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“Vivienne,” Liam suggests.
“That’s pretty,” Hayden says thoughtfully, rolling the syllables around her mental tongue. Vivienne. Then she has to shift so that she can roll Liam’s head around the rounded bulge of her stomach, palming it sideways and down a few inches to relieve a sudden ache. Liam makes an absent noise of protest but goes, wiggling around and then resettling against her with his ear once more pressed to her belly. Hayden grins softly and strokes his hair back from his face, her fingers lingering on his temple, the high arch of his cheekbone.
“Meagan,” Liam offers next, but his tone is flat-sounding and—disinterested, almost, and Hayden frowns slightly. She raises up on her elbows so that she can actually fully see Liam over the swell of her belly, and then she scowls.
“Brigi—hey!” Liam protests, as Hayden swipes his phone away from him. Hayden glances down at the open website, sees randombabynames.com, and shrills, “Liam!” before throwing his phone at his chest. It thumps against his sternum with a meaty thunk and then falls to the mattress below him.
“Ow, hey,” Liam complains, curling in on himself. He bears up under her furious glare for a few moments longer and then crumples. “He should be here!” he protests. “I don’t—” he cuts himself off before he can finish want to be doing this without him, but it hangs there regardless. Liam swallows. Hayden does, too.
Then she sighs, and reaches forward to tuck several strands of Liam’s riotous hair back behind his ear; it’d gotten even more chaotic when he’d sat up in a hurry. “He just needs a little bit more time,” Hayden tells him gently.
Liam had turned into her hand, his lips brushing briefly against the skin of her palm. Now he snorts. “Yeah, well,” he mutters, hunkering down so that he’s flat on his belly this time, his opposite ear once more pressed to the rounded edge of her stomach, “if he doesn’t hurry up and get over himself, there isn’t going to be any more time.”
He closes his eyes, and presses his ear a little bit harder to her. Hayden knows what he’s hearing, what he’s listening for: the steady thump-thump of their baby’s heartbeat. She closes her eyes, and listens to it, too.
“He’s wrong,” Liam argues suddenly, like it’d been sitting on the tip of his tongue and he couldn’t bite it back anymore. “I know what he’s worried about, and he’s wro—”
“We don’t actually know that,” Hayden interrupts, and meets Liam’s eyes when he glances up at her, startled.
Liam’s expression spasms. “Deaton and my dad and Melissa and everybody checked, they said—”
“That I’m perfectly healthy, and the baby is perfectly healthy, but they can’t tell anything more than that.” She hesitates, then adds gently, “He’s one-of-a-kind, our Theo. And we don’t actually know much more than that.”
And there’s no one left to ask, thank god. Hayden puts both her hands on her own belly, the shift slouching uneasily under her skin as she remembers: being facedown on that operating theater table, Liam’s face a helpless mask of horror across from her, and the Dread Doctors above her. But they’re gone, destroyed by the monster they’d destroyed so many lives to make, leaving behind very little besides Theo, and the clinical gruesomeness of the research notes left scattered throughout their various operating theaters. Hayden had seen some of the pages that Theo had gone to retrieve once they’d learned about her pregnancy, some of the drawings; he’d done his best to shelter her and Liam from them, but sometimes he’d forget himself.
Sometimes Hayden would have to come up slowly behind him, and put her hands first on his tense and trembling shoulders, and then on his arms, until she could slide her hands down to reach whatever he’d been looking at, and flip it closed. She’d had to press her chest to his back, and her cheek to his—the stretch of it often too-warm, and damp—and hold on as Theo first tried to protest that he was fine, and then that she didn’t need to worry about it, and finally lifted his hands, and gripped at her forearms, and shook, and shook.
Liam must be able to see some of that on her face, because he makes a wounded noise, and—carefully!—lunges up so that he can press her gently backwards into their bed, covering her best he can with his body and burying his face in the side of her neck. Hayden lets her eyes fall gratefully shut, and turns her face into his.
“That’s not all he’s worried about,” Liam finally murmurs, lifting his head up just enough that he can look at her. “You know that, right?”
Hayden traces her fingers around the curve of his cheekbone, her eyes running over every inch of his beloved face. Then she exhales out roughly and drops her forehead against his, her other side feeling cold and bereft and empty.
“I know,” she assures Liam quietly.
---
She and Theo are in their kitchen the next morning cleaning up after their casual breakfast—and Liam’s, since he’d groggily lingered over his cereal until he’d caught sight of the time, shouted, and rushed off with a sorry for the mess I love you both bye! as he headed off to his first period history students—and nothing had been said, exactly, but Theo’s still Theo. He grabs another dish out of the sink and casually asks, “So exactly how pissed at me is he?” as he leans over to slot it into the dishwasher.
Hayden frowns at the side of his head, her rinsed-off plate held out. “He’s not pissed at you.”
Theo turns to look at her, even as he’s accepting her plate and slotting that into the dishwasher, too. Hayden feels her mouth purse. She leans over to spread a hand over the sink and the rest of the dishes inside, blocking Theo from picking up the next one when he straightens, and reaches for it. He stops and glances at her, brow furrowing.
“He’s not pissed at you,” Hayden repeats firmly. She searches his eyes. “This isn’t about anger. You know that.”
Theo’s jaw tightens. He tears his gaze away from hers, and spends a few moments with his hands and head hanging over the sink before he abruptly sighs, and reaches sideways for the dish towel hanging over the sink so that he can dry his wet hands before throwing the towel onto the counter, and reaching to pull her into his arms. Hayden goes immediately, stepping into his embrace and resting her forehead against his sternum, her arms coming up to circle tight around his waist. He drapes his own arms over her shoulders, and presses his mouth briefly to her temple before resting his chin on the crown of her head.
They stay there like that for a brief moment, and then Hayden feels it when Theo turns to lay the side of his head against her hair instead. He takes one deep breath, lets it out without saying anything, and then finally takes another and offers, hesitant: “I was thinking maybe Josefina.”
Hayden pulls back to look at him. “My grandmother’s name?”
Theo bites his lip, and lets his gaze fall down, away from hers. “I know how much she meant to you and Val. How she helped raise you, after your parents’ accident.”
Hayden hums, thoughtful, and drops her chin onto his chest. He shifts his weight in response, and then after a little pause, starts rocking her gently side to side. Hayden buries a helpless grin against his sternum, warmth filling her belly and rushing up her throat as she deliberately leans even more heavily against him, specifically for the way that he automatically adjusts, and keeps right on holding her up. After another few moments Theo tips his chin back up so it’s digging lightly into the top of her head once arm, his arms shifting to resettle around her shoulders.
“I was also thinking Evelyn,” he tells her quietly, his breath ruffling her hair.
Evelyn. Liam’s grandmother’s name; the one who’d helped intervene after she’d realized exactly what kind of spouse, and father, her son had turned out to be.
Hayden closes her eyes briefly, and presses her face a little harder to his sternum, some of her good mood dissipating. Josefina and Evelyn. Her grandmother, and Liam’s. Family names, but their family names. Hayden knows Theo’s grandparents’ names, just like she knows his parents’, and his parents’ current address, but she also knows: Theo could run into them in the street—literally run into them, a physical crashing—and they’d still have no idea who he was. She has no idea why the Dread Doctors had taken their memories of him, but not his memories of them, but wondering is an academic exercise, at this point: not something any of them could change, if Theo would even admit to wanting to try.
She pulls back. “They’re good suggestions,” she tells him gently, and then her voice firms as she adds, “as long as you’re remembering that Liam and I aren’t the only ones in this thing.”
Theo manages to hold her eyes for a few seconds longer, but then he drops them, the line of his mouth tightening. After a moment Hayden pulls him back in, something rising to stopper up her throat when Theo goes momentarily rigid in surprise before immediately melting against her, his arms coming up to squeeze like vices around her shoulders.
He’s careful of her belly, though; he’s always careful of her belly.
Hayden gives herself another few, deep breaths—her nose buried in the weave of the sweater he’s wearing, her lungs filled up with the scent of him—and then she tilts her head back so that she can plant her chin against her sternum again, and smile up at him. If it feels a little wobbly, well: it’s a little wobbly.
“I was thinking,” she tells him, then hesitates. “What about—Hope?”
Theo immediately gives this surprised scoffing laugh of a sound and then says, sounding genuinely amused, “Oh yeah, sure, let’s burden the poor kid with all our emotional baggage before they’ve even left the womb.”
Hayden can’t help it: she laughs, too, huffing it out under her breath as she tries to keep a straight face and then gives up, and laughs more openly. She tips her chin down so she can bury it in his chest again, but she doesn’t stay like that for long. She strokes her thumbs over the muscles of his back, her arms still around his waist, and looks up at him.
“We’ll see what Liam thinks, okay?” she says, and holds his eyes as when he looks down at her, and searches hers.
He lifts his arms off her shoulders, finally, and cups his hands around her face as he leans down, and kisses her. “Okay,” he agrees, once he has, and pulls her back into his arms right after.
Hayden goes, her ear against his chest to listen to his heartbeat, echoing the one she can hear—she can feel—in her belly. She puts one hand against her stomach to strengthen the sensation, and after a moment Theo—drops one of his hands down, and flattens it over her own.
Hayden feels their twinned heartbeats, one against her palm, and one against the back of her hand.
---
“Mhmm,” Val murmurs, but it’s clear she’s distracted: she’s glaring across the floor of the station at one of the cuffed perps Menendez is dragging by, who’s staring with a little too much interest at Hayden, and Hayden’s rounded belly.
It’s not like Hayden can blame her: she shifts her hands so they’re splayed protectively over either side of her stomach, and narrows her eyes at the perp as she lets the werewolf side of her bleed out a little into the air around her, though she keeps the shift from her eyes or fingers or teeth. The perp abruptly recoils, blinking rapidly, and then looks hastily away as they stumble even more clumsily after Menendez; Hayden can hear how their breath had sped up, probably subconsciously. Satisfied, she looks back at Val.
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you,” she states flatly, but flatly amused.
Val rolls her eyes, and stuffs another ketchup-laden fry into her mouth, the grease-streaked paper bag they’d been laying on making a soft gritty shir as she does it. “Theo, in typical Theo fashion,” she recites, “is dealing with his completely understandable family hang-ups by avoiding being involved in yours. And Liam, in typical Liam fashion, is covering up for the fact that he’s sad about that by being kind of dick about it instead. And you,” she adds, her eyes narrowing and fixing on Hayden’s face as she points another fry in Hayden’s direction, “in typical you fashion, are trying to force-feed those two knuckleheads some common sense.”
Hayden blinks. “Okay, so you did hear a word I’d said,” she allows, ignoring the uncomfortable something squirming in her gut at Val’s particularly concise and particularly incisive summary.
Val doesn’t do something completely justifiable like tap a finger against her badge or gesture broadly around to her workplace which they’re sitting in—a police station, in which she is a cop—but she does exhale out a rough breath through her nose, and lean forward in her chair to cup a hand around Hayden’s face. She strokes her thumb underneath Hayden’s eye, and gives her a grimacing smile.
“The problem with that is, you can’t fix this for them,” she reminds Hayden gently. “They’ve got to figure this out on their own.”
Hayden swallows, and drops her eyes. “So what do you think I should do, then?” she wonders quietly; a little helplessly.
Val drops her hand down, so that it’s chucked up underneath Hayden’s chin instead. She lifts it. “You should keep doing the other thing that I know you’re doing,” she says, when Hayden has flicked her eyes obediently back up to meet hers, “and keep supporting them, and being understanding, and patient, and a refuge.” Val’s lips flicker again, in a more genuine smile this time. “They’ll get there.”
Hayden smiles shakily back.
Val sits back, satisfied, and busies herself eating another handful of fries to give Hayden the time to pull herself back together. Hayden wipes her thumb and then her middle finger under first one eye and then the other, and shakes herself lightly before resettling into her seat. She eyes Val critically.
“Still glad we finally ‘fessed up about all this supernatural insanity?” she wonders wryly.
Val’s expression goes desert dry. “I still can’t believe you three really thought I hadn’t figured it out.”
Hayden grins, wide and helpless. “Yeah, well,” she says, and then leans forward to scoop up her own handful of fries, before leaning back and stuffing them in her mouth.
She leaves her other hand on her belly as she does.
---
Hayden closes her eyes for two seconds after she’s gotten home from work and dropped heavily onto their couch, but when she opens them again, the sky outside the windows is dark, and she’s laying on her side with a blanket tucked carefully around her, and—Liam and Theo are talking, quietly, a handful of steps away in the kitchen.
“—randombabynames.com,” Theo says, clearly unimpressed. “Seriously?”
“Fuck off,” Liam shoots back, but it’s surprisingly without heat. There’s a slight splash and then Theo makes a muffled noise of protest, like Liam had maybe just flicked water at him from where Hayden can hear the sink running. “At least I’m trying.”
Theo doesn’t respond for a few long moments—all Hayden can hear are the gentle clinks and clacks of the two of them cleaning up whatever it was they’d been doing—and then he breathes out a rough sound, and says, “Yeah,” in a tone she recognizes; a tone of defeat.
The water shuts off. Hayden finds herself straining to catch even the slightest sound, her hearing automatically shifting and sharpening to listen even though she—probably shouldn’t. There are a handful of quiet footsteps, a quiet creak like one of them had leaned back against a stretch of counter, and then nothing, for a few moments.
Finally she hears Liam say, “Look, I know what’s going through your head, alright? You’re not much of a spymaster anymore.”
“Your hands are still wet,” Theo points out, but the deflection is half-hearted; Hayden can picture the downcast look on his face.
But Liam doesn’t need to picture it; he’s looking at it. He makes a rough noise, and demands, “Theo, look at me.”
Theo must actually do it, because there are another long few seconds of silence, and then Liam repeats, “I know what’s going through your head—” and Theo must try to look away again, because Liam bites off a frustrated sound and there’s a brief burst of scuffling before Liam finally continues, “—but the problem is.”
He doesn’t actually say what the problem is, not right away. Hayden realizes she’s holding her breath and stops that, but she doesn’t stop listening.
And finally Liam says, “The problem is, me and Hayden? We’re not asking you to trust you.” Theo makes this punched-out noise, like Liam had just driven his clawed hand wrist-deep in his guts, but Liam doesn’t let up. He says, “We’re asking you to trust us.”
Hayden’s eyes start to burn. She squeezes them shut, her chest aching; her heart inside it pounding fierce and hard and fast, just like—just like Theo’s, whose heart she can hear doing the same in the kitchen. There’s another burst of noise and then Liam murmuring, “Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay,” and nothing else; nothing but the sound of Theo’s shaky inhales, his shakier exhales, and Liam’s stream of soothing platitudes, muffled like he’s pressing them directly into Theo’s skin.
Hayden doesn’t know how long she lays there like that, listening, but she does know the instant she gets caught. There’s a sudden muted snort of laughter from inside the kitchen, and then Theo calls, “You might as well stop pretending. We know you’re awake.”
Still, even with the teasing acknowledgement, Hayden isn’t exactly surprised that they don’t make her come to them: they come to her, instead. She blinks up at them as they appear behind the couch, Theo stopping with his hands braced on the back, Liam casually vaulting it so that he can then lift up her legs, slide underneath them, and carefully lower them back down. Hayden wiggles her bare toes in his lap, one of his hands wrapping casually around her ankle.
Liam grins at her; Theo quirks a soft small smile down at them both. Hayden studies him for a few seconds, and then tilts her head in a silent request.
Theo acquiesces: he comes around the back of the couch, and when she lifts up her head and shoulders, he slides easily into place so that she can come right back down with her head resting easy against the thick curve of his thigh. She arches her neck to dig the back of her skull deliberately into the muscle, smiling wider, and he laughs and cups one hand around the top of her head, and strokes the other carefully against her near arm.
They stay there like that for several long moments that become several long minutes. At some point Hayden lets her eyes drift back shut, Theo’s hand tangled gently in her hair and Liam’s fingers smoothing softly against her ankle, and it’s just—the easiest thing to do in the world. But against her near arm the rhythmic stroke of Theo’s thumb keeps stuttering, and Hayden eases her eyes back open.
She looks up at him, and asks, “What is it?”
He takes a deep breath; doesn’t say anything right away. Takes another, and that one gets caught in his chest before he lets it out again, all without saying a word. Down at her feet, Hayden can feel Liam inhale, and she knows where that’s likely going; she digs one of her heels warningly against his belly, all without looking at him. Liam grunts and subsides, and Theo—Theo’s lips flicker.
He lays the hand he’d been stroking against her arm against her stomach, instead.
He says, “I have been thinking about it,” a little earnestly, a little defensively; a little anxiously. Liam’s stomach against Hayden’s foot goes still as he holds his breath, abruptly, but Hayden can’t exactly blame him: she’s not breathing, either. Theo looks at her, and then looks at Liam, and looks at his hand, molded around the curve of Hayden’s stomach.
He says, softly, “I was thinking Madalyn.”
Madalyn. Hayden likes the way it feels in her mouth, when she tests it silently out. She shifts and resettles her head on his thigh, then repeats aloud, “Madalyn,” softly, another test. She grins up at him when he twists to look at her, helplessly-seeming, and she can’t help asking, “Does it mean something?”
Something—giddy-looking, almost, crosses Theo’s face. He ducks his head as he shakes a little, and confesses, “I have no idea.”
Hayden feels her brow furrow. Down at the other end of the couch, Liam frowns thoughtfully. “Do you know a Madalyn?” he wonders.
Theo twists to aim that helpless smile at Liam, instead. “No,” he admits, sounding breathy and like it comes out on half a laugh that he can’t keep in. “I’ve never met a Madalyn.”
And Hayden—feels a wide, wondrous, equally helpless grin break over her own face as he says it. He must sense the attention because he flicks a look back at her, the look on his face a little shy-seeming, now, a little tentative; full of potential possibility like a name with no history that any of them could pin down. When he sees the look on her face he smiles wider, and Hayden can’t help it: she reaches up and hooks a hand around the back of his neck, and uses it to pull him down so that she can kiss him.
She says against his mouth, “I don’t know any Madalyns either.”
“Me either,” Liam chimes in, his grin so wide it’s crinkling up his eyes when both she and Theo glance reflexively over at him. “Or, y’know, I don’t know one yet,” he corrects, sitting up and then bending over so that he can press his nose to her belly. “But I am looking forward to meeting one.”
And Hayden laughs, high and helpless, and threads her fingers through his hair, holding him to her. He twists his head around to kiss her wrist and then lays it right back down where it had been, his eyes closed but his mouth still curved up in that same smile. But then he opens them, and looks up at Theo.
Theo looks down at him for a moment, and then he—leans over, and presses his forehead to Liam’s temple. It puts his mouth right up against her belly and he leaves it there, even as Hayden is bringing up her free hand and threading it through his hair, her nails scratching lightly at his scalp.
He presses briefly up into the touch, but then relaxes back down, so that his lips are right up against her stomach, and she can feel it when they start to move.
“Me too,” he whispers, and Hayden closes her eyes, and holds them both to her, and tilts her head back as she concentrates on the tiny heartbeat she can hear beating just off her own; on the heartbeats she can feel against her fingertips, Theo and Liam resting easy against her, and she against them.