by Aiden Bates
Marcos, with all his hospital connections, had sweet talked one of the nurses into bringing one of the more comfortable recliners down from the OB unit telling them about my situation and that I was carrying twins. This had started the nurses fussing over me, making sure I had plenty of warm blankets and pillows. I sat here now, in my little cocoon with my tablet and lap-desk trying to finally, finally finish “Sirocco.” It felt…monumental that I was nearing the end of the project. All I had left was one panel. I could see it perfectly in my head. In the panels just before it, Rig and Javier had worked through the last of their burdens. Rig, with the guilt of moving on, and Javier, with the guilt of still being alive. They’d decided that they deserved whatever happiness they could find. They were finally going to be able to set their burdens down and be together, free of their mutual and separate pasts. The last panel was a close up of their hands, Rig’s cradled in Javier’s, a shining, golden ring on Rig’s finger.
I looked helplessly at Pedro again. It was impossible to draw something like that when all my own hopes and dreams were still teetering on a knife’s edge. The nurse had come in to unhook him from the IV hours ago, and the doctor had told me it was just a matter of time until Pedro woke up. How much was a matter of time? How long was too long? I tried to keep a grip on it, but my worry that Pedro wasn’t going to wake up at all was mounting with each passing minute. During the surgery they had lost him for a few seconds. He’d coded. My heart had fallen through the floor when the doctor had told me, but she seemed to think this wasn’t likely to lead to anything significant in his recovery. Now, though, everything seemed like it was significant.
I tried again to focus on the comic, but there was just no use. There was no way I was going to give Rig his happy ending when mine was still stubbornly asleep.
A soft groan caught me by surprise, and I looked up to see Pedro’s feet moving, his eyes fluttering open.
I slammed on the call button, and before the voice on the other end could even ask me what I wanted, I started talking.
“He’s waking up. He’s waking up,” I said before call button, tablet and blankets were forgotten and I was on my feet, awkwardly leaning over the bed rail.
I watched as Pedro’s eyes slowly opened, revealing the honey brown eyes I’d been missing. “Pedro, hey, baby. Hi.” I kissed him on the forehead, his warm skin so perfect against my lips. It felt so good to have him here with me again. Pedro seemed a little disoriented, but at hearing my voice he smirked a little and tried to move his arms. “Hey, hey. None of that right now, alright? Try not to move. The nurses and doctors are coming. Just wait a little, okay?”
The nurses, techs and doctors swarmed the room for the next hour, testing his reflexes and asking him question after question about sensation and body movement and all sorts of things before they were satisfied enough to give us a few minutes on our own.
They’d told him to rest, but as soon as they’d left the room his gaze fell on me, and he gestured weakly with his hand for me to come to him. I did. Instantly.
“Did I miss it?” Pedro asked. His voice was raspy and dry as sandpaper even though they’d allowed him a few sips of water.
“What?” I asked confused. “I don’t understand. Miss what?”
Pedro licked his cracked lips before continuing. “The babies. Did I miss our babies being born?”
I laughed, and then took his hand, tracing my thumb against his soft skin. “No, sweetheart. You didn’t. It’s only been two weeks, that’s all. The nuggets are still in here trust me.” The morning sickness alone was enough to remind me of that.
“Mmm, that’s good,” Pedro said. “How’d the surgery go?”
I nodded. “Good. Perfect. They were able to get the clot and repair the bleed. They were really just waiting for you to decide to wake up. You’re going to be okay, Pedro. Really, really okay,” I said. I said it for him, but I also said it for myself. I needed to hear that out loud. Pedro was here and he was awake, and he was going to be alright.
Pedro pulled his hand out from under mine and tugged me closer to him.
“I’m sorry I scared you, angel. Promise I won’t do that again.”
“That’s right. You better not ever do it again or I’ll never forgive you,” I said.
Pedro smiled, and then closed his eyes a moment before opening them and looking at me. “Man, I had the weirdest dreams.”
“Yeah? What about?” I asked, not sure coma patients had dreams, but willing to indulge him.
Pedro’s eyebrows furrowed as if he was trying to remember. “I was in a desert again, and I thought I wouldn’t make it back? I don’t know exactly, I can’t remember much of it, but I do remember really thinking I might get stuck there. That I would end up staying in the desert forever.”
As he spoke, a cold chill ran down my spine. I laced my fingers with his and contemplated how much to tell him, but we’d promised to be honest with each other, and I knew if I didn’t tell him now, the doctors would do so later. “When they did your surgery. Afterward, the doctor told Marcos and me that you’d coded for a few seconds on the operating table. She said it was less than ten seconds and they were able to get you right back again.”
“So I died?”
“Technically, but…it doesn’t matter. You’re here now.”
Pedro’s gaze caught mine and he looked at me seriously. “Yeah, I am. I really am. And I’m not going anywhere, okay? I swear. Not ever.”
“That sounds perfect,” I told him.
Pedro tugged me a little closer to him.
“And when I’m better, when all of this is over, how do you feel about getting married? Would you? Will you marry me, Charlie?”
“Well, this is not the most romantic place to propose, but it’s the best timing. Yes, sweetheart. I’ll marry you.” I grinned as I accepted, and I suddenly felt weightless. Whether it was just the relief of finally having him living and breathing under my hands again or the notion that he wanted to stay with me, with our family forever, I wasn’t sure. Either way, I felt like all those burdens I’d been carrying were suddenly gone, and it was just Pedro and me facing the world together. With our nuggets.
My life now wasn’t like the life I would have had with Jason. We had been so wide eyed and innocent and so achingly in love with each other and the idea of love itself.
Pedro and me, we were messy and complicated. There were deep channels of sorrow, but mountains of growth. We saw each other at our lows, our highs, and we accepted both. Pedro didn’t shy away from my past, I didn’t shy away from Pedro’s future. Our lives were real and baldly honest.
I could now look at my life with Jason like a book; cherished, loved, and unfortunately over. It was there, whenever I wanted to open it again for a revisit. But I’d already read the story, and I could indulge myself in it every now and again without losing myself in it. I could love what I’d had with Jason and be thankful for it. I could love Pedro with just as much thanks and not feel like I was betraying anything or anyone. And I was going to. Every day.
Pedro smiled at me, but then his eyes started to drift closed, and it was obvious he was exhausted. “Sleep, Pedro. I’ll be here. I’ll always be here.” He settled back on his pillows, and I looked around to see if I was being watched before lowering the bedrail and crawling into the bed with him.
Pedro wrapped an arm around me and rested his hand reassuringly on the swelling bump of my stomach. I rested my cheek against his chest, infinitely soothed by the slow steady thump of his heart. I felt his breath even out.
“Thanks, Jason,” he mumbled, more than half asleep.
My heart felt tight. It was like Pedro could read my mind. I held him close, secure now in the knowledge he’d wake up again. Pedro, my fiancé… The father of my babies. How had I gotten so lucky.
“Lucky? I’d say you got lucky twice, darlin’.”
I smiled at the voice in my head; deep, young, and hopeful for a future he didn’t know he wouldn’t have. Yeah. Perfectl
y lucky twice. “Thank you, Jason.”
30
Pedro
Marcos’s babies came during winter, after the holidays were over. An alpha and a girl for Oliver, almost like Mami had said, and an alpha and an omega for Mitch. It almost caused an irreparable division in the family that left all of us still feeling raw about it for months afterward.
“No!” Oliver had yelled in frustration.
“It could be cute? Maybe?” Marcos must have been trying to restore some peace to his household as he gently tried to persuade one of his husbands to agree to Mami. He obviously wasn’t as brave as he was feeling, though, since as soon as Oliver glowered at him, Marcos shut his mouth.
“Suegra, I respect you. I respect your wishes for this family. We have never disagreed on anything before and if you press me on this, I will cave. But please, don’t ask me to do this,” Oliver said, fixing Mami with the biggest, saddest, brown eyes any of us had ever seen.
“You’re being kind of dramatic,” Mitch said. I knew he was enjoying the fact that he and Mami were firmly together on this. “Listen I’ve been thinking about Valentine and Valerie for you, and then we’ll do like, Arrow and Desiree for me.”
“I think I could get used to Arrow, but the other ones are a little…” Papi said, weighing in when nobody had asked him to.
Mami looked at Papi like she was contemplating divorcing him. Mitch and Oliver seemed as though they had never disagreed on anything as enormous as this and didn’t know what to do with themselves. Marcos looked like he was reconsidering every life decision that had led him up to this moment, and Charlie and I very, very carefully looked at each other to make sure we were on the same page.
“That sounds so dumb!” I said, exploding once we were safely in the car and away from anyone else that might hear.
“No themed names! That’s a rule! They’re two separate people. Oh my god. No themed names!” Charlie said, barely able to keep his eyes open long enough to drive, he was laughing so hard.
Before both sides were done fighting about the decision, the Acosta-Munoz-Thompson twins—both sets of them—arrived. That threw us all into chaos all over again as it was all-hands-on-deck as Mitch, Oliver, and Marcos found themselves outnumbered by the babies in the house.
“You have to help me,” Marcos had called to say, desperately. “I have five kids, two recently delivered omegas, and one Mami in the house. For the love of god. For all the time I spent watching you, please…”
Between helping my brother and his family, looking for a job myself, building a crib, and alternatively rubbing Charlie’s back, wrists, feet, our own twins almost seemed to arrive quietly in comparison. That was fine by me. Charlie and I both needed as much peace and quiet as possible.
After sixteen hours in labor, our baby girl came first, and then our baby omega, a sign that she would take the lead between the two of them.
“That’s less because of the order they were born in and more because she’s going to be your mother’s granddaughter,” Charlie said, after the delivery nurses had taken the babies away to wash them and to examine them.
He was sweaty, red faced and he was still groggy after the gas they’d given him to help with labor pains, but he’d never looked more beautiful.
“How are you?” Charlie asked, his blue eyes only half open as he gazed at me.
I chuckled a little. “How am I? How are you?”
“Sleepy,” he said. “Sticky. Kind of wrung out. Really, though, how are you?”
“Actually, I feel kinda like when you showed me ‘Sirocco,’. Awestruck. Amazed. Impressed that this is what you’ve been working on this whole time.”
That made Charlie laugh softly. “I guess so, yeah. No sequels for now, please.”
“No,” I agreed. I leaned over and kissed Charlie’s sweaty forehead, and then his pain bitten lips. “Get some rest. They’ll be bringing our babies back soon, and then we won’t get any rest ever again.” Charlie smiled and closed his eyes, and I continued to sit next to him, holding his hand, and rubbing along the top of it with my thumb as he drifted in and out.
He slept through the move from the delivery room to the recovery room, and I followed behind as they wheeled him along the hallways to where our babies waited, both swaddled in the tiny blankets we’d brought with us. The nurse smiled at me as I looked down at them, as tears of joy, relief, and wonder trickled down my cheeks.
“Your first?” the nurse asked.
I nodded.
“There’s been a lot of those. Twins, and even triplets. I heard it had something to do with that tampered suppressant. Is that what happened to you?”
I nodded again, but regardless of whether Charlie’s pill had been tampered with or not, I liked to think we would have got here anyway, that I’d be looking down at babies Charlie and I produced. Maybe not so soon, but we’d definitely be in this position at some point in our lives.
“Well, good luck,” the nurse said, just before she left me alone with Charlie and my twins. My family.
“Feels unfair, doesn’t it?” Charlie asked. I turned to see him watching me, a light smile on his lips.
“What does?” Once again I leaned down to kiss him gently, still in awe of what he’d done.
“Twins. Two for the price of one, almost. Like, it’s both an unfair amount of work on the front end but they’ll also be really nice once they grow up together? I don’t know. Kind of daunting, kind of glorious.”
“Yeah, yeah. If one of them falls into a coma, the other one can watch them and vice versa.”
