Huzzah! I've finally finished chapter 45. Sorry it's been so long, been busy with school and I just haven't been motivated to write for some time now. I'm still committed to finishing How to Train Your Jocks so don't worry, I'm not abandoning this story. I hope you guys enjoy, and please let me know any thoughts or critiques you have in the reviews!

Chapter 45

I ripped the clear packaging tape off a large box, opening it and rummaging through the contents. Inside were a few appliances, a rice cooker, and an old coffee machine mixed in with a few spoons and a plastic mug. I grumbled and moved on to the next box. We had moved all of our boxes a few days earlier, but since classes were still moving along, and there were six people worth of stuff, not much had been unpacked. Not to mention the only piece of furniture we had was an old couch Fishlegs' mom had given us.

"What are you looking for?" Astrid asked as she looked up from her laptop. She sat in the middle of the living room floor, cross-legged and surrounded by textbooks.

"The power cable for Fishlegs' printer," I said, rummaging through another box before abandoning it and going on to the next. "I have to hand in an assignment this afternoon, and for some reason, my prof wants a hard copy."

"It's not in the box the printer was packed in?"

"No."

"You checked the boxes with all the cables in it?"

"Yes."

"Both of them?"

"Both of them? There were two?"

Astrid nodded. "There's the one the twins packed and there's the one that Fishlegs packed, which one did you check?"

I stopped to look around the room, there were probably fifty-odd boxes of varying sizes scattered around the room. "I don't know...nobody labeled any of these, I didn't even know there were two cable boxes to begin with."

Astrid placed her laptop on the ground and walked over to me. "Well, which one here was the cable box you did open?"

I looked around again, I must've opened around ten or fifteen boxes while searching and they all started to look the same to me. I grumbled again, I wish everyone hadn't dumped their stuff into one room and left it all there. "Why didn't anyone move their boxes to their rooms?" I asked, frustrated.

There was a bang as a door flung open and heavy footsteps came thundering down the stairs. "He doesn't own the house! He doesn't get to choose!" Snotlout yelled from the top of the stairs.

"His dad does!" Ruffnut hollered back as she continued stomping down towards the first floor.

Another set of footsteps could be heard stumbling down after her. "This is a democracy guys, not a dictatorship! We should have a vote!" Tuffnut yelled as he came down the steps towards his sister.

"That won't do anything, we all want the room so obviously we're all going to vote for ourselves!" Ruffnut groaned. "It's only fair if Hiccup decides!"

"How is that fair!?" Snotlout hollered back. "Your best friend is his girlfriend, that's a conflict of interest and also super, completely unfair Ruff!"

"You got a better idea?!" she screamed back.

Astrid sighed, crossing her arms. "That's why nobody's moved any of their stuff from the living room. They're still fighting over the second room on the third floor."

"I thought I told them to draw straws or something?" She shrugged as Ruffnut came stomping over, her brother following close behind her, and Snotlout still screaming at them from the top of the stairs. "Guys, I'm not going to choose for you, the three of you need to figure it out for yourselves."

"Uh...make that four," Fishlegs said, sheepishly peeking himself out from the kitchen.

"Oh...Fishlegs not you too," I groaned.

He smiled weakly and shrugged. "Sorry Hiccup, it's the second biggest room, and it has its own bathroom too. I'd be an idiot to not at least try to get it."

I pinched the bridge of my nose, I knew he was right, but it didn't make the situation any less frustrating. The house was three stories high, with the second and third floors being dedicated for all the bedrooms. While the second floor had packed in five moderately sized rooms, sharing two bathrooms between them, the third floor hosted two larger master-bedrooms each with it's own bathroom. Astrid and I, being the only of the group to share a room between the two of us, naturally took the first third-floor room. It was the second master-bedroom that was causing all of the problems. "Listen, guys, I've got two much to deal with right now, if the four of you can't decide between yourselves, then we'll have to deal with this later," I said, taking my laptop and stuffing it into my bookbag. "There are more than enough rooms on the second floor, pick one of those for now and we'll figure out who gets the big room during the break. I'm going to the library to print something, for now can you guys please chill out for a while?"

"But we-!" Tuffnut began to retort.

"You guys will survive in a slightly smaller room for the time being, leave him be for now," Astrid said, crossing her arms.

I gave Astrid a small smile and a nod before grabbing my phone and my coat and heading out of the door. I had no idea how to deal with the room, and thinking about it only stressed me out. I knew that whoever I chose, the rest would make a big stink about it. My phone began buzzing in my hand as I walked along the sidewalk towards campus. I looked at the caller ID, it was my mom. "Hey mom," I said, pressing the phone to me ear.

"So, how's the new place? I haven't had the chance to visit but your father says it's very nice, very big, plenty of room for you and all your friends I'm sure."

I chuckled. "Surprisingly not as much room as everyone wanted."

"It's not?"

"I'm just grumbling, the guys are all fighting over the biggest bedroom, and all their stuff is still piled up in the living room. Maybe we should've made the move during break, I can't deal with them and all of my work at the same time. I'm starting to feel like a landlord."

"You'll figure it out I'm sure, and they're your friends, whatever decision I'm sure they'll understand."

I zipped my coat up to my chin as I walked. "We'll see about that."

I could hear her laugh softly on the other end. "Anyway, I was calling to see if you had anything in mind for your birthday? Your father and I were thinking perhaps we could do something together. I've finally finished unpacking my new apartment, I could make dinner."

"Your apartment…? You bought a place?"

"Yeah, about time. I've been too busy with work, but enough about me, your birthday?"

"My birthday...yeah I completely forgot about it. I'm not sure what I'm doing, I'll have to talk to Astrid about it, can I get back to you on that? It's been kind of hectic lately."

"Of course! Take your time, I'll keep the 28th open, just let me know if you decide you want to come over for dinner. If you're too busy we can always postpone it for another time."

I smiled. "Thanks mom."

"I seriously can't believe you guys, Hiccup's dad bought us an entire house, and you're all squabbling about who gets a bigger room? For starters, everyone is getting their own room and they're all bigger than the dorm rooms we were in before, you should be happy with any room you get," I said, looking over them, arms crossed like an angry parent.

Ruffnut huffed. "That's easy for you to say, you've got the biggest room in the house."

"That's because Hiccup and I are shari- you know what? I'm not going to get into this, we should be more concerned about unpacking and getting the house set up. We can argue about the room situation later."

Fishlegs put a nervous hand up. "Um...not to be a downer or anything, but it's not exactly easy to unpack when we don't have any furniture. We should probably look into getting some shelves, desks, beds would be nice too..."

Astrid nodded. "Alright, let's go get some furniture then." I turned to Snotlout. "Startup the van, we're going shopping."

"Wait, wait, are we paying for all the furniture?" Snotlout asked.

"Oh I'm sorry, did you want Stoick to buy us a house and luxury furniture?" Astrid retorted angrily. "We're all living rent-free now, I'm sure if we pool the expenses we can figure it out."

"How much do you think it's going to cost to furnish this whole place?" Fishlegs asked, looking around the large empty foyer.

Ruffnut snorted. "A lot, probably. We need beds, dressers, desks, not to mention all of the living room and dining furniture."

"I don't want to sound ungrateful, but the money we were paying in the dorms wasn't that much, and they came fully furnished. Even if we pool our money it'll take awhile to pay for all the stuff we're going to need," Fishlegs pointed out.

"I can probably get a loaner from my dad, but he'll expect us to pay it back as soon as we can," Snotlout said, "and I don't know where we're going to get that kind of money, none of us work during the school term."

Tuffnut clapped his hands together. "I got it, we can rent out two of the rooms!" Everyone turned to look at him. "There's seven bedrooms, and since Hiccup and Astrid share a room, we only need five between the six of us. We can just rent out the extra two, people would pay good money to stay in a nice place like this. Boom. Problem solved."

"Wow," Ruffnut said, shocked. "That's...that's actually not a terrible idea. I guess you have your moments sometimes, bro."

Fishlegs looked around. "Right, but how are we going to find someone to move in now? It's already the middle of the semester."

Snotlout rubbed his hands together excitedly. "Do I smell a challenge? How about; whoever finds a tenant first, gets to have the big room?"

Tuffnut grinned mischievously. "Oh you are on, dude."

"Great, So we're all in agreement?" I asked, everyone glanced around and nodded. "Perfect, let's get started on fixing this place up then, if we start now we might be able to get this place looking half-presentable by next week." I pulled my phone out of my pocket and started scrolling through my schedule for the next few weeks, checking what days I had available. As I neared the end of February, something suddenly came to my mind. "Hiccup's birthday!" I blurted out. "Guys, Hiccup's birthday is in two weeks, if we pick up all the furniture the day before, maybe we can surprise him with a fully furnished house."

Snotlout nodded enthusiastically. "Right! That way we can throw him a wicked birthday house party, guys this is going to be sick!"

"Wait, that's not-"

"Dude, I love the way your mind works! Plus, with a house this big, we could invite the entire dorm over!" Tuffnut exclaimed eagerly. "Okay, we need to start planning this right away, I'm going to see where we can rent some speakers," he said, quickly rushing out of the room.

