Title: The Business of Babies
Summary: Because Draco Malfoy finds preparing to be a 'dad' just as daunting as trying to understand his infuriating wife. A sort interlude following Quirks.
Rating: Hard T, for some language and the fact that the entire story is about sex. Or... yeah. T.
Note: This ficlet was written circa 2007, not long after Quirks first appeared. I've had the intention to post it for years, but typing, sometimes, is hard, and college, among other things, tended to get in the way. But now that I am a graduate and preparing for a life spent in the pursuit of my own, original work, I think it is time that I post all of my hairbrained fics on this site for people to, hopefully, enjoy, as I prepare to leave fanfiction behind for good. There are… a lot more stories coming, as I am loathe to post anything toounfinished, so I'm busy adding endings to everything I've only half thought through.
Do not mock me too much for the writing style. This is over four years old. I like to think my writing has matured, at least a little, from the style seen here.
Incredibly short, but sweet. Enjoy.
They were fumbling over clothes, hastily undoing snaps and zippers to find the smooth, warm flesh that lay beneath the obstructing garments. In the end they settled on a compromise: his tie slack around his neck, shirt half undone and fly unzipped while her knickers were gone and skirt bunched up around her waist, she somehow managing to get her bra off despite still having on her shirt.
Only God knew how she managed to pull off that last one. But she was a woman and women had freakish abilities like being able to remove their bras while they still had on their shirts. Draco had asked her how she did it once, and Hermione had only shrugged. He'd left it at that, not entirely sure the woman really knew how it went about herself.
Blaise suggested it was something women were just born with knowing how to do, programmed into their DNA right next to genes dictating bitchyness and all that. It made a lot more sense that way, and Draco simply relaxed and delighted in the feel of his wife's warm, beautiful, and now impossibly large (he wanted to drool) breasts under his hands. Under her shirt.
He laid her down on the couch, beyond giddy at the lusty look in her eyes. He thought about how much sex he hadn't had in the past two months and he wanted to take a moment and do a happy dance at finally getting back in. The words 'finally' and 'yes' and thank God repeated in his mind like a scratched record, but then she opened her legs and he looked down and oh Jesus, he'd missed this. Hermione licked her lips and he was on her then, the stupid happy dance and scratched record in his brain forgotten because she was ready for him and he was ready to dive in but oh—
Oh.
The baby.
Draco stopped completely, sitting back on his haunches and staring at the baby-swollen tummy obstructing his path. Hermione blinked, confused, calling his name once, twice, and not getting his attention. She pushed herself up a bit on her hands and looked down to where he was staring. He cast his eyes to hers. She said, oh.
No shit.
She suggested trying a different angle, and Draco was quick in rearranging their positions. And then rearranging them again. And again. Hermione was hysterical with laughter by the fourth adjustment, and Draco was so frustrated that he was near tears. It simply wasn't fair. He hadn't shagged in two months—two freaking months! Did anyone know what that did to a man? No matter where he was or who he was with, he thought about sex. Sex with Hermione here, sex with Hermione there. Why, just yesterday afternoon he was in the middle of tea with his mother and he began fantasizing about what his mother would say if she ever found out that he took Hermione on her favorite table. Of course, he had to actually take Hermione on his mother's favorite table, but those were just semantics to the fantasizing mind. But you're not supposed to think of sex when you're with your mother. He knew this pregnancy shit had him messed up in the head but god, this was serious. And then he couldn't focus at work, couldn't sleep at night. He didn't even want to eathalf the time. His mum had told him that he looked like death warmed over yesterday. She was convinced he was taking something.
No Mum, he'd told her. He wasn't taking anything. He just hadn't had sex in over eight weeks. He'd told her he was going to die.
She'd let out something frighteningly similar to a cackle, then proceeded to tell him that he'd live.
Yeah, right. Draco didn't trust anythingthat woman said. Because he didfeel like he was going to die if he didn't get some soon, and she was getting it far too often—from the gardener, and the bread man, and that funny man who came to collect the taxes—to be objective about the subject.
And now, the first occurrence in which Hermione had shown an interest in shagging in two months and it wasn't even working out because of the goddamn baby-belly and his goddamn laughing wife. This simply couldn't be happening to him. His luck wasn't thatbad, was it?
Draco felt a tightening in his chest and, suddenly, he couldn't breathe. It was just too much for him to take. He'd thought he could do it—that he could be strong—but he was wrong. He wasn't ready for this. He wasn't ready to be someone's dad. He was going to mess his little girl up so much she'd be physically disfigured from all the emotional wounds. And she'd go to Hogwarts and be teased because she was ugly and disfigured and she'd hate him, wouldn't she? She'd hate him so much for messing her up and would never, ever talk to him for as long as he lived and oh God, he just needed to have sex so bad.
And, shit—was she crying?
