Andreas blinked sleepily, then grimaced.
“Oh Christ.”
He’d forgotten.
Since the letter had arrived, he’d been counting down the days until his appointment with the nurse at the GP surgery. And he’d completely forgotten what today was.
“I forgot,” he said awkwardly as Erik deposited the tray in his lap.
“Seriously?”
“Mm.”
“You seriously forgot?”
“Yeah. Uh. Sorry?”
Erik laughed at him, and kissed his cheek. “Yeah, well, I’ll let it slide. You’ve been glorious this week.”
Andreas rolled his eyes.
“You have,” Erik said, and the second kiss was softer and closer to home. “You this last week? That’s the most powerful you there is. The you I love most in the whole world.”
Andreas smiled into the kiss, catching at that hair before it was taken away.
“Oh, I know.”
He did. The evening he’d got the letter had been proof enough. And every other night since. And not only was the sex amazing, but he felt—easier. Better. The gap in his reflection hadn’t been so disturbing of late. And even the arrival of his period hadn’t hurt the way it used to, because the end was right there, ready to touch.
Maybe it really was the end of the line.
And God, he couldn’t wait.
So for once, he ignored the presence of a bacon sandwich and the grease around the edges of a liberal fry up. He just dug in, listening with amusement as Erik rustled Beatriz up out of her cot and brought her in to be fed alongside him. She was treated to a dab of ketchup and bit of scrambled egg once she was done with her paste, and then Andreas exchanged empty tray for offspring, and settled back to cuddle her in the warm contentment of his bed.
He couldn’t stop smiling.
“Can I get a picture of that?” Erik asked as he cleared the tray off to the top of the chest of drawers.
“Eh?”
“You and Her Majesty.”
Andreas laughed and hefted her up to his shoulder. She clapped, beaming widely, and Erik took a snap on his phone before tossing it aside, crawling over the bed like a predator, and blowing a noisy raspberry into Beatriz’s belly. She giggled shrilly, grabbing at his hair. He chuckled as he worked himself free, then offered Andreas another bristly kiss before grunting and levering himself back off the bed.
“Want anything from the kitchen?”
“I’m full. But pass me some clothes for Beatriz.”
“Uh-uh,” Erik chided. “You only get to lounge around today. She’s all my responsibility, except for cuddles. You can open your presents while I stuff her into her clothes.”
Andreas grinned, and decided to allow it. He didn’t really go in for birthdays personally. It was something Erik had had to train into him. He usually liked to pick somewhere to go out for dinner, pick where to have birthday sex—Andreas was a big fan of the shower—and that was about it. But Erik liked to spoil.
And in the wake of his letter, Andreas felt like appreciating a good spoiling.
Erik came back with presents. A couple from Mike and the girls. One or two that had snuck in from Erik’s colleagues and would undoubtedly be joke ones to take the mick out of their boss. One supposedly from their genius of an infant whose handwriting looked suspiciously like her father’s. And several—even more than usual—from Erik.
“You went to town on this,” he said as they swapped the baby over.
“Been buying up all year,” Erik said as he settled down on his half of the bed to wrestle all four squirmy limbs into a fresh nappy and—at a minimum—a top. Opening all the presents and getting Beatriz into a T-shirt would take about the same amount of time anyway, so Andreas began to pick at the paper.
“Why?”
“Because you were so low with the pregnancy. I figured either it would be a nice celebration and you’d be fine again, or it would help if you weren’t.”
Andreas paused to bite his lip, then leaned over and offered a quick kiss.
“Thank you.”
“Yeah, yeah. There you go!” Erik held out Beatriz. “One child, fully dressed.”
“Fully dressed includes trousers and socks.”
“No chance,” Erik said, and drew her into a hug when Andreas didn’t take her. “Okay, baby girl, let’s see if you’ve got your daddy’s unwrapping skills…”
He plucked a present from Andreas’ hands, and gave it to a bewildered Beatriz.
“Oi!”
To their joint surprise, she didn’t like it. The ribbons were a source of endless fascination, but when Andreas tore the wrapping off a new pair of slippers that Mike had got him, the loud noise of crunching paper startled Beatriz and she started to cry. She was mollified by a cuddle with Erik, but refused to play anymore, and had to be passed all the ribbons to soothe her upset. Eventually a new jumper helped, and she snuggled into the warm fabric with a soft coo.
“I think that’s you sorted for the afternoon,” Erik whispered, leaning in for a kiss and an absent-minded chew on Andreas’ ear. “Want to cuddle up and watch a slushy film?”
“No slush. It’s my birthday. Some crap action film?”
“Done.”
“Not a romance.”
“Urgh, why am I with you…”
Andreas smirked as Erik fetched the remote and channel-surfed for something appropriate, then puckered up when he found something.
“Uh-uh. After that comment, no family cuddle for you until you pay the fine.”
“I’ll give you fine…”
Andreas shifted up to let Erik back into the nest he’d made out of the duvet. They ended up with their legs stretched across the bed, Erik’s arm over his shoulders, and Beatriz sleeping peacefully on his stomach, a fist of birthday jumper seized tight in her fingers.
“Sorted?” Erik said.
Andreas shuffled sideways until he could tuck his cheek against Erik’s shoulder.
“Yeah.”
Perfect.
* * * *
“Come on,” Erik coaxed, holding out both hands. “Come and have a cuddle with Daddy.”
Andreas sat forward, and Erik grunted.
“Don’t,” he said. “I want her to try it out.”
Andreas rolled his eyes, but leaned back.
They’d stuffed themselves into food comas, but after her lunchtime nap, Beatriz had been up and ready and wanting to play. And so Erik was determined to see Andreas’ birthday out—or at least welcome the HRT in—with her first steps.
Which was why he was sitting on the rug, holding out his hands to the sofa, and trying to persuade Beatriz to come to him, rather than stretch up to Andreas.
And she wasn’t impressed.
But then Erik was tired of waiting. She’d been pulling herself up to stand using furniture—and people’s legs, and the buggy, and street furniture, and just about anything else she could grasp in her sticky little mitts—for weeks. But the minute it came to actually going anywhere, she’d dump herself back on her bum and shuffle across the carpet on her arse.
Not only would she not crawl, she wouldn’t skip it entirely and walk.
He’d tried everything. He’d tried bribing her with food and toys. He’d tried putting her repeatedly on her hands and knees. He’d even managed to get her to doggy paddle in the holiday pool in Valencia. She knew how to crawl, damn it!
And. She. Wouldn’t.
“She’s stubborn,” Andreas said beatifically when Beatriz turned her back and once more stretched up to him with a whine. He stooped and picked her up, and Erik sighed.
“She’s obnoxious.”
“She’s yours.”
“Oh no, that is all you…”
Andreas chuckled. Erik climbed up onto the sofa next to him, sliding an arm around his back and pulling a face at their daughter. She babbled cheerily back, told them about peas and the sea and Daddy, and settled against Andreas’ chest to suck her thumb and stare curiously up at them for a while
.
“She’ll probably just go straight to walking at this point,” Andreas said. He tipped his head to tuck it against Erik’s neck. “Leave her to it. She’ll probably do it once you stop trying to persuade her to do it.”
“See? Yours.”
Andreas laughed. Erik smirked, but buried it into Andreas’ hair so nobody would see.
“She’ll probably let Lauren or the nursery see it first,” Andreas said.
“Oh Christ, definitely yours.”
“Yeah, yeah. Bloody Vikings, can’t accept any responsibility for the genes they passed on.”
Erik smirked, then twisted his head to rest his cheek on Andreas’ warm scalp.
“I have a confession to make,” he murmured.
“Oh?”
“I don’t think I’m Erik the Red anymore.”
Andreas squeezed his thigh. “No?”
“No.”
It was hard to put into words, but—
“I’m Erik the Pink.”
“Eh?”
“I’m—”
Softer.
He’d named himself Erik the Red after a marauding hero, who’d gone out into the world when nobody else wanted him and discovered new lands, new people, new things. Who’d carved a place out for himself when he didn’t belong in the one he already had. A tough survivor. That was who Erik had been, all those years ago. A survivor. An abandoned, unwanted, unloved survivor.
But he’d changed.
He wasn’t red. He wasn’t blood and fire and terror. He was pink. Passion and love and warmth. He was Valentine’s Day and warm jumpers. He was pastel colours and flowers, someone’s fiancé, someone’s dad.
“I called myself after a man who was all—violence and pillaging and forcing a place for himself in the world. I thought I was that. I thought I had to be that. But I’m not. I’m me. I’m Erik the Pink.”
Andreas squeezed.
“I might have been doing some Googling—”
“Oh God.”
“Hey!”
Andreas chuckled, but gave way. “Alright, alright. What did you find?”
“Erik Orosa.”
Andreas lifted his head. He frowned a little.
“O rosa.”
“Yes.”
“The pink.”
“Yes.”
“That’s Portuguese.”
“Yes.”
There was a long pause.
Then: “Why?”
Erik tightened the arm around Andreas’ back.
“Because I want us to match. And you have a Portuguese name. So—you still can. If you’re Orosa. With me. And Beatriz.”
Andreas glanced down at Beatriz. She stared back, still sucking on her thumb. Erik waited, holding his breath, as some communication he couldn’t understand passed between his fiancé and the baby they’d made together.
“Beatriz Orosa.”
“Mm.”
“Andreas Orosa.”
“Yeah…”
Andreas chuckled, then finally looked up.
Leaned over.
And kissed Erik on the jaw, soft and sweet. The little kisses he so rarely bestowed. No sarcasm. No snark. No theatrical drama before its delivery.
Just a simple little peck, as though a love heart would pop up from the spot like they were in a cartoon.
“I like it.”
“Yeah?” Erik could feel the smile stretching his face far too wide.
“Yeah.”
“So I can—”
“I think you better find yourself a deed poll form.”
Orosa.
Erik, Andreas, and Beatriz Orosa.
Perfect.
Epilogue
The doctor’s surgery was heaving.
The usual melee of people thinking doctors could cure the common cold were clustered around the reception desk, sneezing and wheezing in unison, and Andreas sniggered when Erik refused to lift up the plastic rain cover from the buggy.
“No chance,” he said. “If she’s anything like you when you get a cold, then I’m not dealing with it. Especially not with her birthday coming up.”
“Excuse me, I’m not the one who supposedly almost died—”
“I did!”
“—from the flu last year.”
Erik maintained that he did. Andreas tuned him out with a smirk.
The nerves were building.
He’d picked up the vial from the pharmacy the day before. It was a tiny bottle in a small box, and he clutched it in a sweaty hand as he waited for his name to be called. He was so close that he could feel it. The probable end. The possible last step.
Beatriz had another set of jabs at the same time with the childcare nurse, so Andreas was going it alone, but he didn’t mind. In a way, he preferred it. He was still so reluctant to share those huge moments with anyone, so prone to wanting to shut them away in the back of his head to be forgotten once they were over.
And soon, it would be over.
“Beatriz Orosa?”
And it wasn’t the only thing.
The name still sounded strange. Andreas still hadn’t submitted his own paperwork, still adjusting to losing his Ironhand heritage that had powered him through sheer stubbornness all this way. But the wide smile that washed over Erik’s face at hearing their daughter’s name matching his own made Andreas’ heart beat just that little bit faster.
“Good luck,” he said.
“Uck,” Beatriz echoed around three of her own fingers, blissfully unaware of what was about to happen to her arm.
And Andreas watched with a contented smile as Erik the Pink stood, six foot of towering Viking with his explosive red hair and his offensive taste in checked shirts…and pushed a flimsy buggy containing a chubby baby in her bright blue Disney princess dress towards the childcare nurse’s office.
His family.
“Andreas—” A pause. A squint at a clipboard. “—May de Farrow?”
Andreas rolled his eyes, and stood up. He took a deep breath, squeezed the box in his slippery hand, and plastered on a smile.
“Good morning, my love,” the nurse said brightly as she led him back into her treatment room. “Lovely day, isn’t it? I do love a bit of winter sun…”
She chattered away about sun, the cold, white Christmases, the works. Andreas tuned her out, nodding in the right places but too focused on the intense ball of exhilaration and anxiety in his gut. He was almost there. The vial was just inches away from him. Five more minutes, and it would have finally, finally begun.
“Alright,” she said, brandishing an enormous needle. “If you’ll just pull your trousers and underwear down, and bend over the back of that chair. That’s right, dear. Sharp scratch, and—there…”
A pain punched through the skin just below his hip and just above his arse. He could feel the needle. He could feel the growing pressure of a thick solution being forced into the muscle. The pain went from mild and sharp, to a deep ache that reverberated in his pelvis, his thigh, in the very bones themselves.
He grunted, scowling, and the nurse made a sympathetic noise.
“It’s not a nice one, this, is it?” she said cheerily. “It’s very thick, you see, so we have to use a large needle—still, only every once in a while, isn’t it…”
He breathed out. He’d take it every day. He’d be skewered every single day of the week if it would work.
“And we’re all done. Ooh, just stay there a moment, dear, little bit of blood…”
Tape ripped. He felt the warm softness of a cotton bud.
It was done.
It was in him. A full vial of testosterone, at long last. And in six weeks, another one. And then a third, twelve weeks after that.
It had finally begun.
It was finally over.
“There we are!”
He straightened up gingerly. His whole left leg ached. Easing his jeans back up over his bum was nothing short of painful, and the first step towards the door felt like he was trying to move a concrete
block surrounded by jangling nerves, not a body part.
“Just ask the receptionist to book you in for another in six weeks,” the nurse said cheerfully, “and I’ll see you then!”
“Thank you.”
“Not at all, sweetie, you have a good day!”
He limped for the door, an uncontrollable smile on his face. He could feel it. It was insane to say so, because of course he couldn’t literally feel it, but…screw sanity. He could. He could feel the energy and the happiness and the completion. He could feel a lightness on his shoulders that hadn’t been there for years. Give him the restless leg syndrome, give him the crackling voice, give him the flu-like symptoms, give him everything on the list of side effects that had come in the box, he didn’t care.
It was over.
He stepped back into the waiting room just as Erik came out, an unhappy baby on one arm and pushing the empty buggy with the other. Beatriz reached plaintively, her miserable face turned towards Andreas as though he could solve the world for her.
“There, see?” Erik said brightly. “There’s Daddy.”
The word had never sounded so accurate before.
THE END
ABOUT MATTHEW J. METZGER
Matthew J. Metzger is an asexual, transgender author from the wet and windy British Isles. Matthew is a writer of both adult and young adult LGBT fiction, with a love of larger-than-life characters, injecting humour into serious issues, and the uglier, grittier edges of British romance. Matthew currently lives in Bristol, and—when not writing—can usually be found sleeping, working out at the gym, and being owned by his cat.
Find out more online at matthewjmetzger.com.
ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC
JMS Books LLC is a small queer press with competitive royalty rates publishing LGBT romance, erotic romance, and young adult fiction. Visit jms-books.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!
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