Your Baby is My Supermagnet (My Baby is Your Drug)

Week 0

On the night before the end, Erik lies awake in bed, thoughts and nerves racing fast as a bullet, no more controllable than a silver reichsmark once was.

This he knows: tomorrow, everything will change. Impossible to say yet what form that change will take, but for the first time in his life he's wondering what comes after he kills Shaw. It's not something he's ever thought to wonder about before - killing Shaw has always been his end game - and it's unsettling.

Erik is so caught up in his thoughts that he doesn't realize he has company until someone lifts up the covers and climbs in behind him.

"I thought I told you to get out," he snaps, out of patience with Raven for tonight.

"You didn't tell me to get out," a familiar male voice says. An equally familiar warm body sidles up behind Erik, wrapping an arm around his middle, pressing a face between his shoulder blades, breath huffing warmly at the skin there. It's unbelievable erotic, and Erik's body responds in the predictable way.

He just hopes this really is Charles, and not -

I assure you, I am not my sister, Charles thinks at him, in a very dry 'tone.'

"It must run in the family," Erik says, leaning back against Charles now. "Xaviers climbing naked into my bed."

"And," Charles says, making a valiant effort to ignore the pulling on his pigtails, "if you do not stop thinking about my sister - and comparing me to my sister - there will be consequences."

"You're the better kisser," Erik says, a good sharp tug because Charles left himself much too open for that one for him to resist. He's not all that concerned about the threatened consequences, given the way Charles is lazily, suggestively rolling his hips against Erik's lower back even now.

Charles' valiant effort continues, though his voice raises several notches. "They will admittedly be much the same as the consequences otherwise, but nonetheless please stop because oh God, my eyes. Why did you tell her not to wear proper clothing?"

Erik grins in the dark and says, "To agitate you, why else?"

There's a brief silence, and then Charles says, "New subject, if you please."

Erik laughs, twists around in Charles' arms, drags him over for a kiss; and if there's a desperate edge to it on both their parts, they neither of them remark on it.

And on the night before the end, something new begins.

*

It's not that I don't trust you; they're just following orders; we want the same thing; we do not.

The next day, everything happens so fast, too fast; and without being exactly sure how it came down to this, Erik materializes with the others inside one of Shaw's bolt holes in Florida.

He stares at a blank spot on the wall, where Charles lay in the sand seconds before; and for a moment the words rise in his throat, 'Take me back.'

He bites them back before they can come, steels his heart; knowing that nothing can or will change things, that there's nothing for it but to move on.

Week 7

Charles once thought there could be nothing worse in the world than being sick with a stomach flu. More recently, he's thought there could be nothing worse than being unable to command his legs.

Now? Now he knows better. Now he knows there could be nothing worse than having a stomach flu while confined to a wheelchair, especially considering that none of his bathrooms are wheelchair accessible quite yet. He'd have to use a bedpan either way, but it would be nice to be able to be able to empty his own mess into the toilet rather than needing Hank or Sean - more usually Hank - to come fetch the used bedpans for him (Alex is willing, too, of course; but Charles can't bear to take him away from Darwin at such a sensitive time).

Sometimes he wishes Moira were still here; she had the cleverest knack, in the weeks he was in the hospital, for offering her assistance in such a way as to draw laughter out of him, making him forget the indignity of it all at least until she left again. But it was the right thing to send her away, the only safe thing; really it was. Last string pulled to keep himself and the boys safe here, to keep those who have gone safe wherever they might be.

Sometimes he wishes Erik or Raven were - but no. He doesn't and he won't.

After all, the only worse thing than having a stomach flu while stuck in a wheelchair would be having either of them there to witness it.

*

Erik is dying.

He has to be dying.

There's no other possible explanation for why he's spent the last three mornings on his knees in front of the toilet, when he has not vomited since he was a child. He has an iron stomach, developed out of necessity in the days when he had to compete with rats and roaches for his food; an iron stomach is not a skill one loses, and so he must be dying.

Worse, his new brothers and sisters wearied of the noise, the smell and his temper yesterday, and left him to die. Raven stayed, until he raged at her to get the fuck away from him, and then she left him to die as well. No one cares enough to stay and he's going to die all alone. The best he can say is that there won't be rats or roaches in the saltines Raven left for him because this is an upscale hotel room.

At some point there's a tentative knock on the door, followed by Raven's voice inquiring about whether he needs anything; he tells her to get the fuck out and hears her walking away, leaving him to die.

　
Week 9

After the gift giving and before breakfast, Hank walks into Charles' study carrying a number of rather large needles.

"Really, Hank, must we? At Christmas?" comes out more plaintive than he means it to; but there's only been the occasional needle to deal with since the hospital, and so many big ones at Christmas really is much too much.

"I'm afraid so," Hank says, not sounding nearly as sorry as he should about it.

"I won't be doing that today," Charles decides. "Maybe tomorrow."

This is the same thing he's been telling Hank every day for the past week.

Charles wheels himself behind his desk, picks out a chocolate covered cherry out of the box given to him for Christmas, and pops it into his mouth. It's a rather embarrassingly optimistic mistake, for three seconds later he grabs the bedpan and yarks up not only the cherry but his morning tea.

When Charles looks back at Hank, he looks larger and bluer than normal, and has his arms crossed over his chest.

"You see my point," Hank says, in a low tone that's very nearly a growl. "It's either me, now, or the hospital, and I can tell you right now they won't have the first damn idea what to do with you."

"But - it's -" Charles begins.

"It wouldn't be Christmas if you'd let me do this yesterday -"

"But - Christmas Eve -"

"Or the day before yesterday -"

"Christmas Eve Eve!" Charles bellows, and really, his argument here makes perfectly logical sense; he can't imagine why Hank has such difficulty with the concept of The Holidays.

"Or the day before that," Hank continues, and it really isn't very nice of him to loom over a man in a wheelchair who is ever so much smaller than him to begin with. "Charles...you smell wrong."

"Christmas Eve Eve Eve - wait, I smell wrong? Hank, my friend, have you been partaking of Sean's wacky backy again? After what happened the last time, I would have thought you would abstain."

"Charles," Hank chides, glaring at Charles over the frames of his glasses, looking for all the world like someone's scolding grandmother in blue.

"Of course I smell different," Charles continues in what he is aware is a somewhat inane, babbling sort of way. "Sponge baths aren't proper baths to begin with so my baseline body odor will be smellier to start, and then of course there's this business with the vomiting which I wish you wouldn't reference because really, it's humiliating enough without the commentary."

Hank levels an unimpressed look at him, but Charles forges onward.

"It's nothing, really - a lingering stomach flu, that's all, and none of your concern now that the bedpan situation has been resolved."

Hank looks, if anything, less impressed than moments before. "How can you be this obtuse," he says, flatly.

"Hank -"

"No, I really want to know how - oh, forget it, just -" and Hank makes an impatient, jerking sort of motion toward his own temple.

Charles has had a feeling, ever since Hank started coming at him with needles on a daily basis, that he's missing a small but crucial piece to a puzzle. However, he has also had the feeling that he simply does not want to know, is happier and better off not knowing that something else might be wrong with him other than not being able to feel his legs, keep his breakfast down in the mornings or stop himself having nightmares thrice weekly that more often than not wake the entire house.

But whatever this is about, Hank obviously isn't going to let him avoid it any longer.

Charles raises his hand to his temple, and in so doing learns that, to Hank, Charles now smells just like the maternity wing of the hospital - the babies and pregnant women parts, not the chemical parts that are what Hank hates most about hospitals. Apparently, Hank wound up wandering past the maternity wing on the first day they moved Charles from the ICU into a private room, and although his focus at the time was on getting away from there without being seen, he still remembers the smell.

"Is that even possible?" Charles breathes, lowering his hand.

He knows, of course, that it's not possible. It's ridiculous; it's absurd; it's completely, utterly -

But is it really any more so than anything else?

After all, the person bringing this to his attention is blue. With fur. Still likely the most believable person in the house, considering that he doesn't read minds, shoot plasma beams, or fly by virtue of his mouth.

"I don't know, but I'd like to find out," Hank answers, looking relieved.

Charles nearly holds his arm out right there, then thinks better of it. "You have an ultrasound machine in the lab," he says mildly, and it's precious when Hank startles at that, the way people do when he finds something in their heads they hadn't meant him to, as though anyone could separate what they mean him to find from all the other shiny connections. "Let's try that first, why don't we. No need to be quite so bloodthirsty at Christmas, really now."

As he follows Hank down, Charles can't help but reach inward with his mind to find if he can feel any hint of consciousness other than his own within his body. For just a moment he thinks there might be, but he's not sure, can't get a hold on it, and anything he may or may not feel is surely his imagination even if Hank is right.

And Hank is right, that much is immediately evident to both of them when the gel covers Charles' stomach and the wand presses in. Hank, who has evidently used these past weeks for research when he hasn't been assaulting Charles with needles, hesitantly points out the heartbeat and the head and what might be toes, not seeming too confident about that last.

Charles hears himself saying that it's marvelous, isn't it Hank, what a marvelous mutation; and he says marvelous a few more times after that and Hank murmurs his agreement; and they are watching the heartbeat on the screen together, and Charles feels almost as though he's having an out of body experience, or possibly he's about to faint, but either way there's the strangest disconnect from his body going on.

Then he hears himself ask Hank a question, and Hank looks from the pages of a very thick book to the screen and back again and says, "Nine or ten weeks, I think, probably."

And Charles snaps back into his body because he's perfectly capable of subtracting late October from Christmas and coming up with nine weeks minus two days since - Erik - and it's not enough to know it intellectually but his stupid, stupid mind has to go and make one of those vexing connections, and there's nothing cerebral about the memory of Erik moving above him, inside him, with a warm, oh so warm hand holding up Charles' leg behind the knee. Charles toes curl in the memory, and there's such a disconnect between that and the empty places below his waist now that he could weep.

Charles forces himself to tune into Hank again to find that he's going on about asexual reproduction in some non-mammalian creature; he stops abruptly in the middle of a sentence involved amoebas to peer at Charles' face and say, "Charles? Are you all right?"

"Quite," Charles lies brightly. If Hank is going to make such ridiculous assumptions, Charles is not about to challenge them, when it would involve explaining about Erik; just thinking about him now is nearly unbearable without opening what Charles thought they had up to anyone else's scrutiny.

Hank looks less than convinced and so Charles, ever quick on his feet (feet...ha, ha. oh he hates his mind so much), changes the subject by saying, "And how exactly do you suppose I'll be giving birth?"

The spiel about this possibility or that that Hank launches into makes Charles feel much, much worse. Next time, he'll consider thinking before asking questions he can't handle the possible answers to. What an excellent plan; pity he didn't come up with it before opening his mouth.

With a frightening amount of enthusiasm - just how much thought has he put into this? - Hank goes into a lecture about the positives and negatives associated with a Caesarian section - which, unless Charles happens to develop a vagina over the next seven months or so (what a thought. dear god), sounds like the most likely option.

Desperate for any excuse not to have to listen to graphic speculative details, Charles, having spied a stethoscope sitting on a nearby tables, gestures over to it and says, "Say, do you suppose we could get a listen to the heartbeat with that?"

Hank flips through his book a minute, then says, "Not for another month and a half or so, probably? It says something in here about doppler, though. I could set that up within the week, if you want?"

"Or," Charles says, and then he thinks, at the top of his 'voice,' SEAN!! Hank's lab, if you would!

"Oh my God," Hank says.

Minutes later, Sean arrives, looking rather disheveled; from a glance at his mind, Charles gathers that he'd gone back to bed following the gift giving, and fallen right out of it when Charles' voice erupted inside his skull.

"What," Sean says.

To Sean's credit, he shows no disbelief at Hank's explanation of the situation.

"Okay, I'll give it a shot," he says. "But I'm not touching your stomach with my mouth, man; that's just disgusting."

"I can assure you that nothing of the sort will be necessary," Charles says. After a moment's consideration he adds, fiercely, "I would suggest you be very careful, because if you harm one follicle on my baby's head, I will make your heart stop beating."

Sean's eyes go wide at this, and he actually looks to Hank of all people for help. He does not seem at all reassured when Hank says, "It'samuscleyoucontrolit."

"Can I get out of this?" Sean asks.

"No," Charles says, making a note to apologize profusely once this is over; provided, of course, that Sean causes no harm.

Before they begin, Charles asks permission to ride along in Sean's mind for the event, which is the only way he will be able to experience it in the moment rather than through Sean's memories later. Sean grants it somewhat grudgingly, but Charles can see that he too is beginning to become excited; then he positions himself above Charles' stomach, crosses himself and opens his mouth.

And then; oh, and then

dubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdub
dubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdub
dubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdub
dubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdubdub

And suddenly, all Charles can think is

baby
baby baby
baby baby baby
baby baby baby baby
baby baby baby
baby baby
baby

erik's baby

baby

*

Erik sits at the head of the table, eating a kosher dill pickle with peanut butter while everyone else eats Christmas dinner.

"A ham. Really," he says - for the fifth time, since no one paid attention the last four times. "Of all the turkeys in the world you had to go with a ham." When no one reacts to this he adds, for effect, "I can't eat ham."

Significant glances go around the table.

"What a shocker," Raven says.

"It's scandalous," Angel adds.

"Horrible," Azazel agrees.

Emma sniggers; Janos looks like he wants to say something but then as usual doesn't.

Erik considers his options, waits several minutes and then repeats the complaint.

A chorus of eye rolling and groaning follows.

Raven shifts into Erik's form, including helmet, and says, in a pitch perfect imitation, "Why are you asking me about Christmas, I don't give a shit about Christmas, I don't care what the fuck you do for Christmas, now go away and leave me alone so I can keep sulking about Charles and thinking up new nasty remarks about how the rest of you are a poor substitute."

If Erik were admitting to anything, he might vaguely remember saying the first half of that a few days ago, but as for the rest of it -

"That's not -" Erik says.

Fair, his mind supplies, along with but you assholes are a poor substitute.

He immediately crushes that thought.

"- true," he decides.

"Isn't it though?" Raven says. She shifts into Charles' form then, and even knowing who it really is underneath, Erik can't drag his eyes away from Charles' face. His breath catches in his throat, and he has no idea what he's showing, but then Charles' face twists up and melts back into Raven, looking like she's going to cry, and she says, "I'm sorry, that was cruel. But Erik - you aren't the only one who misses him, alright? And it would be nice for you to stop taking it out on the rest of us before someone sets you on fire in your sleep."

"Hear, hear," Janos says. He looks delighted as he glances around at how all the silverware is now twisted and deformed. Since it's his turn to do the dishes, it's hard to say whether he agrees with Raven's sentiment or just Erik's reaction to it.

"She's got your number," Emma says, clearly approving.

Erik decides he didn't hear any of that.

"The smell is making me ill," he says. This is a true but misleading remark, as his iron stomach returned to him days ago. "You'll excuse me."

The cure for this particular illness comes in a bottle.

Erik makes it as far as pouring the wine this time before Emma, the evil bitch, comes up from behind him to pluck the wineglass and bottle away.

"Don't look at me like that, sunshine," she says as she pours it all down the sink. "You'll thank me someday."

She always does this. Everything fucking time he wants a drink, she whisks it away from him as if she's doing him some kind of favor instead of the complete damned opposite.

He can't stop her from doing it, either - if he tries to hit her he bruises his fist, if he tries to wrestle the drink back she sends him across the room. For some reason he can't duplicate what he did in Russia, and when he tries she laughs at him; Erik is actually beginning to think that she staged all of that, played him and Charles along on her evil bitch string for whatever evil bitch reason she had.

And when he asks her why she won't let him have one fucking drink in peace, the answer is always "Because I'm just a bitch that way," proving his point and also proving that she's more self-aware than most raging bitches.

So instead of staying to protest, Erik stalks off for a shower, which he hasn't indulged in in three days. Showers are now the only time he removes the helmet - Michigan is far out of Charles' range until Hank rebuilds Cerebro, but it's worth the constant ache in his neck from sleeping in the thing to keep Emma out of his head.

Though he makes it quick - he knows Emma is meddling around in his head; he can feel her in there - something about the scalding hot water clarifies everything for him. There's a reason he's been so irritable, a reason he can't think straight anymore, a reason he feels so tired and bloated all the time - it's so obvious.

He's stagnating.

Things would be different if there was something to work towards, some sort of shared goal; if they were working together for the sake of mutantkind the way he so optimistically imagined when all this first started. But for all intents and purposes, the government has actually forgotten that mutants exist - they've been wiped out of its consciousness so thoroughly that only one person could be responsible. How like Charles to cut Erik's feet out from under him before he could even begin to organize a counter-strike; to make it so any move Erik might make would be the first move of a new game rather than a continuation of the old. If his first move is violence or force, and appears unprovoked, he'll do great harm and no good to his own cause.

Erik already worked all of this out, weeks ago, after Emma made the discovery, the one thing she's done that's actually useful. What he didn't know, until now, was what to do about it. It's not that he hasn't done anything; they moved into this house a week ago, but where buying a house might be a culminating move in an ordinary human life, for him it's disenchanting at best.

But it occurs to him now that while he may not be able to do much about certain types of humans at the moment, there's another type no one will mourn, for which all the justification for violence is already there.

The southern hemisphere is warm in January, another plus held up against a Detroit winter.

He'll go hunting.

And without Emma along, he'll have a drink while he's at it, as many as he wants.

It's not until he orders a beer on the plane that he realizes he can't, in fact, have a drink. He can look at it well enough, smell it, but he's physically unable to lift it to his lips. He does a sweep of his own mind the way Charles once taught him (on their flight into Russia, ironically enough), and sees her footprints everywhere.

She can't hide what she's done to him, but he can't undo it.

It's maddening weeks later to realize he's somehow gaining a beer gut anyway.

Week 13

Charles has just gotten off the phone with the contractor he's paying to put in a pool when he smells something acrid and looks down to see a spreading stain at the crotch of his khakis.

He tells himself to breathe; tells himself this is not that bad.

This is most likely true, objectively; and it's not like this is the first time. This hasn't happened for a while now, due in large part to his trusty schedule for intake and outtake, the regimens he follows now that he could never have imagined months ago and still doesn't care to think about too closely.

He does everything he's supposed to do, because when he doesn't - when he puts it off in order to stay on the telephone attempting to explain without benefit of telepathy exactly why he wishes to install a pool inside his giant house in January and that this is not a prank call, thank you - well. Just look at what happens then.

What he should do, what he's done the other times, is call for assistance, get it over quickly so he can pretend it didn't happen and return to the role of Professor Charles Xavier, Sexless Saint - the role he's cultivating for the day, likely years in the future, when he will open the doors of his vaguely imagined school.

That's what he should do, but what he wants to do is scream - and scream and scream and scream until he feels better. Or quite possible never; is he ever going to feel better?

Without thinking of what he's going to do on a conscious level until he does it, he scans through the mansion for other minds -

(Hank is sweeping up broken glass in the lab, a result of the loss of manual dexterity in his hands, and Charles shies away from the too-familiar shame in Hank's mind at the failings of his body;

and Sean is clearing the drive, not shoveling but melting the snow with his mouth, and that's going to be a mess should the results re-freeze tonight. Charles makes a note to bring it up with him later;

and Alex and Darwin are entwined together on Alex's bed, their lovemaking tempered with pain that ignites echoes all through Charles, and he flinches away from them)

- and he freezes them, so they won't hear, so they won't know that he's having an absolute raging fit; first wiping all the papers and books off his desk with a vicious swipe of his arm, then turning around and flinging a lamp at the wall, then punching his bookshelf, and that last should probably hurt but he's too on to care.

At first his anger is undirected - or rather, directed at all of it, at everything he can't do anymore, that he doesn't have anymore - but in short order turns into anger at - Erik. Erik, who cut him out; Erik, who broke him; Erik, who left him to die; Erik, who never came to the hospital all those weeks, who could be anywhere, doing anything, who could be dead for all Charles knows. For all he cares.

"Motherfucker," Charles says, viciously, wishing Erik could hear that one, remembering the way Erik's knuckles went white on the steering wheel just out of Virginia when Charles spilled coffee on his shirt and exclaimed, 'son of a bitch, and this is my last clean shirt too."

"Motherfucker motherfucker motherfucker," but now Charles is thinking about Erik, father of his child; Erik, who isn't here.

And he's sobbing now, great racking gasps he can barely breathe through, anger fading into an encompassing despair, and he can't seem to stop, he's scaring himself, and then there's just the slightest twinge of -

distress!

- and he needs to calm down calm down calm his mind for the baby, and he forces himself to take deep breaths, four beats in and four beats out, until he's breathing almost normally again.

He unfreezes everyone then, and calls out for Hank; and it's a lucky thing that Hank understands enough not to give the destruction anything more than a single glance before discarding it and focusing on understanding Charles through his panic.

Minutes later that seem like years, they're in the lab, Hank peering at the baby's form on the ultrasound screen, and finally he says, "It's alright, it's alright, everything looks normal. She's okay."

"She?" Charles repeats, filled suddenly with a sense of wonder.

"Yes, she," Hank says, looking abashed. "I hope you wanted to know - if not then sorry."

"No, no, it's fine," Charles says, sniffling.

He finds himself wishing, insanely, that Erik were here; and bursts into tears three seconds later, for reasons that are absolutely unrelated to anything other than these blasted hormones.

　
　
Week 15

Erik returns to Detroit on an unseasonably warm February morning with a tan, a smile and an unspeakable sense of comfort and well-being.

He's never felt this good in his entire life. Good enough for a spring in his step as he strolls down the street, good enough to whistle if only he knew how.

There's no reason for it that he knows of; nothing happened to inspire this. He merely...woke up in Chile one morning after an incredible dream where he was cocooned in warmth, a pulsing sensation all around him, alternating between sucking his thumb and making a fist, with a sense of contentment so bone-deep it couldn't happen in life.

When he first woke up with the dream clinging to his skin, with the impression that he was glowing from the inside out and radiating light like a miniature sun, naturally he assumed someone was fucking with his head. But putting the helmet on didn't stop it, and a systematic search of his head brought up no new footprints of Emma's, and nothing of Charles' either. Whatever's happening to him, it's something of Erik's, originating from within, and he has no idea what to think about that but gave up trying days ago.

He can't even seem to care anymore about how horribly he's going to seed.

Erik lets himself in the house without need of a key, and settles on the couch drinking coco and reading the paper. He smiles beatifically at everyone who comes through the living room on their way in or out, and the shocked looks he gets, the way they all edge away from him, makes him laugh until he's tearing up.

Just as he finishes the crossword, Emma comes in; so, naturally, he shows her all his teeth and says, "I'm going to kill you," in the tone other people generally use to say good morning.

Emma stares at him for a moment, then starts laughing and keeps on laughing, until she's convulsing so hard with it she has to sit down in the armchair across from Erik to continue.

"What's so funny?" Erik demands, though it comes out much less frightening than his demands usually do.

Emma shakes her head, wipes her eyes and refuses to give even a word of explanation.

Erik has the feeling, and not for the first time, that he's her own private joke.

　
Week 16

Charles is drinking tea at the kitchen table when it happens.

It's very early, or if he's to be honest with himself, very late.

He has difficulty sleeping anymore; and so, as it happens, does Darwin. Charles supposes that's not too surprising. If he had spent a month floating around as little dust particles seeking a safe place to re-form, then spent a further two months as the proverbial primordial ooze on the floor of Alex's closet, he would also be wary of sleep no matter how tired he felt.

At any rate, Darwin is there with him, making for excellent company. Where Hank frets over or scrutinizes him by turn, where Sean skirts around him a bit nervously still despite his repeated and sincere apologies, where Alex is angry on his behalf or awkward depending on the day, Darwin has taken everything in enough stride to sit here with him companionably at the crack of dawn.

Whether they talk or sit in silence, it never seems awkward. Charles has spent some time idly wondering whether it's a result of Darwin's mutation to adapt so seamlessly to the way Charles feels on any given day. Somehow he thinks it's more likely to be his actual personality and people sense that does for it. God knows Charles' mutation doesn't make him any better at saying or doing the right thing most of the time.

On this particular morning, Charles feels an odd, fluttery feeling in his stomach, and is so startled by it that he drops his teaspoon.

Seconds later, it happens again.

"I think I just felt the baby move," Charles says.

Darwin grins at him and says, "Really? Should I run and get Hank so he can take notes?"

Charles laughs; and it happens again, to his utter delight.

It's a perfectly lovely moment right up until he looks down and realizes that his teaspoon appears to be attached to his stomach.

"My teaspoon appears to be attached to my stomach," he says out of shock as much as anything, completely ruining his chance of keeping this latest development between him and the baby.

"That's weird," Darwin says, his face carefully neutral; but Charles can't help hearing the extremely loud I knew it! that goes through his mind.

Ordinarily, Charles does his level best to resist from responding to loud thoughts, regardless of subject matter; it has the tendency to make people believe he's actively reading them when that's not usually the case. He wearied of trying to explain it years ago when it was only Raven he ever needed to explain anything to.

"How could you know? I thought we were circumspect," Charles says, not meeting Darwin's eyes as he pulls sharply on the teaspoon. There's a brief moment of resistance, and then it gives.

"Feel free to 'have a look,'" Darwin says in a terrible imitation of Charles' accent, and taps at his own temple.

Since Charles feels like he would feel entirely too tempted to 'have a look' with or without invitation, it's with some relief that he sinks into Darwin's mind.

Charles remembers the six-hour drive to Richmond that turned into thirteen hours due to Darwin's taxicab breaking down on the highway. He remembers, too, the increasingly lewd suggestions Erik lobbed at him mentally, of the things they could do if Charles would make Darwin blind to them.

But he doesn't recall looking so very flushed and bothered in the rearview mirror. He doesn't recollect the lust written all over Erik, in his eyes and the taut lines of his body as he very visibly held himself back from attacking Charles, audience be damned.

It's with some chagrin that Charles realizes that neither of them were the least bit circumspect, were they; but it gets worse.

It gets worse because, while Charles does sort of remember drifting off to sleep, and very clearly remembers being roughly awoken, he certainly doesn't remember leaning into Erik's shoulder saying, "Mmmm, you smell like good." He quite definitely doesn't remember sliding down onto Erik's lap, Erik's arms going around his shoulders, Erik's hand petting at his hair; and, as they roll to a stop at long last, Erik manhandling Charles across the backseat so he's leaning against the opposite window.

The only part Charles remembers happened moments after all of that, and involved being rudely poked with Erik saying, "Get up, Charles, you lazy bum, we're here," perfectly as though he hadn't been so...completely tender with him, seconds before.

"Please don't tell anyone," Charles says to Darwin when he comes back to the here and now. It comes out sounding more like a plea than anything.

"Don't worry, I won't," Darwin says. He's giving Charles a sympathetic look now, and Charles very deliberately does not look to see what he might be thinking.

He doesn't need anymore pity.

Charles decides to change the subject by saying the first unrelated thing that comes into his head, which happens to be, "You know, considering certain aspects of your mutation, I wouldn't be surprised if you had a similar secondary mutation to mine. You might want to have Alex wear a rubber from here on in, just to be on the safe side."

The look on Darwin's face is an absolute classic; and Charles wheels out of there as fast as he can.

Later that day, when he's writing out checks for the electric and gas, his pen pulls right out of his hand, and he's forced to have a very serious chat, the first but far from the last, with his stomach. "Darling, you really mustn't do that...."

　
Week 17

Erik sways side from side as he stares out the living room window. His pulse is heavy, warm and wet on his skin and in his ears, as though he's sloshing around in water. Somewhere beyond and behind it, he feels metal moving as if in another country.

Something about this seems wrong, but he can't manage to gather his thoughts together enough to worry about it.

He doesn't know how long he's been standing here like this; he vaguely recalls the sun rising what seems like moments ago, but now it's dark again so he could be wrong.

At some point there's a buzzing sound from somewhere far away, "Oh Christ. This is getting ridiculous," and then the world turns back on between one moment and the next. His skin feels cold and dry, nearly chapped, the air around him full of a now-unbearable silence.

And then the full weight of Detroit's night shifts bears down on him, uncountable tons of steel being transported into the city by semi-truck to be welded, sealed, hemmed together; transformed, beautiful, glorious, and it's just as mesmerizing now as it was the first time he felt it. He could stand here basking in it forever -

"Oh, don't start," Emma says.

Erik turns around to see that she's holding his helmet in her hands.

"You know," she continues, "originally I thought she'd have you mind-wiped by the time she's two months old."

Erik says, "That's mine," and makes to grab the helmet back; but his legs are painfully stiff, and he almost topples over.

"Stay, and be quiet too," Emma says, and suddenly Erik can't move, can't speak, can't anything.

"However, I failed to take into account that you have the most idiotically addictive personality I've ever seen, so now I think she'll do you in by next week if you don't have someone shielding you, or learn to shield yourself."

Now that he's paying a miniscule amount of attention to what's coming out of her mouth, what she's saying sounds like so much gibberish, so Erik adds ???????? to the Let me go right fucking now or I will fucking kill you he's already screaming at her mentally.

"Let me tell you a story," Emma says.

(and suddenly, Erik is back in his bed so long ago, sliding down onto Charles, evoking a sharp gasp; he settles for a minute, then begins to move, and in so doing extracts more gasps, and groans, and "Erik," and Charles strokes him with one hand and holds onto his waist with the other -)

Get out, get out, you bitch, that's mine, Erik rages. Mine, you hear me, it's not for you it's mine.

"Oh, calm down, sunshine," Emma says. "I'm just setting the stage here."

(and then

there's one single, impossible cell to begin with

it divides, once

and it happens again

again, again, again

the growth of months passes by in moments

her skin is transparent; she has the beginnings of eyebrows, eyelashes, fingernails

she's been reaching out to him, she's part of him)

As Erik comes back to himself Emma says, "What she's been doing to you is more reflexive than anything. She should have toned it down after a few days, and you should have started shielding her off as well, but you're an idiot and she seems to have the common sense of you and Xavier combined. I'm really not sure why I'm bothering to -"

And that's when a half-built Ford slams into the front yard from the sky.

Emma flinches.

Erik laughs on the inside and thinks, I'm going to make you dance, bitch.

"Stop," Emma says, and Erik can't feel metal anymore, but he can move again and so he lurches towards her, and she says, "Stay," and he can feel metal again, he can pluck up another Ford and his aim will be better this time -

But then Emma says, "Sleep," and it doesn't happen instantly, takes just long enough for Erik to realize what she's done, and he sags to the floor as Emma says, "I'm not going to deal with you by myself."

From his newly prone position, Erik sees Emma's legs go in the direction of the telephone, but he doesn't catch on until he hears her saying to the operator, "Westchester, New York, please."

No, Erik thinks feebly.

Inexplicably, he sees a vision before him, Charles' eyes in his mother's face -

And then there is nothing.

　
*

Charles is about to head off to bed when the telephone rings.

At just past two in the morning, this can be nothing good. He does a quick scan over the minds in the house; one, two, three, four, and that at least is a relief, all accounted for.

The telephone rings again, and Charles picks up with no little trepidation, rather hoping for a wrong number.

"Xavier residence, Charles speaking," he says.

A woman's voice says, "Have you gotten any better at shielding?"

"...I beg your pardon?"

"Shielding, sugar. Has yours improved at all?"

"...Who is this?"

"Emma Frost. You do remember me, I hope."

"With the greatest distaste," Charles assures her.

"Now, have you improved your mental shielding at all since the last time we...met?"

Well, no. Not really, not with everything else he's had to worry about. But there's no reason to tell her that, now is there? In fact, there's no reason to even continue talking to her. He should probably hang up on her right now. It's two in the morning, after all, and he's tired - but not too tired to recognize that there's some ulterior motive here.

Charles doesn't hang up, and tells himself somewhat weakly that it has nothing to do with the two people in the world Emma could have gotten this number out of.

"Er, what's this about?" he says, sounding just as evasive as he means not to.

"It's much more amusing for me if I don't tell you. I'm taking that as a no, by the way. Would you be interested in learning?"

This is a very confusing conversation.

"I'm having some difficulty following your train of -" and suddenly Charles is aware of a wailing sound in Emma's background "- are those sirens I hear?"

"Oh Christ. Will you hold on a minute?"

For the next few minutes, everything is muffled, and though Charles strains to hear what might be going on, all he manages to catch is, "Put the sword away - I will handle - normal lawn ornament - your concern - goodbye, officers -" and then Emma's voice is crisp in his ear again as she says, "Now, where were we?"

"Er," Charles says, thinking quickly as is his wont, "I was just going to tell you that you're wrong. I've improved my shielding a great deal, marvelously so really, I don't need any help with it, good day to you."

At this point he means to hang up the telephone, too tired for head games, but before he can Emma interjects with, "Would you be interested in having your ray of sunshine back?"

"My - what?"

"I don't know why you would be - he's very pretty, but not enough to make up for all that damage. You'd be insane to want him, but I'm be willing to bet that you do."

"Erik. You mean Erik," Charles says, feeling like he has only a very tenuous grasp of this conversation.

"Do you want him back?" Emma presses. "He's going to get himself killed if he keeps on like this, he's going to get the - he's going to get killed."

The answer to her question is hell, no; Charles knows that's the answer, the only right answer, and he doesn't care what happens to Erik, really he doesn't; but when he opens his mouth to utter this or some similar sentiment, what comes out is a strangled sound that doesn't involve words.

Emma laughs. "Is that a yes or a no?"

"Oh dear God, yes," Charles says. Then, his mouth obviously having no connection whatsoever to his brain, he adds, "There's plenty of room here, so if anyone else wants to come along they'd be more than welcome."

He spends the next hour before they arrive with his head in his hands, alternating between thinking why, why, why did I agree to this, what is wrong with me, and deciding whether or not he wishes to alter others' perceptions of his appearance for the duration of Erik and company's stay (the answer to the former is that he hasn't the faintest idea, pregnancy hormones are probably to blame somehow; the answer to the latter is decidedly yes because he's already preventing most of the other people in the house from seeing the way assorted metal objects follow him around at the moment, so what's the difference if he makes himself look trimmer and less expecting for a few days?).

They arrive with the scent of sulfur. Charles looks up to see Emma nod to Azazel, who teleports out again without so much as a glance at Charles. Angel is here too, but no one else (no Raven is at once a disappointment and a relief; he misses her, but how could he explain any of this, or hide something this big when she's always known how to tell when he's being dodgy?).

Where is Erik?

He's just about to ask when there comes a familiar, obnoxious snore; Charles peers around his deck to see that, oh yes, there's Erik, facedown on the floor drooling onto his very nice Persian rug.

And while Charles stares at Erik, Emma riffles through his mind, and what's worse is he doesn't realize it until she starts howling.

Charles doesn't need to ask to know what she's found.

But there's nothing he can do about it, so he ignores her for the moment.

"Angel," he says, "it's good to see you, welcome, welcome. Please make yourself at home." He sends her a mental blueprint of the mansion complete with markers saying You are here and The west wing is here and all 17 bedrooms are unoccupied so feel free to take whichever you'd like.

Angel shoots him a very strange look, but takes the hint and leaves, and as she goes Charles could swear he hears her think, Oh please, don't act like you want to be my friend, I'm only here because I don't want to be the fourth wheel on that freaky shit your sister has going on with Az and Janos.

Charles is so tired; so very tired that he can't have heard that right, surely she didn't actually - no, he refuses to think about it now, or ever again in fact.

"The same goes for you, I assume you were listening in," Charles says to Emma, meaning the sentiment about bedrooms.

"I'm not into freaky shit," Emma says.

"That's not what I -" Charles begins, then decides not to continue; the woman is clearly a sadist. "We'll talk more tomorrow, once I've had some sleep."

He doesn't spare Erik even a glance on his way out, and resolves to avoid him tomorrow and very probably for his entire stay. They have nothing to say to each other, really.

As he wheels down the hallway to his bedroom, he leaves a mental message with the boys to let them know who's here, and that he'll tolerate no epic battles inside the house, and so they should therefore take any bloodshed out-of-doors.

Charles barely manages any sleep at all that night.

*

Erik wakes up around noon with a wicked headache and what feels like rugburn over half his face.

He allows himself a brief moment of contemplation, an awed examination of the new knowledge that he's going to be a father; that he's having a - a daughter.

That a year ago he didn't know other mutants existed, but now he's carrying one.

The contemplation goes longer than expected, to the point that the beam of light from the window has moved at least an inch off from where it was when he first woke up.

When did he get so scattered?

He's sure it's Emma's fault.

Actually, it's Xavier's fault. He contributed the pertinent genes.

"Shut up," Erik says. He's not going to think about the child's - paternity - yet. Not here, not now, not until he's very far away, with his helmet firmly glued onto his head.

That old thing? I left it in Detroit. Emma's voice inside his head is most definitely amused.

Bitch.

"Get out of my head."

There's no answer.

Erik does not let himself think about his escape plan. In fact, there's no such plan to think about, and so Erik swings himself out of bed, lets himself out the door and tries to figure out where exactly he is in the mansion so he can find the nearest exit (for no particular reason).

A few doors down he finds a staircase. Apparently Charles has been redecorating, because right beside it there's a lift. When Erik lived here before there had been no such thing as a lift anywhere, and even the mention of installing one had been likely to send Charles into a snit about history or architecture or something; Erik never paid much attention to the specifics, but Charles was so adamant about it that it's a jarring discovery to make now.

Erik takes the lift down, since it's there. The metal wraps around his mind humming wordless comfort at him - and because it amuses him to move the lift without touching the buttons, he fails to notice how far down he'd have to stoop to reach them.

It only takes a few minutes of wandering around downstairs to find a familiar corridor, and from there only a few more to make his way to the front door.

His non-escape goes off without a hitch until he finds them waiting for him: Alex, hands clenched into fists by his sides; Darwin - alive - beside him, his face turned towards Erik but his body oriented toward Alex like a compass to magnetic north.

Erik sighs.

"Move," he says. It comes out more weary than threatening, but then he doesn't consider either of them the enemy; the enemies are all, as he's said before, out there.

"Gladly," Alex says, and steps to the side; there's a challenge in it that Erik understands both perfectly and not at all, but it doesn't matter. Erik's priorities here don't involve working it out.

"Alex," Darwin says in a low, reproving tone.

Alex gives him a sharp look, then says, "Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I can't hit you until you walk out the door."

"Alex," Darwin says again. He places a hand on Alex's shoulder, which is immediately shrugged off.

Erik decides he doesn't care enough to try to understand the subtext here, so he starts moving toward the door again, mentally cataloguing all the metal nearby just in case Alex is more than just talk. He doubts Alex will turn a plasma beam on him purposely, but he also doesn't intend to get into a fistfight, not with his new knowledge of the life growing inside of him.

"Just going to leave, huh?" Alex says - taunting, now. "It's what you're good at, huh? At least this time no one's busy dying or anything."

This is enough to make Erik stop, momentarily. "What are you talking about," he says. He knows this for an absolute fact, having had Azazel and Emma check on that for him the day after Cuba. "The only person who died is standing right there."

"Do you have any idea how long we were on that beach after you left?" Alex snarls. "Sixteen hours. Sixteen fucking hours."

"There were ships," Erik says, feeling like he's explaining this to a child telling a particularly idiotic lie; what Alex is saying can't possibly be true, not when Charles is the CIA's pet. "And the radio, and Moira to work it. If that failed, Charles is a telepath, don't you try to pull one over on me -"

"Charles was delirious," Alex spits. "If he managed to get anything through to those ships it was the exact same thing he was saying to us."

An otherworldly tension, all too familiar, crackles through the air.

"Alex, you need to calm right down," Darwin says, and he's physically holding Alex back now.

"You weren't there either," Alex says. "You didn't have to hear it, hour after hour -"

"Hear what," Erik says.

"'I can't feel my legs; I can't feel my legs; I can't feel my legs -'" Alex manages before Darwin's skin erupts into stone; he grabs Alex by the nape of his neck, frog marches him out the door. Moments later there's an explosion, and much of the tension in the air dissipates, and Erik hears Alex sobbing out, "I'm sorry, 'Mando, I'm sorry, are you okay, I'm so sorry -"

Erik just stands there, stunned, trying to make sense of what Alex could mean.

Unbidden comes the memory of Charles heavy in his arms, the ocean behind him; of drawing the bullet out of Charles' back - his - Alex can't mean -

When Erik tries to walk out the door, he finds that he can't cross the threshold. Her doing, again.

Emma comes into his mind then to say, You're not going anywhere, sunshine. And oh, yes, I may have forgotten to mention it before, but Xavier's in a wheelchair now. Oops.

Week 18

"Why Detroit, of all places?" Charles asks Emma during the second of their training sessions.

It's an honest question; Charles has never been to Detroit or even Michigan, but when he tries to picture it in his head it seems terribly urban and blue collar. Rather an odd choice.

The object of this exercise is shielding, to either raise his own mental shields to deny Emma access to his mind, or to breach her shields and gain access to hers. The question and answer bit isn't integral, of course, but hiding or seeking specific information allows for a greater degree of focus.

Charles has no idea whatsoever why Emma is so insistent they do this. If he had his druthers, they'd be having conversations more along the lines of People's Surface Thoughts: Why So Boring. He's always thought it would be nice to have a fellow telepath to chat about such things with, but Emma doesn't seem much interested in being his friend.

To make matters worse, he is exceedingly bad at anything to do with shielding, and so Emma knows any number of embarrassing factoids about him already, while he knows very little about her.

Actually, he knows nothing whatsoever about her, other than that she takes an unholy glee in uncovering such things as the Corset Incident out of the depths of his memory (Charles was appalled to learn he still has first-hand accounts of the Incident, much as he'd had to drink before, during, and afterward).

The only questions of his that he can seem to find the answers to are the ones Emma finds amusing. Which is probably why she chooses to let him in for this one; he only has to push at her shields slightly before -

(Erik is standing across the street from one of the great automobile factories. His eyes are glazed over, and the expression on his face is exactly the same as it was the first time Charles slipped his hands down the front of Erik's hands in their hotel room in D.C.)

Well, that's insulting.

Charles has no more than thought it before Emma is laughing at him.

She's always laughing, at all his thoughts; so far he hasn't managed to think one thing she seems to find wise or learned, or even worth talking about in a serious manner.

"Ha, ha," Charles says dryly. "Now, what was the reason for going to Detroit in the first place? Seems rather unlikely you'd go just to get Erik his jollies."

For the briefest moment, Emma looks startled, then covers up with a dazzling smile. "Can't tell you that, sugar," she says. "State secret."

When Charles goes after the answer anyway, she pushes him out so viciously he feels like she's stabbed him behind the eyes. When he protests this treatment she tells him not to sulk, and the rest of the session goes in a similar vein.

Later in the day, still gnawing on it like a dog with a bone, it occurs to him that he could very likely find the answer in Erik's mind. He dismisses the idea at once because, while he's spent the past five days using his telepathy to track Erik's location in the house in order to avoid him, to go further than that would be wrong, especially given that Erik is here against his will to begin with (which is another thing Emma has refused to explain in any detail whatsoever, other than to say that his life would be endangered elsewhere).

Not to mention that the idea of going anywhere near Erik's mind leaves Charles cold, these days. He'd rather not know what might be in there about himself.

So it is that Charles falls back on the old-fashioned method of thinking about it. He doesn't come up with a single thing for the first several days; then, while he's sitting in his newly modified shower thinking of nothing more profound than how marvelous it is to be able to take a shower again, and murmuring to his stomach about how his navel never used to be an outie (naughty girl), it comes to him exactly why Erik would have gone to Detroit.

It's so insane, so Erik that it can't help but be true; and so distressing that he doesn't even finish rinsing all the shampoo out of his hair on his way to give Erik a piece of his mind.

*

Erik is playing a game of world domination against Sean and Angel.

He's not entirely sure why this is what he's doing, except that Sean invited him two minutes after deliberately trying to burst his eardrums - apparently they're 'even' now - and Erik doesn't have anything better to do.

At this point Erik has taken all of North America, Angel holds South America and Australia, and Sean has a tenuous grasp on scattered territories in Europe, Asia and Africa.

"If you lay one on me, I'll give you Scandinavia," Sean says to Angel. It's the third pickup line he's used since the game started.

Erik would feel disturbingly like a chaperone if Angel weren't so obviously able to handle it herself.

"In your dreams," Angel says, and on her next turn neatly captures not only Scandinavia, but the Ukraine and Western Europe as well, the latter of which formerly belonged to Erik.

Suspecting she'll target Sean in Iceland next, Erik beefs up his defense in Greenland, and in Central America as well, then wreaks a little havoc in the Congo, tearing Sean's armies to shreds for shits and giggles, with no expectation of keeping it once he has it - which indeed he doesn't, since Sean takes exception and foolishly diverts troops to take it back, spreading himself thin in the Middle East where formerly he had been strong.

"Remind me not to bring you on as a military advisor," Erik says, after watching Sean lose the Middle East, Afghanistan, Sian, China and Mongolia in a single turn, giving Angel near-total control of Asia. She lacks only Erik's strongly-defended Kamchatka now.

Erik takes Iceland with an overwhelming force and plans his march south and east to prevent Angel gaining any more continents and thus extra armies per turn. She's too deft with the ones she has already.

Sean gets wiped off the map several turns later, but instead of slinking off in disgrace, he remains behind to offer Angel senseless advice, which she ignores until the distraction causes her to make a fatal move that loses her most of Europe, at which point she snaps, "Why don't you go lock yourself in the bathroom or something?"

Erik cracks up at that, because it's exactly what he's wanted to say for the last half hour; he only hasn't because it's to his own advantage to have Angel distracted.

Then Angel's laughing too, and Sean frowns at them both and says, "You guys are pervs, you know that?" He gives Angel what he must imagine to be a smoldering look and adds, "I like it."

Then all three of them are cracking up, and that's why none of them hear Charles come in or realize he's there until they've quieted down to the occasional guffaw and he says, "I hope I'm not interrupting anything important."

Erik goes rigid in his seat; hears Charles say, "Sean, Angel, I'd like a moment with Erik, if you don't mind,"; sees Sean skulk off guilty-faced; hears Angel telling him to leave the board set up so she can finish kicking his ass later.

And then they're gone and he feels himself rising to his feet, turning around, and there is Charles.

Erik takes a moment to speak, occupied by taking an inventory. Charles is thinner in the face; darker under the eyes; his hair is shiny and damp, plastered to his head; and he has a very Charles-like, 'I am Disappointed in you' look on his face as he gets redder and redder.

There is no metal on his person, none in the wheelchair, and that rankles (though for an instant Erik has the impression of small metal things ghosting around Charles; but it's gone the next instant and he dismisses it).

"You have me at a disadvantage, Charles," Erik says, hardening his expression, putting steel into his voice.

"You," Charles snarls.

Erik didn't know Charles could snarl. It's a good look on him.

"You," Charles repeats, actually wagging a finger at Erik as though he's scolding a child who's been naughty.

"What did I do now?" Erik asks, unable to think of anything he's done since Emma dragged him here that would make Charles' face go that red; unwilling to think that Charles can possibly have anything left to say to him about what happened in Cuba that hasn't already been said on a beach there.

"You're planning to blow up Detroit's automobile factories!" Charles says.

Erik stares at him in disbelief.

"You've been in my head," he says, sickened by the betrayal; and this is the one, the first and the only moment of his life in which he actually hates Charles Xavier. "You've been in my head, and this is what you want to talk about?"

Erik hasn't wasted any of his time imagining how Charles might react to learn that Erik is carrying his child; but if he had, he never would have imagined Charles caring so little as to ignore it in favor of scolding Erik about a plan there's no possibility of carrying out anytime in the near future.

"I haven't been anywhere near your head. Don't go around changing the subject," Charles says, in an impatient way that makes the sudden tightness in Erik's chest begin to release; because one thing Charles is not is a good actor. "How could you?"

Erik's going to kill Emma.

I didn't have anything to do with this. He figured it out all by himself. Isn't he precious?

Shut up, Emma.

"Earth to Erik," Charles says testily. When Erik looks at him, he says again, more softly, "How could you? How could you even consider such a thing? Erik?"

"In case you've forgotten," he says, "two nations declared war on us, just a few months ago. That may not be significant to you, but some of us think the correct response to an attack is to counter-attack, not give the other side a cookie and hope they won't kick us again."

Erik's had a lot of time to brood over this, to justify it to himself and to others; still, it's possible there's something lacking about this rhetoric, but it's the best he can come up with, put on the spot like this.

Charles is looking at him like he's never seen him before.

"In what universe can you use that to justify killing hundreds - thousands - of innocent people because they went to work that day?" he says. "Do I even know you?"

"There would have been casualties," Erik has to admit; how not, with tons upon tons of steel flying through the air, object lesson to a ruthless government that they can be ruthless, too, if fucked with; that if they chose to they could follow Detroit with Auburn Hills, Toledo, Newark, Norfolk, Narwah, Canton, Wixom, and on and on, because everything is political and politics in this country come down to votes. While Erik isn't fool enough to think decimating the auto industry will win over the masses, it might have some effect on the behind-the-scenes politics of men who care for nothing but keeping a grip on their own power. "Not so many as all that."

"Really." Charles' voice is flat.

Erik feels a flash of anger, that Charles thinks so little of him.

"We were going to call in bomb threats first."

"Uh-huh."

"Azazel would have come and go, to get people out -"

"How thoughtful."

"And Emma, she would have told him where the people were, where to go next." He can't believe how desperate he is to stop Charles looking at him like that, to make him understand. "The goal was never to kill."

"I'm sure that will make the smaller-than-it-could-have-been number of widows and orphans feel ever so much better."

Erik feels a flash of anger at Charles' obtuseness; it has to be deliberate. "In case you've failed to notice, we didn't do it."

"Yet?" Charles suggests.

"You made them all forget," Erik says, a mixture of bitterness and, if he's honest to himself, relief. "No point to it now if they won't know why."

"But it's still a contingency plan, yes?"

Erik can’t say no, so he says nothing; especially doesn’t say that he doesn’t know that he could do it.

Charles glares at him a few moments longer with something like - contempt? probably - then sighs heavily, and the look on his face changes back to the familiar mix of there's good in you, I've felt it, though it's a look that seems more skeptical about that than it used to.

It's a look that makes Erik venture, "White or black?"

Charles gapes at him. "What makes you think I'd want to play chess with you? After all that?"

Erik raises his hands in an ill-timed gesture of innocence, shrugs.

As he's gambled, Charles can't pass up the chance to try saving his soul over a chess board; just as predictably, Charles tries checkmating himself three times over the course of three games. He never has been able to concentrate on his ulterior motive and the game at the same time.

After Charles has gone, Erik sits there staring at the board, captured pieces lined up in neat rows on the table, his queen and a rook mated to Charles' toppled king.

"Emma," he murmurs after a while.

For once there's no jibing, and he feels something waken inside him, and for a few hours thinks of nothing except warmth, comfort and the sound of his own pulse all around him.

That night he dreams of bombs raining down on Dusseldorf, and wakes from it in a cold sweat with the taste of fear and iron in his mouth.

Bad as that is, it's better, still, than the dream that starts coming days later: another memory, but recast. He's hidden, trapped, cornered in the dark with his child. When the boot steps start down the stairs, he takes her hand in his, though he can't see her face; and tells her "It's alright," though it's not.

　
　
　
Week 19

Things can't go on the way they have been, and so Charles decides to take charge.

"I have been remiss these past few months; distracted by my conditions, such as they are," he says, four different times in four different meetings, steepling his fingers and putting on his Professor Charles Xavier, Firmly In Control face. "I do apologize, and I will do my utmost to turn things around. Training for all of us will begin again on the morrow."

To Sean he adds, "You will cease screaming at others in the hallways - or anywhere else on the grounds, come to that. As amusing as it may seem, it's rather grating to have everyone shouting all the time because they feel the need to wear plugs in their ears in self-defense."

And to Hank, "The 72-hour-long marathons in the lab will stop. Sleep is not an optional activity, and henceforth you will partake of it on a nightly basis - or in the morning or afternoon, I suppose, whatever you prefer. I hope you're aware of how lucky you are that you didn't actually burn the house down the other day."

And to Alex, "You will never again spit after Angel or Erik in the corridors. Must I remind you that they are guests in this house? If you cannot bring yourself to be welcoming toward them, you will simply ignore them from now on, rather than continuing to indulge in such a demeaning and unsanitary behavior."

And to Darwin, "Thank you for keeping Alex in line as much as you have been. Keep on keeping on, and I say, do you suppose if we shoved you out a window you could grow a pair of wings?"

Charles has no idea if any of this will have any actual long-term effect on improving relations around here - Alex in particular looked murderous, but toward the end there was a hint of shame in his expression as well - but it is, possibly, a beginning.

He should have taken back the reins long ago, really; funny how distracting suddenly being pregnant and in a wheelchair is apt to be.

Still in the spirit of taking charge and getting things done, Charles waits until after he's spoken with all the boys, then thinks, Emma, do you happen to have the telephone number for your hideout in Detroit handy?

Why?

I'd like to give my sister a call, do some catching up. This is true - he misses Raven quite terribly - but it's not the entire truth, and it gives Charles quite the thrill when Emma coughs up the number without seeming to catch onto his other reason. Maybe he's developing some faculty at this shielding business after all.

He dials the number.

"Hello?"

"Hello, you," he says, his throat unaccountably closing up so that he has to clear it.

"Charles? Oh my God, Charles - how are you?"

It's somewhat gratifying to hear tears in her voice; decidedly less gratifying to know that if it weren't for everything that's happened, she would have said something closer to 'Charles, you ass! Why haven't you called before now?'

And how is he, what a question. How does he answer that? Does she even know he's been paralyzed? Erik didn't, Charles knows that much from Darwin's quietly shared account of what happened with Erik that first day, his recollection of the blood all draining out of Erik's face. If Erik didn't know, then Raven doesn't, most likely.

How can he tell her something like that?

Well, he can't.

"Are you still there?"

"Er, yes," Charles says. "I'm quite, ah, marvelous really. Never been better!"

"That's convincing," she says, in a tone meaning it's absolutely not; a tone of voice that's already a marked improvement over that 'how are you' nonsense. "You must be enjoying Erik as much as we did."

"I'm not sure 'enjoy' would be the precise, ah, term I'd use."

"Really," Raven says, laughing. "How about 'want to strangle'? Would that be closer to the term you'd use?"

"I have to admit that one's rather more apt," Charles says. He wonders, briefly, how much Raven knows about Erik's plans, if she'd argued against it or gone along -

But that's not why he called her.

He has - somehow, unbelievably - forgotten the other reason why he's called her. He's certain there is one, equally certain it's important and not something that would just slip his mind.

Oh bugger.

"Charles, is something wrong?" Raven asks, sounding concerned.

She knows him far too well; but he disregards her for the moment.

Give it back, Emma, he thinks. Right now. I mean it.

There's no answer.

"Charles?"

He has to say something before Raven has a panic attack over the line. She's always had the most gruesome imagination when it comes to knowing something's going on, but not what.

So he says the very first thing that comes into his head - always a mistake, this time a mistake most probably influenced by the baby choosing that moment to kick at the hand he has rested on his stomach.

"You're going to be an aunt."

He regrets it immediately, but there's no taking it back.

There's a long silence on the other end of the line, but then Raven starts squealing, and he can actually hear the floorboards creaking as she jumps up and down.

"Who is she? Do I know her?" are the first actual words to come out of her mouth, once she's being coherent.

Oh, God.

Oh, God.

Of course, of course she would assume -

"Er," Charles says.

There's another silence, longer this time, and then Raven says, "Oh, Charles - don't tell me this was one of your one-night stands."

"Alright, I won't tell you then," Charles says. It's an evasion and sounds like one, and he only hopes it sounds like the kind of evasion he means it to.

"I don't suppose you're going to marry her, if that's the case," Raven says, positively chilly now.

"I think rather - not," Charles admits. "I mean, it's, ah. Somewhat highly unlikely. At this point."

Surprising, how much it hurts saying that.

"Well, I hope you're going to man up and take responsibility," she says. "I swear to God, Charles, if you don't, I will hunt you down and skin you."

"Oh, come now, Raven," Charles says, testy now because honestly, what kind of person does she think he is? "The child will be raised here - by me - thank you oh so very much."

"Oh," Raven says. "That's good, I guess." There's yet another silence, and then she says, "When is the baby due?"

"July," Charles says stiffly, leaving off the 'probably' because - while there's no certainty that his pregnancy will progress along the same timeline as a female, human pregnancy would - he doesn't want to be on the end of a 'how could you not know when your baby is due' sort of lecture.

There's yet another long silence - which is no better than 'how are you,' really - and Charles takes the opportunity to contact Emma again.

If you do not give me back my memory, I will take it, he thinks at her, letting his power uncoil inside him, letting her see it, letting her know that while her finesse may be better, his raw power trebles hers at the least; that he can blast through any shields she has, than he can destroy her if he wishes, and always could have.

Don't do this, she says, releasing her hold on it so that now he can remember exactly what he called Raven for. You don't know what you're doing.

It's the right thing to do, Charles replies firmly. And don't you ever much around with my head again or I won't take well to it.

To Raven he says, "There actually was something else I wanted to ask you about. Would you mind having Azazel bring Erik's helmet over? I think he might feel better, if he had it...."

Half an hour or so later, Charles has the helmet in his hands.

It's an ugly thing, to his touch and eyes both.

On his way to bed, Erik pauses in the doorway of his room, suddenly on alert.

Something's different, something's changed since he left this morning.

It takes just a moment before he makes out that his helmet is sitting on his bedside table - he knows it by the moonlight glancing off it, but also by the shape of it in that part of his mind that senses metal. For some reason he's never been able to manipulate the helmet; but feel it, yes.

What is his helmet doing here?

Your Xavier grew teeth to get that for you, Emma says, her voice inside his head hard and cutting. More fool he.

Erik closes the door, crosses the room in three long strides. He picks the helmet up and sits heavily down on the bed with its smooth, cold weight in his hands.

I hope you realize that the moment you put that on, you'll be exactly where you were before, Emma says. Except then you'll be in Xavier's hands, because I will wash mine of you. I only have the patience for so much nonsense; between the two of you I have reached my threshold.

"Charles did this?" Erik says, his voice wooden in his own ears. "Why?"

He seems to think you're in an unfair position, for some reason.

Erik sits there, considering but not quite thinking in so many words - he's discovered that this renders his thoughts just slightly less likely to be responded to, and thus (possibly) less easily read - for some minutes. Then he says, "What was it you were saying before? About learning to shield myself?"

Then there's laughter inside his head, not his own. You would wait until now to ask me that. I don't know which of you is more avoidant. This is ridiculous.

Erik ignores this; allowing her to provoke him will only provide distraction from the hazy plan now forming in his head, his way out. "If I'm wearing the helmet, you can't do anything to affect her, because she's an extension of myself. Could you still feel her if I'm wearing it, would you be able to tell anything about her if you didn't already know?"

The answer takes a minute to come, and when it does it's a very grudging, No.

"Then teach me," Erik says. If Emma can't sense the child's presence if he has the helmet on, neither can Charles; and if Erik can learn fast enough and well enough, he can leave before anyone - but especially Charles - suspects anything.

Erik can't imagine that Charles would think him fit to raise a child, not after the way Charles looked at him, the way he spoke to him, like he's a mad dog, lashing out at everything without discretion. Neither can he quite imagine that Charles would try to take her; but he won't take chances on that, either.

She's his, though she's half Charles' too. She's his, and he's keeping her. He'll work out the rest of it later, when he has his autonomy again.

I know what you're doing. Don't imagine you're being subtle.

"Teach me," Erik repeats.

Only if you promise me you won't try to leave until I say you're ready.

"Done."

　
　
Week 20

It shouldn't surprise him.

Raven has been calling the mansion daily for the past week and a half, hinting around for details, details, details. Mostly it's details about the baby's mother she wants - who is she, where did they meet, who is she, why is she just going to hand the baby right over to Charles, who is she, what does she look like, who is she, what's her name, who is she, why the hell are you being so difficult about this, Charles.

It's incredibly frustrating, and by the third call Charles is actually tempted to concoct some elaborate fiction to get her off his back, at least for a while; but he decides it will mean less trouble for him in the long run to duck the questions, let Raven keep wondering, and if the truth comes out later then at least Charles can say, well, that's what happens when you assume things, your crazy theories aren't my fault.

At one point during the fifth call he breaks into one of her rants to say, "Fine, I'm the mother." He does it partly to derail her, partly to hear her reaction, and, if he's to be entirely honest, partly to see if she'll believe it.

"That is so not funny, Charles,"she snaps, and hangs up on him. So that doesn't go over terribly well, but at least now he can say that he told her the truth, it's not his fault she didn't want to listen. Blue people who can shapeshift should not be so unwilling to open their minds to new concepts, regardless of how incredible said concepts may sound.

So in retrospect, it shouldn't surprise him when he wheels himself into his study one afternoon after a long day of training the others and himself to find Raven nosing through his desk drawers. She's not even bothering to be respectful of any of his possessions, slinging books and papers every which way after she's glanced at them.

"What are you doing to my things," Charles gasps.

Raven doesn't so much as glance up. "I'm going through them until I find the answers I'm looking for or you cave - whichever comes first."

"Honestly, Raven," Charles says, "this is childish - Raven, those ledgers are for the household accounts, you really mustn't - gaahh!"

Raven looks at him with that little smirk on her face, an expression Charles has always hated because it means she's gotten the upper hand over him at something; but as it fades and melts into horror, as Raven's hands fly up to cover her mouth, he finds himself wishing the smirk were back.

He should have told her about the wheelchair, he should have -

Too late.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you before," Charles says, when it becomes evident Raven is neither going to faint nor begin shrieking. "I'm finding I'm rather much of a coward when it comes to some things, these days."

This does not improve matters, and Raven is obviously well on her way to a fit of hysterics, so Charles does the only other thing he can think of to do; he holds out his arms to her and says, "Come here."

And then she's in his arms, and it's strange and wrong for her to stoop over him this way when they've ever been of a height; stranger and wronger that the nudist tendency has apparently stuck - she doesn't have a stitch on - but Charles does his best not to focus on that as he rubs her back and makes little soothing noises he wasn't previously aware that he could make. He stores this discovery away for future reference, vaguely aware that comforting should be part of his parental repertoire.

"You know," he says when Raven finally begins calming down a bit, "I'm the one stuck in this thing, so if you ask me I should get to drip snot all on your shoulder."

Ravens lets off a little hiccup at this, which Charles decides counts as a laugh; and he decides something else, too, and says, "There's more, actually, and it's much better. Would you like to see a magic trick?"

Then, before she can give him an answer but also before he can lose his nerve, Charles makes sure no one in the house is liable to come and interrupt them; and then he lets the illusion fall, all of it.

It may be petty of him to enjoy the shocked look that comes over her face, but he does anyway.

"You see, I really wasn't having you on," he says, and before she can react to this he takes her hand and guides it down to his stomach - and the baby is such a good baby because she choose that moment to give a great huge kick, what marvelous timing she has.

Ravens face erupts into wonder, and Charles pats himself on the back for a crisis well averted.

But then Raven plucks a nickel off his stomach and says, "It's Erik's, isn't it?"

Well, this is an entirely new crisis, then, isn't it? Why didn't Charles see this coming? Why does he never see anything coming?

"Er, is it that obvious?" he asks, somewhat weakly.

"Yes," Raven says, pointedly picking two dimes, another nickel and a steelie off him. "You know, I wondered when you could have found the time to go slutting around in bars with everything else we had going on around here."

"Raven!" Charles chides. "I take exception to that - 'slutting around,' honestly?"

"You mean you resemble that," Raven says. "Seriously, have you met yourself? You're disgusting."

"Well, thank you for that," Charles says. "Though I'd have to say it must run in the family then, because I've heard something quite peculiar about what's going on between you and several - ah - gentlemen -" He falters, already regretting opening up this line of conversation because really, he's been doing an excellent job of not thinking about that in any way whatsoever.

"Oh, Charles, Charles," Raven says wryly, giving his stomach a little pat, not bothering to look the least bit ashamed of herself, "you have no room to talk, so don't start."

Raven ends up staying the night. After fetching a plate of cookies and jug of milk from the kitchen, they pass most of it in the little alcove off the second-floor library that's always been their own secret, cozy place.

After some consideration, Charles decides to attempt to maneuver himself onto the overstuffed sofa in the corner. When he manages it, he says delightedly, "You know, I couldn't have done this several months ago." At Raven's stricken expression he adds, "I rather imagine I won't be able to do it a month or two from now, either. I'll be huge. I suspect I'll resemble nothing more than a beached whale by the time I'm through - with an emphasis on the beached."

Raven cracks a hesitant smile at that one, like she's not sure if she's allowed to find it amusing. Then she sits down on the sofa beside him and leans into him. He wraps his arm around her and they stay like that for hours, talking, just like the old days.

Charles confides in her about everything, all his doubts and fears, which mostly come down to Erik. Because Erik is still here, and while Charles doesn't see too much of him, sometimes they pass each other in the halls and Charles can never see anything other than suspicion in Erik's features. Charles hasn't seen him with the helmet on, though he carries it around everywhere now and sometimes when Charles scans the house he doesn't pick up on Erik at all, so he must be wearing it at other times.

Erik is still here, and Charles can't imagine why, can't imagine what danger Erik's life could possibly be in to keep him here when he so obviously doesn't want to be. Sometimes he's tempted to look, once or twice he's even been on the verge of it; but as much as Charles wants to know what's going on, he never can bring himself to actually take a peek. Something always stops him from doing it even though he's never been able to keep such intense curiosity at bay for so long before.

"I don't understand him at all," Charles concludes, after quite the long and tortured monologue about it. He leaves out the bits about wanting to poke around in Erik's head, because Raven would probably encourage him to look; she's always been adamant he stay out of her head, but she never has extended the sentiment to anyone else's.

"He's problematic," Raven agrees. After a moment's though she adds, "I don't know about what he's doing now, but back home - back in Detroit - he was definitely pining for you, in an Erik sort of way. I mean, it's not like he was sitting around crying and eating whole gallons of ice cream in one sitting or anything - but he was really snappish if anyone looked at him the wrong way, or looked at him at all, or had the nerve to be in the same room with him. It was pretty awful, especially for a week or two when he had this scary stomach bug with like, projectile vomiting and stuff - that was pretty horrifying, actually."

Charles is torn between feeling sorry for Erik, and feeling perversely satisfied that he's not the only one who's had to suffer. He refuses to consider the 'pining' statement as anything other than a mistaken reading of Erik; Raven is no telepath, after all, and even Charles' own readings of other people are often erroneous when he's not using his gift. And he knows, very well, what Erik looked like, what Erik acted like back when Erik wanted anything to do with him; and he hasn't seen anything remotely related to it since the morning of the day everything went to hell, the morning after they made the life growing inside of him.

"Are you going to tell him about the baby?" Raven asks.

"I haven't decided," Charles says. Not only has he not decided, but the only decision he's made in that regard has been to decide to decide later, when he feels up to actually thinking about it, which doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon. Or possibly ever.

"You probably should," she says. "I mean, okay, you said Emma knows it's Erik's, right? And Darwin too - I'm never going to forgive you for not telling me that he was alive sooner, by the way - and now me. How do you think Erik's going to feel if he's the last person to find out?"

"Maybe I don't want him to find out at all," Charles says.

"Yeah, okay, you know, I don't think that's going to work out well for you. There's a saying for this kind of situation: 'three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.'"

"You never were any good at maths," Charles says. "Me and you, Darwin and Emma make four, not three."

Raven screws up her face in a familiar mockery of what Charles looks like when he's thinking. "Well, how about 'four can keep a secret if you drop three on their heads?'"

Charles can't help but laugh. "Raven, that's terrible."

"Oh, I know," she agrees sweetly. "Doesn't it sound like something you would say?"

"....Somehow I don't think that's my influence."

A short while later, the sky outside the window begins to lighten, and Raven says with clear regret that she must be getting home. Charles bites back a pang of regret at her use of that word for anywhere but here.

As she comes to her feet, he watches her closely and sees a strength and confidence in her that he doesn't think he's ever seen before, now.

"You're beautiful, you know," Charles says. He's always thought so, but he thinks now that he may not have made it exactly clear, previously.

Raven looks back at him and says, "You, too," and he feels they understand each other perfectly for the first time in a long time.

Then she whistles piercingly and Azazel appears. Charles pretends not to see the way his hands go to Raven's hips so familiarly. He's only just thought that he should read Azazel's mind for his intentions towards her, when the other man gives him a smarmy look - and then they're gone.

Barely twelve hours later, the phone rings and it's Raven again, still harping on him, only now it's all, "you need to tell him, are you going to tell him, you should tell him, you need to tell him so he can step up and take responsibility." When Charles protests that there's no 'need' about it because he could afford to raise thirty children if he wanted them, she says "That's not what I mean and you know it."

*

Shielding is more difficult than it sounds. For the first few sessions, Erik can barely keep the helmet on for thirty seconds without her mind breaking over his like a wave, eroding.

She doesn't mean it, Emma explains, now that he's listening. It's all instinct, reflexive, her way of saying 'hi, I'm here, love me, protect me.' The problem, according to Emma, is that he lacks the ability that should be innate, the willingness to tell her 'enough' and keep her at arm's length so he can function normally (Erik remains skeptical of this, because how much experience with telepathic fetuses can Emma have had? She's probably making it up as she goes along).

Still, despite his doubts, it's hard - and painful, in a strange and empty sort of way - to pull away from her, even now that he knows, even now that he acknowledges the reality that he must learn this if he ever wants to get out from under Emma's thumb.

That he needs her knowledge, her experience, her help to move forward - that he must admit to it - grates at him. Severely. If he didn't need her, he would probably threaten to kill her again (though perhaps not, since after a certain point threats not made good upon cease to be threatening, and Emma has proven difficult to kill.)

The desire to get the hell away from Emma drives him to a not inconsiderable extent, but it's the desire to be gone from this place that fuels him the most, that makes him slip the helmet onto his head every time his thoughts clear, that causes him to try again and again and again even though a few hours of this back-and-forth leaves him muddle-headed and a day of it makes him so woozy inside his skull that he collapses into bed at the end of the day and wakes up some twelve hours later with an insane itch behind his eyes.

He improves. Half a minute becomes two minutes, two minutes become five, half an hour, an entire hour, two; and as the time he can placate the tide improves, so does his ability to think of other things while he does it.

It feels safer thinking with the helmet on, having a measure of privacy for however brief a time, even if Emma immediately intrudes as soon as the helmet is off again.

Erik finds that what he thinks about the most is where he can possibly go to raise a child - a child telepath - in relative peace. He can think of no place he's ever been where he would wish to raise a child. He of all people knows: there are monsters everywhere, a plague of locusts engulfing the earth - and where they're hidden themselves deeply in the grass where he can't see them, the child still will. The minds of men, good or evil, will be open books to her. Bad enough that she'll be able to see into his mind, without all the rest.

He can't imagine where she would be safe to have a childhood - a proper one, unlike his own.

He thinks, very briefly but with an absurd sentimentality that startles him, of Israel, though he's never been, never wanted to go; and he discards that thought in an instant because at his most charitable he still can't believe that place will ever be safe for any child. He flashes through everywhere he has ever been, over and over, and comes up with nothing. The best of them in his mind is Detroit, and only because he didn't go there tracking Nazis; but from what little he knows of labor disputes he doesn't think that will do either.

There's a remarkably simple solution to this problem, you know, Emma says one time after he removes the helmet, no more scrupled about seeking out his past thoughts than his present ones.

Erik ignores her. He has an idea, from the wryness of her voice inside his head, of what her 'solution' is; and he wants no part of it.

Week 21

Raven, as it turns out, is correct on all counts.

Charles spends the better part of a week after her visit agonizing - because she's right, of course she's right. He needs to tell Erik. Better to do it now than waiting until something horribly dramatic like going into labor prompts his confession.

How in the world do women handle this sort of dilemma? Charles has no idea, despite having heard plenty of thought fragments from women with unplanned-for buns in the ovens and unsuspecting boyfriends (or ex-boyfriends). Having always been scrupulous in his own encounters, Charles never paid much attention to them, as their troubles did not apply to his own life and were furthermore quite uncomfortable to contemplate.

He never paid any attention, and so now that he needs to know he has no idea how to even begin such a conversation.

Does he simply say, 'I'm pregnant, and it's yours,' and let things proceed from there?

Or would it be better to begin with a (long, dry, overly tedious) discussion of genes and mutations, build up to it gradual-like?

He doesn't think that 'say, do you remember that time we rutted like rabbits all night long? Surely you do, it was right before you deflected a bullet into my back and left me and didn't come back until months later when Emma dragged you here for reasons she won't explain to me and that I won't get from you because damned if I'll ever touch your minefield of a mind again. Well, I seem to have derailed myself, but if you remember that night which you had better, you sort of seem to have knocked me up' would be an appropriate way to go about it either. For one thing it's rather long and unwieldy; for another, there are far too many emotions in it.

It's probably because Charles is so preoccupied with concerns of this nature that he entirely misses the other thing he should be concerned about, the other major point Raven made, until he has Hank looming over him shouting about "months of work down the drain because you didn't bother to give me all the data."

Charles looks into Hank's mind then, and confirms that he knows. He follows the threads from there to find that Darwin, in an appalling breach of confidence, told Alex during a lover's spat, and Alex told Hank and Sean, and Sean told Angel (who was unaware of Charles' particular condition prior to this, and seems to find it far more amusing than even Erik in drag), and now everyone in the house except for Erik knows.

Alex apparently intends to deck Erik for it at some point in the near future, and oh God, what a mess this is. Telling Erik whilst in labor would probably have been less awkward than sorting all this out is going to be.

Hank is still shouting at him. When he has to stop to breathe, Charles says, rather stupidly, "Well, it's not like you ever asked. This is what happens when you just assume things -"

It's likely that he deserves the roar of incoherent rage that comes out of Hank at this point.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, of course you're right," Charles says, backtracking because it's true and besides, agreeing with angry persons is far more likely to calm them down than most other tactics.

Hank grumbles for a few more minutes, but once it occurs to him that this new data explains away much of what simply did not work in his former ridiculous hypothesis of asexual reproduction, he becomes distracted by the new implications. Charles hears his thoughts trailing off from anger-at-Charles into other more scientific directions, and breathes a sigh of relief that Hank, at least, is so easily mollified.

As Hank is headed out the door, he turns back around and says, "Oh, and one more thing."

Charles sighs and wonders, what now?

"Charles, I don't mean to sound ungrateful here, so please don't take this the wrong way, but could you please let me know the next time you need something out of the lab? Some of my experiments are pretty sensitive, not to mention dangerous. It would really be better if you asked me to help you find whatever you need."

"What are you talking about?" Charles asks, genuinely lost. While he hates being scolded for things he's actually done, being scolded for things he hasn't is far worse. "I haven't been anywhere near the lab since last week's ultrasound."

"Charles, please," Hank growls.

"I really - haven't been," Charles says weakly, and he can't help but slip into Hank's mind to find out why, exactly, he's being accused.

And evidently -

Funny how they've come back to this, isn't this how it all started to begin with -

Earlier today, Hank walked into his lab to find it reeking of pregnancy hormones.

But -

Charles really hasn't been anywhere near -

He hears himself tell Hank sorry, yes he'd been in the lab but simply forgotten, he promises not to do it again, very sorry. He watches Hank walk out the door, looks down to see his own hands shaking.

Because the pieces are falling together now, the way they do when the mind has been filing facts away in case of future importance, the way the mind does. And here are the facts, the pieces if he will:

A stomach bug, Raven said -

And Charles noticed himself the other day that Erik is going to fat, especially about the waist; and thought, rather nastily, good, he deserves it -

But what tips Charles over the edge is the memory of these words, and of Erik's stricken expression as he said them: "You've been in my head. You've been in my head, and this is what you want to talk about?"

He almost convinces himself that it's just as likely - more likely, surely - for it to be any of the others; and for a moment he's actually tempted to go look through all of their minds first, a game of elimination: this one isn't pregnant, nor is this one, nor this one. But this is too important, his suspicion is too strong now for stalling.

Charles forces himself to breathe, then reaches out with his mind for confirmation - for some hint, anything - of a second developing consciousness like the one growing inside of him.

He finds Erik's mind easily enough, but skirts around it - whether he's right or wrong in what he's thinking, in what he's already nearly certain of, the answer will be readily available in Erik's mind; but he won't broach Erik's mind, can't, doesn't want to; might want to with a frightening intensity that he refuses to examine. Instead of dipping into Erik's mind, he has a look around the outskirts of it, and finds -

Something he never would have found if he weren't actually looking for it, a hard and glittering wall like diamond -

And he knows, he knows now; they made not one life but two, that night.

Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding! Emma says. Took you long enough.

Charles barely hears this, doesn't bother acknowledging it; and he flies out the door of his study as fast as his wheels will take him, off in search of Erik to - well, he's not entirely sure what.

He'll figure it out when he gets there.

*

Erik lies on his back in his room, thumbing through the book on prenatal development he took out of Hank's lab. He's not sure why Hank would have such a book sitting around, but he's not going to question it when it works in his favor.

He now knows that his baby is busily forming footprints and fingerprints, which he has determined is a crucial piece of information for a reason, a very important concrete reason he'll come up with if he's ever pressed about it.

He's trying to make out the difference between gestational age, embryonic age and actual age - not knowing why there need to be three ages involved, or which of them even apply to him - when Emma comes into his head to say, Baby's out of the bag.

"What?" Erik's already confused, and she's just made it worse.

Xavier knows, and he's headed your way. I thought you might appreciate a warning.

The book goes flying onto the floor as Erik jumps to his feet, grabs for his helmet and heads out into the hall.

Fuck waiting; it's time to go now.

We had an agreement, sunshine.

"Had," Erik agrees, walking faster.

Put that helmet on your head and I'm done with you.

"Good."

Enjoy your new life as a vegetable.

"I will." And so saying, Erik rounds a corner and almost crashes into -

Charles.

"Goodbye, Charles," Erik says, and turns on his heels to head back down the way he came.

"Erik, wait!" Charles calls out from behind him.

"I don't think so." Erik glances back, picks up the pace once he realizes how close Charles is on his heels.

"Erik, we need to talk! Erik!"

"No!"

You're acting like you're five years old, I hope you realize that, Emma says, convulsing with laughter inside Erik's head. It's too much, and so he puts the helmet on in reaction to damned telepaths plaguing his life.

"Erik, will you just look at me. For God's sake, Erik!"

Erik comes to the stairs at a trot that's far too close already to a waddle for comfort. He barks a vicious laugh and melts the doors of the lift across the hall together as he begins descending the stairs.

"Now that's just not fair, you cowardly cheat!" Charles howls from above him.

Erik keeps going, just one step at a time, in no hurry now that he's managed to out-obstacle a man in a wheelchair.

"Well fine then, if you're going to be that way about it, I'm pregnant too and it's yours! And how about that, you great bloody maniac!"

"...What," Erik says. He's not sure what he just heard, but Charles couldn't have said -

He turns around and goes back up a few steps, staying far enough down to be safe but far enough up to peer over the top step at Charles - who looks very different now than he did a minute ago when Erik almost ran into him. He's wearing the same idiotic cardigan, but it's stretched over his lower abdomen now, and Erik can both see and feel various metal bits and bobs sticking to him that he knows weren't there before.

"You heard me," Charles says, crossing his arms and scowling.

"What," Erik says again.

"I know your vocabulary is more extensive than 'what,'" Charles says.

"What," Erik manages then, "makes you so sure it's mine?"

Charles' face goes slack for a moment; then he turns red faster than Erik has even seen him, and he screams, actually screams, "DO YOU HAVE EYES?"

Before Erik can respond, or even think privately to himself that he might have stepped in it this time, might have pulled Charles' favorite trick of trying to swallow both his own feet at the most inopportune moment imaginable, Charles throws something small and metal his way. His aim is terrible, but that hardly matters, and Erik floats the object into his hand easily enough. It's a U.S. penny, and a strange one: blue, made mostly out of steel, the kind of thing Erik can be fascinated by for longer periods of time than he would ever admit.

"Well, stop gaping at that and toss it back," Charles grumbles. "And don't do anything to it; she likes it, it's her favorite."

Erik obliges, and Charles sits there glaring at him with his arms crossed again as the penny slows in midair and changes directions from its original trajectory far above Charles' head in order to thump decidedly into his stomach, where it stays.

"...That's telling," Erik allows.

"Damn right it is," Charles says, clearly not in the forgiving mood.

And that's when a familiar wave rises up inside of Erik, and he's forced to sag against the banister to keep from toppling down the stairs.

"Erik, are you quite all right?" Charles sounds worried - and he should be; Erik is worried too, stairs were obviously a very bad idea. What happens to babies if their incubator falls down the stairs while they're still inside? Nothing good, he's sure.

Erik waits for the wave to pass, then scrambles up the stairs - up for no reason than that it's easier to stay balanced going up than down - and staggers down the hall a few feet for good measure. When the next wave comes seconds later, he slides down the wall to sit on the floor.

"Erik? What are you doing, what's going on?"

He tries to tell her 'not now,' he tries to tell her, 'calm, be calm,' he even tries 'no, don't do that,' but none of it works, and he's faced with the prospect of either turning into a drooling idiot in front of Charles or removing the helmet. On the one hand, drooling idiot is scarily appealing, but to be one in front of Charles? That's not an option.

"Erik?"

Erik heaves a sigh and takes the helmet off, drops it to the floor. He expects to feel an immediate cessation, but nothing changes. It occurs to him that Emma wasn't bluffing, that he's going to be a drooling idiot anyway, how perfectly ironic -

"Oh, Erik," Charles breathes. "She's lovely."

And just like that, the wave recedes, but not completely like it always has before; this time, it remains as a low tide lapping up against his mind, something he can easily navigate around while never feeling so alone in his own head.

I have no idea where he came up with that little trick. He's a natural, Emma says. He gets to be in charge of you now, I think.

Erik swears he hears her cackling at him.

He rises to his feet, and Charles holds out his hand towards Erik's gut and says, "May I?"

Erik sighs and acquiesces, and then Charles' hand is on his stomach and the baby kicks, the first time he's felt her move and been able to confidently distinguish it from the gas he's been so prone to over the past few weeks.

Right on top of the wonder this brings comes the realization, equally astounding, that this is the first time Charles has touched him in the entire month he's been here.

Erik tries to remember how to breathe.

*

Charles doesn't mean to pick up anything at all from Erik's mind, but he's not even certain what his own mind is doing at the moment. He's going all on instinct as part of his mind wraps around hers to muddle her shockingly loud broadcast of - not thoughts precisely, but physical sensation, what she's experiencing in the moment, warmth and comfort and Erik's heartbeat, so very similar to what Charles can feel now when he peers inside himself to ask baby girl how she's doing today. So similar, but louder, clearer; projected, because she's like him, she's a telepath too, and oh -

Beautiful, beautiful, she's so beautiful, and Charles can hardly believe she's been in his house for a bloody month without him knowing a thing about her.

When she kicks against his hand, something else happens, and it's the most marvelous thing of all really, because somehow - she is negative four months old, but somehow she reaches out to Charles, reaches right through him, and reels her sister in. From the twin expressions of something like delight that flare up within his mind, he knows the something like conversation they're having amounts to 'you're my sister aren't you,' answered with 'yes yes I am hi hello hi.'

Charles is distracted from this by a flash of something like jealousy from Erik's mind - and he still doesn't mean to read Erik, doesn't want to for so many reasons, not all of which he'll even admit to himself, but the connection is there now and he won't break it, not when the children are having so much fun together already. So he focuses instead on shielding off the part of the connection that leads to Erik's mind. When he's done moments later he wonders if he could share what the girls are doing with Erik, their delight in each other; and then he looks up and sees something very raw in Erik's face, something he knows he's not meant to see.

It's at this point that Charles takes a closer look at what he's picked up from Erik's mind; and it's a minefield of half-realized thoughts and suppressed fears, not all that much different than what was always in there before - except that Charles was welcome to a certain extent, then.

What actually comes through - and at times like these, Charles always has to acknowledge that for all he thinks he knows about the mind, in reality he knows nothing at all - is that for some reason, Erik or part of Erik thinks that Charles hates him, that Charles sees him as a monster, that Charles wants him to leave (though Erik can't seem to decide whether Charles wants him to leave with the baby or without her, and Charles knows he'll never be able to detangle the threads enough to figure which one Erik would prefer him to want).

Shocked and very troubled, Charles removes his hand from Erik's stomach. The babies send twin pings of something like displeasure at him, and he thinks sorry, sorry, because as the conduit for what they were doing it's either the physical act of moving his hand or his emotional flailing that's interrupted their party.

It takes Charles all of two seconds to decide he is not going to bring up any of the things he saw to Erik directly; after all, Erik didn't take up that hideous helmet back in Cuba due to wanting Charles poking around in his head.

Charles won't say anything about it to Erik, but he has the sudden urge, the most insane desire, to rise to his feet, wrap his arms around Erik's neck, pull him down and kiss him until he's gotten those stupid notions out of his head.

It takes him a moment - his hands are actually braced on the arm of the wheelchair as though he's whole again and this is a sitting chair that he can just launch himself out of anytime he pleases without falling down - before he remembers that, no. He can't do that.

It's been ages since he's forgotten like this, and now he doesn't feel like kissing anyone. It's just as well anyway.

The silence stretches out, long.

Charles wonders what Erik is thinking.

"Don't take her away from me, please," he says finally, reaching out once again to lay only the very tips of his fingers on Erik's stomach this time. "I have the right to know her, to be a part of her life. And I want to, so very much."

Saying this he can get away with, surely; Erik didn't vandalize his lift and head down the stairs because he intended anything other than leaving. That much would be obvious even without the additional insight.

He can't read Erik's face at all.

"And you have the right to know her as well," Charles adds.

He grabs Erik by the hand and drags it down to his own stomach, where the baby kicks as soon as the contact is made; and Charles doesn't miss the way Erik's eyes widen, doesn't miss the way Erik's hand remains even after Charles is no longer holding it hostage; the way Erik's hand splays out and presses down, the look of wonder that comes over Erik's face.

Charles had quite forgotten how beautiful Erik's hands are.

"Erik, say something, for God's sake," Charles says. After a moment's consideration he adds, "But not anything else stupid. I imagine high blood pressure is bad for babies."

Erik makes a face, one of his assortment of annoyed-frustrated-irate ones, and he's just opening his mouth when - and there's very little excuse for Charles missing this storm cloud coming, but he has been rather distracted, these past few minutes - Charles feels Alex spot Erik from where he's just come up the stairs.

All Charles has the time to say is, "Erik, I think you might want to -" and of course he means to finish the statement with 'make yourself scarce,' except that before he can, Alex grabs Erik by the shoulder, rotates him around, and belts him right in the face.

And so it is that the initial thing that comes out of Erik's mouth is a pained sort of grunt, and the first actual words to follow are "WHAT THE FUCK," and so saying, Erik lunges towards Alex, and Charles just knows there's going to be violence and blood and other such unpleasantness, and there's not a thing he can do to stop it -

Except that then, without Erik so much as touching him, Alex falls to his knees on the floor, clutching his head in his hands, and he's screaming -

Erik whips around to look at Charles, eyes narrowed; Alex is still screaming, and Charles realizes right behind Erik that he's the one doing it -

And so realizing, scrambles to turn it off.

As Alex gets to his feet, Erik turns back towards him, hostility in every line of his body. Charles wheels quickly forward and grabs him by the elbow using both hands. Once, Erik could have shrugged him off easily, but going around in a wheelchair has given Charles new strength in his hands and arms; while he probably can't stop Erik if Erik decides he is going, he can give it a good shot.

"Alex," Charles says, "you need to go. Right now."

"But he -" Alex begins, and Charles glances into his mind and sees all the things Alex doesn't seem to think Charles realizes about Erik, that Alex apparently thinks will somehow magically become clear if he decks Erik a few more times.

"I know what he," Charles all but snarls. "You've taken your shot, it's the only one you're getting, and now you will go."

Alex glares, but he goes, and Charles can feel Darwin rushing in their direction now - he evidently heard the screaming - and he takes a peek into his mind as well, and things are evidently more of a complicated mess between these two than he had previously realized. But yet, Charles also sees that Darwin will manage Alex for now, even if it's largely out of his own very deserved guilt, so now all Charles has to concern himself with is keeping Erik from doing anything - well, anything rash.

Erik is actively trying to pull away now. "I can fight my own battles. I don't need you defending me like I'm some helpless maiden."

Well, that's ever so slightly hypocritical, isn't it. Charles seems to remember Erik being the one to say they need to protect each other.

"You're carrying my child; you will not brawl," Charles says, and this time it's absolutely a snarl. This logic actually seems to penetrate, and Erik goes still. "And besides, I - God, Erik, I think I could have killed him." He's still monitoring Alex with his mind and he can feel that Alex has just realized how close a thing it was, himself; that he's very nearly about to have a panic attack about it. Charles swallows hard, thinks I'm so sorry about that, Alex, then says to Erik, "I really don't imagine your hitting him in the face would have much of an impact at this point."

"Oh, I think it would," Erik says in a tone of lazy threat, which is when Charles realizes that his now-deformed lift doors are floating menacingly in the air.

"How nice," Charles says. "I'm sure it's completely justified for you to smash Alex with that for hitting you with his fist, but as you can see Alex has left, so why don't you put that back the way it was before you decided to start disemboweling my property and then we'll go put some ice on your eye."

Erik gives a derisive snort and floats the doors over to lean up against the wall, which is not even remotely close to fixing them, but Charles decides to deal with that later.

He lets go of Erik's elbow, and they head downstairs together in the now-doorless lift.

They encounter Sean in the hallway on his way from the kitchen, and he looks Erik up and down. When he walks toward them Charles thinks for one mad moment that Erik may wind up with two black eyes today, which will lead to all of them screaming if Charles reacts with the same appalling knee-jerk instinct he did with Alex. But Sean merely shakes Erik's hand with vigor, and says, "I'm in awe of your virility, man. In awe."

"Well, what about my virility?" Charles protests when it becomes clear that the sentiment is not being extended to him.

One explanation later, they make it to Erik sitting at the kitchen table holding an ice pack to his eye, and Charles says, "What were you going to say, before we were interrupted?"

Erik looks at him, unreadable still, and after a moment he says, "I was going to say that I won't - deprive you - of your rights. And I'll make use of mine."

"Oh," Charles says, feeling a warmth spreading inside his chest. "Good. That's good."

It all seems very promising, just at that moment.

Erik wakes up the following day with a splitting headache and a magnificent black eye. There's the off chance the eye might come off as something other than magnificent to others, so he dons a pair of shades on the way out of his room.

He heads to the kitchen, looks in the fridge to see if there's anything likely. He's craving something, but isn't sure just what until he spots a cheesecake on the shelf and a jar of olives inside the door. These are two complimentary things that clearly go together, and the entire contents of the jar including all the juice make it onto the cheesecake.

When Erik takes the first bite, he doesn't expect the ping of delight that accompanies it, that isn't his but that sends echoes up and through him.

Startled, he looks down at his gut. "Like that, do you?"

There's no answer, at least none Erik can identify as such; but when he reaches downward toward her with his mind, he feels a sense of satisfaction that isn't his own. He doesn't know how long he's been standing there just thinking about that, a slice of cheesecake in hand, when he senses a set of eclectic metal objects on a convex background coming toward him.

Charles. Charles, along with -

Erik's mind stutters to a complete, crashing blank. He can barely wrap his head around there being one of them, never mind two.

By the time Erik has managed to fill out the end of that thought with '- the other one,' Charles has made his way into the kitchen.

"Good morning," he says.

Erik grunts, doesn't turn to look at Charles as he lingers with phantom fingers over the metal outlining the swell of Charles' gut. He finds himself thinking, then, of the way that Charles used to approach him in the kitchen in the mornings, the way he'd sidle up beside Erik to ask, 'What are you eating?' as if he couldn't see it for himself; the way he'd bump companionably against Erik's arm with an unconvincing, 'Oh, sorry.'

"What are you eating?" Charles says, in the here and now.

Erik tenses, has to bite back the bile that comes into his mouth then, along with the impulse to snap, 'It's mine, she's mine.'

It doesn't escape him that in all the time he's been here, Charles has only twice sought him out; that they have never, not once, so much as encountered each other except by design. Erik would have avoided Charles before now, if he could have sensed that metal previously; but Charles, he knows, has always been able to sense Erik, except when he's wearing the helmet. That Charles is now in the same room as him is not an accident, but yet more design, as it's been every day before now.

"Cheesecake. With olives," Erik says brusquely, and reaches into the cupboard above for a plate to set his slice down on.

Charles doesn't catch on to the dismissal, because he rolls up closer behind Erik and says, "Oh that sounds disgusting," in the same tone Erik has many times before heard him exclaim that something or other sounds 'lovely.' "Are you sharing?"

"Fine." Erik extracts two more slices for himself, slaps them down on the plate. He'll take what he wants and leave himself, if Charles won't take the hint.

"Wonderful," Charles says brightly. "Now, would you mind handing it to me? I'm afraid I can't reach it myself. You and the counter both seem to have grown rather taller - or else I suppose I may have shrunk, hard to say."

Erik turns, slowly; gives Charles a flat look. "Is that supposed to be funny."

"Well, I had hoped for a laugh, but I'd settle for you twitching your mouth a bit," Charles says, and he's smiling, but the smile fades as Erik continues to stare at him, hard. Good. Good. Charles made his choice clear months ago in Cuba. He's made it even clearer every day Erik's been here. He doesn't get to do this, doesn't get to act like they're friends now just because they both know something they didn't yesterday.

Erik doesn't know exactly what he would say to that, because that's when Emma comes breezing in.

"So sorry to interrupt your scintillating conversation, boys." She doesn't look sorry. From the smirk she's wearing, Erik has no doubt she's taking the same sick pleasure in this as she always does in tormenting him.

"What the fuck do you want," Erik snaps - more nasty than he's usually be, even to her - and takes the opportunity to turn fully away from Charles as he glares at her instead.

Emma glances down at the plate in his hand. When she glances back up, the smirk has been joined by a raised eyebrow. Erik glares back at her harder, refuses to feel awkward. If he wants to eat olives on cheesecake them he will. Fuck her if she doesn't like it. There's only one telepath in the room who gets to have an opinion about it, and that's the one he's eating for.

"Oh, I just wanted to let you know that I'm bored now, so I'm leaving," Emma says, syrupy-sweet. "But there's just one teensy, tiny thing I want from you first, sunshine - and then I'll be out of your hair for good."

Charles pipes up then. "Really, Emma, you don't have to leave. You're welcome to stay as long as you'd like."

Erik ignores him. Whether Emma also does or not, it's hard to say, but she doesn't answer him out loud.

"What," Erik says.

In response, Emma opens the fridge and comes out with a bottle of wine from inside the door, which she proceeds to wave at Erik with a brilliant smile on her face. He knows immediately what she means by it -

("Don't look at me like that, sunshine; you'll thank me someday.")

- and there's a split second where he can't believe she's doing this in front of Charles. But then he comes to his senses and realizes that of course she is, that that's the point. If she wanted it to be private, wanted it just for herself, she wouldn't have waited for Charles to be here with him. She'd have talked to him inside his head as usual instead of actually seeking him out.

Erik doesn't see why he should thank her for something that wouldn't have been an issue if she'd told him from the beginning instead of hiding it from him for her own sick amusement. But Charles is here, Charles is listening - and Charles is nosy too, and if Charles picks up on what they're talking about here then chances are he'll start in on Erik about it. The last thing Erik needs is any more of his fucking judgment.

And it's not like this would be the first time Erik has swallowed his pride as a strategic move in a larger game; so as he thinks Fuck you, bitch, at Emma as hard as he can - and knows it gets through by the self-satisfied look on her face - he also says, "ThankyouEMMA," through gritted teeth.

"You're welcome. Now was that so hard?" she says, and leaves again.

"...What was that all about?" Charles asks.

Erik doesn't look at him. "It's none of your damned business."

Should I tell him? Emma says, inside his head.

No. Don't. There's only so much bending Erik is willing to do, and this is the extent of it. He's not going to beg.

There's laughter inside his head. Very well, I won't tell him. As amusing as that would be.

Erik isn't stupid. He knows she's not doing him any favor here, that whatever her reason is, it has to do with what she wants, not what he does.

Well, at least he won't have to deal with her anymore.

"If neither of you is going to let me in on the secret, will you at least pass me the cheesecake?" Charles asks.

"No," Erik decides. Why the fuck should he do Charles any favors? He stalks out the kitchen's other entrance, the one opposite to the one Emma left out of. He's not hungry anymore, but takes his plate with him on the chance that changes anytime soon.

It doesn't occur to him until later that day that he still needs Emma for his shielding lessons; that she has effectively abandoned him to Charles' mercy.

He can't believe this shit, after all the trouble he went through to break her out of the CIA.

When he realizes she's written her phone number in permanent ink onto his mind, along with a message saying, 'If you need me, call. But don't call," he can't believe that either. Why can't she just leave him alone?

Week 23

It all seems rather less promising, now.

Where before they merely avoided one another, now Erik meets all of Charles' overtures with outright hostility. Charles often finds himself feeling like a rather forward kitten attempting to connect with a large and unfriendly dog; and while he knows Erik's bark is worse than his bite, when it comes to Charles at least (or at least, it was, though there's more than enough reason to wonder about that now), being continually snapped at would wear down the most patient person living - and Charles is hardly that. So, after the first few days, he stops going out of his way to approach Erik, though he does not let up on keeping a mental eye on the baby. Not that he necessarily could if he wanted to - which he doesn't, and never will - as she seems to grow louder in her projecting by the day.

And to think that Charles started out imagining that Erik might at least try getting along with him, for the sake of the children; that he started out wondering if, maybe -

Well. He was obviously mistaken about that. Which is much more depressing than it ought to be, considering that he never had any reason to think it other than a completely unfounded sense of optimism. Really, he should know better by now, when it comes to Erik.

It is because he's preoccupied with just such a train of thought that one day he looks down to see that he has a box of laundry detergent in his lap. Just when he got to the point that he can navigate himself all the way to the laundry room and back without paying conscious attention, he doesn't know.

Said laundry detergent looks far more appetizing than any non-food item should. It even smells - Charles's mouth waters, and this - this is just as ridiculous as it always is whenever he finds himself hankering for dirt, toothpaste or whatever else.

Someone needs to come take this away from me, he projects. Sooner rather than later, if you please.

He's not sure why he's surprised that it's Darwin who pokes his head in first. He was, after all, the only one on this side of the house when Charles sent his call out. But they haven't spoken in several weeks, and Charles remains uncertain whether he even wishes to talk to him. He knows it's not Darwin's fault, the way things are now with Erik; knows, in fact, that Darwin probably did him more a favor than not. Lord knows if Erik ever would have confessed, if Charles ever would have known about his other daughter if Darwin hadn't spilled the beans. And yet Charles is accustomed to his secrets being kept (though granted, usually through being kept to himself), and he can't help but feel betrayed by it - unfair as he's aware he's being, as he can never help being aware he's being. The curse of his gift.

"You called?" Darwin asks.

In answer, Charles lifts up the box to show him. No need to elaborate beyond that, as all the boys are aware of this particular difficulty. At one point he even had Hank rationing out his toothpaste for him twice a day (that is, until he shed blue furs onto Charles' toothbrush, at which time it became Sean's responsibility for the most part).

Darwin comes into the study, takes the detergent out of Charles' hands and places it atop the bookshelf opposite Charles' desk. This is somewhat unexpected, as his usual response to Charles' odder cravings is to show off his mutation through actually ingesting whatever it is that Charles currently wants. It's generally enough to distract Charles from his misery for a few minutes at least.

Charles gives Darwin a closer look, and realizes how awfully tired he seems; and little thinner around the face too. Charles recalls, then, the nastiness of the argument he glimpsed inside Alex's mind on that day, and wonders just how bad things have gotten between the two of them, that Charles has missed these last several weeks due to his preoccupation.

"How are things between Alex and yourself?" he asks, figuring it's preferable to inquire first and only afterward go to snooping, should such be called for.

Darwin looks a little startled at this - not a look Charles is used to seeing on him - but he recovers quickly. "Not great, but not that bad either." He hesitates, then rubs the back of his neck and adds, "I've been meaning to let you know anyway - I'm going to head out of here for awhile, maybe a few weeks. I need some time away."

Things aren't bad, but he's leaving; well, that contradiction is plenty of reason to go snooping, in Charles' estimation.

Except that when Charles tries to read Darwin's mind then, he gets knocked out again before he can make sense of anything going on in there. And when he tries a second time, it happens again.

The third time is not so much the charm. Charles finds himself gaping at Darwin, wondering when he learned to do that - if he did learn it, if it's not some aspect of his mutation. And why shouldn't it be, come to that? Darwin's mutation is defensive in nature, so why shouldn't he have developed bouncers to escort Charles out if there's something he doesn't care for Charles to know?

"Well, do try to be careful," Charles manages, since he can't very well demand to know why Darwin's mind is unavailable for his perusal. "And come home safely."

"Sure," Darwin says. He hesitates, again. "I'm sorry about - you know, telling Alex. It just slipped out."

He looks quite abashed; and Charles never has been much good at holding a grudge in the face of an apology.

"That's quite alright," Charles says, more or less graciously. He considers a moment, then adds, "It's been real."

Darwin does a double-take at him, then starts laughing - so hard he nearly doubles over.

"It's a popular expression," Charles protests, torn between being cross about being laughed at, or pleased that someone finds him amusing (if not in the way he intends to be).

Once Darwin has gone a minute or two later, Sean appears from the other direction.

"What do you need?" he asks.

Charles has of course been eyeing the laundry detergent from the moment Darwin left. So now he gestures towards it and says, "Would you retrieve that for me?"

Sean glances up. "No, man, I don't think so."

Charles sighs.

"Hey, can you break a five?" Sean asks, shifting from foot to foot.

"Oh, probably." Charles looks down at his stomach and starts picking through pens, forks, thimbles and other such odds and ends, searching for quarters. He comes up with nearly enough, and the addition of seven dimes and a nickel makes up the difference.

Baby girl does not appreciate losing any of her toys, not one bit. It's probably a coincidence that she chooses the very moment Charles offers up the handful of change to Sean to kick viciously at his ribs, but he finds that he prefers to think of it as intentional so that he can think to himself that she takes after Erik already.

He's stunned to realize, in that moment, just how much he hopes she takes after Erik; how much he hopes she's just like Erik.

While her timing may or may not be coincidence, it is certainly a coincidence that the moment he thinks of Erik, he loses his mental connection to the other baby completely. As always, he has a moment of nearly overwhelming panic before remembering what it indicates - that Erik's put the helmet on, that's all. He insists on doing so multiple times daily, for whatever reason. It would have been nice if he'd warned Charles he was going to the first time - or any of the subsequent times, come to that - but then Erik never has been terribly considerate.

"Would you mind doing me a different sort of favor?" Charles asks, as he tried to recall where Erik was a few seconds ago.

*

The only way to reach the roof is to climb one out of four narrow sets of stairs. There's no lift, no way for Charles to follow Erik up. For this reason, it's become Erik's most common destination during the day. The gravel paths around the grounds would work well enough to keep Charles at bay, but the idea of being watched from inside the mansion makes the noose around Erik's neck feel even tighter than it usually does.

The sun is out, warming Erik's hands and seeping through the fabric of his turtleneck and khakis. He tries passing on the sensation to her, but doesn't know whether it goes through, or what she thinks of it if it does. All he gets from her most of the time is a low-key sense of her presence that varies so minutely and randomly that the changes almost never seem to relate to anything he does - other than putting the helmet on, which causes it all to intensify again to the point of overwhelming.

But no matter how much he practices, how many times a day, there always comes a breaking point when he can no longer hold her back and must tear the helmet off again. Over the past few days, that point has been coming sooner rather than later, so that Erik is beginning to believe that her ability is growing as she does. Loathe as he is to think that there might soon a day when he cannot put the helmet on - when it will become clear that he will never, while he carries her, be able to leave - still he persists, though by now he can't keep the helmet on for more than a quarter of an hour at a time. By now he's close to admitting that he's doing it not because he expects improvement, but because for those few minutes she is his and only his, with no Charles acting as the go-between.

He's about to take the helmet off for another break when he hears someone clambering out onto the roof. He belatedly recognizes the small metal trappings that accompany it: a belt buckle, a zippy, the eyelets on a pair of shoes, three fillings. He turns around and sees Sean.

No one ever comes within two floors of the roof; Erik knows exactly who's responsible for this. How considerate of Charles to allow him even this much privacy.

"Hey," Sean says. He has sense enough to look and sound uncomfortable - as he should. Erik's surprised he would agree to come up here to begin with, considering past shoves off satellite dishes.

Just as this occurs to Erik, it does to Sean as well; he glances at Erik, then glances around, then back to Erik; gulps then, inches back toward the stairs.

Erik can't help grinning, despite his annoyance; and, almost at his limit for how long he can hold her back, he reaches up to remove the helmet. He's about to suggest that they go inside to start another game of Risk, perhaps with Angel again to offer himself some actual competition, but then Sean says something that reminds him sharply of just whose side he's on.

"Why did you paint the helmet that color?" he says. "Did you lose a bet or something?"

Erik gives Sean a hard, flat look, that changes to disbelief as he sees something he never has before. Sean has always seemed easygoing, careless, clueless - any number of things that have no relation to what Erik's seeing on his face now.

It's calculation, and it's all over his face. It couldn't be clearer if he said it, what he's thinking: that if he'd acted, months ago, if he'd just opened his mouth and screamed, would it have changed the course of things; would the missiles have fallen, would Charles still -

Erik turns away abruptly, a dismissal. He puts the losing bet back on his head, and stares off into the distance, radiating contempt. He only turns back around when he fails to hear or feel Sean going back down the stairs. When he does look back, everything that was on Sean's face before has wiped itself off again, but Erik isn't going to forget it. "Was there something else Charles wanted other than to annoy me?"

Sean grins. Erik isn't charmed. "Since you asked, I think he wants you to stay off the roof. He can't exactly check up on you himself up here, you know."

It's all Erik can do not to fling Sean off the roof by his fillings. "Did he tell you to say that?"

"...Um, no," Sean says.

Erik doesn't believe it for a second.

Week 24

As of several days ago, Alex has borrowed Charles' Corvette to hare off and find Darwin. In this case, 'borrowed' is euphemistic for 'taken without asking.' Less generous minds might even opt to refer to it as 'grand theft auto,' without being technically incorrect.

All things considered, Charles is worried less about the car and worried more about what exactly is going on with the boys, out of his range and protection. He hopes they'll be alright, and still wishes he knew the entire story. He did, naturally, peek into Alex's mind to figure out the great secret, but as he didn't know it either, Charles remains at a loss.

With no one really to talk to about it who won't end up worrying just as much as he does himself, and with the other baby still randomly disappearing from his purview umpteen times a day to make him worry yet more (thanks so much, Erik), Charles has thankfully found a new and delightful pastime: playing with the baby.

Most people must wait to play with their baby until after its birth, but not Charles, oh no.

Tonight, he takes a box of paperclips from his top desk drawer and scatters them about his desktop. The 'shiny shiny new shiny' response is immediate; all of the paperclips lift off the desktop and fly to attach themselves to his stomach.

It became evident weeks ago that he is, in essence, carrying a small and insistent magpie. One that he should likely not encourage as much as he does, since the sheer number of metal things he's had to hide away to keep from being entirely bogged down in them is nearly frightening. He's lucky she's only picked up a handful of steelies so far; when he was a boy he got rolls and rolls of them from the bank, convinced that one day they'd make him a fortune (merely the first example out of many why he doesn't handle his own investing in the here and now), and to the best of his knowledge they remain stashed somewhere in the house. He doesn't recall precisely where, and has declined to look out of a fear of going around with a thousand or more pennies stuck to him for the next few months.

Thankfully, she doesn't pitch as much of a fit over most other things. He's found that taking old bits away from her is made a bit easier if he replaces them with new bobs. On that note, he picks three pens and a fork off his stomach and puts them away in his desk.

'Shiny shiny shiny' and all is going beautifully, he can feel himself relaxing as he listens to her strange satisfied babbling (he knows distantly that he probably ought not to translate her not-really-thoughts into words - it's hardly scientific - but he finds he doesn't much care), until quite suddenly it turns into something like, 'oh hi sister other daddy hurrah!'

Which is when Charles realizes that Erik is indeed headed straight towards them. And what's more, he's bringing the motherlode of anger with him, projecting it off in all directions like he did in the water so many months ago, so that Charles can't help but pick it up no matter how he might try to close himself off.

Hurrah, Charles thinks back at her, confident that she's a tad young to catch the sarcasm.

He has no time to wonder what this can possibly be about before the door of his study opens and Erik storms on in and near-slams his hands flat down on Charles' desk, and says, "There's something wrong with the baby."

There is nothing wrong with the baby. Charles always has her present in his mind whenever Erik allows it; if there were truly something wrong, he would know it. He would know it, there's no doubt of that, and yet his heart sinks with dread and his stomach rolls with it and there's a sick taste in the back of his mouth, and he doesn't even answer Erik in his mad hurry to check, to make sure -

And she's fine, she's fine, and he already knew that but the relief is still palpable, would be enough to bring him to his knees if that were possible any more (but slumping is very much still possible, and that he does).

After a moment of that, Charles looks a little harder, because if Erik looks like that - gray in the face, utterly wracked, there's no mistaking now the fear driving his anger - then there must be some reason. It takes only a few seconds of really looking, and there it is - entirely separate from any part of her true self - a really toxic little ball of - and it takes a moment for Charles to identify it for what it is, the strands threaded and tangled all up tight together so that identifying them individually takes some effort, but -

Grief and guilt; guilt and grief.

Not hers, obviously.

Charles recognizes some of the grief as his very own. While a good portion of it is foreign, much of it has that familiar texture. He could drown in it if he let himself. He wonders how she was able to get her hands on that, given that they've so rarely been in the same room and she is (for god's sake) not even born yet.

He doesn't think much of the guilt is his own, but doubts what isn't is all from one other person, as many colors as it's in.

But there's no time to ponder that now. How to fix this, that's the question. She's taken all of it, wherever she got it, wound it all up together and treated it as a softball to be lobbed at Erik, as though they're playing a game of catch. No wonder Erik thinks there's something wrong; he's no telepath, has no way of distinguishing whether what comes from her originates with her or not.

The only solution he can come up with after several minutes involves putting up a shield between her and Erik, something like what Emma did before. If he did, nothing would get in or out - but Charles doesn't know that Erik would appreciate that. He doesn't know how she would handle it either, how much she may rely on being able to connect with Erik.

At a loss, Charles sends her the thought, You're upsetting mommy-daddy-person-thingy, love, meaning it more as a wry commentary than anything else.

He's utterly shocked when he gets back something like 'oh no!' in return. What happens then can most aptly be described as that she deliberately fumbles the ball and allows it to roll away.

Charles comes out of it to find Erik waiting, tense and drawn and expectant; sees Erik's expression then go inward, and he sags a moment later with such visible relief that Charles would reach over and take his hand, if only it were still within arm's reach.

"Thank you," Erik says. He then turns around and walks back out, closing the door behind him much less dramatically than he first opened it.

Charles sits there thinking about anger and fear, grief and guilt. He knows that for Erik, rage has so often been used as a tool, to allow him access to abilities that would otherwise remain out of reach; but that's not all anger can be used for. It can, for one thing, be used as a mask to cover up just about anything else, from fear to -

But that's as far as he gets thinking it through at that moment, because that's when all of the baby's shiny new paperclips rise up into the air and dart across the room and under the door. All Charles can think, then, is that perhaps their Little Leaguer has informed their Pica pica that 'daddy is sad' or some similar thing; or perhaps their little magpie shares her sister's interest in Erik and is simply loathe to see him go.

Charles isn't nearly done being astonished when the paperclips come back, flying back into the room in the form of a paperclip chain, which she nabs out of the air and exclaims over wordlessly before sending it back out again.

Apparently today is the day for showing off new tricks; at least hers isn't terrifying.

After several more back and forths, each of which results in the chain taking on more loops and whorls, the door opens again, and there's Erik with a chess set under one arm. He walks in, drags a chair from out of the corner and starts setting up a game on Charles' desk without so much as acknowledging his presence.

"This may be the most transparent pretext I've ever heard of," Charles says - with no desire to drive Erik off, it's only that he's completely unable to refrain from commenting on it.

Erik shoots him an unnecessarily nasty sort of look, and continues setting up.

Charles is tempted to say, 'Why should I play chess with you if you won't even talk to me?' But he decides it might be best to keep his more snarky thoughts - which at this juncture are most of his thoughts; didn't he just help Erik, and now he has to go and act like this - to himself for now, to see where this may go.

The game goes quietly, with Erik playing very badly, his attention taken up by summoning various knick-knacks from off Charles' stomach, to stick them together or take them apart or melt them into various lumpy shapes that don't resemble much of anything but that she seems to find delightful. That Erik also seems to find delightful, if the goofy grin that comes over his face every time something comes back to him is any indication.

Like Corvus corax, like Pica pica. Charles thinks, once again, how very alike the two are already.

He finds himself, too, staring at Erik's hands. He's always adored Erik's hands. They're lovely, elegant, especially as he crooks a finger in a 'come hither' to drawn metal objects to him, or as he flicks them back. When he pauses in his preoccupation to make a move in the game, it's the same curt, assured motion as always, regardless that he doesn't appear to have a strategy or to be paying the slightest actual attention to the game.

Out of nowhere, Charles gets a vision in front of his eyes, so vivid, of Erik holding an pink-jammies wearing infant up to his chest, one hand under her little bum, the other supporting her head. She is so, so tiny, Erik's hands so large and so gentle as he cradles her.

Charles wonders what the chances are of him ever seeing that.

"Erik," he says, halfway through their second game. Their magpie is getting tired, her attention lagging as she takes her own sweet time sending items back at Erik, when initially it was instant. "I have a question for you."

"What?" Erik asks, looking combative, suspicious (not that that's surprising).

Charles has actually been wanting to ask for weeks, and figures he may not get another chance after she falls asleep and Erik wanders off to continue avoiding him. "Besides the obvious -" and he has no idea what he means by 'the obvious,' or whether it's the same as what Erik will take from it "- what exactly is your grievance with me? Out with it."

Erik actually glances toward the door, like it might have disappeared in the interim, then looks back at Charles and says, "You need to stop sending Sean to spy on me."

...Well. Charles supposes he should have expected that. "Very well," he says, reluctantly, wondering if sending Hank out onto the roof to check on him would count as a violation (probably). "Anything else?"

Erik gives him a hard look, then gestures towards the wheelchair, of all things, and says, "And you need to stop throwing that in my face. Rubbing my nose in it. Like you think it's my -"

And he clams up, his mouth going into a thin hard line.

"I've gone out of my way not to do that," Charles protests, wondering what the hell kind of thought process, what kind of incredibly, insane buildup led up to this complaint, it's just so far out of the realm of reality - not that that's ever been Erik's strong suit -

And he's about to say more, he's about to let Erik have it, because really? But then something hits him, what Erik almost said, and -

Fault. Fault. 'Like you think it's my fault.'

At the same moment that Charles realizes this, he feels their Little Leaguer brush up against his mind.

And then Erik is on his feet, his face gone dark, and he says, "I didn't say that. Don't put words in my mouth. And you stay out of my head."

"I didn't say anything," and before Charles is done saying this, he's already figured out what just happened here. "And I haven't gone anywhere near your head, I'll have you know."

What he doesn't add, what he only thinks - and at a normal thinking volume, being ever so careful not to project it in any way, is this: 'But I daresay you were just in mine.'

Erik's face grows even darker, something that's evidently possible. "Don't be stupid, Charles."

And so saying, he turns around and stalks back out, slamming the door behind him so hard that Charles is somewhat astonished that it remains on its hinges.

"That went well," Charles tells his stomach a minute or two later. It wouldn't be on for him to criticize Erik out loud in her presence, so he does not add, 'For an occasionally intelligent man, your other father is being awfully thick at the moment.'

But he does think it (though very, very softly).

Her only apparent opinion about the entire subject involves a soft kick at what may or may not be Charles' liver, with the equivalent of a yawn before she falls fast asleep.

(awfully thick at the moment)

There's an echo in Erik's head: a clear, quiet undercurrent, like the one at the back of his mind when he’s reading a book. He pauses at the end of the hall for a moment, then shakes his head to clear it and continues on his way.

He barely sleeps at all that night, too wound up, too intent on poking and prodding at her with his mind when she goes too long without fidgeting at him. He can't relax enough to settle, though she seems all too happy to go to sleep on him after her little stunt (whatever that was, he can't deny even to himself that it scared him. Not knowing what it was scares him more; not knowing if she'll do it again scares him the most).

For the next few days, Erik remains on edge, waiting for something - for anything - to happen. When not much does for days, and then a week, he's finally able to relax enough to try for a good night's sleep.

Except that she's taken exception to his interrupting her beauty sleep all the nights in-between, because from then on, every time Erik lies down for the night - or even, when he grows desperate, for a mid-afternoon nap - she waits until he's just drifting off, then jerks him awake with a barrage of kicks or a somersault.

As strange, as alien to him as her movements still are, they don't bother him - a good, strong kick means all is well with her. Erik is used to physical discomfort, and this at least has a purpose, a meaning other than suffering for the sake of suffering.

What does bother him is the dreams. He'll realize later than they actually began weeks before he first identifies them as what they are; that while they come in fully realized sequence now, they also came in snapshots before that, a flash here or a flash there and then gone, crushed beneath the weight of his own nightmares.

Erik knows his own dreams, the old enemies and the new ones; knows their weight and texture, the jagged edges of them. So he knows, too, when new dreams come to him that cannot be his own.

He dreams, the first time, of mirror shards all around him, reflecting back a beast at monstrous angles: blue fur and yellow eyes, huge hands with blackened fingernails, all staring back at him no matter where he turns.

On another night he dreams of flying, soaring in the air on his own breath, a triumph that turns on a moment to horror as he begins to fall; he tries to scream, then, to regain his control, but no sound emerges and he continues to plummet, waking just as the ground surges up to take him.

Later still, he dreams he's examining his wings, the one whole again to cautious hands and disbelieving eyes, a perfect twin to the other as ever it was before; but even as he holds them out before him in wonder, they begin to shrivel between his fingers, both of them, touched as if by his own poison until they're nothing but crusted nubs between his shoulder blades.

He wakes from these dreams disoriented, unsure of where - of who - he is. But as bad as they are, they're no worse than any of his own dreams, and far better than most of them. There's a foreignness, a disconnect about them that's almost welcome, once he pieces everything together again, when he remembers that he is Erik and not Hank or Sean or Angel. Then they're not his anymore: not his dreams to worry over, not his problem.

They're not his dreams, and, when it comes down to it, they don't bother him.

But then, one night, he dreams that he wakes one morning and swings his legs out of bed. Examines the carpet, revels in the once-familiar rough softness of it between his toes, beneath the pads of his feet. Stands with care, noting the extension of his knees, the way his center of balance shifts as he trusts his feet to hold him. Takes a step, and then another, toward the door, pausing halfway there for a few moments within the pane of light from the window, registering the heat bright on the backs of his feet, radiating underneath them.

Continues across the room again, raises his hand to the doorknob; then draws it back, looks back down at his feet, feels an edge of panic slicing through him as he realizes that something is missing, here, that something is wrong - that if he's made some bargain for this, he may have traded away something far too dear -

He reaches again for the doorknob, twists it, steps out into the darkness of the hallway beyond -

And sits up in his bed gasping and shivering, bathed in sweat, his sheets kicked down and strangled around his legs, constricting him. It takes a minute or two before he's calm to reach down and unwrap the sheets, to cast them aside so that he can stand on shaking legs, stagger toward the bathroom to take a piss as he's had to wake to do so often lately with or without dreams to wake him.

Afterward, he flicks on the bathroom light and throws water on himself at the sink, and rubs and rubs the salt from his face, out of his eyes. He dries off with a towel, then sets it down and stares at himself in the mirror, almost startled not to see a different face looking back at him.

When he lies back down, he falls immediately back into sleep, too tired and too drained to keep himself awake wondering what's going to happen next. If he dreams further that night, or if she tries to punish him with more of her wild rattling around, he doesn't know it.

Erik wakes in the morning and looks down at his gut, and says, "What are you doing to me?" But it comes out sounding too - hard, accusing - and so after a moment he adds, "My dear."

*

Week 27

When Darwin calls, Charles is already sitting at the desk in his study, and picks up on the second ring.

He listens to the story - stranded, car broken down, no money for a tow and never mind repairs - Darwin's voice steady as he explains, Alex's voice sharp in the background as he clarifies or challenges Darwin’s points.

Charles waits until Darwin comes to a full stop, then says, "I'm sure I'll regret asking this, but even if your car won't run, what's stopping the two of you from driving the Corvette back?"

There's a long pause at the other end of the line, and then Darwin says, "Well, there was this explosion...."

"What? Don't tell him that!"

"And we're not sure, but the cops might be looking for us...."

"Don't tell him that either!"

"Marvelous." Charles pinches the bridge of his nose, then rubs his eye sockets for a few moments. Then, in a voice that is, all thing considered, exceptionally level, he adds, "All right. We'll be there for you in just a bit. Don't you worry, and sit tight."

"Thank you," Darwin says. "We really appreciate it."

"Bye now." Charles hangs up the phone, offers up a moment of silence to the ghost of his Corvette (he would never have driven it again, but that's not to say he wouldn't have gone down to the garage to look at it, every so often), and then tries to figure how, exactly, he's going to get there. Over these past few months, it's always been Alex who's driven him when he needs to venture off the grounds for this doctor's appointment or that one.

Charles thinks through his options. Hank's out, no question about that, too self-conscious of his new form even now to so much as leave the house. Sean's not an option either; he can drive, is even enthusiastic about it, but has the most unfortunate tendency to drift over the center line and then overcompensate, shrieking all the while.

Which leaves Angel, or -

Which leaves Angel.

Charles seeks about the mansion with his mind. He finds Angel with no difficulty and takes the teeniest, tiniest peek to see if - yes. Yes. Angel can drive. Quite well, in fact. She observes the posted speed limit, uses the turn signal, slows for yellow lights; and if she occasionally cuts around other drivers with a sense of impatience for going well under the speed limit, well, she's not dangerous about it, and that's good enough for Charles.

It's most unfortunate, then, that it's not good enough for Angel.

"No," she says the moment she sees where this is going, shaking her head vigorously and backing away. "No. I’m not taking you. You can forget it."

"But," Charles says, and, before continuing, takes a second peek into her mind, this time to try to work out just what, exactly, the objection is, and how to overcome it. The first thing he comes across is a remarkably vivid image of himself with his hair on fire, which is alarming for several reasons. For one, he really doubts that charred bald would be a good look on him. "Never mind then."

He wheels back out into the hallway - thinking, as he does, about guilt and grief, and about anger as a mask. He wonders if he ought to try speaking to her about it later, once Alex and Darwin are safe back home again.

Charles lingers mid-way between his study and Erik's room, debating whether he wants to go on and bring Erik into it, or if it would be better to give in and call for a car instead. The latter is something he's managed to avoid thus far, cringing away from discussing his newfound limitations with strangers except where absolutely necessary; and further, shying away from placing himself in any situation where he must depend upon anyone he doesn't already know. It hardly matters that he'll never be helpless, regardless of appearances, or that there's no such thing as a stranger when he can seek out anything he needs to know about anyone in the blink of an eye.

It hardly matters, because there are still days when he looks out the window at a clear blue sky and sees shadows clustered on the lawn, and missiles overhanging in the air; and though it only ever lasts a moment, it always looms over him the rest of that day.

In the end, even as tense as things have been with Erik, his decision is never really in doubt.

So Charles turns toward Erik's room, where he senses Erik's presence, and hopes that Erik will be willing to help. As he gets closer, he can't deny that he feels an ache of anticipation as well. He's kept his word about not stalking Erik by proxy, and hasn't gone out of his way to run into him in person either. Outside of the occasional peek into other heads to see how Erik looks to other eyes (irritable, for the most part; tired, underneath it), he has remained entirely hands-off out of respect for Erik's wishes.

He knocks at Erik's door, and after a minute or so Erik opens it. Though it’s past noon, he’s still in his bathrobe, and looks even more tired to Charles’ eyes than he has through other people's memories.

And even more irritable as well, judging by the stink-eye he immediately levels at Charles. "What do you want?" he demands.

It's not the opening Charles could have hoped for, but he'll take it. "I've had a telephone call from Darwin. Seems he and Alex have broken down off the side of the road, an hour or so away from here."

Erik's stink-eye gets a bit stinkier. "And?"

"And," Charles continues, "as I obviously can't drive to get them on my own, I need someone to take me. There's no one else, and it's life or death." This latter may be a bit of a stretch, but Charles has never been too terribly concerned about little white lies.

The stink eye remains unwavering, and Charles can't begin to guess what's going on behind it.

Erik is going to say no, Charles realizes when the moment drags on and on with no softening of Erik's expression. Despite everything else he's ever said about mutants sticking together, protecting and helping each other, he's going to say no.

But then, after what feels like several months but in actuality is probably no more than thirty seconds, Erik's expression clears up - well, becomes slightly less overcast, at any rate - and he says, "Let me get dressed first," and shuts the door in Charles' face.

"I'll be down in the garage," Charles calls moments later when he's managed to process what just happened. He turns himself around and wheels in the direction of the lift. For the first time in weeks he actively notes the lift doors, still melted around the edges and inclined up against the wall to gather dust.

On his way down, he notes, too, the motion of metal all around him, buzzing with life at the back of his mind. His sense of it ebbs and flows, softest when she's sleeping, loudest when she's enthusiastically awake (the latter often occurring in the middle of the night, when he'll wake to her insistent kicking, the metal objects on his stomach tickling as she moves them about at her whim). It seemed a bit odd to him when it first began happening a few days ago - though not as odd as it could have, had he not spent a considerable amount of time exploring Erik’s mind, way back when.

Charles reaches the garage, wheels around to the passenger side of the Ford they'll be driving, and sets to getting himself situated. Some of the first modifications Hank made to anything to make his life easier were made to this car. Charles is more grateful for the extra handles every time he goes anywhere, even more so now that his mobility, which had improved a great deal with practice and the new strength of his arms, is decreasing again, courtesy of the increasing bulk around his middle.

Even so, by the time Erik shows up, Charles has had time enough to get himself settled, and enough time beyond that to lean backward and close his eyes, slow his breathing and wait on his heart to stop trying to beat its way out of his chest.

Erik opens the door, slides into the driver's side, and begins to fiddle with the seat, first pulling the lever to lurch it as far backward as it'll go, then bringing it back up, back and forth and back and forth until he's satisfied with it. Then he begins adjusting the mirrors, first the driver's side mirror and then the rearview - and Charles could swear that he takes a moment to admire his own reflection. The man is vain, he's always been.

Not that Charles is complaining - he's always loved watching Erik's pre-driving ritual, always performed at the beginning of each day on the road whether or not he was the last person to drive the car (and generally speaking, he had been, claiming that Charles' own driving gave him a headache). In fact, Charles is so absorbed in watching it - so occupied in realizing, for the first time, that there’s something underneath the ritual; that the metal is humming to Erik’s touch as he inspects it with his powers, making it react so minutely that Charles never noticed it before, never could have - that he forgets one other small detail right up until Erik stops fiddling with things and turns the key in the ignition, bringing the engine roaring to life.

And once he does remember, glancing to the open passenger door and the wheelchair still sitting on the concrete, he remembers something else too -

("throwing that in my face, rubbing my nose in it”)

- and he actually considers reaching over, nudging the wheelchair out of the way to close the car door and have them on their way. But the mere thought of going anywhere without it shoots off a spark of anxiety deep in his gut. He's never felt so uneasy at the prospect of separation from any inanimate object; but then, he's never so wholly depended on one before either. As much as he knows, as much as he's already reminded himself several times today that his own gift means he'll never be powerless (at least in situations involving neither Emma nor Erik's hideous helmet) - well. He is simply unwilling to leave without it.

"Erik," he says, going for casual, unconcerned, as though he hasn't just gotten the feeling, a dampening of his palms and a sinking in his stomach, that this is going to go over badly. "My apologies, I should have mentioned this before you got comfortable - but my wheelchair has to come with us. I need you to put it in the trunk before we go."

Erik turns to look at him then, slowly, slowly; then looks past him, to the chair. "You're serious," he says, voice thick with suspicion.

"No, Erik," Charles says, and he's tried so hard, he has, to be understanding - but this is too damned much, it really is; he can't help the scorn that drips from his lips. "I arranged all of this, Darwin and Alex and everything else, for the sole purpose to sticking it to you about the damned wheelchair." He allows Erik to take this in for a moment before going on. "Yes, I'm serious. I can't do it myself or I would. Clearly."

Erik stares at him for a long, long moment, then struggles out of the car - not so trim about the waist himself anymore, Charles notes; it's possible he's even bigger around than Charles at this point.

Though Charles worries for a moment that Erik will simply stalk back into the house, he doesn't. Charles looks resolutely forward as Erik rolls the wheelchair back, as he struggles quite audibly to fold it up, not so much as glancing at the rear view mirror to see what all the particularly dramatic banging and grunting is all about. He doesn't look, and he finds himself fuming, silently, at Erik's gall, Erik's nerve to make this all about Erik when it's Charles who has to live with it every day of his life.

He's still fuming when Erik drops back into the driver's seat, still fuming when they somehow manage to slam their doors closed in sync, still fuming as Erik directs the car out of the garage.

Still fuming, when he looks down at his hand and realizes that at some point he's plucked up a wheat penny from off of his stomach; and that it is melting around the edges into his palm. This ceases at almost the moment he notices it, and cools and hardens in the span of another moment into a new, identifiable but misshapen form.

"Are you done," Erik says, jolting Charles out of his own head.

"...What?" Charles asks.

"I'm not going to listen to you the entire way," Erik says.

In his shock, it takes Charles a few seconds to catch up to this. "I am so sorry, Erik, for thinking things and having thoughts," he answers when he does. "Let me assure you, I will endeavor not to do so any more. Now, turn left out of the drive, if you would."

Then, he proceeds to think, loudly as he can without actually projecting it: Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium....

And underneath it, he fumes a little more; while also marveling on how it can be, that he held melting copper in his hand without being burnt.

A little while later, around the second time he gets up to Bismuth, he runs out of steam for fuming, and can't help but glance once or twice at Erik, wondering how it is that he can be so near, and yet so far away. It's not a barrier he has the first idea how to breach.

(Cesium. Barium. Lanthanum -)

Erik doesn't realise how much he's tensed up, hunched over the steering wheel with every muscle gone tight in his back and neck and shoulders, until the echo at the back of his mind fades away, leaving him with a hollow, almost sick feeling in the silence. After a few minutes of nothing other than one "turn right at the stop sign, please," Erik leans back into his seat. If he were alone, he'd reach up to massage the pain out of his shoulders, but he's not going to show that much weakness in front of Charles. He's not going to let Charles see that he's getting to him.

So Erik keeps his hands on the steering wheel, and glances inward to check up on her. She's fallen asleep, which isn't a surprise - there's always something that's not him happening in his head when she's awake, and all is quiet right now - and she's sucking at her thumb as she snoozes.

After a while, he sneaks a glance at Charles out of the corner of his eye. He's looking out the passenger window, fiddling with an object in his hand. Something metal, hidden from view; if Erik cared to find out what it is, he could brush against it with his power and know in a moment.

But he doesn't (doesn't look; and more, doesn't care).

He does find it harder, as the minutes and scenery go by, not to linger over the small metal things attached to Charles' gut. It's been weeks since he's been this close to her (and Charles). It's been weeks since Charles decided Erik isn't worth approaching unless he wants something out of him. Being this close, he can't help but wonder about her, and it agitates at him, makes him itch with how much he doesn't know. He tries to ignore it, but the harder he tries the more doggedly it digs at him, just like any other itch, until he can't help but scratch it.

"What does she think of it?" he blurts, when he can't take it anymore.

Charles startles, then turns to look at him. "What was that? I didn't catch what you said."

"I asked what she thinks of it," Erik says, cringing inside as he does. He can hear just how pitiful he sounds, begging for crumbs out of Charles this way.

"...Thinks of what? I'm not following."

"This. What does she think of this." He waves his hand over the dashboard. Now that he's having to explain it, he cringes because not only does it sound pitiful, it sounds stupid. "Riding around in the car. It's metal. It's moving. What does she think of it?"

"Ah," Charles says. "Well, she's gone to sleep now, but she seems to like the vibrations."

Erik likes the vibrations, too; and he's always likes driving for just that reason. More than likes it - once he's familiarized himself with a car, tried and tested the way it moves, the way it feels at the back of his mind, it becomes an extension of his will, even when all he's using to control it are the steering wheel and the pedals. Sometimes, when he's driving over familiar ground, or over long stretches of highway, he won't even have to think about what he's doing or where he's going, but will slip into a sort of fugue state (he made the mistake, once, of mentioning this to Charles, who then tried to claim that this is not unique to Erik, that almost everyone with any amount of experience in driving does the same. Erik didn't believe it then, and he doesn't believe it now).

He's wound up too tight to slip into daydreams now, but thinking that she might have this in common with him too is cheering. He can feel his own features softening, the way they always seem to when her sister does anything to catch his attention.

He looks out of the corner of his eye to see if Charles has noticed; he's looking right at Erik, so he probably has. Erik's jaw clenches, and he stares ahead at the road, refusing to glance back over.

After a few more minutes of silence, absolute outside of the rumble of the engine, Charles clears his throat and asks, "Have you thought of a name yet?" He pauses. "For the baby," he clarifies then, as if he thinks Erik is too dense to make the connection.

Erik actually hadn't thought about it, not until this moment. When he thinks about her, she's always been 'her' or 'she' to him. He's not stupid, he's been aware as long as he's known about her that this pregnancy will eventually result in a child. But somehow, it never occurred to him that she'll need a name, that he'll have find something to call her other than she, her, you.

Now that it has occurred to him, he doesn't even need to think about it. It isn't a question, and there is only one answer, that squeezes in his chest and his gut and his throat.

"Edie," Erik says. What else would he call her? What else could he? There may be a wealth of options where Charles is concerned, but not for Erik. He has so little of his mother - no photograph, no momentos, nothing but snatches of memory, faded and spotty. The only recollection Erik has of her that's anything close to clear is the one Charles pulled out of the recesses for him. He always shies away from bringing that one to the forefront of his mind, fearing that if he looks at it too closely or too often, it too will escape from him. He spent more than half his life tracking down Shaw for his mother's sake, but what it comes down to in the end is that he'll never be able to forget Shaw's face, while he can barely remember hers. The only solid, the only real, the only tangible thing he has of her is this: "Edie," he says again, swallowing back against the tightness in his throat.

"That's beautiful," Charles says, softly.

Erik blinks to clear his vision. Then he blinks again. He breathes, in and out, stares hard at the road ahead until the urge to weep - of all the things he won't allow himself to do in front of Charles again - passes him by.

"What about you?" he asks brusquely when he's subdued that urge, beaten it back down into some semblance of submission. "Have you thought of one yet? For yours?"

"Ah," Charles says. "Well, you know, I've been considering a few that I like, but I've just about decided to call her Emily."

"Emily?" Erik says. "Why Emily?"

"It's pretty. I like it." Charles pauses a moment, then adds, "I should think you'd like it, too, Erik."

Erik glances toward Charles to see that he's looking at Erik again (or still looking at Erik), and he's smiling.

"...Why would I like it?" Erik asks, after turning this over in his mind and failing to find the trap. He knows it's there, Charles doesn't smile like that - a little crooked, smug enough to suffocate - unless there's something lying in wait underneath it.

"Well," Charles says, "Erik, Edie, Emily. There's an awfully lot of E's in there. Seems like something you'd get a kick out of."

On the one hand, Erik is fully aware that Charles' argument amounts to an appeal to vanity, which he never hesitated to use on Erik, before; that he's not hesitating to use it now either is insulting, and it chafes.

On the other hand, the more he thinks about it, the more he does like the idea of all those E's.

The result is that Erik finds himself trying to think of a way to agree with Charles' point without actually having to concede it. So he picks at it, gnaws on it, and finally manages, "That might be acceptable."

He's aware that this is somewhat weak, a little bit watery as an argument compared to what he was aiming for, and that nags at him - but not as much as it should, as he considers both names, as he turns them over in his mind, getting to know them, repeating them to himself until they don't seem strange, until they seem to connect to their future owners in the same way that 'Erik' does to himself and 'Charles' does to Charles.

"See, I know you you'd like that," Charles says. "You're really quite predictable that way."

And Erik is so lost in his thoughts of Edie and Emily, Erik and Charles, that he falls back into an old habit from back in the days when he and Charles were together in cars for eight, ten, twelve hours at a stretch as they sought out other mutants. An old habit from back in the days when they'd talk and argue and laugh together, or else sitting companionable in the silence, with none of the awkwardness or resentment, none of the suspicion, none of the sour taste of knowing that Charles doesn't want him, that he never really did:

Erik reaches out, absent-minded, unthinking, and gives Charles a fond pat just above his knee, as he has so many times before.

His body remembers before his mind catches up to it. He snatches his hand back to the steering wheel, has it in a death grip before he registers the thinness of Charles' thigh to his fingers, the loss of muscle mass.

"I didn't mean -" Erik says, not knowing what he didn't mean; and, not knowing, unable to finish.

"...It's all right, Erik, really," Charles says.

Erik stares straight ahead at the road. He doesn't answer. Even if he wanted to, even if he tried, even if he knew what he wanted to say, he doesn't know that he could. There's something caught in his throat, choking him; he can barely breathe through it, much less talk around it.

It is, suddenly, stiflingly hot in the car. His skin is crawling with it, he's suffocating under the weight of it. He might as well be standing right next to a furnace dressed under layers of wool. He reaches over and starts cranking the window down. The rush of air into the car barely helps.

Charles says something, and this time Erik doesn't catch anything other than the sharpness of his tone, his words muffled as if he's speaking from somewhere outside of the car.

"...What?" Erik says, and knows, distantly, that it comes out sounding - wild, manic, hysterical, and his heart is thrashing in his chest, pulsing loud, so loud in his ears, and every breath in or out comes paired with a sharp pain in his chest, and he's dying, he's dying right now, he's going to die right here, and in front of Charles, pathetically -

Charles says something else, and this time it sounds like, "- right - you - over - Erik?"

And then, inside of his head: Erik, you need to pull over. Please.

Erik stomps down on the brake and jerks the steering wheel to the right. The moment the car thumps to a halt on the shoulder of the road, he throws his door open and struggles out of his seat, then staggers back to the rear of the car, holding onto it with his hand for balance.

The metal is warm against his hand, warm against his mind - and then suddenly, it's still warm against his hand, but it may as well be made of plastic for all the sense he has of it. He can't feel anything where he's used to sensing metal all of the time: not any of the car's panels, not the small trinkets Charles has on his stomach, not the tongues on the seatbelts or the teeth of his zipper, the eyelets of his shoes - it's gone, all of it, and its absence screams in the silence. It's the third time in his life this has happened to him, and he's going to die without even the comfort of metal cocooning him -

He braces himself against the trunk of the car, and then he feels her moving, kicking at him, she's woken up, and he realizes: he's not dying, he's in labor, he's going to give birth right here by the side of the road -

And it's so early, it's too early, she can't, she can't come now, and Erik knows, he knows that if she comes now she won't be able to breathe - she'll drown, she'll -

Erik, comes Charles' voice inside his head, again. Erik. You're not - you're not in labor and you're not dying, and she's fine - a little agitated, but she's alright, she really is, I swear it.

GET OUT, Erik thinks back at him, and he pushes Charles away as hard as he can - which isn't very, his focus tattered and in fragments, but it's enough to get the point across, because Charles goes, leaving Erik alone. As soon as he does, Erik wishes him back, desperately, not wanting to be by himself, wanting something to hold onto that isn't unspeaking, dead metal - but it's too late.

Gradually, the pain in Erik's chest subsides, and the erratic beating of his heart quiets down; slowly, the fever breaks, and he feels a breeze, cool against the damp of his skin. Last of all, his sense of metal returns, more slowly than the rest of it. At first the metal all around is no more than a ghostly presence, something that fades away when he looks straight at it, like fog eyed by the sun; but slowly, slowly it comes back into focus for him, the car and all the metal in it, all the metal on him and all that's on Charles, that he's wearing or that's attached to him.

And finally - after how long, Erik doesn't know - he's himself again, or as close as he's going to get for right now, though he still feels a little weak, and when he looks down at his hands they're shaking. He straightens, walks back to the still-open front door, and slides back into the driver's seat. He sets his hands firmly onto the steering wheel, clutches it hard in his grip to keep his hands from shaking. He doesn't look at Charles; doesn't so much as think about Charles, not wanting to give her ideas about telling him what Charles thinks about all of this. That Charles saw him like that - whatever that was - is bad enough without knowing what his opinion about it is.

He turns the key in the ignition - recalling neither putting the car into park nor turning off the engine, though he must have done both - and pulls back onto the road, wary as he does it, not sure that he won't end up pulling over again if whatever that was comes back.

"We could -" Charles says, several minutes later when they're up to the speed limit, but then he stops short.

"We could what," Erik demands, still not looking anywhere but at the road in front of them, keeping his grip tight on the steering wheel, the car itself held equally hard with his power lest he lose it again.

Charles sighs. "I was going to say that we could turn around and go back home if you don't feel up to it, but Alex and Darwin really do need -"

"It's fine," Erik interrupts, too weary now to bother being hurt that Charles would automatically put Alex and Darwin's welfare above his own, without even asking more than half of a question. "I don't care."

"All right."

Everything goes quiet then, and all Erik can think is that he's so tired - and he's been tired, he's been exhausted for weeks, but now he's far beyond that; drained, wrung out, and he feels like he could lie down and sleep for several days straight, never mind what dreams she might send him or what abuse she might offer to his ribs.

"You're projecting, a bit," Charles says a few minutes later, and gives out a dramatic yawn, as if to prove some sort of point.

Erik knows he's not projecting, not the way that Charles means - he suspects that what's actually happening is that she's telling Charles all about it. Stop that, he thinks at her. He can't tell if she does or not, but he doubts it. She's never been inclined to listen to him yet, so he doesn't see her starting now.

Erik grunts, and ignores Charles, resigns himself to grimly boring his way through the rest of this.

He's not so tired as to start yawning along with Charles - not that the urge doesn't come over him, but that's a reaction to Charles' yawning, not his own desire, and he stamps it down - not tired enough to lose grip on the car and start drifting into the other lane; but he is tired enough, and so determined not to pay any attention to Charles, that he misses Charles reaching toward him until Charles' fingers brush his own. Erik nearly does veer off the road in his surprise when they do - and would have, if he didn't have the car under a greater level of control than afforded by the steering wheel.

Surprise turns to shock as he looks to see Charles' hand wrapping around his own; and his first instinct, his first impulse is to fling it away, to reject whatever game Charles is playing here.

But he's tired, and his reaction time isn't what it would be otherwise, and the urge to hurl Charles away is superseded by the realization of how good Charles' hand feels, in his own. And on the strength of that realization, plus the thought that he can't let Charles think Erik is predictable, that he'll react the way Charles expects him to, Erik, instead of dropping Charles' hand, winds their fingers together, and holds on tightly.

He gets a flash of surprise - not his - inside his mind, along with a flicker of something else, something warm and - pleasant - that flits away again the second he notices it.

Erik changes his mind. He wants to know what Charles is thinking; wants to know it desperately, now. He glances down at his gut, and tries to convey this to her. What he gets back isn't much of anything, a sense of sleepiness along with an orange-black glow all around, like light seen through closed eyelids.

That's not useful, he thinks at her, though it lacks bite.

A minute or two later, Charles sighs and says, "We're just about there. Turn right at the next street sign," and pulls his hand away from Erik's.

Erik directs the car as indicated, and he's just trying to work out a way to get Charles' hand back without actually having to admit to wanting it, when he senses something small and metal moving back and forth wildly. He catches sight of Alex waving them down from the ditch on the other side of the road, the sunlight glinting off the face of his watch.

Erik pulls onto the shoulder, puts the car into park, gets out and crosses over to where Alex is standing, partway in the ditch. When he gets closer, he sees Darwin is there too, sitting on the side of his taxi, which has become one with the ditch.

"...What are you doing here?" Alex asks, sounding more agitated than anyone who looks like he does right now has the right to (there's what looks like blood mixed with dirt caked to one side of his face and in his hair, and there are three large burn holes in his shirt. What Erik wouldn't give to have seen any of that happen).

Erik ignores this - though he keeps close tabs on Alex's watch, in case it becomes necessary to break him - and reaches out a hand to the taxi. It rises up in the air, shedding some dirt and a few weeds as it does. When it's up high enough, Darwin slides off and onto the ground, and then moves off to the side, allowing Erik enough room to turn the taxi over and set it down on its wheels.

The right side of the taxi is crumpled up enough that it's not going to go anywhere on its own without a lot of work. And as much as Erik knows about the metal parts of cars, they come with non-metal parts too and there's nothing he can do about them.

"You," Erik says then, gesturing to Alex, and then back at the taxi. "In. And you, in there," this time gesturing to Darwin, and then at the other car.

"Why do I have to -" Alex says.

"Because you match it," Erik interrupts. "And Charles doesn't want you bleeding all over his car."

If Erik thought Charles actually gave a damn about the car, he'd be deliberating about whether or not it would be worth it to ride all the way back to the mansion in the same space as Alex; as it is, he has no compunction about banishing him.

Alex opens his mouth to protest, and Erik is ready to give his watch a twist when Charles calls out, "Do as he asks, please, Alex. We really need to get going."

Alex makes a huffing sound, and then climbs into the driver's side of the taxi. Darwin likewise gets into the backseat of the Ford. Erik walks back over, fits himself into the driver's seat once again. As he takes the Ford into a three-point turn he levitates the taxi several inches off the blacktop and whisks it around, much more abruptly than necessary, and then passes it, making sure to wink at Alex as he does.

"Is this really necessary?" Charles asks, looking in the rear view mirror at the taxi floating along behind them. "I'm going to get a headache if I have to keep everyone else on the road from seeing that, all the way back. Is there some reason we couldn't call for a tow truck instead?"

"I thought this was an emergency," Erik says, cuttingly. "It's life or death, remember? That's what you told me."

"Ah," Charles says. "About that - it was serious: property damage, a bit of a manhunt, though thankfully they were off in the wrong direction - but I took care of all that just now, while you were spinning Alex around like a top." Then, to Darwin, he adds, "Does Alex have some sort of vendetta against statues? That makes two now. Not to mention my poor Corvette."

Darwin laughs, sounding startled. "I guess he might," he says. "I hadn't thought of it like that."

"Not to mention mannequins, good lord," Charles says, and goes on and on about it; Erik stops paying attention after a minute or two, not having any more patience for all the minutiae now than he did before.

Erik just drives, not paying attention to much other than keeping the taxi in line behind them, until she starts waking up again, groggy at first at the back of his mind, but then, suddenly, coming fully awake, all at once -

And what he gets from her, then, is as clear as anything else she's ever told him: there aren't just five presences, here in the car. There are six, and the sixth isn't Alex, seething in the taxi behind them. It's too close for that, centered right on Darwin the way that she herself is connected to Erik, the way her sister is connected to Charles.

It's just as clear, from her enthusiasm, that the new one is much, much more interesting to her than either of her parents, her sister, or Darwin himself, by virtue of being unfamiliar.

His first impulse is to laugh, and laugh, but he tries to hold it off, bite it back, because it's funny, it's hilarious, but probably not to Darwin.

"Erik," Charles says, carefully, doubtfully, after Erik cuts off a laugh-snort a little too conspicuously, "Erik, are you all right? Are you having a stroke?"

Erik is aware of empathy, as a concept. He's just not very good at it. And so, at Charles' question, he loses what little control he had, and begins howling with laughter, so hard that tears start streaking down his cheeks.

"What in the name of god -"

"Look," Erik says, when he's able to talk again. He jerks his thumb backwards.

"For the love of...." Charles begins, trailing off; then, Erik sees him craning around to look at Darwin in the back seat. "Oh, surely not."

Erik glances in the rearview mirror to see Darwin shading his face with one hand. He looks like he wants to melt into the seat. Considering his mutation, it's surprising he hasn't.

"Does Alex know?" Charles asks, when Erik's sniggering has died down. "You clearly do."

"I haven't told him yet," Darwin says.

"Well, don't you worry, I won't say a word. I wouldn't dream of letting the cat out of the bag before you're comfortable doing so yourself," Charles says - sounding gratingly smug about it for no reason Erik can think of.

The rest of the drive back is relatively uneventful: Darwin looking uncomfortable in the back seat, Charles trying to strike up conversation with him every few minutes, Erik sniggering, his baby intent on making a new friend, Charles' sleeping through it all.

By the time they pull into the driveway back at the mansion, Erik has long since realized two things: he has never gotten in his shot at Alex; and he will never have a better chance than this.

So, when Alex gets out of the taxi, Erik is waiting for him.

"...Why are you looking at me like that?" Alex asks.

"Alex," Erik says. "Congratulations. You're going to be a daddy."

"WHAT?" Alex says.

"Erik," Charles chides.

"Oh god," Darwin says.

*

Everyone gathers around, looking at the picture on the ultrasound display. No one in the room can possibly doubt what they're seeing. They've all been present at at least one of Charles' own ultrasounds - all of them but Erik, at any rate (and Angel, who isn't at this one, either, for the stated reason that since she actually has ovaries, she's concerned she could get pregnant from merely breathing the same air as three pregnant men).

It makes Charles wonder if that's something Erik would like to see - or if he's had one of his own yet; and if not, if he would want one. It's hard to say. It's hard to say anything when it comes to Erik, who went from laughing and loose five minutes ago, to tense and quiet now. Probably he's just tired; in fact, he's leaning against the counter in a way that suggests it's all that's holding him up at the moment.

Charles ought to tell him to go take a nap - but for one thing, Erik's not likely to listen to anything he says, and for another, Charles isn't sure if there's any chance of enjoying the dubious pleasure of Erik's company again any time soon once he does go.

"Was that an explosion?" Sean asks, which is enough to make Charles forget about Erik, for a moment.

He glances at Sean, who's pointing at the ultrasound display.

"You're seeing things," Hank says, frowning, and then opens his mouth again, very likely intending to make some sort of remark about Sean's weed intake -

Which is when it happens again, this time with six pairs of eyes to witness it: a very clear flash of light, different from any of the other, normal motion they've seen so far.

It appears to be coming from the head.

Alex turns bone-white; Hank's eyes go wide, and all three of the boys turn to Darwin, looking for all the world as though they expect him to spontaneously combust -

Which, of course they do. Obviously they do. It's no wonder that Darwin left - if this is why he went to begin with, which Charles has little doubt is the case. He's likely to have the most smothering pregnancy in existence.

"Someone may want to catch Alex before he passes out," Charles suggests, as he's on the wrong side of the exam table to do it himself.

Sean rushes in to do it, as Hank is too busy pressing the ultrasound wand down and staring at the screen while muttering to himself.

It's at this point that Erik straightens up and turns to go.

Charles' hand darts out before he has the first idea what he's going to say. He's aiming for Erik's hand, but winds up grabbing his wrist instead. "Erik," he says when Erik's eyes meet his. The heartbeat in Erik's wrist and the pulse in Charles' thumb battle against each other as Charles tries to think of something, of anything to say - something convincing, something enticing enough that Erik will seek out his company instead of continuing to avoid it. But he only has a second or two to come up with anything, and so it ends up being the same old, same old. "I wish you would come and play a game of chess with me, now and again. I miss that."

Hard as it is to do, he releases Erik's wrist before Erik gets around to jerking away.

To his great surprise, Erik nods, once, and then turns again to leave.

Then, when he's halfway across the room, Erik turns back around, looks at Darwin, and says, "I wouldn't worry about it. We're the next stage of evolution. You'll be fine."

And on that note, he makes his exit - and probably a good thing, too, as otherwise Charles might have responded with something along the lines of, 'That's all very well and good, Erik, but aren't you the one who needs me to keep little Edie in check so that she doesn't turn your brain to mush?'

He can't imagine that that would help matters in the least.

*

Erik goes to his room and collapses into bed, and that's all he remembers until he wakes up in the dark to her flailing at him - and pressing down on his bladder. He makes it to the bathroom just in time, having perfected his four-yard dash-waddle from the bed to the toilet weeks ago.

His clothes are sticking to him - he's been sweating in his sleep - his head is fuzzy, and his mouth tastes like rot - it's all revolting, so even though it's nowhere near morning, he brushes his teeth and takes a long, hot shower. Afterward, he dresses and heads out into the hall, taking a roundabout route to the kitchen that just so happens to pass right by Charles' study.

Charles is in there, something Erik would know with or without sensing the metal sticking to him, and with or without the rhythmic undertone of Charles' thoughts that she's sending him: the door is open, the light's on, the air smells like tea, and Charles is muttering to himself, audible from the hallway.

Erik waits just outside the rectangle of light for a minute, then two, then three, waiting to see if she'll tell him anything more interesting than that Charles is re-reading his own thesis (and he calls Erik vain). But she doesn't.

Chess, Erik recalls. Charles wanted to play chess. That will work well enough as a pretext.

He steps into the room, which fails to drag any response from Charles whatsoever, as he's still engaged in reading (and taking notes on) his thesis.

Erik almost whirls around to leave again, if Charles can't be bothered to notice he's there, but what stops him is recalling that sense of warmth he felt from Charles earlier, in the car. So instead, he says, "Learning anything?"

Charles startles. Then he looks at Erik and smiles. "A little," he says. "If you've come for a game, the board's on the bookshelf in that corner."

They set up the game, and begin to play in relative silence.

Erik gives about half his focus to the game, half to Charles, to listening to what she's telling him (still not much, though it's enough to let him anticipate Charles' moves, which is very useful).

"You're cheating, aren't you," Charles accuses, when Erik wins the first game in a record number of moves. "Reading my mind. Funny, you always liked to accuse me of using that method to win our games, and I never did, but now...."

"We're training," Erik says. "It's important to start young."

Charles stares at him, blinks, then laughs. "I see. Well, in that case."

They play several more games - Erik wins both; given the advantage, he's not going to cast it aside just because it's not fair - both of which Charles spends staring at Erik's hands, like they can somehow give away Erik's strategy.

Halfway through the third game, when Charles is otherwise occupied with trying to find something, anything he can do to keep his queen from being captured when he's already lost both his knights, a rook and a bishop, Erik wonders what else he's thinking, underneath all the surface concerns of the game.

Nothing happens.

Erik considers, then wonders it again. This time, he gets back Charles' feeling that he would very much like something with chocolate in it before heading to bed.

Three more tries, and finally Erik gets something back about himself, about his hands, and about -

He's on his feet before he realizes that he intends to stand.

Charles says, "Oh, are you going already? You're winning...."

"I know," Erik says.

"You like winning," Charles adds, as though he's explaining a simple concept to an imbecile.

"I'll finish winning later," Erik says; and, before Charles can work out what he's doing and object to that too, he crosses around to Charles' side of the desk, leans down - and he's convinced, despite what he just saw, that Charles will turn him down, that he'll turn him away, repudiate him again - and kisses him. Not the tentative, slow kiss of a supplicant, but the hungry, demanding one born of too many months without and no promise of more.

If Charles doesn't like it, it's his own fault for having thoughts.

Erik goes in expecting to be pushed away; and so even when Charles makes a strangled sort of gasp into it, even when Charles's mouth opens to Erik's own, he still doesn't trust it, still thinks it must be some sort of trick. But he'll take it anyway.

Erik tastes like spit, and more spit, and something Charles can only describe as Erik's spit. His mouth is warm against Charles' own; and oh, how Charles has missed this, missed him.

Erik still kisses like he's fighting a battle, lays siege to Charles' mouth as if there's nothing more important than battering their mouths together until they're the same temperature - as if the last few months never happened, as if there's no reason at all to hold back.

Charles presses himself up into the kiss to the best of his ability, and then, when that isn't enough, reaches out to pull Erik down, wanting, needing to get him as close as possible. 'As close as possible' isn't very, considering the angle, and the bulks of their stomachs that would be in the way regardless, but it's still closer than they've been in such a long time, and Charles can't get enough of Erik's mouth - or of Erik's hands, one warm on the side of his neck and the other resting on his stomach, metal objects parting way before it.

Charles has no idea what brought this on, nor does he care. He likely will - give it a minute or two - but for now, all that matters is that he has Erik here, warm and solid to the touch, right under his fingertips; that for once, Erik chose to come to Charles on his own - and for this.

Erik's here in body, and Charles wants so badly to slip into his mind, the way he always used to. Between habit and recklessness - the sense that if they're doing this much he may as well dive right in - he very nearly does it. He yearns to wrap Erik's light all around himself; to make himself at home there, never to leave again.

But much as he wants to, he doesn't. The blackout curtains remain drawn around Erik's mind, just the way Erik wants them, and that's the way things will stay unless little Edie pulls them back to give Charles another peek inside - not something that seems terribly likely.

Erik makes an impatient sound, then stops kissing Charles just long enough to reach over to the armrests on the chair and spin it around so they're actually facing each other (evidently manhandling it around is only offensive when it's inconvenient for him). He then waves vaguely at the air, and Charles hears the door thump closed.

With that, Erik returns to kissing him with gusto. It's better now than before, and Charles slips a hand behind Erik's head, strokes the nape of his neck; Erik responds with a rumbly sort of sound, not quite a growl, against Charles' mouth, and presses in harder.

Charles begins to feel warm, tingly all over, and Erik's hand slides up under his shirt -

And that's when the tittering starts, quiet but insistent, coming from neither and both of them.

The kiss breaks off. Charles looks down at both their stomachs, then back up, catching Erik's eye in a glance so significant, so intimate, so familiar that it makes his breath catch. That glance, brief though it is, is worth untold hours of kissing.

"Ignore it," Erik says. He leans back in and gets back to business without so much as waiting to see if Charles agrees.

But Charles can't ignore it, much as he'd like to. He's not used to having a giggling audience commenting on matters, and it's unnerving to say the least (never mind that they can't possibly have the first idea of what's going on; or at least Charles hopes they don't). More importantly, it's reminded him of how much is at stake here, that it's not just himself he has to think of. If that were all, he could - and probably would - take whatever Erik is willing to give, and tell himself that it's enough. But there's more than him, more than either of them to think of.

Charles lets the kiss go on for longer than he means to, but finally, when Erik shifts away just the slightest bit to change the angle, Charles forces himself to pull back, to put that inch of distance between them and say, "Erik, hold on for - wait a minute."

It never fails to astonish him, how quickly Erik can reverse; suspicion breaks over his face instantly.

"Wait for what," he says.

"We're going a tad quickly here, don't you think?" This is met by a hard stare. "All I mean is - well. We have a great deal we need to talk about, wouldn't you agree?"

Erik glances down and sideways - at the wheelchair - and when he looks back up the expression on his face isn't mere suspicion, but something else, something shuttered.

Charles has seen that look on his face before.

Erik pulls away, stops short at the end of Charles' reach. "Let go of me," he hisses.

Charles realizes his hands have reached out to Erik of their own accord, that his fingers are knuckled white in the front of Erik's shirt. He forces his fists open; lets Erik stagger backward several steps, lets him turn around and walk toward the door.

Lets Erik go, knowing that he could raise his hand to his temple and make him stay make him listen make him want to.

"For God's sake," he says. "I'm not talking about the wheelchair, if that's what you think." Halfway to the door, Erik pauses in his tracks, though he does not turn around. "This isn't your - that was an accident." He isn't quite certain that he means to absolve Erik, exactly, with these words; somehow, it feels more like he's absolving himself. "But, Erik, then you left - and that was on purpose."

He means to go on: to point out that when Erik came back, he came unwillingly; that he's never given any indication that he wants to be here; that he's only going to leave again as soon as he's able to, and take little Edie with him.

Erik doesn't give him the chance.

*

Before he can think better of it, Erik spins around (noting as he does that the doorknob is sweating; that he's not the one doing it), and says, "What are you talking about? You told me to go."

"...What?" Charles asks, as if he doesn't remember, as if this is something Erik's pulling out of his ass. He goes red and blotchy, the way he does, as if he's the one with the right to be angry here; and the next words out of his mouth are a heated denial, words piling up on each other in a rush. "I never did. The hell I did, I never did."

As if Erik hadn't been there. As if he doesn't know damn well how it played out. As if he couldn't recite all of it word for word. "Yes, you did," he says, "you told me to, you wanted me to, so don't you try to lie about it now."

"I never did," Charles says hotly, like repeating it will make it true. "And you're delusional if you think I did."

"I'm delusional?" Erik knows that he should stop, that he should leave before he says something he'll regret later - that he should walk away, before he lays himself bare. He has a tendency to say too much, when it comes to Charles. He hates it. But he can't seem to stop himself; never has been able to, ever since Charles first pulled him up out of the water. "You're the one who said we didn't want the same things, when I asked you to -" and here his voice cracks, and it's pathetic, but it's too late to back off from it now, too late to do anything but carry this to its conclusion "- when I wanted you to come with me. You're the one who decided you didn't want me anymore."

"Didn't want -" Charles begins. Then he stops short, stares. "Wait. Wait. Are you trying to tell me that you left me - left all of us - to die because you thought I broke up with you?"

Erik's face goes hot as he realizes that it's possible to feel even more pathetic, even smaller than he already did in saying the words, in airing everything he's kept wrapped so close and so tightly around himself for all these months. "Stop it," he says. "You're making it sound -"

"Stupid? I can't imagine why. It sounds perfectly reasonable to me." Charles' tone is scathing, sharp enough to slice through steel - and it cuts Erik all the way down to the bone. "Why in the world would anyone think that was stupid?"

