It was all worth it

A/N: Okay, so this was an idea given to me by my friend, RazzlePazzleDooDot. She was talking to me about "The Eel Effect" (episode 16 of Defenders of Berk) and she said she would have loved to see Hiccup get Eel Pox. So, here it is, a humorous and slightly angsty or cute one shot featuring Hiccup with Eel Pox xD Like Berk's Eel Pox. Not the dragon Eel Pox. Anyway, I don't know if it's that great, but I really like the first part. I think the first part captured the essence of the show better than any other scene in the story did. And of course, since this would never happen in canon, I had to do it xD one can dream, eh? One can dream. Anyway, this is set a year after the episode, because I didn't want to intrude on canon by making Hiccup get sick in that timeline. Also, I needed them to know the cure by that time so it wasn't like deadly or anything.

It had been worth it.

It had been worth the preparation and the medicines, and the complaints from the village for this.

Stoick beamed at the happy, healthy people bustling around the Great Hall, everyone talking and laughing and eating, everyone safe, no one having crazy delusions under the prolonged effects of fever. This year had certainly been better than the last when it came to illness, though this was mostly thanks to Stoick – the chief had managed to convince the village somehow to start preparing as if they really were going to get sick while doing everything they could to prevent that happening.

Gothi the healer had been particularly helpful in this category – having made the medications early, she'd started forcing it off on anyone who seemed even the slightest bit unwell, including Hiccup, who had developed a nasty cough the previous night.

Not that he'd taken it, Stoick thought with a scowl, remembering entering his son's bedroom and finding the jug on his bedside table, still full, his usual vest lying discarded on the empty bed, he and his dragon having slipped out for a flight.

Ah, no matter. The chief shook it off, spooning another bite of stew into his mouth. He would convince his son to take it anyway, despite the fact that Hiccup protested against the awful taste. Stoick knew it tasted awful, too, but it was a small price to pay for one's health.

Speaking of which, here the boy came now, walking a little slower than usual into the Great Hall, appearing to be staggering slightly…concern tugged at the chieftain. Hiccup wasn't leaning on his dragon, as he usually did whenever his leg began paining him, so perhaps it was nothing…perhaps he had just been working hard all day, and he was just tired.

Stoick turned back to his stew, and he continued to eat in silence for a few minutes until…

"I AM A DRAGON!"

What? Stoick nearly upset his wooden bowl, he looked up so fast. He scanned the Great Hall, searching for the speaker, because clearly, it wasn't a dragon, if they were using a speech Stoick could understand. Funny, that voice had sounded almost like…

His eyes landed on his son, standing actually on top of one of the tables, red-faced and staggering and clearly either very drunk or very sick. Hiccup did not seem able to stand very well at all. "I AM A DRAGON!"

It took Stoick approximately two seconds to scan the gathering crowd and form a plan of action. He pushed through the knot of Vikings until he was standing in front of Hiccup's table, and called, "Hiccup, get down here!" Last year, when Eel Pox had claimed nearly everyone's minds, nobody batted an eye when somebody else started hallucinating. Now, it was something to talk about, something people would remember.

"Hiccup?" The boy looked confused before shaking it off. "I am not Hiccup! Now I am Midnight the Night Fury!"

"Um…Midnight the Night Fury?" Stoick repeated blankly, uncertain how to go about this any longer.

Hiccup puffed his chest out. "The strongest of them all! Except for Toothless," he conceded when said dragon made a noise of dissent.

Around them, people were avidly beginning to whisper about what Hiccup was saying and Stoick knew he had to wrap things up quickly. "Alright. Alright, then, Midnight, come down here. C'mon, we need to get you home."

"I listen to no man!"

"Oh, never mind!" Stoick groaned. There was no reasoning with anybody so delirious, and so he picked Hiccup up by the collar of his riding vest instead.

Hiccup twisted around to give a glare that would have been more intimidating coming from a baby Gronckle. "Unhand me, Father! Or I shall incinerate you with one blast of my fiery breath!"

Stoick dropped his son onto the floor of the Great Hall and tugged him up instead by the arm, leading him by the hand out of the building while Hiccup made furious remarks about his good name being stained by Stoick's inability to see his son's true form. "You are trying to crush my heart, Father," Hiccup said dramatically, flopping down on the bed and trying unsuccessfully to stifle a huge yawn. "Crush my heart, I tell you."

"You need some medicine," Stoick told him.

"And herein you are trying to crush it again," Hiccup told him, rolling pointedly over and accidentally falling off the bed in the process. (The fever was throwing off his depth perception.)

Stoick picked him back up again.

"I have said to unhand me!" There was that glare again, more adorable than threatening. "Midnight listens to no man! I shall not be taking any medicine! You cannot force Midnight into submission, no, you cannot!"

"Hiccup, you need some. C'mon, open wide."

"The only time…I shall be opening…" Hiccup yawned again, resting his head momentarily on Stoick's arm. "I…listen to no man…"

And, without further ado or preamble, Hiccup promptly fell asleep, his head still resting on Stoick's arm, soft snores pouring from his slightly open mouth.

Hiccup's illness continued for a week or more, and during that time, the hallucinations grew steadily worse, to the point where Stoick had to stop Hiccup from jumping off a cliff to, as the boy said, "fly away from this madness on my beautiful, sleek wings".

"The only madness on Berk I see is the one standing right in front of me," Stoick told his son as he entered the house and deposited him back on the bed. He became concerned that Hiccup would keep trying stupid things, so he moved the bed downstairs again, so he could hear if Hiccup tried to get up out of bed at any time, even during the night.

So it was a quiet evening between the two, with Hiccup deeply asleep and occasionally waking up to mutter more nonsense about being a dragon, shifting in his bed before immediately surrendering to sleep again. Stoick had his back to the bed as he tended the fire absently, watching the bright flames jumping and sparking, listening to the sounds of his son groaning behind him. There was silence for a bit apart from the crackling of flames, and Stoick started to hope that maybe the fever had finally broken, the medicine kicking in – for, as Hiccup had stated that first day, Midnight listened to no man, and absolutely refused to take the medicine as it was a "horror of horrors, and yet another attempt to mangle my very soul and spirit beyond repair".

"Dad?" Hiccup's voice sounded slurred, but it was the first time all week he'd called him that instead of 'Father', which, no matter which way you tried to swing it, just didn't sound right coming out of Hiccup's mouth.

Stoick instantly abandoned his seat by the fireside to kneel by Hiccup's bed, smoothing the boy's auburn hair, a messy tangle now from lying in bed all week. The boy's green eyes were still cloudy, and he was sweaty-faced and shivering, a clear sign that the fever still had a hold, however small, over him, but at least he didn't appear to be gearing up to talk about himself as Midnight again.

"Yes?" Stoick kept his hopeful gaze fixed on his son. With the boy's gaze fixed on him, he couldn't mask his surprise when his son reached down and took his father's large hand, giving it a squeeze that the chieftain barely felt. Hiccup's hands had no strength.

"Just…wanted to be sure you were here," Hiccup mumbled, eyelids already beginning to flutter again as he sank back down onto the pillow. "I was…I was scared you weren't."

He must still have a fever, Stoick thought to himself. And it must have still been affecting him, because whatever his son did, he had never spoken to his father like this before.

As such, the chieftain wasn't one hundred percent sure how to handle this, but, seeing as the boy was sick and barely in his head, he thought it best simply to reassure him. "No need to be scared." He gave his son's pale hand a small squeeze, too. "I'm here. I'll always be here."

Hiccup opened his eyes, and stared at Stoick openly for a minute, making the man uncomfortable under the constant scrutiny. He finally fell back asleep, but not before mumbling, "I'm glad we killed the Green Death, Dad."

Stoick blinked, uncomprehending. "I'm…I'm glad, too?"

"I'm glad we killed her," the boy kept repeating well into the night, and even after Stoick had made the decision to retire to bed. He was staying up later and later these days to look after his son, and make sure the boy was happy and comfortable and not throwing himself off cliffs.

Stoick was busily dousing the fire for the night when he heard Hiccup beginning to stir again, repeating his own words. "I'm glad we killed her…I'm glad we killed her, Dad. Because now you love me."

Stoick continued to nod along and agree, as he had been doing for the past hour, when something about the sentence caught his attention, and he spun on his heel suddenly, turning to face his son. "Because now I what?" For a second, he honestly thought he had not heard his son correctly.

"You love me," Hiccup told him, blinking up at him as if he couldn't imagine what was upsetting him so much. "At least, I hope you do. I know the odds are better now than they were before, because now I've actually done something to give you a reason, but sometimes I still wonder if you really do." Hiccup looked down at his sprawled hands as he spoke.

