Chapter Text
“I think it’s time.”
“No,” said Sherlock vehemently, “it can’t be, I still have two weeks left.”
“I’m sorry,” Mycroft said, shaking his head, calm in the face of Sherlock’s rising panic. “These things happen all the time. Babies seldom conform to a schedule, so I’m told, however much we might wish it otherwise.”
Sherlock opened his mouth to protest but the words were quickly swallowed by another wave of excruciating pain.
“Three minutes since the last one Sherlock.” Mycroft looked critically at his wristwatch. “Come now, I think we’ve waited long enough, don’t you.”
“But I can’t go yet….he’s not here.” Sherlock gripped the back of the chair by the dresser in his bedroom bending almost double. He sucked in a deep heaving breath and forced himself to hold it, expelling the air in short measured pants.
“For god’s sake Sherlock, I assure you we’re trying our best.” Mycroft snapped in irritation, impervious to his brothers discomfort.
“Well try harder damn it…I need him. This is all your fault and I hate you.”
Mycroft regarded him coolly. “Not entirely my fault though, is it Sherlock, I wasn’t the one who put you in this most unfortunate position, that I believe, was young Mr Watson’s doing.”
Before he had a chance to protest Mycroft turned briskly on one Italian leather-clad heel and swept in a cloud of cologne from the room. Sherlock could hear him, the arrogant arsehole, just outside the door ‘discussing’ him with mummy and daddy, agreeing in obsequious tones how unreasonable and irrational he was, and how such behaviour was only to be expected from him in his delicate condition. But Sherlock was in far too much pain to care by now. He was well into the early stage of labour, possibly further.
Sherlock knew his brother was right about one thing though, the hospital, not that he ever would admit it, but as long as he stayed here, at home in his room, he could go on pretending that none of this was really happening. It had actually worked for most of the day. A slight tightening around his abdomen was all he’d felt at first. The odd sensation woke him in the early hours of the morning after a few precious hours of sleep, and he dutifully took out a notebook to write down each time that it happened, like tracking the progress of a rather grotesque experiment. Slowly throughout the day, forty minutes narrowed to thirty, to twenty, to ten until he was struck with a sudden and inexplicable desire to strip down his bed sheets and clean his own bathroom. The nesting instinct was an old wives tale he thought even as he tussled with elasticated corners and got trapped in an inside-out duvet cover, sweaty and frustrated biting his lip as if inflicting more pain upon himself would somehow help him resist the excruciating cramps set low in his abdomen.
With as much grace as he could muster which was admittedly, not much, Sherlock sank further down towards the floor. He eased his hands carefully down the heavy wooden chair-back and squatted, frog like, legs parted to accommodate his grossly distended stomach. That felt a little better and he leaned slightly forward and pressed his clammy forehead to the cool lacquered surface of the dressing table, counting out the seconds in his head.
One hundred and thirty seconds. Two minutes ten. His stomach tightened to a rock hard ball and he rocked back on his heels with a groan, crying out in pain as his bottom hit the floor. The door flew open with a bang crashing into the wall behind, and with Mycroft at his back and mummy at the front, gentle hands heaved him up to standing again, guiding him over to sit on the bed.
“That’s quite enough Sherlock,” Mycroft snapped in frustration, “you’re going in now. You are not giving birth in this house, you need hospitals, doctors, a professional medical team… too many things can go wrong when...”
Sherlock didn’t bother listening to the rest of Mycroft’s lecture, not that he could concentrate through the constant haze of pain. He knew it by heart now anyway, had heard him say as much repeatedly for much of the past nine months. His age of course – too young,his tall slender build and worryingly narrow pelvis, the child was estimated to be at least nine pounds taking his own birth weight into account, and therefore the need for medical intervention was a statistically high probability. It had the potential to be a difficult birth, and for him and the child to stand the best possible chance of survival a surgical team would be on hand to provide for every eventuality. It was odd to contemplate dying, that this life inside his belly could be the end of him. It was some small comfort that if that were the case then a tiny part of him and John would live and grow and thrive in his place. He remembered how he had hated this thing before he'd seen it, alive and squirming on the black and white screen, how John had gripped his hand like a vice before the doctor found out he wasn't next of kin and security had dragged him out of the room.
John. He would miss this. Scalding hot tears bourne of anger and frustration prickled at the backs of his eyes. But nothing could stop this from happening now, the baby was coming whether Sherlock was prepared or not.
He rolled onto his side, as far as the baby would allow him to and squeezed his eyes tight against the next contraction that felt as if it would rip his too-slight body apart. He couldn’t do this, not on his own, not without his Alpha, his John. But John was over two thousand miles away in the sweltering heat of Kandahar. A compromise Mycroft had claimed, prison or the army, that had been his choice.
Mummy stroked the hair back from his brow, swiping a gentle thumb along his cheekbone too, thankfully passing no comment on the silent flow of tears that dampened his face and rolled off his chin onto the pillow beneath his head.
