Summary: Set after THW. Pregnancy is difficult enough by itself, let alone when one happens to suffer from chronic pain at night during the colder months.
Warnings: Pregnancy
Rating: Teen and Up
Dead Dove: No
Words: 675
Fandom: How to Train Your Dragon
Characters: Hiccup, Astrid
Pairing: Hiccstrid
Author’s Notes: Stiiiiiilll searching for the motivation to post things. This fic took literally days to post. :')
Enjoy!
-XOXOX-
Well into the night, Hiccup still lies awake in bed. He’s on his back underneath layers of blankets and furs and he spends these hours staring up at the ceiling. There’s very little else he can do, very little else he has the energy to do. Their bedroom is freezing despite the fire they kept burning in the firepit to keep their house warm. He’s sweating plenty underneath the many layers and yet he’s apparently not warm enough. Why else would old injuries be acting up?
His stump and the burns he suffered all from a battle many years ago haunt him every single winter and with devastating winter around the corner, his nights are only going to get worse. Then there is the fact that this season is a little more different than most as this year he’s pregnant with his and his wife’s first.
He’s a well over halfway, though the layers on him makes him seem even bigger than he actually is. Astrid is asleep, Toothless and the Light Fury are asleep. He lets his hand glide over his bump on top of the furs, even the baby is asleep. They’ve started moving and then kicking, but he has learned by now that the lack of movement doesn’t mean that something is wrong. It simply means that they’re asleep.
It’ll still be winter when they come, his stump and burn scars will still be plaguing him when the day comes that he’ll have to push a new human being into the world and it’s not for the first time that he realizes just how reckless this pregnancy is.
He doesn’t blame Astrid for his situation, his sleepless nights. He was just as thoughtless when he let her between his legs and eagerly accepted everything she had to offer him. They’re married, they want to love each other completely. Besides, he’s the one with the broken body, he should’ve thought of the implications. Those are certainly the thoughts going through his head. Nowadays, he can’t get around without the use of a cane, a tool usually reserved for his worser days.
With the amount of scarring on his lower body, he even needed Gothi to take a look at him to make sure whether he could even give birth to begin with. Right now, however, his biggest concerns are his sleepless nights.
Hiccup rolls onto his right side with some difficulty and tries to find a position that’s comfortable. Curled up or one leg out, arms underneath his pillow to thicken it up or not. He tries on his left side when the other one doesn’t work out and does his best to keep his grunts of pain to himself. He simply can’t find comfort and the twinges in his scarred muscles and joints don’t help matters much.
It’s maddening, enough to drive him up the walls. It’s frustrating.
Despite his best efforts, Astrid turns around to face him. In the darkness, their eyes meet.
“Hey,” she starts quietly. “Can’t sleep?”
Hiccup shakes his head. At least he can still move something without pain. Until morning comes and a migraine will have inevitably taken up residence inside his brain.
“I’m so tired,” he admits and he wishes that it was enough. That being tired and closing his eyes was all that it took for him to fall asleep, but it isn’t.
Astrid reaches over and cups his cheek. “Just close your eyes, try to get as much rest as you can even if you can’t fall asleep. And when morning comes, I’ll be taking over as chief. You curl up to Toothless, okay?”
Hiccup is tired enough and in enough pain that he agrees. Not that Berk expects him out much in his condition. He nods and Astrid scoots closer. She wraps her arms around him to hold him to her and he wraps one around her. Her chin touches his crown and his forehead her chest, he closes his eyes. She goes back to sleep and he does his best to.
