AN: Emrys, I'm glad you didn't wind up with colored anything (hehehe, would've been funny though). As for the rest of you, send the evil cliffie blame to Shelly, she's positively diabolical that way (and here I thought I was good in that area)! As always, the bunny is scarfing up the reviews and the comments make our day...

Not the Daddy…part 11

Pregnancy clock: 3 months, 3 weeks

"I can't believe I knocked out the knocked up man."

"For the hundredth time, Rodney, it wasn't just the wee bump he took from you. I've told you the colonel is prone to all sorts of things you'd associate with a delicate constitution -"

Sheppard squinted his eyes shut tighter. If only he could have stayed out of it for another thirty-seconds he wouldn't have had to hear that last part.

Opening his eyes for the sole purpose of glaring at the two of them, he protested, "I don't have a delicate constitution," but it came out dry and squeaky, instead of strong and steady.

Rodney was not far from his bed, and bounced on his heels, hands behind his back and sang sotto-voice, "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."

It was a toss-up who scowled harder, Beckett or John.

Sheppard purposefully ignored McKay, and rolled slightly off his back, groaning. "Doc, I hope nothing reopened." His head pounded and the queasiness was present in the background, just enough that he knew sudden movements were a very bad idea.

Beckett folded his arms across his chest, and Sheppard could see the lecture mode coming, and wished suddenly he'd just kept his mouth shut and gone back to sleep.

"Nothing busted open, but it'll be sore for a few days. You've got quite the goose egg on the back of your head." He seemed to reel himself in a bit before continuing. "Colonel, you've got to understand that though the actual shape of your body won't be changing, your mind thinks it is. Your sense of balance, ability to recover, everything is suppressed, off-kilter, to be blunt, you're not being careful enough."

"He ran into me!" John spluttered, all righteous indignation.

What he didn't do is deny the changes in his body that Carson was talking about. And that was a big step, one that wasn't lost on either McKay or Beckett.

"Aye, but two months ago, in the same situation, you would've shoved him off, had a less than pleasant exchange, and met each other for lunch an hour later. This isn't two months ago, and you need to watch where you're going in the halls. Avoid situations that might not have presented problems before. I imagine the workouts with Teyla will come harder, though you should continue, just learn to listen to your body."

Sheppard couldn't believe the nerve. He was ran down in the halls by McKay, and who was getting the lecture?

Rodney shifted uncomfortably, suddenly aware of the growing heat coming from John's direction. "Thank you, Carson, I think you've done enough."

Beckett seemed to want to say more, but he grumbled something under his breath before saying, "You'll be staying overnight, Colonel. If you're feeling well in the morning we'll see about letting you go, but remember, drink those shakes, and listen to your body. If you feel dizzy or tired, stop and rest. And, later we'll be finishing the exam from the other day."

Sheppard watched Beckett leave, and found himself suddenly apprehensive. He didn't want another exam. He wasn't sure he could deal with it. Hearing that heartbeat – that was something he wasn't quite sure of, how to think or feel about it. He was mesmerized, terrorized, and thoroughly stunned.

He found himself reaching for his stomach, and his hand met air where he thought there should be skin. He looked down confused, and noticed his hand was about a foot away from his abdomen, and he'd expected it to stop there. That was weird. He finished the distance, and rubbed absently.

"What are you doing?"

His hand stilled, and he realized McKay was watching his stomach.

"You're not going to throw up again, are you? Because as much as I'm worried about you, the whole throwing up process, it's starting to sour my stomach."

"Can I ask you something?" Sheppard was watching him intently as Rodney moved forward to slide into the chair that was closer to John's bed.

McKay slouched against the hard plastic backrest, and nodded. "I imagine I'll even have an answer for you."

"How's it happening?" John's voice was so quiet that it was almost lost under the sound of the air refresher pipes.

"Happening?" McKay sat up a bit straighter. "What?"

"This pregnancy thing. I don't get it. I mean, the bond, fine, and even being connected to her physical state, you know – getting sick, tired, but the rest of this," Sheppard almost stopped. He had been so busy telling everyone that he wasn't pregnant, that he never stopped to ask how. He knew the why. Dreya was a grieving widow, and she made an impulsive decision. He could relate to that. But the how – hearing the heartbeat pretty much destroyed every last shred of disbelief he had been mustering to keep his sense of reality solid. It was like someone building a foundation on quicksand. You can deny what you can't see. What you can't hear, or feel.

"Rodney, I heard the heartbeat. And just now, I reached down, and was going to rub a belly that doesn't exist on me. How? I thought this was just – I don't know, but pregnant? Men don't get pregnant, and I'm not, but these tests and the medical problems, and the heartbeat, it's –"

He was stumbling around like a blind man, and wanted to take back every single thing he'd just said. Scratch that, everything he'd said since he'd woken up.

But McKay was grinning with poorly concealed excitement. "You've come to the right place, Colonel."

Rodney was so excited John could practically see the hand wringing going on in the man's head.

"While you've been…indisposed…we've done some theorizing, and between what we've gotten from Dreya and Hamas, and our own people, we've come up with what I think is a logical conclusion."

"The suspense is killing me," Sheppard said dryly. The irony of it was, he was being honest.

McKay didn't even pause. "The Eradian people at some point millennia ago developed this method of survival, maybe it was a defense against disease or falling population, I don't know, but anyway, that's not the point. The male in the bond becomes almost like a beacon, a biological lighthouse, for the mother."

"Shortly before conditions become critical, the father feels it. If there's any significant risk at hand, watch the father because he'll be affected first. It's brilliant, actually, giving them just enough time to get in there and possibly save the baby."

McKay paused to see if the impact was getting through to Sheppard. He kind of nodded half-heartedly.

Apparently, Rodney took him for being less than impressed. "Don't you get it? This is an amazing evolutionary concept. Back in Earth's early days, even up to the last century, more women were lost in childbirth then," he stumbled for a minute before waving his hand in annoyance, "I don't know the exact number, but it's huge, and the baby died with the mother in most cases. With this bond, complications with the baby bypasses the mother link and sends the information to the father, and the sensations are read quicker. It's amazing. Think along the lines of the Ancients attempt at continual redundancy, for all we know, they could've been responsible for this. Anyway, in order to be effective, the father's got to have almost every single physiological change along with the mother."

Rodney narrowed his eyes at Sheppard, who appeared to be slipping into a dazed confused state. "You still following me?"

John could only nod dumbly. Does it count if he was following it, but wishing he weren't?

Apparently, McKay was satisfied, and continued, "Basically, the only thing missing is the physical body of the baby inside your, ah, stomach."

"But how?" Sheppard still wanted to know. Maybe if he did, he could find some way to stop this. He didn't stop to think about the fact that the entire scientific department had been spending almost the whole time since he'd been bonded working towards the same goal, and been unsuccessful.

"I'm getting there, patience, Colonel. As far as we can tell, the bond works like a transmitter. The closest phenomena you can compare it with are waves of energy, think radio waves, or light. Your body is accepting the transmissions, and translating the information into the physical representations, made possible when she bonded you."

Rodney seemed to draw in on himself, and cocked his head slightly and the excitement was replaced with a puzzled look. "The only thing we truly don't understand is how it works with the distance separating you from Dreya. The foremost idea we had for breaking the bond would be to increase the distance until you can no longer receive these transmissions. However, seeing how you're light years away already, that rules out our best option. Since you felt the loss of the one baby before Dreya, there is little, if any, lag from Dreya to you."

Sheppard considered the whole shebang, and had an idea, "Waves can be blocked, right?

Rodney took a moment to catch his breath. It wasn't that his explanations didn't tend to ramble, they did, it was more along the lines of what he'd just said had been more concise and rapidly spoken than what was even usual for McKay.

"Theoretically, yes, but we've been trying different scramblers and screens."

They'd been trying to block the bond. Been trying. "It hasn't worked," he said flatly.

Rodney stared at him, and shook his head. "No, it hasn't. We thought, there for a while when you improved, but it was just Dreya -"

Things locked into place. "That's why you've been going back so much to talk to Dreya," he accused.

"It wasn't just that, though it was a part. Sheppard, you've got to admit, this is fascinating! Do you realize if we could figure out how this bond works what it would mean? There wouldn't be any more problems with a doctor not understanding what a patient was feeling. No more 'on a scale of 1 to 10 how bad is it? It's amazing!"

"And the fact that it's me, and not you makes it even better," Sheppard grimaced, and found his hand moving lower and rubbing again, before he stopped and pulled it back as if he'd been burned.

Rodney snorted, "You positively glow – when you're not puking. It'll be good for you. You can learn about the other side you're always so busy chasing."

"I'm not always chasing! They find me, and besides, I've never gotten a girl pregnant, not here or anywhere else. And, I've heard the rumors about you and that one scientist, what's her name?"

McKay flushed, and retorted, "Not the one pregnant."

"I'm not -" he started, only to stop. Because son of a bitch if he wasn't. "Pregnant," he finished lamely.

"You so are," argued Rodney.

"Maybe I'll take you back to Eradia and find some other pregnant woman to bond you, see how much you like it." Sheppard kind of liked that idea, actually. Heck, maybe he could volunteer all the men of Atlantis. Have a baby marathon and hey, Beckett. Now that had possibilities. All the lectures and haranguing he'd been doing lately, see how much he liked the shoe on the other foot.

McKay's flushed face suddenly paled. "That's not funny."

"It so is," mocked John.

And then his queasy stomach surged, and he found himself rolling over, scrambling for the basin that Beckett was always keeping next to his bed. He heaved until he got lost in the spasms of his stomach, and was left panting and weak in the bed.

The sound brought Beckett out, and he shooed McKay out of the way, before helping to wipe Sheppard's face, and give him a rinse for his mouth. "There, now, it's over. How do you feel?"

Truthfully, he felt better, and he smiled easily. "Not so bad now."

"No kidding, you just emptied twenty-four hours of attempted digestion, let me guess, you're hungry?"

"Well, actually -"

McKay stood up, and his hands straightened his pants as he said resignedly, "I'll just go get some of that blue Jell-o from the messhall that you seem to be eating more than your fair share of. But when I come back, I want a promise that 'Rodney' or 'McKay' will be somewhere in the babies name. It's the least you can do if I have to wait on you like this."

As Rodney left, Sheppard couldn't help but shout at his back, "It's not my kid to name, but even if it were, I sure as hell wouldn't name it RODNEY!"

Beckett was hovering, and pushed him back against the mattress. "Calm down, Colonel." He pulled the thermometer off the wall behind Sheppard's head and ordered, "Open."

Sheppard shot him a dirty look, but did it anyway.

While they waited, Beckett waved a nurse to bring over the portable blood pressure machine, and started making notes in his chart. His prenatal folder. Beckett hadn't gotten rid of it, no matter how much he bitched. Figures.

It beeped complete and Beckett read the number, nodded, and slapped on the cuff. The thing squeezed his arm till the thought it was going to cut off his circulation before finally beginning the slow deflation downward. Carson wasn't happy with the numbers judging from his frown. "A little high, Colonel. You need to stop getting so riled up. Stop letting things get to you."

"Maybe it's high because someone insists on using a prenatal folder to record every single thing I do in this place," he growled.

Carson didn't take the bait. He got out the Doppler and Sheppard had a sudden return of queasiness, but oddly, he was also a little…excited. Conflicted. Absolutely, totally, conflicted. He watched as Beckett dabbed the jelly on the end of the wand, and stubbornly kept the blanket pulled up to his chest.

"Colonel, don't be childish," remonstrated Beckett, tugging the blanket down.

"Childish? Childish?" he echoed disgustedly. "Childish is throwing a fit when you get shorted a lollipop after getting a shot, or sent to bed with no dessert! Childish is not having a doctor pulling up your shirt to listen to a heartbeat that isn't even there!"

"Blood pressure, Colonel."

Right. His pressure was probably through the freaking roof at this point, and seeing how high Atlantis's roof is, that was pretty high.

The jelly was a repeat of the experience earlier, very cold, but this time he didn't flinch. The thub-thub of his own heartbeat pounded into the air, loud and strong, but this time he knew it wasn't the baby's. A few moments later, it was overcome by a strong and amazingly fast 'whush whush', and Carson announced, "One hundred fifty seven, nice and strong, maybe a girl."

"A girl? You can tell the sex of the baby off a number?"

Carson grinned a little and explained, "It's not really proven, but there has been some studies that show a correlation in heart rate to gender. A higher heart rate can indicate a girl, slower, a boy."

They were both startled when Rodney dropped the bowl of Jell-O, standing just inside the doorway, and said, "Is that the baby?"

"No, Rodney, it's the little alien pet I swallowed three weeks ago."

Sheppard felt awkward. Only three people had heard and experienced the solid proof of his condition. He hadn't wanted anyone else to hear it. Maybe it was irrational, maybe even childish, but he felt like he was the pregnant teen confronting his parents with proof that he'd had sex, which made absolutely no sense at all.

"It's amazing," McKay said, not even taking the bait from Sheppard's acerbic comment. He walked over, stepping around the mess he'd made on the floor, and looked at the machine in Beckett's hand. "Can I?" he asked, moving a hand towards the Doppler.

Carson shrugged, and handed it over.

Now this was really tripping Sheppard out. "Uh, my body guys," he said, pushing the machine off and doing a mental yuck when he got the jelly on his hands again, because that felt gross. "Could you at least ask if you want to listen to the Colonel Sheppard's Freak Show Hour?"

But Sheppard realized he wasn't having any affect on McKay. Rodney was still staring shell-shocked at the machine, and then back to John, and he had this very scary gleam in his eye. Oh, shit.

OoO

A week later, John sat staring at the calendar in his quarters. Four months. He was four months pregnant, no, scratch that damn it, SHE was four months pregnant. He was four months pregnant via screwed–up-alien-bond-that-should-never–have-happened. He was having a hard time keeping a line between the two. He now frequently reached for a stomach that wasn't there, and when meeting air, moved the rest of the way in, and rubbed without even knowing it.

Elizabeth had gotten him started on learning Ancient. He was still working out with Teyla. And, the throwing up had fallen back to every other day. He was pretty sure the shakes had helped with his weight loss, but Beckett would let him know soon enough. Sheppard had an exam scheduled for tomorrow. It was supposed to be today, but he'd begged off complaining of too much work. He was convinced Carson knew it for the lie it was, but you do what you have to, and right now he wasn't sure he could face the scale, the peeing in the cup, the chatter from the nurses and the heartbeat…always that damn heartbeat that amazed him and made him sick and angry at the same time.

Since that day a week ago, McKay had been sticking to him like Velcro. He showed up with blue Jell-o at night, and with saltines in the morning. Hearing the heartbeat had been the equivalent of a positive paternity test, which made no sense at all to John. He was tempted to ask McKay just what the hell was wrong with him, but hadn't gotten up the nerve. Maybe McKay had been deprived as a kid, who knows, but he was so not going to ask Dreya to name the kid Rodney. Maybe John McKay and whatever her last name is, but only if she agreed to relocate permanently to the Athosian settlement. No kid of his – shit – no kid named after him was going to be culled by the wraith.

He'd brought it up to Elizabeth yesterday. This thing with Dreya, her living on another world, and though it was safe for her now, what happened if their defenses failed? She'd argued that it was Dreya's right to live where she chose, and that while she was thrilled he was taking an interest in her, on the other hand, he didn't have much right to go around demanding she up and leave her people. John wasn't so sure of that. Dreya had given him some rights when she bonded him, whether she'd meant to or not.

He had, however, gotten Elizabeth to agree to him and his team returning to Eradia. It was just a matter of scheduling a day to go. McKay was up to his eyeballs in some power issues with keeping Atlantis cloaked, and Teyla and Ronon had slunk off to the mainland. Teyla had been working on Ronon's animosity towards Dreya, and it seemed to be helping. Sheppard had thought about having more words with him over it, but it was kind of hard when he himself sometimes found himself so damn mad that the very thought of her made his head ache. It was usually the times he found himself falling asleep in his chair, throwing up, tripping over his feet, or pushing a hand against the growing ache in his back.

He glanced down at his desk and stared at the copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting. It was a gag gift. He wasn't quite sure it was Zelenka this time, because the Czech was usually more overt. It had appeared at his front door during the night a few days ago. The irony of it, was that he'd started reading casually, and found himself relieved to find that backaches, increased peeing, puking, and the newest member to join the party, heartburn, were pretty common. And then he'd wondered how on earth the human race had managed to continue. If he was a woman, you can be damn sure he'd never do this again.

He shoved the book under his copy of Peace and War, and flipped the calendar over so he didn't have to look at it. It had been Kate's idea. She'd said it might help him keep track of things and feel more in control. Control. That was ironic. What part of control could he possibly have? He wanted one thing, and his body kept doing something else. Something being sent from some other distant world, and so far, nothing anyone had done was able to change that.

He dropped into his bed, and looked at the clock, feeling that anger towards Dreya mount again. It was only nine-thirty at night. Ridiculous. Sheppard knew if he tried to stay awake, he'd only get a stiff neck and sore back for his trouble. He stretched out, fluffing the pillow under his hand, and thought again, four months – sixteen weeks. Only twenty-four to go. That's not so bad. He could do this.

A flip in his stomach stalled his thoughts. Was he going to get sick again? Another flip. He'd felt something like it over the past couple of days but it'd been so slight, he'd thought maybe he imagined it, but suddenly he knew exactly what it was. The baby. A rapid flip and it felt like something turned inside, but it was feather light. And suddenly John felt the tiredness evaporate like a puddle on a hot summer day. He jumped up and pushed at his stomach, willing it to stop, to get out. This was it. Elizabeth had said to be prepared. Now he knew the truth. There hadn't been anyway to prepare.

He wanted to feel it again, but he wanted it to stop. It scared him crazy, and made him think of Dreya.

The sound of his door opening caused him to look up, and he knew he had that deer in the headlights look on his face. McKay put the blue Jell-o down and rushed over, "What's wrong? Is it the baby? Is it okay? Oh, god, she's not miscarrying again is she? Because there's only the one left -"

John shook his head, trying to stop McKay's babbling. "No, and it's not a miscarriage in the fourth month anyway," he'd just read that this morning. "It moved, Rodney."

He couldn't believe he'd admitted it.

And the giddy boyish grin that spread across McKay's face told him it was the right thing to do. And hey, he brought him Jell-O. It was the least he could do.

TBC