A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!

January 7th 2020

Chapter 7
Their House of Love

One by one, each delivery which brought some of the items they'd bought on that long morning found its place in the house. All the assembly had left the trio feeling like they could turn pro in furniture building, and each of them had two or three scrapes or bruises from an incident or another. But it was all worth it, as the rooms took shape. Sam would disappear off to work on his room whenever they'd arrive, on the assurance from his sister and Lucas that he should absolutely focus on that. He was keeping the door closed the whole time, keeping everything a mystery until he'd be done. Every so often, he would appear with some item or another and ask if he could put it somewhere in the living room, or the kitchen…

"I'd tell him to stop asking for permission, but he'd do it anyway," Maya had told Lucas after the fourth time he'd done so.

"And you worry about him and Dora," Lucas had replied with a shake of the head. "The other night when Dot and Emmett and the kids came over, I swear I watched him contemplate reaching for her hand for a good twenty minutes and he couldn't even do it."

"Oh, I know. He hasn't even worked up the nerve to ask her out yet. He has to know she wants him to do it, right?"

"How long did it take us to speak up?"

"… Right."

As the days dwindled down on their way to their deadline for the camp in and the 'official' move, and as the amount of things they still needed to unpack and put in their place had gotten smaller and smaller, though with a noted exception. Against one wall in their room, Lucas and Maya had left a stack of boxes untouched. They had not been packed and brought from Houston, instead having spent the past four years as boxes in their parents' respective homes. They were the things which, although important enough to hold on to, would have felt superfluous to bring along when they'd left Austin. Truth be told, it had been so long since they had even made those boxes that they didn't remember what was in them, not specifically. They hadn't started on those for that very reason.

But now… Now there was little else for them to do. They were done. What boxes remained were things they had relegated to storage in the basement… and the Austin overflow boxes up in their room.

Before they could get to that, Sam had summoned them to come and check out his completed room. It was still very reminiscent of his room back in Tucson on the whole, though there was a sort of distinct feel to it that said 'I'm in college now, I have to be a bit more serious.' It wasn't as though he had been all wild and unruly before, of course, the kid had been focused and responsible his whole life. Maybe this was just his best interpretation of being a fifteen-year-old college freshman. It suited him.

"Photo door?" Maya smiled, pointing to his closet door. At the top, he'd set the couple of pictures he'd asked for her to print. The first showed everyone at the restaurant, the night before he'd left Tucson, his family, the Lanes, Javi, and Dora. There was another shot, a selfie from the back of the car when Dora had gotten hold of Maya's camera. Dora had that zen little smile of hers; Sam looked like he was discovering new heights in smiling. The third and last image – so far – was of the three of them, standing in front of the house, half a second away from losing control of their serious faces.

"Yeah," Sam nodded.

"Be careful, she's going to want to do the whole 'first day of school' shoot with you," Lucas teased, knowing he wasn't giving Maya any ideas she hadn't already had.

Sam was off to the movies with Dora and Alex that evening, so once he was gone Lucas and Maya had decided to make a night of tackling those boxes up in their room.

"Here," Lucas came back with the bag just delivered and carrying their dinner. Maya was already sitting on the ground, with her first box before herself. It was open just a crack and gave the impression of a kid at Christmas, waiting for the rest of the family to show up so they could open their presents already.

"I'm shaking my head at four-years-ago Maya. The girl did not think ahead when she made these boxes," Maya waved her hand at her stack of boxes, which just had her name on each. "Yours at least sort of say what's inside."

"Maybe she wanted to make this into a surprise for… four-years-later Maya," Lucas suggested.

"Well, I am definitely going to be surprised, because I don't have a single clue," she sighed, drumming her fingers on the box in front of her. Lucas offered the container with her dinner and her expression perked up. "This helps."

"Page one of the Maya Handbook: Fed Maya equals Happy Maya," he 'recited,' sitting across from her. She laughed.

"Yes, it does."

Lucas' first box was marked 'sports, awards,' and that was just what was inside. The photo album had once been just pictures, but in the process of his packing, his mother had insisted that they needed to be preserved. She had bought the album and begged for him to let her take care of it, so of course he'd let her. She had organized everything in chronological order, also including details he couldn't have remembered. She had not gotten her hands on the worn old box where he had stored his medals and trophies, not the little ones anyway. The others, those were on full and permanent display back at his parents' house and there they would remain so long as Melinda Friar drew breath, so she could show her guests and tell them about how talented her Luke was.

Maya's first box, like all her other boxes, may not have been identified, and she may have claimed she didn't remember what was inside them, but once she opened it… All she needed to see was the stuff on top and suddenly it was like a slingshot had tugged her back to the summer of 2021. It had made her gasp with that predicted surprise, and Lucas had looked up.

"What is it?" he asked.

"School stuff, most of it," she reached in and pulled out a thick folder full of papers. Flipping through those, they could both see various old tests and reports and assignments, a splash of corrections and marks in various colors and handwritings on them all. "I was so proud of these, I kept them… probably much longer than I ever needed to." She set them aside, knowing that if she started looking at each one she would end up in a hole she wouldn't escape and she'd get nothing done.

Underneath the folder, she found a tin box that made her smile before she set it behind herself on the ground. At Lucas' look, she told him she would show him later.

"Basket Cases!" she picked up an old cardboard box she'd salvaged from Mr. Matthews' office one day. Inside, she'd put every little thing she thought to keep of her days with the quiz team.

The sorting of the boxes took enough time that, by the time Sam called to say that he was back at the Hunter Hart house, they were still at it. They were so close to being done though, so they'd kept at it until the end. The whole time, Maya had never so much as looked at the tin box, and when they'd picked up everything to either be put on a shelf, or in a drawer, or wherever it might go – sometimes back in their boxes and down to the basement with the rest – she'd taken it and stuck it in her bag.

"I don't get to see?" Lucas asked.

"Not yet," she grinned.

"You're loving this, aren't you?" he smiled.

"Oh, so much."

Before they knew it, their camp in day had arrived. The forecast, as hoped, was for a clear sky that would enable a great view of the stars. The part that involved 'moving' wasn't so hard. They'd packed up everything that had become spread across the Hunter Hart house over their stay there the last few weeks, and after the girls and MJ had been put to bed, they'd said good night to Katy and Shawn, they'd gotten in the car, and they'd gone home.

It was just as they'd left it the last time they'd been here, a couple days before, but somehow the fact that they were here to stay made the whole thing feel different, more weighted.

"Small detail, but we should probably go to the grocery store tomorrow morning," Maya looked to Lucas as they stood in the living room. "All we've got is everything we need for smores. Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed, but we're supposed to set an example for the kid here, no?" she tugged her brother close.

"I've got an apple in my bag…" Sam informed her.

"Of course, you do," she tapped his chest with a proud/unsurprised sigh.

After dropping off their bags, they'd grabbed their bag of smores stuff, some blankets, and everything needed to get a fire going, and they made their way to the campfire site. When the fire came to life, Lucas moved to sit next to Maya and leaned to whisper something at her ear. She snorted, failing to keep her reaction hidden. Sam looked at them.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," Maya promised him. "Trust me, you don't want to know." Whatever her brother decided this meant, he didn't argue. What Lucas had said was that, just now, Sam really gave off this vibe like he'd been raised far away from here, which he had, of course. She'd had some of it herself, when she'd first moved to Texas, though she and Sam had absolutely had different upbringings, leaving them with different 'New York vibes.'

"First time I remember coming out here, I had to be… three or four years old," Lucas told Maya and Sam as they held their marshmallows to the flames once speared. "It was me and my dad and my grandparents," he recalled. "My grandmother kept me on her knees the whole time, kept saying not to get too close to the fire. Then Pappy Joe said he knew how to make sure I wouldn't move, and he told me a story, about the ghosts in the woods. They would come out at night, and the only way to keep them from coming after you was to keep the fire going, because they didn't like it. And if I touched anything, well then a ghost might come and go in me and get away with my soul."

Maya had heard the tale, years ago, but it didn't stop her laughing right along with her brother.

"How long did it take you to stop believing that?" Sam asked.

"Longer than you'd think," Lucas admitted.

They had somewhere just shy of too many smores before they'd packed it in, putting out the campfire and returning to the house. There, they got changed, and they made their way up to the attic. Everything was already set for them to spend the night 'under the stars.' Maya nodded for Sam to go ahead and look through the telescope's view. It had been his gift, so it was only fair that he got to use it first.

Even after they'd all had a turn, and a few more returns, even as they started to turn in for the night, Maya could see her younger brother resting in his sleeping bag and still looking through the window above, to the night sky and its stars. He looked as though he'd sunk deep in his thoughts, and she'd be willing to bet she knew where he'd landed, who he was thinking about after their time with the telescope.

"I'll go check on the dogs," Lucas told Maya. It was their first night here, too.

"I'll come with," she moved to join him.

It wasn't until he'd made it down the stairs and into the living room that he realized Maya hadn't followed directly. She'd gone off somewhere after coming down from the attic. When she reappeared again, she had the tin box in her hand.

Trix and Lou had perked up at once as Lucas had come down. They might have been asleep, curled up near the front door, there was no way of telling. Now that their people were there, they walked on over.

"No running, okay?" he told them, touching their backs before opening the door. They moved on to the porch, sitting on their hind legs without a fuss. Lucas sat on the front step next to Trix, who lay down over his legs and stared up at him. He shook his head, smiling as he ran his hand along her back. Maya came and sat next to him. "Hey."

"Hey," she bumped his shoulder, looking up to the sky for a moment, enjoying the quiet all around them. "I was so shocked at how quiet it was at night here, when we came from New York, but this is just something else."

"Yeah," he agreed. One look at her made it clear that she very much enjoyed this next level quiet. "Do I get to see what's in there now?" Lucas asked, nodding to the box.

"Curious, curious," Maya nodded. When she popped the cover up, it swung on its hinges, revealing, at first glance, a bunch of little bits of paper, bunched in packs with paper clips. It took him a moment, and the connection that 'hey, that's my handwriting,' to figure out what they were. The top was covered in packs of small notes, passed to her from him, sometimes passed back and forth, with new responses scribbled in.

"Wow…" was all he could say. Sometimes he just missed those times, him and her, one behind the other in class…

Under the notes, there were odd little trinkets, the kinds of things that wouldn't have meant much to anyone except the one who kept them. Some ticket stubs, a couple coasters, dried petals in a small bottle, a couple of paper umbrellas… At the very bottom, there were pictures, inside a flyer he recognized from their senior prom. Some were clearly from her camera, others from a photo booth…

"I was going to bring it to Houston with us, but then I didn't want to risk it, so I stuck it in the boxes to stay. I think I almost came back for it a couple dozen times over the last four years."

And now they were home, him and her. And the box never had to be left behind ever again.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners