April 29th 2023

Chapter 207
Turtles Together

There had been this notion, when they had first been on the verge of becoming parents, when they had been left to all too suddenly change their plans, leaving Houston and their friends to return and settle down in Austin, that they'd sooner or later lose track of those friends, people they had known anywhere from a few years to most of their lives. That never happened, not in the six years since, but they were all aware, one way or another, that their relationships, their connections, were not what they would have been if they'd stayed in Houston all through college. Maya and Lucas had welcomed one son and then another, all before their friends and former roommates had ever gotten their diplomas had thought to relocate along with them. They'd all been on the same level, and then babies had become a thing, and while several of them came back Austin side, freshly graduated, ready to see what life had in store for them, the Friars were a family of four and striving as best they could.

Now here they were, six years later, six children later, whether they'd all come biologically or not, one after the other or not. They had found their way into careers that may not have been exactly what they'd been aiming for before Elliott had come along but were rewarding nonetheless. And they still had their friends, near and far, all of them great aunts and uncles to their children, even if they could recognize, sometimes, that they'd not quite lose track of one another but very easily go days and days without getting in touch with one another except for the odd text message. Who knew, maybe that would have been the same if nothing had changed, if they hadn't gotten pregnant when they'd done. All they had was what had happened and what they could see. From there, the best thing they could do was the thing that they always did, to the best of their abilities. They set up group nights with those who were local enough to make it, with dinner and movie nights. It gave them as good of a chance as any to catch up.

It wasn't anything new for them at least to be on a long-distance base with Farkle and Isadora. The two of them had been back in New York all along, visiting whenever they could even back when they had all still been in middle school and high school. Maybe for that, it sometimes got to feel like the two of them had been a source of unchanged stability in everything that had happened, especially as 'the two of them' had become 'the three of them.' About halfway between Noah and Jamie Friar's births, the world had been blessed with the birth of one Ada Marie Minkus.

She was three and a half now, very much her parents' child in looks as in temperament. Her aunts and uncles in Texas may not have gotten to see her in person very often, but they saw her and she saw them over many a call on the phone, or over a screen, enough that it was plain to see, where all parties were concerned and the girl herself especially, that the distance did not matter. She knew them, and she loved them, and when she would see them or hear them, she would have a smile on her that sent echoes of her father especially, to her Aunties Maya and Riley.

A lot of that contact had been born of the fact that, when Isadora had become pregnant with Ada, the Friars were the only ones of their friends to already have become parents, to already have experienced what it was like to expect and then deliver a baby into the world. Maya and Lucas could both recall getting calls and texts from their friends in New York, once a day, sometimes twice, often three or more times a day, with questions and concerns… sometimes nightly, too. Would they have been able to make it through just fine without that lifeline? Absolutely. But they did have their friends to reach out to, and said friends were glad to assist them any time, even if that time had been three in the morning. This had continued once Ada had been born and for the better part of her first year of life, so it was no wonder that it carried on as it had, until the dark-haired bright girl awaited calls from the Friars as fervently as she did, whether that was her aunt and uncle or her many young 'cousins.' She wasn't even four yet, might not have exactly understood the constraints of the gap between their homes, but she had it in mind that she should be entrusted with babysitting the twins. They would compromise at times by placing the screen for Simon and Jackson to see and 'leaving the three of them alone,' allowing Ada Marie to watch them.

So far as geographically available babysitters, they were in no way lacking in willing candidates, and sometimes Lucas and Maya would joke with them, suggesting that their children were the draw to get their friends to come over now, less so themselves. That wasn't true, of course, even as they continued to cope with that feeling of separation between the friendships of before and those of today. They were most of them married, too, and for most of them the thought of children had been circling overhead, landing in some places, struggling to in others, and remaining in flight for the rest.

It was still that for the Orlandos, though to hear it out of Riley, it was only a matter of time. She had not been shy to share, mostly with Maya, how much she and Dylan had been minded in their attempts, not that it would have surprised her old friend at all. Given a project of this… magnitude… she would expect no less of her Honey, though she could maybe have done with less details on certain elements, as though just because she'd had children herself, she needed to hear about all the tricks her friends had researched and put into practice and how they had been experienced. If they weren't successful soon, it would be a wonder what other stories they'd have to tell.

At least, in their case, they knew it was only a matter of time. They'd gone and gotten checked out when it had taken longer than hoped and all was fine. On the flipside, Zay and Nadine's news had not been good. They could not conceive, not successfully. They hadn't mentioned it to their friends, at least as far as Maya or Lucas were aware, but they were almost certain the Babineaux couple had at least once become pregnant only to lose it before ever getting to tell people. It was hard to explain except for this shift in their moods around the Friars at one time and another, a lift and a fall. Nadine had turned her attentions toward obstetrics as her field in recent times, and that, too, felt connected to these unspoken events. At the same time, she and Zay had also been taking steps toward adoption the previous year, though after Maya and Lucas had taken Ava in, they had directed themselves to becoming foster parents, thinking of older children like her who might have needed a home as she'd done. They still had this thought of a baby, and if that opportunity came, they would welcome it with open arms, but until then, they were happy with what they were accomplishing.

What had been maybe the wildest story to follow for them had been that of their friends out in Houston and their encounter in parenting. Sophie and Chiara wanted to have children together. Asher and Ray wanted to have children together. They may not have been able to do so on their own, but neither could the other pair, and there they all were, with what everyone needed and a shared desire, so why couldn't they make something out of it? They had a whole plan for it, too. Their goal would be four children, one born of each combination of mother and father in their two pairs. What hadn't been the initial plan, instead happening as they tried and figured what combination would happen first, was that they'd struck twice rather than once, with both Sophie - through Ray - and Chiara - through Asher - going in to become pregnant at the same time.

There had been no guarantee that either attempt would take, and maybe only one of them would have led to a baby, but even if that had been the case, it would hardly have been a problem, not if it meant that they got to start their family. But there hadn't been disappointments in the end, no. Both pregnancies had been confirmed, and for the many months to come, they had all of them been in this bubble of imminent parenthood together. The funniest had easily been Sophie and Chiara, experiencing it all side by side, right down to comparative belly growth pictures. Those had always been endlessly sweet, but it hardly compared to the moment when bellies were traded for babies. The plan there became that, when the first of them went into labor, provided that they were well within the ability without being harmful to the baby, the other would be induced, so the children would be born on the same day. They had felt as good as twins to them anyhow, so this would be perfect.

And finally, the day had come. Sophie had gone into labor, they had all gone to the hospital, and under Nadine's care once she'd driven in from Austin, Chiara had been induced. She'd actually ended up delivering before her wife, who'd had a long enough labor that they'd nearly made it to midnight and failed in their 'twinning.' They'd had three minutes to spare when the baby finally came crying along, there to join her sister.

They'd come along with only days to spare ahead of Halloween, only a couple of weeks ahead of the Friar twins, which had been a delight for the six friends, looking at their identical sons and 'fraternal' daughters as they grew through their first months. As to the two baby girls and their names, the idea had been for each parent in turn to get to name one of them, the other passing on their surname, and because they'd found out already that they would both be daughters already, Chiara had left hers to be named by her father, because she knew, the moment Sophie had learned of hers, what that baby girl would be called.

Asher had debated long on his choice, venturing for a bit with the thought of naming his daughter for his late grandmother, Valentina, before going for that of his living one. She had been just as important to him, and she was getting on in years... He had wanted her to get to know her great granddaughter, and so Elena Mantovani was of their world. The fact that her given name matched so well to her 'twin' could be deemed luck as it could be fate.

There really had been no need to think about it, not once Sophie had known she was having a girl. It had been time enough that she'd been able to heal the heartbreak of what had happened to her friend and fellow police academy graduate, but she was never going to forget. She would always remember how it had been meant to be her out there, that terrible night, going undercover, but because she'd been in Austin, too far away when they'd tried to call her, someone else had taken her place, her friend had gone out there, just as strong, just as capable... and then she'd been killed. Sophie had not forgotten her, and she never would, not for a second, as she'd watch her Eloise grow.

Elena and Eloise, the Mantovani and Choi 'twins,' were eight months old now, and 'Lena and Lolo' were the sun and all the stars in their parents' sky. They all couldn't wait, same as the Friars did, to see how they would do as friends with the likes of Simon and Jackson as they got older. As of yet, when the four babies got together, it was clear that they were getting familiar enough to show excitement, like 'hey, there's those babies, I enjoy seeing them.' The Friar boys were always called Hug-a-bears for good reason, but the Houston girls showed that DNA was by no means a prerequisite for that kind of bond. Their mothers would suggest that, though they had not grown in a single belly together, they had grown in 'adjacent wombs,' especially at night, with their mothers sleeping almost belly to belly most of the time. They looked nothing alike, but you'd see them together and you couldn't deny that they were sisters.

Between Ada Marie, Elena, and Eloise, the future Orlando and the children coming through the Babineaux household, the spirit coming through the young Friars was that the gap between them and their friends, perceived as it might have been, was very quickly shrinking away. It wasn't as though they all needed to have children in order to understand one another again, far from that, but it had become such a part of who they were, creating that gap to begin with, but now it had all changed. They had started this new chapter together, and it suited them as friends, allowed them to rediscover one another.

"It'll be great, you know, it'll be just like when we were kids together, huh? Huh, Lolo?" Dylan suggested, one afternoon when the subject came up, all of them having had lunch together at the Friar house. His friends' daughter balanced on his knee, he was beaming at her like the prospective father he was, and her smiles and giggles only brightened him. Her sister, nearby on her Uncle Zay's knee, thought it was pretty funny, too.

"Hey, they're never too young to learn the classics," Zay declared, humming the theme to their favorite turtles' adventures.

"Oh, here we go," Nadine mumbled, though she laughed, looking down to the boy who stood by her as she sat, caught up in the arms she had looped around him.

He had only very recently been placed with them and, at seven years old, was the oldest of the children they had or were presently fostering. Zay and Nadine were becoming familiar with the early days and how different kids would deal with it, but Freddie... Freddie was his own thing, and not just because he was the oldest. This had always been his life, as far as he knew it, and he'd had to get used to it, but for a while he'd had something that had felt different, and that had been his foster sister, Noor. But not too long before he'd ended up with the Babineaux, she had gone and been adopted. He'd come to them with that sadness, and somehow it had been something to help him and his new foster parents bond. Whether or not he would remain with them or not - though they already felt like he would - they had shown him just who they were by finding the family who had taken Noor in and getting in touch with them. The children had been reunited with such relief that, even if they would not grow in the same house, the promise of not being lost to one another went a long way to soothe their young hearts.

"Freddie, come play with us!" Elliott called to the boy one year his senior. Freddie spun around to look at Nadine and she smile, releasing her arms from around him. He smiled back.

"T-th... Thanks!" he gulped before sprinting off to join Ava and the Friar boys. Zay watched him go, pointed to the children as he turned to his childhood friends.

"See? Turtles."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners