Work Text:
9:40 pm. The numbers briefly light up Anna’s phone screen as a text from Elsa slides in.
Sorry I couldn’t make it tonight. Hope you’re having fun!
Anna twirls another mozzarella stick through her marinara sauce, watching the viscous red liquid seep into the gaps in the crumbly, golden-orange crust. With a little imagination, it could be a very crispy, basil-speckled submarine being sucked into a massive blood whirlpool. Now that’s a movie she would see—provided the blood looks fake enough, anyways. (She does not go to the cinema to get nauseous and uneasy, thank you very much—school does that plenty enough as it is.)
She is having fun. She’s having immense fun. How could she not be? She’s eating delicious empty calories, she’s surrounded by her closest friends, and Hiccup is turning 19 in about an hour and a half. She’s at her best friend’s—pardon her, her new boyfriend’s—birthday outing and she is having the time of her life.
Or at least she should be.
It was an event they had all been planning for months. The new sci-fi thriller, Cold Life, was all Hiccup could talk about. An ambitious project based on a comic book series Anna had never heard of (as so many sci-fi thrillers were), the plot centered around a ragtag group of time travelers trying to prevent the heat death of the multiverse while also not causing too many timeline overlaps and unraveling reality. So you know. Very low stakes.
They made a movie night out of it, buying tickets a week in advance and surprising Hiccup with reserved seats in the back of an iMax theater. They bustled their way in and paired off, as they so often did, organizing by who was most comfortable whispering and joking under their breath to who.
Anna watched the movie eating popcorn with one hand and holding Hiccup’s with the other—she’s still getting used to being allowed to do that. Now, she’s sitting in a sparkly blue plastic diner booth, delicately picking at her food in such a way as to make it last as long as possible.
It isn’t that she’s not hungry. She’s always some degree of hungry. In a world where she was her most authentic self, the chicken Florentine panini, the mozzarella stick appetizer, the onion rings, and the honey mustard sauce would be gone within minutes of being delivered. The reason they are all still on her plate in some capacity is because they’re keeping her busy enough to not look…
Well, busy enough to not look like she shouldn’t be there.
She looks up for the first time in a while, tearing off the end of the marinara-soaked cheese strip as she scans the diner booth. The lively conversations—the same type that usually give her some degree of comfort and belonging—are starting to agitate her.
They shouldn’t be. The topics are innocent enough. Merida and Astrid are raving about how epic the movie’s fight choreography was, occasionally ripping off pieces of honey chipotle wings with their teeth for emphasis. Rapunzel and Moana are wrapped up in an animated discussion about all sorts of visual imagery and motifs and other such things, trying to meander their way toward a conclusion about the meaning of the recurring pink glow on the horizon. Flynn and the twins are rating the explosions (of which there were many, despite explosions being impossible in the oxygen-devoid environment of outer space) with a surprising amount of thought. Mavis is spearheading a deep dive with Tooth and Johnny into the psyche of a character Anna found rather irritating. Finally, next to Anna, Hiccup and Jack are arguing over themes, and whether Cold Life is making a statement for or against the idea of inevitability.
Usually, when they go out with friends, one of Hiccup’s hands is always reserved for Anna to hold. They’re still getting used to being together, and sometimes Anna (or both of them, for all she knows) needs a reminder it’s real. For years and years it was only ever friends—Anna gazing longingly when his back was turned, drawing hearts around their names in her notebook margin and covering them up when anyone looked. Wondering how he’d feel wrapped around her, or pressed up against her while they slept. Daydreaming about flooding his locker with candy boxes on valentine’s day. She’s still in shock from bumbling her sorry way through asking him out and him actually saying yes.
Yeah, I’ll go see Black Hole Tyrannosaur with you. You want to grab ice cream afterwards? Absolutely fucking surreal.
Black Hole Tyrannosaur, for what it’s worth, was very good. The concept of going through a wormhole and finding a planet containing several extinct animals who had fallen through gaps in space-time sounded ridiculous, but the practical effects were solid and the characters funny enough to make it a delightful ride.
They’d held hands across the seat, sprouting a tradition of linking one pair of hands and using the other to share popcorn. Anna glances at Hiccup’s hands now, one making slicing motions to indicate how distinctly the movie laid out that butterfly effect-style change is always possible and the other clutching the side of his head the way it always did when he was frustrated.
He can convey his points well enough with one-handed gestures, but today is his birthday. He deserves to utilize the full power of elaborate, sweeping hand motions to discuss Cold Life. She’ll let the hand-holding rule slide for now.
Anna takes a long sip of the cookies and cream milkshake she and Hiccup are sharing, and feels a deep pit start to settle in her stomach.
It isn’t that she didn’t like the movie. It had some interesting concepts, and it entertained her well enough. She rarely got bored, per se.
