Jim and Nathan, Sunday afternoon

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Nathan stops by to check on Jim, who's doing considerably better than he was last night, thanks to some good sleep and Lorna's cooking. They talk a little bit about their cooperative effort against Chthon, and Nathan finds out Jim is possibly just a little bit gleeful about what he managed to do.


He owed the woman his firstborn, Jim decided. As annoyed as he sometimes felt at being mothered by virtual strangers, there were times, like now, that he was glad of the help. He'd woken up starving, only to find an absurd amount of food already covered and waiting for him, most of it still warm. Jim wondered whether Charles had been monitoring him and anticipated or if incredible timing was just another of Lorna's powers.

"I smell Lorna-cooking," came a quiet voice from the door. Nathan stood there watching him, smiling a little. "I'd say good morning," he went on, "but honestly, I'm not actually sure what time it is. I think my sense of place and time went by the wayside when we found ourselves fighting an Elder God in the backyard..."

Jim smiled, briefly lowering his fork. "Afternoon, I think. Feels like I was out for a while." He nodded towards the various platters. "Help yourself. I think Lorna's decided to take me on as a personal project. My lack of anything resembling bodyfat seems to offend her on some primal level." He scooped up another piece of marinated chicken. "Not that I'm complaining."

"You don't complain about Lorna's cooking. You just enjoy it." Nathan sat down and helped himself to a still-warm roll. He might have had some of her cooking earlier, but really... "I've missed her bread, most of all, I think.... how are you feeling?"

"Not too bad. Surprisingly." Jim took a sip of water. "Most of the damage was overextending my telepathy. I, um, I don't use it offensively. Never tried to learn. I didn't think to hold anything back for myself." He hadn't been able to, really. If he'd stopped to think about what he was doing he would never have been able to go through with it. That one split-second of panic had almost been too much. Jim reclaimed the fork and started back at his food. "How are you? You got the hard part of that deal."

In the midst of tearing a piece off the roll, Nathan paused, his mouth opening and closing quizzically before he gave Jim a rueful smile. "Remind me to someday tell you the story of the Trojan Horse, and why pretty much any other offensive use of my telepathy, however much I still don't really like doing it, kind of pales in comparison. But anyway. I'm fine. And Wanda's going to be, from what I understand."

"That's good," Jim said. It still felt good to hear. "It can't be an easy thing to recover from, but she will. She seems like a tough woman." With Magneto for a father she would have to be.

"One of the toughest around," Nathan said, then turned his attention back to his roll. "Charles told you something, didn't he?" he asked suddenly, after a moment of silence. "To... think in a certain pattern, before you linked with me."

"Not exactly." Onto the vegetables. There were several Jim didn't recognize, but he was reasonably certain Lorna would not react kindly to picking. "He told me your psimatar was designed to prevent anyone without Askani training from using it. I didn't want to take a gamble and try to copy something I didn't understand, so I bypassed the restriction by plugging my power directly into yours. My power, your control. Um." He paused and gave the other man an apologetic look. "I'm sorry. I should've asked. Things happened so fast..."

"Oh, hell, Jim, don't apologize," Nathan said, looking startled. "I was pointing it out as a good thing. I was expecting to have to take what I got from you and spin it into the proper patterns to be able to use it... but I didn't. Saved me a few seconds."

"I was just afraid sh-- Cthon would notice if we took too much time." Jim dropped his gaze. He told himself that this was ridiculous. He knew other man hadn't minded, but he couldn't shake the feeling of guilt. "Sorry," he said again, forcing a rueful smile. "I'm a little paranoid about using my powers invasively. And cutting loose at all." He raised his fork to twirl it slowly next to his temple. "I have some issues."

Nathan set the roll aside, very carefully as there was no such thing as wasting Lorna's cooking alllowed - and then sank his face into his hand, snickering helplessly. "Oh, damn, this needs to stop..." he wheezed. "Seriously. If we start having anything more in common, people are going to start making jokes about us being long-lost relatives or something..."

Jim grinned. "Then one of us needs to stop being crazy. But much as I'd like that to be me, I try to keep my goals realistic." He sighed and sat back in the bed, prodding a chunk of potato. "I did it, though," he said, half to himself. "I didn't think I'd be able to." Jim smiled weakly at Nathan. "I like being able to help. It makes me feel less . . . fractured."

Nathan's smile was warm this time. "Helping people making you feel better about yourself, oh, no, I don't know anything about that at all... you did a great job, by the way. You reacted fast, in precisely the way you needed to react to be of the most help. You've got good instincts."

Jim raised his hand to rub the back of his head in a familiar gesture, embarrassed. "I just have a lot of practice," he said, his attention retreating back to the safety of his plate. Potatos were suddenly looking good. "I can slip myself into another flow of thought pretty easily. It's kind of a prerequisite for the condition. It wasn't hard to reapply. I'm good at tracing back the connections." Charles had told him that, once. Whether it was talent or necessity Jim had never been able to determine. "Thanks for -- for taking the weight, I guess. If you hadn't attacked for me I wouldn't have been able to do it at all."

"We make a good team," Nathan said, with a nod for the thank-you. "I wouldn't be adverse to doing it on a regular basis, if that was something you decided you wanted..." It wasn't a calculating look he was giving Jim, really.

The younger man laughed, more lightly this time. "I've been thinking about it. Since before I even came back, really. I was . . . holding off, I guess. I wasn't sure I'd be able to take the strain. Or perform at all." Suddenly he looked up, grinning wildly. "But I did. It was -- it was incredibly stressful, but I didn't have an episode. I stayed myself. Even after it was over." He'd been shocky and disoriented in the woods when Cain had found him, but that had been because of his telepathy, not his disorder -- and Charles had assured him that with sufficient practice he could train himself out of future vulnerability. The thought was one he'd hardly believed he could have: I didn't break.

The huge grin was... actually very endearing, and Nathan could have smacked himself in the head for the thought. You do not reflect on how much like a little boy at Christmas the man who fought a god mind-to-mind with you looks at the moment. At least, not loudly.

"I'd say that's a pretty good indication," he said instead. "And hell, we both know just how effective Charles is at teaching people like us to build on good indications, don't we?"

Jim snorted. "Whether we want to or not sometimes, right?" The assertion did nothing to banish the smile, though it eased down a few notches. He stole another bite of food. The ravenous hunger was abating, at least, and his body had made sure his reserves were replenished before waking up again. "I don't know why I was so worried. He's had to drag me by my ankles into making progress enough times for me to be used to the fact it's for my own good. Never to the point of asking me to attack an elder god, but I guess we were running out of ways to escalate."

"Trust Charles to find room anyway!" Nathan declared suddenly, his gray eyes sparkling with mischief, making him look a good ten years younger. "He's so irritating, isn't he?"

"Eternally," the younger man grinned. "It's the knowing benevolence. Although he's proven himself capable of intense weirdness at times. He showed me some Monty Python when I was about fourteen. I think that was the point I decided the professor was secretly deeply bizarre."

"Monty Python," Nathan said thoughtfully. "Hey, did I ever tell you that one of mine and Moira's first bonding activities was watching bad historical movies and making fun of them? Ask her to tell you the story about the Gladiator showing and me getting up in the middle of the theatre screaming about stirrups sometime..."

Jim blinked for a moment, then laughed. "Oh, yeah, background in history. So like my reaction to nine out of the ten films that make use of dissociative disorders, basically. There was less screaming in the middle of theaters, though. We learned early on that private showings were really a better way to go."