Title: Childish Pleasures
Author: Ami Ven
Prompt: phase 21, challenge 01, prompt 11 “You can’t look dignified when you’re having fun.” (Wes Janson, Star Wars)
Word Count: 416
Fandom: X-Men
Pairings: Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr
Setting: part of my
MCU Happy ‘VerseSummary: Charles and Erik are not too old to have a little fun.
Childish Pleasures
A child’s shriek startled Charles out of his afternoon nap, already rolling his chair toward the back porch ramp, even as he cast his mind out over the school grounds.
He hadn’t sensed any danger, no anger or malevolence, just the general hum of familiar minds. Ororo was in the east garden, taking advantage of the beautiful spring weather to tend her flowers. Scott and Jean were in the kitchen, getting an early start on the preparations for their turn at making dinner. Hank was in his lab, deep in calculations for some upgrades to the Blackbird. And Erik -
The shriek came again, this time followed by a peal of childish laughter, and Charles let himself roll to a stop in the grass.
Erik had a dozen of the younger children, just inside the treeline across the lawn. Six-year-old Mariko, now giggling madly, sat on a metal disk floating a few feet in the air, which Charles recognized as the large silver serving platter from his mother’s china cabinet. Mariko’s iridescent wings, still much too small to lift even her slight weight, fluttered against the air as the disk rose and fell in an irregular pattern.
The other children danced around her, too breathless to laugh, as Erik sat in the grass behind them, letting eight-year-old Liam poke daisies into his short hair.
“Hello, Charles,” said Erik, and reached out his other hand to glide the wheelchair over a dip in the lawn. “Have you come to join us?”
“I hadn’t,” the telepath admitted. “But I could be persuaded.”
“By what, professor?” asked Ayora, who was seven.
He smiled. “By whether there are enough daisies for everyone.”
Liam grinned. “There are lots more, professor,” he said and raced off.
Erik stood, crossing to lift Charles out of his chair and onto the grass, then settling beside him. He slowly lowered the silver platter, which had kept floating while they talked, back to the ground, and Mariko tumbled off, dragging it behind her as she half-collapsed in Erik’s lap.
Charles smiled and reached up to secure a daisy that was working itself loose from Erik’s hair. “I think I prefer this look to that dreadful helmet.”
“Well, my dear, I’m afraid you don’t have quite enough hair to pull it off yourself,” teased Erik, but he softened the words with a kiss to the top of Charles’s head. “Perhaps the children can weave them into your oh-so-stylish cardigan.”
“Erik…” laughed Charles, but he let them do it.
THE END
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