we're all here because we're not all here, Part 3 | X-Men: First Class | Charles/Erik, Alex/Hank | R
Title: we're all here because we're not all here, Part 3 (chapters nine through eleven/epilogue)
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. Romance is completely forbidden between patients, not that that stops our boys. Lines are crossed, tears are cried, hopes are dashed and dreams are reborn. Somewhere in between, people fall in and out of 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. I hope you all enjoy!
ix. Recovery.
Hank looks back on his relationship with Moira and recalls how he would often wonder about her thin wrists and how easily they could break. They had been young, too young when their dalliance had begun: Hank had been so taken with her wit and charm, and Moira must have liked something about Hank, as she stayed with him for too long-far too long. Medical school seemed like such a long time ago. Long hours on locked wards, well, Hank had known that it was only a matter of time before something happened between the two of them. Hank remembers Moira’s raucous laughter and gentle touch and then his mind drifts to Alex: a young man just out of boyhood, alone, scared, and hurt in ways that Hank can only begin to guess at. Alex’s face floats before him like a specter or a ghost, his smile fading into nothingness. Hank thinks that maybe he’s always liked fragile things.
He wonders if she’s still married. He decides it’s not his place either way. If he asked, Moira would expect something from him, most likely: some dying ember of their past romance, rekindled. There wasn’t anything left in those deep recesses of his heart, Hank knew it. Any love he had born for her has faded into memories that he could no longer touch, and he is glad for that. In certain ways, he thinks objectively that a relationship with Moira would be far more accepted than anything that could ever happen between Alex and himself, and he laughs quietly at the ridiculousness of his situation.
Hank wonders how long it will take until his feelings for Alex vanish, how many days it will take until the hurt fades into nothingness and then finally, acceptance. He’s not sure he wants to feel numb again.
Charles is sitting in his room, staring out the window at the landscape beyond, when a hesitant knock hums against the door. He turns to see a tall girl with blonde hair. He knows her.
“I suppose you’re here to get me, as they say, back on track,” Charles presumes.
Raven sits down next to him on the bed. “No, Charles. I’m here because I love you.” She brings a hand across his back, her hand warm and strong against the thin fabric of Charles’s tee shirt. Charles breath comes in short bursts, and he curls under Raven’s hand, crossing his arms and bowing his head. Raven continues to caress Charles’s back in slow, sure circles. Charles leans sideways and lets his head fall into Raven’s lap, clutching at her legs in a way he would consider childish and immature: a way that Raven had once clutched at him when Mother had passed. Raven runs her fingers through Charles’s hair, which has grown slightly longer in his time at Braddock.
“It’s okay,” she whispers. Charles breathes in deeply and smells lavender and outside and springtime and freedom, all reminiscent of home. “I spoke to Dr. McCoy,” Raven says quietly, continuing to stroke Charles’s hair. “If you want, I can take you back to Westchester.” Charles stills himself in shock. “It wouldn’t be easy, and we’d need to hire an in-house psychiatrist, but we could do it.”
Charles sits up and wipes his face. “Dr. McCoy said that?”
Raven nods.
Charles coughs. “So they’re kicking me out, then? After all?”
Raven shakes her head. “No. It’s one hundred percent your choice. But you can leave this place today, if you like.”
Charles stands up and leans his back against the windowsill so that he can face Raven. The sunlight beats down on the back of his neck, and he starts to sweat.
“Did Hank tell you about Erik?” Charles guesses.
“Who’s Erik?” Raven asks in turn.
Charles tells her. By the end of the story, Raven is herself in tears.
“That seems so wrong, Charles,” Raven says. “He shouldn’t have had to go.” She pauses. “If you left Braddock, we could find him. Together.” The offer is far too tempting, and Charles closes his eyes, escape on the tip of his tongue. He recalls the temptations he has failed in the past and his eyes blink open, vision temporarily blurred. He shakes his head back and forth. He will not succumb this time.
“Don’t you see, though?” Charles says. “I can’t let his final gift to me go to waste. I need to stay here, Raven. I need to heal, here. Otherwise, I don't know if I could live with myself, really.”
Raven nods and gets up from the bed. She tentatively approaches Charles and slips her arms around his neck. Self-consciously, Charles wraps his own arms around her.
“I’m so sorry about last time you were here,” he tells her. “I was out of line.”
Raven pulls away. “So was I.” She chances a smile grin at him.
Charles smiles at her, teeth white and lips pink. “There’s something else I need from you, though. And I'm not sure if you're going to like it.”
Alex doesn’t like sitting in the patient’s chair during his sessions with Moira. After a few attempts at what Alex thought of as 'normal therapy,' Moira stands up and decides that they need to go outside, because, fuck it, this place was too beautiful not to take advantage of. Alex is a little in awe of her as she demands two outdoor passes from reception. The secretary for a time will only give her one pass, and by the end of the conversation, Moira is practically yelling at the poor girl behind the desk. She fights for him in a way very few people have fought for Alex before, and he finds himself partly embarrassed, partly pleased. Alex is surprised to find that he likes her.
And so they begin their sessions in the backyard. Alex comes to look forward to his sessions with Moira: despite the fact that he no longer is in therapy with Hank, and despite the fact that seeing Hank sends his stomach into his feet every time, Alex understands. He understands why Hank did what he did, because he can see the difference between his sessions with Hank and his sessions with Moira.
“Hardasses,” Moira sighs, settling in on the picnic bench. Alex laughs a little and swings back and forth a bit in the hammock opposite her. The wind blows through his hair and it brings along with it the smell of trees and pollen and wilderness.
“Tell me about it,” Alex says. Security had given them a rough time, as usual, and Moira had been forced to give up her car keys. Moira had handed them over with extreme contempt.
“As if we’re about to pull a Ferris Bueller’s day off,” Moira barks out. Alex grins at the thought.
“So let’s pick up from last time,” Moira says, crossing her legs and fixing Alex with a stare that seems to both pierce him and ground him in this place. “You were talking about your last foster home before you met Scott.”
With Hank, Alex had never talked about Scott, never talked about his childhood. There had been a part of Alex that had been ashamed to talk about how he had been shuttled from home to home, unruly and unmanageable-truly, he had been unworthy of stable home. With Hank, Alex had wanted to seem strong: masking his weakness from the other man as best he could had been the prime objective of their time together. With Moira, he could just talk. The more he told her, the freer he felt. He supposes that this is what real therapy feels like.
“Scott found me when I was seventeen,” Alex says. “I was in Phoenix at the time, and he just comes up to the front door and knocks. Shelly, one of the other foster kids I was living with at the time, actually answered the door before I could get there. She was only five, back then, I think. It was a really bizarre experience: he just asked me my name, and I told him, Alex Summers, and he gets this real big smile on his face and sticks out his hand for me to shake or something… and he goes, ‘I’m your brother, Scott.’ I thought I was being punked.”
“But you weren’t,” Moira says.
“No,” Alex says. “I wasn’t. Scott had the birth records there on the day to prove it and everything. Not sure if he would have wanted me if he had known about my juvenile record, he probably would have left me there in Phoenix.”
“I don’t think Scott would have left you there, record aside,” Moira says, taking a sip of her coffee. “I think Scott wanted his brother back. He was going to get you back if you had scales and a peg leg.” She laughs a bit to herself and Alex smiles at the thought.
“Scott was always pretty good about keeping in touch, even when I was behind bars,” Alex nods to himself. Moira shifts in her seat.
“It’s interesting to me,” she begins, “that you’re bringing up prison, just after we talked extensively about the various foster homes you lived in, and how that was brought to an end by Scott’s reappearance in your life.”
“What do you think that says about me?” Alex asks, bemused.
“What do you think that says about you?” Moira retorts. Alex rolls his eyes.
“I don’t know. Maybe that I connect the two, in my head?” Alex looks off into the distance for a moment. “They both weren’t very pleasant.”
“Because of what happened in the Gregory home,” Moira posits. Alex nods.
“The dad pushed me around, yeah, but it was more… like I said last time, it was more what the mother would do. Would say really. I’d prefer a slap from him than words from her any day.”
“Why do you think her words hurt you so much?” Moira asks.
“I guess… before her, people never really took the chance to really talk to me,” Alex sighs. “And the first person that does talk to me, well, she says shit like, ‘You’re only here, you little shit, because your mother’s condom broke and she couldn’t afford the abortion.’”
“I take it there’s a special circle of hell reserved for her, upon her demise,” Moira says, brow furrowed.
Alex laughs. “It’s funny you should say that, I got a letter from one of the kids I used to live with in the system, saying she’d passed away a couple weeks ago. Husband up and pushed her out the window. Funny how things happen.”
“What do you mean by that?” Moira asks. “Pushing her out the window doesn’t strike me as very funny.”
“No, just that bad things tend to happen to bad people,” Alex shrugs. “Karmic justice and all.”
Moira pauses. “Do you think you’re a bad person, Alex?” she asks.
“Do you think I’m a bad person, Moira?” he asks, imitating her.
“No,” Moira says confidently.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Alex replies.
“You are someone who has done bad things, maybe,” Moira says. “But you were also forced into terrible situations that very few people come out of unscathed.”
“Are you calling me damaged goods?” Alex asks.
“Do you think you’re damaged goods?” Moira retorts. Alex groans.
“Stop, with your fucking shrink ‘answer my question with a question’ bullshit,” Alex hisses. Moira sighs and sips her coffee.
“Let’s talk about prison, then,” Moira says at last.
“Why?” Alex says, giving himself a good kick off the ground and allowing the hammock to swing a little too hard. He rocks back and forth aggressively.
“When you fall off of that thing, I’m not going to feel bad,” Moira says lightly. “And because prison is the only subject we haven’t breached yet, Alex. I need you to take whatever misgivings or hesitancies you have about the time you spent there and throw them out the window. There’s nothing you could ever say that could disgust me, Alex. You know that I am not here to judge you.”
“You think what happened to me in prison disgusts me?” Alex asks quietly. Moira does not answer. Alex scratches his ear and looks back at her. “Maybe it does.”
“What happened, Alex,” Moira says in a serious voice.
“Do I really have to spell it out for you?” Alex says bitterly. “I was eighteen when I was convicted and thrown in there. Being blonde didn’t fucking help,” he says running his fingers through his hair gruffly. “They called me bitch, and whore, but it’s not their words that hurt me. They’d force my head down and whip themselves out, and they’d laugh, like it was all some kind of sick fucking cosmic joke. I begged for solitary, just so they couldn’t touch me anymore. And when the warden wouldn’t give me that, I stabbed my cellmate and then, oh, then they gave me solitary. For the sake of the general population, I can finally get some sleep at night without worrying that someone’s gonna attack me while I’m sleeping.”
Moira does not react to this revelation, and Alex wonders if she deals with patients who’ve been raped every day. He is thankful for her non-reaction, however: had she given him that horrified look of pity he had been expecting, he probably would have puked.
“There is one thing I need you to know,” Moira begins carefully. Alex stops swinging his hammock and waits for the other foot to fall. Moira looks him in the eye, and her gaze is confident, unwavering: “You did not deserve what happened to you. Because, Alex, you are not a bad person. You have to know that, deep down. You are good hearted, and kind. Think about the kids you used to be in foster care with. You protected them when you were the one who needed protecting. You are not to blame here.”
“I think karma would have something else to say about me entirely,” Alex mutters, but he doesn’t really believe his own words. There’s something about how Moira spins his life around in her hands, twisting and weaving it into something he doesn’t recognize: something salvageable.
“Karma is bullshit,” Moira says, a little saucily.
Alex laughs a little, but there are tears as well, and finally, finally, he feels like he has fallen into the next chapter of his life: one with new beginnings and second chances and, best of all, hope.
Hank pinches the bridge of his nose and attempts to reconcile the two siblings that had come into his office hand in hand with the bickering duo before him, throwing fiery barb after barb at each other without stopping.
“I’m trying to be the better man, here,” Charles says in a deadly quiet voice.
“You’ve always been the better man,” Raven bites back.
“Raven, what do you mean by that?” Hank asks, holding out a hand to silence Charles.
“When Mom and Dad were still around,” Raven says, “it was always, ‘Charles this, Charles that.’ They always loved you so much, and I felt like I was always walking in your shadow, Charles, because I always was. You were the better man.”
“How can you say that?” Charles asks. “Father always doted on you, Raven; you were the baby of the family, got everything you ever wanted-”
“Not true,” Raven says hoarsely. “I never had their respect, like you did, and you never had to work for it, you just had it, like it was something you shat out-”
“Raven, Charles,” Hank says warningly. Her voice stops and the two Xavier children turn to stare at Hank, bewildered at his outburst. “Can’t you see how destructive your words are? How you just tear each other down?”
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Charles growls. “You should come over for dinner some time. That’s when the real claws come out.”
“So now I have claws,” Raven says. “Maybe next I’ll sprout fangs and really become the monster you must imagine me as.”
“I think you’re the monster?” Charles says in disbelief. “Who exactly is in treatment here, Raven? I’m the one who couldn’t cope.”
“If I may,” Hank interjects. Charles’s eyes dart to him, and he nods. “Perhaps the root of your animosity towards Raven is this jealousy you say you have of your parents’ love for her. And envy at the fact that Raven was able to overcome her addiction without professional help.”
Raven looks surprised, but Charles bites his lip for a moment. “You could say that.” He turns toward Raven. “When the pills first became a part of my life-through you, might I add-I always had this idea in my head that I could stop myself if it got too far. But I couldn’t, in the end, could I? You had to stop me, Raven.”
Raven blinks away a few tears.
“I don’t think this session was a good idea, Charles,” Raven says quietly. “It feels like we’re breaking something.”
“What do you think is breaking, Raven?” Hank asks.
“I don’t fucking know,” she says scathingly. “Isn’t that your job? To figure this shit out?” She turns toward Charles, incredulous. “Is this how he is every time?”
Charles suppresses a chuckle. “I guess so. He’s not very direct. I think that’s the first rule of psychiatry: be as obtuse as possible.”
“Now that the two of you have taken your respective potshots at me,” Hank says, “can we get back to the jealousy you both feel? And perhaps the resentment? Charles?”
Both Charles and Raven are quiet for a long minute. Then they both break in at the same time, and quiet down immediately. Charles waves Raven on.
“You don’t know how hard it was for me to bring you here,” she says quietly. “I knew for like, three months before I actually did it, though. I knew you needed help. Do you even remember when I found you on the banister, dangling your legs into the atrium? You thought you were hang gliding, Charles.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re going on about,” Charles says truthfully, but his eyes show fear and self-loathing.
“Well I do. You could have died. That’s when I knew I had to do it. Had to bring you here,” Raven says in short bursts. “So I don’t care if you hate me, Charles, I don’t care if you blame me for being your fucking gateway, or whatever, because I know that whatever wrong I did by you back then… I did right here, Charles. I know it.”
Raven leans forward and lets out a sob into her knees. Hank looks at Charles expectantly but says nothing. At last, Charles puts a hand on Raven’s back.
“You’re right,” he says softly. “And I’m sorry, too.” His pat on the back turns into a hand clawing at the fabric of Raven’s shirt, trying to find a handle to grip, to secure himself to her. His voice is contorted by emotion as her chokes out, “I’m so sorry for abandoning you.”
Raven looks up at Charles, eyes shining. Charles lets a single tear fall down his cheek before wiping it away. She takes his wet, empty hand and presses it against her cheek, then her lips, kissing it.
“I believe our time is up,” Hank says, casually taking a sip of water, but his eyes are alight with the high of victory and the knowledge that at last, Charles Xavier had set himself on the road to recovery.
x. Sober and proud.
There isn't a day that goes by that Armando doesn't want to purge. There's no aha moment, no day when he wakes up and doesn't think, I have to meet weight, I have to cut down this week. Armando takes every day as an uphill battle, a wrestling match between two parts of him that remain constantly at war. He likes the feeling of empty, and had been addicted to the sheer relief purging had brought him in the past, no, you will not gain that pound, you are too fat, you aren't thin. Every day is a battle, and the war never ends. It's not a change that you make in a week or two, it's a change for life. It scares him how in some ways, he can never let his guard down, never relax, lest he fall back into old habits. Every day is a choice, every meal an act to stay healthy, every trip not taken to the bathroom a win just as sweet as when Armando would take guys down on the wrestling mat.
Armando had stepped out of his life to attend Braddock; now, it is time to jump back in. And fuck it: he is ready.
When Charles steps into Westchester House for the first time after Braddock, he wonders about its vast recesses and dark caverns that he had explored as a child and if they still remained, or if he had just dreamed them up in his youth. Raven scoots inside, kicking her boots off in a pile and throwing her coat on a hanger by the door. Charles shuffles off his own coat and lets it pool on the floor around him.
“Is it possible,” Charles asks faintly, “that this place has become even less inviting in my absence?” Charles has always had a hate-hate relationship with Westchester House-save the library, which Charles had an absolute and unequivocal adoration for-and it seemed that the house had grown invisible brambles that tried to prick Charles wherever he stepped.
“The house missed you too,” Raven says lightly. “Let’s get some chow.”
Raven seems happy, Charles muses as he watches her order take-out from the counter of the fully functional, yet under utilized kitchenette (neither of them knew how to cook well, and Charles refused to hire a full-time cook for fear that they'd somehow become the spoiled little brats he always imagined they'd turn out to be). Raven scours the menu for her favorite egg roll and Charles is reminded of a time when they were kids and the horrors of the world had yet to crack open their innocence; a time when Mother had played the piano and Father had watched her, and Charles had raced Raven up and down the stairs of Westchester House until they both collapsed. He thinks about his past because he can’t bear to think about Erik with Raven present, babbling on about brown rice and crab rangoon.
As Charles walks through the house, he notes how empty it feels. Before Braddock, Charles had been used to an empty home, with rooms that rarely saw the light of day or human occupancy, even. He had liked his privacy, the quiet that a house can only have when you're alone inside it. Now Westchester House seems to swallow him up so easily, and bizarrely, Charles misses the clattering sounds of Braddock: of Sean running throughout the halls, too hopped up to sit still; of Alex and Erik sparring in the gym, leather smacking against leather; of nurses gossiping and doctors fussing. Braddock had been full of life: yeah, the people who lived there had pretty messed up lives. But they were alive. The only thing Westchester House reminds Charles of is Mother and Father, and the memories are only sometimes pleasant. Mostly he thinks about the days after they both had passed and recalls the bizarre quiet that had settled in the house: that dark specter, loneliness.
It’s only when Charles is alone in his room at last, looking up at the cracked ceiling in the dark, beneath the canopy of the four poster bed, that he really wonders about Erik Lehnsherr and how easily oaths of I will find you and We’ll be together could break. He presses his hands to his lips and pretends that the hand belongs to the other man, pretends it is a hand with more callouses and longer fingers and a warmth that Charles rarely has in his extremities. Charles wonders where the other man is: wonders if he’s in New York, or even in this country. Charles's mind flashes to an image of Erik on the ground, clutching at an empty bottle of pills; Erik, hanging from a noose; Erik, gun pressed against his forehead-biting his lip, Charles refuses to let his mind go there. He bites his lip and shakes his head. No, there was no way Erik had done that. He wouldn’t do that to Charles. He wouldn’t.
Charles doesn’t get much sleep that first night back home.
Charles wakes up to Raven calling for him. He groans and rolls to the side of the bed, taking most of the comforter with him. There is no nurse at the door but Charles glances there anyway, waiting for someone to pop through unannounced. No one does.
“Charles, get your ass down here!” Raven yells, and her voice is like a siren in Charles’s ear. He groans and grabs a robe from his closet, throwing it on over his tee shirt and boxers. Hadn’t he left early morning wake up calls behind at Braddock?
"Goddamn bullshit," Charles growls, and he suddenly laughs, remembering Alex's daily tirades, raging against breakfast and sleep deprivation. He half-walks, half-stumbles down the stairs, missing the last step and practically somersaulting off.
He sees Raven at the door, hair askance and yawning, but her eyes are alight with mischief.
“Someone’s at the door for you,” she says, arching her back and heading for the kitchen. “I’m gonna go make some coffee so that I can function like a real human.” She dashes off and Charles thinks he hears her say have fun and remains slightly perturbed. He goes to the door that looms before him and opens it uncertainly.
“I don’t think I could have missed this house,” Erik says casually, raising an eyebrow. He looks like he’s traveled all night: his clothes are rumpled and he has bags under his eyes, and a full-to-bursting duffle hangs off his back. In his eyes are exhaustion and relief and a sprinkle of nervousness. “Raven was pretty specific with her directions, and seriously Charles, when she said, ‘The big one,’ she meant it-holy shit, Charles-”
But Erik isn’t able to finish his sentence, because Charles has literally jumped upon him and muffled his mouth with his own lips, and wrapped his legs easily around Erik’s waist (actually the leap itself had been surprisingly spry for eight-thirty in the morning, go figure) with his arms tightly attached to the back of Erik’s neck. Erik makes a pleased humming sound and holds Charles by the ass and waist, and he walks through the threshold of Westchester House with Charles aloft-thankfully without dropping him.
They stay there, in the early morning rays of the sun in the foyer of Westchester House, relearning each other until Charles feels dizzy from holding his breath.
“I said I’d find you,” Erik murmurs into Charles’s ear once the initial embrace has settled in emotional pitch and shock. “I promised. You can't imagine how I've missed you, how much I wanted to turn around and take you with me, God, Charles-” Erik continues to murmur into Charles's ear as Charles rakes a hand through Erik's hair thoughtfully. Charles wondering whether or not this is some sick dream he's having, still in bed, waiting to wake up.
“Promises can be broken,” Charles says, his voice breaking slightly. "Am I dreaming?"
“Not my promises,” Erik says, smiling down at him. "And this is not a dream. Though, if it was, I'd say it would be a pretty fucking great one."
Charles laughs and pulls back a bit. "I am awake, aren't I," Charles asks softly.
Erik kisses him. "Yes," he tells Charles. He plants another kiss, this one longer. "Yes. We're both finally awake." And Charles knows that he doesn't just mean that they're both conscious: he knows what Erik knows... that at last, they have been untethered from what had brought them to Braddock.
Now, instead, they are linked to each other.
The house seems to warm to Erik’s presence nicely, as if it knows its fate is irrevocably entwined with his. The hallways brighten, the rooms appear less unkempt, and if Charles didn’t know better, he’d think the house was trying to make a good impression, the saucy minx.
They’re in bed, entangled in each other’s arms, when Charles’s eyes seem to glow with excitement. Erik, slightly wrecked, raises an eyebrow and laughs a bit as Charles crawls up his body to look him in the eye.
"What?" Erik asks softly.
“I have an idea,” Charles says. “I think you’re going to like it.”
Charles tells him. Erik likes it.
When Alex finally gathers his belongings and piles them on his bed for appraisal, he’s not sure what he expects to see: the objects of a man he no longer knew, perhaps? Were they things that belonged to someone who no longer existed? No: those were his pajamas, his mismatched socks. The blue teddy bear Scott had given him so long ago was still his. The things hadn’t changed. He had. Alex throws things willy-nilly into his duffle: he just wants to get it over with, the packing, at least. There are so many emotions twirling around inside Alex’s head that this small act of bringing together his possessions and leaving his room empty is making his world spin.
He is leaving Braddock today. He’s been here for four months, and he’s leaving today. Moira has cleared him, the board of directors has cleared him, and they probably have some other fuck-up just waiting for the opportunity to take Alex’s bed, his spot in rehabilitation.
“Knock knock,” Moira says, opening the door. Alex jumps and starts throwing things in his bag even faster. “Woah there, buster. What’s up with you?”
Alex tries to remember the last time he saw Hank: it might have been two or three days ago, in the cafeteria or walking the halls. Alex had stopped saying hi to the doctor or even acknowledging his presence. It was too hard to think about the last time they had been together… Hank had put himself on the line, had admitted his feelings for Alex, forbidden as they were, and what had Alex done? He’d stood there, like a fucking idiot, foot in his own mouth, too fucking afraid to say what he really thought. Well, he had blown it. Hank hadn’t ever brought it up again, and Alex is horrified at the fact that he is too scared to do anything about it. And now Alex is leaving Braddock, and he’s never going to see Hank again.
“I’m just trying to pack my shit,” Alex says gruffly. He turns to Moira: she’s got her lips wrapped around the bright red straw of one of those gas station Slurpees the size of her head. She sips on it for a moment, and as she pulls away, he can see her mouth has turned blue from the pigment in the drink.
“You’re quite the dynamo today,” Moira says, sitting down on Alex’s desk, letting her legs hang off it. “Is Scott coming to pick you up?”
Alex shrugs. “I told him I’d make my own way.”
Moira frowns. “Not sure if that’s the best idea, bud.”
“I can call my own fucking taxi,” Alex says shortly, his anger rising. “I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can, Alex,” Moira says, a little peeved. “That’s why I think you’re ready to leave this place.” She tilts her head to the side and puts her Slurpee down. “You seem angry today.”
“I’m not angry,” Alex says, gritting his teeth. At the sound of his own clenched voice, Alex pauses and laughs a bit.
“You’ve convinced me,” Moira says dryly, raising an eyebrow.
“I don’t know,” Alex says. He looks at her from across the room. “I’m a little angry. Frustrated, maybe. But mostly sad.”
“Sad that you’re leaving?” Moira asks. Alex nods.
“I know it’s stupid,” he mumbles. “But this was starting to feel like home.”
Moira smiles a little and jumps off the desk. She nudges Alex to the side a bit and starts rearranging Alex’s clothes and other objects until they all somehow manage to fit inside his large duffle.
“You’re a miracle worker,” Alex says in awe. Moira barks out a laugh and looks pleased with herself. Alex runs a hand through his hair and feels a bit awkward at their proximity. “You know… I mean that in so many ways, Moira. Thank you so much, so fucking much.”
Moira looks up at him and smiles wide, teeth and everything, and then she surprises Alex in a strong hug that seems to envelop him. He hugs her back tentatively at first, and then he buries his head in the crook of her neck, breathing in her familiar smell, determined to remember her forever.
“Don’t think you can get rid of me this easily, hot shot,” Moira laughs in his ear as he pulls away. He thinks he sees her eyes glistening, but she claps him on the shoulder and suddenly she is back to being sassy, blunt as hell Moira. “This is my number,” she says, handing him a small business card. “I understand if you want to continue on with another therapist closer to home, and I’d love to give you a few recommendations, if you’d like them. But if you ever want to talk to me, about anything at all, I’m here. Whatever you decide, I do think you should continue therapy.”
“I don’t want a new therapist, though,” Alex tells her, settling his duffle on his shoulder. “Can’t we just… keep going? With our sessions?”
“It’s a pretty long commute from Phoenix to upstate New York, Alex,” Moira says.
“They have this thing, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it,” Alex says, “they call it a phone-”
“Asshole,” Moira laughs, punching him lightly on the arm, but her eyes are warm. “Okay, phone sessions. Think you can handle that, tough guy?”
Alex and Moira say their final goodbye, and then Alex is on his way to reception. He’s already said his goodbyes to Sean and Janos and Ginger, and Armando had left Braddock a few weeks ago. Charles had already been gone a full three days. Hank had been, of course, nowhere to be found all fucking day, but Alex isn’t really sure what he would do if the doctor actually shows his face.
Reception hands him his cell phone, fully charged. Alex holds it in both his hands like an ancient artifact, and then pockets it deftly. He shoulders his bag and it hangs off the shoulder of his leather jacket heavily. He walks outside and sits down on the bench nearest to the door, slinging his bag down to his feet and breathes in and out in short bursts. He leans forward, resting his arms on his knees. The parking lot in front of him is so familiar, and yet it’s like Alex is seeing it with new eyes: in civilian clothing, by himself, a free man.
Alex doesn’t realize he’s crying until wet spots appear on the wooden porch beneath him. He reaches his hands up to his face and wipes the wetness away, then rubs at his eyes tiredly. He is done here. He is, as they say, rehabilitated.
He sits there for about an hour, looking at his phone. He doesn’t dial for a taxi: maybe it’s sheer terror at finally doing something for himself for the first time in four months, maybe he can’t bring himself to leave this place just yet… or maybe it is some kind of premonition, because the moment he begins to dial information, the door to his left swings open.
Alex looks at Hank, who seems to intentionally stand in the direct line of the afternoon sun, and Alex’s has to squint a bit as his eyes water. The blonde looks away from the man in the sun.
“I thought I’d missed you,” Hank says, voice oddly tight. Alex looks up again at Hank and sees that his cheeks are blotchy and, behind the glasses, his eyes are red. It’s clear Hank’s upset, and all Alex wants to do is pull the other man into his arms and never let go. “I didn’t think you’d be out here,” Hank continues in a low voice. Alex wonders if Hank wishes Alex had just left when he was supposed to, thinks that it would probably have been easier on the both of them if he had just gone.
“Couldn’t leave,” Alex says quietly. “Don’t really know why. Just… couldn’t.”
“Did you call a cab yet?” Hank asks offhandedly. Alex shakes his head. Hank clears his throat, looking out at the parking lot, then back to Alex, and then at the floor.
Alex is holding his breath.
“Would you like a ride to the airport?” Hank asks. Alex’s eyes widen in shock, but somehow he manages to nod.
Hank’s car is a beaten up dark blue Ford station wagon that Alex supposes has seen better days. Alex climbs into the passenger seat and throws his duffle in the back seat. Hank slides inside and turns on the car, the hum of the vehicle more of a purr than the hacking cough Alex had expected from the rusty looking machine. They pull out of the parking lot in silence, Hank’s right hand resting on the stick shift lightly.
They’ve been driving for around fifteen minutes when Alex finally opens his mouth.
“You asked me what you are to me,” Alex starts off, “the last time we spoke.”
“Alex, you don’t have to answer that,” Hank says quietly, his voice even. “It was very unprofessional of me.”
“I don’t want you to be professional, Hank, so let me fucking talk for now,” Alex says, voice getting stronger with every word he says. “You’re not my therapist. You’re not my boyfriend, I’m pretty sure, because you haven’t looked at me or talked to me at all in the past few weeks, and I’m pretty sure boyfriends are more attentive than that.” Alex’s voice drops and they’re both quiet. “But I fucking love you, Hank. And it’s about damn time we were done with this being sad bullshit and got over ourselves.”
Alex slides his hand over Hank’s so that they both rest on the stick shift.
“You better not be taking me to the airport right now,” Alex says in a low voice. He dares a glances in Hank’s direction: the brunet has a huge smile on his face, eye crinkled and just, fucking, glowing like a super nova: right there, in the seat next to him, is the man he wants like nobody he’s ever wanted in his whole life. It’s more than want, though: it’s like, now that they’re together again, he’s got a piece of his soul back.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Hank grins, flicking on his blinker. “My house is about thirty minutes away from Braddock. Opposite direction of the airport, of course.” Hank accelerates and Alex feels the car speed along the winding road before them, and Alex laughs aloud in pure exhilaration. “What are you going to tell your brother, Scott?” Hank asks quietly.
Alex shrugs. “You know, home is where the heart is, all that bullshit. He’ll eat it up.”
Hank snorts, eyes bright and blushing slightly. “You’re a little manipulative, you know that?” Alex squeezes Hank’s hand on the stick, and Hank accelerates even more. “A lot manipulative.” There’s a roughness now to Hank’s voice that Alex revels in.
He shoots Hank a sly look and rolls his window down so that the wind whips around his face, and as they pass Braddock once again, Alex waves and wonders when it became so easy to say goodbye.
Simple, you idiot, Alex thinks to himself. You’re saying hello, too.
“Hello, future,” Alex says, and he’s not sure whether he’s talking to Hank or just the paved road that runs before the both of them, winding out into the distance, beyond the forests and hills on either side of them, until it runs up to the horizon of blue sky and disappears entirely.
xi. Epilogue.
Kitty Pryde volunteers at the Angel Salvatore Halfway House four days a week: basically, on days that she doesn’t have class. She commutes from the NYU campus out to Westchester county by herself, and her friends don’t ask her where she’s gone or why she manages to disappear from their lives for more than half the week (including Sundays). It’s not a rehabilitation clinic, and not, in the definition of the word, strictly a halfway house: it’s more like an SLE, or Sober Living Environment, as Kitty tells her parents when they ask her what she does with her time outside of class. There are a few full time in-house staffers, yes: a couple of nurses and janitors, all under the employ of the Xavier family. They need more volunteers, though, and Kitty is happy to give them her time. It’s less a place of rehabilitation and more a place for people who have already been through it all and just needed a stepping-stone back into the real world. She’s seen hundreds of people pass through Salvatore, some decades older than her, some sixteen, sometimes fifteen-year-old runaways. All had needed this place. Kitty thinks sometimes, she needs it too.
Kitty gets out of her car and slams the door shut behind her. She slings her backpack on and starts walking across the grounds, green as ever in the late days of spring. The manicured lawn beneath her feet crunches a bit as she makes the trek: she sees Erik, Charles’s partner, sitting on the porch in a wooden chair, rocking some reading glasses and a book that looks older than dirt. He looks up at her as she approaches him and waves a hand in her direction.
“How’s it going, Old Man,” Kitty says, climbing up the stairs to the front door.
“Pretty good, Kittycat,” Erik says. Kitty smiles at the nickname and the routine of their interaction: she doesn’t remember when the pet names started, but they’ve now become so engrained in her mind that she has to mentally restrain herself from calling Erik ‘Old Man’ when talking about him to her friends. Erik nods toward the door. “New batch of recruits came in a few days ago. You’ll have your hands full.”
Kitty nods with a smile and enters the house. There are a few permanent residents at Salvatore House: Erik and Charles, of course, as well as Charles’s sister, Raven, who flits in and out of the place. At times, Kitty thinks she is uncertain of her spot there, but Charles loves her beyond measure and thus, she is welcome. Sometimes Kitty is certain this place runs on Charles’s love alone, as she’s astounded by his extreme compassion and unending understanding for even the most bitter inhabitants. It’s like he’s seen everything the person is, everything they’ve done, all the things they’ve ever been through, and he knows them, knows them so thoroughly, and he knows how to help. Charles is frank about his own experience in rehabilitation, but Kitty is too shy to pry any further than the story Charles tells everyone who comes to work at Salvatore House.
In addition to the various staff around Salvatore House, there is a small psychiatry staff headed by Hank McCoy, who is talking to Charles exasperatedly when Kitty finds him.
“She says that she’s tired of following me around the country,” Hank groans, head in his hands. “She says she’s staying at Braddock. She says she likes it there.”
“She’s a hell of a doctor…” Charles pauses. “Tell her I’ll pay her double she’s making there,” Charles chuckles to himself. “Plus perks.”
Hank raises an eyebrow. “Moira's just playing hard to get. She wants to come here, I can tell." Hank coughs a little. "Does this mean I’m getting a raise, too?”
“Does this mean I get perks, too?” Kitty mimics a little too well. Hank glares at her.
Charles laughs at Kitty, who drops her bag in her usual locker. “Kitty: not until you have a degree or I hire you. And Hank… perhaps. If you behave. No more of that ‘I’m calling in sick today because Alex has the day off.’”
Hank rolls his eyes. “That was one time, and believe me…” Hank clears his throat. “More than worth it.” His voice is high and strained, and Charles barks out a laugh.
“Fair enough, friend,” Charles says mirthfully. “Fair enough.”
Kitty snickers a bit and wonders exactly who this Alex girl is, and how good she would have to be in the sack to keep Hank away from his job that he so clearly loved.
“Hey Kitty,” Charles greets. Hank waves at her, too. “Did Erik tell you about the new kids?”
“Yup,” Kitty says. “He keeps me very informed.”
Hank runs a hand through his hair, sighing. “Back to Dr. MacTaggert. Moira drives a hard bargain, Charles, but hopefully she’ll see reason. I know that Alex would be happy seeing her closer to Westchester.”
A few new faces bound into the room and nearly knock Hank off his feet. “Let’s go play, Hank!” says a taller skinny boy with brown hair; he holds a leather basketball in his arms and doesn’t look older than seventeen.
“Bobby keeps on saying he’s gonna wipe the floor with me,” says a girl around the same age with a streak of white in her hair.
“Anne Marie,” Hank sighs. “Bobby will do no such thing. One of my many talents includes basketball.”
Kitty snorts because she knows that Hank’s prowess in sports is close to that of a toddler attempting rocket science, but Anne Marie looks pleased in his response and Hank leaves Charles and Kitty alone, ushering the children out of the room.
Charles introduces her to some of the other new kids: Warren Worthington, a trust fund kid that Kitty can tell is going to give her a hard time; and Alison Blaire, a pretty blonde girl with what Kitty thought looked like the most horrible looking black eye she’s ever seen. The introductions end abruptly when Charles gets a phone call from whom Kitty assumes is the psychiatrist Hank has been wooing for months.
“Moira,” Charles says smoothly into the phone. “So nice to hear from you.” He walks away from the group and continues his conversation in his office, away from the chatter of the new kids and away from Kitty. She wonders if Charles knows exactly what kind of good he’s doing in the world.
Kitty hangs out at Salvatore House for a few more hours, helping out where she can. The giant house is a place of seemingly infinite discovery: every room radiates life. People live here, Kitty thinks to herself, roaming alone upstairs after she’s completed her various chores. They don’t just stay here. They really live.
It’s around dusk when Kitty leaves. She slings her backpack over her shoulder once more and exits through the front door. Erik is still sitting there, still reading, though he’s much farther along in the book than he had been when she had arrived.
“See you, Old Man,” Kitty waves.
“Later, Kittycat,” Erik says gruffly, but the affection is clear.
Kitty walks down the steps of the porch into the driveway as a black sports car pulls up in front of her. The windows roll down to reveal a blonde man in his late twenties or early thirties, she guesses. He is obscenely attractive and Kitty finds herself blushing as he pushes his sunglasses up into his hair to reveal a pair of awfully blue eyes.
“Hey, do you work here?” he asks her.
“I volunteer,” Kitty says, a little breathlessly.
“You know where Hank McCoy is? I mean, Dr. McCoy,” the man says, blushing a little himself, like he’s not sure what exactly Dr. McCoy is to her. “I’m picking him up early,” the man says, leaning in a little conspiratorially.
Kitty sighs, smiling a little to herself in realization. The good ones are always taken, aren’t they.
“He’s in the backyard with a couple of the new kids,” she says, pointing the way to a few figures in the distance playing basketball. “Got his hands full, by the looks of it.”
The blonde man smiles and thanks her, pulling away from Kitty and leaving her alone in the drive way. She walks to her car and opens the door, sitting herself down inside and flinging her backpack into the passenger seat. In the distance, Kitty can see the blonde man giving Hank a peck on the cheek before snatching the basketball out of the psychiatrist’s hands and sinking a free throw. Raucous laughter fills the air.
Kitty turns back to the house toward Erik, who is still sitting on the porch, reading. In the doorway, Kitty sees Charles leaning against the frame of the door, just watching Erik with the most relaxed expression on his face: like just seeing him is like drinking a cool lemonade in the middle of the hottest day of the summer. Erik continues to read, unbothered by his partner's presence, but there's a hint of a smile on his face and the glint of contented happiness in his eye.
Kitty looks around at all this-she hears the chatter and laughter of a home, not just a House-and somewhere, in the very essence of her being, she knows that these people have got it right.
THE END
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. Romance is completely forbidden between patients, not that that stops our boys. Lines are crossed, tears are cried, hopes are dashed and dreams are reborn. Somewhere in between, people fall in and out of 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. I hope you all enjoy!
ix. Recovery.
Hank looks back on his relationship with Moira and recalls how he would often wonder about her thin wrists and how easily they could break. They had been young, too young when their dalliance had begun: Hank had been so taken with her wit and charm, and Moira must have liked something about Hank, as she stayed with him for too long-far too long. Medical school seemed like such a long time ago. Long hours on locked wards, well, Hank had known that it was only a matter of time before something happened between the two of them. Hank remembers Moira’s raucous laughter and gentle touch and then his mind drifts to Alex: a young man just out of boyhood, alone, scared, and hurt in ways that Hank can only begin to guess at. Alex’s face floats before him like a specter or a ghost, his smile fading into nothingness. Hank thinks that maybe he’s always liked fragile things.
He wonders if she’s still married. He decides it’s not his place either way. If he asked, Moira would expect something from him, most likely: some dying ember of their past romance, rekindled. There wasn’t anything left in those deep recesses of his heart, Hank knew it. Any love he had born for her has faded into memories that he could no longer touch, and he is glad for that. In certain ways, he thinks objectively that a relationship with Moira would be far more accepted than anything that could ever happen between Alex and himself, and he laughs quietly at the ridiculousness of his situation.
Hank wonders how long it will take until his feelings for Alex vanish, how many days it will take until the hurt fades into nothingness and then finally, acceptance. He’s not sure he wants to feel numb again.
Charles is sitting in his room, staring out the window at the landscape beyond, when a hesitant knock hums against the door. He turns to see a tall girl with blonde hair. He knows her.
“I suppose you’re here to get me, as they say, back on track,” Charles presumes.
Raven sits down next to him on the bed. “No, Charles. I’m here because I love you.” She brings a hand across his back, her hand warm and strong against the thin fabric of Charles’s tee shirt. Charles breath comes in short bursts, and he curls under Raven’s hand, crossing his arms and bowing his head. Raven continues to caress Charles’s back in slow, sure circles. Charles leans sideways and lets his head fall into Raven’s lap, clutching at her legs in a way he would consider childish and immature: a way that Raven had once clutched at him when Mother had passed. Raven runs her fingers through Charles’s hair, which has grown slightly longer in his time at Braddock.
“It’s okay,” she whispers. Charles breathes in deeply and smells lavender and outside and springtime and freedom, all reminiscent of home. “I spoke to Dr. McCoy,” Raven says quietly, continuing to stroke Charles’s hair. “If you want, I can take you back to Westchester.” Charles stills himself in shock. “It wouldn’t be easy, and we’d need to hire an in-house psychiatrist, but we could do it.”
Charles sits up and wipes his face. “Dr. McCoy said that?”
Raven nods.
Charles coughs. “So they’re kicking me out, then? After all?”
Raven shakes her head. “No. It’s one hundred percent your choice. But you can leave this place today, if you like.”
Charles stands up and leans his back against the windowsill so that he can face Raven. The sunlight beats down on the back of his neck, and he starts to sweat.
“Did Hank tell you about Erik?” Charles guesses.
“Who’s Erik?” Raven asks in turn.
Charles tells her. By the end of the story, Raven is herself in tears.
“That seems so wrong, Charles,” Raven says. “He shouldn’t have had to go.” She pauses. “If you left Braddock, we could find him. Together.” The offer is far too tempting, and Charles closes his eyes, escape on the tip of his tongue. He recalls the temptations he has failed in the past and his eyes blink open, vision temporarily blurred. He shakes his head back and forth. He will not succumb this time.
“Don’t you see, though?” Charles says. “I can’t let his final gift to me go to waste. I need to stay here, Raven. I need to heal, here. Otherwise, I don't know if I could live with myself, really.”
Raven nods and gets up from the bed. She tentatively approaches Charles and slips her arms around his neck. Self-consciously, Charles wraps his own arms around her.
“I’m so sorry about last time you were here,” he tells her. “I was out of line.”
Raven pulls away. “So was I.” She chances a smile grin at him.
Charles smiles at her, teeth white and lips pink. “There’s something else I need from you, though. And I'm not sure if you're going to like it.”
Alex doesn’t like sitting in the patient’s chair during his sessions with Moira. After a few attempts at what Alex thought of as 'normal therapy,' Moira stands up and decides that they need to go outside, because, fuck it, this place was too beautiful not to take advantage of. Alex is a little in awe of her as she demands two outdoor passes from reception. The secretary for a time will only give her one pass, and by the end of the conversation, Moira is practically yelling at the poor girl behind the desk. She fights for him in a way very few people have fought for Alex before, and he finds himself partly embarrassed, partly pleased. Alex is surprised to find that he likes her.
And so they begin their sessions in the backyard. Alex comes to look forward to his sessions with Moira: despite the fact that he no longer is in therapy with Hank, and despite the fact that seeing Hank sends his stomach into his feet every time, Alex understands. He understands why Hank did what he did, because he can see the difference between his sessions with Hank and his sessions with Moira.
“Hardasses,” Moira sighs, settling in on the picnic bench. Alex laughs a little and swings back and forth a bit in the hammock opposite her. The wind blows through his hair and it brings along with it the smell of trees and pollen and wilderness.
“Tell me about it,” Alex says. Security had given them a rough time, as usual, and Moira had been forced to give up her car keys. Moira had handed them over with extreme contempt.
“As if we’re about to pull a Ferris Bueller’s day off,” Moira barks out. Alex grins at the thought.
“So let’s pick up from last time,” Moira says, crossing her legs and fixing Alex with a stare that seems to both pierce him and ground him in this place. “You were talking about your last foster home before you met Scott.”
With Hank, Alex had never talked about Scott, never talked about his childhood. There had been a part of Alex that had been ashamed to talk about how he had been shuttled from home to home, unruly and unmanageable-truly, he had been unworthy of stable home. With Hank, Alex had wanted to seem strong: masking his weakness from the other man as best he could had been the prime objective of their time together. With Moira, he could just talk. The more he told her, the freer he felt. He supposes that this is what real therapy feels like.
“Scott found me when I was seventeen,” Alex says. “I was in Phoenix at the time, and he just comes up to the front door and knocks. Shelly, one of the other foster kids I was living with at the time, actually answered the door before I could get there. She was only five, back then, I think. It was a really bizarre experience: he just asked me my name, and I told him, Alex Summers, and he gets this real big smile on his face and sticks out his hand for me to shake or something… and he goes, ‘I’m your brother, Scott.’ I thought I was being punked.”
“But you weren’t,” Moira says.
“No,” Alex says. “I wasn’t. Scott had the birth records there on the day to prove it and everything. Not sure if he would have wanted me if he had known about my juvenile record, he probably would have left me there in Phoenix.”
“I don’t think Scott would have left you there, record aside,” Moira says, taking a sip of her coffee. “I think Scott wanted his brother back. He was going to get you back if you had scales and a peg leg.” She laughs a bit to herself and Alex smiles at the thought.
“Scott was always pretty good about keeping in touch, even when I was behind bars,” Alex nods to himself. Moira shifts in her seat.
“It’s interesting to me,” she begins, “that you’re bringing up prison, just after we talked extensively about the various foster homes you lived in, and how that was brought to an end by Scott’s reappearance in your life.”
“What do you think that says about me?” Alex asks, bemused.
“What do you think that says about you?” Moira retorts. Alex rolls his eyes.
“I don’t know. Maybe that I connect the two, in my head?” Alex looks off into the distance for a moment. “They both weren’t very pleasant.”
“Because of what happened in the Gregory home,” Moira posits. Alex nods.
“The dad pushed me around, yeah, but it was more… like I said last time, it was more what the mother would do. Would say really. I’d prefer a slap from him than words from her any day.”
“Why do you think her words hurt you so much?” Moira asks.
“I guess… before her, people never really took the chance to really talk to me,” Alex sighs. “And the first person that does talk to me, well, she says shit like, ‘You’re only here, you little shit, because your mother’s condom broke and she couldn’t afford the abortion.’”
“I take it there’s a special circle of hell reserved for her, upon her demise,” Moira says, brow furrowed.
Alex laughs. “It’s funny you should say that, I got a letter from one of the kids I used to live with in the system, saying she’d passed away a couple weeks ago. Husband up and pushed her out the window. Funny how things happen.”
“What do you mean by that?” Moira asks. “Pushing her out the window doesn’t strike me as very funny.”
“No, just that bad things tend to happen to bad people,” Alex shrugs. “Karmic justice and all.”
Moira pauses. “Do you think you’re a bad person, Alex?” she asks.
“Do you think I’m a bad person, Moira?” he asks, imitating her.
“No,” Moira says confidently.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Alex replies.
“You are someone who has done bad things, maybe,” Moira says. “But you were also forced into terrible situations that very few people come out of unscathed.”
“Are you calling me damaged goods?” Alex asks.
“Do you think you’re damaged goods?” Moira retorts. Alex groans.
“Stop, with your fucking shrink ‘answer my question with a question’ bullshit,” Alex hisses. Moira sighs and sips her coffee.
“Let’s talk about prison, then,” Moira says at last.
“Why?” Alex says, giving himself a good kick off the ground and allowing the hammock to swing a little too hard. He rocks back and forth aggressively.
“When you fall off of that thing, I’m not going to feel bad,” Moira says lightly. “And because prison is the only subject we haven’t breached yet, Alex. I need you to take whatever misgivings or hesitancies you have about the time you spent there and throw them out the window. There’s nothing you could ever say that could disgust me, Alex. You know that I am not here to judge you.”
“You think what happened to me in prison disgusts me?” Alex asks quietly. Moira does not answer. Alex scratches his ear and looks back at her. “Maybe it does.”
“What happened, Alex,” Moira says in a serious voice.
“Do I really have to spell it out for you?” Alex says bitterly. “I was eighteen when I was convicted and thrown in there. Being blonde didn’t fucking help,” he says running his fingers through his hair gruffly. “They called me bitch, and whore, but it’s not their words that hurt me. They’d force my head down and whip themselves out, and they’d laugh, like it was all some kind of sick fucking cosmic joke. I begged for solitary, just so they couldn’t touch me anymore. And when the warden wouldn’t give me that, I stabbed my cellmate and then, oh, then they gave me solitary. For the sake of the general population, I can finally get some sleep at night without worrying that someone’s gonna attack me while I’m sleeping.”
Moira does not react to this revelation, and Alex wonders if she deals with patients who’ve been raped every day. He is thankful for her non-reaction, however: had she given him that horrified look of pity he had been expecting, he probably would have puked.
“There is one thing I need you to know,” Moira begins carefully. Alex stops swinging his hammock and waits for the other foot to fall. Moira looks him in the eye, and her gaze is confident, unwavering: “You did not deserve what happened to you. Because, Alex, you are not a bad person. You have to know that, deep down. You are good hearted, and kind. Think about the kids you used to be in foster care with. You protected them when you were the one who needed protecting. You are not to blame here.”
“I think karma would have something else to say about me entirely,” Alex mutters, but he doesn’t really believe his own words. There’s something about how Moira spins his life around in her hands, twisting and weaving it into something he doesn’t recognize: something salvageable.
“Karma is bullshit,” Moira says, a little saucily.
Alex laughs a little, but there are tears as well, and finally, finally, he feels like he has fallen into the next chapter of his life: one with new beginnings and second chances and, best of all, hope.
Hank pinches the bridge of his nose and attempts to reconcile the two siblings that had come into his office hand in hand with the bickering duo before him, throwing fiery barb after barb at each other without stopping.
“I’m trying to be the better man, here,” Charles says in a deadly quiet voice.
“You’ve always been the better man,” Raven bites back.
“Raven, what do you mean by that?” Hank asks, holding out a hand to silence Charles.
“When Mom and Dad were still around,” Raven says, “it was always, ‘Charles this, Charles that.’ They always loved you so much, and I felt like I was always walking in your shadow, Charles, because I always was. You were the better man.”
“How can you say that?” Charles asks. “Father always doted on you, Raven; you were the baby of the family, got everything you ever wanted-”
“Not true,” Raven says hoarsely. “I never had their respect, like you did, and you never had to work for it, you just had it, like it was something you shat out-”
“Raven, Charles,” Hank says warningly. Her voice stops and the two Xavier children turn to stare at Hank, bewildered at his outburst. “Can’t you see how destructive your words are? How you just tear each other down?”
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Charles growls. “You should come over for dinner some time. That’s when the real claws come out.”
“So now I have claws,” Raven says. “Maybe next I’ll sprout fangs and really become the monster you must imagine me as.”
“I think you’re the monster?” Charles says in disbelief. “Who exactly is in treatment here, Raven? I’m the one who couldn’t cope.”
“If I may,” Hank interjects. Charles’s eyes dart to him, and he nods. “Perhaps the root of your animosity towards Raven is this jealousy you say you have of your parents’ love for her. And envy at the fact that Raven was able to overcome her addiction without professional help.”
Raven looks surprised, but Charles bites his lip for a moment. “You could say that.” He turns toward Raven. “When the pills first became a part of my life-through you, might I add-I always had this idea in my head that I could stop myself if it got too far. But I couldn’t, in the end, could I? You had to stop me, Raven.”
Raven blinks away a few tears.
“I don’t think this session was a good idea, Charles,” Raven says quietly. “It feels like we’re breaking something.”
“What do you think is breaking, Raven?” Hank asks.
“I don’t fucking know,” she says scathingly. “Isn’t that your job? To figure this shit out?” She turns toward Charles, incredulous. “Is this how he is every time?”
Charles suppresses a chuckle. “I guess so. He’s not very direct. I think that’s the first rule of psychiatry: be as obtuse as possible.”
“Now that the two of you have taken your respective potshots at me,” Hank says, “can we get back to the jealousy you both feel? And perhaps the resentment? Charles?”
Both Charles and Raven are quiet for a long minute. Then they both break in at the same time, and quiet down immediately. Charles waves Raven on.
“You don’t know how hard it was for me to bring you here,” she says quietly. “I knew for like, three months before I actually did it, though. I knew you needed help. Do you even remember when I found you on the banister, dangling your legs into the atrium? You thought you were hang gliding, Charles.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re going on about,” Charles says truthfully, but his eyes show fear and self-loathing.
“Well I do. You could have died. That’s when I knew I had to do it. Had to bring you here,” Raven says in short bursts. “So I don’t care if you hate me, Charles, I don’t care if you blame me for being your fucking gateway, or whatever, because I know that whatever wrong I did by you back then… I did right here, Charles. I know it.”
Raven leans forward and lets out a sob into her knees. Hank looks at Charles expectantly but says nothing. At last, Charles puts a hand on Raven’s back.
“You’re right,” he says softly. “And I’m sorry, too.” His pat on the back turns into a hand clawing at the fabric of Raven’s shirt, trying to find a handle to grip, to secure himself to her. His voice is contorted by emotion as her chokes out, “I’m so sorry for abandoning you.”
Raven looks up at Charles, eyes shining. Charles lets a single tear fall down his cheek before wiping it away. She takes his wet, empty hand and presses it against her cheek, then her lips, kissing it.
“I believe our time is up,” Hank says, casually taking a sip of water, but his eyes are alight with the high of victory and the knowledge that at last, Charles Xavier had set himself on the road to recovery.
x. Sober and proud.
There isn't a day that goes by that Armando doesn't want to purge. There's no aha moment, no day when he wakes up and doesn't think, I have to meet weight, I have to cut down this week. Armando takes every day as an uphill battle, a wrestling match between two parts of him that remain constantly at war. He likes the feeling of empty, and had been addicted to the sheer relief purging had brought him in the past, no, you will not gain that pound, you are too fat, you aren't thin. Every day is a battle, and the war never ends. It's not a change that you make in a week or two, it's a change for life. It scares him how in some ways, he can never let his guard down, never relax, lest he fall back into old habits. Every day is a choice, every meal an act to stay healthy, every trip not taken to the bathroom a win just as sweet as when Armando would take guys down on the wrestling mat.
Armando had stepped out of his life to attend Braddock; now, it is time to jump back in. And fuck it: he is ready.
When Charles steps into Westchester House for the first time after Braddock, he wonders about its vast recesses and dark caverns that he had explored as a child and if they still remained, or if he had just dreamed them up in his youth. Raven scoots inside, kicking her boots off in a pile and throwing her coat on a hanger by the door. Charles shuffles off his own coat and lets it pool on the floor around him.
“Is it possible,” Charles asks faintly, “that this place has become even less inviting in my absence?” Charles has always had a hate-hate relationship with Westchester House-save the library, which Charles had an absolute and unequivocal adoration for-and it seemed that the house had grown invisible brambles that tried to prick Charles wherever he stepped.
“The house missed you too,” Raven says lightly. “Let’s get some chow.”
Raven seems happy, Charles muses as he watches her order take-out from the counter of the fully functional, yet under utilized kitchenette (neither of them knew how to cook well, and Charles refused to hire a full-time cook for fear that they'd somehow become the spoiled little brats he always imagined they'd turn out to be). Raven scours the menu for her favorite egg roll and Charles is reminded of a time when they were kids and the horrors of the world had yet to crack open their innocence; a time when Mother had played the piano and Father had watched her, and Charles had raced Raven up and down the stairs of Westchester House until they both collapsed. He thinks about his past because he can’t bear to think about Erik with Raven present, babbling on about brown rice and crab rangoon.
As Charles walks through the house, he notes how empty it feels. Before Braddock, Charles had been used to an empty home, with rooms that rarely saw the light of day or human occupancy, even. He had liked his privacy, the quiet that a house can only have when you're alone inside it. Now Westchester House seems to swallow him up so easily, and bizarrely, Charles misses the clattering sounds of Braddock: of Sean running throughout the halls, too hopped up to sit still; of Alex and Erik sparring in the gym, leather smacking against leather; of nurses gossiping and doctors fussing. Braddock had been full of life: yeah, the people who lived there had pretty messed up lives. But they were alive. The only thing Westchester House reminds Charles of is Mother and Father, and the memories are only sometimes pleasant. Mostly he thinks about the days after they both had passed and recalls the bizarre quiet that had settled in the house: that dark specter, loneliness.
It’s only when Charles is alone in his room at last, looking up at the cracked ceiling in the dark, beneath the canopy of the four poster bed, that he really wonders about Erik Lehnsherr and how easily oaths of I will find you and We’ll be together could break. He presses his hands to his lips and pretends that the hand belongs to the other man, pretends it is a hand with more callouses and longer fingers and a warmth that Charles rarely has in his extremities. Charles wonders where the other man is: wonders if he’s in New York, or even in this country. Charles's mind flashes to an image of Erik on the ground, clutching at an empty bottle of pills; Erik, hanging from a noose; Erik, gun pressed against his forehead-biting his lip, Charles refuses to let his mind go there. He bites his lip and shakes his head. No, there was no way Erik had done that. He wouldn’t do that to Charles. He wouldn’t.
Charles doesn’t get much sleep that first night back home.
Charles wakes up to Raven calling for him. He groans and rolls to the side of the bed, taking most of the comforter with him. There is no nurse at the door but Charles glances there anyway, waiting for someone to pop through unannounced. No one does.
“Charles, get your ass down here!” Raven yells, and her voice is like a siren in Charles’s ear. He groans and grabs a robe from his closet, throwing it on over his tee shirt and boxers. Hadn’t he left early morning wake up calls behind at Braddock?
"Goddamn bullshit," Charles growls, and he suddenly laughs, remembering Alex's daily tirades, raging against breakfast and sleep deprivation. He half-walks, half-stumbles down the stairs, missing the last step and practically somersaulting off.
He sees Raven at the door, hair askance and yawning, but her eyes are alight with mischief.
“Someone’s at the door for you,” she says, arching her back and heading for the kitchen. “I’m gonna go make some coffee so that I can function like a real human.” She dashes off and Charles thinks he hears her say have fun and remains slightly perturbed. He goes to the door that looms before him and opens it uncertainly.
“I don’t think I could have missed this house,” Erik says casually, raising an eyebrow. He looks like he’s traveled all night: his clothes are rumpled and he has bags under his eyes, and a full-to-bursting duffle hangs off his back. In his eyes are exhaustion and relief and a sprinkle of nervousness. “Raven was pretty specific with her directions, and seriously Charles, when she said, ‘The big one,’ she meant it-holy shit, Charles-”
But Erik isn’t able to finish his sentence, because Charles has literally jumped upon him and muffled his mouth with his own lips, and wrapped his legs easily around Erik’s waist (actually the leap itself had been surprisingly spry for eight-thirty in the morning, go figure) with his arms tightly attached to the back of Erik’s neck. Erik makes a pleased humming sound and holds Charles by the ass and waist, and he walks through the threshold of Westchester House with Charles aloft-thankfully without dropping him.
They stay there, in the early morning rays of the sun in the foyer of Westchester House, relearning each other until Charles feels dizzy from holding his breath.
“I said I’d find you,” Erik murmurs into Charles’s ear once the initial embrace has settled in emotional pitch and shock. “I promised. You can't imagine how I've missed you, how much I wanted to turn around and take you with me, God, Charles-” Erik continues to murmur into Charles's ear as Charles rakes a hand through Erik's hair thoughtfully. Charles wondering whether or not this is some sick dream he's having, still in bed, waiting to wake up.
“Promises can be broken,” Charles says, his voice breaking slightly. "Am I dreaming?"
“Not my promises,” Erik says, smiling down at him. "And this is not a dream. Though, if it was, I'd say it would be a pretty fucking great one."
Charles laughs and pulls back a bit. "I am awake, aren't I," Charles asks softly.
Erik kisses him. "Yes," he tells Charles. He plants another kiss, this one longer. "Yes. We're both finally awake." And Charles knows that he doesn't just mean that they're both conscious: he knows what Erik knows... that at last, they have been untethered from what had brought them to Braddock.
Now, instead, they are linked to each other.
The house seems to warm to Erik’s presence nicely, as if it knows its fate is irrevocably entwined with his. The hallways brighten, the rooms appear less unkempt, and if Charles didn’t know better, he’d think the house was trying to make a good impression, the saucy minx.
They’re in bed, entangled in each other’s arms, when Charles’s eyes seem to glow with excitement. Erik, slightly wrecked, raises an eyebrow and laughs a bit as Charles crawls up his body to look him in the eye.
"What?" Erik asks softly.
“I have an idea,” Charles says. “I think you’re going to like it.”
Charles tells him. Erik likes it.
When Alex finally gathers his belongings and piles them on his bed for appraisal, he’s not sure what he expects to see: the objects of a man he no longer knew, perhaps? Were they things that belonged to someone who no longer existed? No: those were his pajamas, his mismatched socks. The blue teddy bear Scott had given him so long ago was still his. The things hadn’t changed. He had. Alex throws things willy-nilly into his duffle: he just wants to get it over with, the packing, at least. There are so many emotions twirling around inside Alex’s head that this small act of bringing together his possessions and leaving his room empty is making his world spin.
He is leaving Braddock today. He’s been here for four months, and he’s leaving today. Moira has cleared him, the board of directors has cleared him, and they probably have some other fuck-up just waiting for the opportunity to take Alex’s bed, his spot in rehabilitation.
“Knock knock,” Moira says, opening the door. Alex jumps and starts throwing things in his bag even faster. “Woah there, buster. What’s up with you?”
Alex tries to remember the last time he saw Hank: it might have been two or three days ago, in the cafeteria or walking the halls. Alex had stopped saying hi to the doctor or even acknowledging his presence. It was too hard to think about the last time they had been together… Hank had put himself on the line, had admitted his feelings for Alex, forbidden as they were, and what had Alex done? He’d stood there, like a fucking idiot, foot in his own mouth, too fucking afraid to say what he really thought. Well, he had blown it. Hank hadn’t ever brought it up again, and Alex is horrified at the fact that he is too scared to do anything about it. And now Alex is leaving Braddock, and he’s never going to see Hank again.
“I’m just trying to pack my shit,” Alex says gruffly. He turns to Moira: she’s got her lips wrapped around the bright red straw of one of those gas station Slurpees the size of her head. She sips on it for a moment, and as she pulls away, he can see her mouth has turned blue from the pigment in the drink.
“You’re quite the dynamo today,” Moira says, sitting down on Alex’s desk, letting her legs hang off it. “Is Scott coming to pick you up?”
Alex shrugs. “I told him I’d make my own way.”
Moira frowns. “Not sure if that’s the best idea, bud.”
“I can call my own fucking taxi,” Alex says shortly, his anger rising. “I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can, Alex,” Moira says, a little peeved. “That’s why I think you’re ready to leave this place.” She tilts her head to the side and puts her Slurpee down. “You seem angry today.”
“I’m not angry,” Alex says, gritting his teeth. At the sound of his own clenched voice, Alex pauses and laughs a bit.
“You’ve convinced me,” Moira says dryly, raising an eyebrow.
“I don’t know,” Alex says. He looks at her from across the room. “I’m a little angry. Frustrated, maybe. But mostly sad.”
“Sad that you’re leaving?” Moira asks. Alex nods.
“I know it’s stupid,” he mumbles. “But this was starting to feel like home.”
Moira smiles a little and jumps off the desk. She nudges Alex to the side a bit and starts rearranging Alex’s clothes and other objects until they all somehow manage to fit inside his large duffle.
“You’re a miracle worker,” Alex says in awe. Moira barks out a laugh and looks pleased with herself. Alex runs a hand through his hair and feels a bit awkward at their proximity. “You know… I mean that in so many ways, Moira. Thank you so much, so fucking much.”
Moira looks up at him and smiles wide, teeth and everything, and then she surprises Alex in a strong hug that seems to envelop him. He hugs her back tentatively at first, and then he buries his head in the crook of her neck, breathing in her familiar smell, determined to remember her forever.
“Don’t think you can get rid of me this easily, hot shot,” Moira laughs in his ear as he pulls away. He thinks he sees her eyes glistening, but she claps him on the shoulder and suddenly she is back to being sassy, blunt as hell Moira. “This is my number,” she says, handing him a small business card. “I understand if you want to continue on with another therapist closer to home, and I’d love to give you a few recommendations, if you’d like them. But if you ever want to talk to me, about anything at all, I’m here. Whatever you decide, I do think you should continue therapy.”
“I don’t want a new therapist, though,” Alex tells her, settling his duffle on his shoulder. “Can’t we just… keep going? With our sessions?”
“It’s a pretty long commute from Phoenix to upstate New York, Alex,” Moira says.
“They have this thing, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it,” Alex says, “they call it a phone-”
“Asshole,” Moira laughs, punching him lightly on the arm, but her eyes are warm. “Okay, phone sessions. Think you can handle that, tough guy?”
Alex and Moira say their final goodbye, and then Alex is on his way to reception. He’s already said his goodbyes to Sean and Janos and Ginger, and Armando had left Braddock a few weeks ago. Charles had already been gone a full three days. Hank had been, of course, nowhere to be found all fucking day, but Alex isn’t really sure what he would do if the doctor actually shows his face.
Reception hands him his cell phone, fully charged. Alex holds it in both his hands like an ancient artifact, and then pockets it deftly. He shoulders his bag and it hangs off the shoulder of his leather jacket heavily. He walks outside and sits down on the bench nearest to the door, slinging his bag down to his feet and breathes in and out in short bursts. He leans forward, resting his arms on his knees. The parking lot in front of him is so familiar, and yet it’s like Alex is seeing it with new eyes: in civilian clothing, by himself, a free man.
Alex doesn’t realize he’s crying until wet spots appear on the wooden porch beneath him. He reaches his hands up to his face and wipes the wetness away, then rubs at his eyes tiredly. He is done here. He is, as they say, rehabilitated.
He sits there for about an hour, looking at his phone. He doesn’t dial for a taxi: maybe it’s sheer terror at finally doing something for himself for the first time in four months, maybe he can’t bring himself to leave this place just yet… or maybe it is some kind of premonition, because the moment he begins to dial information, the door to his left swings open.
Alex looks at Hank, who seems to intentionally stand in the direct line of the afternoon sun, and Alex’s has to squint a bit as his eyes water. The blonde looks away from the man in the sun.
“I thought I’d missed you,” Hank says, voice oddly tight. Alex looks up again at Hank and sees that his cheeks are blotchy and, behind the glasses, his eyes are red. It’s clear Hank’s upset, and all Alex wants to do is pull the other man into his arms and never let go. “I didn’t think you’d be out here,” Hank continues in a low voice. Alex wonders if Hank wishes Alex had just left when he was supposed to, thinks that it would probably have been easier on the both of them if he had just gone.
“Couldn’t leave,” Alex says quietly. “Don’t really know why. Just… couldn’t.”
“Did you call a cab yet?” Hank asks offhandedly. Alex shakes his head. Hank clears his throat, looking out at the parking lot, then back to Alex, and then at the floor.
Alex is holding his breath.
“Would you like a ride to the airport?” Hank asks. Alex’s eyes widen in shock, but somehow he manages to nod.
Hank’s car is a beaten up dark blue Ford station wagon that Alex supposes has seen better days. Alex climbs into the passenger seat and throws his duffle in the back seat. Hank slides inside and turns on the car, the hum of the vehicle more of a purr than the hacking cough Alex had expected from the rusty looking machine. They pull out of the parking lot in silence, Hank’s right hand resting on the stick shift lightly.
They’ve been driving for around fifteen minutes when Alex finally opens his mouth.
“You asked me what you are to me,” Alex starts off, “the last time we spoke.”
“Alex, you don’t have to answer that,” Hank says quietly, his voice even. “It was very unprofessional of me.”
“I don’t want you to be professional, Hank, so let me fucking talk for now,” Alex says, voice getting stronger with every word he says. “You’re not my therapist. You’re not my boyfriend, I’m pretty sure, because you haven’t looked at me or talked to me at all in the past few weeks, and I’m pretty sure boyfriends are more attentive than that.” Alex’s voice drops and they’re both quiet. “But I fucking love you, Hank. And it’s about damn time we were done with this being sad bullshit and got over ourselves.”
Alex slides his hand over Hank’s so that they both rest on the stick shift.
“You better not be taking me to the airport right now,” Alex says in a low voice. He dares a glances in Hank’s direction: the brunet has a huge smile on his face, eye crinkled and just, fucking, glowing like a super nova: right there, in the seat next to him, is the man he wants like nobody he’s ever wanted in his whole life. It’s more than want, though: it’s like, now that they’re together again, he’s got a piece of his soul back.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Hank grins, flicking on his blinker. “My house is about thirty minutes away from Braddock. Opposite direction of the airport, of course.” Hank accelerates and Alex feels the car speed along the winding road before them, and Alex laughs aloud in pure exhilaration. “What are you going to tell your brother, Scott?” Hank asks quietly.
Alex shrugs. “You know, home is where the heart is, all that bullshit. He’ll eat it up.”
Hank snorts, eyes bright and blushing slightly. “You’re a little manipulative, you know that?” Alex squeezes Hank’s hand on the stick, and Hank accelerates even more. “A lot manipulative.” There’s a roughness now to Hank’s voice that Alex revels in.
He shoots Hank a sly look and rolls his window down so that the wind whips around his face, and as they pass Braddock once again, Alex waves and wonders when it became so easy to say goodbye.
Simple, you idiot, Alex thinks to himself. You’re saying hello, too.
“Hello, future,” Alex says, and he’s not sure whether he’s talking to Hank or just the paved road that runs before the both of them, winding out into the distance, beyond the forests and hills on either side of them, until it runs up to the horizon of blue sky and disappears entirely.
xi. Epilogue.
Kitty Pryde volunteers at the Angel Salvatore Halfway House four days a week: basically, on days that she doesn’t have class. She commutes from the NYU campus out to Westchester county by herself, and her friends don’t ask her where she’s gone or why she manages to disappear from their lives for more than half the week (including Sundays). It’s not a rehabilitation clinic, and not, in the definition of the word, strictly a halfway house: it’s more like an SLE, or Sober Living Environment, as Kitty tells her parents when they ask her what she does with her time outside of class. There are a few full time in-house staffers, yes: a couple of nurses and janitors, all under the employ of the Xavier family. They need more volunteers, though, and Kitty is happy to give them her time. It’s less a place of rehabilitation and more a place for people who have already been through it all and just needed a stepping-stone back into the real world. She’s seen hundreds of people pass through Salvatore, some decades older than her, some sixteen, sometimes fifteen-year-old runaways. All had needed this place. Kitty thinks sometimes, she needs it too.
Kitty gets out of her car and slams the door shut behind her. She slings her backpack on and starts walking across the grounds, green as ever in the late days of spring. The manicured lawn beneath her feet crunches a bit as she makes the trek: she sees Erik, Charles’s partner, sitting on the porch in a wooden chair, rocking some reading glasses and a book that looks older than dirt. He looks up at her as she approaches him and waves a hand in her direction.
“How’s it going, Old Man,” Kitty says, climbing up the stairs to the front door.
“Pretty good, Kittycat,” Erik says. Kitty smiles at the nickname and the routine of their interaction: she doesn’t remember when the pet names started, but they’ve now become so engrained in her mind that she has to mentally restrain herself from calling Erik ‘Old Man’ when talking about him to her friends. Erik nods toward the door. “New batch of recruits came in a few days ago. You’ll have your hands full.”
Kitty nods with a smile and enters the house. There are a few permanent residents at Salvatore House: Erik and Charles, of course, as well as Charles’s sister, Raven, who flits in and out of the place. At times, Kitty thinks she is uncertain of her spot there, but Charles loves her beyond measure and thus, she is welcome. Sometimes Kitty is certain this place runs on Charles’s love alone, as she’s astounded by his extreme compassion and unending understanding for even the most bitter inhabitants. It’s like he’s seen everything the person is, everything they’ve done, all the things they’ve ever been through, and he knows them, knows them so thoroughly, and he knows how to help. Charles is frank about his own experience in rehabilitation, but Kitty is too shy to pry any further than the story Charles tells everyone who comes to work at Salvatore House.
In addition to the various staff around Salvatore House, there is a small psychiatry staff headed by Hank McCoy, who is talking to Charles exasperatedly when Kitty finds him.
“She says that she’s tired of following me around the country,” Hank groans, head in his hands. “She says she’s staying at Braddock. She says she likes it there.”
“She’s a hell of a doctor…” Charles pauses. “Tell her I’ll pay her double she’s making there,” Charles chuckles to himself. “Plus perks.”
Hank raises an eyebrow. “Moira's just playing hard to get. She wants to come here, I can tell." Hank coughs a little. "Does this mean I’m getting a raise, too?”
“Does this mean I get perks, too?” Kitty mimics a little too well. Hank glares at her.
Charles laughs at Kitty, who drops her bag in her usual locker. “Kitty: not until you have a degree or I hire you. And Hank… perhaps. If you behave. No more of that ‘I’m calling in sick today because Alex has the day off.’”
Hank rolls his eyes. “That was one time, and believe me…” Hank clears his throat. “More than worth it.” His voice is high and strained, and Charles barks out a laugh.
“Fair enough, friend,” Charles says mirthfully. “Fair enough.”
Kitty snickers a bit and wonders exactly who this Alex girl is, and how good she would have to be in the sack to keep Hank away from his job that he so clearly loved.
“Hey Kitty,” Charles greets. Hank waves at her, too. “Did Erik tell you about the new kids?”
“Yup,” Kitty says. “He keeps me very informed.”
Hank runs a hand through his hair, sighing. “Back to Dr. MacTaggert. Moira drives a hard bargain, Charles, but hopefully she’ll see reason. I know that Alex would be happy seeing her closer to Westchester.”
A few new faces bound into the room and nearly knock Hank off his feet. “Let’s go play, Hank!” says a taller skinny boy with brown hair; he holds a leather basketball in his arms and doesn’t look older than seventeen.
“Bobby keeps on saying he’s gonna wipe the floor with me,” says a girl around the same age with a streak of white in her hair.
“Anne Marie,” Hank sighs. “Bobby will do no such thing. One of my many talents includes basketball.”
Kitty snorts because she knows that Hank’s prowess in sports is close to that of a toddler attempting rocket science, but Anne Marie looks pleased in his response and Hank leaves Charles and Kitty alone, ushering the children out of the room.
Charles introduces her to some of the other new kids: Warren Worthington, a trust fund kid that Kitty can tell is going to give her a hard time; and Alison Blaire, a pretty blonde girl with what Kitty thought looked like the most horrible looking black eye she’s ever seen. The introductions end abruptly when Charles gets a phone call from whom Kitty assumes is the psychiatrist Hank has been wooing for months.
“Moira,” Charles says smoothly into the phone. “So nice to hear from you.” He walks away from the group and continues his conversation in his office, away from the chatter of the new kids and away from Kitty. She wonders if Charles knows exactly what kind of good he’s doing in the world.
Kitty hangs out at Salvatore House for a few more hours, helping out where she can. The giant house is a place of seemingly infinite discovery: every room radiates life. People live here, Kitty thinks to herself, roaming alone upstairs after she’s completed her various chores. They don’t just stay here. They really live.
It’s around dusk when Kitty leaves. She slings her backpack over her shoulder once more and exits through the front door. Erik is still sitting there, still reading, though he’s much farther along in the book than he had been when she had arrived.
“See you, Old Man,” Kitty waves.
“Later, Kittycat,” Erik says gruffly, but the affection is clear.
Kitty walks down the steps of the porch into the driveway as a black sports car pulls up in front of her. The windows roll down to reveal a blonde man in his late twenties or early thirties, she guesses. He is obscenely attractive and Kitty finds herself blushing as he pushes his sunglasses up into his hair to reveal a pair of awfully blue eyes.
“Hey, do you work here?” he asks her.
“I volunteer,” Kitty says, a little breathlessly.
“You know where Hank McCoy is? I mean, Dr. McCoy,” the man says, blushing a little himself, like he’s not sure what exactly Dr. McCoy is to her. “I’m picking him up early,” the man says, leaning in a little conspiratorially.
Kitty sighs, smiling a little to herself in realization. The good ones are always taken, aren’t they.
“He’s in the backyard with a couple of the new kids,” she says, pointing the way to a few figures in the distance playing basketball. “Got his hands full, by the looks of it.”
The blonde man smiles and thanks her, pulling away from Kitty and leaving her alone in the drive way. She walks to her car and opens the door, sitting herself down inside and flinging her backpack into the passenger seat. In the distance, Kitty can see the blonde man giving Hank a peck on the cheek before snatching the basketball out of the psychiatrist’s hands and sinking a free throw. Raucous laughter fills the air.
Kitty turns back to the house toward Erik, who is still sitting on the porch, reading. In the doorway, Kitty sees Charles leaning against the frame of the door, just watching Erik with the most relaxed expression on his face: like just seeing him is like drinking a cool lemonade in the middle of the hottest day of the summer. Erik continues to read, unbothered by his partner's presence, but there's a hint of a smile on his face and the glint of contented happiness in his eye.
Kitty looks around at all this-she hears the chatter and laughter of a home, not just a House-and somewhere, in the very essence of her being, she knows that these people have got it right.
THE END