CONTENT WARNING: This chapter has many references to suicide and suicidal thoughts as well as disordered eating. If this kind of content is upsetting to you, please consider clicking away.

"I'm losing my grip here,
I'm off the deep end,
I wanna come back to me,
I wanna come back,
I wanna get out of my head."

- Out Of My Head, The Wombats

Sometimes Hiccup knew it was going to be a bad day before he even opened his eyes.

The first thing he did when his alarm trilled was fumble over in the dark and switch it off and then switch off all the back-up alarms, setting them for an hour later. Then once those ones went off, he switched them off too.

There were so many things he needed to do today.

He could feel all of them rattling around in his head as he turned over onto his side, pulling the covers over his head. Deadlines were a breath away; there were essays to write, things to do - he didn't have time to waste. He hadn't had time to waste for days, and yet it seemed like every day turned out this way - lost in a haze, his brain filled with cotton wool, his eyes drooping in exhaustion.

Why was he always so tired?

Hiccup turned over, pulling himself onto his stomach, shrouding himself in the duvet.

Get up, the voice in his head said. Get up. You're lazy as hell. Look at the time.

He looked at the time. 11am.

You could have done so many things this morning. You have so much to do. You're wasting time. Get up.

But he couldn't get up. He kept trying - kept thinking about how any second now, he was going to swing his legs out of the bed and plant them firmly on the floor. It shouldn't be difficult. He was an able-bodied person - it shouldn't take everything in him to get out of bed and pull on some clothes, and yet doing so felt like climbing a mountain.

What's the point, anyway? It was a slightly different voice in his head this time. It's not like you're going to pass any of your classes.

That was true, too. Hiccup had been smart once upon a time - he'd comfortably held the top spot in school, he'd got into university no problem - but it had always felt like a front. Like he'd managed to trick everyone into thinking he was a lot smarter than he was, and it was only now that the disguise was starting to crack.

The moment he handed in his essays - if he ever managed to get them done, he'd spent so long staring at a blank screen, his brain screaming for him to focus - they'd know that Hiccup the Useless was just that - useless.

Part of it was this stupid thing in his brain that kept him afraid all the time. It kept him mute in seminars, too scared to speak lest he embarrass himself in front of everybody - everybody that had wonderfully smart and insightful things to say. When Hiccup talked, it was like he'd only just learned how to speak that day. So, he didn't talk.

And he didn't ask for help either. He meant to. The lecturers and seminar tutors had impressed upon them every day the importance of taking office hours - "it's in your best interests to come to talk to us," they said, "you won't do well without it," - and he'd intended to, he really had.

It was just that - there was always something else he could do. Always something else he could do besides sitting in a room alone with a stranger, hands shaking, shoulders hunched, as he tried to speak for himself while his brain was just telling him to run.

And then after a few weeks of not doing that, it was too late. He couldn't go to tutorials now, not now he'd built up a block to it. Besides, the lecturers wouldn't want to see him anyway. He could just hear them sneering - "well, Mr. Haddock, if you really cared about your degree, you'd have come to see us sooner."

He did care. He did.

If you cared, you'd get out of this bed right now.

So, he tried. He tried to summon up the energy to pull himself out of bed, but all he managed to do was roll over onto his side.

God, you're useless. You should just kill yourself.

Hiccup sighed and pulled his pillow over his head.

It was an alarming thing to look down into oneself and find nothing there but a burning, aching hole.

What was more alarming though was how used to it he was. It didn't even scare him much anymore, the way that sometimes he'd lie in bed, turning it over in his head, thinking about how he'd do it.

It'd have to look like an accident, he'd decided. There was something he couldn't bear about the shame of everyone he'd left behind, knowing that he'd done it on purpose. Maybe he'd jump off a cliff, and hope that it'd look like he'd just been walking, standing too close to the edge, and simply just… slipped over. Maybe he wouldn't look before he crossed the street, too engrossed in the music blasting through his earphones to see the bus speeding right at him. His death would be tragic, maybe they'd say a few kind, sad words at his funeral, and then slowly but surely, everyone would move on, and forget that Hiccup Haddock had ever existed.

Then he felt guilty for thinking about it all. He didn't deserve to feel this way. His life hadn't been difficult enough - there were so many things he'd had so easily, and compared to some people, Hiccup's life was a walk in the park. How could he think about ending it? How dare he?

And yet, that guilt didn't make any of those feelings go away. If anything, they made them worse.

There are so many people who have it worse off than you.

Hiccup screwed his eyes up and let out a low groan into his pillow. "God," he mumbled to nobody but himself. "Make your mind up."

Just get out of the fucking bed.

And then, finally, as the clocked ticked over to 12pm, Hiccup pulled himself out of bed.

Hiccup sat down at his desk, opening his laptop and pulling books out of his bag.

Just because he'd wasted the morning, didn't mean he had to waste the afternoon, too. He was going to work. He was going to make this day worth something, and if he could do that, maybe he'd be worth something too.

Right, he thought to himself. Two hours of work, and then I get to sit down and eat.

He always liked to make food a reward. Getting to sit down and eat when you know you've already got things done.

It didn't matter that it was 12:30pm and there was already an ache and a rumble in Hiccup's stomach. He ignored it. When he had some work done, he'd eat, and it would feel great.

