Title: The Pearly Whites of Wisdom

Summary: Hiccup experiences weird side effects of having his wisdom teeth out, and Astrid has a hard time keeping him out of trouble.

Hiccup was high on anesthesia.

It was the time in every teen's life when a visit to the dental surgeon to extract four teeth, also known as "wisdom teeth," was necessary. Hiccup's procedure had only lasted twenty minutes, and Astrid was surprised when the nurse called her to the back room to collect him. Hiccup's mom being dead and his dad out of town on an unavoidable business trip, the task of driving him home had fallen on Astrid.

"Hiccup?" she asked the still figure. He was lying spread eagle on the bed provided by the oral surgeon.

He cracked an eye open. "Thhhhhh," he hissed.

"Sorry," Astrid whispered, taking a seat next to him.

"It's okay not. Forgives. The koala." Hiccup's words were slurred and muffled because of the gauze in his mouth. Astrid would have paid anything to whip her cellphone out to videotape, but video footage was forbidden until they stepped outside. She would be driving and wouldn't have a chance to at that point.

"The koala?"

Hiccup nodded sagely. "Yes. Needs sleep."

The nurse bustled back into the room, holding a clipboard and a goody bag of parting gifts. "Here's an ice pack for his jaw. You can heat it up when the ice stops working. If the area starts swelling, call us. Also, he can only eat soft foods like noodles, soup, and ice cream."

"Ice pack cream and swelling soup," Hiccup repeated dutifully. "Wait? What if..." he trailed off.

"Yes, Hiccup?" Astrid asked.

"The dragon," he concluded, obviously done explaining himself as he held the ice pack up to his jaw.

"The dragon what?" Astrid prodded.

"Eat meat." Great. Hiccup wasn't even using proper grammar.

The nurse shook her head. "I've never seen anyone get so messed up by sedation."

Astrid groaned. "You should have seen him after the surgery to amputate his leg. He thought he was a Viking in the middle of a battle with a huge dragon."

"Trolls exist!" Hiccup shot upright.

"Yes, Hiccup." Astrid stood. "Do I need to pull my car around?"

"That would be great." The nurse handed her a pack of paper. "This will tell everything you need to know. Be sure to give it to his parents. I'll help him outside, so don't worry about coming back in."

Astrid gave Hiccup one last look and then went to retrieve her car in the parking lot. She pulled it around to the glass doors. The nurse came out, supporting Hiccup. He stumbled like a drunk and goggled at the sky like he had never seen the color blue before. Astrid reached over across the passenger seat, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. The nurse helped Hiccup in.

"They steal thy socks, only the left ones." Hiccup preached to the nurse, jabbing a finger in the air like an enlightened man. "Guard thy sock drawers!" So Hiccup thought he was in the Middle Ages with a new pair of socks. Brilliant.

"I will," the nurse promised, slamming the door shut.

"Let's get you home," Astrid said, swinging the wheel around and directing her car out of the parking lot.

Hiccup suddenly gasped. "Thou! Thou kidnapper!"

"I'm not kidnapping you, Hiccup."

"Thou ain't?" Confusion rippled his face.

"No." Astrid pulled into the nearest Braum's drive-thru to buy him a milkshake.

"Welcome to Braum's. What can I get for you today?"

"One medium vanilla milkshake, please," Astrid requested, glancing at Hiccup.

"Anything else?"

"Trolls! Left socks!" Hiccup jabbed another finger into the air, proclaiming the good news he had just discovered to the world.

"Nope."

"That will be two dollars and sixty-nine cents at the next window."

Suddenly, Hiccup gasped and pressed his nose against the window. "AH!"

"Hiccup, if you keep at it, you're going to rip out your stitches," Astrid warned, paying for the milkshake. She would get a refund from Hiccup later. "What do you see?"

"Dragons! Wow! Toothless!" Hiccup waved to an old lady who was eating an ice cream cone in her car. Unfortunately, Hiccup's and her windows were both cracked a tiny bit. The old lady shot him a nasty glare. Her dentures were on her dashboard, in plain view of the innocent Hiccup.

Astrid would have explained that Toothless was the imaginary dragon that Hiccup saw whenever he went under, but the Braum's employee had already given her the milkshake. Oh, well. It wasn't as if they would see the old lady again.

Astrid gave the milkshake to Hiccup so he wouldn't say anything else embarrassing. Hiccup spent the rest of the way home chatting about the prices of gas and Toothless. It was hard and frustrating to understand him because he kept using improper grammar and would not, thank thou very much, finish a sentence. Examples included:

"Toothless only on top of the roof."

"Gas. Two hundred and fourteen dollars! RIP OFF! Can't live under such conditions! Woo hoo!"

"Car's empty stomach. Feed!"

A lot of his remarks were punctuated by exclamations of "trolls!" and sagely nods. Astrid was exhausted from keeping Hiccup from trying to escape the car every time they came to a stoplight by the time they reached Hiccup's house. She grabbed the milkshake from his hand when he started trying to feed it to the grass and helped him to the front door.

Since Hiccup was in no mood to be of any assistance, Astrid dug around in his coat pocket to get his keys. She unlocked the front door and lead Hiccup to the couch.

"Now, you stay here, and I'll get you a blanket and pillow. Don't. Leave. The. House," she ordered, staring him down.

He stared right back after her with innocent green eyes. "Toothless?"

Satisfied that he would be preoccupied with Toothless, Astrid went to get the promised items. On the way past the kitchen table, she dropped off the remainder of his milkshake. She hurried up the stairs and went through trial and error to find Hiccup's room, having never had the occasion to be in it before.

Of course, it was decorated with large posters of dragons. She grabbed a pillow and his favorite green blanket. As an afterthought, she grabbed a hand towel from the bathroom to cover the pillow. If Hiccup started bleeding, Stoick would not want to clean the blood off of the pillowcase when he got back that evening.

"Do you want me to put your milkshake in the fridge, Hiccup? Or do you want to finish it now?" Astrid asked loudly, passing by the kitchen table again. Hiccup didn't answer or yell anything about Toothless or trolls, so Astrid assumed he had fallen asleep. She went to give him the pillow.

Hiccup was not on the couch where she had left him. "Hiccup?" Astrid called. Where had he gone? "Hiccup! I've got your milkshake."

No reply.

"I'll let you feed it to the grass."

Still no answer.

Astrid turned around, surveying the room. There weren't many places he could have gone. Astrid checked under the coffee table. Besides dust bunnies and cookie crumbs (being bachelors, Stoick and Hiccup weren't big on the whole vacuuming thing), it was empty.

Then Astrid spotted the front door, which was wide open. She dropped the pillow and blanket on the couch. "Hiccup!" she ran to it and looked out. She shouldn't have left him alone when he thought she has a kidnapper! She rushed out into the street, looking up and down the block for a teetering figure. Stoick was going to kill her. Before he had left, she had assured him that she would be able to get Hiccup home safely. Out of character for Stoick, he had been pretty worried that something would happen.

"HICCUP, WHERE ARE YOU? I have Toothless!" she tried, peering into the car to make sure he hadn't hidden inside. The seats were just as she had left them. She even examined the trunk to make sure he hadn't locked himself in there. Hiccup wasn't behind the rose bushes in front of the house's windows either.

Such began Astrid's embarrassing yet frantic search up and down the street. She rang everyone's doorbell, asking if they had seen a loopy teenager holding an ice pack to his cheek. The answer was negative every time.

After thirty minutes of running and peeking into people's cars and backyards, she returned to Hiccup's house. With a sinking feeling, she picked up the handheld phone on the bureau next to the front door. She dialed Stoick's number.

"Stoick Haddock," he answered.

Astrid sighed. "It's Astrid."

"How's Hiccup? All the teeth out?"

Astrid sighed again, debating how to tell him. "Well..." The sound of snoring from the living room cut her off. She muted the receiver against her shoulder and stepped into the living room. Hiccup, snuggled underneath the blanket without a care in the world, was fast asleep on the couch.

"Astrid?"

"He's fine," Astrid said through gritted teeth, even though she couldn't really blame Hiccup. "He's knocked out cold." A snore louder than the rest punctuated this remark.

"You're not the one who knocked him out, are you?" Stoick asked.

Astrid was shocked. "Of course not!" Why on earth would he think something like that? "It was the pain medication the nurse gave him before we left. You know how he gets."

"Just making sure. Tell him I'll be home by ten." Stoick wasn't one for sentiment.

"I will." Astrid hung up and glared at Hiccup, debating whether or not she would wake him up to tell him exactly how mad she was. Seeing as how she didn't want to hear about trolls or Toothless again, she only put the pillow and towel beneath his head.

Astrid gave him the traditional farewell of their friendship. "I'll see you later, alligator." She made absolutely sure that the house door was firmly locked behind her. A nagging feeling in the back of her brain made her tilt back the front seat in her car and relax for a little nap, just in case Hiccup decided to take a stroll.

Stoick would come home that night wondering why Astrid was snoring in her car on a camp out in his driveway, and why the potted plant in the living room had been watered with a vanilla milkshake.