Chapter Text
“Okay,” Hiccup said. “Just like we practiced.”
The we was proverbial — no one else was in Hiccup’s hut. Not even Toothless. It wasn’t for a lack of trying on the dragon’s part. But Hiccup needed to be alone, so he sent Toothless out with the other dragons to fetch dinner, so he could sort out the strangeness lying in his chest.
Or, as Hiccup was beginning to suspect:
“Her name is Hiccup. She is the daughter of Stoick the Vast. She likes dragons,” Hiccup said. The words echoed, but Hiccup could feel their presence hanging in the air, awkward and persistent.
But they hadn’t felt wrong. New? Yes. Unfitting? No. Not the way that boyhood had been, and that manhood was beginning to feel now: an ick on her skin, grime sloughing off and around her foot and metal leg, congealing and dark and impossible to move forward without feeling like she had to die to breathe again.
“Great,” Hiccup said to absolutely no one.
Except the other possibility caused a whole new bunch of issues. Berk wasn’t new to the changing genders thing — not by a long shot — but things were different for Hiccup. They were always different, whether it was the way she talked or the things she thought or just the way she looked, scrawny and unsightly the way hiccups on Berk had always been.
But, she thought, hand creeping up to her hair, which was beginning to reach her collarbone in messy tangles. But, she thought, turning on her heel to the reflecting glass in the corner of her room.
Give her some time, maybe a bit of Gothi’s seiðr, and her chest might slope more to fit the gentle curves the girls of Berk had. She’d always had a delicate face, though she hadn’t bothered shaving the stubble that grew in rough patches along her jawline recently.
Norns above. Time. She always needed more time—!
“Gah!”
A familiar croon answered her cry of frustration. Hiccup stumbled over herself. What? Toothless had gone out with the other dragons to get dinner. He wasn’t supposed to be back for another hour or so.
But his black snout poking through the doorway said otherwise. He pushed open the door with ease before bounding to her side, eyes wide and curious, as if he was asking what was wrong.
Hiccup knew better. “Hello to you too, Mr. Bossy,” she said, “‘Course you couldn’t leave me alone for five minutes.”
Toothless chuffed, before pushing against her side until she flopped onto the floor.
“Ugh—! Wait, Toothless!”
Stupid dragon didn’t even bother to look at her. He just rolled her over until she was on her back and set his heavy head on top of her stomach, knocking the breath out of her lungs for possibly the next… forever.
And he was laughing at her! She could feel his great, scaly body shaking.
Resigned to her fate of spending an undetermined amount of time on the floor, Hiccup let her hands rest on the crown of Toothless’s head, scratching behind his ear flaps. “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “You win this one, bud.”
Toothless rumbled. The sound went straight through her bones. She could feel the question aching in her teeth: What’s wrong? Tell me, tell US.
“It’s not so simple,” she said. “I don’t — Toothless, I’m scared. What’s gonna happen if I say it out loud? Like, I know it’s not a big deal on Berk, but things are different for me! They always are!”
For you? Toothless seemed to ask. He thumped his tail, shifting his head on her chest until he and Hiccup were eye to eye. US. We are ONE. WE. Whatever hurts you hurts us.
Hiccup had never been very good at keeping eye contact. But in Toothless’s wide gaze, as she always did, she saw her own wide-eyed reflection allowed to simply look back — to exist.
“I’m a girl,” she said.
Toothless’s mouth stretched into a wide and gummy smile. He purred, the sound shooting straight through Hiccup, and at last she could breathe again.
“You’re right,” she murmured. She scratched behind his ear flaps again. “I’m still me. Us. You’re always right.”
Though it sort of hurt her neck from her position on the floor, Hiccup pressed her forehead to Toothless’s wide face. Thank you, she thought, the words aching in her teeth.
Then Toothless licked her face.
* * *
“You know that doesn’t wash out,” she said later, after she’d taken Toothless out to actually get dinner. She’d decided to hunker down for the night and add more to her map, so she’d taken them to the main tent. Now with his great belly full, Toothless simply gave a contented warble from his position on the floor.
He was, Hiccup thought to herself as she leaned over to scratch his jaw, a very spoiled dragon.
She heard footsteps, and looked up to see Astrid, hand on one hip. “Late night?”
“Just adding more to the map,” Hiccup said. Her gaze returned to the paper. She was pretty sure there were supposed to be sea stacks north of the Edge, not south. What had she been thinking? She leaned over the map, charcoal stick in hand, and then had to adjust her position when the floorboards dug into her bad knee a little too much.
Minutes passed in silence. What was there to say? Hiccup scratched in a jagged couple of lines for the sea stacks.
“You seem a little distracted,” Astrid said. She joined Hiccup on the floor. “Got anything on your mind?”
Astrid would understand. Out of all people she would understand the most. Maybe. Would she? No. Yes. Hiccup wanted to throw up.
Toothless chuffed. We, the noise said. He moved his head, gesturing toward Astrid. A question: Do you want to tell her?
Her stomach swooped. She felt like she was mid-flight; caught in that moment of slipping off the saddle and letting every nerve in her body scream at her humans shouldn’t fly. But then Toothless would appear at her side, and the certainty of being caught would flower, even as she fell.
Yeah. Hiccup did want to tell her.
She set down the charcoal stick. Just as she’d practiced. “… I do. Hey, Astrid?”
She turned to look at Astrid, whose blue eyes, warm in the candlelight, allowed her to just look back. And Toothless, behind her, his black mass solid in her gaze; Hiccup’s great scaly dragon who was very spoiled, and very, very loved.
“I’m a girl.”