Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
Bodie listened to his stomach rumble as he wandered into the kitchen, hunting a snack of some sort. When he’d first moved in with River, the smell of coffee, feijoada, and a few other foods like bacon had made him barf his guts out.
Now, though he was just hungry all the time, he figured it was like a miracle because as soon as the baby bump had popped out like half of a basketball, he’d lost the morning sickness and gained the “I have to eat the house”.
He still couldn’t believe when they’d left the lodge the second time, he had just gone with River.
Right now, he was working remotely on his same job, but he was kind of thinking about trying to find a new one after the baby was born.
While it was nice that he could do his job from anywhere, it still took a lot of long hours, and he would really love something with a little more flexibility.
River came wandering in, his little headset still on, his phone in his hand. “Hey, babe, did you want to have a snack together?”
“Together, separately, eternally, always, yes.” He winked at River. “I’m starving.”
River came to wrap both arms around him. “What would you like to have? We have lots of weird little canned fish products.” Unlike a human, he could eat fish while he was pregnant. Lots of it. Including shellfish.
“You know what I want right now?” Bohdi felt his belly rumble again.
“What’s that?” River kind of slow danced him around the kitchen.
“Grilled cheese. With clam chowder.”
“Okaaay.” River snorted but moved to the pantry to pull out a couple big cans of soup. “You heat this up and I’ll make the sammies.”
“You’re the best.” He burned grilled cheese every time. Every. Single. Time.
“I try, baby.” River tugged out bread, butter, and cheese, and they moved around each other happily, their silence companionable, not strained.
The only time Bohdi had any… angst, he supposed he would call it, was when River shifted in order to go swimming.
River had a house with an indoor pool room that was weatherproof…
While Bohdi was an excellent swimmer, it made him super sad that he couldn’t get his otter on and play with River that way, but he would never ask River not to shift. It was a huge part of who he was, and it was important as hell to him.
“So, what have you been up to today, amor?”
“Very boring data entry.” He rolled his eyes. “I needed to put in a bunch of statistics to get a new form created, and ugh.” He grinned. “What about you?”
They’d worked in separate rooms today because River had been doing a bunch of remote meetings.
River spread butter on the outside of the bread before filling the inside with American cheese. They had discovered they both liked that on grilled cheese alone, so they always had a small pack of it on hand.
He opened the cans of soup to make sure they weren’t going to make him barf, and everything seemed to be on the up and up, so he started to pour it into the pot to heat it.
River shrugged. “It was meeting after meeting, you know how it goes. But we got a bunch of stuff settled, so now I can start on that big project.”
“Nice, I know you were waiting for that.” Some kind of funding had fallen through on River’s project to begin with, but then they’d gotten a new partner, and it had come around, so that was great news.
“I was. We were so down-trodden, I guess would be the best word, when we figured out it wasn’t going to happen. And then now it’s back to being good, right?”
Bohdi loved this.
He’d always thought he wouldn’t.
When his mom was begging him to get married and have babies, he had always thought he couldn’t imagine being married and having to put up with somebody else all the time. But sharing these little details of life made him smile constantly. He loved it.
He loved River, and he really felt like they were becoming a couple.
They were learning everything about each other — their likes and dislikes, from horror movies to peanut butter and jelly, or grilled cheese and weird soup that wasn’t tomato, to what side of the bed they liked to sleep on, and the fact that he liked to have two comforters while River only needed one.
By the time they got the soup heated up and the grilled cheese made, he’d also opened a couple of cans of clams and oysters. They were having a little feast with some saltines, the shellfish, the soup, and the sandwiches. It was perfect.
“Thank you for indulging me. I was having a terrible craving.” Bodie said he was learning that when the baby wanted something, he didn’t get to say no, he just had to go with it and hope they had whatever he wanted.
River bent across the way and kissed him on the nose, grinning at him. “No problem, baby. You know I enjoy spending time with you no matter what we’re doing. And I love providing you with what you need.”
He popped another cracker with an oyster on it into his mouth. “Such an alpha.”
“I am. It doesn’t help you that I’m Brazilian, too. We get a little chest-thumpy.”
“Good thing I happen to like chest-thumpy.” He did, too. He thought River was brilliant, and he hadn’t met River’s folks yet, but he’d talked to them on Zoom and they were hilarious. And River’s dad’s accent was amazing.
“Mmm, definitely a good thing for me”. River reached out and wiped a little bit of detritus off of his lower lip, which made him tingle. “Now, finish up your soup before it gets cold.”
“Thanks, love.” He ate his grilled cheese too because that was the yummiest thing ever. Crispy, gooey, and just right with the soup.
He was still getting used to them being together, living with each other, and being pregnant too, but Bodie was more and more confident all the time that it was a good thing, and that they were going to make this work.
He could only hope though that his children didn’t have the same affliction he did, and they would learn to shift.
He didn’t want to put that on anybody, especially his kids.