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

July 29th 2020

Chapter 211
Their Autumn For a Party

"You know when you look outside and you can just sort of tell from the sky, and the wind… A storm is coming?" Lucas asked as their slow Sunday waking had been hurried along by the eager barking of dogs. He and Maya had gone down to find that entire canine host waiting for them. Crowley and Lupescu were like an impossible tag team. The moment you got one of them going, the other was right there, too, which was going to complicate things when the day came that Rosa went ahead and moved out…

It hadn't happened yet, and there were no signs of that changing for a while longer. They weren't nudging her out the door either. Maya and Lucas were both more than happy to have her around, and not just because she held her weight as their roommate. She was one of their closest friends. What else did they need? Besides, with the way things were going, all they really needed to do was to keep hosting her and, in time, she would end up leaving them to go and live with Jenna. The two of them were growing closer as friends, with the girl sharing many a meal or evening with them up at the house, and as to anything beyond that, well, they were still figuring it out.

Until then, they had Crowley, and Lupescu, and Peanut, and Archer, and Trix and Lou, and when they decided it was time for their humans to come around, they were a united front.

"What are you talking about?" Maya looked back to her husband as she stood with the littlest of their pup pack in her arms. "What storm?"

"The Sam-Cecilia-Dora Halloween Cyclone III," Lucas replied, filling the dogs' bowls.

"Oh, that one…" Maya hummed. It could have been a gag between them, but then they'd had two Halloweens here and both of them had involved some kind of… teenage love drama shenanigans. "It should be fine, shouldn't it? Dora's going to a party with her friends from college, and Sam and Cecilia are just… very attached…" she tossed back a look that said 'and let's just leave it at that.' "Can we just enjoy that today is Halloween? Better yet, can we enjoy that it's been ten years to the day since that night at the haunted house?" Maya asked him, approaching in a very menacing/cute way thanks to the dogs.

"That night when we almost kissed, and then we figured we really just wanted to kiss for real and all that?" Lucas asked back.

"And all that, yeah," she smiled.

"Yeah, I guess we can do that."

In what felt like no time, the day was on its way. After breakfast, Maya, Lucas, Sam, and Rosa set off to get the last of the set-up going. This included building up the maze, and that was just going to eat up the majority of their day as it was. They could have built it up ahead of time, but rather than to leave the structure like an invitation for people to come along in the night and mess things up, they had left it to today. The Sandersons had been kind enough to let them store the very many bales of hay up at their farm until they were needed.

For a while, both Lucas and Sam were going back and forth from the farm to the land across from the house, ferrying a new load of hay, which was then unloaded and carefully worked into reproducing Maya's meticulously calculated plan. With the help of Missy and her family, and the Oswalds, on whose land the maze was being built, it all came together. By the time it all became about going through and setting lights and other elements, checking that the map was correct, the hiding spots and potential emergency exits, too, many of them moved to setting up the games and other installations on the grounds outside the Friar house. It was going to be their biggest night yet, and they couldn't wait.

Finally, it came time for everyone to go and get changed. In opposition to her vampire day back at school, Maya had gone for something much more light for their party night, truly in as literal of a way as she could have done. She had cast herself as a spirit of sorts, the embodiment of the sun. She had wanted to go for something a bit more abstract than usual, and really she just enjoyed the opportunity to conjure up her interpretation of this concept. It involved many elements of gold, in her hair and makeup as much as her clothes, and also some light strips and bulbs set in her earrings, her gloves and her shoes, and in parts of her dress. The full effect did not come to be seen until the sun – the one in the sky – started to go down. Once it did, the lights and the gold started to work together, until she really just… shined… there among the rest of them.

She wasn't the only one, not in the end. Almost as soon as the idea had come for Maya to become the sun, it was clear what needed to happen with Lucas and his costume. He had to become the moon.

Both of their costumes were guided by lights, but where hers picked up on accents of gold, his were made to lift from silvers and blues. Whatever scruff had been left to rise on his face had been shaved off, while his hair had been given a decidedly 'sticky uppy,' spritely sort of shape. While her head had been crowned in rays, the top of his costume included something almost like a cape, starting at the center of his back and extending to the cuffs of his sleeves. And when he'd raise out his arms, it would billow out to create a shining crescent moon. On its own, it was really almost too much, but then coupled to everything else, the hair, the makeup… With the lights on him and the darkness around, he was just the moon, and she was the sun.

"Tell you what, we won't lose each other tonight," she'd laughed, giving her skirts a twirl for effect.

For all his fears of 'the storm,' the night would go on without any incidents where Sam and the girls were concerned. Contrary to what Maya had assumed, Dora did come to the party. She'd brought along a friend, and the two of them and Sam and Cecilia together had gone and enjoyed the maze, played the games, and then once the party had moved inside, they would be seen sitting and chatting here, or dancing there… Maya would tell Lucas how this was a sign, that things were going up rather than down. She had optimism in her now that the next Halloweens would prove her right.

"As the moon, which, you know," Lucas told Maya as he extended out his hands to point at the sky, creating his crescent cape. Their guests had gone away and both Sam and Rosa had retreated above and below for the night. "I think it's time we get some sleep, before you're up there in the sky and you have to get to school."

"A valid point, I'll give you that," Maya replied, getting hold of his silvery hands with her golden ones. "However… It's after midnight, November the first, and it's been ten years for us now," she smiled, and he smiled back.

"Minus a few hours," he nodded.

"I was already dreaming about you at this point, I think it counts," Maya assured him, pulling at his arms so he would follow her down from the porch. "Shouldn't we make sure that we don't have any stragglers in there?" she tipped her head toward the maze. "I know the way."

If someone had been up in the attic, looking down and over to the maze on the Oswalds' land, they could well have seen those two glowing orbs of the sun and the moon, weaving through the walls of hay and followed their progress. They would only be missing the laughter in that pair, the feeling in them as though they were that girl and boy who, ten years ago that day, had gone from friends to a girlfriend and boyfriend, as though they were just teenagers all over again.

"Oh, I hope there aren't any zombies this way…" Lucas whispered as he trailed behind his wife. Maya was almost too busy looking at the way their lights bloomed over the bales of hay around them.

"It's alright, we're spirits, they can't touch us," she promised, her voice almost a song.

"Right, right, sure," Lucas nodded.

"Plus, if they try and touch you, they'll have to deal with me," Maya spun on her heel to face him and the smile on her face made one lift over his own. He enveloped her in his arms and in his cape.

"I feel safer already."

"Yeah?" she beamed, stretching up to kiss him.

She'd wanted to come out here, just a little while, and she had a feeling he understood why without her having to say it. They weren't those same kids anymore, they had grown, they were adults, with growing obligations, one of them with a career and the other well on his way to his own. The part where their anniversary landed on a Monday, that was beyond their control, and they were going to have to get creative about marking this double-digit milestone on the day itself. Strolling just him and her, shining spirits in the dark, if for a few minutes… That was a memory they would could hold on to, no matter what they'd achieve later on.

"I don't know who I'd be if I stopped looking at you like all I want to do is tell you how much I love you," Lucas told her, rewarded with a look bursting of that same emotion, like the sun shining on to him.

"But you do say it, so many times, in so many ways, because that's who you are, my good Huckleberry husband. It's one of those many, many reasons why I love you, too. I could stand here with you all night, listing them off, but you know, we really are going to need to get some rest before comes around and we have to become real humans again."

"Such a shame," he laughed.

"I would be happy to tell you at least one, every day. I could do that, for a long, long time."

"Wow, that many, huh?"

"Well, you know, one day it might be 'you picked up your socks,' I mean you can't have zingers every day, otherwise they'd start losing their power."

"Right, no, that's true."

"And then other days, well, they might be the kind I need to whisper, so no one else hears them," she went on, turning a look up to him that lit her eyes with a spark.

"Now I'm curious," he pulled her nearer, and her smile grew.

"But I'll always find them, because after ten years with you, I feel it more than ever. And that's my one for today. I love you for that."

"You can mark me down for that one, too," he declared, catching her in another kiss, this one keeping hold of them for a good while, until they finally had to make adults of themselves and head back to the house to get ready for bed.

"Any chance you'll keep your hair like that tomorrow? I'm kind of not hating it," Maya told Lucas as they went on their way back out of the maze.

"Might not be exactly in line with the dress code at work… and with school, well…" he pointed out, smiling nonetheless.

"Just tell them you're getting in touch with that Jack Frost vibe, now that we've crossed from Spooktober into Extended Pre-Christmas times."

Much as he would have liked to entertain her, Lucas had instead set about washing the silver out of his hair before they headed to bed, while she did the same with the gold in hers, on the reasoning that it would be a nightmare on the sheets and they might end up eating some of it by accident. If nothing else, it definitely eased them off closer to sleep, until Maya's alarm woke them and set them on their way through Monday morning.

It would have been all too easy for Maya to set her students on a period of silent painting, the better to leave her in that dreamy head space she'd been in since the night before. She'd already penned what felt like a solid chunk of a new song for Ree, and she could have kept on riding that wave until the end. She couldn't do that though, wouldn't dismiss what she had set out for her kids that day. At least she was in a ridiculously good mood, and that had a way of bouncing on to those she met, too.

"Thanks, girls, see you tomorrow," Maya smiled to Daphne Brett and Ariel Su as they picked up their bags and headed out of class after helping her clean up post third period. They had barely cleared the door that Maya heard a light knock at the door and found Lucas standing there. "Do you have a hall pass?" Maya asked, finding her smile impossible to rein in, no matter how much she tried to play it cool.

"I have this, does it count?" he asked, lifting up his ring hand.

"Works for me. What are you doing here? It's a bit early for lunch, isn't it? The bookstore…"

"Maeve was kind enough to pad up my lunch break, as was the rest of the staff on the floor today, so that I could show up a bit early and spend some time with you," Lucas revealed.

"That is very nice of them," Maya went ahead and sat at her desk as he pulled the second chair over to join her. "Don't forget to thank them for me."

"Consider it done," he told her as he sat down, looking around the room. He'd been here a few times already, but something about this place always made him want to come back. It was just so much like an expression of her, right down to the poster she'd brought back from Paris, which now hung on the door to the supply closet.

"People just seem to know you're a really good guy, and they like to do things like this for you…" Maya hummed, nudging his foot with hers as he turned back to her. It made him smile. "Call that my reason for loving you for the day."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners