Fear the Rest
Chapter 4: Dangerous
June 1988
The story broke in the pages of the New England Journal of Medicine. Erik found a copy in his mailbox with the relevant passages underlined, in an envelope with a New York postmark. The notes in the margins were in a hand he recognized from grading papers, and so he was unsurprised by the postscript:
Interesting, don't you think? And yet worrisome all the same. I know you didn't expect this so soon, and I didn't want you to be taken by surprise. --Henry McCoy
Erik read the article, a very dry proposal that a single genetic mutation could be responsible for both the rising incidence of "birth defects" and for the isolated reports of paranormal abilities that had been popping up in the literature for years. Some of the turns of phrase were suggestive, especially "what we might call the X-gene," but Charles would never have agreed to publication. If he'd been consulted, it had been under false pretenses.
Other than that, there were no surprises. It was neutrally written, an innocent attempt to make sense of curious data. Exactly the way they'd always thought it would start, sooner or later. Ten years ago he'd imagined himself sitting here reading this article. Imagined setting it down on the table and saying, "Well, Charles, it's begun."
Erik read the article again, his coffee growing cold as he waited for Raven to get home from work. He was learning the sound of her steps in the hall and the familiar rattle of the door. He handed the article up to her wordlessly when she came into the kitchen, and she read it in equal silence. She rested her hand in his hair while she read.
"Well," she said finally. "Now what do we do?"
"We wait. We watch the papers."
The next story was three days later, a few inches in the Science section of the New York Times, rehashing the Journal study for a non-medical audience. That night there were six of them gathered around the kitchen table. Raven kept quiet and let him do the talking, but she watched the others with what Erik recognized as a calculating expression. He wondered what she was thinking.
Olivia talked a great deal and waved her hands. She was the daughter of civil rights pioneers and was a rather fierce feminist. She'd browbeaten Erik into making an effort to remember that the girls in his classes wanted to be called women now. He had lunch with her from time to time at MIT; she taught music. He'd asked her once if that wasn't a bit quixotic, and she'd shrugged one shoulder and said most classical music departments weren't looking for black women as department heads.
"It's not a very good department," she'd said, "but it's mine."
"Better to reign in hell?" Erik had asked.
"Aren't you educated."
"I actually read Paradise Lost on my own," he said. "I like poetry."
"I don't," she said. "But I like being taken seriously. So I can quote Milton with the best of them."
Brendan read the article with his brow furrowed. "I'm not sure I understand half of this, Erik, but it doesn't sound bad."
"No," Erik admitted slowly. "It may be the best way for the concept to be introduced to people. Gradually, and as something they'll hardly see as affecting them."
"Can you test for this stuff?" Kevin asked. "Not that it's not obvious for some of us."
He ducked his head after he finished the sentence and shifted nervously in his seat. He'd skulked in the back of Erik's classes until Erik had finally caught him reaching for a book and seen the scales on the back of his hands. He'd already been in college at seventeen when they grew.
In the privacy of Erik's office, with the door locked, he'd coaxed Kevin into opening his mouth and showing him the fangs.
"They're poison," Kevin had said. "I bit the back of my hand, and it swelled up like a bee sting."
"You've probably got at least partial immunity," Erik had said. "I wouldn't try biting anyone else. At least not in friendly circumstances."
"As if. My roommate thinks I'm a freak because I won't take my clothes off in front of him and I only take showers with the door locked. I'm not going on dates." He tossed his head nervously, his whole body moving just a little too bonelessly. "I can't keep this up."
Erik had patted him on the shoulder, remembering against his will the smell of old wood and the sound of children's footsteps on the stairs. "You're not the first," he'd said.
Now Erik found himself falling into a teacher's tone easily.
"We think--I think, based on early research--that a single mutation to a single gene unlocks the potential for various changes in the body. What form those changes take in each individual is determined by a complicated interaction between several genes. But testing for the mutated gene--what he's calling the X-gene . . ." Erik trailed off, and then started again. "Yes. It can be done."
Olivia raised her eyebrows. "Prenatally?"
"Probably," Erik said with distaste. He didn't look up at Raven.
Olivia let out a breath, not quite a laugh. "'Help fight birth defects.'"
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Brendan said.
"We will come to it," Raven said. "It's just a matter of when."
Erik met her eyes, then, across the table. You believe me, he thought, although he knew she couldn't hear it. She nodded as though she'd understood him anyway and flashed a dangerous smile.
He'd been thinking about going home with Brendan for the night, unsettled enough to want the familiarity of a man's body against his. Instead he let them all go, well after midnight, and followed Raven straight to bed, leaving the dirty wine glasses on the table. He closed his eyes and pressed his head against her shoulder to feel her scales pressing against his cheek.
* * * * *
Jean scrubbed the back of her hand across her forehead in frustration. She'd worked through the same calculus problem three times and gotten three different answers, and the TV blaring in the background wasn't helping. She'd asked for and gotten a non-smoking dorm room, but she wished there'd been a box to check for a TV-free room, too.
"Could you turn that thing down?" she asked her roommate in a tone that was brighter than she felt.
"Sure," Amber said, turning it down an infinitesimal amount. Jean sighed (inaudibly, she hoped), and tried to focus on differential equations. It was impossible to drown out the sound of commercials, replaced by the sickly-sweet soundtrack to an afternoon TV movie.
"And now back to 'Mutation: One Family's Tragedy.'"
Jean was proud of the fact that she didn't jerk her head around to stare. Instead she made herself close the book carefully, her pencil marking her place, and lean back in her chair until she could see the TV.
A woman with a mom haircut was talking on the phone in her kitchen, frowning. "I don't understand how Teddy can be failing," she said. "He had straight A's in the fall."
"It's not his fault," the man's voice on the other end of the phone said. "I know he's trying. But ever since he . . . changed, he just hasn't been able to keep up."
"I see. Will he have to repeat a grade?"
There was a pause.
"I've suggested we have a conference with the principal, to talk about the options for your son," the man said in a careful tone. "Is Thursday night good for you?"
