Chapter Text
It started innocently enough.
One week after returning from Berk, the riders were restless. The sky was clear, the dragons were dozing, and the fire pit on Dragon’s Edge was practically begging to host a night of “responsible, team-building relaxation” — Snotlout’s words. Which should’ve been the first red flag.
They’d dragged out blankets, spare logs, fish-on-sticks, and a dented mug Ruffnut insisted was “magical and necessary for fire rituals.” Toothless curled up nearby, already fast asleep. Hookfang was roasting his own tail. Life was good.
Then Snotlout emerged from his hut, holding a bottle half the size of Tuffnut’s torso over his head like he’d just won a gladiator match.
“BEHOLD!” he yelled, voice cracking with triumph. “THE ELIXIR OF THE GODS!”
Everyone paused.
“Snotlout,” Hiccup said cautiously, “why are you holding that like it’s an offering to Thor?”
“Because it is, my emotionally repressed friend,” Snotlout replied, uncorking it with his teeth. “This—” he sloshed the dark amber liquid dramatically, “—is Stoick’s secret stash of ancient Highland Deathfire whiskey. Thirty-five years aged in yak barrels. One drop can kill a yak. Or start a yak bar fight. Or both!”
“…Snotlout,” Astrid said slowly, “how did you get that?”
He grinned. “I borrowed it. From the Great Hall. While no one was looking. And also while Gobber was passed out face-first in a plate of pickled eels.”
“You stole it,” Fishlegs gasped.
“Liberated, Fishlegs. I liberated it in the name of fun, team bonding, and totally forgetting that Astrid hit me in the head with an oar last week.”
Astrid did not deny this.
Against better judgment — and possibly out of sheer boredom — they passed around mismatched mugs, horn cups, and at one point, a seashell. The whiskey burned. It roared. It hit their stomachs like a Monstrous Nightmare landing on a cabbage cart.
Then everything descended into glorious, reckless chaos.
Ruffnut tried to teach Stormfly how to dance. Tuffnut challenged a boulder to a duel and lost. Hiccup kept insisting he was “completely fine” while dramatically leaning on Astrid’s shoulder like his spine had gone missing. Fishlegs sat under Meatlug, reading her a book titled “The Digestive Tract of the Scauldron” and crying.
Snotlout climbed a tree and yelled, “I AM YOUR NEW CHIEF!” before falling directly into the fire pit, where Hookfang licked him like a toasted marshmallow.
Astrid, against all odds, seemed totally unfazed. “I can’t even see, and I’m still the most responsible one here,” she muttered as she handed Hiccup a mug of water and slapped a toasted fish stick out of Snotlout’s hand.
Eventually, they collapsed in a disorganized pile of limbs and regrets, snoring and muttering things like “the yak is inside the bottle” and “I think I kissed Barf.”
⸻
The Next Morning
The sun was a screaming, vengeful demon.
Birds chirped with the malice of a thousand axes. The fire pit was still smoking. There were fish bones in Ruffnut’s hair. Hiccup woke up with someone’s boot on his chest. Fishlegs had a half-braided beard, and no one could explain why.
Astrid was the first to sit up, mostly because Stormfly shoved her with her snout.
“My brain hurts,” Hiccup groaned from beneath a scorched blanket.
“My soul hurts,” said Fishlegs, cradling his head.
Snotlout, face-down in a pile of ash, groaned, “My pride hurts… but also my butt.”
And then—doom.
The heavy, deliberate footsteps.
The silence of dragons suddenly sitting upright like kids caught sneaking fish.
And then the voice.
“Well,” said Stoick. “Looks like a herd of yaklings hosted a wrestling match in your camp.”
Everyone froze.
Like actually froze. Even Hookfang didn’t move. Ruffnut literally slid behind Tuffnut and tried to disappear under the log.
Stoick looked around. At the scorch marks. The broken mugs. The half-empty bottle of Deathfire whiskey sitting precariously on a barrel like it too was hungover.
Stoick picked it up.
Held it up to the light.
Sniffed it.
Lowered it.
Stared.
No one breathed.
“Where,” he asked slowly, in the way a glacier creaks before it crushes a village, “did this come from?”
There was a beat of silence.
Then everyone talked at once:
• “Maybe it was Gobber?”
• “We found it!”
• “It came from the sea!”
• “Hookfang brought it!”
• “Stormfly laid it!”
• “The boulder! The boulder had it!”
Stoick didn’t blink.
Didn’t speak.
He just did the face.
That one, devastating, soul-destroying look of disappointment only Stoick the Vast could summon. The “I expected stupidity, but not this level of stupidity” look. The “do you know how long this whiskey was guarded under lock, key, and dragon?” look.
Snotlout sat up, pointed at the bottle, and whispered, “Oh no. He has the look.”
“The these teenagers did something stupid look,” Hiccup mumbled, facepalming.
Stoick sighed deeply, louder than the sea, and crossed his arms.
“I’m going to say this once,” he said. “You’re dragon riders. Defenders of Berk. Leaders. If you’re going to steal something sacred, get blackout drunk, and sing love songs to your dragons, at least don’t do it in plain sight of the entire archipelago.”
“…Wait, who sang a love song?” Hiccup asked.
“YOU DID,” said the entire group in unison.
“To Toothless,” added Astrid, grinning.
Toothless purred smugly.
Stoick shook his head. “This whiskey was meant for weddings. Peace treaties. Mid-winter alliances. Not… whatever this was.”
There was a moment of shameful silence.
Then Snotlout raised his hand weakly.
“In our defense,” he croaked, “it was a kind of treaty. Between me and the fire pit. We have a mutual respect now.”
Stoick glared. Snotlout went limp like a sack of fish.
“Clean this place up. All of it. And don’t let me catch you stealing from the Great Hall again. Or singing.”
He turned on his heel and stalked away, cape billowing, the scent of disappointment trailing behind him like smoke.
They didn’t speak for a long time.
Then Ruffnut, deadpan, said: “So… round two tonight?”
Tuffnut raised a single, trembling fist in the air. “For the treaty.”