Chapter Text
Nights when Erik visits the mansion—the academy now, too—it's always quiet. There's an absence of a mental reassurance on the brim of their minds. They know that Charles is still there, despite the temporary lack of mental vigilance, but that may be just because the threat is in front of him where his naked eye can watch his every move, see his intentions in the gestures of his body language. Though there isn't a real threat, not from Erik at least, the air still sinks around them in what is a blanket of tension woven with apprehension, as if the older ones who know are still waiting for something volatile to happen.
Alex hates it when Erik visits.
He pads down to the ground level softly, past the bunker and towards the steel frame of the lab. The children are all asleep, and a good portion of the teachers too—because they weren't there for it, they can't understand that dull ache and panic—with the exception of Sean and himself. And he knows what the other is doing that night, from the distinct roll of smoke under his door, the burning scent that carries up in wisps, and Alex knows he is trying to forget. To some extent, they all are.
Naturally, Hank is awake too; Hank is always awake, and Alex wonders when he finds the time to sleep. If it isn't for the food that Alex brings to him, he knows that the research minded man would probably forget to glance up from his whatever-he-is-working on. (Alex watches now, when he sets the plate in front of him until the last morsel is swallowed. Then he waits, arms crossed and expectant, making sure that he keeps it all down and is nourished, healthy.)
Alex thinks about turning on the radio when Hank doesn't turn around—like always—or acknowledge that he had entered. If anything, it will spur Hank to say something, even if it's just a quiet, 'turn that off'. Hank had told him before that he can't work with music or outside distractions, not because he is bad at multitasking, but because he can't . It takes up too much energy to switch from task to task, more time to form a coherent, steady bond back to his research with idle static being interpreted under the surface. Hank is like that, though. He sets all of his focus on one task, one object, until it he makes himself sick with ambition and blocks out everything and everyone that might deter him from his purpose.
It's ridiculous, the blonde thinks and drops his head between his hands, peeking through the cracks of his fingers at the brunette hunched over his table, that he's jealous of inanimate objects and intangible ideas. But he is, because they're what Hank loves most , even if one at a time until the object has been reached and cleared. Alex knows that he's just a juvee kid without a college degree and too many anger problems, but sometimes he wishes that he was interesting enough to snag Hank's attention to just look at him , to just pass into his field of gravity for a moment like he had done one night where everything had burst.
If it weren't for Cuba, for the jeering shock to everyone's tentative emotional state, Alex wonders if things would have gone differently. Hank of course had been emotionally raw, trying to stuff his life back into the jacket of his skin and rearrange it to fit the new skeleton of ideals that Alex had helped institute. The scars hadn't healed enough, Charles, Erik, Raven, the cumulation of energy had struck back and tore through the stitches leaving gaping wounds that had shut Alex out for the better part of the first two months.
Alex secretly blames Erik for taking Hank away from him, just as much as he blames him for the bullet that deflected into his heart's father's spine.
“He's here,” Alex murmurs, voice ghosting over his hands in soft vibrations as he thinks about the lack of one presence in exchange for another overpowering and much unwanted one. “Magneto,” he clarifies, the title like anathema on his tongue, and he feels the burn of stomach acid at the thought of referring to him by what he had once called a father figure, an older brother that he had seen so much of himself in—the hate, the rage, the anger, and all the ways that Erik had seemed to have controlled them, the hope that Alex could control the storm of himself too.
“I know.”
Alex swallows down a bark of anger. Why can't Hank talk to him, to anyone other than Charles—and even that he thinks is out of some wayward guilt that Hank harbors for no reason but that he's Hank and makes up sins to cling to himself like molten strip of iron to a magnet, slowly welding into him. It hurts, and within the last two months of being avoided and not meeting those gorgeous blue eyes, which he misses terribly, he has come to terms with accepting that he is not indestructible and that he can be hurt. Emotional wounds are harder to deal with, but Alex now knows how to stop the bleeding by at least recognizing their existence. It was a minor step, but one that had taken far too long on a road of stunted emotional development and by himself. It had taken others—Charles, Hank, and before-Erik—to act as a catalyst, albeit slowly, the reaction is working.
He doesn't want Hank to have to be alone to be able to reach those conclusions.
He may just be an angry kid without a college degree, and a closet full of resentment and problems, but Alex would like to think that he can see a pinlight of hope in the navy wash of the sky. After Cuba, which is how his memories and character have been compartmentalized in his mind, before-Cuba and after-Cuba, he had told himself that he can't be a brat forever. He can't turn into Magneto.
Sometimes he talks to Sean about it, because Charles is too busy trying to pretend that nothing has changed and focus all his energy on the school, and Hank trying to invent his way out of their broken family and the new dynamics that have been set up. Sean has taken the opposite approach. While Alex is gunning up to dive into adulthood and be the man that he has never had a paragon for, Sean is falling backwards into a safety net of youth and disowning all responsibility for Cuba and the feelings that come with it. He smokes away his problems, halfheartedly whining that everything sucks while Alex dully agrees and refuses the blunt.
One night, the second night that Magneto had broken in and shaken the peace of mind that they had been working on building up, Alex lets Sean tug him away from everything that matters. He coughs on the smoke in his throat, the burning sensation makes him want to shove it away as his eyes water. His best friend laughs, and the next time he passes it to him, he lets the smoke creep down into his lungs in an slow embrace. Sean is looking up at the ceiling, pupils blown and the rims of his eyes a flush pink, and Alex tells him that he's in love with Hank.
“And?” Sean reaches up, fingers clenching in the air a few times before his arm flops back over his head. “Everyone knows. Except Hank. You should tell him,” he drawls the matter-of-fact tone out lazily, words curling around the hazy smoke.
Alex would tell him, and he thinks about doing so almost every time he sits in his lab and watches for a sign that Hank would believe him, much less respond to it. At least Before-Cuba, when he had called Hank childish names that he hadn't meant, he had evoked flustered expressions that were always focused on him .
He would do anything to just have Hank look at him again.
Alex tries again, hoping for something other than an 'I know', even though one of the aspects of Hank that he loves is the expanse of knowledge that makes him seem as if he does know everything. He raps his knuckles against the metal of the table as if to warn him, “Do you hate him, for what he did to the Professor?” To what he did to us is left unsaid, the words hanging between his tongue and the air.
Hank is only a couple feet away from him, perched on a stool like an over sized bird pecking at his work. Before-Cuba, Hank was lanky and almost too thin. Now, he's beyond too thin, Alex thinks and eyes the way that the fabric falls away from his frame, and he can imagine the way that his ribs probably protrude from under his skin. His skin has taken a permanent pallor, either from holing himself in the dim lab, or from lack of nourishment altogether.
Alex still thinks he's beautiful. Even more so, as Hank lifts his head and he sees the glint of sapphire irises for the first time in months, and it nearly takes the breath out of his lungs altogether as if memory alone doesn't do justice to just how shockingly rich the color expands. And he knows he can't live off the memory of Before-Cuba Hank, no matter how much he loves him and he wants to shake him back into the slight progress they had made, because Alex also wants to love After-Cuba Hank just as much, if not more.
“I don't know,” Hank sounds unsure of his own voice, tone falling, “He didn't mean to.”
“He left us, though,” Alex breathes, and he hates that Hank doesn't hate him as much as Alex does. He wants him to agree, to understand so that they can relate on some sort of steady, common ground, because he feels so far away from Hank right now even though he's only a few feet away. Hank is somewhere towards the horizon, on the edge of something that truly terrifies Alex. He wants to be able to pull him back away from it, to keep him grounded, but that requires reaching him first and Alex has no common patch of ground to step towards him on.
It scares Alex that Hank is so far away from him now.
The brunette doesn't reply, and rage is bubbling up his throat, “He broke Charles. He broke us. Everything we had is fucked up, and he has the nerve to show back up when we're trying to rebuild and move on, and you don't care? ”
Once upon a time, Hank would have been the rope that tied him back and reminded him how to tame the monster in the form of anger. He had been the control and the sanity for the both of them—even though Alex now knows that he had been silently battling his own monsters and wishes he could go back and help him fight them off before the wear started to show physical signs of defeat. Alex craves the wave of calm that Hank used to emanate.
Now, he just looks at him with an unchanging press of his lips. Any sign of life in his eyes is frozen in blue ice. Alex feels like choking, because he doesn't know how to fix this. His hand reaches out, falling on Hank's forearm. He visibly flinches , but Alex doesn't pull away, just stares back at him like he could try to plead with him to talk to him, to look at him like he had Before-Cuba and the night where Alex had thought that he had slain the monsters lurking in the dark. He hadn't.
“Alex, I need to--”
“No,” Alex croaks , pulling the fabric of Hank's sterile lab coat into the curl of his fingers, “Why won't you talk to me? I miss you, Hank. I hate seeing you like this, and—and I know that a lot of shit has happened, and that Erik fucked everything up. But I don't want to be Erik.”
He can't balance his rage like Erik can. He can only tame his, not use it as a manifestation of his power under his reigns. He doesn't want to become poisoned with it, though, because Erik took it like a double edged sword, and Alex would not be doomed to the same fate as him. He would be the better man that Charles had idealized.
Hank is rigid under his hand, like he wants to pull away but is too conflicted or trapped to do so. His jaw sets hard, Adam apple bobbing with a dry swallow, “I'm doing work, building what the Academy needs. This is important.”
“You are killing yourself! When was the last time you were outside? There's more to you than that stupid large brain,” Alex searches his expression for any falter, for any crack where he slip in and pull him out.
There's a moment of disbelief, and Alex wonders if Hank realizes that he actually is more than a mind. Because he is, and god he is so beautiful and powerful that Alex could scream at him if that is what it takes for Hank to recognize that he is amazing in ways that leave Alex breathless. He wants him to realize that he is in love with him so harshly that it feels like he's crashing every time Hank looks at him.
“I can't do this now. Alex, stop.”
Why won't you let me help you? Stop pushing me away.
You are so so stupid and irritating—
and brilliant and beautiful.
I love you, Hank.
“Okay.”
Alex spins on his heel, hands shaking violently as he walks up to his room and bites back the words he couldn't say, a copper aftertaste left on his tongue. Magneto is gone, and he can feel the brush of Charles' mind on his even more forceful than before, protective like a startled mother bear and he knows that something hadn't gone well. It rarely does, though.
He breathes in the smoke past Sean's room, focusing on the weight of gravity like it's the last thing to keep him grounded. He's afraid that the string keeping him tethered had been cut, and he can't tell if he had salvage it despite the hollow drift. He won't become Erik, he tells himself as he drops to the ground, sliding against the door of his bedroom. Hank is not Charles, despite the brilliance and similar nature. They will not become their mistakes, Alex will not let it happen as he watches the older men mutually destroy each other.