Erik blinked awake as the sun barely started lighting up the room, hand moving instinctively to brush over Charles as if to check to see if he was still there even though he had consistently been there for the last nine years. Thus appeased, he stared drowsily at the ceiling and just spent the next few minutes breathing slowly and coming into consciousness. Today was Monday, he remembered, which meant he could not lie in bed all day. He had to set up the streamers, pick up the cake. He hadn’t started the dishwasher before he’d come up to bed--he’d have to do that. Did they have enough cups for breakfast? Why did Jakob go through so many cups?
Speaking of, he glanced down, the small body warped on the bed, sleeping like a psychopath yet again. He must get that from his father.
The boy was pressed in between his dads, fully sideways: his head rested on Erik’s stomach, his feet dug into Charles’ back. At four years old he was small and cute enough to not engender bitterness over sneaking into their bed at night and digging bony bits of himself into their bodies, at least not from him. Still, Erik hadn’t quite given up on cuddling with his husband that morning, so he dragged Jakob into a more traditional position, head at least pointing towards the pillows. With the boy sandwiched between them he could snake an arm around Charles’ stomach, lean forward enough to press his face into the back of the other man’s neck.
Charles stretched hugely, Erik could hear him yawn, smiled against his spine.
“Your son’s been kicking me in his sleep again,” Charles pointed out groggily.
“He gets it from you,” Erik said, his go-to argument since Jakob was Charles’, biologically speaking.
Charles yawned again, reached around to stroke Erik’s hip over the covers.
“I’ll make breakfast, you set the table?”
He didn’t know why Charles still ran things like this past him. The only breakfast he could be trusted to make was cereal. And only cold cereal at that. He squeezed Charles’ hand once, fingers brushing over his wedding band, and slipped out of bed, rubbing his eyes.
As with Charles, only an air raid could wake Jakob--he didn’t so much as sigh as his fathers got up for the day. Erik pulled the covers up to the kid’s thin shoulder, fixing the collar on his space-themed pajama suit. The boy was a science nerd even at four, just like his father. Erik was trying to turn him into a language nerd instead and it was mostly working, but unfortunately they didn’t really sell pajamas sets on that design. Magnet, their cat, stretched for a minute and then jumped off the bed, following him to the walk-in closet.
“He’s got to start sleeping in his own bed,” Charles groaned, massaging the small of his back as they got dressed. By now Erik was used to sleeping in the master bedroom on the second floor--it was the only practical way to run things with the nursery up here anyway--but for some reason it still felt rather fancy even after all these years. He helped the man massage the knot out, accepted a sleepy kiss for his troubles, and attempted to argue back.
“I already won’t get to see him during the day--don’t try to take him away at night, too.” Charles looked him over with a teasing glance as they both pulled on T-shirts and jeans. Emma had accused them of synchronizing their outfits, but honestly it just seemed to happen.
“I’d hardly call his preschool an all-day affair,” Charles mocked. Erik glared at him as they left the bedroom quietly, following one another down the stairs to the kitchen.
“Nine to one!” Erik reminded, heart twisting at the thought.
“He’ll be back before you know it,” his husband insisted, turning and wrapping his arms reassuringly around his waist. Erik doubted it, but kissed his man all the same. “Besides, I’m taking today off. You won’t be lonely.”
“Only because you don’t have class.” Erik grumbled, but decided it still counted and grinned, letting him go. “We can watch Princess Firenza and the Frog together.”
Charles made a gagging noise and went to start breakfast.
“I’ll make you French toast if you promise to keep me out of your Princess Firenza fanaticism.”
“Use the blackberries before they go bad,” he reminded, and then continued. “Is it my fault your son has an unhealthy obsession for vigilante princesses?”
“A princess doubling as a knight with her bodyguard frog--how do people come up with such trash?”
Erik balked. “Princess Firenza is not trash! Gott, you’re really a terrible stand in for Jake.”
“I’ll let you cut my sandwich into a star, will that make you feel better?”
“Not likely,” he pouted, starting the dishwasher and setting the table.
Once Charles finished with the blackberry sauce he got the French toast going.
“You want to get Jakob up? This’ll be ready soon,” the man commented. Erik tried not to pull a rendition of Jakob’s sporadic tantrums by bursting into tears and dragging his feet. If Jakob got up then he’d eat, and after he ate he’d get dressed, and the only task after that was getting him ready for the bus, or whatever rich private academies used to pick up their rich private academy kids.
He managed not to cry but he definitely dragged his feet.
When he got back to the master bedroom Jakob was already awake, curled up on Charles’ side of the bed with the book from his nightstand: some biology text that Erik couldn’t even understand, nevermind the fact that, unlike Jakob, he was actually literate.
“Was leist du, Mauschen?” he questioned, What are you reading? and Jakob grinned at him with those bright blue eyes--darker than his father’s but no less beautiful. Erik only wished his hair was equally similar: it had the same half-curl as Charles’, but was wheat-colored, apparently an ode to Sharon. There was always the hope though that Jakob would go through a rebellious stage and dye it...But then again he was just as likely to shave it all off.
“Nothing, Vati,” the boy hummed. “I’m only pretending. But!” he crowed, jumping up to his knees excitedly, “After school today I’ll read it to you! I can’t wait to read!”
Erik laughed, caught the boy when he took an energetic leap into his arms and let the knee to his ribs slide. He didn’t know how to break it to his son that one day of education would not make him literate, and so didn’t bother, just carried him down to breakfast.
Jakob talked of nothing else all through the meal: who he was going to meet at preschool and what he was going to do and what he was going to learn.
“Maybe when I get home I can help you with your homework, Daddy!” he bubbled to Charles who frowned like he had bad news to break and opened his mouth to do just that.
Before he could try and before Erik could stop him, his cell phone went off and he checked it for a text.
“Who is it?”
“Tom. He wants to know if he should bring anything.”
Erik’s lip curled angrily and he about bent his fork in half. “Yeah, tell him to bring a G-U-N so I can S-H-O-O-T him,” he growled.
“When I go to school I’m going to know what you’re sayyyiiing,” Jakob sang, pushing the blackberry sauce over his toast. Even though he didn’t share any genes with Erik, he seemed to have somehow inherited Erik’s distaste for eating.
“I don’t want you to cause a scene,” Charles warned Erik. “He’s really trying to turn over a new leaf here.”
“Like the last time? Or do you mean the time before that? Or maybe--”
“It doesn’t do his recovery any good to keep bringing up the past. I think he’s actually got a good shot this time--he and Sidney seem to have a really good thing going.”
“His last name is a first name; what good can come from that?”
“Excuse me?”
Erik rolled his eyes. “That does not even count--you’re Charles Lensherr-Xavier now if you don’t remember.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Kevin Sydney--it’s a perfectly respectable name, and the man’s certainly a much better influence than Thanos.”
“Or the one before--what was his name? Skull?”
“Skull is your head bone,” Jakob pointed out, and they realized they should not be having this conversation in front of him. Charles changed the subject by causing problems. For some reason he couldn’t stop himself around Jakob.
“If you don’t finish your breakfast they won’t let you go to school,” he warned, which set Jakob off on his ignored toast like a wild cat. Erik grabbed him with a worrying hand to the shoulder, glaring at Charles slightly.
“Don’t tell him that! He’s going to make himself sick!”
Charles just turned back to his own food, trying to look apologetic.
Once Jakob had barreled through half his food without pausing for breath Erik pulled him away from the meal to get dressed for the day while Charles got his backpack ready.
“I want Daddy to pick out my clothes,” Jakob whined as Erik went about rummaging through Jakob’s drawers. As the working father, everything Charles did was automatically more exciting than everything Erik did. The problem with being home with Jakob every day around the clock was that Jakob had built up a boredom to his presence. It was aggravating, but there was nothing he could do about it besides tell Charles to quit his job as a genius biologist and stay home with their (now) school-aged child.
“Daddy ist beschäftigt. Was wollen Sie tragen?” Daddy’s busy. What do you want to wear?
Jakob ignored him, going to his door and shouting down the stairs: “Daddy! I need you!”
Charles jumped on the ignoring bandwagon, because they had a strict protocol regarding shouting not being the proper way to get someone’s attention, and Erik sighed, setting out his Cafe Voice. Somehow it was easier disciplining the cafe kids than his own kid.
“Kommen Sie hier,” he growled low in his throat, staring the boy down. Jakob turned away from the stairs, eyes wide. He knew better than to mess with that voice. When he came close enough Erik dropped to a knee, frowning into those big blue eyes. “Daddy’s not getting you dressed. I’m getting you dressed. Take it or leave it. But you can’t go to school in your pajamas.”
Jakob didn’t like getting a talking to, and, like his father (or maybe like all children, Erik didn’t know), he sought appeasement through affection: he leaned into Erik’s shoulder, wrapping his tiny arms around Erik’s neck. Erik, it turned out, was a secret pushover, so he hugged the boy back, picking him up to search through his drawers together.
In the end they decided on khaki cargo pants and the double blue shirt with the crocodile on it. Erik had no idea if this was what rich kids wore, had to struggle to wrap his mind around the fact that his little Jakob was a rich kid. Charles did all their finances, or, rather, had people that did all their finances for him, so Erik wasn’t exactly sure how much of a rich kid Jakob was, but Charles had once told him that they could afford to spend a million dollars every week for about a year or so and still most likely have some left over to live on for the rest of their lives in leisurely middle-class. Erik hadn’t been able to wrap his mind around that statement and so ignored it and continued to live in leisurely middle-class regardless.
Except that his son was going to private preschool that required him to bring his own laptop, so being rich was awkwardly encroaching on his life and he didn’t like it. He didn’t brush Jakob’s hair on purpose to get back at those rich bastards and then brought the kid downstairs to put on his jacket and backpack.
Seeing him standing there ready for school was too much though--he made him take his backpack off again with the excuse of the boy needing to use the bathroom before he left.
Charles readjusted his cardigan up over his shoulders, texting and holding Jakob’s classic red backpack, never been used, about to be used.
“Put that thing away and remind why I agreed to let you take my baby away from me,” Erik gasped, finding it hard to breathe suddenly. Charles did so immediately, chuckling as he set down Jakob’s backpack, wrapping both arms around Erik’s shoulders and rubbing his back consolingly.
“Oh, darling! He’ll be back in no time at all!”
Erik shook his head, held the man back tightly. “This is just the start! Then it’s kindergarten, then high school...college...God, Charles! Why did we ever agree to get on this awful conveyer belt to death?”
“Things only get better with age, baby. Once he’s in college we’ll have the house to ourselves again,” Charles teased, hitching his body against Erik’s slightly. Erik pulled back and frowned at him.
“Don’t call me that.”
Jakob came back then, or rather bounded back.
“I’m ready for school now!” he crowed, leaping back into his backpack.
“Let’s go then,” Erik sighed, and they went to wait on the sidewalk for the pickup. Erik tried to not think of it as a kidnapping.
“Did you brush your hair?” Charles questioned under the birch trees that lined their block.
“Um, sure,” Jakob answered, because he was under the impression that ‘sure’ meant ‘I’m not sure.’ Charles tried to catch his eye but Erik stared steadfastly down the street, willing the bus or the van or the limo or whatever rich people used to tow their kids around to blow up and never come.
His willpower must have been slipping in his old age: the only ritzy van in existence pulled up and Shan hopped out quick and excitable to steal his child. She had some fancy title such as liason or student handler but Erik could only think of her as baby thief.
“Aua, Vati!” Jakob cried under his too-tight grasp, and wriggled away. The kid didn’t even say goodbye to them, just ran up to Shan, whom he’d met at the orientation. They shook hands, part of school protocol, and she waved to him and Charles, smiling happily. Jakob clamored up into the van, but stopped before sitting down, turning around in the door jamb and staring past Shan to his parents.
“Come on! We’re going to be late!” he exclaimed, waving them forward.
Erik and Charles exchanged a surprised glance, and then rushed forward to explain. The thing was, they had explained this before. Jakob understood this--they couldn’t go with him. He knew they couldn’t go with him.
“Jakob, we talked about this,” Charles murmured, glancing at Shan. “I’m so sorry. We talked about this. I don’t want to make you late...”
“No problem--you’re our last pickup. First day is always tough,” she cheered gamely.
Erik ignored their conversation, rubbing Jakob’s shoulder as the boy stared up at him. By the frightened gaze he was getting, his son was beginning to understand that his parents weren’t coming to school. None of the other kids’ parents were in the van...
“Jakob, you know we can’t go with you,” he murmured softly.
“That’s okay,” the boy replied in a voice that was just starting to panic. “You don’t both have to come with me. I only want you.”
“School is only for children.”
“But Daddy goes to school all the time,” Jakob replied thinly, huge blue eyes filling with tears.
“This school is different,” Erik tried to explain. Jakob wasn’t having any of it.
“If you can’t go with me then I don’t want to go,” he cried, climbing Erik like a tree and gripping him around the shoulders in a pincer hold.
“If you don’t go to school how will you read to me tonight?” he cajoled.
“You can teach me at home. Like you teach me Hebrew.” He was crying in earnest now, and Erik was tearing up too much to answer him, his throat clenched and painful with it.
“Come on, Jakob. It’s time for school,” Charles said gently, and the feel of him pulling Jakob away was too much. When Charles got Jakob off he had to turn away, wiping away tears as quickly as they came or at least trying to keep up with them. He wished he were anywhere but here as Jakob sobbed to him: “Vati! Lass mich bei dir bleiben! Bitte, Vati! Bitte!” Let me stay with you, let me stay with you.
As soon as he heard the van pull away he was rushing back into their house, doing everything he could to not outright sob.
“He’ll be fine,” Charles assured, curling up beside him on the couch and just holding him, murmuring continued assurances into his hair. Erik didn’t believe any of it and succumbed to sobbing.
Erik stayed on the couch for hours, miserable and wrecked as he always was after crying. He did it so infrequently it completely drained him when it came about. Charles was a doting husband: went to the store and bought him comfort food till it was pouring out his ears, till he thought he might be sick. He put on Princess Firenza for a second, but it just made Erik start sobbing again so he turned over to the SuperAction Channel and they watched a rogue killer alligator eat people. These were the only sorts of horror movies Charles was capable of watching, because the animal was only following its instincts and really did they always have to kill it at the end, it was so cruel.
He was worried that the school hadn’t called to say that his son was still sobbing uncontrollably and needed to be picked up. Maybe his school was evil and was ignoring his sobs. Maybe they beat kids for sobbing at private schools.
“They don’t beat children,” Charles scoffed with Erik shared his fears over expensive ice cream. “Not for thirty thousand a year they don’t.”
“It costs extra?” Erik burbled miserably into his melting treat.
“Oh, honey,” Charles laughed at him and just held him all over again. Erik put his ice cream down and collapsed into the grasp petulantly. “Jakob is going to be absolutely fine! There’s going to be so many new and exciting things at his school he’ll forget all about this in no time.”
“He might but I won’t,” Erik replied disconsolately.
Someone knocked on the door and Charles didn’t even leave him alone long enough to answer it, just shouted ‘Come in!’ and went back to consoling his husband.
“Who died?” Raven questioned when she saw their states, baby on her hip like it had grown there and a toddler gripped by the hand. Erik was furious immediately: why did she get to keep her kids when he had to send his off to school? She was flaunting her abundance of babies, he was sure of it.
“You, if you don’t get your spawn out of my house,” he growled.
“What’s up with Captain Sunshine?” the woman asked her brother, tossing him a baby and collapsing into their chair.
Charles fit Marie into the crook of his arm and continued to caress Erik’s legs where they were spilled into his lap.
“He’s had a rough morning.”
“I was expecting more threats to raid the preschool and less abject weeping,” Raven admitted, looking Erik over and taking in his red eyes and post-cry lethargy.
“Jakob had rather a meltdown when they came to pick him up. He made it sound less like a preschool and more like a baby gulag,” Charles explained.
“Rough. Well, if you’re baby-hungry you can have mine. Kurt’s disappearing every five seconds now and Marie’s sucking the life out of me. You guys are so lucky you only had one. I’m thinking of taking the cafe over from Az and letting him be a stay at home dad. Us Xaviers simply weren’t cut out for this kind of life,” Raven sighed dramatically.
“I don’t want your babies, I want my baby. Speaking of which--get yours out of here. We’re not on babysitting duty today, we’re in mourning.”
“You don’t have to babysit them! Logan has to babysit them. I invited him over. I think I’ll go nap.”
“What the hell are you doing inviting people over to our house? No one even invited you! Now get your brats and get out! Go be a housewife and do dishes or watch soap operas or something! Get out of my house!”
“You really didn’t pick a good time, Raven,” Charles said apologetically.
“How was I supposed to know Jakob leaving would turn him into a gigantic bitch?” the woman wailed back.
“Honestly,” Charles admitted. “I’m rather surprised you weren’t expecting it. I mean, really, does it ever take much?”
“I’m going lie down and drown in my own tears,” Erik threatened, pitching himself off the couch and stumbling towards the stairs.
“I think I’ll join you,” Raven yawned. “Dibs on the king bed! Charles, keep an eye on the kids till Logan gets here?”
Erik didn’t care that Raven had nicked his bedroom, but he didn’t want her to enjoy it.
“There’s semen all over that bed,” he hissed, poised at Jakob’s door.
“Please,” the woman scoffed back as she passed him up for his own room. “You’re married with a kid. There hasn’t been semen in that bed for months.”
That wasn’t quite true, not with Charles’ ever-present libido, but the woman was already safely away out of reach from his snark. He was too exhausted to care now, turning and tumbling into Jakob’s made bed, clutching the boy’s teddy bear to his chest before dozing off morosely.
He woke up only partially when Charles climbed in behind him, slotting their bodies together like two well-worn books on a shelf, wrapping an arm around Erik’s waist.
Erik shifted in his grip, tilting from the precarious balancing act he’d had on his hip, leaning into Charles’ weight.
“Let’s have another kid,” he mumbled groggily.
“I was just stuck with Kurt and Marie for half an hour while Logan was fucking off doing god knows what. I don’t even want our kid back at this point.”
Erik hit him, open-handed but rough on the curve of his ass, which had the adverse effect of making Charles groan and arch into him.
“We could try for a brunet this time around,” he cajoled.
“You’re setting us back, Erik,” Charles grumbled. “As it is, in fourteen years we’ll have the house to ourselves again. Why do you want to muck about with that schedule?”
“We’ll stage it: each time one kid goes off to preschool we’ll have another kid to take their place.”
“You’re insane,” Charles chuckled, kissing his cheek.
“We always talked about having a big family.”
“We do have a big family: Raven, Aza--”
“We always said we’d want more than one kid. Otherwise they’d be selfish lonely brats like me.”
“And then we had Jakob and he’s so perfect that no kid could compete and we agreed that if we introduced a lesser child into the mix he’d turn out like Tom.”
“And then you hit me for saying that and said that we’d love all our kids so much and anyway that wasn’t what Tom’s problem was anyway blah blah blah.”
“We’re not having another kid. Just hold out for grandkids. That’s what progeny are for.”
“I’m going to adopt a baby while you’re not looking,” Erik persevered stubbornly. “Just you wait. I’ll buy a test-tube baby.”
“I could get you a kitten,” Charles tried to appease. “Would that make you feel better, hmm? A cute little kitten to take care of?”
Erik ignored that paltry scheme. “Just one more baby. Please? We’ll use your genes again--he’ll be sure to be just as great as Jakob. Your DNA is like influenced by Ghandi or something.”
“You really want to go back to dirty diapers, crying, no sleep, bottles? Please try to remember the exact flavor of our six month dry spell. I nearly died.”
Erik grinned, remembering. Or, actually, remembering the end of that spell. “And then Moira agreed to take him for the whole weekend and we went to the sleazy motel when we woke up from our parental coma we both came so hard we thought we’d sprained something.”
“Please, remind me,” Charles groaned, hand going straight to the V of Erik’s legs and making him gasp.
“Raven’s right in the next room!” he hissed, but that didn’t stop his hips from flexing back against Charles’ palm, trapped between that and the growing prod behind him.
“She used to live right above us if you don’t remember.”
“Logan?”
“Brought the kids to the park to pick up chicks.”
Erik only had a moment to think of how absolutely bone-tired he was before pushing it aside as he was parentally trained to do. Charles would just have to be on top, not that it was any hardship on the brunet usually.
“Not on Jakob’s bed,” he argued though.
“Why not? He never sleeps in it.” Charles bit back bitterly. Erik was sure the brunet didn’t want to get into that tried and true debate so didn’t rise to the bait, going with a simple,
“Not. In Jakob’s. Bed.”
Charles sighed long-sufferingly, huffing into Erik’s hair. “How do you feel about Jakob’s floor?”
“...Doable.
His mood was lifted, but Charles teased that it was only partly finally getting some and partly the fact that it was 12:45, an acceptable time to sit on the porch waiting for their son to come back.
“School only just lets out at one,” Charles reminded him, coming out with sandwiches cut into cute geometric shapes.
“I thought those were for the TAs,” Erik replied, eyeing them carefully. Charles had had to make a second batch after he’d ignored dinner to demolish the first one, and they were certainly off-limits, reserved solely for his First-Lecture-of-the-School-Year! lunch date.
“I pity you, so I’m making an exception,” Charles teased, holding them out to him. He took one because they were amazing, but ignored the rest, too pent up to eat.
Charles stayed on the patio with him, trying to distract him from the slow countdown to Jakob coming back.
It didn’t precisely work, but he did end up getting a big distraction when Logan came back up the block with a double stroller and a pleased grin, blocking Erik’s view of the street.
“Would you fucking duck down or something?” he shouted, startling Magnet where the animal was sunbathing on the porch. “You’re only blocking the whole goddamned street!”
“That’s fifty cents,” Charles pointed out.
“The swear jar is for Jakob, not you,” Erik pouted back.
Charles just held out his hand. Erik took it cheekily, kissing his wedding band. “Put it on my tab, Geliebter.”
“It sounded almost as if you were shouting obscenities at me,” Logan growled when he got close enough.
Erik didn’t have time to fight him though as the school van pulled up the street--lunging to a stand and practically vaulting Logan and his infantile crew.
Charles had liked to play the cold fish all day, but he was just as excited to see their son again if his sprint to the sidewalk was any evidence.
Jakob leapt straight out of the van into his arms and he didn’t think he’d ever be able to stop hugging him as the kid started spewing words fifteen to the dozen.
“How was he?” Charles asked Shan, getting in on a group hug and talking from Erik’s shoulder.
“He was fine! By time we got to school he was so wrapped up in meeting all the other kids he was chipper as a lamb!” she laughed.
“Omigod, Vati!” Jakob was exclaiming, pulling away to look over both his dads. “School is so awesome!”
“Thanks, Shan,” Erik sighed, waving the girl away.
“No problem,” she laughed. “See you tomorrow!” Erik wasn’t looking forward to it. Jakob might have gotten over his fear of school but Erik hadn’t.
“Daddy, Vati, why are you crying? Are you sad?” Jakob balked, his soft little hand caressing a few tears loose from Erik. He glanced over and, sure enough, Charles was starry-eyed with tears as well.
“What? You don’t have a monopoly on crying,” Charles gulped at him.
“We missed you,” Erik explained to his son, laughing just slightly.
“Oh, Vati!” Jakob consoled, wrapping his arms around Erik’s neck, wriggling against him. “Sie nicht traurig*. Tomorrow I’ll ask Miss Elliott if you can come to school with me, just this one special time.”