#i remembered that it's ok to let your characters bond at 30k words

[tysonrunningfox]

Toothless: Return to the Black Pony of Second Chances: Part 7

This is fast but also I am practicing. 

Ao3

I didn’t expect Astrid to actually come find me the next time she has to go into town. 

Honestly, I expected her to pretend that we never ran into each other in the barn.  And she basically did, barring the fact that she now critiques how I pet Toothless at least once a day. 

I picked his feet.  He didn’t like it at all, and I wish I’d spent longer practicing with Stormfly.  I’d risk going into Stormfly’s stall when Astrid isn’t there, except I already feel endangered by the fact I’m aware of her summer school status.  I guess Fishlegs is still alive, but also, he’s been on chicken coop duty for the last three mornings, so I don’t want to trade. 

Anyway, I didn’t expect an invitation to town when Astrid found me after morning chores. 

She looks the best and the scariest that any teenage girl has ever looked with mud smudged under her jaw and in her hair.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen her clean, or not since church lunches a decade ago, because by the time I’m up she’s already halfway through her pre-morning set of chores.  Seeing her clean would be like seeing Heather without dark makeup and chipped nail polish.  Maybe mud and cow poop is just the Wyoming version. 

I don’t expect Heather to text and I don’t know how to feel about that.  I don’t really want her to when Astrid might get nosy again. 

“Ok, can I trust you to drop the stack of orders in the back at the post office?”  She looks up abruptly, opening the truck door and climbing halfway out before I can even attempt to answer.  There are muddy handprints on the back of her thighs and hay sticking out of her back pocket and I look away at the stack of envelopes in the backseat.  

“Do I look like I’m six?”  

“You act like it,” she counts a stack of money in the envelope she pulled the list out of, frowning a tight frown that would make me feel bad for her if she weren’t always on my ass.  “Meet me in Gobber’s store when you’re done.”  

“You trust me to cross the street all by myself, it’s an honor, Master Hofferson—”

“And don’t talk to anyone in there,” she cuts across me without looking, “we need them to like us in case we need any favors.”  

“I’m glad you reminded me because I was going to ask each and every individual about their cows.”  

She shakes her head and walks off without saying anything else and I hate that more than anything.  I’m pretty sure only one person has ever been done with me before and that was my mom when she drove me to the airport because she couldn’t handle me anymore, but that took a hard-fought decade.  Astrid’s past that point in less than three weeks, her steps smooth and unaffected as she opens the door to Gobber’s store, picking up a basket inside.  

I do what she says and go to the post office, dropping the stack of bills and packages on the counter and waiting for the man behind it to check each one for proper postage.  

“Stoick’s boy, right?”  He asks, checking an address like it’s his job and not someone else’s problem.  

“Uh, yeah.”  

“Heard you were back for the summer,” he looks up and grins slightly, “you don’t happen to remember me, do you?  I babysat you once, you were barely knee high.”  

“I…sorry, I don’t,” I look back at Gobber’s store, hoping Astrid is coming out after efficiently getting everything we need and giving me an excuse to exit this conversation.  

I miss anonymity.  Already.  I miss notoriety being a choice even more.  Here everyone stares because I’m Stoick’s son and because they all remember the accident and because I’m new in town and that practically makes me a bigger tourist attraction than the world’s biggest cow turd or whatever passes for interesting around here.  I could drop my pants on the side of the road and if anyone was around to see it they’d just pass it off on the city ruining me, when really it’s an almost insufferable lack of self control only made worse by the fact Astrid sees me as a responsibility to keep busy and out of trouble.  And the fact is that when everything is boring, trouble is obvious.  

“Bucket,” he taps the side of his head and it clangs like skulls don’t, “old army nickname, you might remember that at least.”  

“Oh yeah,” I lie, because the only thing worse than people acting like my leg doesn’t make me different is acting like I should feel the same, “I bet I got a kick out of that.”  

“All the kids do,” he finally drops the packages in a bin behind the counter, “I’ll let your father know if he gets anything else in, maybe I’ll see you again when you come to pick it up.”  

“Yeah, sure.  Maybe.”  I feel like I’m supposed to say goodbye because it doesn’t matter what I do, it all feels rude in some way.  Like I’m in a minefield of backcountry etiquette laser triggers and tripping one means one of those bored, withering looks from Astrid.  And probably an assignment to clean the next most disgusting poop to what she already made me clean.  

“See you around!”  Bucket does wave and I sort of raise my hand as I’m opening the door and stumbling out into the wind-blown parking lot.  

There’s an honest to god tumbleweed against the tire of the truck and I sigh, opening the door to Gobber’s store and flinching at the loud bell that jingles and announces me.  Astrid and two guys I don’t recognize all look over and she’s the first to look away.  One of the guys is younger and behind the counter, leaning on his elbows like he needs to see Astrid’s list.  The other is older and the first person I’ve seen wearing anything but filthy jeans since I crossed the state border.  It’s just slacks and a button up shirt and tie, but it stands out as much as the fact that he’s the kind of attractive that only appears in proximity to girls as hot as Astrid.  

That’s how it always was with Heather, at least, the zone ten feet around her in all directions instantaneously populated with GQ rejects and aspiring young actors or influencers or whatever other title inspires a guy to wake up and do a thousand crunches.  

Astrid glares at me as I approach and I almost want to warn them both, like yes, she’s unreasonably pretty, but at what cost?  Don’t they realize they’d have to deal with her personality too?  And that she snoops and bosses and if you’re ever randomly, instantaneously better than her at something she seethes about it for literal weeks.  

“I mean, normally, shipping on that would be an extra twenty bucks to get it here by Friday, but I think I can take that off as a discount,” the kid behind the counter types something into the geriatric computer and it whirs ominously, “for you, especially.”  

The man in the tie looks irritated.  

“Thanks Gustav,” Astrid flips through her list, apparently clueless and not even looking at me as I walk up to stand next to her, “did you get the mail sent?”  

“Yep, Bucket clanged his head for me and everything.”  

“Mr. Haddock’s son, right?”  The man who is even more clearly not a boy when he opens his mouth and literally talks in a British accent like this all isn’t already ridiculous holds his hand out and I shake it, trying not to wince at that unnecessarily bruising grip.  “I heard you were coming back to town.  I’m Eret.”  

“Back to town?  It doesn’t quite sound like you’re from town.”  

“He’s with the bank,” Astrid says flatly, setting her list on the counter and looking back at me, “and you actually saw Bucket put the envelopes in the bin?  He didn’t just leave them on the counter?”

“I think I know how to mail things.”  It feels oddly like being chastised by my dad in front of people, and more than that, people who apparently don’t like me just for standing reasonably close to Astrid and talking to her.  

“You’re lucky to have Astrid watching out,” Eret, the mysteriously well-dressed British banker man who is honestly reading like a glitch in the Wyoming matrix, says like he wants nothing more than for Astrid to break that unusually bland even for her expression.  “I don’t know how anything would get done without her around.”  

“It wouldn’t,” the guy behind the counter, Gustav, apparently, agrees, giving me a similar glare.  “She practically keeps inventory around here.”  

I feel vaguely like taking off my once white sock and waving it like a flag of surrender.  

“That’s because you don’t,” Astrid rolls her eyes and she’s either mean to everyone or literally so clueless I shouldn’t be mad for her telling everyone that Heather is my girlfriend because maybe she actually thinks that.  

It’s a little weird to see, honestly, because I’ve seen Heather surrounded by hopeful guys dozens if not hundreds of times and she always knows.  She always looks at them differently and ends up with something from the experience, like a date or a free meal or tickets to something impossible.  But Astrid is just standing there, her usual angry, uptight self, like she doesn’t realize what’s going on at all.  

It might be halfway endearing, like all that hard-working self-sacrifice is actually the result of nothing going to her head, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s practically impossible.  She has to know, she has to have some sort of opinion about it.  

Either that or she’s literally incapable of any opinion but annoyance and unattainable expectations.  

“So, ah…” Eret pauses and looks at me like he’s just remembering I’m unfortunately still here.  I know that face too, the one where he’s trying to tell if I’m just incomprehensibly lucky or if I’m following Astrid around like a lost little duckling.  

The answer is neither, and I almost want to tell them that.  I am merely a referee and witness who will probably be on their side at the trial.  

“Hiccup.”  

“Hiccup, right, how long will you be around?”  

“Hopefully just the summer.”  I try to sound bored.  I succeed.  Astrid digs into her pocket for the stack of bills my dad gave her and counts them carefully.  

“That’s what I said, now I’ve been here a year,” he says like he’s claiming some sort of badge over me and I take a step away from Astrid, like proximity is enough to re-state the disinterest my expression obviously isn’t yelling loud enough.  

“I’ve been here fifteen,” Gustav says smugly, counting Astrid’s stack of twenties, “and you’re a little short.  Sorry.”  

“Here,” she reaches over the counter and pulls a pack of socks out of one of the paper bags, “how’s that?”  

“I can just delete the socks from the inventory, you know, it’s not like anyone counts it around here.”  Gustav looks worried, for a second, glaring at Eret about something other than standing too close to probably the only girl who’s going to come in here today.  

