Fallon froze, then eased Gage back. “That’s us! Come on. Let’s go watch.” He snagged his boyfriend’s hand and tugged him toward the terrarium, where they could now see a worker hovering over the top with a pair of long metal tongs.
There was a roach squirming from the end, and Fallon felt a visceral revulsion at it and burrowed closer to Gage.
“Pumpkin Spice is getting Jonny,” the woman said.
Gage stiffened a bit, and Fallon looked up to see a strange look on his face. It was dark. Angry. But there was also something like relief there. His hands curled around Fallon a little tighter as the chameleon’s tongue—looking like a fat ball—suddenly elongated and snatched the insect into its mouth.
The crunching sound was also a little repulsive, but Fallon couldn’t look away. Not then, and not when Alayna was next. And then Charlie was fed to Tink, who took a bit longer to take hers, but eventually, the fat, ugly roach was down her gullet.
The worker fed them both a few more without names before she packed everything up, and suddenly, the space was almost too quiet. Fallon could hear his own breathing, which was just a little faster than Gage’s.
“So.” Gage shoved one hand into his pocket.
“I mean, I know it’s not them, but?—”
“No. I know. It was oddly cathartic though.”
Fallon let out a tense laugh because that was so true. It was cathartic in ways he hadn’t been expecting it to be. “We should do this every time we start hating them a little more.”
Gage snorted and turned, tipping Fallon’s face up to kiss him. “I’m happy with that idea.”
Fallon kissed him back. “Now we can go see the lions.”
Gage’s face broke out into a huge smile, and he grabbed Fallon’s hand, dragging him out into the light, a piece of their ugly past left behind in the shadows.
Exactly where it belonged.
From the next month on, Fallon was up to weekly appointments at the clinic, and he was starting to feel like shit from head to toe. He wasn’t showing much in the front. He wasn’t like otherpregnant people who looked like they were carrying a basketball under their shirt. He seemed to be big all over—from the bottom of his ribs down to his hips, and stretched all across his stomach.
He supposed he didn’t mind it that way. But it was wildly uncomfortable and hard to breathe.
“That’s normal,” the doctor said, pulling off his gloves. “For you, anyway. The placement of the uterus makes you carry more internal than external.”
Fallon bit his lip. He was alone for the appointment. Gage was on an emergency call, but Fallon didn’t mind doing these by himself. “So there’s nothing I need to change.”
The doctor tilted his head. “Work less, I think. Do you have plans for paternity leave?”
“I own my own business, so I can stop whenever.”
“The sooner, the better. You want to get as much rest in now as you can. I’m guessing you’re not sleeping as well as you used to.”
Fallon fought the urge to roll his eyes. No. He was not. He was napping a ton, and that didn’t help with his fatigue.
“I also think it’s time to have a discussion about reproduction.”
Fallon stared at him. “I think it’s fairly obvious that I know how reproduction works. And before you ask, I wasn’t using testosterone as a birth control. I?—”
“No,” the doctor interrupted, offering a small smile. He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. I know you’re a grown man who has done all the research. I’m talking about for your future. We haven’t gone over the labor and birth plan yet, but there is an option available to you.”
Fallon blinked at him.
“If this is a one and done—and for a lot of my trans patients, it is—we can perform a hysterectomy at the same time as a C-section.”
Fallon hadn’t considered that. At all. He’d been avoiding the labor and birth plan because it involved a lot of strangers looking at him in intimate places, and that made him feel weird and uneasy. He hadn’t considered that there were other options he could choose from.
But that meant he hadn’t been given time to think about them, and he was not the kind of person who could decide in the moment. It made him feel itchy all over.
“I…I don’t know what I want. I hadn’t thought about it.”
