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Astrid is lazing. It’s not something she often has the inclination—or the time—for, but the feeling of the sun-warmed air around her and the heat of the sand beneath her make it easy, as does the sound of the waves crashing not fifty feet away.
She’s waiting, really. She got here earlier than she meant to, and though she knows Heather reserved this stretch of beach for the party, she figures someone tempted to ignore the little sign affixed to the post of the pavilion might be more deterred by the physical presence of a person stretched out on the sand. The chance to have all this beauty to herself for a little while doesn’t hurt either.
That proves to be short-lived, though—before long, she hears the sound of several cars parking, doors opening and closing, and then approaching footsteps. Astrid rouses herself and stretches, checking surreptitiously that nothing’s slipped out of her bikini top while she was lying down, and then stands and turns back to the path. The rest of the party has gotten maybe halfway from the parking lot, so she trots out to meet them just as the little group is emerging from the scrubby trees between the beach and the parking lot.
“Hey, Astrid!” Heather says when she’s a few feet away. She’s at the front of the group, carrying a tote bag in each hand and a folding chair slung over her shoulders on a woven strap.
Astrid grins. “Hey. Need help carrying anything?”
Heather clicks her tongue. “I think we’re good on this, but if you want to grab my keys, there’s a couple chaises in the back of my car I was going to make Eret go back for.”
“Sounds good.” Heather’s keys are on a lanyard that’s pinned beneath the strap of the chair on her back, but Astrid reaches out and unhooks them from the end. “I’ll be right back.”
“Need a hand?” one of the guys asks as Astrid walks past. He’s near the back of the group with floppy red-brown hair, and he’s holding what looks like a cake carrier.
Astrid flashes him a smile. “I got it, thanks though.”
When she gets back to the beach, everyone’s in the pavilion setting things out on picnic tables. Astrid takes the folding chaises onto the beach, where Heather’s already dropped the chair she was carrying next to Astrid’s towel and tote bag, and sets them up. Astrid picks up her towel and shakes off the sand, draping it over one of the chaises to claim it, and then scoops up her bag to go add the chips within to the food the others have brought. Most of the rest of the group is heading toward the water as Astrid approaches the pavilion—it’s just Heather, the guy she’s been seeing lately, Eret, and the skinny guy who had the cake carrier still standing next to the table.
“Hey, Astrid,” Eret says. They’ve hung out a few times, and he’s doing his best to keep his eyes on her face and ignore the fact that she’s wearing a bikini top—which, she notes with some amusement, the other guy isn’t. His cheeks have gone a little pink, and even with as pale as he is, she doesn’t think he’s been outside long enough to blame it on the sun.
“Hey, Eret,” she says, grinning at him.
“The heathens are already in the water,” Heather says as she’s unpacking the cooler.
“Like you have any right to call them heathens,” Astrid says with mock severity. “Not after last time.”
Heather brandishes a package of hamburger patties at her. “Listen—“
“You two have met, right?” Eret asks, rescuing the patties and then using them to gesture between Astrid and the skinny guy.
“No, I don’t think so,” Astrid says, laughing at the mild outrage on Heather’s face, at the same time the guy says, “I feel like I’d remember.”
“Right, well, Astrid, Hiccup, Hiccup, Astrid.”
“Hi,” Astrid says, holding her hand out to Hiccup. He takes it in a pleasantly firm grip, his hand warm and lightly callused. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” he says, his mouth tilting up in a crooked smile.
“I think I’m all set here if you ladies want to go hang out,” Eret says. “And Hiccup, feel free to amuse yourself as you see fit, but I will say there’s always fun to be had with the heathens.”
“Oh, I know,” Hiccup says. He hovers for another moment. “Is there anything I can help with with the cooking?”
Eret makes a shooing gesture. “You made cupcakes from scratch. Go have fun.”
“Alright.” Heather’s bent down, digging something out of the cooler, but Hiccup meets Astrid’s eyes, warmth in his gaze, and gives her a nod.
Heather stands, tossing something to Astrid, who is so distracted by Hiccup’s pretty, deep green eyes that she almost doesn’t make the catch. Looking down at the object in her hand, she sees a canned beverage—some sort of spiked fruit juice. Without another word, she turns, heading back to the chaises.
“What happened last time?” she hears Hiccup ask as she’s walking away.
Heather sits down on the chaise next to her a moment after she does, stretching her legs out with a sigh of satisfaction.
“Happy birthday,” Astrid says, cracking open her canned beverage and holding it out for Heather to tap hers against.
Heather does so with a small smile, then lifts it briefly in a cheers motion. “Thanks for coming out. The drive wasn’t too bad?”
“Not once I got out of the city,” Astrid says. She takes a sip of her drink and makes an appreciative noise. “Thanks for grabbing me a raspberry one.”
“I know it’s your favorite,” Heather says, grinning, and Astrid grins back. “How’s the new job?”
“So far so good,” Astrid says, shrugging a little. “Apart from the fact that I’m butting heads with the receptionist a little.”
“Already? Astrid, you’ve been there two weeks.”
“I know, but—“
“And of all people, the receptionist? That’s not who you want to be starting shit with.”
“I’m not the one who—“
Astrid is cut off by a crow of victory coming from further down the beach. She looks away from Heather to see that Hiccup has joined the group Heather called the “heathens”—the twins with their long blonde hair, almost indistinguishable apart from the fact that Ruffnut’s wearing a bikini top, Fishlegs, who’s watching nervously as the last person, Snotlout, from whom the victory cry must have come, bends down to let Hiccup climb onto his shoulders. It’s a sight to see as he straightens up—Hiccup’s taller than Snotlout is, so his feet dangle almost to Snotlout’s waist. Snotlout’s broader, though, to the extent that several inches of bare shoulder poke out on either side of Hiccup’s thighs as Snotlout gets a good grasp just above his knees.
“Oh gods, they’re chicken fighting,” Heather says as Fishlegs bends down too, and Tuffnut gives his sister a hand to help her climb up on the other man’s back.
“Should we stop them?”
Heather pauses for a moment, then—“Nah,” she says, “they’ll be fine.”
Astrid supposes it’s a good thing Hiccup’s involved; she’s seen how vicious the twins can get with each other when it comes to horseplay. Maybe Ruffnut will have more restraint about scratching the shit out of Hiccup than her brother.
“Better than pissing off one of the partners,” she points out.
Heather nods, her head cocked toward Astrid, as though granting her the point. “I suppose so.” Then she smirks. “I saw you almost miss that catch.”
“That wasn’t my fault—you threw it when I wasn’t looking.”
“It was your fault for not looking.”
Astrid opens her mouth, but finds she has nothing to say to that, so she turns to look down the beach again instead. “That Hiccup guy’s cute,” she says, watching carefully out the corner of her eye and timing it carefully as Heather makes an inquisitive noise and raises her beverage to take another sip. “Brings the cake in more ways than one.”
Heather chokes on her drink—fruit-flavored alcohol shoots out of her nose and goes spraying, and she doubles over on her chaise, sputtering and coughing. Astrid reaches out and pats her none-too-gently on the back, trying—and failing, she’s well aware—to keep back a self-satisfied smile.
“Touché,” Heather croaks out when she can speak again. “You bitch.”
Astrid can’t help but laugh at that, throwing her head back and guffawing loudly.
At the sound, Hiccup twists around to look at her. He’s distracted for just a moment, but that’s more than enough for Ruffnut; she shoves hard with both hands, and for a long, suspended moment, the unbalanced lever of Hiccup on Snotlout overextends, trying to right itself. When it fails, both men fall backwards into the water with a huge splash.
From the pavilion, she hears Eret give a quiet “oof” of sympathy.
Astrid spares a glance for Heather, who’s now laughing too, before turning back to watch as Hiccup stands up, pushing his hair, which is now soaking wet, out of his face. The water comes up to his waist, but as he walks back toward the beach, Astrid takes the opportunity to check him out properly, letting her eyes drift to each new stretch of his body as it emerges from the water.
It’s only on the way back up that her gaze snags on something—two horizontal scars, just beneath his nipples. They’re hard to see, faded pale and mostly obscured by the smattering of body hair on his chest, which points down toward and then past his belly button. There’s any number of things they could be from, she knows, but…
Astrid drags her gaze up to Hiccup’s face to find that he’s looking back at her. She smiles at him, hoping that he won’t interpret the way she was looking at him as anything other than appreciation and interest—which is, after all, what it was.
He smiles back, warmth—and maybe relief?—in his gaze, and then turns back to the water, where Fishlegs is now fervently refusing to let Ruffnut get back on his back.
“Well, I guess chicken fighting was always going to be short-lived,” Heather says next to her. “I guess you’d better tell me what happened with the receptionist.”
“About Hiccup,” Astrid says instead, and Heather’s eyes dart toward her.
“What about him?”
“Supportive parents?”
Heather takes a sip of her drink, slurping a little. “For the most part. His mom was, from day one. His dad… took a little onboarding.”
Astrid sighs in irritation and takes a drink of her own beverage.
“Yeah,” Heather says in agreement, then reaches out and smacks Astrid’s shoulder. “Now. Come on. Receptionist.”
Astrid snorts with laughter.
The day presses on. Eret finishes the burgers, they eat, and Astrid is more gratified than she’d care to admit that she somehow managed to bring Hiccup’s favorite kind of chips. The sun keeps sinking toward the horizon, and after a while of hanging out and splashing around with the rest of the group, Astrid makes her way back to her chaise.
She’s only intended to sit down for a moment, but the second she’s sitting down on the rigid fabric of the chair, a wave of tiredness washes over her. Everything catching up with her at once—the drive, which was a lot longer and more tiring than she told Heather, and several hours of running around on the beach—and she leans against the back of the chaise, just to rest her eyes for a second.
The next thing she knows, she’s waking up to something nudging her, and her eyes pop open to see Hiccup standing over her. Glancing at the sky, she can see the sun’s dropped just a hair since she dozed off.
She blinks up at Hiccup again. “Did you just kick me?”
“No, just the chair,” he says hurriedly. “And I was just kind of nudging it. Sorry, Heather said to wake you up since we’re doing cupcakes soon, and I, um—I thought it’d be weird if I shook your shoulder or something, and then you woke up and my face was right there. Sorry.”
Astrid snorts, sitting up. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” She looks at Hiccup again. “Shit, your shoulders are starting to get pink. Sit down, I’ll get you some sunscreen.”
She swings her legs off the chaise and bends down to grab the sunscreen out of her beach bag. Hiccup sits down beside her, and she squirts a little sunscreen into his hand. “Here’s some for your face, too. I can do your shoulders if you want.”
Hiccup’s eyebrows rise sharply. “Sure.” He turns to give her access to his shoulders and back, and she starts massaging in the sunscreen, noticing as she does the little constellations of freckles and moles that mark his skin.
“So, um,” Hiccup begins. “Heather mentioned that you figured out I’m trans.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Astrid’s not sure what to say. “Sorry about that.”
Hiccup huffs a laugh. “It’s alright. It’s not hard to tell when someone’s had that realization, and at least you weren’t shitty about it.” He’s quiet for a moment, no doubt to keep sunscreen from getting in his mouth. “Also, Eret’s setting up the volleyball net, and Heather was talking about getting a tournament going. I was wondering if you might like to be on a team.”
“With you?” He nods. “Yeah, sure. Are you any good at volleyball?” She finishes rubbing in the sunscreen and pats his shoulder, and he turns back toward her.
“Not particularly. But I am pretty competitive.”
Astrid grins wolfishly, and is utterly delighted to see a flush rising under the sheen of Hiccup’s freshly-sunscreened cheeks. “Then we’ll do just fine.”
Standing, Hiccup smiles crookedly back down at her, and with the rush of the waves near them, the glint of sunlight and competition in those rich green eyes, and the hints of wit and humor she’s gotten from speaking to him along with the hints of lean muscle she felt under her hands just now—well, she wouldn’t say she’s lost completely, but he’s got her enchanted, and she’d like to see where this path will lead.
“Can we make a deal?” she asks.
Hiccup furrows his brow slightly. “What kind of deal?”
“If we win, I get to take you out to dinner.”
The blush redoubles, and his smile widens. “Alright,” he says after a moment. “On one condition.”
“What’s the condition?”
“If we lose, I get to take you out to dinner.”
Astrid can’t help but laugh with delight. “It’s a deal,” she says, reaching out.
Hiccup shakes her hand and then pulls her to her feet, and together, they walk back to join the party.