cross-country
part 1
The night Scott moves in, Hank and Raven attempt to cook together and end up overcooking the spaghetti and burning the sauce.
“Well,” Hank says. “Not ideal.”
“You have a flare for understatement,” Raven replies, and orders in Chinese.
“Flare,” Hank echoes. “I like the sound of that.”
Raven twists the phone cord around her wrist and when she hangs up she blinks at Hank.
“When’d you get so punchy?” she asks, and Hank shrugs. He tends to get like this when he’s tired, but also when he’s nervous, and he is nervous--if they are, in fact, meeting Alex’s brother, it seems devastatingly important. Even if he’s not Alex’s brother, he’s still another mutant, a potential new recruit.
“Is this about Alex?” Raven continues, narrowing her eyes, and it makes Hank start.
“Why would it be?” he asks, and Raven shrugs.
“Because of all those letters,” she says. “What’s the deal with all those letters?”
“We just--write letters?” Hank says, and Raven frowns.
“But it’s not like you were particularly close before you moved away, was it?”
“Alex was about the same,” Hank says. “Quips, you know. Mockery.”
“But not exactly the same?” Raven presses, and it’s Hank’s turn to frown.
“Well, no--where are you going with this?”
Raven goes back to frowning, and then she goes out to her foyer for her coat and leaves to fetch dinner, which leaves Hank in his armchair in the parlor, trying to pin down Raven’s thought process like a butterfly, and, like butterflies, it repeatedly eludes him. Which is why Hank never expressed any particular interest in entomology.
You would think his bestial nature would help with those things, but even thinking that makes Hank twist slightly inside, because he’s not an animal at all, and he knows it. He’s just not completely clear on what he is, and he wishes he had a sibling who was like him, but Raven is as close as he’s got, and they’re currently fighting about whether or not Allen Ginsberg should be allowed in the house.
And then there’s a knock at the door, and Hank hopes to all that’s holy that it’s Scott Summers, and then he opens it.
“Come in quick,” he says, angling himself so he’s behind the door.
Scott Summers, who is wearing sunglasses and has a flop of dark hair, comes in. He’s almost disconcertingly calm: Hank imagines Raven warned him, but he doesn’t so much as start, and with the sunglasses on Hank can’t read his eyes.
“Scott,” he says, voice flat and formal, and holds out a hand.
“Hank,” Hank echoes, and they shake hands.
“Raven said you were called the Beast,” Scott says.
“They call me that, also,” Hank replies, and then he finds himself at a loss. He ultimately ends up asking Scott stupid questions--“How long have you been in San Francisco?”, “Where are you from?”--and in return he receives tight, terse responses. Hank doesn’t see anything of Alex in this man, but then he wonders if he remembers Alex clearly, anyway. Scott’s hair is dark while Alex’s is light, he knows. Maybe their noses are similar.
Raven saves him, bearing bags of Chinese food and shutting the door with her hip before shifting back to her own skin.
“Scott!” she says. “You found us. Did Hank show you your room?”
“No,” Hank mutters, before Scott himself can say the incriminating word.
“It’s perfectly alright,” Scott interjects smoothly. “We were just chatting.”
And Hank wonders on what planet that was chatting, but for whatever reason Scott is saying this, so he leaves it. As he trails up the stairs after Scott and Raven Hank wonders if he and Scott might be the same age; it’s been a few years since Hank became the Beast, and it makes it harder for him to gauge relative ages. He knows Alex is a few years younger than he is, and he suspects Scott is the older brother, but Scott seems closed in a way Alex never has; it surprises Hank, in retrospect, that Alex would be open at all, given his time in prison, but he suspects Alex’s biting mockery serves as a protective shell, and Scott might do the same with his smooth withdrawal.
Hank does occasionally have flashes of brilliant insight into human nature. They startle him.
Dinner--dinner is mediocre at best. Raven and Hank share the burden of the conversation, and Hank’s not sure how to deal with Scott’s almost preternatural terseness, so maybe he talks too much. He manages not to mention Alex once, not even obliquely, but Alex is present there, in the conversation, if only because he’s purposefully not being mentioned. Raven and Hank describe the powers of some of the other mutants in an attempt to offer something to Scott that Hank can’t completely describe, and Scott seems to be collecting this information in his head without responding to it.
“He makes me nervous,” Hank says to Raven when Scott goes up to bed.
“He’s shy,” she says. “Be patient. Do you remember when all this was new?”
Hank does; certainly he does. But mostly he remembers being delighted to meet others who were fumbling through their powers like him. He remembers when he was in university, younger than his classmates, stumbling through puberty: finding other mutants was like when he finally, stupidly, realized that there were people his age in the world, people whose voices cracked and who got too tall too quick, people who were growing hair in unfortunate places. Everyone in college was already done with that, unfairly, and they looked at Hank with a benign amusement, like they forgot what it was like and didn’t know how to be sympathetic.
He wonders if, to Scott, he and Raven seem like those college students seemed to him--done with the first part of dealing with their mutations, already caught up in this sort of battle. On some level, it makes sense, and maybe that’s why Hank hazards a grin when Scott comes down in the morning, and asks him how he likes his eggs.
“Whatever you’re having is fine,” Scott replies, and Hank sets about making scrambled. He cracks a full dozen into the bowl, and when he turns back towards Scott there’s something on his face that might be surprise.
