Entry tags:

!closed, !completed gdoc, !log, [plot] cruise2019, ~2019 june, ~25 points, ~~erik lehnsherr (magnetic_lord), ~~hiccup haddock (itwasallme)

Who: Erik and Hiccup
What: awkward waking up
When: Saturday morning
Where: Their room on the cruise ship
Warnings: Not really
Status: completed gdoc



There was a lot of people in their room on the ship with Erik, Hiccup, Tefe and Aurie. or maybe it just felt like a lot of people because none of the rooms were that large on the ship and having an active three year old bouncing around the room made it feel even smaller. But there was a sofa bed so Tefe and Aurie usually shared that with Erik and Hiccup each taking one of the others.

The prior evening when they'd come back to the room Tefe had already been asleep and Aurie had monopolized one of the other beds with several of the extra pillows and her toys. It looked like she'd fallen asleep having a war of some sort. Or possibly a party. It was hard to tell with the toys scattered all around her.

They hadn't wanted to wake her up right away so they'd sat together on the other bed to talk for a while but apparently they were more tired than either of them thought because being warm and sitting still had put both of them to sleep.

Erik woke up with hair tickling his nose and face but it wasn't unpleasant. There was no sense that there shouldn't be someone with him so he wasn't waking up as quickly as usual. At least he wasn't waking up until he realized that some time during the night with the familiar feeling of a warm and trusted body beside him he must have pulled them both down to sleep under the covers and he was now curled against Hiccup's back with his arm around his waist holding him there.

Oh this was awkward.

---

Hiccup didn't mind sharing a room with Erik, Tefe and Aurie. He did usually offer to let Tefe and Aurie share the other bed, but he'd given up on insisting too much to just go the way they wanted to go with. What mattered more to him was that he didn't make anything awkward with his friends so he stuck to changing in the bathroom and generally tidying up after everyone to make sure their space was as clean as it could be with a toddler. Sometimes it was a losing battle, but not having the dragons or any animals on board meant that he didn't really have a whole lot to otherwise occupy him or Aurie.

She seemed to be doing alright though, with her pile of toys. The scene they'd walked in on had been utterly adorable and Hiccup had absolutely snapped a few pictures to preserve the memory of it. She'd no doubt be embarrassed by it as she got older but in the meantime, he was going to hold it close as a reminder of what a great kid she was. It did leave very few options for them though but they'd been having a good conversation prior to getting back to their room so it made sense to continue it for a little while longer. Hiccup always felt like he could talk for hours with Erik on a variety of subjects.

Who'd fallen asleep first and how they'd managed to get under the covers, he honestly didn't know. He also didn't really know entirely that it was Erik curled around him. Hiccup just knew he was comfortable and warm and it all just felt right. Being the little spoon wasn't something that happened often, usually when he camped outside and Toothless did so to keep him warm. This felt better than that. He shifted a little bit to find a cool spot on the pillow and pulled the arm around his middle up a touch, his own hand over his bed partner's hand and settled it over his chest.

"Five more minutes," he murmured. Surely they didn't have to wake up right at this particular moment.

---

Erik couldn't even remember what they'd been talking about the night before. He was far too distracted by the warmth and the fact that Hiccup had pulled him closer to turn his thoughts to anything intellectual. He was just so tempted to pretend that he was still sleeping to continue enjoying the rare moment of complete relaxation. Tefe and Aurie's magnetic auras were missing so Erik decided it must have been the door opening and closing that had awakened him. And he was obviously still delaying and that wasn't fair to Hiccup and it being morning and being so close to a warm body he trusted was going to make things incredibly awkward very quickly as bodies reacted so Erik took a deep breath and tried to move his arm but Hiccup had his hand and he didn't want to yank it away because that was definitely the wrong message.

"Hiccup, wake up."

---

Erik's voice was more than enough to wake him up fully, but instead of jolting or spazzing, Hiccup simply tensed. How had they ended up in bed together? Very briefly, he was worried they'd done more than just fall asleep together, but the fact that he was wearing clothes confirmed that it had just been sleeping. He wasn't going to examine why he was both relieved and a bit disappointed at that.

"Uhh. Sorry. I'm sorry." He came to his sense and let go of Erik's hand. It was definitely awkward as he moved around and somehow moved closer to Erik before twisting away and sitting up. This was weird. This was potentially terrible and awful and it was going to ruin everything and there was a very good chance that if Erik didn't say something, Hiccup was going to start freaking out externally instead of internally.

---

The squirming and moving closer instead of away at first definitely did not help Erik think clearly. He wasn't sure how Hiccup was reacting because at the moment he had all the signs of beginning to freak out but that tended to be how Hiccup reacted at first to some things until you redirected his thoughts so Erik wasn't sure if he was really upset or just in his normal mode.

"You don't have to apologize." There was also the chance that Hiccup was freaking out because Erik was a man and there was that potential future with Aurie where they were both her father figure and what that could mean. Erik wasn't sure how he himself was reacting, his body had its own opinion and his intellect had another. There was a chance he had offended his friend and that could end badly which meant his first instinct was to withdraw before anything else could happen.

And since he was stuck he'd sat up in the bed but hadn't moved to leave.

---

"I didn't- I didn't mean to," he said, almost pleading but not quite. Like he was trying to stave off an argument or Erik being angry with him. "It just felt nice and that was probably the best sleep I've gotten since Astrid got sent home and I really, really, really do not want to screw anything up because you're pretty much my best friend. I've been trying really hard to not make things weird or awkward or anything. Well, no more than usual because it's me and I'm weird and awkward." It was terrible. The words were just coming and they weren't stopping and Hiccup was so close to just willing his hands to cover his mouth to make it all stop.

He realized in that brief lull that they were still in bed together and scrambled to get out, which resulted in him standing there in front of Erik with a fairly obvious reaction to being curled up together right there. Hiccup flushed with embarrassment and quickly turned around, though he knew that wasn't going to make much of a difference. He hung his head, already admitting defeat. "I'll just...get my things and go." He'd totally ruined everything.

---

Well it was sort of normal mode because tense Hiccup tended to move on to the Hiccup that talked too much and had everything that he thought fall straight out of his mouth. It was always hard to get a word in edgewise during this stage because Erik tended to wait to see everything a person wanted to say before he said anything and Hiccup could go on for a long time, especially because not getting something back immediately made him talk more to fill in the quiet spots.

"Slow down." They'd both been trying not to make things weird and awkward and it obviously wasn't working because circumstance and the dome kept trying to butt in. "You don't have to go." It was just sleeping in the same bed, fully clothed, no matter what other feelings and desires might have been involved there wasn't anything to be ashamed of or worried about as far as Erik was concerned but he also wasn't taking into account that Hiccup was younger, probably didn't have a lot of experience and that he had taught himself to compartmentalize just about everything if he needed to.

---

Hiccup was totally unprepared for Erik to be so calm about everything so he just sort of looked over his shoulder at the older man with a cautiously optimistic look on his face. "I don't?" He was almost afraid he'd heard that wrong. Fortunately, he didn't start babbling again and that was a minor miracle because it was on the tip of his tongue to explain that he didn't expect anything like that from his friend, no matter what some possible future said. They could just be good friends who looked after Aurie and she called them dad for the ease of it, not because of anything intimate between them. Though part of why he didn't go down that rabbit hole was because then he'd have to confront his own feelings on the matter and he didn't have the first clue what those feelings were.

"I um...made it worse, didn't I? With the... and the..." He couldn't quite bring himself to say that he'd freaked out, but from the embarrassed look on his face, that much was more than clear. "I am so glad Tefe wasn't here to witness that. She'd probably laugh," Hiccup mumbled with a bit of a sigh. He was a total mess. Why did Erik even put up with him, anyway?

---

Was it a good idea to point out that Tefe and Aurie had already been awake and seen the two of them curled together in bed? It might get the probably inevitable reaction out of the way but Erik decided not to because Hiccup was calmed down, if embarrassed, for the moment. "Tefe doesn't laugh. Not much anyway." It was the main thing about her that made her so foreign and still familiar, because she might not laugh but she was good at being angry and Erik was very good at that emotion.

What was it about cruises? The last one the dome put them on was when he'd danced with Charles, and then had to chase him down to find out why he was being so distant and odd about everything. This time it was Hiccup...and that parallel was a little disturbing now that he'd thought of it. There was no way they were all on a cruise just so for that so he did his best to shove the thought aside.

"It's fine. It wasn't how either of us expected to wake up but it was just sleeping." And the smell of Hiccup's hair and the warmth of the body that had moved against him...and this was going to be very distracting.

---

"That's true," he replied with a slight smile. He did, at least, back up a few steps so he could sit down on the bed. It felt a little less like everything was out on display even if he was fully clothed and Erik probably had experienced such things for himself. Hiccup just didn't have those sort of experiences waking up with another man like that. It'd happened once with Astrid, before coming to Madison, and after? Well. They just didn't really talk about that part.

"I know we...never really talked about it. Aurie's time being older," he ventured as he fiddled with his hands on his lap. It was easier to talk about it with his back to his friend. "I just don't want to mess up." There were very few people in his life that he felt comfortable being vulnerable with and it meant something that Erik was one of those people. "I don't- I don't know what the future holds, but I know if I'm here? I want to be part of your life, and Aurie's and Tefe's." They were probably the most important people to him in all of Madison Valley, but he'd never actually said as much.

---

Whatever it took to make him feel more comfortable at the moment. Erik glanced over his shoulder at Hiccup but decided to keep from looking to see if it helped. "None of us know." And it had bitten him so many times with his losing people he cared about here but Hiccup was already a part of them so there really wasn't any going back. Well there was but Erik didn't want to completely cut ties with his friend.

"You are part of us. And we probably should talk about when Aurie was older. But when we're sure we're ready." Erik was reluctant to have that conversation himself at the moment. Sometimes he just needed the right moment and post waking up awkwardness was really not the right moment.

---

It was somewhat reassuring that Erik also didn't know. Hiccup knew that logically speaking, but sometimes it was heard for his heart and his head to be on the same page about things. What helped the most was knowing that he was part of their family already, that it wouldn't change just at the drop of a hat or over a whim here or there. The dome wouldn't break them, or at least not if they didn't lose their memories.

"Maybe when this trip is over?" Hiccup didn't really relish the idea of having the conversation either, but he understood the importance of it. He had a feeling that Erik did, too. Plus, if they set at least some kind of deadline on it, there was a better chance that he would be able to actually sort through his feelings before that point. "I want to be able to enjoy the rest of the cruise." It was certainly a lot more pleasant than any boat he'd ever been on before. The whole concept was a bit weird to him even though he could sort of see the appeal.

---

"I think when this is over is a good idea." Erik could use a deadline as well. He knew he was already thinking about it somewhere in the back of his mind but he needed to stop putting it off and decide what was in his head. It wasn't going to go away and putting it off would only continue to make things more uncomfortable. But no matter what way things went Hiccup was family, that wouldn't change for any of them.

"I did sleep very well." He couldn't help adding that. It had been a long time since he'd had another body around while he was sleeping, aside from a toddler than sometimes crawled in with him but since Aurie tended to kick like a mule and take up more than half the bed it wasn't the best sleep in the world.

---

"Okay," he agreed. He felt a lot calmer now, even though they didn't really have any more answers than when they started. Just the agreement to talk about it and when felt like a weight lifted off his shoulders. His body had finally started to calm down, too, so he felt comfortable enough sitting so that he had his back against the headboard.

At Erik's admission that he'd slept just as well, Hiccup felt his cheeks color a tiny bit. "We could. Um. I mean. We could share, if you wanted? That way Tefe could have the bed for herself and Aurie could sleep on the sofa bed." It certainly made more sense size wise and so long as they both knew that any bodily reactions were just because of being near a warm body, it could be alright. It certainly wouldn't be any worse than they'd just experienced.

---

Erik felt a little bit like he might have manipulated that by bringing it up but it was true, until he'd awakened and realized he was curled against Hiccup he'd slept soundly without dreams, at least none that he remembered. It was good to feel like he hadn't been on guard the entire time even if he knew he still would have been instantly alert if there was an unknown person or danger of any sort.

"And Aurie could sleep with all her toys because apparently that is a thing." Erik shook his head with a fond expression for how they'd found her last night. "Let's see how we feel about it later but for now we should probably go get breakfast and find out what trouble Aurie is getting into today."

---

"I think a little spoiling now and then isn't the worst thing," Hiccup pointed out with a small smile. Aurie was easily someone Hiccup could hardly say no to, at least when what she was asking for didn't hurt her or put her at risk. Part of it was because he worried she might decide she hated him and never wanted to see him again, but a larger part was because he loved to see her happy and smiling.

He nodded slightly at Erik's compromise. They could decide later, absolutely. And he was right. They should go enjoy the time they all had together. "Alright. I'm going to get changed in the bathroom and then we can go," he said as he got up to fish around the drawers for some clothes. That would give Erik time to get changed in the room and Hiccup made a mental note to just call out before walking out of the bathroom to make sure his friend was properly dressed.

---

"Let me know when you're done so I can brush my teeth." Erik was used to being ready quickly, habits like that could save your life, so he was sure he'd be dressed and ready before Hiccup was but he was also sure Hiccup might linger in the bathroom feeling awkward if he didn't think Erik was waiting to get in so he gave him that excuse. "And I am not opposed to some spoiling for her."

Which was probably very obvious since many of the toys she'd been playing with had been bought by Erik. When it came to children, Aurie and Nina especially, there was nothing he wouldn't do for them.

"If you want we could see a little of Málaga while we're docked. I haven't been to Spain in quite a while." And everywhere they'd gone so far he was able to translate for them, Spain was no different although his dialect was a few decades out of date. "But we'll figure that out after we eat."

Erik watched Hiccup retreat with his clothes into the bathroom before stripping out of his own to get changed. There was no need to make anything any more awkward than it already was.