[fic] Regurgitating Refracted Light 1/1
Jan. 15th, 2012 07:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keire_keTitle: Regurgitating Refracted Light
Rating: 14
Genre: adorable
Pairings: Erik/Charles, minor Alex/Hank
Wordcount: 5k
Warnings: crazy teenage logic
Summary: In Alex’s defense, Erik’s shark impressions were spot on. He has no one but himself to blame for the misunderstanding. Human AU.
Author’s Note: continuation of Playing Havoc and Skidding Down the sliding Scale
Betaed byyami_tai. <3
Alex spends a week reeling. It’s not his fault, goddamn it! How the hell was he supposed to know Erik has anything as human as feelings? It wasn’t like he gave any sign they were in use!
He barely registers the following week of school. He may have gotten a detention for insisting on keeping his hands clamped over his ears, but he feels justified. Math isn’t half as important as making sure his brain isn’t leaking out of his ears. Mr. Xavier gives him sympathetic looks whenever he passes in the corridor, and that is cool -- that was just Mr. Xavier being friendly. Alex could deal with that, so long as their paths didn’t cross over no blueberry pancakes.
The universe has decided to cut him a break, because at around the same time Erik has hit the motherlode of work related meetings, so he is hardly ever home. Alex merrily cooks for three, inhales two-thirds of the results and leaves the rest in the oven, while he retreats upstairs. The food is gone the following morning, which Alex takes to mean Erik lives and even visits the house sometimes.
Alex is a little grateful for that. He can’t deal with sharks right now, and if he ever meets Satan in person, the guy is getting punched in the teeth, for false advertising. He tries to work out his issues like the mature (almost) adult he is, and reason out how the fuck could he have missed, well, everything, but the only conclusive answer is that he didn’t miss a goddamn thing and Erik is fucking with his head, again. Alex happily accepts the explanation and, once more, offers thanks to Cthulu for keeping Erik out, as he pops in another of the classic Star Trek DVDs into the player downstairs. Watching it on his computer screen just isn’t the same, and he would die if Erik found him obsessively rewatching the adventures of William Shatner and his cardboard space.
Thanks to the efforts of the brave crew of the Enterprise, by Friday Alex is reasonably adjusted (a grudging “thank god” is offered for Hank and his make-out skills -- it’s the only other thing keeping Alex alive at this point), and he and Erik share a few very civilized meals over the weekend, even if the conversation rarely strays from the weather.
Of course, it all goes to hell on Monday.
“Alex,” he hears as he exits the school property. He turns and there is Mr. Xavier, striding his way with a purposeful look in his eyes. He is smiling, but the smile is subtly off, sliding from the guileless end of the spectrum towards the all too-knowing expression Alex saw in his kitchen last week.
Alex doesn’t like where this is going.
“Do you have a minute?”
“Sure,” Alex says, and curses himself. Think of the alien, he tells himself belatedly, when the supernaturally blue eyes brighten and Mr. Xavier beams.
“Excellent.”
They stare at one another for a moment.
“Well?”
“I was actually hoping we could talk over a cup of coffee. Would that be okay?”
Correction: Alex abhors where this is going.
“Sure,” he says again and Mr. Xavier leads him two blocks down, where a cozy little cafe beams at them both with a cheery display of muffins and cupcakes.
“Earl Grey, please, and a muffin. Alex?”
“Uh, mocha. No whipped cream.”
The barista nods, smiles a smile more plastic than the one printed on his name-tag and takes the ten dollars from Mr. Xavier’s hand. “I’ll bring it over to the table,” he says.
“Wonderful.”
They sit. Alex waits for something to go wrong, but Mr. Xavier is humming to himself as they wait, steadfastly ignoring the tension coiling all around. Alex’s brain, as usual, decides to take it further, and the opening burr-rhumb of the Jaws theme rumbles through his consciousness.
“Professor,” Alex says in the end, because he is almost at the point where the girl gets chomped to pieces mid-coitus and that is not an image he needs right now.
That gets Mr. Xavier’s attention. “We are not in school. You’re free to call me Charles.”
“Oh. Yeah. Okay. Charles.” God, it feels weird. “So. What did you want to talk about?”
The barista arrives with their drinks and Mr. Charles wastes another minute stirring a packet of brown sugar into his cup.
“Last week didn’t exactly leave you at peace,” he says at long last.
Alex snorts. He regrets it when Mr. Charles winces.
“I feel terrible about it. I know you must find the situation mortifying.”
It’s not that bad, Alex wants to say, but Mr. Charles clearly isn’t finished.
“The thing is, I really do like your father. I understand that I am your teacher so by definition I am required to stay out of your life outside the school walls, but I have compelling evidence that suggests Erik enjoys my company, too. So, I wanted to ask if you would be fine with us meeting outside school related venues.”
“Wait a goddamned minute,” Alex says, holding up his hand. “Are you-- No seriously, I had a shitty week, which did things to my head, because it kinda sounds like you are asking my permission to date my dad. Which is crazy.”
Charles ducks his head at smiles at his tea. “I admit, it is unorthodox.”
“Yeah, that, but also, why? I mean, how is that any of my business?”
“As it happens, I do like Erik a lot. I want to know if I should get my hopes up.”
Alex is adding two and two and getting apple pie. “I don’t follow. No, I mean it. I don’t have special magic powers to make it happen, right? I’m cool with it,” he says and shocks himself into silence by how true that is. “I am cool with it. Wow. Anyway. What makes you think I can stop Erik from breaking your heart?”
Charles smiles, just a little. It shakes Alex, because it’s not one of the smiles he is familiar with from the classroom, nor is it the wicked grin from last week; this is something new, uncertain and utterly human that he has never seen on Charles before. “I’m not asking you to. I’m not expecting you to protect me, in any capacity. I can handle Erik, believe me.”
Alex has opinions on the subject, but his opinions came about at the same time he was visualizing Jaws in a cafe, so he should probably await confirmation that he is in the correct universe before voicing them. At least until there are less sharks swimming around the patron’s heads.
“What I’m asking is if you are okay with the idea of me dating Erik, or if I have to be ready to be told it can’t happen because you disapprove.”
There exists, presumably, a planet, on which the statement makes sense. Alex hopes so, because Charles is teaching him advanced biology, which he needs to get into college, so if it turns out he is touched in the head and out of tune with reality, Alex will need to revise his entire curriculum.
“I don’t get it,” he says honestly. “What?”
Charles doesn’t look surprised. He bites his lip. “Ah. You should be aware by now that Erik would never date someone of whom you disapproved.”
“That’s dumb. He dated whatsherface three years ago, didn’t he?”
“How did that end?”
Alex opens his mouth to say they broke up and closes it before he can utter a sound. Erik dated before and okay, Alex had never been enthusiastic about his partners, but he was okay with most of them. At least one was kinda cool. The longest they were ever around was a year, but the signs of things going wrong usually started a month or two before the actual breakup, which was always civilized.
Except whatsherface.
“Wait. Pause. You’re not seriously saying Erik dumped the woman ‘cause I didn’t like her?”
Charles waits.
“I mean, god, she had boobs! Awesome ones, at that. We went to a beach once, and damn, she owned a bikini for every day of the week and the boobs were just fantastic. Plus, cute butt and everything. No way in hell Erik would dump all that because I found her skeevy. Uh. No offense. I mean, about the boobs.”
“Why else would he dump her?” Charles presses on, magnanimously ignoring the fumble Alex is making of sorta maybe implying Erik values boobs in a person he is planning to date, because it has to be awkward to hear when you are a guy and trying to date the first guy--
Fuck, the advantages to heterosexuality are obvious and many, Alex thinks viciously. Most importantly, keeping the pronouns straight is not a nightmare.
“Dunno, he got bored?” he says eventually.
“If he got bored, I don’t think the breakup would stick in your mind like it obviously has.”
True. Erik had an epic tolerance for boredom. He could read tiny print for hours on end.
“But that makes no sense,” Alex insists.
“It does to me.” Charles looks at him. “Please, Alex. I understand my behavior is to blame for your protective tendencies towards my person, but I would like to remind you I managed to get through the first thirty years of my life unaided. I’m merely asking if you can handle the idea of myself and Erik dating.”
“What do I care, I’m off to college in the fall,” Alex says with a shrug. He wonders briefly if that means that Charles will be moving in any time soon, which, hey, free bio tutoring on demand! “You are obviously good with biology, you can tutor me if pre-med explodes in my face, right? I do okay on my own, generally, but there’s those bits I sometimes can’t figure out, so when I come home for break you could help? I got tons of books at home, and they mostly make sense, except when they don’t.”
School business is evidently a safe bet, because Charles’ face breaks out into the widest, happiest smile Alex has ever seen on his, or anyone else’s, face. “Of course,” he says and hurriedly devours half the muffin, chokes, drains the cup of tea and composes himself. “I’d be more than happy to.”
“Cool,” Alex says, immensely pleased with his genius. He has just scored free tutelage and killed the subject of Erik dating. He deserves cookies. He deserves lots and lots of cookies, which Charles will bake for him, because he looks like the kinda man who bakes cookies by the bucketload, on the basis that cookies make everything better. Erik doesn’t really care about cookies, so Alex will eat his share, which comes down to even more cookies! Basically, Alex has a brief chocolate-chipped moment in his happy place, while Charles smiles at him and nibbles on the remnants of the muffin.
Then, on the way home, he realizes that, what the fuck, he now has ammo to use against Erik, which is all kinds of epic.
“I had a chat with Mr. Xavier today,” he says when he gets through the door and finds Erik poking the potatoes in the pot with a spatula.
“Yes?”
“He asked me if he could date you,” Alex says with unholy glee. “Dude. This is all kinds of weird and disturbing. You’re gonna have suitors, next, and woah, bad mental picture! You realize that totally makes you the girl, right?”
Only around now he realizes Erik has frozen and is looking at him in something that may be shock or may be apprehension. It is gone before he can get a better look, so it is a moot point, anyway.
“Given your recent forays I would assume you know the definition of homosexual,” Erik says, just a touch stiffly. “I might have to kill him after all.”
“Good job trying to score off a dead person,” Alex says. “If you get arrested for necrophilia, do your bank accounts get frozen? Because I might need those later. For bail and college.”
“I presume there exists a planet on which this statement makes sense.” Erik tastes the concoction and stirs it some more. “Get the plates.”
“Dunno, it’s not always easy to clean up the evidence and Charles would make a cute corpse. He is pretty cute alive, and Snow White taught us all that nothing’s sexier than a corpse in a glass coffin, so…”
Erik stirs the contents of the pan, on which something sizzles. “Sometimes I wonder how your brain works. Then I remember I value my sanity and stop wondering, but every now and then, the urge to crack your skull open and witness the miracle returns.”
“See, that’s exactly why I didn’t want you dating Charles. You’re thiiis close to being a demented psycho killer. Of course it turns out Charles is an alien in a meatsuit, so I guess you two are the perfect couple. Whaddya know.” Alex punctuates the speech with holding his thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart and looking through the gap. Most of what he sees is therefore his own skin, but he does register Erik dropping the spatula and turning off the stove.
“Food,” he says curtly.
They eat in silence at the kitchen table. Erik proceeds to rank up high scores on the “shut the fuck up and look constipated” game that he likes to play when his clients are being fucking morons, as opposed to their usual mindlessness. Alex watches him from the corner of his eye and bemoans the fact that Hank has some sort of a sciency thing the following morning, and therefore isn’t available for a make-out session.
“It’s been brought to my attention there might have been a little too much sarcasm in this house,” Erik says later, when Alex is up to his elbows in dishes.
“No shit.”
“I’m therefore declaring the kitchen a sarcasm-free zone.”
“What? Are you nuts? Why?”
“Because clearly communication is something that happens to other people, where we are concerned.” Erik’s arms are folded and he is scowling, but Alex knows him a little by now and this is nervous Erik, not angry Erik. Admittedly, there tends to be very little difference between the two, and no difference whatsoever in the outcome, but Alex is proud he can tell the difference all the same.
“We need to communicate now? After all this time?”
“Evidently.” Erik looks away. “I am dating Charles,” he tells the refrigerator, which, like most kitchen appliances, listens to him in rapt attention. Alex envies that skill. The fridge collaborates with him, the stove grudgingly allows that he make food now and then, but the whole damn assortment stands to attention when Erik walks past. Alex bemoaned growing older and having to take over part of the kitchen duties, even if the kitchen took it relatively well. His own cooking scores a pretty respectable “edible to tasty”, which is nothing to scoff at, but Erik sets the standards high with his “delicious to mouth-orgasm”. Then Charles butts in with his cookies and pancakes and Alex will have to be dragged to college with wild horses, because food. “You can either deal with it, or don’t.”
“I know, right? That’s what I told him. None of my business,” Alex says, salivating at the prospect of dinner followed by cookies. Or pie. Maybe Charles makes pie.
“It’s not like you’ll be living here much longer.”
“Again, I know.” College education couldn’t be that important, right? I mean, compared to cookies? “Did you tell him about whatsherface?”
It takes Erik a moment. “Susanna, you mean?”
“Yeah, her. He said you two broke up because of me.”
Erik looks away. “Fuck. I am gonna kill him.”
“You’re kidding,” Alex says and wipes his hands in a towel. “Seriously? Why?”
“You were a dumb kid, that’s why.”
“Hey, the pudding thing was an honest accident! I felt bad about it. I even apologized right away, you didn’t even have to make me.”
“You ran from the house when she came over.”
“It wasn’t like she was a bitch or anything.” Alex shrugs and crosses his arms. “Just, you know. I didn’t care to know her.” Now that he was a little older and armed with some armchair psychology, he could speculate this might have been because he really had been a dumb kid and the woman was monopolizing Erik’s time and attention to a level unacceptable for a whiny thirteen-year-old. Well, maybe if he was being torn apart by wild wolves, he would admit that. In some alternate reality. Maybe.
Erik rolls his eyes and somehow Alex gets it. Erik really did dump the woman solely because Alex didn’t want to spend time in her presence. It is a shocking revelation that descends with a choir of angelic trombones and a supporting cast of all the Cinderella mice.
“Why the hell did you even keep me?” he asks before he can stop himself. It’s not a new thought -- it’s been running around his head at top speed every now and again. Erik was his age at the time, and something shady must have happened, because well, it wasn’t like he was the girl in that scenario, right? He must have had a choice.
Erik raises a brow. “What?”
“You were seventeen. I get why Emma didn’t just, you know…” Alex waves a hand in the air to indicate termination of figure-ruining pregnancy. “Her father is militant about the stuff. What I don’t get is, how I ended up with you?”
Alex has, for the first time in his life, struck a mine of gold when it comes to making Erik awkward. If it wasn’t for the fact that he is high on recent discoveries and his brain is clearly not working as it should, he would make it come up twice a day, just to see the obvious discomfort on Dad’s face.
“Emma planned to give you up for adoption. I volunteered.”
“Why? Having kids at that age ruins your life!”
“Everything ruins your life when you’re seventeen. Kids, parents, teachers, teachers dating parents,” Erik says wryly. “Given a few years it turns out it isn’t half bad.”
Point. Erik has an excellent job, an awesome house and a fucking fantastic heir, if Alex says so himself. Not precisely the vision of a life ruined.
“Yeah, but still. Why?”
“I got dragged through the system for about a year after my parents were killed.”
Alex blinks. This is new. Not the dead parents bit: he is aware of the generation gap between Grandma Edie, Grandpa Jacob and Erik. Erik was what, seven at the time of his parents’ deaths? Alex didn’t hear anything about the system up until now.
“I thought Grandma and Grandpa adopted you after the car crash.”
“They were living in Germany. By the time someone got around to making international calls, I’d been carted through an orphanage and three foster homes.” Erik fetches a glass and pours himself a whiskey. Alex clutches the edge of the counter, because damn. Erik’s childhood photos invariably have him looking like hell just spit him out, and he’d always wondered why (not too long ago, when he happened to get his hands on one, he had the thought that not having Erik at that age would have been an unimaginable horror, and Erik had lost his. Alex shoved the picture where he found it and never thought about it again). “They weren’t horrible, mind. I got to live with decent folks each time and a bunch of other kids, none of whom had horror stories to tell. Even so, it’s not a good experience.”
Alex picks the story apart and assembles it in context. “You kept me because you didn’t want me to get adopted?”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“They let you?”
“I had to throw a tantrum.”
Alex imagines Erik throwing a tantrum and shudders. “Fuck, that must have been scary.”
“Grandma backed me up. Emma, well. She does care,” he says with obvious difficulty. “If something happened to you, she would get vengeful. But…”
“Duh.” Alex has feelings for Emma. She cares about his well-being; she supplies cash whenever he needs any he can’t skim off Erik; she listens, when he needs her to. However, he also remembers staying with her for a month of vacation when he was twelve and knowing that he was in her way. She said nothing, she tried her best not to let him feel it, but he knew. He was embarrassed by how clingy he got upon returning -- it took a crowbar to pry him out of Erik’s arms -- and Erik had one of his worst spats with Emma the night she brought him back.
“There you have it, then.”
Alex stares ahead, wondering how to process. Erik has feelings, apparently. Well, fuck me sideways.
“If you’re expecting a teary hug, go whine to Hank,” Erik says, possibly in reaction to Alex’s expression, and just like that the world is back to normal.
“I thought we were getting frugal with sarcasm.”
“That wasn’t sarcasm, that was me stating a fact.”
“But I have emotional needs! You can’t just shove me onto some guy across the street whenever I need a hug!” Alex extends his arms and grins.
Erik throws an apple at his head.
The ban on sarcasm dissolves spontaneously, and they spend the evening on the opposite sides of the couch, watching Governor Schwarzenegger shoot at hapless blondes, swapping acerbic observations.
Alex kind of avoids Erik after that. He manages for a whole week, and, on Friday, when he knows Erik should be out of the house until at least midnight (apparently, he took the dating thing seriously, and he and Charles are going to a fancy dinner), he drags everyone he can catch home with him. It ends up being just Raven, Hank, Angel, Darwin and Sean, but beggars cannot be choosers and he knows where to procure reality buffer also known as ethanol.
He opens the door cautiously. No booby trap springs to bite off his head. It seems promising, so he lets his posse in and takes stock of the living room, at which point he swallows his tongue and coughs pathetically into his hand.
Charles is sprawled all over Erik on the couch and they are both blissfully asleep.
Raven lets out a squeal and she is halfway across the room with her phone out before Alex can say “stop, you foolish earthkin!”
“Raven, get back here!”
“Relax, Charles sleeps like a log. He’d sleep through Judgment Day.”
“Yeah,” Alex starts saying just as she takes the third picture, hardly even noticing Erik’s eyes opened, “but Erik wakes if the dog next door sneezes.”
“Raven,” Erik says. “Is there a reason for the photo shoot?”
“Facebook demands feeding,” she pronounces cheerfully and snaps one more picture.
“If these end up on Facebook, so will your baby pictures.”
“You don’t have my baby pictures,” Raven says haughtily.
Erik raises a brow. “Charles,” he says in a voice soft like a marshmallow in a hot chocolate. Alex gags.
“Hmm?”
“I need Raven’s baby photos.”
“Shoe box in the walk-in closet, top shelf on the right.” Charles tries to turn over, finds he has no space to do so, so instead he huffs and burrows his face in Erik’s turtleneck.
“I need them now and digital.”
“Laptop.”
Alex shoves his fist into his mouth, because Raven’s face is a picture of that painting Erik has hanging in his room, minus the hands clasped to the cheeks and the swirly background. Erik reaches for the bag, which conveniently lies beside the couch, pulls out a slim laptop that Charles sometimes carries to school, opens it, and props it on Charles’ shoulder blades.
“It demands a password.”
“Met, Ala, Gly, Ser,” Charles murmurs, adding something Alex really doesn’t want to hear about Erik smelling nice. No fucking kidding, he thinks peevishly. He doesn’t select the softener for the amazing softening powers.
“Nerd.”
“Mhm.”
Raven’s face circles through every imaginable shade of red, finally settling for beetroot. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Try me,” Erik says, and grins. Oh yeah. He would dare. Silly of Raven to challenge.
“Charles!”
“What?” Charles tries to raise his head, but Erik’s hands are in the way. He calculates the obvious merits of shaking them off versus delegating the issue, and remains as he were. “Mm. Can this wait?”
“He’s being mean to me!”
“Erik, be nice.”
“Let me look it up. How would you spell that?”
“Erik.”
“She started it.”
“What did you do, Raven?”
“Oh, sure, believe him!”
“Alex, handle this,” Charles says and goes right back to sleep. He wiggles against the couch, forcing Erik to hoist the laptop until he settles, then put it right back onto Charles’ shoulders and types “raven” into the explorer search box.
At this point everyone but Raven has a fist in their mouths, trying to smother giggles. Angel, being a girl, has little shining stars in her eyes, even though her face circles through a range of expressions and her customary smirk is one of them. Alex is torn between giggling like a loon and marching straight out of the house and joining the army, moving to India and becoming a Buddhist.
“Yeah, gimme a moment,” Alex says. “I have to go to the toilet and upchuck a rainbow. Shouldn’t take long.”
Charles’ head rises briefly. He frowns. “That sounds serious. Have you seen a doctor?”
Erik scrolls through the search results. “It’s hereditary. Emma is vomiting rainbows at the sight of cats younger than six months, or anything of a comparable level of cuteness.”
Charles blinks and tilts his head like a surprised baby owl in a disheveled feathery cap, and Alex can hear cooing, which is not originating in his own head, thank you very much. The owlet blinks and focuses and fluffs itself up until the cute oozes out of its every pore and slimes up the downy feathers. Some of the cute drips on Erik, whose mouth quirks and curls and yeah, Alex can feel the rainbows dripping between his teeth, down his chin and onto his shirt.
“How on earth are we comparable to baby cats in cuteness?” the owlet asks the shark.
“Don’t ask me, you have the teenaged ninja turtle up in arms in defense of your honor.”
“No one ever pauses to check my driving license. I am over thirty years old. I don’t think I have much honor left to defend.”
“It buggered off to greener pastures, leaving you with all the common sense of Little Red Riding Hood.”
“Little Red Diving Hood, you mean.”
“Little Drowned Rat is more like it.”
“I resent that.”
“It’s not fair!” Raven wails, and every pair of eyes in the room turns to her. Charles looks inquisitive and radiates compassion, the kind that implies his heart is weeping for the suffering of multitudes in general, but the sorry fate of the soul before him in particular. Erik glances at Raven and then looks down at Charles, amused, as she continues. “Do you know what this all means? This means that unless I score with Matt Damon your boyfriend will be hotter than mine!”
“Sweetheart, Erik and I have long since departed high school. We are not boyfriends.” Charles lets out a snuffle, which is so ridiculously adorable, especially when muffled by Erik’s turtleneck, that Alex gives it a rating of nine and a half tribbles, on a scale of one to ten. “Besides, even if you score with Matt Damon, who is way too old for you, by the way, my significant other will still be hotter than yours.”
“Hear, hear.” Erik is still surfing the web, but that only requires the use of one hand, and Alex is disturbed to notice that his other is rubbing circles into Charles’ neck. Any moment one or both will start purring and then the universe will implode in a shower of sparkles, little pink hearts and clumsy kittens.
Alex wonders how soon can he download some Rambo off the internet, because he needs to reaffirm his masculinity through a shower of blood and gore.
“You know, I suddenly hate this,” Raven tells him with a pout. “I thought it would be hot, but this is just pathetic and caramelized and sad. We are so breaking them up.”
Alex scowls. “Are not.”
“Are too!”
“Are not!”
“Are too!”
“Or, here’s a shockingly novel idea: go get drunk in Alex’s room and stop arguing the fate of my relationship over my head?” Erik grins at them both. “Because eventually I will get up and live up to my reputation, and I promise you, I will not pay for therapy.”
“You shouldn’t encourage them to drink. Alcohol stunts growth.”
“Personal experience speaking?”
“As if you have room to talk,” Charles mutters.
“What gives, anyway, you said you’d be out,” Alex says, because he was promised a party, damn it, and he will collect.
“Fell asleep, obviously.”
“We could go to a club,” Angel suggests sensibly.
“There’s no club which admits under eighteens in ten mile radius.” Charles is employing his earnest teacher voice, and Alex is shocked -- properly shocked, now that he’s gotten to know the man personally -- that everyone, himself included, looks embarrassed and considers their toes. Even Raven looks awkward.
“Or, we could throw the party at my place,” she says decisively after a minute or so of comparing the pattern on her Converse shoes to that of the carpet. “You,” he points at her brother, “should know that I hate you from the depths of my heart and if you get back home before one a.m. I will dye your hair purple while you sleep.”
Charles says something, but the voice is muffled by Erik’s turtleneck.
“He says he will paint you blue if you touch his hair.”
“I would love to be blue, believe me,” Raven says haughtily.
Alex, wisely, ushers his merry band out the doors at this point. When he gets home the following morning Erik and Charles are arguing the superiority of Captain Picard over Captain Kirk. Alex sighs, gets himself a cold beer and a bowl of leftover breakfast cookies.
“Mazel tov,” he tells them and trudges upstairs to sleep off the hangover.
*****
Sometime later that afternoon he wakes and goes to check the computer. There are photos from the party all right, punctuated by a frowny face from Charles, on the photo which has Raven waving his favorite brand of vodka like it was a bottle of beer.
The really incriminating pictures don’t end up on Facebook. Alex understands why – he has seen Raven’s baby pictures and they need to be kept off the internet for the good of all mankind. Raven sends the former to everyone she knows via email, though, in all their teeth-rotting glory, and god, if Alex hadn’t been there, he would be citing Photoshop or possibly LSD. As it is, he spends the rest of the afternoon alternatively throwing up rainbows and brushing the multicolored stains out of his teeth, then he goes downstairs and eats the food Erik is cooking for Charles.
He can sacrifice a little of the masculinity he is bound to lose just hanging around these two for the food.
END.
Rating: 14
Genre: adorable
Pairings: Erik/Charles, minor Alex/Hank
Wordcount: 5k
Warnings: crazy teenage logic
Summary: In Alex’s defense, Erik’s shark impressions were spot on. He has no one but himself to blame for the misunderstanding. Human AU.
Author’s Note: continuation of Playing Havoc and Skidding Down the sliding Scale
Betaed by
yami_tai. <3Alex spends a week reeling. It’s not his fault, goddamn it! How the hell was he supposed to know Erik has anything as human as feelings? It wasn’t like he gave any sign they were in use!
He barely registers the following week of school. He may have gotten a detention for insisting on keeping his hands clamped over his ears, but he feels justified. Math isn’t half as important as making sure his brain isn’t leaking out of his ears. Mr. Xavier gives him sympathetic looks whenever he passes in the corridor, and that is cool -- that was just Mr. Xavier being friendly. Alex could deal with that, so long as their paths didn’t cross over no blueberry pancakes.
The universe has decided to cut him a break, because at around the same time Erik has hit the motherlode of work related meetings, so he is hardly ever home. Alex merrily cooks for three, inhales two-thirds of the results and leaves the rest in the oven, while he retreats upstairs. The food is gone the following morning, which Alex takes to mean Erik lives and even visits the house sometimes.
Alex is a little grateful for that. He can’t deal with sharks right now, and if he ever meets Satan in person, the guy is getting punched in the teeth, for false advertising. He tries to work out his issues like the mature (almost) adult he is, and reason out how the fuck could he have missed, well, everything, but the only conclusive answer is that he didn’t miss a goddamn thing and Erik is fucking with his head, again. Alex happily accepts the explanation and, once more, offers thanks to Cthulu for keeping Erik out, as he pops in another of the classic Star Trek DVDs into the player downstairs. Watching it on his computer screen just isn’t the same, and he would die if Erik found him obsessively rewatching the adventures of William Shatner and his cardboard space.
Thanks to the efforts of the brave crew of the Enterprise, by Friday Alex is reasonably adjusted (a grudging “thank god” is offered for Hank and his make-out skills -- it’s the only other thing keeping Alex alive at this point), and he and Erik share a few very civilized meals over the weekend, even if the conversation rarely strays from the weather.
Of course, it all goes to hell on Monday.
“Alex,” he hears as he exits the school property. He turns and there is Mr. Xavier, striding his way with a purposeful look in his eyes. He is smiling, but the smile is subtly off, sliding from the guileless end of the spectrum towards the all too-knowing expression Alex saw in his kitchen last week.
Alex doesn’t like where this is going.
“Do you have a minute?”
“Sure,” Alex says, and curses himself. Think of the alien, he tells himself belatedly, when the supernaturally blue eyes brighten and Mr. Xavier beams.
“Excellent.”
They stare at one another for a moment.
“Well?”
“I was actually hoping we could talk over a cup of coffee. Would that be okay?”
Correction: Alex abhors where this is going.
“Sure,” he says again and Mr. Xavier leads him two blocks down, where a cozy little cafe beams at them both with a cheery display of muffins and cupcakes.
“Earl Grey, please, and a muffin. Alex?”
“Uh, mocha. No whipped cream.”
The barista nods, smiles a smile more plastic than the one printed on his name-tag and takes the ten dollars from Mr. Xavier’s hand. “I’ll bring it over to the table,” he says.
“Wonderful.”
They sit. Alex waits for something to go wrong, but Mr. Xavier is humming to himself as they wait, steadfastly ignoring the tension coiling all around. Alex’s brain, as usual, decides to take it further, and the opening burr-rhumb of the Jaws theme rumbles through his consciousness.
“Professor,” Alex says in the end, because he is almost at the point where the girl gets chomped to pieces mid-coitus and that is not an image he needs right now.
That gets Mr. Xavier’s attention. “We are not in school. You’re free to call me Charles.”
“Oh. Yeah. Okay. Charles.” God, it feels weird. “So. What did you want to talk about?”
The barista arrives with their drinks and Mr. Charles wastes another minute stirring a packet of brown sugar into his cup.
“Last week didn’t exactly leave you at peace,” he says at long last.
Alex snorts. He regrets it when Mr. Charles winces.
“I feel terrible about it. I know you must find the situation mortifying.”
It’s not that bad, Alex wants to say, but Mr. Charles clearly isn’t finished.
“The thing is, I really do like your father. I understand that I am your teacher so by definition I am required to stay out of your life outside the school walls, but I have compelling evidence that suggests Erik enjoys my company, too. So, I wanted to ask if you would be fine with us meeting outside school related venues.”
“Wait a goddamned minute,” Alex says, holding up his hand. “Are you-- No seriously, I had a shitty week, which did things to my head, because it kinda sounds like you are asking my permission to date my dad. Which is crazy.”
Charles ducks his head at smiles at his tea. “I admit, it is unorthodox.”
“Yeah, that, but also, why? I mean, how is that any of my business?”
“As it happens, I do like Erik a lot. I want to know if I should get my hopes up.”
Alex is adding two and two and getting apple pie. “I don’t follow. No, I mean it. I don’t have special magic powers to make it happen, right? I’m cool with it,” he says and shocks himself into silence by how true that is. “I am cool with it. Wow. Anyway. What makes you think I can stop Erik from breaking your heart?”
Charles smiles, just a little. It shakes Alex, because it’s not one of the smiles he is familiar with from the classroom, nor is it the wicked grin from last week; this is something new, uncertain and utterly human that he has never seen on Charles before. “I’m not asking you to. I’m not expecting you to protect me, in any capacity. I can handle Erik, believe me.”
Alex has opinions on the subject, but his opinions came about at the same time he was visualizing Jaws in a cafe, so he should probably await confirmation that he is in the correct universe before voicing them. At least until there are less sharks swimming around the patron’s heads.
“What I’m asking is if you are okay with the idea of me dating Erik, or if I have to be ready to be told it can’t happen because you disapprove.”
There exists, presumably, a planet, on which the statement makes sense. Alex hopes so, because Charles is teaching him advanced biology, which he needs to get into college, so if it turns out he is touched in the head and out of tune with reality, Alex will need to revise his entire curriculum.
“I don’t get it,” he says honestly. “What?”
Charles doesn’t look surprised. He bites his lip. “Ah. You should be aware by now that Erik would never date someone of whom you disapproved.”
“That’s dumb. He dated whatsherface three years ago, didn’t he?”
“How did that end?”
Alex opens his mouth to say they broke up and closes it before he can utter a sound. Erik dated before and okay, Alex had never been enthusiastic about his partners, but he was okay with most of them. At least one was kinda cool. The longest they were ever around was a year, but the signs of things going wrong usually started a month or two before the actual breakup, which was always civilized.
Except whatsherface.
“Wait. Pause. You’re not seriously saying Erik dumped the woman ‘cause I didn’t like her?”
Charles waits.
“I mean, god, she had boobs! Awesome ones, at that. We went to a beach once, and damn, she owned a bikini for every day of the week and the boobs were just fantastic. Plus, cute butt and everything. No way in hell Erik would dump all that because I found her skeevy. Uh. No offense. I mean, about the boobs.”
“Why else would he dump her?” Charles presses on, magnanimously ignoring the fumble Alex is making of sorta maybe implying Erik values boobs in a person he is planning to date, because it has to be awkward to hear when you are a guy and trying to date the first guy--
Fuck, the advantages to heterosexuality are obvious and many, Alex thinks viciously. Most importantly, keeping the pronouns straight is not a nightmare.
“Dunno, he got bored?” he says eventually.
“If he got bored, I don’t think the breakup would stick in your mind like it obviously has.”
True. Erik had an epic tolerance for boredom. He could read tiny print for hours on end.
“But that makes no sense,” Alex insists.
“It does to me.” Charles looks at him. “Please, Alex. I understand my behavior is to blame for your protective tendencies towards my person, but I would like to remind you I managed to get through the first thirty years of my life unaided. I’m merely asking if you can handle the idea of myself and Erik dating.”
“What do I care, I’m off to college in the fall,” Alex says with a shrug. He wonders briefly if that means that Charles will be moving in any time soon, which, hey, free bio tutoring on demand! “You are obviously good with biology, you can tutor me if pre-med explodes in my face, right? I do okay on my own, generally, but there’s those bits I sometimes can’t figure out, so when I come home for break you could help? I got tons of books at home, and they mostly make sense, except when they don’t.”
School business is evidently a safe bet, because Charles’ face breaks out into the widest, happiest smile Alex has ever seen on his, or anyone else’s, face. “Of course,” he says and hurriedly devours half the muffin, chokes, drains the cup of tea and composes himself. “I’d be more than happy to.”
“Cool,” Alex says, immensely pleased with his genius. He has just scored free tutelage and killed the subject of Erik dating. He deserves cookies. He deserves lots and lots of cookies, which Charles will bake for him, because he looks like the kinda man who bakes cookies by the bucketload, on the basis that cookies make everything better. Erik doesn’t really care about cookies, so Alex will eat his share, which comes down to even more cookies! Basically, Alex has a brief chocolate-chipped moment in his happy place, while Charles smiles at him and nibbles on the remnants of the muffin.
Then, on the way home, he realizes that, what the fuck, he now has ammo to use against Erik, which is all kinds of epic.
“I had a chat with Mr. Xavier today,” he says when he gets through the door and finds Erik poking the potatoes in the pot with a spatula.
“Yes?”
“He asked me if he could date you,” Alex says with unholy glee. “Dude. This is all kinds of weird and disturbing. You’re gonna have suitors, next, and woah, bad mental picture! You realize that totally makes you the girl, right?”
Only around now he realizes Erik has frozen and is looking at him in something that may be shock or may be apprehension. It is gone before he can get a better look, so it is a moot point, anyway.
“Given your recent forays I would assume you know the definition of homosexual,” Erik says, just a touch stiffly. “I might have to kill him after all.”
“Good job trying to score off a dead person,” Alex says. “If you get arrested for necrophilia, do your bank accounts get frozen? Because I might need those later. For bail and college.”
“I presume there exists a planet on which this statement makes sense.” Erik tastes the concoction and stirs it some more. “Get the plates.”
“Dunno, it’s not always easy to clean up the evidence and Charles would make a cute corpse. He is pretty cute alive, and Snow White taught us all that nothing’s sexier than a corpse in a glass coffin, so…”
Erik stirs the contents of the pan, on which something sizzles. “Sometimes I wonder how your brain works. Then I remember I value my sanity and stop wondering, but every now and then, the urge to crack your skull open and witness the miracle returns.”
“See, that’s exactly why I didn’t want you dating Charles. You’re thiiis close to being a demented psycho killer. Of course it turns out Charles is an alien in a meatsuit, so I guess you two are the perfect couple. Whaddya know.” Alex punctuates the speech with holding his thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart and looking through the gap. Most of what he sees is therefore his own skin, but he does register Erik dropping the spatula and turning off the stove.
“Food,” he says curtly.
They eat in silence at the kitchen table. Erik proceeds to rank up high scores on the “shut the fuck up and look constipated” game that he likes to play when his clients are being fucking morons, as opposed to their usual mindlessness. Alex watches him from the corner of his eye and bemoans the fact that Hank has some sort of a sciency thing the following morning, and therefore isn’t available for a make-out session.
“It’s been brought to my attention there might have been a little too much sarcasm in this house,” Erik says later, when Alex is up to his elbows in dishes.
“No shit.”
“I’m therefore declaring the kitchen a sarcasm-free zone.”
“What? Are you nuts? Why?”
“Because clearly communication is something that happens to other people, where we are concerned.” Erik’s arms are folded and he is scowling, but Alex knows him a little by now and this is nervous Erik, not angry Erik. Admittedly, there tends to be very little difference between the two, and no difference whatsoever in the outcome, but Alex is proud he can tell the difference all the same.
“We need to communicate now? After all this time?”
“Evidently.” Erik looks away. “I am dating Charles,” he tells the refrigerator, which, like most kitchen appliances, listens to him in rapt attention. Alex envies that skill. The fridge collaborates with him, the stove grudgingly allows that he make food now and then, but the whole damn assortment stands to attention when Erik walks past. Alex bemoaned growing older and having to take over part of the kitchen duties, even if the kitchen took it relatively well. His own cooking scores a pretty respectable “edible to tasty”, which is nothing to scoff at, but Erik sets the standards high with his “delicious to mouth-orgasm”. Then Charles butts in with his cookies and pancakes and Alex will have to be dragged to college with wild horses, because food. “You can either deal with it, or don’t.”
“I know, right? That’s what I told him. None of my business,” Alex says, salivating at the prospect of dinner followed by cookies. Or pie. Maybe Charles makes pie.
“It’s not like you’ll be living here much longer.”
“Again, I know.” College education couldn’t be that important, right? I mean, compared to cookies? “Did you tell him about whatsherface?”
It takes Erik a moment. “Susanna, you mean?”
“Yeah, her. He said you two broke up because of me.”
Erik looks away. “Fuck. I am gonna kill him.”
“You’re kidding,” Alex says and wipes his hands in a towel. “Seriously? Why?”
“You were a dumb kid, that’s why.”
“Hey, the pudding thing was an honest accident! I felt bad about it. I even apologized right away, you didn’t even have to make me.”
“You ran from the house when she came over.”
“It wasn’t like she was a bitch or anything.” Alex shrugs and crosses his arms. “Just, you know. I didn’t care to know her.” Now that he was a little older and armed with some armchair psychology, he could speculate this might have been because he really had been a dumb kid and the woman was monopolizing Erik’s time and attention to a level unacceptable for a whiny thirteen-year-old. Well, maybe if he was being torn apart by wild wolves, he would admit that. In some alternate reality. Maybe.
Erik rolls his eyes and somehow Alex gets it. Erik really did dump the woman solely because Alex didn’t want to spend time in her presence. It is a shocking revelation that descends with a choir of angelic trombones and a supporting cast of all the Cinderella mice.
“Why the hell did you even keep me?” he asks before he can stop himself. It’s not a new thought -- it’s been running around his head at top speed every now and again. Erik was his age at the time, and something shady must have happened, because well, it wasn’t like he was the girl in that scenario, right? He must have had a choice.
Erik raises a brow. “What?”
“You were seventeen. I get why Emma didn’t just, you know…” Alex waves a hand in the air to indicate termination of figure-ruining pregnancy. “Her father is militant about the stuff. What I don’t get is, how I ended up with you?”
Alex has, for the first time in his life, struck a mine of gold when it comes to making Erik awkward. If it wasn’t for the fact that he is high on recent discoveries and his brain is clearly not working as it should, he would make it come up twice a day, just to see the obvious discomfort on Dad’s face.
“Emma planned to give you up for adoption. I volunteered.”
“Why? Having kids at that age ruins your life!”
“Everything ruins your life when you’re seventeen. Kids, parents, teachers, teachers dating parents,” Erik says wryly. “Given a few years it turns out it isn’t half bad.”
Point. Erik has an excellent job, an awesome house and a fucking fantastic heir, if Alex says so himself. Not precisely the vision of a life ruined.
“Yeah, but still. Why?”
“I got dragged through the system for about a year after my parents were killed.”
Alex blinks. This is new. Not the dead parents bit: he is aware of the generation gap between Grandma Edie, Grandpa Jacob and Erik. Erik was what, seven at the time of his parents’ deaths? Alex didn’t hear anything about the system up until now.
“I thought Grandma and Grandpa adopted you after the car crash.”
“They were living in Germany. By the time someone got around to making international calls, I’d been carted through an orphanage and three foster homes.” Erik fetches a glass and pours himself a whiskey. Alex clutches the edge of the counter, because damn. Erik’s childhood photos invariably have him looking like hell just spit him out, and he’d always wondered why (not too long ago, when he happened to get his hands on one, he had the thought that not having Erik at that age would have been an unimaginable horror, and Erik had lost his. Alex shoved the picture where he found it and never thought about it again). “They weren’t horrible, mind. I got to live with decent folks each time and a bunch of other kids, none of whom had horror stories to tell. Even so, it’s not a good experience.”
Alex picks the story apart and assembles it in context. “You kept me because you didn’t want me to get adopted?”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“They let you?”
“I had to throw a tantrum.”
Alex imagines Erik throwing a tantrum and shudders. “Fuck, that must have been scary.”
“Grandma backed me up. Emma, well. She does care,” he says with obvious difficulty. “If something happened to you, she would get vengeful. But…”
“Duh.” Alex has feelings for Emma. She cares about his well-being; she supplies cash whenever he needs any he can’t skim off Erik; she listens, when he needs her to. However, he also remembers staying with her for a month of vacation when he was twelve and knowing that he was in her way. She said nothing, she tried her best not to let him feel it, but he knew. He was embarrassed by how clingy he got upon returning -- it took a crowbar to pry him out of Erik’s arms -- and Erik had one of his worst spats with Emma the night she brought him back.
“There you have it, then.”
Alex stares ahead, wondering how to process. Erik has feelings, apparently. Well, fuck me sideways.
“If you’re expecting a teary hug, go whine to Hank,” Erik says, possibly in reaction to Alex’s expression, and just like that the world is back to normal.
“I thought we were getting frugal with sarcasm.”
“That wasn’t sarcasm, that was me stating a fact.”
“But I have emotional needs! You can’t just shove me onto some guy across the street whenever I need a hug!” Alex extends his arms and grins.
Erik throws an apple at his head.
The ban on sarcasm dissolves spontaneously, and they spend the evening on the opposite sides of the couch, watching Governor Schwarzenegger shoot at hapless blondes, swapping acerbic observations.
Alex kind of avoids Erik after that. He manages for a whole week, and, on Friday, when he knows Erik should be out of the house until at least midnight (apparently, he took the dating thing seriously, and he and Charles are going to a fancy dinner), he drags everyone he can catch home with him. It ends up being just Raven, Hank, Angel, Darwin and Sean, but beggars cannot be choosers and he knows where to procure reality buffer also known as ethanol.
He opens the door cautiously. No booby trap springs to bite off his head. It seems promising, so he lets his posse in and takes stock of the living room, at which point he swallows his tongue and coughs pathetically into his hand.
Charles is sprawled all over Erik on the couch and they are both blissfully asleep.
Raven lets out a squeal and she is halfway across the room with her phone out before Alex can say “stop, you foolish earthkin!”
“Raven, get back here!”
“Relax, Charles sleeps like a log. He’d sleep through Judgment Day.”
“Yeah,” Alex starts saying just as she takes the third picture, hardly even noticing Erik’s eyes opened, “but Erik wakes if the dog next door sneezes.”
“Raven,” Erik says. “Is there a reason for the photo shoot?”
“Facebook demands feeding,” she pronounces cheerfully and snaps one more picture.
“If these end up on Facebook, so will your baby pictures.”
“You don’t have my baby pictures,” Raven says haughtily.
Erik raises a brow. “Charles,” he says in a voice soft like a marshmallow in a hot chocolate. Alex gags.
“Hmm?”
“I need Raven’s baby photos.”
“Shoe box in the walk-in closet, top shelf on the right.” Charles tries to turn over, finds he has no space to do so, so instead he huffs and burrows his face in Erik’s turtleneck.
“I need them now and digital.”
“Laptop.”
Alex shoves his fist into his mouth, because Raven’s face is a picture of that painting Erik has hanging in his room, minus the hands clasped to the cheeks and the swirly background. Erik reaches for the bag, which conveniently lies beside the couch, pulls out a slim laptop that Charles sometimes carries to school, opens it, and props it on Charles’ shoulder blades.
“It demands a password.”
“Met, Ala, Gly, Ser,” Charles murmurs, adding something Alex really doesn’t want to hear about Erik smelling nice. No fucking kidding, he thinks peevishly. He doesn’t select the softener for the amazing softening powers.
“Nerd.”
“Mhm.”
Raven’s face circles through every imaginable shade of red, finally settling for beetroot. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Try me,” Erik says, and grins. Oh yeah. He would dare. Silly of Raven to challenge.
“Charles!”
“What?” Charles tries to raise his head, but Erik’s hands are in the way. He calculates the obvious merits of shaking them off versus delegating the issue, and remains as he were. “Mm. Can this wait?”
“He’s being mean to me!”
“Erik, be nice.”
“Let me look it up. How would you spell that?”
“Erik.”
“She started it.”
“What did you do, Raven?”
“Oh, sure, believe him!”
“Alex, handle this,” Charles says and goes right back to sleep. He wiggles against the couch, forcing Erik to hoist the laptop until he settles, then put it right back onto Charles’ shoulders and types “raven” into the explorer search box.
At this point everyone but Raven has a fist in their mouths, trying to smother giggles. Angel, being a girl, has little shining stars in her eyes, even though her face circles through a range of expressions and her customary smirk is one of them. Alex is torn between giggling like a loon and marching straight out of the house and joining the army, moving to India and becoming a Buddhist.
“Yeah, gimme a moment,” Alex says. “I have to go to the toilet and upchuck a rainbow. Shouldn’t take long.”
Charles’ head rises briefly. He frowns. “That sounds serious. Have you seen a doctor?”
Erik scrolls through the search results. “It’s hereditary. Emma is vomiting rainbows at the sight of cats younger than six months, or anything of a comparable level of cuteness.”
Charles blinks and tilts his head like a surprised baby owl in a disheveled feathery cap, and Alex can hear cooing, which is not originating in his own head, thank you very much. The owlet blinks and focuses and fluffs itself up until the cute oozes out of its every pore and slimes up the downy feathers. Some of the cute drips on Erik, whose mouth quirks and curls and yeah, Alex can feel the rainbows dripping between his teeth, down his chin and onto his shirt.
“How on earth are we comparable to baby cats in cuteness?” the owlet asks the shark.
“Don’t ask me, you have the teenaged ninja turtle up in arms in defense of your honor.”
“No one ever pauses to check my driving license. I am over thirty years old. I don’t think I have much honor left to defend.”
“It buggered off to greener pastures, leaving you with all the common sense of Little Red Riding Hood.”
“Little Red Diving Hood, you mean.”
“Little Drowned Rat is more like it.”
“I resent that.”
“It’s not fair!” Raven wails, and every pair of eyes in the room turns to her. Charles looks inquisitive and radiates compassion, the kind that implies his heart is weeping for the suffering of multitudes in general, but the sorry fate of the soul before him in particular. Erik glances at Raven and then looks down at Charles, amused, as she continues. “Do you know what this all means? This means that unless I score with Matt Damon your boyfriend will be hotter than mine!”
“Sweetheart, Erik and I have long since departed high school. We are not boyfriends.” Charles lets out a snuffle, which is so ridiculously adorable, especially when muffled by Erik’s turtleneck, that Alex gives it a rating of nine and a half tribbles, on a scale of one to ten. “Besides, even if you score with Matt Damon, who is way too old for you, by the way, my significant other will still be hotter than yours.”
“Hear, hear.” Erik is still surfing the web, but that only requires the use of one hand, and Alex is disturbed to notice that his other is rubbing circles into Charles’ neck. Any moment one or both will start purring and then the universe will implode in a shower of sparkles, little pink hearts and clumsy kittens.
Alex wonders how soon can he download some Rambo off the internet, because he needs to reaffirm his masculinity through a shower of blood and gore.
“You know, I suddenly hate this,” Raven tells him with a pout. “I thought it would be hot, but this is just pathetic and caramelized and sad. We are so breaking them up.”
Alex scowls. “Are not.”
“Are too!”
“Are not!”
“Are too!”
“Or, here’s a shockingly novel idea: go get drunk in Alex’s room and stop arguing the fate of my relationship over my head?” Erik grins at them both. “Because eventually I will get up and live up to my reputation, and I promise you, I will not pay for therapy.”
“You shouldn’t encourage them to drink. Alcohol stunts growth.”
“Personal experience speaking?”
“As if you have room to talk,” Charles mutters.
“What gives, anyway, you said you’d be out,” Alex says, because he was promised a party, damn it, and he will collect.
“Fell asleep, obviously.”
“We could go to a club,” Angel suggests sensibly.
“There’s no club which admits under eighteens in ten mile radius.” Charles is employing his earnest teacher voice, and Alex is shocked -- properly shocked, now that he’s gotten to know the man personally -- that everyone, himself included, looks embarrassed and considers their toes. Even Raven looks awkward.
“Or, we could throw the party at my place,” she says decisively after a minute or so of comparing the pattern on her Converse shoes to that of the carpet. “You,” he points at her brother, “should know that I hate you from the depths of my heart and if you get back home before one a.m. I will dye your hair purple while you sleep.”
Charles says something, but the voice is muffled by Erik’s turtleneck.
“He says he will paint you blue if you touch his hair.”
“I would love to be blue, believe me,” Raven says haughtily.
Alex, wisely, ushers his merry band out the doors at this point. When he gets home the following morning Erik and Charles are arguing the superiority of Captain Picard over Captain Kirk. Alex sighs, gets himself a cold beer and a bowl of leftover breakfast cookies.
“Mazel tov,” he tells them and trudges upstairs to sleep off the hangover.
*****
Sometime later that afternoon he wakes and goes to check the computer. There are photos from the party all right, punctuated by a frowny face from Charles, on the photo which has Raven waving his favorite brand of vodka like it was a bottle of beer.
The really incriminating pictures don’t end up on Facebook. Alex understands why – he has seen Raven’s baby pictures and they need to be kept off the internet for the good of all mankind. Raven sends the former to everyone she knows via email, though, in all their teeth-rotting glory, and god, if Alex hadn’t been there, he would be citing Photoshop or possibly LSD. As it is, he spends the rest of the afternoon alternatively throwing up rainbows and brushing the multicolored stains out of his teeth, then he goes downstairs and eats the food Erik is cooking for Charles.
He can sacrifice a little of the masculinity he is bound to lose just hanging around these two for the food.
END.
