"Nursery." A prompt fic for the ABC challenge
Disclaimer: I don’t own it. I just wish I did.
This is for the ABC Fanfic Challenge @ thursdaymornin. My prompt word was nursery. So I’m pretty sure everyone knows where this is going. ;)
By the way, this is for Zaynab, unclear_sky , who is going to make me porny prom animations. Thanks, girl! :P
“We should just find out,” Meredith sighs, dropping the stack of color swatches down onto the counter.
Derek stands on the other side, watching as she finished off her pancakes, the food she’d been craving since practically day one. Covered in butter and syrup and the occasional fruit. He stopped trying to get her to eat healthy months ago. Denying Meredith food was never a good idea.
“That’s no fun,” he laughs. “Don’t you want to be surprised?”
Meredith chews her food contemplatively before speaking. “I do. But Der, seriously. I’m due in two months. Most people have the nursery done by now.”
“Yellow is good. Very gender neutral. That way if we have boys and girls, we can just keep it yellow,” Derek replies. His way of always making sense is getting to be something she’s come to find more and more annoying lately.
“I’m glad you think I’m a baby machine,” she smirks, forking a piece of pancake swimming in its syrupy sea. “Ship one baby out of my uterus, move a new one in…”
Derek laughs. “I’m just saying. If we’re not finding out, yellow makes the most sense.”
“Okay. Fine. Yellow,” Meredith says. She licks her finger then picks up a pile of yellow swatches. “There’s like a thousand different yellows.”
“We should just go with pink. It’s definitely a girl,” Derek smiles confidently, kissing her temple as he refills his coffee cup.
Meredith rolls her eyes playfully. “How do you know that?”
“Just a feeling,” he shrugs. “You have all the signs.”
“Signs…” Meredith echoes curiously. “Like the huge boobs and the fat ass?” she questions teasingly.
“You know I love your body,” Derek assures her. “And your ass is not fat.”
Meredith sips on her orange juice. It was something she rarely drank before, but because coffee was a pregnancy no-no, she had to resort to another morning beverage. And orange juice was the one thing that didn’t make her nauseous. “But you admit that my boobs are like watermelons,” she giggles.
“And I’m enjoying every minute I get to spend with them,” Derek smirks. Along with the new boobs and curious appetite, his wife was even more insatiable when it came to sex. Not that Derek minded, of course.
“You can get reacquainted with them later. Right now, we need to pick a color. I want to have the nursery done before the baby is in preschool,” Meredith jokes playfully.
Derek decides to get the ball rolling by picking up the first color swatch he sees. He knows that no matter what, she’s going to change her mind ten times anyway. “Lemon.”
“Eh…” Meredith sighed disinterestedly. “A little…blinding?” she offers.
“Blinding? Okay, well, we don’t want that,” he says, amused. “You pick one.”
She digs through the stack then picks up a lighter shade, examining it for a moment before showing Derek. “Daffodil.”
“That’s pretty,” Derek agrees. He takes a sip of his coffee and nods. “The nursery gets a lot of sunlight. It would look nice.”
“Well, I like custard too. It’s a little lighter, so when we eventually put pink or blue stuff in there, it won’t overpower it, you know?” she says, getting up from her chair and walking over to the fridge.
When she grabs the peanut butter, Derek laughs. Since the beginning of the pregnancy, Meredith has eaten peanut butter by the gallon. Sometimes he finds her curled up on the couch with the jar and a spoon. If it turned out that their child abhorred the stuff, they would know why. Peanut butter overdose in utero.
“Custard works too,” he nods, watching her scoop some onto a piece of bread followed by a handful of barbecue chips. That’s a combination he hadn’t yet seen in the past seven months. It seemed like the further she got into pregnancy, the more quirky she got with her cravings.
Meredith bites into the sticky, crunchy snack. “What about a theme.”
“Theme?”
“Yeah. Like the circus or the jungle,” Meredith explains.
Derek shakes his head. “Not liking either of those.”
“Well, we can’t do princess or racecar or anything,” she sighs. “You know, we built this house ourselves. We should have just put two nurseries in. One blue. One pink. Called it a day,” Meredith says, waving her hands in the air. “Chances are you’re going to knock me up again.”
“Hmm…probably,” Derek grins. “But I still want to be surprised every time.”
“Fine then. Custard, no theme. We can just add little decorations once she or he is born,” Meredith finalizes, smiling at her husband.
He wraps his arms around her, their baby in between them. “I love you both so much,” Derek whispers into her hair.
Meredith runs her hand over her belly. She never thought she could love another person so much. Her mommy instincts kicked in the minute they found out she was pregnant, and had been growing ever since.
“We love you too,” she says softly, her arms draped over his shoulders. “But we’d love you even more if you stopped at the donut shop on the way home from the paint store…”
“Does the baby want a donut?” Derek smirks.
“I want a donut. The baby wants a muffin. And maybe a scone…the kind with the blueberry stuff in the middle,” she requests adorably, biting her lip the way she does to get something. Not that Derek would ever deny her anything she wanted.
Derek smiles, trailing his fingers down her back. “Baby has an appetite, huh?”
“A little, yeah,” she says coyly. “And I have a feeling Chinese food is on the horizon tonight. The baby really likes eggrolls…”
“I thought you hated Chinese food,” he says humorously.
Meredith shrugs. “Right now, it sounds good.” Using his shoulder for balance, she slips on her shoes, then grabs her bag off the hook by the front door. “The baby likes variety.”
“We should probably narrow down our name choices so we don’t have to keep saying baby,” Derek chuckles, helping her into the passenger seat of the car.
“It took us a month to pick a paint. Sorry sweetie,” Meredith says to her belly. “You might be Baby Shepherd for the first year.”
“We picked custard. That’s a start,” Derek points out as they begin the trek out to the store for the nursery paint.
“We should get some of that.”
Derek pulls onto the main road and nods. “That’s why we’re going to the paint store,” he says, confused.
“No no. I mean custard. Like, actual custard,” Meredith says, stressing her point.
“Let’s find a custard shop then,” Derek says with a laugh. “Then we’ll go get the paint.”
She spreads her fingers over her belly protectively and leans back comfortably in her seat. “Thank you.”
I know it’s short. But I got in the requisite fluff that comes along with MerDer babies. I would have made it longer, but I wanted to do more prompts. Anyway, hope you liked it. :)