Chapter Text
“We need a name.”
“Hm?” Tech looked up from his datapad and over at his spouse. “For what?”
Phee smiled at him from the other side of the couch, her hand coming up to rest on her small baby bump. Tech smiled back and set the datapad down on the coffee table. She quickly scooted over to him, resting against him. In the last month, she’d wanted to cuddle more and more. He wondered if it was tangentially related to the beginnings of some nesting instinct. Whatever it was, Tech would not deny her desire to be close to him.
“This kid,” she brought Tech’s hand down to her belly. “They’re going to need a name.”
Tech frowned. “A name?”
“Can’t keep calling them Baby Brown Eyes. Or Beebee.”
“Beebee?”
“Baby Brown Eyes. BBE is the initials. So Beebee.”
“I see,” Tech nodded. “We still have four months though. There’s plenty of time to think still.”
“I know,” Phee leaned her head against his chest. “Didn’t feel confident about thinking of actual names before our appointment today.”
“Why not?”
She rubbed her eyes and Tech saw her lips wobble.
“Phee,” he reassured, rubbing her arms. “Everything is fine. The doctor told us their development was on track. You are in excellent health and so is our baby.”
“I know,” she murmured. “Didn’t want to get ahead of myself. Now feels better to start thinking.”
“I guess so,” Tech nodded. “It will be interesting to be naming the child before they show understanding.”
“That’s normal life, Brown Eyes,” Phee squeezed his hand.
Tech studied the paint swatches in front of him. There had been another appointment today, and both he and Phee had been able to see their baby. Phee didn’t want to know the sex, but Tech had figured it out before the screen was cropped. Now that he knew the biological gender, there was some temptation to throw out a few of the samples. Then again, gendering color was ridiculous.
“What do you think about Bayla?” Phee asked from the counter.
“Pardon?” Tech looked up and got up from his chair. “What are you making, dear?”
She fixed him with a look as her fork hovered over the pickle jar. “I’m hungry, okay?”
“Pickles and meiloorun?”
“Hey, don’t judge me,” she gently prodded her stomach. “Beebee is making me want sweet and sour.”
Tech held up his hands, watching Phee dish out the concoction into a bowl. “This is an…interesting craving.”
She screwed the jar lid on and walked over (definitely not waddled, Wrecker took heat for that one last week). “I don’t know, okay? But anyways, Bayla?”
“I’m very confused.”
“Yeah, I’ve felt that too lately,” Phee sat down with her fork and bowl of fruit and pickles. “I’m talking about names. We only have three months left.”
Tech glanced at the swatches of paint. “I don’t know if Bayla will be a good fit.”
“Rand?”
He shrugged noncommittally.
“Well, have you got any ideas?” Phee asked while spearing a piece of fruit.
“Uh,” Tech glanced at where his datapad lay on the couch. “99021?”
Phee swallowed the meiloorun, then poked a pickle. “Tech, they’re not going to be a soldier.”
“They are the child of one,” Tech said. “Unless we named them after one of us.”
“Uh uh. They deserve their own name. Besides, they’re getting our last name.”
Hearing her refer to the surname he now had as our sent a little happy thrill through Tech. “I suppose so.”
“Well, we still have three months left.”
He watched as she ate a piece of fruit and pickle together, her face souring. “It’s not good, is it?”
She shook her head. “I wanted it. But ugh, not anymore.”
“Can I get you something else?”
Phee pushed herself up and started walking to the bedroom. “How fast can you take off your pants?”
Tech stepped off the ladder to admire his handiwork. While he initially didn’t see a point of painting the nursery, it had grown on him. The repetitive brushstrokes helped calm his anxieties of impending parenthood and his replication of the sky. Crosshair had been able to hear about both when he’d come over to help him and Phee blend the shades of blue together seamlessly.
“Should we paint the starship along that wall?” Phee pointed to the adjacent wall. “Or is it too much?”
“I thought we were painting stars?” Tech asked her.
“We could do both?”
“Let’s set the paint dry before we do anything else.”
“Good plan,” she nodded as she placed her hands against her back. “Ow.”
Tech raised his eyebrow. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sore. Can we go to the couch and look over names again?”
The couple made their way into the living room and Tech retrieved his datapad. He watched Phee lower herself to the couch slowly and grabbed another pillow for her. As fascinating as it was to watch their child grow, Phee’s discomfort wasn’t easy to watch. They had both wanted this, yet she had to endure both the physical and emotional process.
“So far,” he opened his datapad. “I have Spanner, Rocket, Wave, Kickback, Wire-”
Phee shook her head. “None of those.”
“Fair. What about Hyperdrive? Coil? Switch?”
“No,” Phee frowned at him. “Tech, I’m sorry, but those are terrible names.”
Tech sighed. “This is difficult. How can we name him when he has no input or way to express his personality?”
“He?”
Tech froze and glanced over at her. His mouth went dry as he realized he had let the gender slip.
“I, uh, I…” he floundered. “I was just referring to h- them in a general way.’
“Baby Brown Eyes is a boy?” Phee’s eyes were wide. “You saw, didn’t you?”
“Last month,” Tech nodded. “I was going to wait until he arrived. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t,” Phee wiped the moisture building in her eye. “At least I don’t have to stress out over girl names anymore. They’re hard. But we need an actual name, Brown Eyes.”
“Those are names.”
“A name that isn’t also a common noun.”
“Eli?”
Tech lifted his head from the pillow. “Phee?”
“Beebee won’t let me sleep,” Phee grumbled in the dark. “I’m thinking of names. Eli?”
“I still don’t see why we don’t let him name himself when he’s old enough to make his own decisions.”
“That’s how we end up with a kid named Vrathean or Mantell Mix or something like that.”
“My brothers and I had to name ourselves,” he reminded her, reaching his hand under the folds of the covers towards her belly. “May I?”
“You’re always allowed. And you never had anyone else to name you! It was yourselves or just being a number. That’s not right!”
Tech pressed his hand to her stomach and brought the other to where he assumed her face was. “It’s okay. I should have asked earlier, but why is this naming so important?”
“I know you were born as a number,” Phee told him in the dark. “I’m used to people naming babies actual names, not kids growing up having to name themselves. And the more I think about it, giving them a name is important. It’s showing him he’s wanted and that we care.”
Tech considered her words. “But what if it doesn’t suit the person our child becomes?”
“Then I’m okay with them choosing a new one.But to give a name from the start, it’s a sign of love.”
Reassurance bathed Tech and he felt the baby’s foot press against his hand. “I see now.”
“Thank you. And we…we don’t need a set name yet. Just a few we feel really good about. When they come, seeing them might make the choice easier. But if I...”
Her hesitance made Tech scoot closer and hold her closer.
“I’m scared,” she muttered. “There’s only a month left.”
“It may be less if you go into labor early.”
She shuddered against him. “I don’t know what’s going to happen when he’s ready to come out. There’s things that might go wrong. And I want to be ready.”
Tech kissed the side of her face. “I can’t promise anything, but I will be by your side the whole time. And when we see our child for the first time outside your womb, I think we can figure out their name.”
“So can we add Eli to the list?”
“I think so. What about Ace?”
“Maybe.”
Engaging in some frisky activities after Mother’s Day had been intended to help Phee feel better, but Tech only succeeded in sending them to the Pabu’s clinic and single delivery room. The doctor assured Tech he had not triggered labor early several times and their baby was well on its way to coming out, but it fell on deaf ears. For two people who rolled with the punches easily, both of them had panicked about nearly every little thing that happened over the long course of Phee’s labor. Calm finally came over the both of them when the little boy was born and made his presence known with a cry that altered their worlds.
“That’s our baby,” Tech whispered after the child was placed in her arms, a cold pack on his bruised hand.
“Our baby,” Phee repeated, staring down. “Holy shit, we made that.”
“Language,” Tech said, even though he was thinking the same. “Do you still want to call him Eli?”
Phee shook her head. “No. He doesn’t feel like an Eli.”
Staring from his son to Phee, Tech found himself thinking of how important both of them were. Phee had changed his life even before they’d procreated. With her, he had found both an equal and a balance. He had learned so much more about love and life beyond the Grand Army with her. But there was someone else who had challenged his mindset before her who he still thought of from time to time.
“What if we named him Romar?”
Phee lifted her head. “Romar?”
“My siblings and I met a man on Serrano shortly after our first encounter,” Tech explained, reaching over to gently brush their son’s nose with his knuckle. “He gave Echo, Omega, and myself shelter after I was injured. He was trying to repair a unit storing Serranian cultural data. He challenged how I thought of things, and I stopped generalizing former Separatist planets afterwards.”
“I like that,” Phee mused. “Romar. It kinda sounds like roamer. Fits for the son of a defector and a liberator of ancient wonders. Romar Genoa.”
“Romar Genoa,” Tech repeated. “Now that we’ve named him, shall I go get my siblings?”
“Not yet,” Phee shook her head. “Hold him first.”
She passed him over to his waiting arms. Tech tensed at first when Romar was transferred to him but relaxed as the baby settled against him.
“Romar,” Tech said, feeling a sense of rightness as he spoke the name. “Welcome to the galaxy, little pilot.”