A/N: Requested anonymously on Tumblr as part of Fictober!
Prompt: April and Andy celebrate baby Jack's first Halloween with him, a few days late
Enjoy!
"Andy, we have to do this."
She's been stuck between bed and Jack's crib, right now with Andy standing over her and Jack in his arms. Their son seems content for now but the space between okay and losing his mind, crying, is so thin that April feels on edge at all times. It's definitely a new experience.
"Babe, how many hours did you sleep today?" Andy asks her because he's worried, that much she knows. Right now she needs him to just go along, damn it. "Because it's like two, and you're tired. I can watch Jack and-"
"This is important," she whines and knows how easily this could backfire. Maybe she would just sit in one spot and fall asleep, or maybe she would pass out before even seeing Jack not-really-react to any of it. "He could have had his first Halloween in the hospital..."
"I know, but take a nap. We're probably not gonna get a whole lot of sleep for a while," he leans down to give her a kiss and steps out of the room to give her disgusting space to sleep.
It's nice, having a partner in all of this. Something in the back of her mind imagines the hell she might be in had Andy not been there, and vice versa, and knowing that he's cooing at his son with pure love in the other room lets the exhaustion sink in at last. Andy could last an hour or two without her, probably. Jack wouldn't be hungry until then.
The blankets are so soft, and the pillow she's buried in swallows her up.
April jolts awake an unknown amount of time later.
There is nothing to see in the room other than the light creeping in from the hallway underneath their bedroom door. The sun must have set long ago and when April looks at her phone she curses, slowly getting out of bed with a grunt. It takes a moment before she realizes that there isn't much sound in the rest of the house save for some shuffling downstairs.
Opening the door, the only light she can see in the house is coming from the ceiling bulb in that hallway.
"Andy?" she calls out, voice crackly and low from taking a three hour nap-turned-sleep.
Nobody answers, even when April repeats it. More shuffling, now hurried after yelling, comes from the kitchen. Looking down the stairs, April can see their dining room half-illuminated from the neighboring room's lights turned on and, again, nothing else.
Taking careful steps, she peeks inside the kitchen and all that's apparent from the bottom of the stairs is the plastic skeleton hanging on their fridge and a bowl of candy that was never supposed to be filled. Oh, and their basement door is wide open, a portal to darkness next to so much light. April is about to take another step when loud, slow footsteps start to pound their way up the basement staircase.
"Andy?" she repeats, but the steps continue. "Babe?"
When she takes a step forward, she can see Jack sitting up in his high chair where he was just a moment before hidden from sight. He stares at her, totally unperturbed but a bit giggly when he sees her. Turning to face whatever was coming up from the stairs, a tall figure with a box in his arms emerges. Something fires in April's brain telling her to move, fast, despite her exhausted body, but after a second's hesitation due to that sleepiness she just stifles a laugh.
She can hear music blasting out of the terrible earphones stuck in his ears, so when she yells his name again Andy drops and barely catches the box in his hands. He still manages to let go again, letting the whole thing fall to the floor with a soft thud.
"Oh, you're awake!" he yells and rips the earbuds out. "Oh man, the surprise is ruined! We tried, Jack..."
Andy looks at him apologetic, the infant just as excited to see him without a hint of awareness about the words he said, before giving April the same look. She finally gets a good, non-terrified look around the room and notices that there are decorations sitting on the counters. Another bowl of candy is full, all sorts of sour candies and dark chocolate inside, while Jack is wearing the orange onesie with a tiny, green night cap she doesn't recognize.
Andy reaches down to take out a pile of fake spider webs.
"Andy, what are you doing...?" she asks, masking her words in a yawn. When she's done he's sifting through everything to find more skeleton parts and the fake witch's head they packed away years ago. "Dude, where did you find all of this stuff. I thought we threw most of this out?"
"Well, we were gonna... y'know, give you a surprise Halloween party," he shuffles some of the things in his hands around and then shrugs. "So, uh, surprise!"
"We?" she asks, looking around cautiously.
"Oh, me and Jack. He's so good at telling me which ideas sucked. I was gonna get us each a pumpkin pie, you know like a Jack-o-lantern, but then he cried. I fed him from one of the bottles those weirdos at the hospital made you pump full," he starts rambling, the sweat of his own brand of anxiety building up on his forehead. "Anyways, I figured I'd decorate and we would wake you up and-"
April, despite all the muscles in her body nearly dead asleep, is on him at once. She kisses him without thinking, breaking away once he chuckles a bit and the kiss threatens to go just a bit too deep for her right now. She cannot stop the grin on her face and goes over to Jack, picking him up and hugging him close.
"I love you," she says to Andy and then looks down at the little bundle in her arms. "And you too. Thanks for setting up an awesome post-Halloween."
"It's weird enough to work, right?"
"Totally," she answers without a hint of annoyance because Andy is busying himself with turning their kitchen into a dense, miniature haunted house and it's maybe the best celebration of Halloween she can remember.