Original: "Fire and Ice" -- Slash
I know this needs WAY more editing, but I wanted to try and catch the superhero train before it was out of the station and over the hill.
Warnings: mild swears, too long, italics abuse, suggested salaciousness, boyz being clueless
"No, really, I don't need any help," Nick muttered under his breath, wrestling with the shrink wrap with his teeth and his left hand, while clutching at the towel wrapped around his waist with his right. "Thank you so much for offering, though."
He finally managed to extract a new tube, while glaring through sopping snow-white hair at his so-called teammate sitting oblivious in the Integrity League locker room. Wiping his eyes, he recognized PowerSurge. Oh, crap.
Shivering -- cold, he was always cold, why else would he keep boiling himself like a lobster? -- Nick quickly slathered himself down with lotion before trying to struggle into his skintight uniform. The general public never understood the many tribulations of a superhero; yanking full-body spandex over damp skin was near the top of Nick's personal list. What the hell was Surge doing over there?
Nick waved his hand and the obscuring steam coalesced into shards of ice, which hung glittering for a moment before falling to the floor. Surge was just sitting there in his boxers, staring at his calves and ... what? Zapping himself with small electric jolts?
Oh. Yeah. Stubble looked terrible under the uniforms. No wonder most superheroes went for the waxed look. Pity, that. (Nick had kind of a Thing for bears.) But judging from Surge's halo of electromagnetically-charged auburn curls, any body hair probably would turn him into a hard-muscled nuclear dandelion. Nick shivered again at the mental image, and not from cold this time. Hastily he checked that his towel was draped loosely enough to conceal any other embarrassing reaction.
He opened his locker and pulled on his garish blue Icepack tights. This might finally be his chance to talk to Surge about ... well, about that thing ... about a couple of weeks ago.
"Sorry, Icepack. This is gonna hurt." Large hands grabbing his wrists above the Nullifier clamps. A tingling heat, oh spirits, so warm, spreading up to his palms, spilling down his arms. "I promise it's not as bad as it feels."
Nick swallowed and pushed the memory away. He almost tapped his teammate's shoulder to get his attention, then remembered how much the big guy hated to be touched. Or spoken to. Or looked at. Especially by Icepack.
But hey, he was a superhero. He could freeze-dry the Medusoids, he could do this. Nick plonked himself down on the bench, and sent a brief flick of sleet against the back of Surge's neck.
Startled, the other man looked up. "Uh. Icepack. Sorry." He dropped his eyes immediately and inched away a little. "Didn't notice you. Ummm. " He pointed to the side of his head. "Earbuds. Sorry."
"Sorry." A sharp jolt of heat, and the clamps spring open. The familiar clarity of powers returning. The overwhelming awareness of luxurious warmth from behind. "Hey, Icepack, you okay?" Swaying back for just a moment, leaning into that irresistible thrum. A hand cups his cheek. A little cry of sheer pleasure escapes his lips. "Oh jeez. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." The hand is abruptly removed, and he is shoved upright and away.
"What music you got?" Could Nick be any more pathetic in his eagerness to avoid that other topic? Without thinking, he leaned over to yank one of the bright red devices from Surge's ear. The other man flinched away, and the earbud fell between them. Nick could hear a tinny voice reciting "...fails to take into account the fact that both photons and electrons can be polarized, which is to say that their orientation in space and time..."
"Dude. That's not the Fanboy Five."
Surge pulled out the other earbud and stuffed the pair under the red-and-black spandex piled at his feet. "Umm. Electromagnetic theory. Trying to... you know, get some control over my powers. I thought..."
Nick was pretty impressed. It wasn't like he had ever bothered to study up on thermodynamics after Granny Nan pulled him off that ice floe, bleached his hair, and marked him as her mortal vessel. "That's heavy stuff. Helped any?"
"Not really, but... Well. You all seem so, I dunno, smart and competent and stuff. Me, I'm just Dave the Maintenance Guy. At least until I rammed that forklift into the Undermind's Quantum Tropulator a couple of months ago, and it fell on me, and you know..." He shrugged. "I ended up here."
"Sheesh. You make it sound like some kind of accident. You were a hero, dude, even before you got powers. How could Cardinal Virtue NOT invite you into the League when you saved all of our butts? Not for the last time, either." Nice segue, Nick.
Wonder of wonders, Surge actually made eye contact with Nick -- how can such pretty blue eyes be so warm? -- if only for a moment. "Yeah, well, Sparkling says..." He trailed off and looked terribly uncomfortable.
Sparkling, huh? Well, that's hardly a shock. Except of the kind that Surge might administer. But Nick couldn't blame him; with her golden hair and eyes, turquoise skin, and Amazonian build, Sparkling had made even Nick consider turning straight once or twice. Except that she and the League leader were joined at the hip, and probably other places, too. "You know that Sparkling and C.V. have a Thing going, don't you?"
"A thing? Oh. I didn't mean that. She's not my type. At all." Surge got very interested in the floor all of a sudden. "I just... Well, she's in charge of my training. What with our powers being kinda similar. And..."
Nick tried to figure out what held Surge's attention. Sure, the guy had nice feet, big and strong and not too hairy, but they weren't that fascinating.
"...sometimes I really HATE my powers, y'know?" the other man mumbled, so low that Nick could barely hear.
Oh. That one. The obligatory superhero angst. O woe, I am forever doomed to help humanity that hates and fears me! Nick sighed. Looked like it was his turn to get the newbie through the crisis point. "Yeah, I hear you, dude. We all feel that way sometimes, that it would be so much easier to be a regular human."
Obviously, this was a day for miracles, because Surge looked at him again, for ten whole seconds this time. "You do? But... You're so good at this stuff. I've watched you. Uh, observed you. In training, I mean. You use the whole ice thing like it's second nature."
"Second nature?" Nick laughed. "Yeah, I guess it is. I mean, I was only two when Granny Nan -- that's Nanoq Agyrapaq, my spirit guide -- found me. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful, she saved my life and all, but well, I never fit into the tribe after that, you know? And she acts like she owns me, sometimes. She's still pissed about me joining the League."
"But you're a hero!" Surge protested.
"I'm not supposed to be a hero. I'm supposed to be a healer. That's what I was doing in the Lower Forty-Eight in the first place, studying medicine to become a better shaman. To skip ahead in the Origin Story recap, that whole Cosmic Comet caper went down, I got mixed up in the big boss fight and, well, here I am." Nick boffed Surge on the shoulder, and tried to ignore the tingling wash of heat. "Not much Granny Nan can do about it but bitch at me. But d'you know what the worst part is?"
Surge shook his head mutely, his eyes still round with shock from the friendly punch. Sheesh, we're teammates, he could at least pretend to get along!
Nick pushed aside his All-About-Me-ism and leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially, "The cold."
"The ... cold? But ..."
"I know, I know." Nick held up his hands, laughing. "It's my whole deal, right? Freeze-blasts, ice-slides, all of that? Granny Nan gave me the siku power, but she forgot to reset my own personal thermostat. So I'm always surrounded by these Arctic temperatures, and they can't hurt me, but holy crap am I COLD. All the time. Why do you think I'm always taking such long hot showers?"
"Wow. That must suck." Surge shook his head in sympathy. "That , umm, whaddyacallit, 'icicle' power..."
"Siku. It means 'sea ice.' I wanted that for my code name, but the Hoaxster -- I know he's a founding member of the League, but jeez, what a jerk -- kept calling me 'Sicko', so I went for Icepack instead."
"I hear him call you 'Sixpack', sometimes." For some reason Surge blushed bright red, a color that clashed pretty badly with his hair, then explained, "He calls me 'LightningBug.' And 'PowderPuff.'"
"Like I said, a real prick." Nick had hoped that their little heart-to-heart (along with shared loathing of the Avenging Asshat) would have led to some manly bonding, even if it was in a totally het way. Surge still looked glum, though. "So anyways, you've only been at this whole superhero gig for a few months. Ignore what Sparkling says. She takes her alien ambassador role just a bit too seriously, y'know?"
"Yeah, but..." Surge wiped his hands on his shorts and looked away. "She's right. It's different for me. It's my ... my teammates that I'm hurting, okay?" There was real agony in Surge's voice; the need to ease it almost froze Nick solid. "Sparkling says ... and she's right ... that if SHE can manipulate the spectrum from X-rays to ultraviolet, I could at least manage not to shock people unconscious every time I touch them."
Huh? "Do what to who now?"
"Oh, c'mon now, Icepack. You know." Surge scooted even further away along the bench, hunching his shoulders. "The way I give people a nasty electric shock every time I make skin contact. Everybody hates it. Even when ... when I was ... deactivating Dr. Zero's Nullifiers. A couple of weeks ago. The whole team bitched about it. Damn it, you even passed out from the pain." He curled up into himself a little more.
Aw, crap. "You thought... you think that your touch hurts me?" Nick asked carefully.
"You don't have to pretend. It was just for a few seconds. I didn't ... I didn't tell anybody. "
Nick took a deep breath. "You didn't hurt me, Surge. I ... reacted that way because your touch feels so good."
Surge shook his head in denial.
"I'm serious. Whenever you touch me, it sort of ... tingles all over. It makes me feel warm. Warm like I haven't felt in twenty years." Nick smiled, and just let it all pour out. "I don't know if it's the way our powers interact, or if it's ... something else, but I swear by all my ancestors if you'd let me I'd just crawl inside you and never leave. It feels that incredibly freaking good." A-a-and please just let me shut up now before my babbling gets me beaten up, or worse, laughed at.
Surge wasn't laughing. In fact he was staring, kind of slack-jawed. "You... you liked it when I touched you?"
"Liked it? It's like hot chocolate and fresh-baked bread and a roaring fire under a bearskin rug. Hell yeah, I like it." Oh, great. Now he'll be afraid to be alone with me. Smooth moves, 'Sixpack'. "It's okay. I mean, this is my issue, not yours. I just ... didn't want you to think that you had hurt me. You know, for the good of the team and all that. "
"You like it when I touch you." Surge repeated, apparently still stuck on the concept. "You like it when I touch you." He raised a hand, then abruptly stilled. "Maybe that was, I don't know, maybe an after-effect of the Nullifier. Maybe it would hurt you now."
Huh. "Maybe," Nick said cautiously. "We could test it. You know. You could try touching me again. Somewhere ... not essential for combat, maybe." Might as well bait for a seal as for a salmon. He sketched a frame of ice around his lower face, then shattered it. "Someplace, maybe, like here."
"Maybe." Surge held his gaze.
Nick held his breath.
The big man slowly lifted one tentative finger and stroked Nick's lower lip. Oh, bright shimmering Lights of the North, that felt so good. Nick struggled to keep from groaning, and sucked the finger into his mouth, rolling his tongue around it, tasting all the sweet humming heat of it.
Surge's eyes went dark. "You ... it's okay if you call me Dave, you know. My name. When we're ... when we're not out fighting bad guys, or something."
"Mmmm. Nick," Nick offered indistinctly, still licking.
"Nick. Yeah. That's nice." Surge -- Dave -- leaned in a little further. "You know how I said that Sparkling wasn't my type?" Nick nodded, suppressing a grin."That's 'cause my type is human. And little. And black-eyed. And, uh, male."
Well, Nick thought, right before his brain started melting, good thing I opened that new tube of lotion.
Warnings: mild swears, too long, italics abuse, suggested salaciousness, boyz being clueless
"No, really, I don't need any help," Nick muttered under his breath, wrestling with the shrink wrap with his teeth and his left hand, while clutching at the towel wrapped around his waist with his right. "Thank you so much for offering, though."
He finally managed to extract a new tube, while glaring through sopping snow-white hair at his so-called teammate sitting oblivious in the Integrity League locker room. Wiping his eyes, he recognized PowerSurge. Oh, crap.
Shivering -- cold, he was always cold, why else would he keep boiling himself like a lobster? -- Nick quickly slathered himself down with lotion before trying to struggle into his skintight uniform. The general public never understood the many tribulations of a superhero; yanking full-body spandex over damp skin was near the top of Nick's personal list. What the hell was Surge doing over there?
Nick waved his hand and the obscuring steam coalesced into shards of ice, which hung glittering for a moment before falling to the floor. Surge was just sitting there in his boxers, staring at his calves and ... what? Zapping himself with small electric jolts?
Oh. Yeah. Stubble looked terrible under the uniforms. No wonder most superheroes went for the waxed look. Pity, that. (Nick had kind of a Thing for bears.) But judging from Surge's halo of electromagnetically-charged auburn curls, any body hair probably would turn him into a hard-muscled nuclear dandelion. Nick shivered again at the mental image, and not from cold this time. Hastily he checked that his towel was draped loosely enough to conceal any other embarrassing reaction.
He opened his locker and pulled on his garish blue Icepack tights. This might finally be his chance to talk to Surge about ... well, about that thing ... about a couple of weeks ago.
"Sorry, Icepack. This is gonna hurt." Large hands grabbing his wrists above the Nullifier clamps. A tingling heat, oh spirits, so warm, spreading up to his palms, spilling down his arms. "I promise it's not as bad as it feels."
Nick swallowed and pushed the memory away. He almost tapped his teammate's shoulder to get his attention, then remembered how much the big guy hated to be touched. Or spoken to. Or looked at. Especially by Icepack.
But hey, he was a superhero. He could freeze-dry the Medusoids, he could do this. Nick plonked himself down on the bench, and sent a brief flick of sleet against the back of Surge's neck.
