[Cable & Deadpool] Summers'son bonus scene
Here's yet another random bonus scene from Summers'son while I dither about finishing that last 'real' chapter (whatever that means with a plot that jumps from AU to AU as much as this does. About all I can promise at this point is that it makes sense in my head. >.> )
To my own mind Summers'son has always been less of a true high school AU than a "suppose Wade was a regular mutant and Nate could read his mind" AU with Awkward Teenage Shenanigans added for emphasis - or, taking that perspective a step further, “The tale of how Nate being able to read Wade's mind only made everything about getting to know each other much more complicated for both of them.“ To show my working on that latter point, here's how I envisage Nate and Wade's first meeting would have gone had Wade kept his canonical resistance to telepathy. We pick up our story from the part where Nathan is sitting out his gym class with a volleyball-induced headache.
The meditation exercise works unusually well, especially considering the volume of background noise around this place. So well he doesn't notice anyone approaching until there's a bottle full of water being stuck in his face.
Nathan glances up and finds himself looking into a face covered in a grotesquely fascinating network of scar tissue. The hand holding the bottle out to him is coated in more of the same. None of which matters in any way whatsoever in the face of the discovery that he can't read a single thing from the other boy's mind.
He's halfway backwards out of his seat before it sinks in that if an attack was coming it he'd already know. No-one who meant him harm would have wasted that opening, so the stranger has, albeit by the most unsettling route possible, effectively proven himself free of ill intent simply by allowing Nathan long enough to notice him. The odds of a mutant with telepathic talent on the level for a perfect mind-screen turning up at his new school by pure chance seem unimaginable, but then again, telepathy is among the more common mutant abilities, so logic would dictate it's not beyond all possibility. What's painfully obvious is that anyone with the power to block Nathan out so completely couldn't have missed him trying to find a way in. Two days here and already his cover is blown.
"Sheesh, you never seen a bottle of water before?" says a voice, coming, Nathan realises, from the other boy. "Whadya do when the Evian truck drives by, piss yourself up a tree?"
Oh. If this guy really does mean no harm, then that reaction Nathan had just now probably looked a little extreme. It's a bit late for him to play it coy, though. "You startled me," he admits, with a grimace. "Sorry, I wasn't expecting to meet another mutant here."
If he'd hoped this would diffuse the situation, the look on the other boy's face at being called a mutant says it's backfired spectacularly. "The hell? It's a skin condition, smartarse! Not the next step in effing human evolution."
"I didn't..." Nathan starts, and it's only the fear of committing a third faux pas in a row that stops him again. Why on earth would anyone bother to lie about something so self-evident? But if he's not lying, if he honestly doesn't know, then how...?
Nathan gives in. He's in no state to navigate whatever quagmire he's blundered into here. If this is all some enemy plot to mess with him he could do worse than play along. "I didn't mean... Look, sorry, I'm a bit out of it right now. Can I try this again?" He summons something that perhaps qualifies as a smile, rights himself and reaches for the water. "Thanks for this. I could really use something to drink."
His benefactor shrugs but doesn't budge as Nathan takes a long drink. He's probably sticking around to see if he's going to dig himself any deeper. Nathan figures he should still probably make an effort to be polite - he is feeling better for the drink.
"Nathan Summers," he says, holding out a hand and trying to look grateful. "I, uh, I already said sorry, didn't I?"
"Twice." The other boy gives his hand a long stare, which is Nathan's first reminder that no-one else he's met in his own age group has bothered shaking hands. "But don't let that stop you, there's still time to dissolve into a gibbering heap and back-pedal madly over what you really meant to say about my face."
Nathan winces. "You get that a lot, don't you? For what it's worth, I promise I usually make a better first impression."
The boy shrugs again. "I'm Wade Wilson," he says, putting his hand in Nathan's. "Don't sweat it, 'least you're original. Can't remember the last time someone called me a mutant. Most people go straight for 'is it contagious?'"
He'd definitely waited until their hands were touching to drop that one into conversation, Nathan decides. He's not falling for it. "How often do you tell them it is?" he asks, letting his mouth quirk up around the corners.
"Only if they're pissing me off," says Wade, effortlessly casual. "Which is pretty often, so."
Nathan realises he's still just holding Wade's hand, so he gives it a quick shake and lets go. The sense memory of the texture of Wade's skin is going to be with him a while, and if that is a 'skin condition', then Nathan is a Martian. He wonders if there's some sort of general rule in this century about how long you're supposed to know someone before you drop, nothing personal, but whoever it was told you you weren't a mutant was a quack - trust me, I know what I'm talking about, into conversation. He's probably going to have to ask Scott. That and whether he's ever heard of anyone who could pull off a perfect telepathic mind-screen on instinct alone.
"So, Nate," Wade says, "since we're sharing awkward personal details here, does the thought of volleyball always make you this eloquent?"
[etc]
From there we would be more or less back on script, until the following day, when this happens:
***
If Nathan had come away from his first encounter with Wade with a hasty resolution to be more careful where he dropped the 'm' word into conversation, then Wade shows his appreciation by leaving barely more than a day before sending it all to waste. He catches Nathan on his way to the cafeteria just after the lunch bell, looking pleased with himself in a way that sets off alarm bells in Nathan's head before he's even got as far as remembering that Wade is very likely the one person in the entire school capable of surprising him.
"Hey, Nate!" he says, scampering up. "You ever hear of something called 'fridge logic'?"
"Fridge logic?" Nathan echoes, wondering if he might have misheard.
"It's all that stuff that doesn't hit you until ten minutes after you turn off the TV while you're standing in your kitchen wondering who ate all the leftover turkey. Then suddenly you're going, wait one damn second here, how did he get to LA that fast if he was in Kentucky when the helicopter blew up? And if Joe and Jane weren't talking to each other all week, how did the sniper know to look for a guy in a purple hat? You know? Those things you don't spot when you're caught up in the excitement, then later bam, you're leaping out of the bath and running naked down the street yelling it was lupus all along!"
"Ah?" Nathan tells himself that asking Wade to clarify where the fridge comes into that would only demonstrate that he's missed the point.
"But sometimes," says Wade, "it works for real life stuff too! Like yesterday, this new guy called me a mutie and-"
"I definitely said 'mutant'."
"-and I got so caught up tearing him a new one it was hours before I stopped and thought about how what he said was 'another mutant'. Which means either he musta found some other mutant around here who I never did in all my years in this joint, oooooor... he's a mutant."
Nathan comes to a stop. Oh well, it's the least of all his secrets, Wade has him dead right and if he has to tell one more lie he'll likely choke on it. "Ah. That's very astute of you."
"I'm right, aren't I?" Wade looks positively triumphant.
Nathan gives him a small nod, and the surrounding crowd a quick scan for anyone who might have overheard. Fortunately, with a few hundred other conversations going on around them their own hasn't carried far. "I'm going to have to ask you to keep that quiet," he says. "I'm supposed to be keeping a low profile."
"I knew it! So? What's your mutant thing?“ Wade's bad reaction to the subject yesterday could only have been because he hadn't understood. Today there's no mistaking that meeting a real mutant is the coolest thing that's happened to him all year.
Nathan can definitely work with that. "I have your word you won't share this?"
"Course! Cross my heart and swear on my grandmother's gravy."
Nathan beckons him forward and leans in conspiratorially close. "I can read minds."
Wade jerks back half an inch, eyes wide.
"But not yours, for some reason," Nathan finishes, enjoying this despite himself. "You want the truth: that's why I thought you were a mutant. The only time that's ever happened before is with other psychic mutants."
Wade gapes at him for several seconds before his brain starts up again. Taking a step back, he folds his arms. "Hang on, hang on, your mutant power just happens to be something you can't prove for me?"
He's got a point; fortunately, Nathan has a fallback plan. "It's not my only power. But if you want to see what else I can do, we'll have to go somewhere with less of an audience." Once upon a time he would have just levitated a pencil, but with his TO gone and his internal calibration an embarrassing mess, the odds of that ending well aren't good.
"Kay, I'm game," says Wade. "C'mon, I know somewhere we can use."
***
As promised, their only company on this side of the school building is an overflowing dumpster. Nathan finds an empty bottle, holds it up for Wade to see, then stands it on the ground and steps back. "Ready?"
A couple of seconds later a tinkling noise from the far side of the car park means the bottle has touched down again. Not where he was aiming, but he got the direction right and it didn't smash until touchdown, so there's that.
Wade whoops in delight. "Whoa, that was awesome! Do it again!"
The second bottle - plastic this time - lands on a roof over the fence. The third goes almost straight up and has Wade jumping around like a man on hot coals to avoid it on the way down. Nathan still feels like he's trying to juggle grains of sand in heavy gloves every time, but he has to admit he's having fun for once, if only for the sheer joy Wade is getting out of his demonstration.
"Can you do bigger stuff?" Wade wants to know.
"Not if we don't want anyone noticing."
"How big?"
Nathan finds himself eyeing the dumpster again. "Still figuring that out."
"Aw, come on! What's the biggest thing you've ever moved?"
Nathan shrugs. "Used to be I couldn't lift my own weight. These days..." He hasn't been this tempted to experiment since he got here, but now he's got someone to show off to all of a sudden the rules have changed. "All right, come on, if I'm going to make this much noise we're going to need a head start."
With them both peering back at the dumpster from around the nearest corner, Nathan leans his mind against it and gives it a shove. The whole bin see-saws up on its far corner, hovers like that for an infinite moment, then comes crashing back down again with an ear-splitting bang. Nathan has to elbow Wade several times before he remembers they're supposed to be walking nonchalantly in the opposite direction - not running through his entire vocabulary of synonyms for 'amazing'.
It's while they're on their way back that Wade suddenly asks, "So... how do you know if you're a mutant? Like, for sure?"
Nathan congratulates himself for a job well done.
***
Since I am officially leaving this one there, just to briefly clarify the other obvious question about how things go for them in this universe: since Nate can't read Wade's mind and doesn't have the faintest idea Wade's into him, after they've known each other a little longer he doesn't think anything of letting it slip in conversation that he's into boys. From there, getting themselves together is far simpler than it could ever have been had the usual rules applied, but we wouldn't have had much of a story worth telling. (Well. Even less of one than I had to begin with.)
To my own mind Summers'son has always been less of a true high school AU than a "suppose Wade was a regular mutant and Nate could read his mind" AU with Awkward Teenage Shenanigans added for emphasis - or, taking that perspective a step further, “The tale of how Nate being able to read Wade's mind only made everything about getting to know each other much more complicated for both of them.“ To show my working on that latter point, here's how I envisage Nate and Wade's first meeting would have gone had Wade kept his canonical resistance to telepathy. We pick up our story from the part where Nathan is sitting out his gym class with a volleyball-induced headache.
The meditation exercise works unusually well, especially considering the volume of background noise around this place. So well he doesn't notice anyone approaching until there's a bottle full of water being stuck in his face.
Nathan glances up and finds himself looking into a face covered in a grotesquely fascinating network of scar tissue. The hand holding the bottle out to him is coated in more of the same. None of which matters in any way whatsoever in the face of the discovery that he can't read a single thing from the other boy's mind.
He's halfway backwards out of his seat before it sinks in that if an attack was coming it he'd already know. No-one who meant him harm would have wasted that opening, so the stranger has, albeit by the most unsettling route possible, effectively proven himself free of ill intent simply by allowing Nathan long enough to notice him. The odds of a mutant with telepathic talent on the level for a perfect mind-screen turning up at his new school by pure chance seem unimaginable, but then again, telepathy is among the more common mutant abilities, so logic would dictate it's not beyond all possibility. What's painfully obvious is that anyone with the power to block Nathan out so completely couldn't have missed him trying to find a way in. Two days here and already his cover is blown.
"Sheesh, you never seen a bottle of water before?" says a voice, coming, Nathan realises, from the other boy. "Whadya do when the Evian truck drives by, piss yourself up a tree?"
Oh. If this guy really does mean no harm, then that reaction Nathan had just now probably looked a little extreme. It's a bit late for him to play it coy, though. "You startled me," he admits, with a grimace. "Sorry, I wasn't expecting to meet another mutant here."
