AN: This takes place before the other bonus chapter, obviously 😉

"Penguin? Penguin, I'm home! Where are you?" Cameron called as he closed the door. "And more to the point, where's my dinner?"

"Oh my god, did I accidentally time travel?" Penny asked with a laugh as she came to greet him. "I meant to put that time machine away but I must've left it out again. I do believe I've stepped back into the 1950s."

Cameron released her to look out at the ocean through the floor to ceiling windows of their Malibu beach bungalow and appreciate the sunset for a moment. "Oh come on, the deal was that whoever got home first would take care of dinner, and you've obviously been home from the doctor for hours, so--?" He gave her another kiss, a really good one, to take the sting out of his words. "My meetings ran long at the studio, there was only shite to eat there, and I wanted to hurry home to you so I didn't stop anywhere--" he let his words hang as he took a drink of the wine she handed him.

"Go look in the oven, she suggested, dropping a kiss on his nose and smiling enigmatically.

The oven? 

Normally he could smell something if it were baking, but he obediently went to check anyway, giving her a quizzical look and leaving her standing in front of the windows.

He flicked on the light and looked around their spotless kitchen. He bent over to look in the oven, which looked empty from where he stood.

No, not quite empty. There was a dinner roll sitting in it, though the oven didn't seem to be on or anything.

How odd.

"Penelope? Is this dinner? There doesn't seem to be anything in here except some sort of bun or something--" he opened the door to get a closer look.

"What, honey?" Penny asked innocently as she came into the kitchen, leaning a rich hip on the counter as she sipped her juice.

"I said there's nothing but a bun in the oven," he repeated as he noticed that she was sipping juice out of her wine glass.

His words echoed in his head as the mists cleared.

Juice in her glass.

Bun in the oven.

Home from the doctor.

"Penguin, did you--are you--are we--" Cam swallowed, setting his wine glass on the counter before he spilled its contents.

Penny, too, set her juice glass down as she smiled widely and patted her stomach, eyebrows high, nodding vigorously.

"YES!" Cameron shouted, both fists in the air, jumping up in the air. He hugged Penny, lifting her off her feet, twirling her around before carefully setting her down again. He kissed her soundly, cutting off her happy laugh.

"How far along are you?" He asked, stroking her slightly protruding belly, which was her natural state.

"About eight weeks," she replied. "I'm due in mid-April."

"A spring baby, how marvelous!" Cameron said. He pulled out his phone. "I have to call Vivi and tell her straight away."

"Yeah, but why don't you wait until tomorrow, Daddy?" Penny suggested. "It's the middle of the night over there right now, no need to wake her up."

"I suppose you're right," he agreed, disappointed. "But god, I want to tell someone, you know?"

"Why don't you call Simon?" Penny suggested, handing him his wine and guiding him toward the couch."

"You mean you haven't told Yoko yet?"

"What kind of person would I be if I told someone else before I told you?"

Cam smiled at Penny, the love of his life. "Thank you for that, love." He pulled her down next to him and put his arm around her. "Thank you so much for this, as well." He patted her tummy.

🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥

"You want me to what?" Penny looked around the spare bedroom, then back at Cameron. "Are you serious?"

"Well, I suppose not," Cam responded uncertainly. "I mean, not if you don't want to, but--" he blinked at Penny, looking more and more unsure of himself. "It's just the way things have always been done in my family, that's all," he told her.

"So you want me to sleep in here, in the spare room, for the duration of my pregnancy," she repeated. "Oh no, wait, I'm sorry, you didn't even call it my pregnancy, did you? You called it my 'confinement'," she repeated, trying really hard not to laugh.

"No," he contradicted. "Not you, I wouldn't dream of making you move out of our room," he assured her. "Me. I'd sleep in here."

Penny finally did burst out laughing, she couldn't help it.

Cameron looked reproachfully at her, as if asking how could she?

Penny tried womanfully to contain her mirth. She knew it wasn't nice.

"Okay, and why, exactly again would you do that?" she asked when she could speak.

"You know, so I wouldn't, uh, hurt you guys."

"Hurt us guys?"

"Yes, you know, accidentally roll over on the two of you or, erm, wake up and want to have my way with you or whatever..." Cameron's voice trailed away as he stared at the ceiling, and even through his scars, Penny could see he was blushing furiously.

"Have your way with me? Or whatever?" Penny repeated, biting the inside of her cheek, hard, so she wouldn't laugh at him again.

"Cameron, are you saying that me, pregnant, would be so alluring that you wouldn't be able to contain your manly desires? Hm?" Penny asked as she stepped into his arms, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him softly on his ear. "Is that what you're saying?"

"Penelope, stop poking fun at me, dammit," Cameron admonished, pulling her arms away from around his neck and stepping away. "This is a time honored von Schellenburg tradition, and you're making me feel like an idiot!"

"Oh ho, please, Prince Cam, if anyone's poking anyone--" Penny gasped, swatting at the front of his pants.

Cameron tried to keep a straight face, but couldn't manage, and soon the two of them were hanging on each other, laughing themselves silly.

"Okay, Cam, first of all, I'm pretty sure the thing with separate bedrooms? That was so the man of the house could have female visitors while the mother of his child couldn't or wouldn't have relations with him, which won't be an issue for us," Penny told him when she could breathe again. "I'll put out for you for as long as I'm able, I promise." She kissed him soundly on the mouth. "We don't need separate bedrooms for sure."

Cameron stared at her. "Really? That was the reason?"

"Yes," Penny promised. "In the king and queen days of yore? The king liked to get laid regularly, for sure way more often than the queen liked to put out, and they believed that it was dangerous for pregnant women to have sex. So once she was with child, they separated to sleep so the king could have regular female company without the queen having to know about it," she assured him. "So unless you want to have sex with someone other than me, there's no reason for you to sleep in here." She looked around the room's rather austere interior. "Though now that I see in here, it does remind me that we should fix it up a little, you know, make it a little nicer, brighter, more cheerful? I mean, if we're going to have a baby, we'll probably have more visitors, and we should make this a pleasanter place for them to stay, don't you think?"

Cam looked around. "Yeah, I guess we could fix it up while we fix up the nursery," he agreed.

He turned to Penny. "And somewhere in all that laughing you kind of said that we don't have to give up our activities whilst you're carrying my child? Is that right?"

Penny again laughed out loud. "Of course not! Where did you learn such a thing?"

Cameron shrugged. "I don't know, I just thought that was a known fact." He sighed. "You can't blame me for being a bit cautious, a bit scared, yeah?"

"God, Cam, I'm laughing so much I'm getting stomach cramps!" She sat on the loveseat which was under the window in the spare room. "No, oh my god. Sex during pregnancy is fine up until the very end, at which point it can actually bring on labor, which isn't a bad thing."

Cam smiled as he sat next to her, nuzzling into her neck. "Well, that's a lovely thing to hear, because for whatever reason, your body has become irresistible to me these last few weeks, I must say, and I just assumed I was going to have to become very friendly with my hand over these next few months."

Penny turned and kissed Cam. "Well, you've become irresistibly adorable to me as well, so I guess we're just going to be doing it like rabbits, then." They kissed for a few moments before Penny murmured, "Any other old wives' tales you want to ask about?"

Cam considered. "Is it true that you can't watch scary movies or the baby will have a birthmark?"

"What?"

"And now I'm rendered deaf, thanks so much," Cam muttered, shaking his head. "So I guess that's a no on that one, then."

They left the spare bedroom hand in hand, heading for their bedroom to prepare for bed. "This is no end of fun," Penny remarked. "Ask me some more, ask me some more!"

"Is it true that spicy food will cause weak bones in the baby?" he asked as they brushed their teeth.

Penny gave him a look as she spat out her toothpaste, then simply shook her head.

"Riding a bike will cause a miscarriage?"

Headshake.

"Swimming will cause a miscarriage?"

Headshake.

"A cat sleeping with the baby will steal the baby's breath?"

A stare and a head shake.

By now they were in bed.

"Swimming in the ocean with sea animals with cause birth defects?"

"Are you serious right now?" Penny almost reached over to turn on the light so she could see Cam's face. "Where did you hear this stuff?"

"A lot of it was in the kitchen at our old house in France, from the cook and gardener's wife talking and all that," Cam confessed.

"I guess that would be why they're called 'old wives' tales," Penny remarked in the dark. "Look, Cameron, my love, the truth is that, if it's a healthy pregnancy, there's just about nothing you can do, or nothing that can happen, within reason, to dislodge it. My body is made to protect it from just about everything imaginable. And, conversely, if it's not a healthy pregnancy, then there's almost nothing we can do to save it."

She put Cam's large hands on her belly. "This little bump, as far as we can tell, is a completely healthy clump of cells, okay? Short of club me in the belly, nothing we do it is going to make it shake loose and die. It's strong and healthy."

And, even though she'd never known Cam to be religious, ever, Penny heard Cam murmur some words in Italian and felt him make the sign of the cross before he bent over in the dark to press his lips against her belly.

Aww.

"In about thirty weeks, give or take, there are going to be three of us, and there's not much we can do about it, one way or the other, okay? So let's start practicing calling each other 'mommy' and 'daddy' and making everyone around us really nauseated, what do you say?" Penny asked, pressing a kiss to Cam's warm lips.

"I say it sounds smashing," he answered, sliding a hand to her sensitive breast and giving a soft squeeze.