Hard Knocks

A/N: SURPRISE

Yes, this is the surprise. Updating all of my eighteen in-progress fics at once. It was pretty crazy, but I did it, and it's here, and good day to you all! I had tons of fun doing this, so I hope you guys have tons of fun reading this!

On that note, I'm not sure how in-character or accurate this chapter is. I'm pulling everything about orphanages and politics out of my rear, remember, so please be kind. Plus, also, I really love Hiccup's nickname for Stoick xD and I changed Stoick's last name from 'Haddock' to 'Maddox' because Maddox sounds like it and is also less...weird xD


To Hiccup's surprise, though he didn't voice it, they didn't just drop in the drive-through of a fast-food place; Wonder Beard drove to a part of town that the teen had never seen before, although he noticed that everything here was much cleaner.

"Is this where you live?" The question tumbled off his lips before he could stop it, tearing his eyes away from the view outside his window to look at Wonder Beard.

The man nodded. "Have you ever been here?"

"No, never," Hiccup shook his head, and Wonder Beard twisted the steering wheel slightly, turning down into the parking lot of a very rich-looking sit-down restaurant.

Hiccup privately thought that it was the type of place an old and crabby woman might go on her Friday nights spent away from Bingo, but he chose not to voice this thought as Wonder Beard cut the engine, unbuckled his seatbelt and reached for the door handle.

The blonde man climbed out of the backseat and Hiccup gave him a small smile as he slid out, too.

Once they had entered the building, the impression of an elderly lady's kind of place quickly vanished. Dim red lanterns hung from the ceiling, casting a crimson glow over the dark oak walls. The tables were highly polished, and the ding of the bell above the door echoed noticeably in the thick silence. Everybody was chewing quietly, and there was the clink of cutlery on porcelain, but nobody spoke, as though it were a library or a church.

Wonder Beard quietly spoke to a dark-haired woman bearing a black apron with the restaurant's crest, and she led them over to a table for two.

"There's only two chairs," Hiccup commented in surprise, as Wonder Beard indicated for him to take one. He obediently sat, but looked to the blonde man. "Where are you going to be sitting?"

"I think it'd be, er…best to let you two alone," the blonde replied awkwardly, and he refused to meet the boy's eyes, even when Hiccup gave him a curious look.

"So, what do you have to do with him anyway?" Hiccup gestured as the blonde man wandered off into the crowd, towards another table. "Is he your friend, or…?"

"Gobber's my friend, and my campaign manager." Wonder Beard responded shortly, as a waitress walked by and set menus down in front of each of them. "Why?"

"Oh…" Hiccup nodded in dawning comprehension. "I get it. He can't be seen with us, because then that would look too set up, right?"

Stoick wasn't exactly sure he liked the tone Hiccup took, but he dismissed this. "I wouldn't call this set up—

"Well, I mean, you're doing this to look good, nothing else, right? This is set up. There's nothing wrong with that."

As he spoke, his voice audible in the silence of the other customers, people began glancing around at the table, registering that Stoick the Vast was sitting with the young orphan he had saved last week.

Several customers actually stood from their tables and walked past Stoick's several times, as if hoping to hear an interesting bit of conversation.

Hiccup regarded this with amusement dancing in his green eyes. "Wow," he remarked. "If this is what happens when you take me out to lunch…if I moved in with you, you'd probably become President."

Wonder Beard's lips twitched at the comment, but he hid this by pretending to be reading the menu. Unsure what to do with himself in such an upscale place, Hiccup picked up his own menu and scanned it with his eyes.

"Ready to order?" the waitress was back, a yellow legal pad balanced on a plastic tray in one hand and a pen in the other.

Wonder Beard nodded and murmured his order in a low voice, but Hiccup didn't catch it. When the waitress turned to him, however, he peeked down at the menu he held and blurted out the first dish he saw. "Grilled halibut with cilantro butter."

For some reason, this made Wonder Beard's lips twitch again; perhaps he had noticed Hiccup's quick glance downward, and guessed what he was doing.

"And what would you like for the drink?"

"Water," Wonder Beard replied.

"Do you guys sell Coke?"

The waitress nodded.

"Alright, then…Coke." It was hard for Hiccup to speak with as much authority as the man across from him; he wasn't used to ordering people about, unless you counted those rare times when he asked Gustav for a favor. And even then, it wasn't a demand; it was a request.

As the waitress smiled at them and walked away with a promise of being right back, the teenager allowed his eyes to roam the building again. "This is a nice place, you know. D'you come here a lot?"

Wonder Beard shrugged. "When I can."

"This is the nicest place I'll ever be in, that's for sure." Hiccup slumped down in his seat a bit, a glaring contrast to the rest of the customers, all sitting up as straight as if they had steel rods for spinal cords.

The man tore his eyes away from the others in the restaurant to focus on the boy in front of him. "You seem very certain of that." Privately, he wondered how much longer they could carry on with the small talk.

Hiccup shrugged indifferently. "I think it's pretty clear I'm never getting adopted. I mean, every time somebody comes into the orphanage, they just pass right over me. Except for you, of course, Wonder Beard, and you're bringing me back afterward."

Stoick blinked at the teen for a second, unsure how to respond to the not-so-affectionate nickname. "Wonder Beard?"

Hiccup, realizing what he had said, blushed scarlet, but met Stoick's eye. "Well, then what is your name?"

"Maddox. Stoick Maddox. But you can continue with your charming nickname." To Hiccup's intense surprise, the man seemed to have decided that he found the whole thing amusing; he was actually smiling, and seemed to be fighting back a laugh.

Relieved that Mr. Maddox was taking things so well, Hiccup gave a quiet sigh of relief. "Right. Sorry, Wond—sir."

The waitress appeared beside their table again, holding a tray with two glasses upon it. "Here are your drinks," she chirped cheerfully as she set the tray down upon the table's edge and passed the glass of ice water to Stoick, and the glass of brown liquid to Hiccup.

"I'll be back with the food shortly," she assured them before disappearing for the second time within the hustle and bustle of the kitchens.

Hiccup picked up one of the napkins from the middle of the gleaming wooden table, folding it over and over until it formed a rather shapeless, crumpled ball of white. "I've never understood napkins," he confided to Stoick, unraveling the ball once more. "Why would we wipe our mouths on napkins when that's practically what sleeves are for?" As if to emphasize this point, Hiccup dropped the napkin and began playing with his jacket sleeve.

Taking an actual, long look at him, Stoick realized that his jacket was much too large for him, draping like a cloak over his tiny shoulders. Yet even though he'd just joked about wiping his mouth on his sleeves, the man couldn't help but notice that the overlarge jacket looked almost brand-new, though weather-beaten.

"I thought orphanages were supposed to keep the kids in well-fitting clothes," Stoick remarked before thinking. "Why do you wear such a huge jacket?"

Hiccup raised his gaze to the man's for a moment, and then dropped it again, back to his jacket. He took a long moment to speak, and in the silence, Stoick knew that he had overstepped. "I wasn't brought in to the orphanage in a blanket, like most babies. The headmistress said that she looked too poor to even afford a blanket in that time. Called her a Molly Weasley lookalike." He plucked a piece of lint from the brown sleeve. "I was brought in wrapped in this jacket. It's the only thing I have that came from my mother."

The story shouldn't have surprised Stoick, but it did. His eyebrows flew up on his forehead, and before really thinking it through, he blurted, "What, do you want to find your birth parents or something?"

Hiccup nodded slowly, pulling a knee up to his chest and resting his chin on his kneecap. "I want it more than anything else in the world."