Coda to Not a Lullaby (roo'verse fic)

[tzzzz]

I just wrote this little coda to Not a Lullaby, a roo'verse AU:



A Nursery Rhyme for Beauty

“This is it,” Bryn Sheppard tells her reflection in the large makeup mirror in the bathroom off of her old room. She approves of the flowing cream-colored gown and the matching yarrow flowers woven into her red hair. Bryn spent years of her childhood hating the red hair that made her classmates call her carrot top, but she’s grown into herself. She’s strong, confident, unique, and now, she’s getting married.

Bryn gives the dress a twirl, grinning at the way it flows around her. She picked the soft layers of flowing chiffon to evoke the feeling of Ireland in the summertime, complimented by the understated makeup she’d had applied this morning.

Satisfied by her reflection, Bryn barges out into the hallway and into Luke’s old room where five of her brothers are doing their best to move behind schedule as usual. The moment she flings the door open, Will has Max on his back, wrinkling the black suits with the perfect green ties that Bryn had picked out for them. Antony isn’t even in his suit yet and is playing with Luke’s old saxophone. It’s a testament to their upbringing in a house full of kids that none of the boys currently has his ears plug against the noise he’s producing. Finally, in an absolutely pathetic coup de grace, Luke is reassuring Nathan that the job of ring bearer is easy while sitting on the floor (in the beautiful white suit he’s supposed to be keeping perfectly clean). Luke wanted to wear his dress blues, but Bryn vetoed that idea immediately.

“Oh shit,” Will has the good sense to say, letting Max slide easily off his back. Luke gets off the floor with reactions well honed from years of judo, but no amount of hustle can beat Bryn’s glare. Antony keeps playing the sax.

Bryn winces. Learning disability or not, Antony should know not to give the bride a migraine on her wedding day. “Antony, do you think you could stop that for a sec and go get changed into the suit I laid out for you?” Anticipating Antony’s desire to wear whatever costume he’s currently obsessed with and ruin the wedding photos, Bryn adds, “You want to match your brothers, right?”

Antony heads off, with Will quietly escaping to go help him, even though Antony hasn’t needed help getting dressed in years.

“And Max, why don’t you and Nathan go check in with your deedee?” Max nods seriously. He’s such a quiet child that Bryn often jokes with her father that they should become showbiz parents and get him cast as a creepy elf child in horror movies. With his unusually large blue eyes, narrow face and pointy ears, Max fits the part.

“Luke Sheppard,” Bryn exclaims. “I can’t believe you’re on the floor, messing yourself up on our big day.”

Luke rolls his eyes. “It’s fine, Bryn. I really think you need to calm down.”

That’s right, Bryn thinks as she starts to hyperventilate, Luke is the calm one. That’s the reason why she loves him. It’s the reason why she needs him doing this with her.

Luke wraps her in his strong arms. He always knows exactly what she needs. They’ve been together almost their entire time on this Earth, minus the few months that Bryn spent gestating alone. But Bryn thinks that Luke’s heartbeat must have been the first sound she ever heard, judging by how much comfort it brings her to hear it.

“You routinely perform on stage in front of thousands of people,” Luke reminds her, “just channel whatever allows you to eat two In-N-Out burgers and three diet cokes right before a concert and not throw up.” Luke has historically always vomited before any judo match, important test, performance review, or date. After all these years he still doesn’t understand that much like her father, the way Bryn deals with stress is by being a massive control freak and then covering it up with a smile and a slouch.

“Speaking of which, did you puke yet?”

“Took care of it this morning before I put the suit on.”

“Good boy. Now what about Emilio?”

“He’s downstairs. Malik is making sure that everything is arranged to your satisfaction.”

“You didn’t let him see you, did you?”

“No, Bryn, I didn’t let him see me. I know it’s bad luck.” Luke is the most superstitious one in their family, so Bryn should have anticipated that. He’d even insisted that none of the three of them spent the night before the wedding together. Bryn respected that wish and didn’t sneak into her brother’s room, no matter how much she wanted to.

Bryn gives Luke’s suit another check, brushing invisible dandruff of his shoulders just in case. She pulls him over to the window where they look out at the guests arriving. Luke embraces her from behind, his arms clasped against her belly. They’re going to start trying for a child soon, and because Luke stubbornly wants to finish the last two years of his commitment to the Air Force instead of using an incubation to get out of it, Bryn will be the one to do it. She’s still not sure how she feels about it, but Luke has wanted children ever since Max was born and Bryn can never deny him anything he really wants.

People have been arriving for a while now, but there are still more to come. Bryn, Luke and Emilio decided on a small intimate ceremony beneath the copse in the west garden. What they failed to realize is that with even just family and close friends, the ceremony still involves almost a hundred people.

Dad had been perfectly happy not to use the wedding for networking purposes, much to Uncle Dave’s chagrin, but Malik and Akio have been engaged for three years now and Bryn is betting that one of them will be gestating soon enough to make it official. Uncle Dave can twist his own son’s arm into the biggest networking event on the planet, as far as Bryn is concerned.

Dad still invited a few people from work, however. Bryn spots dad’s chief engineer, Radek Zelenka, who had been relentlessly awkward around Bryn and her brothers growing up, but was a fixture of their childhood nonetheless. He also invited Rodney’s old business partner and the current director of personnel for the Research Division, Elizabeth Weir. Bryn absolutely adores Elizabeth and her anthropology professor husband, so she doesn’t mind.

Bryn stands on her toes so she can see the small group of paparazzi lurking near the front gate. The property is large enough that they won’t be able to glimpse the wedding without trespassing, but Bryn still hates to see them here. She never expected them to even show up, knowing how ruthlessly private her family is, but the niece of Darren Berry entering the music world had been more of a story than Bryn anticipated and her wild phase had kept giving them stories.

“Can we just shoot them?” she groans.

“I don’t think that’s legal,” Luke deadpans. “But the new house is pretty paparazzi proof.” Uncle Dave bought it for them as a wedding gift. It’s just down the road from their uncle’s house, with a similar built-in music studio and plenty of rooms for the family they’re thinking about starting. It’s a shameless ploy to keep them near home, one that only Uncle Dave is bold enough to execute. Bryn thinks it’ll work, though. She wants her family to have their privacy out in the suburbs and she can keep her loft in New York for when she needs it. Emilio will be out of the field writing a book for the next year, so they’ll need a quiet place where he can work.

“It is,” Bryn agrees. It’s set back into the woods, away from prying eyes. “But are we really moving in there?”

“I want to,” Luke admits. “I think I would’ve picked that exact same house if we were looking for ourselves.”

“Really? You would’ve picked a house half a mile away from Uncle Dave’s place?”

“When I’m not deployed, I want to be with all the people I love. Besides, don’t you feel bad whenever we leave Antony?”

Bryn nods. They’d all been so close growing up, taking responsibility for their youngest brother especially. While Bryn, Will, and Luke no longer need each other the way they used to, Antony still needs them now more than ever. Antony understands that they have their own lives, but every time Bryn leaves she sees the small, childish part of him that still feels betrayed each time. Bryn can deal with the guilt - she has been dealing with it. But Luke is the most loyal person she knows and it’s been killing him to be away from the family, especially Antony.

He’s also surprisingly close to Max and Nathan. Bryn remembers that he did a lot of babysitting after Max emerged. While Bryn was getting wrapped up in music, recording her first song anonymously with Uncle Darren, Luke spent increasing amounts of time with his step-brothers. Bryn teased him that it was just his biological clock starting to tic. She supposes the house is good for him to start his nesting instinct in preparation for their family.

“I’m glad we have the house,” Bryn finally agrees, pulling Luke’s arms tighter around herself and looking out the window once again.

Emilio’s family have all already arrived in limos from the hotel, but Bryn spots his best man walking up the drive with Grandma Berry in a thankfully unwrinkled suit. “Tom’s really pulling that off,” Luke comments. “I wonder who he got to iron it for him?” Tom is what Uncle Dave politely refers to as a ‘nature lover,’ aka hippie. Bryn has rarely seen him out of old jeans and flannel. He’s the reason they’re having the wedding in the garden instead of buy fresh cut flowers for an indoor ceremony.

The next group to arrive is the envoy of Luke’s military buddies. Bryn loves her brother more than anyone in the whole world, but she privately admits that she hates some of his friends. Luke has a talent for tolerating immaturity that has served him well as the second oldest in the brood, but it also leads to some odd friends. The leader of Luke’s cross-service strike team, Captain Aiden Ford, is the only one that Bryn actually likes. The others are too interested in talking about boobs and packages and making fart jokes to really interest her.

Which is why it still surprises her that Luke was the one to meet Emilio. For a while, it seemed as though their dream of marrying as a pair would never work out. After Bryn decided to drop out of Columbia to pursue her music career, she’d been surrounded by producers and sound mixers and other artists. She spent most weekends in the city partying and trying out her own sexuality. If she’s honest with herself, the only thing that kept her from going totally wild was the fact that she knew any bad behavior would get straight back to Uncle Darren, which would mean that Uncle Dave would find out about it sooner or later.

Luke, always the good child, had decided to do the family’s military service and had enrolled in the Air Force Academy. He met Emilio while receiving an award at the American Embassy in Peru. When Bryn imagined who they’d end up with, it had always been a Guild man like their uncle - someone who still believed in old traditions like pair marriages. Bryn half expected Uncle Dave to be the one that set them up.

And he’d tried, on every leave that Luke got. But every perfect royal carrier that they met, with an Ivy League education and all the right Masonic heralds was either interested in them only for the possibility of a dynastic merger between their parents' companies or because of Bryn’s fame.

Dad told them many times that love came in strange packages and that they’d just have to be patient. Bryn remembers hating him so much, watching as he kissed Rodney, who was incubating Nathan at the time, and wishing she could just skip over these next years of fruitless searching and get to a moment of genuine tenderness between spouses like her dad had found. She didn’t want to wait until she was forty, like her father. She wanted it right away.

But when Bryn was in the process of giving up, fucking yet another R&B producer and not caring, Luke had come back from Peru with a Primatologist, of all things. Emilio hadn’t been intimidated by Bryn’s success or their strange extended family. He already loved Luke for his generosity, his skill with a tranquilizer gun, and the same strong, wise silence that Bryn relied upon so much.

Bryn had almost wept at first, realizing that Luke had found someone. She couldn’t imagine what someone who spent his life wandering around in the rainforest looking for monkeys could possibly want with someone so immersed in the urban superficial world as Bryn, but Luke had been sneaky. On a long leave back in the states, he’d forced Bryn to be their New York tour guide, keeping her and Emilio in the same orbit. Bryn remembers being nervous, trying not to screw things up for her brother and smother her jealousy at the same time. But they did get along, talking about science and art and their shared love of music.

Bryn fondly remembers the first time Luke left them alone, excusing himself from a trip to the Museum of Natural History because he was needed for a fictitious phone conference. It was been a cold winter day and Bryn remembers shaking, wishing she wore pants instead of a wool dress and tights, but Emilio put his arm around her, staring at a stuffed lion of all things, and simply cupped her frost-rosy cheek and kissed her. Bryn was so surprised that she’d bumped his nose - a move she hadn’t done in years.

Emilio was so suave, hiding the nervousness he later admitted to, that he brushed of the awkwardness and grabbed Bryn’s hand, leading her on to the next exhibit without a word. It wasn’t until they were on the subway back to Bryn’s loft, Emilio’s warm arm still around her, that Bryn asked, “So does this mean what I think it does?”

Emilio had replied that even though he’d fallen completely in love with Luke and never expected to be able to love another that way, he’d agreed to meet Bryn. Luke had referred to their childhood plans as a door he couldn’t close without knowing he’d at least tried to step through it. But through some miracle, Emilio loved Bryn as much as Luke, though for completely different reasons.

Still, Bryn was hesitant to believe in her luck. She’d been with Luke and Emilio for a year and a half before she finally stopped feeling as though she was intruding on their relationship. But then they were using Luke’s leave to visit Emilio at his field station in the amazon and Emilio had taken them in a boat for a night float down the river under the full moon. “I think we should get married,” Emilio simply said. “Your step-father helped me research your Guild’s traditions and pair marriages are actually supposed to happen before a child is conceived, so we can do it anytime. I want to do it.”

Bryn remembers how shocked she was in that moment. Luke had brought up asking Emilio before, but Bryn had always been uncertain, due to Emilio’s pleb status and her own insecurities. Emilio made her dreams come true that night, much like her Uncle Darren had made her professional dreams come true when he produced her first album. Bryn realized then that she doesn’t know how to ask for things, or make things happen for herself, she needs people, like Emilio, who knows her desires better than she does.

“I’m so happy you found him,” she admits to Luke. “How did you do that, by the way? How did you find the one person who’s perfect for both of us?”

