Work Text:
September 2022
Sometimes, Hiccup just likes to drive.
To turn his keys in the ignition, to practise steering like he first did when he was old enough to drive – although he’s more than capable now.
He’s always liked the feeling of driving. Whether it be a long car journey where he can be pleasantly rocked like a baby, or him driving himself, music blasting, it’s been a strange passion of his that he’s never wanted to shake.
Or maybe – for him, at least – it’s the freedom. Being disabled and struggling to walk is easier for him when he has the option of driving.
That’s what he tells himself. It’s easier to justify to people: to Dagur, to Heather, to his friends. That’s even what he tells Snotlout, at first. He just likes to drive.
And he does. But that’s not why.
He doesn’t work it out until he’s gone away for the fourth weekend in a row, speeding along a motorway. He’s relishing the alone time, yearning for the speed, the control, the thrill – when it hits him.
He likes it, because he can. He can drive around the state, he can buy himself a Snickers bar, he can do all those things... because no one tells him not to. There is no thick, stern, angry Scottish accent booming around his house–not–home telling him he can’t eat. There are no more hands on his body hurting him.
Here, he can fling his hand out of the window, surfing through the wind like a dragon, as he drives. Here, he can control where he goes, when he goes, and he can go wherever he want.
Here, he is free.
So he drives, and drives, and drives.