WHO: Abby and Leo Moore WHEN: Evening of January 31 WHERE: Their bedroom SUMMARY: The Moores realize that they're all grown up and make a grown up decision about their future. WARNINGS: None
The house that the Moores and Darlings had settled into in Dunhaven was large, to put it lightly. Abby had grown up in a comfortable enough sized house, the Darlings having had enjoyed a comfortable upper middle class lifestyle in their nice suburb in Queens, but had then moved on to dorm living in California and then to apartments that existed mostly to just give her somewhere to sleep between hotel rooms. To have made a home in a house that could have fit upwards of many of her old apartment in Portland, even if it was a house that was shared between four people, was something of a novelty. There were plenty of rooms for them all to have their own space, as well as plenty of shared spaces for when they all wanted to be together.
Given her new career in Dunhaven, Abby had wanted a room to herself that could act as her office. She'd had grand plans of spending late nights writing up human interest stories (because there was little else to report on in a small town like Dunhaven, really) and she'd done exactly that for about a month after all of them had settled into the house. Now, though, she preferred to take her laptop in bed, her notes spread out and usually leaving a not-so-generous space for Leo if he wanted to join her, though he usually didn’t as he’d learned the signs that told him when she was actually working. It might not have been the most ergonomic of workspaces, which Leo like to kindly point out to her on the rare occasion that he did disturb her office hours, but it was comfortable and warm and Future Abby could deal with the back pain that would come with typing cross legged and hunched over her computer. Leo made sure to tell her often that he’d still love her when she was hunchbacked.
Work was what had led her to bed much earlier in the evening than she normally would retire. Armed with her laptop and a notebook of notes and quotes about a recycling initiative that some high schoolers were trying to implement in town, Abby had set up shop and finished her article just in time for it to be sent to the editor to be included in tomorrow's print of the newspaper, while Leo worked in his own office on a script he was currently preparing. Though now finished, she had opted to stay in bed, laying back in the pillows on her side of the bed with her laptop resting on her chest as she scrolled through Facebook; Future Abby would deal with the neck pain.
It was about that time when Leo came into the room, rubbing the obvious fatigue from his eyes, and distracting her from the flow of pictures of other families, life announcements, and memes that made up her timeline. "Hey, baby," she greeted, looking from the screen to him as the greeting made him drop his hands and look toward her with his usual expression of unconcealed adoration. She turned her laptop toward him as he came closer, a smiling photograph of two of their friends from New York up, a glittering ring on the woman's finger at the forefront. "Allison and Owen got engaged. We should try to get up there if they have an engagement party."
“We should send them flowers or something, too, since they took us out to dinner after we got engaged,” he offered, climbing over Abby from her side of the bed to settle in on the other side of her. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder and then let his cheek rest against it, while she lifted her hand to brush her fingertips across his jawline. “Any other exciting news in the land of social media?"
Leo, himself, didn’t do much with social media. As much as Leo loved being on stage and performing, he had never been much for the spotlight off the stage, and public accounts had become too in the spotlight for his liking after he’d had his first successes and it had come out that he was dating Abigail Darling. He had his instagram account that he maintained on an irregular basis, but primarily used to comment profusely all over Abby’s posts. His Facebook was no longer in existence since shortly after college, and his Twitter account had been maintained by his agent in New York and was now virtually inactive. Most of his news about his old friends came through Abby, who remained relatively active if only to keep tabs on those they saw less of now that they moved down the coast, unless it was one of the few people who stayed in contact on a regular basis through texts and phone calls.
“Oh, and that reminds me. Georgie’s pregnant. She sent out a group text this morning, so we should probably do something for that, too.”
"No kidding?" Abby asked, her expression growing excited on behalf of their friend. She was notoriously bad at keeping up with group texts, sometimes even those between her sisters, so it didn't come as a surprise that she had missed the news from earlier in the day. "Oh, that's really wonderful. They'd been trying for a while, it sounded like. Flowers might be nice or maybe some kind of pregnant lady gift basket. Those have to exist, right?"
Leo pressed his lips together, brow furrowing as he considered it. “You know, I’m not sure, but we can look into it in the morning. If nothing else, we can send her a gift card for a spa day.”
Closing the laptop with a soft snap, Abby reached over to set it down on the nightstand, careful not to jostle Leo too much with the movement, though he sat up on his elbow to let her move and then resumed his position against her when she settled back in. "That was pretty much all on today's gossip report," she said, answering his initial question. "Oh, except can you believe that Christina's kid is turning three already? It feels like he was just born."
His eyebrow shot up in surprise. “Really? Though I guess it has been a few years, hasn’t it?” Leo groaned, sitting up then and leaning back against the headboard. Abby followed suit, leaning to let her head rest on his shoulder. “God, I feel old. I know we’re one of those married couples now, too, but sometimes I still feel like I’m barely out of college, much less old enough to be surrounded by friends with kids turning three.”
"Tell me about it," Abby agreed. She reached for Leo's left hand, pulling it into her lap so her fingers could splay his palm against her own, then toy idly with the piece of jewelry that circled his ring finger and let the world know he was, in fact, one half of a married couple. Though she was a couple of years younger than him, she wasn't exempt from feeling as though everyone was far more grown up than her. Even knowing that she had retired from a successful career, it shocked her sometimes when she realized that she was a wife in her late 20s that owned a home (with Leo and her sisters, of course) and had paid off her student loans. It felt so responsible, so very at odds with where she felt like she should have been in life. Abby was far from irresponsible and had never been her whole life, but it didn't stop her from being amazed at how quick the world around her seemed to move.
Lifting Leo's hand, she pressed a gentle kiss to his knuckles before letting him go. "I think that all of those years apart where we just sort of paused settling down together for everything else we were doing is just a little more ingrained than I realized. I have to remind myself that we are settled down now and we could be one of those married couples with an eventual three-year-old if we wanted to." She lifted her head, giving Leo a smile. "We're all grown up."
