Tangled Vows

Chapter 6

The end of the day rolled around, and Astrid waited patiently for the store to close. Unable to wait alone in the store room, she wandered over to the open door and leaned against the frame with her arms folded. From her position at the door, she could see Hiccup hunched over the counter writing something, and because the door was behind the counter, his back was turned towards her. 

Clearing her throat, Astrid made her presence known. "Are you nearly ready to close up?"

Hiccup looked up and over his shoulder toward Astrid, his face remaining unchanged as he met her eye. He nodded and turned back to his work.

"Yeah, I just need another minute and then I'm done." Hiccup replied, burying himself in the small notebook that he had been writing in.

Astrid nodded, looking around the store in boredom and deciding to take a tour for herself while she waited. It wasn't a large store, after all, and she could probably make an entire circuit of the store in less than 20 seconds. But Astrid let herself linger over areas, getting to know what was where in the store. But it had changed little in the past three years.

"Do you make a lot of money from the store?" Astrid couldn't help but ask as she perused a section of spanners and wrenches hanging from one of the displays by the wall.

Hiccup hummed, "Not a lot, but I make enough to live comfortably. Some of us like what we do enough to not care how much we make."

Astrid knew that was a dig at her and what she had left behind three years ago, but she tried to shrug it off and move past it. She knew it would be tough to move on from, to get along with the guy who thought so poorly of her. But Astrid could not erase the memory of Hiccup she had left behind, and not the one that she was talking to in that moment.

"So, you like working here then?"

Hiccup chuckled, shaking his head slightly at Astrid's searching questions.

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I do. Unlike you, I'm not trying to escape from her and take everyone with me. I want to stay because this is where my home is." Hiccup replied curtly, his answer certain like it was written in stone a thousand years ago.

It was Astrid's turn to laugh, "You really live by that saying, don't you?"

"What?"

"We're born in Berk, we die in Berk." Astrid shook her head pitifully as she finally emerged from behind the shelves and strode over to the counter. "Don't you ever want more from life? More than what you could ever get from here?"

Hiccup slammed the notebook shut and put both hands on the counter demandingly, his presence shifted from someone innocuous and friendly to the most intimidating psychopath Astrid had ever laid eyes upon. Something darkened about his physique as he practically towered over her, despite them only having about two to three inches of height difference.

Not for the first time, Astrid regretted what she had said to Hiccup.

"Don't do this again. You're already on thin ice with me, do you want to go through it?" Hiccup warned, the emeralds in his eyes dimming to almost black onyx stars. "I don't care what your excuse was, to run away, to leave. But you have no right to question other people's motives to stay. Just because you didn't want, doesn't mean everyone else thinks the same."

Astrid's mouth dried up, and every word of rebuttal she may have had waiting on the tip of her tongue died in her throat and she retreated from the fight. Hiccup looked her up and down curiously, a moment of confusion passing over his features as he did so, before accepting his victory and began putting everything away.

Storing away the notebook, and emptying out the cash register to take home - as his father had taught him to do - Hiccup looked over to see Astrid standing idly in front of the counter.