Safe

Chapter 12

When Courtney starts to show, at least she feels like it happens rapidly: she notices the slightest bump somewhere around 14 weeks, and by the time she has the much more detailed 16-week scan at the OB-GYN three weeks after they last saw any of their doctors, she's exclusively wearing oversized tees (or Shayne's shirts) to hide it.

She'd already had more tests than she could remember or count, all of them showing up clear and the doctors continually telling her anything could happen, but for now, everything is progressing normally. She'd been nervous the whole time, but with each time they told her it was all okay, she felt a little more confident.

"Looking perfect!" Dr. Nook tells her, as they perform the scan, and as much as she takes all her measurements and snapshots, she also glides the ultrasound wand around to show off the increasingly human-like shape of the foetus.

It's not particularly active, yet, as far as Courtney can feel, but they tell her that's not a problem – some of them are just calmer, quieter, and all the signs are good and everything looks absolutely fine.

"Would you like a snapshot print out?" she asks, Courtney glancing over towards Shayne for a moment to see him looking immediately excited by the idea.

"Yeah, sure," she answers the doctor, and when they leave the appointment not long later, they're in possession of an ultrasound picture of their kid, or at least, a developmentally incomplete foetus that will – hopefully, in about 24 weeks' time – become their kid.

"I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to hold off from at least telling Damien much longer," Shayne admits, carefully, as they drive back to work after the appointment – it had been a mid-morning one, this time, and they were both on call for shoots both before and after it.

"I think it's... we'd still need to flag that it's pretty high risk and not really guaranteed until we're actually holding an infant if we tell anyone, but I think from what they've been saying, maybe it's far enough and going well enough that we could start telling people," Courtney admits, briefly glancing over at him to smile softly before looking back to the road just as the traffic in front of them starts moving again, "and I swear I'm showing more every damn day."

"Little buddy in there is having quite the growth spurt," Shayne agrees, humming softly, "who would you be happy to tell?"

"I think... all our close friends and coworkers are probably fair game now," she admits, shrugging lightly, "maybe not all our coworkers, but it'd be hard to tell some and not others if it means I'm gonna stop trying so hard to hide the bump in the office. Which'd be nice. I miss crop tops."

"Still gonna have to hide it in shoots," Shayne points out, almost sympathetically, "but... yeah, I think I'd be okay with that too."

"You know how you got an ultrasound printout in your lap and we're about to go back to the office full of the people we're okay to tell now?" Courtney asks, Shayne laughing softly at the almost teasing implication in her voice, feeling it bubble in his own chest as excitement.

"So... do we pull people aside and tell them, or what?" he asks, Courtney humming lightly in contemplation for a moment.

"You could always send Damien a photo now," she points out, "or send it just close enough to us getting there that we get to watch him squirm and try not to say anything until he can drag one of us away to talk, because that guy would freak out you'd accidentally sent it to him instead of someone else and refuse to even tell Saige."

"Yeah, I'm sending it now," Shayne decides, immediately, pulling out his phone and flipping the ultrasound to sit face-up in his lap. He takes a picture of it on his phone, and he blurs it a little in his rush to take it, but he immediately opens his texts with his best friend and sends it through, with a rushed caption: "So... (yes I'm sending this to you on purpose Dames. The appointment we ducked out for was a 16-week check-up)."