Vanessa & Wade | Wednesday Evening/Night

[x-deadpool.livejournal.com]

Vanessa promised Wade ice climbing (or something). He informs her that he intends to hold her to her promise. She tells him she's got a job she needs to do first. He offers to help.

Wade parked the jeep he'd rented and petted the snow tires for a moment before grinning to himself and making his way into the building that housed both X-Factor Investigations and Vanessa Carlylse's place of residence. He'd been bored recently and she'd promised him ice climbing. Therefore, there was really only one thing for him to do - find a place that offered ice climbing and kidnap her so she could fulfill her end of the bargain.

He went up one floor and then, because his stealthy spy skills were top-notch, he took the door in the stairwell to the second floor instead of heading for the third. There was only one door it could possibly be, which was excellent since he wouldn't have hesitated to harass her neighbors if he hadn't guessed which apartment was hers right off, so Wade knocked with a chipper sort of rata-tat-tat.

The knock drew a confused expression onto Vanessa's face. Who was at her door? "God, please don't be Mrs. Goodman," she muttered to herself. More professionally she called, "One moment." A door could be heard clicking shut loudly and suddenly instead and few moments later a latch was heard turning. A pistol was in her hand hidden behind her thigh when she opened the door enough to see who it was. The chain was still on so most people wouldn't have been able to force their way in easily and too many things could go wrong with a peephole so Vanessa had changed the door when she'd moved in to one without any such thing. Her door was also made of reinforced steel. That wouldn't have been quite as secure if her walls weren't solid brick. She was still figuring out how to proof the place against super strength.

A small tilting of her head made it obvious that Vanessa was looking Wade up and down. When she got back to his face her eyes narrowed. "I probably don't have to shoot you, right?"

Holding up one hand, Wade said, "I promise, you probably don't have to shoot me."

She gave him a scrutinizing look, but nodded all the same. The door closed, the gun got tucked into the waist of her black cargo pants and the chain got unlatch. When she opened the door again her hands were both empty. Vanessa stepped back and gestured Wade inside. "Hey, so, you've got terrible timing but it's lovely to see you." She had a small smile on her face as she said that.

"I have impeccable timing," Wade corrected. "Also, I got bored and you promised me ice climbing, so I went and found the closest ice climbing place in New York and it's a good drive away so this'll have to be an overnight trip, probably. Our instructional class in the appropriate techniques to use while ice climbing is tomorrow at around eight in the morning. I guess we could leave really, really early tomorrow, but that sort of makes me kidnapping you right now irrelevant and I was intensely looking forward to kidnapping you, though you probably can't tell from my current expression. The excitement at the prospect is definitely visible in my jawline, if you look close enough. And also possibly the set of my brow, which is very distinguished."

He had turned up out of nowhere to kidnap her for ice climbing? Really? It was so hard to not find him amusing while he went on about his jaw and his distinguished brow. And it was also hard to not give him points for actually wanting to kidnap her to do stupid and possibly dangerous things together. She liked a guy who had follow through. "The closest place I found was in upstate New York, about five hours away." Somehow Vanessa didn't doubt that he had every intention of kidnapping her for a five hour drive out of nowhere. In the middle of the week. She checked her watch. "It's four-thirty. And I've got to go catch a possible adulterer in action tonight." Now she was pouting a little. Vanessa really wanted to go ice climbing.

"Do you have a deadline for the adulterer pictures?"

"She paid, I do it now or hand it off to someone else but I'm not one to make someone do my case just because a man who thinks he's very charming shows up at my door to whisk me off to inevitable injury." He was maybe slightly charming. Slightly. And Vanessa would only testify to that under duress.

"Huh." Wade frowned for a moment, then said, "I've got my stalker cam in the back of the jeep. You know who he's cheating with?" Because he was going to kidnap her, damn it.

Her lips pursed in an failed attempt to suppress a smirk. "Uh, love? Why do you have a stalker camera while coming to kidnap me?"

"It's always good to be prepared," Wade said, expression earnest. Then his eyes shifted to the side a little. "And I like photography?"

