Together Again

Since they’d arrived in LA a few days before Christmas, Ash and the girls got some time to spend alone with Andy before his parents flew in. Instead of him going back home to Ohio for the holidays and to celebrate his birthday, they’d decided to fly out to California this year. He was a bit nervous about seeing Chris and Amy again because it was the first time in nearly two decades; it was also the first time they’d meet their granddaughters.

On Christmas Eve morning, Andy was up at the crack of dawn, waking himself up enough to drive safely. He was going to pick his parents up from LAX and had told Ash and the girls they could stay at the house and sleep in, if they wanted to. They’d all decided that’s what they wanted to do, mainly because they weren’t used to getting up at the crack of dawn if it wasn’t a school day. Besides, they were still a bit jet-lagged from their own flight out here, as they weren’t used to running on Pacific time.

About two hours after his lover left, the older man rose from the bed they’d been sharing with a soft yawn. He’d woken up to an uncomfortably full bladder once again, and decided that relieving it would be better than laying there uncomfortable and possibly in pain. With that decision made, he tossed the covers off his legs and headed to the bathroom.

He couldn’t help but smile as he washed his hands a short time later. It’d been so long since he’d seen his best friend, and just as long since they’d last shared a bed. Granted, they weren’t lovers back then, at least, not intentionally, but still. Ash enjoyed waking up in the younger man’s warm embrace, although he enjoyed waking up to a morning romp far more. That rogue thought caused his cheeks to turn a bit pink, but he wouldn’t deny enjoying his lover’s touch. He’d been longing for it the last time they saw each other, and all those years apart just made the longing stronger.

“I’ll take your bags upstairs,” he heard his lover say before a door—presumably the one that led to the garage—closed.

“All right, son. We’ll head to the living room,” another masculine voice—which he assumed belonged to Chris—answered.

“I can put on a pot of coffee while you’re doing that, Andy.” The last voice was distinctly feminine.

“Thanks, Mom. I’ll be back down in a few minutes, so just make yourselves comfortable.”

Moments later, he heard heavy bootsteps coming up the staircase, and he knew it was his lover doing just as he’d said he would. He smiled as he started pulling on the clothes he’d picked out the night before. They were nothing too spectacular, just a pair of black skinny jeans and an old Mötley Crüe shirt he’d somehow managed to keep in pretty good condition since before the girls were born.

Ash smiled and hummed happily when he felt his arms wrap around his waist from behind as he slowly brushed his hair. The kiss to his throat, just millimeters from his hot spot, made him purr like an oversized cat, which made his lover grin. He’d always had a pretty high libido, but right now, it was at its highest aside from when he was pregnant.

Taking a couple steps back, Andy desisted in such debauchery because it was bad enough they’d gone at it a few times with their daughters in the house. He’d never be able to face his parents again if they heard them going at it, which he couldn’t bring himself to do. Then again, it didn’t look like the older man wanted to be heard going at it by his would-be in-laws any more than he wanted Legacy and Magick to hear them. Overall, it was just a better idea to refrain for right now.

“Ready to go get the girls up?” the younger man asked.

“We’ll get ’em up in a little while,” Ash answered. “It’s way too early for them if it’s not a school day, and they can get pretty snarky when they’re woken up too early on days like that.”

“The last thing we need is two hormonal teenagers being snarky to Mom and Dad,” he chuckled. “Trust me from my own experience in those shoes…not a smart idea.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” the older man laughed.

“Well, since you’re already up, let’s go downstairs and blow their minds,” Andy told him. “I know Mom was the one to keep my hope of finding you alive, but I think she’s given up hope the past couple years.”

“Time to go teach her a lesson, then, I say,” he laughed.

The younger man offered his elbow like any true gentleman would, even though he was another man. With a grin plastered to his kisser, Ash gently wrapped his arm around the crook of said elbow and smiled into the kiss he was given. After pulling apart and staring into each other’s eyes for a moment, they headed down to the living room.

Sitting on the couch with mugs of coffee in hand were the younger man’s parents, Chris and Amy. They looked tired and a bit disheveled, but that was to be expected after flying more than halfway across the country, and especially so close to Christmas. He was still a bit afraid to greet them, wondering what they’d say after more than seventeen years of thinking he likely wasn’t alive anymore. Sensing his anxiety, Andy stopped just outside the living room doorway and gave him a sweet kiss to calm him down.

