Quaranteam Book Two Ch 18

Chapter Eighteen

January 1

st

, 2021

Most of the ladies had gone much harder at New Year's Eve than he had, and as such, he woke up relatively early at eight. He suspected a lot of them would wake up rather hungover and annoyed at themselves, considering several had claimed they weren't going to overdo it when it came to booze, and the majority had failed pretty heavily in that regard, with a few of them getting so rip roaringly drunk that they had threatened to scale the chandelier.

Christmas, just the week before, had been a relatively quiet affair, and presents were kept to small things, nobody putting together a list, with lots of books, CDs and vinyl changing hands as everyone was encouraged to introduce their partners to things they thought they might like. Presents were opened simultaneously and absolutely no one was expected to write thank you letters to anyone inside of the Team, although brief phone calls were encouraged to families.

Part of getting everyone's families familiar with a team was to focus on the Soon To Be Wives club first, with all the additional partners for later dates. Accordingly, Andy wasn't expected to remember

anybody

's name, but was doing his best to pick them up as he could, and he'd certainly found he got along with some of them better than others. Ash's brother Dermot had connected with Andy even beyond the Irishman's love of his books, and the two of them were often the ones who had to be corralled off the phone call towards the end, they got along so well.

But when it came to New Year's Eve, the women of Team Rook had been so glad to see the back of it that they threw the kind of rager meant shake the very top of the heavens, with the exception of Ash and Niko, who'd stayed dead sober, and Andy, who'd gone light, despite the

constant

prodding from various women around the house trying to get him to drink. (They'd also decided to let Asha and Hannah get drunk as well, but only since they were staying in the house.)

In the morning, when he'd woken up, he'd found everyone was still asleep and in bed, so he'd left a note saying he'd be down in his office if anyone needed him, so that nobody would panic when they woke up and found he wasn't in bed with them, like they had early in December.

Down in his office, the things he wanted to look at awaited him on his desk.

The day before, the last day of December, both Ash and Niko had been in to see the doctor, to get check-ups on the babies, and Andy had been more than a little taken aback by some of the news they'd gotten.

First, the doctors had revised the due dates for the two women. Niko's target date was May 5

th

, while Ash's was May 21

st

. It came as a surprise to everyone involved that Niko had gotten pregnant first, and that meant she was expected to be delivering first, even if it was just by a few weeks. Niko had been a little worried that Ash was going to take it as a slight, but instead Aisling had just laughed it off, saying she was fine with it, and it let her learn by watching Niko. Ash said it was fine if she wasn't first in everything.

The second surprise was the

number

of children the two women were to be having. While Niko had only the one, it turned out Aisling was carrying

twins

, which she immediately began to joke about how she was doing double the work and how Niko might've been first, but that she was still getting off light, compared to the labor Ash was going to have ahead of her. Niko said it was

fine

for her to stick with only one child making her world more complicated. It was too early to tell if they were fraternal or identical twins.

The last and final surprise was getting to know the genders - Niko was having a boy, while each of the children Ash was carrying was a girl. Ash had immediately scrapped all the names she and Andy had been talking about, and decided to go back to the drawing board now that she was having twins.

Niko had been absolutely adamant that since she was having a boy, he would be named Matthew, after Andy's late brother, something that made Andy smile from ear to ear even while his eyes watered up. Andy insisted they have some tilt towards her heritage, and she'd suggested they use the name of her reservation as the child's middle name, but neither was entirely certain that Matthew Rosebud Rook worked, so they'd revisit the middle name closer to the child's birth. But the fact that she was completely unwavering on insisting that their son would bear his late brother's name made him tear up a little each time he thought about it.

He'd put the two sonograms up on wall of his office, so he could see them whenever he wanted to look up and consider how quickly the future was running towards him. They'd told all the members of the house, obviously, and Andy had called Phil, which had resulted in a bit of information that had come as rather a surprise to him.

Boys, it seemed, were making up a smaller than normal percentage of reported pregnancies in those that had been vaccinated with the Quaranteam serum. The sample size wasn't enough to know anything conclusively thus far, but early reports had the male/female split in upcoming children to be something akin to 1:10. That wasn't normal, and that wasn't good for long term sustainability, but the science was what it was. It was yet another thing they would have to simply find a way to work with on the other side.

Another thing that was already starting to be visible about the fetuses being carried by women with Quaranteam serum running through their veins were that they were in

incredibly

good condition, free of health problems. It was almost like the Quaranteam serum was doing what it could to improve the health of anyone it encountered. All the pregnancies had, so far, been remarkably problem free, with chances of problematic or inherited weaknesses or deficiencies at apparently 0%. Many of the things that neonatal screenings were invented for had simply not shown up in any of the pregnancies that had happened in the post Quaranteam environment.

The future only knew what other generational surprises lay ahead for their children, but Andy and Phil agreed they'd do the best they could to take them one day at a time.

After spending a few minutes looking at the ultrasound images, still trying to wrap his head around how he would be a father of not one but

three

children before the end of summer, he started futzing around with the collection of ideas he had puttering around with in the background while starting up the next Druid Gunslinger novel. Most of them would likely just litter around on his hard drive as he pecked at them in between working on actual projects. They were usually under just concept headings like "A Colorado Collegiate Werewolf" and "Merlin's Mayhem" and "The Unlying Bracelet" and "Born of Dragons," but every so often he'd dust one off and see if he could pull anything interesting from it. He was considering whether or not a story he'd started a while ago called "Family Is Hell" was worth picking up again but had decided to put it back where it was for the time being.

If he was working on anything

other

than the next Druid Gunslinger, he suspected his agent and his publicist would try and string him up, especially with the movie going into production in just a few short months. They wanted to have yet another book ready to go, in case the sales bump from the movie was putting things through the roof. He'd tried reassuring them that even if the movie's filming went spectacularly, with the amount of effects that would be needed, the film itself couldn't possibly be out before Christmas of 2022, and more likely summer of 2023. But the folks at the top always wanted it now, now, now, and once they had it, the creative folks could wait, wait, wait.

He was still in the middle of a great debate about whether or not the Druid Gunslinger books should acknowledge the apocalypse that had happened because of DuoHalo, and still hadn't come down on either side of the fence yet, although he was starting to lean a lot more towards just having the six-to-twelve months of the pandemic happen off-stage in between books, and starting a Gunslinger book down the way with something like "Over half the world died in less than six months. But I don't wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about what the world looked like a year later." It would be a nice, simple, effective way to acknowledge that the world, both real and fictional, had changed, and still not linger in the pain and misery too long.

Sometimes putting your head down and hiding in fiction was easier than trying to make sense of the real world all around you. At least, it felt like that helped him keep a handle on things.

And then there was the upcoming wedding, in less than a month's time.

In that regard, he felt like he'd basically done everything that he could, which was mostly just to stay out of the way of everything and everyone. All his partners had their opinions on what things "had" to be in the wedding and where all the conflicts lay, so he was basically happy to let them hash all of that out without him. He would show up where they told him to, say what they told him to (and probably add some of his own words along the way), respect whatever traditions he was supposed to and invite whomever they thought was necessary.

Fiona, Moira and Aisling would have liked for there to be a Catholic priest present, and for the ceremony to contain at least most of a Catholic marriage ceremony, but Piper, Emily, Sarah and Niko had differing opinions, and so the compromise that had been reached was that it would be a non-denominational Christian wedding with a local priest from a Unitarian church handling the service, which would touch on elements of both Catholicism and Protestantism. Andy's one insistence was that it not be "a three-hour epic" and that they keep the ceremony under an hour, even with the unique challenges their wedding was going to present.

The biggest problem was going to be attendance. It wasn't the first time nor would it be the last time that he thanked Nathaniel Watkins for giving him so much money, because the invites alone would've broken anyone else. The decision had made that every person

involved

in the wedding could invite 50 people each, with Sarah and Emily being given exceptions and being allowed to invite twice that, for professional reasons. People were expected to bring only small numbers of their own Team to the wedding, so each person who was invited could bring up to 3 members of their Team with them. It didn't sound like a lot of people when you were talking about it, but if everyone invited had RSVP'd with 3 addons, it would've been 1,500 people.

One of the things they'd learned from the invites, though, was who was alive and who'd died, and that was chilling on its own. Many of the invites had bounced back as "recipient deceased." They had hired a service to send the invites and to process the replies, and once a week since they'd sent out the invites, the service would send back a list of who'd accepted, how many they were bringing and who had passed away.

There were still a few more weeks left for reservations to come rolling in, but based on the estimates and how people had been responding, it was looking like they'd have close to 750 people in attendance when the ceremony happened at the end of the month. And there was no way in hell they were assigning seats at the reception for that many people, so other than the tables marked off for Team Rook and the one table assigned off to the side to Team Marcos, people could sit where they wanted, and they could get the food from the buffet.

All the fiancées had decided as a group they all wanted to take Andy's last name. There had been a little bit of talk at the start about them all maybe hyphenating their original last names, but Fiona pointed out how much more complicated and messier it would make their house look, and they'd agreed simple was better.

Andy had also made it clear that the whole staff of the house was expected to be in attendance of the wedding, and as guests, and that if he caught them doing a lick of work, he would make them regret it, which Nicolette had begrudgingly agreed to. And to make sure that both Alexis and Niko felt comfortable, Linda had assigned a couple of her girls to guard the house while everyone would be out of it.

For the honeymoon, the decision had been made to go down to Jamaica, a place that (almost) none of them had ever been to before (with the exception of Sarah, who'd been down for filming at one point), and they would enjoy a week away from home. They'd talked about doing a trip around the world, but the world didn't feel stable enough for them to be comfortable with that yet.

Basically, at his request, most of the decisions were handled for him, but he'd made one exception to that rule - the DJ for the reception. Andy had always joked around that if he had an endless amount of money, he'd throw whatever it took to have DJ Shadow (a Bay Area legend) come and DJ his wedding. As it turned out, DJ Shadow hadn't asked for an unreasonable amount at all.

(Also, Andy had decided what his entrance music would be, but was doing his absolute best to keep that secret from

everyone

involved, having resisted the overwhelming lure to walk into "Stayin' Alive," because it would've been in incredibly poor taste.)

Those family members who were flying in from overseas were being given a few days before the wedding to get a chance to meet everyone, learn names, see the house and just generally get the lay of the land, which meant his Bachelor Party was actually scheduled for a week before the wedding. The last thing he wanted to do was to try and keep up with Aisling's family when it came to drinking.

All of that really meant that he had about three weeks of time during which he could get writing done, but past that, it was going to be time spent getting to know Aisling and Em's big families, as well as Sarah's and Moira's smaller ones, all of whom were incredibly eager to spend some time getting to know Andy in person.

Which meant he was a little taken aback when there was a knock at the door to his writing room, but he'd insisted that he keep an open door policy in the house, so he simply sighed and then said in his loudest voice, "Come on in."

Who entered, however, surprised him. Two members of his staff, Jenny, his cook, and Katie, his groundskeeper, moved in one after the other, Katie looking a little nervous, Jenny looking almost giddy.

Jenny was a slightly stocky Midwestern brunette with the warmest face ever, an absolute kind-hearted soul who had originally hid the fact that she and Katie were married from Andy. She'd been adamant that the staff remain staff, that they preferred to keep the relationship professional, and the rest of the staff had been in firm agreement with her.

Katie, Jenny's wife, was Hispanic, originally from Los Angeles, with short black hair in a bob cut, hard and muscular in the places where her wife was soft. She, also unlike her wife, was a staunch lesbian, whereas Jenny identified as bisexual.

Both women were dressed in their off-duty clothes, jeans and t-shirts, as Andy had told them they could have New Year's Eve and New Year's Day off, to which his entire staff had insisted on just working 'half days,' as if they were uncertain if Team Rook could function with them gone, even temporarily.

They were probably right.

"Can we have a bit of your time, Master Rook?" Jenny said, a nervous smile on his lips.

"Of course ladies, come in, take a seat, talk to me," he said, pulling his laptop closed, eager to take his thoughts away from the Gunslinger for a little while. "What's on your mind? Wanted to get your next dosing in while no one else is awake?"

"No, but yes, Master Rook," Jenny sighed. "This is... well, it's a little complicated. Katie?"

Katie frowned as the two of them sat down on the couch across the room from him, looking down at her hands. "I need... I need to say something, Master Rook, and I need you just to listen for a bit while I try and explain myself."

"Of course, Katie. Take as much time as you need and just tell me when it's my turn to talk again," Andy said.

Katie kept her eyes fixated down at her hands as she started to talk. "I knew I was a lesbian very early on in life, even though I knew it wasn't something my family would approve of. By the time I was ten, I knew that boys really didn't do anything for me. When I was in high school, I had to keep it quiet, but I started dating girls, fooling around with them and it just... it just felt

right

. In college, because I decided I wanted to make sure I wasn't the kind of girl who could go both ways, I hooked up with a guy from my economics class, someone I knew wouldn't go talking about the experience, and by the end of it, well, let's just say he had a good night and I'd been bored off my tits. And in that morning, I knew that guys... just didn't do it for me. So I moved up to the Bay Area, basically distanced myself from my family, found Jenny, fell in love and got married. I knew Jenny liked both boys and girls, so we established an agreement that she could have a little dick on the side as long as it wasn't serious, and everyone involved understood it was just a physical fling. And that's served us pretty good, for quite a while... until we got here."

Jenny put her hand on top of Katie's. "If you're not ready—"

"I'm never going to

be

ready, baby, but I think I just gotta

do

this," Katie said. "When we got here, we were initially going to lie to you, and we'd both planned to take care of your needs. I'd fooled Tanner back in college, so I figured I could fool you too. It would be just another part of the job, I told myself. And then we met you, and you... well, you weren't at all what we expected you to be, Master Rook, no offense. You weren't pompous or assuming. You didn't think you were always right and you didn't seem all that comfortable telling people what to do. You were, dios mio, you were the least arrogant rich prick I'd ever met."

"We also didn't realize you

weren't

rich until you actually

were

rich," Jenny giggled, "when Mister Watkins gave you all that money."

Andy chuckled with her but had to admit he could see it.

"And even when you

became

rich, you sort of refused to

act like it

," Katie sighed. "The only reason we found out you'd

become

rich was because you were taking over our salaries from the Air Force, and you were

increasing

them, because you didn't want us to be underpaid, despite the fact that you're providing room, board and taking care of our Quaranteam needs. It's madness, you know that, don't you?"

"I'm just trying to do the best I can to make sure anyone who's life is tied to mine is doing okay."

"That's why we're here today, Andy," Katie said. "We need to talk to you about us getting dosed from you, because, well, we'd like to request some changes."

Andy hadn't overlooked the fact that Katie had referred to him by his first name, but certainly wasn't going to be a prick and point it out, especially since she looked so concerned by the conversation they were having. "Sure, go on."

Katie bit her bottom lip, looked up at Jenny, who nodded at her wife resolutely. Then Katie turned her eyes up to Andy with an expression he'd never seen on her face before. "I'm a lesbian. I

know

I'm a lesbian. I've tried looking at every picture any of the women of the house can think of when they think of 'hot guys.' Chris Evans. Idris Elba. Paul Rudd. Brad Pitt. Michael B. Jordan. Ryan Gosling. George Clooney. Matt Damon. All of them. None of them give me even the slightest flutter of excitement in my belly. But... I look at you, and I get the same queasy feeling I get when I look at Ruby Rose, or Cara Delevingne."