DISCLAIMER: Most definitely not mine.

A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviews, favorites, and follows! They all make me so happy; you have no idea!

Again, this story is winding down. I don't know exactly how many more chapters it'll have or when they'll go up, but I definitely feel it slowing. This has been my baby basically ever since I started posting fanfiction four and a half years ago, and it's time to let it go. Almost.

The rest of Mal's pregnancy passes in a flash. Ben watches as she seems to get bigger and bigger, until even leaving their bed becomes virtually impossible. This time, it really does look like she swallowed a watermelon. Or two.

At the twenty-week ultrasound, they find out they're having two boys. Identical ones, at that, and they spend the rest of her pregnancy devising ways to tell them apart while giving them their own, consistent identities, and that means enlisting Aria and Clara's help in devising their names.

All of their friends and family know, of course, that they're doing so, and suggestions start pouring in, and not so subtly, either. Jay and Carlos toss out their own names, talking on and on about how they might not get to pass down their names, and wouldn't that be so sad, Mal, which triggers her hormones and leaves her crying into Ben's shoulder for an hour while the two laugh their asses off. Evie and Doug rattle off names that made their shortlist for Henry, because they are great names, Ben, they just didn't quite fit him.

He doesn't remember it being quite like this with the girls.

The four of them have made their decisions by the time Mal enters her last month, but they decide not to tell a soul that they've done so. Mal has her doubts about Clara being able to keep it a secret, but their little girl is becoming quite sneaky. He doesn't know how he feels about that.

Almost every piece of literature on twins that he can find says that they will most likely not make it to the due date. This is great news for them, since the twins' due date is July 10, and Clara's birthday is the 12. Once they get past Aria's birthday in June, the two wait with bated breath. Mal's been through this twice before, so when the Braxton-Hicks start at the exact midway point between the girls' birthdays, she's momentarily excited, before realizing what they are. Every day is spent with the sentence, "Maybe it's today," uttered by someone.

It has yet to be today.

July 10 dawns with no babies yet arrived, and the two start to panic. Aria was early, so they've clearly missed that, and Clara was four days late.

They go to sleep that night with no sign other than the drop in Mal's stomach from the day before that makes her faint waddle even more pronounced than it had been. She lies on top of the blankets, stretched out and taking up most of the bed the way she only does when she's this pregnant. He holds onto his little silver and finds himself restless. They have to get through Clara's birthday. She seems excited at the prospect of it, but they both know that will fade almost immediately. They have to make it.

By the time they get the girls settled for lunch on July 11, Ben's starting to think it might, in fact, be the day. Mal's been nesting since she woke up, and her back seems especially aggravating today. He pays half attention in the Council meeting, his eyes straying to her every few minutes. He can tell when the contractions start and does his best to surreptitiously time them. They're seven minutes apart for most of the meeting. Five to seven is when you go to the hospital wing. They go down to six just as the meeting closes, and without even needing to say a word to each other, they're hand in hand to the hospital wing and instructing his father to make sure his mother stays with the girls.

Clara's labor, at least, the part they'd been aware of, was a record-breaking ninety minutes. Aria's, closer to four hours. He expects to be greeting his sons by dinner. Instead, they take their sweet time, partly because one of the babies is still breech, even after all the tips and tricks they tried from their appointment five days earlier.

They enter the world at 11:43 and 11:50 PM, respectively, just ten minutes shy of Clara's birthday. They'd woken up Aria shortly after Clara was born, but she arrived at 5:30 in the morning, so it wasn't unquestionably out of the routine. In the end, they decide to leave the girls asleep, and enjoy their first hours with their purple haired boys by themselves.

That's right, purple haired boys. He laughed his ass off when he first noticed. Mal has yet to comment on it.

The girls are brought in after their breakfast, their grandmother in tow. Mal is barely awake and the baby in her arms is milk drunk. Aria and Clara don't seem to care in the slightest, as they climb up onto the bed and sit on either side of Mal's feet in awe.

"Who is who?" Aria asks, looking back and forth between them.

"How come they get Mommy's hair?" Clara adds, and Ben bites back a smile.

"Just the luck of the draw, I guess," Mal says, "Who knows? It could all fall out and turn all pretty like yours."

"But yours is so much prettier!" Clara protests.

"Yeah! All the best things are purple. Only boring things are brown," Aria says.

"Chocolate's brown," he tries, and Aria does seem to agree that perhaps they are some acceptable brown things in the world. "Now, to answer your earlier question, we haven't decided yet. What do you think?"

Aria and Clara look to each other, then begin whispering, pointing back and forth between the baby in his arms and the one in Mal's. When they finally pull apart, Aria sits up straight and clears her throat.

"Princess Clara and I have come to a decision," she announces. She's become much more insistent on using their titles since she turned six, he's noticed. He's not sure how he feels about it.

"And what is that decision, your highness?" Mal asks, playing along well.

"We think that Queen Mommy is holding Prince Spencer, and King Daddy is holding Prince Ethan," Clara says, mimicking Aria's posture and tone.

His mother, almost forgotten about, makes a sound at that, and he grins up at her before returning his attention to Mal.

"What do you think, Queen Mommy?" he asks.

"I'm in agreement with the princesses."

"Well then, would you like to introduce your brothers to your grandma?" he says, turning back to the girls. They bounce up and down as they wave his mother over.

"Grandma, this is Spencer Christian Adams," Clara says as she carefully touches his head, slowly enunciating each word like she has been for the past month.

"And this is Ethan Jacob Adams," Aria says.

"I picked out Spencer's name all by myself!" Clara adds.

"They're lovely names. I'm so proud of all of you," his mother says, and she presses a kiss to his cheek and then Mal's.

She takes a picture of all six of them, with each girl holding one of the babies (With his and Mal's help, of course) and it is the picture sent out to announce the birth. He doesn't think he'll ever tire of seeing it.