"I'm not buying that." A glare was shot toward a closet. The closet, in fact, Vanessa had been buried in when he'd knocked on the door. "I've no idea where my camera is, though. I may have given it to someone else for stalking on a client's behalf." Her attention shifted back toward Wade. "Theoretically, if I used your stalker camera - which we're not going to think too hard about you having - and caught the guy then I could drop off the film or transfer the pictures into the database, hand off the rest of the case and then ditch out of here tonight..." She was considering the pros and cons of this plan. Jean-Paul or Laura could handle breaking the news to Mrs. Goodman. Vanessa would even give whoever did it half the pay from the case. Of course, then she'd be gone for two days on no notice which was slightly unprofessional but Mrs. Goodman was the only case she had. She'd also be disappearing with a possibly shady mercenary who had brought his self-proclaimed stalker camera with him. Then again...ice climbing would be amazing and Vanessa was relatively sure he could keep up with her.

"I can drive," Wade said, grinning. "Let's go find your cheater, snap the money shot, get the details wrapped, and head out." He waggled his eyebrows at her, then shifted over to a milder form of his patented puppy dog eyes and said, "Please? It's ice climbing."

Trying and failing to not smile, Vanessa replied, "What kind of camera is it?" Stupid puppy eyes.

"A digital SLR with a few different lenses - including a telescopic lens," Wade said, grinning. He was totally winning - kidnappage was imminent.

There was still a little bit of residual wariness in her expression. Vanessa wasn't sure how she felt about taking a non-employee with her on this. "You understand that there is no promise of kidnapping as kidnapping is dependent upon catching him, yes? And since leaving you here alone seems like a worse idea than having you come with me, especially when it's your camera, you also understand that you are not to interfere at all unless asked, correct?"

Wade raised his hand again - it was fast becoming his general sign for 'I come in peace and promise not to break your shit' - and said, "Duly noted." Kidnappage was still imminent. Even if he had to monkey his way up to a ridiculous height and then hang around for a while to catch the guy cheating while he orgasmed with his mistress' name on his lips - he was going to make it happen, damn it. He had priorities. They involved ice and hammers and rope and possibly falling on rocks. They were awesome priorities.

Vanessa nodded, seemingly placated. Then she added, "And you're not allowed to encourage or allow me to beat the ever loving shit out of him or confiscate his balls, okay?" She turned to grab her coat and her keys while explaining. "I've got a thing for adulterers. In that I can't stand them, think they are the scum of the earth and don't deserve to have any of their happy bits attached. So, I really might want to deck the bastard. Don't let me."

"Yes, ma'am," Wade said, a smile turning up the corners of his lips because that... was just kind of hot.

***
Our intrepid duo follow their mark, talk a bit, find out more about Mr. Goodman than they ever really wanted to know, and then head for the office.

An hour later Wade and Vanessa were parked across the street from a restaurant where her mark was having dinner with a woman who wasn't his wife. There had been small, flirty looks and brushes of hands but both could have been construed as something innocent. Vanessa was watching it all through a pair of binoculars from the driver's seat because she didn't trust Wade to be able to tail a vehicle through New York, "Can't you two just finish dinner already? You're obviously not into the meal anyway."

Wade had one eye on the camera, the zoom all the way up, and his finger on the button to take more pictures - he'd taken a few earlier to make sure there'd be enough detail. "She's not even that hot - why do men always cheat on their wives with fugly women? I will never understand this." Pulling his eye away from the camera, the mercenary shook his head. "I mean, you've got something good. If all else fails, cause a fight. Make-up sex is the best."

A white eyebrow rose in a delicate arc. "Spoken like a man who knows?" She shook her head, a silent laugh on her lips. "I've never had make up sex so I'll have to trust you on that. As for the ugly women," she shrugged. "I think people get bored. I think some of them don't know what to fix or how and others are too lazy to put in the effort. What I don't get, though, is if the woman you've married is no longer the woman you want to be with then why not just leave her? That's what pisses me off. I know divorce can be messy and expensive, but if you're man enough to fuck someone else then you ought to be man enough to sack up and tell the woman you're supposed to be committed to that you're no longer committed or interested in continuing your relationship." After a moment she added, "That goes for women, too, for the record."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that make-up sex is the best sex," Wade said, nodding sagely. "I don't know from experience, though." He hadn't been in one place long enough to have a relationship, even assuming he was willing to put whomever he was with at risk. "I don't get getting bored. I mean, no - I get it, I just don't get how you think cheating will spice things up. It'll make things worse - and then you have to go through the whole 'divorce' thing, anyway. I really want to know if the homewrecker realizes she's a homewrecker."

"I don't think it's about spicing. I think it's about getting your own wants and supposed needs dealt with and fuck the other person. Or don't fuck them, as the case may be. And I'm not even sure how much I can fault the Other Woman. If she's a free agent then she's not responsible for what he does. On the other hand, is she really deluded enough to think there's any future there? Maybe that's part of the appeal. She knows a married man will never turn into something serious." There was disgust in her voice by the end and Vanessa had to remind herself to take a step back. She watched as the pair finally paid the bill and started to head out of the restaurant. They were close but keeping it within acceptable parameters.

"I just don't get the deceit," she admitted, frustration clear in her voice. "I get fantasies. I get kinks. I get your partner maybe not being into all that. But if it's so bad you need it and they can't or won't give it to you then obviously you're going to go elsewhere. At least be honest about it. Maybe they'd be cool with you satisfying specific urges elsewhere." Vanessa looked at Wade, holding up a finger to silence any possible disagreement he may have. "I've seen it. In a personal, professional sort of way. Anyway, everyone gets caught eventually and then everything's just harder for everyone. Hearts break more if you're not up front about things you want or need. Or that you don't want or need as the case sometimes is."

"I'm not saying I agree with it," Wade said, snapping a picture of the couple leaving, then another as they got into a taxi together. "But maybe it's a misguided attempt at protecting whoever they're with. Or protecting themselves, if you want to go with the 'getting your own wants' angle. Do you really want to flaunt the fact that this person you're supposed to be in love with and all that jazz isn't doing it for you in one way or another? Maybe multiple ways? What if the rest of their homelife is fine, it's just this one thing that's off?" He shrugged. Relationships weren't really his deal. "Then again, I don't think I qualify to be talking about it at all. Fat lot of no relationships that I've got going on over here." Wade hid the camera as the taxi drove past them.

"On a completely different note," Wade said, "You can tell me how your shapshifting mutation works while you tail them. Can you make yourself sparkle all on your own or do you need a sparkle-y mutation to base the shift off of?"

Vanessa put the car in gear and followed the taxi from two cars behind it. The shift in topic to her mutation kept her from making any comments personal enough for her to regret later. Especially since she clearly had no ground to stand on on the relationship front. What did she know about them? Nothing. She just had a lot of ideas about how they should be.

"I make a direct copy of a person. So I can't, for example, borrow your healing factor without first taking on your physical form. I can't shift just my hair or build or skintone. And I can't shift without making a copy. Trust me, if I could control it at will like some people I'd have the coloring I had before I manifsted rather than being blue all over."

"What was Vanessa 1.0's coloring?" Wade asked, tipping his head to the side as he brought the camera back up and scrolled through the pictures he'd taken so far. They were all ridiculously innocuous, which was annoying. He had a feeling he was going to have to climb up an escape ladder or something so he could peer through a crack in a window or something. Money shots were supposed to be easier than this - or maybe it was just that this particular money shot was interfering with his plans. It was probably that.

"Nessa version one-point-oh had red hair, the sort of fair skin that didn't burn or tan, freckles and blue eyes. You could spot me as Irish from three blocks away. Back then the accent didn't seem so out of place when I spoke." She always assumed it was weird for people to hear the heavily Irish Southie accent from the blue chick.

Wade tipped his head to the side and squinted as he looked at Vanessa. He wasn't sure he could do the mental juggling to make the color-changes work right. "Huh," he said, frowning a little. "Accent is often an indicator of geographic region, not ethnicity or race or whatever. So the Bostonian thing, it doesn't really trip up, so far as I can hear." After all, he didn't go around saying 'eh' all the time. Stereotypes were ridiculous, though he supposed he could grant that there was often a kernel of truth buried in them. "So south Boston? Never lived there. What was your favorite thing to do on a Saturday?"

"Play stick ball if it wasn't all iced over, hockey if it was." The answer was easy. Vanessa had been a consumate tomboy as a child. She turned left after the taxi and then glanced at Wade out of the corner of her eye. "What was yours? You strike me as a trouble maker."

If he was honest, his Saturdays had varied depending on whether his father was home or not and whether you were asking before or after his mom got sick. There wasn't a whole hell of a lot to do in Alberta in 1975. "Soccer, mostly - I liked to avoid the death-by-hockey-puck that all my friends were going for. That, and I'm pretty sure we covered how I'm pretty much the worst skater on the face of the planet. I'm good with the foot coordination, though. And my hand-eye coordination's dead accurate. Just not so much when you put me on skates and put the skates on ice."

