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“You alright, baby?”
You meant nothing by it. God, you vowed that nothing you did would ever be to hurt him and he knew it, deep in his bones even when doubts crept through the night and invaded his sanity. Andrew counted his blessings that your patience in his unlearning of every reflect instilled upon him since childhood was as saintlike as his nickname you refused to use.
But your check-in was a bucket of ice water over the head. His back was to you, so you didn’t see how his face knotted on itself with every harsh blink.
“Don’t call me that.” His voice was in his typical low register, but the hoarseness amplified his words, echoing over the water of the Cody’s pool, and struck at your core.
“Okay,” you said as normally as you could manage. You didn’t know how long he’d been standing there though you could make an accurate estimate.
Hiding the pain that you’d uncovered something else that his upbringing had soiled for him was something you had learned to protect Andrew until he was ready to address them with you. Once, he’d read your facial expression as a rejection of his entire being and the way his face crumbled into tears haunted you for weeks.
Yet something else joined the agony of his discomfort in your chest, warmth curling around your heart that he had asked you to do something for him. He’d wanted something and made it known. He was trusting you still.
Moving around into his field of view, though it was concentrated upon the rippling aqua, you considered his tight fists and his oscillating chest before speaking, “What can I call you instead?”
The crease in his brow was carved like a cliff face in perpetual overthinking. He didn’t move from the spot nor his gaze from the water. Carefully, you coaxed him out with your idea.
“‘Handsome’?”
He let out a small scoff. A hand on his chest stopped any more of that right in his tracks.
Because he was handsome. Adonis would be more accurate. A body carved from dedication to being about to take care of others for those he cared about and each scar a tale of a way he carried that out, you loved to feel his strength through his skin, his defiant heart punching through his torso.
In a weird sense, you were minutely grateful everyone else was unsettled by his stare. He was your lighthouse and you sought him out avidly, no competition to be subject to those eyes you truly believed completely changed colours to pair with his outfit. But you still couldn’t understand how no one had even tried to pick him up whenever he was out, especially with his hair grown long enough to create waves about to break in the perfect surf. Tanned skin held lines that ran deep as lay lines. Not just the frown, his dimples that had started folding more into his cheeks since your arrival were one of his many attributes that were now your weaknesses.
“No?” you tilted your head when Andrew continued refusing to look at you, “What about ‘my love’?”
He filled up space in your life like your love filled up your chest and spilled over. You let it flood everything until you bathed and basked in it, tempting him from the deep end to join you in this relationship. When he waded out and reached for your outstretched hands, the ties to each other brought you circling into the centre and meshed you into one.
There wasn’t any part of him you couldn’t understand. You adored his every quirk and quality, yearning to bury yourself in his life. Initially, it quaked you to your core. There wasn’t a risk from him. His devotion was entirely on display in asking for your favourites and bringing them to you STAT, pairing with his free time spent as your shadow. Anxiety of overwhelming you spilled off him at this new found freedom of expression. As a unit, Andrew began to condense all his love without the need to prove himself into doors held open, embraces during nights that he had rarely slept through, your preferred foods combined for dinner, your inner children skipping hand in hand along the beach.
Andrew was watching you closely now, waiting for the punchline.
Instead, you stood between him and the pool and ironed your palms up his taut t-shirt, “‘My man’?”
Partnership, not ownership, was what you preached to Andrew in this relationship. But you had him at your side and you were the only one that saw this vulnerability without jumping to shame or jeer at it. And there was something delicious about that being all yours.
No longer stiff with discomfort, Andrew graced your back with his hands. A warmth spread through your ribs even through your shirt. His brow had softened, his pinstriped forehead slackening until they were faded. His eyes were where the creases were now; they stared at you again with a squint that preluded a smile.
He swallowed hard before he spoke, voice still low and clandestine, “My name.”
“Andrew,” you whispered back.
One kiss, soft, cautious, solidified the not-so-nickname from your mouth to his. Andrew was normally clean shaven so you relished in your fingertips and chin prickling against his stubble.
You parted, barely, so that you could repeat: “Andrew.”
You brushed over the curls that he’d styled upright, still like silk as you graced over them to the back of his skull and pulled him in for another kiss, another, each punctuated with “Andrew, Andrew, Andrew.”
His breath huffed out his mouth with amusement. When you felt his lips back on yours, the right corner was quirked up on a lopsided smile against your own.
His hands ghosted over your face, “Call me yours.”
And as they cradled your jaw, you were certain he could hear your pulse racing as you bore witness to this tenderness he was gifting you.
“My Andrew. Let’s go home.”