August 3rd 2020

Chapter 216
Their Surprise From Friends

"The phone call we got earlier, before Chiara and I came out here, was from the hospital, to confirm an appointment we were looking to get," Sophie started, just as quickly raising her hand, indicating it wasn't what they might have been thinking. She was fine, and she had been for a while. To see her on the job, you would hardly know she'd been off on recovery for so long.

"So, what is it about then?" Lucas asked, and there was that shared look again, the unit of those couples.

"Sparing you the exact procedural details, we are trying to have a baby. All of us," Asher went right for it, leaving the visiting couple to sit there, in complete and awed silence.

The story went like this.

When Sophie and Chiara had gotten married, even before that, when they had gotten engaged, there had been one big question that could not be ignored. Would they both want children someday? It was still early, for both of them, and it wasn't as though they would come into this with some unplanned pregnancy. It would have to be planned, regardless of the way they came by these kids, biologically or not. They had to get that question on the table now, couldn't leave surprises to chance, that one of them would eventually want this and the other would not.

But they had been all in, both of them. Chiara came from a big family, and it was what felt natural to her. For her part, Sophie had pretty much the opposite, but she had all this love in her, just looking for outlets, and this felt right. With this knowledge between them, their fates were sealed together, bonded in marriage for a few years now.

The question had been left in the back of their minds for a while after their wedding. The next time it was addressed was after the incident which nearly claimed Sophie's life. At the beginning, when they had gotten to the point where the fear for that life became less and less of a thing, Sophie had been left in such a place that she believed perhaps their plans were not meant to come to fruition, that children would feel like too much for them. Chiara had seen through this, seen the fear in her wife, the fear of what their lives might become because of her condition.

It had taken some time, months, before those worries would be put to rest, after Sophie had finally cracked and let those pent up feelings out into the light. Chiara had vowed to her that absolutely nothing could have made her want to not have kids with her, that her resilience was just the kind of quality they should aspire to pass on. From that point forward, quietly so, they had started to consider their options.

Meanwhile, there were developments on the other side, too.

Like the girls, the idea of children had been discussed, only in the case of Asher and Ray, it had happened before, a long time before. It hadn't necessarily been a discussion of the two of them having those kids together specifically, but it spoke of their intentions. It came down in a not so different pattern from Sophie and Chiara's. Asher had grown up with one brother but so many more cousins, aunts and uncles... When he looked to the future, even back in high school, he saw himself with a family of his own.

Ray also came from a large family, except in one moment they had all been taken from him, when his parents had found out about him and his sexuality and they had kicked him out, shunned him without looking back.

Not so long after it had happened, in his first days living at the Friar house with Lucas and his parents, he had been out with Asher. He was still pretty shaken up over his parents' choice. He had feared this would happen if they ever found out, but maybe a part of him had hoped they would surprise him and be okay with it. He'd clung to that hope, and it had been his undoing.

In that broken state, he had made a defiant claim, that he would have his own family someday, and it would be bright, and loving, and no one would ever have to fear that they might be tossed away like trash for being who they were.

From there, as their bond and their relationship had grown, solidified, Asher and Ray had never straight up asked one another if they wanted kids someday, it was just a fact of who they were and who they saw themselves becoming. One day, they would be a family together, they would have children.

The two sides had not come to cross together until the sign had gone up on the Shaws' lawn across the street from Sophie and Chiara's house.

The guys had been living with the girls since they had moved back to Texas and jobs had taken them to Houston rather than their native Austin. The plan had always been that they were welcome to stay there as long as needed, as they were eventually looking to buy a house of their own, once things had settled down post move from New York.

Until such a chance came up, the four of them were just living together, and they found they had such an ease of it that they almost didn't think about the guys moving anymore, it was just their life now. Someday they would go, they figured, but that was not important at the time.

Then the sign had gone up on the lawn across the street, and they had seen it. Chiara had been the first to see it, and almost instantly she had sent a picture of it into the house chat.

