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The first thing Hiccup registers through the fogginess of his mind is the softness of the bed beneath him. The second thing he registers is something pulling his hair. It’s pretty light, not near hard enough to be painful, but the strangeness of the sensation is still enough to jar him fully awake.
“Oh no, he’s waking up!” Tuffnut’s voice says panickily, as Hiccup registers both he and his sister’s faces hovering right over his. Something tugs his hair again.
“That’s a good thing, you muttonhead,” Ruffnut shoots back. Her braid swings, nearly hitting Hiccup in the nose and he tries not to scrunch his face too much at the smell of fish.
“But we’re not ready yet,” Tuffnut protests, as he sticks something in Hiccup’s hair. That’s what they’re doing…?
“Ready,” Hiccup rasps, wincing at the weakness of his voice and how achy he is everywhere, “For what?”
“No,” Tuffnut yelps, and smacks a hand down over Hiccup’s eyes.
“Good to see you awake, Hiccup,” Ruffnut says cheerfully as he feels another very pointed tug in his hair.
“It was good to see you too, when I could still see you,” Hiccup says flatly, reaching up to wrap a hand around Tuffnut’s wrist and tug his hand off, “What are you two doing to me?”
“Adding some decorations,” Ruffnut sing songs, “Nothing much.”
“Decorations?” he repeats blankly, hand reaching up to feel his hair and try to figure out why it feels like it’s being tugged in one million different ways all at once. There’s… Are those hairclips….?
“With these,” Tuffnut agrees gleefully, with apparently his initial horror at Hiccup waking up too early forgotten. He holds up a bright blue hairclip and then reaches for Hiccup’s hair again.
Hiccup attempts to smack his hand away. But it’s actually hard when he’s still exhausted and moving jars some injury he can’t identify enough that he drops his hand back to his side. “Why are you putting dozens of hairclips in my hair and where did you get those from?” he demands, exasperated. Because he’s pretty sure they don’t have any such ridiculous supplies out here on the Edge, but it’s not like he would ever know with the twins. At least this isn’t an actually damaging prank – unless to his scalp counts.
“You’ve been unconscious for days,” Ruffnut replies, a little fiercely, “You were scaring everyone.”
…oh.
It’s been that long?
“So this is… retaliation?” Hiccup guesses tiredly. But for the twins, he knows it’s their form of affection and showing just how scared they’ve been. Which he feels a little bad about. He didn’t mean to make everyone that worried.
“Yeah,” Tuffnut agrees, “And it’s awesome.”
“Can I disagree?”
“Nope,” Ruffnut says, grinning, “Besides, you look nice like this.”
“Uhuh,” Tuffnut agrees, “Kind of cute.”
“What?” Hiccup yelps. He did not just –
“Yeah, he’s got a point,” Ruffnut crows a bit gleefully, leaning over him.
Hiccup groans. “Please never say that again.”
Ugh. No way. It’s ridiculous enough that Dagur has claimed he’s cute before – even when all they’ve done for the last three years is fight. He is not going to have his friends saying things that ridiculous too.
The twins just snicker.
“No, really,” Ruffnut insists stubbornly, “We should show you what you look like right now.”
“Yeahhh!” Tuffnut agrees, brightening, “Ruffnut, give me our phone! I can take a picture.”
“I don’t have our phone anymore, remember?” Ruffnut reminds.
Tuffnut deflates. “Right,” he grumbles, “I forgot you broke it.”
“I didn’t break it,” Rufnut defends.
“Yes, you did.”
“Ryker broke it!”
“Because you threw it at him!”
“Well, it distracted him from killing you,” Ruffnut retaliates.
“The look on his face was pretty awesome,” Tuffnut agrees, a bit grudgingly, “But our phone is still broken.”
Hiccup sinks back against his pillow with a long sigh.
“Hey,” Ruffnut argues, “It’s not my fault that someone named Hiccup decided he wasn’t going to help us get a new phone if we broke this one.”
“Someone named Hiccup is right here,” Hiccup replies with a sigh, “And he still stands by his decision.”
“But that’s not fair,” Ruffnut whines.
“No, it’s not.” Tuffnut looks like he’s actually pouting.
“Guys, this is the sixty third time you’ve broken your phone since we moved out to the Edge. We don’t have resources to keep making trips just to get you a new one.” He feels really bad to say so but there’s a certain point where he really needs to draw a line. Mostly, Astrid’s been griping about it non-stop, and… Well, they don’t have time to keep making trips and buying extra phones for the inevitable time the twins’ break again.
