“We should be patient,” he said, sliding up onto the sofa with her and depositing her in Erik’s lap. She twisted to look up and grab for her favourite toy of all: his beard. “She kicks and she can stand up if she uses furniture or you hold her up. She just doesn’t fancy crawling yet.”
Erik rescued his beard, frowning.
“Stop it,” Andreas chided, slinging his legs over Erik’s lap and cosying up. Beatriz ended up bracketed between them, confined by their bodies. She peered around at her square of room, then stretched out to lie down in it and begin to play with the buttons on Erik’s shirt. “She’s a little human being, they don’t play by the rules.”
“I know, I know, I just…”
The button slid out of its hole and Beatriz yanked hard, exposing hairy belly in the space. She prodded it, then started to pull on the hair.
“See? She can already do buttons.”
“Yay,” Erik said sourly.
Andreas chuckled. “Stop worrying! I know you want her to be walking and talking and doing everything the minute your apps tell you she should be, but she’s a human being and they don’t develop at the same rate.”
“I know! I know, I just—I can’t help it,” Erik admitted.
“First baby worries.”
“Yeah.”
“Trust me,” Andreas said. “According to my mother, I never crawled at all. I jumped straight from lying around doing nothing to walking.”
“I know,” Erik said, blowing upwards into his hair.
“She’s going to be fine, aren’t you, sweetie?”
Beatriz fixed him with a look, then yawned and stretched out her arms towards him.
“Oh, are we done for the afternoon?”
He leaned back, cuddling her, and felt Erik slide his socks off. Fingers began to tease and rub at his bare toes, and he sighed.
“Mm, I could get used to that.”
Erik smiled, but it was wan.
“Erik…”
“I know,” Erik said. “But it’s not as easy for me. I’ve never looked after babies. You know how you know stuff, but you don’t know stuff?”
“Er, no?”
Erik huffed. “Fine. Um. So—you know I think you’re the most incredibly attractive man I’ve ever met, and in more ways than one, and I could spend the rest of my life worshipping every inch of your body, right?”
Andreas coughed, feeling a heat flooding his face. “Yes.”
“That doesn’t stop your dizzy days.”
“No, but—”
“That’s kind of how I feel. I know you’re right. I know you know what you’re doing with her, and you’ve been looking after babies most of your teenage years, and even if you hadn’t, we’re all different and why wouldn’t babies all be different, too, but—but I still worry. It doesn’t change that I worry.”
Andreas sighed. Beatriz, lying right over his heart, mumbled and snuggled into his chest a little more.
“I get it,” he said, reaching out a hand to squeeze Erik’s arm. “Just don’t worry so much you wind yourself up. She’s already doing the bum-shuffle. She’ll either start standing up in a few weeks, or she’ll tip herself over and figure out the easier way of doing it.”
“Yeah…”
“And she’s going to talk early.”
Erik brightened up at that. “You think?”
“Yeah. There’s definite meaning to that babble now.”
“Did your brothers and sisters talk early?”
“No, but my father was very much that children should be seen and not heard, so we weren’t encouraged to. None of this chattering away to babies stuff.”
Erik craned his neck. “Is she asleep?”
“Yeah.”
“Want to put her down in her cot?”
“She’s fine here.”
“No, I mean—” Erik’s fingers ghosted higher up his leg. “—do you want to put her in her cot?”
Andreas chuckled. The heat that hadn’t quite left his face began to migrate south. “Mm, alright then. But you’re not getting as lucky as you think.”
Erik’s hand paused and he swallowed. “Um. Andreas.”
“What?”
“The other night—”
Andreas blew upwards into his hair. He could sense a discussion coming.
“You, um. You jumped pretty violently when I touched you.”
“Mm.”
“Are you—alright?”
Was he? Andreas wasn’t sure. They’d always joked about their straight sex life. He’d always enjoyed vaginal sex. He’d especially enjoyed it with Erik, who had magic hands. He was reasonably sure that nine out of ten times they’d had sex, Erik’s dick hadn’t gone anywhere near him, and he’d been dissolved on his hands alone. And hadn’t cared, because it was mind-blowing like that.
But not the other night.
The other night, Erik had barely laid a finger on him, and Andreas had been tugging his hand away. The rush of disgust had been unwelcome. Alien. Something he’d never experienced before.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m—struggling a bit, I suppose.”
“Was it something I did, or—”
“No,” Andreas said. The pinched expression on Erik’s face smoothed out. “It was just dysphoria.”
“You’ve never had it there before though.”
“I know. That’s why I’m not sure. I’m having problems with my reflection down there as well. I don’t know if it’s just the leftover pregnancy trauma, so I’m kind of waiting it out.”
Erik hummed. “You will tell the psychiatrist when you next go to the clinic though, won’t you?”
No.
“If it’s still bothering me by then.”
He wouldn’t tell the psychiatrist any such thing. Andreas had been trying to medically transition ever since he’d reached the UK, barely nineteen years old and still bearing the wrong name. And at every attempt, he’d been knocked back. He couldn’t be a man, because he liked vaginal sex. He couldn’t be a man, because he didn’t want a penis. He couldn’t be a man, because he wanted babies. And if the psychiatrists wouldn’t agree that he was a man, then they wouldn’t approve him for surgery.
Back then, it had just been about the top surgery. And that had been hard enough. Two years of appointment after appointment after appointment, just to get that. Hormone therapy, after having a baby? Andreas had no illusions that would be any easier.
So no.
He knew better now.
He’d not be telling the psychiatrist anything.
* * * *
Erik lost.
He’d been hesitant about going abroad this year. What with a new baby and Andreas still not being quite right, he’d wanted to stay at home. Just be them. A family. Where even he was figuring out that not a lot could go wrong.
But he lost. Jo booked a family-friendly hotel by the beach in Valencia. Lauren booked flights. Andreas complained about the Valencian accent, and grumbled that he’d voted for Barcelona.
Right up until the morning of the trip, Erik wondered if he wasn’t the only one who was remotely sane.
“Babies hate flying,” he said for the umpteenth time as Andreas hefted their bags into the boot of Jo’s car on the Saturday morning. “It hurts their ears. Remember that baby on the flight to Rome?”
“That was a two-year-old, and he was screaming because he wanted sweets,” Andreas said. “My parents flew with us hundreds of times as babies and we were fine.”
“But—”
“Come here away from your fusspot of a father, eh?” Andreas crooned obnoxiously, sweeping Beatriz up out of Erik’s arms. He twirled with her, and she shrieked, flinging out her arms like a small, fat aeroplane. “See? She likes flying. She’ll be fine.”
“But what if she cries?”
“Then she cries, so what?” Andreas said, walking around the car and stooping to buckle her into the car seat. “I’m taking her baby bag, and if that can’t fix it then there’s nothing we can do
. Flying or no flying.”
Jo laughed at him as Erik climbed into the front seat with her, grumbling.
“Honestly, you’d think you want her to cry,” she chided.
“I want it to go well!”
“It will! She’ll be excited. She’s like you, she’s a big ball of adventure waiting to happen.”
She certainly seemed to be enjoying the car journey. She hadn’t been in Jo’s car before, and having her dad next to her while she was in her car seat was a novelty unto itself. Erik craned his neck to watch his boyfriend read their daughter a Spanish picture book, and violently wanted to go home.
“I’m not ready for this,” he grumbled to Jo, who just smirked.
“You weren’t even ready to hold her when she was born. You managed that.”
“Out of necessity.”
“And you’ll manage this out of necessity, or Andreas will kill you.”
“But what if—”
“What if,” Lauren interrupted loudly from the back, “we all have a great holiday and you get a whole album’s worth of snaps of Beatriz on her very first trip.”
“Should have known you lot wouldn’t listen.”
He knew he was being a bit daft. He could even admit that maybe taking her abroad for the first time before she could walk and run into traffic or get lost on the beach was a good idea. But—still. Abroad. With his little girl. Anything could happen, from those child-snatching rings he’d read about in the papers to a dodgy batch of baby food.
“She’ll love it, and so will you,” Jo said cheerily as they joined the motorway. “Plus if it turns out she’s as prone to sunburn as you, you’ll get to spend all week under a parasol with her and keep her all for yourself!”
Erik snorted. He sat back and fiddled with the radio as they rushed down the busy motorway, Jo expertly weaving in and out of grandma drivers and plodding lorries. The gentle vibration of the road under them, and the warmth of the car, slowly dragged Andreas and Lauren into sleep, and Beatriz sat contentedly with her picture book, chewing sedately on a cardboard corner and staring avidly out of the window.
“You know,” Jo said, “Andreas is right. You’re really wound up about her sometimes.”
Erik shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, well. You know why.”
“I do,” Jo said. “And I’m not saying you shouldn’t worry sometimes. But she’ll catch it off you, you know.”
“What?”
“If you worry she can’t do something, she’ll learn that she can’t. Just like you and I did.”
“What?”
“Come on, we both grew up with placement after placement saying we were useless, worthless, pointless kids. That’s why we were so surprised when Mike and Andreas came along and thought otherwise. If you act like Beatriz is going to get hurt by something, she’ll pick up on it and get scared of it, too. Or you can act like she’s got superpowers and can take on the world, then so will she.”
Erik blew upwards into his hair. “Yeah, I know. Andreas is so calm. I want to be, but I worry. She’s—you know. Both of them are.” He glanced over his shoulder, but Andreas was slumped against the top of the baby’s car seat, dead to the world. “They’re my family. Mine. The one I made and—”
“And no social worker can take away,” Jo said quietly.
Erik swallowed. “Yeah.”
“I get it,” she said firmly. ”You know I do.”
“You don’t, though.”
“I do.”
“You and Mike don’t have kids.”
That was where they diverged. Erik had always wanted a baby, to make his own family and undo what his own family must have done when he was a toddler. To create a whole new family line, all of his own, that would never abandon him and would carry on long after he was gone.
Jo—hadn’t. Jo hadn’t wanted to bring any kids into a crap world, and she had met her soulmate in gruff, grumpy, kid-hating Mike. They were in childless heaven, without a regret in the world. So Jo got it…but she didn’t, too.
“Take some cues from Andreas,” she said finally. “He’s got far more experience with kids than you do anyway. He’ll know when to get worried.”
“He’s got a poker face an inch thick,” Erik grumbled.
Jo cackled with laughter.
“He does! He wasn’t even worried when his waters broke! And then he just kicked me out of the delivery room like he was having a tooth pulled, not having a baby!”
He bitched and moaned about the delivery, and his somehow more-British-than-he-was boyfriend, all the way to the airport. Beatriz saved him the job of waking Andreas and Lauren up by making a literal stink in the back and starting to howl despairingly just as Jo took the exit, and Erik grimaced, hitting the switch for the window.
“I’ll sort it when we get there,” he said.
“If she gets any louder, I’m kicking you out here and now and you can sort it on the side of the road!” Jo muttered.
The airport was heaving. Jo made good on her threat, bringing the car up to the front of the terminal building and kicking Erik out with baby and baby bag. Beatriz was furious, and in a right state by the time he could get her on a changing table and the offending nappy off her.
“It’s your own fault, you know,” he said. “The rest of us hold it.”
She whimpered, stuffing her whole fist in her mouth and regarding him with teary eyes as he cleaned her up.
“You have to promise to be good all week,” he said seriously. “No learning to walk all of a sudden and running off. You start with a good slow crawl, you hear me?”
He snapped the last tab back into place and reached for the antibacterial gel. She kicked experimentally, testing the confines of her new bum-prison, then reached with chubby hands and grasping fingers.
“Yeah, I know,” he said, picking her up for the silently demanded cuddle. “You’re bloody gorgeous and everybody knows it. That’s the problem. The locals are going to want to keep you.”
She cooed peaceably as he bounced her on his arm, gathering everything back into the sports bag that had been turned into her baby bag once they’d brought her home from the hospital. A young woman in a niqab was waiting outside with her tiny newborn when he ducked out of the baby changing room, and she smiled brightly at him.
“See?” he told Beatriz. “That wasn’t because she likes lumberjacks.”
“Baaaa,” Beatriz said obliviously, twisting to peer around at the noisy terminal building. Erik hefted the bag over his free shoulder and slid his phone out of his pocket to text Andreas.
Erik: Waiting in here with Her Majesty. Text when you’re done with bag drop and we’ll meet you at the entrance to security. My passport’s in the front pocket of the blue case.
Andreas: Okay. Everything alright?
Erik: Yeah, superhero dad sorts another grave injustice!
Andreas: Sure you did.
Erik: Charming!
Andreas: Does superhero dad need his ego massaging?
Erik: Not in front of the baby ;)
Andreas: Dirty flirt xxx
Erik grinned, putting the phone away when a disgruntled chirp sounded in his ear and Beatriz enthusiastically pointed towards the security area. He busied himself by showing her the wonders of the little plastic bags for toothpaste, and talking to an armed police officer whose hat was apparently the most incredible thing Beatriz had seen in her whole life. She babbled away, not in the least bit perturbed by the hustle and bustle all around them, though she was much less certain of the sniffer dog that the copper’s colleague had.
“Not got a dog at home?” he asked genially.
“No, but she likes the cat.”
They chatted around her fascination until Jo found him, distributing boarding passes and cooing at Beatriz like she was her mother—and Erik felt a pang low in his gut. This was always how airports worked. Andreas got so upset and twitchy at not passing in airports that he would studiously, deliberately play on how they looked. Two couples, going on holiday.
And so when he approached, arm in arm with Lauren like he was her boyfriend and not Erik’s, Erik simply handed Beatriz over to the man who was far more obviously her father.
“I’m sorry,” Andreas whispered, and Erik shrugged.
“Won’t be forever,” he said thickly.
It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, though. The only consolation—albeit a horrible one—was that Andreas felt even worse. Erik sighed, giving Lauren the baby bag in exchange for her backpack to complete the lie, and squared his shoulders.
“Come on, then,” he said. “Let’s go get patted down. I want enough time for a burger before we take off.”
He kept up the casual breeziness, as much for himself as Andreas. Andreas had had bad experiences in airports, and it was only his love of travelling that had kept him going at all. But he was passing well—deliberately well, in that tight tank top that left no illusions as to what his chest was made of—and didn’t say a word the entire time to avoid giving himself away. Lauren chattered nineteen to the dozen so it would look normal, and Beatriz simply seemed a little confused at being passed through the metal detector, before finally the four of them reunited on the other side, and Erik could see—almost feel—the way that Andreas relaxed.
“There you go,” he said, defiantly taking his baby back. “No white rooms, no latex gloves, nada.”
“Please learn to say nada correctly.”
Erik pulled a face. Beatriz giggled, then whined when he tried to put her back in her buggy, finally reconstructed after its trip through the scanners.
“I can’t carry you all day, sweetie.”
Her wail of anguish said he might have to. Andreas laughed.
“Just hold her. We have plenty of time to get something to eat, I’ll feed her then and she might settle down for a nap on the plane.”
In truth, Erik didn’t mind. She was in a good mood, and it was helping him to relax. She wanted to see everything, touch everything—even the burger intrigued her, like it looked somehow special because it was in this strange place. And it helped. He sat with her on his knee, one hand around her middle and the other around his burger, and so what if Andreas was being a little bit more hands-off than usual? So what if it wasn’t a great idea to project gay fatherhood all over the airport?
Erik the Pink Page 12
