Two years had passed of their marriage, bringing them to the third year of their courting altogether when Melkior had started to ask Irena about the matter of children. With his business flourishing nicely and a very stable income enough to support both his family back in Drovikstead and their new home on the private island, it seemed only fitting.
Irena was organising their latest shipment of supplies into neat piles on the floor of the modern living room when he knocked on the frame to let her know that he was coming in. Her curious blue eyes darted up to him and a comforting smile tugged at her lips.
"Evening my love, how is the project going?"
Melkior waved a hand through the air as though to push the subject of work away from them and moved over to her, mimicking her seated position and letting his eyes look over the stacks she'd made. She seemed to be separating the items by where in the house they belonged. Grocery items with an unlabelled 'kitchen' stack and toiletries in an unspoken 'bathroom' stack. Melkior nodded at her work before planting a soft kiss to her lips and taking her hands in between his.
"Irena?"
She looked at him, scanning his face for who knows what, as she awaited his explanation or inquiry.
"We've never discussed the topic of children before. Do you mind?"
She shook her head and pulled him upwards so that they were standing. Melkior tilted his head confusedly at her.
"This is a matter for the dining table, not the floor."
Melkior grinned at her, she could be quite strange and particular about certain things. Still, he followed her with no complaint and took a seat beside her at the table.
When they were settled, Irena looked to him with an expressionless face and spoke in an even tone. In truth, it unnerved Melkior.
"Do you want children?"
He scanned her face, letting the question become an afterthought as he tried his best to read her. Eventually he came up empty and swallowed thickly.
"Well, err, yes. But not if you don't want them."
Irena nodded at his words and little by little, a smile fell to her lips. Melkior drew his brows up in confusion as he tried to understand his wife in any capacity at all. Eventually she was beaming and she pulled Melkior to her by tugging at his neck and she kissed his jaw happily. His heart trembled in relief as he slowly brought his hands to the small of her back and hugged her in return.
"We'll make quite lovely children, don't you think?"
Melkior blushed a furious shade of red at her words and nodded.
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They had started to organise all the necessary proceedings to prepare for a child when Melkior stepped into the nursery with one more inquiry for his lover.
"Oh, darling?"
Irena kept her hands busy, screwing the wooden frame in place for the crib and thus unable to turn and look at the man's face. He thought nothing of it and carried on.
"Yes?"
Melkior flicked through a page of notes on his pad, glasses slipping a bit of the way down his nose as he absently tried to remember what project team A had been consulting with him about before.
"Do you mind if I have one of my teams analyse our genetics first?"
Irena rose a single brow, halting her work with the crib to look back in his direction. Her blond waves dipped into her eyes and she had to tuck the pieces back behind her ear to see him more clearly. He stood casually as ever, notepad in hand and blue collared shirt hugging his defined abdomen nicely. Eventually he caught her gaze and recognised her seeming desire for an explanation.
"My company already has all the technology to do it, it's one of the areas we specialise in. I'm only hoping to avoid any major genetic disorders if we can and it'd be a fascinating opportunity, don't you think?"
Irena nodded at his explanation, flipping it around in her head for any sort of reason to decline. His blue-grey eyes were alight with curiosity as he looked up from the pad, abandoning his thoughts of work entirely. She didn't share his scientific fascination, but to see him so excited about something brought an air of joy to her. Melkior was her husband after all, and anything she could do to keep that charming smile on his face was a small task in her head. Not to mention, she thought it to be a reasonable sort of request and thus saw no reason to refuse him.
"Of course, darling. Let me finish up this mess first."
Melkior quickly seemed to remember what she was doing and set his work things down, moving over to where she sat. He undid the buttons at his wrists and rolled the sleeves up to his arms.
"Now, you know I'm no good with this sort of thing-"
Irena grinned, kissing his cheek and nodding.
"I'm glad to have you help me anyways."
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Melkior's Wing Tipped Oxfords tapped along the facility hallway. As he drew closer to the lab room, the buzz of chatter and the squawking feet could be heard. The man picked up his pace at the sound of movement and event until he was inside the midst of the room and he scanned the many heads, alive with scientific musing.
The lead scientist spotted Melkior and quickly waved an arm for the man to come over. Dr. Saliba stood in his lab coat with the unimposing chequered sweater vest beneath it and a rare ghost of a smile on his face. Being that the doctor was a very stoic and old school African fellow, Melkior hadn't actually considered the matter of his external lack of expression. Though now that he noticed what joy looked like on the man's face, it unsettled him. He preferred it when the man was expressionless.
Shaking the matter from his mind, he focused on the particular strand of gene code which was zoomed in on the doctor's screen.
"What are we looking at?"
Saliba wasted no time getting into the crux of the matter and tapped the screen so it highlighted a set of the codes.
"You see this segment here?"
Melkior nodded, blue eyes dancing about the screen.
"This is a set of codes we've discovered in your wife's genome."
Melkior blinked twice and then turned to the man with furrowed brows.
"Pardon- 'discovered'?"
Dr. Saliba peered over the rims of his dull lenses and nodded.
"It is a gene code that hasn't been observed by modern science before."
Melkior's mouth started to get wet and his mind raced with countless possibilities.
"Is it a disease? A mutation? What does it do?"
Dr. Saliba started to break down the different chemical compounds and the order which they appeared in the strand. When he finished explaining the science, he removed his glasses and set his hands flat on the table. Melkior leaned forward in his stool, watching the doctor very closely.
"We only have speculations at the current moment sir, but we do have a running theory that you'll find interesting."
"I'm listening."
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