Kevin & Wade | Wednesday Afternoon

[x-deadpool.livejournal.com]

Kevin stops by the medlab to look for Laurie and finds Wade instead.

((Thanks to Bounce for the illustration of Cap'n Chemo & Hairy Cell with the turbine engine of doom. <3))


Kevin felt like far too much of a fixture in the medlab in general. He was actually looking for Laurie rather than one of the doctors for once, which was a welcome change from reporting for being poked and swabbed and whatever else. Spotting a door left ajar, Kevin poked his head through it only to find it largely empty aside from Wade in a hospital bed looking very much like he was half-dead. Brow furrowing, he inched his head in farther to sweep the room for anyone else. “Benevolent overlord?” Maybe he was actually dead. Maybe Molly’s new moose did it.

Half-curled on his side, Wade breathed slowly and cracked an eyelid open. He was not fond of this whole ‘chemo’ experience. “Minion Number One,” he said, voice rougher than usual. Attempting a smile would have ended in a pathetic sort of grimace, the mercenary knew, so he didn’t even bother trying. It was too much to hope for, he knew, that no one would find about about his relocation to the medlab. “You’re not sick, are you?” Deflect, deflect - toss questions at Kevin so Kevin couldn’t toss questions at him. It was a weak defense and it wouldn’t hold up for long, but it was all he had for the moment.

The Southerner inched a bit forward until he was halfway through the opening in the doorway, his body blocking anyone outside from seeing inside as a result. “Nah, Ah’m not sick. Ah think Doc McCoy’s done pokin’ me for a while, too. Ah was lookin’ for Laurie. You seen her or you busy bein’, uh, dead?”

“I,” Wade said, raising one finger as though he was confirming something very, very important, “Am not dead. Yet. I only wish I was.” But as long as he didn’t do too much moving, he wasn’t in danger of throwing up. For the moment, anyway. He’d had a horrible time of it earlier, though.

An eyebrow raised. “Uh, why do you want to be dead?” He looked like hell, though. Kevin didn’t need to know what was up with the guy to know that whatever it was it was bad. He had a healing factor so it must have been really bad. On the other hand, he’d probably be fine in like two days.

“Because throwing up this much this often and hurting this much sucks,” Wade answered. “Sorry, I forgot to say. I didn’t see Laurie.”

“Why’re you throwing up so much?” He looked a little too deathly for it to be something stupid like the flu, right?

Shifting just a little, Wade tried to sit up and then decided that was a bad idea. Just like he’d decided it was a bad idea earlier. “They tell me it’s a normal side effect of my treatment,” Wade said, rubbing at the spot where the central line had gone in. The little raised circle was weird beneath his skin and he didn’t like it, but they’d told him it was necessary and made things generally easier, so here he was. There was a reason it hadn’t been forced out by the healing factor, but the medical mumbo jumbo had gone over his head and he sort of didn’t feel like dealing with trying to figure it out now that he was all kinds of sick.

Treatment? “Ooookay.” Wade seemed to be big on avoiding the implied question of what was wrong with him so Kevin figured he probably didn’t want him to know. That was fine, but it was sort of weird since he looked like he might keel over and go into cardiac arrest any time now. Or at least Kevin thought cardiac arrest was what happened when you started to die. TV said so. “You seem sorta...uh, not talkative. Ah’ll just go try to find Laurie. You want me to close the door for you? It was open a little bit.”

“Nah, stay,” Wade said, reaching a hand back to the space on the small mattress behind him where he’d laid the laptop, he snagged the computer and tugged it around in front of him. “Nicer, not dying alone and stuff.” He tried to say it so Kevin would know he was joking, but it fell sort of flat. “See, this is all my hairy cancer’s fault.”

The joking tone never made it out, but Kevin was going to assume Wade was joking and just felt too much like he’d gotten run over to make it sound like he was. He checked the hall and then slid into the room, shutting the door behind him with a click. “Your cancer’s hairy? Is that literal? If your hair’s cancerous shouldn’t they just electrolysis it off?” He was reasonably sure there was no such thing as hair cancer. Kevin would feel really bad if there was actually hair cancer and Wade had it.

The Southerner made his way over to a chair set against a wall and pulled it over to the side of Wade’s bed so he could drop down into it. “Ah thought you had a healing factor. Healin’ factors don’t get their asses kicked by hair cancer, Ah thought.”

Wade opened the laptop, a page on Hairy Cell Leukemia already open. Wikipedia was awesome for stuff like this and he’d figured he should read up on what he had (again) before actually getting the treatment. “My hair’s not cancery. My blood’s hairy, which means it’s cancery.” Turning the laptop so Kevin could see it, Wade decided he’d done his work for the day and let out a slow breath, eyes mostly closing again. “See? Difference. And... yeah. Can’t figure out what’s going on with the healing factor.”

Leaning forward, Kevin scanned over the wikipedia page on Hairy Cell Leukemia. “They say it’s like really treatable, though. That’s like a bonus point, right? If you had to be cancery at least you got the one that’s supposed to be easy?” He looked over at Wade again. “Well, in comparison.” That didn’t look easy. “So you say ‘treatment’ and you mean...like, chemo?”

“Yup,” Wade said, nodding. “Which is a bitch. I’ll be honest.” Pointing at the laptop, he said, “Treatable seems to be a relative term. Doc’s hopeful it’ll work, but Jesus. I’m tempted to call it off and just deal with the whole random bouts of exhaustion thing.”

“Hm... but if it’s bad enough that your healing factor can’t kill it dead, or Ah guess if your healin’ factor sucks enough to not do it, then couldn’t get it get worse?” He scrolled down the page. “They wouldn’t bother treating people with it at all if it wouldn’t like, kill ‘em or somethin’ right?” Kevin leaned back in the chair with a frown. “Bein’ bald is totally gonna kill your game, you know.”

“You’re just pointing out all the positives, Minion Number One,” Wade said, tone dry. “I mean, I’m looking like death, I’m gonna be bald and lose my game... thanks. I ‘preciate it.” Finally getting up the gumption to move over onto his back instead of his side, he let out another slow breath in an attempt to control the nausea. “Just beefin’ up my self-esteem.”

Kevin shrugged, totally unsympathetic, and went rifling around in his messenger bag until he found a pencil with the right weight and his sketchbook. He pulled both out and dropped his bag onto the floor. “You could work the sympathy vote. Girls go for that, don’t they? You could have ‘em fallin’ all over themselves to bring you soup and water and, Ah dunno, pet you until you fall asleep. It’s like havin’ game, only pathetic. You could work the pathetic angle.” He flashed a grin in Wade’s direction and opened his sketchbook to a random, clean page. “Ah mean, you’ve got pathetic down already.”

Closing the laptop so the glare from the screen would quit getting in his eyes, Wade then pointed a finger at Kevin and said very carefully, “You suck.” There was no real venom behind his words. In reality, game was the last thing on his mind. He sort of just wanted to actually die. The treatment itself had been so painful that he hadn’t been able to stop his eyes from watering - he refused to say he’d been crying. It had left him practically gasping - and Wade was no stranger to pain. By the end of it, he’d been dizzy with it. The nausea had set in soon after and then, a couple hours later, the exhaustion. He didn’t know what was going on, really, but Hot Doc Jean assured him it was all normal.

He wondered if he’d get used to it. There were several treatments left standing between him and “freedom,” as it were. Wade thought he could make it through sheer, stubborn force of will. Maybe. If he was lucky.

Another shrug followed as the sound of pencil lead on paper began. “Yeah, well, never denied that. Ah’ve dated two guys, it should sorta go without sayin’.” He grinned a little without looking up. “You really should go after that sympathy vote. You could get whatever it is guys stuck in bed getting chemo want. Other than dyin’. Askin’ ‘em to kill you might not work in your favor. Well, unless they really did kill you. Guess that one depends on perspective.”

“Two guys? Really?” Wade wasn’t sure he would have expected that. “You seem... like such a lady’s man, Minion Number One. Bringing all the girls to the yard and whatnot. I guess you bring... all the girls and all the boys, huh?” Of course, to be fair, probably no one would expect him to have fallen into bed with Warren, so expectations were all sorts of messed up where everyone was concerned, generally.

“One pursued me. Ah caved.” It was the simplest explanation for how he had wound up dating Jay, all things considered. “The other...uh, Ah don’t remember. Ah think that just sorta happened. Groundwork already laid, all that. Girls only wanna hang out in the yard now. They were in other yards before. My yard was a non-girl zone.” Okay, that metaphor was getting just a touch ridiculous now.

“Lies,” Wade said, reasonably sure that Kevin’s yard couldn’t have been a non-girl zone. “All lies.” Opening his eyes a little wider, he attempted to peer over at Kevin’s sketchbook. He failed, but he’d made the attempt. That was what counted, so far as Wade was concerned. “What’re you drawing? Commemorating this period of my life in... graphite and stuff?”

“Pretty much. It’s not a portrait of you lying there all pathetic though, no worries.” He tilted his head to the side, considering his inspired portrait. “It’s more commentary on your place in the world. Or somethin’.” He erased a part of the cartoon man’s head and gave him more Wade-esque hair. “It’s, um, inspiration? To not die? Maybe?”

“Doc Hank’s not sure whether I’m actually dying or not,” Wade said, listening to the sound of pencil on paper and the slide of eraser following the lines along whenever Kevin needed to erase something. “Kind of a catch-22, really. Which is lame. Also, belatedly. You have a dirty mind. It’s a quality I appreciate in a minion.”

“My mind’s not dirty, it’s healthy. And male. And just so you know? Ah’m now gonna think of you and STDs. Y’know, ‘cause you’ve got hairy crabs and stuff.” Maybe it was bad that his brain had gone from hair cancer to crabs to the fact that you shave off your pubic hair to get rid of them. Kevin tried to kill that rationalization only then it turned into Wade having cancer and the constellation for cancer was a crab which went back to having crabs which was an STD. No matter how you looked at it, Wade was an STD. “You’re the reason there are condoms in the world. You did all that yourself. ‘Cause otherwise the women of the world will need to shave off their...” Kevin trailed off, thinking about that for a moment complete with mental images. “Well, maybe we should make sure they don’t have condoms...”

“But no condom,” Wade said, trying not to laugh, “Would mean lots of little Wades. I’m not sure the world can handle lots of little Wades. The world can’t even really handle one Wade.” In fact, the world seemed to be trying to get rid of its one Wade pretty damn hard. He wasn’t bitter, though. He did keep flashing back to his mother’s ordeal with cancer, though. She’d had a hard time of it. Maybe the world was trying to tell him something, giving him cancer, too. Maybe it was time he started listening to the world when it came to this stuff.

Wade thought about that for a moment, then snorted softly to himself. Yeah, right. When had he ever taken advice like that and run with it? “So... if W.A.D.E. is an STD... what’s it stand for?”

“Why’s it got to be an acronym?” Kevin looked up at Wade, a frown beginning to pull down the corners of his mouth. The first thing he thought of to fit the acronym was Women’s Anal Discharge Excrement, which made no sense and was really gross so he decided against it. After some time Kevin finally said, “Wailing Against Dick Evacuation. See, once a lady goes and catches WADE she’s got to have it all the time. She actually starts to wail, sorta like a banshee, if she can’t have it. They’ve tried vibrator and dildo therapy but it seems like only the real thing’ll do. In the end, doctors suspect the ladies are all seeking out the perfect fuck. Or possibly the man who gave them WADE, hypothesis being that they have become addicted to sex with him to the point of being unable to settle for anything else while also bein’ overcome with lust and needin’ it all the time.”

“Because acronyms are cool,” Wade said, mulling over what Kevin said his stood for, its symptoms and the theories surrounding its existence. “Also, wouldn’t that mean I’d have women like. Chasing after me and stuff? I’m not sure I can handle that. I mean... well. They’d be chasing me and then having dudes chasing them and those dudes would get jealous and then try to kill me and everybody’d end up dead or almost dead. Can I be a different STD?”

“Gonorrhea’s taken,” Kevin deadpanned.

“But Minion Number One,” Wade whined, making himself look even more pathetic. He couldn’t hold up the facade, though, and he laughed a little. “Jesus, I thought the whole point was for me to not die. I’m a deadly STD. I’m so sad. On the inside.”

“You can be Whispered, Auspicious Degenerate Excitement,” Kevin offered. “When people have caught you they can’t help being terminally hopeful about getting really, really dirty sex and whispering dirty talk to anyone who turns them on.”

Wade considered that almost seriously. “See... I’m not sure how well that’d be transmitted, but I think I can work with it.” He tried to sneak a peek at Kevin’s sketching again, but failed because he still didn’t actually feel like moving. “Wastrel’s Aurally Dispersed Encouragement. I like the thought of dispersing aurally...”

“That sounds so dirty. Dispersing aurally, just...” Kevin shook his head. “What’s a Wastrel? Or Ah guess who is a Wastrel?” Wade was better with words than Kevin was, even half dead. Kevin likely should have minded but he already knew words weren’t really his strong suit. “You need a better word’n ‘encouragement.’ Too tame for an STD.”

“Uh... excretion? And I’d be the wastrel, of course.”

“You made up the word wastrel, didn’t you?” Kevin stopped drawing and looked up to consider excretion. “Excretion sounds dirty in the wrong way. Like excrement. Really, who wants to get aurally dispersed excrement?”

“Excrement is excrement,” Wade said, tone almost indignant. “Excretion is like. Ooze. Aurally dispersed ooze. Enzymes! Wait. I don’t think that works.”

“Yeah, ‘cause oozin’ out your pores is better than people wantin’ to nail you,” Kevin replied in a flat tone. “Enzymes is better. Makes you sound like a cleanin’ product, though. Like, WADE causes you to talk dirty but gets out your ear wax, too!” he said the last bit in the best commercial announcer voice he could manage.

“Ectoplasm.”

Kevin blinked. “Like you’ll wanna get it on with ghosts?”

Raising one hand, Wade pointed at Kevin and said, “Do you know how many hot people died young? Too many. But with WADE, you and Anna Nicole Smith can still get it on.” He basically sang those last three words the same way Marvin Gaye did. Then he shifted back onto his side and curled in a little tighter because wow, wave of nausea. Maybe his stomach didn’t like Marvin Gaye.

“So WADE makes ghosts like, corporeally interactive with you? And you catch it by hearin’ ‘bout it? Or like, something else that has to do with ears?” Kevin had a terrible mental image now of someone coming in some chick’s ear to spread WADE to them.

“You get me... by listening to Marvin Gaye,” Wade said, eyes closed tight as he tried not to open his mouth too much. It wasn’t like he had anything left in his stomach to throw up now, anyway.

Kevin glanced up and noticed the look on Wade’s face. That wasn’t a good look. He frowned a little, then held up his finished drawing so it was in front of Wade whenever he eventually opened his eyes again. “Marvin Gaye, huh? Sneaky. Ah like it.”

“I’m... a very clever sort of B.O.” Wade took a slow breath through his nose and stayed very, very still for a few moments. Then he cracked his eyelids open again and blinked. “Is he throwing kittens into the airplane’s turbine engine thingies just for laughs? I don’t approve of killing kittens.”

Craning his neck over the top edge of the sketch pad, Kevin frowned at the picture. Then he frowned at Wade. It looked nothing like a kitten. “No. It’s a hairy cell.” He pointed to the little hairy limbs with the tip of his pencil. “See, hairy.”

“Oh,” Wade said, squinting a little more at the sketchbook before nodding his agreement. “Okay. Cause otherwise I was gonna have to take Leah back for like. Moral and ethical reasons. And things. And that would suck.”

“You’ll give me a kitten even though Ah can decay her with skin contact or if she tries to jump on my head but you’ll take her back if you think hairy cells are kittens bein’ fed to plane engines in drawings? That makes no sense.” Kevin lowered the sketchpad, letting it lay in his lap. “You look like you’re gonna puke. Should Ah be like over there,” he pointed further down by the foot of the bed, “so you don’t like projectile vomit on me?”

Wade didn’t immediately answer. Once the nausea had subsided a bit, he said, “There’s a difference between her jumping on you and you chucking her into a turbine engine.” Which totally made sense. He had no idea why Kevin didn’t see that. “And no, that’s what the trashcan is for.” Reaching behind him again, he felt around toward the edge of the bed there until he found the trashcan he’d strapped to the side of the bed. He pulled it loose and then brought it around in front of him, basically cradling it against his stomach.

