Baby-sitters Club | Happily Ever After: Maybe Baby

[luxken27]

Title: Maybe Baby
Fandom: The Baby-sitters Club
Universe: Post-canon
Genre: Family
Rating: M
Warning: Sexual content
Word Count: 2,941
Summary: First in a new series. If it came down to a choice between having her, or having a child of his very own, then he would choose her every time.

Links: DW | AO3

Written for the “hollow” prompt on my 2017 Summer Mini Challenge table.

So if you were curious about this post on Tumblr, allow me to put you out of your misery :P

Although this is the first entry into this brand new series, it is not the first one that I wrote. That would've been Stubborn, a fill for my 2016 SMC table. I wrote a follow-up as a gift for last year's fandom stocking, Just Janine, and a small kernel of an idea took hold in the back of my mind. My muses like these little baby kernels, and they especially enjoy nurturing them at the exact moment when I have neither the time nor inspiration to devote to them.

But I kept getting ideas, for other entries in the series sketched out in those first two fics. And I gave in, because I ♥ these two and need no excuse to write more fic for them =)

Anybody who knows me knows that I don't have any kind of maternal instinct at all. I have no desire to have children, be around children, or even deal with childish people. So the fact that I wrote syrupy sweet domestic fluff at all came as a surprise. I'm pretty sure the inspiration came from reading about paynesgrey's pregnancy last year, and the idea of pairing Charlie and Janine in this scenario proved to be too hard to resist. They are so different - and their family backgrounds are so different - that it felt like a fun place to dig in.

After I finished up "Just Janine" I started thinking about what might've led these two down this path in the first place. It is pretty obvious to me that Charlie would be the one who desired starting a family, and I really like the idea of turning the notion of the "ticking biological clock" on its head. What if it was the man who wanted to have a baby? How could he convince his wife to go through the pain and suffering of childbirth in order to fulfill a need innate in him, but not her?

So I started thinking about it, and mapping out a couple of ideas, and this one hit me with a wallop. It more or less came out in one piece, which rarely happens for me. It also took a turn I wasn't anticipating, but one that I think works.

So this fic establishes the parameters of the universe I'm working in here. There is a bit of exposition about where he and Janine are in their lives and their respective careers, and what his motivations are for pursuing this. He understands quite well that his desire for a baby is not one that Janine shares, and so he approaches the subject with care. He knows that the pregnancy will be her burden to bear, and though she has agreed to do it at some point, circumstances in his life are pushing him forward now. He can't wait any longer.

So he approaches her one evening and asks her about her stance on it. She's still ambivalent about the idea, and expresses this to him. He's upset, but contains it, and elicits the reassurance that she has no intentions of going back on her promise to have children with him someday. She agrees to think about it, and he leaves it at that.

The last scene of the story was the surprising one, for me. I had every intention of them having the discussion at the end, but the preceding sex scene basically came out of nowhere. It makes sense, though; you can't really talk about having explosive chemistry and an equal partnership in bed without showing it, too :P

I really wanted Janine to have agency over her body in this universe, and taking control of her sex life is a great way to demonstrate that without going too deep into issue!fic land. It would be so easy to characterize her as a shy, inexperienced virgin who basically had to be led through sexual acts the first couple of times, but if I'm going to write about her planning a pregnancy and carrying it to term in this universe, I'm going to give her more credit that that.

I love the idea of her being exactly who she is in canon, but at the same time being so very comfortable in her own skin. She's responsible for herself, and she doesn't have any neurotic hangups about sex. Believe me - coming off a bevy of reading mediocre romance novels, this is very refreshing, indeed! She initiates and enjoys having sex with her husband, even before they are married. I can't think of a better way to demonstrate explosive sexual chemistry than that :P

Anyway - so she comes to bed and wakes him up for a bit of surprise!sleepy sex, and then tells him that she agrees to start trying for a pregnancy. I can totally picture her doing exactly that when he leaves her after pleading his case; instead of going back to grading papers, she's researching how to come off of birth control safely and what sort of timeline she may be looking at between stopping and the ability to become pregnant. She might not make the decision to stop that night, but she learns enough to satisfy that aspect of the idea. She knows how much it means to him to have a family, thus reiterating her promise to him.

This series is going to be written exclusively from Charlie's POV, mostly because I think that will be the most interesting way to tell this. If he could birth a baby himself, he'd do it, but he can't - so he'll go through his wife's pregnancy every step of the way, from this moment of them deciding to start trying, to her actually having the baby, and beyond.

I know kid!fic isn't everyone's cup of tea. It isn't even my cup of tea, but I've had a surprisingly nice response to the first two entries in this series. We'll see if anybody else wants to board this train with me, or if they'd rather stick to the fun falling-in-love Count Me In universe instead. These two post-canon continuums are totally unrelated. Which will make life interesting for me, because I'll be working on them both at the same time. Luckily, writing for one tends to inspire me to pursue ideas for the other, so hopefully this won't be the last SMC fill for these two in some capacity :D