After a second, much colder, and significantly less eventful bath, I emerged from the bathroom feeling clean, dressed, and emotionally frayed. The floor was still a slick mess of soapy water, a problem for Future Hiccup to deal with. Present Hiccup's primary concern was the nine-foot-tall, sulking dragon-man I could hear pointedly not moving in the living room.
I found him sitting on the floor in front of the cold fireplace, his back to me. He was still damp, the water glistening on his black scales under the warm light of the living room lamps. Patches of white, dried soap foam were visible on his shoulders and along the powerful ridges of his spine, stark against his dark hide. His posture was a masterclass in silent, wounded indignation. His shoulders were slumped, his ear-flaps were drooped low, and his long, powerful tail was coiled tightly around his feet instead of its usual, relaxed sway. He was radiating an aura of betrayal so potent I was surprised the houseplants weren't wilting.
"Hey, bud," I said softly, approaching with the caution of a bomb disposal expert. "Feeling… dryer?"
He responded with a low, annoyed huff, a puff of air from his nostrils that was the draconic equivalent of a slammed door. He deliberately angled his body away from me, a clear, pointed snub.
Okay. So we were doing this. The silent treatment. For a creature who had only just started to grasp the basics of spoken language, he was remarkably fluent in the universal dialect of being pissed off.
"Look, I'm sorry about the… cold water," I said, rubbing the back of my neck. "I panicked. You have to admit, the situation got a little… weird."
He didn't move. His tail, however, gave a single, irritated thump against the floorboards. It was a full-body eye-roll.
I sighed, grabbing a thick, clean towel from the linen closet. This was going to require some hands-on diplomacy. I knelt behind him, my knees protesting the hard floor. "You've still got soap on you," I said, my voice gentle. "You'll get itchy. Let me help."
I reached out with the towel. He flinched, his entire body tensing as if expecting another icy blast. The movement, so full of distrust, sent a sharp pang of guilt through my chest. I had genuinely scared him.
"Easy," I murmured, keeping my movements slow and predictable. "Just the towel. Warm. Dry. See?" I pressed the soft cotton against his shoulder. He remained tense for a long moment, then, with a reluctant sigh, he relaxed, allowing me to work.
I began to gently rub the towel over his back, the thick terry cloth easily wiping away the dried soap. His scales were incredibly smooth and warm to the touch, each one a perfect, interlocking piece of natural armor. As I worked, I could feel the coiled power in his muscles begin to loosen, the rigid lines of his back softening with my touch. The act became a slow, quiet apology, a physical expression of the words he couldn't yet fully understand.
"I know you don't get it," I said quietly, my voice barely above a whisper as I moved the towel down to the powerful muscles of his lower back. "Where you come from, maybe this is all normal. But here… for humans… we have these things called 'boundaries'. They're like… invisible lines. Rules. And you, my friend, you flew over those lines, did a barrel roll, and set them on fire."
He let out a low, questioning rumble, turning his head slightly to look at me, his green eyes narrowed in confusion.
"It's about privacy," I tried to explain, my words feeling clumsy and inadequate. "Being naked… it's a vulnerable thing for us. It's not something we do with… well, with anyone we're not being very, very friendly with." I felt a blush creep up my neck. "And barging into the bathroom while someone is in there is a big, capital-N 'No'."
I finished with his back and moved to his shoulders, my hands now working the towel over his powerful biceps. He was watching me intently, his head tilted, his ear-flaps swiveling as he tried to parse the meaning behind my tone, if not the words themselves. He was trying, I had to give him that. He was trying so hard to understand this strange, fragile creature he had somehow become attached to.
"You're not… bad," I continued, trying to reassure him. "You're just… new. You don't know the rules. And I'm not mad. I was just… startled. And very, very embarrassed." I finished drying his arms and tossed the towel aside. "All done. See? No more soap."
He turned fully to face me then, his expression no longer one of grumpy indignation, but of a deep, thoughtful confusion. He looked at me, his gaze intense, and then he did something that completely disarmed me. He reached out and gently poked my chest with a single, black claw.
" Hic-cup ," he rumbled, the word a soft, questioning vibration.
"Yeah, that's me," I said with a small, weary smile.
He poked me again, then gestured around the room, at the walls, the furniture, a sweeping motion that encompassed our entire shared space. " Mine ," he stated, his voice full of a simple, unwavering certainty.
I understood what he was trying to say. In his mind, the logic was simple. I was his. The house was his. Therefore, everything in the house, including the bathroom and its contents (me), was also his. The concept of a private, Hiccup-only zone within his own territory was completely alien.
"It's… it's more complicated than that, bud," I sighed, running a hand through my hair. How do you explain the complex social contract of personal space to a being who likely didn't even have a word for it?
He seemed to sense my frustration, my inability to bridge the gap between our worlds. The confusion in his eyes softened, replaced by a simpler, more direct emotion. He saw that I was troubled, and his immediate, instinctual response was to offer comfort.
He uncoiled from his sitting position and, before I could react, he wrapped his powerful arms around me, pulling me into a hug. It wasn't the restrictive, possessive hold from the bed, but a gentle, enveloping embrace. He rested his chin on the top of my head, his chest a warm, solid wall against me. A deep, soothing purr rumbled through him, a sound of pure, uncomplicated affection.
My own tension melted away. I leaned back against him, the exhaustion of the day, of the last few weeks, finally catching up to me. It was ridiculous. I was sitting on my living room floor, being hugged by a giant, naked dragon-man, and for the first time all day, I felt completely, utterly relaxed. This was my life now. And maybe, just maybe, it wasn't so bad.
We sat like that for a long, quiet moment, the only sounds the crackling of the fireplace I had lit earlier and his deep, steady purr. It was peaceful. It was comfortable. It was…
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
The sound was so sharp, so unexpected, it made both of us jump. Toothless's purr cut off with a startled hiss, his arms tightening around me in a reflexive, protective gesture. My own heart leaped into my throat. I never got visitors. My life was a quiet loop of home, work, and the occasional grocery run. An unexpected knock on the door was an anomaly of the highest order.
"It's okay," I murmured, patting his arm. "Probably just a package." I gently extricated myself from his hug, my body suddenly cold without his warmth. I stood up, my mind racing. Who could possibly be at my door at this hour?
I walked to the door, my socked feet silent on the wooden floor. I could feel Toothless's eyes on my back, his posture alert and wary, ready to spring into action at the first sign of a threat. I took a deep breath, plastered on what I hoped was a normal, non-I'm-hiding-a-mythical-creature-in-my-living-room smile, and opened the door.
Standing on my porch, looking just as uncomfortable and out of place as I felt, was Astrid Hofferson.
My brain stalled for a solid three seconds. Astrid. My childhood friend, my academic rival, the brilliant, driven, and frankly terrifyingly competent aerospace engineer who worked for the government's advanced propulsion division. I hadn't seen her in person in over a year. She stood there, her arms crossed over her chest in her classic, defensive posture, but her usual confident smirk was gone, replaced by a look of strained anxiety.
"Astrid?" I managed, my voice a weak squeak. "What are you doing here?"
"Hiccup," she said, her own voice tight and clipped. "We need to talk."
It was then that I saw the movement behind her. Someone was with her, someone who had been standing just out of sight in the shadows of the porch. A figure stepped forward, moving with a stiff, awkward grace into the light of the doorway.
My jaw dropped.
She was tall, easily a head taller than Astrid, with a lean, athletic build that spoke of coiled, predatory power. Her skin was a stunning, vibrant shade of deep blue, patterned with faint, almost iridescent yellow markings that shimmered in the light. Her legs were digitigrade, her hands tipped with sharp, black talons that were currently clenched into tight fists at her sides. A crown of sharp, elegant spines framed a draconic head that was sleeker and more avian than Toothless's, with a single, sharp nasal horn and intelligent, piercing blue eyes that darted around nervously, refusing to meet mine.
She was a dragon. An anthro-dragon. A Deadly Nadder, if my research into the dimensional arrivals was correct.
And she was wearing a dress.
It was a long, simple, gray sheath dress, the kind of thing the government probably issued as standard, inoffensive human attire. But on her, it was a disaster. It was clearly too small, stretched tight across her broad shoulders and chest, and it was far too short. The hem ended high on her powerfully muscled thighs, revealing a good deal of shapely, blue-scaled leg. She was constantly tugging at it, a gesture of profound self-consciousness. She looked like a warrior who had been forced into a cocktail dress at gunpoint.
She saw me staring, and a faint, darker blue blush spread across her cheeks. She ducked her head, her gaze fixed on the welcome mat, a picture of pure, awkward misery.
"Uh," Astrid said, her own voice cracking under the strain of the sheer, overwhelming awkwardness of the situation. "Hiccup, this is Stormfly. Stormfly… this is Hiccup."
Stormfly looked up at me for a split second, her yellow eyes wide with a mixture of anxiety and curiosity, before looking away again. She gave a short, jerky nod, a gesture that was clearly a new and unfamiliar one.
It seemed I wasn't the only one in the exchange program. And from the look on Astrid's face, her experience was going about as smoothly as mine.