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They get the letter that Alex has been declared dead on a Thursday. Charles looks at Hank with the worst sympathy in his eyes, and Hank punches the front door off its hinges, jams a syringe of the cure into his veins, and then drinks himself into a stupor by the lake.
.
You’re not allowed to leave me Hank had yelled at Alex’s back when Alex had left. There had been a slight pause, a tiny increment of space where Hank could see Alex’s shoulders shake with the effort to take one more step.
He thinks about that day, and that tiny tremor in the other man’s muscles, more and more often now. He talks to the whiskey bottle about it. Asks the bottle if it’s ever seen anything as beautiful as Alex Summers’ back.
.
Before the breakup on the beach in Cuba, Charles would have talked Hank out of burning most of his research into Alex’s energy beams. Two little brothers Alex had admitted one day, and asked Hank in a quiet voice about it, and how could Hank have ever refused? But fucking Erik happened, and Charles now doesn’t say anything except replace the cheap whisky Hank drinks with much more expensive vodka.
It makes him so angry, because here they are, all that’s left of the grand vision Charles once had about a place where mutants could be happy – two heartbroken men who spend their time alternately destroying parts of the beautiful Xavier mansion and drinking in the parts they haven’t demolished yet.
.
You can’t hide forever, goddamn Alex had said, and was the only one brave enough to stand in the face of Hank’s roars. The transformation had made him much more powerful than he could control, and he had pushed Alex against the wall of the bunker, smelled the fear that leaked through from the shorter boy.
Fuck you Alex had spit back, unflinching, and slapped Hank across the face with a look of wild desperation and determination in his eyes. It was like when Hank had uncurled his cramped toes in the CIA lab and seen Raven’s admiring look – something he hadn’t known he had needed, or wanted, until he had it.
Alex’s raw, untempered emotions, running unchecked at all times because of his extensive time spent in solitary, had kept him grounded as a monster. The second Alex had left, Hank had finished the cure and the monster had melted into a furious boy; but with Alex gone, he was sure his emotional stability was ugly and twisted, the way he had been before Alex had found him.
.
Alex Alex Alex Charles mocks him one day, and Hank stares, betrayed. Yes, Charles is drunk enough to consider it alcohol poisoning on someone less telepathic, but.
Alex is his special thing, his bright smiles and easy touches like the sun to Hank’s blind eyes. Charles does not – does not get to ruin that, especially when Hank catches echoes of affection for Erik he knows he’s not projecting.
So Hank flat out snarls and transforms in a second, leaping and landing right in front of Charles, growling. He intends to say something cutting, surely, but Charles puts his head in his hands and lets out a broken sob, saying forgive me, forgive me, I miss him. And if there’s anything Hank understands, it’s that. I miss him.
.
Then Logan shows up. And everything goes to hell. For the first time since Alex, Hank feels slightly more grounded.
.
They were experimenting – on mutants – and taking a lot from the army –
Hank is hacking into the database of files, and running through the pictures. It’s revolting, and he throws up plenty of times.
The database does not have a file on Angel (small mercies) but it does have a full file on Banshee.
Shit Hank thinks, and punches through the computer. He was a kid. Sean was more a kid than the rest of them, could have had a long life filled with ineffective flirting and that bashful grin he gave whenever he was pleased, with three or four or six little banshees running around behind him because he was Irish and Catholic and wasn’t that what they did?
And – Alex Summers –
There is a file, and a summary of his powers and his time in the army, and one order – held for testing. And that’s all.
Alive? Dead? Hank looks blankly at the picture of Alex in his uniform, his mouth set in a grim smirk, his pointy chin. God, that sharp face.
Have you ever met a problem you can’t solve, Hank? Charles asks him telepathically, from across the mansion, and oh, he thinks, lots of problems. Raven. His feet. The whole fucking X-Men team, who he thought he could save if he just made them uniforms, something to work together in.
And logically, he knows that those problems have solved themselves, but it’s just – hard, to admit that as a scientist, the solution he envisioned was not the solution necessary.
Alex Summers, the one goddamn problem I’ll always be solving Hank grumbles before he sets to work tracking him down.
.
Students begin to trickle in, slowly. Charles hires a construction crew one week and spends the week controlling them and rebuilding and refurnishing the mansion. There are now more training grounds, a simulation lab, and nearly all parts of the mansion have been reinforced. Even if someone lights the house on fire, the most that’ll happen is the temperature inside will go up a few degrees. Alex Summers could lose control and go crazy, and the house will remain disappointingly intact.
Alex Summers is how Hank measures a lot of things these days. Alex would make him eat, Alex would make him teach the new science class, Alex would want him to instruct Ororo Munroe in making that chocolate cake recipe because honestly? Nobody in this mansion can fucking cook and the girl needs something to do since she seems to think making it rain incessantly is a good use of spare time.
.
Alex Summers would expect that nobody would find him. Hank has to think like Alex Summers, the only kid who asked for solitary, if he wants to find him; not like Alex Summers, mutant who tried to cheat Hank while playing Monopoly and danced around the lab to Beatles music to try and get Hank distracted.
.
Are you fucking kidding me Alex Summers says when, in the middle of the night, in a nearly bare apartment on the outskirts of Norwich, England, he wakes up to find a growling Hank McCoy.
That had better be your brother and not some child you randomly had while you were in the army Hank threatens Alex, gesturing to a sleeping Scott next to him.
Alex grins then, unable to stop the smile. His cheeks hurt. He thinks that even if he tried, he won’t be able to stop himself from launching himself across the room and burying his face in Hank’s shoulders, fingers twisting in the soft blue fur.
I knew you would find me Alex whispers into the quiet night air, and Hank makes a wrecked noise and buries his nose into Alex’s soft, blonde hair.
This time, there’s a tremor in Hank’s shoulders that Alex can feel, a telltale sign that Hank might cry. So Alex runs a soothing hand across Hank’s back, feeling the muscles ripple, corded with tension.
Have you ever seen anything as beautiful as Hank McCoy’s back he silently asks the night air, then hauls Hank up and kisses him fiercely with everything he has. He drinks in the growls that Hank makes, licks carefully over Hank’s sharper teeth, and lets out a breathy moan when Hank fights back, curling his way into Alex’s mouth.
Shit Alex says, breaking away, don’t ever leave me. Don’t ever let me leave again. Because here is Hank McCoy in all his glory, blue and beautiful, and Alex aches to tell him how Hank is his anchor, how he’ll follow Hank to the ends of the earth. He pulls Hank into the other room in the apartment, and while Scott snores a wall away, Alex professes his love in broken fragments and heated looks, pressed up against Hank. They writhe together on the floor, and Hank says again you’re not allowed to leave me, and this time it sounds like the promise it is and not the desperate plea it was supposed to be.
.
Four years and a countless number of mutants later – after they’ve found Sean’s broken body and nursed him back to health, after Scott is able to open his eyes without fear of bringing death, after they find Gabriel too, after Hank has taught Ororo enough that she now makes it rain incessantly while baking chocolate cakes, after Erik and Charles have conducted their secret affair long enough that it’s no longer secret when morning comes and all the metal appliances in the kitchen have melted (and one memorable time, when Hank’s newest plane melts and he retaliates by showing Alex how, um, ridiculously athletic he can be during sex in the Professor’s office), after Raven hesitantly begins appearing once a month to visit, after Hank experiments with the serum and spends periods of time as an attractive scientist and as an attractive Beast and finally feels comfortable enough after three years as Beast to permanently destroy the samples of Raven’s blood used in the serum, after all that – Alex drops to his knees in the garden outside the mansion, where it’s snowing slightly (even though it’s the middle of summer because Alex knows Hank loves the snow and promised Ororo motorcycle lessons if she helped), and hopefully presents Hank with a set of matching silver rings engraved with the words you’re not allowed to leave me.
Hank says yes, of course, and Alex and Hank turn the business of not leaving each other into a lifetime commitment.