“Like I’m going to let you get away with that,” Astrid scoffs, and I don’t think I’ve heard her closer to joking.  It’s not close, by any means, but it’s better.  Less wooden and bossy and proper and it makes me uncomfortable how much it shocks me.  

“True,” Gustav sighs, “five dollars and twenty-five cents is your change.”  

“Thank you,” Astrid puts it right back into the envelope from my dad instead of pocketing it, like five dollars or a pack of socks matter in the long run and I don’t know the last time I’ve felt more out of place, which is really saying something.  “I’m sure I’ll be back like…tomorrow, with how much we run out of things.”  

“I’m not working again until Thursday, if you could like…wait,” Gustav smiles.  I feel for the kid, because at fifteen I sort of was him, thinking Heather would turn around and look if I was there reliably enough.  

And I don’t know Astrid, not in any of the ways that matter, but I also know that giant, attractive, misplaced, well-dressed Brits almost always take precedence over kids willing to steal socks or gum or banana rum shooters from the corner store.  

“Right,” Astrid picks up one of the bags and practically drops it into my arms before I’m ready and picks up the other two herself, “we have to get back, the last couple of cows should be calving any minute and I left Ruffnut all alone with them.”  

“Sounds serious,” Eret moves like he’s going to open the door for her,  but she kicks it open before he can, rolling her eyes when I barely slip through before it closes.  

She buckles the jug of orange juice into the backseat so that it doesn’t fall on the bumpy road and I’m surprised that I know that, that something weird and pastoral and every day is sticking into my mind.  The same way that I know the name of three or four different brushes that all look almost the same and I know how to check Toothless’s gums for how hydrated he is.  

Maybe this is how someone comes here for the summer and ends up staying longer.  

Astrid is buckling her seatbelt when Eret comes back out of the store and practically jogs to her side of the car.  She frowns before rolling down the window, and maybe there’s something to the absolutely, untouchably frigid act because he sticks that package of socks through.  

“Here.”  

“What are you doing?”  

“They were seven dollars, just take them, it’s the least I can do.”  He says it like there’s some veiled importance, like in his year of study he’s learned that packages of calf-length women’s athletic socks are important to Wyoming mating rituals.  Astrid crosses her arms.  

“I’m not a charity case.”  She turns the key in the ignition and jams the truck into reverse like she’s actually going to peel out of the parking lot and take his arm with her.  And as much as I’m inherently uncomfortable in this situation, I’m more uncomfortable being an accomplice to a crazy person literally running someone’s anachronistic, dress shoe clad foot over, so I hold out my hand.  

“I know where her dresser is.”  

He frowns.  He tosses them to me anyway and I actually manage to catch them.  He lingers for a second longer while she refuses to look at him and then pats the side of the truck before walking away.  

“That took longer than it was supposed to,” she rolls up her window as soon as she’s back on the road, turning the radio up a few clicks like attacking me with some ridiculous song about stomping in a corn field is going to keep me from asking questions.  

“That’s what happens when you stop to flirt for fifteen minutes.”  

“What?”  She looks at me, half confused and half her normal accusatory.  

“Come on, even you aren’t that clueless,” I toss the package of socks into the backseat with everything else, “Mr. Statutory and ‘I’ll embezzle for you especially’ Gustav.”  

“Embezzle?”  She frowns, turning too fast onto a dirt road and spewing dust up behind us.  It’s the same sort of confidence she has with Stormfly, like she’s not actually doing anything dangerous because she’s done exactly this so many times that the boundaries are more like brick walls to her.  I don’t think I’ve done anything that repetitively ever and no wonder she’s insane.  “Gustav’s just a kid, and the only kid who would let Gobber hire him instead of making more money on a ranch somewhere.”  

“Because he wants to talk to you, obviously,” I don’t know why I’m doing this, it feels more like advice than an argument, so I turn it back around, “just like the attractive British guy who, of course, would only brave the tiny square of this state that’s directly next to you.”  

“Eret works for the bank.”  

“Yeah, and you have so much banking business to take care of, right, that’s why he’s buying you socks, to win responsibility for your assets.”  

She grits her teeth, signaling again even though there’s no one around and turning left onto another dirt road I don’t think I’ve been on.  

“You really shouldn’t talk about things you don’t understand.”  

“Yeah, and I really appreciate you telling everyone I have a girlfriend that I don’t.”  

“You’re still on that?”  She scoffs, “I said I was sorry.”  

“And it felt so authentic, really.  I’ll be the bigger person and not tell everyone that you’re practically sharing expenses with Mr. Statutory—”

“Stop calling him that, he’s like twenty-three or something,” she glares at him, “you sound crazy.  He’s just someone I know because he works at the bank that has all of the loans for land around here.”  

“Because teenagers know so many bankers.”  

“Why do you care so much?”  She turns again, past the first fence line I recognize as Haddock property.  “Don’t you have anything better to do than worry about who I talk to in town?”  

“Not really.  There’s literally nothing else to do, I don’t get why no one else understands that.”  

“There’s plenty to do, did you forget that you’re the only one who can touch a dangerous horse that’s taking up food and resources?  That’s something to fix, right there, something no one else can even bother you about.”  

“Right, because I know so much about training horses.”  

“You could ask,” she scoffs, “I’m sure someone taught you to do that at some point.”  

I almost blurt out that I’ve never really needed to but that’s a bad idea when there are no witnesses and she’s already mad at me.  

“Who would I ask?”  

“I’ll help you.”  It’s less of an offer and more of an order, “I have an old saddle you can use.”  

“Ok, fine.”  I shrug and look out the window at those two warped trees by my dad’s dingy, wind-blown house.  

“Don’t tell anyone I talked to Eret,” her voice is a little softer, a little more unsure, “Ruffnut’s all about him, I don’t want to deal with that today.”  

00000

I grew up hearing about how beautiful baby animals are. 

And yes, the cow that I helped um…retrieve from the rear of a groaning cow is cute after the cow licked all of the…stuff off of it, but it didn’t seem beautiful, necessarily.  Useful, maybe.  Important. 

More important than handing out flyers outside of a meat-packing plant or avoiding chicken nuggets, but not beautiful. 

Functional. 

Gratifying, especially when Astrid left me alone with it for a second to check the other cow.  Like she might trust me.  Like proving that I can in fact give stacks of letters to a person actually did start to establish some base layer of trust. 

Of course, that all proved false the next morning after mucking stalls when she announced it was time to start training Toothless.

“Do you know if he’s green-broke?”  She asks, hanging the pitchfork back on the wall and wiping her palms on her jeans, seemingly unaware of the hay in her hair. 

“He’s…black.”  I say, pointing through his stall bars. 

“No, is he—green-broke means that he’s comfortable with a saddle.”  She clarifies, already a bit annoyed with me, and honestly it’s more familiar than her being halfway trusting, so I’ll take it. 

I shrug, “I wouldn’t know.” 

She takes a frustrated, determined step towards his stall and Toothless’s nostrils flare, whites of his eyes showing as he tosses his head. 

It seems like Astrid can’t think when she’s standing still. 

I get it, in a way that I think it might be the only glimmer of a thing that we have in common, and she shoves her hands into muddy pockets, looking at me like she hates that she’s depending on me for the concept of a landline. 

A landline she probably doesn’t believe in because what wire survives the wind howling outside. 

“Why are you helping me?”  I ask, the question that’s been on my mind boiling over like the milk Ruffnut didn’t buckle in yesterday when she volunteered to fall on the flirting with Gustav sword. 

It catches Astrid off guard and she sputters for a second before taking a step back from Toothless’s stall, and shrugging. 

“You’ve been…surprisingly non-whiny.”  She shrugs, gesturing pointedly at my arms, sunburned and peeling slightly where they peek out from under the sleeves of my torn H&M flannel that’s rolled halfway up my forearms.  “All things considered.” 

“All things?” 

“For a city kid, you’re surprisingly useful.”  It’s more backhand than compliment, but I don’t hate it, necessarily. 

It’s honest. 

There’s no commentary about potential or effort or how I’m wasting either. 

“Useful.”  I echo the word that’s never been applied to me before. 

“You can’t tell if a horse is green-broke or not but…that’s not your fault.”  She pulls the insult like it’s heavy for her and she expects me to help her heft it and maybe the frosty, general inaccessible thing has its charm, because right now it’s like she’s gesturing to a hay rope that I might even be allowed to access if I weren’t so scrawny. 

“It’s the city’s fault, I know.  Can’t fight the corruption of places being open past 8pm with biceps like these.”  I flex. 

She blinks at me, exhausted, and I don’t know why I suddenly realize that she always has been.  She’s all dark circles and scowl, all slightly too skinny angles in her cheeks, like I always felt when my mom insisted on a stricter than usual vegan kick with no more cooking lessons than she’d had previously. 

“Come on, you can learn on Stormfly.”  She waves me after her, purposeful again, boots clunking heavy on the barn floor as she takes Stormfly’s halter off of its hook.  “We’ll deal with Toothless when you know some of what you’re doing.” 

She says the name with the same tone that her eyes had when she acknowledged my arms and my jeans and my general unacceptability.  Like she accepts it, despite initial reservations. 

Acceptance.  Yet another word I don’t know I’ve had directly applied. 

It’s heavy, like the saddle she promptly plops into my arms.  Which I drop. 

She doesn’t laugh and it feels like an assignment.