She sits on the ground beside him. Still lying on his back, he smiles over at her, amused by the small oof she makes as she lowers herself awkwardly down, delighted by the fact that it's their unborn child causing this unaccustomed ungainliness.
"Careful, or we shall never get you up again without the hoist," he says, laying his wrench aside.
"Sod off, Clanker," she says, one hand on the curve of her stomach and a smile glowing in the corners of her eyes. Apropos of nothing, she asks, "D'you know what your name means?"
"It's the Slavic form of Alexander," he says, wiping his hands off on the rag tucked into the waist of his work trousers, "which was Latinized from the original Greek Alexandros, 'defender of men'."
She makes no response, aside from some muttering of the "knows all that, but…" variety.
He pretends not to have heard. "What?"
She pretends not to have spoken. "Nothing."
"I ought to have been named Maximilian, after Franz Joseph's brother. But my father wanted to show the Slav nationalists that he was sympathetic – not that it worked." He slides out from beneath the unmounted engine and leverages himself upright. The cursed thing will go on malfunctioning (he's no master of mechaniks) whether or not he has a pleasant chat with his wife. "What about your name? I don't believe I've ever asked."
She shrugs. "It's Welsh. Something to do with birds, I think."
"You don't know?" he asks, curious. He shifts so that he's sitting beside her, their backs to the wall, facing his half-rebuilt Stormwalker. A labor of love. Two years ago, he would have imagined working on it the greatest thrill possible.
Now, he's looking forward to being far too preoccupied with a son or daughter to have any time for this collection of rusty gears.
"Not all of us are encyclopedias, love," she says, grinning at him. "Besides, it's Welsh."
"And you don't know what it means? Aren't you Scots?" he asks, metaphorically tweaking her nose, and doing it quite on purpose.
Predictably, her temper flashes over: "Aye, and that's why I don't speak bloody Welsh!"
He laughs, and she half-heartedly punches his arm as she realizes that he's been teasing. His feelings are hardly injured; he pulls her onto his lap and kisses her soundly, one hand resting on that smooth rounding of her stomach.
There's a kick and flutter beneath his hand – firm enough to make him startle, even after months of it – and he begins to understand what she's on about. He looks down at the curve under his fingers. "Names are important."
She puts her hand over his and laces their fingers together. Her voice is light: "Is that why you have so barking many?"
He thinks about it. It's a bit more complicated than that, but… "Well, yes."
She murmurs the entire long string into his ear. He shivers at the warmth of her breath and the small intimacy of the words, and squeezes her hand more tightly.
"I'm all for tradition," she adds (a lie if ever there was one), "but I think we should give that up, aye?"
He grimaces. He wouldn't even know where to start, and at this point, burdening a child with the names of a dead empire seems cruel. "All things considered - I'm more than happy to let it end with me."
"Mm," she says, agreeing without agreeing, and kisses him. He sinks into her warmth, into the electricity between them, into the simple fierce joy of this life. His wife, his child – everything he could ever have wanted; why did he once think he needed more?
After a minute the baby kicks again, harder this time, and she breaks the kiss with a brief curse and a vaguely resentful, "Sodding wee thing just elbowed my liver."
"Are you certain it wasn't your spleen?"
"I'm certain it wasn't my bladder."
"And I'm certainly grateful for that," he says, earning a laugh. He smoothes a stray lock of golden hair away from her face and kisses her forehead. Gently. "We shall need to settle on a name soon, you know."
She shrugs. "It doesn't matter."
He wants to ask, Then why did we have this discussion? but opts for the somewhat wiser, "It doesn't?"
"Oh, aye," she says cheerily, dropping a kiss on his cheek and rising, awkward and ungainly and lovelier than ever. "I've already decided: Sophie for a girl, Franz for a boy."
