'Tis the season (1/2)
Title: 'Tis the season
Pairings: Jon/Spencer, various others
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: This is a complete work of fiction, no disrespect intended.
Summary: “So,” Gabe said conversationally, sitting down next to him. “You got yourself knocked up.”
Author's Notes: For foxxcub, who asked for a fairytale AU with no William Beckett and no mpreg unless it was Spencer. This is almost definitely not what she had in mind.
Thanks to maleyka for encouraging the original idea and brainstorming with me, adellyna for the beta and listening to me ramble, harriet_vane and zarah5v2 for being willing to give it a look-over, and cupiscent for reading even though this isn't her cup of tea.
Spring was coming. Spencer could feel it in the slight warmth of the breeze stirring his hair, the crunch of the fading frost beneath his feet as he jumped from a leaf onto the ground.
Brendon was having the same thought, apparently, because he leapt down from the dried-out stem of a sapling and announced, “Spring!”
Spencer spread his wings wide, inspecting them for the first traces of emerald speckled amongst the pink. He gave a few inquisitive flaps, and the dust gathered thicker, running like veins along the lines of his wings. “It’ll be pollination season soon,” he guessed, joining Ryan on the broad, flat leaf where he was reclining.
“I want a seed pod this year,” Ryan said, eyes closed, face tilted back into the watery, early-spring sunlight. His wings moved a little, stirring sympathetically with the rustle of the breeze. “Early. I don’t want to wait.”
Spencer flapped his wings a few more times, but it was still too soon in the season, and he wasn’t turned on enough even in a general, vaguely horny-feeling sense to shake any of the dust free. “Soon,” he repeated, shifting over automatically as Brendon climbed up beside them, balancing on the springy edge of the stem.
“Who are you going to ask?” Brendon piped up, wriggling until both Spencer and Ryan reluctantly shifted again to make room for him between them. Brendon was excited about spring in general, as usual, probably much more so than he was about the imminent pollination season.
Winter was Spencer’s favorite season, when everything was cold and still and waiting, blanketed in white, without the hectic buzz of spring or the lazy, lethargic apathy of summer, but arguably it wasn’t the best time to be a fairy. Spencer was looking forward to some variety in his nut-and-seed-centric diet.
Ryan’s eyes cut sideways, and Spencer had to take a minute to remember the conversation before he caught up. “No,” he said firmly. “I love you, but I’m not having a seed pod with you.”
Ryan looked slightly put out, but mostly like he’d already known that would be the answer. “You wouldn’t have to carry it,” he pointed out.
“No,” Spencer said again. He closed his eyes, soaking up the faint rays of sunlight, and added, “I’ll bet Jon would, though.”
“Hmm,” Ryan replied thoughtfully. Their leaf did a little spastic shiver which meant that Brendon was moving again, and Spencer flattened one hand against the spongy surface to keep his balance.
“Spring,” Brendon said happily, hopefully settled again. “Sunshine. Flowers. Insects.”
Brendon had always been rather taken with insects. “Allergies,” Spencer reminded him, because Brendon had yet to meet fairy dust that didn’t make him sneeze. It was the main reason Spencer hadn’t recommended him to Ryan, and probably why Brendon himself hadn’t volunteered. He didn’t know if Brendon could hold his breath and stop sneezing for long enough to make a seed pod. Spencer was sort of idly curious about how that would turn out if he tried.
“Green things,” Brendon countered. “Blossoms. The season of courtship and love.”
From somewhere to their left, Patrick’s voice floated clearly up the hill. “Pete, I am not having a seed pod with you!”
“Courtship and love,” Spencer agreed solemnly. “And involuntary incubation.”
~*~
Nearly everyone was about over the next few days, forgoing winter hiding places to bask in the warming weather. Spencer was briefly wistful for the cozy stillness of the past months, but it was still good to see everyone again. Visiting neighbors was much less likely to occur when your wings froze the second you poked your head out from underground.
Spencer saw Greta in the early afternoon, her hair cascading in golden curls over her shoulders and a wreath of white flowers in her hair. “Already?” he asked, doing a double-take to check the color of her wings.
They were still milky-white, floating like gauze behind her back. She flushed when he asked, though, cheeks turning rosier and plump with her smile. “Not yet,” she admitted. “It’s not stopping us from trying.”
“Victoria?” he guessed, and was rewarded with another happy blush splotching her white throat.
“Check with me in another few days,” she said, and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek before she moved past. Brendon caught her only a few feet away, swinging her around until she was laughing too hard to breathe, and from the cajoling tone of his voice, he’d made the same assumption Spencer had.
He saw Butcher spread out sunbathing on a nearby patch of grass, which meant that everyone in their little community was now present and accounted for, save for a few. “Where’s William?” he asked Ryland, climbing up onto the toadstool where Ryland was currently perched, gangly legs crossed and a piece of straw left over from the winter sticking contemplatively out of his mouth.
“Probably still hiding out,” Ryland answered, removing the piece of straw and gesturing with it to somehow encompass the meadow full of fairies. “You know how he is. We probably won’t see him until after the crocuses bloom. I haven’t seen Gabe, either.”
Spencer nodded. William was the only person who disliked the coming of spring as much as Spencer did, and for nearly the same reasons. He disliked winter even more, though, and tended to burrow until well after the final frost had melted on the grass.
“Do you know where Ryan’s gone?” he asked, trying to spot the familiar red-and-black pattern of Ryan’s wings.
Ryland sucked thoughtfully on his bit of straw. “I heard Brendon sneeze from that direction a while back,” he offered, gesturing to the shadowy cave of a shrub, just starting to sprout fresh buds of brown and green.
It was as good a tip as any. Even if Brendon wasn’t actually with Ryan now, he probably had been before, and Spencer might run into someone else over there who would know. “Thanks,” he told Ryland, flitting down again and setting off for the shrub.
“Don’t mention it,” Ryland called behind him. “And if you see Alex, tell him to bring me some of those little white truffle things.”
Spencer made a vague mental note, but he was already busy poking his way into the shrub. It was close-knit and dim, the sunlight not yet able to penetrate beneath the thorny branches, and he couldn’t see far in front of him past the spiraling core at the center.
“Ryan?” he called, seeing a shadow and glimmer as he pushed one of the heavier branches out of his way, and then he realized what he was seeing and came to a complete halt.
Ryan was lying on his stomach, wings spread out to their fullest extent on either side of him, head pillowed on his arms and a blissful expression on his face. Jon was standing at his feet, his wings beating gently, enough to swirl the air around them into a light breeze. All around them, dancing in the whirlwind, was the purple glitter of Jon’s fairy dust.
Spencer’s wings snapped open reflexively, helping him backpedal. “Shit,” he said out loud, and Ryan’s eyes snapped open, widening at once. “I’m sorry.” Jon stopped moving, surprised, his face blurry through the haze of swirling dust. Spencer wondered if this was perhaps the reason Brendon had been sneezing earlier. “Sorry,” he said again, already backing up.
The sunlight seemed a little brighter when he re-emerged, and he blinked for a few seconds, letting his eyes adjust. Victoria came over to stand next to him, her lips curled up a little. “Walked in on a cross-pollination?” she guessed.
Spencer scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “Ryan,” he confirmed. He’d done it before, of course; there weren’t many places for fairies to hide where they wouldn’t be found, and they were all hugely social by nature. The fact that it was Ryan, though, made him feel just a little more horrified.
“Hey,” Victoria said sympathetically, squeezing his arm. “Look on the bright side. At least he wasn’t naked, right?”
Spencer shuddered. “Thank god for that.” His wings trembled a little along with the rest of him, and a few specks of dust shook loose, drifting down to disappear into the grass beneath their feet.
“Hey,” Brendon said, popping up beside them and bouncing a little on his toes. Then he sneezed.
“Sorry,” Spencer said automatically, folding his wings behind him. It was an automatic, sympathetic reaction to Jon spreading fairy dust, he guessed. His wanted in on the action.
“No problem,” Brendon said, and sneezed again. Victoria cooed at him and wrapped an arm over his shoulders. Spencer sighed.
~*~
“So Jon said yes?” Spencer said when Ryan slipped up to join him on an early crocus bud, his arms curling long and gangly around his knobby knees.
“Yeah. Sorry,” Ryan replied, rubbing at his nose. “I didn’t mean for you to find out like that.”
“I shouldn’t have come looking for you,” Spencer demurred.
“I should have told you,” Ryan countered. “It was just kind of a spontaneous thing.”
“Really,” Spencer said. “It’s fine.” It wasn’t even that it had been an image he needed to bleach from his brain or anything; it had just felt…private.
Ryan leaned against him a little. “I really want a seed pod,” he said softly.
“I know,” Spencer answered, bumping his shoulder gently.
Ryan sighed. “It’s just, every year, I always break up with whoever I’m with right before pollination season starts.”
“That’s because you turn into a raging, stir-crazy bitch during the winter,” Spencer informed him honestly.
Ryan bumped him back with slightly more force than was strictly necessary, but not enough to knock Spencer from his perch. “I know,” he said finally, and sighed again.
“Hey,” Spencer said soothingly. “It’ll happen. You’ll be incubating before you know it.”
“Thanks,” Ryan said. A second later, he added, “Did you see Patrick earlier?”
Spencer grinned, face turned into the last rays of the sunset. “Yeah. His wings are already speckled.”
“Black,” Ryan confirmed. “Which means it’s Pete’s.”
This time Spencer laughed, shaking his head. “Patrick’s going to kill him,” he said. “Every year, he says no, and every year…”
“Apparently it was an accident,” Ryan said solemnly. “Pete just happened to lose control and send a shower of fairy dust down over Patrick’s head as he was walking underneath a tree branch.”
“Uh-huh,” Spencer said skeptically. He couldn’t imagine a pollination season without an angry, red-faced Patrick, though. It was like a tradition.
“I think he got Joe, too,” Ryan said thoughtfully. “I wonder if he’ll have two this year.”
If Pete ended up dividing his time between two seed pods, Spencer thought, Patrick really would kill him.
Ryan had his wings spread halfway open, peering sideways over his shoulder. “Didn’t take?” Spencer asked, leaning slightly further away so that Ryan could get a better look.
Ryan frowned. “I can’t tell yet,” he said. His wings gave a despondent little flutter. “They look a little darker, I think.”
Spencer refrained from pointing out that the sun was sinking low on the horizon, and that everything was looking a little darker by the moment. “Maybe in the morning,” he suggested. He stood up, stretching out, and said, “Have you seen Brendon?”
“Not for a while, but he might be with Jon,” Ryan suggested. “He was with Greta earlier, but I think she and Victoria disappeared a while back.”
“We could always follow the sound of the sneezing,” Spencer suggested.
“I resent that,” Brendon’s voice carried up from beneath them, a second before the crocus shook violently and he appeared by their side. “Are you calling me a peeping tom? I’m not the one who interrupted someone else’s cross-pollination today.” He gave Spencer a pointed look as he said it, although it was a cheerful enough, without menace. “I was just looking for Jon, but I found you guys instead. Are we sleeping out under the stars tonight?”
Ryan wrinkled his nose. “Still too cold,” he said. “Maybe soon.”
“I’ll stay out with you,” Spencer offered. Ryan was right, it was still cold, but Spencer liked the bite of it. Besides, within half an hour he’d have Brendon plastered against him to keep warm, and cuddling with Brendon was like sleeping next to the sun.
“Cool,” Brendon said, bouncing. He made a move to drop back to the ground, and then stopped, frozen. Spencer frowned, staring back, but Brendon wasn’t looking directly at him. “Spencer,” Brendon said slowly, “are you…?”
“What?” Spencer asked. He was abruptly nervous, and wary. His wings flattened back behind him, but Brendon caught at his hand, saying, “No, no,” until Spencer spread them again.
Brendon’s fingers traced wonderingly down the side of his wing. “There’s purple,” he said. “I see purple.”
“What?” It was Ryan this time, saving Spencer from having to say it. “No you don’t. It’s just dark.”
“It’s probably dark green,” Spencer offered. His wings had been heavy with dust since the morning, since he walked in on Jon and Ryan, clinging to his wings and ready to fall. He should probably shake them out before he spent the night out with Brendon, just in case. Neither of them would sleep if Brendon was up sneezing all night.
“No, it’s not,” Brendon insisted. “It’s purple. Look, here.”
Spencer started to turn around, annoyed at Brendon for plucking at him, but Ryan stopped him, holding him still while he and Brendon both spread their hands out on Spencer’s wing. It jittered under their touch, uneasy, and finally he twitched it away.
Ryan’s expression had gone blank. “It is,” he said. “I think he’s right.”
“I’m not incubating,” Spencer snapped, yanking his wings back tight against his body. It wasn’t even possible, really. He hadn’t been with anyone like that, hadn’t spent any time immersed in a cloud of dust with his wings spread in welcome. He’d only been around Jon and Ryan for a handful of seconds, not even that, and certainly not enough to have caught enough of Jon’s fairy dust to cross-pollinate.
Brendon’s eyes were wide and awed. “I think you are,” he breathed.
“I’m not,” Spencer warned, glowering. Brendon didn’t take the hint and back off, but then he rarely did. Ryan was still frozen, holding himself stiff and aloof. Spencer fought the sickening swoop in his stomach and said flatly, “Ryan’s right, it’s too cold. I’m sleeping in tonight.”
It took him a while to climb down from the crocus and stalk away, but he didn’t hear either of them calling him back. There wasn’t enough light to see properly now; Spencer could barely find his way back to his favorite bush, let alone check his wings for discoloration. It was all a mistake, anyway. In the morning, everything would be fine.
~*~
“This is your fault,” Spencer hissed, jabbing a pointed finger into Jon’s chest. “You did this.”
Jon looked remarkably surprised to be under attack, particularly first thing in the morning. “What?” he asked, strategically backing out of finger-poking range and putting a tiny flower stem between them.
Spencer let his wings flare out to the sides, bright and angry where they caught the morning light. It was still early yet, but no amount of shaking, dunking or brushing had managed to get rid of the tiny purple specks creating an unsightly blemish on Spencer’s lovely pink and green wings.
“What?” Jon said again, and then his eyes widened, and he said, “Oh.”
“Oh?” Spencer echoed, advancing in measured steps. The flower stem crumpled beneath his feet. “Oh? You cross-pollinated with me, Jon.”
Jon looked apologetic, at least, but nowhere near the groveling point Spencer really craved. “Technically, I was cross-pollinating with Ryan,” he pointed out. “You just intercepted.”
“If I do not find a way to get this out of me,” Spencer glowered, “you had better step up and take responsibility.”
Jon blinked, startled. “Oh, hey,” he said in surprise. “Do you want to incubate together? I mean, I can’t carry it for you or anything, but we could…”
“No,” Spencer bit off. “No, I do not want to incubate with you, thank you, you’ve done enough.” He shook his wings out, as they were currently cocked at crooked and alarming angles behind his back, and growled, “Where’s William?”
Jon opened his mouth, obviously thought better of whatever he was going to say in trying to persuade Spencer to have a seed pod with him, closed it, then opened it again and said, “I haven’t seen him. But that’s not all that unusual. You know how he is at the beginning of spring.”
Spencer did know. William hated the idea of cross-pollinating with a sincere, burning fervor. He avoided everyone else like they were a polite plague when there was fairy dust in the air, and tended to stand on low-hanging tree branches and make impassioned speeches about the innate injustice of a race that gave you no control over your own biological processes.
Rumor also had it, though, that he’d found a way of getting rid of the dust before it clung, since two years ago there had been an unfortunate incident during which Pete had mistaken his target and tackled William in a cloud of fairy dust from the ambush point of a rose bush. Pete had lived in fear for the next two days, until he managed to carry out his original plan of attack and William passed the satisfaction of holding Pete’s life in his hands over to Patrick.
Spencer needed William. If not to get rid of the dust, which he was gradually - albeit very slowly - becoming resigned to, then at least for a good bitch session about how all fairies should be entitled to a reproductive choice.
No one else understood. Brendon was already helping Greta pick out tree branches on which to hang her not-yet-conceived cocoon, and Brendon was allergic to pollination.
Jon was still looking at him, Spencer realized, with a mix of sympathetic tenderness and trepidation. Spencer let his wings flare out again, just to see Jon stumble hastily backwards, and hissed, “This isn’t over yet.”
He didn’t know exactly what he meant by that, but he got a great deal of satisfaction out of saying it, which was really all that mattered.
He saw Patrick across the meadow, busily doing fairy-things while he ignored Pete hovering behind him. It was usually hard to tell with Patrick for the first few days, but he was definitely incubating, based on the black streaks smeared across his yellow wings. Patrick always went through pollination season looking like a cranky bumblebee.
Ryan was harder to find, but that was because he was sulking in a daffodil. Spencer sighed, then crawled in beside him and tried not to get his ass covered in yellow crust.
“You’re angry with me,” he guessed, because he knew how Ryan’s brain worked, and Spencer was the one with purple polka-dots on his wings.
“No,” Ryan said, and then sulked for a few minutes before saying, “Yes.”
“I’m sorry,” Spencer said sincerely. “Ry, I really am.”
“You don’t even want a seed pod,” Ryan muttered, glaring at Spencer mutinously. “Why did you have to steal mine?”
“It was an accident,” Spencer protested. “Really. It won’t happen again. You should ask Jon again, give it another try. I’ll even stand guard for you.” He held up his hand, pinky finger outstretched.
Ryan didn’t budge for a few seconds, but eventually he unfurled slightly and curled his little finger around Spencer’s. “You think he will?” he asked slowly.
Spencer scoffed. “Of course he will. He agreed once already, didn’t he? And he’s obviously fertile, so…” Spencer shivered his wings out a bit. “Good choice.”
Ryan squeezed his knee. “It’ll be okay,” he said, in what was for Ryan an unprecedented show of sympathy. Then his eyes lit up a little. “We could do it together, Spence. We could be incubation buddies. So you don’t have to go through it alone.”
Spencer resisted the urge to roll his eyes only because Ryan was so obviously sincere. And enthusiastic. “Joy,” he said dryly. “I can’t wait.”
~*~
“Brendon,” Spencer said loudly. He was tired and he was cranky and he was incubating, for fuck’s sake, so he wasn’t in the mood for games. Ryan was avoiding him, and if anyone knew where and why, it would be Brendon.
Brendon’s eyes got very wide and spooked. He was balancing on one toe, hovering just about the ground and ready to take off at a second’s notice. “Spencer,” he said. “Ah. Hi.”
“Where is he?” Spencer asked, crossing his arms over his chest. It took just a little more effort today to push his hip out, which only made him scowl harder. He was going to get fat. Ryan could get over his hissy fit and just deal, already, because Spencer clearly had the worse end of these circumstances.
“Right now he’s a little…” Brendon began tentatively, which was as far as he got before Ryan’s head poked out of a nearby pile of acorn caps and Spencer stopped paying attention to him.
“What do you want?” Ryan grumped. There was a surly set to his jaw that didn’t go well with the current whimsical arrangement of his fluffed-up hair.
“I want food,” Spencer said firmly, as his stomach noisily reminded him of why he’d come in search of Ryan in the first place. “I’m starving. Do you remember where we hid those nuts? Maybe some berries, too, I’m seriously hungry.”
Brendon shifted his weight from foot to foot nervously. Ryan just stared at him. “You stole my seed pod,” he said flatly. “I’m not sharing food with you, you…you…cocoon thief.”
Spencer was so surprised he almost took a step back. “Are you mad about that again?” he asked incredulously. “I thought you were going to try again today.” He paused, frowning. “Am I interrupting, is that it? Was Brendon supposed to be standing guard?” It didn’t look like there was room for another person in that pile of acorn caps, but then Ryan was pretty skinny.
“No,” Ryan snapped. He glared in silence for a few seconds, just long enough that Spencer was about to sigh and ask again, and then he mumbled, “Jon said no.”
“What?” Spencer asked, not sure he’d heard correctly. It made no sense.
“Jon said no,” Ryan repeated. He was louder this time, defiant. Brendon was taking tiny steps backwards through the air, like he thought he could quietly disappear if they just kept snapping at each other.
“Why the hell would he say that?” Spencer asked, baffled. “He said yes. You two were going to do it.” Jon loved Ryan, he knew how important this was to him. Spencer was living proof that Jon had been ready and willing just yesterday.
“Because of you,” Ryan said, eyes narrowed venomously. “He said he wouldn’t do it because of you. Thanks a lot, Spencer.”
“Wait, what?” Spencer said. He still felt like he was missing something critical, something obvious. Something that would make the rest of this make sense. “Ryan…”
Ryan’s head had disappeared beneath the acorn caps again. “Go away,” he called, muffled inside his refuge. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
“Ryan,” Spencer tried again, but Ryan just swept the whole pile of acorn caps down on top of himself in a rattling heap and refused to come out.
Spencer tried to turn his ire on Brendon, but Brendon had taken off when the acorn caps came down and was halfway across the clearing.
Spencer squared his shoulders and went to find Jon.
Jon was actually relatively easy to find, all things considered. He was smiling and laughing with three other fairies, all of whom disappeared the second they saw Spencer coming. Spencer wondered if it was his pissed-off glare, or the fact that his wings were smeared with ugly streaks of purple war paint.
“Why won’t you have a seed pod with Ryan?” he demanded, crossing his arms again. He knew better than to try the hip thing now; he felt too bulky and awkward as it was.
Jon didn’t seem all that surprised, all things considered. His tone was perfectly even when he answered, “I’m having one with you.”
“No,” Spencer said clearly, “you’re not. You’re having one with Ryan. I’m having one by myself. Thanks to you, obviously, but we’re still not doing it together. You can cross-pollinate with more than one fairy in a single season,” he pointed out, exasperated. “There’s no rule or anything, you’re not incubating. You can still shake as much dust as you like.”
Jon shook his head, and managed to somehow look soulful instead of just plain stupid. “That’s not how it should work. I have a responsibility to you now.”
“Oh my god,” Spencer said impatiently. “Are you actively trying to make my life worse? Haven’t you done enough?”
Jon looked rather taken aback. “I’m saying that I’ll stand beside you,” he said with a certain amount of confusion. “I can’t support both you and Ryan at the same time, and I’ve already…”
“No,” Spencer cut him off, jabbing a finger in the air. Jon jerked back reflexively. “No, no. You’re not screwing this up for him. I’m not screwing this up for him. He’s my best friend, you don’t get to make me the reason he’s unhappy.”