It’s just that it’s one of those movies where you have to have your whole brain turned on. Whirring at 100% capacity the entire time, or you’ll miss about 16 important details. And then later details build off those details, and later details build off those ones. It’s an endless cycle of “if you zone out for a few minutes, you’re fucked.” And then when you try to play mental catch-up, you miss yet another plot-relevant piece of info.
Hiccup loves this kind of stuff. He loves sinking his fingers into complicated things and picking them apart to see how they work. He has an eye for detail that she could never dream of, and a knack for piecing them together like some kind of mental jigsaw puzzle. He’s probably the smartest person she knows. (Still a little shocking to her that he found her to be anywhere near his supreme Level of Brain.)
It’s not that Anna isn’t smart. She can usually follow Hiccup fine when they’re chatting about this or that or the other, discussing pressing concerns like the future of AI or whether single-biome planets like the ones in Star Wars could actually exist. Not to mention she’s beaten him in chess. Several times.
The problem is that her mind is constantly running on full power mode. It’s the only way to keep up with her classes, no matter how wired and anxious it leaves her 24/7. And nowadays, even during what’s technically her downtime, her poor brain is spluttering and overheating like a computer that no one ever shuts down.
She couldn’t keep it on full power for an entire 2 and a half hour film even if she wanted to. It always flutters away mid-movie, demanding rest and leaving her at the mercy of shallow, mediocre movie takes developed by an Anna Runeardsen only half there.
And now, between her failure to keep track of Cold Life’s many timelines, her merciless confusion at the vague symbolism, and her frustration with mean characters everyone else seemed to think were fascinating and deep, Anna suspects she arrived at a very surface-level and mediocre take indeed. From what she overhears of the babble around her, she wouldn’t have anything to add—or worse, would cause a stir by accidentally disagreeing with something everyone else is in solid accord about.
All right, no more lying to herself. This sucks. Never in her life has she felt so painfully boring.
She considers trying to butt into Flynn and the twins’ conversation—how hard could it be to have a discussion about explosions? When she checks on them again, though, they’re packing up. From what Anna overhears, Flynn is apparently taking Ruffnut and Tuffnut to some monster truck show, so they can’t stay all night.
Do they even have monster truck shows in this city? If they do, Anna sure wasn’t aware. She wonders if the three of them are bored and faking an excuse to leave, although Ruffnut’s enthusiastic speculation about which unlucky car would be crushed the flattest seems to indicate otherwise.
Anna scans the table again, assessing her remaining options. Rapunzel and Moana have moved on to talking about some weird little piano leitmotif Anna completely missed. Mavis’s miniature discussion circle is now analyzing the main love interest, a rather nasty woman who used her tragic backstory of finding out she was an “accident” and her general bitterness over being infertile as justification to implode an entire timeline.
Her eyes pause on Jack and Hiccup, now discussing the “brilliance” of the ending. Though they seem to be disagreeing over what details they did and didn’t like, the general consensus was that the entire finale was very, very good.
Jack is being particularly insufferable about it, seemingly incapable of shutting up about what a mad genius Directorman Whatshisface is. During his spiel, he seems to be on a mission to dip his fries in every available substance on the table—honey mustard, ketchup, Merida’s chipotle aioli, Hiccup’s side of Ranch, the table sugar jar, someone’s abandoned BBQ sauce, Hiccup’s soda, Merida’s lemonade, his own mint chocolate shake. He barely seems fazed by even the most disturbing of combinations.
“Hey Jack,” Anna pipes up. “Which one tastes the best?”
“Huh?” He looks at her, blinking in confusion before he realizes what he’s subconsciously been doing.
“The ranch,” he says cheekily. “No question.”
And just like that, he’s back to gushing about the poetic cinema of the last 20 minutes of Cold Life. So much for getting him to change the subject to something she could talk about without making an idiot of herself.
“Okay, yeah, yeah, I get it, you think it’s brilliant that all their efforts were for nothing. I want to hear what Anna thought.”
Anna isn’t sure how long Jack has been talking when she hears Hiccup say her name. “Huh?”
Hiccup turns and smiles at her. “I want your input. I know those like…hopeless, depressing endings movies do sometimes aren’t your cup of tea, so I was wondering how this one fared.”
Anna blinks, eyes widening with shock. “You remembered?”
“Uh, I’m in love with you?” He looks at her like she’s completely lost her marbles. “Of course I remembered.”
Anna’s entire face grows hot, probably turning redder than the marinara sauce.
It isn’t like they haven’t exchanged “I love you”s. They’re six months in. Anna dropped an “I love you” after four (although rest assured, she knew long before they started dating—she just didn’t want to scare the poor boy off right after she somehow managed to woo him. Somehow.). He said it back after only a little contemplation (which she considered a win, from the guy who overanalyzes everything), soft and slow under a blanket fort. They’d been huddling for warmth and telling ghost stories, and when Anna accidentally came up with one so alarming she freaked herself out, she took a break from the spooky tale marathon to confess her undying love.
