Chapter 17
Festival of Hearts

All of a sudden, as Maya was rounding toward the halfway point of her pregnancy, it got to feel as though her body up and decided that things had been going much too smoothly for her. She'd been expecting an increase in discomforts, sure, but it didn't make them any easier to bear. All she could tell herself was that things were moving into place, accommodating for the growth and the eventual birth of their baby boy. Once she'd told herself that, then all was left was a lot of grumbling and silent swearing.

Her feet had been the worst for a while. No matter how many times Lucas stepped up to try and provide some relief there, it only got her so far, didn't it? And then her back had gone and joined in on this, and that was just wonderful, wasn't it? She didn't complain. She wasn't going to complain. It was nothing so bad as to rouse any of Lucas or their families to get hovering about her more than they already did. The only place where she'd had no choice but to say something was at work.

The hours in the dining room were getting to be a challenge. By the time her shifts would be over and she'd be waiting for Lucas to come and get her, he'd usually find her sitting on the long leather bench just inside the door, where people would wait when there were no tables available, feet up, her coat bunched up between the wall and her back. She'd have this look about her like she could be the picture of patience, but, on the inside, she was pleading for him to just hurry up and get here so she could go home.

Isabel had been helping her from the start, from the days of 'ergo,' and after seeing her trying so hard not to show when her feet and her back were really starting to get to her, to the point where she'd start slowing down, she'd finally pulled her aside to talk. She would start her working at the front desk more, where she could sit and get off her feet a while. It wasn't going to go and fix everything, but it still made a world of difference.

"I hate that I'll have to leave in a few months," Maya had told her with a sigh one night. They were going back to Austin as soon as they were done with school here this semester, and even by then she would probably have stopped working here already. As sure as she was that there were other kind and helpful bosses out there, Isabel had just been a lifesaver since November, enough that Maya didn't want to have to leave her or this place.

"That'll make two of us," Isabel had promised her. "You better send me loads of pictures of that little boy there," she'd smiled, nodding to her belly.

"You'll get those," Maya promised back, chuckling.

They were coming up on the middle of February now, and as much as her discomforts had disrupted her sleep at times, it was nothing compared to the nightmare her mind had gotten into cooking up for her.

The first few nights, it didn't go so far as to wake her, but she'd be moving enough, talking in her sleep, that it would wake Lucas. He had gotten pretty good at providing some comfort, simple reassurance without waking her, and in time she'd go back to sleeping soundly. He didn't mention it in the day either, guessing she probably didn't remember even having the dream. He could hear her though, at night. She'd call his name, like she was looking for him, or like she was pleading with him. Eventually, he started to understand what was getting her so worked up in those dreams, and there was no need to wonder what had put that thought in her head.

"Lucas… Lucas… Don't go… Lucas… Can't leave us…"

Then, the nightmare woke her up. Lucas had gotten out of bed to go to the bathroom, and he'd just been washing his hands when he managed to catch the sound of a small strangled cry. He barely managed to dry his hands and he hurried back to find her sitting up in bed, wild eyed enough that she must not have been completely out of that dream state. The fact that he hadn't been next to her when she'd woken up couldn't have helped put her at ease either.

"Hey, hey, it was a dream, you're fine, I'm right here," he hurried back over to her, sitting and pulling her into his arms even as she was reaching for him. She held on so tight and he closed his eyes, running one hand up and down her back while the other kept her close to him. "It wasn't real."

"It felt real," her voice promised, coming so small as to make her sound like a whole other person.

"Want to talk about it?" he asked after a few seconds had gone by with neither of them saying a word. She let out a breath.

"Was I… Did I say…"

"Yeah… Last couple of nights," he admitted. She made a small noise like she understood now that she'd been waking him up without knowing it, and she hated it. "It's fine. If I hadn't been in the bathroom, I might have been able to keep it from getting so bad this time."

"It probably would have happened sooner or later."

"So, you remember having this dream before?" he asked.

"Yeah…" she spoke softly. After a few moments more, she pulled back so that she could look at him as she went on speaking. "It was almost just like… snippets before, the same things over and over, but this time, it… I don't need a shrink or anything to tell me what it meant; it was pretty clear. We were in my old apartment, back in New York, me and you and him," she pressed a hand to her belly, following that curve up and down and up again. "He was… I'll take a wild guess and say he was about six years old."

"And I left?" Lucas asked, setting his hand to her knee. She still looked so spooked, like the image continued to play in her head. He knew she remembered the last time she'd seen him all those years ago, she'd told him about it, that and the moment when she'd realized he wasn't just out but gone… It was the kind of thing that wouldn't just go away, the kind of memory so readily available that it made it very easy for her mind to make a few cosmetic changes, recast the players, putting her in her mother's position and him in her father's, and their son… their son in hers. "That is never going to happen, okay? Maya, look at me," he begged quietly. When she did, he tipped his head forward until his forehead met hers. "I'm not going to do that, not to you, not to him."

"I know that," she told him. "Really, I do. But then that stupid nightmare, it just sits in my head like it wants to convince me I don't know anything. I mean… my father didn't set out thinking he would ever leave me and my mom either. He was devoted to her, to us. They were young, too, younger than us, I know, but what's three years in the end? And then it got hard, too hard, and he…" She was crying. He could just see the tears drop off her cheeks and make dark circles on her pyjama pants. One landed on his hand, and he reached up to swipe the others from her face before they could join it.

"I'm not him, Maya. We could have been having this baby right out of high school like they did, we could have had him before then, too. I would still be here, with you, with him."

"I can't even begin to think what that would have been like…" she took a breath, let it out. "But I can believe it anyway. I think that's one of the things that made me fall in love with you," she admitted, making him smile. "You were like the embodiment of everything my father wasn't. I'd look at you, and I'd know that, no matter what, you were the one person I could always count on to be there." She was smiling, too, now, while he was sitting there, suddenly being the one on the verge of tears as he listened to her. "So, really, this nightmare is just kind of… it's pissing me off," she decided.

"Yeah?" he asked, smirking.

"It's trying to cast you as somebody you're not, and I'm not having that."

"No?"

"Hel… Heck no," she cringed at her correction, which only made him laugh as he leaned in and softly kissed her. "Shut up," she smiled when their lips met.

Despite this bit of reassurance, it had still taken some time for them both to get back to sleep. The thing with nightmares, she knew, was that they had almost as much power when they weren't happening, because the chance that they could return was enough to make falling asleep again a bit of a challenge. So, while he knew they were still awake, both of them, he decided it was as good of a time as any to bring up Valentine's Day, which was coming up in just a couple of days.

"I don't really have anything Valentine worthy in my maternity wardrobe," she pointed out.

"I don't mind."

"I know, but I do… a little…" she admitted, turning carefully until she was facing him.

"Hey," he smiled as he got 'bump bumped.' "Maybe you could borrow something from Willow?"

"Maybe…" Maya agreed, but he could tell plainly from her voice…

"You don't want to go out, do you?"

"Is that bad?" she asked, looking up at him.

"The whole point is that we're together and we have a good time, right? There's no rule that says we have to go somewhere. The others probably will though, which means… we get the house to ourselves."

"Yeah, it does mean that," she agreed with a smile.

"So, maybe you borrow something from Willow to wear, and… maybe I cook for you…"

"Liking this so far," she nodded slowly.

"And maybe we don't have to put any shoes on…"

"Liking it more…"

"And we eat on the couch, watching whatever you want."

"Genius, I love it." He stroked at her cheek, looking into her eyes, and she hummed. "Just keep on looking at me like that, I might actually sleep through the night."

"Done," he vowed.

X

"Sorry I'm late, had a doctor's appointment," Willow explained as Maya opened the door and let her in.

"On Valentine's Day?" Maya asked with a flare of drama, like it should be a holiday where things closed for some reason. Willow laughed. She was looking around, which Maya guessed to mean she was checking for Lucas. "He's downstairs showering," Maya told her friend and bandmate.

"Good," she opened up the bag she was carrying and offered it out. Maya reached in and pulled out a dress. "That's the one you wanted, right?"

"Yep. Hope it fits…"

"Go try it on," Willow nodded up the stairs.

She had half a mind to just change right where she stood, but finally she led her fellow mom-to-be up to the second floor and into hers and Lucas' room, where she pulled off her shirt and pants before slipping on the dress. Willow stepped up and helped her get it on right before stepping back to check out how it looked on Maya.

"Got this for a family friend's wedding a few weeks back, should do for Valentine's Day, yeah?" she smiled approvingly. Maya turned to see herself in the mirror. "Do you like it?"

"Yeah, I do, except now I'm thinking if I'm not going to be wearing shoes then maybe I should do my toe nails to match the dress… and the fingers, too," she looked to her hands.

Once Willow had gone, off to go and prepare for her own Valentine, Maya had picked out a bottle from her collection. Before she could sit and start tackling the task – which was really getting to be a Task with the passing weeks – she sent a message off to Lucas' phone, telling him the room was now off limits until the start of their Date. Whether he heard her complain her way through the painting of the toe nails while he was downstairs working on their dinner, he never said and she never asked.

After finishing with both her toes and fingers, she'd sat back on the bed, waiting for everything to dry properly. As she lay there, she started to feel the baby moving, which brought a smile to her face before she could carefully set her palm over the spot where she'd felt him without scrapping her nails.

"Having a good swim there, Sprout?" she asked.

Sometimes she'd try calling him by his name, but it still didn't feel right. Maybe it was just that, while he was in there, she still saw him as her little Sprout, not Alexander… Alex… Or maybe she really had changed her mind about the choice, and not just because of the initials thing. Her aunt Luna had pointed out that their best bet around that potential for teasing was to simply cut it off at the source. Let Alex, if that would be his name, grow up knowing about the alien puppet, let him hold his initials as something fun, something they wouldn't get to use against him. She liked that, but she still didn't know, probably wouldn't, not until she and Lucas got to hold their son in their arms, until they saw his face…

She didn't even feel herself drifting off to sleep. The next thing she knew, she opened her eyes to find Lucas smiling down at her.

"Oh… hey…" she greeted him, still half asleep, then, "No, wait, you're not supposed to see me until I come down, you're supposed to do the face."

"I did do the face," he assured her. "Dinner's ready," he added, offering his hands to help her up. Once she'd stood up on her bare but adorned feet, she pressed her hand to his chest so he'd stand still before taking a couple steps back and waiting. She didn't even have to prompt him, really. He looked at her standing there and the smile crept on to his face at once.

"Okay, let's go," she nodded, satisfied.

Of the many things she could count on, where Lucas was involved and where it led directly to his doing something for her, he had taken the combination of a house to themselves, Valentine's Day, and her indirectly promising that she wouldn't be coming anywhere near downstairs until it was time to eat, and he'd run with it. When they came down the stairs and reached the landing, she discovered what he had managed to assemble in her absence. The flowers, the lights, the (coffee) table setting… It all brought a renewed smile to her face.

"If I didn't have this here ring already in my possession, I'd start thinking you were about to propose to me," she turned a grin to him.

"I'd be happy to do it again," Lucas looked back to her in kind.

"I'm pretty attached to my one proposal though," Maya insisted as he led her down the rest of the way. He led her to the living room, where the smell of food was as good a motivator as she could ask for. Lucas would describe himself as an okay cook. He wouldn't be entering any competitions anytime soon, and he could sometimes botch a recipe, but when he got something really right, it was nothing short of amazing. He'd made one of those recipes he knew he could nail tonight, and she couldn't wait to dig in.

"Got your pick of the entertainment," he gave a sweeping gesture toward the television, making her chuckle. "What will it be?"

"Well… I could go super cheesy romantic comedies… or big explosive action adventures…"

"Is there a cheesy romantic action adventure?" Lucas smiled.

"I think that's Titanic," Maya countered, then after a beat, "Yeah, let's do that."

"You're just going to yell at them about everything they're doing wrong, aren't you?"

"They. Could. Have. Fit. On. That. Door," she punctuated each word with intent.

So, they sat on the couch in their Date wear and bare feet, with their plates in hand, and they watched Leo and Kate on their way through one genre and then the next as they hit that iceberg and everything changed. They'd finished eating by then, dinner and dessert. When Lucas held up his arm as though to offer his shoulder, Maya hesitated, pointing out that she'd actually found a position that was kind of perfect for her back.

"You can lean on my shoulder though," she smiled, holding up her arm.

"Alright," he nodded, stretching out along the couch and leaning to the space she'd opened for him. It was inevitable, as he found himself so close to her, his hand came to find her belly and settled there, which suited her fine. Their sprout seemed content with it, too, with the way he'd move around.

"Do you think he knows you're you?" she asked. "I swear it feels different when you're there and he moves."

"Must be all those long talks we've been having," Lucas suggested, which made her laugh.

"Must be, yeah."

As the film progressed, Lucas was treated to what felt like a much more subdued version of Maya's usual rantings over the actions and inactions of the various characters attempting to get off the sinking boat. They had watched this movie a handful of times in the time they'd known each other, and always she'd be shouting at them, but now the words were the same while the tone was kept flat and unassuming, like she didn't want to overdo it because of the baby.

"Oh, here it comes," she sighed, as the door scene came. "We don't stand for this nonsense," she addressed the baby in her belly. When he kicked, he made both his parents laugh. "Look at you, making us proud and you're not even born yet." As the movie ended, they let the credits roll. "My mother was in high school when this came out," Maya told Lucas. "She convinced my father to take her and see it in theaters. She said he looked like he wanted to just leave already… right up until they had the drawing scene," she rolled her eyes. Then she started to giggle.

"What?" he looked up at her.

"I just remembered the first time we saw it, you and me," she managed to say through her still rolling laughter. It had been the first time they'd ever seen it, too. "You turned so red…" she laughed on, as he pulled himself up to sit and look at her, grinning despite himself.

"I'm not red now, am I?" he pointed out.

"Better not be," she tried to give him a squint of the eye but only laughed again. She tried to stall it now, gripping her lip in her teeth.

"She's got nothing on you," Lucas vowed as he leaned in to kiss his Valentine.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners