2020-01 - This Is How The Monsters Lose

By the first of August, it wasn't perfect. Because they weren't perfect people. The apartment was small, and Logan tended to prowl around irritably, looking for something to fix, which irritated Emily, who wanted him to get the fuck out of her hair already, but they didn't choke each other or anything. There were a few pretty big fights before everything worked itself out, but healthy fights. Normal people fights.

By Labor Day, things were better. Logan found work - part-time at first, as a cook in the mornings and then as the on-call maintenance guy at the apartment complex. Emily was back to work, too, and that took a lot of the pressure off.

By Halloween, they had worn into a comfortable groove. They handed out candy to kids in the apartment complex. Logan dressed up like the Wolverine "because it's my name, Emily, duh." Emily rolled her eyes at him. They had agreed not to find out whether it was a boy-baby or a girl-baby till it was born, so they were comfortably criticizing both genders of children all night - they'd never let their daughter dress like that, their son wouldn't fucking burst into tears like a pussy, et cetera.

By Thanksgiving, they were starting to talk about everything that had happened in that house differently. All those terrible memories weren't gone, exactly, but something had shifted. They could talk about Lucy fondly now, even when the tears clouded their eyes to think about how they wished she was still here. The tears went unshed, just a couple leaking out the corners of laughing eyes when Emily pointed out that it would make things really awkward if she was six months pregnant with Logan's kid and Lucy was still alive.

By Christmas, surrounded by presents for a baby that was right around the corner, it had been almost half a year since monsters had bitten them. Neither of them spoke to it, while they curled up on the couch together and looked at the lights on the tree, but the thought came-and-went quietly. Emily hadn't so much as locked a door with her mind since July, and Logan had left his breaking-and-fixing days back with his oxy-and-bourbon days.

By New Year's Eve, they were struggling with what the hell to name this person that would be here any minute. The unspoken agreement was that they couldn't name a girl Lucy. Poetic? Sure. But too painful. Ethel, Lucy's best friend? No? This was hard. Eventually, they settled on Harris for a boy, because that was the only way Emily would agree that it could be a Miller at all. She had been crankily fishing for an argument, and Logan knew it, and shut that shit down by getting on one knee and asking her to be a Miller, then all three of them would have the same last name, okay? Problem fucking solved, Jesus, Em.

By the second anniversary of Lucy's death... it was enough that no monsters came for them.

By Logan's birthday, Emily was so tired of being pregnant. Just come out already! She poked at her stomach constantly. Logan told her how he'd read that sex could help trigger labor. Emily told him how she'd never seen him read a day in her life, so he could just fuck right off. He made his own birthday cake and groused, but it was good-natured grousing.

By January the 20th, when they crowded together on a hospital bed and looked at the tiny person in their arms, the tiny person that they had somehow managed to conjure - through all their drama, their bullshit, their picking on each other and protecting each other and needing each other - they still weren't perfect people. But they were happy people.