fanficition cove

Originally written/posted: June 2011
Fandom: X-Men First Class
Pairing: Hank/Alex
Rating: G
Word Count: 1450 words
Notes: Again, not reread. Sorry!

“Hank,” Raven says slowly, looking around the kitchen, looking at the destruction that he’s caused. “Why are the counters covered in cupcake batter?”

He’s trying to make Alex cupcakes, because it’s his birthday and all, and even though they weren’t exactly the best of friends, he would want someone to do this for him, too. He doesn’t know why he feels the uncontrollable urge to please the boy that seems to hate him the most, but it’s something that on most days, he cannot ignore.

It’s seemingly impossible today.

“It’s Alex’s birthday,” he says, and grabs a paper towel.

“Yeah,” Raven agrees. “So?”

He bites his lip, it’s a nervous tick that he can’t really get rid of (Sean says that girls will find it ‘adorable’ and he might be inclined to care if what he’s after is actually, you know, vagina). It’s long past the time that he had a crush on the girl, but the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that he had a crush on her ability to be able to hide so flawlessly, not because of who she was.

Raven looks at him like she’s stuck between hugging him and punching him, and luckily for him, she does neither and instead looks around the kitchen. “Charles is going to kill you,” she says.

He shrugs, “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Erik always wakes up first, and once he finds out that I’m making cupcakes for Alex’s birthday, he’ll cover for me.”

“Well,” she says, “we better get to actually doing this. Alex wakes up in an hour.”

::::::

They move quickly; Hank has always been good with his hands, and Raven is a natural baker, who spends hours in the kitchen when there’s nothing left to do around the mansion (for how big it is, it’s not very entertaining).

“We have to decorate them, Hank!”

Hank blinks. “He’s a boy, Raven, he’s not going to care what it looks like on the outside.”

“It’s polite to do so, and plus they’ll look so much prettier when I eat them.”

“You’re awful,” he says, but grabs a frosting bottle and starts decorating them, too. “And these aren’t even for you, anyways.”

“He’ll offer some to me,” she says, and he knows that she’s right, so he drops the subject.

“I didn’t know you could decorate.”

“My mom owned her own cupcake shop,” he says, shrugging. It’s completely normal for him to be doing this for someone who probably, kind of hates him, right?

::::::

After they’re finished with the cupcakes, he puts a sign in front of them that says ‘Stay clear, Sean, Charles & Erik, oh, and Happy Birthday Alex’ and moves outside. It’s not that he’s a pussy (he is) or that he’s restless or anything, but he just has some reading to get done (he doesn’t) that isn’t going read itself.

He’s nervous because there’s a high chance that Alex will probably make fun of him for this.

And it’s not like this is anything new, because the blonde makes jokes about him too frequently to ignore, but he’d like to think that this would be the one thing that would be different between them.

Plus, there is something safe about books that isn’t safe about reality, in books, he can hide and pretend, and live in a fallacy where he doesn’t have to acknowledge that Alex exists. In a book, it’s much better than reality because he doesn’t have to live with the fact that he’s not normal, and even when he does have to acknowledge it, at least it’s accepted.

“Hank?”

He looks up against the blinding sun, and sees Alex. Alex, who is looking at him with an expression that he is unable to read because he’s generally crap at reading people, especially this boy, who has cupcake frosting smeared across his cheek. If he notices it, he doesn’t say anything, and it’s probably the most endearing thing that he’s ever seen.

“Alex,” he says. “Hi.”

A slow, deliberate grin spreads across his face. “Thank you,” he says.

“For what?” If there’s one thing that Hank is good at around Alex, it’s playing coy.

“For the cupcakes, you just, you remembered. I don’t think anyone else would’ve.”

Hank smiles and shrugs, waving him off with a dismissive, yet awkward, hand.  He does get too much credit sometimes, even if it’s barely ever from Alex himself. “Nah,” he says. “I would want someone to make me cupcakes on my birthday, ya know?  I was just returning the favor.”

Alex grins at him, catching his eye for a moment before he plops beside him. “I would.”

“What?”

“I would make you cupcakes.” He says.

Hank tries to deny that his heart skips a beat at that, but he can’t bring himself to care, not when the younger boy is staring at him so intently. “November 21st,” he says.

He gets a slap on the arm for that, and he can’t help but smirk at the other boy. Like this, it’s easy to let himself get comfortable, to let himself get used to the way that Alex’s voice curls around his laugh, the way that his deep voice grasps around his spine and pulls. But, he knows that this is only temporary, because Alex is wonderful (even if he’s an asshole most of the time) and Hank doesn’t come anywhere close to that.

“What?” Alex asks.

He lets his eyebrows knit together. “What?” He counters.

“You keep staring at me,” he says, but it’s not accusing, or annoyed; if anything, he sounds fond.

Hank flushes even though he doesn’t mean to, and shrugs. “You have a bit of, uh, frosting on your cheek.”

“Where?” He asks, reaching up a hand to try and snatch it away, but of course, because Hank’s life is quickly resembling that of a romantic comedy, he  completely misses the target.

He chuckles, the sound caught between a laugh and a sigh. “No,” he whispers, “here,” he finishes, reaching up with an efficient, slender finger to wipe it away.

“Hank,” he says.

Hank doesn’t say anything, he simply looks over at Alex who is watching him with a look that definitely mirrors adoration and love, and maybe a little of exasperation. He doesn’t know what to do now, because he’s only ever really kissed Raven, and that wasn’t a real kiss because Erik had interrupted, and he wasn’t into kissing her anyways.

He just didn’t know how to say no.

And he might be getting ahead of himself here, because Alex might not even want to kiss him, or to touch him — this thought leaves his head as soon as he feels Alex’s fingers grasping his arm, stroking strong and sure. But he’s pretty sure that the look in his eye right now signifies that he does, because he’s seen Charles look at Erik the same way.

Hank can’t help but think that it’s really something special, because he never thought he’d get someone to look at him like that.

“Wh-”

Then they’re kissing, and it’s not rough, or dominant, and there isn’t the faint taste of alcohol in their mouths like he once thought that there would be. It’s sweet and it’s tender, and Alex tastes of tobacco, cupcake batter, and cinnamon, and it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. He can do this forever, sitting under a sycamore tree with a pretty boy in his lap, listening to each others heartbeats and the sound of their breaths.

For a moment, everything loses its significance when they pull away. Hank thinks this is mostly because he almost doesn’t want to believe that this is real, and partly because he doesn’t know how to let himself.  He’s not willing to sacrifice this for anything, not willing to find out that this might just be a figment of his imagination, and instead of kissing a gorgeous boy, he’s kissing his book instead.

“But why?” He asks, a little breathless, once he realizes that, yes this is actually Alex; that they had just willingly kissed.

“You’re the only one who really cares,” he whispers, his fingers tracing lines across Hank’s cheekbones. “Plus, I have a thing for nerds.”

Hank laughs. “Well, lucky for you, I’m the nerdiest of them all.”

And the book, which was so delicately placed in his lap, is thrown to the side, face up, so Bob Dylan could watch them too.

(He might have been nervous about having an audience, but Alex is Alex, and audience or not, he is now his.)