Disclaimer: HTTYD is not mine. No profit is being made.

Summary: A series of snapshots from Hiccup's early years. What childhood influences make a Hiccup? Add one boyhood crush, a tablespoon of Gobber's mentoring, two cups of childhood loneliness and ostracization, and a heaping helping of fatherly disapproval. Stir vigorously. Bake for fifteen years, then leave to cool in the brisk Berk climate.

Author's Note: This is the part of the fic I wasn't sure about doing but wanted to do anyway. What I wanted to try here was depicting a teenage boy starting to get all hormonal and lusty because it's a natural thing that happens when many people hit puberty. I've seen people argue that Hiccup was interested in Astrid because of her looks, and I think there is some physical attraction there. But I also think he's attracted to her because of her character. I wanted to write about a teenage boy dealing with those feelings WITHOUT reducing the girl he's interested in into just a sexual object, and connect his admiration of her character with those feelings. I don't know if I pulled it off; that's up for you readers to decide. So let me know what you think!


Catching the Sun

By Saphie


Part 6

When Hiccup was thirteen, he had the occasional really, really embarrassing dream about Astrid. The sort of dreams he assumed she'd murder him for if she ever found out. He also started noticing things about her, little details he hadn't noticed before, like the fact that her formerly very stick-like body shape was getting...rounder in places. Sometimes, in the Great Hall, he would peek over at her and get somewhat absorbed in how her lips moved when she talked with the other people at her table.

This increased the awkwardness between them to near-astronomical levels.

For a while, Hiccup wasn't really sure what was happening to him, until his father happened to peek in his room at the worst time imaginable to tell him to clear out some of the junk he'd left scattered downstairs and found him...well. The less said the better. In any case, after the initial mutual mortal embarrassment, Stoick had spoken to Hiccup about being a "late-bloomer," and how maybe it meant now he might start growing a little (finally) and about how there was going to be changes that he would notice about himself. So one agonizingly awkward talk with Stoick and one marginally less awkward and far more informative talk with Gobber later and Hiccup understood what was happening to himself a little better.

It put a new wrinkle in the whole Astrid thing, though. Part of him ached for the days that she paid attention to him and longed for innocent sunny afternoons out in the fields with hay scattered around. Another part of him ached for her to pay attention to him and longed for not-so-innocent sunny afternoons out in the fields with hay scattered around. That's what the older teens sometimes got caught doing, anyway. They'd wander out and come back with hay in their hair, and get eyeballed by the older villagers. Now Hiccup finally knew what they'd been up to.

Sometimes Hiccup wondered if he'd ever know what that was like. He wasn't exactly a fine specimen of Vikingry and it was becoming more and more apparent that it wasn't just a stage he had to grow out of. Puberty schmuberty, most Vikings were walking boulders by his age. He wished his father was right about him finally growing, but he doubted it.

Then there was the whole him-being-the-village-pariah thing.

Who would ever, ever want someone like him?

The hopeless tangle of emotions and weird urges made it nearly impossible to talk to Astrid, especially since he felt rather guilty for the latter. Even when he did find himself around her, Hiccup's palms got sweaty, he felt like his lungs were seizing up, and if he managed to say something at all, it usually sounded stupid and involved a lot more stuttering than his talking to her once had.

Astrid was Astrid. She'd been one of the only people in the village his age that he thought might have almost been a friend. She was smart, and driven, and tough, and determined, and had the capacity to be kind even if she didn't have the inclination. She was just overall completely amazing, as far as he was concerned. To think about things otherthan that, when thinking about her just seemed...crude. Well, cruder than even Vikings were supposed to be.

But the two seemed to feed in on themselves. The more amazing she got, the more he found her occupying his thoughts, in ways that were both wholesome and...not so much. And with as many dragon raids as they were getting, she had plenty of opportunities to be amazing.


"Wow! Did you see that? Bob the Sled just got a Gronckle by jumping off the roof of the mill," Hiccup enthused.

There was a dragon raid going on. Business as usual. Hiccup was watching out the wide window of the forge, leaning slightly outside, watching the explosions of fire blooming all over the village, and the Vikings trying to hammer and stab and slice every winged thing in sight. Then Astrid went running by with the other teens, buckets in hand, and Hiccup leaned out the window to get a better look.

"Eyes on yer work, Hiccup!" Gobber called out, hammering away, then seeing the boy lean out even farther to look at Astrid's retreating...figure, Gobber rolled his eyes and grabbed him by his collar and dragged him back into the shop. "That, by the way, is not yer work."

Flushing slightly and looking everywhere but Gobber, Hiccup got back to work, struggling to lift some of the damaged weapons into the hearth, and jumping up and down to put his full body weight on the bellows.

"I need to get out there, Gobber," he puffed as he jumped.

"Someday, Hiccup. Someday."

"No, like, today."

"No, like, someday," Gobber said, imitating the teen's voice. "Far faaar in the future. Your father's right. You're nowhere near ready yet. Look what happened when you tried to go out there two months ago-tried to lift an axe, dropped it on Ack's foot-he nearly lost two of his toes."

"Okay, first of all, I didn't drop it. Per se. The force from a nearby explosion knocked it out of my hands and Ack just happened to be standing unfortunately close. Secondly, he still has both those toes. Thirdly-I feel really bad about it, so please stop reminding me. Everyone in the village only just stopped calling me Hiccup the Toe-Foe last week."

Hiccup stopped working the bellows for just a moment to catch his breath. "I just-I just have to find another way. That's all. To fight dragons."

"There is no other way to fight dragons besides fighting dragons. It takes good old-fashioned Vikingry," Gobber said, waving his hammer-for-a-hand around emphatically.

Hiccup shot him a level look. "So, you're saying I'm not a Viking. Because I can't fight dragons."

"I didn' say that now, did I?" Gobber evaded carefully. "I will note for the record that I personally have never said that."

There was a long pause as Hiccup considered something. People whispered about him, called him weak, said he was a nuisance, said he was always in the way. Some made jokes about him, when they thought he wasn't around to hear-those hurt. But he'd never really considered...

"Has-has anyone else said that then?" he asked slowly, his voice very quiet, the very idea painful. "That I wasn't a Viking?"

Gobber was as good a liar as any Viking, but he had a soft spot where Hiccup was concerned, and for a moment, just for a moment, his face was stricken. Then his expression smoothed out to something far more casual.

"Noooo, o' course not. Who'd say something like that? Haven't heard anything like that, and you know I hear everything. The only one that knows more about what goes on around here besides me is your dad."

Hiccup bit back his next question, fearing the answer. He couldn't ask how his father felt about it. If his dad didn't think he was a Viking, he wasn't sure what he'd do.

There was a loud shrieking noise, calls of "Night Fury! Get down!" and the pounding thrum of an explosion and Hiccup ran to the window again, leaning outside to watch the excitement, the weapons quickly forgotten. He saw his father leading the other Vikings outside, shield raised, utterly fearless.

"Aim the catapults towards the western fields!" he bellowed in a voice that rang through the entire village, in tones that almost demanded thoughtless compliance.

Seeing Hiccup at the window again, Gobber rolled his eyes again, grabbed Hiccup by the collar again, and set him back down inside the shop again. Other than the stringy arms, he wasn't the worst apprentice a blacksmith could have-he was right clever and had figured out certain things about metallurgy just through observation. But all the cleverness in the world didn't do much in the face of the boy having the attention span of a squirrel. Gobber found firm, specific instructions worked best.

"Weapons. Bellows. Now."

Hiccup dutifully went back to the bellows. "I know I can do something more, Gobber. I just need to figure out how."

"I'm sure you will, Hiccup," Gobber said comfortingly. "Just give it time, lad. You can't go out there until you can handle yourself. What are you losing by waiting, really?"

His father's love, his village's respect, friends, the attention of the girl he was having weird, squirmy, frequently-embarrassing feelings for...

Only everything, Hiccup thought, as he pumped the bellows.

There was another explosion or at least the sound of something groaning and caving in itself. Sometimes noises like that were hard to tell apart.

"She's trapped! She's trapped, someone get her out!"

There was a little girl, screaming, the screams muffled.

"The walls collapsed! Crossbeams are in the way!"

"Move them!"

"They're on fire! And they're the only thing holding up the roof now!"

"Put it out! Astrid, get the brigade over here!"

"On it!" the girl called, leading the other teens over.

The ruckus was enough to get both Hiccup and Gobber looking at one another and then rushing out of the stall. A group of Viking was gathered around a house nearby that was partly collapsed.

"The Uggersons' little girl is in there!"

"There's a gap, can anyone fit through?"

"Too small!"

Vikings were trying to put out the fire so they could lift or chop the beams out of the way and get the girl out in time, before the house burned down with her inside it, but it was starting to look grim. Hiccup watched helplessly as Gobber ran over to help, as the screaming got louder from the inside. There were horrible creaking groans from the rest of the house.

"Listen to the roof-sounds like it's about to collapse any minute!"

"Break the beams, just break the beams!"

"Out of my way!" It looked like Spitelout was about to just break his way in with his axe, fire be damned, but the effort would probably kill him and collapse the rest of the roof on the little girl inside. The crowd knew it, Spitelout knew it...

Astrid knew it. She poured one last bucketful of water on the flames and then, suddenly, a steely look came over her face, and she threw her bucket aside. There was a gap in the burning beams. It wasn't large enough for an adult Viking to fit through. But someone smaller...

"Oh no," Hiccup murmured, seeing the expression that came over her face, figuring out what she was doing before the others did. "Oh no, Astrid, don't! Don't!"

"What's she doing?"

Moving around Spitelout, with a running jump, Astrid dove through the fiery gap between the burning beams and into the house.

"Astrid, no!" called out Gobber.

"The Hofferson girl just dove in there!"

The roof was still groaning, it was starting to cave in, the other Vikings were about to try forcing their way in anyway, a horrified yell was building in Hiccup's throat-

-and Astrid came diving out between the beams again with a bundle wrapped in her arms, carefully rolled using her shoulders and forearm and landed in a heap outside the building just as it collapsed in itself with a deafening crash. She was coughing horribly and so was the bundled up little girl, and both were singed and covered in soot-but they were alive.

There were cheers all around and they quickly gathered around Astrid and the little girl, tending to them both.

"Well done, lassie! Well done!"

"-bravest thing I've seen this entire fight and I saw Glurk taking on two Monstrous Nightmares at once, so that's saying something-"

"-wait 'til the Hoffersons hear about this. After the double heart attacks, they'll be so proud of the lass-"

Astrid, for her part, didn't seem to care much about the praise or fussing of the others. She merely looked at the little girl, who was clinging to her, in relief. She also almost looked surprised at herself.

"You're okay," she said in a hoarse voice to the girl. "It's okay."

What she'd done wasn't about praise for her, about other people thinking she was a good Viking.

It was about being a good Viking, about doing what she could to help the tribe, and about being what she needed to be to do it. She had to be the best, because they were fighting a never-ending war.

They needed the best.

Snotlout, who'd been standing there with the other teens that were in the fire brigade, was clinging to his bucket awkwardly and looking toward Astrid in relief and admiration. She had effectively prevented his father from knocking his way in and who knew if he would've survived it.

Hiccup, who was standing there with his hand over his fluttering heart, relieved and astonished, wondered if there was every any point at all that Astrid would stop leaving him completely blown away.