Chapter 4: The Date
Alexandra's was an elegant little restaurant tucked away in the middle of the city between two cellular service shops. Hank had been there once before, on a double date with Remy and Rogue, and had found the atmosphere soothing, the restaurant pretty, and the food delightful. Amanda looked right at home as she threaded her way around the tables, and Hank noticed more than a few heads turning to look at the slim black-clad nymph he was escorting. It was quite a change; he was used to envying the other single guys at the mansion the pretty girls they went with, especially Remy, though he'd never admit it to any of them. It was rather pleasing, he thought, to have a girl on his arm that others envied him for.
They found seats, and the hostess gave them menus. Amanda looked at it for a moment, then said quietly to him, "I have a confession to make."
"What?" he tensed.
"I have never been here before, and I have no idea what is good." She said. "I assume you've been here before?"
"Indeed," he said gravely as he relaxed.
She looked at him beseechingly. "Will you order for me? Please?"
He took her menu from her and smiled as he laid a hand comfortingly over hers. "Of course," he said. She smiled, relieved, and he consulted the menu for a few more minutes before waving the waiter over.
They started with an appetizer of cocktail shrimp, and Hank discovered that both he and Amanda enjoyed spicy foods when he saw her adding more horseradish to the cocktail sauce. He grinned, and let her have her way with the sauce as he mentally changed the selection he made for her. The shrimp was followed by a Caesar salad, his with a lemon basil dressing, hers with the house Italian. Then the waiter brought their main entrees. He had ordered prime rib with pesto linguini, and had chosen for her the herb-roasted chicken and fettuccini in a creamy alfredo sauce. At his request, they had added slightly more pepper to the chicken, and he was rewarded by her surprised, pleased look when she took the first bite of her chicken. She ordered herself a slice of cheesecake for dessert, and he had their strawberry shortcake.
She sat back, finally, and grinned. "Wow," she said. "I've never had a meal like that. Beats my cooking all hollow. I think I'm about to burst my dress."
Hank looked at her dress, startled, and she laughed. "I was joking," she said. "But the food was delicious. I haven't eaten so much in a while." She wiped her mouth with a napkin, and Hank called for the check. He left a generous tip for the waiter and they made their way out into the street.
He started to head for the car, but she stopped. "The theater's only a block away," she said. "Can we walk?"
Again he was surprised. It was what he would have done, were he alone, but he hadn't thought that she would enjoy it. He smiled at her and fell into step beside her as they walked up the sidewalk toward the theater.
She looked up at the sky, at the few stars that littered the velvety blackness, and said, "I always swore to myself that I'd never live in the city, and yet here I am."
Hank looked up, then at the woman walking beside him. "Why would you prefer not to live in the city?" he asked her. "Apart from the problem of pollution and never-ending sound."
"Stars," she said wistfully, stopping and pointing upwards. "I grew up in West Virginia, riding horses from my parents' breeding stables. I used to love going for long walks at dusk, so I could watch the sun go down and see the stars come out. But I can't do that here in the city." She stopped, pointed upward. "See that bright one, hanging right over top of us? That's Rigel. The constellation it's in is Orion; if it were just a bit darker we might be able to see the three stars that make up Orion's Belt."
Hank looked up at the sparkling point of light hanging so far above him. "The Egyptians believed this constellation was the resting place of Osiris," he said quietly, studying the constellation.
"Yes," Amanda said, pleased. "In Greece Orion was the son of Neptune, the Sea God. He fell in love with Diana, who placed him there in the sky far away from the constellation of the scorpion that killed him." She looked pleased. "I'm surprised you knew the Egyptian legend."
"I read." Hank looked back down at her as they continued walking, and she laughed as she slipped her hand into his. Her palm was so small and soft in his, and he felt a thrill of pleasure at the spontaneous, unasked-for touch. His mind was wandering toward other, less-appropriate thoughts, and he tried desperately to get back on track. "If you had such an obvious interest in astronomy, why did you not pursue that career path instead of biogenetics?" he asked her.
Amanda sighed, and leaned into his arm. "My sister was a mutant," she said. "When she reached her fourteenth birthday her skin suddenly became so excessively thin that the lightest touch bruised it. She could barely tolerate clothes. And it just got worse from there; you could see the blood literally running through her veins, and all her other bodily functions going on even through her skin. One day she was in the kitchen doing dishes when a plate dropped on the floor and smashed. While she was trying to clean it up she got cut with a piece. Her skin was so thin that they couldn't stop the bleeding. She died." Amanda took a deep breath. Her eyes were damp.
"Mom and Dad were really broken up about it. Dad's a mutaphobe; he hates mutants. It was something of a shock to him when he found out his oldest child was one. Mom doesn't like mutants either; she got stuck in the middle between hers and Dad's anti-mutant hysteria and the need to try to support Katherine while she tried to deal with what was happening to her." Amanda sighed and wiped her eyes. "It destroyed their marriage. Dad stayed back on the farm, and Mom moved here to get a job and start over. She lives just outside the city now. Mom and I drive back for holidays. Anyway, I became a geneticist because I wanted to find a way to figure out how to test for and predict mutated gene carriers. If I can find a test maybe I can help some other baby sister from having to watch her older sibling die."
Hank wrapped an arm around her shoulders and they stopped walking. "I'm sorry," he said to the russet curls resting against his arm. Amanda looked up at him, then hugged him as tightly as she could, considering she couldn't even get her arms all the way around him.
"It's all right," she said finally. "Katherine was the reason I started becoming interested in biogenetics. I was trying to find something that would isolate and identify the X-gene, and the reovirus was the only answer." They resumed walking. "Did you get a chance to read the notes?"
"I did," Hank said. "It was very interesting. This reovirus has characteristics both like and unlike any virus I have ever seen before." He stopped. "Amanda, you said the samples would be destroyed if you removed them from your freezer. But viruses have a higher tolerance for temperature differentials than many other forms of life on the planet. Why did you not wish to share the samples with me?"
She looked down, a pink blush coloring her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she said. "But Bruce stole so much of my research, I guess I'm sort of a little paranoid. I don't want that to happen to me again."
"I understand," Hank said as they stopped at the ticket window and purchased two tickets. "I am still interested in seeing the samples, however. Let me see what I can do; I may be able to arrange a visit for you to where I work." It was a stretch; Hank knew Xavier would probably not like the idea of his bringing an outsider like Amanda into the mansion. There was too much of a chance that she might stumble onto their secret, though Hank was pretty sure that Amanda wouldn't speak of what she saw. He sighed. "Let's go find our seats," he told her.
The curtain rose shortly thereafter, and Hank lost himself in the grandiose, swelling 'Phantom Overture'. As the play progressed, he sat back into his seat and let the familiar music wash over him. Amanda, he noticed with surprise, was doing the same. And when the curtain came down, he found her with her eyes damp. He smiled.
"I'm sorry," she apologized. "I get so wrapped up in these things. Bruce hates it when I get emotional; that's why he never took me anywhere."
Hank grinned at her. "It is quite a moving piece," he said.
Amanda wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, and grimaced when it came away streaked with her makeup. "Will you excuse me?" she said as they reached the lobby of the theater. "I need to go wash this makeup off my face."
Hank obligingly stopped, and she ducked into the ladies' room. The lobby was full of people, and it was stuffy. He stepped out of the door, leaning against the glass outside where Amanda could see him when she came out and looked up. A streetlamp had gone out directly across from the theater, and he found that that helped him, as he squinted up into the night sky to see the three bright stars that made up Orion's belt.
"Hey, mutie," came a harsh voice, and he flicked his eyes downward. Five scruffily dressed youths, maybe in their mid to late teens, were sitting under the dysfunctional lamp, smoking. The first by spoke again. "Hey, freak," he said. "Whatcha hangin' around tryin' to look like one of them for?" He gestured to the other well-dressed patrons of the theater with a wave of his cigarette. "You ain't never gonna be like them. Go hang out with your own kind, freak."
Amanda chose just that moment to come out of the theater, her smeared makeup fixed. Hank turned to her, pointedly ignoring the five rude youths on the other side of the street, and took her arm. They started to walk back toward the restaurant where they'd left the car.
Amanda frowned at the boys. "What was that all about?" she said. Hank shook his head and kept on walking.
The five guys sped up and walked just a few steps behind them. "Hey, lady," said the one who'd spoken. "You can do better than that, you know."
Amanda's hand tightened on Hank's arm as he made a move to confront the hecklers. "Forget it, Hank. They're not worth the attention. Ignore them." She ignored them too, walking off down the street. Hank walked beside her.
The five boys followed them. "Look at him," they jeered. "Big, blue, and ugly. What a freak. Look at them. Hey, lady," one of them hollered. "Is he hung the way he's built?"
Amanda flushed an angry pink, but kept walking. The guy who had spoken sped up, followed by his friends, and got in front of her. "Ditch the freak," he said to her. "Come on. Let me show you a real man."
"I have one, thank you," Amanda said shortly. "If all you can do is belittle someone for the way he looks, without being mature enough to look beneath the skin, then you're no man. You're an idiotic child." She took Hank's arm, started to steer him around the knot of boys.
The one who had spoken turned an angry red, and watched dumbfounded as his friends laughed at him. In anger, he stooped, picked up a chunk of broken brick from the sidewalk, and hurled it at them.
Amanda cried out and stumbled into Hank's arm as the piece of brick connected with her head. She put her hand up to her temple, and it came away slick with blood. Hank gasped and took a handkerchief from his pocket, pressing it to her temple to stop the bleeding. Amanda took it from him, holding it to her head, and grabbed his arm with one hand. "No, Hank," she said. "Don't sink to their level. Come on. Let's go home."
Then a second piece of building debris followed, and Hank gasped as it struck his arm. Then a rock sailed past him, and he heard Amanda cry out again as it thudded against her ribs. He lost his temper.
He rushed at their tormentors. The boys, seeing Hank's angry, snarling visage and considerable mass bearing down on them, yelled and scattered. He almost pursued them, but Amanda's soft sobs behind him drew him back to her side. He stared in distress at the blood smeared on her hands and the side of her face, and said, "Let's get you home."
He stopped in at the drugstore on the way to purchase bandages and antiseptic, and then got Amanda home. She unlocked the door and ushered him inside, and then he insisted that she lie down on her couch as he dampened a towel and wiped the blood off her hands and face. She leaned her head back against the arm so he could look at the cut under the bright table lamp beside the couch. "How does it look?" she said quietly.
"The wound is superficial," Hank said, parting the strands of her hair to look at the cut, "It should heal with no trouble. Are you experiencing any dizziness, or discomfort?"
"No," Amanda said, though she winced a little as he carefully squeezed a line of antiseptic ointment on the cut. He spread it around with careful, gentle fingers, and then considered how he was going to wrap a bandage around her head.
"Don't worry about the bandage," Amanda said quietly, turning to look at him. "I'm sure it will be…all right…" Her words trailed off. His face was only inches from hers, and she could smell the warm, subtle scent of his cologne. She found her gaze straying to his lips, and she wondered what it would be like to kiss him. Deed followed thought.
Hank almost pulled back in surprise when her lips found his, but her lips were soft, inviting, and yielded so sweetly to his when he got up the courage to kiss back that he didn't want to break the contact. Her arms crept around his neck, and she kissed him back, passionately, and his last thought was that Charles was right, he was by himself much too often.
Much later, they both lay on the pile of blankets Amanda had spread out on her living room floor, because her bed had obviously not been built to handle the excessive weight he put on it. "I am sorry about the bed," he said to the warm body spooned up against his front.
Amanda giggled sleepily. "'S okay,"she said. "I needed to get another one anyway. The mattress was a bit lumpy." She rolled over and looked at him. In the moonlight, there was no color in his fur, only white, black, and shades of gray. Her fingers traced the outline of his chest muscles, played with the short, coarse fur, and caressed the smooth skin under the fur gently. She giggled suddenly.
"What?" Hank said, sitting up. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back down beside her.
"Don't go," she said. "Stay with me. Are your friends going to miss you, back at your place?"
"Not likely," Hank said dryly. "What were you laughing at?"
She giggled again. "I was thinking about what that boy said," she grinned. "And I have to say, you're definitely 'hung like you're built'."
Hank stared at her in openmouthed shock, and she laughed again. Oh, he liked that sound more and more every time he heard it. "Don't worry, that's a good thing."
"Really." His eyes narrowed, though his voice was filled with amusement. He lowered himself carefully atop her, adjusting his position so that his weight would press his lower body against hers while not crushing her. "Shall I attempt to change that assessment?"
She giggled. "You can try."
They didn't get up off the floor until sunlight streamed in through the large window in her living room. Amanda stretched luxuriously in the nest of blankets as he rolled over and sat up. "I'd offer you a shower, but I don't think you'd fit in the tiny shower stalls they put in these apartments," she said, getting up herself and strolling, casually nude, into her kitchen to set the coffeemaker. Hank paused in the act of pulling on his pants to admire her body from the back. Though he'd always refrained from joining in the sexist chatter the men at the mansion indulged in occasionally, he had privately always considered himself a 'leg man'. Amanda had wonderful legs, he noticed, looking at them for the first time unencumbered by clothing, shadows, or blankets. Though he supposed even if she didn't have those long, tanned, smooth legs, he'd still be in love with her. She was a wonderful conversationist, a wonderful date, and definitely a wonderful bed partner.
Amanda turned to him, asking, "Cream and sugar?" And he didn't even hear her because he was staring at her front. He instantly switched his assessment of his own preferences; he wasn't a 'leg man', he was a 'chest man', as long as that chest was Amanda's. She didn't have the spectacular breasts some of the other women at the mansion had (notably Betsy and Jean) but hers were decent-sized and perfect for her average size and slim build. Not even the dark bruise under her ribs, a souvenir from the second brick that had struck her, could mar the beauty of her body.
She grinned at his look, put the mug of coffee down on the kitchen table, and swayed her hips seductively as she walked over to him. All thought fled his head as they tumbled back down into the nest of blankets again.