"Time doesn't make much sense, does it?" Joel asks with a bit of a laugh, making sure he spreads the ornaments out across the tree. It's something he's always been very particular about without ever really knowing why, but even as a child he'd always been the last at the tree, moving the ornaments his parents had put up until he was satisfied that they were evenly spaced, that one side of the tree wasn't decorated more heavily than the other. Joel knows he has some tendencies that others might find a bit strange; his inability to really leave Siren Cove, the way he needs certain things ordered while having been completely content with Crossroads in the disastrous state it had been until Spencer had fixed it and he's never bothered to investigate those little quirks further. His anxiety, his panic, his need for order, he understands it all, and that's all he needs.
Not that he's experienced much anxiety lately. He has periods, as does Spencer, and he sometimes wakes up with his heart pounding from dreams about the demon pressing down on him, but they're not the same as the panic he'd experienced on the ship that day, the first day of the cruise. It's been a long time since he's gone through anything like that and even leaving town to get married had been easy. Spencer makes so many things easy and Joel wonders if he has any idea how much he's truly changed Joel's life. How much he's really given to him.
"It feels like it moves both so slow and so quickly," he continues, returning to his earlier train of thought. "I feel like you've always been here, like we can't possibly have met less than a year ago." And he's not sure if that counts as time moving too quickly or too slowly, but he understands that it doesn't feel like it's been only a few months since they got married. It feels like this has all been in the works forever.
"We should tell my parents about the baby on Christmas," he says suddenly, hanging a reindeer ornament near the middle of the tree. "We should wait until we're having dinner and tell them in the middle of it." Mostly he wants to see their faces like that. He expects someone will drop a fork, someone else might knock over a glass in an attempt to give one of them a hug. But he also expects it'll be a wonderful moment and it's something he wants to remember for the rest of his life.
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Not that he's experienced much anxiety lately. He has periods, as does Spencer, and he sometimes wakes up with his heart pounding from dreams about the demon pressing down on him, but they're not the same as the panic he'd experienced on the ship that day, the first day of the cruise. It's been a long time since he's gone through anything like that and even leaving town to get married had been easy. Spencer makes so many things easy and Joel wonders if he has any idea how much he's truly changed Joel's life. How much he's really given to him.
"It feels like it moves both so slow and so quickly," he continues, returning to his earlier train of thought. "I feel like you've always been here, like we can't possibly have met less than a year ago." And he's not sure if that counts as time moving too quickly or too slowly, but he understands that it doesn't feel like it's been only a few months since they got married. It feels like this has all been in the works forever.
"We should tell my parents about the baby on Christmas," he says suddenly, hanging a reindeer ornament near the middle of the tree. "We should wait until we're having dinner and tell them in the middle of it." Mostly he wants to see their faces like that. He expects someone will drop a fork, someone else might knock over a glass in an attempt to give one of them a hug. But he also expects it'll be a wonderful moment and it's something he wants to remember for the rest of his life.