since feeling is first
It was late - almost two in the morning - but they were both still awake, sitting up in bed. They were too exhausted to sleep, but not too tired to argue - they were always up for that.
"Max," Ben declared.
"No," Gwendolyn said firmly, reaching over to prod his forehead. "He's a William - Will for short."
"He should be named after Grandpa."
"If I'm going to through labor with him, I get to name him whatever I want. Besides, Max can be his middle name."
Before he could challenge that, she gasped and shifted as much as her rotund belly would allow, clutching it with one hand. She reached for him with the other, but he was already there, laying his hand down next to her own.
The baby kicked once, twice, three times; strong, pulsing, and alive. It - he - had been moving more and more often lately, and Gwendolyn thought it was a Biblical miracle every time.
"Max," Ben called out, almost singsong, and then stole a sly glance at his wife, who was holding her breath as the - ugh, ow, brat - beat a drumline against her insides. "See, he kicked harder there. He wants to be called Max."
She didn't reply, just leaned back against the headboard, gazing at her stomach and their hands, overlapping lightly. Her expression was unreadable.
"What's up?" he asked, taking his hand off and putting his arm around her shoulder instead.
"I just realized...he's going to be exactly like you, no matter what we name him. He is your son." She groaned. "I am so tired all of a sudden."
"Haha, very funny."
"I'm serious!" And she was, but she was giggling enough to make her shoulders shake.
Come morning, Gwendolyn would once again be the woman who was a part of a network that protected the world - the universe; who helped Ben bear the weight of it any way she could, because, God help her, she loved the doofus to death and still had no idea why. In three months, she'd give birth to a son and name him William (no matter what Ben said) and he would grow up to be just like his dad and she would love him anyway.
Gwendolyn knew and believed this absolutely, because it was usually Ben's job to be wrong. A job she knew he would accept knowingly, graciously a thousand times over if it meant staying by her side, just like she had accepted countless near-death experiences and her dreams of a normal life crumbling to dust just to be beside him doing what they both loved, and maybe, maybe, that was all their little crazy family would ever need.
Even if her son never played a single t-ball game or missed his senior prom because he'd been on his way to go quell another Galvanic Mechamorph uprising in Shibuya, he would have love, the larger-than-life, superhuman kind - the only way the Tennyson family knew how to do it.
She would do and see all of those things, but right then she was a woman who laughed like a girl at two in the morning while her husband kissed her hair, called her a weirdo, and told her to do the kid a favor and go to sleep.
When she did, she dreamed of a life where their son was named Max and turned out just fine.
A/n: In an attempt to save this from my inevitable computer recovery, I had to copy this down from my old computer by hand, and then re-type it all onto our only computer with internet access. OH GOODNESS remind me never to do that again. So many abbreviations I thought I was Gossip Girl for a second.
I freaking love kid fic. And cheesiness. Can't you tell? Title stolen from the e.e. cummings poem of the same name, and I'm sure he would be so thrilled about that.
(Disclaimer: I don't own Ben 10.)