Nick was by no means an expert, especially since his first experience had been with a villain who’d ended up trying to kill him, but Seth’s appreciative noises and the grinding of his hips meant he wasn’t too bad, right? And Seth tasted like pretzels, which should not have been as hot as it was. Oh god. What if he had a food fetish? What were they called? Foodies? Shit. What if he was a foodie?
Nick remembered what he’d learned on Reddit about safety and consent. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You have a right to say no, and I will respect that decision.”
Seth laughed quietly. “Really. How generous of you.”
“I know,” Nick said, distracted by the way Seth’s sweater was pulling up even higher. Another inch or two, and his belly button would be exposed. Was that hot? Nick thought it might be, but he couldn’t be sure. Did he have a kink for belly buttons? What a terrible realization to have at this exact moment. He was having a hard enough time knowing he was a foodie.
“Nick,” Seth said.
“I’m not thinking anything weird!” Nick blurted as he looked up from Seth’s stomach. “I don’t want to cover you in chunky peanut butter and eat it off you!”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Nick said hastily. “Forget I even said that. Let’s talk about something else. How are you? I’m fine, thank you for asking. Would you like to take off your pants and stay awhile?” But then the idea of having to take off his own pants entered his head, and he couldn’t quite catch his breath. This was both exactly what he wanted and still moving way too fast, all at the same time. He didn’t know how to reconcile the two, and the indecision made his brain hurt.
“Hey, hey,” Seth said, reaching up and grabbing his forearms. “Nicky, look at me.”
Nick did, trying to calm down before he spun out of control. While he wasn’t as bad as he used to be, he was still prone to setting himself off, his thoughts becoming nothing but static, his throat closing, vision tunneling. If he let it go too far, he’d end up with one of his headaches, which would knock him on his ass for a few hours at least.
The medicine he took—Concentra! It’ll help you concentrate!—slowed the worst of the ADHD symptoms, but the headaches had increased in frequency. A side effect, he and Dad had been told, but one he’d have to deal with, given how Concentra was the best thing for him.
He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth as Seth’s grip tightened around his wrists, grounding him. “There you go,” Seth said, brow furrowed in worry. “We’re good, Nicky. Relax.”
“Sorry,” Nick muttered, feeling ridiculous. Of course he’d ruined the moment. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He couldn’t even semi-seduce his willing boyfriend right.
“Nothing to apologize for,” Seth said, letting Nick’s wrists go and rubbing up and down his arms. “You good?”
Nick nodded. “Yeah. Just … you know how it is. I thought about your belly button and then I wondered if I have a kink for belly buttons.” He frowned. “Or something. And then peanut butter got involved, and now here we are.”
“I have no idea what to do with any of that,” Seth said, “but here.” He reached down between them and pulled up his sweater, revealing at least ten miles of taut skin. “How’s the belly button?”
“So good,” Nick breathed fervently. And because he couldn’t not, he bent nearly in half and pressed his lips against Seth’s stomach. When he felt Seth tense, he blew as hard as he could. The fart sound ripped through the room as Seth screeched, bucking his hips, knocking Nick off the side of the bed. Worth it.
“You dick!” Seth snapped at him. “What is wrong with you?”
Nick grinned up at the ceiling from his position on the floor. “I’m trying to blow you!”
“Blow me? You jerk, I’ll show you blow me, just you watch. I’m going to blow you until you can’t even remember your stupid name.”
With that, Seth launched himself off the side of the bed, landing on top of Nick, knocking his breath from his chest. Nick managed to grunt before Seth pulled up his shirt and began to blow raspberries onto Nick’s bare skin. Nick cackled as he tried to shove Seth off him, but Seth was too heavy. “Blow me!” Nick began to chant through his laughter. “Blow me, blow me, blow—”
“Ahem.”
Once upon a time, Nick fell from the top of McManus Bridge, plummeting hundreds of feet toward the pavement in what was surely going to be his messy, awful death, all because of a douchebag Extraordinary named Shadow Star who’d taken Nick’s fanfiction a bit too seriously.
And here, now, for the second time, Nick’s life flashed before his eyes because he was sure this was the end. Only this time, it wasn’t going to be because of impact trauma. No, he was going to die of mortification, because apparently his room had fantastic acoustics, seeing as how the words blow me echoed dully as he and Seth turned their heads at the same time to see Aaron Bell standing in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, a grim look on his face.
“Um,” Nick said. “It’s not what it looks like?”
“Really,” Dad said flatly. “Because it looks like my underage son is demanding oral sex from his underage boyfriend when they’re both supposed to be in the kitchen doing homework.”
Nick hadn’t known that hearing his father say oral sex would be so emotionally devastating. He did now.
“Oh my god,” Seth moaned, covering his face with his hands.
“Dad!” Nick yelped.
Dad rolled his eyes. “Seth, get off of Nick and get your things. I’m driving you home. Nicky, why don’t you stay here and think about all the sex you’re not going to have. In fact, when I get home, we’ll discuss exactly that.”
“What the hell,” Nick muttered as Seth slid off him. Seth refused to meet either of their gazes as he stood from the floor, cheeks aflame. “Dad, you can’t say things like that.”
“And yet I did,” Dad said, not moving from the doorway, even as Seth tried to push by him. In the end, Seth made himself as small as possible as he sidestepped Dad, back rubbing against the door frame. He didn’t even say goodbye. “I live to make your life miserable. It’s in the job description, kid. When you become a father, you get a manual called How to Screw with Your Child. It’s very informative, and it’s the only type of screwing that’ll be happening in this household for the foreseeable future.”
“I hate everything,” Nick announced grandly as he glared at the ceiling.
No response. Nick turned his head to see an empty doorway. He groaned and sat up, glancing at the photograph sitting on his messy desk. In it, a young version of Nick stood with a beautiful woman, her hair blowing in the wind coming off the ocean as she laid her head on his shoulder. Jenny Bell, his mother, now three years gone.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked her picture. “You’re the one who told him he had a sense of humor.”
She didn’t reply.
Nick looked away from the photograph when he heard the front door open. He jumped up from the floor and went to the window, sliding it open. The sounds of Nova City filtered through, loud and obnoxious and comforting. The air was frigid, causing gooseflesh to prickle along Nick’s bare arms. They were supposed to get snow later, the clouds above an ominous gunmetal gray.