A/N: I was having a conversation with my older sister the other day about celebrity baby names and this drabble just kind of happened.
I...yeah...I don't know.
Anywho, enjoy! And please excuse all mistakes. I wrote it super quick and only looked it over once. I'm also really tired.
Fair warning, it may suck. Like, really bad.
And The Winner Is...
Caroline Mikaelson was seated on her bed with an open book lying on her belly. Her eyes traveled the words intently as her delicate fingers flipped through the crisp pages. Noises echoed throughout the room, shouts of elation and drunkenness reminding her that it was the fifth of May.
If she weren't so heavy and if there wasn't a weight pressing directly on her bladder, she'd step off the bed and look out the window. She'd see what she always saw on Cinco De Mayo: beads, beer, and boobs.
But since she was so heavy and since there was an incessant weight on her bladder she decided to stay put and rifle through some more books. One could never be too prepared.
"What to Expect When You're Expecting?" A teasing voice asked from the doorway.
Frowning playfully, Caroline lifted her head and stared amusedly at her husband. "Baby names," she corrected, picking the book off the bed and showing him the front cover.
Klaus stalked into their bedroom and sat down gracefully next to Caroline. He placed his left hand over her grossly-swollen belly. "Oh dear," he sighed. "What's caught your attention now?"
Eight months ago, when Caroline had anxiously announced that she was pregnant, Klaus had nearly fainted. She'd shown him the stick with the two blue lines and he'd looked at it with extreme confusion. His forehead had creased and his jaw had dropped enough that she could see the white gum dancing on his tongue.
For an awful moment, the sickening thought that he wasn't pleased ran through her mind, coiling around her brain like a boa constrictor.
They'd been trying to get pregnant for more than three years, and were already well into their tenth year of marriage. When they'd reached their seventh anniversary instead of giving in to the seven-year-itch, they decided they wanted a baby.
That meant more sex and more romance. No condoms and no alcohol.
Unfortunately, it didn't work as fast as either of them had first thought.
Year one came to a close with no positive results other than killer abs. Year two ended with more fear than excitement.
By the end of year three, each time Caroline would get her period, it felt like Mother Nature, the bitch, was laughing at her inability to conceive. She'd even brought it up with Klaus that maybe they should stop—because maybe a child wasn't in their future.
That night, though, Klaus had taken her to bed. He'd kissed her flat belly and her full chest and her closed eyelids, promising in his sweet, British accent that even if they never had children of their own, they'd still be the same love-struck idiots they'd been since they got married at eighteen.
The next morning, Caroline had woken up feeling different. There was a spring in her step that even Klaus couldn't ignore.
Am I that good in bed? Klaus had asked jokingly, and for a couple of weeks, that's what Caroline chalked her good mood up to—really, really fantastic sex with her sexy husband.
As more time passed, something seemed to be missing. It took Klaus asking if she needed him to pick up some tampons on his way home from the office (he was good about not getting embarrassed by that stuff) as he'd noticed that she'd run out, before she let even the idea enter her mind.
Could it be happening? She'd asked herself, stroking her stomach.
After refusing Klaus' offer of buying feminine hygiene products for her, the blond nervously glanced at her calendar and tried backtracking to her last period. Sure enough, it had been well over a month (one month, two weeks, and three days to be exact) since she was due, and she was always on time. Always.
Stress at work and lots of visiting friends from Virginia had clearly made her lose track of the time.
Then a thought occurred to her, a thought that made her want to dance and sing and throw open her apartment windows and scream to the streets of New Orleans. She was pregnant. She was fucking pregnant!
She had a tiny, living thing growing inside of her, feasting on her food and relying on her for survival. A human, fifty percent Klaus, fifty percent her, in her stomach.
Three and a half years of trying and it was finally happening. Klaus and her were going to be a family. The realisation sent tears streaming down her face.
On her way home from work the next day, she surreptitiously grabbed a pregnancy test from the counter at the local pharmacy, glad that the person working the till wasn't Klaus' kid friend Silas who had a nasty habit of running his Greek mouth.
Nothing could have prepared her for how fucking long those three minutes of waiting for the pregnancy test would take. She'd been patient for three years, yearning for this day to come. Why couldn't she wait another 180 seconds to find out if all of her dreams were coming true?
When the annoying siren on her phone had gone off, she'd nearly choked on her own heart. And then she'd looked at the stick, trying to ignore the fact that she'd just peed on it. And then she saw what was on it, and for the rest of the evening all she could see were two blue lines.
1.1.1
Klaus had returned home later than usual. He'd warned her earlier that he'd be at the pub with his buddy Marcel.
Agonising nerves swarmed under Caroline's skin when her ridiculously attractive husband opened their apartment door. She was still seeing the blue lines, so when he approached her and kissed her and gazed at her with lust, his normally blue eyes were even bluer.
Placing his keys on the kitchen counter, he'd grabbed a beer from the fridge.
Want one? He'd asked. Caroline shook her head. He smiled, grabbing another beer. More for me.
Klaus situated himself on their sofa, sipping his beverage every now and again with leisure.
How could he be so calm when all she wanted to do was throw up? But maybe that was the morning/noon/night sickness talking, not her unprecedented annoyance.
Klaus, she'd called, her voice shaking.
Yes, dear?
Can you come here?
Of course.
He'd gotten up, taking his beer with him.
By the time she'd finished telling him the news, there was beer and glass all over the kitchen floor.
What? He'd asked breathlessly, his eyes growing wide with shock.
She repeated the story, handing him the pregnancy test. He took it, held it up to the light, and blinked rapidly.
It was only a few seconds later, when he looked back at her, that she realised he was crying. And that she was crying too.
"What are you thinking about?" Klaus asked, bringing her back to the present.
Caroline's lips quirked up in a half-smile. She glanced at the hand splayed across her belly. Tracing his wedding ring with her index finger (she'd had to take hers' off a month ago when her fingers decided to swell to twice their normal size), the bubbly blond moved her hand to cup her husband's smooth cheek.
"How glad I am you decided to get rid of the beard," she cooed, soothing her thumb across his now-present dimple.
"You loved the beard!" Klaus cried emphatically.
"Eh…"
Klaus grinned. "So that's why you baked me a cake when I shaved it off. You said it was because of my promotion at work!"
"Maybe…" Caroline drawled. Klaus narrowed his eyes at her playfully. "Okay," she acquiesced, "yes."
"You never answered my question." Klaus grabbed ahold of the book she'd been reading. "What's caught your eye today?"
Caroline had to laugh at the way he said today, like he'd asked the question far too many times.
It was true, she had been changing her mind about their child's name a lot since they'd found out they were expecting. There were just too many adorable options. And it didn't help that her best friends, Bonnie and Elena (both of whom had two children each), kept sending her books full of all sorts of different choices.
She dropped her hand from his face and took the book from him. He scowled at her blatant thievery. "You snooze, you lose, Mikaelson." Flipping over to the bookmarked page, she skimmed the page one last time and handed it back. "These ones."
"Celebrity Baby Names of the Last Fifteen Years," he read aloud, his eyebrows getting closer and closer together as he announced each word.
"You don't look happy," Caroline observed. She moved her scarlet lips into a pout.
Klaus just barely resisted rolling his eyes, Caroline knew.
"We've been over this," he said, which was also true. They had been over it. Many times.
"I know you don't like most of them," Caroline admitted, "but could you just look at the ones I've underlined. They're so adorable!"
Never one to resist when his wife sounded so happy, Klaus let his eyes wander over the names Caroline had, indeed, underlined in her pink pen.
"Apple, Arabella, Clementine…?" Klaus looked at her from underneath his lashes. A look telling Caroline he was beginning to suspect she'd gone insane.
"Just keep going," she instructed.
He rolled his eyes all the way this time, and even added a low grumble. "Elsie, Everly, Haven, Mars—okay, you've got to be kidding me with that one."
"What? I thought it was cute," Caroline defended.
"I'm not naming our child after a planet, Caroline. That's a line I will never cross."
"Stop being such a whiny baby and keep reading."
Klaus opened his mouth to say something else, but thought better of it and continued reading off the names.
"And, finally, we get to Tallulah." Klaus closed the book silently and placed it on the bed. Caroline could see the vein in his forehead doing jumping jacks.
"Haven't you ever seen Bugsy Malone?" She asked as an explanation for the last name on the list.
"Caroline…"
Holding up her hand, Caroline shuffled until her feet touched the floor. "No, it's fine, I get it." She slid off the bed and started making her way to the bathroom. "Esther was all about traditional family names and that's what you're all about too."
"Sweetheart, you know my mother has nothing to do with this," Klaus said, heading after her.
"Of course she does. If you were named something boring like John, you'd be wanting us to name our kid after one of the Twelve Disciples. Or some other Biblical character. Or Jesus, even!"
Klaus' eyes hardened.
It was the same argument again and again. The one thing they couldn't just agree on. Everything else was easy: The birthing plan, where the baby would sleep, how long Caroline would breastfeed, where their kid would go to school. But this? This was like their argument about what they wanted their rings made out of.
Their engagement had been a mutual decision at the time of high-school graduation, and they'd managed to plan their dream wedding in time for the end of summer on a pretty low budget. And since she had no engagement ring, they were forced to decide on the material together.
It took all three months of summer, lots of fights, and lots of makeup sex before they decided on silver.
"Sorry," Caroline mumbled. She really had to pee, but she didn't want to leave Klaus in the middle of a sort-of fight. "Take my friend Matt, for example," she began. "His name is Matthew, and he named his son Peter. He had a daughter two years later. You remember lovely little Mary?"
Klaus rubbed his cheek. "What's your point, Caroline?"
Shifting her weight onto the bathroom door, the blue-eyed girl chanced a look at her husband. "My point is, I don't want our child to have a boring name."
"And you think my name is boring?"
"Niklaus? No. But it is traditional. Something handed to you because some dead guy in your family had it before you. I'm Caroline after my grandmother. Matt named his kids after people in the Bible because that's the book he read the most growing up. Even Bonnie and Elena were influenced in part by their families."
Caroline paused to gather her strength. She really was feeling weak all of a sudden. People were still partying outside. If she listened carefully, she could hear the laughter.
"Look, I'm not saying that we should name our child Mars or Clementine, but I'm just pointing out to you that celebrities don't play by the rules when they name their babies. They come up with whatever's in their head. Or, judging by some of those names, what's in their stomach. I want our baby—our baby, Klaus—to be special in all possible ways. Name included."
"Care—" Klaus started, but Caroline interrupted.
"Wait, I'm about to pee my pants. Give me a minute."
After drying her hands, Caroline walked out of the bathroom to find Klaus waiting outside the door for her. Before she could blink, the man had grabbed her waist and pulled her to him, even though all that touched him of her was her bulging belly.
She gasped and was about to say something, but Klaus had other ideas for her mouth, swallowing her words with a smooth, gentle kiss.
"As I was saying," he continued, pressing his forehead to hers. She opened her eyes and stared at his beautiful face as he spoke, "Our child, my dear wife, will be special. No name will change that. We've still got a month to decide, we can make it."
Reluctantly, Caroline's lips spread wide. Damn, if her hubby didn't know how to calm her down. "It's just, this is the thing that will define our child for the rest of its life. I want to make the right choice."
Klaus surprised her by kissing her again. "We're Mr. and Mrs. Mikaelson, love. We don't make bad choices."
And that was all the convincing she needed.
Klaus burst through the hospital room door, a boastful smile on his face. "It's a girl!" He announced, his words choked, as if he couldn't quite open his throat wide enough for them to come out properly.
A round of applause erupted from the waiting room as the select few invited to witness the birth of Caroline and Klaus' baby brought their hands together in congratulations.
"Can we go in?" Bonnie asked, tugging on Elena's hand.
"Yeah, can we?" Klaus' brother, Kol, followed.
Biting back the tears threatening to crawl down his cheeks, Klaus nodded. "The room's big enough for you all."
And that is how Caroline's friends, Bonnie and Elena; his sister, Rebekah; his brother's Kol and Elijah; his mother and Caroline's mother all ended up in a room together.
Each person took a moment to moon at the child in his wife's arms. The women all stroked the baby girl's wispy blond hairs while his brother's gave Klaus uncharacteristic, emotional hugs.
"Ooh, tell us her name!" Bonnie squealed.
Klaus eyed Caroline, a smirk bending his lips. He nodded his head. "Go on."
Caroline jerked her head as a signal for him to stand beside her. He obliged, taking her free hand.
"Well," she said, "at first, we thought we'd never get around to actually naming our own child. But then Klaus woke me up one night a couple of weeks ago, muttering something about having some epiphany in his sleep about what her name should be." Caroline squeezed his hand, and he felt the same butterflies brush his insides as he did when they were young and foolish and crazy enough to get married at eighteen.
"And it turns out he had come up with a pretty good idea," she went on. The whole room had gone silent in anticipation.
"Tell us!" Liz Forbes shrieked.
Caroline and Klaus stilled, just waiting for their little girl to wake up, screaming.
"Okay, fine," Caroline said in mock exasperation when the baby stayed asleep. "Everyone, please say hello to…"
A/N 2: If you want to know the name, fear not - I actually came up with one. I'll publish a nine-word follow-up tomorrow with just the name.
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