Erik the Pink

by Matthew J. Metzger

Jo was right. He was going abroad, with his family, for the first time.

  And it was going to be amazing.

  Chapter 15

  Going back to Spain was like slipping on a warm, favourite jumper.

  To be suddenly surrounded by his own language was like sinking into a hot bath. It was a comfort he hadn’t known he wanted. The signs were like a cool compress over aching eyes. The voices were like music to his ears—albeit badly-sung music. The Valencian accent was just appalling.

  Andreas never involved himself much in booking their holidays. He wasn’t a fussy traveller—hostels were as good as five-star hotels to him—but he was pleasantly surprised by the hotel that Jo had picked out. They always booked like a pair of straight couples, then swapped. The room that theoretically was for him, Lauren and their daughter was enormous, and Erik groaned when he saw the bed.

  “If I want a cuddle in the night, I might get lost!”

  The first day of a holiday was always a write-off. Erik didn’t like flying—too cramped—and Beatriz hadn’t slept like Andreas had hoped. To be fair, she’d been well-behaved, too enthralled by the clouds to kick up a fuss about anything, but it had meant Andreas couldn’t catch a few winks either, so by the time they’d landed, arrived at their hotel, and swapped rooms around to their liking, he was in dire need of a drink.

  But Beatriz was in dire need of a nap.

  “Do you want me to stay here with Beatriz?” he asked doubtfully, and Erik looked up from undoing his shoes.

  “Eh?”

  “I’m going to put her down for an hour or two, or she’ll kick off tonight,” he said. “But that means one of us has to stay, so…”

  “Ah,” Erik said. “You want to hit up the nearest bar for some sangria.”

  Andreas pulled a disgusted face. “Excuse you. Sangria? Tourist.”

  Erik chuckled, and surged up off the bed. He caught Andreas by the hips, and Andreas chuckled as he—as well as Beatriz, cuddled sleepily against his shoulder—was tugged into a swaying sort of slow dance, hips joined but chests apart.

  “You go and unwind and be all—Spanish,” Erik said. “I’ll stay here and put my feet up on the balcony with a beer while our little angel here has a nap and remains an angel, instead of becoming an unholy terror. And then if you wander back over in time for dinner, we can all go out together and find a nice restaurant. Sound good?”

  Andreas leaned in for a quick kiss, which was foiled by Beatriz smacking his cheek indignantly.

  “Sounds perfect,” he said. “Thank you.”

  He stayed long enough to settle Beatriz for her nap, tucking her in with her now very dog-eared yellow blanket, and gave Erik another, proper kiss before pocketing his wallet and the spare key for the hotel room, and heading out.

  Into the warm, wet heat of Valencia in high summer.

  Andreas wasn’t from Valencia. He wasn’t even from the east coast. He was Navarran. He’d grown up in the wetter mountains of the north, with thick forests coating the wilderness and hot summers giving way to bitterly cold winters every year. He still spoke Spanish with hard consonants and the tight edges of Basque, even though he didn’t speak much of the latter.

  But it was close enough. He could feel the language like a favourite song. He could breathe in the smell of Spain—warm streets, ancient history, meat sizzling on street food stalls—and see the different charge between strangers. Feel the more fiery brand of wariness than the cold British politeness, and the strange shift where friendliness began earlier than it did after the first few words with an Englishman, yet never developed into the camaraderie that Yorkshire folk like Erik seemed to have with one another purely by virtue of existing in the same space with the same accent for more than ten minutes at a time.

  He could feel his own culture, like a blanket wrapping around his identity, and breathed it in.

  Even though he’d never been here before.

  He found a local bar, tucked down a narrow side street and away from the swarms of tourists. His own language rolled off his tongue more smoothly than it did at home, and they swapped small talk as a local beer was rustled out of a fridge for him, and then Andreas retreated to a corner, to watch a sport he didn’t care about being narrated in his own tongue for once on the widescreen above the bar, and relaxed.

  God, it felt good to be Spanish again.

  He couldn’t put his finger on the feeling. He’d lived in the UK for five years, and had no intention of leaving again. He’d done his citizenship exam just after getting pregnant. One of the reasons he was so keen on getting married was to secure his spot, to make sure he could never be sent back to Spain, away from his family. He never wanted to leave them, he never wanted to leave their little house with the flowering plants in the tiny garden, and he never wanted to come back to Spain. Not permanently.

  And yet, Spain was still home, somehow. Andreas couldn’t escape that. He relaxed in his birth country even though he’d been driven out by the people who ought to have loved him. It had been home once, and his mind had never forgotten it or let go. He knew how it all worked, how its people worked, on an intrinsic level he’d never quite grasp about his new home.

  He still loved it—even if he would never come back.

  He wanted Beatriz to know this feeling. He wanted her to be able to drop into any Spanish city in the country, and feel at home. He wanted her to know what it was like to be Spanish, just as much as she’d know what it was like to be English. He wanted her to feel it, deep down in her very soul, and be able to love the country of her ancestors just as much as she hated it when it did the stupidest things.

  But he’d never take her to Navarre.

  He’d grown up in the shadow of Pamplona. An ancient, beautiful city—but it had been tarred by his own family. He knew he couldn’t go back there without feeling the shame, the loathing, the disgust on the back of his neck like they were watching him. Without hearing his mother’s shrill denial, and seeing his father’s appalled face.

  Beyond Navarre, he was a man. A boyfriend. A father. And he always would be.

  But there?

  He was just the sick girl they still believed him to be.

  Andreas stretched out his feet under the table, and smirked at a dirty tackle on the TV.

  Just a man in a bar—and at home, despite being thousands of miles from his real one.

  * * * *

  Erik didn’t realise he’d dozed off until the hotel room door opened and woke him up.

  “The fuc—oh.” He stopped his angry reaction with a laugh when Andreas stepped over the threshold. “Sorry. Dozed off.”

  “So I see,” Andreas chuckled, coming out on the balcony. He leaned over the back of Erik’s chair and kissed him softly.

  “Mm, you smell like Spain,” Erik said, then lifted a corner of T-shirt and chewed on his waist. “Taste like it, too. Let’s stay here and have dinner in bed.”

  “You can’t eat me for dinner.”

  “I can try.”

  Andreas grinned. “Not with a baby in the room, you can’t.”

  “Spoilsport,” Erik sulked. He stretched before he got up, and was surprised to see Beatriz peering up at them from her cot. “Hello, gorgeous! Been patient, have you?”

  She lifted her arms cheerfully as he bent over the cot, and he picked her up with a noisy kiss and handed her off to Andreas for a cuddle. Then, naturally, took Andreas into his arms for his own cuddle.

  “You’re affectionate,” Andreas said.

  “You’re relaxed,” Erik said promptly. “You’re always more amazing when you’re here. Even if you forget to talk to me in the right language half the time.”

  “Excuse you and your right language nonsense.”

  “Nonsense?” Erik echoed dubiously.

  “Hey, we’re in first words territory,” Andreas said, jiggling Beatriz on his shoulder. “Right, let’s go and get something to eat. There’s a street full of nice local places where you can try something adventurous and I can get some pr
oper food, not the tat they put out for the tourists.”

  Erik grumbled about not being allowed to be a tourist, but only mockingly. The truth was, he was relieved by Andreas’ buoyant mood and the soft slope of his boyfriend’s shoulders. If Spain could restore a little of his equilibrium after the pregnancy, then Erik was all for it.

  They met Jo and Lauren down in the hotel lobby, whereupon Beatriz flatly refused to go in her buggy and ended up being passed to Jo for a cuddle. Jo had dyed her hair blue for the holiday, and Beatriz chewed thoughtfully on it, nuzzling her head against the bright colour as they headed out into the warm dusk.

  Dinner was a calm and pleasant affair. The place Andreas had found made a wide range of food, and they fed Beatriz largely by letting her try a little bit of everything. Surrounded by chatter, every parental figure she had, and clutching her favourite blanket, she got peaceably drowsy instead of having an exhausted tantrum, and by the time they moved on to desserts, she was asleep on Andreas’ shoulder, drooling peacefully down his T-shirt, their identical curls a mass of black at his neck.

  Erik’s chest hurt with just how bloody perfect it all was.

  He’d be forty in a couple of years. A round number. The last round number—his thirtieth—had ended with him drunkenly crying on Jo’s shoulder and saying he’d never get to have his own family. Bawling his eyes out at how much it hurt, the years sliding away from him and watching his dreams get further and further away. Every failed date chipping away at his confidence, making him wonder if his mother hadn’t been right to dump him, if the reason he’d never found a family in care been that he simply wasn’t the kind of man who deserved to have one?

  But here he was.

  With his family. His sisters in all but blood, arguing over how dubious the dessert looked. His partner, grimacing at their terrible butchering of his mother tongue and calling them all philistines for not appreciating the brilliance that was properly made arroz con leche. His daughter, fast asleep in said partner’s arms and a chubby fist curled up at her father’s neck.

  His family.

  His eyes burned, and Andreas’ smile faded.

  “Erik?”

  “Sorry,” he grunted.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” Jo asked, squeezing his arm.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Really. Nothing.”

  “So you’re crying?” Lauren asked doubtfully.

  “No, that’s why I’m crying,” he said, trying to shove a napkin up his nose to prevent a mucus-related disaster happening. “This—here—us—”

  Andreas’ face softened.

  “Yeah, it is,” he said simply.

  “I’m going to be forty in a couple of years,” Erik choked out. “And I—I never thought I’d get to be here. I’d nearly given up on getting this. Getting—all of you. Any of you.”

  They all stared back at him, their faces wreathed in sympathy and understanding and love. Not pity. Love.

  “My partner and my child and my sisters,” Erik grounded out, and Jo made a little noise. “And when he can get the time off work, my brother, too. All of you. My family. I—I started out without one, without anyone, and now I can fill a table with them, and I just—I—”

  “Here,” Andreas murmured. “Take your little girl.”

  He took her with shaking hands. She whimpered, a fist lashing out, but then cuddled into his shoulder and fell back to sleep. Trusting. Warm and heavy, breathing deeply against his fingers, a weight of perfection that he’d created.

  His daughter.

  Surrounded by his sisters and his partner, Erik buried his face in his baby’s curls and cried it out. He’d done it. He’d finally managed to do it.

  And no matter how hard it got, whatever happened, however he fucked up—he’d never stop being grateful for it.

  Chapter 16

  He couldn’t do it.

  Andreas was stood in the ensuite, staring at himself in the mirror, and he couldn’t do it.

  He wanted to wear shorts. It was blisteringly hot outside, and they were going to spend the day either at the beach or the pool with Beatriz. Even Lauren, who he swore had cactus juice for blood, said it was too warm to do anything but laze around near—and preferably in—the water.

  And he wanted to wear shorts.

  He wanted to wear his trunks. They were long and loose, and it was easy to swim in them without the shape contracting too much when he got out and showing off what he didn’t have. He wanted to get his shirt off, and get a good tan on every inch of skin between his hips and his scalp. A perfectly even tan was like giving Erik a shot of Viagra straight to the veins—and Jo had promised to take Beatriz for the night so they could have a bit of time to themselves.

  But he couldn’t do it.

  He looked better than he had ever since the pregnancy had started to show—but he still didn’t look as good as he had before getting pregnant at all. And worse, he didn’t feel any better. He still felt oddly loose, like he was being held together by string and tape. Like his skin was holding him in, but only barely.

  And he didn’t want to put the shorts on.

  He was wearing his long pyjama bottoms—the only way to prevent Erik getting wood during his sleep, which Andreas wasn’t always one hundred percent comfortable with now he seemed to have developed genital dysphoria as well—and he didn’t want to swap them out for the shorts.

  Grinding his teeth, he braced his arms on the sink and scowled at his reflection.

  “Get it together,” he whispered to his own face in Spanish. “Just put the shorts on and go swimming with your daughter.”

  The feeling refused to ebb.

  “You look fine.”

  It didn’t matter.

  “Since when did you let being you get in the way of what you wanted?”

  He came on holidays even though airports scared him ever since that security guard at Heathrow with the latex gloves. He’d got pregnant even though it was used against him by every medical professional he saw in his transition journey. He’d come out, even though he knew his parents would turn on him.

  Yet when he reached out to pick up the shorts again, his stomach turned.

  “Shit.”

  He closed his eyes and breathed past the urge to be sick. He hated this part. The part where he wanted to do something, but didn’t at the same time. It would be easier if Erik wanted him to wear the shorts. Andreas could just tell him to piss off, it wasn’t happening, and put his trousers on instead.

  But Erik hadn’t said a word. He’d been too busy trying to work out a way of getting his mane off his neck without putting it in a man bun and risking Andreas’ wrath. He likely didn’t even care what Andreas wore—he’d been up at the crack of dawn going through Beatriz’s baby clothes and worrying they’d all be too hot, too stifling, too exposing, she’d get sunburn, she’d get heatstroke, on and on and on.

  He’d probably not even notice if Andreas wore shorts or trousers.

  But Andreas would know.

  “Come on,” he told himself. “This is a holiday. Don’t bring dysphoria on holiday. You didn’t even buy it a plane ticket.”

  To hell with dizzy days. He was going to have a good time with his friends and family. He was.

  He lashed out to grab the shorts, and stepped into them before lurching forward towards the toilet. He hadn’t had breakfast yet, so only threw up a mouthful of stringy spittle, but the jumping in his stomach didn’t ease for a long time. He hung there, arms braced on the seat, and tried to breathe through it.

  “For fuck’s sake,” he muttered to himself.

  He’d thrown up almost every day for the whole pregnancy, but this was the first time since. His dysphoria gave him something like a panic attack. He’d get short of breath and nauseous, that sick feeling creeping under his skin like there were hairs growing under there trying to poke out through his pores. It was an intense, brittle, spiky sort of feeling, and completely unpredictable. Sometimes, he could be called a woman to his face and it would just rol
l off him. Water, duck’s back. And other times—

  Other times, just putting on a pair of shorts and feeling like everyone could see his hips, even when he knew they couldn’t, was enough to make him chuck it.

  “Hey!”

  Erik’s knuckles rapped on the bathroom door, and Andreas wiped his mouth.

  “You nearly ready? Beatriz is getting hungry.”

  “I’ll catch you up,” Andreas called, not trusting his belly if he just upped and walked out with them. “Just need to do my teeth.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, go on.”

  He closed his eyes and managed to wait until he heard the hotel room door close before opening his throat and heaving again. It was like being punched from the inside out, and he couldn’t wait for the day when it would be over. When he had his hormones, when he had stubble and a deep voice and nobody looked twice, because ha ha of course that wasn’t a woman, were you blind?

  “January,” he told himself, and rested his forehead against the cool edge of the sink. “January. You just have to get to January.”

  * * * *

  Erik only agreed to leave the hotel restaurant once Andreas had joined them and had a decent breakfast.

  He could hear perfectly fine. Okay, he couldn’t understand what Andreas had been saying to himself in the bathroom, given that Erik’s Spanish started and ended at short, trite phrases said painfully loudly and slowly, but the sound of vomiting didn’t need translating.

  And given Erik hadn’t been inside him in any sense in over a year now, that only left the dizzy days.

  There was nothing Erik could do about it but watch out for its consequences. Andreas in a dysphoric attack could be…hard on himself. Not quite at the self-harm level, but still prone to unhealthy choices. Like skipping meals, or closeting himself away. Avoiding social situations, even with his family.

  But to his relief, it didn’t seem to have been too bad. Andreas put in an appearance just after Erik had managed to spoon enough mush into Beatriz’ mouth rather than all over her face, and instead of using a get-out of cleaning her up, dryly told Erik that he could handle that and went to get some eggs on toast.