Tom and Luke Get a Family Pt. 01

Arturo grinned. "I know just how you feel!" he said. "The number of men that can really enjoy sexual intercourse with both sexes, must be fairly limited. Even if a gay man successfully fucks a woman, I'm sure that in many cases he does not enjoy it. There's the matter of smell for one thing. Perfumes would be less popular if people enjoyed unenhanced natural scents."

"Yes. All the gays in our family, by which I mean Luke's family, use a particular old-fashioned brand of male fragrance called Storing pour Homme, because it really seems to enhance a man's natural smell. It's also of course a way of announcing your sexuality."

"Yes, I've noticed that both you and Luca wear it," his boss replied. Tom talked to Carlo, his doctoral student, and told him that while his attendances at work would be spasmodic, he, Tom, would ring him each day to see how he was managing.

Tom went back to Arturo's house after work and found that Arturo's housekeeper Isabella had a meal ready for him, Luke and Arturo. Afterwards, Luke and Tom went back to the hospital to see Olivia and the baby. Olivia looked very pleased to see them, and a few hours' sleep had obviously done her good. The colostrum had started to flow, and the baby had taken a little of it. "What are we going to call him?" asked Luke.

"I thought about Giovanni," said Olivia.

"That sounds good to me!" said Tom. "What do you think, Luca?

"I wondered about Ricardo," said Luke. They finally agreed on Giovanni Ricardo Desparaldi. His birth weight had been just 3 kilos. The nurse brought young Giovanni in for Olivia to feed, or at least to attempt to. At that moment, Olivia's parents arrived and the boys made their farewells. No more than two visitors were allowed at once.

When they got back to Arturo's, Dorothea rang. She was coming the next day and bringing a load of baby clothes and a few soft toys. "I'm not sure that Olivia has done anything about clothes" said Luke. "I think she wanted to wait until she knew that all was OK with the baby." By the next day, it was clear that the baby was ingesting his milk. The colostrum had lasted only a short time.

Dorothea arrived with a case of clothes and was greeted with enthusiasm by the boys. Olivia received the offer of clothes with gratitude. After another three days, she and Giovanni were well enough to come home. A midwife was due to make a daily home visit, but Olivia was glad that Dorothea was there to make sure that the homecoming did not upset Giovanni's feeding routine. Isabella was running round making sure that Olivia's room was OK to receive the baby, who was to sleep in a small portable crib next to his mother's bed. Dorothea had the next door room and was ready to help if it was necessary, even in the middle of the night.

The first two days after release from hospital were anxious, in case there were problems with Giovanni's feeding, but Olivia's milk continued to flow and the boy continued to guzzle it greedily. He lost a little weight over the first week after birth, then slowly started to increase in weight again. Olivia had remained in bed for most of this time, but was now getting up, moving around and taking her meals with the rest of the family. Arturo was delighted to have three adults sitting down to dinner each night with him and Bastian, who was rather bewildered by the whole event.

One night after dinner, Olivia asked the boys to come to her room while she was feeding Giovanni. "I have finally decided to accept your joint offer to be guardians of my son," she told them, and I want you both to come with me to register his birth. Can we go tomorrow morning?" A look of total joy suffused the faces of both boys, and they took turns to embrace her and kiss her. They had been embarrassed at first by the fact that Olivia had her son sucking her breast while making this announcement, but each was thrilled when she gave the baby to one of them to hold while she kissed his partner. She showed them how to hold him over their shoulders to get him to burp up his wind.

"If I were married," she told them, "my husband would be doing what you are doing. So you mustn't be embarrassed at the sight of my tits! If you are to play the role of Giovanni's fathers, you have to do everything a married man would do for his wife, except for sleeping with her! Once Luca's mother has gone home, I expect one or other of you to be on call each night, so that if Giovanni wakens up you will be at hand to get him out of his crib and give him to me for feeding. AND you will remain present until he has been fed and you can put him back to bed again! It's enough for me to be a human cow, without having to get out of bed to fetch him to be fed! We must just hope that with a good feed last thing in the evening, he will only waken once in the night."

This really wakened the boys up to what parenthood is like. Little did they realize that much more was to come, involving diapers/napkins and other needs essential to baby life!

