Chapter Six
I'm sorry. It's short. Nano story. I granted myself a break from it because I hit 32k so, you guys get this. All my writer buddies are jealous and I am hiding out in fanfiction.
Stoick had meant to oversee Hiccup for the rest of that day, but, unfortunately, he was called away from this by Mildew.
The last thing Hiccup heard before Stoick slammed the door behind him was Mildew yelling something about his cabbage.
This is what led Hiccup to gently remove his blankets and roll up the leg of his pants. He noticed Toothless out of the corner of his eye, giving him a stern look. Hiccup looked quickly away from him again, massaging his leg with his fingers. He pushed himself up from the bed using the bedpost and leaned heavily on his one good leg. He only made it a step before Toothless was around the other side of the bed with Hiccup, glaring at him sternly. He used his nose to push Hiccup back onto the bed.
Hiccup fell back on his butt and glared at his dragon, opening his mouth to make a nice argument before a knock came at the door. Toothless hissed and growled at the door, as if trying to tell the person that his rider was busy being foolish and to please come back later.
"Help me, bud?" Hiccup asked, gesturing to his leg.
Toothless didn't look happy about it, but he reflected that he'd much rather help Hiccup and ease the pain than have him seriously hurt himself.
Hiccup leaned mostly on Toothless the whole way to the door opened it and leaned heavily against the frame. The walking made his leg throb, but it felt good to be up out of bed after a day doing nothing.
And then the good feeling vanished.
Snotlout was standing on his doorstep and he looked pleadingly at Hiccup.
At first, Hiccup would not have believed his father when the man had told him that his friends had done this to him, but one look at Snotlout told him all he needed to know: the chief had told the truth.
"I…Hiccup…" Snotlout managed weakly.
Hiccup felt like the boy was repeatedly punching him in the gut with every word he spoke. He didn't want to fly off the handle or cry or overreact in any possible way and he decided the safest option was to just shut the door and pretend like this never happened. He nodded, a little curtly, a little coldly, and moved to shut the door.
"Wait!" Snotlout blurted and Hiccup did, hoping for an explanation maybe, or an apology. But Snotlout's next words blasted this hope away. "Did they fix your leg?"
It took Hiccup a second to understand what he was asking and when he did, his hands flew instantly, protectively, to his leg. Back inside the house, he could hear Toothless growling.
Hiccup could feel his cheeks burning and his throat seared painfully. He wanted to say something to Snotlout, anything at all – but everything he tried to say ended up trembling and breaking halfway through, so he went with the safest option, the thing he said whenever he wanted to hide the pain. "Thank you for summing that up," he snapped and he did slam the door then and Toothless growled at it and the boy limped back to bed, rubbing his leg and wishing he'd never opened the door.