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rallamajoopFour days left before we leave for Japan! *breathes into paper bag* So much packing still to do, but at least our itinerary's sorted. We've got a week in Osaka to look forward to, then a couple of days staying in an onsen near Mt Fuji, then a week in Akihabara in Tokyo. Madman are paying for that last one, plus flights, a week's rail pass and tickets to the Tokyo Anime Fair and the Ghibli Museum. They really go out of their way spoil their cosplay champions. Plans so far include going to the Tokyo Anime Festival (which won't let us cosplay, booo) taking part in the Namba Cosplay Street Festival (which certainly will), and spending all (and I do mean ALL) the money we saved on flights and accommodation on that obscure little fashion brand we came back from our last trip so hopelessly addicted to. It's going to be awesome. :3
The bad news is that despite all my best attempts to make this my unofficial deadline, I'm not going to have the remaining three chapters of Summers'son finished and posted before then. I swear to god I'm getting close - my notebook-draft is only a handful of scenes from the end, but there's no way I'm going to get it all finished by Tuesday at this stage. Least I have the one new chapter to share - after this many months between updates that's a whole lot better than nothing.
Title: Summers’son
Summary: Settling into the 21st century is giving a teenaged Nathan some trouble.
Chapter: 8/10
Characters/Pairing: Nate/Wade
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 3540
Previous parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Notes: Breaking a bit from our previous theme of random things that may have happened in various AU versions of events, here we have a scene that could just as easily happen in more or less any universe where Nate and Wade manage to get together.
The school grounds include an Olympic-sized pool and swimming lessons are a regular part of gym classes for every able-bodied student over the warmer months—except Wade. The official reason is to be found in a well-folded doctor's note stating that chlorine reacts with Wade's particular skin in undesirable ways which could, for example, lead to legal professionals wanting to have a strong word with school staff on the subject of duty of care. While it's not inconceivable that someone with a bona-fide medical degree may have written that note, the idea that a little pool water could do Wade's skin any worse damage is laughable, and so obviously so that there's probably more sympathy than genuine concern behind most of the gym teachers who've accepted it over the last few years. The real reason Wade won't swim has nothing to do with chlorine and everything to do with the fact that the accepted swimming uniform for boys tends to consist of a pair of boardshorts and no shirt. To Wade, who will go on wearing long sleeves well into each summer, showing that much skin in public does not bear considering.
Wade is, in his own words, no-one's bitch; he can look another student right in the eye and dare them to tell him they have a problem with his face (and they'll be looking back, because Wade will very probably be fisting both hands in the front of their shirt while he says it) but below the neckline his confidence wavers. Given the choice between cooling his heels on the side of the pool for half an hour or spending the same period stuck between half a class who are staring and another half deliberately looking the other way, there's no contest, and if Nathan had imagined that a small thing like being Wade's boyfriend would grant him a pass on the subject, then by the time he's dated Wade a month he's having to admit just how wrong he'd been.
To Nathan's mind it makes no kind of sense that they should have waited nearly that long. He understands that you're not supposed to rush into these things—everyone need to be ready, to be sure—but like most rules conceived in reference to a model of relationships where no-one's telepathic (and, for that matter, where no-one is Wade) he doesn't really see how they apply to him. There can scarcely have been any other couple in history more sure they were on the same page with respect to taking things to the next level. The hours upon hours they've spent on the psychic version of the act prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt, and that's only if all those months he'd wasted failing to realise he liked being the subject of Wade's fantasies weren't wait enough in themselves. Back when they'd started this it had been obvious they'd naturally progress from that to the real thing within a week or two, assuming they could keep their hands off each other for that long. It had been obvious that the sheer animal need to get Nate in the nude would be more than enough to overcome any initial nerves Wade might have about the act.
Given the song and dance it had taken to convince Wade that anyone like Nate could ever want him in the first place, Nathan really should have known better.
Wade was always going to have some initial nerves about being naked in company—didn't everyone in this century?—so the first few times he'd felt Wade panic when Nathan's hands started playing with the edge of his shirt, he'd pulled back and slowed things down, waiting for Wade to catch up with him. But that twitchy sense of unease that stings like pins and needles whenever Nathan touches his mind never goes away no matter how long they make out for, or how many times they try. The time they spend together had quickly fallen into a pattern that was distressingly predictable: a few times a week they'd go home together, sooner or later end up on someone's bed or couch, which would continue until Scott or Al interrupted them or Wade panicked, and they'd separate, the both of them trying very hard to pretend they weren't painfully hard and desperate to do something about it. From there, one or the other would have to go home; Nathan would have to survive dinner with Scott and probably make some token attempt to get some homework done. Then and only then could he roll into bed, reach out for Wade's mind and finish what they'd started in each other's company that afternoon. It's always worth it, but the more times they go through it, the less satisfying Nathan finds it. He's well past ready for more.
You know the scars don't bother me, he whispers one night, the both of them sated and sleepy enough that, for the moment, it doesn't matter so very much that the Wade under his fingers is imaginary; that the scars he's tracing on Wade's chest are an illusory mix of what he thinks they might look like and what Wade wants him to think. You know how much I want to see you for real.
Wade ducks his head in that way reserved for Nathan's company alone, that means he's nervous and happy. In this moment, it doesn't matter so much that normally he'd react defensively when this topic comes up. Yeah, I know. Just... a little longer, okay?
Nathan knows he means it. He always means it, just as surely as Wade knows Nathan means they don't bother me. Communication is the least of all barriers in a relationship founded on a literal meeting of minds. But knowing Nate's sure isn't quite the same as knowing, and knowing is another step yet diverged from believing, and no matter how sure they both are that Nathan will be able to deal with his boyfriend's crater-marked body, what Wade believes, deep down, is that there's going to be a moment when Nathan first sees how bad it really is when he'll recoil in disgust. A flinch, a widening of the eyes, a split-second where the mental link between them splutters out and in again out—that's all it'll take for Wade to know the thought has crossed his mind. Everything since their relationship's awkward beginnings has been so impossibly perfect that Wade can't quite deal with that. Every time he says 'a little longer', he's really saying 'a little longer before I have to take that other shoe square in the face, kthx'.
The trouble with leaving it to unresolved sexual tension alone to catapult Wade over that last hurdle is that the tension is getting resolved—psychically, without either of them ever laying a hand on the other. Far from acting as an intermediate option Nathan had envisaged, they've let themselves stall at that stage, while a variety of tensions arising from far less innocent sources build to breaking point. Sooner or later something has got to give and Nathan's worried that if it's not Wade it's going to be him, because no matter how many times he's promised himself he's not going to push, the image of what it would be like to pin Wade down telekinetically and strip him by force has begun to play a disturbingly consistent role in his mental landscape of late. It's enough to make him threaten to withhold psychic sex altogether until they've done the real thing—or it would be, if he could see either of them believing he'd go through with it. At the very least he's more or less decided that next time he catches Wade hovering on that precipice between feels so good and one of his nervous freakouts, he's sure as hell not going to bother easing him back from the edge.
Two months may not be that long, but they feel like forever.
So this is the background when they find themselves on the old couch opposite the TV one lazy afternoon, garish, machine-embroidered design already well on its way to embedding itself in the back of Nathan's neck, but still a comfortable hour or so left to them before Scott comes home to interrupt. Wade is perched over him with a knee planted on either side of his hips and a tongue exploring his mouth, but it's hard for Nathan to take so much interest in that when his shirt is hanging over the back of the couch and Wade's right hand is resting ever so tentatively on the skin under his collarbone. Wade's left is wedged in the gap between the cushions and the back of the couch, complicating his balance even before he began a cycle of changing his mind about what to do with the rest of his weight every few seconds, and what all that does is to keep his fingers skittering over Nathan's skin at intervals so unpredictable as to be the stuff of pure distraction. Losing the shirt had been a gamble—he could hardly have been less subtle without getting YOU COULD JOIN ME ANY TIME tattooed across his chest, and it always leaves Wade swinging like a harmonograph pendulum between nerves and temptation on a good day and flying off the board in a tangle of furious indignation on a worse one. The odds that Wade will actually take the hint are barely worth the trouble, but right at the moment Nathan can't remember if they'd ever featured in his plans in the first place. Wade has two fingers sitting just in the hollow at the base of his neck and two more resting on the join that separates old flesh from new, and as easy as it ought to be to blame everything on the sensitive new flesh he hasn't been this aware of it since the day he was reborn. They've done so, so much more than this without ever sharing the same room, but now they're together this is exactly as much as it takes to drive him insane.
Nathan has his own hands resting just over the hollow of Wade's armpits, where the side seams of Wade's shirt meet the underarm seams in a neat little corner that's he's probably going to be able to recreate from memory a year from now after getting to know it in such maddeningly intimate detail. If he were to press down a little more firmly it would be the texture of Wade's skin he was learning through the thin fabric, but he doesn't dare; he hardly dares move his hands at all. Wade is right on the edge between what his body is telling him and what his insecurities are screaming at him and his nerves are contagious. Nathan hasn't even dared look into his mind in long minutes, not when he can read far too much in every spreading finger that hesitates over his skin (the edge of a nipple, the shape of a rib, the dip at the centre of his chest...). So he holds on to Wade like he might shatter any second, holds just as tightly on to the polite fiction that either of them have more than a fraction of their concentration involved in kissing anymore, when all Nathan can think is how much he wants to feel that mouth over where Wade's fingers are following the curve of muscle over his stomach.
The point is, yes, Nathan had been entirely guilty of stripping off his shirt with intent but he could claim perfect ignorance of how they'd ever gotten from that to the part where Wade's hand brushes across the front of his pants and they both recoil as one.
Well, Wade recoils, but there's probably a better name for what Nathan does, similar though the motion may be.
Fortunately for all involved, Wade doesn't get far before he freezes with barely space between them to focus beyond the ends of their noses. With a look like a kid struck by the realisation that maybe there had been a really good reason why he was supposed to keep his hand out of that cookie jar, he offers, "Uh, is that-"
"Yes," Nathan hisses, because the alternative involves getting that same message across with a medley of mutant powers that are in no state to remember their manners.
He watches Wade's Adam's apple bob lightly down and up again before temptation wins.
The pressure on the second brush is slower, hardly more sure as the heel of Wade's hand leans into the front of his pants and rubs almost the full length along his erection before bumping lightly into the skin above the hem of his jeans.
Nathan unclenches his teeth and tries to breathe evenly, with debatable success. A small eternity goes by before Wade's hand comes back.
On the fourth stroke instead of lifting away it hesitates, then rubs a little more gently back down, and nevermind how excruciatingly aware Nathan had been of every move Wade had made so far, from there keeping count became swiftly impossible.
Wade goes on watching his face the whole time, looking for permission, guidance, reassurance—one of those things; Nathan has spent an unhealthy amount of time in his mind lately and he still couldn't have said which is the foremost, but he holds Wade's eye like everything in this moment hangs from that one point of connection, even as his focus slips around like a sailor on a greased deck. He doesn't look down at what Wade's doing to him. He feels like they couldn't stop themselves now if the whole world could be falling down around their ears. He feels like he could scare Wade away with one wrong move. The heat of Wade's hand hardly more than the whisper of a promise through all the layers of clothing between them and Nathan has never been more aware of anything in his whole life. He's pictured this so many times—with Wade's help and without—that he'd thought he'd known how it was supposed to go, and the reality has skipped so many crucial steps that he's navigating well beyond anywhere he knows how to get back from.
It goes on until he can't bear to stay silent a moment longer, whispers, "Wade..." and Wade starts, scrapes his palm on the button of Nathan's jeans and finally looks down. Nathan follows his gaze down at last to see Wade nudge the button a second time, thoughtful.
"Is it okay if...?" he starts.
"Wade," Nathan cuts in quickly, "you can assume whatever you ask from now on, the answer's going to be 'yes'."
Wade looks back up, not quite startled; catching Nathan's meaning at an angle, but for once in his life this may actually be Wade without a single smart remark left in his body. The moment is gone just as fast when he turns his head down and busies himself with the complex problem posed by Nathan's fly (the zipper in particular was not best designed to accommodate the tent trying to rise beneath it, and Wade is terribly careful as he pulls it down.) Faced with the white triangle of Nathan's briefs he pauses again, completely curled in on himself as he grips the upper hem with both hands and tugs it down, a little too hard and fast. Nathan winces, but is done in time to catch Wade distracting himself with the thought, Whoa, weird... does mine look like that from this angle?
"Wade," Nathan warns, and gets a sheepish look for it and an even quieter, I wasn't thinking bad-weird, and then Wade's hand is closing over him, and there's a moment before Nathan can even process the sensation, he's so stunning it's really happening.
Wade's hand is rough and dry, Nathan feels it shaking every time Wade loosens its grip a little—which he does a lot, because it takes him several false starts before he figures out the right amount of pressure. None of that really matters though, because Nathan is increasingly aware that without those minor flaws this would be over in no time and that doesn't bear thinking about. What his mind settles on instead is that other first, not entirely unlike this one—an imaginary empty classroom where he'd leaned into Wade and whispered a handful of words that had changed the world.
"What ever made you think I could never want this?" he murmurs aloud, though his voice is on the raw side of seductive, he stumbles badly over 'never' and the result comes out somewhere between hypothetical and pleading. He watches Wade's shoulders shake silently in response. That's close to being the last complete thought he remembers having, save only one last attempt to make sense of how any years of dedicated solo practice could explain how good Wade is at this. With those few false starts behind them it's almost like he knows Nathan's body as well as Nathan himself does—how much pressure to use, what rhythm, just when to tighten and twist on the upstroke—and if that was inexperience talking he didn't care or want to know because anything better and he'd have promised Wade his soul by now just as long as he kept his hand moving.
He comes—god, he comes with Wade's hand on his cock, probably all over Wade's stupid shirt and his own chest, and he'd have watched it happen to the last if he could only make his spine cooperate—if he could have seen anything at all after Wade kept on stroking him right through it, almost to the very end. After, he's aware of nothing so much as being pleasantly alone in his own head, for the first time since he can't remember when.
Wade slumps forward, weight barely supported on his knees and forearms and his head on Nathan's shoulder. Nathan curls a hand around the back of his neck and for a while they breathe together like that, neither moving. It's all too soon, though, that Wade's forcing himself back on to his haunches to tell Nathan something that's buzzing with incomprehensible urgency in the front of his mind. Any other time he'd know every word before Wade opens his mouth; right now he can't begin to imagine what could possibly be so important.
"Nate," Wade hisses, "Nate, I just came too! Just from touching you! Is that supposed to happen?"
It's far too much effort to make sense of what he's on about, not to mention patently stupid—they come together all the time, don't they? Why should... is as far as Nathan gets before the crucial difference dawns on him.
From the lowest depths of a very deep well of satisfied comfort, Nathan wakes himself up enough to swear and drop an arm over his eyes. No wonder Wade had been so good.
"What?" Wade squeaks. "Nate, what?!"
It takes a fantastic amount of effort for Nathan to summon up the words, "I must have been projecting."
"Ohhh," says Wade. "I thought that was only for when we're doing the full mental monty—Nate," he adds, spotting Nathan's embarrassment, "Nate, listen to me, this is not a bad thing."
Arm over his eyes, Nathan still has to turn his head away from Wade before he can get out the words, "It's possible you weren't the only one I was projecting to."
"You mean... maybe other people too... nearby?" Wade eyes go comically wide as the implications sink in. "Can't you, y'know, check if anyone just had a surprise wet dream starring you?"
Nathan tries, he really does, but those same powers he's struggled so long to turn down are suddenly demanding a fantastic effort to register the existence of any mind more than two feet away from the couch he's lying on.
"Maybe in a while," he concedes.
"So I wore you out a bit, huh?" says Wade. Nowhere in that phrase can Nathan detect the slightest hint of a joke.
He peaks out from under his arm and they share a grin. "You couldn't tell?"
Wade snickers a bit and looks down self-consciously at the damp patch on the front of his pants. There's something wrong about that, Nathan realises—something far more important than the minor logistics of getting Wade home today, but it takes him a little longer to remember what they've missed out of those detailed mental plans that went out the window somewhere earlier that afternoon.
"Wade," he says, catching him by the arm and startling the both of them, "next time,"—next time being the one after he's made sure he wasn't projecting, figured out some extra precautions and just maybe had the most embarrassing conversation with Scott of his whole life—"next time, I get to touch you too, promise?"
Wade ducks his head one more time, and looks up again, shy. "Yeah, okay."
For a moment Nathan wants to press the point, but they both heard the promise in those words. It may not be much, but for the first time in what feels like forever, it's more than enough to believe in.
Part 9
The bad news is that despite all my best attempts to make this my unofficial deadline, I'm not going to have the remaining three chapters of Summers'son finished and posted before then. I swear to god I'm getting close - my notebook-draft is only a handful of scenes from the end, but there's no way I'm going to get it all finished by Tuesday at this stage. Least I have the one new chapter to share - after this many months between updates that's a whole lot better than nothing.
Title: Summers’son
Summary: Settling into the 21st century is giving a teenaged Nathan some trouble.
Chapter: 8/10
Characters/Pairing: Nate/Wade
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 3540
Previous parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Notes: Breaking a bit from our previous theme of random things that may have happened in various AU versions of events, here we have a scene that could just as easily happen in more or less any universe where Nate and Wade manage to get together.
The school grounds include an Olympic-sized pool and swimming lessons are a regular part of gym classes for every able-bodied student over the warmer months—except Wade. The official reason is to be found in a well-folded doctor's note stating that chlorine reacts with Wade's particular skin in undesirable ways which could, for example, lead to legal professionals wanting to have a strong word with school staff on the subject of duty of care. While it's not inconceivable that someone with a bona-fide medical degree may have written that note, the idea that a little pool water could do Wade's skin any worse damage is laughable, and so obviously so that there's probably more sympathy than genuine concern behind most of the gym teachers who've accepted it over the last few years. The real reason Wade won't swim has nothing to do with chlorine and everything to do with the fact that the accepted swimming uniform for boys tends to consist of a pair of boardshorts and no shirt. To Wade, who will go on wearing long sleeves well into each summer, showing that much skin in public does not bear considering.
Wade is, in his own words, no-one's bitch; he can look another student right in the eye and dare them to tell him they have a problem with his face (and they'll be looking back, because Wade will very probably be fisting both hands in the front of their shirt while he says it) but below the neckline his confidence wavers. Given the choice between cooling his heels on the side of the pool for half an hour or spending the same period stuck between half a class who are staring and another half deliberately looking the other way, there's no contest, and if Nathan had imagined that a small thing like being Wade's boyfriend would grant him a pass on the subject, then by the time he's dated Wade a month he's having to admit just how wrong he'd been.
To Nathan's mind it makes no kind of sense that they should have waited nearly that long. He understands that you're not supposed to rush into these things—everyone need to be ready, to be sure—but like most rules conceived in reference to a model of relationships where no-one's telepathic (and, for that matter, where no-one is Wade) he doesn't really see how they apply to him. There can scarcely have been any other couple in history more sure they were on the same page with respect to taking things to the next level. The hours upon hours they've spent on the psychic version of the act prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt, and that's only if all those months he'd wasted failing to realise he liked being the subject of Wade's fantasies weren't wait enough in themselves. Back when they'd started this it had been obvious they'd naturally progress from that to the real thing within a week or two, assuming they could keep their hands off each other for that long. It had been obvious that the sheer animal need to get Nate in the nude would be more than enough to overcome any initial nerves Wade might have about the act.
Given the song and dance it had taken to convince Wade that anyone like Nate could ever want him in the first place, Nathan really should have known better.
Wade was always going to have some initial nerves about being naked in company—didn't everyone in this century?—so the first few times he'd felt Wade panic when Nathan's hands started playing with the edge of his shirt, he'd pulled back and slowed things down, waiting for Wade to catch up with him. But that twitchy sense of unease that stings like pins and needles whenever Nathan touches his mind never goes away no matter how long they make out for, or how many times they try. The time they spend together had quickly fallen into a pattern that was distressingly predictable: a few times a week they'd go home together, sooner or later end up on someone's bed or couch, which would continue until Scott or Al interrupted them or Wade panicked, and they'd separate, the both of them trying very hard to pretend they weren't painfully hard and desperate to do something about it. From there, one or the other would have to go home; Nathan would have to survive dinner with Scott and probably make some token attempt to get some homework done. Then and only then could he roll into bed, reach out for Wade's mind and finish what they'd started in each other's company that afternoon. It's always worth it, but the more times they go through it, the less satisfying Nathan finds it. He's well past ready for more.
You know the scars don't bother me, he whispers one night, the both of them sated and sleepy enough that, for the moment, it doesn't matter so very much that the Wade under his fingers is imaginary; that the scars he's tracing on Wade's chest are an illusory mix of what he thinks they might look like and what Wade wants him to think. You know how much I want to see you for real.
Wade ducks his head in that way reserved for Nathan's company alone, that means he's nervous and happy. In this moment, it doesn't matter so much that normally he'd react defensively when this topic comes up. Yeah, I know. Just... a little longer, okay?
Nathan knows he means it. He always means it, just as surely as Wade knows Nathan means they don't bother me. Communication is the least of all barriers in a relationship founded on a literal meeting of minds. But knowing Nate's sure isn't quite the same as knowing, and knowing is another step yet diverged from believing, and no matter how sure they both are that Nathan will be able to deal with his boyfriend's crater-marked body, what Wade believes, deep down, is that there's going to be a moment when Nathan first sees how bad it really is when he'll recoil in disgust. A flinch, a widening of the eyes, a split-second where the mental link between them splutters out and in again out—that's all it'll take for Wade to know the thought has crossed his mind. Everything since their relationship's awkward beginnings has been so impossibly perfect that Wade can't quite deal with that. Every time he says 'a little longer', he's really saying 'a little longer before I have to take that other shoe square in the face, kthx'.
The trouble with leaving it to unresolved sexual tension alone to catapult Wade over that last hurdle is that the tension is getting resolved—psychically, without either of them ever laying a hand on the other. Far from acting as an intermediate option Nathan had envisaged, they've let themselves stall at that stage, while a variety of tensions arising from far less innocent sources build to breaking point. Sooner or later something has got to give and Nathan's worried that if it's not Wade it's going to be him, because no matter how many times he's promised himself he's not going to push, the image of what it would be like to pin Wade down telekinetically and strip him by force has begun to play a disturbingly consistent role in his mental landscape of late. It's enough to make him threaten to withhold psychic sex altogether until they've done the real thing—or it would be, if he could see either of them believing he'd go through with it. At the very least he's more or less decided that next time he catches Wade hovering on that precipice between feels so good and one of his nervous freakouts, he's sure as hell not going to bother easing him back from the edge.
Two months may not be that long, but they feel like forever.
So this is the background when they find themselves on the old couch opposite the TV one lazy afternoon, garish, machine-embroidered design already well on its way to embedding itself in the back of Nathan's neck, but still a comfortable hour or so left to them before Scott comes home to interrupt. Wade is perched over him with a knee planted on either side of his hips and a tongue exploring his mouth, but it's hard for Nathan to take so much interest in that when his shirt is hanging over the back of the couch and Wade's right hand is resting ever so tentatively on the skin under his collarbone. Wade's left is wedged in the gap between the cushions and the back of the couch, complicating his balance even before he began a cycle of changing his mind about what to do with the rest of his weight every few seconds, and what all that does is to keep his fingers skittering over Nathan's skin at intervals so unpredictable as to be the stuff of pure distraction. Losing the shirt had been a gamble—he could hardly have been less subtle without getting YOU COULD JOIN ME ANY TIME tattooed across his chest, and it always leaves Wade swinging like a harmonograph pendulum between nerves and temptation on a good day and flying off the board in a tangle of furious indignation on a worse one. The odds that Wade will actually take the hint are barely worth the trouble, but right at the moment Nathan can't remember if they'd ever featured in his plans in the first place. Wade has two fingers sitting just in the hollow at the base of his neck and two more resting on the join that separates old flesh from new, and as easy as it ought to be to blame everything on the sensitive new flesh he hasn't been this aware of it since the day he was reborn. They've done so, so much more than this without ever sharing the same room, but now they're together this is exactly as much as it takes to drive him insane.
Nathan has his own hands resting just over the hollow of Wade's armpits, where the side seams of Wade's shirt meet the underarm seams in a neat little corner that's he's probably going to be able to recreate from memory a year from now after getting to know it in such maddeningly intimate detail. If he were to press down a little more firmly it would be the texture of Wade's skin he was learning through the thin fabric, but he doesn't dare; he hardly dares move his hands at all. Wade is right on the edge between what his body is telling him and what his insecurities are screaming at him and his nerves are contagious. Nathan hasn't even dared look into his mind in long minutes, not when he can read far too much in every spreading finger that hesitates over his skin (the edge of a nipple, the shape of a rib, the dip at the centre of his chest...). So he holds on to Wade like he might shatter any second, holds just as tightly on to the polite fiction that either of them have more than a fraction of their concentration involved in kissing anymore, when all Nathan can think is how much he wants to feel that mouth over where Wade's fingers are following the curve of muscle over his stomach.
The point is, yes, Nathan had been entirely guilty of stripping off his shirt with intent but he could claim perfect ignorance of how they'd ever gotten from that to the part where Wade's hand brushes across the front of his pants and they both recoil as one.
Well, Wade recoils, but there's probably a better name for what Nathan does, similar though the motion may be.
Fortunately for all involved, Wade doesn't get far before he freezes with barely space between them to focus beyond the ends of their noses. With a look like a kid struck by the realisation that maybe there had been a really good reason why he was supposed to keep his hand out of that cookie jar, he offers, "Uh, is that-"
"Yes," Nathan hisses, because the alternative involves getting that same message across with a medley of mutant powers that are in no state to remember their manners.
He watches Wade's Adam's apple bob lightly down and up again before temptation wins.
The pressure on the second brush is slower, hardly more sure as the heel of Wade's hand leans into the front of his pants and rubs almost the full length along his erection before bumping lightly into the skin above the hem of his jeans.
Nathan unclenches his teeth and tries to breathe evenly, with debatable success. A small eternity goes by before Wade's hand comes back.
On the fourth stroke instead of lifting away it hesitates, then rubs a little more gently back down, and nevermind how excruciatingly aware Nathan had been of every move Wade had made so far, from there keeping count became swiftly impossible.
Wade goes on watching his face the whole time, looking for permission, guidance, reassurance—one of those things; Nathan has spent an unhealthy amount of time in his mind lately and he still couldn't have said which is the foremost, but he holds Wade's eye like everything in this moment hangs from that one point of connection, even as his focus slips around like a sailor on a greased deck. He doesn't look down at what Wade's doing to him. He feels like they couldn't stop themselves now if the whole world could be falling down around their ears. He feels like he could scare Wade away with one wrong move. The heat of Wade's hand hardly more than the whisper of a promise through all the layers of clothing between them and Nathan has never been more aware of anything in his whole life. He's pictured this so many times—with Wade's help and without—that he'd thought he'd known how it was supposed to go, and the reality has skipped so many crucial steps that he's navigating well beyond anywhere he knows how to get back from.
It goes on until he can't bear to stay silent a moment longer, whispers, "Wade..." and Wade starts, scrapes his palm on the button of Nathan's jeans and finally looks down. Nathan follows his gaze down at last to see Wade nudge the button a second time, thoughtful.
"Is it okay if...?" he starts.
"Wade," Nathan cuts in quickly, "you can assume whatever you ask from now on, the answer's going to be 'yes'."
Wade looks back up, not quite startled; catching Nathan's meaning at an angle, but for once in his life this may actually be Wade without a single smart remark left in his body. The moment is gone just as fast when he turns his head down and busies himself with the complex problem posed by Nathan's fly (the zipper in particular was not best designed to accommodate the tent trying to rise beneath it, and Wade is terribly careful as he pulls it down.) Faced with the white triangle of Nathan's briefs he pauses again, completely curled in on himself as he grips the upper hem with both hands and tugs it down, a little too hard and fast. Nathan winces, but is done in time to catch Wade distracting himself with the thought, Whoa, weird... does mine look like that from this angle?
"Wade," Nathan warns, and gets a sheepish look for it and an even quieter, I wasn't thinking bad-weird, and then Wade's hand is closing over him, and there's a moment before Nathan can even process the sensation, he's so stunning it's really happening.
Wade's hand is rough and dry, Nathan feels it shaking every time Wade loosens its grip a little—which he does a lot, because it takes him several false starts before he figures out the right amount of pressure. None of that really matters though, because Nathan is increasingly aware that without those minor flaws this would be over in no time and that doesn't bear thinking about. What his mind settles on instead is that other first, not entirely unlike this one—an imaginary empty classroom where he'd leaned into Wade and whispered a handful of words that had changed the world.
"What ever made you think I could never want this?" he murmurs aloud, though his voice is on the raw side of seductive, he stumbles badly over 'never' and the result comes out somewhere between hypothetical and pleading. He watches Wade's shoulders shake silently in response. That's close to being the last complete thought he remembers having, save only one last attempt to make sense of how any years of dedicated solo practice could explain how good Wade is at this. With those few false starts behind them it's almost like he knows Nathan's body as well as Nathan himself does—how much pressure to use, what rhythm, just when to tighten and twist on the upstroke—and if that was inexperience talking he didn't care or want to know because anything better and he'd have promised Wade his soul by now just as long as he kept his hand moving.
He comes—god, he comes with Wade's hand on his cock, probably all over Wade's stupid shirt and his own chest, and he'd have watched it happen to the last if he could only make his spine cooperate—if he could have seen anything at all after Wade kept on stroking him right through it, almost to the very end. After, he's aware of nothing so much as being pleasantly alone in his own head, for the first time since he can't remember when.
Wade slumps forward, weight barely supported on his knees and forearms and his head on Nathan's shoulder. Nathan curls a hand around the back of his neck and for a while they breathe together like that, neither moving. It's all too soon, though, that Wade's forcing himself back on to his haunches to tell Nathan something that's buzzing with incomprehensible urgency in the front of his mind. Any other time he'd know every word before Wade opens his mouth; right now he can't begin to imagine what could possibly be so important.
"Nate," Wade hisses, "Nate, I just came too! Just from touching you! Is that supposed to happen?"
It's far too much effort to make sense of what he's on about, not to mention patently stupid—they come together all the time, don't they? Why should... is as far as Nathan gets before the crucial difference dawns on him.
From the lowest depths of a very deep well of satisfied comfort, Nathan wakes himself up enough to swear and drop an arm over his eyes. No wonder Wade had been so good.
"What?" Wade squeaks. "Nate, what?!"
It takes a fantastic amount of effort for Nathan to summon up the words, "I must have been projecting."
"Ohhh," says Wade. "I thought that was only for when we're doing the full mental monty—Nate," he adds, spotting Nathan's embarrassment, "Nate, listen to me, this is not a bad thing."
Arm over his eyes, Nathan still has to turn his head away from Wade before he can get out the words, "It's possible you weren't the only one I was projecting to."
"You mean... maybe other people too... nearby?" Wade eyes go comically wide as the implications sink in. "Can't you, y'know, check if anyone just had a surprise wet dream starring you?"
Nathan tries, he really does, but those same powers he's struggled so long to turn down are suddenly demanding a fantastic effort to register the existence of any mind more than two feet away from the couch he's lying on.
"Maybe in a while," he concedes.
"So I wore you out a bit, huh?" says Wade. Nowhere in that phrase can Nathan detect the slightest hint of a joke.
He peaks out from under his arm and they share a grin. "You couldn't tell?"
Wade snickers a bit and looks down self-consciously at the damp patch on the front of his pants. There's something wrong about that, Nathan realises—something far more important than the minor logistics of getting Wade home today, but it takes him a little longer to remember what they've missed out of those detailed mental plans that went out the window somewhere earlier that afternoon.
"Wade," he says, catching him by the arm and startling the both of them, "next time,"—next time being the one after he's made sure he wasn't projecting, figured out some extra precautions and just maybe had the most embarrassing conversation with Scott of his whole life—"next time, I get to touch you too, promise?"
Wade ducks his head one more time, and looks up again, shy. "Yeah, okay."
For a moment Nathan wants to press the point, but they both heard the promise in those words. It may not be much, but for the first time in what feels like forever, it's more than enough to believe in.
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no subject
Date: 2012-03-09 03:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-09 04:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-09 03:16 pm (UTC)Visit Harajuku in Tokyo if you got free time :D oh and maid/butler cafe in Akihabara.
And can I just say that Im sooo happy that I checked your blog today!! Just the thing I needed to brighten up my life!xD
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Date: 2012-03-09 03:40 pm (UTC)And can I just say that Im sooo happy that I checked your blog today!! Just the thing I needed to brighten up my life!xD
Aww, so happy to oblige. <3 Not to mention excellent timing!
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Date: 2012-03-09 03:58 pm (UTC)Goddddddd!!! Its so cute and hot and funny and kinky and fluffy and all of the obove!! Oh young Nate and Wade, you guys are so....well, young. It makes me smile.
I loves you.
You doesnt like Akiba? Everybody loves Akiba. XD if you find toranoana, that's where they keep all the doujinshi.
And if you like old japan-ish feeling, Asakusa is a good place to go too. Its an enormous temple with street filled with japan-stuff and matsuri(summer festival) food stands.
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Date: 2012-03-09 04:23 pm (UTC)*g* That's half the fun of writing teen-AUs. All the awkwardness and false starts and mostly puzzling their way through even though things really don't go as planned.
You doesnt like Akiba?
Nooo, I think you misunderstood. We liked Akihabara very much, and are happy to be staying there!
Y'know, I think we went through Toranoana last time we were there. I don't remember it by name, but Wikipedia is telling me it's right next to Animate, and I'm sure we went through another huge used anime goods store nearby, but we went through soooo many shops that day it's a bit of a blur. A very happy blur.
For doujinshi I spent more time hitting up every Mandarake and K-Books we went near. The one Mandarake in Shinsaibashi was the one that really took the prize though. Between that and all the fashion stores I think we may have spent more money in Shinsaibashi than any suburb in Tokyo.
Asakusa was actually one of the places we stayed last time we were there.
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Date: 2012-03-10 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-12 07:28 am (UTC)"You mean... maybe other people too... nearby?" Wade eyes go comically wide as the implications sink in. "Can't you, y'know, check if anyone just had a surprise wet dream starring you?"
This part made me laugh so hard xD
I love your Cable & Deadpool stories, you write them both very well, and I like your writing style. I was really glad I saw that this story was updated. I can't wait to see what happens next, but I don't envy Scott or Nate for the impending, incredibly embarrassing conversation they're gonna have. xD
Hope you have fun in Japan, It sounds like it's going to be a blast. :3
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Date: 2012-03-13 06:21 am (UTC)I can't wait to see what happens next, but I don't envy Scott or Nate for the impending, incredibly embarrassing conversation they're gonna have. xD
Well, not to spoil anything major, but the next chapter will be jumping us off into some other far corner of AU-space, so we won't be seeing the direct fallout. (There will be a short epilogue to tie off some of the other loose ends to this scenes, but not that one in particular.) Unofficially though, I can tell you that once he's feeling up to it again, Nathan isn't going to be able to find anyone nearby who seems to have felt anything too obviously related to what he and Wade were doing, to his relief (though he will have to live with the knowledge that he was far too embarassed to be nearly so thorough or far reaching with that particular mind scan as he probably should have been).
Hope you have fun in Japan, It sounds like it's going to be a blast. :3
Thanks, we sure intend to! And thanks very much for reading and commenting too. ^_^
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Date: 2012-03-13 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 06:51 am (UTC)I really can't promise a speedy update on this since I'm about to be out of the country for two weeks, and after that my beta reader is going to be out of the country, and aslkighak;ah it was all I could do to get this chapter up while I had the chance OTZ. Going to try very hard to get another couple of mini-scenes like the epilogues to chapter 6 written up though.
and just maybe some totally unrelated C/DP smut that has been almost-but-not-quite completed foreverIs it wrong that a couple chapters ago I was giggling like a maniac, half-hoping that Scott would walk in on them in full make-out mode?
Considering how many times I've thought about that scenario myself, I'm in no position to judge - this story is all about teenaged awkwardness after all. It'd probably end up more awkward than interesting to go into detail about, but that's one uncomfortable conversation that logically must have happened at some point, and very probably under just those circumstances.
Anyway, so glad you're enjoying this so much! It has become a terribly self-indulgent little story, this one, but so much easier to justify spending time on if I am indulging other people as well. ;3
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Date: 2012-03-17 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-23 11:58 am (UTC)