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Wen Kexing didn’t expect himself to be pregnant again.
Well, he did want to, hope to be, even, but he never thought it would actually come true. Maybe a little, when they first started trying. But after one, two, fifteen attempts he started to get used to the fact that A-Xiang would be his only biological child. Not that he wasn’t happy about it.
She was a miracle. Not planned. But always a miracle. He did have her when he was young, barely nineteen and without any plans at all. It was always just him and his little A-Xiang. Nobody else. He knew he was going to be like this from the day he took a test and it came out positive. His partner at the time didn’t want a child. Wen Kexing understood it—the guy was just as young and if he wanted to leave, fine.
Kexing was going to raise the little girl himself. Except nothing could have ever prepared him for the complications that came with his pregnancy and later with the birth.
It was hard from the start.
He couldn’t leave the house, he was throwing up that bad. Only thanks to his friend could he actually keep the little flat he lived in—they helped him pay rent, do the shopping and were the softest people on the planet. It was only the start. Everything hurt him—he knew it was how things would go, but he was sometimes crying because of the pain.
He spent the last month in the hospital. They told him his little A-Xiang could be there earlier and that she was not supposed to. His pregnancy, his little girl, was in danger. He could barely eat, sleep and functioned solely on IV they gave him. He knew he shouldn’t worry and he tried, for his daughter. But how could he keep being positive when all he got was stressed out doctors walking around, running tests after tests and not telling him anything.
He gave birth two weeks before his due date. Too early, but his midwife told him it was fine, it happened, his baby was going to be okay. He wanted to believe her. She was a kind individual and she never lied to him whenever he was meeting her before.
The birth was hard, complicated and terrible. A-Xiang was positioned wrong. Kexing was too weak for it to go smoothly. He passed out four times. After a few hours, they decided to perform an emergency C-section. Kexing had never been more scared in his entire life.
When his baby was born, he was high on medication and worried, because they took her. They took her and he didn’t hear her cry. He was trying to listen to the doctor saying his body was wrecked and that the damage could make it hard—or impossible—to get pregnant again in the future. He didn’t care. He just wanted to see his daughter.
And he did. They gave her back, explaining to him that she needed to be taken because she ingested some of the fluids and they needed to check her lungs for any respiratory issues, but she was fine. His baby girl was perfectly okay and there with him. And she was crying. And Kexing was crying, too.
Now he remembered it. And he cried again. Out of happiness as well. He couldn’t believe he was holding a positive pregnancy test in his hands again, now, fourteen years later. He was now thirty-three and had a real family—his husband, Zhou Zishu, a man three years older than him, his A-Xiang, now fourteen and an absolutely perfect young woman, and Chengling, a boy they adopted a couple years prior, who was now turning twelve.
He felt like he was about to faint. He could barely believe that it was all real. The doctors, everyone, literally a nyone who heard about him told him he would never have a child again, and he believed it. How could he not? Everyone who told him that was trusted. They knew what they were talking about.
And, indeed, it was hard for him to get pregnant. They had been trying for two years now, but now they didn’t have to anymore. Even though he had only just found out about his pregnancy, he was certain it was going to be good this time. He was stronger and not alone anymore. If something didn’t go right, he had his husband and two perfect children to help him. But he believed he would be fine.
He was sitting on the bathroom floor, crying his eyes out and leaning his head against the side of the bathtub. He couldn’t not stare at the stick in his hand. It was… it was a miracle again. He was blessed again. As if fate decided he was good and needed a reward.
He almost forgot he wasn’t alone in the house. Zishu had come back a couple minutes ago, though he did not say anything, as if suspecting Kexing needed some time for himself. It happened quite often. Zishu was so considerate and understanding whenever that happened—he gave Kexing all the space he needed and even more, but was always within Kexing’s reach, just in case. Just in case Kexing needed him. In case Kexing wanted a hug, a kiss, whatever.
And now, Zishu was knocking on the bathroom door, calling out in a concerned tone, “Are you okay, Xing’er? Did something happen?” He grew softer with time and was not the same, gruff person Kexing had met before, but that didn’t mean Zishu was worse. He was different, but just as good. There was nothing that could ever change the way Kexing perceived him.
Kexing could only choke out a faint no before he realized it probably made the situation worse. But he just couldn’t stop crying. It was all too emotional for him right now.
“I’m okay, A-Xu, I’ll come out in a minute.” He knew he needed to compose himself and tell his husband about his discovery.
They both wanted to have a child together, but Zishu was just as aware of Kexing’s condition as Kexing himself, and they knew there was basically no chance that it would ever happen. And yet the two lines were there, on the stick, and the two others lying on the floor, a reminder that the miracle was real. There. Kexing could only sob some more.
“Baby?” Zishu was growing more and more concerned with every second of not seeing his husband and only hearing muffled crying noises from the bathroom.
“Yes, I’m… I’m fine, really. Wait for me there, A-Xu,” he called out, gathering the sticks and putting them in his back pockets. He wanted it to be a surprise.
He did come out a few seconds later, throwing himself on top of his husband right away. He was still crying, unable to stop even though he wanted to. He was smiling, too, but Zishu couldn’t see that as Kexing’s face was buried in his chest and shoulder now.
Zishu was now on the verge of crying himself, it seemed. “Xing’er, baby, are you sick? You can tell me. Did you have a panic attack again?” It happened sometimes, he knew, and he needed to ask, just to make sure. “If something happened, I can try and help you. Please.”
Kexing didn’t like that. But he was so happy and overwhelmed and not sure about anything that he just couldn’t speak.
“No, I… It’s not bad, A-Xu, I promise. Believe me?”
Of course he did. There was no time when he didn’t believe his husband. They trusted each other with literally anything and there was nothing they couldn’t tell each other.
“Just tell me, please.” Zishu kept pushing him, but he was doing it so gently that Kexing didn’t feel any pressure at all. Maybe a little. But it was a good kind of pressure. “Come, let’s sit down.” He helped Kexing get to the couch and sit there, but Kexing refused to stop touching him even for a moment. Zishu thought it was cute yet a little concerning.
He needed to know what was happening before the kids came home. It would not be bad if they saw their Baba crying, but there needed to be a reason for that. Zishu wanted to know what he should tell them when they come back from school.
“I need to tell you something,” Kexing whispered, still clinging to his husband. His crying transformed into soft sobbing now, meaning he was finally able to produce some more coherent words. “Don’t worry, A-Xu, it’s good news.” He breathed out a couple of times, trying to calm himself down. Zishu didn’t need any more reasons to worry.
“Yes?” Zishu asked, voice hopeful and almost cheerful. He looked Kexing in the eyes right after Kexing decided to stop hugging him. They were still round and full of tears, but there was some deeply hidden happiness in them, too.
“A-Xu, I… We…” He didn’t know how to say it. It had been years since he had to do it, and even though he knew Zishu wouldn’t react badly, there was some tiny voice in the back of his head telling him to wait, to stop, to think it through again.
Saying anything turned out to be impossible. For a while, at least. Kexing just stared his husband in the eyes, letting the tears fall out again, this time in a silent and far less dramatic manner. He was smiling, as widely as when he found out he was expecting A-Xiang, if not wider.
He lowered his hand to his stomach, pressing it there and looking for any change on his A-Xu’s expression. There was none. If so, his eyes widened so slightly nobody would be able to tell the difference.
“A-Xu,” Kexing said, taking Zishu’s hand and squeezing it tightly, “Forgive my boldness.” He removed his hand from his stomach and reached towards his back pocket, taking the sticks out. “We are going to have a child.”
Zishu took a hold of all the tests and looked at them thoroughly, just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. Before he knew it, he was smiling and crying himself, dropping the sticks to the floor and hugging Kexing tight.
“This is not a joke, right?” He sobbed into Kexing’s shoulder, wrapping his arms around his husband even tighter, as if to shield him from the whole world. It worked.
“I’d never joke about it, A-Xu.” He would. Sometimes, to ease the mood, but not often. This time he was as serious as ever, or perhaps even more. “I’m really pregnant, A-Xu. We will be parents again.” Because, even though A-Xiang was just Kexing’s and Chengling was not theirs (biologically, at least) at all, they were still their kids. Zishu and Kexing were still their parents, if not biological, then at heart, which for them mattered far more.
“I’m so happy, baby, I…” Zishu was stumbling over his words, which—even though he was not as good with them as Kexing, most of the time—he barely ever did. “Thank you.” Whatever he was thanking for, neither of them needed to know that. Kexing just accepted the words without thinking twice.
They sat in silence for a while, hugging and sobbing their hearts out. They remembered every other time they did it, except all those times were when they held the negative tests in their hands. It was terrible. But they kept trying, even if they stopped expecting anything after a couple tries.
“A-Xu, I’ll stop working,” Kexing said, his voice not even a whisper. His hands found Zishu’s back and pressed there, wanting to hold him as close as he could, as a silent thanks for helping him create a new life.
“Why?” Sometimes Kexing thought that his husband was really dumb. Chengling had to take after someone, right?
“I know the… pregnancy will be at risk and I don’t want to make it worse.” It was still hard to talk about his previous pregnancy, even though it had been over fourteen years now. “I don’t want to go through that again,” he admitted, quite scared. He didn’t want it to seem like he regretted his pregnancy with A-Xiang. Because he didn’t. He truly loved every second of it, but if he could make it easier, he would, gladly.
“Okay. If you want. If they don’t let you go on leave, I’ll go and have a talk with them.” The little sparkle in Zishu’s eye didn’t look like he had a casual talk in mind at all.
Kexing couldn’t help but laugh at that. “I can talk to them just fine, thank you, A-Xu. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to do that.”
“If it’s for you, I can.”
“You’re too good to me, A-Xu. Stop it or I’ll swoon!” He dramatically put his hand on his forehead just to exaggerate the gesture.
“You already did that. Literally. When you first met me.”
“It was hot outside!” Kexing wasn’t going to let his husband bully him like that. He remembered their first meeting very well and it was not as terrible as Zishu wanted him to believe.
“And you chose my arms to faint into, like a princess.”
“Well, sorry that I thought your arms had to be super strong and could easily lift me up!” He did not choose Zishu’s arms to pass out in them, absolutely not. He just happened to stand really close when they were talking.
“Anyway.” Zishu couldn’t stop smiling, both from the news and the pleasant memory they had just recalled. “I think we should tell…” Before he could even finish, A-Xiang opened the door and, along with Chengling, yelled an excited ‘hello!’. “Tell them the news. Come here, A-Xiang, A-Ling!” He called the kids, who could only kick their shoes off and run into the living room, their coats still on and bags in their hands. Their cheeks were a little reddened from the late October cold.
“A-Die? What is it?” Chengling was the first to speak. He was mostly the one to actually snap out of any trance faster than A-Xiang lately (she claimed she was just busy, but her parents knew well enough who she was busy with).
“You’re crying. Why are you crying?” A-Xiang looked at them, coming closer to see their faces better. She had the same pout as her father, but she was using it far more often. “Did something happen? You look happy, but you’re crying! What?” A-Xiang kept staring at them and then at the sticks on the floor, which seemed to help something in her mind click. “Are those…?”
Zishu couldn’t help but smile at her expression. Her eyes widened, she dropped her bag to the floor (Chengling did so, too, after a moment), her lips parted and she appeared confused, on top of everything.
“Just sit down, both of you,” Zishu ordered, and helped Kexing scoot to the middle of the couch to make some space for their kids to sit on both ends of it. “We want to tell you the news now.”
“I’m never talking to you again if it’s a joke, Baba!” A-Xiang yelled at Kexing, who only stared at her, his eyes still watering just as they did before. His tears seemed to know no limits, but as long as they were happy tears, he didn’t mind them at all.
A-Xiang didn’t even see the test properly, so Zishu decided to be the one to pick one of the sticks up and show it to his kids. Chengling just stared at it, a little amazed and just as confused, but clearly happy. It was A-Xiang who started speaking first, of course.
“Baba! It’s positive…” She took it in her hands, wanting to examine it thoroughly from every side. Her father kept his pregnancy test he took when he had her, and this one looked just the same. Two lines. Positive.
“It is, A-Xiang.” Kexing nodded, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. He smiled widely at their daughter, then turning to his husband and their son to do just the same.
“Does that mean…?” Chengling spoke, still quite dazed. He received another test and looked at it with just as much admiration as A-Xiang did before.
“Yes, dear, you’re both going to have a sibling.” Kexing nodded with the widest smile in some time, probably. He never thought he could be happier than on his wedding day and after finishing Chengling’s adoption process, and yet there he was.
“Will you love us the same as you’ll love them?” A-Xiang blurted out, clasping her mouth shut with her hands a second after. She knew it was an inappropriate thing to say, but she thought about it and couldn’t just not say a word about it.
“Oh? A-Xiang, baby, why would I love any of you differently?” Kexing genuinely couldn’t quite get it. Of course he would love all of his children equally!
“Because they would be yours…” Chengling added, as if having a mental connection with his Jiejie. He was actually even more prone to insecurities like that, being the only adopted kid who didn’t share blood with either of his parents.
“Dumbass, come here,” Kexing called out to his son, forcing Zishu to move to the side so Kexing would be between both of his kids right now. “I thought I explained that already, but it’s fine, I can do it again. You are both just as much my children as will be the one me and A-Xu will have in a few months, right? I don’t care if A-Xu doesn’t share blood with you, A-Xiang, or either of us with you, A-Ling, because I love you both as my children and so I will love our third child, okay?” And, because he wanted his words to mean something more. Something deeper. “I promise.”
He hugged both of them and held them close, closer than ever. He knew another child wouldn’t change any of the feelings he had for his other children. Because this kid would be just as much his and A-Xu’s as A-Xiang and A-Ling were, and nobody was ever going to change his mind.