Vanessa & Wade | Sunday

[x-copycat.livejournal.com]

Once They get to where CF is holed up for the day, the pair pretend everything is normal and convince the contact that "Donnie" has settled down with a wife and twins.

The remainder of the drive up to see Crazy Frank had been mostly silent. Wade had forgone his usual mindless banter in favor of focusing on the road ahead while Vanessa watched scenery streak by out her window, occasionally singing along with the radio which she kept firmly on modern rock stations whenever they went out of range of what they were listening to.

Eventually they left the highway so Wade could follow the various turns from one street to another in the path he had memorized. The directions led them through the outskirts of city and into the suburbs. Houses lined street after street in varying colors of slightly different takes on the same design of house. It was obviously one of those communities that had rules about the colors you could paint your house and how often you had to mow your lawn. The car stopped in front of a pale yellow house with tan trim, complete with shutters. “A guy named Crazy Frank set up shop here and no one noticed?” A cabin in the woods seemed more secure.

“Uh huh,” Wade said. “It’s very temporary. We’re on a tight schedule.” He smiled a little. “I think he’s moving out tonight.” Parking the car, he cut the engine and opened his door, sliding out and then stretching because wow, driving for two hours after awkward was just... well. More awkward, really. But he wasn’t gonna let himself think about that.

Reaching over after shutting his door, he tweaked the “for sale” sign in the front yard and lifted his chin toward the front of the house. “Looks just like something your mother would approve of, huh, honey?”

Oh God, he’s going to play the couple looking for a house with me. Vanessa just barely managed to not smack her palm against her forehead. That game worked very well between her and Jean-Paul, but she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to play it with Wade. However, Vanessa wasn’t one to be unprofessional so after she had emerged from the car and stretched her shoulders she slid right up next to Wade.

An arm wrapped around his and she all but rested her chin on his shoulder. If he wanted to play couple then he would have to live with it. “I don’t know, she’s not much of a fan of yellow since someone told her it was considered the color of insanity. Maybe if we paint it blue?” An affectionate smile spread over her face as her head tilted to look at Wade. Any indication that it may have been disingenuous was absent. “Then it would match the baby.”

Wade smiled. They were having blue babies, were they? “Well, one of them, at least. I still can’t believe you never mentioned twins ran in your family,” he said, stepping away from the car and up onto the sidewalk that led to the front door. Blue babies. His mind had sort of gotten stuck on that. “But maybe if we keep the house yellow, your mother will visit less.”

“We could paint it white so the other one doesn’t feel so left out. Niamh’s already blue so maybe then Étaín won’t feel like she’s not special.” The Irish in her accent had taken several steps up as she spoke, until it was much closer to the slightly Boston, thickly brogued accent she had used for Morgan when she had first shown up at the mansion. It was a mimic of Thom Sheehan’s accent. “Aye, but you know, if my mam doesn’t visit we might never find someone to watch the girls so we can have nights out alone.” Vanessa stayed by Wade’s side, matching him step for step as he made his way up the walkway toward the front door. In her head there was now a pair of little twin girls, one blue like Vanessa and one pale but otherwise normal people colored. She didn’t even want kids, but it was an amusing image.

“Maybe there’ll be a nice girl or two in the neighborhood who wouldn’t mind looking after our troublemakers,” Wade said, pausing at the door so he could knock. He waited after the initial two knocks and then knocked again. There was some shuffling to be heard and a couple dull thuds before the lock turned and the door opened.

“Donnie!” A large man stood in the entryway, a t-shirt stretched over some truly impressive girth, and gestured for the pair on the porch to come inside. “Been expecting you - sorry about having to reschedule. Mess up in Seattle.”

“Hey Frank,” Wade said, stepping inside even as he shifted a little to keep Vanessa slightly behind him. “No problem on rescheduling - and thanks for seeing us.” He waited until the door had closed before extending his hand for the other man to shake. “This’s my friend I told you about. You have what I asked you for?”

The other man narrowed his eyes for a moment before apparently deciding not to bring up whatever it was that had apparently annoyed him. Wade paid the narrowed eyes no mind as they shook hands. “Aye, well and so. They’re downstairs.” Crazy Frank’s eyes caught on Vanessa and he tipped his head to the side. “I get a name for your lady here? Or are we being all cloak and dagger-like about her?”

“I do fancy daggers,” Vanessa replied a bit cheerfully. “Not so sure how I feel about cloaks, though.” She appreciated Wade’s attempts to put himself between her and and the big man. The guy was a stranger and Wade had reflexes the metamorph didn’t, so while her arm had unwound from his once the door had shut she did not step out from behind him. From just behind Wade’s shoulder Vanessa extended a hand to the man, watching his body language carefully. “They call me Nessa.”

“Nice to meet you, Nessa,” the large man said, shaking her hand. It was firm but not overkill, since he wasn’t trying to be an ass. These were paying customers, after all. And something about the woman kept ringing at the back of his mind. He just couldn’t place it yet. “I’m C.F.”

“Crazy Frank,” Wade interjected, a half-smirk turning up the corner of his lips.

“Not that,” C.F. continued, turning and gesturing for them to follow him toward a door halfway down the hall. “C’mon, I’ll show you the merchandise and we’ll see what your Nessa there has to say about it.” He quirked an eyebrow as he cast a look back toward them, already heading downstairs. “You didn’t really tie the knot and procreate, did you Donnie? No offense, Nessa, but I’m thinking you could’ve picked better.”

A laugh met C.F.’s criticism. Vanessa wasn’t sure if his name really was Frank anymore so she tried to not think of him as such. “Aye, likely could have. Suppose I’m attracted to danger a bit. And there is a certain charm about him, don’t you think?” She was smirking a little as she spoke, trying not to laugh as she followed behind Wade. “My Donnie’s a bit of a peach when no one’s looking, but you probably shouldn’t let that get out. No one’d respect him anymore. That is, if they do at all.”

“He gets his jobs done,” C.F. said, flipping a switch when he got to the bottom of the stairs and then taking a sharp left. He’d turned on a light down below. “This is it - just what you asked for, Donnie.”

Wade stepped down the last few stairs and stepped forward so Vanessa could follow. He half-turned toward her, though, so he could see the reaction on her face when she finally got down and saw what he’d had brought out for her. “There’s a few to choose from, but the gist of it, love, is pick whatever you like. It’s yours.”

Vanessa was half peering around Wade so she could see what was down here without stepping out from behind him. There were half a dozen high caliber, incredibly illegal, military-grade rifles arranged on the table. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped a little as her gaze moved over one gun and then the next. Her fingers wrapped around Wade’s wrist and she whispered as she exhaled, “I think I might actually want to marry you now.” The words were quiet enough that the sound of her voice likely didn’t travel beyond Wade’s range.

Wade grinned. “Careful,” he murmured, quirking a brow. “I’ll hold you to that.” Then he tipped his head to the side. “Go on, go get a feel for ‘em.”

“Your lady friend looks star-struck, Donnie,” C.F. commented, grinning despite himself. He’d seen that look before. “Basement’s soundproofed. People who lived here apparently had a son who liked to bang on his drums or some such. So the target’s over at the other end.” He nodded toward the far side of the room. The realtor was going to have an interesting time dealing with the leftovers once they’d finished up here, but it wasn’t like C.F. would have to handle it. He’d be long gone and on his way to Austin by the time anybody realized something was amiss.

Right now Vanessa didn’t much care if he did hold her to it. She trailed over to the table from the stairs, fingers running over the length of each firearm. The metamorph was meticulous. She inspected each weapon, disassembling and reassambling each one in turn before even considering the target at the other end of the concrete room. “Shame you chose the suburbs,” she commented lightly as she loaded a clip into the first weapon. It was a Heckler & Koch 417. Thom had one he loved. It was a sharpshooter’s rifle. “None of these weapons can be properly measured over such a short distance. No wind, no obstacles aside from the stairs, no real challenge of distance.”

Vanessa wasn’t one for straight target shooting much. There was little challenge to it and she found little accuracy in what a person could do when their shot was wide open. For that reason she positioned herself back in a corner of the basement, lining up her shot through the slats of the wooden stairs. She was at an angle to her target, but when she squeezed the trigger her shot found the center nonetheless.

“True enough,” C.F. said, nodding. “But all the cabins in the mountains were taken today and I’ve got plans for tomorrow. So the suburbs it is.”

Wade gave C.F. about half of his attention as the other man spoke about the fiasco in Seattle, then the Hellhouse and whether either he or Nessa had been there. “Hellhouse isn’t really her style,” Wade murmured, watching her move from one rifle to the next. He had to smile. “And anyway, this is just for home protection, don’t you know?” Obviously his wife would know how to handle rifles and obviously she’d be able to shoot one while crouched behind the steps and still make a bullseye on the target.

“Aye, and she’ll be protecting the feck outta your house, I’m thinking.” C.F. seemed quite amused at the mental image that thought conjured.

“I’m very possessive about my knick knacks,” Vanessa put in, passively listening to their conversation as she tested each rifle in turn. She took one shot dead on in front of the target and then moved around the room taking shots from different angles and crouching or standing on a milk crate to get more angles that way. Vanessa emptied each clip. “And very, very protective of the twins.” Her gaze flicked up toward Wade and she shot him a brief, brilliant smile before she went back to considering the guns that were now lying on the table in front of her.

On the one hand, she knew the 417 well because of Thom. On the other hand, the Accuracy International AWM was being used to replace some of the AI AW’s in the British Army. Only God knew what the US military was doing. No one she spoke to very often paid attention to the Americans and their weapon choices. She pointed to one of the long range rifles she wasn’t as familiar with, a Barrett M82. “What’re the effective and max ranges on this?”

“Effective’s 2000 yards,” C.F. answered readily. “Max’s 7450 yards.” He’d tipped his head to the side again, watching her as she did her testing. The moves looked familiar, practiced - he could’ve sworn he’d seen somebody else go through essentially the same type of testing with his hardware. “You in the business before you settled down, Nessa?”

“Appreciative” didn’t begin to describe the look Vanessa gave that rifle. A low whistle followed the quirk of her eyebrow. Damn, now that was pretty. Did she really need a weapon that could take a man out from over a mile away? Probably not. Vanessa wasn’t a mercenary anymore. She didn’t take jobs. But being a mercenary was so very much a part of her being that she couldn’t help but think what if she did need such a gun and then she didn’t have one? Decisions, decisions. She was half tempted to excuse herself and call Thom for a recommendation. He always seemed to know exactly what she needed for weaponry, being the man who supplied her with so much of it.

Tearing her eyes away from the options on the table, Vanessa looked back up at C.F. “Aye. Did a fair bit of work in Africa and South America and some up in Eastern Europe and Russia with a crew. They’re not active anymore, though.”

“Supplied a lot of weapons to a few crews operating round abouts there over the years,” C.F. said, head still tipped to the side a little. “Who was your go-to man for your guns, then?”

Shit, now she had to remember. “Oi, fuck. I’ve got to remember his name. I’ve not been out of the game so long but I wasn’t the one who handled that part of the business, one of the guy’s was. It was a bloke with an Irish name. Bloody hell, that doesn’t help. Most of who we dealt with were blokes with Irish names.” That’s what happened when the guys who started the crew came out of Ireland and UK Special Forces, wasn’t it? “Bloke named Fitzpatrick. Not sure I ever knew his first name. Thom always called him Fitzpatrick.”

“Christ Almighty,” C.F. grinned, straightening up all of a sudden. “Not Thom O’Callahan, was it?”

Wade looked back and forth between the two of them, one eye narrowing a bit.

Both eyebrows darted up. O’Callahan was the name Thom gave when he was buying supplies, as he had called it. “Aye. Thom O’Callahan. You, you’re not Fitzpatrick are you? ‘Cause Donnie here definitely never gave me your last name, which was astoundingly negligent of him.” She gave Wade a look, but couldn’t wipe the amused smile off her face.

“Aye, Steele Fitzpatrick,” he said, offering his hand again for a proper shake this time. “You’re Thom’s girl, then, are you?”

Wade had a feeling this was going to wind up going nowhere good for him, but he was too fascinated by the interaction taking place in front of him to try and figure out if that was all bad or not.

Still wearing that smile when she took Steele’s hand again to shake it. “I’m Thom’s girl, yeah. Suppose you’re the source of every gun I own, then. Including,” she drew her Sig P226 Tactical out from her shoulder rig under her jacket. She kept the safety on. “My favorite.” The gun was slid back into the holster. “Thom always spoke pretty highly of you. Good selection, decent price and not going to dick someone about unless they deserved it. He liked you as his gun guy.”

“And I liked him as a buyer,” C.F. said, acknowledging the Sig P226 with another smile. “How’s he doing, then? If your crew’s inactive and you’re all settled with Donnie here, what’s the old man up to?”

“Not all the crew’s inactive. One’s still working. Thom, though, he’s retired.” Vanessa couldn’t help the smirking turn her smile took as she glanced over at Wade for a moment. “He’s a bit on in his years, after all. Fifties seemed like a good time to retire to him, while he still had enough kick in him to enjoy his remaining years. He convinced the woman he’d been seeing on his brief stints back home between jobs to take him back after she swore she was done with him two jobs prior to his retirement. He’s living on a farm now with his fiery, Welsh redhead. Brilliantly happy, too, from what he says.”

“Aye, fifty’s a bit old to be in the business,” C.F. said, nodding sagely. “Good to hear he got himself that lady of his, though. Old man deserves a bit of rest and relaxation, as they say.” He tipped his chin toward the table and said, “You like the Barrett? I’ll give you a bit of a discount, since she’s for home security and whatnot.”