"Of course," she said, and hung up. A perky teenage girl came into the kitchen, and they chatted for a moment, her mother clearly hiding her worries. Then the door slammed open and a teenage boy came in. The camera lingered long enough to point out the claws and the mane of hair. Jean wondered why he didn't just get it cut.
"I got a call from school today, Teddy," his mother began.
"Leave me alone," the boy growled. He glared at his sister, now pouring juice into a glass on the kitchen island. "And get out of my way!"
He pushed her, and the juice spilled. "Hey!" she yelped, and pushed back. He snarled and hit her, his claws slashing her arm. She screamed, and blood showed on her shirt. The glass rolled off the counter and shattered on the floor.
The movie cut to the children's parents, late that night, drinking coffee in the kitchen. The husband put a hand on his wife's shoulder compassionately.
"Have you thought any more about what we talked about?"
"How can we have him locked up in some--some institution? He's our son."
"And Shelly's our daughter," he said. "We have to think about what's best for her. What's best for us."
She looked up at him, eyes wet. "Do you really think he'd hurt her?"
"He's a mutant," her husband said. "We can't know what he'll do."
There was a snap and a pop, and the picture flared and faded to black.
"Jeez," Amber said, looking almost impressed. "Think we got a power surge or something?" She tried to turn the TV back on, to no effect.
"Why do you watch that stuff, anyway?"
Amber shrugged. "It's that or game shows." She settled back down in her chair, taking a swig of her Diet Coke. "You ever see a real mutant?"
And that, Jean thought, is what I get for opening my mouth.
"Actually, yes," she said.
"Cool. Did they look really freaky?"
" They were my friends," Jean said. "So watch it."
"Oh." There was a pause. "That's okay. It's not, like, their fault."
"No," Jean said, visualizing stillness. She really didn't want to break anything else, although she couldn't feel too guilty about the TV set.
"I guess it must suck for them, huh?"
"Not always. It's really not a disease."
"Are there really people who can like, read minds? That would be cool."
Jean felt the corner of her mouth twitch. "So I hear," she said.
Amber glanced at the TV set and shook her head. "Good thing my parents are coming up this weekend. I'll get my dad to buy a new one."
"Oh, good," Jean said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. "I'm going home this weekend."
"You should stick around more," Amber said. "Hang out."
Jean shrugged. "It's easier for me to get work done somewhere quiet. And there's stuff I need to help out with at home. My--" She found herself at a loss for an easy word for what Professor Xavier was. "Charles needs me."
Amber raised her eyebrows. "You can't spend all your time taking care of your dad. Or stepdad, or whatever."
"Or whatever," Jean agreed. "And I don't. He gets around really well. It's just that there are just still things it's hard to do when you can't walk."
"Yeah, but do you have to do them?"
She shrugged. "If not me, who else?"
"He's not married?"
"He's sort of divorced," Jean said. "And his ex isn't . . . really in the picture."
"That sucks."
"Yes. It sucks." Jean brushed her hair out of her face. "It sucks bigtime."
"Like, movie of the week sucks. With the wheelchair and all. 'Divorce: One Family's Tragedy,'" Amber intoned solemnly.
Jean threw a pencil at her. "Shouldn't you be studying?"
"You are way too responsible," Amber complained.
Jean shrugged. "I can't help it. I was raised that way."
* * * * *
Olivia threw down the newspaper she was holding and spread her hands flat on the table in frustration. "It does us no good to find out about beatings the day after they happen," she said. "Even if we could find the person who did this--and how could we?--it doesn't help Maria Sanchez."
The girl's mother was quoted in the paper as saying she shouldn't ought to have been out after dark in that neighborhood, but ever since her eyes changed it had been hard to keep her in at night. She'd lain in the alley all night and died on the way to the hospital after a garbage collector found her in the morning. There was a picture alongside the article of a girl with soft black fur showing under the dip of her shirt's collar and sharp lumps in the back of her shirt Erik thought were budding wings.
"If we do nothing, there'll be ten more like her," Kevin said. He bared his fangs with a hiss, and then closed his mouth in confusion. He still wasn't at ease with the instincts that seemed to accompany his mutation. He pulled his hands back into his overlong sleeves.
"If we do something, there'll be ten more like her," Olivia said. "It's like trying to hold back the tide."
"We've got to find the ones like her," Erik said. "And teach them to fight back."
It had been Olivia who'd suggested they form a group. To Erik's surprise, Raven had been enthusiastic about the idea, and after weeks of long phone conversations between the two of them he'd found himself the nominal leader of a fledgling mutant rights organization that met in his kitchen at irregular intervals worked around exams, Raven's work nights, and Brendan's rehearsal schedule.
Olivia had prodded him to write something about mutants as the next step in human evolution, and had run off pamphlets on the music department's photocopier. She'd added things like "brothers and sisters unite" and "rise up against injustice" to the point that he wouldn't have recognized it as his own writing, but she'd argued persuasively that that was for the best. Raven went up to New York every few weeks with a stack of them to hand out at the couple of nightclubs that had official or unofficial "mutant nights."
"If I'd found a telepath, I'd be sure to let you know," Raven said, looking impatient with him. "I'm assuming Jean Grey doesn't count."
"Charles doesn't want her to see me," Erik said, with what he hoped was a smile. "I don't think she counts unless she's stopped believing Charles Xavier is God."
Raven shrugged. "I still think it's worth working on Warren Worthington."
"Oh, yes," Erik said. "That would solve all of our problems that cry out to be solved by a giant, arrogant bird."
"Erik . . ." Olivia interrupted. "Focus."
He sighed. "What about the other option?"
"I've got nothing, Erik," Raven said, and shrugged when he frowned at her, not looking a bit apologetic. "I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm saying we could be living next door to a precognitive and we'd never know. 'Has weird dreams that come true' is about the ultimate in 'able to pass.'"
"What about the old lady in New York?" Olivia asked.
"She's probably an urban legend," Raven said. "I mean, honestly, 'Destiny'? Although I've had some fascinating conversations asking people who the oldest mutants they know are."
Olivia looked at Erik, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
He scowled at her in mock ferocity. "Don't say it."
"One of the men who comes to Avalon sometimes says he knew a man who didn't age," Raven said. "Some kind of super-soldier, to hear him tell it. Although I don't think he tells me the truth very much of the time. He smiles too much when he talks."
"The man who didn't age--he was an American?" Erik asked.
"I think so. Or maybe Canadian. Victor had done ten shots of vodka when he told me. I'm surprised he was vertical."
There was a sharp knock on the door. Raven slid out of her chair to answer it, blue scales flowing seamlessly into a tank top and jeans, red hair going brown, her eyes only turning brown as she reached for the doorknob. She smiled when she opened the door, and was already returning to blue before it closed again.
"You're late, Brendan," she said. "We're already on eternal argument number six. You know, 'what's the point in trying, what's the point in not--'"
"I need to talk to Erik," Brendan interrupted. "Alone, if you don't mind. I'm sorry."
He looked like he hadn't slept in days. Erik made a "go on" gesture to Olivia, who went back to frowning over her newspaper clipping. He came to the door, putting a hand on Brendan's arm.
"Has there been another attack?" Erik asked in a low voice. Brendan looked like he'd had a shock. Whatever had made him go white around the mouth, he needed to tell it without an argument breaking out.
"I have to talk to you," Brendan said. "Now." He looked at Raven and then looked away as though it had hurt.
"Of course," Erik said, frowning in concern. "Come in the back where it's quiet."
Erik closed the bedroom door on the rising sounds of bickering.
"You need to get an AIDS test," Brendan said, without meeting Erik's eyes.
It took Erik a few seconds to sort out everything that meant, and he was angry at himself for every second it took.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Of course I'm sure, Erik. I wouldn't tell you if I wasn't sure." He sounded very calm. "Alex called me three weeks ago. You remember. You met him at the New Year's party."
Erik didn't remember, but that didn't seem to be the thing to say. He nodded instead.
"We broke it off a few weeks later. I can't say I gave him much thought afterwards. He got sick this spring but he was too afraid to go to a doctor for two months. Afraid of what he'd hear." Brendan looked down at his hands. "Two months. You can't imagine what I wanted to say."
"But you didn't." Brendan was too kind for that.
"I didn't," Brendan said. "But I should have. Erik--"
"We haven't very often. Not since the holidays."
"Since October," Brendan said, sounding distant. "That's when Alex and I started it up. And of course there's no way to be sure it was him."
"Don't say you're sorry," Erik said. He raised a hand to touch Brendan's arm, but it felt terribly awkward. He stopped. "If -- it will be just as much my fault as yours."
"Do you think I care whose fault it is?" Brendan snapped. "You and Raven -- and you're not the only ones. I've been making the list. And haven't you and Olivia --"
"Actually, we never have."
Brendan turned away abruptly. "I hate this," he said. "And I am sorry. And I have to go now. Good night."
Erik let him go; he sat for a moment, very still, before going back out to the living room, just in time to see the front door close. Raven looked a question at him from across the room. He shook his head at her. She nodded almost imperceptibly. She'd ask him later.
He'd tell her later. He sat back down in his chair and picked up his cold cup of coffee, turning it around in his hands. "We're not getting anywhere tonight," he said finally. "Go home. Consider our options."
"And the Sanchez girl?" Olivia asked.
"Find the ones who killed her, and I'll handle it," Erik said. "They won't do it again."
"All right," Olivia said, sounding impressed. He didn't really think she could do what the police couldn't, but then again, at least she'd genuinely be trying. She swept up the paper and pages of her notes and left. Kevin followed in her wake.
"So?" Raven asked after they'd gone. Erik wanted badly to go and sit beside her on the couch and put his arm around her shoulders, but he didn't think he should until he'd told her.
Later she lay curled in the curve of his arm in the dark of the bedroom. Neither of them spoke. He stroked the line of her shoulder.
"We should get the test tomorrow," Raven said. "There's no point in waiting."
"Yes," he said.
The silence drew itself out.
"We don't know," he said at last.
"No," she said. "We don't know. Except about Brendan."
Raven curled tighter against him, her eyes closed. One blue hand closed on the sheet, and opened again. He held her tight, feeling her breathing, knowing she wasn't asleep. It should hurt more than this, he thought; surely it should hurt him more than it did her. Surely he should at least be more surprised.
Raven minded the clinic less than he did. She was used to lines and paperwork and chipped furniture and the sharp smell of antiseptic not quite masking the smell of people fidgeting in their fear on hard plastic chairs. Erik hated it. But he hadn't bothered to find a personal physician in Boston, sure that the university's health center would do in the unlikely event he needed one.
Besides, even a private doctor would have put the information in his medical records, there to be released if laws were passed requiring it. The only way to be truly safe from exposure was to ensure that they never had a name to match with their vial of blood. He wondered where Brendan had been tested, and if his name was even now going down on a list.
There was Jean; she was pre-med, and after everything he and Charles had taught her, surely she knew how to run a blood test. But he knew a positive test would leave her with a wretched crisis of conscience. He was sure -- well, fairly sure -- that there was no reason Charles needed to be told, but he wasn't certain she would see it that way. There was no reason for her to lose sleep.
He was sure enough. Or maybe it was only that that the idea was unthinkable. He curled his fingers around Raven's shoulder, glancing down at her leaning against him despite the crack between the plastic chairs, and wished that the idea that he'd infected her wasn't all too thinkable, horribly thinkable. She didn't even look her age.
They took Erik first. He had to turn his head before the lancet would pierce his skin, and might under other circumstances have been amused by the confusion of the medical technician. He didn't like looking at his arm after they'd stuck a plastic bandage to it, and he spent the mild lecture on the importance of returning for his results staring at the slices of the street that showed through the slats of the wooden blinds. Erik informed the white-clad girl stiffly that he had no intention of wasting both their time by not returning before retreating to the waiting room.
He leaned back, not willing to pretend casual disregard by hiding behind the shield of a crumpled magazine. Instead he watched Raven watch people, learning their faces, learning the way they held their hands or hunched their shoulders. A dozen ways of showing fear.
Erik was happy to get out into the sunlight and slipped an arm around Raven's waist as they walked back to his car.
"They're afraid," she said.
"Of course," Erik murmured.
She shook her head. "The doctors are afraid. Of us. Didn't you see?"
Not the way she would have, with her eye for the slight hesitation as gloved hands touched her, the stiffness as the little numbered vials were put away.
"Of course," he said again. And would he have seen the same hesitation in Jean's hands, the same awkward care? And would that save her life someday? He ran his fingers around the curve of the steering wheel.
"Penny for your thoughts," Raven said. "Unless they're depressing."
"The wages of sin," he said, and smiled.
"For God's sake, Erik." Raven fished for a cigarette. He took it out of her hand and held it for her to light. She raised an eyebrow at him, but lit it and took out a second one for herself. It didn't taste quite as good as he'd remembered, but he supposed ten years' distance could put a nostalgic haze on any memory. He was on time for his first morning class, but all hour he couldn't quite ignore the slight ache in his arm and the taste of cigarette smoke in his mouth.
The first test was negative. Erik got home first with the results folded in his coat pocket and sat at the kitchen table to wait. He forced himself not to turn around when the door opened, to give her time to see that he was there, to school her face into whatever expression she wanted to show him.
The door closed.
"It's negative, Erik."
"Mine too," he said, and waited another few beats before he turned around.
She smiled a little, shrugged. "Which means we wait."
"It does."
When she came over to the table, he stood and kissed her very lightly on the lips. She leaned against his chest.
"Well," she said. "Six months is a long time."
"It is," he said neutrally. There hadn't been a question of sex for the last week; they'd slept clutching each other like children, an extra blanket pulled up over them both despite the mildness of the nights.
"If we were careful?"
He smiled against her hair. "Yes."
"I can't go six months," she said.
He chuckled.
She pulled him hard against her and kissed him. Eventually she broke off the kiss and began tugging him by a handful of shirt toward the bedroom.
He pulled away a little stiffly. "I don't actually have --"
She tilted her head to one side and shrugged. "Well. There's a drugstore."
"As if I were sixteen," he said, shaking his head as he put his coat on.
Olivia called three weeks later. They'd missed a meeting when Raven's schedule and Erik's had snarled, and Olivia hadn't answered days of phone calls. Brendan had said on the phone that it was just as well, he had work to do. He'd sounded determinedly normal. Erik had accepted that, although he wasn't sure he believed it. He didn't think he'd want to deal with anyone for a while if it were him.
Olivia called after dinner. Erik was stacking dishes on the counter while Raven rummaged through the cabinets for something sweet to follow. It felt rather disconcertingly domestic. He thought he should ask Brendan if living with someone always raised the specter of matrimony or the equivalent, and then he remembered again, like brushing bruised fingers against something for the thousandth time. The shrilling of the phone made a welcome distraction.
"I've found them," Olivia said without preliminaries.
"Found who?"
Raven glanced over, then went back to looking through cabinets. He knew she was listening.
"The bastards who got the Sanchez girl. They've been bragging through their neighborhood about beating up a freak. I've heard it from three different people now, always the same story. Always the same names."
"I see," Erik said
"I doubt any of them will go to the police," Olivia said. "It's not the kind of neighborhood where people think the police are their friends."
"I won't ask them to," Erik said. "I doubt the police are."
"You'll take care of it." She sounded mildly skeptical.
"I will."
He listened as she gave him names and descriptions, making careful notes in pencil on a pad of notepaper that had the beginnings of a grocery list at the top.
"There's a warehouse they hang around," Olivia said. "Apparently they go out there to shoot up or smoke crack or whatever they do."
"Lovely," Erik said dryly. "Thank you, my dear."
"I'm not your dear, Erik," Olivia said. "Save it for the boys."
He smiled, rather painfully. "You'll hear what happens."
"From you, or from the nightly news?"
"Yes," he said, and they left it somewhere between a joke and an agreement.
"I'm coming with you," Raven said as soon as he put the phone down.
"And Kevin," he said.
Raven shook her head. "He's not ruthless enough."
"You're that sure what it'll come to?"
"Aren't you?"
He'd folded the piece of notepaper into a small, crisp square without thinking. Now he turned it around in his fingers. "I think it's time to send a message," he said. "Bring Kevin. He's got to do more than sit around and talk sometime."
"Actually, no," Raven said. "He doesn't."
"Ask him," Erik said. "Tell him it'll be a learning experience."
Raven stole a car at the subway station. He read off Olivia's directions in a dry voice from the passenger seat. Raven drove, looking like a middle-aged black man in sweatshirt and jeans. Erik wore a version of the same. Kevin had a hooded sweatshirt with sleeves long enough to hide his hands.
Erik frowned as he got out of the car in the alley behind the warehouse. The shoes he wore were new, the arches stiff. They made sharp, clear prints in the dirt.
"You can still stay in the car," Raven said to Kevin.
He shook his head. "I'm coming with you."
Erik held out a hand to the door. The chain wrapped through the door handle unraveled itself and dropped to the concrete with a clank. He found the moving parts of the metal loading door, making sure they would make no noise as the door opened.
Raven ducked through the door first. He put a hand on her shoulder, meaning to stop her. She raised an eyebrow at him. He frowned, unable to argue without making a noise. She smiled a little and shrugged his hand away. He took Kevin by the arm and followed her.
There was the sound of voices, laughter. Then clattering, as if someone had knocked something over. More laughter over swearing. Erik glanced at Raven and rolled his eyes. Erik stopped behind a stack of dusty crates and felt for them mentally, finding the metal of zippers, chains around necks and wrists, the eyes of shoes, the angular shapes of knives. Only one of them had a gun. He took a few moments to bend the firing pin, carefully, and then lifted both of them by the metal they carried and threw them up against a wall.
Shouts. Swearing. Erik stepped out into the light, followed by Raven and Kevin. The two men--boys really, with close-shaven hair and dirty clothes--were struggling, held uncomfortably by zippers and chains.
"Hello," Erik said. "In a hurry to leave?"
They looked at him.
"You're fucking doing this," one of them said. He spat. "Freak."
Erik gestured, and the boy's knife slid free from his pocket. The boy watched it as he would have watched a vicious dog he meant to throw a rock at, looking angry rather than afraid.
"You killed Maria Sanchez," Raven said.
