Eye of the Beholder

Author’s Notes: Thank you to onewing, blue_lioness and my new reviewer Arden Skysender for your reviews. An image inducer is from the comics and it allows the less human looking mutants to look perfectly normal by projecting a hologram around them, though if someone were to touch Hank while it was on, they would still feel his fur.

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“I’m sorry, sir, but Miss Simon checked out around 2:30 this morning,” the lady behind the counter tells Hank as she puts an envelope with his name written on it on the counter. “She did leave this for you though.”

“Thank you,” he replies, thankful that at least she had the courage to talk to him unlike the man that had been there when he walked in.

He takes the offered item and walks away, opening the envelope as he goes. He pulls a sheet of paper with the hotel’s stationary out of the envelope and starts to read the hastily jotted down note in barely legible handwriting.

Dear Hank,

I’m sorry to leave like this without properly saying goodbye, but I can’t stay here. Just the thought of being in the same building, Hell even in the same state as James is keeping me awake. Call me when you get home and we’ll talk. I know you have my number.

Thanks for your help,

Amanda

With a sad smile, he puts the letter back in its envelope and heads out to the car and he spots Jones out of the corner of his eye coming out of an elevator, sporting a rather sizable bruise on his cheek. When he gets to the car he can see Storm sits in the front seat with her head against the headrest and her eyes closed behind her sunglasses. She finally cracks an eye open when he gets back into the car and then looks around, confusion on her face.

“Where’s Amanda?” she asks as he starts the car and drives away from the hotel.

“She’s already left,” he answers as he hands her the letter.

“Can’t say as I blame her,” she states after she reads the short missive. “So what now?”

“Now, I take you home as originally planned before returning to my own place,” he replies.

“What about you asking her out on a date?” she questions as she puts the letter away.

“She did request that I call her when I get home,” he points out, a smile playing across his lips.

“So she did,” she agrees, a smile of her own appearing. “What do you intend to do about Jones?”

“As much as I’d like to see him swing by his short hairs, I do have something planned that should cause him no end of problems,” he responds with a devious smile.

“What have you got going on in that fuzzy, blue head of yours, Hank?” she asks, chuckling at his behavior.

“You’ll see soon enough, my dear,” he answers with a twinkle in his eye.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?” she grills.

“No, I’m afraid not,” he snickers.

“Fine,” she huffs as she leans against the headrest again and closes her eyes. “Wake me when you want me to drive.”

Figuring it’s a ploy to get him to talk, he just smirks at her though she doesn’t see. After a few minutes he can hear her slow, steady breathing and he knows she’s asleep. He sneaks a Twinkie out of the glove box and continues to drive through the early morning light towards New York.

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Several hours later, Hank trudges into his own apartment after more hours than he cares to think about in a car. All he wants to do now is eat his dinner and crawl into bed for some well earned rest. He doesn’t even bother taking his shoes off as he tiredly walks into the kitchen and looks in the fridge for some dinner ideas.

With a sigh, he stares into the nearly empty appliance with remorse. With the past week being so hectic and his weekend shot with that miserable ball, he hasn’t had time to go grocery shopping. He shuts the refrigerator’s door and turns to his favorite cupboard to pull out a box of Twinkies. Not dinner, he knows, but it might give him the energy he needs to go down to the store and go shopping as people either avoid him or stare at him as if he is some traveling freak show.

With a sigh of disgust and disappointment, he tosses the empty box into the recycling bin. What to do now? He supposes he can go out to dinner, there’s a little diner down the street that opened recently that he hasn’t had a chance to try out yet. However, going out to dinner is so much nicer when you have company and an idea pops into his head.

This should satisfy Storm’s needling of him when he left her at the school to call a certain lawyer and ask her out on a date. Plucking the pieces of paper up from their spot next to the phone and calls her home number only to get her answering machine. He leaves a brief message just to let her know that he’s home and then calls her cell phone only to go directly to her voice mail.

He hangs up the phone and leans his forehead against one of the upper cupboards at a bit of a quandary. So what now? Then, from deep in the darkest recesses of his mind comes a most unwelcome voice.

What were you thinking anyways? Why would a beautiful woman like that want to have anything to do with a big, furry beast like you? Get a clue, she’s young, she’s attractive and she can have any guy she wants. You don’t stand a chance, just give it up.

“Shut up,” he growls to himself and then sighs.

Whether or not she’d ever see him as anything more than a friend, it doesn’t change his current situation. He still needs to eat dinner and there’s no food in the fridge, but he doesn’t want to deal with the problems of his obvious mutation. So he changes his watch to the one with the image inducer in it. Then with a sigh, he turns the inducer on, drags himself back downstairs, picks up the last copy of the Sunday New York Times from a machine and heads towards the little dinner down the street.

He’s seated within moments of walking in and he sees that the place is tastefully done in a Country Home style and the menu reflects the décor. As he’s perusing the dinner choices, the hostess passes his table with someone following behind and a familiar scent mixed with bleach, detergent and fabric softener reaches his nose causing his head to shoot up. He wildly looks around and sees that only a few tables over, Amanda is sitting down. The hostess places a menu in front of her and another one across the table from her.

“You’re expecting someone else?” the hostess confirms.

“Yes, he should be here shortly,” Amanda replies with a smile as she puts a satchel and her purse on the chair next to her.

“Ok, just let your server know if you need anything,” the woman tells her.

“Ok, thanks,” Amanda responds.

With that, the hostess bustles away and Hank tries not to openly stare at Amanda. She’s wearing jeans and a turtle neck sweater with low heeled boots and her hair is pulled back into a long ponytail. He can see even from the distance he’s sitting at that there are bags under her eyes and she’s not wearing any makeup.

She glances up at him, gives him a brief smile as her cheeks redden and then grabs her satchel. He’s confused that she didn’t recognize him and then he looks down at his hands and remembers the image inducer is on. He contemplates turning the thing off and then asking her to join him for dinner, but then he remembers what she said about already having a dinning companion. She had said ‘he’ would be there shortly and Hank can feel his heart sink down into his shoes.

Told you she wasn’t interested in you, the nasty voice hisses. She’s got someone else. What could she possible see in you anyways?

He sits there and just stares unseeingly at his menu, wondering if he should just go home and then he glances up at her again. She now has a pad of paper out and at first he thinks she’s writing something down and then he notices that she’s in fact drawing something. She peeks up at him and then quickly looks back down, and he can see her forehead turning red.

He chuckles that she’s blushing so hard that her whole face is turning red. He wonders why she would be blushing so hard and then a little part of him comes to the conclusion that he’s the subject of her picture. The evil voice scoffs at that small part of him that still thinks that there’s a woman out there that would want him to touch her.

“Hey, girlfriend!” a man’s voice calls very near him and Hank nearly jumps out of his fur.

“Dougie!” Amanda happily cries back as she quickly stands up to hug the very good looking, impeccably dressed young man.

“Uh-oh,” Dougie says worriedly after they have been hugging for a good minute. “It’s never a good sign when you hug me that long. What’s wrong, sugar?”

“You won’t believe the weekend I’ve had,” she sighs, still not letting go.

“Well, let’s order dinner and then you can tell me all about it,” he tells her as he pries her arms off of him and makes her sit, taking the seat across the table from her.

As this Dougie person looks at his menu, the server arrives at Hank’s table and he hastily orders something. He hopes he can get his food, eat it and get out before Amanda and her boyfriend can get all cuddly again or maybe he should just get it to go. He opens his newspaper and starts to read, but he can’t get past the first two lines and if quizzed about it, he’d be hard pressed to even tell someone what the subject line says. He listens with half an ear as they order their dinners and he tries reading another article, one that might hold his interest.

“Ok, girlfriend, spill,” Dougie demands and Hank’s eyes narrow in anger at the demanding tone of voice the man is using. “What’s got you in such a snit?”

“Remember how I told you that Mr. Jones said he’d get Steele off of my back if I went to the ball with his nephew?” she asks.

Ah, so that’s why she was there with the little scum ball, Hank thinks, not even caring that he’s eavesdropping on them.

“Yeah, so?” Dougie responds.

“Well, I would have been better off if he had just let Steele fire me like he wanted too,” she states. “First off, when James and I talked about where we would be staying down there he said that the hotel was booked so we were going to have to share his suite, but when I called them, they had plenty of rooms. When I called him on it, he just made up some bullshit story about they must have had a few last minute cancellations.”

“Uh-oh, bad sign when they try to trick you into sharing a room with them,” Dougie mutters.

“Then the dress I’m supposed to wear is like half a size too small,” she continues. “Now I’ve never given Dolly Parton any competition in the chest department, but by the time I was done squeezing into that thing I could have sworn you could put an entire Thanksgiving dinner on my chest with room to spare. One good hiccup and I was positive that I’d come popping out of that damn thing.”

Dougie snickers, but says nothing else and Hank looks over at her out of the corner of her eye and he has to admit that her bust was more impressive in the dress, but still…they aren’t nonexistent.

Oh, my stars and garters, what am I doing staring at her chest!? Hank thinks, tempted to start banging his head on the table.

“At any rate, James admits to me that he’s a mutant right before we leave the hotel,” she says.

“Uh-oh,” Dougie mutters and she raises an eyebrow at him. “I know you don’t have a problem with mutants, but they can’t all be as wonderful as Ambassador McCoy.”

Hank nearly falls out of his seat just as the server shows up with his dinner. He quickly starts to eat, to try and cover his shock.

“He told me that his power is to make people like him,” she states. “That it wasn’t flashy, just useful. He didn’t bother to tell me that he has the power to brainwash people into doing whatever he wants. But of course I didn’t find that out until much later. But I’m getting ahead of myself.”

She pauses as the server arrives with their dinners and then starts getting her food ready to eat.

“You must really be upset if you’re going for the comfort food,” Dougie says, eyeing her cheeseburger and fries.

“Don’t start with me, Douglas,” she growls in warning as she stuffs a fry in her mouth. “So anyways, we get to the ball and there are Phantoms as far as the eye can see. At least half of the men there had to be dressed as the Phantom. So we start making the rounds and James is making with the smoozing. I turn to look the replica of the Hubble Space Telescope, I turn back and POOF he’s gone. So I go off looking for this twit and of course the guy has just vanished, however, and this is where it gets a bit surreal, I do find Ambassador McCoy and his date. So I figure, hey, James is all pro-mutant, he’d probably sell his mother to meet McCoy, right? So I decide to follow the Ambassador around with plans on just ‘happening’ by when James finally puts in an appearance.”

“So how long were you following the wonder fuzz ball?” Doug asks.

“Three hours and show a little respect,” she snarls and Hank’s heart lighten ups a bit at her defending him. “The man may be blue and furry but his still smarter than the two of us combined.”

“Sorry,” Doug says, startled by her reaction.

“I have to admit, I’m a bit jealous of Ororo Munroe,” she continues. “She at least had a date that didn’t ditch her and he danced with her. It looked like he was good at it too. The last time I had a good dance partner was at my sister’s wedding and that was my dad.”

“You’re tangenting, sweetie,” Doug warns her.

“Sorry,” she replies. “So, I follow them around for three hours. There are hundreds of people there; I’m keeping pretty far back from them so I don’t think I’m being too obvious. So they go off dancing again and I figure that James isn’t going to bug them out there so I go wandering around looking for him again. By the time I get back to the dance floor, Munroe is just standing there in the middle of the empty dance floor and the Ambassador is nowhere to be seen. So I’ve now lost two men in one evening, but I figure a man that stands over six feet and is blue and furry shouldn’t be too hard to find unlike my date. So I’m standing there on my tip toes trying to find him in the crowd and the sexiest voice in the world asks me if I’m looking for something. About scared the hell out of me and I end up losing my balance and falling right onto Ambassador McCoy.”

“I’ve heard of throwing yourself at a man, but jeez, girl,” Doug snickers.

“It gets worse,” she warns. “I realize I’ve just literally fallen on the UN Ambassador, so I try to stand back up and end up twisting my ankle. As I’m falling, he grabs me, picks me up, walks pretty much the entire length of the Air and Space museum, carries me up a flight of stairs and then walks probably the rest of the museum length before putting me down all without so much as breathing hard.”

“Your knight in shining blue fur,” Doug snickers.

“And it’s soft, as in two week old kitten soft,” she tells him. “It also tickles. At any rate, he takes care my ankle…and then he drops a bomb on me.”

“He’s secretly in love with you and wants to take you away to some uncharted island to have his wild way with you,” Doug teases and Hank frowns in confusion over his comment.

“As if,” she snorts. “Remember all those phone calls I was getting from my cousin pretending to be McCoy?”

“Yeah,” he answers.

“Well, those phone calls weren’t from Brian,” she states and Doug sits there for a few moments piecing the clues together while Hank tries not to laugh.

“Oh my god, no,” Doug gasps in horror and she nods. “It was really him?”

“Yes, and thank God the man has a sense of humor,” she replies, her cheeks turning red again at the memory.

“I would have died of embarrassment,” Doug says.

“I wanted too,” she replies. “I was hoping God would just strike me dead or the earth would open up and swallow me whole, but no, I got to sit there and blush so hard that they could have used me as a lighthouse beacon.”

“So now he’s got you so you can’t escape, embarrasses the hell out of you and then tells you he’s madly in love with you,” Doug teases and Hank chances a quick glance at their table.

“Will you stop?” she laughs. “He’s not in love with me. I wouldn’t be so lucky.”

The sad wistfulness in her voice catches Hank completely by surprise and he stares at his half eaten dinner in shock. What in the world did she mean by that? And what kind of weird boyfriend does she have that talks about other men being in love with her?

“Ok, so what happens next?” Doug asks.

“Well, after he helps me take my mask off…,” she starts.

“Wait, he has to help you take the mask off?” Doug questions.

“The hairdresser that did my hair wove the ribbons into my hair so someone else would have to help me get it off,” she explains. “That was probably James’s idea, but instead of him getting to play with my hair, it was McCoy.”

“Uh-oh, we’ve gone from the Ambassador to McCoy,” Doug sniggers. “We’re getting friendly with a certain big, blue fur ball.”

“Watch it, buster,” she warns. “So he helps me get the mask off…”

“How many hairs did he pull out?” Doug interrupts again and she glares at him.

“None,” she snarls. “He was incredibly gentle.”

“Uh huh,” Doug grunts with a knowing smirk on his face and she narrows her eyes at him. “Please continue.”

“No sooner is the mask off than Munroe shows up on James’s arm,” she starts, the color starting to drain from her face. “I was so mad at him that I’d rather see him roast over a slow fire than hear his voice again. But when he got close to me, it was like nothing else mattered than to make him happy. We leave and he’s making all of these suggestions about what we can do when we get back to his suite and I didn’t have any problems with it. In fact, I thought they were all incredibly great ideas…”

She pauses and Hank looks over to see that she’s as white as a sheet and her eyes have unshed tears in them. Doug reaches over and puts his hand on hers, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“If Hank hadn’t shown up and distracted James, I would have gone back to that hotel and I would have…I would have…,” she tries to continue as the first tears leave streaks down her face.

“Oh, honey,” Doug says sadly.

He moves around the table to sit next to her and pulls her into his arms. She clings to the front of his shirt and quietly cries into his chest. He just rocks her and talks soothingly into her hair. After a few minutes, the tears dry and she sits back up looking a bit worse for wear. He sits there holding her hand as she tells the rest of the story in a monotone voice.

“After Hank left, I took the longest, hottest shower in history,” she continues. “I washed and I washed and I washed until there wasn’t any soap left and I still felt so dirty. It was like that bastard had stained my very soul. When I finally got out, I tried to go to sleep, but I just couldn’t. I kept seeing James doing to me all those things he suggested and I woke up in a cold sweat and my heart pounding. I finally checked to see what time the first train for New York left Washington and found that there’s a train that leaves at 3:15 in the morning. So I checked out, took a cab to the station and came home. I tried to get sleep on the train but only had limited success with that and when I got home I just crawled into bed. I haven’t been able to get more than a few hours of sleep. Every time I close my eyes it’s like James is waiting there for me. I’m not even safe in my own home from him.”

“What are you going to do?” Doug finally asks.

“I don’t know,” she sighs, resting her head on his shoulder. “That son of a bitch may not have gotten me in his bed, but he’s got me jumping at every shadow. I’ve spent the whole day trying to figure out what I’m going to do and I’m so tired right now, I could drop.”

“That explains why you smell like bleach,” Doug gently teases.

“So sue me,” she huffs. “I have a problem to figure out, I clean. It helps me think. Besides, I had to do my laundry or I’d be going to work naked tomorrow.”

“That’d definitely distract your boss from talking to you about his nephew,” Doug chuckles.

“Oh, I doubt it,” she grumbles as she sits up and stares at the remains of her dinner. “The man is as tenacious as a bull dog with a soup bone. That’s what makes him a good lawyer.”

“Come on, let’s finish dinner and then I’ll drive you home,” Doug suggests and she sits back up as he retakes his own seat. “Then we’ll make popcorn and stay up and watch movies all night.”

“I’m not twenty-two any more,” she points out. “Besides, I have to work in the morning. I’ll sleep after they fire me.”

“So why did you pick this restaurant?” Doug asks after a couple of minutes of silence.

“Oh, I was checking out an apartment near here,” she answers after she swallows.

“Still planning on moving?” Doug questions.

“I might not have any choice now,” she replies. “Mr. Jones has my address and all James has to do is come to the office and then it’s over. I guess I better start looking for another job whether or not I get fired. God, I hate this. That stupid little prick is ruining my life and it’s entirely my fault. I feel like I’m a shoe in for the moron of the year award.”

“You’re not a moron,” Doug assures her. “How were you supposed to know the guy was a mind controlling mutant asshole? Besides, now you’ve finally gotten to meet Ambassador McCoy. How long have you wanted to meet him now?”

“Since he was Secretary of Mutant Affairs,” she admits.

“What is it with you liking him anyways?” he inquires.

“Why are people still fascinated with Martin Luther King, Jr. even though he’s been dead for over thirty years?” she asks. “Or Rosa Parks? Or Cesar Chavez? They all stood up and changed the world, not because it would make them money, but because it was the right thing to do. That’s what Hank McCoy is doing right now.”

“So, when did you go from calling him the Ambassador to Hank?” Doug asks, a smirk firmly planted on his lips.

“Since he asked me to start calling him that last night,” she answers with a self righteous tone.

“You like him,” Doug snickers and Hank frowns as he wonders what kind of boyfriend suggest his girlfriend likes someone else.

“Well, yeah, the man saved me from a fate worse than death,” she points out.

“No, sweetie, you like him as in you have the hots for his blue, furry bod,” Doug teases and she stares at him with her jaw hanging wide open.

And now here comes the truth, Hank’s nasty little voice hisses in his head as Amanda closes her mouth with an audible snap and sits up straight.

“Ambassador Hank McCoy has treated me with nothing but kindness and respect,” she replies in a tone commands attention as she stares holes into her dinning companion. “And whether or not I have ‘the hots for his blue, furry bod’ is beside the point. The man deserves respect and by George, he will get it when I’m around.”

“Ok, ok, put the lawyer away, sheesh,” Doug grumbles. “But I bet you wouldn’t say ‘no’ if he asked you out.”

“Why in the world would he want to date me?” she asks. “Not only am I not a mutant, I’m opinionated, vocally so, and I refuse to sleep with a man just because I have the ‘hots for his bod’. I want to make sure there’s more to the relationship than pure physical attraction.”

“Pure physical attraction isn’t such a bad thing,” Doug softly points out and one of her eyebrows arches towards her hair line. “I noticed you didn’t bring up how smart you are this time.”

“Next to Hank, I’m a country bumpkin,” she points out. “But you know, it’s odd. I’ve been around other men that had more than two brain cells to rub together and every last one of them have tried putting me down. But when I was with Hank, not once did he try to make me feel stupid or belittle me in any way.”

“So if he did ask you out you’d say ‘yes’, wouldn’t you?” he continues to badger her and it finally dawns on Hank that Doug isn’t her boyfriend, but just a friend, a very gay friend.

“Would you mind stopping at the grocery store on the way home?” she suddenly asks. “I haven’t had a chance to get to the store today.”

“Wow, you really do have the hots for him,” he laughs as she narrows her eyes at him. “You know I’m right or you wouldn’t keep changing the subject.”

“Fine, if he calls me and asks me for a date I’ll say ‘yes’. Happy?” she growls. “Not like it’s going to happen though. He’s a busy man. Now can we please finish dinner and get going. I really do need to get the shopping done.”

“So what movie you do want to watch tonight?” he asks out of the blue.

“While You Were Sleeping,” she replies after a few moments of thought.

“Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman,” he muses. “Not bad and Bill’s got a great ass.”

“I thought you’d approve,” she chuckles as she pushes her plate away. “Who’s turn is it to pay?”

“Yours,” he replies instantly and she eyes him suspiciously. “Last week you were out of town and I paid the week before that.”

“Ok, I guess you’re right,” she mutters. “I’ll go take care of the bill while you finish up and then we’ve got to scoot.”

“Can I look?” he asks, pointing to her pad.

“Yeah, sure,” she says as she gets up and heads off to the register.

Hank watches her walk by with just his eyes, noticing the gentle bounce of her breasts and the sway of her hips until he realizes what he’s doing. Blushing furiously himself, he stares at his nearly empty plate and quickly goes to finish eating the now pretty cold food. When he looks up again, he sees Doug flipping through Amanda’s drawings and occasionally at him. Hank quickly turns back to his unread newspaper, trying to pay attention to it this time he can’t help but inhale deeply when she walks past him yet again.

“Why’d you draw this one?” Doug quietly asks when she returns.

“I needed something to distract me from some of the other drawings,” she answers as she sits back down. “Besides, he has a nice face.”

“Compare this picture to this one,” Doug instructs as he flips through several pages.

“What about them?” she asks.

“I don’t know about you,” he replies, dropping his voice even more making Hank strain to hear. “But if you added a lot of blue fur to that guy sitting over there, he’d be a dead ringer for McCoy.”