Draco rolled over onto his side, looking into his wife's face with something akin to horror.
Oh God, what the hell was she doing crying? Hadn't she just been laughing a moment ago? What type of emotional stress could have possibly come to plague her in the past ten second as to make her cry? Dear Lord, what had he done now?
The man soon found himself with an armful of woman, hugging his wife awkwardly—because of the baby, dipshit, the baby—as she cried her eyes out into his neck. He rubbed her back, whispered stupid soothing words in her ear. Just like he was supposed to—like Ginny had told him to. Because honestly, Draco wanted nothing more than to sit up and ask her what the hell she was crying about now—with or without finger-pointing—and what baby furniture catalog he had to look at to get her to stop.
There were so many effing reasons whyshe cried now, though.
Her favorite jeans didn't fit.
There was no more ice cream.
Draco was being an arse. (Why was he suggesting that he go buy more ice cream? Did she not just say that her favorite jeans didn't fit? Wasn't he listening?)
She'd bought the wrong size onesies from the department store. (So what if she'd grow into them. What were they going to do in the meantime? Let the baby go naked?)
Jack Sr. died on the Young and the Restless (Whywasn't he crying? A man just died. Didn't he feel anything?) Fucking, fuckingsoap operas...
She couldn't find her other knitting needle.
Her bum jiggled when she walked. (Why did he keep feeding her? Didn't he see that she was fat?)
Draco was being insensitive. (Didn't he get it? Oh God, why was he such a man?)
It was Tuesday.
She was upset so often that Draco had begun to make lists of the reasons so he wouldn't forget. They were all interrelated in some way—like the jeans and the ice cream and him being an arse—and she never shut up if she thought he forgot something, promptly going into a rant usually about how he was insensitive and too much of a manto be an adequate partner for any woman in the world and oh, would he pleaserub her feet now? And then he was wonderful.
Draco had taken to posting the little lists around his office and in his briefcase as reminders of the reasons why she was upset. And there were more—sweet Merlin, there were more. He didn't dare leave them around the house anymore, though. Not after that time she'd found one spell-o-taped to the bathroom mirror entitled 'Why She's So Freaking Crazy, as of April Third.' He was never, ever being forced over to Pansy and Potter's again.Ever.
Draco wasn't so thick as to not realize how freaking weird it was that he made lists of the reasons why his wife cried. It was something crazy people did—something Hermionedid—and he felt a mild panic at the thought that he was becoming as whacked in the head as she was. But he was usually too preoccupied thinking about how much sex he hadn't had in the past two months and how much he missed it to dwell on his dwindling mental health. Because when you haven't had sex in two months, not much matters beyond finding a way to have sex, save perhaps your wife, her baby-swollen tummy and trying to find ways to subtly coerce said woman into the aforementioned intercourse. He wasn't supposed to do that, though. Hermione was too stressed as it was, and Ginny freaking swore on her lifethat she'd shove his balls up his arse if she found out that he was pressuring her for a fuck. And yeah, he was afraid of Ginny. More so now because Hermione was too pregnant to protect him from her.
And oh, he was right about the baby furniture. Only, she didn't want him to look at a new catalog to find that stupid changing table she was intent they have. She wanted him to stop their crib order—the crib which had taken three months and hours looking through a billion catalogs to pick out and was currently a custom order from Belarus. Because she didn't really like it, she said. She was thinking of something white, and round, because those corners could really hurt a child.
And Draco stared up at the ceiling in ever-mounting disbelief, eyes wide and mouth agape as he realized what she wanted.
His crib.
The same crib she had so vehemently protested using when his mother had suggested it months ago.
Do you understand, she suddenly asked him, lifting her head to stare into his eyes. You have to cancel it, Draco, she told him. It wasn't what they needed.
She carefully spoke around the issue of hiscrib being what they needed, and he wanted to call her on it, to get her to admit that he had been right from the very start. He didn't, though. Not when her eyes were all big and wet and pleading with him to understand. He sighed, cupping her face and bringing it down to his as he began to kiss away the tear tracks on her cheeks.
He told her that he understood; he'd cancel the order tomorrow morning.
She hugged him and bathed his neck in kisses. He was wonderful again. She told him so.
They didn't have sex.
It would be months after the birth of their child before they finally did.
Had Draco known, he'd have quietly offed himself in the middle of the night.
A/N: There is more to this, in an notebook from 2008 that deals, specifically, with the birth of Alivia Malfoy, Draco's yet unborn but soon-to-be favorite girl. I understand that this is rather an interlude, the middle before Draco meets the second love of his life, and that, perhaps, we all need to see that interaction before we come full circle. Or, rather, before Draco can come full circle, as well-in accepting the oddities that come with being a husband, a father, a man. The quirks. Because life is strange and makes you cry sometimes. But that doesn't mean it isn't wonderful, too.
Reviews are love.