology. “I need…I need to find my son.”
“He’s gone,” Fuse whispers, her gronckle trying to lick her face as she bats it away with a limp arm, knocking the fur off her shoulders again.
“Hiccup,” Tuffnut puts his fur back around his daughter’s shoulders, “at least some of us need to get back.”
“Fine, take half the ships.” Hiccup looks over his shoulder at the island, Bang splashing through the surf in a frantic lap. At first he thought Bang could help him, but he’s distraught, crying out and flailing briefly through the air before diving back into the sea. “I’m staying.”
“We’ve been here for hours, Hiccup,” Snotlout’s belligerent tone fades enough to make Hiccup nauseous at whatever he’s about to say, “don’t you think we would have found something by now?”
“There isn’t anything,” Fuse shakes her head, “the vent opened up just like we said it would. It’s all gone.”
“We did find something,” Tuffnut stands up, “my daughter who needs to get home. Ruff, come on.”
A couple of other people move towards their dragons and a ship at the back of the fleet starts turning around. Eret knows these people, he’s been chief to these people. And they’re all so quick to leave. It’s only been a couple of hours, he’s on that island, somewhere. It doesn’t end like this, it can’t.
“I need a ship to get him home if he’s hurt,” Hiccup clears his throat and tries to give an order, but they’re all starting to sound like pleas. “And I need enough people to get it back fast—”
“Hiccup,” Gobber takes a slow step forward between Snotlout and Fishlegs, his limp more obvious than Hiccup has ever seen it. “Don’t make me say it.”
“How can you leave? You know him even better than I do.” Hiccup doesn’t know where to aim the flare of desperate anger at seeing dragons take off of ships as more and more peel away from the back of the fleet and head towards home.
“I know him enough to know…he’s not you.” Gobber sighs and he looks old and sad and Hiccup shakes his head.
“No, he’s—I’ve got to find him. I’ve got to fix this—”
“The village needs you,” Gobber swallows, “Astrid’s going to need you.”
“Astrid needs me to bring our son back!” Hiccup shouts, voice cracking, a tear leaking from the corner of his eye. Snotlout looks away. Fuse is muttering something under her breath while her dad kneels in front of her, holding her hands.
“She’s going to need you more than ever, chief.”
The title is a slap and terse reminder that he can’t be Hiccup right now, he can’t be a father. He can’t think about Eret, the boy, his son, it has to be Eret, future chief. He doesn’t grieve for the latter at all, but looking at Bang frantically splashing by the shore, the grief for the former hits like a Warhammer to the chest.
He’d prefer a Night Fury blast, honestly, and he’s jealous of his dad’s choices all over again.
“Toothless,” his voice shakes and he wipes another tear before it falls. He can cry later. “Get Bang to come over here.”
Toothless croons and the spines along his head glow weak blue for a moment and Bang pauses, turning towards the ship and swimming forward with a couple splashing wingbeats. He croons louder, like a scream, like the sound Hiccup’s heart is making when he thinks about going home empty handed. He doesn’t want to imagine Astrid’s face when he tells her, but he can’t think of anything else.
Bang stops splashing and lets out a weak blast, rocking the boat slightly and blowing it back towards Berk with a burst of wind to the sails. Toothless’s head stops glowing, immediately, and he looks up at Hiccup with big green eyes. Hiccup wishes, for the first time, that he couldn’t read Toothless quite so well.
“He wants to stay,” Hiccup wipes his eye with the back of his hand. He’s going to fly back, maybe it’ll dry him out enough to talk to Astrid. “Bang wants to stay.”
“Toothless can’t make him come?” Snotlout asks and Hiccup barely bites back a sob.
“Won’t.”
And it’s quiet. And no one is going to argue with him, now no one is going to be better and be so brave and stubborn and stupid that an island bends to his will and tens of thousands of dragons follow the course he laid out for them.
“I’ll fly back, ships can follow.” He avoids looking at anyone else before taking off, tears biting into his cheeks as he urges Toothless too fast, hoping the rushing wind can make him think of anything else.
Astrid
“They should be back by now,” Ingrid paces back and forth in front of the Haddock fireplace, arms crossed and twitching.
“They’ll be back soon,” Astrid rubs her temple, trying to focus on fixing the shirt in front of her. She doesn’t know why Eret can’t go a day without destroying some item of clothing, Stoick does better than he does.
Aurelia sobs upstairs and Astrid pricks her finger, swearing and setting down the needle entirely.
“The island isn’t that far away, Mom.” Ingrid tosses another log on the fire, just looking for something to do, and Eret sighs a pointed sigh at her.
It’s absurd to be in the same room with him like this. At the Haddock table, in Hiccup’s house, Hiccup’s ring around her finger. She wouldn’t say that they’re getting along, it’s more like they’re ignoring all communication aside from the necessary and after Ingrid got hurt, they agreed that the necessary must include their children.
Eret included.
Hiccup will bring him back. If he’s hurt, they’ll figure it out. Arvid shouldn’t have scared Aurelia, but he seemed sure enough that Astrid thought he could use his father. She was shocked, initially, that he wasn’t on the ships with everyone else, but it makes sense, he’s more ostracized than ever without his attachment to her.
“The pacing isn’t helping anything.” Eret tells Ingrid gently and she scowls at him.
“It’s not hurting anyone either.” She looks at the staircase when Aurelia sobs again and her face goes pale, “what all did Arvid say again?”
She looks worried and it makes Astrid’s stomach churn with the horrible shadowy feeling that something about Arvid’s account might be true. But even if it is, Hiccup will find Eret. Hiccup has pulled people out of worse situations than this and more than that, Hiccup has been pulled out of worse situations than this. This wasn’t a bewilderbeast or a red death, this was just an island and Eret’s strong. Too strong. Strong enough to take the whole world on his shoulders and fight when someone tries to take it back.
“Hiccup will bring your brother back, alright?” Astrid doesn’t know how many more times she can say that today.
Eret catches onto her stress, the infuriating way that he always has, and she sees his hand twitch towards hers on the table top, twenty five years of habits dying a slow, brutal death. She hardens her expression and hopes he can’t see through this one and his hand on the table curls into a loose fist.
“The chief always has a miracle up his sleeve.”
“It’s not a miracle,” Astrid fights to keep her voice level as the crying upstairs slows, a raw pained sound pulsing with her measured heartbeat, “Arvid doesn’t know what he saw.”
“What did he say he saw?” Ingrid asks.
“Don’t worry about it.” Astrid can’t say it without thinking about Arvid’s face, how sure he was, how impossible it all is, “we’ll get the whole story when—”
“Hiccup gets back, we get it.” Ingrid kicks one of Stoick’s blocks with enough force that it flies across the room and plinks off of the window.
“Hey—”
The door swings open, creaking and letting in two streams of early evening sunlight on either side of Hiccup. Astrid can’t see his face, but she can hear his steps, heavy, defeated footfalls that don’t make any sense. She stands up as he shuts the door behind him and his red-rimmed eyes meet hers.
“Where is he?” Ingrid runs up to Hiccup first and he shakes his head at her. “What’s that mean? Where’s my brother?”
“Astrid,” he gently pushes Ingrid out of the way so that he can see Astrid clearly and his eyes aren’t red from flying. They’re red from crying. “I…”
“Is he at the healers?” Astrid’s mouth goes dry as she says it, “do I need to go be with him? Is it—”
“Answer her,” Ingrid shoves on Hiccup’s shoulder, not hard enough to make him stumble, and she starts crying, the sound weaving with the crying upstairs and echoing off of the wall. “Why aren’t you answering her?”
“Ingrid,” Eret stands up and hugs her and she shoves at his arm.
“Why aren’t you answering us? Where’s my brother?”
“We…” Hiccup swallows and sniffs and his voice catches on a knot in his throat, “I couldn’t find him.”
“You couldn’t find him?” Astrid repeats the answer. The idea that this is where Hiccup failed, that this was the unanswerable question, doesn’t have a place in reality. “Did he run away? Or…”
“No,” Hiccup looks at the floor between them and Ingrid’s crying dries up to defiant little sniffs, “Bang was there. He was—he wouldn’t come back with us. I—he…”
“He’s dead?” Eret asks, a careful tenderness in his voice that she couldn’t ever match. Not that she needed to, he always had it covered, and it does to Hiccup what it used to do to their children. It brings him back to the moment and he wipes his face, jaw set forward.
“We couldn’t find him today, but I’m going back tomorrow, Astrid. Hel, I’ll leave now, I’ll get Toothless some food and—”
“He is dead, isn’t he?” Astrid cuts across his frantic hope, because he’s cushioning himself, she can see it in wide, teary green eyes that won’t quite focus on her face.
“No one has seen him since the blast and—” Hiccup’s arms flop to his sides and he looks smaller than usual, like he lost another part of himself, and Astrid’s knees start to shake. She forces them steady. “And the volcano was erupting into the sea and—”
“Eret’s dead,” she whispers, voice shaking out of her control. She tries to swallow it and tears well up in her eyes, hot enough to burn as she struggles to keep them open. Through the teary film, Hiccup looks too similar, like he’s from a reality where Eret got to grow old or Hel, even just grow up, and she cries out because there’s not enough room inside of her for all of this.
“I’m sorry, Astrid.” Hiccup’s arms wrap around her, too tight, like he’s trying to hold her together and she doesn’t think that’s possible. “I’m so sorry. It’s—it’s because of me, I should have listened to him. It’s my fault.”
That drags another harsh sob out of her throat and she buries her face in his neck, inhaling sea spray and leather and trying to breathe. It feels like she’s suffocating, like the air in the room is fleeing from her and Eret was dead hours ago, wasn’t he? Midgard has been without him for hours and she didn’t know. She didn’t listen.
“It is your fault,” Ingrid shouts, “you said no one else would get hurt. You said you’d protect us—”
“Ingrid,” Eret—the only Eret, now—herds her towards the door, “come on—”
“You said you’d make sure no one else got hurt. That’s why I told you everything,” she barks out a single, violent cry, “and now Eret’s dead. It’s my fault. Fuck, it’s my fault—”
“It’s all our faults,” Aurelia’s voice appears at the bottom of the stairs and Astrid manages to look up at her. Her face is puffy and Arvid’s standing behind her, hand on her shoulder. “More than that, it’s his. It’s his own damn fault. Dumb, stubborn—” She inhales a sob and her shoulders shake, “I—he made his choice and our dragons are back and I still don’t think I can ever forgive him for it. I…”
She doesn’t know what to say. There’s a space that Eret would have—should have—filled and it hangs heavy in the miserable air.
#eret iii#festerverse#fuse thorston#arvid hofferson#aurelia haddock#arvid hoffesron#ingrid hofferson#eret sr#you gonna cry#i did#like 8 times
22 notes
·
View notes
Text
Interruptions
I’m posting at lunch because I’m impatient and this chapter has a lot of good things in it and I’m excited.
Tumblr | AO3
Aurelia’s sitting at the table in the chief’s house, surrounded by stacks of letters, Arvid sitting across from her and staring at her in a way that kind of makes my stomach hurt. I can’t help but think of Ingrid earlier, because that look on Arvid’s face, well…he’s in the chief’s house for her, he’d die before he flew off without her. Aurelia waves with the end of her writing stick before scooting down in her chair to write another line.
“How’s Ingrid?” She asks, not really looking up and Arvid looks at me, interest piqued.
“She’s uh…” I shrug, looking for a half decent lie, “coping.”
“That bad, huh?” Aurelia looks up at Arvid and they have a silent conversation mostly made of eyebrows.
“I was thinking,” Arvid says almost like he’s daring me to start a fight.
“Yeah?”
“About Ingrid.” He continues like he wasn’t entirely sure he’d get this far and Aurelia’s the one with that disgusting fond face now. “We could take shifts, maybe, staying with her.”
“That’s a good idea, in theory,” I pause there waiting for him to pick the fight and when it doesn’t happen I walk the rest of the way up to the table, hands on the back of an empty chair. “But she’s pretty upset, she doesn’t want to feel like she has to comfort anyone else.”
He flexes his jaw and I half expect for him to kick my feet out from under me. Aurelia looks at him, expectantly blinking, and he shrugs.
“She doesn’t have to comfort me.” He looks at the table, tracing the grain with a fingertip and not so expertly avoiding eye contact, but we’re talking and no one is bleeding so I’m going to take it as a win. “I just wasn’t expecting—it’s Ingrid.”
“I know.”
“And…” He looks up like he’s debating with himself and Aureila stays out of it this time, writing away in neat little runes and making me really glad I convinced the chief to share that load. “And I think she’s lying, it’s Ingrid, she’d never accidentally cut off half her hand. I don’t buy it.”
It’s kind of a nice reminder of the days when Arvid and I used to operate on the same wavelength. I guess that’s true of Ingrid, in general, she left when we were still friends. Maybe after he’d decided I wasn’t his brother anymore, but we were still trying to hold onto some part of that.
Until I lashed out at him and called him stupid for not seeing what we both missed. I hate looking back at that now, at that feeling that if I hurt him, somehow I’d have less hurt to deal with myself.
“That’s a good guess,” I sigh, “don’t ask her about it, I’m hoping she’ll tell us all when she’s ready.”
“She told you?” He doesn’t sound offended so much as left out and I get that entirely.
“Not really by choice, it was right after she got back, she was really upset.” I wince at the memory, “she cried.”
“I saw that.”
“No, she cried more than once. But don’t tell her I told you that, because—”
“Got it,” Arvid crosses his arms and goes back to mostly ignoring me. “I can be over there tonight.”
“You—Dad—Er, your dad has been sleeping there, you can—not that I can tell you where to sleep or—”
“Can’t you?” He snaps at me and Aurelia kicks his shin under the table. He doesn’t quite flinch and I refuse to back off, but I get the feeling neither of us want to fight. That fighting would just be clinging to the old newly established social order, that Ingrid is back and she’s hurt and everything feels different again. Our parents are talking and we have to define our roles all over again and just thinking about it makes me exhausted.
“I don’t want to. Go sleep in your normal bed, if you want, ask your dad, I haven’t been forcing heart to hearts on him or anything.”
“Alright,” he drops it. For now. I want it to be the final drop but I don’t feel particularly optimistic about it, even if Aurelia appears to be fully on my side for once.
“So you’ve got part of an afternoon off Ingrid watch,” Aurelia waggles her eyebrows at me in a way I really wish she wouldn’t in front of Arvid, “any plans?”
“When have I ever had plans?”
Arvid snorts then glares at the table, like he doesn’t want me to know I amused him even at my own expense.
“I don’t know,” she shrugs, “I just thought you might like to start with someone who’d like to have plans with you.”
I glare at her. She looks up at me and grins, and it kind of looks like a threat. At the same time, someone threatening me with Fuse, who happens to like me and who I’m only now realizing I haven’t seen since the middle of the night when she slipped out from under my arm. My glare turns into something goofy and she raises her eyebrows.
“I’ll see you guys later.”
I go back outside and get on Bang, urging him into the sky and coating in the direction of the Thorston house. I don’t know where I’m going to go if she’s not there, because it’s Fuse and she’s building bombs and that could mean day trips off island looking for supplies, and as willing as I am to follow her, time is shorter than I’d like it to be. How have I gone days without thinking about it? About her? About the fact that she kissed me and we talked and she fell asleep under my arm like she fit there.
I guess I’ve been busy.
I get lucky and spy her pink tinted head and Hotgut outside of her shed just as they’re about to take off. I land and she stares at me for a second before smiling, a nervous smile like she’s happy to see me but is also worrying about what bad news that implies. Bang whuffs at Hotgut, dragging his tail back and forth across the ground and Hotgut snorts.
“Hey,” Fuse cocks her head and her hair is shinier than I remember it, “I figured you wouldn’t be around for a while. How’s Ingrid?”
“She’s doing as good as could be expected,” I sigh, “Arvid offered to take a shift without pummeling my face in though so…”
“I was going to eat at the mead hall, my mom’s not cooking because my brother stole a stink bomb and set it off in the kitchen.”
“Long story?” I laugh and I can’t help but notice that she’s wearing a different shirt than the last time I saw her which means she must have changed at some point and existed in that temporary unclothed state.
“No, I just told you all of it.” She frowns at me like I hit my head and I practically feel like I must have.
“I haven’t eaten all day. I could go for some food.”
“Ok, let’s go,” she swings onto Hotgut and takes off before I can say anything else. She lands before I do but waits and I’m not sure what to do when I step away from Bang’s side. I think about hugging her, but that seems sudden, but everything’s going to feel sudden when each and every new thought about her hits like a physical blow.
“Should we uh...go inside?”
“What else would we do,” she laughs but it’s not really at me but she doesn’t wait for me either and I don’t realize until I see her cheeks flushing that she doesn’t know how to do this either, whatever this is.
We get food and sit down at the end of a table across from each other and she stares at me for a weird, warm moment I don’t quite understand. I wish it were dark, somehow, it was easier to talk to her then, when she wasn’t blinding me with all of her everything.
“What have you been up to?”
She smiles down at the table, a little of that dangerous edge sneaking in, “collecting Meatlug’s spoils. My uncle never lets me use her, something about keeping the peace but…it’s looking good.” She nods, trying to force her trademark pragmatism over genuine excitement. Her eyes are almost too blue to be real and I want to tell her that but my mouth’s dry. “I could probably have it done in three weeks.” She smiles at me then, an awkward, off center smile that looks like flirting and my face is so hot it could restart the forge. “Two if you had any time to help.”
“I don’t. But I want to.” I take my first bite of food and realize how fully hungry I am, shoveling in two more. Fuse wrinkles her nose and I remember that girls don’t like that, for some reason, wiping my chin with the back of my hand. “It’s crazy how close we are.”
“If we’re right,” she frowns, “it’s all going off of my hunch about that thermal vent.”
“Hey,” I reach across the table and set my hand on hers and she doesn’t move away, “you’re right. You’re always right.”
She smiles. I’m not sure what to do with my other hand or my food now that my stomach is churning, excited and nervous.
“That’s not true,” she shrugs, “you must be biased.”
“I probably am.” I wish we were on the same side of the table. Why’d I sit across from her? Why would I ever purposefully put anything between us at all? I wish it was dark again, I wish we were alone. I try not to look as out of control as I suddenly feel but it doesn’t work because I jump about a foot in the air when someone’s hand lands on my shoulder.
It’s the chief.
“Hey, you two, how’s it going?”
At least I jumped high enough that my hand came off of Fuse’s so he can’t tease me about that. I don’t really feel like dealing with the chief’s teasing on top of everything else.
“Fine.” I shrug. Fuse takes a bite that’s almost disappointed and I realize that she’d rather be alone too. Her gray sweater sleeves are pushed halfway up her arms, showing skinny, freckled wrists and the chief is staring creepily at us, vague half smile on his face.
“Just fine?”
“Do you need something?” I huff and turn towards him, easily finding my most annoyed face.
“How’s Ingrid?” He asks with enough legitimate concern that I’d feel bad for glaring at him if it were anyone else.
“Arvid’s with her.”
“She still won’t let a healer look at it?” He asks like he’s tired of asking and Mom’s probably been on his back about it even more than mine.
“No, but I did convince her earlier to let Gobber look at it. I thought Mom might take Gobber’s opinion as an answer even though she won’t take mine.”
“She’s just worried, it’s not that she doesn’t trust you.” He nods, “and Gobber, that’s a good idea. What did he say?”
“I couldn’t find him so he hasn’t seen her yet.”
“I’ll let him know to come find you if I see him.”
I look at Fuse and back at the chief, trying to silently tell him why I maybe don’t want Gobber finding me exactly right now. He doesn’t get it, just awkwardly smiling at us when I don’t say anything immediately.
“Or maybe you could just tell him Mom wants him to look at Ingrid’s hand.”
“I haven’t seen it myself,” the chief shakes his head, “I wouldn’t know what to prepare him for.”
“It’s a hand without some of its fingers, I bet Gobber can figure it out.”
“It’s better if you ask him.” The chief almost orders and I sigh. He’s probably right, Ingrid will be more likely to go along with it if it comes from me.
“Ok. Sure.”
“Also, just wanted to give you a heads up but Sven was asking me about that dam that’s apparently leaking over on Brinhild’s creek?” The chief points in the vague direction he’s talking about and I can feel Fuse staring at the side of my face as he does and I wipe my chin again, self-conscious about being at the other end of her critical gaze. Fuse could probably look at me long enough to talk herself out of the insanity of liking me and it’s going to be all the chief’s fault when it happens. “I told him to come find you too, you just know more about it—”
“Sure. Fine.”
“Ok,” he looks between us again, that stupid smile like he has something to do with anything about this on his face, “well, you two have a good night.”
“Bye, chief.” I turn back to Fuse and look at her almost cautiously, “sorry about that.”
“You’re busy,” she takes an almost dainty bite and she’s still just…looking at me and I try not to do anything weird with my face, but that’s probably impossible at this point. “I didn’t realize you were handling so much on your own.”
“Not really on my own,” I shrug and do I always shrug like that? Or does my shoulder usually move more normally? I’m suddenly aware of how wide I am and it feels like the edge of my shoulder is really far out there and I’m not sure what to do with my hands because they feel limp and itchy just sitting on the table. “Everyone’s been helping out but…”
“But it sounds like the chief’s trusting you with some actual decisions.”
“He didn’t really have a choice,” I snort, “someone had to step in when he was…you know, all…sad about—gods, that’s not a very cheerful conversation. Why would I bring that up? Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” she smiles, “I’m used to your stream of consciousness word vomit routine by now.”
“Trust me, it’s not stream of consciousness.” I look at her sweater again, like a tick, this time fixating on the point of her collarbone just barely visible outside of the stretched out collar and gods, I shouldn’t be in public, I’m making such a mess of this. I especially shouldn’t be in public with Fuse, but that makes me think of the alternative of being in private with Fuse and I half expect her to read my mind and like…plant something deadly in my pocket.
“You’re trying to tell me you have any kind of filter?” She laughs at me but it doesn’t feel mean, it’s like the Fuse version of a joke and I laugh too.
“I’m filtering most of it right now.” I tap my temple with my finger and it feels dorky and she looks at my arm like she’s not sure why I have to be so embarrassing and I wish I had an answer for her.
“Why?” She frowns and it’s the first time in my life I wish she weren’t so perfectly direct because now I have to tell her something that doesn’t make me sound like a pervert or an idiot.
“Because you’re pretty.” I blurt, successfully sounding halfway between pervert and idiot. “And I have a lot of thoughts about it.”
Her expression doesn’t move but she turns red, redder than I’ve ever seen her, and I can’t help but wonder if it makes her skin feel hot to the touch. And then I’m thinking about touching her face and how it’d fit in the palm of my hand and maybe I should ask for something to blow myself up before I dig any further into this pit.
“Oh.” She nods, still red but smiling slightly, the corner of her mouth twitching upwards just enough that I relax.
She likes being called pretty. Ok. That’s good to know.
“So uh…bombs?” I fall back on something else I know she likes and she nods like she’s glad for the change of subject. “What’s uh…what’s the coolest thing you’ve ever blown up?”
“Probably that ice I cleared out of the harbor last year,” she grins at the memory and she’s so literal I want to hug her.
“I didn’t mean coolest like…coldest,” I laugh and she turns red again, “but I remember that, that was pretty awesome, it made all that green snow.”
“It was also one of the coolest. I like the water ignited stuff, it’s so counter-intuitive.”
“Because water should put out fire.” It’s nice talking to her. Like, actually talking to her. Not her giving me advice, not planning something with her or clarifying some stupid misunderstanding, but getting her to share something. She does that so little that everything she says feels like some secret she’s trusting me with. I want to ask more about it, like if she has any idea how it works and I’m trying to figure out how to say it when Sven appears out of seemingly nowhere and interrupts.
“Eret! Just the man I’m looking for,” he leans on the table between us, blocking half my view of Fuse and turning everything fun about this into torture, “the dam leak’s worse, too much water’s getting through to repair it with rubble from the new wood storage. It pushes those rocks down river before you can say flooded hanger.”
“Did you tell the chief that?” I ask, mostly to get rid of him and he shrugs, shaking the table.
“He said you knew more about the problem.”
“I’ll think about it and try and get some decision to you tomorrow, alright?”
“Gustav wants us on it bright and early tomorrow morning, I wasn’t kidding about the flooded hanger, lad.” He looks a little awkward and lowers his voice, “not enough dragons in there right now for me to trust them to keep it dry.”
“Is there a way to stem the flow up stream to slow it down enough for repairs?”
“Not that I know of,” he shrugs, awkward again, “we used to use a whispering death to dig a new diversion trench but I haven’t caught any around yet. It’s early season for them, though.”
“Let me…oh!” I draw with my fingertip on the table, “there’s that tributary halfway up the mountain, the one by that cave…do you know what I’m talking about?”
“The cave,” he thinks for a second and I can feel Fuse looking at me again, her eyes hot on my face and I don’t know if I want to hide or look back at her. “Right! Just south of the point.”
“Yes, that little creek flows into the bigger creek, but I bet it could be temporarily blocked with a boulder long enough for the repairs downstream.”
“We can try that,” he stands up, nodding to himself like he’s thinking through it, “I’ll let Gustav know.”
“You aren’t going to run it by the chief or anything?” I don’t know why this decision feels more important than all those I made when I was alone, but somehow it does. It feels like the first one of a new era, I guess, different because the chief could shut me down but won’t.
“Don’t have time,” he shrugs, “I was lucky to find you before I had to bring another excuse back to Gustav. I’ll let you get back to your meal,” he looks almost suspiciously at Fuse, who doesn’t seem to notice, and I sigh, relieved, when he leaves through the main doors.
“Sorry, about that,” I gesture at the doors and Fuse shakes her head.
“Don’t be,” she fiddles with the end of her braid, almost shy for a moment before that feeling that she can see straight into my thoughts comes across me, “just maybe next time we want to talk we should stay away from people who want you to make decisions.”
“Right,” I sigh, “we should have never left your work shed, honestly.”
“Next time,” she suggests. Her cheeks turn red again and I almost ask why until I realize that she’s talking about being alone in her work shed the next time we have a chance to talk.
And that the idea is something to blush about and she’s been staring at me so long that she can’t hate it as much as I feared. And I remember what kissing her felt like and the warmth of her under my arm and it feels like there’s not enough room in my chest when I think about being alone with the air as clear as it is between us. She likes me. I look down at her sweater again, remembering how soft she felt when she hugged me and the tips of my ears feel so hot I’m scared they’re about to spontaneously catch on fire.
“Y-yeah,” I stutter out, ever eloquent under pressure. She raises her eyebrows and breathes out a single laugh, almost relieved that I made a bigger fool out of myself than she did.
Like she ever even makes a fool out of herself. I can’t remember a time she didn’t come out of a conversation sparkling clean while I was an embarrassed mess. I must have liked her longer than I knew to be so stupid around her for so long. Hel, maybe my body knew before me from the way I keep wanting to lean into her, like she’s a magnet pulling on me in particular.
“Hey twerp,” Smitelout sits down beside me and I jump, glaring at her and hoping my red face makes me look as angry as I suddenly am and not embarrassed. “Can I measure your hand?” She holds out a piece of leather with a few marks on it at even intervals and I reflexively hold my hand to my chest.
“What? No. Of course not.”
“Ugh, they’re gigantic anyway,” she looks at my hands before doing the same to Fuse’s and it feels oddly violating in a way I don’t totally understand. “And Thorston’s are too skinny. You guys are no help at all, where’s your mom?”
“I don’t know!” I snap, “go find her yourself, it’s not that big of an island.”
