Power Swap: Learn How to Fall

[Joshua Bernstein]

Sean's reply was disappointing, if unsurprising given his current mental state. Josh supposed it wasn't fair to expect the (former?) telepath to make decisions at this time, even if he wanted nothing but to do what Sean wanted. But Sean wasn't going to tell him; he could stubbornly insist, but he had a suspicion that wouldn't actually result in enlightenment and instead would cause further withdrawal. In any event, he wasn't sure if Sean really knew what he wanted to articulate it to him, if only because when he was depressed he didn't always know, or didn't want to admit to it or think about it.

So once more he disentangled himself from his partner, leaving with yet another promise to return immediately as he left to fetch newspaper, pen, movie, and cell phone.

He lingered in the kitchen for slightly longer than he'd intended, beginning a pot of coffee because he needed it, and calling Sean's favorite bakery in order to request a delivery.

Chocolate Cheesecake, a nod to their reconciliation dinner, when the telepath had admitted he rarely had occasion to eat cheesecake, and the attorney had suggested they have it more frequently.

Then another order; enough Chinese food for both lunch and dinner, with eggrolls and sweet and sour soup and fortune cookies and the whole shebang. He hoped that would cheer Sean up..

On his way back to the bedroom (sans coffee, which was still percolating; he assumed it would be done by the time the bakery delivered, and he could fetch it then) he stopped in every spare bedroom, stripping them of pillows and blankets, and made his precarious way back to Sean.

"I'll have to go back down in a bit, the coffee's on and I need the caffeine." He explained over the pile of pillows as he stumbled back toward the bed, dropping his burden beside Sean.

"Right. Here's the paper," He handed a somewhat crumpled paper to his partner before searching through his pile for the pen and handing that over as well. Then he began flinging the extra pillows at the headboard. "We need to be comfortable."

Phone on the bedside table, movie next to the television, blankets across the foot of the bed.

That should do.

"And I ordered us cheesecake for breakfast." He added cheerfully, drawing himself up onto the bed, pulling covers around himself and peering over Sean's shoulder at the paper. "So what's the first clue?"

[Dr. Sean Neville]

It was strange, having to rely solely on words. Josh told him that he would return soon, and Sean had to rely on that – he trusted Josh implicitly and thus it wasn’t as though he doubted his promise. However, he didn’t know what Josh had decided; he would have to wait until the other man returned and showed him.

It was strange, having to wait to learn what another person planned to do. It was also inefficient, because the psychiatrist could do nothing in anticipation. If he knew that Josh was getting food, he could clear off the end table or get one of the trays for when he was ill and ate soup in bed. Or if he knew that Josh was getting a movie, he could set up the television and DVD player.

Instead he could only wait. And worry in the back of his mind about who was affected and how they were coping. Better than him surely, hopefully. He hoped that Vincent Verax still had his regeneration power because otherwise he would be dead. And that would be terrible.

By the time Josh returned, Sean had calmed himself a bit. And as soon as he saw the armful of items in the other man carried, he turned, ready to help; but Josh had already dropped the pile by then. The newspaper was pressed into his hand, and Sean took it, smoothing it out over his knee, unconcerned about the newsprint.

“Cheesecake for breakfast?” Sean questioned, as he felt the other man worm under the covers beside him. He could feel him there, the heat and presence of his body, a different sense to rely on but one he was grateful for at the moment.

Cheesecake for breakfast, an abundance of pillows and blankets, the newspaper for the crossword puzzle and, assuming the movie box was what he thought it was...no matter what anyone might say, Joshua Bernstein was a romantic.

He turned his head to capture the other man’s in a grateful kiss, light and gentle. But it was empty, only a husk of a kiss rather than what he knew as a real kiss, and despite himself he frowned, pulling back.

“I’m sorry,” he said with a sigh, before glancing down at the newspaper. “God worshipped by Jezebel. Four letters.”

[Joshua Bernstein]

"Yes, cheesecake for breakfast. You said you didn't eat it much. It's chocolate cheesecake, from that bakery you love so much."

Josh would have denied being a romantic had he been asked; traditional displays of affection usually made him feel self-conscious and exposed, and thus he largely avoided them. However, he desperately wanted Sean to be happy, or at least distracted enough to not be miserable, and this was what came to mind.

He scooted closer to Sean, returning his arm around the other man for the third time that day; he hoped he wouldn't have to remove it again until the cheesecake arrived.

He leaned into the kiss, closing his eyes..and then snapping them open again when Sean pulled away too soon. He squelched the disappointment rising in his stomach; his partner couldn't help this, he was hurting and he couldn't behave normally. Not yet.

So instead of giving voice to his disappointment he tugged Sean closer, listening as he read out the clue. An easy one, it turned out , and he answered without hesitation, "Baal." He smiled, then, because he knew that with Sean's Catholic upbringing that was one he too would have known immediately, and, upon recalling that Sean was no longer a telepath, he belatedly added that thought aloud, "But I know you knew that, you couldn't not know it."

He leaned forward to pull the mountain of blankets forward, a task made awkward by the fact that he refused to let go of Sean with his other arm. "I admit I hope the cheesecake gets here soon, I'm rather hungry."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“You’re a terrible influence,” Sean told him, which was an affectionate remark he’d made many times over the years. He then added, “And I’m grateful for you.”

He didn’t know if he would be able to keep cheesecake down, but they would discover that when the delivery arrived and he tried to take a bite. If not, Josh could eat and Sean would take his piece when he felt a little better. He hoped he could keep it down; he hoped that he found himself tired and in need of a pick-me-up, the telltale sign that his brain needed the glucose boost so he knew that somewhere inside of him, his powers still lurked.

When he felt Josh’s arm around him, he leaned back into the embrace, simply resting there. It was comfortable, and he was grateful that Josh was giving so freely when he needed it. It helped immeasurably.

Sean wrote BAAL neatly in the four letter blocks, nodding that he had known that one. He hadn’t practiced Catholicism in thirty years but that knowledge still cluttered his brain. He moved on to the next clue, “Fabric joint; four letters.” This was easy; it was seam.

“They’re good about deliveries,” he remarked, because that was true; particularly when it was his address because he was a valued customer. A special friend of Rick’s one might say, in another of Humphrey Bogart’s roles. “And it’s early enough that they shouldn’t be too busy.”

He turned his head to nuzzle Josh’s hair, feeling it against his cheeks and nose before lifting his head again. “I used to have a dream that was a little like this, but worse.”

[Joshua Bernstein]

"I'm not that bad," Josh protested, though he knew deep down that Sean was absolutely correct. He'd managed to engage so many different people in not precisely legal manners of protest and activism over the years, and he'd encouraged Sean to have sex when they weren't in a relationship, even knowing the other man's dislike of casual sexual encounters. Not that the intimacy between them had ever been casual.

He didn't know the answer to the next two questions, despite Sean's belief that they were easy. All he could think of were people smoking joints made out of fabric, and he squinted his eyes at the newspaper as if it would miraculously tell him what it meant by such a thing. Certainly drugs had changed since he was a youth.

He accepted the nuzzling, turning his body slightly toward the other man. "You had nightmares about doing crossword puzzles with me?" He teased, hoping that would lighten the mood a little.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean didn’t think he was that bad; he thought Josh was a wonderful person who had some vices and didn’t always think clearly when excited. And that he could do with limiting his scope of potential friends to include more than making eye contact with strangers on the bus. But he thought so highly of Josh’s personality that he spoke only in jest with that remark. And it was for the best that he couldn’t hear the other man’s thoughts at the moment, lest he find himself trying to defend that pattern of the past many years, reminding Josh that he always went along with it, and then a quiet admission that he would have gone along with more for less, as long as Josh had remained in his life.

Intimacy with a telepath was never casual.

The psychiatrist waited what he thought was a fair amount of time for Josh to speak up with his answer, since he couldn’t follow his thought processes. When no remark followed, he turned to look at the other man and found him staring at the paper. Believing that to mean that Josh didn’t know the answer, he wrote SEAM in the boxes and moved on to the next clue. “Better suited to the occasion. Five letters.”

He then sighed softly against Josh’s hair. “They started not long after I learned to like my telepathy. I remember that in the dream I was in the middle of a town and people were around me but I couldn’t feel them. They would speak and I couldn’t hear them and if I tried to touch them they disappeared. Nothing was real.”

He shook his head to himself before adding, “I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like.” He couldn’t imagine what the deafening silence would feel like because by that point, he’d been overwhelmed for long enough that the memories of his life pre-telepathy had been burned away.

“But you’re real,” he added, and the gratitude was heavy in his voice. “That makes it better.”

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh's eyes widened behind his glasses when Sean filled in the answer. "Oh!" He chuckled in embarrassment at just how off the mark his thought process had been. "I was thinking of smoking joints, not...Hmm. That makes more sense in context."

He read the next clue mentally as Sean read it aloud. "What occasion?" He muttered to himself, wracking his brain for an appropriate word. "Appropriate is too long. Ummm." He gnawed his lower lip thoughtfully; it was a very good thing that Sean had the pen, as the attorney was known to chew on those when they were available.

His mental search was interrupted by the telepath's explanation of his nightmares, and he frowned in sympathy. "That sounds awful." He whispered, allowing his arm to drop from Sean's shoulder to his waist as best he could with pillows in the way. "But I'm real. I won't le--"

And then the doorbell rang.

"That must be the cheesecake. I'll be back. And with coffee."

This promise was soon fulfilled; he brought the entire cheesecake, because they might want more than one slice, after all, and plates and forks and napkins balanced atop the box. In the other hand he was barely not dropping two mugs of coffee; he briefly wished he had experience as a server. That would come in handy about now.

"Umm. Do you mind helping me a moment?" He hated to ask for a favor now, but he was afraid he couldn't put anything down without dropping other items.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

In a better mood, the psychiatrist might smile or chuckle at the other man’s admission. Instead he said, “The puzzles are never that interesting.”

Appropriate was far too long. And Sean, a veteran of morning crossword puzzles (or evening as the case may be) was used to the subtle hints in the wording of the clues. As such, he said, “When they say ‘better’ more often than not it means we’re looking for a word that ends in ‘e-r.’ Best means ‘e-s-t.’” It was helpful to have this to focus on, and he appreciated that Josh had made the suggestion and then picked up the paper from downstairs.

The rest of their conversation was cut off by the arrival of the cheesecake, and Josh disappearing from the room again. Because Sean knew that there was cheesecake and coffee to be had, he busied himself with getting the tray from next to the dresser and setting it up on the end of the bed; they could rest the plates and mugs there without having to worry about spills.

When Josh returned, he was impressed that the other man had managed to avoid dropping everything. And at being asked, he was on his feet, crossing to the other man by the door. He reached out to take both mugs of coffee, holding them gingerly because they were hot. “You can put the napkins and forks in my pocket if that would be easier,” he added.

Then he brought the mugs over to the bed, setting them down carefully on the tray, before crawling back into bed.

[Joshua Bernstein]

"I think I have it." Josh shifting the box, which he'd tucked under one elbow, to his now free hand, tilting it first one way and then the other as the napkins and forks began to slide off. "Or not...."

But he managed to set the plates beside the mugs of coffee, and, with a sigh of relief, snatched the napkins and forks and dropped them with a clatter next to the plates before opening the box, revealing a chocolate cheesecake, wax paper between each thin slice.

"So we're looking for an er ending." He began, renewing the conversation they'd left off when he had gone to fetch their breakfast. "Improved-er." He suggested with a grin. "Sorry, fine, e and r are two letters, so it needs to be a base of only three letters."

And he scrunched up his face in concentration, trying to think of three letter words that meant something was appropriate while sliding one piece of cake onto each plate before scrambling back into bed with the other man, leaning across him to snag one plate.

"Hmmm. I'm not coming up with anything five letters." He sighed, stabbing the tip of his cheesecake, "But I'm going to rattle off words as they come to me in the hopes that helps. Er suffixes or not. More, special, further, higher, suitable, preferable, greater, surpassing, exceeding, favorable, enhanced, emended, superior, finer, desirable."

At that he leaned over and captured Sean's lips in a kiss before his counting-brain caught up with his language-brain, and he pulled back slightly. "Finer? That's five letters."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean took the offered plate as well as the attendant fork and napkin, and he stared at the cheesecake. It looked as rich as ever; it looked moist and decadent, and it smelled nice. The thought of eating it caused his stomach to turn over. He sighed softly, because that was disappointing.

However, if he had gone this long without vomiting, he wouldn’t deliberately induce nausea now; as such, he set the plate back down on the tray and reached for the coffee mug. He took a sip, found it too bitter to drink (no milk and no sugar) and without remark set that back down on the tray as well. He had no intention of mentioning it to Josh, not when his partner had gone out of the way to be so understanding with him this morning. He could attribute it to his lost appetite.

He didn’t need caffeine right now, as it was; the mental shock and anxiety were more than enough to keep him awake.

He listened while Josh listed off different possibilities, only finer had the correct number of letters. Inwardly, Sean began to list his as well. He couldn’t think quite clearly enough for this.

Then Josh leaned in to kiss him, and he wanted to enjoy it because he enjoyed kissing and Josh had initiated. But it felt empty; he couldn’t describe it if asked, except to say that this was like eating cardboard instead of cake. However, he managed not to yank back this time.

“Finer” could work. There was one surefire way to test that theory, and he glanced at the down clue for the first and second letters. “Disney subsidiary, three letters. Pit-” He paused as he read the second clue to himself, a frown forming on his lips, but then finished aloud. “Pitiful. Eight letters.”

[Joshua Bernstein]

As Sean read the next clue Josh began shoveling cheesecake into his mouth; he was starving. It didn't escape his notice that Sean wasn't eating, but he didn't want to argue about something so trivial; he simply hoped that his partner would be up to eating by lunch, otherwise they would be eating Chinese take-out all week.

"Hmmm," He frowned at the clue, tapping his fork against his now empty plate. "I don't even know what Disney's subsidiaries are." He admitted, dropping the fork and exchanging plate for coffee. "But the only three letter word related to pitiful coming to mind is sad."

He sipped his coffee, not caring that it was black (in fact, that was how he preferred it) before carefully returning it to the nightstand so that he could resume snuggling against his still obviously distraught partner.

"Your handwriting is much better than mine." He observed, though this certainly wasn't the first time he'd had occasion to say this. But he wanted to cheer Sean up, and thus far the crossword puzzle hadn't done the job, nor the cheesecake and nor (most upsetting) kissing.

Because he'd never had telepathy he couldn't imagine what it must be like to lose it; his life had always been without the ability to read minds. But for Sean, that was so much a part of who he was, and his difficulty coping was both transparent and disturbing.

And because he wanted to cheer Sean up, and wanted his partner to know that the telepathy was incidental in their relationship but did not want to send the other man into a bigger funk about its loss, he wrapped both arms around him, whispering into his ear, "You know I love you no matter what."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

The psychiatrist shook his head at Josh’s remarks. “I’m not familiar with the Disney subsidiaries either,” he began, as Disney wasn’t his top priority in multinational corporations to watch, although he did keep his eye on the political donations of various companies when it came time for elections. “But the synonym for pitiful is either letters, not three. So sad is out.” He shook his head to himself as he thought. “’Inadequate’ is too many letters.”

The compliment was one Josh had paid him before. “The Jesuits didn’t have a high tolerance for sloppy handwriting,” Sean explained somewhat absently, rather than make a joke about how he managed to survive the medical school brainwashing with his penmanship intact. His heart wasn’t in for humor at the moment. However, he did lean back into Josh’s embrace, appreciating it. If he didn’t have to hold the pen and the newspaper, he would better return it.

It was for the best at the moment that he couldn’t hear Josh’s thoughts, about how his behavior was disturbing, or worse, about how upsetting it was that he wasn’t responding to the attempts to kiss that Josh initiated. Otherwise he would try to explain and that wouldn’t go over well. Even if he could articulate his opinions and experiences, it would go over poorly.

Josh breath was warm against his ear and he closed his eyes, feeling his partner’s arms tight around him. “I know.” He couldn’t emphasize that with a mental echo like he otherwise would. And he realized what it took for Josh to say this aloud, which caused him to sigh softly in gratitude. “I know you don’t fetishize the telepathy,” he added after a moment. He opened his eyes and turned his head, brushed his forehead against Josh’s. “I know you’ll stay with me; I’ve just never had a disability before.” Not like this.

He became limp at that; he hadn’t meant the sentiment the way it sounded.

[Joshua Bernstein]

"...Oh. Apologies, I got that mixed up." Josh had been paying far more attention to Sean than to the clues being read to him; the other man's emotional needs were a higher priority than finishing their crossword puzzle with all the right answers. "Hmmm."

He didn't have time to dwell upon synonyms for pitiful, however, because despite his hope that words of affection would cheer Sean up they apparently had the opposite reaction. Josh could have kicked himself; he didn't want his partner to talk about disabilities in mournful tones.

He tightened his arms around the other man as he went limp, pressing his lips into a thin line of defiance at the telepath's words. "If there's any way to fix this your colleagues will find it." He was sure that this was true; with multiple people now wielding different powers, or lack of powers, they would do everything in their power to deal with this crisis. "I'm sure this won't be permanent. It's just...just...." He flailed about for words to articulate a silver lining, but nothing came to mind that wouldn't just depress Sean more, and so he finally settled on, "I'm sure it must be difficult. I can't say I understand what it's like, because I don't. But I've never been a telepath and it's not so bad. I mean," He added hurriedly, "I know it seems like a disability for you, because you've lived with it forever, but your telepathy doesn't define you. You're more than a telepath to me, to your friends, to your coworkers. And your coworkers are smart people, they'll find out what happened and then they can correct it."

He hoped that was true; he didn't know if he would be able to help Sean cope with permanent loss of his telepathy, not if one day reduced him to despair.

"So eight words, you say? Miserable? No, that's one word too long. Pathetic? That's eight words."

Perhaps this clue was a bit too apt for the situation.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Truthfully, Sean had confidence in his colleagues’ collective problem solving abilities; however, without a cause or a timetable for how long this would last (or whether it was permanent) he felt adrift and hopeless. He didn’t want to feel that way, but shelving the overwhelming sense of loss felt impossible to him. When Josh tried to explain that he was more, he shook his head. “I use it for everything,” he explained, before he took a calming breath. “Everything. And some things I don’t know how to do without telepathy because I’ve never done them without telepathy before.” Like kissing and other intimacy. “I know everyone else copes just fine but it isn’t real to me.”

When Josh redirected their attention to the puzzle, Sean followed along.“Pathetic is eight letters,” the psychiatrist agreed, and it would fit in the space. He didn’t think about how that answer perfectly described how he felt; if he did, he would have to stop doing this puzzle and he wanted to try to be normal for Josh; he owed the other man that much.

They still didn’t have an answer for Disney subsidiary, but as he filled in that word, it became plain that one of their previous guesses was incorrect. That was why he hadn’t filled it in yet. “’Finer’ is wrong. There’s a ‘p’ in the middle.” He wracked his brain for a three letter base word that had a ‘p’ as the second letter, before settling on “Apt.”

Of course, nobody said apter; people said more apt but having done crossword puzzles for decades, he knew that wouldn’t stop a puzzle master from choosing that as an answer. It was one of his few gripes with crossword puzzles.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh's frown deepened as Sean continued to insist that he was defined solely by his telepathy. He had always accepted that the older man was a telepath, but that was never a characteristic that he would have picked to describe him to others, and frequently was something he failed to mention because he just didn't think about it that much. He knew the telepathy influenced the way Sean behaved and dealt with others, because how could it not? And the psychiatrist was never shy about admitting this.

But to hear that he couldn't even fathom living without it, considered himself to be less than whole when it was gone, well, Josh couldn't allow that. He waited until Sean had filled in their answers before gently pulling his lover to face him.

"You don't believe that." His voice was firm, firmer than it usually was when dealing with Sean. "You're one of...no, you're the strongest person I know. And you can cope with this. When I first met you I knew you could do anything at all you set your mind to, and that includes functioning without this. Think of it like...like....when the power goes out, it's inconvenient, and it's hard, and we might run into the edge of the coffee table, but we can cope. And then the power comes back on. Meta abilities are genetic, aren't they? I don't see how it would be possible for it to just abruptly disappear forever, you still have Sean Neville's genes."

Granted, he hadn't ever done that well in science, but it didn't sound reasonable to him that the power would just disappear. Maybe slowly deteriorate as he aged, but he wasn't about to say that aloud when Sean was already upset.