we're all here because we're not all here, Part 1 | X-Men: First Class | Charles/Erik, Alex/Hank | R
Title: we're all here because we're not all here, Part 1 (chapters one through five)
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairing: Erik/Charles, Alex/Hank
Prompt: Here at 1stclass_kink.
Rating: R for sex, drugs, dark themes and language. See Warnings.
Word Count: 25,000
Genre: Slash, Gen
Summary: AU, no powers. Charles and the gang are in treatment at the Elizabeth Braddock Rehabilitation Clinic for their various problems. Erik is the new patient, convinced he's going to die. Alex is getting a little too intimate with his therapist, and Dr. Hank McCoy remains torn between love and ethics. Lines are crossed, tears are cried, hopes are dashed and dreams are reborn. Somewhere in between, people fall in love.
Warnings: Character death, substance abuse, eating disorders, suicide, domestic abuse, rape. Yeah, this fic is definitely not for everyone.
Author’s Notes: This fic could not have been written without a number of things and people: first, I have to acknowledge the documentary Thin and the HBO series In Treatment as well as my own mother for providing me with a semi-thorough background into the world of psychiatry and rehabilitation. If you're interested in the subject, I highly recommend both the series and the documentary: very eye opening. I'd also like to thank starshipbadass for reminding me to write the next part/continue with the fic/being there to bounce ideas off of/squeeing over various ideas I had. Truly, without her, the fic would not exist. I'd also like to thank all the people at 1stclass_kink who commented with their kind words of support. The fic is split into 10 parts + an epilogue, so I'm breaking the fic in a few pieces and posting Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 separately (link to Part 2 at the end of Part 1). I hope you all enjoy!
i. A new resident causes a stir.
They always wake the residents of the Elizabeth Braddock Rehabilitation Clinic at a stupidly early hour of the morning. Some in-patients cope better with this rude introduction to the day than others: Charles can hear Alex throwing something at the nurse next door and smiles as he slips on a dark purple sweater over his white undershirt. Charles’s room is slightly messy, as per his usual: he had grown up in a house of privilege, and thus was used to maids cleaning up after him. He was, however, also used to a clean and kempt living space, so Charles did attempt at some rhyme and reason in his room when he could bring himself to clean. It’s just that so often, too often, there were more important things on his mind to be bothered with the mundane parts of his time at Braddock.
Charles slides into the facility-provided white slippers and edges into the hallway. Alex stumbles out of his room, right on cue, grumbling something incoherent and clearly obscene. He too wears a purple sweater, though it’s slightly too large for the boy-almost-man.
“Fucking, cocksucking bullshit,” Alex hisses, falling into step with Charles.
“Good morning to you as well,” Charles says in turn. It has become a morning ritual between the two of them, ever since Charles entered the facility three weeks ago. Alex had already been committed to Braddock for some time before Charles had arrived on its doorstep, and yet the younger man seemed no closer to recovery than most of the other in-patients. It darkens Charles’s attitude about rehab in general.
“Breakfast will be served from six-fifteen until seven,” says a voice over the loudspeaker.
Charles and Alex sit down at their usual table in the corner of the cafeteria: from there, the two of them can survey the rest of the inhabitants of Braddock with facility. The table is too big for just the two of them, however, and soon enough the chairs are filled by Charles’s other acquaintances: Armando, the former boxer with the eating disorder, slides in next to Alex; Angel, the spunky spitfire with a heroin addiction, daintily inserts herself next to Charles; and Sean, the cokehead who used to deal as well (in fact, to a certain clientele in Braddock, Sean still dealed), fills out the table next to Armando. Each in-patient wears a purple sweater: provided by Braddock, it’s supposed to make him or her feel comradery amongst the addicts. All in all, Charles supposes that it works, a bit. A yellow P (patient, Charles muses) is stitched just above the hem on the bottom right of the sweater, and more often than not, Charles finds himself running his fingers over the uneven thread.
Charles pushes his food around on his plate. By Armando’s side is a nurse who makes sure that the dark skinned young man finishes his entire breakfast. Armando sends her dirty looks as he muscles his way through his eggs and biscuit. Once he finishes, the nurse leaves, and the patients at the table visibly loosen up. Armando puts his napkin to his mouth and spits out one last mouthful of food he hadn’t managed to get down.
“Nicely played, Mandy,” Angel laughs. Armando scowls at the teeny girl opposite him.
“Fuck you too,” Armando sighs. The words are, however, said without malice: again, like Alex and Charles’s grudging acceptance of the morning routine, Armando and Angel are actually very close to one another.
“Did you see the new guy?” Sean asks the table at large.
“What new guy?” Alex asks, mouth full of food, so that it sounded more like Wra nu gi?.
“The new guy they brought in last night,” Sean says without missing a beat, jittery and excited. “Don’t sleep much. Heard them bringing him in around four.”
Charles tilts his head to the side. New patients were not uncommon at Braddock, but patients brought in during the night? That was far more rare. Charles can feel his companions staring at him, daring him to take a guess at the mystery behind their new fellow inmate.
“He probably didn’t want to make a scene,” Charles decides. “I know when I came here for the first time, at a very reasonable hour in the morning, it felt like you all were giving me the Evil Eye. At least for this poor chap, he’ll have gotten through all his paperwork before we even woke up.” Charles pauses. He realizes the possibility of a suicide attempt and makes a note to himself that that, indeed, is the more likely possibility: suicidal in-patients, or Jumpers, couldn’t wait for normal working hours. Charles drums his fingers on the table. “I doubt we’ll see him today, folks. His adoring fans-” Charles looks pointedly at Sean- “may have to wait.”
As Charles finishes his sentence, the door to the cafeteria opens and Charles chokes on his cereal while Angel raises an eyebrow in his periphery.
The man that walks in is tall. He wears a white t-shirt, but carries the staple purple Braddock sweater under his arm. Charles can’t help but notice the way the stranger’s legs are lean and long, or how under his white shirt his stomach is clearly defined and taut. Charles notes the stranger’s face, how his scruff covers a fair complexion and his eyes, large and blue, seem glassy and fixed. The new guy’s expression is blank, and he slides into an empty table, probably hoping to remain unnoticed.
Needless to say, it doesn’t work. Every eye in the cafeteria is fixed upon him. Charles feels a small amount of sympathy for the man, and he kicks Alex under the table. Alex looks at Charles, annoyed.
“What’re you on about, motherfucker,” Alex drawls.
“Staring isn’t polite,” Charles reminds gently. Alex rolls his eyes, but brings his focus back to the table. “’Mando, you gotta fucking eat that shit. You gotta.”
Armando turns back to Alex and Charles, away from the newcomer. “I don’t have to do anything,” Armando growls.
“It’s like what the doc says,” Alex continues. “You’re here for a fucking reason. You gotta, fuck, you gotta want to get better. Otherwise, it ain’t gonna happen.”
Angel’s eyes thin as Armando remains silent. “Coming from you, Alex,” Angel hisses, “that’s rich. Fuck off.”
“You PMSing?” Alex bites back. “Or did you forget to take your happy pills today?”
Charles glances at Angel, who brings her arms in, hugging her tiny torso. She is well known throughout the facility to be on a methadone treatment. Usually meds are a subject most of the patients talk about with ease, a common thread through all their various addictions and diseases. This time, Angel looks sick to her stomach, and Charles can only hazard a guess as to exactly why.
“Alex,” Charles warns. Angel pushes her chair back.
“Just, shut the fuck up,” Angel says, voice full of intense rage. “You don’t know shit, Summers.” She leaves, and makes enough of a scene to distract the cafeteria from the new guy. A nurse trails Angel as she leaves the rest of them behind.
“Magnificent work, Alex,” Charles sighs. “Truly.”
Alex looks away from Charles, clearly ashamed.
“Something’s been up with her for a few days,” Armando sighs, glad to create a new topic of conversation. “I think she might be off the methadone, actually. Might be going through some withdrawal symptoms.”
Charles nods, concerned, but he finds his eyes attracted yet again to the newcomer, who pushes away his breakfast, untouched. A nurse approaches him and says something to him that Charles cannot decipher, but at last, the man grudgingly spoons a few mouthfuls of food into his gullet. Then he is gone in an instant, and the room erupts in gossipy chatter.
Interesting, Charles thinks to himself. His hand reaches for an invisible pill bottle in his pocket, a reflex from years of drug abuse: when things had gotten too interesting for Charles, he had reached for something that would dull his senses. Now his blood seemed to pump at twice the normal rate, and for the first time since being admitted to the Braddock Rehabilitation Clinic, he is curious.
“New guys,” Sean sighs, eating his food with increased vigor as if to make up for everyone else’s clear disinterest in breakfast. “Always get all the attention.”
ii. Hank McCoy remains concerned.
“See you tomorrow, doc,” Alex says with a small, private smile, closing the door behind him. Hank breathes in and out fully for the first time in forty-five minutes.
“Shit,” Hank draws out.
“I’m done,” Angel tells the ground of Hank’s office. “I’m done with rehab. I want to go home.”
“I would not advise that,” Hank begins slowly, carefully. He glances at his clipboard and flips a couple of small pages stapled to the front of her chart. “I see that your methadone prescription has been reduced.”
“I want to go home,” Angel repeats.
“How are you feeling with the new treatment, Angel?” Hank asks calmly.
“It fucking. Sucks,” Angel bites back venomously.
Hank writes something on his clipboard. Angel seethes.
Hank stares at Erik Lehnsherr.
Erik stares at Hank McCoy.
Neither speaks.
“It’s a funny thing, living here,” Charles beings, cracking his knuckles. Hank settles in to his chair and leans forward, pen discarded. His sessions with Charles are always captivating and entertaining, and today is no exception. His notes can wait. “Though I suppose it’s all temporary. Getting better and getting out of here is clearly the goal, but… even so, there are some things about Braddock I do enjoy.”
“I should hope so, for the amount of money it costs,” Hank smiles, attentive. “What do you enjoy?”
“I think the kids-I think of them as kids, I guess-they look up to me. I feel a bit like a father figure,” Charles admits. “They’re not bad people. Just got messed up in the wrong stuff. It’s not really their fault. They have the ability to rise above their current predicament. I know it.”
Hank raises an eyebrow and wonders if Charles is talking about the kids or himself.
“I have faith that all the patients at Braddock can make a full recovery,” Hank says in a rote fashion. There were some patients that, in Hank’s opinion, would never make a complete recovery. There were some patients that Hank doubted would leave Braddock in anything but a body bag. There were a lot of things that Hank gained by working at Braddock: a secure income, heath insurance, a nice incentives plan. But of all the things Hank has lost since starting his job at the rehabilitation clinic, it is his optimism that he misses the most.
“Bullshit,” Charles calls. “But I won’t make you admit it. You’re another part of Braddock that I enjoy.” Charles smiles and Hank blushes slightly.
“I try to make our time together as… useful as possible,” Hank tells Charles.
“Dr. McCoy,” Charles begins. “This is my third rehabilitation center in the past year. The first two I entered of my own volition. My sister checked me in here.”
“That may be true, Charles,” Hank starts, but Charles cuts him off.
“Sometimes I don’t think I can kick it,” Charles says, hands drumming against his thigh. Charles is visibly clenched and strained. “Sometimes I think this is all a waste of everybody’s time. I might as well get out of here. High on drugs or not, I can still cure some genetic diseases before I spiral out of control.” Charles’s words are not egotistical or overly confident: they are simple fact. “I could do some real good… before I go.”
“Of all the patients I have ever treated,” Hank says after a moment of quiet, “I have never treated someone as gifted as you, intelligence wise. What you say is true, Charles: you could probably, high as a kite, solve mysteries that humanity has puzzled with for decades.” Hank leans forward even more, eyes locked on Charles. “But just imagine what you could do sober.”
Hank sighs and picks up his clipboard. “There’s your motivation, Charles.”
It takes a moment between each patient for Hank to compartmentalize, to wipe the slate clean for the next patient and not carry on left-over emotion from the previous case.
Wiping the slate clean after a session with Alex is… more difficult.
Hank looks at himself in the mirror: his hair is mussed, his pupils are blown wide, and his shirt is un-tucked. Hank pats down his hair, shoves his shirt down into his pants, and rubs at his eyes.
The phone rings at his desk, signaling that it’s time for his next appointment. Hank picks it up and immediately responds “Let her in.”
Composure. That’s what he was lacking.
“Perhaps we can readjust your methadone dosage,” Hank says, scribbling his clipboard again. Angel scowls, but looks a little less repulsed by the thought of staying at Braddock.
“Can I see Barnell?” Angel asks softly.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Hank replies kindly. Barnell was her former boyfriend and heroin dealer.
Angel’s face immediately turns into a scowl.
“Fuck you, doc. Fuck you.”
Hank glances through Erik’s file.
“You were checked in here by one Emma Frost. Your… girlfriend?” Hank prods.
Erik’s withering look that he sends Hank’s way reads Not if she were the last woman on the planet.
“So, not your girlfriend. But clearly a friend, if she brought you here after your… attempt,” Hank says, delicately opening the door to the subject that brought Erik Lehnsherr to Braddock in the first place.
“Not a friend,” Erik finally grunts out.
Hank looks at Erik, intently waiting for him to elaborate.
Erik stares back, intently waiting for Hank to let him leave.
“I want to get better,” Charles tells Hank. “I don’t want to OD. That would… that would kill Raven. The guilt, I mean.”
“That’s the first time you’ve mentioned Raven by name in our sessions,” Hank comments casually, but he knows that this is significant.
“She’s the one who first got me mixed up in pills. She managed to get herself out while she could, but I…” Charles clears his throat. “Well. As you can see, I succumbed. I couldn’t… control myself.”
“It’s not about control,” Hank tells Charles kindly. “It’s an addiction, plain and simple. You should know this, Charles. It’s a matter of dopamine transmitters getting tricked and mutating until they’re no longer controllable.”
Charles looks discontent, as if the words Hank says are flowing in one ear and running out the other.
“If I die, Raven would never forgive herself,” Charles repeats, voice stronger, more certain.
“Maybe Raven’s not the one who should be doing the forgiving,” Hank says. “Have you two ever talked about the circumstances regarding when you checked in here at Braddock?”
Charles averts his gaze. “It was necessary. I was spiraling out of control.”
“Charles,” Hank says patiently. “You were committed against your volition. Maybe what you need from Raven is a conversation about why she did what she did. And how she betrayed your trust by exposing your problem to, let’s face it, complete strangers. It’s a violation of privacy, Charles, however necessary it was at the time. You might know, rationally, that she did the right thing… but I think you’re also angry at your sister.”
“I’m not mad at Raven,” Charles says automatically. “She saved me.”
“That was quick,” Hank replies.
Charles is quiet for the rest of the session.
Alex sits across from Hank, legs wide, feet pressed firmly against the floor.
“I heard you got in a fight with Janos Quested today,” Hank sighs, tapped a finger against his clipboard. “Care to explain?”
Alex has a black eye, a dark spot against his blonde hair. Alex has a split lip, red and swollen against his pale skin.
Alex is silent. Hank waits.
“He was being a cocksucker,” Alex begins.
“Janos has never gotten into a fight before your encounter today,” Hank retorts. “And this is not the first time you have provoked someone into physical violence, Alex.” He lays the claim down on the table like a truth, though it is merely a guess until Alex’s silence all but confirms Hank’s words. “Is there something in it for you, Alex? Do you…” Hank can’t finish the sentence, but Alex can.
“Do I like it?” Alex spits back. He slams his fist against the arm of his leather chair. Hank scribbles something on his clipboard, and Alex pauses, the anger and insecurity dripping away from the young man slowly but surely. “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s a… distraction.” Alex looks at Hank plaintively, pressing his foot forward against Hank’s leather shoe. The pressure is soft but firm. Familiar.
With Alex’s last statement, Hank is sent spiraling into his own set of worries. Was their entire relationship a distraction from whatever Alex was truly dealing with, deep down? This is why you never supposed get involved with patients, Hank, he thinks to himself. There’s a reason they’re in therapy. They need help, not a horny psychiatrist preying upon them while they’re emotionally defenseless. The guilt consumes him for a moment, and then Alex has breached the gap is sitting on Hank’s lap, clipboard dropping away from Hank’s fingertips. The horrible realization is gone from Hank’s mind, replaced by Alex’s fingers unbuttoning his shirt.
“You’ve got that look on your face,” Alex murmurs. “That look that you think this is a bad idea.”
“It is a bad idea,” Hank groans as Alex presses his face into Hank’s neck. Hank pulls Alex back by the shoulders and looks at him square in the eyes. “Am I hurting you, Alex? Is this… hurting you?” The idea horrifies Hank, but he can’t help but wonder if this is Alex’s MO: hurt enough on the surface so that his inner pain can be masked.
The question clearly offends Alex, who stumbles back away from Hank, confusion and hurt in his eyes.
“What do you think this is?” Alex asks plaintively. “I would never use you-this, whatever this is… in that way, Hank. How could you think that?” Alex’s eyes are red and angry now: betrayal is painted on his visage, and Hank feels absolutely miserable.
“I’m sorry,” Hank tries, but Alex is out of his office in an instant. Hank almost runs out after him, but no: composure, first and foremost. Hank buttons up his shirt and presses down his hair. Finally, he ducks out of the office and turns to his secretary, Ginger.
“Next?”
iii. Three visitors.
Charles is waiting in the visitor’s lounge when the blonde girl walks in, looking meek and subdued. Charles waves a bit and his sister smiles, tossing some of her long hair over her shoulder. The room isn’t very populated: just a few other patients convening with loved ones. Charles has stationed himself on a couch in the center of the room. He stands up when the woman finally makes it over to him and envelops her in his thin arms.
“They’re not feeding you enough,” Raven says, squeezing his ribcage tightly. “You shouldn’t be this skinny.”
“You try eating the garbage they serve here,” Charles laughs into Raven’s ear. She releases him and they both sit on the couch. Raven dives into her bag and comes out with a bacon, egg and cheddar bagel. The smell is mouthwatering. Stuffing it quickly into Charles’s hands, Raven whispers conspiratorially, “Eat it quickly, before they can confiscate it.”
Charles unwraps the meal quickly and begins to devour it bite by bite. He thinks about how he could eat whatever he wanted if he were out of the Braddock clinic. He bites down on the bagel again. A nurse gives him a disapproving gaze as he finishes the bagel, but that’s the most recrimination he receives.
There’s a moment of silence once Charles has settled into the couch and Raven stares at him, drinking him in.
“They’re treating you well, yeah?” Raven asks.
“Braddock has been very good to me,” Charles assures her. Raven lets out a little sigh of relief.
“And you’re feeling… better?” she asks delicately. Charles looks away from her.
“I think so,” he sighs.
They are quiet again, and the moment is awkward, as if Charles has little else to say to Raven, which is, in fact, the farthest thing from the truth.
“So I did the right thing here,” Raven asks, and Charles raises an eyebrow. She clearly wants some sort of release from this visit; some sort of catharsis. Charles wonders if he is selfless enough to give that to her.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Charles replies.
He isn’t.
Raven gapes at him, mouth slack, lips parted in shock.
“From an objective standpoint, you saved my life, Raven,” Charles begins. He thinks to his last conversation with Hank, when the truth had blossomed into a deadly flower in the middle of his session. “For that, I owe you something. A boon, I suppose. But you betrayed my trust,” Charles bites out at last, and his eyes are shining with horror and grief.
Raven puts her head in her hands. The few patients in the visitor’s center have the decency to look away as Raven weeps.
“I’m sorry,” she sobs. “I’m sorry, Charles.”
“If you had never introduced me to the damn pills,” Charles finally says coolly, vindictively, “I wouldn’t even be here. So yeah, Raven. Sure. You did the right thing.”
Charles stands up and walks away from Raven, who still sits on the couch, too devastated to run after him. He walks back to his room with purpose. He feels slightly guilty for thrusting all his shame and guilt upon his kid sister, but the sick pleasure he gets out of cutting Raven down is sweet enough to drown it. Charles is surprised at how good cruelty feels.
He passes the new guy-Erik, Charles thinks his name is-who stares at Charles with a dark expression.
“Can I help you?” Charles growls. Erik shrugs.
“You look like you just got out of a fist fight,” Erik remarks calmly. Charles looks down at his hands, which are balled up tightly. Charles looks up at Erik and smiles slightly.
“I think you might be right,” Charles says grimly. "I think I won."
“I fucking told you not to come here,” Alex says.
“I’m not here for you,” Scott says. He pushes his glasses up into his brown hair and rubs his eyes. “I’m here because Mom sent me.”
Alex groans. “What does she want now?”
Scott shrugs and leans his elbows forward on the table. “Beats me. But she sent me with this-" And Scott shoves a care package at Alex, who looks at the box with distaste. A blue teddy bear pokes out of the top of it, and Alex examines it warily with one outstretched finger.
“Alvin, the guy you met when you were inside,” Scott begins, and Alex’s world seems to shake. Talking about his time in prison tended to do that. “He says to tell you hi and, his words, ‘Get the fuck outta rehab, dickweed.’”
“The words of a poet,” Alex mutters, but he clearly remains unnerved.
Scott puts his chin on his hand and looks at Alex, confused. “Why exactly are you in here, anyway? You don’t have a serious addiction-not anymore, at least. Nice and dry in here.” Alex shrugs. “Whenever I call and ask when I can take you home, the doctors here tell me you’re in no way ready to leave therapy. So Alex,” Scott says, leaning forward a bit, “what is going on in that head of yours?”
Alex takes the teddy bear out of the box and begins to spin it on its back. “I dunno. I mean, I know, but it’s complicated. Hard to talk about. Hard to deal with.”
Scott looks at him sympathetically. “Sometimes I think that you like being here. Like being in treatment.”
Alex looks up at him from under dark lashes. “Just because I’m doing better here doesn’t mean that I like it.”
“But you do,” Scott continues. “You seems happier, Alex.” Scott smiles. “I’m glad.”
Alex shrugs. “Don’t get too mushy on me, bro. You might spontaneously grow a vagina.” But the blonde cracks a grin and soon the two are laughing quietly together on the patio of the visitor’s center, breathing in the crisp mountain air that surrounds the Braddock clinic.
When Erik hears that he has a visitor, he is at first shocked; then, suspicious. He wants nothing to do with his life before Braddock. In fact, he wants nothing to do with life in general, but that horribly annoying Dr. McCoy would probably have his head on a silver platter if Erik ever voiced this particular desire.
So when Emma Frost, Emma fucking Frost walks through the doors of Braddock, it takes all that Erik can muster not to tackle her to the floor and strangle her with his bare hands. Somewhere in his periphery Erik can see Charles talking to Alex, making a joke. Erik doesn’t want Emma to touch his life here: he doesn’t want to see her at all. She wears a white pea coat that glows in the fluorescent light of the hallway, and in her hand is a bag full of what look like Erik’s belongings.
“Erik,” Emma greets. Erik does not get up from the table where he sits, does not look at Emma, does not move a single muscle. This doesn’t seem to bother Emma, as she sits down smoothly before him, completely calm. “I know you do not want to see me. I certainly do not want to see you. But we have some business to discuss.”
“Leave,” Erik tells her. “Leave now.”
“Mr. Shaw has agreed to pay for your treatment at the Elizabeth Braddock Rehabilitation Clinic indefinitely,” Emma continues seamlessly. “He feels unwarranted guilt that somehow he caused your mental break, though of course, Mr. Shaw has been completely cleared of charges regarding The State of New York vs. Sebastian Shaw, including both counts of first degree murder. My condolences,” Emma adds. “I’m sure your parents were lovely people.”
“I don’t want his money,” Erik growls. “I want him locked up.”
“Well, Erik,” Emma sighs, “that’s not something you’re ever going to get. So pick your battles, sweetheart.”
Emma passes the bag across the table. “A gift from Mr. Shaw. A token of his affection.”
She stands and turns to leave.
“How can you live with yourself,” Erik spits at her. She doesn’t turn around.
“Fairly easily,” she calls over her shoulder. “Good day, Mr. Lehnsherr.”
Erik takes the bag to security for a full sweep. They clear it, and Erik totes the bag back to his room and spills its contents on his bed: a few dark turtlenecks, a large golden locket, and a book entitled Overcoming Grief. Erik throws the book across the room and picks up the locket. He fiddles with it and finally, it opens in his hands.
A small bag of pills falls out of the locket, into Erik’s open palm.
A token of his affectionn, Emma’s voice echoes in Erik’s head. Erik grips the baggy tight, then stuffs the pills under a loose floor board.
“Not today,” Erik says aloud.
iv. Getting into a fight, followed by anger management.
Alex groans in a low voice and manages to throw something at the nurse in the doorway, who easily bats down the teddy bear, flipping on the light switch. He crunches up on the bed, attempting to grab a few extra seconds of sleep before the day begins.
“Mister Summers,” the nurse says with a sigh. “It is time for you to be awake.”
“Fuck,” Alex moans, but his vitriol is subdued today. He rolls to the side of his bed and manages to get his feet on the floor without throwing anything else, anyways. He drags on his sweater and slumps out of the room.
“You’re in high spirits this morning,” the nurse says with a smile. Alex grunts in response.
Charles emerges from behind him.
“Fucking hell,” Alex sighs in greeting. “You look like shit.”
Charles doesn’t respond or make eye contact. Alex tilts his head to the side, confused. “Y’alright there?”
Charles slows his step so that he falls back from Alex. Unnerved, Alex walks on toward the cafeteria. Charles, as much as he is a patient at Braddock, rarely shows his inner turmoil so easily. Generally, Charles dispenses advice at his leisure, and occasionally, if ever, exposes his deep-seated issues to the group at large. Even when Charles has shared in Group Therapy, he easily avoids his own problems, and more commonly, he rambles on some sort of obscure philosophical tangent that make Hank look like he’d just discovered a new solar system, the smart little fucker. Alex looks back over his shoulder and sees the new guy, Erik, walking step by step next to Charles. The taller man makes a comment under his breath and Charles barks out a laugh, looking up incredulously at Erik as if to ask, Did you really fucking say that?
A spike of emotion radiates through Alex’s midsection. Alex turns back to face front and conveniently smacks himself in the forehead with the door to the cafeteria. Groaning with stars in his eyes, he opens the door and walks to the food line with a grimace on his face. Charles isn’t supposed to hang out with Jumpers. Charles is Alex’s friend, mentor, fucking, fuck-
Alex has swiftly gone from feeling all right about six-fifteen in the fucking morning to viscerally, irrevocably hating Erik Lehnsherr, and Charles Xavier, and this whole. Fucking. Place. Alex takes his tray of food and goes to sit at the usual table. After a time, Charles follows, one extra patient in tow.
“Alex,” Charles says, eyes bright and excited, so, so fucking different from just minutes ago when Alex had spoken to him, “this is, this is Erik. Erik Lehnsherr.”
“Hello,” Erik says.
Alex eats a bite of toast and nods in Erik’s direction. Charles and Erik sit, Erik in Angel’s seat.
“That’s where Angel sits,” Alex tells the both of them, who seemed far too pleased for this early in the morning.
“We’ll manage,” Charles says dismissively. Alex’s blood starts to boil.
He takes a bite of egg.
Armando slides in next to Alex. He gives Erik a withering look, and Alex’s appreciation for Armando skyrockets dramatically.
“Erik hails from Germany,” Charles says, opening the floor delicately, precisely. “I’ve always wanted to travel to Berlin.”
Alex and Armando eat their breakfast.
Angel wanders over to the table, apple in hand; she cocks her hips to the side and smiles wide. “Hey there, stranger,” Angel smiles. “Joining the cool table today?”
“It’s certainly cool today,” Charles says, glaring at Alex, who finds some grim satisfaction at getting under his skin. It’s not an easy thing to do.
Angel and Erik go through some rote introductions, and Sean’s eyes nearly bug out of his head when he sees Erik at their table. Mostly, Charles and Erik remain in their own little bubble as the rest of the patients at the table watch them cautiously. It’s when Charles laughs a little too loud, clapping Erik on the back with a strong hand, that Alex has fucking had enough.
“You can’t sit here,” Alex says.
“I beg your pardon,” Charles chokes. “Alex, what are you-”
Alex stands, eyes on the tall man in the turtleneck. “Erik.” He says the name venomously. “You can’t. Fucking. Sit here.”
“You’re being childish,” Charles bites back, but Erik is standing up now, too, and Alex can feel this humming in the back of his head, like he knows what’s about to happen, and it feels good.
“I want to sit here,” Erik says coolly, but his eyes burn at a slow heat. Alex, on the other hand, is already at full blast.
“I don’t fucking care what you want, cocksucker,” Alex growls. “This is our table. We don’t need a fucking Kraut sitting with us.”
Erik’s fists tighten, and Alex feels as if he is unraveling a ball of yarn: slowly, but surely, he is untangling his opponent until they can’t take it anymore. It’s always been a talent of his, riling people up.
“I will leave, Charles,” Erik says through gritted teeth. Charles looks at Alex forlornly, as if he knows what’s about to happen. Alex imagines Erik as this ticking time bomb, this long smoldering fuse, burning away, waiting to explode.
“We got enough Nazi drill sergeants in here, Charles, the nurses might as well be fucking Gestapo-” Alex says derisively, and then Erik has sprung across the table like some sort of jungle cat, which in itself would have been sort of funny, had Erik not then proceeded to tackle Alex to the ground.
“Erik, stop!” Alex hears Charles yell, but all he knows now is Erik’s fist against his jaw, splitting open the wound Janos had put there just a few days ago. Alex fights back weakly, clawing at Erik’s face, and he feels his fingernail scraping the flesh on Erik’s cheek. Somewhere in the background, he can hear Angel screaming and Armando calling for security. Erik grabs Alex by the front of his shirt, picks him up, and slams his head against the linoleum flooring of the cafeteria. Alex groans and sees bright lights hovering all around him. Charles briefly flashes above them, attempting to pull Erik away, but Erik brushes the man back with ease. Alex sees Erik’s face, full of fury and intense sorrow, hovering above him. Erik is practically straddling Alex’s body, but he’s got a knee buried in Alex’s stomach, and Alex feels it nearly crushing the breath out of his lungs. Erik lands another punch as security races toward them.
“Do it,” Alex grunts out. “Do it.”
Alex flashes back to his old jail cell and imagines what his life could have been like if he could have fought back, if they hadn’t pushed him around so easily. He remembers his weakness and how his body had eventually given up, though his mind had raced around inside his head, like a hummingbird trapped in a cage of human flesh.
Erik’s eyebrow raises and he holds his fist back in understanding. For a moment, he is only compassion, and it makes Alex sick.
Security pulls them apart, but Erik is beyond his rage now, confusion marking his face. Alex rolls onto his side and spits blood onto the floor.
It feels good.
They put Erik and Alex on probation. Hank takes one look at Alex and immediately puts his head in his hands, horrified. Alex shrugs off Hank’s attempts at reasoning with him.
Somehow, Alex finds himself in the gym. He runs for a bit on a treadmill, and never has he felt more like a lab rat. He steps off and towels his sweat off his forehead, unsettled. The confusion he had entered the gym with had not lessened with his aerobics.
Charles and Erik enter the room together. Alex stops in his tracks. It’s been a few days since the incident in the cafeteria, and Erik had strayed away from Alex’s friend group since then. But here he is, accompanied by Charles, and Alex can’t help but feel a little betrayed.
“Alex,” Charles says nervously. Erik looks at Charles for a moment and they seem to silently communicate. Charles clears his throat. “I’m, uh, I have to go talk to Armando. See if I can get him to keep down dinner.” A skittish Charles looks back and forth between Erik and Alex, as if trying to decide if leaving is the right choice. Eventually, after a few beats, Charles is gone, leaving just Alex and Erik alone in the gym. Well, alone, plus the security guard by the door.
Erik picks up a pair of boxing mitts and throws some gloves at Alex.
“What the actual fuck,” Alex begins.
“Put them on,” Erik says, sliding on his own mitts. “I will not punch you again, but you, perhaps, can explain some things to me.” Erik puts up his hands as targets.
“I don’t owe you shit,” Alex growls, but he pulls on the gloves and steps up to Erik. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, Alex jabs at Erik’s mitt. The sound made by leather smacking leather resounds throughout the gym
“I did you a favor,” Erik says, changing his hand positions. Alex pulls an uppercut.
“Is that what you call beating people up these days,” Alex grits out while throwing another punch.
“Kick,” Erik commands, hand darting low, against his own hip, and Alex thrust his leg up into a roundhouse. It connects. “Good,” Erik compliments. “And I know what you did. I should have known it then, but I know it now.”
Alex punches Erik’s left hand mitt in a one-two fashion. He pauses, hands slack for a moment, eyes flicking toward the fading scratch that runs horizontally across Erik's cheek. “Yeah. Dude, I’m sorry.”
Erik cracks a smile and moves his mitts again. “It’s okay. You should see the other guy,” he jokes, and Alex lets out a smooth chuckle. He wonders if Erik is always this sarcastic, and he also remembers Charles and Erik laughing in the hallway that morning. He punches Erik a little too hard, and Erik’s feet slip slightly.
“Where were you,” Erik says, attempting to keep his ground. “Before this. Before Braddock.”
Alex continues to punch, saying nothing; Erik complies, moving his hands and regularly asking for a kick or elbow. At last, Alex throws his gloves on the floor and collapses onto the ground, back against the matt, breathing hard. Sweat seems to pool off him, and Erik sits down, legs crossed, beside him, looking equally wiped. He is almost leaning over Alex, but his presence is not intimidating. Alex sighs.
“Phoenix Penitentiary,” Alex admits at last. “Before that, Gilbert, Arizona. Then some other places. The foster system moves you around a lot, especially if you’re as much of a fucking lunatic as I was as a kid.”
“You were a lunatic?” Erik asks blandly, and Alex smiles, lifting his arm above his head, letting his palm fall across his forehead.
“Yeah… suppose I never grew out of that,” Alex laughs. Then they are both silent. “I think about it less,” Alex says quietly, at last, “prison, I mean. It’s hard to think about anything when you’re getting beaten up. Nice work, by the way,” Alex adds, rubbing his jaw. It pops in and out of its socket.
“I can think of other ways to distract oneself,” Erik says, looking out into the distance.
“This way works just fine,” Alex grunts. “You don’t know what it was like there, but I think you can manage a guess.”
Erik shrugs. “How does getting beaten help you forget?”
Alex looks away from Erik.
“What are you, some shrink?” Alex says, sitting up. He looks at Erik, who just waits, sitting there with Alex. “Look, I don’t know what you want me to say, dude.”
“I don’t want you to say anything,” Erik says, standing up. He offers Alex a hand and raises the blonde to his feet. “I want you to get through this. I want you to have a few uncracked ribs left by the time you’re thirty.”
Alex rolls his eyes, but Erik remains intense and grave, clenching down on Alex’s fist.
“Don’t let those fuckers win,” Erik grits out, and Alex’s eyes widen at the emotion in his voice. "Don't give them the satisfaction." Alex simply nods, and Erik releases his hand nodding as well. They stare at each other for a bit, and in and unsaid communication, decide never to speak of this again.
Alex grabs his water bottle and walks toward the door.
“Come on, I think I saw some rice pudding in the caf. Let’s go steal some before the early birds get ‘em all.”
Erik smiles and follows the younger man out of the gym, letting the door slam shut behind them.
v. Group therapy.
They sit in a circle of chairs and couches, crowded together in certain areas (Angel, Armando, and Sean sit clumped together on the couch) and farther apart in others (Erik sits in a single chair farther away from the group, though next to him is Alex, to everyone’s surprise). Hank sits as a member of the circle, glasses sitting on the tip of his nose, dangerously close to falling off entirely. Janos Quested and Charles round out the group.
“I hope we all remember the rules of group therapy, but I will repeat them now,” Hank begins, and the idle chatter quiets down immediately. “This is a safe space: anything said here is confidential. There are no judgments made here. No topic is taboo. If you have something to say, raise your hand. No calling out of turn. You don’t have to share, but it is highly encouraged: after all, group therapy only works when you participate. You can say as much or as little as you want. And keep the cursing,” he looks pointedly at Angel, “to a minimum.”
Angel rolls her eyes but says nothing.
“Would anyone like go first?” Hank asks. The group rustles with anticipation, and Charles’s hand raises tentatively into the air. Hank nods, and Charles clears his throat.
“My name is Charles Xavier,” he begins. “I was admitted to Braddock for an oxycodone addiction, which is a prescription pill that has a similar effect to heroin.” He looks uncomfortable for a moment. “I’ve been sober for the last four weeks. And my sister visited last week.” He hisses out a breath through his teeth, remembering the experience. “I’m mad at my sister,” Charles says off-handedly. He laughs. “I don’t know why that’s so hard to say. I have no problem getting annoyed with her over casual things like eating the last biscuit or blasting music in the house.” Charles pauses, staring across the circle at Erik, who stares back. “I’m mad at my sister. And when I tell her about it, about how mad I am at what she did to me… well, at first it felt good. Really good. Like, close to orgasmically good. Oxycodone high good.” He grins in remembrance and lets the grin fade before continuing. “Does that make me horrible? That I enjoyed seeing her upset?” Charles asks the group at large. He sees shocked faces, mouths parted in astonishment, as if jarred by the fact that today, Charles is actually sharing something significant. “Then of course I didn’t sleep at all, just thinking about the way she looked as I ripped her apart. It wasn’t fair of me. I should apologize. Shouldn’t I?”
Charles looks at Hank, who has his pen on the edge of his teeth, concentrating on Charles as if he were an elaborate puzzle. “What do you think you should do?” Hank asks Charles, who shakes his head.
“I don’t know,” Charles says quietly. “I know what I did is something I should never have done. Raven probably hates me now.”
“I disagree with that,” Erik interjects, hand raised. The group turns to stare at him. “I think you did the right thing in telling her. Now she knows where she stands with you, instead of just flying in the dark.”
Hank nods. “Perhaps your methodology was not the most… effective, but I agree with Erik. Raven needed to know how you felt, Charles. How you still feel. She is, after all, your sister. She loves you, no matter what.”
Charles doesn’t look convinced. “You didn’t hear what I told her. You weren’t there.”
“I didn’t need to be,” Hank sighs. “Why do you think it felt good?”
“Telling her?” Charles asks. Hank nods. “I don’t know. I guess I restrain myself from telling people what I really think most of the time. I don’t tend to be extremely revelatory in casual conversation. I keep my thoughts to myself, especially the malicious ones. I don’t enjoy hurting people.”
“But you just said,” Angel pipes in, “you said you liked seeing your sister upset.”
“I didn’t like any such thing,” Charles says defensively, his expression full of pain. The group is quiet for a moment. “If anything, I was only glad that she knew exactly where the blame lies.”
“And where does it lie, Charles?” Hank asks.
“With her, of course!” Charles exclaims, looking around at his fellow patients, and then to Hank, with a duh, of course expression on his face. “She’s the one who started getting high with me in the first place. Introduced me to my dealer. And of course, she threw me in here.”
“So, your being here,” Hank says quietly, “is your sister’s fault.”
“Yes,” Charles replies.
“I don’t know if that’s exactly the case,” Hank says. “Don’t you think that you share some of that blame yourself?”
“But I wouldn’t have done the pills if it hadn’t been for her-” Charles begins, then he cuts himself off. “Hank, we discussed this. You told me that she did this to me: that she betrayed me. Aren’t you on my side?” Charles’s voice is full of hurt.
“I am always on your side, Charles,” Hank intones. “But Raven didn’t do this to you.”
Erik raises his hand and the group quiets down.
“You swallowed pills,” Erik says calmly. “You. You chose to do something dangerous, Charles. Was she shoving these pills down your throat?”
“No,” Charles grits out. He rubs his temple in aggravation. “You clearly don’t understand what I’m saying.”
“You say you blame your sister for throwing you in here,” Hank says. “But did she not save your life by bringing you here, to Braddock?”
“It’s like we were talking about, Hank,” Charles says, turning toward Hank. “You said it. She violated my privacy.”
“To save your life,” Hank adds. “There is a lesser of two evils there, Charles, and I think you know it.” Charles looks away and is silent, clearly perturbed by this turn of events. Hank inspects the group. “Thank you for sharing, Charles. Who would like to share next?”
Armando clears his throat. “Armando,” Hank says. “Would you like to say something?”
“Yeah,” Armando says, but his voice is subdued. “Well. I’m Armando. Bulimic, I guess. But I haven’t thrown up since I got here. Which is a new thing for me. It makes me sick to keep it down, but I do it. So I can get the fuck out of here and back to wrestling.”
“Why is it so important that you continue to wrestle?” Hank asks pointedly. “Isn’t that what caused your disorder in the first place? Your need to shed pounds quickly and meet weight?”
“Wrestling didn’t cause anything, doc,” Armando retorts. “Wrestling kept me sane when there was no reason I shouldn’t go batshit crazy. Wrestling got me through some tough shit-crap, I mean.”
“But at the same time-” Hank starts, but Armando cuts him off.
“No,” Armando says. “No. I kept my food down, and that’s all I’m saying. I don’t have anything else to give you.”
Hank raises an eyebrow, but says nothing. “Okay, fair enough.”
"I did think someone would congratulate me," Armando mutters.
"My congratulations," Hank extends, but Armando looks at Hank venomously.
"Thanks," he says without meaning it.
No one raises a hand to speak next. Hank clears his throat.
“With a show of hands, how many of you have something that you feel ashamed of?” Hank asks. Slowly, everyone’s hand rises. “Well, good, that means you’re all human beings.” Hank looks at Alex. “Would you like to share with the group something you’re ashamed of?”
Alex shakes his head, his eyes darting toward Erik anxiously. “I don’t want to share today.”
Hank’s lips tighten, and he glances at Erik, who looks even less enthused about speaking with the group.
“I’ll go,” a small voice pipes in. Angel, the sole girl of the group, crosses her legs Indian style on the couch, making herself as small as possible before continuing. “My name’s Angel,” she says. “I had a heroin addiction before I came to Braddock, and now I have a methadone addiction, I guess. Which is better for me than smack, they tell me.”
“It’s the first step on a long road to recovery,” Hank says, and his eyes flit to Charles, who still looks unnerved from his sharing.
“I first got involved with H when I was fifteen. You know, at some party,” Angel says, smiling a little at the memory. “Some kid got so drunk he tried to roller-skate across the pool cover. Fell through like a stone.” Her smile fades a bit. “I told myself just once I’d try it. They injected it between my toes. It made me sick the first time. Puked on some rando’s shoes. But it was so fucking good. That first high. There’s nothing like it.”
Nods of agreement around the circle.
“Then I met Barnell,” Angel continues. “He was my dealer first, but we got close. Started fucking around. Sometimes trade a hand job or a blow job for drugs, or whatever. It got more serious as I got more… into H, I guess. I moved in with him for three years.” Angel laughs to herself for a moment. “You know that thing they call the honeymoon period? That time, right after you move in together, when everything’s fucking great and nothing hurts? We didn’t even have that. The first week I moved in, he had already thrown me down the stairs.”
“Why didn’t you leave?” Janos asks. The group seems almost surprised to hear him speak.
“It’s not that simple,” Angel says. “I couldn’t just leave.”
“Why not?” Hank asks now.
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go. My mom kicked me out, and I sold my apartment when I moved in with Barnell.”
“And the money from your apartment sale…?” Hank queries.
Angel rolls her eyes. “That was gone before the month was out. Expensive habit.” She cringes. “He said these horrible things to me.”
“What things?” Erik asks, leaning forward on his chair. Angel wipes her eyes.
“He said, ‘I’m the best fucking thing that ever happened to you,’” she hiccups out, and it is so clear that Barnell was the exact opposite of that it makes Hank’s teeth hurt. “’I’m the best thing to ever walk through your tiny, miserable life. You don’t deserve love, because you’re a fucking whore. You’re gonna die in some alley, with a needle jabbed in your arm and no one is going to fucking care.’”
Hank looks at her with sad eyes. “Do you believe that’s going to happen to you?”
“I don’t know,” Angel says, wiping a tear from her eye. “Maybe. Sometimes I think that’s what I deserve.”
“I know that’s not going to happen,” Hank says in a clear, calm voice. “Because I care about you, Angel. We all care about what happens to you.” A low murmur of agreement echoes throughout the group.
“He called me worthless for three years,” Angel whimpers. “And I believed him.”
“Is that what you’re ashamed of?” Hank asks. “That you thought you were worthless?”
“No,” Angel says. “Well, sort of. It’s that I believed his bullshit for so long. I got all wrapped up in every single little fucking thing he said, took his word as law. He had the heroin, controlled how much I was going to get, and when. He might as well have been God, for all I cared.” She pauses. “I’m ashamed because I still want to see him. Still want to be in his life. Is that wrong?”
“After he hurt you so badly?” Hank asks. “After all the things he said to you?”
“Why do you keep answering my questions with questions? Is that a fucking shrink thing you do?" Angel spits, her voice almost reaching a yell. She purses her lips. "He kept me for three years. No one else wanted me, but he kept me.”
“Angel, it doesn’t sound like he 'kept you' very nicely,” Hank implores. The others watch the back and forth in silence.
“Barnell wouldn’t hurt me,” Angel says softly.
At last, Armando puts a hand on Angel’s arm. “He already did.”
After that, Angel simply sobs into Armando’s chest: at first, her tears are loud and theatrical, but they slowly fade into a silent trickle that ebbs and flows intermittently. Every so often, Angel mouths the word “Why,” and Hank wishes he could answer her, but all he can think is how little he can help her in the long run, and how hard it is to rehabilitate oneself when one is so very broken.
“I think we’re good for today,” Hank says, clearing his throat. “Thank you, Charles, Armando, Angel, and everyone else who spoke. It may not feel like it, but this is helping. Truly.” He fixes Angel with a smile, but she has a blank expression on her face. Sean and Armando lead her away. Charles and Erik fall into step together, Erik murmuring something soothing into Charles’s ear. Janos is the only person to thank Hank for his time, and his politeness is so jarring that Hank almost forgets to say “You’re welcome.”
Alex sits across from Hank, determined not to move. Hank stands up and gathers his things.
“I’m disappointed you didn’t want to talk today,” Hank says. “Sometimes I feel like the only real moving forward you do is in our group sessions.” He gives Alex a pointed look and leaves the blonde behind, fiddling with his fingers, along in an empty circle of chairs.
PART 2
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairing: Erik/Charles, Alex/Hank
Prompt: Here at 1stclass_kink.
Rating: R for sex, drugs, dark themes and language. See Warnings.
Word Count: 25,000
Genre: Slash, Gen
Summary: AU, no powers. Charles and the gang are in treatment at the Elizabeth Braddock Rehabilitation Clinic for their various problems. Erik is the new patient, convinced he's going to die. Alex is getting a little too intimate with his therapist, and Dr. Hank McCoy remains torn between love and ethics. Lines are crossed, tears are cried, hopes are dashed and dreams are reborn. Somewhere in between, people fall in love.
Warnings: Character death, substance abuse, eating disorders, suicide, domestic abuse, rape. Yeah, this fic is definitely not for everyone.
Author’s Notes: This fic could not have been written without a number of things and people: first, I have to acknowledge the documentary Thin and the HBO series In Treatment as well as my own mother for providing me with a semi-thorough background into the world of psychiatry and rehabilitation. If you're interested in the subject, I highly recommend both the series and the documentary: very eye opening. I'd also like to thank starshipbadass for reminding me to write the next part/continue with the fic/being there to bounce ideas off of/squeeing over various ideas I had. Truly, without her, the fic would not exist. I'd also like to thank all the people at 1stclass_kink who commented with their kind words of support. The fic is split into 10 parts + an epilogue, so I'm breaking the fic in a few pieces and posting Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 separately (link to Part 2 at the end of Part 1). I hope you all enjoy!
i. A new resident causes a stir.
They always wake the residents of the Elizabeth Braddock Rehabilitation Clinic at a stupidly early hour of the morning. Some in-patients cope better with this rude introduction to the day than others: Charles can hear Alex throwing something at the nurse next door and smiles as he slips on a dark purple sweater over his white undershirt. Charles’s room is slightly messy, as per his usual: he had grown up in a house of privilege, and thus was used to maids cleaning up after him. He was, however, also used to a clean and kempt living space, so Charles did attempt at some rhyme and reason in his room when he could bring himself to clean. It’s just that so often, too often, there were more important things on his mind to be bothered with the mundane parts of his time at Braddock.
Charles slides into the facility-provided white slippers and edges into the hallway. Alex stumbles out of his room, right on cue, grumbling something incoherent and clearly obscene. He too wears a purple sweater, though it’s slightly too large for the boy-almost-man.
“Fucking, cocksucking bullshit,” Alex hisses, falling into step with Charles.
“Good morning to you as well,” Charles says in turn. It has become a morning ritual between the two of them, ever since Charles entered the facility three weeks ago. Alex had already been committed to Braddock for some time before Charles had arrived on its doorstep, and yet the younger man seemed no closer to recovery than most of the other in-patients. It darkens Charles’s attitude about rehab in general.
“Breakfast will be served from six-fifteen until seven,” says a voice over the loudspeaker.
Charles and Alex sit down at their usual table in the corner of the cafeteria: from there, the two of them can survey the rest of the inhabitants of Braddock with facility. The table is too big for just the two of them, however, and soon enough the chairs are filled by Charles’s other acquaintances: Armando, the former boxer with the eating disorder, slides in next to Alex; Angel, the spunky spitfire with a heroin addiction, daintily inserts herself next to Charles; and Sean, the cokehead who used to deal as well (in fact, to a certain clientele in Braddock, Sean still dealed), fills out the table next to Armando. Each in-patient wears a purple sweater: provided by Braddock, it’s supposed to make him or her feel comradery amongst the addicts. All in all, Charles supposes that it works, a bit. A yellow P (patient, Charles muses) is stitched just above the hem on the bottom right of the sweater, and more often than not, Charles finds himself running his fingers over the uneven thread.
Charles pushes his food around on his plate. By Armando’s side is a nurse who makes sure that the dark skinned young man finishes his entire breakfast. Armando sends her dirty looks as he muscles his way through his eggs and biscuit. Once he finishes, the nurse leaves, and the patients at the table visibly loosen up. Armando puts his napkin to his mouth and spits out one last mouthful of food he hadn’t managed to get down.
“Nicely played, Mandy,” Angel laughs. Armando scowls at the teeny girl opposite him.
“Fuck you too,” Armando sighs. The words are, however, said without malice: again, like Alex and Charles’s grudging acceptance of the morning routine, Armando and Angel are actually very close to one another.
“Did you see the new guy?” Sean asks the table at large.
“What new guy?” Alex asks, mouth full of food, so that it sounded more like Wra nu gi?.
“The new guy they brought in last night,” Sean says without missing a beat, jittery and excited. “Don’t sleep much. Heard them bringing him in around four.”
Charles tilts his head to the side. New patients were not uncommon at Braddock, but patients brought in during the night? That was far more rare. Charles can feel his companions staring at him, daring him to take a guess at the mystery behind their new fellow inmate.
“He probably didn’t want to make a scene,” Charles decides. “I know when I came here for the first time, at a very reasonable hour in the morning, it felt like you all were giving me the Evil Eye. At least for this poor chap, he’ll have gotten through all his paperwork before we even woke up.” Charles pauses. He realizes the possibility of a suicide attempt and makes a note to himself that that, indeed, is the more likely possibility: suicidal in-patients, or Jumpers, couldn’t wait for normal working hours. Charles drums his fingers on the table. “I doubt we’ll see him today, folks. His adoring fans-” Charles looks pointedly at Sean- “may have to wait.”
As Charles finishes his sentence, the door to the cafeteria opens and Charles chokes on his cereal while Angel raises an eyebrow in his periphery.
The man that walks in is tall. He wears a white t-shirt, but carries the staple purple Braddock sweater under his arm. Charles can’t help but notice the way the stranger’s legs are lean and long, or how under his white shirt his stomach is clearly defined and taut. Charles notes the stranger’s face, how his scruff covers a fair complexion and his eyes, large and blue, seem glassy and fixed. The new guy’s expression is blank, and he slides into an empty table, probably hoping to remain unnoticed.
Needless to say, it doesn’t work. Every eye in the cafeteria is fixed upon him. Charles feels a small amount of sympathy for the man, and he kicks Alex under the table. Alex looks at Charles, annoyed.
“What’re you on about, motherfucker,” Alex drawls.
“Staring isn’t polite,” Charles reminds gently. Alex rolls his eyes, but brings his focus back to the table. “’Mando, you gotta fucking eat that shit. You gotta.”
Armando turns back to Alex and Charles, away from the newcomer. “I don’t have to do anything,” Armando growls.
“It’s like what the doc says,” Alex continues. “You’re here for a fucking reason. You gotta, fuck, you gotta want to get better. Otherwise, it ain’t gonna happen.”
Angel’s eyes thin as Armando remains silent. “Coming from you, Alex,” Angel hisses, “that’s rich. Fuck off.”
“You PMSing?” Alex bites back. “Or did you forget to take your happy pills today?”
Charles glances at Angel, who brings her arms in, hugging her tiny torso. She is well known throughout the facility to be on a methadone treatment. Usually meds are a subject most of the patients talk about with ease, a common thread through all their various addictions and diseases. This time, Angel looks sick to her stomach, and Charles can only hazard a guess as to exactly why.
“Alex,” Charles warns. Angel pushes her chair back.
“Just, shut the fuck up,” Angel says, voice full of intense rage. “You don’t know shit, Summers.” She leaves, and makes enough of a scene to distract the cafeteria from the new guy. A nurse trails Angel as she leaves the rest of them behind.
“Magnificent work, Alex,” Charles sighs. “Truly.”
Alex looks away from Charles, clearly ashamed.
“Something’s been up with her for a few days,” Armando sighs, glad to create a new topic of conversation. “I think she might be off the methadone, actually. Might be going through some withdrawal symptoms.”
Charles nods, concerned, but he finds his eyes attracted yet again to the newcomer, who pushes away his breakfast, untouched. A nurse approaches him and says something to him that Charles cannot decipher, but at last, the man grudgingly spoons a few mouthfuls of food into his gullet. Then he is gone in an instant, and the room erupts in gossipy chatter.
Interesting, Charles thinks to himself. His hand reaches for an invisible pill bottle in his pocket, a reflex from years of drug abuse: when things had gotten too interesting for Charles, he had reached for something that would dull his senses. Now his blood seemed to pump at twice the normal rate, and for the first time since being admitted to the Braddock Rehabilitation Clinic, he is curious.
“New guys,” Sean sighs, eating his food with increased vigor as if to make up for everyone else’s clear disinterest in breakfast. “Always get all the attention.”
ii. Hank McCoy remains concerned.
“See you tomorrow, doc,” Alex says with a small, private smile, closing the door behind him. Hank breathes in and out fully for the first time in forty-five minutes.
“Shit,” Hank draws out.
“I’m done,” Angel tells the ground of Hank’s office. “I’m done with rehab. I want to go home.”
“I would not advise that,” Hank begins slowly, carefully. He glances at his clipboard and flips a couple of small pages stapled to the front of her chart. “I see that your methadone prescription has been reduced.”
“I want to go home,” Angel repeats.
“How are you feeling with the new treatment, Angel?” Hank asks calmly.
“It fucking. Sucks,” Angel bites back venomously.
Hank writes something on his clipboard. Angel seethes.
Hank stares at Erik Lehnsherr.
Erik stares at Hank McCoy.
Neither speaks.
“It’s a funny thing, living here,” Charles beings, cracking his knuckles. Hank settles in to his chair and leans forward, pen discarded. His sessions with Charles are always captivating and entertaining, and today is no exception. His notes can wait. “Though I suppose it’s all temporary. Getting better and getting out of here is clearly the goal, but… even so, there are some things about Braddock I do enjoy.”
“I should hope so, for the amount of money it costs,” Hank smiles, attentive. “What do you enjoy?”
“I think the kids-I think of them as kids, I guess-they look up to me. I feel a bit like a father figure,” Charles admits. “They’re not bad people. Just got messed up in the wrong stuff. It’s not really their fault. They have the ability to rise above their current predicament. I know it.”
Hank raises an eyebrow and wonders if Charles is talking about the kids or himself.
“I have faith that all the patients at Braddock can make a full recovery,” Hank says in a rote fashion. There were some patients that, in Hank’s opinion, would never make a complete recovery. There were some patients that Hank doubted would leave Braddock in anything but a body bag. There were a lot of things that Hank gained by working at Braddock: a secure income, heath insurance, a nice incentives plan. But of all the things Hank has lost since starting his job at the rehabilitation clinic, it is his optimism that he misses the most.
“Bullshit,” Charles calls. “But I won’t make you admit it. You’re another part of Braddock that I enjoy.” Charles smiles and Hank blushes slightly.
“I try to make our time together as… useful as possible,” Hank tells Charles.
“Dr. McCoy,” Charles begins. “This is my third rehabilitation center in the past year. The first two I entered of my own volition. My sister checked me in here.”
“That may be true, Charles,” Hank starts, but Charles cuts him off.
“Sometimes I don’t think I can kick it,” Charles says, hands drumming against his thigh. Charles is visibly clenched and strained. “Sometimes I think this is all a waste of everybody’s time. I might as well get out of here. High on drugs or not, I can still cure some genetic diseases before I spiral out of control.” Charles’s words are not egotistical or overly confident: they are simple fact. “I could do some real good… before I go.”
“Of all the patients I have ever treated,” Hank says after a moment of quiet, “I have never treated someone as gifted as you, intelligence wise. What you say is true, Charles: you could probably, high as a kite, solve mysteries that humanity has puzzled with for decades.” Hank leans forward even more, eyes locked on Charles. “But just imagine what you could do sober.”
Hank sighs and picks up his clipboard. “There’s your motivation, Charles.”
It takes a moment between each patient for Hank to compartmentalize, to wipe the slate clean for the next patient and not carry on left-over emotion from the previous case.
Wiping the slate clean after a session with Alex is… more difficult.
Hank looks at himself in the mirror: his hair is mussed, his pupils are blown wide, and his shirt is un-tucked. Hank pats down his hair, shoves his shirt down into his pants, and rubs at his eyes.
The phone rings at his desk, signaling that it’s time for his next appointment. Hank picks it up and immediately responds “Let her in.”
Composure. That’s what he was lacking.
“Perhaps we can readjust your methadone dosage,” Hank says, scribbling his clipboard again. Angel scowls, but looks a little less repulsed by the thought of staying at Braddock.
“Can I see Barnell?” Angel asks softly.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Hank replies kindly. Barnell was her former boyfriend and heroin dealer.
Angel’s face immediately turns into a scowl.
“Fuck you, doc. Fuck you.”
Hank glances through Erik’s file.
“You were checked in here by one Emma Frost. Your… girlfriend?” Hank prods.
Erik’s withering look that he sends Hank’s way reads Not if she were the last woman on the planet.
“So, not your girlfriend. But clearly a friend, if she brought you here after your… attempt,” Hank says, delicately opening the door to the subject that brought Erik Lehnsherr to Braddock in the first place.
“Not a friend,” Erik finally grunts out.
Hank looks at Erik, intently waiting for him to elaborate.
Erik stares back, intently waiting for Hank to let him leave.
“I want to get better,” Charles tells Hank. “I don’t want to OD. That would… that would kill Raven. The guilt, I mean.”
“That’s the first time you’ve mentioned Raven by name in our sessions,” Hank comments casually, but he knows that this is significant.
“She’s the one who first got me mixed up in pills. She managed to get herself out while she could, but I…” Charles clears his throat. “Well. As you can see, I succumbed. I couldn’t… control myself.”
“It’s not about control,” Hank tells Charles kindly. “It’s an addiction, plain and simple. You should know this, Charles. It’s a matter of dopamine transmitters getting tricked and mutating until they’re no longer controllable.”
Charles looks discontent, as if the words Hank says are flowing in one ear and running out the other.
“If I die, Raven would never forgive herself,” Charles repeats, voice stronger, more certain.
“Maybe Raven’s not the one who should be doing the forgiving,” Hank says. “Have you two ever talked about the circumstances regarding when you checked in here at Braddock?”
Charles averts his gaze. “It was necessary. I was spiraling out of control.”
“Charles,” Hank says patiently. “You were committed against your volition. Maybe what you need from Raven is a conversation about why she did what she did. And how she betrayed your trust by exposing your problem to, let’s face it, complete strangers. It’s a violation of privacy, Charles, however necessary it was at the time. You might know, rationally, that she did the right thing… but I think you’re also angry at your sister.”
“I’m not mad at Raven,” Charles says automatically. “She saved me.”
“That was quick,” Hank replies.
Charles is quiet for the rest of the session.
Alex sits across from Hank, legs wide, feet pressed firmly against the floor.
“I heard you got in a fight with Janos Quested today,” Hank sighs, tapped a finger against his clipboard. “Care to explain?”
Alex has a black eye, a dark spot against his blonde hair. Alex has a split lip, red and swollen against his pale skin.
Alex is silent. Hank waits.
“He was being a cocksucker,” Alex begins.
“Janos has never gotten into a fight before your encounter today,” Hank retorts. “And this is not the first time you have provoked someone into physical violence, Alex.” He lays the claim down on the table like a truth, though it is merely a guess until Alex’s silence all but confirms Hank’s words. “Is there something in it for you, Alex? Do you…” Hank can’t finish the sentence, but Alex can.
“Do I like it?” Alex spits back. He slams his fist against the arm of his leather chair. Hank scribbles something on his clipboard, and Alex pauses, the anger and insecurity dripping away from the young man slowly but surely. “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s a… distraction.” Alex looks at Hank plaintively, pressing his foot forward against Hank’s leather shoe. The pressure is soft but firm. Familiar.
With Alex’s last statement, Hank is sent spiraling into his own set of worries. Was their entire relationship a distraction from whatever Alex was truly dealing with, deep down? This is why you never supposed get involved with patients, Hank, he thinks to himself. There’s a reason they’re in therapy. They need help, not a horny psychiatrist preying upon them while they’re emotionally defenseless. The guilt consumes him for a moment, and then Alex has breached the gap is sitting on Hank’s lap, clipboard dropping away from Hank’s fingertips. The horrible realization is gone from Hank’s mind, replaced by Alex’s fingers unbuttoning his shirt.
“You’ve got that look on your face,” Alex murmurs. “That look that you think this is a bad idea.”
“It is a bad idea,” Hank groans as Alex presses his face into Hank’s neck. Hank pulls Alex back by the shoulders and looks at him square in the eyes. “Am I hurting you, Alex? Is this… hurting you?” The idea horrifies Hank, but he can’t help but wonder if this is Alex’s MO: hurt enough on the surface so that his inner pain can be masked.
The question clearly offends Alex, who stumbles back away from Hank, confusion and hurt in his eyes.
“What do you think this is?” Alex asks plaintively. “I would never use you-this, whatever this is… in that way, Hank. How could you think that?” Alex’s eyes are red and angry now: betrayal is painted on his visage, and Hank feels absolutely miserable.
“I’m sorry,” Hank tries, but Alex is out of his office in an instant. Hank almost runs out after him, but no: composure, first and foremost. Hank buttons up his shirt and presses down his hair. Finally, he ducks out of the office and turns to his secretary, Ginger.
“Next?”
iii. Three visitors.
Charles is waiting in the visitor’s lounge when the blonde girl walks in, looking meek and subdued. Charles waves a bit and his sister smiles, tossing some of her long hair over her shoulder. The room isn’t very populated: just a few other patients convening with loved ones. Charles has stationed himself on a couch in the center of the room. He stands up when the woman finally makes it over to him and envelops her in his thin arms.
“They’re not feeding you enough,” Raven says, squeezing his ribcage tightly. “You shouldn’t be this skinny.”
“You try eating the garbage they serve here,” Charles laughs into Raven’s ear. She releases him and they both sit on the couch. Raven dives into her bag and comes out with a bacon, egg and cheddar bagel. The smell is mouthwatering. Stuffing it quickly into Charles’s hands, Raven whispers conspiratorially, “Eat it quickly, before they can confiscate it.”
Charles unwraps the meal quickly and begins to devour it bite by bite. He thinks about how he could eat whatever he wanted if he were out of the Braddock clinic. He bites down on the bagel again. A nurse gives him a disapproving gaze as he finishes the bagel, but that’s the most recrimination he receives.
There’s a moment of silence once Charles has settled into the couch and Raven stares at him, drinking him in.
“They’re treating you well, yeah?” Raven asks.
“Braddock has been very good to me,” Charles assures her. Raven lets out a little sigh of relief.
“And you’re feeling… better?” she asks delicately. Charles looks away from her.
“I think so,” he sighs.
They are quiet again, and the moment is awkward, as if Charles has little else to say to Raven, which is, in fact, the farthest thing from the truth.
“So I did the right thing here,” Raven asks, and Charles raises an eyebrow. She clearly wants some sort of release from this visit; some sort of catharsis. Charles wonders if he is selfless enough to give that to her.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Charles replies.
He isn’t.
Raven gapes at him, mouth slack, lips parted in shock.
“From an objective standpoint, you saved my life, Raven,” Charles begins. He thinks to his last conversation with Hank, when the truth had blossomed into a deadly flower in the middle of his session. “For that, I owe you something. A boon, I suppose. But you betrayed my trust,” Charles bites out at last, and his eyes are shining with horror and grief.
Raven puts her head in her hands. The few patients in the visitor’s center have the decency to look away as Raven weeps.
“I’m sorry,” she sobs. “I’m sorry, Charles.”
“If you had never introduced me to the damn pills,” Charles finally says coolly, vindictively, “I wouldn’t even be here. So yeah, Raven. Sure. You did the right thing.”
Charles stands up and walks away from Raven, who still sits on the couch, too devastated to run after him. He walks back to his room with purpose. He feels slightly guilty for thrusting all his shame and guilt upon his kid sister, but the sick pleasure he gets out of cutting Raven down is sweet enough to drown it. Charles is surprised at how good cruelty feels.
He passes the new guy-Erik, Charles thinks his name is-who stares at Charles with a dark expression.
“Can I help you?” Charles growls. Erik shrugs.
“You look like you just got out of a fist fight,” Erik remarks calmly. Charles looks down at his hands, which are balled up tightly. Charles looks up at Erik and smiles slightly.
“I think you might be right,” Charles says grimly. "I think I won."
“I fucking told you not to come here,” Alex says.
“I’m not here for you,” Scott says. He pushes his glasses up into his brown hair and rubs his eyes. “I’m here because Mom sent me.”
Alex groans. “What does she want now?”
Scott shrugs and leans his elbows forward on the table. “Beats me. But she sent me with this-" And Scott shoves a care package at Alex, who looks at the box with distaste. A blue teddy bear pokes out of the top of it, and Alex examines it warily with one outstretched finger.
“Alvin, the guy you met when you were inside,” Scott begins, and Alex’s world seems to shake. Talking about his time in prison tended to do that. “He says to tell you hi and, his words, ‘Get the fuck outta rehab, dickweed.’”
“The words of a poet,” Alex mutters, but he clearly remains unnerved.
Scott puts his chin on his hand and looks at Alex, confused. “Why exactly are you in here, anyway? You don’t have a serious addiction-not anymore, at least. Nice and dry in here.” Alex shrugs. “Whenever I call and ask when I can take you home, the doctors here tell me you’re in no way ready to leave therapy. So Alex,” Scott says, leaning forward a bit, “what is going on in that head of yours?”
Alex takes the teddy bear out of the box and begins to spin it on its back. “I dunno. I mean, I know, but it’s complicated. Hard to talk about. Hard to deal with.”
Scott looks at him sympathetically. “Sometimes I think that you like being here. Like being in treatment.”
Alex looks up at him from under dark lashes. “Just because I’m doing better here doesn’t mean that I like it.”
“But you do,” Scott continues. “You seems happier, Alex.” Scott smiles. “I’m glad.”
Alex shrugs. “Don’t get too mushy on me, bro. You might spontaneously grow a vagina.” But the blonde cracks a grin and soon the two are laughing quietly together on the patio of the visitor’s center, breathing in the crisp mountain air that surrounds the Braddock clinic.
When Erik hears that he has a visitor, he is at first shocked; then, suspicious. He wants nothing to do with his life before Braddock. In fact, he wants nothing to do with life in general, but that horribly annoying Dr. McCoy would probably have his head on a silver platter if Erik ever voiced this particular desire.
So when Emma Frost, Emma fucking Frost walks through the doors of Braddock, it takes all that Erik can muster not to tackle her to the floor and strangle her with his bare hands. Somewhere in his periphery Erik can see Charles talking to Alex, making a joke. Erik doesn’t want Emma to touch his life here: he doesn’t want to see her at all. She wears a white pea coat that glows in the fluorescent light of the hallway, and in her hand is a bag full of what look like Erik’s belongings.
“Erik,” Emma greets. Erik does not get up from the table where he sits, does not look at Emma, does not move a single muscle. This doesn’t seem to bother Emma, as she sits down smoothly before him, completely calm. “I know you do not want to see me. I certainly do not want to see you. But we have some business to discuss.”
“Leave,” Erik tells her. “Leave now.”
“Mr. Shaw has agreed to pay for your treatment at the Elizabeth Braddock Rehabilitation Clinic indefinitely,” Emma continues seamlessly. “He feels unwarranted guilt that somehow he caused your mental break, though of course, Mr. Shaw has been completely cleared of charges regarding The State of New York vs. Sebastian Shaw, including both counts of first degree murder. My condolences,” Emma adds. “I’m sure your parents were lovely people.”
“I don’t want his money,” Erik growls. “I want him locked up.”
“Well, Erik,” Emma sighs, “that’s not something you’re ever going to get. So pick your battles, sweetheart.”
Emma passes the bag across the table. “A gift from Mr. Shaw. A token of his affection.”
She stands and turns to leave.
“How can you live with yourself,” Erik spits at her. She doesn’t turn around.
“Fairly easily,” she calls over her shoulder. “Good day, Mr. Lehnsherr.”
Erik takes the bag to security for a full sweep. They clear it, and Erik totes the bag back to his room and spills its contents on his bed: a few dark turtlenecks, a large golden locket, and a book entitled Overcoming Grief. Erik throws the book across the room and picks up the locket. He fiddles with it and finally, it opens in his hands.
A small bag of pills falls out of the locket, into Erik’s open palm.
A token of his affectionn, Emma’s voice echoes in Erik’s head. Erik grips the baggy tight, then stuffs the pills under a loose floor board.
“Not today,” Erik says aloud.
iv. Getting into a fight, followed by anger management.
Alex groans in a low voice and manages to throw something at the nurse in the doorway, who easily bats down the teddy bear, flipping on the light switch. He crunches up on the bed, attempting to grab a few extra seconds of sleep before the day begins.
“Mister Summers,” the nurse says with a sigh. “It is time for you to be awake.”
“Fuck,” Alex moans, but his vitriol is subdued today. He rolls to the side of his bed and manages to get his feet on the floor without throwing anything else, anyways. He drags on his sweater and slumps out of the room.
“You’re in high spirits this morning,” the nurse says with a smile. Alex grunts in response.
Charles emerges from behind him.
“Fucking hell,” Alex sighs in greeting. “You look like shit.”
Charles doesn’t respond or make eye contact. Alex tilts his head to the side, confused. “Y’alright there?”
Charles slows his step so that he falls back from Alex. Unnerved, Alex walks on toward the cafeteria. Charles, as much as he is a patient at Braddock, rarely shows his inner turmoil so easily. Generally, Charles dispenses advice at his leisure, and occasionally, if ever, exposes his deep-seated issues to the group at large. Even when Charles has shared in Group Therapy, he easily avoids his own problems, and more commonly, he rambles on some sort of obscure philosophical tangent that make Hank look like he’d just discovered a new solar system, the smart little fucker. Alex looks back over his shoulder and sees the new guy, Erik, walking step by step next to Charles. The taller man makes a comment under his breath and Charles barks out a laugh, looking up incredulously at Erik as if to ask, Did you really fucking say that?
A spike of emotion radiates through Alex’s midsection. Alex turns back to face front and conveniently smacks himself in the forehead with the door to the cafeteria. Groaning with stars in his eyes, he opens the door and walks to the food line with a grimace on his face. Charles isn’t supposed to hang out with Jumpers. Charles is Alex’s friend, mentor, fucking, fuck-
Alex has swiftly gone from feeling all right about six-fifteen in the fucking morning to viscerally, irrevocably hating Erik Lehnsherr, and Charles Xavier, and this whole. Fucking. Place. Alex takes his tray of food and goes to sit at the usual table. After a time, Charles follows, one extra patient in tow.
“Alex,” Charles says, eyes bright and excited, so, so fucking different from just minutes ago when Alex had spoken to him, “this is, this is Erik. Erik Lehnsherr.”
“Hello,” Erik says.
Alex eats a bite of toast and nods in Erik’s direction. Charles and Erik sit, Erik in Angel’s seat.
“That’s where Angel sits,” Alex tells the both of them, who seemed far too pleased for this early in the morning.
“We’ll manage,” Charles says dismissively. Alex’s blood starts to boil.
He takes a bite of egg.
Armando slides in next to Alex. He gives Erik a withering look, and Alex’s appreciation for Armando skyrockets dramatically.
“Erik hails from Germany,” Charles says, opening the floor delicately, precisely. “I’ve always wanted to travel to Berlin.”
Alex and Armando eat their breakfast.
Angel wanders over to the table, apple in hand; she cocks her hips to the side and smiles wide. “Hey there, stranger,” Angel smiles. “Joining the cool table today?”
“It’s certainly cool today,” Charles says, glaring at Alex, who finds some grim satisfaction at getting under his skin. It’s not an easy thing to do.
Angel and Erik go through some rote introductions, and Sean’s eyes nearly bug out of his head when he sees Erik at their table. Mostly, Charles and Erik remain in their own little bubble as the rest of the patients at the table watch them cautiously. It’s when Charles laughs a little too loud, clapping Erik on the back with a strong hand, that Alex has fucking had enough.
“You can’t sit here,” Alex says.
“I beg your pardon,” Charles chokes. “Alex, what are you-”
Alex stands, eyes on the tall man in the turtleneck. “Erik.” He says the name venomously. “You can’t. Fucking. Sit here.”
“You’re being childish,” Charles bites back, but Erik is standing up now, too, and Alex can feel this humming in the back of his head, like he knows what’s about to happen, and it feels good.
“I want to sit here,” Erik says coolly, but his eyes burn at a slow heat. Alex, on the other hand, is already at full blast.
“I don’t fucking care what you want, cocksucker,” Alex growls. “This is our table. We don’t need a fucking Kraut sitting with us.”
Erik’s fists tighten, and Alex feels as if he is unraveling a ball of yarn: slowly, but surely, he is untangling his opponent until they can’t take it anymore. It’s always been a talent of his, riling people up.
“I will leave, Charles,” Erik says through gritted teeth. Charles looks at Alex forlornly, as if he knows what’s about to happen. Alex imagines Erik as this ticking time bomb, this long smoldering fuse, burning away, waiting to explode.
“We got enough Nazi drill sergeants in here, Charles, the nurses might as well be fucking Gestapo-” Alex says derisively, and then Erik has sprung across the table like some sort of jungle cat, which in itself would have been sort of funny, had Erik not then proceeded to tackle Alex to the ground.
“Erik, stop!” Alex hears Charles yell, but all he knows now is Erik’s fist against his jaw, splitting open the wound Janos had put there just a few days ago. Alex fights back weakly, clawing at Erik’s face, and he feels his fingernail scraping the flesh on Erik’s cheek. Somewhere in the background, he can hear Angel screaming and Armando calling for security. Erik grabs Alex by the front of his shirt, picks him up, and slams his head against the linoleum flooring of the cafeteria. Alex groans and sees bright lights hovering all around him. Charles briefly flashes above them, attempting to pull Erik away, but Erik brushes the man back with ease. Alex sees Erik’s face, full of fury and intense sorrow, hovering above him. Erik is practically straddling Alex’s body, but he’s got a knee buried in Alex’s stomach, and Alex feels it nearly crushing the breath out of his lungs. Erik lands another punch as security races toward them.
“Do it,” Alex grunts out. “Do it.”
Alex flashes back to his old jail cell and imagines what his life could have been like if he could have fought back, if they hadn’t pushed him around so easily. He remembers his weakness and how his body had eventually given up, though his mind had raced around inside his head, like a hummingbird trapped in a cage of human flesh.
Erik’s eyebrow raises and he holds his fist back in understanding. For a moment, he is only compassion, and it makes Alex sick.
Security pulls them apart, but Erik is beyond his rage now, confusion marking his face. Alex rolls onto his side and spits blood onto the floor.
It feels good.
They put Erik and Alex on probation. Hank takes one look at Alex and immediately puts his head in his hands, horrified. Alex shrugs off Hank’s attempts at reasoning with him.
Somehow, Alex finds himself in the gym. He runs for a bit on a treadmill, and never has he felt more like a lab rat. He steps off and towels his sweat off his forehead, unsettled. The confusion he had entered the gym with had not lessened with his aerobics.
Charles and Erik enter the room together. Alex stops in his tracks. It’s been a few days since the incident in the cafeteria, and Erik had strayed away from Alex’s friend group since then. But here he is, accompanied by Charles, and Alex can’t help but feel a little betrayed.
“Alex,” Charles says nervously. Erik looks at Charles for a moment and they seem to silently communicate. Charles clears his throat. “I’m, uh, I have to go talk to Armando. See if I can get him to keep down dinner.” A skittish Charles looks back and forth between Erik and Alex, as if trying to decide if leaving is the right choice. Eventually, after a few beats, Charles is gone, leaving just Alex and Erik alone in the gym. Well, alone, plus the security guard by the door.
Erik picks up a pair of boxing mitts and throws some gloves at Alex.
“What the actual fuck,” Alex begins.
“Put them on,” Erik says, sliding on his own mitts. “I will not punch you again, but you, perhaps, can explain some things to me.” Erik puts up his hands as targets.
“I don’t owe you shit,” Alex growls, but he pulls on the gloves and steps up to Erik. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, Alex jabs at Erik’s mitt. The sound made by leather smacking leather resounds throughout the gym
“I did you a favor,” Erik says, changing his hand positions. Alex pulls an uppercut.
“Is that what you call beating people up these days,” Alex grits out while throwing another punch.
“Kick,” Erik commands, hand darting low, against his own hip, and Alex thrust his leg up into a roundhouse. It connects. “Good,” Erik compliments. “And I know what you did. I should have known it then, but I know it now.”
Alex punches Erik’s left hand mitt in a one-two fashion. He pauses, hands slack for a moment, eyes flicking toward the fading scratch that runs horizontally across Erik's cheek. “Yeah. Dude, I’m sorry.”
Erik cracks a smile and moves his mitts again. “It’s okay. You should see the other guy,” he jokes, and Alex lets out a smooth chuckle. He wonders if Erik is always this sarcastic, and he also remembers Charles and Erik laughing in the hallway that morning. He punches Erik a little too hard, and Erik’s feet slip slightly.
“Where were you,” Erik says, attempting to keep his ground. “Before this. Before Braddock.”
Alex continues to punch, saying nothing; Erik complies, moving his hands and regularly asking for a kick or elbow. At last, Alex throws his gloves on the floor and collapses onto the ground, back against the matt, breathing hard. Sweat seems to pool off him, and Erik sits down, legs crossed, beside him, looking equally wiped. He is almost leaning over Alex, but his presence is not intimidating. Alex sighs.
“Phoenix Penitentiary,” Alex admits at last. “Before that, Gilbert, Arizona. Then some other places. The foster system moves you around a lot, especially if you’re as much of a fucking lunatic as I was as a kid.”
“You were a lunatic?” Erik asks blandly, and Alex smiles, lifting his arm above his head, letting his palm fall across his forehead.
“Yeah… suppose I never grew out of that,” Alex laughs. Then they are both silent. “I think about it less,” Alex says quietly, at last, “prison, I mean. It’s hard to think about anything when you’re getting beaten up. Nice work, by the way,” Alex adds, rubbing his jaw. It pops in and out of its socket.
“I can think of other ways to distract oneself,” Erik says, looking out into the distance.
“This way works just fine,” Alex grunts. “You don’t know what it was like there, but I think you can manage a guess.”
Erik shrugs. “How does getting beaten help you forget?”
Alex looks away from Erik.
“What are you, some shrink?” Alex says, sitting up. He looks at Erik, who just waits, sitting there with Alex. “Look, I don’t know what you want me to say, dude.”
“I don’t want you to say anything,” Erik says, standing up. He offers Alex a hand and raises the blonde to his feet. “I want you to get through this. I want you to have a few uncracked ribs left by the time you’re thirty.”
Alex rolls his eyes, but Erik remains intense and grave, clenching down on Alex’s fist.
“Don’t let those fuckers win,” Erik grits out, and Alex’s eyes widen at the emotion in his voice. "Don't give them the satisfaction." Alex simply nods, and Erik releases his hand nodding as well. They stare at each other for a bit, and in and unsaid communication, decide never to speak of this again.
Alex grabs his water bottle and walks toward the door.
“Come on, I think I saw some rice pudding in the caf. Let’s go steal some before the early birds get ‘em all.”
Erik smiles and follows the younger man out of the gym, letting the door slam shut behind them.
v. Group therapy.
They sit in a circle of chairs and couches, crowded together in certain areas (Angel, Armando, and Sean sit clumped together on the couch) and farther apart in others (Erik sits in a single chair farther away from the group, though next to him is Alex, to everyone’s surprise). Hank sits as a member of the circle, glasses sitting on the tip of his nose, dangerously close to falling off entirely. Janos Quested and Charles round out the group.
“I hope we all remember the rules of group therapy, but I will repeat them now,” Hank begins, and the idle chatter quiets down immediately. “This is a safe space: anything said here is confidential. There are no judgments made here. No topic is taboo. If you have something to say, raise your hand. No calling out of turn. You don’t have to share, but it is highly encouraged: after all, group therapy only works when you participate. You can say as much or as little as you want. And keep the cursing,” he looks pointedly at Angel, “to a minimum.”
Angel rolls her eyes but says nothing.
“Would anyone like go first?” Hank asks. The group rustles with anticipation, and Charles’s hand raises tentatively into the air. Hank nods, and Charles clears his throat.
“My name is Charles Xavier,” he begins. “I was admitted to Braddock for an oxycodone addiction, which is a prescription pill that has a similar effect to heroin.” He looks uncomfortable for a moment. “I’ve been sober for the last four weeks. And my sister visited last week.” He hisses out a breath through his teeth, remembering the experience. “I’m mad at my sister,” Charles says off-handedly. He laughs. “I don’t know why that’s so hard to say. I have no problem getting annoyed with her over casual things like eating the last biscuit or blasting music in the house.” Charles pauses, staring across the circle at Erik, who stares back. “I’m mad at my sister. And when I tell her about it, about how mad I am at what she did to me… well, at first it felt good. Really good. Like, close to orgasmically good. Oxycodone high good.” He grins in remembrance and lets the grin fade before continuing. “Does that make me horrible? That I enjoyed seeing her upset?” Charles asks the group at large. He sees shocked faces, mouths parted in astonishment, as if jarred by the fact that today, Charles is actually sharing something significant. “Then of course I didn’t sleep at all, just thinking about the way she looked as I ripped her apart. It wasn’t fair of me. I should apologize. Shouldn’t I?”
Charles looks at Hank, who has his pen on the edge of his teeth, concentrating on Charles as if he were an elaborate puzzle. “What do you think you should do?” Hank asks Charles, who shakes his head.
“I don’t know,” Charles says quietly. “I know what I did is something I should never have done. Raven probably hates me now.”
“I disagree with that,” Erik interjects, hand raised. The group turns to stare at him. “I think you did the right thing in telling her. Now she knows where she stands with you, instead of just flying in the dark.”
Hank nods. “Perhaps your methodology was not the most… effective, but I agree with Erik. Raven needed to know how you felt, Charles. How you still feel. She is, after all, your sister. She loves you, no matter what.”
Charles doesn’t look convinced. “You didn’t hear what I told her. You weren’t there.”
“I didn’t need to be,” Hank sighs. “Why do you think it felt good?”
“Telling her?” Charles asks. Hank nods. “I don’t know. I guess I restrain myself from telling people what I really think most of the time. I don’t tend to be extremely revelatory in casual conversation. I keep my thoughts to myself, especially the malicious ones. I don’t enjoy hurting people.”
“But you just said,” Angel pipes in, “you said you liked seeing your sister upset.”
“I didn’t like any such thing,” Charles says defensively, his expression full of pain. The group is quiet for a moment. “If anything, I was only glad that she knew exactly where the blame lies.”
“And where does it lie, Charles?” Hank asks.
“With her, of course!” Charles exclaims, looking around at his fellow patients, and then to Hank, with a duh, of course expression on his face. “She’s the one who started getting high with me in the first place. Introduced me to my dealer. And of course, she threw me in here.”
“So, your being here,” Hank says quietly, “is your sister’s fault.”
“Yes,” Charles replies.
“I don’t know if that’s exactly the case,” Hank says. “Don’t you think that you share some of that blame yourself?”
“But I wouldn’t have done the pills if it hadn’t been for her-” Charles begins, then he cuts himself off. “Hank, we discussed this. You told me that she did this to me: that she betrayed me. Aren’t you on my side?” Charles’s voice is full of hurt.
“I am always on your side, Charles,” Hank intones. “But Raven didn’t do this to you.”
Erik raises his hand and the group quiets down.
“You swallowed pills,” Erik says calmly. “You. You chose to do something dangerous, Charles. Was she shoving these pills down your throat?”
“No,” Charles grits out. He rubs his temple in aggravation. “You clearly don’t understand what I’m saying.”
“You say you blame your sister for throwing you in here,” Hank says. “But did she not save your life by bringing you here, to Braddock?”
“It’s like we were talking about, Hank,” Charles says, turning toward Hank. “You said it. She violated my privacy.”
“To save your life,” Hank adds. “There is a lesser of two evils there, Charles, and I think you know it.” Charles looks away and is silent, clearly perturbed by this turn of events. Hank inspects the group. “Thank you for sharing, Charles. Who would like to share next?”
Armando clears his throat. “Armando,” Hank says. “Would you like to say something?”
“Yeah,” Armando says, but his voice is subdued. “Well. I’m Armando. Bulimic, I guess. But I haven’t thrown up since I got here. Which is a new thing for me. It makes me sick to keep it down, but I do it. So I can get the fuck out of here and back to wrestling.”
“Why is it so important that you continue to wrestle?” Hank asks pointedly. “Isn’t that what caused your disorder in the first place? Your need to shed pounds quickly and meet weight?”
“Wrestling didn’t cause anything, doc,” Armando retorts. “Wrestling kept me sane when there was no reason I shouldn’t go batshit crazy. Wrestling got me through some tough shit-crap, I mean.”
“But at the same time-” Hank starts, but Armando cuts him off.
“No,” Armando says. “No. I kept my food down, and that’s all I’m saying. I don’t have anything else to give you.”
Hank raises an eyebrow, but says nothing. “Okay, fair enough.”
"I did think someone would congratulate me," Armando mutters.
"My congratulations," Hank extends, but Armando looks at Hank venomously.
"Thanks," he says without meaning it.
No one raises a hand to speak next. Hank clears his throat.
“With a show of hands, how many of you have something that you feel ashamed of?” Hank asks. Slowly, everyone’s hand rises. “Well, good, that means you’re all human beings.” Hank looks at Alex. “Would you like to share with the group something you’re ashamed of?”
Alex shakes his head, his eyes darting toward Erik anxiously. “I don’t want to share today.”
Hank’s lips tighten, and he glances at Erik, who looks even less enthused about speaking with the group.
“I’ll go,” a small voice pipes in. Angel, the sole girl of the group, crosses her legs Indian style on the couch, making herself as small as possible before continuing. “My name’s Angel,” she says. “I had a heroin addiction before I came to Braddock, and now I have a methadone addiction, I guess. Which is better for me than smack, they tell me.”
“It’s the first step on a long road to recovery,” Hank says, and his eyes flit to Charles, who still looks unnerved from his sharing.
“I first got involved with H when I was fifteen. You know, at some party,” Angel says, smiling a little at the memory. “Some kid got so drunk he tried to roller-skate across the pool cover. Fell through like a stone.” Her smile fades a bit. “I told myself just once I’d try it. They injected it between my toes. It made me sick the first time. Puked on some rando’s shoes. But it was so fucking good. That first high. There’s nothing like it.”
Nods of agreement around the circle.
“Then I met Barnell,” Angel continues. “He was my dealer first, but we got close. Started fucking around. Sometimes trade a hand job or a blow job for drugs, or whatever. It got more serious as I got more… into H, I guess. I moved in with him for three years.” Angel laughs to herself for a moment. “You know that thing they call the honeymoon period? That time, right after you move in together, when everything’s fucking great and nothing hurts? We didn’t even have that. The first week I moved in, he had already thrown me down the stairs.”
“Why didn’t you leave?” Janos asks. The group seems almost surprised to hear him speak.
“It’s not that simple,” Angel says. “I couldn’t just leave.”
“Why not?” Hank asks now.
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go. My mom kicked me out, and I sold my apartment when I moved in with Barnell.”
“And the money from your apartment sale…?” Hank queries.
Angel rolls her eyes. “That was gone before the month was out. Expensive habit.” She cringes. “He said these horrible things to me.”
“What things?” Erik asks, leaning forward on his chair. Angel wipes her eyes.
“He said, ‘I’m the best fucking thing that ever happened to you,’” she hiccups out, and it is so clear that Barnell was the exact opposite of that it makes Hank’s teeth hurt. “’I’m the best thing to ever walk through your tiny, miserable life. You don’t deserve love, because you’re a fucking whore. You’re gonna die in some alley, with a needle jabbed in your arm and no one is going to fucking care.’”
Hank looks at her with sad eyes. “Do you believe that’s going to happen to you?”
“I don’t know,” Angel says, wiping a tear from her eye. “Maybe. Sometimes I think that’s what I deserve.”
“I know that’s not going to happen,” Hank says in a clear, calm voice. “Because I care about you, Angel. We all care about what happens to you.” A low murmur of agreement echoes throughout the group.
“He called me worthless for three years,” Angel whimpers. “And I believed him.”
“Is that what you’re ashamed of?” Hank asks. “That you thought you were worthless?”
“No,” Angel says. “Well, sort of. It’s that I believed his bullshit for so long. I got all wrapped up in every single little fucking thing he said, took his word as law. He had the heroin, controlled how much I was going to get, and when. He might as well have been God, for all I cared.” She pauses. “I’m ashamed because I still want to see him. Still want to be in his life. Is that wrong?”
“After he hurt you so badly?” Hank asks. “After all the things he said to you?”
“Why do you keep answering my questions with questions? Is that a fucking shrink thing you do?" Angel spits, her voice almost reaching a yell. She purses her lips. "He kept me for three years. No one else wanted me, but he kept me.”
“Angel, it doesn’t sound like he 'kept you' very nicely,” Hank implores. The others watch the back and forth in silence.
“Barnell wouldn’t hurt me,” Angel says softly.
At last, Armando puts a hand on Angel’s arm. “He already did.”
After that, Angel simply sobs into Armando’s chest: at first, her tears are loud and theatrical, but they slowly fade into a silent trickle that ebbs and flows intermittently. Every so often, Angel mouths the word “Why,” and Hank wishes he could answer her, but all he can think is how little he can help her in the long run, and how hard it is to rehabilitate oneself when one is so very broken.
“I think we’re good for today,” Hank says, clearing his throat. “Thank you, Charles, Armando, Angel, and everyone else who spoke. It may not feel like it, but this is helping. Truly.” He fixes Angel with a smile, but she has a blank expression on her face. Sean and Armando lead her away. Charles and Erik fall into step together, Erik murmuring something soothing into Charles’s ear. Janos is the only person to thank Hank for his time, and his politeness is so jarring that Hank almost forgets to say “You’re welcome.”
Alex sits across from Hank, determined not to move. Hank stands up and gathers his things.
“I’m disappointed you didn’t want to talk today,” Hank says. “Sometimes I feel like the only real moving forward you do is in our group sessions.” He gives Alex a pointed look and leaves the blonde behind, fiddling with his fingers, along in an empty circle of chairs.
PART 2