“Mm...aye, she’s gorgeous.” Vanessa’s fingers ran down the barrel again. An effective range over a mile. A maximum range of several miles. Jesus, she swore she was getting wet just thinking about it. Her fingers went over the AWM as well, though she had a rifle with about the same range as that one already, same for the AW and the 417. What she didn’t have was something that could hit a target over a mile away. With a nod, Vanessa looked from the weapon back to Fitzpatrick. “I want her.”

“It’s settled then, Donnie,” C.F. said turning to Wade. “Your lady here wants the Barrett. I’ll get the case for transport. Take ten percent off what I told you initially and I’ll toss in some ammo.”

Wade nodded as C.F. went over to the side of the room and started sorting through cases. “You like her, then?” He smiled.

Smiling, Vanessa nodded. “I’d say I want to have her babies but I’m not sure how the girls would take to a little gun half-sibling. Or me cheating on their da.” She checked Fitzpatrick’s relative location to them, then looked back at Wade and spoke more quietly. “But you haven’t got to do this.”

“I want to do this,” Wade said, shrugging. He’d intended to do this before they had their little talk in the car and he didn’t see any real reason to change his plans now that they were here and she’d seen the weaponry. “Besides, you’re hot when you’re wielding a rifle.” He grinned.

“I’m hot when I’m not, too.” Vanessa found herself chewing on her lower lip, watching Wade closely. He was buying her a very, very illegal firearm which could do a lot of damage which would be very hard to trace from the distance at which she could work. And it was an expensive, gorgeous weapon. She crossed the distance to Wade before she could really consider how she had said little more than an hour before that this was off the table. And she kissed him, lips pressed tightly against his, then whispered, “Thank you.”

Wade’s hands had settled at Vanessa’s hips when she kissed him and he had to be honest. It took him a few seconds to get his brain back in gear. “You’re welcome,” he said, smiling a little.

C.F. chose that moment to clear his throat, eyes lingering on the ceiling until he was fairly certain they’d stopped making out. “Here’s your weapon, Nessa. You tell Thom I said hello.”

Vanessa was still half attached to Wade. She wasn’t sure when her finger had hooked into one of his belt loops, but that’s where it was now as she leaned against him slightly. It was her spare hand that reached out for the case containing her very, very sexy long range rifle which had clearly been broken down so there wasn’t the awkwardness of trying to explain what was in a case nearly five feet long. She raised and lowered the case a few times, getting a feel for the weight of it all. “Thanks, love, I will. I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear from you, so to speak.”

Wade reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out an envelope. It was thick and obviously full of cash. Handing it over, he nodded to C.F. “Thanks, Frank,” he said, giving the other man an unrepentant grin. “Nessa and I’ll be going. The twins are waiting and Nessa’s mother’s nice, but she spoils them. I’ll bet they won’t go to bed for hours tonight...”

“Not once their da’s home anyway.” She used a conspiratorial tone when Vanessa looked at Fitzpatrick and said, “They’re both daddy’s girls. Can’t get them to sleep half the time unless he does it.” She gave Wade a look that many would have described as adoring. “It was lovely actually meeting you, though, Steele.” Then she started to tug at Wade’s belt loop to direct him over to the stairs.

Letting himself be tugged away in the direction of the stairs, Wade made sure Vanessa was walking up in front of him and then gave C.F. a finger wave. “Toodles!”

They got back out to the car and Wade unlocked it, shifting around to open Vanessa’s door for her while she put the case with her pretty new gun in the back. “M’lady,” he said, half bowing and with a flourish.

Grinning, Vanessa inclined her head to Wade, patted him on the cheek affectionately and slid into her seat with little more than a murmured, “Good sir.” They had gone from a fair bit of awkwardness to a bit of playfulness with a fictional marriage and children, which was more than a little amusing considering Vanessa was involved with said fictional children. But it was a world better than the awkwardness from before. She had some worry that it would be back now that they didn’t have a play to put on for Fitzpatrick.

Still grinning, Wade closed the door and then headed back over to the driver’s side. He got in, buckled up, and then they were off to parts unknown again - or, really, they were off and heading back to the city, but he went around a different way to get to the main road than the one they’d taken in, so it might have seemed like they were off to parts unknown. “So you and Crazy Frank have connections, huh?” He asked, brows up.

“Apparently.” The Irish in her accent was fading now, though it wasn’t gone entirely. Vanessa wasn’t sure going into any detail about who Thom was or about her crew was wanted or necessary so she skipped it. She did note, a bit belatedly, that Fitzpatrick’s comment about her being Thom’s girl could either be taken the way she believe it was intended and imply that Thom was her dad or it could be taken to imply she was his girlfriend. Given she’d stated he was in his fifties that was just all sorts of odd. But mostly because it was Thom, the man who had taught her how to box and snipe. “Why do you call him Crazy Frank when his name is Steele?”

“He always signed his emails with C.F. and somebody told me once that he was crazy but they were mumbling on the last name, so I just made up the Frank part,” Wade answered, shrugging. “It works.” So somebody in their fifties had gone and retired. Wade hadn’t missed the byplay there. He just didn’t quite know what to make of it. The idea of retiring just... seemed so entirely foreign to him. What would he do? “What’s your Thom doing, then? Is he really on a farm somewhere with a redheaded Welshwoman?”

Vanessa nodded. “He is, actually. He’s been mad on her for ages. I don’t remember a time when he wasn’t with her. We took a lot of long jobs, though, and sometimes we took jobs back to back. None of us really had time to get home or go off somewhere and rest much. When we did, though, he went to her. She couldn’t take it anymore though and called it off. The crew decided to split after an incident in particular that I’d rather not talk about and Thom went back to her, begging her to take him back and promising he was retired.

“He’s taken an odd, very short, job here and there since but only with her permission and because he gets restless.” It was funny, really, to think of Thom asking someone else permission to do anything. “But he’s too old to do anything else. He was in the military when he was younger and then he was a mercenary. It’s all he knows. So, in order to keep him from going nuts she lets him take on smaller, short, usually relatively safe jobs.” Some of that was wetwork but wetwork was much safer from a mile off from your target. “I’ve no idea what he would have done with himself if she hadn’t taken him back, honestly. He’d probably be here, actually. With me.”

“Interesting,” Wade said. It obviously wasn’t an academic observation. He was honestly interested in the fact that this man who’d known nothing but military service and mercenary work had managed to... retire from it all. “What’s it like, staying in one place pretty much all the time?”

She shrugged. “Depends what you make of it, I guess. If you’ve got people who matter and stuff to do it’s not so bad. I went half mad at the mansion until I replaced their self-defense teacher. And then I only went a quarter mad since that only took up so much time. Working at Snow Valley helped kill my twitchiness. So did mates. I spent a lot of time in bars with Adrienne and Kane drinking beer and watching baseball. And making fun of Kane for being both Canadian and a Jays fan, though the latter is the really tragic point. The former’s only funny because he’s a Mountie and I like picturing him in the little red uniform with the hat.” Vanessa started giggling, unable to stop herself from picturing Garrison like the guy from that show Due South. It was a hilarious image, really. “It took me a while to adjust but by the time I was going to go back I actually had a lot I’d be leaving behind. I’d never had that before and the guys got on without me just as they had before I’d come on board.”

Wade smiled. He’d never met this Kane person, but anybody who dressed up in the traditional Mountie uniform had his respect. Slowing for a stoplight, he commented, “There’s something very distinguished about a man in uniform, even if it’s red with shiny buttons and a kinda goofy hat.” He mulled over everything else she’d said. “Y’know, a surprising number of the kids at this school have abandonment issues. I mean, that’s what I’m calling it, anyway.” He let a pause lengthen while he took a turn and then merged onto the main highway. “So, y’know. It’d suck to like. Help them with stuff like this one chick, Laura. She’s got nifty powers kind of like mine but not quite and she’s fun to spar with. It’d suck to help her and then bail like her dad evidently did.”

“Yeah, he did. And she didn’t know him for very long. She’s got issues but abandonment’s not the big one.” Vanessa wasn’t going to tell Wade about how Laura had been biologically engineered to be a weapon, an instrument of death. She leaned her head against her window and watched the cars in the next lane over. “And I might feel a touch more protective of her than anyone may anticipate, so there’s the possibility if someone let’s her down again I might take it personally. And I get really, really pissed when people hurt my people.” Her head turned until she could look at Wade. In a rather calm, even tone Vanessa said, “So don’t get her hopes up, okay? Don’t let her get attached. Because if she ever cries over you, it’s all the excuse I would need to add more scars to your collection. You can heal, but you can still hurt, too.”

“Threat number two,” Wade said, quirking a brow even as he kept his eyes on the road. “I like Laura. I like Meggan, too. I like that they’re young enough to not really know about all the crap the world can throw at them the way I know it. They’ve got their own issues, their own histories, but it’s like it’s not as ingrained and gritty as mine. I guess that’s what people call innocence, right?”

“I don’t know if what they have is innocence. I think they’ve both gone through enough to have lost it. But I think they’ve both got hope still. And optimism. Something folks your age seem to have long lost before hitting that half-century mark. It’s an important thing. Something that’s damn hard to grow back but that can be grown back with enough time.” It was funny, how she was sort of talking about herself. Vanessa wouldn’t have admitted it aloud, of course. She had learned a lot more optimism in the past few years than she’d had before. She’d learned something of how to hope. It was a very strange thing to think of the person she had been and the person she was now. But then, she hadn’t had any idea who Vanessa was before. Vanessa hadn’t existed for any period of time long enough or frequently to have an identity.

“They’ve got enough hope and optimism that they can still overcome the crap the world throws at them. That’s the difference.”

“Hope and optimism, then,” Wade said, nodding a little. “There’s this half-pint, too. I might’ve promised to help her figure out how to run somebody into a wall the right way. Or at least watch while her teacher and she worked on it, since like you said. I can heal, but I can still hurt and one set of bruises in a month and a half is enough as far as I’m concerned.” It occurred to him that he’d never actually told her that all the bruises he’d had when she caught him swimming had come from Miss Half-Pint Molly, of the Awesome Hats Mollys.

An eyebrow quirked upward. “Our fictional twins are going to start getting very jealous of all the cute, tiny females of varying ages you’re adopting. Cute, tiny females of varying ages with varying levels of abandonment issues that you’re getting all...” she went looking for the right word. The word she wanted to use was maybe not accurate. But it looked very accurate on him right now. He could always correct her. “All attached to.”

“Yeah, well,” Wade said, thinking of all the debutantes he’d pointedly not let himself get attached to over the years. “I’m not working. I’m... just kind of here. And what else am I supposed to do if not help out the people who seem to need help when they need it?” He’d been trying really hard not to really acknowledge the whole ‘getting attached’ thing. Still, once it was brought out into the light of day and all... visible, he had to shrug. “I’ve never had anybody to get attached to before. It’s weird. And even weirder that they might get attached back. But not a bad weird. The kind of weird where I’m pretty sure I’d break a few noses if somebody like. Made them cry. I... am not entirely sure what to do with that. It’s like step three in a process that I haven’t finished step one on yet. I skipped steps by accident. How do I fix that?”

“You skip steps a lot, don’t you?” She sounded amused. “I’m not sure what steps one and two are. If you tell me then maybe I can advise. Or you can just keep on with your skipped steps. Don’t think about it and just go with it. Just keep in mind that any progression of steps will likely further your steps and furthering along the progression is likely to lead to more attachment on one side or the other.” Vanessa shrugged in a helpless gesture. “Which means you may need to consider how many times you’ll need to break your own nose when you leave. I just mean, you’re not planning to stick around and that’s going to impact all those cute, tiny females you’re adopting. And maybe it seems unfair to help them when they need it, but you should probably look at the case-by-case basis of how leaving will impact them and avoid the ones who might get more hurt by it. Like the ones with raging abandonment issues.”

“That was the plan,” Wade said, emphasizing the word there as he hadn’t before. “That was my initial plan. But it’s taking OJ a while to look at stuff and I’m thinking that can’t really mean anything good. So there’s no telling how long I’ll be here attempting unsuccessfully to get help with my powers and stuff.” He didn’t really want to go into the details of it because... there was obviously enough about him that’d made her think they shouldn’t do their increments thing and that was alright - fuck, he had cancer. He shouldn’t be doing increments at all. That didn’t mean he wanted everybody to know why he was there. “And... y’know. I’ve been at this a long time, the job. I’ve never really taken a break. Maybe I wanna see how the breaking thing goes.”

“So you’re revising your plan?” Well, now she felt like more of an ass than she had before. That was awesome. “It’s just a break though, right? I mean you get this break and it’s longer than you anticipate but in the end you get all patched up and sent on your way and do you really think you won’t actually go on your way at that point? Given the chance to get back to work and moving around and always being so busy you don’t have to think about anything but the job or, what? Working security at a school full of tiny, cute females? Do you honestly think you’d choose the latter after months of being restless?”

“I don’t know,” Wade said, shrugging again. “It’s maybe a short break, it’s maybe something more than that. But... working security at a school where I get to help people and can know them instead of just being that guy standing in the background meant to take a bullet for somebody if it comes down to it? It’d be different. It might not stick. Or maybe it will. It’s not something I’ve ever been able to do. And protecting people I care about seems like it’d be a hell of a lot more... fulfilling.” When had they gotten around to this? Wade didn’t care about people. He refused to acknowledge that he cared about them. It was a thing. A good thing, part of a system that’d worked for him for decades. A cute kid in a hat and a couple chicks with abandonment issues really shouldn’t be able to change his decades’ worth of habit.

Shit, he thought, speeding up a little to go around a tractor trailer. Shit.

“The pay’s worse,” Vanessa warned. “The pay’s absolute shit in comparison, actually. But if you don’t mind that then, yeah, it’s a lot more fulfilling. Not that most mercs care much about fulfilling. Or caring. Or being something than the bloke in the back who takes a bullet that no one cares about. Who dies without anyone. It’s not really the mercenary way, is it?” She gave him a wry smile. “When a mercenary starts to care...it might be time for retirement. It’s hard to come back from caring.” She knew. Though Vanessa was likely a lot more dangerous when you attacked someone she cared about than she was on a job where it was just about the pay check, and even those involved guys who were family to her. She’d take a bullet for any of those guys, but covering Eamon’s back wasn’t the same as protecting kids. It wasn’t even the same as being protective over Jean-Paul.

“Retirement never really seemed like a viable option,” Wade said. “I mean, what would I retire to? And if half of these people find out who I really am, what I’ve done...” He shook his head. “It’s not the kind of thing people are really able to accept most of the time.”

“The old head of security outed me as a mercenary while commenting to someone’s journal. I’d kept it under wraps because, even though I’m a shapeshifter and I’ve never used my real name or body out in the field on a job, I wanted to minimize the risk of anyone tracking me back to the mansion even further. I’d had the assurances of the Professor that the information would be on a need-to-know basis and the head of security was in the loop. And he outed me. And I got pissed. But I managed to not hunt him down and shoot him in the head, because that would be inappropriate in a school where I was teaching children.” She even sounded a little proud of herself on that last point. “But no one cared. A couple people told him to stop being a dick if I’m remembering correctly. I’ve never given anyone details and I can’t remember anyone ever asking for any. Nathan was a mercenary, too. He was there long before me, part of the leather brigade going out and playing superhero and all that. No one had a problem with him either.”

Vanessa shrugged and took in a deep breath after all her rambling. “My point is, there are plenty of people with shady histories around. And you shouldn’t assume it will matter to people before you know them well enough for that to be an informed opinion. Because in my experience? Those people give second chances out like candy, to anyone who wants one and hasn’t proven themselves unworthy of one. They’re more likely to care about who you are than who you were. If who you are is a guy who did wetwork and the like but who wants to help kids run people into walls and be better fighters by sparring? That counts a lot with those people. And it counts for a lot with the Professor.”

“Yeah?” Wade didn’t know. He didn’t have the background in trusting people enough to believe they’d give him a first chance, let alone a second one. “We’ll have to see how things go with OJ and the powers thing.” Cause if that went badly, he might not be of any use to anybody, let alone the kids in fantastic hats and the ones he sparred with so regularly now.

“Who the fuck is OJ, anyway?” Seriously, either he was batshit crazy and talking to the juice about his powers issues or he had a former football player and very possible murderer who got away with it as his attending physician.

“Osmosis Joe,” Wade said, grinning. “Big, blue, furry, smart like a smart thing, odd sense of humor.”

“You mean Hank?” Vanessa shook her head. “I need a bloody crib sheet so I can keep track of your stupid nicknames for people.” She was hoping he would manage to forget the one he had given her earlier.

“What, you don’t like the nicknames, buttercup?” Wade waggled his eyebrows a little. “I think they’re catchy!”

Vanessa poked him in the ribs a bit harder than she meant to, though she was unapologetic about that. “I don’t care what you call other people, snookums, as long as I know who the hell you’re talking about when you use them. You can set them all to rhyme with iambic pentameter if it makes you happy.”

“Oh, snazzy,” Wade said, managing to not flinch away from her poking. “I’ll have to come up with something actually in iambic pentameter now, just for you.” Maybe he’d try really hard to make a journal entry in it or something. He’d just have to figure out what iambic pentameter was exactly and then maybe get somebody to proofread it because he wasn’t really all that great with that kind of thing most of the time.

“I’m sure my heart will be all aflutter.” Vanessa sighed and collapsed against the back of her seat, slouching and slumping down several inches. “And then I’ll feel the pressing need to clean my shiny, shiny, gorgeous new gun. And resist the urge to propose to you.”

Wade considered that for a long moment, then reached over and turned the radio down. Then he cleared his throat, took a breath, and sang, “Why do you build me up, buttercup baby, just to let me down and mess me around? And then worst of all, you never call, baby, when you say you will, but I love you still. I need you more than anyone, darlin’, you know that I have from the start... build me up, buttercup, don’t break my heart...”

During the serenade Vanessa had straightened a bit. Her eyebrows were trying to inch into her hairline and she was staring at him with an expression caught somewhere between amused and very confused. “I think that’s pretty close to Motown and didn’t we ban Motown in the car?” It was all the reaction she could manage since Vanessa wasn’t entirely sure if she should be laughing or not. It had been a very strange day.

Grinning, Wade shrugged. “I was going more for an A Capella boys group rendition, personally, but whichever. It just worked so well in the moment. I couldn’t resist.”

“I think that moment was like three minutes ago when you called me buttercup, wasn’t it?”

“Delayed momentary reaction?” Wade said, tone hopeful.

Pretending to consider it, Vanessa eventually shrugged. “Alright, I’ll give you that. But only for the sake of Niamh and Étaín.”

“Ah, yes. The twins. One blue and one white. What do their names mean?”

“They’re both from Irish mythology. Niamh was the daughter of the sea god and she married Oisín and was one of the queens of one of the otherworlds, specifically Tír na nÓg. Étaín was a sun goddess and the heroine in one of the oldest mythological stories they had at the time.” She smiled a little, a quiet, almost private expression. “I was taught a lot of Irish mythology by my dad and my various father figures who came after.”

“Nice. We’ve got goddesses and queens for progeny. I’m impressed with us,” Wade said, nodding. “We do good work.”

“Aye, we do. I figure any man who could inspire me to have offspring had to be remarkable. Exceptional. Astounding. Extraordinary.” Vanessa was grinning again. “And with such a man only exemplary offspring could result. So, naturally, we had queen goddesses who adore their father. Because nothing else would have been quite right, would it have?”

Wade smiled a little. He had pretty strong opinions on how you should go about raising your offspring for obvious reasons, if you knew anything about him. Which no one did. “Put a lot of thought into our hypothetical progeny, huh?” Kids had never been an option for him, because if you had a kid, you had responsibilities to said kid and he wasn’t the kind of person who dealt well with those kinds of responsibilities. At least, he hadn’t been. He was pretty sure adopting other people’s kids was about as far as he actually needed to go when it came to offspring. “You’re looking pretty darn content there, buttercup.”

Eyes narrowing, the remains of Vanessa’s smile disappeared as her lips pursed. “I am a quick thinker who does so well when on her feet. I don’t want kids. I don’t even particularly like kids. I like the ones at the mansion because I taught them and it’s easier to like them when they are hip tossing one another poorly and saying ‘ow’ a lot. But so we are clear, the idea of having tiny blue and white babies with you does not appeal to me.”

Quirking a rueful smile, Wade shook his head. “I’m probably the last person on the face of the planet who’d want to knock anybody up, hot and talented with rifles though they might be. Just trust me on that. Seriously.”

One shoulder shrugged. “I can’t get pregnant anyway. If I do end up pregnant by some weird twist of fate I’m finding my doctor and possibly taking out a world of hurt on him. I figured if for some reason I wanted kids I could adopt them, but I was pretty sure I was too broken to be anyone’s mother. I was a lot younger than they would allow in this country, but I didn’t have it done here.” She hadn’t told anyone that. It had never come up. Kids hadn’t ever even jokingly been brought up before. Though Vanessa wasn’t sure why she chose to tell Wade.

Wade nodded. “Good to know, just for reference, I guess.” He wasn’t sure exactly what she might’ve had done, but it wasn’t really the kind of question you asked given the circumstances. They lapsed into silence again and Wade reached over to turn the radio back up.

Vanessa let the silence sit for some time. They were headed back the way they had come so she figured basically the whole hype involved a car ride a few hours one way to get a gun and then a few hours back home. That was it. It felt like a waste of half a day, really. As much as she liked her gun, it seemed like a waste. And the awkward was sort of killing her. Vanessa hated awkward. Her answer to awkward was to ignore it in hopes it would go away. But an hour later she was so damn annoyed by it that ignoring it was just annoying her more.

“Loads of people do really badly with distance,” Vanessa told the car at random. “For a lot of people keeping someone involves actual, physical proximity and keeping in a having contact kind of way. I feel like you should be aware of that the next time you tell someone you’d rather be kept. ‘Cause even if you mean that in a general sense and you don’t mean that in the sense that you want that specific person to keep you, well, telling someone that could really imply that you do want to be kept by that specific person. I don’t know enough yet to say for certain, but I’m pretty confident in my assessment that you’re worth keeping. But you probably shouldn’t shoot yourself in the foot by wanting to be kept by someone who can’t deal with distance. And there’s a lot of long distance involved in your line of work.”

Wade didn’t say anything for a few moments, using the time to pass a slower car and then get back in his original lane. “I’ll remember that,” he said, nodding, because how else was he supposed to reply?

Drawing her knees up to her chest, Vanessa nodded and folded her arms over her knees. She laid her head atop her arms and just watched everything rush past out the window. “Good.” And she let the silence settle again, because she’d said her piece and what else was there to say now?