"I'll see if I can work on getting us a couple of beer kegs," Ruffnut quickly declared, grabbing her coat and bag before darting out of the side door.

Snotlout took his phone out of his pocket. "I'll get to asking my dad for that loaner, we'll need to get this place some sweet furnishings before we throw any parties," he said as he dialed and wandered out of the kitchen.

I sighed, looking around the barren kitchen that Fishlegs and now stood in. Toothless came creeping towards us and began rubbing up against my leg. I reached down to scoop him up in my arms. "Well that didn't go exactly as I had hoped it would."

"We're not really letting them throw a party are we?" Fishegs asked.

I stroked the soft fur along Toothless' back. "Let's leave them be for now, if it gets them motivated to fix up the house I'm not going to stop them. But we should keep track of who's getting invited, we don't want things to get out of hand."

Fishlegs nodded. "Right, and Hiccup?"

"Don't tell Hiccup for now, I'm still hoping that maybe we can surprise him, plus I think he has enough on his plate at the moment." I stared at Fishlegs for a moment. "If he's stressing about school, shouldn't you also be stressing? Don't you guys have the same classes?"

"I took a few online classes during the summer, so I have a reduced course load. Not as stressful," he explained. "So if you need me to, I can try keeping an eye on the party plans."

I placed Toothless back down onto the floor where he quickly dashed out of the room. "That would be great, keep me posted okay? We don't want anything too big. Keep the numbers below thirty?"

"Of course."

We both nodded and parted ways. Midterms were coming up, so I was determined to get as much done as early as I could. With the money borrowed from Snotlout's dad I began looking for all the furniture we would need, a dining set, microwave, beds, dressers, pretty much everything was needed. Some I bought second-hand and hid in the basement so Hiccup wouldn't find it, the rest I ordered online to arrive only a few days before his birthday. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly, the party, which I had talked Snotlout and the twins down from inviting the entire school to, was all set to be a small group of friends celebrating Hiccup's birthday. After setting up all the furniture while Hiccup and Fishlegs were out at the library, I left to pick up his cake, and returned to a house I did not recognize.

I gawked up at the house, lights on in every room, music blaring out the windows, and swarmed with dozens of drunk belligerent students. I couldn't believe my eyes, and my shock quickly turned into anger. I stormed into the house, clutching the cake close so it wouldn't get smooshed as I shuffled between the crowds of people stumbling about in the front hall. I made my way into the kitchen and opened up the pantry, shuffling the cake box behind a few stacks of canned tomato sauce so nobody would find it and eat it.

When I turned back around to the rest of the kitchen, I noticed Snotlout there, grabbing four beers, two in each hand, with a huge grin on his face. As he began walking back towards the hall, I stormed over, grabbing him by the collar and shoving him against the doorframe. "Explain." I demanded.

His face went from glee, to confusion, to complete terror in a matter of seconds. "Astrid! Look, it's not my fault okay? I only invited like, ten guys, and they told some people, who told some people, you know how it goes right?"

"Uh-huh, and you just let...what? A hundred strangers into the house knowing perfectly well there was only supposed to be twenty at most?"

Snotlout squirmed, eyes darting around frantically. "Well, you know...what was I supposed to do? Tell them all to leave?"

I stared at him in disbelief. "...Yes! That's exactly what you should've done!"

Quick footsteps came towards the kitchen, and screeched to a halt on the smooth white tiles. Tuffnut turned towards Snotlout, not immediately noticing me there. "Snotlout! We have a problem, Hiccup's here and I haven't seen...oh, uh...hi Astrid, well I found Astrid."

"No shit, dude," Snotlout hissed back.

I released Snotlout's collar and groaned. "Hiccup's here? Guys this was supposed to be a surprise party."

Tuffnut shrugged. "I mean, he looked pretty surprised to me."

I frowned. "Where is he? Someone needs to explain this mess to him."

"Well I tried to convince him to have a drink and join in, but all he wanted to do was go upstairs and take a shower," Tuffnut told me, pointing towards the stairs.

I looked up, where I could see people drinking and laughing while leaning against the banister on the upper platform, then I turned back to Snotlout and Tuffnut. "I swear, if you guys let anyone into our room there'll be hel to pay."

"Relax, we told everyone to stay off the third floor," Snotlout said.

I narrowed my eyes at them, staring for a few moments before turning and heading for the staircase. I squeezed by all the people chatting as they stood along the stairs, making my way down the hall as I watched people sitting around on the floor, making out in various bedrooms. By the time I had found myself at the second set of stairs, there was no longer as many people around, which relieved me. I climbed up, as I did, I could hear the faint sound of the shower going, and I walked into our room. All the furniture was still in place, nothing looked like it had been touched since I left. I breathed a sigh of relief and fell onto the bed.

A few moments later, I heard the squeak of the shower turning off, and the rattle of the curtain pulling back. The bathroom door opened, and a cloud of steam escaped into the room as Hiccup walked out, a towel around his waist, wet hair dripping on his shoulders. When he saw me, he gave me a tired smile.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Don't be," he told me, "I knew as soon as I saw the house that this was Snot and the twins taking over things. You wouldn't plan something like this."

I sighed. "Last I heard of it, twenty people were coming, I should've paid more attention to everything that was going on."

"Really, you don't have to apologize. Snotlout and the twins, they do stupid stuff, we both know that, and constantly making sure they stay out of trouble isn't your responsibility."

"I know...but I wanted to surprise you, you know, last year, it went so well, and now...I think I bit off more than I could chew." I turned towards him. "Happy birthday by the way."

Hiccup laughed. "Look, it's okay, this week with everything going on, hasn't exactly been the easiest." I stood up and hugged him from behind as he opened the dresser to find his clothes. "You're going to get wet."

"That's alright."

He smirked as he turned around to hug me back. "For what it's worth, I do really appreciate the furniture...you did a great job."

My smiled widened. "Do you want to get out of here? We could...go play some mini-golf or something. It's too noisy here."

Hiccup nodded. "Yeah...yeah I'd like that."

Astrid smiled up at me. "Do you want to get out of here? We could...go play some mini-golf or something. It's too noisy here."

I nodded. "Yeah...yeah I'd like that."

After I changed, Astrid and I snuck out of the house and took the bus down to the old mini-golf place we had played at all the way back when we first met each other. It was nice, a much-needed break from all the school and house stress that had been going on all week.

"I can't believe what a mess everything became, I should've suggested something like this from the start," Astrid said as she lined up her shot, giving the ball a soft tap. It rolled slowly into the hole with a thunk.

I kissed her on her temple. "Don't beat yourself up about it, I know you meant well."

"I wanted it to be like last year."

"Last year was a lot less complicated," I said. "With everything happening, doing something for my birthday really wasn't on my mind, so it's not like I'm disappointed or anything," I told her as she walked over to the hole and plucked her ball out. "Even my mom wanted to have dinner with me."

Astrid quickly turned to look at me. "Your mom?"

"Yeah, she wanted me and my dad to come over to her new place for dinner."

"And you said no?"

"I said I'd think about it, but since I never got back to her I guess that means no."

"Hiccup, you should've said yes!"

I picked up my ball and began heading over to the next hole. "I'm not really ready to do that again, I mean, you do remember what happened the last time I had dinner with my parents right? It was a complete clusterfuck."

Astrid hurried to catch up with me. "I know things haven't always gone well, but Snoggletog was fine wasn't it? Your dad really seemed to be trying to patch things up with her, sometimes you have to give things a chance."

"You and Finn were there during Snoggletog, whenever it's just the three of us, everything goes to shit, trust me." I placed my ball at the start and lined myself up with the club.

She crossed her arms. "You can't avoid spending time with your parents forever Hiccup, I know things can be rough, but at least they're trying to make things right."

I hit the ball on an angle, it bounced against the barrier and rolled off to the far side of the course. "Things can be rough?" I repeated, a little annoyed.

"I know they fight," she said. "Couples fight, we fight, we're fighting right now. That doesn't mean they can't figure it out."

"We're not fighting," I retorted stubbornly.

Astrid sighed, "What matters isn't the fighting, what matters is how you make it work. Your parents are trying to make it work, but they need you, and I think you need them too." I said nothing, my eyes drawing to my feet. "It's only eight, I think you should call your mom and try to have that dinner with them."

"I don't know," I mumbled. "If they start fighting again…" I trailed off and began shaking my head.

Her hands cupped my face, bringing it up so she could look into my eyes. "I'm here, you know you can always call me if something happens."

I bit my lip. "What if they don't work it out? My mom bought her own apartment, I thought maybe they'd move in together, but they have separate places now, it's like they're not even married."

"It's been a long time Hiccup, it's not going to be the way it was right away, you need to give it some time. Your parents have to figure things out at their own pace."

"But what if they don't? What if they can't?" I asked her.

She looked into my eyes. "I'm not going to lie, it might not. I know it isn't easy to think about, but if you do what they did back then and avoid fixing things because you're afraid it won't, you'll only regret it, and you'll never know if it could have."

I nodded slowly, resting my hands on her arms. "I'll call them," I finally said.