A mischievous expression crept onto her face. "So you're sure you don't want to go skating with me?" She knew the answer she'd get so she didn't wait for a response. "And I meant the really Irish part of my accent, not just the Southie."

"What, Irish people can't be blue? I feel like that's some sort of discrimination - you should work on that," Wade commented, managing to keep a straight face as he said it.

She shrugged, expression unapologetic. "Irish people should be red or orange or yellow. All piss and vinegar, y'know? We tend to be a short tempered, hot headed lot with too much energy and too much dedication for a cause." She smiled then, pride apparent in her body language. "If it wasn't for whiskey we'd have taken over the world."

"You begot your own ruin," Wade said, nodding solemnly. Then he grinned. "You don't strike me as particularly hotheaded. Planning world domination any time in the near future?"

Vanessa had to swerve into the next lane in order to keep an eye on her taxi. It was headed out to Brooklyn from what she could tell. "I'm not that sort of hot headed. Besides, I've had too much whiskey recently to remember any of my diabolical plans." That was at least half true. "I lack the initiative most Irish do. We're more a reactionary lot than an initiative one."

"I can see that," Wade said, snapping a picture of a random car ahead of them. "Which is a shame. You'd be one fine mistress of the universe."

"Too many minions to keep in line. Too much of a headache." Another fifteen minutes of driving led them out to Brooklyn and to a motel there.

Vanessa killed the headlights once of the pair had gotten out of their taxi and had followed them in the darkened car until they saw what room they went into. Now to wait and see if the lights stayed on or not and if the curtains were open anywhere. "You'd think something classier and less cliche than a bad motel room," she muttered to herself. "But no."

"Of course not," Wade said, shaking his head. "Cliches are cliche for a reason." He'd been mulling over her comment about minions and he had some ideas about how you could make it work, but they were still young and he didn't want to expose them to the dangerous outside world until they were ready.

"I give it ten minutes. He didn't seem like the kind of guy who goes in for foreplay."

The metamorph nearly snorted. "In my experience the vast majority of men don't go in for foreplay. Which I never understood, but apparently they don't agree with me that figuring out how to make your partner squirm and lose control is one of the best parts." Vanessa made a noise of disapproval. "Priorities are all fucked up that way." She could see the outline of the figures in the window of their room. He was starting to undress her.

Through the binoculars Vanessa spotted what she thought was a parting in the curtains. "I think we can get our money shot tonight, lovie." She tapped Wade's arm, then opened the car door to sneak up to the window and spy. If all else failed, she was almost entirely certain she could take the guy down if he got violent when he found them spying on them. If she couldn't, well, chances were Wade could. It would be really disappointing to find out her fellow mercenary was useless in a fight.

"Most men are stupid," Wade murmured, following close behind Vanessa as she made her way to the window. "That part in the curtains looks big enough." Positioning himself and the camera, Wade narrowed his eyes a little. Voice even quieter than it had bee moments ago, he muttered, "He's not even bothering to take her shirt off all the way. That's just fucking ridiculous."

"I could be wrong since I've never had an affair," Vanessa whispered from just behind Wade. Her hand was on the back of his shoulder to help her balance while she peered through the window, though she was careful to remain far enough back in the darkness to remain unseen hopefully. "But if you have an affair because of animal passion or a need not being met shouldn't there be more, well, passion? When I want someone I sure as fuck want them naked under me."

"Uh huh." If they'd been anywhere else, doing almost anything else, Wade would have had more to say on the subject of being naked beneath Vanessa. Namely, he would have volunteered for the position - and several others. Unfortunately, they were on a job and business needed doing before he could really get into the swing of things. So Wade started taking incriminating pictures.

Suddenly he jerked his eye away from the camera. "Jesus fuck," he whispered. "Did you know that's what his mutation was?"

Brow furrowing, Vanessa gave Wade a curious look. "His wife never mentioned him having a mutation." Vanessa hadn't asked, but she figured if it was relevant it would have been mentioned in conjunction with answers for any one of a number of other questions she'd asked. "Why, what is it?" She tried to peer through the window but the couple had moved and she'd have to risk being seen or push Wade out of the way in order to glimpse this with her own eyes.