“It was something I needed,” Luke replies. While Bryn finds it easier to lose herself in other people’s drama and problems, Luke deals with uncertainty through blind faith. Sometimes Bryn wonders if Luke has blocked out the early days living with their uncles. She doesn’t understand how he can believe that all he has to do is want something for it to come true, when they spent years of their lives when their own father could barely look at them, let alone give them a hug, or support them in any way. Even after Rodney came into their lives, it still seemed ridiculous to hope. But then maybe Bryn had been wishing for the wrong thing all along. She always wanted to be normal, but she never asked to be happy.

“Look, there’s Will’s new girlfriend.” Luke pokes Bryn to get her attention. The new girl - Layla, Lilly, maybe Lauren - fits the cookie cutter mold of Will’s girlfriends. She’s a tall, thin brunette built to wear a power suit with a pencil skirt, bringing her briefcase to a wedding.

“What’s her name again?”

“Lyra,” Luke replies. Luke has dutifully learned all of the names of Will’s girlfriends, while Bryn normally sticks to nicknames based on some bizarre fact she discovered while snooping on them. Lyra used to be Peanut Heir (her family founded the Skippy’s brand) but Bryn is considering labeling her Wedding Worker.

“Who brings a laptop and a briefcase to a wedding anyway?”

Luke shrugs. “Will has a type. Besides, if he’s going to be the next great name in the Sheppard dynasty,” they both roll their eyes, “then he needs a powerful workaholic woman on his arm.” He gives Bryn a final squeeze before releasing her from his embrace. “Now, I think we’ve indulged your nosy neighbor syndrome enough. Aren’t we supposed to be getting married?”

Bryn’s breath hitches as it hits her. All the planning, the dress and the music and the invitations and the flowers, and it never really sunk in: they’re getting married.

“We did it,” she whispers.

“What?”

“We did it. We kept that stupid promise.”

Bryn remembers hiding among the apple trees at the back of the garden and pulling out the old cigar box full of her most precious possessions that she kept hidden there. She now knows that all the gardeners must have seen it and told each other to leave it alone, but it had felt private at the time. She had taken a sheet of pink paper with glitter designs on it out and written a contract on it (she and Luke often went on errands with their Uncle Dave, including multiple trips to his lawyer’s office).

Luke grins, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a familiar, well-creased paper.

“Oh my god, you kept it?”

“Hereby, I, Bryn Sheppard, promise to only marry with my favorite brother, Luke,” Luke reads.

Bryn looks at her shaky signature. She’s kept the same signature since then, though the letters have gotten more drawn out and sloppy over the years.

She reads the rest out loud. “Ergo, I, Luke Sheppard, per se promise to joint marry with Bryn. Res ipsa loquitur.”

Luke laughs. “Wow, we had no idea half of what Mr. Woolsey said to us meant.”

“Clearly. We were how old?”

“Ten, maybe.”

“Well, we finally fulfilled our contract after fifteen years.”

Bryn giggles. “So we did.”

Luke leans in to kiss her then, soft and sweet, as always. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Bryn replies, feeling her heart fill to almost bursting. “But it’s getting close to time. We’d better make sure our brothers are all still in one piece.”

The scene downstairs is just as chaotic as it had been upstairs. Bryn peaks out onto the lawn from the kitchen windows. As it turns out, Will, Antony, and Malik are already doing their job as ushers. Bryn’s best man, her freshman year roommate, Kevin, is dutifully running interference between Grandpa Sheppard and pretty much everyone, especially Emilio’s family, who aren’t used to the subtle snobbery of Guild society. Now Dad will consent to talk to him, but Kevin is under strict instructions to keep them apart on a day that will remind her father of the wedding Grandpa forced on him so many years ago.

The rest of the family seems to be in their element. Uncle Darren has his kids under control. P.J. and Cody are slouching like sullen teenagers, with Jerome and Alexander seated in between them and Darren saving a place for his husband on the aisle. Rodney has Nathan in his lap and appears to be explaining for the hundredth time that all he has to do is walk down the aisle and wait for someone to take the rings off the cushion he’ll be holding. And Uncle Dave is terrifying the caterers with a few choice glares.

“Hey, Princess.” It’s her father, surprising her from behind. “You look beautiful.” He kisses her on the cheek. He has Kyle, the latest addition to their family, cradled easily against his chest. All of dad’s children with Rodney look mostly like one of their parents. Max is almost all Rodney, though with a thinner face and John’s ears. Nathan and Kyle both have John’s features and coloring and Rodney’s blue eyes. In fact, Nathan looks like he could be Will’s identical twin when he was that age. None of them look like they could be related to Bryn.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“You ready to walk down the aisle?”

“Are you?” Bryn counters. Her father tripped over his own feet twice during rehearsal. He tries to blame it on his shifting center of gravity now that Kyle spends more time out of the pouch, but Bryn knows he’s just a klutz.

“I think I can manage. But it’s not easy, giving two of you away at once.” It’s not as though he doesn’t have plenty more, Bryn thinks, uncharitably. Bryn loves Rodney and has never stopped being grateful that he came into their lives and changed their father for the better. But it hurts that now, years later, her father’s second family is picture perfect with two parents who love each other and love their work and put all their energy into raising their three gorgeous children properly. Bryn can’t help be a little jealous that Max, Nathan and Kyle get all that, when Bryn and her brothers got a traumatized father, an abusive donor, and two overwhelmed uncles who thought they were having one, only to end up raising five kids the first year of their marriage. Bryn knows that her upbringing made her who she is today and she wouldn’t trade her experiences for anything, but her dad really did get a rare second chance. He shouldn’t complain that Bryn and Luke have grown up on him.

“It looks live everyone is seated. I’m going to drop Kyle off with Rodney and then I’ll grab the wedding planner and let him know its time to start,” her dad offers. Kyle is just old enough to stay out of dad’s pouch for the entire wedding. Bryn is glad of that fact because she thinks it would be weird to have her father in a paternity suit for the wedding photos.

Bryn watches as Dad unceremoniously drops Kyle into Rodney’s lap. They pause briefly for a conversation, making eyes at each other like it’s still their honeymoon. Dad leaves Rodney with a kiss and makes his way behind the bushes where the wedding planner and Emilio are hiding out, only to emerge a second later and give Bryn an incredibly dorky thumbs up.

Outside, the string quartet pauses and begins the wedding march. This is exactly the opposite of Dad and Rodney’s wedding in Vegas two years ago, where they had fog machines, the Darth Vader march from Star Wars and a man dressed like Elvis officiating. Bryn’s theory is that her father and Rodney are too afraid to take their relationship seriously, as though if they stare to hard at it, it might suddenly disappear.

Emilio is lead in by his mother, a short stocky woman in her fifties wearing a flashy woven dress. He looks so beautiful in the black tuxedo Bryn picked for him that she gasps, clasping Luke’s hand in hers. Emilio’s black hair curls behind his ears and his gaze is sharp and penetrating as always. Bryn can tell he’s nervous by the way he clasps his hands together and the subtle movement of his lips that she knows is a half-conscious form of prayer.

Uncle Dave arrives beside Bryn just in time. In her whole crazy family on this even more hectic day, Uncle Dave is the only one that Bryn never worried about. He’s been a solid constant in her life since she could remember - the steady, precise one. To this day, he’s still never let her down, which is why she made the decision that he’ll give her away, while her father walks with Luke. Traditionally, the parent who carried the child gives them away and for both parents to participate for a paired marriage. But, though Bryn has met her donor a few times, it seemed inappropriate to have him here on a day about family and nobody was going to invite Luke’s donor, even if he is out of prison.

Bryn laces her arm through her uncle’s. He’s grinning so wide that Bryn doubts she’s ever seen him more happy. Then they’re stepping out of the door, following Dad and Luke. The sky is blue, the music is perfect, and Bryn can see the faces of all the people she loves most in the world staring back at her as she walks down the aisle. She spots Antony giving her the dorky thumbs up he undoubtedly learned from their father and her Uncle Darren has a tear at the corner of his eye. Even Rodney is struggling to kept his emotions from overwhelming him, hiding not very cleverly behind bouncing baby Kyle.

Despite Emilio’s Catholic upbringing, they have all decided to recite their own vows, holding each others hands in a triangle with Bryn and Luke on one side and Emilio on the other.

Luke’s choice of words are short and sweet as expected. “I always knew this day would come,” he says, eyes shining. “Ever since we were children, I felt I knew Bryn inside and out, that she was a part of my soul that I could never let go. I’ve often felt lost in life. We’ve been through tough times, but I know that if I look to Bryn she’ll have an answer, even if that answer is just to stand strong, so I can believe in her and that she’ll make things work. I often thought we were perfect, that we didn’t need anybody else in the whole world, but then I met Emilio and found everything I didn’t even know we needed. We’re complete together, the three of us, and that’s why I want to vow to these two people that I love that I will love and cherish them always.”

