Daion Echoes Through Transglass

5-2

"What are you grinning about?" Trevor asked, sleep making her voice wispy.

        "I'm just happy," he said, hugging her a little closer.

        "And yet you went to sleep scared of the dark."

        "No, I went to sleep scared of all those things like sleeping, walking, eating, and defecating around an enormous amount of ammunitions."

        "Same thing," she said through a yawn. "So what changed? You finally grow a spine?"

        "No, not at all," he said, deadpanning it perfectly and making her smile in that slow, sleepy way she had in the morning. "I realized this is the same ship we've been on for a standard year and it hasn't blown up yet. Chances are good it won't just because I now know the potential is there."

        "Good job figuring that out, sweetie," she congratulated him in the most condescending voice possible. The open hold warning stopped alarming as Trevor stretched.

        "Sounds like it's time for you to get ready for your quarterly physical."

        "Speaking of, I expected my Mom to have vidded about that by now," she said, glancing at her smart. It chimed for an incoming vid request as she was looking at it. "Okay, there she is." Trevor answered with a grin, keeping the vid on voice only."Hi, Mom," she said, yawning again.

        "Where are you? I can't see you. Are you up yet? You have your physical today, don't forget," her mom answered.

        "You can't see me because I answered voice-only. We just woke up. I've got an hour until my physical."

        "We just woke up?" Trevor's mom demanded, making her daughter chuckle.

        "Established relationship forms signed and filed yestercyc. Captain assigned us a shared cabin and we moved in before going to bed."

        Her mom made the same excited noise she had for finding out Trevor was going to have a pregnancy check during today's physical, and then yelled at Charlotte (who must've been minimum in another room) that Trevor and Leo were registered now. He grumbled a reply the couple didn't hear through the vid and got yelled at by his mom for being older than Trevor and not yet having someone to be registered with.

        "I'll vid you after the physical to tell you the results, okay mom?" Trevor said over top of Charlotte's reply that under Daion law relationships didn't have to register, and that he'd been more than a little busy organizing Daion populations on multiple planets and leading the reclamation of their Central World to bother around with any romantic relationships.

        "What time will you be done?" her mom asked Trevor, ignoring Charlotte's reply completely.

        "Usually the physicals only take half an hour."

        "Okay, so I'll vid you in an hour and a half."

        "No, mom, I'll vid you. I can't get vids during physicals because my smart will be monitoring."

        "Oh, yes. Okay. They have to check the baby."

        "No, mom, they're checking me, remember? I'm the person getting the physical?"

        "For the baby, you have to be healthy too, right?"

        "Okay, Mom, whatever. I'll vid you after, in about an hour and a half, okay?"

        "Okay. I love you. Oh, I'm so happy! Charlotte! Your sister will vid us in an hour with the results for how healthy the baby is!"

        The vid disconnected before Trevor could argue with her mom. Leo was laughing as she growled with the frustration of dealing with family before her morning tea.

        "She's going to be like this with you, now, too. Still think it's funny?" she asked, glaring at him with an 'I'm warning you' stare.

        "That's okay by me. My mom is terrifyingly similar and will be worse with you than she is with me because you're the mother of her first grandchild. So just consider this chuckling as my pre-meeting-my-mom-in-person apology. My dad will apologize in person for her when you finally meet them."

        "Fair deal," Trevor said with a grin and rolled out of bed. Leo followed her into the clean a few minutes later so they weren't fighting for elbow room at the sink and then they got dressed for breakfast together.

        Leo haunted the hallway outside the below decks control room while Trevor went for her physical. He didn't have to be here, everyone who had been working double shifts for five cycles had been given a full cycle off before coming back onto regular single shifts, but he genuinely liked being around the old equipment. He was asked a couple of questions about the satellite control panels and helped those fellow crew members navigate the antique handheld to find what they were looking for. The distraction was welcome as he waited and wondered how Trevor's physical was going.

        Forty-five minutes after her physical started, his smart vibrated his wrist. Time for a celebration swim! the written message said. Meet you at our pool, was added to the first line while he was still looking at his smart.

        You're really pregnant?? he wrote back, unable to keep his wide grin hidden.

        Yup! I have to vid my mom. 17 missed vids on my smart in the past twenty minutes... see you at our pool.

        Trevor included a holoheart around the final written message.

        "What's with the grin? Did you win the bridge crew's pool for what cycle and time Shiner sent their first threat?" Hodahvay asked as he slid into the seat for the consoles he should have been at for the past forty-five minutes since his shift started. Captain's distrust of Shiner had spread through Dockland's reduced crew quickly.

        "Trevor's pregnant. She and I are going to be parents," Leo replied. Saying it out loud, hearing the words as a definitive statement, was one of the best things that had happened so far this cycle... possibly this standard year. A chorus of congratulations rose up from everyone in the below decks control room, and well-wishes for Trevor's good health followed Leo as he left to go and meet with her as promised.

        He stopped at his personal comp to save a quick message to his parents' shared file and update them of this latest family news. He re-watched the last file they'd saved, the one he and Trevor had received together this morning while getting dressed, and he smiled for a second time at the excitement of both his parents in their reply to finding out he and Trevor were registered and possibly pregnant. His mom had been even more overly happy than Trevor's, but only by a slight margin. Leo chuckled as he waved a hand through the holoscreen and exited the comp.

        The margin between who's mom would be the worse meddler was either going to widen or converge, and it was going to be annoyingly wonderful to find out. Leo changed for swimming and decided on his way toward this deck's pool he needed to talk with Trevor about creating a shared file for only their moms so the two women could commiserate privately once Trevor and Leo started telling them to butt out and back off.