A/N: BEFORE YOU START READING! Hey guys! Welcome! This story is an alternate timeline stemming from my Lucaya Project stories/universe. They are updated daily, presently in the third year/story, and as suggested by a few readers, this story here picks up from a part of that story before diverging into its own timeline. It takes place in that world and will continue to, so if you haven't read the previous stories, you might want to go and check them out:

"A Hart in Texas" (LP 2017) (all of it)
"Our Brand New Years" (LP 2018) (all of it)
"Endings, Beginnings, and the Journey in Between" (LP 2019) (chapter 1 through 118, at which point the story splits, continuing one way there, and another way here!)

Hope that all makes sense... Anyway, this story will be updated weekly, every Monday!

Chapter 1
Four Sticks

They weren't going to return to the party, it was sort of agreed upon without ever being spoken. So, before they would actually look, she'd set herself to the task of removing their makeup and, when that was done, they'd changed out of their costumes. It wasn't the ghost and the vampire who were about to find out what those tests had to say.

Lucas and Maya sat together, looking at the contents of the towel before them. Somehow, all four tests had ended up face down, which was just as well. They could turn them over and see what they showed. Everything else, the boxes, the instructions, had been set aside.

"I can't…" she breathed, looking back at him. It would have been so much easier if they hadn't been stuck waiting so long. It had made the whole thing feel so much bigger than it already was and now… now it felt like she wouldn't remember how to breathe in a few seconds.

"Do you want me to?" he offered. He was starting to feel it, too.

"No, I… I can do it, I…" She wasn't even moving her hand. "Okay, turn one over," she finally relented. They shared a look. Lucas sat forward, looking to the four tests.

"This one was one line for no, two for yes, right?" he asked, pointing to the one on the left. She nodded. He reached out and turned it over.

There were two lines.

It took a moment before they could both see those lines and remember what they meant, as though the knowledge – which had been there all of ten seconds prior – had been shoved from their minds the moment they saw what was there right before their eyes. It took a moment, and it didn't happen all at once. Maya was the first one to get there, and when she gasped, her hand suddenly clasped to her mouth, it echoed on to Lucas. Two lines… two lines meant yes.

He looked over at her, and his face looked just like hers. Startled, overwhelmed, and just a bit breathless.

"I-It could… It could be a mistake, turn the next one," she pulled her hand back down, reaching for that first stick like she needed to see it from up close, to hold the thing in her hands and make sure it was real. "That one's plus or minus, yeah?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's…" He flipped it over, and there was a plus sign staring back at them, clear as day. This time it didn't take them near as much time to process it, even if it did feel like their heartbeats had just gotten even more amped up. She snatched that one up, too, caring very little about the fact that she'd peed on this thing. "Maya…" he looked at her, his face unable to express anything beyond shock.

"Next one has the lines again," she shook her head and pointed to the remaining tests. Almost like he had seen enough to see where this was going, he didn't so much turn it over as he picked it up and handed it to her, right side up, so she could see for herself this one was positive, too. She received it, joined it to the others. She looked at him, held his gaze even as she reached blindly for the last test. This one would leave no room for interpretation. She held it up for him to see, and the look on his face told her all she needed to know. Pregnant.

They sat there, looking at one another, they couldn't say for how long, as the revelation settled in them, beyond the first hit of discovery and into established fact. Finally, he was the one to speak and break that silence, saying the words because he had to, someone had to…

"You're pregnant… You're really pregnant…"

"Either that or I really lucked out finding the four broken tests," she breathed, looking down to the four sticks gripped in her hand. "Should I take the other ones?" she looked back up to him. "I have them, and…" Before he could say anything, she was up and moving to dig the other four boxes from the back of the closet.

"Maya, wait…" he went to her, slowly pulling her back until she turned to face him.

"Is it just me or does it smell like urine in there now? Maybe… Do they go bad if you wait too long?" she frowned. Looking at her, he could tell she wasn't going to be satisfied until she'd checked, so he moved around her and found the other tests for her.

"Do you need water?" he asked. She took the boxes.

"Nope."

He followed her out of their room and back into the bathroom, where they went through the whole thing again, unwrapping the tests, laying them out before her. One by one, she picked them up and set them down when she was done. She went and washed her hands as he set the timer. When she turned back to him, he couldn't translate the thoughts in her eyes, but he did what he could. He stepped up to her and wrapped her in his arms. She pressed her head into his chest, locking her arms around him, too, and they waited.

She needed to know, needed to be sure. She knew it was silly and she was probably being irrational. She knew this new set of four would say the same thing as the other one, and it wasn't like she was hoping they would say any different, but she needed to humor this frenzy in her mind before she let herself cross into acceptance and the all too important question… What now?

The timer rang, uninterrupted this time, and as they went on standing together the way they did, he could just turn his eyes from over her head and look down to where the new tests lay, face up. Two lines, plus sign, two lines… pregnant. He bowed his head, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, and that was all she needed to know.

"Woah…" she spoke, barely above a whisper. It was real, it was happening… There was a miniscule little sprout of a human being inside her, one they had created together, him and her.

"Are you… are you okay?" he asked.

"If I say yes, will that freak you out?" she spoke quietly after a few seconds.

"Why would it freak me out?" A few seconds more went by before she looked up at him.

"Because… Because I'm not scared," she admitted. "Because I know it's going to complicate things so much, and it's not… ideal… that it's happening now, but inside… I'm not just okay, Lucas, I'm… glad, I'm happy… I want to cry, for no other reason that we're having this baby, you and me… And maybe I should be scared instead."

"No," he shook his head, his hands moving to cup her face as he looked at her, the woman he loved… who was now carrying their child. "Happy's good," he insisted, feeling the expression on his face release at last, settling into a smile and a stinging at his eyes which would turn into tears of joy before long, just as her eyes were doing now.

"Happy's good," she repeated as he hugged her again, kissing the side of her head, her closed eye, and her lips… He lifted her right off the floor, and she held on tight even as she laughed.

"What do you want to do now?" he asked, and it took her a few seconds to remember. It was still Halloween, the party was still going on. They could go back, maybe manage to enjoy it now, but oh… Just the thought of going back down there right now, the press of so many people, the heat, the smells… Was this the pregnancy already, or just plain old common sense? Either way, she didn't feel like going back.

"We should pick all this stuff up," she nodded back to indicate the new tests, the boxes… Sooner or later, she'd have to tell the others, but she wasn't going to have them find out this way. Willow knew, Riley knew… Well, they knew about the maybe, not the yes. She'd have to tell them for sure, tomorrow at the latest. Then there'd be their roommates… And their other friends… Their parents… Their parents…

"I'll take care of it," Lucas told her. "Do you want anything from downstairs?"

"All good," she shook her head with a smile. "I'll wait for you back there," she nodded out the door before moving toward their room.

She still had those first four sticks grasped in her hand. She didn't think she'd actually let them go the whole time, just clamped two or three fingers around them and went about her business. She went to her nightstand, found an empty bag there and slipped the sticks inside before rolling the rest of the bag around and setting the bundle back in the drawer. She wasn't sure why she held on to them, but right now they were her proof and she wanted them there.

After a few seconds, her curiosity won out as she went to the mirror hanging on the closet door. She stood in front of it, looking at herself. She turned to the side, flattened her shirt to meet the curve of her body for a moment before just pulling it up, tugging the top of her pants down just enough that she could see if there might have been anything there to see… All these weeks she'd been going to the gym with Lucas, it had been starting to show, and now… She tilted her way this way and that, tried to angle herself and see… She wasn't that far along, she couldn't be, but then she'd always been tiny, in more ways than one, so maybe it would show up already.

Maybe she was imagining it, but she could swear there was this curve to her that hadn't been there a few weeks ago. If not for what she had just found out, she might have dismissed it as school stress messing with her body, but now…

When she heard the floor creak, she startled and let her shirt fall back down and turned around to see who… It was Lucas, back again, and she breathed out. He had a smile about him, the one she'd catch on him sometimes when he would have been watching her without her knowing. This one though, it had an added layer of emotion. He was so happy, too, just like her, and now…

"We can do this, right?" she asked him. He looked back at her, about to speak, and she held up her hand to stop him. "Don't just say 'yes' to make me feel better, answer the question," she begged, taking a step toward him. He shut the door and walked over to her, finding her hands to hold in his own.

"You and me, the whole time we've known each other, so many things happened that weren't what we expected for our lives. But they happened, and look at where we are now. Dating five years as of… just a few hours from now, living out here together, with school, and work, and the band, and we're making it work. Because you, Maya Hart, are one of if not the strongest person I know. Doesn't mean you don't have plenty of insecurities, it means you never stop fighting through. And me, my life was never better than what it became when you came into it.

"And now this? A baby… Our baby," he smiled, his lower lip trembling with the feelings coursing through him, "That might be the most unexpected thing to happen to us right now, but it might just be the best one yet. Can we do this? Neither of us has it in them to do anything else except to do whatever it takes so that we can do it. Yes. We can, and we will do this, you and me. Okay?"

She stared back at him for a moment, her head slowly starting to move into a nod. She gave his hands a squeeze and he leaned in to kiss her.

"You're always so good at that…" she breathed.

"Kissing you?" he joked.

"Obviously," she joked back. "I mean tonight has put that proof in the bag." He chuckled. "I mean the whole rousing speech thing. Maybe you should be the one writing songs."

"You're my whole inspiration," he shrugged.

"See? You're doing it again."

"Can I see?" he asked her now, "Before, when I came back in…"

"Oh, well…" She stepped back from him, pulling her shirt up again, pushing the waistband of her pants down again. "If I go like this…" she turned sideways, "What do you think? Maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see, or…"

"Here…" he blinked, awed, as he stepped up to her and set his hand to the spot she'd been inspecting.

"Might be a food baby, not just the baby," she suggested. "We're going to need books. Now, if only I knew a guy who worked in a bookstore," she pondered.

"I'm going to have to sneak those out," he smirked. "If we don't tell people right away. I just remember, when your mom was going to have the twins, she kept telling me that just because I knew it didn't mean I could tell people, not for a while."

"Right…" she remembered, too, as he let go and she set her clothes back in place. "Maybe we can borrow Willow's books for now." He could just see her mind spinning in a handful of directions, considering so many little things they'd need to do, and look into, and buy…

"We're not going to get any of those tonight," he reminded her. "We're not going to figure out anything tonight. Before we get thrown into this tornado, it's just you and me, we're the only ones who have to know, and…"

"Three of us," she reminded him, and he smiled, or smiled more… He'd never really stopped.

"Three of us, right," he amended. "So let's just be happy." He took a look at the clock. "Look, it's November 1st… Five years…"

"Do I give the best presents or what?" she mock bragged.

"Pee sticks?" he teased.

"Hey, I am growing you a human, show some respect to the sprout," she 'warned.'

"Sorry, Sprout," he looked down at her before turning his eyes back to her. "Happy Anniversary."

"Happy Anniversary," she repeated with a genuine smile now. "Not to play favorites, but I think this one's gonna go in the books as the best one yet."

"What I'm hearing here is I need to find a way to top this… Okay, I can do that," he declared with confidence.

"I believe that," she smiled. They could just hear the music from downstairs, and he took hold of her hand, all she needed before she swayed into a dance with him. They might not have felt like going back downstairs, but it didn't mean the party had to be over. With everything they'd just learned, it was the opposite… The party was only just starting. Like any party, it would get chaotic and messy in places, but by the end of it they would know it had all been worth it.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners