Paige nodded.

"Yeah," she said. "Even after seeing what I could do, he still let me touch."

"Wow." Crystal shook her head a bit.

"Well, hey, I guess we really can stay for a bit here. Might be nice to not have to worry about the neighbors."

"No kidding," Paige said, grinning a bit. She relaxed a little. "Staying here isn't so bad."

"No, it's really not." Crystal grinned a bit. "Plus there's eye candy." She kept her voice quiet so the kids, at least, wouldn't overhear.

Paige snickered a bit and then went to sit back down at the table to get some of the jasmine tea before it was gone.

The next few days passed in relative peace, and Crystal caught herself flirting with Remy once or twice more.

And then she got a rejection letter from a job, stating that she "wasn't qualified". The letter had a stamp at the bottom that she recognized as an all-human working class club. She swore at the letter, tempted to use it as target practice.

Paige had gotten some of the same; all of her job applications had come back rejected, all on the grounds of not being qualified. And she knew very well why they claimed she didn't qualify, as well. She swore quietly as she crumpled them up and threw them away.

As soon as Charles saw one, he felt like going and lecturing the companies himself.

Instead, he called someone who could do something much, much worse.

"Evening, sugar," Emma said, dropping a kiss on Charles' cheek as she passed him, clearly comfortable in the house. "You said you have something for me to look into?"

"I think you'll enjoy this one, Emma," Charles said, nodding and sitting down on the couch. He held out a wrinkled rejection letter that had been fished out of the bin. "Look at that and tell me what you see."

Emma looked it over swiftly and grinned. "I see discrimination against mutants," she said, almost sing-song. "Just the one or do you have more for me?"

Charles just smiled serenely and handed over three more, all of them crinkled.

"Several different places," he said. "I did say you would enjoy this."

"You always give me the best things, sugar." Emma smiled as she looked them over. Three of them were major chains, too. Excellent. "So where did these come from?"

"You've no doubt figured out that we have a pair of guests," Charles replied. "Well, they consider themselves guests, we've been trying to integrate them a bit more, but they aren't quite comfortable yet. In any case, they received these within the last few days in response to employment inquiries."

"Another pair of strays, Charles?" Emma teased, though she was grinning as she looked over the rejection letters. "Keep them around, I may or may not need to talk to them myself."

"They aren't strays," Charles said. "Darwin brought them to us after they were evicted from their flat several weeks ago." And, to be honest, yes, Charles wanted them to stay.

"That makes them strays," Emma said with a little chuckle as she stood again. "I'll look into this and see what I can make stick. Oh, and Stark is stopping by today."

"Why is Tony dropping in?" Charles asked, brow furrowing a bit. "No, never mind, I don't want to know. I'll find out when he arrives."

Emma snickered and patted his cheek. "I'll check in again when I've got news," she said, heading for the door. She winked at Tony as he passed her heading inside, and Tony grinned back.

Charles just looked at Tony.

"Should I even ask what brought you here?" he asked.

"Science," Tony said with a grin. "And Bruce kicking me out of the lab, really, he shouldn't be able to do that, it's my lab. But he tagteamed me with Jarvis. Traitors."

"To be fair, you do tend to ignore basic necessities," Charles pointed out. Carefully, he got up from the couch, although it was a bit of a struggle. "Oof. This one's getting big now."

Tony helped steady him. "Yeah, well, how much longer do you have left? Two weeks? Three?" He shook his head a bit. "No wonder it's getting harder for you."

"Officially, three more weeks," Charles said, letting Tony help him. "Although, more realistically, it could be sooner."

"Probably." Tony took a few moments to just look him over before he shook himself. "So, where's the crazy German?"

"Erik is away on business for the next few days," Charles said. "He wanted to get it out of the way before the little one is due to arrive."