fic: naming
So this one turned out to be a lot longer than I intended, so long in fact, I'm actually using an LJ-cut to save your friend's page! I'm nice that way.
word: naming.
Cam left the naming chiefly to Scout.
She pestered him relentlessly about it though. While she stood at the kitchen counter, five months pregnant, her stomach just now starting to really show, an emerging pump clearly pear shaped under her dress. She rolled flour and a little bit of salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. Strawberries and rhubarb lay chopped and minced in a bowl.
He sat at the table, in their tiny kitchen, cleaning guns.
"Think of anything yet?" she asked. He looked up at her, and she was staring down at her hands kneading the dough. Her fingers pinching and rolling. She kept her hair braided a lot lately, strands normally fell loose and framed her face.
He cleared his throat and grabbed the rag from his knee. "No."
She huffed, but said nothing, clanking the dish a little harder than needed as she placed the dough in. As the pie baked she went out to the back yard to lie on a quilt they kept folded in the tiny screened in laundry room. The sky was bright, but a cool breeze moved over the hill, through her hair. He watched her from where he sat, through the screen door. Holding a book in one had, her other resting on her stomach.
~
Her mother came by a lot. More than Scout wanted, more than Cam wanted. She brought unstable air with her; ruffling their feathers as she rearranged Scout's herbs and dropped off things that were supposed to help her sleep. Scout never touched any of it, just stuffed it in a tin and asked Cam to store it in the cabinet over the fridge that she couldn't reach.
Ingrid was a constant force of disruption for Scout; she had her good moods and bad moods. Sometimes disappearing with covens of witches for months at a time, or spending weeks in her house scouring her books and spells for deep magics. Breaking out the Ouija board to speak to the dead to find her son while Tony sat in his study grading papers.
Though sometimes, Ingrid was tender enough, overwhelmed with joy watching her daughter make a child of her own. She sat with Scout outside, like when Scout was a child as she told Cam, and read. Books of poetry, or fairy tales. Ingrid braided her daughter's hair and smiled, kissing her neck and hugging her tight. But then she'd start asking about names for a boy, always dropping Rhett, like a coin in a well. Commenting on her hopes for a grandson.
"Well the father determines the sex you know," she explained to them over dinner one night. Tony was there too, nursing a glass of scotch. After the morning sickness stopped, Scout cooked around the clock. If she wasn't reading or writing, she cooked. Lavish meals and extravagant deserts. The Food Network had replaced the History Channel and HBO. She copied down recipes as fervently as she jots down story ideas. "There were two boys in your family, so you must carry a lot of Y chromosomes."
He shrugged and kept eating his chicken while Scout sipped her water.
"You know Rhett means 'the speaker'," she said after her forth glass of wine.
~
Cam applied and got a job at a tiny mechanic in town shortly after they moved in. Scout had a good amount of money saved up from her work, and still does some articles and editing for the magazine, but Cam wasn't going sit on his ass all day every day, not contributing besides fixing things around the house.
He worked four days a week, morning until six. He came home smelling like oil and gas. Clothes and jeans smudged all over with oil and sweat, his hair mussed sweaty against his forehead and neck. The sun was just starting to set when he came home. Some days in October summer sneaked in ever so often and Scout opened all the windows in the tiny cottage.
Today she didn't really make dinner citing the heat. "Just some pies and stuff," she answered listlessly from the couch. She rubbed her stomach, pulling up the shirt that didn't really fit her anymore. A little bigger today than last week.
He chuckled and sat next to her, pulling her legs over his lap, running his greased fingers up and down her smooth calf, the scar on her knee. She lolled her neck along the arm of couch, staring at the crack in the ceiling that sometimes leaked. "Any ideas yet?" her thumb thumped the top of her belly like a tiny drum.
"Not really, run some by me."
She only had three requirements; no living namesakes, it was considered bad luck, nothing plain, and preferably a literary character. She and her brother were both named after books, and it was a tradition that she planned on continuing. He was far too old and they had been together too long for him to say he didn't read; he kept three books with him, Johnny Tremain, Watership Down and Pet Semetery.
She kept a running list five miles long in her head with names. She wouldn't pick one he didn't like, but he didn't have anything negative to say about any of them.
"It's not like I'm asking you to pick out a college or anything." She stretched and sat up, slipping from his grasp and going back to the kitchen. She turned on the radio and sang loudly to Whitesnake as she started cutting the pie.
~
Mitch stayed with them from Thanksgiving to the New Year, sleeping on the couch that was a little too small for him, but he didn't complain. Cam liked having his brother around. He'd convinced him to break from the hunting, from the search for their baby sister to hang around for the holidays.
Scout liked having Mitch around though she never actually said it. They had a lot in common. The reading obsession, they both went to college, could talk for hours about boring things. Cam also figured she liked having the company during the day. She had some friends from school who still lived in the area who stopped by every now and then; sometimes while he was home. He tried to make himself scarce. Her friends didn't really understand them. Why Scout, a writer, a college educated woman who loved to travel, was tied down with a man who barely finished high school (though she defended him on that matter, stating with reverence about how he took the incomplete to take care of his siblings after their parents died), who worked just above minimum wage at that mechanic.
She'd shrug and sip her tea, or stick something in the oven. "It just is," she'd say with a smile. And he'd walk behind her and kiss her neck.
But with Mitch, there isn't anything to explain, there isn't anything to hide. He knew where that ugly scar on her forehead came from, knew about the miscarriage two years
ago and that her brother was killed by his own hand after an infectious werewolf bite.
For Christmas Mitch got her some obscure books of poetry she'd been scrounging for, and some kid's books for the baby.
All three of them went to her parents' for the lighting of menorah candles. They kept one in the kitchen, but it meant a lot to her to do the family thing.
There were conversations of hunting and literature. Ingrid said nothing about Rhett or names. Cam assumed that Tony had said something to her, or she was so high off her ass on anti-depressants she just didn't care enough to notice. Scout said the holidays, Rhett's birthday and the anniversary of his death were the worse, as if it had just happened that night instead of eight years ago.
That night, behind a closed and locked door, Cam went down on Scout, running his hand over her thighs and to her stomach. She pulled his hair and had to bite her own palm through her orgasm, not wanting to wake Mitch. The walls were pretty thin.
Afterward he wrapped his arms around her waist, and placed his head against her stomach, listening, feeling. Lazily she threaded her fingers through his hair, over the spots she had just been tugging.
"Help me make a list," she said.
"Of what?" he was two minutes away from sleep.
"Names." She yawned and shifted. "Top five for each."
"Now?"
She softly laughed. "No. I just...I'm having problems keeping track of things."
"Sure." He kissed her belly, inhaled the scent of her skin and arousal lingering in the air.
~
One day when he came home, he found her sitting on the couch crying, clutching a book tight to her chest. He stood at the doorway a minute, bewildered. She hadn't really been crazy-hormonal like he'd seen on television, like he remembered his own mother being when she was pregnant with Penny.
He stepped in the living room cautiously. "What's wrong?"
She shook her head. "Nothing."
"Liar."
She smiled and put down the book. "Just, she makes me crazy."
Over the last few years he had become very familiar with the phrase She makes me crazy. Ingrid fussing over the phone about how Scout should do a banishing or exorcism. Cried for hours about the absence of her son, her eldest child, ringing the guilt inside of Scout like a large bell. Residing within her mind for weeks after.
He ran a hand over his face. "I'm gonna do something."
"Don't."
"She can't just do this to you. It was bad enough before, but now." He shook his head.
"Don't," she said more adamantly. "It was nothing this time." She wiped under her eyes.
"She just, she was going on about his name. Over and over again. Dad finally grabbed the phone from her and hung up."
Cam sat next to her and looked over the book. A baby scrap book that her cousin Misha had dropped off the month before. He was preparing for the hurricane Misha after the baby was finally there. Misha the self-appointed protector of Scout, even though Scout was the older one. A hat she wore proudly since Rhett died.
There were all ready pictures in the front, little things scribbled, a poem Scout composed two months ago and finally felt good enough about it to write it in ink. He took the book from her fingers and dropped it on the table, kissed her forehead. "How's it going today?" he asked, nudging her side.
She shrugged. "Little quiet." She sniffled and stood. "I'm making a sandwich, do you want anything?"
"Sure."
He found a notebook under the coffee table, opened to a page with names. Some crossed out and a few starred.
~
When she was eight months along, she had real troubles sleeping. She walked around the cottage at night, setting and resetting salt lines, making sure all the hexbags were in place, that the devil's shoestring was taped snugly above the front and back porch. She stayed up late reading or watch TV, finally nodding off in the early mornings around the time he was waking and getting ready for work. Sometimes, on his nights off, he'd try to stay up with her. Lying side by side in bed, the sheets and quilts around his body because she pushed them all off because she was always hot.
And she finally asked him what he'd been dreading bringing up.
"Jane is a name from a book you know," she said, running the blade of her finger down the side of his face. He lie there, head propped up by his left arm.
"I know," he answered, looking down to kiss her palm.
"So is Patrick."
He swallowed hard, feeling the fullness of his Adam's apple. His parents' names were hardly spoken. When she asked questions it was always Did your mom... What did your dad like...
"If that's what you want," she started, so tenderly touching his cheeks, the bridge of his nose. "I like Jane."
He shook his head. Their names held the power of their death. "I...I don't." He didn't know how to say it really.
She slightly smiled, that sad kind of smile that meant she understood. "I don't want to name it Rhett either." She trailed the nail of her finger down his chin to his neck. "Middle names are okay though."
He smiled back. "Yeah."
~
Francesca Jane worked out nicely. He never read the book that Scout finally picked the name from, but he say the movie a few times on TV. While Scout slept after fourteen hours of labor, in the hospital bed that she had been complaining was too stiff earlier, he held the baby close to his chest, walking in circles around the room.
She was so tiny, little wisps of red hair all over her head, squished pink face, a chubby tummy. She slept too, but he slipped his trigger finger under her hand and she instinctively clutched and his heart fluttered an extra bit.
"I gotcha, Frannie," he whispered pacing towards the window.
.end
.
.
.
word: naming.
Cam left the naming chiefly to Scout.
She pestered him relentlessly about it though. While she stood at the kitchen counter, five months pregnant, her stomach just now starting to really show, an emerging pump clearly pear shaped under her dress. She rolled flour and a little bit of salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. Strawberries and rhubarb lay chopped and minced in a bowl.
He sat at the table, in their tiny kitchen, cleaning guns.
"Think of anything yet?" she asked. He looked up at her, and she was staring down at her hands kneading the dough. Her fingers pinching and rolling. She kept her hair braided a lot lately, strands normally fell loose and framed her face.
He cleared his throat and grabbed the rag from his knee. "No."
She huffed, but said nothing, clanking the dish a little harder than needed as she placed the dough in. As the pie baked she went out to the back yard to lie on a quilt they kept folded in the tiny screened in laundry room. The sky was bright, but a cool breeze moved over the hill, through her hair. He watched her from where he sat, through the screen door. Holding a book in one had, her other resting on her stomach.
~
Her mother came by a lot. More than Scout wanted, more than Cam wanted. She brought unstable air with her; ruffling their feathers as she rearranged Scout's herbs and dropped off things that were supposed to help her sleep. Scout never touched any of it, just stuffed it in a tin and asked Cam to store it in the cabinet over the fridge that she couldn't reach.
Ingrid was a constant force of disruption for Scout; she had her good moods and bad moods. Sometimes disappearing with covens of witches for months at a time, or spending weeks in her house scouring her books and spells for deep magics. Breaking out the Ouija board to speak to the dead to find her son while Tony sat in his study grading papers.
Though sometimes, Ingrid was tender enough, overwhelmed with joy watching her daughter make a child of her own. She sat with Scout outside, like when Scout was a child as she told Cam, and read. Books of poetry, or fairy tales. Ingrid braided her daughter's hair and smiled, kissing her neck and hugging her tight. But then she'd start asking about names for a boy, always dropping Rhett, like a coin in a well. Commenting on her hopes for a grandson.
"Well the father determines the sex you know," she explained to them over dinner one night. Tony was there too, nursing a glass of scotch. After the morning sickness stopped, Scout cooked around the clock. If she wasn't reading or writing, she cooked. Lavish meals and extravagant deserts. The Food Network had replaced the History Channel and HBO. She copied down recipes as fervently as she jots down story ideas. "There were two boys in your family, so you must carry a lot of Y chromosomes."
He shrugged and kept eating his chicken while Scout sipped her water.
"You know Rhett means 'the speaker'," she said after her forth glass of wine.
~
Cam applied and got a job at a tiny mechanic in town shortly after they moved in. Scout had a good amount of money saved up from her work, and still does some articles and editing for the magazine, but Cam wasn't going sit on his ass all day every day, not contributing besides fixing things around the house.
He worked four days a week, morning until six. He came home smelling like oil and gas. Clothes and jeans smudged all over with oil and sweat, his hair mussed sweaty against his forehead and neck. The sun was just starting to set when he came home. Some days in October summer sneaked in ever so often and Scout opened all the windows in the tiny cottage.
Today she didn't really make dinner citing the heat. "Just some pies and stuff," she answered listlessly from the couch. She rubbed her stomach, pulling up the shirt that didn't really fit her anymore. A little bigger today than last week.
He chuckled and sat next to her, pulling her legs over his lap, running his greased fingers up and down her smooth calf, the scar on her knee. She lolled her neck along the arm of couch, staring at the crack in the ceiling that sometimes leaked. "Any ideas yet?" her thumb thumped the top of her belly like a tiny drum.
"Not really, run some by me."
She only had three requirements; no living namesakes, it was considered bad luck, nothing plain, and preferably a literary character. She and her brother were both named after books, and it was a tradition that she planned on continuing. He was far too old and they had been together too long for him to say he didn't read; he kept three books with him, Johnny Tremain, Watership Down and Pet Semetery.
She kept a running list five miles long in her head with names. She wouldn't pick one he didn't like, but he didn't have anything negative to say about any of them.
"It's not like I'm asking you to pick out a college or anything." She stretched and sat up, slipping from his grasp and going back to the kitchen. She turned on the radio and sang loudly to Whitesnake as she started cutting the pie.
~
Mitch stayed with them from Thanksgiving to the New Year, sleeping on the couch that was a little too small for him, but he didn't complain. Cam liked having his brother around. He'd convinced him to break from the hunting, from the search for their baby sister to hang around for the holidays.
Scout liked having Mitch around though she never actually said it. They had a lot in common. The reading obsession, they both went to college, could talk for hours about boring things. Cam also figured she liked having the company during the day. She had some friends from school who still lived in the area who stopped by every now and then; sometimes while he was home. He tried to make himself scarce. Her friends didn't really understand them. Why Scout, a writer, a college educated woman who loved to travel, was tied down with a man who barely finished high school (though she defended him on that matter, stating with reverence about how he took the incomplete to take care of his siblings after their parents died), who worked just above minimum wage at that mechanic.
She'd shrug and sip her tea, or stick something in the oven. "It just is," she'd say with a smile. And he'd walk behind her and kiss her neck.
But with Mitch, there isn't anything to explain, there isn't anything to hide. He knew where that ugly scar on her forehead came from, knew about the miscarriage two years
ago and that her brother was killed by his own hand after an infectious werewolf bite.
For Christmas Mitch got her some obscure books of poetry she'd been scrounging for, and some kid's books for the baby.
All three of them went to her parents' for the lighting of menorah candles. They kept one in the kitchen, but it meant a lot to her to do the family thing.
There were conversations of hunting and literature. Ingrid said nothing about Rhett or names. Cam assumed that Tony had said something to her, or she was so high off her ass on anti-depressants she just didn't care enough to notice. Scout said the holidays, Rhett's birthday and the anniversary of his death were the worse, as if it had just happened that night instead of eight years ago.
That night, behind a closed and locked door, Cam went down on Scout, running his hand over her thighs and to her stomach. She pulled his hair and had to bite her own palm through her orgasm, not wanting to wake Mitch. The walls were pretty thin.
Afterward he wrapped his arms around her waist, and placed his head against her stomach, listening, feeling. Lazily she threaded her fingers through his hair, over the spots she had just been tugging.
"Help me make a list," she said.
"Of what?" he was two minutes away from sleep.
"Names." She yawned and shifted. "Top five for each."
"Now?"
She softly laughed. "No. I just...I'm having problems keeping track of things."
"Sure." He kissed her belly, inhaled the scent of her skin and arousal lingering in the air.
~
One day when he came home, he found her sitting on the couch crying, clutching a book tight to her chest. He stood at the doorway a minute, bewildered. She hadn't really been crazy-hormonal like he'd seen on television, like he remembered his own mother being when she was pregnant with Penny.
He stepped in the living room cautiously. "What's wrong?"
She shook her head. "Nothing."
"Liar."
She smiled and put down the book. "Just, she makes me crazy."
Over the last few years he had become very familiar with the phrase She makes me crazy. Ingrid fussing over the phone about how Scout should do a banishing or exorcism. Cried for hours about the absence of her son, her eldest child, ringing the guilt inside of Scout like a large bell. Residing within her mind for weeks after.
He ran a hand over his face. "I'm gonna do something."
"Don't."
"She can't just do this to you. It was bad enough before, but now." He shook his head.
"Don't," she said more adamantly. "It was nothing this time." She wiped under her eyes.
"She just, she was going on about his name. Over and over again. Dad finally grabbed the phone from her and hung up."
Cam sat next to her and looked over the book. A baby scrap book that her cousin Misha had dropped off the month before. He was preparing for the hurricane Misha after the baby was finally there. Misha the self-appointed protector of Scout, even though Scout was the older one. A hat she wore proudly since Rhett died.
There were all ready pictures in the front, little things scribbled, a poem Scout composed two months ago and finally felt good enough about it to write it in ink. He took the book from her fingers and dropped it on the table, kissed her forehead. "How's it going today?" he asked, nudging her side.
She shrugged. "Little quiet." She sniffled and stood. "I'm making a sandwich, do you want anything?"
"Sure."
He found a notebook under the coffee table, opened to a page with names. Some crossed out and a few starred.
~
When she was eight months along, she had real troubles sleeping. She walked around the cottage at night, setting and resetting salt lines, making sure all the hexbags were in place, that the devil's shoestring was taped snugly above the front and back porch. She stayed up late reading or watch TV, finally nodding off in the early mornings around the time he was waking and getting ready for work. Sometimes, on his nights off, he'd try to stay up with her. Lying side by side in bed, the sheets and quilts around his body because she pushed them all off because she was always hot.
And she finally asked him what he'd been dreading bringing up.
"Jane is a name from a book you know," she said, running the blade of her finger down the side of his face. He lie there, head propped up by his left arm.
"I know," he answered, looking down to kiss her palm.
"So is Patrick."
He swallowed hard, feeling the fullness of his Adam's apple. His parents' names were hardly spoken. When she asked questions it was always Did your mom... What did your dad like...
"If that's what you want," she started, so tenderly touching his cheeks, the bridge of his nose. "I like Jane."
He shook his head. Their names held the power of their death. "I...I don't." He didn't know how to say it really.
She slightly smiled, that sad kind of smile that meant she understood. "I don't want to name it Rhett either." She trailed the nail of her finger down his chin to his neck. "Middle names are okay though."
He smiled back. "Yeah."
~
Francesca Jane worked out nicely. He never read the book that Scout finally picked the name from, but he say the movie a few times on TV. While Scout slept after fourteen hours of labor, in the hospital bed that she had been complaining was too stiff earlier, he held the baby close to his chest, walking in circles around the room.
She was so tiny, little wisps of red hair all over her head, squished pink face, a chubby tummy. She slept too, but he slipped his trigger finger under her hand and she instinctively clutched and his heart fluttered an extra bit.
"I gotcha, Frannie," he whispered pacing towards the window.
.end
.
.
.