TLC Forum

The More Important Things
Part One
movie-verse, pre-HTTYD
"Trolls exist! They steal your socks." ~ Gobber

Hiccup stopped, frozen in the doorway. He could tell by the stoop of his father’s shoulders that he was going to say something important, even though his back was turned toward him. Carefully he inched into the room, keeping his back to the wall, until he was at an angle where he could see the face of the great chief of Berk. The bushy red eyebrows were drawn down, but that could mean anything. Anxiously Hiccup bit his lip. The eyes under the eyebrows darted straight to him.

“It’s time, son,” Stoick said.

“T-time?” Hiccup faltered. “Time for what…Dad?”

“I should have done this a long time ago, but it’s not too late.”

“…Oh?” Hiccup’s voice cracked nervously.

“We’re going fishing, son. Now I know you’ve gone before on your own, but it’s time I really took the time to give you a serious lesson about it.”

“Oh…fishing.” Hiccup was relieved. Last time there had been a conversation like this, Hiccup had just accidentally blown a hole in the side of Gobber’s
workshop. “That’s, uh, wonderful. When are we going?”

“Right now.” Stoick picked up two fishing poles from the floor, and he gave one to Hiccup. It was several inches taller than he was.

“Oh…um…thanks, Dad.” He shifted the pole, trying to keep it from falling over. “Where are we going then?”

“To the water.”

“Well now, that’s helpful,” Hiccup said under his breath.

“Come on.” Stoick shouldered his pole and took a bucket that was standing by the door. Hiccup thought he could probably fit all of himself inside of that bucket.

“What kind of fish are we going for, Dad?”

“For the love of—ohhhhhhhh.” Stoick put his hand to his forehead. “You keep asking questions, son, and you’ll end up someday in even worse trouble than you usually are. Come on.” He swung about and strode through the front door.

Hiccup couldn’t think of a good response to that sort of statement, so he wrapped his arms around the fishing pole and struggled trying to lift it off the ground. “Things will probably go better if I have a pole that weighs less than I do,” he muttered, and stumbled down the front steps. “Coming in a minute, Dad.”

*****

That's the first bit, sooooo...yeah. I'll post more of it later.
(And my apologies if I do something non-canonical with the story. I've not seen all the TV episodes yet. )

Heehee!
(As for movieverse canon, I don't regard the show as being that important. )

what is HTTYD?

How To Train Your Dragon

Part Two

“Hello, Stoick!” a burly villager called. “Taking your boy fishing, I see.”

“Of course. Time he learned.”

“Yeah, you got to learn sooner or later.”

Hiccup glanced back and caught an amused look on the Viking’s face. And who wouldn’t laugh? I look like a rowboat with a warship’s mast on it! He scowled and looked down at the ground. Why do I have to be so small?

“Hey, Stoick!” Another Viking. Sounded like Spitelout Jorgenson. Hiccup didn’t even look up. “You going fishing?” Spitelout continued. “And taking your little boy with you.” Little boy. That hurt.

“Yes, he’s coming with me today. We’ll see how he handles himself.”

The brawny Viking laughed out loud. “I took my son Snotlout the other day. This was his, let’s see, twelfth? no, thirteenth trip. Caught a big one, long as my arm.”

“That’s nice,” Stoick said. His teeth were clenched. Hiccup could hear it in his voice. He was probably angry at Spitelout for mentioning his strapping son Snotlout. Again. He never missed a chance to rub it in.

Why doesn’t he just say it out loud? Hiccup wondered. “My son is something to be proud of. Your boy isn’t.” He felt like crying, so he pretended to be keenly interested in the ground so that no one would see.

Then he heard a familiar, uneven gait ahead. Gobber!

“Hello, Stoick! Hello, Hiccup! Going fishing, eh?”

“As you see.” Stoick actually stopped walking this time.

“Ah, yes. Good day for it, too.” Good old Gobber. The things he said didn’t always sting like the others’. “Don’t you think Hiccup might need a slightly smaller pole than the one he’s got there?” Stoick snorted.

“Ah, he’ll be alright with the one he’s got now. I used one just like it when I was his age. If it was good enough for me, it’ll be good enough for him.”

“Well, that may be so. But I was just thinking, y’know, maybe if you gave him a smaller pole he’d be more, well, quick with the cast and all that. You wouldn’t want him to catch fewer fish because he was slower casting, now would you?” There was a silence, and Hiccup felt both of them looking at him. He nervously dug the toe of his boot into the dirt.

“That’s true,” Stoick said at last.

“Great! I might have something in my shop I can make into a pole for him, real quick. I’ll be right back.” Gobber lumbered back into his shop and Hiccup looked up at his father out of the corner of his eye. Stoick didn’t seem to be too displeased. Hiccup sighed in relief.

In a minute Gobber came out with a small fishing pole. It was still a little larger than Hiccup would have chosen, but it was better than the one he had now.

“Now don’t let the fish pull you in, Hiccup!” Gobber said brightly. “Good luck, Stoick!”

*****

Eee, I love this!

Aww, good ol' Gobber.

Thanks, guys!

Part Three

Hiccup drew a quick breath. “Dad, I know this path!”

“You do?”

“Yeah.” Hiccup tripped over a branch in his eagerness. “It leads down to that little harbor thing, doesn’t it? And there’s like cliffs all on the three sides, and then there’s the sea on the other, and there’s some little stunted up trees near the water, and all those twisted rocks like statues all over.”

Stoick’s eyes seemed to smile; you couldn’t see his mouth too well under the moustache and beard. “Gone fishing there before?”

“Fishing?” Hiccup blinked once or twice. “No, uh yeah, no. But they say there are trolls that live among these rocks. I came down here once looking for them.”

“Oh…trolls.” The smile faded from the chief’s eyes. “Trolls don’t exist, son.”

“Well, but maybe they do, Dad! Just because you’ve never seen one doesn’t mean—”

“Hiccup…” Stoick’s voice dragged the name out warningly.

“Well, but Dad, maybe they’re just—”

“Hiccup.”

“It’s just maybe possible that they—”

“Hiccup!”

Hiccup fell silent, and cowered back a little as his father glared down at him. After a long moment of silence, Stoick turned back around and continued walking, and his stride showed that he was annoyed. Hiccup fell behind a little, and softly finished his sentence to himself:

“That they’re good at hiding.”

*****

This section was a little short. It just kind of stopped abruptly without giving me any kind of warning. My mind is weird.

Haha, yes.

Part Four

The harbor was on a part of the island a good long distance from the village, but not uncomfortably long…not for Stoick. When they came at last to the place where the path widened out into the little bit of land around the harbor, the chief was nearly as fresh as when he’d started out.

And Hiccup? He arrived around five minutes after his father did, winded and limping a little. The cliffs around the place protected it from the cold gusts that otherwise would have been blowing in off the sea, but he was shivering a little.

Stoick had already cast his line in. There was a stone nearby that was shaped almost like a seat, right at the edge of the water, and the chief gestured toward it.

“Sit right there,” he said. Hiccup slid onto it and dropped his line in the water near the shore. “No, son, not like that,” Stoick said, propping his pole up against a rock. “You won’t catch anything worth bragging about if you’re in water that shallow. Here.” He took the pole from Hiccup and pulled in the line. Then he handed back the pole and took Hiccup’s hands in his own massive paws. “Like this,” he said, and, with a flick that nearly wrenched Hiccup’s arms from his shoulders, he cast the line far out into the middle of the harbor. “There. Now see what you catch.”

Hiccup sat still for a minute, staring at the ripples the lines made in the water.

“I’ve gone fishing here for years,” Stoick told him. “One of the best spots you’ll ever find for fish, son.”

Or for trolls, Hiccup thought. But he didn’t say it out loud.

“It’s time I taught you about the more important things in life,” Stoick went on. “Like fishing, for example, over drawing. Drawing is almost completely useless. Sure, it can be used here and there for maps and such things, but it’s not as important as fishing. Fishing gives you food. You need food to survive. Maps, not so much.”

“Uh-huh.” Hiccup tried to sound like he was paying attention, but really he had just seen what looked like a bit of movement in the woods on the cliff across from them. A troll, maybe?

“Hiccup, your line, son!”

Hiccup jumped and jerked back on the pole.

“No, no, slower! You’ll break your line that way. Here.” Stoic took the pole and gradually pulled an arm’s length of the line in. “Now you try.”

Hiccup took the line and tried to do as his father had.

“No, slower! Now let it out a bit—no, now back in, quick, while he’s coming towards you. Now ease it back a—oh, no, no, no, not like that! Here!” He took the pole again.

“Yeah, Dad, what if you did this one first.”

“I probably should.” While Stoick was absorbed with the task at hand, Hiccup inched off his rock and tiptoed backwards until he was behind his father, then he turned and ran back up the path. In a minute Stoick had pulled in a fish: a cod. “Well, not too bad,” Stoick began, turning to where Hiccup had been sitting. “It might—Hiccup? Ughhhh.” He sighed. “Well, he’ll be back sooner or later.” He put the fish in the bucket and took up his own pole again. “And when he does…I’ll be here.”

*****

This is as far as I've gone, because I couldn't decide on one thing: twins or no twins?
What does everybody think: should Ruff and Tuff be in the story?

Stoick sounds like my mom... lol.

Personally, I'm digging this father-son fic as it is without them. But that's just me.