Once they'd all been home that night, they'd just sort of been looking at it, stalking it almost, with an unspoken thought in them that soon became spoken. What if the guys bought it?

They weren't even sure who had said it anymore, because really it had been on all of their minds, as far back as when Chiara had sent the photo. They hardly had to address it any further than that, an offer would be made, the very next morning if they could. The Shaws knew them, the Shaws liked them, treated them pretty much like four more of their kids, as they had always done, same with Maya and Lucas, and Rosa, Riley, and Dylan, when they had lived across from them as well. They might be compelled to sell to these people they knew already.

Ray had been looking out at the house, seeing the whole of it, and his first thought had been for how happy they could be out there, raising their family together, and Asher had just smiled, showing a similar picture existed in his mind's eye.

It had not been an immediate leap from that to 'let's have a kid together,' but it had been the start. The offer had been made on the house, and before long their assumption toward the Shaws had paid off. They had taken the offer, the house would become Asher and Ray's new home. When they had heard the news, the response had been clear: they had to celebrate.

Admittedly, they had been a bit tipsy when the idea had been put on the table for the first time. Even so, the way they saw it, the drinks loosening up their tongues and inhibitions might just have been what they needed. They had been talking about how their kids would get to grow up together, going across the street here and there, and they could all be one big, happy family.

The actual meaning when they'd mentioned 'their kids' had been 'Asher and Ray's kids and Sophie and Chiara's kids,' separate, but before long the meaning took to shifting. In bringing up the subject, most times, she wouldn't have tipped her hand, but in her near drunken state, Sophie had found herself opening up, bringing up the fact that, following her injuries and the surgeries required to repair them, her doctor had explained how unlikely it was that she would ever be able to carry a child of her own. It wasn't as though they hadn't already talked, her and Chiara, about which of them would do this, if that was the route they took. Chiara had been the obvious choice, but now she had become the only choice.

Whether they would use Chiara's own egg or get one from Sophie for her to carry, there was still that other very important part they needed to consider, which they had mentioned. Right then, one as tipsy as the next, both Ray and Asher had chimed in with 'I'll do it.'

They had all sort of laughed at first. It almost felt too silly, like a sign that they'd celebrated too much. But then once the chuckles had died down, the guys had looked to each other. They were serious, they both were. More than that, it felt right, almost like the house, when they had first decided to go after it. They were all so close to one another, to the point where they might have easily kept living together.

Now, they would all be living across the street from one another. And if they did this, the child would be part of both their families, would forever bind them together, and that was kind of the best idea. Stating this very thought to the girls, it had left Sophie and Chiara to be the ones looking at each other now, considering this offer. Sure, it was unusual, but then when had either of them turned aside an idea because it wasn't the 'normal' way. Their whole story had started on a message board, the two of them parted by countless miles and an ocean, and then by chance they had been brought together. They were making it work.

Their answer had been that they would all reconvene on this idea in the morning, when they were sober.

They were just brimming on the edge of hungover, but that might have been the best option again, leaving them to be direct. What they were all suggesting would boil down to bringing this child into the world in a shared custody scenario, mothers here, fathers there. But they would be across the street from one another, and it would never be all that separated between them. They would all look after the baby, see it grow. They would need to work out the break down of who had the child when, if they would do one week here and one there, but even that would mostly be about bed time, wouldn't it? They would have their meals together, they would spend time together... It wouldn't be such a bad idea, would it? They would be their child's other half, familiar and loved.

So, that was the plan, the start of it, of course. They wanted more than one, but they weren't getting ahead of themselves. What mattered was that they were all ready to jump in. There had been plenty of talk of whose egg and whose sperm, which had bordered between awkward and comical and landed somewhere along the line of them 'vowing' to have one of each combination. For now though, they were looking to call up the 'ChiaRay' combo. If all went well, it would all be happening very soon, and now Maya and Lucas knew that this secret would not have remained one, if given the time. It was the whole reason this dinner had happened, for them to share the news.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners