Work Text:
March 12th 2017
The atmosphere is so unbearably stiff, Hiccup thinks he could choke on it. His dad's hands are tight on the steering wheel, and all he can think of is how lucky enough those iron-strength hands aren't around his neck.
Keeping his eyes inconspicuous, Hiccup scans his face, looking for any signs of anger above the usual line.
None. He dares to ask.
“So… dad. Astrid invited me around after Simon’s birthday for a sleepover. Can I go please?”
“You want to go to Astrid's ?” He spits her name like a slur, and Hiccup feels his stomach drop.
He wishes beyond imagination he could take it back, but he's smarter than to consider it. “Uh, yes please. If that's okay with you.”
“It's not.” Stoick’s eyes turn back to the road.
“Why?” Hiccup asks before he can think, and he fights to hold a gasp in his throat.
“Because I said so. And I’m in charge.”
“Why can’t I go?” Hiccup asks sadly.
“Because that’s what I said! ” Stoick screams the last word, turning down the street violently enough to warrant a sanction. “I am your father , and you will learn to listen to me. Honestly, it’s like you don’t want to be around me anymore.”
A new flash of horror crosses his face. “Is that it? You don’t want to live with me any more? Would you rather piss off to your mother and her d[]e of a wife in Canada, is that what you want?”
“No, of course not!” Hiccup cries, horrified. In an attempt to de-escalate the situation, he says “I just want to spend time with her; she's my friend!”
“And I am your father.”
Hiccup looks him dead in the eye as he pulls up into Snotlout’s front drive. “Talking to me like that isn't very fatherly .”
He begins walking towards Snotlout’s house, his cousin's present clutched in his hand.
He doesn't get far.
A rough hand circles around his wrist, and an even rough voice snaps “you’re going home now.”
“But Snotlout’s bir-”
“I said , home. Now.”
Hiccup may have been fine if Snotlout hadn't opened the door at that very second, his face the picture of confusion.
Hiccup, his other hand still locked in Stoick's grip like a vice, drops the present on the ground as far as he could reach.
“Are you-”
“Your friend will not be joining you,” Stoick says curtly. “Happy birthday.”
And Snotlout watches dust collect under Stoick's tires as he drives away.
Houses, trees, lampposts and the like flash past Hiccup's eyes as his dad drives, rumbling with anger like a volcano. A disgusting part of him wants him to yell, to scream and to lose his temper. At least he’d feel like his traumas were real that way. In a sense of the word, the silence is almost worse. It leaves Hiccup trapped in his worst nightmares of what could happen, no clues guiding him to the soothing words to leave his lips and calm his father down.
He’s trapped in this car, too. Stoick still keeps the childlock on, and he can’t smash a window without injuring himself more on the cut glass. A morbid part of him wants it to happen, just so he can scream, plead, cry for help, go to a hospital where they’ll stitch him up and hopefully notice the hand-shaped bruises on his body.
In fact, he’s considering it when his father grounds to a halt in the middle of a dual carriageway, gets out, and opens Hiccup’s car door.
“Go.”
“What? Go where, what are you-”
“I said go . Get out of this car.”
“I don’t understa-”
“Just get OUT! ” He screams. Hiccup’s hands fumble to undo the seatbelt, and he almost rushes out. His father brushes past him, uncaring when a barge from his shoulder knocks him to his hands and knees.
And it is from his knees, gravel digging into his palms, that he watches his father drive away without looking back.
For a jarring moment, he stares in shock. Did his father just abandon him? It doesn’t make sense- why would he do that? Does he expect him to wait for him there, does he want him to wait? Should he wait? Is this child abandonment? Should he call the police ?
So many questions rush through his head, pounding his skull like marbles. He gets to his feet, and the ground wobbles beneath him. It’s so confusing, and it hurts so bad and-
Oh no. Hiccup watches the tears fall hot and heavy from his eyes, pulsing painfully in his ducts. His head begins to hurt with even the effort to think. The one thing he can get straight is that his father, Stoick Vard Haddock, the mayor of Oregon, has abandoned him.
He throws his head back, bending double, and screams. Tears fall into his mouth, salty and horrible, and he spits them into the bush, along with bile he chokes out.
A car zips past, inches away from him. Raw terror pounds him. He could get killed if he isn’t careful. And the last time he was in a road accident, he lost half his left leg.
Carefully, he scrambles over the knee-high metal fencing at the side of the road, and crouches in the bush, not daring to move. His hands shake so much it makes the leaves skitter when he separates the bush to keep an eye out for his father. Over the roaring of the cars, he can still hear his heart pounding in his ears.
He waits until his muscles begin to cramp, counting the seconds his fath- his dad doesn’t show up full of apologies. Hiccup’s not even sure he wants them. A creeping feeling his father is beyond redemption grows stronger every day.
Then, a familiarly hefty, black BMW drives past him on the other side of the dual carriageway, and pulls to a stop. With bated breath, Hiccup watches his father get out of the car and run across the road, calling his name, his real name. He looks worried. Hiccup also notices his face is clear of the tear tracks that trail down his own, and is struck with such a burning hatred of his father, guiltless and stubborn - Stoick , like his name- while he trembles in a bush.
“Hiccup?” Stoick turns towards him, and Hiccup straightens himself out, climbing out of the bush he was in. Stoick eyes him with a disgusted look and says “were you hiding from me?”
He would lie, but he doesn’t have time. So, he bends the truth. He's good at that.
“I'm sorry, dad. I wasn’t hiding from you. I thought you were someone who was going to hurt me.”
“Yes, well I'm your father,” he emphasises like Hiccup might forget. “Get in the car. You're going to Simon’s house.”
Hiccup could cry in relief. “Thank you dad.”
“And you can stay at Astrid's.”
“Thank you very much. I'm very grateful.” The words taste like vomit in his mouth, or that might be actual vomit. He can’t tell. Either way, speaking so kindly to the man who left him on the side of the road makes him sick.
After a silent five minute drive, Hiccup is deposited on Snotlout’s front doorstep. He nods goodbye to his father, and he wordlessly drives off.
Snotlout opens the door, a childish party hat on his head over his beanie. His crystal-blue eyes sparkle with joy, but cloud over with concern at the sight of Hiccup’s tear-stained cheeks.
“Hey Hiccup. Are you- are you okay?” Snotlout asks gently, closing the door behind him. Hiccup opens his mouth, and crumples into tears.
“Sshh, sshh, it’s okay. He’s not here anymore,” Snotlout soothes, a little awkward, but he doesn’t think Hiccup minds. His cousin clings tighter to him, and he squeezes tighter, rubbing circles onto his back. “I won’t let him hurt you.”
Snotlout holds him for a long time. He offers Hiccup his bedroom to cry some more in, and he accepts. While his friends party downstairs, he stares at Hookfang, the red crested gecko, in his tank across the room. It has the same unimpressed look Snotlout wears on his face so often. Hiccup leans closer into Snotlout’s bed. It smells like his cousin too.
When the party fizzles out hours later, Hiccup dares to come down like a hermit crab escaping its shell, and finds only Astrid sitting by the breakfast bar, clutching a paper cup of lemonade.
She looks at him with soft eyes. “Hey, Hiccup. You feeling better?”
“Yeah,” he says, flipped onto the defensive, because if she’s asking if he feels better , it means she knows he was worse , and that also means Snotlout must’ve told at least her.
“So, uh...” Snotlout clears plates of food away, making almost exaggerated efforts not to meet his cousin in the eye. “What did happen, Hiccup?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says firmly, tears clouding his eyes. There’s a clinking of glasses, a rushing of water, and a mumbled “give this to him” as Snotlout hands Astrid a glass of water. Hiccup takes sips from it like it’s life elixir, and it occurs to him he hasn't eaten or drank anything all day. Oh well. It’s not like he’s willing to ask.
Snotlout gives him a plate with a sandwich anyway. It’s plain cheese, with the nice butter his dad gets from the grocery store downtown. Hiccup takes a bite, and it sits like rocks in his stomach. He can still feel the ghost of gravel on his hands, jutting into the skin like knives.
He can hear his cousin open and close his mouth several times like he wants badly to ask Hiccup something, but eventually, he decides not to. “My dad just got Netflix, is there anything you guys want to watch?”
Even more hours later, Hiccup falls asleep either side of his best friend and his cousin, The Office still playing quietly. It reminds him of being very young, watching it over and over until his eyelids drooped and he felt too tired to sleep. Those days reeked of alcohol and manipulation and secrets, and days where he had to cook his own meals, put himself to bed, remember to do his own homework.
That, he reminds himself, is far away. He’s safe here.