"It's like tentacles," Wade said, putting his eye back to the camera and taking a few more shots. "I don't know if I'm impressed or intimidated. My manhood's got no hope of competing."

"I did tentacles once," she told Wade almost philosophically. "It was...interesting. I think I was too young to really form an opinion of whether or not it was enjoyable. I could see how a girl might like something tentacle-like."

"She certainly seems to be enjoying herself," Wade said, pulling back so he could show Vanessa the latest picture. "Really." They hadn't really gotten into background information yet, but he was gonna find out why she'd been too young to appreciate tentacles. Maybe 'too yoing' meant late teens. Everybody experimented at that age.

Vanessa tilted her head, studying the picture for a moment. "Hm. Yeah she does. I can see why if those little suckers on the ends really do have suction like an octopus. Said suckers were very strategically placed. "But that's not incriminating enough for us yet. We need without a doubt intercourse."

Wade nodded and leaned back in, snapping photos at interesting moments - the tentacles kind of faded into the background eventually. There was only so much shock you could deal with on the job, after all, and tentacle sex wasn't even the weirdest thing he'd seen.

It was lucky for him that Vanessa hadn't taken his bet earlier, because it took the mark for freaking ever to get to the actual sex. Wade was pretty sure he'd be able to compile all the pictures he was taking and make a video out of them. If he did, he'd post it on the internet and see what people thought. Maybe once this case had blown over - or he could try to figure out how to blot people's face out with those annoying little bleary spots. That might work.

Finally, though, he had what he felt was undeniably the money shot. "Look, I think I got it." He held the camera up for Vanessa to view again.

There it was. Mr. Goodman in all his tentacled glory astride his mystery woman. He was using some of his tentacles to support her weight and was clearly mid-thrust. Vanessa gave Wade a small pat on the back. "Get a couple more for the undeniable truth to be inarguable and then we'll split." Maybe she should start dragging people around with her on these jobs to see if they could handle the strangeness of her life.

Wade nodded and went back to snapping pictures. After the fifth one and well into the first position change, he tipped his head back and rested it against Vanessa's hip. "I can haz ice climbing now?" Then he grinned and waggled his eyebrows.

There was really nothing to be done but smile. Vanessa's fingers even ran through his hair and about scratched the back of his head near his ear like he was a puppy. "Mm...yeah. You can haz ice climbing. But only after we hit up my office and only if you agree to no more cat cheeseburger talk. You're not cute enough to make that not irritating."

Wade would have laughed, but they were still perched outside the window of a seedy motel room where a dude with tentacles was cheating on his wife with some chick who apparently really appreciated those tentacles and alerting a guy with that many miscellaneous appendages that you were spying on him was a bad idea - not that Wade knew from experience or anything. Definitely not. "No more cheesy cat burgers," he said, sliding out of position and then standing, all while making sure his camera wasn't going to smack into anything. "To the office, Miss Carlylse!"

***
Vanessa packs and kidnapping commences.

Back at the X-Factor offices Vanessa was getting the photos Wade took uploaded onto their database. She was also getting a note posted to Jean-Paul and Laura asking one of them to handle the closing of the case for her. "You know, if it wasn't ice climbing and if I didn't really need something physically challenging and exhausting I wouldn't be letting you kidnap me like this. Some of us have jobs with sort of regular hours. For future reference. Got it?"

"You mean I have to plan my kidnapping further in advance?" Wade asked, watching the pictures upload. "That's no fun. You take the spontaneity out of life when you plan everything - also, I do not believe that you have regular hours. You're a PI."

"We have regular office hours, whether or not I am the one doing them," she pointed out. "I don't keep anything like regular hours if I'm on a case. Guess you'll need to coordinate my capture with my coworkers if you want it to be a surprise. Last minutw kidnappings are possible but they'll take help from someone who knows my schedule." Not that he was likely to pop up and kidnap her often.

"I'll remember that for future reference," Wade said, nodding. "Now let's go. Five hour drive ahead of us and I've got snow chains in case the snow tires need some help - they're awesome."

"You are totally going to get us stuck in a snow bank, aren't you?"

"Who said anything about snowbanks?" Wade asked, expression one of complete innocence as he unhooked his camera after the files finished transferring and tipped his head to the side. "C'mon, we're traveling light. And it's cold. We can call on the way up to reserve a room."

"I do need actual clothes," she reminded him. "If you can wait five minutes I won't have to see if I can turn more blue from exposure." She double checked that everything had uploaded, then began to usher him out of the office. "Wait a second, a room? Singular?" Nothing in her voice suggested whether or not he was being presumptuous. Mostly she sounded amused.

"With two double beds and cable," Wade said, nodding even as he snapped his camera case closed. His tone was distracted because he was trying to get the little clasps to fasten and it took him an extra minute, but his expression was sincere when he looked up. "And a snack bar - we should get some food on the way up. I'm hungry like a hungry hippo and I definitely don't want little white balls for dinner."

"Damn, little white balls are my favorite." Vanessa wore her most forlorn expression possible while setting the alarm. Then gave Wade a shove out the door and another bump with her hip to ensure he was out of the way when she locked up.

"No little white balls for you," Wade said, finally managing to get the clasps fixed. He pointed at Vanessa, then continued, "Or big white balls, either. I'm thinking we can swing by a Jason's Deli on the way up. Stock up on sandwiches, maybe soup if you're feeling adventurous. They have some of the most amazing Chicken Chili I've ever had, which is saying something, considering I make a mean chicken chili myself. Mostly I make burgers, though. We're going to need a lot of water."

She gave him a funny look as they headed down the stairs toward her place. "It's a five hour trip, are you planning on getting us lost for another three hours? Or do you just really not do well during car trips? I don't think we need soup. Sandwiches, maybe some fruit, and is a deli place even going to be open right now?" Vanessa associated delis with daytime hours and they were definitely in evening hours. Subway was the only place she thought might be open.

"Jason's Deli's been commercialized, they keep dinner-time hours," Wade said. Then he shrugged. "I get bored easily and yes, driving on snowy, possibly icy roads will keep a large portion of my mind occupied, I have this healing factor thing that leaves me hungry a lot of the time and I get weirder the hungrier I get. I figure we've dealt with enough weirdness for one evening, what with the tentacles and everything, so I was attempting to spare you, but if you think you can handle it, we can probably subsist on sandwiches and apples."

"I think there's plenty of diners and gas stations if I decide I can't take it anymore. Then again, I could always tie you up and throw you in the backseat if you get too unwieldy." She sort of liked that idea and the grin on her face stated that quite explicitly. Vanessa unlocked her apartment again, flicked on a light and gestured to the couch, all alone in a room too big for so little furniture. She'd never bought more furniture or decorations after moving in here so what she had only filled an apartment half the size of this one. There were more books to take up space and more weapons than when she'd lived at the Brownstone, though. "Have a seat, lemme get clothing so I don't have to attempt naked ice climbing. I'm really not into that sort of extreme sports."

Wade gave Vanessa a small salute and headed for the couch, taking in the books and the weaponry with nothing more than a slight tilt of his head. It was a nice space - and conveniently located. He wondered which had come first - the offices or the apartment. Sitting, he unbuttoned the snap holding Selma in her sheath at his side and pulled her free, balancing the point on his finger while he waited for Vanessa to pack clothing that would keep her from freezing.

Not one to bother with makeup or hairstyling, all Vanessa needed was a backpack. Her winter boots went on her feet and her trainers went into the bag with her clothes. It only took her five minutes to pack, true to word. Two of those minutes had involved packing clothing and toiletries. The other three had been for weaponry. Wade seemed like a decent guy, decent enough that she'd run away with him practically in the middle of the night. But he was dangerous and she didn't know if he was definitely stable. As such, she prepared for the eventuality that he may be totally unstable and try to kill her or someone else. Most of her knives were hidden on her person, one gun was in a hip holster and another was on her ankle. Another half dozen knives, mostly of the throwing variety, were stashed amongst her clothing.

The first thing out of her mouth when she emerged packed and ready to go was, "You do have directions, right?"

"Yes," Wade said, pulling his hand from beneath the knife and catching the hilt so he could sheath her again. "And the Jeep has GPS." Resnapping the button to make sure Selma didn't fall out, Wade stood and raised his brows. "So diners on the way it is. And away we go."

"You can find a Jason's on the way, too. But if you buy like twelve sandwiches and get distracted while driving because you're busy eating I will tie you up and throw you in the backseat." She paused at the alarm on the wall by the door. "And I mean tying you up in a hostage sort of way, not in a sexy way." She set the alarm, scooted Wade out the door and locked up. "Just please don't kill me before we get to go ice climbing. That would blow."

"I agree," Wade said, heading downstairs and then holding the door for her. "Then I wouldn't have anybody to go ice climbing with. I'd have to make a pathetic little sadface and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have as much impact on a burly ice climbing instructor as on unsuspecting women who have cookies that I want."

Vanessa made a mental note that Wade apparently had a thing for holding doors for people. Interesting. She followed him down the street and hoped Wade hadn't forgotten where he'd parked. "Since I don't make or usually have cookies does that mean I can anticipate never getting the little, pathetic sadface?" Or was that a pathetic little face? A sad pathetic face? Whatever, it was something like that.

"Do you eat cookies? Because I can pretty much guarantee if you have a cookie, I will stumble upon you just as you're preparing to take the first bite. Maybe it'll be the first cookie you've had in six years or something and I will find you and I will make the pathetic little sadface. We'll see." Wade headed for the Jeep, clicking the security button on the key he'd been given to unlock the doors before they got to it. "My stuff's in the back," he said, opening the door so he could put the camera case with his single backpack - he really wasn't lying when he said they were traveling light. It wasn't like he needed anything more than some boxers and extra t-shirts, anyway. And socks. Wade definitely traveled with a lot of socks, but that was personal preference as opposed to necessity.

Vanessa tossed her bacpack over the passenger side seat so it landed with a soft noise in the back seat. all her extra knives has been carefully wrapped in her clothes. "I'll be sure to keep an eye out for you next time Peaches is using my kitchen to bake and shove sugar down the throats of all the investigators." The only time Vanessa ever ate sweets was if Laurie made them.

"Mm... cookies..." Wade slid into the driver's seat and closed the door, then pulled the key out of his pocket and buckled his seatbelt while starting the Jeep. "And we're off!"

***
Several hours' worth of driving later, Wade and Vanessa attempt to book a room at a hotel.

"Were you the sort of kid that went and collected bugs and brought them all home?" Vanessa asked out of the blue. Wade had been going on about the art of the sandwich and other various nonsense for much of the drive so far between bouts of silence or one of them turning up the radio. Vanessa was fishing for a radio station they could both stand again since they'd just lost the last one.

"Nah, my mom would've killed me," Wade said. "I kept an aquarium on the back porch full of frogs, though. Only in the summer when they had tadpoles. I'd go catch them in this pond on our neighbor's property and bring them home in a jar. What about you?"

She grinned proudly as she unlaced her boots. "I collected garden snakes. Man, the boys in the neighborhood thought I was the biggest badass because I wasn't afraid of any of the insects and I'd collect snakes. My mom hated it and she'd get rid of them whenever I'd leave the house. Only I knew she'd do it so I'd come home with two more, one to replace the one she got rid of and one for extra insurance." Vanessa slid her seat as far back as it would go and propped her socked feet up on the dashboard, laughing. "Dad totally encouraged me, too. I was such a daddy's girl. I think he really wished he'd gotten a son so when I turned out to be more tomboy than girl he was all for encouraging me. I think he was trying to get his time in before I liked boys and makeup, which I'm sure he thought was inevitable."

Wade was a little bit jealous that she got to take her shoes off, but he was having a lot of fun avoiding black ice. It was tempting to see if the snow tires could handle a drift, though he didn't actually give in to that temptation. "Clever - did she ever stop trying to get rid of them? And what'd you do when the snakes all went and started hibernating?" He hadn't been a momma's boy, but he'd never been on good terms with his dad. He could remember maybe one or two times when he'd been very, very small that his dad had been home and sober and interested in playing catch.

"She never stopped trying, no. In the winter I would try to hide the snakes so she couldn't find them to get rid of them. And then I'd bring like ten home at once when they started to pop up again in the summer. It was my own little form of retribution. If she wouldn't keep getting rid of them I wouldn't have brought so many more home with me. I just wanted a couple to keep, really." Vanessa hadn't thought about that in a long time, actually. It was strange to think back to when life had been normal before her manifestation. It was strange to think about anything other than just her dad from that time period. "Maybe I should get a pet snake."

"Moms can be weird that way, though," Wade said, shrugging. "Mine was pretty cool about the tadpoles and the frogs, though. Came in handy when I had to do life cycle projects in school." His mom had been awesome. Wade recognized and understood that some of his memories were probably biased - fuck, most of his memories about his mom were. And he knew she'd only been human, so romanticizing her was ridiculous, but he couldn't help it. So far as he was concerned, his mom had been the best and his father hadn't deserved her. "I'm jealous of your feet. And also, I'm kind of cold." Reaching over, he turned the heat up a little.

Vanessa quirked a lopsided half-smile at Wade. Her arms folded over her knees and she laid her head atop them so she could watch him, clearly amused. "You're jealous of my feet? Wade, are you secretly in love with the dash board? Do you have a strange, niggling feeling that you used to be a cat who lounged in the sun and on top of the heating vent on a dashboard once?"

"Nah, they just look toasty, lounging up there, and I'm kinda jealous, that's all." And he was resolutely not going to think about his father any more. It'd been ages since he did that and he couldn't figure out why he was doing it now. Wade saw their exit coming up and slowed down so he could take it without risk of fishtailing or spinning out or flipping over. He had, after all, promised Vanessa not to kill her before they went ice climbing.

"Obviously you're going to freeze to death ice climbing if you're already jealous over toastiness and it's not freezing in here." She made a tsking sound and shook her head. "And if we have to sleep in the car because our impromptu trip involves no vacancies at our destination I'm not going to be your blanket. Just sayin', I don't have enough mass or body heat for that."

"Huh," Wade said, tipping his head to the side a little. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Vanessa. "The hotel's number should be in the recently dialed section. Call and make sure they've got room for us. Also, it's not about mass - the body heat thing would work, just needs to be skin to skin."

Smiling, she took his phone and looked for the number. "So what you're telling me, sweets, is that if we're stuck sleeping in the car then we'll be doing so naked?" Her laugh came out more like a giggle. Vanessa found the number of the hotel easily and hit the green button to call and waited for someone to answer. "Hmm, hotel room with cable or naked in the car. Tough choices."

"I know," Wade said, nodding solemnly. "That cable tv is a big draw. Pay-Per-View and cartoons, man. I'm not sure how my hot body can compete."

"Your hot body doesn't come with sheets or a pillow," she told him just as someone picked up the line and greeted her. "Hi, I'm actually driving in right now and was hoping you had vacancies." Vanessa nodded along and answered questions as the woman on the other end asked them. "Non-smoking. No preference for floor. Two people." Moving the phone a little away from her mouth, Vanessa told Wade, "She's seeing what they have available."

"Remember to ask about the snack bar," Wade said, then glanced at Vanessa out of the corner of his eye. "And you know my hot body could come with sheets and pillows, if you wanted. You just need to specify."

Vanessa bit her lip through her smile with the mental image of him sprawled on a bed naked trying to look very sexy with strategically placed sheets. Wade's voice was deep and it must have carried over the phone line easily because the woman on the other end was asking Vanessa if the other person with her was male. "Aye, it's me and a male companion. Is...is that a problem?" She looked at Wade while she listened and raised an eyebrow. "Well, but we're--I'm sure it's lovely. I, uh, why don't I check with him."

She was trying not to giggle madly when she covered the phone and addressed Wade. "Honey. She says they only have singles available. But the honeymoon suite is open." Vanessa had said it all very carefully and was still trying to restrain the laughter threatening to make its way up.

"The honeymoon suite?" Wade asked, slowing and stopping for a light. "Does it have a snack bar?" Obviously the mercenary had his priorities.

Even through her hand the woman had heard Wade and answered him before Vanessa could relay the message. "Why, yes, sweetie, it does."

When Wade glanced at Vanessa for confirmation, he grinned. "We'll take it." It might not be cheaper, but it'd be funny.

This was so going to be trouble. "Yes, that's right," she told the woman on the phone, "we'll take it. We are. Very much in love. Oh, trust me," she looked over at Wade, "when you see him you'll see why." She grinned and laughed. "Wilson. Yes, Mister and Missus Wade Wilson." She hung up with the woman and gave Wade a backhanded smack on his shoulder.

"Apparently I'm now your wife for the next two days."

"My very hot, very capable, knife-wielding wife. I like it," Wade said, reaching over to bat Vanessa's hand away from him so she couldn't hit him again.

She hit him again, just with her other hand. Out of affection. "And abusive. Don't forget that your wife is terribly abusive." Then she reached up to ruffle his hair. "Well, we'll see how good a fake husband you are, huh? It's like physical challenge with a side of social experiment. This is what happens when you're spontaneous, sweetums, you always get more than you bargained for."