toywomb - Tumblr blog

toywomb · 8 days

Text

Request #456.14: Pregnant POW escape

*For the request, transman POW goes in labor in enemy territory while escaping the POW camp*

At first, Jim doesn’t even notice the contractions. He’s been waiting for his opportunity to get away for weeks, and he’s completely focused on making sure his plan goes perfectly.

Jim’s been in the POW camp for seven months now, which is how he knows that once a month, for a few hours, all of the guards are off duty. It’s some sort of feast, probably a cultural celebration—whatever it is, apparently everyone needs to do it together, so the monitoring posts are all vacant. Prisoners are kept inside their cells by nothing but the electronic locking mechanisms. Within the first two months, Jim figured out that if he was going to escape, it would have to be on one of these feast days.

The problem has been the locking mechanism. It’s not particularly sophisticated, but Jim has had nothing to break it—nothing, that is, until the previous month he found the a nearly-fried electric lighter lying outside in the rec yard. Carefully, as subtly as he was able to with his massive belly, Jim bent over and picked up the lighter, hiding it in his shoe. With some work under the cover of darkness, Jim was able to modify the lighter so that it would fry the electronic locking mechanism of the cell and set him loose.

Now, Jim knows he only has one chance to escape. He was three months pregnant when he was captured. He’d only just discovered his pregnancy, but he was waiting to report it to the admiralty, because he knew he’d be shipped back home as soon as they knew, and he didn’t want that. He wanted to stay with his husband, even if that was on the front lines of the war. Even if that put him at risk.

It was a stupid decision. Now, he’s full-term, due to go into labor at any moment, and in the middle of hostile territory. It’s his first pregnancy, so he doesn’t know what symptoms of his are expected solely from the pregnancy and which have been worsened by his predicament, but it’s been a painful seven months. He’s absolutely massive, which he hadn’t expected—people say you usually carry small on your first pregnancy, but maybe it’s because he has narrow hips or just because his husband is a large man, but his belly is big and heavy, sitting low in his hips and straining at his pelvis. Jim’s back hurts all the time, and so do his feet and knees. Even his wrists and elbows sometimes ache, though that might be from sleeping on a hard dirt floor throughout his entire pregnancy. Of course, being pregnant hasn’t excused him from the hard labor that prisoners of the camp are expected to provide. Especially early on his pregnancy, Jim was expected to spend long hours digging, lifting, and carrying stones at a nearby rock quarry. Later on in pregnancy, when it became hard for Jim to bend over and stand back up, the aliens decided that he was taking too long in the rock quarry job and moved him to the kitchens, where he spent long hours sweating in front of a hot fire, cooking gruel for himself and the other prisoners. It was tortorous—he was on just as strict rations as everyone else, and there were guards in the kitchen watching to see if anyone snuck a mouthful. Jim was constantly ravenous, but he ate last, after everyone else at camp. Over the months, even as his belly had swelled to epic proportions, his cheeks had hollowed slightly, and he’d lost weight in his arms and legs.

Many nights, Jim has laid awake unable to sleep, either because of hunger or his back pain or with his baby squirming restlessly in his stomach. They were incredibly active, seemingly nearly constantly moving, with their hands and feet appearing at all angles over his belly so Jim couldn’t even tell if they had gotten in the right position for an impending birth. He was glad to have his baby with him—it was reassuring, like having a piece of his husband even as he was alone in this horrible area—but it also terrified him. He knew if he gave birth in this camp, things would not go well. The aliens were too cruel to let him keep his baby, and if they took it, who knew if he would ever find them again? Jim wouldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t.

On the day of Jim’s planned escape, he was given the day off from work, because of the feast. Of course, that meant a day off of eating for all prisoners in the camp, but that was expected — the kitchens were always busy cooking for the guards and so the prisoners were never allowed to eat on feast days. Jim ignored his growling hunger and stroked his huge belly, re-running the plan over and over in his head. Despite himself, his thoughts kept wandering to his husband, wondering if he was alive and wishing to see him again. He had had many dreams, while he was here, imagining his husband bursting in to save him—come with the cavalry in tow, a gun in hand, unlocking Jim’s cell and swinging him into his arms, kissing him on the forehead, cupping Jim’s belly. For the first couple of months, Jim hadn’t just hoped for a rescue—he’d expected one. But nobody ever came. Eventually, Jim realized that either something had happened to the rest of his unit, including his husband, or they couldn’t find him. In either case, Jim was on his own.

