Fic: Everything They Never Had (Kirk/Spock, R)
Title: Everything They Never Had
Fandom: Star Trek: XI
Rating: R
Pairing: Kirk/Spock, established relationship
Wordcount: 3,250
Warnings: Angst, MPreg
Disclaimer: I do not own, and I wish this weren't so because I'd love to make Kirk/Spock canon!
A/N: I love MPreg, I really do, but I also love angst. When I saw this prompt on the st_xi_kink meme, I HAD to write it.
A/N ETA: OMG. I inspired fanart! *squees* yawmin has drawn an adorably hilarious scene from the fic. Thank you so much, yawmin! You can see it here in the comments. The image is also linked to from where it occurs in the fic. =D
Summary: “It wasn’t a baby, Jim. It was some kind of alien parasite. It was growing even as it exited your body.” Jim’s stomach turns, but Bones won’t stop talking. “It was eating your intestines and the human flesh it had grown to mimic a human embryo. It had been working on the placenta and your liver for weeks and I blew it off as normal pregnancy pains.”
Everything They Never Had
It starts when Jim collapses on an away mission.
He wakes up in sickbay, Bones hovering over him.
“Dammit, Jim! Is it even possible for you to go on an away mission without injuring yourself?” Bones is running a tricorder over Jim’s stomach and then he turns to the medical screen above the biobed. “Although, you haven’t got any apparent injuries.”
Jim shrugs. “I was running a lot down there. I probably just got overheated. Rainforest planets do tend to be kinda warm, you know?” He swings his legs off the side of the bed and sits up. “Can I go now?”
“Hold on.” Bones shoves him back onto the bed. “I’m getting some strange readings. Your hormone levels are off.”
Huh. Maybe that’s why Jim hasn’t been feeling very horny lately. Not that he isn’t at all horny; it’s just that normally he wants sex about six times a day and recently he’s only been wanting it two or three times. Sadly, Spock seems happy to be getting a break. “Is my testosterone down?”
“Yeah, and your progesterone and estrogen are up.” Bones shoves the tricorder right up next to Jim’s stomach. “I’m also seeing high levels of the human chorionic gonadotropin hormone.”
“And that means… what?”
“It means you’re pregnant.”
What? Um, Jim’s kind of a man. It’s basically impossible to miss. He’s got facial hair and muscles and a dick. And he doesn’t have boobs or a vagina or the uterus that a baby would need to grow in. So, yeah, he can’t be pregnant. But Bones isn’t laughing, and Jim’s a little scared. “How am I pregnant?”
Bones laughs then. “If you were a girl, this would be the point where I explain the birds and the bees and wonder how you got to be twenty-seven years old without getting the Talk from anyone. But since it’s you… I have no clue.”
“I thought you were supposed to be a doctor!”
“A doctor, yes. An omniscient god, no.” Bones points to the screen above the biobed. “See this blob? This is a placenta. See this line? This is your rectum.”
“I’ve got a baby attached to my poop chute.” It’s impossible, but the evidence is staring at him from the biobed display. And it’s literally staring at him because Bones has moved the picture in past the placenta and the freaky embryo is staring at him with big bulbous eyes.
“Yep. It looks like you’re about four months along. Please tell me you got with some freaky alien man four months ago because otherwise I’m at a loss to explain this.”
Jim feels wounded. He’s been with Spock for six months now and after it took him a year to convince the guy to date him, he’s not going to cheat on him with a freaky alien. “The only alien I’ve had sex with is Spock. And four months ago we were busy doing that research mission on Gentaly XI. It was uninhabited, so there wasn’t much chance for sex with freaky aliens.”
“Well, Spock is pretty freaky if you ask me. Who knows what his messed up genetic code has done to his biology.” Bones runs the tricorder over Jim’s stomach one more time. “I’m seeing mostly human DNA, but there are some traces of alien DNA.” He taps a few buttons on the tricorder. “The computer says it isn’t Vulcan DNA but unless you’ve been doing it with aliens besides Spock, the kid has to be his.” He grins at Jim. “You wanna know the sex?”
Jim shrugs. “Nah. I want it to be a surprise.” Then his mind catches up to the conversation. Spock is going to be a dad. And Jim is going to be a dad. And they are going to be dads together. “Shit.”
~*~
It probably wasn’t the best idea for Jim to wait until Spock was buried cock-deep inside him to tell Spock about the baby.
Spock freezes, blinks once, twice, and then pulls out.
“What are you doing? Spock? I need to come!”
“Informing someone you cheated on them during conjugation is not conducive to continuation of the act.” Spock is sitting on the edge of the bed with his arms crossed. His back is straight and his lips are tight. Jim hasn’t seen him this angry since he pulled the whole “you never loved her” thing because of Nero.
When he works out exactly what Spock says (because it’s not easy to understand four and five syllable words when 90% of your blood is in your dick), he gets angry too. “I didn’t cheat on you!”
Spock glares at him. “Your declaration of ‘hey, Spock, I’m going to have a baby in five months, fuck me harder’ belays that statement. I ask that you not tell me who the mother is. My actions towards her may prove dangerous.”
Jim sits up and glares back, though hearing that Spock is violently jealous is inappropriately turning him on. “I’m the mother. It’s your baby, you asshole.”
Spock blinks at him again. “I do not understand.”
“Your freaky alien sperm got me pregnant. I’ve got a four-month-old embryo up my butt.”
“That is impossible.”
Jim shoves him off the bed. “It is not! I’ve got your baby inside of me. Now deal or get out of my room before I hurt you.” This was not how Jim imagined the conversation going. Actually, he didn’t really imagine this conversation at all. He was planning on telling Spock over a nice cozy dinner, not during the middle of an epic sex session, but his brain didn’t seem to like the plan.
Spock stares up at him from the floor. Slowly he moves till he is kneeling in front of Jim. He reaches out and places a hand on Jim’s stomach, which is still flat and doesn’t betray the baby at all. “It is my child.”
Jim covers Spock’s hand with his own. “Yep.”
Spock surges upward, pressing a hard kiss to Jim’s lips. The kiss is brutal and punishing but Spock’s hands on Jim are gentle as he guides him back onto the bed. Spock pushes into Jim without breaking the kiss. They make love, slowly, softly, perfectly.
Afterwards, Spock presses a kiss to his stomach. “Marry me,” he says.
He’s hovering possessively over Jim, one hand pressed against Jim’s side. Considering that Jim’s wanted to marry him since the moment that Spock walked onto the Enterprise’s bridge and requested to be made first officer, Jim can’t say no. Instead, he twines his fingers with Spock’s and pulls him into a kiss, whispering “Yes” against his lips just before they touch.
~*~
Jim never considers aborting the baby. It was the first thing Bones suggested, but Jim doesn’t want to hear anything about “the dangers of ectopic pregnancies”. It’s his baby, which means it’s worth a little pain and a chance of death.
Spock worries more about the dangers, but Jim knows he wants the baby too. He can tell from the way that Spock refuses to let him go on away missions and how Spock’s hands are always on his belly in private.
Things don’t change much for the next two months of the pregnancy. Jim’s belly grows to the point where he shows even in his baggiest uniform, but the crew doesn’t mention it. He assumes it’s because they don’t want him to bite their heads off for insinuating he’s fat. (And hey, he only flipped out on Bones once, and that was because he was running on two hours of sleep over three days. It was totally not his fault.)
But now that his belly is showing, Spock can’t seem to keep his hands off of it. Chekov catches Spock grabbing at him in the turbolift. Scotty spots them behind a turbine in engineering. Uhura walks in on Spock kissing his belly in the observation deck and backs out speechless. Bones already knows, which means Spock doesn’t mind getting handsy in front of him. Prenatal sickbay visits are fun just because Jim likes to watch Bones splutter over Spock groping him.
Jim knows there are rumors going around the ship about them. Everyone knows he and Spock are dating (declaring publicly that he was going to woo Spock the day after Uhura broke up with him kind of put them at the top of the rumor mill’s radar), but they tend to be somewhat circumspect about their relationship. (That time in the Captain’s chair when he hit the all call button and the whole ship heard him fucking Spock notwithstanding.) He ignores the rumors for a while though, until he sees Chekov lean over at the navigation console to inform Sulu that “Commander Spock is a chubby chaser!”