So yes. Factually speaking, he loves her. She loves him. It has been stated aloud many, many times at this point. Not exactly a surprise.
But every time he says it, it feels like one.
Maybe it’s because she still, even after all this time, worries she doesn’t deserve it. Maybe it’s because she’s not used to people loving her and being so upfront and straightforward about it. Maybe it’s because the mere concept of someone she loves reciprocating with equal or greater intensity will never not shock her.
Anna has never had reason to hold a high opinion of herself. The idea of anyone thinking so much of her is still a little hard to grasp.
She’s never been first-in-line for anyone’s heart, either, or been anyone’s top choice. But now, with Hiccup looking at her like that, she can believe she’s his.
He isn’t exactly talking quietly, either. Hiccup has never been particularly loud—much to the chagrin of his more rowdy, boisterous family members, who always complain he’s no fun at parties. While not exactly soft-spoken, he didn’t often care to raise his voice and preferred a tone that could devolve into inconspicuous mutters if needed. Generally speaking, Hiccup cared quite a bit more about the cleverness of the things he said rather than the volume at which he said them.
And yet here he is, announcing that he’s in love with her so noisily that several of their friends look up. His enunciation leaves no room for argument, either—the oft-present incoherent mumbles and splutters have apparently gone on sabbatical.
He’s speaking with an open confidence Anna doesn’t often hear.
“I mean…I, uh…”
Anna isn’t so lucky.
“Good, right?” Jack cuts her off, mouth full of French fry, before she can stumble very far. “There’s something so beautifully ironic about them ripping themselves apart hopping between universes and sacrificing their own timeline versions of themselves…and then their plan still doesn’t work. And for a second there, you really thought everything was going to be fine! Like the way they set it up to trick you was brilliant—”
“I don’t necessarily think—”
As usual, it’s difficult to get a word in edgewise once Jack is off on a rant. “Kinda underlies this idea that you can try really, really hard, and still fail. That people with the best intentions can do everything right and still get fucked over. Like, that’s just life, you know?” He punctuates the statement with a bite of an onion ring dipped in tabasco sauce.
Anna frowns. “That doesn’t really—”
“And the twist of the heroes being punished when they fucked up, but the villains ultimately getting rewarded? Solid.” The bite of onion ring is not nearly long enough to slow Jack down. “You know, I never see movies ballsy enough to flat-out show that evil rich people can buy their way out of trouble. At least not without some kind of ‘karma’ coming for them. Which it doesn’t in the real world, since karma isn’t really a thing.”
“Seems a little bleak, don’t you think?” By some miracle, Hiccup manages to cut in. “This idea that any efforts to spearhead positive change in society are ultimately doomed.”
“That’s not really the point, though. It’s more about how all societies will eventually end, and trying to prolong the inevitable is a waste of your own existence—”
“Will they, though?” Hiccup interrupts Jack a little more boldly as they fall into their usual movie-arguing rhythm. “I mean, no future time travelers have come from the end of the universe and told us for sure.”
“It’s likely.” Jack takes a noisy sip of his green-and-brown milkshake. “Entropy ultimately prevails and all that.”
“But there’s no point.” Anna finds herself shoving her way in before she can second-guess it. “I mean, like…what’s the purpose of showing us a story where nothing gets accomplished? What am I supposed to take away from that?”
For a moment, Jack looks surprised before the usual air of self-assurance returns. “No, no, I think you’re misunderstanding,” he says around a mouthful of fry. “There’s not supposed to be a point for the characters. The point for us is that there’s no point for them. It’s kind of showing how everything we do is meaningless in the face of a cold, uncaring universe.” He grins, like he just put in the last piece of a particularly tricky jigsaw puzzle.
Ah, so this is the answer that she’s been missing for so long. Complete and utter nihilism.
“You seem oddly sanguine about all this,” Hiccup notes. Jack only smirks, raising his milkshake like he’s making a toast.
“What can I say? I’m just speaking the facts.”
Anna felt one hand clench into a fist under the table, the other starting to whittle away at the wood beside her placemat with green fingernails. It’s hard to tell if he’s actually that smug, or if he’s just trying to get a rise out of her. Maybe both.
Probably the latter. He’s not above causing a stir to get the attention on him. She’s not so different from him that way—dismissed and overlooked for much of her life, always wanting to be seen.
Still, there are other ways to go about it without talking over her. Or her boyfriend, for that matter.
“I guess you aren’t wrong,” Hiccup says, though he sounds resigned.
Jack looks briefly appalled that that was even considered a possibility. “Psh. Of course I’m not. Seriously great ending, though. I was more impressed than I’ve been in a while.”
“Yeah, kept you on your toes.” Hiccup doesn’t sound quite as enthusiastic as before. “Certainly couldn’t say it’s predictable, that’s for sure.”
“Really subverted all the stuff you—”
“Well, I thought the ending was stupid.”
Anna surprises herself with how ferocious she sounds.
As so often occurs, the entire table happens to go quiet the second she calls attention to herself. Her friends all turn to stare, and she suddenly wonders if she’s made a grave mistake.
Then something warm settles over her fingers, still digging nervous trenches in the wooden table. She feels a thick hand curl around her own, and some of the tension trickles down her back and out of her body.
A couple quick squeezes, subtle but unmistakable. It’s a small gesture, but Anna knows exactly what it means.
I’ve got your back.
Hiccup’s taken to doing it when the old, rusty metaphorical springs that make up her body get coiled a bit too tight. It helps drain out the worst of the anxiety, social or otherwise, and get her bent back into place.
She glances up. He’s giving her a soft look, encouraging and perhaps even a little…eager.
Right. He’s in love with her. He’s probably not lying about that. If he’s in love with her, he’ll probably want to hear her opinions. That logically tracks, right?
He gives her a small nod, as if to say go on.
And so she does. No turning back now—she has to commit to the bit, at least.
“So nothing they do will ever be able to save the multiverse.” She crosses her arms. “They try, and they fail, and they go back in time, and they try, and they fail again, and they keep doing that until they dissolve into the space-time continuum and cease to be, blah blah blah. It’s boring. It’s the same deal with the same result every single time.”
“Well, yeah, but the thing that makes it entertaining is the variety of ways in which they fuck up.” Jack smirks.
“Sure, the first few times. Then eventually it’s like…okay, is this going anywhere? Is it gonna show me some epic thing that makes all of this worth spending three hours getting my brain sliced up and handed to me? And then, to top it all off, you get Clinical Depression: Movie Finale Edition!”
She spreads her hands wide as she says it, mouth hanging open in mock wonder.
“I still don’t think you’re getting it.” Jack’s smirk turns to a frown. “It’s not really about some big dramatic reveal. In the real world, you don’t always get to know the how or the why of things. They just happen.”
There’s a note of bitterness in his voice, like he has quite a few of his own unanswered questions. A predicament that apparently he wants to see reflected in media everywhere so as to not feel alone.
Anna almost feels sorry for him until he continues talking.
“I mean…come on. Not every ending can be this cheerful ‘friendship and teamwork save the day’ thing. Anyways, it wouldn’t make sense for the story. If you pay attention to the plot structure, like Hiccup was saying earlier, it’s more narratively satisfying to end on a bleak note.” Jack sips his milkshake smugly before popping another handful of fries in his mouth. Hiccup looks away, eyeing the table guiltily. “Honestly, I think more movies could use endings where—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up, Jack.”
Jack freezes mid-chew, the end of a French fry poking from his lips. The entire table turns to stare at Anna again.
She glances over the stunned faces of her friends, suddenly feeling mortified. Jack looks like he got smacked with a mallet.
“Oh, gosh.” She shrinks back into her seat, studying the few bites left of her panini. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped. Geez. That was so rude, I—”
“Are you kidding?!” Hiccup’s voice cuts in, and a hearty hand slaps her back. “Annihilate him, babe.”
She looks up to see the shock has faded from Jack’s eyes to be replaced with…an almost playful glint. He’s not mad, she realizes. Not even annoyed. More intrigued than anything.
He’s challenging her. Which is good, as he is, from this moment forward, essentially consenting to being annihilated.
“I can’t deal with you right now.” She leans back in her seat, letting out the most exaggerated groan possible. “You’re so ridiculous. ‘Ooooooh, look at me, I’m such a deep and profound movie where everything sucks and nothing gets any better! I’m gonna win an Oscar because the movie awards committee loves pain and suffering and they think the only way to be respectable is to wallow in your own sadness and misery!’ Give me a fucking break. You think I need to be told by some…brainscrewey movie that sometimes things go to shit?! My life has been going to shit for years. And I don’t think I’m the only one. I mean…we’re all kind of fucked, right? Not like our majors are gonna make us more than pennies.”
She looks around at her friends, all studying liberal arts or humanities or whatever other field that was absolutely not hiring. Hiccup was maybe the only exception, with his path toward an engineering bachelor’s.
They stare back at her, eyes growing even wider. Apparently the perpetual optimist talking with absolutely 0 filter whatsoever isn’t something you see every day.
