Finding Hiccup - Modern!Au ✔️

seventeen

And then three days have passed and the darkness has lifted and I'm out of bed, having an argument with Heather.
"Those were my Shreddies. I always eat Shreddies. You know that."
"No you don't," I say, to be annoying. "Sometimes you eat pancakes."
Heather looks like she might spontaneously combust.
"I eat pancakes when Mum makes pancakes. When she doesn't, I eat Shreddies. Every morning for the last five years. Ten years. And you just go and finish the packet."
"Have muesli."
"Muesli?" She looks so aghast at the idea, I want to giggle. "Like raisins and shit?"
"It's healthy."
"You don't even like Shreddies," she says accusingly. "Do you? You only took them to wind me up."
"They're OK." I shrug. "Not as good as muesli."
"I give up." Heather rests her head on her hands. "You're just trying to ruin my life." She shoots me a dark look.

"I preferred you lying in bed."
"Well, I preferred you plugged into a computer," I shoot back. "You were much less of a pain when we never saw you."
"Heather!" As Mum bursts into the kitchen, holding Snotlout on one hip, she looks shocked at the sight of her, collapsed on the countertop. "Sweetheart. Are you OK?"
"Shreddies!" Snotlout yells as soon as he sees my bowl. "I want Shreddies! Please," he adds sweetly as he slithers down from Mum. "Please may I."
"Here you are." I pass the bowl to Snotlout. "You just had to ask nicely," I inform Heather. "Try learning from your brother."
Heather doesn't move a muscle. Mum comes over and prods her.
"Heather? Darling? Can you hear me?"
"I'm fine." At last she lifts her head, looking wan and pale. "Tired."
Now that I look at her, she does have black shadows under her eyes. "I think I've been overdoing it," she says weakly. "Homework and everything."
"Are you sleeping well?" Mum peers at her anxiously. "You teenagers need sleep. You should be sleeping fourteen hours a night."
"Fourteen hours?" We both stare at her.
"Mum, even comatose people don't sleep fourteen hours a night," says Heather.
"Ten hours, then," she amends. "Something. I'll look it up. Are you taking vitamins?"
Mum starts randomly pulling vitamin bottles out of the cupboard. TeenVit, KidVit, Well Woman, Osteocare...I mean, it's a joke. None of us ever takes them.
"Here." She plonks about ten capsules in front of Heather and another load in front of me.

"Sam, sweetheart, come and have some magnesium."
"Don't want nesium!" he yells, and runs out of the kitchen and hides under the dining table. "No nesium!" He clamps his hands over his mouth.
"Oh, for God's sake." Mum swallows the magnesium pill herself, and sprays herself with something called Skin Enhancer, which has been sitting in the kitchen cupboard for three years, I know for a fact.
"You need some iron," she adds to Heather. "And an early night. I've got a DVD planned for this evening, which we can all watch, and then straight to bed."
"That sounds super-fun," says Heather, staring blankly into the middle distance.
"It's a classic," adds Mum. "Dickens."
"Dickens. Right." Heather shrugs like, Who cares?
"At least we've got you off those wretched computer games!" says Mum, sounding a bit too bright. "It just shows, you don't need to play them, do you? I mean, you've barely noticed, have you?"
"Barely noticed?" Heather finally lifts her gaze to meet hers. "Barely noticed? Are you joking? Barely noticed?"
"Well, it's not like you're counting down the days until—"
Mum stops abruptly as Heather lifts her sleeve to reveal a digital watch strapped to her arm.
"Sixty-one hours, thirty-four minutes, twenty-seven seconds till the ban is lifted," she says tonelessly. "I'm not just counting down, all my friends are counting down. So yes, Mum, I have 'noticed.' "
Heather can be pretty sarcastic when she wants to, and I see two little red spots appear on Mum's cheeks.
"Well, I don't care!" she snaps. "Tonight we're all going to watch Great Expectations, as a family, and believe it or not, Heather, you'll be amazed. You children think you know it all, but Dickens was one of the greatest storytellers ever, and you will be blown away by this film."

As she strides off again, Heather slumps down further on the kitchen countertop.
"You are so lucky," she says indistinctly. "No-one's on your case. You can do what the hell you like."
"I can't do what the hell I like!" I say defensively. "I have to do this documentary the whole time. And now I'm supposed to go to Starbucks."
"Why Starbucks?"
"Dunno. Starbucks therapy. Whatever."
"Right." Heather sounds supremely uninterested. But then, all of a sudden, she sits up. "Hey. Can you tell your therapist you'll be cured if you attend this year's European Gaming Expo in Munich and you have to take your sister?"
"No."
"Phhhmph." Heather subsides onto the counter again. Mum's right, she does look rough.
"You can have these." I give her the last remaining dregs of Shreddies, which Snotlout has abandoned.
"Yeah, right. Soggy, third-hand Shreddies covered in Sam dribble. Thanks, Henry." Heather gives me a death stare.
Then, a moment later, she reaches for a spoon and starts shoveling them in.