First of all, Jim is not chubby. And second of all, Spock is not a chubby chaser. He’s just a very territorial Vulcan. This time when Jim hits the all call, it isn’t an accident.
“Attention members of the Enterprise crew. This is your captain speaking. I would like to inform you that my fiancé, Commander Spock, is not a chubby chaser, regardless of the rumors you may have heard.” Chekov winces guiltily. “The rumors are based on the fact that Spock has been seen groping my belly, which is not chubby. The reason it is… somewhat larger than normal is because I am pregnant with Commander Spock’s baby. I’m having the kid in three months and then Spock and I are getting hitched. Deal with it. Captain out.”
Jim turns to grin at his soon-to-be-husband. Spock is already on his way towards the captain’s chair. Jim tries not to flinch and thinks up excuses for his actions. He’d blame it on hormones, but he hasn’t had a single mood swing or food craving since the pregnancy started. The only symptoms he has are excessive tiredness and unending hunger (for normal food), and neither of those are good excuses.
Spock steps up to the captain’s chair and yanks Jim upwards into a punishing kiss. His hands are on Jim’s stomach. “Mine,” he says in Jim’s ear.
“You’re not mad?” Jim asks softly.
Spock shakes his head. “It would have been more logical to inform the crew in a less offensive way that they were misinformed, but I do not wish to hide the pregnancy. I now also have the whole crew to back me up when I declare you unfit to join away missions.”
Damn. Jim didn’t think that one through at all. Still, if it got Spock’s hands on him in the middle of the bridge with everyone watching, he’s not going to complain. Instead, he turns the comm over to Sulu and heads for a nearby meeting room. He needs Spock to fuck him now, and their bedroom is way too far away.
~*~
Jim wonders sometimes why he accepted the pregnancy so quickly. Bones says it’s probably because the baby is pumping endorphins into his bloodstream. Apparently this isn’t common in normal female pregnancies. Bones chalks it up to the pointy-eared DNA in his baby.
It isn’t that Jim never wanted kids. He did want them; he just wanted them farther down the line. Twenty-seven feels so young sometimes. He’d always though forty would be a great age to have kids. He’d be an Admiral by then, and he’d be able to settle down at home with them. His mother had spent way too much time off-world.
He knows Spock thought he gave up kids when he got together with Jim. That’s part of the reason he’s so clingy. He wanted to help repopulate his race, but after a year, Jim had convinced him to do what felt right, which, thankfully, meant sexing it up with Jim. Now Spock’s been given the chance to have a kid and repopulate his race and be a good little Vulcan, and he didn’t even have to break up with Jim to do it.
Jim is just glad that he gets to keep Spock and his baby. He loves both of them, and he doesn’t know what he would do without them.
~*~
Seven months into the pregnancy, Jim starts to get small pains in his stomach. Bones tells him it’s probably just because the baby is shifting organs around to make room for itself, but the pain feels too sharp for that. Jim tries to ignore it though. Bones is still trying to get him to terminate, and Jim does not want to give him more ammunition.
After a week, the pain is so bad that Jim cannot stand up when it is happening. He hides it by spending most of his time sitting, but he can’t sit all of the time. When Sulu requests that he look at something at the navigation console, Jim stands carefully and walks slower than normal so that he doesn’t aggravate the pain.
He gets halfway there before the pain shoots through his stomach and he falls down. The pain increases and he curls himself around his stomach. He doesn’t know if he’s trying to protect his baby or himself.
There is screaming going on around him, but he can’t register what they are saying. When he feels Spock leaning over him, he grabs at him. He catches Spock’s shirt, and then Spock picks him up and cradles him like he’s a baby himself.
The pain is ripping through his stomach now and all Jim can think about is the baby. It’s too early, but medicine is better than it used to be. Bones can keep the baby alive if they get to him in time. He croaks out “Sickbay”, but he doesn’t know if Spock hears him. Jim presses a hand to his stomach. He wants to hold the baby in. He wants to keep it safe.
He blacks out.
~*~
He wakes up in sickbay with Spock’s hand in his. The first thing he says is “Where’s my baby?”
Bones is standing nearby. He shakes his head and turns away.
Jim grasps Spock’s hand tighter. “Where is our baby, Spock?”
Spock won’t look at him. “There was no baby.”
“There was a baby.” Jim felt it. It was inside of him, kicking him and mucking about in his internal organs.
Bones turns back. He has tears in his eyes, and Jim’s heart breaks. “It wasn’t a baby, Jim. It ripped its way out from inside you while Spock carried you to sickbay. It was some kind of alien parasite. It was growing even as it exited your body.” Jim’s stomach turns, but Bones won’t stop talking. “It was eating your intestines and the human flesh it had grown to mimic a human embryo. You must have picked it up on that planet we thought was uninhabited, and we just let it keep growing this whole time." Bones shakes his head. "It had been eating the placenta and your liver for weeks and I blew it off as normal pregnancy pains.”
Jim’s stomach lurches and he retches. It feels like his stomach has been ripped to pieces, and nothing comes up. Spock clutches at his hand and Bones sticks him with a hypospray that calms his stomach, but nothing can calm his mind.
“I loved it. It was my baby, and Spock’s baby, and I loved it!”
Spock stands and pulls him close. His hands don’t go anywhere near Jim’s stomach.
Jim is the one who touches his now-flat belly. “I wanted it so badly.”
“You didn’t,” Bones says. “It was pumping you full of endorphins to make you feel happy, like you wanted to be pregnant, so that you wouldn’t terminate.”
Jim shoves Spock away and tries to get out of bed to throttle Bones. “It was my baby, and I wanted it!” He can’t get out of the covers and Spock is holding onto him tightly and Bones is too far away and Jim can’t do anything.
Bones leaves then. Spock moves into the bed with Jim, but his hands stay on Jim’s shoulders. Jim wants to yank them down and press them against his belly. He wants Spock to get possessive and happy and do that small smile thing where his eyebrows go up and the left side of his mouth quirks just the tiniest bit. But now there’s no baby to be all possessive and happy about. There never was.
The question is out of his mouth before he thinks about it. “What happened to the… thing?”
Spock closes his eyes and leans his head on Jim’s shoulder. “I shot it.”
Jim thinks then of how Spock must have felt seeing Jim lying on a biobed with a creature that they thought was a baby eating its way out of Jim. How he must have felt when he had to shoot that creature. Jim presses a kiss to Spock’s hair. “I’m sorry.”
“I am too.”
And Jim can hear in that statement everything that he is feeling. Sadness, anger, and the painful joy that Jim is still alive. It’s everything that Jim is feeling too.
Jim moves to take Spock’s hand, but he stops when he sees the gleam of gold on his ring finger. They were getting married because of the baby. If there was no baby…
Jim takes a deep breath. “I understand if you… if you don’t want to get married.”
“Jim?” Spock pulls back until he is looking Jim straight in the eyes.
“I mean… there was no baby.” And it breaks Jim’s heart all over again to say that. “You wanted to get married because of the baby, so if there isn’t one then…”
Spock shakes his head fiercely. “I asked you to marry me because I love you. I will not take that back.” He falters, looks away. “Unless you do not wish to marry.”
Jim takes his hand then, feeling Spock’s fingers trace over the edge of Jim’s engagement ring (a silly old Earth custom, but it had delighted him when Spock had handed him the ring a week after he announced their engagement over the intercom). “I love you. I still want to get married. And I want to do it as soon as possible.” Not because he’s afraid Spock will leave him once the idea that there is no baby sinks in, but because the original date of the wedding had been planned to accommodate the baby. It was going to be two months old by then, and they were going to do the wedding colors in blue if it was a boy or pink if it was a girl. Jim doesn’t know what color they will choose now. Red for blood and pain?
Spock kisses him softly, and Jim knows he understands and agrees. There is more to deal with (they have to tell the crew; they have to replan the wedding; they’ll have to call his mother and Spock’s dad again and they had both been so happy the last time; there are gifts for the baby bought by the crew that they’ll have to return) but Jim isn’t ready to deal with it.
They lie together in the bed without speaking. Jim’s brain brings up things like try again? someone’s got to be able to help men get pregnant and adoption? and what about a surrogate? but it’s too soon. He pushes the thoughts away and focuses on what has just happened, trying to understand.
And when Spock’s hand finally fumbles at his waist, too far away to touch skin but about where the baby used to be, Jim lets his tears fall in honor of losing everything they never had.
Fandom: Star Trek: XI
Rating: R
Pairing: Kirk/Spock, established relationship
Wordcount: 3,250
Warnings: Angst, MPreg
Disclaimer: I do not own, and I wish this weren't so because I'd love to make Kirk/Spock canon!
A/N: I love MPreg, I really do, but I also love angst. When I saw this prompt on the st_xi_kink meme, I HAD to write it.
A/N ETA: OMG. I inspired fanart! *squees* yawmin has drawn an adorably hilarious scene from the fic. Thank you so much, yawmin! You can see it here in the comments. The image is also linked to from where it occurs in the fic. =D
Summary: “It wasn’t a baby, Jim. It was some kind of alien parasite. It was growing even as it exited your body.” Jim’s stomach turns, but Bones won’t stop talking. “It was eating your intestines and the human flesh it had grown to mimic a human embryo. It had been working on the placenta and your liver for weeks and I blew it off as normal pregnancy pains.”
Everything They Never Had
It starts when Jim collapses on an away mission.
He wakes up in sickbay, Bones hovering over him.
“Dammit, Jim! Is it even possible for you to go on an away mission without injuring yourself?” Bones is running a tricorder over Jim’s stomach and then he turns to the medical screen above the biobed. “Although, you haven’t got any apparent injuries.”
Jim shrugs. “I was running a lot down there. I probably just got overheated. Rainforest planets do tend to be kinda warm, you know?” He swings his legs off the side of the bed and sits up. “Can I go now?”
“Hold on.” Bones shoves him back onto the bed. “I’m getting some strange readings. Your hormone levels are off.”
Huh. Maybe that’s why Jim hasn’t been feeling very horny lately. Not that he isn’t at all horny; it’s just that normally he wants sex about six times a day and recently he’s only been wanting it two or three times. Sadly, Spock seems happy to be getting a break. “Is my testosterone down?”
“Yeah, and your progesterone and estrogen are up.” Bones shoves the tricorder right up next to Jim’s stomach. “I’m also seeing high levels of the human chorionic gonadotropin hormone.”
“And that means… what?”
“It means you’re pregnant.”
What? Um, Jim’s kind of a man. It’s basically impossible to miss. He’s got facial hair and muscles and a dick. And he doesn’t have boobs or a vagina or the uterus that a baby would need to grow in. So, yeah, he can’t be pregnant. But Bones isn’t laughing, and Jim’s a little scared. “How am I pregnant?”
Bones laughs then. “If you were a girl, this would be the point where I explain the birds and the bees and wonder how you got to be twenty-seven years old without getting the Talk from anyone. But since it’s you… I have no clue.”
“I thought you were supposed to be a doctor!”
“A doctor, yes. An omniscient god, no.” Bones points to the screen above the biobed. “See this blob? This is a placenta. See this line? This is your rectum.”
“I’ve got a baby attached to my poop chute.” It’s impossible, but the evidence is staring at him from the biobed display. And it’s literally staring at him because Bones has moved the picture in past the placenta and the freaky embryo is staring at him with big bulbous eyes.
“Yep. It looks like you’re about four months along. Please tell me you got with some freaky alien man four months ago because otherwise I’m at a loss to explain this.”
Jim feels wounded. He’s been with Spock for six months now and after it took him a year to convince the guy to date him, he’s not going to cheat on him with a freaky alien. “The only alien I’ve had sex with is Spock. And four months ago we were busy doing that research mission on Gentaly XI. It was uninhabited, so there wasn’t much chance for sex with freaky aliens.”
“Well, Spock is pretty freaky if you ask me. Who knows what his messed up genetic code has done to his biology.” Bones runs the tricorder over Jim’s stomach one more time. “I’m seeing mostly human DNA, but there are some traces of alien DNA.” He taps a few buttons on the tricorder. “The computer says it isn’t Vulcan DNA but unless you’ve been doing it with aliens besides Spock, the kid has to be his.” He grins at Jim. “You wanna know the sex?”
Jim shrugs. “Nah. I want it to be a surprise.” Then his mind catches up to the conversation. Spock is going to be a dad. And Jim is going to be a dad. And they are going to be dads together. “Shit.”
