Cable/Deadpool crackfic snippet
May. 5th, 2011 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopOkay, let's get this one out there at the top of the post before I get to the excuses: I just wrote 1300 words of a The Little Mermaid AU Cable/Deadpool fic.
While waiting to get the next chapter of the highschool AU back from my beta reader I felt the need for a bit of a light relief between the big fic projects - the irony here being that the HS AU was supposed to be light relief between bigger fic projects that has since gone badly feral. When you've reached the point where you feel the need to write a bit of something for light relief from your cheesey highschool AU fic, you may as well admit you're already well off the deep end of crackfic territory.
Or to put it another way, this is another of those scenes that get written because they would not leave me alone.
The worst part is, of course, that this fandom already has a The Little Merpool AU, in the form of a hilarious 24 page comic featuring, amongst other things, Bob the Fish, Weasel the Lobster, and Deadpool the Mermaid-Who-Wants-To-Be-Human-Because-He's-Fed-Up-With-His-Fishy-Lack-Of-Interesting-Plumbing. Really, you should probably just go read it now if you haven't already, just so we can all be perfectly clear on how I cannot even claim original crackfic anymore. But also because it's kind of brilliant.
If that comic has a fault, it's only that somewhere in the middle it veered right off to the left of where I thought it was heading and left me with a head full of leftover ideas for things you could do by mashing up Cable & Deadpool with The Little Mermaid which never made it into that one comic. What about the chance to mix up Deadpool's canonical desire to just look like a normal human being with the mermaid's longing to be human? What about the chance to cast Cable as the handsome prince and Blind Al as the old witch who thinks Deadpool's off his nut for imagining that any prince who'd turn him down for his face is worth giving the time of day, but who grudgingly agrees to grant his wish anyway just to make a point? What about Deadpool tackling the 'you must snog within three days or the deal is off' rule head-on with his glorious Deadpool aplomb? So. Many. Possibilities.
So in honour of yet another Idea That Would Not Die, have a very rough, completely un-betaed scene from the middle somewhere.
I honestly have no idea if there's going to be anymore of this.
Prince Nathanial Christopher Charles Dayspring Askani'son Summers isn't usually in the habit of taking long walks on the beach. Or anywhere, as a general rule. When he's in the mood for quiet contemplation he does it inside, where there are fewer opportunities for obsessive royalists to leap out at him unexpected.
Then again, he's not usually in the habit of being rescued by enigmatic mermen who vanish before he can thank them properly either, so perhaps it's just that sort of week.
He wishes he knew what he was doing out here.
Alright, that's not true, what he really wishes is that he had a better explanation than the insane idea that his rescuer might just pop his head out of the waves and let Nathan wave him over for a chat if he he makes himself visible enough. Anyone could have told him what a longshot this was in an ocean this size. Given that one of few things Nathan does know about the merman is his firm aversion to being seen at all, it would be a longshot even were the ocean the size of a millpond. All he can say in defence of the idea is that it's surely no more crazy than the idea of a merman saving a human's life in the first place, and he knows that happened, even if the rest of the court is convinced it was no more than a fever dream brought on by swallowing too much seawater.
Everyone knows that mermen are ugly, vicious creatures without a ounce of love for mankind to share between them; more naturally inclined to drag a hapless sailor down to his doom in a fit of cackling glee than carry him ashore. So either what everyone knows about mermen is wrong or Nathan has encountered the one exception, and it bothers him that he has no way of knowing which. It hadn't seemed polite to ask at the time, considering it effort it had taken just to get the admission that his mysterious rescuer was a merman in the first place. If Nathan had to guess he'd say the merman had seemed more than a little embarrassed to have been caught helping a human.
If that's true – if the merman had done something the rest of his race would disapprove of in order to help him – that only makes Nathan's debt to him all the greater. Unfortunately, staring out into the ocean fails to grant him any particular insight into how he's going to go about ever finding that merman again.
Nathan still has no idea what he thinks he's doing out here.
Sighing, he turns back towards home just in time to watch a large wave tumbling a naked man up the beach not twenty feet away from him. For a moment Nathan wonders whether the sea has delivered him his merman after all, but on a second look the man is plainly human. He's also plainly in serious need of some help.
Nathan doesn't stop to wonder what the a naked man is doing out there, just tosses his coat onto the sand and charges into the surf. The next wave reaches the floundering man a moment before Nathan does and he goes under; Nathan pulls him up coughing and spluttering. He goes mostly limp as Nathan drags him up the beach and rolls him on to his side on the edge of the waveline. There the man proceeds to cough up another couple of mouthfuls of water and finally flop over over onto his back, panting. Nathan lets him lie there for a while as he gets his breath back. The edge of a few waves wash up as far as his legs, slowly eroding sand out under him like an irritable landlord, but he's otherwise in no more danger from the sea up here.
After a minute he opens his eyes. Nathan leans over him, concerned.
“Are you alright?” he asks.
Nathan has just time to register the man reaching for him before he becomes aware that he's being kissed enthusiastically on the lips by someone who tastes strongly of seawater.
Alright, thinks Nathan. Apparently this man is very grateful for his help. Or possibly foreign. One of those things.
The man stops kissing him again just as suddenly and stares off into the distance for a confusing moment, like he's just remembered something worrying or heard something Nathan hasn't. Automatically, Nathan turns to look in the same direction. There's nothing there. Odd.
When he looks back the man has shaken himself out of his daze and is gazing at Nathan as though he's just discovered religion. It makes Nathan faintly uncomfortable.
“It was nothing really,” he says, standing up. The man's gaze follows him. There's something tantalisingly familiar about him that Nathan can't quite place. At least he does seem to be alright, he supposes as he looks the man over, not to mention quite. Er. Quite.
It's at about this moment that the man seems to remember that he's still very naked and hurriedly covers himself up with both hands. He looks up at Nathan accusingly, then down at his hands again. It's clearly too late to hope he hadn't noticed Nathan looking.
“I didn't mean...” Nathan stammers.
The man looks back up and waggles his eyebrows at him.
Perhaps he's very foreign, thinks Nathan, feeling a little helpless.
“Look, I... you can borrow my coat,” he offers, and hurries off to retrieve it, grateful for the distraction.
It's too big on the man and he has to help him with the sleeves, but at least it's long enough to hang down to his thighs, which makes things much less awkward for both of them. Again, the man looks inordinately grateful; Nathan doesn't have the heart to tell him that he's very fond of that coat himself and is going to want it back.
“Now maybe you could tell me how you came to be out here,” he prompts.
The man's shoulders slump. He pats his throat significantly and Nathan is suddenly seeing his silence thus far in a new light.
“You can't speak?”
The man shakes his head, shoulders slumping even further.
“But you can understand me, can't you?”
The man nods vigorously. He can't be that foreign then, but even so. “You're not from around here, are you?” Nathan hazards.
Another shake.
“I suppose it's not going to be much good me asking who you are and where you came from either then,” says Nathan, “Unless you could, er, mime it out, or something.”
The man considers, looks sharply at Nathan with an expression that suggests inspiration has struck, and then he charges back into the surf, wading out until the water is up to his knees. He points to himself, splashes around in exaggerated fashion for a bit, then points to himself again, willing Nathan to understand. Any fool could see he's trying to tell Nathan something important.
“You're.... called Wade?” Nathan guesses.
The man hits himself in the forehead with the palm of his hand and falls dramatically backwards into the water, probably ruining Nathan's coat in the process. Given the chance Nathan is sure he would have been a lot more embarrassed or insulted or something to that general effect by this reaction had he not been urgently occupied rushing into the waves to drag the man out again.
At least one thing about his origins is clear: wherever the man hails from must be dry as a bone, if he's lived to this age without getting enough experience with water to learn he can't breathe it.
