A/N: Four days behind...

September 6th 2023

Chapter 249
We Unite For Cake

Maya and Lucas had been in their room a while, discussing their days, when the girls appeared in the doorway and stopped there. They all had a look on their faces like something had not gone quite how they'd wanted it to go, and now they were unsure how to proceed.

"Hey… What's up?" Maya asked them, and as they were prone to do, the younger five looked to Marianne for an answer. She didn't have to be told twice. At once, her shoulders rounded in resolve and she moved into the room, directly toward her father.

"We need to talk to Mom," she informed him, with the red quickly interpreted as 'you need to not be here for this.' Lucas could hear Maya biting back a snicker, and he folded his smile down into a tip of the head.

"I'll go see how lunch is getting along," he told her, moving out of the room, through the gap opened up between the twins and Lucy and the little sisters. As soon as he'd cleared past them, the girls scrambled into the room and shut the door.

This had been a repeated scene over the last couple of weeks, all the way to the day before The Big Day, the day before Lucas' birthday, as Maya and the girls would get together to work on their plans for him. It wasn't just going to his thirty-ninth though. It would also be Nicholas Orlando's tenth, and they could never forget it.

"Hey, I was just about to call you," Maya smiled as she picked up Riley's call. She was putting finishing touches on the wrapping for Nicky's gift, which she'd finally been able to pick up. "I was wondering if you wanted to drop by for lunch tomorrow. I hear your favorite's on the menu at the cafeteria," she revealed. She had a good idea of what her face would look like at the moment. Two decades on, she would still queue up for a good bowl of…

"I don't think I can make it," Riley replied, and Maya could just hear the edge of genuine disappointment peeking through. "About tomorrow…" Now she sounded apologetic, which allowed Maya to put the pieces together before they had all been presented to her.

"What's wrong with Nicky?" she asked, and her best friend sighed.

"He was feeling off earlier, stuck it out, but as soon as he got home, he got sick. Dylan's got him to lie down for now. We're keeping an eye on him, but he's definitely not going to school tomorrow, and… well…"

"No, hey, I get it. Not the best way for a kid to hit double digits," she remarked sympathetically, recalling Marianne's excitement about crossing that one milestone back in October.

When they hung up, Maya sat back with a frown, looking at the present before her. This couldn't be the end of it…

Gathering Lucas along with the girls this time, she relayed the news that Riley had given her. Everyone was appropriately upset, not so much about any of their plans for the young turtle not happening so much as his not getting to have his birthday the way it should have gone. That wasn't the end of it though, was it? No way were they going to let Nicky have a bad tenth birthday. Sure, his family would still be there and, knowing them, they'd already be doing their part to try and fix things for him, but they had always been closely connected to the boy's birthdays, from the day he was born, so they weren't about to sit on the sidelines with this one, no way.

It had to be reminded a few times as they tried and figured out what they might do that Nicky was in fact sick, and it was still important that he should take it easy… as much as possible. They wanted him to have a great birthday, sure, but they also didn't want to make things worse for him. Eventually, they did get to a place where they were satisfied, so all they had to do was wait until the morning.

"Hey… You awake yet? Birthday man?" Maya's whispered voice was the first thing he heard when he woke up, and Lucas had to work very hard not to smile… yet. He knew that, for his patience, he would be well rewarded. He could practically see her features quirking under the challenge of getting him to break, deciding how far she could go, knowing full well that they were on a clock before one or all of their daughters across and down the hall came running into the room. By that logic, he could also take a guess as to what she'd pick as the most effective way of getting him to show that he was awake… and she played dirty. His best way out was to give his best performance of just now waking up.

"Hey…" he spoke 'sleepily' as he turned around and found her turned on to her side, a hand this close to cutting in.

"Good morning," she squinted at him, letting her hand down in disappointment. There was no way she had fallen for it, but possibly she'd decided to give him this one… It was his birthday.

"Good morning," he repeated as she leaned in to kiss him.

"Happy birthday, Huck."

"Huck?" he laughed.

"Trying it out," she shrugged.

"Twenty-six years of Huckleberry, I'm kind of set in my ways, but… it's interesting. I think you should try it out some more," he hummed, and she nodded, thinking the same. "So… How long do you think we might have before…" She held up a finger and he stopped, listened… Hushed voices, giggles… The Daughter Train was inbound.

"Save it for later, yeah, Huck?" she whispered, and he had all of three seconds to course-correct his grin before the girls burst into the room.

They left the house right after breakfast. Most of them wouldn't get to stick around the Orlando house very long before they had to head off to work, to school, but Lucas had seen to it that he wouldn't be needed at the ranch until later.

"Hi! What are you doing here?" They were greeted at the door by eight-year-old Emily, who looked as though she'd run off at the sound of the bell, halfway through getting her hair done. She had one braid neatly collecting one side of her hair, while the other still hung loose and long. "Mom! Aunt Maya's here and everybody!" she called back just as her little sisters came rushing at her back. At six and three, Megan and Aimee looked enough like their big sister that they might have been triplets themselves, had they been born together.

"You missed breakfast," Megan informed them from around a baby tooth gap.

"That's alright, she's still got some," Lucas nodded to Aimee, who was picking at fruit from the bowl she carried snug in her arms. This made her laugh, even as her sisters both remembered that it was their uncle's birthday and they both hugged him at once.

While Maya took the kids off into the kitchen, Lucas headed up the stairs to Nicky's room. The door was closed, showing a poster of his favorite basketball player that covered the spot where he had written his name in marker when he was six years old. He knocked and announced himself, asking if he could enter. After a few seconds, he heard a bumping noise near the ground, a faint motor… He smirked.

"Want to back the car up a bit?" he asked, and the motor retreated. "Good? Alright, coming in." He opened the door, checking the floor for the remote controlled car. It had been a Christmas present, and it had not lost its shine for him nearly a half a year later. Today, he had used it to communicate as he sat propped up against his pillows in his bed. He definitely had that sickly paleness about him. Mostly though, he looked about as bummed out as a ten-year-old would be, being in this state on his birthday. "Voice not working?" Lucas asked. Nicky shrugged, shook his head. "Got it." He went and sat across from him. "Can I give it a go?" he asked, motioning to the remote. Nicky handed it over, and Lucas went about making the car go around in a circle, a figure eight… It had Nicky's attention, which was as he had hoped it would. "How are you feeling this morning?" Lucas asked, resisting the urge to reach out and feel his forehead.

Nicky picked up a pad of paper from next to his bed along with a marker. There were already words on the page, which spelled out his breakfast order from earlier. He wrote a few words and turned it over. I'm stuck here.

"Yeah, about that," Lucas smiled. Nicky stared back at him, curious.

Downstairs, the Orlando kitchen was overrun with the nine girls talking about what was ahead for all of them that day, the Friars telling the Orlandos about what they were going to be doing for their father's birthday once they all got home from school. Cookies had materialized, as though they hadn't all recently had breakfast, and they were disappearing fast. Behind them, Dylan was having a very 'involved' conversation with Ezra while Maya and Riley stood by the counter, finding it hard not to laugh at the pair of them together. Dylan and babies was always a win, and it could be seen right in the way the junior turtles would crowd around him.

"I'm really glad I had my son on your husband's birthday," Riley declared, and Maya snorted.

"That was all you," she tipped her head to her.

"You know what I mean though. I know how much Lucas means to Nicky, and today, I think he was more bummed out about not having their ice cream thing than anything else."

"Yeah, he does," Maya nodded, turning her eyes up. "Means a lot to him, too."

Lucas was more than happy to play sitter for his friends that day, doing all he could to ensure that if he ended up holding his end of the bargain with his birthday buddy, he wouldn't end up making him sick all over again. They had a relaxed morning, watched television… By lunch, Nicky was starting to perk up, so after they'd eaten, and digested a while, Lucas invited him to go and change out of his PJs so they might head out. He knew exactly what this meant, and it was the biggest that Lucas saw him smile so far that day.

"Nothing too crazy this year, huh?" he commented as he saw the boy's chosen ice cream come together. Nicky shrugged, but he kept smiling as he watched the woman behind the counter work. He was just happy to be there, the two of them… The ice cream was almost more of an afterthought this time around.

"I can help with Ezra sometimes," Nicky declared as they sat across from one another and ate their ice cream. Lucas was glad to hear his voice coming back around.

"I'm sure you could. You're great with him."

"We have a lot of sisters and we're the only boys," Nicky further explained, which got a nod out of Lucas. Yes, he could see that. Nicky was a great big brother, and he loved all three of his sisters, but he couldn't pretend as though he wouldn't have loved to have a brother of his own, too, and not just being the brother. It would be great for Ezra to have that connection with him, too, beyond his pack of big sisters.

"You're free to come over anytime, you know that," Lucas told him, and the birthday boy nodded before digging back into his ice cream.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners