CHAPTER THREE

Omigosh! Sora thought to himself as he gazed at Riku's phone number. OMIGOSH. Should I call him? What should I do?

Sora decided to consult his brother, Cloud. Cloud was usually good at this type of stuff. Too bad he was at work, but Sora was going to call him anyway.

"Hello?" Cloud's voice blasted through the phone's speaker. Sora was feeling melodramatic so he was sprawled out on the guest bed in a "woe-is-me" pose.

"Cloud!" He cried.

"Oh, it's you. You finally wake up? You were out like the dead."

"I bought peanut M&Ms."

"Okay…?"

"Cloud, there was a boy."

"A potential boything?"

"He gave me his phone number on a bag of peanut M&Ms."

"Sounds like a match made in heaven."

"Should I call him?"

"Yeah."

"Like, now? Isn't that desperate? Should I wait?"

"Did your dick crawl up into your body and sprout a vagina?"

"Cloud, I'm being serious!"

"Seriously girly. C'mon, Sora. Just call him back sometime tomorrow."

"Yeah. Okay. That sounds good."

"Maybe you should go bra shopping this afternoon."

"Bye Cloud." Sora snapped his phone shut. Okay, maybe he was being a bit girly. He really had been feeling overly emotional for awhile now.

And then his stomach did a dance. Not a happy one, either.

Maybe peanut M&Ms were not the first thing one should eat in the morning.

He meant to call Riku back, really he did. But Sora was sick. What was the point of calling when there was no way he could do anything? He was tired and mopey and puking. He had no idea what was going on, but he was really sick. He figured it was some bug thing.

Some little bug thing that was now encroaching on a week. Cloud was even a bit worried.

"You should go to the doctor."

"No." Sora whined pitifully. He was laying in the guest room again, still in a "woe-is-me" pose. "I hate the doctor."

"You need some drugs."

"You need some drugs."

Cloud just rolled his eyes. "I'm making you an appointment. I'll drag your ass there if I have to."

And Cloud had to do just that.

The doctor's office was a sickening green color. Sora had no idea why they'd picked such a nauseating color. He was already nauseous enough.

Cloud plopped Sora's deadweight ass in a chair in the waiting room while he signed his brother in.

Then they waited. And then Sora's name was called.

Dr. Vexen took them back and Cloud once again plopped Sora's deadweight ass on the examining table.

Dr. Vexen did a bunch of tests, body examining, and that stupid thing Sora hated where you had to pee in a cup. Sora really, really hated that. Talk about performance anxiety! He couldn't relax enough to pee!

Then Dr. Vexen came back into the room with a perplexed look on his face.

Cloud didn't like that look. "What's going on?"

"I'm dying, aren't I?" Sora whined melodramatically, and Cloud shot him a glare.

"I'd like to run a couple more tests, if you don't mind. They're longer and slightly more invasive, but should hopefully tell us what's going on."

"What do you think is wrong?" Cloud asked.

"It appears that you have a metabolically active tumor in your lower pelvic cavity."

"…What?" Sora replied.

"You've got a growing thing inside you, above your groin." Vexen looked up from his clipboard. "I don't think it's malignant, but it's rather large and I'm surprised it hasn't caused any adverse health conditions before now."

Sora was speechless.

"We should run those tests." Cloud answered for him in a stern tone. "Now."

"That's just fine." Vexen answered. "We've got all the machines."

After three hours of tests, (two hours of tests and one hour of Sora taking pee or puke breaks), Vexen sent Sora and Cloud back into the examining room they began in. A couple minutes later, he entered with a couple of folders on his clipboard.

"Am I dying?" Sora repeated his question from earlier.

"Quite the opposite, Mr. Strife." Vexen replied, shifting through the papers. "You're pregnant."

Two identical blue gazes stared at the doctor in shock.

"What?"

"I'm not lying to you." Vexen turned on a light screen behind him and opened a few folders, adjusting the papers. "As you know, this is a Minute Clinic. As such, I don't actually have your medical records on file. First of all, because you're a first-time patient, and second of all because we send those reports back to your main physician. We're typically emergency situations only."

Vexen lifted up an x-ray image and placed it on the light screen. "Okay. As you can see from this image, Mr. Strife's pelvic bone structure is completely normal. Lower abdominal pain can be caused by bladder stones, which x-rays can sometimes detect. However, based on the description of your symptoms, I doubted bladder stones were the cause. I don't like ruling anything out, though, and I wanted to check your lower inguinal zone for any abnormalities. This image shows none.

"However," Vexen continued, "your MRI image is a different story."

Vexen placed the image on the screen and Cloud and Sora did a double take.

"Is… is that real?" Sora was flabbergasted.

"Yes, Mr. Strife. It's real."

"But it's… it's…" Sora had no words.

"A uterus." Cloud finished. "Sora has a uterus?"

"A uterus with a baby?"

Vexen nodded. "Yes, so it seems. He has a complete and intact female reproductive system. However, his male genitalia are dominant. For the past few years, his brain has agreed with his physical body and accordingly released male reproductive hormones. However, that doesn't mean that Mr. Strife's female system has been inactive. It appears to be working just fine. Your eggs are released from ovaries and then expelled during menstruation."

Sora was pale. "The hell? Menstruation? Men don't menstruate! It's like a law of nature!"

"I'm not sure where all the uterine lining disappears too, though." Vexen continued, seemingly unaware of Sora's impeding mental breakdown. "Perhaps the lymphatic system clears away the blood from the interstitial fluid?"

"Holy crap." Sora mumbled. "Holy crap, holy crap. I'm dreaming. No, I'm nightmaring."

"Nightmaring isn't a word." Cloud replied. "But if you're doing it, I'm doing it too."

"Omigosh." Sora said. "Omigosh, this is ridiculous."

"You do have the option of abortion. You are about a month and a half along. You can take some time to decide. However, partial birth abortions are illegal in this area. You'll need to decide about the procedure before your final trimester. You also have the option of removing your female gentalia either during the abortion procedure or after the baby's birth."

"Okay." Sora took a deep breath. "What if I want to keep it? Any advice or anything?"

"Yes. This is very rare. I doubt it's ever been reported before. I will search for other cases. Right now, I'd like you to keep this quiet. There's no need for the media to get hold of this story and sensationalize the balls off it." Vexen muttered darkly. "I give you my word to keep this between us. I specialize in reproductive health.

"Suggestions? Bed rest. Lots of it. Your body has believed itself to be male for years and your brain has suddenly turned on the female hormones at full blast. You're most likely going to be dizzy and faint often. I want you to come back and see me at the beginning of your fourth month. The MRI provided a good image of your fetus, probably better than an ultrasound. So far, it looks perfectly healthy. Eat right, get plenty of rest, and try not to stress out. I'm well aware this is a strange situation, but stress is never good for a baby."

"Okay." Sora nodded. "I think I'm going to pass out."

Cloud caught him. The blonde, while a little horrified, was sardonically amused by the situation and let out a small chuckle.

"What's so funny?" The doctor asked.

"I was teasing him about growing a vagina." Cloud smirked.

Vexen rolled his eyes. "Take care of him. Feel free to contact me with any questions or in the case of emergencies."

"Yes. Thank you."

"You're very welcome."

It was hard for Sora to think about.

Pregnant.

Pregnant.

Fuck, he was only twenty-one. And he was pregnant.

And he was a man. A pregnant man.

It felt like everything he'd ever known was spinning around and doing a topsy-turvy drunken dance number and Sora just couldn't figure out the steps. Craziness.

Sora didn't know what to do. Pregnant. He was going to get fat and have to lay around in a bed for like a year and eat healthy food and not drink. Because he was pregnant.

Sora was stressing out.

Omigosh, Sora thought, what am I doing? What have I done? What the hell is going on? How did this happen? Why me? Why not Cloud? Cloud would love a vagina so he could pop out Leon babies.

And then something hit him.

He was going to have a baby. He was pregnant and that meant that he was going to end up popping out a baby.

Not just any babies, Vanny's baby.

Oh snap, Sora thought. Just when he thought he'd gotten rid of that no good loser, too.

"Cloud." The blonde could hear his little brother's whining from downstairs. "Cloooud, I need you."

The blonde sighed, ran his fingers through his spiky locks, and trudged up the stairs. "What is it, Sora?"

He was greeted with a teary-eyed monster.

"I don't know!"

"What is it you don't know?" Cloud was not one for philosophical ramblings, especially those of his little brother. Sora could just go on and on sometimes; you had to snap him back to the topic on hand.

"What am I going to do?" Sora looked so lost Cloud had to feel a little bad for the kid.

"Do you want to keep the baby?"

Sora looked down to the floor. "I don't know. I haven't decided. It's hard."

"What's hard? Do you not want to be pregnant?"

"It's a little freaky."

"It is, but the doctor said it's not dangerous. Who gets that kind of chance, Sora?" Cloud made a bit of a wistful face. "Men don't have babies. This is really, really fucking rare."

"It's Vanny's baby." Sora whispered. "I don't know if I wanted to be connected to him like that."

Cloud sat down in a chair near the head of the guest bed. "Yeah. He would have some legal rights."

"We're not married—"

"It doesn't matter. When you get down to it, it's his kid, too." Cloud pointed out. "I think you could make a case that he's not father material. The mother usually gets the kids in cases like this. Plus, you don't have to tell him."

Sora tilted his head to the side. "You're right. I don't."

"You don't."

Sora nodded, a bit of a smile on his face. "I don't think I will. He doesn't like kids, anyway."

"It's your call."

There was a bit of silence. Sora looked happy with his decision and Cloud was trying to figure out how to approach the next topic without injuring Sora's feelings.

"Sora?"

"Yeah?"

"If you," Cloud stopped for a second, and took a calming breath. "If you… Leon and I, we've been talking about adoption."

Sora wiggled enthusiastically. "It's that serious between you two?"

Cloud smiled. "It is."

"Well, yay!"

Cloud chuckled. "I was trying to say that if you don't want the baby, Leon and I will adopt it. So you can still see it and stuff but we'd be the parents."

Sora froze. "O-Oh."

"It's just an option. We'd never try to take your baby away if you don't want us to. And I also don't want you to think we'd only help you if you were going to give the baby to us. We will support you wholeheartedly either way. But it's an option, if the thought is just overwhelming."

"I can see where you're coming from," Sora replied. "But I don't think I'm ready to make that kind of call."

"I'd be surprised if you were." Cloud said. "But I think you need to carry the baby to full term."

Sora grinned. "The more I think about it, the more I want to, too. I mean, I like kids. A lot."

"You elementary education major, you."

Sora laughed. "Shut up! I can still take online classes, can't I?"

"I'm sure you can, if you feel up to it."

"It's my baby too, not just Van's." Sora smiled. "And I'd teach it to not be a cheating bastard."

Cloud smirked. "What a good mother you are."

"I'm not a girl. I'll be a father."

"Fine."

"Maybe a dad." Sora mused. "I like the sound of 'daddy'."

Riku was not having a good life. He thought himself to be relatively attractive. He thought he was pretty charming and polite. He was good boyfriend material.

Why hadn't Sora called him?

Riku sighed and dropped his head into his hands. He was at work (of course he was. Where else would he be?) and he was moping. He didn't care that some of the older secretaries were shooting him sympathetic looks. (That's because he didn't notice them. He would have been pissed if he'd known. He's not a fucking child.)

Why hadn't Sora called him? Riku figured there could only be two reasons: one, because he was a horrible tease, or two, that he was really dumb and didn't find the number.

For his pride, Riku hoped it was the second one. He thought that perhaps he and Sora had had a little chemistry. It'd been a nice break from his normal routine. Riku had never spent so much time with someone so bouncy.

He wanted to date Sora. At least once. Riku wanted to take him to Mickey's, the popular date spot. He wanted to sit together in a secluded area and play eye-tag with Sora and talk about useless things.

But Sora hadn't called him back. Why didn't he somehow find a way to sneak around and obtain the boy's number? Because he'd given Sora his number! He hardly ever did that. And when you gave someone your number you expected them to call you back. If you didn't call back, you were rejecting them.

Riku didn't do so well with the whole concept of rejection, so he preferred to think that Sora was daft and clumsy and had simply lost his number or not seen it.

So his heart broke a little one day when Sora called him back. Almost two weeks after their impromptu "date." Riku didn't pick up. He wouldn't know what to say. He wanted to hear what Sora had to say. And then he could plan out a response and call Sora back on his own terms.

Once the voicemail had been recorded, Riku eagerly pressed the play back button and jammed his cell phone next to his ear.

"Hey Riku, it's Sora. You remember me? You gave me your number on that bag of M&Ms." Sora laughed. Riku smiled a little himself. "I'm really sorry for not calling you back sooner. I've been really sick. I'm still really sick. My brother has me on bed rest and I've not been doing much of anything."

Sora paused for a moment, and Riku heard him take a deep breath. "I'd honestly forgotten about you. I'm so sorry. I've had other things—one really fucking huge thing, to be honest; it's the reason I'm sick—on my mind. It's got nothing to do with you. I found the half-empty M&Ms bag earlier today and I spent the morning trying to gather the courage to call you. It's been like… two weeks. That's like ten times longer than common courtesy for calling-back, you know? I'm so sorry. I'd like to see you again, if you still want me, but I can't really do much of anything." Riku heard a little beeping noise. "And now I'm running out of time. I guess you can call me back if you want. I'll keep my phone by my—"

Then message cut off. Riku moved his phone away from his ear.

He should call Sora back. Maybe.

A/N: And mpreg screams its way in. That's why the VanxSora warning has to stay in the summary. I know my mpreg is kind of technical, but I'm the not the kind of guy that can really believe in magical gay baby happenings. The first time I ever read a mpreg I did some research. I don't know if this has ever happened or if I got my technical anatomy jargon right. I asked my boyfriend, though, and he said it sounded okay. But what does he know, anyway? And my dad got his MRI and x-rays done at a Minute Clinic. (Maybe? I suck at listening sometimes. Let's just go with it.)

Thanks for reading! Hope you liked it.