Vanessa & Wade | Sunday

[x-copycat.livejournal.com]

Wade grabs Vanessa and they head for a road trip to see his gun contact, "Crazy Frank" for a surprise for Vanessa. A conversation during the drive up changes the entire dynamic of the day.

Wade pulled up in front of Vanessa’s building and cut the engine. He’d texted her earlier to let her know he was on his way and that they’d have a couple hours in the car on the drive out to undisclosed locations, so she had plenty of time to get ready. Still, he sent off another text and then scrolled through the backlog of messages on his phone until he found the one with the actual address for where they were going. He turned off the GPS in the car and suppressed a yawn.

They might have to make a strategic stop halfway there or maybe Vanessa could just drive back. He still hadn’t actually told her what they were doing, only that Crazy Frank had some things she might be interested in. Wade was just glad he had that appointment with OJ next week to go over his test results. Maybe they could get this whole ‘exhausted’ thing figured out so he could get back to work already. Mansion life was entertaining, but he was still going a little stir crazy.

Vanessa wasn’t one to take long to get ready. Her hair got secured in a braid that went halfway down her back and the usual array of knives got affixed to her legs, forearms and belt. She knew they were driving for hours which meant they weren’t staying in the city so her gun was in a shoulder rig as well. A few minutes after the text saying he was there came through she was emerging from her building, typically dressed in combat boots, fitted cargo pants that wouldn’t restrict her range of motion, a long sleeved shirt and a leather jacket that was insulated against the cold. A beanie was the only thing she didn’t typically sport and gloves were in her pockets. If she didn’t know where they were going then she would be prepared for just about anything. There were small throwing knives in both cargo pockets of her pants where she had once had sheaths sewn into the lining.

She flashed Wade a smile when she spotted him and moved around to the passenger side of the car to slide in. “Hey, trouble. So do I get to find out where we’re going yet?”

“No ma’am,” Wade said, grinning as he started up the car again. “It’s a surprise.” One he was pretty sure she’d enjoy once they got to where they were going. He suppressed another yawn and waited for her to buckle up before checking his mirrors and pulling out of his spot. “Man, this place really got messed up,” he said. “I mean, everybody knew it did, but it’s one thing to see it on the news and shit. It’s something entirely different to like. Walk through the streets and see the damage.”

Vanessa looked out through the window. District X wasn’t the most polished looking place. It was still being rebuilt in spots and other spots had been shoddily slapped back together for the sake of having something somewhat serviceable. Enough of the city was still in ruins to count and construction was ongoing. It was the one line of work that was always hiring no matter what else the economy might be trying to do on any given day. “Apocalypse was a bastard. But it was pretty impressive to see the way people fought back. Even the non-mutants who had no chance against their terrorizers some of the time. The carnage, though....” Vanessa trailed off with a frown. “I felt bad for the people who had never been in war. That’s really what it ended up being. Off the cuff, and sort of guerrilla, but it was all out war. Humans again mutants, mutants again mutants...and it was chaos.”

October 2008 - Wade had been in Georgia taking care of that Southern Belle and falling out of windows. He shook his head as he remembered how ridiculous that had seemed once all the shit had hit the fan in Manhattan. “It’s the kind of thing you don’t really think you’ll see at home, I guess,” he said. “In Zaire, Columbia, wherever - sure. But not here.”

“No, not here. And not with your mates. Not your backyard.” She had fought in other people’s backyards plenty of times, but US soil had not seen war since Pearl Harbor had been bombed, really. Sure, there were attacks and mutant-created earthquakes and the like, but nothing quite like that. Alphabet City wasn’t far from District X at all. It was in the lower east side which bordered her own neighborhood. Vanessa glanced in the direction of it. “A lot of people died. Some who were good people who hadn’t gotten out in time, some who were good people who had been brainwashed into being his loyalists, some just driven mad who flocked to him. Years as a mercenary and I hadn’t ever had to shoot a holy man until that bastard kicked down the backdoor.” Vanessa tore her gaze from the direction of where she had shot the crazed pastor and set her focus resolutely on the road ahead of them.

“Huh,” Wade said, thinking that over. “I did, once. A priest in the Congo.” That was back before he’d gotten on the vaguely moral train, though. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it now. It was difficult to divorce his thought processes. “He was causing trouble for the local dictator, but the dictator couldn’t actually kill the man himself for fear of causing an uprising.” The pay had been really, really good.

“That wasn’t the sort of job we took much. We signed up for battles, infiltrated governments and killed the opposition. Wet work was never holy men. Never women. Never kids. And if any of those could be avoided as casualties in wars they would be. Usually by not taking the contract.” She shrugged. “Everyone has their rules.” Still, even now, killing the Baptist pastor didn’t sit right with Vanessa. It was necessary, there was no argument about that. He had gone verifiably mad. But it angered her nonetheless that someone had come in and created that situation. “Bastard” really wasn’t a strong enough word to be applied to Apocalypse. Vanessa wasn’t sure she knew one that was, though.

“Yeah,” Wade said, nodding. “Everybody’s got their rules.” He let the silence set in for a few minutes, then turned on the radio because wow, way to put a damper on the whole trip by accident there. A country song came on, which was sort of unique, considering they were in freaking Manhattan. But it made him grin. He sang along to the opening lines, eyes slanting to the side so he could see Vanessa’s reaction.

An eyebrow slowly rose as the other came down in a furrow. Very, very slowly Vanessa’s head turned toward Wade. Wade, who liked country music. Crappy country, from what she could tell. “Any attraction I’ve ever had to you has been sufficiently squashed.” Garrison’s Snow Patrol predilection when he got dumped was more attractive than this. Jesus, that was a terrible thought.

Wade pouted for a moment before he started laughing. He couldn’t help it - her reaction had been entirely worth revealing his somewhat odd enjoyment of country music. “I blame Georgia,” he said. “Either that, or North Carolina. Two Southern jobs in a row and I wasn’t given much choice about what the clients subjected me to.” Turning the radio down a bit, he gestured to it with one hand. “Please, save yourself. I don’t mind.”

“So you subject me to it in turn?” Vanessa wasted no time trying to find a station that wasn’t spouting twangy lyrics or wannabe gangsta declarations. “If I had known you disliked me so intensely I would have preferred you shoot me somewhere that would heal, stab me or punch me. All would have been preferable.” She settled the radio on a Motown station that had (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay playing, and relaxed back into her seat.

Wade sang along to that, too, just because he could. He tipped his head to the side mid-lyric, though, and said, “I don’t dislike you, buttercup. I’ve shared one of my deepest, darkest, most humiliating secrets with you. I trust you.” He said it earnestly, only the crinkles at the corners of his eyes giving away his amusement.

“Your terribly shaming love of country denotes trust?” Trying not to smile was harder than it should have been. “You killed people for money. You’ve killed a holy man. You were a mercenary for however long and...country music is the terrible secret you only disclose to those you trust.” Vanessa reached over and patted Wade on the head much like one would do to a rather dim-witted child. As she pulled her hand back, she considered the blue skin and cocked her head to the side. “Buttercup?”

“It works because it doesn’t,” Wade said, stopping to let people cross the street. “I mean, seriously - what am I gonna call you? Blue bonnet? Bluebell? Too obvious. Minion Number One and I have decided that I need to name everyone things that make no sense so no one will know who I’m talking about when I’m talking about people with him. So you’re buttercup for the moment until I find something that works even better. And Jesus, don’t you think country music is shameful enough to be my deep, dark secret? I mean, from the way you were looking at me... it was like I’d suddenly grown a second head and started talking about roasting babies on spikes.”

At once Vanessa’s face was being arranged in a completely innocent expression as a hand came up to her chest and she asked, “Me? Did I do that? Okay, I might have. Because you didn’t seem like the country type and, well, I’ve done the country type before. He went a little nuts after I broke up with him and stood outside my building yelling at my coworkers.” Eyebrows went up, her eyes went wide and her head cocked to the side as if to say what can you do? Sam had been very sweet, right until he went a little nuts. “Should our incrementing get far enough that there’s keeping and then keeping ceases for any reason, should I anticipate you going nuts and annoying my coworkers? Because Bishop had to go through that last time and he’d never let me live it down if history repeated itself. “

Mostly to herself Vanessa though aloud, “Maybe I should make a new ‘no country sorts’ rule. Though that would put a quick and platonic end to incrementing.”

Wade laughed a little. “Do I strike you as the sort to yell at people like that? I mean that in all seriousness - go running until my legs fall off? Yes. Take a job in a different country? Sure. Stand outside a building and yell at people? Not so much.”

“I don’t know. It turns out that you have a disturbing fondness for country music. I can’t really put anything past you, can I?” She looked over at him, studying Wade for a few moments. “And I’ve seen at least three different versions of you so far, which means I can’t make any assumptions on which of those are real or whether any of them are. Therefore, I do not assume that you would stand outside my office and yell at my coworkers for perceived injustices to our relationship, which is entirely hypothetical at this juncture. But I also can’t assume you wouldn’t even if you don’t seem like someone who would since you seem like a lot of things and I’m willing to bet you can probably convince people you are any number of types of people if you want them to believe it.”

“Three versions of me?” Wade asked, arching an eyebrow. “Do tell - which versions have you seen?”

Vanessa ticked each off on a finger, “The shameless flirt who will engage with anyone, though seemingly without as much intention behind said flirtation as he projects. The adrenaline junkie who will kidnap a woman he barely knows to go do something dangerous neither have any experience with. The mercenary who doesn’t sleep because he’s too busy checking possible points of entry and who can casually admit to killing a religious leader for a job.” That was three, but that wasn’t really all of them, was it? Vanessa kept ticking off fingers. “The guy who is too ‘polite’ to make good on said shameless flirting and admits it. And the guy at the pool.” She didn’t have any good way of describing that version of him and she wasn’t sure she wanted to try to either. Vanessa wasn’t even sure she wanted to think about that version too closely because she remembered her reaction to him. “I guess that’s five versions. Maybe four and a half if you combine one and four since four is sort of an offshoot of one, though it’s more like the layer under it if I had to guess more accurately.”

Wade listened as she listed off the versions of him that she’d seen, nodding along as she named each one. He could agree with all of them. “Which one’s your favorite?” He asked, quirking a smile as he turned onto one of the bridges that led to the rest of New York.

She shrugged, the gesture casual even as she decided she didn’t want to answer him. Vanessa went for an honest answer that was more evasive than it needed to be. “Depends on the situation. Not all facets of an individual personality, whether genuine or defensive masks, are equally useful in all situations. I wouldn’t exactly want the the shameless flirt dangling from a rope below me with an ice tool in his hand.”

“Interesting,” Wade said, nodding. “I can live with that.” Then he quirked a smile. “Just so long as you don’t hate any of them, I think we’re good.”

“As long as the mercenary isn’t taking a contract against me or mine, I see no reason to need to.” Vanessa was relieved that her answer had placated his curiosity rather than pushed him to ask for a more definite position. “But which ones are real and which ones are for the sake of throwing everyone off your scent?”

“Sort of defeats the purpose of having smoke screens if I tell you that, doesn’t it?” Wade asked, eyes on the road and the traffic around them as he drove.

Vanessa nodded. She’d done much the same when she had come to the mansion. It was easier that way when you had no intention of staying, which she assumed he shared. “Yeah, it does. Without your smoke screens no one gets kept at enough distance. Why would you want that?” Her voice held the implication that he wanted to keep everyone at arm’s length because he’d be leaving. It made her rethink that whole increment thing they had going on.

“It’s not keeping people at a distance that I’m worried about,” Wade said, shrugging. He had to admit, with all the kids at the mansion... it was difficult to not get attached. He’d never let himself do that before not even when he’d settled in one place for a few years. It was always just passing acquaintances, in the end, and no one missed him when he moved on. But so many of the kids had abandonment issues - like Laura or Cammie. And then there was Molly, who was too adorable for words and who Wade actually kind of wanted to stick around for.

He wasn’t sure sticking around was really an option, though. This wasn’t a job. This was a break from his regular routine. Once the doctors figured out what was going on with him and how to fix it... he’d need something that’d pay the bills. Not that he had many of those, of course. That made him pause. Of course, then he remembered that he was being driven very slowly mad with the lack of things to do and he brought himself right back to the spot where he’d been in the first place. Wade managed to finish his initial thought, at least. “It’s more that I’ve never really been able to let people get close and I’m not sure how to do it here. Who’s to say you’d like the real me, anyway?”

“Who’s to say I wouldn’t?” she challenged back. Vanessa had never had the problem with letting people close to her. For a while after being kicked out of her house the problem had been figuring out how to keep her distance. Then her problem had been learning to trust Aleister. Then her problem was balancing the distance she needed for the job with the closeness she had to the guys which was a help on the job, ensuring she and they would go above and beyond to keep one another safe. When she had shown up at Xavier’s door three and a half years ago her concern had been getting attached to people she would leave. As it turned out, she got attached and she never left. Garrison, he was specifically the reason she had never left.

“Can’t say that I see much of a point in keeping someone around indefinitely if all they are is smoke screens and mirrors. Keeping someone around involves investing something of yourself in that person, not just your time.” Even though he was looking at the road Vanessa gave him a serious and contemplative look. “Why bother investing myself in someone who doesn’t invest back?”

“Why, indeed,” Wade said, voice soft. He maintained eye contact with the bumper of the car in front of him. He didn’t have an easy answer. There were the things he wanted to do here and now, thanks to his interaction with the kids at the mansion, and there were the reasons he’d come to the mansion in the first place - they pretty much clashed and crossed one another out at every turn. He couldn’t reconcile them and he didn’t know why he’d gotten hung up in this whole keeping business, anyway, when he knew the likelihood of anyone wanting to keep somebody probably wouldn’t appreciate his work schedule, the constant danger, or even the types of jobs he was best at.

Later, he was sure, he’d blame boredom. Boredom and the hairy cancer.

Apropos of nothing, he said, “So I was born in 1960.”

Vanessa blinked and found herself staring at him. “Come again?”

“Nineteen-sixty. August 14, 1960,” Wade said, shrugging. “That’s when I was born.”

“You’re...fifty years old?” That took some serious mental adjustment on Vanessa’s part. He was fifty. He didn’t act like a fifty year old man. Not even the playful sorts of fifty year old men she had come in contact with managed the effervescent playfulness bordering on immaturity that Wade did so well. And he looked....Jesus. He looked just a few years older than her. Vanessa had put down that old soul, weathered look Wade could have in brief moments to his mercenary work, but apparently that wasn’t the cause. Or at least not the whole cause.

“The healing factor,” she said slowly. “It makes you look younger. Like it did for Logan. Only Logan has like the holy grail of healing factors and yours isn’t even good enough to heal you without leaving scars.” And he was fifty.

“Yeah, basically,” Wade said, nodding. They hit the main highway and he sped up to nine miles over the speed limit, then pushed the cruise control and let the car do the rest of the work. “It’s gimpy.” Really, the healing factor had a lot it was contending with, but Wade didn’t want to bring up his hairy cancer at the moment. “And Crazy Frank calls me Donnie. Don’t ask.”

“I won’t.” She was a little preoccupied with the fact that she had been flirting with, kissing and cuddling up with someone twenty-two years her senior. It shouldn’t have been that big a deal to Vanessa except for the inherent deceit of omission. Technically everything about Wade was deceit by omission, wasn’t it? She had started to share a man with her forty-year-old best friend. But there’s a big difference between that and a guy ten years older than Jean-Paul who you thought was ten years younger than him.

Vanessa sighed and let her head fall back against the headrest. Her eyes closed partway and she watched the highway ahead of them. The diminished visual field from her halfshut eyes meant she couldn’t see Wade out of her peripheral vision anymore. “You’re leaving, right? After whatever gets fixed with your powers that you need to fix?” She was pretty sure he had said as much once, but it was possible she had just assumed it.

“That was the plan,” Wade said, thumbs tapping a quick beat on the steering wheel. He wasn’t sure it was going to stay the plan, of course. But he sort of felt like he’d done enough sharing for the day. For the rest of the year, probably, which was saying something, since it was early March now. And anyway, her reaction to the age thing was essentially the reason for all the smoke screens. They weren’t lies, they just weren’t the whole truth.

“I think the increment thing we’re doing is a bad idea.” Vanessa said it a little more quickly than she normally spoke. Ripping off bandaids was more useful, she had always thought, than trying to peel them off slowly.

“And that, my friends,” Wade said, his tone good-natured, “is why we keep up the smoke screens.”

“It’s not your age,” she explained. “That...I need to get my head around a bit. I had assumed one thing, which was an assumption admittedly, and got a little blindesided by the truth. But that isn’t why. I’m pretty sure I would adjust and not care in the end. You’re leaving, that’s why. It’s...not something I thought of at the time because, admittedly I was a little distracted by...other things. And I should have thought of it, so I’m sorry for that. I’m very, very good at walking away from people and from situations. But I’m also terrible at not getting attached to people. I know that probably doesn’t make much sense, but I’m full of contradictions.

“I can hang out and go ice climbing or be stupid and stuff and when you leave it’s fine. I’ve got mates who are practically family whose locations I can’t even be sure of from day to day. But I’m not particularly good at casual. Whatever I keep telling myself right now or doing at the moment, I know me. I know casual feels empty and in the end I want to be someone’s somebody who matters. So I’m not going to do casual and incremental with you because I think I’ll get attached. And then you’ll leave. And I honestly don’t know what I’d do with that. So I think it’s a bad idea.”

