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.

Every so often it was good to carry out a tour of inspection. It kept the staff on their toes, made them feel appreciated that the boss cared enough about them to visit them in their places of work.

Plus there was the possibility of running into a few tenants.

After a fleeting visit to the 13th floor, where he accepted the fawning devotion of his minions gracefully, he stepped into the maintenance department to listen to Ruprecht's grievances, then went to the back room of the Mocha and brought a smile to Joy's sour face.

"I'll have a tall skinny latte," he told her, "at my usual table."

Which was free, as luck would have it.

He sat and sipped and looked around with great interest and satisfaction.

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.

Declan stood outside of the Mocha in the garden, wearing a casual black sweater with the sleeves pushed up and a pair of jeans. His phone was pressed to his ear and his head was in his opposite hand that also held a lit cigarette. On the other end of the line his mother was informing him that his sister was coming to stay with him whether he wanted her too or not. His sister was a grown woman, but apparently she'd gotten in some trouble and needed a change of scenery. Declan loved his sister and they'd always had fun together, but he'd never had to be responsible for her either. 

Smith sat in the back corner at a table with his back against a wall out of habit. One might say that he looked grumpy and they would be right. He was miserable and completely pissed off, which was a bad combination. He wanted to beat the shit out of something, but he'd already pounded the punching bag in the gym to dust more times than he could count this week. He missed Laura. He wanted her back, but how did he get her? He'd pretty much burned that bridge the last time he'd seen her. Sighing, he took a sip of his coffee and glared at the world in general. 

Oliva was sitting on one of the couches with her legs tucked up beside her and her shoes on the ground in front of her, wearing a dark blue sweater dress that draped to bare one shoulder. There was a bag next to her from a Halloween shop in the City and a large photo book in her lap that was all about the works of Alberto Vargas and his pin-ups. She adored retro pin-up art, and she was looking into buying one of his paintings. What better way to make an informed decision than to read up and look at all of his work?

Isabella stood in line with her hands tucked into the pockets of her new, cream colored coat. She smiled at everyone that looked at her. She was in a fabulous mood and had been for over a week now. Micah and her were getting along amazingly well, her mom had come out of her surgery okay, and things were just... Good. Almost frighteningly so.

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.

Bea had gotten up this morning with a mission: Go buy a puppy. 
She'd wanted a puppy for years now, but she'd never really had a stable environment or the income on her own to care for one properly. With her first royalty check and this move to the Manor, that all changed. She opted to go to the pound to find a puppy instead of buying one, and ended up finding an adorable bundle of fur that the woman running the place had said looked like it  was wearing eye make up that matched Bea's.
Bea didn't care about any of that --- She fell in love with the big, floppy, blue eyed thing at first sight. So, she adopted the puppy, named her Pippa, and promptly went to the nearest pet store to buy everything she needed. 
Now she was back at the Manor, sitting Indian-style in the grass of the gardens watching Pippa bound around in the grass and chase anything that moved. She was dressed ultra casually, in a pair of black flip flops, dark blue low rise skinny jeans, and a tiny, faded white t-shirt that bared a few inches midriff and ironically enough, had the Pound Puppies logo on it.

Sscrunch, sscrunch, sscrunch - the tell-tale sound of diapered movement.

Faith whined and Alec looked up from the envelope in his hand just in time to see his son disappear around the sorting counter. This wasn't the first time this had happened so Alec knew enough now to go around the opposite way, meeting Gavin at the end, rather than trying to chase him.

Gavin popped around the end of the counter, intent on the door, saw Alec and gave a mighty holler. He tried quick to turn back and keep crawling away but Alec was prepared for that too and swooped down, scooping the squirming child up.

"One of these times somebody's gonna come in and step on you," Alec warned as Gavin wriggled in his arms and braced himself on Alec's chest, reaching with one hand to pull on Alec's necklace, momentarily distracted by the shiny bit of metal. "Or bonk you on the noggin with the door and then, trust me, you won't be happy."

Gavin just looked at him, tugging on the chain and huffing out a breath.

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.

It took a very long time to do the laundry this way. A very long time. But, Charlie told himself, it was educational AND she enjoyed it.

Nia took each item of clothing from the basket and posted it carefully into the machine. "Sock," she said, "sock, smelly sock, bozzers, tissert, bozzers." She paused staring. "Pooh Bear."

"Yeah those are mine," Charlie said, flushing. "They can go in with the others. There's a good girl."

"Pooh Bear," Nia sighed then continued. "Sock, sock."

Charlie yawned then looked round hopefully as the door opened. Someone else to talk to would be nice.

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?

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.

Lara felt like she was in a maze. She had left Stone's apartment sometime in the early afternoon to get some fresh clothes from her own place, but after she fetched them she found that the stairwell she'd taken just a few minutes earlier had been blocked off. Confused and still unwilling to take the elevators after Halloween 2007, Lara headed down the hall to take the other fourth floor stairwell. That one was blocked off heading up, so she had no choice but to go downstairs.

And so began the wandering. She'd walk into one set of stairs that was blocked off one way, another set that was blocked entirely, and then back to the original set which was blocked off in a different direction that it had been just a minute earlier. Lara didn't know if she was seeing things or if a Manor something was messing with her, but she couldn't find a straightforward path straight up. Instead she was in an endless circle going up, down, down, up between between the first through fifth floors.

After what felt like a few hours had passed, Lara stopped in the middle of a hallway and leaned against the wall. She wasn't sure what floor she was on, but she really just wanted to give up.

She'd lost track of how long she'd been sitting in the lobby, but she knew it'd been hours. She couldn't help it, really. Every time she got up to move, she was filled with an overwhelming sense of dread that told her taking another step would be a really bad idea. But when she sat back down, she felt like she was being watched. Hours of that was really starting to get to her. But she had a feeling that constantly feeling like she was being watched was far preferable to what would happen to her if she kept walking once she stood up, so... she sat.

She dragged her fingers through her hair and wished that Noah were there to keep her company.

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.

She wasn't quite sure what time it was, exactly, other than Really Freakin' Late. Or early. One of the two, really, and it didn't matter which when you'd just had a nightmare. Not even a specific nightmare about something happening in her life, no. Just random generic bad things happening that'd for some reason been far scarier than usual.

Peri knew that dwelling on it in her apartment wasn't going to get her anywhere. So she made herself a mug of hot tea before grabbing her robe, putting her slippers on, and making her way downstairs. Once in the lobby, she settled into a chair and quietly watched as the occasional person came or even went. (Because really, in the Manor, there was always somebody coming or going.)

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?"