[Open - Gathering - Baby Shower]

[just_another]

They're actually having a baby shower.

Joel is fairly certain his mother wouldn't have let them get away without something, even if he had insisted it be small and consist only of family, but for some reason he and Spencer have allowed themselves to be talked into a real shower. With invitations and food and little baby themed games to play. It's sort of strange, looking at it from his position, given that Erin is the one who's going to be giving birth and therefore is the one in the glowing pregnant woman position at this entire gathering.

She'd sweetly agreed to attend and had even whispered to Joel that she would take the brunt of the attention if she could manage it. He had whispered back that he knew they had picked her for a good reason.

But here they are. Several weeks have passed, the invitations have gone out and the decorations have been put up all over Joel and Spencer's living room. He had agreed to lift the enchantments on the house for the extent of the party, which means that anyone can open the door to their guests, they don't all have to be invited in by either Joel or Spencer, and it makes him a little nervous, but he understands the usefulness of others being able to answer the door. At least for today.

It's the decorations that keep getting to him. Sweet little ducks and zebras and monkeys, little jungle animals all over the walls. The bottle and rattle shaped cookies are pretty cute, but those aren't going to be left when the baby gets here. The animal theme, though, is fairly close to the nearly finished nursery Joel has been working on upstairs and he can't help but grin at the decorations.

Spencer, on the other hand, can't stop coming back round to the center of the living room to stare at the enormous sign that's been strung up above a table already stacked with gifts when a majority of their guests haven't even arrived yet. He'd been worried this morning that the day would overwhelm him, that knowing so many people would be coming into their home would be daunting when just a year ago, he'd never even once invited company over before meeting Joel; but so far, he feels calm, in spite of having had to watch Joel remove the enchantments that act as their security on the house. If someone wishes to crash a baby shower--which he doesn't imagine will happen anyway--then they'll have to face not only the wrath of a room that will be filled with witches and sirens, but the wrath of his mother- and sister-in-law, as well. That's not a sight Spencer thinks would be very pretty to witness.

Still, he feels light, perhaps a lingering effect of the having the chance to fall in love with Joel a second time during the spell that had taken over the town. Certainly, a great deal of his contentment has to do with the fact that he won't have to worry about losing his husband in a crowd but even beyond that, he's excited.

So much has changed in the course of the past year and weeks from now, they'll be holding their newborn in their arms for the very first time without another care in the world but for who they've been looking forward to meeting since they'd decided to take this journey together. There's something a bit strange about realizing that it's all coming to a head, that the waiting will soon be over and they'll be fathers at last, but when the first knock on the door comes, Spencer can't help but smile.

[Baby shower for Joel and Spencer's wee one. Erin, their surrogate, is present and is currently 31 weeks pregnant. If you're even a little friendly with either of them, Joel's mother sent an invitation, but the enchantments have been taken off the house for the event and so it's not an impossible party to crash. If anyone wants to crash a baby shower...]

Comments

[astra_inclinant]

"Ohhh," Mira says, realizing. The memories from the spell are -- strange. Like the memory of a dream -- a vivid dream, a memorable one, but also not quite her life. She's starting to get used to weird memories. "I saw Spencer, but I, I mean, that version of me didn't know him. But he couldn't talk." She grins. "Which makes you the prince?" Some part of her left over from fairy tale land knows that.

"No, I don't think so. I was..." She shrugs. "A villager. Lived with my parents, loved reading, wanted adventure in the great wide somewhere, you know." She smiles wryly. "Not too crazy different, when you think about it, but then our house got crushed by a giant."

[just_another]

"That made me the prince," he says with a laugh. "And Caden was my brother. It was all very strange, but it was actually kind of nice, too." He remembers being happy. He's certainly happy now as himself, but getting to experience that with Spencer all over again, having their time together, being able to share a second first kiss when their real first kiss had been under the threat of pain and tasted of blood means a lot to the two of them.

But a second later he blinks, staring at Mira. "A giant crushed your house? And everyone's okay?" Spell or not, he thinks if someone had been injured or worse in that world it would have crossed over to this one and he hates to think of any of his friends in danger.

[astra_inclinant]

"Caden?" She laughs. "That's an interesting twist. Etta was still my sister. I think there was some reason she wasn't there, she was some kind of..." She pauses. "Minstrel, bard thing? We all seemed like -- ourselves, mostly, just in a fairy tale. My father even tutored the aristocracy. Maybe he taught you in this universe when you were just a little bored princeling." She's never known much about Joel's childhood, but it's amusing to imagine him being rebellious and privileged in a magic kingdom.

She nods, her smile fading a little. "When we heard the noise, I ran outside and my parents ran after. He just walked over the house like it was nothing. Thank god, the house here is fine and no one's been hurt. But it's -- I can still remember the way the two of them looked just looking at it." She tries to shake it off. They're at a baby shower. "They haven't really talked to me about it, that's the way they are. This town is so -- much, sometimes, though. It's a tough place to love, but I do?"

[just_another]

Joel loves it, too. It's home, even more than Shediac had been to him and he'd grown up there. He misses New Brunswick at times and he misses the way things had felt so much easier, but he'll never leave Siren Cove, not unless Spencer wants to. This place has become secure for him. It's become a place that protects him and people like him, but having their memories messed with isn't quite the same thing.

And he doesn't know what to make of it.

"I love it, too," he says. "I'm not sure I'd ever be able to leave. I mean, if Spencer wanted to, then of course, but on my own..." He trails off and grins, somewhat embarrassed. "Before the cruise everyone went on last year, I actually hadn't left town in eight years."

[astra_inclinant]

She nods, understanding. There are parts of her that have big dreams, standing in New Mexico with a radio telescope, watching stellar parallax inside a Mayan observatory, but she also can't imagine raising children in a town that doesn't know about magic, or is filled with Starbucks and Targets and no quirky local places working hard to break even and friends with all their customers.

As if that's something she needs to consider, with no one in her life, but Joel and Spencer and all this makes it feel a little real.

She grins at his admission. "You guys need a vacation, at least," she teases. "Go to like - DC and roll around in artifacts, or something. But yeah, I get that."

[just_another]

"Aoife offered us use of her apartment in New York," he says, though he still needs to speak with Spencer about the possibility of them going there for a weekend. It seems a little daunting, the idea of a city that big, because even Shediac had been small and he's never been anywhere even remotely close to New York City.

"I'm not sure how it... well, I-I think I'd be able to go," he says. "It would help to have Spencer with me. I've just never been good at leaving town for a lot of reasons."

The first time he had tried, he'd had to pull over or risk driving his car into the ditch in the midst of his panic attack.

[astra_inclinant]

"Aoife? Wow. That's -- very sweet of her. She is really full of surprises sometimes." High school tutoring means Mira has a bit of an in on Aoife's family and her own insecurities, and it's led to a soft spot for her, but also a tendency to get really, really bored with her shit when she's cruel to people. But sweetness out of nowhere is more surprising. Maybe not out of nowhere. It's hard not to like Spencer and Joel.

She picks up on the tentativeness right away, and nods. Her anxiety is very predictable, mostly around being self-sufficient and living up to her own perfectionism, but she's been recently enough forced out of a several-months-long panic attack to recognize stress when it shows up in other people's language. "My grandmother lives in New York," she offers. "That's where my mom was born. If you do go, I could give you a whole map of anything you really want to see and how to avoid commuters. Can't guarantee you wouldn't get lost inside something like the New York Public Library, but it's a nice quiet place to get lost with primary documents to look at while you're there. And bonus points, it's New York so you could basically spend a weekend inside with anything you can imagine just delivered to your doorstep."

Mira smiles. "Or, you know, ring my Bubbe if you're super interested in being fed until you burst, but that doesn't sound like a sexy vacation."

[just_another]

"She is," Joel agrees, but he knows he sees the sweetness in her more often than not. There's something about her he's drawn toward, something he wants to watch over, though he doesn't think she's in need of actual protection. It's just that he wants to be there for her, he wants to be able to listen if she ever does decide to open up.

"And that would be incredible," he adds, lighting up at the suggestion. "Having a map, being prepared, I think it would help. It's not so much getting lost that bothers me, it's just that this place... well, it became a bit of a security blanket after everything that happened to my family."