“Just asking,” she stands up, rocking the bench as she does so and making me feel even more off kilter. “Oh yeah, and Fuse. I’ll have the uh…stuff,” she whispers as loudly as anyone has ever whispered, making it seem like she’s talking about something secret and also like she wants me to punch her, “ready pretty soon.”
“Thanks Smitelout,” Fuse’s tone is clipped and she’s annoyed and that means she was thinking something that got cut off too.
And she liked whatever she was thinking about enough that it’s annoying to have it truncated and I don’t know what to do with that. Or any of this. She likes me, that’s impossible enough. Just look at her and it’s impossible and it just gets even more improbable when she opens her mouth.
“Have a good rest of your date, nerds,” Smitelout just has to get in one more comment before walking away and of course it’s the worst of them all.
“This isn’t—I mean, maybe it—”
“Does it matter?” She shrugs, “I don’t care what you want to call it—”
“I mean, date is a word.” I cough and stutter over nothing because I can’t make anything not stupid come out of my mouth.
“Yeah, I know that.” She laughs at me like she still somehow likes me and I have no idea how I haven’t messed this up yet.
Someone else taps me on the shoulder. Every bit of anxious hope in my chest instantly turns to intense frustration and I snap, loud enough that someone drops a plate across the room.
“What? What do you want?” I look over my shoulder and it’s Gobber, eyebrows raised. “Oh. Hi Gobber.”
“Smitelout told me you were looking for me.”
“That’s uncharacteristically helpful of her.”
“Was it to apologize for yelling in my face?” He asks, not quite annoyed, and I’m getting dragged into another conversation against my will, aren’t I?
“Sorry. You just…uh, scared me.” I look apologetically at Fuse and she shrugs like she somehow already accepts that this is just the stupid new order of things. “What I actually wanted to talk to you about is—well, I, uh…” I struggle to think about anything other than Fuse and date and the fact that she blushes when she thinks about being alone with me, “Ingrid. Right. I wanted to talk to you about Ingrid.”
“I heard she’s back,” Gobber shrugs, “well, most of her.”
“Yeah,” I hold up my right hand and mime cutting across three fingers, “that’s what I wanted your help with. She won’t let any healers look at it because she’s as stubborn as a Rumblehorn with a yak carcass and my Mom doesn’t trust me that it’s not rotting off. I was hoping you could look at it and reassure her.”
“Well, is it rotting off?”
“No. No swelling either, no fever, no uh…signs of infection,” I try to say delicately, because it feels like a bad plan to say ‘pus’ in front of a girl on something that might be kind of a date, “since the first time I cleaned it right after she got back.”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll take a look at it.” Gobber holds up his hook, “my lifetime of experience should convince Astrid.”
“Thank you, that’s what I was hoping for.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s up at my old house. My dad and Arvid are there if you want to drop by now. Or tomorrow is fine but—”
“Let’s get it over with now, in case you did miss something and your Mom has reason to worry.” He looks between me and Fuse and raises an eyebrow, “I don’t have Grump with me so you’ll have to give me a lift, if that’s not a problem...or is it?”
I sigh and try to say sorry to Fuse with my eyes. I’m lucky, because she gets it, even though she looks so disappointed it hurts when I stand up away from the table.
“It’s not a problem. You’re right, we should do this now.” I take a second to look forlornly at my half eaten food before waving at Fuse, “I’ll…see you later. Sorry it’s just—”
“I get it,” she’s so understanding I could kiss her. If we weren’t here in the center of all annoying, interrupting people, I’d get to.
Gobber and I walk outside and I try to ignore his look, so he intensifies it as I help him onto Bang.
“What?”
“Fuse Thorston, eh?”
“Shut up,” I climb on Bang in front of him and kick off just fast enough that I can’t hear him tease me on the way to my old house.
#eret iii#festerverse#fuse thorston#arvid hofferson#aurelia haddock#smitelout jorgenson#feret#smingrid#i'm tagging it because fuck. it.#put that hint together
24 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
aifosqueen
I am bored
maraudersgoodtimes
Picturesque Memories of the Marauders
yunarim
— 海の魔女 ♡
flikstagram
flikstagram