If he'd hoped this would diffuse the situation, the look on the other boy's face at being called a mutant says it's backfired spectacularly. "The hell? It's a skin condition, smartarse! Not the next step in effing human evolution."
"I didn't..." Nathan starts, and it's only the fear of committing a third faux pas in a row that stops him again. Why on earth would anyone bother to lie about something so self-evident? But if he's not lying, if he honestly doesn't know, then how...?
Nathan gives in. He's in no state to navigate whatever quagmire he's blundered into here. If this is all some enemy plot to mess with him he could do worse than play along. "I didn't mean... Look, sorry, I'm a bit out of it right now. Can I try this again?" He summons something that perhaps qualifies as a smile, rights himself and reaches for the water. "Thanks for this. I could really use something to drink."
His benefactor shrugs but doesn't budge as Nathan takes a long drink. He's probably sticking around to see if he's going to dig himself any deeper. Nathan figures he should still probably make an effort to be polite - he is feeling better for the drink.
"Nathan Summers," he says, holding out a hand and trying to look grateful. "I, uh, I already said sorry, didn't I?"
"Twice." The other boy gives his hand a long stare, which is Nathan's first reminder that no-one else he's met in his own age group has bothered shaking hands. "But don't let that stop you, there's still time to dissolve into a gibbering heap and back-pedal madly over what you really meant to say about my face."
Nathan winces. "You get that a lot, don't you? For what it's worth, I promise I usually make a better first impression."
The boy shrugs again. "I'm Wade Wilson," he says, putting his hand in Nathan's. "Don't sweat it, 'least you're original. Can't remember the last time someone called me a mutant. Most people go straight for 'is it contagious?'"
He'd definitely waited until their hands were touching to drop that one into conversation, Nathan decides. He's not falling for it. "How often do you tell them it is?" he asks, letting his mouth quirk up around the corners.
"Only if they're pissing me off," says Wade, effortlessly casual. "Which is pretty often, so."
Nathan realises he's still just holding Wade's hand, so he gives it a quick shake and lets go. The sense memory of the texture of Wade's skin is going to be with him a while, and if that is a 'skin condition', then Nathan is a Martian. He wonders if there's some sort of general rule in this century about how long you're supposed to know someone before you drop, nothing personal, but whoever it was told you you weren't a mutant was a quack - trust me, I know what I'm talking about, into conversation. He's probably going to have to ask Scott. That and whether he's ever heard of anyone who could pull off a perfect telepathic mind-screen on instinct alone.
"So, Nate," Wade says, "since we're sharing awkward personal details here, does the thought of volleyball always make you this eloquent?"
[etc]
From there we would be more or less back on script, until the following day, when this happens:
***
If Nathan had come away from his first encounter with Wade with a hasty resolution to be more careful where he dropped the 'm' word into conversation, then Wade shows his appreciation by leaving barely more than a day before sending it all to waste. He catches Nathan on his way to the cafeteria just after the lunch bell, looking pleased with himself in a way that sets off alarm bells in Nathan's head before he's even got as far as remembering that Wade is very likely the one person in the entire school capable of surprising him.
"Hey, Nate!" he says, scampering up. "You ever hear of something called 'fridge logic'?"
"Fridge logic?" Nathan echoes, wondering if he might have misheard.
"It's all that stuff that doesn't hit you until ten minutes after you turn off the TV while you're standing in your kitchen wondering who ate all the leftover turkey. Then suddenly you're going, wait one damn second here, how did he get to LA that fast if he was in Kentucky when the helicopter blew up? And if Joe and Jane weren't talking to each other all week, how did the sniper know to look for a guy in a purple hat? You know? Those things you don't spot when you're caught up in the excitement, then later bam, you're leaping out of the bath and running naked down the street yelling it was lupus all along!"
"Ah?" Nathan tells himself that asking Wade to clarify where the fridge comes into that would only demonstrate that he's missed the point.
"But sometimes," says Wade, "it works for real life stuff too! Like yesterday, this new guy called me a mutie and-"
"I definitely said 'mutant'."
"-and I got so caught up tearing him a new one it was hours before I stopped and thought about how what he said was 'another mutant'. Which means either he musta found some other mutant around here who I never did in all my years in this joint, oooooor... he's a mutant."
Nathan comes to a stop. Oh well, it's the least of all his secrets, Wade has him dead right and if he has to tell one more lie he'll likely choke on it. "Ah. That's very astute of you."
"I'm right, aren't I?" Wade looks positively triumphant.
Nathan gives him a small nod, and the surrounding crowd a quick scan for anyone who might have overheard. Fortunately, with a few hundred other conversations going on around them their own hasn't carried far. "I'm going to have to ask you to keep that quiet," he says. "I'm supposed to be keeping a low profile."
"I knew it! So? What's your mutant thing?“ Wade's bad reaction to the subject yesterday could only have been because he hadn't understood. Today there's no mistaking that meeting a real mutant is the coolest thing that's happened to him all year.
Nathan can definitely work with that. "I have your word you won't share this?"
"Course! Cross my heart and swear on my grandmother's gravy."
Nathan beckons him forward and leans in conspiratorially close. "I can read minds."
Wade jerks back half an inch, eyes wide.
"But not yours, for some reason," Nathan finishes, enjoying this despite himself. "You want the truth: that's why I thought you were a mutant. The only time that's ever happened before is with other psychic mutants."
Wade gapes at him for several seconds before his brain starts up again. Taking a step back, he folds his arms. "Hang on, hang on, your mutant power just happens to be something you can't prove for me?"
He's got a point; fortunately, Nathan has a fallback plan. "It's not my only power. But if you want to see what else I can do, we'll have to go somewhere with less of an audience." Once upon a time he would have just levitated a pencil, but with his TO gone and his internal calibration an embarrassing mess, the odds of that ending well aren't good.
"Kay, I'm game," says Wade. "C'mon, I know somewhere we can use."
***
As promised, their only company on this side of the school building is an overflowing dumpster. Nathan finds an empty bottle, holds it up for Wade to see, then stands it on the ground and steps back. "Ready?"
A couple of seconds later a tinkling noise from the far side of the car park means the bottle has touched down again. Not where he was aiming, but he got the direction right and it didn't smash until touchdown, so there's that.
Wade whoops in delight. "Whoa, that was awesome! Do it again!"
The second bottle - plastic this time - lands on a roof over the fence. The third goes almost straight up and has Wade jumping around like a man on hot coals to avoid it on the way down. Nathan still feels like he's trying to juggle grains of sand in heavy gloves every time, but he has to admit he's having fun for once, if only for the sheer joy Wade is getting out of his demonstration.
"Can you do bigger stuff?" Wade wants to know.
"Not if we don't want anyone noticing."
"How big?"
Nathan finds himself eyeing the dumpster again. "Still figuring that out."
"Aw, come on! What's the biggest thing you've ever moved?"
Nathan shrugs. "Used to be I couldn't lift my own weight. These days..." He hasn't been this tempted to experiment since he got here, but now he's got someone to show off to all of a sudden the rules have changed. "All right, come on, if I'm going to make this much noise we're going to need a head start."
With them both peering back at the dumpster from around the nearest corner, Nathan leans his mind against it and gives it a shove. The whole bin see-saws up on its far corner, hovers like that for an infinite moment, then comes crashing back down again with an ear-splitting bang. Nathan has to elbow Wade several times before he remembers they're supposed to be walking nonchalantly in the opposite direction - not running through his entire vocabulary of synonyms for 'amazing'.
It's while they're on their way back that Wade suddenly asks, "So... how do you know if you're a mutant? Like, for sure?"
Nathan congratulates himself for a job well done.
***
Since I am officially leaving this one there, just to briefly clarify the other obvious question about how things go for them in this universe: since Nate can't read Wade's mind and doesn't have the faintest idea Wade's into him, after they've known each other a little longer he doesn't think anything of letting it slip in conversation that he's into boys. From there, getting themselves together is far simpler than it could ever have been had the usual rules applied, but we wouldn't have had much of a story worth telling. (Well. Even less of one than I had to begin with.)