"Being here without you is like I'm waking up to only half a blue sky, kinda there but not quite."

Mai wanted to trust him. That was the thing. She wanted to, because it made sense and because she needed to trust somebody so it might as well have been the man whose home had become hers without her even asking for it. All intentions of finding a new place to stay had clearly been thrown out the window. But the main issue she had was that she wanted to be able to say she trusted him. Trust was a scary thing to hand over to someone else, no matter how much she loved them. She wasn't totally convinced that it made sense anywhere other than in her head, but her fear of having faith in him came from the knowledge that he might one day decide to do something irrational to protect the people that he loved and trusted. And it definitely seemed, now, like that included her.

She didn't want to be any sort of downfall for him, much in the same way that she didn't want to be perceived as someone who made rash decisions based on her fear that he might not be everything she thought he was. Did she know everything there was to know about this man? Obviously not. But she wasn't even close to being willing to give up the chance to find out.

She wanted, stubbornly, to say that he could never have been stupid. But fear did strange things to people. Instead she murmured sort of knowingly, "yeah, eventually." Even Mai could tell that she was a little unsure, still.

Our family... They were a family. But he had never met her parents and she wasn't convinced she knew anyone he was related to, aside from Keiran. Of course, that came from being oblivious to the fact that a couple of the men at the meeting had been close family to Theodore. Unfortunately, the poor woman had a good few shocks ahead of her yet.

Mai pressed a kiss to his jaw, quietly agreeing to his suggestion. So pajamas were donned and she tucked her toes into little socks, then she pulled her hair up into a loose ponytail and moved back downstairs. "Theo?" She began once she reached the bottom step. "I think we need to talk... about my parents. We should have said something by now, and I just-" She sighed, leaning her shoulder and her head against the frame of the entrance to the room. "It's gonna be awful, y'know. Dad may not care so much, but you'd better believe mum is going to have a lot to say, and the longer we wait, the more painful it'll be."

The stairs squeaked, signalling the return of the redhead just as the brunette was serving up the hot chocolate. With a final flourish of chocolate grated on top and a couple of marshmallows, he pressed the cup into Mai’s hand and kissed her cheek with a small smile. He moved into the living area and flopped down onto the sofa, letting one arm rest over the back of it so that Mai could sit down with him.

He’d gotten into a semblance of pyjamas – though in truth it had just been the case of stripping down to his boxers and undershirt and abandoning the rest in the washing room. On the comfort of the sofa, he could already feel his eyes beginning to droop but he forced himself away and turned his attention to her. His brows furrowed a little bit and he nodded thoughtfully, his mind briefly straying to his own parents.

“Are you most worried about her?” He asked of her quietly after taking a few mouthfuls of the hot chocolate. “We can … we can, well.” He tipped his head back against the cushions. “We could invite them to dinner, here, if you want. At least then it’s home territory.” He lifted one of the marshmallows off of the top of the drink with his teeth and lifted it into his mouth, smirking at her briefly before beginning to chew it.

“What are your parents like?” He inquired after a moment. “I mean … I get that it’s not great but what was it like when you were younger?”

Mai moved fairly slowly across the room, pausing in front of the couch to smile at his actions - even though the smile was nearly teasing. Still, she had to be serious and had to genuinely consider his offer. With another sigh, she sank into her spot next to him and pulled the blanket over their legs. "So, here's the deal, right?"

She shifted to turn towards him, an odd sort of energy coming up despite the topic. Her free hand settled on the fabric that covered his leg and she took a sip of the cocoa before explaining. "My dad wasn't really there. I know I've brought him up before, and I mentioned that I always figured people must have just really loved him to keep him away so much. Turns out, though," she tilted her head against his shoulder, "he didn't want to be home. And somehow, yes, my mother is the bigger concern. Dad won't care, really, so long as it doesn't affect him. I mean, if I got hurt, he might react somehow. But it wouldn't be quite the same as a typical protective father, I suppose."

Mai looked up at him, trying to decide how to phrase the issue with Brea's lack of conversation skills. "My mum, she... is very convinced that she is in the right. Always. Once - you won't believe what my father said," Mai laughed to herself, setting the cocoa down to free up her hands and tell the story properly. "She has a good idea of what her morals are, and if others don't agree, they're totally nuts, right? So the last time we were all together, she mad this comment about my job, and.. ugh. But dad, he didn't even look up from his paper, but he said, Brea, did you pack something warm for your trip to the moral highground?

"It was brilliant!" she grinned. "So deadpan and everything. He's got a surprisingly posh accent, too, so he sounded almost ridiculous. And she did not like it."

Mai sighed rather contentedly, sinking against him and wrapping one arm across his middle. "She's very vocal about what she disagrees with. And usually I can handle it. This time, though... is different, I'm afraid. This definitely falls under the umbrella of not quite right, according to her."

Wrapping his stray arm around her, Theodore lifted his legs onto the sofa and got comfortable underneath the blanket. Between sips of cocoa he listened, idly fiddling with Mai’s hair. He loved the way the red shimmered in the lamplight as it trickled over his fingers like molten lava. She was always warm to the touch, though. She never burned. As her voice thumbed through the story he couldn’t help but smile. Parents were the strangest creatures in the world. He and Mai should have both recognised that, really, given that they’d become the same breed. And thinking of their own little one, Theodore wondered whether Adriana had decided to stay over. He couldn’t think of anyone else who would look after Esme for them at this hour. She must have done, he rationalised, otherwise she would have come downstairs to tell them she was going home.

Theodore chuckled. “It’s good that he defends you, at least. And that his comedic timing is on point,” he chuckled again shook his head as he brought the cup to his lips for another sip before reaching over the arm of the sofa to put it down on the side table. Then Theodore let himself slip down the pillows and he pulled Mai more into him, his lips finding her temple. “I can deal with your mum, babe.” He murmured, adding with a grin. “I’m very charming, I’ve been told.” He winked.

Drawing his hand across her hip, Theodore hummed thoughtfully, trying to decide what he could do to make the whole thing a lot easier on Mai. There was a part of his brain anxiously nagging that telling his own parents was going to be like diving head first into a tornado and getting spat out unceremoniously into shark infested waters. But those two he wouldn’t have in his house. His mother, maybe. His father, not so much. In other places, he was coming up with feeding her mother to such an extent that she couldn’t pause to grouch at them. Another option was getting her horrendously drunk but he didn’t think that would do much to abort unwanted comments.

“We’ll deal with the whole thing together,” he promised. “You don’t have to cope with her on your own. I’ll cook. We’ll drink fizzy fruit things and we’ll eat and chat and we’ll deflect before any of it can go wrong.” He leaned over and kissed her. “Besides, we’ll be at home. There’ll be no problems and no need for flashy … hang on. Would we need to dress up for this? I mean, you’ll look beautiful no matter what but is there an appropriate suit for in-law introductions?” He bit his lip and a laugh bubbled up from within him despite himself.

“Besides!” He added jovially. “It can’t be that bad, can it? She’s going to have a grandchild. That’s pretty amazing. Will it really fall under that umbrella?” But then, Theodore thought about his father. No grandchild could make him enamoured with anyone. Esme was proof enough of that. He winced. “Is she going to get really angry?” He asked, almost in a juvenile way but he had no other way to phrase it. Maybe it would be a dinner from hell. Well, Dinner From Hell pt. 1, at least.

"Impossibly charming," she agreed, stretching up to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Even if you work me up into doing very stupid things, like going to scary meetings. I... I really am sorry, by the way. I got frightened and made the wrong decision," Mai offered with a slight pout. It definitely wasn't her finest moment, to say the least.

She leaned into his kiss, watching him as he pulled away to speak again. He was right, she mused silently as she nodded along. At home they felt safe, and at home they knew little areas to sneak off to if they needed to control their tempers or get a moment of quiet. Or, of course, for anything else. But probably not when her parents were around. Definitely not.

"I don't know if saying this will.. offend you in any way, but it isn't my intention. I just... I think it would be better to ask somebody to watch Esme while they're here. I don't want her to see me fighting with them or, or for them to make backhanded comments about it while she's able to hear them." She looked down at her fingers where they had begun picking at the weave of the blanket almost absentmindedly. "I don't know if they will do either of those things, mind. But I.. I wouldn't forgive myself - or them - if she was hurt because of their meeting you."

It hit her too late, what he had said. By the time he was asking about how angry Brea might become, Mai had lifted her gaze and was basically just blinking at him. In-laws. Holy hell. Okay, yeah. He had sort of proposed, but not technically. But Theodore was serious about her. Why else would he have called them his in-laws before they were even engaged, nonetheless married. She took a good few seconds after he finished speaking, but when she realized she was just staring at him in awe, she murmured, "ridiculously angry."

The worry didn't linger in her words as it would have done otherwise, because she was still so amazed. Finally, she felt that she just had to explain herself. "Theo..  Honey, did you-? That is, ... Are you aware of the title you just gave my parents?" She paused only a moment to let him consider it, but gave him the answer before very long at all. "You called them your in-laws."

She was smiling, by the way, reader. A sheepish but sort of giddy smile that evolved into Mai biting her lower lip and pulling her feet up and onto the couch so she could sit on them. With that added bit of height, she could face him dead-on. The laugh she let loose was a fairly embarrassing one, given how much of a giggle it actually was. But she didn't care.

"I love you," she announced, obviously not for the first time. Mai hid her mouth behind her fist for a moment, seriously attempting to act more rational. There was no use, though. Her fingers uncurled and she reached for the nape of his neck. "We can do this."

“You’re a free, independent woman,” he teased, “I didn’t do anything.” Theodore smiled indulgently at Mai, leaning to pop a kiss on the end of her nose. “I shouldn’t have left it up in the air like I did,” Theodore admitted. “It was childish and I’m sorry. Next time anything as fraught as that comes up I promise we’ll talk about it until the subject is dead and then neither of us will do anything mad.”

He was greedy with his kiss, as though he hadn’t had the luxury of kissing her properly in weeks. It wasn’t true, of course, but the way his heart skipped a beat and his hands tugged her that little bit closer made it seem as such. It was only with a reluctant whine that he broke away, unconsciously licking his lips as he lifted his head once more.

Theodore’s eyebrows rose a little in surprise and as Mai went on he found himself nodding, a grim look taking over his face for a moment as he tried to get his head around the idea that it could be possible. That said, he knew just as much vitriol would come out of his father’s mouth. He almost felt stupid, then, for being surprised. But he had no reason to expect it with Mai’s parents. Conversely, he wouldn’t even be shocked when it was his own.

“That makes sense,” he agreed. “Besides that, grown up dinners aren’t very interesting for little ones, let alone the rest of us, so maybe when the initial awkwardness is over and if it works out alright and if they’d like to they can meet her later?” He raised a brow and bit his lip, hoping that he was on the right track. He didn’t want there to be a divide in the family. He knew it was going to be inevitable but he wanted as few of them as possible.

Theodore reached back over the arm of his chair for his hot chocolate and he took a sip as he turned back to her, his eyebrows rising in question as he caught her expression. “What is it?”

He couldn’t help it when she sat up. He abandoned the hot chocolate and his hands found her hips, brushing across the familiar but changing swells of her body as their little person began to grow. He found her lips again, one hand coming up to cradle the back of her head. He pressed forward, lowering her back against the cushions, and let his hand come round to cup her cheek while the other ran up her leg.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured breathily, breaking away to find her jaw with his lips. “And totally, absolutely wonderful. I love you more,” he told her, nipping her earlobe gently with his teeth as his fingers tickled across the waistband of her jammie bottoms. “Let me show you just how much, hm?”

Mai didn't bother trying to explain why she was so thrilled with his phrasing, particularly once Theodore closed the distance between them. An unintentional sound of want escaped without her noticing, and she couldn't help the way she held onto him a bit more tightly when he leaned over her. She would have argued that it was, obviously, impossible for him to love her more, but his hand brushed over her middle once more and reminded her that she had wanted to tell him something. "Theo-" His name escaped like a gasp. It wasn't fair, really, to keep it quiet now that she knew.

So her hand moved from his shoulder and down to his fingers, placing his hand firmly on her stomach. "Theodore," she tried again, feeling slightly steadier. Her free hand found his cheek, requiring that he look at her properly before she went on. "I was right. I thought I knew the baby's gender, and I was right."

Telling him, she realized, meant that things were all the more set in stone. Names would have to be picked and they could start buying clothes and everything else. Not that she particularly cared what the baby wore so long as they were warm enough. But that wasn't really the point. They knew, now, and that meant that they had a secret again, just the pair of them. No-one else knew, and she actually loved that idea.

"Honey, it's a boy," she told him, her words practically a whisper. As if she needed to confirm it somehow, Mai nodded and said it again. "We're having a boy."

