itle: Nine Months
Summary: I'm a closet whore for Mick kid fic. So here we go, I'm writing my own. Beth gets knocked up and the delightful duo deal.
Thanks to PNWgal and Hydriotaphia for giving this a read through and encouraging my crazy
Author's note: There's pregnancy sex herein, well, later herein. Cause I'm damaged like that and can't seem to write these two without sex. I've written it into separate chapters and will clearly have it marked in copious author's notes, so you can skip it if that sort of thing wigs you out and you'll miss nothing but me and my odd sexual proclivities
Part One
The smell should have tipped him off first. He was so inured to her scent that the cocktail of hormones and the hiccup of her cycle had only passingly registered. But he hadn't known what he was looking for.
The syncopation of the echoing heartbeat, a second rhythm chasing Beth's around the apartment, was what finally threw him off. At first it had terrified him. He had stalked the apartment, on the verge of pulling up the floorboards, trying to figure out whether he was going insane or if someone was trying to drive him there.
They'd crawled into bed, Beth's mouth on his and hands pulling at his pants for the brief interlude before he retreated to his freezer.
He'd begun a trail of kisses, mouth to neck to breasts to stomach to pelvis.
And froze.
The thud.
He pressed an ear up against her.
"Mick?" Beth whined.
"Shhh..."
"You sh-"
"Beth," Mick's latent breath kicked up a notch. He listened. It was unmistakably coming from her. The second heartbeat. "Oh God. Oh God."
She was clothed, scooped up and in his arms in a heartbeat. Two heartbeats.
"Beth" he shook his head. "It can't be. It just can't be, but what the hell else--"
"Mick, what's wrong?" Beth struggled to jump from his arms but he held her.
"Nothing. Everything," Mick curled her up like a weight bar, again to his ear.
"That's very cryptic but you're freaking me out." Mick lowered her to the ground.
"I think you're pregnant."
The little cadence beat questions like how and why, what now and what if, at him, questions no one seemed to be able to answer. Not the pile of research Beth had buried herself in, not Josef, not the litany of doctors – vampire and otherwise – Mick had chased down, not the covert tests, not even the damned soothsayers brought in by the older vampires on Josef's payroll.
Beth blushing and Mick hedging, they inventoried every position, every location for conception. They recounted food and blood eaten, Beth gave gallons of her own blood and bodily fluids for the testing. The movements of the sun and the moon were tracked and every possible moment was analyzed. And still the reality of Mick and Beth and the life that they had somehow created was a mystery and a miracle.
And so, with little other choice, they decided to ride the pendulum between worry and acceptance for the next eight months.
"I'm just going to live in the bathroom," Beth lay flat against the cool tile, Mick's hands rubbing her back, an endless ache warring with the waves of nausea. "Bring me my laptop. I'm staying here now."
"Beth, this is natural. Normal. We should be happy."
"You be happy. I'll be vomiting," she groaned.
Mick sat on the couch, shirt half open, feet bare. There was a time when that was all Beth needed to drive him to the floor and ruin another shirt.
But for the last two months every Henley made it from the wash to the drawer to Mick without incident. His hands stayed above her waist, fingers restricted to her stomach and the light workings of her back and shoulders.
"Where did you go, libido?" Beth glanced down at her silent self. "Are you ever coming back?"
"Here," Josef thrust a cigar into Mick's hand, its rich smell of ball games and old men, sparking memories in the young vampire. His best friend concealed the ache of jealousy with the practiced ease of every other emotion. Just a flicker.
"What's this?" Mick found a perch for the cigar while Josef chewed at his.
"Cohiba Maduros. It's tradition, I hear," Josef flicked a silver lighter in front of his own cigar. "Celebrating new life with a puff of death into the lungs. We could follow my traditions, but I'd need time to find a fresh goat."
She couldn't sleep alone anymore. Mick spent more time in a bed than he had during his brief stint as a human. It was in the dark hours of the night; she tossed and turned and he sat beside her, paperwork spread.
"Mick," her voice was tentative, laced with fear, and she didn't turn to face him. Then in a tone only his ears could hear, "what if there's something ... wrong with the baby?"
"There won't be. There can't be," Mick soothed. He dropped the folder and wrapped his arms around her.
"You don't know," tears now. "What if this is a punishment, not a reward?"
"How can a baby be a bad thing?" Mick bit back his own worries. The God that took away his humanity was the same one that gave him Beth, so he was familiar with the give and take of this universe. Take a child, give a monster sounded like a viable proposition.
"But what if..."
"What if you are making a miracle?" Mick asked. He bent over her and kissed the bump. He could worry enough for them both. "What if you are giving me everything I've ever wanted?"
A quick lesson from Ryder and Mick began filling the computer with pictures of her, of the changes. Of her glow, her frowns, the tiny bulge against her muscled abdomen. She stole the camera and shot his hands on her, him on her, him. They both ignored the undercurrent of fear that the bubble might burst and the joy would pop out of their lives as fast as it came in.
"Motherfucking --"
"Beth, he means well."
"Fuck his good intentions," a slam of her shoe against the wall as Beth sent her heel flying. "Fuck Guillermo, fuck the coroner and fuck this story."
Mick froze, unable to suss out the appropriate response. Her other shoe flew. Too close to his head to be entirely accidental.
"I don't care if this kid is dangling from my goddamn uterus, if I want to see a corpse, your little vamp buddy better get the hell out of my way or I'll going to bring a flamethrower next time."