Covering Bases

Up until that point, Hiccup thought the worst of the “advice" had been shared at his grooming ceremony before the wedding.

“Gyrate man.  It’s all about the gyrating.”

But during his grooming ceremony, before the wedding, they were sober.  Now all filters were off.

“No, no, you gotta do this—" Tuffnut did something lewd and quite impossible with his fingers, and then proceeded to make wild and painful looking gestures with his hands.

Hiccup grimaced.  "Uh, I don’t think—"

"More wrist!" Snotlout barked. “You need more wrist!"

Fishlegs looked horrified.  Hiccup quickly shook his head at him from across the table.

Snotlout caught the motion and scoffed. “What do you know—"

A shadow settled over the table, silencing all the boys, and the heavy hand on his shoulder saved Hiccup from further comment.  He looked up and saw his father towering over him with a kind, albeit uneasy, expression.

“It’s time, son,” Stoick said.  His mustache barely twitched.

Hiccup nodded and pushed away from the table.  The hoots of his peers left him rattled.  His stomach fluttered.  When he stood, his head felt clamped and fuzzy from the weight of his drinking.  He carefully moved to the twin oak doors where Astrid already waited for him, along with her mother, Phlegma, and Ruffnut. The women whispered and cackled around her, but Astrid’s eyes were locked on his.  Darkened, piercing and troubled.

It was like coming down from a high.  He couldn’t feel his legs move him towards the door and away from the heat of the Mead Hall.  The collar of his shirt was damp with sweat.

"Hey,” Astrid said softly as he joined her at the threshold.  Hiccup hadn’t seen her since they shared the bridal-ale and their attentions were pulled to others.  Her face was pinker since then, either from drink or agitation, and her dress more rumpled with spots of food and drink.

He couldn’t have looked much neater.

"Hey,” Hiccup returned after a hard swallow. He wished he had a glass of water.  Something to cleanse the taste of mead from his tongue.

They stared at each other. The Feast was over. The Night was next.

"Off yeh go!" Phlegma bellowed. Her brow was shiny and cheeks ripe from wine. She and Spitelout began nudging each other and chortling.

Astrid leveled a scowl at the pair, disapproving, but muttered, “let’s go."

The traditional race to the Mead Hall hadn’t been much of a race; Hiccup was a fine sprinter, even with a prosthetic, but Astrid’s endurance paid off, dress and all.

Exiting the Mead Hall turned out to be a different affair entirely.  Hiccup and Astrid left together at a matched pace; their entourage followed behind with their torches held high to light the way.

Three steps into the cool, Friggdag air and Astrid hooked her arm through his and hurried him away from the party.  The action left Hiccup startled; he was inclined toward the exact opposite.  The night had suddenly ended too soon, and the Mead Hall hailed him with its glow and noise and safety.

“Just trying to put some distance between us and them,” Astrid said through the corner of her mouth, as though sensing his incertitude.  They did manage some space between them and their train.  The paths became harder to see with the firelight at their backs, but it was worth it to get away from the ribbing and knowing grins.

“Too much socializing?” Hiccup asked.  He tried to focus on her face without stumbling along the path.  Their home—their new home—approached at an alarming speed.

Astrid gave a breathy laugh, full of bravado he wouldn’t have been able to sense a years ago.

“I can handle long parties.  It’s you I was worried about."

A sprig defensiveness struck him.

“I managed," he griped.

His next step caught on a loose stone and it was only Astrid’s hold around his arm that kept him from crashing down.

“How much have you had to drink?” she teased.  Still, she pulled him closer and Hiccup gripped the hand she rested on his arm, his thumb pressing across her knuckles.

“Maybe more than you,” he admitted.

With the final and most harrowing ceremony ahead of him all night, every offered mead refill looked too appetizing to turn down.

Astrid stumbled a bit on the hem of her dress, just at the steps of their new home.

Hiccup laughed—short and loud—forgetting himself.  Astrid whacked him in the chest with a closed fist, drawing a grunt from him.  Still, Hiccup wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his hold.

His new—almost—wife.

Astrid tilted her head up, nose bumping against his, and peered at him through her lashes.  With only starlight, he could see the mirth fade from the corners of her eyes. Her gaze betrayed vulnerability, an understanding that filled him with a protective, connective energy.

"It’s almost over," she whispered.

"I know,” he said back, just as soft.

In that moment they weren’t about to consummate their marriage.  They were teasing and breathless, faces flushed with mead and desire.  They were in a familiar embrace and comfortable state.

“Hold up you two!” Phlegma barked.  She hurried ahead with her torch held high.  The moment broke; awareness came rushing in.  The house Hiccup had designed and constructed, as negotiated into the mundr (despite skepticism from both sides of the new family), materialized at their side.  Raw, paintless, undented wood.
Their followers were alighted before them—the witnesses and their torches, the friends and guests who tagged along.  

“Gotta carry her through, Hiccup!” Snotlout cackled from somewhere behind Sven and Burnthair’s wall of shoulders.

Hiccup remembered the next step in this much-too-long process; carrying his bride over the threshold of their new house.  Astrid slid an arm around his neck and pulled herself so tightly against his body that her forehead brushed his cheek.

“Can you carry me?" she murmured.  She kept her voice low, half for her appearance’s sake, half for his.

He nearly felt offended at the question.  Of anyone to doubt him, it shouldn’t have been her.

Then he heard it—a croaking, curious bark from above.  Hiccup craned his neck.  A pair of luminous green spheres cut through dark and he knew his dragon was perched on the roof.  A trill of assurance thread through his spine, settling of his nerves and heating his cold fingers.

He smiled.

"Are you wearing any armor I don’t know about?” he asked.

She cocked an eyebrow. “Not tonight."

"Then probably."

"You don’t have to," Astrid said kindly, still in that soft voice. She knew he could on any given day—she had to have—but tonight she worried about the little things.  “If your leg—"

Hiccup ducked a bit and swept her legs up into the crook of his other arm.  She gripped his shoulders on reflex, a sudden intake of air swelling her chest.

"I think you’re underestimating what repeated swinging of a hammer does to one in a forge,” he said with a slight grin.

She was heavy, alright.  The weight and muscle she put on since her younger years was evident as soon as he lifted her.

Nothing he couldn’t manage for small while.

An unbidden, cruel memory jumped to the forefront of his mind—the last girl he’d picked up was Camicazi—before he violently threw it back.  Tonight, and every night after this, would be about Astrid.  He could never revisit such memories.  Especially not now.

Steeled, he step through the open door of their freshly built home—their home—ignoring the calls and cheers of those behind them.

Astrid craned her neck back and openly admired the woodcraft and space.

"It looks great," she said honestly.  Much of the woodwork was unfinished; unfurnished and undefined.  But the structure was there. The promise of a home.

"You can explore it tomorrow," Hiccup told her.  His hands felt clammy beneath the fabric of her dress and he was more afraid she’d accidentally slip from his grip than drop her.  Stepping into the space somehow added a new burden of expectation.

He could hear others following him in.  His father.  The steady clunk-clunks of the Gothi’s cane and Gobber’s leg.  Phlegma’s whistle. Snotlout’s jeering before Hiccup’s uncle shoved him back outside and shut the door.

"Ignore them," Astrid murmured when his next step faltered.

Hiccup allowed a moment to take comfort in her breath against his cheek, her weight in his arms.  He nodded, and slowly set her down in front of the door to their bedroom.

The newlyweds faced the witnesses:  The elder, the chief, his three commanders, and Astrid’s mother.  Glüm stepped forward and gently pulled Astrid away from Hiccup.

"We’ll take it from here," she told him.  She and the elder herded Astrid into the bedchamber for preparation. Phlegma followed, laying a lewd wink on Hiccup as she passed.

Hiccup was, once again, left at the intolerable mercy of his father’s stare.  His uncle Spitelout grinned at him.  Gobber, his mentor, was looking around the modest living space and nodding—but then, Gobber never had much interest in women no matter how many songs he sang of them in jest.

Hiccup met his father’s gaze, saw the discomfort and embarrassment reflected in a different shade of green eyes, and suddenly had to stifle a laugh. He didn’t know why since he had his own wavering distress to wrestle with.

"Dad, it’ll be fine," he said, and he took some verve in getting to comfort someone other than himself.  Hiccup held his father’s eye, willing the man to understand.

“Of course it will be,” Stoick agreed, but Hiccup could sense the unwanted placating.

"Astrid knows," Hiccup added. “Everything."

"Aye?" Stoick paused a surprised look on the door hiding the four women.  He smiled. “You’re a lucky one, Hiccup."

Hiccup allowed a small smile in the same direction.  He really was.

The door opened—Hiccup jumped—and Astrid’s mother poked her head outside.

“Hiccup, she’s ready.”

She stepped aside, candlelight spilling out in a treacherous invitation.

What little confidence Hiccup garnered in the last moments fled.  He resisted the urge to sink to the floor as his unsteady legs begged of him.

“In yeh go, son,” his father said, giving him a “light” push to get him moving.  Hiccup stumbled inside, every footstep behind him as loud as thunder.

The smell hit him first—fresh of unsettled wood and oil, much like the rest of the home.  Goldgubber decorated the stands and floors around the bed, welcoming fertility.  He might have thrown up if he had a weaker stomach.

Astrid sat on edge of the bed, her hair lighted by soap and reaching the hue of starlight, loose and curled around her shoulders. The dress was gone and in its place a soft-cotton robe preserved her modestly. It hung loose enough to expose the skin above her breastbone.  White, freckled, ribbed.  Hiccup nearly forgot the witnesses.

Nearly.

The ring he made shined on her finger and Hiccup felt heat spread through his gut.  He couldn’t tell if he were more excited or terrified.  His father nudged him again and he hurried over to Astrid.  He felt oddly safer near her.  She stood from the bed, her face set and hard.  Her eyes focused.

He removed her bridal crown with trembling hands he couldn’t quite sooth, his head still fuzzy from the mead, for which he was both thankful for and concerned about.  He didn’t perform his best when under the influence. In anything.

Glüm was closest to them so Hiccup handed the intricate headdress to her.  As soon as his hands were free he reached out and grasped Astrid’s.  She seemed shocked at the action.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

Her shock lingered a moment longer, caught off guard by the question that followed. Then she nodded once, very firmly, very stern.  She pulled a quick, tight smile that might have been for his assurance or her own.  She wanted to keep this as simple and straightforward as she could, Hiccup knew that much.

He took a breath, gave Astrid a wan smile of his own, and turned to address the witnesses.  He was first drawn to his father—as always—who appeared, predictably, expressionless.  The Chief Face, as Hiccup had come to call it.

"Well, get on with it!" Spitelout grunted.

Hiccup ignored him.  He looked his father straight in the eye and, despite his intestines doing a rough dance better suited for the Feast floor, said in an unwavering voice,  “I read the by-laws… you don’t have to be present.”

Eyebrows raised. Gobber chuffed.

“There just have to be six legal witnesses to identify us,” Hiccup continued quickly, before anyone could object. He gestured to himself and Astrid with his free hand. “Consider us identified.”

From his side, Astrid smiled. It was just like Hiccup to try and find a loophole for something he didn’t want to do. For once, she approved.

“Then how will we know you did it?” Gobber needled and Astrid’s smile turned into a not-so-subtle stink eye for his difficulty.  It went ignored.  “You expect us tae listen in?”

“Sure, put a mug to the door for all I care,” Hiccup responded.  Astrid’s attention flew to him—he could sense it.  Half-scandalized, half-hurt.  He kept his gaze on the gathering at their door, but his hand held hers tighter.

She taught him this—to hold his ground fast and hold his head high.  Vikings don’t listen to those who falter.

“I will remain,” Gothi volunteered.

Silence reigned.

“Good enough fer me,” Phlegma shrugged. “Come on, Glüm, dear. You lucked out.”

Astrid’s mother didn’t bother to hide her relief.

"Remember, love," she told Astrid as she allowed Phlegma to guide our out.  Hiccup didn’t know what Astrid was meant to remember—he was too uneasy to contemplate it.  Glüm grabbed Spitelout and Gobber on the way out with whatever was more available to her.

“Oi!”

“Och! That’s me beard, woman!”

Only Stoick lingered, uncertain.

“Dad,” Hiccup pleaded.  He allowed an edge to his voice. “You fulfilled your role.”

Stoick appeared torn.  He didn’t want to break a tradition that he knew to be true, Hiccup could tell that much about his father.  But something in his face, in the sagging of his shoulders, told Hiccup that Stoick wished he had the forethought to look up the laws back when he wed.  Mindlessly following tradition wasn’t always the best course of action.

Stoick gave Gothi a helpless look.  The old woman scowled—hilariously similar to the one Astrid directed at Gobber earlier—and made a shooing motion with her gnarled hands.

Not even Stoick the Vast would defy the village elder.  He nodded.

“Alright, son,” he said, gruff, and he turned.

The young couple sagged against each other the moment Stoick left the room.  A look was shared, a small victory.  Hiccup imagined he wore the same timid smile as Astrid.

‘Thank you,’ she mouthed.  He squeezed her hand, swelling with happiness.

“Next, the clothes are removed.”

The croaking voice startled the pair.  Hiccup jerked so hard that Astrid’s hand was thrown from his grip.

“Ah, ah, Gothi—” he started.

“We know,” Astrid said quickly. Her hand reached up to wipe her bangs back, forgetting they were already brushed into her hair.

Gothi cast a shrewd gander over the fidgeting pair, and then clunked her staff once against the ground.

“I will face the wall,” she announced.  She did just that.

Hiccup turned to Astrid.  Suddenly he was too aware of the bed and her robe and how heavy his clothes weighed on him.

He wanted to take this slow, to kiss her and coax her—coax himself—into being comfortable with having this pushed onto them.  But the village elder was two arm spans away.  She could hear everything.  She could look over her shoulder at anytime.

His hands jumped to his belt, a reflexive gesture, and froze. Astrid’s presence became so unsettling he didn’t know what to do next.

She gripped his shoulder and leaned her head close to his.

“Come on, Hiccup,” she said in soothing undertones, low enough to keep the elder from hearing. “This is happening. You’ve already made it as painless as you could.”

“Yeah,” he breathed, his nerves ablaze against her words and logic.

“Also…” Astrid gave his belt a light tug. “It’s not really fair that I’ve been undressed and you haven’t.”

A hint of a smile lit her eye; it countered the tight corners that betrayed her unease.  Hiccup twisted his mouth and nodded.  Tonight would be awkward no matter what—too many people were aware of what they were doing.  An entire village of them waited, some outside the room, some inside.

But after tonight it would be better. He had to hold onto that hope.

“Right,” Hiccup blew out.  He unfastened his belt and pulled it from his waist.

He left his formal cloak in the Mead Hall.  The air was so warm he hadn’t noticed, or perhaps it was his overheated body.  The belt dropped, his leggings loosened underneath his dress tunic.

It wasn’t until he kicked off his shoe did Hiccup notice how still Astrid had gone.  Her eyes followed his every move, drinking in each piece of clothing he pulled.   Hiccup felt more displayed, and more judged, than he had during the wedding procession with the entire village at attention.

“Are you just going to watch me?” he asked her in a low hiss.  He kept stealing glances back at Gothi. He didn’t trust her.

Astrid sat back on the bed, that impish smile back on her face. “I think I am.”

“After I made everything so easy?”

“Easier,” she corrected.  She made a little shooing motion with her hand. “Get on with it.”

Hiccup pouted but pulled the shirt overhead anyway—mildly annoyed and also grateful she behaved so… casual with him. Familiar.  Maybe it was her way of trying to make things easier.

His hands still lingered at the waist of his trousers.  The last article of clothing.  With nothing to hold them up—no belt or draw—they hung low on his hips, enough to show the fine, rufous hair trailing up his navel.

Astrid’s playful, predatory look faded at his hesitation.  She gave him an apologetic shrug and stood.  Her hands cupped his face and she kissed him, rare in its tenderness and sympathy.

“It’s fine,” she said in that soft, placating voice she’d been using for the past hour.  “I’ve seen you naked before.”

Hiccup leaned from her embrace.  “What?  No you haven’t.”

“I have.”

“When?”

“The faster you are joined the sooner I may leave,” Gothi spoke up again.

Hiccup winced.  Astrid went red to the roots of her hair. It just occurred to Hiccup that Gothi was Astrid’s Master. For her, this would be like having Gobber around.

He closed his eyes. He was half-hard anyway, he reasoned; she had felt it when she last kissed him.

It didn’t matter.

They were husband and wife…

He hooked his thumbs into both the trousers and skivvies, cast a quick look to make sure the elder was still turned away, took a breath, and yanked both layers down.

The room felt colder, but he knew it was more in his head than actual exposure.  Nerves.  Hiccup stepped out of the pooled clothing and kicked them away before he dared to lift his eyes from the ground. His fingers clenched; his first reaction was to cover himself but Astrid had already grasped his wrists in a preemptive move.

She openly stared at his bared body.  Hiccup fought to keep from grimacing.  Saliva pooled under his tongue and he tried his best to swallow discretely. He didn’t want to show his anxiety or the sudden weakness in his knees.  Instead he turned his head so that he could keep Gothi in his peripheral.

“Just as you remembered?” he asked, trying to keep his voice light despite the nervous clench of his gut.

Astrid released his wrists and reached out.  Her fingertips touched the skin between his hips.  His pelvic muscles jumped.

She lifted her gaze from his body and smiled.  Then she kissed him again.

“Even better,” she murmured before laying another kiss upon his lips, deeper. “You aren’t five anymore.”

Hiccup laughed. In the face of everything, a short, disbelieving chuckle bubbled from his throat.  He could have told her that he loved her, right then, and wholeheartedly mean it.

Astrid responded with the first full smile he’d seen since they entered the bedroom.

“Let’s do this." She said it like they were about to try out some new flying gear, full of bravado and determination.

Their mouths were back together in the next moment and her hands were at his waist, running up his back, teasing the skin above his rear, her palms smoothing along his bare skin like she couldn’t stop touching him. It gave him confidence.

They moved onto the bed as one—she pulled him back as he pushed her down, kissing all the while.  The kissing helped. It was something they were familiar enough with to distract them as they entered new, physical territory, rushed by tradition.

Hiccup quickly became hyperaware of everything Astrid did.  She shimmied back, her robe tickling his skin, and settled on the pillow.  Her hands untied the sash holding the last article of clothing shut. He felt her knuckles bump against his stomach in the action. Hiccup broke the kiss and looked down—the loosened cloth, the strip of skin—then back at her.  Astrid nodded and he knew her enough to read the urging in her brow.

Braced over her on one arm, Hiccup parted the ceremony robe one side at a time. Astrid turned her gaze to the ceiling.  Now it was her turn to be on display.  She could sympathize with Hiccup’s initial reaction to cover himself.

She steeled her nerves, tightened her fists, and looked at him—observed—as he explored her exposed body.

Hiccup touched her like she touched him.  First the stomach, pale and soft. The thatch of curls below.  The curve of her abdomen.  The dusting of freckles across her chest. His nails tickled her flesh, raising goosebumps. His hand ghosted toward her ribs and hovered by the peak of her breast, his palms soaking in the cool contrast.  

He didn’t need to say she was beautiful. She could see it in his face. The naked awe etched into his features, the gaze that kept falling to her body.

Astrid breathed into his touches, her chest rising right before him. Her hands trailed up his arms, over the thin, corded muscles, and played with his hair. They took that a small, timeless moment to relish in the body they were bound to in matrimony.

She hadn’t expected Hiccup to look so nervous, so closed off, the more his hands explored. Not with the way he touched her.  Astrid cupped his cheek and ducked her head in close to his.

“Hey,” she said, having caught his attention.

“Hey,” he croaked. The atmospheric edge had returned.  Probably because they stopped kissing. They had been doing so well.


“You’ve done this before,” Astrid reminded him.  She looked paler in the candlelight.  Tight-lipped.

He managed half a smile. “Not with you.”

The simple message gave her more comfort than she anticipated.  She preferred the even footing.  

Hiccup saw her smile and captured it with his mouth, enticed.  Her lips parted against his—familiar—and he settled his body down on her.  She jolted when their bare skin touched—their navels pressed together, his organ trapped between—but she didn’t pause in her caress.

Their kisses quickly became charged with the new rousing sensations—skin on skin, his weight on her, his narrow hips trapped between her thighs.

Hiccup mouthed her collar, kissed down her chest, and tested the sensitivity of her breasts.  Astrid wrapped her legs around him and closed her eyes. She knew what he was doing—warming her for entrance under the pressure of time—so she worked with him and focused on the stirrings he incited.  He was gentler than Grund.  Sensual.  The candlelight and the quiet and the sound of his mouth wet on her body heated her loins.  His length was hot and rigid against her belly, sliding against her in whatever way he moved.

When Hiccup returned to her lips his hands became more active. He rolled his palm down her body to the junction between her legs and tentatively brushed her lower lips with the pads of his fingers.  She gave a hum of approval and tightened her arms around his neck.  His fingers explored the warmth between her legs—prodding, delving, gentle—and Astrid kept focusing on how they were his fingers. Hiccup’s beautiful, long, slender, quick fingers.

All the while she kept her hands moving around him, over his shoulders, down his sides, across his stomach. Possessive.  She never touched the bobbing length between them.  Later.

Astrid gasped into his mouth when his thumb pressed against her nub, what only she had touched before, with his fingers wet in her folds.  He did it again. Harder, quicker--

“Okay,” she breathed, fast.

Hiccup drew back and looked at her.  It took a moment for his eyes to focus. They were dark, pupils dilated in his state of arousal.  “Ready?”

