Spoiler warning: this story will include X-Men: Apocalypse spoilers about a dozen chapters in. I will ABSOLUTELY post a warning when it turns into spoilers. I'm also warning you now that it'll happen. Until then it should only be spoilers for First Class and Days of Future Past, for which I will not include warnings since they've been out for so long.
For this story, expect short chapters and fast updates. It is not related to my other stories, besides the obvious parallel that I am hardcore Team Summers! For a story about Scott and Alex as brothers, with a slightly less science/torture and time travel... I hope you enjoy. :)
Alex Summers had sat here before. He was in what was usually a comfortable armchair in the living room, but he couldn't relax into the stuffing. Not with his parents sitting opposite him looking like they had something very serious they needed to say.
They were intimidating people sometimes. Alex loved his parents and knew they had stood by him through a lot of rough times, and although he was an adult now—technically—they still scared him when they sat on the couch that way. They held one another, supportive and loving but very… grown up.
This was how they punished him as a child. He had always preferred his dad's belt to his parents' disappointment.
They lived in a normal, quiet house on a normal, quiet street. Just that morning Alex had mowed the lawn. Very normal, very suburban. In the normal living room of a normal house on a normal street in a normal neighborhood, a very un-normal person braced for bad news.
"I'm still looking for a job," he said. "I know it's been a while."
It had been a few years since Cuba. He tried to stay, at first. He didn't want to abandon Charles—but Charles wanted to be abandoned. When the war claimed too many teachers and students from the school, it broke something in Charles. He didn't exactly tell Alex to leave. No, he said it with far more hurtful, condescending words.
"Oh, we know," his mother assured him.
"It's not about that, son."
Alex realized how old they were. He realized it because he shuffled through memories of sitting here for wrenching life lessons. He was too old, too big, and too strong to be spanked. He was, he realized, stronger than his father. Both his ma and dad were both graying, wrinkled. They were… older.
Which is why it came as such a surprise when his ma followed up with, "Alex—sweetheart—you know we always wanted to have a large family."
Oh yes. He knew. A Catholic family with only one kid? Who ever heard of it?!
"Is this about grandchildren?" he asked.
Alex was a late-in-life baby and an only child. Lately he had heard a few hints that it would be nice for his parents to see a grandbaby sometime before they died.
"Not exactly," his dad said.
"We're going to have a baby."
For a moment, Alex just stared. "You're—trying?" And that was a mental image his mind could just shut right down!
"Four months along," his dad said.
Alex understood without being told. It wasn't the first pregnancy since he was born, but he knew none of them lasted past the first trimester. Of course his parents hadn't told him until they felt more certain this one would—for lack of a better word—survive.
"Congratulations!" That was the right thing to say at a time like this. It wasn't quite real for Alex that his parents were having another baby.
Apparently his parents saw his indifference, because his ma said, "You'll finally be a big brother."