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Given the number of times their dad had been on the run, a lot of his stuff had ended up in boxes in the spare room of Wanda’s house, and after several years of staring at the mess and saying that they should do something about it sometime, Pietro and Wanda had finally got around to it.
It was a lengthy process involving debates over what their dad might yell at them for throwing out, and worried rhetorical questions about where he’d acquired several files which contained high-level government secrets.
Which just left going through a box full of loose photographs taken sometime in the sixties.
Wanda wanted to keep them for the sake of a family photo album, so she and Pietro spent the afternoon going through the box, trying to sort through the photos into something resembling an order.
During this time, Pietro made a discovery.
His dad and Professor X were all over each other.
Like, all over each other.
At first he’d chalked it down to typical bro stuff. Hanging your arm across your friend’s shoulders wasn’t that strange.
But after the first couple dozen photos, with his dad and Professor X next to each other in every photo, arms around each other and looking entirely too pleased with themselves, Pietro started to suspect…
It was far too intimate.
The picture that broke him was one of the two of them, sitting next to each other on a couch, his father’s arm around Charles’ waist, Charles’ arm slung around Erik’s neck, Charles leaning over so far that he was almost in Erik’s lap.
The look in his dad’s eyes was, uh, quite something.
He held the photo up to Wanda. “There are a lot of photos like this, and I’m not saying that – okay, I think what I’m trying to say is: Wanda… did our dad… boink Professor X?”
Wanda took a sip from her mug of coffee. “Pietro, our dad is still fucking Professor X. And please, just call it sex. Somehow calling it boinking makes it worse.”
Pietro gaped. “How have you never told me this before?”
Wanda shrugged. “I honestly thought you already knew. Literally everyone knows.”
“Define ‘literally everyone’.”
“Lorna, Billy, Tommy. All of the Young Avengers. All the X-Men, most of the students at Xavier’s, all of X-Force. And about half the Avengers.”
“… What the fuck. How come I’ve never even – never even heard about that before today? Like, no-one’s ever mentioned it around me.”
“I guess everyone thought you already knew. And it’s kind of an unspoken thing. Everyone knows, nobody says.”
*
Over the next few days, Pietro tried to absorb this new piece of information. And failed, because seriously, what the fuck.
In the end, he realised that either Wanda was telling the truth, or she’d decided to prank him, in the hope that he’d mention it to someone else and embarrass himself.
At first, he thought he could just ask someone about it – one of the X-Men, maybe. Someone objective, and sensible, and straightforward. He’d ask, and if Wanda was pranking him then he’d play it off as a joke.
But then he thought about what the response might be if his dad and Professor X were actually doing it. God, that would be mortifying.
He also couldn’t risk Charles knowing that he was asking about this. So whoever he asked would have to have telepathic shields strong enough to keep Xavier out of their head.
Not Jean Grey. No way could he have this conversation with her.
Which pretty much only left…
*
Pietro walked into the living room.
“Billy, do you know David?”
Billy didn’t even look up from his phone. “Of course I know him, we’re on the same team and he’s dating my brother.”
“No, not David Alleyne. The other David. I figured you might know him because, y’know. Similar age. Similar power levels.”
“The other… oh, right. I don’t know him, but Prodigy David knows Laurie Tromette, and she knows Megan Gwynn, and Megan’s roommate is Ruth Aldine, and Ruth has a thing with other David.”
“… Your gossip network terrifies me.”
Billy looked up at him. “Why, do you want to talk to him or something?”
“Yeah, could you tell him that? Or could you tell all those other people to tell him that?”
Billy looked back down at his phone. “Sure.”
*
The café was the small, impersonal kind. It was the middle of the day, so the place was half empty.
Pietro sat at an empty table, ordered a coffee, and waited.
That was the thing about being a speedster. You spent half your time waiting around for other people.
He looked around the room, and when he looked back, David Haller was sitting in the chair across from him wearing a battered black leather jacket. He ran a hand through his long black hair, turning it from slightly messy into a moderately different version of slightly messy. For all that he was one of the most powerful mutants in the world, he sure as hell looked like a skinny teenager.
David was like someone had taken a version of Charles Xavier and sharpened it; sharper cheekbones, sharper jawline, a sharp gaze that bored right into Pietro, those one-blue, one-green eyes unnerving him.
His accent sounded like a French accent and an Israeli accent had a one-night stand, then abandoned the resulting child to be raised by an English accent and a Scottish accent. “So what’s this about?”
“Are our dads fucking?” blurted Pietro.
“Yes,” said David matter-of-factly, sipping his tea. When had he ordered tea? Had he ordered tea? Pietro hadn’t even seen him walk in the door.
So it wasn’t a prank. So Wanda had been telling the truth, and this was actually happening. “Okay. And…” He trailed off into silence.
“And what?”
“And, you know?”
David frowned at him. “Is this all you wanted to talk about?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d have thought you’d already know something like that.”
“I didn’t. But apparently everyone knows.”
“Everyone does know.” David took another sip, then let out a relaxed breath. “Honestly I’m kind of relieved that that’s all you want to talk about. Usually if someone I don’t know well asks me to a random meeting, I end up getting asked to do some pretty dangerous shit. The last time I went to brunch with Illyana Rasputin, she asked me for help fighting the Elder Gods.”
“Shit, what did you do?”
“Killed the Elder Gods, passed out, spent five days in a coma. Honestly, I’ve had worse.”
“…Right. So, anyway. Our dads.”
David nodded. “Yeah, they’ve been on and off for years. Currently on now, I think.”
Pietro drained his coffee in one long swallow. “How do you deal with it? Because, I mean, I just found out about this, and eventually I’m gonna have to, uh, face them and act normal.”
“I just don’t mention it. Nobody mentions it.”
Pietro didn’t understand how calm David was about this. “Yeah, but don’t you ever find it weird? Your dad is sleeping with his nemesis!”
“So? I’m sleeping with my nemesis.”
“… I didn’t know you had a nemesis.”
“Ruth Aldine. You contacted me through her. There was this big prophecy where we were supposed to fight to the death sometime in the future. But we sorted things out, so now we’re just together. But she still calls me her nemesis. I like it.”
“Okay, but why date your nemesis? Sorry if it’s intrusive, but I’m just trying to understand why our fathers would… I mean, even if they started hooking up before they became arch-enemies, that wouldn’t explain why they still do it.”
“Well, if me and Ruth are anything to go by, probably because they’re in love.”
“… I could have guessed that.”
David finished his tea. “You probably could have guessed that.” He let out a long breath. “Look, Pietro, you seem to be looking for some kind of advice on how to handle our dads’… situation. And people don’t really come to me for advice literally ever because of the whole insanity thing, but here’s how I see it: Am I happy that our dads are sleeping together? No. Their whole ongoing thing seems like a complete fucking mess. They’ve been having the same argument about mutant ethics for longer than I’ve been alive. But for better or worse, it’s happening and there’s shit all anyone can do about it.”
“So your advice is to just accept it?”
David shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
*
Erik was in Wanda’s spare room, flicking through the (definitely stolen) government files that Wanda had told him to pick up before she shredded them. “Ah, I’d wondered where these went to.”
“Mmm,” said Pietro. Then, because his impulse control wasn’t the greatest: “So, you and Charles, huh?”
His dad looked up at him. “Me and Charles what?”
Pietro made a gesture with his hand which he hoped would illustrate his point but ended up being more like a vague circling motion. “You’re, you know. Together.”
Erik frowned. “… And?”
“And I only just found out. Y’know, you could have mentioned it to me. At literally any time.”
Erik snorted. “Really, Pietro, I thought you already knew. Everyone knows.”