Work Text:
“Oh Archie, they’re perfect, just beautiful,” Ruby smiled brightly as the redhead gently handed her another small white puppy wrapped in a warm terry cloth towel. “You’re a papa Pongo,” the young woman crooned, showing one of the cleaned up and squirming little babies to him before gently placing it in the doggy bed with its siblings.
“Many times over,” Archie nodded with a small chuckle as he helped with yet another puppy’s arrival and clean up. Twelve… Thirteen… Fourteen… Fifteen puppies!”
“Fifteen,” he exclaimed happily shaking one of Pongo’s paws, smiling over his dog’s head to Ruby where she sat behind them both. The last puppy however, was unearthly still, disconcertingly so in Archie’s arms, drawing his attention back, and a frown to his face, a somber and worried silence overtaking the happy moment. Fourteen, he thought sadly as he stared down at the pup.
But no, he couldn’t give up. Not yet, he thought looking over at Pongo, at Ruby, at Perdie: the tired, hard-working mother, he had to try at the very least. Rubbing the towel back and forth over the little pup, trying to warm it up, trying to find some kind of spark of life, and stoke it back to life. And finally a whimper, a small little movement, and then another. Yes! Yes! They still had fifteen, he thought gratefully.
“Sixteen,” Ruby whispered softly, as Archie met her eyes once more, pupils widening in surprise as the young woman’s hand slowly drifted down to her stomach. “There’s another pup on the way, it’s just going to take a few more months,” she revealed with a shy sort of smile.
“Really,” the doctor managed, voice a little shaky from the surprise of it. “Ruby, are you…” No, of course she was sure. She wouldn’t have brought the baby up if she wasn’t certain of it. If she was anywhere near as excited as she had been when they had first begun discussing the possibility of trying, when they had finally talked through and conquered their doubts about a baby now, about the possibility of starting a life here in Storybrooke together, making a new home away from the one they had known, well she had probably gone through half a dozen tests the moment she suspected, and simply been waiting for the right time to tell him. “How far along?”
“I don’t know,” Ruby replied with a smile. “2 months, maybe a little more,” she speculated. “Last month was light, and I’m two weeks late. I took four tests,” she admitted with a small embarrassed chuckle, gently pulling the proof of it from her pocket to hand them to her husband.
“Sixteen puppies,” Archie cheered, kissing Pongo’s head, before hopping around him and pulling the brunette into a fierce hug, with a brilliant light-up-the-room smile.
“Unless there’s more than one,” he added with a small teasing sort of smirk, one hand drifting down to join hers over her stomach.
“You don’t think sixteen is enough,” Ruby laughed, eyes going wide as she wrapped her fingers around Archie’s.
“We’re keeping all the puppies,” Archie asked softly, in her ear so not to upset the dogs.
“You really think you could part with them,” she whispered back, looking at the basket full of puppies.
“Then I guess, the count is sixteen,” the redhead nodded with a smile. “And we’re going to have to start house-hunting.”