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There were a great many things Erik had been prepared for when it came to being a single father.
For example, how hard it would be to make sure Lorna went to school and got into bed on time. How he’d constantly worry if she was safe and emotionally healthy. Or how his whole life would revolve around her. Since Magda had passed away before they'd had the chance to marry, they were always going to be a little short on money and of course, as she got older, Erik had known his hours would be too long to make dinner on time and that they maybe wouldn’t see each other as much as they were supposed to, period.
But despite all of that, they’d actually managed surprisingly fine. Of course there were fights; two people with the same fierce tempers were inevitably going to blow up now and again – but when they’d cooled off, Erik would always get a quick, reluctant hug from behind before Lorna scampered back up to her room to sulk a little more. Some of the relative success was due to him not shying from subjects – if she was big enough to ask, she was big enough to hear the answer – eating together most nights of the week.
And as the years went on, it felt as if they really were going to be all right.
Then puberty had hit, and the fact that Lorna was indeed a cis-gender girl in a very female body became terrifyingly real.
To be fair, Erik hadn’t been prepared for that. He hadn't really wanted to think about what might happen on that horizon. He hadn't grown up with sisters nor any close female friends, so by simply thinking about his little girl growing up without Magda to guide her had brought him about the same level of comfort as staring into the black swirl of an abyss.
Not that he hadn't called Edie or done his reading. He had. But nothing - nothing - could have prepared him for what was to come.
Lorna’s entry had been both early and tremendously violent: like a head-on collision with a truck, only with fewer injuries but just as much blood, crying, screaming and unadulterated panic.
And so, neither of them would ever forget the night of Rage-Fueled Ignorant Dad Brings Daughter To ER For Menstrual Cramps.
It was easier to deal with that particular ignorance now. Lorna had – after a certain amount of screaming fights and sulking – grown into her shaky shell and filled it out in a way Erik could only ever have wished for. She was independent, intelligent, and held herself straight with not so much as a hint of the horrible posture Erik himself had suffered after his growth spurt. She preferred jeans and flannel shirts, always stood up for herself and she was still all gung-ho about the roller derby she’d started with in middle school.
As much of those things she did, it didn’t mean she was a perfect little angel though. On the contrary, she’d chosen an extremely head-on and directly aggressive way of rebellion; using a constantly snippy attitude that pushed Erik’s blood pressure through the roof and she was so brazen (something that Erik blamed on the roller derby thing, despite whatever Charles said about it somehow being hereditary) it made even Erik feel embarrassed for her when they went out in public. And that was not taking into account all the sass and cheek he dealt with on a daily basis.
Deep down, however, it made him proud to see so much of Magda in her. And most of all, he knew he could talk about everything with her.
Almost, at least.
The day had been stifling with humid, pressing warmth and so, naturally, the night brought along sheets of rain, even if the clamminess and weird pressure persisted. Under normal circumstances, Erik could keep his awareness under control, but when the energy simply buzzed in the atmosphere without discharging, it made him toss and turn for ages, skin crawling and headache pulsing red and hot behind his eyes. Thankfully, Lorna had yet to be as affected, and some part of him still hoped, particularly on nights like this, that she’d never get as honed and attuned to the geomagnetic fields as he was.
He’d given up on sleeping hours ago. Instead, he’d pulled on a pair of sweats and gone through most of the grading – not counting the stack to bring over to Charles’ on Saturday – and now he’d turned to halfheartedly playing through one of Lorna’s horror games. Erik didn't play usually, and the fight they’d had when she’d came home with the Xbox under her arm had been all but nuclear.
However, in times like these, he was grateful for the distraction. In fact, he was so distracted he didn't even notice when Lorna hobbled down the stairs and stopped in the doorway to stare at him, green hair pulled into two messy braids and arms clutched tightly around her stomach.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” Erik shot back, taking down another hoard of zombies with his machete.
“Thought you said playing games was brain numbing,” Lorna said, voice dripping and her eyes narrowing.
“Sometimes, numbing your brain is good,” Erik retorted, “and you’re supposed to be in bed, young lady. You have school tomorrow.”
Lorna huffed, “Well, I happened to be suffering through a fucking thing that's called cramps, so that’s not going to happ –” The end of the sentence lost all heat as she groaned, clenching her eyes shut in pain.
Erik studied her, choosing not to comment on the profanity as he pressed pause. “Is it that bad?”
She nodded tightly, one hand gripping the door jamb. “Like someone is stabbing me in the gut with an iron poker.”
Not as much out of the water as he’d been four years ago, Erik motioned for the unoccupied part of the sofa. “Come lie down for a bit,” he said.
Moving slowly, as if she was about to fall apart at the seams, Lorna padded over the living room floor before she all but fell into the sofa, curling up tightly beside him. This close, the pained lines between her eyebrows made a stark contrast to her otherwise clear face, only marred by a couple of acne scars along her hairline.
“Want me to heat the lavender pack for you?” Erik asked, brushing green locks from her eyes. Her forehead was hot to the touch.
At that, he got a sharp, malevolent glare in response. “You don’t think I've tried that already?” she bit at him.
Having learnt from a couple hormone-fueled fights that all had ended up in angry, hysterical tears on Lorna’s part, Erik cut her some slack. It was too late for that.
“Paracetamol?”
“I’ll barf if I take another one,” she grumbled, winding her threadbare bathrobe even tighter around herself, letting out a shuddering sigh.
Erik let his hand drop from her hair. “Why did you even drag yourself down the stairs then?”
Sending him another glare, Lorna tipped her head back and swallowed, before she said, grudgingly, as if she didn't want to admit it at all, “Ororo said massages are good, and I – I heard you were up.”
“What do you mean?” Erik frowned.
“She gave me one earlier today, okay, and it really helped,” Lorna explained grumpily, mouth curled into something tricky, but oddly familiar. “And I thought - well, that you could give one when I got home. But you were so late, so…” She shrugged again, toes digging into the sofa.
Erik raised an eyebrow. “You want me to give you a massage?”
“Massages help with all kind of tension. I’d do it myself, but I can’t reach with this damn thing.” She waved her wrist in his face, the one she’d sprained it quite badly two weeks ago during a roller derby bout. Currently, it was sealed into a lime green cast, making it all but immobile.
Putting the controller down on the coffee table, Erik sighed. “All right. Tell me what to do.”
Giving him a tight, but pleased smile, Lorna gingerly pulled her legs over his, “Like this,” she said and flipped herself over, her hips settling over his thighs. Erik didn't miss the little groan of pain she made at the move, and not for the first time he felt so sorry for her.
Ever since that first trip to the ER, Lorna’s cramps had continued to be severe and extremely intense and they’d only gotten worse when her mutation manifested. Not that she’d ever admit it to either him or herself. Stubborn, she instead powered through the bad mornings, face ashen and jaw set in stone no matter what Erik said – only to have him go get her in the afternoon because she couldn't move without throwing up into the nearest trashcan. Just last month he’d been forced to carry her out to the car because she’d passed out in the middle of Biology. Charles, who’d held the lesson, had been kind enough to clear the classroom when she’d dropped, put her in recovery position with a cardigan under her head. He'd even stayed at her side until Erik had been able to drive the fear of God into his AP Government class and come running.
“So how do I do this then?” Erik asked, putting a light hand on the back of her knee as she wiggled into place.
“You dig your thumbs in on either side of my spine, almost on my butt, but not actually on my butt. And then it’s just a rotating motion outwards, following the pelvic bone toward my hipbones.”
Erik let his hands hover over her. “You are sure about this?”
“Yes,” she sighed, exasperated.
“Tell me if it hurts.”
“Yes box.”
Carefully, Erik brushed her bathrobe and thin t-shirt out of the way, placing his hands on her lumbar, before he dug his thumbs in like instructed. “This alright?” he asked, starting up a motion outwards along the bone. Having inherited his ectomorph frame, it was easy to feel the ridge through the flannel, skin and muscle.
Lorna nodded, eyebrows still knitted, before she reached out to shove a cushion under her chin. “Mmm. That’s good,” she mumbled, voice muffled by fabric.
Reassured, Erik kept up the same steady pressure on his daughter’s back, feeling the tension slowly, slowly let up under his ministrations. He had really no idea what he was doing, but it wasn't too different from loosening up Charles’ tense shoulders during the lunch breaks. The man always sat hunched over like a humpback when grading, and then had the stomach to complain about being sore. On top of it, he never learned no matter how many times Erik kicked his chair to get him to straighten up out of his slump.
He’d known Charles for almost two years now, ever since he’d walked in with his freckles and genuine kindness that had spread like a wildfire through the teacher’s lounge room from the very first day. The other teachers had fawned over him – even Emma had put a hand on his shoulder, which was a big deal – but Erik had told himself he wouldn’t be affected by that ray of sunshine. Sure, it was nice to have some new energy input from time to time, but best not get used to it, as it would burn out after a year of going head to head with bratty teenagers.
They all did.
But as the months and years wore on, Charles’ energy hadn’t diminished. Rather, it'd only grew, and when he’d won over every student and every teacher, Charles had seemed to make it his personal project to make Erik come out of his shell – something which might have been born out of the fact that because Erik scared the students shitless and was perpetually grumpy with everyone except Emma.
None of that had, of course, disenchanted Charles. Instead, he’d started to greet Erik with a personal smile every morning, followed by bringing him coffee and coaxing him into conversations about mutant rights, always accompanied by that constant aura of excitement. And no matter how Erik had tried to fight it, it had slipped under his skin until he somehow found himself going over to Charles’ condo to grade papers every Saturday night.
By then, Lorna had gone warm and heavy in his lap, so Erik was slightly taken aback when she propped her chin up in her hand, turning her head.
“Are you uncomfortable?”
She didn't reply. “Dad,” Lorna said slowly, as if she was sucking on a cough drop, unsure if there was any taste left in it or if she was ready to spit it out.
Erik eased up on his digging, scanning her face. "Yes?"
“Tell me, are you gay?”
Erik stopped.
Until a few years ago, he had never identified with that community or anything of that sort. He always stood with all sort of minorities though, but after Lorna’s birth and Magda’s death, all the activism had been put on the shelf, and even more so when he graduated and started working. He’d always considered himself to be straight, but the last few years, a sort of doubt had started to churn deep in his belly, lazy but simmering all the same. A doubt that showed up in his dreams and woke him panting and shuddering like a schoolboy; made his eyes linger on and remember tense, broad shoulders in Oxford shirts, freckles, laughter and soft kissable lips that seemed to belong on a woman, but didn’t and was so made all the more enticing than they should.
He drew a shuddering breath. He knew as well as Lorna that he’d missed his chance to deny it, but still he couldn’t make himself answer. Instead, his eyes flickered before he cleared his throat, not letting the perfectly calm exterior slip.
“I loved your Mom very much,” he said.
Face still questioning, Lorna stayed unfazed. “I know you did. So you’re bisexual then?” she asked, her voice a little softer through the bluish light of the television.
Erik huffed. “Why is it important?” he said, trying to keep his racing pulse under wraps.
“So you are?” Lorna looked at him, green eyes wide, but not surprised.
Later, Erik would blame the sleep-deprivation for his weak resistance and horrible come-backs. But in the moment, he simply gritted his teeth and dug his thumbs into Lorna’s spine once again. “Why are you so goddamn nosy?”
“Because you’re so goddamned defensive,” she retorted, one green quizzical eyebrow crooked. “It is a valid question.”
“Language,” Erik said tiredly. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
At that, Lorna’s eyes softened. “Okay.”
A silence settled again as she made herself comfortable once again, only interrupted by the pattering of the rain against the windowpanes, the static buzz from the television and the Lorna’s soft breaths against the pillow.
Erik cleared his throat again. “How is it valid?”
Immediately, Lorna propped her chin up, blowing a lock of hair out of her face. “Well, I was just thinking since you've been very friendly with Mr. Xavier lately.”
If it was possible to have multiple heart-attacks in the span of a minute, it was exactly what Erik was experiencing at the moment.
“I appreciate Mr. Xavier’s input in my discussions.”
“Dad, you’re friends. Don’t deny it.”
Erik let out a breath.
“See, wasn't so hard?”
“Lorna,” Erik said, sharply.
Unfazed as always, Lorna continued. “And he’s gay though. You know that, right?”
Erik’s hands stopped for a moment, before he returned to what he was doing, pointedly not looking her in the eyes. “How do you know that?”
“He corrected some asshole during class, who said that he could understand mutations and mutants, but that being gay was a choice and an abomination and stuff.”
“I heard about that,” Erik said, remembering overhearing a heated conversation between Emma and Jean a week ago. “It was in Charles’ class?”
“Yup. And is it Charles now?”
