I still wanted to break his perfect white teeth, but the strange sight of something foreign poking from Gabe's hole held my attention. I stared in awe and a mild bit of horror as our baby's head stretched Gabe's opening even wider.
"Good head of hair on them," Dr. Ostref said when the contraction ended. "The hard part is next."
Gabe flattened himself to the bed, sobbing. "That was already hard!"
"Just a few more pushes, and they'll be here!" The doctor overdid it with the false cheer. Either that, or he was a psychopath.
I sat on the bed so I could reach Gabe's hand, taking it in both of mine. He instantly squeezed my fingers and cried out from another contraction.
"Fuck!" he screamed, but he kept squeezing my hand and straining against the bed.
"There's one shoulder."
The doctor tugged me back, and Gabe whimpered when I let go of his hand. "They're almost here, which means it's almost Mika's turn."
"My … what?"
"You get to catch the baby, and I'll cut the umbilical cord." He frowned at my utter lack of recognition. "Didn't you read the materials I sent you?"
"Yes!" I'd read every single word, but I didn't remember any of them now. "I … catch the baby."
"Now."
Gabe convulsed with another contraction, and the doctor placed my hand under the baby's tiny head. I readied my other hand for the inevitable, and one push later, I had a wriggling baby boy in my arms. The doctor wiped the last of the fluid from his mouth and nose, which scrunched up with anger before releasing his first cry.
"That's it," Dr. Ostref said as he helped Gabe crawl onto the bed. "One healthy baby boy."
Once he passed the afterbirth, Gabe collapsed against the pillows on his back, his sides heaving. Gently, I laid the baby against his bare skin. He opened his wide blue eyes and stared up at me. His coloring and hair were like mine, but his eyes matched Gabe's.
"Aww." Gabe scrambled up against the pillows, cradling the baby in his arms for a better look. "He looks just like you."
"Smells like a meerkat, too," Dr. Ostref said. "You had nothing to worry about."
I frowned at Gabe. "You were worried?"
"I didn't want to screw him up with my genes, is all. Not a shifter, remember?"
At least twenty times, I'd sworn fate didn't make mistakes, but he was too stubborn to listen. "You need to stop talking like that," I said. "You're his daddy, and you're perfect."
Tears glistened in the corners of Gabe's eyes when he gazed up at me. His relationship with his own dads had improved, and this would help him reclaim some of his own first memories with them for himself. "Daddy? And you're …"
"Papa."
"And I'm Doctor Still-here," Dr. Ostref said with an unapologetic grin. "May I take him for measurements? It's required for the birth certificate."
Gabe sniffled but nodded, and the doctor lifted the baby with sure hands. "Do you have a name for him yet?"
We'd talked about names, but none of them seemed to fit our blue-eyed curmudgeon with a full head of dark hair. I was at a complete loss.
"With that nose, he looks like an F-16," Gabe said.
"Hey!" That was my nose, though it did look funny on a baby.
"What about Jett?"
"We're telling the family it's because of his hair color," I groused.
"Jett Michael Mears," he said.
