Hey y'all! It's Day 4 of Sicktember!
Today's fic took me a little longer to write, but I got it done! Yay!
This one was kind of a cute one that went a slightly different direction than I was intending, so I hope you all enjoy it.
Hiccup sat up in bed, staring at Toothless. Gods, his head hurt.
He heard the door open, and judging by the amount of light that came in the door, he was late. He was always leaving the house just as the sun was coming up. He sighed and flopped back down on his bed.
A headache. Waking up late. His entire body being sore, though he hadn't done a lot yesterday. Feeling super groggy, though he'd been up for an hour. Shivering, though he could see the fire was lit, but he was also curled up under like 5 blankets because it was the middle of devastating winter. Nausea. All of that could only mean 1 thing: he was sick.
Great. I got a cold for my birthday.
Pulling his blankets over his head, he groaned. There was no chance he was really gonna be able to leave bed today, much less go teach at the Academy.
Stoick hurriedly rushed up the hill to his house. He'd just had to stop Sven from trying to hurt the twins after they had attempted to steal a few of his sheep. After coming back to town, he ran into Astrid, who told him that Hiccup had never shown up to the Academy this morning when he'd asked. Which explained why all the riders were around town. As he'd gotten back to the plaza, he'd noticed that Gobber was completely alone in the forge.
Which meant that Hiccup was either missing or hadn't left the house. Odin…he hoped it was the latter.
Neither could mean good things. It wasn't like Hiccup to stay in the house all day, but surely, he would have told his father if something was wrong.
Stoick was kicking himself. He hadn't thought to check on his son this morning before he'd left the house, but clearly, he should have. Hiccup was always up and leaving the house shortly after dawn, most mornings Stoick was either up or awake enough to hear him leave.
Reaching the door of the house, Stoick threw it open and immediately called for his son. Getting no response, he rushed up the stairs to see a pile of blankets on his son's bed. He glanced quick over to the end of Hiccup's bed where Toothless usually slept.
Sure enough, there sat the dragon. But Toothless didn't seem panicked, not in the slightest. Which likely meant that Hiccup was somewhere in the pile of blankets on the bed. Ever so gently he picked up the top of the blankets until he found his son, curled up under all of them. Stoick set the blankets back down over Hiccup, leaving his head exposed, and gently shook his son awake.
As Hiccup rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, Stoick asked, "Is everything okay, son?"
"'m fine," came Hiccup's soft, slightly hoarse voice.
"You don't sound fine." Stoick took a better look at his son, now that he was about halfway out from under his blankets.
Hiccup certainly didn't look fine either. He was definitely paler than usual, leaning against the headboard on his bed as though he was exhausted, though he had just woken up. He was also sweating, but visibly shivering at the same time. Stoick knew exactly what that meant; Hiccup had a fever, which meant that he was sick.
Hiccup had stayed quiet after his last comment and was obviously trying not to look at his father.
"Hiccup, why didn't you tell me you weren't feeling well?"
"Never said I wasn't feeling well." He pulled his legs up towards his chest as he said this, hugging them once they were close enough. This caused him to shiver even more, as he was no longer under the blankets at all.
Stoick placed a hand on his son's forehead. It was incredibly warm, no wonder he's shivering.
"You have a fever, son," Stoick said gently, pulling Hiccup's blankets up and around him. "That's why you didn't leave the house today isn't it?"
Hiccup nodded, taking the blankets his father was trying to surround him with and curling up in them again. This time, he left his face uncovered.
"Have you eaten anything today?" Hiccup shook his head. "I'll go make you some soup."
As he got up, Stoick reached an arm around his son, pulling him into a quick hug. Hiccup didn't protest, just surprised that his dad was trying to take care of him.
As he was putting the soup on the fire, it occurred to him that it was his son's birthday, his first since the defeat of the Red Death. Stoick had been planning to do a special dinner for him that night and to give him his present then, but Hiccup clearly wasn't up to that. However, he might like his present now, it might make him feel a little better. He decided to go grab Hiccup's birthday gift from his room and take it to him.
When he got back upstairs with the gift in hand, Hiccup had laid back down, though he wasn't asleep. Toothless had moved over to be next to Hiccup and had laid down right at the top of the steps where Hiccup could reach out and pet him from where he was laying in the bed.
Not knowing what to say, Stoick just set the gift down on the bed next to his son and knelt down next to him as well.
"What's this?" Hiccup asked, pulling his other hand out from under the blanket and grabbing the gift.
