To Silver: If you're reading this, I hope you post your stories eventually because I'd love to read them! I've never played Paper Mario though. :o

"Nate, being the dork that he is, after watching a movie/anime/whatever starts to debate if he would look hotter as a hero or as a villain, then after getting pictures of said heroes/villains he would ask his boyfriend to picture him in their clothes and say which ones he would look hotter in, to the embarassement of the other" was the prompt this time.

When I think of Nate, I'm reminded of puppies. Thanks to fanart.

"Hugh, I need you to come over right away, it's an emergency!"

On the other side of the phone, his boyfriend sounded kind of dumbfounded.

"Uh, wha-"

"Thanks a bunch, see you soon! Remember to hurry!"

Click.

And now to print off a few more pictures while Hugh was probably still in his room, thinking, "Damn it, Nate," and wondering what exactly all that had been about.

Actually, that was exactly what Hugh was thinking! He liked to think he knew Hugh better than Hugh knew himself, and that was how Nate could also say, with no uncertainty, that the dark-haired boy would take his sweet time getting here even though they lived close to each other.

So he had time to print off a few more pictures.

–

Hugh wasn't particularly amused, standing in his doorway, but tried to give Nate the mandatory greeting kiss regardless.

It was "mandatory" because it was something Hugh insisted all good couples should do, and he "tried" because Nate was too busy fluttering around his room and having other things on his mind to let Hugh do it.

Except, wait, the hero always kissed the girl- er, love interest. Yes, the love interest in general.

Given his new aspirations in life, that was exactly what Nate had to do.

He scurried back to Hugh to fix this, only to soon find out about another exception called, "There's a reason people in movies and television shows wait until they've calmed down from drinking two liters of soda and three hours of continuous good ideas". The kiss was uncoordinated and their teeth clanked together painfully, and Hugh pulled away scowling and rubbing a spot on his nose where Nate's skull must have accidentally smacked him. So apparently quick wasn't the way to do those things.

"Good to see you too," Hugh grumbled dryly.

Nate knew pretty well when he was just being sarcastic, and chose to ignore Hugh while the printer whirred out the last of his pictures. And when the darker haired boy eventually moved his hand away from his nose, it didn't turn out to be broken or even mildly bleeding or anything, so Nate figured he didn't have anything to worry about there either.

It took several minutes for Hugh to stop scowling at him and just ask though. Because that was what Nate had really wanted, was for him to ask:

"So apparently you needed me for something?" And because it was Hugh and he was apparently in a bad mood today, he didn't miss a chance for sarcasm. "Forget how to tie your own shoes or something?"

"I just spent the last three hours on my laptop watching Poke-Maniacs," he announced, as if that explained everything.

...That, and the aforementioned empty two liter of soda, which Hugh noticed and glanced at, before bringing his gaze back to him. If he'd sounded dumbstruck on the phone, well, the face he was making now was plain hilarious.

"...My little sister gets up at seven every Saturday to watch that," Hugh said finally. He seemed too confused to say anything else.

"Yes, and it's surprisingly addicting. I'm proud to announce your sister has good choice in her Saturday morning cartoons, but that's not the point here."

"What is the point, exactly?"

And that was Nate's cue to grab all the pictures he'd printed, and gleefully lift them up to show them to Hugh. "Who do you think I would look best as?"

"You're taking up cosplay?" Hugh asked. "Do you even know how to sew?"

He still sounded confused. It seemed like "confused" would have to be a state of mind Nate would have to get used to seeing him in for the next several minutes, but...

"No and no, you're completely missing the point!"
"Then what is the point?" Hugh snapped back.

Great, so now he was baffled and getting a little agitated. From past experience, Nate knew that was not a good combination of moods to see Hugh mixed in, so he made a quick decision to just tell him now before he made the situation any worse by accident.

He tried again, saying, "Okay, not in a cosplay way, but just in general... which one of these would I look sexiest as?"

Hugh could barely even speak the word, "sexy". Watching him sputter now was also pretty hilarious, and it took all the restraint Nate could muster not to start laughing at him. Which was good, because Hugh made quick recoveries, even if they weren't always subtle ones.

"You're asking about how...? It's a cartoon aimed at seven year olds, Nate!" Hugh shouted back. A bit louder than necessary, but it was worth it to see his red face.

Besides.

"Not all of them!" Nate informed him. Judging by the look Hugh was giving him, that didn't seem to help any. Deciding it might help to explain further, he continued, "So there was this thing on the internet that said all heros were beautiful and all villains are sexy, and I was watching some shows on my laptop-"

"Poke-Maniacs. For three hours, apparently."

"Yeah, so anyway, I was starting to notice that, wow, these guys are animations, but maybe the internet was right. I mean, the internet is always right, but-"

"It's a show for seven year olds."

"They're legal," Nate insisted. He normally didn't mind when Hugh interrupted him, because he was a patient guy like that, but they weren't really getting anywhere at the rate this was going. "And, technically, it's 'an all ages' show. My dear boy, there's a difference."

Just to be complicated, Hugh retorted, "If I remember correctly, the main characters are twelve year olds. Which makes sense, because marketing a form of media to a specific age group usually entails the main characters being around the same age or older-"

"Well, they look legal," Nate cut in. He wasn't interested in hearing a smarty-pants lecture from Hugh in about the same way he hadn't been interested in finding out that one character in the show he'd thought was sort of cute was actually just a twelve year old kid.

Yeah, that was kind of a mood ruiner.

But at least Hugh was forced to agree with him after pointing out how the characters hadn't aged once in over five years of running could throw some people off.

"I still think you have too much free time though," Hugh informed him as he wittled down the number of pictures they had to look at.

Apparently, he'd also realized that he wouldn't be going anywhere for a long time, because he took a seat on the bed while waiting.

"Why are you asking me this anyway? If you're not going to be a cosplayer or anything..."

Nate was hit with a sudden genius idea then. "Why don't we cosplay togeth-"

"No."

...It made sense that Hugh wasn't much of a cosplayer, now that he thought about it. He was too serious for that sort of thing. And he played video games, but probably the only time he watched cartoons or anything was with Nate or his little sister, so in retrospect it made total sense.

"I'm not actually interested in wearing a costume, I just wanted an opinion."

"You want my opinion? I think-"

"So for starters, would I look better as a hero, or a villain?" Nate demanded, shoving two seperate fistfuls of paper into his face. 'Heros' in one hand, 'villains' in the other, and Hugh recoiling from both of them.

Hugh snorted. "Do you honestly think you could pull off being a villain? Sometimes I'm only about this close to mistaking you for a hyper active Growlithe puppy," he replied, indicating with his thumb and forefinger a very narrow gap of space.

"I am not...! Never mind. So none of the villains then?"

"Er..."

"That makes me sexier as a hero then!" Nate declared, laying the hero pictures out on the bedspread between them for closer inspection.

Hugh fidgeted uncomfortably at the 's' word again, and attempted to look elsewhere. He was almost impossibly modest sometimes.

"Oh, but did you notice that a lot of the villains I printed wear spandex?"

"You should never have been allowed to keep a color printer in your room," Hugh growled in response.

Nate took that to mean a, "Yes", and also that his boyfriend was jealous over all the neat technological equipment his parents bought him and let him leave lying around.

"I wear a wetsuit under my clothes," Nate continued, voicing his train of thought. "Does that mean if I just walked around in a wetsuit all day-"

"No!"

The abruptness seemed to shock Hugh coming out of his own mouth, although Nate had already expected it and could only grin in return. He opened his mouth to tease Hugh, but Hugh could anticipate what he was going to do next just as easily as Nate did for him, and thus he was hit in the face with a pillow – from his own bed! – before he could get even the first three words out.

"L-look..." Hugh muttered, thoroughly red in the face. It might have been wishful thinking, but Nate suspected there were some pretty interesting images of himself that had popped into Hugh's imagination just now, otherwise he couldn't imagine what was possibly making the boy blush. "You asked my opinion, so..."

"Yes?" Nate pestered. "What is it?"

Hugh glared at him again.

It was how Nate knew they were about to get somewhere.

Hugh still struggled with words and blushy-feely things, but it was always a sign that they were about to get somewhere.

"So... if you're asking what I think, I-I think you look perfect the way you are."

Nate briefly considered staying silent for a bit, just to watch him squirm, but at the same time it was best not to fluster his boyfriend too much all at once. Keeping that in mind, he cooed, "Aw, that's very sweet of you!" and watched as Hugh let out an obvious sigh of relief.

Sometimes he swore he just had the cutest boyfriend in the world.

He thought it was over.

"But I'm still making you pick one."

It's the first time I've uploaded a story from Nate's point of view. Is it as obvious as I think it is that I prefer writing as Hugh?

Does this still fit the prompt you wanted?

The captcha when I was signing in to post this read "gayq". It... It knows what I've been writing! /too easily amused