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[Open - Gathering - Baby Shower]

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...]

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Maybe she needed a pack animal.

Oscar wasn't cutting it - too short, for one, but he's still too little, and when Raleigh'd been packing up the gift bags that just sort of seemed to multiply over the last few months, she'd rolled her eyes at his quizzical look. "Well, you're no help."

But here she is, not late (miracle!) with bags in one hand, and maybe she's got to back into the door, but whatever. Spencer and Joel's baby is going to be the most spoiled baby in all the land, that much she knows, and pretty much... well. She's been picking up things since the first time that they told her that they were going to have a baby, and she's been stowing it all away and had no idea just how much stuff there was.

She'd bundled it up into groups so it wouldn't be a million things, but... well. There's the stuff that's book themed-- the Charlotte's Web Blocks and the Paddington Bear Rattle, along with their respective books as well as Alice in Wonderland and some other books; there's a little bag with stuff for them - tea, a thumb drive with a couple of audiobooks of the books she'd seen them reading more than once, and a card that both talked about just how much she knows they'll be the best dads ever, it promises that if they ever need a babysitter, she'll be around-- and that she's got food covered for the first week after the baby's born. There's a third bag, that's stuff off the registry. Nothing flashy or big, just the boring little things that hadn't been picked up yet when she'd looked at the wishlist.

When she sees the giant pile of gifts, she realises that this kid's going to be the most-loved child in all of Siren Cove, and she's honestly glad. If Spencer and Joel want a village to help, they've got it, and they more than deserve it. Once she sets down her burden, she sighs, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear as she turns around. She'd been thinking about this part - wrangling everything here without it being overbearing, not knocking over other things on the table, that kind of thing - that she hadn't actually thought about the fact that now? They're at a party, and maybe she should meet Joel's mom, but also Erin, once she finds Joel and Spencer, but they're already busy talking to people, and... She didn't even know where to start.

It's Ellie who swoops in first and Joel sees it happening from across the room and wonders how long he should wait before saving Raleigh. His mother is a wonderful woman, but she has a lot of energy and she's more like Joel than Charlotte, a little less likely to smile, a little harder. The result is that sometimes that energy comes off as disapproval even when she doesn't mean for it to.

Hopefully that won't be the case today.

"Raleigh, right?" Ellie asks as she reaches down to help her with the bags. "My god, these two are the most spoiled soon to be parents I have ever seen. Let me help you with those."

"Oh, Mrs. Baker! It's so nice to see you again." She smiles brightly when she sees Joel's mother, and she allows her to take one of them. "The baby's going to have pretty much everything it needs," Raleigh agrees as she looks at the pile of gifts. "I had no idea how much stuff I'd stashed away over the last few months, but when I pulled it all together for the shower..." She shrugged as she looked down at the bags.

"I mean, I think all of it's either going to be used by them, or they'd donate it, but you're not wrong." She smiles sheepishly, and puts the last bag in with the rest. "How've you been? Everything looks amazing." She hasn't even really gotten the chance to look at it, but she knows full well that Ellie's poured a lot of her time into this, so she's sure it'll be pretty great.

Ellie practically beams at that and if she didn't already like Raleigh -- which she does, because anyone her son likes as much as Joel likes Raleigh is officially good in her books -- then that would certainly seal the deal. "Thank you," she says. "I'm so glad they let me do it. They deserve it, you know? And they would never do it for themselves and while I know you or Lara would try to do it for them, you know they would only try to refuse. I only managed it because I have grandmother guilt working for me."

"It's true," Joel agrees, all but appearing beside his mother. "You can't say no to the grandmother no matter how badly you want to." Then he grins at Raleigh. "Hey."

Raleigh's smiling, too. "Oh, I know - They do, but it's still really good of you to put together." She looks around the house. "They already pretty much told me - like, months ago, that it's not really something they wanted me to do, but that they'd be okay with you doing it, I think it's because they knew you could do it so well." She's smiling brightly, and then Joel's right there, and it's been a while since she's seen Joel look quite this happy. "Hey! Congratulations, Dad." She wiggled her eyebrows, smiling wider. "Or, almost Dad, I guess. Not long, now." She looks back over her shoulder at Erin and Spencer, smiling wider before she looked back at Joel.

"Two months, that's plenty of time to get everything done that I've been putting off," Joel says and he doesn't mean to sound nervous, but he actually sort of is. Two months had seemed like a long time only a few months ago, but now it seems like it's getting shorter and shorter, the due date looming right overhead.

"Right?" he asks, looking at Raleigh, his voice slightly strangled. Ellie, looking amused, drifts off to take care of someone looking for a drink.

"You've got people to help you, it's totally enough time," Raleigh reassures him with a nod. "I mean, people are pretty much falling all over themselves for your kid. I know I am, and- I mean, I was talking to Mira earlier, and it's pretty much like... you guys - both of you, you're... you, so we want to help any way we can."

She nods once, definitively, but then-- "But, right now? It's a party. So you can do everything that you've been putting off, starting... tomorrow." She smiled wider, shaking her head. "I can't even believe that it's been- I mean, it really seems like the last 7 months have flown by, you know?"

"It seems like the entire year has flown by," Joel says with a startled sort of laugh. Sometimes he looks back and can't quite believe that a year ago he and Spencer were awkwardly bringing lunch to one another instead of living together. At this time last year they had spent several evenings together, both of them doing their best not to think about their developing feelings, both convinced it was only a friendship that the other wanted.

And how wrong they had been.

"A lot has changed in a year," he says. "More than I ever could have imagined possible."

"I know. It's been a heck of a year, but... I mean, you guys found each other, and... and it's all just... right." She pauses. "It's weird, for me too. I mean, the last year I think has-- I have made such great friends here, and found family. Maybe that's sort of it, that everybody's found family." She looks at Erin again, just a little past him. "And I mean, next year will be the same, since you guys'll be a family of three," she says with a smile.

"It's kind of crazy to think how much things are still changing," Joel agrees. In the next year they're going to have a baby. He or she will be here within two months and this time next year the baby won't be quite a baby anymore.

"And all these people," he says. "The last time I was willingly at a party this large thrown for myself I think I was probably six years old."

"It's in a good way, though! Stuff for me's mostly... it's settled, I think, and this stuff-- it's way better than the sort of... ups and downs we had a year ago." That's the most that she's going to get into it, the other things that happened, but it seemed like that chapter'd mostly closed for everyone. People just seemed a lot safer, these days.

"All these people care about you. I mean, all of them you know, anyway. I think there's a couple of people just hanging out." She leans back to look at the crowd, then back at Joel. "Do you guys need anything? I mean, not today with the party, but... I was thinking, if you guys are going to be orgainizing stuff, or if you'd be building something, I could help? I you need it, I mean, I'm not just going to shove myself into your construction plans or whatever." She's still struggling a little how to balance not living with them, but still thinking of them as family; it's hard that she's been so involved with work, and the whole fairy tale... thing, but she really wants to make an effort.

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[Open - Gathering - Baby Shower]

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