A/N: Thanks for all the reviews, I'm so glad that the story isn't confusing for anyone and that you all seem to be liking it. Anyways, I have a poll up on my profile page here on the site asking what kind of twins you'd want Chris and Stephanie to have. I'm torn between a couple choices so the votes actually really help so if you want, go vote for one of the options! Anyways, hope you enjoy the chapter and reviews are love. :)
"I love my daughter and I will support her in everything and anything that she does, within reason of course, and I do support her with this. I guess, though, when you picture your daughter having her first child…or children as the case may be, you just kind of want that ideal for her. Chris is a good man though, I think, I hope rather. I've obviously known him for some time now, I just don't know how he will be with my daughter."
"Vince, do you have any thoughts?" Amy asked the patriarch of the McMahon family and the president of the WWE.
"The only thing Chris has to do right is treat Stephanie and the kids well, that's all I ask of him."
"Do you think that he was trying to make a power move here?"
"No," Linda said, "we've seen men who have tried to use our daughter for her last name, more often than either of us care for and Chris isn't like that."
"We hope he's not like that," Vince said, patting Linda's hand, "but we're still assessing the situation. We don't know the circumstances under which Stephanie became pregnant and it's none of our business, but she trusts Chris and so we're trusting him, but if he does anything to hurt our daughter or grandchildren, then he's going to have to face me."
"Vince, we don't know that he's even doing anything," she told her husband, then smiled towards the camera, "we're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt."
"Welcome," Stephanie said, trying to sound exuberant for the cameras, pulling the door open for her parents on the other side. She gave a smile towards the camera as her parents walked in and she closed the door behind them. In actuality, her lower back was aching something fierce and her feet were hurting as well, but she had to keep her best face forward for the cameras. She didn't want to look like an ugly, fat pregnant woman for all the world to see. "It's so good to see you."
"It's good to see you, sweetheart," Linda said, kissing Stephanie's cheek and then holding a bottle of sparkling cider and a cake. "I had the chef whip up the cake and I thought that since you can't drink because of the babies that we'd bring sparkling cider."
"Thanks, Mom, thank you for being so thoughtful," she said and then she joked, "I can probably finish off this entire cake by myself though. I swear, I think these kids are going to be professional eaters because all I want to do all the time is eat."
"I was the same way with you," Linda said, looping her arm through her daughter's, "I thought I was going to gain 100 pounds. The doctor kept telling me, 'oh, it's okay, you're pregnant, you're supposed to gain weight.' I don't think they knew as much back then as they do now."
"Probably not," Stephanie said, "at my next appointment we're going to find out just what's in there."
"I can't wait for that," Linda said, "I really want to know what you're going to be having."
"Believe me, so do I," Stephanie laughed, rubbing her stomach a little with her free hand.
"Have you two had any discussions about what you might want?" Amy asked Chris and Stephanie, who were sitting together on the loveseat for this particular interview. Chris and Stephanie looked at each other a moment and then started laughing like they had some inside joke.
"When we first found out we were having twins," Chris said, "we had this huge discussion. First of all, we were shocked, completely. I go with Stephanie to the doctor's appointments-"
"He's really good about that," Stephanie said, throwing Chris a grateful smile. "He's been to every single one and even sits with me during the gross examination stuff. He actually schedules around the appointments so he's there for every one."
"Shut up," Chris stage whispered to her as he blushed.
"I like it," she told him quietly as the camera captured their intimate moment, "it's reassuring having someone there sharing it with you."
"Anyways," Chris cleared his throat and tried to unclog the embarrassment currently stuck inside, "we were totally shocked because the first ultrasound she had didn't really pick up the second baby so for a whole three weeks, we just thought about how great it was that our one baby was healthy."
"So then we had the second sonogram and the doctor is looking at the monitor and apparently at first, baby number one was blocking baby number two, but then the doctor was able to see that there were two heartbeats and so we were having twins."
"It was a surreal moment. I had just gotten used to the idea of being a father, right," Chris said, chuckling at how he'd been that day, "and suddenly this doctor, who for a second I believed was a quack because we'd been told we had a healthy baby, is now suddenly telling us there was this other one we didn't know about and it's kind of like, okay, well now there's another one I'm going to worry about for the rest of my life."
"Once we got over the shock though, the idea settled and we both liked it."
"Two is always better than one…except in competitions," Chris said, then furrowed his brow, "not that our kids are going to be competitive with each other, I just won't have it."
"So any preferences then?" Amy prompted them back to the original question even though she thought them learning about the twins was a good story to include somewhere.
"Chris wanted two boys," Stephanie answered, looking over at Chris, who gave a careless shrug.
"I just think that if I have two sons, it'll be cool, they can follow in the old man's footsteps."
"And tell them what you told me about two little girls," Stephanie nudged him in the shoulder.
"No," he said, that blush creeping up on him.
"Come on," Stephanie said, but Chris kept shaking his head, "okay, I'm telling, Chris said that he thought two little girls would be the end of him because he couldn't possibly handle all that cute and that they'd be Daddy's little girls and he would be so protective of them."
"Stephanie," he whined.
"It's cute," Stephanie said, "I think it'd be kind of cool to have one of each though."
"It would certainly help because my step-mom has been buying clothes for both boys and girls and it'd be nice if we could use them both," Chris said, "I mean, the onesies, I don't care about the color…man, who cares if you dress a boy up in pink or a girl in blue, stupid colors, but I might have a problem putting my sons in dresses."
"See how he says sons?" Stephanie jerked a finger at him. "I kind of hope now that we have two girls."
"I hate you."
"Vince, Linda, hello," Chris said politely, shaking Vince's hand and giving Linda a short hug.
"Are you all settled in?" Linda asked kindly. Even though it was even odder that Stephanie and Chris were living together and not together, she did like the man. He was always respectful towards them and even in business, he was a man who spoke his mind and stuck to his principles; she liked men like that. He also treated Stephanie well and in this strange situation, it was all she could really hope for.
"Kind of," Chris said, "I've got a ton of furniture that I brought up and I know the place is really big, but it's not big enough for all our furniture so most of it is out in the garage right now and we're going to kind of joint decorate the house, see what things we want to keep and the rest we'll give to charity."
"You should just do the whole house over," Linda said, "with kids, you're going to have to child-proof everything and maybe you should be looking at more practical furniture."
"Mom, I think we've got it covered," Stephanie said.
"So Chris, how is impending fatherhood treating you?" Vince asked, clapping Chris on the shoulder as they walked into the living room. Stephanie and Linda were heading into the kitchen to put the cake away and Stephanie gave Chris a sympathetic glance before leaving the men-folk to their discussion.
"Um, so far so good," Chris answered, trying not to get nervous. He always felt under harsh scrutiny with Stephanie's parents, but with Vince especially. He knew Vince saw him simply as the guy who knocked up his daughter, but didn't love her or want her, which couldn't be further from the truth. He loved Stephanie in his own way. It may not be in the traditional sense, but he did love her. He tended to think that Vince was just worried that he would run out on Stephanie, but that was never the case. He and Stephanie made the decision.
He thought back to that night briefly. It had just been one of those things, a moment where the world seems to crash into you at full force and propels you towards someone. Stephanie had been expressing the desire for children and something inside of him just…wanted to offer. At first, he'd intended for it to be the traditional way that a woman becomes pregnant without sex, through artificial insemination with his…donation. But that night, they'd just been there and they were talking and like he said, the word just seemed to crash at them and suddenly, they were together and they'd made the conscious decision and it had turned out better than either had expected.
"Are you nervous? These are your first children, right?" He knew that Vince only had the best of intentions and this was his not-so-subtle way of trying to get information from Chris in regards to his past.
He took it all in stride though and nodded, "These are my first children, yes, and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't really nervous because I kind of am, I mean, you're a father, it must have been pretty nerve-racking with Shane, right?"
"Of course," Vince nodded. "I just want to make sure that my daughter is happy."
"I'm looking after her."
"Yes, looking after her, but you don't love her."
He really wished people would stop misinterpreting their relationship. "We're not strangers, Vince, Stephanie is one of my best friends and has been for quite some time now. How we chose to live our lives is not normal, we get that, but I love your daughter."
"But you're not in love with her and that's the difference," Vince said and Chris could sense this conversation taking a turn and he wanted to desperately curb it, but he wasn't really able to and he knew that Vince, like his daughter, would talk about what he wanted when he wanted and Chris could only hang on for dear life. It didn't help that the camera was right in their faces, capturing, for all the world to see, his dressing down by Vince. He just hoped the editors would be kind in postproduction.
"I fail to see…"
"I just worry about my grandchildren being confused," Vince said and Chris knew that he was trying not to get angry or too involved, though knowing the McMahons like he did, they wanted to get involved.
"I don't understand why they'd be confused."
"Because you're not together. Here they are, in school someday, and everyone's parents have been married and together and what are they going to say? That their parents just decided to have them on a whim and they're friends."
"Vince, are you aware of the familial situations in this country?" Chris asked. "There are a million different types of families, divorced, married, gay, lesbian, grandparents raising kids, single mothers, single fathers, there is no real definition of family anymore. Stephanie and I plan to provide all the love in the world to them and they're going to be better off for that love not because they have a traditional family."
"I just think Vince is from a different era," Chris pondered. "Plus, I know that if Stephanie has two girls or one girl that I'm going to be that guy. I'm going to be the Vince if my daughter ever decides to have a man's baby that she's not with. You think, oh yeah, I'll be supportive, but you can't say and I know where he's coming from."
"Do you feel like your relationship with Stephanie is misunderstood?"
"Absolutely," Chris nodded. "I think everyone thinks that we just got drunk one night, but it wasn't like that, I'm not like that. I would never screw my best friend because I was drunk. I wouldn't be that guy with her. Even before she was carrying our kids, I never would have disrespected her and our friendship like that."
"Everyone doing okay in here?" Stephanie asked, coming back out, "dinner is looking good and should be ready in about ten minutes, how goes it in here?"
"It's okay," Chris answered, knowing she was directing the question at him. Stephanie sent him a look and he nodded. It really was okay. He could handle her family, all the looks, stares from everyone. He could handle it all, everything and everyone who looked at them strange, they didn't matter to him.
The only thing that mattered to him was his family.