"Your birthday gift. I was going to give it to you later, but I thought you might like it now," Stoick explained.
Hiccup stared at him. "You remembered my birthday?"
Shocked by the question, Stoick replied, "Of course I did. I've never forgotten it." Then, realizing why Hiccup was so surprised, he added, "I haven't been a very good father, son. I know that. And not even acknowledging your birthday the past several years was probably one of the worst things I did. I'm trying to be better, son, I swear."
Hiccup, not caring how cold he was without his blankets, jumped and wrapped his hands around his father. He knew his father was trying to be better, he'd seen it in his father's actions already. But not only acknowledging his birthday but getting him a pretty decent sized gift really showed Hiccup that Stoick was really trying.
"Well, I need to go check on that soup I was getting ready for you. I put it on the fire before I came up here," Stoick said as he let Hiccup go. "You need to get back under those blankets, or your fever is only going to get worse. Smiling, Hiccup did as he was told,
As he watched his father walk down the stairs, his gaze shifted to the gift that he had discarded on his other side when he'd hugged his father. He hadn't opened it, so he had no clue what was in it. As he picked it up, he slowly started picking at the paper that was wrapped around it.
Astrid was beside herself with worry. Hiccup hadn't shown up to the Academy that morning, and no one around town had seen him all day. And when she'd run into the chief earlier, he'd seemed surprised that Hiccup hadn't been at the Academy that morning. She'd watched him hurriedly climb the steps to his house, presumably looking for his son. She'd been watching for him to come back out for the last 10 minutes. Something had to be wrong.
She went up to the door and knocked a few times, the chief answering after the second knock.
"Hi Chief, is Hiccup home?"
"Yes, he's upstairs," the chief replied. "You can go up and see him if you want." He opened the door a little wider to let her in. After he closed the door, he went back to checking the pot that was hanging over the fire, so she just slowly started her way up the stairs.
Once getting to the top, she found Hiccup sitting on his bed, wrapped in blankets and furs, with a few books in his lap. He was flipping through one of them.
"Hey." He jumped, then turned to look at her. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."
"You didn't. Just a little startled is all cause I didn't hear you come up the stairs." His voice was slightly hoarse as he spoke. "What are you doing here?"
"I was worried about you. When you didn't show up this morning, I thought maybe you'd gotten kidnapped or something."
He chuckled. "Nope, just got a cold for my birthday. Nothing really new there." She was worried? He thought.
"Your birthday?"
"Yea, today's my sixteenth birthday. This," he held up the small pile of books in his lap, "is the gift my dad gave me for it."
His birthday was today?! She had been wanting to get him something for his birthday, but because she didn't know when it was, she had no idea how much time she had to figure out what to get him.
Seeing her almost guilty look, Hiccup said, "You didn't have to get me anything; I wasn't even expecting a gift from my dad. I'd like it though if you could stay and keep me company this afternoon, though?"
He wanted her to stay and spend time alone with him? She was absolutely okay with that. Hiccup was becoming one of her best friends, and she was sure that she was wanting to be more than friends with him anyway, but she had no way of knowing if he also felt that way.
His dad brought him a bowl of soup and made some comment about needing to get back to chiefing, though he'd rather stay home and take care of his son.
"I can stay and take care of him this afternoon, Chief," Astrid volunteered. Hiccup shot her a glare.
"Would you?" the chief clarified. "He just needs to sit and rest for the rest of the day; he should be feeling better later if he does." Astrid nodded and the chief left.
Shortly after he finished his soup, Hiccup ended up leaning his head on Astrid's shoulder as they talked. A short while after that he had fallen asleep, so she adjusted so she was sitting at the head of his bed with his head in her lap.
As she played with his hair, she couldn't help but think about how much she had grown to care about him and love him as more than just a friend. She was definitely going to get him for not saying anything to anyone about not feeling well, but that was later. Right now, she was perfectly content looking after him while he was sick.
So just like the rest of my Sicktember fics, this is the end of this one. However, since I hinted at more of a relationship between Hiccup and Astrid here, I would be willing to write more to this one, y'all just gotta let me know!
Yesterday's fic, some may notice I didn't mark it as complete. I have two more chapters that I would like to add to it. Unfortunately, the last two days I haven't been able to write more than what I've posted, so I hope to get that one actually finished this weekend. We'll see if I can stick to it.
Daystrid Out!
*passes out on the couch after a long day of classes*