By the time he headed back downstairs, Beatriz was sitting on the kitchen floor, waving a feather toy enthusiastically at Marmalade. The cat was less enthused, having learned his lesson from getting too close last week and being thwacked on the nose by the wand. She abandoned it though when she saw Andreas, stretching her arms up and crowing, “Uh! Uh!” until he stooped to lift her.
“Hello, my little monster,” he crooned, blowing a raspberry on her cheek until she squealed with laughter. “Ready for nursery?”
She cooed happily, patting his cheek, and he walked her round the kitchen as Erik set up the pram and put her favourite toys into the storage pouch under her seat. She was entering her clingy phase, and had been so distraught last week at the loss of both parents and her well-chewed toys that the nursery had had to ring Andreas at the gym and get him to come and pick her up.
“Say bye-bye to Daddy!”
“Ba-ba,” she echoed, twisting to wave at Erik. He laughed, leaning in to kiss Andreas, and broke off with a protest when she hit him.
“Ow!”
“Think you’ll find her ladyship gets kisses first now,” Andreas said with a smirk, and watched as Erik mockingly punished her with a bristly kiss. She yowled, squealed for her own cuddle, then finally permitted them to settle her down in the pram with her TARDIS toy. It was instantly shoved into her mouth, along with a decent effort at wedging one socked foot in there, too.
“Just as well she doesn’t need shoes yet,” Erik said thoughtfully.
“Yep. Right, off we go. See you toni—ah!”
His hips were seized, his body turned, and the kiss that was planted on his mouth was firm and fiery. He melted. Looped both arms around Erik’s neck and sagged into him, a warm feeling of contentment rising up inside him as the grip on his waist shifted around his back and he was completely enveloped. He opened under the gentle pressure, tilting his head back for a better angle—and broke away with a laugh when Beatriz shrieked indignantly.
“Someone knows it’s time to go to playgroup,” he whispered, and Erik snorted with laughter.
“Someone knows she gets a literal sandbox to play in at playgroup,” he said, nuzzling Andreas’ ear. “I know it doesn’t really help, but you are perfect.”
Andreas curled his toes inside his shoes.
“Not yet,” he breathed, nudging his nose against Erik’s. “When I feel like me, when I can look in a mirror, when I match, then you’ll see what perfect looks like. Right now? You have no idea.”
Erik grinned, and bent down for a single soft, gentle kiss.
“Can’t wait,” he whispered—and let go.
* * * *
“There’s Daddy!” Erik crowed, pointing. Beatriz screwed up her face uncertainly—then shrieked and flopped forward in his arms, her own outstretched pleadingly towards Andreas.
“Baba!” she shouted. “Baba-baba-baba!”
“Is that a word yet?” Erik asked hopefully as Andreas reached them, sweat streaming from his scalp and out of breath. He was gasping, and blew Beatriz a kiss before tipping his head back and sucking his water bottle dry.
“Ba-ba!” she screamed, her face beginning to go red.
“Patience, poppet, Daddy’s just got to change his T-shirt. He’s all nasty and wet, see?” Erik explained patiently as Andreas stripped off the soaked T-shirt and rummaged a towel out of the baby bag in the bottom of the pram. He dried his hair and upper body in brisk, rough motions, and stuffed the soiled towel loose into the netting, before finding the spare T-shirt that Erik had brought with them that morning, and whipping it on over his head.
And then, finally, holding out his arms.
Beatriz’s tantrum stopped at once as she was handed over, and she snuggled gleefully into Andreas’ shoulder, cooing serenely. She balled a fist around a handful of cotton, then dragged it to her mouth to suck on the entire bundle of flesh and fabric.
“Are we tired?” Andreas murmured, drawing a hand over her fluffy curls before glancing Erik’s way.
“Probably, the ducks were the most exciting things in the entire world this morning,” Erik said. “You alright?”
“Knackered.”
“Home?”
“Please. I might take a nap along with this one.”
He looked shattered—but he also looked better, much as Erik would only grudgingly admit it. There was a little more steel to his spine. He walked a little taller. He didn’t hunch down as if to hide when carrying Beatriz. If anything, he stuck his chest out a little more, and walked with a longer, more purposeful stride. The weight had fallen off his stomach and hips, and his thighs—while no smaller—were harder.
Give him a bit of bum fluff on his chin, Erik thought, and he’d never be called a woman again.
They’d been to four Park Runs now. Beatriz loved it—ducks were her new favourite things, and she was even beginning to make terrible attempts at throwing them bread on her own—and getting her first post-run cuddle from Andreas seemed to be the highlight of her Saturday mornings. She usually refused to get back in the pram all the way home.
“Jo texted me while you were beating the path,” Erik said as he took the brakes off the pram and began to push it towards the park entrance. “She wants to know if our big family holiday is still on, even with a baby.”
Every September, they went away to the Mediterranean, them and Lauren and Jo and sometimes Mike, if he could get the time off work. The rush had died off, the prices had fallen, but the weather was still great. They usually alternated between the Spanish coast and the Greek islands, with the odd year bouncing off to Corsica or Malta for a bit of a change. Last year had been a bit of a bust, Andreas showing too much to really enjoy it and Erik too worried about him getting food poisoning or bitten by a mosquito and damaging the baby somehow to relax.
But privately, Erik was torn between terror and excitement this year. He was determined to take all of his kids on holiday and show them the big, wonderful world out there—but he was also terrified. How did one take a baby on holiday? They couldn’t very well push a buggy up a mountain, or pack a car seat into a speedboat.
“Sure,” Andreas said. “Why not? We just have to pick somewhere suitable to go with a baby, that’s all.”
“How do we find somewhere suitable?”
Andreas chuckled. “I don’t know, pick a nice beach and a hotel with lots of family activities?”
“Okay…how?”
“Oh my God.”
“I don’t know!” Erik said defensively.
“Well, here’s a hint. If the advert online talks about kiddie pools and a crèche, it’s suitable to take a baby.”
“I’m not using a crèche in a foreign country without any idea if it’s safe,” Erik said flatly, and Andreas snorted.
“No, given you demanded the last government inspection report at the nursery and an up-to-date list of their first-aiders and their missing child plan,” he said tartly. “Anyway, we won’t need to. There’ll be four of us. I take it Mike won’t be able to get the time without much notice?”
“Jo was talking the first week in September. Apparently he’s going to Dublin to visit his mum anyway, and you know how much Jo gets on with Mary.”
“Ah, so Mike wants to avoid a murder and Jo wants to have a jolly of her own.”
“More or less.”
“I’m game,” Andreas said, hefting Beatriz a little higher. “How about you, princess? ¿Quieres ir de vacaciones?”
She babbled merrily back at him, and Erik cocked his head.
“Wonder when she’ll start talking.”
“Early, by this noise,” Andreas said genially.
“She’s not crawling yet. The app says—”
“Que le den a la aplicación,” Andreas said. “She’ll crawl when she’s ready.”
Erik hummed to himself. He had to admit, he was getting a little twitchy. Her baby-babble was just like the app said, incomprehensible but sounding chatty, a little bit like Andreas in full flow. It was going
to be language. And she could understand basic words to a degree, she caterwauled if he said rusk and gave her a cracker or vice versa. And she was hitting all the other milestones.
She just…wasn’t crawling.
She didn’t even try, and Erik tried to be sensible and tell himself that she’d teethed long before the app said she would, and she’d never gotten into peekaboo like it had promised, and she kicked and could sit up and enjoyed standing in her sling in the kitchen doorway on baking days, like she was standing up on her own.
But it nagged anyway. He grunted, watching her as she twisted to wave at a passing lorry, shouting, “Lala!” as though it were a name.
“I can hear you worrying!” Andreas shouted over his shoulder, and Erik snorted.
“Sorry, sorry…”
“Where was Jo thinking? For a holiday?”
“No idea,” Erik admitted. “I booked the time off work anyway—was thinking if you didn’t want to go, I could just have a nice week at home with the pair of you.”
“Speaking of a nice time at home,” Andreas said as Beatriz cuddled back into his shoulder and began to whine. “I’m trying to keep sunshine here awake.”
Erik raised his eyebrows. “Dangerous game. Why?”
Andreas turned his head to smile—and Erik’s stomach twisted. That smile. That bright, wide, beautiful smile that if he touched in just the right place would dissolve into a look of pure, unadulterated bliss.
“Oh,” he said.
“It’s been a while.”
“It’s been about eleven months and twenty-three days,” Erik said.
“Oh, but you’re not counting.”
“Nope.”
He’d been terrified of having sex when Andreas had started looking unmistakably pregnant, as opposed to too-many-doughnuts-in-too-short-a-time pregnant. And ever since, Andreas had been so not in the mood that it wasn’t even funny. Erik hadn’t begrudged him a moment of it—he was reasonably sure trying to eject ten pounds out of his arse would put him off having anything else put there for a while, too—but he couldn’t lie about the little rush of excitement that swept over him either.
“So I think her ladyship needs to get settled down in her nursery for a nap,” Andreas said smoothly, waving at a car as Beatriz did and earning a surprised smile from the driver. “And then we can sneak off for our own little cuddle in our bed.”
“This long of a dry spell, I hope you’re not expecting a sex god,” Erik said.
Andreas snorted. “You’re not getting it in me, if that’s what you think. I can’t even use tampons again yet. Break out in a cold sweat every time, the dizziness is horrendous. But there’s other ways.”
Erik caught him at the traffic lights, cosying in on the opposite shoulder to their daughter to kiss his neck, close and intimate.
“Do I lose boyfriend points if I admit that all I want is to see you come undone, and then curl up around you and feel every inch of your skin against mine, and bask in just how stupidly lucky I am to have all of this?” he whispered, and Andreas smiled against his cheek.
“Mm, no,” he said slowly, “but I’d not say that in front of your mates. You’d definitely lose a few man points for it.”
“Sod that,” Erik said, nipping his earlobe before pulling away. “You’re not thick—you know full well there’s millions of men out there would kill for a guy like you. You feel underappreciated, and you’re gone. This—” He slid a hand possessively low around Andreas’ hip. “—is called protecting my own interests.”
“Ooh, smart man. Talk clever to me.”
Erik grinned and jabbed the button for the lights again, willing them to hurry up.
“Just wait until we get home,” he said, “and I’ll talk any talk you want.”
Chapter 12
Andreas was roused from a floating, gentle sort of bliss by crying.
Not bring-the-rafters-down crying. Not the apocalyptic scream of a full nappy, or the desperate wails of a hungry mouth. But crying, all the same.
“I’ll go,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to the warm shoulder under his cheek and levering himself reluctantly free from the soft security in which he’d been drifting for the last hour. The sex itself had been short, sudden, and tantalisingly sweet. But the afterglow had been like heaven, and he’d missed that intimacy far too much for far too long.
He near-floated from the bed to the nursery, which had been converted from its former life as the spare room. Beatriz’s cot was right under the window, a sparkly mobile turning gently above her and casting rainbows on the ceiling that usually held her captivated through every colourful sunrise. But now, at two o’clock in the afternoon, her face was screwed up in mournful loneliness, and she reached for him with the desperation of a baby who’d failed to remember that her beloved family were only next door.
“Oh, hello, my little one,” he crooned gently, lifting her and her spit-sodden yellow blanket with practised ease. She snuffled into his shoulder, snotty and teary, and hiccuped sadly there. “What’s all this noise for, hm?”
He didn’t really know if babies dreamed, but if she were a toddler he would have said she’d had a nightmare. She clung, whimpering plaintively into his skin, and he carried her back into the master bedroom to settle down in his vacated spot with her. Erik, still half-asleep, slung an arm over his thighs and nosed against his hip.
“There we go,” he crooned when she unstuck herself long enough to blink down at her father. “Tucked in nice and warm with Daddy and me. Nothing to cry about, is there?”
She issued one more disagreeable whimper, then quieted as he stroked her curls. She stared resolutely down at Erik, but brightened up a little bit when Andreas carefully slid down to join him, and let her roll onto her back between them, bracketed like a doll between two giant bookends. She began to play with Erik’s beard, tugging on it until he cracked open a single blue eye.
“What do we have here?”
Andreas rolled his eyes as the peace was disturbed in favour of a tickling game that had Beatriz shrieking the house down, although at least it was in a more cheerful manner. He detached himself when the game reached eardrum-perforating levels, and migrated to the shower. He’d have to get dinner on soo—
He stopped in the bathroom, and stared.
He’d caught sight of himself in the mirror. Of his face. Of a hard line of jaw meeting neck, thinner than the last time he’d accidentally checked. Of leaner cheeks, a hollower frame.
For a split second, he’d seen a man in the mirror.
His heart jumped inside his chest, and when he switched on the shower, he dared to look down as he stripped. His shape had changed a little. The swollen gut had retreated. The skin was returning to where it had all been before the pregnancy. His thighs were no longer round, but carved and hard.
He looked—
Better.
Not good, not yet, but better. There was nothing that could be done for his hips, but they alone were responsible for the curve again. The incision had healed nicely, and the stretch marks were far enough away to have been something else entirely. His legs looked decent again, maybe even good enough to let loose in a pair of shorts when they went on holiday. A pair of shorts and a tank top in Spain—God, that would do wonders for his mental health…
He hummed to himself as he showered, pondering where to go. Beatriz loved the sandbox at her playgroup. She’d probably fall in love with the beach. And he suspected that Erik was going to try and turn her into a water baby, so he had even more excuses to go splashing around in swimming pools and seas.
And perhaps it would be a good idea to try Spain again this year. She was used to him speaking Spanish, and he fully intended to raise her bilingual. Being surrounded by Spanish speakers would be good for her—plus, it might sway her towards uttering a Spanish word as her very first. He quietly hoped for it, mostly because it would wind Erik up something chronic.
He heard Erik get up, and tipped his head back under the spray, sighing deeply.
He was getting there. He had another appointment with the endocrinologist in October, to check his hormone levels, and then another in January, just before Beatriz’s first birthday. If all was well then, Dr Laing had promised that he would issue a testosterone prescription.
So they were only six months away.
Six months from the end game. Or at least, six months away from the thing that would wipe out ninety percent of his problems. The genital dysphoria was still bad, after the horrors of pregnancy and birth, but they hadn’t existed before, so Andreas was willing to give them time. Maybe the memory would fade, pleasant sex would override it, anything. And if not, then maybe he would have to have another step after all, but for now—
For now, he only had six months to go.
After twelve years of knowing what was wrong and what had to change, he only needed to wait six more months.
He smiled.
And for the first time since he’d begun to show, Andreas could see the end in sight.
* * * *
Andreas: Bring cake home from work today.
Erik blinked at the text message, but dutifully wandered into the kitchen and began to raid the fridges for any leftover double chocolate fudge cake. He knew better than to ask questions before doing as he was told.
Erik: Why?
Andreas: A woman in the doctor’s surgery was making a big fuss of Beatriz then told me that her mum must be very beautiful.
Erik laughed. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. “So it finally bloody begins.”
Erik: I hope you told them that I am.
Andreas: x
Erik: That’s not a yes!
Andreas: It’s not a no either.
Erik: Well I don’t know about her mum, but her dad is an absolute stunner.
Andreas: Which one?
Erik: Excuse me, both of them.
Andreas: One more than the other though, right?
Erik: Depends.
Andreas: On what?
Erik: On if the charming answer is going to get me laid tonight.
Erik the Pink Page 10
