One of my favourite HTTYD lines is when Gobber says, "trolls do exist! They steal your socks! But only the left ones, what's with that?" and thus, this little story happened. Prepare for some papa!Stoick feels.
The door to the Haddock household opened and a very small, very wet six-year-old boy stepped in. The water that dripped from every inch of his slim body was creating a steadily growing puddle on the floor beneath him.
"Hiccup!" Stoick the Vast shot out of his chair and rushed to his son. The boy has been missing for the entire afternoon. Now, Hiccup wandering around the village for long periods of time was nothing out of the ordinary - he was never able to stay in one place for more than a few minutes - but today Thor's wrath seemed to pour all over Berk in the shape of a heavy rainstorm, which went on and on and didn't show any signs of stopping. Thus, as the sky grew darker, Stoick began to worry and was just about to go outside and fetch the boy from wherever he was hiding when he finally entered the house, panting heavily and soaked from head to toe. Nevertheless, his face were lit with a huge, toothy smile.
"Where on earth have you been?!" Stoick scolded his son as he closed the door behind him and threw some extra logs into the dying fire. "You shouldn't be wandering around in this weather! Come on, off with those clothes before you catch a cold. We'll have to hang them by the fire for the night."
"I went to the forest!" Hiccup said proudly, shaking his head like a wet dog. "I looked and looked and looked... but I didn't find anyone! Daddy, I think they're hiding from the rain!"
"Who is 'they', son?"
Hiccup made a face. "The trolls, Daddy!" he said and stomped his tiny foot impatiently. "I told you like a bazillion times!"
Stoick sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Odin, please give me strength. He really, really didn't want to have this conversation again. Ever since Gobber told Hiccup this ridiculous story of trolls living in Berk's forest the boy seemed to become obsessed with the idea, much to Stoick's dismay.
"You should have been hiding from the rain as well, son. I thought you went to visit Gobber," Stoick said, trying to change the subject and at the same time make Hiccup stand still for two seconds so he could pull his soggy tunic off. The boy was more hyperactive than a Terrible Terror.
"I did, but that was hours ago!" Hiccup called, wiggling his hands out of the sleeves. "He showed me all his tools, even the really sharp ones... but he didn't let me touch them! And when I promised to be a good boy and not to break anything, he just laughed and said that a brat like me can break things by just looking at them! I'm not sure how it works but it sounds pretty cool. I mean, Snotlout can break things with his hands because he's ten times stronger than me, but if you can do it just with your eyes then you don't need your hands at all, right? Daddy, do you think trolls can break things with their eyes?"
Stoick opened his mouth but Hiccup didn't really wait for an answer. He kept blabbering, jumping from one topic to another as if his mouth couldn't catch up with the speed of his thoughts.
"And then he made me some soup... and it tasted waaay better than yours. I mean, don't be upset Daddy, but I think that soup tastes better when it's not burnt - "
Stoick felt his ears growing hot. Being a single father and a Chief has barely left time for him to work on his poor cooking skills. Little kids could be cruelly honest sometimes.
"Well, Gobber should have made you stay at the forge until the storm passes and not let you out," Stoick said with a frown. "And to the forest, of all places! I'll have a word with him first thing tomorrow." He wrapped a thick towel around Hiccup's shivering body. He really hoped the boy wouldn't get sick this time - his skinny frame made him sensitive to the cold more than the other Viking kids his age. At least Hiccup seemed to be in a good mood, chattering nonstop and barely noticing his father's attempts to change his clothes.
A few minutes passed until Hiccup was fully dressed in a new set of dry clothes. Stoick has just finished hanging the last wet sock by the hearth when he caught the boy staring at him with round eyes.
"Is something wrong, son? Are you feeling unwell?"
Hiccup lowered his gaze and bit his lower lip. "No... I'm okay," He murmured, and Stoick was all but convinced.
"Hiccup," Stoick said slowly and put his thumb under the boy's chin, forcing him to look at him. "Something is obviously wrong and if you think you can hide it from me, you're terribly wrong. Come on, out with it."
Hiccup twisted his face in a childish pout, trying to jerk away from his father's hand, but it was pointless. At last, he took a deep breath and blurted, "Are you going to leave my socks there for the entire night?"
For a few seconds Stoick was too stunned to answer. That was definitely not something he expected to hear from his son. Why on earth would Hiccup care for a pair of socks?
He cleared his throat. "Well of course, Hiccup. They're completely soaked, like the rest of your clothes. It'll take the whole night and the next day for them to dry. Why is this bothering you?"
Hiccup stayed silent. He looked away and started to pass his weight from foot to foot and wiggle his hands - a habit of his when he was hiding something.
Stoick straightened up and folded his massive arms across his chest - this posture always seemed to scare the boy enough to milk the truth out of him. Actually, not just the boy - every Viking on Berk knew that when Stoick the Vast towers over you like this, you better give him what he wants or he'll put you on a boat and send you straight to the open sea. "Hiccup, I'm only going to ask you one more time. What is it about your socks that bothers you so much?"
Hiccup still didn't look at him when he finally spoke, his voice barely audible. "Because... because they'll steal them," he murmured.
"They'll steal them?" Stoick repeated. "Who in Odin's name is 'they', Hiccup?" although he had a bad feeling he already knew the answer.
Hiccup's gaze shot back at Stoick, his cheeks flushed. "The trolls!" he called with sudden defiance, balling his hands into tiny fists. "Gobber said that trolls steal your socks, and always the left ones!"
Stoick squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled sharply, trying to keep calm and not yell at his son. This wasn't happening.
"Hiccup," he said in the steadiest voice he could manage, "We've been over this. There are no such things as trolls."
