Erik the Pink

by Matthew J. Metzger

  “Sorry, what?”

  Andreas laughed. “That’s how Spanish surnames work. We take both our parents’ names, and not our partner’s name.”

  “I don’t get it,” Erik said blankly.

  “If we used Spanish convention,” Andreas said, “then Beatriz would be Beatriz Lerouge Mão De Ferro.”

  “Mine and yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “So—”

  “So my father was João Mão De Ferro Frazao, and my mother was Isabel Bibiano Alvarez. Put the two together—”

  “Oh my God,” Erik said.

  “When I got my citizenship here, the paperwork doesn’t really allow for that many names so I dropped everything but the first one.”

  “Mão De Ferro.”

  “Yes.”

  “What does it mean?” Erik asked curiously.

  “Hand of Iron. Ironhand.”

  Erik let loose a great booming laugh, and Andreas smirked.

  “I thought you’d like that.”

  “So Beatriz is Beatrice Ironhand?”

  “Yep.”

  “Oh my God, that’s amazing. I might change my name to match yours.”

  “It’ll never happen the other way around,” Andreas said snottily.

  “I thought a hand was manos?”

  “Mano. Las manos is hands.”

  “So how can Mão De Ferro mean Ironhand?”

  “Because it’s Portuguese.”

  “Now my head hurts,” Erik complained.

  Andreas chuckled as they reached their favourite bench, and he sat down. His hips were aching, and he led Erik rustle their bundle of complaining joy out of her pram. She immediately forgot all about her butterfly toy, and began to cry. Erik was not, after all, supposed to be cuddling her after three o’clock in the afternoon. (The concept of days off was still eluding her.)

  “Oops, your turn.”

  “Hello, sweetie,” Andreas crooned, taking her and cuddling her close. The crying trailed off into a discontented grumble, then she latched onto the toggle on his coat, beginning to suck peaceably on it.

  “How can your last name be Portuguese?”

  “My whole name is Portuguese.”

  “Even Andreas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Andreas because I liked it,” Andreas said simply, shrugging. “And my father was Portuguese. He was from Lisbon.”

  “I thought you only spoke English, French, and Spanish?”

  “And a bit of Basque. But not really Portuguese. My father’s family left Lisbon for Bilbao when he was five. I only know a handful of phrases in Portuguese—about as much as you know Spanish.”

  Erik gave him an unimpressed look. Andreas just smiled beatifically, and blew a raspberry on Beatriz’s cheek. She giggled.

  “You can’t be Spanish and have a Portuguese name.”

  “Then go back to Scandinavia with your inability to spell your name the English way.”

  Erik snorted. “Point, I suppose.”

  Andreas cocked his head with a curious smile. “You told me you chose your name, after a drunk night out with your friends.”

  “Yeah…”

  “What was it originally?”

  Erik rolled his eyes. “Awful. Boring. Not me. I’ll swap you.”

  “Tell me yours I’ll tell you mine?”

  “Exactly.”

  Andreas smirked. “Deal.”

  “Peter.”

  “Peter?”

  “That’s what I told the social workers who came to get me from the hospital where she dumped me, apparently.”

  “Peter Lerouge?”

  “Peter, no last name. They picked Smith.”

  “So Peter Smith turned into this enormous Viking and decided to name himself Erik the Red?”

  “Pretty much. What about you?”

  Andreas leaned over and whispered it in Erik’s ear. Beatriz burbled at the change in position and pulled on the toggle.

  “That’s—wow.”

  “Yep.”

  “I mean, that’s a gorgeous name, but it’s not you.”

  “What did you think they called me?”

  “I don’t know. Something—a bit harder. You know, like Andreas, with that nice hard D and sharp S.”

  “Oh, you like me with nice hard D in me?”

  Erik erupted into gales of laughter that startled the ducks in the pond. Andreas grinned when Beatriz started to giggle, too, though—of course—she was years too young to understand the joke, and Andreas would be happy to go the traditional parenting route of pretending she would be forever too young and innocent to understand that particular one.

  “Well, that is how we ended up with this little miracle, so yes, I think I do like you that way,” Erik said gleefully.

  Andreas smirked, holding Beatriz up to kiss her nose, and began to bounce her gently. She stared at him like he’d completely lost his mind.

  “And I know we can’t have another bundle that way, but I do want more.”

  “I do, too,” Andreas said, shuffling sideways to lean his cheek on Erik’s shoulder as he kept raising and lowering Beatriz. She began to get the idea and flail her limbs around.

  “What do you reckon? Two or three?”

  “I want three,” Andreas said. “It’s a good number. Four is getting a bit too much, I think.”

  “Three it is,” Erik said, sticking his tongue out at Beatriz. “What do you think, love? Two baby brothers or sisters?”

  She yawned widely, and made a familiar grasping motion with her stubby hands.

  “Okay, we’ll ask again when you’re a little bit older,” Erik said, and stood up to get her situated back in her pram. She was little more than a nose and a pair of mittens sticking out of her parka, and it looked absurdly sweet as he juggled her and the contents of the pram. He passed the butterfly to Andreas as he worked her back into her blanket nest, and Andreas turned it over in his hands thoughtfully.

  “Lauren said her surrogacy offer still stands.”

  “We can talk about the how closer to the time,” Erik said. “I’m thinking we wait until Beatriz is at least two or three. She might not get as jealous if she’s a bit older.”

  “Don’t count on it, Javier was jealous as hell of Cristina and there were four years between them.”

  “Your siblings?” Erik asked as he tucked the baby blanket in and reached for the butterfly.

  “Yeah. Me, Ana, Javier, Cristina, Daniel, and Laura.”

  “That’s a lot of kids.”

  “Ana and Javier were twins.”

  “That’s still a lot of kids.”

  Andreas shrugged. “I guess my parents liked each other.”

  “Or your mum took it like a trooper.”

  “Urgh, thank you for that image.”

  Erik chuckled as he sat back down. He slung one arm around Andreas’ shoulders, and kept the other on the pram handle, rocking it gently to lull Beatriz off to sleep.

  “I guess those names are banned for our potential babies?”

  “Yep.”

  “Is there a Spanish equivalent of Rose?”

  “Er, Rosa.”

  “And Robert?”

  “Roberto.”

  “I ban those.”

  “Why?”

  “Shit kids I knew in care. Like, really shit. Even by care standards. I’m pretty sure Rob is in prison now. He had a shitty kid brother, too, Danny.”

  “Double-banning offence, that. Okay.”

  “Hey, you picked Beatriz.”

  Technically, Andreas had just had the final say. Erik liked Spanish names, and Andreas—much as he didn’t want his children to ever meet their grandparents—still very much loved his country and most of his culture, and wanted them to know it, too. He wanted Beatriz to speak Spanish, eat the far superior Spanish food, and know what life was like outside of tea, rain, and ‘yer bird’s well fit’ Britain. They had agreed from the very beginning to try and find Spanish names for their children that
would be easy to adapt to life in the UK, but without them losing their own heritage.

  And when they’d drawn up a list of ten names, some for boys and some for girls, Andreas had had the final pick. An act of kindness on Erik’s part, after a particularly rough day when Andreas had broken down in tears and admitted that he didn’t think he could go through with this—albeit five weeks too late to do anything else but go through with it.

  “You pick its name,” Erik had said. “One boy’s, one girl’s. Then whatever they turn out to be, we’re ready. Go on. You pick.”

  So he’d picked Beatriz. Third on the list, but it was special. And so far, it matched her haughty little attitude and sunshine smile perfectly.

  “Yes…”

  “So how about next time, we do the same thing, get a top ten between us, then I get to pick?”

  “Okay.”

  “Because if we have a girl next as well, I want to name her Ellen.”

  “Elena,” Andreas said automatically. “Why?”

  “Auntie Ellen,” Erik said promptly. “She was the only foster carer I ever had who I liked. She was great. She—she didn’t think I was dumb because I couldn’t read very well, or that I was a hooligan because I was big and into heavy metal. She was the first person to tell me it didn’t matter where I’d come from or what I looked like, that everything that counted was my choice. That if I fucked up that was on me, but if I did good, that was all me and all. I wanted her to adopt me. She was going to do it, too.”

  “What happened?”

  Erik shrugged awkwardly. “She, um. She had a stroke. Massive stroke. She was in hospital for six, seven weeks. They—they let me go see her, to be fair. I was only eleven, but I still went to see her. And then…then she died.”

  “Oh, sweetheart…”

  “My social worker took me to the funeral. He was a bit a knob most of the time, but yeah. I have to—yeah. I gave him the credit for that. They let me say goodbye. And I didn’t find out until I was eighteen, but she left me a bit of money. Enough for the house deposit. She made everything possible. She was the nearest I had to a mum. Well, like some cross between an auntie and a nan. But she was mine, you know? She was like…my first family. So—Ellen. Elena. After her.”

  Andreas squeezed his arm, his chest aching. He’d never heard about her. Erik didn’t talk about his time in care. He wanted to forget it had ever happened, usually liked to pretend he just popped into being at eighteen, six feet of red frizz and endless belly laughs. It was so easy to forget where he’d come from.

  “You’re in luck,” Andreas said gently, tugging the arm around his neck lower so he could twist and kiss the wrist. “I like Elena. It’s a beautiful name. And if we have another girl, it’d be the perfect name.”

  Erik let go of the pram, and turned on him to crush him into a hug.

  “Hey,” Andreas murmured when he felt the hitch. “None of that, now.”

  “Sorry. S’just perfect.”

  The hitch was followed by another, and another, and Andreas sighed, carding his fingers through the wild mane of red hair that threatened to smother him.

  “What’s perfect?” he murmured gently.

  “You. Bee. This.”

  Andreas closed his eyes and squeezed back.

  “S’all I ever wanted,” Erik croaked thickly. “And now—now—”

  “Now you have it,” Andreas whispered softly. “Forever. And nothing can take it away.”

  The crying began in earnest then, and Andreas simply held on, deciding to ride it out. He could tease some other time. Right now, he would simply hold on.

  “You’re right,” he said. “It’s perfect.”

  * * * *

  The pub was quiet, the lunch rush was over, and the assistant manager wanted to train the new team leaders in how to manage a pub when Erik was at the area meetings and he wasn’t working.

  So Erik got kicked out.

  “Just naff off home!” Tom said. “Go be a family man or whatever it is you are now!”

  Which was how he found himself in the hall, holding his keys, and staring at his boyfriend lying flat on the floor weightlifting their baby and being filmed by Lauren.

  “What on earth?” he asked, and Lauren erupted into gales of laughter.

  “She loves it!” she said.

  Andreas grinned. He was wearing his gym kit, and the hair around his temples was damp. When Erik glanced at the TV, it was switched off, but an empty DVD case lay open in front of it. A fitness video.

  “Should you really be working out?” he asked.

  “It was just a bit of stretching,” Andreas said, lifting Beatriz high again. She waved her chubby little arms with a crowing laugh. “Seriously, if I put her down, she cries.”

  As Erik watched, Andreas lowered her until he could plant a loud kiss on her tummy. She bestowed one of those enormous smiles on him, and made a grab for his hair.

  “Nope!”

  He lifted her away—and Erik stooped to take her. She squealed in surprise, a grumble rising, then laughed in his ear when he turned her into his shoulder for his own cuddle, and began to pull on his beard.

  “My turn,” he said smugly, marching over to the sofa and sitting down next to Lauren. She was in her Lycra, and he raised his eyebrows. “Been a workout session, has there?”

  “I can’t fit into my jeans,” Andreas said.

  “I’m not surprised,” Erik said flatly. “You had a baby.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. He got an acidic look that could have scorched his hair.

  “I’m going for a shower. And take that man-bun out!”

  Erik ruefully tugged the band out of his hair, letting the frizz explode out of shape again. Prickly boyfriends were dangerous territory. Beatriz was in a better mood, cooing and repeatedly patting his beard like it was the cat.

  “When did you come over?” he asked Lauren, who shrugged.

  “About two hours ago. We had coffee and a gossip and did a stretching video.”

  “If it was just stretching, why is he sweating?” Erik asked doubtfully.

  Lauren snorted. “Speaks a man. You try yoga poses sometime. They make you sweat, believe me.”

  “I’ll take your word for it…” Erik grumbled, turning to bump his nose against Beatriz’ fists. She wasn’t able to hold herself up yet, and nearly slid off his shoulder at the impact. The angry squawk was deafening.

  “Daddy’s mean, I quite agree,” Lauren said loftily.

  “Shut up,” Erik groused, shifting Beatriz to lie down in his lap, taking her feet between finger and thumb and waving them like toys. She blinked, and shoved a fist against her mouth, looking uncertain. “Does Andreas seem…okay to you?”

  “Yes,” Lauren said slowly, and cocked her head. “Is he…not?”

  “I don’t know,” Erik said carefully.

  “What’s up?”

  “He’s—I don’t know. I think he’s on a diet or something. And he won’t go out if it’s too warm to wear my big coat.”

  Lauren sighed. “Oh, Erik. He’s probably feeling self-conscious. It takes a while for your body to recover after a baby. And Andreas is a bit more sensitive about that than most women.”

  “How d’you mean?” Erik asked stupidly.

  She huffed at him. “Good God, even for a man you’re being dense today.”

  “Hey!”

  “Did you leave your brain in the fryers at work?”

  “Rude,” Erik drawled, and swept Beatriz up. He stood up, crooning low in her ear. “Come on, let’s leave horrible Auntie Lauren here and go have a wonderful adventure of our own in the kitchen.”

  “Good, about time you got me a brew, I’m a guest!” Lauren shouted after them.

  Beatriz liked the kitchen. Erik suspected it was because he started every morning there with her, singing to her and rocking her in one arm or the baby carrier while he made breakfast. He was getting good at holding her on one arm and doing everything else with the other. She played with his bea
rd while he made a fresh round of tea, and began to smack her lips just as he’d finished popping the mugs on a tray.

  “Lauren!”

  “What?”

  “Has Andreas fed her yet?”

  “No, she didn’t want her lunch!”

  She was almost four months old, and they were starting to give her little dabs of food as treats, like peanut butter or honey on the end of her dummy or a finger, or smooth soups. But she wasn’t quite ready to be fully weaned yet, and Erik opted for the faster and simpler feeding route, in light of the impending tantrum that he could sense coming. He shook out the formula into a bottle, rummaged for the milk, and shoved the completed mix into the microwave.

  The door closed, the microwave hummed, and the baby exploded.

  “Oh-kay,” he said, trying to stay calm even as his instincts shrivelled up into panic and his entire head seemed to cringe to get away from her. “It’s nearly ready, sweetie. You need to learn to give us a little bit more warning about when you’re hungry. You’re worse than your daddy, this little full-to-empty trick you have going here…”

  He heard the bathroom door open upstairs, and just as the microwave pinged, Andreas shuffled into the kitchen clad in a million towels.

  “I’ll take her, you test it,” he said, expertly hefting the screaming baby out of Erik’s arms and carrying her through to the living room. Erik sighed in relief, tested the bottle on the back of his hand—then grabbed a couple of Mars Bars out of the cupboard.

  “Here,” he said, following Andreas. “You have them, I’ll sort her out.”

  “I’m not really—”

  “They go out of date tomorrow, and you know I don’t like them.”

  Andreas raised an eyebrow, but dutifully swapped baby for chocolate, and Erik sat on the end of the sofa, awkwardly getting Beatriz settled at the right angle before allowing her to latch onto the bottle.

  “Why didn’t she want lunch?”

  “No idea,” Andreas said, palming one of the bars off onto Lauren but at least breaking into the other one himself. “Just didn’t. Wasn’t interested. Tried for half an hour, but she just kept shoving the bottle away. Doesn’t matter, she’s only a couple of hours late.”

  She was certainly interested now, and Erik sat back with her, keeping his eyes trained on her as she suckled. She stared up at him, and he wondered if she could see him clearly at that distance yet.