The fever, Stoick thought. It had to be. Why else would his son be talking like this? He'd never doubted in Stoick's love before…had he?

"Like when we got our father-son portrait painted," Hiccup said matter-of-factly, as if reading the chieftain's mind. "You just seemed to like the painting so much that I thought…well, I thought…" he swallowed. "I thought maybe you wouldn't love me anymore."

"No." The word slipped from Stoick's lips all too easily. No, Hiccup couldn't think like that. Why would he? He believed in his father's love.

"You absolutely hated me." Hiccup's voice still carried that calm, emotionless note. It was as if – and it made Stoick sick to even consider it – it was as if he had simply gotten used to it. He had accepted that his father didn't love him. But that wasn't true. "You hated me, and you hated how skinny I was before the Green Death. I assumed you'd still want a brawny, dragon killing son rather than a scrawny dragon taming one."

There was not a lot that could render Stoick the Vast speechless, although his son had always been among the few. His mouth kept opening, trying to form words, because he knew what his son was saying and he knew that it wasn't true and he knew, with a crushing shame, why Hiccup would believe it was. But, no matter how hard he tried to find the words to say, he simply couldn't.

He reached over and squeezed his son's hand instead, watching as the boy started to turn away again. He was suddenly afraid that if Hiccup turned away and fell asleep, he would completely forget this conversation, and have to go through life thinking that his father had never loved him at all. "It's not true." Maybe not the best opening, but it was the first thing he could think of.

At least it got Hiccup's attention. "What's not true?"

And suddenly, Stoick found his voice and the words started pouring out of him again. "It's not true, Hiccup, any of it. I'm sorry…I'm sorry for the way I treated you before, and I know I'll never be able to take that back. I'm going to have to live with that guilt all my life. But I need you to know that I loved you, even then. I loved you then, and I still do now, and I'm sorry about the painting, too, son, I'm sorry. But…but you have to know that I loved you. Always. Even when I didn't show it. I loved you even then."

"You did?" Oh, the surprise on his son's face hurt the chieftain's heart more than anything else ever could. "But you hated me…you're not making any sense…"

"I know what I did." He lowered his eyes in his guilt, unable to bear holding his son's green gaze at that moment. "And I'm sorry for it. But I never hated you, never. Always, I was trying to do what was best for you. I was just trying to protect you…"

"But you never said you loved me…" Hiccup pointed out quietly, and this made Stoick feel even worse. "You just…you always talked like you hated me. You called me an embarrassment. I thought that's what I was." He lowered his own eyes to the blanket, a yawn forcing its way through his lips.

The past hit Stoick harder than he would have ever thought possible, and the man couldn't speak. When he finally regained his voice, all he could whisper was, "I'm sorry, Hiccup."

"I'm not," the boy replied bluntly. "If you hating me was what it took to get me to shoot down Toothless…" and here he paused to scratch the Night Fury behind the ears, eliciting a most undignified purr from the sleeping creature. "…then I'm not sorry at all."

"Listen to me." Stoick forced himself to speak the words, to meet his son's gaze and take the boy by the shoulders, so they locked gazes, so the boy couldn't brush this off as nothing. "I love you. I loved you then, I loved you now. And I won't ever stop. Never."

The words seemed to strip Hiccup of the little strength he still possessed, because he sank back on his pillows, his eyelids fluttering again. "Promise?" It was barely a whisper, barely audible, but in the still air, the listening father heard.

"I promise. I promise, you are loved."

It had been worth it.

When Hiccup was fully recovered, and lucid enough to carry on an actual conversation without suddenly falling asleep on his father – as he had done the last two times they'd tried to talk – there seemed to be a hint of wariness in his face, in the very way he moved, that made Stoick feel certain he remembered the conversation, fever-ridden and hallucinating though he was.

But Stoick had meant everything he said. He was a man of few words, and those few words were not empty ones. He'd meant it then, and he meant it now, as he looked down at his axe, pretending to be sharpening it to avoid eye contact. "I love you son. Sleep well."

Hiccup had to have heard. Stoick glanced up a little, just to see his reaction, to make sure he hadn't made him uncomfortable by saying the words. But that doubt was wiped away when he saw his son's smile, as bright and brilliant as the sunrise.

It had been worth it.

It had been worth the fevered hallucinations and the sleepless nights.

It had been worth it.