“But the explosions we used them in were pretty awesome,” Tuffnut argues. And he’s still wondering what you could possibly do to a phone to make it blow up because they’ve managed that at least thirteen times.
“Yeah and you’re really not persuading me to change my mind,” Hiccup replies.
“Well, that just means we’re gonna have to use your phone to take a picture,” Ruffnut decides smugly and reaches for the thing where it’s lying on the table next to his bedside. “Nice,” she chirps, as he hears the phone making a dinging in confirmation that she somehow got past the password screen.
“How do you know my password?” Hiccup demands, instantly spooked. The first thing he’s doing when he gets his phone back is hanging the password and he means it. Not that he’s got anything to hide on it but how does he know they aren’t going to send ridiculous messages in his name, just as a prank?
“How do we know how many tails a yak has?” asks Ruffnut.
“Yeahhhh!” Tuffnut agrees, “Or how many eggs a chicken lays!”
He’s going to get a headache for more than one reason now. “How do you know how many eggs a chicken lays? It changes every day. And what does that have anything to do with my password?”
“Your password is like so obvious,” says Ruffnut, “I mean, it’s the same thing as your screensaver.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It’s just Toothless spelled backward,” she retorts, wiggling his phone at him.
Because yes, the background of everything on his phone is various pictures of Toothless. And? That doesn’t mean his password was that easy to guess, does it?
“But that’s not technically the same as the picture then.”
“Yeah it is,” Tuffnut argues, “All you have to do is hold the picture upside down and you know what the password is.”
Hiccup groans into the palms of his hands. Fine. He’s going to just end this argument before it confuses him even more. But well, the twins can be very clever at times no one expects it. He should’ve seen this coming. How long have they known his password?
Ruffnut is poking around on his phone and he’s really beginning to consider just pulling it away. He just really, really doesn’t want a broken phone too. This is the first and only one he’s ever had – and it took until he was put in charge of the Dragon Training Academy three years ago before Stoick even considered spending money on that for him. How all his friend’s got their parents to get them ones when they were still little children, he has no idea.
But trying to sit up to wrestle the phone away from the twins would mean having to move and he aches enough as it is, so… He’s going to cautiously stay lying down and hope he doesn’t really regret it.
“Ooh, nice,” Ruffnut chirps, lifting the phone and snapping a few pictures of him before she flips it around, holding it up in front of his face so he can see himself.
He looks insane.
Honestly.
There’re hair clips of every single color of the rainbow and various designs on each of them all over his hair and it’s also the worst hairstyle he’s seen in his life.
And she did not need to take a picture of him when he was mid-facepalm-grimace either.
“See?” asks Tuffnut, “You look awesome.”
“Um,” Hiccup supplies, “I guess?”
They both look immensely proud of themselves.
Fine. He’ll not burst their bubble and just withhold any further comments about his real opinion of what they’ve done to his hair.
“Wait,” Hiccup says suddenly, eyes narrowing on one of the hairclips in the picture. He snatches the phone away to get a better look, “Is that a Toothless hairclip?”
“Yup,” Ruffnut agrees, “We got it from Astrid’s younger sister. Remember when she had this whole fuss about how she wanted some personalized dragon ones?”
“How could I forget?” Hiccup asks, dryly. Mostly, he just remembers that Astrid had been veyry annoyed that her younger sister wanted a Toothless hairclip and not a Stormfly one. Hiccup just thought it was funny, even if he’d tried to be polite to her about it. “But how did you get that from her? And where did you get the rest of these from?”
“We got a bunch from Snotlout’s younger sisters,” Tuffnut replies, “And Fishleg’s older sisters, and Astrid’s sister pitched in at the end!”
“You went all the way back to Berk to get hairclips?”
“Why not?” asks Tuffnut, “Even after all that, you still hadn’t woken up.”
Hiccup winces a little. “Sorry to worry you,” he mutters.
“Don’t worry,” Ruffnut chirps, patting his shoulder, “You didn’t choose to get hurt.”
“And it gave us time to do your hair,” Tuffnut agrees, “Can we finish now?”
Hiccup sinks back against the bed with a groan, even if it’s half to hide his amusement. “You aren’t done yet?”
“Nope,” Ruffnut replies, grinning.
What is he going to say, no? To those hopeful faces? “…Fine. Go ahead.” At least it’s keeping them busy and out of trouble. And… here, with him. He doesn’t want them to leave.
Tuffnut brightens and snatches up a bright pink hairclip and leans forward. Ruffnut is quick to join him. He can feel them both poking at his hair and he’d say it feels nice to have someone else doing his hair if it… weren’t for an insane reason. But still, at least they seem to be trying to be careful to not to pull anything, even if it’s really not working.
Hiccup flips out of the stupid picture and no, he can’t say why he’s not deleting it. He flips to his contact screen instead, just to see if he’s missed anything. A bunch of missed calls from Gobber and one from Stoick. He should call them back sometime.
He scrolls almost accidentally to the end of the contact list, momentarily freezing as his eyes fall on the two numbers at the very bottom of the list.
Dagur’s and Heather’s.
Three years in and he can’t say why he hasn’t deleted Dagur’s from the list.
He can’t say why he hasn’t deleted Heather’s either, considering she, well… Yeah. All that.
He thinks about it sometimes but then he just… doesn’t. He doesn’t know why. Or maybe he does and he doesn’t want to think about it. It makes a tightness build in his chest that he can’t really explain and is mostly just…
Ugh.
He should scroll to a different screen. He’s about to when Ruffnut peers up at the phone. “Why do you have so many unread text messages from someone you labeled What Is it With You and Your Armada? Who’s that?”
“Um, no one and no idea,” Hiccup hastily replies, flipping out of that entirely. Not something he really cares to explain. Espeically not the part where Dagur wouldn’t stop texting him in the first couple months after he got out of prison. Hiccup never… looked at them. He just – Well, all of this is a mess. And he’s not going to have some ridiculous text message chat when they’re literally at war with each other.
Maybe it’s just that the last time he took a call from him was three years ago, and that turned out to be a come here with your dragon or I’m going to kill your dad conversation, so…
Ugh.
He’s too tired to think about this right now. And he needs to think of something distracting to say before the twins figure it out on their own.
“Where’s Toothless?” Hiccup asks. That’s actually weird – where is his dragon?
“He went out for a break, to… you know,” Tuffnut shrugs, “Fishlegs insisted we ought to keep your room clean, even if Toothless didn’t want to leave your side.”
“And Snotlout’s been offering to take him out flying since he’s getting restless but he kept turning it down,” Ruffnut adds.
Snotlout offered that?
He smiles a little, faintly, sinking back against the pillow. “Uh, one more thing,” Hiccup adds, as an afterthought, “Can you get these out of my hair before any of the others come to visit?”
“But they’re awesome!” Tuffnut protests, looking hurt.
“Oh, no problem,” Ruffnut promises with a devious amount of cheer that makes him instantly worried, “We’ll take them out in time, if there is time.”
There’s a distant growl in the hallway then and the door is pushed open moments later, Toothless trotting in. The dragon lights up the moment it seems him awake, running to his bedside, yipping eagerly.
“Hey, buddy,” Hiccup laughs, a little breathlessly, as Toothless licks his face, “Good to see you, too.”
Toothless yips again, jumping over the bed – nearly knocking the twins’ heads off – as he lands on the other side and starts licking him again. Hiccup reaches up, lightly rubbing his neck and Toothless nuzzles closer, pushing Ruffnut aside a little so he can get in right next to him.
“Oh, fine,” Ruffnut grumbles with an eyeroll, jumping up onto the side of Hiccup’s bed and just flipping right over it, landing next to Tuffnut on the other side. “I’ll sit here instead.”
Hiccup laughs.
Yeah, it’s good to be awake and with them all again.
Toothless cocks his head as he leans closer and it takes Hiccup a moment to realize that he’s looking at the hairclips. And he also looks like he’s about to do a dragon laugh.
“No, bud, don’t laugh,” Hiccup whines, “You’re above that.”
Toothless looks at him, somewhere between guilty and amused.
“See? Even your dragon appreciates it,” Ruffnut grins.
“Fine, you win, I look great like this,” he says, sagging against his bed. No, he doesn’t believe that in the slightest. At least they had fun, though.
She pats his shoulder. “We’ll stay here if you wanna sleep. Everyone else is on a scouting mission.”
And they stayed back to watch over him? Even if Toothless could have done it? It makes a small bit of warmth swell up inside of him.
“Is everything okay?” Hiccup asks, just to make sure.
“Yeah, everything’s great,” Tuffnut agrees lazily, leaning against the side of his bed.
He takes his sister’s hand, their clasped hands resting on the side of the bed right near Hiccup’s and after a moment, he wriggles his hand out from under the blanket to squish it into a triple-hand-hold-mess-of-fingers kind of thing. But the twins don’t seem to mind.
Maybe they’re right and he should just get to sleep for now. And deal with these hairclips after he wakes up again. Even with the memories of the attack that injured him ringing in his mind, at least he knows he’s safe right now.