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Finally! It’s five!
Erik hastily empties his desk of the files into the drawer underneath and locks it. Erik is not one to be lax at work or the one to leave the office the minute the clock chimes five. On the contrary, he’s a misanthropic slave driver who obtains illicit pleasure in herding his minions towards workaholism. But today, he hasn’t been able to concentrate; especially not after reading Charles’s text bidding him to come home early. The anticipation had been killing him for the past two hours, leaving him with too little mind space to overlook the files Emma had sent him. If the ski-way traffic isn’t a bitch, he’ll be on his doorstep in thirty minutes.
Encouraged further by the thought, Erik dons his coat clumsily. He’s looking for his fedora when he spots the redhead on his radar, heading directly towards him for collision.
Erik curses in two languages.
‘Hello Lehnsherr. Leaving early, I see. Such a rarity. The Daily predicted that the next occurrence would be when you turn forty-nine.’
The knucklehead has the nerve to bare all his teeth in a grin. Erik growls. If anyone can bare all their teeth in a grin, it’s Erik and Erik alone.
When Erik doesn’t answer, Sean continues as he follows Erik out of his cubicle. ‘Will you take a day off tomorrow? You’re turning forty-eight. Aren’t you?’ The rest of Sean’s yammer dims to the back of Erik’s head as he wonders how his birthday became Sean’s knowledge.
That’s when he sees it.
Ah! He had almost forgotten.
Glowing in big red neon on the halogen board in the middle of the gathering area is a list of birthdays of every senior partner in the firm. Erik’s name is second on the list, following Emma’s.
The Ice Queen is only twenty-nine? Horse shit!
When Erik had confronted her a week ago as to why she had made the knowledge public, Emma had purred in a voice that was dipped in honey, rolled in powdered sugar and sprinkled with chocolate dust. ‘You don’t want the minions to think we’re untouchables. Do you, Sugar?’
Of course, it so happens that she thought about the approachability of the higher-ups in the organisation just a week before Erik’s impending birthday.
A donkey’s left ass!
There’s nothing the she-devil enjoys more than torturing Erik’s soul over a grille in hell while sipping on his blood.
Erik wonders if the chart would catch fire if he glared at it hard enough. And if it does, maybe he can see if Sean would be willing to be subject to an experiment.
‘—It’s fine, Lehnsherr. I can look into the Clarkson cases for you—’ the redhead is still prattling behind him, and that’s all Erik has the patience for.
Erik stops in his path to the lifts and turns towards Sean. The latter stumbles to a halt, almost tripping on his own leg. Erik glares at him while pointedly flexing his wrist into a tight fist. The dimwit opens his mouth and closes it around an audible clatter of teeth.
He watches with content the size of Sirius as Sean flees his presence; probably to weep on Emma’s lap.
Speaking of forty-eight, Erik hates it. Hates it even more that others are aware of it. While he’s pragmatic enough to know and accept that ageing is inexorable, the increase in number gives the people around him the freedom to pounce on him with questions, opinions and advice he’d fought to keep at bay all year.
‘Forty-eight? You sure it isn’t the other way around, Lehnsherr?’ Raven chides.
While the network of wrinkles on his face is already far more intricate than the country’s network of ski-ways, Erik has a feeling that the situation will worsen with each passing year. Not that he cares one bit about his looks. No. It’s just unfair when Charles’s face is stuck at twenty-five and refuses to age; especially when Charles is only two years behind him.
Charles attributes the existence of Erik’s wrinkles to his excessive frowning. Try not to when you’re working with the likes of Sean Numskull Cassidy.
Since Raven looks like a teenager even at thirty-three, there must be something in the Xavier gene that enables it.
‘Papa is basically a human Jigglypuff,’ their children used to say constantly when they were young. Erik has seen a lot of cartoons on the TV with his kids, but he hasn’t seen Jigglypuff, though if it’s anything like Charles, it’s certainly good.
‘You have to take up the medical examination at least annually, if not quarterly, Mr Lehnsherr. It’s a company mandate.’ Moira, his HR, says. Dodging her and her stubborn streak is becoming increasingly difficult with each passing year. Erik only hopes that it doesn’t come to Emma’s attention.
The thing is that Erik hates hospitals. Straight and simple. The thought of even stepping into one of them crowds him with paranoia. The stench and sight of the white floor is enough to make him sick. Furthermore, the death of his parents hadn’t helped in softening his opinion of them. Nothing good has ever come out of hospitals for Erik, except his three children.
Besides, Erik believes that youth is a state of mind, not a phase in one’s life.