~*~
It probably wasn’t the best idea for Jim to wait until Spock was buried cock-deep inside him to tell Spock about the baby.
Spock freezes, blinks once, twice, and then pulls out.
“What are you doing? Spock? I need to come!”
“Informing someone you cheated on them during conjugation is not conducive to continuation of the act.” Spock is sitting on the edge of the bed with his arms crossed. His back is straight and his lips are tight. Jim hasn’t seen him this angry since he pulled the whole “you never loved her” thing because of Nero.
When he works out exactly what Spock says (because it’s not easy to understand four and five syllable words when 90% of your blood is in your dick), he gets angry too. “I didn’t cheat on you!”
Spock glares at him. “Your declaration of ‘hey, Spock, I’m going to have a baby in five months, fuck me harder’ belays that statement. I ask that you not tell me who the mother is. My actions towards her may prove dangerous.”
Jim sits up and glares back, though hearing that Spock is violently jealous is inappropriately turning him on. “I’m the mother. It’s your baby, you asshole.”
Spock blinks at him again. “I do not understand.”
“Your freaky alien sperm got me pregnant. I’ve got a four-month-old embryo up my butt.”
“That is impossible.”
Jim shoves him off the bed. “It is not! I’ve got your baby inside of me. Now deal or get out of my room before I hurt you.” This was not how Jim imagined the conversation going. Actually, he didn’t really imagine this conversation at all. He was planning on telling Spock over a nice cozy dinner, not during the middle of an epic sex session, but his brain didn’t seem to like the plan.
Spock stares up at him from the floor. Slowly he moves till he is kneeling in front of Jim. He reaches out and places a hand on Jim’s stomach, which is still flat and doesn’t betray the baby at all. “It is my child.”
Jim covers Spock’s hand with his own. “Yep.”
Spock surges upward, pressing a hard kiss to Jim’s lips. The kiss is brutal and punishing but Spock’s hands on Jim are gentle as he guides him back onto the bed. Spock pushes into Jim without breaking the kiss. They make love, slowly, softly, perfectly.
Afterwards, Spock presses a kiss to his stomach. “Marry me,” he says.
He’s hovering possessively over Jim, one hand pressed against Jim’s side. Considering that Jim’s wanted to marry him since the moment that Spock walked onto the Enterprise’s bridge and requested to be made first officer, Jim can’t say no. Instead, he twines his fingers with Spock’s and pulls him into a kiss, whispering “Yes” against his lips just before they touch.
~*~
Jim never considers aborting the baby. It was the first thing Bones suggested, but Jim doesn’t want to hear anything about “the dangers of ectopic pregnancies”. It’s his baby, which means it’s worth a little pain and a chance of death.
Spock worries more about the dangers, but Jim knows he wants the baby too. He can tell from the way that Spock refuses to let him go on away missions and how Spock’s hands are always on his belly in private.
Things don’t change much for the next two months of the pregnancy. Jim’s belly grows to the point where he shows even in his baggiest uniform, but the crew doesn’t mention it. He assumes it’s because they don’t want him to bite their heads off for insinuating he’s fat. (And hey, he only flipped out on Bones once, and that was because he was running on two hours of sleep over three days. It was totally not his fault.)
But now that his belly is showing, Spock can’t seem to keep his hands off of it. Chekov catches Spock grabbing at him in the turbolift. Scotty spots them behind a turbine in engineering. Uhura walks in on Spock kissing his belly in the observation deck and backs out speechless. Bones already knows, which means Spock doesn’t mind getting handsy in front of him. Prenatal sickbay visits are fun just because Jim likes to watch Bones splutter over Spock groping him.
Jim knows there are rumors going around the ship about them. Everyone knows he and Spock are dating (declaring publicly that he was going to woo Spock the day after Uhura broke up with him kind of put them at the top of the rumor mill’s radar), but they tend to be somewhat circumspect about their relationship. (That time in the Captain’s chair when he hit the all call button and the whole ship heard him fucking Spock notwithstanding.) He ignores the rumors for a while though, until he sees Chekov lean over at the navigation console to inform Sulu that “Commander Spock is a chubby chaser!”
First of all, Jim is not chubby. And second of all, Spock is not a chubby chaser. He’s just a very territorial Vulcan. This time when Jim hits the all call, it isn’t an accident.