Letting out a somewhat shaky breath, he nodded to his lover in a silent decree that he was ready. Still, he hid his face behind his hair, something he’d always done when feeling a bit shy, and that drew a chuckle from the younger man. At hearing their son’s deep, reverberating chuckle, Chris and Amy looked up, smiling when they saw that he had someone else with him. They quietly greeted him, but he just couldn’t seem to find his voice at the moment and barely managed a small wave. Since they couldn’t tell who he was at the moment, they had no idea why he was being so shy.

Andy chuckled and got them seated on one of the two love seats in his living room, gently pulling him against him. His sweetheart’s head rested on his shoulder, his face almost completely hidden against his neck, and he knew he was nervous. Without even realizing he was doing so, he rubbed a gentle hand up and down his back to soothe and calm him, knowing that being so anxious wasn’t healthy for him.

“Mom, I’ve gotta thank you for something…” he said, looking over at the woman who’d given him most of his looks.

“Oh, boy…why do I get the feeling this is a doozie?” Amy asked with a chuckle.

“Because it is. You remember how, for all those years, you encouraged me not to give up hope that I’d find Ashley one day?” the younger man asked.

“Of course. Mother’s intuition kept telling me that he was fine, that either you’d find him, or he’d come back when he was ready,” she answered, nodding.

“Well, I hired a private investigator shortly after he took off. When the first quit, I hired a second who stayed on the case till he finally found something,” Andy said. “That something is the best thing I could’ve asked for.”

Curious, his parents cocked a brow at him, but said nothing.

“If not for you encouraging me to keep digging, I doubt I’d have found him,” he continued, squeezing the man in his arms gently. “He’s being shy right now, and I don’t really blame him, but I’ve finally got the man I love in my arms.”

“Ashley?” the younger man’s mother asked. “Jesus Christ, boy, I didn’t even recognize you.”

Still feeling a bit too shy to speak, he looked up and smiled at her.

“Yeah, he quit dying his hair and got tons of tattoos,” his lover chuckled. “But I think he looks just as great as he did all those years ago.”

“You sweet-talker, you,” Ash murmured, blushing at his compliment.

“You’ve always known I had a silver tongue, Outlaw,” he laughed.

“Outlaw?” Chris asked. “Well, I suppose it fits, given the way you ran off without a word all those years ago.”

“Which is exactly what inspired this.” The older man moved just far enough away from his lover to hike up his shirt and show them his tattoo.

“And naturally, now Andy has to call you Outlaw, as a result,” Amy laughed.

“Oh, I get him back. Don’t I, Batman?” he chuckled.

Andy blushed bright as a tomato since his obsession with the old comic book character had been pretty notorious over the years.

“Wait a minute…” the now-elderly woman said thoughtfully. “What the heck happened to your stomach, Ashley?”

Blushing when he realized she’d seen his stretch marks, he stayed quiet for a moment. “Your son,” he finally said, his blush deepening.

“Huh?” the Biersacks chorused curiously.

“In a roundabout way, your son caused those stretch marks,” Ash said, smiling as he remembered feeling their daughters moving inside him.

The older couple shot them confused looks, and he sighed.

“I was born a hermaphrodite, meaning that I appear male externally, but also have a female reproductive system no one would know about if I didn’t tell them,” he explained.

“And after the night he told us about…”

“You remembered that drunken tryst?” he asked, turning to him in shock.

“Yeah, I remembered it,” Andy answered. “But you ran off before I could tell you, and we haven’t exactly wanted to dwell on the past the last six months.”

“Touché, Batman,” he conceded. “Anyway, a month after that night, I wasn’t feeling so great. To anyone who didn’t know about my condition, it seemed like the flu, so that’s what I let the guys and Sandra think it was since I had no proof of my suspicions.”

“You then found out you were pregnant, didn’t you?” Chris asked.

“Well, I had a positive pregnancy test. I was scared and far from thinking straight, so I went back home to Missouri to let my grandparents help me get my head on straight,” the older man admitted sheepishly.

“Speaking of, how are your grandparents?” Amy asked.

“Dead,” Ash answered simply. “Grampa died in the fall of 2014, and Grama died five years later.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that, Ashley,” his would-be mother-in-law said, coming over to give him a hug.

“It’s all right; they helped me a lot before they died, and they’re better off now,” he told them. “They were the ones to help me with two of the most special people in my life…well, when Andy’s not included, that is.”

Once again, the older couple cocked a brow at him curiously.

Before he could even speak, a soft voice called out a lone word: “Mama?”

“In the living room with Daddy,” he answered, turning to look toward the doorway.

Moments later, Legacy and Magick came into the living room and settled on their laps, their heads resting against their chests since they were still half asleep. Neither of the teens noticed their grandparents just yet, but then again, they weren’t the most observant pair on the planet when they weren’t fully awake.

Chris and Amy were shocked when they realized what’d happened all those years ago, their eyes widening. They’d honestly thought they were never going to have grandchildren, considering that Andy was an only-child, when in reality, he’d given them two many years ago. They stayed quiet as they cuddled the girls and let them wake up completely before trying to introduce them, wondering if their granddaughters were going to be just as shy as the man who was obviously their mother or not.

Shortly after they’d entered the room, Legacy and Magick swiped their parents’ coffee mugs and took the last few sips, sighing as they finished waking up. Ash laughed and jokingly called them coffee fiends, which earned him two tongues being stuck out at him. He playfully threatened to bite them, making the girls squeak and pull their tongues back into their mouths where they belonged.

“Now that you girls are awake, we have some folks we want ya to meet,” he told them.

Turning, they finally took notice of the older couple sitting across from them.

“Chris, Amy, I want you to meet your granddaughters, Legacy and Magick,” he told them, smiling down at the girls. “Legacy, Magick, these are Daddy’s parents.”

“Oh, Ashley…they look just like you,” Amy gushed.

“Well, except for their eyes…they got those from Andy,” Chris said.

Blushing, the twins hid their faces in their parents’ chests.

“You don’t have to be shy, girls,” Andy chuckled as he rubbed Legacy’s back. “Mom and Dad aren’t gonna hurt ya.”

Still feeling a bit shy, the twins merely waved to their grandparents.

“I can’t believe it,” their grandmother breathed. “I thought we’d never have grandchildren, and all this time, we’ve had two…”

“I regret that I hid ’em from y’all,” Ash sighed. “I was just scared that Andy would think I was a freak, or that he’d say they weren’t his…something along those lines.”

“It’s understandable, Ashley,” his would-be father-in-law said.

“Yeah, we wish we’d known sooner; Hell, we’d have helped you after your grandparents died, if you needed it,” the elderly woman agreed.

“I might’ve been a bit unsure if they were mine or not at first, but even if I didn’t remember that night, I wouldn’t have been able to deny them once I saw their eyes,” Andy agreed.

“I know that now,” he said. “But the way my mind was working back then…”

The twins snuggled against him, pouting as they imagined just how scared and vulnerable he was right after finding out he was pregnant. The memory was easily visible in his eyes, and the others quickly realized just how hard it’d been for him. Finding out he was pregnant so abruptly with his best friend’s children, all while thinking he didn’t remember the night they were created…it was no wonder he’d ran off and hid like he had.

Amy soon got up and started the typical Christmas breakfast tradition she’d started when her own son was a kid, something she hadn’t stopped doing as he reached middle age. He smiled as he stayed on the love seat with his sweetheart and daughters, hoping this was one of many Christmases like this to come.

During breakfast, Ash couldn’t help but wonder what it’d be like to finally come back to California, this time permanently. He’d missed the sand and surf, something he couldn’t get in a land-locked state like Tennessee. And while he loved being able to see the snow every winter, considering the difference in climate and elevation, sometimes it got annoying. Like all the days when school was cancelled because it wasn’t safe to leave one’s house when the girls were younger. Boy, snow days back then had taken all the fun out of having a white-covered ground for him.

By the time breakfast was done and the dishes put in the dishwasher, everyone was in a great mood and enjoying each others’ company. Legacy and Magick had finally decided to get dressed, and they were dressed very similarly to their parents. It was amazing just how similar they were to the middle-aged men, but then again, maybe it shouldn’t have been; the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, after all.

Notes