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“When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching - they are your family.”
- Jim Butcher
January 2021
He’s relapsed. Of course he has. That would be bad enough, if it weren’t for the millions of other events piling on top of him to get to this point.
First, he skipped class. Not ideal, but his maths teacher Mrs Beck will have to shove it up her ass. Today, he’s surprisingly less tolerant than usual to other people’s opinion of him. He doesn’t know what it is.
Maybe it’s the argument he had with Dagur, the usual ‘you need to eat Hiccup, it’s for your recovery’. Recovery. He hates that word. It’s as if he’s sick, and he isn’t sick. Sometimes, he listens to his therapist, her god damned sympathetic head tilt and her god damned sympathy voice, and Hiccup swallows the childish urge to cry back down his throat as she says ‘you’ve been through a lot, and that’s given you a lot of mental...’ issues problems illnesses you’re ill you’re sick you’re broken ‘hurdles to overcome’, she settles on like he’s a superhero who’s been kicked down, and not a tree who grew wonky since day one of birth.
Anyway, he’d slammed the door in his face, ‘I hate you’ still burning in his throat, and walked to school. He was ten minutes late.
Which was what perhaps led him here. It took him ages to get his things, and he was late to maths as well , and then-
And Mrs Beck stood him at the front of the class and said “why the hell are you late?” As if warped through a black hole, her face turned into his father’s, her grey-streaked brown hair fading to auburn, brown eyes fading to blue, and he felt so sick it made him want to actually scream.
She raised her hand, and in a moment of pure, adrenaline fuelled instinct, he flinched, covering his head with his arms. He didn’t even have time to process the fact he’d just made himself look crazy in front of his AP maths class before he bolted from the room. His feet thudding the carpet as fast as he could go, the step- click of his prosthetic blurring in his ears, he didn’t stop until he found a bathroom stall, fumbling for the sharpener he keeps unbolted in his pencil case.
The rest was a haze. His milky white skin was ripped open in cruel, clean slices. He watched the blood dribble like a baby’s saliva, streaking crimson lines like tiger stripes.
Now the blade is on the floor beside him, and he looks at his arms, bloodied and dripping onto his jeans - ruining his favourite pair of jeans - and thinks ‘what have I done?’
Panic sets in, gripping him by the throat like a vice. He’s ruined his clean streak -seven months and sixteen days, to be precise- and Dagur’s gonna find out, and so will Heather, and so will Astrid, and they are all going to be disappointed, the one thing worse than angry, because disappointment hits him in a dangerously vulnerable place, that makes his heart burn its ties with the other.
He decides he does not want that feeling to mess things up with the few good people in his life, he can’t let that happen-
He’s pulling his black hoodie sleeves down when he notices something else. The sleeves begin to soak through. He’s gone too deep.
Oh God , he thinks in a haze, his mind wrought with panic. A lot of parts of him - fear anger guilt shame logic - kicks him at once, and he goes with logic. He needs to stitch this up. And maybe go to the hospital. Except he can’t because he’s afraid of hospitals in the way little kids are, in the way people are when they wake up to one less limb in one. He knows he can’t take being around all the germs and people and suffering .
(Hiccup doesn’t know how Dagur does it every day. Every time he hears his cheery voice announcing his return, he makes him go upstairs, take a shower and wash all the germs off. Then he hides in his room, feeling guilty beyond verbalisation for forcing him to do something so time consuming when it’s his home and his shower and his life.)
Somehow, that tiny thought is enough to send everything else tipping onto him. The horrific blend of fear anger guilt shame he’d so carefully tucked away crashes onto him all at once, so much so that he physically stumbles and slams into the door with an awful crash!
He holds his breath, waiting for a response from the world outside this disgusting and germy toilet cubicle. No one. Huh. Maybe he’s out of the woods-
“Hello?” The all too familiar voice of his cousin asks.
“Snotlout?”
“Hiccup? Hiccup, was that you?” He asks, sounding so confused and and worried , and the tone of his voice is so soft Hiccup thinks he might choke on it.
Words come to his throat and get lost in the invisible netting over his mouth. Tears begin to build in his eyes, and he wonders how watching himself bleed means he remains stone-faced, but one kind gesture from his cousin and he crumbles.
Baby baby pathetic baby-
Syphoning every Bad feeling in his body, he draws back his fist and punches the wall.
For a moment, there is tingling nothingness. His skin is white, then pinkish red. Chunks of plaster crumbled onto him, painting his knuckles chalky white.
Then the tingling turns to a sting. Thenthe sting turns to a burn. And everything suddenly starts to hurt a lot . His knuckles are red and smarting like someone took a cane to them in the Victorian days he vaguely remembers learning about. It’s horrible and it hurts , and he’s hit with a sudden, visceral need for someone to hold him tight, kiss his knuckle better, and bandage his damaged arm, to carry him home like a baby and tuck him into bed and stay beside him until he’s sure the demons inside him won’t come back.
He doesn’t know how long that last part will take. Maybe he’ll be waiting forever.
“-cup, I need you to open the door. Or at least tell me if you’re okay.”
‘ I’m okay’ dances threateningly on his tongue. He gets his mouth all the way open this time, before crumbling into sobs.
“Hiccup, is that- nevermind, I know it’s you. Please open the door?”
Going against every instinct he’s ever had, Hiccup’s trembling hand unlatches the door. Snotlout bursts in, and immediately shuts the door behind him.
His eyes move up and down, taking in the sorry weight that is his cousin. “You look- God , what happened?”
Hiccup shakes his head sorrowfully. Snotlout works it out anyway, spotting the blood, and tentatively reaching for Hiccup’s sleeve.
He backs into the corner like a frightened animal, pressing into disgusting, germy walls.
Snotlout crouches down next to him (not in front, as if he knows not to overwhelm him like that, but is must be a lucky coincidence) and holds Hiccup’s chin, tilting it towards him so Hiccup has no choice but to look at his cousins’s sky-blue eyes.
“Hiccup. Let me see.”
When his hands move to unroll his sleeve, Hiccup makes no move to stop him. The corner he’s found himself in is a bit damp and smells awful, but it’s a nice place for him to melt into while everything else goes wrong.
Snotlout curses under his breath -Hiccup recognises it as one of the three Russian swear words he’d been able to goad Fishlegs into teaching him- and claps a hand to his mouth. Guilt rocks Hiccup to the core like a boat on a stormy ocean. “I’m calling Dagur,” Snotlout says, rummaging for his phone in his bag, and Hiccup’s voice catches in his throat.
“ Don’t! ” Snotlout raises his eyebrows at him, as if to say ‘are you being stupid?’ “Please- he’s at work right now, he’s busy, I- don’t- just give me some time to think, okay?”
He gives him that, at least, pulling his medical bag out of his rucksack. Hiccup silently thanks whatever the hell is out there his cousin’s grown common sense and survival skills recently. The boy who didn’t check the restaurant menu for nut allergies and had to be taken to the hospital via ambulance on Ruffnut and Tuffnut’s birthday is long gone.
“Stay still, okay? I’m going to clean that, and bandage it. Then you’re going home.”
“Home?” Hiccup has been living with Dagur and Heather for seven months, but that must be only temporary. He’s lived with his dad for sixteen and a half years, but his dad is abusive beyond redemption bad. He’s not sure where home is.
He lets Snotlout do as he wants, cleaning the wound with an alcoholic wipe from a packet and wrapping a bandage around it. It begins to soak through, but not at the rate of his hoodie. Hiccup watches the blood spread in slow, blooming motions. It reminds him of when he used to watch nature videos when he was a kid: sped up accounts of flowers blooming and wilting, trees sprouting, foods shrivelling and rotting. It had tilled him with wonder at the time, how much the world changed over a matter of days.
Now the days all look the same. He doesn’t watch nature videos anymore.
Snotlout picks him up, holding him by the torso with one hand, the other clutching his undamaged forearm as he half-leads, half-carries Hiccup down the corridor. He must look a sight: jeans dotted with blood, his head hanging, nearly on his chest, being dragged down the corridor.
He stops by the lift, and Hiccup fumbles for his lift key in his jeans pocket. He dumps it in Snotlout’s hang, and he opens it, and there’s a vague swooping motion of going down, and more corridors, his feet dragging underneath him, and much more sun than inside, and Hiccup’s in Snotlout’s car, saying goodbye to the school at half eleven in the morning.
“Don’t worry, I signed us out. And I dropped your bag in your locker,” says Snotlout, his eyes not leaving the road.
“You did?” Hiccup mumbles, trying to recall the event.
“Yeah. I put you down on the floor. You looked like you were going to fall asleep.”
“Oh.” Now he mentions sleep, he is very tired. “Can I sleep?” At the back of his mind, he vaguely remembers something about not sleeping when you’ve lost blood.
“Not unless Dagur says you can. Don’t worry, I haven’t told him yet,” he adds, seeing the panicked expression on Hiccup’s face. “But I will have to. It’s Dagur or someone else, because I am not -”
“No, no, it’s okay,” he says, and he means it. As much as the thought of Dagur knowing he’s relapsed makes his skin crawl, he’d never put Snotlout through caring for his mental issues problems illnesses you’re ill you’re sick you’re broken broken broken hurdles to overcome, as his therapist said once. Whatever’s wrong with him is not his cousin’s burden to carry.
It should be his parents’ problem, he thinks bitterly. It should be them shouldering the burden of caring for him through his worst times instead of causing them. He has half a mind to call his mom and plead for her to come down to Oregon at once, because her only birth son ( Ishaan doesn’t count , he tells himself, and it’s cruel to think so harshly of an eight year old, but he does) has cut himself and he’s bleeding and hurt and scared and he needs a mom or a dad. Any would do, but he has neither, and he’s left to pick up the pieces himself.
Snotlout pulls up into his drive, a brief “my dad’s out right now” conveying more than anything else ever could, and sits him down on the sofa. He disappears into the kitchen, but comes back with a tray laden with objects Hiccup’s too tired to name just before Hiccup can start worrying.
“I...” Snotlout sighs heavily. “I don’t think you’ll- I’m gonna- you need stitches, okay?”
“Alright,” Hiccup mumbles. Snotlout props his head up with several cushions, and it’s so comfy he could fall asleep. But he tries not to; he’d hate to drift off and never wake up. Really. He’s not suicidal like that anymore. This was just a mistake. A bad one, he tells himself.
“This might hurt,” Snotlout warns him. Hiccup nods vaguely.
The needle jabs into his skin, piercing layers of soft flesh and skin, and Hiccup inhales sharply. He wished he’d paid more attention to his cousin; this is torture , and being ready might’ve helped a little. There’s an odd sliding motion of the thread being pulled, and morbid curiosity turns his eyes to Snotlout’s hands, pulling the thread into a complicatedly looped knot. He pulls it tight, slow and gentle, but it’s so goddamned painful , more so than putting the wound there in the first place, Hiccup wants to cry.
Snotlout moves onto another cut he judges deep enough to need stitching. His hands are shaky, and each stab into his skin makes Hiccup want to scream, but-
He needs this. He might bleed out too fast before Dagur can come for him.
Snotlout finishes the worst of them, stepping back to admire his handiwork. He sighs through his teeth. “It’s not perfect.”
Hiccup looks too. The stitches are, frankly, horrible. They’re jagged and uneven and his skin’s practically glowing red.
Three rapid knocks on the door. Speak of the devil, Hiccup thinks, before his head drops onto the couch.
“Hang on, I'll get it,” Snotlout says, leaping up. He disappears for a moment, then he's back, Dagur trailing behind, and Dagur-
He takes one look at him, his green eyes blazing with fear care love and his arms, the twin cobras Hiccup feels so safe in, wraps around him. Hiccup melts into his embrace, so warm and safe , and he realises it's the case because Dagur and Heather have become his home, and his family.
He can't count the amount of times he's scrolled past some corny post in a pretty font with a fake, flowery slogan about family. Purple prose , he thinks, having heard it in an English class some day he was probably not listening.
But one of them sticks in his mind, sandwiched between him and Dagur, wrapped in the bandages Snotlout applied to his arm, crackling in the air all around him with his friends: “When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching - they are your family." He wishes he could remember where he heard it so he could silently thank them.
He thinks of his father, and his enormous, turned back, his enormous fists flying towards him, the darkness of his room, crying as he bandaged his own wounds.
He thinks of Dagur, his gentle voice as he asks him questions - ’are you feeling okay? When did this happen? What did you use? Do you feel any dizziness? Does anything internal hurt?’ - his gentle fingers on his neck as he finds his blood pressure, his gentle smile as he lets Hiccup lie down, and he’s so gentle , and it’s not what a creature like him deserves. He’s poison, he’s blood, he’s shattered glass and sharp nails. Manipulative, like his father said.
Dagur finally leaves the room, mumbling something about calling a doctor. Hiccup curls into a ball and cries. Somewhere along the way, he falls asleep.
When he’s done, voices are talking all around him. Dagur and Snotlout are joined by a third person with close-cropped afro hair and a young face.
“Thanks for your time, doc,” Dagur says.
“Please. Call me Madeleine,” she replies, beaming. “Now, what seems to be the problem?”
“It’s my brother, he’s-”
Brother . Hiccup’s heart squeezes, like Thor’s fist shattered his ribs and clutched his heart in his almighty fingers.
“-and I stitched him up,” says Snotlout, sounding somewhat proud of himself.
“You what ?” For a moment, Dagur looks as if he might actually kill Snotlout on the spot, but he screws his eyes shut for three seconds, and says “Okay- okay, did you sterilise the needle, thread and wound site?” Dagur asks.
“Yeah,” says Snotlout.
“Well done,” Madeleine says. “That was a very sensible thing to do. Obviously you’re not trained, so I’ll have to redo them.”
“Of course, of course.” Snotlout nods, and leaves the room.
Dagur bends down towards Hiccup, his smile warm like evening sun Hiccup can see through barely-open eyes. “Hiccup, we’re going back to mine, alright? You don’t have to walk, I’ll carry you.”
The rest is a senseless blur. He’s on Snotlout’s couch, and then he’s in someone’s arms- the twin cobras he feels so safe in, and then he’s on another sofa as if no time at all passed between the two. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees long, dark arms expertly applying something to his arm that makes it go numb, and a faint pulling.
Somehow, the next time he opens his eyes fully, it’s over, and he can smell the cheap cologne Dagur wears beside him, can feel his warm, leathery hand in his.
“Hey, brother. Madeleine’s redone your stitches. Turns out, they just needed dissolvable ones. They’ll heal up just fine.”
They’ll scar, Hiccup thinks.
“So? We’ve all got scars,” Dagur says, and Hiccup realises he said it aloud. Dagur’s posture shifts uncomfortably, and Hiccup knows he’s thinking of the cross on his chest that symbolises his past belonging in the Dragon Hunters.
“I’ll have these scars on my wedding day,” he says quietly. “I’ll die with them on my skin.”
“That’s okay.”
“No,” Hiccup shakes his head. “No, it’s not.”
“C’mere.” Dagur lifts him gingerly from the sofa into a steady hug. His voice drifts off into oblivion as Hiccup’s head comes to lean on him, in the place where his chest meets his shoulder. It’s warm and steady. He thinks he could stay there forever if the world would let him.
Dagur hugs him back, resting him on his knee like a baby. “It’s okay Hiccup. You’re safe, alright?”
He lets his voice rock him to sleep for the second time today.
You’re safe .