just like a dream

[savekeating]

 

Gabriel finds out he’s pregnant on a Wednesday. He goes to the pharmacy, takes two tests within an hour of each other, then dresses Stensland for a trip to the park where he wreaks havoc on the sand box and hangs upside down from the monkey bars. Afterwards, they sit in the shade and eat french fries dipped in vanilla ice cream. It’s the end of Spring, and the park is quiet like a church, people walking their dogs and some kids kicking a ball back and forth.  Stensland is three years old, flush-faced with a riot of red curls. He has Gabriel’s eyes; he has Gabriel’s everything, except his heart because Gabriel is of the opinion that he no longer has one. Stensland’s big heart, and all his soft parts, those he got from Flip. 

 

Two days later and Gabriel still hasn’t found the time to tell him. Flip smells like day-old sweat after a twelve-hour shift, like grass and grit overlaid with the metallic tang of someone else’s blood. When Stensland is finally put to bed, Flip rolls Gabriel onto his stomach and they fuck, sure and steady, Gabriel groaning into the mattress and fisting his cock with his free hand. 

 

Flip squashes him with his weight in the aftermath, breath heavy gusts curtaining Gabriel’s cheek. Gabriel groans, unclenching his muscles. Flip is a heavy weight on top of him, a stone anchoring him to the earth. In another life, the one where Gabriel’s clothes don’t always smell like baby formula and Stensland’s vomit, he would have thrown Flip off after fucking him. But this is his life now and this is his bed. There are framed photos of Stensland on the wall from his second birthday and Gabriel is slowly, slowly learning how to cook, butchering all of Flip’s bubba’s family recipes. 

 

On Saturdays, Flip likes to play the part of All-American husband. Gabriel parks Stensland in front of the TV, ducks into the garage to smoke his morning cigarette in secret and then remembers he’s with child. He busies himself watching Flip mow the lawn instead, raggedy t-shirt damp with patches of sweat at the armpits, a perfect alpha specimen. Maybe if Gabriel hadn’t let his libido get the better of him, he wouldn’t be in this mess, he thinks. The first time Flip had rubbed up against him, pinned him against a brick wall to arrest him, Gabriel had thought:  yes. Yes to all the things Flip had yet to ask him. 

 

Flip rubs the sweat off his face on the crook of his arm, then turns when Gabriel hoots and whistles. “Nice view,” Gabriel grins, and Flip grins back, happy, the shape of his eyes half-moons, the first thing, really, that Gabriel ever noticed about him aside from his hands which were big, like the rest of him. “You wanna get me a glass of water?”

 

“Get it yourself,” Gabriel snorts, and Flip laughs, pressing a kiss to Gabriel’s temple when he passes him on the way to the kitchen. 

 

Flip showers, makes them breakfast that’s not half-bad, then it’s time to play with Stensland in the living room while Gabriel pores over the morning paper and does the crossword. They play on the floor with building blocks. Then it’s bath time and Stensland has to be lured out of the cabinet, half-naked and hysterical. The morning sickness begins three days later.

 

“You’re pregnant,” Flip says, when Gabriel is straddling him one morning and making good on his promise to keep him in bed. Flip’s hands are warm on Gabriel’s hips, immoveable. Gabriel aches where they’re joined, but it’s a good kind of ache; his knees feel weak and his thighs slippery with slick. All morning Flip had wound him up with his mouth, his traitorous tongue. Gabriel likes this, this still hour before their day begins, sunlight dappling the brown threads of Flip’s hair, their bodies moving in rhythm.

 

“Yeah,” Gabriel sighs, riding him sweet and slow. “Yeah, I am.”

 

Flip just breathes underneath him, and it undoes the knot clenched inside Gabriel’s chest, a fist uncurling. “Well,” Flip says, looking straight at him, eyes big and brown, the same way Stensland had looked at Gabriel when he first called him Papa. “All right. All right.”

 

Flip lets out a breathy laugh then lays a hand over Gabriel’s still-flat stomach. “Are we keeping it?” he asks hopefully. “Is it mine?”

 

Gabriel shoves his hips down, shudders. “What do you think?” he asks, spine taut as a bowstring. Then he comes.

 

*

 

They tell Stensland after the second month when a roll of stomach shows. Gabriel blames the donuts and the pickles and the peanut-butter and hot-sauce concoction Flip whips up for him at midnight. Stensland presses his hands along Gabriel’s stomach, prodding gently, then presses his ear to Gabriel’s belly button.

 

“You’re gonna be a big brother, Stens,” Flip tells him, seating him in their laps. 

 

And Stensland, sweet as strawberries and cream, just scrunches his nose and sneezes.

 

 

 

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