A/N: Knock knock, we're back? :)

November 5th 2020

Chapter 310
Their Welcoming of Family

"You know, this takes me back," Dylan told Lucas as the two of them carried the large and heavy box up the stairs. Lucas inquired on where he felt taken, minding the corner as they turned and carried on. You know, when we all snuck in and moved Maya's room into the basement, turned her room into a nursery for her sisters. Only this time we're not having to sneak around."

"That is a relief," Lucas agreed. "Also, more lighting. I don't know how we ever managed to pull that off."

"Teamwork, Friar!" Dylan laughed, and Lucas had to steady his grip so that his own laughter wouldn't make him drop his end of the box.

There had been a room in the Babineaux house dedicated to their eventual child, for as long as they'd begun their adoption process. Many times over, they had considered actually filling it up, preparing it ahead of time, but each time they had reconsidered, for valid reasons. The one at the top was that they didn't actually know if they would get a baby, or a small child, or a bigger child. Much as they couldn't help but imagine themselves with a baby, they had been equally open to welcoming older children, who would need something other than a crib, or a changing table… So, the room remained empty, waiting to learn its eventual purpose.

Despite all this, Zay and Nadine did not lack for preparation. It became something midway between common sense and compulsion. Their basement contained many items kept at the ready, unassembled pieces of furniture, clothing, and toys, and books, and other items for decorating a baby or a child's room. Nadine would call herself the primary culprit in this matter, being found occasionally to enter stores and find some thing or another to add to their growing stock pile of belongings for children they did not yet have, but Zay was not entirely innocent of this either.

But now it had all come together for the better. Amelia Geraldine Babineaux, Mia as she was to be called, was born two days ago now, and she was coming home.

None but Maya and Lucas, who had been there with Nadine and Zay as they had gotten the call and learned of their impending parenthood could really understand exactly the level of joy this news brought to the new parents. After so many sorrowful losses, so much wait, so much disappointment and anxiety, they had gotten good news. Not just good news but the best news, the news, the one they had been waiting on for so long. There was a young woman up in Midland, and she was giving birth to a child she sought to put up for adoption, and she had chosen them. They didn't have too much more in the way of details at the time, except that they were assured there would be no coming back on this decision, not like the last time they'd been called.

There was little time for them to think of much else but to get on the road, knowing they'd have a few hours between them and their destination. Maya and Lucas had told their friends to go on ahead. They would put away the food and then they'd be right behind them. They also promised to get the word out, to the future grandparents, future aunts, and many future friend-family members. It wasn't as though Nadine was the one giving birth to this child, so they did not all aim to drive up to the hospital along with them, wanting in no way to crowd the baby's birth mother. Still, both Zay and Nadine's parents would be joining them.

Maya and Lucas had been no more than a half hour behind, and once they'd arrived to the hospital and rejoined their friends, the baby had still yet to be born. Zay and Nadine were in the delivery room, as they had been allowed within by the mother, so their friends waited nearby, soon joined by the grandparents. This child may not have been their blood, may not even have existed in their consciousness until a few hours prior, but it was clear at once that she was already part of the family.

Finally, Zay had come along, looking like his brain was ready to explode for how quickly his day had turned around, and clearly unable to spot his people. His father had called his name, and he'd turned around, coming up to them and greeting his Isaiah Sr's extended arm as an invitation to hug him, which was precisely what he did.

"Breathe, now," Senior told him. Zay had absolutely inherited his frame and his height from his mother's side, but he had without a doubt gotten that smile from his father. "What's going on back there, is the baby here?"

"She's here, and she's ours," Zay confirmed, sounding the most joyfully affected they had seen him be since the day he'd married Nadine. And then to be embraced and congratulated as he was, they could not have invented a better day than this one.

They were just into the early hours of the next morning by then, and both Maya and Lucas were going to be looking to a tired day at school and at work but they could not leave without going to meet little Mia. Zay brought them to the room, separate from the birth mother's, where Nadine now looked over the baby. She held her and looked upon her with so much love in her that they could hardly make her realize anyone else was in the room.

But at last she'd looked up, and she'd invited her friends to come forward, to meet her daughter. She was just about as perfect as any newborn could hope to be, not too big, not too small, and everything was just as it should be. They would be able to take her home very soon.

What little they could share, from what they'd gotten to discuss with the birth mother, was that she'd been hoping to find a family for her child who might look like her, half black, half Chinese… It had not been a guarantee, sure, but then there had been Zay and Nadine, and if their picture had been the thing to draw her eye, everything else she'd learned about them only proved that she'd been right to look for them. She would have arranged to meet them, to talk, but then she'd gone into labor, and so it had all happened very, very fast.

On the drive back to Austin, the night fast progressing, neither Maya nor Lucas could imagine even sleeping for a minute. Instead, they got to plotting what was to be the creation of Mia Babineaux' nursery, before she came home with her parents. Zay and Nadine would be staying up in Midland until this happened, the grandparents seeing to bringing whatever they'd need to make that journey back.

"I'm just saying, I will swear to anyone who asks," Maya intoned as Lucas drove them home. "This whole thing today, with thinking we were having a baby, that was just like… a premonition." Lucas laughed. "Well, did a baby come or what?" Maya grinned at him.

Getting to go to work that day, telling those few teachers who'd been there when she'd been a student that two others of their former students had just had a baby, that was about the best spreading of cheer one could hope to find.

All through the day, where time permitted, a conversation had been going on, over texts and calls, regarding the nursery. This was actually their third time stepping in to help create one of these, between the Hunter twins' and Zola Obi's, after Willow's delivery had gone so badly. While the first one had been done by a bunch of teenagers in the middle of the night, and the other by concerned friends over days, this one was easily the most laid back, much as they remained on something of a deadline.

"How's it going in here? Can we bring the crib?" Lucas asked, peering through the door, where Maya had several of the others helping her with the walls, paintbrushes working along.

"If you keep to the center of the room, definitely," she turned and replied at once.

"Right, okay," Lucas nodded, giving a look to Dylan to make sure he understood before they brought the box in.

"Hey, trade with me?" Dylan moved to Asher. "You're better at this than I am."

"You said it, not me," Asher smiled, passing his brush and paint over before checking that he didn't have any splatter on him. "We had to build two of these. I'm not ashamed to say, the first one took way longer to finish than the second. We did it all together, me and Ray and Sophie, and it made all of us feel surprisingly dumb here and there."

It had been tricky enough to find the time to do all this, as it was a weekday and they all had work, or classes… They'd started the previous evening and hadn't done nearly as much as they would have liked, though there had been some errands to run and they'd gone to do those first, the better to have everything they needed once they got started, so it wasn't without reason. As for today, any of them who was able to do so had come out here and done what little they could before leaving again, reuniting at the end of the day to give the big push. By now, the Babineaux family, along with the baby, would have returned from Midland but, per their friends' request, would then head to the Zhu house to wait for the okay to come home. This was more than acceptable to them. For one, they had known their friends long enough and had been involved in group efforts like this one enough times to graciously let it happen. And then, of course, this would be the first time that Mia's aunts, Marley, Michaela, and Olivia, would get to meet her.

"Are we almost done?" Riley asked, some time later.

"Think so?" Rosa looked to the others.

"I think we can tell them to come. By the time they get in the car and drive out here, we'll be done," Maya confidently stated.

It was a bit tighter of a call than they might have preferred, as the last touches were being made even as Rebecca came to report that the car was arriving. What mattered was that, when Zay and Nadine came through the door, the former carrying the baby in her car seat, the group had made it down the stairs for a muted but enthusiastic welcome. The wait had been so long, and this, the homecoming, was such an important milestone, too. The new parents were very well aware of it, too, and it showed in their eyes, in their smiles, overflowing with gratitude for their friends even as they took in this still surreal moment. They were home, with their baby girl…

"We've barely slept since she was born, it still feels like I could have imagined it, but… she's here, and she's real… She's so real…" Nadine declared, looking upon her sleeping daughter after she'd set her down in her crib. She looked around the room, still just taking it all in, and as she turned back to her friend, her bandmate… her sister… she had tears in her eyes.

"Yes, she is," Maya smiled. She was not spared her own happy tears. Not too far back, Zay stood with Lucas, looking to his wife being the happiest she had been in so long, and he was so pensive that his best friend had to ask what he was thinking.

"Just that… I look at our girl and I… All this time that we waited, and we thought it would never happen, all of that was so hard, but… If it hadn't taken as long as it did, then we wouldn't have her. She hasn't done anything else but sleep, and eat, and cry, and all of that, but I love her. Man, I love her so much, and I wouldn't want any other kid but her."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners