You're the Fathers

**Razz**

It’s as though I'm looking at my baby pictures, only this time it's not me I'm looking at. I cannot believe Artemis had my son. The toddler boy looks just like me. He has my same curly blonde hair, only I keep mine gelled back. He even has my rare violet eyes. It can only be found on my father's side of the family.

Then there is the other toddler boy. He looks almost identical to Ronan. He has Ronan’s heterochromia eyes, which, like mine, are rare. He has Roan’s jet-black hair and lashes so thick that they make him look like he is wearing eyeliner.

I’m failing to understand how these boys can be twins. How does that even happen? Is it even possible for twins to have two different fathers? Why do they look like us, not Camden and Slater? I'm honestly so confused.

“It's okay. You can say hi. It's not like they're going to bite you,” Artemis says nervously.

“Well, they are a lot like their mother, so they do bite,” Camden deadpans. I think it was supposed to be a joke.

“How old are they?” It’s the only question I can formulate at the moment.

“Three,” Artemis says.

I do the math in my head. Pregnancy is nine months. The year goes by before they turn one. So that’s two years. It took us four years to find Artemis. So that means…these two children could very well be mine or Ronin’s. Or both?

“MY sons are your biological sons,” Camden says, stressing the first word, marking his custody of the toddlers.

“How?” Ronin asks succinctly.

“It’s called heteropaternal superfecundation. It’s a rare phenomenon where sperm from two different donors fertilize two eggs during ovulation,” Slater says, walking into the room from the kitchen. “Atticus is biologically Razz’s and Atlas is Ronin’s. Un embarazo. Dos padres diferentes.”

“You two have been raising our sons like your own?” I query, dumbfounded.

Slater and Camden took in a pregnant woman and have been helping raise two children who aren’t even theirs. I can’t wrap my head around it. I don’t know what I expected the ex-fed and his counterpart to be like, but this wasn’t it.

Just walking into their house it felt homey, comfortable, and full of love. It felt as though I was home again with my family. As strange as that might seem, my family is enormous but full of unconditional love. They adopted Ronin when didn’t have to and treated him just as they do me. He is their son as much as I am. It’s obvious that Camden and Slater view our sons as theirs, just as much as they are ours.

I fall to my knees beside the couch, gawking at my son. I can’t keep the tears from streaming down my face. He is so beautiful, just like his mother. I just met him, not having he existed until this point, and he already owns a piece of me.

“Razz, this is Atticus Xavier Vance. Our son,” Artemis says, squatting down beside me, rubbing my back in soothing circles with one hand and holding a tow-headed toddler boy. He had walked over from where Camden was sitting with him on the floor in front of the rustic wood and steel dresser they use as entertainment to sit under the wall-mounted TV.

Our son. I couldn’t tell if she was including me in that statement or the other men in the room.

Guilt knocks into me, constricting my heart in a vice grip, making it feel as if the organ is being squeezed. If only I would have found her sooner. Ronin and I could have been the ones helping her raise our children all this time. Instead, I refused to seek the help of the family to track her down. We missed the birth of our sons, their first words, and their first steps.

Ronan

I want to pummel my best friend. All this time of wasted existence could have been spent with not only the woman we love, but our sons, too. We missed so much of their lives because of Razz’s stubborn pride. I’m furious with him and with myself. I should have challenged him more in his decision or gone to the family myself to find Artemis. Then maybe I could have held my son as a newborn or caught him as he took his first steps. I want to scream and rage at the injustice of it all, but I can’t. Not right now.

Preston is holding my son on the couch where I’m looking down from behind him. I take in the boy’s eye color of honey and turquoise like mine. His nose and the shape of his face are like Artemis, but his hair and eyes are like mine. He could be mistaken as Slater’s son with dark hair and tan, olive skin, and the hint of turquoise in his dual eyes, but heterochromia is genetic.

The small boy stares at me with those eyes I see in the mirror every day. The pattern of his is different, however. I offer him a comforting smile. “Hey, there little man.”

A smile splits his chubby face. “You eyes like Atlas,” he comments.

“Yeah. My eyes are like yours,” I confirm for him.

“Pretty!” He squeals, and I kneel behind the couch so that I’m closer to his level for him to get a better look as he stands on Preston’s legs to look over his shoulder.

“Thank you, Atlas. Your eyes are pretty, as well.” The boy jumps at my words.

“Atlas’s middle name is Ronan. I thought should know that, hermano,” Slater says. I look at him, confused about why he just called me ‘brother.’

I was raised in a Spanish-speaking home before I was adopted by Razz’s family. Okay, so it wasn’t much of a home with my mother being an abusive junky whore. Her consorts weren’t much better than she was. I didn’t know that paternal love didn’t involve bruises or being touched when and where I didn’t want to until the Jamison Family took me in. If it weren’t for Razz betraying my trust when we were children, I would be dead. Or worse, I would have been a drug-addicted sex toy, all used up because I wouldn’t know anything else.

I was lucky to have a friend who cared enough to report what I told him in confidence to his parents when I didn’t come to school. I was even luckier to be adopted into his family, who showed me what love was supposed to look like and not the warped kind that was shown to me. They got me the help I needed, both medical and mental. I grew up on a ranch surrounded by six morally gray fathers and a fiercely protected mother alongside my best friend turned brother.

“Es hora de que mi amores venga a comer,” Slater announces that it’s time to eat. He calls us all his loves, which once again strikes me as odd. But I suppose since half the people in the room are his family, that’s easier just to address us all as he does them out of habit, I suppose.

“Do you want to come with me?” I ask Atlas, standing up. This way Preston can stand without trying to hold a squirming toddler as well.

The child nods and reaches his arms out to me. I scooped my son up, holding him for the very first time. I’m in awe.

“Sígueme,” Slater says, placing his hand on my shoulder. I do as he orders, following him into the kitchen with Atlas.

“Hablas español también, Plata?” Slater asks me if I spoke Spanish.

“Si, crecí hablando español,” I respond, telling him I grew up speaking it.

I no sooner help Slater place my son in his highchair than the doorbell rings.

“I got it!” Camden announces, exiting the kitchen.

When he comes back, there are more people with him whom I’ve never met, other than two of the teenage boys. Razz’s cousins, Kassius and Alister Cain, or Kass and AC for short. Like me, AC was adopted by Razz’s aunt and her family.

“What are you doing here?” Razz asks and Kass laughs.

“We got grounded again, of course,” Kass says with a smile.