“Do you eat that much?” he asks, and Hank blinks.
“Since I changed, yes,” he says. He wonders if changed is the right word, but he doesn’t have a better one. Since he became? Since he transformed?
“So you weren’t--” Scott starts, and it occurs to Hank that this was one story they failed to tell last night.
“No,” he replies. “No, it used to be that I just had big feet.”
“My feet are big,” Scott says, glancing at them. “Is that a mutant thing?”
Hank laughs, tries to make it light and not mocking, though he really has no control over his laughter. To his ear it always sounds the same--a little coarse, a little rumbling.
“My feet were really, really, big. And ugly. And my toes looked like something you’d find on a gorilla.”
“Oh,” Scott says, and falls into silence.
“How did you find out about your powers?” Hank asks, and turns out to be the worst and the best question, because Scott is willing to answer it, to quietly ruminate on how his powers shocked and terrified him, and Hank wants to tell him about Alex but can’t, not yet.
“I could help you,” he says. “But I think the Professor--Charles Xavier, Raven’s brother--might be able to help you more.”
Scott nods.
“But I might be able to develop something external that could help you control it.”
“Glasses,” Scott suggests.
When Raven gets back, they’re both down in the lab, and Hank can’t help but think that Scott and Alex’s powers might be exactly the same, only with a different physical source, so he pulls up his notes on Alex’s suit and uses them to draw up a prototype for glasses.
They have to be brothers. It makes too much sense.
2/7/1967
Beast:
What mutation would you want, if you could have someone else’s? I’ve been thinking about it--I actually think yours isn’t so bad, even if it gave you clown feet. Obviously it’s rough that you have to hide and shit, but there’s something wicked about being the beast, you know? You should know, because you are the Beast.
On the other hand, Sean and Angel can fly, even if Sean has to wear that ridiculous squirrel suit.
As far as I know, no one in the school has mutant siblings--I asked around, and Sean says his siblings don’t have any powers he knows about, though they’re all really loud. Probably a given, screaming like banshees to compete with him. He must have just out-evolved them. Probably to get more food, since he keeps eating my desserts at dinner. Any advice for protecting food?
Suit’s working fine, don’t worry about it.
-H
p.s. Valentine’s day is coming up. Probably will have rolled around by the time you get this. Got a valentine? Or are you too badass for that Hallmark bullshit?
Through some vagary of fate and the U.S.P.S., Hank gets Alex’s letter on Saint Valentine’s Day (and you would think the post office would have too much to do, delivering actual valentines, to get the regular letters through). Raven gives Hank a significant look when she hands the letter over to him, but Hank suspects that’s because they’re still trying to decide how, and when, to tell Alex that his brother is alive. And a mutant. And living with them.
“Call him,” Raven says, very gently, placing the letter in his hands. “You should call him.”
“We aren’t sure--” Hank says, even though it’s a lie.
“We’re sure,” Raven says. They haven’t told Scott yet, won’t until they tell Alex.
“Call him,” Raven repeats like a mantra, and then she disappears, and leaves Hank staring at the phone in the hallway. It’s black, sitting on a small wood table. It had never seemed particularly intimidating before, even though it was Magneto’s line into the house, but now--Hank doesn’t know what to do with this information that he has. It’s full of potential, and Hank isn’t clear on how the potential will manifest itself, if, like Alex’s and Scott’s powers, it might come surging out and burn them all.
He dials.
The Professor picks up the phone, and Hank has to ask for Alex, because he can’t imagine telling Charles first, even if he already knows. And then he was to wait for an interminable moment at the end of the empty line, and then there’s muffled sounds, and then Alex.
“Hello?” Alex says, his voice abstracted by the long-distance connection, and Hank wraps the cord of the phone around his hand, a nervous tick he didn’t even realize he had.
“Alex--it’s--” Hank starts, and then Alex says, “Beast, I know it’s you, calling to wish my a happy Valentine’s Day?” and damn Hank had completely forgotten that it was, even though he had known only moments beforehand, when he read Alex’s letter.
“Happy Valentine’s Day?” Hank offers, weakly.
“What is it?” Alex asks, like he knows something’s off.
“Raven and I--” Hank starts, and then Alex interrupts him to say, “Raven and you what?” and Hank has to say, “You aren’t making this easy for me, okay?” and he doesn’t know why he’s so angry, and Alex sounds angry and then he, Hank, says--
“Raven and I may have found your brother.”
And everything is silent. It echoes down the line, and it expands from the phone to fill the hall, and Hank thinks that he might actually hate Alexander Graham Bell, even though, prior to this moment, he’d always admired his ingenuity.
“My brother’s dead,” Alex says, flat.
“Scott Summers,” Hank says. “He can shoot beams from his eyes. He has brown hair. He’s 28. He has some sort of amnesia about his childhood but Raven found him, and he’s here--”
Alex hangs up on him, and Hank is certain that he hates Alexander Graham Bell, and he’s staring, helpless, at the phone’s receiver, like it might hold some sort of secret.
He hangs up the phone. He redials the School’s number, his fingers too large, clumsy and shaking as he spins the rotary.
“This better not be a fucking joke,” Alex says, and Hank can almost feel the heat through the line.
“Why would I joke about this?” he asks, weary, and Alex sighs, crackly across bad wires.
“No,” he says. “You wouldn’t joke about this.”
“Alex--” Hank starts.
“I need to come out and meet him,” Alex interjects. “Does he know about me?”
“Not yet, no,” Hank says.
“I need to meet him,” Alex repeats, and Hank nods before he realizes you can’t hear a nod.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, you should.”
Hank hangs up and goes to talk to Raven.
They tell Scott after Hank finishes the prototype for his glasses.
He cries, and Hank can see a surge of power flash behind the lenses, and then he glances at Raven because he doesn’t know what to do. He pats Scott on the shoulder, awkward.
“I just--” Scott says. “I didn’t think--I remember him.”
Hank and Raven wait.
“There was an airplane--I was supposed to take care of him.”
“He’s fine,” Raven soothes. “He’s doing well.”
“When’s he coming?” Scott asks.
“We’re ironing out the details right now,” Hank says. “Within the month.”
Hank’s actually been talking with Alex on the phone about it; when he should come, how long he can stay. The switch from letters to phone has been weird for all the things they don’t mention: Hank doesn’t joke about what Alex went to prison for, Alex doesn’t mock Hank by calling him a badass when he clearly isn’t, they don’t mention the fact that they’re both attracted to men. Their conversations are starched and white, swathed in an odd formality. Which maybe explains why Hank sits down to write Alex a letter, after they’ve booked Alex on a train for the end of March, even though he says he can hitchhike, hop train cars. They haven’t talked for a week, and Hank misses their stilted conversations, though he doesn’t want to delve into those feelings.
03/01/67
Alex--
It’s been awhile since we’ve written, yes? Though I guess we’ve been talking--it doesn’t seem quite the same. So I thought I’d return to the old medium.
In your last letter you asked whose powers I would take, if anyone’s. My first inclination was to say Charles’s--they carry a lot of weight, being as invasive as they are, but I don’t feel like I understand people clearly. I wish I could have his insight. You do have a point about flight, though. I can’t say I agree with you about mine, but maybe you never properly appreciate what you have. I am coming to terms with being the Beast. Allen Ginsberg and Moira and I have been discussing ways to get mutants more involved in some of the movements happening here. There are, admittedly, the drugs and the hippies and unwashed masses, but there’s also a broad acceptance that I think our mainstream culture is lacking. When you come into town, you should meet them (you probably will, since we usually meet at the house--Switzerland, as we call it--as we have no particular secrets to keep from the Brotherhood).
You also mentioned protecting food. If Raven’s to be believed, you’d best look out for me when you get here. I’m larger than I used to be, and I metabolize faster. As I would prefer not to advise you on something which could lead to my demise, I’ll keep quiet on that point.
Scott’s doing well. He seems to have unlocked some memories; I believe I mentioned this to you? And you two talked on the phone, you probably know. He’s looking forward, desperately, to meeting you. And you’ll be here before the month’s out, so bon voyage, safe travels, etc.
-H
When Hank gives the envelope to Raven, she looks at it and then at Hank, and raises an eyebrow.
“Seriously, Hank.”
“What?” he says.
“It’s just--” she sighs and shakes her head. “Nevermind. I’m glad your friend is coming out to visit.”
She says it like it means so much more, and Hank could use those psychic powers right about now, frankly. He knows it’s invasive--sometimes he feels the invasiveness of those powers, in the smug way Charles recognized his mutation before he could reveal it himself, in other, smaller ways. But sometimes people seem like the most cryptic puzzle. Hank’s own flashes of insight are thin and limited, to the point where he isn’t even sure they’re insightful at all, and he thinks that even if he had one chance to view the human mind under a microscope, clear and true, he might be able to extrapolate that into patterns of understanding.
But maybe the point is that you can never do that with the human mind, because humans are gnarled and idiosyncratic, and Hank should be satisfied with just being the Beast.
He is, in a strange way. He had never expected to find in himself so much strength. It’s a different blessing from Charles’, but a blessing nonetheless.
3/13/1967
Beast:
I suppose I’ll be racing this letter to San Francisco, but it seemed worth writing anyway. I still haven’t packed--what’s the weather like? I suppose I’ll find out when I get there. I don’t understand why I have to take the train, but the Professor thinks it’s safer? All I know is that it’s longer, and I don’t think I can sleep in those bunks. At least I know they’re small enough that no one will sneak in and molest me (and before you ask, it was emphatically not rape that landed me in the big house).
Charles’s powers are the last ones I would want--there’s too much responsibility, knowing all those details about people. I always wonder what he knows about me, and how he manages to restrain himself from revealing it. I don’t think anyone understands others with complete clarity, anyone. Maybe you expect to because you’re a scientist, but those of us with normal intellects muddle along just the same.
Look forward to seeing you, and of course my brother, and I suppose Raven as well, as I haven’t got any choice. I would like to come to one of your poetry readings with Moira and this Ginsberg. And I will be sure to put all my food under lock and key with you around, big guy.
-H
The letter arrives before Alex does, actually by a full week, but the house is already in a flurry: they’re putting another bed in Hank’s room, because they were worried having Scott and Alex share a room would be too much pressure. The expectation of a guest is weighing on everyone: Scott is twitchy with excitement, and his uncontrolled powers keep flashing behind his glasses, and Hank really needs to refine the prototype, and, perhaps more significantly, get Scott to the east coast and the Professor for training. Raven might be concerned about being overwhelmed with X-Men, but if so, she’s a cipher and hides it well. And in the background there’s still research, and Raven putting on Hank’s body for meetings. Hank is quietly anxious for summer, especially August, when his fellowship ends.
But Alex comes first.
Raven goes to meet Alex, with Scott. She always goes out in Hank’s old body, to keep the neighbors from getting suspicious, but at Hank’s request she shifts into the body she used to wear in a phone booth on the way. For some reason it makes Hank uncomfortable to imagine his body greeting Alex without his actual presence; he figures it would be somewhat more comfortable for Alex to see the blonde Raven, even though it’s a form she has all but abandoned.
With the other two gone, Hank is left to pace the house and reread Alex’s letters, looking for some trick to bridge the gap between the easy way they write one another and the stiff way they spoke on the phone, because as much as Hank wants to blame the phone he suspects it’s the speaking, and the discomfort will just elevate when they’re physically present with one another.
And then Hank feels terribly egocentric about this whole thing, because Alex is here to see his brother, and Hank is just a bystander.
He tries to take a nap, but the empty bed on the other side of the room is there, and he can’t sleep.
He’s downstairs in the kitchen, tearing hunks off a loaf of bread, when they get back. Raven’s shaking off her blonde locks like a dog shakes off water, and Scott is trailing after her, and then there’s Alex, close behind him.
“Hey,” Hank says, around a mouthful of soggy bread, still bright with the bite of sourdough.
“Hank,” Raven says. “That was supposed to be sandwiches for a week.”
Alex laughs.
“Well you should’ve known it wouldn’t last a week,” Hank says, frowning. “There are four of us here, now, and Allen and Moira are coming by in a few days, and you know how I need carbohydrates.”
“I still don’t actually believe that,” Raven says. “Now say hello to our guest.”
“Alex, welcome,” Hank says, and Alex grins at him cockeyed. “How was the trip?”
“Nothing untoward happened,” Alex says, and it’s Hank’s turn to grin, and then Alex adds, “Good, you got my letter.”
In the evening, Hank and Raven retreat to the parlor to sit in the uncomfortable armchairs and leave Alex and Scott alone in the kitchen for sibling bonding. Hank wonders what kind of bonds siblings make: covalent, ionic, something else entirely.
“Do you think it’s going alright?” he asks Raven.
“It’s fine,” Raven says. “Don’t fret. They’re just catching up. Getting to know one another.”
“Do you think--would you be okay if Scott joined the X-Men?” Hank asks.
Raven shrugs. It’s been a long time since they discussed their teams, and Hank feels brave for bringing it up, even as Raven takes it completely in stride.
“They’re siblings,” she says. “I count Charles as my brother, but I left him, though that was different entirely. I wouldn’t be surprised if Scott wants to go to Charles’ school, or at least stay close to his brother. At least he knows what the Brotherhood is all about, if he ever decides he wants something else.”
Hank nods. Raven’s response is measured and reasonable, and he’s filled with a surge of affection for her.
“I’m sorry,” he says, after a moment. “For pushing you with the Human Be-In, and everything. I’ll still be meeting with Ginsberg and Moira--but I’m still figuring out what it means to be like this.”
Hank gestures to himself, and it’s Raven’s turn to nod, and there’s a rekindling of their tentative truce, there. It’s something they’ve been approaching since Scott moved in, but Hank had never had the courage to voice it, and it’s astoundingly comforting to have Raven back.
“I count you as a sister, you know,” he says.
“I know,” Raven says, and then they fall into silence again, but it’s warm and comfortable, heavy across Hank’s shoulders but also lighter than any silence in the house has been for a long while.
By contrast, the silence in Hank’s room that night is heavy, Hank lying flat on his back on his bed and looking straight up at the ceiling, Alex somewhere across the room. Hank can see in the dark, but he consciously doesn’t look, because he doesn’t want to know if Alex is doing the same thing, or curled up on his side, or lying on his stomach with his arms criss-crossed under his pillow. It seems too intimate, like knowing too much, and Hank has seen Alex’s genes but he doesn’t want to see this.
He knows Alex is awake, though, because he can hear him breathing, and that’s what he hears until he falls asleep.
The morning is, by all measures Hank can think of, worse. Hank is making breakfast for everyone, because Raven has a meeting, and he’s coaching her on his research and helping her select clothes for his body when Alex comes downstairs, stumbles slightly, and blinks between the pair of them.
“Woah,” he says, and the way he’s looking at Raven, who is shirtless and looks like Hank looked once, makes Hank irrationally jealous.
Raven looks at Hank, quick, and shifts back.
Alex rubs his eyes.
“Damn,” he mutters. “Sorry, that threw me. I mean I knew but I guess I forgot.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Hank says, although he is worried about it. “How do you like your eggs?”
“Scrambled, runny,” Alex says. “It was just so weird to see both of you, you know? I mean, you probably don’t, but--ah, fuck it. You guys go back to whatever you were doing, okay? I’ll just--”
“Don’t worry about it,” Hank repeats. “Raven’s more than ready for the meeting, she’s leaving in a few minutes, just sit down and I’ll make your eggs.”
“No--” Alex starts.
“Sit down,” Hank hisses, and Alex does. Raven comes up behind Hank and places one blue hand on his shoulder before she leaves, squeezing so her fingers dig into the soft spot beneath the joint. Hank cracks eggs into the pan, and Alex is silent behind him. It had been a long time since Hank wanted to forget about his old body completely, because he’d slowly come to consider it part of the trajectory of his life, but now he does.
He knows why, and it’s a stupid reason. He knows--he knows Alex is attracted to men, and he knows in a removed, empirical way that he was not a bad looking man, once. Despite the glasses. His chest, anyway, was decent, and Raven probably makes it look better than it actually was.
He knows, now, that he’s some sort of amalgam of human and animal that no one in their right mind would ever be attracted to. He had always assumed that monasticism had come hand-in-hand with his transformation, but seeing someone attracted to his old self makes Hank envy all the opportunities he had. Sure, he’s not a virgin, but only just barely, enough to know what he’s missing. And now all those doors have slammed shut.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that it was Alex, because that’s a door in his mind Hank wants to keep shut entirely, under lock and key. They share a room. Hank has fur. Alex is younger than him by three years, which is not much, but is something. It’s just--not. That would be inappropriate, invasive, wrong.
Scott comes downstairs. Hank slides Alex’s eggs onto a plate, and makes another batch of scrambled, slightly firmer, for Scott and himself.
After about a week, Hank learns to pretend Alex just isn’t there when goes to sleep. He can smell him, and hear him breathing, but he just concentrates on something else, until his head aches and everything goes bleary and he eventually, finally, falls asleep. It actually is no better than it was before, but Hank pretends that it is.
During the day Alex is mostly off with Scott--sibling bonding, almost constant. Hank is pleased that they’re still getting along, but it makes the time he does spend with Alex feel weirder, like they’re still strangers and not the people who spent so much time writing one another letters. He considers reinstating the letter writing, but that strikes him as pathetic, when they’re sharing a room.
Moira and Allen come over the beginning of the next week, and Hank lets Alex know so he can join them, which means of course Scott tags along. A group of five instead of three, they wind up in the parlor instead of the better-lit kitchen: Alex and Scott tight together on the love seat, Hank in his oversized chair and Moira and Allen in the twinned armchairs by the windows.
Hank makes them tea, pours it out into teacups that taunt him with their delicacy until Moira rises to help him distribute them. He flashes her what he hopes is a grateful grin, though he knows his teeth sometimes obscure any expression other than vaguely menacing, or hungry.
Allen starts talking, in the way he usually does, words whirling around like a dervish. Hank can feel Alex watching him, like he doesn’t entirely take this seriously, and it makes Hank feel skittish. If he had a tail, he would be thrashing it.
“Alex and Scott are new--” he says. “Should we explain to them what we’re trying to do?”
“My dear Doctor McCoy,” Allen says. “I should think that was completely clear.”
“We’re discussing the possibility of integrating mutants with the counterculture movement,” Moira offers.
“Those people?” Scott says, and his face wrinkles.
“Discussing?” Alex says. “So you aren’t actually doing anything yet?”
“Well what do you suggest?” Moira asks, diplomatic as ever.
“Something,” Alex says. “I don’t know. But you’ve been meeting for, what, months?”
“Since January, yes,” Hank replies.
Alex falls silent; he must hear something in Hank’s tone that Hank himself can’t detect, because he looks at Hank and then he’s quiet.
The rest of the meeting goes about like usual, but only because Alex and Scott are silent. Scott occasionally makes mild efforts to participate, making a peace offering for the incumbents, but Alex is quiet, and Hank himself is removed from the other two because he’s trying to understand how Alex might see what’s happening. Maybe they should be doing something more, but first Hank wants to understand what they could do, whether they’ll be accepted. He wants to understand what was between those who feared him, those who embraced him, and those who tried to attack him on January 14th.
There’s probably the answer, or maybe the answer is in what Alex is saying: in giving up the discussion, and doing something. In being not just strong, but brave.
“Beast,” Alex says, when they’re both in bed that night.
“Hmm?” Hank hums in reply, his coherence blurred by the border of sleep.
“Sorry about tonight,” Alex says, his voice emerging from the dark. “I just thought from your letters--you might be doing something. This feels like something where you gather people without mutations and get them to tell you you’re okay.”
“That’s not what it is at all. Though if it is--it’s because no one else will,” Hank says flatly. “It’s because I can’t go outside here, Alex, and maybe if we could get more humans without mutations involved in this, maybe I could.”
“But you’re more than that, aren’t you?” Alex asks. “The Beast.”
“Are you more than who you are?” Hank asks. He stretches his arms above his head, feels the curve of his own spine. “Is Havok more than Alex?”
“No,” Alex says.
“Would he be, if Havok looked a little more like me?”
“I don’t know,” Alex says, after a moment.
“So,” Hank says. He lumps himself over so he’s lying on his side, his back to Alex and his voice, insistent and straining against the shuttered light of the room.
“Beast,” Alex says, after a moment. “Hank.”
“I’m sleeping,” Hank says, though it’s plainly a lie.
“You’re okay,” Alex says.
Hank sleeps less that night than the six nights prior, and it’s Alex who wakes him in the morning: Alex wearing the harness Hank made him to help with his control like a life vest.
“Do you sleep like that?” Hank asks, because he can’t remember, because Alex was wearing a sleep shirt the night before.
“We aren’t so different after all,” Alex says. “Come on, we’re going outside.”
Hank can see light slivering beneath the blinds.
“It’s morning,” he says. “It’s too late. We can’t.”
“Fuck that,” Alex says, tugging at his arm. “This is what you want, isn’t it?”