“Attention members of the Enterprise crew. This is your captain speaking. I would like to inform you that my fiancé, Commander Spock, is not a chubby chaser, regardless of the rumors you may have heard.” Chekov winces guiltily. “The rumors are based on the fact that Spock has been seen groping my belly, which is not chubby. The reason it is… somewhat larger than normal is because I am pregnant with Commander Spock’s baby. I’m having the kid in three months and then Spock and I are getting hitched. Deal with it. Captain out.”
Jim turns to grin at his soon-to-be-husband. Spock is already on his way towards the captain’s chair. Jim tries not to flinch and thinks up excuses for his actions. He’d blame it on hormones, but he hasn’t had a single mood swing or food craving since the pregnancy started. The only symptoms he has are excessive tiredness and unending hunger (for normal food), and neither of those are good excuses.
Spock steps up to the captain’s chair and yanks Jim upwards into a punishing kiss. His hands are on Jim’s stomach. “Mine,” he says in Jim’s ear.
“You’re not mad?” Jim asks softly.
Spock shakes his head. “It would have been more logical to inform the crew in a less offensive way that they were misinformed, but I do not wish to hide the pregnancy. I now also have the whole crew to back me up when I declare you unfit to join away missions.”
Damn. Jim didn’t think that one through at all. Still, if it got Spock’s hands on him in the middle of the bridge with everyone watching, he’s not going to complain. Instead, he turns the comm over to Sulu and heads for a nearby meeting room. He needs Spock to fuck him now, and their bedroom is way too far away.
~*~
Jim wonders sometimes why he accepted the pregnancy so quickly. Bones says it’s probably because the baby is pumping endorphins into his bloodstream. Apparently this isn’t common in normal female pregnancies. Bones chalks it up to the pointy-eared DNA in his baby.
It isn’t that Jim never wanted kids. He did want them; he just wanted them farther down the line. Twenty-seven feels so young sometimes. He’d always though forty would be a great age to have kids. He’d be an Admiral by then, and he’d be able to settle down at home with them. His mother had spent way too much time off-world.
He knows Spock thought he gave up kids when he got together with Jim. That’s part of the reason he’s so clingy. He wanted to help repopulate his race, but after a year, Jim had convinced him to do what felt right, which, thankfully, meant sexing it up with Jim. Now Spock’s been given the chance to have a kid and repopulate his race and be a good little Vulcan, and he didn’t even have to break up with Jim to do it.
Jim is just glad that he gets to keep Spock and his baby. He loves both of them, and he doesn’t know what he would do without them.
~*~
Seven months into the pregnancy, Jim starts to get small pains in his stomach. Bones tells him it’s probably just because the baby is shifting organs around to make room for itself, but the pain feels too sharp for that. Jim tries to ignore it though. Bones is still trying to get him to terminate, and Jim does not want to give him more ammunition.
After a week, the pain is so bad that Jim cannot stand up when it is happening. He hides it by spending most of his time sitting, but he can’t sit all of the time. When Sulu requests that he look at something at the navigation console, Jim stands carefully and walks slower than normal so that he doesn’t aggravate the pain.
He gets halfway there before the pain shoots through his stomach and he falls down. The pain increases and he curls himself around his stomach. He doesn’t know if he’s trying to protect his baby or himself.
There is screaming going on around him, but he can’t register what they are saying. When he feels Spock leaning over him, he grabs at him. He catches Spock’s shirt, and then Spock picks him up and cradles him like he’s a baby himself.
The pain is ripping through his stomach now and all Jim can think about is the baby. It’s too early, but medicine is better than it used to be. Bones can keep the baby alive if they get to him in time. He croaks out “Sickbay”, but he doesn’t know if Spock hears him. Jim presses a hand to his stomach. He wants to hold the baby in. He wants to keep it safe.
He blacks out.
~*~
He wakes up in sickbay with Spock’s hand in his. The first thing he says is “Where’s my baby?”
Bones is standing nearby. He shakes his head and turns away.
Jim grasps Spock’s hand tighter. “Where is our baby, Spock?”
Spock won’t look at him. “There was no baby.”
