[Cable & Deadpool] Summers'son (6/?)
May. 9th, 2011 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopIf parts of this chapter seem eerily familiar for some reason, it's not you, it's that several lines of dialogue from this chapter were actually included waaay back when I made my 'so I'm not going to continue that highschool AU fic because it's plotless and silly, but if I were, here are a few leftover ideas that might have been in it'-post, not long after the first chapter went up. Well, we all know how that went. I regret nothing!
Title: Summers’son
Summary: Settling into the 21st century is giving a teenaged Nathan some trouble.
Chapter: 6/?
Characters/Pairing: Nate/Wade
Rating: PG (this part, NC-17 overall)
Word count: 4255
Previous parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
Nathan doesn't find himself looking forward to seeing Wade the next morning as much as he usually would.
The instant Wade catches sight of him in the school corridor he experiences a full-body flashback to the image of Nathan's psychic self reaching for his inseam. He freezes, eyes wide, then dives for his schoolbag, suddenly discovering the urgent need to devote all his concentration to hunting through it very thoroughly for something or other. Stupid stupid stupid stupid thing to let yourself think about Nate you stupid...
The litany of misplaced guilt hits Nathan somewhere equally personal. The irony of how they're both stewing in guilt over the same incident isn't lost on him, the difference being, of course, that Wade has nothing to feel guilty about. He does.
Much as he hates to allow himself any excuses to put off making this right, this isn't a conversation they can have in public.
“Hey,” he calls to Wade, who jumps like he's bitten, both hands still buried in his school bag, “you free this evening?”
Say no! screeches Wade's inner monologue. Make an excuse, anything will do! You can't trust yourself around Nate right now! You were supposed to hang out with Weasel today – remember Weas, guy who used to be your best friend before you ditched him for the outside chance of getting to oogle Nate's abs?
Out loud, almost without stuttering, Wade says, “You know me, I'm always free. Your place or mine?” Barely have the words left his lips before he's wincing at his choice of phrasing.
“Mine,” says Nathan quickly. Unlike Blind Al, Scott rarely makes it home under an hour after school lets out, and they're going to want their privacy.
Wade practically sags with relief when the bell rings. “Great see ya later,” he says, all in one breath, and flees down the corridor.
It's going to be a long day.
***
Wade has had time to calm down considerably by the time they meet to walk home, even if he does keep up a steady stream of conversation on any and every innocent topic that might keep him diverted from thinking about last night. The story about how his maths teacher seriously thinks they're all going to do a whole chapter review over the weekend just because he wasted half the lesson giving them a lecture on the Importance Of Doing Your Homework carries them out of the school. The tale of how Brian-Dickface-Thompson got all up in his face, used the 'f' word (freak, when you're talking to Wade) and dared him to make something of it then flinched so far when Wade jerked his arm like he was really gonna punch that mofo right where he deserved it that he tripped over his own shoes and face-planted right into Toby Whitehouse's lunch tray and how fucking hilarious it was lasts the next couple of blocks. The news about the new FPS Weasel's almost talked his Dad into getting him for his birthday and all the sweet things he's heard about the new blood-splatter physics get them almost to Nathan's front door. Nathan's contribution is mostly limited to offering the occasional expression of agreement in three words or less whenever Wade has to stop for breath. Just as they're reaching the front door Wade gets to the end of his last topic without another lined up to follow and for all of a moment he panics. By the next he's remembered that hanging out with Nate in a fog of awkward sexual tension is something he does every day and kicked himself back into acting casual, but his nerves are contagious. Nathan is left feeling even less comfortable than Wade is.
By the time they're dumping their bags by the end of Nathan's bed he's well past ready to get this over with, but no more ready to tackle the subject than he's ever been.
“So, you wanna watch that new Tarantino DVD?” Wade suggests.
This is it, the moment of truth. “Actually, there's something I need to talk to you about.”
Wade is instantly apprehensive. The image of a Nate who needs to talk to him about the awkward erections he keeps getting at school rises in his mind, but it's mostly habit and just as rapidly beaten down and shoved under the thick woollen comforter of common sense and the repeated mantra that not everything is about sex, sheesh. “What kinda something?”
Nathan hasn't planned out what he's going to say – how do you plan out a way to say, I'm telepathic, I've known you found me attractive since the day we met and I've decided I feel the same way about you, but mostly what I need to admit is that the reason you had a fantasy about me coming on to you last night was because I barged into your mind without your permission, and did I mention that I'm incredibly sorry, I got carried away in the moment but that's really no excuse. But if you're not too freaked out by all this I'd like to do it again, properly this time...? Certainly not like that, dumping the whole story on Wade in one go. What you felt last night was me is the crux of the matter, but going straight there without giving Wade the first hint as to how any of this is possible doesn't seem like much of a plan. What he needs to is somewhere to start from.
“I can read minds,” he blurts out, half-expecting somehow that with that much out there Wade will be able to put the rest of it together within a minute.
Wade looks at him like he's just tried to drop an endorsement for an expensive brand of lady's deodorant into everyday conversation without looking suspicious. “You can not.”
“No, I really can,” Nathan assures him.
“Uh-huh. Sure you can,” says Wade, clearly still waiting for the punch line, all thoughts of inconvenient fantasies finally, ironically, drowned out under the sirens of his bullshit detector.
“Wade, I'm not having you on.” Nathan is already losing patience. He's trying to admit to something important here and instead he hasn't even made it past the first hurdle of Wade's natural skepticism. “I can prove it if you like.”
“Is this that trick where you tell someone to pick a number, only it has to be between one and fifty and everyone picks thirty-seven because the rules make it so you-”
“Do you want to play 'think of a number'?” Nathan says, interrupting. “No rules, no limits, any number you like.”
“Okay, fine,” says Wade, pauses for a beat then raises his eyebrows. “Got it yet?”
Nathan finds the end of his patience. “Wade,” he says, “'pie' is not a number.”
“Shows how much attention you pay in maths,” crows Wade, “it is too a number! Three-point-one-something-to-do-with-circles...”
“That's not the kind of pie you were thinking of. You were thinking of the kind with pastry and...” Nathan pauses to concentrate, “pumpkin filling?”
Wade's mouth falls wide open. “Holy shit,” he manages after a few seconds of gaping.
In retrospect Nathan doesn't know how else he was expecting Wade to react. “Believe me now?”
“Holy shit. How'd you do that?”
“Like I was trying to explain,” Nathan says, very slowly, “I can read minds.”
“So, uh, is this, like, something you only realised you could do lately?” Oh please say yes, Wade thinks, over his barrier of natural skepticism only to hit the spike-pit of uncomfortable implications at speed, Shit, when was the last time I thought about having sex with him? All day, right, yeah, but only, like, sideways, it's almost like I wasn't thinking about it at all; if this is all some kind of trick I sure hope he's getting a good laugh out of it.
“It's something I've been able to do for most of my life,” Nathan admits. “I didn't-”
“You've been reading my mind? All this time?” Wade takes a step back, away from him. He knows? How can he know? He can't know! “You didn’t think that maybe that was something you should have mentioned before?”
“You have a tendency to think rather loudly.” Nathan puts his hand on Wade's arm in what he hopes will come across as reassuring and tries to sound calming. “Yes, Wade, I know. I've known all along. I didn't bring it up before because I didn't want to embarrass you. But the re-”
“That's so nice of you, Nate, 'cause this thing I'm feeling now – this has nothing to do with embarrassment,” Wade squeaks, edging away; Nathan is forced to turn his reassuring hand into a vice grip on Wade's arm just to stop him from bolting, hating the way Wade flinches against him.
“Wade, will you just let me finish? What I'm trying to say is that I don't mind that you think of me like that. I like it. I've been starting to feel the same way about you.” He hadn't meant to shout that part, but the way Wade's trying to shrink away from this conversation he's not sure anything else would have gotten through. He manages to pull a half smile and a shrug when Wade freezes up and stares at him. At least with that much out in the open this has to get easier.
He should really have known better than to expect Wade wouldn't find a way to surprise him.
“You – you what me?” Omigod – I – he – he's psychic and he keeps hearing me thinking about sex with him and now he thinks he likes me back – oh my god I mind-whammied him into thinking he likes me and I didn't even know I was doing it!
Nathan's smile slips off his face. “Wade, no, listen – it doesn't work that way.” How does Wade come up with this stuff?
“No, Nate, I just bet you woke up one day and decided you wanted the guy who kept flooding your head with how much he wanted to do you.” Not even the force of Nathan's hand on his arm can stop Wade's instinct to inch away.
“Oh for Pete's sake Wade,” Nathan growls, grappling to regain any kind of control of the situation, “you're not the first person to think of me like that or the first boy I've liked, do you really think you'd know how this works better than me?” But Wade's shaking his head, inching away under his hold; even with everything laid out for him he can’t even begin to comprehend a world where Nate could actually want him of his own free will; he just won't listen. “You've got it backwards, look, just let me show you...”
Wade stumbles back the moment Nathan releases his arm, but he doesn't get far before Nathan has his fingers pressed to Wade's temples, opening up their minds. He calls up the memory of what it had been like to meet Wade, how it felt to recognise the same person who'd all but written him off as a stuck up jerk was giving him a chance to prove himself better; his confusion that Wade wasn't getting over him as they got to know each other, his frustration with how little the Nathan in Wade's head had in common with the real thing; all those irrational bursts of jealousy, every guilty twinge of relief that washed over him whenever he saw Wade and felt that he still wanted him, everything he'd felt last night when he'd finally made sense out of his own feelings and been all but overwhelmed by how badly he wanted Wade back; he shows it all to Wade, jumbled into a seething mess of raw desire, but unmistakable in origin or intent, more honest than he knows any other way of being.
When he finishes Wade's looking at him with new eyes. That, or he's short circuited.
“Did that feel like I'm just reflecting back what you feel about me?” Nathan prompts.
Wade opens and closes his mouth soundlessly a couple of times before saying, “Nate? Might need a hand staying upright for a second here.”
“Oh, sorry.” Nathan grabs him under the armpits and feels some of Wade's weight sag into the support. “Please tell me I got through to you this time.” He's made such a godforsaken mess of this confession so far that if Wade hasn't gotten his point he's at the end of his ideas (and certainly there's nothing that could go wrong funnelling so much raw feeling into the head of someone with no experience processing other people's emotions, oh Mother Askani when did he become so bad at this?)
“Nate, you...” Wade breathes, eyes snapping back up to Nathan's, like he's only just remembered what they were talking about, then hesitates. “...you think that scar ridge in my nose makes it look kind of bent from an angle?”
Nathan winces. A few less relevant details had been bound to slip through, but even so, trust Wade to get sidetracked on trivialities. “Not the point, Wade.”
Wade tries again. “You want to see me naked?”
That was more like it. “You know what they say, you show me yours...”
“Me? I mean, me?” Wade sounds as though he could be stuck on this for a while. “You know about the skin it doesn't get any bett-”
“I know, Wade. It doesn't bother me, it never has. And that's still not the point.”
Wade hesitates again. “Did you really have a sexy dream about me weeks ago and you didn't realise it meant anything?”
Bigger wince. “I thought it was one of yours I'd picked up by accident. It can be harder to tell when you're asleep.”
“But you're sure this isn't-”
“Wade, if I hadn't spent the last few months listening to you thinking about how sure you were that I could never like you back, I might have figured this out a lot sooner.”
“Oh. So. You like, me huh?” If Wade had been aiming for flippant he misses it by a mile. He sounds like he's forgotten how to breathe. “Like, like me like me?
“Yeah,” Nathan admits. “I do. A lot.”
For a moment they both stand there like that, smiling at each other like idiots.
“Is this where you kiss me?” says Wade after a bit, tongue darting nervously over his lower lip. “Traditionally speaking, I mean, that would be the part we're up to, right?”
Nathan has no objection to this plan. “Well, we wouldn't want to break with tradition,” he says, and reaches his hands from where they've been resting under Wade's shoulders around his back to wrap around his body and pull him close.
The kiss is like and unlike what he'd expected, Wade's lips soft but a little dry. He shivers at the first touch, lips parting under Nathan's own, but otherwise he doesn't seem to know how to respond.
“This would also be where you're supposed to kiss me back,” Nathan whispers, lips a hair's breadth from Wade's own.
Wade squirms a little in his arms. “Don't take this the wrong way, but about ninety percent of me is still expecting my alarm clock to cut in any second.”
“You're not dreaming, Wade.”
“Easy for you to say, your best friend hasn't just revealed he reads minds and wants in your pants.”
“How about this then,” says Nathan, in a moment of inspiration, “if this was a dream, what would you do?”
Wade considers this for a second. The next, Nathan is flat on his back with a lapful of Wade, a state of affairs he'd be enjoying much more had he not just had the wind knocked halfway out of him, turning a startled laugh into a small coughing fit and ruining Wade's enthusiastic attempts to kiss him properly. None of this is helped when Wade manages to elbow him in the gut.
“Sorry,” says a rather sheepish Wade. “If this was a dream that would have gone better.”
“What a disappointment,” Nathan says, mostly done with the coughing.
“Smartass,” says Wade cheerfully. “So disappointing, yeah. Don't know how I'll cope.”
“Oh, I think you do.” Nathan curls a hand around the back of Wade's head and tugs him down. “How about we try this again.”
The third attempt goes much better, and they stay there a while, trading slow, closed-mouthed kisses on Nathan's bedroom floor. Wade still thrums with nerves, but after his first clumsy attempts go by without any knocked noses he stops concentrating so hard and gets a little bolder, opens his mouth a little more under Nathan's next kiss, then hesitates again. Am I doing this right? How soon are you supposed to go for the tongue? Wait, you know this one, there was that article in Seventeen you read that time you were stuck in that doctor's waiting room for an hour and there was nothing else to read so no-one could judge you for it. Though they could still judge you for the part where you're seriously trying to remember advice from a girly teen magazine now you're doing this for real oh crap forget it just follow Nate's lead...
Nathan smiles against his lips. Shh, he whispers into Wade's mind, you're doing fine. Just enjoy it.
Wade's face is suddenly a whole foot further away from Nathan and has the look of someone in the middle of experiencing a major revelation.
“That was you!” Wade squeaks. “In my head last night – that was you!”
Nathan feels his face heat up. Right. That. Caught up in the roller-coaster of Wade's reactions he'd practically forgotten all abut it. “Yeah, it was me,” he admits. “I was sort of building up to owning up about that. I'm sorry, I should never have barged in on you like that. I just... heard you thinking about me, and I got a bit carried away.”
“Sorry?” Wade sounds incredulous, “Nate, why would you be sorry... well, maybe you can be a little bit sorry for going full inception in my brain without even asking and making me think I'd climbed into that handbasket on my own, you jerk,” says Wade, whacking him on the shoulder.
Nathan raises his hands apologetically. “That's what I meant. And I'm more than a little sorry. Even if you were thinking about me, I know it wasn't fair on you for me to jump in on you like that.”