Alex is slipping out of his harness, withdrawing his arms from the sleeves, dropping it to the ground. Hank watches him shuck his shell, and Alex watches Hank, eyes bright. There are two things happening here.
First there’s Alex, who is shucking off the limits that have been imposed on his mutation, limits which grant him the control to hide. He’s trying to say something, something radical and good, and Hank sees that--but he also sees the sinew of Alex’s shoulders, the line of his chest angling into his waist, his skin, bare and pale and clean. Hank can see the sharp jut of his hipbones, pointing down, and the soft skin that covers them, and that’s the second thing that’s happening. Alex has to see Hank, seeing this as well as the other thing, although maybe he just mistakes it for Hank’s typical hungry expression.
The truth is that Hank doesn’t know what he wants, not at all. He wants to ask Alex what’s going on here, but that would mean revealing that he himself doesn’t know what’s going on--whether they’re friends, why they’re friends. He wants to ask Alex if this isn’t dangerous, but at least he knows this is as much about bravery as danger, and Hank needs to be brave.
So Hank watches Alex slip into a shirt, and then he spread out his arms like he’s showing Hank something, and then Alex offers Hank a hand and pulls him out of bed, even though Alex should, by all rights, be too small to have that much leverage on Hank.
Hank gets up, and shrugs on his large coat, and they go outside. Hank doesn’t know if Alex’s done something, sent Scott and Raven out on errands, but they aren’t around, and then Hank and Alex are out in the street. The sun is drawing mist off the bay, brilliantly bright, so much better when seen through air than through windows.
They get a block out of their quiet neighborhood when Hank starts to feel the looks, glances and stares, because he doesn’t have his hood up, because he’s being brave, but mostly because he’s large and covered in fur.
Hank wants this to be easy. It’s never going to be easy. He thought maybe talking it through, making it scientific, would make it easy, but--it’s not.
“What if the newspapers get wind?” Hank asks. “Maybe we should go back.”
Alex threads his fingers through Hank’s, his hand strong and coarse--Hank can feel it against the pads of his fingers.
“We won’t go far today,” he says. “We’ll just go for a little, and you can go back the rear way so no one will find the house.”
They do that. Beyond the whispers, nothing happens, which is in some ways worse, because Hank imagines everyone is scared--he sees a girl clutch her mother’s skirts, pull back. He knows mutants have been in the news, featuring as strange and caricatured versions of themselves, and it makes him feel like a yeti or the Loch Ness monster, only more so, worse.
“So what do you do?” Alex asks. “How do you convince them we’re not a threat?”
“I don’t know,” Hank says, weary.
“I don’t, either,” Alex tells him.
They go home.
Raven is there, waiting, leaning against the oven, slim arms crossed, hip jutting out.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” she says.
“Nothing happened,” Hank says, simply.
“You’re compromising our security.”
“It was my idea,” Alex says, and Raven says, “Of course it was.”
And then the conversation is over. Hank shucks his coat, and he and Alex go upstairs, and then Hank goes downstairs again.
“Raven,” he says, and she shakes her head.
“It’s okay,” she says. “I don’t like it, but it’s okay.”
“Why?” Hank asks, because Raven doesn’t forgive so easily, not usually, and she shrugs.
“Because this is about you and Alex, isn’t it?” she asks. “I might be your friend--your sister--but we’re on different teams. We need to accept that.”
Hank wants to say that they don’t. They don’t need to accept that--she could come back, come back to Charles and to Hank and to them, the X-Men. Raven’s resignation is somehow terrifying, because it means she doesn’t want to change him but nor is she willing to be changed. He doesn’t understand what his friendship (that’s what it is, that’s what he’ll call it) with Alex has to do with any of this, but--
“It won’t change much,” Raven says. “This is how it was always going to be.”
Hank doesn’t know what to say to that. He hugs her, wrapping himself around her because it’s all left to do, one chance to hold on. She squeezes him back, and then there’s a clatter of feet coming down the stairs, and Alex is there, looking at them.
“Oh,” he says. “Sorry.”
“You aren’t interrupting,” Hank says, drawing back. “Do you want lunch?”
“No, it’s okay,” Alex replies, and goes back upstairs.
“Go after him,” Raven says, exhaling a long breath, and Hank turns to look at her.
“What?”
“You heard me, Hank,” she says. “Go on.”
“And do what?”
“Well,” she says, shrugging. “You could make him lunch.”
So Hank puts bread and cold cuts and mayonnaise and mustard on a tray, and brings it upstairs to the room he shares with Alex, where Alex is sitting on the bed and putting his harness back on.
“I brought lunch,” Hank says, and Alex glances up.
“Oh,” he says, then, after a beat, “Thanks for that.”
Hank sits on his bed, opposite Alex, and watches him. He’s not sure what to ask, and by the same measure he’s not sure what Alex wants to know. Does it matter, that he was hugging Raven in the kitchen? Or was Alex just being excessively polite?
Hank doesn’t want to read things that aren’t there, but he wishes he could read something. He starts to put together a sandwich, the way he likes it, with lettuce and too much of both the condiments, and then Alex comes over and sits on the other side of the tray from him, making his own sandwich.
They’re quiet, except for the slick of butter knives across bread, which was a sound Hank never even noticed before he was Beast.
“You know,” he says, trying to keep his tone light. “Raven’s like a sister to me.”
“Yeah?” Alex asks, pausing and peering up at him. Hank can see the feathering of his lashes, the streaks of color in his irises.
“I think we share some genes,” Hank says. “Since I became Beast.”
“Oh,” Alex says, and then he falls silent, again.
“It’s nice to have a sibling,” Alex says. “Does this mean the Professor is your brother?”
“No more than he is yours,” Hank says, and Alex grants him a grin, a quick one.
“Yeah, I didn’t really think so,” he says, and puts the bread on top of his sandwich, squeezing it closed and taking a bite.
“Thanks for making lunch,” he says, his tone dry.
“I didn’t know what you liked on sandwiches.”
“For future reference: everything,” Alex says.
“You don’t call me bozo, so much anymore,” Hank says, and Alex shrugs.
“You want me to?”
Hank shrugs back.
“You look less like a clown, now,” Alex says, and Hank doesn’t have a clue what that means.
“You don’t,” he says, and Alex laughs.
They spend the afternoon in their room, lying around and reading. Alex extracts a book from his suitcase, and Hank sees it’s Howl, and he does his best to hide his grin.
“I figured, if I was going to meet someone famous,” Alex says. “Even though he turned out to be a coot.”
Hank laughs outright.
Once Hank is down on the bed Alex climbs up behind him, kneels at the foot of the bed and pulls open the blinds, letting in a stream of sunlight. There’s a bright swirl of dust motes mingled with Hank’s fur, and then Alex clambers down and returns to his own bed and shoots Hank a grin. With the sun on his back everything is warm and languid and far too soft--the light is gentle, and time passes slowly, and Alex is there. Hank looks up, once, to catch Alex watching him, and Alex just keeps watching.
“You’re purring,” he says.
“I don’t--” Hank replies, and Alex gets up off his bed and approaches.
“No,” he says. “I hear it, you’re purring.”
“You know lions don’t purr?” Hank says. “I’m closer to a lion than any housecat--”
Alex reaches out an arm, presses a finger to Hank’s lips, and then leans in until his ear is on Hank’s chest, and Hank is positive he can’t be purring, because he’s fairly certain he’s stopped breathing.
“Hmm,” Alex says. “Nothing. Maybe I have to wait.”
And then he slides up alongside Hank on the bed, with his ear still on Hank’s chest, and Hank is staring at him.
“What?” Alex asks. “Just keep doing whatever it was you were doing that made you purr.”
“I don’t know what that was,” Hank says, slow and honest, and then Alex starts to scratch the fur on his stomach, oddly low, just above the sling of the waistband of Hank’s pants where the skin is soft, the muscles tender.
“Alex,” Hank says, and it comes out a growl, because he can feel himself hardening and he wants Alex off, before it’s too late, before Hank ruins everything.
“Not quite what I was looking for,” Alex says. “But it’ll do.”
And then Alex is using his other hand to pull himself up by Hank’s shoulder, so he’s lying against Hank’s chest, and then he kisses him, on Hank’s bed, in the shaft of sunlight from the bedroom window. Hank catalogues these things, because he’s not sure what’s happening or if it will ever happen again, and he wants to remember what might be the last best thing to happen to him.
Alex’s tongue presses against his lips, begs access, pries, and Hank acquiesces, flicking his own tongue until Alex’s mouth before withdrawing it, because Alex has stopped.
“Your tongue--” he says, and his voice is low and his pupils are blown.
“What?” Hank asks, because apparently something’s wrong with his tongue, he hadn’t even realized it had changed, maybe his tongue has been completely weird, all along.
“It’s ridged,” Alex says, and it sounds like awe rather than disgust. “Like a cat’s--oh god.”
And then Alex’s mouth is back on Hank’s, insistent and warm. His tongue sweeps through Hank’s mouth, and Hank returns the favor and is rewarded with a soft moaning, with Alex pressing his body hard against him and squirming in a way that makes Hank arch his back and bite down hard on Alex’s lower lip.
Alex pulls back, pressing his head into Hank’s shoulder.
“Don’t start something you can’t finish, Hank,” he whispers. “Please don’t.”
And Hank isn’t even sure how this started, but he’s pretty sure Alex started it.
He can finish it, though. He reaches for Alex’s pants, and fumbles, and the Alex reaches down and puts Hank’s hands on the lower seam of his own shirt.
“Here,” he says. “Do this.”
And then he begins to undo his own trousers.
Hank rips the shirt down the middle, from the hem to the collar, and Alex puts his hands back on Hank’s shoulders and teases at his fur.
“So what are you going to do, Beast?” he asks, and Hank flips them over in one smooth motion, so he’s straddling Alex on his knees and Alex is on his back, his legs about Hank’s hips. Hank ducks his head, and Alex’s eyes widen. Hank takes Alex full in his mouth, because if his tongue isn’t a problem, he may as well put it to good use.
When they finish, they’re a tangle of limbs and sweat and smells, strong ones that Hank can’t pick out individually.
“That was Havok,” he murmurs into Alex’s neck.
“You should know, Beast,” Alex replies, and curls his arms around Hank’s shoulders, and then they sleep.
When Hank wakes up Alex is still asleep, snoring lightly on his chest. It’s gone dark outside, and the only light is the dim, drifting light of street lamps, and Hank’s not sure if he should kiss Alex again--not sure if he can, or if that was some sort of fluke where Alex forgot who Hank was, what Hank looked like.
But Alex is still here, warm and soft and golden, hair splayed across his forehead, smelling like sex and sweat and like himself, beneath that, like wheat and and fire and human, and his hand is tangled in the fur on Hank’s chest, fingers twined around blue strands.
Hank inhales all of this, because if kissing was good all of this was magnificent, perfect, and he wants to remember how it smells and feels, to wake up in bed with someone--to wake up in bed with Alex, in a small room at the top of the house, in a bed that really can’t hold both of them.
Then Hank extracts himself, and lifts Alex up and moves him back to his own bed, and takes a pen and paper from his desk downstairs to the kitchen.
“I could hear you, you know,” Raven says. She’s standing in front of the open refrigerator, eating a pickle.
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Hank asks.
“It’s not that late,” she says, looking at the clock on the wall. “But I could ask the same of you.”
“I want--I don’t want this to be a mistake for him,” Hank says momentarily. “I want to give him a way out.”
“Because you pushed yourself on him?” Raven asks.
“No,” Hank says, after a moment.
“Because he didn’t like it?”
“No,” Hank says, quieter now.
“Because you’re afraid,” she says, and Hank nods.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Raven says. “Just be glad that Scott was out.”
Raven goes upstairs. Hank sits down at the kitchen table like he has so many times before, and writes across the ridges in the wood grain.
04/11/67
Alex--
I think I love you.
I’m writing this down because--you can read a letter without looking at me, at your own pace. You can do whatever you please with it, eat it or tear it to pieces, keep it or ignore it entirely. I’m writing it down because I’ll be able to handle your rejecting this letter better than if you reject me, and also because letters are the basis of why I want to say this, the genes of our relationship.
I know, you probably--actually, I don’t even know, I don’t know why you wanted to do anything intimate, for lack of a better word, with me. But maybe you just needed someone, and I was there, despite the fur and everything, and now I’ve gone and jumped to conclusions. So if it was something like that, I don’t want to pressure you. Don’t worry. I’ve never really expected--I thought being the Beast was a sort of recipe for monasticism. I’ve resigned myself to that. We can still be friends.
I just thought you should know.
If you need me, I’ll be in the lab.
-Hank
Hank slips the letter into an envelope and writes Alex’s name in large block letters on the front, and then he goes upstairs and places it on the floor, beside Alex’s bed, thankful that Alex is still heavily asleep, wrapped up somewhere warm and safe where Hank wishes he could be.
When he gets to the lab, Hank realizes he doesn’t even know what he wants to do there. He winds up curling up and sleeping on the cold cement floor, though he wakes himself periodically from little more than nervous energy. There’s a point in the middle of the night when he goes upstairs and calls Moira, and she answers sharp and quick, with a practiced wakefulness.
“Moira,” he says. “It’s Hank.”
“Hank?” she echoes. “It’s one in the morning.”
“I want to talk,” he says. “To the hippies. A speech.”
“It’s one in the morning,” she says.
“Can you and Allen set it up?”
“Okay,” Moira says. “Go to sleep, Hank.”
The next time he wakes, it’s from a knock on the door, and there’s piece of paper sliding across the threshold.
04/12/1967
Hank:
Idiot.
-Alex
Hank looks at it, blinking.
“Open the door,” comes Alex’s voice, adamant, and so Hank does, wary and slow.
Alex grabs him by the shoulders, wraps his legs around his waist, and kisses him full on the mouth.
They break more glassware than Hank has in the past month, and he doesn’t mind at all.
Allen and Moira arrange Hank’s talk for one month later, in Haight-Ashbury. Hank wakes to dim pink light and a mass of gold hair pressed up under his nose. He and Alex wind their way through the city, hands intertwined, and the sun is coming up behind them and Hank doesn’t know what’s going to happen, whether this is going to be a disaster or a success. But it’s starting to look like Hank has been operating under a false dichotomy for a long time, one where things he had thought failures had turned up roses, daisies, every flower imaginable.
One where things he had though broken had turned up Alex, who would blanch at being called a flower, but who needed to be called something other than Havok, because he was so much more than that.
But then again, maybe they all were. The sun is rising on May 15th, and it’s getting warm, but there’s a breeze coming off the ocean, to cut it. People are looking at Hank, because he is, after all, the Beast. But his face is already plastered up all over town, because he has things to say, things people ought to know. The world is big. There are mutants in it. Maybe they can work this out.
There was an afternoon, not so long ago, when Alex had taken off his harness and Hank had bit his shoulder and licked his back and fucked him until he thrust his hips forward and his back arched and he moaned to the ceiling until the rafters vibrated with a blooming hope and Hank was grateful that Scott had gone off to the school and Raven was out for the afternoon, when the sun was warm and bright on their faces and backs and bared bodies.
That was an afternoon, not long ago, when they had been both brave and neither afraid, and this morning feels like that, with the long expanse of the future stretching before them like the ocean, like an experiment that can only produce pure results.
They go forth.
They--the people who write news, and later historians--wind up calling the summer of ’67 the Summer of Love. They also call it the Long, Hot Summer. Hank tries not to read too much into either of those things. It’s not perfect, by any means: there are riots that summer, fires and hate and rage. And there’s worse to come. But there’s also a note from Alex, folded up in Hank’s pocket that morning in May, that reads Idiot but means something else entirely.