Finally, a bell tools near dusk—the sign that it is nearly time to start the feast. From his cell, Jim sees the guards climb down from their nearby towers and head towards their mess hall. Nearly, nearly. Jim tells himself to be patient, but his stomach is in his throat, his heart rabbiting in his chest, and maybe that’s why he’s able to dismiss the clenching of his massive stomach as nothing more than another sign of adrenaline and nerves.

He waits for half an hour after the guards disappear and then decides the coast is clear. He pulls the modified electric lighter out from where he’s hidden it in a hastily dug hole on the floor and carefully inserts it into his cell’s locking mechanism. For a moment, he’s not sure if it’ll work—and then there’s a buzz, and the door springs free of the lock. Slowly, Jim pulls the door back. No alarm sounds—no klaxons blare, no guards coming running. Jim takes a step outside of his cell, then another. Jim is held in a mostly empty block, likely because of his pregnancy. There is only one other person in this block, in a cell at the other end, but Jim doesn’t have time to free them, so he stays quiet as he makes his escape. He vows to himself that he will come back later for them. For now, he can’t take any risk.

He follows his carefully planned route around the empty POW compound, where he doesn’t see any guards, as expected. From the mess hall, he hears sounds of loud laughter, and music. Yellow light leaks out from beneath the doors. Jim keeps close to the fence, to better obscure his shadow if anyone happens to come outside, but the doors stay firmly shut. Finally, Jim makes it to the fence near the rock quarry, where months ago Jim had discovered a loose piece of fence. He had spent time, then, widening the hole, then stuffed it with loose grass and gravel to hide the gap. Now, he bends to his knees, barely able to reach around his massive belly, and hustles the dirt and rocks out.

It’s kneeling here that he feels the unmistakable twinge. Low in his belly, it spreads upward, shuddering up to his ribs and around his back. It’s a tight, sharp ache that makes Jim gasp. He presses one hand to his belly and realizes what’s happening. He had known it was around time, but hadn’t known it would be now. His baby was coming.

Jim’s resolve solidifies. It’s now or never. He picks up the speed scraping rocks out of the hole and quickly opens up a decent sized gap. He tries to wriggle under it, but it’s harder than he had expected—his belly is so much bigger than he had thought it would be, months ago. For a brief moment, he gets stuck, and while he’s trying to wiggle free, another contraction grips him, harder and more painful than before. He clenches his teeth against it and tries not to panic. When it lets him go, he thrashes with renewed vigor and manages to break through.

He won’t be able to fill the hole back up behind him, but it doesn’t really matter — once they realize his cell is empty, they’ll know he left the compound, no matter how he get out of it. Hopefully, by the time they notice, Jim will be far away. He curls around the north side of the compound and heads into the thick woods. The trees provide good cover and JIm stays away from obvious paths to make it harder to track him, but he’s moving a lot slower than he’d like. The later he got into pregnancy, the more his walk became a waddle, and even now he has to walk with a hand supporting his back and one supporting his belly to help him keep his balance. He moves slowly, too slowly, over rough terrain, and though he does his best to walk through the contractions, sometimes they grip him so tightly he can’t do anything but stop and pant, praying that the pain will lessen so he can get moving again.

He’s been walking for maybe half an hour when his water breaks, between one step and the next. He nearly folds over but manages to catch himself on a tree trunk. Even in the moonlight, he can see the tinge of red in the waters between his feet, and he breathes back panic, touching the now much-firmer skin of his belly. When the next contraction grips him, it’s twice as painful as the ones before. Jim remembers, vaguely reading about this years ago—that when the amniotic fluid was gone, there was less of a cushion, just muscles pressing against muscles, bone against bone.

Jim tries to reach down and gauge how dilated he is, but he can barely reach his cunt around his massive belly, let alone reach inside himself. He forces himself to keep walking. It doesn’t matter how far he is, he just needs to get out of here, he tells himself. He thinks of his husband, the way he might support him right now. He had been so happy that Jim was pregnant. He had promised to take care of him, to give him everything he needed. He would have taken birthing classes, JIm knows. Probably classes on counter pressure, classes on massage—Jim clenches his fist tight against a contraction. He imagines the touch of his husbands lips against his neck, imagines grabbing his husband around the neck and swaying with him to open his hips. When the next contraction comes, Jim tries to grab a tree and do just that, but it’s not the same, there’s no comfort, and the searing pain in Jim’s stomach is now accompanied by a burning pressure that’s working its way steadily down his pelvis.

Oh god, Jim realizes. He’s going to have his baby here. Here, in the middle of enemy territory. In the middle of the forest. He’s going to have his baby here, and then the baby will cry, and the aliens will find him. They will find them, and they will take his baby, and they will kill him.

He makes it maybe five more minutes of stumbling around before he realizes he has to stop. He’s in too much pain. He’s not making any progress. The contractions continue to worsen in intensity, and they’re so close together now—maybe a minute or two apart. He needs to find a place to shelter, to hunker down and give birth to his baby. He sees what might be a rocky outcropping through the trees and stumbles towards it, pausing once or twice to press his belly and bite his lip, working his hips through a contraction.

When he gets to the outcropping, he finds it’s not much — really just a couple big boulders in the middle of the forest — but in the middle of it, there’s a semi-sheltered area carpeted by some sort of pine-like needle, and Jim squeezes his body between the gaps in the boulders to get inside. He squats with his back against a rock, working his hips back and forth. His belly, which has dropped steadily the last few weeks, is so low it’s nearly touching the ground and he rubs at it, moaning lowly when he wants to shout.

Tears prick his eyes. He wants his husband. He wants someone to be here with him, to hold his hand, to pull him to their chest and kiss his cheek and squeeze his hand. Suddenly, squatting feels horrible and so Jim tips forward onto his hands and knees and rocks back and forth that way. This time his belly really does brush the forest floor, the sensitive, stretched skin scratching against the pine needles. Jim pulls up the dirty shirt of his gray prison uniform and palms at his belly, at the baby underneath it. “Please, please,” he hears himself saying. “Oh, god, oh, god.”

Jim doesn’t know how long he’s there, rocking back and forth — ten minutes? Two hours? — but it feels like an eternity. Finally, though, he feels the need to push and he moves back into a squatting position. You can do this, he tells himself, you can do this, and though he doesn’t believe it, he screws up his face and pushes. For just a moment, it feels like there’s movement—like he can feel the bowl of the baby’s skull scraping against his pelvis. It takes everything in him not to scream, but if he screams they’ll hear him, and if they hear him, he’ll die. Panting hard, he gives himself a brief break, and on the next contraction, pushes again. But this time, he feels no movement. He does this for several contractions, but something seems to be stuck, and when he reaches down he can’t feel anything like a head between his legs.

Panicking, Jim forces himself to his feet. Maybe walking will dislodge something, he thinks hysterically. He only manages a step or two before he has to stop and grab onto something, cradling the underside of his belly with one hand and bending at his knees. When the contraction easies, he takes a few more steps. He can feel the baby so low in him now.

And then he hears a noise. He jolts upright, breathing hard. Yes, that’s voices, all right, voices in the forest. Jim has to get back to his hiding place. But the contractions are so hard he can barely move. He tries to stumble back but he trips and barely manages to grab a tree and avoid falling flat on his face.

“There’s a heat signature over here,” someone is saying. “It’s just around this corner, near these rocks—“

Jim stumbles back up and takes another step forward, and that’s when they emerge from the trees. It’s been so long that Jim barely recognizes the uniform. He stares at them, their black vests, for long, long moments before he realizes that’s his uniform. His people. These are his people.

