Chapter 91
Come Little Monsters

October 2024

"Hey… What time is it?" Maya blinked as she woke properly. It took a few seconds more for her to situate everything, but already Lucas' presence suggested that time would have passed. Last she'd been aware of, he was out at work, and it was nap time for the boys, not so much for herself, and yet here she was. Lucas had Noah in his arms, the five-month-old watching his big brother with curiosity. Elliott was sitting in a ball on the bed, near his mother, his hair a tussled post-nap mess, babbling along like he might have been trying to tell the tale of Opie Bunny, the stuffed toy presently being made to hop along by his master, who would come to chant 'up up up!' every so often, only to melt into laughter. Maya had been audience to many a show like this, and she could take hours of her son's machinations.

"Dinner, almost," Lucas told her, equally amused as he watched Elliott play. "I just got here."

"I so did not mean to sleep that much, or… at all," Maya sat up, rubbing at her eyes before reaching over to carefully brush the almost seventeen-month-old's hair back into place. He took this without pausing in his 'up up up!' games.

"He wasn't having it again?" Lucas guessed, and she shook her head with a sigh. They'd struggled to get both boys down for their naps in the afternoon, mostly because Elliott would just try and get up again, would want to see his little brother. Then when they'd try and have them go down in separate rooms, one kept in Lucas' old room/their temporary home while the work on the attic continued back at their house, and the other in Thomas and Melinda's room, it would be a mess. Elliott understood when it was nap time now, it seemed, and he would not stay down when they took him away. The only way they actually got him to go to sleep was if they kept him in the room, with Noah nearby. This, in turn, made it so that someone – usually Maya, and Lucas after her – would have to stay with the two of them.

"We've still got more than a month out here, by the time we get back home…" Maya sighed. "They're actually sleeping most nights through, and that's great, but then we'll have to work Elliott back into the nursery and it's going to be a load of tantrums from him, and Noah won't do much better."

"And we're not going to help either one of them if we just move him into the nursery, too," Lucas added, looking down to their younger son, who raised his eyes up to him at the sound of his voice. He gave him a funny look, and Noah laughed, getting a kiss to the forehead from his father in response. By now, maybe sensing something was happening around him, Elliott abandoned his bunny in favor of scooting over until he could be picked up and held in his mother's lap. Maya hugged him close, and to feel how he held to her, too, she could only be happy for the present, setting the future aside for the time being. They'd get there, she knew they would… eventually.

"How was it at the store today?" she asked, looking up to her husband with a smile that said 'let's focus on that instead.'

"Well, it was book club day," he gladly informed her, sitting across from her.

"Already? Month's barely halfway done," Maya chuckled.

"That's what I told them. They said they were done already, and they figured they'd get ahead of things and pick up the next one already, double up. "They also wanted me to pass a message on. You told Ariel you'd help her with her costume?"

"I did, yeah," she grinned at once.

"Right, well, now they both would like your assistance, Ariel and Daphne, 'if that's not too much,'" he raised one hand to air quote while the other kept hold of Noah.

"No, no, that should be fine," Maya confidently nodded, looking around until she found where she'd left her phone. Picking it up to send a text and keeping Elliott from getting a hold of it at the same time was easier said than done, though she was getting a fairly good handle on distracting him. Once Noah was big enough to get in on this, she'd have to find a new tactic…

The plan was made. She would meet them at the mall the following afternoon, after they got out of school, so they could figure out what they needed and hunt for supplies. Actually, she would head out earlier, the better to lock down costumes for the boys, and Lucas and herself.

"You know, it is our second Halloween the four of us," she smirked to herself as she wheeled the double stroller into the mall, earbuds in and connected on a call with Lucas, off on a break at school.

"We barely knew that Noah was coming last time," Lucas laughed.

"No, I know, but we were very actively working to hide that he was in there, so that counts," she argued.

"Alright, I'll take that," he agreed. "We do have that picture."

"Me holding Elliott, you holding my not-a-belly, yes," Maya smiled. Thinking back on it now, it sent her emotions on an understandable whirl, thinking about how it was Elliott's second Halloween, which just felt impossible. "Well, we're not playing 'hide the baby' this year, so what's the plan? Group costume? Or do we do our own thing and find something ridiculously cute for the boys? It is really going to be a problem how much I look forward to them being afraid I'll bust out their baby pictures someday," she considered in a pensive tone which dipped back into a smile when she heard Lucas chuckle in her ears.

"It's going to be a couple more years before they have any say in their costumes," he pointed out. "Might as well have fun with it, right?"

"I like the way you think," Maya laughed.

"We could go all in with their nicknames," Lucas suggested.

"What, like a sprout and a bee?" she smiled, picturing it easily in her head. "How many times would we have to explain it though?"

"Yeah, good point… What about you, any ideas?"

"To the surprise of absolutely no one, I have enough ideas for several Halloweens and way more kids than we actually have at the moment," Maya informed him. "And somehow, having to just pick two out of those, that's the hard part. So, I don't know, maybe I'll just see something and make up my mind that way. Either that, or if you think of something else…"

"I'm trying, but I'm starting to see what you mean about too many ideas. I'll keep thinking about it though, and if I think of something I'll write. Send me pictures if you find anything?" he asked, as Maya recognized the shift in his voice suggesting his class was about to start and he needed to get off the phone.

"Do you even need to ask?" Maya smiled.

"Love you," he replied, and she said it back before they hung up.

"Alright, young dudes, let's see what we can do about your costumes," Maya checked on both ends of the stroller. Noah was awake and fully invested in watching her, while Elliott bordered on 'why am I not allowed to walk, Mother?' energy with the way his legs were kicking away. "Hey, hey, Sprout, come on," she went around and crouched in front of him.

"Mama!" he reached out and she bowed her head.

"No, no, this is my fault, I made your face like that, big dash of eye power," she sighed. "Please work with me here, okay?" she took his hands, pressed kisses at them until he laughed. "Not looking to lose sight of you today, so can't just put you on your feet, not here. But we're going to look for something cute to put you and your brother in, and then Ariel's coming. You like Ariel, yeah?"

Whether it was the mention of the name or just the brief moment she spent with him that did it, Elliott finally settled for enjoying his stroller ride as Maya started them off in search of this costume hunt. She had been thinking about this for weeks, and the one thing she knew for sure was that she'd just go ahead and get them ready-made costumes. In years to come, once they were older and they had some actual say about what they would go as, she could see herself picking up needle and thread, but for now, she wasn't going to overdo it.

Maya couldn't pretend like she wasn't enjoying the idea of Lucas, off in class, having to play it cool while she sent him picture after picture of contenders for the boys' costumes, anything from animals, to cartoon characters, to food items, to superheroes. Ideally, she definitely wanted to pick two things that would go together, so between that and ensuring she would take something Elliott and Noah would endure for the length of their costumed time… Yeah, this was not getting any easier.

"Spiraling?" Lucas asked when she picked up his call.

"Little bit a lot," Maya sighed. "Is your class over already?" she got a look at the time, just bordering on frazzled. It couldn't have been that long, could it?

"If anyone asks, I went to the bathroom. I just figured you might have a better shot at making a decision if we got to talk it through real quick."

"Hey, who's the best husband out there?" she smiled.

"Pretty sure I'd get disqualified for the prize if I answered that question."

"Good call. Please collect your prize tonight. Now, I'm looking at half a jungle, a couple super teams, and trying not to look at the food ones because I'm hungry and I need to deal with this first."

"Process of elimination?" Lucas suggested.

"Yeah, okay, might be able to do that," Maya nodded to herself. "Just have to stop looking at the racks or I'll just do the reverse and add… more…"

"What'd you see?" he guessed.

"Nothing, nope, didn't see nothing, everything is great here…" she insisted.

"Maya…"

"It's nothing. There's a Pinocchio outfit, that reminded me of last year's costumes." The year had just gone by so fast, hadn't it? It was to be expected, with all that had happened, she guessed. Finally, after a moment, she came to the conclusion that there really would be no wrong answers here, that their boys would look cute in whatever she chose. "Alright, I think I can work this out now. Go back to class. Last call on suggestions?"

"I trust you," he promised, so that was that.

By the time she got a text from Ariel to say that she and Daphne had arrived at the mall, she was coming out of the store, now the happy owner of one fox costume and one deer costume, in Elliott and Noah's sizes respectively. She may have had some kind of woodland theme for herself and Lucas to go along with them. For now, she just had to go and locate the girls, so they could focus on their costumes, in whatever shape they'd take.

She had not told any of the grandparents about going for the costumes, and she kept them hidden away underneath materials acquired with Ariel and Daphne for theirs, which she'd now have to transform when she went back to the house. Part of her just had this feeling like this would only lead to some of them – one in particular – going out there and doing some shopping of their own, but she was just going to have to risk it. She wanted to show Lucas first, as she would have done if they had been living at their own house right now.

