#fishlegs showing up at word 6200 and stealing the show

[tysonrunningfox]

Ripped: Part 23

Like...here, I can’t do this anymore, I’ve been sitting on the first part of this for forever.  Please, join me in...whatever this is.  

Ao3

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Four thirty-seven in the morning is not time to wake up, but Astrid doesn’t have much of a choice after Hiccup’s side of his bed goes cold and the wheels in her mind start spinning, skating across the last twelve and twenty-four and thirty-six hours. Hiccup exhausted beyond sanity at the hospital, Hiccup sleeping with his head on her lap. Hiccup with damp hair and wide eyes, laying her back on his desk. Hiccup laughing at a joke that could only be funny in the first hours of the morning, sleepy hands holding her close.

“I don’t want it to be tomorrow,” he’d whispered in her ear, voice hoarse and comfortable as he pressed a tired kiss to her jaw, pulling her leg over his hip like if he just arranged their limbs carefully enough, they could feasibly meld into a single person. “Tomorrow’s just going to be more hospitals and decisions and not enough…” He trailed off, palm dragging up the curve of her waist.

“It already is tomorrow, technically,” she’d looked at the clock until he dragged her face back to his, soft thumb on her chin.

“Well sure, if you’re still a stickler for a linear definition of time,” he smiled, bringing her back to her apartment hallway where she couldn’t help but notice he was charming and handsome under the stupid hat. “But cyclically, it’s not really morning until we sleep, is it?”

“We already slept,” she reminded him, difficult just so that he’d narrow his eyes in a cute, shrewd way and kiss her. He went further than that, rolling her onto her back and holding the sheets dramatically above his head before disappearing under them, breath ticklish on her navel as his hands made room for himself between her knees.

“No more of that then,” he’d laughed, kissing her hip, “no sleeping, no tomorrow. It’s a deal.”

The only thing more shocking than how quickly Astrid trusted Hiccup is how quickly she got used to him.  As electric as his presence has become, it’s comfortable too, a secondary North her internal compass passively tracks when he’s in range to keep herself in alignment.

She bites her lip and sighs, staring at the ceiling for a ten count before giving up and rolling out of bed.

His closet isn’t a walk-in, but it’s larger than hers, and she finds a soft sweatshirt that smells like him hanging at the back of it. She pulls it on and pauses to touch the cold side of the bed, taking in the silence, as temporary as it is. He was right, there’s a whole day of hospitals and adult arrangements ahead of her, but after how easy and good last night was, nothing seems insurmountable.

She brushes her teeth with her finger again, looking around the bathroom at the old bathmat and Hiccup’s shirt from yesterday balled up in a corner. There’s a trimmer on the counter and auburn stubble in the sink and she finally starts to come around to the idea that sometimes when things seem too good to be true, it might just be because they are that good.

Hiccup wasn’t exaggerating how empty the kitchen is, but she manages to find a glass in one of the old walnut cupboards and get some water. She didn’t have much of a chance to look around yesterday, given she had better things to acquaint herself with, but since Hiccup isn’t back yet she starts scoping out the living room.

It’s a bachelor pad, obviously, old comfortable furniture without a decorative pillow in sight, video game controllers on the end tables and an empty beer bottle next to the remote. The rug is soft though and there are thankfully no Patriots posters on the wall, only two framed diplomas by the front door, both from the Berk Police Department. One is three years old and says ‘Snotlout G. Jorgenson’ in crisp black ink on thick white paper and the other was folded at some point and is starting to yellow around the edges, the name ‘Stoick Haddock’ handwritten in careful cursive script.

The frame of the older diploma is dusty and Astrid tucks her hand back into Hiccup’s sweatshirt sleeve to clean it off, and as soon as she does, it reflects the heavy deadbolt on the old door behind her turning. If months of living at a bona fide murder site honed her reflexes, last night’s uneven sleep dulled them because she freezes, holding her breath and watching the reflection of the door slowly swing open.

A single footfall heavier than any Hiccup would be capable of producing crosses the threshold and her heart sinks as she turns to face whatever she’s being dragged into next.

“Can you take any longer to open a door?” Snotlout’s improbable voice cuts through the sudden silence and he stumbles into the living room.

“The plan was for me to sweep the place,” Eretson follows him, teeth clipping the consonants as frustration pours around the dulled corners.

“Sweep the place? It’s my apartment, what are you expecting to find?” Snotlout throws his arm up and looks around for evidence that Eretson’s concern is unnecessary, but his eyes land solidly on Astrid.  

He raises an eyebrow and she jumps, coming back to life all at once and dropping her glass of water on the way to yank down the hem of Hiccup’s sweatshirt.

Eretson doesn’t flinch at the sound so much as he condenses, pulling his gun from the holster on his hip and cocking it with a cold steely click. Then he sees what, or who, he’s aiming at and his grip goes slack, barrel of the gun pointing towards the slowly spreading puddle on the floor as his jaw works soundlessly, eyes wide.

“Good morning,” Snotlout says, slow blooming grin spreading across his pasty, stubbled face as he takes in her bedhead. She almost wishes his eyes would dip lower because if he were being pointedly creepy, she’d have a reason to yell and maybe regain her grip on the situation, but instead she’s wedged under the weight of his obviously amused observation.

“Why aren’t you in the hospital?” The question comes out shrill and she jumps back from the water starting to pool between her toes. The sweatshirt is far too small for current company and she yanks it down again, fisting the fabric beside her thigh and holding it there. Eretson is still frozen, wrist slack and eyes wide and she snaps. “Never mind, I don’t care, can you put the gun away?”

“Apologies.” Eretson directs his startled gaze to the floor and stands up straight, thankfully re-holstering his weapon.

Well, thankfully until the lack of weaponry renders the situation impossibly more awkward.

And cold. Drafty even.

“And shut the door!” Astrid orders, even though she has no authority, and Eretson looks at Snotlout for corroboration.

“Just got shot,” Snotlout looks pointedly at his arm and Eretson sighs, bright red as he resigns himself to shutting and locking the door, clearly weighing the consequences of being on the other side and wishing his lot in life were different.

Something truly awful must lurk outside the door for Eretson to choose to be in this living room right now and Astrid wishes she knew what it was so that she could make her own educated decision.

“Good morning,” Snotlout repeats and Astrid glares, holding the fabric tight around her thighs.

“We already did that.” She steps sideways out of the puddle, daring either of the men in front of her to say something about her state of dress. For once in her life, it’s a fight she wishes she hadn’t picked because everything in Snotlout’s slight grin says ‘good game, Champ’.

“Where’s Hiccup?” Snotlout asks, looking around for another target to embarrass.

“He went to get breakfast.” Astrid does her best to frame the sentence as an insult but Snotlout is unfazed. No, unfazed would be better, he’s a delighted audience.

“That’s my boy.”   He’s more than delighted, he’s disconcertingly, disruptively proud and Astrid wishes she could hitch a ride on Eretson’s shoulders as he attempts to sink into the floor.  

Her clothes are in Hiccup’s office, where they were enthusiastically abandoned the night before, which she can’t think about with Hiccup’s nearly mortally wounded cousin grinning at her like a proud coach.

They aren’t even her clothes, they’re Tuffnut’s clothes.

She wishes she could ask Hiccup where he is, but of course, no phone. Eretson is so absolutely mortally embarrassed that she half thinks she could ask to borrow his phone to call Hiccup, but she doesn’t have his number memorized. Snotlout probably does, but asking him probably involves details requested in the name of ‘bro’.

“I’m going to go get dressed,” she announces, trying for something official and feeling like an inadequate cat herder.  

It’s impossible to set her shoulders and stalk to Hiccup’s office while keeping her ass covered, but she tries anyway, eyes locked dead ahead to give her periphery a chance to reorient. Snotlout follows, lurking in the doorway as she confronts the mess on the office floor.

Or no, not mess. Her clothes and Hiccup’s towel.

Snotlout whistles under his breath.

“Damn, on the desk by all his special books?” He laughs, “that’s like nerdy hot, I’d give you a wedgie if I thought you were wearing underwear.”

“Oh my god!” Astrid snaps, “if I didn’t think you’d bleed out, I’d—“

“Those are your clothes, from the hospital, does that mean Hiccup was in the towel?”

“Snotlout,” she hisses his name, “why the hell aren’t you in the hospital?”

“I’m proud of you two, really.” He nods, more encouraging coach than the creepy opportunist she knows how to deal with. She half expects him to clap her on the ass and tell her ‘good game’. “At the rate you were going, I thought you had another year of hand holding before anything happened. But then you fu—“

“Can you give me a minute?” She grits her teeth and he nods, hand held up in half surrender as he backs into the living room and shuts the door.

She takes a minute to breathe, leaning back against the desk and pressing her knuckles to her eyelids until she sees static.

“Where’s your mop?” Eretson asks, voice muffled through the door.

“What? My floor isn’t clean enough for you? Sorry, I was pretty busy being shot and almost dying, I should have mopped first though, I guess.”

“Just trying to make myself useful.”

She gets dressed with both eyes locked on the door, even though it seems like Snotlout is more likely to interrupt to congratulate her than to catch a glimpse of something he shouldn’t. She briefly thinks that she might not be cut out to be his ‘bro’ if this is the kind of involvement she can expect, but that’s not a train of thought she has time to catch right now, so she pushes it aside.

Last night felt like she and Hiccup were potentially the only two people in the world, or at least the only two that mattered.  The only two she had to think about.  But now it feels like the rest of humanity is butting its way back into her mind by way of one recently shot idiot and chasing any dregs of that peaceful feeling away.

When she opens the door, Snotlout is sitting on the couch, pouring over his phone. Eretson is lurking by the front door with one shoe on, obviously debating over taking the other off. Astrid’s shoes are next to the couch, vaguely under Snotlout’s legs, approximately where she abandoned them the day before as Hiccup left to shower.

She clears her throat and he doesn’t look up. Eretson doesn’t look away from his mismatched feet.  

Snotlout doesn’t look good, that’s the obvious place to start.  His face is nearly gray under patchy hospital stay stubble and the circles under his eyes look like bruises.  She doesn’t know much about almost bleeding to death, but she’d assume a person should sleep more and move less afterwards and it looks like he’s been doing the exact opposite.  He’s wearing sweatpants and a suit jacket that’s so oversized that its sleeve is cuffed above his wrist and his other arm is hidden inside of it, presumably in a sling or something to restrict him from ripping his stitches.

“What are you wearing?”  She frowns, trying to place the jacket.  It’s familiar somehow but she’s not used to it looking so absurd.

“When is it my turn to ask the questions?” He grumbles and she sighs.

“I don’t think I’m going to answer any of your questions,” she raises her eyebrows at his suit jacket, “and I didn’t realize harassing me required business casual.”

“Shit,” he looks down like he’s only now realizing his outfit might be out of the norm, “I fucking told you I was going to forget to give your fucking jacket back, this is not my fault.” He points a shaky, accusatory finger at Eretson who flushes over an absolutely stoic expression, rolling his sleeves up his forearms.

“You can keep it,” Eretson says, looking somehow larger and also more uncouth without his suit jacket as he decides to put his discarded shoe back on, apparently not planning on staying.

“Who said I want it? It’s itchy as hell,” Snotlout huffs, settling further into the couch and making no move to take the jacket off. “Oh, maybe I’ll need it when I have to sit on someone’s shoulders to pretend to be as freakishly tall as you are.”

“Or for when stripping doesn’t work out and you decide to become a flasher,” Astrid offers, folding Hiccup’s sweatshirt over her arm and pacing slowly, glancing at the door and wondering where Hiccup is. The handle of Eretson’s gun glints darkly and she pauses, turning her glare on him, “and why’d you point a gun at me? What could you possibly have been sweeping the place for, actually?”

“Grisly,” he says dumbly, a kid caught dually red handed next to a broken cookie jar.

“Why would Grisly be here?” She knows the broadest form of the answer even if the specifics are hazy.

Grisly would be here to do awful, nefarious things, and she swallows hard, waiting to be proven right.

“Because he shot Jorgenson.” Eretson squares his shoulders, bracing for an argument even as Astrid’s knees threaten to bobble.

She wishes she were shocked, then she could claim credibility instead of facing the fact that she half believed what Grisly was capable of just because Hiccup said it.

“He remembered?” She nods quietly to herself and Eretson relaxes, glad to not have to convince her.

“He is right here,” Snotlout grumbles, “and he didn’t have to because the idiot informed me that he came to the hospital to ‘finish me off’.” He rolls his eyes like he didn’t just tell her that someone connected with the police tried to kill him twice, “like he learned English from shitty mob movies or something. If Ruffnut hadn’t shown up when she did—”

“Oh my God,” Astrid cradles her head in her hands, staring at the floor and thinking of the day before, staring silent at a closed bathroom door and coaching Ruffnut through trying to do the right thing.  If she’d stayed on the phone a second longer or if Ruffnut had turned around in the lobby like she’d threatened, Snotlout would be dead. Hiccup would hate her for making him leave the hospital.  

Hiccup would be planning a funeral in his office instead of trying to get breakfast.

Hiccup.

“Where’s Grisly now?” She asks, dread creeping up her spine.

“Have you heard anything strange?” Eretson asks, back in detective mode, and Astrid shakes her head.

“No, but I can’t say I was listening for Grisly.”

“Yeah, you were too busy banging Hiccup on his desk.” Snotlout snorts, still not creepy. Still alive even though someone wanted the opposite. Thrilled to embarrass her, definitely, and so disconcertingly unconcerned with his own mortality that she feels coerced to protect him.

But Hiccup is out there alone, and if there’s even a chance he was right about Grisly, she doesn’t know how she’ll ever forgive herself for not going with him.

“Hiccup—he didn’t have any proof,” Astrid’s brain fills in ‘at the time’ as her eyes flick to the clock yet again. “But umm, he has a hunch that Grisly was connected to…what we talked about the other night. All of it, I mean.”

Eretson’s phone rings and Astrid jumps at the sound, wishing she’d been clearer or that she hadn’t talked at all. She won’t know which until he picks up and the way he’s looking at the caller ID makes her wary.

“This better be important.” He says, curt and responsible, and Astrid wants to snatch the phone away from him and put it on speaker. “A development? Explain to me how there can be a development on my case when I’m not working it.”

Astrid used to be the queen of ‘this better be important.’

For a while, in her teens, it seemed like a magic phrase. A filter that made people rethink before they added their petty issues to her already overfull plate. It felt like one of the only things she could say to make people hear her, to think twice about how many actually important things she must be dealing with to deny their request. And maybe it made her feel important too, to place herself in a position to rate other people’s problems on a scale she got to set.

Then she learned what it’s like when people rightfully push past it.

Important never means good. Important is never better.

“Who is it?” Snotlout asks, tensing on the couch until Astrid offers him a silent hand to help him up. He’s heavy in an amorphous, exhausted way that scares her, like all his weight has shifted to the wrong ends of his bones.

Eretson’s face falls under the weight of the importance he’s about to communicate, his eyes flicking between Astrid’s expression in limbo and Snotlout’s growing frustration, “when? No, take him to my office—it’s still my bloody case—that’s your job then, Johnson—Well, I’m on my way in now, I’ll be there in five minutes.”

He hangs up, exhaling one sharp breath and not so much puffing out his chest as making the most of the space he knows he takes up. It’s comforting, like a doctor trained to deliver bad news, and Astrid glares at him, willing him to spit out whatever it is so that she can shoulder her part of it.

People who hoard information inevitably drown in it and thinking of Hiccup’s books in the next room makes it hard to breathe.

“Is everything ok?” Astrid asks the general question, hoping against hope that it’ll keep the specific at bay. “Is Hiccup ok?” She tries the words on for size along with the lump of heavy concern in her chest that she can’t quite remember deciding to take on.

She did, of course, a long time ago.

It was there in the hospital when Hiccup looked at her for stability while his world spun out of control. It was there when he was too frazzled to function, when he needed to see the city for what it is and not what he wants it to be. It grew from a little seed of trust planted when she followed him into an alley, unsure of what she’d find but willing to take the risk.

Then, it didn’t feel like a risk at all.

“Grisly brought Hiccup down to the station on murder charges,” he says simply, and again, Astrid wishes she were surprised.

For months, she’s been reminding herself that if anything had gone differently, she could have ended up like that poor woman who trusted the wrong man in a dark alley, but because of Hiccup, that reality wasn’t ever really on the table for her. This one was.

“Murder charges.” It’s not a question, it’s another unfortunate sentence to try on, feeling out the edges of yet another situation happening to her without her input. “Who died?” Astrid asks because she doesn’t know what else to do. At this point, she doesn’t expect an answer, but the question was doing nothing useful overflowing inside her head.

It’s not doing anything useful in the open either. It flops on the floor like it’s dead itself and she starts planning for the worst, just in case.

“And all those morons just believe him?” Snotlout huffs, trying to inflate himself but leaking out of a painful, obvious hole.

“Says he caught him in the act.” Eretson looks like he’s lost many races training to win this one and the enemy is pulling ahead in the final sprint. “I’m heading in, it sounds like Grisly has my boss half-convinced to hand the case over to the NWF.”

“Those idiots couldn’t find the big bad wolf if he blew their house down or, I don’t know, shot another cop!” Snotlout gestures at his shoulder, “and yeah, I just called them pigs, indirectly, but I meant it.”

“Which is why I’m going to go deal with this,” Eretson crosses the room and almost gingerly helps Snotlout out of the suit jacket, sliding it back on like it’s bulletproof and he thinks he’s going to need it. Underneath, Snotlout is wearing a scrub shirt with a thankfully dry blotch of red-brown blood on the shoulder above a square of thick gauze taped to the wound.  “Get that shoulder re-bandaged at least.”

“No! I’m just going to bleed out on the floor to spite you, specifically.” Snotlout does his best to take the sweatshirt Astrid’s holding but his face goes even paler when he yanks. “I’m coming with you.”

“Jorgenson,” Eretson’s tone would be patient if it were wrapping around any other word, but now it’s ill fitting, chafing at the seams.

“Hiccup didn’t kill anyone, you know he didn’t, I know he didn’t, and I don’t give a shit what that creepy fucker says—”

“He already tried to kill you once, don’t be stupid enough to give him another chance.”

“He already proved his aim sucks once, you mean,” Snotlout is giving up the fight though, clammy sweat blooming across his forehead as he leans back against the arm of the chair, catching his breath. “Oh fuck off, you don’t have to be so smug about it.”

“You shouldn’t stay here,” Eretson checks his jacket pockets and pulls out a Ziploc bag with a handful of white pills in it and hands it to Snotlout who takes it, reluctantly grateful. “Either of you.”

“Oh we can’t stay here? You can’t kick me out of my own place, it doesn’t work like that,” Snotlout swallows one of the pills dry and winces as it sticks in his throat. It must be dry, like Astrid’s, like her automatic functions are on pause, waiting for permission to start working again. “And last time I checked, you still aren’t my commanding officer, so I’ll do whatever the fuck I want,” he says so that no one can say he didn’t.

“He can’t be anywhere on file,” Eretson tells Astrid, obviously done with the pointless argument, and she stands up straighter, glad for even the suggestion of something useful she can do. “Grisly might check there, especially now that he confessed his intentions, Snotlout is a liability.”

“I’ve always been a liability, thanks.” Snotlout rolls his eyes and Eretson’s jaw flexes at the comment. “Maybe we should go stay with Ruffnut, Grisly was scared of her for some reason.”

“No, the twins were suspects too, they gave information at the station,” Astrid thinks, tapping her finger on her chin and trying not to think about Hiccup’s developing penchant for touching her there. “Wait! I’ve got somewhere. Fishlegs didn’t give you his home address, did he?”

“No, would he have a record of any kind?”

“Absolutely not.” The first relief Astrid’s felt all day sweeps away just enough frantic anxiety to make room for dread, and Astrid doesn’t know any antidote for that but action. “Should I come to the station with you?”

“And leave me out?” Snotlout starts trying to stand up again but Eretson responds before he can put too much effort into it.

“You should stay out of it for now.”

“Isn’t it a little late for that?” The idea of backing off, of having less power in this already powerless situation, makes her want to scream. “He was with me last night, there’s no reason I couldn’t go down to the station and say so. I’ve been his alibi before, I am his alibi now. Someone has to listen that Grisly is behind this.”

“Last time you were his alibi, you ended up looking guilty by association,” Eretson reminds her.

“But—”

“And I got suspended and then shot,” Snotlout adds, forever helpful.

“Ok, but—”

“You need an alibi,” Eretson rubs his chin, “there’s no way Grisly won’t ask about you, you’ve been involved from the beginning.”

“She was with me,” Snotlout shrugs one shoulder, deflating a little against the chair, “no alibi like a cop alibi, right?”

“But I wasn’t.” Astrid is surprised to sound panicked, like even saying last night didn’t happen could take it from her somehow. Like lying could take the feeling that Hiccup’s apartment inexplicably feels like home away. That hasn’t faded, if anything it’s stronger, like being surrounded by his space is keeping her sane through the latest insane moment.

“That’s not bad,” Eretson halfway compliments, checking for his gun one more time, “that gives you a reason to leave the hospital too.”

“But I wasn’t with you last night,” Astrid shakes her head, “especially as a ‘reason for you to leave the hospital’ four days after you were shot—"

“Yeah, you were,” Snotlout starts texting someone, “it was super hot, I’ll tell people it was hot.”

“No, you won’t.” She tries to take his phone and he winces when he tries to hold it out of her reach.

“Too late,” he grins, “already told Ruffnut.”

“She won’t believe you!”

“She doesn’t have to, she just has to lie, and she’ll know that since she helped me sign out of the hospital.” He looks seriously at her, “the last thing Hiccup needs is you looking like an accomplice again and linking whatever Grisly says he caught him doing back to three other murders.”

“Never thought I’d say this,” Eretson clears his throat and looks purposefully at Snotlout, “but you’re right. Get somewhere safe, I’ll call when I can.”

“Ok, but before you go can you tell me I’m right again?” Snotlout asks as Eretson opens the door, “and maybe add in that I’m tall and muscular, because flattery is the best medicine.”

“You mean laughter,” Eretson deadpans, expression chiseled in stone as he shuts the door and leaves them in silence.

Astrid steps forward and locks it, trying to weigh whether she feels overwhelmed or entirely disconnected from everything that just happened. Maybe it’s both and that’s worse, and she lets out a breath that feels shaky but sounds slow.

“I’ll be right back,” Snotlout announces before disappearing to the bathroom, the sink turning on as soon as he shuts the door.

She lets herself think, for a second, what the morning would have been like if Hiccup hadn’t left. No less awkward with Eretson showing up here, of course. Then again, Eretson didn’t see Hiccup at the hospital, chances are seeing Snotlout out of it would have reactivated his Mother Hen Protocol and he would have been out of bed fussing, nudity be damned.

Snotlout would probably be furious at Hiccup acting like the wrong ratio of “sexy” and “nurse” while he wanted to be invasively congratulatory. Eretson might have actually combusted from awkwardness.

Grisly wouldn’t have been able to frame him. Or Grisly would have come here next, after wherever he found Hiccup. There’s too many variables missing, the tight setup she familiarized herself with in Eretson’s office sprouting roots and propagating itself into any number of possible outcomes.

The sink is still running in the bathroom and she can hear Snotlout splashing occasionally so she decides that the chances of him bleeding out in there are low, at least until she hears him hit the floor. The utter helplessness of being without her phone or the ability to search for anything on the internet gets the best of her and she grabs the remote off of the coffee table, turning on the TV and fiddling with inputs until she finds cable. Patriots re-runs, of course, and she mutes it before Snotlout can come out and decide it’s time for another of their great bonding marathons.

Like last night, apparently, which she can’t think about without thinking about Hiccup. Hiccup warm and safe, no part of him too far away for her to touch, their bedhead tangled together.

No, that won’t help anything. Getting somewhere safe might help Snotlout, but she doesn’t have Fishlegs’s number memorized or any way to call him. He must be working this morning though, since she isn’t.

If a few missed shifts get between her and safe harbor, she doesn’t know what she’ll do.  

She’s looking for the news when she comes across a local channel, pausing when she recognizes Heather in an interview close up on a repeat of some Sunday night in-depth expose on the Grimborn murders.

“…course there’s something really compelling about looking at history through a modern lens, and I’m glad to see this unfortunate string of events connect people to the city’s past,” she says pleasantly while the camera pans up to show the Ripped Tavern’s pre-renovation grimy walls and a rack of Grimborn tee-shirts.

“I understand that the Berk PD has hired you as a Grimborn Expert to consult on the ongoing case?” A reporter that Astrid vaguely recognizes asks and Heather can’t seem to help but look a little smug.

Astrid’s thumb hovers over the channel button, her jaw twitching when she thinks about how happy Hiccup is to teach and learn and how imperious he isn’t, and she’s glad enough to have a distraction deflecting worry for frustration that she doesn’t change it.

“…really discuss that, given that the case is ongoing,” Heather continues with an almost flirtatious grin, like she’s getting a real kick out of keeping secrets only because she knows she’ll get to reveal them later, “but I think at this point in the investigation, the connection is inevitable. Obviously, whoever is committing these murders has not only a big Grimborn knowledge base but also a personal connection that they find motivating, for some reason.”

She thinks of Hiccup, motivated by seeing the city as something capable of surviving trauma and her stomach turns with the contrast to where he is right now.

“Given advances in modern forensics and the assumption that this ongoing string of murders will be solved, what do you think the chances are that it will provide insight into the original Grimborn murders?”

“The chances?” Heather snorts, “I can’t say anything about the chances, but whoever’s doing this really knows their stuff. I’m half tempted to visit their eventual cell and run a few of my pet theories by them.”

The bathroom door opens and Snotlout steps out, a fresh square of white gauze taped to his shoulder as he dries his face with the scrub shirt, pausing on the way to his closed bedroom door to frown at the TV, “Heather?”

“She’s talking about being hired to help with the case.”

“You can’t watch something normal for five minutes while I get change?” He mumbles on the way into his room, struggling with the knob for a second before getting it open and disappearing inside. “Nerd.”

“…paper recently mentioned the Admiral Haddock theory, do you think there’s any present connection to the Haddocks?”

Astrid didn’t know there was more than one. She didn’t know it was a family with a legacy aside from Hiccup and the freshly dusted diploma on the wall. It’s another link of the chain that Hiccup is somehow in the middle of as the noose tightens and she swallows hard, trying to focus on Heather’s words.

If a news channel is showing this as a rerun, that means there can’t be any news.

Except there’s so much that can’t be reported yet, and it’s not the first time recently she’s wished she knew less about the system that has her lying about whereabouts she’d never take back. She wishes she weren’t confronted with this reality, where Hiccup is in trouble and she has to contemplate what her life would look like without him in it.

“That theory is a joke,” Heather’s laugh is a little sharper, willing to lash out at the idea of feeling unheard, “it was the…the flat earth conspiracy of the day.”

“Can you explain what you mean by that?”

“It was…sensationalist and sensationalist on purpose, there’s no way that the Admiral could have had anything to gain from the murders.”

“So, you think whoever is committing the murders now has something to gain from it?” The reporter asks with a little too much interest and Heather is obviously reminded of something by an ear piece she’s not good at hiding.

“I really can’t discuss the current case.”

“Well, the bleeding stopped at some point,” Snotlout comes back out of his bedroom in a baggy black tee shirt that’s stretched at the neck like he struggled getting into it. The color makes him look paler and she almost advises him to change, but if Fishlegs is mad at her for missing work, a little pity might be on their side.

She thinks about asking Snotlout to use his phone to call a cab, like it’s nineteen ninety eight and people get their information from the news, but there are enough holes in this plan already that it shouldn’t matter if they get an Uber to the archives. The driver looks at Snotlout like Astrid is trying to use the first dregs of a zombie apocalypse to her advantage and she attempts to distract them with small talk, wondering how Ruffnut gets drivers to wait outside with a shovel.

It has been the longest few months of her life, and every city block dilates further. It feels like it takes hours to locate the service elevator down to the archives, but all of the lost time recondenses when she’s standing in front of Fishlegs’s desk, a half-dead Snotlout leaning on her shoulder and no miraculous news from Eretson propping her up.

She clears her throat, trying to remember if she’s ever missed a shift of another job and of course, coming up dry, “Hey, Fish.”

“Astrid?” He looks up, taking his one headphone out and jumping to his feet, “where have you been? I must have sent a hundred texts—”

“Sorry, I don’t have my phone, I know I missed…I don’t know how many shifts I missed but that’s not like me, I promise it’s not.”

“Seems like you’ve been doing a lot that’s ‘not like you’ since you started here.” Fishlegs crosses his arms just long enough for Astrid to freeze up. He looks mad, sure, but worried too and she holds out a placating hand.

“I can explain.”

“No, sorry,” he deflates, patting her shoulder apologetically and seemingly noticing Snotlout for the first time, eyes widening. “I was just so worried, with hearing how it went with the detective and knowing that I told him about Hiccup and the copier and—”

“It’s ok,” she cuts him off, shifting from foot to foot and debating whether she should offer Snotlout a chair or not. If she does, she’s half worried he won’t get back to his feet again, and he’s heavier than he looks, even after the blood loss. “I should explain, before I ask this favor, actually.”

“No, you don’t need to explain,” Snotlout insists, holding out his hand. His left hand, because his right is hanging lame at his side, “Snotlout.”

“Fishlegs.” He frowns at Astrid, “is it drugs?”

“See? He won’t help you if you explain. Do you want some?” Snotlout takes the bag out of his sweatpants pocket and holds it up. “Because if that’s what it takes—”

“Put those away,” Astrid hisses, helping Snotlout sit down in her office chair, “it’s not drugs, it’s—well, he has drugs because he just got shot, but—well, I need your help.”

“Back up, he just got shot?” Fishlegs sits on the edge of his desk, “who is he, again?”

“I just told you, I’m Snotlout.”

“That means nothing to me.”

“He’s a cop,” Astrid tries and Snotlout shushes her.

“Don’t lead with that, a lot of people don’t like cops—”

“We think Hiccup’s getting framed for murder, and we need to lay low, is your spare room still available?” She asks simply and Fishlegs narrows his eyes in his standard ‘more information required’ thinking face.

She tells him everything. Snotlout interjects with details she didn’t know, some of them he must have learned last night when he was evidently helping Eretson with the case. Fishlegs doesn’t ask much, and by the time she gets to this morning, her voice catching over describing how they learned that Grisly has Hiccup at the station for questioning, his frown is set in to the point that she worries she misjudged.

She was forced to trust Snotlout and Eretson and even Hiccup, in a way, if she didn’t want to go through all the hassle of making a formal harassment complaint. From the beginning, she chose to trust Fishlegs and if he throws that back on her now, she’s worried it would snap something tenuous deep inside her. An instinct that could be strong if it just has time to grow.

“Let me summarize. Instead of just taking me up on my offer to stay in my spare room before your apartment became the newest target of a Grimborn copycat serial killer,” Fishlegs pauses to swallow, “who you think is in league with the police, you got even more entrenched in the mystery, and now you’re asking me to essentially harbor two possible fugitives, one of whom was shot four days ago and might still have the well-connected murderer after him.”

Astrid squares her shoulders, “Yes. Please.” One please is just polite, but two is begging and she pauses, hoping she won’t have to and hating that she would.

“I’ll do it,” he nods, “I was just making sure I’m not biting off more than I can chew.”

“You must have a gigantic mouth, dude—”

“Thank you,” Astrid throws her arms around Fishlegs shoulders, effectively cutting Snotlout’s surely very complimentary statement off. “Seriously, thank you.”

“Hey, you’re welcome, no one would come up with a lie that elaborate for missing two shifts,” he pats her shoulder and she sighs, finally able to take an actual deep breath now that someone is sharing at least some of the weight on her shoulders.

“You haven’t met Hiccup,” Snotlout snickers and Fishlegs looks like he’s going to join in on the joke until he catches Astrid’s fallen expression and stops himself.

“I think I need a drink if I’m going to do this,” Fishlegs looks around at the stacks, the dust layers on the books separating stories that ended when they ended and those still growing with everyone who still picks them up. “I’ve never harbored fugitives before, but I think I can justify closing the archives for a day to learn the ropes.”

“That…sounds like the best plan I haven’t pulled out of my ass today,” Astrid laughs but gestures to the clock on the wall, “it is seven in the morning though.”

“Oh!” Snotlout perks up slightly, “I bet I know a place within our budget that’s probably open.”