Work Text:
“Son?” A large, but gentle hand on his shoulder began to shake him awake. “Son, wake up.”
Hiccup rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “Wh– what is it?”
“It's...” Something indecipherable flashed on his face.
“Oh! The election!” Hiccup sprung into life out of his sleepy state. “How did we do?”
Stoick didn't say anything.
“Dad?” Hiccup waved his hand in front of his face. “You don't look that happy.”
With a heavy heart, he gently pulled Hiccup upright and wrapped his arms around his tiny body. “I’m sorry, son.”
“No...” came Hiccup’s voice, wobbling like fractured glass. “We can’t...”
“He flipped Wisconsin just ten minutes ago,” Stoick told him, running his hand down his back. “You said to wake you up when we got the results.”
“I– I know.” Hiccup began to squirm out of Stoick’s hold, and Stoick immediately let him lie back down. He pulled his tartan blanket over his shoulders, and curled inwards, his face buried in his chest. Stoick laid it over his body just six hours ago when he fell asleep, promising to keep an eye on the results.
Muffled by the blanket, yet still more gut–wrenching than anything imaginable, the sound of Hiccup crying met Stoick’s ears.
“Oh, Hiccup... my son...” Stoick gently patted his shoulder, trying to be a comfort – but his voice was hollow with dread. This could well and truly be a disaster for the United States.
If he was afraid, how could he even fathom what Hiccup was feeling? Stoick couldn’t bear children. Stoick’s reproductive rights weren’t under threat. Stoick wasn’t trans. Stoick didn’t rely on regular, life–saving medical care that could be made even more inaccessible.
His chest threatened to cave just at the thought. He wanted to break down, and yell, and hit the wall, and curse whichever God allowed this to happen.
But when Hiccup was eleven, he once told him that it scared him when Stoick yelled. So he never let loose like that around his son. He couldn’t scare his son – his sweet, innocent boy. He couldn’t let anything hurt him.
And now look where they were.
“Dad... what are we going to do?” Hiccup asked, his voice so soft Stoick almost didn’t hear it.
“Honestly?” Stoick sighed heavily. “I don’t know yet.”
“What- what if I-”
“Try not to think about that right now,” Stoick soothed. He hesitantly began to coax Hiccup towards him – that way, he could at least try to ease the hurt in his poor son’s body. He’s hugged him through countless pain flare ups, held his hand through many seizures and fainting spells. Stoick was always there for him.
But this was a new kind of hurt – something Stoick wasn’t yet equipped to soothe. Maybe it – like chronic pain – wouldn’t ever go away.
Hiccup summoned all the strength he had to sit up, and flop tiredly against Stoick’s shoulder. Once again, Stoick was wrapping his arms around him, holding him closer and closer, until it almost felt like enough to shield him from the horrors of the world.
“We tried. You know we did. That’s all we could’ve done.”
“I really thought we were going to win.”
“I know.”
Hiccup sounded about five years old when he said “I'm scared, dad.”
“I know.” Stoick patted his son's shoulder. “And you have every reason to be.”
Stoick recalled with a shudder, reading the Project 2025 manifesto, Hiccup glancing over his shoulder – the dread running through their veins as they both slowly realised the implications it could have.
That dread returned to them now: a thunderstorm of terror and hate raging outside their house. Stoick could shut the windows, draw the curtains, and he and Hiccup could hold each other until it was over – but it would always be there, lurking, ready for them.
And they would have to brave it someday.
“Listen,” Stoick began to say. “I don't know what the future holds, but I promise, with everything I have, I will protect you, Hiccup.”
“What about everyone else?”
A new wave of chills ran over Stoick. While he was so terrified for Hiccup, he was thinking of other people. Of course he was.
“We’ll... do all we can. You know what you can do,” Stoick soothed, “but you also know what you can’t do. And what you can’t do is change this result.”
“If I could, I would,” he said.
“I know you would, son.” Stoick patted his back.
He would, too, if he could. But – even though he was a politician himself – there was nothing he could do just now.
Today was a day to feel sorrow, and outrage. More importantly, today was a day to be there for Hiccup.
But, above all, today was a day for them both to grieve.