Chapter Text
The floor meeting for the 6th floor of the East Village Residence Hall was held on a Thursday, after classes were over. The RA, who lived in 602, went over the rules of the residence hall and forced all of the students to introduce themselves.
Astrid prided herself in her ability to pay attention and be one of the most locked-in people you could know, but she'd already had an eight AM class, track practice, and the general exhaustion of the first full week of college. She hadn't even had the energy to go to Fall Fest to see all the university clubs— not like she'd have the time to join a club anyways. She half-listened as the other students introduced themselves, finding herself glancing around the room more, unintentionally sizing people up.
They were all seated haphazardly around the stiff-but-worn institutional furniture in shades of blue, some students efficient in their posture, and others taking up entire stretches of the furniture for themselves. A guy with long blonde hair— Thorston, Astrid didn't catch the first name, was practically laying horizontally while he introduced himself, before pointing across the room to a girl who was sitting on the floor and who was also Astrid's roommate. He shared that they were twins, and Astrid realized that she's been so busy with her absolute academic grind from day one that she barely even knew anything about her own roommate.
Just as her roommate Ruffnut was going to speak, the door swung open, and a tall, skinny, panting and freckled boy rushed through. Astrid shot him a dirty look for interrupting her roommate, not expecting him to notice it out of all the other faces staring at him, but he caught it and winced. He walked over to an empty table with chairs, picking one up with some difficulty and dragging it into the circle, the legs screeching across the floor as he did so.
What an entrance.
Ruffnut cleared her throat before resuming her introduction, and soon everyone's attention was turned away from chair boy and back to Ruffnut. Well, except for Astrid.
He was wearing a sweater, which made no sense in this heat. She recognized the pattern and hairy texture as one of those Icelandic sweaters— her mother had complained about how itchy they were once when they found one in a souvenir shop in Sweden while visiting her grandparents. To wear one during the first full week of September in Boston was truly a choice. The denim jeans he had on probably weren't helping either, and he was fanning himself with his hand as he waited for the AC to cool him down, his face still red and ruddy from doing what Astrid assumed was running here.
Ruffnut finished introducing herself, probably oversharing something that Astrid regretfully had missed, before cruelly popcorn-ing to chair-sweater boy, who was chugging from a water bottle now. His eyes were wide and green as he almost choked on his water, and the RA saved him and asked Ruffnut to pick someone else. She let out a sigh before turning to Astrid.
Astrid took a moment to tear her attention from chair-sweater-water bottle boy and let her gaze settle more generally around the room. She introduced herself evenly, calmly and efficiently, sharing that she was Ruffnut's roommate, studied physical therapy, and was from southern California. She glanced at chair-sweater-water bottle boy, who'd finally seemed to settle down, and popcorned to him.
"Uh. Hi, I'm—" someone coughed behind her, directly in her ear, "— or uh. Hiccup. 608. Mechanical engineering."
He had a nasally voice and the hint of an accent that Astrid had a hard time placing from the few words he uttered. It frustrated Astrid that he seemed to forget the format— name, room number, major, and where you were from, and included what she could only assume was a stupid nickname, but apparently nobody else cared because they all just moved on after that sad excuse for an introduction.
She hadn't even caught his real name because of the person who decided to cough right in her ear. What kind of nickname was Hiccup anyways?
After another fifteen minutes of introductions, everyone had gone and the RA awkwardly had to stop them from leaving so they could go over some last minute information. Apparently they were only allowed to sign in three guests to the residence hall at a time, no candles, no string lights, and no tapestries. Something about fire code.
Finally, they were all dismissed.
Hiccup stood up awkwardly, gathering his things and slinging what looked like the world's heaviest backpack— a bulging green Jansport, over his bony shoulder. It seemed to be so heavy that it threw him off balance slightly before he regained his footing and started walking out of the common room.
Astrid didn't mean to follow him, but her dorm happened to be 612, so she had to pass by 608 to get there. He stopped in front of his door, fumbling in his pockets for his wallet, and produced his student ID to tap his card on the lock. He typed in his door code, and it flashed red and nothing happened. He tried again.
He must have sensed her hovering, because he turned around, though he nearly jumped when he saw her.
"Sorry," he muttered, the 'S' lisped slightly and the R's rolled softly. She still had no clue what the accent was. "Do you uh. Know how to unlock the door?"
Astrid gestured for him to give her the ID card, and she caught a glimpse of his legal name on it as she held it to the lock. Henrik, and then three more stretches of letters that she didn't recognize as names but were long and unfamiliar to her. She handed it back to him.
"Type in your door code number and hit pound."
He did as instructed, and the lock flashed green. He turned the handle, pushing the door open with his body weight, and muttered a thanks before retreating into the room.
Astrid was left standing outside, looking at the two name tags on the door: Christopher Ingerman and...
She squinted at the smaller letters, all fighting for space on the red piece of paper about the size of a grapefruit, cut out to look like a lobster. Henrik Hlodvardur Haddock Storolfsson. The name was crossed out badly with pencil, which barely did anything to the permanent marker it had been written in, and 'Hiccup' was crammed off to the side in messy handwriting that did not match the original. Her eyes drifted down to a sticky note on the ground with 'Hiccup' on it in that same scrawl, probably having fallen off of the name tag.
Suddenly the Icelandic sweater and unidentifiable accent made sense.
-
Astrid didn't go out during the first Friday of college that happened last week, having decided that she was no longer interested in the type of politics surrounding parties that occurred in her high school. She'd attended a prep school in LA on an athletic scholarship, and felt severely out of place around the many wealthy students whose parents paid for them to attend.
Back then, she felt pressured to fit in with the crowd at school, as to not give away that she was effectively a charity case. It wasn't that her parents weren't wealthy— they could afford international travel for the family every year, and she was grateful for that. But that privilege came on the backs of several conditions. One, her mother was a flight attendant and regularly flew between LA and Copenhagen, two, her father was a school teacher and had summer holiday off, and three; her maternal grandparents lived in Sweden and had space to let them stay over in their small countryside cottage in a village outside of Malmö (which was a short train ride from Copenhagen). They wouldn't be able to make the trips otherwise.
College was her chance to be different. While wealth disparity was still a very visible thing at Northeastern University, there were enough students that there were lots of social niches and offshoots and people didn't keep score the same way. She'd been hoping for something like that— out of the suffocating bubble of the prep school and into somewhere where she could kind of blend into a crowd, away from parties, drugs, craziness...
Ruffnut had other ideas.
"There's a pregame tonight at Tuffnut's room," she told Astrid, hitting her vape and blowing the smoke into her sleeve so it wouldn't set off the smoke alarm.
Astrid looked up from her textbook, and spun around in her standard-issue university desk chair to meet Ruffnut's eyes.
"Ruff, I told you, I don't want to go to parties."
She said it firmly, but with enough casualness that it wouldn't read as too serious. Luckily with Ruffnut, nothing was ever that serious.
"It's not a party, it's a pregame," she stressed the difference between the two. "Just Tuff, Snot, and maybe their loser nerd suitemates if they decide to show up."
Astrid let out a sigh. "And if I say no?"
Ruffnut grinned, and Astrid caved.
"Fine."
-
Ruffnut's twin brother's room was already a pretty impressive mess, despite the fact that they weren't even two full weeks into the school year. He shared it with Scott 'Snotlout' Jorgenson, a beefy guy who, within the first two minutes of her arriving, made it known to Astrid that he was planning on rushing a frat, and hit on her.
They gave her a room tour, which wasn't much, since the style dorm for the building they were in was semi-private suites— two double-occupancy bedrooms that shared a private bathroom via a somewhat complex system of locks. The bedroom looked the same as Astrid and Ruffnut's, though with a lot more dirty laundry, snacks, and alcohol throughout the room, but Tuffnut got really excited when it came to showing her the bathroom.
"Wait, check this out— the bathroom is huge!" he said enthusiastically, holding the handle and presenting it to them to add to the suspense or whatever he was doing. Tuffnut made choir noises as he pushed open the door and revealed the interior.
It was a very large bathroom. There was more space around the toilet, plus grab bars, and the shower was wide and flush with the ground and had a built-in bench attached to the wall, rather than the small, square shower stall that Astrid and Ruffnut had in their room. It felt a little clinical, and that was when it dawned on Astrid that this was probably one of the accessible rooms.
Astrid knew that invisible disabilities were a thing, but based on what she knew, it seemed like the guys had simply lucked out.
Tuffnut was standing on the shower bench, enthusiastically showing all the features of the faucet and its detachable wand head, when the door to the other ensuite bedroom opened, revealing a familiar freckled face.
"Hiccup?" Astrid found herself uttering unintentionally, which drew the attention of the others in the bathroom. Hiccup gave her a look like a deer in the headlights before trying to close the door again to retreat, but Snotlout stopped and grabbed the handle to pull it open. Hiccup didn't stand a chance.
The door was yanked open and Hiccup stumbled into the bathroom, his movements awkward and clumsy and reminiscent of a baby deer—like he hadn't yet grown into his body. He used the door handle to steady himself.
He was quite tall, she now realized. Maybe that backpack from earlier had been weighing him down, as Hiccup was at least a half a head taller than the rest of them, who all hovered around 5'8" or 5'9" besides Snotlout. Maybe a baby giraffe was a better analogy.
He must have finally figured out that it was still far too hot for wool sweaters. Instead, he had a plain dark gray T shirt on, revealing wiry freckled arms. The tag was sticking out the back of the shirt collar. Still wearing jeans, and worn Converse sneakers. The laces were tied kind of lopsided, double knotted, and—
Astrid stopped herself. Why was she paying so much attention to this random guy? He was just some nerd who lived on her floor. He didn't even dress remarkably or anything. All he’s done so far was make a clumsy entrance into the floor meeting, forget how to unlock his door, get yanked through the bathroom door, and have a weird name and accent.
Three times. She's seen him three times. He was nothing special, yet her mind insisted on keeping a detailed account of every detail about him. Weird.
"Yo nerd, are you going to join our pregame?" Snotlout said rather forcefully, which was comical considering the fact that Hiccup was over half a foot taller than him and the shorter guy had to crane his neck to look at him.
Hiccup rolled his eyes at the name, and furrowed his thick eyebrows in confusion. "What kind of game?"
Everyone laughed, well, besides Astrid, because she knew what was going on.
"They're drinking before going to a party or whatever they're doing," she clarified.
"Oh."
"Do you guys not have pregame in Iceland?" Tuffnut asked, genuine curiosity in his voice rather than malice. Astrid's suspicions were confirmed.
"I don't know, I didn't really go out back at home." He said with a shrug.
"We can tell," Snotlout and Ruffnut said in almost unison.
Tuffnut clapped his hands together.
"Well, to give our dear Hiccup Henry Haddock the full American experience, let's go do some shots!"
Astrid narrowed her eyes. She could've sworn it was Henrik, not Henry. Hiccup didn't correct him, and Astrid only watched as Hiccup get carted off by Tuffnut and Snotlout. They each took one of his spindly arms and lead him back through their bathroom door and into their side of the suite. He toed very cautiously around all the clothes littering the floor before taking a seat at the desk chair that Tuffnut offered him.
"Is Fishlegs joining?" Tuffnut asked, pouring out shots for the people occupying his room, plus one for this Fishlegs guy— probably the Christopher Ingerman whose nametag was also on Hiccup's door. Why everyone she's met so far had weird nicknames, she had no clue.
"He said he wasn't going to drink but he would maybe stop by," Hiccup offered with a shrug, staring down at the cup that he was handed.
They cheers-ed, took a couple shots each, and poured their own concoctions of varying proportions of chasers and liquor. Settled into their various spots around the room, they sipped their drinks in awkward company. Astrid was sitting on the foot of Tuffnut’s bed, with Tuffnut on the other end. Across from them were Ruffnut and Snotlout on his bed. Hiccup sat at Tuffnut’s desk chair, near the foot of both beds, where their desks were set up facing opposite. Snotlout’s desk had all the alcohol on it.
Tuffnut cleared his throat and started up an icebreaker game. Never Have I Ever.
“Never have I ever gotten an A in a class,” he shared with a triumphant grin, for something he probably shouldn't have been so proud of. She wondered how he managed to get into Northeastern, with honors, nonetheless.
Astrid looked around the room as everyone else took a drink, besides Ruffnut. At this point, she wasn't really surprised, just amused. Hiccup paused for a moment before he decided to drink. She scowled and tore her eyes away from him, trying to look at literally anything but those green eyes and the way he was sitting, arms crossed like he was trying to make himself look smaller, small frown tugging at his lips.
Tuffnut locked eyes with Snotlout across from him on the bed.
Snotlout spent a really long time thinking. Enough that everyone else seemed to be getting impatient. Finally, he puffed out his chest, before announcing his fact. “Never have I ever not scored a goal in a school sports game.”
Ruffnut blew a raspberry. “Boooo! That’s not how you play the game!” she grabbed a random shoe off the ground and chucked it at him. Luckily, Snotlout caught it before it knocked over a liquor bottle and ruined their night.
Nobody seemed to want to spend another five minutes waiting for Snotlout to think of another prompt, so they all drank begrudgingly. There were no goals in track and field, besides running or jumping, Astrid thought dryly to herself.
“Step aside, Snotlout. Time for a good one.” Ruffnut cracked her knuckles, sitting up on his bed. “Never have I ever greened out from smoking weed.” Her eyes met Tuffnut’s with a devious grin.
He seemed exasperated. “Uh, yeah you have! You greened out last weekend after we walked all the way to the Hood Milk Bottle to buy milk only to find out it was closed because it was two in the morning.” He pouted and crossed his arms. “I had to carry you All. The Way. Back.”
So that's where Ruffnut had gone last weekend.
Ruffnut raised a finger, narrowing one eye at Tuffnut. “I said I’ve never greened out from smoking weed. That was an edible,” she clarified, smug expression on her face.
Tuffnut grumbled to himself about something that made Ruffnut shout at him and took a swig. They bickered a little more about the Hood Milk Bottle incident.
Astrid tuned it out as she noticed motion from the shared bathroom doorway. A large boy cautiously stepped into the room, and it seemed like he was trying not to be noticed. That must be Fishlegs, the guy that Hiccup mentioned was his roommate. He looked around nervously before Astrid called him out.
“You’re Fishlegs, right?” she asked, turning everyone's attention towards him. He squeaked with a wince.
“Y-Yeah, that's me…” he said quietly.
“Fishy legs!” Tuffnut exclaimed excitedly, already distracted from the bickering he started. “Come join the partay,” he said, drawing out the “ay”.
Hiccup and Fishlegs exchanged a look— about what, Astrid had no clue. Fishlegs went over and poured himself some orange juice, no alcohol, and took a seat gingerly at the end of Snotlout’s bed, next to Ruffnut.
“New guy, you go next,” she announced bossily, gesturing towards him with her cup. The bright blue alcohol concoction sloshed dangerously close to the rim. “Never have I ever.”
Fishlegs paused to think for a moment, bringing a finger to his chin. He dropped it before speaking, posing it more like a question. “Never have I ever failed a class?”
Tuffnut, Ruffnut and Snotlout, very predictably, took sips from their cups. Astrid noticed Hiccup drink too, and raised an eyebrow at him. He caught her eye and blushed, or maybe his cheeks were just red from the alcohol. She didn't know. All she knew was that the room felt warm— or maybe was it the alcohol, and that she was surrounded by idiots. She huffed and looked away from him.
Everyone else's eyes found her though, as it became Astrid's turn for some reason— not that they'd gone in any particular order to begin with. She thought of a good one back after Snotlout’s. So many of the stupid parties she went to in high school ended up with games of ‘Never Have I Ever’, but never has she had the balls to share this one. No pun intended.
“Never have I ever actually had Swedish meatballs at IKEA.”
The room erupted into outrage, the shots finally having taken its hold on everyone. Well, Tuffnut, Ruffnut and Snotlout. They yelled over each other until Fishlegs could hush them enough to return to a normal volume, though even he seemed confused.
“Do they not have IKEA in LA? There's no way,” Ruffnut said first, sounding disappointed and also betrayed.
It was Snotlout’s turn to voice his opinions. “There’s definitely an IKEA in LA,” he insisted. “I saw this video where a guy went to every IKEA—”
Tuffnut cut him off. “So you're telling me you've been to an IKEA and you didn't eat the meatballs? Preposterous!”
Astrid only shrugged, the alcohol making her feel looser. “My mom makes better Swedish meatballs.” In fact, she has been to several IKEA stores, in both Sweden and the US. She even visited the IKEA Museum once. She liked the Baltic herring at their restaurant, and at the normal stores, she preferred the gravad lax-sallad— the salads with the smoked fish.
Snotlout scoffed. “I doubt it…”
“My mom is Swedish, Snotlout,” Astrid clarified, with a matter-of-fact tone, and Snotlout furrowed his eyebrows, grumbling to himself before he took a drink.
Her eyes wandered around the room as everyone else took a drink. Well, everyone else besides Hiccup, but nobody else besides her seemed to notice, since they were still fuming over Astrid having never had the meatballs.
He seemed almost annoyed, his noodle-like arms crossed over his chest, and an unamused expression on his face.
Ugh. What was his deal?
The room quieted down once again, as they waited for the final participant to speak after having been silent for the rest of the game so far.
She swore she saw Hiccup throw a sideways glance at her with a green eye before he opened his mouth.
“Never have I ever eaten Swedish food.”
While everyone else was in an uproar, getting pissed at him for basically repeating the previous prompt, Astrid was mad at him for the fact that his response seemed to be a direct attack at her. The way he caught her eye before he spoke rubbed her the wrong way. What an asshole…
Astrid felt a twinge in her brow as she drank alongside the others, having conceded after Hiccup explained that he lived too far from the one IKEA in Iceland. She would have bit back any choice words she had for him, if she didn't have alcohol in her system.
“What is your problem?” she snapped at him, and Hiccup seemed taken aback. The room fell into a hush.
Hiccup’s face was red, making his freckles blend into each other as his eyebrows furrowed again. She couldn't tell if it was from alcohol or embarrassment. “Me? You're mad at me?” he threw up his hands in confusion. “I don't even know who you are.”
Bullshit. She's run into him two times before. There was no way he didn't remember her.
He seemed to realize that he said the objectively wrong thing, and set course for overcorrection. “Oh, right,” he smacked his forehead lightly in recognition. “Allison.”
"Astrid. Astrid Hofferson," she corrected through barred teeth, putting emphasis on her Swedish last name, though her father's family had immigrated a while back and the spelling was Americanized. "I'm Ruffnut's roommate."
"And she also pole dances or something—" Ruffnut cut in, and Astrid shot her a glare for not reading the room.
"Track team. I'm on the track team. Pole vaulting.”
Hiccup blinked at her, taking in all the information.
"...Nice."
Astrid was fuming. He was the one who singled her out and mocked her with his stupid prompt, the one who asked who she was then guessed her name incorrectly, the one who needed help with his door, and all he could respond with was that? Not even the realization that she's already saved his ass several times?
She decided to grill him.
"So, Storolfsson," she said, pronouncing it the Swedish way and hoping it was close enough. Hiccup seemed to flinch at his name, shifting in his seat. "That's a patronymic, right? Son of Storolf?" Astrid flexed her knowledge of Nordic patronymic naming conventions, though they'd gone out of fashion in Sweden before her grandparents' time.
"Yes, but I use Haddock here, it's easier..."
"Wait," Tuffnut cut in, having taken another shot. "So you have two last names?"
Hiccup sighed, his shoulders slumped, probably not in the mood to explain what would end up being a more complicated story than they ever would have thought it was. "Long story, but yes."
“Haddock and Stro…Strogonoff… son?” Tuffnut guessed incorrectly, causing Hiccup to visibly cringe.
“Sto-rolfs-son,” Astrid corrected, breaking down the grand total of three (3) syllables, figuring that she was at least closer than Tuffnut. She didn't break eye contact with Hiccup. “It’s not that hard. Just use your Icelandic name, not some stupid fish.”
To her point, Tuffnut repeated it correctly when broken down into the syllables. Astrid didn't know what possessed her to press on like this. She should've measured the amount of liquor she poured into her cup.
"It's not that—"
"What is it then, Henrik?" She asked in a more accusatory tone than she knew was helpful, using his real name, and she could tell that everyone else seemed uncomfortable with the interaction too.
He swallowed, and his Adams apple bobbed. "It's just easier here, okay?” For a moment it looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead he pulled his arms tighter across his chest. “...You wouldn't understand."
That struck a nerve with Astrid.
"Listen here, Henry, Hiccup, Henrik." She frowned. "Whatever your name is." She narrowed her eyes at him. "You don't know anything about me. Okay?"
With that, Astrid stormed off, leaving the guys’ room.
“--think Hiccup lost,” she caught Tuffnut say.