Startled, the other man looked up. "Uh. Icepack. Sorry." He dropped his eyes immediately and inched away a little. "Didn't notice you. Ummm. " He pointed to the side of his head. "Earbuds. Sorry."
"Sorry." A sharp jolt of heat, and the clamps spring open. The familiar clarity of powers returning. The overwhelming awareness of luxurious warmth from behind. "Hey, Icepack, you okay?" Swaying back for just a moment, leaning into that irresistible thrum. A hand cups his cheek. A little cry of sheer pleasure escapes his lips. "Oh jeez. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." The hand is abruptly removed, and he is shoved upright and away.
"What music you got?" Could Nick be any more pathetic in his eagerness to avoid that other topic? Without thinking, he leaned over to yank one of the bright red devices from Surge's ear. The other man flinched away, and the earbud fell between them. Nick could hear a tinny voice reciting "...fails to take into account the fact that both photons and electrons can be polarized, which is to say that their orientation in space and time..."
"Dude. That's not the Fanboy Five."
Surge pulled out the other earbud and stuffed the pair under the red-and-black spandex piled at his feet. "Umm. Electromagnetic theory. Trying to... you know, get some control over my powers. I thought..."
Nick was pretty impressed. It wasn't like he had ever bothered to study up on thermodynamics after Granny Nan pulled him off that ice floe, bleached his hair, and marked him as her mortal vessel. "That's heavy stuff. Helped any?"
"Not really, but... Well. You all seem so, I dunno, smart and competent and stuff. Me, I'm just Dave the Maintenance Guy. At least until I rammed that forklift into the Undermind's Quantum Tropulator a couple of months ago, and it fell on me, and you know..." He shrugged. "I ended up here."
"Sheesh. You make it sound like some kind of accident. You were a hero, dude, even before you got powers. How could Cardinal Virtue NOT invite you into the League when you saved all of our butts? Not for the last time, either." Nice segue, Nick.
Wonder of wonders, Surge actually made eye contact with Nick -- how can such pretty blue eyes be so warm? -- if only for a moment. "Yeah, well, Sparkling says..." He trailed off and looked terribly uncomfortable.
Sparkling, huh? Well, that's hardly a shock. Except of the kind that Surge might administer. But Nick couldn't blame him; with her golden hair and eyes, turquoise skin, and Amazonian build, Sparkling had made even Nick consider turning straight once or twice. Except that she and the League leader were joined at the hip, and probably other places, too. "You know that Sparkling and C.V. have a Thing going, don't you?"
"A thing? Oh. I didn't mean that. She's not my type. At all." Surge got very interested in the floor all of a sudden. "I just... Well, she's in charge of my training. What with our powers being kinda similar. And..."
Nick tried to figure out what held Surge's attention. Sure, the guy had nice feet, big and strong and not too hairy, but they weren't that fascinating.
"...sometimes I really HATE my powers, y'know?" the other man mumbled, so low that Nick could barely hear.
Oh. That one. The obligatory superhero angst. O woe, I am forever doomed to help humanity that hates and fears me! Nick sighed. Looked like it was his turn to get the newbie through the crisis point. "Yeah, I hear you, dude. We all feel that way sometimes, that it would be so much easier to be a regular human."
Obviously, this was a day for miracles, because Surge looked at him again, for ten whole seconds this time. "You do? But... You're so good at this stuff. I've watched you. Uh, observed you. In training, I mean. You use the whole ice thing like it's second nature."
"Second nature?" Nick laughed. "Yeah, I guess it is. I mean, I was only two when Granny Nan -- that's Nanoq Agyrapaq, my spirit guide -- found me. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful, she saved my life and all, but well, I never fit into the tribe after that, you know? And she acts like she owns me, sometimes. She's still pissed about me joining the League."
"But you're a hero!" Surge protested.
"I'm not supposed to be a hero. I'm supposed to be a healer. That's what I was doing in the Lower Forty-Eight in the first place, studying medicine to become a better shaman. To skip ahead in the Origin Story recap, that whole Cosmic Comet caper went down, I got mixed up in the big boss fight and, well, here I am." Nick boffed Surge on the shoulder, and tried to ignore the tingling wash of heat. "Not much Granny Nan can do about it but bitch at me. But d'you know what the worst part is?"
Surge shook his head mutely, his eyes still round with shock from the friendly punch. Sheesh, we're teammates, he could at least pretend to get along!
Nick pushed aside his All-About-Me-ism and leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially, "The cold."
"The ... cold? But ..."
"I know, I know." Nick held up his hands, laughing. "It's my whole deal, right? Freeze-blasts, ice-slides, all of that? Granny Nan gave me the siku power, but she forgot to reset my own personal thermostat. So I'm always surrounded by these Arctic temperatures, and they can't hurt me, but holy crap am I COLD. All the time. Why do you think I'm always taking such long hot showers?"
"Wow. That must suck." Surge shook his head in sympathy. "That , umm, whaddyacallit, 'icicle' power..."
"Siku. It means 'sea ice.' I wanted that for my code name, but the Hoaxster -- I know he's a founding member of the League, but jeez, what a jerk -- kept calling me 'Sicko', so I went for Icepack instead."
"I hear him call you 'Sixpack', sometimes." For some reason Surge blushed bright red, a color that clashed pretty badly with his hair, then explained, "He calls me 'LightningBug.' And 'PowderPuff.'"
"Like I said, a real prick." Nick had hoped that their little heart-to-heart (along with shared loathing of the Avenging Asshat) would have led to some manly bonding, even if it was in a totally het way. Surge still looked glum, though. "So anyways, you've only been at this whole superhero gig for a few months. Ignore what Sparkling says. She takes her alien ambassador role just a bit too seriously, y'know?"
"Yeah, but..." Surge wiped his hands on his shorts and looked away. "She's right. It's different for me. It's my ... my teammates that I'm hurting, okay?" There was real agony in Surge's voice; the need to ease it almost froze Nick solid. "Sparkling says ... and she's right ... that if SHE can manipulate the spectrum from X-rays to ultraviolet, I could at least manage not to shock people unconscious every time I touch them."
Huh? "Do what to who now?"
"Oh, c'mon now, Icepack. You know." Surge scooted even further away along the bench, hunching his shoulders. "The way I give people a nasty electric shock every time I make skin contact. Everybody hates it. Even when ... when I was ... deactivating Dr. Zero's Nullifiers. A couple of weeks ago. The whole team bitched about it. Damn it, you even passed out from the pain." He curled up into himself a little more.
Aw, crap. "You thought... you think that your touch hurts me?" Nick asked carefully.
"You don't have to pretend. It was just for a few seconds. I didn't ... I didn't tell anybody. "
Nick took a deep breath. "You didn't hurt me, Surge. I ... reacted that way because your touch feels so good."
Surge shook his head in denial.
"I'm serious. Whenever you touch me, it sort of ... tingles all over. It makes me feel warm. Warm like I haven't felt in twenty years." Nick smiled, and just let it all pour out. "I don't know if it's the way our powers interact, or if it's ... something else, but I swear by all my ancestors if you'd let me I'd just crawl inside you and never leave. It feels that incredibly freaking good." A-a-and please just let me shut up now before my babbling gets me beaten up, or worse, laughed at.
Surge wasn't laughing. In fact he was staring, kind of slack-jawed. "You... you liked it when I touched you?"
"Liked it? It's like hot chocolate and fresh-baked bread and a roaring fire under a bearskin rug. Hell yeah, I like it." Oh, great. Now he'll be afraid to be alone with me. Smooth moves, 'Sixpack'. "It's okay. I mean, this is my issue, not yours. I just ... didn't want you to think that you had hurt me. You know, for the good of the team and all that. "
"You like it when I touch you." Surge repeated, apparently still stuck on the concept. "You like it when I touch you." He raised a hand, then abruptly stilled. "Maybe that was, I don't know, maybe an after-effect of the Nullifier. Maybe it would hurt you now."
Huh. "Maybe," Nick said cautiously. "We could test it. You know. You could try touching me again. Somewhere ... not essential for combat, maybe." Might as well bait for a seal as for a salmon. He sketched a frame of ice around his lower face, then shattered it. "Someplace, maybe, like here."
"Maybe." Surge held his gaze.
Nick held his breath.
The big man slowly lifted one tentative finger and stroked Nick's lower lip. Oh, bright shimmering Lights of the North, that felt so good. Nick struggled to keep from groaning, and sucked the finger into his mouth, rolling his tongue around it, tasting all the sweet humming heat of it.
Surge's eyes went dark. "You ... it's okay if you call me Dave, you know. My name. When we're ... when we're not out fighting bad guys, or something."
"Mmmm. Nick," Nick offered indistinctly, still licking.
"Nick. Yeah. That's nice." Surge -- Dave -- leaned in a little further. "You know how I said that Sparkling wasn't my type?" Nick nodded, suppressing a grin."That's 'cause my type is human. And little. And black-eyed. And, uh, male."
Well, Nick thought, right before his brain started melting, good thing I opened that new tube of lotion.