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hoosierbitchTitle: My Brother's the Keeper
Fandom: X-Men First Class
Pairing: Alex/Sean
Rating: PG-13
Betas: The ever-fabulous elrhiarhodan, rabidchild67, and coffeethyme4me! [Uh, when I tried to make the names into links, LJ ate my entire post. Twice. O.o]
Notes: This was originally posted as an xmen_firstkink fill here.
Warnings: Internalized homophobia, homophobic language.
Prompt/summary: Alex and Scott aren't only brothers, they're twins. When Charles finally finds Scott, Hank seems to think that Scott is finally someone smart enough to talk science with and Sean seems to hero worship him. Slowly Alex starts to convince himself that he is the evil twin and that is why nobody likes him anymore. Over a few weeks he starts to withdraw from everybody until the gang finally figures it out.
*
"He doesn't look like you," Sean says, and Alex elbows him in the stomach. "What? I'm just saying!" Alex glares at him until he shuts up and then turns back to the window. Scott—his brother Scott—has dark brown hair and tinted sunglasses and is standing right outside the car, in the middle of the driveway, looking awkward. "What's wrong with him?"
"Shoots lasers out of his eyes," Alex says, watching Hank rush out of the house to get the professor's chair from the trunk.
"Damn," Sean says admiringly. "I'm gonna go help, you want to come?" Alex shakes his head.
Alex stays at the window and watches Sean shake Scott's hand, watches them laugh, watches Hank help the professor inside while Scott places his hand in the crook of Sean's elbow and lets himself be steered into the mansion.
He doesn't remember Scott. He'd hoped that he would when he saw his face, figured it'd jog his memory and all of a sudden he'd remember this boy, would remember his childhood and their parents and being left behind—but he doesn't.
*
Charles introduces them, all of the X-Men standing in the grand foyer watching Alex and Scott like they're some sort of TV show. It makes Alex uncomfortable. He reaches his hand out to shake before he realizes that Scott can't see it, and then he feels stupid so he just glares.
"Alex has been looking forward to meeting you," Xavier says to Scott.
Scott sort of smiles and turns his head like he forgot he can't figure out where Alex is just by looking for him.
"Hi," Alex says, after Hank kicks his ankle and Sean shoves him between the shoulder blades.
Scott turns towards him, looking right exactly at him even though Alex knows his eyes are closed. He swallows and looks at Scott's face and tries not to think about what would happen if Scott's power was directed at him, if it would hurt, if their joint red flames would match or react or grow.
He doesn't know what to do when Scott reaches out for him. So he just freezes while Scott's fingers clumsily trace his face. He feels like an animal on display, like he's being examined by one of the lewder guards, like he should let Scott know that people who touch him get hurt.
He closes his eyes when Scott hugs him, shivers when Scott whispers his name, "Alex," right against his ear. The hug's making him feel claustrophobic. Trapped.
He can't remember ever being held like this before.
He'd—sort of—he'd fantasized about it, with Angel (and once when he was drunk, Darwin), but Scott's body is real and hot and close and pressed up against him. It's intimate without being sensual and Alex wants to punch Scott for turning all of Alex's jerk-off fantasies into bad jokes, pale caricatures of contact.
"I missed you so much," Scott says, and Alex realizes that Scott is crying. He's pretty sure that he should, like, hug Scott back, or pat him on the head or tell him it's gonna be okay but he doesn't really want to encourage Scott to cry any more and he's not sure how to get his arms around Scott without dislodging Scott's arms and he maybe doesn't want Scott to let go. "I'm so glad you're okay," Scott says, and Alex keeps his eyes closed and nods and doesn't disagree.
*
Scott spends a lot of time in the lab, so Alex spends a lot of time right outside the lab. Hank doesn't want Alex around, hasn't since the change, so he knows better than to invite himself in. There's a small window in the door and if he stands right up against the wall he gets a decent view without drawing attention to himself.
Scott's powers are tremendous. They're a lot like Alex's, but more directed and focused. Scott doesn't have to do a ridiculous dance to summon his power, it doesn't need to be collected and controlled. But then, Alex hasn't had to keep his eyes closed for years, so. It evens out.
It only takes a couple of days for Hank to put together some glasses. They're a sort of purple color and they give Scott headaches, but he can open his eyes now without putting holes in the walls. Alex watches them celebrate through the slat of a window and then leaves.
*
He avoids Scott for the better part of the day, even though Xavier finds him on the roof before dinner and sends him a mental sigh of disappointment. Alex thinks fuck off as loudly as he can and stays outside until the sun sets.
Scott's waiting outside Alex's bedroom when he slips in through a window, and he wastes a minute being pissed at Charles before he realizes Scott's getting closer to him, reaching out for him, and he really doesn't want Scott to touch him again so soon.
"Are you still blond?"
He takes a step back but the wall is closer than he thought, the molding pressing against his shoulder.
"It's just—I'm still figuring out colors, but your hair seems lighter than the rest of you, so—are you still blond? Mom was blonde, too."
He nods and for a selfish minute wishes Scott had never gotten his sight back. Wishes he'd stayed out on the roof longer. When Scott had been blind, he hadn't been a threat. When he couldn't see Alex, he couldn't—Alex figures he'd be harder to hate if you couldn't look at him.
"I'm—it's good to see you," Scott says, and Alex nods and doesn't look at his face. "I guess I'll head to bed."
Alex waits until Scott turns the corner before going back out the window.
*
The house gets more and more crowded as Xavier recruits new mutants, and it makes Alex nervous. Or angry. Depends on the day. He keeps to himself and gets a reputation as a loner, a badass, an asshole.
He misses Erik a lot. The way he'd rolled his eyes at Sean when he babbled or poked fun at Charles when he waxed poetic. The way he'd been like a shield, a strong quiet wall that Alex had sometimes needed to hide behind.
Now Erik's gone, and sometimes it seems like Alex is the only angry one left. His powers make him a mutant. His personality is what's making him a freak.
*
Hank likes Scott. And Hank doesn't like anybody these days. Now, whenever Alex goes by the lab, it seems like they're in there together, chattering away, pushing pieces of ruby glass between them and talking about telescopes and geology and refraction patterns. Alex had taken his GED when he was locked up, and he'd been kind of proud of his scores, but when he tries to listen to Hank and Scott's conversations he only understands maybe one word out of three.
The next time he makes dinner he goes down to the lab himself to fetch them. "Come on, lovebirds," he hollers from the open door, stepping through like he belongs there, grinning when Hank drops his tweezers.
"Jerk," Hank mutters, pushing Alex aside as he leaves. Scott punches Alex playfully on the shoulder and jogs to catch up with Hank. Alex closes the door to the lab a bit harder than necessary and tries to feel like he won that one.
*
Scott remembers their parents.
Alex doesn't remember anything from before his fourth birthday. He'd—he'd made up versions of his parents in his head. Which he hasn't ever told anyone but kind of wants to tell Scott because Scott's nice and quiet and his brother, and maybe he'd understand.
When Alex was a kid and stupid enough to still be lonely he'd imagined a dad who would love him and a mom who would want to hold him, imagined that the foster homes were temporary and maybe someone would like him enough to take him out. They sent a lot of things home with Alex—mostly notes addressed to his parents that he gave to his guardians, notes he could barely read but easily understood. They explained how Alex had problems, how Alex was stupid, how Alex needed help.
Scott remembers who their parents actually were and it takes Alex weeks to work up the nerve to ask about them. "They loved us," Scott whispers, new glasses glowing red in the dark. Alex nods and turns away and leaves Scott's bedroom and goes to the bunker and blows shit up until he's got nothing left except his voice so he just screams.
His temporary guardians had taken care of him, but they’d been paid to, and his real mom and dad had maybe loved him but what if Scott was lying, what if Scott was wrong, what if Scott was the kid they wanted and Alex was the one they didn't love and gave away? Maybe Alex was the broken brother, the evil twin, the one who wasn't supposed to have a family.
*
"When's our birthday?"
"September 8th," Scott says. He fidgets with his pockets while Alex stares at the radio. "I always...I forget that you don't know things, sometimes." Alex shrugs and bites his lip. He doesn't know a lot of things. He doesn't know his parents' first names (he has so many questions he's been rationing them out; names are next on his list), doesn't know what Scott and Hank talk about in the lab or who any of the bands are that Sean won’t stop talking about. He doesn't know how to not be jealous of Scott.
*
He's on the roof again when Sean comes to find him. "The professor told me where you were," Sean says, scooting cautiously up the shingles to rest on the peaked rooftop next to Alex. "And then he told me not to tell you that. I'm kind of crap at secrets," he says cheerfully.
Alex doesn't have any secrets that belong to other people, but he thinks if he did, he would keep them.
"We're going into town tomorrow," Sean says, wiggling slowly down the roof and then carefully laying down, staring up at the moon.
"You scared of heights?"
"I keep thinking Erik's about to push me," Sean admits. "Hasn't quite sunk in fully that he's gone. And that I can fly now. Plus, I don't have my suit on." Alex takes a deep breath and slides down to lie next to Sean. "So, are you going to come into town with us, or what?" He says yes and Sean stays with him for a few more minutes.
*
He goes to a department store while the others pick up groceries. He's getting sick of wearing sweatsuits all the time. He picks up jeans in a couple of different sizes and spends the rest of the afternoon trying on different clothes. Figuring out which fabrics feel best against his skin, which sizes he's supposed to wear, what styles he likes. He shoves down any guilt about abusing Xavier's credit card and tries on a suit. A button-down shirt and a tie and a jacket. He looks like someone else. Someone untouchable. Important. Adult. He feels like Erik.
He's in the middle of changing outfits when Sean finds him to let him know it's time to leave. He pops into the hall outside the dressing room without any warning. "You've lost weight," Sean says, staring at Alex's shirtless reflection. "A lot of weight." Alex snatches up his hoodie and pulls it on quickly, glaring at Sean in the mirror as soon as it's back on.
"Didn't know you were fucking bent," he snarls, and Sean stiffens. "Did you enjoy the free show?"
"I'm not a pervert," Sean says, turning to leave. "Just—just see Hank when you get back, okay? You might be sick. Asshole."
*
He only buys a couple pairs of pants and doesn't see Hank when he gets back or think about how dark Sean's freckles got when he blushed.
Hank hunts him down a couple of days later anyway, and Alex spends the whole examination mentally cursing at Sean. "You certainly have lost weight," Hank murmurs. He touches Alex when he says it, one big blue paw resting right on his shoulder. Alex freezes, not sure if he likes it or not, not sure what signals to send that could say don't stop touching me and if you try to fuck me I'll bite your goddamn dick off.
Hank's nostrils flare and he backs off. "You need to eat more," Hank says, fiddling with something on the counter. It looks like a miniature jungle gym. A twisted collection of thin metal strips that bend and reform under Hank's capable hands. "You've been using your powers more and more, keeping up with your training regimen, and that burns calories at an exponential rate. If you lose much more weight it's going to start impeding your vital organ function—"
"Spare me the lecture," Alex interrupts, because he's not going to ask what exponential or impeding mean.
Hank sighs and puts down the metal toy, all stretched out into a long tube shape. "When you use your powers, it's just like any other kind of exercise. It uses energy. A lot of energy. So you should make sure to eat foods that are rich in fat and protein, okay?"
Alex catches a glimpse of red out of the corner of his eye. Sean's in the hallway. Looking in through Alex's window. His cheeks flare up in a violent blush—he hadn't realized quite how visible that window was. The others must have seen him through it a time or two. He wonders if they were laughing at him and not just some joke he didn't know when they were all huddled in there together.
"Are you finished?" he growls. There's a cookbook in Xavier's library that'll probably explain which foods have fat and which ones have protein. He doesn't want to stay in the lab any longer than he has to.
"Yes, I'm finished," Hank says. "Come back in a week for a check-up, okay? Alex—"
He bolts out of the room and shoves Sean into a wall as he passes him. "Thanks for nothing," he says with a glare.
"You're welcome!" Sean's cheerful voice echoes down the hallway after him.
*
He makes sure to tell Scott later that evening. He figures their powers are pretty similar, so Scott will need to eat more nuts and meat, too. But Scott already knows. He'd figured it out when Hank had explained how their power works.
He doesn't ask Scott what his parents' names are and he leaves before Scott asks anything of him.
*
Sean starts cooking dinner. Simple meals that leave lots of leftovers and have too much spice. Meals that are full of all of the ingredients that Alex had laboriously copied out of the cookbook—the cookbook that's missing from the library.
On Saturday Sean tries out a pasta sauce full of protein chunks.
No one likes the protein chunks.
They complain all through dinner, and Sean just hollers back at them. Not once does he say anything about Alex's powers, how he hadn't known how his own body worked. Alex forces himself to eat everything on his plate and doesn't look at Sean. He doesn't find him after dinner, either, to say thank you or sorry or I like your freckles.
*
He's never had friends to lose before. And he—he misses them. He feels like he did in his first month of solitary, when he'd been greedy for just the sound of footsteps passing by his cell.
He sits in the living room, glaring at the TV and trying not to look lonely, hoping someone will wander by to hang out with him. But Sean and Scott and Hank spend most of their time in the lab nowadays. They show up for dinner smelling like chemicals and laughing about what new thing Sean's destroyed or how cool Scott's new glasses look. Hank's blossoming under the attention. Even Alex can tell that. Awkward Hank—the one person that Alex had been pretty sure was less comfortable with people than he was—awkward Hank is flourishing.
Alex tries to read books, since he's alone and stupid, but they make his eyes hurt and he's not going to ask the professor to get him glasses because he's not a nerd and he doesn't want to seem like he's copycatting his brother. Plus one of the first books he picked up was The Three Musketeers, which is what Jean, the new girl, had called the other boys.
He thinks maybe he was in jail when everyone else was learning what to do with friends. How to make them laugh and like you and want to hang out with you. He thinks maybe he was in jail, locked up because he'd hurt people—don't touch me—and this is just a natural continuation of his sentence.
The two weeks after Charles got him out of prison, when they were still at the CIA base (before Alex killed Darwin), were the two best weeks of his life. He'd kind of hoped that it was the start of something new. The beginning of a life where he was part of a team.
*
The night he dreams about sucking Sean's dick, he sets his bedroom on fire. He wakes up surrounded by flames. He can hear the roar of his mattress catching on fire. He rolls out of bed, ignoring the pain in his arms and chest, and grabs the fire extinguisher he'd hung by the door.
Hank's there seconds later. He throws Alex's curtains into the hallway and pulls the bed into the center of the room so it won't spread. Sean and Scott arrive together. Sean tries to sonic out the flames, but it just fans them. Scott comes back with two more fire extinguishers and that gets the job done just fine.
When the flames are gone, Alex looks down at his arms, the blistering burns already rising, and passes out.
*
When he wakes up, he’s in the lab. It’s cold. He recognizes it from the days of waiting at Xavier’s bedside, the weeks of watching his brother make friends behind closed doors. He can hear machines humming and the sound of his own breath and nothing else. There are bandages wrapped around his arms and taped over the left side of his chest. His skin feels tight and his heart’s beating too loudly and the room’s so empty it aches.
He could have killed them. Could have burnt the mansion down around their sleeping bodies; the professor in his bed, unable to move; Hank surrounded by all his chemicals; Scott without his glasses—
He clenches his hands into fists and the pain burns from the palms of his hands up his arms. Bad enough that the machines around him start beeping and the thoughts in his head quiet down. Monster. Killer.
Hank rushes in, and Sean—wheeling the professor—isn’t far behind him. A rush of sympathy and good intentions and loud questions. Alex tries not to wish for Erik because the professor will hear it and it’s useless and cruel, but he still wants it and so the skin around Xavier’s eyes tightens. Or maybe that’s just what happens when he looks at Alex. Maybe that’s what’s always going to happen now because Alex is dangerous, he’s given them proof, they all know that it’s not just easier to push Alex away, it’s safer.
Alex wants Erik and his honest, cutting comments, wants to be bathed in the chill of his anger, he wants the Erik who had glared at every single man in uniform they’d passed while leaving the prison instead of Charles, soft stupid Charles who had smiled at them, had thanked the men guarding the doors, had rolled his eyes at Erik’s stubbornness.
No one’s smiling now.
“Are you okay?” All of them are asking; it’s a symphony of questions, a barrage.
Alex squeezes his hands into fists again and the machines beep like an angry chorus. Xavier reaches forward to stop him or hold him or slap him. Out of the corner of his eye Alex can see Scott peeking through the doorway—the open door that Alex knows so well when it’s closed—and it hurts, it all hurts, he doesn’t know where the fire starts or where his body is supposed to end.
Hank injects him with something that burns like ice and it takes him back to sleep.
*
Jean’s there the next time he wakes up. Her red hair a curtain around her face, bent over a book. He tries not to move but she turns, startled, her hair a smooth wave.
“I’ll tell the professor,” she says, but she stops with her hand barely raised towards the intercom. “You hurt,” she says, and Alex nods. “You hurt so badly,” she whispers, and when she leaves the room at a near-run Alex remembers that she’s a telepath.
The professor’s there soon, looking drawn and serious. “I’m not going to send you back to prison,” is the first thing that Charles says, his chair bumping gently against the bed.
“Then—where?” Alex’s voice sticks in his dry throat. Because the professor can’t keep him here, not with people around, people he’ll end up hurting. At least in prison he would get fed, he’d have clothes and a bed—Xavier couldn’t send him back to one of the foster homes, could he? Alex is too old, too angry, they wouldn’t take him anyway, not with his record. Xavier wouldn’t just kick him out on the streets. He—he wouldn’t.
“Alex,” Charles says quietly, and maybe he uses his telepathy to boost it because somehow it cuts through the frantic beat of Alex’s heart and the irregular thrum of power that lives underneath his skin, “you’re not going anywhere. This is your home. We are your family.”
He’ll take Xavier’s word about the room and board, because he’s got no other choice, not yet. But he knows the rest of it can’t be true.
“Thanks,” he says, turning his face away from Xavier because the rest of him hurts too much to just get up and walk away.
“Please don’t give up yet,” Xavier whispers, after the lights in the room have dimmed and Alex is almost honestly asleep. “Please don’t give up yet.”
*
The burns aren’t that bad. Second-degree, which Hank explains to him in unnecessary detail. Hank pulls out pictures in a medical book that look substantially grosser than the burns on Alex’s arms and describes them like they’re Valentine’s cards.
Then Hank shows him the ointment he’s supposed to spread on the burned skin to prevent infection and scarring. He explains how the healing process will work, talking slowly, casually, his right hand waving in the air while his left rests on Alex’s shoulder. Alex kind of likes Hank like this. He’s almost grateful for his dream—his nightmare—and the subsequent pain. He likes being touched on a part of his body that isn’t burned, a part that hadn’t hurt before Hank put his hand there and then taken it away. When Alex takes his creams and gauze and leaves, he hunches his shoulders inwards, keeping the pressure of Hank’s hand in his mind, the ache of it keeping the sting of the burns at bay.
*
Hank comes to his room every morning before breakfast and helps him change out of his suit (it’s the only way they could think of to keep his powers controlled at night) and puts a new coat of bandages on. They don’t really talk. Hank just grumbles about coffee and glares at Alex’s wrists.
Hank’s a lot bigger than Alex is. And he’s got claws and giant hands and sometimes in the mornings Alex has trouble breathing through the fear.
*
Alex doesn’t tell them why it happened. About the queer fucking dream he’d had, how he’d been on his knees taking it like a whore, like a girl, like a sissy. He doesn’t talk to Sean at all because every time he gets close to him he can’t help thinking about Sean’s flat stomach and his dick and whether or not his come would taste different than Alex’s own.
He’s a fuck-up and a monster and a—a fag.
Scott’s not queer, even though they’re twins, even though they grew in the same womb and sprang from the same genes. Scott and Jean have been flirting-maybe-dating since she got to the mansion, and Scott touches the other guys so casually it makes Alex hurt.
*
Slowly, Alex is fading away. He uses his individual meals—smoothies, his fingers too badly burnt to hold silverware—as an excuse not to go to the dining room for meals. Hank rewraps his bandages every morning and every night and as soon as the burns are gone Alex is going to run away. Steal a credit card and maybe a car and head south. Maybe Pennsylvania, maybe Virginia—he’ll have to get a map. He doesn’t know anything outside of DC, outside of cell block B, outside of the mansion and its acres of land that he’s already starting to miss.
When Charles announces that he and Hank are going to be flying to DC for a weekend to eavesdrop on some hush-hush CIA meeting, Alex figures that it’ll be the best chance he’s going to get to leave. He packs a suitcase and steals from Xavier’s wallet (wrong, it feels so wrong, but he’s doing them all a favor, they’ll figure that out in the end). He’s ready to go. He falls asleep Friday night with his drawers emptied and his suitcase full. Saturday morning Sean wakes him up, pounding on his door.
“Hank said you need help,” Sean hollers through Alex’s closed door. “With your burns? And the bandages? I have extra gunk and Hank already showed me how to smear it on you, so you might as well let me in. I’m gonna nurse the hell outta you,” Sean says proudly when Alex opens the door.
“I don’t need help,” he says, even though he does. He’s weirdly grateful that Hank had remembered to set something up for him. Even if his back-up nurse is Sean. Sean and his floppy hair and his jokes that Alex doesn’t get and his long fingers that make Alex’s thoughts drift too far away.
“Eh, I’m already awake,” Sean counters, pushing his way inside. “And Hank will be mad if I don’t do what he says, so get ready to get gunked!”
Sean is spreading all of his supplies out on the bed. Alex’s suitcase is inches away from the tips of his bare toes.
“It’s not gunk,” Alex says. “It’s lotion. Anti-bacterial.” The word feels weird on his tongue but Sean doesn’t even blink so he must have pronounced it right.
“Cool. Now get your shirt off.” Sean is wiggling his eyebrows. He stops after a second. Maybe he remembered which twin he was talking to. Maybe he saw how quickly Alex blushed or how tense he got.
Hank usually undoes the zipper on Alex’s uniform for him. It’s not at a weird angle or anything, but the tag on the zipper digs into the tips of his fingers painfully and the gauze on his hand catches on the teeth.
“Let me?” Sean’s tentative, with his words and with his fingers, carefully taking the zipper down and easing the padded leather over Alex’s burned skin. They dress Alex’s hands and arms first. Sean babbles the whole time, about doctors and arcade games and even about Scott, for a little bit, when he talks about an adventure Alex hadn’t been a part of.
“It must suck to have to sleep in the uniform,” Sean says, his voice too close to Alex’s ear. “I bet it gets really hot. And smelly. How are we supposed to wash these, anyway? I doubt we’re just supposed to stick them in the washer—”
“Hank doesn’t talk this much when he does my bandages,” Alex growls, shivering when Sean’s finger brushes the inside of his elbow.
“Well, Hank’s cranky in the morning. He needs coffee and sugar before he’s really human. Uh—as human as Hank can get, anyway.”
“He just doesn’t like me,” Alex says with a careful shrug, tucking the loose end of the bandage on his forearm neatly away.
“Of course he likes you,” Sean says. “You’ve got that whole James Dean lone wolf thing going for you. Very cool. If anything, he’s just intimidated by you.”
Alex tries to laugh. It comes out wrong, though, choked and unhappy, mangled by the tightness in his throat.
Sean boggles at him. “You’re not—I mean, do you seriously think that Hank doesn’t like you?”
Alex takes the extra ointment from Sean and puts it on the bed. He’ll pack it in the suitcase after Sean leaves. Couldn’t hurt to have more of it. “No one likes me,” he says, pushing Sean out of his thoughts while trying to herd him out of the room. “So don’t fucking lie to me, I’m not in the mood for bullshit. And we’re done here, so just—just get out.”
“I’m not—are you—stop pushing me!” Sean’s arms are spread wide, his elbows banging against either side of the doorframe.
“Get out of my room,” Alex growls.
“No.” Sean starts to fold his arms but throws them back up when Alex goes for the doorknob. “You’re not—we should—I just...”
“Sentences,” Alex snaps. “Try one.”
“You were really skinny,” Sean says, his voice small, and Alex grabs his t-shirt off the bed and pulls it on because he hasn’t gained enough of it back yet, not according to Hank, even though before the burns he’d eaten until he felt sick and made himself sit in the dining room for almost every meal just so that he could eat Sean’s cooking. “You were really skinny and I almost didn’t notice, even though I watch you all the time, and I figured out it was because you don’t really hang out with me. With us. With anyone,” and Alex is going to blast him with plasma beams just to get him to shut up, to get the sordid taste of his loneliness out of Sean’s mouth. “I thought we were friends,” Sean says, and Alex nods because he’d thought that, too. “And I want—maybe—”
Sean’s blushing, and it doesn’t look good on him, doesn’t look attractive. Really. His face is turning a dark red, darker than his freckles, darker than his hair. It’s spreading down his neck (how far down does it go...?), his eyes are black and he looks flushed, feverish—hot. “Maybe I want to be more than friends,” Sean says, holding onto the doorframe so tightly that his knuckles have gone white.
“That doesn’t mean—I’m not bent or anything,” Sean adds quickly, flinching away from Alex.
“I’m not either,” Alex says, even though he does want to kiss Sean, wants to kiss him even though Sean is a boy and too tall and loud and it’s wrong, wrong wrong wrong wrong. Alex already has enough sins, already has too many burdens to lift, he does not need more.
Sean lets his arms fall. Alex could push him out of the room, he could, if he could just—
Alex can’t move but Sean is stepping forward, so slow it’s like they’re both underwater; distorted and buoyed. Sean’s bare feet drift across the carpet, bringing him too close to Alex, Alex who is breathing through his nose which makes the whole world smells like medicine and morning breath and maybe that’s what he tastes like when Sean kisses him. Maybe he tastes like morning and medicine, because surely sin doesn’t have a taste of its own.
“Come downstairs,” Sean says, pulling away. The blush on his face is just as violent but now his lips match. They’re wet. Alex thinks he may have licked them or bit them, doesn’t know, can’t remember, can’t think beyond yes. He knows that his own lips are wet and the bottom one is still tingling. “And I’ll, uh—I’ll make you some breakfast.”
*
When they kiss in the kitchen they both taste like coffee and pancakes.
Alex doesn’t leave.
*
He and Sean are not dating. No matter what Hank has to say about it—and he has a lot to say about it, teasing them in gentler tones than he usually uses with Alex—they are not dating, because they are not queer.
But sometimes, times like tonight, they end up on the couch together in the living room, their sides pressed up against each other, Sean’s arm slung over Alex’s shoulder.
He’s been pinching himself a lot over the past couple of weeks. His arms are still tender from the dream that had burnt his room down, and he keeps pinching himself because no way can it have become real, and be this good, be his.
“You should talk to Scott,” Sean says, knocking his knee against Alex’s. “He keeps whining that I’m monopolizing your time.”
Alex swallows hard.
“He does want to talk to you,” Sean says, his head tilted so that his breath brushes against Alex’s neck. “Really, he does.”
Alex promises to talk to Scott just to get Sean to stop talking and move on to other—better—pursuits.
*
He grabs Scott the next day when he’s walking through the hallway with Jean and pulls him into the library, Jean’s worried-but-understanding expression making him angry, the tender skin of his hands smarting from the rough weave of Scott’s sweater vest.
“I don’t know what I did,” Scott says, as soon as Alex shuts the door behind them. “But I’m sure that I’m sorry and I’ll never do it again, please don’t hurt me—” Alex thinks Scott is mostly joking, but he doesn’t care. He already feels threatened; feels dangerous. Scott should be afraid of him.
“What were their names?”
Scott’s standing on the rug in front of the fireplace, right where Alex pushed him, the flames glinting off of his hair and glasses. Alex stays by the door, staring at the pattern in the oak panels. It’s raised and real underneath his raw fingertips.
“Whose names?” Scott asks slowly.
“Mom and Dad. I don’t remember them,” Alex says shortly. “Or you. At all. So—” he can feel the words starting to choke inside of him already, fuck, he keeps his hand on the doorknob because he needs to know that he can escape. “Will you just tell me what their goddamn names were? Please?”
“Oh,” Scott whispers. “Yeah, I can—I can do that. Mom’s name was Katherine Anne,” he says, so quiet that the crackling of the damp logs becomes part of her name, an unexpected accent mark, Katherine Anne and fire. “And Dad’s name was Christian.”
“What’s my name?” Alex asks, his voice like a set of creaky stairs, threatening to break under too much weight.
“Alexander.” Alex nods because he’d guessed that, guessed that it was short for something, Alexander or maybe Alexei because what if he was Russian, or named after a Russian ancestor, maybe Alex had been a nickname or something a social worker had made up. “You’re Alexander Christian Summers.” And it hurts, hurts like his chest is being crushed. They’d named him. “Your name is Alexander Summers, and you’re my twin, and we were born on September 8th, 1944.
“They talked about you all the time,” Scott says, still standing half a room away, his hands empty and splayed open like an offering, like a priest giving benediction instead of a baptism. “They looked for you for years, they looked everywhere they could think of, but you—the records must have gotten lost or something—I don’t know. They wanted you back so much,” and Scott’s breaking Alex’s heart, he is, he’s hammering at something inside of Alex’s chest that has nothing to do with the red flames that live inside of him but everything to do with his burnt hands, and the tears running down his face.
“You’re my brother,” Scott says, and it’s the most important thing that Alex hears. Family, his family, he has family, and they don’t—they didn’t—
They’d wanted him. All the years he’d spent bouncing between temporary homes, the years spent behind grey walls, talking to his own echo—and somewhere out in the world, his family had been looking for him. Missing him. Loving him.
*
He is still more echo than man, more shadow than friend. He haunts the edges of the mansion, missing fallen teammates and remembering smaller, darker rooms. But when he wanders the basement now he doesn’t hide out in the hallway, and when he sits on the couch he calls out to the people who pass him by, and when he sits on the counter in the kitchen while Sean makes him dinner he thinks about redefining family and finding home.
*
Feedback is loved and adoredjust like Nicholas Hoult in glasses!
Fandom: X-Men First Class
Pairing: Alex/Sean
Rating: PG-13
Betas: The ever-fabulous elrhiarhodan, rabidchild67, and coffeethyme4me! [Uh, when I tried to make the names into links, LJ ate my entire post. Twice. O.o]
Notes: This was originally posted as an xmen_firstkink fill here.
Warnings: Internalized homophobia, homophobic language.
Prompt/summary: Alex and Scott aren't only brothers, they're twins. When Charles finally finds Scott, Hank seems to think that Scott is finally someone smart enough to talk science with and Sean seems to hero worship him. Slowly Alex starts to convince himself that he is the evil twin and that is why nobody likes him anymore. Over a few weeks he starts to withdraw from everybody until the gang finally figures it out.
*
"He doesn't look like you," Sean says, and Alex elbows him in the stomach. "What? I'm just saying!" Alex glares at him until he shuts up and then turns back to the window. Scott—his brother Scott—has dark brown hair and tinted sunglasses and is standing right outside the car, in the middle of the driveway, looking awkward. "What's wrong with him?"
"Shoots lasers out of his eyes," Alex says, watching Hank rush out of the house to get the professor's chair from the trunk.
"Damn," Sean says admiringly. "I'm gonna go help, you want to come?" Alex shakes his head.
Alex stays at the window and watches Sean shake Scott's hand, watches them laugh, watches Hank help the professor inside while Scott places his hand in the crook of Sean's elbow and lets himself be steered into the mansion.
He doesn't remember Scott. He'd hoped that he would when he saw his face, figured it'd jog his memory and all of a sudden he'd remember this boy, would remember his childhood and their parents and being left behind—but he doesn't.
*
Charles introduces them, all of the X-Men standing in the grand foyer watching Alex and Scott like they're some sort of TV show. It makes Alex uncomfortable. He reaches his hand out to shake before he realizes that Scott can't see it, and then he feels stupid so he just glares.
"Alex has been looking forward to meeting you," Xavier says to Scott.
Scott sort of smiles and turns his head like he forgot he can't figure out where Alex is just by looking for him.
"Hi," Alex says, after Hank kicks his ankle and Sean shoves him between the shoulder blades.
Scott turns towards him, looking right exactly at him even though Alex knows his eyes are closed. He swallows and looks at Scott's face and tries not to think about what would happen if Scott's power was directed at him, if it would hurt, if their joint red flames would match or react or grow.
He doesn't know what to do when Scott reaches out for him. So he just freezes while Scott's fingers clumsily trace his face. He feels like an animal on display, like he's being examined by one of the lewder guards, like he should let Scott know that people who touch him get hurt.
He closes his eyes when Scott hugs him, shivers when Scott whispers his name, "Alex," right against his ear. The hug's making him feel claustrophobic. Trapped.
He can't remember ever being held like this before.
He'd—sort of—he'd fantasized about it, with Angel (and once when he was drunk, Darwin), but Scott's body is real and hot and close and pressed up against him. It's intimate without being sensual and Alex wants to punch Scott for turning all of Alex's jerk-off fantasies into bad jokes, pale caricatures of contact.
"I missed you so much," Scott says, and Alex realizes that Scott is crying. He's pretty sure that he should, like, hug Scott back, or pat him on the head or tell him it's gonna be okay but he doesn't really want to encourage Scott to cry any more and he's not sure how to get his arms around Scott without dislodging Scott's arms and he maybe doesn't want Scott to let go. "I'm so glad you're okay," Scott says, and Alex keeps his eyes closed and nods and doesn't disagree.
*
Scott spends a lot of time in the lab, so Alex spends a lot of time right outside the lab. Hank doesn't want Alex around, hasn't since the change, so he knows better than to invite himself in. There's a small window in the door and if he stands right up against the wall he gets a decent view without drawing attention to himself.
Scott's powers are tremendous. They're a lot like Alex's, but more directed and focused. Scott doesn't have to do a ridiculous dance to summon his power, it doesn't need to be collected and controlled. But then, Alex hasn't had to keep his eyes closed for years, so. It evens out.
It only takes a couple of days for Hank to put together some glasses. They're a sort of purple color and they give Scott headaches, but he can open his eyes now without putting holes in the walls. Alex watches them celebrate through the slat of a window and then leaves.
*
He avoids Scott for the better part of the day, even though Xavier finds him on the roof before dinner and sends him a mental sigh of disappointment. Alex thinks fuck off as loudly as he can and stays outside until the sun sets.
Scott's waiting outside Alex's bedroom when he slips in through a window, and he wastes a minute being pissed at Charles before he realizes Scott's getting closer to him, reaching out for him, and he really doesn't want Scott to touch him again so soon.
"Are you still blond?"
He takes a step back but the wall is closer than he thought, the molding pressing against his shoulder.
"It's just—I'm still figuring out colors, but your hair seems lighter than the rest of you, so—are you still blond? Mom was blonde, too."
He nods and for a selfish minute wishes Scott had never gotten his sight back. Wishes he'd stayed out on the roof longer. When Scott had been blind, he hadn't been a threat. When he couldn't see Alex, he couldn't—Alex figures he'd be harder to hate if you couldn't look at him.
"I'm—it's good to see you," Scott says, and Alex nods and doesn't look at his face. "I guess I'll head to bed."
Alex waits until Scott turns the corner before going back out the window.
*
The house gets more and more crowded as Xavier recruits new mutants, and it makes Alex nervous. Or angry. Depends on the day. He keeps to himself and gets a reputation as a loner, a badass, an asshole.
He misses Erik a lot. The way he'd rolled his eyes at Sean when he babbled or poked fun at Charles when he waxed poetic. The way he'd been like a shield, a strong quiet wall that Alex had sometimes needed to hide behind.
Now Erik's gone, and sometimes it seems like Alex is the only angry one left. His powers make him a mutant. His personality is what's making him a freak.
*
Hank likes Scott. And Hank doesn't like anybody these days. Now, whenever Alex goes by the lab, it seems like they're in there together, chattering away, pushing pieces of ruby glass between them and talking about telescopes and geology and refraction patterns. Alex had taken his GED when he was locked up, and he'd been kind of proud of his scores, but when he tries to listen to Hank and Scott's conversations he only understands maybe one word out of three.
The next time he makes dinner he goes down to the lab himself to fetch them. "Come on, lovebirds," he hollers from the open door, stepping through like he belongs there, grinning when Hank drops his tweezers.
"Jerk," Hank mutters, pushing Alex aside as he leaves. Scott punches Alex playfully on the shoulder and jogs to catch up with Hank. Alex closes the door to the lab a bit harder than necessary and tries to feel like he won that one.
*
Scott remembers their parents.
Alex doesn't remember anything from before his fourth birthday. He'd—he'd made up versions of his parents in his head. Which he hasn't ever told anyone but kind of wants to tell Scott because Scott's nice and quiet and his brother, and maybe he'd understand.
When Alex was a kid and stupid enough to still be lonely he'd imagined a dad who would love him and a mom who would want to hold him, imagined that the foster homes were temporary and maybe someone would like him enough to take him out. They sent a lot of things home with Alex—mostly notes addressed to his parents that he gave to his guardians, notes he could barely read but easily understood. They explained how Alex had problems, how Alex was stupid, how Alex needed help.
Scott remembers who their parents actually were and it takes Alex weeks to work up the nerve to ask about them. "They loved us," Scott whispers, new glasses glowing red in the dark. Alex nods and turns away and leaves Scott's bedroom and goes to the bunker and blows shit up until he's got nothing left except his voice so he just screams.