“Well, yeah, but I'll think 'a some way you can make it up to me,” says Wade. In his head he's trying out the idea of a Nate who's not just into him but so into him he can hardly keep his mind off him and that – oh yeah, that is something he could totally get used to. “What makes you think I couldn't like you, maybe the part where you never bothered to let me know you were gay and psychic and had some kinda voyeur thing going?”
“I don't usually,” says Nathan, losing most of his remaining hopes Wade might not have noticed him blushing under another flash of heat.
“So it's just with me, huh?” says Wade, enjoying himself.
“Just that one time, I promise.”
“Uh-huh, and all the rest of those times you never bothered to mention you had a subscription to the porn track up here?” Wade taps his head with a finger.
“In my defence, I was trying not to lead you on,” says Nathan. “That may have backfired a little.”
“A little,” Wade scoffs. “But Nate, seriously,” and now it's Wade's turn to be shy again, “y'know it's not like I would've said no if you did tell me, right? I knew there was something weird going on, it's never like that when I do it on my own. It explains so much if that was you and you were – you were,” the gesture Wade makes is abortive but unambiguous in meaning, “too, right?”
“Oh yeah,” says Nathan, with feeling.
“And you...” it takes a lot to leave Wade at a loss for words, but he cycles through several different ways of finishing this question without finding any he's comfortable saying aloud.
“Wade, after what I did last night, you are allowed to ask me if I got off thinking about you. The answer is yes, for the record. Yes, you have no idea. It's... never been like that for me before either.”
He'd honestly thought the answer would be self-evident, but the joyous sense of wonder he can feel spreading through Wade's mind is a clear sign he'd failed to account for just how much it was going to mean to him to know that not only did Nate do that, a thousand guilty fantasies were instantly validated because Nate had them too! Complete with the embarrassing secrets and the lousy impulse control! That was way beyond 'he likes me back', that was like the third base with the ball still in the air of he's-just-that-into-me.
Speaking of base-metaphors... Wait, if that was the real Nate and we both had happy endings... does that mean that was sex? Not sex-sex, but at least as sex as phone sex or cyber sex. Have you still lost your cherry if you didn't know you were doing it until after? Are you allowed to decide something was sex retroactively? Maybe it's the look on Nathan's face that does it, but it's at this point that it dawns on Wade that his new boyfriend reads minds, and he catches Nathan's eye in a way neither of them need to be psychic to interpret. You planning to weigh in on this one or are you just enjoying the view? This is important philosophical stuff we're dealing with.
When Wade's not having his universe rearranged he catches on fast.
We could do it again, Nathan thinks back, bringing his hands up to stroke gently over Wade's hips, Just to make sure it counts.
“Yeah?” gasps Wade, out loud, so sudden that Nathan might have laughed at him in any other circumstances.
“Tonight?” he suggests.
“Tonight's good for me,” says Wade quickly.
The question, what shall we do until then? hangs in the air between them, neither quite sure if voicing something that loaded would be a good idea. It doesn't take Nathan long to start wondering what to make of the fact they've effectively agreed to retreat to different houses to consummate their relationship. Mostly it seems safer just to go with it, even if they have sentenced themselves to a very long afternoon and the growing need to find something else to talk about before the shared anticipation can become a little too physical. Wade is thrilled and overjoyed and excited and overwhelmed and less than entirely certain where his feet have gone and still at least forty-eight hours short of really being able to believe he hasn't hallucinated all of this, not to mention barely a hair's breadth away from having to spend the rest of whatever they do do until then with either the least or most awkward boner of his life. He doesn't know whether he wants to rip all Nathan's clothes off right now or go lie down somewhere quiet for a while with a damp cloth on his head.
What he does have is enough questions burning in his head to fill a biography.
“So...” says Wade, sitting back a bit, “the whole psychic thing, how's that work anyway?”
Well, Nathan couldn't have asked for a much better opening than that. “It's more of a mutant thing.”
“You're a mind-reading mutant?” Wade is surprisingly okay with this. Sometimes people are mutants. It's a thing. Set up against the rest of what he's heard this afternoon, Nate being a mutant is practically mundane. “I thought mutants usually got stuff like, I dunno, metal claws or superstrength and stuff.”
“Telepathy's actually one of the more common manifestations,” Nathan explains, nudging Wade back. “Come on, off. I'll tell you all about it – but I'm not doing it lying on the floor.”
After that, with all possible complicating factors exhaustively dealt with, the mutant conversation goes as smoothly as Nathan had first imagined when they'd met, what feels like years before. It also succeeds in keeping them both distracted until well after Scott gets home, after which somehow or other they end up watching (most of) that DVD after all, but they do it with Wade leaning against Nathan's side and his head on Nathan's shoulder, the line of warmth that connects them commanding far more of his attention than anything that goes on on screen.
'Tonight' goes even better.
Having a boyfriend is definitely something Nathan's going to enjoy getting used to.
Just to really confuse the chapter order, I went and wrote not one but two short epilogues to this chapter. But the real chapter 7 is now live as well~
Title: Summers’son
Summary: Settling into the 21st century is giving a teenaged Nathan some trouble.
Chapter: 6/?
Characters/Pairing: Nate/Wade
Rating: PG (this part, NC-17 overall)
Word count: 4255
Previous parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
Nathan doesn't find himself looking forward to seeing Wade the next morning as much as he usually would.
The instant Wade catches sight of him in the school corridor he experiences a full-body flashback to the image of Nathan's psychic self reaching for his inseam. He freezes, eyes wide, then dives for his schoolbag, suddenly discovering the urgent need to devote all his concentration to hunting through it very thoroughly for something or other. Stupid stupid stupid stupid thing to let yourself think about Nate you stupid...
The litany of misplaced guilt hits Nathan somewhere equally personal. The irony of how they're both stewing in guilt over the same incident isn't lost on him, the difference being, of course, that Wade has nothing to feel guilty about. He does.
Much as he hates to allow himself any excuses to put off making this right, this isn't a conversation they can have in public.
“Hey,” he calls to Wade, who jumps like he's bitten, both hands still buried in his school bag, “you free this evening?”
Say no! screeches Wade's inner monologue. Make an excuse, anything will do! You can't trust yourself around Nate right now! You were supposed to hang out with Weasel today – remember Weas, guy who used to be your best friend before you ditched him for the outside chance of getting to oogle Nate's abs?
Out loud, almost without stuttering, Wade says, “You know me, I'm always free. Your place or mine?” Barely have the words left his lips before he's wincing at his choice of phrasing.
“Mine,” says Nathan quickly. Unlike Blind Al, Scott rarely makes it home under an hour after school lets out, and they're going to want their privacy.
Wade practically sags with relief when the bell rings. “Great see ya later,” he says, all in one breath, and flees down the corridor.
It's going to be a long day.
***
Wade has had time to calm down considerably by the time they meet to walk home, even if he does keep up a steady stream of conversation on any and every innocent topic that might keep him diverted from thinking about last night. The story about how his maths teacher seriously thinks they're all going to do a whole chapter review over the weekend just because he wasted half the lesson giving them a lecture on the Importance Of Doing Your Homework carries them out of the school. The tale of how Brian-Dickface-Thompson got all up in his face, used the 'f' word (freak, when you're talking to Wade) and dared him to make something of it then flinched so far when Wade jerked his arm like he was really gonna punch that mofo right where he deserved it that he tripped over his own shoes and face-planted right into Toby Whitehouse's lunch tray and how fucking hilarious it was lasts the next couple of blocks. The news about the new FPS Weasel's almost talked his Dad into getting him for his birthday and all the sweet things he's heard about the new blood-splatter physics get them almost to Nathan's front door. Nathan's contribution is mostly limited to offering the occasional expression of agreement in three words or less whenever Wade has to stop for breath. Just as they're reaching the front door Wade gets to the end of his last topic without another lined up to follow and for all of a moment he panics. By the next he's remembered that hanging out with Nate in a fog of awkward sexual tension is something he does every day and kicked himself back into acting casual, but his nerves are contagious. Nathan is left feeling even less comfortable than Wade is.
By the time they're dumping their bags by the end of Nathan's bed he's well past ready to get this over with, but no more ready to tackle the subject than he's ever been.
“So, you wanna watch that new Tarantino DVD?” Wade suggests.
This is it, the moment of truth. “Actually, there's something I need to talk to you about.”
Wade is instantly apprehensive. The image of a Nate who needs to talk to him about the awkward erections he keeps getting at school rises in his mind, but it's mostly habit and just as rapidly beaten down and shoved under the thick woollen comforter of common sense and the repeated mantra that not everything is about sex, sheesh. “What kinda something?”
Nathan hasn't planned out what he's going to say – how do you plan out a way to say, I'm telepathic, I've known you found me attractive since the day we met and I've decided I feel the same way about you, but mostly what I need to admit is that the reason you had a fantasy about me coming on to you last night was because I barged into your mind without your permission, and did I mention that I'm incredibly sorry, I got carried away in the moment but that's really no excuse. But if you're not too freaked out by all this I'd like to do it again, properly this time...? Certainly not like that, dumping the whole story on Wade in one go. What you felt last night was me is the crux of the matter, but going straight there without giving Wade the first hint as to how any of this is possible doesn't seem like much of a plan. What he needs to is somewhere to start from.
“I can read minds,” he blurts out, half-expecting somehow that with that much out there Wade will be able to put the rest of it together within a minute.
Wade looks at him like he's just tried to drop an endorsement for an expensive brand of lady's deodorant into everyday conversation without looking suspicious. “You can not.”
“No, I really can,” Nathan assures him.
“Uh-huh. Sure you can,” says Wade, clearly still waiting for the punch line, all thoughts of inconvenient fantasies finally, ironically, drowned out under the sirens of his bullshit detector.
“Wade, I'm not having you on.” Nathan is already losing patience. He's trying to admit to something important here and instead he hasn't even made it past the first hurdle of Wade's natural skepticism. “I can prove it if you like.”
“Is this that trick where you tell someone to pick a number, only it has to be between one and fifty and everyone picks thirty-seven because the rules make it so you-”
“Do you want to play 'think of a number'?” Nathan says, interrupting. “No rules, no limits, any number you like.”
“Okay, fine,” says Wade, pauses for a beat then raises his eyebrows. “Got it yet?”
Nathan finds the end of his patience. “Wade,” he says, “'pie' is not a number.”
“Shows how much attention you pay in maths,” crows Wade, “it is too a number! Three-point-one-something-to-do-with-circles...”
“That's not the kind of pie you were thinking of. You were thinking of the kind with pastry and...” Nathan pauses to concentrate, “pumpkin filling?”
Wade's mouth falls wide open. “Holy shit,” he manages after a few seconds of gaping.
In retrospect Nathan doesn't know how else he was expecting Wade to react. “Believe me now?”
“Holy shit. How'd you do that?”
“Like I was trying to explain,” Nathan says, very slowly, “I can read minds.”
“So, uh, is this, like, something you only realised you could do lately?” Oh please say yes, Wade thinks, over his barrier of natural skepticism only to hit the spike-pit of uncomfortable implications at speed, Shit, when was the last time I thought about having sex with him? All day, right, yeah, but only, like, sideways, it's almost like I wasn't thinking about it at all; if this is all some kind of trick I sure hope he's getting a good laugh out of it.
“It's something I've been able to do for most of my life,” Nathan admits. “I didn't-”
“You've been reading my mind? All this time?” Wade takes a step back, away from him. He knows? How can he know? He can't know! “You didn’t think that maybe that was something you should have mentioned before?”
“You have a tendency to think rather loudly.” Nathan puts his hand on Wade's arm in what he hopes will come across as reassuring and tries to sound calming. “Yes, Wade, I know. I've known all along. I didn't bring it up before because I didn't want to embarrass you. But the re-”
“That's so nice of you, Nate, 'cause this thing I'm feeling now – this has nothing to do with embarrassment,” Wade squeaks, edging away; Nathan is forced to turn his reassuring hand into a vice grip on Wade's arm just to stop him from bolting, hating the way Wade flinches against him.
“Wade, will you just let me finish? What I'm trying to say is that I don't mind that you think of me like that. I like it. I've been starting to feel the same way about you.” He hadn't meant to shout that part, but the way Wade's trying to shrink away from this conversation he's not sure anything else would have gotten through. He manages to pull a half smile and a shrug when Wade freezes up and stares at him. At least with that much out in the open this has to get easier.
He should really have known better than to expect Wade wouldn't find a way to surprise him.
“You – you what me?” Omigod – I – he – he's psychic and he keeps hearing me thinking about sex with him and now he thinks he likes me back – oh my god I mind-whammied him into thinking he likes me and I didn't even know I was doing it!
Nathan's smile slips off his face. “Wade, no, listen – it doesn't work that way.” How does Wade come up with this stuff?
“No, Nate, I just bet you woke up one day and decided you wanted the guy who kept flooding your head with how much he wanted to do you.” Not even the force of Nathan's hand on his arm can stop Wade's instinct to inch away.
“Oh for Pete's sake Wade,” Nathan growls, grappling to regain any kind of control of the situation, “you're not the first person to think of me like that or the first boy I've liked, do you really think you'd know how this works better than me?” But Wade's shaking his head, inching away under his hold; even with everything laid out for him he can’t even begin to comprehend a world where Nate could actually want him of his own free will; he just won't listen. “You've got it backwards, look, just let me show you...”
Wade stumbles back the moment Nathan releases his arm, but he doesn't get far before Nathan has his fingers pressed to Wade's temples, opening up their minds. He calls up the memory of what it had been like to meet Wade, how it felt to recognise the same person who'd all but written him off as a stuck up jerk was giving him a chance to prove himself better; his confusion that Wade wasn't getting over him as they got to know each other, his frustration with how little the Nathan in Wade's head had in common with the real thing; all those irrational bursts of jealousy, every guilty twinge of relief that washed over him whenever he saw Wade and felt that he still wanted him, everything he'd felt last night when he'd finally made sense out of his own feelings and been all but overwhelmed by how badly he wanted Wade back; he shows it all to Wade, jumbled into a seething mess of raw desire, but unmistakable in origin or intent, more honest than he knows any other way of being.
When he finishes Wade's looking at him with new eyes. That, or he's short circuited.
“Did that feel like I'm just reflecting back what you feel about me?” Nathan prompts.
Wade opens and closes his mouth soundlessly a couple of times before saying, “Nate? Might need a hand staying upright for a second here.”
“Oh, sorry.” Nathan grabs him under the armpits and feels some of Wade's weight sag into the support. “Please tell me I got through to you this time.” He's made such a godforsaken mess of this confession so far that if Wade hasn't gotten his point he's at the end of his ideas (and certainly there's nothing that could go wrong funnelling so much raw feeling into the head of someone with no experience processing other people's emotions, oh Mother Askani when did he become so bad at this?)
“Nate, you...” Wade breathes, eyes snapping back up to Nathan's, like he's only just remembered what they were talking about, then hesitates. “...you think that scar ridge in my nose makes it look kind of bent from an angle?”
Nathan winces. A few less relevant details had been bound to slip through, but even so, trust Wade to get sidetracked on trivialities. “Not the point, Wade.”
Wade tries again. “You want to see me naked?”
That was more like it. “You know what they say, you show me yours...”
“Me? I mean, me?” Wade sounds as though he could be stuck on this for a while. “You know about the skin it doesn't get any bett-”
“I know, Wade. It doesn't bother me, it never has. And that's still not the point.”
Wade hesitates again. “Did you really have a sexy dream about me weeks ago and you didn't realise it meant anything?”
Bigger wince. “I thought it was one of yours I'd picked up by accident. It can be harder to tell when you're asleep.”
“But you're sure this isn't-”
“Wade, if I hadn't spent the last few months listening to you thinking about how sure you were that I could never like you back, I might have figured this out a lot sooner.”
“Oh. So. You like, me huh?” If Wade had been aiming for flippant he misses it by a mile. He sounds like he's forgotten how to breathe. “Like, like me like me?
“Yeah,” Nathan admits. “I do. A lot.”
For a moment they both stand there like that, smiling at each other like idiots.
“Is this where you kiss me?” says Wade after a bit, tongue darting nervously over his lower lip. “Traditionally speaking, I mean, that would be the part we're up to, right?”
Nathan has no objection to this plan. “Well, we wouldn't want to break with tradition,” he says, and reaches his hands from where they've been resting under Wade's shoulders around his back to wrap around his body and pull him close.
The kiss is like and unlike what he'd expected, Wade's lips soft but a little dry. He shivers at the first touch, lips parting under Nathan's own, but otherwise he doesn't seem to know how to respond.
“This would also be where you're supposed to kiss me back,” Nathan whispers, lips a hair's breadth from Wade's own.
Wade squirms a little in his arms. “Don't take this the wrong way, but about ninety percent of me is still expecting my alarm clock to cut in any second.”
“You're not dreaming, Wade.”
“Easy for you to say, your best friend hasn't just revealed he reads minds and wants in your pants.”
“How about this then,” says Nathan, in a moment of inspiration, “if this was a dream, what would you do?”
Wade considers this for a second. The next, Nathan is flat on his back with a lapful of Wade, a state of affairs he'd be enjoying much more had he not just had the wind knocked halfway out of him, turning a startled laugh into a small coughing fit and ruining Wade's enthusiastic attempts to kiss him properly. None of this is helped when Wade manages to elbow him in the gut.
“Sorry,” says a rather sheepish Wade. “If this was a dream that would have gone better.”
“What a disappointment,” Nathan says, mostly done with the coughing.
“Smartass,” says Wade cheerfully. “So disappointing, yeah. Don't know how I'll cope.”
“Oh, I think you do.” Nathan curls a hand around the back of Wade's head and tugs him down. “How about we try this again.”
The third attempt goes much better, and they stay there a while, trading slow, closed-mouthed kisses on Nathan's bedroom floor. Wade still thrums with nerves, but after his first clumsy attempts go by without any knocked noses he stops concentrating so hard and gets a little bolder, opens his mouth a little more under Nathan's next kiss, then hesitates again. Am I doing this right? How soon are you supposed to go for the tongue? Wait, you know this one, there was that article in Seventeen you read that time you were stuck in that doctor's waiting room for an hour and there was nothing else to read so no-one could judge you for it. Though they could still judge you for the part where you're seriously trying to remember advice from a girly teen magazine now you're doing this for real oh crap forget it just follow Nate's lead...
Nathan smiles against his lips. Shh, he whispers into Wade's mind, you're doing fine. Just enjoy it.
Wade's face is suddenly a whole foot further away from Nathan and has the look of someone in the middle of experiencing a major revelation.
“That was you!” Wade squeaks. “In my head last night – that was you!”
Nathan feels his face heat up. Right. That. Caught up in the roller-coaster of Wade's reactions he'd practically forgotten all abut it. “Yeah, it was me,” he admits. “I was sort of building up to owning up about that. I'm sorry, I should never have barged in on you like that. I just... heard you thinking about me, and I got a bit carried away.”
“Sorry?” Wade sounds incredulous, “Nate, why would you be sorry... well, maybe you can be a little bit sorry for going full inception in my brain without even asking and making me think I'd climbed into that handbasket on my own, you jerk,” says Wade, whacking him on the shoulder.
Nathan raises his hands apologetically. “That's what I meant. And I'm more than a little sorry. Even if you were thinking about me, I know it wasn't fair on you for me to jump in on you like that.”
“Well, yeah, but I'll think 'a some way you can make it up to me,” says Wade. In his head he's trying out the idea of a Nate who's not just into him but so into him he can hardly keep his mind off him and that – oh yeah, that is something he could totally get used to. “What makes you think I couldn't like you, maybe the part where you never bothered to let me know you were gay and psychic and had some kinda voyeur thing going?”
“I don't usually,” says Nathan, losing most of his remaining hopes Wade might not have noticed him blushing under another flash of heat.
“So it's just with me, huh?” says Wade, enjoying himself.
“Just that one time, I promise.”
“Uh-huh, and all the rest of those times you never bothered to mention you had a subscription to the porn track up here?” Wade taps his head with a finger.
“In my defence, I was trying not to lead you on,” says Nathan. “That may have backfired a little.”
“A little,” Wade scoffs. “But Nate, seriously,” and now it's Wade's turn to be shy again, “y'know it's not like I would've said no if you did tell me, right? I knew there was something weird going on, it's never like that when I do it on my own. It explains so much if that was you and you were – you were,” the gesture Wade makes is abortive but unambiguous in meaning, “too, right?”
“Oh yeah,” says Nathan, with feeling.
“And you...” it takes a lot to leave Wade at a loss for words, but he cycles through several different ways of finishing this question without finding any he's comfortable saying aloud.
“Wade, after what I did last night, you are allowed to ask me if I got off thinking about you. The answer is yes, for the record. Yes, you have no idea. It's... never been like that for me before either.”
He'd honestly thought the answer would be self-evident, but the joyous sense of wonder he can feel spreading through Wade's mind is a clear sign he'd failed to account for just how much it was going to mean to him to know that not only did Nate do that, a thousand guilty fantasies were instantly validated because Nate had them too! Complete with the embarrassing secrets and the lousy impulse control! That was way beyond 'he likes me back', that was like the third base with the ball still in the air of he's-just-that-into-me.
Speaking of base-metaphors... Wait, if that was the real Nate and we both had happy endings... does that mean that was sex? Not sex-sex, but at least as sex as phone sex or cyber sex. Have you still lost your cherry if you didn't know you were doing it until after? Are you allowed to decide something was sex retroactively? Maybe it's the look on Nathan's face that does it, but it's at this point that it dawns on Wade that his new boyfriend reads minds, and he catches Nathan's eye in a way neither of them need to be psychic to interpret. You planning to weigh in on this one or are you just enjoying the view? This is important philosophical stuff we're dealing with.
When Wade's not having his universe rearranged he catches on fast.
We could do it again, Nathan thinks back, bringing his hands up to stroke gently over Wade's hips, Just to make sure it counts.
“Yeah?” gasps Wade, out loud, so sudden that Nathan might have laughed at him in any other circumstances.
“Tonight?” he suggests.
“Tonight's good for me,” says Wade quickly.
The question, what shall we do until then? hangs in the air between them, neither quite sure if voicing something that loaded would be a good idea. It doesn't take Nathan long to start wondering what to make of the fact they've effectively agreed to retreat to different houses to consummate their relationship. Mostly it seems safer just to go with it, even if they have sentenced themselves to a very long afternoon and the growing need to find something else to talk about before the shared anticipation can become a little too physical. Wade is thrilled and overjoyed and excited and overwhelmed and less than entirely certain where his feet have gone and still at least forty-eight hours short of really being able to believe he hasn't hallucinated all of this, not to mention barely a hair's breadth away from having to spend the rest of whatever they do do until then with either the least or most awkward boner of his life. He doesn't know whether he wants to rip all Nathan's clothes off right now or go lie down somewhere quiet for a while with a damp cloth on his head.
What he does have is enough questions burning in his head to fill a biography.
“So...” says Wade, sitting back a bit, “the whole psychic thing, how's that work anyway?”
Well, Nathan couldn't have asked for a much better opening than that. “It's more of a mutant thing.”
“You're a mind-reading mutant?” Wade is surprisingly okay with this. Sometimes people are mutants. It's a thing. Set up against the rest of what he's heard this afternoon, Nate being a mutant is practically mundane. “I thought mutants usually got stuff like, I dunno, metal claws or superstrength and stuff.”
“Telepathy's actually one of the more common manifestations,” Nathan explains, nudging Wade back. “Come on, off. I'll tell you all about it – but I'm not doing it lying on the floor.”
After that, with all possible complicating factors exhaustively dealt with, the mutant conversation goes as smoothly as Nathan had first imagined when they'd met, what feels like years before. It also succeeds in keeping them both distracted until well after Scott gets home, after which somehow or other they end up watching (most of) that DVD after all, but they do it with Wade leaning against Nathan's side and his head on Nathan's shoulder, the line of warmth that connects them commanding far more of his attention than anything that goes on on screen.
'Tonight' goes even better.
Having a boyfriend is definitely something Nathan's going to enjoy getting used to.
Just to really confuse the chapter order, I went and wrote not one but two short epilogues to this chapter. But the real chapter 7 is now live as well~
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 05:55 am (UTC)“You – you what me?” Omigod – I – he – he's psychic and he keeps hearing me thinking about sex with him and now he thinks he likes me back – oh my god I mind-whammied him into thinking he likes me and I didn't even know I was doing it!
Hahaha. Only Wade.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 03:39 pm (UTC)Hahaha. Only Wade.
Heh, poor Wade. No matter how much time Nate spends reading his mind, Wade is always going to go on finding ways to surprise him.
One more
Date: 2011-05-15 01:35 am (UTC)Another lurker right here who loves your C&DP stories, including the complete crack - Little Merman?!- and the weird dubcon stuff too: hope to see more from your soon...
:D
Re: One more
Date: 2011-05-16 03:46 am (UTC)and possibly some weird dubcon eventually too, we shall see how that turns out.