When they get back from Washington, there's so much work to do.
There are the repairs--so many them, from the years when they let everything slide. It didn't take long for a house this large to start falling to pieces. It began even before the school closed. First Charles decided they didn't need the planned renovations of the student dorms, and that made sense--but then he decided there was no purpose in replacing the roof, which didn't. From there he let the gardener go, and the housekeeper...and not so much let them go as stopped signing the checks, leaving it for Hank to explain their services were no longer needed. It had been terrible. Hank came so close to leaving so many times in those years, but that was the first of them.
This time, calling the contractors, doing the hiring...Charles does all of that himself, after conferring with Hank, who agrees to everything. It's Charles' house, after all, and Charles' money...and it's good to see him caring about something again.
The other things, renewing their licensing, contacting old students and teachers and recruiting new ones--that they do together, like real partners. It's the way they were back in the beginning, and Hank loves it. He never thought he'd see Charles like this for a while after Cuba, but he's been certain they wouldn't since the first time they closed their doors.
The house and the school aren't the only things that need repaired, of course. Charles' bad dreams are back, they came as soon as he went off the serum. Now, when he calls Hank to his room in the middle of the night and begs for a dose of the serum, it's Hank's job to refuse. It's not really Hank's job to distract him, but he's been doing it for so long, it's become such a part of him that he can't help it. So in the nights he wraps himself around Charles, and he touches him. Learns all the new ways to touch him, now that he has to focus on everything above the waist. After an hour or so, they're both physically exhausted as well as mentally, and they fall asleep beside each other.
Hank wants to trust it, this thing that's still between them, but he's not sure he can. He and Charles never slept together before the school closed, and the first time they did...the first time they did, Hank's not really sure how it happened, if Charles wanted it or it was just Hank who did. He knows they'd been drinking, both of them. He knows he woke up in Charles' bed, head pounded, with no memory of the night before outside of a flash or two (shoving Charles into the door, hard, the Beast rising up in him as he did, a lust so sudden and so strong it half-sickens him to think about, even though it always makes him hard, too, if he thinks about it for too long; Charles bent over his dresser, Hank pounding into him, half blue and all need).
They've been together so many times sense. Sometimes one or both of them have been angry with the other. Sometimes Charles in particular has been cruel, egging Hank on so he'll be too angry to remember he wasn't going to end up in Charles' bed again this time, not until whatever issue it is is resolved. But it's been other things, too. Sometimes Charles weeps, sometimes Hank just needs to feel something...but other times, it's been because Charles smiled at him, and Hank remembered how beautiful he used to be. Sometimes, it's been because Charles touched his thigh suggestively, or simply said, "Please, Hank."
Since Washington, they haven't had the angry kind of sex, the kind that makes Hank not care if he hurts Charles a little during, and that makes him think he needs to leave for good in the morning. It's all been the good kind--the kind where Hank is helping, or the kind where they both just want to. It's been that kind in particular, more and more.
Hank just wishes he could remember how it was the first time. It had been rough, and that was fine, but was he angry? Did Charles said something cruel, and Did Hank snap, because he was frustrated in so many ways? Did Charles even want it the first time, or did that come later? Things seem okay right now--better than okay--when Hank manages not to think about it, he's never been happier, or more relieved--and when he's not thinking about it, he knows they're going to be all right.
It's just that when he does think about it, he's not sure they can be. If it started the way he fears it might have, how could anything good come out of something like that? Even Charles did want it the first time, Hank's not always sure he isn't delusional to think they could ever be okay. And if he didn't...if he didn't...
Hank thinks about asking, sometimes. He knows Charles would be honest with him--that Charles has too much guilt of his own to be anything but honest with him now. But if he was too much a coward to leave all the times he should have, he's even more of a coward now that he knows he really would have to go, if it was the wrong answer.
He doesn't ask, and he doesn't ask, and in the end he never does, even though he knows he ought to. And he's happy--they're both happy--more and more of the time.
But he can never help but wonder, every once in a while.