Erik doesn't know what he's doing here. He doesn't know why he bothered. He can still feel the imprint of Charles' lips on his own, but that doesn't mean a thing held up against Charles' scorn, the sour taste in the back of his mouth, or the sick twisting in his stomach.

"Go to hell," he spits, and in the moment he turns toward the door he can feel every piece of metal in and around the house: the pennies on Charles' stomach and the eyelets of his shoes, the wiring and the pipes and the nails in his walls. Every bit of it is crisp and clear in his mind, all ready and waiting.

He holds everything still in that moment, lest he bring the house down without meaning it (if he were going to do it, he'd want it to be intentional), then heads toward the door. The doorknob is more than sweating now: it's beginning to melt, though slowly, not even dripping yet - not that it would be enough to slow or hold Erik even if it were.

"Oh, so now you're leaving," Charles says. "Of course you are. I don't know why I expected otherwise. But, Erik, do you know what? Despite whatever it is that you think, I didn't want you to go then, and I don't want you to go now - so if you do, don't you dare try laying the blame on me for it later."

Erik stops, again, almost to the door with his hand stretched out halfway toward it. He turns around, slowly this time, just far enough that he can see Charles, sitting at his desk. "But you," he says, and the words stagger out of him, like there's sand in his mouth. "You want me to leave. You always have. You never wanted me here before, and you don't want me here now."

And though Erik knows that it's stupid, it's pathetic, that he's only giving Charles an opening to hurt him again, he still finds himself waiting for Charles to say that he's wrong.

*

Charles is reeling. Erik, for his part, looks like he might actually cry; looks, too, like he's bracing himself for a blow.

Of all the things Charles thought Erik's anger might be masking, this was not one of them. Guilt, yes, and that in spades - but this? Does Erik really think so little of him?

In the first days and weeks after Cuba, Charles went over and over it in his mind, trying to put together the pieces to figure out just why Erik had shut him out to begin with, just what Charles could have done that was so horrible that Erik could leave without so much as glancing back. Charles' clearest memory of that day is still the press of Erik's boots in the sand as he walked away. It was the making of his nightmares for months afterward (and he suspects the entire house - with the exception of Erik himself, who wasn't here yet - knows this).

In all the time Charles spent looking back, digging through his memories for signs that what they had had prior to Cuba was something other than what he'd thought, he'd never once considered that Erik might think that Charles had rejected him. It's completely absurd, of course, but now that he sees it, he can hardly believe he didn't before.

It's not that he didn't realize Erik was hurting; nothing could have been more obvious, especially after today. But he'd honestly thought that, for Erik, most of it came down to the wheelchair.

"...No," Charles says slowly, after a long moment in which he tries to think of what he might say, what there could possibly be to say to keep Erik here. He's so close to the door now, so close to walking out; and Charles has had a lifetime's worth of Erik turning his back on him. "Erik, no. Want you to leave? I don't want you to leave. I - do you have any idea how much I've missed you? How hard it's been without you?" He waits, but Erik says nothing, opening his mouth halfway only to close it again. Charles' palms are sweaty on the arms of his chair, and his mouth is dry as he says, then, "I don't want you to leave, Erik. I'd much rather you - I want you to stay. If you want to. Now, and after - after our daughters are born. If you want to." He swallows, hard, around the sudden lump in his throat; there's a metallic sort of taste at the back of his mouth. "Do you want to stay?"

Erik looks at him for a long time, opens his mouth and then closes it several more times. And then, finally: "I don't know."

Charles can't believe it. Here Erik has just made an enormous issue about supposedly being forced out, here Charles has just opened up his entire heart to ask Erik to stay, yet he has no opinion about it? How hard can it possibly be?

He takes several deep breaths to keep from exploding, then says, in the calmest tone he can manage, "What do you mean, you don't know?"

Evidently less of the calm gets through than he'd hoped, because Erik flushes and snaps, "I don't know. How am I supposed to know? How am I supposed to decide anything when I'm trapped here?"

"Trapped here?" Charles feels like he's repeating Erik a lot today. "You aren't trapped here, Erik, that's ridiculous."

"Oh, really," Erik says. "Is that so. Do you mean to tell me that I could leave, right now - that I could walk out of this house, and keep walking down the road, and nothing bad would happen to me or to her?"

...He has a point.

Charles' disappointment is thicker and heavier than it has any right to be; he does his best not to show it, lest Erik take it the wrong way. "Well then," he says, "why don't you think about it, and we'll talk about it - later. After. How does that sound?"

Erik seems to think this over for a moment. "Fine," he says, and turns to the door again.

Charles makes a small sound of protest, entirely without meaning to.

Erik turns around again, and now he's actually - smirking. "Charles," he says, full of meaning, and steps to the side so Charles can see the doorknob, which has at some point turned into a weeping brass icicle, melted halfway to the floor.

Charles wheels around his desk and to the door, and peers at the doorknob. While he didn't do it consciously, there doesn't seem to be any point in denying who's responsible for this, especially considering the melted penny in the car earlier. "It's excellent work, if you ask me," he says. "Very pretty, if not terribly - well, functional. Do you suppose she'll be a sculptor?"

Erik snorts.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to fix it yourself. I wouldn't have the slightest clue how," Charles says.

Erik twitches his hand at the doorknob, which reforms into more or less the same shape it used to be. Then he reaches out, turns it, and walks out of the door, clicking it softly shut behind him.

Charles manages, somehow, to neither reach out and drag him back in, nor to follow him out into the hall. Instead, he sits there, feeling Erik's presence move further and further away.

When Erik turns the corner, Charles wheels back around to his desk, not sure whether he plans to return to his work or to put everything away. Instead of doing either, he slides their chess game to one side, then opens the top drawer and pulls out the box of washers that Raven brought on her last visit. He dumps them onto the surface of the desk and sorts them into stacks by size.

He stares at them for a minute, then reaches out and sweeps them all onto the floor. He puts his elbows on the desk, buries his head in his hands, and proceeds to hyperventilate.

A few minutes later, he wipes his face with his hand, then looks down to see that the washers have nearly all made it up to his stomach. A feeling of content is coming from Emily, who grumbles so loudly when he tries to trim her collection by removing a bobby pin that he decides to let her keep everything, at least for now.

*

Week 29

Erik tries to go to talk to Charles every day for the next week and a half. He looks for the metal objects Charles carries around with him, and then heads in that direction - but as soon as he's almost there, he feels as though he's suffocating, and has to put distance between them again. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, how much sleep he's had, what he tells himself about his intentions - it always happens, always sends him in the opposite direction.

Soon, he starts to feel suffocated even across the house from Charles - and moreso when Charles heads even slightly in his direction.

As a result, he ends up spending his days up on the roof again. It's not as good as it was before, but at least he still feels like he can breathe up there.

One day, he climbs the steps to find that Darwin is already there, looking out over the railing.

"What are you doing here?" Erik asks - less harshly than he usually would, since she perks up at the presence of her friend (she has very bad taste in friends, in his opinion, but he supposes he'll allow it).

"Hiding," Darwin says. "I hope you don't mind. Alex is driving me crazy."

This statement is accompanied by a quiet but solid thump! from the direction of Darwin's gut.

"I see," Erik says drily. "Hide all you want."

He feels gracious enough at that moment to keep his actual opinion to himself: that anyone foolish enough to get pregnant with Alex's spawn deserves what they get.

Over the next few days, Darwin is up there almost as often as Erik is - possibly more, since he's undeterred by the several days of rain that they get. One day, when he looks particularly harried by whatever Alex is doing, he says, obviously at least half-jokingly, "Maybe we should run away together."

Erik doesn't pay much attention to it then, but a few hours later it hits him, something he'd actually forgotten about up until now out of self-defense and a complete lack of giving a fuck.

He waits until late that night, after Charles' metal beacons have remained in the same position in Charles' room for over an hour, and then slips into the study, where he finds the phone on the desk. He stares at it for several minutes, then dials a number that he hasn't thought about since it was shoved into his head.

It rings for a while before she picks up.

"...Hello?"

Oh, the call definitely woke her up. Erik grins predatorily. "Emma!" he says, trying not to sound like her name is a bad taste in his mouth (the result comes out a little strangled, but still workable).

"Erik?" Emma sounds much more alert now - and sharper, somehow, too, with something he can't identify at first. "Why are you calling here at...four in the morning? What's wrong? Is the baby okay?"

"She's fine," Erik says, and, incredibly, feels something almost like warmth toward Emma for about half a second. Stop that, he thinks downward, because obviously it's the baby causing it. I won't have it.

There comes a long pause. Finally, Emma asks, "Then what do you want?" She sounds wary, as she should. If she'd had the courtesy to sound wary once in a while before, Erik wouldn't have had such a problem with her to begin with.

"...Would you come get me?" Erik asks. It doesn't come out plaintive at all.

There comes another pause, longer this time. Then: "Yes, all right. When do you need me to get there?"

Erik hadn't actually thought that far ahead. He hadn't thought about this at all other than as his only way out. And now that he does think about it, he realizes that everything has - shifted, somehow. He feels freer, that the walls that have been closing in around him are now receding.

"Actually, that won't be necessary," he says, and hangs up the phone before she can say anything to ruin it.

The phone rings immediately, shrilly; Erik sits there and grins at it until it stops, trying to picture what Emma's face looks like right now. Then he goes to bed, already so much looser, with plenty of room to breathe.

Week 30

Charles has just about given up on having any kind of interaction with Erik before the girls are born, so he's somewhat stunned when Erik walks into his study one day, sits down in the chair in front of Charles' desk, and frowns.

"Where's our game?" he demands.

"...I put it away," Charles says. "I do need space to work, you know. Surely you didn't expect me to keep it sitting on my desk indefinitely."

Erik gives him a look suggesting he'd expected precisely that. Truth be told, that would have been the case if he'd come by anytime within a week after their discussion; after the first seven days, even Charles had had to admit it was unlikely their game would be continued.

"We could set up a new game," Charles suggests.

"I was winning the other one."

"That you were. Let's say I conceded it, and begin a new one." Charles rolls backward and retrieves the chess set from its shelf, then rolls forward and begins setting up the game on his desk.

"Are we saying you conceded it, or are you actually conceding it?" Erik asks.

"There's not much of a difference, really."

Erik raises an eyebrow at him. "Isn't there."

Erik's more than capable of getting in a snit for even less of a reason than usual when it comes to games, but he doesn't sound angry about this. He doesn't look angry, either. If Charles didn't have a great deal of recent evidence to the contrary, he'd almost think Erik were flirting with him.

"All right, you've got me there; I concede our previous game. Although you were cheating."

"Training."

"Cheating. Blatantly. So it's not all that prestigious a win for you, really."

"A win's a win," Erik says. Then he winks, and there's no way to interpret that as anything but flirting.

Charles doesn't have the first idea where this is coming from. He has the vague sense that he's grinning like a fool. "Well, in that case, two can cheat."

"Stay out of my head."

"That's not at all what I meant," Charles says, before Erik can work himself up. "You'll see."

Charles is losing the game badly by the time he finishes and then sends in the first of the cavalry, a lumpily-formed queen that began life as a handful of pennies. He slips it onto the board as soon as Erik isn't looking. When Erik looks back at the game a moment later, he does an immediate double-take.

"You're in check, by the way," Charles says. He doesn't see the point of being subtle.

They play several more games, all of which Charles loses despite his unduly-acquired queens - as he presumed he would, given that Erik knows what he's planning to do with them.

Erik leaves as soon as the last game ends; he returns around the same time the following day, and they do it all over again. Their talk is all of the game itself, or of babies and mutations - usually their own, but occasionally Alex and Darwin's.

At no point does Erik speak of his plans. At no point does Charles ask. Much as he'd like to press Erik, much as it's killing him not to know, he doesn't wish to drive Erik away.

On the sixth day that Erik comes by, the lift doors disappear from the hallway.

"I don't suppose you'd know anything about that, would you?" Charles asks. He's teasing; he thinks it's far more likely that Hank's taken them for whatever reason.

"What would I want with your lift doors?" Erik asks.

It's not a no - and so when Charles wakes up the next morning to someone rudely poking him and his lift doors floating menacingly above his bed, it's not terribly surprising.

Alarming? Certainly. But not surprising.

"Charles." The finger digging into Charles' shoulder retreats, then prods at him again, harder this time. "Charles, wake up."

Charles sighs and says, "Erik, what -"

Which is when he actually looks at the lift doors and realizes they're...not his lift doors anymore. The object floating above him used to be his lift doors, there's no doubt of that, but now appears to be a -

"Why," he amends, "are you levitating a wheelchair around my room?" He feels a tugging sensation from within, which causes the chair to shudder slightly toward him. "And would you mind setting it on the floor now? I have every faith in your ability to keep it aloft, but Emily seems to want it very badly. I'd prefer not to be crushed this early in the day."

Erik flicks a finger at the chair, which backs away and descends to the floor.

"You look a bit grumpy. Were you expecting a reaction from me? Are you upset that I didn't squawk, cover my head with my hands? I could make a better effort, if you'd like."

Erik rolls his eyes, which is as good as an admission in Charles' book. "That won't be necessary," he says. A moment later, he adds, gruffly, "Well? Do you like it?"

"I suppose so," Charles says carefully, though he hasn't given the chair itself much more than a glance in favor of peering at Erik and trying to read his motives from his facial expression. "What's this really about?"

Erik gives him a sharp, impatient look, as if he expects Charles to follow along with what he's thinking without the benefit of actually reading his mind. "If I'm going to stay, you're not going to keep using that." He waves a hand at the plastic wheelchair sitting by the bed.

"What?" Charles heard the words, but it takes several moments before they make any sense inside his head. When they do, he sucks in a breath and says, "So you've decided, then? You're going to stay?"

Erik stares at him long enough that Charles thinks he must have misheard, must have misunderstood - and the bitterest part of the disappointment is that he knows, he really does know better than to get his hopes up, by now.

But then the color drains out of Erik's face. "You want me to," he says, looking horrified, like he thinks Charles is going to say, 'No, of course I don't want you to stay, Erik. I was only pulling your leg when I said I did.'

"...Ye-es," Charles says, taking a moment to let himself catch up. "Yes, I do. I'm certain I said as much, before. There was a clear statement on my part. I'm surprised you don't remember it, considering you were there." The 'you idiot' is implied strongly enough that Erik can likely pick up on it without reading his mind. Charles' fondness, his relief, is stamped even more strongly onto every word. He doesn't think there's any way Erik could miss the fierceness of his joy, written plain in every thought.

As Charles speaks, the color comes back into Erik's face. By the time he's finished, Erik is once again regarding him with an impatient expression.

"Aren't you going to try it?" Erik asks.

"Not right this moment. I won't even be properly awake for -" Charles glances at the clock on his bedside table "- three hours yet."

Charles is toasty warm and comfortable underneath his blankets; he simply does not have the inclination to bother with the logistics involved in getting out of bed right now. He'll reacquaint himself with his former lift doors when he's good and ready, and then only if he decides to go along with it. Irritating as Erik may find this, he'll live. Charles has been waiting, he's been waiting so patiently for Erik to come to him; Erik can stand to wait a little too.

Erik goes a little red, and opens his mouth. Before he can say anything, Charles lifts up one end of the blanket and says, "You're welcome to join me."

Erik closes his mouth. He looks very...young, suddenly. Young and uncertain, and not a little shy.

Charles feels rather overwhelmed himself.

"Hurry it up, now," Charles says. "I haven't got all morning." He'd like to be asleep again within a quarter of an hour or so, and he'd prefer to do it with Erik petting his hair.

"What would I want to do that for," Erik says, unconvincingly. He climbs into the bed beside Charles, somehow just as graceful as he ever was, if slower and more careful.

"I notice you're not denying it." Charles waits for Erik to get himself situated, then maneuvers himself closer and curls up next to him as best he can. He lays his head on Erik's shoulder and his hand on Erik's stomach. It's like letting out a breath he's been holding for...minutes, days, weeks, months, maybe ever since the last time they lay together this way.

Charles doesn't fall asleep as quickly as he means to, largely due to Erik distracting him by playing tug of war with Emily over some of the metal things on Charles' stomach. After a while, he finds himself idly wondering about the metal wheelchair, the meaning behind the gesture. The most obvious answer is that Erik is trying to level the playing field between them. If that's what it is, he's going to be disappointed; except for when Erik has his helmet on, Charles will always have the advantage over him. He could be sitting on ten times his own weight in metal and still have it.

He doesn't suppose he'll say this to Erik - at least, he'll try not to. He can only imagine Erik's reaction if he did; he might take to wearing the helmet everywhere in a fit of paranoia.

Charles pictures him wearing it to bed, or to the dinner table, and can't help sniggering.

"I wouldn't wear the helmet to the dinner table," Erik says, sounding oddly furtive. "That would be stupid."

"All right, then," Charles says, amused. He closes his eyes and tries to think somewhat more magnanimous thoughts.

*

This isn't how Erik had expected this to go. Charles was supposed to shriek when he woke up to see the wheelchair, but he didn't. Then he was supposed to be impressed about Erik's engineering genius, but he didn't do that either. He was supposed to drive it around and he didn't, then they were supposed to have sex (possibly on the wheelchair) and they didn't. And now Charles is asleep, using him as a pillow, he's once again sabotaged everything Erik wanted to do, and Erik can't even manage to summon up much annoyance about it.

Erik's arm is going numb, but he can't move it. That might wake Charles up. Charles, whenever he wakes up, might change his mind. Better not to jostle him. Better not to reach out his other hand to stroke Charles' hair (not that it's not tempting, but he won't give Charles the satisfaction of waking up to find him doing it). Better not to move at all, not to even breathe any louder than he has to.

Stillness and quiet are old tools in Erik's repertoire, and they come to him easily now. Waiting is familiar, too. And doing it with Charles beside him, warm and comfortable and solid - that's not a hardship.

Erik doesn't plan to go to sleep, but that doesn't go as expected, either. He wakes up several hours later to Charles shifting next to him, yawning and patting Erik up and down in that absent-minded, familiar way he always used to.

Erik catches the exact moment Charles remembers. It's in the way his hand falters on Erik's gut, the way he might as well have said '...oh,' for as loudly as Erik hears it in his head. He looks like he's woken up to find himself unexpectedly petting a shark.

"Good afternoon, Charles," Erik says, enjoying the upper hand. He'd thought he'd lost it for a while there.

"Ah," Charles says. "Good afternoon." He smooths his hand over Erik's gut then, and it's different this time, all casual possession. "You're still here."

"Evidently." Erik had the upper hand a second ago, but it's gone now, fled to wherever it goes when he's with Charles. He doesn't know why he thought it might be different this time, how he thought he could feel anything but exposed before him.

"Good. That's good." Charles thinks for a beat - Erik doesn't get any of the details, just a murmur, low and warm at the back of his mind - then says, "Well."

His hand is still on Erik's gut, his thumb stroking back and forth. Erik can't think about anything else; he can barely even breathe. He rolls onto his side so they're facing each other. Charles' hand slides over to his waist.

"'Well,' what?" Erik asks.

"Well," Charles says again. Erik doesn't miss the mischief in it; Charles never has had much of a poker face, and it's even worse now than it used to be. "It's about time we were up and about, don't you think? You know, we really have a great deal we ought to -"

Before he can say 'talk about,' Erik leans forward and kisses him, hard. Charles is expecting him this time, kisses back with a heat, an intent, that makes him want so much more. Erik's in a better position for this than he was the last time, too - he's not going to end up with even more of a backache than usual, for one thing - and when Charles tugs at him to bring him closer, he goes eagerly.

Erik had completely forgotten about that thing from before, and so when the giggling starts, he jumps, lurching away from Charles in surprise.

Realizing what it is, who it's coming from, he looks down at his gut.

"...Er," Charles says.

"It doesn't matter," Erik decides, and moves back in - but Charles holds him off.

"Let's give it a minute and see if they stop," he says.

Erik rolls his eyes. They wait. The giggling tapers off after a few seconds, but as soon as they resume and things get heated it starts again, even louder than before.

"I don't care," Erik says when Charles pulls away.

"You may not, but I most certainly do." Charles looks just as frustrated as Erik is: red in the face, breathing harshly. He bites his lower lip, which only ramps up Erik's sense of frustration, thinks something more Erik can't quite make out, then lays his hand on Erik's gut and says, "Quiet down, the both of you." Nothing happens. After a few seconds, he adds, "It's grownup time now. Go to your rooms."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say," Erik says. It's probably the stupidest thing Charles has ever said, period, but he's willing to allow that Charles might have said something even stupider sometime Erik wasn't around to hear it.

Charles raises a skeptical eyebrow and says, "Yes, well, I'd like to see you do better."

As much time as Erik spends having conversations with his gut, he tries to keep them private. They're no one else's business. But this is important, and no matter how humiliating it is, there's no way he could manage to sound stupider than Charles.

He looks down and says, "Now."

And just like that, the giggling stops.

Charles stares at Erik, his mouth hanging open. "How did you - oh, that's not fair. That is so utterly not fair."

"What isn't?" Erik asks, smirking as he moves back in and finally, finally gets to nip at Charles' jaw and get his hands under Charles' shirt without anything - or anyone - ruining the moment.

"It's not fair that you get to have the scary daddy voice when I'm the one who can kill people with my mind."

As if Charles ever would. Erik's pretty sure he's only bringing it up because he thinks it turns Erik on when he says things like that in bed.

Erik hisses into Charles' ear, "I can kill people with my mind. I just need a conduit." He rattles all the metal in the room for a second to help make his point.

Charles rolls his eyes and laughs. Then he reaches out for Erik, reels him in and kisses him hard until they're both breathless.

All Erik can manage to do in response is hold on, hold on tight to Charles, lest he drown.

*

Week 37

"Don't touch me," Erik snaps, jerking his arm out of Charles' grasp. "You've done enough." He storms off without another word, heading down the hall, around the corner and up the stairs.

Charles tracks him as he goes, a horrible sinking feeling in his stomach.

Things have been going so well for weeks now - nearly two months, in fact. Though Charles still has a moment of panic every time he wakes up in the morning to find himself alone, the only sign of Erik (nearly always the earlier riser) an Erik-shaped impression in the sheets, he really had begun to think that this was all going to work out without any further complications.

On the heels of the dread comes anger, because how dare he, how dare he go and act like this, without so much as an explanation? All Charles even did was pat him on the arm in greeting, and this is the reaction he gets? What the hell?

Oh, he's going to give Erik a piece of his mind - just as soon as he catches up with him.

Charles follows Erik up, taking the lift to the top floor. Erik, predictably, has gone all the way up to the roof, where he thinks he's safe.

Charles rolls to the bottom of the staircase leading upward, and considers. It's narrow, yes, but this still ought to be manageable once he adjusts his chair a bit. He's discovered over these past few weeks that, thanks to his growing affinity for metal and his new chair, he can get to areas in the house that were formerly impractical if not impossible for him to reach on his own. He's been trying not to get too accustomed to floating himself around, but it comes in very useful at times like this.

I'm coming up, he projects to Erik. If I should begin to fall, I expect you to catch me.

Erik isn't very good at projecting, so what Charles gets back is not so much words as it is a general sense of 'what-stay-away-don't-you-dare,' underlaid with a whiff of abject misery that completely contradicts it.

"Oh, for god's sake," Charles mutters to himself. "Would you make up your mind."

He intends to make the wheelchair an inch or two thinner to facilitate his ascent, but when he reaches down to check how much space he has to work with - and to make sure he doesn't accidentally cut off his own circulation without knowing it - there seems to be less of a margin than usual.

Further investigation of the matter brings to light that it's not that the wheelchair is any narrower than usual, but that Charles himself is...rather wider in the hips than he had been even as recently as this morning.

Exploration beyond that reveals that there's been quite a bit more than wide hips added.

Charles thinks he understands Erik's outburst now. Frankly, he feels a bit ill about it himself. But it is awfully hypocritical on Erik's part, considering he's the one who's spent a great deal of time and hot air over these past weeks informing a fretting Alex that there's no reason to worry, because as a pregnant male mutant, Darwin (and, by extension, Erik and Charles) will obviously be able to adapt perfectly to every pregnancy-related challenge he might come up against.

Erik has been full of completely nonsensical opinions about evolution and mutation this entire time, no matter how often Charles tries to tell him that it doesn't really work like that; yet, when mother nature gifts Erik with her best tools for birthing babies naturally, he decides he doesn't like it. See if Charles puts up with any more of Erik's speeches. Erik can go on about 'blah blah mutation, blah blah evolution' all day long if he likes; Charles still won't pay him any attention.

Floating up the stairs is a somewhat harrowing but ultimately exhilarating endeavor. Charles emerges onto the roof to see Erik at the railing, facing away from him and looking out at the grounds. Since the roof isn't really made for wheels, Charles continues floating an inch or so off the surface as he makes his way over to Erik.

When he's just about there, Erik looks at him and says, dryly, "'Blah blah mutation, blah blah evolution.'"

"Yes. Well. You deserved that." Charles feels himself flushing. Then, before he can think better of it, he blurts, "I really wish the two of you would stay out of my head." He immediately wishes he hadn't when Erik bursts out laughing. The man really is a terrible hypocrite. "If you're quite finished having a tantrum, let's head back downstairs, why don't we? It's beastly hot out here."

He reaches out to put his hand on Erik's hip - his hips are definitely wider than normal, now that Charles is paying attention - and though Erik stiffens for a moment, looking immensely irritated, he doesn't pull away.

*

Week 39

"What were you doing up there this time?" Charles asks with a frown when Erik comes down from the roof.

Charles has some sort of issue with Erik being up there. Erik doesn't know why; it's not like Charles can't come and get him when he wants to. It's not like he doesn't all the time now that he's figured out how.

"I was taking measurements," Erik answers, gesturing at Charles with the tape measure.

"...For?"

"The machine guns," Erik says.

Charles gives him a flat look. "Machine guns."

"Mounted machine guns," Erik clarifies. He fully intends to get a few Uzis too, but that's a secondary concern. "I needed the measurements to decide how many we need." By 'need' he means 'can fit'; you can never have too many machine guns.

"We are not mounting machine guns on the roof."

It's cute that Charles thinks that; this is why Erik gets to be in charge of defense, offense, and everything else remotely security-related.

"Yes, we are," Erik says. "You can afford it. Two dozen or so should do to start with."

"You are entirely missing the point," Charles says. "For one thing, no one here knows how to use a machine gun, mounted or otherwise."

"I do."

"...Be that as it may, if we were investing in anything like that, which we most certainly are not, twenty-four would be overkill. Even you couldn't operate that many at once, surely."

"Yes, I could," Erik says, more than a little affronted at Charles' lack of faith in his abilities.

Charles stares at him some more. He's gone a little red. "Even so, the answer is still no."

Erik ignores this; Charles will come around eventually. Time to move on. "We're going to need a jet, too."

"A what?"

"We have Hank," Erik explains. "We might as well use him."

Charles pinches the bridge of his nose. "And where would you suggest we put such a thing?"

"Under the basketball court," Erik says. He's proud of that; he's actually given it a lot of thought.

"We're not putting a hangar under the basketball court; that's just ludicrous," Charles says through gritted teeth. "We're not putting one anywhere else, either."

Erik doesn't know what his problem is. He's spent the last week making Hank, Alex and Sean rearrange furniture all over the house, but God forbid Erik try to change anything. He's being completely irrational about it. He won't even let Erik have his knife collection in bed at night. Erik can't believe he cares more about redecorating than keeping their family safe.

Erik can't wait until this is all over; maybe they'll be able to have a reasonable discussion about it once he doesn't have to spend the whole time arguing around Charles' idiotic nesting instinct.

One way or another, Erik is getting that jet. And that hangar.

But first things first.

"You should give your accountant a call," Erik says. "There's still time to get moving on the machine guns today."

Charles looks Erik up and down, then breathes hard out of his nose and wheels away.

Week 41

On the night before the beginning, Charles lies awake in bed, wishing he could sleep. Emily's making it difficult, which has become a habit with her. Not only has she decided to spend much of her time kicking his bladder - an activity he enjoys far less than she does, given that he's had to bow to the necessity of a catheter as a result - but she seems to be under the impression that he doesn't need any of his other internal organs, either. He certainly doesn't need the lung capacity he'd grown so accustomed to over his first thirty years of life; what a silly notion.

It doesn't help that Erik keeps tossing and turning next to him, piling on blankets only to tear them off half an hour later. He stumbles out of bed to go to the bathroom seemingly every five minutes. And he does it all in as grumpy and loud a fashion as possible, just to make certain everyone in the vicinity appreciates the suffering he alone is enduring.

Propped up on three pillows, Charles does eventually manage to nod off, though he keeps starting awake and only falls asleep properly an hour or so before the sun comes up.

When he wakes a few hours later, the first thing he does is turn his attention inward.

"Well?" he inquires, as he has first thing every morning for the past several days. As far as anyone - meaning Hank - can tell, the girls are due any day now, but so far there's been nothing. There's no sign of anything now, either; all he gets from Emily is a sense of contentment, the same as any other morning.

That settled, he scans the house for Erik. He finds him in the kitchen and skirts around him to check in with Edie in the same manner in which he did Emily. She's clammed up a bit over the last few days, so he doesn't get much from her other than the general sense that she's not distressed. He suspects the quiet means it's about that time, but so far Erik's shown no more sign of giving birth in the immediate future than Charles.

"Oh, all right then. If you insist on staying in there, I suppose I won't try to convince you otherwise," Charles huffs, then proceeds with the laborious (ha) task of transferring himself from the bed to the wheelchair, followed by the equally tedious, awkward and time-consuming everything involved in getting ready for the day.

By the time he exits their bedroom, everyone else has been up and about for a while, and he's left to fend for himself in the newly remodelled kitchen. He debates for a while between cereal and toast - pretty much the outer limits of his culinary ability - before realizing he's not hungry. He doesn't ordinarily skip meals, but then again, he usually has more of an appetite around breakfast time.

He compromises by drinking two cups of tea instead of his usual one, then wheels himself toward the lab to find out if Hank has made any headway since yesterday. It's unlikely, but the further Darwin's pregnancy progresses, the more alarming the accompanying sounds from his abdomen become. While Darwin doesn't appear to be in any discomfort, it raises the question of exactly how they're meant to handle his child once there's no Darwin-like barrier between him and everything - everyone - else.

If Darwin goes into labor before Hank makes a breakthrough, they may have to shut him in the bunker by himself and hope for the best. Charles can't imagine Alex would take well to that.

At any rate, it seems that nothing new has turned up since yesterday.

"I'm getting closer, though," Hank says. He's currently trying to coax Darwin's arm to let him draw blood - he's been going through quite a bit from both Darwin and Alex lately, looking for some way to inhibit the baby's mutation at least long enough to get him born.

Charles doesn't envy Hank, having to work under Alex's glare. Neither does he envy Alex and Darwin, having to put their trust into someone who, the last time he tried something similar, managed to turn himself blue. He leaves after a few minutes chatting, thankful that they don't need anything from him at the moment.

He heads off to his study, where he has paperwork he needs to see to, as usual. There's always paperwork, enough to smother him; he knows that, soon enough, he won't have a chance to work on any of it, so he's catching up as much as he can beforehand.

Several hours later, Charles looks up from his desk and realizes he has yet to see Erik today. That's strange; Erik ordinarily spends most of the day alternating between hovering around Charles and hiding from him. The hovering usually comes first thing in the morning, followed by a stint up on the roof or in some similarly inconvenient room across the house.

Erik's absence is odd enough that Charles uses it as an excuse to take a break, pushing himself away from his desk and heading in the direction of Erik's mind. It's closed off to a greater extent than usual - so much so that he's probably shielding - and Charles can't get a sense of anything more than his physical location.

He finds Erik in an unused bedroom on the other end of the house, pacing aggressively between the bed and the dresser. By the time he gets to the doorway, Erik's mind has shuttered even more, lending credence to the blocking theory.

Erik completely ignores his arrival, abruptly cutting off his pacing and walking over to the window, where he proceeds to stare out at...Charles isn't really certain what landmarks are visible from here. The lawn?

Charles tries not to feel hurt; he always tries to avoid taking it personally when Erik goes back and forth like this. The important thing, he reminds himself, is that Erik is here - even if he does spend most of his waking hours either sulking or preparing for an invasion. (He may think Charles is unaware of the arsenal he's hidden under their bed, but in actuality, he's choosing to ignore it.)

Ordinarily, this line of thought would be met by a statement such as, 'I don't sulk. Don't be stupid, Charles,' but this time Erik doesn't respond at all.

Charles gives him a minute, then says, "Well, you may as well tell me whatever it is you're upset about. Is it something I did? Out with it."

This would do the trick on most days; Erik normally jumps at any excuse to air his grievances, petty as they so often are. But today, he merely glances at Charles and then away, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

"If you won't tell me, I may assume it's something serious," Charles says. Then he adds, more light-hearted, "Maybe I'll get it into my head that you're in labor. We can't have that, now can we?"

Erik shoots him a disbelieving look, at which point Charles begins to think he might not have been far off the mark.

Then Erik says, "I told you to stay out of my head," which confirms it.

"...Oh. You are? Well, that's...that's...you are not doing that here," Charles manages, a little wrong-footed due to having assumed, for no particular reason, that he would be the one to go into labor first (probably because, from what he recalls, Emily was conceived at least half an hour prior to Edie). "And before you tell me to go away, you are not doing it alone, either. Come on."

And so saying, he turns the wheelchair around and heads back out into the hall, glancing over his shoulder a few seconds later to make certain Erik is following.

Erik submits to being led back to the inhabited part of the house with less resistance than Charles expected. In fact, he looks almost relieved at Charles taking charge - or at least he's alternating between that and severe annoyance, judging from the look on his face and the flashes of emotion Charles gets from him the next time he has a contraction, about five minutes after Charles found him.

Charles has to bite his tongue and grip the arms of his chair to keep from reaching out to Erik during the contraction; when it seems to be over and Erik relaxes minutely, he runs his fingers up and down Erik's arm, as much to soothe himself as Erik.

"Do you need anything? Can I get you anything?" Charles asks.

Erik looks momentarily irate - then calculating. The list of demands that follows is both lengthy and fickle, but considering the circumstances, Charles resigns himself to racing madly around the house for Erik's amusement. He'll get his own back when it's his turn.

The third time Erik changes his mind about the condiments he wants on his sandwich, Charles takes a detour to his study on the way back to make a phone call.

Since Erik has refused to discuss anything about his birthing plans beyond insisting that mutation and evolution make medical care completely unnecessary, Charles took it upon himself weeks ago to make arrangements for the both of them - or, rather, to include Erik in his own arrangements, which have been in place since well before Erik's return.

Erik may end up not needing help, but he's not going to give birth without having the option.

As Charles explains the situation to the receptionist on the other end of the line, he's very glad Erik isn't there to hear him explaining that his 'wife' has gone into labor.

"How far apart are her contractions?" the receptionist asks, not sounding terribly impressed.

Charles is struck by the sudden, insane urge to make up a number. He controls himself and thinks How far apart are your contractions? at Erik. Erik responds - suspiciously, though Charles suspects that's less because he senses Charles' intention than that he always seems a tad suspicious whenever anyone asks him questions about himself - and Charles relays the answer.

"Mm-hm. And how long do they last?" After Charles relays this information, too, she says, "If you bring her in now, we're just going to send you home again. Why don't you make her comfortable and call back when she's further along?"

She then proceeds to go into more detail about when that would be, without letting Charles get a single word in - much less utter the code phrase that will set everything in motion.

And then, maddeningly, she hangs up.

Charles stares at the phone for a few seconds, then dials Raven, reckoning she'll want to know that one of her nieces is on her way.

When he gets back to Erik with the latest sandwich, he asks, "How are you feeling?"

Erik's answer doesn't amount to much more than a grunt.

Charles wonders how Edie is doing, and he reaches out to her with his mind to find out. At first he doesn't get much from her, but he presses on, more insistent than usual, until he gets through.

She's fine; not unduly stressed, so far as Charles can tell.

She reaches back to him, as she usually does. He basks in her presence. I can't wait to meet you, he thinks at her.

In response, she reaches to him, through him - then past him. Charles doesn't question what she's doing until she gives a little tug.

He still doesn't quite realize what she's done until a few seconds later, when he feels a band of pressure tightening around his midsection. It's not just a cramp - though it could be; he's had them on and off for the past week or so, and there's not anything so different about this.

Nothing so different, except for that tug, and the sense that Edie's just pulled on Emily's hand, telling her, 'Hurry up, hurry up, I'm tired of waiting on you.'

"If you put her up to this, don't tell me," he informs Erik. "I'd really rather not know."

Charles takes deep breaths, even after the first contraction is over, trying not to give in to the impending panic.

He's not ready for this.

*

"Aren't you going to offer to make me a sandwich?" Charles grumbles, midway through their third or fourth chess game.

Erik doesn't know (or care) what he's going on about. He'd usually have some idea, whether he wanted to or not, but she's been very quiet today, so the most he's been getting from Charles is the occasional pulse of annoyance. He stopped caring about Charles' annoyances weeks ago, right around the time he realized he couldn't escape knowing all of the details.

"No," Erik says. "Why would I?"

Charles looks like he's about to make a cutting response, but grimaces instead and pulls a wristwatch off his gut to check the time. He keeps doing that.

By the time they're on their tenth or eleventh game, Erik's decided he hates chess. He was already getting sick of it before today, but after this is all over, he's never playing another game again.

Every time he decides he's had enough, that he's going to go find something else to do to pass the time, he ends up having a contraction and changing his mind. They're coming faster now, more intense when they do come - and they're starting to really hurt.

When they're on their twelfth or thirteenth game, Erik tenses up as the fist clenches around his gut again. Charles looks at his wristwatch again, frowns, bites his lip for a moment, then says, "Well. Time for me to make a phone call. You sit tight; I'll be right back."

Erik's been half-wishing for Charles to go away, but as soon as he's out the door, Erik can't help wanting him to come back. A minute later, he shrugs and takes advantage of the situation to strategically reposition some of the pieces.

When Charles returns, he barely glances at the board before moving a knight seemingly at random.

He looks at Erik, sighs and says, "You know, we really ought to discuss how this is going to go. I have some people - doctors - coming to the house."

Erik stands abruptly, deciding to finish this whole business up on the roof, since Charles clearly can't be trusted.

For me," Charles clarifies, rolling his eyes. "They're coming to assist me."

"Why? Are you sick?"

Charles pinches the bridge of his nose and heaves a sigh. "In case you've failed to notice, you're not the only one in labor at the moment. I daresay I can't give birth all by myself. Nor am I going to make the attempt."

He doesn't say 'Unlike some people.' Erik doesn't hear it in his head, either - but it's still perfectly clear from the way Charles purses his lips and starts massaging his temples.

Erik's about to make a scathing rejoinder - 'we're the better men, Charles,' something along those lines; he's always come up with his best speeches on the fly - when Charles grimaces. Erik hadn't really been too concerned about that up until now, considering Charles has been looking more constipated than pained each time, but now he finds himself peering at Charles' face, eying the way he's tensed up and the way his hands are gripping the armrests of his chair.

"Is something wrong?" Erik asks, when Charles focuses on him afterward.

Charles raises an eyebrow. "Nothing more than's wrong with you. I'm fine; she's fine. If that changes, you'll be the first to know."

"I'd better be," Erik says. He sits back down, looks at the chessboard, and neatly captures Charles' queen.

A few moves and one contraction - Erik's - later, Charles says, "I'm having a Cesarean section. just so you know." Before Erik can demand to know why he didn't bother telling him this before today, he adds, "It seemed the best option, all things considered. And the surgeons I went with, they're really quite good." A pause, then: "This isn't up for debate. I just thought you'd want to know."

Erik grunts in acknowledgement, mostly because he doesn't feel like hearing about everything involved in "all things considered."

He checkmates Charles two moves later. It's anticlimactic.

Halfway into their next game, the doorbell rings.

"Right, then," Charles says, sounding so cheerful that it has to be forced, and wheels out of the room. Erik considers staying where he is, but once he feels Charles' chair turn the the corner, he decides Charles might get anxious without him, and follows.

Things seem to go very quickly after Charles answers the door and lets an invading horde into the house.

There are people everywhere, going in and out constantly. First there are the human doctors and nurses, one or two of them almost always talking to Charles about something. (Erik doesn't know them, doesn't trust them, doesn't want them anywhere near him - but he can't avoid them, not if he's going to stay with Charles through this; and he can't leave Charles to their mercy.) Then there's Hank, who comes in to ask Charles some hurried questions, glancing nervously around; he flees in short order, even though no one so much as bats an eye at him. Sean gawks from the doorway for a few minutes; Angel shouts from down the hall that she's going out for the rest of the day, not that she owes any of them anything; Alex comes in and starts grilling the doctors about what they can do for Darwin until Darwin drags him out again, saying, "Now's not the time."

Somewhere in there, Raven shows up smelling like sulfur, takes a good long look at Erik and then says, "So why is it that you get morning sickness and act like you're dying, but now that you're in actual labor, you just look a little grumpy? That's weird."

"GET OUT," Erik says.

Everyone in the room stops what they're doing and looks at him.

"Why should I?"

Charles starts massaging his temples again. "Raven, please. I'll let you know when there's someone for you to meet. Would you mind just..."

"Oh, fine," Raven says. She rolls her eyes and leaves.

Erik doesn't realize he's gripping Charles' shirtsleeve so he can't go, until Charles pries his hand off and winds their fingers together instead.

Not too long after that, it starts hurting even more, and he can barely catch his breath after one contraction before the next begins - and for all that he knows he can take it, that this is pain with a purpose, he also doesn't have any say, any control over it. This is bigger than him, it's older than him, it's not even meant for him except that it is, and there's no way to slow it down now, even if he needed to.

And for the first time, Erik starts panicking. He's not sure what his body is doing, what it wants, what he should be doing - it's something he thought he'd be able to figure out when he got this far.

"Erik," he hears Charles say after a few seconds or minutes of panicking, his thumb stroking Erik's wrist soothingly despite how hard Erik's squeezing his hand. "Erik, do you want some help? The doctors could help you. I promise they mean no harm."

"...Maybe," Erik says through gritted teeth.

"Here, I'll show you."

Erik hasn't gotten anything specific from her since this started in the middle of last night; but now, Charles gives him everything she could have given him from the minds around them, and more besides. He sees that Charles is telling the truth, so far as it goes.

There's no way to prove they wouldn't mean him harm if they had the full understanding of what's going on, but he also sees how firmly Charles has them all in his power. In the end, that's what makes Erik say, "Fine."

Erik's not thrilled about letting anyone get an eyeful of everything going on between his legs right now, but there doesn't seem to be much choice if he's doing it Charles' way. Despite the humiliation of it, it is a relief to have someone else tell him not to push yet - apparently that's what his body wants to do - though that quickly becomes less of a relief when it's all he wants to do and they keep telling him no.

Then they change their minds, and Erik puts everything he has into this one, most important thing, and he hears Charles telling him how well he's doing but he ignores that, and he hears someone telling him to keep going and he ignores that too (the hell do they think he's doing? He's not going to suddenly change his mind), and he ignores everything he hears until they're telling him just one more, and that one hurts more than anything has yet, and then they're telling him just one more after that, and that one's not nearly as bad, and then he sees her, twisting around in the doctor's hands, and then he hears her, screaming at the top of her voice because she's only been in the world for a second but it's already pissed her off by being too bright, too cold, too loud.

"Give her here," Erik says. "Give her to me."

He repeats himself as they suction her nose and mouth, and keeps repeating himself until he gets results.

He's still having contractions, much smaller ones now, but he pays them no attention as she's handed to him. She's red and wet, naked and shouting, perfect.

She's so small. He didn't expect her to be this small. Not after everything she's put him through to get here. He didn't expect her to be this defenseless, despite her fierceness.

"Hi," Erik says, taking in every detail of her puffy face and tiny, waving fists.

She stops her crying, then; warm recognition - 'Oh, it's you' - fills Erik's mind.

When someone cuts the umbilical cord, the hum that's been on the inside of Erik's head for months goes silent. He hadn't realized how loud everyone else was inside his head until this moment. But it's good that all that's gone, because it's peaceful enough now that, if he listens carefully, he can still hear her in the back of his mind, smaller and quieter, but still there.

"She's beautiful," Charles says. Erik has the feeling he might have said a few things before that. If any of it was important, he'll just have to repeat it. "May I hold her?"

"Don't you have something you could be doing," Erik says. It's not that he wants to keep her from Charles - more that, for this moment, he wants to keep her to himself.

"There's no rush."

A little while later, when he thinks he can bear it, and when Charles has just finished having a contraction (so he's less likely to drop her within the next ten minutes), Erik hands her over.

"Hello, Edie," Charles says in a thick voice.

Watching them, knowing they're only half done, Erik knows something else, too: that he'll never have any brighter memory than the ones he's made, the ones he has yet to make, today.

*

Thankfully, Charles doesn't have enough concentration free to be alarmed about the position he's in, flat on his back on an operating table and unable to feel yet another part of his body. He's too busy focusing on everything else:

On making certain the minds around him are aware enough of what they're doing to do it correctly - without being so aware of what they're doing that they consciously realize they're about to perform a Cesarean section on a man;

On sending reassurance to Erik, who's seated beside him holding Edie, who's now clean, sleeping, and dressed in a set of pink pajamas Charles had insisted they purchase when he glimpsed them during a shopping expedition a few weeks ago. (There's a matching set waiting for Emily.) Charles isn't convinced that letting Erik bear witness to this is the best of ideas, but Erik did insist, and he can't imagine Erik twisting the door off its hinges in the middle of things would be a good plan, either. Unsurprisingly, Erik looks like he's about to drop, and despite his own reservations, Charles doubts he'll make any trouble as long as everything goes as expected;

And on making certain Emily doesn't do anything silly, such as deciding the surgical tools are new toys meant just for her. Charles thinks this is unlikely, given that she seems to have quieted down the way Edie did prior to her birth - the metal things on his stomach are less stubbornly attached than usual, and he's able to move them out of the way with no objection from her.

With all these considerations before him, Charles doesn't have the time or energy for the sort of visceral panic that would force the surgical team to put him under general anesthesia (and wouldn't that be a disaster in the making; the balance here is far too delicate for him to leave everything on its own while he sleeps).

Once they begin, it goes very quickly, far more than it did for Erik.

Charles feels nothing, and, thinking it's best not to court nausea or lightheadedness, resists the urge to see the incision through the doctors' eyes. Instead, he holds on tightly to Erik's free hand, as much for his own comfort as to keep Erik from doing anything foolish.

Within minutes, they're pulling Emily out of his body - Charles feels an odd, disconnected sort of tugging sensation, rather than pain or nothing at all - and giving her the same quick but thorough examination they gave Edie. And then she's crying, her first two tries hesitant before she gets the hang of it and begins to wail like the world is ending.

"Hello, there," Charles says when they lay her on top of him. "Hello, Emily."

He's felt so connected to her, all these months. He's felt her move inside him, even seen her a few times in the shape of a foot or an elbow faintly outlined on his stomach. He's waited so anxiously to meet her, never dreaming how much more connected to her he'd feel now that she's in the world, now that he's truly meeting her for the first time.

He stares at her, taking her in, memorizing her every feature. She's just as red as her sister, just as beautiful.

"Her head's not as squished as Edie's," Charles remarks aloud, for Erik's benefit.

Erik doesn't bother giving him a dirty look - his dirty looks are evidently in short supply, and he's saving them for the doctors - but merely says, "Some of us didn't take the easy way out."

"Yes, well," Charles says, too tired himself to make an argument of it. He glances away from Emily long enough to take in Edie again - and to take in Erik, holding her in one arm as he reaches out to lay his hand on Emily's back, so gently. Charles doubts Erik ever imagined he could be so gentle; but Charles has always seen it in him.

Charles knows they're not done yet. The doctors still have to finish suturing him back up. When that's finished, he has to send them away again, taking a few things from their minds while hiding the rest; Darwin may need them several months from now. Raven will want to hold and coo over her new nieces. The boys will want to see them, too, though Charles doesn't know whether holding or cooing is in the cards there.

But later, when the excitement's died down, they'll be left to themselves for a while: Charles and Erik, Emily and Edie, just the four of them, together.

Charles can't wait.

Epilogue

Erik's sitting in the kitchen, Emily beside him, her small hands cupped within his as they melt pennies together. (As he melts pennies and she tries to help, though she'll take all the credit later when she tells Charles about it, and Erik won't contradict her.) Edie and Scott are sitting on the other side of the table, squabbling over a box of crayons, though that seems to have been resolved now, Scott allotted two crayons and Edie the rest.

It took all morning to get them to settle down, so of course, as soon as they're being quiet and good, Alex and Darwin return from running errands.

"Daddy, Daddy!" Scott shrieks, and launches himself out of his chair and into the hallway. For the first time today, Erik isn't obligated to follow him, so he doesn't.

"Hey, sport," Alex says. He comes into the kitchen with a bag of groceries, sets it down on the counter, then turns his full attention on Scott. "What did you do while we were gone?" He glances over at Erik when he says this, all suspicion, as if his stupid kid would somehow get up to stupider things than usual just because Erik got stuck watching him this time.

"I played with Hank and I colored and I..." Scott begins, and Erik tunes him out right up until: "...and I went out the library window and I bounced. It was really cool!"

"You what?" Alex glances over at Erik again, looking murderous this time, then turns back to his son. "Why would you do that?"

"I didn't want to. Edie pushed me."

"Did not!" Edie says scornfully, not even bothering to look up from whatever she's drawing. "Tattletale."

"Yeah, tattletale," Emily says, turning around in her chair to glare at Scott.

Alex glares at Erik, like it's Erik's fault his kid is dumb enough to stand next to an open window while arguing with the girls. What did he expect would happen?

"Were you supervising them at all?"

Erik had been supervising his own children; he's never seen the need to waste much time or energy looking after Alex and Darwin's indestructible little shit. (The most fragile thing about him is that visor over his eyes, and that would be just about impossible to break, too. Erik should know; he helped Hank make it.) Erik's just opening his mouth to say so when Darwin shows up with another bag of groceries. He takes one look at Alex, then hurriedly sets the bag on the counter and ushers him out of the room.

"Come on, Scott," Darwin says.

Scott sticks his tongue out at Edie, then follows his dads out.

Erik turns back to helping Emily with the pennies.

A minute later, Edie says, cheerfully, "Little shit."

Erik sighs. "Don't read Daddy's mind, dear; it's rude." He pauses for a moment, and then adds, "And don't say 'shit.'"

*

Charles plans to stay holed up in his study for most of the afternoon to get various things done, but when he gets a spark of not-quite alarm from Erik in the kitchen - followed by a sense of 'You need to come see this' - he sets his work aside and ventures out.

When he gets there, he sees Erik holding a piece of construction paper at arm's length in front of his face.

Erik turns to look at him, his eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline.

"What's the matter?" Charles asks.

Erik flips the paper around. "Isn't it pretty," he says, not a little ironically.

Charles peers at the crayon drawing. He makes out the sun easily enough in the top right-hand corner; the blue squiggles in the middle of the page are clearly meant to be water. There are stick figures, of course: Erik's the tall one, the girls are the short ones, and Charles is the medium-sized one with a square intersected by two circles in place of legs. They're all holding hands, which is par for the course. For some reason, one of the shorter stick figures has green hair.

It takes Charles a little longer to make out what the big gray oval above the stick figures is meant to be. He's stumped at first, until he notices the other, much smaller stick figure off to the side, drawn upside-down with a red squiggle coming from its head.

...Oh.

"It's lovely," Charles croaks, when the urge to have a coughing fit has passed. He glances at Edie, who looks awfully pleased with herself.

"Can't keep anything from this one," Erik says, just as ironically as before. He turns to Edie, gestures at the blobs in the lower left corner of the page, and asks, "What's this thing here?"

"That's a giant," Edie says. "It's squishing your helmet."

"...Oh, I see. And why is that?"

"Because when you put it on, you stop having thoughts."

The look on Erik's face suggests he's not having any particularly coherent thoughts at the moment; and the glance he sends Charles' way suggests he wishes he hadn't been so quick to call him in here. "You mean you can't hear my thoughts."

Edie gives Erik an impatient look, one he's worn many a time. "No-o," she says, crossing her arms. "You stop having them."

Charles can't resist: "She's got you there, Erik," he says sweetly.

Erik looks back and forth between them, and he's just opening his mouth to say something when Emily pipes up:

"I think it's pretty, Daddy," she says, with a defiant glance at her sister.

This escalates in short enough order:

"It is not, it's ugly," Edie says.

"You're ugly."

"Am not! Your hair is ugly!"

(Well, that may explain that part of the picture.)

And then Edie lunges at Emily's hair, and Emily smacks her, and then Charles wheels forward to break them up and hold them away from each other.

"That's enough," he says. "No more fighting. Apologize."

Mumbled, insincere apologies follow.

"Thank you. Now, I want you both to go to your rooms until I say you can come down."

He glances at Erik, who's still frowning at the picture in his hand. Erik takes the hint and says, without so much as looking up, "Now."

Charles lets them go. They glare at each other a moment longer, then scatter out opposite exits.

"I'd appreciate a little more help than that, every so often," Charles says, more out of habit than any expectation of changing anything.

Erik stares at the picture a minute or two more, then shrugs and takes it over to the refrigerator.

"You can't be serious," Charles says. "Isn't that a tad morbid to have up on the fridge?"

"More morbid than this?" Erik asks, gesturing at last week's masterpiece, which involves Scott being eaten by a bird. (The explanation for this one: "Because he's a little worm." Edie's always been a bit bloody-minded, especially in her revenge. She hasn't had a civil word for Scott in a week and a half, ever since he made the mistake of pulling Emily's hair.)

"...I suppose not."

It's been a good long while since Charles has looked at Erik and had one of those surreal moments when he can hardly believe Erik's here, that they're raising two beautiful (if often trying) girls together. He has one such moment now, and suspects Erik is having one as well, judging from the bemused way he's still looking at Edie's picture, as if he can't imagine how they got from that place to this one.

"You should come here and kiss me," Charles says.

Erik obliges - with a bit more tongue than is strictly necessary, judging by the chorus of "ew"s from the doorway some fifteen minutes later.

THE END