Title: Son of Men
Chapter: 16
Rating: T
Summary: When a message comes through the typewriter, it's going to turn everyone's life upside down.
Author's Note: I'm really sorry I didn't get this out sooner. I was hoping to put the finishing touches on this while I was on vacation in Vancouver, but I woke up one morning and found this: goo . gl / uFjxU right behind my hotel and then my whole idea of actually writing fic went to hell LOL (take the spaces out of the link, it links to a pic which I think you really do wanna see, in case you were wondering) Please take that as my excuse for not finishing this early because my mind has been pretty much - elsewhere. But to make this short, here's the second to last chapter. It's also a little longer than the other ones to make up for the long wait. The last chapter is already written and edited and will follow next weekend.

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Peter slowly woke when the first rays of sunlight crept through the half-open curtains, beckoning for another hot summer day. He reached out to his side blindly, seeking out Olivia's comfort that he had so terribly missed the last couple of nights only to find the spot next to him empty. He crooked open one eye while his hand slipped over the still warm sheets next to him, telling him that it couldn't have been long that Olivia had left the bed. His vision still blurred, he could barely make out the time on the clock on the nightstand, but not exactly sure if the number before the :24 was supposed to be a five or a six.

Usually, he noticed when Olivia left the bed, even if it was in the middle of the night and he was truly dead to the world. It was as if he had a sixth sense when it came to her. Except that that sixth sense seemed to fail him terribly lately. He rolled over onto his side just to see Olivia entering the bedroom. She was clad in nothing but one of his dress shirts which barely reached her thighs. The top two buttons were left open, giving him a perfectly teasing view of what lay just beneath the light blue cotton material. Strands of her long blonde hair were falling loosely over her shoulders, cascading down like a waterfall which reminded him again just how much he loved it when she wore it down like that.

Without a word, she crawled back under the sheets with him, her hand immediately sneaking over his side to come to rest between his shoulder blades as she molded her body against his in a perfect fit. He could smell the faint odor of peppermint toothpaste when his nose found its way into the crook of her neck, nuzzling that certain spot just below her ear that he knew she enjoyed. Usually she never brushed her teeth until after breakfast, so what he was smelling now probably was the remnant of her attempt to rinse the vile taste of vomit out of her mouth.

"Morning sickness?" he mumbled sleepily, his fingers absentmindedly playing with a strand of hair they had gotten hold of while his hand had lazily traveled over her shoulder.

"I'm fine, don't worry," she replied which caused Peter to snort,"That's becoming your catch phrase."

Olivia couldn't suppress the smile that was playing at the corners of her mouth. Not long ago, it would have bothered her to no end if someone would have been able to read her like Peter could. But with him, it was different. She knew she could be vulnerable with him, allow herself to be frightened and not be ashamed of it. He had taught her that there were times when it was okay for her to let her guard down, that she didn't need to be strong all the time, that it wasn't a sign of weakness when she admitted that she was scared.

He had once told her that "to be alive is to be vulnerable" to which she had just laughed at him and asked in which fortune cookie he had found that little bit of wisdom. When he had told her that his mother had written that in her very last letter to him, she had felt beyond stupid for having given him that snotty answer. In hindsight, she had to admit that Elizabeth Bishop had passed on a lot of wisdom to her son and that that was probably what had shaped Peter to be the man that he was.

"I could do without the puking..." she started to tell him just as the queasiness she'd been trying to keep at bay since throwing up not long ago grew so overly strong once again. Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply before she buried her face in her pillow, waiting for the room to stop spinning around her and the nauseating feeling to pass. She could feel Peter run his hand over her back in little circles, trying to help her ride out that last wave of nausea.

"Better?" he asked, when he felt her body relax against his touch and her breathing evening out.

"For now," Olivia mumbled into her pillow, finding temporary relief in the cool cotton fabric that was tightly pressed against her face, "I'm looking forward to the day that I wake up without having to rush to the bathroom and empty the contents of my stomach into the toilet. It's excruciating."

Peter's response to her was not the cocky remark she had expected from him when he whispered four little words into her ear, "Move in with me."

She turned her head to her side, blinking at him from under a veil of long blonde hair that had fallen over her face. That was surely something she had not expected to hear at 6:43 AM on a Saturday morning. Her lips curled into a faint smile, her eyes filling with just a hint of mischief when she pushed a few loose strands of hair out of her face.

"So you can get lucky every night?" she smirked in an attempt to dodge the seriousness of the question that he had just posed. At the crack of dawn and in a state of dizziness and nausea, she rather not wanted to make any life changing decisions.

"More so I can wake up next to the woman I love every morning," Peter replied, a hint of amusement in his voice that showed that he obviously had not expected her to answer him the way she did. The naughty grin that played at the corners of his mouth soon faded though and his expression turned serious, "I mean it, Liv. Move in with me. Make a home for us and our little family."

"Move in with you here?"

"The house is big enough for a bunch of kids. Granted, it needs some work here and there, plus we'd have to talk to Walter about moving out of the living room, but it's got potential." He studied her for a moment, trying to read her reaction to what he had just proposed but all he got was a blank stare. "If you'd rather find a new place, I'm sure we can..."

"No," Olivia cut him off immediately, trailing her fingers down the side of his face, stopping at the little patch of stubble right below the corner of his mouth, "You just caught me off guard. I've never..." she pondered for a moment, trying to find the right words for what she wanted to tell him before she said, "I've never been serious enough with anyone to even consider moving in together."

"Think about it?"

Even before her mind realized truly what she was doing, she blurted out a"I don't have to think about it" into the still of the room. For a fleet second, she cursed herself for giving him such a quick answer, especially since she had vowed to herself that she would no longer make any rush decisions concerning her relationship with Peter as it was no longer just herself she had to think about. But as soon as the realization hit that she had basically just agreed to move in with him, she also came to realize that this was just the next logical step for them to take. It just had come a lot sooner than she had expected.

So she brought her nose closer to his face, gently rubbing it against his as she whispered a short "yes" as the silence in the room was suddenly filled with the high pitched squeal of a baby.

Peter let out a short snort, "Not even 7 AM and the kid's up for the day."

"Dunhams like to greet the day early. You should know that by now," Olivia replied which caused a slightly puzzled look on Peter's face.

For the first time since they had brought Henry back from the other side, Olivia had referred to him not as his son but as a Dunham. She had not outright called him her son, but by referring to him as a Dunham, it sounded as if she had accepted that that little boy that lay babbling in a crib that stood at the foot of his bed was more than just a Bishop – that he was also part Dunham, part her.

Thinking back to how she had cared for Henry the night before, unwilling to hand him over after his last feeding of the night. Instead, she had sat on the couch with the baby snuggled against her chest, gently stroking his back while she hummed a slow tune for him, trying to lull him to sleep. Henry had spent what had felt like an eternity to Peter watching Olivia as she sang to him, desperately trying to keep his eyes open as he intently listened before sleep had finally truly overwhelmed him and he had succumbed to the constant beckoning of the dreamland that was awaiting him behind closed eyes.

Granted, they still had a long way to go, had to adjust to the changes the baby had brought to their daily lives, but for the first time since he had held that piece of paper in his hands that so violently had pulled away the earth beneath his feet and had sent him flying into a pitch black abyss of despair, he felt like they were going to be okay. That they could work their way through this and in the end, would be fine.

"Are you gonna get him or shall I?" Olivia broke him out of his thoughts and pulled him back into a reality where his ears were filled with the incoherent babbling of his baby son.

"I'll go," he replied just as he slipped out from under the covers and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Even before he got up, his eyes fell on his son who lay in his crib belly down with his hands tightly grasping the bed sheet as he pulled himself up on his arms and looked around curiously.

"Kiddo, we really need to teach you what it means to be able to sleep in on a weekend," he cooed at Henry as he picked him up.

The little boy immediately resumed his incoherent babbling, occasionally donning a broad smile as he wiggled in his father's arms and made himself as comfortable as he could, snuggling close Peter's body.

"Maybe he was just trying to tell us he was lonely," Olivia said as she propped her head up on her elbow and watched father and son bathed in the first rays of sunlight that crept through the only half-closed blinds. For a second, the faint smile playing at the corners of her mouth disappeared when she noticed that golden halo again that both father and son had been bathed in just a couple nights ago. She blinked, then released the breath she had been holding when she realized that the faint glimmer had been nothing more than a reflection of the morning sun.

"You okay?" Peter asked immediately upon noticing the change in her expression.

"I'm fine," she replied almost instantly, "It's just... I'm still kinda getting used to seeing you with a baby in your arms."

"And I'm still getting used to actually having a kid," Peter sat down on his side of the bed, offering her a loving smile as he leaned back against the headboard. Henry in his arms had already made out Olivia and was now wriggling in his father's arms, trying to turn around towards the sound of her voice. When Peter finally moved him into a sitting position on his lap, a broad smile broke out on the boy's face when he finally was able to lay his eyes on Olivia. He contently leaned back against his father's chest and started babbling in full force, as if he was trying to tell her every little bit of a dream he had had the night before.

For the longest time, Peter and Olivia just listened today the incoherent babbling coming from the youngest Bishop. Occasionally, his arms would fly high into the air, gesturing wildly while at other times he would just point at something invisible nearby. Even at 6 months old, he was already exhibiting the Dunham habit of gesturing animatedly while talking, something that didn't go unnoticed by Peter and Olivia.

"I can't even imagine how desperate you have to be to give up something so precious, " Olivia said as she gently tickled Henry's belly which caused the boy to stop his story telling for a just a second and giggle with delight, "You had Walter check him out for anything unusual that wouldn't show in a regular check-up, right?"

"No cortexiphan in his system. I know you were worried about that."

"If Walternate didn't use cortexiphan on him, what did he do with him then?" She continued her tickle attack on the boy which soon turned into hysterical laughter, a single front bottom tooth now clearly visible as he broadly smiled at her, "Lincoln was genuinely worried, I could see that. It makes absolutely no sense to me why his mother would give him up if Walternate wasn't using that drug on him."

"I have a different theory," Peter started as he ran his hand over Henry's head, smoothing a few locks of unruly blonde hair that were sticking out in each and every direction, "I had Walter run a DNA test on him. Just to make sure."

"And?"

"He's definitely part Dunham, part Bishop, I can tell you that. However, here comes the strange thing. He's just a little bit too much a Bishop than he's supposed to be."

Olivia's eyebrows furrowed, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know that every kid inherits 23 chromosomes from each parent, right? Henry here, however, has 25 chromosomes that Walter identified as belonging to me and only 21 he got from his mother."

"How's that possible?"

"Walter thinks that Walternate has been trying to duplicate the chromosomes Henry got from me."

Instinctively, Peter tightened the hold on his son, pulling him closer to him in attempt to shake off that sickening feeling that started to grow inside him as he thought about what exactly his real father had been doing to the baby. In his arms, he was holding a boy whose DNA read like a secret government project, and the outcome was yet to be determined.

"And do what?" Olivia's voice broke him out of his thoughts just as his mind was starting to wander the dangerous paths of 'what could have been' and 'what will be', "Turn him into a clone of you?"

He shrugged his shoulders slightly, "I don't think so. I rather think he's been trying to activate the machine using Henry instead of me. If I can operate it, so could probably any person who has the same subset of DNA the machine is finetuned to."

Olivia just shook her head, "Does Walter have any idea what those DNA changes are gonna do to him?"

"He can only speculate. Right now, Henry's absolutely healthy and apparently also very talkative," he leaned forward to look down at his babbling son who immediately tilted his head backwards when he noticed his father's attention and first rewarded him with a blank stare of confusion which almost instantly turned into a delightful bout of short giggles, "What are we gonna do with you when you can actually talk, hmm?"

Olivia just laughed as she reached out to take Henry from him and place him down on the bed next to her. The boy fussed for a moment, then rolled over from back to his side faster than anyone could look, coming to rest with his whole body tightly pressed against Olivia's, his head tugged away in the crook of her neck right under her chin.

"I guess someone was definitely very lonely in his bed," she cooed at the baby while she placed her hand against his back and gently nuzzled the top of his head, inhaling the sweet scent of his baby shampoo.

"Great, now I have to fight another guy for my girlfriend," Peter snorted with a hint of amusement in his voice as he slid down the mattress and lay down next to Olivia and his son. He propped his head up on his elbow and teasingly said, "I guess I have to reconsider if I really wanna keep that guy around if he's the one who gets to cuddle with my girlfriend instead of me."

"Now imagine what's gonna happen in a few months when we have yet another little one in the house," Olivia smirked, winking at him with her eyebrow, "You probably won't be able to lay a hand on me ever again."

"Definitely have to reconsider that whole 'being a daddy' thing."

"Most definitely have to reconsider," Olivia replied in the most serious tone she could muster, but still with a tiny hint of amusement in her voice.

"You questioning my parenting abilities already?"

"No. I'm just being a bit selfish," she whispered and quickly removed her hand from where it had been resting on Henry's back and placed it over his ear, "because I don't wanna miss out on all those hot nights of making out with this absolutely gorgeous guy that I've fallen in love with."

Peter couldn't help but laugh, "Dunham, you never cease to amaze me." He leaned forward, his forehead coming to rest against Olivia's, "I love you."

A wide smile spread across her face, "I love you, too."