FIC: Never Be a Better Chance (XMFC, Erik/Charles, Lorna/Alex, PG)

[regann]

Title: Never Be a Better Chance
Author: Regann
Pairing: Charles/Erik (XMFC); Lorna/Alex
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own anything; I just play with them.
Notes: As always, thanks to pookaseraph for help/support/cookies/bribes.

Summary:
"Wow." Alex sat back in his seat, a little dazed. "So do you think your dad is...like..."

"...your dad's ex-boyfriend?" Lorna finished with a wince.

Lorna's got a little mystery on her hands, one she's determined to solve. Non-powered, modern AU. ~24,000 words.



Never Be a Better Chance

Even though her father's new job wasn't the same kind of traumatic life-changing event that usually precipitated a move, Lorna couldn't shake the bad associations that the sight of packing boxes stacked around their new house made well up inside her.

She knew her dad was trying -- in his own, special emotionally-stunted way -- to be sensitive to her distress, but if there was one thing she'd learned in the three years since her mother's death, it was that Erik Lehnsherr didn't really do sensitive. It wasn't that he didn't try, especially when it came to his accidental daughter, but it was one of the few things at which he tended to fail.

At least they were almost done with the unpacking; Lorna knew she'd feel better once they'd gotten the last of the moving detritus cleared away, and all they had left to do was to transfer the last few boxes to the attic where they'd likely rot until they moved again.

"Lorna!" Her father's voice floated down from somewhere above her, likely from the storage crawlspace that passed as an attic in their new box, accessible only through a trapdoor in one of the closet's ceiling. Thank god her dad was tall but on the scrawny side or else Lorna would be the one fighting the cobwebs and bugs it most likely hosted. "Are there any more boxes?"

"Let me look, hold on!" she shouted back. She quickly eyed her way through the rooms -- living room, kitchen, until she reached the extra room her dad was using as an office. There, in the corner were two unpacked boxes admit the scattered chaos of everything else. "Two more -- just a sec!"

The boxes were beat-up, worse than any of the others they'd unpacked, and the tape looked old, brittle and discolored where it peeled at the edge, which led Lorna to believe they were probably something Erik had packed up the last time he'd moved. Secretly, she wondered why he bothered keeping them but she kept her opinion to herself as she grabbed them and headed for the second floor.

Given the wear on the cardboard, she was almost surprised she made it as far as the hall before the bottom gave way in one of them, spilling items across the shiny hardwood floor.

Lorna bit back a curse as she knelt down and started to gathered the spilled items, mostly a mountain of papers and odd trinkets, almost knick-knacky in their randomness. None of it particular struck her as things Erik would consider dear, but she still dutifully reached for a pile of papers. As she did so, a handful of photos fell from between them, which she reached for automatically, saving the slick sheets from sliding across the floor to add to the ungainly mess she already had to clean up.

It wasn't until she was absently leafing them through that she noticed what they were photos of -- her dad, when he was really young. Or, at least younger than she'd ever seen him, maybe even young enough to look like the handsome German college student her mother met, fell in love with and left in the span of a summer spent abroad. There was something college-y in the look and the subjects of the pictures, her father and various people she didn't recognize in casual clothes, lounging around on comfy couches or at some generic park. In a few, there were even scenic shots of what she thought could be London, which made her even more certain that she'd stumbled upon evidence from a time she only believed happened because it had led to her existence.

Lorna abandoned any pretense of clean-up as she shuffled through the photos with intent, searching for some flash of blonde hair or a gentle smile that could be her mom. She didn't find one but the last few photos were interesting in that she did find a wide, familiar smile beaming back at her in them, but it was her father's, more unguarded than she'd ever seen him before. In those photos where her dad actually looked young and handsome instead of frightening and foreboding like he did now, Erik wasn't alone -- there was a quiet-looking young man with him, with longish dark hair and a smile of his own, and the bluest eyes she'd ever seen. He was laughing in one of the photos, arm slung around her father's shoulders, and there was some something about that picture that kept her drawing her eye back to it. She couldn't really place it; it was on the tip of her tongue, the edge of her brain, the thing that she saw that startled her, it was...

"Lorna!"

Erik's bark of her name startled her enough that she dropped all the photos in a scattering mess. She looked up to find him giving her one of the looks, frowning as he came down the last few stairs of the staircase, eyes darting between her and the mess. "What happened?"

"The box broke," she said, reaching over to start pushing at the papers again. "I was trying to pick them up."

His eyes lingered on the photos strewn across a stack of hastily-straightened papers and waved her off. "Go find a new box and the tape," he said. "I'll do this."

Lorna scurried to comply, glad to leave him to it as she dashed into the kitchen for the tape gun. By the time she'd gotten back, he'd gathered everything into a neat pile, ready for the box she was busy taping back together.

"You have school tomorrow," he said, apropos of nothing, as he began to stack everything into the new box.

"Yes?"

He paused long enough to give her a pointed look. "I thought you'd want to do something about that before it did," he said, disapproval easy to read in his accented voice.

The this was her hair, currently gathered in a messy ponytail and currently died platinum and streaked with green. She'd done it in a fit of rebellion against the news that he was moving her across the country again and he'd ranted about it but hadn't pressured her for a fix-it dye job. Lorna lifted her chin a little and met his glare. "Nope," she said. "I like it."

"Of course you do," he said to himself, as he taped up the now-full box of knickknacks. "I'm going to put these away," he said. "You're in charge of starting dinner."

"So you mean, I've got to find the takeout menus, right?" she called after him as he headed up the stairs. "Because I'm not actually cooking for you after I've spent the whole weekend unpacking."

"Anything but pizza, Lorna," he called back. "I mean it!"

Lorna almost smiled at his playfully stern tone but then she had a flashback to how he'd looked in those old pictures with that guy, happier than he ever was these days. For some reason, it made her incredibly sad.

After a moment, though, she shook it off, her mind on more important things like whether she remembered what she did with the Chinese takeout menu and what she was going to wear to school the next day to best shock her father and her classmates.

With those kinds of fantasies running through her head, Lorna found herself humming as she made a beeline for the kitchen.

**

The first few weeks of school were just as hideous as Lorna had been expecting and she explained the horror of her days in detail whenever her father asked. Not that it gained her more than a sigh and an eye roll, but she figured he needed to suffer since it was his decision-making that had landed her there.

Being a new student, especially one with dyed-green hair and a penchant for little too-much black eyeliner (on purpose), Lorna knew she was perceived as both mysterious and strange by her classmates, conclusions she didn't try to change. She was much happier left alone with her iPod and her crafts project, a metal-working piece she hoped would result in a silver ring that her dad would get as a Hanukkah present if he didn't piss her off too badly in the interim.

Despite her best intentions, she did make one friend, mostly because both they shared two core classes together and both tended to gravitate to the back corners of the classroom whenever possible. It took about two weeks before they got around to introducing themselves, however, after Lorna noticed that he'd spent an another entire Biology class staring at her out of the corner of his eye.

"What?" she demanded as soon as the teacher dismissed them and she stood to gather her books.

"What what?" he asked, slinking out of his seat as he ran a hand through his spiky blond hair.

"Stop staring at me," she told him. "And if you've got something to say, just say it."

His face scrunched up and she wasn't sure if it was a grimace or a grin. He needed to work on that. "Any reason your hair's green?"

"Same reason your jeans are artfully distressed?" She looked him up and down for emphasis.

The look must've been a grin because it melted easily into a laugh. "Fair enough." He grabbed his bookbag and hustled after her as she made her way toward the door. "I'm Alex."

She gave him a suspicious look, the one she'd hadn't known for a dozen years that she inherited from her father. "Lorna," she finally said.

His grin widened and it was really...nice, she decided, when he wasn't doing that other thing with it. "I know, you're in my English class, too."

"Yes, I am," she nodded. "And if we don't hurry it up, we're going to be late." With that, she dashed ahead of him, but he didn't seem to take the hint because he slid in the desk beside hers for fifth period and, for some reason, she didn't protest it then or for the next week or so. Finally, she had to accept that they were friends, if one described a friend as someone one traded barbs with about their personal appearance and sometimes laughed with over the inanity of their classmates.

There was also a little fluttery feeling she got sometimes when he smiled at her or grabbed the books she accidentally left behind after a class, but Lorna was adamant that that was just a digestive pang.

She became a little more grateful for Alex and their so-called friendship as their first major exam in Biology approached. Lorna wasn't stupid and she never let her grades suffer when she could help it, but Biology was kicking her ass and she wasn't too proud to beg for help.

"Sure," Alex said when she broached the subject of studying together. "We can start tomorrow if you want? I'm free."

"Yes! Definitely," she said, feeling relief wash over her. She could've probably asked her dad for help but she really tried to avoid that at all costs. "Where do you want to meet?"

"We'll never get anything done in the library," he said. "There's some kind of nerd gathering in there after school on Wednesdays. We could do it at one of our houses?"

Lorna was momentarily struck dumb by the mere idea of subjecting anyone, but especially Alex, to the not-so-tender mercies of Erik Lehnsherr in full glare mode, a fact Alex must've noticed because he quickly continued. "We can totally do it at my house, if you want."

"That sounds like a great plan," she said and they quickly hammered out the details on where they'd meet up after the last period of the next day.

Alex, she was surprised to find, drove to school which was an envious privilege for a sophomore, but she was relieved that they didn't have to deal with a bus ride. Lorna usually carpooled with another family in her neighborhood, although she hated really wasn't a fan of Dr. Quested's son, although she dealt with it to escape the trauma she'd endure if she had to ride the bus everyday.

It wasn't until they were standing outside of Alex's house, which was huge and rather more like a mansion than Lorna had expected, despite the casual signs of wealth about him, that Lorna thought to ask, "Are your parents home?"

Alex stopped his desperate search for his keys to look up at her. "This is really a study session, right? Because, yeah, but I do need to cram for this test."

"What? No!" She gave him a shove as he laughed at her. "Ew, god. I just meant..." She made a vague hand gesture at herself, including her green hair, heavy eye make-up and dark, goth-lite clothing. "...parents don't tend to react well to the package, if you caught my drift."

Alex was still smiling, but it was softer and it reached his eyes. Like he actually cared she was a having a minor freak-out about meeting his parents. "Lorna, it's fine. Charles is not going to care, I promise." He triumphantly rescued his house keys from his voluminous backpack and unlocked the door. "Come on."

Lorna followed him inside, still a little in awe at her surroundings. The house was just as mansion-like on the inside, marble and artwork on the walls, plush white carpet on the floor in what looked like a formal dining room off to her left. Her dad certainly wasn't a slouch, but this was, by far, out of the same league as their comfortable two-story house. To distract herself, she asked, "You call your dad by his first name?" Not that she didn't just sometimes call her dad Erik, but that was mostly to piss him off. There hadn't been much annoyance in Alex's voice when he'd said it.

"Ah, well, Charles isn't really my dad, really," Alex said, not looking at her. She could see he was turning red, though, by the stripe of his skin at his nape were it was pinking up before her eyes.

"Step dad?" she asked.

"Foster father, actually," another voice supplied, soft and accented and amused from the room she hadn't shamelessly peeked into, causing her to whip around in surprise. "But he's grown rather fond of me, I think."

Alex snorted. "Yeah, you're okay."

The man who'd spoke was standing in the doorway of the other room with a book in his hand, smiling warmly at them. He wasn't very tall -- not much taller than her, actually, especially in her butch boots -- and he was dressed like something out of a movie, in that she'd never seen another so perfectly typify the professor-y type in her real life. He had wavy dark hair, neatly styled, and very kind blue eyes above his smile. He looked familiar, too, but she couldn't figure out why.

"Hello there," he said, stepping up. "Since Alex doesn't seem to be willing to do it, I'll introduce myself. Charles Xavier."

"Lorna," she managed, taking the hand he offered for a handshake. Usually when adults did that, she found it condescending but Mr. Xavier just seemed enthusiastic and...very British. "Lorna Dane."

"Lovely to meet you, Lorna," he said, still smiling.

"Uh, you too, Mr. Xavier."

"You're welcome to call me Charles," he told her.

"Or Professor," Alex said with a touch on her arm. "That's what we call him sometimes, too."

"You're a professor?" she asked.

"Guilty as charged," he admitted with a laugh. "It doesn't account for much by Alex's reckoning, but I might come in handy if you get a bit lost with your Biology since my specialty is genetics."

"And you weren't going to mention that?" Lorna asked Alex with a roll of her eyes.

He shrugged. "We shouldn't need him!" He threw a look toward Professor Xavier. "No offense."

"None taken," he assured him. "Go study, learn something. If you decide you do need me, I'll just be..." He motioned with his book back toward the room he'd come from.

Alex's touch on her arm became a tug. "Come on," he said, pulling her in the other direction.

Lorna watched the Professor disappear back into the other room and spared one more thought to how familiar he looked before finally followed Alex deeper into the house, trying to set her mind on the utterly terrifying task of passing her Biology exam.

**

The study session went well and they didn't need Professor Xavier's help, although Lorna suggested it a few times. Every time she did, though, Alex got this crazy stubborn look in his eyes and refused, so she gave up, recognizing it for what it was. She often felt the same when it came to asking her dad for help, although she guessed it wasn't for the same reason.

Still, she felt her anxiety uncoiling a little as they plowed through four chapters of useless vocabulary words and she was so caught up in trying to grasp the material, she was surprised to look up from the books and notice the time.

"Wow, we've been killing it," she said with satisfaction.

"Hell yeah," he agreed. "See? I told you you weren't going to fail miserably. You're way too smart for that."

Lorna was busy trying to ignore the flutter in her stomach -- she ate a late lunch! -- at his smile and the ringing confidence in his declaration that she didn't notice the Professor enter the room (Alex called it a den but it was more like a lounge, up to and including a old-fashioned pinball machine and a pool table) until he cleared his throat loudly.

"How's it going?" he asked. Lorna noticed that his shirt sleeves were pushed up to his elbows and his hair was a little more mussed.

"Good," Alex said, and she echoed his assessment.

"I'm glad to hear it," the Professor said. "I was wondering if Lorna wanted to stay for dinner?"

She and Alex exchanged a look. "Do you want...?" she began.

"If you want," he answered. "I mean, yeah, it's cool, but only if you want."

The Professor looked away for a moment and Lorna couldn't quite shake the belief it was to hide his smile at their general inability to form a sentence. She cringed and hoped it wasn't obvious externally. "I'd have to call my dad," she admitted, making a decision. "I forgot my cell, though. Can I use your landline?"

"Of course," the Professor said, as if he'd been expecting it. "There isn't a phone in here, but you can use the one in my study. Alex, show her way? I've got to get back to the stove."

Lorna followed Alex back toward the entrance, to the room where she'd first seen the Professor. "You guys don't have a cook?"

"No," he laughed. "We're not that bad."

"You mean that rich?" she teased.

Alex ducked his head a little as he ushered her into the study, a glorious room full of rich, dark wood and books. "Okay, yeah, Charles is loaded," he said. "But we don't live like that."

"So you're saying you guys scrub your own toilets?"

"No," he admitted. "We do have a maid service for that."

Lorna might've felt put off by the obvious riches of the Summers-Xavier household except that the Professor seemed very nice and not at all put off by her green hair like so many other parents and Alex seemed to like her 80% of the time, so she figured she should return the favor.

"Here's the phone," he said, waving toward the phone on the edge of the massive desk. "But you could've just borrowed my cell."

"And let my dad have your number on the Caller ID?" She shook her head. "No way."

He looked at her a little like she was the cleverest person he'd ever met. It was a little disconcerting but nice. "You do think of everything."

"I try," she said with a little smile. Then she remembered she needed to run the gauntlet of a conversation with her dad and asked, "Can I do this in private? I don't want you to subject you to this, even second hand."

"Sure, sure," he said, "Come back to the den when you're done, okay?"

Lorna waved him off and made sure he was good and gone before she grabbed the receiver and dialed her home's landline. The handset was cordless so she wandered around the room while she listened to it ring, looking at all the framed photos and documents that littered the room. The Professor, it seemed, had earned a lot of degrees in his day.

When the machine picked up at her house, she sighed. "Stop screening your calls like someone actually wants to talk to you," she said after the beep. "I need to ask you something. Dad? Dad!"

She heard the click on the other end, so she stopped shouting. "You're so charming, how could I resist?" Erik said in a dry tone. "Why aren't you home yet, Lorna?"

"We're still studying and my friend's dad invited me to stay for dinner," she said. "Can I?"

There was a long pause on the other end, which she knew would've been accompanied by a frown if she'd been there in person. She rolled her eyes to herself and continued her examination of the study, now moving to the massive collection of framed photos that took up an entire section of the shelves behind the Professor's desk. "How late will you be?"

"No later than nine," she supplied. "Please?"

It was something she rarely said and she hadn't asked to do anything social since they moved, so she figured he was just torturing her before the inevitable permission would be granted. She listened to him mutter under his breath in German while her eyes skittered over photos of a pretty blond girl and then one of what was obviously Alex, a few years younger.

"I supposed it's fine," he conceded. "But if you're not home by nine, I'm coming to look for you."

"Yeah, yeah."

"And don't forget your cell phone again," he added. "It doesn't do you any good on your dresser."

"Yeah, yeah," she repeated, more interested in perusing the next row of photos than listening to Erik's usual admonishments. "Is that all?"

It turned out to be lucky that she didn't care to hear what he had to say, though, because as her eyes slid across the bottom row of photos, she ground to a halt when she realized what was staring back at her -- a younger, smiling version of the face that belonged to the nagging voice in her ear.

And she suddenly realized why the Professor had looked so familiar -- he was the guy from the photo she'd found in her dad's old box when they'd been moving, the smiling young man with the bright blue eyes who'd been so friendly with her father's young, joyful doppelganger. The photo the Professor had was from a different time and place, but the essentials remained the same: her dad and Alex's dad, young and happy, standing close and grinning at each other like there was no one else on the planet.

"Do you hear me, Lorna?" her father's voice came from the receiver, a shade more concerned than when he usually asked that question.

It took effort to answer, still mesmerized as she was by the unexpected candid photo. "Yeah, Dad, sure. See you later."

Erik sighed, but she honestly wasn't sure why. "Goodbye, Lorna."

She remembered -- just barely -- to hang up the phone when she heard the dial tone, returning the receiver to the cradle on auto-pilot. As soon as her hands were free, she reached for photo, so nicely preserved in a smart silver frame, unlike the ones her dad kept, hidden in dusty boxes in the attic. Lorna couldn't shake the feeling that it meant something, especially given the way they looked at each other, it was as if...

"Hey, you done?" Alex said, poking his head into the room. "Not trying to eavesdrop but I figured your dad still couldn't be bitching at you."

Lorna slowly replaced the photo on the shelf. "You'd be surprised."

He gave her a questioning look which was accompanied by a head tilt that she shouldn't find cute but she did. "Something the matter?"

Lorna let her eyes linger on the photo for one more moment. "I'm not sure," she said at least. "But I'd like to find out."

**

Lorna almost asked Professor Xavier about the photo during dinner, but she was distracted by the surprise of seeing a gangly red-headed guy she knew from school appear at the dinner table as they were taking their seats.

"Aren't you in my PE class?" she asked, waiting for him to remove his ear buds so she could repeat the question.

"Yeah? Yeah!" He gave her a wave as he sprawled into his seat. "Laura, right?"

"Lorna," she corrected. "And you're....Sean?"

"Yup," he nodded.

"Who's he?" she asked Alex.

He shrugged. "Foster brother."

"Doesn't talk much about us, does he?" the Professor asked with a teasing gleam in his eyes that made him look more like the young man from the photo.

Lorna smiled and shook her head, even as she stepped on Alex's foot under the table. "Ow!"

During the dinner of surprisingly tasty lasagna and salad, Lorna learned a little bit more about Alex's family. He was actually one of three foster brothers, but the oldest was apparently a genius and already working on his PHD even though he wasn't even old enough to drink alcohol yet. From Alex's face as the Professor discussed this Hank person, she got the sense that there was some history there that wasn't entirely pleasant; having her own weird sibling rivalry with siblings she never even saw, Lorna understood.

Every time she thought to open her mouth and ask Professor Xavier about the photo, the words just didn't seem to come and, in the end, she decided just to wait. There was something about the photo that made her think it might embarrass the Professor if she just blurted it out and caught him off-guard and she didn't want to do that. He hadn't been anything but nice and polite to her and since it looked like Alex was the only friend she was going to make, she didn't want to upset things between her and his family. But that didn't mean she wasn't still dying with curiosity about it, though. There had been something about the way her dad had looked at those photos that screamed they were important in some mortifying, dark-secret way that she was determined to unearth. Erik Lehnsherr did not get to have dark secrets she couldn't use against him.

And since she couldn't ask the Professor, she decided that she'd ask the next best person: Alex.

Lorna waited until they were alone in his car as he drove her home, flirting with that nine o'clock deadline that her dad had set.

"So I was looking at your foster dad's photos when I was on the phone," she began.

"Are you going to say something about that one of me at zoo? Because it's totally not what it looks like," he said.

"Not everything is about you," she told him. "And I didn't even notice it, actually." Somehow, his expression was darker after that, so she hurriedly continued. "I noticed one of the Professor when he was really young. Maybe in England?"

Alex nodded a little, but she couldn't tell if it was in answer to her question or along with the soft music playing in the background. "He grew up there, went to school there, so maybe. Why?"

"Do you know the one I mean? He's with some tall guy? They're like..." Lorna searched for the right term. The closest she could come up with was "hugging" but it wasn't quite right and it left her a little uncomfortable. "They're sort of leaning on each other and it's on the bottom shelf. Do you know?"

Alex pulled up in front of her house and threw the house into park before he turned to answer. "I've never paid much attention to them. Charles has a lot of pictures in there."

"Yeah," she admitted with a sigh. "So you have no idea?"

He shrugged. "I guess I just assumed it was an old boyfriend or something."

Lorna felt her face get a little warm. "Boyfriend? What do you mean, boyfriend?"

Alex was giving her a hard look. "I meant what I said," he told her. "Is that a problem?"

It took her a moment to realize that Alex was tensing up and scowling at her because he thought she was some kind of homophobe which she clearly wasn't. Homophobes usually didn't go around with green hair, after all. "No, no, no, no!" Before she realized it, she had her hands stroking up and down his bare arms which was nice because...it was nice and also because she could feel his relax under her touch. "I was just surprised is all. Isn't it hard for him to be a foster parent if he's gay?"

"Well he doesn't much date these days, either way," Alex said. "But he dates women too." He scrunched up his face at her. "Okay, now I'm weirded out by your interest in Charles's love life. What the hell?"

"My interest is in the photo, not his love life," she protested. "I don't want to think about your dad's love life. Ew."

"I agree."

"It's almost as bad as thinking about yours."

"Hey!"

"So you don't know anything about the photo?" Lorna asked, just to make sure.

He shook his head. At what must've been her obvious disappointment, he added, "But I could ask if you want?"

She brightened. "Really?"

Alex ran a hand through his hair, which she knew was a nervous gesture. She just didn't get why he was nervous. "Sure."

"And you can be all sly about it? I don't want to make your dad suspicious."

"Charles doesn't really do suspicious," Alex said. "And why is this a big mystery with you anyway?"

Lorna debated with herself but ultimately decided not to mention it to Alex yet. She still wasn't sure what she planned to do with the information once she got it, and she didn't want anything to ruin her as-yet-formed plans, not even Alex Summers with his scrunchy smirk and spiky hair and sometimes-dreamy blue eyes. "I can't tell you right, but I will if you'll help me." She gave him a pleading look. "You will still help me right?"

Alex looked at her for a long moment and he leaned against the steering wheel in what was obvious exasperation. "I don't even know what I'm helping you with," he griped. "But yes, sure, whatever."

Her exclamation of excitement totally wasn't a girly squeal and if Alex ever said otherwise, she was done with him, even if he was her only friend. "Thank you!"

"Yeah, yeah," he said, in a fair approximation of how Lorna had said it to her dad earlier that evening. It was something else they had in common, apparently. "Get out of the car before your dad realizes I'm out here."

It was a fair point, so Lorna scrambled to do just that, although she found herself turning back when he called her name softly through his open window. "Hey, Lorna?"

"Yeah," she asked, leaning in toward him.

"You had fun tonight, right? Hanging out?"

Lorna grinned and hoped her face wasn't visible from outer space at how red she had to be turning thanks to Alex and his stupid soft smile. "As much as can be had with Biology, that is."

Suddenly she had a face full of smirk looking back at her, a toothy evil grin that worried her and excited her at the same time. "That's so not true," he said. "Maybe next time, though."

"Alex Summers, you asshole!" she growled as he laughed at her shocked face and peeled away from the curve, in no doubt that she was red to the roots of her bleached hair.

She was still standing on her front lawn, trying to decide if she was irritated or pleased by his parting comment when she heard the front door open and close behind her.

"It's 8:55," she said before her dad could say anything.

Erik shrugged as he reached her side, relieving her of the burden of her book bag, a weight he shouldered easily. "You didn't tell me your friend was a boy."

"He's just my study partner," she said, looking away. She twisted her now-empty hands in the hem of her shirt.

Erik raised an eyebrow. "Is that why you're blushing?"

Lorna glared at him, pushing past him for emphasis as she flounced back toward the house. "Whatever. You don't know what you're talking about."

"You can tell me these things, Lorna." His voice was soft and concerned, which she didn't like at all. It made her remember how her mom had sounded when she used that same parental tone and he was nothing like her mom at all.

"Why?" she shot back over her shoulder. "It's not like I know anything about you!"

She didn't look back as she slammed into her room, where she hid out for the rest of the night.

**

Lorna ignored Alex like a coward the next day at school, not even buckling under the pressure of his pathetic hangdog expression shot at her from across the Biology lab. Then she went home and ignored her dad, too, instead choosing to blare music she knew he hated at the loudest volume possible as she worked in her sketchbook, trying to work out the design she wanted to try when her Crafts class practiced silk-screening the next week.

On Friday, she apologized to Alex for her behavior the day before by presenting him with his favorite energy drink from the machines as soon as she noticed he was barely going to make it through home room without taking a nose dive into his notebook. Alex, being well-versed in her ways, took it for what it was and the tension between them disappeared, much to her relief.

Still, she was surprised when he slid onto the bench across from her at lunch where she sat with her notes spread in front of her, hurriedly finishing up the French homework she hadn't done the night before and wondering again why she hadn't taken German.

"So."

Lorna looked up from conjugating the subjective. "Yes?"

"So you don't want to know about the photo that you practically begged me to ask Charles about?" Alex asked.

"No, I do," she assured him. "Did you find something out?"

He nodded. "I asked him about it last night, but I was totally smooth."

"And he said?" Lorna asked, making "gimme" motions with her hands.

"The thing was he got really quiet," Alex said. "And that's totally un-Charles-like behavior. I know you've only met him once but the trick is usually getting him to shut up. Me asking him questions is usually guaranteed to get him rambling for hours, but not about that photo."

Lorna frowned. "So he didn't say anything?"

"Just that it was an old friend," Alex revealed. "And then he clammed up and said he had work to do and could I kindly leave? Which is really rude for him, so I guess I caught him off guard."

Lorna thought about her dad carrying those photos around for what was probably years without ever looking at them and the Professor's seemingly uncharacteristic silence on the matter and wondered what it all meant. She also thought about the expression the men's younger counterparts shared in those photos, something warm and secret and bright, something that made her think of the old movies her mother used to love to watch when she first got sick. It wasn't a very good train of thought for a lot of reasons, so she was almost glad when Alex reached across the table and laid his hand on hers.

"What?" she asked, snatching her hand away.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" he demanded. "I don't mind doing you favors but I really don't like to upset Charles if I can help it and he was last night, so I'd like to know why."

Lorna bit her lip as she considered her options. Finally, she realized she was going to have to trust someone if she wanted to keep digging into this without just asking the adults, which was even less of an option now that she knew Charles had dodged Alex's innocent queries. "That guy in the photo with the Professor? He's my dad."

Alex's eyes widened. "You're sure?"

She nodded. "He's got some photos of them too, I found them when we were moving this summer. He keeps them in a box in the attic."

"Wow." Alex, who had leaned in when she was speaking, sat back in his seat, a little dazed. "So do you think your dad is...like..."

"...your dad's ex boyfriend?" she finished with a wince. "Maybe? I don't know. They could've just been friends, I guess."

"Why don't you just ask your dad?" Alex wanted to know. "I mean, I hate to push Charles but he's not really my dad."

"It's complicated," she said.

"What do you mean?"

Lorna sighed. "How long have you lived with Charles?"

"Since I was 12," Alex said. "Why?"

"That's how old I was when I met my dad for the first time," Lorna revealed. "I didn't even know his name until my mom got sick and was scared I'd be left alone. So she looked him up and..."

Alex's hand was holding hers again but this time she didn't pull away immediately. "That sucks, Lorna. I'm sorry."

"Anyway," she continued. "My dad's not exactly a sharer, especially with me. And he didn't look very happy when he caught me with the photos in the first place. I can't just ask about them a month later."

"Is that why you're so interested?" Alex asked. "Because you don't know anything about your dad?"

"Partly," Lorna nodded. "But also..." She tried to think of how to frame what was going through her head. "I've never ever seen my dad as happy as he was that in those photos, not in my entire life. Admittedly, that's not long but...I guess I just want to know why and how."

"But you don't just want to ask him?" Alex asked again.

"Right."

"Huh." Alex crossed his arms in thought and Lorna tried not to get distracted by the flex of muscle under his T-shirt. "And we can't just set them up?"

"Do you want to do that and not know the back story? Because I don't," Lorna told him. "I really just want to know the deal."

Alex frowned for a moment, then his eyes lit up and shot Lorna a grin. "Raven," he said.

"What about a raven?" she asked.

"No, Raven, as in Charles's sister," Alex said. "She's coming to visit next week. Maybe she'll know."

"Would she tell us?" Lorna asked.

"She loves embarrassing Charles," Alex told her. "I'm sure if there's some story, she'll be glad to spill. But we should probably ask her in private."

"We?" Lorna repeated. "Don't you mean you?"

"Well..." And there was the head in the hair move. "We usually do a big dinner or something when she's in town. Hank'll even be there. I'm sure Charles wouldn't mind if you wanted to come over."

"You're cool with that?" Lorna asked.

"Completely," he said. "Just don't mind Hank, okay? He's a complete dweeb but whatever. You'll come, right?"

Lorna couldn't resist the smile he was throwing her way. "Sure," she said, smiling. Though she quickly sobered up and added, "But just to dish the dirt on my dad with your aunt Raven."

"Oh, god." Alex looked a little sick. "Don't ever refer to her as that again. Aunt Raven? She'd kill you and me for that."

Lorna couldn't help but laugh at his pained expression. "Not a problem."

"What are you going to do when you find out whatever?" he asked. "What's your final play?"

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "Right now, I just want to know. It's like...this completely different side of my dad and I just -- want to know. You know?"

"Yeah, I do," he grinned, looking away a little shyly as he added, "Sometimes I feel that way about you."

Later, Lorna assured herself it wasn't another breakout of cowardice that make her run away after that and was instead just her sudden, all-consuming desire to ace French subjective.

**

On the plus side, Lorna didn't bomb her Biology exam, but on the minus side, she spent every waking moment possible obsessing about the fact that her dad might have been a little gay when he was younger. Not that there was anything wrong with that -- she knew lots of people who experimented in their youth, at least on TV and according to the internet. Her own feelings were decidedly murky on the subject of love and sex, though they seemed more and more Alex-shaped as the days passed, no matter how much she wished otherwise. She wasn't exactly what people in high school called experienced but she had flipped through enough Cosmo Girls to know that wanting to make out with your only friend was probably a bad idea.

She was desperate, though, on both the sexuality crisis she was having on her dad's behalf in her head and the general wonderful-awful way she was starting to feel around Alex, desperate enough that she actually allowed Erik to bring Alex up in a dinner conversation without storming off in a huff.

"I'd like to meet him one of these days," Erik said, after giving Lorna permission to go to the Xaviers for dinner that weekend, where she and Alex planned to ambush Raven. "If you're going to be spending this much time with him."

"Sure thing, Pa," she said in a terrible impression of a southern account. "As soon as he comes a-courting."

Her father's disapproving looks were eloquent enough in their own right that he didn't need to say anything about that remark. Still, he kept talking. "Lorna, I'm not trying to pry" -- a blatant lie, but Lorna let it slide -- "But I am here if you want to talk about it. Relationships are hard when you're young and...that's part of the job of a father, right? To give you guidance from my own experience so you can try and pretend to avoid the same disasters everyone end up going through."

Lorna saw her chance and pounced on it with all the ferocity of a jaguar. "So you're open to questions about your romantic past?"

She could see the debate going on in his head. "Up to a point," he clarified.

"First time you thought you were in love," she demanded.

He smiled a little as he reached for his beer, taking a long sip before he answered. "I was about your age. A girl who lived down the lane from me. Her father was a musician."

That was much earlier than she was looking for. "What about, I don't know, college?"

Erik's eyes met hers, suddenly soft, making her uncomfortable enough to look down at her plate.

"What?" she asked.

"Do you want me to talk about Susannah?"

She hated the way he said her mom's name, quiet and rolling charmingly in his accent. Lorna shook her head emphatically, so much so that she smacked herself with her long dangly earring. "No, no, thanks. Mom told me all about that. It wasn't like I need you to preserve some lie for me about how she was the great love of your life or even your college year." He was handsome and funny and nice, her mom had told her when they'd been curled up together in her mom's hospital bed. I knew I was never going to see him again, but he was dashing enough that it didn't matter.

He let the subject of her mother drop and she was grateful enough to press on. "When did you think you were in love really? Like, not puppy love, but real love?" The kind of love where you might keep old photos hidden in the attic for fifteen years, she added in her head.

"That was at university," he admitted, his eyes losing focus, like he was looking into the past. "It was...very special but it didn't last, obviously. In fact, it was quite painful in the end -- something I'm hoping you can avoid by following my sage wisdom."

"Yeah, right, Dad," she scoffed and changed the subject, but she couldn't forget how, for a split second, his face had looked like it had in those photos before it had went harsh all over and smoothed into his usual bland expression.

The talk with her father only left Lorna more determined to get to the bottom of the Charles-and-Erik mystery, even if it turned out her working theory about a torrid gay college romance was completely off base.

Alex picked her up early on Saturday because the big affair they were having for the weekend was actually a cookout-slash-barbeque deal which they could have in Alex's backyard because it was bigger than the park that Lorna had played at as a child. Once they arrived, she noticed Alex stuck close and introduced her to a rapid succession of people -- Hank, the cute but nerdy genius; Moira MacTaggart, a friend of Charles's; Darwin, Alex's best friend who went to a special smarty-pants school which is why she'd never met him before; and Darwin's friend-maybe-girlfriend, a pretty dark-haired girl named Angel. Sean was there with a few of his friends, too, and it was a really chaotic event.

"It'll be easier to catch Raven alone that way," Alex explained when she mentioned it. "Otherwise, everyone will notice."

Finally, Alex introduced her to the guest of honor, Raven Xavier, and to say that Lorna had a little fire of irrational jealousy in her gut would've been an understatement. She was gorgeous with long, blond hair and a great figure clad in fashion-magazine-stylish clothes and she looked really young, although she was only a few years younger than Charles who didn't look old as much as stodgy given his sartorial choices. Raven was even nice, which further cemented Lorna's spike of despair that she'd never be quite as awesome.

It wasn't until long after they'd eaten and Charles was distracted by Moira out on the patio that Alex and Lorna managed to steer Raven into the study for a two-on-one chat.

"What's going on, Alex?" she asked, sipping from her wine glass, as she watched the two of them bemusedly. "You've had that look on your face all day."

"We have a question for you," he said.

"This isn't about sex, is it?" she asked. "Because that's totally Charles's duty to explain and not me."

"Jesus, Raven, no," Alex said while Lorna just turned a new, more alarming shade of red and added a legitimate reason to the list of why she didn't like Raven Xavier. "You're insane."

The smile Raven gave Alex flashed a dimple in her cheek. "I've got to get my kicks somewhere," she laughed. "Seriously, what's up?"

Lorna grabbed the photo from the low shelf and held it out to Raven. "We're trying to find out how Charles knows this guy," she said, going with the cover they'd come up with. "Alex figured since you'd know, so..."

Raven's smile fell from her face as soon as she focused on the photo and realized who was in it. Before Lorna could say anything, Raven had taken it from her hands, running a gentle finger over the glass as she whispered. "Erik."

Lorna felt a surge of adrenaline at that small confirmation she hadn't dreamed the entire connection up. There was no way two Eriks could just happen to look so much alike. "His name is Erik?" she asked, shooting a quick nod in Alex's direction.

Raven's face hardened and she glared at Alex. "Why do you want to know about this?"

"I'm curious," he said.

"Then get over it," she said immediately, shoving the photo back at Lorna. "Because it's none of your business."

"You know something, don't you?" Alex said. "You're just not saying."

"He was just some person he met at college," Raven said with a hand wave, as if to dismiss the entire conversation.

"Bullshit, Raven," Alex said. "Charles wouldn't keep a framed photo of just some person. I know it and you know it."

"And now we're back to the "none of your business" part of this conversation," Raven told him. "Because it's not yours or your friend's. How did you even start wondering about this?"

Alex opened his mouth, then shut it, looking at Lorna for help. They hadn't figured Raven would give so much resistance to answering the question. "I think I know him from somewhere," Lorna blurted out. "I wanted to know where."

Raven relaxed a fraction but her pretty face remained hard and evasive. "Charles can't help you because he hasn't spoken to Erik in a very, very long time," she told them. "And I hope to god you didn't bring this up to him."

Alex refused to be cowed. "He wasn't nearly as upset as you."

"Leave it alone, Alex," she told him before downing the rest of her wine in one gulp. "Don't bring it up to me or Charles again, okay?" She set her wine glass on the table and took the photo back from Lorna. Raven set it back in its place on the low shelf with a sad shake of her head and a soft "Oh, Charles" before she shot Alex one last warning look and left, door banging loudly in her wake.

"That was..." Lorna began.

"...completely psycho," Alex finished. He turned to Lorna. "You know, before, I thought maybe you were jumping the gun about this, but...there's no way Raven would react like that unless there was something major going on here."

"Thanks," Lorna said a little meanly.

"Don't be like that," he said. "Because I'm in this for the long haul. We are figuring this shit out."

Lorna tried not to find the determined tilt of his chin hot but...it was totally hot.

God, she was screwed.

**

Even though Alex had dedicated himself more fully to helping Lorna figure out the truth of their fathers' past connection, they were also at a loss of how to do that. They'd ruled out just asking them straight out (too simple and too easy for lies) and Raven had been a bust, so they weren't sure where to go from there.

"I'd ask Hank," Alex said as they discussed the situation over lunch at school the next week. "But I can't trust him. He's always been a tattletale."

"If I thought anyone knew what happened in the strange little place that is Erik Lehnsherr's brain, I'd ask them but I doubt there's anyway," Lorna said with a sigh.

"Are you sure we shouldn't just throw them together? And see what happens?" Alex asked her. "If nothing, the entertainment value alone will make it worth it."

"But what if they're like former mortal enemies and we reignite some feud, thus turning our lives into some kind of demented Romeo and Juliet-type hell?" Lorna shook her head. "We need more information."

"I was thinking more like a step-gay Parent Trap but...okay," Alex said with a laugh. "But I see your point."

As fair as her point was, though, Lorna was out of options, so she decided it was time for her to take drastic measures which meant a visit to the attic.

She waited until early Saturday morning when she knew he had some kind of meeting-slash-date with a client, one Emma Frost, who smiled like she was made of ice and made Lorna want to hurl metal objects at her with her mind. Her company's lucrative contract had been what had lured her dad into the move in the first place and Lorna might've been a little bitter about it, Alex notwithstanding.

Once the house was clear and would be for several hours, Lorna sucked up her irrational fear of all things creepy-crawly and hauled herself up into the attic crawlspace. It was a tight fit, especially since her dad had packed it full of junk he probably should've thrown away, but she managed to make it through the maze of brown cardboard until she found the boxes she was looking for. After that, it was a simple matter of ripping into it and she was up to her elbows in evidence.

She quickly realized that most of the paraphernalia seemed to be related to Erik's time at university where she knew he'd studied Engineering and had used his now-absent charm to seduce at least one pretty coed, that one being her mom. Most of the papers she flipped through were worthless, old essays and playbills and all the weird stuff people kept thinking they'd care about some time in the future. Her mom had even had something similar, an old straw bag from a school trip to the Caribbean that she'd kept old cards and hair ribbons and other trinkets, including the only photo she'd had of Erik left from her time abroad.

Lorna put away thoughts of her mother and the ache it created in her chest and continued sifting through Erik's stuff. Every so often her eyes would be drawn to photos, even though she still hadn't found the one that had started it all. But there were other shots of Professor Xavier and him with Erik in the pile now that she knew enough to recognize him, looking as young as Alex did now. It made her sad to think of how happy they both looked in those photos compared to how her dad tended to look these days and even the Professor's smile didn't shine as brightly as it had in those photos. She knew it could've just been life weighing down on them but her instinct told her it was something else.

She was just about to call her snooping mission a bust when she found a letter tucked among some very boring forms her dad had kept in triplicate. The letter was aged and crinkly around the edges of the envelope and it was addressed to "Erik Lehnsherr" at a UK address in an elegant, loopy scrawl that she didn't recognize. She did, however, recognize the return address which was the same as Alex's. With trembling fingers, she fumbled trying to get the letter out of envelope with the minimal amount of damage inflected.

Lorna could hear her own heartbeat thundering in her ears as she scanned the lines of the letter:

Erik, it started and Lorna felt a little lump form in her throat for no reason.

I know you probably don't want to hear anything else I have to say, but we parted on unsatisfactory terms and I couldn't let it remain that way without offering some kind of olive branch. You should know me well enough to expect nothing less from me.

I could begin by apologizing for things I said to you and explaining now that I know now how wrong I was to think them, let alone say them. But that wouldn't erase the things that you said and those things can't be blamed on a simple but unfortunate misunderstanding or something like petty jealousy. If they could, I wouldn't be writing you -- I'd be with you, setting everything right.

But I can't, can I? Even if you forgive me for Raven, it won't change your mind. You'll still feel like what we had was a mistake that you'd rather not repeat ever again. It breaks my heart to accept it, but I can.

This letter is not about anything more than my desire to ease any lingering resentment between us. I know you've moved on and, by the time you read this, I'll be back in the States, as you might be able to tell from the return address. I just wanted us to be able to leave this situation as friends, because you've been one of the dearest ones I've ever had.

I forgive you for everything and I hope you can do the same for me.

Sincerely,
Charles

By the time she read the "Charles" hastily scribbled across the bottom of the expensive stationery gone thin with age, the lump in Lorna's throat had turned into sniffles and a set of teary eyes, which were probably accompanied by very unattractive blotches of red all over her face. Even though most of the letter was vague -- intentionally so, if Lorna had to guess, the sadness in every line was unmistakable. She'd been right when she'd worried about the things ways stood between her dad and Professor Xavier.

And, of course, it made complete sense that whatever they'd had had been ruined by her dad. Considering the stunted emotional range he displayed as an adult, she shuddered to think how he'd been at that young age. It was probably a good thing her mom hadn't been looking for anything more than a good time when she'd stumbled upon him.

Since she didn't want to get caught -- and because she wanted to share her find with Alex as soon as possible -- Lorna quickly the everything but the letter and one of the photos into the box and smoothed down the tape as much as possible, before she shimmied her way out of the crawlspace and into the closet. She let out a yelp when she banged her elbow on the shelf on her way down but she also had a heart attack when the closet door was wrenched open with a bang, only for her father to be standing there, glaring at her.

"Lorna!" he said, his frown at odds with how nice he looked in his date clothes of slacks and a black turtleneck. "What in the hell are you doing?"

When she noticed Emma Frost, ridiculously dressed in white from head to toe behind him, Lorna wondered if the curses were delivered in English for Ms. Frost's benefit or her own.

"I was in the attic," she answered, glad that her prizes had been slipped into the back pocket of her denim shorts, covered by the hem of her Hard Rock T-shirt.

"Obviously," he said. "Why?"

"I thought I packed away one of my favorite sweaters up there," she said, wondering when she'd gotten so good at quick lies. "And I really wanted to wear it to the football game tonight."

"The football game was last night," he pointed out.

"Oops, silly me," she said. "But I was looking for my sweater."

It was obvious he didn't believe her, but it wasn't like he'd ever guess the truth, so she offered him a sweet smile and waited for it to work its magic.

"Get out of here and clean up," he ordered, shaking his head. "We've finished out business and Ms. Frost invited you along with us for lunch."

Lorna knew that no one missed the glare she sent first her father and then his guest before she stomped off toward her room, Ms. Frost's "I didn't realize her hair was permanently green..." burning in her ears.

Unfortunately the letter -- and Alex -- would have to wait.

**

Suddenly, at least to Lorna, it was Halloween. Before Halloween came midterms, fall break, and a month of increasingly more candy everywhere she looked, but then, too quickly, it was Halloween.

And while Halloween wasn't really a reason to get excited, the fact that she and Alex were having their first official date on Halloween definitely was.

Her combined euphoria/terror over that fact was enough even to distract her from the mystery of Charles-and-Erik as she called it in her head, the letter being her last great piece of evidence. Alex had crowed over Raven's mention, confirming that she knew something she hadn't told them when they'd asked, but the rest of it had left him with a hint of frown and downcast eyes.

When she'd asked about it, his answer had been direct and simple: "I don't like to think of Charles being that sad," he'd said. Thinking of her mother, Lorna had understood.

But now it was Halloween and Alex would be there to pick her up at nine o'clock, not-so-coincidentally arranged to happen a half-hour after her dad was supposed to leave for some fancy adult thing he was attending with Ms. Frost.

"I still think I should meet this boy before I let you go out with him," her dad said as he watched her make faces at herself in the mirror above the bathroom sink in order to check her makeup. Zombie Prom Queen wasn't as original as she'd wanted her costume to be, but she'd worked out a lot of stress hacking-and-slashing at the bargain basement nightmare of crinoline and satin she'd picked up for a dress.

"Well that boat has sailed," she reminded him. "I've been to his house a half dozen times and I see him everyday at school."

"But this is a date, isn't it?"

"Please stop trying to have this kind of talk with me," she begged. At his stern look, she stopped checking out the artistic way the fake blood dripped out her neck to return it. "How about this? If we survive this important step in our budding relationship, I'll let you meet. Swear to god, I'll even invite him to dinner and let you freak him out for hours."

"I just want to meet him," he said again, as if to contradict the part where he wanted to put the fear of Lehnsherr in Alex. "But I accept your compromise."

"Good!" she said. "Now shouldn't you be leaving?"

"Remember your cell phone," he warned as he headed out, looking very dapper in his suit.

"You better beat me home if you want to enforce that curfew," she said with a smile as she slammed the front door in his face. She didn't breathe a sigh of relief until she heard the sound of his car leaving the driveway, although her nerves were completely back by the time she heard Alex's car in the same drive half-an-hour later.

The nerves, however, were of a fluttery kind and Alex seemed to have his own case of them when he met her at the door dressed as something...shirtless. Lorna assumed it was some kind of gladiator thing, but she was mostly preoccupied with the lack of a shirt, and being extremely grateful for how green-grey zombie makeup hid the horrible blush she could feel heating her cheeks.

Since Alex appeared as nervous as she was, at least she didn't feel like she was suffering alone. The car ride to Darwin's neighborhood was filled with stupidly stilted small talk, as if they didn't spend a high percentage of time together talking about everything under the sun on any normal day. Lorna was disgusted with both of them on the inside, but on the outside, she couldn't do more than smile, trip over the words coming out of her mouth, and work hard to keep her eyes continuously drifting to Alex's surprisingly well-defined abs.

"It was nice for Darwin to invite us to his friend's party," Lorna said.

"Yeah, he's cool," Alex said. He flashed her a smile. "Thanks for coming."

"What else was I going to do tonight?" she said, but she smiled, too.

After that, they couldn't seem to stop smiling at each other and when Alex actually opened the car door for her when they reached the party and slung an arm around her to guide her through the crowds, Lorna was almost convinced she'd never stop smiling.

Darwin seemed glad to see her again, as did Angel, who was rocking some kind of sparkly wings and a ton of glitter to go along with Darwin's Spider Man. The party seemed to take up an entire block, with lights and music and decorations pouring from several houses and, while it looked like there were all ages gathered for the fun, it didn't take the four of them long to find out where all the other teenagers were gathered, if only because the suspicious smell of pot could be detected wafting from their direction.

"We should've brought Sean," Lorna joked as she felt her eyes water a little from the second-hand smoke.

"No way," Alex said, tightening his arm around her. "The last thing I want is him following us around."

"I'm sure he had his own big plans for the evening."

Alex snorted. "No, he got himself grounded last week. He's on candy duty with Charles tonight."

"Poor kid," she laughed.

"Hey." Alex leaned in so he could let his voice go all soft. "Can we not talk about my family for a while? I'd really just like to hang with you without all that."

Lorna was really starting to worry about the permanent case of butterflies she had because they in no way seemed to be going away ever, as long as Alex was around. "Not a problem," she said. "No more family talk, I swear."

It was very easy to keep her promise because Lorna was a little tired of worrying the mystery of her father around in her head, with or without the added bonus of Charles Xavier. It was like she spent every day trying to figure him out and, after three years, she really wasn't any closer than she'd been when she'd first met him when it came right down to it. It was a struggle every day, not to just give up and hide in her room and die from grief over the fact she was stuck with him because her mother was dead and gone. It was a much more interesting prospect to put that all aside for a couple hours and lose herself in the sway of the music and the vibe of the crowds and most especially in the way Alex got closer and closer as the night went on, his arm always around her like she was going to disappear if he didn't.

And if she liked to pretend she snuggled back only because it was starting to get chilly in her destroyed, strapless prom dress, then it was nobody's business but her own.

Then, when Alex guided her into the dark alcove away from prying eyes, pressing her against the rough brick of a wall when he crowded in to kiss her and she wrapped her arms around him to keep him from ever thinking about pulling away, the only thing on her mind was that moment, the heat of Alex's hands on her back where the dress left her skin bare and the bold touch of his mouth against hers. She wasn't sure how long they kissed, hidden from the rest of the crowds, but when they pulled apart she couldn't help but laugh at the sight of her green zombie makeup smudged across Alex's face.

And when he didn't seem to care as he kissed her again, Lorna thought there was nothing that could ruin her night.

Less than an hour later, she realized how wrong she was.

**

After her mother's death, Lorna had seen enough of hospitals to last her a lifetime, which was only part of the reason that she was losing her mind as she rushed into the ER on that early November night. There was blood on her hands and dress -- real blood, not make-up -- and she was shaking so badly that she was sure everyone else in the waiting room had to hear her teeth rattling in her head.

But what make it worse was that the blood wasn't hers. It was Alex's.

Even though she'd been there for it all, everything that had happened that had led to Alex being unconscious and bleeding and Lorna pacing in the ER after an ambulance ride was still mostly a blur. One minute, they'd been at the party with Darwin and Angel and then the next minute some punks had been hassling some people and Alex, along with Darwin, had stepped in. It hadn't struck Lorna as a particularly great idea, but she wasn't a stupid guy with too much testosterone and something to prove, so she'd hung back with Angel and hoped for a quick end to the pissing contest.

What she got instead was all hell breaking loose when punches started swinging and then Alex was done under the blows of three assholes who'd ganged up on him and then there had been parents and cops and flashing lights, but Lorna had been too horrified by the sight of Alex laying on the ground, unmoving and covered with blood, to pay much attention to anything else. The next thing she knew, she was being handed up into an ambulance with Alex's stretcher.

Someone -- the police? the hospital? Darwin? -- must've called Professor Xavier because he'd been waiting there when they'd arrived. He'd rushed to her side and offered her a quick hug which was way more comforting than she'd expected.

"Are you all right?" he'd asked, double checking on her affirmative answer before he'd given her arm a quick, reassuring squeeze before he'd disappeared after Alex, leaving Lorna alone to wait for any scrap of information.

Finally, she sat down and wrapped her arms around herself, trying to fight off the sick combination of fear and bad memories, hating the familiar way the smells of the hospitals assaulted her nose. She needed something, someone who could make her believe that it was all going to be okay.

She hadn't even realized she was calling anyone until she had her cell pressed to her ear, call already connecting.

Her father picked up on the second ring. "I'm not extending your curfew," he said immediately.

Lorna tried to keep her voice steady as she said. "Dad?"

"Lorna, what's wrong?" From the sudden sharpness in his tone, she hadn't succeeded.

"I'm at the hospital, there was a...Alex is..." She choked back a strangled breath. "Can you come?"

"Are you all right? What happened?" She could hear fumbling on the other end of the phone. "Lorna!"

"I can't...I'm fine, can you just come?" Her voice cracked. "Please?"

"I'm on my way," he said once she'd told him exactly what hospital she was at. "Everything will be fine, Liebling, I promise. I'm on my way."

It wasn't long after she ended the call that she found herself looking into Professor Xavier's concerned blue eyes as he took a seat beside her. "How are you doing, love?"

"I'm fine," she said, although it was obvious it wasn't strictly the truth. "How's Alex?"

"The doctors are still with him," he said. "But I'm sure he'll be fine. Are you sure you don't need to see a doctor?"

She shook her head, noting to herself that despite his words, the Professor's face was drawn and worried. "I wasn't hurt."

He nodded, as if accepting her assessment. "Do you need to call someone? Maybe your parents? I don't want you sitting here all night."

"I already called my dad," she admitted.

"Good." He gave her an anemic smile. "If you're sure you don't need the company, I'm going to go back to check in on Alex."

She waved him away. "Yeah, please, go."

"I'll let you know as soon as I find out something more substantial," he promised before he slipped away, shoulders drooping as she watched him go.

Lorna wasn't sure how much longer she sat there, shivering in the too-cool waiting room before she heard someone calling her name from down the corridor. Even if she hadn't recognized the voice, she would've recognized the tightly-coiled crack of it on her ears. "Lorna!"

She'd never been so glad to see her dad before in her life, even with the dark look on his face. He was almost running in his haste to get to her and she flew to her feet to meet him half-way, throwing her arms around him even as he reached for her.

Since she was too busy burying her face against his neck and sobbing out all of her fear and worry, it took her a moment to realize he was talking to her, murmuring endearments and other soothing nonsense, all interspersed with a litany of "Are you hurt? Are you hurt?"

"No, no, I'm fine," she finally managed to tell him, once he'd set her back on her feet and gently pulled away to look for himself.

"Lorna, there's blood --"

"It's not mine, it's Alex's," she explained.

"Are you sure?" Erik ran a thumb over her cheek and she realized he was wiping away her tears.

She nodded again before she couldn't stop herself from throwing her arms around him once again.

"Come on, come on," he said softly as he guided her toward a chair. "Tell me what happened before I hunt this boy down and kill him."

"You can't, the doctor is still with him," she answered with a strange hitching sound that was half-laugh, half-sob.

"Tell me why?"

"It's so stupid, Dad," she started. "It's just stupid and I -- why are guys so stupid?"

"How about you tell me what happened and then I'll try to answer," he said, tucking her under his arm, needless of the mess her make-up was making of his white dress shirt.

Lorna didn't complain as she settled in with a sigh and told the whole tale of the fight and then the cops and the ambulance ride. In some corner of her mind, she was amazed he let her get through the entire story without interruption, not even one single muttered German curse or interjection.

When she'd finished all he said was, "And your friend? Will he be all right?"

"I don't know yet, his dad said probably, but he was waiting on the doctors," she said.

He was silent for a moment, simply smoothing her product-laden hair under one large calloused hand. Then he asked, "Do you want to wait here or go home? It could be all night before there's anything to tell."

As much as Lorna longed to go home, she knew she wouldn't rest until she knew something. "Can we wait, just a little longer? Maybe the Professor will know something soon."

"Of course."

They sat in mostly companionable silence for a while, another thing Lorna had learned to hate about hospitals. Her dad had offered to get her something hot to drink when he noticed how cold she was, but she'd turned it down, not really sure her stomach would stand for anything. Finally, he told her he was going back out to the car to get her a jacket and she agreed to spend a few minutes alone because she was really that cold. She tried to ignore how much colder she felt once he was out of her sight, but it was there in the pit of her stomach. Lorna hunched over a little more drawing her legs up to her chest as she huddled in her chair.

She glanced up when she heard her name. "Oh, good, you're still here," Professor Xavier said as he entered the waiting room.

Only now that she mostly calmed down could Lorna appreciate how horrible the Professor looked with his own worry. "How is he?" she asked.

"A concussion and several abrasions, some of which needed stitches," he said. "They're keeping him overnight but he should be going home in the morning."

"Are you mad at him?" she asked. "He didn't mean to, not really, it was those other guys! I -- "

"Lorna, please, calm down," he told her with a hint of a tired smile. "I'm actually quite angry at him for scaring me so badly but, no, I'm not mad at him for getting hurt. I've already talked to one of the officers on the scene and I know he was just trying to help this time."

"This time?" She couldn't help but ask.

Professor Xavier managed to smile a little more. "Yes, this time. While I won't deny Alex the chance to tell you about his rather rough-and-tumble history himself, I will tell you that this isn't our first, ah, incident, let's just say."

Lorna was distracted enough by the revelation that she didn't even remember that there was a very particular reason that she and Alex had spent months keeping their families from meeting, not until she heard a strangled sound, followed by her father's strained voice, saying, "Charles?"

As she watched, Professor Xavier's entire body went stiff with surprise and he slowly turned toward Erik who was standing a few feet away, his dark coat clenched in one hand. Lorna had never seen that particular expression on her father's face, pained and surprised and ghost-white.

"Erik?" Professor Xavier's voice had a waver in it that Lorna hadn't even heard when he'd been talking about Alex. "I -- this is a surprise."

"Yes, it is." Erik looked toward Lorna, holding out the jacket which she took from him automatically. "Why are you speaking to my daughter?"

The Professor's eyes widened as he quickly glanced back at Lorna. "Daughter?"

Lorna decided to save them the trouble of trying to figure it out. "Dad, this is Professor Xavier," she said gently. "Alex's -- father." Before she could lose her nerve, she hurried on. "Professor, this is my dad, Erik Lehnsherr, but I think you already knew that."

"Yes," he said. "I did."

When her father's shocked blue eyes met hers, Lorna knew that he knew somehow. He could tell, maybe just from the expression on her face, that she was aware that there was more between them than just a passing acquaintance, just as she could tell from his that there was a very uncomfortable conversation waiting in her future.

**

Under other circumstances, it would've amusing to watch her dad and Professor Xavier stumble their way through the social niceties, as awkward as she and Alex had been in the first part of their date, but Lorna wasn't in the right frame of mind to appreciate it. Instead, she interrupted to ask if she could see Alex and, when the answer was a regretful no, she acquiesced to her father's suggestion that they head home.

But just because she was tired and shivery and worried didn't mean she missed the long look her dad sent back over his shoulder at Professor Xavier, or the answering intensity in the Professor's eyes as he watched them go.

The car ride was quiet, though Lorna was aware it was just the calm before storm, a calm that lasted until they both stumbled through the front door. As Lorna was shrugging his coat from her shoulders, her father spoke up. "We need to talk."

She sighed. "I figured." She held his coat out to him, wincing when she noticed it was probably unsalvageable thanks to the blood and make-up that now stained its lapels. "Can I at least take a shower first?"

"I'll make coffee," he said, heading into the kitchen.

The shower did help, watching the water turn gray-green as it washed away the last of her make-up. Lorna almost felt human when she came downstairs with dripping hair and her comfiest sweatpants, straightening her shoulders a little when she caught Erik's stern expression.

"It wasn't Alex's fault," she said to start, sliding into the chair across from his where a mug of coffee waited. "Even his dad so."

"Your boyfriend's rap sheet isn't what interests me at the moment," he said.

Lorna flushed a little under his knowing gaze, which is why she shot back, "No, I'm pretty sure it's his dad that's got your interest."

Erik actually flinched. "Charles is an old friend," he said slowly, like he was weighing each word as he said them. "But you knew that."

"Yes," she agreed, refusing to look guilty.

"How?"

"I recognized him from the photos I saw when we were moving," she told him.

"Alex's last name is Summers, not Xavier," Erik stated, but his tone implied that it was a question.

"And Sean's last name is Cassidy," she said. "What's your point?"

"Who's Sean?" Erik asked with a frown.

"Alex's brother," Lorna revealed meanly, watching as Erik's expression shuttered a little. "Oh, and Hank his other brother? His last name is McCoy."

"That's...unusual," her father said, like he wasn't dying to know the story of how his "old friend" had three sons with three different last names.

Lucky for him, Lorna took pity on him. "Professor Xavier is their foster dad."

Lorna didn't know why but Erik seemed relieved by that piece of information, but it disappeared as he pinned her with his favorite glare of disapproval. "Are you going to tell me why you've worked so hard to keep me from meeting Alex and Charles when you knew that I knew him?"

"I didn't want you to scare Alex away," she answered bluntly. "And the Professor...I figured it would be weird."

"Why?"

"Because you're really not just old friends, are you?" she asked, thinking of the letter she still had hidden in her jewelry box. "Unless that's some quaint code for ex-boyfriends."

Sometimes Lorna forgot how scary she'd found Erik when they first met, but the look on his face at that moment was doing a good job of reminding her. "Where did you get that idea?"

Lorna wasn't even sure how to answer that because it was so ridiculous. She decided to go for flippant. "I don't know, maybe from the eyesexing you were doing back in the hospital? That might've been my first clue, if I hadn't accidentally found your break-up stash."

Her dad was clenching his teeth so tightly she could see a muscle jumping in his cheek. It wasn't a good look for him. "You don't know what you're talking about," he told her. "So I'll ask you to keep your baseless opinions to yourself."

The or else, they both knew, was implied.

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever."

"Maybe we ought to get back to discussing your boyfriend's rap sheet," Erik said. "Or perhaps talk about how maybe I don't want you associating with some kid who thinks getting his ass kicked into the hospital is a proper way to end a date."

"Oh, please," Lorna groaned. "Seriously, don't tell me you're going to pull this? Really?"

"You could've been hurt," he pointed out, his voice fierce and clipped. "I'll not have that, Lorna."

"I told you what happened! It wasn't Alex's fault!" She glared at him. "You're just saying that because you're mad that I said what I said about you and Professor Xavier."

"I said it because it's true," he snapped. "I don't want you getting hurt."

"Whatever."

"Lorna..." Erik reached out and took her hand in his, even as she tried to brush off his touch. "You're my daughter. I love you. I would rather die than have anything happen to you, do you not understand that?"

She finally pried his fingers away from hers, looking anywhere but at him. "Yeah, okay. Fine. Whatever. Just as long as you're not going to try and say I can't see Alex anymore."

Erik let out a sigh and sat back in his chair. "How could I stop you? He's in half of your classes."

"Exactly." She finally reached for her coffee and took a long gulp, despite the fact that it was too-strong and nearly scalded the skin from her tongue.

He shook his head at her as he drank from his own cup, but Lorna thought she saw a hint of amusement by the bland mask he called an expression.

Lorna was even more tired than she thought because she heard herself asking, "What's the big deal with this Professor Xavier stuff anyway?"

"There's no deal, Lorna," he said. "We were friends a very long time ago. That's it."

"That's not it," she objected. "So why say different? I just...you don't lie about Magda. She's your ex-wife. So what's the difference?"

"Charles is not my ex-wife, for one," he said. "I wish you'd dropped this."

"But he was more than just your friend." Lorna thought about Alex, how she'd felt when he'd kissed her earlier that evening and how stupid she must've looked insisting for months that they were just friends. Erik looked that stupid, now, even if he didn't want to admit it because even if she hadn't seen the photos they both kept or the way they'd looked at each other in the hospital, it would be obvious from way her father looked like he was in pain every time his mouth shaped the name Charles or how he looked away when he said they were just old friends. "Why can't you just admit it?"

Erik pushed away from the table with rather more force than necessary and snatched up both his mug and hers. "You're tired," he said once his back was turned as he rinsed out their cups. "I'm sure you could use some rest."

Lorna knew a dismissal when she heard one and she really was tired, way too tired to be playing verbal gymnastics with the emotionally-stunted wonder that was her father. "Yeah. Goodnight," she said, rising to her own feet. "I'll see you in about two days."

"Goodnight, Lorna."

She had one more thing to say, however. "He has a photo of you, you know."

"What?"

"Professor Xavier." Somehow it was easier to tell this to his back than to his face. "He keeps it on the shelf in his study, right behind his desk. You look...happy, like in the ones you have. That's how I knew for sure who he was."

Lorna didn't wait for a reply before she dashed up the stairs to her room.

**

Alex came home from the hospital the next day, but Professor Xavier kept him out of school for the next few days. Lorna spoke to him briefly on the phone his first day home but since, according to Sean, he spent most of the time drugged up and whining, she didn't want to bother him more than necessary.

The lack of Alex for so many days in row meant that she was not going to take no for an answer on Saturday when she demanded a ride to the Xavier home.

Lorna expected a fight since the air between her and her father was still heavy with their discussion the night of the party, but Erik agreed with little more than a flinty-eyed nod. It wasn't until they arrived and he turned off the ignition when they rolled to a stop in the curving drive that Lorna realized he had another plan.

"What are you doing?" she asked when he followed her out of the car.

"I'm going with you to check on your friend," he said. "And I'm going to speak with Charles. It's been...a long time."

"You mean you're going to eyesex a while while you pretend that whatever happened between you didn't happen."

Erik scowled at her. "One word of that again, young lady, and I'll give you something to complain about." He dragged her along toward the door with a firm grip on her elbow as Lorna held on tightly to the tupperware of cookies she'd brought for Alex.

It was surreal to watch her dad ring the doorbell and wait with her the minutes it took for someone to reach them from within the massive depths of the house.

Finally, Professor Xavier opened the door, dressed like always in his professor-y slacks and a cardigan. He smiled a genuine smile when he first saw Lorna, but the expression flickered when he noticed Erik standing right before her. "Lorna, Erik," he said in greeting. "It's good to see you both. Please, come in."

"How's Alex doing?" Lorna asked as soon as she stepped inside, still clutching the bowl of cookies.

"Oh, he's improving every day," Professor Xavier said, with a teasing look at her as he added, "Though I daresay seeing you will probably be the best medicine of all."

She couldn't stop from blushing and she pointedly ignored her father as she asked "You think?" with just a hint of disbelief.

"Oh, I know," he assured her. Lorna didn't miss the way the Professor's eyes finally strayed to Erik. "He's missed you rather desperately, actually."

Definite eyesex, she decided with an inward sigh. Lorna only wished Alex was there with her to observe it firsthand. On that note, she caught the Professor's eye and gestured toward the stairs with her tupperware. "So, can I...?"

"You most certainly may," he said. "I'm fairly certain he's camped out in the den. You know the way."

"Thanks, Professor," she said, her feet already carrying her in that direction, still ignoring her father's unwanted presence. She paused halfway down the hall to turn back and remind Erik to be nice, but the words died in her throat when she saw them standing together. They were closer than they'd been a minute before, and Professor Xavier was speaking to her father softly, too low for her to hear. Then she watched her father respond with an echo of a smile, one that softened the harsh lines of his face and coaxed an answering grin from the Professor. Lorna waited a minute longer until they moved toward the study before she turned back and continued on to find Alex.

He was in the den, sprawled out on the couch and channel-surfing. Alex didn't look too bad, she decided, although there was some pretty spectacular bruising still present on his face and his arms, along with a neatly sutured cut running down beside his right eye. Trying to fight away some kind of weird shyness that reminded her they hadn't really talked about anything since their massive makeout session at the party, Lorna brazenly sashayed into the room.

"You're lucky I dig scars," she said instead of something expected like "hello" as she tossed the tupperware at him. She took advantage of his surprise to push his legs off the couch so she could cozy up next to him. "Because that's going to be a big one."

Lorna had underestimated how nervous she was until she saw Alex break into a huge smile. "Lorna," he said and it was a little breathy and surprised.

She nudged him with her elbow a little. "Don't act like you didn't think I'd come check on you."

"It's great to see you," he said, winding his arm around her. He was careful about it but she didn't know if that was because he was uncertain of her response or because he was still hurting from getting the shit kicked out of him. It might've been a combination of the two.

In case he doubted her, Lorna made an act of settling in next to him and entwine her fingers with his -- not that it was a hardship. "I've been so bored without you," she admitted. "English is twice as bad when no one's around to help me mock everyone."

"Oh yeah?" he asked. "So tell me what I've missed."

Lorna did just that while they sat together on the couch, making short work of the chocolate chip cookies she'd made. Sean came around eventually to snag a few, but Alex's glare made sure he didn't linger in the den. She wasn't exactly sure why Alex found her bitching about the mean girls in their Biology class so riveting, but if he was willing to listen and nod at all the right times while she snuggled up beside him, she wasn't going to complain.

The conversation eventually ended up back at Halloween night. "No more tough guy stunts," she told him, poking him in the chest for emphasis. "You scared me and your dad and I don't ever want to have to see that much of your blood ever again."

Alex had the grace to look contrite. "Yeah, he let me have it when I got out."

"Professor Xavier?" She tried to imagine that and failed. "Really?"

"He doesn't get mad, he gets disappointed," Alex explained. "And it's so much worse. I'd rather him yell or ground me than give that look."

"Speaking of looks, I wish you hadn't been dying in the ER when my dad saw your dad finally," Lorna said. "It was...interesting."

"God, when Charles mentioned your dad, I wanted to ask, but I didn't have the guts," Alex admitted with a laugh. He snuck a quick, chocolate-flavored kiss. "But I knew you'd tell me everything eventually."

Lorna eventually had to disentangle herself from Alex, if only because someone had to make the trek down to the kitchen for something to wash down the cookies and Alex, along with being injured, gave a mean pleading look when he put his mind to it. She honestly wasn't trying to do anything but innocently grab a few Cokes from the fridge when she started to near the airy, open kitchen, only to slow when she could hear voices - her dad's and Professor Xavier's.

"...really lovely," the Professor was saying. "She's been a joy to have around the house and Alex is very fond of her. I was beginning to despair that he'd ever find a girl who could actually put up with him."

Lorna could feel heat rush into her face when she realized he was talking about her, half-embarrassment and half-pleasure at his assessment.

"She has her moments," Erik replied and Lorna rolled her eyes from where she stood in the hall, carefully not in the men's line of sight.

The Professor laughed and she could imagine him shaking his head as he did sometimes at Alex or Sean. "I'm glad life's been good to you, Erik," he said softly, so much genuine fondness in his voice that Lorna wanted to feel embarrassed for him. "I won't lie and say I hadn't wondered about you over the years."

"I've wondered about you as well." Her father's voice had a warmth in it that she was only used to hints of, and it felt almost as telling as the Professor's tone had been. "I even thought about it when we moved here, that this was your hometown. Still...I never thought I'd see you again."

"Nor did I," the Professor agreed. "Especially not because our children are friends. University doesn't seem so long ago but, obviously, it is."

"Our children are dating, Charles," Erik said. "Calling them friends doesn't really capture the horror of the situation."

"It doesn't, at that." The Professor's laugh at that was free and young and made Lorna think of how he looked in the photo in his study. "I'm glad, though. I have missed you, my friend."

Lorna really thought Professor Xavier misused the term "friend" when he said it like that to Erik, but when she heard her father's quiet answer (And I, you), she felt like she'd been committing some crime by interrupting them at that moment, perhaps breaking some fragile that would never have another chance to mend. Instead, she slipped away, prepared to distract Alex with her new-found wiles so he wouldn't complain too much when she returned without his soda.

**

In between making out and making Alex cry in the face of her proficiency at Mario Kart, Lorna had informed Alex during her visit that she hadn't yet given up on finding out the whole story about whatever had happened between the Professor and her dad. And she was still convinced that Raven Xavier was the one who could do that for her.

"She was mentioned in that letter," she'd pointed out to Alex. "She has to know what went down."

Alex had agreed. "Next time she's here, we'll hit her up again."

What neither of them had expected, of course, was that would be less than twenty hours later. Lorna was over again but she didn't have anything else better to do and time spent with Alex was way more enjoyable than being stuck at home all day. Thankfully, her dad hadn't accompanied her today, but Darwin was there when she arrived, which meant her agenda of making out some more was put on hold for the first few hours of the visit. It wasn't long after he'd cleared out, assured that his best friend was in good shape, that Lorna was just about to put that plan into action, when Alex glanced up at something over her shoulder and blanched.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

Lorna sighed, expecting to here Sean or even Hank spit out a reply, but the voice that answered throaty and feminine. "Good, you're both here. That way I don't have to yell twice."

She quickly twisted around to stare in shock at Raven who stood there with her hands on her hips, smirking at them.

"Go away, Raven," Alex said.

"No can do, kiddo," she said as she perched on the edge of a nearby chair. She looked at them for a beat before she started motioning at them with her hands. "A little space between you two, okay? I just ate and I don't think I could stomach any more of this teen puppy love crap than I've already witnessed."

Lorna was only marginally glad that Alex's face was as red as hers. "We weren't doing anything!"

"Oh, but what you were thinking," Raven said with a shake of her head. "Kinky, Alex."

Lorna decided to save Alex from whatever he was going to say by slapping a hand over his mouth and addressing Raven. "Did you say you came to yell at us?"

"That's exactly what I said," Raven nodded. "Although, okay, I wanted to check on Mr. Punching Bag over there, too." She narrowed her eyes at Lorna. "You lied to me when you asked me about Erik."

"Yup, I did," Lorna said with no shame. "And you know what happened and didn't tell me. So I think we're even."

"Not even close," Raven said. She leaned back in her chair but kept her eyes trained on Lorna, as if to study her. "So you're Erik's daughter. Now that I know, I can see some resemblance."

"Charles told you?" Alex asked.

"It was a surprise to have Erik Lehnsherr waltz back into his life with a kid in tow," Raven told him. "He needed a friendly ear."

"Three kids," Lorna corrected with a sigh. "He was two younger than me that live with their mom."

"Three? Wow." Raven shook her head. "He never struck me as the fatherly type."

"He's really not," Lorna told her.

"I'm still not clear about the yelling," Alex admitted.

"You lied to me and tried to worm information out of me under false pretenses," Raven reminded him. "That's not nice."

"I guess you shouldn't lie to your Auntie Raven," Lorna told him.

The "auntie" earned her a dark look. "Same goes for you, you know."

"Fine, I won't lie anymore," Lorna said. "But I still want to know what happened between them."

"They're just old friends," Raven shrugged. "Like I told you before."

"Even if I wanted to believe that, there are these things called my eyes and, oh, also my ears," Lorna told her. "I've seen and heard them together and, no, they're not just old friends."

"I don't know what you think you know..." Raven began.

"My dad kept letters," Lorna blurted out. "From the Professor. Talking about you."

Raven kept her steady gaze before she sighed again, but this time it was less out of annoyance and more out of defeat. "You're not going to let this go?"

"Nope."

"And you think...what? That they're exes who had a bad break-up back in the day?"

"Essentially," Lorna said.

"Okay, fine, you're right." Raven crossed her arms. "Charles and Erik had a fling in college, it didn't work out, tears all around. Are you satisfied?"

"No," Lorna told her. "Because my mom had me with Erik and she wasn't ever as hung up on me as Professor Xavier looks to be twenty years after the fact."

For the first time since she'd met her, Raven's expression was soft and concerned-looking. It was as disconcerting as it was on her father. "What difference do you think it'll make if you know the gory details, Lorna? What is it going to get you?"

It was a question Alex had asked her a few times and one she'd asked herself, too, but Lorna still wasn't sure she had a satisfactory answer. Even if she'd had one before, Lorna was almost certain that it would've changed in the last few days. "Maybe I want to try to make it better."

"You're not the first," Raven said after a moment and now she just looked sad. "But, honey, I don't know what you think you can do about it."

"Maybe if I knew what happened, I could figure that out."

Instead of answering her, Raven shot Alex a look. "Your girlfriend is unreal."

He smiled at Lorna fondly. "I know."

Lorna couldn't help but return the look which led to Raven mocking them both. "Please stop that if you want me to tell you anything."

"Are you gonna?" Alex said.

Raven buried her face in her hand for a moment before she looked up at them again. "Yes," she said with a sigh. "Despite my better judgment, but -- just the highlights," she warned. "And if I ever hear from either of your fathers that they found out about this, I will kill you both. Got it?"

Lorna didn't bother answering, she just raised an eyebrow in expectation.

"They were friends in college," she said after a moment. "Good friends. I wasn't really paying attention to the circumstances of it all, but one day there's Erik, at the center of Charles's life. I'd never seem him take to someone so fast." She gave a little laugh, but it sounded hollow. "I was more than a little jealous about having to share him after so many years of it just being us."

"And?" Alex prompted when it looked like Raven wasn't going to start speaking again.

"Back then, I didn't know anything more than that. Erik was Charles's best friend and he was always around whenever I spent time with him, and..." She looked down at her perfectly manicured nails for a moment. "Alex, I'm sure you don't have much appreciation for it and probably you don't either, Lorna, because it's your dad, but Erik was really..."

"Dashing?" Lorna offered.

"I was going to say gorgeous and sexy, but dashing works," Raven said with a smirk.

"Ugh." Alex was making that scrunched face and it was definitely a grimace.

"Alex, really," Raven snorted. "This is the story about how Charles had his heart broken during his first big gay romance and you didn't expect it to be traumatic?"

Alex buried his head against Lorna's shoulder. "I'm only doing this for you, you know."

She patted his leg. "I know."

"You're making my teeth rot out," Raven told them.

"Anyway," Lorna said. "Like so many other American coeds, you thought the German exchange student was hot. And?"

"And Charles brought him home for the holidays," Raven continued. "He had a flat near school during the semester, but the family was staying at an estate in the country. But when Charles came, he brought Erik with them. I thought it was my chance."

Lorna really didn't think she liked where this was going because, as much as she tended to think the worst of her dad in any given scenario, what Raven seemed to be hinting was solidly criminal as far as offenses went.

Alex -- proving that he was often hotter than he was smart -- asked, "Chance for what?"

Raven crossed one leg over the other, then rested her elbows on her knees, chin on her fist. It was a very youthful position for someone who was almost as old as Lorna's parents. "The same thing you'd think you had a chance of if Charles bailed out of here for the weekend and Erik wasn't around to stop Lorna from crawling out the window."

Alex went a little pink but he had connected the dots, if his wide eyes were any indication. "Oh my god, you slept with your brother's boyfriend? That's..."

"...yeah, a bitch move, I know," she said. "But I didn't, actually. Though not for lack of trying." She tossed her long blond hair and it seemed like a nervous gesture. "I, ah, did strip down and, um, get in his bed one night to wait for him."

"This is not going to end well," Lorna said.

"You've already been spoiled on that," Raven reminded her. "Erik did turn me down but not before Charles walked in and misunderstood the entire thing. The next thing I know, I'm in the hall in my bathrobe and they're shouting at each other on the other side of the door." She tugged at her shirt as if reliving that moment, like she was pulling the collar of a robe more securely around her. "That's when I figured out what exactly I'd done. Charles was hurt and angry and Erik was pissed and hurt and...that was the end."

"So why didn't you just tell the Professor the truth and straighten it out?" Lorna demanded.

Raven gave her a sad look. "What I did that night was terrible but it wasn't what ended it between them," she explained. Her voice was quieter now, without the sharp edges. There was nothing but sorrow left, the echoes of a remembered hurt. "Your dad, Lorna, he -- there are some things you can't take back and Erik said them in that fight. I won't tell you exactly because that's not your business. But he told Charles that it wouldn't have mattered if he had planned to sleep with me or any other woman because it wasn't serious between them. That Erik would never be serious about -- "

Lorna raised a hand to cut her off. "I get it." The letter, so vague but heartbroken, suddenly made sense.

Raven met her knowing gaze. "It was barely a few weeks before Erik had some new girl hanging on his arm, just to drive the point home. What he wanted wasn't anything Charles could give him."

"So my dad had a freak-out about his big gay affair, thus ending said gay affair." Lorna covered her eyes with her hands for a minute. "And then he went on to knock up my mom, fail at saving his miserable marriage, then date nothing but frigid bitches ever since from what I can tell. Way to deal, Dad."

"He's not alone. Charles hasn't been much better," Raven said with a trace of amusement. "He dates when he remembers to and -- well, never mind, I don't want to traumatize Alex further. But your dad's not alone with horrible coping mechanisms."

"Thanks, Raven," Alex muttered, but he looked contemplative himself, as if he had been listening to the entire exchange and not just cringing at Lorna's side. "Do you really think Charles has been carrying a torch for this as-- guy for, like, longer than I've been alive?"

"I don't think," Raven answered. "I know."

And that, Lorna knew, was why she'd been through this entire ordeal. Because just like her dad wasn't alone in having horrible coping mechanisms, she didn't think Professor Xavier was alone in carrying a torch. She'd seen more emotion from her dad in his few brief interactions with Professor Xavier than she'd seen him display to anyone in the years she'd known him, except maybe herself.

And, for some reason, she wanted her dad to be happy -- as happy as he'd looked in those old photos, as happy as her mother had been before she'd gotten sick.

As happy, she could admit to herself, as she was starting to be, for the first time she'd lost the only family she'd ever known and gained a stranger in its place.

"So, now you know," Raven said, an expectant expression on her face. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to fix this," Lorna promised.

But even as the words came out of her mouth, Lorna only knew one thing for sure: it was definitely easier said than done.

**

Despite her rather naive hope, nothing really changed once Lorna knew the truth about her dad and Professor Xavier. Things made more sense now that she had the context to decipher all the things she'd seen between them, all the long looks and speculative glances, all the strange ticks one displayed when the other came up in casual conversation. None of that knowledge changed anything, however, and Lorna was at a loss to figure out how to make it.

Alex finally came back to school so Lorna's days weren't quite so boring and they fell into a comfortable pattern of classes, then hanging around at Xavier mansion for a few hours, doing their homework and evading detection when they snuck off into various low-traffic areas to make out for however they could before Sean or the Professor stumbled upon them. Sean usually just rolled his eyes and made gagging noises, but the Professor tended to give them a patently false look of disapproval that didn't hide the smile behind his eyes or the soft way he chided them. It was nice to see that he approved and didn't seem to hold any grudges against Lorna due to the unfortunate identity of her father.

It wasn't long after Alex's recovery that Erik started demanding a chance to meet him properly, a demand to which Lorna only agreed reluctantly. Even though it was obvious Alex wasn't exactly thrilled with the prospect, he agreed to dinner one night at her house. Of course, he faced the evening with all the anticipation one might have for a firing squad, although she could understand his reluctance to meet someone he'd never heard great things about.

In the end, it was awkward but not too traumatic, a few hours of glares and scowls, of her father being as stony-faced and menacing as he was able while Alex tried to keep up a tough but polite demeanor. By the time Erik left them alone at the kitchen table to focus on their homework, Lorna was more amused than anything, even though her badly-stifled giggles earned her a dark look from Alex.

Once she was sure her father wasn't lurking, Lorna leaned over and gave Alex a kiss to soothe his wounded ego. "Sorry," she said. "But it is kind of funny. You guys are more alike than I ever noticed."

"Does that mean you have some weird Electra complex you're just figuring out?" Alex asked with mock-horror.

"I'm going to pretend like you didn't just suggest that," Lorna said. "Which works in your favor but also against it because you actually making a literary allusion that's actually correct is hot, if I do say so myself."

Once Alex had left for the evening -- with only chaste kiss on her cheek under Erik's baleful supervision -- she turned to her father and waited for whatever it was she knew he was dying to say. "Well?" she asked when he just kept looking at her. "What did you think?"

"Of Alex?"

"No, about the price of tea in China. Yes, Alex. I know you're dying to say something."

He refused to rise to the bait, however. "I didn't immediately want to kill him," he shrugged. "You could do worse."

"Are you sure that's not just because you know his father would be disappointed if you did?" she asked.

That earned her a real glare and Lorna felt accomplished. "That smart mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble one of these days."

"But not today," she grinned as she headed off to her room. "Good night!"

Even with the unresolved mess that was her plan to perhaps set her dad up with his ex-boyfriend -- and, yes, it was weird when she thought about it like that -- Lorna had to admit that life was pretty good on average. She still hated Biology, even with Alex and Professor Xavier to help her out, and her father still drove her crazy more than he didn't, but it wasn't as bad as she'd imagined it would be just a few months before when they'd first came to town.

Still, life still threw a few minor annoyances her way.

"Seriously, you're going out with her? Again?" Lorna shook her head. "Don't get you enough of her at work?"

"It's a working dinner," Erik said as he grabbed his keys, rolling his eyes . "And I like spending time with Emma."

Lorna didn't particularily enjoy it, though, and she didn't get why he didn't understand why. He also didn't seem to get why it was important that she like his choices, another way in which failed at basic Parenting Wisdom 101. But for all her pouting and whining, Erik still saw Emma, for dinners or drinks or some event they would attend together. It made her want to tear her hair out every time she had to pretend to like the woman when she'd turn up, always dressed in white with that same cool smile fixed on the face.

Luckily for the health of her scalp, it wasn't too often and most nights found Lorna and Erik by themselves, occupying the house that was slowly becoming home. Her father tended to stick to either his home office or the living room in front of the TV when he was there, which left the kitchen and dining room as Lorna's domain, more than enough room to spread out her books and papers and projects when she was working. She'd never admit it but it was almost...peaceful sometimes, the faint sounds of the TV or of Erik clacking on his computer in the other room while she buried herself in whatever attention work she needed to do.

One night, when she was so frustrated with her math assignment she was ready to admit defeat, Lorna went looking for her father for help as much as it pained her to do so. She didn't hear the TV, so she poked her head into his office. He was there, but he wasn't typing; he was staring hard at something he held in his hand, too low behind the desk for her to see, but he had a tumbler with a splash of whatever liquor he kept stashed in the cabinet above the refridgerator.

"Dad?" she asked, a little tentatively.

"Lorna." He was surprised, quickly tossing the paper he'd been looking at on his desk. He nodded toward the math book she had clutched against her check. "You need some help?"

"I..." As she approached, her eyes flickered down and caught a glimpse of what he'd been looking at -- one of the photos from the box in the attic, the one of him and Professor Xavier that she'd noticed was missing when she'd found the letter. "Never mind."

Erik followed her eyes and quickly covered the photo with some kind of work schematic he already had on his desk. "What is it?"

She shook her head, all thoughts of math problems out of her head. "Look, I know I haven't exactly been sensitive about this thing between you and Professor Xavier," she said, despite the way her father's face began to lose its welcoming expression. "But I...it's not because I just want to be mean about it. I just want you to, I don't know, face up to it? Whatever it is."

"Lorna," he began, lifting a hand to scratch at his eyebrow. "I don't know what you think you know about this, but..."

"I don't know anything," she lied quickly, thinking more of her father's ire than Raven's threat as she did. "But you said you used to be friends, right? And you could be again, probably, if you want. It probably doesn't matter what happened back then because the Professor's pretty forgiving from what Alex says, and..."

"Liebling," he sighed, and it made her throat close up. He hadn't called her that since the night at the hospital. "When you're older, you'll understand that it's not that simple."

Lorna wasn't sure where it came from, but suddenly she was blindingly angry. She had to fight the urge to throw her math textbook at him. "What I understand is that he's right here. You're acting like he's dead and you can't ever fix whatever it was, but he's not. You could pick up the phone and call him or go over to his house and he'd be there, probably ready to forgive you for whatever stupid thing you did to him." She turned away when she felt the hot prickle of tears behind her eyelids. "Don't you understand how lucky you are?"

Erik's face had lost all of his annoyance, stricken by her words. "Lorna..."

She couldn't stand to hear the pity in his voice so she turned on her heel and fled the room, choking back her stupid, irrational tears until she reached her room.

**

Lorna hated to cry; she especially hated to cry over something as ridiculous as her father's emotional constipation when he was only bringing the pain on himself. The realization that Erik seemed to be actively pining over the Professor in his spare time only strengthened her resolve that something had to be done about it.

And when no other idea presented itself to Lorna, she did the one thing she thought she'd never do.

She decided to go to Professor Xavier herself.

The Professor didn't have afternoon classes one day a week, and he was almost always home on those days when she and Alex got out of school. He usually left them to their own devices for the most part, just checking in once or twice to make sure they never got too comfortably alone with each other. Lorna decided it was time to turn the tables.

"He's home," Alex said as they stomped into the house, shrugging out of their coats as they come in from the garage. "You should probably do it now if you're going to go through with it."

Alex was even less sure about the course of action than Lorna was, but he was trying his best to be supportive. Lorna thought it was cute. She bent down and grabbed something from the pocket on her backpack before she shoved it at him. "I'll see you after," she told him, sliding the something into the back pocket of her jeans.

"Of course you will, you'll need a ride home."

"And that's the only reason why, of course," she laughed, giving his hand a quick squeeze. "God, stop acting like I'm only using you for your car."

"I thought it was for easy access to Charles," Alex deadpanned before he broke off into a grin. "Good luck."

Lorna found him in his study, working at his desk, furiously scratching his pen across a legal pad even though his tricked-out laptop sat only inches away. It was very...him, she decided, as she watched him for a minute, trying to hold onto the courage that had pushed her along so far.

He looked up when she cleared her throat nervously as she stepped into the study, closing the door behind her. "Can I talk to you for a minute, Professor?" she asked.

Professor Xavier laid down his pen and smiled. "Of course you can," he told her. "And, please, you can call me Charles."

She really couldn't, not when the name still half-left her father's mouth like some kind of secret talisman, a prayer and a curse in one lingering syllable. But Lorna couldn't exactly explain that, so she ignored the offer with a tentative smile.

"So?" he promptly kindly.

"I'm fairly sure I'm about to step over a lot of boundaries, so if I am, just tell me and I'll shut up," she started. "But I was wondering if I could to you about...my dad."

He didn't looked surprised at announcement, just resigned. "Would you like to sit down?"

Lorna shook her head. "I...look, Professor, I don't know if my dad ever said this or if he ever will be but I know, know, that he's sorry for whatever it was he did to hurt you back then."

"How do you know I didn't do something to hurt him?"

Because Raven told me was the answer in her head. But what she said aloud was just as truthful. "Because I know my dad and he sucks at expressing his feelings beyond grunts and growls now, I can only imagine how bad he was at it when he was dumb and twenty. So, yeah, logic says it was his fault."

"No relationship is ever as simple as one being right and one being wrong," the Professor said. "Especially not one with your father."

"So you're not going to hide behind all that 'we were just good friends' thing everyone else does?"

He smiled at that. "I have too much respect for myself and for your intelligence for that. Did Alex not warn you that I'm a stickler for honesty?"

"He didn't have to," Lorna said. "That's why I wanted to talk to you."

"I thank you for the apology on Erik's behalf, but it wasn't necessary," he said after a moment of silence in which he watched her face with his piercing eyes. "I don't hold any grudges against him, especially for the past. It's...in the past now."

"I didn't think you did." Lorna reached into her pocket and pulled out the letter she'd found in the attic. She set it on the edge of the desk and watched as the Professor's eyes widened at the sight of his own, faded handwriting on the envelope. "You didn't even then, right after he broke your heart. And that's either because you're, like, the nicest person on the planet or because you still loved him so much it didn't matter."

"Well I'm certainly not the nicest person on the planet," he told her with a short, strained laugh. "For one, I have no trouble telling you that you're much more blunt than I was expecting. You inherited that from your father, you know."

For all his talk of honesty, Lorna noticed that he chose a rather round-about way to admit he'd been in love with Erik. "I guess my question really, though, is how you feel about him now."

Professor Xavier sat back in his chair, drumming the fingers of one hand against the smooth mahogany wood of the desk. He didn't look angry or sad as he seemed to ponder her question, but he looked serious in a way adults usually didn't when asked embarrassing questions by teenagers. Finally he said, "Your father was very special to me when I was young. That fact hasn't changed over the years."

Lorna decided to live up to his opinion of her. "Raven said you were still in love with him."

"Raven, is it? I should've seen her mark on this." It was accompanied by another laugh, though one with more genuine amusement in it. "As she must've told you..." And now his voice was soft and sad, like Raven's had been when she'd spoke of it. "...she is never wrong."

It hurt to hear him admit it, even though it was what she'd been after all along. It hurt to look at his face, too, so kind and accepting and fond even when she was obnoxiously demanding that he share his deepest feelings with her. She tried to imagine their places reversed, if he were asking her about how she felt about Alex, and Lorna knew she'd died of embarrassment before she was half as candid as he'd been.

Lorna thought maybe he deserved a little candidness in return. "I think it's the same for him," she said. "He kept your photos and your letter all these years, and I swear I caught him pining the other night. He just...he can't do anything about it himself. I don't think my dad thinks he deserves to be happy, especially not with you. Not after that." She waved a hand at the letter. "I think he's going to go on making himself miserable over it for the rest of his life. Is that what you want?"

"Of course not." The Professor picked up the letter and studied it for a moment. "I want your father to be happy."

"So do I," she said, realizing how much she meant it. "But I don't think he can be without you."
"Oh, Lorna," the Professor began, but she cut him off, reaching for his hand, the one that still held the letter, clasping it between both of hers.

"Please," she said. "Just think about what I said."

He held her gaze as he nodded and gently disentangled their hands. The love and the pain were both so visible on his face that it should've hurt to look at him. But there was hope there, too, and it made it easier for Lorna to smile as she bid him goodbye.

Only her father, she noted, could have that kind of love looking at him and fail to notice it. Lucky for him, then, that Lorna was made of sharper stuff.

That, she decided, she had definitely inherited from her mother.

**

One day in mid-November, as he suffered through another interminable meal under Erik's menacing glare, Alex blurted out, "Charles told me to invite you both to spend Thanksgiving with us."

Both Lorna and her father paused, forks still mid-air. "He did?" Lorna asked.

"Well, we didn't know if you guys did anything big since it was just the two of you," Alex explained. "And ours is already like madhouse with everyone else so it's not like two more will matter." He added when no one replied, "It's cool if you have other plans or whatever. Charles just told me to ask."

Thanksgiving, since she'd joined the Lehnsherr household, had rarely involved more than a day of mindless channel-surfing with maybe a store-bought pumpkin pie since neither of them could cook well enough for a proper dinner and Erik, lacking the indoctrination of an American elementary education, didn't even really see the point of it. It surprised Lorna that Charles bothered with for a similar reason.

Still, a big meal and a day spent with friends, no matter the reason, sounded like more fun than what they usually did. "What do you say?" she asked her dad.

"If Charles really made the invitation," Erik said.

"I wouldn't lie on Charles," Alex said. Then he smirked. "You can always call himself yourself to confirm."

"I'll take your word," Erik said. He glanced at Lorna who knew her expression was practically begging. "We accept the invitation."

As the holiday approached, Lorna wasn't sure if she was looking forward to it or dreading it, given the way things still sat uncertainly between her father and Professor Xavier. Since the talk she'd had with Alex's foster father, she'd spent as much time as she could avoiding him, mortified after the fact with the audacity she'd had. Whenever she brought it up to Alex, he laughed, both because he'd warned her not to do it in the first place and because he found the idea that the Professor would bear her any ill will because of it ridiculous.

Lorna refused to show up for Thanksgiving empty-handed, so she pulled out her mother's old recipes to make a savory casserole and a sweet cobbler to contribute to the dinner spread the Professor had planned. When her father pointed out that she'd never made that much of an effort for him, teasing that it must've been for Alex's benefit, Lorna didn't speak to him for the entire drive over to the Xavier house.

When they arrived, Raven met them at the door when they rang the bell.

"Long time no see, Erik," she said with a flash of teeth and a toss of her long, blond hair.

"Raven." He looked around like there was anywhere he'd rather be than in the Xavier moment at that moment.

"Wow," Lorna said, with a roll of her eyes. "Can you guys stop with the awkwardness and show me where I can leave this casserole?"

"Good to see you, too, kiddo," Raven said with a snort. Not waiting for Erik to reply, she relieved him of the cobbler. "Come on, I'll show you."

Lorna tried to have some sympathy for her dad as he escaped the reunion as quickly as possible, but as she followed Raven into the manor's massive kitchen, she had to admit the look on his face had been comical.

"Lorna and Erik are here," Raven announced as they entered, which caused the Professor to turn away from whatever he and Moira were tending on the stove. "Lorna brought cobbler and casserole."

Still a little shy of Professor Xavier, Lorna made a hasty exit of her own, heading off to where the rest of the guests were gathered in the den, watching some sports event on the big screen TV. Once she'd joined them, she saw what Alex meant about the holiday being a madhouse for his family. In addition to Alex, Sean, the Professor, and Raven, Hank had returned, plus the Professor's friend Moira, along with several of the Professor's students who didn't have anywhere else to spend the day. Her father was there, too, prowling around the edge of the room like he expected an attack any moment.

"At least pretend like you want to be here," she sing-songed as she passed by him, before she elbowed her way into a seat on the sofa between Alex and Hank.

Erik eventually relaxed enough to get into the spirit of the atmosphere, so much so that he looked as genuinely disgruntled as the rest of the guys to abandon the TV in favor of dinner once the Professor came to announce it. The places were laid out beautifully in the formal dining room, which the family didn't use on everyday occasions, so it was the first time Lorna had seen it all lit up and decked out. The dazzling setting did little to keep the dinner itself from being a raucous affair, controlled chaos with so many people gathered at the table.

Lorna ended up with Alex on one side and Sean on the other, with Hank and Raven across from her. Her father was seated to Raven's right, which left him on the Professor's left. She didn't know if the seating arrangement had happened by accident or design, and she tried to catch Raven's attention for some subtle clue, but all she got from the Professor's sister was an impish smile the one time their eyes met.

Alex was impressed with Lorna's meager contributions to the feast and, when she pinked up a little under his praise, she could swear she caught her dad and the Professor sharing a laugh over it out of the corner of her eye, but she decided to ignore them both in favor for the smile on Alex's face. Dessert was served on beautiful gold-trimmed china and everyone dispersed with pie or cake or cobbler in their hands, the teenagers and the adults going their separate ways. Lorna with Alex, Hank and Sean ended back up in the den where she ate pie and watched the boys play video games and yell insults at each other.

A little while later, when she'd gathered the empty dessert plates to save them from destruction at the hands of the three rambunctious brothers much too invested in their gaming, Lorna wondered where her father had disappeared to, because she hadn't seen him since dinner and it had been even longer since she'd spoken to him. Carefully carrying the plates down toward the kitchen, she decided she'd go looking for him once she'd dropped them off.

Then Lorna stepped into the kitchen and was met with a sight that she'd never ever suspected to see in her entire life -- her father and Professor Xavier, locked in a rather heated embrace.

The Professor's sleeves were rolled up and the stacks of clean dishes on the counter behind him spoke to what he had been doing before he somehow ended up with Erik wrapped around him. Lorna tried not to think too hard about the way her dad's hands were trailing up the Professor's sides or how he had him backed up against the counter and, really, she didn't want to think about it at all, despite all the work she'd done to make it happen.

Lorna didn't know how long she stared before the sound of breaking china startled them all back to reality, and she winced as the men pulled apart, heads whipping in her direction.

"I'm so sorry," she managed to squeak out under her father's intense gaze. She could feel the blood racing to her face as she looked between them and the mess at her feet.

"It's quite all right, love," Professor said, all smooth charm as if she hadn't just caught him making out with her dad. Only the color in his face gave him away. "It's only a few plates. It'll be fine."

"No, I mean..." Her eyes trailed over to her father who looked breathless and maybe a little annoyed, but maybe also...lighter than she'd seen him, shoulders less bowed under the invisible weight he forced himself to carry. "I didn't mean the plates, although, yeah, sorry about that, too. I meant about the...you know. I didn't mean to interrupt."

"We can hardly expect people to avoid the kitchen, can we?" Professor Xavier said. He let his fingers gently brush against her father's. "I'll go get a broom for the plates," he said before he disappeared into the pantry.

It left Lorna with no one to focus on but Erik, who was now leaning against the counter, arms crossed. "I...you...he..."

"Don't look so surprised, Lorna," he said, amusement evident in the way his mouth tugged upward at one corner. "Were you hoping for some other kind of outcome with all your meddling? I practically have your fingerprints on my back from all the pushing you've been doing."

"I was just trying to help!" she said with indignation.

"I know," Erik agreed, the smile in his voice if not on his face. "And you did, probably in spite of yourself at all. But thank you."

Before Lorna recovered from the shock of her father's thanks, Professor Xavier was back with a broom and dust pan, squatting down at her feet to begin collecting the larger pieces of broken china. Lorna hurried to help and he smiled when she volunteered to hold the dust pan while he carefully swept the smaller debris into it.

"Thank you," he said once the broken plates had all disappeared into the trash and he'd put away the broom. "No need to worry about it."

"It was the least I could do since it was my fault," she said.

Professor Xavier gestured toward the island where several half-eaten pies sat. "Did you want some more dessert?"

"No, no, I was just trying to save them from that exact fate," she admitted with a laugh. "Guess I didn't do a great job of it."

"You've done a great job at so many other things, I think it's all right to fail in your valiant efforts to preserve my china collection," the Professor said, echoing her laugh. While he didn't look as changed as her father, his smile shone even more brightly.

Lorna watched them for a moment, the easy way they stood beside each other, the little glances between them that seemed to be its own conversation.

"So I'm going to go." she said, waving at the door as her feet carried in that direction.

Her pronouncement earned nothing more than a flick-like hand motion from her father which might've generously be called a wave by someone else, but Lorna recognized more as a shooing "go away" gesture. As she left the kitchen, she rolled her eyes.

But she couldn't stop herself from pausing only a few steps into the hall and turning back around for a quick peek. She'd only been out of the room a few seconds, but they had already gravitated back to each other, standing even closer than when she'd been present. Her father's hand was sliding up down one of the Professor's arm, a startlingly affectionate gesture as he nodded along with whatever quiet things the Professor was murmuring to him.

Erik was leaning toward Professor Xavier, telegraphing his intent, when he finally noticed Lorna again.

"Did you need something else, Lorna?" he asked as he stopped just shy of the kiss.

"Nope, but I totally owed you one," she said with a grin. Even the scowl he sent her way seemed to lose its heat when he was with the Professor. "You boys better behave," she continued cheerfully. "I'm sending someone to check on you in a little while. No funny stuff in the kitchen!"

The Professor grinned, shooting Erik an amused look which seemed to distract him to the point that Lorna knew she was going to get an answer from either of them. They were once again a hair's breadth from a kiss when Lorna finally ducked out of the kitchen, off to track down her co-conspirators. They all deserved a share to share in the triumph and the trauma of it.

At least Alex would have the comfort of knowing he'd been right, she decided. It really had been a step-gay Parent Trap, right down to the climatic love scene in the kitchen.

As the sound of their mingled laughter followed Lorna down the hall, she realized she couldn't stop smiling.

**

Lorna finished taping the seam of another box, rocking back on her heels with a sense of satisfaction. "Last one!" she boasted, looking up when she realized she was alone except for the stacks of boxes that surrounded her. "Hey, Dad, did you hear me?"

"All the way downstairs," her dad answered a few seconds later, quickly taking the stairs two at a time. "Why were you yelling?"

"I'm done with my room," she explained, patting the last box for emphasis. "What's next?"

"This weekend? Just our rooms and anything essential that you can't live without," he said. "We'll deal with the rest once the place has been sold."

"I can't believe we're moving again," Lorna said, leaning over to write "LORNA'S STUFF" on the side of the box with a large, black Sharpie marker. "We haven't even been here a year!"

"I thought you were fine with this?" Erik asked with a frown. "When Charles and I asked --"

"No, no, no, I am," she hastened to assure to him. "It's cool. Weird but cool. And it's not like I'm all that emotionally attached to these walls or anything."

"I mean it, Lorna," Erik said. "If you're having second thoughts about this, now is the time to tell me. We can unpack and we can continue on as we have been."

"I know," she smiled. In fact, she did know that her dad was serious and that he'd willingly sacrifice his own plans at her objection. It had taken a while for her to see it behind his taciturn exterior, but the last few months had been a revelation. "But no, I'm not giving you a reason to back out of this. I want to go live in a mansion with a swimming pool and a weight room and a TV the size of our garage door. If you've got cold feet, you're going to have to explain that to Charles without me."

"My feet don't have anything to say about this," Erik said. "And I'm sure that your eagerness is only because of the anmenties and has nothing to do with the fact it will allow you to spend even more time with your juvenile deliquenet of a boyfriend."

"Alex may or may not be plus of the move," she admitted, grinning at her father's sour expression.

"Just wait until he breaks your heart and you can't escape him," he warned. "You'll have wished your little plan with Charles and me hadn't worked half so well."

"Wow, way to be a pessimist, Lehnsherr," she chided, pulling herself up to sit on her empty dresser. "Me and Alex are made of more solid stuff than that."

"You're 16," he drawled. "Solid is relative."

"We've survived watching our parents date each other," she argued. "We've walked in on you two making out no less than five times in the last six months and he blames it all on me, nevermind that he actually helped. That kind of horror creates a bond that transcends a mere teenaged crush."

While Lorna was mostly teasing, she knew Alex would sincerely agree with her assessment. Every time they stumbled upon Erik and Charles being affectionate whatsoever with each other, Alex looked like he was going to be ill. She had no idea how he was going to survive seeing her dad and Charles together every day once the Lehnsherr-Danes moved in for good, an event that was currently in progress. It did make her uncomfortable to catch her father and Charles in what her grandmother Dane had scandalously called a clinch but it was worth to see how much happier her father had been in those six months since Thanksgiving. She was finally beginning to see the man her mother had once told her about.

"Don't get any ideas about it transcending too much," he warned. "I'll not have you thinking you can get away with...things...now that you'll be under the same roof. I'll be watching."

"Oh please," she said, rolling her eyes. "Eventually, you and Charles will need some "alone time" and the last thing you'll be worried about is what I'm up to, with or without Alex."

Erik's grin came on slow but bloomed wide, all shark-like teeth and danger. "You just keep that in mind, Lorna," he said. "If you two manage to sneak off alone, just remember what's likely happening in the other room."

"You're a horrible person," she said, her mouth round with horror. "How dare you plant that in my head? Ew, ew, ew. There's got to be a law somewhere against insinuating that you'll be off having sex in a conversation with your own child."

Her dad laughed and, really, he was a horrible father sometimes. He was just lucky she'd gotten used to him over the years.

"I'm telling Charles on you," she said, sliding off the dresser to poke him in the chest for emphasis. "He actually knows how to act like a mature parent, unlike you."

"I feed you, give you a roof over your head," he protested, still grinning.

"I'm not a dog!"

"I know," he said, pulling her into a hug despite her weak protest. "You're sure this is fine?" he asked, more softly.

"Hell, I'd move without you if Charles would let me." She softened the brunt of her words by throwing her arms around him in return. "You're happy, right?"

"Right," he said, brushing a stray piece of green hair away from her eyes. It reminded her of her mother and the ache she always got was there -- but it was a sweeter ache, one tempered a little by the soft look on her father's face. The sound of a loud vehicle pulling up outside broke the moment and Lorna pulled away.

"Then I'm happy," she said, wiping non-existant dirt from her hands on her denim shorts. "Or at least I will be after I make Alex and Sean carry all these boxes down to the moving truck."

"So that's your plan, is it?" he asked. "I noticed you seemed very cheerful about moving boxes."

"If a girl can't advantage of her boyfriend, who can she take advantage of? I ask you."

Erik was still laughing at her statement when Charles poked his head into the room. "Everything good?" he asked, glancing from Erik to Lorna. Even though there was no way he could, Lorna felt like he knew exactly what they'd been talking about in the moments before, the tone touched with a concern that wasn't needed to inquire after their packing progress.

"Absolutely," Lorna answered. "Everything's great."

"That's what I like to here," he smiled, first at her, then at her father. "I've brought along help, as promised, and they're very eager to pitch in." He coughed. "At least with a little persuasion, they are anyway."

When Lorna caught her father's eye, they both started laughing again.

Lorna glanced around at her boxed-up belongings, then over at Erik and Charles where they stood smiling at each other, talking in that low, intimate tone she'd come to expect from them. If she strained her ears, she could hear Alex and Sean downstairs, probably moving the boxes from her dad's office out to the truck that would carry all of their most important things over to the Xavier house where they'd spend the first week of summer vacation settling in.

The sight of all that cardboard still did funny things to Lorna's stomach but, for the first time since her mother died, it didn't feel like an ending.

It felt like a beginning.

**

The End.