Your Baby is the Size of A...

22 Weeks - Your baby is the size of a coconut

"Have you been moisturizing," Poppy asked softly, tracing a myriad of new stretchmarks lacing his skin.

"I have, and soaks in the tub. I think Bump is merely growing too quickly for me to have any relief," he said, rubbing palms along the naked swell of his stomach, carefully avoiding the protrusion of his belly button – which was something he still hadn't grown accustom to.

Poppy pressed her hand rather heavily against his stomach, and Severus could feel as Bump pushed back, a tiny foot or hand meeting Poppy's through the thin barrier of his abdominal wall. Her eyes watered, her thumb smoothing soft circles against his skin.

"The dear love," she whispered, giving him a tender look that managed to snatch the breath out of his chest. "Surely you're not irritated over the marks, not when Bump is so lovely."

Severus snorted, rolling his eyes. "Lovely. A few soft touches do not make up for making me collapse last week, or for trying its damnedest to starve me."

She tutted and pushed against his stomach again, but Bump was silent in its nest of his guts.

"So, it's not all the time that Bump responds?"

"No. And sometimes the little devil kicks hard enough to keep me up all night. Not always a gentle soul." He didn't think Poppy needed to know about the times Bump had kicked his kidneys hard enough that he had pissed blood, or when it had pushed against his ribs hard enough to make them pop. Last week had worried her enough, and it had taken a lot of cajoling to get her to promise to not tell Dumbledore. So, he kept quiet about things that might make her rethink her decision to keep his secrets.

Grimacing, he smoothed his hand along his stomach. "Back to the marks. I've been using cocoa butter and some betony and honey to encourage fading. I don't mind that they're there – I simply don't want them to be . . . vibrant."

She traced a particularly pink mark. "I think Muggles use Vitamin E and abrasive scrubs to encourage the fading. Maybe ground coffee beans or salt granules?"

He made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, pushing himself into a seated position. He paused, letting the blood flow circulate through his body before attempting to get to his feet. Severus shrugged on his shirt and began doing up the buttons. There was a brief moment as they both fell silent, that he thought either of them would apologize. The fiasco from last week had smoothed tensions, made it clear that Poppy wasn't terribly upset, and that Severus had been forgiven any indiscretions.

"Any . . . issues? Your head okay? Your wrist," she finally asked, giving him a look. "That bruise on your ribs?"

"Some headaches still; wrist is still sore but not swollen. Bruising is going down," Severus informed her, buttoning up his shirt. He drew in a deep breath. "Feet are swollen; fingers too. My hormones are a fucking mess. I can't sleep; we're back to the not-eating state of things. But we've made it another week, so I think we're surviving, aren't we Bump?" He ran a hand over the swell of his stomach, fabric pulled tight against his stomach.

"So, no real lingering effects of the fall then?" Poppy touched just over his ear curiously as if worrying over his mental state – as if the fall had perhaps rattled something free from the wall of his skull.

"Not really. Just the now-usual aches associated with Bump," he said, shaking his head in mock irritation. She tutted playfully.

"The baby's the size of a coconut now, you know," Poppy finally said, giving him a soft smile.

"If only my body reflected that, instead of a damn beach ball," Severus ground out, casting the concealment spell quickly, smoothing his hands along his sides to rid his clothing of wrinkles. His hand caught and rubbed his hand along his left side under his ribs, as though he could ease the deep-seated ache there from where Bump liked to kick his kidney and liver.