If Erik could still feel his face, he’d be burning up. “I’m not – Lorna, We work together, that’s all. Colleagues. Friends, I guess.”
Lorna’s face did something again, making Erik feel very uneasy, before she said. “I know. I’m just saying if it was, it wouldn't bother me. Mr. Xavier is very nice. Really, he’s awesome. I don’t think Ms. Frost would have stayed with me, or exposed her favorite cardigan to being potentially barfed upon.”
“Charles is very nice, yes.” Too nice for his own good, sometimes. “But it’s nothing.”
“Well, if it was, I’m not bothered at all. Ask him out to coffee or something. Really,” she said, swatting her splinted wrist at his side.
“He doesn’t drink coffee,” Erik said absently, concentrating on the still lingering tension in her back. “Besides, we work together and he’s your teacher. Your biology teacher.”
Once again, Erik found himself on the receiving end of that eyebrow. “Mom was your instructor in college, so I know you have no scruples about that. Not really.”
“Your Mom and I was –" Erik started, then remembered that his and Magda's relationship had been very much inappropriate the first two years and thus, a terrible example. "Okay, maybe not, but I grew up. He’s like twenty-something –”
“Twenty-eight, his birthday is next month.”
“Well, twenty-eight and I’m old –”
“Thirty-seven, which makes it a nine year difference, one year more than you and Mom. Anyways, you’re good-looking, so you get some leeway.”
“He’s not even – what?”
Lorna was grinning so wide, it looked like her face was about to split in half. “Compared to most dads, you’re good looking. No bias. Kitty agrees. So does Ororo. Mr. Xavier definitely thinks so too –”
“No.” Erik held up his hand. “I’m not discussing him. That. Period,” He pushed her head back onto the pillow. “Please respect that,” he then added, serious.
Lorna’s face fell a bit, but she did slump back into her exit position. Erik clenched his fists to help the blood flow, an odd feeling settling in his chest as he gently started to massage her back again.
“You know, we should probably make an appointment with the gynecologist again,” she said after a while.
“Why?”
“I’ve bled like a pig for like five days and it shows no signs of stopping. And it’s not the first time either. It’s like Satan’s waterfall every month, I’m not even kidding. It’s fucking dripping whenever I go to the bathroom –”
“Lorna,” Erik said. He might have been her father, but some details were better off unknown - family or not.
“All right, all right. I’m just saying – very heavy bleeding, and I don’t think it’s normal. No way I’ll let it be like this next month.”
“I’ll set it up,” Erik told her, secretly glad for the subject change. “What happens next month?”
“We have a bout against a team in Syracuse. Theresa and Coach Howlett are supposed to take us and – ouch!”
Erik let go off her as if he’d been burned. “Are you all right?”
Grimacing, Lorna slowly twisted onto her side, sharp hip digging into his thigh. There was a red streak across her face from the crease of the cushion, but otherwise she looked fine. “Yeah, it’s much better. You just dig a bit deep.”
“Is it better now?”
“Yeah, it is. Thanks,” she said, before she pulled her legs towards herself to sit up. “I should head back up. It’s almost four, so.”
“Still don’t want the lavender pack?”
She stood up gingerly, slightly more held together than before. “I guess it won’t hurt to try. But no more pills or I might actually barf.”
“Got it.” Erik stood as well before he ventured into the kitchen, while Lorna took up the stairs. Used to the procedure, he pulled out the lavender pack Edie had thrust in his hands a few days after the ER incident. It was worn, had even started to tear at the corner.
As he put it in the microwave, he caught sight of Lorna hobbling up the stairs again, still stiff but not as hunched over as before.
“Lorna.”
She turned on the top step. “Yes?”
Tapping his finger against the edge of the counter, Erik couldn't really believe what he was about to say. “He thinks I’m good looking?”
Lorna was quiet for a moment. Then she smiled that tricky smile again. ”Of course. And it is an objective truth, I mean, how else could you've sired this?” she grinned, and gestured at her face and body with a flourish.
Erik laughed and shook his head at her as she turned around the corner and disappear into her room. The lavender pack spun in the light of the buzzing microwave and for a moment, he didn't feel the ants under his skin. Instead, he thought about Lorna lying on the classroom floor with the cardigan under her head and how Charles had beamed at him as he lifted her into his arms.
The microwave dinged. He’d probably ask Charles out for a coffee on Saturday.
After all, you could only prepare for so many things.