Fic: Being Sympathetic part 3
Series: Sympathetic
Fic: Unsympathetic - part 2.
Rating: Overall NC17, this part PG
Warnings: mpreg
Summary: How do you react to something like that?
Foetus. Danny knows the word. He’s aware of the meaning, but his brain is having trouble connecting it to his own situation.
A foetus. Foetus.
Inside him.
Live foetus…and there come the black spots again.
“Mr. Williams?”
Someone, Kale, is snapping his fingers in front of his face. “Danny, you still with us?”
Sure he is, although he wishes he wasn’t. Wishes he was home, blissfully unaware.
He swallows thickly and gastroenterologist guy comes over with a cup of water and has to help fold Danny’s fingers around it, because they’re sort of numb.
It’s impossible. Absurd. Ridiculous… He sits up straight, spilling half of his cup of water, and looks wildly around the examination room. “Is there a camera in here?” He asks, hating how shaky his voice is. “I swear to you, if this is some kind of candid camera joke, I’m going to sue you to the ends of the earth.”
Davis shakes his head and looks him in the eye. “We’re not joking Mr. Williams.”
There are no tells. No signs that the doctor is lying. His face and tone are sincere…and they tell Danny the doctor himself believes in what he’s saying. They’re not joking.
Not joking.
There’s a foetus inside of him.
“Are you sure it’s not a parasite?” He tries. “We were in the jungle…”
“I’m sure.”
“There were bugs.”
Davis gives him an apologetic look and Danny slumps back against the table. “But- How?”
He looks down at the ever so slightly distended skin of his belly and twitches. Suddenly it doesn’t feel like part of him anymore.
He feels like he wants to crawl out of his skin. It feels a little like when he was small and his mom found that huge tick attached to the back of his arm. She wouldn’t remove it herself because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to get the head out from where it was firmly embedded in Danny’s skin. His seven year-old self had been terrified of the disgusting bug he couldn’t get away from and he’d cried all the way to the doctor’s office.
“Right now we don’t know much.” Davis says, jerking him from his gloomy thoughts. “We don’t know why there is this extra structure inside your body. How it occurred that you apparently had a viable ovum, and we don’t know how the conditions were created that allowed the foetus to grow.”
“So basically you don’t know anything.” Danny snaps.
Davis puts a calming hand on his shoulder and Danny has to stop himself from slapping it away. He knows his current situation is not the doctor’s fault, but these are the people you go to for help when your body is out of whack. Where the hell do you go if the doctors themselves don’t know what’s going on?
Davis seems to get the gist of his thoughts. “We don’t know these things yet,” he says. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t ways of finding out or at least coming up with a likely hypothesis.”
Danny remembers the cup he’s holding, takes a sip of water and tries to think calmly, rationally. Formulate some sort of plan of action. “So we don’t know anything yet,” he says, “except there’s a foetus inside of me. And it’s alive.”
“That’s basically what it comes down to, yes.”
“So there’s no cancer?”
“Not as far as we know.”
“No aneurism?”
“Certainly not.”
He takes a deep breath. “So…what do I do?” And if the guy says ‘I don’t know’ Danny is going to go home, get his gun, and wave it around until somebody gives him answers. No jury would convict him under these circumstances.
Davis grins. “You try to relax and digest this news, and you let us do our jobs.”
Relax. Right. Like that’s going to happen. And when is Steve going to get here? Stupid Neanderthal is taking his damned time. Hopefully he’s not on in the middle of a-
Oh god.
Steve.
How the hell is he going to tell Steve about this? He’s not going to believe it. And Danny can’t blame him because, really?
“Doc?” he croaks. “Are you sure?”
Davis doesn’t answer immediately. Instead he twists the ultrasound screen a little so it’s easier for Danny to look at it. Then he grabs the transducer again and puts it back on Danny’s belly. “Morning sickness usually starts around week six, that, and the size of the foetus and its heart rate, indicates that the foetus is about nine weeks old.” He points at the screen. “There, you see that little shape? At nine weeks most of the basic structures are in place.”
He indicates the largest part of the little blob. “That’s the head right there. These little things are the arms. Right there, those are the legs.”
And as he points Danny starts to recognise. Sees a clear shape where before he only saw indistinct smudges.
The focus changes a little. “That’s the heart beating.”
Danny stares while Davis shows him the…foetus…from different angles. There really is something alive in there.
It looks like a gummi-bear.
And then it moves.
The little gummi-bear waves tiny arms and kicks tiny legs and Danny takes a shuddering breath because holy shit, there’s a tiny little human being growing inside of him.
Davis talks on about the sac, and something resembling an umbilical cord, but Danny’s not listening. His eyes are riveted to the screen where the baby’s stopped moving. He wants it to move again, and gives a startled laugh when it does.
“Mr. Williams?”
“What?” Danny’s says without taking his eyes off the screen.
“We need the equipment for other patients. We’ve made some recordings for further study and some prints. I think it’s best if you get dressed now and we move this to an office.”
Davis takes the transducer off his belly and the image disappears, breaking Danny’s trance. Then he turns to the other doctors. “Gentlemen…” he says, “I believe it would be best if this news stayed under wraps for now. At the very least until we’ve discussed it with the director.”
Mark, Kale and the gastroenterologist guy -Danny should really get his name at some point- they all nod. They look excited, like little boys who just decided to start a secret club no one else can join.
“What about Dr. Hannah?” Gastroenterologist guy asks.
Davis pats him on the back. “Tell her it was a parasite after all.”
-----------------------------------
It feels weird to be dressed again, sitting in an office, drinking a cup of bad hospital coffee. It’s too normal. Something major just happened, Danny’s entire worldview tilted on its axis. And here he is drinking coffee like nothing happened.
Davis stepped out for a minute. Presumably to go talk to the director and Danny passes the time paging through a pamphlet on foetal development. It’s going to look like a gummi-bear for at least two more weeks. Then it’ll start to look like a little alien.
The door slams open and Danny jumps in his seat.
“Danny?”
Steve’s here, finally. Danny stand up but then stalls, not sure what to say.
“Danny, what’s going on? What wrong?” Steve asks.
He looks so damn worried…as close to panicked as the SEAL will ever let himself get. A sound escapes Danny that he can’t even classify himself and he reaches out. Steve immediately pulls him into a hug and Danny just sinks into it, burying his face against Steve’s neck. He knows he needs to explain, knows Steve is freaking out with all kinds of worst-case scenario’s running through his head, but right now he just wants to take comfort in Steve’s warm strength.
“Whatever it is,” Steve mumbles near his ear, “we’ll get you through it okay. You’re going to be fine.”
He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself more than Danny, and Danny pushes him back because he can’t let Steve keep thinking the worst. “I’m not dying or anything.”
“No, you’re not.” Steve says.
He sounds determined. Like Danny is not going to die because Steve simply won’t allow it.
Just for that Danny pulls him in for a quick kiss.
Well, it was supposed to be quick. But Steve won’t let him go and then there’s Steve’s tongue, teasing his lower lip, demanding entrance, and Danny loses himself in this like he always does.
Finally, reluctantly, he pulls away and pushes Steve down in a chair. Which, judging by his face, Steve sees as another portent of really, really bad news.
“No, no, no. Babe, listen to me. Listen to me. I an not dying. I do not have some sort of horrible disease. Stop making that face, please. There’s just something…”
Wrong? Weird? Unnatural? He doesn’t even know how to begin explaining to Steve what’s going on.
Davis chooses that moment to come back and Danny is so grateful he could kiss him. “Maybe the doctor can explain it better than I can,” he tells Steve.
Davis shakes Steve’s hand and takes a seat behind his desk. He lays out two prints from the ultrasound. “Essentially,” he starts, “it comes down to this. Through what we think is a congenital condition, either at the chromosomal level or because of an unknown form of vestigial twinning or fetus in fetu, your partner has an additional structure or organ in his abdominal cavity that resembles the female reproductive organs. Somehow the right conditions were created for conception and gestation to occur, resulting in what appears to be a healthy foetus.”
Danny keeps his eyes locked on Steve’s face, nervously waiting for a reaction.
Steve frowns darkly. “I have no idea what you just said.”
Davis blinks at him for a moment and starts over. “We think your partner has a birth defect, either at a genetic level, or because of originally being part of a twin that didn’t split properly or that was enveloped in his own body. This has left your partner with something that resembles a womb. Apparently there was an ovum, an egg, present, and this egg was fertilized, resulting in a foetus. Basically, your partner is pregnant.”
It’s silent for a long moment and then Steve stands up so abruptly that his chair falls over. “Jesus Danny,” he says. “You got me out here for some kind of practical joke?! We were in the middle of a fucking case! I ran out of an interrogation for this!”
“Steve, it’s not-” Danny starts, but Steve turns and walks out of the room.
Shit. Danny rushes after him and grabs his arm, jerking him back around to face him. “Listen to me, you Neanderthal, I’m not-”
Danny stops cold. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Steve look this angry and for a moment he thinks Steve might punch him. His arms drop down of their own accord, covering his belly in an unconsciously protective move.
Steve’s eyes widen.
It would have been funny if everything wasn’t so fucked up, and then Davis is there, assuring Steve it’s not a joke, that he’d lose his license for pulling something like that and he convinces a shell-shocked Steve to come back into the office.
Danny takes a few deep breaths before following.
In the office Steve is back in his chair, staring at one of the ultrasound pictures with a frown. Once Danny is seated in his own chair Steve opens his mouth, but Danny interrupts him.
“Babe…” he says, “whatever you’re planning to say…I need you to stop and think about it for a moment okay? I know tact isn’t exactly your strong suit, and I understand your reaction, really I do because it was my first reaction too -although I don’t know why you think I would pull a stunt like that, and trust me we will be discussing this later- but right now I really don’t want to argue with you. Because I had a crappy day. A really fucked up crappy day. I mean, first they tell me I have cancer, then it’s a-”
Steve stops breathing. “You have cancer?”
“No.” Danny says, rubbing his eyes. “No, I don’t. I don’t have cancer. Or an aneurism. Or parasites.” He waves his hand at the ultrasound picture. “I got that instead. Aren’t you glad?”
Steve is silent again, staring at the picture.
The silence lasts a long time.
“You are going to say something about this at some point right?” Danny prods.
“It’s a lot to take in.” Steve finally says, but he reaches out and his hand finds Danny’s, interlocking their fingers.
And Danny finally lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding.
Fic: Unsympathetic - part 2.
Rating: Overall NC17, this part PG
Warnings: mpreg
Summary: How do you react to something like that?
Foetus. Danny knows the word. He’s aware of the meaning, but his brain is having trouble connecting it to his own situation.
A foetus. Foetus.
Inside him.
Live foetus…and there come the black spots again.
“Mr. Williams?”
Someone, Kale, is snapping his fingers in front of his face. “Danny, you still with us?”
Sure he is, although he wishes he wasn’t. Wishes he was home, blissfully unaware.
He swallows thickly and gastroenterologist guy comes over with a cup of water and has to help fold Danny’s fingers around it, because they’re sort of numb.
It’s impossible. Absurd. Ridiculous… He sits up straight, spilling half of his cup of water, and looks wildly around the examination room. “Is there a camera in here?” He asks, hating how shaky his voice is. “I swear to you, if this is some kind of candid camera joke, I’m going to sue you to the ends of the earth.”
Davis shakes his head and looks him in the eye. “We’re not joking Mr. Williams.”
There are no tells. No signs that the doctor is lying. His face and tone are sincere…and they tell Danny the doctor himself believes in what he’s saying. They’re not joking.
Not joking.
There’s a foetus inside of him.
“Are you sure it’s not a parasite?” He tries. “We were in the jungle…”
“I’m sure.”
“There were bugs.”
Davis gives him an apologetic look and Danny slumps back against the table. “But- How?”
He looks down at the ever so slightly distended skin of his belly and twitches. Suddenly it doesn’t feel like part of him anymore.
He feels like he wants to crawl out of his skin. It feels a little like when he was small and his mom found that huge tick attached to the back of his arm. She wouldn’t remove it herself because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to get the head out from where it was firmly embedded in Danny’s skin. His seven year-old self had been terrified of the disgusting bug he couldn’t get away from and he’d cried all the way to the doctor’s office.
“Right now we don’t know much.” Davis says, jerking him from his gloomy thoughts. “We don’t know why there is this extra structure inside your body. How it occurred that you apparently had a viable ovum, and we don’t know how the conditions were created that allowed the foetus to grow.”
“So basically you don’t know anything.” Danny snaps.
Davis puts a calming hand on his shoulder and Danny has to stop himself from slapping it away. He knows his current situation is not the doctor’s fault, but these are the people you go to for help when your body is out of whack. Where the hell do you go if the doctors themselves don’t know what’s going on?
Davis seems to get the gist of his thoughts. “We don’t know these things yet,” he says. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t ways of finding out or at least coming up with a likely hypothesis.”
Danny remembers the cup he’s holding, takes a sip of water and tries to think calmly, rationally. Formulate some sort of plan of action. “So we don’t know anything yet,” he says, “except there’s a foetus inside of me. And it’s alive.”
“That’s basically what it comes down to, yes.”
“So there’s no cancer?”
“Not as far as we know.”
“No aneurism?”
“Certainly not.”
He takes a deep breath. “So…what do I do?” And if the guy says ‘I don’t know’ Danny is going to go home, get his gun, and wave it around until somebody gives him answers. No jury would convict him under these circumstances.
Davis grins. “You try to relax and digest this news, and you let us do our jobs.”
Relax. Right. Like that’s going to happen. And when is Steve going to get here? Stupid Neanderthal is taking his damned time. Hopefully he’s not on in the middle of a-
Oh god.
Steve.
How the hell is he going to tell Steve about this? He’s not going to believe it. And Danny can’t blame him because, really?
“Doc?” he croaks. “Are you sure?”
Davis doesn’t answer immediately. Instead he twists the ultrasound screen a little so it’s easier for Danny to look at it. Then he grabs the transducer again and puts it back on Danny’s belly. “Morning sickness usually starts around week six, that, and the size of the foetus and its heart rate, indicates that the foetus is about nine weeks old.” He points at the screen. “There, you see that little shape? At nine weeks most of the basic structures are in place.”
He indicates the largest part of the little blob. “That’s the head right there. These little things are the arms. Right there, those are the legs.”
And as he points Danny starts to recognise. Sees a clear shape where before he only saw indistinct smudges.
The focus changes a little. “That’s the heart beating.”
Danny stares while Davis shows him the…foetus…from different angles. There really is something alive in there.
It looks like a gummi-bear.
And then it moves.
The little gummi-bear waves tiny arms and kicks tiny legs and Danny takes a shuddering breath because holy shit, there’s a tiny little human being growing inside of him.
Davis talks on about the sac, and something resembling an umbilical cord, but Danny’s not listening. His eyes are riveted to the screen where the baby’s stopped moving. He wants it to move again, and gives a startled laugh when it does.
“Mr. Williams?”
“What?” Danny’s says without taking his eyes off the screen.
“We need the equipment for other patients. We’ve made some recordings for further study and some prints. I think it’s best if you get dressed now and we move this to an office.”
Davis takes the transducer off his belly and the image disappears, breaking Danny’s trance. Then he turns to the other doctors. “Gentlemen…” he says, “I believe it would be best if this news stayed under wraps for now. At the very least until we’ve discussed it with the director.”
Mark, Kale and the gastroenterologist guy -Danny should really get his name at some point- they all nod. They look excited, like little boys who just decided to start a secret club no one else can join.
“What about Dr. Hannah?” Gastroenterologist guy asks.
Davis pats him on the back. “Tell her it was a parasite after all.”
-----------------------------------
It feels weird to be dressed again, sitting in an office, drinking a cup of bad hospital coffee. It’s too normal. Something major just happened, Danny’s entire worldview tilted on its axis. And here he is drinking coffee like nothing happened.
Davis stepped out for a minute. Presumably to go talk to the director and Danny passes the time paging through a pamphlet on foetal development. It’s going to look like a gummi-bear for at least two more weeks. Then it’ll start to look like a little alien.
The door slams open and Danny jumps in his seat.
“Danny?”
Steve’s here, finally. Danny stand up but then stalls, not sure what to say.
“Danny, what’s going on? What wrong?” Steve asks.
He looks so damn worried…as close to panicked as the SEAL will ever let himself get. A sound escapes Danny that he can’t even classify himself and he reaches out. Steve immediately pulls him into a hug and Danny just sinks into it, burying his face against Steve’s neck. He knows he needs to explain, knows Steve is freaking out with all kinds of worst-case scenario’s running through his head, but right now he just wants to take comfort in Steve’s warm strength.
“Whatever it is,” Steve mumbles near his ear, “we’ll get you through it okay. You’re going to be fine.”
He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself more than Danny, and Danny pushes him back because he can’t let Steve keep thinking the worst. “I’m not dying or anything.”
“No, you’re not.” Steve says.
He sounds determined. Like Danny is not going to die because Steve simply won’t allow it.
Just for that Danny pulls him in for a quick kiss.
Well, it was supposed to be quick. But Steve won’t let him go and then there’s Steve’s tongue, teasing his lower lip, demanding entrance, and Danny loses himself in this like he always does.
Finally, reluctantly, he pulls away and pushes Steve down in a chair. Which, judging by his face, Steve sees as another portent of really, really bad news.
“No, no, no. Babe, listen to me. Listen to me. I an not dying. I do not have some sort of horrible disease. Stop making that face, please. There’s just something…”
Wrong? Weird? Unnatural? He doesn’t even know how to begin explaining to Steve what’s going on.
Davis chooses that moment to come back and Danny is so grateful he could kiss him. “Maybe the doctor can explain it better than I can,” he tells Steve.
Davis shakes Steve’s hand and takes a seat behind his desk. He lays out two prints from the ultrasound. “Essentially,” he starts, “it comes down to this. Through what we think is a congenital condition, either at the chromosomal level or because of an unknown form of vestigial twinning or fetus in fetu, your partner has an additional structure or organ in his abdominal cavity that resembles the female reproductive organs. Somehow the right conditions were created for conception and gestation to occur, resulting in what appears to be a healthy foetus.”
Danny keeps his eyes locked on Steve’s face, nervously waiting for a reaction.
Steve frowns darkly. “I have no idea what you just said.”
Davis blinks at him for a moment and starts over. “We think your partner has a birth defect, either at a genetic level, or because of originally being part of a twin that didn’t split properly or that was enveloped in his own body. This has left your partner with something that resembles a womb. Apparently there was an ovum, an egg, present, and this egg was fertilized, resulting in a foetus. Basically, your partner is pregnant.”
It’s silent for a long moment and then Steve stands up so abruptly that his chair falls over. “Jesus Danny,” he says. “You got me out here for some kind of practical joke?! We were in the middle of a fucking case! I ran out of an interrogation for this!”
“Steve, it’s not-” Danny starts, but Steve turns and walks out of the room.
Shit. Danny rushes after him and grabs his arm, jerking him back around to face him. “Listen to me, you Neanderthal, I’m not-”
Danny stops cold. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Steve look this angry and for a moment he thinks Steve might punch him. His arms drop down of their own accord, covering his belly in an unconsciously protective move.
Steve’s eyes widen.
It would have been funny if everything wasn’t so fucked up, and then Davis is there, assuring Steve it’s not a joke, that he’d lose his license for pulling something like that and he convinces a shell-shocked Steve to come back into the office.
Danny takes a few deep breaths before following.
In the office Steve is back in his chair, staring at one of the ultrasound pictures with a frown. Once Danny is seated in his own chair Steve opens his mouth, but Danny interrupts him.
“Babe…” he says, “whatever you’re planning to say…I need you to stop and think about it for a moment okay? I know tact isn’t exactly your strong suit, and I understand your reaction, really I do because it was my first reaction too -although I don’t know why you think I would pull a stunt like that, and trust me we will be discussing this later- but right now I really don’t want to argue with you. Because I had a crappy day. A really fucked up crappy day. I mean, first they tell me I have cancer, then it’s a-”
Steve stops breathing. “You have cancer?”
“No.” Danny says, rubbing his eyes. “No, I don’t. I don’t have cancer. Or an aneurism. Or parasites.” He waves his hand at the ultrasound picture. “I got that instead. Aren’t you glad?”
Steve is silent again, staring at the picture.
The silence lasts a long time.
“You are going to say something about this at some point right?” Danny prods.
“It’s a lot to take in.” Steve finally says, but he reaches out and his hand finds Danny’s, interlocking their fingers.
And Danny finally lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding.