To celebrate Pride Month, I decided to take requests from readers for bonus chapters for my stories. I posted about it on my message board but if anyone reading this has a request, feel free to drop a suggestion in a comment on this chapter!  (I will try to get to any requests that aren't something I intend to cover in spinoffs/sequels or that don't fit my vision for the character although I may have to extend Pride Month a bit to get to them all)

This is a bonus chapter written based on the following request from itsmeimthevampire :

I'd love to see ANY bonus scenes of Robin and Ty. Maybe a time skip to the future where they have kids and are making pancakes for a big family breakfast or something.

***

Fiddling with his tie while he strolled down the stairs, Robin could hear laughter from the kitchen: just laughter, no screaming. Any morning without screaming was a good morning. However, the morning wasn't over yet. With a couple of four-year-olds around, screaming was always an imminent possibility.

"Daddy!" the two boys by the table exclaimed in unison when Robin entered the kitchen. "Dada is making pancakes."

"Or something like it at least," Tyler mumbled from the stovetop, struggling to detach a circle of batter from the supposedly non-stick pan. Looking at his work, he concluded: "This one looks more like a stegosaurus..."

"I want it!" Owen immediately piped up, waving his plate toward his dada. The stegosaurus pancake—which looked nothing like the dinosaur in question so the comparison may have been a ruse on Tyler's part to encourage the boys to eat—landed elegantly next to a pair of sausages and a pool of red sauce.

"Are you boys having pancakes with hotdogs and ketchup?" Robin sat down at the short end of the kitchen table.

Shuffling half a hot dog and a quarter of the stegosaurus in his mouth, all dripping in red liquid, Owen nodded happily.

"Dada said we could!" Alex, his twin brother, informed Robin with a huge ketchup-stained grin.

"That's what they wanted, and who am I to object?" Tyler explained with a shrug. "It's carbs, protein, and vegetables!"

Robin wasn't sure ketchup counted as a vegetable but he agreed. There were more important battles as a parent than pancake toppings. As long as the boys ate with good appetites and weren't screaming, everything was swell in the Caster-Erie household.

"You can have them without ketchup though," Tyler assured Robin, putting a plate with pancakes topped with blueberry jam—his favorite—on the table. A light kiss landed on his cheek. "Should I help you with that tie?"

Robin nodded, although the question baffled him a bit. "You know how to tie a tie?" he asked while Tyler straightened out the ends of the fabric. "I don't think I've ever seen you in one. You wore shorts at our wedding!"

Not that Robin had minded the shorts, which had been paired with a matching pale blue linen blazer. He'd barely noticed what Tyler wore anyway as his head had been in the clouds, in disbelief about the fact that the wondrous Tyler Caster was about to be his forever. That was five years ago now, and Robin hadn't quite landed yet. Sometimes he had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming. He had a husband. He had kids. He had a family.

Tyler shrugged. He was, of course, wearing shorts at that very moment. Luckily his job as a PE teacher made such attire acceptable. "I think it was Lance who taught me," he said. "He had to wear one for some military banquet when he first enlisted. So I helped him practice tying it over and over." Finalizing an elegant knot, Tyler placed a peck on Robin's forehead. "There! You're all set, Robby. Surely the committee can't deny you that grant when you look this handsome."

"I hope so..." Robin mumbled, turning to catch a stray piece of pancake falling off Owen's plate. "You lost this buddy," he said, putting it back on the plate. His son immediately put a fork in the piece, shoveling it into his mouth. Robin could swear that boy had somehow inherited Tyler's appetite, despite having no blood relation to his beloved Dada.

"Yum," the kid declared with a happy smile on his lips. "Can I have more?"

"One T-rex pancake coming up!" Tyler placed a quick peck on Robin's lips before rushing back to the stove to flip a batch of various dinosaurs. "And I know you're getting that grant, cutie."

Robin hoped his husband was right. Getting the grant would be huge for his research into criteria for identifying medical child abuse. It's what he'd been working on as a postdoc for the last couple of years together with Professor Royce. Perhaps if someone had conducted such research when he was a child, his mom's shackles on her son could have been shattered earlier.

"Look, Daddy, I cut it all by myself," Alex proclaimed, having meticulously worked on severing a pancake for the last few minutes.

"Well done, buddy," Robin praised, ruffling his hand through the boy's hair. It was indeed a huge accomplishment for the boy, who struggled with his motor skills since he was born with a form of cerebral palsy. Although he had improved in leaps and bounds since moving in with Robin and Tyler as a foster child two years earlier. Alex hadn't been walking yet at the time but now he could mostly keep even steps with his brother, even while using braces on his legs.

When first meeting their kids at the Social Services office, Owen had kept repeating "Two daddies?!" in amazement while bouncing up and down, as he'd never even had one daddy, while Alex had attached himself to Tyler's prosthetic leg, fascinated by the device. The years since had been chaotic, sometimes it felt like at least one kid was always screaming, but wonderful, as slobbery good night kisses made up for all the screaming. After a lot of legal hoops, the couple had been able to officially adopt the boys a few months ago.

"Here's another batch of dinos!" Tyler announced, dropping unrecognizable blobs on the plates of both the kids and his husband.

"You should sit down and eat too, Ty," Robin said, worried his husband was forgetting to feed himself. Despite being known for his appetite, Robin had noticed Tyler forgoing to eat on several occasions, being too busy serving the children.

"I'm about to, cutie." Tyler took a seat, diving into a plate of pancake scraps and blacked hot dogs. It appeared he had saved the less successful batches for himself.

"Is that enough food for you?" Robin asked, skeptical about whether the hotdogs were actually edible.

"Well, I'm also having whatever these guys aren't." Tyler made a growling sound toward the children, pretending to try to steal a pancake off Alex's plate. The kid quickly snatched it with his fork, showcasing his improved motor skills.

"Dada is a pancake monster," Owen informed Robin among loud giggles.

"Alright then..." Robin accepted this fact without question. He turned toward Tyler again. "Are you sure you're fine picking up the children from preschool today? I can try to get there as quickly as possible after my presentation otherwise."

Usually, Tyler dropped the kids off in the morning and then Robin picked them up afterward since his husband had also taken on duties as a soccer coach, which meant he often stayed at the school after hours. But today, Robin wasn't sure when he would be able to leave the university, since his presentation.

"It's fine," Tyler assured him between growls and giggles. "They'll have a blast hanging with me at practice for a bit. I'm sure the girls on the team will enjoy it too. I actually talked to Alejandro though while you were in the shower and he agreed to come pick them up from the field at around six."

"We get to hang at the grandadas?" Alex asked excitedly, dropping a piece of pancake off his fork as he attempted to eat and talk at the same time.

"Yay!" Owen chimed in. "Granda Alejandro makes awesome ice cream sandwiches," he concluded as an explanation for his excitement.

Robin had tried Alejandro's homemade ice cream sandwiches—which were made with coconut milk and had no added sugar in them—and they were indeed delicious. Definitely a cause for celebration.

"And mac and cheese," Alex added, licking his lips while thinking of his favorite dish. The boy was something of a mac and cheese fiend, his favorite being Alejandro's version with truffles, smoked ham, and aged cheese.

After taking Robin in after he cut ties with his mom, Jon and Alejandro had become his surrogate parents and they had quite naturally stepped into the role of grandparents for the boys. Robin was proud that he was able to provide a large extended family for his children, something he never had himself. Their family went beyond blood relation but that didn't lessen the love and care. Jon and Alejandro. Des and Hernan. Sarah and Victoria. Donna and Kevin. Tyler's mom Darlene. Lance and Tallulah. Emmie. They all were vital parts of Robin and Tyler's family and by extension Alex and Owen's family.

"I actually asked Jon and Alejandro if the boys could stay with them overnight," Tyler added, snatching Owen's plate to eat the leftovers as the boy had lost interest and left for the living room, where he could be heard loudly playing with his extensive collection of plastic dinosaurs. It appeared he had loaded as many dinos as possible into a Playmobil firetruck, narrating their adventures of extinguishing fires all across the Stone Age. "I figured it would be nice with an evening all to ourselves, so you can relax after securing that grant."

Robin refrained from protesting about the grant being far from secured yet. Tyler's belief in him made him believe it may be possible. "Do you have anything special planned?" he asked instead, tousling his fingers through Alex's hair as the other boy also left the table to join his brother in dino playtime.

"Just ordering pizza and a double feature of Jeopardy and the Liverpool game," Tyler offered. "And then maybe some... cuddles," he added, winking mischievously, perhaps insinuating the adult kind of cuddles.

"Sounds plenty special to me," Robin replied, stroking Tyler's hand and for a moment getting lost in his green eyes. Ten years into their relationship, those eyes never failed to mesmerize him. Green like freedom. With Tyler by his side, Robin always felt free, no matter how many domestic duties called on him. Life with Tyler held no shackles.

A loud yell from the living room broke the moment. It appeared Alex was trying to steal Owen's favorite triceratops.

"I'll deal with it," Robin immediately offered, putting his hand on Tyler's shoulder as he rose to deal with the dinosaur emergency. Of course, there could be no morning without screaming. But there were also no mornings without joy in the Caster-Erie household.

Author's Note: Yes, I do plan to cover the ten years between SLB and this story at some point. I'm still working on how to do that though (and I need to finish Bitter Treats first). So consider this a sneak peek into the boys' future!

I've actually pictured Robin and Tyler with twin boys for quite a while and their names are both dedications to their special interests (although the boys are adopted, so they probably wouldn't have actually named them, so consider it more like Easter eggs). So Alex is after the Jeopardy host Alex Trebek and Owen is after legendary Liverpool player Michael Owen.