Chapter Text
“I’m telling you, Charles. Animals simply hate me.”
Erik frowned as he stood over the pen of puppies, watching as the tiny little things climbed atop each other to vie for Charles’ attention. One of Charles’ students had found a pregnant stray a few months prior, and somehow, the telepath had talked him into driving to his apartment to “look” at the litter now that they were old enough to be adopted. Erik knew that his husband was on Cloud 9, of course, laughing in delight as two small mutts wrestled each other on his lap. The other puppies in the litter were having an equally great time as they dashed under and around the wheelchair, nipping at Charles’ dangling shoelaces, pawing at his wheels, grappling their way up his trousers before tumbling back to the floor.
“Do you expect them to come play with you while you’re standing like a statue, Erik?” Charles countered, glancing back momentarily with a cocked brow. “Come in here. Let them suss you out.”
“It’s not going to make a difference. I’ve never come across an animal who liked me. I give off an anti-animal aura.”
You’re giving off an anti-Charles aura, right now. Get in here, Charles hissed at him telepathically.
Huffing to himself, Erik reluctantly stepped over the low gate and into the pen, taking a seat on the floor opposite Charles. If it were up to him, they would not be getting a dog in the first place, but it had become quickly apparent that Charles would either divorce him or murder him if he disagreed, so. Here they were, in a college student’s apartment, surrounded by fur and noise.
As expected, only a few of the dozen or so puppies sauntered his way, sniffing at him momentarily before deciding that they were much more interested in the hems of Charles’ trousers than they were Erik. He glowered as the little creatures mobbed around each other and his husband, content to ignore him as if he weren’t there.
“I told you,” he insisted, crossing his arms. “It’s always been this way. I believe it has something to do with my mutation. It makes animals hate me.”
“Your attitude might have something to do with it,” Charles huffed. “Animals are empathetic. They can feel your foul mood. Everyone can right now, from a mile away.”
“Then you pick one, Charles,” Erik snapped back, fed up. “It won’t make a difference. It’s your bloody dog anyway, isn’t it?”
Before Charles could reply, the college student whose apartment they were in, Armando, quickly emerged from the kitchen with a wriggling pup in his arms. “Sorry, there’s one more,” he said as he placed the puppy on the ground in the pen. “This little girl likes to escape. Don’t know how she does it, but I find her somewhere random at least twice a day. She was in my laundry basket just now.”
Erik studied the tiny dog. She was a bit smaller than her siblings and didn’t have the same brown ears and chest coloring that they did. No, she was all black, dark as the night, with light brown eyes shining like beacons.
Erik stared into those beacons. They stared back, unblinking.
And then Erik’s lap was suddenly overtaken by an energetic bullet of black fur, bounding into his lower stomach like a tiny cannon. Her front paws used his chest for leverage and her tail wagged with ferocity as she began to assault Erik’s face with her pink tongue, lapping at his chin, cheeks, nose.
“Oh, Gott, what are you doing?” Erik demanded of the puppy, scrunching his face as he placed his hands under her body to pull her away. “Have you any manners?”
Erik heard Charles chuckle as he held the puppy up, her tongue waggling out of her mouth as her tail moved in overdrive. She wriggled and batted her paws through the air, like she was asking Erik to place her back on the floor. When Erik obliged and set her to the side of his legs, she clambered over his knees, took a few circles, and plopped herself down in the center of his lap.
“You spoke too soon, darling,” Charles said from the other side of the pen, beaming. “Look at how much she adores you.”
“Yeah,” agreed Armando, standing with his hands on his hips. “She’s been pretty shy around most people. Definitely hasn’t warmed up to anyone that quickly.”
Erik frowned down at the puppy as she nuzzled her head into his knee before tentatively running a hand over her back. Her fur was soft and silky, thick over her small frame. Small as she was, Erik noticed that her paws were large, hinting at a future growth spurt. “What sort of dog is she?” Erik asked after a moment.
“The mom is some kind of Shepherd Collie mix, we think. We have no idea what the dad is, though. Maybe a Lab, but we don’t know anything for sure,” Armando offered.
Erik hummed and scratched his fingers along the dog’s stomach. Immediately, she turned over in his lap so that her four legs were vertical, tongue lolling happily out of her mouth. As Erik scratched along a section just beneath her ribcage, the dog’s back legs began to pump in the air, kicking something invisible.
Both Charles and Armando laughed. “You found her tickle spot,” Charles mused, a smile in his voice.
Erik stopped scratching then, and the puppy rolled back over on his lap, sitting upright now. She stared up at Erik once more and he stared back, studying her open-mouthed grin, feeling the thrum of her wagging tail against his legs. Her ears perked when he cleared his throat.
“What do you think, love?” Charles asked after a moment, an eager smirk on his face. “She seems to have decided that you’re adequate. Do you think she could be your dog?”
Erik pursed his lips. The dog closed her mouth, too, eyes wide. She tilted her head to one side and stopped wagging her tail, sitting perfectly still. As If she were waiting for his answer, too.
“I suppose this one’s alright,” he finally agreed, to which Charles replied with a grin. The dog began to thump her tail once more, springing up to launch another assault on Erik’s face with her tongue. “On one condition,” Erik grunted.
“What’s that?”
Erik smoothly stood to his feet with the puppy in his arms, crossing the space to Charles in a few long strides. Once there, he placed the puppy on Charles’ lap, unable to keep the smile from his lips as she began to cover Charles in kisses as well.
“She’s our dog."