Bryn gives Luke’s hand a squeeze, trying desperately not to cry from shear joy. Emilio looks a little dumbfounded, so even though it’s his turn next, Bryn steps in and says the vows she’s agonized over the past few months. “The first song that I sang professionally was ‘Not a Lullaby,’ and I sang it before I was really old enough to understand, an irony my uncle was gleefully aware of. But now, thanks to Emilio, I understand. Life’s hard lessons teach us to be guarded. We still hope, but a part of us comes to believe that things won’t work out. We become afraid that our next relationship is just another lesson in what not to do. But that one relationship, the one that works, the one that lasts, only teaches us one thing - it teaches us to be vulnerable again, to kept life lesson’s in our pocket for a rainy day but that real love is trusting, soothing, tender. That’s how I feel with the two of you. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so open, ready to take anything life can throw at me, but now I do. I vow to trust, to give you all my honesty, to love as deeply as I am capable, and to teach you, every day, that love is good, never hurtful.”

Luke lets loose a tear at that, but Bryn only smiles at him. This is their day. Emilio, too, looks touched but also has that darting, overwhelmed look in his eyes. Bryn takes the moment to survey the crowd. Uncle Darren has his chest puffed out like he couldn’t be prouder. He’s holding Uncle Dave’s hand tightly in his own. Dad and Rodney also look overcome by emotion, but they have Kyle as a distraction. Bryn smiles at everyone, and they all smile back. Bryn wants to capture this feeling, put it in a jar and distill it, then save it for a rainy day. She doesn’t think there’s a sadness in this world that her current joy couldn’t melt, a corner dark enough that it couldn’t light it up, or a single hurtful world that could bring her down from this moment.

Emilio, finally having caught up with the ceremony, clears his throat. “See, this is why I want to marry them,” he says to the audience. “When I met Luke, I thought that I couldn’t be more happy. I found someone who was strong, caring, and considerate. Luke treats me like a treasure. I look in his eyes and I see that I am valuable and that he will move a mountain for me. We had a quiet passion. We gave each other comfort and strength and we could stay in love forever. But Luke wanted me to see if I could love Bryn too. I thought I couldn’t love anyone as much as I loved Luke. And I had read about her before. As everyone here knows, the gossips have it wrong. I was expecting a spoiled child and I found a brave, intelligent woman. My love for Bryn is fascination. It is a desire that is started by a graceful movement or an insightful word. She surprises me every day and the more I know her, the more I want to be surprised. These two loves compliment each other. They complete me and I vow to always honor their love, to cultivate my passion for them, to do whatever I can to make them happy.”

Time seems to speed up, while Bryn is caught in a daze, wondering what she did to deserve this kind of happiness. Luke waves Nathan over and they exchange the rings. Pair marriages don’t traditionally have formal engagements with rings, so each of the wedding bands has inset jewels. Bryn’s is a mix of emeralds and diamonds on white gold. Luke has sapphires and Emilio rubies.

Then it’s time for the Guild official to add Emilio to the family tree and present their own copy of the family genealogy that they will keep until it is returned to the guild upon their death. Bryn recognizes the copy they’re getting - it was first inscribed in the Victorian era, when the Sheppards still lived in England. Their Guild historian must have remembered that it was always the one she looked at when her uncle dragged her along to the Guild Club. She grips it tightly in her hand, feeling the familiar weight of it, lovingly tracing its jewel-encrusted cover and opening the first pages to the portraits of the family at the time it was rendered.

And now, at last, it’s time to kiss. Luke gives her a soft, chaste kiss, but Emilio goes for something more passionate, cupping her face and grinning gleefully afterwards. He practically bends Luke over like a tango dancer in their kiss, despite being both shorter and more slightly built.

Everyone is congratulating them before heading inside to the reception. They family stays our for photos in the gardens, however. They start with Bryn, Luke and Emilio, in poses ranging from formal to intimate. Then the whole family joins in - Emilio’s parents, grandparents and his three sisters, plus Dad, Rodney, Uncle Dave, and Uncle Darren and all their children. When it comes time for a shot of just the children with their parents, John refuses to stand alone with his kids, he insists that their uncles join in. Bryn insists that Rodney is included too, because even though he missed almost their entire childhood, he played more of a role than Bryn thinks he’ll ever know in making their family complete. Bryn thinks that without Rodney, Dad would never have essentially overcome his past trauma, and Bryn would never have been given even the short chance to be young and irresponsible she’d had before she met Emilio. She thinks that without Rodney they’d still be stuck in that weird limbo where their uncles were the authority in their lives and their father was a victim to be watched over and protected.

But the family photos don’t last long because Kyle starts crying to be put back into Dad’s pouch. Dad makes his excuses, grousing about finally getting his tube tied, but heads back into the house to put on a paternity suit and take care of Kyle.

“Is he serious?” Bryn asks Rodney, while the photographer is adjusting the lights.

Rodney shrugs. “We’ve talked about it. John is forty-six now and has seven kids and only one of our three children was planned.”

Male carriers can safely incubate well into their fifties, though their fertility for gestation usually ends closer to dad’s age. And seven kids isn’t even close to how many children an imperial carrier could have over a lifetime without birth control. But Bryn herself doesn’t really like the idea that when she finally has a child, he or she might be the same age or older than John and Rodney’s future sons.

“Do you want more?” Bryn asks.

“It’s not my body.”

“That’s not an answer to the question I actually asked, Rodney.”

“I knew I should never have taught you about logical fallacies.”

“Rodney.”

He sighs. “I guess if it were up to me, then three would be more than enough. I love Kyle, but I would’ve stopped at two. But it’s an invasive surgery that may be moot in a year or two. We could just be really careful.”

Bryn wants to point out that if Rodney and Dad were capable of being really careful, then they would have either Max or Kyle, but instead she just smiles and squeezes Rodney’s arm. “Dad’ll make a decision anyhow and you’ll just have to go with it.”

“That’s true.”

“Hey,” Bryn signals the photographer. “Get a picture of just me and Rodney.”

Rodney looks bewildered that Bryn would even want a picture with him, but does a good job of taking her arm and puffing his chest out like the proud father of the bride. She gives him a kiss on the cheek afterwards, moving on to take pictures with her brothers. She already knows she’s going to frame the one with her and Antony throwing the wedding planner’s extra rose petals up in the air.

The reception is in the solarium, where a couple of clever engineers from the company (whose other job is to build weaponized lasers) built a plexiglas platform that covers the pool and turns it into a dance floor, with eerie, ethereal lights shining up through the water beneath. Emilio came up with the idea to add jellyfish to the water to give the lighting a strange, moving texture. Bryn found the idea of jellyfish at her wedding gross at first, but it had been the only real input either of the boys had been excited about, and Bryn couldn’t resist Emilio in his ‘I know this is dorky, but it’s from science’ moods. Now she admits that though the jellyfish are still a little creepy in and of themselves, the overall effect is breathtaking - a dark pool with jellyfish lit by deep blue and purple lights.

Dad claims the first dance, even though he has Kyle back in his pouch, making it impossible to dance with him without pressing up against his belly. Still, Bryn wouldn’t have it any other way. As far as she’s come - from spoiled child, to acclaimed musician, to wife - her father has undergone as much of a change. He’d stopped being a victim and found and married someone he absolutely adores. Not to mention the three new additions to the family, who Bryn knows less about than she probably should.

“You look so beautiful,” dad says. Bryn has never seen him quite like this. Dad rarely displays genuine emotion when he’s not in middle of a panic attack, so it’s strange to see his face so open and vulnerable, practically trembling with happiness. “My little girl,” he chokes up a little. “I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“I was always scared that I would mess things up, that I was an unfit parent.” Bryn doesn’t mention that sometimes he was just that. “After you left school, I was so afraid that you’d make the same mistake I did and end up with one of those people I saw you with in magazines.” Bryn blushes. She supposes that she’s always known that her Dad would see those pictures and articles about her, the few that did get published. But the family is used to having a celebrity in the family, so they all pretend that the outside world’s interest in them doesn’t exist. When she came home during those wild years, Bryn remembers it being just like being transported back in time to when she had responsibilities to people, and unconditional love and support.

“You weren’t a bad father, Daddy,” she replies, realizing all of a sudden how lucky she is to have three people who love her with all their hearts, who have always supported her dreams and given her what she needs to be successful in life. “And I was never going to let one of those creeps knock me up.”

Dad chuckles, but he seems almost relieved to hear that, despite the fact that she and Luke and Emilio have been in a stable relationship for years. “What I wanted to say is that I guess the proof that I didn’t do so bad a job is standing right here. I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.”

Bryn leans forward to kiss her Dad’s cheek as the parent-child dance comes to a close. “I’m proud of you too, Daddy.”

The rest of the reception is wild. Bryn suspects that Kevin has his eye on Sergeant Mehra from Luke’s team. He can never seem to resist a woman who could break him in half. And Antony gets his wish when he convinces DJ Rizza to play the YMCA, a song which he has a perverse love for. Bryn’s soundmixer, bassist, and at least five more of her music-business friends turn to give her simultaneous looks of horror as the song comes on. Bryn just shrugs. She’s lived with Antony too long to bother with people who won’t indulge him. Besides, Bryn admits that it may be worth going through the motions herself to watch her Uncle Dave be forced to get into it.

“I married this man?” Uncle Darren comments, unable to stop his laughter at his husband’s awkward movements.

“I’m sure he has other talents,” Bryn replies.

Uncle Dave lets Antony pull him into some square-dance like move, causing Darren to double over with laughter.

“If he weren’t the father of my children, I might divorce him for killing disco,” he comments.

“I think it may already be dead,” Bryn replies. She and Uncle Darren are usually on the same side of things, but Bryn vehemently disagrees with her uncle’s love for the Bee Gees.

“Those are fighting words,” Darren replies. “But I’ll give you a free pass, only because it’s your wedding day.”

Bryn, Luke, and Emilio are sitting on the sidelines, watching Max lead a conga line when Dad and Rodney come up to them. Kyle is peaking out of his father’s pouch, smiling at them.

“I don’t think Kyle’s going to go to sleep if I stay around all the lights and music,” Dad informs them. “And I don’t want him cranky in the morning. So I think we’re going to call it a night.”

“You don’t want to stay, Rodney?” Luke asks.

“And watch your Uncle pull something trying to dance as though he doesn’t have a stick up his ass?”

Bryn giggles. “And the open bar?” Bryn is pretty buzzed herself.

“There is that. But I should probably be a responsible husband and keep your Dad company while he’s laying down to let Kyle sleep.”

“You mean you’re going to sit in bed watching Star Trek and making out?”

Rodney blushes, looking outraged at the same time. He’s so fun to wind up that Bryn can’t help herself sometimes. At least Dad is amused.

“Well, before we go, I wanted to give you our gift,” Rodney says. “It’s not something as ridiculous as a house.” Bryn doubts that Uncle Dave will ever hear the end of that one. “But, I figured that since you all lead busy lives it’ll come in useful.” He hands over three smooth devices make out of a strange black/grey material that Bryn has never seen before. “These are a prototype, so um, don’t show them to anyone from a telecom company. They’re basically holoprojectors so that you can talk to each other as though you’re together.”

“Cool,” Luke says.

“Very cool,” Bryn agrees.

It’s Emilio who says, “Thank you,” surprising Bryn by giving Rodney a hug. Rodney looks a little bewildered, but goes with it, patting Emilio awkwardly on the back and saying, “Congratulations.”

Dad gives his children each one last kiss on the cheek before putting his arm around his husband and sauntering off.

“They are a handsome couple,” Emilio remarks. “I hope we will be like them.”

“We’re already a handsome triad,” Bryn counters. “And we don’t need to be as crazy as they are, trust me.”

“You mean watching Star Trek and making out isn’t your idea of an ideal evening?” Luke jokes.

“Maybe the making out part,” Bryn agrees, leaning in to kiss him first, then Emilio. Bryn remembers the days when she’d had to hide her physical affection for her brother. In retrospect she’s sure that her father and her uncles and probably the whole staff of the house had known, but it felt like something dirty. They can kiss each other whenever they want now, even though as far as Bryn’s concerned, what they feel for each other hasn’t changed.

The kiss with Emilio grows in intensity, until he has her crushed up against his front. “Maybe your parents have the right idea,” he says breathlessly.

Bryn blushes, looking to Luke for agreement. “Sounds like a plan.”

They make their goodbyes before walking out through the darkness of the lawn towards where the limo is already waiting to take them to the W for the night before their flight to Tahiti for their honeymoon in the morning.

Bryn stalls on the edge of the driveway lights for a second, pulling her spouses closer to her. “Thank you,” she whispers, not sure to whom.

The End.