Chapter Text
Trying to become pregnant wasn’t something Stiles had thought he would have to worry about before. Sure, he’d always envisioned having a large family. But actively trying to conceive a living being inside of himself was never even in the realm of possibilities, whenever he imagined his future children. Then again, he'd always imagined he'd be married to Lydia and that she would be the one bearing his children, but life has a funny way of changing all your plans, as you grow older.
Not that he hadn’t had plenty of time to mull the prospect over. Even though Derek and Stiles knew they wanted a family the moment they finally got together, there will still plenty of hurdles they had to cross, before that point. Stiles had to finish college first, which he did at the top of his class. Then, even though the Hales had plenty of money, Stiles wanted to have a career of his own established. It took a few years, but he slowly built up a solid reputation with good contacts and a steady stream of work.
Once that was all settled, Stiles and Derek sat down and really discussed whether they wanted kids and if they were ready for them. They read countless baby books and Stiles researched like crazy. It took some more time but eventually they decided they were ready.
But nothing happened.
Stiles concentrated on his abilities, with his spark of power, but there was still no change. Even taking into account that it should be impossible for him to bare children, they shouldn't have been having this difficult of a time with it. It's not like they weren't trying. Stiles and Derek had always had what most people would consider to be a very active sex life. But now, they’d been having sex like rabbits dosed with Viagra.
The more they worked at it, the more stressed they became, until it got to a point where they weren’t even really enjoying the sex anymore, just going through it mechanically.
Finally, for the sake of both their sanities, they decided to take a break from trying. Instead they waited until Stiles’s next heat to take some of the pressure off, since they’d both be horny out of their minds from the heat pheromones. Peter even helped by brewing Stiles a special tea that was supposed to help increase fertility. It smelled of ginger and currant and some other smoky yet spicy ingredient that Stiles couldn’t quite identify, but smelled vaguely familiar.
Later, when he was in the throws his heat and Derek was firmly knotted inside of him, he thought he overheard Peter and Laura arguing.
“Peter!” Laura yelled. “I can’t believe you kept that.”
“I’d never throw away something that could be useful in the future,” Stiles only just overheard Peter’s reply. “Besides, it is supposed to be used to increase fertility.”
*
Contrary to popular opinion, werewolves could not smell exactly when a person became pregnant. It wasn't until the various hormonal changes took place and the baby was already growing inside the person that they could detect it in a person's scent. And because Stiles was probably the most impatient person in the world, he insisted that they get a pregnancy test to be certain. They had to drive five towns over to buy the pregnancy tests and send Laura into the store to get them, just to be on the safe side, but it was worth it.
Stiles couldn't have held back his shouts of joy, if his life depended on it. He burst out of the bathroom, showing off the blue plus sign, like professional football players show off their Super Bowl rings. Derek was even worse. He pulled Stiles into a tight hug, only to jump back a moment later, fearful of crushing his unborn child. Then dropping down to his knees to press kisses all along Stiles’s abdomen. They were all blissfully happy for a solid ten minutes, before reality crashed in.
They were going to have a BABY!
There was so much to do! They had to prepare a nursery, order diapers, and start picking out names! Then there was all the work they had to do to create a false adoption or surrogacy records to explain their child’s existence.
Peter and Laura let Stiles and Derek panic a few moments, enjoying their distress, before swooping in and revealing that they had already been working out all those details. Peter had a few contacts that were already working on forging the surrogacy and birth records, while Laura had already designed the nursery and picked out all kinds of baby care items. She was just waiting on to get their final approval on her choices, before she actually purchased anything.
Stiles and Derek had mostly approved of everything on Laura’s list, with only a few minor changes. Laura had wanted to paint the nursery sky blue and had picked out a white crib, but Derek and Stiles both preferred a forest green color and a heavy mahogany crib that could convert a toddler bed. The crib Laura picked out was beautiful but a little too fragile, while the mahogany one would be able to withstand a baby werewolf’s strength as well as the teething when the baby’s first fangs grew in.
*
Werewolf pregnancies never lasted as long as normal human one. The gestation period for a wolf in the wild was only two months. A female werewolf pregnancy usually lasted between six and seven months and all the male werewolf pregnancies Peter and Tawiyela had ever heard of lasted from five to six months. And Stiles wouldn’t even begin to really show, until around the third month. Still they had to be cautious. If word got out that Stiles—a man—was pregnant, their lives would, at the very least, become a media circus and, at the worst, they could be carted off to some secret government lab.
Luckily, the Hales weren’t exactly known for throwing many social gatherings and Stiles’s job provided the perfect cover story to explain his absence. In addition to the news that they were going to be using one of Stiles’s distant cousins, as a surrogate mother to help explain any resemblance to Stiles, they started spreading the word around town that Stiles would be going to the East Coast on a four month long project to help convert and digitize a college library. It was a boring enough story that people didn’t ask too many questions and the rest were distracted by the news of their growing family.
There were plenty of congratulations and few good natured jokes about Stiles running off to enjoy his last few months of freedom, before the baby got there. A few people grilled Stiles for more information about his work project. These people were promptly treated to a riveting hour long lecture about the importance of preserving knowledge and what a great tragedy the loss of the Dewey Decimal System was. After the third person went through that, people stopped asking about it.
*
Just like in the movies, the first real symptom of his pregnancy to hit was the morning sickness. It snuck up on him one afternoon, when he was having lunch with his father. Stiles had ordered his usual burger and curly fries and a chicken salad sandwich for his dad.
As soon as the smell of the fries reached his nose, he felt his gorge begin to rise. The smell that he had once likened to the scent of heaven, now reminded him of three day old rotting bodies. He darted out of the booth and straight for the bathroom to hurl his guts up. It was over quickly and, when he emerged from the bathroom, he found that his father had already covered for him and had their food boxed up.
From then on, the smell of anything fried in oil was like kryptonite to him. Even whiff of a donut or French fries was enough to send him running to the nearest bathroom, much to his father’s not-so-secret delight. He just couldn’t understand how his beloved curly fries could betray him so cruelly.
Soon it wasn’t only fried foods he couldn’t stand. It got to a point, where the only thing he could eat was freshly caught game, cooked to the barest minimum. Derek, of course, reveled in this, his inner wolf eager to provide for his mate and cubs. Stiles would never admit it, but he secretly loved watching Derek return home from a hunt, shirtless and sweaty from the effort, with a fresh kill thrown over his shoulders.
*
Eventually his appetite did normalize and he could go back to eating regular foods. Of course, that was when one of the next symptom set in.
They never talk about heartburn in the movies. Only twenty-six and a werewolf, he’d never experienced anything like it before. The first time it happened, he was convinced he was having a heart attack, it hurt so much. He was absolutely convinced that a hunter had secretly laced his food with wolfsbane for a solid five minutes.
Luckily for everyone, it was just Peter and his dad at home with him, otherwise Derek might have flipped out and gone on a rampage through town, looking for imaginary hunters.
*
They agreed it was time for Stiles to set off on his ‘archiving job’, when he started putting on the weight halfway through his second month. His dad and Derek even took off from work to ‘drive him to the airport.’
That was right about the time that the pregnancy fatigue started setting in as well. It seemed like Stiles was just achy and tired all the time. Even the smallest actions would exhaust him and he spent as much time as he could off of his feet, letting Derek rub the cramps in his legs and feet. For most of the third month, he did little more than sit on the couch.
*
Because Stiles is Stiles, he could never just sit around and do nothing all day. So he spent his time researching. Unfortunately, he researched a lot about pregnancy, including all the things that go wrong. He became paranoid at the slightest change in his body, scaring everyone with his hysterics, when he freaked-out over a mild case of gas.
It got so bad at one point that Derek physically removed every electronic device capable of internet access from the house.
*
Of course, it’s only when Stiles starts really showing ,during the fourth month, that he began going stir-crazy from being cooped up in the house all the time. He begged and pleaded to be let outside and do something. Peter, Laura, and Derek all took turns taking him on walks in the preserve but it still wasn’t enough.
Stiles wanted to go out to see a movies or go dancing. Deciding to take matters into his own hands, he devised a plan. Waiting for a night when everyone was working late, he took out every gag gift his Drag Queen friends from Jungle ever gave him and prepared a disguise. He even shaved his legs and watched a bunch of YouTube tutorials to learn how to properly apply makeup. When he was finished, he had to admit that he would make a fairly attractive woman.
He almost made it out of the house, when Derek came home early. It was kind of worth having his plans foiled just to see the combined look of annoyance, confusion, and arousal on Derek’s face. Not one to be easily deterred, Stiles tried to talk Derek into taking him out to Jungle. Appealing to his mate’s possessiveness, he described, in vivid detail, how he wanted his mate to take him out and claim him right on the dance floor, in front of everyone.
Derek didn’t take him out to Jungle, but he did fuck him up against the wall, while still in Drag. Even though they didn’t get to go out like he wanted, Stiles was still pleased to have discovered a new kink his mate possessed. Derek seemed to particularly enjoy having Stiles stocking clad legs around his waist and the smear of lipstick on their lips.
*
During the fifth month, Stiles started producing milk. His pectorals swelled up, but he didn’t develop actual boobs, much to his relief.
The scent of the milk he produced, as well as the strong scent of their cub growing inside of him, seemed to really hit all the right buttons for Derek. Unfortunately for him, Stiles was adamant about not letting him touch his chest, no matter how much Derek begged. Stiles’s nipples were always sore and leaking and even his softest t-shirt felt like sandpaper against them.
Derek may have pouted and sulked for a while at that news, though he was mollified by getting to feel the baby’s first kick.
*
In the sixth and last month of his pregnancy, Stiles seemed to lose all control of his bladder. If he so much as sneezed, he ended up having to change his underwear. He couldn’t go ten minutes without needed to pee and his child always gleefully kicked and punched at every one of his internal organs.
*
The last month was also when Stiles started getting the weird food cravings that didn’t involve wild game and it was Derek’s job to go to the store at all hours of the night to buy things for him. Stiles hormones had also really started to fluctuate, so Laura had also taken some time off to keep Stiles company—mostly by watching trashy television with him. Plus, she and her boyfriend Evan were starting getting pretty serious and she was even introducing the new werewolf to people around town.
Knowing this, it really shouldn’t have been that much a surprise, when the rumors started. Beacon Hills was a small town full of nosy gossips. With Laura taking time off from work and her devoted bother out buying typical pregnancy foods, it was only normal that people would assume that Laura was expecting.
Of course, Derek’s brain wasn’t exactly functioning at full capacity at four in the morning, after a long day at work. He was standing in the candy isle, trying to remember if Stiles asked for a Snickers or a Twix—he’d probably just buy both to be on the safe side—when the guy behind the counter asked him when the due date was. Fearing the worst, Derek started stuttering and protesting, wondering how Stiles would react if he they told people in town that he was a hermaphrodite to cover things up.
Then the cashier mentioned Laura’s name and Derek almost kicked himself for his own stupidity. Stiles was 'out of town', so of course, they wouldn't think it was him. He quickly made up a story about Laura breaking up with her boyfriend and that it wasn’t pregnancy food but breakup food. He threw in a few complaints about having to watch a marathon of chic flicks for good measure. The cashier winced and nodded in sympathy. Crisis momentarily averted, he just had to remember to let Laura know that she and Evan couldn’t be seen together around town for a good week or two.
*
A week before his due date, Stiles hormones were running really wonky and he couldn’t stop crying. He was more than ready have this baby out of him already. He just felt ugly and bloated and not attractive in the slightest. One day it got particularly bad and Derek had to spend hours telling him how beautiful he was and kissing every inch of his body to make Stiles feel better. Not that it was much of a hardship for Derek.
*
Stiles delivery day finally arrived on a sunny April afternoon. It had to be a caesarian section for obvious reason, but Stiles was still apprehensive about it. Tawiyela had come down from Oregon to assist in the delivery, though Peter was doing most of the work, because any other kind of cut would heal too quickly. He nearly fainted, when Peter’s claws made the first incision on his stomach but it was worth it, when they placed the small bundle in his arms.
It was a girl. A perfect, beautiful, very loud baby girl.
*
Everyone cooed and fussed over little Talia Claudia Stilinski-Hale but it was the Sheriff, who noticed that Derek was shying away from holding her. In truth, Derek was absolutely terrified of holding his newborn daughter. What if he dropped her or held her too tight. The Sheriff, knowing exactly what was going through Derek’s mind, from his own experience when Stiles as born, took his granddaughter and placed her right in Derek’s arm, before he could protest.
Of course, once Derek was holding her, he never wanted to let her go. He was awestruck that he had helped create this little miracle, with her perfectly shaped little fingers and toes. The others all laughed affectionately at the look on Derek’s face but he was too lost in gazing at his beautiful child to care.
*
After all the fuss and complaining he’d done during his pregnancy, the second he sees Derek holding their daughter, Stiles announced that he already wanted more. His dad just laughed and told him to wait until his daughter was through the terrible twos stage, before they even considered having more. Stiles replied that it was fine with him because Derek would be the one carrying the baby next time.
Derek, never taking his eyes away from little Talia, just nodded his head in agreement. He’d gladly go through everything Stiles did, times ten, if it meant they could have more little treasures, like the one in his arms.