"It's too fucking hot for September," the little boy announced loudly, right in front of his grandparents and a bunch of other relatives.

No one had been paying attention to him especially, but everyone heard it, and all the nearby conversation stopped.

Shocked, all Sam could manage was, "Scott Anderson-Evans!"

Blaine helped him out with, "You know we don't use that word!"

"I'm just telling you what Aunt Stacey said."

"I didn't realize he was old enough to have discovered the quoting-someone-else loophole," Blaine muttered to Sam as the rest of the adults resumed their conversations. To his son he said, "That doesn't make it okay for you to say it."

Sam looked around for his sister.

He found her sitting in a lawn chair with her feet in the kiddie pool, fanning herself with an old magazine. Shielding her eyes, she looked up at him and asked, "Why is it always so fucking hot when we have these Labor Day picnics? Summer's supposed to be ending."

Sam groaned at the swearing, but at least there weren't any actual kids in the kiddie pool. He slipped off his Chucks, pulled up another lawn chair, and joined her. The water wasn't exactly cold anymore, but it was cool enough to feel nice. It really was fucking hot for September, even early September. "We haven't had one of these picnics since the last time Labor Day was on Scott's birthday. The actual day of his birth. Remember?"

Stacey snorted. "Like that's a day I'd forget."

"I remember you said the exact same thing that my six-year-old son just charmingly quoted you as telling him, about it being too fucking hot.'"

"It was too fucking hot."

"Mmm."

"You were so funny!" Stacey laughed at the memory. "So scandalized at me dropping the f-bomb!"

"It's too fucking hot for September," Stacey announced as she wiped the sweat off her forehead with the sleeve of her t-shirt.

"Stacey!" Sam scolded. He didn't like to hear his little sister use that language. Especially considering…

"Okay, don't even start with me, Sam," she said, turning on him with a sudden fury. She shook a half-eaten hamburger at him as she proceeded to enumerate her grievances. "One, I am an adult. Two, it is a hundred degrees in the fucking shade. Three, I have never been this uncomfortable in my entire fucking life even without this fucking heat. Four, the baby can't understand English yet. Five, I'm doing this for you, so you'd better just shut the fuck up and thank me."

Sam looked to his husband for help. Blaine shrugged and said, "I think your sister is right. You should shut the fuck up and thank her." He then walked over behind his sister-in-law, put his hands on her shoulders to massage them, and said, "Thank you, Stacey. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Stacey shook off his hands. "Ugh. Did you not hear the part about it being a hundred in the shade? What part of that makes you think I want anyone touching me?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "But remember how your defense was that you were pregnant and anyway he couldn't understand you?"

"So you want me to knock it the fuck off?"

"Stacey. Please."

"Okay, okay."

Scott came over then and stood next to Sam. He looked at the pool—the pool that his grandparents had filled up just for him, as he was the only child at the picnic—longingly, but he didn't get in. As he'd already explained to his dads, he was too old now for a baby pool. "Did you yell at Aunt Stacey for saying a bad word?" he asked.

"Nope," Sam said. "Aunt Stacey's an adult. I don't get to yell at adults."

"Wait a minute!" Stacey looked at him with exaggerated shock. "You're admitting I'm an adult!? I think this is a first! You're my witness, Scott."

"Oh, come on, Stace. I don't treat you like a little kid."

"Bull-…" Stacey glanced at Scott, who was watching and listening intently. "-hockey. Do you remember what you said right after we found out I was pregnant?"

Sam knew exactly what she was getting at, but he didn't really want to tell the whole story in front of Scott. "I think I said 'Yay!' And anyway, that was over six years ago."

Scott wasn't going to let him off that easy, though. "What else did you say? Is this part of the story of how my aunt is really my mother but not in a creepy hillbilly way?"

Blaine appeared out of nowhere to say, "I wish you hadn't taught him that term, honey. I mean, here we are, visiting your family in Kentucky, and they're going to think we think—"

"We don't think you think anything," Stacey assured him.

Scott jumped up and down. "Come on, dad! Tell the story!"

"Okay, I'll tell the story," Sam said. Scott didn't know the part Stacey had hinted at, so he wouldn't know that Sam was leaving it out. "You wanna pull up a chair and put your feet in the pool at least? That's not babyish, that's just keeping cool."

Scott considered. Probably because his dad and aunt were doing it he decided it would be acceptable, so he pulled up a lawn chair. Blaine did too.

"Well, let's see," Sam started. "Your dad and I had been married for four years and we wanted a baby super, super bad."

"Why?" Scott asked.

