June-July
"And what," Erik says, voice thick with incredulous disbelief, "do you think you're going to do with that?"
Charles' erection is hot and stiff in his hand. Erik's not sure he believes this is really happening. He doesn't care what Charles' doctor told him, there's no way a little blue pill can do this. Not when every other option they've heard of over the years has been so much more dramatic: Charles hated the pump, he's always been too squeamish for the injections, but now all he has to do is pop a Viagra and neck for forty-five minutes? There's no way.
"Oh, I don't know. I was thinking I might fuck you with it."
There's something about the way Charles says 'fuck' that makes Erik's mouth go dry.
"That's what you think, huh?" he says, running his hand up Charles' stomach.
Erik leans in, positioning himself so that his thigh is pressed up against Charles' erection, and goes back to working him over with his hands and his mouth, all those places that are good for him, his earlobes and the hollow of his jaw and that one place on his neck, his collarbone and his nipples...
They can't usually do it like this. Charles almost never manages to get more than half-hard on his own, and when he does, they always have to hurry or he'll lose his erection before they get anywhere with it. Erik can count on his fingers the times he's had Charles' cock in his ass over the last eight years. He can count on one hand the times it's been satisfying for either of them.
Part of Erik wants to hurry now, in case those pills aren't as good as they seem to be. But he wants to take his time even more, now that it looks like he has the luxury. He wants to make this good for Charles, too. It would be a shame if he got bored or fell asleep or something.
"Oh, don't be ridiculous. Of course it's going to be good," Charles says, scoffing—but he doesn't exactly try to rush Erik along, running his hands up and down Erik's arms in encouragement.
Some time later, Erik shifts so that he's straddling Charles' lap. He glances down and tries to look shocked, like he's just now noticing their visitor.
"Is that for me?" he asks, his lips brushing the shell of Charles' ear. "I think it is. Oh, yeah."
"Uh-huh," Charles says, sounding a little dazed, the way he always does when it's working for him, erection or no erection.
A minute later, Erik's the one feeling dazed. He always gets pretty stupid when it's his turn during sex, and that's even more true now than it is the rest of the time. As soon as he lowers himself onto Charles' cock, still so thick and hard for him, he forgets everything else he wanted to do or say here. All he can think about is Charles inside him, stretching him open; Charles rubbing his back, pulling his shoulders forward until Erik's close enough to gasp directly into his ear; Charles setting his hands on either side of Erik's waist once he has Erik where he wants him; Charles wrapping his fingers around Erik's cock a few minutes later, stroking him so that Erik's chasing two things instead of one, and all he knows is that it's a good thing he doesn't have to choose between them.
Afterward, Erik slumps down in bed beside Charles, and, when he's able to put two thoughts together again, says, "Please tell me we get to do that again."
Charles takes the prescription bottle off his nightstand and looks at it. His lips move soundlessly as he reads the label. "How about tomorrow?"
*
Viagra is the best thing that's ever happened to their sex life.
It's not like they haven't had an active sex life, because they have. It's not like they haven't had a good sex life, especially since they discovered metal dildos and wedge sex cushions. But after nearly a decade of not being able to do this, it's all they even want to do now that it's back on the table.
They fuck every day for weeks. Erik keeps finding excuses to come home from work early so they can fool around in the kitchen while before Charles has to pick Lorna up from day camp. Lorna quickly figures out that the answer to "Can I sleep over at so-and-so's house tonight?" is almost always yes, so they have a little fun rocking the elevator on all the nights she's out of the house. They even do it in Charles' van a few times. It's a little cramped, and Erik always smacks his head on the ceiling at least once, but somehow that only adds to the attraction.
Charles gets more out of it than Erik would have expected. Though the physical sensations are pretty muffled for him, Charles likes the hormone rush. He likes Erik's excitement, feeling the way it feels for Erik. He gets off on watching, too. It seems like every time Erik looks at Charles' face when he's riding him, Charles is gazing raptly downward.
After a while, they remember that there are other things they like to do, and slow down with the Viagra. It seems to be more effective if it's not an everyday thing, and Erik's starting to get a little tired of limping around everywhere anyway.
*
August
The first day he wakes up sick, Erik figures it must have been something he ate. He knew that pepperoni didn't look right. See if they order from that place again.
By the time he gets to work, he already feels so much better that he completely forgets about the whole thing—until he wakes up the next morning and he's sick again.
On the second and third days he wakes up sick, he spends all day at work alternating between trying not to think about it, hoping it goes away, and stressing out that maybe this will be the time it's something more serious than a little stomach bug. Something like cancer, maybe. He's officially in his thirties now, and his dad lived to the ripe old age of thirty-seven. These things can be genetic, and as much as he knows he has a habit of jumping to the worst possible conclusion, it's not outside the realm of possibility. Not by a long shot.
On the fourth day, when he's on his knees in the bathroom with the toilet seat up, it finally occurs to Erik that it could be something else that's a little more serious than a little stomach bug. Not cancer. Something good.
Maybe he's pregnant.
He tries to tell himself there's no way. Sure, he was pregnant once before with Lorna, but that was like a fluke or something. It still doesn't feel like something that actually happened. Even now, Erik can hardly believe it, despite the fact that they have this kid wandering around who looks like Erik when she's laughing and Charles when she's frowning in concentration, who has Charles' freckles and Erik's big toe, and who makes Erik want to sit up straight whenever she looks at him over the rims of her glasses because that's when she looks just like his mom.
They couldn't get that lucky a second time. For one thing, Charles can't even—but okay, the Viagra—but even so, Charles almost definitely has a lower sperm count than he did before—but the last time Erik got sick in the mornings like this, the only time he ever did, was when he was pregnant with Lorna.
Erik reaches up to flush the toilet, then gets heavily to his feet. He blows his nose on some toilet paper, washes his hands, brushes his teeth, going through the motions with his thoughts a thousand miles away.
He calls in a sick day at work, and for once they don't even try to convince him to come in anyway. He must sound really out of it. He feels really out of it.
There's no way what he's thinking could be true, but he calls their doctor's office to make an appointment anyway.
Turns out they don't have anything open until tomorrow. Maybe he should go in to work after all, but Erik can't see himself actually getting anything done. He could barely concentrate the last couple days as it was; he's not going to be able to focus on anything until he knows for sure about this.
Erik gets dressed and goes to sit in the living room. He picks up a book, but three pages later he can't remember anything he just read, so he sets it aside. Next he turns on the TV, but it's the same story there, and he turns it back off five minutes later. Then he gets up and starts to pace until the cat realizes he's still around and starts crying to be fed. His bowl is half-full with perfectly good cat food, but Erik dumps a new scoop over it anyway.
Where the hell is Charles, anyway? He should be back from dropping Lorna off at school by now. It's not that far of a drive. Hell, Lorna could walk to school if she got motivated enough.
Charles doesn't teach a class today, does he? No, Erik's sure he only has class on Mondays and Wednesdays this semester. He sees his therapist on Tuesdays. Thursdays and Fridays are free days. He should really be home by now.
Erik's just about to give Charles a call down at the college just in case he did go in for whatever reason when he feels Charles' van coming from way down the street. He's pretty sure Charles can hear Erik's thoughts all the way down the street, too.
Charles sure takes his time—is he doing ten in a twenty-five or something?—but eventually Erik feels the van pull into the garage. A few minutes later, he wheels himself into the house.
"Erik?" he calls, his voice carrying down the hall as he heads toward the living room. "Did you sleep through your alarm? Your car's still in the driveway..."
"Hey," Erik calls back. He stands up from the couch and turns toward the doorway, his hands in his pocket as he waits for Charles to come into view. He's not sure what to say, how to approach the subject. He thought for sure Charles would pick it out of his head, he felt like he was doing the mental equivalent of shouting it at the top of his lungs, but maybe he wasn't after all. He doesn't really have any way to tell how loudly Charles hears anything he's thinking about. Sometimes Charles is in his head all day long, other times he blocks out everything, and there's not much of a pattern as far as Erik knows. Well, other than that Charles is more likely to be in and out of there a lot when he's spiraling; those are the days when he feels the need to check to make sure Erik doesn't hate him a minimum of thirty times a day.
When Charles appears in the doorway, Erik ends up going with, "I actually called off work today. And, um. I need to tell you something. But you have to try not to get too excited, because I'm not a hundred percent sure about it yet."
Erik usually can't tell when Charles is in his head—Charles hasn't made a point of knocking since the first few months they were together, when he was still figuring out whether or not Erik meant it when he said he didn't mind—but this time it's obvious, because right around the time he gets to 'too excited,' Charles' entire face lights up.
"Erik," Charles breathes. "My God."
"See, there you go getting all excited. Were you even listening when I told you I'm not sure yet?"
He guesses not, since Charles isn't listening now, either:
"We're getting you an appointment for today," Charles says, heading toward the phone. "There's no reason it should have to wait for tomorrow."
For a telepath, Charles is pretty damned good at sweet-talking receptionists over the phone when he can't even read their minds. The next thing Erik knows, his appointment's been moved up from two-thirty tomorrow to one this afternoon.
Try as Erik might to keep either of them from getting too excited, they spend the next few hours talking and making plans for if—if, and Erik loses track of how many times he has to interrupt Charles to remind him that they don't actually know one way or the other yet—he actually is pregnant. Try as he might to tell himself there's no way, Erik gets more and more excited right along with Charles.
By the time they reach their family clinic at fifteen minutes to one, Erik's hands are shaking. When the doctor says, "Congratulations, kids. You're going to have a baby," he has to put his head between his knees to keep from passing out.
*
"Are you sure you're okay with this?" Charles asks. "Now that we know for certain?"
"I'd better be," Erik says darkly as he flips through the pamphlets they shoved at him on the way out. As much as he appreciates that there's literature out there that doesn't automatically assume comparing labor pains to menstrual cramps would be useful to him, he still wants to know who got paid to come up with titles like 'Male Pregnancy: What To Expect When You Never Thought You'd Be Expecting.' What the hell is that? It's cutesy enough to make Erik want to barf. He's pregnant, not a moron.
"No second thoughts?" Charles presses, glancing over at Erik and then back at the road. He looks nervous. Of course he is. He spent something like ten minutes of their appointment rubbing Erik's back and telling him to breathe, to calm down, that everything was all right; but now that they're on their way home, it's his turn to worry.
Erik pulls out the ultrasound picture from where it got shuffled in with the other stuff. He's about eight weeks along, so it doesn't look like much yet. Just a little gray jellybean. But it's their little gray jellybean, and Charles wasn't the only one to get misty-eyed when they saw it on the monitor for the first time. "No," Erik says. "I'm okay with it. Actually, I'm great with it. This is good. Really good. I couldn't be happier."
"All right." Charles' frown melts away as a big, goofy smile takes its place. A minute later, he reaches over to pat Erik's stomach when they stop at a red light. A couple minutes after that, he does it again at the next red light. He would probably use Erik's stomach as an armrest if he didn't need both hands to drive, nevermind that Erik's not even showing yet.
*
Later that night, after they've finally managed to have the round of victory sex they've been waiting on all day, Charles asks, "When do you think we should tell people?"
Erik's reading back through the pamphlets, most of which he only got to skim earlier. Charles is reading along with him, his head on Erik's shoulder and his hand resting on Erik's stomach, which is still flat despite Charles' obsession with it.
"Did you see the way Lorna was looking at us earlier? We're going to need to tell her something soon." It's not that they never gross her out by being touchy-feely in front of her, but Charles hasn't been able to keep his hands off Erik's stomach all day long. There's no way she missed that, or all the significant glances, either. "She'll probably figure it out on her own if we don't let her in on it this weekend."
Charles laughs.
"I'm serious! She obviously knows something's up. She's eight, not stupid."
Charles gives Erik's stomach a condescending little pat. "She's rather skeptical of that story, dear. I don't see her jumping straight from 'my parents are acting really weird' to 'my dad must be pregnant.'"
"Why wouldn't she believe that story?" Erik demands. Sure, he has a hard time believing it himself sometimes, but he was there. And so was she, if you want to get technical about it. "She's seen the pictures. What more does she want?"
"I'm sure she'll come around," Charles says, running his hand down Erik's stomach. "Especially once whoever's in there gets a little bigger."
He says 'whoever's in there' in a high-pitched voice. Until this moment, Erik had completely forgotten about the way Charles used to baby-talk to his stomach all the time when he was pregnant with Lorna. He doesn't remember it being anywhere near this embarrassing back then, but you know, he was twenty-one and their relationship had still been pretty new at the time; he probably thought it was charming, or cute. But like two-thirds of the other things Charles does that used to be charming or cute, this isn't anymore.
"Yes, it is," Charles says. He sounds smug. He's been acting smug for months anyway, ever since they started with the Viagra. Erik can't imagine how bad he's going to be by the time Erik's waddling around like a big huge whale. The way Charles acts, you'd think he was the one with the really cool secondary mutation. "So we'll tell her this weekend, then. When should we tell everyone else?"
Everyone else. Oh, crap.
"Do we really have to tell my mom?" Erik groans.
"Probably. I can't really see a way around it."
"Great," Erik says. "That's just great. You know, I told her we couldn't have anymore kids. She's going to think I lied to her."
He had to tell her that. It was the only way to get her to lay off with the nagging: 'Now that you have that good job/Charles has his Master's/you bought that nice big house/Charles has his PhD, maybe you could think about a brother or sister for Lorna.' Erik got tired of hearing it after a few years. It was annoying. If he'd let himself think about it too much, it probably would have hurt. He played it up as a sob story to get her to stop, and even though it was true as far as he knew at the time, he's starting to feel kind of bad about it now that he's actually pregnant again.
"I think she's going to be really happy about it. And I don't think she'll think you were lying. I really don't."
"Oh yes, she will. I'm never going to hear the end of it," Erik says darkly. "Are you sure we can't wait a few years to let her in on it?"
"Pretty sure." Charles rubs his thumb back and forth on Erik's stomach soothingly. He kisses Erik's shoulder and says, "It'll be fine. You worry too much."
*
"I thought you said you two couldn't have anymore kids," Mom says, two days later.
Erik's lying on the couch, holding the wireless phone to his ear. He sighs and slings his other arm up to cover his eyes. "Yeah, well. We couldn't. But things changed."
"What do you mean? What changed?"
Erik doesn't know why he had to go and blurt out the news like that. He could have let her go on about all the things she usually tells him about over the phone: her diabetes, the latest drama with her coworkers, whatever she's fighting with her doctor or the neighbors about this month.He could have done that and stuck with his original plan of telling her about this kid around his or her fifth birthday. But no. He just had to open his mouth.
"Well, Charles' doctor put him on this new medication," Erik says, hoping she'll let it go at that.
"What medication?" she presses.
"I don't want to get into all the details."
"Why not?"
"You don't need to hear about my sex life, Ma," Erik says. God, he wishes he hadn't said anything. At least not without Charles to help share in the humiliation.
"I wasn't asking about your sex life! What does that have to do with anything?"
"What could my being pregnant possibly have to do with sex? Gee, I don't know! You figure it out."
There's a couple seconds of silence, and then she says, "You don't need to get smart with me, Erik. I was just asking you a question."
At this point, their cat, Mister, hops down onto Erik's chest from the top of the couch and bumps his head against Erik's hand. Erik scratches him absently behind the ears, grateful for the support, and mutters, "I'm sorry, Ma. I don't want to talk about it, that's all. It's embarrassing. I wasn't trying to be smart."
"Good," she says. "Well, you don't have to tell me anything you don't want to." Another couple seconds of silence; she's obviously waiting to see if he feels bad enough about it to keep talking, but he's been onto that trick for a while. "You could have at least let me know you were trying."
"Yeah, well, we didn't want you to get your hopes up," Erik says, because it's a lot less humiliating than admitting that they didn't even think about this possibility at all during their big sex marathon. "Anyway, you're the first to know, so could you try not to be mad about it?"
"I'm not mad," she says, but Erik knows he's not going to live this one down for a while.
*
October
"Daddy?" Lorna says.
"Yes?" Erik says, hitting the pause button on It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
"When this is over, can we watch Friday the 13th?"
"No."
Lorna pouts. "Why not?"
Erik ticks the reasons off on his fingers. "One: you're way too young to watch it. Two: we don't have it anyway. Three: we're not renting it, because you're too young."
"Theresa's dad lets her watch it. I'm two months older than her," Lorna says.
Erik always knew Sean Cassidy was irresponsible. He makes a mental note to call him up and give him the updated list of things Lorna is definitely not allowed to do when she's over there. "Do I look like Theresa's dad to you? I said no. Drop it."
Lorna pouts for a few minutes, then, when Charlie Brown ends and they're about to put in Hocus Pocus, she says, "Daddy?"
"Lorna," Erik says. She'd better not be about to ask about A Nightmare on Elm Street.
"Do you think the baby will be blue?"
When they went to Disney World for Mutant Day last year, Lorna was pretty excited by all the blue mutants they saw there. In fact, she'd been so excited at first that they'd had to shush her and tell her to be impressed more quietly, and to try not to stare, or point, or yell, 'That kid's blue!'
"I doubt it," Erik says.
"But Aunt Raven is blue."
"Aunt Raven's adopted, remember?"
Lorna looks confused. "I thought she was still Dad's sister."
"Well. She is." Erik tries to think of a way to explain it that doesn't involve saying that Raven being adopted means that she doesn't have to worry about turning into an alcoholic if she has a drink once in a while, and that Charles probably isn't going to have a blue kid. "But because she's adopted, she and Dad don't have any of the same genes, and genes are what make Aunt Raven blue."
"But they're both mutants, so don't they have the same genes?" Lorna says, looking even more confused.
"Well, that's the X gene," Erik says. "The genes I'm talking about are different. Me and Dad and your Aunt Raven all have the X gene, so we're all mutants, but our mutations are all different, because our other genes are. Does that make sense?"
"I guess so."
Which means 'no.'
"You know who you should really ask about this? You should talk to Dad. He's the one who teaches this stuff. He can explain it better than I can," Erik says.
"Okay," Lorna says.
"So do you want to watch the rest of this movie, or should I turn it off?"
"I want to watch the rest!" Lorna says, and so Erik hits the play button again, then gets up and goes into the kitchen to make some more popcorn.
After Hocus Pocus is over, they top off their movie marathon the way they do for all of them: by watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Erik doesn't remember anymore when or how that became Lorna's favorite movie. It's always seemed like a weird choice for a Jewish girl who made people cry in kindergarten when she told the whole class that Santa wasn't real—but on the other hand, it's maybe a pretty predictable choice for a mutant girl with green hair. The message isn't all that bad, either, as long as you ignore the part where Santa and the other reindeer don't start tolerating Rudolph until his nose becomes useful to them.
Lorna falls asleep on the couch around the time Rudolph runs away. A few minutes later, Erik pokes her to see if she's still awake. She's completely out, barely even twitches, so he fast-forwards to the end of the movie, then shakes her shoulder.
"Movie's over," he says. "Time for bed. Come on, you're way too big for me to carry."
He hopes she doesn't actually have her heart set on the baby being blue. She's already been pretty clear that a sister would be okay, but a brother definitely wouldn't be. That's a lot of pressure she's putting Erik under here.
*
November
"If you see anything cool in there, like wings or a tail or something, let me know," Erik says to the ultrasound tech at his big 20-week appointment. "But if you see a penis, don't tell me. I want to be surprised."
No one tells anyone anything other than that their baby looks perfectly healthy, but when they're on their way home, Charles keeps looking at Erik with a secretive little smile, going soft around the eyes whenever he glances at Erik's stomach.
He obviously knows something. Erik would put money on it. Charles never has been good with surprises; there's no way he didn't peek.
"So," Charles says on the drive home, "let's talk about names. What were you thinking for a girl?"
Last time they had this conversation, Charles asked the same question, and Erik was convinced that since Charles brought up girl names first, that meant they were going to have a girl—until two minutes later, when he agreed to the name Lorna without batting an eye, then spent the next few weeks trying to convince Erik they should go with Francis if they had a boy. He had Erik so convinced that it would be a boy that, when Charles was paralyzed three months before Lorna was born, Erik decided that he could live with Francis if it put a smile on Charles' face. Well, they got a Lorna instead of a Francis, and the story still makes Charles smile every time they tell it.
It's a cute story, but it seems a lot less cute now that Charles is obviously playing mind games with him again.
"Mind games," Charles scoffs. "As if everyone doesn't have this conversation at some point. Really, Erik."
Erik doesn't buy it. "If it's a girl, I think we should name her Ruth."
"Sounds good to me. Now, what were you thinking for a boy?"
"How about Joshua," Erik says.
The corner of Charles' mouth twitches. If he weren't driving, he'd probably be rubbing his hands together with glee. "I don't think so. No. Absolutely not."
"What's wrong with Joshua?" Erik demands.
"I just can't see it," Charles says. "I was thinking something more like Ulysses."
"Are you crazy?" Erik says, and it's on.
Erik's pretty sure Charles is teasing him through Percival, Ambrose, and Bartholomew, but by the time he starts seriously arguing the merits of David, Erik thinks he might have been played. He resigns himself to spending the rest of this pregnancy wondering what Charles' game is.
*
January
Y2K comes and goes. The world doesn't end, which Erik appreciates since he has enough on his plate as it is.
The week after Lorna's ninth birthday, Erik notices that Charles seems quieter, a little distant. His first thought is that maybe he needs to give him a nudge so he can talk to his doctor, find out if he needs to get his medication adjusted. Charles is completely brilliant, but it somehow never occurs to him on his own that he could be feeling crappy for a reason, that it's the same old pattern every time.
He's still in the shower when Erik wakes up on Wednesday morning. Erik goes in the bathroom to pee, careful not to flush, then puts the toilet seat down and sits. He waits until Charles turns the water off, pushes the shower curtain out of the way, and reaches for his towel, and says, "Hey."
Charles jumps. "Oh. Hi. Do you need the shower?"
"I just wanted to talk. Find out how you're doing," Erik says. "You've been kind of out of it the last couple days. Is everything okay?"
"I'm fine." Charles towels himself off, first his head, then his chest and stomach, then his legs. He doesn't look at Erik. "You really don't need to check in on me."
"Bullshit. Something's obviously going on. Come on, Charles. Talk to me."
"You don't want to hear about this. You really, really don't. Trust me on this one," Charles says.
"Sure I do," Erik says. "If something's bothering you, I always want to know about it."
Charles sighs. "Fine." He rubs his face with the towel and says, in a muffled voice, "I don't know if I can do this."
"Do what?" Erik presses, all set to come up with three rational arguments about why Charles is wrong on the spot. He's not sure if there's something coming up that Charles is freaking out about, or if it's everyday stuff that's got him all worried, but whatever it is, they can figure it out if they talk about it. That's the way they work; it's probably why they're still together.
Charles takes the towel away from his face, glances over at Erik with a worried look on his face, then looks away again and says, "I'm don't think I'm ready for this. I don't know if I'm going to be able to handle a baby."
Erik's heard just about everything from Charles over the years, but this is the first time he's ever felt like Charles just slapped him in the face. "Excuse me, what? You're not on board with this anymore? When did this happen?"
"I didn't say that," Charles says.
"That's what it sounded like to me." Erik stands up heavily, gestures down at his stomach. "You know, this is a hell of a time for you to change your mind. In case you haven't noticed, I'm seven months pregnant here. It's a little late for you to spring this on me!"
"I didn't say anything about changing my mind," Charles says.
He looks like he's about to cry. Well, good for him; he's not the one having the baby. He's not the one having to listen to this shit from his kid's father two months before his due date.
"You know, I really thought you were happy about this!"
"I am happy, Erik—"
"No, you're not! We wouldn't be having this conversation if you were, would we?"
"You were the one who asked, Erik! That's why we're talking about it. You asked. I had no intention of bringing it up. And I didn't say I don't want the baby. I never said that. I never would say that. That's not what I was getting at at all." And now Charles is crying, sitting there in the shower holding the towel, red-faced and red-eyed, looking a little pissed and a lot miserable, and Erik would probably feel at least a little guilty about it if he had room to want to do anything but scream.
"Then why don't you explain to me just what the hell you were trying to say?" Erik demands. He feels like a bully, looming over Charles, but for once he doesn't care.
"I'm trying!"
"Well, try harder!"
"I would if you'd just listen—"
And that's when Erik hears the knocking at their bedroom door.
"What do you need?" he calls, trying to decide whether it just started, or if it could have been going on for a minute or two. He hadn't realized how loud he was being until just this second. He wonders how much she heard.
"I need to get to school," Lorna says.
Shit. Erik glances at Charles, who hasn't even transferred back to his chair yet, much less gotten dressed and ready to leave the house. He walks over to the door, cracks it open, and says, "Dad's running a little behind today, so I guess I'll take you. Give me a couple minutes to get ready and then we'll go, okay?"
"Okay," Lorna says. She looks pretty worried. Erik wishes he could tell whether it's more because she doesn't want to be late, or because of all the shouting.
Erik puts on his socks, his shoes, and one of those big, baggy sweatshirts he wears because men's maternity wear isn't actually any less embarrassing than women's. He leaves his pajama bottoms on because it's quicker and he really doesn't want to have to deal with khakis today. It can be casual Wednesday. Fuck it.
He can't even look at Charles on his way out.
*
Erik pulls into the school parking lot and parks behind the last school bus in front of the big double doors, ignoring the sign that says he's not supposed to do that.
"Well, you have a good day," he says to Lorna.
She didn't say anything on the drive over here, but now she looks at him nervously and says, "Were you and Dad fighting?"
"No," Erik says automatically, before he remembers their rule about not lying to her. If she's old enough to ask a question, she's old enough to get some sort of answer. One that's true, even if it's not the whole truth. "I mean, okay, yes. We were sort of arguing. A little. But it's not anything you need to be worried about, okay?"
"Are you going to get a divorce?" she asks, biting her lip.
"Not as far as I know," Erik says. It's not the first time she's asked him that—a lot of her friends' parents have gotten divorced the last couple years—so at least this time he manages not to add, 'You know, It's kind of hard to get divorced when you can't get married in the first place.'
Lorna still looks worried, so he adds, "I really don't see anything like that happening, okay? Your Dad and I are a little upset with each other right now, that's all. We'll work it out."
They usually do, so that part's true. Probably.
*
Erik goes straight in to work after dropping Lorna off. It means he gets there forty-five minutes earlier than he usually does, but he's too pissed off at Charles to want to run into him again this morning, even if it means he's going to be freezing all day. Pajama bottoms in the middle of January really weren't his best idea ever.
He's still pissed when lunchtime rolls around. The last thing he wants to do is talk to Charles, but he calls him anyway, first at the house in case he stayed home today, then at the college when he doesn't pick up the home phone.
"Are you going to be able to pick Lorna from school, or do you need me to do it?" he asks when Charles picks up.
"I can do it," Charles says.
"I can leave early if I have to."
"No, I've got it," Charles insists.
"Okay. Bye." Erik hangs up before Charles can say anything else.
Erik almost never works late unless he doesn't want to go home. Today he stays until almost seven, even after the meeting where his boss tells him that, whatever possessed him not to wear pants to work today, he will be dressed appropriately for the office when he comes in tomorrow. 'Or else' is heavily implied. When he does leave, he drives around aimlessly for several hours, not heading anywhere in particular, just driving down familiar roads so he doesn't have to think too hard about what he's doing or where he's going.
He's not ready to go home yet. He's not ready to face Charles, he's not ready to talk this out rationally, and he definitely isn't ready to admit that he probably fucked up by jumping down Charles' throat like that. He didn't mean to do that. In all the other times he's had to bug Charles to find out what's going on with him, he's never had a knee-jerk reaction like that to Charles' answer. He's had plenty of big freakouts over the years, but not in that kind of situation, not when he was going in trying to be patient. Where did that come from?
Erik thinks about driving over to see his mom, but that's usually not a good idea when he and Charles are fighting. He'd just end up spilling everything, and then she'd hold it against Charles for months after their fight is over. Or, even worse, she'd take Charles' side, and Erik definitely does not feel like being ganged up on.
He can't stop anywhere for a drink or two, either, so instead he just drives, thinks and tries not to think, until he's more tired than he is angry. That'll have to be good enough.
It's almost ten by the time he gets home. Lorna's already in bed. Charles is waiting for him, grading a big stack of papers on the dining room table instead of at the desk in his office the way he usually does.
"Hey," Erik says.
Charles doesn't look up. "There's some leftover meatloaf in the oven, if you're hungry. It's still warm."
Erik actually is pretty hungry, which his stomach chooses that moment to growl and remind him about. Where Charles tends to forget to eat when he's depressed, Erik forgets to eat when he gets mad enough. Charles doesn't usually bother worrying about Erik's dinner when they've been fighting, but Erik's been a lot less pregnant most of the times it's come up.
"Okay. Thanks," he says, and heads into the kitchen. He heaps a double helping of meatloaf onto his plate, then sits down across from Charles and digs in.
They need to talk, Erik knows that, but he takes his time eating, trying to think of how he should approach it, how he should start. He shoves the last few bites around with his fork for a few minutes, pretty much the same way Lorna does when she doesn't really feel like finishing her food.
"Hey," he says to get Charles' attention. Charles looks up, and Erik goes on: "I'm sorry I freaked out at you this morning. I shouldn't have done that."
"No, you shouldn't have," Charles says.
Erik bites back the impulse to snap Charles' head off again for not just accepting the damned apology. He doesn't know why Charles always has to make such a point of agreeing that Erik shouldn't have done whatever he's apologizing for, but that's not what's important here.
"That said, I need you to explain to me exactly what you were trying to say earlier. I won't interrupt. I can't promise I won't yell, but I'll do my best. I need to know what's going on here." He intends to stop there, let Charles get a word in, but now that he's talking, it all comes pouring out. "I can't do this again. Like it was after Lorna. I can't do it all by myself again." Charles had been shot and paralyzed just three months before Lorna was born; they'd come home from the hospital on the same day. In the nine or ten months that followed, Erik's entire life narrowed down to taking care of Lorna almost completely by himself while trying to convince Charles that there were still things in life worth sticking around for. He can't remember how he got through it, and he never wants to go back. "If there's some stuff we need to work through, that's okay. I'm fine with that. But I need you to be present. I need you to be here. Please tell me you can do that."
Charles clears his throat, a quiet, sad sound. He's crying again, and that's quiet, too, at least until he pulls a kleenex out of his pocket and uses it to blow his nose.
"I don't want it to be like that, either. That's the last thing I want," Charles says. "What I'm worried about—and I admit I could have said this better earlier, and maybe I would have if I'd had a minute to collect my thoughts, or maybe I wouldn't, I suppose we'll never know—what I'm really concerned about is that I'll be awful at it." This is the part of the conversation where Erik would usually jump in to reassure Charles that he won't be terrible at whatever it is they're talking about, but this is too important and he's too tired to bother with the same old reflexive reassurances. "I'm going to be the one staying with the baby during the day when you go back to work. I have no idea how I'm supposed to juggle everything: the baby, Lorna, and my job, too? What if I drop it when there's no one else here? What if I get into an accident because I haven't slept, and they're in the car with me? What if I'm running late one day and I forget him, or, or her, in the car? I couldn't live with myself, Erik."
Erik can't believe what he's hearing. It's not even close to what he expected. Not that he really knows what he expected, but ever since Lorna turned a year old, Charles has been the stay-at-home parent. He took care of her as he earned his Master's degree and his PhD, and, in the last couple of years, as he started teaching part-time. He's always been great with her. Erik doesn't know where any of this is coming from.
"You're not going to leave the baby in the car," he manages, because Charles is looking at him anxiously and he needs to say something. Anyway, it's true. Of the two of them, Charles is the one that would never, ever happen to. He's the one who constantly keeps an eye on Lorna in the back of his mind, no matter where she is or what she's doing. The same will be true with the new baby. "Even if you did, you'd notice right away. It's not like anything would happen."
Charles swallows. "Even if you're right...it's a lot to deal with, Erik. I truly question my ability to adequately handle so much at once." He looks down at the red pen he's twisting around in his hands. "But I've been thinking about it all day, and I think I have a solution. I could take a leave of absence for the next school year. I think that would work. The first year is the hardest, so that would get me through."
Erik remembers how it was after Lorna was born, neither of them working, both of them stagnating in the place they'd lived in then, They hadn't even come close to breaking out of their rut until they started looking outside the apartment. He says, slowly, "I don't know if that's a good idea. That sounds like it would be depressing. Don't you think you'd get lonely?"
"I don't know."
"If you're worried about getting overwhelmed, there must be other options," Erik says, still slowly, tapping his fingers on the table as he thinks it through. "You could drop the baby off at daycare whenever you needed a break, not just on days you work. Or I could. Or, you know what? We could even hire a nanny."
Charles laughs, looking startled. "A nanny? You're kidding, right?"
"I'm serious! You can afford it. Why not? If it would make things easier?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
He's obviously not convinced yet, but he looks less miserable about it than he did before. Erik's already feeling much better about it, too. This he can handle. If he knows what's going through Charles' head, he can start helping to figure out solutions. This is doable.
"Well, we still have plenty of time to figure it out," Erik says. "Anyway, not to change the subject, but there's something else I want to know."
"What?"
"It's a boy, isn't it?" Erik says, because that was a really clumsy save a few minutes ago. Charles should be really embarrassed about how obvious that was.
Charles grins sheepishly. "I'll never tell."
"Of course you won't. Then you'd have to stop teasing me about it," Erik grumbles.
By the time they head to bed a little while later, he really feels like it's going to be okay.
*
February
Erik's back hurts. His feet hurt. His ankles are swollen. His skin feels so greasy and oily that he's up to three showers a day. And if it weren't enough that he has to deal with all the same stuff pregnant people normally do, his hips have been gradually widening over the past couple weeks, and that hurts twice as much as everything else.
He doesn't remember how he got through the last month or so when he was pregnant with Lorna. Being twenty-two and running on terror, adrenaline and really bad hospital coffee probably helped. But he's thirty this time, and it's been weeks since he had the energy to do anything after work other than lie on the couch until it's time to go to bed. Thankfully, Charles is usually around to give him foot rubs and massage his calves so he doesn't have to jump out of bed with leg cramps in the middle of the night.
One evening when they're doing just that, Erik frowns at Charles, who's just finished telling him how lovely he looks even though he could probably see his reflection in Erik's forehead if he came just a little closer, and says, "This is all your fault, you know. You did this to me."
Charles doesn't quite manage to hide his smile. "I'm so sorry, dear."
"If you really want to feel bad about it, you could put a little muscle into that thing you're doing with your thumbs," Erik says. "Yeah. Like that. Oh, yeah. Right there. That's good. Keep doing that. Oh, yeah."
After a few minutes of this, Charles looks a little flushed. Poor guy. Erik stopped feeling horny all the time around the end of December; they've done it maybe twice since then, and the last time was mostly just so Charles wouldn't think Erik was avoiding it for worse reasons after their fight. It's no wonder he's getting worked up over a little moaning, even if it is coming from a heavily pregnant and extremely shiny person who has his smelly, gross feet planted in Charles' lap. And who, by the way, is definitely not going to be putting out again until this kid is out of him, even if they were to have a big fight every single day from now until then.
"You showered an hour ago. Your feet are fine," Charles says, putting a little more muscle into it, just the way Erik likes.
*
March
When he had Lorna, Erik went into labor a week late, despite all the stress and about ten cups more coffee per day than he really should have let himself have.
This time he goes into labor three days early, and Charles handles everything. Charles is the one who calls Erik's mom to let her know she needs to pick Lorna up from school and keep her for the night; he's the one who double- and triple-checks Erik's overnight bag to make sure they packed everything; he's the one who drives Erik to the hospital once him contractions are close enough for them to take him seriously instead of sending them home to wait it out. Meanwhile, Erik gets to focus on breathing, counting, and feeling like this has to be happening to someone else because there's absolutely no way it could be happening to him.
It's good to be able to put it all into Charles' hands this time. It's good to trust that he can. It's even better to have Charles by his side through the whole thing, holding Erik's hand and reminding him about all that crap they learned in their lamaze class. Telling him he's doing great, being the strong one this time because someone has to be. All Erik really wants is to be able to lean on him and let everything else just happen, and that's just what he gets.
A little later that evening, things get hectic for a few minutes, and at the end of it, there's a wiggling, screaming, bloody newborn in the doctor's hands. He's definitely a boy, and, a minute later, a nurse lays him down on Erik's chest.
"We still like David for a name, right?" Erik asks, almost whispering even though there's no reason he needs to.
"Right," Charles says. He's whispering, too.
"Okay." Erik looks down at their son. He can't believe he'd forgotten how small newborns are, or how solid they feel despite that—so solid, in fact, that Erik is finally convinced that this is happening. That it's real. "Hi, David. Hey, buddy. I'm your Daddy," he says in a choked voice, completely unaware that this sweet, innocent little baby is actually going to be calling him Pops when he turns into a smartass about ten years from now. "That guy over there is your Dad. He's going to be holding you next. It's okay if you like me better, but try not to make him feel too bad about it, all right?"
Charles laughs. When Erik hands David over a few minutes later, he laughs a little more, and then starts to cry.
Erik had also forgotten how great it is to see Charles holding a baby. And not just any baby: their baby, a new little person they made together. It's the best sight in the world.
"We should have more kids," Erik says. He's pretty sure people usually wait until they forget how much labor sucks to start wanting more babies, but hey, that's what they make drugs for.
Charles raises an eyebrow at him. "Why don't we wait to discuss it until this one's sleeping through the night."
"Okay," Erik says. "But just so you know, I think we should have five total. Or maybe six, you know, if we moved your office into the den..."
Charles rolls his eyes, like it's not his fault they have seven bedrooms to begin with. It wasn't Erik's idea to let their four-year-old decide how many bedrooms their house should have when they were having it built. If it had been up to him, they would have had three or four bedrooms at the most, but he figured Charles could spend his trust fund however he wanted.
"We'll talk about it later," Charles says.
And for now, they turn their attention back to the new baby they already have, for the little while they have left before the rest of the family shows up to get acquainted.
*
Epilogue - August
When his lunch break rolls around, Erik calls Charles at the school. It's his first day teaching this semester, the first day he's had to juggle everything including work since Erik went back to work after his maternity leave ran out.
"Hey," Erik says. "How's it going?"
"Pretty good," Charles says. "He was a little upset at first when I dropped him off, but he seems all right now as far as I can tell. I think this is going to work out really well."
"Good. I'm glad to hear it. So, how are you doing?"
Charles takes a second to think about it, then says, "Good. I'm good."
After many discussions, and the realization that the college actually does, in fact, have its own small daycare center, they decided that it made the most sense for Charles to take David to work with him, rather than dropping him off somewhere on the way. Charles still has a pretty light class load, and he's seemed a lot more confident about everything since they went over the logistics fifteen or twenty times.
"Okay, good," Erik says.
They chat for a few more minutes before Erik lets Charles go so he can eat his lunch.
He's relieved. It's not that he was all that worried or anything, but he definitely feels better for having checked in. Charles sounded okay. A little tired, sure, but that's not exactly news. They're both tired; having a five month old will do that to you. But there's really no comparison between the way things are now and the way they were when Lorna was that age. They're nine years older, nine years more experienced. They both have jobs, a life outside the house. Charles' depression was diagnosed years ago, and they have all sorts of coping strategies to help him that they didn't have back then.
Lorna has adjusted really well too, though she was a little miffed at first about getting a non-blue non-sister who didn't really do anything other than eat, poop, sleep, and cry for the first couple months.
As much of a learning curve as it's been and will probably continue to be for all of them, things are good. And they're going to keep on being good. Erik's sure of it.