Erik the Pink

by Matthew J. Metzger

“You take her,” Andreas mumbled sleepily—but the whimper had already quieted, and the flailing limbs had tucked themselves back around the chubby body. Daringly, Erik wrapped his arms around his partner, and slid them right under their daughter.

  “She’s so heavy,” he marvelled.

  Andreas relaxed back into him.

  “Is this you still scared to pick her up?”

  “I’ll get used to it,” Erik whispered reverently.

  Slowly, Andreas slid out his own arms, and left her resting entirely in Erik’s. Erik beamed. He’d never held anything that felt like her before. Her warmth felt different, her weight felt new. She settled with one last grumble, snuggled on Erik’s forearm but against Andreas’ belly, and Erik bit his lip.

  “Christ,” he mumbled.

  “Mm?”

  “She’s amazing. You’re amazing. It’s—everything’s—”

  His throat closed up and he sniffled, burying his face against Andreas’ neck. The chuckle and mocking croon were offset by the hand that reached up to stroke his hair. And to hell with it. Erik didn’t care if he looked a bit bonkers, having a cry while holding his baby and hugging his partner. He’d wanted her for his entire life—he was allowed a bit of a meltdown now she was actually here.

  “I’ve got a family,” he mumbled into Andreas’ skin.

  “Already had that.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Andreas hummed, ruffling his hair before dropping his hand and stroking Beatriz’s cheek. She squirmed in Erik’s hands, prompting a fresh wave of tears.

  Chosen family were one thing—Erik had had them for a long time—but they weren’t anchors, the way Beatriz felt like an anchor. They weren’t part of his DNA in the same way. They weren’t for better or for worse the way that a blood family was. They didn’t have his nose, his partner’s eyes, their life all bound together in their very existence. Jo might be like a sister, Mike might be like a brother, but Beatriz was his daughter.

  Erik had never thought it would matter to him so much until the second hospital scan, when they’d been able to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. He’d spent his childhood wanting to be adopted. He’d spent most of his adult life firmly thinking of Jo as a sister, irrespective of their lack of blood relation. He’d never thought it would matter so much that his daughter had his nose.

  Yet somehow, it did.

  And somehow, it made calling Andreas his boyfriend seem ridiculous and too light. They had a baby. They were a family.

  “You’re my partner,” Erik mumbled hoarsely.

  “What?”

  “You. You’re my partner.”

  “Ye-es…”

  “I mean, instead of my boyfriend. Seems daft now. Now she’s here.”

  Andreas chuckled. “If you say so. Personally, I prefer it.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. Less ambiguous than partner.”

  Erik grimaced. He hadn’t thought of that.

  “Husband’s even better though,” Andreas continued, tapping Erik’s wrist. Beatriz closed her eyes at the flicker of movement, and snuffled sleepily. “Now we can tick baby off the bucket list, where’s this wedding, eh?”

  Erik laughed. He tightened his shoulders so they squeezed Andreas’ in lieu of a hug.

  “Now she’s here, can we put her in a puffy dress and make her a flower girl?”

  “She’s a bit small…”

  Erik laughed, rubbing the last of the tears away on Andreas’ shoulder before peeking down at their daughter. She’d dropped off to sleep again, and Erik didn’t dare to move.

  “You’ll have to get used to holding her yourself, you know,” Andreas said.

  Erik smiled so wide that it hurt.

  “Yeah,” he said. “In a bit.”

  Chapter 4

  The first week was hell.

  Andreas had seen it coming: the exhaustion, the baby blues, the frustration. The wreck that the pregnancy had left behind of his body would be hard to cope with—the sagging belly, the bleeding, the need for more sanitary towels than he’d gone through between the ages of twelve and twenty-two—of course it would put him in a foul mood. Of course he was going to struggle. And he remembered his mother getting baby blues after each new sibling like clockwork, so wanting to cry along with Beatriz during the night feeds wasn’t entirely unexpected either.

  The urge to kill Erik, though?

  That was a new one.

  Or rather, the sustained feeling was. Andreas often wanted to smother Erik with a pillow once or twice a week, in short and savage bursts. Andreas would happily murder him with a pair of kitchen scissors every time he put his hair in that stupid man-bun, for one. But it usually passed when Erik flashed him one of those goofy grins, or seized him for a kiss and a not-so-subtle grope, or chewed on whatever part of Andreas was closest like he was made of chicken. He was so enthusiastic and cheery, it was hard to stay mad.

  Apparently all Andreas had needed was a week-old baby, though, and that did the trick.

  He managed nine days before finally biting Erik’s head off, bursting into tears at four in the morning when the inevitable hungry wail started up, and kicking a snoozing Erik rudely in the back.

  “Just fucking deal with her, she’s your daughter, too!” he snapped, then stormed off into the bathroom and slammed the door on the caterwauling.

  Thankfully, the tide turned then. Erik quietly got her changed and fed and put her back to bed before slipping into the bathroom and wordlessly turning the taps on.

  “Come on,” he murmured, kissing Andreas’ neck and gently shaking him until he unburied his face and dumped it on Erik’s shoulder instead. “Hot bath for you. Favourite salts, head massage, the works.”

  Andreas had dissolved into tears all over again at that, clinging for a good cry and offering a mixture of apologies for being an overemotional shit and accusations that Erik couldn’t just leave the baby to him because he was scared to touch her.

  “I know,” was the only thing Erik would say. “I’ll do better, I promise. I want to do all the stuff you do. You just do it so well, I’m a bit scared of taking over and messing it up.”

  The next morning, he’d been up first and Andreas had come down to Erik gingerly feeding the baby at the kitchen table, half a pint of milk all over the floor and Beatriz fully intending on ramming the bottle up her nose. But it was working after a fashion, and Andreas couldn’t even bring himself to care about the mess.

  “I’ll get her changed, you sort the floor,” he’d said, and made himself a coffee.

  It was just as well they had that first fortnight to themselves, though, what with Erik scared to handle her properly and Andreas’ emotions all over the place. Thankfully, Beatriz was oblivious to the whole thing: all she cared about was her cuddles, her yellow blanket, and a steady supply of formula.

  After that fortnight, though, all bets were off. The texts from family started to come in thick and fast and then, exactly fourteen days after they’d brought Beatriz home, Jo arrived.

  None of their supposed family were actually blood family. Andreas’ were all in Spain, and best forgotten. Erik simply didn’t have one. Their family, instead, was comprised of the friends they’d collected around themselves over the course of their separate lives. And in pride of place at the top of the list was Jo. She was the closest thing Erik had to a sister. When he’d been fifteen, and Jo eleven, they’d been put in the same foster placement. For a year, they’d grown up alongside one another, and when Erik had moved into a council flat of his own, his stroppy little pseudo-sister had been a regular visitor.

  And two weeks to the day after bringing Beatriz home, her pseudo-aunt let herself in like she owned the place.

  “Hell-oooooo!” came the call. “Anybody home?”

  “Kitchen!” Andreas called back, and tipped his coffee towards Erik. “That took longer than I thought.”

  “She was trying to be good,” Erik said peaceably, and grinned when she barrelled into the room. �
��Hey, Jo.”

  “Hello, shiny new parents!” she beamed, and stooped to hug them both in turn. “Come on, come on, let’s see my gorgeous little new niece, then!”

  Like Eric, Jo was tall and wide. She was perpetually dressed in dark leggings and violently colourful tops, and—if outdoors—always had a fag-end hanging from the corner of her mouth. She cut her hair in a plain, straight bob, but it was inevitably dyed a wide range of different colours. Andreas snorted with laughter at the new arrangement: bright blue top, white middle, and a thick stripe of pale pink to finish the ends.

  “Nice flag hair,” he said.

  Jo beamed and did a little twirl. “I know, right? I thought just pink because, you know, new niece, but what if she turns out to be a boy after all? Or neither? Or both! I want my first picture with my first niece to be always good!”

  Andreas laughed.

  “So? Come on! Picture time! Is she all perfect? Ten fingers, ten toes, Andreas’ looks?”

  “Hey!” Erik protested. Jo just blew him a kiss.

  “She’s having a nap,” Andreas yawned. “Judging by the last couple of weeks, you’ll get to see her in full angelic glory in about twenty minutes.”

  “You.” Jo clipped Erik around the ear. “Make us some tea. G’wan, you useless lump.”

  “You’re cruel to me,” Erik whined, but got up. “Another chocolate, Andreas?”

  “Please.”

  “So.” Jo dropped into Erik’s vacated seat. “Worth it?”

  Andreas made a grunting noise.

  “Yes!” Erik shouted from the inside of the fridge.

  “I’m just knackered,” Andreas admitted. “It was worth it, in the end. She’s everything we wanted.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “And I’m done,” Andreas added, propping his chin on his hand. “That part was the worst. I already got the doctor to send the referral to the endocrinologist. Minute they say I can, I’m going on the T.”

  “You’ve earned it,” Jo agreed. “Oh my God, what if your voice ends up even lower than Erik’s? And you’ll go all fuzzy! You can be beard twins.”

  Andreas rolled his eyes.

  “Nobody beats my beard,” Erik said. “Not even my boyfriend.”

  “Oh yeah, that reminds me, when’s the wedding?”

  Erik laughed. “Excuse me? You’re not my mother, good God.”

  “You always said you wanted to have the baby first, then get married. So, baby, check. When’s the wedding?”

  “When I can pass properly, and Beatriz can be a flower girl,” Andreas said around another gargantuan yawn.

  “Ooh, Beatriz,” Jo said, trying and failing to echo Andreas’ proper pronunciation. “It sounds beautiful like that. So she has your last name?”

  “For now,” Andreas said. “She’ll change it when we get married, whenever that is. We still have to decide on a surname, because no way am I—”

  Right on cue, the baby monitor on the counter crackled into life, and a heartfelt, hungry wail sounded both from the plastic device and the stairs.

  “Oh my God!” Jo squealed, even as Andreas heaved himself up from the table.

  “You sure?” Erik fussed. “I can—”

  “Just get the bottle on, eh?”

  He took the stairs slowly. The caesarian had been messy and he was still sore. The bleeding hadn’t quite eased either, and the grim weight of sanitary pads was unpleasant. But it was almost over. And despite the hellish noise that battered the sides of their bedroom when he opened the door, the screaming monster within was worth it.

  She quieted to a dull roar as he lifted her and cuddled her to his chest. Erik had had her all morning, the fact betrayed by her attire. Andreas preferred plain white or yellow clothes, no patterns to be ruined by sick or shit. But Erik had gone all-out on the novelty items. Her Babygro featured a fluffy Dalek and the proclamation that she would exterminate them all…after naptime.

  “Guess this is your extermination technique, huh?” he asked in Spanish, settling her against his chest. She mouthed hopefully at his T-shirt, then began to cry all over again when the bottle failed to sprout from where her instincts expected it to be. “Sorry, sweetie. Can’t do that anymore.”

  The yowl of outrage told him without words that this was completely unacceptable.

  “Hey, take it up with the surgeon, I never mentioned anything about mammary glands.”

  He rocked her lightly as he edged back downstairs, to find Jo hovering by the armchair with a tea towel and a huge smile.

  “She’s so big!” she gawped as Andreas sat back in the chair, lifting Beatriz up a little. Her mouth worked like a gossipy goldfish, even a two-week-old brain recognising that the position change meant second breakfast was going to appear imminently.

  “Thank you,” he said pointedly as Erik appeared with the warmed bottle.

  “English,” Erik said absently, beyond used to Andreas’ habit of switching between his languages. “And she’s not big, she’s tiny. She’s only a baby.”

  “Not for a new baby, she’s not,” Jo scoffed. “How is Marmalade taking it?”

  Marmalade was Erik’s enormous orange cat. Erik claimed he was half Maine Coon; Andreas privately thought the other half was tiger. He had paws the size of saucers, and could purr loudly enough to drown out next door’s car when they left it running in the street. Andreas had owned smaller dogs. Hell, he was reasonably sure people had owned smaller donkeys.

  “Oh, he likes her. We had to put a rack lid on her cot because he kept trying to climb in with her. He’s a bit scared of the crying, though.”

  Jo laughed. She settled on the arm of the chair, peering down with a wide smile as Andreas guided the teat into Beatriz’s gaping maw. Jo giggled as the demanding baby latched on and began to suckle noisily.

  “She’s gorgeous.”

  The two of them watched in peaceful quiet, and Andreas felt a burn of pride in the middle of his chest that he’d been lacking for years. It was the same rush of affection and belonging that had been absent since his mother had burst into tears and called him sick in the head. He’d thought he’d left it behind on the continent—but he hadn’t. He’d taken it with him, stored up inside, ready to be aimed at someone else.

  At a whole new family.

  Blissfully unaware, Beatriz demolished breakfast with single-minded determination, grumbling when the empty bottle was taken away again, and belched loudly enough to make Jo jump and start giggling.

  “She’s definitely yours, Erik!” she called into the kitchen, then bit her lip. “Oh my God, can I hold her, or are you still in protective m—papa mode?”

  “If you sit down.”

  Jo bounced over to the sofa, snagging a blanket from the car seat on the floor on her way. She settled, draping the tea towel over her shoulder and arranging her arms perfectly, and when Andreas carefully slid the warm bundle from his grasp to hers, she grinned as though she were the new parent, not him.

  “Hell-o, beautiful,” she whispered as Beatriz blinked up at her. An uncertain noise escaped, a hand rising in a strange, jerky wave. “I’m your Auntie Jo. I’m going to spoil you rotten when your daddy is at work and your papá is being a mean old grump. You’re going to love me.”

  Beatriz looked unconvinced.

  “You will,” Jo said. “Me and Auntie Lauren and Uncle Mike. You’re going to have so much fun, poppet. I promise.”

  * * * *

  Four weeks into parenthood felt like a milestone, and Erik was determined to celebrate.

  After a couple of blowout fights, they’d settled into a little bit of a routine. Andreas was trying to be patient as Erik got to grips with his fear of handling her wrong, and Erik tried to do the same when Andreas was having a dizzy day, as they’d long since dubbed his dysphoria.

  And when the twenty-eighth day of being a father closed, Erik decided to throw nerves and niggles to the wind, and celebrate.

  It wasn’t easy. The house felt stuffy and confining. Andreas, wracked b
y dizzy days for the whole pregnancy and most of the time since, refused to leave it if he didn’t absolutely have to. Beatriz was a demanding hunger monster, and the cat wasn’t helping matters, wanting to enjoy all this sitting around they were both doing.

  But Erik took charge. Hustled Andreas off for a long bath after dinner, and took the opportunity to air out the downstairs while giving Beatriz her bedtime bath. He settled her down in her cot just as he heard the water starting to drain in the bathroom.

  “I’m going to make Daddy feel better tonight,” he said. “He’s not been feeling very well since you came along—not that it’s anything to do with you, you understand—so tonight I’m going to give him some well-deserved TLC. We’re going to have an evening in the armchair with all his favourite TV shows, a big bottle of wine just for him, and I’m on duty to feed, change, and cuddle you all night long. So are you going to help me help Daddy? All you need to do is stay nice and quiet and asleep for a whole three hours while we watch his favourite season of Sherlock. That’s all. Can you do that for me, baby girl?”

  She didn’t make a sound, vaguely twitching her hand away from him, and he beamed.

  “Good girl. I’ll even give you a little bit of honey in the morning if you help me out, okay?”

  Nothing.

  “Okay.”

  He checked the baby monitor and pulled the door to behind him, then headed downstairs.

  To the nest.

  The nest had long been Erik’s attempt at making dizzy days better. A construction in the armchair of cushions and blankets, the footstool pulled up for maximum laziness and the end table moved from its usual spot to act as a stand for snacks, the TV remote, and whatever poison would help Andreas feel better, be it a protein shake or a porn star martini. It was Erik’s attempt at helping with something he couldn’t help with, his attempt at grasping something he didn’t understand.

  He didn’t understand dysphoria. He didn’t understand which things would be upsetting and which wouldn’t, and he didn’t understand why words like mother would get to Andreas, when he could laugh in the face of someone telling him to go back to his own country. Erik didn’t understand any of it—he only understood that it had been hard. That Andreas had really suffered with it, worse than any racist at the coffee shop or ignorant remark at the pub, and that there’d been nothing Erik could do to make it go away. From the first month, when he’d cried after every bout of morning sickness, to the last two when he’d refused to leave the house at all, at the end of his rope with people staring and cooing and calling him miss, Andreas had suffered. He’d even stormed out of the ante-natal classes halfway through the course, sick of being called Erik’s wife.