Chapter IX Registration, parenthood and house-hunting

After breakfast and baby-feeding the next morning, the three left Giovanni in the care of Dorothea and went off to the Municipio to register his birth. They explained to the registrar that the baby's father was untraceable, and that Tom and Luca wanted to be appointed guardians to the baby along with his mother. The registrar said that that would require them to register as foster parents, and told them how to go about registering.

A few days later, Dorothea went home. The men had come to the arrangement that they would take it in turns, alternate nights to sleep in the room she had had which was within earshot of Olivia and Giovanni. If the boy cried in the night, whoever was 'on duty' would take him out of his cot and give him to Olivia for feeding. He would then wait up to half an hour till the feeding was over, take the boy, change his diaper if necessary and put him back in the crib and kiss him good night. The difference between Tom and Luke doing the job was that Tom also kissed Olivia before going back to bed. Of course the boys were no longer able to sleep naked, the one 'on duty' had to sleep in pyjamas, or at least in pyjama-trousers!

Arturo had obtained for them a pile of estate agents' brochures to examine for possible houses. Luke said in English to Tom that they were going to have a lot of work involving a lawyer in the coming months: the legal definition of their status vis à vis Giovanni, the work involving house purchase and the drawing up of new wills under Italian law. Bastian was the obvious candidate for these jobs, but Luke wanted to get Tim Ingledown to check him out.

"I'm basically distrustful of lawyers, and we need to be reassured that Bastian has a good reputation. I've heard in England about many friendly but incompetent solicitors!" Luke telephoned Tim and asked him to check out Bastian's reputation, as well as explaining why they needed a lawyer. He mentioned that they would be needing a lot of money for the purchase of the house and furniture, and that instructions would be coming to Tim about it from his parents. Curiously, Tim was the first person in England to be informed about the boys becoming fathers.

Inspection of the house agents' brochures revealed about half a dozen possible properties, though none of them was cheap. "We are not in a state to haggle," said Tom, "so we must be sure to make a realistic offer." They set out the next day by looking at the exterior of each house and checking its location. This ruled out three of the houses without even looking inside. Eventually after having inspected the interiors, they found one that suited them. It was near the park, a short tram ride from their old flat, and convenient both for getting to and from the Teatro Musicale and Costanza's home. There was also off-street parking at the back. It was not cheap, but it had been recently modernized and had four bedrooms and three bathrooms, two of which were en-suite. The boys contacted Luke's parents and were promised £500K from each, which was more than enough to buy the house and to furnish it. Olivia helped them to choose the furniture.

"It's a good job that we have so much parental help," said Luke, "we could never have bought this house on a mortgage, even if they had given us the deposit." There was enough space in the house for Olivia to have her own sitting room, as well as a study for the boys. There was a large kitchen with an alcove for eating, a separate dining room, which also housed Tom's piano, and a very large sitting room. The ground floor at the back had a terrace facing on to the small back garden.

Chapter X A new family in a new house

The family as we now must call them, lived in Arturo's villa for six months. Arturo's summer party took place in the house almost without them noticing. Tom used the event to apologize to Carlo for his frequent absences and spells of going home early and reminded the boy that he should always ring him if he had problems in the lab. Luke felt unable to take time off for the party, even though he was living in the same house.

By the time that the new house was ready, Olivia had begun to wean Giovanni. He was taking solids, basically adult food homogenized in a hand grinder, with only a couple of small milk feeds each day. "I'm sure Bastian at least must be relieved to get the house to themselves again!" said Luke.

They moved into the new house in mid-December, just in time for Arturo's departmental party. Since Giovanni had eaten a good lunch, Olivia felt able to leave him with Costanza for a couple of hours while she went back to the villa with the boys for Arturo's winter party. It was the first time that she had felt that she could leave her son.

The party was held as usual on the shortest day, and it was a totally different experience for the boys from previous years. Those had been day-long eating, drinking and socializing occasions, not just with the chemists, but with most of the gay population of Trabizona. This time it was an occasion for Olivia to meet her old colleagues in the lab, the first such occasion since her confinement. For the first time, they realized that they were now a family, and day-long drinking was no longer an option. Olivia's colleagues in the lab were amazed and delighted to see how happy she looked, and how her fuller figure (due to breast-feeding) became her. The men's gay acquaintances were in turn surprised to see how fatherhood had restrained their drinking habits.

Tom's demeanour reminded Ben how much happier and more relaxed he seemed than in the period when he was pining for a family. Fatherhood was obviously good for Tom. Both the men looked happy and proud as they showed off Olivia to their gay friends. After two hours, they left on the shuttle bus for the town centre, where Luke walked to work and Tom and Olivia took the tram home.

Tim Ingledown had checked out Bastian and reported that the firm in which he was a partner had a very good reputation, so the boys gave him their instructions. In their wills, most of their individual estate was to go to the survivor. If the testator was the survivor, most of the estate was to go to Giovanni and any other children jointly with an income for life to Olivia, who would be joint trustee for Giovanni's inheritance until he was eighteen. They had told Tim that they wished to cancel their English wills.

Bastian told the boys that it was vitally important that the documentation on their guardianship of Giovanni, and an attested English translation, should be looked after very carefully. It would be needed for instance when Giovanni was due to start school. It should be taken with them whenever they were taking Giovanni outside the Schengen area, even when Olivia was with them, but particularly when they were going to Britain. There had been numerous problems with the custody of children being taken out of the jurisdiction of the English courts, and the UK Border Agency could get quite difficult in cases where children were leaving the country, even when they had only been visiting.

Once the boys had become official guardians, they at last felt able to show off Giovanni to their families. Liz Satterthwaite, Tom's sister, was particularly delighted that the boys finally had a baby. She knew how deep Tom's longing for a child had been. David, Jon and Tommy, Luke's fathers and brother, were also happy that Luke now had a child that he and Tom could care for, even though he could not call it his own. Skype was a wonderful tool for showing off their offspring. Luke's grandparents too were delighted to see their third great-grandchild for the first time.

Of course, they also had the rather more difficult task of showing off Olivia to all their English relatives, but that seemed to go quite well also. No doubt the relatives were all wondering what was going to happen with regard to Olivia. After all, she was not just a provider of a baby for the boys, she was a human being with thoughts, desires and a need for relationships. But until she felt a sexual need, she was quite well-off: comfortable, well fed and housed in a nice house, free to go out whenever she wished, subject to Giovanni's needs, which got less once he had been weaned.

The boys were always friendly and considerate and got her anything that she asked for. They took her to church, to the opera and to the cinema, and they even ate out in a restaurant a couple of times per month, while Costanza acted as baby-sitter.

They were all delighted with the new house and gave a housewarming party to a select list of guests: Arturo and Bastian, Ben and Leonora, Pauline and her fiancé, Cornelio and his wife and Signora Bruschetti, Tom's piano teacher. It was not a sit-down meal: basically buffet food and drinks organized by Tom and Costanza, who was happy to continue working for the boys and delighted to be in a house with Giovanni, of whom she made a great fuss. Her extra work and responsibility were to be rewarded by a big pay rise, plus travelling expenses.

By now Giovanni was sleeping through the night, and Tom and Luke could resume sharing a bed, under their own silk sheets. They celebrated this by making love with increased frequency. Costanza was not the only one to fall under Giovanni's spell. Both the men as soon as they got into the house would seek him out and if he was awake, play with him and talk to him in spite of the lack of intelligible verbal response.

Although it was their intention to bring the boy up as an Anglican, it was agreed that he should be baptized in the Roman church. There is no problem about Anglican churches recognizing Roman Catholic baptisms, but the reverse is not always the case. Arturo and Pauline were Giovanni's godparents, and another small party was held after the service at which his 'head was wetted' by the guests in numerous glasses of Prosecco. The whole question of Sundays had been settled by a complex programme. On one Sunday per month, the boys alone would drive to Bologna for the Sunday service, two weeks later all three of them would take Giovanni to Bologna and after the service go on to Luke's mother's. The other two Sundays per month, with Olivia and Giovanni, they would go to their local Catholic church.

Tom had offered to resign as churchwarden of Holy Cross, but the Chaplain has said that Tom was too valuable to lose and a deputy had been found for the Sundays when Tom was absent. The boys had however, temporarily left the choir.

Once Giovanni had got a few teeth and had started eating solid food, Olivia took charge in the kitchen. It turned out that she was a good cook. Both Tom and Costanza were relieved by this discovery. Tom had been doing all the weekend cooking (Costanza only came during the week), and it had prevented him from spending time with Giovanni. The men both now worked split shifts during the week, with a break from 1 to 4 pm, during which they came home and had a family meal with Olivia and Giovanni, cooked by either Olivia or Costanza, at which either Tom or Luke would say grace.

Tom of course would come home soon after 6 pm in time for Giovanni's evening feed, and would then either bath him or help Olivia do it. The boy would often waken about 11 pm for a short feed, and Luke would be there to change him if necessary, and put him back in his cot. He was now growing steadily. The sparse black hair that he had had at birth was now long and abundant, and Olivia needed to cut it from time to time. He had long ago lost the red and wrinkled appearance of a newborn.

Things continued in this way until January. Bianca, Dorotea and Massimo's daughter, at university in Paris, had gone to spend Christmas in England with her brother Sandro and his boyfriend, their two adopted daughters and Luke's parents and adopted brother at Rockwell's Barn, so Dorotea and Massimo came to Trabizona and inaugurated Tom and Luke's new guest room. It meant that Tom could entertain them in the days between Christmas and the New Year when Luke had to work.

At New Year they all spent the day at Olivia's parents', but the boys had to be very restrained in their drinking, because they had to drive home with a very precious small passenger who had not been around the previous year! He was not yet big enough for a baby seat, and his carry-cot was strapped to the back seat. The Desperaldis had by now got used to their daughter's ménage à trois, and were always delighted to see Giovanni.

February saw Pauline's directorial debut in a new Italian-language production of Rossini's last completed opera, Guglielmo Tell with Luke as répétiteur. He had had several long phone conversations with his father David about the job of répétiteur. The cast were all native Italian speakers, so the job tested Luke's musical skills rather than his linguistic ones. Pauline was quite demanding about what she wanted from the principals, and it was sometimes a struggle for Luke to achieve her objectives. Rehearsing the chorus, in contrast, was much easier.

He would get home at night quite drained, even after the public performances had begun, and was often disappointed that Giovanni was asleep. Even Tom found it hard to get him to relax. "It's all right for you, Tom," he would grumble, "you've had a nice evening with our son and his mother. I come home shagged out with emotional strain and can't unwind, because they're both in bed!"

"Have a drink," said Tom, "and then come to bed. I'll soon relax you! You mustn't feel like William Tell's son, a target for arrows!" They managed these days to get regular supplies of Belgian beer. They took their glasses of Westmalle Dubbel and adjourned to the bedroom. Tom slowly undressed Luke before taking his own clothes off. He made his boyfriend lie on the bed and squatted over him with his arse in Luke's face, his dick and balls dangling temptingly in front. Luke started to kiss his hairy rump, while Tom bent forward and took Luke's limp cock into his mouth. It at once started to stiffen, while at the other end of his body, Luke's tongue was pushing at his anal sphincter. They both shivered in delight at this double stimulation.

Luke then transferred his attention to Tom's cock, which in turn began to stiffen and rapidly hardened to full size in Luke's moist warm oral cavity. The dirty talk that usually accompanied their lovemaking was silenced when both their mouths were full of meat! Luke put both his arms round his partner as their mutual mouth-fucking got into its stride. They had not played soissant-neuf for some months and they had to go slowly in an attempt to keep their orgasms in synch. When Luke tightened his grip on Tom's waist, Tom knew that Luke was about to come and speeded up his movements so that they both squirted together.

As usual, Tom had difficulty in keeping all Luke's come in his mouth until he could swallow it, but eventually only a small volume dribbled out of his mouth on to his mate lying below. Tom moved over Luke's left leg, rolled over and lay down beside him. Luke reached out and put his arm round Tom, and the two fell asleep with uncleaned teeth and a taste in their mouths from a beverage even more enjoyable than the contents of the half-drunk glasses of beer beside the bed!