Thanks to hippiechick2112 and feathered moon wings for reviewing! And because I forgot these last chapter, also thanks to Melissa hearts fiction and ellie for reviewing last chapter :)

The library was closed on Saturday and Sunday, and Sunday afternoon found Scott outside with a basket of soaking wet laundry. Laundry made him respect water. He hadn't realized how heavy it was until carrying dry laundry, then wet laundry. Water made itself a part of everything and changed it.

Scott didn't understand. As he pinned a shirt to the clothesline, he noted to ask Hank later. Hank would explain.

He picked up a blouse and pinned one of the shoulders. Was it supposed to be that… tiny?

"Doesn't look like it'll fit you."

Scott looked up. He had heard someone approaching—someone too deliberate to be Alex or Ororo, too loud to be Hank, too heavy to be Ruth, and too ambulatory to be Charles. And he didn't really want to talk to that person.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Summers."

Scott finished pinning the blouse and picked up another piece from the basket.

"Afternoon. Can I help?"

"No, thank you. You're a guest, I don't think—I don't think my dad would like that."

"Keep you company, then?"

Scott paused. "It's almost two o'clock," he said, "Alex will be home soon."

"It's not that I'm waiting for him—"

"I know Hank loves your technology. And Ororo thinks a lot of you, she's still down about her arm."

"Matthew, I know I'm upsetting you."

Scott regarded Chris for a moment. Then he said, "I'm busy, that's all, sir. I don't mean to be rude."

"No, you don't like me," Chris insisted, "that's abundantly clear. You and Alex seem to be close, though. I hoped we could find a way to tolerate one another."

"Because of Alex."

"Because I love my son."

Scott returned to hanging the laundry. "I'm starting to worry Ororo's stuff shrunk in the wash. She likes you. If I shrunk her clothes and you could keep her from killing me, we'll call it even." He paused again, just long enough to extend his hand.

Chris shook. "It's a deal. How long have you lived here?"

"Long enough."

"I've met quite a lot of people. I don't know that I've ever met anyone like your mom and dad."

Scott nodded. "Yes, but I'd as soon not talk about that."

"What would you talk about?"

Scott shrugged. "Not that. If I tried to tell you everything wonderful about them, anything I said would be… pale. There were be omissions."

With a look of disapproval, Chris asked, "And that would bother them?"

"No, it wouldn't matter to them. Just to me." He finished hanging his laundry and picked up the basket. "Thanks for keeping me company, Mr. Summers, but if you wouldn't mind I really do need to get to my studies."

"On a Sunday?"

"Mom's Jewish. Our Sabbath is Friday and Saturday. Sunday's right back to studying."

Which was fully true, except that Scott did not consider himself Jewish and Ruth did not consider working on Shabbat a sin. He left the laundry basket outside since he would need it when he took in the clothes, but he didn't go back to his room to study.

He went to the lab.

Hank was crouched by a metallic sheet. Scott wouldn't guess what those science-looking implements were or what they were supposed to do. He just went to the wire cage on top of the filing cabinet and scooped up the mouse who lived there. The little thing cowered in his palm, whiskers twitching.

"What's wrong?" Hank asked.

"Who says something's wrong?"

"You always come visit Porthos when something's wrong."

Scott stroked the mouse's ears gently, with a single fingertip. "I miss Artie."

Hank was never sure what to say to that. Artie had been a sweet enough cat to Scott. She never fully warmed to anyone else, but Hank liked dusting off old knowledge to help make an organic flea repellent. She had not made a big difference for him, Charles, or the other students, but she meant so much to Scott.

"Everything changes, Hank."

"That's why I like my lab," Hank replied. "Too many factors outside, too many forces at work… but science moves at its own pace, always fitting."

"I'm not as clever as you."

"Most people aren't," Hank said. "You have to stop saying things like that. You make it sound like you don't matter just because I'm smarter than you. You matter to a lot of people. And being smart isn't everything."

"You love your experiments," Scott pointed out. He ignored the part about not putting himself down, but then, they had both expected him to.

Hank agreed, "I do, but for most of my life I was alone. Intelligence means being weird and isolated. Lonely. There are more important things than being smart."

Scott wasn't sure what to say to that. Everyone wanted to be smart. Didn't they? He had always known—not thought, but known it like a fact—that he was dim. He had been told it at school. It seemed like being smart was everything, despite what Hank said.

But who knew more about being smart than Hank?

"Do you think knowing more makes you happier?"

"Yes. I was even thinking about going back to college before, well."

"But—I mean, not you like you, you like anybody. You and the Professor…"

"We're not actually talking about Charles and me, are we?" Hank asked.

Scott shook his head. "Is it really better to go to college, though?"

"Why wouldn't you want to go to college? It's an opportunity everyone should have and it's what Charles wants for you."

"Yeah, but… I just don't want to go. But then I look at Alex. I love Alex, but I don't want to be like him. But I'm not like you. When you talk, people know you're smart. I talk and I just sound like a kid."

"Part of that's your age. You are a kid."

"I guess I can't argue with that," Scott agreed. He was and wasn't a teenager, but he certainly had the looks of one. To anyone who met him, he was a sixteen-year-old boy. "But what if you don't go to college? I was gonna join the Army, but I can't do that now, not with…" Scott touched his glasses. He couldn't complete a vision test.

"You know, you can study whatever you like in college. Just because Charles and I studied sciences doesn't mean you have to. There are degrees in literature, philosophy…"

"It's not that." Mixed up, Scott changed the subject: "What are you working on?"

Hank looked up from his pane of shimmering metal. "I'm trying to amplify Cerebro."

"Amplify it?" Scott asked. "Is that safe? Cerebro is already hard on the Professor." He had seen Cerebro used only a handful of times. It left Charles wrung out. Always.

"If what I'm doing works, the machine will be more… user-friendly. Right now it's a brute force approach, Cerebro amplifies his brainwaves but he controls them. If I can build it to guide him, the machine could handle the heavy lifting. Something like Cerebro, it'll never be easy to use, but it won't be as draining."

Scott nodded, looking unconvinced. "Hank… he's not as strong as he wants us to think."

"I know."

Hank knew better than Scott did, in fact. Hank had been the one to stay.

After Erik and Raven and Alex and Sean moved on, while Charles was still in the hospital, Hank stayed. Of course he knew what made Alex and Sean leave, knew he wasn't given the same treatment because of his looks. Telepathically encouraging Alex and Sean to get out into the world was one thing; Charles never would have done that to Hank.

So he had seen Charles low. He had seen Charles lost, down, and in a state of almost-perpetual drunkenness. Hank knew very well how vulnerable Charles was.

"The modifications are to ease his interactions with Cerebro," Hank explained. "Charles can be stubborn and I don't think there's much chance of him not using Cerebro—this way he won't hurt himself."

"Oh. That's a good idea."

Scott wasn't ready to apologize yet and Hank heard as much in his tone. That was okay. They'd argued a little; this was nothing.

"Hey, why don't you check on my other project?"

"What other project?"

Hank indicated a table in the corner. The table was covered with old newspapers. Hank was brilliant and his experiments often produced incomprehensible results. This time he had what looked like the world's most depressing mobile: wire hangers with wire rods hanging from them.

"What are—aw, way far out! For Saturday?"

Hank nodded. "I wanted to try something else, but I need supplies."

"Something you can't order?"

"For Saturday?"

"Fair enough. Make me a list, I'll take care of it tomorrow."

There was a pause. Hank was trying to find a way to say something.

Scott chuckled. "Go ahead."

"I know it's Sunday."

"And summer. Go ahead."

Not that Scott understood a word of it—well, not enough words to make a sentence out of—but he listened to Hank's enthusiastic chemistry lecture. Only after Hank had worn out the subject of oxidizers and "adequately even assurances in proportional distribution" did Scott move to deposit Porthos back in the cage.

"You've been working on Mr. Summers's ship, right?"

"Yes."

"Do you think it'll be fixed soon?"

"I don't know. Spaceships are pretty solidly outside my area of expertise."

"Do you remember when I first came here?"

"You mean when you told me I was purple?"

"You are purple—"

"Or when you hadn't heard of evolution?"

"Not that—"

"Ah. So when you were uncomfortable because you thought me and Charles were lovers?"

"No I didn't—wasn't!" Scott objected, blushing. "I mean when you told me that people are made from the ashes of dying stars."

"'Ashes' is something of a metaphor. Otherwise that's true."

"So we've all traveled in space, in some sense."

"I suppose, at our most basic level, one might say. Although not in a ship. Scott, are you asking me when your dad—"

"He's not my dad."

Hank opened his mouth to correct Scott and wisely decided on another course. "Are you asking me when Mr. Summers will be gone because you want him to leave or because you're working up the nerve to talk to him?"

Scott shrugged. "Alex is doing better. Alex is doing a lot better."

Not sure what to say to that, Hank changed the subject: "I've made progress on a cure for your… condition. It's not finished yet, but I want to run some tests on different cells." He had already vaulted across the room as he said this, and now perched atop a filing cabinet, rifling through one of the drawers.

"Okay," Scott agreed, rolling up his sleeve.

"Oh, no, not blood," Hank assured him. "Skin cells."

"Skin cells?" Scott repeated. He imagined Hank would take those by peeling off a layer of his skin with the same tool Ruth used to peel potatoes and carrots.

"It won't hurt."

Scott had heard that before.

Hank hopped across the room again, seeing no reason to walk when he could use aerial somersaults. "It won't," he repeated. That was the downside to being both a scientist and friends with Scott. The kid believed everything he said, until it was personal—and Hank disliked people not believing him.

Not because he would hurt Scott, he wouldn't, just because he disliked being doubted. He was right.

Almost always.

"Open your mouth."

Officially, Hank had no training in this—but as a buccal swab was something most high school freshmen did themselves in biology class, he wasn't concerned. It was a three-second process of brushing a q-tip against the inside of Scott's cheek, and Hank had all the skin cells he needed. He dropped the q-tip in a vial and capped it.

"That's it."

"Really?"

"Finished. You'll be seventeen before you know it."