Pride sparked within him something rotten when she said his name. He smirked into her skin and he inched his fingers below the waistband just as she reached for his hand. The lust abated when his palm cupped at the swell of their child. As big as his hands were, their little Rookwood – a weird thing to even think about – was getting rounder by the day. His smile lost its cheekiness and it grew truly heartened. He sat back on his haunches and used both hands to glide across her bump, committing to memory every little bit he could.

His eyes jumped to hers and he felt his breath catch in his throat. His hands stilled and he looked down again, unable to quite fully comprehend that there within her was not only life but also their son. Theo glanced back up at Mai again just to check and then he leaned down, pressing a kiss to the top of their bump, as close to their son as he could get right now. He lifted his eyes, a smile teasing at his lips, and he reached out to bop her on the nose with his knuckle.

“You are so loved, little one,” he murmured into her belly. “And no one’s more excited than your big sister, promise you that. She can’t wait to meet you. And I can’t either.”

Theo looked up, a shy smile changing his features entirely. He leaned down again and this time kissed Mai, a soft, chaste movement of his lips against hers that ended a little too soon. The hot chocolate had gone cold, though, and bedtime was so far gone it wasn’t even funny anymore. He kissed her on the nose and then on the forehead, his smile turning warm and contented.

“We should go to bed, you know,” he admitted. “Not for what I had in mind a minute ago,” he grinned all the same though. “But because it’s late and if we fall asleep here we’ll regret it tomorrow, hm?”

"Merlin," he breathed, running his hand over her stomach again. "Our son."

A bit of Mai did regret stopping him, but he was so happy that she couldn't imagine having kept it from him. A bright laugh hit the air as his fingers tickled over her middle, but she nodded in agreement. "You're right, of course," she replied, sitting up and dropping one foot down to the floor.

Mai pushed herself off of the couch even as her fingers danced around Theodore's, lacing between them and tugging him to his feet with a smile. So it was up the stairs they went, and within minutes they were ready for bed. It wasn't until she actually crawled under the covers that she missed being able to tuck Esme into bed. A little feeling of discontent made itself known, so she snuggled further into Theodore's arms.

"Can we get Esme early tomorrow?" she asked quietly, looking up at him despite the darkness. "I don't like missing bed time."

For the rest of the week, Mai did her best to pretend that she was not exceptionally nervous, and was determined that neither of them should be elsewhere when it was time for Esme to be tucked in. But the last workday of the week came to a close and it was time to send Esme to her aunt's so that they could clean up and make dinner before her parents arrived. She half wished that his parents would be there, too, just to sort of shame her parents into behaving, but he was probably right to try and separate them.

Coming into the kitchen, Mai made a mental note that, perhaps they could have waited a bit longer, but it seemed like the better plan to just get this meeting out of the way so that they could feel more prepared for dealing with his family.

Her fingers smoothed down the fabric of her dress and she looked down at it, wondering if perhaps something else would have been better. It was basically too late, though, so she just stood up straighter and moved across the room to stand next to him. Mai was quiet for a moment, but she had to say it out loud before they showed up and proved it for her.

"I'm scared.."

The bottle relinquished its cork with a pop like music to the brunette’s ears. The wine glugged into the stemless glass he had sat on the counter beside the stove and he looked at it for a few seconds before bringing the bottle to his lips. He put the bottle back down and swallowed the wine, smiling to himself in a kind of half terrified sort of way as he imagined the evening ahead. Really what he wanted was a movie night with his girls on the sofa where they could eat the lemon meringue cake he’d anxiously made that morning. Instead, he was trying to put on an absurd dinner party to placate Mai’s parents into liking him. He absolutely couldn’t believe it.

Parents. Parents! Theodore Rookwood didn’t do parents. He could barely cope with his own, let alone someone else’s. Indeed, he’d never actually met a set of parents before who he really needed to like him. He was the eternal bachelor. This sort of thing just didn’t happen to him. And yet, he was settling down. Strangely enough, he didn’t mind, either. In the house he’d bought with his first Wizengamot bonus while he’d still held his family’s seat, he’d found his real family. There were three people within it he yearned to come home to every day, people who made going to work difficult in the mornings but endlessly rewarding in the end, knowing that the gold that went into Gringott’s every week kept them warm, fed, and happy. This was his life now and he truly didn’t know how he’d done without it before.

Meeting the in-laws might have had something to do with it, mind you. Well, and meeting his parents. Cressida had learned that the hard way. Pregnant, love? Here, have some gold and go away. Who would have thought that three years or so later the gold would run out, the panic would set in and the only option was to do what she had been barred from doing in the first place? Disowned yet stable, he’d been the only person that Cressida could give Esme to. He was finally the person that Esme needed and could have. Indeed, he was more of the person that had taken Mai in that day without second thought, the one who didn’t even blink and think about what his parents would think when she fell pregnant. He was his own man for once and now forever and what was so wonderfully ironic about it was that he’d never ever been more like a Rookwood.

Although, Rookwoods didn’t anxiously make paella. How was that even possible? Theo truly had no idea. He glugged more wine into it all the same, watching it cook off and flavour the rice. He was mentally going through all of the preparations, wishing he’d done a bit more. He couldn’t do much more, mind you. He’d stuffed peppers, for heaven’s sake. He’d also loitered outside the fish monger’s an hour before they opened that morning, too. So, you can figure he probably didn’t go to work today. He’d bought mussels and monkfish and prawns and then panicked because he wasn’t entirely sure if monkfish was okay. So, like an idiot, he’d hurried back in and swapped the monkfish for a myriad of oily fish and even picked up some skate simply because he hadn’t seen it for a while. So, you can see why he was already drinking. Thankfully though, Theo could hold his white wine. It was red that caused all the trouble with him.

He was sure he was a few beats shy of a panic attack and/or bursting into tears. He didn’t want to do the latter so he decided to drink the wine instead as he pushed the rice around the paella pan. He was dressed, at least. He couldn’t remember when but sometime between taking Esme to Adriana’s and getting the cake out of the oven to ice it he’d donned a blue shirt and some dress trousers, though he was wandering around in socks that had flying Snitches on them so it probably wasn’t in keeping with the formality. He did manage to not get icing all over himself, though, so he supposed that was something of a plus.

Mai’s presence in the kitchen area did very little to stifle any of Theo’s fears and as soon as she came up beside him he abandoned the wooden spoon he was poking the paella with and pulled her into his arms, burying his head in the crook of her neck where he could smell her perfume. He wanted to say there, and told her as much as he pressed a kiss just below her ear. He was tempted, he went on, to open the front door, give them the cake and shut it again.

He had no idea what they’d think, especially given as they lived off of Knockturn Alley. Salamander Road wasn’t exactly terrifying, mind you, and certainly harked back to the old days when Knockturn Alley really wasn’t as scary. All the same, he didn’t want them to think he was some sort of dark wizard plotting world domination with their daughter and grandchild in the same house. Half of it would be right given who he associated with but he wasn’t the world dominating type.

“It’ll be fine,” he said, straightening back up again. He didn’t sound particularly interesting and his voice was a decibel higher than usual. “It’ll be fine,” he said more firmly, his voice a bit more optimistic.

Then of course he remembered he was Irish and he groaned, cuddling back into her as he asked whether they’d even understand what he was saying. He knew he’d drifted into sounding more and more like a Londoner given as he rarely returned home now. The time in England had let his accent spread out but then if he was with Millie, the bizarre combination of Hackney and Cork that she was, they both tripped back into it. With Keiran, to the untrained ear it sounded like a completely different language. Mai probably heard it most when Adriana was over and even Esme had the twang when she came home after spending time with her aunt and, nearly, uncle. Adriana wasn’t quite there yet with her Muggle.

“Merlin,” he lifted his head. “Do they even like fish?” He felt his heart pummel into his stomach as he looked at her. He was already thinking up something quick, something else. He had lamb in the freezer. It would be fine. Or maybe … maybe he could distract them out in the garden while he ordered a Chinese. “What if they don’t like me?” He asked, really getting to the bottom of what was obviously bothering. “What if … what if this isn’t enough? What if they disapprove? What if…?”

He took a steadying breath and shook his head. He needed to support Mai in this, not collapse into a drunken, nervous wreck. He took her hands and squeezed them as he let a weak smile lift his lips.

“We can do this,” he said decisively, his voice sounding stronger and more like his own than it had since she’d come in. “We can do this. It’s going to be fine. I love you and,” he brought one of her hands up to kiss the back of it. “You look very beautiful by the way. Not that you don’t look beautiful every day – especially Tuesday with those stockings,” he wiggled his brows cheekily at her before drawing her gently into his arms, “but you look especially glorious tonight. I’m still the luckiest man in the world even if this goes a bit pear shaped. I know that much.”