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tysonrunningfox · 5 years

Text

Ripped: Part 16

Ao3

“People who do this don’t look at pictures of it like that.”

The plain-faced supposition of Hiccup’s innocence in Eretson’s office after Dave’s murder flashed back into Hiccup’s mind the second that Grisly saw Tuffnut. Hiccup had looked at those crime scene photos with a shivering, pale-faced feeling of dread, something more instinctive and paralyzing than fear. With a slow spreading numbness in the center of his brain, somewhere between clinical detachment and an abstract refusal to accept the reality of the gore.

But when Grisly saw Tuffnut and smiled like he was imagining a duplication of the horrible scene in the alley, Hiccup wondered instantly if that’s what Eretson meant. What if people who murder and mutilate their victims look at the pictures like Grisly stared down Tuffnut? More than predatory. Not a hungry lion but a bored housecat holding a trapped mouse by the end of its tail.

Astrid’s right, it’s a basket of leaps, but leaps based on a gut feeling that gets deeper the longer that Hiccup tries to shake it off.

He knows that theories are supposed to be based on facts, and he tries, really, but usually his theories are based on flippant comments that connect two things with a random click. A joke that amounts to pulling two random puzzle pieces out of a thousand-piece box and finding a mysterious miracle fit. The first click is enough to make him curious and that’s when he shifts to more systemic tactics, looking for corners and edges and working inward with obvious patterns until a picture starts to form.

Johann’s ads got huge, so he must have been making money, and in comparing the dates of his biggest ads to the dates of the murders, a blurry but cohesive picture emerged. It’s eternally unfinished though, a puzzle in an elementary school library, some pieces pocketed and some chewed up and hidden away or just plain lost.

All the pieces of this puzzle are still here though, it’s only three quarters unwrapped, and Hiccup happened to slip two miracle pieces out of the side of the box. Grisly looks at people like he knows what’s under their skin, but wants to visually confirm. And as Eretson glared over Hiccup’s shoulder out that bulletproof window, the corners started to take shape.

Grisly wedges himself where he doesn’t belong. Grisly works for the condos that do the same, muddling the character of Downtown Berk into something new and clean that just doesn’t fit. Grisly hired Heather, who enhances unfinished puzzles from cryptid pictures of a real solution to high definition snapshots, like a thesaurus fueled scientist on CSI.

He doesn’t want it to take shape, necessarily, but at the same time he can’t stop dwelling on it, finding grains of fact in the space of it. Pieces craving one or two matches attach to the bigger, truth shaped possibility. And with Snotlout stuck on traffic duty, Hiccup can’t go research at the station without looking more suspicious. But then again, a few sepia toned pixels from a half-ruined older version of similar events might provide insight to the shape emerging from cool alleyway fog.

That’s half the reason he goes to the archives two days after finding Gruffnut’s body. He never spent that much time on the Elizabeth Smith murder, probably because no one questions a beginning. Well, no one but Astrid, with her theory that her apartment isn’t involved at all, rewriting the root of the narration in an attempt to distance herself from it.

He wishes that tactic was working better for her.

The other half of his reason for visiting ticks up to an easy seventy five percent when he’s halfway down the stairs and hears Astrid’s voice, hovering just past the cusp of irritated above the sound of rustling papers.

“…being ridiculous, Fish,” she snaps, setting something heavy down on what Hiccup assumes is her desk.

“I’m no Grimborn-ologist—”

“Not what it sounds like.”

“It’s simple pattern recognition,” Fishlegs’s arms are crossed when Hiccup comes around the corner, and Astrid is elbow deep in a dusty box of paper scraps, a brown smear across her scowling eyebrow. “All I’m saying is that there’s reason to believe there will be a murder at your apartment in the next week and a half, and I have a guest room—”

“You’re looking for somewhere to stay?” Hiccup blurts and they both turn to look at him. Astrid tries to wipe the streak of dirt off of her forehead and leaves a larger smudge behind and Fishlegs sighs heavily through flaring nostrils, moustache barely budging in the breeze.

“She’s not looking, she has one.”

“I’m not looking because I don’t need one,” Astrid corrects him, going back to sorting through her box, “what are you doing here?” The question starts out harsh and ends flat, but she shoots him a genuinely curious look and he shrugs.

“I was hoping to do some research,” he says cautiously, edging a step closer to her desk to try and see what she’s looking at. “And maybe see you, if that’s ok?”

“I don’t know, have you done your taxes?” Fishlegs rolls his eyes.

“I didn’t realize I needed to pay taxes to talk to Astrid,” Hiccup tries to drag a laugh out of the room, but it doesn’t work, the air as stale and tense as the centuries old contentions in the papers around them. “If so, is there a special form? Or a student loan balance exemption—”

“What are you looking for?” Astrid abruptly pulls her hands out of the box, wiping dusty handprints on her jeans and gesturing back at the stacks.

“I was going to umm,” he thinks briefly about lying, given the conversation he walked in on, but thinks better of it with her paralyzing blue eyes staring straight through him. “I was going to brush up on that first Elizabeth Smith article, actually.”

“Sure,” she waves him along after her and he follows down an unfamiliar, narrow catalog of books to the left and through a door into a dingy back room full of boxes.

“It smells like my dead great aunt’s attic in here,” he comments, running his finger over a dusty letter box that threatens to crumble under the gentle touch.

“Maybe she donated something,” Astrid stacks two dirty boxes on top of each other and wipes down a table with a dust cloth. “This is the new arrivals room, but Fishlegs said if I shuffled things around, I could make it the Grimborn room. I already moved some of the Grimborn things in here after I caught people trying to sneak out with them in their coats.” She picks up a carefully folded but newly wrinkled newspaper and sets it down on the clean section of table, “Elizabeth Smith paper, have at it.”

Then, with a casually familiar but all too brief pat on his shoulder, she walks back towards the door.

“Wait,” he turns around and she stops, looking at him expectantly, “I was kidding about using you as a tax loophole, I actually did come to see you.”

“I know, but I’m working,” her lips twitch into a small but sincere smile as she shrugs and leaves the room and he can’t help but remember her kissing him goodbye after their date. He wanted to walk her home, but it felt like bad luck, just more time to peek into alleys and have another moment ruined. He got the feeling she silently agreed and they both ended up calling rides, much to Snotlout’s instant disappointment.

And Hiccup’s slightly delayed disappointment.

It was the first time their dare-he-say romantic interaction didn’t get smothered by a new murder discovery or accusation in the next twenty-four hours. No, this time there have been no tours full of prying questions or alleys full of gore or faces full of suspicion, just empty hours to think about Astrid.

One time he stopped responding to a girl after three unremarkable but overall decent dates after she mentioned being the fifth wheel on a ski trip with two of her coupled up friends. It was June. Just the thought of tying himself to a potential weekend months in the future with a girl he barely knew made him back off, even though she’d tagged along on a tour and handled meeting Snotlout with a surprising amount of grace.

On a first date with Astrid, he offered to be her date to a family wedding at some point far in the future.

He tried to pawn it off on the fact that Eretson spent their entire interview looking at him like a perfectly healthy dog abandoned at a high kill shelter for being ugly, but being a more-than-potential murder suspect isn’t affecting his decision making as much as it probably should. The fact of the matter is when Astrid started yelling theories down at him from her window, she did what he’d always banked on being impossible. She made learning about the past make him think about the future. She gave him something to look forward to, to depend on. And then she had to take over his tour with an impossible picture and kiss him surrounded by history and anchor him again and again when things kept turning for the worst.

For the first time in five years, he’s desperate for forward motion. And more than that forward motion towards something. Someone. Even scarier, with someone.

“Finding anything?” Astrid’s voice breaks his concentration and he blinks twice at the paper he hasn’t even started to read.

“What?” He shakes his head, watching her set down another heavy looking box and start digging through it.

“I asked if you were finding anything,” she smiles at him, a fond minimal smile he definitely hasn’t done anything to deserve, “sorry to break your deep concentration.”

“No, you’re good, I wasn’t concentrating on the right thing anyway.” He laughs and it feels more like a lie when she nods bemused and turns to leave, “or I mean I was, actually, concentrating on something more important than reading this old thing again.” He smacks his knuckles on the edge of the table when he gestures at the paper and she raises an eyebrow. “Can I help? It looks like you’re sorting through things, I could help with that.”

“I thought you were here to research.”

“I’ve got nothing but time,” he shrugs, “unless you don’t trust me not to pocket any of this delightfully dusty paper.”

“I trust you,” she says it like it’s a phrase in a foreign language she’s just learning, “I just found all these boxes under that table where we were displaying some of the Enquirer correspondence, I have no idea what’s in them.”

“Have you informed Area Fifty-One that you’re on the cusp of a big discovery?” He asks seriously as she opens the box and she elbows him a little harder than necessary on the way to set the old lid down. “Ok, I get it, don’t diss the Enquirer, you don’t have to break a rib.”

“You know how I feel about the Enquirer,” she teases, voice dipping, and Hiccup’s heart jumps in his throat remembering his too big hat on her head and how fiercely beautiful she is when she’s trying to convince him that she’s right.

“Right, it’s the clandestine shrine to the preservation of the everyman’s most rationally thought out theories about their place in the universe,” he talks too fast, like always, but Astrid keeps up, narrowing her eyes and shoving a heavy manila folder at his chest. He promptly nearly drops it, barely saving a scrap of paper from drifting out the bottom. “This could be a priceless piece of history—”

“I’m working,” she turns back to the box and squints to decipher a handwritten date at the top of a page of notes. “Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Flirting.” The red on her cheeks is more obvious when she holds another clipping up to the light and pointedly avoids his eyeline.

“What? I’m not flirting,” he relishes in even the tiniest second that he has her unbalanced. And it’s true, he didn’t think he was flirting, he was talking about the Berk Enquirer, that’s not flirting.

Maybe Astrid thinks that’s flirting.

“I’m working,” she repeats and Hiccup turns around to lean back against the table, studying her like she’s studying an old dusty letter.

“I can see that.” He cocks his head at her and she spares him a glare, the heat rising further in her cheeks when he doesn’t flinch.

She has a face made for smiling but she holds it like she resents even the implication of that decision being made for her. Maybe it’s because she knows he’s watching her, but the line of her jaw is tense, working quietly as she knits her brows together and sounds out an unfamiliar word to herself. She’s all contrast, upright spine in a comfortable sweatshirt, hair in front of her ears escaping a neat ponytail, fundamentally kind eyes bristling at his persistent attention.

“I thought you were going to help,” she breaks, setting the letter down gently with frustrated hands.

“Am I qualified to sort through the Enquirer?” He touches a folded paper in the box, using false reverence as an excuse to step closer. “Or can you point me to some sort of bullshit subtext interpretation certification?” He takes a notebook out of the box and starts skimming through it, carefully avoiding disturbing a century old folded corner on a page. “Some kind of supply manifesto? Doesn’t look like a big ship, maybe a private merchant?”

“On second thought, I don’t need your help,” she takes the notebook from him, dusty fingers grazing over his hand. Her eyes flick to his lips, almost a glare, and it would be funnier if it didn’t make the dingy room feel so much warmer.

“Sorry,” he says even though he isn’t, backing up a step and giving her what he hopes is an at least half-convincing apologetic smile, “I didn’t believe that you actually considered making fun of the Enquirer to be flirting. I had to check.”

“That’s not—what is your thing with visiting me at work anyway?” She huffs, sorting things into nonsense piles without reading them.

“You visit me at my work every night.”

“That’s because you bring your work to my apartment,” she says slowly like she’s disappointed she has to explain something so obvious to him.

“Here I was feeling flattered,” he shakes his head, letting her get back to reading before continuing, “I do have a reason to visit you though. I’m worried that too much time with Fishlegs might bring you to his side of the historic copier blood feud we have going on.”

She snorts, “so you came to annoy so much it shoves me in that direction, ok.”

“I was just thinking that it absolutely doesn’t bode well for me if you’re staying with him while,” he pauses, trying to think of a half-decent way to say this, “you know, your apartment is…while you’re waiting to see if—”

“If there’s a fourth murder,” she stands up straight and dares him to argue with her, “I’m not scared, or even if I am, I’m not going to run just because Fishlegs thinks I can’t take care of myself.”

“Who said anything about running?” Hiccup gestures at himself, “all I’m saying is that I know what it’s like to be constantly inconvenienced by where these murders keep happening. It makes sense to umm, lean on someone who gets that unique complication, I think. So if you need some place to stay because Eretson’s creeping you out by glowering at the chalk outline on your living room floor all day, I get that.” He waits for her to respond but she’s just staring at him, apparently confused, all of that righteous anger fading into something tired that makes him want to hug her. “I don’t have a fancy guest room with all the…I don’t know, little soaps and stuff that Fishlegs probably has but—” He yelps when she punches his arm, “what—”

“I said stop flirting with me while I’m working,” she tucks her hair behind her ear, “and inviting me to stay with you when you don’t have an extra bed is definitely flirting, you don’t need to double check that one.”

“Oh, I didn’t—I can see how you—not that I don’t want, I mean, I’ve finally had a little time away from murder to clear my head and you’re so—”

“Then what did you mean?” She asks the right question, bouncing him back to the root of the issue even as he’s still trying to swallow his foot.

“I don’t like the idea of you being involved in whatever’s going on more than you already are.” He reaches for her hand and she lets him, her stubborn expression falling slightly, “I hate feeling like I’ve involved you in this, I hate that you have to be my alibi, I—if anything else is going to happen, I want both of us, but you especially, to be far away from it.”

“I don’t think you have much say in how involved you are,” she says quietly and he hates that his heart stutters when he realizes that she’s worried about him. It shouldn’t make him happy, especially when he’s saying how much he hates that she’s involved, but it does anyway.

“That’s fair, given how this has gone so far, but digging a foxhole and hunkering down in your particular apartment right now doesn’t seem like a way to disentangle either of us.” He squeezes her hand and while she doesn’t back down, she seems to remember that it’s a thing she could be capable of, with much conscious effort and determination. “Plus, I was going to offer you Snotlout’s bed, I thought you’d really appreciate all of the Patriots posters and the signed football in a glass case—”

“No,” she laughs, shaking her head, “absolutely not.”

“Framed tickets from some big game—”

“Over my dead body.”

00000

“Gruff’s is open?” Snotlout sits bolt upright on the couch, jerking Hiccup out of his book. Viggo Grimborn Solved: The Admiral Haddock Connection is even better after Astrid returned it with comments, mostly half coherent swearing about how stupid it is on little blue sticky notes, because she wouldn’t write in any book, even one she thinks is this stupid.

“I can think of one really big reason that’s not possible,” Hiccup hunkers down further in his father’s chair, carefully holding a sticky note aside to read the words underneath it.

“Just got a text from Johnson, they just broke up a fight there, it’s totally open.”

“I don’t see how Gruff’s could be open, dude.” He’s halfway through a sentence when Snotlout snatches the book and grabs his wrist, yanking him unwilling and stumbling to his feet. “Give that back—”

“Astrid’s…not even dirty notes,” he wrinkles his nose in disgust, “will be here when we get back.”

“My back’s killing me, I don’t want to walk all the way down to Gruff’s just to find it predictably closed, as usually happens when bar owners are murdered.”

“Then get an Uber,” Snotlout is undeterred, tossing Hiccup’s shoes at him, “unless you spent all the money you made with those big-ass tours on some lame book or something.”

“I don’t know when I’ll be able to start tours again, this money might have to last a while.” Hiccup is glad that the original floor plan of 324 Harbor Road he ordered yesterday hasn’t arrived yet, even though it only looks expensive because it’s old paper. In reality, finding something that specific and having it shipped overnight would usually cost way more than the couple hundred dollars he spent on it.

“You could get a normal job—”

“Fine, I’ll come look at the locked front door of Gruff’s with you,” he starts putting on his shoes, “just leave the concept of a job out of it.”

So Hiccup hasn’t been having the easiest time of it lately and he spent some time trying to find the shift between his original holding pattern and the quick descending chaos of the last couple months. His mind immediately jumps to Astrid and her toothbrush and the midnight tour that entangled them in something bigger and more horrible than he could have imagined, but if he thinks a little deeper, his trouble started way before her.

Hiccup’s life took a turn for the dismal when Snotlout started having frequent opportunities to say ‘I told you so’.

Gruff’s is definitely open. If anything, it has more than its usual crowd and Hiccup spots a few people in Ripped Tavern shirts around a booth when they first step inside. Of course, Gruffnut’s murder would have caused a real increase in a certain kind of business, but as seedy as he was, Hiccup can’t see how he would have managed to take advantage of it.

When they finally make it through the crowd, there’s a split second where Hiccup thinks that Gruffnut has miraculously done exactly that, but then the doppelganger behind the bar tries to twirl a bottle like Tom Cruise and when it shatters on the floor, he breaks into an unmistakably authentic grin. In years of coming here, Hiccup never saw Gruffnut smile.

“If this is your bar, that’s your gin you just threw on the floor, idiot,” Ruffnut is leaning on the bar and pleading with who Hiccup obviously must accept is her brother, even though it’s still really creepy.

“I’ll get the hang of it,” Tuffnut assures, picking up another bottle and starting to throw it.

“If you’re just going to smash that, can I have it?” Snotlout tries, sliding onto a stool beside Ruffnut and holding out his hand.

“No,” Ruffnut chastises him, “at least pay for it.”

“Here you go,” Tuffnut sets it on the counter with a couple of shot glasses, “it’s on the house. I’ve always wanted to say that. I don’t know who calls a bar a house though, that’s never made sense to me, you can’t live in a bar.”

“That means that the business is eating the cost of the drink,” Ruff groans, but she doesn’t think twice about accepting a shot from Snotlout.

“Good, down with the business.” Tuffnut pours himself a shot out of the bottle and clinks it with Snotlout’s, “and the man and the establishment and—”

“Tuff, you are the business. That’s your money now.” Ruffnut points to an official looking piece of paper that was recently on the bad end of an attempted bartending trick involving blue curacao. “You have to sell this place.”

“Sell?” Hiccup sits down, leaning on the bar to relieve the aggravated ache in his lower back. Just leaning doesn’t do much and he accepts a shot from Snotlout, who seems to be doing more actual bartending than the person behind the bar. “When did you buy it?”

“Like five years ago, apparently,” Tuffnut shrugs, wiping the filthy bar with a rag and refilling a glass someone brings him. “Do I look cool or what?”

“Gruffnut put it in Tuff’s name,” Ruffnut tosses a shot glass at him and it misses, shattering on the floor, “look over here, Tuff, I mean it. Look at what that asshole did to your credit score.”

“Uh, you already showed me that, my credit score is perfect. Beautiful bastard had one more gift to give me.” He pauses to wipe a fake tear, absently glugging vodka into someone’s highball glass as they come up to the bar to order again.

“Um, can I get a well whisky, neat?” The would-be paying customer asks and Tuffnut rolls his eyes.

“Well, whisky is pretty neat, but this vodka is fancy.”

“How much?” They look dubiously at the mostly full glass of alcohol and Tuffnut shrugs.

“On the house.”

Hiccup reaches in front of Snotlout and grabs the piece of paper, a bank statement of some kind, and raises his eyebrow, “your credit score is 420?”

“Nice,” Snotlout holds his hand out for a high five and Tuffnut narrows his eyes.

“Aren’t you a cop?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” Tuffnut claps his hand to Snotlout’s over the bar and pours another sloppy round that Hiccup decides to sip rather than knock back all at once, “I didn’t know you guys were in on the code. Hip to the lingo, as it were.”

“Did you come with Astrid?” Ruffnut asks, looking genuinely concerned when Tuffnut makes sloppy change for a tray of beers and struggles to slam the register door shut.

“No,” Hiccup instantly wishes he’d changed his shirt or looked in a mirror before leaving. In his defense, he thought he was going to a bar that was closed due to murder, but that doesn’t matter now. “Is she coming?”

“She said she was on her way.”

Hiccup isn’t really used to panic. His first reaction to a problem is usually more along the lines of breaking it down or figuring it out. And he knows he doesn’t have proof, he doesn’t have anything but a gut feeling and the memory of feeling chilled to the bone when Grisly looked at Astrid at the archives, but thinking of her walking alone still makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

“How long ago?” He tries to sound buoyantly curious but Ruffnut sees through it.

“A little early to be keeping tabs, isn’t it? You two have been on like one date.”

“He was reading her dorky little notes in his book all afternoon,” Snotlout snorts, “he’s probably wondering if he has time to go get it so they can discuss.” The last word is in Snotlout’s favorite, completely inaccurate nasal tone and Hiccup rolls his eyes.

“They’re over here!” Tuffnut shouts in the vague direction of the door from the other end of the bar, all while pouring beer and spilling most of it on the floor when he uses a full glass to point towards Hiccup.

“So it’s true,” Astrid fights her way through the crowd a second later, catching herself on Hiccup’s shoulder when someone jostles her, “this is exactly what I would have guessed Tuffnut playing bartender would look like.”

“I’m winning bartender, thanks,” he gestures at the shelves behind him, “or I will be when I figure out how to reach the bottles on the top shelf.”

“Keep giving those out for free,” Snotlout nods and Tuffnut points at him.

“Good call, why should I use storage I can’t even reach?” He turns around and starts staring at the liquor shelves, “does not spark joy…”

“Does he know that’s all his now?” Astrid leans in close enough to ask Hiccup in particular, her breath cool against his ear in the over-crowded bar.

“There have been attempts to explain it to him, I don’t think any have sunk in.” He laughs and she leans a little harder on his shoulder, “so Gruff had the bar in Tuffnut’s name?”

“Apparently,” she shifts, lips nearly against his ear when she speaks again, “a letter showed up at the twins apartment earlier with no return address and a copy of the deed inside.”

“No return address?” Hiccup frowns and turns to face her, momentarily preoccupied by the mystery enough to fend off being overwhelmed by her proximity and the tickle of her hair against his cheek, “did you recognize the handwriting?”

“It wasn’t Comic Sans,” her smile is tight and not quite comforting, teasing and oddly protective at the same time. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

“Not in so many words.” He scrambles when Astrid half falls into his lap, half catching her and flinching when she pushes herself back upright with a hand on his head.

“Snotlout, oh my god,” she snaps and Hiccup can hear Snotlout rolling his eyes.

“I’m just trying to hand you a shot, get the rest of the way onto Hiccup’s lap if you’re so clumsy.”

“I’m not clumsy,” she fixes her shirt but keeps her elbow on Hiccup’s shoulder, “and it’s Wednesday, you know that, right?”

“We’re celebrating the fact that this bar doesn’t suck anymore without Gruffnut being a dick to cops,” he shoves a shot into her hand and half of it sloshes onto Hiccup’s leg, thankfully cooling the idea of Astrid on his lap. He’s doubly thankful for the sudden chill when she shifts behind him to let someone through, her fingernails almost habitually raking across the nape of his neck.

She pauses and he wonders if she caught his shiver, but then an unmistakably familiar voice attached to partially familiar biceps next to them announces itself.

“What do you mean Gruffnut Thorston didn’t get along with the police?” Eretson leans on the bar, almost unrecognizable in a black tee-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. Almost, except for the absolutely familiar, business-like scowl he’s directing at Snotlout.

“Oh come on,” Snotlout throws his head back but still manages to slap Tuffnut’s hand when he sets a free high ball glass of something from the top shelf in front of Eretson, “don’t serve him—“

“This is Gruffnut Thorston’s bar, isn’t it?” Eretson shakes his head and does a double-take when he catches sight of Astrid out of the corner of his eye. “And you’re here.” He looks at Hiccup and then pans past Tuffnut to Ruffnut on Snotlout’s other side, “you’re all here.”

“I am,” Ruffnut nods, “but your sleeves aren’t, and I have to ask, are those guns standard issue?”

“Come on,” Snotlout groans, spinning on his seat to face Eretson and nearly jabbing him in the chest with an intentional but thankfully hesitant finger. “What are you doing here?”

“Some friends invited me,” Eretson sounds almost bashful, like he’s not supposed to tell suspects that he has friends, and maybe he’s not. That sounds like the kind of protocol Snotlout wouldn’t mention breaking.

“Now you’re bragging about having friends—“ Snotlout starts but Eretson stops him with a clap on the shoulder firm enough to at least attempt to anchor him back to his sensibility, that is if he had any.

“Wait, how do you all know each other?”

The pause is long enough that the initial awkward silence fades back into the indistinguishable din of the crowded bar and Hiccup clears his throat.

“So, again, I gave a Viggo Grimborn tour to Astrid’s apartment and Snotlout is my cousin and at some point he went by Astrid’s place and met Ruffnut and—“

“Shut up,” Snotlout hisses, kicking Hiccup a little too hard in the shin. His left shin. The metallic ringing echoes in Hiccup’s ears and he waits for Eretson to hear it. For the air in the room to shatter.

“My office. Eight o’clock tomorrow. Be on time or I’ll send officers to collect you.” Eretson slaps the bar and turns around, disappearing back into the crowd.

#ripped #httyd fic #hiccstrid #modern au #serial killer tour guide au #loving how fishlegs and hiccup can't get along #loving bartender tuffnut #loving exasperated coplout #and the fact that Eretson can't relax for five goddamned minutes

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tysonrunningfox · 4 years

Text

Ripped: Part 28

All that’s left is an epilogue, my dudes, my pals, and I’m so incredibly happy that anyone has hung in until now.

AO3

“What exactly happened?” Snotlout asks, looking more alive than Hiccup feels, leaning his elbows on a surprisingly clean table at what still claims to be Gruff’s bar.

“We’ve told you like ten times,” Hiccup leans his head on his hand, swirling the glass of the clear alcohol he doesn’t really trust and wishing he were somewhere else.

“Since when have you denied an excuse to tell some long-winded story?” Snotlout rolls his eyes and Astrid nods, quietly agreeing even though her eyes are worried.

“It’s not a long story.” Hiccup understands the impulse to celebrate, but given that he’s the one who just got out of jail, shouldn’t he get to dictate what constitutes that celebration? Shouldn’t his so-called friends have realized that his idea of a celebration might be less ‘bar’ and more ‘shower and nap and food that wasn’t squeezed out of a tube by someone with a face tattoo wearing a hairnet’?

“I want to hear it again,” Snotlout clasps his hands together in a pleading, annoying way that makes Hiccup roll his eyes.

“I hit Grisly,” Astrid tries and fails to bite back an almost shy, self-congratulatory smile, “in the face, with an umbrella. I think I broke his nose.”

“I think you broke his nose when you kneed him in the face.” As much as he wants to go home, Hiccup will tell his half of the story all day if it keeps making Astrid smile like that, buoyant in a way he doesn’t think he’s ever seen her. Flashes of it maybe, under his sheets on that night he can’t think of without aching, but never this constant, like the weight she’s had on her shoulders has been banished to a cell where he belongs.

“Right, I hit him with an umbrella, then kneed him in the face, then shoved him into a wall.” She nods, scooting closer on the booth bench when Ruffnut slides in beside her.

Her leg is warm against his and her hand is casual on his thigh, thumb tracing the seam of the shitty, too-big jeans they gave him when they took the jumpsuit back. He shivers at the contact, barely resisting the urge to lean his cheek against the top of her head. He doesn’t think she’d stop him or anything, it just feels like something he wants to be private.

Everything about her makes him want to be alone, to have her all to himself instead of sharing her with everyone while he paces an anxious victory lap in his tour de force of keeping his face straight for over a week. As lonely as he was in jail, he doesn’t want to show it yet, not when everything is still so fresh and chaotic and unbelievable. But he wouldn’t have to act around Astrid, couldn’t even choose to. There’s no debate about letting her in because she’s already there, behind his defenses, holding them up even when he crumbles.

“I bet he can pull off the broken nose though,” Ruffnut’s assertion pulls him back into the conversation and he turns slightly to see her better, his arm sliding around Astrid’s shoulders. “What? Why are you all looking at me like that?”

“He was going to kill us, Ruff, I don’t care what his nose looks like,” Astrid scoffs.

“I’m not saying I care, I’m just saying I don’t mind a guy who looks a little dangerous.”

“Well he is that, if your definition of ‘a little dangerous’ means someone who killed at least four people, including your cousin, and tried to kill three others.” Hiccup can’t believe the last few months fit in a sentence.

Well. Two sentences. One compound and twisting and the other short and to the point. The very big, life changing point, but it’s a straight three word shot to get there.

Three words that he said, out loud, that Astrid didn’t ever respond to, because a sociopathic soon-to-be punching bag interrupted the moment. And every moment since has been filled with questioning and paperwork and friends who he just doesn’t want to perform for right now when all the tension is melting out of his back and leaving it a sore mess of frayed nerves.

“This is why we didn’t work out, Hiccup,” Ruffnut tuts and shakes her head, patting Hiccup’s hand on Astrid’s shoulder, “you’re too literal.”

“You married Mr. Benson for his money and it’s about time you admit that to yourself. It’s not my fault that we were lying, and I don’t have any money.” Hiccup snorts, glad to talk about something other than jail, even if Grisly’s face flits through the story like he’ll surely do in Hiccup’s nightmares.

“At least I didn’t have to drag out the divorce by milking you for alimony,” Ruff says, “the annulment because you wouldn’t put out is much quicker.”

“Too bad, I know a good lawyer. Maybe I could have ended up with alimony.” Hiccup smiles when Astrid looks up at him, ponytail tickling his arm. “Don’t worry, the marriage was a fraud anyway, I only made Mr. Benson up to launder money.”

“Yeah, and it was just my attempt to burn through Snotlout’s precious friend-group,” Ruffnut laughs as she elbows Astrid in the ribs, “you could be next, babe, I like a girl with a bludgeon.”

“Probably not the day to get under Astrid’s skin, Ruff, she’s not pulling her punches,” Snotlout warns, “I think there’s an umbrella rack by the door.”

“I’ll go hide it,” Ruffnut leaves but Astrid doesn’t move except to lean forward and pluck Hiccup’s glass from his hand, continuing his mindless swirling.

“That’s not entirely true,” Astrid teases Snotlout, eyebrow raised, “I’m currently holding what? Sixty-five punches for a later date.”

“Sixty-eight,” he corrects, unusually solemn. “Precisely, I could check Heather’s tally, if you want—”

“That’s fine, I guess I’ll trust you.” She takes a sip of Hiccup’s drink before turning to look at him, “do you not trust Tuffnut’s sudden moonshine making abilities?” She asks, mischievous enough to offset the tired circles under her eyes.

“I’m confused enough about today without the help of any mind-altering substances.” He’s struck again with the urge to leave, to go somewhere quiet where things make sense and he can hug her until the room stops spinning. Maybe longer, if she doesn’t have anywhere to be.

“What part are you confused about?” Snotlout’s eyes brighten. “Because we could go through it again, piece it together, I’d be happy to help.”

“You just want to hear about how I hit Grisly again.” Astrid’s fake flippant tone fails when she smiles, victorious like the night she took over his tour, his too big hat tipped sideways on her head.

“What would happen to my psych profile if I admitted that it was kind of hot?” Hiccup’s filter slips ever so slightly, exhausted from its constant engagement, and Astrid shakes her head and laughs, looking at him like she’s wondering if he hit his head.

“Nothing good,” a tired British voice answers and Eretson appears, sitting heavily on the booth bench beside Snotlout and setting a familiar hat on the table, “don’t worry though, it’s shredded. Grisly did his best to clean up before he went to see you.”

“Is that…” Hiccup reaches for the hat but pauses, remembering the last place he saw it and curling his hand into a fist. “Isn’t it evidence?”

“Even Berk PD doesn’t need it with the way Grisly’s talking,” Eretson takes Snotlout’s glass and pounds it back in one long gulp. He’s not wearing his usual tie and his sleeves are pushed up, and Hiccup wonders if he’s finally going to catch a glimpse of the man off duty.

“Hey!” Snotlout protests but Eretson ignores him, pointing at Hiccup’s barely touched drink in Astrid’s hand.

“Um, be my guest.”

“Why is it that serial killers always want to tell you what they do to the bodies?” Eretson asks the room at large before taking a slightly more measured sip. “It’s never good.”

Hiccup is almost as shocked by the authenticity of his laugh as Astrid is, pulling away from his side enough to look up at him with obvious relief, “What? No stories of respectful funeral services? I always pictured Grisly as a ‘be the undertaker you wish to see in the world’ type.”

“We’re just ignoring the fact that Eret stole evidence? If that’s even your real name,” Snotlout narrows his eyes and Eretson does his best to ignore him, nudging the hat in Hiccup’s direction.

“I thought you might want it back, seems like it has history.”

“A gory history,” Hiccup frowns but Astrid takes the hat carefully by its brim and slides it to him.

“Well, so do we.” She nudges him with her elbow and everyone else’s eyes bore into him like more invasive searches while ‘I love you’ pounds on the gate, hatching another escape plan.

“You’re right. Again.” He clears his throat and if she gets the reference, she doesn’t show it, “I’ll get it disinfected. And dry cleaned. And sterilized.”

“You know, I think I spent all this time being jealous of you because you’re tall and a detective and you have abs and talk like you’re on Downton Abbey, but you’ve actually just been a klepto waiting to steal evidence.” Snotlout laughs to himself, sitting up a little straighter.

“And to think, if you hadn’t gotten shot, I’d still be following the rules.”

“You’re blaming me?” Snotlout looks at Eretson a too long second, his eyes darting down to the open button where the other man’s tie usually is. “Well that’s typical.”

“Can I steal you another drink?” Eretson picks up both empty glasses and Snotlout crosses his arms, suddenly flustered.

“Uh yeah, you better, since you drank my other one.” He brushes Eretson off and then calls after him, “also, you can’t steal them, they’re free because the bartender is an idiot.”

“I prefer guru!” Tuffnut jumps away from the still, which is suddenly emitting an alarming amount of steam, “or alchemist.”

“It’s really just a chemical reaction…” Fishlegs explains as he pours a jar into the two glasses.

Everyone else is having fun. Maybe they wouldn’t notice if Hiccup just slipped out and looked into whether he could bribe an Uber Eats driver to deliver the food directly to his bedroom door. It’s not like there’s a serial killer out there anymore, Berk isn’t exactly California in the seventies. Grisly was a rare occurrence.

“I’ll get the fire extinguisher,” Tuffnut disappears into the back room and Fishlegs walks over to lean on the edge of the table, thinking for a second before holding out his hand.

Hiccup stares at it before shaking it, awkward with the realization that he was so used to being surrounded by fellow inmates and guards who hated him that he forgot that Fishlegs’ dislike was an exception.

“Not to be a downer,” Fishlegs starts and Astrid glares at him.

“Then don’t.”

“I’m just wondering what comes next,” he looks at Astrid like a worried older brother she didn’t ask for, moustache radiating concern, “a trial for impersonating a police officer to break into a jail.” He flicks the side of Hiccup’s hat and his tone turns judgmental, “a tour of the compiled murderous history of the city.”

“No, I—I’ve had enough murder for multiple lifetimes,” Hiccup insists, wondering randomly if anyone has ever told Fishlegs that he has the uncanny aura of a high school guidance counselor.

Hiccup’s high school guidance counselor didn’t like him either. He should be glad that Fishlegs doesn’t get to see his shredded psych evaluation.

“And no one talked to me about the off-label badge use,” Astrid shrugs at Eretson when he sits back down, “they seemed pretty happy to get us out of there, honestly.”

“That’s an understatement,” Eretson’s chuckle is cynical, free of any veneer, “they spent all their quarterly budget hiring civilian security guards and their serial killing commander, they couldn’t afford for you to sue them.”

“I can’t afford to sue them,” Hiccup waves off what he assumes is Eretson’s offer as soon as he opens his mouth, “mentally. I can’t believe that somehow this is over, but I need it to be over. I know I’ll have to be a witness later but I just…”

Running out of words is an uncomfortable feeling that he has no interest in getting used to. It’s not even that he’s out of words, he can see himself finishing the sentence in his head and the end of it adds nothing. It’s nothing he hasn’t said before, it’s nothing he’s not communicating now with his slumped shoulders and surely exhausted expression.

Astrid finds his hand and squeezes it, “I think it’s fitting. Sometimes modern bureaucratic problems require medieval solutions.”

He loves her. Those are words he wants to say a thousand times and he doesn’t doubt that every time he does, they’ll mean something different. More. Building on each other in ways he doesn’t even understand yet.

“While there is evidence of umbrellas existing prior to the middle ages, the steel ribbed model that did so much damage wasn’t invented until the seventeen-hundreds at the earliest,” Fishlegs says it like a joke and Snotlout groans.

“I can’t do it, I can’t spend anymore time with nerds.” He catches himself, “not that Astrid is a nerd. I’m only calling Fishlegs a nerd, for the tally.”

“I would have used a sword if I had one,” Astrid thinks seriously on the problem for a second, forehead furrowed as she taps her finger on her chin, “a battle axe, maybe.”

“I think a sword is customary for the knight in shining armor rescuing the damsel in distress from the tower,” Eretson smirks and takes a self-congratulatory sip of his drink when Hiccup’s mouth falls open.

“Now, you decide to be funny? I tried to get you to lighten up for days while I was in jail, but now that everything is miraculously going to be ok, you reveal that you’re funny?” Hiccup shakes his head, “Snotlout, maybe you were right about this guy.”

“Right that he’s an asshole or right that he’s a tall detective with abs who talks like he’s on Downton Abbey?” Snotlout checks and Eretson can’t quite hide his blush this time, which only makes Snotlout smile wider.

“First one.”

“You’ve been Princess Hiccup for two seconds and you’re already making decrees that people are assholes,” Snotlout grins at the new nickname and Hiccup wants to hide under the table, “that took no time at all to go to your head.”

“When you’re a princess, you have to cling to the power that you can,” Hiccup tightens his arm around Astrid, resolving to take her with him if the urge to flee entirely overwhelms, “now I’ve got to hope that my knight in shining armor doesn’t lock me in another tower to ravish me, or something.”

“My tower,” Astrid’s face falls, eyes suddenly wide and serious as she folds her hands on the table, expression frozen like she just got very bad news.

“I mean you don’t have to ravish me, if you don’t want, I was just pointing out that I’m not familiar with the existence of any Distressed Damsel consent laws or—”

“I can’t lock you in a tower because someone got murdered at my apartment. Shit. I was so focused on,” she waves at him in a distracted, distressed way, “that I forgot I don’t have anywhere to live that’s not a recent crime scene. I bet my stuff is covered in blood—”

“It is.” Hiccup mumbles, wincing at the memory.

“I’m never going to get my deposit back.” She leans her head on her hands and Hiccup rubs the sudden, stressed knot in her shoulder.

“I’ll talk to Gobber for you.”

“You can move in with us,” Snotlout offers, too blunt to be anything but sincere. Almost annoyed, like he’s frustrated that he has to be the one to suggest such obvious things.

“What?” Hiccup and Astrid ask simultaneously and Fishlegs coughs.

“I mean if you still need my guest room—”

“She doesn’t need the guest room, Fishface,” Snotlout brushes him off, “she can move in with us. We have a three-bedroom place, if she doesn’t want to stay with Hiccup, he can sleep on his weird desk.” He elbows Eretson to bring him into a joke, “she’d probably join him though—”

“Sixty-nine!” Astrid shouts, face red and glare sharper than the sword she wished for.

“Do you need the pants back?” Tuffnut asks from the back room and Snotlout snickers.

Hiccup’s whiplash is feeling more and more like a stroke.

“I wasn’t asking for details…”

“No, I’m going to hit you sixty-nine times—you planned that.” She crosses her arms, “that’s why you were so nice—that’s why you asked me about football—”

“Yeah,” he holds his hand up to Eretson for a high five and Astrid clears her throat. “The Pats are the best, by the way. God, not saying that was so hard, but worth it.”

“If you’re good enough for high fives, I can probably start knocking that tally down…” She rolls up her sleeves and threatens and Hiccup remembers waking up with his head on Astrid’s lap, casual banter bouncing around and making the hospital room feel like home.

And he loves her, and it’d be perfect in a way that could almost make up for everything that’s happened. And he loves her, and she didn’t have a chance to respond.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” He blurts at Snotlout and points behind him towards the front door, “alone?”

“Why can’t she move in with us? I love her.” He says it so easily and Hiccup feels like his eyes might bug out of his head.

“Now? Can I talk to you alone, now?”

Something about his tone, probably the fact he sounds crazy, keeps anyone from saying anything as they all unload from the booth to let him and Snotlout out. The cool evening breeze is wonderful against the back of Hiccup’s neck, even now when he’s in the middle of freaking out, and he takes a deep breath, trying to let the freedom quell the panic.

“What’s your problem?” Snotlout throws his arms up and Hiccup glares at him.

“What’s my problem?” He shakes his head, “you can’t just ask my—” Girlfriend? They haven’t agreed on that. Savior? As much as he wants her to ravish him, he’s not actually her princess and this is the twenty-first century. Reason he’s alive? That’s doesn’t have anything to do with their living situation. “You can’t just ask Astrid to move in with you like—”

“Us, I said us,” Snotlout corrects.

“That’s supposed to be my job and I would have asked you first and—”

“Do you not want her to?” Snotlout frowns, holding his hands up in a tentative surrender, “dude, I legitimately thought it was going that direction, you can’t go two seconds without staring at her with stupid lovey-dovey eyes, so I just figured—”

“I want her to. I—more than—I was thinking about it before the whole jail thing but—” He exhales, letting himself remember that morning, how right it felt, “and you can’t just go around telling her that you love her—”

“Uh, I do love her, cuz,” Snotlout points at his shoulder, “some creepy asshole tried to kill me, and she broke his face. And she saved your idiot life in the process.” He backhands Hiccup’s chest a little too hard and Hiccup realizes he hasn’t even considered that Snotlout might feel the same about losing him as he did about losing Snotlout, “so yeah, I kind of love her. I think she should probably get a medal or a plaque or something.”

Hiccup sighs and rubs his hand over his face, “I love you too. And I love her—”

“Different ways, I hope.”

“Couldn’t be more different.” He tries to shove his jumbled brain into some kind of order, before the door opens behind Snotlout and Astrid steps out, halfway through putting his borrowed jacket on.

She’s wearing his hat.

“Tuff helped me spray it down with one-hundred-eighty-seven proof alcohol. The inside too. I think that counts as disinfecting it.”

“Good.” He swallows hard, wondering for the thousandth time today if he’s dreaming and he’s going to wake up uncomfortable on that cot in his cell. Or worse, wake up at four in the afternoon at home, only to realize that none of this happened and he never met her.

“Do you want to get out of here?” She asks, magical words in her magic voice, laced with that magic understanding she seems to have of his brain and soul, and he nods so fast that his back twinges.

“I’ll see you at home,” Snotlout points at Astrid, “and maybe you also, potential roomie, guard my boy on the way there?”

“That was the plan,” her lips twitch, “I’ll have to do without my umbrella, but I think I’ll manage.”

“You don’t have to decide now,” Hiccup placates as soon as Snotlout is back inside, but Astrid seems relatively unperturbed. Maybe after all of this, she’s just imperturbable.

He wishes he felt that way. At all. He feels like he could be disrupted by an unexpected pebble in his path.

“Where to?” She takes a couple of backwards steps ahead of him, like she’s giving him a tour that makes him use fresh eyes to take in a street he’s seen a hundred times before.

Home. He wants to go home. He wants his bed and his sheets and her and he wants it to be her home too. It won’t feel like home without her and he loves her, and he needs to make sure she knows that before he makes any plans.

If he has another serious conversation today, he’ll scream.

“I don’t know.” He shoves his hands in too big pockets, Fishlegs’ question rattling around his head. What comes next?

It was easy to think about the next few months when they’d been taken from him, but now, looking at Astrid starting some tour to the future wearing their past on her head, ears sticking out under the weight of the brim, he can’t make himself focus on anything but her. Even if he’s lost, he’s not adrift, because his anchor is safely held in her competent, decisive grip.

“You seemed a little…antsy in there.”

“You caught that, huh?”

“Do you want to talk about it?” She falls back into step beside him, looking up from under the black brim with endlessly deep blue eyes and his heart thuds out of rhythm.

“No, not at all.” He runs his hand through his hair and can smell the anti-septic of cheap jail shampoo, “I want a shower and I’m so tired that I want a nap, but I’m way too keyed up to take one. I really want pizza, but I don’t want to have to talk to anyone to get it. I want to be alone, but I want you to be there—” He pulls up short, “Princess Hiccup is demanding, apparently.”

“Not particularly,” she grabs his hand to get him walking again, her fingers warm steel and comfort, “your place then. I think that the people making minimum wage at Pizza Hut wouldn’t be too happy if you showered in the sink while not talking to them.”

His place. Like she’s willing to be there, like she understands how he needs to be alone, but he’d be miserable if she wasn’t there. Even if she is there, it still counts as being alone, and he’s never felt like that about anyone.

“Astrid, I…” There’s so much he wants to say and so much he wants to say later, so he settles on a question, squeezing her hand so she’ll look at him. “How does Snotlout know about um, well, my desk?”

“Well,” she starts, then her face falls, instantly distraught in a way he knows instinctively means that Grisly flitted across her thoughts.

“I’m sorry—”

“It’s a valid question—”

“I wish I hadn’t asked,” he rubs his face again, “or I wish I hadn’t asked now, because I’ve been in jail and I don’t want to think about it, or about what I missed, or about what happened. Not right now.”

“I don’t want to think about how Snotlout knows about your desk.” She wrinkles her nose, flushing when she says ‘desk’ and he doesn’t think about it, his feet follow a path that goes with the hat, dragging her with him into an alley between two planes of century old brick. “What are you doing?”

“Shortcut.”

“Wait,” she stops just within the shadow of the buildings, yanking on his arm with all that unexpected strength, and when he turns around, she’s astonished and half smiling.

“What?” The hat is crooked, and he can’t be conflicted how he feels about it when she’s laughing and pressing an intentional finger against his chest.

“You almost went to jail for being the Grimborn copycat, but you’re not—”

“I know that,” he catches the hand she’s poking him with, folding in her pointer finger before kissing her knuckles.

“You’re the prostitute.”

“You lost me.”

“If Grisly was the Grimborn copycat, and you’re the one lured into dark creepy alleys for the promise of a few bucks to pay your bills, then you aren’t the damsel in distress, you’re the prostitute taken advantage of by the dastardly fiend.” She whispers the last few words and it’s perfect, it’s Grisly reduced to an anecdote or a setup.

“What does that make you?” He lets go of her hand to brush her hair behind her ear, and he hasn’t kissed her because of cops and audiences and neither of those are here now, in an alley so like the one where she first stood on a grate and refused to enjoy his tour. “No, no, I’ve got it. You solved it.”

“Solved what?” She cocks her head, cheek pressing into his palm, and his other hand finds her waist as her back meets the wall and the hat tips forward over her eyes. She takes it off and sets it in place on his head, nudging it straight with a satisfied smile as his thumb drags across the corner of her mouth. “Please get to the point.”

She relaxes when he kisses her, arms wrapping around his neck, simple and charged when his knuckles scrape against kiln-fired brick. It’s the right kind of distraction, the jumble in his head pushed aside for something better and more important. More permanent.

“You solved Grimborn,” he mumbles against her cheek, kissing down her jaw and shuddering when her warm hand slides under the back of his itchy prison lost and found tee-shirt.

“What?” She pushes him back an inch with a hand on his chest and frowns, eyes too focused behind the daze. When he tries to kiss her again, she repeats the question, eyes flicking to his hat as she hooks her heel around his.

“As you said, I’m the prostitute, easily lured and cornered. You caught the murderer.” He’s too close not to kiss her again, especially when the brim of his hat nudges against her forehead and she smiles, momentarily content in the victory. It’s about time this happened in one of the alleys that still center him, even when the Grimborn lure is dissolved. “You solved it.”

“I didn’t…” She trails off when he runs a hand down her thigh, tugging it against his as he kisses her pulse, “it’s not solving—”

“It’s good enough for me,” he pulls back enough to brush his nose across hers before meeting her eyes, the weight of the last serious thing he can’t ignore sitting heavy in his chest, “your apartment sucked.”

“What?”

“Condo of eighteen-eighty-three, mass-produced, no character, remodeled by a renegade arcade enthusiast on a budget in the early nineties,” he pauses to rebuild his drive, lips pressed against hers as his hand cradles the back of her head, “my place on the other hand…” He gets distracted by soft hair tickling his forehead and the way her fingers curl in his hair, displacing the hat, “original hardwood floors. Towel warmer. Crown molding.”

“Are you asking me to move in with you?” She rakes her fingernails through is beard when she gets him far enough away to read his face. She has hat-head.

He can’t breathe.

“I meant what I said,” he swallows, “in jail before—I love you.”

The weight off his chest lands on his foot and he freezes, feeling her heavy breathing against his front and her fingers frozen in his hair at the nape of his neck.

“It’s too soon.” She says it like she’s reading it off of a quiz on a website that didn’t give her the answer she wanted. “You can’t say that this soon.”

“I just did,” he tries to smile, “what rule am I breaking this time?”

His experience in evading conviction makes him hope it’s closer to trespassing than murder.

“You don’t know?” She tries for chastising but it’s hard to take her seriously when her warm hand finds his side as she stands up straight, putting some space between her back and the wall even if she doesn’t expand the space between them. “You don’t ask someone to move in with you after what? One date?”

“Wait, all those times you saved my life or my sanity don’t count as dates?” He fakes shock, taking her hand and starting towards his apartment again.

“I’ve saved your life once,” she allows, bumping her shoulder against his, “doesn’t exactly increase the total that much.”

“Oh no, you’ve saved it at least twice, probably more. What do you think would have happened to me if you weren’t there when Fishlegs caught me with a broken copier for a second time?”

“You wouldn’t have broken the copier without my help.”

“You don’t know that.” He pulls her onto the sidewalk through a small gap around a dumpster, his front door half a block down the road pulling him towards it like a gravitational beacon. Shower. Astrid. Food. Astrid. Bed. Astrid. “You don’t have to decide now, I just…wanted you to know how I felt about it.”

“Which, just to make sure we’re on the same page, you feel that I’m personally offending you by living in a place without crown molding.” She jokes even as her eyes scan his face, probably looking for some sign that he’s offended by her response, as impossible as that would be with her holding his hand. “I feel like…it’s too soon but if you can afford it on your meager prostitution income, I could definitely afford it.”

“That’s how it is?” He laughs, refusing to let go of her as his key slides into the front door and turns with a click that resonates in his bones. “You’re not wrong, but do you have to rub it in now?”

“And I feel like if I look away from you for a second, you’re going to disappear, and I don’t even want to think about going through that again.”

“I don’t want to think either,” he opens the second door and his dad’s old, dusty chair greets him like an envoy promising safety. When Astrid locks the door, he can breathe again fully, the quiet making room for him to feel how empty his chest has been, how his hands burn when he looks at her. “I don’t know the rules behind the knight locking the damsel back in their own tower.”

“Already looking for more rules to break?” She takes the hat off of his head and hangs it on the rack by the door, exactly where it goes, like she’s belonged here all along.

“Mostly wondering who retains ravishing privileges in this situation,” he helps her shrug out of his borrowed jacket and tosses it onto the couch, clutter the last thing on his mind.

“Where does that even fit in the shower, nap, not nap, pizza schedule?”

“Now,” his voice surprises him, deeper than he expected, and he clears his throat as he pulls her to him, hands sliding down to her hips, “ideally, if you think we can squeeze it in.”

“Are you on a tight schedule I don’t know about?” She wraps her arms around his neck and kisses his cheek, cocking her head when he nods.

Before, when a package sent him skidding off kilter, he wasn’t ready to move forward, to clutch at the happiness he could instead of dwelling on the possible bad. But holding on so tight is what got him in trouble, it’s what led him further and further into someone’s trap, away from the path he wants to be on. He could talk all night about the last week in hell, but it wouldn’t make him feel better the way that taking a break from the obstacle course inside his head would.

“Very tight schedule,” he starts walking backwards, tripping over the edge of the rug and catching himself on the arm of the couch. “Might have to multi-task.”

“Hiccup,” she laughs, taking a step away from him to rely on her own obviously better balance, “it’s been a long day—”

“It’s been a long week, stuck in my head all day with all my worst-case scenarios.” He continues to pull her with him towards the bathroom, “right now I just want you to help me stop smelling like jail and to start out this new leaf on the right foot.”

“How else would you do it?” She relaxes, all trepidation gone as she tugs his too big, itchy shirt up his chest, getting it over his head as he fumbles the door open.

“Funny—”

She cuts off his not quite complaint with a kiss, her hands dragging up and down his chest in a pattern like she’s assessing him for damage. Her fingers practically shock him with warmth after so long in practical isolation and he pulls her shirt up, sighing at more of her skin against his. She laughs into his mouth as she tugs on the waistband of his jeans against the cheap belt bunching them across his hips.

“Whose pants did you steal?”

“It was all they had,” he takes off his own belt and the oversized pants fall to his knees before he realizes he’s still in his shoes and sits back on the toilet to deal with his leg.

“I figured you’d be done with communal showers,” she locks the bathroom door before taking her own shoes off and stripping easily, curious eyes flicking only once to the red marks on his shin when his leg drops to the floor.

“I’m not really ready to take my eyes off you either,” he shrugs, grinning when the words make her blush even as she looks around the bathroom, efficient even in her embarrassment.

“How do we do this?” She asks after a second, gesturing simply at his leg as she opens the shower door and turns on the water, steam billowing towards the ceiling.

“The bench should work.” He doesn’t know where his crutch is, doesn’t know anything except it feels right when she touches him, fingers sure against his back as she helps him to the bench and sits unceremoniously across his lap.

And seeing her through bars and across fraught tables covered in paperwork, after being surrounded by their friends and curbed by outside world, she’s finally close enough to feel real. She kisses him, combing her fingers through his hair and letting the shower water soak into it as he pulls her impossibly closer, one hand on her hip and the other sliding up her stomach to trace the curve under her breast.

She shivers even though the water is on the cusp of too hot and he hums into the kiss before breaking it, mumbling against her wet jaw.

“Something’s different.”

“You’ve had even less sleep this time?” She swipes a gentle thumb under his eye and stands just long enough to straddle him, knees squeezing his hips as his back slips down slightly against the wet wall.

“That’s not it,” he groans when she grinds against him, hand darting down to wrap around him. And after so long in his head, ignoring uncomfortable situations to the best of his ability, it’s almost too much, his head falling back against the tile as his fingers dig into her hips.

“Is this it?” She kisses his neck, hand moving slowly, teeth grazing his earlobe when he catches her wrist to stop her. “I thought you were in a hurry,” she teases, breath hitching when he slides his hand around to her inner thigh, fingers brushing between her legs.

“No, it’s just that I don’t have any old books in my bathroom for you.” He kisses down to her collarbone as he touches her, and her sound of exasperation is half-hearted as she clings to his shoulders. “Can we still do this, or do I need to install a humidity-controlled bookcase under the sink?”

“The respect for climate control,” she stutters, biting her lip when his finger slips inside, “is kind of hot.”

“Yeah?” He laughs into her neck, pulling her closer with a hand between her shoulder-blades and adding a second finger to the first. “Oh wait, that’s not true either, there’s a soggy magazine in here somewhere to read when my phone dies.”

“What magazine?” She asks, grinding down against his fingers, breath cool on his forehead.

“Highlights.” He twists his fingers, thumb searching for her clit.

“That works.” She moans under her breath when he finds it and he focuses on the sound to keep from shaking, this much good after all that bad making him lightheaded.

“I already did the maze though.”

“No,” she fakes miserable as best she can while rocking against his hand, fingers wrapping around him again and stroking, “that ruins it.”

The door rattles and they both jump, his arms wrapping around her back and pulling her as close as he can, like he could somehow protect her, one-legged and tractionless. As if she needs his protection, she’d probably bludgeon the intruder with the toilet tank lid, or something, and he’d be stuck helpless again.

“Oh, are you guys in there?” Snotlout’s voice is muffled through the door and Astrid hides in Hiccup’s shoulder, arms crossed self-conscious across her chest.

“Uh, can you go away?” Hiccup tries, rubbing her back and repositioning in an attempt to wake up an ass-cheek that he hadn’t realized had fallen asleep.

“It’s just you?” Snotlout yanks at the door again, “let me in, I have to pee.”

“No?” It comes out as a question and he clears his throat, trying again as Astrid shifts, the water suddenly hitting his thigh instead of her back. “No.”

“Come on, I just have to pee, I’ll pee in the sink—”

“If you’re planning on peeing in the sink, just pee in the kitchen sink,” Hiccup growls back and Astrid sits up straight, hands on his shoulders for stability as she looks disgusted between him and the door.

“No! Just hold it, no one is peeing in any sink!”

“Astrid’s in there?” Snotlout snickers, but she’s too indignant to be embarrassed now, eyes on fire as she responds.

“I’m moving in with people who pee in the sink?”

“It all goes down the same drain,” Snotlout’s justification barely registers as Hiccup looks wide-eyed at her.

“You’re moving in?” He whispers, not trusting the words to be louder.

“You offered,” she pushes a strand of wet hair away from her face and he kisses her, hands on her face, fingers curling in wet hair and holding her close.

Snotlout says something he doesn’t hear, an unwelcome grunt from an outside world he doesn’t care about and he breaks the kiss just long enough to bark back.

“Go away!”

“He’s going to pee in the kitchen sink,” Astrid grimaces and he kisses her wrinkled nose, heart thudding.

“I don’t care.”

“I—”

“Move in,” he rests his forehead against hers, “please. Just—please, I will never pee in the sink. I swear on my life, which I already owe to you. I promise.”

“But Snotlout—”

“Don’t talk about Snotlout right now,” he touches every part of her he can reach, memorizing her again, this time knowing he doesn’t have to let her go, “please, I have to focus on giving you another reason to move in.”

“Another?” She looks at him like he’s a reason, like he’s reason enough, and it feels like he’s going to burst out of his skin.

“Besides the old books,” he kisses her chin, “and the hat.” And the lack of on-site murders. “And the crown molding.”

She slicks his hair back from his face, “and you.”

“And me.”

“I’m convinced.”

#ripped #httyd fic #hiccstrid #modern au #slightly OSHA non-compliant #it's cute i think #it's everything i think but idk

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