The work was going very well, from what they'd seen and heard. By all accounts, the whole thing would be done in a few more weeks, ahead of December and a good week ahead of what they'd had as their original target date. They would be able to move back in even before that, really, though they would decide what they'd do exactly, depending on how everyone felt by then. For Maya as much as Lucas, being away from their house really made them realize how good everything had been with them out there. Their lives had veered well away from the path they'd originally set out on, and it had not been easy, had been genuinely difficult in some places, but… they were actually doing so much better than they realized, and they saw it now.

They had always recognized this chance they'd been given, for having the house passed on to them. It was one huge problem removed from their path, and they were not blind to it. Maybe that was part of the reason why building the attic felt as important as it did. It wasn't just about creating this new space for them to use, it was about… about honoring the past and looking to the future. The attic was a long time coming, decades of it, after the plan had been set aside following the loss of Annabeth Friar. And as the house had been in their family before, it would continue to be with them, and someday maybe it would belong to Elliott, or Noah, or another child as yet born… or a grandchild… The attic would be something they had brought into the legacy.

Maya: Do NOT say anything about the costumes in front of your parents when you get here, ok?

Lucas: What costumes?

All in all, they played it very coy, after he arrived, and through dinner, and even through the evening. It wasn't until everyone was turning in for the night, with the boys already asleep, that Maya finally sprang the two kits from their hiding place. She knew Lucas could already envision their boys as the fox and deer the moment he saw the costumes, as much as he was now having to resist putting them on Elliott and Noah to see how they'd look. It wasn't worth waking them.

"Do you think it all looks better because we have kids now? Like, yeah, that would always be cute, but then on our sons," he explained.

"Oh, yeah, definite offspring bonus," she decided with a chuckle. He had to stop himself laughing in response. "So, might not be able to put those on them, but check this out," she reached into one of her bags and pulled out a sketchbook.

In the time before he arrived home from school, she had gone ahead and drawn what was almost a rehearsal for a future family photo. She drew Elliott in his fox costume, and Noah as the deer. The former was in Lucas' arms, where she had him dressed as something like a wood elf, much like herself, holding the latter.

"I figured we shouldn't look too much unlike ourselves, so they'd still know it was us and they wouldn't freak out, Noah especially," she told Lucas, who was still looking at the drawing now with a great, bright smile.

"I love it," he told her, and she smiled back.

The costumes – theirs and the girls' commissions – would be constructed over the following weeks, occupying much of Maya's time along with looking after the boys, and helping with the rest of the Halloween prep are her in-laws' house. They were always to be counted on for decent decorations and for candy at the ready for trick-or-treaters, though with their current lodgers, it did feel like they were kicking it up a notch. They would all be right here that night, handing out the candy. They would have wanted to do more, but then they also had the boys to think of. Sure, they were still so very small, but that didn't mean they couldn't enjoy this night. Before the boys' bedtime, they would go out, the four of them, for a walk through the neighborhood.

"Just realizing now it's been two years since that night…" Lucas stated as they worked together to carefully change the boys out of their costumes and into their PJs without waking either one of them. Maya paused for a moment when he spoke. He was right. Two years ago tonight, that was when they'd found out they were expecting Elliott. Two years for that, and then…

"And in a few hours… seven years for us," she told him.

"Have I mentioned that I really love this time of year?" he smiled now, and the look that passed between them was hard to misinterpret. "We really need to get back to living at home as soon as we can…" Lucas hummed.

"With these two in their own cribs…" Maya matched his tone. Letting the beat carry on a couple seconds more, they finally cleared their throats and got back to work. "Think we could manage to keep him and Elliott with us tonight?" she wondered as she lifted a changed and still sleeping Noah into her arms.

They looked to their second born, just days away from half a year already, and to the one curled up on the bed, before looking to each other again. With a quick silent nod, Noah was passed into his father's arms before they could go and get into bed. Maya picked up the older boy, who immediately clung to her in his sleep. That was the whole reasoning right there for the swap. Elliott notoriously ended up gripped to his mother in the night, so it was logical for Lucas to have the other near him.

As important as other dates like birthdays or their wedding anniversary might have been, Lucas felt for his part that this day right here was the top one of all. November 1st. That was the beginning for them, and every time they circled around to it again, they got to see what they'd made of this time, of this union. Waking up on November 1st this time, finding their boys in between them, seeing how they were almost huddled together now and sleeping peacefully… It was all they could ever want to see.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners