I blinked my eyes open and found myself in an uncomfortably bright room. I groaned as I felt my head pound so hard against my skull that I thought it was going to break out of there. I sat up in bed and rubbed by forehead. Gods, what had happened last night?

As the room slowly came into focus, my stomach began twisting painfully in my stomach. I desperately searched for anything I could vomit into and was pleased to find a big, red bucket by my bedside. I rolled down onto the floor with a loud 'thud', wondering how I hadn't involuntarily emptied my stomach all over the carpet yet.

It didn't take long for the intense nausea to overwhelm me though, and soon I was retching into the bucket before me like there was no tomorrow, the smell of different types of liquor encouraging me to vomit even more.

As I was busy emptying my stomach of whatever I had filled it with, I failed to notice the door to the room I was in open, followed by someone making their way inside.

"I thought I heard something. Did you fall off the bed?" The voice was eerily familiar, but I just couldn't figure out exactly who it was, especially with my head deep in a bucket. "I'll get you a glass of water."

The person disappeared and I was once again left alone, puking out my guts. When my stomach was finally empty, my forehead was coated in sweat and my mouth reeked of stomach acid. I wanted nothing more than for death to embrace me. Gods, how much did I drink?

I massaged my temples, trying to soothe away the intense headache, but the headache was unfortunately there to stay. When the intense vomiting finally passed, I realized how thirsty I was. Fortunately, the gods seemed to have been listening, seeing as shortly after the person from before came back into the room, a tall glass of water in their hand. It wasn't before they handed me my water that I realized who I was staring at and exactly where I was.

Hiccup was crouched down beside me, a soft smile on his face as he brushed away a stray strand of hair from my face. I looked around the room and finally recognized it as the Haddock house guest room. Fucking hell, I was back.

"Gods, you had me scared there for a minute, Astrid." Hiccup spoke so softly I didn't even know what to think for a minute. He just sounded so loving and ... strangely relieved.

I glanced over at the bucket. "Yeah, sorry about the puking."

It wasn't before then that I had realized how raspy my voice was. I sounded like I had been smoking cigarettes for the past 60 years, and that was definitely not a cute look on me.

Hiccup raised his brows and stared at me in wonder. "Puking? You don't have to be sorry about that at all! Tell me, how much do you remember from last night?"

I took a moment, trying to recollect my memory before I was hit with a massive wave of shame and regret. Why didn't anyone stop me from singing? Or dancing for that matter? "I'm so sorry if I embarrassed you and Valerie, I didn't mean to sing and dance so horrendously."

Hiccup furrowed his brows as he forced me to meet his eyes. "Astrid, you do know you were drugged last night, right?"

I couldn't believe what this man was telling me, drugged? No way, I was always careful no matter how drunk I was. It was probably a misunderstanding of some sort. "Ha ha, very funny Hiccup, but I wasn't drugged last night, I'm careful."

Hiccup sat down beside me, refusing to break our eye contact as his forehead creased. "Astrid, you and I both know I would never mess with something like that."

Oh my gods, he was being serious. As if on cue, the memory of a hand under my shirt and in between my thighs hit me like a freight train and I instantly shot to my feet, clutching my head as it throbbed painfully against my skull. "No, no, no."

"Astrid—" Hiccup reached out for me, but I slapped his hand away.

I ran a hand across my face as I tried to keep myself together. I had absolutely no recollection of what happened after I was carried outside, and I had a gut feeling that I didn't really want to know what had happened either. Gods, I felt so dirty. I wanted nothing other than to hop into the shower and scrub until my skin fell off, I had never felt so violated in my life.

Suddenly, a horrifying thought hit me and I slowly turned around to face Hiccup. Why was I in his house? I stared at him, wide eyed as I slowly backed up against the wall. "Hiccup ... what am I doing here?"

Hiccup must've seen how absolutely terrified I looked, because he slumped his shoulders and took a step away from me, just to show that he had no intention of hurting me. "It's not what you think, alright? The guy who ..."

I furrowed my brows as Hiccup gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. Why was he so mad?

"It was Jake Peters, a freshman at the college and a friend of Val's brother. I ... I saw him from Val's window, carrying you out to his car and I just ... I lost it I guess." Hiccup began fiddling with his thumbs and that's when I noticed his bruised knuckles.