‘You have a child’s mind in a man’s body,’ Charles constantly tells him, and not entirely with jest. Based on the number of times Erik has pulled elaborate pranks on Charles, he’s probably right. It’s too tempting not to. A few days ago, he had made Charles watch a psycho-thriller and had hid in the shower the next day waiting for Charles to get in. Mid-shower, while Charles’s face was covered in soap bubbles, he had pounced on him, eliciting screams and yelps. Of course, that had earned him a punch to the face. But the bright colour that had spread across Charles’s face and chest and the sparkling anger in the blue of his eyes had made it worth it. Charles looks so adorable throwing daggers at Erik that it is totally worth sporting a bruised jaw time and over.
Erik giggles at the memory — or a hoard of similar ones — as he steps out of the lift and into the building’s parking lot.
But despite his age, Erik is healthy. He works out daily. His muscles are steel, and he can deadlift four hundred pounds. He can break bones without breaking a sweat. Most importantly, he can still carry Charles to the bedroom and fuck him senseless. And as long as Erik can do that, he’s perfectly happy.
Galvanised by the train of thought, Erik steps on the accelerator and races through the streets in a mad rush to get home.
*
Dinner is ready by the time Erik arrives home. Without fanfare, the two of them swallow the pasta at an alarmingly unhealthy rate. Their haste is justified, of course, for there are better things waiting to be done in the bedroom. Birthday sex, to name one.
One moment they have their clothes on and the next moment, they don’t.
In a slurry of wet, noisy kisses and the drag of skin, they reach the bedroom. Of course, they could have just fucked on the table, but they had already done that within two days of moving into their new home. On every possible surface.
Twice.
Their cumulative activities on the first two days had led to scarred neighbours, horrified unexpected visitors, and several restraining orders. It’s not like they don’t learn their lessons.
Whilst on most nights they embark on ‘slow lovemaking’, today, Charles insists on ‘wild fucking’. And who is Erik to deny Charles anything?
Charles is already wet. The Minx! And with an unrelenting look in his eyes, Charles orders sharply: ‘Don’t stall, Lehnsherr!’
Erik knows that his birthday this year is going to be a special one, not just because of Charles, but because Peter and Crystal had called a few days ago to announce that they’re expecting, and that Charles and Erik are going to be grandfathers.
Their kids will arrive the next day for the birthday celebrations that Charles dutifully organises every year. Peter and Crystal are caught up with work, so is Wanda, and David is yet to leave university. That gives them plenty of time to indulge in pre-birthday celebrations; birthday sex, to be more precise.
With more than five hours till his birthday, it's going to be a lot of fucking. Bulbs light up in Erik’s head, and his grin turns animalistic.
Charles growls into the pillow below as Erik pistons his lower back, his cock pumping in and out of Charles’s ass. It's a delectable sight. The hitch in Charles’s breath arises with his thrusts and mends into moans. Moans that do things to Erik’s cock. In fact everything that is affiliated to Charles has that effect on Erik’s cock. Their combined scents hang thick in the air. Charles’s flushed face as he begins to dissolve in ecstasy, the red that rises to his skin and melds with the starburst of freckles, the loose fringe of silky brown hair that spills from his head and into his eyes. Granted, the brown fall of his hair is now striped with grey streaks, but that only serves to enhance Charles’s points on the sextometer.
‘Don’t be lazy Erik. Put your back into it,’ Charles hisses, pulling him back and clenching on his cock deliberately.
Erik groans at the sensation of the tight heat around him. ‘You want me to put my back into it? Here,’ he growls, ramming his lower back into Charles’s backside, the motion jostling them further into the bed.
‘Yes! Yes. Right there!’ Charles exhorts between pants.
Another thrust of his hips—
And that’s when it strikes.
A blinding pain in his upper back, seizing his muscles and spasming his mind with agony. It feels as though his spine is twisting like a wet cloth, draining the life out of him. He tries to shut his eyes and will the pain away. It doesn’t. Instead, it creeps higher, onto his shoulders, threatening to numb his arms. Erik collapses forward onto the bed, and for a few moments, everything goes blank.
Erik doesn’t remember Charles calling Hank, forcing his legs into boxers, or the drive to the hospital. But when he becomes conscious enough to comprehend, he realises — with paranoia deeper than all of Neptune’s oceans — that he’s sitting in the Emergency section of the hospital, dressed in nothing but his boxers and a threadbare vest. Charles’s furry lilac house slippers — two sizes too small — bite at his heels.
Erik curses in three languages. This is going to be the worst birthday ever.
The cheap holiday decorations thrown carelessly over the sterilised white do a shoddy job of bringing in the holiday cheer, or whatever it’s supposed to bring.
Charles rushes in through the parting in the white curtains on sensing Erik’s sour mood. His mate’s sweet scent dulls the arduous odour of the disinfectants sprayed over the bed and the side table, albeit just a little.
‘Erik,’ Charles says, concern written on his face, ‘how are you feeling?’
A sharp pain blooms in Erik’s back when he lifts his head in Charles’s direction. He must have projected it, for Charles winces in sympathy.
‘Never mind,’ Charles says, coming to sit next to him and taking his hand. ‘Hank says that it shouldn’t be anything more than a strained muscle. But to be on the safer side, he’ll send in Logan to run some scans.’
Erik groans, realising with disappointment the size of Jupiter that they probably won’t make it home before midnight. Charles catches his thoughts, and before he can respond, a boy enters through the curtains, eyes covered by a red translucent plasma-containing glass and fixed severely on the data pad in his hand.
He stops when he fully centres himself in the claustrophobic space, sniffs a lungful of air and looks up at Charles. His scrunched-up brows untangle and his lips part in a grin.
The first thing Erik registers about the boy is ‘Alpha’, and the second thing Erik registers about the boy is ‘Threat’.
‘Professor Xavier?’ the boy beams, and all Erik wants to do is break every one of his teeth. Erik tries to get up and stand between the boy and Charles, but gets pulled back down by the pain in his back.
‘Do you remember me? I studied in your mutations class before enrolling in Medicine. Batch of 15:203?’ the boy asks with hearts in his eyes, like in the cartoons.
Charles looks confused for a moment, before his face, too, blooms in recognition. ‘Scott Summers? What a pleasant surprise! A doctor, is it? Very impressive!’
Scott dips his head and blushes severely — also like in the cartoons — and in a voice dipped in maple syrup, rolled in coconut shavings and sprinkled with cinnamon dust, answers, ‘Junior doctor, actually, Professor. I hope you’re all right though. Hank told me to help you fill up your form.’
‘Oh, I’m all right,’ says Charles sheepishly and cocks his head at Erik. ‘It’s him who is in pain.’
As if sensing Erik’s presence just then, Scott looks at Erik with disinterest. ‘And how is he related to you, Professor? Your father?’
Father?
Erik needn’t get up to slam the boy’s data pad square in his face, he can do it all with his powers. But much to Erik’s ire, Charles catches on to that train of thought before Erik can act upon it.
Erik, no! Charles warns him mentally. Out loud, he says, ‘Oh no. This is my alpha, Erik. His back is injured, and he’s not able to move.’
Scott sighs heavily and dramatically, as if mourning Erik’s very presence. He walks towards them and sits on Charles’s other side.
The first thing Erik registers is that he’s sitting too close to Charles. The second thing Erik registers is How dare he! If anybody should be sitting too close to Charles, it’s Erik, and Erik alone.
So Erik melts the armrest between Charles and Scott to create a barrier between the two, such that no matter how much he tries, Scott can never touch Charles.
Charles reprimands Erik to behave. Scott glares at Erik pointedly. Erik smirks at him.
Scott takes down the information as Charles provides Erik’s name, age and insurance details with barely restrained boredom.
‘So, tell me, Professor,’ Scott says, turning to Charles with way too much cheer for Erik’s liking. ‘How did the injury happen?’
And isn’t Erik the one who is supposed to answer that question?
‘He fell down the stairs,’ Charles says at the same time as Erik says, 'I was fucking him.’
‘Erik,’ Charles hisses, nudging his bare thigh with his fist.
'I was fucking him,’ Erik says it once more, just in case Scott didn’t catch it the first time he said it.
Scott grits his teeth. Charles’s face traverses eight shades of red in three seconds. Erik's smirk deepens.
‘Have there been any performance issues?’ Scott asks.
‘Performance issues?’ Erik asks, raising his eyebrows as Charles looks between the two of them.
As if blind to Erik's presence entirely, Scott turns to Charles and shrugs. ‘I mean, are there any performance issues when it comes to lovemaking? Clearly, he’s too old for you, Professor. What are you, twenty-eight? If that is the case, I can assure you there are clearly other options—’
'I have no problems fucking Charles seven times a week. Just like I've been doing for the past twenty-eight years,’ Erik snaps. The data pad in Scott's hand shakes in place.
‘Erik!’ Charles hisses, slapping Erik’s bare thigh lightly. Be nice.
Be nice to a man — no, a boy — who no doubt is hitting on my husband right in front of my eyes? Bull fucking shit!
He’s not hitting on me. He’s just doing his job.
Just doing his job? A donkey’s right ass!
‘Let’s move on to the next question, Scott,’ Charles pacifies.
Scott does a tawdry job of searching the next question on the screen, as if it even exists in the first place. ‘Have you been using protection?’
Even Charles sputters this time and blushes a deep red. ‘Oh, dear. We haven’t.’
You can’t be this naïve, Charles. Come on, it’s blatantly evident that he’s just making these up. You can’t tell me that you don’t understand. He’s clearly hitting on you and right in front of me. Erik tries.
Don’t be boorish, Erik. He was my student. My students are no different from my children.
But does he know that?
Ignoring Erik’s question, Charles gestures for Scott to continue. Erik wonders if Scott will catch fire if he glared at him hard.
‘Any STDs I should be aware of?’ Scott asks, feigning professionalism.
‘And what has that got to do with the price of flowers on Hyperion?’ Erik snaps.
Erik! Charles warns.
You really are a shit telepath, Charles. What the fuck does STDs have to do with my back injury?
I’m sure it’s part of a generic and a standard questionnaire.
Standard questionnaire? Erik curses in four languages.
Ignoring Erik once again, Scott turns to Charles and asks, ‘So, Professor, tell me, how regular are your heats?’
And that's all Erik has the patience for. With a flick of his powers, Erik plucks the datapad from the boy's hand and angles it in the air so that Scott's teeth are victimised on impact. But just when he's about to slam the square metal into Scott's face, Logan enters, parting the curtains.
Killjoy.
He looks from the datapad hovering in the air to Erik's face, then at Scott, back at Erik, and sighs heavily.
‘I'm just going to pretend that I walked in while the two of you were discussing insurance details.’
‘Kid,’ Logan calls out to Scott. ‘Make yourself useful and set this machine up.’
Erik watches with satisfaction the size of Saturn as Scott winces and gets up from Charles’s side to set up the scanning machine Logan had carried with him.
‘There are no fractures or swellings, which is a good thing,’ Logan says on examining the scans. ‘It looks just like a strain. Still, it's best not to overexert yourself for a couple of weeks.’
Logan injects an anti-inflammatory spray into Erik's bloodstream that dulls out most of Erik’s pain and scribbles out a handful of medicines. Once he's done, he turns towards Charles and asks, ‘And you, bub. Everything alright?’
‘Yes, everything's alright,’ Charles says, confused. ‘Why do you ask?’
He looks at Charles and then at Erik, back at Charles and again at Erik with a hung jaw. Charles and Erik look at each other and mentally shrug.
‘You're kidding, right?’ Logan asks, dumbfounded.
‘What's happened to Charles?’ Erik asks, concern and worry bubbling up like the hot gases swirling around Operion and blinding it in a thick fog. ‘Is he alright?’
‘Do you even scent each other?’ Logan asks after another bout of staring at them.
‘Oh, I'm afraid we've been rather… occupied lately,’ Charles answers.
Occupied getting straight into business, that is. But Erik doesn't complete it.
‘Oh, I knew that Professor was not happy in the marriage—’ Scott begins to say, only to be cut off by Logan. ‘Get out, kid.’
Erik watches with satisfaction the size of Betelgeuse as Scott hunches his shoulders and stomps out of the room with a big frown on his face, just like in the cartoons.
Turning towards them, Logan sighs heavily and dramatically, like a dying star that doesn't have the energy to put up with them any more. ‘Anybody within a two-mile radius of your scent can tell that you're pregnant, Charles.’
‘What?’ They both blurt out in unison as Logan flees from their presence, mumbling something that sounds very much like: ‘I'm not paid enough for this shit.’
*
‘No.’ Charles is shaking his head and pacing the length of the tiny space. ‘How could this happen?’
They both know how this exactly happened. But that's neither here nor there.
‘What will the people say? What will my colleagues say? What will Raven say? Most importantly, what will our children say? Dear God.’ Charles stops in his path and turns to Erik with horror in his eyes. ‘Erik, Crystal and I will go into labour around the same time. We're going to become fathers and grandfathers at the same time.’
Erik gingerly gets up, and when he doesn't encounter pain, he moves more boldly towards Charles and pulls him into his arms.
‘Exactly,’ Erik says with wonder, rubbing his hands up and down Charles’s arms and back. ‘We're going to become fathers once again, Schatz. Remember how you'd been missing having children running around the house when David moved out? Moreover, I don't think that we’ve done such a bad job at raising our children that they'd loathe an addition to the family. Besides, people will speak either way, Charles. You know I don't give two shits about what those idiots say. But if you don't want the child, then it's fine. I'm more than content to become a grandfather—’
‘No,’ Charles says severely, placing a finger on Erik's lips. ‘No, that's not what I meant. I'm just — I wasn't expecting it.’
‘So wasn't I. But now—’ Erik brings one hand down to lay on Charles’s stomach. A slow grin spreads on his face. ‘I'm going to become a father and a grandfather, Charles. I can't deny that this is the best birthday gift I could get.’
Charles looks up to the red letters blinking over the far wall. ‘It's not your birthday yet. There's still half an hour left.’
‘Then what do you say we start the celebrations early?’ Erik asks suggestively. His eyes twinkle and his grin turns sly.
‘Don't grin so wide,’ Charles scoffs. ‘It'll give you more wrinkles.’
‘You like my wrinkles.’
‘I do,’ Charles agrees, a touch too fondly. ‘Besides, didn't Logan tell you to take it easy?’
Damn. He did. As much as Erik likes the idea of celebrations, he doesn't want to aggravate the injury more than it already is, because explaining to the kids how it happened is going to be inexpedient. Especially when two of his three children are telepaths.
Charles chuckles warmly into his mind. Don't worry about the kids, I'll shield them from your mind. Some telepaths they may be, but I'm their father. Out loud he says, ‘Don't worry about your back either. I'll do all the work.’
Charles projects an image into Erik's mind as to how he'll do all the work. It involves their king-sized bed, Erik supine on it, and Charles riding him into the mattress.
Enthused by the thought of home and what's to follow, Erik pulls Charles and rushes out of their faux emergency ward. ‘Yes, let's go home.’
Another minute in the odious place and Erik is sure to go ballistic. Nothing good has ever come out of hospitals for Erik, except his three children.
Make it four, Charles corrects.
*
~ 2 years later ~
Erik will never tire of looking at Lorna and Charles together. Lorna’s green curls pop against Charles’s chest where he is rocking her gently to sleep on the sofa.
Despite Erik’s initial doubts, their kids had welcomed Lorna’s arrival gleefully and without any rebuffs. Well, if you ignore Wanda’s and David’s cries of ‘I have the most embarrassing parents ever!’ and Peter’s crisis of having two pregnant members in the family — ‘I don’t know whom I should be more worried about. My pregnant wife or my pregnant father’ — or whose baby shower should be organised first.
In the end, Charles and Crystal had shared a baby shower and Lorna and Luna Xavier-Lehnsherr were born on the same day.
Erik looks at the clock on the far wall. There’s still five more hours till his birthday. It’s going to be a memorable birthday, Erik already knows. He’d gotten his gift early. Wanda had called in a few days ago announcing that she’s expecting with Vision and that Charles and Erik were to become grandfathers for the second time around.
Their kids won’t be flying in until the next day, and Lorna has already been put to sleep, which gives them enough time to indulge in some pre-birthday celebrations. Birthday sex, to be precise.
Galvanised by the thought, Erik sits beside Charles on the sofa and begins to nose behind Charles’s ear and peppers the sensitive skin with wet kisses, just the way the telepath likes. Charles’s scent has changed the slightest bit in the last month, not that Erik minds, because now Charles smells divine.
Charles chuckles beneath him, understanding Erik’s intention. ‘I would love to, darling. But I’m rather tired.’
Come to think of it, Charles has begun to get increasingly tired in the past month. The portions of food on his plate are getting ridiculously small. Erik had initially attributed it to the strain that comes with running behind a toddler. But he realises with a gut-wrenching feeling that it may be something more.
Do you want me to talk to Hank? Maybe we could go to the hospital and get some tests done, Erik projects.
Charles shakes his head. I already spoke to Hank, and he assured me that all’s well. Nudging Erik’s side, he projects, Besides, you hate hospitals.
‘I do,’ Erik agrees out loud. ‘Nothing good has ever come out of hospitals for me; except my four children. But I’d go for you.’
Charles sighs heavily and dramatically, like Erik is the naïve one for a change. He takes Erik’s free hand and places it on his stomach. ‘Make that five.’
‘What?’ their children blurt out from the doorway. The cake iced with ‘Happy 50th, Dad!’ falls and splats on the floor. A balloon that reads surprise! in a bright sunny yellow bursts in tandem.
Well, Erik wasn’t lying when he said that his impending birthday is going to be a memorable one.
_