[HTTYD] Hybrid: Gray (theme 19)

Hybrid: Gray (theme 19) [rough draft], a DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon fanfic series by Raberba girl

List of themes by AngieChild, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt

A/N:  I want Tooth's father's name to be something like, 'person who can catch fish even from under the ice' and/or 'crazy person who'd fly out in an ice storm to rescue someone,' but I haven't settled on the official renderings.  Probably Icefisher when it's a human addressing / referring to him, and Ice Hunt when it's a dragon.

I'm also having a small problem with dragon language in this fic.  In my other stories, the characters speak either Norse or Dragonese, not both at the same time; but Hiccup here sometimes combines the two languages, and I haven't settled on the best way to indicate that.

o.o.o

It probably would have taken Valka and Ice Hunt longer to fully trust each other if their sons hadn't expedited the process.  It wasn't long before the human child and the nightwing hatchling were regularly curling up together to nap in the same aerie - usually Valka's, since Toothless's mother was much slower to tolerate any proximity to a human, even a baby one.

Valka had named the hatchling 'Toothless' due to his completely bare gums.  It wasn't until later that his mother allowed Valka close enough to the other hatchlings for her to discover that they, too, had no teeth yet.  Toothless himself began to answer to the name, and even Icefisher - as Valka had named his father when she witnessed the black dragon diving for lunch one day - seemed to recognize that the sound referred to his smallest child.

Hiccup referred to his little friend with a particular purring sound that Valka in turn came to recognize, so much so that she realized one day that she hadn't heard Hiccup attempt to say the name 'Toothless' in weeks.

Valka didn't see too much of the nightwing mother or the two bigger hatchlings at first - they seemed to spend most of their time sleeping, and the mother especially kept her distance.  It was Toothless who constantly sought (and was sought by) Hiccup, with his father hovering protectively in the background.  Although Valka enjoyed seeing the children play together, it worried her how much more Hiccup seemed to sleep during the day, and how much more active he was at night.  She lost count of the times she would start awake in the darkness and find no sign of her son.

By the time she finally realized that the black dragons must be of a nocturnal breed, the boys had adjusted to each other, sleeping during roughly half the day and night rather than claiming all of one or the other.  Valka and Ice Hunt had to trust each other with guardianship duties, if for no other reason than to get enough sleep themselves.

Valka wondered uneasily sometimes if the atypical sleeping schedule was somehow bad for Hiccup.  Why were some creatures nocturnal, anyway, if sleeping during the night was supposed to be the 'normal' way of things?  Did it matter when Hiccup slept as long as he got the same amount of sleep?

These worries were eclipsed one week when Hiccup started to vomit every day, and his tongue took on a strange gray tint.  He seemed well enough after he'd thrown up whatever had made him sick, but the frequency of it was taking its toll on him physically, and his recovery time was taking longer.  "Hiccup, what have you been eating?!"

"Not bad!"

"Hiccup, you've been eating something that's making you sick.  What is it?  You need to stop."

"Not eating bad!"

She stayed awake long enough to see for herself, and finally discovered the problem.  A horrified corner of her mind wanted to blame Ice Hunt for allowing such a thing, though the more rational part reminded her that he wouldn't have recognized it as a problem at all.  A dragon would view social grooming as perfectly ordinary and harmless.

"HICCUP!!  What are you doing, don't lick him, are you--?!  Stop it!"

Hiccup gave her an injured look, and squirmed to get down.  Toothless had reared up, resting his forepaws on Valka's leg as he anxiously croaked up at his friend.

"Hiccup!  Hiccup, listen to me, you must not lick the dragons, do you understand?  Don't lick Toothless!"

"[Friend] mine," Hiccup protested.

"That's why you're getting sick, Hiccup!  He's covered with, with dirt, and who knows what else, if you lick him like that then you'll keep getting sick!!  Do you like throwing up?"

"No," he said sulkily.

"No licking, Hiccup."

"...."

"No licking."

"[Friend] mine," Hiccup whimpered, tears welling up in his eyes.  "[Friend] mine!"

"What's yours?  Toothless is yours?  Hiccup, you don't have to lick him to prove that you're friends!  We know you care about each other, we can all see that!"

Hiccup just cried without saying anything.  Toothless was starting to cry now, too, so Valka knelt to stroke him.  The little dragon ignored her soothing fingers and pressed his face into the closest part of Hiccup he could reach.

"Hiccup, listen to me.  It's bad for you to lick animals like that.  It's bad for your body, you don't feel good and then you can't play with Toothless.  We know that you and Toothless are friends, Hiccup, you don't have to make yourself sick trying to prove that, do you understand?"

Hiccup murmured heartbrokenly to Toothless, who started to lick him in response.  Hiccup gave his mother a defiant look.

Valka sighed.  "It's okay for him to lick you, because he's a dragon, he won't get sick.  But you are human, Hiccup, and it's not good for you."

Hiccup stared at her.  "Dragon?"

Valka felt a pang of fear.  "You are not a dragon, Hiccup.  You are a human.  Dragons are our friends that we love, but you and I are human beings."

"Dragon?  Dragon...?!"

He seemed to be frightened and clingy for hours after that, refusing to be parted from either his mother or his best friend.  Valka kept him close and tried to distract him with lessons disguised as games.  It worked a little bit, but it wasn't until Cloudjumper took him to the king for a long talk that the boy truly seemed to relax.

'Is this really for the best,' Valka thought uneasily, 'raising him here?'  Then again, would Hiccup be better off in that war-torn village, or here in this peaceful refuge?  'I won't let him forget who he is.  He is the son of Stoick the Vast, the hope and heir of our tribe, and I will raise him here so that he may know peace and someday bring it back to his true home.'

o.o.o.o.o

The sensation of a tongue steadily swiping across his skin and clothes awakened Hiccup.  He lay sadly, letting himself be claimed, unable to return the gesture.  "Sad, confused, lost," he told Toothless.  "Not the same as you??"

"Mine," Toothless told him determinedly as he worked.

Hiccup sat up, reaching out to touch his friend's black scales.  He hadn't known or cared much about why he'd been getting sick recently, but now, the knowledge of its cause weighed heavily on his heart.  "Friend?  My friend that I love?"

"Mine, mine, mine," Toothless purred.

Hiccup's hands fisted in frustration.  How was he supposed to return the claim?  It had been hard enough already, having such a tiny tongue that took so long to finish the task, and the taste of dragon hide would seem to cloy in his mouth after a while, making it even more difficult - and then, after all that, the other dragons would respond to his painstakingly applied marks with more confusion than recognition.  But now he wasn't even allowed to mark his friend at all!

Hiccup grabbed the dragon's head and licked - not much, just a little patch of forehead.  He hugged Toothless tightly and insisted, "Mine, mine, mine, mine," as if he could say with his arms and his voice what he was unable to say with scent.

It seemed that he had unintentionally discovered a compromise.  A token scent-mark was better than nothing, he could do it quickly and stealthily enough that his mother didn't notice, and he stopped getting sick.

o.o.o

Author's Notes:  This ficlet was supposed to be that last small section and maybe a couple of sentences of explanation; I don't know where the rest came from. *sweatdrop*

So, I asked hybrid Hiccup about his sex life in this universe.  He told me, and after I'd wandered down that path for a while, I went back and closed it off and decided to just make him asexual, sorry.  Because if he's not ace, then he'd go mate with Camicazi in a plot thread that I'm pretty sure is against my religion and gets too off-topic and would require the creation of yet more Fan Characters (I've already made way too many DX), so I decided it's just easier and better if I make him asexual.  Hiccup will not be romantically paired with anyone in this universe.

I've been thinking about this AU a lot, and it's developing a LOT differently than how I'd imagined it ._.  I'm kind of nervous about where it's going.

Complete:  2/100