“There was a baby.” Jim felt it. It was inside of him, kicking him and mucking about in his internal organs.
Bones turns back. He has tears in his eyes, and Jim’s heart breaks. “It wasn’t a baby, Jim. It ripped its way out from inside you while Spock carried you to sickbay. It was some kind of alien parasite. It was growing even as it exited your body.” Jim’s stomach turns, but Bones won’t stop talking. “It was eating your intestines and the human flesh it had grown to mimic a human embryo. You must have picked it up on that planet we thought was uninhabited, and we just let it keep growing this whole time." Bones shakes his head. "It had been eating the placenta and your liver for weeks and I blew it off as normal pregnancy pains.”
Jim’s stomach lurches and he retches. It feels like his stomach has been ripped to pieces, and nothing comes up. Spock clutches at his hand and Bones sticks him with a hypospray that calms his stomach, but nothing can calm his mind.
“I loved it. It was my baby, and Spock’s baby, and I loved it!”
Spock stands and pulls him close. His hands don’t go anywhere near Jim’s stomach.
Jim is the one who touches his now-flat belly. “I wanted it so badly.”
“You didn’t,” Bones says. “It was pumping you full of endorphins to make you feel happy, like you wanted to be pregnant, so that you wouldn’t terminate.”
Jim shoves Spock away and tries to get out of bed to throttle Bones. “It was my baby, and I wanted it!” He can’t get out of the covers and Spock is holding onto him tightly and Bones is too far away and Jim can’t do anything.
Bones leaves then. Spock moves into the bed with Jim, but his hands stay on Jim’s shoulders. Jim wants to yank them down and press them against his belly. He wants Spock to get possessive and happy and do that small smile thing where his eyebrows go up and the left side of his mouth quirks just the tiniest bit. But now there’s no baby to be all possessive and happy about. There never was.
The question is out of his mouth before he thinks about it. “What happened to the… thing?”
Spock closes his eyes and leans his head on Jim’s shoulder. “I shot it.”
Jim thinks then of how Spock must have felt seeing Jim lying on a biobed with a creature that they thought was a baby eating its way out of Jim. How he must have felt when he had to shoot that creature. Jim presses a kiss to Spock’s hair. “I’m sorry.”
“I am too.”
And Jim can hear in that statement everything that he is feeling. Sadness, anger, and the painful joy that Jim is still alive. It’s everything that Jim is feeling too.
Jim moves to take Spock’s hand, but he stops when he sees the gleam of gold on his ring finger. They were getting married because of the baby. If there was no baby…
Jim takes a deep breath. “I understand if you… if you don’t want to get married.”
“Jim?” Spock pulls back until he is looking Jim straight in the eyes.
“I mean… there was no baby.” And it breaks Jim’s heart all over again to say that. “You wanted to get married because of the baby, so if there isn’t one then…”
Spock shakes his head fiercely. “I asked you to marry me because I love you. I will not take that back.” He falters, looks away. “Unless you do not wish to marry.”
Jim takes his hand then, feeling Spock’s fingers trace over the edge of Jim’s engagement ring (a silly old Earth custom, but it had delighted him when Spock had handed him the ring a week after he announced their engagement over the intercom). “I love you. I still want to get married. And I want to do it as soon as possible.” Not because he’s afraid Spock will leave him once the idea that there is no baby sinks in, but because the original date of the wedding had been planned to accommodate the baby. It was going to be two months old by then, and they were going to do the wedding colors in blue if it was a boy or pink if it was a girl. Jim doesn’t know what color they will choose now. Red for blood and pain?
Spock kisses him softly, and Jim knows he understands and agrees. There is more to deal with (they have to tell the crew; they have to replan the wedding; they’ll have to call his mother and Spock’s dad again and they had both been so happy the last time; there are gifts for the baby bought by the crew that they’ll have to return) but Jim isn’t ready to deal with it.
They lie together in the bed without speaking. Jim’s brain brings up things like try again? someone’s got to be able to help men get pregnant and adoption? and what about a surrogate? but it’s too soon. He pushes the thoughts away and focuses on what has just happened, trying to understand.
And when Spock’s hand finally fumbles at his waist, too far away to touch skin but about where the baby used to be, Jim lets his tears fall in honor of losing everything they never had.