#darillium pregnancy fluff | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sonickedtrowel · 1 year

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Another one-shot chapter! the prompt here is.... is I wrote pregnant River and young babies/kids with these guys when I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about and I'm sure if I went back and read it after having 2 babies my soul would cringe out of my body. So instead let me just present you with this, a scene from Darillium which hopefully resonates more with those of you out there who have reproduced. 12/River ao3 link

“What the hell even is a round ligament?” River asked, unceremoniously flinging a pamphlet from the obstetrician’s office over the arm of the sofa and onto the floor.

“Er,” the Doctor carefully began, “I think it’s—”

“I know what it is,” she snapped, which, honestly, he should have seen coming. “I know because it simulates me being stabbed in the abdomen eighty three fucking thousand times a day. Round ligament. Fucking bastard traitor.”

There were a lot of things about humanoid pregnancy that were significantly improved upon by living in a sufficiently advanced society with decent modern medicine. Safe, well-tested anti-nausea medications. Effective preventive treatments for life-threatening complications like pre-eclampsia. The highest quality of monitoring and interventions available for any foetal developmental concerns. Advanced surgical techniques and augmented healing technologies that made the dangerous and unpredictable old-fashioned mode of childbirth a thing of the past— evolution truly had dropped the ball on that one.

But there were some things that remained, as River succinctly pronounced, “total shit.”

“Why don’t you lie down for a bit, dear?” the Doctor suggested. “I’ll start dinner, you get some rest. Doc—”

“I swear to god,” she interrupted, “if you say ‘Doctor’s orders,’ you can kiss this face goodbye, because I will shoot you in it. And if the next one’s hot I won’t even feel bad.”

“Fair enough,” he replied, valiantly struggling to choke down a laugh, because he felt fairly sure that would not go over well at the moment.

“Anyway,” River lamented, “resting is the problem. Obviously I need all the rest I can get, but I can’t get any because when I lie down there’s a, a bowling ball, just— rolling all around in there, bouncing off my round ligament whenever I try to move a half an inch— oh, but if I don’t keep flipping sides like I’m being cooked on a spit I’ll throw out a hip! And the stupid app said they’re only the size of a, a— what is it this week?”

“Rhodocrosian dwarf leek,” the Doctor supplied helpfully.

“Which is fucking meaningless, by the way, because the proportions are not even remotely comparable— but the point is,” she stressed, stopping mid-pantomime, “whichever way you measure a spring onion, or whatever, it should not be big enough to be smashing my ligaments!”

“I think it’s supposed to get better soon,” said the Doctor, crouching in front of the sofa and laying his hand ever-so-carefully over the upper curve of the tiny swell in River’s belly, avoiding the bastard traitor. “Remember Dr. Kiril said something about touching the abdominal wall? Not as much rolling around once the bowling ball’s out of room.”

“To be replaced with something even more dreadful, no doubt.”

“I’m sorry, dear. You’ve definitely got the worse end of this deal.”

“And to think, we spent all that time trying to make this happen,” she sighed. “I’ve been so spoilt, always being a bit superhuman. Healing quickly, never having to feel my age or the little inconveniences and indignities it normally brings. Making a baby sounds so magical and romantic in the abstract but it’s all been so… biological. All the scans, all the hormone testing— do you know how long I’ve been pissing in little plastic cups? Three years, Doctor. Every month: ovulation tests, pregnancy tests, then start all over again. So much hope tied up in such an unappealing ritual. Like making a little advent calendar of urine.” He failed to suppress his laugh at that, but River smiled, wearily. “At least I only have to do it at appointments now. There’s not a shred of dignity left to me in this entire business. And what a way to spend what’s meant to be our longest honeymoon. It’s all terribly unsexy.”

“Well, there were quite a few sexy parts, as I recall.”

“If you don’t mind being on a very strict schedule.”

“I didn’t mind.”

“Doctor,” River said solemnly, and he took her hand, as he knew well now when she was bravely preparing to say something important, against many decades of instinct to bury it instead. “Have we just… thrown the biggest spanner you could possibly imagine into everything?”

“Well… yeah, maybe, a bit,” he replied— there was, of course, no use pretending otherwise. “But in a good way.”

“But, it’s— it is completely mad, isn’t it? We’re so happy in our life, let’s blow it up on purpose. I couldn’t fathom loving another person like I love you, but instead of just enjoying that incredible, rare, precious thing, we’ll make a new person from scratch! Who are we to make a person? Why does anyone ever do something so obviously insane?”

The Doctor laughed softly, stood, and settled carefully down beside River on the sofa, giving her room to gingerly rearrange herself against him.

“It’s just so hard to imagine what it will really be like,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “It’s— it’s like moving the stars. Adding a second sun to a solar system. Everything’s going to change, and it can’t all be for the better. When there’s more light, some things will burn.”

“Well, you’re not wrong about any of that,” he said, carefully draping his arm around her and threading his fingers through hers. “But we do have a pretty extensive record of doing completely mad things. It’s our speciality, really. And, you know… it is very normal to have doubts about such a huge change.” He pressed a kiss to her temple and she curled a little more into his side, her breath hitching as she winced with the movement. “It’s a leap of faith with a very long way to the landing. You’ve got to get through a lot of wild thoughts on the way down. And thank you. For telling me how you’re feeling.”

“Well, I appreciate you not pointing out that I sound like I’ve completely lost my mind. I have actually noticed.”

“Nah,” he scoffed. “You just sound like you’re… growing a new sun. You’re handling it magnificently.”

“How are you so bloody calm about it, by the way?” she grumbled.

“Oh, don’t worry, dear, I’m an absolute mess. This is what we call triage. You just carry on and I won’t have to pay any attention to me— doing me a favour, really.”

“Mm. Sounds healthy.”

“I think, in this specific case, it’s sort of the natural order of things.”

“And you know, of course I’m worried but… I don’t actually have any doubts. I don’t even know this person yet, and they’re making my life an enormous pain in ways I’d never imagined, and I don’t regret it one bit. Isn’t that strange?”

“Well, not so strange. Love is like that. No one ever said it made sense.”

“What, no ‘biological imperative’ talk? No human hormones hijacking my brain? Suddenly when it’s our little foetus it’s all mushy stuff?”

“River Song, let me tell you something very important right now. It was a hard lesson to learn, but ever since you came into my life, it’s all been mushy stuff.” She laughed, and turned her head to kiss him, the tension tangibly melting out of her shoulders as her lips lingered against his.

“Oh,” she moaned, “I would really, really love you to take me to bed, if I could move at all without the stabbing.”

“How about I do take you to bed, get you all set up with your pillows and wedges and noodles and whatnot, and we can see how the bastard traitor is feeling later.”

“Okay,” she sighed. “Oh! Oh, there it goes— put your hand right here!” She grabbed his hand and pressed it very firmly to her stomach, which was alarming considering how she seemed not to be able to do anything without incurring the round ligament’s wrath, but then—

“Oh!” The Doctor could feel the sort of grin taking over his face that River teased would make him look like the Grinch, if he weren’t so pretty. (He wasn’t so sure about ‘pretty’ as an appropriate adjective for this face, but had decided not to object.) “Hello, there,” he said softly.

“You really felt it this time?” she asked, beaming back at him as she pressed her hand down over his.

“Yeah, just a teeny tiny little… poke. A little hand? Little foot?”

“My bet’s on little elbow,” she said, cradling the tiny curve of her belly. “I’m sure a half-developed leek with pointy elbows and no body fat would look fairly ghastly, but… they certainly are sweet from this angle, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed, though it came out with a gravelly waver to it. “The sweetest. Well, easy for me to say; I’m not getting poked.”

“I think that’s my favourite part, actually. Like they’re saying hello. Then it’s not some big unimaginable unknown we’re waiting for, it’s… just this little one right here. Already keeping me company.”

“So maybe there is a little magic left in the process?”

“I guess so.” River smiled with the sort of Christmas-morning delight he’d hoped would fill every moment of their night on Darillium, and the Doctor thought having two suns in his life seemed like the perfect number.

#12river #the doctor/river song #dr fic #river song #12th doctor #darillium pregnancy fluff #this ones for the parents out there bc i sure as shit didn't know what i was talking about last time i wrote pregnant river lmao

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