…Except, he didn't get any work done.

No sooner had he sat down at his laptop, was he lost in the world of social media, scrolling through Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook so many times that in the end, he was just scrolling through the same posts he'd seen a hundred times over. It wasn't even satisfying. All he could feel was this horrible sense of guilt, but every time he tried to pull himself back to studying, it was like there was a block in his brain. He'd stare at a blank page and think about how he didn't know what to write, and then he'd stare at his books and think about how none of the words were going in, and then he'd panic, and think about how he was going to fail, how disappointed his father was going to be in him, how stupid he was, how worthless he was-

- and then he'd go right back to scrolling through Tumblr.

An hour passed. And then another. And then another.

Hiccup's stomach hurt now, begging for food, but he didn't deserve food. He didn't deserve to eat when he hadn't managed to get anything done.

The day crept forwards, and Hiccup's stomach rumbled more and more. He knew he should get up and get food, but something kept him tied to the chair.

I need to get some work done.

But the page stayed blank, and Hiccup's stomach stayed empty.

It wasn't so much that Hiccup wanted to die.

At 10pm, when the whine in his stomach was too strong to ignore, Hiccup stumbled downstairs and out into the kitchen.

Fishlegs and Cami were sitting on the sofa. They'd been squabbling about something earlier, Hiccup had heard them as he'd headed downstairs, but when he walked in, they both fell silent, eyes tracking him as he shuffled over towards the kitchen counter.

"Everything okay, Hiccup?" Fishlegs asked.

"Yup."

"It's just — we haven't seen you all day."

"Busy doing work, that's all," Hiccup mumbled, as he rifled his way through one of the cupboards.

Damn it, everything in here would take thirty minutes or more to make. In the end, he grabbed a huge bag of oven chips from the freezer, ripped them open and dumped almost half the bag in a pan. It wasn't healthy, but Hiccup couldn't bring himself to fuss around with saucepans and vegetables. He was too hungry to care.

God damn it, you can't even look after yourself. Useless.

"You have eaten today, haven't you?" Fishlegs said.

"'Course I have," Hiccup lied, ducking his head as he shoved the pan into the oven.

I won't do this again tomorrow, he told himself forcefully.

But even then, he knew that wasn't true. The same thing had happened yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Wake up in a haze, manage to get nothing done, and then forget to eat. Rinse and repeat.

Worthless.

Cami was watching him, eyes narrowed. "Your hands are shaking."

"My hands are always shaking," Hiccup said.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

Hiccup was dangerously close to snapping. Of course, I'm not okay.

"I'm fine," he insisted. "Just a bit stressed about deadlines, that's all."

He tumbled towards them, dropping onto the sofa and burying his head into one of the cushions.

There was a long silence. Fishlegs stared down at him, pressed his lips together. "You'd tell us if something was really wrong, wouldn't you, Hiccup?"

Hiccup pulled the cushion back off his face, looking up into Fishlegs' worried eyes.

I should tell them, Hiccup thought to himself. I should just tell them how awful I feel and maybe they can help.

And then another thought popped into his head, or maybe they won't.

There it was again, that shame that lurked deep inside him, that burned him up alive. He could admit all that he was feeling, but everything in him told him not to. There was burning feeling in his stomach, the fear of being vulnerable.

He wouldn't know how to put all of his messy feelings into words anyway.

"I'm fine," Hiccup said, putting on a smile and rubbing imaginary sleep out his eyes. "Just really tired, that's all."

For a moment, he thought that Fishlegs was going to push him further: he was staring at Hiccup intently, as if he wanted to say something. But then, he just tipped his head back against the sofa and let out a long sigh.

"You and me both," Fishlegs said. "I have so many essays I don't know how I'm ever going to finish them."

"Me too," Cami pitched in. "And I have to do group work with a bunch of people who never show up."

"University's hard," said Fishlegs.

"Yeah," Cami said, a wry smile on her face. "Why can't things worth having just be easy?"

"Sometimes I just want to walk into the ocean and never come back," Hiccup said.

That was about as honest as Hiccup would ever be about his feelings, and he knew they'd think he was joking.

It was like a curse - you can be honest about how you feel, but you have to hide it under humour. Cover it up with as many layers of smokescreen as possible so that nobody ever finds out what really goes on in your head.

"Everything sucks," Cami said, her chin resting on her chest as she chewed on the strings of her hooded sweatshirt.

"Yeah," Hiccup said, in agreement. "Everything sucks."

Hiccup didn't want to die.

There were plenty of things that could keep Hiccup in this world: his friends being one of them. Good food. Books that he couldn't put down. Songs with a strong beat and a catchy tune that made him forget for a second that he'd ever felt sad at all. That one last hopeful feeling he had that things might get better.

But then he remembered all the things he couldn't do, how he could never be a functioning member of society if he couldn't send a fucking email. How was he going to make it out of university if he couldn't get himself to sit and write an essay? Hell, how was he going to survive going out into the world if he couldn't bring himself to speak to his tutor?

How could he live, when he couldn't bring himself to get out of bed?

It wasn't that Hiccup wanted to die.

It was that he didn't feel capable of living.