Jon squared his shoulders and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t.”
“Fngah,” Spencer said, and stomped off to find William.
~*~
William, it turned out, was nowhere to be found. Spencer spent a good deal of the morning trampling flower seedlings and stalking about hacking apart blades of grass, but at the end of it, he was no closer than he had been at the beginning.
Gabe was his next best bet, because even during pollination season when William wouldn’t let other fairies within ten feet of him, Gabe couldn’t take more than two days of being apart. Gabe, however, was missing as well, and it only took another three circuits of the meadow for Spencer to reach that conclusion.
His next step was to approach the group sitting in a circle on a particularly large toadstool, all lazing about in the sunlight with varying degrees of nonchalance. Ryland raised an eyebrow at his approach, but he didn’t take the straw out of his mouth, so it must have been Alex who asked, “What’s up?”
“Have you seen Gabe?” Spencer asked, because asking after William would probably be pointless.
“Hmm,” Alex replied thoughtfully, and looked to Ryland. Ryland chewed for a bit as he mulled it over and then looked to Nate, who considered for a moment and shook his head. “Sorry,” Alex said, returning his attention to Spencer. “Haven’t seen him.”
“I thought he was just here, though,” Nate said, twisting around. “Didn’t we just see him?”
“I think that was yesterday,” Ryland corrected, tapping the bit of straw against his teeth. “We might have seen him yesterday.”
“Maybe Victoria’s seen him,” Alex suggested. “Is she around?”
Ryland waggled his wings suggestively. “Victoria is busy. She may have seen him, though, while she wasn’t busy. Shall we rustle her up?”
“I don’t think she’ll like that very much,” Nate inserted warily. “Maybe we should ask someone else.”
“If he’s around, Adam might have seen him,” Alex suggested. “I can’t think of who else…”
“Wait, shh,” Ryland urged, and the group fell silent. Ryland waited one more second and then yelled “Gabriel!”
They all waited for a few moments, and then Ryland turned back to Spencer and said, “Sorry, not here.”
“Thanks,” Spencer said slowly, his wings spreading as he turned to go.
Alex suddenly looked alarmed. “You’re not incubating his seed pod, are you? Does he know?”
Ryland muttered something under his breath that sounded like, “Does William know,” but Spencer couldn’t swear to it.
“No,” he said quickly. “I’m not. Just wanted to ask him a question. Thanks, though.”
Ryland lifted his straw in good-natured farewell. Spencer turned again, took a few steps and nearly ran into Jon.
“Hey,” Jon said awkwardly. “I was just wondering if there was anything I could do for you.”
Spencer was suddenly aware of three curious pairs of eyes burning into the back of his head. “No,” he said, starting to walk so that they could have this conversation - if there was going to be one - somewhere more private. “I think you’ve done enough.”
“Okay,” Jon said, falling into step a half-pace behind him. “If there is, though, let me know.”
“Can you make Ryan start talking to me again?” Spencer inquired, one eyebrow arched dubiously. “Because I think that’s it.”
Jon hesitated, and then offered carefully, “I brought you a snapdragon.” When Spencer just stared at him, he added, “For the morning sickness?”
“Oh god,” Spencer said faintly. “There’s going to be morning sickness.”
Jon’s face was leaping about between wincing and an expression of concern. “Probably,” he admitted. “It’s common in ninety-nine percent of incubating fairies.”
“Oh god,” Spencer said, because now his brain was catching him up on all of the other symptoms as well, and it wasn’t a particularly happy picture. Until now, he’d mostly been thinking, I’m going to get fat, and not without a certain amount of venom.
“It’s not really all that bad,” Jon offered, and when Spencer turned to eye him suspiciously, he added, “I hear?”
Spencer rolled his eyes and stalked off to sulk. Just in case, he took the snapdragon with him.
~*~
Spencer was horny. He was horny and he was incubating and getting himself off three times a day just wasn’t cutting it. Everything had started tingling.
“I want sex,” he told Greta as they dipped their toes into a puddle of dew together. “Lots of sex. Huge amounts of sex.”
“Mmm,” Greta agreed, her hand curved over her belly as if to keep it from falling into the puddle as well. She was almost exactly as round as Spencer was, which wasn’t too bad, yet. It took a little more effort to get from here to there, but he was being lazy anyway, these days.
“I’m keeping Victoria busy,” Greta told him, splashing her feet a little. “It’s the hormones. She’s not exactly complaining, though.”
“I want sex,” Spencer said again, and he meant it to come out matter-of-fact, but it sounded a little like a lament out loud. He was already nauseous in the mornings, and in another week he wouldn’t be able to walk upright. He felt like he was getting the shitty side of this incubation deal.
Greta patted his hand. “I know,” she said sympathetically, and then beamed at him until he had to give in and smile back. She was glowing, and there were fresh flowers in her hair. It really wasn’t fair.
He was on his way over to his favorite sunbathing spot, idly considering a few hours of naptime curled up in a daffodil somewhere, when he heard Patrick’s voice rising over the murmur of insects and rustling leaves.
“I am not going be dragged around on a leaf for two weeks!” Patrick was yelling, as Spencer finally came within sight of them. “Pete!”
“It’s ingenious,” Pete argued, soothing. He was tugging a full-grown maple leaf behind him, waggling the stem for emphasis. “It’s like a sleigh. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”
Spencer winced. Patrick tended to blow up early, past the point that he could balance using his wings, and he looked within a few days of that now. Spencer straightened up almost without thinking about it, determined to be upright for as long as possible before his stomach overbalanced him. No one would be dragging him around on a maple leaf, that was for sure.
Just in case Jon got any ideas, Spencer tracked him down immediately to make this clear. “No leaf sleighs,” he ordered, coming to a halt and crossing his arms in front of Jon. It was kind of awkward; he had to fold them higher now, on the little shelf made by his belly. He tried to make his glare twice as intimidating to make up for it.
Jon blinked at him, bemused. “Okay,” he agreed.
“And no getting people to carry me places like I’m a hammock,” Spencer pressed, because that had been Pete’s ill-fated idea last season, and it had been an unmitigated disaster.
“Sure,” Jon agreed. He paused, then said, “I’m probably going to need to bring you stuff, then.”
“Yes,” Spencer agreed, then changed his mind and said, “No. I’ll have Brendon do it. Or Ryan.” Ryan still wasn’t speaking to him, but it was fine. Once Spencer was unable to walk and a complete invalid, he’d have to shape up.
Jon’s eyes crinkled a little bit at the corners. “What about a domesticated grasshopper?” he asked, and if Spencer didn’t know better, he’d have sworn Jon got that idea from Brendon. Only yesterday, Brendon had suggested a domesticated cricket.
“No,” Spencer said vehemently. “No insects. I want to maintain some level of dignity.”
Stupid Greta, he thought. She had that extra vertebra that women had. She’d probably be fine. And having lots of sex while she was at it.
“Is there anything else I can do?” Jon asked, solicitous as always. “More snapdragons?”
“No,” Spencer said immediately, and added for good measure, “And no flying or gliding apparatus made out of spider-silk and other questionable materials.”
“Pete?” someone asked behind him, and Spencer turned to see Mikey yawning, bleary and half-awake. Alicia was right behind him, both arms wrapped around Mikey’s rounded stomach and grinning.
“Not this year,” Spencer assured them. “This year he’s making a sleigh out of leaves.”
Mikey blinked a few times. “Oh hey,” he said in surprise. “That might actually work for once.”
~*~
Part Two
Pairings: Jon/Spencer, various others
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: This is a complete work of fiction, no disrespect intended.
Summary: “So,” Gabe said conversationally, sitting down next to him. “You got yourself knocked up.”
Author's Notes: For foxxcub, who asked for a fairytale AU with no William Beckett and no mpreg unless it was Spencer. This is almost definitely not what she had in mind.
Thanks to maleyka for encouraging the original idea and brainstorming with me, adellyna for the beta and listening to me ramble, harriet_vane and zarah5v2 for being willing to give it a look-over, and cupiscent for reading even though this isn't her cup of tea.
Spring was coming. Spencer could feel it in the slight warmth of the breeze stirring his hair, the crunch of the fading frost beneath his feet as he jumped from a leaf onto the ground.
Brendon was having the same thought, apparently, because he leapt down from the dried-out stem of a sapling and announced, “Spring!”
Spencer spread his wings wide, inspecting them for the first traces of emerald speckled amongst the pink. He gave a few inquisitive flaps, and the dust gathered thicker, running like veins along the lines of his wings. “It’ll be pollination season soon,” he guessed, joining Ryan on the broad, flat leaf where he was reclining.
“I want a seed pod this year,” Ryan said, eyes closed, face tilted back into the watery, early-spring sunlight. His wings moved a little, stirring sympathetically with the rustle of the breeze. “Early. I don’t want to wait.”
Spencer flapped his wings a few more times, but it was still too soon in the season, and he wasn’t turned on enough even in a general, vaguely horny-feeling sense to shake any of the dust free. “Soon,” he repeated, shifting over automatically as Brendon climbed up beside them, balancing on the springy edge of the stem.
“Who are you going to ask?” Brendon piped up, wriggling until both Spencer and Ryan reluctantly shifted again to make room for him between them. Brendon was excited about spring in general, as usual, probably much more so than he was about the imminent pollination season.
Winter was Spencer’s favorite season, when everything was cold and still and waiting, blanketed in white, without the hectic buzz of spring or the lazy, lethargic apathy of summer, but arguably it wasn’t the best time to be a fairy. Spencer was looking forward to some variety in his nut-and-seed-centric diet.
Ryan’s eyes cut sideways, and Spencer had to take a minute to remember the conversation before he caught up. “No,” he said firmly. “I love you, but I’m not having a seed pod with you.”
Ryan looked slightly put out, but mostly like he’d already known that would be the answer. “You wouldn’t have to carry it,” he pointed out.
“No,” Spencer said again. He closed his eyes, soaking up the faint rays of sunlight, and added, “I’ll bet Jon would, though.”
“Hmm,” Ryan replied thoughtfully. Their leaf did a little spastic shiver which meant that Brendon was moving again, and Spencer flattened one hand against the spongy surface to keep his balance.
“Spring,” Brendon said happily, hopefully settled again. “Sunshine. Flowers. Insects.”
Brendon had always been rather taken with insects. “Allergies,” Spencer reminded him, because Brendon had yet to meet fairy dust that didn’t make him sneeze. It was the main reason Spencer hadn’t recommended him to Ryan, and probably why Brendon himself hadn’t volunteered. He didn’t know if Brendon could hold his breath and stop sneezing for long enough to make a seed pod. Spencer was sort of idly curious about how that would turn out if he tried.
“Green things,” Brendon countered. “Blossoms. The season of courtship and love.”
From somewhere to their left, Patrick’s voice floated clearly up the hill. “Pete, I am not having a seed pod with you!”
“Courtship and love,” Spencer agreed solemnly. “And involuntary incubation.”
~*~
Nearly everyone was about over the next few days, forgoing winter hiding places to bask in the warming weather. Spencer was briefly wistful for the cozy stillness of the past months, but it was still good to see everyone again. Visiting neighbors was much less likely to occur when your wings froze the second you poked your head out from underground.
Spencer saw Greta in the early afternoon, her hair cascading in golden curls over her shoulders and a wreath of white flowers in her hair. “Already?” he asked, doing a double-take to check the color of her wings.
They were still milky-white, floating like gauze behind her back. She flushed when he asked, though, cheeks turning rosier and plump with her smile. “Not yet,” she admitted. “It’s not stopping us from trying.”
“Victoria?” he guessed, and was rewarded with another happy blush splotching her white throat.
“Check with me in another few days,” she said, and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek before she moved past. Brendon caught her only a few feet away, swinging her around until she was laughing too hard to breathe, and from the cajoling tone of his voice, he’d made the same assumption Spencer had.
He saw Butcher spread out sunbathing on a nearby patch of grass, which meant that everyone in their little community was now present and accounted for, save for a few. “Where’s William?” he asked Ryland, climbing up onto the toadstool where Ryland was currently perched, gangly legs crossed and a piece of straw left over from the winter sticking contemplatively out of his mouth.
“Probably still hiding out,” Ryland answered, removing the piece of straw and gesturing with it to somehow encompass the meadow full of fairies. “You know how he is. We probably won’t see him until after the crocuses bloom. I haven’t seen Gabe, either.”
Spencer nodded. William was the only person who disliked the coming of spring as much as Spencer did, and for nearly the same reasons. He disliked winter even more, though, and tended to burrow until well after the final frost had melted on the grass.
“Do you know where Ryan’s gone?” he asked, trying to spot the familiar red-and-black pattern of Ryan’s wings.
Ryland sucked thoughtfully on his bit of straw. “I heard Brendon sneeze from that direction a while back,” he offered, gesturing to the shadowy cave of a shrub, just starting to sprout fresh buds of brown and green.
It was as good a tip as any. Even if Brendon wasn’t actually with Ryan now, he probably had been before, and Spencer might run into someone else over there who would know. “Thanks,” he told Ryland, flitting down again and setting off for the shrub.
“Don’t mention it,” Ryland called behind him. “And if you see Alex, tell him to bring me some of those little white truffle things.”
Spencer made a vague mental note, but he was already busy poking his way into the shrub. It was close-knit and dim, the sunlight not yet able to penetrate beneath the thorny branches, and he couldn’t see far in front of him past the spiraling core at the center.
“Ryan?” he called, seeing a shadow and glimmer as he pushed one of the heavier branches out of his way, and then he realized what he was seeing and came to a complete halt.
Ryan was lying on his stomach, wings spread out to their fullest extent on either side of him, head pillowed on his arms and a blissful expression on his face. Jon was standing at his feet, his wings beating gently, enough to swirl the air around them into a light breeze. All around them, dancing in the whirlwind, was the purple glitter of Jon’s fairy dust.
Spencer’s wings snapped open reflexively, helping him backpedal. “Shit,” he said out loud, and Ryan’s eyes snapped open, widening at once. “I’m sorry.” Jon stopped moving, surprised, his face blurry through the haze of swirling dust. Spencer wondered if this was perhaps the reason Brendon had been sneezing earlier. “Sorry,” he said again, already backing up.
The sunlight seemed a little brighter when he re-emerged, and he blinked for a few seconds, letting his eyes adjust. Victoria came over to stand next to him, her lips curled up a little. “Walked in on a cross-pollination?” she guessed.
Spencer scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “Ryan,” he confirmed. He’d done it before, of course; there weren’t many places for fairies to hide where they wouldn’t be found, and they were all hugely social by nature. The fact that it was Ryan, though, made him feel just a little more horrified.
“Hey,” Victoria said sympathetically, squeezing his arm. “Look on the bright side. At least he wasn’t naked, right?”
Spencer shuddered. “Thank god for that.” His wings trembled a little along with the rest of him, and a few specks of dust shook loose, drifting down to disappear into the grass beneath their feet.
“Hey,” Brendon said, popping up beside them and bouncing a little on his toes. Then he sneezed.
“Sorry,” Spencer said automatically, folding his wings behind him. It was an automatic, sympathetic reaction to Jon spreading fairy dust, he guessed. His wanted in on the action.
“No problem,” Brendon said, and sneezed again. Victoria cooed at him and wrapped an arm over his shoulders. Spencer sighed.
~*~
“So Jon said yes?” Spencer said when Ryan slipped up to join him on an early crocus bud, his arms curling long and gangly around his knobby knees.
“Yeah. Sorry,” Ryan replied, rubbing at his nose. “I didn’t mean for you to find out like that.”
“I shouldn’t have come looking for you,” Spencer demurred.
“I should have told you,” Ryan countered. “It was just kind of a spontaneous thing.”
“Really,” Spencer said. “It’s fine.” It wasn’t even that it had been an image he needed to bleach from his brain or anything; it had just felt…private.
Ryan leaned against him a little. “I really want a seed pod,” he said softly.
“I know,” Spencer answered, bumping his shoulder gently.
Ryan sighed. “It’s just, every year, I always break up with whoever I’m with right before pollination season starts.”
“That’s because you turn into a raging, stir-crazy bitch during the winter,” Spencer informed him honestly.
Ryan bumped him back with slightly more force than was strictly necessary, but not enough to knock Spencer from his perch. “I know,” he said finally, and sighed again.
“Hey,” Spencer said soothingly. “It’ll happen. You’ll be incubating before you know it.”
“Thanks,” Ryan said. A second later, he added, “Did you see Patrick earlier?”
Spencer grinned, face turned into the last rays of the sunset. “Yeah. His wings are already speckled.”
“Black,” Ryan confirmed. “Which means it’s Pete’s.”
This time Spencer laughed, shaking his head. “Patrick’s going to kill him,” he said. “Every year, he says no, and every year…”
“Apparently it was an accident,” Ryan said solemnly. “Pete just happened to lose control and send a shower of fairy dust down over Patrick’s head as he was walking underneath a tree branch.”
“Uh-huh,” Spencer said skeptically. He couldn’t imagine a pollination season without an angry, red-faced Patrick, though. It was like a tradition.
“I think he got Joe, too,” Ryan said thoughtfully. “I wonder if he’ll have two this year.”
If Pete ended up dividing his time between two seed pods, Spencer thought, Patrick really would kill him.
Ryan had his wings spread halfway open, peering sideways over his shoulder. “Didn’t take?” Spencer asked, leaning slightly further away so that Ryan could get a better look.
Ryan frowned. “I can’t tell yet,” he said. His wings gave a despondent little flutter. “They look a little darker, I think.”
Spencer refrained from pointing out that the sun was sinking low on the horizon, and that everything was looking a little darker by the moment. “Maybe in the morning,” he suggested. He stood up, stretching out, and said, “Have you seen Brendon?”
“Not for a while, but he might be with Jon,” Ryan suggested. “He was with Greta earlier, but I think she and Victoria disappeared a while back.”
“We could always follow the sound of the sneezing,” Spencer suggested.
“I resent that,” Brendon’s voice carried up from beneath them, a second before the crocus shook violently and he appeared by their side. “Are you calling me a peeping tom? I’m not the one who interrupted someone else’s cross-pollination today.” He gave Spencer a pointed look as he said it, although it was a cheerful enough, without menace. “I was just looking for Jon, but I found you guys instead. Are we sleeping out under the stars tonight?”
Ryan wrinkled his nose. “Still too cold,” he said. “Maybe soon.”
“I’ll stay out with you,” Spencer offered. Ryan was right, it was still cold, but Spencer liked the bite of it. Besides, within half an hour he’d have Brendon plastered against him to keep warm, and cuddling with Brendon was like sleeping next to the sun.
“Cool,” Brendon said, bouncing. He made a move to drop back to the ground, and then stopped, frozen. Spencer frowned, staring back, but Brendon wasn’t looking directly at him. “Spencer,” Brendon said slowly, “are you…?”
“What?” Spencer asked. He was abruptly nervous, and wary. His wings flattened back behind him, but Brendon caught at his hand, saying, “No, no,” until Spencer spread them again.
Brendon’s fingers traced wonderingly down the side of his wing. “There’s purple,” he said. “I see purple.”
“What?” It was Ryan this time, saving Spencer from having to say it. “No you don’t. It’s just dark.”
“It’s probably dark green,” Spencer offered. His wings had been heavy with dust since the morning, since he walked in on Jon and Ryan, clinging to his wings and ready to fall. He should probably shake them out before he spent the night out with Brendon, just in case. Neither of them would sleep if Brendon was up sneezing all night.
“No, it’s not,” Brendon insisted. “It’s purple. Look, here.”
Spencer started to turn around, annoyed at Brendon for plucking at him, but Ryan stopped him, holding him still while he and Brendon both spread their hands out on Spencer’s wing. It jittered under their touch, uneasy, and finally he twitched it away.
Ryan’s expression had gone blank. “It is,” he said. “I think he’s right.”
“I’m not incubating,” Spencer snapped, yanking his wings back tight against his body. It wasn’t even possible, really. He hadn’t been with anyone like that, hadn’t spent any time immersed in a cloud of dust with his wings spread in welcome. He’d only been around Jon and Ryan for a handful of seconds, not even that, and certainly not enough to have caught enough of Jon’s fairy dust to cross-pollinate.
Brendon’s eyes were wide and awed. “I think you are,” he breathed.
“I’m not,” Spencer warned, glowering. Brendon didn’t take the hint and back off, but then he rarely did. Ryan was still frozen, holding himself stiff and aloof. Spencer fought the sickening swoop in his stomach and said flatly, “Ryan’s right, it’s too cold. I’m sleeping in tonight.”
It took him a while to climb down from the crocus and stalk away, but he didn’t hear either of them calling him back. There wasn’t enough light to see properly now; Spencer could barely find his way back to his favorite bush, let alone check his wings for discoloration. It was all a mistake, anyway. In the morning, everything would be fine.
~*~
“This is your fault,” Spencer hissed, jabbing a pointed finger into Jon’s chest. “You did this.”
Jon looked remarkably surprised to be under attack, particularly first thing in the morning. “What?” he asked, strategically backing out of finger-poking range and putting a tiny flower stem between them.
Spencer let his wings flare out to the sides, bright and angry where they caught the morning light. It was still early yet, but no amount of shaking, dunking or brushing had managed to get rid of the tiny purple specks creating an unsightly blemish on Spencer’s lovely pink and green wings.
“What?” Jon said again, and then his eyes widened, and he said, “Oh.”
“Oh?” Spencer echoed, advancing in measured steps. The flower stem crumpled beneath his feet. “Oh? You cross-pollinated with me, Jon.”
Jon looked apologetic, at least, but nowhere near the groveling point Spencer really craved. “Technically, I was cross-pollinating with Ryan,” he pointed out. “You just intercepted.”
“If I do not find a way to get this out of me,” Spencer glowered, “you had better step up and take responsibility.”
Jon blinked, startled. “Oh, hey,” he said in surprise. “Do you want to incubate together? I mean, I can’t carry it for you or anything, but we could…”
“No,” Spencer bit off. “No, I do not want to incubate with you, thank you, you’ve done enough.” He shook his wings out, as they were currently cocked at crooked and alarming angles behind his back, and growled, “Where’s William?”
Jon opened his mouth, obviously thought better of whatever he was going to say in trying to persuade Spencer to have a seed pod with him, closed it, then opened it again and said, “I haven’t seen him. But that’s not all that unusual. You know how he is at the beginning of spring.”
Spencer did know. William hated the idea of cross-pollinating with a sincere, burning fervor. He avoided everyone else like they were a polite plague when there was fairy dust in the air, and tended to stand on low-hanging tree branches and make impassioned speeches about the innate injustice of a race that gave you no control over your own biological processes.
Rumor also had it, though, that he’d found a way of getting rid of the dust before it clung, since two years ago there had been an unfortunate incident during which Pete had mistaken his target and tackled William in a cloud of fairy dust from the ambush point of a rose bush. Pete had lived in fear for the next two days, until he managed to carry out his original plan of attack and William passed the satisfaction of holding Pete’s life in his hands over to Patrick.
Spencer needed William. If not to get rid of the dust, which he was gradually - albeit very slowly - becoming resigned to, then at least for a good bitch session about how all fairies should be entitled to a reproductive choice.
No one else understood. Brendon was already helping Greta pick out tree branches on which to hang her not-yet-conceived cocoon, and Brendon was allergic to pollination.
Jon was still looking at him, Spencer realized, with a mix of sympathetic tenderness and trepidation. Spencer let his wings flare out again, just to see Jon stumble hastily backwards, and hissed, “This isn’t over yet.”
He didn’t know exactly what he meant by that, but he got a great deal of satisfaction out of saying it, which was really all that mattered.
He saw Patrick across the meadow, busily doing fairy-things while he ignored Pete hovering behind him. It was usually hard to tell with Patrick for the first few days, but he was definitely incubating, based on the black streaks smeared across his yellow wings. Patrick always went through pollination season looking like a cranky bumblebee.
Ryan was harder to find, but that was because he was sulking in a daffodil. Spencer sighed, then crawled in beside him and tried not to get his ass covered in yellow crust.
“You’re angry with me,” he guessed, because he knew how Ryan’s brain worked, and Spencer was the one with purple polka-dots on his wings.
“No,” Ryan said, and then sulked for a few minutes before saying, “Yes.”
“I’m sorry,” Spencer said sincerely. “Ry, I really am.”
“You don’t even want a seed pod,” Ryan muttered, glaring at Spencer mutinously. “Why did you have to steal mine?”
“It was an accident,” Spencer protested. “Really. It won’t happen again. You should ask Jon again, give it another try. I’ll even stand guard for you.” He held up his hand, pinky finger outstretched.
Ryan didn’t budge for a few seconds, but eventually he unfurled slightly and curled his little finger around Spencer’s. “You think he will?” he asked slowly.
Spencer scoffed. “Of course he will. He agreed once already, didn’t he? And he’s obviously fertile, so…” Spencer shivered his wings out a bit. “Good choice.”
Ryan squeezed his knee. “It’ll be okay,” he said, in what was for Ryan an unprecedented show of sympathy. Then his eyes lit up a little. “We could do it together, Spence. We could be incubation buddies. So you don’t have to go through it alone.”
Spencer resisted the urge to roll his eyes only because Ryan was so obviously sincere. And enthusiastic. “Joy,” he said dryly. “I can’t wait.”
~*~
“Brendon,” Spencer said loudly. He was tired and he was cranky and he was incubating, for fuck’s sake, so he wasn’t in the mood for games. Ryan was avoiding him, and if anyone knew where and why, it would be Brendon.
Brendon’s eyes got very wide and spooked. He was balancing on one toe, hovering just about the ground and ready to take off at a second’s notice. “Spencer,” he said. “Ah. Hi.”
“Where is he?” Spencer asked, crossing his arms over his chest. It took just a little more effort today to push his hip out, which only made him scowl harder. He was going to get fat. Ryan could get over his hissy fit and just deal, already, because Spencer clearly had the worse end of these circumstances.
“Right now he’s a little…” Brendon began tentatively, which was as far as he got before Ryan’s head poked out of a nearby pile of acorn caps and Spencer stopped paying attention to him.
“What do you want?” Ryan grumped. There was a surly set to his jaw that didn’t go well with the current whimsical arrangement of his fluffed-up hair.
“I want food,” Spencer said firmly, as his stomach noisily reminded him of why he’d come in search of Ryan in the first place. “I’m starving. Do you remember where we hid those nuts? Maybe some berries, too, I’m seriously hungry.”
Brendon shifted his weight from foot to foot nervously. Ryan just stared at him. “You stole my seed pod,” he said flatly. “I’m not sharing food with you, you…you…cocoon thief.”
Spencer was so surprised he almost took a step back. “Are you mad about that again?” he asked incredulously. “I thought you were going to try again today.” He paused, frowning. “Am I interrupting, is that it? Was Brendon supposed to be standing guard?” It didn’t look like there was room for another person in that pile of acorn caps, but then Ryan was pretty skinny.
“No,” Ryan snapped. He glared in silence for a few seconds, just long enough that Spencer was about to sigh and ask again, and then he mumbled, “Jon said no.”
“What?” Spencer asked, not sure he’d heard correctly. It made no sense.
“Jon said no,” Ryan repeated. He was louder this time, defiant. Brendon was taking tiny steps backwards through the air, like he thought he could quietly disappear if they just kept snapping at each other.
“Why the hell would he say that?” Spencer asked, baffled. “He said yes. You two were going to do it.” Jon loved Ryan, he knew how important this was to him. Spencer was living proof that Jon had been ready and willing just yesterday.
“Because of you,” Ryan said, eyes narrowed venomously. “He said he wouldn’t do it because of you. Thanks a lot, Spencer.”
“Wait, what?” Spencer said. He still felt like he was missing something critical, something obvious. Something that would make the rest of this make sense. “Ryan…”
Ryan’s head had disappeared beneath the acorn caps again. “Go away,” he called, muffled inside his refuge. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
“Ryan,” Spencer tried again, but Ryan just swept the whole pile of acorn caps down on top of himself in a rattling heap and refused to come out.
Spencer tried to turn his ire on Brendon, but Brendon had taken off when the acorn caps came down and was halfway across the clearing.
Spencer squared his shoulders and went to find Jon.
Jon was actually relatively easy to find, all things considered. He was smiling and laughing with three other fairies, all of whom disappeared the second they saw Spencer coming. Spencer wondered if it was his pissed-off glare, or the fact that his wings were smeared with ugly streaks of purple war paint.
“Why won’t you have a seed pod with Ryan?” he demanded, crossing his arms again. He knew better than to try the hip thing now; he felt too bulky and awkward as it was.
Jon didn’t seem all that surprised, all things considered. His tone was perfectly even when he answered, “I’m having one with you.”
“No,” Spencer said clearly, “you’re not. You’re having one with Ryan. I’m having one by myself. Thanks to you, obviously, but we’re still not doing it together. You can cross-pollinate with more than one fairy in a single season,” he pointed out, exasperated. “There’s no rule or anything, you’re not incubating. You can still shake as much dust as you like.”
Jon shook his head, and managed to somehow look soulful instead of just plain stupid. “That’s not how it should work. I have a responsibility to you now.”
“Oh my god,” Spencer said impatiently. “Are you actively trying to make my life worse? Haven’t you done enough?”
Jon looked rather taken aback. “I’m saying that I’ll stand beside you,” he said with a certain amount of confusion. “I can’t support both you and Ryan at the same time, and I’ve already…”
“No,” Spencer cut him off, jabbing a finger in the air. Jon jerked back reflexively. “No, no. You’re not screwing this up for him. I’m not screwing this up for him. He’s my best friend, you don’t get to make me the reason he’s unhappy.”
Jon squared his shoulders and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t.”
“Fngah,” Spencer said, and stomped off to find William.
~*~
William, it turned out, was nowhere to be found. Spencer spent a good deal of the morning trampling flower seedlings and stalking about hacking apart blades of grass, but at the end of it, he was no closer than he had been at the beginning.
Gabe was his next best bet, because even during pollination season when William wouldn’t let other fairies within ten feet of him, Gabe couldn’t take more than two days of being apart. Gabe, however, was missing as well, and it only took another three circuits of the meadow for Spencer to reach that conclusion.
His next step was to approach the group sitting in a circle on a particularly large toadstool, all lazing about in the sunlight with varying degrees of nonchalance. Ryland raised an eyebrow at his approach, but he didn’t take the straw out of his mouth, so it must have been Alex who asked, “What’s up?”
“Have you seen Gabe?” Spencer asked, because asking after William would probably be pointless.
“Hmm,” Alex replied thoughtfully, and looked to Ryland. Ryland chewed for a bit as he mulled it over and then looked to Nate, who considered for a moment and shook his head. “Sorry,” Alex said, returning his attention to Spencer. “Haven’t seen him.”
“I thought he was just here, though,” Nate said, twisting around. “Didn’t we just see him?”
“I think that was yesterday,” Ryland corrected, tapping the bit of straw against his teeth. “We might have seen him yesterday.”
“Maybe Victoria’s seen him,” Alex suggested. “Is she around?”
Ryland waggled his wings suggestively. “Victoria is busy. She may have seen him, though, while she wasn’t busy. Shall we rustle her up?”
“I don’t think she’ll like that very much,” Nate inserted warily. “Maybe we should ask someone else.”
“If he’s around, Adam might have seen him,” Alex suggested. “I can’t think of who else…”
“Wait, shh,” Ryland urged, and the group fell silent. Ryland waited one more second and then yelled “Gabriel!”
They all waited for a few moments, and then Ryland turned back to Spencer and said, “Sorry, not here.”
“Thanks,” Spencer said slowly, his wings spreading as he turned to go.
Alex suddenly looked alarmed. “You’re not incubating his seed pod, are you? Does he know?”
Ryland muttered something under his breath that sounded like, “Does William know,” but Spencer couldn’t swear to it.
“No,” he said quickly. “I’m not. Just wanted to ask him a question. Thanks, though.”
Ryland lifted his straw in good-natured farewell. Spencer turned again, took a few steps and nearly ran into Jon.
“Hey,” Jon said awkwardly. “I was just wondering if there was anything I could do for you.”
Spencer was suddenly aware of three curious pairs of eyes burning into the back of his head. “No,” he said, starting to walk so that they could have this conversation - if there was going to be one - somewhere more private. “I think you’ve done enough.”
“Okay,” Jon said, falling into step a half-pace behind him. “If there is, though, let me know.”
“Can you make Ryan start talking to me again?” Spencer inquired, one eyebrow arched dubiously. “Because I think that’s it.”
Jon hesitated, and then offered carefully, “I brought you a snapdragon.” When Spencer just stared at him, he added, “For the morning sickness?”
“Oh god,” Spencer said faintly. “There’s going to be morning sickness.”
Jon’s face was leaping about between wincing and an expression of concern. “Probably,” he admitted. “It’s common in ninety-nine percent of incubating fairies.”
“Oh god,” Spencer said, because now his brain was catching him up on all of the other symptoms as well, and it wasn’t a particularly happy picture. Until now, he’d mostly been thinking, I’m going to get fat, and not without a certain amount of venom.
“It’s not really all that bad,” Jon offered, and when Spencer turned to eye him suspiciously, he added, “I hear?”
Spencer rolled his eyes and stalked off to sulk. Just in case, he took the snapdragon with him.
~*~
Spencer was horny. He was horny and he was incubating and getting himself off three times a day just wasn’t cutting it. Everything had started tingling.
“I want sex,” he told Greta as they dipped their toes into a puddle of dew together. “Lots of sex. Huge amounts of sex.”
“Mmm,” Greta agreed, her hand curved over her belly as if to keep it from falling into the puddle as well. She was almost exactly as round as Spencer was, which wasn’t too bad, yet. It took a little more effort to get from here to there, but he was being lazy anyway, these days.
“I’m keeping Victoria busy,” Greta told him, splashing her feet a little. “It’s the hormones. She’s not exactly complaining, though.”
“I want sex,” Spencer said again, and he meant it to come out matter-of-fact, but it sounded a little like a lament out loud. He was already nauseous in the mornings, and in another week he wouldn’t be able to walk upright. He felt like he was getting the shitty side of this incubation deal.
Greta patted his hand. “I know,” she said sympathetically, and then beamed at him until he had to give in and smile back. She was glowing, and there were fresh flowers in her hair. It really wasn’t fair.
He was on his way over to his favorite sunbathing spot, idly considering a few hours of naptime curled up in a daffodil somewhere, when he heard Patrick’s voice rising over the murmur of insects and rustling leaves.
“I am not going be dragged around on a leaf for two weeks!” Patrick was yelling, as Spencer finally came within sight of them. “Pete!”
“It’s ingenious,” Pete argued, soothing. He was tugging a full-grown maple leaf behind him, waggling the stem for emphasis. “It’s like a sleigh. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”
Spencer winced. Patrick tended to blow up early, past the point that he could balance using his wings, and he looked within a few days of that now. Spencer straightened up almost without thinking about it, determined to be upright for as long as possible before his stomach overbalanced him. No one would be dragging him around on a maple leaf, that was for sure.
Just in case Jon got any ideas, Spencer tracked him down immediately to make this clear. “No leaf sleighs,” he ordered, coming to a halt and crossing his arms in front of Jon. It was kind of awkward; he had to fold them higher now, on the little shelf made by his belly. He tried to make his glare twice as intimidating to make up for it.
Jon blinked at him, bemused. “Okay,” he agreed.
“And no getting people to carry me places like I’m a hammock,” Spencer pressed, because that had been Pete’s ill-fated idea last season, and it had been an unmitigated disaster.
“Sure,” Jon agreed. He paused, then said, “I’m probably going to need to bring you stuff, then.”
“Yes,” Spencer agreed, then changed his mind and said, “No. I’ll have Brendon do it. Or Ryan.” Ryan still wasn’t speaking to him, but it was fine. Once Spencer was unable to walk and a complete invalid, he’d have to shape up.
Jon’s eyes crinkled a little bit at the corners. “What about a domesticated grasshopper?” he asked, and if Spencer didn’t know better, he’d have sworn Jon got that idea from Brendon. Only yesterday, Brendon had suggested a domesticated cricket.
“No,” Spencer said vehemently. “No insects. I want to maintain some level of dignity.”
Stupid Greta, he thought. She had that extra vertebra that women had. She’d probably be fine. And having lots of sex while she was at it.
“Is there anything else I can do?” Jon asked, solicitous as always. “More snapdragons?”
“No,” Spencer said immediately, and added for good measure, “And no flying or gliding apparatus made out of spider-silk and other questionable materials.”
“Pete?” someone asked behind him, and Spencer turned to see Mikey yawning, bleary and half-awake. Alicia was right behind him, both arms wrapped around Mikey’s rounded stomach and grinning.
“Not this year,” Spencer assured them. “This year he’s making a sleigh out of leaves.”
Mikey blinked a few times. “Oh hey,” he said in surprise. “That might actually work for once.”
~*~
Part Two