His temporary guardians had taken care of him, but they’d been paid to, and his real mom and dad had maybe loved him but what if Scott was lying, what if Scott was wrong, what if Scott was the kid they wanted and Alex was the one they didn't love and gave away? Maybe Alex was the broken brother, the evil twin, the one who wasn't supposed to have a family.
*
"When's our birthday?"
"September 8th," Scott says. He fidgets with his pockets while Alex stares at the radio. "I always...I forget that you don't know things, sometimes." Alex shrugs and bites his lip. He doesn't know a lot of things. He doesn't know his parents' first names (he has so many questions he's been rationing them out; names are next on his list), doesn't know what Scott and Hank talk about in the lab or who any of the bands are that Sean won’t stop talking about. He doesn't know how to not be jealous of Scott.
*
He's on the roof again when Sean comes to find him. "The professor told me where you were," Sean says, scooting cautiously up the shingles to rest on the peaked rooftop next to Alex. "And then he told me not to tell you that. I'm kind of crap at secrets," he says cheerfully.
Alex doesn't have any secrets that belong to other people, but he thinks if he did, he would keep them.
"We're going into town tomorrow," Sean says, wiggling slowly down the roof and then carefully laying down, staring up at the moon.
"You scared of heights?"
"I keep thinking Erik's about to push me," Sean admits. "Hasn't quite sunk in fully that he's gone. And that I can fly now. Plus, I don't have my suit on." Alex takes a deep breath and slides down to lie next to Sean. "So, are you going to come into town with us, or what?" He says yes and Sean stays with him for a few more minutes.
*
He goes to a department store while the others pick up groceries. He's getting sick of wearing sweatsuits all the time. He picks up jeans in a couple of different sizes and spends the rest of the afternoon trying on different clothes. Figuring out which fabrics feel best against his skin, which sizes he's supposed to wear, what styles he likes. He shoves down any guilt about abusing Xavier's credit card and tries on a suit. A button-down shirt and a tie and a jacket. He looks like someone else. Someone untouchable. Important. Adult. He feels like Erik.
He's in the middle of changing outfits when Sean finds him to let him know it's time to leave. He pops into the hall outside the dressing room without any warning. "You've lost weight," Sean says, staring at Alex's shirtless reflection. "A lot of weight." Alex snatches up his hoodie and pulls it on quickly, glaring at Sean in the mirror as soon as it's back on.
"Didn't know you were fucking bent," he snarls, and Sean stiffens. "Did you enjoy the free show?"
"I'm not a pervert," Sean says, turning to leave. "Just—just see Hank when you get back, okay? You might be sick. Asshole."
*
He only buys a couple pairs of pants and doesn't see Hank when he gets back or think about how dark Sean's freckles got when he blushed.
Hank hunts him down a couple of days later anyway, and Alex spends the whole examination mentally cursing at Sean. "You certainly have lost weight," Hank murmurs. He touches Alex when he says it, one big blue paw resting right on his shoulder. Alex freezes, not sure if he likes it or not, not sure what signals to send that could say don't stop touching me and if you try to fuck me I'll bite your goddamn dick off.
Hank's nostrils flare and he backs off. "You need to eat more," Hank says, fiddling with something on the counter. It looks like a miniature jungle gym. A twisted collection of thin metal strips that bend and reform under Hank's capable hands. "You've been using your powers more and more, keeping up with your training regimen, and that burns calories at an exponential rate. If you lose much more weight it's going to start impeding your vital organ function—"
"Spare me the lecture," Alex interrupts, because he's not going to ask what exponential or impeding mean.
Hank sighs and puts down the metal toy, all stretched out into a long tube shape. "When you use your powers, it's just like any other kind of exercise. It uses energy. A lot of energy. So you should make sure to eat foods that are rich in fat and protein, okay?"
Alex catches a glimpse of red out of the corner of his eye. Sean's in the hallway. Looking in through Alex's window. His cheeks flare up in a violent blush—he hadn't realized quite how visible that window was. The others must have seen him through it a time or two. He wonders if they were laughing at him and not just some joke he didn't know when they were all huddled in there together.
"Are you finished?" he growls. There's a cookbook in Xavier's library that'll probably explain which foods have fat and which ones have protein. He doesn't want to stay in the lab any longer than he has to.
"Yes, I'm finished," Hank says. "Come back in a week for a check-up, okay? Alex—"
He bolts out of the room and shoves Sean into a wall as he passes him. "Thanks for nothing," he says with a glare.
"You're welcome!" Sean's cheerful voice echoes down the hallway after him.
*
He makes sure to tell Scott later that evening. He figures their powers are pretty similar, so Scott will need to eat more nuts and meat, too. But Scott already knows. He'd figured it out when Hank had explained how their power works.
He doesn't ask Scott what his parents' names are and he leaves before Scott asks anything of him.
*
Sean starts cooking dinner. Simple meals that leave lots of leftovers and have too much spice. Meals that are full of all of the ingredients that Alex had laboriously copied out of the cookbook—the cookbook that's missing from the library.
On Saturday Sean tries out a pasta sauce full of protein chunks.
No one likes the protein chunks.
They complain all through dinner, and Sean just hollers back at them. Not once does he say anything about Alex's powers, how he hadn't known how his own body worked. Alex forces himself to eat everything on his plate and doesn't look at Sean. He doesn't find him after dinner, either, to say thank you or sorry or I like your freckles.
*
He's never had friends to lose before. And he—he misses them. He feels like he did in his first month of solitary, when he'd been greedy for just the sound of footsteps passing by his cell.
He sits in the living room, glaring at the TV and trying not to look lonely, hoping someone will wander by to hang out with him. But Sean and Scott and Hank spend most of their time in the lab nowadays. They show up for dinner smelling like chemicals and laughing about what new thing Sean's destroyed or how cool Scott's new glasses look. Hank's blossoming under the attention. Even Alex can tell that. Awkward Hank—the one person that Alex had been pretty sure was less comfortable with people than he was—awkward Hank is flourishing.
Alex tries to read books, since he's alone and stupid, but they make his eyes hurt and he's not going to ask the professor to get him glasses because he's not a nerd and he doesn't want to seem like he's copycatting his brother. Plus one of the first books he picked up was The Three Musketeers, which is what Jean, the new girl, had called the other boys.
He thinks maybe he was in jail when everyone else was learning what to do with friends. How to make them laugh and like you and want to hang out with you. He thinks maybe he was in jail, locked up because he'd hurt people—don't touch me—and this is just a natural continuation of his sentence.
The two weeks after Charles got him out of prison, when they were still at the CIA base (before Alex killed Darwin), were the two best weeks of his life. He'd kind of hoped that it was the start of something new. The beginning of a life where he was part of a team.
*
The night he dreams about sucking Sean's dick, he sets his bedroom on fire. He wakes up surrounded by flames. He can hear the roar of his mattress catching on fire. He rolls out of bed, ignoring the pain in his arms and chest, and grabs the fire extinguisher he'd hung by the door.
Hank's there seconds later. He throws Alex's curtains into the hallway and pulls the bed into the center of the room so it won't spread. Sean and Scott arrive together. Sean tries to sonic out the flames, but it just fans them. Scott comes back with two more fire extinguishers and that gets the job done just fine.
When the flames are gone, Alex looks down at his arms, the blistering burns already rising, and passes out.
*
When he wakes up, he’s in the lab. It’s cold. He recognizes it from the days of waiting at Xavier’s bedside, the weeks of watching his brother make friends behind closed doors. He can hear machines humming and the sound of his own breath and nothing else. There are bandages wrapped around his arms and taped over the left side of his chest. His skin feels tight and his heart’s beating too loudly and the room’s so empty it aches.
He could have killed them. Could have burnt the mansion down around their sleeping bodies; the professor in his bed, unable to move; Hank surrounded by all his chemicals; Scott without his glasses—
He clenches his hands into fists and the pain burns from the palms of his hands up his arms. Bad enough that the machines around him start beeping and the thoughts in his head quiet down. Monster. Killer.
Hank rushes in, and Sean—wheeling the professor—isn’t far behind him. A rush of sympathy and good intentions and loud questions. Alex tries not to wish for Erik because the professor will hear it and it’s useless and cruel, but he still wants it and so the skin around Xavier’s eyes tightens. Or maybe that’s just what happens when he looks at Alex. Maybe that’s what’s always going to happen now because Alex is dangerous, he’s given them proof, they all know that it’s not just easier to push Alex away, it’s safer.
Alex wants Erik and his honest, cutting comments, wants to be bathed in the chill of his anger, he wants the Erik who had glared at every single man in uniform they’d passed while leaving the prison instead of Charles, soft stupid Charles who had smiled at them, had thanked the men guarding the doors, had rolled his eyes at Erik’s stubbornness.
No one’s smiling now.
“Are you okay?” All of them are asking; it’s a symphony of questions, a barrage.
Alex squeezes his hands into fists again and the machines beep like an angry chorus. Xavier reaches forward to stop him or hold him or slap him. Out of the corner of his eye Alex can see Scott peeking through the doorway—the open door that Alex knows so well when it’s closed—and it hurts, it all hurts, he doesn’t know where the fire starts or where his body is supposed to end.
Hank injects him with something that burns like ice and it takes him back to sleep.
*
Jean’s there the next time he wakes up. Her red hair a curtain around her face, bent over a book. He tries not to move but she turns, startled, her hair a smooth wave.
“I’ll tell the professor,” she says, but she stops with her hand barely raised towards the intercom. “You hurt,” she says, and Alex nods. “You hurt so badly,” she whispers, and when she leaves the room at a near-run Alex remembers that she’s a telepath.
The professor’s there soon, looking drawn and serious. “I’m not going to send you back to prison,” is the first thing that Charles says, his chair bumping gently against the bed.
“Then—where?” Alex’s voice sticks in his dry throat. Because the professor can’t keep him here, not with people around, people he’ll end up hurting. At least in prison he would get fed, he’d have clothes and a bed—Xavier couldn’t send him back to one of the foster homes, could he? Alex is too old, too angry, they wouldn’t take him anyway, not with his record. Xavier wouldn’t just kick him out on the streets. He—he wouldn’t.
“Alex,” Charles says quietly, and maybe he uses his telepathy to boost it because somehow it cuts through the frantic beat of Alex’s heart and the irregular thrum of power that lives underneath his skin, “you’re not going anywhere. This is your home. We are your family.”
He’ll take Xavier’s word about the room and board, because he’s got no other choice, not yet. But he knows the rest of it can’t be true.
“Thanks,” he says, turning his face away from Xavier because the rest of him hurts too much to just get up and walk away.
“Please don’t give up yet,” Xavier whispers, after the lights in the room have dimmed and Alex is almost honestly asleep. “Please don’t give up yet.”
*
The burns aren’t that bad. Second-degree, which Hank explains to him in unnecessary detail. Hank pulls out pictures in a medical book that look substantially grosser than the burns on Alex’s arms and describes them like they’re Valentine’s cards.
Then Hank shows him the ointment he’s supposed to spread on the burned skin to prevent infection and scarring. He explains how the healing process will work, talking slowly, casually, his right hand waving in the air while his left rests on Alex’s shoulder. Alex kind of likes Hank like this. He’s almost grateful for his dream—his nightmare—and the subsequent pain. He likes being touched on a part of his body that isn’t burned, a part that hadn’t hurt before Hank put his hand there and then taken it away. When Alex takes his creams and gauze and leaves, he hunches his shoulders inwards, keeping the pressure of Hank’s hand in his mind, the ache of it keeping the sting of the burns at bay.
*
Hank comes to his room every morning before breakfast and helps him change out of his suit (it’s the only way they could think of to keep his powers controlled at night) and puts a new coat of bandages on. They don’t really talk. Hank just grumbles about coffee and glares at Alex’s wrists.
Hank’s a lot bigger than Alex is. And he’s got claws and giant hands and sometimes in the mornings Alex has trouble breathing through the fear.
*
Alex doesn’t tell them why it happened. About the queer fucking dream he’d had, how he’d been on his knees taking it like a whore, like a girl, like a sissy. He doesn’t talk to Sean at all because every time he gets close to him he can’t help thinking about Sean’s flat stomach and his dick and whether or not his come would taste different than Alex’s own.
He’s a fuck-up and a monster and a—a fag.
Scott’s not queer, even though they’re twins, even though they grew in the same womb and sprang from the same genes. Scott and Jean have been flirting-maybe-dating since she got to the mansion, and Scott touches the other guys so casually it makes Alex hurt.
*
Slowly, Alex is fading away. He uses his individual meals—smoothies, his fingers too badly burnt to hold silverware—as an excuse not to go to the dining room for meals. Hank rewraps his bandages every morning and every night and as soon as the burns are gone Alex is going to run away. Steal a credit card and maybe a car and head south. Maybe Pennsylvania, maybe Virginia—he’ll have to get a map. He doesn’t know anything outside of DC, outside of cell block B, outside of the mansion and its acres of land that he’s already starting to miss.
When Charles announces that he and Hank are going to be flying to DC for a weekend to eavesdrop on some hush-hush CIA meeting, Alex figures that it’ll be the best chance he’s going to get to leave. He packs a suitcase and steals from Xavier’s wallet (wrong, it feels so wrong, but he’s doing them all a favor, they’ll figure that out in the end). He’s ready to go. He falls asleep Friday night with his drawers emptied and his suitcase full. Saturday morning Sean wakes him up, pounding on his door.
“Hank said you need help,” Sean hollers through Alex’s closed door. “With your burns? And the bandages? I have extra gunk and Hank already showed me how to smear it on you, so you might as well let me in. I’m gonna nurse the hell outta you,” Sean says proudly when Alex opens the door.
“I don’t need help,” he says, even though he does. He’s weirdly grateful that Hank had remembered to set something up for him. Even if his back-up nurse is Sean. Sean and his floppy hair and his jokes that Alex doesn’t get and his long fingers that make Alex’s thoughts drift too far away.
“Eh, I’m already awake,” Sean counters, pushing his way inside. “And Hank will be mad if I don’t do what he says, so get ready to get gunked!”
Sean is spreading all of his supplies out on the bed. Alex’s suitcase is inches away from the tips of his bare toes.
“It’s not gunk,” Alex says. “It’s lotion. Anti-bacterial.” The word feels weird on his tongue but Sean doesn’t even blink so he must have pronounced it right.
“Cool. Now get your shirt off.” Sean is wiggling his eyebrows. He stops after a second. Maybe he remembered which twin he was talking to. Maybe he saw how quickly Alex blushed or how tense he got.
Hank usually undoes the zipper on Alex’s uniform for him. It’s not at a weird angle or anything, but the tag on the zipper digs into the tips of his fingers painfully and the gauze on his hand catches on the teeth.
“Let me?” Sean’s tentative, with his words and with his fingers, carefully taking the zipper down and easing the padded leather over Alex’s burned skin. They dress Alex’s hands and arms first. Sean babbles the whole time, about doctors and arcade games and even about Scott, for a little bit, when he talks about an adventure Alex hadn’t been a part of.
“It must suck to have to sleep in the uniform,” Sean says, his voice too close to Alex’s ear. “I bet it gets really hot. And smelly. How are we supposed to wash these, anyway? I doubt we’re just supposed to stick them in the washer—”
“Hank doesn’t talk this much when he does my bandages,” Alex growls, shivering when Sean’s finger brushes the inside of his elbow.
“Well, Hank’s cranky in the morning. He needs coffee and sugar before he’s really human. Uh—as human as Hank can get, anyway.”
“He just doesn’t like me,” Alex says with a careful shrug, tucking the loose end of the bandage on his forearm neatly away.
“Of course he likes you,” Sean says. “You’ve got that whole James Dean lone wolf thing going for you. Very cool. If anything, he’s just intimidated by you.”
Alex tries to laugh. It comes out wrong, though, choked and unhappy, mangled by the tightness in his throat.
Sean boggles at him. “You’re not—I mean, do you seriously think that Hank doesn’t like you?”
Alex takes the extra ointment from Sean and puts it on the bed. He’ll pack it in the suitcase after Sean leaves. Couldn’t hurt to have more of it. “No one likes me,” he says, pushing Sean out of his thoughts while trying to herd him out of the room. “So don’t fucking lie to me, I’m not in the mood for bullshit. And we’re done here, so just—just get out.”
“I’m not—are you—stop pushing me!” Sean’s arms are spread wide, his elbows banging against either side of the doorframe.
“Get out of my room,” Alex growls.
“No.” Sean starts to fold his arms but throws them back up when Alex goes for the doorknob. “You’re not—we should—I just...”
“Sentences,” Alex snaps. “Try one.”
“You were really skinny,” Sean says, his voice small, and Alex grabs his t-shirt off the bed and pulls it on because he hasn’t gained enough of it back yet, not according to Hank, even though before the burns he’d eaten until he felt sick and made himself sit in the dining room for almost every meal just so that he could eat Sean’s cooking. “You were really skinny and I almost didn’t notice, even though I watch you all the time, and I figured out it was because you don’t really hang out with me. With us. With anyone,” and Alex is going to blast him with plasma beams just to get him to shut up, to get the sordid taste of his loneliness out of Sean’s mouth. “I thought we were friends,” Sean says, and Alex nods because he’d thought that, too. “And I want—maybe—”
Sean’s blushing, and it doesn’t look good on him, doesn’t look attractive. Really. His face is turning a dark red, darker than his freckles, darker than his hair. It’s spreading down his neck (how far down does it go...?), his eyes are black and he looks flushed, feverish—hot. “Maybe I want to be more than friends,” Sean says, holding onto the doorframe so tightly that his knuckles have gone white.
“That doesn’t mean—I’m not bent or anything,” Sean adds quickly, flinching away from Alex.
“I’m not either,” Alex says, even though he does want to kiss Sean, wants to kiss him even though Sean is a boy and too tall and loud and it’s wrong, wrong wrong wrong wrong. Alex already has enough sins, already has too many burdens to lift, he does not need more.
Sean lets his arms fall. Alex could push him out of the room, he could, if he could just—
Alex can’t move but Sean is stepping forward, so slow it’s like they’re both underwater; distorted and buoyed. Sean’s bare feet drift across the carpet, bringing him too close to Alex, Alex who is breathing through his nose which makes the whole world smells like medicine and morning breath and maybe that’s what he tastes like when Sean kisses him. Maybe he tastes like morning and medicine, because surely sin doesn’t have a taste of its own.
“Come downstairs,” Sean says, pulling away. The blush on his face is just as violent but now his lips match. They’re wet. Alex thinks he may have licked them or bit them, doesn’t know, can’t remember, can’t think beyond yes. He knows that his own lips are wet and the bottom one is still tingling. “And I’ll, uh—I’ll make you some breakfast.”
*
When they kiss in the kitchen they both taste like coffee and pancakes.
Alex doesn’t leave.
*
He and Sean are not dating. No matter what Hank has to say about it—and he has a lot to say about it, teasing them in gentler tones than he usually uses with Alex—they are not dating, because they are not queer.
But sometimes, times like tonight, they end up on the couch together in the living room, their sides pressed up against each other, Sean’s arm slung over Alex’s shoulder.
He’s been pinching himself a lot over the past couple of weeks. His arms are still tender from the dream that had burnt his room down, and he keeps pinching himself because no way can it have become real, and be this good, be his.
“You should talk to Scott,” Sean says, knocking his knee against Alex’s. “He keeps whining that I’m monopolizing your time.”
Alex swallows hard.
“He does want to talk to you,” Sean says, his head tilted so that his breath brushes against Alex’s neck. “Really, he does.”
Alex promises to talk to Scott just to get Sean to stop talking and move on to other—better—pursuits.
*
He grabs Scott the next day when he’s walking through the hallway with Jean and pulls him into the library, Jean’s worried-but-understanding expression making him angry, the tender skin of his hands smarting from the rough weave of Scott’s sweater vest.
“I don’t know what I did,” Scott says, as soon as Alex shuts the door behind them. “But I’m sure that I’m sorry and I’ll never do it again, please don’t hurt me—” Alex thinks Scott is mostly joking, but he doesn’t care. He already feels threatened; feels dangerous. Scott should be afraid of him.
“What were their names?”
Scott’s standing on the rug in front of the fireplace, right where Alex pushed him, the flames glinting off of his hair and glasses. Alex stays by the door, staring at the pattern in the oak panels. It’s raised and real underneath his raw fingertips.
“Whose names?” Scott asks slowly.
“Mom and Dad. I don’t remember them,” Alex says shortly. “Or you. At all. So—” he can feel the words starting to choke inside of him already, fuck, he keeps his hand on the doorknob because he needs to know that he can escape. “Will you just tell me what their goddamn names were? Please?”
“Oh,” Scott whispers. “Yeah, I can—I can do that. Mom’s name was Katherine Anne,” he says, so quiet that the crackling of the damp logs becomes part of her name, an unexpected accent mark, Katherine Anne and fire. “And Dad’s name was Christian.”
“What’s my name?” Alex asks, his voice like a set of creaky stairs, threatening to break under too much weight.
“Alexander.” Alex nods because he’d guessed that, guessed that it was short for something, Alexander or maybe Alexei because what if he was Russian, or named after a Russian ancestor, maybe Alex had been a nickname or something a social worker had made up. “You’re Alexander Christian Summers.” And it hurts, hurts like his chest is being crushed. They’d named him. “Your name is Alexander Summers, and you’re my twin, and we were born on September 8th, 1944.
“They talked about you all the time,” Scott says, still standing half a room away, his hands empty and splayed open like an offering, like a priest giving benediction instead of a baptism. “They looked for you for years, they looked everywhere they could think of, but you—the records must have gotten lost or something—I don’t know. They wanted you back so much,” and Scott’s breaking Alex’s heart, he is, he’s hammering at something inside of Alex’s chest that has nothing to do with the red flames that live inside of him but everything to do with his burnt hands, and the tears running down his face.
“You’re my brother,” Scott says, and it’s the most important thing that Alex hears. Family, his family, he has family, and they don’t—they didn’t—
They’d wanted him. All the years he’d spent bouncing between temporary homes, the years spent behind grey walls, talking to his own echo—and somewhere out in the world, his family had been looking for him. Missing him. Loving him.
*
He is still more echo than man, more shadow than friend. He haunts the edges of the mansion, missing fallen teammates and remembering smaller, darker rooms. But when he wanders the basement now he doesn’t hide out in the hallway, and when he sits on the couch he calls out to the people who pass him by, and when he sits on the counter in the kitchen while Sean makes him dinner he thinks about redefining family and finding home.
*
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