Making a snowcat was harder than Loke thought it would be.
After more than forty minutes of making four perfectly shaped and sized cylinders for legs that were probably too thick for a snow sculpture cat (especially in representing their cat, Scrubs), Loke attempted to balance a long oval-shaped snow chunk onto the four legs to create some sort of a body. He squatted, slowly and steadily transferring the weight from the snowcat's body to its legs.
Finally, once he felt ready to let gravity determine fate, he let go, standing up and backing his hands away from the entire structure.
And by some sheer miracle, the entire thing stayed.
He sighed in relief, stretching out his back — having been hunched over and shaping snow for a long while now. He looked over at what Lucy was working on.
"Ah," he remarked, seeing one snowperson — complete with two dark round pebbles for eyes, a leftover carrot from the refrigerator for the nose, and twigs for a smile — about a meter away from his half-done cat. "You finished one already."
"Mhm!" she affirmed, rolling yet another large snow base next her snowman. "And I'm making a second to go right next to it."
He smiled. He loved seeing her so focused on her work. Lucy was capable of doing anything that she put her mind to. Her determination would stop at nothing.
"So is this one me?" he asked her, gesturing toward the completed snowman before scooping a clump of snow into his hands. He squints, thinking that he sees some finger-made etchings in the snowman under its right eye.
"Yeah," she replied, smiling cheekily. "I couldn't really get your tattoo exactly right. It was too complicated for the snow. Sorry."
Loke shrugged, indifferent. "I'm not doing so great with our cat."
Lucy looks over at his creation. "I don't think Scrubs would mind," she laughed.
"I suppose the snow family on the front lawn will never actually perfectly portray the real family living inside the actual house," he agreed.
"We always have next winter," Lucy reminded him.
"Indeed."
Loke kneeled back down to the ground, picking a still snow-heavy patch on the grass to roll his starter snowball in. After packing the snowball down to the size he wanted, as proper for a snowcat head, he walked back to his half-complete cat, settling the head on top of the torso toward the end. He rotated the head back and forth a bit, grinding the snow together to keep both pieces together. Once secure, Loke added two clumps of snow on top of the head to make ears.
"There!" he declared, getting up and brushing the excess snow off his gloves.
He looked over at Lucy's work — now next to the snowman him is a complete snowman her.
"Adding something to yourself?" he called out to her, spotting her scoop up another ball of snow.
She didn't reply, just rolling along another smaller ball up next to the two snowpeople.
He laughed. "I know my snowcat is bad. Are you redo-ing for me?" he asked.
She looked up at him with a big smile.
"Nope," she answered. She picked up a smaller ball of snow, set aside from before, and plopped it onto the larger ball.
"Then what are you —" He interrupted himself to think for a moment. "Another person?"
She paused, her smile growing wider. "Yes," she replied.
He furrowed his eyebrows. "Who?"
She shook her head, not giving him the answer.
"Who?" he asked again. "In our family? Another —"
Oh.
Wait —
"I'm pregnant, Loke," she announced, hearing his sudden silence and seeing his widening eyes.
"Lucy!" he exclaimed, dropping everything and coming toward her to bundle her up into a deep embrace. Unable to control the happiness welling inside of him, he lifted her up off the ground and spun her around a couple of times.
She laughed. "Put me down!"
"Lucy," he said, standing her back onto the ground and pressing his lips onto her forehead. "Lucy…"
"I was going to wait until later to tell you," she explained, out of breath with excitement. "But I thought this might have been a better way."
"You shouldn't have waited at all," he jokingly admonished her. He kissed her again, this time on the nose. "You should have told me once you found out!"
"I think you might have been driving at the time," Lucy teased.
Loke gave himself a brief moment to calm down, looking deep into her eyes.
And all he saw was Lucy. Lucy and him. Lucy and him and their cat and their child. Lucy and him.
He took a breath and then smiled.
"We're going to parents, Lucy," he said. "You and I. Parents."
"Yeah," she said, a blush forming over her face and her smile widening over her lips. "Parents."
When they wake up in the morning to the howl of the wind outside, they don't even have to draw the curtains to know that Loke is not going to be leaving for the airport anytime soon.
"I should at least check to make sure anyway," he mumbles into the back of her neck, his nose nuzzling through her hair.
She groans, not bothering to open her eyes. She feels around for her phone blindly instead — dropped somewhere between the pillows and the sheets. Eventually she finds it and then passes it over her shoulder to him, tapping it once onto his skin.
She feels his hand lift from her waist, coming up from under the covers to take the phone from her hand. She keeps her eyes shut as she hears him unlock the phone — he lets out a little moan when the bright screen hits his sleep-washed eyes — and go online to check the flight status.
After a minute, he takes a deep breath in and sighs. She hears the plop of her phone on the pillow behind his head, feels his hand come back to her hips.
"Delayed?" she murmurs, her voice cracking from disuse.
"This flight is delayed due to severe weather conditions," he recites. "We apologize for any inconveniences."
She laughs. "Nothing to be sorry about."
He kisses her shoulder. "I guess I won't be going anywhere this morning."
"Good," she says, and then with a sneaky smile, adds, "But now that we're both awake…" She reaches down for his free hand, and then guides him to her breast. "I suppose we can use this time doing whatever we please."
She hears him chuckle.
"And whatever do you mean by whatever we please?"
"Take a guess."
"Won't have to," he growls, his lips moving down her back, his hand squeezing.
Usually Loke was caught in storms on the other side of the flight on his way home — and that was always terrible. The absolute worst part of being married to a traveling businessman.
But now, seeing the heavy blizzard going on outside, no sign of the snow letting up, with Loke on this side of the flight and with him stuck in bed with her — she thinks that storms aren't too bad after all.
Some nights she can't sleep.
She can't really explain it. The nightmares started ever since her firstborn son, and whoever knows why, because he is the greatest gift that she never expected to desire. Once the sun goes down, she tries to get to bed as soon as possible. She tries to encourage her eyes to shut, her mind to quiet, her breath to soften, but sometimes sleeping — and keeping asleep — proves to be the most difficult thing to do in a day.
She doesn't have an explanation. She's not scared, and she doesn't think she's anxious. And bad dreams stopped haunting her mind ever since Loke came back from the war, safe and sound.
In fact, she doesn't even know if these are dreams. There's no people, no sounds — just colors of shapes that she never remembers upon waking, but nevertheless leave a sour and acrid taste on her mouth.
Tonight she gets out of bed again at midnight. She doesn't wake up because she never fell asleep.
After two hours and eighteen minutes of staring and waiting for the red digital numbers on the clock on the nightstand tick by, she gives up. Lucy isn't a quitter, but she also hates wasting time, and she knows there are more efficient ways of getting herself to sleep than trying to do so alone.
She steps down the stairs to the living room. Slowly, her husband's figure comes into sight — peaceful, wearing a dark green sweater, reading a book with his back propped against the coffee table, cross-legged sitting on the fluffy rug by the couch, a thick blanket draped over his legs.
The fireplace makes the edges of his blue hair shine a soft yellow-white, makes his face glow amber. The shadows of the fire flicker over jaw, the small smile over his lips that forms when he hears her bare feet on the wood floor pad toward him.
"Couldn't sleep?" he asks her.
She looks up at the family photos on the wall behind him — one of when they were married, one of him throwing up their baby son into the air and her scared shitless watching him do so, and the center one — the largest —of the two of them embracing, their son between them.
He turns around to see what she's gazing at.
"I've tucked him in for the night," he tells her. "We didn't even get through one page of Fairy Tail before he dropped to sleep."
She laughs softly, glancing once more at the photos before she kneels down next to him, leaning into his shoulders. "I wish I could still do that."
He frowns. "I'm sorry nothing's worked."
She pecks him on the cheek before she slips herself under the blanket, stretching herself out on the rug and resting her head on his lap. "It's fine," she tells him. "Everyone says to try this or that, take this or that, but I think what works best is just cuddling up next to you."
"Let me read to you, too," he suggests, with a light chuckle. "Apparently that helped our son."
"Mhm…" she agrees, letting the warm of the fireplace, the warm of the blanket, the warm of his body envelop her.
And so he starts to read — something about nebulas and stars and the ionized gas components that were common between them — things that Lucy doesn't really try to understand but she listens anyway and lets her eyes go shut, her mind to quiet, her breath to soften.
She doesn't need his voice to soothe her to sleep. His hand running through her hair, his fingers loosening the tangled waves, is more than enough.
In midnight , waking up,. Both Loke and Lucy made love like 50 times like lion would do to his lioness.
Lucy if we keep going anymore we're gonna end up having 33 baby's. said Loke while panting
Well I'm a lioness enough to do that ain't I Loke? Said Lucy while giving a lioness challenge look.
Loke smiled and gave the blonde a chaste kiss
Sure you do master