HTTYD - Day 7, Part 3

Fourth new chapter/story in the past week, feels good to be productive again! and im liking the last few gentle chapters of this story 🥰 but another dose of exciting chapters is coming around the corner!

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Camila went home not long after dinner, but Paris stuck around since Jessie hadn’t had her over in awhile. But since it was still a school night, Marcus figured he should ask what Paris’ plan to get home was. He was about to knock on Jessie’s door and ask if her mom was coming to pick her up when the door suddenly opened, with the two girls about to step into the hallway. “Oh!” Paris gasped, immediately seeing her friend’s dad standing at their feet and stopping herself. “Sorry,” she blushed; ‘walking into someone’ took on a different meaning when that someone was less than a foot tall.

“That’s OK,” Marcus chuckled. “I’ve kinda learned to stop worrying about what could happen and just focus on what actually does happen. You didn’t run into me, so neither of us should feel bad.”

Paris smiled, impressed with the man’s positive attitude. “That’s a great way of looking at things!”

“Thanks,” he replied, and turned to his daughter as she spoke up.

“Were you coming to get us for something?” the giant teenager asked, and he nodded, looking back at Paris.

“Yeah, I was just checking up to see when you were planning on going home, Paris. I mean you’re free to stay as late as you want, you know that. But since it’s a school night I just thought I’d check.”

“Oh, my mom was gonna come pick me up,” the girl explained.

“But we were gonna watch a movie before she did,” Jessie added. Marcus glanced over at the clock, seeing that it was a little after 7pm. Is there enough time for them to watch a movie before Jessie has to start getting ready for bed? But his daughter was already one step ahead of him. “Paris said she goes to bed normally at 9, and the movie’s only like an hour and a half, sooooo… I mean we probably should’ve started like 15 minutes ago, but every minute we spend talking about it makes it even worse!” The two girls pretended to freak out in unison and ran past Marcus towards the living room. He was a little hesitant about letting them start the movie, since he knew that that Paris’ parents would probably want her home by 8:45 at the latest, which meant her mom would be there around 8:30. Only getting to watch part of a movie was annoying, but getting to watch 90% of it and then having to leave in the last 10 minutes was even worse. But he also didn’t wanna tell his daughter no, since technically she’d be able to finish it, even if her friend couldn’t. Worst case scenario, they’ll just learn to start a little earlier next time, he decided. Time management skills.

Jessie jumped up from the couch and hustled her way back to where her dad was, still standing by her door. She dropped to the floor all of a sudden, breaking her fall with her hands for a split second before putting her elbows on the ground and resting her head in her hands, her feet kicked up behind her and swaying back and forth. It all happened so quick that Marcus was caught off guard, taken aback by something so massive moving so quickly. Her face had gone from being 50 feet above him to at his eye level in barely two seconds. She was purposefully being goofy though—not that Marcus expected anything less from his daughter. It was typical Jessie behavior.

“Paris wanted to know if you wanted to watch the movie with us?” she asked, tilting her head back and forth.

“Depends what you guys were gonna watch,” he answered. He didn’t think it’d be something he’d wanna watch, but at least her movie picks nowadays were a lot more appetizing than they used to be. Even to this day, he still knew every line from “I See the Light” because Tangled was the only movie Jessie picked for family movie night for at least a year when she was a little kid.

“Mmmmm, do you remember that one we watched about the girl who wrote a bunch of letters to her crushes and freaked them out, but then one of them fell in love with her?”

Marcus had to think for a moment, but it sounded familiar. “The one with Noah Centineo?”

Over in the family room, Paris suddenly burst out laughing. “Oh my God, I love that your dad knows who Noah Centineo is.”

Marcus rolled her eyes but Jessie laughed, agreeing with her friend. “Yep! I’ve taught him well,” she giggled, gently patting him on the head. “But anyways yeah, that one. It’s the sequel to that.” Her dad looked hesitant, but Jessie wasn’t buying it. “Oh come on, I know you liked it. You literally told me when it was over that it was better than you were expecting.”

“I was just trying to be polite,” he shrugged with a laugh.

“Yeah, sure,” Jessie said, rolling her eyes and picking her dad up before hopping back onto her feet. “He said he loved the first movie and can’t wait to watch the second with us,” she jokingly lied to Paris, carrying her dad to the family room and sitting to the right of her friend on the couch. She set her dad down between the two of them, and then tucked her feet beneath her on the opposite side. Paris pulled a blanket off the ground and was preparing to drape herself with it when Jessie scooted over suddenly, the side of her leg bumping into her dad as she reached for the other side of the blanket. “Ooooh, we can get all snuggled and cozy too,” she commented, and scooted even closer to Paris, trapping Marcus between their legs. Then she threw the blanket open to its fullest and draped it over her and Paris’ laps, teasing her dad by covering him in the process. “OK, everyone ready now?” Polite as she was, Paris couldn’t keep from laughing along with her friend a little, while they both felt Marcus sandwiched between their legs and trying to push his way up and out. She budged to the side just a tiny amount in order to help him out a bit, and it proved enough for him to climb out. Having successfully escaped being squeezed by the teenage girls, he pulled the blanket down so he could climb on top of it, and then plopped to a seat in the middle.

“OK I changed my mind, I’m not actually cold enough for a blanket,” Jessie declared, and scooted back over to her original position, causing her dad to tumble fall a couple feet onto the couch again as the blanket fell from beneath it. She turned onto her side instead, her legs curled up away from Marcus and Paris, and set her elbow onto the cushion so she could prop her head up.

She glanced down to the side to see her dad marching over to her before taking a seat and using her arm as a backrest. “I don’t care how many times you try to get rid of me, I’m still gonna wanna sit with you,” he stated. She smiled and decided she’d had enough fun, and they all got relaxed as Paris started up the movie.

Marcus didn’t think the movie was as good as the first one (Jessie had been right about him enjoying it), but it wasn’t really that bad. Early on into their watching, Jessie had commented that she’d be content if the movie had “just one scene that’s half as good as the hot tube one from the first.” Marcus couldn’t remember which scene she was talking about, but it wasn’t hard for him to guess what might be so appealing about a “hot tub scene.” Since his seat was a little in front of Jessie’s face, he was able to glance up at her face to gauge her reaction a few times throughout the movie. She seemed moderately interested for most of it, although there was one occasion where he looked up and realized she suddenly looked far more engrossed than at any point before. She was even biting her lip from how entranced she was, and when she shifted her body slightly her eyes stayed glued in place like an owl.

After sitting in the same spot for a while, Paris changed positions too, adopting a similar one to Jessie’s, but instead had her head laying on the pillow against the couch’s armrest. She curled her legs onto the couch like how Jessie was laying, but she forgot that Marcus had been sitting there, so her feet nearly ended up blocking his view of the TV. Having been best friends with Paris for so many years, they were naturally completely comfortable around each other and Jessie didn’t care when Paris’ feet rubbed up against her elbow. But Marcus cared. Even though he could still see the screen, there was now a wall of socked soles bordering his view. Her feet were laying on the side, one on top of the other, and the combined width of them both ended up being taller than Marcus’ height sitting down. Paris was obviously a clean and hygienic girl, so it wasn’t like her feet smelled bad or anything… but he could still smell them. And just the regular smell of faintly used socks was worse than not having to smell them at all. Every once in awhile, his daughter’s friend would wiggle her toes or curl them without even realizing, which were also a tad distracting. But considering how quickly Paris was to apologize for even the most minor inconvenience she might’ve caused, Marcus simply felt too polite to say anything to her.

After the movie ended and Paris had gone home, Jessie didn’t say anything as she carried her dad to the bathroom so they could both brush their teeth. “So… what’d you think of it?” Marcus asked, looking up at her.

Jessie sighed as she set her dad down on the bathroom counter. “They literally made the hot tub scene from the first movie… worse. Like I don’t know if I’ll even wanna rewatch it now,” she grumbled. Marcus didn’t say anything, but he chuckled a little on the inside. At least that means I probably won’t have to watch the third one.