"Yes there are!" Hiccup was yelling now, his face entirely red. "Gobber's not a liar! He told me that he already lost four left socks and that it could only be a troll who took them, because yaks are too slow and dragons are too noisy!"
Stoick rolled his eyes to the ceiling and uttered a silent prayer, begging the gods to help him through it. He really had to have a serious talk with the old blacksmith about all those ridiculous ideas he's been filling his son's head with.
He decided to try a different attitude. "You know what, Hiccup? Let's say that trolls do exist." Gods, he hoped he wasn't going to regret this. "Now, Why would they want to take your socks? You're just a wee boy! Your socks are way too small and narrow to be of any use for them. And right now they're wet and smelly, too. I doubt that anyone in the world would like to steal a pair of tiny, wet, stinky socks, even if he's a troll."
"They use them to stuff their pillows," Hiccup said peacefully as if he was talking about the weather. "So they don't if they're small."
That was when Stoick decided he had enough.
"This conversation ends now, Hiccup," He said, his voice pure steel. "Go to your room. It's nearly past your bedtime anyway."
"But Dad - "
"I said, this conversation is over!" Stoick bellowed. He regretted this almost instantly as tears began to shimmer in Hiccup's big, green eyes. Stoick was never good at handling crying children, even when it was his own son - actually, especially when it was his own son.
Moments like this made Stoick miss his wife the most. Valka would have definitely handled the situation better than him. She had the patience of a saint - unlike Stoick, who couldn't even last one minute without losing it in front of his son.
Stoick sighed and laid his meaty palms on Hiccup's slender shoulders, which were already trembling from an attempt not to cry. "I'm sorry for yelling at you, son," he said quietly, "but you have to stop with all these troll nonsense. You're not a baby anymore. You're six years old - and that's way too old to believe in fairytales. Go to sleep now, and I don't want to hear another word about trolls or socks ever again. Do you understand?"
Hiccup sniffed and nodded silently, looking utterly miserable. He tore away from his father without saying goodnight and climbed the stairs to his loft, his shoulders slumped forward as if they carried the weight of the entire world.
The door to the loft closed, and Stoick felt very tired and very old all of a sudden. He hated to send his son to bed like this, so he tried to convince himself that sometimes it was better to be hard on Hiccup than let him be carried away by his imagination - and the gods knew the boy had way too much of that. It may not look too harmful right now - after all, he was still a kid; but Stoick knew that the more he lets him go on with that, the worse it will get and the harder it will become to get those crazy ideas out of his head. Even at his young age it was already crystal clear that Hiccup was... different. If he told Snotlout and the other kids about this whole troll thing... well, they certainly didn't need any more reasons to make fun of him.
If the weather clears tomorrow, I'll take him fishing, Stoick decided, hoping for some father-and-son quality time that will give him some chance to fix what he had done.
It was still dark and pouring outside when Stoick rolled out of his bed with a groan. He had barely gotten any sleep last night, thinking and thinking of how he lost his temper in front of Hiccup, how he could make it up to him, and what the hell he was going to do with his son.
Rubbing his eyes and swaying slightly he entered the main room, and nearly lost his balance as he stumbled over a heap of something soft and warm.
"What in the name of..." he blinked a few times, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light, and looked down at the unexpected obstacle.
A flock of shaggy, auburn hair was barely peeking under what seemed like an endless pile of blankets and furs. Apparently Hiccup has decided at some point during the night to leave his bed and go camping in the main room, right in front of the dying fire and his drying clothes. But why would he do that? Hiccup was an adventurous boy indeed, but wandering around in the middle of the night wasn't like him. The boy was so energetic during the day that at night he used to collapse onto his bed sleep peacefully until next morning.
Stoick shook his head and kneeled in front of Hiccup, ready to scoop him into his arms and carry him back to his bed. A cold floor was no place for a little kid to sleep on, especially in this lousy weather. Hiccup didn't show signs of sickness last evening despite being outside for so long, and Stoick intended to keep it this way.
His arms froze midair when he caught a glimpse of the pair of tiny socks that hung just a few feet away. And then it hit him.
"Gobber said that trolls steal your socks, and always the left ones!"
Hiccup wasn't just camping in the main room. He was ambushing.
He had snuck out of his room to wait for a troll to come and claim the socks for itself. He had probably planned to stay awake all night in hopes of proving his father wrong, and ended up falling asleep on the watch.
Oh, Hiccup.
What am I going to do with you?
Stoick sighed - he seemed to do that a lot since yesterday - and looked back at his sleeping son. Hiccup's face was barely visible under the blankets, and it was hard to see anything clearly in this darkness, but Stoick could swear that there was a certain swollenness around the boy's eyes, as if he was crying himself to bed.
He looked again at the drying socks. An idea struck his mind.
"Always the left ones!"
Stoick stood up, walked to the hearth and grabbed the left sock. It was still pretty moist and didn't smell too great, but he slipped it into his pocket anyway.
He wasn't entirely sure why he was doing this; only yesterday he swore to dissuade Hiccup from all those crazy fairytales he believed in - not to play along. But something about the thought of his boy curling all alone in front of the dying fire, exhausting himself from crying just to wake up and discover that nothing happened during that time - something about this seemed simply wrong.
He knew that once Hiccup woke up and noticed his missing left sock he wasn't not going to shut up about it all day. But Stoick didn't mind. He would do everything to see those green eyes light up again with a smile that resembled Valka's so much it almost hurt.
Please tell me that I'm doing a good job, Val.
And besides, Hiccup was just a little boy. He had a full life of dragon battles, wars and Chiefing responsibilities ahead of him - a life that was going to be anything but simple. So, as long as he was young, he deserved some simplicity. He deserved a little magic. Didn't they all?
Don't worry Hiccup, you won't be needing this left sock in a few years... ;)
Reviews are welcomed, as always.