Sam never knew how to answer this question; it always just seemed so obvious to him why they would want a baby. Blaine jumped in with, "Because we had so much love for each other that it seemed selfish to keep it to ourselves." He placed one hand on the back of Sam's neck and one on the back of Scott's and added, "We wanted you to share it with you."

"Dad, it's too hot for that," Scott said, shrugging off his father's hand.

"He's…kinda right," Sam said. But at least he didn't just shrug Blaine's hand off; he kissed it before gently placing it in Blaine's lap. "So anyway," he said, turning back to Scott, "two men can't make a baby on their own."

Scott nodded. "Because they both have sperm but no eggs."

"Right," Blaine said. "Some of the genes that make up a baby come from the father's sperm, and some of them come from the mother's egg. Like your dad is made up of a mix of Grandma and Grandpa Evans' genes—"

"And you're made up of a mix of Grandma and Grandpa Andersons'," Scott continued for him. It wasn't the first time he'd heard this.

"Exactly!" Sam said. "And, now, do you know who else is made up of a mix of Grandma and Grandpa Evans' genes?"

"Uncle Stacey and Aunt Steve. I mean…" Scott smacked himself theatrically on the forehead. "Aunt Stacey and Uncle Steve."

"Right. And…hmm…" Sam scratched his head. "Is there anyone who would have genes from Grandma and Grandpa Evans, just like I do, who also has eggs that we could mix with the genes from your dad's sperm?"

"Aunt Stacey of course! And also I had to grow inside her uterus because men don't have a place like that for growing babies in."

"That's right. And it takes nine whole months for a baby to grow enough inside a woman's uterus to be ready to be born, so we're lucky that Aunt Stacey loved us enough—and loved you enough, even though you weren't even born yet!—to give us her egg and grow you inside—"

"I know all this, dad!" Scott said, kicking his feet impatiently in the pool. "You were going to tell me what you said when you found out Aunt Stacey was pregnant!"

Stacey laughed. Blaine did too, but at least he tried to stifle his.

"All right, all right." Sam kicked a little water onto Scott's shins.

"Dad!"

"What? You got me first."

"Just don't get my clothes wet. And tell me what you said!"

"Right. So. You might not know this, but, uh…mixing eggs and sperm together doesn't work every time. Sometimes you have to try a bunch of times before a woman gets pregnant."

"Oh," Scott said thoughtfully. "No, I didn't know that."

"You still have to use protection every time if you don't want to…uh…" Blaine caught a glimpse of the uncomprehending look on his son's face and said, "Never mind. I'll tell you about that later. Go on, honey."

"Well, it doesn't. And there's no way to know right after you try it if it worked or not. You have to wait…How long did we wait, Stacey?"

Stacey thought back. "My period was about two weeks late, I think, so—"

"What's a period?" Scott asked.

"Oh, it's, uh…It's something women get every month…"

"But what is it?"

"Well," Stacey said, leaning forward. "You know what the uterus is, where the eggs are and the baby grows, right? And you know what the vagina is, the part that the baby is born out of?"

Scott nodded.

"So once a month, if a woman isn't pregnant, instead of a baby, blood from her uterus comes out her vagina, and she bleeds for about five whole days."

"Ew!" Scott looked at his dads, as if hoping for a sign that Aunt Stacey was pulling his leg. Not seeing any such sign, he said, "That is disgusting! I never, ever want that to happen to me!"

"Well, you're in luck," Blaine told him, "because it doesn't ever happen to boys."

Scott threw his arms up over his head in a victory gesture and yelled, "Woo hoo!"

Sam's mother turned from where she was standing over by the grill and called out, "Woo hoo what?"

"Nothing," Sam shouted back. "I'll tell you later."

"Anyway, back to the story," Scott said.

"Right. Where was I?"

"Your sister's period was about two weeks late, so it must have been about a month after we mixed my sperm with her egg."

"Right. Okay. So she called me and said, 'Sam, I think it worked because my period is late.' Remember, men don't get periods and women who are pregnant don't get them either, so that's one clue that a woman might be pregnant. But it's still not for sure because sometimes they're just late. So she has to take a test to know for sure."

"What kind of test?"

"She pees on a special stick," Stacey explained. "And if two pink lines appear after a few minutes, it means she's pregnant."

Scott looked at her skeptically. "This is another thing boys don't have to do, right?"

"Right."

"Woo hoo!"

"So Aunt Stacey said she was going to take the stick-pee test, and I said, 'Wait until Blaine and I can drive down because we want to be there when you take it.'"

"You wanted to watch her pee?"

"No! She went in the bathroom to do that in private. But we wanted to be in her apartment with her when she saw if there were two lines or not. You have to wait a few minutes after peeing, so there was enough time for her to pull her pants back up and flush and wash her hands and everything."

"Wait, why did she have to flush if she went on a stick?"

"Just a little went on the stick. The rest went in the toilet like normal. Anyway, she waited until the weekend to take the test, and we drove down to be in her apartment with her when she found out."

They sat around Stacey's little apartment drinking iced tea, not wanting to jinx anything by mentioning the reason they weren't drinking beer. They didn't even mention the reason they kept giving her more liquids.

Sam did an impression of Squidward from some SpongeBob episode the two of them had especially liked as kids, and Stacey laughed so hard she snorted. She laughed so hard she announced, "Oh my god, you almost made me pee myself!" The three of them all looked at each other, and Stacey quietly stood, saying, "So, I guess this would be a good time for me to…"

As she walked toward the bathroom, Blaine called after her, "Don't worry if you're not!" But he said it more for his own benefit, of course, and for Sam's, than for hers.

They held hands, silently watching the bathroom door and waiting. How could it take so long to pee on a stick?

"We didn't actually…your dad and I thought Aunt Stacey was going to come out of the bathroom right away—after she washed her hands and everything—and we'd all watch the stick together to see if the lines showed up."

"That sounds boring," Scott said.

"It was," Stacey said.

"Anyway, Aunt Stacey didn't know that was what we were expecting, so she stayed in the bathroom by herself, and it didn't matter because the lines did appear, and we were all so happy!"

There was a shriek, and Stacey ran out of the bathroom waving the stick. She leapt into Sam's arms and yelled, "You're gonna be daddies!"

Sam shrieked too and twirled her around. Blaine didn't quite believe it. He didn't think she'd lie, exactly, but he needed to see for himself, make sure she hadn't misread it or something. But as soon as he wrested it from her hand and saw the two little pink lines, he hugged them both and danced around with them. They didn't stop until Stacey said she was getting dizzy, and then Sam rushed her solicitously to the couch.

"What did you say, dad?"

"Let's see. I remember Aunt Stacey kept saying, 'I can't believe I'm actually pregnant!' In a happy way, like, 'I can't believe I actually won a million dollars!'"

"I can't believe it," she kept saying. "I can't believe I'm actually preggers! And on purpose!"

"But what did you say?"

"Um…"

Stacey started laughing and said, "Blaine, just wait until you have to tell my dad you knocked up his little girl!"

"Ha ha," Blaine said, stomach sinking. Because, yeah. Sam's parents were nice enough to him, but he'd never managed to shake the suspicion that they didn't totally forgive him for turning their oldest son gay. And now he'd gone and knocked up their only daughter. Their unmarried only daughter.

"Yeah, but it's fine," Sam said. "Cause, like, I know it's not exactly a miracle, it's all thanks to medical science and everything, but who can be mad about a virgin birth!"

Stacey and Blaine shared an incredulous look. Sam beamed obliviously.

Finally Stacey said, "Sam, you do know I'm twenty-two, right?"

Still smiling, Sam nodded and said, "Of course I know that!"

"So what makes you think I'm still a—"

Sam's face fell and he covered his ears before she could finish her sentence. "La la la!" he shouted. "Virgin birth!"

Stacey fell into a laughing fit, but Blaine could see his husband was legitimately distraught at the suggestion that his adult sister might have had sex at some point. He scooted closer to him on the couch and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. "She's not a little kid anymore, Sammy," he said gently. "I mean, by the time we were twenty-two, we had already—"

Sam jumped up off the couch and ran out of the apartment screaming, "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

He didn't come back until Blaine sent him a text solemnly promising never to mention Stacey and you-know-what ever again.

"I think I said something about…" Sam looked pleadingly at Blaine.

"Your dad said, 'This is the happiest moment of my life. I can't wait until our child is born so I can play with him and love him forever.'"

"That's right," Sam said, putting his hand on the back of Blaine's neck. "But then the happiest happiest moment of my life was about nine months later, when we had a Labor Day picnic just like this one, but Aunt Stacey had to go the hospital in the middle of it, and a few hours later you were born.

"But that's not funny!" Scott protested. "I thought you said something funny when you saw the lines on the pee stick."

"Nope," Sam said. "Sorry. But Aunt Stacey went into labor on Labor Day. That's pretty funny."

Scott just stared at him.

"Come on! It's irony!"

"It's not actually irony," Blaine whispered to him.

"But it is funny, right?"

"It's a little funny," Blaine agreed.

Scott marched off in a huff, very displeased with the story's conclusion.