Kevin watched Wade cuddling the little trashcan, unable to stop the frown on his face from developing. Damn. He knew chemo sucked in a theoretical way, but it sucked more seeing someone who was usually sort of high energy and ridiculous cuddle a trashcan. “Ah’m not really a violent person. You don’t gotta worry ‘bout me throwing her in a plane engine. ‘Sides, Ah like Leah. She sleeps on the couch at night and Ah think she’s startin’ to get that clothes are okay but skin is bad. She likes Laura. Laura might be like her favorite person ever, actually.” He was rambling about really unimportant stuff like the cat liking Laura because he figured it would be some sort of minor distraction from the urge to puke.

“I like Laura,” Wade said, still breathing slowly. He was sore from the chemo and sore from the throwing up, so even inhaling was something of a trial, but so long as he didn’t keep throwing up, he might be alright. “She’s feisty. And she’s good for sparring - inventive. Original. Could use more training. Forgot to tell her I’d miss our sessions for a while. Damn.”

“Want me to tell her?” Kevin hoped he never got cancer. That sounded stupid in his head because, yeah, no one wanted to get cancer, but if Wade was this bad off on chemo then how totally pathetic and useless would Kevin be? He probably didn’t have much of a pain tolerance all things considered and since Wade could fight Kevin assumed he did. Kevin probably would have been unable to speak from the misery and pain. “Laura’s good people. Sorta crazy but not in a bad way.”

“Yeah, I’d appreciate that,” Wade said, not nodding because that’d be a bad plan. “That’d be really nice. Just... y’know. Don’t tell her what’s up with me. I guess. If she wants to sniff me out, she can. I just... don’t want everyone to find out. About the cancer. And the chemo. Why’s the little guy throwing the hairy cells into the turbine engines?”

“Ah’ll just tell her you had some stuff that came up that’s eatin’ all your time and Ah dunno what it is but you can’t make it to your sparrin’ stuff and you wanted me to tell her ‘cause Ah managed to see you in passin’.” Kevin tended toward honesty with people in general and particularly with Laura, but he would blurry up the truth in this instance for Wade. He could understand not wanting people to know he was sick. Besides, he did have stuff eating his time and Kevin did see him in passing. “No one likes Hairy Cell. Hairy Cell is a dick. So Cap’n Chemo’s tossin’ his ass in the engine. There’s gonna be a party for him later.”

“What, like a funeral? Or a celebration for Cap’n Chemo? Is it his birthday?”

“Sorta like a celebration for killin’ the villain. A whole ‘you rock and we all get to live ‘cause Hairy Cell can’t come be all gross and hairy and taint our blood and kill us dead’ thing. Y’know, a happy to be alive kinda celebration.” He tried to picture what that kind of party would look like. A lot of alcohol and half naked people, he thought. “With party hats.”

“Party hats? Can there be kazoos, too?”

Kevin considered what you would do with a kazoo in a boozy, half-naked, strategically placed party hat kind of shindig. There was only one thing you could do, really. “Sure.”

“Cool,” Wade said, taking a slow breath. “I like kazoos. You can play Hot Cross Buns on kazoos. And recorders.”

“Hot cross buns are something you eat on Easter, not somethin’ you do inappropriate things to with kazoos.”

“It’s a song,” Wade said, shaking a finger at Kevin. “You can play it. On a kazoo. It is awesome.”

“We are throwin’ Cap’n Chemo way different parties than each other.”

“What kinda party are you throwing him?”

“One with a lotta booze and most of the clothing on the ground. He killed Hairy Cell, he needs a debaucherous night. He earned it.”

“Oh,” Wade said, thinking about that. “Okay. So three naked ladies and an orgy. I can see that.”

“Is it a four person party or are the naked ladies separate from the orgy? Or are there a lotta guys involved in the orgy?”

“Four person party turned orgy thanks to a lot of liquor,” Wade answered. “Mm... pretty.”

Kevin grinned. He had a feeling Wade may have had three specific naked ladies picked out in his head. He wasn’t going to ask who they were. “Cap’n Chemo, pimp daddy.”