#ogtads

Sam chuckled ruthlessly at the bickering. “You guys are… such bad influences.”

“We try.” Snotlout muttered, squinting at the sky.

A beat of silence drifted between the three.

“...how long now?” Astrid asked.

Sam looked at her watch. “Two…wait, shit, no, one minute an’ fifteen seconds…fourteen…thir-teen…twe–”

“Okay we get it.” Snotlout deadpanned, and his tone made Astrid snort.

“Y-you know what I don’ get?” Sam slurred, on the verge of chuckling. She turned and pointed at Astrid, “What does ‘Close enough’ mean?”

“...what?” Astrid stared blankly at her.

With an egregious groan, Sam tilted her head towards the sky, tapping Astrid’s forehead with a manicured nail, “Y-you know….you said that we were…closenough to Ruff’n’Tuff’s birthday. What does that mean?”

It took a few seconds for Astrid to remember what she was talking about, “Oh, from when we first got here?” She closed her eyes, licking her lips, “I dunno. it means we're in the ballpark. it's not like snow falls on the same day every year.”

That gave Sam even more pause. She swayed on her feet so much that it apparently warranted Snotlout steadying her, “Wait, w-what d’you mean?”

Astrid was beginning to think all the tequila was messing with her translator. Was that possible? She clumsily fumbled with it, giving Sam a stare that she hoped looked disappointed. “Vikings don't do a lot of math.”

Another significant beat of silence. 

And then, a lightbulb seemed to go off in Sam's head, because she gasped so dramatically that it startled both Snotlout and Astrid. “Oh…my gods.” She muttered, cupping both sides of her face in a very convincing imitation of horror, “you guys count your years in winters….”

Astrid and Snotlout shared a very drunk, very amused look with one another. “That is what a year is, Sam.” Astrid jokingly chastised.

Sam took a step back, as if in awe. “Oh my gods.”

“What?”

“Oh my gods,” Sam had a weird juxtaposition of horror and amusement in her slurred words “You guys c-can read the stars…train dragons… and you guys are fuckin’ flat-earthers!” The last part came out as a very loud shriek.

Astrid squinted at the younger teen, trying desperately to wake her brain up for a few seconds. “I don’t see your point.” she admitted. 

Sam took a couple hunched-over seconds to catch her breath, and when she finally craned her neck to look at the vikings, she looked on the verge of hysterical laughter. “Astrid, seasons’re just a side effect of what a year is. It’s not – Oh Ancients, I can’t breathe.” She barked with laughter.

Oh, now Astrid knew where this was going. A childish dread sank in Astrid’s gut, which Snotlout certainly shared considering the look they gave one another, “Oh….Thor. Please…you’re about to drop another ‘holier than thou’ futuristic trivia tid-tidbit, aren’t you?”

Astrid had to thoroughly ignore Snotlout’s snickering pun of “tits-bit”, forcing her eyes wide open as she studied the no-longer-giggling goth.

The look on Sam’s face was not a foreign one – Astrid had been able to pinpoint it many times since their arrival in the future, and it always accompanied some “earth-shattering revelation”. And to be fair, a few months ago, they were. Television, for one. Incredibly off-putting. The moon-landing: also vaguely horrifying. Bacteria, GMO’s, Nuclear Bombs, oh, and fucking uh…soy milk. Disgusting. Astrid hadn’t tried it yet, and she had no intention of ever trying it, thank you very much. How do you even get milk out of beans? 

“Earth’s round.”

“What?” The words pulled Astrid from her bean-milked thoughts, and she found Sam staring with incredibly round, incredibly serious eyes at her.

“Earth’s round.” She said again, and then formed a sphere-shaped object with her hands. “Like- like boobies. But just-just one.”

“Tits-bit.” Snotlout breathed again. This time, with more awe.

Astrid blinked, and it felt like it was in slow motion. “The earth…is a boob?”

“One big boob…” Sam agreed. And then, somehow, her eyes got wider, and she took a step back as if she was having an epiphany. “That’s why we call her Mother Earth…”

Astrid stared at the goth as she gazed into the sky, feeling like her brain was being rearranged.

“...I think I need’ta sit down.” She eventually whispered. And then allowed the fence to guide her to the snow-powdered grass.

“Me, too…” Sam said, and then Snotlout followed.

There were another couple beats of silence – or, well, not silence, because even though the population of the backyard had thinned, the main body of the party was still pretty audible outside the house. As it tended to do, the noise nullified Astrid’s thoughts, gradually pushing her latest conversation into the back of her mind, and it wasn’t long before she found herself tapping her foot to the beat, pretending to know the song by horribly humming along with it.

Sam giggled at her horrible rendition, which only egged her on. She could go all night like this, she thought. She wasn’t even upset anymore.