Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Lucas opened the letter from Gerard and began grinning as he read. His roommate looked at him with interest.

"Good news from home?"

"Yeah.."

Lucas said without looking up.

"My stepfather is pregnant again."

"That's still weird to me!.. I mean.. How didn't he know he had women's bits as well as men's?.. Did he never have any blood tests his whole life?.. Why did no one know?"

Lucas chuckled and shrugged in response.

"Anyway.. I thought he just had a baby."

"Two years ago. This is their third."

His roommate, Bill Stolsky, watched Lucas finish the letter. Privately he was a little awed by the calm, remote half-breed. Even when they'd been doolies, first-year cadets, and normally regarded as lower than the low, there had been something about Lucas Iero that had kept the upper-classmen from dealing him too much misery. He'd been at the top of his class from the beginning, and it was already known that he was moving on to flight training after graduation. Iero was on the fast track to the top, and even his instructors knew it.

"How old is your stepfather?"

Stolsky asked in curiosity. He knew Iero was twenty-one, a year younger than himself, though they were both seniors in the Academy.

Lucas shrugged and reached for a picture he kept in his locker.

"Young enough. My dad's pretty young, too. He was just a kid when I was born."

Stolsky took the picture and looked at the four people in it. It wasn't a posed photograph, which made it more intimate. Three adults were playing with a baby. One man was small and delicate, and was looking up from the baby in his lap to smile at a strong, dark, eagle-featured man. The man was one tough-looking dude. Stolsky wouldn't want to meet him in an alley, dark or otherwise. He glanced quickly at Lucas and saw the strong resemblance.

But the baby was clinging to the big man's finger with a dimpled fist and laughing while Lucas tickled his neck. It was a revealing and strangely disturbing look into Iero's private life, into his tightly knit family.

Stolsky cleared his throat.

"Is that the newest baby?"

"No, that picture was made when I was a senior in high school. That's Michael. He's four years old now, and Joshua is two."

Lucas couldn't help grinning and feeling worried at the same time when he thought of Gerard's letter. Both his little brothers had been delivered by caesarean, for obvious reasons, but also because Gerard was simply too slender to have them, even if it had been possible. After Joshua's birth, Frank had said there would be no more babies, because Gerard had had such a hard time carrying Josh. But Gerard had won, as usual. He'd have to make a point of getting off on leave when this baby was due.

"Your stepfather isn't—uh—"

"Indian? No."

"Do you like him?"

Lucas smiled.

"I love him. I wouldn't be here without him."

He stood and walked to the window. Six years of hard work, and he was on the verge of getting what he'd lived for: fighter jets. First there was flight training, then Fighter Training School. More years of hard work loomed before him, but he was eager for them. Only a small percentage made it to fighters, but he was going to be one of them.

The cadets in his class who were going on to flight training had already been thinking of fighter call signs, picking theirs out even though they knew some of them would wash out of flight training, and an even greater number would never make it to fighters. But they never thought it would be them; it was always the other guy who washed out, the other guy who didn't have the stuff.

They'd had a lot of fun thinking up those signs, and Lucas had sat quietly, a little apart as he always was. Then Richards had pointed at him and said..

"You'll be Chief."

Lucas had looked up, his face calm and remote.

"I'm not a chief."

His tone had been even, but Richards had felt a chill.

"All right.."

He'd agreed.

"What do you want to be called?"

Lucas had shrugged.

"Call me 'Breed.' It's what I am."

Already, though they hadn't even graduated yet, people were calling him Breed Iero. The name would be painted on his helmet, and a lot of people would forget his real name.

Gerard had given him this. He'd pushed and prodded, fought for him, taught him. He'd given him his life, up in the blue.

~

~

~

Gerard turned into Frank's arms. He was nude, and Frank's strong hand kept stroking down his pale body as if searching out signs of his as-yet-invisible pregnancy. Gerard knew he was worried, but he felt wonderful and tried to reassure him.

"I've never felt better. Face it, pregnancy agrees with me."

Frank chuckled and stroked Gerard's chest, concentrating on his nipples, that were now much more sensitive.
Frank could almost bring him to satisfaction just with his mouth on his nipples.

But this is the last one."

He said.

"What if it's another boy? Wouldn't you like to try for a girl just once more?"

Frank groaned, because that was the argument Gerard used to talk him into getting him pregnant this time. He was determined to have his four children.

"Let's make a deal. If this one is a girl, there won't be any more. If it's a boy, we'll have one more baby, but that's the limit, regardless of its sex."

"It's a deal."

Gerard agreed. He paused.

"Have you thought that it's possible you could father a hundred children and they'd all be boys? You may not have any female sperm. Look at your track record, three boys in a row—"

Frank put his hand on Gerard's mouth.

"No more. Four is the absolute limit."

Gerard laughed at him and arched his slender body against him. Frank's response was immediate, even after five years of marriage. Later, when he slept, Gerard smiled into the darkness and stroked Frank's strong back. This baby was a boy, too, he felt. But the next one—ah, the next one would be the daughter Frank craved. He was certain of it.

The End!

Notes

Hi there chipmunks.. You ok?..

So here is the epilogue.. I was unsure about this, cos I never really did m-preg before, and it puts a whole new spin on the story (I think).. but I was didn't like the other version I tried to do, with adoptions.. Soooooo..... This is what you get!

Please comment, stay safe, and peace out babies!
<3