Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

          The day I woke up in the hospital was blurry, I found myself repeating the events of the last few months over and over again in my mind, trying to make sense of how I ended up in that sterile room with a gunshot wound. 

We killed Bunny.

Julian left us.

Charles tried to kill us.

Charles shot me.

Henry killed himself.

There’s only four of us left. 

          I don’t know much of what happened around me those first few days; I knew that Camilla and Francis had been there a bit, and I knew that Charles had not. Henry’s mom came to visit me, to tell me once again that Henry was dead; she said that he left me his car, and I didn’t realize for quite some time what that implied. Henry knew he was going to die some way or another. About a week into my stay, Camilla informed me that Charles was going to a rural in-paitent facility for his alcoholism and that she was going to be staying in a cottage near the center for some time as well; it wasn’t clear if the rehab was his idea or not. Francis and I were all that was left of the group we once had. 

          My third and final week in the hospital, Francis was there with me every day; we were the only friend that each other had. To this day I still cannot fathom how he managed to spend every minute of visiting hours here, seeing as he hated hospitals. Francis may be a hypochondriac and a frequent guest of the emergency room, but his anxieties of illness and medical situations keep him from hospitals when he’s not the one sick. I found that the only times I felt any sense of calm were when he was there with me; his quiet humming as he read, the smell of his all too familiar cologne, the way he anxiously checked in on me at any sign of discomfort. When he would leave, I found myself anxious and longing for the next day when I would pray he would return again. And he did. Day after day he was there from ten in the morning to eight at night.

          When I finally got discharged from the hospital, Francis told me that he'd take me home, yet for the first time I realized that school was over, ‘home’ was once again California. I lost any hope of ever regaining my sparse possessions that were in my dorm room, and had resigned myself to the fact that I’d be going home with less than I left with. Yet, Francis pulled onto his street, and he opened my door for me (seeing as it was still difficult for me to move with the stitches, I'd told myself), and he led me inside. 

          I had been in Francis’s apartment several times, but when he opened the door that day, it was different somehow, but I couldn't figure out exactly why. “I moved your things” he informed me, “Hampden said that someone had to come deal with your things and well Camilla and Charles- anyways, I didn’t want you to lose them, so I brought them here”. I saw it then: my books on the bookshelves, my coats, his hand-me-downs, on a coat rack, my tea mugs on the kitchen counter, my shoes by the front door. He hadn’t just thrown my possessions into a box, he treated them like they mattered; like I mattered. “I- thank you, Francis, really, you didn’t have to do all this” I told him, causing him to throw glances in every direction but that of my own. “I was thinking of risotto for dinner if that's alright with you- all the hospital food, I could not imagine eating that for three weeks”, Francis said after an awkward pause of silence, then left for the kitchen. 

           And so we unintentionally fell into a domestic routine, making meals side by side, reading by the fireplace, pouring tea, coffee, and whiskey for one another, and lived with never ending flows of conversations that never felt forced or strenuous to continue with.

         It had been a few weeks, and though Francis didn’t appear to be bothered by my sudden presence, I couldn’t help but feel like an intruder. “So, I should probably head home soon- to California”, I told him one morning over tea, “Why”, he responded with an anxious urgency. “Well, I- I’ve been imposing on your life for weeks now, I’m feeling better, so I figured I should go, shouldn’t I?”. Yet Francis suddenly had been taken aback by what I’d said, “Please don’t go, Richard. If you leave, I’ll be alone. Stay. Please.”. And so I stayed. I had initially brought up the idea of moving into my own apartment, but once again, Francis, seemingly frightened at the prospect of living alone, urged me to stay, and once again, I was not at all dismayed at the idea of doing so. 

          Weeks turned to months and Francis and I returned to Hampden. Francis, determined to finish his studies, somehow became a French major “ I’m not staying in this apartment all day alone, might as well be on campus with you”, and I became an English major once again. After keeping diligent journals of the last year, I figured out that I quite enjoyed writing and that teaching or writing are the only career paths I could ever truly see myself in. The return to Hampden was unremarkable in the fact that once we were in classes with many of our fellow peers, not a single one of them seemed to remember that we too were involved with Bunny’s death the prior year. Out of our entire group, the ones that our peers took the most interest in were Bunny obviously, Henry, and the twins. We two remained the most inconspicuous in the group, and therefore our entrance back onto campus was not met with any fanfare whatsoever . 

         For the first time, ever possibly, I didn’t seem to feel lonely. As involved and enveloped I had become with the classics students, I never truly felt a part of the group, though in retrospect I now knew why; but with Francis, I felt different than I had ever before. As a child I never had many friends, and any relationship I had ever had with a girl had never felt like I had a true companion in life, but Francis, Francis was different from anyone I had ever known; he cared for me in his own, anxious sort of way; he’s quick witted and funnier than I believe he truly realizes, and he’s kinder than anyone I’ve ever known. When we were together those days, which was admittedly most of the time, we didn’t have to fill the air with nonsensical conversation, just the presence of the other was enough to not feel alone in our own thoughts. This of course didn’t mean we never spoke, we had conversations that could last from minutes to days, and often found ourselves just speaking our thoughts out into the air; it was a relief, to both of us I feel, to be able to just say what we felt and to not feel judged by it. 

          It was deep into the Vermont winter, February I believe, I had become sick with a nasty cold, and I came to the horrifying realization that I loved Francis. Ever since I became so ill that past winter, every illness I get seems to affect me more than before, and seems to not only frighten Francis, but makes him noticeably anxious until I’m completely returned to my healthy self. This particular cold was probably the worst one yet, I had a fever, an incredibly sore throat, I was exhausted, sneezing non-stop, and my entire body ached. When Francis found me in this state, after I had not joined him in the kitchen for breakfast, his face became deathly pale, and he frantically asked if I needed to go to the hospital, since I was clearly on the verge of death. Once I had assured him that it was just a cold, and his face returned to its familiar pale shade, he immediately took on the role of caregiver. It wasn’t that this was in any way out of the ordinary for either of us; whenever the other was sick, we took care of him, but this time, it felt different. I had caught him come to check in on me when he had thought I was asleep, and a look passed over his face when he saw that I was there; it was a look of relief that I was there, that I was alive, and that I wasn’t in any discernible pain, it was a look more caring than even my own mother had ever given me. All of a sudden, I had been overcome with an overwhelming amount of love that I seemingly had for him. I loved the way his hair was a mess of fiery red curls, I loved the way he never judged me for the life I had come from, I loved the way he cooked for us, I loved the fact that he needed me as much as I needed him, I loved the way he cared for me without a second’s hesitation, I loved everything about him and I believe I had for quite some time. 

        One night, Francis had been in one of the moods he so often fell into; he was clearly anxious, and I don’t believe he had slept much the night before, we both often had nightmares after everything that happened, and so I made him his favorite tea, and brought it to him as he was on the couch reading. When I sat it down next to him, he looked up at me with his sorrowfully beautiful green eyes, and whispered a quiet, “thanks”, and in that moment, all of my repressed feelings I had held onto for my entire life decided to explode out of my mind. I sat down on the couch next to him, he laid his head onto my shoulder, and we sat like that for quite some time, until I quietly, nervous that he wouldn’t feel the same, and anxious at the sudden realization that I was clearly not heterosexual, as I'd once believed, said, “I love you, Francis”. He sat up immediately, and I was terrified that I had ruined everything we had together, but miraculously he looked right into my eyes, and in that anxious whisper he was so frequently brought to, he replied, “I love you too”. At that moment, Francis fell into my arms, and despite the fact that I was keenly aware of how much I would like to kiss him as soon as humanly possible, we just held each other close, and I felt myself start to cry. I cried for all that we had lost, all the time we spent together not telling the other that they were loved, and for the joy of loving someone and being loved back. After a while of just holding one another, I pulled back, wiped the tears from my eyes the best I could, noticed his own teary eyes, and finally kissed him. The last time, he had kissed me, and though I had kissed back, I was not truly kissing him, hell I was convinced I was straight, but at this moment, for the first time, I was kissing Francis. Matters progressed more than they had ever in the past, and we eventually found ourselves lying tangled up with one another on his satin sheets taking in everything that had just happened. 

          All in all, life after kissing Francis had not been so different to life before then. I’d come to acknowledge that our situation prior to being properly in love with one another was not entirely heteronormative (when I initially came to this realization, while we were washing dishes together, Francis just snorted at me, “Richard, I love you, but you do know most straight guys don’t cook risotto side by side with their ‘roommate’, then enjoy it with a bottle of wine at a candlelit table night after night”). We would still cook together practically every night, but we kissed while we were waiting for water to boil; we still read and wrote our papers in the living room together, but Francis had started to refuses to work unless he was so close to me that I could practically hear his heartbeat; we still walked around campus together, but we began to walk hand in hand (Hampden was far more queer friendly than I had realized prior to falling in love with Francis). A lot had changed, though. For one, I hadn't slept in my own bed for almost two months; not only was it nice to sleep on his luxury mattress with his linens that had likely cost more than anything I’d ever owned, but I think we both could escape the nightmares and slept more soundly wrapped in each other's arms. Additionally, without claiming that it was all my doing, but Francis began to seem happier than I’d even seen him before. His dark moods had almost completely diminished, he smiled more than I ever saw him smile the previous year, his face had filled out, and he looked healthier than ever. For example; I had learned that the arms full of hand-me-downs he constantly relayed onto Charles and I were not simply out of good natured charity or that they were simply out of style (after all, every clothing item he owns is timeless), they had just grown so large on him that he would practically drown in them, but I’d noticed him sneaking into my closet to borrow those old suits (along with my entire wardrobe; it seemed that stealing my clothes was by and large his favorite part of my being his boyfriend). And then, when he would go on shopping sprees to buy even more clothes, he would say, “What’s mine is yours, Love, we wear the same size”. 

          Besides the fact that Francis was thriving, I too was also happier than ever before; I had my parents send all my belongings up to Vermont, and informed them that after I graduated in a month or so (which I invited them too, though I doubted they would actually come) that I'd be staying and living with my friend here in Vermont. My father of course was furious that I wouldn't be returning to our horrific hometown to work at the gas station until I died of heat exhaustion, but my mom seemed happy for me. My mother never loved me out in the open, neither of my parents did; but I knew that she loved me in a way that she never learned to express. The long and short of it was simply this; all it took was Francis and I loving each other for our lives to finally fall comfortably into a place where we could both be truly, inexorably happy.

Chapter Text

         The week leading up to our graduation was hectic and anxiety inducing to say the least; unexpectedly, my mother had made arrangements to come to my graduation ceremony, though she failed to mention why my father would not also be in attendance (not that I exactly cared whether or not he came), and Francis’ mother and grandfather also planned to be there for the ceremony. We both had papers to finalize, exams to take, final graduation reviews, cap and gown fittings, and Francis insisted on buying us each a new suit for the occasion. It was an odd thought, that in a few short days, we would be completely finished with Hampden. In a way, we both knew that we would be forever tied to Hampden, not just by our academic records, but emotionally too. All of the awful decisions that we had made that year, all of the awful plans we were coaxed into joining would forever haunt us and would tie us to this small town forever. Truthfully, the only good we received from Hampden was each other; Hampden’s academics certainly weren’t wonderful, our sole professor for our intended major had disappeared into thin air (not that I blame him), but somehow, this peculiar school gave me the one person I love most in this world. Through some truly terrible circumstances, Hampden brought me to the best thing to ever happen to me. 

          Our families were meant to come into town the night before graduation, Francis’ family would horrifyingly be staying at the hotel where Henry had killed himself, and we would be hosting my mom in our guest room as it was clear that my father was already not pleased with the money she had to spend just to come up to Vermont to begin with. We spent the week leading up to graduation panicking on how to act around our families, I had convinced my mom that, “No I’ll be fine sleeping in Francis’ room for two nights, you can sleep in my room I won’t mind”, we had no intentions whatsoever of telling my mom that we were together, surely we could go two days acting as the heterosexual roommates she believed we were. Obviously, Francis would not be telling his family about his poor Californian boyfriend, doing so would possibly give his grandfather a heart attack, “ would that really be all that bad?” he had morbidly joked earlier in the week. We just needed to hide our relationship for two days, then we would be free to live, forever. 

          “Richard, I think I see your mom’s taxi outside”, Francis calls out as we put the finishing touches into making our apartment look as neat and inconspicuous as possible. I look out the window, and sure enough, there she is, my mom who I haven’t seen for almost two years is here and on her way to our front door. “Hey”, Francis says as he pulls me into a firm kiss and a tight hug, “It’s going to be okay. I love you.”, we pull apart, and open the door to greet my mom. I didn’t realize until she tentatively came in to hug me just how much I had missed her; she held me tight, and I almost began to cry at the surrealness of it all. As she held me for longer than had since I was a child, Francis and I shared a knowing smile, and I’d never known that it was possible to feel this happy all at once. We spend the night in; Francis and I make a simple spaghetti dinner for my mom, and we spend the evening telling her about the past two years we’ve spent together (minus a few key details, RE: murder, etc…, of course), and my mom tells Francis all about what I was like as a child, to be honest, I’d never realized how much attention she had actually paid to me all those years. As Francis and I finally fall into bed around midnight, he pulls me close and laughs, “God Richard, you had a baseball card collection?” he asks in mock disgust, “no wonder you thought you were straight, you poor thing”; we fall into a quiet pile of laughter as we attempt to drift off to sleep. However after an hour of restless tossing and turning, it’s clear that both of our minds are equally occupied with racing thoughts, “I never thought we’d be graduating without them here”, Francis says quietly, and it’s clear we’ve been plagued by the same grief stricken thoughts. “I know we were technically going to graduate in different years, but they were always supposed to be here for this. Julian was supposed to be sitting with the rest of the faculty, and then come complaining to us about it after the ceremony; the twins are supposed to be here, telling us how much they missed campus since they’ve graduated; Henry should still be working on his never ending translations and refusing to graduate; God even Bunny is supposed to be here”, Francis murmurs to me. And what can I possibly say in response to that, except for a meaningless, “ I know.” ? 

          We wake up around 8:00, and start preparing a simple breakfast before we need to start getting ready for the ceremony; my mom is ecstatic, and Francis has spoken on the phone with his own mother and grandfather confirming that they know all the details for today. Francis and I get ready together, we sneak a shower together, get dressed and groomed side by side, and sneak kisses whenever possible; when we’re finally ready, we look in the mirror and there we are: Francis and Richard, the two remaining Classics students, the boyfriends in the (somewhat) matching suits. My mom insists on taking loads of pictures of us once we’re ready, and though I typically loathe getting my photo taken, I realize that these are the first pictures we’ve ever had taken of the two of us, and suddenly I’m less annoyed by the whole ordeal. 

          When we get to campus, we part ways with my mom and head to the staging area; we’ll meet back up with her and Francis’ family afterwards, but we wanted one last moment alone before we really need to put on the heterosexual play for his family too. We sneak into the stairway where Francis had asked me on that very first day, “ Cubitum eamus?”, and we steal a kiss or two before actually heading over to the staging area. The ceremony itself isn’t too awful beside the fact that we are sitting as far as physically possible away from each other due to our last names; we each walk across the stage, grab our diplomas, and return to our seats. Truthfully the whole affair is wildly boring and overrated, but we withstand it nonetheless. 

          After we move our tassels and toss our caps, we find each other, then find our families; my mom is quick to spot us, and we were able to spot the bright red hair of Francis’ mom in no time. We took a few photos, said a quick goodbye to the few classmates we were friends with, and then we finally left Hampden. After we left, we headed over to a celebratory lunch in town before our parents had to head back home; frankly, Francis and I couldn’t care less about celebrating in any form, but we entertained our parent's wishes and begrudgingly went. Lunch went suspiciously well; from all the horror stories that Francis had told me about his mother and grandfather, I was sure that we were in for a meal akin to the one Bunny had invited me to early last year, but by the time the bill was paid, the most drama that had ensued was that the waiter had confused some of our orders with another table’s and Francis’ grandfather became a bit agitated. Once the meal was over, I left to take my mom back to the airport, and Francis left to see off his mom and grandfather; we would meet back at home, and planned on going out for drinks later in the night. 

          I arrived home just an hour after lunch, and Francis wasn’t due home for another hour or so, so I thought I would straighten up the apartment, and put everything we had put away while my mom was here back out. I became so obsessed with making our apartment look perfect, and then with reading a book I had picked up a few weeks ago while we had gone out shopping, that I didn’t realize that over six hours had passed and that Francis hadn’t come back home.

Chapter Text

          Sometime around midnight, I finally heard the front door of the apartment open;  I was deeply exhausted from the long day, and desperately wanted to sleep, but I knew I had to stay up until he got home. I had expected Francis to come home completely wasted from an alcohol infused rage set forth by his grandfather, so when he came home completely sober, I knew there was something incredibly wrong. When I stepped into the living room to meet him, I was met with a shell of the man that I had to grown to love with every fiber of my being; his face was ghastly, his eyes puffy red and sunken in, his cheeks tear stained, and his hair completely disheveled. “Francis? What's wrong? What happened?”, I asked with fear brewing in the pit of my stomach, “Francis, talk to me. Please”. At that moment, he looked me dead in the eyes, shook his head, and finally choked out, “No.”, that faded into a heavy sob. I immediately took him into my arms and held his trembling body as he shook with deadly sobs, “I’ve got you”, I whispered into his ear, “You’re safe Fran, you’re going to be ok, I’m here, I’ve got you”, I repeated in a plea akin to a prayer, praying that he could hear me. Eventually his sobs died down, though by this point, I somehow too was crying, and I got him to our room, out of his suit, and into bed, and I held him close until he cried himself to sleep. 

          We didn’t wake until early afternoon the next day; Francis looked better, but it was clear that he was still very upset. Gone was the man I had been laughing with and kissing less than twenty four hours ago; the last time I had seen him look anything like this was when Julian had discovered what we had done. The only way I could describe him was that he was utterly broken. 

          “I think you should go to California for a while”, was the first thing Francis said to me after we woke. “Francis, why would I do that? I live here. With you.”, I told him, “I’m not leaving you here, something’s clearly wrong, what happened last night?”.

“I’m getting married”, he said as he stared blankly out the window, “ Grandfather has decided now that I’m out of school, It’s time I marry, or he cuts me off completely. He knows about us Richard. I didn’t tell him, but he's known me my whole life, he knows I’m gay, and if I- if I continue to ‘act on my desires’, that’s it, he’s done with me”. 

“You can’t be serious Francis”, he couldn’t possibly be serious . “Francis, I’m not leaving you and letting you marry a woman just so you can continue to live off your grandfather’s money. You’re being completely ridiculous, you can’t just give up what we have. I know you Francis; getting married to a woman would kill you. Please, Francis, don’t.”

“Don’t you see that I don’t have a fucking choice here?”, he spat back, “I’m not like you Richard, I can’t just make my own decisions and not care how they’ll affect my family. I can’t live without-”
“Say it,” I taunted, “say that you would rather live in a loveless, unhappy, and miserable marriage, without me, than not have your grandfather’s money at your disposal”.

“It’s not like that at all” he cried, “my whole life, my entire being is built on that lifestyle, I can’t just stop living like this”.

“No,” I said, “you just don’t want to stop living like this. There’s a difference Francis. Would you truly rather have money than have me?” I asked, though I already knew what his answer would be. Francis just looked up at me, with shame painted over his face, and I knew for sure what it meant. “Fuck you Francis” I scoffed, as I pushed past him to go pack a bag to get out with.

          I’ve never quite been one to cry; when we killed Bunny, I was too guilty to cry, and after Henry died, I was too sedated to feel any emotions to begin with. Yet, on the seven hour flight to California, I didn’t stop crying once; I forgot any sense of decorum I knew, as all I knew at the moment was gut-wrenching pain and sorrow. I didn’t realize how much I loved and needed Francis until he ripped me out of his life. Before I left for the airport, Francis desperately tried to ‘fix’ things, “ We can still see each other if I’m married” and, “ I swear the moment my grandfather dies, I’ll leave her for you” , but he just didn’t get it; he didn’t understand that I could not live in a reality where I was his dirty little secret he was keeping until his grandfather died, and he couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that we could live without that money. I had always known Francis was fairly allergic to work, but I didn’t realize that the sheer possibility of having to work would be the breaking point for him when it came to our relationship, and the weight of his wallet. 

          Upon arriving home, under the pretense of applying for jobs, and wanting to spend time at home, I was immediately roped into working at the gas station with my dad. If Francis could see me now, I found myself thinking on those blisteringly hot days, when my face burned and peeled, and I sweated through my cheap t-shirts and jeans I’d owned since high school. Maybe, I tried to convince myself, this is for the better; Francis and I could never last as a couple when I came from this, and Francis came from generations of old money and a life of luxury. Francis wasn’t in love with just me alone, he was in love with the scholar, the deadly confidant, the man in nice suits, the man who was desperate to erase and bury his past. I was still however deeply in love with him, I missed every single thing about him, I missed his humor, his beautiful and wild red hair, the way he never could carry out a conversation in just one language, the way his hand felt in mine, and how safe he made me feel every night as we drifted to sleep.

           After two months, and against all of my better judgment, I decided to write to him; to speak on the phone would still be all too painful despite the fact that I desperately needed to hear his voice. 

My Dear, Francis, 

I’m not sure you want to hear from me, but if I have to go just one more day without telling you how I feel, without telling you how much I need and miss you, I would go utterly insane. 

Truth be told, from the moment I got to the airport, to the minute I got into the taxi at the airport in California, I cried. I cried as the plane left the ground and carried me further and further away from you with each passing second, and I cried when I stepped foot in Plano, the one place I had no intentions of ever returning to. I miss you terribly. I miss your smile, your laugh, your face, your body, your hair, but most importantly, I miss the way I feel when I’m with you. Without you, the nightmares have returned and I can barely sleep- I wonder, is this the same for you too? Without you, I can find no joy in anything; not even reading can soothe my bruised soul. If it’s not obvious, I still love you; I love you so much that it scares me. I find myself wondering how I’ll continue to live without you by my side; frankly, I’m not sure I can envision a scenario where I’ll continue to live if it’s not with you. I know, I know, this is all very melodramatic (clearly you’ve rubbed off on me), but it’s the truth. Francis, please come back, I know you can’t possibly be happy with this choice that you’ve made. We can figure out how to live with just the two of us, without your grandfather’s money. If you could just give me the chance to show you how happy we could be, I promise I would make you the happiest man in the world (and being back with you would make me the second-happiest man in the world). All I want in this world is for your life to be full of joy; I can’t stand or fathom the idea that you would willingly choose to live unhappily. Please Francis, I need you, and I believe you need me too. 

Forever yours, 

I love you, 

veni domum,

Richard. 

 

          The letter sat on my desk for two weeks before I finally had the courage to send it; I knew deep down that he likely wouldn’t change his mind. If Francis was anything, it was stubborn, but I couldn’t go down without a fight for the person I loved. After a month, I had given up on checking the mail for a response; after two months I had forgotten that I sent the letter in the first place. After three months, late one Wednesday night, my mom knocked on my bedroom door, and told me with a sly smile that there was someone at the door for me, so I followed her to the front door and before I could even process what was happening, I was immediately pulled into the firmest hug I’ve ever felt. Francis had come to get me.

Chapter Text

          I had never once imagined the possibility of the sight in front of me: Francis Abernathy, in California, standing in the home I grew up in. I was stunned, speechless, and heartbroken all at once; Francis didn’t look good at all, in fact, he looked worse than I’ve ever seen him. He was drowning in his clothes: one of my long sleeved shirts I had left in Vermont, and a pair of jeans I didn’t recognize, his face had lost shape, his eyes sunk in, and he looked ghastly. With my mom still in the room, I didn’t want to start the impending conversation quite yet, so I suggested we go for a walk. 

          Luckily for me, I didn’t exactly live in a populous area; if there is any benefit to living in Plano, it’s the scarcity of neighbors. For a while, our walk was silent, but eventually I stopped at a park bench, “We need to talk about it, Francis”. “What do you want to know?”, he asked, and with a desperate plea I replied, “Everything”. 

           “The minute you left, I knew I made the biggest mistake of my life. Those first few days I could barely live with myself; I didn’t eat, I didn’t drink, I didn’t sleep, I just existed in sorrow. I didn’t know what to do; did I call my grandfather telling him to send whatever horrendous girl he had deemed suitable my way, or did I try and find a girl myself? Luckily for me, he already had a girl, Priscilla, in mind, and we began a fucked up sort of dating for a few months.” he said. “Did you miss me”, I asked as he stared into the distance, “Did I miss you? Richard, I couldn’t sleep in our bed because it smelled like you, I cried myself to sleep nightly thinking of how I gave you up, I loathed everything in our apartment because everything reminded me of you”. “Anyways”, he began again, this time with tears beginning to flow steadily from both of our eyes, “Around month three, I was thoroughly exhausted and miserable. You were right, I couldn’t live like that, so I- I tried to kill myself, Richard”. “You what?” I asked, “I tried to kill myself, Richard”, and he rolled up his sleeves to reveal thick, red, raised scars on his wrists, “I couldn’t live like that, but I didn’t know where else to turn, and I was so alone, and I thought you hated me, so I-” he was sobbing by this point, so I just held him close, and we sat there, crying together until he was able to breathe again. He told me about having to go to the psychiatric hospital for two weeks, and how he talked about us to his therapist there. He told me about coming home and finding my letter, and how he spent the next two months reserving as much money as he possibly could without being suspicious, and depositing it into a secret bank account his grandfather had no access to, and he told me how he told his grandfather that he was planning on spending the rest of his life with me, and how the next day he was officially cut off financially. He told me how he got on the first plane he possibly could, in the cheapest seat they offered, so that he could come to bring me home. 

         “I know that I need to be careful about how I spend my money from here on out, but I bought this the day before I called my grandfather so it doesn’t technically count”, Francis started, “but I wanted you to know that in those few months where I had all access to all the nice things that money could buy, all I wanted was you, and I need you to know that you’re the only thing in this world that I could ever need, and that I’m so sorry that I hurt you”. He handed me a small velvet box, with a simple silver ring inside of it, “Oh, we’re getting married?”, I joked through the tears, “Not yet Papen.”, he says with a smile, “Look on the inside”, on the inner portion of the ring Philtatos is engraved in simple script, and I finally, after almost six months, kiss him. 

          We walk back to my childhood home, and I announce to my mom that I’ll be packing everything up and moving to Vermont officially. Francis auspiciously bought two return tickets to Vermont for two days from now, so we have just over a day to pack, sell the things I don’t want, and have everything else I want to keep shipped to Vermont. We’re both ecstatic to begin living the rest of our lives together for real this time, and the two days go by quickly. When it’s finally time to head to the airport, my father says goodbye with a rough handshake, but my mom holds me tight, tells me she loves me, and hands me a photo envelope with a knowing smile on her face. 

          I don’t open the envelope until we’re 30,000 feet in the air, with Francis sleeping on my shoulder, and ring firmly on my left ring finger (I wanted to wait until I was away from my parents to wear it). Inside is a note from my mom, ‘Richard, I’ve known and loved you for 23 years. The two days I spent with you and Francis, I witnessed you the happiest I’ve ever seen you be, it was easy to see that you both had a special bond. These past few months, I could tell you were hurting, and it wasn’t until Francis appeared on our doorstep that I was able to put the pieces together; you both are so clearly in love. I love you my sweet boy, go to Vermont and live as happily as you were when you were together back in June. -Mom’, inside are the pictures of us from graduation, they’re mostly posed photos, but there’s one candid she took without us realizing, it’s a picture of when we found each other right after the ceremony ended and were embracing and laughing and whispering “I love you” to each other before we went to meet up with our parents.  It’s a photo that captures all the joy we felt before the storm hit. It’s the before, and now we’re living in the after, on the way to our home, together.

Chapter Text

          Due to Francis’ limited finances, and the utter need we both had to get out of Hampden, we decided to move a few weeks after I returned to Vermont. Deciding where to move to was altogether a horrific process, as much as I loved Francis, his particulars when it came to where we would be living were meticulous: we obviously couldn’t live in Boston, the Midwest reminded us all too much of Henry, California was nauseating to him, and I just wanted to get out of Vermont. We ended up in a small apartment in New York City; the prospective job opportunities for us both were highest there, and we found that blending into a big city would be easier than sticking out in a small town like Hampden. 

           Painstakingly packing up our place in Hampden was the hardest thing I’ve ever done; for months we had pushed every awful reminder of that year in the back of our cabinets, cupboards, and drawers. Every closet cleared out unearthed memories of those we’d loved: a collection of Henry’s old clothes left behind on random drunken nights, bottles of Charles’ favorite liquors stashed behind the plates he knew Francis never used, the spare set of clothes Camilla left for the those last months on the nights when Charles was ‘too much’ to be around, and of course, a grim collection of newspapers mentioning Bunny’s death. It was almost too much for us to handle, we spent hours in silence processing, once again, all the harm we had taken part in; it felt as if we didn’t deserve to move on from here. We were the ones to make it out alive, and it didn’t feel at all fair. Yet we continued to move on; we packed every box, we sold the items we couldn’t bear to look at, and we burned the ones that we never wanted to see again. We packed up our entire home, all the good and bad memories, and we finally left. 

          Our apartment in the city boasted tall windows that made the miniscule space feel larger than it actually was, and that let in the cool fall breeze. The floorboards were sporadically loose, causing us to trip over our own feet, and stub our toes while we were moving in. I promised Francis that I would nail and glue each and every loose board down once we were done unpacking. Our walls were eggshell white, and practically begging for photos, art, and fresh paint to cover their bare faces; Francis spent hours debating on what color paint we should use, at first, he mused over the idea of deep and dark color, but after multiple trips to the paint store, at least 15 test bottles, and only one small disagreement, we ended up with a light and cool green, reminiscent of the lake house. Our kitchen was small, but had an oven and stove large enough for Francis to cook his various and extravagant foods; on the drive from Vermont to New York, he told me that while I was gone, he’d taken to cooking increasingly complex foods, both out of a necessity to save money, but also to distract himself for everything he’d been going through. The thought of him cooking alone in order to quell his missing me was almost too much to bear; it made my heart ache in ways I was still uncomfortable with. Our bedroom was the best part of the small space; it had a small balcony that overlooked our small neighborhood, the large sliding glass door and windows let in the light of the city, and subsequently kept out the demons of our past. Something about being able to see the city, and the life it held inside of it, kept out the ghosts that had haunted our sleep since the day Bunny died. We were both able to get jobs fairly easily, I got a job working at a liberal arts high school teaching ancient world literature, while Francis got a job as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum, his years in various boarding schools around the world, and the recognition of the Abernathy name, finally serving a purpose in his life. Occasionally, Francis would tutor some of the students at my school, who showed an accelerated interest and knowledge in their French studies. I had never thought Francis would enjoy being around children but, around the albeit exceedingly intelligent and refined students at my school, he lit up, and would be in an exceptionally bright mood for the rest of the day. I was almost sad that we would never have a child of our own, though I was sure Francis, after how his childhood went, did not feel the same. 

Six months later

          I was teaching my last class of the day when my classroom phone rang, with Francis on the other line, sounding on edge and shaken, I could picture him perfectly: sitting at his small desk in the basement of The Met, rocking on the backs of his chair, fidgeting with the coils of his telephone cord. “Richard, when you come home, you need to clean-”, he started, “France, I’m in the middle of class, could this not wait?” I asked, “Richard”, he said again, “I ran into him. He’s here, in the city”. “Who? Who’s in the city, Francis?”, in a moment of panic I began to speculate that Henry had faked his own death and hid out until he could find us once we had finally let our guard down, but before I could let my mind wander much further, Francis interrupted me, “Julian, Richard. Julian is back”. Oh fuck.

          Though I don’t typically leave immediately after the school day ends, today I left with my students. Before I returned home, I thought enough to grab some flowers, and a bottle of Julian’s favorite wine. Stupidly, I had never finished the conversation with Francis due to a student needing my assistance, but I assumed by his frantic plea to me to clean our already neat apartment, that we would be joined by Julian for dinner tonight. As I frantically picked out the cheapest, yet most acceptable looking flowers, and sped through the wine aisle, I felt comically like my younger self did in those hours leading up to those few, stress filled dinners we used to invite Julian to. I didn’t know how to prepare our home for Julian, the few guests we did have over were close friends and a few of Francis’ cousins who knew of our relationship, so we didn’t hide our relationship away in our home. We had pictures of us framed up on our walls: the photos from graduation, several we didn’t know existed that Camilla had sent Francis upon hearing of our relationship, and a few recent ones taken by a friend at a party a few months ago. It felt wrong to hide these obvious tokens of our relationship away in the coat closet (even the irony was too much for me to handle), so I left them up; if Julian was to come into our home, he would have to see who we really were. I did however vacuum the entire apartment, deep clean the bathroom and kitchen, and wash all of the dishes that had been neglected for a few nights. I was thankful for all the work we did when we had initially moved in here; I have a feeling Julian would have been horrified at the state the floors were in before I painstakingly fixed them. Even after a deep cleaning session, I couldn’t help but pace endlessly around the space, trying to scrutinize every item we own, every corner of the apartment, and trying to find everything that Julian would find wrong with our home. However, when Francis finally made it home, groceries in hand, his excitement for the dinner was evident; gone was the anxiety he’d been initially struck with upon the surprise of seeing Julian, instead, he seemed almost thrilled with the idea of having him in our home. “Did you tell him about us?”, I questioned as he began to tell me about how he’d come across him. Julian had apparently been at The Met for the day, a completely chance encounter, when Francis saw him. Truthfully, I was surprised that Francis had pursued him, he could’ve slipped away and Julian would’ve been none the wiser, yet it occurred to me, that after all the time he’d spent with him, Julian was one of the only constants he’d had in his life. Throughout his childhood Francis had been bounced around schools, nannies, countries, and even parental figures when his mom was in any of her ‘unstable periods’, but up until the day he left, Julian had been there for Francis. “I did, and, don’t be upset, he was not exactly surprised’, Francis said with a sly smile on his face, “Maybe we were the only ones who couldn’t tell that we were hopelessly in love”, he joked. I suppose he may be correct in his assumption. 

          Julian arrived at exactly seven o’clock. For the past two years, I had often imagined about what he was doing, where he escaped to, but I mostly spent my time wondering if he had left because he was truly angry with us, or because he was aware that he was very likely the cause of our situation. I forgot what he looked like, I forgot that he was shorter than I was, I forgot that his hair was the shade of gray that you only seen on the men of academia, I forgot that he dressed exactly like Henry (or possibly Henry dressed exactly like him); in short, I forgot that it was his somewhat peculiar and refined look that had initially drawn me to him. I don’t think I ever cared for his personality much; he was, no, he is a brash man, who always believed he was better than his fellow man, and he never took responsibility for any of the actions that were ignited by the sparks he lit in his students. I didn’t even consider until now that we were not the only people he must’ve run from when things got difficult: his professional resume is proof of a man constantly on the run. Despite all of this, possibly because of all this, I still found that I loved him. Or it may not have been love that I felt towards him, but an intense need to worship him; maybe, love and worship go hand in hand. 

         We did not discuss our time at Hampden (both with and without Julian) over dinner; instead, we told him how we had fallen in love, we told him about our life together in the city, we told him of our jobs; we had inadvertently reverted to our younger selves, trying to impress him with the detail of our life, while hiding all of the horrible bits out of his view. He told us how he had temporarily moved to a village in Germany, and how he was granted a teaching position in the classics department at a university close to where he lived. He had only been in the city for a few days before Francis ran into him, he was visiting an old, dying colleague who was in a hospice facility near Central Park; he was looking forward to inheriting his large collection of ancient text reproductions. It’s entirely possible that he only came to collect said collection, from the way Julian spoke of his colleague’s condition, it appeared as if he was fighting to stay alive longer than Julian had anticipated. He did not ask of the others, for a while, Francis and I believed that he had told Henry where he had gone, and that possibly, considering he had the grim foresight to leave his car to me, that he had sent Julian some type of suicide letter. It had always been clear that Henry was Julian’s pride and joy, I was truthfully somewhat surprised that he remembered who I was. Maybe he wouldn’t have even recognized me without the connection to Francis who had the connection to Henry; everything always led back to Henry. 

          He didn’t stay long, which was probably for the better; the longer the conversation went on, the more I saw Francis’ hope and admiration dwindle. Not once the entire night did Julian ask how we were after he left; he didn’t care that his leaving made everything so much worse, he didn’t care that the utter disappointment that he expressed in Henry led him to his suicide. Julian didn’t care that his leaving destroyed us; he left us when we were most vulnerable, when we could’ve used his calming guidance to help us recover from the trauma we’d endured and put us through. We were just another one of his little educational experiments that had taken a turn for the absolute worse, and he was too much of a coward to stay and face the students he’d failed. We had worshiped him, and he felt completely indifferent to all of us but Henry.

           When the door finally closed behind him, when we said our goodbyes for what was likely the last time, Francis fell into my arms. He was not sad exactly, but he was hurt; in some fucked up way, Julian was like a father to him, and though he’d been grappling with the idea of losing him for quite some time, tonight, the last string that tied us to him had been cut. Julian had left us the address to his home in Germany, but we wouldn’t need it, we’d offer it to Camilla and maybe even Charles, but we didn’t need Julian anymore. We didn’t need to prove ourselves to a higher figure anymore; I didn’t need to seek approval from my father, Francis didn’t need to conform to his Grandfather’s standards, and neither of us needed to be the astute academics that Julian looks so highly upon. We were thrilled with our life, I loved the simplicity of being ‘just’ a high school teacher, I didn’t need to be a notorious professor like Julian. Francis loved assisting with creating and inspiring the exhibits at The Met, and he even loved working with the few students he tutored; he did not need to create a facade of a man that did not exist. We loved our small apartment that never completely darkened no matter the night; we loved falling into bed, side-by-side every night, knowing that the nightmares couldn’t reach us in our little corner of the city. We were okay now, and that was enough.

Chapter Text

          Camilla came to visit us for the first time since Hampden. After the six months Francis and I spent apart, we began to talk to her more often; at first, the letters we had been exchanging turned to somewhat sporadic phone calls. Charles had completed his time in rehab and he was remaining sober; though she didn’t confirm it in so many words, we were fairly sure that their ‘other relationship’ had completely stopped- none of us were keen to bring it up, but when she told us that they’d be living together with their grandmother, we had expressed some concern after what had happened during our time at school, and she assured us that they weren’t like that anymore, we just had to believe her. The sporadic phone calls that were typically only between Camilla and Francis, with only a few words said on my part turned to weekly calls between us all; Camilla seemed really happy for us, that Francis and I found our way to each other, and that we were so much better because of it. Camilla hadn’t seen anyone herself since Henry, we occasionally wondered what those last words he whispered to her were, but we knew that he was truly the only person she would ever love like that. Henry would probably hate the very idea, but if soulmates existed, Henry and Camilla were made for each other; despite all the awful things he did, he protected her fiercely when she needed it most. Henry had saved Camilla when nobody else could. Nonetheless, several months ago, their grandmother had passed away, and Camilla had no reason that she couldn’t travel away from her anymore; Charles was off with some job and his own apartment, and Camilla could finally come see us after over two years apart. 

          Francis was ecstatic for her arrival. Up until everyone left, Camilla and Francis had always had the closest friendship in the group; in many ways, they were more like siblings then Charles and Camilla had ever been with each other. Before I came along, and before we fell in love, Camilla was Francis’ only real support at Hampden; Henry was cold to everyone but her, he and Charles had a complicated relationship, and Bunny was Bunny. I remember all the nights at the country house where Camilla and Francis would end up collapsed onto each other on a couch, books in hand, in an almost child-like tangle of limbs. The week leading up to her arrival, Francis was on a high I had never seen before; he cleaned every inch of our apartment, he finally set up the guest room, with extra attention to linens and decor that he knew she’d enjoy, and he stocked the refrigerator and pantry with all of her favorite foods. Francis had every detail of her flight memorized, and had practiced the taxi ride to the airport twice to make sure he wouldn’t arrive late to pick her up. In fewer words, Francis was ready to see his Millie again. 

          The day she arrived, I had my last day of work for the school year, and would be meeting them at the apartment after the school day ended. Though I was not quite as excited as Francis, I too was eager to see Camilla again. I left work as soon as I could, and only made one stop on the way home to buy her some flowers for her room; I initially grabbed roses, then thought better on it, and ended up with a lavender bouquet instead. When I finally made it home, a bit exhausted from the last day of school shenanigans and stressors, I opened the door, and there she was. 

         Camilla was there, and she was exactly the same, and entirely different all at once. “Camilla!”, I laughed as her face took me in, and she sprang up to hug me. Camilla held onto me like she was afraid I would evaporate into thin air, she held on for so long that I had come to the realization that I didn’t think I had ever hugged her before. None of us in the group were very touchy with one another beside Camilla and Francis, and Camilla and I weren’t even entirely close the last time I saw her, but I supposed that didn’t quite matter anymore. When we separated, I took a moment just to look at her; gone were the remaining hints of adolescence she held in her face just a few years prior. Her hair was the same dusty blonde, but it was longer- she didn’t keep it in the same boyish cut I once knew. She was wearing a simple white dress, and she smiled in the exact same way she did in those simpler days before everything was so awful. 

          For a while, we all just sat in our small living room and talked; Camilla’s face as she saw how Francis and I cuddled close together on the couch had Francis confused, and me trying to hide a laugh in an effort to save his feelings. “Camilla, what’s that face for?” he prodded, “Nothing, nothing, it’s just I didn’t entirely believe until now that you were actually together”, she said as she looked at me with a sly smile. And so we finally told her the full story of how we fell in love- she was the first person we’ve ever told the details to, our friends just knew that we met at school, and Julian didn’t seem to care about the details. I spoke about my students, and Francis romanticized his job, and told her about one of his favorite students of mine he tutored. She told us about the used bookstore she had taken over running last year, and about her Grandmother’s final months. She didn’t talk much about Charles, they had grown apart while he was in rehab, and it didn’t sound like they saw much of each other in the past year; the last time she had seen him was at their Grandmother’s funeral. 

          After talking for several hours, we decided it would be easier to eat dinner out that night- Francis and I rarely ate out these days in efforts to save money, so it would be a nice treat for us all. We ended up at a small Italian restaurant a few blocks away from our apartment, a small family run place that had the best marinara sauce I’ve ever had. I had feared that a special meal out would feel too much like our meals together in Hampden, but I had nothing to be afraid of; we could be together again and not be the same people we were two years ago. 

          When we got home, I turned in early for the night. Despite wanting to spend more time with Camilla, I was exhausted from work, and I could sense that Francis wanted her for himself for a while. I showered, stole a kiss from Francis, and escaped to our room to read for a bit until I fell asleep. As I was blearily attempting to finish the chapter I was on, I could vaguely hear Francis and Camilla’s conversation in the living room; I could picture them perfectly: Francis sprawled out on the couch, Camilla tucked into the crook of his arm, both with a cup of tea (but they would soon switch over to wine or whiskey). Most of what they said was incomprehensible, but as I drifted to sleep, I caught Francis say in an almost pained voice, “ how do I tell him I want something I know he doesn’t want, and we can’t have”. 

          Camilla’s trip to New York passed in the blink of an eye. We used our time as hosts as an excuse to finally explore the city: we went to the Met where Francis showed us every exhibit he’d worked on, we walked the entirety of Central Park, and we even got some cheap tickets to see A Chorus Line on Broadway. The week was truly wonderful, and as happy and content as Francis and I were being together, having her out to visit had brought out a childlike joy in Francis I hadn’t really witnessed before. He was so genuinely happy with her that I almost felt jealous, but my joy for him outweighed any pangs of jealousy I might have felt. Every night I feigned fatigue to go to bed early so that they could have some alone time to talk at the end of each day; back when we would go to the country home, they would spend every night like this, and I could tell they missed it. Up until Camilla’s last night with us, I hadn’t caught anymore of their conversations past what I heard that first night, but not only was I not that tired on the last night, but they were talking louder than they usually did. “Camilla, you don’t understand, he’s never once mentioned wanting a family, his parents were just awful to him, he wouldn’t want to do that to someone”, Francis cried to her. If I was hearing correctly, Francis Abernathy was crying about not having a family with me. It’s not that I never wanted a family of my own, up until I got together with Francis, I had just assumed it would be something that would eventually happen in my life, but I wasn’t dead-set on having one (or not having one, for that matter), but I was fairly certain Francis would be repulsed by the idea given his upbringing. But then I thought back to the fleeting moments we spent with the Corcoran baby, and I thought about how much he enjoyed working with some of my students. Oh. “Oh Francis,” I heard Camilla as she comforted him, “I think that he would do just about anything for you, he always has from the moment you two met, you could at least talk to him about it, and see how he feels?”. “Millie, even if he… felt the same, we’re two men. It’s just… It’s not anything we could ever have”, I recalled watching him work with my students sometime last year and coming to the same conclusion before I let myself think of all of the ‘what ifs?’ . Was this actually something I had wanted, but pushed away before I let myself really realize it? Before I could let myself think much more, I heard Camilla’s response, “Franics, if this is something that you two both really wanted in your lives, I would- I could help you. You know I would help you” . 

          Camilla left around noon the next day, as we saw her off at the airport, I saw her hold Francis close and whisper something in his ear before she pulled away; the airport was too loud to hear what it was, but it left them both crying. The subway ride home and the subsequent afternoon were fairly silent; Francis and I were both sad to see Camilla go, but I knew what he was thinking about, I just didn’t know how to bring it up without making it seem like I was eavesdropping on every one of their conversations. We laid in bed for a long while that night reading; Francis seemed content in his book, but I just couldn’t focus on anything until I brought it up. I closed my book, and turned to him until he noticed me staring at him, “Jesus Richard, you scared me. What’s wrong?”, “Francis I- I heard you talking to Camilla last night. I couldn’t sleep, and you were honestly talking a bit loud, and I just- I couldn’t help but overhear what you two were talking about”, he looked horrified at me, “No you don’t have to Richard, it was- it was just a stupid thing I brought up and Camilla kept wanting to talk about it and I know you don’t want-”, I stopped him before he could begin to spiral more than he already was, “Francis. It’s not stupid. I think It’s something I want too”. He looked stunned, “Wait what”, he said, “you’re not just trying to calm me down are you? Richard I can handle it if you don’t want a family, just don’t lie to protect me.”, I turned to grab his trembling hands in my own, “Francis, I would love to have a family with you”, I said as tears began to pool in his eyes, and he fell into me almost as if he’d been shot. I hadn’t realized until then how much this had to have been haunting his mind. We sat there for a while, Francis in my arms, talking about this family that we had both seemingly been wanting. He told me how he didn’t think he actually wanted a child until he had fallen in love with me, how watching me with my students, and then working with a few of his own, had led him to imagine what it would be like to have one of our own. I told him how I could imagine spending Saturday afternoons as a family having picnics, and exploring the various parks of the city. We talked about Camilla’s offer, and how it would be difficult to be gay dads; we talked about a future where we spend the rest of our lives together, and how we wouldn’t want it any other way. After hours of fantasizing over our future, we eventually fell asleep knowing that the conversation we just had would completely alter the trajectory of our lives.

Chapter Text

          We didn’t talk about it much after that night; after all, I was only 23 and he was 24, we were poor, and our relationship was still in its own infancy. Yet, life went on; that summer was blisteringly hot, we spent a few days at a hotel on a beach in Rockaway, where I tanned to the complexion I once had during the summers of my youth, and Francis’ face freckled like the constellations in the night sky. The next school year began, and Francis took up a more consistent role as a French tutor, now for any student who needed help, not just the ones he found interesting. That winter, we returned to the country home to spend the holidays with Camilla, and we rang in the new year together. Spring came, and while the city sprang to life and bloomed with flowers, we thought of Bunny and lit a candle in his memory at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We knew there was no redemption to what we had done, but we tried, however we could, to find peace. Summer came once again, my tanned skin and his constellation painted face, and the cycle continued year after year, and we were happy. 

… four years later…

          Francis and I had been together for five or so years; besides the months following graduation, our life together had been full of more joy, comfort, and love than either of us probably deserved. Ever since the flight from California to Vermont in ‘85, I had worn the ring he’d bought me proudly on my left ring finger. I remember joking with him when he first presented it to me, that he and I were getting married, “not yet Papen”, he’d said, not yet . 

          But we had been together for five years, we were stable in our relationship and our jobs, and I knew that I would never love anyone as much as I loved him. Francis was it for me, and I knew that I was it for him too. Because of what we had been through together, we honestly couldn’t end up with anyone else even if we wanted to. But I didn’t want to spend my life with anyone else but him; I wanted to marry Francis Abernathy. I knew it wasn’t legal, it might never be, but abiding by legalities had never truly been our style. I could honestly imagine it all before I even asked him: us, our respective friends from work who knew about us, a few of Francis’ cousins we’d taken to spending time with, and of course, Camilla. 

          The ring he’d gotten for me was a simple gold band with the engraving, Philtatos, I knew I wanted something similar for him, too. I spent weeks on the endeavor; I snuck away a ring of his to be sized, then tried desperately to find something to have engraved on the inside that was just as perfect as he’d had done for me. I agonized over the decision, love felt too simple, while my love didn’t quite capture just how much he meant to me. I tried to scour our past to find something that could capture how much I loved him in just a word or two. Cubitum eamus was too on the nose, and I honestly wanted nothing that would remind either of us of Hampden, yet I practically tore apart our apartment looking for something that would work; I even went through every one of my journals from the past years, and found nothing that felt right. After almost conceding to the simple love (only, whatever I chose I would translate to latin), I found the letter I wrote to him during our time apart begging him to come home. Home. He was my home, and he would be my home for the rest of my life if he’d let me. I’d begged him ‘ veni domun’ in that letter, and he did, he came home. Domus meus, my home.

          The ring was ready a few weeks later, the timing coincidentally lining up with the anniversary of when he’d come home to me in California. I wasn’t sure how I was going to propose; in all honesty, I was considering doing it over dinner that night. I knew we couldn’t have a public proposal (not that either of us would enjoy that in the first place), but I wanted it to still be special somehow. When I came home with the ring, shiny gold in a small blue velvet box, I hid it in the nightstand of our guest room, and waited anxiously for him to come home.

         Francis only came home an hour or so after I had, he came in the door, set his bag and shoes by the door, and came to find me grading papers on the couch. “Hello love”, he said in the same sweet voice I’d come to love over the past years, as he sat down and pulled me into a kiss. Though this routine was completely normal for us: joining on our couch after our long days of work before deciding what to do about dinner for the night, that day, with the ring waiting in the other room, his soft smile and disheveled hair, and the way he leaned into me and we sat for a moment in silence, it all felt so right. Francis suggested that we have roasted asparagus and pan fried salmon for dinner, and I was so busy thinking about how to propose (and that I was actually going to do it) that I just went along with whatever he wanted. Francis was still the better cook between us, especially when it came to fish, so I let him take the lead on dinner, but I helped prepare the asparagus, set our little table, pour two glasses of wine, and I even thought of lighting some candles too (if the candles gave away that I was up to something, Francis was kind enough to not say anything). I slipped into the guest room to grab the ring, and waited with him in the kitchen as he finished preparing dinner. I wondered if he could tell that I was acting off, I’m sure that I was probably a nervous wreck, but I just waited patiently as he told me about his day at work, and replied only when strictly necessary so that he couldn’t hear the waver in my voice. 

          We finally sat down to eat, and he looked me up and down, taking in the candles, my nervous face, and my unwavering eye contact, and he shook his head and laughed quietly, “Hey, love. What’s going on?”, he asked with that knowing look in his eyes. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to eat with him looking at me like that, and with the ring weighing down my pocket like a ton of bricks; I took a final deep breath, slid out of my chair, and onto one knee in front of him. I wished I could’ve captured the look in his face at that exact moment: he’d known something was on my mind, but the pure look of shock and love on his face is something I know I’ll remember until the day I die. “Francis”, I whispered through a wavering voice, “I’ve read all the great love stories, the tragedies, the comedies, and every one between, and not a single one has prepared me for what to say to you now. You know that from the day I first met you, I began to fall in love with you. I didn’t know it at the time, and maybe you didn’t either,  but I truly believe now that I was in love with you from the moment I laid my eyes on you. You have taught me more about myself than I ever knew there was to learn. I have loved you through every single awful thing we’ve been through together, and I’ve been in love with you through all the wonderful things too. These past five years have been the happiest years of my life. I want to grow old with you Francis, I want to have a family with you, I want to spend every second of the rest of my life with you. I cannot imagine my life any other way than with you.”, I said through tears, as I stared into the crying eyes of the love of my life, “Franics, will you marry me?”. Then, as he choked on a sob and fell into my arms, he replied, “Yes Richard, yes I’ll marry you. I love you.”. I grabbed his face and kissed him until we were both laughing and overwhelmed with joy. We were going to get married. I was going to marry Francis Abernathy.

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          We did not have a large wedding, after all, due to the nature of our relationship, we would not be legally married, and we would not have been able to afford a large, gaudy wedding even if we had wanted one.

          Our wedding took place the summer after I proposed, at the country home, of all places. We had spent many of our holidays and vacations back at the home over the past several years, and had replaced so many of the awful memories we once associated with the place with some that were much more fond. Besides the obvious benefit of owning the ‘venue’, it provided the privacy that we craved for our wedding day. As for those in attendance, there was my mother, alone as my father refused to attend. Francis’ mother was also there; where his grandfather had been horrified at his homosexuality, his mother had ‘always known’ and supported us despite her father’s views. There were a few of Francis and my coworkers, as well as a few of his rebellious cousins. And of course, there was Camilla, who had also agreed to officiate for us. The ceremony itself was short; we went through an atheistic and altered version of the typical American wedding. We exchanged pre written vows in front of our guests, but we would exchange our real vows later that night, after dinner. We exchanged rings once again, matching bands that we had saved up for: gold, slightly thinner than our respective engagement rings, each with a small, matching diamond set smoothly into the band. Camilla pronounced us husbands, and we shared a somewhat brief kiss, as we both found ourselves crying, overwhelmed with emotions. After the ceremony, we went inside to enjoy an early dinner with our guests; neither of us wanted to have a large reception, with Francis anxious in any party-like environment, and my distaste of dancing, it brought us both the most comfort to condense our reception to just a dinner. 

          Once the dinner was over, and our guests had left, leaving us with their congratulations, it was finally just Francis and I. We found that we couldn’t decide what to do with ourselves now that we were husbands, in fact, we spent those first few fleeting moments alone, embraced with one another in complete and utter silence. After what was either a few seconds, minutes, or hours spent in each other's arms, I pulled away slightly, asking, “Would you like to exchange our vows now?”. “I would love to”, he said into my neck, where his head still rested. 

          We decided earlier that day that Francis would go first, as I had been the one to claim many of the ‘firsts’ in our relationship thus far. “Richard”, he began, “I fell in love with you the very first day I met you, but then I never could have imagined us here today. I thought I was forever destined to love you unrequitedly, that I would have to spend the rest of my life thinking about the beautiful boy from college that broke my heart without even knowing it. I never thought that I would be able to have a life like this, a life where I am truly, completely happy, but you showed me that I could. You have given me the life I never believed I could have, and I promise to give you the best possible life that I can create for you. I love you. I completely and utterly love you, Richard.” he finished, and I immediately pulled him into a deep and longing kiss, and, after several minutes, once we broke apart, he whispered, “your turn”. I pulled out the small sheet of loose leaf paper I had written my vows on, and spoke in as steady of a voice as I could muster, “Francis, loving people never came easy to me before I met you; I spent my childhood lonely and detached from my parents, and I don’t think I ever truly loved any of my friends. Loving you? Loving you is easy. Loving you feels like stepping outside after a rainstorm has passed; it feels like one of those warm nights in California, where the sky was clear and I could lay and stare at the stars for hours. Loving you feels like I’ve been saved- from what, I’m not sure of, but I feel saved nonetheless. Loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done, and I will forever be grateful that you came into my life. I loved you before, I love you know, and I promise that I will love you for the rest of my life.”.

         After we traded vows, we curled up on the couch, like we did almost every night, and we split a bottle of champagne between the two of us. We eventually made our way to our bedroom, the very one Francis used to sleep alone in all those years ago, and, once again, matters progressed.  

         I’ll be the first to admit that life after getting married was not much different than life before, in fact the only real change we experienced was that we called each other our husband. We went on with life, with our annual trip to Rockaway (only this year we extended the trip and used it as a honeymoon), and in September, the new school year began, and we fell back into our comfortable, domestic routine. 

         The most major change we went through however, happened in November, a year to the day since I had proposed. Over the year, Francis and I had discussed the matter extensively, weighing the pros and cons constantly, until we finally made a decision. We considered the eventual addition of a child, as well as the fact that legally, there was no proof that we were together, or that we were a family. We both yearned for a way to show that we were husbands other than our rings. We felt that we needed a way for someone to see either of our names and remember that we shared it with another person. In short, we decided to change our names, and, after the paperwork finally went through, that was how I came to be Richard Abernathy-Papen, husband to Francis Abernathy-Papen.

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         November had frozen into December, Christmas had come and gone without much fanfare, and I was anticipating a mellow New Year's Eve. Francis and I had left the country home on the 29th, and I had spent the few days in between then and now (now being New Year’s Eve) relaxing at home, grading midterm papers by the fireplace, while Francis had been at work. The Met was open today, but Francis would still be home in time with more than enough time to spare before midnight, even with all the commotion in the streets in anticipation of tonight’s events. 

          Francis, true to his typical form, burst through the front door just after 6:00. I had been reading on the couch peacefully, after finally finishing grading the last of the midterm papers, but with snowflakes still dusted through his fiery red hair, his nose, face, and fingers red from the cold, and the way his flustered face softened upon seeing me, I couldn’t find it in myself to get irritated at his disturbing my peace. “It’s too fucking cold out there”, he said as he strode to the couch, “You know”, I started as I set down my book, knowing there was no use in pretending that I’d get back to it anytime soon, “you would probably be less cold if you’d, oh I don’t know, wear a hat, or even, god forbid , a coat made for the snow.”, “And hide these good looks? Absolutely not.”, he laughed as he came to cuddle up next to me, inevitably planning to steal the warmth from my body. “Hi love.” he breathed out once he’d fit his body next to mine, “did you finish grading those tests yet? I was hoping I could steal you to the kitchen to help me with dinner tonight”. We’d spent the last few nights eating takeout and leftovers, between the post Christmas haze and my non-stop grading, we hadn’t had the time or energy to cook a real meal. “If you insist”, I said as I grabbed his hands into mine, trying to bring them to a more acceptable temperature. 

         We ended up making a garlic and herb filled focaccia with roasted chicken and carrots for dinner. It was one of our favorite meals these days; it was easy enough to make on a weeknight, but required just enough work that we were ‘forced’ to make it together. As we sat down around two hours later to eat, I was suddenly struck with a wave of gratitude for the life I had. This wasn’t exactly an uncommon occurrence for me: to suddenly become keenly aware how lucky I was to get to love and be loved by Francis, and how thankful and glad I was to spend my life with him. The way it would hit me would put me at a loss for words, I loved him so much that I couldn’t quite process it properly. Francis, likely noticing the odd look on my face (I often wonder what I look like in these moments), stopped chewing, and, in a very un-Francis like manner, spoke with his mouth full of food, “What?”. “ Nothing” , I replied in my best attempt to mock the sing-songy voice he used way back on that day when we spoke for the first time. “Rich, come on, what? Do I have food on my face? Did I miss a spot shaving? What is it”, he said, starting to get irritated, “Nothing France. It’s just- I just- I just really love you.” I stammered. “You,” he said as his face blushed to a bright pink, and he pointed his fork at me, “are an idiot. And I love you very, very much too.”. It was the moments like these, the ones where Francis (and myself too, I suppose) just got to be completely himself, without having to worry about being judged, where I loved him the most. Of course I loved him constantly, but the little moments I knew only I got to see, I treasured the most. 

          We never stayed up late like we used to in college, but we of course stayed up to bring in the New Year. Francis certainly wasn’t one for parties, and I wasn’t particularly keen on them either, but it was still fun to watch the fireworks from our balcony, drink champagne, and listen to the radio just the two of us. We both read for a bit, but Francis was antsy (or at least antsier than usual) and I couldn’t focus with him constantly picking his book up and putting it down, and the incessant tapping of his foot. Usually I wouldn’t say anything about it; it would cause an unnecessary fight over something he couldn’t control, and I could focus past, but the champagne had me feeling bold. Apparently, it was giving Francis the same boldness it was giving me, because just as I was getting ready to say something about his fidgeting, he stood up, then immediately sat back down, bore his eyes directly into mine and blurted out, “I want to have the baby this year”. 

         We spent the rest of the night talking about ‘the baby’ ; immediately after Francis had said he was ready, I had immediately agreed. We talked about what they would look like. I imagined a child with his soft and wild curls, while he pictured one with the freckled face I bore throughout my childhood. Francis spoke of having a little girl to dote on, while I thought of a little boy who I could toss a ball around with at the park, while Francis soaked in the sun. We excited ourselves over the thought of taking them to the country home to spend their summers out in nature, we pictured what room we would make theirs (mine, obviously), and how we would replace some of the old books in the library with children’s picture books. Francis said he would want to teach them how to play the piano, how he would take them to work with him, and how he would teach them French by the age of five. I told him how I would read to them every night, how we could invent stories together, and how they would be reading chapter books long before their peers. Eventually, we wore ourselves out talking about this magical, hypothetical, child, and we realized we had completely missed the ringing in of the new year. At one or so in the morning, Francis dragged me to bed, and we slept in each other's arms, dreaming of the future.

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          Francis and I called Camilla the following day; we knew this process would likely be long, and we wanted to be sure that Camilla would still agree to help us before we got our hopes up too much. As soon as Francis started to hint at what we were hoping to ask, Camilla cut him off to give us her answer, which of course was, “Yes”. We spent the call discussing the more technical parts of what this arrangement would mean for us all; Camilla never wanted children of her own, but would love to act as an aunt to our child. We agreed that she would forgo her parental rights to one of us, and we could look into the possibility of the other one to gain parental rights through adoption. We would obviously pay for any expenses that she would face, and she would be able to live with us and handle the business side of her bookstore from afar until the baby was born. She wanted to begin the process soon, and suggested she discuss how to start with her doctor, and would come down to visit us come February. To say Francis and I were ecstatic after the phone call would be an understatement; this, a family, would truly be ours. It was never something that either of us had ever imagined we could actually have, and here we were, planning to have a baby in our arms by the end of the year. The very thought of it terrified and excited us all at once, and we couldn’t be happier. 

          In the midst of the happiness we’d been enveloped in for weeks, Francis received a call that we truly did not expect: his grandfather had died of a heart attack several weeks prior, and at the reading of his will, it was found that not only was Francis never taken out of it, but a large majority of his grandfather’s estate had been left to him. He supposed that his grandfather, only having one child whom he clearly didn’t trust, had made the decision over a decade ago that when he died, his money would go to his responsible, worldly, and wise grandson. Maybe he forgot after Francis’ coming out that he had left so much to his grandson, but how could he? Was it possible that although he absolutely did not agree with the way that Francis chose to live his life, that he knew that leaving him the money was the only way to keep the Abernathy name in the good graces of reputation and respect? We would never know why he kept Francis in his will, but we did know that it would change things considerably for how we would be able to raise our family. It wasn’t that our child would live a life of squalor if we hadn’t inherited the money; we both had jobs that would be more than enough to give our child a fulfilling and happy life, but with this money, we could do so much more than we’d ever expected we could. 

          The first thing we agreed to do with the (truly absurd) amount of money we’d been given was to find a new place to live; the one main asset that had not been left to Francis was his grandfather’s old home in Boston, but it wasn’t like we would’ve left the city if it had been. We wanted to move to a home that we could spend the rest of our lives in, that preferably had more than the one extra room we already had. We ended up in a beautiful three floor brownstone closer to both the museum and my school. It was the largest home I’d ever lived in: it boasted six bedrooms, a large and bright kitchen with a door that led to a small yard. The master bedroom was on a floor all to itself, had a balcony large enough to place two chairs and a small table on, and had a master bathroom with a tub big enough for us both. It was truly magical. We spent days and days picking out paint colors for all the rooms (except the room we planned on turning into a nursery), buying furniture to furnish all the space we couldn’t with the quaint furniture from our apartment, and decorating all the empty walls. Though I would’ve been content living out my entire life with Francis anywhere, I felt an immeasurable amount of joy that I would get to spend the rest of my life with him in this home. 

          We’d just barely moved into the new house when Camilla came to visit; in fact, the day before she arrived we’d scrambled to get her bedroom presentable enough for her to stay (with a promise to finish by the time she came to stay for her impending pregnancy). She’d arrived with the news that she’d begun hormone therapy and that she and the ‘father’ would have to attend an appointment in a week and a half for the first attempt. After lengthy discussions on who should be the donor, we’d decided that we would alternate until one took, and Francis would go first. Camilla left after several days, and Francis followed behind her a week later. Dropping Francis off at the airport knowing that when he returned, our lives could have been changed irrevocably filled me with such a nervous energy that I began to cry. He had to wipe the tears from my face telling me, “We’re going to be perfect Richard. I’m going to be home soon, and no matter what happens next, we’ll be in this together. I love you”, he left me with a hug and a chaste kiss and I was back on a train and home before I knew it. 

          Francis came home several days later, and we began the agonizing three week wait. We had previously decided that we wouldn’t talk to Camilla before we knew either way, as to not get any of our hopes up. The three weeks passed in slow, quiet, agony. Francis and I remained peacefully optimistic, finding that we didn’t discuss whether or not it ‘took’ nearly as much as I’d anticipated: truthfully, we didn’t want to jinx the possibility that in those fleeting moments, Camilla may have been pregnant. Finally, after 20 long days, we received a call late in the afternoon. Francis with his neurotic phone tendencies ran to answer the phone, “Hello?” he said in the mature voice he tended to use on the phone, and before I could ask him who it was, I saw his beautiful green eyes flood with tears as he cried out, “Oh Millie thank you, thank you, thank you. Yes I’ll tell him. Okay, we’ll see you soon. I love you”, and he set the phone back down. I stared at him questioningly, and suddenly he was in my arms crying, “It worked Richard, it worked. We’re going to be dads”. I joined him in broken, joyful sobs, and we held each other, shook, and laughed.

          Camilla came a week after she received the news, suitcases packed, and ready to settle into life with us for the next nine months. She’d already made the first appointment with a doctor we knew of in the city, who we’d been told worked with parents like us. We found that in the city, though there obviously wasn’t an outpouring of gay families, that they were out there, and that we wouldn’t be alone. 

          In truth, we should’ve seen it coming, and maybe we were foolish to not consider it. However, at the first prenatal appointment, with all three of us in that tiny room, with the doctor coming in to review Camilla’s medical charts, with her promise to try and get us to hear the heartbeat (though it may have still been too early to do so), with all that we had going through our minds, and with the whooshing beat of our baby’s heartbeat suddenly filling the quiet air, we were shocked when the doctor pulled us to our senses to tell us that she found a second heartbeat. 

          At the end of the day, who could we blame but ourselves for ignoring that one, vital calculation in this arrangement but ourselves. We were ecstatic, yes, we would love both of these babies with our entire hearts, but we had only planned for one. Perhaps, I tried reasoning, that we could not be blamed for not realizing that twins were genetic, after all we exclusively studied classics, yet both Francis and Camilla laughed accusingly at me as I was the only one who’d ever been pre-med in college. We were now properly frightened, and thoroughly overjoyed, and, as Camilla so kindly pointed out, we’d be completing our family all in one go around.

Chapter Text

          What to tell you of Camilla’s pregnancy? While I spent my days at work, Francis had decided to begin to transform one of our spare bedrooms into an office so he could primarily work from home to care for Camilla, and eventually, the babies. He would still need to go into the museum at least once a week, but, as all of his workload now surrounded the planning and research for exhibits, he could just as easily complete his work at home and come in only when he needed to attend meetings, oversee the installation of a new project, or drop off and pick up materials. 

          Despite Francis’ hatred for being around sickness, he was with Camilla whenever she needed him those first few months; he was there to hold back her hair while she was sick, he took her to every single appointment, he researched everything she was going through, and helped her to feel as good as she could given the circumstances. He cooked and bought her every craving, and made sure she was getting all the nutrients she needed for the babies. In short, he doted on her every need without a moment’s hesitation. 

          In early May, we decided that we should get a car again; we had gotten on just fine without one, but with Camilla soon to be heavily pregnant, and the impending arrival of the twins, we knew we couldn’t get by with just the trains for much longer. With the car, came the torturous experience of purchasing car seats. I knew that Francis wanted more than anything for our children to be safe and well cared for, but through the agonizing weeks of researching the safest, easiest to install, and seemingly endless trips to various baby stores to find the seats he’d decided on, we ended up with two, plaid blue contraptions from Fisher Price, that would also clip into a tandem stroller. When we came home with the seats and the stroller, Francis wanted to open them up and have me build the stroller, ‘just in case’. While I was working on the stroller, which ended up taking me, Francis, and Camilla, over 3 hours to actually assemble, Francis suggested we tell our parents about the babies. He spoke to his mother on occasion, and I called my mom every few months to check in on her; in truth, I was terrified to tell her that we were starting a family together. With how my childhood went, and the overall lack of attention she tended to pay to me as a child, I wasn’t sure if she’d be happy for me. Yet, I was due to call her soon anyways, and I figured if, in several months time, if she heard a baby crying somewhere in the background of my call, she’d have questions. 

         A couple days later I decided to give her the call with the news. To say I was dreading the call would be a bit of an overstatement, but not by much; while the phone was ringing, I was almost hoping that it would go unanswered, but before I knew it, there was her voice on the line,

“Hello?”. 

“Hi mom. It’s me”,

“Oh Richard! I’ve been meaning to call you for weeks now”, she said before I could start to explain why I was calling. “How are you? I feel like I haven’t heard from you in ages; are you still living with Francis?”, I chuckled softly, still after all these years, I was not used to her knowing of, and supporting, my relationship with Francis.

“I’m good mom. I’m actually really good. Look, I wanted to uh- to tell you some really good news actually”. I took a deep breath while she remained ominously silent on the other end, “So Francis and I still see one of our old friends from school, Camilla. I think I’ve mentioned her to you before, and a couple of years ago she offered something to Francis and I that we decided to accept this year. There’s really no easy or simple way to explain everything, but Camilla is having a baby for us. Francis and I are going to be dads. Also, it’s twins”. Silence. Pure silence took over the line. As I sat there, trying to decide if I should put the phone back on the receiver, I heard a soft cry on the other side, “Mom?” I asked tentatively,

“Oh Richard”, she said sweetly, “I’m so happy for you”. We spoke for a while longer after I told her the news; she asked if she could come visit around the holidays this year, after the babies had been born and we’d settled in, and surprising myself, I told her I would love nothing more. 

          It was mid June when we would finally get to learn what we were having; I was convinced they were two boys, and Francis and Camilla thought that there were two girls. Luckily, I was finally off work for the summer, and I was able to make it to the anatomy scan appointment. I’d been to a few of Camilla’s appointments, but I’d missed most of them up until this point. While I was anxious the entire time, fidgeting, asking if things were looking okay and normal, and stressing out when the doctor had a bit of trouble finding one of the baby’s heartbeats, “That’s baby b”, Francis had said, “they’re always moving and trying to hide from the doctor” , Francis had been calm and confidant the entire appointment. I’d noticed in the past few months, now that Francis suddenly had these two little lives he was charged with taking care of, that he’d lost so much of his anxious and tense air, and had become much more himself in ways he used to only be around me. It made me so proud to see how much he’d changed. Once we’d almost hit the one hour mark of the appointment, the doctor asked if we wanted to know the gender of the babies, we (of course), said we would love to know, and after a bit more arrangement of the ultrasound wand (baby b really did move a lot), and a couple last pictures, the doctor told us that baby a, our calm and mellow baby was a boy, and baby b, our wiggly and energetic baby was a girl. We were over the moon with joy. 

          At the beginning of Camilla’s third trimester, we set up the nursery. The babies would, of course, sleep in our room for a while, but they would still need a room nonetheless. We painted the walls a light yellow, and all the furniture was white; we painstakingly stamped little ducks around the room in all different colors, and Francis took to organizing the obscene amount of clothes, diapers, and baby blankets we’d accumulated over the past few months. We decided to put a rocking chair in the nursery, and one in our room, and we stashed diaper changing stations on every floor of the house, and by the time we were finished, our house had become overrun with baby supplies. All that was left that we needed was our babies. 

          The rest of Camilla’s pregnancy went on without much activity; I returned to work in September, and Francis and Camilla kept busy with appointments, shopping, and making arrangements around the house. 

          On October 26th, when she was 36 weeks pregnant, Camilla went into labor. She’d been hoping to have a natural birth, and that she did. She’d been in labor for almost 20 hours when they’d finally been born, first the boy, and then the girl. Camilla had been a trooper through it all, through every contraction, to every push, she had been so strong. When our babies cried for the first time, Francis and I both broke into exhausted, grateful, and joy filled sobs, as we took in the new lives in front of us. For the nine months leading up to that moment I suppose I wasn’t fully convinced that it was all real until I saw them for the first time. 

          After the babies had been cleaned up, and checked over medically (they’d been born a bit early, but they were healthy as could be), the nurses sat Francis and I down, and handed each of us a baby. I’d never held a baby until I held my daughter for the first time, she was a tiny little thing, they both were, and the weight of her in my arms filled me with an immeasurable amount of emotions. I don’t believe I had stopped crying from the time they’d been born to when we’d finally gotten to hold them. Holding her, and watching Francis cry as he held our son, brought on yet another wave of tears. We’d switched babies by the time they had Camilla situated and confirmed that she was healthy and doing well; we both went over to her and carefully, as to not hurt her or either of the babies, we’d embraced her, and thanked her immensely for what she’d done for us. 

           I suppose I never realized quite how many names there actually were in the world until it came time to name our children. We’d had names in mind that we wanted to use for them before the birth, but we wanted to see them before we named them. After we spent our first day with them, we knew exactly who they were: our little boy, with dark eyes and wispy blonde hair was named Benjamin John Abernathy-Papen, and our baby girl with light eyes and curly red hair was named Katherine Frances Abernathy-Papen.

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          Three days after their arrival, Francis, Camilla, and I walked through the front door of our home, with our two babies in tow. We’d decided to have Camilla stay for a few weeks, until she felt able to return home, but after her nine months of keeping them alive, it was now time for Francis and I to completely take over. 

          Benjamin and Katherine were fairly easy going newborns. We spent those first few weeks pleasantly un-exhausted; of course, they woke every several hours to be fed, and cried when we changed them, but they often were content to be next to their sibling, or in one of our arms. They seemed to love when I read to them, or being held in Francis’ arms as he softly played the piano, and when we walked them around the house. They each had clear personalities from the day they were born, Benjamin, our calm little ‘Jamie’, liked to be held facing one of us- he was more content to stay awake in his bassinet and to gaze at a mobile than his sister was. Katherine loved to see the world, if we were holding her, she wanted to be looking out and watching everything pass by; on the rare occasion that she’d be crying, the easiest way to calm our little Katie down, was to hold her up to a window and to let her watch the action outside. 

         When they were one month old, Camilla returned home, with a promise to see us at Christmas, and we were truly alone with the babies for the first time. I’d taken an extended leave from work, and would return after the holiday break as we’d decided that Francis return to work (mostly from home) once they turned one month old, which seemed like a great idea in theory, but now that the time had come for him to work, I was regretting everything. There had never been a moment in the past month where either of us had been completely alone with the babies, there was always someone, usually Camilla, there to help, but we knew that wouldn’t be possible forever. 

         It wasn’t that I was afraid to be alone with the babies, it was just that I was petrified. Francis was going to be leaving for work in an hour, and we were sitting together feeding them before he left. I was trying to hold my composure for him, I knew how anxious he was to be leaving us for the first time - he’d become the most devoted and attentive father, he was completely obsessed with them, and even he hadn’t been alone with them yet. “You’re going to be good for Dada, aren’t you Katie girl”, he cooed as he burped our daughter; recently, she’d become far more vocal than she’d been after birth - if she was hungry, wet, gassy, or anything in between, she was sure to let us know. Jamie, who’d just finished his bottle, was already falling asleep in my arms, as quiet as ever. 

         Once Francis was done with Katie, he handed her to me, and I sat in the rocking chair in our room, Jamie in the bassinet next to me, as I watched Francis finish getting ready for work, and before I knew it, he was kissing all of us goodbye, and clearly trying to hide the fact that he was seconds away from crying. “We’ll be okay, France”, I assured him and myself as he walked out the door, and I was immediately alone, with two tiny babies. 

          The first hour and a half was not bad at all, both babies were fast asleep, and I was able to wash the endless supply of dirty bottles, while listening to the baby monitor for any sign of waking babies. They wouldn’t be due for another feeding for almost two more hours, but I started to get all the bottles I’d need ready before they woke up, when the monitor lit up and I heard the first cry. I ran upstairs to find Jamie with a red, scrunched up face, and tears rolling down his cheeks, clearly in need of being held. I immediately picked him up, and started to rock him around the room, when I started to smell the unmistakable smell of a dirty diaper coming from Katie. I tried to set Jamie down, but when I did, he immediately started to sob again, but I knew I didn’t have long before Katie woke up and started to cry too. My mind was racing through solutions of what to do when I remembered the strange backpack-like contraptions Francis had bought during one of the trips to the baby store. I took Jamie down to the nursery and fished one out of the closet. “Please work with me here Benjamin”, I quietly pleaded with my crying son as I set him down in his crib, while I tried to strap the carrier to my chest, and picked him back up to place him against me, safely secured by the straps. Not only was I completely hands free, but Jamie was immediately silent and content. I was able to go back up, change Katie, walk her around, and keep everyone content and calm. 

         After that first hurdle of the day, feeding time felt less daunting to attempt. Though we liked to feed them at the exact same time, I knew that wouldn’t be possible today, but I was able to feed one baby, and have the other strapped to my chest, to keep them from getting too upset, and eventually put them down for their nap with only a few tears shed. I had been so terrified to be alone with my own babies, but once the bandage had been ripped off, everything had come to me. I could do this; we could do this. 

         Once they were down for that nap, I took out the camera, and took some pictures of them sleeping; they were already getting so big, and it had only been one month - I didn’t want to ever forget what they looked like at this age. We’d been taking so many pictures of them, but I couldn’t resist taking them - here were these two perfect little babies who we loved so much, and they were all ours. I also just didn’t know what to do with my time when they were asleep - I was afraid to nap in case they woke up, and I honestly wasn’t all that tired to begin with, so I decided to call my mom. 

          I had truly been planning on calling her earlier, but life was so incredibly hectic, that it didn’t even occur to me to do so until now. I went downstairs with the monitor in hand, picked up the phone, and dialed her number. I was worried that she would be upset that I didn’t call sooner, but once she picked up, she was thrilled to hear that she was a grandma, and she let me talk about them for a good hour or so. I hadn’t realized how much I would enjoy talking about my children - they were only babies, but I found myself bragging about every little thing about them; I was bursting with joy and pride for them. She hadn’t insisted on it, but she did ask when the soonest was she could come visit, and we decided that as long as it was okay with Francis, that she would come for Christmas - not only did she desperately want to meet her grandchildren, but she wanted to meet Camilla, and thank her personally for all she did for us. Eventually I had to go to take care of the babies, but talking to my mom had taken a weight off my shoulders that I didn't even know had been sitting there. 

          Francis finally made it home from work around six, and when he walked in the front door, he found me in the kitchen with Katie in the carrier, starting dinner, and Jamie swinging in a baby swing I had also found in the nursery closet, his face lit up, and he cried, “My babies!”, seeing that we’d all survived the day. “I was going to tell you to break some of these things out today, but I was so stressed this morning I completely forgot”, he said as he carefully removed Jamie from the swing. “Please tell me they were good, Richard, I’m terrified for my turn alone with them”, he fretted, “They were perfect, France, we got through it just fine”, I assured him. “I missed you. All three of you”, he said as he laid his head on my shoulder, “But, I’m glad to see you had a good day”. 

          Over dinner, each with a baby in our laps, Francis and I were able to catch each other up on our days, and I could suddenly picture countless dinners that we would spend this way - sitting at the table as a family of four, talking about our days, and completely in love with our life. I knew that this is what my life was always supposed to look like, and that I was completely made for loving them all. As long as I had those three, I would spend the rest of my life happy.

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      I was, for once, eagerly anticipating my mother’s arrival. It had been a year or so since I’d seen her, and still we’d only sparsely spoken on the phone, but I was determined to connect more with her, if not for my sake, for the sake of the twins. Francis was also excited for her to visit - his own mother had taken no interest in meeting the babies, and had only droned on to him about how much of an inconvenience having a child was, so having a grandmother actually excited to meet his children made him feel better. We both, Francis especially, were eager for Camilla’s visit as well, it’d only been a month without her here, but we’d missed her presence in the house. 

       My mother’s plane arrived on the morning of the 20th, I’d left Francis home with the twins, while I’d driven to the airport to pick her up. As I waited for her at her gate, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of anger that while she was so supportive of my life, that she didn’t seem to care that my father wasn’t. I could truthfully not care less about his opinions on my life, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth that she could hold so much joy for me and my children, and be fine living with a man who seemed to hate every aspect of my life. Yet, before I could be left to ruminate any further on that line of thought, the door to the jet bridge opened, and before I knew it, my mom, now older looking, with grayer hair, and a more hunched stature than I’d remember, was coming to envelope me in a hug. “Oh Richard, look at you!”, she said as she held onto my shoulders to get a good look at me, “My son is a dad! Oh, let’s go so I can go get a look at those babies”. I chuckled as I grabbed her bag, and led her to baggage claim, where we were met with two more absurdly large suitcases that she’d also brought with her. I subconsciously thought that it had been wise of me to remove the stroller from the trunk before I left, because all her bags surely wouldn’t have fit with it in there. 

      The drive home from the airport was filled with talk of the babies, and our plans for the week she’d be in town. I wanted to show her all around the city, and show her how great of a life Francis and I had made for ourselves. I did warn her of our rather absurdly sized home, and explained the situation with Francis' late grandfather, and as I pulled up to our home, I watched her face take in the home that I now got to call my own. As she and I walked up the front stoop, Francis shyly opened the door with Jamie in his arms, and as my mother saw him for the first time, I swear I could see her begin to melt into the sidewalks of Manhattan. Francis greeted her with a smile, “Come on in from the cold, and meet your grandchildren”, and my heart, which I was convinced couldn’t soften any more than it already had, did just a bit more as I watched Francis welcome her into his life too. Francis was mentally wary of my mother - his situation with his was so troubled, that he had built walls up around any motherly figure in his life, but I hoped he could let her in, as I had begun to in the past years as well. 

      With all her bags set down in our entryway, we led her to the nursery, where Katherine was still fast asleep, and had my mom sit in one of the rocking chairs to hold Jamie. “Oh Francis, he looks just like you”, she beamed at him. I hadn’t quite seen it until now, as all newborns looked so similar to me, but he really had begun to look so much like him. Sure, he had Camilla’s hair, but his tiny, yet somehow sharp nose was identical to Francis’, and his lips had the exact cupid’s bow and slight downturn that I’d always loved so much in Francis. Of course, Katherine had his hair, which was only darkening to his fiery red by the day but she kept most of Camilla’s softer features, and upturned nose. The one thing they both truly shared were their eyes, which oddly looked so much like mine as a child, but perhaps it was only a trick my mind was playing on me to convince me that we all shared traits. 

      Francis had to leave just an hour after we got home to go pick up Camilla from the airport, which gave my mom and I much needed time to catch up with each other. I hated myself for letting myself go so many years without seeing her in person - of course we spoke on occasion, but after becoming a parent, I couldn’t imagine going years without seeing the face of my child. Yet, when I started to think like that, I only began to feel rage fill inside myself with the role my own father took in my life. It’d been five years since I’d not only seen my father’s face, but even heard his voice; I didn’t want to bring up my resentment to my mom on such a happy day for us, but I had to ask. “Does Dad even know about them?”, I asked as my mom was rocking and cooing at Katie. She paused, “I’d suspect not”, “So do you just hide our phone calls from him?”, “He moved out of the house the week after you and Francis got married, Richard. I didn’t want to upset you then and there never seemed a good time to tell you. I haven’t seen him in several years, and I plan on never seeing him again”. She went on to tell me that he’d relentlessly questioned why she was going out to visit me, and why she’d waste money on a plane ticket when she had ‘just’ been out for my graduation. She ended up telling him that I was getting married to Francis, and it made him rage. He demanded that she not go, but she insisted. He made her choose between their marriage or me, and she chose me. She was lucky that the house had been passed down to her by her own parents, so it was he who had to leave, and she’d never heard from him again. While it made me endlessly happy that she had finally shown that I was more important to her than my father was, and despite the fact that it was always clear that he never quite cared for me, I was devastated that he’d leave us both. “But let’s talk about something happier, hmm?”, my mom said after all the time we spent talking about how he’d left, and so I told her how Katie seemed like she might start laughing any day now, and she started trying to coax a giggle out of her. I gave her a tour of our home after we put the twins in their cribs for their nap, and showed her to her room to rest. “Richard, you have no idea how incredibly proud I am of you. I’m so sorry I didn’t show it enough to you as you grew up, but I promise that I will be here for you for the rest of my life trying to make up for how I raised you”. 

      I left my mom in her room to rest, and went downstairs to clean up a bit from the day and wait for Camilla's arrival; though it’d just been a month or so, I couldn’t wait to see her again. Before I could finish washing the bottles from today, I heard the keys in the front door, and saw Camilla and Francis return home. I walked into the entryway and Camilla wrapped me in her arms - she’d cut her hair short again, and looked so much like she did back in our days at Hampden. “How are our little infantes” , she asked, using the nickname she’d taken to calling them. “If I did my job right, they are fast asleep and will hopefully stay that way for another hour or so - I’m sorry, I know you’re so eager to see them again”. “Auntie Millie can wait a bit, it’ll give me time to meet your mom Richard”. I went to grab my mom, and the moment she saw Camilla, she held her and thanked her for giving her such beautiful grandbabies. As my mom and Camilla got to know each other, Francis and I excused ourselves to check on the babies. When we got to the top of the stairs, he pulled me into a tight hug and whispered into my ear, “I love you, I love you, I love you”, and we quietly snuck into the nursery to watch the twins sleep. 

      When they finally woke up, Camilla came with me to bring them down for their next bottles, and as she walked over to pick up Jamie, his little face lit up in recognition that his favorite Aunt Millie was back. Both babies clearly adored Camilla, and I felt a pang of guilt that we might be depriving them from someone they might think of as their mother, but just as that thought was starting to sink into my mind, Jamie started to wail and flail his tiny body around in Camilla’s arms, impatient for his bottle. Camilla tried to soothe him to no avail as I made his bottle, but when Francis walked in the door, and took Jamie from Camilla into his arms, he instantly soothed, and I knew that while Camilla would always be so important to them, she didn’t want to be and wasn’t their mom, and Francis and I were the ones they would always find the most comfort in as their parents. 

      Christmas came and went in a flurry of an absurd amount of presents for the twins, courtesy mainly of my mom, before we knew it Camilla and my mom returned back to their homes with a promise to come back to visit again soon. With the festivities over however,  Francis and I were exhausted. We’d been hosting for almost two weeks, while still parenting, and we desperately needed some rest. New Years Eve was the night after our guests left, and we were looking forward to spending the night at home resting with the babies. 

       As we put the twins down to sleep for the last time of the year, I couldn’t help but remember where we had been a year ago to the day. Just a year ago, we were dreaming of having just one child to call our own, and now, right in front of us were Benjamin and Katherine, our very own, perfect children. We really did mean to stay up until midnight, like we’d done the year before, but this year, with our babies sleeping peacefully in their cribs, we fell asleep hours before the fireworks went off and the ball dropped, sleeping side by side, knowing that we finally had the life we’d spent last year dreaming of.

Chapter Text

The first year of Benjamin and Katherine’s lives were captured through home video tapes, pictures, and of course through my writing. It’s difficult to comprehend how quickly a year can pass by until one day, you are sat holding your newborn infant for the first time, and suddenly it is 365 days later, and that same precious tiny person now toddles around, calls you by your name, and no longer fits quite as easily in your arms as they once did. The babies grew with a speed neither Francis or I could fully comprehend - they were such small newborns, they seemed so frail and breakable, yet by spring, when they were nearing half a year old, they were (and I can find no better word to describe them with here) sturdy. Both of them could sit up and took joy in playing with each other, and nothing, truly nothing, made them laugh harder than when the other would push them a bit causing them to tumble over. The first time it happened, Jamie and Katie were facing each other and they were playing with one another's hands, and Jamie pushed just a touch too hard and Katie went tumbling back. Francis almost had a fit when he saw it happen, and my heart dropped for a second, but before either of us could get up to pick up Katie, both babies were erupting in laughter. Francis went to set Katie back up, which only led to her pushing down Jamie, and they once again filled our living room with laughter. Oh their tiny belly laughs! How could nobody have warned us about those belly laughs? When they are older, much older, I know those laughs are the thing that I will miss most of all. If, during that dark year of our lives, somebody had pulled Francis and I aside and told us that if we could hold on to life, that one day we would hear those laughs daily from our own children, I know that the difficult days would’ve been easier to bare knowing we had this in store for us. Though back then I wouldn’t have ever believed that this would be my life, but that is entirely besides the point; the point is, our lives were filled with an incomprehensible amount of joy these days.

In the brief second we took to blink our eyes, our babies had turned two - from sweet infants, they became rambunctious toddlers who were blossoming into real people right in front of our eyes. Jamie had sandy blond hair that fell past his ears and blew into his eyes on windy days, and the most curious brown eyes I’d ever seen. He was endlessly inquisitive, constantly asking questions that we couldn’t find the answers to half the time, and loved listening to stories for hours on end. Kate, who notably did not like to be called, ‘Katie’ these days had Francis’ curly red hair that poofed up into a lion’s mane in her sleep, and her light eyes had darkened with time, and were a deep, deep blue. She was a loud girl with a spirit unlike one I’d ever met, and she loved everyone she knew with her whole heart. She loved music and could often be found in Francis’ lap as he played nursery rhymes for the babies on the piano. Both babies, toddlers, I mean, overflowed with joy and love, and were the brightest souls we’d ever met. As I’m positive every parent must say, they are the best children in the world, except with ours, I truly believe they are. Francis and I completely and utterly adored our children, who I still feel we don’t quite deserve, and our lives were the happiest they had ever been.
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I did not grow up in a particularly happy home, and my childhood memories of my home consist of unpainted white walls, pictures of relatives who were long deceased, stained carpet, and the lingering smell of a vaguely neglected house that not even the strongest breeze through an open window could erase. The few pictures of my immediate family on the wall were stiffly posed portraits of my father, mother, and I, with forced smiles and wandering eyes. There was obviously no art on our walls, but I cannot remember there ever being music played throughout the house ever either. We had a radio, but when it wasn’t broadcasting a sports channel, the news droned on constantly in the background. I longed as a child for some type of culture, which I know is responsible for my adult longing for the picturesque, and the only way I could find it was in books. My room, while still bland and unmemorable, held my books - my escape from my dreary life.

I never imagined that my adult life would be any different than that of my parents until after Francis, but after welcoming our children into the world I knew deep down that they could not grow up in a home like mine had been. And how could they have, with Francis as their Papa? Our walls were full of color, and art was found on practically every wall of our home. Shortly after the twins started to crawl, I began to go through all our old photos, and I framed them and hung them all over the walls - I wanted my children to see love and feel how much we loved not just them, but each other. I never fully knew growing up if my parents actually loved each other and I needed Jamie and Kate to know that Francis and I did. Francis was incessant with the camera, and loved taking pictures of the kids, and especially of them with me, and I loved getting to capture natural moments of him with them - every month I would take film in to be developed, and soon our scrapbooks overflowed with pictures of our lives. Some days, as the children were playing in the living room, the record player spinning and filling the room with music, and the windows open, letting the lights and sounds of the city into our home, filled me with a joy so overwhelming that it would almost bring me to tears with how grateful I was.

In building our beautiful home, Francis had insisted on sourcing antique furniture to bring more life into the space, he’d go to shops all over the city, but his favorite was owned by another gay couple a bit older than us, James and Welty, who had recently come to be the caregivers of Welty’s young niece who was just a year or so older than the twins. Pippa was a precocious young girl who looked much like our Kate, but was more like Jamie in her mannerisms. She loved classical music and was always delighted when she was over at our home and Francis would play the piano for the children. While Kate who was currently enamored with musicals begged for Annie, Pippa would ask for a bit of Beethoven. The children loved spending time together, and we were so happy to have another couple we could actually relate with.

It was difficult, our family situation, even in New York City - while of course there were other queer families in the city, in any room, we usually were still the only ones there in that space still. My coworkers knew of my family through passing comments and knowledge of my taking time off to care for the children when they were sick, but I have always been a private man, and never spoke much about my relationship to Francis with most of the people I worked with. I found it difficult to anticipate whether or not someone would find it lovely that my husband and I were raising children together or if they would find it unnatural and speak quietly about me in the teacher’s lounge when I wasn’t there to hear it. Most of our friends came from Francis’ work, seeing as those in the arts tend to be more open minded about people like us, and so we were not a lonely family shut away in our townhouse like I’d once worried we would be. I feared though, for the future; when Jamie and Kate would start school in just a few years, would their classmates welcome them or would they shun them away for having two fathers? I worried that the teachers would neglect them, or that the principal would discover there were children being raised by two queer men and call child protective services to have them take our children from us. Late at night, when I would worry most, and Francis would force me to tell him what was keeping me up and so worried, he would assure me that nothing of the sort could happen, yet my anxieties on the matter were always there. I wanted my children to never know the sense of feeling less than or like they didn’t belong in a space, and I couldn’t imagine the pain that being the reason for their suffering would bring me. However, when mornings came, as they always do, I’d wake up to the two of them climbing into our bed, and suddenly I wouldn’t even remember what I’d been so upset about just the night before.