Chapter Twenty-Five
May 3
rd
, 2021 - 10:23 am
The last several days had been something of a blur for Andy. Thankfully, Ash seemed to be holding to her expected delivery date, and so the twins hadn't yet arrived, although Aisling and Andy had picked out their names - Kayleigh and Riley - and Andy felt a little bit of relief that his son, his first son, Matt, got to experience being the center of attention for at least a little bit on his own.
It also turned out that whatever else the nanobots rushing through Piper's body were doing, they were at least respecting the fact that she was still taking birth control, and while her body may have wanted her to get pregnant, it hadn't affected the birth control she was on, and her intentions of doing one more Olympics before retiring were still going to be on. For now, at least, Piper remained unimpregnated.
Fiona
had
tested positive for pregnancy, and that had delighted her to
no
end, because she'd been expecting it to be something of an uphill battle. Both her and Andy had been considered semi-infertile when they were younger, and now that she was with child, she couldn't be happier.
They'd brought Matt back from the hospital just a couple of days after he'd been born, and the doctors said that he was just shy of 8 pounds. He'd been born with hair a shade of onyx like his mother, hazel eyes like his father, and a strong opinion about when to eat, like both of his parents.
The family had set up a room in the manor which would be the nursery, a place where the newborns and infants could be until they were old enough to get their own room, although Andy had done the math and was already worried that a handful of rooms might turn into dormitories with several children bunking in. But, as he was fond of saying, they'd burn that bridge when they crossed it.
Niko had been wiped out for a few days after getting back, but since then had sprung into being a new protective mother with all the gusto she attacked everything else with. Matt had been doing the rounds, and the entire family had already taken multiple turns holding him.
Also, as expected, Jade had decided to settle into her role as house nanny, and she sprang into that job like she was born for it. In fact, she'd taken to handling Matt when he woke up in the middle of the night so much that Niko had only gotten up once so far to help. Niko had felt a little bad, but Jade had insisted that she be allowed to do her job and tend to Matt when Niko was resting. It was an adjustment to the house rhythm, but it seemed a welcome one, with the Team coming together to show how group parenting was going to work.
But one person that Andy had had trouble cornering was Nicolette, however, as the almost ninja-like housekeeper had taken to avoiding talking to anyone for more than a few moments over the past week. Andy, however, had a plan. He grabbed his laptop and went to sit in the hallway outside of Nicolette's room, and he started to write.
One of the advantages of being a writer was that location didn't matter, and wherever he wanted to write from, he could. So, pulling up a chair and waiting outside of someone's room was definitely an option. An hour or so later, Hannah wandered by and cocked her head, and asked, "What're you doing, Andy?"
"Waiting for Nicolette," he told her, not looking up from his typing.
"I think she's scared of talking to you," Hannah said with a giggle.
"Well, that's ridiculous, so I'm going to wait here until we have a conversation," Andy told her, typing away on the keyboard. "If you see her, you can tell her that."
"Okay, Andy." And then Hannah continued along her way.
Another hour or so later, he heard the voice he wanted to hear from the end of the hallway near the stairs. "You're not going to let this go, are you?" Nicolette's voice asked.
"Nope," Andy said. "We're gonna talk about it."
Nicolette let out an overly dramatic sigh and then walked over towards him, dressed in one of her least slutty French maid outfits, dropping down onto her knees next to him in the chair. "Please don't make me give it up, Master," Nicolette said, a single tear running down her cheek.
That was the point where Andy turned and looked at her, a single tear running down his own cheek. "Is that the kind of monster you think I am, Nicolette?" he sighed. "That I would ask you to give up the child you so vehemently insisted you wanted? I'm not going to make you give it up, Nicolette; I swear to you on my son's life." She let out a very visible shudder and sigh of relief at that, as if the tension had just left her body. "Why would you think that I would?"
"I... I'm not sure, Master," Nicolette said. "With Piper not getting preg--"
"Piper didn't
want
to be pregnant, Nicolette, not yet." Andy nodded his head, though, as if he could understand how the information out of context might have made her jump to erroneous conclusions. "That was a decision that
she
made, and I'm supporting her in. That doesn't have anything to do with you."
"I was worried you might've just been telling me I could have a baby so you could get out of the hospital or something," she sighed. "Whitney got accidentally pregnant with Bill's baby in 2019, and he forced her to terminate it, which she did without open objection, even though it was fucking killing her. They had a ripped condom, which neither had noticed in the heat of the moment, and when Whitney missed her period, Bill... didn't take it well."
"Oh, shit..."
"He flew off the handle and while he didn't hit her, he was threatening to abandon her, to get rid of her because he didn't want a child that badly. He did the worst thing he could possibly do to a person who gets off on total submission - he refused to tell her to do anything else until she'd had the abortion. It... it was the worst I'd ever seen her, Master. She was crying all the time, almost nonverbal, and despite the fact that she was trying very hard to put on a brave face, that was the break in their relationship from which they never recovered from. Rationally, I know you wouldn't ask me to do that, Andy, but the idea of losing this child... I was scared that maybe you'd agreed to it in a spur-of-the-moment thing, and that when you weren't under the pressure of your first child about to be born, maybe you'd reconsider, because I'm not one of your wives. It sounds really fucking stupid when I say it out loud, I know. But just because it was important to
me
doesn't mean it would have to be important to
you
, sir. I'm staff. I get th--"
"Okay, Nicolette, knock it off," he chuckled. "The
staff
designation around here couldn't mean any less if I
tried
to make it mean less, and Heavens know, I have tried. It's a way for you women to say you don't want to be married to me, you're never
going
to want to be married to me and that I shouldn't even
consider
trying to ask one of you to join the brides. I get it. I respect it. But I also need all of you to do me a favor."
"Sir?"
"I need you to stop treating me like an idiot," he said with a grin. "If you or any other woman in the house wants a child, I'm
going to say yes
. You just need to talk to me about it first, let me know that it's something you've thought about, given weight to all the ramifications, and then let me know that you're
trying
for it. I think the only reason I was even slightly annoyed at the hospital was because you were springing it on me out of nowhere. Because it was hard to tell if it was you or the nanites speaking. And then when you started ducking me at home--"
"To be fair, Master, it wasn't just you. I was scared
anyone
would try and talk me out of it. Or that maybe one of the wives would get jealous. Fi can be a little scary and territorial when she wants to be, but you know that."
"--I assumed it was because you
didn't
want to keep it, now that you'd come to your senses, and didn't know how to tell me. I'd been trying to find you to tell you that if you didn't
want
the baby, you could terminate it, but if you wanted to keep it, that was fine, too. I'd support whatever decision you'd made. I'm never going to make you do anything you don't want to."
Nicolette threw her arms around his midsection and leaned her head against his chest. "Aren't we a perfect pair of idiots? I'm avoiding you because I'm afraid you'll make me give it up, and you're hunting for me, because you want to tell me that whatever I want to do is okay," she laughed in between sobs. "You want to write an O. Henry story? I think we've got a free one for you."
"God no," Andy laughed. "Those stories were always depressing as fuck. Let me tell more entertaining stories about how a phoenix wants to bone a minotaur or something. Now, whether you like it or not, you're sort of the de facto leader of everyone who considers themselves
staff
. I want you to go about conveying a message for me - anyone in the house on staff who wants to have a kid with me is allowed to, provided they talk to me in advance about it. No, not
allowed
to... that's the wrong word. If someone wants to have a kid with me, I'm encouraging it. But we talk first, before that moment happens. I'm trying
really
hard here to be as supportive to everyone as I can, but every so often, one of you girls thinks the worst of me for whatever reason. No more springing it on me in the heat of the moment. I just need a few minutes to wrap my head around the idea, but I promise not to tell anyone no, okay?"
"Even if it's Whitney?" she asked him.
