Hey guys! My first fanfic, so bear with any mistakes. This site's less confusing when you're just reading, not writing...

Disclaimer: Oh, yes, I own How To Train Your Dragon. i'm Dreamworks just aimlessly writing fanfic. Pshhh, not!

Hiccup reclined against the black wall of Toothless' side, absently scratching behind his ears. Toothless closed his cat-like green eyes and purred.

"Hey, buddy."

The eyes snapped open.

"I've been thinking about Astrid—" Toothless smacked his tail impatiently. Hiccup grinned ruefully. "Yeah, yeah, I know I never shut up about her. But seriously, this time I'm not raving about how her eyes are the color of sky over mountains or how graceful she is when she fights…" Toothless, recognizing the approach of a daydream, nipped his human's arm lightly. Hiccup blinked, shaking his auburn hair in the air. "Anyway. This is important this time, bud."

Toothless moved like a flash of lightening, sitting up so abruptly he knocked Hiccup off balance. The dragon looked him in alarm. Hiccup tried to disguise his laugh as cough; Toothless growled. Quit and just tell me. "Calm down…I just—well, Dad said something at breakfast today while you were outside…"

Toothless's eyes narrowed.

"Yeah, I thought it was weird too…"

"Hiccup," Stoick the Vast said seriously; the action accompanying his words was incongruent as he wiped biscuit crumbs out of his beard.

Hiccup promptly dropped his fork in surprise. Admittedly, he and his dad still had a lot to learn about each other. But Hiccup knew after sixteen years of awkward breakfasts together that an earthquake wouldn't interrupt his meal, much less conversation. And he had just initiated it? Immediately, the boy started to panic. Toothless had been off somewhere when he woke up this morning and wasn't back yet, which was unusual, but Hiccup didn't mind him having a little "me" time. So he hadn't worried. Had his dad kicked the Night Fury out? Renounced the Dragon Peace? Did his son shame him again: small, weak, and now crippled? Hiccup's eyes settled grimly on the metal prosthesis. That was it. He knew this utopia of having an actual relationship with his father and being respected by his former tormentors couldn't last. It was just a prolonged dream.

"Y-yeah, Dad?" He mentally started to take stock of what he and Toothless would need to survive. Notebooks, charcoal, extra leather…how would they get food? Could Toothless hunt? Astrid. Oh, no. This was it with Astrid too. She was too good to be exiled for associating with an outcast. Maybe he and Toothless could go somewhere warm, by the sea, fly farther they ever could before…

His dad cleared his throat. The noise grinded against Hiccup's raw nerves. The pausing is great, Dad! It only adds fun to this situation! "Hiccup, what are your intentions with Astrid Hofferson?"

"Dad, wait, pl—" the boy stopped his desperate plea mid-breath. "What? My intentions?" Hiccup stared at him. "What do you mea—huh?"

His dad chuckled. "Son, I might not be a young buck anymore, but I'm no' soft in the head. She's over here mos' every day to 'ask you something', you became hot-cheeked and even more stumbly around her—"

"Stumbly is not a word."

"—she kissed you in front of the entire village!"

"Not the entire village," Hiccup said lamely.

Stoick smiled; it still seemed a little strange to Hiccup to have his father smiling at him. "Ach, the way you act around her….reminds me how I was around your mother."

"Really?"

"To all the rest of the village, I was this mighty young warrior. But around her…" he shook his head with nostalgic disdain. "Fallin' over, blushin', stutterin'. Made excuses to talk to her every chance I got. Finally she flat-out asked me what I meant for us."

Hiccup involuntarily leaned forward. "What did you say?"

"I proposed."

Odin help me, Hiccup thought.

Stoick took a massive bite of egg, swallowed and fixed Hiccup with an intimidating gaze. "Hiccup, I'll ask you again. What are your intentions about Astrid Hofferson?"

Hiccup pondered the enormity of the answer to that question. He was not one to not think things through. He picked up his goblet and sipped, swallowed. He answered slowly, simply. "I'm in love with her."

It was the right answer, he knew, the truth.

Stoick's eyes brightened. "A wedding, then?"

Hiccup fell out of his chair.

"So that's when you came roaring back in," Hiccup finished. "Freaking out, of course, once you heard Dad yell." Toothless bared his teeth. The teen patted his back fondly. "I know bud. I worry about you too. I always feel sort of jumpy when you're not with me." He turned to look earnestly at Toothless, green eyes connecting with green eyes. "So what do you think? You think if I…propose, she'd said yes? Or punch my face?"

The dragon's ears flattened against his head. Hiccup could read that: Mine! "We'd still ride every day," Hiccup promised. Toothless rumbled. "Okay, twice a day." Toothless' ears raised some. "You'd still live with me, eat with me…we'll see about the sleeping-in-the-same-bed-thing…can't imagine Astrid liking—" Toothless roared; Hiccup sighed. "Okay, okay, I'd bring her around. I just…I don't want to ask to only get shot down. It's been so long, is she expecting me to—?" He spotted a flower swaying in the winds of the night….an astrid. Of course. He eyed the petals thoughtfully.

"You never tell anyone this," Hiccup said threateningly to Toothless, who snorted at him. Hiccup inhaled and yanked off the first petal. "She loves me…she loves me not…she loves me… she loves me not…"

The last petal.

"She loves me!" he whooped. Toothless rolled his eyes at his friend's jubilation. Well, duh, he said with a puff of air. He could only take so much of that goofy grin on Hiccup's face; he lightly slapped the boy's shoulder with his paw. Hiccup chuckled. "Don't get all jealous. I love you too, bud."

She better be willing to share, Toothless thought menacingly. But Hiccup wouldn't forget him. They were too closely tied; bonded more together than he was with his only kin of the sky. Hiccup was his boy.

Toothless smiled, comforted, and laid his head in the lap of his boy. "Well, I guess you're on board. Question is…" he twirled the petal-less flower in his fingers, "…is she?"

Love it? Hate it? Chapter 2 coming up either way!