Astrid nodded, “Yeah.”

Hiccup mimicked her head motion.  Still looking dazed, he slowly turned his attention downward.

The vice she had around his hips loosened as her legs parted in offering.  She watched, with an almost detached sense of curiosity, as his arm moved between their bodies to guide himself to her entrance.  The purpled head peeking from his grip bumped against the soft skin of her groin and she bit her lip.

“Do you need… um… help?” She felt foolish as she tripped over the words.  She wanted to hit something immediately after.

“Help?” he repeated, taken from the moment.

Hiccup didn’t know where to start with what he could use help in.

Astrid had trouble meeting his eyes.  It annoyed her; how she couldn’t fully prepare for this outside of actual experience.

“My mother—some of the women—they said,” her voice had gone so quiet in her uncertainty that he could barely hear her, “they… well, spoke of men sometimes needing stimulation…”

“Oh,” Hiccup blinked. “Heh… no, I’m… I think I’m all set there.”  He had come to full length, his skin drawn back.

“Yeah, sorry,” she sighed. “Just… covering all my bases.”

She looked at him. His head was still bowed toward his task but she could still see the sheer concentration on his face.  They were just a touch away from being joined.

She brushed his bangs and whispered, again, “Okay.”

Hiccup didn’t need any more command.  He pushed his hips forward, his spine curved under the spread of her hands, and Astrid felt him penetrate her.  It was the oddest sensation.  She tried desperately to relax to keep it from becoming painful; nothing painful should ever be associated with Hiccup.  If she were to be objective, she’d describe it as uncomfortable but bearable.

But she couldn’t be objective.  This was Hiccup inside of her. His member, heated, solid and inside her.  Her thighs pressed tighter around his waist, drawing him into her even as the discomfort endured.  Her heels dug into his backside.

Hiccup let her set the pace, moving slowly until he was fully enveloped inside his young wife.  They held the position, fully bound.  Hiccup hung his head next to hers to hide the rapture on his face.  He listened to her breathe in his ear, his nose buried into her throat, and concentrated on controlling the reflexes of his hips.

“Alright?” he asked.

He felt her nod.

“Are you?” she returned.

“Yeah,” he said.  But he sounded strained.

She waited for him to move.

Hiccup kept his forehead pressed against hers.  His breath ghosted along her collar.

“Hiccup?”

“I can’t believe I have you,” he murmured into her hair.

Astrid’s arms tightened around his shoulders and she kissed the skin behind his jaw.  She felt… connected. Full. She could have stayed like that for a long while more, just holding him.

A loud clunk rapped against the bedpost.

“Is it in?”

Hiccup whipped his head around.

Both had forgotten the Elder.

“Yes,” Astrid squeaked when Hiccup seemed to have lost his voice.

The old woman pursed her lips, eyes roving over the joined couple shamelessly.  Then she turned towards the door.

"Complete this," she rasped. “I will be outside."

Hiccup could feel Astrid relax a bit in his arms.  He also felt grateful for the unexpected blessing, but it wasn’t enough to soothe his mortification.

The elder paused with her hand on the door handle.

“I will, as you say, have a mug to the door.”

Then she closed it behind her.

They remained motionless in the wake of her exit.  Astrid cleared her throat.

“Well…” she began.

Hiccup’s brow knit. “Did she just…”

“Yes.” Astrid’s grin was wild. “Yes she did. She got a good eyeful of your ass.”

He groaned and dropped his head. “Great. That makes me feel better.”

“Well, so long as you feel better,” she muttered. “I have to see her near every day.”

Hiccup shifted his hips back before pushing them forward. Astrid bit her lip.

He froze.

“Sorry!” He hadn’t been thinking. “Are you…?”

Astrid gave a bit of a breathy laugh and Hiccup thought it was lovely the way her chest heaved and her hair haloed around the pillow.

“It’s fine,” she assured him. “This is good.”

He dipped his head and captured her lips, still nestled fully inside her.

“I just want you to feel comfortable,” he said.  He swept soft pecks down her cheek and jaw to her ear.

He wanted her to feel comfortable and he wanted to thank her for agreeing to marry him and for accepting his past choices and for the night.  For just being Astrid.

Her fingers trailed his spine.  “I am,” she assured him. “It’s all a little weird.”

“It is,” he agreed. “We’ll get used to it."

"We will…"Astrid’s roaming fingers slid down his sides, around his hips, to over his rump where she gripped a cool butt cheek in each hand.  “Starting now.”