"Never heard of her," the other boy said.
"She was growing fur," Kevin said. "She could see in the dark."
"Killed a bat," the first boy said. "Just like killing a rat. We get a lot of those around here. Got to keep the place clean."
Erik had killed soldiers in Berlin, when they had him bound and under their guns. These two were no different. They'd killed his people, and thrown the bodies out with the trash, and laughed while they did it. One of them was muttering too softly for Erik to make out words, but he understood the tone. Filthy Jews. Filthy queers. Filthy mutants.
Erik raised a hand and brought the knife floating up into position.
"Jesus," Kevin said. "Um, I don't know--"
Erik slit the boy's throat with one hard jerk of the knife. He went limp almost at once, bloody from chin to knees. The other boy screamed.
"I hardly think this is the first time there's been a lot of noise around here," Erik said. "What do you expect? The neighbors will call the police?"
"You killed him. You killed him. You--fuck it, don't hurt me, I'll do anything you want. You want the stuff?" He tried to get his hand to his jacket pocket. "Take it. Just get the fuck away from me."
"I think there's more cleaning up to do," Erik said. The knife moved toward the boy's throat.
He saw Raven move without seeing what she was reacting to, but the fact she was moving was enough for him to drop behind a crate. There was the metallic crack of a gunshot.
"Get the fuck out of here!" The voice was young, cracking. Another shot splintered the wood of the crate. Erik tore the gun from the third boy's hand and sent it spinning across the room. Raven launched herself out from cover, in an inhumanly high arc; he heard the crash as she brought the boy down, and stood slowly.
"Eat this!" shouted the boy who'd been pinned to the wall, holding the useless gun pointed at Erik. Erik smiled.
"No!" It took Erik a moment to realize it was Kevin's voice, that the shadow throwing itself at the boy was Kevin, moving faster than Erik had ever seen him move. Pinning the boy under his weight, writhing like a snake. Opening his mouth inhumanly wide.
The boy tried again to raise his gun, and Kevin bit him on the arm. He screamed, a wild, high sound that went on for a long time and turned into a low toneless noise of pain as Kevin rolled off of him. The boy's muscles didn't seem to be working right. His hands jerked.
Erik ran to them, taking care to stay out of reach of the boy's flailing hands. He crouched beside Kevin.
"Oh, God," Kevin was repeating, over and over. "Oh, my God." There was blood on his mouth. Erik put an arm around his shoulders.
"You did the right thing," he said. Erik put his hand on Kevin's cheek and made him turn his head to look at him. "He was trying to kill me."
"I thought he was going to blow your head off," Kevin whispered.
"He would certainly have tried," Erik said. He patted Kevin on the shoulder. Raven had come up behind Kevin, and raised an eyebrow at that. Erik met her eyes and shook his head just a little. She looked down at Kevin and nodded understanding. She wouldn't tell him the gun wouldn't have fired.
"He tastes terrible," Kevin said.
Erik pulled latex gloves from his pocket. He had hoped not to need them. He fished in the now barely twitching boy's pocket and found a bandanna. He used it to wipe the blood from Kevin's mouth, and then threw it down beside the boy.
"Well," he said. "That should send a message."
No one spoke for a while on the way home.
"Blood," Kevin said. "And they probably shoot up. You don't think--"
"Do you have any cuts in your mouth?" Erik asked, his voice level.
"I don't think so. No."
"Rinse your mouth with alcohol when you get home."
"And then drink some of the alcohol," Raven said. "It'll help your nerves."
"They'll look for me," Kevin said.
"They'll look for a snake," Erik said.
"Living off all those rats," Raven added. She sounded calmer than Erik felt.
He made himself smile, and then frowned in exaggerated distaste. "Someone should clean up around there."
They disposed of the car at the subway station, and Raven slipped away to get rid of the shoes. Erik left Kevin in a bar near the station and walked back. He met Raven at his own car.
She put her hand on his shoulder when he slid behind the wheel.
"I'm all right," he said.
"Of course you are."
"They've got to understand that we're dangerous."
"They will."
Erik was between classes the next afternoon when his office door opened without a knock. Olivia slipped in and shut the door behind her. She was dressed for teaching, cream sweater a sharp contrast to her dark skin. She sat down without being asked.
There was a pause.
"My God, Erik," she said. Her tone was less shock than admiration.
He closed his grade book. "I did say--"
"I know." She smiled slowly. "I know."
"And?" He kept his tone neutral, trying not to give the impression that it mattered what she thought.
"Okay," she said. "That's how it is." She nodded. "That's just how it is."
* * * * *
Amber was sprawled on her bed reading the paper. Jean found that comfortingly familiar, and she was settling down to read when Amber gave a low whistle and then tossed her a piece of the paper.
"Murder Rumored Mutant Slaying" was the headline. Jean read the article, frowning. Someone in Boston had apparently died of snakebite, but the bite wounds were an odd mix of human and animal. The neighborhood was convinced a marauding snake-man was on the loose. The police seemed to feel a drug deal gone bad was more likely, although they couldn't explain the snake.
"Weird," Jean said, wondering what she was supposed to say.
"So, do you know any mutants in Boston?"
Jean bit her lip. "I don't know any mutants with poisonous fangs, in Boston or anywhere else. I mean, it could be a mutant . . ."
"Or?"
"I don't know." Jean folded up the paper. "All right, it probably was a mutant. But that doesn't mean that all mutants are drug dealers who bite people."
"Uh-huh," Amber said, sounding unconvinced. "All I know is, I'm keeping an eye out for people with scales."
Jean looked down at her book pointedly. "I'm trying to study here."
"Sure. Sorry."
She'd just managed to immerse herself in the Middle Ages when there was a knock on the door. Jean rubbed her forehead wearily as Amber bounced up to answer it. Maybe she should go hide out in the library. Or take the train over to Warren's apartment and see if she could curl up on his couch and study. The apartment was one of the few perks of being independently wealthy she envied.
"Hi," a familiar voice said. "Is Jean here?"
"Scott," Jean said, feeling herself smile. She closed the book and slid off the bed, brushing past Amber. As she did, she felt a nerve-prickling wash of emotions that were too strong, off somehow, but she shook her head and shook it off.
Scott grinned. "I don't have much to do tonight, so I thought I'd come see if you wanted to have dinner."
"I'm better than being bored? You certainly know the way to a girl's heart," Jean said, and then regretted it as he flushed. She touched his arm to take the sting out of it, and found herself wanting to lean up and kiss him, too. But that probably wasn't the best way to remind him that they were supposed to be seeing other people while they were in school.
"Nice glasses," Amber said from behind them. Jean turned around slowly to look at her, thinking, you know, for thirty seconds I was just having a normal evening. And you're about to screw that up.
"Sunglasses at night," Scott said, with a crooked smile. "It's a look."
"So are you one of Jean's mutant friends?"
There was a moment of absolutely awful silence.
"Yep," Scott said finally, his voice neutral but his whole body tense. "That would be me."
"I guess it takes all kinds," Amber said stiffly.
Scott raised one eyebrow above the rim of his glasses. "If this is a bad time--" he began, to Jean. The question it implied made her suddenly angry, and made her wonder what the last few weeks had been like for him.
"It's not," she said. She picked up her coat and shrugged it on. "We'll be back."
Outside Scott turned to her, hands outstretched in the beginning of an apology. She raised her fingers to his lips. "Don't."
He smiled. She closed her eyes, and could feel him smile against her fingertips, could feel it when he frowned a little instead. "I don't want to make it harder."
She opened her eyes and shook her head. "Don't you dare apologize." She smiled, trying to soften her words again. "Come on. I want to have dinner with you and forget about all this."
Jean let herself back in quietly near midnight, expecting Amber to be asleep. Instead she was sitting up watching TV in her pajamas. She glanced up at Jean as she came in and then looked back at the TV.
"I kind of wish you wouldn't--I mean, I just don't think I'm comfortable with having people like that in the room," Amber said. "You know, I'm sure he's a nice person, but I don't know him, and I'm just--I'm not comfortable with it."
"With Scott," Jean said, sitting down on the edge of her bed. "You're not comfortable with Scott."
"I just--" Amber looked miserable. "It's just too weird, okay?"
"Are you uncomfortable with me?"
"No! I think you're a really nice person. But you're not . . ."
"Yes, I am," Jean said.
"Oh." There was a pause, filled with the tinny noise of a commercial. "I think I'm going to go to bed now."
"Me, too." Jean lay there in the darkness for a while; she didn't see how she could possibly sleep, and then she did. In the morning she got up and went to class and was a little surprised to see that the world around her was the same, the campus still crowded and pretty and patchily covered with dirty January snow. All that had changed was her.
She wasn't surprised when Amber got permission to change rooms, but she wasn't all that unhappy, either. At least now she could hear herself think. She thought she had every right to enjoy it.
* * * * *
As the weeks wore away toward six months, Erik and Raven didn't talk about what they were waiting for. They told each other about their days over dinner, cheerfully or in irritation depending on the day. They spent a lot of evenings curled together on the sofa reading, going to bed in answer to one of them stirring restlessly.
They kept up the meetings; the first one was awkward, but after that things were better. Kevin actually seemed more at ease in his own skin. He spoke up more, and laughed at Olivia's wry humor. Brendan started coming again, keeping up a brittle good humor. He edged away from any attempt Erik made to touch him, however casual.
Six weeks short of six months, Raven came to bed as a light-haired man, broad-shouldered and muscled like a dancer.
Erik let himself be pressed down under her weight and curled boneless and satisfied against her afterwards. He dreamed of needles and the smell of antiseptic and woke to the scream of the metal bedframe twisting.
Three weeks short of six months, they were lying in bed listening to Mozart, Raven's head on his shoulder, his sweat drying on her hair. There had been an edge of desperation to the sex. He touched her hair and she turned her head away.
"I don't have health insurance," she said.
"Raven . . ."
"I can't afford it, and even if I could, they won't cover pre-existing conditions."
"You wouldn't have to tell them."
"I can't afford it, Erik. And if I get sick . . ."
He pulled her in to curl against him. I'll pay," he said.
"You can't afford it," she said. "I know what you make."
"I'll marry you if I have to. Then you'll be covered by my insurance."
"Erik," she said, half-laughing. "You don't want to marry me."
"I don't want to marry anyone," Erik said. "But if we have to, I will."
"I'm still worried about the money," Raven said after a few minutes of silence. "If I can't work, or if we both can't--"
"If it comes to that, I'll get the money from Charles. Even he can't turn away a dying man." The words tasted terrible in his mouth. But this wasn't the time to stand on pride.
She turned, frowning. "You'd do that?"
"Before I'd let you go without."
"Oh, Erik," she said, and pressed her cheek against his shoulder.
He waited for her facing the door, this time. He thought they'd worn away some of their pride in six months, and replaced it with something stronger.
The key turned in the lock, and he saw her smile. He let out a single breath of relief and smiled in return.
They went out to celebrate and got terribly drunk, enough so that they had to take a cab home. Raven had to argue him out of trying to make the cab fly in the way back to the apartment. They'd drunk too much to do more than kick off their shoes and sleep half-dressed and curled around each other. They made up for it in the morning.
"If there are going to be other people, we should--" Erik started, some time afterwards.
"Have rules? God, yes. I don't want to go through this again."
"No," Erik agreed, kissing her hair. They lay tangled and contented for a while.
"I'm not cut out for monogamy," Raven said.
"Neither am I. You know that."
"I know that," Raven said. There was an odd note to her voice.
"What?"
"What about Brendan?"
He hadn't been sure, when it had just been an abstraction. Now he was. He stroked her hair, the apology he couldn't give her in words. "I still want to," he said.
Raven closed her eyes. "If I say no?"
There was no possible answer but the truth. "I'd do it anyway."
She rested her head against his shoulder. "That's what I thought you'd say."
"Raven--"
"Don't, Erik," she said. "I need to think."
He touched her temple with his fingertips. He could hear her breathing in the quiet, calm but not sleeping. After a while she slipped out of bed and he heard her soft footsteps heading for the door, the door closing behind her. He closed his eyes and waited for her to return; some time before she did he fell asleep.
She had left the apartment already when he woke up in the morning, although the coffee in the coffeemaker was still warm and the morning newspaper was very carefully folded on a corner of the table. That morning between classes he thought about calling her office just to see if she answered the phone, and told himself that was childish.
She was home when he got in that evening, cutting up vegetables in the kitchen. She glanced up at him as he came in. "I'm making salad."
"I see that."
She put down the knife, brushing her brown hair away from her face with the back of her wrist. "You know, it would be easier if you'd just fight with me."
"How can I? You've every right to be angry."
"Angry?" She bit her lip. "Oh, Erik. I'm terrified."
"Raven," he said. He lifted her hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles.
She closed her eyes. "Freedom. Brotherhood. Well, I suppose it's time to practice what I've been preaching, isn't it?" He waited, forcing himself to stay quiet. After a moment she opened her eyes. "You'd be careful?"
"Very."
"And tell me if--"
"Anything happens. Yes."
She caught his hand and twined her fingers with his.
Erik managed the phone call carefully, inviting himself to Brendan's apartment firmly but without explaining. He'd never been at his best on the phone. He tried to order his thoughts on the way across town. He'd have to be careful not to push hard enough for Brendan to throw him out for his own good.
Brendan let him in. He stepped back carefully out of Erik's way, and Erik found himself missing the casual kiss at the door he would once have gotten. He frowned at the usual state of domestic chaos, programs and magazines littering the coffee table, cups on the floor; at least that hadn't changed.
"Erik," Brendan said, looking at a spot a few feet from Erik's shoulder. "What can I get you?"
He asked for coffee. The process of making it was enough of a distraction to Brendan that Erik had a chance to establish himself in a kitchen chair before Brendan could ask why he was there. He sipped the coffee as Brendan stacked dishes on the countertop.
“So,” Brendan said, after several minutes but still before Erik was quite ready for him to. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
Erik turned the cup around in his hands. He hated being left at a loss for words. “Well,” he said, putting the cup down. He abandoned the security of the chair, crossing to where Brendan was doing dishes and standing at what he hoped was a non-threatening distance. “Things.”
Brendan examined a plate with care. “You haven't gotten . . . personal bad news?”
“No,” Erik said, and knew that was the first thing he had to say. “No. The news is good.”
If Brendan's face had showed relief first, Erik might still have left it at that and gone home alone, but it didn't. The tiniest change of expression told the story: he'd been bracing himself against bad news with its one awful consolation, Erik safe for him to touch, and deprivation showed before relief.
Erik pretended not to see it, and when Brendan turned to him there was only a lingering sadness under his smile.
“I'm glad,” Brendan said and embraced him too gently.
When they pulled away, Brendan took a few steps back, starting to put space between them. Erik pursued, deliberately putting himself in Brendan's way. He put a hand on Brendan's arm, standing a little too close. He knew how to do this.
“I'm still interested,” Erik said.
Brendan kissed him chastely, hands lingering on his shoulders and then letting go. He shrugged in frustration. “For what it's worth, so am I. But under the circumstances...”
“I'm still interested under the circumstances."
Brendan stiffened visibly. “No. You're crazy.”
“I'm not."
“You're my friend,” Brendan said, as if that should resolve the question. “I won't risk your life. And Raven's, or have you forgotten about her?”
“I never do,” Erik said. “She understands.”
“Does she,” Brendan said skeptically. “Well, I don't, and I won't.”
“I can be careful."
“There's no such thing as careful enough,” Brendan said. “Not when it's my friends.”
Erik stepped in closer, not trying to touch him, just standing too close. Not crossing any line that Brendan could call him on. Trying to tempt entirely passively, the way Charles used to put food in front of him when he was hungry and hadn't let himself feel it.
He wanted to say, There hasn't been anyone since you found out, has there? , but he knew it wouldn't be kind and wasn't absolutely sure it was true. Looking at the lines of tension in Brendan's body, he thought it was. Brendan had always been graceful, and now he was awkward, starting movements he didn't finish, turning away from his audience.
“You're going to have to face this eventually with someone,” Erik said instead.
“With someone else who's positive,” Brendan said, his jaw set. "Erik, I won't.”
Erik let him go, let him turn away and fill his hands with glasses. “I've never asked for anything to be perfectly safe."
“There's a difference between not perfectly safe and suicidal,” Brendan said, bending to put a glass in the dishwasher. Erik waited for him to follow it with Erik, I think you should go now . Instead Brendan clinked the glasses together too hard and murmured, "Oh, damn it."
Erik let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and began to think that he might get his way after all. If Brendan were going to throw him out, he would have done it already. Charles would have already, Charles might have still, but Brendan wasn't Charles and didn't have his iron will.
Erik took the next glass Brendan reached for out of his hands.
“I promise I'll be scrupulously careful,” Erik said.
“Define scrupulously careful,” Brendan said, and Erik smiled.
There was some painfully awkward sorting out of rules over coffee; hands only was all Brendan would agree to, which was less than Erik wanted but enough for him to accept. He wondered if it would be enough to make this worthwhile for Brendan.
Their hands lay close together on the table. Erik stroked the back of Brendan's hand, and Brendan let him do it, with a look of rueful hunger. Erik turned his hand palm up and rested it on the table, inviting an answering touch.
Brendan's fingers brushed his, then ran over his palm and up the bared line of his forearm. He was watching Erik, very seriously. He ran his fingers over the faded tattoo, which Erik found unpleasant, a phantom ache like fingers pressing on a bruise. Erik kept his arm still and let Brendan remind himself that Erik was already stained.
“Why, Erik? We're not exactly lovers.”
Erik wanted to say because you need me , and wasn't sure enough that it was true.
“We're friends,” he said instead. “That hasn't changed.”
“No," Brendan said. "But the situation's changed.”
“I won't give you up just because things have gotten complicated."
“If you put it that way.” Brendan smiled a little. “We could see how far we get before I panic." Making a joke of fear that looked real enough. Erik thought that was a kind of courage.
“That's fair.” He knelt in front of Brendan and kissed him thoroughly, exploring the corners of his mouth. “Still wondering why?”
“Yes, but I know I won't get a better answer out of you.” Brendan's hands rested on Erik's hips in an awkward embrace, table and chair at the wrong heights. Erik reached up to brush Brendan's cheek with the palm of his hand. A cool bitter voice in the back of his head said he wasn't really wanted here.
“Only if you want to,” Erik said.
“Erik,” Brendan said, breathlessly amused. “I want to.”
Erik got to his feet, walking behind Brendan and putting his hands on his shoulders. Resting his hands on his hair. Brendan let him for a while, and then asked, “What now?”
“A room with a bed would help,” Erik said.
“Well, I have one of those." It was a good thing Erik knew where it was, since Brendan trailed behind him. Erik stretched out on the bed while Brendan dimmed the lights. He could hear the stereo in the other room playing something Asian, circular and seemingly without rhythm.
Brendan lay down beside him, leaning into his touch. It was familiar and wrong. Erik could feel the tension in Brendan's body, his breathing too fast, out of rhythm. Erik stroked the fabric of Brendan's shirt over his shoulders.
“It's been so long, even this is sensory overload,” Brendan said. It was meant to be a joke, Erik knew, but he pulled back and gave him space. Brendan had never gone as much as a week without someone in his bed since Erik had known him. Now he was tense and miserable. Erik couldn't see how he could work like this.
He rubbed Brendan's shoulders. The muscles were so tight that Erik began wondering if he'd be able to get it up, as tense as he was. He worked on the tension and on thinking through how to make it all right if Brendan couldn't. Brendan buried his face in the pillow and sighed. That was promising.
“Take your clothes off and I'll do it properly,” Erik said.
Brendan did. He'd never been much for being naked for its own sake, but now he wanted to be seen. Erik liked looking at him, broad shoulders and hard muscles softened by the extra ten pounds he'd never get away with as a working dancer, scattering of freckles across his fair skin.
Slowly he found the knots of tension and eased them with his hands. The oil he was using tasted like bitter oranges when he followed the kneading fingers with a kiss. He kept quiet while he worked, and eventually Brendan began to relax under his hands, so visibly grateful for the touch that Erik was furious at himself for not having offered to do this before. “Your feet are tense,” he said, hands moving steadily. “You've been walking tensely, or standing tensely, or something.”
“Dancing tensely,” Brendan said. Erik pressed a kiss against the arch of his foot, and he shuddered. “That felt good,” he said, sounding almost surprised.
Erik stretched out beside Brendan when he was done and raked Brendan's hair with his fingers, running his mouth down the line of his jaw. He kissed Brendan hungrily, Brendan's teeth against his tongue, the lingering taste of oranges on his lips. Brendan smiled, and Erik found himself smiling back.
“You really are enjoying this,” Brendan said.
“It's good to see you smile,” Erik said, and then bent his mouth to the curve of Brendan's neck in case he'd said too much. There was a moment of pleasant struggle, his body arched over Brendan's, but then Brendan relaxed and let Erik do as he liked, too passive for Erik's tastes.
Erik pulled away and lay back, one arm outstretched against the pillow, inviting. Brendan just watched him at first, face hard to read in the dark. Erik had to unbutton his own shirt before Brendan's hands slid against his skin, warm and only a little hesitant. At the point where Brendan would have shifted down to take him in his mouth, Erik eased out from under him and pushed him down, working on him with insistent hands.
When he grasped Brendan's wrists Brendan shuddered and laughed breathlessly.
“You know what that makes me think about,” he said.
Erik did, and while he wasn't in the mood for games, it wasn't his own needs that mattered at the moment. He held Brendan's wrists and let him lose himself in fantasy, a guilty schoolboy being scolded for his adolescent sins. Erik wasn't nearly as absorbed in his role as schoolmaster, but he enjoyed watching a new kind of tension mount.
At the point where Erik wanted to be inside he made do with fingers and insistent words, watching Brendan touch himself as well, eyes closed, getting there, sweat beading on his forehead. It was the words that did it, in the end; one last “I'll make you” and Brendan came, shaking with the force of it, and then sagged to the bed, panting.
“There,” Erik said.
“Erik,” Brendan breathed, and then was quiet for a minute. Finally he rolled over to face Erik. Naked and no longer hard, he looked terribly vulnerable. He smiled ruefully. “You didn't get much out of that.”
“Just let me do something about that,” Erik said, and got his own hand where he needed it. It took a minute, and when he was on the edge he found himself searching Brendan's face. “I want you to watch,” he said.
“I'm watching,” Brendan said, and that was enough to do it.
Everything was quiet. Erik wanted to pull Brendan into his arms, and knew they should clean up first, and wished he could forget long enough to do it anyway, and couldn't. They were lying close enough so that Erik could feel the warmth of Brendan's body, Erik's hands keeping contact between them.
“I needed that,” Brendan said after a while, sounding satiated and guilty. Erik wasn't sorry in the least. If he started to have second thoughts later, he'd remember the moment when he first made Brendan smile.
“Well,” Erik said, “if you feel it was a bit one-sided, next time you can address yourself to my needs.”
Brendan smiled and didn't argue about there being a next time. Erik was glad. Their heads rested close on the pillow. He could hear Brendan breathing in the dark.
“You're so brave,” Brendan said finally.
Erik spread out his hand against Brendan's shoulder. “Isn't it obvious why I'm here?” he scolded gently.
“I love you too, Erik," Brendan said, sounding amused.
Erik kept touching him, letting his hands say what he couldn't put into words. Gradually his hands slowed and stilled on Brendan's chest, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breathing.
“Stay the night,” Brendan murmured after a long quiet stretch of time. “Please?”
Erik didn't say he'd been planning to all along, that Raven wouldn't expect him back until morning; he only said "yes" and watched Brendan settle beside him, lines of care slowly returning to his face as he lay there and then fading as he sank into sleep.
He missed Raven beside him, a sweet ache. When he was back in her arms with his head on her shoulder, he'd be able to think about what he'd already lost and how this would end. Just then, though, it was cool and quiet, and he didn't want to move even enough to strip off his disordered clothes. He closed his eyes in the darkness, the taste of bitter oranges still in his mouth.