It was time. She'd fought against it for so long

 It was time. She'd fought against it for so long, but now, she was putting her foot down.

“John. You are absolutely not naming the baby; ‘Justin Thyme’. Please. I am begging. Stop with the joke names. You’re hurting me.”

“I’m going to be a dad, Susan, I have to get my funny bones dusted off and oiled up. I’m all rusty from my years of being an edgy shut-in!” 

While it was nice to see John glowing and having fun with life again, Susan could not help but wish he would stop with the puns, they were becoming a bit much.

“I, for one,” Thomas butted in, bringing the teas into the room, “am a fan of waiting at least until we know the sex for the baby before we decide on a possible name for the gremlin.”

John huffed. “You’re not any fun. You don’t have any names in your life that mean something to you, or that you’d always liked as an idea for a future child?”

Thomas sat on the couch, blowing on his teacup in thought for a moment. “Well, to be honest, I never thought I’d make it this far in life. I didn’t have a plan past graduation.”

Susan couldn’t personally relate, she’d had accepting parents who had gotten her help early in life so she was already socially transitioning before she was too far into school that anyone would even remember that she started school with one name; she chose a feminine version of her birth name, so at the beginning of every subsequent school year, when the teacher called out the masculine version, she would correct them, claiming their pronunciation was off; no one fought her too hard on her ability to exist and she’d been both in therapy for mental health and also been medically transitioning since it was legally allowed. All in all, her mental health growing up had been way better than most trans youth.

John, on the other hand, was nodding along. “I get what you mean, but there’s a future ahead of us, now, so let’s plan for that, yeah?”

Thomas looked into his teacup with a soft smile that showed in his eyes more than his lips as he nodded lightly. “Yeah.” 

Susan clapped her hands. “So, what about gender-neutral names, so whichever sex the baby comes out as they have a good name?”

“What about Ash?” Thomas suggested.

Susan had to admit, it wasn’t a terrible name. It was at least better than what John had been throwing out earlier. She nodded her approval.

“I love that, actually!” John agreed.

“So… baby Ash, then?” Susan asked.

Thomas and John nodded. They had a name for their little bun in the oven.

They were starting to feel like a real family, at least to Susan, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.