Chapter Text
"Are you sure you want to? C-carry -- Have -- You know --"
"Use your words, Cecil."
"Carry them? The, um. The eggs," Cecil finally blurts out, his face a fascinating and probably unhealthy shade of plum.
"Children," Carlos corrects him, without missing a beat. He strokes his hands up and down Cecil's arms, still taut and nervous as they remain braced to either side of the pillow. "And yes, I think I understand the process pretty well. If we prepare for it right, and I stop taking the shots for a few months..."
"Oh, but it's so much to ask," Cecil agonizes. "You know we could use a suh... um, surrogate, or take someone else's. The thing with the. What is it. Kidnapping?"
"Adoption. At least I hope that's what you mean. But no, we've been over this. I want our children, Cecil."
The eggs, after all, won't develop with his DNA unless he incubates them, and the idea of raising kids that are fertilized from Cecil alone, or with some host parent's genetics thrown in, is just weirdly upsetting to him. More weirdly upsetting than the thought of bearing a decidedly non-human pregnancy, Carlos had been surprised to realize.
"It's a little gross, though," Cecil reminds him. "I mean, it's very gross. All the antibiotics. And you won't be able to have solid food for three months."
Carlos grimaces, not for that mental image so much as the alternative he knows he has to suggest instead, as a scientist. He clears his throat very, very clinically, chews the inside of his cheek as he works up the nerve, and just tries driving the words out.
"I think we should try it from the front," he says. And when Cecil looks down at him in a knotted mess of confusion and embarrassment he clarifies: "Look, it's what that organ is meant for, right? It'll be sterile, they'll be incubated properly, and I'll even get to eat normal meals the whole time."
"I can't put you through that," Cecil says, looking pained.
"We've talked about this, Cecil."
"I know, but... it'll hurt you. I'll hurt you."
"You could never, ever hurt me," Carlos says firmly, reaching up and brushing several strands of hair out of his partner's eyes. "Not in any way I didn't want, at least. Besides..."
He glances down at where their bodies are joined -- or rather, where Cecil's tentacles have unfurled by the dozens and wrapped snugly over every exposed inch of Carlos's lower body, keeping Carlos's strap-on buried deep inside that one sucking orifice between Cecil's legs that Carlos still doesn't really understand.
"...Some things just don't seem as big a deal as they once did," Carlos finishes, with a little bit of a shrug.
This elicits a chuckle between them, and Carlos watches the tension seep from Cecil's still-mainly-human shoulders.
"All right," Cecil relents at last, as he leans down and plants a light kiss on Carlos's forehead. Carlos makes a soft noise of satisfaction.
"All right," Cecil says again, his gift for words seemingly escaping out the window again. "Let's have a li -- Um. S-spawn a clu, a cl --"
"Make a family," Carlos provides. Cecil, helplessly grateful, agrees and ends the conversation with a deeper sort of kiss.
They have rushed into a lot of things in their relationship. Moving in together, getting married. This is one where they agree to take their time and do it right.
Carlos works with Teddy Williams -- who has been his doctor since the incident under Lane 5 -- to scale back the hormones, prepare his immune system, and train certain muscle groups he never thought he'd have to use again.
It's unpleasant and stressful, to be sure -- there are plenty of nights Carlos doesn't want to be touched at all and a few days when his temperament is ungodly. He starts hating the sound of his voice, even when Cecil assures him he sounds no different than before. His chest becomes too tender for his binders and he dreads going out. Soon, he can't bear to look at his own reflection either -- which is easy enough to accomplish, since Cecil keeps the mirrors covered in the apartment anyway.
Cecil does his part by mainly staying out of the way, monitoring his diet, and producing a few 'practice' eggs. Unfertilized, he promises Carlos, who grows ashen at the sight of the little walnut-sized things anyway and absolutely refuses to eat them for breakfast.
Finally, the two agree on a date. They even narrow it down to a particular time. The hour of conception, Cecil deems it ominously. They mark it on their phones' calendars and leave a note to themselves on the fridge, written in magnet poetry like the most cryptic dirty verse ever constructed:
[that night]
[all of] [them]
[inside]
[him][.]
The night itself arrives without any particular hurry, though it still seems to sneak up on them. Cecil gets home from the station after midnight, per usual, and the two have an appropriately romantic dinner. No wine is involved -- alcohol might harm the eggs -- and they retire upstairs to the bedroom after washing up. No unfinished business, no loose ends, no distractions.
Well. Almost no distractions. They might have lingered on making out longer than they had planned on the schedule. And that may have led to some heavy petting, and Cecil stroking Carlos between his thighs like he's not normally allowed to do, until Carlos gasps, squirms, and nervously insists that Cecil just knock him up already.
Cecil fidgets with his tie and promises to oblige.
They have the next part very carefully planned. After undressing, Carlos lies down on his back on the bed, pillows supporting his neck and lower back. Legs parted, he remains still as Cecil slides a lube-slicked finger into his front hole, shuddering only softly when Cecil brushes over that textured spot and hastily apologizes. Just when Carlos thinks he can't stand the intrusion any longer, Cecil's finger goes away and Carlos feels a warmer, wetter thing unfurl near his hole. He shuts his eyes.
"Are you all right?" Cecil asks carefully, the slim tendril not probing any further just yet.
Cecil's breath is hot against Carlos's cheek and that causes his stomach to twist somehow, even though he knows it shouldn't, even though they practiced and he told himself he'd gotten over a lot of this anxiety. Carlos fists at the sheets beside his head. He runs his thumb over the hard, familiar weight of his wedding ring and manages to a short, tense nod.
"No," Cecil instructs him. "Carlos, I need to hear you say it."
Carlos's eyelids crease a moment and he almost wants to make a smart remark, about how now of all times Cecil has rediscovered the ability to speak in complete sentences. But his own language centers seem to be falling apart just then, and it's not totally awful that this should be happening right now, some part of it is beautiful and just-right, but it's all so... overwhelming.
"I'm fine," he manages, eyelids lifting enough that he can make out Cecil's concerned silhouette hovering over him. "Keep going."
Cecil bows his head, his lips not quite meeting Carlos's cheek as he leans down and in, and Carlos's breath hitches as the tendril slides its way inside him.
They had fooled around with frontal penetration a bit in the past, and it had been messy and uncomfortable and Carlos had needed quite a bit of alone time afterwards. This is... not quite the same. Because Cecil is not exactly fucking him -- he's just using the small limb to trace the contours of his husband's insides, slicking a special chemical around the deepest part to soften and open things up, as far as Carlos understands it. His nerve endings aren't exactly dense in that area so he can't really feel what the tendril is doing, just that it feels warm and, progressively, a little tingly.
"Good?" Cecil prompts, somewhere above him.
"Not good, but... okay," Carlos breathes.
"We can stop."
"No. I want this. Just, please..."
Cecil brushes a few wiry curls of hair from Carlos's forehead and complies again, carefully, so slowly and lovingly it almost aches. He eases the wet tendril out of Carlos's body, and Carlos has one moment of nausea from the cool emptiness left in its wake before something else is pressing against his hole. Thicker, with a fat, rounded tip.
The ovipositor is distinct from the rest of Cecil's tentacles, plush and a bit translucent, roughly segmented and quite pliant even when fully erect. Usually drawn up inside Cecil's body, Carlos had assumed the first time he'd seen it that it was Cecil's receptive sex organ which had everted somehow, and he had tried pleasuring it with his tongue -- to productive if messy results, after which Cecil had babbled incoherently for about half an hour trying to explain what had happened. Carlos had taken the whole thing in stride -- after learning your partner has tentacles, finding that some of them lay eggs is hardly a revelation -- but all that apparently had not prepared him for this moment, here, with the thing poised to go inside him.
Carlos doesn't realize he's stopped breathing until Cecil is taking hold of his wrist and guiding his hand down between their bodies.
"It might... help if you..." It's almost a relief that Cecil, too, is losing his ability to construct complete sentences again. "I don't want to go too fast."
Carlos's head is swimming. His pulse point is going like a jackhammer against Cecil's thumb and he nods, exhaling the small bit of breath he's been holding back and allowing his fingers to venture south and spread apart the flesh there.
Cecil goes slow. And they had practiced this part too, and Cecil is using plenty of lubrication -- his own as well as the store-bought variety -- but the ovipositor is just huge and Carlos can't suppress every noise that leaves his throat. He groans and tries to do what seems natural, spreading his legs, holding himself open. When the first ridged segment passes into him his entire body starts to shudder and he forces himself not to clamp down, all the muscles in his pelvis seeming to spasm and flutter around Cecil's organ all at once.
He hears Cecil making a distressed choking noise and his eyes crease open again. He's about to ask if Cecil is all right, but the face he sees is one so screwed up in pleasure it seems a moot question.
"Gods. Carlos, you're so..." Cecil manages, voice quavering, the rest of it coming out as an ecstatic moan.
The organ must be far more sensitive than either of them realized, Carlos thinks dimly, in that part of his brain that even now can't resist taking field notes. He hums in response, bidding his eyes to fall shut again as he rocks his hips, carefully, and Cecil slides a little more into him.
The other ridges are a little easier to take, and Carlos isn't sure if they're smoother or if the numbness is suffusing through his pelvis now, but soon enough Cecil is buried in as far as he can go. They groan and arch together as the tip flares out inside Carlos, anchoring them together, and then everything is just... insensate.
Eventually they both remember to breathe again, and Cecil leans down for a trembling kiss. Where all of Carlos's energy has gone into not panicking and keeping his body relaxed, Cecil's has gone into holding back and not giving into his body's impulses. Now each of them is a shaking, exhausted mess, and they technically aren't even half done.
"All right?" Cecil asks between breathy, clumsy kisses.
"Yes," Carlos answers, so readily that it shocks him. His hands release their death-grip on the sheets and he winds his arms instead around his husband's shoulders. "How about you?"
"M'great," Cecil slurs, running his tongue over Carlos's bottom lip, and the sated enthusiasm of it all makes Carlos chuckle and hug him all the tighter. "Beautiful, ravishing, perfectly imperfect..."
"Husband," Carlos suggests, nudging the side of Cecil's nose with his own.
"My other half," Cecil purrs, and his voice does indeed seem to reach a deep, hidden octave that rattles in both their throats, coiling around their bones. "The completion of my being. I would give you a thousand young."
It's a little late into the evening to be that formal, Carlos thinks, laughing softly beneath his breath again. "Is this another ritual?"
"Nn, no, not a ritual," Cecil says fondly, dreamily. He's manifested several more tentacles by now, but just yet they only slither lazily over Carlos's thighs, a little cool to the touch. "Just me."
"Well," says Carlos, not quite believing him, but deciding now is as good a moment as any to get going on the next step of this. And he wants to tell himself the next words are immediate but in fact it requires he draw in a breath first. "I'm ready when you are."
Cecil nods softly and lifts his head, kissing his partner's nose and then locking eyes with him again, as below at the join of their bodies something moves.
Carlos is aware of it, first, as firm pressure, like a hard thumb pushing flat against the fragile ring of muscle at his entrance. The pressure seems to grow, and the firm lump seems to swell as it squeezes inward, stretching Carlos's hole into a tight, shivering circle and still it seems to keep pushing into him, past all possible sense of scale and his body's elasticity.
He is on the verge of crying out, convinced the flesh there is about to tear or snap when suddenly it's through, and the egg is traveling upwards inside of him now, a rolling weight against his inner walls. He wriggles against the pillows, feeling it shift and catch briefly against each segmented ring of Cecil's ovipositor before the sensation seems to simply disintegrate inside him, replaced by a strange satedness ebbing into his lower belly.
Carlos and Cecil breathe out in ragged unison.
"That's one," Cecil confirms shakily, thumbs running over his husband's cheeks. "How're you doing?"
Carlos makes a small cooing noise. His head is swimming in syrup, and his brain seems to have been replaced by a very sore bowling ball. Without thinking, he drifts one hand down from Cecil's shoulder and rests it, feather-light, over his own stomach.
"S'strange," Carlos mumbles, the edges of his words soft and floating like he's about to drift off into sleep. "I used to... have nightmares about this... As a kid, freaking out when my mom went on about 'womanhood' and all that..."
All this is not very romantic of him, Carlos thinks dimly. But there is a certain rightness to these words choosing this moment to come tumbling out, with his husband anchored inside him, the rest of his tentacles now sprawled and twining over Carlos's lower body like Cecil's about to either put down roots or swallow him whole -- and neither idea frightens him anymore, Carlos realizes.
"Now all I want is... How many did you say you were gonna give me?"
"A thousand," says Cecil, and even though Carlos's eyes are still shut he knows with a cosmic certainty the small and loving smile that accompanies those words. "Not all at once, though. You couldn't take it..."
"I don't think we could feed 'em all anyway. Or put them through college..."
"It does feel like, um, the clutch is..." Cecil shifts on what remains of his knees, sounding embarrassed. "...It feels bigger than usual. I'll try to hold back."
Carlos weighs this bit of information for a moment. Finally: "Are they all that size?"
"Yeah." Cecil's tone relaxes. "Feels like. I'd guess they're all about... normal."
"This one didn't feel very 'normal.'"
"It's the same size as the practice ones," Cecil assures him, stroking warm fingers through Carlos's hair. "It's just strange going into your -- because it's going inside you. The next one should be easier. Tell me if it's, um, not."
Carlos exhales, more sharply than intended, his body vibrating as he nods.
This time, Cecil accepts the nonverbal confirmation. He steadies himself, tendrils warming against Carlos's skin as he gives his hips a firm squeeze and continues.
And the second egg does pass through much more easily than the first. It eases through the shivering ring of muscle at the base of his opening and keeps going, accompanied with a gush of hot and viscous fluid that Carlos only barely feels as it pours deep inside him. The third and fourth eggs come closer together, and Carlos gasps and arches his back as each rolls over his sensitized flesh, an electric jolt traveling, unbidden, up his spine.
The fifth egg is a little bigger than the others. When it passes through Cecil's ovipositor it raises each segmented ridge and Carlos cries out and groans, twisting, lifting his hips to take the firm weight deeper inside him. If he could see himself, Carlos is sure the lewd display would mortify him. Cecil, who can see him, actually gasps, murmuring his name in something half awe and half alarm, squeezing more tightly around Carlos's hips with all his various appendages.
By the sixth egg, it all starts to blur together. Cecil's grunts as he releases something deep inside his body. The clenching, undulating weight of the ovipositor as it rolls its cargo inside of Carlos. Every breath and sigh and electric fluttering of not-quite-pain suffusing Carlos's lower body, the heat in his chest, the full and leaden feeling filling his belly.
His cock, blood-swollen and hard as a little rock, juts out from its hood and begs achingly for attention. Finally, after the tenth or twelfth egg, Carlos can't help it anymore and grinds the heel of his palm against his dick, coming with a shudder just as Cecil releases another batch inside him.
"Wow," Cecil manages, when Carlos's orgasm has subsided into little twitches firing off like overtaxed synapses and his heartbeat is still loud in his ears. "I didn't think you--"
"--Sorry. I just--"
"No, no, don't apologize, my gods. I've never seen you so..."
Beautiful, Cecil's lips finish for him, as he gathers the two of them into a kiss with too many teeth, their bodies rocking together as Carlos opens to him in a way he never has before.
Carlos swears the egg count is well past twenty before he actually starts to feel nauseous. His lower belly feels heavy and distended, and he can actually feel the hard lumps of the eggs gathering inside him when he presses his fingers against his stomach. The sweat and lubricant between their bodies has started to dry and things are starting to stick and chafe in unpleasant areas.
In one of their normal sessions of marathon sex (because neither of them are young men anymore, but Cecil still gets his cycle every six weeks, and Carlos is nothing if not appreciative for the extra data collection) this would be when they pull apart for a break, a couple glasses of water, and some more lube. But Cecil's ovipositor is still latched tightly inside him, making sudden separation physically impossible, and the eggs seem to be descending much faster now as well. Even if Cecil volunteers to stop, Carlos is not sure at this point that he can.
"Cecil," Carlos pleads anyway, head tossing side to side as yet another egg finds its way into his overstuffed body, stretching his insides, cutting into his air. The sheets beneath his back are soaking wet and freezing. "I can't -- I can't --"
"Just a bit more," Cecil promises, more groan than words, breath coming heavy and hot against Carlos's throat. "I swear I've never... You're so wonderful..."
"I can't breathe," Carlos dry-sobs.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." Clumsily, Cecil tries disentangling their limbs, sitting back as much as his body will allow to start urging Carlos onto his side. It frees his breathing somewhat, but everything is still too full. "This should help. I just. Please hold on. I'm nearly --"
Another egg forces its way up inside Carlos and his eyes roll back into his head. Everything feels ready to burst. His midsection, his skull. He can taste bile and salt rising in his throat and, just for a moment, Carlos fleetingly thinks back to articles on explosive breeding in frogs and parasitic wasp larvae and wonders if this is it, this is the way he goes out, mated to death by his egg-laying tentacle beast of a husband.
Then Cecil lets out one final, full-throated moan, hands and tentacles tightening around every part of Carlos's body. A massive gush of boiling hot something floods Carlos's insides, packing into every remaining millimeter of space until the universe spins, a dark buzzing fills his ears, and he teeters just on the edge of blacking out. And then it's over.
In the morning, every part of Carlos -- inside and out -- just aches. He also can't seem to move any of his limbs, or haul himself upright once he does. There seems to be a thousand pound weight occupying his torso.
"Hi," Cecil says sleepily behind his shoulder, a hand curling loosely in the hair above his ear. "Need to throw up?"
"I think, yeah," Carlos struggles out, moments before he's heaving last night's dinner into a bucket Cecil rushes to his bedside.
"That's probably healthy," Cecil says with what Carlos thinks is an inappropriate amount of optimism, after he's done hurling all the possible contents of his stomach. Cecil takes the bucket away and returns with a washcloth and a glass of water, and after Carlos has recovered a little he helps him to sit up and start the long process toward the bathroom.
"Christ," Carlos mutters when he's finally up on his feet, unbalanced and swaying, looking down at the swell of his stomach which seems unfairly small given all that Cecil packed in there last night. "I don't think I'm making it to the lab today."
"You'll feel better after breakfast," Cecil assures him, allowing Carlos to hang onto him for balance as he makes the first tentative waddle toward the toilet.
"I look hideous," Carlos protests.
"You're glowing, actually," Cecil maintains. Before Carlos can ask if he means that literally, Cecil leans over to kiss him, sour-tasting mouth and everything.
It takes a couple days for Carlos to adjust to his new center of balance but afterwards their lives continue on quite normally, by Night Vale's own particular definition of the term.
Carlos goes to the lab as usual, and after the first week or so his colleagues stop staring at his growing midsection like it's about to burst open and create a departmental biohazard. Cecil goes to the station each day and comes home after midnight with fresh meats and tremendous amounts of affection, which Carlos guesses is in part pair-bonding instincts kicking into high gear but mostly Cecil being Cecil.
He tries his best to return Cecil's attentions, but for the first couple weeks business-as-usual is the best Carlos can manage, with domestic affairs coming in as a distant second on his list of priorities.
When the morning sickness finally starts to recede, Carlos manages to find a sort of equilibrium, and that offers a short peace at least -- but then the fits of dysphoria come back, as his body takes the signs of pregnancy to flood his system with estrogen again and bring out sets of biological blueprints it had kept stashed for just this purpose, against all his intentions. Soon, his chest starts to swell and he's putting on weight in places he had hoped he never would again. It's not much, but it's enough to have him feel more like an alien in his own skin than ever before.
Some nights it gets too much to bear. When that happens no amount of assurances from Cecil seems to make any bit of difference, and Carlos does not so much go to sleep as pass out from exhaustion, huddled at the far corner of the bed, nails digging half-moons into the flesh of his upper arms.
Other nights, it's better. And on those occasions Carlos usually ends up falling asleep in the middle of the bed, Cecil spooned against his back with all his many limbs cradling them together as if it were just the two of them adrift in a dark ocean. On those nights, it's enough to share body heat and breathe in unison with another living being. And Cecil -- patient, devoted Cecil -- doesn't ask for anything more out of him, even though Carlos can tell the dry spell is killing him.
After the first month mark, things begin to settle out, thank goodness. Jeans become a more difficult thing, but at least Carlos's libido comes back, to the couple's mutual relief. They find they have to get a little creative with positions, but it's not so much a challenge, when one of them has a virtually infinite number of fully prehensile and very strong limbs at his disposal, and the other has plenty of toys.
In fact the only thing that Carlos never ends up getting used to is going out in public. Not because of any hateful confrontations or confused pronouns -- he's actually never once been misgendered in this town, even that time when he had to run out at 3 in the morning to prevent Ragnarok and forgot his binder -- but because everyone wants to coo at him.
"You're so lucky, Mister Palmer," the barista at the coffee shop sighs, while preparing a decaffeinated version of his regular order one morning. Caffeine, he's read, isn't good for the eggs either.
"Doctor," Carlos corrects, mostly out of habit. He'd taken Cecil's last name at marriage not out of any sense of tradition but because he'd long ago become resigned to the fact no one in this town was ever going to realize his surname was not 'Thescientist.' "And, er, thank you. We're very happy."
"Have you been picking out names?" she asks, shaking out an extra helping of ground spider flakes into his nonfat latte foam. That's another thing: everyone keeps trying to feed him extra protein.
"We don't even know how many there are yet," Carlos says wearily. "Would you like to be added to the list?"
"Oh I would be so honored!" thrills the barista, clasping her spare hands together.
Carlos steals a quick glance at her name tag to see what he's just signed one of his future daughters up for. Well. He supposes 'Anaesthesia' sounds enough like a name.
Her enthusiasm is a bit off-putting, though. But it's fine, Carlos reminds himself. It's very fine. Cecil's a local celebrity, and thanks to how much he's gushed about his husband on the air in the last few years Carlos guesses that makes him a bit of a celebrity too. When Anaesthesia the Barista comes around from behind the counter asking if she can touch Carlos's stomach, however, that's where Carlos has to draw the line.
Escaping the coffee shop is even more of an ordeal, not simply for the incantations he has to recite to get the door to appear but because on his way to the cafe's exterior wall he has to politely dodge three fussing grandmothers, eight hearty congratulatory slaps on the back, and solicitations from two (completely licensed) baby organ merchants. There's also a ten-year-old mystic with silvered eyes offering to tell the babies' futures, which Carlos very hesitantly declines.
Once outside, Carlos gets exactly one and a half breaths of fresh air before being crowded again, this time by a small mob of dead-eyed Boy Scouts offering to help him to his car. Tucked into their sashes, Carlos sees that many in the troop are carrying a worksheet for their Subvert Heteronormativity merit badges, most of which seem to be on their last signature.
(The badge had been proposed by Scout Master Earl Harlan shortly after his reappearance from the Shadow Realm, to show then-newlyweds Cecil and Carlos that there were no hard feelings. Which meant there were hard feelings. Carlos tries not to think about it too much.)
Latte abandoned on the sidewalk somewhere, Carlos holds up his hands to give himself -- and the babies -- some breathing room.
"Look, I'll stamp all your worksheets," he promises. "Just go spend your afternoons non-competitively browsing crochet patterns on Ravelry or... anything else that you enjoy."
"But don't you need help into your car, Mister Palmer?" one of the Scouts pipes up, whom Carlos thinks he recognizes as one of the alien-human hybrid super soldiers installed at the local secondary school by the Illuminati last month. Nice boy. Corrosive blood.
"Doctor Palmer," Carlos corrects before he can help himself. "Mister Palmer is my husband. And I'm fine. Really."
He actually isn't, but fortunately a few of the Scouts hang back to give him a hand when he finally makes it to his car, twenty minutes and many stamped worksheets later.
"You know," Carlos grunts, leaning his weight onto the alien-human hybrid boy's arm as he eases into the car seat. "In other towns in this country, a lot of you would be asking how a man even gets pregnant in the first place."
"Cecil ran a full biology lesson on the air last week," the boy says helpfully. "He said medical facts deal in absolutes not representative of the full spectrum of biodiversity on this planet and we should question what gets left out when medicine makes normative assumptions."
It sounds a little less philosophical than a normal Children's Fun Fact Science Corner segment, and Carlos wonders how he might've missed it. He'll have to ask Cecil for the tape later.
"Cecil's a smart guy," Carlos agrees, certain that he's fallen a little bit in love all over again.
"We know. He says he gets it from you through some process called osmosis. He's helping us earn our Subversive Radio Host badges!" the boy adds, his grin spreading so wide it comes dangerously close to splitting his head in half.
Carlos has a brief moment where he wonders if this is how one of his and Cecil's own boys will turn out, and if that would be good or bad, and how you identify alien-human hybrid super soldier children anyway. Mainly, he wonders how many, if any, of his kids will go into Scouts and how that will affect their subsequent survival chances.
"What's your name?" he asks, moments later when he's properly seated and stamping the Palmer family crest into the all-too-familiar signature section of the Scout's merit badge worksheet.
"Subject One-Zero-One-Three," the kid volunteers.
"Oh." Carlos decides to add it to the list of baby name ideas anyway.
A couple years ago -- really, even two months ago -- it would've seemed weird to Carlos to post images from an ultrasound up on a bowling alley scoreboard. Now, it just seemed like a logical extension of Teddy Williams making the best of his combined medical practice and arcade fun complex.
"I'm counting twelve very healthy little ones," Teddy informs Carlos and Cecil eagerly. They study the grainy black-and-white scans while Teddy goes back to checking out their lane shoes.
It's a league day, not that Carlos expects he'll be able to play much this late into the pregnancy. But it's nice to be able to come support his husband's team while also getting a check-up in before the lanes open.
"There should be more, shouldn't there?" Carlos says, squinting at the oval shapes and the faint outline of what could be humanoid fetuses inside them. "There had to be... thirty at least, when he implanted them. I'm not sure."
"I think you're flattering me," Cecil says fondly, his arm wrapped around Carlos's lower back for some much-needed support.
"A few wouldn't have fertilized and would simply have dissolved," Teddy explains, not looking up as he gives two sets of shoes -- neither in the couple's actual shoe sizes -- a cursory anti-fungal and deodorant spray. "Others might've gotten absorbed early on by their siblings. Not a lot of room in a human uterus."
Carlos suppresses a grimace at the word. He feels compelled at that moment to sit down -- and even more importantly, to stop looking at the ultrasounds. Cecil squeezes his arm gently, matching him when he tries to move away and silently insisting upon helping him into a nearby chair.
"Besides, twelve is plenty for first-time parents!" Teddy continues brightly. "But I am worried that with the size of the eggs and your condition, a normal delivery's just gonna be out of the question."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, they're gonna get a lot bigger before you pop, Carlos. And with twelve of them, the risk of something tearing or even one of the eggs breaking during your contractions is just too much for me to recommend, as your bowling alley and fun complex proprietor."
"You don't have the facilities here to do a C-section, though," Carlos says carefully, "do you?"
"Nope!" Teddy confirms. He foists the pairs of wrong-sized shoes across the counter, and Cecil dutifully grabs them, to perform the standard custom of pretending to try them on before asking for a different size. "With your permission, Carlos, I'd like to call down to the NVMA and get you scheduled with a colleague of mine, over at the main hospital--"
"No," Carlos and Cecil both say immediately, and then exchange embarrassed glances.
"It's just," Cecil tells Teddy, craning his head to meet his gaze over the shoe counter, "neither of us really trust the hospitals around here, Teddy."
Cecil's own experience with the Night Vale Medical Association has been neutral-to-good, if he's going to be honest, but he doesn't have pain receptors, and Carlos very much does. After the incident with Carlos's appendicitis last year, both of them have tried to steer clear of the establishment.
Teddy hums in understanding, nodding. "You wouldn't be the only ones," he agrees. "But still, that's my recommendation."
"Thanks, but we have... Well." Cecil glances quickly back at Carlos, placing a hand over his in a quick apology that says 'I should've shared this with you before.' "I think we'd be all right having the kids at home."
Carlos's eyebrows shoot up straight into his hairline, and Cecil squeezes Carlos's hand adamantly, the thin press of his lips insisting he can explain this all on the drive home tonight.
"Really, Teddy," Cecil continues to the bowling alley proprietor. "I think we're prepared for this one."
"Well, if you're sure," Teddy says doubtfully, as on the other side of the bowling alley the automated pin replacement machines start to hum to life, signalling the fun complex will be opening soon. "But think about hiring a midwife anyway. And keep my number on the fridge, just in case. Worse comes to worse, I got a really good hacksaw that I usually keep around for Heart Health Week."
"What was that about?" Carlos asks on the drive home that evening, after a truly staggering league loss and a round of commiseratory drinks, which he'd had to pass on.
"Oh. You know," Cecil says muzzily, waving a hand. Cecil, by contrast, had not had to pass up on the beer and while he hadn't had terribly much, it's enough that Carlos feels more confident being the one behind the wheel right now. "Usually when my kind mate with humans we tend to get really... involved in the whole process."
"'Involved'?" Carlos repeats, in a tone that indicates this elucidates exactly nothing.
"You're not going to like it," Cecil groans, but proceeds to tell it anyway. "In the past, you know, it wasn't usually, um, consensual. With humans. So we evolved stuff to make people more..." A lot more gesticulating, and then Cecil mumbles out a barely audible: "Pliant."
Ah.
"I guessed that much," Carlos points out. It really doesn't bother him what Cecil's species had evolved to do, because Cecil's not like that, and for as up and down as this pregnancy has been it's not as though Carlos hasn't been open and adamant about wanting Cecil's children from the beginning. "The numbing agent you used on me. And the expanding tip on the ovipositor to lock mating pairs together. A lot of creatures develop features like that, even for breeding within their own species."
Cecil gives Carlos a look that he can tell, even from the corner of his vision, is ashen and a little bit perturbed. Carlos can't help a smirk. It will probably never make complete sense to Cecil how Carlos can be so fidgety discussing his own biological situation, yet so readily chat about the reproductive cycles of everything from fruit flies to... well, Cecil.
"Y-you, um." Cecil wrings his hands awkwardly. "You've been taking all your regular notes, then, huh?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Right. Well, uh." Cecil stops wringing his hands, just as awkwardly. Then he runs one through his hair, mussing it considerably. Carlos politely does not point this out, as Cecil plows straight on ahead with his explanation. "So okay, the going in is the simple part, right? We numb things a bit, but if a human fights back or tries to run we just sort of... pin them down. A-and keep going."
It's not exactly a pleasant mental image, but nor are most of the mating behaviors of the animal kingdom, Carlos reasons. Again, he might've guessed, and anyway, it's enough for him to know that Cecil's not like that. Not at all.
"Makes sense," he says, in a neutral tone of voice. He taps a complex blood sigil on the dashboard and slows the car as he gets into the turn lane.
Cecil, meanwhile, keeps fidgeting in his seat. "Right but. For the, uh, going out part, stress on the eggs can be a big deal so we do a lot more to prevent, um... anything like that. Generally by making it as painless as possible."
"I'm not seeing a downside so far?"
"We'll basically be having sex," Cecil blurts out finally. "For all of it. Probably at least for a few hours. Up to... uh, however long it takes."
"Oh." That could get messy, yes, among other things. "So... no midwife."
"It might get awkward."
"Just a tad."
"I think... Well, I'm pretty sure instincts will cover us. A lot of that is just written into me. But you'll be pretty out of it," Cecil cautions grimly. "The, uh, the secretions... Well, I've never used them before but they're supposed to act like really strong sedatives? And some people react to them like, ah..."
"I'm getting the picture," Carlos says helpfully, eyes fixed on the road even as he nearly misses their turn.
"We can still go to the hospital instead," Cecil hastens to add. "For the procedure, like Teddy was saying... Or even just a normal delivery, if you wanted."
"No."
Definitely not a normal delivery, Carlos thinks. The health risks that Teddy talked about aside, anything that even resembles all those horror scenes on TV and in movies sounds worse than all the rest of this pregnancy combined. He'd rather be knocked out and miss everything than be on his back in a hospital at any point.
"I think you're right," he tells Cecil instead, easing on the brake as he reaches the corner of their street. "I think we'll be fine on our own for this one."
It sounds like a nice idea, the way Cecil describes it, but Carlos is very sure it's going to be exhausting, sweaty, and by the end of it, incredibly gross. Better than the horrifying pain of the alternative, of course, but still no picnic.
They have a month or so to prepare, however, and now that Carlos really is spending most of his time at home, he's able to organize to his own satisfaction.
The first thing Carlos does is bring out the water-resistant mattress protector from the back of the linen cupboard. It normally sees use only when Cecil is at the peak of his cycle, something they thankfully have not had to deal with for the length of the pregnancy (it has to do with pair bonding and pheromones again, as Carlos understands it). The protector is crinkled and there's a hole in one corner where the dog has chewed at it but Carlos is fairly confident the thing will do its job.
This squared away, Carlos checks their supply of bottled water (the tap variety has a tendency to giggle nervously), powdered Vitamin C and electrolyte supplements, breakfast bars, condoms, dental dams, breath mints, lube, AA batteries, and clean towels. He changes the sheets, dusts the curtains, fixes up the heating lamps for the egg creche Cecil has built in the nursery, and is making headway into cleaning the entire apartment top to bottom one evening when Cecil finally sits him down and begs him to just relax in bed and watch Netflix for a while.
"I love you, but please just let me take the lead on this one," Cecil urges, winning his husband over at the end of it through a careful combination of a very decent foot massage and shutting Carlos up with a kiss whenever he opens his mouth to protest. "You have been so, so good to me, Carlos. Even though I know you hate this."
"I don't hate this," Carlos objects, allowing himself finally to go boneless under his husband's attentions as Cecil guides him further onto their bed, piling up a small mountain of pillows to serve as a backrest. "I'm happy."
"But you're stressed, and I know you want to feel like your old self again," Cecil says softly.
His hand comes to rest on the swell of Carlos's stomach. It's the very first time he's done this, Carlos realizes, his breath hitching and the tension starting to knot in his shoulders again... But then he lets it go, breathing out, letting his eyes fall half-lidded as Cecil gently presses over this (though he can hardly grasp the term) seed of their union, the twelve little lives inside him that will soon be outside him.
"It's only been three months," Carlos reflects, after a long and shared silence. And he's not sure whether he's experiencing some sort of pre-post-partum depression or... what, really, but a certain sadness is settling over him.
Whatever it is, the noise Cecil makes in the back of his throat says he understands. His hand leaves Carlos's stomach and moves to his shoulder instead, gently drawing him into a hug -- and from there, into a very long and soft kiss.
"How about tomorrow?" Cecil asks suddenly, when their mouths part again.
"Huh?" Despite being easily reclined on the bed like this, Carlos feels a little breathless.
"To have the eggs," Cecil explains.
"I can't just decide to have them, Cecil. They just come on their own."
"Oh. Uh, not really," Cecil admits, making a vague gesture with his hand again. "Like, for human babies, yes, I could see that. That makes a sort of sense. But for this I'm supposed to, uh, uhrm... g-get it started for you. When you smell ready. And you do. It's sort of a cinnamon-y smell. I just noticed it."
Carlos fixes him with a long, long look, kiss-bruised lips parted in something that might be sheer and utter bafflement. Cinnamon-y smell?
"Were you going to tell me about this at some point?" Carlos asks eventually. "Especially if we, I don't know, decided on going with a procedure after all, or something else?"
"Oh, sure! I mean, yeah!" Cecil nods so fervently with his eyes so wide he looks a little like a bobblehead figure. "I guess it just slipped my mind a little. You know how it is, you grow up thinking everyone does it a certain way, and it just, you know. Of course I was gonna tell you about starting -- um. The thing. The going out part."
"Inducing labor," Carlos provides, with a faint sigh of fond exasperation because, well, Cecil.
"Right! That. So, um, tomorrow?" Cecil is wringing his hands again. "It's a Saturday, so I'll be off work. We can have breakfast together and then we can h-have a... Have our --"
Carlos is poised to complete his husband's sentence for him again if need be, but Cecil take a deep, steadying breath and finishes it himself.
"Have our family," Cecil says, his smile wide and his eyes clear and bright with so much goofy, unbridled happiness that Carlos would lean up and kiss him again if he could sit up on his own just then.
They end up snuggling together and finishing The IT Crowd instead.
Morning is strange, not simply because the sun is an unusual color of puce today but because unlike Cecil's ominously-labeled hour of conception three months ago, this seems oddly unceremonious. Cecil wakes him up a little after 8:00 when he leaves bed to go walk the dog, and promises that they'll start no later than 10:00.
Carlos, practically bedridden anyway, assents to the proposed schedule. But he insists on a small breakfast, eight ounces of water and a bathroom break for both of them beforehand, lest they get dehydrated or develop headaches within the first hour, or something more awkward than that. Also, he wants to be able to brush his teeth one last time. And it'd be very nice if Cecil would brush his too, he notes.
All of this gets squared away by 9:30. By 9:47, Cecil is getting kissed senseless as Carlos pulls him back down onto the bed. Their mouths taste mainly of toothpaste and a little of the maple syrup Cecil forgets to wipe from the corner of his lower lip.
By 10:05, Carlos is naked, kneeling on the bed with his hands on the headboard for balance. Cecil kneels up behind him, the rest of his clothes vanishing as his lower body unravels into its more natural shape. His countless tendrils sprawl over the sheets and walls but mostly around Carlos, coiling easily around his waist and thighs to begin supporting his weight.
"If I go too fast, or..." Cecil puts his still mostly-human hands at Carlos's buttocks, curling in and down to start slowly spreading his cheeks.
"I'll tell you," Carlos says firmly, allowing his head to hang forward as he leans back into the touch.
A small shiver runs up his back when something cold traces over his rear hole. The muscle there twitches, slightly, though none of this so far is new. More embarrassingly, he can't tell if the stuff being rubbed into his asshole is the store-bought kind or something from Cecil's own tentacles. Maybe the latter. Cecil did mention a lot of secretions coming into play this time around.
Either way, when a slimy tendril finally probes its way into Carlos's backside, it's in one of the extra-long condoms they bought for this sort of thing. Carlos lets out a low panting noise as it wriggles its way inside, seeming to take up every bit of space perfectly as it winds deeper and deeper -- and as always seeming to stop just short of too deep, settling only when Carlos's ass feels completely and utterly filled.
But Cecil isn't done. His hands have left Carlos's hips now, but only because the tentacles are winding their way up over Carlos's body. They coil over his arms and the swell of his torso until the mass of limbs can easily support his entire weight, allowing Carlos to let go of the headboard and lean back into his husband's chest. He moans softly as he does, the tentacle in his ass seems to slide in just that extra fraction of an inch.
Within a minute or two, Carlos is completely ensnared, held gently by the supportive limbs as he lolls back bonelessly against Cecil. Only his head and the front hole between his legs remain untouched, and at the moment, one pink and wet tendril is rolling lazily against Carlos's lower lip, nudging to be let in.
"You're not going to gag me with this, are you?" Carlos asks, only barely concerned. When he laps at the fluid dribbling from its tip his tongue comes away tasting faintly sweet and tingling, not so much like a numbing agent but as though the contact is making his tongue blush, if that's possible.
"That'd, uh. I'm not sure, but I think that'd kill you," Cecil stammers. "It's strong. A couple mouthfuls should do."
"Hm."
Carlos obliges, parting his teeth and relaxing his tongue to let the tentacle snake its way to the back of his mouth. He closes his lips around the tendril to create a suction, enjoying as the flesh grows hot and the muscle ripples and tenses against his tongue.
It pumps out its tingling secretion first as a thin stream, then as an actual torrent, gushing down his throat faster than he can react. Reflexively, Carlos swallows. And gulps again, noisily, as his mouth fills up once more. And again, his head starting to spin.
After the third dose, Cecil finally fights back control of his appendage and slides it out from Carlos's mouth, gasping an apology.
"I'm not used to that one," Cecil admits. "Are you okay? Do you feel sick?"
"No, no, I'm."
Carlos falls silent, eyes threatening to roll back into his skull as the force of it hits him all at once. Not as nausea, as he might've feared, but as a roiling heat, building first in his ribcage before it spreads to his stomach and, somehow, instantly, seems to race to his extremities.
He groans and gasps, twisting helplessly in the embrace of Cecil's many limbs, his tongue all of a sudden too thick for his mouth. His mouth falls open, words dying in his throat as some feeble squeak. His skin, his teeth, his eyeballs, everything feels as though charged with a 10,000 volt current. His nipples and cock, and especially Cecil's tentacle pumping gently into his ass, feel like they're actually on fire.
"Carlos?" Cecil says urgently, hands finding his husband's shoulders amidst the tangle of limbs.
"Ha-aa-aa..." Carlos's eyelids hinge shut, too heavy to remain open anymore. He tries in vain to direct his arms, to get his fingers onto his own dick. For one dreadful moment, Carlos wonders if he really is dying.
"Carlos!"
Carlos swallows with considerable effort, somehow managing to avoid choking on his own tongue.
"Hngh," he manages. "I need -- Please."
He's so close, even with his cock untouched. He's sure that if he can just think--
Fortunately, Cecil guesses or knows him well enough to intuit what he needs. One of his tentacles -- a roughly textured one, covered in moist little suckers that grip and squeeze whatever bit of flesh they come in contact with -- slithers up along Carlos's thigh and dives between his legs. It presses flat against Carlos's small, blood-swollen cock and draws upward, rubbing achingly slowly over the sensitized flesh.
That's all it takes. Carlos comes shudderingly hard, actually shouting. The pleasure rips through him from toe to head and he arches and strains, joints popping, muscles clenching around the fat tendril inside his ass as black spots flash behind his eyes.
"Jesus Christ!" he gasps moments later, still wracked with the aftershocks as he falls limp again into Cecil's many non-human arms. Cecil, meanwhile, is busily rearranging the two of them on the bed, easing Carlos down onto his side even as the tentacle fucks languidly inside him, milking the last of his orgasm. "You -- this stuff --!"
"Do you need to stop?" Cecil asks softly, taking extra care that he's not overstimulating Carlos from the front just now, while still maintaining all the contact that he needs.
"No! My god. Fuck. That was... amazing." Carlos tries to wriggle onto his back to meet Cecil's gaze, but it's fairly impossible. Cecil climbs closer instead, tucking his chin against Carlos's exposed shoulder. "You mean we could've been using this stuff in bed for years and we just didn't?"
"It would've felt like cheating," Cecil says sheepishly, letting one of his upper, still vaguely human arms drift over Carlos's stomach.
"It isn't! -- I mean, it is, but. Damn it, that was incredible."
Cecil can't see many downsides to producing a secretion that can induce mind-shattering orgasms in his husband in under 30 seconds, it's true. Apart from it being potentially lethal and maybe only able to be secreted when Carlos is pregnant. Pair bonding is weird like that.
"We're doing this again," Carlos continues firmly. One of his own hands steals free and comes to rest atop Cecil's, turning until they are able to lace their fingers. "I don't care if it makes a mess. I'd say you just ruined me for human partners but -- that happened a long time ago."
"Good," Cecil says, making no particular attempt to hide the smug look on his face. "How're you feeling? Do you need a towel?"
"Towel...?"
For the first time, Carlos notices the damp, squelching sensation between his thighs. He attempts to sit up to inspect himself, wondering if perhaps the extra estrogen in his system has made him wet, or if while orgasming he'd actually pissed himself somehow -- but it feels off, too viscous, not as warm as he'd expect --
Cecil urges him back down onto his side, and then from there onto his hands and knees. "Shh, don't try to sit up," Cecil urges. "It's just your water breaking. Hasn't even soaked through the sheets yet. Do you feel any of the, um. The contractions?"
A nest of plush tentacles spools beneath them to better cradle him in place while Cecil lifts Carlos's hips, keeping his thighs spread. Fingers run deftly along Carlos's inner thighs, mopping at the damp and lightly stroking through the soaked patch of hair above Carlos's front hole.
"N-not yet."
"You shouldn't," Cecil assures him. His hand presses against the swell of Carlos's lower stomach, feeling for the first egg that may be starting to descend. The tentacle still buried deep into Carlos's ass flexes and shifts minutely, eliciting a soft mewl. "You should only feel some pressure and... just generally very good."
"Hnnn. Working so far," Carlos grinds out, sagging and resting his cheek against the nest of writhing tendrils as Cecil's thrusts pick up in earnest.
"No pain?"
"No. Good. So good."
"I think... I need to start opening you up. That okay?"
Carlos bites his lip. It is not okay, it has not ever been okay when one of his partners touched him there. He's tolerated it for the pregnancy, and once or twice for the sake of experimenting with things for Cecil, but --
-- But everything feels so warm and pleasurable right now, even though he's just come. He can't imagine his body resisting any kind of touch, even ones he wouldn't normally say yes to. His mind flashes on Cecil's fingers or even something larger stroking inside his front passage and a hot shiver runs down his spine. Would it be so bad?
Besides, Carlos thinks, it's a special occasion.
"Do it," he gasps, when the tentacle inside him wriggles just-so, jolting a response to his lips.
"You can stop me any time."
"I know."
He feels a handful of Cecil's appendages slide over his hips and tangle over his back, ticklish and cool even as the rest of Cecil's body seems to warm up. Between Carlos's legs, four thin tendrils -- each probably no thicker than a pinky finger -- wind their way to his front entrance. They trace the narrow ring of muscle and slip inside easily, one after another, wriggling like little worms up into the deepest part of him.
Carlos pants wetly, struggling not to clench his muscles around the intrusion. He feels his inner walls being stroked and stretched and does his best not to lose it completely, focusing instead on something, anything else. It isn't bad exactly -- but it's too intense.
Fortunately, Cecil is more than forthcoming with distractions. The fat tentacle in Carlos's ass coils and twists lively as it pumps in and out of him. Other tendrils curl around Carlos's chest and stroke at his engorged nipples, Cecil's thrusts creating a delightful rhythm as he fucks Carlos harder and harder into the bed and the nest of tentacles. Another appendage, no thicker than a dandelion stalk, winds eagerly around Carlos's cock and pulls taut, squeezing and tugging at the little red phallus until it pulses and aches, teetering just shy of pain.
Without warning, Carlos comes for the second time that morning. It rises in his throat as a choked half-sob, fire racing through his extremities as he shudders and gushes beneath, beside, surrounded by the writhing mass that makes up his husband.
Things are hazy for a few minutes after that. He's aware of Cecil moving him around again, of towels brisky wiping down his thighs as Cecil eases the large tentacle from his ass and does away with the condom. When Carlos is able to focus again, he finds he's still roughly on his hands and knees but Cecil is now below him, lying on his back on the bed while his many arms keep Carlos suspended and both of them gently entombed.
"Hi," Cecil whispers. He is nearly entirely manifested now, the only 'human' parts of his shape being his head and part of his chest. Carlos reaches down to where Cecil's shoulders would nominally be and sinks his fingers into the writhing coils of sinewy proto-tentacles emerging there, urging a pleased sigh from the remains of Cecil's throat.
His eyes are jet black. Not from the transformation as such, but blown wide by his own carnal needs. Carlos is ashamed to admit it, even through the fog of arousal, but he hadn't realized until quite this moment how much Cecil is enjoying this as well.
In a bid to make up for some lost time, Carlos leans in to kiss the lingering facsimile of Cecil's lips. Cecil returns it, although his tongue at this point is closer to something else.
"You're wonderful," Carlos sighs, feeling faint and yet so restless. Something is still squirming between his legs, and a hard pressure he can't quite describe is growing in his pelvis, almost like he's building toward another orgasm. "So beautiful I can't even take notes right now."
Cecil's expression splits into a wicked, toothless grin.
"How do you want it this time?" he asks, far too innocently for what he is.
"Oh god. I don't know."
"First word that comes into your head."
"Water," Carlos admits.
"...You're thirsty?"
"Yeah."
"One more, then a break," Cecil promises, as several well-muscled tentacles slither near Carlos's back entrance again. "You're doing so well."
The first egg appears by early afternoon. Carlos barely notices when it finally slides free, in the throes of his seventh or eighth screaming anal orgasm.
"There's one," Cecil says with far too much enthusiasm, rolling the peach-sized thing around in his mass of limbs to shake off the extra fluid before nestling it down somewhere warm.
"What??" Carlos gasps, unsure of what is happening or even what is up or down at the moment, but very certain he'll never be able to move his legs again.
"The rest should come a little faster," Cecil assures him, manifesting lips and most of a face again just to kiss Carlos back into a twilight sleep, giving his body a few minutes to recover.
They rest. They drink. An attempt is made to reach the kitchen at one point but the pair never get as far as the edge of the bed. At one point, near the 20 hour mark or so, a starving and dehydrated Carlos assents to a liquid meal from one of Cecil's tentacles, while most of his body is being lazily sucked and kissed by a variety of mouths.
Carlos is vaguely aware that an entire day, night, and possibly another day passes like this, his body diving in and out of a light sleep as though he's being carried head-first down a fast and shallow river. He's also vaguely aware that he's technically giving birth, although he can never put a finger on the when or how of it -- just that everything is slippery and warm, and he feels like he's dissolving, and he has no urge whatsoever to stop it.
The twelfth and last egg slips free by late Sunday night, a little over 36 hours from when the couple started. It's larger than the other eggs and seems to roll out of Carlos's body as heavily as a small bowling ball, eliciting a strangled, exhausted cry and one final set of bone-rattling convulsions which wrack his entire body. Cecil's tentacles bear it away to nestle with the others somewhere within the sprawling net of his body, and then work to carefully ease Carlos down onto a dry spot of the bed.
"You are wonderful," Cecil whispers, his human head and shoulders manifesting from the coiled mass to give Carlos something to cling to as he curls into a ball on a pile of sheets. "You are my everything. Thank you, Carlos."
"Didn't do much," Carlos mumbles into the crook of his husband's neck. He passes out shortly thereafter.
Carlos wakes up many hours later profoundly hungover and sore in places he didn't even know he had.
He's no longer huddled in a patch of dry mattress, but reclined comfortably against a stack of pillows near the headboard. All the sheets are fresh. He's been washed head to foot and dressed in clean boxers and a loose-fitting t-shirt. On the nightstand are a couple bottles of water with condensation slowly beading along the plastic, as well as what appears for all the world like a steaming fresh cup of tea, prepared with lemon slices and honey exactly how he likes it.
Carlos smiles at the sight of it, then notices the clock. The time isn't real, of course, but it's close enough to let him ballpark the hour as sometime mid-afternoon, meaning Cecil should be at the station. But the tea is obviously fresh, so where...?
A soft noise in the direction of the nursery answers this for Carlos, as he looks up and finds Cecil in the doorway, human-shaped and wearing a lime green bathrobe and those ratty purple Crocs Carlos begged him, without success, to throw away months ago.
"Good morning," Cecil greets him, even though they both know that 'morning' is not all that applicable at the moment. "I didn't wake you, did I?"
"You made me tea."
"I did!" Cecil beams with the reminder of this accomplishment. "I actually got the kettle to boil this time. Figures, all I had to do was maintain eye contact the whole while."
"But don't you have work?"
"Oh," Cecil says casually, padding across the room in those terrible Crocs and seating himself at the edge of the bed. He gingerly takes the teacup from the nightstand and brings it to Carlos's lips. Carlos indulges him with a small, careful sip. It is quite good, if still a little too hot.
"I looked over my contract while you were asleep," Cecil explains. "Apparently, I never got around to arguing to reinstate my paternity leave clause. You know how it is, I wasn't even thinking about children until we got married, and have you ever tried negotiating something like that back into a contract? But, I looked harder and I found that even though Strex did away with sick days when they bought us, they have an exemption for biohazardous containment on page eight, so I called down to the lab..."
"And you got my team to declare our apartment an emergency quarantine zone," Carlos finishes for Cecil, massaging his eyelids.
"Only for a couple days. It's not much, but I thought it'd help," Cecil explains modestly. "Don't worry! We still have enough food and water to last us while we're in lockdown. Besides..."
He encourages Carlos to take another sip or two of the tea and then sets it aside on the nightstand again, kicking off his Crocs to curl up beside Carlos on the bed.
"...After everything you've been through," he continues, tucking his head against his husband's shoulder, "I just didn't think it'd be right leaving you alone."
With considerable effort, Carlos lifts a hand, reaching up to stroke through some of Cecil's (admittedly, thinning) hair.
"We could've hired a nanny," Carlos reasons.
"Ouch," Cecil chuckles against his arm.
"Not saying we should have," Carlos clarifies, patting the back of his partner's head. "I'm glad you're here. I just don't want you to get into trouble over this."
Or ruin the next two days for their neighbors, if Carlos is going to be honest, but he has far too much of a headache and far too little energy to start nagging Cecil about that just now. Really, he's just relieved Cecil called in a favor from the lab as opposed to creating an actual biological hazard simply to justify playing hooky from work.
"I think I've put you to plenty of trouble for the last few months," Cecil points out. His arm drifts over Carlos's midsection -- which seems unfairly small again, for all that it's been through as of late. "Let me be inconvenienced for a bit. Please?"
"Well... I guess I can learn to deal with that," Carlos says with a sigh, letting his head ease back onto the pillows once more.
There are whole checklists full of things to do now, Carlos realizes. His body will start to produce milk soon, but the babies won't need it, so he'll have to get used to hand-expressing until it dries up. There'll be post-natal checkups with Teddy, and he'll have to get back on his hormones, maybe on an all new regimen this time given all the extra estrogen in his system (ugh). He'll need to call the university to change the start and end dates of his extended leave of absence from his department, then call the Town Clerk to file for the hatching permits with City Hall. And then, of course, will come the actual hatching, after which things are going to get very noisy and crowded in this apartment. Will they have to start looking at houses? Can they even afford it on Cecil's salary? How many realtors accept deposits in supermarket produce?
All this flits through Carlos's mind within the space of a couple seconds, which is seemingly enough to wear him out all over again. It's not even especially important right now, he decides. Something else is.
"Can I see them?"
They look a bit like ostrich eggs, Carlos is surprised to find, when Cecil wheels out the creche from the nursery. Obviously, they're smaller than an ostrich's, each about the size of a peach or billiard ball, and considerably lighter, though the shells are just as thick. They're remarkably warm to the touch as well. When Carlos gently presses his ear to one, he's able to make out a very, very tiny heartbeat coming from within.
There are too many to hold at once, so Carlos makes do with holding a few at a time, keeping them nestled close against his chest while the others remain cozied under the heat lamps of their nest. Cecil sits patiently to the side, smiling fondly, admiring the entire scene.
"Feel like a father yet?" Cecil asks after a long and peaceful silence.
"I don't know," Carlos says, though the answer seems fairly obvious to him now. "I didn't think that far ahead."
end