I felt a wave of relief wash over me as I realized Hiccup hadn't done anything wrong and then immediately after I felt weighed down with guilt for even beginning to think that Hiccup would ever do something so cruel. Hiccup would never hurt me, especially not like that. "That still doesn't answer my question though, why am I at your house?"

Hiccup looked up at me, those emerald green eyes of his sparkling in the sunlight that shone in through the window. "I couldn't bring myself to leave you back at Valerie's, so I took you back here seeing as I imagined your parents wouldn't be very happy with seeing you in your ... state."

I raised a brow at him, glancing down at his bruised knuckles. "Didn't you drink as well? And why are your knuckles bruised?"

"I called us an Uber and ... I accidentally bruised my knuckles by punching the wall." Hiccup explaining, avoiding my gaze. I narrowed my eyes at him, not believing his little lie for a second, but being too overwhelmed by everything to bother with calling him out.

"Thank you, I guess. Valerie's not mad, is she?" I asked as I crossed my arms. He shot me a small smile as he gently shook his head.

"Not at all, she's just worried about you. I'll go tell her that you're fine." Hiccup stood up from the floor and made his way over to the door. "There's a towel on the dresser if you want to take a shower, the bathroom is right down the hall."

I nodded and watched as he left. I eventually took him up on his offer and went to go take a shower. I must've been in there for ages, scrubbing and scrubbing as if it would make me feel any better, but I still felt absolutely disgusting. I still felt those disgusting hands all over me and no amount of scrubbing seemed to be able to rid me of that feeling.

When I came back to the room, I noticed a hoodie and a pair of tights resting on the bed, which looked to have been made in my absence. I slipped into the outfit and felt a wave of comfort wash over me as I pulled on the hoodie. It was Hiccup's hoodie, and it smelled just like him. Never before had I worn a hoodie as comfortable as that one and for a second, the feeling of Jake Peters' hands disappeared. I felt so safe and protected, it was almost like Hiccup had his arms wrapped around me with no plans of letting go.

The tights on the other hand, were definitely Valerie's, something that I immediately yanked me down from cloud 9. I had no idea why, but the thought of Valerie's clothes being at Hiccup's house felt like a massive punch to the gut.

I walked over to the bedside table and picked up the glass of water that sat on it, right beside my phone. My head wasn't hurting as bad as it had before, but the nausea seemed to have returned. As I finished my water, I picked up the phone and noticed that I had 60 missed calls from my parents. I closed my eyes as I silently cursed. "Fuck."

I had forgotten all about calling them the night before, which had resulted in them leaving a thousand messages asking me if I had made it safely to Heather, followed by my parents informing me that they knew I was not at Heather's at all.

Right as I was about to call my parents and tell them that I was alive, I got a text from Heather. The text was nothing else than a 3 minute long video which looked to have been filmed from a crowd.

I clicked the video, and loud music seemed to be coming from behind where Heather was filming. As the video continued, I recognized the place Heather was filming as Valerie's front yard, where Hiccup stood in front of what I assumed to be Jake Peters with clenched fists and Valerie behind him.

Valerie looked like she was trying to calm her boyfriend down, but it was clear that Hiccup was outraged. Jake Peters took a step backwards towards what I assumed to be his car, where I saw a sleeping figure sprawled across the backseat. I quickly recognized the sleeping figure as yours truly and felt a hint of embarrassment at myself.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, Peters?" Hiccup's voice rang loud and clear through the loud and constant chattering of the crowds, which immediately quieted down as he spoke.

"Gee, calm down, Haddock. I was just trying to be a gentleman by taking the poor girl home, don't you see how wasted she is?" Jake Peters said, gesturing to the passed out girl in the backseat of his car.

Valerie took a hold of Hiccup's arm and desperately tried to pull him away from the scene. "Hiccup, let them —"

"Taking her home, huh? To who, you?" Hiccup sneered. I had genuinely never seen Hiccup as furious as he was in that moment. If you looked closely at the video, I'm almost certain you could see the steam shooting out of his ears.

Jake Peters held his hands up in defense. "She's the one who was begging me to take her back to my place, I'm only a simple man following orders."

"So you're telling me that the unconscious girl in your backseat begged you to take her home? I don't believe you, you shitbag." Hiccup growled as the crowd egged him on, chanting 'Fight, fight, fight!'.

Jake Peters took a step towards Hiccup gritting his teeth as he gave him a dangerous look. "Why do you care so damn much about the people I fuck? Listen to your damn girlfriend and back off, I'm leaving with Astrid, whether you like it or not."

And that's when all hell broke loose. Hiccup's fist collided with Jake Peters' jaw, surprisingly enough knocking him to the ground. The crowd cheered and Valerie audibly gasped as Hiccup pulled the bleeding Jake Peters up by his shirt and delivered another blow to his face, which was followed by the sickening crunch of what I believed to be Jake's nose breaking.

Hiccup got up, dropping Jake to the ground as he massaged his knuckles. He turned around and exchanged a few words with Valerie, which I didn't really catch due to the loud chattering of the crowds around Heather. Then he leaned into the car and picked my unconscious self up as Valerie dialed what I imagined to be an Uber.

Heather then zoomed in on Hiccup who seemed to be carrying me quite effortlessly as he patiently awaited our ride. I watched as he turned down to look at me, brows furrowed as his eyes overflowed with concern. I couldn't help my heart from doing a somersault in my chest. Wow, maybe he actually cared about me and my well-being. What am I saying? Of course Hiccup cared about me and my well-being, why else would the boy have brought me home?

The video ended with Heather's phone tumbling to the ground and her sheepishly scrambling to get it as she tried to avoiding getting stomped on by the moving crowd around her.

"I guess you found out what really happened to my knuckles then." Hiccup chuckled nervously, causing me to jump in surprise at his sudden appearance.

I turned around to face him and found him staring sheepishly down at the floor, a tray filled with breakfast in his hands. I put my phone into my pocket as I crossed my arms. "You beat up Jake Peters? For me?"

Hiccup put down the tray with breakfast on the bed before he ran his fingers through his hair. "I mean, he did kind of deserve it. And in retrospect I kind of wish I had beaten him up even more, especially after what Fishlegs witnessed him doing to you on the couch."

"Fishlegs saw that? And didn't do anything to help me?" I questioned with a dangerous edge to my voice, suddenly not feeling very fond of Fishlegs.

"Fish ... he thought you were alright with it, seeing as he had seen you ... Uh, make out with him earlier." Hiccup refused to meet my eyes as he spoke.

I sighed and slumped down on the bed, causing the breakfast tray to jump and subsequently spill the orange juice and scrambled eggs all over the sheets. "Oh my gods, I'm so sorry!"

We both rushed over to clean it up and both reached for the napkins at the same time. Our fingers brushed against each other, and I felt that familiar tingle of electricity shoot up my arm as I quickly retracted it. Hiccup grabbed a napkin and began wiping the spilled orange juice and scrambled eggs off the sheets, but it didn't exactly help. "No worries, we were going to wash this anyway."

I sank down to the floor beside him, leaning against the side of the bed as I watched him give up trying to clean up my mess. He sat down next to me and stared blankly at the wall.

Instinctively, I grabbed his hand and gave it a small squeeze, which made my heart race in my chest. Hiccup turned to face me, and I was instantly drawn to those gorgeous emerald eyes of his. The butterflies in my stomach went berserk. I shot him a small smile, trying to suppress my emotions. "Thanks for saving me yesterday, I really don't know if I'd be doing half as well today if it wasn't for you."

Hiccup shrugged as that familiar lopsided smile of his crept onto his face. "It was nothing. I just saw something that wasn't right and I stopped it, you would've done the same for me."

I turned to face the wall, the smile from before still dancing across my lips. "I guess, but you've saved my ass too many times, Haddock. I don't think that's normal."

Hiccup snorted. "You would be long dead without me."

"That," I laughed. "Is very correct. Hadn't it been for you, I would've frozen to death on a park bench."

Hiccup grinned. "Or you would've drowned in that river."

I rolled my eyes at him. "Yeah, yeah, we get it, you're Superman."

Hiccup shrugged. "I'm just a normal guy trying to help the people he cares about."

"Sure," I gave his hand a small squeeze. "Just a normal guy."