“Jim!” One of them says, running towards him, and it isn’t until he’s right in front of him that Jim realizes that it’s his husband.

“Oliver?” he says faintly. “Is that - Oliver?”

“Jim, sweetheart,” Oliver says, stricken. “Oh my god, we found you.”

“I don’t—“ understand, Jim wants to say, and then another contraction grabs him and he’s gasping, hands falling from Oliver’s face to grasp at his shoulders as he bends over with the force of the pain.

“We need a hospital,” someone says—whoever it is with Oliver, a friend, a soldier, Jim is too in deep with the pain to recognize anything right now. He barely knows what’s happening. “Come on, come on, the shuttle’s back here.”

“Oliver,” Jim groans, low his throat. The pressure between his legs is immense. “It’s coming, it’s coming, I can’t —“

“Shit,” Oliver swears. “Hold onto my shoulders, Jim, okay? Anya, help him stand up,” and then he’s kneeling and Jim is desperately grabbing at his shoulders, desperately swaying his hips, desperately trying to keep himself upright with the blinding white waves of hot pain searing through him.

“Come on, push,” Oliver says, “You can do this, push it out, baby,” and Jim moans but does, and it seems the walking did something after all because he feels the baby inch down. “Good, you’re so good, baby, god, you’re doing so good.”

“Oliver,” Anya hisses. “We need to move.”

“I think Jim is a little busy right now,” Oliver hisses back, and jIm has missed this so much, missed having someone to look out for him, that tears spring to his eyes and he sobs. “Come on, baby,” Oliver says, his attention back on Jim now. “You’ve got this, come on, give me a big push.”

“It hurts,” Jim sobs. “Oliver, Oliver—“

“I know,” Oliver says, looking sick, “God, baby, but we’re almost there and then we’re out of here, please, baby, come on—“

So Jim pushes. It takes three more contractions and Jim nearly bites off his own tongue trying not to scream but then there’s a baby, a scrawny little thing covered in gunk and blood and Oliver is holding it, cradling it with careful hands and an awe-struck expression and then Jim is saying, “Give it here, give it—“ and it’s a little boy, of course it is.

The baby doesn’t cry. It opens its mouth, and it’s breathing, but it isn’t crying when Jim presses it to his chest.

“Oliver,” Anya says, and Oliver says, “I know, fuck, I don’t think Jim can walk,” and then turns to Jim and says, “Hold tight to the baby, baby,” and lifts him up like it’s nothing.

Jim presses the baby to his chest and lets his head rest on Oliver’s shoulder. He burns, all over, and his muscles ache, and he wants so badly to be safe that he feels like he could combust. “We’re not far,” Oliver promises him. “The ship is just over here. Just five minutes, baby.”

The ship is in sight when Jim feels the next contraction grip him. He lets out a surprised groan, louder than he had expected.

Oliver looks at him. “Baby?”

“Another contraction,” Jim says, “It must just be the placenta.” But they’re barely inside the ship when another one is gripping him tight and he scrabbles at the wall for purchase.

“Shit,” Oliver says, taking the baby from Jim. “Anya—“

“On it,” she says, running towards the cockpit as the door to the ship closes behind them. “We’re getting the hell out of here, Sarge.”

“Baby,” Oliver says, crouching beside Jim, who’s slumped against the wall. “I need to check if anything is wrong. Can I do that?”

Jim nods weakly. With the baby pressed to his chest with one hand, Oliver reaches towards Jim’s cunt, feeling around carefully. It still stings. Jim closes his eyes and presses his head back against the wall as his hands rest on his still-huge stomach, and he feels the familiar lift of the ship off the ground. It makes fresh tears spring to his eyes. He’s going home. He’s getting out of here. He’s with Oliver.

Oliver makes a noise in the back of his throat, surprised, and Jim opens his eyes to see Oliver staring at him with wonder.

“Jim,” Oliver says. “I think there’s another one.”

121 notes · View notes