Who: Miles Lufkin and Mira Jasper!
What: omg bbs
Where: Miles' flat!
When: fluid time! About twoishy weeks ago?

After her exhausting confessional with Octavius, Mira knew it was time to come to terms with her pregnant state. Yes, she had avoided any and all owls, and yes Bianca had been a very good friend for keeping everyone away while she dealt with this change in her life, but with her return to the WWN (after the weekend, of course), came her return to the outside world. And, furthermore, meant that she must acknowledge the people that lived in it, the very first being the father of her unborn child.

Mira rubbed her forehead, thinking about how pitifully ridiculous that sounded. She had been avoiding the one person she should have been talking to this whole time? Granted, there had been select letters, but… she pulled her lips back, and sighed. Well she was here now, wasn’t she? Unannounced and unbeknownst to anyone (even Bianca) at Miles’ door, but here nonetheless. It was a start.

Holding tightly to the strap of her purse with one hand, with the other Mira reached up to knock on Miles’ door. Usually, she would then proceed to open the door and waltz through into the foyer unbeckoned, but perhaps a visit like this warranted a bit of social niceties.

Miles had been working on various ways to keep himself distracted. Interviews, photoshoots, robe fittings, furniture moving, he was even, he couldn’t believe it, putting in extra practice time. Extra. Practice! All to keep his mind from focusing on the fact that Mira Jasper was carrying his child and he had absolutely no idea where the hell his life was currently going or supposed to be in this moment. Should he be buying books? Books on how to---father? She did not even know that he was ready to accept the role, and with each passing day he grew more and more worried that he’d lose his determination. Or was he scared that she didn’t deem him worthy of being in the child’s life and that was why she was not bothering to include him?

He wouldn’t say that he had wanted to become a father at this point in his life, but it was not something he had completely dismissed from the future. It was now coming sooner than anyone could have expected and he was ready to start this new chapter of his life. With his uprooting from the Pride last season, his life had seemed a bit off course. Now he felt like he had some sort of direction.

Or at least he would, if Mira would talk to him.

Miles slid out from the kitchen, wondering if it was Arista again with another rant or two (or five). He missed the dynamics of the Pride, but he was still nursing a bruised ego and would keep his distance from the team. Ready to tell his former seeker that he needed to start charging her for these therapy sessions, Miles peered through the peephole and was startled to see Mira on the other side. Without the composure he usually maintained around her, he pulled the door open quickly in surprise.

“Hello?” he said, eyes peering past her and down the corridor to see if her bodyguard was present. When there was no sign of the hitwizard (though that didn’t mean she wasn’t hiding in the shadows), Miles let out a breath and smiled. “I--come in?”

A smile. His easy reaction warmed her tense heart, and because of it Mira released her clenched-claw grip on her purse. In fact--- something of a small smile appeared on her lips as well, and mirroring Miles’ cautious optimism, she stared at him as openly as he did her.

After a few quiet moments, Mira then pulled her hair to lay it all of it over her right shoulder, and stood up a bit straighter. “Hi,” she finally responded, and still fingering through her hair, purposefully marched inside with her head held high. She had spent the better part of two weeks huddled in her room, painfully wallowing at what the hell she was going to do now--- and that time was over. Now, now was for taking her life back, or at least, pretending to take her life back while her insides continued to shake at the idea of giving birth. Or at the idea of how fat she was going to get. Or how she was going to start losing control of her own body, as she remembered vividly from Bianca and Adamina’s pregnancies. Or---

She shook her head, thinking now was not the time for those thoughts. One at a time, the most pressing in front of her first. Or, more accurately, behind her, as she had strolled entirely past Miles and now found herself in his kitchen.

“I am ready to talk now,” Mira said suddenly, finding a bit of courage as she waited for him to appear within sight again. “I wasn’t before,” she admitted, hooking her purse on a nearby chair. She, however, decided to stay standing. “But now I am so… we should talk.”

“If you want,” Mira added in hastily, thinking that now, of all times, she supposed she could dial down on her demanding tone.

This was a good sign, yes? Mira had sought him out, which meant...Miles was not sure, but it was better than the blockade that had been set up these past few weeks. Now that she was here, all of the speeches that Miles had compiled seemed to get thrown out the window. What does one say to the woman who was having his child? Was she? He did not...there were pressures from every angle of this situation, but all Miles wanted was to have Mira be sure that he’d be on her side.

He put his hand out as he thought he was going to start speaking, but his mind went blank. Where had his determination gone? Miles was not going to be a laissez-faire father, like his own had been. There were times in Miles past that he had wished his parents to be more than just figureheads and party hosts, and he was determined to be more than that.

“You are one of my best friends, my favorite person,” he said, unable to keep a serious expression as he smiled. It was true. He and Mira were magnetized to each other, falling into place even after months apart. As friends or as lovers, it did not matter. There was no one else he could say that about and he was glad for it. “I am more than happy to do this with you, if that is what you want.”

There were many more things he wanted to say, questions to ask, but Miles felt that laying down the foundation of what could be a very long future together, should be settled first.

What? She had--- what? Her brow rose in subdued surprise, as she had thought…. she had not thought it would be this easy. Miles was many wonderful, and equally irritating, things, but a wizard that so readily declared his openness at having, and raising, a child was not something she would have previously assumed of him. In fact, she had quite assumed he reacted the same way she did upon revealing her current state, with confusion and uncertainty.

Though, Mira supposed, unexpected and unmarried pregnancy wasn’t something she would have assumed for herself either, so perhaps it wasn’t so fair to presume. She uncrossed her arms from her chest, and let her hands fall to her sides. Miles continued to smile, which made her feel….

“Your favorite person?” she inclined her gaze forward, speaking in a small voice. Not that it was a complete surprise, for she had always felt especially connected to him, and had quietly marveled at how easily they could be with each other over the years without a fault. But this had just felt… she had been so unsure, and so scared of the future, nothing, not even years of trust, could shake her doubts.

Feeling comforted, Mira allowed one of her hands to reach out toward Miles’ extended arm. But, before their palms could touch, she quickly curled her fingers back and looked at him carefully. Her eyes locked on his face for reassurance.

“Are you sure?” she asked. Her voice sounded so much more significant with how quiet his flat had become, it almost felt like an invisible pressure waiting to burst with his response.

He had not been more sure of anything in his entire life. Miles was known for throwing himself into situations he scrambled, as gracefully as possible, to get out of. This was not something that he felt was a mistake he had made...he felt it was more of an event, something he would have to prove he could handle and make his own. The trade to the Magpies earlier this year had startled him and angered him out of his mind, but what did Miles do? He made the team his own, he took the leftovers of a once great squad and turned them into a decent competitor. Miles, he was a natural leader, someone you could count on to be loyal and dependent on no matter the situation. If he was on your side, he was always on your side.

No matter how annoying a person was, ask Jeremiah.

“I am absolutely sure,” he said with a nod. Miles smiled, feeling genuinely excited for this next venture and trying to give Mira a sense of security. He would prove to her again and again that he was there to support her through it all, hadn’t he always been? There had been plenty of men he had thwarted off for her in the time they’d known each other. He would do it again and again, too.

“Come on,” he said, putting both hands out and gesturing her forward, “We both need a hug. Come on.”

Immediately, her eyes watered. She did need a hug. Mira needed a lot of hugs from a lot of different people to make this life change easier to swallow, and certainly the reassuring touch from Miles would help significantly. In the future, perhaps not as much as his touch was what had gotten her in trouble in the first place, but now, very much, it was sorely needed.

Head bent she pressed her nose to Miles’ chest as her arms wrapped as much of him as she could grasp. His familiar calmed her, and for the first time in weeks, Mira felt the frenzied anxiety building within her ebb ever so slightly. Sniffling just the slightest, she spoke into his chest.

“I didn’t think you would be so calm,” she let slip. Exactly nothing about her life during the past two weeks had been calm, Miles must have been stealing all of it for himself. The ends of her mouth curled upward slightly, but she still kept her eyes closed in an attempt to control her undoubtedly hormonal tears. “But it’s nice.”

He dipped his chin forward and placed a kiss to the top of her head. Here they were, two friends and sometimes lovers, ready to take on the biggest adventure a pair of semi-adults could take. Miles trusted that with how hard-headed the two of them could be, they wouldn’t allow themselves to be anything but spectacular parents. Their child would be fantastic in every way a child could be fantastic, he was sure.

“I’m glad you think it is nice,” he said with another smile. Miles let out a laugh, hugging Mira tightly to him and unconsciously rocking back and forth. “I had a few weeks to get over the shock.”

“Perhaps your personal blockade was a good thing, it gave me time to get all the madness out.”

She let out a stifled snob, quieted only by her desire to laugh at the same time as her tears collected. Bianca always knew what was best, especially when Mira seemed to have no clue what was going on. Miles too, seemed to know what to do as well, something she would admit she had not been expecting. But that was good, wasn’t it? Because surely, there were going to be a lot of moments within the next eight months that she hadn’t the faintest clue how to act, but two of the people she cared most about would know what to do.

“Good because there is no way this will be my only moment of madness, I’m sure.” Her shoulders shook slightly as if she were laughing, but Mira was too overcome with excess emotion to actually do so, so it simply resulted in a string of heavy breaths released into his cloak. She had tilted her head, just in the slightest so he would be able to hear her words not as muffled sounds. “You’ll have to be--- madness free.”

It would be. Albeit the random (or perhaps weekly) blip, Mira knew… it was going to be alright.