A/N: This is an extremely sappy oneshot partially inspired by LiptonLee's Gilmore Girls fic "Huh." If you're a Gilmore Girls fan, I strongly encourage you to read it.
Also, before anyone jumps on my back: though it isn't the norm, it is possible to 'spot' during a pregnancy, which leads some women to think that they're still having their period. And, though the sex of the baby usually can't be determined until later in the pregnancy, I read somewhere that it may be able to be discerned as early as 12 weeks into the pregnancy. I'm banking on the idea that in the future, technology will have improved and the sex of the baby will be apparent earlier in the pregnancy.
So…it may not be entirely accurate and plausible…but, enjoy this saptasticly clichéd story anyway! Constructive criticism is always welcome and appreciated.
--
"Derek?"
He's heard her say his name many different ways before, but this scared, unsure version isn't one he hears often.
He shifts on the couch so he's facing her, his questioning, hazel eyes meeting her wide blue ones.
"Um, Derek," she starts again. "I'm...I went to the doctor today. You know, about how I've been really tired lately and how I fainted on Friday? And, I know we didn't really plan this this way, and really, I should have known, but I was still getting my period, so I guess I couldn't actually tell, but-"
"Case?," he interrupts her rambling. She takes the hint and gets to the point.
"I...I'm pregnant, Derek. We're having a baby. A little girl," her eyes drop to her lap as she says this, then flick back up to his, looking even more scared than before.
He's shocked, to say the least, because she's right—they certainly hadn't planned this. They day they'd come home from their honeymoon, Casey had sat down and made an elaborate 10 Year Plan, outlining things like career goals and car payments and the purchase of a new home. He was sure that "Baby" didn't come into the plan for at least another four years. He was also sure that Casey was faithfully taking her birth control pills every morning and keeping track of her cycle.
He clears his throat, though he's not at all sure what to say or how to react.
"Um, when?"
"December. December 20th."
He calculates the time in his head, nodding. 5 months, 18 days. He has 5 months and 18 days before the baby's born. Before his baby's born.
"Uh," he tries to force a tight smile, but he knows he's failing miserably. "That's...that's..."
Unexpected? Amazing? Wonderful?
...Horrible?
Casey's terrified of whatever word Derek could possibly be searching for, but she's tried to prepare herself for all of them on the way home from the doctor. She's thought about how to reassure him, how to convince him that a baby is a good thing, how to prove to him that he'll be a great father. She's even reworked their plan so she can show him that they'll still be able to afford to take the trip to Spain that they've both been looking forward to, and her career won't suffer too badly with her maternity leave.
She reaches into her purse to pull out the paper she'd started crunching numbers on when he speaks again.
"I'm just...I'm going to go out for a little while."
She's left gaping at the door with tears forming in her eyes, because this—Derek leaving—was not among any of the reactions she'd imagined.
--
When she finally recovers from the shock, she calls Emily, not even bothering to greet her friend before she wails into the phone.
"He left, Em! He left me!"
"What?" Emily asks, clearly confused.
"Derek left me! I'm pregnant and he left!"
"WHAT?"
Casey only moans in return.
"Casey, honey...Are you sure he left you?"
"Yes," she half-shrieks, half-sobs. "I told him I was pregnant, he barely said anything, and then he walked out the door!"
"Did he say where he was going?"
"No," she whispers glumly. "He just said he was going 'out.'"
"Casey...going 'out' is not the same as leaving. He's coming back. He probably just needed a little time to think."
"Em, you and I both know how this goes: 'Good girl marries bad boy. Bad boy knocks up good girl. Good girl knits booties, bad boy goes out to 'buy diapers.' Good girl never sees bad boy again,'" she huffs.
"We both know Derek isn't like that. Don't you remember how much time you spent convincing everyone how nice Derek really is when the two of you first got together?"
"And don't you remember how much time everyone else spent trying to convince me of the exact opposite?," she nearly screams. "God, my Aunt Janet was right all along."
"Casey. You're overreacting. We both know that. Derek was just surprised; he's coming back," she ignores Casey's sound of disbelief. "Listen. Go sit down, go start a gift registry for your baby shower, go start decorating a poster board for feeding schedules. Just go do something else for a while and stop worrying about Derek. He'll be back before you–"
She breaks off, suddenly.
"Em?"
"I just saw his car, Casey. He's pulling into your mom's driveway."
Casey hangs up the phone without even a "thank you" or "goodbye" and prays that she remembered to take her house keys as she climbs into her own car.
--
She knows she could cut the 35 minute drive from her and Derek's home to London down to 20 minutes. She's been in the passenger seat as Derek's done it at least ten times, and she stopped complaining about the speed by the seventh. But, she reminds herself, she's pregnant now. She has to spend the full 35 minutes agonizing over her current situation.
She also knows that Emily's probably right, that Derek only needs a little time to think, and she shouldn't be practically stalking him. But Derek's lived with her for almost a decade—he should expect nothing less than paranoid dramatics from her.
When she pulls up to her family's home an entire 38 minutes later ("Who LETS people over the age of 90 DRIVE?" she'd fumed), she notices Derek's car parked in the driveway, with the garage door wide open behind it. As she leaves her car and gets closer to the garage, she realizes that it looks even more disorderly than usual. There are bike helmets and Christmas decorations and power tools strewn all over the room, as if someone had just thrown them there.
There's also a funny smell in the garage, one she slowly realizes is the smell of freshly used spray paint.
"Spray paint?" she wonders. Derek hadn't done any graffiti since before they'd even graduated high school. Was trashing their family's garage and then graffiti-ing it his version of some teenage-esque fit? Was this his revenge against George and Nora for ever introducing him and Casey in the first place, thus leading to the current predicament he was obviously less-than-happy about?
She peers behind a wall of haphazardly stacked storage bins and sees Derek, sitting on an upside-down milk crate, stirring an old can of white paint. Next to him, she realizes, is the cardboard box labeled "Derek - Ages 5-8," apparently in Derek's mother's handwriting. And then she sees it.
There's a tiny hockey stick propped up next to the milk crate Derek's sitting on. Though it's been sprayed pink, she can still see the bold, black letters underneath that read, "DEREK V. KINDERGARTEN 2," presumably to direct the stick's return in case Derek had lost it. Immediately, she remembers where she'd first seen this hockey stick: in the video George had insisted on showing on Derek's 21st birthday. The video of his first hockey game.
She tries to swallow the sob that suddenly rises in her throat, but Derek hears her and turns to look at her.
"Case…," he says, softly. "You probably shouldn't be in here. I don't think the fumes are supposed to be good for..."
She sobs again at his concern for the baby.
His expression becomes worried, and she realizes that she's still staring with a shocked expression at the hockey stick.
"You...you did say it's a girl, right?" he asks.
She sniffs, nodding.
"Is this one of those anti-feminist things?" he wonders, indicating the pink paint.
She shakes her head "no."
"So, this is okay, then?"
She lets out a strangled noise and nods fiercely. He exhales, gesturing for her to sit on the other milk crate next to him before picking up the paintbrush. He traces a heart around his name and kindergarten location, then fills it in.
Casey gasps, slightly surprised at the fact that she can no longer see Derek's name.
"Why'd you do that?" she asks. She, for the most part, knows the answer, but she wants to hear him say it.
"Soon as she gets a name, it's going right here," he explains, pointing at the heart.
"You're going to give that to her as soon as she comes out?" Casey tries to tease in a watery voice.
"I was thinking we'd give her a day or two to get used to the whole 'world' thing first," he says. "But, I was wondering if I could convince the doctor to catch her in these."
He holds up a pair of goalie gloves, smirking.
She smacks his arm and then leans against him. He presses a kiss to her hair before propping up the hockey stick and leading Casey to the front porch, where they wait in the warm sun for the paint to dry.
She sees Emily briefly smile down at them from her window, and she smiles too, gathering Derek's arms around her waist and thinking about the life that's forming beneath his settled hands.