Charlie swatted at me very weakly. I pulled up a chair and sat beside him again, once more holding his hand. I never expected it to be this serene or to have the chance to enjoy a few moments of relative peace and quiet. I should have known it wouldn’t last long. My phone pinged for the umpteenth time, and I sighed before answering the text. One of dozens, not to mention the eighteen missed calls.
“Ready for visitors?” I asked Charlie. “Once I let one come in, they’re all going to want to be here.”
“Of course. Can you let my dads know too?”
I sent off text messages, asking them to co-ordinate times so they didn’t all come in at once, and then we relaxed for what we both realized would probably be the only time for the next few days or even weeks.
Not even an hour later, I heard footsteps at the door.
“God, you look terrible!” I said, as Marcos blearily entered the room.
“That’s what he used to look like when he was watching you,” Charlie remarked softly.
“I’m just tired all the time,” Marcos protested. “You abandoned us.”
“I didn’t abandon you, I had Charlie to look after.” With us more focused on our own delivery date, the Acosta-Munoz-Thompson’s had to recalibrate having less help around, and I could see the effects all over the bags under Marcos’ eyes.
Mitch and Oliver looked just as tired, but it was more obvious by the way they weren’t immediately admiring the babies as I’d expected them to. They also weren’t chattering to each other or ribbing Marcos like they usually were. They just seemed to stand there, holding each other up.
“Who’s watching the gang?” I asked, surprised at seeing them all out at the same time.
“Benny,” Mitch said. “If I know him he’s fixing to have another one soon, so I just wanted to remind him of what he’s getting himself into.”
“You okay?” Marcos asked Charlie. They’d always been friendly, but ever since the surgery, I found that Charlie was a lot more likely to take up for Marcos when the whole family was ganging up on him. That was okay. As long as they didn’t in turn gang up on me, I could live with that. It was just another sign that Charlie was integrated into the family.
“We’re okay,” I answered on Charlie’s behalf, kind of appreciative and endeared by Marcos’s concern, for once.
“Of course, you’re okay, you didn’t do shit. I’m asking Charlie. Charlie, are you okay?”
“Oh, absolutely. No thanks to him,” Charlie said, rolling his eyes in my direction. “Did you bring me any granola bars?”
“Nah, I can run downstairs and fix you a platter from the vending machines, though. Since Pedro’s useless.” They exchanged really tired smiles, and I grunted a little. So much for not ganging up on me, I guessed.
“Where are they?” Mami pushed her way through Mitch and Oliver, and headed directly for the twin’s cribs.
The twins were still fast asleep, so Mami perched over both of their bassinets and settled on watching them, a satisfied smile on her face, as if she’d been responsible for their arrival. Well, in a way she was. She’d had me, so, without me the babies wouldn’t have been born… I guess every grandparent thinks like that.
“What did you settle on?” Papi asked me, eyeing Mami carefully for fear of the hornet’s nest he was kicking.
“Well…” I glanced at Charlie. “We thought Jace for the boy. You know, as in…”
Marcos, Oliver, Mitch, and Mami all nodded to show they understood.
“Yeah, Silas took my baby name,” Charlie said with a soft laugh. “Not that I told him I wanted it or anything. At the time, I never even considered having a baby, but still.”
“Good thing Teddy’s was a girl, then,” Mitch said with wink in consolation. “Anyway, Jace is modern. Sleek. Jace Acosta. He sounds like an action hero.”
Marcos heaved a sigh like he was trying to breathe through the start of tears. I knew that sigh and the feelings he tried to hide behind it. I felt them too, I guess we all did.
“And the girl?” Oliver asked with a soft smile. He never met Jason, but by now he knew us well enough to know what that sigh meant too.
“Well, if it’s alright with you, Sue-ay-gruh,” Charlie said, pronouncing the Spanish word for “mother-in-law” very badly but very earnestly. “We were thinking of Incarna.”
“Holy shit. Why? What did the poor baby do to deserve that?” Mitch asked in a whisper I was close enough to hear, but thankfully, Mami did not.
