Hiccup and Astrid

Understanding

It had puzzled Astrid that she had somehow managed to become so heavily concerned with the feelings of just one person. Before the battle with the red Death, she wouldn't have given anything except the next training session a second thought.
She was a fighter first and a feeling human being second. That's just how it was. She was a Viking and as far as she was concerned, Vikings didn't need to feel or think about their emotions. Feelings just got in the way. 
Or so she thought. 
"Astrid?" 
She didn't turn around since she already knew who was coming and a smile crossed her face. As the familiar thunk of metal on the ground sounded, she also heard the low purr. Of course as the "Dragon Trainer" as Snotlout had taken to calling Hiccup, the russet haired boy was never without his dragon. 
Toothless sniffed the air and walked around to the other side of the rock and Astrid scratched him under his head. "Hey, Toothless," She said. After a minute she turned to the boy now sitting next to her.  She ogled at his drenched clothes for a second before asking with a raised eyebrow, "How was your flight?"
Hiccup shrugged, "Toothless decided he wasn't interested and decided to go fishing," He glared at his dragon, "Of course he conveniently didn't care that I was still riding him." 
"So you fell in?" Astrid tried to stifle the giggle that emerged.
"It isn't funny!" He protested, pointing an accusatory finger at the Night Fury who widened his eyes innocently.
"Don't give me that look, you completely 'never minded' I was there!"
"Maybe you're too light," Astrid suggested. Hiccup scowled. 
"Yeah, the bony hero takes a swim," Hiccup said dryly as he rested his head in his hands. Astrid couldn't help it anymore and burst out laughing. 
Hiccup stared at her incredulously and then sneezed. Astrid frowned at him.
"You should really change out of those before you get sick."
"I'b finb,"
Hiccup insisted with a sniff. Astrid sighed and grabbed his arm. 
"Come on," Astrid said and continued to pull him along. Hiccup knew he couldn't fight her grip anymore than he could convince Toothless to stop eating fish. Instead he decided that he liked how close she was, even if her grip did hurt a little. 
There were so many things he didn't understand about Astrid and there were even more that he thought he had, but had been proven wrong about. He'd thought she was just a tough girl who could have cared less if Hiccup fell off a cliff. 
But he was wrong. So very wrong about everything he thought to be Astrid Hofferson. One of the first things he learned about her was that she had a strange affinity for taking walks through the forest and enjoying the foliage. She really knew plants well and he was always amazed that she knew what herbs did what. At one point he'd even tasted tea that she'd made from leaves in the forest and he couldn't say he'd tasted anything better. Berk wasn't exactly known for its culinary skills. 
He was sure that Astrid hadn't really noticed him or what he'd been doing with his life until now, but the truth was that she had noticed. She just hadn't said anything about it. When he asked her about that, she'd told him,
"I had noticed, but I didn't care as much as I should have."
Hiccup had remained thoroughly confused throughout the rest of that day because of her comment. 
Astrid was also passionate about things other than fighting he soon discovered. She had pushed aside her other hobbies to get stronger though. What those hobbies were, he was still finding out. But one of them he'd found out about when he was flying one afternoon and happened to cruise over the village where he saw Astrid sitting outside her house with flowers amassed on the ground. She was carefully choosing them and rearranging them. 
Hiccup had landed and startled her as she hadn't been expecting him to find out about that. She'd promptly hit him for sneaking up on her and then walked away. He knew that she was probably embarrassed about liking flowers, but he couldn't care less what she thought. Whatever it was that she did, he'd support her on it. 
"Inside," Astrid's voice broke his reverie as she gestured to his hut. 
"Aren't you going to come in?" Hiccup asked. She shook her head. 
"I've got to do something," She answered. Hiccup nodded. 
"Well, I'll, um, see you later?"
He said and Astrid nodded. Why was it that all their conversations always ended so awkwardly? It was frustrating that he couldn't figure out what to say to her even though it had been years since Hiccup had woken up to a changed village. She turned on her heel and walked back to her house. Hiccup let out a sigh. 
Girls were so hard to understand. One moment she was slugging him in the arm and the next she'd be kissing him into oblivion. It was perplexing and aggravating to the point where he suspected he was slowly losing his sanity over it.
He went inside and changed into a dry set of clothes. He was going to have to figure out a way to get Toothless to stop fishing while they were flying together. 
Toothless moaned and Hiccup turned around to see the Night Fury was holding something in his teeth.
"What've you got there, Bud?" He reached over and took the object from the dragon. He looked at it carefully. It was Astrid's headband. How had that fallen off her head? He puzzled over this for a moment before he smiled. 
He wasted no time in taking the headband and heading to his drawing studio in the forge.

Astrid let out a low sigh of frustration. She couldn't find her headband anywhere. No matter where she looked in her lodge, it was nowhere to be found. For the life of her, she couldn't imagine how she could have lost it. She'd had it with her with she was wandering through the forest right before Hiccup had found her. 
Hiccup. 
He had become steadily harder and harder to understand over the past few years. Right when Astrid thought she'd finally understood him, he surprised her by doing something completely spontaneous. Not that she minded, Hiccup's spontaneity was one of his many gifts and he never disappointed in what he came up with each time. 
They'd kissed many times, but Astrid sometimes felt like she was the only one who really wanted to. She wasn't sure if he wanted to kiss her and was too shy to or if he simply didn't want to. 
To make matters worse he left her no hints to go on in terms of what he was thinking. He'd surprise her by an open display of affection through an invitation to take a flight on Toothless or giving her one of his latest inventions. But he had yet to openly state how he felt, which was odd for Hiccup. 
He was the most expressive out of everyone in Berk, well, except for Toothless. It was no wonder that the two got along so well, they were the same in every way possible. 
Astrid sat back down on the bed. She'd lied to Hiccup when she'd said she had to get home. She'd had nothing to do there and was just looking for an excuse to get away from him. Why? She wasn't entirely sure. He was acting so strangely that she wondered if it was because he'd fallen into the water or if it was something she'd said.
Her eyes went up as a tentative knock on her door broke the silence. She stood up and opened it to find Hiccup standing there, a grin threatening to break his mouth. 
"Hi," He said. She stared at him. 
"What did you eat for breakfast?" She asked. 
"Well, Toothless made me eat another dead fish-"
"I did not need to know that," Astrid said in a deadpan tone. Hiccup shook his head. 
"Um, Toothless found this," Hiccup held out the headband. She looked down at it and closely examined the band. There in the center of the headband was a new metal addition. Carved into the metal was a small flower.
"I wanted to thank you," Hiccup said, meeting her eyes. She frowned at him.
"For what?" 
"All this, you helped me in everything and stood beside me, always" He gestured broadly to her. 
"You just gestured to all of me," She said. He grinned and leaned in to kiss her gently on the lips. It was a sweet kiss, because now he was the one kissing her with all the passion in his heart. As he pulled back, he turned red. 
She grinned.
"I see you gained enough confidence to kiss me, not bad."
"So you're not going to hit me for kissing you?"
She slugged him in the arm. 
"That was for stealing my headband," Hiccup blinked and then turned around to look at Toothless.
"You!" He exclaimed and took off after his dragon. Astrid could only shake her head and closed the door behind them. Boys would always be boys. 
Maybe they were off to a rocky start in understanding one another but at least here and now they were sure that they could accept each other completely.
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