"What would you name our kids?" Erica tosses her hair over her shoulder and looks up at Boyd, who doesn't respond. It's one of those rare days in Beacon Hills where nothing had to be researched out of an old leather book and no one had to be carried into Deaton's office for an explanation as to why they weren't healing. They both like those kinds of days because it means they can do this: skip class to sit under the tree behind the gym where no one could find them unless they really tried (or had a werewolf-like sense of smell) and just talk. She repeats, "What would you name our kids?"
Boyd pushes himself up and leans back on his elbows, staring at her. He loves her all the time, but especially when the sun shines on her and it makes her hair almost glow. He's called it a halo before and she always rolls her eyes but that's what he thinks it is.
He shrugs. He doesn't like to think about the future because the present and recent past have just been so uncertain. It doesn't make sense to him to think about the future. He's just trying to survive right now. "I don't know. What would you name them?"
She sits back, cross-legged and twirling a blade of grass between her fingers. She's thought about this before and the two names she picked mean something to her. "If we had a girl, she'd be Ava—" Because Ava means "Like a Bird" and she's always wanted her child to be free, not chained down with medicines and doctors and restrictions like she was. "—and if we had a boy, he'd be Omar." Because Omar means "Long Life, Popular, Flourishing" and that was everything Erica had ever wanted for herself. She cocks her head to the side, smiling at Boyd, who still has no definite answer.
He never expected to have a girlfriend in the first place, so he's never thought about it. The most he's ever been around kids was his little sister and after dealing with her, he'd sworn off even smiling at a baby. "What about you?" she asks him again. "Would you name our son Vernon Milton Boyd V?"
At least that was a definite no. He shakes his head viciously and knows she's waiting for a reason why. "My name is stupid. I only have it because it's a family name and everyone who had it before me was a big war hero, protecting their country and everything." He picks at the grass and sighs. He thinks about his dad who came home from Vietnam a completely different person, according to his nana, and he thinks about how she's told him about Papa Boyd, who he never got to meet because he died saving his platoon, or whatever, during the Korean War, "but he was a good man, strong and quiet, like you." Boyd doesn't give JROTC a second thought. "I'm not a hero, and I will never be a hero. So, this name stops with me."
She shrugs, moves from where she's sitting and straddles him. "Well, I think you're a hero. You're my hero, anyway." She blushes, only because she's never said it out loud even though she thinks it every time she sees him.
He looks up at her, smiling, and brushes her hair behind her ear. "That's because you're the only thing I have worth protecting."