Morningstar Manor

Peri had been sleeping like crap the past few days anyway, so that in itself wasn't so weird and she didn't think anything of being awake at an ungodly hour of the morning. Not to mention she'd gone on maternity leave a couple weeks earlier and her body still wasn't used to not getting up early and going to work.

And then there was a particular sensation in a lower region, and she was reaching over to punch Noah hard in the shoulder.

"Noah! Wake up!"

Yay, labor!

Two years ago on New Year's Eve Peri and Noah had their first date. Sort of. They're gotten take out and watched some endless hours of the annual Twilight Zone marathon. If he recalled correctly they'd attempting a drinking game that revolved around drinking everytime there was mention of the apocalypse or nuclear annihilation. They couldn't do that this year, for obvious reasons, but Noah cleared his schedule for New Year's Eve and New Year's day just to spend it watching the marathon with Peri.

This is exactly why he'd woken her up at eight-thirty in the morning so that they could drag themselves to the living room for the beginning of the marathon and some breakfast. Most of the day was spent lounging, eating, accidentally falling asleep, pointing out favorite episodes and mocking the over acting. By the time it was dark out, Noah couldn't figure out what to cook and was too tired to drag himself to the kitchen. "How long do you think it'd take if we ordered," He asked Peri.

Lara crouched on the floor in front of Stone Hawthorne's apartment, slowly surrounding herself with the contents of her messenger bag. (Slowly because the big puffy coat she wore was kind of limiting her mobility.) He had a show tonight and was supposed to meet her at his place after. The only problem was that she couldn't figure out where she'd put his keys. She'd heard something jingle-jangle-jingling when she shook her bag, so she figured they must have been in there somewhere. But so far she had yet to locate them. Damn it.

Peri was exhausted after a not so hard day's work. Damn baby. As a result, all she wanted to do was collapse in bed and sleep for a week. As she let herself into the apartment, she had every intention of doing just that. But of course she had to give Wicket attention first, not exactly a hardship.

"You better hope Noah helps me up when he gets home and doesn't just laugh his ass off at me," Peri said as she eased herself down to the floor and reached for a squeaky toy. "Because I don't care what they say, five months is totally getting into the 'trouble getting up' stage."

Especially when you'd been working all day.

Wicket pounced at her impatiently. Shaking her head, she squeaked the toy at him before tossing it off towards the hallway.

So... not really feeling the Halloween spirit right now. The morning sickness, yeah, but not so much the Halloween spirit.

Peri was exhausted. Was pregnancy supposed to start sucking the energy out of you so soon? Because seriously, this was kind of ass. It had resulted in her attempting to tidy the apartment and giving up halfway through gathering the first load of laundry. Apparently she'd exhausted all her energy during the rest of her day.

So of course that was when the phone -- which was all the way across the room -- started ringing. Groaning, she pushed herself up off the couch and trundled over to get it. "Shut up, shut up, I'm coming," she grumbled. She glanced at the caller ID.

"Hi, Daddy," she said cheerfully. "No, perfect timing. What's up?"

She then beelined over to flop on the couch as she talked.

There were some things you didn't want to tell people. Peri had, at various points in her life, told people most of them. All except for one. A very important one.

She'd been feeling sick and crappy for the past couple days at work, but being who she was, she figured it was the flu and ignored it. Well, ignored it save for lots of hot tea. That always made her feel better. Except this time, it hadn't. And the throwing up? Had always been at a certain time of day, which set off all of her flaily panic alarms. But being the reasonably rational woman she usually was, Peri had done a bit of shopping...

... and now sat on the couch with half a dozen pregnancy tests sitting lined up like little soldiers on the coffee table in front of her. Five of them said positive in some form. One didn't. Oh how she was concentrating on that one right now.

After having decided awhile ago that it would be more beneficial to move into Peri's place instead of Noah's, given that it'd be easier to walk to should the elevators play anymore tricks on the Manor, it had taken a number of weeks...into a couple months to properly coordinate their schedules so they could have a weekend to actually do the moving in. Noah had successfully packed up his apartment over number of days, moving some things like excess furniture and other such stuff that would clutter Peri's place and weren't necessarily needed, to the studio to put it to good use there.

After a day of lugging boxes, it was evening time and Noah was hefting in the last box, this one had dog-related stuff in it. It was most of Wicket's belongings, the thing they hadn't already put in Peri's place. He set the box down with a sigh next to the coffee table and opened it up and Wicket promptly jumped right in and started digging around in his things while making doggy noises. Noah chuckled and sat down heavily on the couch. "That's the last of it." He said with a relieved sigh. Lots of it still needed to be put away, or dragged down to storage.

Peri had to work, which meant that at seven something in the morning, she was bustling around and going through her morning routine.

Okay, so she was really just downing a cup of coffee after her shower, but still. Morning stuff was going on. Noah had crashed with her the night before -- she wasn't quite sure when he'd come in, actually -- and he was still asleep, so she was trying to be quiet. Waking the sleeping boyfriend wasn't very nice.

Thinking about him made her smile as she leaned against a counter in the kitchen, hands wrapped around the warm mug. Fourteen and a half months, not damn bad. And also approaching one of her longest relationships ever, thank you.

Hey, babe. This is me being bored in a meeting. Yes, I'm on my laptop in the middle of a meeting, completely ignoring the people I'm supposed to be listening to. They know precisely nothing about what they're talking about.

Entertain me?

Lara really needed a break from all the hoopla going on inside. It was kind of impressive that she lasted this far through the night before she had to get out for some air. Unfortunately, the air was cold. The cardigan she had on over her dressed was a help, but not exactly ideal. Nevertheless, Lara was going to stay outside for at least a few minutes, free to be mopey in peace. It would make the air inside feel that much warmer (and therefore welcoming?) when she came back in. Besides, there was a lot of stuff to look at out in the fancypants courtyard she'd wandered onto. Statues and trimmed hedges and a tastefully lit fountain with benches around it. Lara headed in that direction, to get away from the noise she could hear coming from inside the building.

( Hahaha, Stone loves Lara [unfinished] )

Ever since finally getting back to her apartment, Peri had been curled up on the couch. She'd gotten up only long enough to shower and text Noah, and now she was curled up on the couch again.

Not sleeping, though. No, she didn't think she would ever sleep. Or at least, she didn't think she'd sleep any time soon.

When she heard the knock at the door, she got to her feet and went to check it out. She sighed in relief when she saw it was Noah. "Hey," she said, smiling slightly when she opened the door.

So Noah had an idea. He didn't, however, get done work until around one in the morning. That was okay though because Peri had worked late too. Noah knew for a fact that she was home though. So he decided it was high time for some sappy moments. Which was why he stopped and got a few things, like food, before he got home and then went to his place to pack the food, a blanket, a travel radio and maybe one of his telescopes to (one of the smaller ones so it fit) into a gym bag. He hoisted it over his shoulder and then hooked Wicket's leash to his collar and took the dog with him down to Peri's floor. Once he reached her apartment he knocked on the door.

Peri was busy working on something with her laptop, while Noah was busy doing... well... whatever he was doing. She wasn't paying much attention to him, or him to her, but that was all right. They were good with the companionable silence thing.

Well, until there was a sound at the door.

"You want me to get that?" Peri asked, glancing up. "Or you gonna do it?"

To: Peri
From: Noah
Subject: So...

I've been meaning to ask, since your mom keeps saying 'hi', when should I expect to be presented to your family and should I be scared of this prospect? Just thought I'd ask while I'm sitting here bored as hell since my evening session canceled on me last minute, the fuckers.

- Noah

Calling Peri's apartment a mess would be a bit of an understatement. Way too much laundry to be done, books and newspapers all over the place, and a couch pillow halfway across the room. So it really shouldn't have been surprising to anybody that knew her that she was spending her Monday evening cleaning like hell instead of going out and being social.

The extent of her social schedule for the evening would probably be seeing the boyfriend at some point, if that. He'd wander by her place, or she'd go wander by his. They were pretty good with the wandering, really.

J was in the garage, attempting to balance her work bag and a couple of grocery bags. She'd stopped at the store on the way home and had done a little shopping for dinner.

Noah was in the Mocha, enjoying a a very large coffee and a sandwich while reading a good old fashioned newspaper. He was waiting to go into the studio but that wouldn't be until dinner time.

Grace was on the roof in the hot tub, head back on a folded up towel, watching the sky from behind her sunglasses. It was good to have a night off.

Stone was enjoying an afternoon dinner-spoiling ice cream cone with his (half!)sister, Cassidy at the ice cream place in Vine Square. As luck would have it on the nice day, they were sitting outside at on of the small wrought iron tables and talking about the end of school and the upcoming summer.

Gilly & Ben, Lobby & then some:

Gilly had gotten out of school early because of the carnival and with no homework. She was due to meet up with the Rutherford Toms Shoes kids soon so they could set up at their booth at the carnival. As luck would have it, she was heading out of the stairwell right after on Benjamin Lyon had gotten off the elevator. She hadn't seen him around in a long while, on account of him being at college. This is precisely why she slung her messenger back around behind her and jogged toward him. Her only warning before she leapt onto his back piggyback style was a loud war cry of, "BENNNNNJAMIN!" Hopefully, he wouldn't drop her.

Because he was smart enough to know that he needed more of a buffer than just Lis in order to quell any and all possible arguments between himself and one Stone Hawthorne, Noah had called in a special favor from one Detective Drew Marlowe. He wasn't officially a detective but with a name like Drew Marlowe and a band name like Smark investigations, the title was necessary.

The middle-aged man who was going to be helping with producing the joint effort of Lis Rhodes-Hawthorne and Stone Hawthorne, collective known as Rocky Rhodes, was late - which to Noah wasn't very unusual as he'd worked with the guy in the studio a number of times. The man wasn't very punctual but he was pretty damn awesome musically. He also owned an instrument store, which came in handy with mutual discounts and what not.

Currently, Noah was fiddling around with some knobs on the sound board, having heard a quick acoustic warm-up of the song they were going to record today already. Lounging around on the chairs and couches behind him were Lis and Stone. Stone was pretending to tune and re-tune his guitar, disinterested in Noah since he didn't want to get into a fight, and hoping to maybe get some inspiration for another song along the way while they waited. Lis, apparently, was interested in Noah's girlfriend, or asking questions about her anyway. Noah was kind of amused.

Lara was practically bouncing as she headed through the lobby Monday night. She'd just gotten back from practice (the skates she was holding by their laces being the proof of that), and had gotten great news. After months of being on the semi-sidelines, only playing about fives minutes a bout, she was totally being promoted from roller derby alternate to fully-fledged roller derby team member! She was going to be the starting jammer in the Landlocked City Rollers' next game!

This was beyond awesome, and Lara was all stupidly grintastic to herself as she floated along merry way toward the mailroom.

It was obscenely early -- to the tune of somewhere between three and four in the morning -- but Peri couldn't sleep, which was why she'd pulled her robe and slippers on before shuffling her way to the elevator and going down to grab the mail that she'd ignored on her way upstairs after work.

She shut the mailbox, stuck her keys in the pocket of her robe, and sat down in a chair to go through the stack of envelopes.