“The Adderall doesn’t always work, y’know.” She knows she’s oversharing now, but she doesn’t care. “Neither does the Zoloft. Or whatever else I try. I’m panickey, I’m stressed all the time, I pretend I have a promising future to keep myself sane but I really, really don’t. I see the world and the economy and the environment and all this stuff like…falling apart around us, and I need to delude myself into believing maybe everything’s going to be okay or I’ll lose it. And you think a movie about people giving their all to prevent a disaster and failing miserably every time is what anyone needs?!”
There’s a short pause before Jack speaks up again, this time lifting a finger insightfully.
“But narratively speaking—”
“Well, fuck the narrative!” Anna starts frantically waving her hands around, channeling Hiccup’s over-the-top gestures in her desperation to get her point across. “Maybe if its message is this shitty ‘nothing you do will ever matter’ thing, then the narrative is what needs to change, not get an equally-shitty ending to go with it. I mean, last I checked, people watch movies for fun, and like…who enjoys feeling hopeless, crushing despair?! How am I supposed to leave a movie theater feeling satisfied and like…generally okay about the state of the world when none of the good guys get a happy ending, and they all died for nothing?”
“Arlin got a happy ending—”
“Fuck her too!” Before Anna knows it, she’s picking up an onion ring drenched in honey mustard and chucking it across the table. Drops of yellow goo fly onto her friends’ faces, and the fried vegetable lands on Jack’s cheek with a wet splat. He peels it off his face, eyeing it with distaste.
“She’s the worst,” Anna goes on emphatically. “Look, we all have problems, but you don’t see me going around and destroying timelines over it. Sorry, but I’d be different. Also, can we talk about how sexist it is that only the ‘traditional’ lady who wants babies gets a happy ending?! Bet they thought I wouldn’t notice that. Ha!” She smirks triumphantly, ripping off a piece of a mozzarella stick. “I see how it is. They think the one who wants to be a mom is the pure and virtuous and innocent one by default, so she’s the one who gets to live. But I see right through their bullshit, and I think Karis and Suret should have lived! Everyone else can die, I guess, if the plot really needs them to, but give us someone to root for, you know?”
Hiccup whistles, nudging Anna playfully. “That’s my girl!”
Anna gives him a sidelong glance, sure she’s blushing an embarrassing amount. “I’m your girl?”
He blinks. “I’d think so, unless you’re only dating me as a friend. In which case it might be necessary for us to have a talk about the nature of our relationship.”
“Did Arlin get a happy ending, though?” Moana asks. “I mean, she got stuck in that eternal time loop. And wasn’t the implication it was just a fake dream dimension?”
Rapunzel is temporarily distracted from their conversation, watching Jack with Merida and Astrid in a sort of morbid fascination. He pops the earlier-chucked onion ring in his mouth before beginning an elaborate routine to lick up the honey mustard splashed across his cheeks.
Anna shrugs. “Happy comparatively. It was still better than what everyone else got.”
“She had growth, though, man,” Johnny pipes up. Casual but insistent, in the way he has a habit of being. “At least she’s less of a jerk than she was in the beginning. So she kinda deserves it.”
“And Arlin’s psyche is so interesting!” Mavis stretches out her fingers, grinning. “Like…why did she feel so incomplete without kids? She was super well-loved by everyone for like…her whole life, so it’s not like she didn’t have a support system. And she was smart enough and rich enough to basically become whatever she wanted, so…why was she gunning so hard for her own kids? I mean, she could’ve easily been a pediatrician or a teacher or a social worker or something, if she wanted them around so badly. But she was so insistent on being a mom, so like…what is her deal?”
Before she can stop herself, Anna lets out a puff of frustration. “To be honest, it was hard for me to care when she spent most of her screentime being an asshole. Like, I know ‘unlikable main characters’ are the new fad or whatever, but they’re just…draining to watch.”
Mavis gives her a puzzled look. “Really? I love picking them apart. Trying to figure out how they work.” Johnny and Tooth nod emphatically.
Anna frowns. “So you don’t ever get like…aggravated, having to see somebody be a huge jerk over and over?”
Tooth shakes her head, rainbow-dyed hair forming a bright blur around the dark skin of her face. “Not if it’s fiction, no. I mean I would assume any reasonable person would know not to emulate that kind of thing, right?”
“But it’s not like…disheartening?”
Johnny shrugs. “Honestly makes me appreciate real actual nice people more.”
She hears a shifting in the chair next to her, and glances over to see Hiccup turning back toward them. For a time, it seems he was distracted by Jack’s show. The other boy has, to the best of his ability, cleaned the honey mustard off his face, and is now sipping his milkshake and watching Anna—the contrarian of the day, apparently—with great interest.
Hiccup opens his mouth to speak, and Anna preemptively winces. She can only imagine how inane and childish the love of her life will find her views on unlikable characters. Honestly, if this many people are looking at her like she’s nuts, she probably deserves for him to make a snide comment—
“Anything else I can get for you kids? A dessert, maybe?”
A new voice interrupts before Hiccup can realize Anna’s movie takes are probably horrendously wrong. Their waitress is standing by the booth, notepad in hand.
“Oh! Ah—” Hiccup looks down at his lap nervously, and Anna sees his eyes drift to the wallet in his back pocket. His brow creases, a note of sadness drifting onto his face.
She knows what he’s thinking. Even before they started going out, it became second nature for her to tell.
He thinks he can’t afford this.
They’re all broke college students, some more comfortable asking their parents for handouts than others. Hiccup’s the stingiest with money, with his need to prove his independence to his dad ensuring he spends nearly every spare moment working on-campus jobs and every paycheck on rent and essentials. He doesn’t have much left over on less than minimum wage.
But it’s also his birthday.
“Oh—oh no, I think we’ll be okay—”
“I’ve got it.” Anna pulls out her duck-shaped purse and slams it down on the table. “Are you still doing the February special? The one where you sub out chocolate ice cream for strawberry and you get a discount?”
She read about it online when they first picked the place. Something to do with having leftover strawberry-flavored stuff from not as many people ordering Valentine’s desserts as the diner planned, Anna guesses. Today’s technically the first day of March, since Hiccup’s “actual” birthday comes only once every 4 years, but perhaps it’s close enough.
The waitress nods, and Anna launches into the dessert order.
“Can we get a banana split? February special, so two strawberry scoops and a vanilla scoop. Extra caramel and hot fudge sauce. Oh! And, uh…I don’t know if pineapple’s in season this time of year, but if you have any, could you sprinkle a bit on the top?”
After the waitress leaves, Anna turns to see Hiccup gawking at her. “What?”
“I love you.”
He says it with so much force that Anna’s surprised the table doesn’t shake. Several of their friends smirk, and Anna feels her cheeks burn.
“Oh, stop it.” She rolls her eyes, smiling nervously. “It’s your birthday! You deserve nice things.”
“But…that thing costs like $10!” he spluttered, waving his hands around. “Plus tax! And…you remembered I like caramel sauce?”
It’s her turn to stare at him like he’s been claimed by insanity. “I’m in love with you? Duh.”
He dissolves into incoherent stutters, blushing like a madman, and Anna smirks triumphantly.
If her doing a nice gesture can evaporate his dignity this quickly, then perhaps he isn’t exaggerating about the high regard he views her in.
“But back to Arlin,” she says, sitting up a little straighter. “Was it just me or was the scene where she goes on and on to Cyndilla about how she wants a baby completely out of nowhere? It was so random—”
“You sure you’re not just projecting because you don’t want any babies?” Jack asks, cutting her off as he slurps annoyingly at his milkshake.
Anna narrows her eyes. “Say that again and I’ll use you as a projectile missile.”
Merida snorts out a laugh, giving Anna an approving nod across the table. “Drag him, lass! Ah swear, someone’s got tae.”
It’s snowing when they walk out into the parking lot.
Hiccup shivers, mouth no doubt still feeling the last traces of his birthday sundae. Smiling softly, Anna takes off her puffy magenta jacket and slips it over his shoulders. No trouble getting those skinny arms in the sleeves, though the bottom of the coat hangs a ways above his waist.
He frowns at her. “But aren’t you gonna—”
She pats his arm. “You ate ice cream. You need it more.”
The group is starting to disperse across the curb, finishing up conversations and texting their older friends for rides. No one, save maybe Jack and Rapunzel, seems keen to walk back to the dorms in the snow.
Elsa’s coming to pick Anna up soon. To what Anna’s sure would be the shock of her earlier self, she feels a prick of disappointment. She doesn’t want the night to end.
“I agree with you, by the way,” she murmurs, looping her arms around her boyfriend’s neck. “I think it was pro-inevitability—the movie, I mean. Nothing in the greater timeline changed in any meaningful way—nothing that I noticed, anyhow.”
“Ha!” Hiccup scoffs triumphantly as he wraps an arm around her waist. “I knew it. Jack’s an idiot.”
“But…” She slides a hand into his thick hair, starting to twirl stands around her finger in little circlets. “I also think its entire statement on inevitability was complete bullshit.”
He looks taken aback, leaning away from her. This only presses him farther into her massaging fingers. “What? Really?”
“Yeah, absolutely.” She snickers. “Nothing is inevitable. There’s so many of these like…” She shakes her head. “Chaotic…chance…equation things I could never hope to understand that determine the probability of everything. And as I do understand it, they have to line up just so for literally anything to happen. Saying any cause will only ever produce one specific effect no matter what, and no matter if new outside stuff crops up and complicates everything—which it inevitably will, by the way, because random unexpected shit is always happening—seems…pretty improbable to me? Like, saying you can’t avoid a certain thing when there’s so many factors that have to work together to lead to any like…event…thing, and there’s like a billion other slightly and largely-varying event kinda things possible, acting like one is all special-weshial and can’t be altered no matter what seems kinda stupid.”
“So you’re saying…nothing is inevitable?”
“Yup. Same way nothing is certain-certain.”
“Oh? So not even us falling madly in love?”
Anna scowls at him as her cheeks begin to burn. “Okay, first of all, stop trying to be cute when I’m getting a point across. Second of all, especially that.”
She snorts mockingly, and Hiccup raises an eyebrow. “Care to elaborate? I mean…I had a crush on you for ages. You liked me even longer. Why wouldn’t we have gotten together?”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, we had all kinds of things working against us. You were so dead convinced I was out of your league for some reason, and I was terrified you’d friendzone me and it would like…totally ruin me. No offense.”
He boyfriend shrugs. “None taken.”
“Point being that it would have been so easy for both of us to just never say anything. And voila! There you have it! No more being in love and making everyone else tell us to get a room.”
She spares a sidelong glance at Merida, who’s currently glaring at them with her tongue stuck out.
“Well, we’d still be in love though, right?” Hiccup says, frowning. “We’d just be a lot more miserable about it?”
“Not necessarily. Maybe one or both of us would meet someone else we were convinced was our soulmate or whatever, and we’d get super obsessed with them. Like, to the point it seemed stupid to like anyone else. Or I’d get frustrated when you put walls up like Elsa did, and I’d stop trying to get through to you. Or you’d hear me fart in class or something, and then decide I was disgusting and never worth considering as a romantic option again.”
He pouts. “You really think I’m that shallow?”
“I doubt it.” She shrugs. “But it’s what I’ve come to expect. You ever hear that ‘never ever ever do anything gross or lame in front of the guy you like or he’ll be turned off and never consider liking you back ever again’ stuff on the internet? Had me watching my every move around you for a long time.”
Hiccup scoffs. “Well, you didn’t need to. I’ve known for years that you snore, and sometimes you stink to high heaven because you forget to put your deodorant on in the morning, and you can get so overwhelmed that you can’t bring yourself to shower for days, and you still have all your toys from when you were a kid, and you love predictable and critically-panned movies because surprises and endless trope inversions stress you out, and you panic when you have to make big decisions or decisions where you think people will hate you for getting it wrong, and guess what? I still love you.”
His volume drifts up on the last sentence, like he’s speaking over a blizzard instead of a light, silent snow shower. Anna catches glimpses of several of their friends turning to look at them.
She tenses against him, sliding her hand out of his hair. Suddenly she’s looking at the snowy concrete, unable to meet her boyfriend’s eyes. “Why do you always say it like that?”
“Say it like what?”
“Like…like loud like that. So like…any old person can hear.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Aren’t you embarrassed?” She finally looks up, grimacing slightly. “I mean—well, it’s just—I guess I wonder—aren’t I embarrassing?”
He looks genuinely perplexed. “…are you? This is news to me.”
“You’re not like…” She bites her lip anxiously, somewhat dreading the blunt answer she knows she’ll get. Her voice softens, as though if she speaks too quietly for him to hear, she’ll have an excuse to drop the subject and put off learning what has to be a painful truth.
“You’re not embarrassed to be with me? Like…at all?”
To her surprise, his confusion only grows. “In what world would I be embarrassed to be with you?”
“I mean…I’m barely passing college. I’m addicted to Starbucks and posting food pics on Instagram and a bunch of other unoriginal ‘basic girl’ stuff. I can’t go more than a few sentences without accidentally saying something stupid. I’m super gross and can’t take care of myself half the time. My brain overwhelms itself over the dumbest things, and then I can’t function at all. I’m not really on track to become anything like…exceptional. And smart people movies fry my brain, and I probably form a whole host of bad opinions about them while I’m watching them. I’m kind of a failure.”
After a small pause, Hiccup lets out a deep sigh. “Okay, I don’t even know where to start with all that. First of all, half that stuff doesn’t matter to me. That’s what I’ve always told you, and like…let’s be real, I’m not a good liar. If I was bullshitting, you’d know by now.” He shakes his head, smiling fondly. “If any of those things did bother me on any significant level, I can assure you I never would have gone out with you in the first place. I knew you long enough to know what I was getting into, Anna. Secondly…”
He casts a glance behind her, Anna following his gaze. Jack is stuffing snow down a giggling Rapunzel’s shirt, the smug air from earlier long gone. Anna looks back to see Hiccup rolling his eyes.
“I didn’t get most of Cold Life, either. Really, I was humoring Jack more than anything, but it’s no crime not to be able to wrap your head around that clusterfuck of a movie. I was impressed that you were able to analyze as much as you did. Thirdly…”
His hands slide up her waist to firmly grasp her shoulders. “You need to listen to me here. You’re the farthest thing from a failure. You get up every morning and you work your ass off ten times harder than anyone I know—just to get through the day. You bite and claw your way through advanced high school classes and college applications and now these terrifying exams that are worth 60% of your grade, and you still somehow find the energy to look out for me when I can’t do it myself. You keep on smiling and trying to see the best in everyone and everything, even when people are awful to you and you feel like no one wants you around—absolutely not true, by the way. Honestly, I do all right in school because a lot of technical, mathy stuff comes easily to me, but…” He smiles meekly. “I wish I had half the resilience you do. I wish I knew how to bounce back when I do eventually find a class that’s too much, because gods know it takes the balls of steel you have. Or…” His cheeks flush in embarrassment. “Boobs of steel, I guess.”
“Nice.” Anna grins. “I have natural protection if someone tries to stab my lungs!”
“Precisely.”
“But…” She meets his eyes, a little embarrassed by how desperate she probably looks. “You think there’s still hope for me?”
“Absolutely. You just haven’t found your niche yet. Which is fine—most people our age haven’t, despite what stupid college marketing campaigns will try to tell you. But when you do find it? I know you’re going to kill it. Zero doubt in my mind. When you funnel all that energy into something, it’s going to blow people away.”
And then Anna Runeardsen stands on her tiptoes (curse her boyfriend’s growth spurt the last year of high school—now he towers over her and it’s really rather unfair) and kisses Hiccup Haddock like never before.
They’ve kissed probably dozens of times at this point, some more memorable than others. This one feels different, though—like something straight out of a cheesy Hallmark Christmas movie.
(One where the actors have good chemistry, though. Not those lifeless budget movie kisses where it looks like two fish trying to eat each other.)
Her hand slides back up into his hair, and she breathes him in. He tastes like Oreos and hot fudge and ice cream and a shameless burst of self-confidence when she needs it the most. His lips are dry and chapped from the cold late winter air, but Anna doesn’t mind. It’s him, and that’s what matters to her.
Her heart still pounds every time, just like it did holding hands with him for the first time during a 6th grade game of Red Rover. All these years, and he still makes her feel like she’s floating on a summer breeze, wildflower aromas all around her and the sun in her hair.
Ironically, being with him is also as tranquil and easy as cloud-watching in the grass on a clear day. He excites her endlessly and keeps her grounded all at once, and she doesn’t know what she’d do without him.
Nearby, she can hear Merida gagging. This only makes Anna kiss her boyfriend harder.
When she pulls away, Hiccup’s hair is dotted with snowflakes. She smiles, brushing it out fondly.
“So,” she says cheekily. “Out of all the infinite possible timelines we exist in, I’m glad I’m in the one where I got to date you.”
He raises an eyebrow teasingly. “Are you sure? There’s probably several where you marry some famous actor, and get to livestream from a private pool all day.”
“Well…if you get that Silicon Valley job you’re striving for…” She pokes him playfully in the chest. “What’s the difference? Financially, anyhow.”
He raises a teasing eyebrow. “Anna, I don’t think you understand how money works—”
“Sure I do. There’s three categories of the monetary elite: ‘Rich’, ‘Richer’, and ‘Filthy Fucking Rich.’ And I, sir, am more than happy to just be in the ‘Rich’ category.”
He gives her a skeptical look, and she wonders if he knows she’s joking. She quickly backtracks.
“Or not. We could also be mega-broke together. I’m all right with living in a cardboard box under the freeway as long as I’m doing it with you.”
“Yeah, don’t get your hopes up about being rich.” He leans forward and kisses the side of her head. “I don’t think it’s time for us to start packing our bags for San Jose yet. I haven’t even passed my upper divs.”
Anna snorts. “You will, though. You really are the smartest person I know.”
“Maybe you have low standards, then.”
“I absolutely do not.”
“Debatable.”
There’s the soft crumbling of snow under tires, and Anna looks past Hiccup’s mop of brown hair to see a pale blue fiat pulling up to the curb.
“Looks like my ride’s here.” She leans up and plants a last kiss on his cheek. “We’ll have to continue this dispute some other time.”
“Good.” Hiccup snorts, crossing his arms. “You’ll have adequate time to realize you’re wrong.”
“I’m not,” she says breezily. “But even if I was, and you start failing absolutely every class starting tomorrow…” She blows him a kiss as she backs toward Elsa’s car. “You know I’m sticking with you no matter what, babe.”
“I love you!” He shouts the words at her as she closes the car door, loud enough for all their friends to glance at him again. Elsa snorts with laughter.
“Seems like your relationship is in terrible jeopardy,” she deadpans.
Anna snickers as her sister drives away. “Oh, yeah. I’m so concerned.”