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Toothless’ rider has always been brave, resilient, and confident. And smart. And cool. Toothless thought these things before the two of them even became friends; even a few hours after Hiccup had shot him out of the sky.
Which is why it’s weird, sitting by the end of Hiccup’s bed, to hear others say differently. They call him ‘useless’ and ‘vermin’ and ‘resilient’ in a bad way. They glare at Toothless and flinch when he moves too fast and Hiccup’s father, Stoic, doesn’t very much like Toothless being in his house, but he’s scared of said Night Fury and won’t tell him to get out.
The metal-smelling one, Gobber, that was all over Hiccup’s scent the first time they met, comes by and measures Toothless a lot. Toothless warbles at him, because this viking is the only one not terrified to come near him. Gobber also measures Hiccup’s not-leg, and Toothless licks Gobber to scent him.
The lady-viking, Astrid, comes by a lot too. Mostly to sit and read, petting Toothless. Her dragon’s scent is all over her, and Toothless licks her face a few times to scent her as well. But then she visits with the mean-vikings, the ones who’s scents were on all of Hiccup’s small-hurts before they fought the Queen. He growls if they get too close to either him or Hiccup, and when they leave he glares at Astrid for bringing them.
The next time she visits, she brings fish and Stormfly. Toothless warbles at the dragon, cooing and sniffing her since Hiccup’s scent still lingers on her. Stormfly sits by Astrid and she reads aloud to the two dragons.
Outside the hut, the vikings are finally listening to Hiccup and not fighting the dragons being around. But that doesn’t mean they are always nice. They snap and shout at the curious ones and scream at a Gronckle when they feed her fish and she throws up. Toothless climbs up onto the roof of his rider’s home and roars at anyone who is snippy at another dragon.
He wanders the village sometimes, too. People feed him apples now, since he’s proven that he’s not going to eat them, only scold them. Terrible Terrors cling to his back as he walks, and he delivers them to people who don’t have a dragon yet, or just to kids who want to pet them.
Toothless herds sheep for some farmers named Mulch and Bucket. Bucket has a bucket on his head and Mulch is very short, so the sheep don’t listen much to them. But they listen when Toothless herds them. Most of his time, however, is spent hanging out with lady-viking Astrid or watching Hiccup sleep. He looks even more tiny than usual lying in the bed. Toothless croons and warbles sadly at him, but during the night he coos, the sort of sound a dragon would make to a lost hatchling. Or a dragon to its own hatchling to calm it; encouraging rest and recovery.
Hiccup rests and recovers and Toothless grows restless from not flying with a rider for so long. He makes this known to Astrid by smacking her with his tail and kicking his saddle as her.
“I don’t know how to fly you, nobody does. Only Hiccup knows.” Is what she says, guiltily. Toothless forgives her because it probably wouldn’t have been as satisfying as it was with Hiccup.
Hiccup was a special human; Toothless’ brother. Toothless’ wings are aching from being attached to his body and he starts gliding from the top of the mess hall steps to the bottom. The strange-twins watch him do so. The male, Tuffnut, jumps off the top of the stairs next to Toothless the next time he does so. The Zippleback, their dragon, catches him right before he hits the ground at the bottom. The female, Ruffnut, exclaims that it’s her turn and Toothless returns to Hiccup’s hut. He tells Hiccup about the twins, about Astrid, and Stormfly, how he’s feeling, the hurt in his wings. Hiccup would’ve been able to understand him, had he been awake. Hiccup has a knack for being the only viking able to do something; first to fly a dragon, train almost any dragon, understand dragon-speak.
Snotlout, Hiccup’s cousin, comes to his hut only once. He starts by shouting at Hiccup for scaring him, tears in his eyes but not falling, and then tells Hiccup how much he’s sorry for the way he treated the smaller. Toothless warbles in appreciation for the apology, licking Snotlout and crooning at Hookfang, Snotlout’s dragon.
A few days after Toothless tries to get Astrid to fly him, she brings him down to the Dragon Academy; on the way, she explains how it will now be used by Hiccup to teach them about dragons, if he wants to.
When they get inside the dome, the other teens are there as well. Snotlout asks why they’re there.
Astrid opens a box on one side of the arena and pulls out Toothless’ saddle and prosthetic-wing; it smells a lot like Gobber and is fixed. Toothless makes a note to thank him for it.
Toothless croons happily, trilling as Astrid.
“We are going to try and fly Toothless; he’s getting restless.” Astrid explains.
“Psh-I can do it easily!” Tuffnut exclaims, taking a running leap at Toothless, who allows it. After he’s on, Tuffnut seems to realize that he needs the saddle and tailfin.
“Yeah, sure you can.” Ruffnut rolls her eyes and Tuffnut rolls off Toothless. Astrid and the shy kid, Fishlegs, work together, mostly following Toothless’ non-verbal instructions, then work the tailfin and saddle onto the Night Fury.
Ruffnut gets on him next, much gentler, and uses her foot to change the saddle positions. Toothless thinks about getting Hiccup’s key for it, before realizing the paper is at the bottom of the ocean now.
“Alright, up!” Toothless does not go up. Ruffnut doesn’t pull the saddle handle up to help him lift off.
The teens try for hours to figure out how to get Toothless to fly, but nothing they do works. It ends with Astrid punching Tuffnut after he calls her useless for not knowing.
Hearing that familiar word, Toothless lunges at Tuffnut, pinning him down like he had done to Hiccup's father not-too-long ago. He growls and shrieks at the viking.
“Help! Help! Sister, please! Astrid, Snot, Fish, help!” Tuffnut wiggles around, but everybody is just staring. Toothless growls again, louder. “Okay! Okay! I’m sorry, please let me go!”
Toothless croons happily and gets off of Tuffnut, approaching Astrid and gently licking her face. Fishlegs’ face falls.
“We called Hiccup useless.” He says. “Toothless knows; Hiccup has probably told him all about us and what we’ve done. That’s why he won’t let us near him.”
Horror dawns on all their faces.
After that day, they all back off trying to see Hiccup. They talk to their dragons and to Toothless kinder, softer, sometimes guiltily. Astrid is actually getting really good at understanding him.
But nobody can compare to Hiccup, who has fully healed but still not woken up. He can’t understand the elder, Gothi, but Gobber tells him it’s nothing to worry about.
Toothless worries, though, because these vikings don’t know Hiccup like he does. They may have known him longer, but Toothless has seen him without all those filters he puts on in the village. But Toothless can’t say that, so he growls and runs off into the woods. He climbs the tree they’d dangled Astrid off of all that time ago and lazes around for the rest of the day until Fishlegs and Meatlug find him and walk him back to the village.
Astrid hugs him tightly and tells him it’ll be okay.
Hiccup wakes up the next day. Toothless can sense it minutes in advance and is as close as dragon-ly possible when Hiccup’s eyes slowly flutter open. Toothless bounds around the room, warbling and chirping and licking Hiccup’s face when he finally sits up.
“Hey, bud.” Hiccups says, and god did Toothless miss that voice. Hiccup looks around before his face pales considerably and Toothless warbles at him. “Uhhh, I’m in my house.” He whips his head around to stare at Toothless with wide, anxious green eyes. “You’re in my house.”
Toothless dips his head in a weak imitation of a nod, tail stopping its wagging motion. Why was Hiccup scared? Toothless was here!
And he’d never leave his stupid viking alone with the villagers ever again.