He lets Wade keep the coat – it's never going to be the same again anyway – and Wade lets Nathan keep calling him 'Wade', despite the name evidently not belonging to either of them. It's just going to have to do until they get a little better at this whole communication thing.
While waiting to get the next chapter of the highschool AU back from my beta reader I felt the need for a bit of a light relief between the big fic projects - the irony here being that the HS AU was supposed to be light relief between bigger fic projects that has since gone badly feral. When you've reached the point where you feel the need to write a bit of something for light relief from your cheesey highschool AU fic, you may as well admit you're already well off the deep end of crackfic territory.
Or to put it another way, this is another of those scenes that get written because they would not leave me alone.
The worst part is, of course, that this fandom already has a The Little Merpool AU, in the form of a hilarious 24 page comic featuring, amongst other things, Bob the Fish, Weasel the Lobster, and Deadpool the Mermaid-Who-Wants-To-Be-Human-Because-He's-Fed-Up-With-His-Fishy-Lack-Of-Interesting-Plumbing. Really, you should probably just go read it now if you haven't already, just so we can all be perfectly clear on how I cannot even claim original crackfic anymore. But also because it's kind of brilliant.
If that comic has a fault, it's only that somewhere in the middle it veered right off to the left of where I thought it was heading and left me with a head full of leftover ideas for things you could do by mashing up Cable & Deadpool with The Little Mermaid which never made it into that one comic. What about the chance to mix up Deadpool's canonical desire to just look like a normal human being with the mermaid's longing to be human? What about the chance to cast Cable as the handsome prince and Blind Al as the old witch who thinks Deadpool's off his nut for imagining that any prince who'd turn him down for his face is worth giving the time of day, but who grudgingly agrees to grant his wish anyway just to make a point? What about Deadpool tackling the 'you must snog within three days or the deal is off' rule head-on with his glorious Deadpool aplomb? So. Many. Possibilities.
So in honour of yet another Idea That Would Not Die, have a very rough, completely un-betaed scene from the middle somewhere.
I honestly have no idea if there's going to be anymore of this.
Prince Nathanial Christopher Charles Dayspring Askani'son Summers isn't usually in the habit of taking long walks on the beach. Or anywhere, as a general rule. When he's in the mood for quiet contemplation he does it inside, where there are fewer opportunities for obsessive royalists to leap out at him unexpected.
Then again, he's not usually in the habit of being rescued by enigmatic mermen who vanish before he can thank them properly either, so perhaps it's just that sort of week.
He wishes he knew what he was doing out here.
Alright, that's not true, what he really wishes is that he had a better explanation than the insane idea that his rescuer might just pop his head out of the waves and let Nathan wave him over for a chat if he he makes himself visible enough. Anyone could have told him what a longshot this was in an ocean this size. Given that one of few things Nathan does know about the merman is his firm aversion to being seen at all, it would be a longshot even were the ocean the size of a millpond. All he can say in defence of the idea is that it's surely no more crazy than the idea of a merman saving a human's life in the first place, and he knows that happened, even if the rest of the court is convinced it was no more than a fever dream brought on by swallowing too much seawater.
Everyone knows that mermen are ugly, vicious creatures without a ounce of love for mankind to share between them; more naturally inclined to drag a hapless sailor down to his doom in a fit of cackling glee than carry him ashore. So either what everyone knows about mermen is wrong or Nathan has encountered the one exception, and it bothers him that he has no way of knowing which. It hadn't seemed polite to ask at the time, considering it effort it had taken just to get the admission that his mysterious rescuer was a merman in the first place. If Nathan had to guess he'd say the merman had seemed more than a little embarrassed to have been caught helping a human.
If that's true – if the merman had done something the rest of his race would disapprove of in order to help him – that only makes Nathan's debt to him all the greater. Unfortunately, staring out into the ocean fails to grant him any particular insight into how he's going to go about ever finding that merman again.
Nathan still has no idea what he thinks he's doing out here.
Sighing, he turns back towards home just in time to watch a large wave tumbling a naked man up the beach not twenty feet away from him. For a moment Nathan wonders whether the sea has delivered him his merman after all, but on a second look the man is plainly human. He's also plainly in serious need of some help.
Nathan doesn't stop to wonder what the a naked man is doing out there, just tosses his coat onto the sand and charges into the surf. The next wave reaches the floundering man a moment before Nathan does and he goes under; Nathan pulls him up coughing and spluttering. He goes mostly limp as Nathan drags him up the beach and rolls him on to his side on the edge of the waveline. There the man proceeds to cough up another couple of mouthfuls of water and finally flop over over onto his back, panting. Nathan lets him lie there for a while as he gets his breath back. The edge of a few waves wash up as far as his legs, slowly eroding sand out under him like an irritable landlord, but he's otherwise in no more danger from the sea up here.
After a minute he opens his eyes. Nathan leans over him, concerned.
“Are you alright?” he asks.
Nathan has just time to register the man reaching for him before he becomes aware that he's being kissed enthusiastically on the lips by someone who tastes strongly of seawater.
Alright, thinks Nathan. Apparently this man is very grateful for his help. Or possibly foreign. One of those things.
The man stops kissing him again just as suddenly and stares off into the distance for a confusing moment, like he's just remembered something worrying or heard something Nathan hasn't. Automatically, Nathan turns to look in the same direction. There's nothing there. Odd.
When he looks back the man has shaken himself out of his daze and is gazing at Nathan as though he's just discovered religion. It makes Nathan faintly uncomfortable.
“It was nothing really,” he says, standing up. The man's gaze follows him. There's something tantalisingly familiar about him that Nathan can't quite place. At least he does seem to be alright, he supposes as he looks the man over, not to mention quite. Er. Quite.
It's at about this moment that the man seems to remember that he's still very naked and hurriedly covers himself up with both hands. He looks up at Nathan accusingly, then down at his hands again. It's clearly too late to hope he hadn't noticed Nathan looking.
“I didn't mean...” Nathan stammers.
The man looks back up and waggles his eyebrows at him.
Perhaps he's very foreign, thinks Nathan, feeling a little helpless.
“Look, I... you can borrow my coat,” he offers, and hurries off to retrieve it, grateful for the distraction.
It's too big on the man and he has to help him with the sleeves, but at least it's long enough to hang down to his thighs, which makes things much less awkward for both of them. Again, the man looks inordinately grateful; Nathan doesn't have the heart to tell him that he's very fond of that coat himself and is going to want it back.
“Now maybe you could tell me how you came to be out here,” he prompts.
The man's shoulders slump. He pats his throat significantly and Nathan is suddenly seeing his silence thus far in a new light.
“You can't speak?”
The man shakes his head, shoulders slumping even further.
“But you can understand me, can't you?”
The man nods vigorously. He can't be that foreign then, but even so. “You're not from around here, are you?” Nathan hazards.
Another shake.
“I suppose it's not going to be much good me asking who you are and where you came from either then,” says Nathan, “Unless you could, er, mime it out, or something.”
The man considers, looks sharply at Nathan with an expression that suggests inspiration has struck, and then he charges back into the surf, wading out until the water is up to his knees. He points to himself, splashes around in exaggerated fashion for a bit, then points to himself again, willing Nathan to understand. Any fool could see he's trying to tell Nathan something important.
“You're.... called Wade?” Nathan guesses.
The man hits himself in the forehead with the palm of his hand and falls dramatically backwards into the water, probably ruining Nathan's coat in the process. Given the chance Nathan is sure he would have been a lot more embarrassed or insulted or something to that general effect by this reaction had he not been urgently occupied rushing into the waves to drag the man out again.
At least one thing about his origins is clear: wherever the man hails from must be dry as a bone, if he's lived to this age without getting enough experience with water to learn he can't breathe it.
He lets Wade keep the coat – it's never going to be the same again anyway – and Wade lets Nathan keep calling him 'Wade', despite the name evidently not belonging to either of them. It's just going to have to do until they get a little better at this whole communication thing.