no substitute / nate & king [finished]
Sand felt nice under his feet. It was strange, the way sensory so often became an overload. Feel the sand, taste the salt in the air, smell the ocean water, hear the waves rush across the shore. The neurons fired off in every direction, lighting his already active brain into overdrive. His feet were bare and his hands rested in his jeans pockets as he slowly scanned the water, ignoring the housing that that was situated not much further back from the shore. It was all free of complication. It was easily. It was simple. It wasn’t anything near what he was used to.
King just about enjoyed anything that could cease his hyperactive mind, and a house by the sea was therefore pretty much perfect as a source of constant distraction. Granted, his hyperactive mind never ceased - he couldn’t, however hard he tried - but he could make himself less aware of it with a lot of effort. And currently, that effort was diving into waves as they came. It wasn’t really much there was to it, but it always served to ceaselessly entertain the twenty-three year old. It was almost three hours later that he jogged out of the seemingly infinite body of water panting lightly at the effort, squinting a bit at the approaching person, his glasses still, unfortunately, back on the porch where he’d left it. “Hey asshole!” King called with a grin, his hands resting on his knees as he panted the last of his energetic efforts out into the air. “Where’s that list?”
Nate glanced from where he stood to the person incoming from the waves. With a raise of his eyebrows he watched him draw near, the setting sun placed back in the distance. When King emerged from the water and greeted him in typical fashion, the remnants of a smirk crossed his lips. "Darn. Must have slipped my mind. I'm an old man, after all."
King ran a hand through his hair as he straightened up again, making it stand on end. A shiver forced goosebumps on his skin as a breeze brushed past his wet skin, and for a moment, he glanced over at his house a bit further up the beach. "So you don't live in the library?" he asked, bringing his gaze back to Nate, the grin still on his face. "I figured you'd catch fire in full exposure to the sun."
There was something nearly cartoonish about King. With his hair on end, seemingly constant grin and eternal energy, Nate had a running image of him that was best represented as the Energizer bunny. "And I thought you'd have a Dorito-induced potbelly under those lovely tshirts, but alas."
King looked down at his not-at-all-potbelly, rubbing it idly. Sure, he wasn't ripped, but he certainly wasn't fat or skinny either. He shrugged, grin widening, if that was even possible, and spread his arms a bit. "My body is ready," he chuckled, turning his head a little. Dropping his hands again, he started to trudge up to his house backwards, watching Nate becoming fuzzier and fuzzier as the distance increased. "You're checking me out then? Stop it. You'll make me want to get dressed. Hey, do you know anything about research equipment?"
"I'll check you out as I please." Nate didn't make any motion to follow. Instead, he sat down in the sand to look out at the water, letting the colours of the sky silently soothe him. He crossed his legs, leaning back on his palms slightly and wiggling his fingers into the sand. "Specify." Nate was rather well versed on a list of subjects. It tended to happen when you spent every day reading through a library.
It didn't take King too long to make the track back from his house with his glasses on and a towel around his neck, flopping down next to Nate with a shrug. "The kind you ste-- borrow... For genetic manipulation, maybe. Or making laser-shooting robots, I'm not picky," he replied as he looked Nate over. As much as he liked the guy, he really disliked him. He was kind of torn over it. At any rate, he made him feel things, though he wasn't actually sure whether they were good feelings or bad feelings.
"Planning world domination?" Nate glanced at the much younger man beside him, taking a moment to examine the details of him. He tipped his head slightly before deciding that he was spending too much time looking. He laid back in the sand, sighing lightly.
King made a face, his reply firm and abrupt. "No." But as sudden as the answer had come, just as sudden the immediate decision was weighed. "Well, maybe. Well, no. I mean, maybe? No, not world domination, just robots. You know? Robots." A grin followed the word as he pushed his feet in the loose sand a bit. "I've been toying with robotics. Do you know about robotics?"
He let King rattle on. He was surprisingly used to it. King had a nice enough voice, one Nate didn't actually mind listening to. "I know there are alchemy combinations that can be integrated." He dug for a comparison. "Like lightsabers. They're whatever colour the inner crystal is. Bur instead of colour, it's a property."
At the word alchemy, King's gaze, which had been following a seagull as he talked, snapped back to Nate, the grin dissipated from his face. He stared at him for a long moment. "Do you know magic?" His voice was quiet and serious, like asking for the answer to some dark and forbidden secret.
He shrugged vaguely before shifting to cross his arms behind his head. Magic. It was nearly laughable. With werewolf blood pulsing through his veins, he was a living definition. "Yeah." He pulled a hand to slide under the front of his shirt and scratch his stomach.
In that moment, King was practically on top of him, grabbing him by the shirt as he straddle his waist. "You need to show me," he insisted, a bit loudly, but his entire mannerism conveyed urgency. "Well, you don't need-- No, you actually need to!" Bouncing idly with excitement, King tugged on the fabric of Nate's shirt that was clenched in his fists. "You need to show me, I want to know, can you show me, will you show me? Will you? Will you? You don't understand, you don't--" Excitement overtook him and he found words just wouldn't come properly formulated anymore. So instead he made a sound between a whine and a groan, headbutting Nate's shoulder a few times.
Nate's eyes flew open at the sudden weight on top of him. He grabbed his hips as a gut response, holding them as he threw his weight to the side and pushed, rolling them over. With a hand in the sand at either side of his head, Nate looked down at him. "Calm the fuck down."
King blinked up at Nate as his back landed in the cooling sand, actually surprised at the sudden movement. His hands slowly let go of Nate's shirt, resting idly on his own chest as a bit of a barrier between them. For a moment, fear flickered in the pit of his stomach as old memories flickered through his mind, his eyebrows furrowing slowly. "I am calm," he replied quietly, eyeing Nate closely.
A rare grin crossed Nate's lips, pushing aside the familiar inclination of fear that he got from the person beneath him. Right then, right there, there was nothing to be afraid of. "Then quit acting like a lunatic." Interesting wordage. He leaned down, gently headbutting King's forehead before he rolled off of him.
That reaction had definitely not been what King had expected, and as Nate rolled off him again, he couldn't help but stare after him. Since he'd met Nate, King had come to understand that smiles and grins were a rare thing - opposed to smirking, which he just did freely and barely indicated the same sort of softness that the other two did - and the fact that he had just know confused King. To battle this confusion, King, of course, resorted to words. "I'm not acting like a lunatic, I was just asking a question. Questions aren't the symptom of lunacy, or everyone would be. That is, the, the modern definition of lunacy. The archaic definition is related to the changing phases of the moon. You know, from the Laton word l-- well, you probably do. Know, I mean. Not for obvious reasons. I mean, yes for obvious reasons. Not obvious reasons would mean you're a lunatic." King paused momentarily. "Well, you are. Very much so."
"More specifically the phenomenon of people behaving oddly during certain moon cycles. Obviously a debunked notion." He'd been called a number of things. Lunatic was one he'd heard before. Nate had the tendency to not only rub people the wrong way, but also to be specifically good at it. "Yesterday I was termed 'evil'. I'm working wonders at meeting my hate quota."
King sat up slowly as he looked Nate over for a moment. However much he disliked the man at certain times, and however much a dick he was, there wasn't an inch of him that was actually evil. "You're not evil," King grumbled, picking his towel - which had fallen off him when Nate had flipped them over - from the sand and dropped it in the other man's lap. "You're a dick and very unlikeable, but you're not evil. I know evil. You're not it."
"How kind of you to differentiate." The deadpan was astounding. Nate looked down at the towel in his lap and wrinkled his nose in distaste. He pushed it off of him and onto the ground. His eyes shut once again and he stretched some, the onset of tired pouring over him. He should have been heading home. Instead, he sleepily opened his eyes and watched the sun disappearing beneath the horizon.
King watched the expression and the action, and oddly enough, he felt a pang of hurt stab through his guts. But instead of conveying that hurt, he conveyed anger. Or rather, annoyance. It was easier than playing open card, it would end up hurting you a lot less. Push before you're pushed. Snatching his towel from the ground, King stood up, looking down at Nate with a glare. Why did they always end up here, with one of them angry for whatever reason? Because he doesn't care. The words echoed through his mind, followed by more familiar ones. No one cares. King balled his fists in anger. He wasn't doing this again, not know. "Whatever," he grunted, and started the track back up to his house. Why did he always associate with the people who didn't really care?
He was actually unsure of what had just happened. Nate pushed himself up to stand, quickly jogging after King. It was an uncommon action for him to follow or chase someone. "What the hell?" he questioned, moving to stand in front of him and stop him.
King threw his towel over his shoulder idly, raising an eyebrow at Nate as he stepped in front of him. "What?" he asked him, pushing his glasses up his nose with a finger. "I get it. I'm gross," King snorted, plucking at his towel for a moment. He accepted he annoyed people. Hell, half the time he did it on purpose, just his way of keeping them away, but there was just something about the way Nate had looked at the towel that so very much reminded him of the last time his mother had looked at him before she left for good. It hurt. And the fact that the memories had been brought up just pissed him off.
Nate held up a finger. "You are not gross. You're fine. You're more than fine. You damp, sandy towel, however, is gross." His nose wrinkled again as he described it.
King just looked at him for a moment, or more so eyed him suspiciously. No matter the occasions he had accused Nate of lying, he didn't genuinely think Nate was a liar, but that didn't make him less suspicious of anything that wasn't a critique on him or anything he did. "My towel is not gross," he mumbled finally, plucking at it again before pressing his nose into it. "What's more than fine? Is there a scale to it? Where does 'more than fine' go on that scale?"
Nate chuckled as he watched him before edging closer. He leaned around him and lightly touched the back of his arm as he shifted. There was a slight pause as he looked at him before he pressed his lips to King's temple. "It's just more than fine."
The lips to his temple was the strangest thing that had happened in a while. It wasn't necessarily the fact that it happened, but moreso that it never happened to him. King just stood there for a moment, confused - it seemed Nate tended to have that effect on him, unfortunately. "I'm going inside," he finally grunted, but he didn't make a move to follow up on his words.
Nate looked down at him, giving a slight nod in response to the declaration. There was a strange sensation that stretched from his ribs to his fingertips. The only movement he made was to brush his fingertips along King's jawline. He didn't notice that he was holding his breath.
As seconds ticked by, King still had yet to move, his head tilting idly as fingers brushed along his skin. He didn't know what was going on right this moment, but he knew enough to know it was peculiar. And for once, he didn't battle the oddity with words. Well, he opened his mouth but words wouldn't come, the silence stretching between them.
And time just went on. Nate was left just as silent. His fingers shifted, dragging their way across his skin until they stopped at the back of his neck. The tips of his fingers just barely grazed skin. It was then that he realized he was in unfamiliar territory.
King watched him, and for the first time, he noticed his heartbeat. It wasn't racing in particular, but it wasn't just beating. His mouth, which had shut somewhere along the line, opened again and for a second, he found himself leaning into Nate. And then he kissed his cheek. "Okay." It was all he said before he stepped to the side and walked past him, stopping on the porch of his house to drop the towel on the wooden bench there, brushing dried sand off his legs.
He let the breath he'd been holding out slowly as he felt lips on his cheek. Nate's hands found their way to his pockets, like they were retreating home to keep safe. With his own dose of unsurity and confusion, he watched King. "Okay." He turned slowly, setting off in the direction of his home.
"Hey," he called out to Nate's retreating back as he finished off brushing the sand off his legs. King had a mind to invite Nate in, and while he had absolutely no problem inviting even strangers in, this time, it didn't feel right. Far from it. He didn't really think Nate would much appreciate sitting around with him, watching TV. King shook his head. "Never mind. That list."
Nate glanced over his shoulder at the figure that was shrinking with each step. His smile only made it half way, ending up crooked as it tended to. "I'll make whatever list I see fit."
King watched him as he licked his lips slowly, and with a sigh, he moved into the house, but not before snatching the towel off the bench. Just shit, were the only words that begrudgingly crossed his mind.