“Nah, it’s cool,” Wade said, nodding along to the song that had come on the radio. He kept the smile in place, the mask flawless as he continued, “It was only increments, right? Did you ever figure out what maraschino cherries were good for? I figure I should probably let you know I wasn’t actually trying to insult you with that or whatever you wound up thinking, depending on your experiences with them. They’re just really good in drinks of an alcoholic nature. I guess that’s not really a compliment, either, huh? I never was all that good at compliments, anyway. Suffice it to say this is totally not meant to be rude or anything.”

He wasn’t sure driving out to see Crazy Frank was such a good idea anymore, but Crazy Frank would get pissed if he didn’t turn up and then he’d’ve blown a contact for a couple months and if he needed heavy artillery or something on a job, that could be awkward. Wade wasn’t sure, but he had a feeling dealing with Crazy Frank’s awkward would be a hell of a lot easier than dealing with the awkward currently stifling him in the car.

Wade seemed unfazed. Vanessa wasn’t sure if it was more smoke screen or if it really didn’t matter to him. She supposed it probably didn’t matter much in the end. How many other women was he flirting with? They probably wouldn’t all care about him planning to leave. So, really, she hadn’t taken much away from him. “They’re good for stems to tie with your tongue,” Vanessa told him lightly. The serious thoughtfulness from her voice the last time she had spoken was gone and now she only sounded casual, as if she were talking to anyone. “And good for attracting attention in bars from said tying. Everyone told me they were sickly sweet and my sweet tooth isn’t really very developed so I made my friend eat them instead. I’m not sure what the compliment was where they were concerned, though.” At the time she had assumed it to be something more about how he liked cherries and wanted to taste them on her lips, but Vanessa was questioning her interpretation of a number of things he had said to her now.

“Yeah, I kinda can’t remember at the moment, myself,” Wade said, shrugging. Casual. He was good at casual. Casual was all he’d ever done. And distance... distance was important. She’d reminded him of that. He couldn’t undistance himself from the kids, but he could at least try to make sure he didn’t lose distance with anybody else. Jesus, he’d been kind of an idiot since getting to the mansion. What the hell was wrong with him? “Probably something stupid. That’s kind of my MO these days.”

They had about an hour and a half until they got to Crazy Frank’s. He could fill the void with meaningless chatter and discount pretty much every single bit of interaction they’d had up until now because that was how you went about restoring distance, wasn’t it? Yeah, that’d work for him. Totally.

Vanessa fell silent after that, not really sure what to say. It was easier to play the casual game when you had more distractions than they currently had. They were going somewhere and she didn’t know where. Then the Temptations came on the station singing You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me and she half glared at the radio. Out of the settled silence she quietly said, “The one at the pool. And the one that’s polite.”

Wade glanced at the radio and resisted the urge to rub at his eyes. “Yeah?” He asked, voice losing most of his fake calm and cheer. I won’t leave you, don’t wanna stay here, don’t want to spend another day here... He looked over at her and quirked a rueful sort of smile. “The flirt’s mostly fake. Ice climbing’s better. Then the pool. Last, and truest of all, is Mr. Manners.” He was pretty sure this wasn’t going to help matters. He just hoped all those emotions he refused to acknowledge he had weren’t leaking through. He hated leaking.

There was no joy in the faint smile Vanessa wore as she shook her head. “That sucks.” Probably not the reaction someone would have expected from her, but it was genuine. It would be just Vanessa’s luck, wouldn’t it? I’m going to be celibate and a practicing asexual, damn it.

“Yeah,” Wade said, nodding. “It’s cause my mom was old fashioned. Or, y’know. In touch with the times or whatever. Small town in the middle of nowhere. I kind of had manners beaten into me until they stuck.” Oh, the many levels upon which that statement was true. Wade didn’t want to touch on that anymore, though. He wanted to veer off into the territory where they talked about sandwiches and bad country music again. “If you don’t switch the station from Motown, I’m going to put it back on country.”

Vanessa leaned forward and started to search the stations again. Motown really wasn’t helping. “That wasn’t what I meant.” She didn’t example further. If he wanted to know then he would ask, but she wasn’t sure he actually cared what she meant. When she found a rock station Vanessa paused. The beat was heavy, modern rock not classic rock. And it was a distinctly angry song. Vanessa left it and turned it up a bit.