Bag already packed weeks in advance, Sherlock finally allowed himself to be manhandled into the waiting car, the final vestige of resistance crumbling under the onslaught of pain. Every small bump in the road lanced through him, he couldn’t sit still in his seat, fidgeting and grimacing and yanking at the seat belt, and even though he was running hot and drenched in sweat his teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. The pain was almost a blur now, and a constant ringing filled his ears, with barely time to catch a breath in between each new contraction. When they struggled through the doors to maternity a short time after, the nurse on duty only had to take one glance before she promptly commandeered the nearest wheelchair for him.
The clinical stench of the labour ward made his mouth fill with water as they wheeled him down the gleaming corridor. It was eerily quiet in the early pre-dawn hours, the only sounds the vague muffled cries of fussy new-borns behind closed doors the click of the mid-wife's heels and the swish of rubber wheels across the floor. He hated hospitals with a vengeance now. The endless prodding and poking over the course of the pregnancy having stripped away every last shred of his dignity. Feet hoisted up in stirrups and naked from the waist down with a latex-gloved hand knuckle deep in his arse. It had made him feel cheap, disgusting, ashamed of himself and his rapidly distorting body, made worse by the pitying looks he attracted and the mutters of shocked disapproval.
Not that a pregnant omega was anything out of the ordinary. Rather, there were other considerations....
Such a bright child too. What a waste.
The disruption to his education hadn’t been the worst of it. At his first examination when oestrus had failed to occur, the doctor had taken his mother aside looking grave. She on the other hand returned looking furious. “Pregnant at sixteen…Sherlock what on earth have you been doing, what on earth were you thinking?”
“The point, I think,” said Mycroft that night, “is that he really wasn’t thinking at all. At least,” he added, “not with his brain.”
That may have been true, Sherlock thought, but it wasn't just John's fault, he'd been equally to blame for this.
~*~
The cool summer breeze tickled at his skin and the heady scent of the tall wild grass washed over his senses in a delicate haze. John hovered above him, hands braced either side of his head, the muscles in his arms tense with the effort to hold himself up as he gazed at Sherlock's face with a mixture of awe and wonder.
'I love you so much', he breathed, 'Fuck, Sherlock.'
'Yes please,' Sherlock smiled, which made John laugh, even more so when he raised his legs higher to wrap around John's waist and tugged down sharply on his shoulder's until the boy above him collapsed onto his chest.
He arched his neck invitingly, and shivered as a tip of a warm, wet tongue traced a line up his throat.
'I want you...I want to...' John broke off, his next words lost as their lips pressed together. Sherlock felt like he was drowning, breath hitching and heaving in his chest. He buried his fingers in the soft blond layers of John's hair and ground his hips up aware of how desperate he was for more. Anything John could have anything, everything as long as this would never end. Cars zipped back and forth along the road, oblivious, the distant chatter of voices from the sports field could still be heard as the after school practices got underway. This was their place, among the tall grass and wild flowers, set in a glade of trees across the bridge that straddled the river at the edge of the school grounds. But for all the times they'd been here, they'd never gone as far as this. But Sherlock wanted, oh god how he wanted, term ended tomorrow and they'd both be going home. Two months without John would be torture after being together every day for the last three months, and if this was to be the last time then Sherlock intended to make it count. Whatever that involved.
Lightly calloused fingers traced a line down Sherlock's side to his hip, and John grabbed a handful of arse cheek and squeezed before sliding his palm further under and pressing on the back of Sherlock's thigh until he unlocked his ankles from around John's waist and draped a leg over each of his shoulders. The chink of a belt buckle and the rustle of heavy fabric, John pushed roughly at his jeans, shoving them down as far as he could manage, Sherlock's own clothes discarded some time before, crumpled and damp beneath the trees.
Cold lube on overheated skin made him twitch, it was so easy to forget that they needed it sometimes. He relaxed a little more as two fingers eased inside him going slowly, giving him more time to adjust, not that it was needed. He still felt stretched out from when his heat had ended last week. Sherlock wriggled impatiently. 'Please'.
John kissed him gently, tongue sliding softly against his own, teeth nipped at his swollen bottom lip gently sucking on the tender flesh. The blunt head of John's cock pressed up against his hole and he tilted his hips to draw him in further. Sherlock arched as John pushed forward, the hot, thick length of his hard Alpha cock stretching and filling him perfectly even without the promise of a knot. Sherlock didn't care because this felt more real, almost. No raging hormones and uncontrollable urges, just them, wanting each other just as much without all that and it was perfect, John was perfect, he was loved and he loved in return with all his heart.
'I'm going to miss you so much,' John whispered brokenly, 'promise, you have to promise you won't leave me.'
'Never,' Sherlock breathed, groaning at the friction on his own tender flesh where his cock lay trapped between their bodies.
'Need,' John gasped and his hips stuttered, 'to pull out, gonna come soon.'
'No,' Sherlock clung to him, desperate and reckless, 'Don't care, not in heat anymore....want to feel you come inside me."
'Oh God,' John groaned, 'I want to so much, but...'
'Do it,' Sherlock moaned, 'Come in me John...please.'
John thrust into him hard, pushing Sherlock back along the damp, flattened grass beneath them. He felt the warm rush of fluid pulsing into him in rhythmic bursts as his own cock spurted against his chest, sticky and warm on their skin.
John collapsed panting on top of him, easing his body up just enough to withdraw his softening cock. A trickle of come followed with it, wetting Sherlock's thighs and dribbling between the cheeks of his arse. He sighed in content, nuzzling into John's neck as he breathed in the sweet musky scent of him.
'I love you.'
~*~
There was an oversized clock on the wall of the delivery room, the time announced three in the morning. Sherlock sighed in resignation, in the brief respite between contractions; trust a child of his to have a back-to-front sleep schedule even prior to birth.
“Lets get you out of those things now, shall we?” the plump beta midwife smiled at him kindly, indicating Sherlock’s sweatshirt and jogging bottoms. He tugged at them absently, holding onto the side of the bed as he dragged them down one thigh then the other feeling oddly off-balance and clumsy. They dropped the rest of the way to the floor and he kicked them off and pushed them away with his foot, disgusted at the dark brown stain that marked the crotch. After near constant wear in the last three months of his pregnancy, he never wanted to see them again after this night. John had wanted to burn them, they'd had it all planned out, a ritual bonfire in John's back garden to rid him of the hated oversize elasticated leisure wear that made him feel like a bloody old man and did nothing to disguise his expanding waistline. Not that John had minded it at all, the memory of soft kisses on each new livid purple stretch mark were all he had left of him now.
Because John wasn’t here.
“Is this normal?” he gave a violent shiver, almost biting his tongue as his teeth clacked together.
The midwife frowned, taking in his trembling frame and clucking her tongue in sympathy. A small steady hand wrapped around his elbow and led him carefully over to the bed. “We’ll just pop you up on the table love, shall we, see how far along you are, it might be further than we thought.”
Sherlock nodded, too dazed to argue, and hitched his bum up shuffling into the middle of the bed. A deep stack of pillows kept his body at a gentle recline and without any prompting he raised his knees, pressed his feet sole to sole the way he had a hundred times before, and allowed his legs to flop open.
“This might smart a little bit love, take a deep breath for me…there's a good boy.”
Sheathed fingers prodded inside him manually measuring dilation. Sherlock hissed at the stinging pain. “Five centimetres already love, you’re half- way there, well done.”
“It’s a natural bodily process," Sherlock huffed, "And hardly a worthy achievement…it’s not as if I’m doing anything.”
“Nonsense, it’s not to be sniffed at bringing a baby into this world,” said the midwife, pulling off her gloves and dropping them in the bin by the door. "But it could still take a good long while love, best you make yourself comfortable, have a little nap while you can, this could be a long night.” She snapped off the overhead light, exchanging it for a lamp by the bed.
Oh god, did they actually think that would help? Sleep? But Sherlock drew the thin, blue hospital blanket up to his shoulders anyway, lying half on one side with his knee raised. Between the constant indigestion, and acid crawling up the back of his throat every night, legs that ached and twitched involuntarily as soon as he tried to rest, he felt about a hundred years old, rather than the seventeen he actually was. He gasped as another wave of pain washed over him.
The midwife paused in the doorway, “You can have something…for the pain you know. There’s no sense in trying to be brave, you won’t win any medals for it, not here…..I’ve got three of my own love, it’s bloody hard work and I'd take all the help I could get if I were you.”
Sherlock keened, curling up into as much of a ball his distended body would allow. “Please,” he gasped, feeling young and scared and very much alone. “Something, anything…oh god I think I’m going to die.”
“No love, you’re not.” She patted his leg gently, smoothed sweat damp curls back from his brow. “You're going to be fine. It’s pain with a purpose you see, worth it, every agonizing minute, and when all this is over and that babe is in your arms you’ll barely remember this part at all.”
That, Sherlock sincerely doubted. Probably some useless platitude spouted to make him feel less wretched.
"Be right back love." With a final smile of reassurance she crossed to the door and disappeared. But seconds later as promised she came back, and practiced fingers pinched the top of his thigh and a needle pierced the skin. “Diamorphine love, might take a little time to kick in.” She gave his leg a little pat in reassurance, and all he could manage was to nod dumbly and wait for the welcome buzz of the medical grade drugs to hit. It seemed a very bad idea considering his history of substance abuse. Wasn’t it in his records? Didn't his parents have to give their permission or something?
The world went fuzzy at the edges. The pain was still there but it felt like he could breathe again. Someone pressed a cool damp cloth to his brow and when he began to cough, fed him ice chips from a plastic cup. Footsteps were like echoes and bodies as insubstantial as shadows. He was so tired, everything hurt, his eyes pressed shut to block out the last of the light. He was dimly aware of a thick band stretched around his middle holding soft rubber pads and electrodes in place. The monitor beeped softly, a rapid little rabbit heart and another overlaying it slower and steady.
Three, Sherlock thought as he drifted into darkness.
There really should be three.