Letting his knuckles brush over her arm as it fell back to his side, Leo dipped his chin, tilting his head to look at his wife. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t given much thought to what their future would look like now that they were finally married and settled in one place together and her comment caught him off guard, though not in an uncomfortable way. The pair had spent so long just trying to make their long-distance relationship the best it could be that all of his efforts had been put toward getting to this point and he’d had no attention to spare toward what came after. “We could be, for sure,” Leo said with a small nod, “when we want to.”
Because even without giving it much thought, Leo knew it was more of a when than an if. At least, it was for him. And as Abby looked up at her husband, she knew that it was a when for her, too.
The future had always felt like such a far off, abstract thing to Abby, something that would come someday. But when their relationship had required a certain extra level of maintenance and effort thanks to the distance, it had been easier to just brush it aside to be considered later. It wasn't that they hadn't talked about the future, of course, but it was always the immediate next step that she felt like they should be focusing on first. The first had been finally settling down in one place, then it had been the wedding. Now, though, they had found themselves in that someday that she had never let herself dwell on too much.
"Do you want a three-year-old?" Abby asked, then scrunched up her nose as the words registered and Leo let out a quick laugh. "Er, that was a weird way to ask that. Sorry."
“Weird, but funny,” Leo grinned, reaching over to take Abby’s hand in his. Her fingers immediately laced through his own. “Honestly, though, I wouldn’t mind having a three-year-old, but I see that happening at least a few years from now.” Because if he couldn’t tease the one person with whom he could be completely and utterly himself, who could he tease?
"Maybe," Abby conceded to the teasing, giving him a smile as she happily accepted it. She had always enjoyed their easy teasing, it being one of her favorite parts of their relationship -- one of many, many favorite parts. Still, she hesitated just a moment before asking, "Would you want it to happen in, like... three years and nine months? Four years?" Her head listed just so to one side and she smiled again. "Twenty?"
Leo couldn’t help the wave of emotion that crashed through him at the thought of them adding numbers to their family in the immediate future, though he couldn’t quite discern what each separate emotion was as they all tangled together and filled him to bursting. He needed a moment to choose the right words to properly express his thoughts so instead of answering the question that he really wanted to answer immediately, he asked, “Are we naming said three-year-old Albus Severus? Because that really sways my answer one way or the other.”
A laugh immediately burst from Abby, which was a good indication in and of itself that she'd more or less acclimated to the strangeness that was their dreams. It had never been hard for her to separate Ginny from herself, especially once she found out who was dreaming about Harry, but there had been a brief time where she'd preferred to just pretend it wasn't happening at all. Now, though, she could appreciate the joke.
"Definitely not," she replied, still grinning at Leo who reached out and smoothed her blonde hair back, his palm coming to rest at her cheek. "But you might need to reign me in, just in case it actually was her idea."
“Deal,” he replied. “I actually want our future kids to continue to love us past infancy.” He hesitated, then, that same nervous and uncertain boy he’d been making him nervous to say what he really wanted out loud, even when the man he was knew that he and Abby rarely weren’t on the same page. He let his thumb brush over her cheekbone, drinking in the beauty of her before he replied, voice quiet and more certain than his rapid heartbeat made him think he was. “I’d be good with anywhere between three years, nine months, and twenty.”
Unless Abby was mistaken, and she rarely found that she was, she thought her heart actually skipped a beat as she drank in Leo's words. It wasn't a surprise that his desires and her own were aligned, as that was almost always the case with the two of them, but it was the gravity of the statement and just what she knew it could mean for them both. Her hand lifted, her fingers grazing over his as her cheek pressed into his touch. "I'd be good with that, too," she agreed, before adding, "but I like the sound of three years, nine months."
Leo’s face split with a grin. As he’d expected, they were on the same page, but it didn’t mean he didn’t feel the relief that washed over him any less. “I’m all in for that timeline,” he replied, leaning down to steal a kiss from his wife, one which she happily leaned up to meet him halfway in. “I want that and, if you want that, too, then I’m ready to make it happen for us. I want a family with you, Ab. I always have. Nothing would make me happier than being able to be the couple posting sappy announcements on social media. Let them shower you with gifts for a change,” he winked.
Abby smiled at the thought of being the one getting pregnant lady gift baskets (something she still wasn't sure existed, but figured it really should if it didn't), but it was all of the words that came before it that made her feel like she may just melt into a puddle. Leo's words tended to leave her feeling that way more often than not, but this was something else entirely. "I've always wanted a family with you too, Leo. I always knew we would someday, but I think -- no, I know that this is someday."
Leaning up, she took another kiss from him, but couldn't help herself as she backed away, a playful sparkle to her eyes. "You do know I'm a triplet, right? What if we have three three-year-olds in three years, nine months?"
“Well, as it turns out,” Leo replied, “three of my favorite people are triplets, so I must like them. Besides, that’s three opportunities we have to pick names that aren’t terrible.”
"Well, when you put it that way," Abby returned, sticking her chin out as she smiled, "I guess we'll have to cross our fingers for three. We should get at least one of them right."
“I guess we need to start trying for three, then,” Leo laughed, shifting in the bed to turn back toward Abby, his hand dropping to graze over her thigh as he took another kiss. Her own hand lifted to rest on his chest. “And if we get all three of them wrong, we’ll just have to keep trying.” And another kiss. “I’m really, really okay with that.”
"Me too," Abby grinned, though the smile quickly disappeared into another kiss as she reached out to Leo. "And you know," she continued, "if we want to stick to our timeline... we should probably start trying right away." One more kiss. "Logistically speaking and all."