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“Hiccup? Are you in there? Dinner’s ready!”
Hiccup jolted at the sound of a knock and Grimmel’s voice at the door. He jumped so hard that he dropped his pencil and his papers went flying across the floor.
“No! No no no no no—” Hiccup whispered to himself, panicking as he scrambled to get them all.
Just then, the door of the hut opened and Grimmel walked in.
“Hiccup, are you alright?” Grimmel asked. “I heard something fall.”
“Y-yeah! Yup! Don’t—don’t worry about me, I just dropped some, uh, stuff—” Hiccup stammered, not looking him in the eye as he gathered everything. As he stood up, one paper slipped out from the pile and landed at Grimmel’s feet.
Hiccup turned white. ‘Shit! He’s going to see!’ “N-no, wait, that’s—”
Grimmel bent down to pick it up, studying the drawing with…fascination? “Hiccup,” he said. “Is this a drawing of Shadow?” He showed Hiccup the image of the young Night Fury.
“Uh…” Hiccup was stunned. Why was he stunned? Was it because Grimmel didn’t step all over his things when he walked it? Or because he seemed genuinely interested in what Hiccup had drawn? “I—y-yeah, that’s…that’s him.”
Grimmel observed the drawing closer. “Why does it say ‘Toothless’ near his head?”
“Oh, uh—that’s, um, what I like to call him. ‘Cause, y’know, when we first met, he looked like he didn’t have any teeth, so…” Hiccup realized he was rambling and shook his head. “A-anyway, yeah.”
Grimmel glanced over at Hiccup’s desk. It was covered in all sorts of sketches; dragons, inventions, people, etc. “Did you draw all of those?” he asked.
Hiccup was surprised. He didn’t expect Grimmel to be accepting of what he did in his spare time. “Uh…yeah,” he finally replied. “I, um…I liked to, uh, draw inventions in my room or at the forge back on Berk, when I had nothing else to do. N-nobody’s ever seen it…not like they’d be interested in it, anyways…”
Grimmel’s face softened and he handed Hiccup the drawing back. “Hiccup, you know you don’t have to hide from me,” he said.
“I-I know, I know, it’s just…” Hiccup sat on his bed and sighed. “This is all so…weird, you know? I grew up up in a place where no matter what I do, everybody hates me, my dad doesn’t listen, nobody wants anything to do with me…and now I’m here, with a bunch of guys who are so kind to me even though they barely know me.”
Grimmel didn’t say anything, but he understood all of it. He just sat down beside Hiccup on the small bed Drago had made for him when he decided to stay on Dragon’s Edge with them, and let Hiccup talk.
“Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so…Hiccup-y,” Hiccup went on. His voice began to crack. “D-don’t get me wrong, I like being here with you and the guys and the dragons, but even here I look so different from all of you. I don’t feel like I belong anywhere. Everyone I meet just pushes me aside like I’m invisible or barely notices me—and it just reminds me how everybody back on Berk treated me, like—like I was nothing, like I didn’t—”
He stopped himself, his throat closing up. He slumped against Grimmel’s side, fighting back tears.
“I just wish that I was more like a real Viking and not…me.”
Grimmel wrapped an arm around him and rubbed Hiccup’s shoulder, listening to him cry quietly.
“You know, I came from a tribe where nobody appreciated me either,” he said.
Hiccup’s head shot up. “Really?” he asked, wiping his nose miserably with his sleeve. “Do you mean Berk?”
“No, not Berk. Drago and I didn’t always live there before we ran away,” Grimmel said. “When I was your age, I struggled to fit in as well. Being the chief’s son, I didn’t exactly fit his image of a strong, powerful chief with an heir to the throne. I didn’t know why I was so different or why my thoughts weren’t the same as everyone else’s. So I mostly kept to myself and spent my time sketching and building things. Do you know what my first invention was?”
Hiccup shook his head.
“A crossbow. Specifically, my crossbow, the one that I have on my back at all times. It’s a very important object to me, because I made it all on my own,” Grimmel went on.
“Wow,” Hiccup said. “That’s—”
“Stupidly sentimental, I know. It’s a very reliable weapon, but when physical weapons are unavailable, I tend to use magic.”
Hiccup looked down at his hands. “I wonder if I’ll ever get magic. Nobody on Berk believed in it.”
