trans_9 | Free Hugs, anyone~?

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Free Hugs, anyone~?

Too much doom and gloom on the ship? Easily fixed, if you ask this mechanic.

There is a table in the mess hall, carefully set up just inside one of the doors, with a small sign on top reading, "Free Hugs!" Next to the sign, looking as smiley as she possibly can, sits Kaylee, ready to hug anyone and everyone who walks through the door.

Non-huggers beware, even you are in danger of some cheering up today.

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Daily complaint about the food? Check.

"Take it you just popped, yeah? Been here some amount of months now myself, and it makes me a little sad to say that it don't get better with time." Kaylee grinned, and settled a little more on the bench, eying the peg leg all the while. "You make that yourself?"

Ah, the hugs. "The hugs are for anybody wantin' 'em. Place needed a bit of sunshine, y'know? Folks've been on the down side lately, and a hug or two never hurt anybody."

"I did. Well, Gobber did--I'm his apprentice, but I improved a little on his original design."

He held out his leg to show it off. "Works well enough. Most of the time."

Back to the hug thing, which is confounding him.

"So you're just...hugging people completely at random to be nice to them," he said, wrinkling his face as he tried to work out this...oddity.

"Well, it ain't a bad fix at all." She's not about to rain on the kid's parade about it by offering to fix it up even more for him. "You do a lot of tinkerin'?"

Ah, yes, the hugs. The hugs are confusing plenty of folks today.

"All there is to it, yeah. Pretty simple, maybe, but it's enough to make most people smile, and that's enough for me."

"A little. I'm okay at it," he said with a slight sniff of pride.

"And that's..."

Yeah, he didn't get it. And he was still stuck on it.

"That's weird," he admits outright. "I don't get it."

There wasn't a lot to get, but affection for affection's sake was something of an alien concept to him. What with parental orders to break heads on rocks and all. (That was how you said 'I love you'!)

"You don't toss in a noogie at the end? No surprise headlock? It's not just a ruse to get close to people to wedgie their underclothes to the ends of the Earth?"

It was just a hug, plain and simple? Like a sign of affection? With no violence thrown in anywhere? It wasn't, at the very least, a hug-punch combo?

He's better than okay, if he managed that with what minimal resources he must have had. "I'll bet you could do a lot more, given the right tools..."

Always looking for potential recruits for Engineering, though will some of the less-modern folks it was more a matter of how well they caught on to what they were being taught or told.

"A lot of people seem to think it's a little weird. But it really is just a hug," Kaylee promised. "No extra surprises."

Yeah, he was still completely stuck on that hug thing. It was bewildering and alien and he was pretty sure he liked her for that level of daring. (Daring to be nice!)

What? People were decent to one another where he came from, sure. There was loyalty, there were allegiances, there were epic friendships, but random affection was just not the Viking way. And after ever so many insults, teasings, punches, noogies, headlocks, and tackles, Hiccup, in all his tininess, sort of wished hugging were the Viking way.

Hiccup kind of liked the idea of it at least being somebody's way.

It wasn't that Kaylee was cute--she was, but aside from her being a little too old for him, she was a little too cute for him to be interested. (Not enough spikes and grommets and scars there). It was that even if he didn't want to admit it to himself, a hug from the nice older girl who seemed a lot like a big sister might be, might be nice.

Putting his tray down on the table, he said, swinging his arm awkwardly, "Well, I guess if you're giving them to everybody, a hug would be okay. I mean, since you feel like giving them. I'd hate to, um, offend your...cultural...I know there's some word for that, but my people usually don't care about offending anyone's anything, so I forget what it is. In any case--since it's your way--" Not his, nope, he was a Viking, and that meant he totally eschewed hugs as any Viking would.

He sniffed. "--A hug would be fine."

Kaylee had encountered plenty of folks so far who weren't too keen on the idea of hugs, but this one was definitely taking the cake on ideas for what alternate plans she might have going.

"A hug it is, then!"

At least the kid was somewhat entertaining, and agreed in the long run. The mechanic offered him another smile as she stepped up to give him a nice firm hug.

Take that, vikings.

I was nice. It made him feel better all of a sudden, and sad all at once. It made him homesick even when hugging never happened at home.

It made him wonder if this was what it would have felt like to be hugged by a mother he couldn't remember.

Eventually, she let go, and he pulled away and he sniffed, as if he was being dismissive, but maybe that sniff was covering up something else. Maybe.

"Well then, glad you got that out of your system."

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Free Hugs, anyone~?

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