Episode 243: Surprise (Acheron)

Sometime after sunlight entered the room, the bed creased; Spence was back.

“Hey,” Spence whispered.

Ach was three percent sure he made a noise. It might have even been a happy noise. He slung his arm around Spence’s body, tucked their bodies together under the blanket.

Spence’s lips found his. “We should sleep,” he said, which meant he didn’t want to.

Ach was awake.

Should, he teased Spence. He joined their lips again and rolled on top of Spence. They were married. They’d been interrupted last night, but now Spence was finally, finally home. The increment of guilt Ach felt about Spence needing sleep could not stand up against the taste of Spence, the feel of him.

He sighed against Spence’s forehead. “Bonding to you was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Me too,” Spence breathed. He tilted his head and grinned. “I’m sorry I took a detour.”

Ach grinned back. He couldn’t imagine giving up any of Talise’s four. “I like your little detours,” he said, playful. “Even if they already think they’re adults.”

He nestled against Spence and added, “And we might not get little detours of our own. I’m glad you have them.”

The tech was out there, but Ach had no idea how to go about creating people. Maybe if Nell or someone used it first…he would be safe to ask.

“We have the bonus wiccans,” Spence reminded, “and we’ll have your pixies someday.”

Someday, after Nell. “Yeah, but do you think we would have if we didn’t know how good it was to have kids?”

Spence gazed at the ceiling, deliberating. Ach watched the little starpoints of his eyes as their brightness waxed and waned with the flow of Spence’s thoughts. “I don’t know. I think we would have gotten jealous.” He wrapped his arm around Ach and drew their bodies together. “Sleep while we can?”

Ach nodded against him, body and mind abuzz.

Married. This was going to be their first full day as man and man. Husband and husband? Those both sounded so bland.

He settled for blissfully happy. Their first full day together, linked, one, whole.

He relaxed into their bed, whatever time remained before breakfast.

“Ach,” Spence grumbled. The bed shifted as Spence turned away from him, annoyed.

Something gurgled.

It was a toddler, climbing up Ach’s body, from the foot of the bed. “It’s Ella,” he mumbled into a mouthful of toddler hair. He opened his eyes to blonde hair.

What?

“It isn’t Ella,” he managed.

Something in his voice made Spence sit up, alert.

They looked at the round-faced blonde girl, with way too many curls and Ach’s same teal eyes.

“Ahh!” she squealed at…both of them? She jumped onto Ach’s chest and smothered him with a hug.

He hugged her back, because what was he supposed to do? Who was she?
“Did the attack start?” he asked.

Spence’s eyes went vague…asking Konrad or Corban, Ach guessed…and then he returned to awareness of the room. “No? I…”

Ach could feel it now through the link, the sense that Spence had sent Corban an image of their bed. But what he showed Corban wasn’t one toddler, it was…ten.

Ten toddlers.
Corban sent back a dragon message that he was on his way.

Corban and his luck magic would be able to figure out what was going on.

“We should get dressed,” Spence warned. “Corban is coming.”

Plus they had twelve toddlers in their bed. Yeah. Ach grabbed a shirt and a pair of mesh shorts he wore in the mornings when he trained, and slipped them on without shifting the covers.

Before Ach had his right arm through the shirt sleeve, Corban knocked.
“Come in,” Ach called, amused that Corban had let himself into their apartment without knocking and only stopped on the threshold to their room.

He had a mini panic, that Corban was going to realize Ach and Spence were sleeping together, and then forced himself to calm down. Everyone knew Ach and Spence were sleeping together. They’d even gotten married, just in case there was any confusion.

Corban stepped in and stared at the bed, his blue eyes wide. He had Talisey-blue eyes, even though he wasn’t Dragon.

“So,” Spence introduced, “we were asleep. And then we had these.”

One of the blonde boys tried to nose-dive off the bed, but Spence caught him with one arm and pulled him into an arm-carry position.

Corban opened and closed his mouth twice before he announced, “First thing is to find out who they belong to. Confirm.” He walked over to Ach’s desk and set out twenty four small translucent containers, each containing one genetics spell.

“Great,” Spence said, following. “Where are we starting? And has the attack started?”

“Um,” Corban said. He looked back and forth between them, before plucking a hair off the blonde toddler’s head and Spence’s head, and putting them together in the same container. The spell mixture turned gold.

Somehow, even though it was impossible, Spence had a son. A little blonde son.

“Soooo,” Corban said, swirling the gold mix around in the dish. “Giana’s dead. Mel spent most of the night in prison but he’s out now. Aadya’s missing. Rhyss is missing. But,” he shrugged, with a stressed grin. “This isn’t the attack.”

“Unless the attack has multiple phases,” Spence murmured. “I…can I…do you need anything?”

It was a big list of problems. Ach wondered if his dad was okay.

Corban laughed. “I’m dying to know what the rest of these tests say.”

Spence held the blonde boy against his chest. “He’s mine. I think the blonde girl is Ach’s. These three are probably mine.”

“Test him with Ach too,” Corban urged.

A long time ago, back when Spence was with Talise, Ach and Corban had tried out dating. There was some awkward kissing, that was almost more like Ach thought dating Endy or Terren would be, and a lot of hanging out together.

Ach had gotten pretty decent at reading Corban’s emotions, which he wasn’t with most people. Anyone else, he would have believed the calmness, but with Corban it was obvious to Ach that he was bursting with some kind of restrained knowledge.

Ach couldn’t help grinning in response. When Spence walked over with the toddler and the test, Ach dropped a hair in and waited. He wasn’t surprised when Ach’s test turned gold too, because Corban already knew.

What else would Corban be holding back from saying?

Spence, for once, was surprised. “Huh. Both of ours.”

Now the laughter escaped from Corban. “Congratulations,” he announced. “You have ten disgusting sex babies.”

“Disgusting sex babies?” Spence and Ach locked eyes. Corban’s explanation didn’t make any sense at all. Ach hoped he realized that. “These are apparitions,” Spence countered.

Besides, didn’t disgusting sex babies need a womb and nine months? And not happen in groups of ten, unless you were Camilla?

Corban’s smug amusement got even worse. Ach was kind of glad they’d broken up. Spence always shared, he didn’t just sit there getting more and more awful while toddlers tried to fall off beds and Ach panicked.

Corban ran his hand over his mouth, probably trying to figure out how to explain disgusting sex babies with no girls around to help.
“Someone, somewhere,” he said, “was wishing you could have kids right around the same time you were wishing you could have kids.”

“Who,” Spence said. It was more like his voice actually let him show emotion for once, than like he was asking. He cleared his throat and said, more like himself, “What’s going on.”

Corban laughed. “I don’t really know. But it involves Aadya and Rhyss.”

Oh. He didn’t mean the babies were disgusting, he meant the sex was. His mom and Rhyss?

Talise was going to flip.

It still didn’t explain why there were twelve kids on their bed.

Talise was going to flip.

“So we just…” Spence ran his free hand through his hair. “Keep them?”

Corban shrugged, still like this was all a big joke. “They’re yours. People. Want me to watch them while you go panic and find cribs?”

“Please,” Spence said.

No way. Ach was wearing shorts he only wore to train and he wasn’t changing in front of Corban. He had to find a way out of this.

“Are you kidding?” He blurted out, and then blushed because he’d talked way too loud and half the toddlers on the bed had jumped. “We have to name them.”

Spence laughed at Ach’s outburst and said to Corban, “Maybe we can get cribs later?”

“Okay. I’ll let Yishti know,” Corban promised, since Yishti was in charge of babysitting services for everyone. It was a good thing she wasn’t a spy or something, since everyone trusted her with heirs.

Ach had heirs.

One of these ten, maybe all of them, his heir. With Spence.

He wanted to melt into kissing Spence, except there were all these toddlers and he was wearing shorts for training in. He needed better clothes. The urge was making his arms itch. His arms itched so bad that he wanted to cry, except he knew it was all in his head so he made himself stay calm.

Corban grinned, since it turned out he had more to say and whatever it was made him still want to laugh. “They’re Ella and Jax’s age, exactly. And they don’t have names. Or words. But they can walk, so that’s good!”

He dipped his head in goodbye, and left.

Ach and Spence stared at each other.

They stared at the kids.

They stared at each other again.

Spence cleared his throat and set the one blonde boy back onto the bed, with the mess of toddlers. “Please remember while I panic that I love the idea. Our kids.”

“I’m panicking too,” Ach promised. “I’m just…we have kids!” He hugged Spence, because he couldn’t help it. “Your kids are going to have half-siblings.”

“Have, presently,” Spence corrected.

“Yeah, but they don’t know it yet.” Ach looked at all of them. He could kind of feel which ones belonged together as twin sets. One pair of blonde boys was identical, with hair that stuck up just like Ach’s dad’s hair. “Can we name some after our dads?” That right there could possibly take care of four, because they both had two dads each.

“Do you have twelve names hiding in your mind?” Spence laughed. He grabbed a neon index card and a marker and wrote, “Drey Jerosh Alandrial V” on it.

“The nose-picker,” Ach instructed, pointing to one of the two identical boys. He thought Nell would probably laugh if he ever found out he’d given a nose-picking kid his dad’s name. “And you want to name the one that looks just like him after your dad?”

Spence wrote, “Zane,” on a card and pinned it to that kid. Two down, eight to go.
“Five and Zane,” Spence summarized.

Five. Yeah, Five. That was a cool name, for a The Fifth.

“What about the identical looking girls?” Spence pointed toward a pair with dark hair and matching faces. They weren’t quite identical though: One had Spence’s eyes and one had eyes the same color as Talise. “They are girls, right?” Spence asked. “Or is Rhyss messing with us?”

Ach laughed. He hadn’t figured Rhyss out yet, so he wasn’t sure.

“How about one after my mom,” Spence suggested. “Not Indigo. Ind…indy. India?”

It was a country in Babylon with a rich culture and absolutely no trouble when it came to underpopulation. That was good symbolism.

“Okay, India. And what goes with that?”

Spence looked at the brown-eyed twin as he pinned an “India” card to the blue-eyed twin. “India is in Babylon. It’s an old country with old stuff. So is Egypt. They have a river called the Nile, which is almost Niels and he wanted a kid named after him…so…Ny…la? India and Nyla?”

Ach remembered to close his mouth. It wasn’t Spence’s fault he sounded like a lunatic. It was Ach’s for wanting intimacy instead of letting Spence sleep.

Even so…Nyla was a kind of a pretty name. Ach nodded. “So that was easy. Almost half done.”

“That’s four,” Spence said. He tapped the marker against the stack of cards. “But we named one Five, so…if we say six, these two are one and two. One…you liked bird names, right?”

It was all Ach’s fault. And Rhyss’s. Ach’s fault for the no sleep, Rhyss’s for the too many kids, but the end result…Spence wasn’t making any sense.

Ach rolled with it. Spence probably made sense to himself, and Ach liked their names so far. Plus, Nell liked bird names so that would be almost like naming a kid after him. “Myna?” he suggested. “Crow.”

“Myna, like mine,” Spence agreed.

Okay, yeah, sure.

Spence pinned “Myna” to the blonde girl and looked at her twin. Ach did dancing feet with Myna’s twin, trying to figure out who he was. “I should name him after my other dad. Or my mom. Or…Melaya? Aadrick?”

He burst into laughter. Aadrick? That was the worst name ever invented.

“I don’t think those names can be combined for a boy,” Spence decided. That was probably good because it prevented Ach from suggesting the name Melaad.

“He can just not have a name,” Ach joked. He didn’t want to leave any of the parents out, but he was so stuck…

But Myna was about who Nell was, not about naming a girl Nelly or something like it.

Who his dad was…

“What about Thoreau?” Ach asked. He wondered if his dad would ever get it. Probably not. His dad didn’t think too hard about what a thinker he secretly was, and where Thoreau was all about self-denial, Meldrick liked certain amenities like plumbing and other people to do most of the cooking and cleaning…
It was hilarious.

His dad would never guess.

Spence considered. “I like Thoreau.”

Ach did too. He kind of loved the name, a lot. It was masculine and meant so much more to Ach than his dad would ever know…

Spence, having named the first six, pointed to the boy who’d tried to die falling off the bed. “Seven. This one is Seven.”

That was such a Niels name. Ach frowned. “Seven?” he complained. “What about Septimus?” Same intention, better sound.

“That’s so normal,” Spence complained back, but he wrote “Septimus” on a card and pinned it to the boy. Only four left. All of them were boys.

Spence pointed to the dark-haired boy with Talisey eyes. “What about after my other dad? And Konrad? I had a name I liked…”

“Yeah?” Ach prodded.

“Koen Samuel? Since Drey gets a middle name.” Spence studied the boy. “Or should he just be Sam?”

“I like that, Koen. So just two left,” Ach said. He straightened the sock on the darker-skinned boy. He should be named after Ach’s mom, because their skin tones were close. “Aadyn? After my mom?”

“We should name one after Rylena, too,” Spence suggested.

Yeah, probably. Ach didn’t know her well, but she mattered to Konrad and Nell, and if Ach ever wanted future pixie babies he’d better be extra family-feeling to her.

“Randyn?” he suggested.

“Too close to Landyn,” Spence said, shaking his head.

Yeah, it was. Plus randy meant in the mood and Ach wasn’t naming a kid horny-n.

“Endyn?” Spence said.

Endyn. He looked like an Endyn.

Just three twins left.

“That’s Dante,” Spence said, about the last kid.

Ach could feel, through the mental link, how much the kid felt like a Dante to Spence.

“Dante,” Ach confirmed. He turned to the final boy, out of ideas, and cringed. “Aadrick?” he asked.

Instead of laughing at the name, Spence looked at the boy and nodded. “Aadrick.” Just the girl left, then.

Spence lifted the last girl off the bed and studied her face. “Genie?” he asked.

Yeah. Ach nodded.

They looked at their twelve kids, newly-named. Twelve of them.

“Problem,” Ach said. “How do we get these little people down to breakfast?” It was going to be ugly. A horrible mess of ugly and conglomerate spludge instead of a neat line. Ach’s arms started to itch again.

“I don’t know,” Spence admitted. “We call my mom?”

“No, she’s having surgery,” Ach reminded him. “Or she just had it.” Either way, she wasn’t free to help them with twelve random extra kids. Plus they had their original six.

Cady and Hugh! He bet they could help. And Fort and Emma probably could too. Teach the kids how to hold hands in a line.

“She had it, I think,” Spence insisted. “And I bet she wants to be busy.”

Yeah, because his mom hated being alone in the same room as her emotions. She’d probably like all this distraction, and having someone to laugh at who wasn’t herself.

“She’s going to flip,” Ach said.

So was Talise.

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