Grimmel shrugged. “Well, you never know. Magic chooses whom it deems worthy of its power,” he said. He cracked a smirk. “Drago tells me that I’m so magical, it’s like static shock when we kiss.”
“Ew.” Hiccup scrunched his face and giggled.
Grimmel chuckled with him, then went back to the story. “I spent a long time figuring out what sort of talent was right for me. I was quite skilled with my hands, so I found myself sketching or making weapons in the forge—much like what you did on Berk. The first thing I made that worked successfully was a bolas launcher I called the Marauder. And with it, I managed to shoot down a Night Fury.”
Hiccup’s eyes went wide, making the connection. “Wait, the Marauder? I build the same thing from this sketchbook I found in the forge but made it double-barreled! That’s the thing I tried shooting Toothless with!” he realized. “You’re telling me you shot down Bloodscar with that thing?”
“Indeed I did,” Grimmel nodded. “When I tracked him down through the woods, he was limping and half-starved, and it was then that I realized that maybe killing dragons just wasn’t for me. So I set the creature free, befriended him, and focused my efforts on working in the forge. My father saw my skills as an opportunity, so he sent me to Berk with my uncle as my guardian, and I have barely seen him since.”
Hiccup’s face twisted in sadness. “So, uh…what happened once you were on Berk?”
“Well, let’s just say that Berk and my birth tribe weren’t on the best of terms, but my residence there seemed to ease the tensions. I integrated myself into Berk’s life, building inventions when I could and displaying how they worked. I thought that if I showed them my unique talents, if I proved that I was worthy to be a Viking, then I would finally belong somewhere. But as you know, Berkians are a stubborn lot and don’t take to change well. After all, I was from a formally rival tribe and none of them could see past that.”
Grimmel smiled softly. “Nobody…except for Drago.”
Hiccup’s eyebrows went up. “So he stopped you from wanting to change yourself to fit in?”
“Not exactly,” Grimmel said. “By the time I met him, I had more or less accepted that I was just built differently. I knew myself and my strengths. My life wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t what I wanted either. And when I thought about our future together, I was tempted to fall back into my old self-destructive thoughts. I thought for a while that he couldn’t love me if I couldn’t be in his world. So you know what I did?”
“What?”
“I communicated. I asked him what he thought of me one night in a secret spot of ours. I told him I would do anything for him, even change myself to be more Viking if he wanted me to.” Grimmel laughed dryly. “I still remember that night vividly. Drago got…incredibly agitated. I thought I was going to die. He said that if I thought I needed to change myself for him, then I didn’t actually care about him at all.”
Hiccup had his eyes trained intently on him, absorbing every word. “So what’d you do?”
“I reevaluated myself. Who cares if Vikings think I’m weak and odd and different? If I was being honest, outside of other people’s opinions, I wasn’t all that bad. Drago also felt a little out of place in his world, and we somehow found each other. Us misfits—we find our way to one another eventually. After that night, we figured out ways to compromise. I learned Berkian customs to communicate with him, never to change who I was. He soaked up my dragon knowledge like a sponge and met me in the middle, even going with me for a few flights when we wanted to.”
“Then what happened?” Hiccup asked.
Grimmel smiled, his fingers brushing over a small silver ring that rested on his right finger. “We fell in love. We ran away together. We said our vows. And now I’m the luckiest Dragon Rider in the world.” He looked down at Hiccup. “Everyone feels insecure with who they are at times. It’s a necessary part of growing up. But relying on other people’s approval to validate your existence will do nothing but destroy you. All you can do is learn to love yourself as you are, and meet others halfway. And If you’re lucky enough to find people who love you exactly as you are—you hold onto them. And you hold tight, so that you never feel as alone as you were ever again.”
Hiccup’s eyes filled with tears and he pushed himself forward, colliding into Grimmel’s chest in a tight hug. Grimmel wrapped his arms around the boy, holding him as he cried.
“I wish my dad had said something like that,” Hiccup croaked. “This is going to sound weird, but…can I call you and Drago my dads?”
Grimmel’s eyes sparkled and a lump formed in his throat. He nodded. “Yes, of course. We’ve talked about it, and we already see you as family. You can call us whatever you like.” He rubbed Hiccup’s back and kissed the top of his head. “We love you no matter what.”
Hiccup smiled through his tears, and hugged him tighter. “I love you too, Dad.”