A/N: [July 6th 2024]

September 25th 2023

Chapter 268
We Ask For Keys

It was a good thing they both knew her siblings as well as they did, or else that morning would have started a whole other way. Most of them by now had lived under this roof for a solid four years, or they were doing it at the moment. They all had keys, knew how to get in… The few who did not live here, because they were still living at home, knew how to get in, too, even if they didn't have keys to call their own. This in itself had been the thing to give them away. They knew how to get in, but not how to be as covert about it as they thought they did. That, plus the fact that they were just waking up at the time, alerted Maya and Lucas to some good natured would-be intruders. They had barely made it through the door that they looked up and found their sister and brother-in-law staring down at them from the top of the stairs.

"Good morning, Friars," MJ saluted them with a grin, while Haley tried to rein in her snort.

"Have I taught you nothing?" Maya shook her head.

"About art? A lot of things. This? We were on our own," MJ waved a finger around.

"Yeah, I need extra credit big sistering," Haley added.

"We'll see about that in a few years," Lucas suggested as they all moved up the stairs, quiet on their feet so not to wake anyone, least of all the birthday girls on the second floor… not yet at least.

Maya left the pouncing to her younger siblings. MJ saw to Nellie, while Haley went to Gracie, both of them startled out of sleep with wishes of a happy twenty-first.

"Merry, merry happy day, sweet Penelope," MJ intoned.

"Why thank you, Master Matthew," she replied, matching his accent as best she could, barely awake as she was.

"First round's on you, Gracie Mouse," Haley squeeze hugged her sister with a blooming smile.

"Sure, orange soda for you?" Gracie hugged her baby sister back in all her loving gentleness.

"Orange soda," Haley giggled.

"Okay, that's way too quiet, come on," MJ yanked for Nellie to follow him, so they might pile on to Gracie's bed with her and Haley. There was a lot of squealing and laughing, and it only calmed enough to demand that Maya come and join them, where she belonged. She went gladly, finding the two brown-haired heads, the better to kiss them and wish them a happy birthday.

Of all the moments for her to realize it, Maya recalled the twins' first birthday and, in doing so, determined that it would have been twenty years since the summer of Philly, when Lucas had flown out to let her know what had happened, the night of their accident, and when her parents had finally lifted the ban that had kept them apart for the better part of a year. She looked at him, and he was thinking it, too. So long ago, and yet not…

They had left the pouncing to the kids, but before long Katy, Shawn, and the Clutterbuckets joined the already loaded dinner table, as Bobby and Ethan Davis soon did as well, joining their girlfriends and getting playfully teased by MJ, recalling how Nellie and Gracie had not been visited by the same 'B and E' team they might have hoped for and quickly getting smacked in the shoulder for his efforts.

Maya and Lucas had been thinking more and more about extending their dining room, the better to accommodate not only their regularly expected numbers at meals but also the just as expected number of guests they so regularly received, and that morning was no different, except that it really felt like it would be in their best interests to finally go ahead and get it done. They knew just who to contact for it, too. It had been years since their little crew had worked on this house, the better to set to stage for Lucas' proposal, but he could not imagine not getting his father and grandfather involved, them and as many others as they'd need; they had no worries on assembling as many people as they'd need.

"Why not? Let's do it," MJ declared, pulling their attention back to the table, where they had missed the conversation unfolding around them.

"Do what?" Lucas asked, and his brother-in-law turned around.

"Do you guys mind if I move in today instead of next week? I mean… It's their greatest birthday wish," he pressed his hand to his heart and turned humble eyes to his older sisters.

"Is it too late to change our minds?" Nellie teased.

"Yeah, can we vote him out?" Gracie chimed in.

"Hey!" MJ 'complained.'

The only one who really needed to approve this decision in the end seemed to be Haley, who would have to cut short her 'bro revoir' plans, as she called them. She agreed though, if only so that she might spring some surprises on him when he least expected it. All three of her sisters volunteered to help her pull this off, and MJ looked appropriately concerned for his safety all of a sudden.

So, they went back to the Hunter house, where MJ had – to no surprise to his parents and his sisters – done next to nothing to pack up his old room ahead of moving into his new one. He mostly tossed things in bags and bins, the better to sort it all out once he'd return to the Friar house. The only exceptions to this rule were his most prized possessions, most of them clothes, shoes, and other accessories.

"Maya?"

"Yes, Star Boy?" she asked back, grinning, as they drove back to the house.

"Is it true they're going to start doing your musical in other countries? Translated and everything?" Some of the chatter around them quieted down, suggesting some people were now paying attention where they hadn't been before, and they wanted to know the answer, too.

"Where did you hear that?" she casually asked him.

"I have my ear to the ground… figuratively speaking… So, is it true?"

"Might be… little bit… Getting there, anyway." He grinned. "But that's not important right now. You're about to move into my house, remember?"

"Oh, great, are there rules? There's rules, aren't there?" he sighed dramatically, pawing at the window. "Take me back! Mother! Papa!" The others laughed.

"No, Uncle MJ, you're coming, right?" Lucy demanded, looking concerned, and MJ quickly reassured her that he'd been joking.

"I do that a lot, you know?" he smiled at his niece, and she nodded. "You bet I'm coming," he offered his fist for bumping, and she merrily returned the gesture. "On your birthday, I'm making pancakes."

"Pancakes!" Remy and Kacey hollered from behind him, which made him jump and made Lucy giggle.

"All the pancakes, I promise, as many as you like," MJ told his nieces in glad surrender.

"Seven each?" Kacey suggested. MJ looked to his sister and her husband to ask if they could actually put down seven whole pancakes. Maya and Lucas looked to one another, quietly appraising, before Maya mimed the rough size the pancakes would have to be in order for the triplets to eat seven of them.

"You guys are beasties," MJ blinked, impressed. Kacey, Remy, and Lucy all grinned with pride of their own.

"I told Nellie and Gracie about the pancakes," Marianne informed her uncle, holding up her mother's phone.

"You did not," MJ turned to her. "What did they say?" Marianne looked back at the screen and read.

"They said 'Where's our freaking pancakes, little brother? Annie, tell him we cleaned that up for you, but he should get the message.'" She quietly laughed, suggesting she knew exactly the word they were going to write, but she was not going to say it out loud, unless she planned on getting grounded until she was in middle school.

"That is going to be so many pancakes…" MJ tossed his head back in defeat.

MJ did not actually have to make forty-two pancakes that day, but he did get made to sign a contract wherein the twins would collect on their 'back pancakes' until they had been paid in full… and in pancakes. He was free now to go up and start unpacking, settling into the room he'd share with Wyatt, and he got help from his new roommate himself – along with his other, much smaller roommate, who was very good at carrying things from one person to another when asked – and his sisters and brother-in-law. There wasn't a lot to do, but they wanted to be involved, and he appreciated it.

"Hey, is it my imagination, or are you being more quiet than usual?" MJ asked Wyatt, and his sort of brother looked up like he'd been cornered. "Oh, look at that, I got it right. Tell me everything? What's her name? Or his name… or their name?" The others looked between the two of them, like they might have been at a tennis match, even though only one player was presently sending the ball along. Wyatt had turned his attention to the stack of books he'd been organizing.

"Hey, you don't have to say anything if you don't want to," Maya told him. She knew as well as they all did that his romantic history had not exactly been much to talk about. He'd never really had a proper girlfriend, and Finneas' mother really didn't count at this point. And since his son had been born, there had been no one, not to their knowledge.

He never actually answered, and none of them pushed on the matter. At some point they were aware of MJ awkwardly apologizing for cornering him like that, not realizing, but Wyatt promised that he had nothing to be sorry about. They were good; they were brothers, as good as.

When it was down to those who lived in the Friar house – now counting fifteen humans, six dogs, and one bird, it took a moment to sink in that MJ was finally here to stay, as he would, for the next four years, and that he wasn't simply visiting. Maya had never lived with her little Hunter brother, and it was one thing when it came her Hart-Lane siblings, but him, and Haley… Now he was here, playing around with her daughters, who took great glee in climbing all over him, and… and he was home. He looked at her at one time, and the way he smiled… He'd thought it, too, and he was as happy about it as she was. He'd never gotten to live with her either.

They would be reunited again with the residents of the Hunter-Hart house, at dinner, which was at a restaurant rather than either of their homes. With all of them there, it was as loud as any dinner of theirs, but how could it not be? Nellie and Gracie had been in their lives for a whole twenty-one years now, and any birthday was bound to bring out stories, the silly, the emotional, the embarrassing… Seeing them both there, grown adults the pair of them, it still didn't feel possible. Not all of them there had had the privilege of knowing them from the day they'd been born, but some of them had, and they only became more thankful for this with every year they got to stack on to the one before.

The twins – Hunter and Davis both – would separate from the group after dinner, with birthday plans of their own to see to. The Friars would return home, with the new member of their household never so happy to help in bedtime routines as he was that day.

"You might need to work on your bedtime stories," Maya teased her brother, leading him out of the green room. "The point is for them to fall asleep, not be enthralled and awake."

"Hey, what do you want me to do? I'm a performer."

"Yeah, you are, Star Boy."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners