Trish came by Harry's every Tuesdays and Thursdays after classes. Hank showed up every Mondays and Thursdays after Charles would finally kick him out of the lab, claiming that beakers and test tubes were poor substitutes for therapy. It only took three weeks for Alex to give Hank a knowing look and tell him that Charles sure didn't seem to have to try so hard any more. Hank ignored that. He wondered if "Trish" was ignoring anybody.
They discussed everything from the weather to minority rights (somehow, skirting the word 'mutant' in favor of things like Gandhi, peaceful protests, preemptive strikes, etc.) to favorite hobbies to worst subjects. She didn't mind him waxing eloquent about his theories she would never understand, just smiling at him from those dark eyes over her tall glass of steaming frappacino. He didn't mind her eerily strategic militant theories. Every once in a while he wondered if somewhere equally out of the way, Charles and Erik played chess and discussed much the same things.
"You're wandering," Trish prodded, one eyebrow raised in an amused expression.
Hank focused back on the here and now and smiled sheepishly. "Just thinking."
"Ships and shoes and sealing wax?" she quipped.
"More like cabbages and kings," he rejoined heartily. Too heartily.
She reached out a hand to stroke his fur and said softly, "Okay."
They stared at each other for a long moment. Hank cleared his throat and picked up his drink. "To friends who can agree to disagree."
She smirked, a genuine smirk that did not belong on Trish's face but that did belong on Raven's. "I'll drink to that."
Perhaps he should have been relieved they didn't break out the chess board.
Harry was the first to break their peace. "Someone's stirring up trouble," he muttered and tossed a newspaper down on the table between them.
Frown lines puckered on her brow.
Hank glanced at the headline—and froze. Fort Dawes had been broken into. Speculation was rampant on how it could be possible. And Hank... His thoughts raced ahead of him and stopped— No. His thoughts raced faster and stopped—
On her.
"What was in Dawes?" Trish asked suddenly, her head swiveling up to look into Harry's face and sending a cloud of her scent Hank's way. "Is something missing?"
Hank was almost aghast at how innocent she sounded.
Harry grinned his gap-toothed grin. "Only all the security footage from between 11:30 pm and 4:30 am, reportedly the memories of the security guards for the same period, and absolutely everything in the file room."
Top secret files, memories... Hank felt like he would be sick. He watched Trish frown at the newspaper, reading it carefully, and watched Harry return to the counter to brew up another round of his famous black coffee.
"What do you think?" Hank blurted suddenly.
Trish looked up, startled. Her eyes flickered, then softened. She reached and slid her hands into his blue, furry ones and held on tight. "We're not chess pieces, Hank," she said softly. "If you believe in peaceful protest, go for it. If ou want to do something different than what someone else expects of you, do it. If you don't want to fight...then don't."
Hank looked down at their clasped hands, then back into those soft, dark eyes that should have been gold. "Do you want to go for a drive?" he asked.
She smiled.
She took him back to her apartment, and they made love. She tasted exactly the way she smelled, like heat and summer and blueness—and Raven.
He had her drop him off near a park he knew the Professor favored and looked around until he found them. He fell to studying the two young men, a game board—a chess board—between them. Their game was deadly serious. Their mouths moved as though they spoke, one to another.
Hank wondered, briefly, if Charles asked Erik about Dawes.