Disclaimer - Not mine. They belong to the BBC.
Baby Boom
There was a knock at the door, a knock followed by a very familiar buzzing sound that announced that while Rose had gone to the TARDIS to sleep the night, the Doctor had decided to come up here for a visit.
It was very backwards and usually the other way around.
Brilliant. What the hell had happened this time?
"Jackie? I need to speak to you about something important...Jackie?" He pushed open her bedroom door, not caring that two seconds ago she had been fast asleep, considering it was 3 in the morning.
She glared at him. "What do you want? You have any idea what the time is?"
"3:27am on a Monday morning. And didn't I say I needed to talk to you about something?"
Well, almost half past then. Worse than just a normal 3am could ever be, especially considering she started a new job tomorrow. "You wanted to talk, and you have to do it at such a bloody ungodly hour in the morning? Why?!"
He looked a bit sheepish at that, as if only just noticing that to a human it might be considered late. "Sorry if I woke you. I just...I didn't want Rose to hear, and she only fell asleep not long ago. Or at least that's what the TARDIS told me, but she's lied before. Sneaky little..."
She knew what he was about to say, and calling his ship a bitch was a bit...out of character even for him. "Fine! What's so bad and wrong that you can't tell Rose?"
He shifted a bit, before sighing, closing the door behind him and going to sit on the edge of the bed. "Umm, I'm a bit...embarrassed about this actually. And it's not that I won't tell Rose, it's just...I don't know how to and I wanted to talk to someone whose been through a similar thing before, and she just...hasn't. Or if she has, I really, really don't want to know."
Jackie rolled her eyes and let out her breath in a loud rush. "Spit it out, before I thump you one."
He looked at her, shifted slightly, looked towards his feet and giggled in a mad little way. "I'm pregnant."
Oh. Alright.
So, she hadn't really been expecting that, but he is an alien so...
He was WHAT?!
She looked down, couldn't help it really, and just stared. "But...you're male." Then another thought hit her and she looked back up into his face and gave him her best Mum Glare. "It's not Rose's is it? She's too young to be a mum! Especially when it would be her in the dad role."
He looked at her like as if she had gone out of her mind. Her! He's the one claiming he was pregnant.
"You think I was expecting this? And no it isn't Rose's, and males of my species didn't carry the young."
Oh. Well, that was better...sort of. "Then...how?"
He took a deep breath and she immediately knew he was about to launch into a rather lengthy tirade of precisely how he had gotten this way. "Just...tell me how? Not how."
He closed his mouth yet still looked like he was going to go on. She lay back down, and sighed. This was going to take all night, but at least she wouldn't be getting a blow by blow (pun intended) description of the Doctor's sexual escapades.
"Weeell. To put it simply, I got drunk and slept with the wrong species. Technically, they're called Hippos. And that isn't shortened for Hippopotamus either. The females are the dominant sex and feel that carrying the extra weight of a baby is...ungainly, so they evolved the ability to transfer any ova that happens to be fertilised into the male. No matter where they happen to be at the time. It literally transports the cells into the male by focusing on that part of the DNA. Not all species are compatible, and humans aren't and so...well, apart from a few...small differences in biology, we're not that different."
"Small?" So said Mr. Two Hearts and two god knew what else's.
He sighed. "Alright, so maybe I wasn't thinking clearly at the time. Someone thought it would be funny to spike my drink with...well, that doesn't matter. But the point is it isn't my first choice of partner. Or anywhere on the spectrum of species I might usually find attractive for that matter."
"And you slept with one of them, she got pregnant and the baby transferred to you?"
He nodded as an answer. "I only found out later on yesterday. I wasn't feeling right and ran some tests. Glad Rose was up here. Yet again, I'm amazed you didn't hear me scream like a girl. Which is, by the way, exactly how I feel right now. It's humiliating..."
Jackie nodded. She hadn't thought about how a male might feel if they miraculously ended up a mum. She couldn't help but giggle slightly, but at least now she knew why he had come to her and not Rose, and at the time he had. "God, it must have taken some guts to come up here and tell me this."
He scowled. "Yeah, and you laughing at me really isn't helping."
She stopped. Well, after a while she did anyway. "Sorry, Doctor. Can't help it. You'd find it funny if you were female."
"I'm not. And that, if you haven't figured it out by now, is the exact problem here...how's it going to come out?!"
Anything funny about this was wiped from her mind, as she looked down at him and imagined what it would be like to... "Ooooh, ouch. Well, if you're not too scared of things like scalpels and needles and things, you could always have a caesarean. They're a bit in right now, though that might leave a scar."
His hands lowered to his belly and rubbed it carefully. "Scar? Well, not like anyone would ever see it anyway...yeah scar. Ruin my body this will, but it will probably be the only way. And it'd be gone next regeneration anyway."
Jackie nodded. "Yeah, then of course you've gotta ask yourself the big ones...who would perform it, and how will you keep it quiet? Well, first things first. In the morning...well, when the sun is up, you're telling Rose."
The Doctor looked at her and burst into tears.
She couldn't help it, she started laughing again.
The whole scenario was too funny really.
She'll have to go buy one of those new digital cameras so she could keep a photo chronicle of his pregnancy, oh and get him one of those photo albums for baby's first year.
He ran out of the room, and she heard the door slam as he made his way back down to the TARDIS.
The TARDIS...
Right, first things first. She'd have to buy a baby carrier for whenever he drove. He wouldn't be getting anywhere near that ship of his until he had one on that seat she had spotted the few times she'd been inside it.
She didn't fall asleep that night. She was too busy making lists in her head for things a baby would need.
No need to tell her she had to do her part for him.
He'd come to her as a scared mother-to-be after all.
It was the least she could do.