Chapter 100
The May Boys

Noah x 1

As familiar a sight as it was to him, Lucas smirked when he woke up to find Maya sitting next to him hunched over her sketchbook. It tended to suggest something along the lines of 'I had an idea in a dream and I don't want to lose it,' or 'I woke up and thought of something.' And sometimes, rarer than the other two, it was really just a matter of 'I'm awake, but I can't get up yet, so I'm spending my time this way.' This one was probably of that third category, but specifically, Lucas had a feeling it was a matter of her trying to resist doing something she really wanted to do until he was awake to share in it.

Stretching his neck just enough, he could see that it was specifically her Noah sketchbook she had in her lap and, going by the fact that she'd left it by her bedside the night before, he figured she'd planned ahead for just this occasion. On the page, she was drawing their younger son, lying awake in his crib just as he did now, oblivious to his parents and purely satisfied in the company of TumTum Teddy. She'd gone so far as to draw a banner, strung up over the crib, wishing its inhabitant a happy first birthday.

Noah, their little bee, was a year old today, and it blew their minds just to think about it. This past year felt as though it had gone by in a flash. One moment, he was brand new and squalling in their arms, and now he was this little guy, very much like his big brother in some aspects, as he seemed intent on emulating him, but in other ways… He was growing into his own person. Both boys had a curiosity, which was hardly a surprise with who their mother was, but it might be said that Elliott was more of an observer, whereas Noah was becoming a discoverer.

His philosophy seemed to be 'this is a new thing, let me touch it and see what it does.' It had already led to a few near misses and a couple… not misses. One of these had left little more than a lot of crying and required some solid mommy-hug time to remedy. The second had left a small mark on his right foot and gotten his parents' hearts racing in ways they could have done without. He was okay, but in combination with past incidents… Yeah, they were watching him closer now.

"One of these days, he's going to be that kid who gets his head stuck between two bars, isn't he?" Lucas had stated, as Maya walked with the baby and worked him down from his shrieks.

"You know, I love Dylan, he's one of my favorite humans… Not sure I was looking to have one of our kids challenge his crown in this," she'd told him, looking to their son's foot.

When he finally sat up and revealed himself to be awake, Maya looked at him and oh, how he loved that smile on her. She was so excited to get to go over there and pick up the birthday boy, that they might celebrate him. It made him laugh, and he locked his arms around her, kissing the side of her face. Go on, it said. In no time, she set the sketchbook and pencil aside and moved to the crib across the room while he got up and went across the hall into the nursery. Elliott was standing in his crib, the image of someone who'd been seeking an escape route from his barred bed.

"Come on, now, really need you to be the good example big brother here," Lucas chuckled as he lifted Elliott up and brought him close.

"Hi!" Elliott smiled and it got his father laughing again.

"Little Huckleberry sprout, that's you," Lucas told him as they moved back to the other room.

Maya had taken Noah to sit on the floor, and here she had him on his feet while she held him under his arms. He would get so giddy this way, which spelled so much potential for trouble the moment he was able to walk and run of his own accord. Maya wasn't so caught up in that notion right now, no. Rather, she would hum and half-sing a song to him as she got him dancing, and he would laugh and laugh his curly head off.

Lucas set Elliott on his feet and let him run off to join them, all the better to grab his phone. They were very active in chronicling their boys' lives, as was to be expected, and if ever there was a moment worth capturing, Noah's first birthday morning would absolutely be one of them. Seeing how Elliott would shake around in his own version of dancing, alongside his mother and brother, only livened up everything beyond what it had already been. And Maya… Nothing could touch her here, nothing but pure happiness.

"Coming down here anytime soon there, Dad?" she tipped her head back to look at him. "Elliott, go get him," she looked to him, and the boy took off at once, hurried those few steps until he could reach up for his father's hand, which he was granted at once. He brought him over, and Lucas scooped him up as he crouched and then sat with Maya and Noah.

"Your little brother is a whole year old now," Lucas informed the boy in his lap while pointing to the one in Maya's. "This many," he held up a finger. Elliott did as he did. Noah did as he did, for no other reason than that.

"You know, that means that, for the next few weeks, we have two one-year-olds," Maya stated, holding up her own finger now. She wasn't about to be left out, was she?

"Might not be so noticeable in a few years, but right now…" Lucas gestured from one boy to the other. There was no mistaking who was older right here, was there?

"Both one," Maya persisted, aided by the boys showing their one finger in the air. "See, they agree."

"Do you really want to test this?"

"Let me have this," she whispered. Lucas laughed.

"Hey, El, you want to sing Happy Birthday to Noah with us?" he asked, looking to their firstborn. Elliott tilted his head back to look at him with curiosity. He was getting to show more and more an understanding of words like 'sing,' and 'music,' as time went on, and there was possibly nothing more endearing than to watch him as he tried to twist his growing but still minimal vocabulary into something resembling song.

Today, as Maya and Lucas very slowly sang out the words together, they could see Elliott was trying to figure out what this was about, sometimes sounding out some of the words he knew or was able to retain and repeat. They didn't always come out right, especially if they had an 'r' sound in them. He definitely had a grasp on 'happy,' and he let that one ring over and over, almost like a chant, a promise. Today was his little brother's first birthday, and it would indeed be 'happy, happy, happy.'

X

Lucas x 24

"Hey, wake up," was the first thing he heard, a whisper at his ear. "The boys will be awake soon, come on."

Lucas cracked an eye open, and to say that having Maya's face be the first he saw in the morning was one of the greater joys in his life felt like an understatement just now. She couldn't have been awake all that long herself, and even just like this, blond hair all a mess and clear faced, it was her smile, her eyes, that left him sort of… breathless, serene…

"I am awake, very awake, so awake," he promised, biting back a yawn.

"Good," Maya beamed, leaning in to kiss him. "Happy birthday, husband," she intoned, with just the lift of song in her voice. "What's on your mind, right this second?" she asked.

"Right this second?" he repeated, and she nodded. "Mostly that I wish I didn't have to start getting ready for class right now," he replied as he held her close. She laughed, by no means discouraging this line of thought and instead feeding into it, adding fuel to the flame by kissing him as she did, like there was no such need as breathing.

"Guess that's going to have to hold you until tonight, huh?" she smirked when she pulled away. He gave the most pitiful sound of complaint at this and she laughed. "You'll make it, don't worry."

If it wasn't bad enough that she was back in school now, and also working at the art store, the semester was drawing nearer to its end every day, so having both her husband and her sons' birthdays all roughly two weeks apart from one another across the month of May felt like a great challenge to her abilities in getting three cakes done. Sure, Elliott and Noah were still small enough that it didn't really matter that much what the cakes looked like, at least not to them personally, but that didn't mean she was going to give anything less than her very best.

So far, they'd had Noah's cake, and in true Noah fashion, he'd gone grabbing at it with both hands. It had all been a solid mess, and they couldn't have wanted it to go down any other way.

When it came to the boys' cakes, at least, she had Lucas there to pitch in and help her. He'd done it with Noah's, and he would do it with Elliott's before long. But his cake had to be done in secret, away from his eyes and his helping hands. Anytime she would work at it while he was home, she would 'banish' him up to the attic, with the reasoning that he would be far enough to not smell anything so much – it didn't work, he smelled the carrot cake from two floors up – and also to give her ample warning before he got close enough to see anything.

Today, by some chance, she finished earlier than him, enough that she could rush home and put the finishing touches. She could have easily called in any of her junior bakers to help her out, but at this point she'd done everything else on her own and she felt the need to keep it up this way, to complete it on her own just as she'd started it. Just to be safe, she'd texted Lucas and told him to wait outside if he got home before she gave him the all-clear.

"Daddy! Daddy!" she heard Elliott call from out in the living room, where Pappy Joe had been watching his shows with the boys. This chant was accompanied by the familiar tap of the boy's hands against the door, which told Maya that he would be standing there and looking out to where he could see Lucas. That was alright… She had finished the cake. She hid it away in the refrigerator, cleaned up after herself, and then she scurried to open the door. After he'd been helped over the threshold, Elliott went to find Lucas, as he sat on the porch steps. He was scooped up at once and greeted with big kisses to his cheek, which Elliott returned as soon as he could reach his face.

Lucas would say how he had never felt the need to put so much emphasis on to his birthday, and most people would assume this to mean that he didn't care for it, which wasn't so. No, it was only that, growing up as he did, the son of Melinda Friar, he never had to worry about the day of his birth being treated like anything less than of a national holiday. Now that he no longer lived with his parents, that Maya was the one with the keys to his birthday celebration, it was something different, absolutely still special in and of itself. What he found over the last couple of years though was that having the boys be part of this day, their dear sons, was making these days feel even bigger and better. It made him appreciate each turn of the year, each year he got to say he'd spent with his wife and their boys.

"We're really setting a precedent here with all these cakes this month," Maya breathed, later that evening, after she'd finished putting Elliott and Noah to bed. Having seen how they both gobbled up their pieces, Lucas couldn't help but laugh and agree.

"We'll be very good until the end of the month," he promised her.

"I'm sure you will," she smirked, looping her arms around his neck.

"Look at that, a little dance," Lucas received this by joining his arms around her waist, setting them to swaying. Maya was all too happy to comply. It was so easy to be happy with his life, on this day made for looking back on this twenty-fourth year of his life, living in this house, with two healthy and happy boys, and a wife he'd loved from the day he'd met her… He would have known her ten whole years this coming fall, something he would not have believed if he didn't remember their first meeting as vividly as he did. He could have said that he'd known her all his life.

"Is it too early to start planning for next year?" Maya wondered.

"Just a bit," Lucas smiled.

"But… twenty-five…" she pointed out innocently.

"No, I figured that part," he nodded.

They danced in silence for a while longer here. Next year… By this time next year, they would be about to graduate college. More than that though, if they kept to the plans they'd made, looking to what lay ahead of them… By this time next year, they could well be on the verge of welcoming baby number three, another little Friar to make their days merry as their boys had done it over the past near two years. Here was this child who did not exist yet, not one speck, and yet it existed in a thought, a dream in his or her parents' hearts, like blueprints.

"Good birthday?" Maya asked.

"Great birthday," Lucas confirmed, meeting her in a kiss.

X

Elliott x 2

"You know, you don't have to pay attention to this whole 'terrible twos' thing everyone keeps going on about. If you want to be above that, I can make it worth your while," Maya whispered as she pulled Elliott from his crib. He was barely awake, but she'd been out here in the nursery for a few minutes already, and when she'd come back to look in on him he'd reached out for her at once. He would just hold to her so tight in times like this, and it would only make her happier to have him in her arms. She kissed the top of his head, slowly paced the length of the room.

Shawn would always say that Nellie had been his first biological child – by minutes ahead of Gracie – but Maya had been his first child, the one who'd made him a father. And Maya… The sleepy little guy in her arms had made her a mother… Two years ago… Two whole years already…

She was not sad to see how he was growing up, on the contrary, but oh… Some part of her would always remember when he'd been put in her arms the first time, a newborn babe, all small and curled in on himself. The distress of being born would not be something that stayed with him, but in the one moment of his life where it would have done so, he'd had her there to reassure him, her and Lucas both… Looking back on it now, as well as they'd both dealt with starting out as parents, she felt able to remember all those little moments where they had struggled, when they'd just been little more than kids themselves.

The last two years had been about so much learning, and none of it had been done with all that much time to stop and think, had it? They'd had a few months of trying not to panic their way through looking after their baby boy, and then all of a sudden, they were expecting their second child already. And if that had not been enough, then there'd been the whole Kermit situation… Everything they picked up as parents with Elliott they could only perfect with Noah, which wasn't to say they had everything under control by now, but well… They did know what they were doing now, didn't they?

"You know, I could just take you with me today. You'd be a big hit at the store. What do you think? You and me, Sprout?" she quietly asked, kissing the small hand he stretched up to her. "Oh, I know, you have a big day coming up with the grandparents, and great grandparents, and your dad… the lucky one," she sighed, finally turning to take him across the hall.

Lucas had the day off from work today, while she for once was working all day. She hadn't been meant to, but then they'd called her yesterday and asked if she could exceptionally do opening to closing. It had been so hard not to simply say she was unavailable. As much as she would have liked to be home as much as possible, to be with her birthday boy, she couldn't see herself turning down those extra hours' pay. She'd told as much to Lucas, and he'd understood and agreed.

"He won't know the difference, you know? We still have the party tomorrow, and we'll do something tonight," he'd promised her. "How many of these do we have left before he actually does understand?"

"You already made your point, don't pull it apart," she'd waved her finger at him, making him laugh.

Lucas could have simply taken the boys to the mall today, hung out near the store the whole time, but it wouldn't have helped matters, would it? He couldn't get in the way of Maya doing her job, and they were due for a round of visits with the grandparents and great grandparents. He could send her pictures and videos, which he did, regardless of the fact that she wouldn't see any of them until she got her phone back whenever she was on break or at lunch and dinner.

From what he heard whenever she was on those breaks and could write or call him back, it seemed that this day turned out to be a very busy one, which might not have been seen like a great thing, except in Maya's case it really was. She thrived on that extra activity, and evidently so did the time, because it flew by and in no time was good and behind her.

When she walked through the door, she had the look of someone who expected to find the children already asleep, the day having unfortunately passed them by. So, when she came to what looked like a small fort in the middle of their living room, populated by her husband and two very awake sons, she laughed.

"What do we have here?" she inquired.

"Elliott's Hideaway," Lucas informed her, even as the birthday boy went running for his mother and was taken up without pause.

"Are you guys giving your dad a hard time tonight?" Maya asked, her 'reprimand' being no match for her smile.

"They napped a lot today, just for this," Lucas went on. "They're the opposite of a hard time, so I think they earned a late birthday surprise."

"You don't mean the c-a-k-e, right? Because I don't care how long they slept before, they won't put in a wink if we give them any of that now," Maya laughed at the image in her head.

"No, I think it's safe to keep that for tomorrow's party," Lucas promised. "This here is the surprise," he gestured around the 'fort,' born of blanks and cushions and a few chairs.

"Shouldn't we be surprising him though?" Maya tipped her head to their elder son as she came to join him and the crawling Noah in the fort.

"What, do you think I'm new at this?" Lucas smirked, holding up a finger before holding up the switch at the end of their Christmas light extension cord. Tonight, as she would discover, it held the outlets of the living room lamps. And when he flipped the switch, rather than to bring them to total darkness, it revealed 'the surprise.'

Under the canopy created by the blanket overhead, Lucas had planted as many glow in the dark stars as he could fit. The effect was… well, stellar. The best part – as well it should be – was the boys' reaction. Noah was sort of startled, maybe a bit afraid for a couple seconds, but then he would take his cue from his big brother, as he so often did, and Elliott… Sitting in his mother's lap, her arms around him, he just set his head back against her, eyes turned to the 'sky' and he was in awe. It stayed with him, with his mother and his father. If they questioned him, in years to come, they would find this night to be his very earliest memory.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners