Vanessa & Wade | Monday Morning (backdated)

[x-deadpool.livejournal.com]

Vanessa stops by the mansion to see Wade after his final immunotherapy treatment and they talk about a variety of things. Backdated because Cai fails sometimes.


Pretty much the only thing that had motivated Wade to actually get up that morning was the fact that he knew this was his last round of treatment. He'd showered and he'd headed downstairs, through the labyrinthine hallways, down the elevator... and into the medlab. Where he'd sat through the final treatment, dealt with the worst of the nausea, and then... managed to drag himself back upstairs.

When he walked into his suite, it was to blessed darkness... which was odd, because he remembered sort of beating himself up halfway through the treatment for forgetting to close the blinds and curtains before leaving. "Huh..." And then his paranoia kicked in and he scanned the darkened room a bit more thoroughly. He found... a Vanessa. Sitting on the couch. "Hey," he said, closing the door and shuffling over to sit beside her. He managed more of a controlled collapse than anything else, but still. He landed essentially where he needed to be.

A small twitch at one corner of her mouth waas the only indication of a smile. Vanessa had never seen Wade right after one of his treatments and she hadn't quite been prepared for him looking like death warmed over as he did. She pressed the post-it she used as a bookmark onto the paragraph she'd just finished and shut the book. as Wade collapsed beside her. "Hey. Figured since this was your last day of hell with treatment, at least for now I guess, that maybe you'd want company." She kept her voice low, unable to remember if he had noise sensitivity to go with the light sensitivity. The small wastebasket was conveniently next to the couch with a few plastic bags lining it in case of nausea induced vomiting.

"You know me," Wade said. "Always up for some company." He slouched over a little, temple resting against the pillow so conveniently braced against the arm of the couch. "How's the kid doing? And her mom and stuff?"

Vanessa slid to the far end of the couch to give Wade room, legs folded up under her still and all. "They're fine. Annie's settled back into life as usual and her mom thanked me at least half a dozen times for having her taken care of so well while I took care of the assholes using her kid as leverage. She wanted me to pass on particular thanks since all of Annie's schoolwork was done."

"Couldn't let her fail math," Wade said. "I mean, even I can manage fourth grade math and spelling..." And it wasn't like there'd been a lot else to do besides watching movies and playing boardgames and stuff. Kyle had been a great diversion for the kid, though. He'd been infinitely more helpful with the schoolwork than Wade, initially. "Glad she's settled back in and stuff."

Shifting around until he could wedge his toes into the crevice between two cushions, Wade looked at Vanessa over his bent knees. "How've you been?" She'd looked pretty damn ragged toward the end of that case. She'd been better recently, but still.

"Fine," she replied with a tone that indicated the answer was more impulse than truth. "I'm on a security detail for a strip club currently and you know I don't really keep strip club hours generally so I've been existing on coffee and Red Bull for the past week. I more or less slept all day yesterday. And I get to go back to that tomorrow."

Vanessa intentionally avoided addressing her state of mind after the brothel case had wrapped. Wade had never been told the specifics and she would keep it that way for confidentiality purposes. It just so happened that was a convenient excuse to not address how she really was since that case.

If Wade had been feeling a little more alive and a little less like he wanted to curl into a ball and let God smite him, he probably would've called her on how fast she'd answered his initial question. As it was, he pointed one finger at her and said, "Fine. Freaked-out, insecure, neurotic, and I can't remember what the E stands for." Which was kind of like calling her on it, but not really. Cause she could wiggle out of it if she wanted by poking fun at his unabashed reference to Mark Wahlberg's version of The Italian Job.

Never having seen the movie in question, Vanessa didn't see the reference as one. Rather she considered the three points of the acronym Wade remembered and shrugged. "Those are all pretty accurate to varying degrees probably. Though maybe not all at the moment."

Oddly, Wade felt a little deflated when Vanessa didn't contradict him. He closed his eyes and took a slow breath, then reached for the blanket on the back of the couch and tugged it down over his chest. "What made you take the strip club case?"

Vanessa shrugged. Why had she taken the case? She didn't actually put that much thought into it really. "I just did. They were getting hassled and I don't like the idea of the sort of assholes who are probably hassling a strip club making life hell for the girls. There weren't any other big, pressing cases on the table for me so I took it and passed the smaller stuff off to Jean-Paul and Laura to pick from. Once I get the people hassling them to back off or get arrested I'll pick whatever seems like the most pressing thing. I have a weakness for missing kid cases, admittedly, and those are usually depressing. Jean-Paul won't let me take the infidelity cases if he can help it so I automatically hand those off to him or he curses at me in French and I don't even like French never mind enduring it when I could avoid it."

"Yeah... I can definitely see that. Getting cursed at in general isn't the most entertaining pastime... but French is just..." Wade didn't have an adequate adjective. He waved his hand a little, though. "So French. If you're going to get cussed at, it's gotta be in like. German. Or Russian. Way more effective."

Vanessa shook her head. "Cantonese. Chinese people sound pissed all the bloody time. It's a bit ridiculous, actually. He manages to get some venom in the French, though. Or it may be because it's Quebecois French. I'm not actually really sure what the difference is other than French people get really offended if you suggest the Quebecois are French, honestly."

"Ah, but a Quebecois will sound like he's telling you to suck is cock when he's asking for cup of sugar," Wade said, a smile quirking up the corners of his lips even though he sounded completely exhausted. "I still think Germans and Russians can be scary, though. Course, then there's that clicking tongue language down in Africa. You'd never know if they were cursing you or not. I wouldn't, at least."

Laughing quietly, Vanessa's knee nudged Wade's foot. "So I see you've met Jean-Paul? He really is quite dashing with his sugar fixation." She'd never thought about it before, but there really was something very euphemistic about that man. Perhaps it was the accent. "I don't think Germans are really scary. It might be because I've got more distance from World War Two than you have given I was born almost half a century after it was over and there hadn't even been two decades before you were. Mostly I think of Germans as those blokes with the really dry sense of humor who find it imperative to educate me about various beers. Russians...eh." Vanessa shrugged. "I find them more creepy than scary. I tend to expect them to be stalking someone and sniffing panties and possibly committing horrific acts against children. I don't really think of them as the bad guys I want to run from. Maybe it's because of the wars I've been in?"

"But would you ever run from a bad guy, really?" He nudged her knee back with his foot, smiling.

"A bad guy?" Vanessa considered it for all of a half second while wearing a thoughtful frown. "It's unlikely unless I knew I was majorly outclassed. I like challenges but I'm not suicidal and there are a number of mutants with strong offensive powers I just can't match in a fair fight. Which isn't to say I may not run away, get the high ground and take them out with a sniper rifle when they thought they'd won. Does that still count as running away?"

"Nah, that's strategic retreat, regrouping, and intelligent take down," Wade said, still smiling. "It's weird, thinking about being out classed. I don't do it much. Not because I'm awesome - obviously." He gestured at himself and his partial fetal curl on the couch. "But because if you think about it too much, it's easier for people to get inside your head, y'know? Plus... well. Even a gimpy healing factor's kept me alive for this long."

"I only have the healing factor boon if I work with someone who has one. Which I don't currently. So you can be less careful than me and live to see another day where as I may not. And don't get me wrong, I wouldn't consider myself outclassed that easily. Partly because I'm stubborn and partly because I worked with men from the start so I had to figure out how to match them even though the female form doesn't build and hold muscle to the degree that the male body does." She grinned. "Sometimes I cheated and worked with a male mimic on the whole time, though." Vanessa did not mention the jibes at Mike about how her dick was bigger than his during those times. Whether or not it was true. Her metaphorical dick was always bigger anyway so far as she was concerned. The thought of Mike brought a shadow of sadness to her expression despite the smile.

"Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater," Wade muttered. "If I could be sure you wouldn't get my cancer, I'd offer my healing factor. But, y'know. Kinda gimpy. Don't you work with Laura? She's got a healing factor."

"Aye, that's true. My brain was more on mercenary than private eye stuff, though. I'm hoping if I need a healing factor that badly, though, that she isn't readily handy," Vanessa admitted. "She hasn't got the chops to survive if I've gotten myself that torn up and like as not she'd be dead if I was that bad off. It's not a pretty thought but it's the truth. Luckily, the last time I got torn up that badly it wasn't on X-Factor business anyway."

"Yeah... I'm not sure I like the idea of the hellcat being around if you get all torn up..." Wade paused, frowning a little. "Course, I'm not real fond of the thought of you getting all torn up in general, so I guess we should just avoid that scenario, huh?"

"But I'm danger girl over here," she countered with a small laugh and a smile. "People tell me they need help and I go. I will always put myself between a weaker person and an attacker. It'll probably end poorly for me one of these days. But I'm pretty crafty at getting out of situations so I'm not that worried about it, obviously. No worries about me, my darling faux fiance." Vanessa gave him a wink. "I'm like a cat and I've not even used half my lives up yet."

"Don't make me kill people for you, buttercup," Wade said, eyes more than half-shut now as he peered at Vanessa where she sat on the other end of the couch. "Cause on days when it ends badly, there's gotta be somebody to step in between you and whoever's wailing on you."

Smiling, she asked, "And you're gonna be that somebody?" Wade's personality was just a little too similar to her own in that regard and she likely she should have expected the comment about killing people for her. Still, they'd only known one another for a couple months and Vanessa didn't think they were quite at the point of killing for one another yet. With that thought she realized she probably would have killed someone if they were trying to take Wade out, though. She tried not to think about why she would be so willing to do that and put it down to her base reaction being kill the danger.

"I'm good at killing people," Wade said, shrugging a little. "Might as well kill somebody for a good reason instead of just cause that's where somebody else's paying me to point my guns. Defending a friend seems like a good reason to me."

Tapping a finger against her chin, Vanessa looked thoughtful. "Is friend an upgrade or a downgrade from faux fiancee?" She grinned, though. "You know, that's actually sort of why I got out. I nearly went back to work but a friend went missing and I refused to go anywhere until he was found, dead or alive. Ending up going out with a crew who did end up finding him and some others who went missing with him. They offered me a job afterward and I figured I could actually fight for something other than just have it as a paycheck." Vanessa shrugged, the gesture attempting to add nonchalance to a topic that clearly wasn't casual. "That's why I never went back to being a mercenary after I got my powers stuff sorted here."

"Why's it have to be an upgrade or a downgrade?" Wade asked, nudging her knee again. "Can't it be like. A simultaneous thing?" He left the question of staying or going unaddressed so far as he was concerned. He didn't know what he was doing. He'd planned to leave as soon as he got his healing factor thing figured out, but there didn't seem to be any easy answers so far as that was concerned. He was hopeful that this last treatment would do some good, but he wasn't holding his breath for it.

She noticed the lack of acknowledgement of the rest of what she'd said. Vanessa hadn't intended her situation to relate to his at all; she knew he was leaving. All she had meant was to explain something that tied into something he'd said. It was about the only way she tended to reveal things about herself but Vanessa made a mental note to try to not do it as much with Wade. A suspicion was beginning that he may have been seeing deeper meaning in stuff she said than she intended. Of course, she also could have been overthinking things again and he just had nothing to say on the matter. "It could be, yes. People just...don't really work that way for the most part. People like one box. One title. Or they get confused. You can be a half dozen things to someone, many of which are unrelated, but somehow you always get classified as a single thing. A friend. A lover. A rival. A mentor."

"True, but you can be a friend and a mentor or a friend and a lover," Wade said, his reasoning abilities fading as he let himself sink farther into the cushions. "Isn't that kind of the ideal? For relationships, I mean. Partnership... it's gotta mean more than just fuck buddies, more than just that person you share space with, more than... I dunno. Just more."

"Ideally, yeah. Like I said, people are usually more than one thing to someone else but people have trouble thinking of others in terms of more than one classification at once." Maybe he was too miserable post-treatment for this conversation to make sense to him since he seemed to be missing part of what she'd already said. "My last boyfriend was also a friend but if you asked me what he was to me I'd say boyfriend. He was a friend before and he's still one now. The people I consider family are mentors, teachers, friends role models...but if you ask me who they are to me I will either refer to them as my brother and my da or as my crew. Humans function on simplicity. Before you went into treatment for your cancer you were my budding partner in adventure in addition to a developing friend." And there was that other thing she wasn't going to bring up that he was. "Kindred, a business associate, adventurer, friend," she grinned as she added, "faux finace. If someone asks me who you are to me I will tell them one of the last two depending who it is. And how cheeky I feel. Though in the cheeky case I might leave off the 'faux' bit to confuse them because I'm a terrible person, you know."

"Cheeky monkey," Wade muttered, still smiling. "You like confusing people. So do I. It's fun." He fiddled with the fringe on the blanket for a moment and then said, "I have my doubts about how successful this treatment is going to be. For my hairy cancer, I mean."

"I live to be cheeky," she told him brightly a moment before her face closed down into something more serious. The treatments had been hell on him and she assumed chemo had been worse. Only for it to not work? "What do you do if it doesn't work? What's that mean for your cancer?"

"I don't know," Wade said, shaking his head. "I guess they could rinse and repeat, but I don't know if they'll want to, given the cancer didn't respond the first time. I'll probably just chill for a while. Wait to see what the docs say."

Vanessa frowned. "Have they mentioned any other options existing? If the cancer didn't respond the first time, though, would you really want to do it again even if the doctors wanted to?" She couldn't imagine anyone volunteering for this again after a failed first attempt.

"Dunno. Probably not. OJ, though. He said something. About my healing factor maybe killing me if the cancer went away. Or the cancer killing me eventually. He said there were possibilities and things, but they were all just working theories. So I dunno what his new working theory will be, if the immunotherapy didn't work. I'm supposed to be staying... positive. Kinda difficult sometimes, though. I've been living with it for twenty years. It's just sort of something that's there now. Annoying as fuck, but constant."

Vanessa's eyebrows darted upward at the notion of his healing factor killing him. Could a healing factor actually do that? That seemed like a ridiculous notion. Healing factors replaced damage, regenerated dead cells, kept things working. Even if one worked overtime it wouldn't have anything to do unless there was damage to heal. Hank was smart, he probably knew what he was talking about. Vanessa, however, was going to take a stand here that he was talking out of his ass despite his intelligence because it was better than him being right. "If your healing factor and your cancer haven't killed you yet I have trouble either will pull it off any time soon. Thus, I propose vacation! Whenever they stop poking and prodding you. Whenever you're either healed or cured or in remission or whatever. Or whenever you just say 'fuck it, I'm done.' There will be vacation. Somewhere we can commit daring physical acts we have absolutely no training for." She grinned brightly at him. "Sort of like a farewell present before you leave here and go back to your fabulous mercenary life."

"I dunno," Wade said, quirking a smile. "I mean, absolutely I am going to kidnap you for some kind of celebratory vacation thing. But I dunno that going back to work is necessarily the best idea. I mean, I want to. It's what I had planned when I got here. But if the treatments didn't work... what's the point? I'll have the same problems I did before. Getting tired might not seem like a horrible side effect to most people, but what if I'm protecting a kid or something? I can't afford to be tired."

"How is it you kidnapping me if I proposed it already?" Vanessa poked his leg and then she really thought about what else he was saying. He might not go back to work. If he didn't go back to work then what would he do? Would he stay? It felt like a heavy weight settled in her stomach suddenly, but it didn't show on her face or in her voice. "Wet work is possible if you've got the marksmanship for long range sniper shots," she offered, attempting to be helpful despite that feeling inside her like something was growing necrotic with every passing moment. "Or possibly working with a crew to help bolster defense when you're wiped from the cancer. Though you seem more like the lone wolf type. What are you going to do if you don't go back to work? I mean, you get twitchy and restless around here. I can practically see you trying to plan some grand adventure just to distract yourself."

"I dunno," Wade said again, shrugging a little even as he poked her back. "Like I said, I'm good at killing people. It's about the only thing I've ever been good at." He didn't know why he was saying this. She probably didn't want to hear it. "There's not a whole lot a washed up merc can do."

"You're not washed up," she pointed out quite stubbornly. "You're sick, there's a difference. And you've been living with your cancer for twenty years. What's really so different now from six months ago? From ten years ago? You've been dealing with it. If you really want to work you could. You just can't be as reckless as you maybe want to be. But if you choose not to go back to work as a mercenary there are other things you could do. You could teach shooting or fighting. You could find a head of security job where you don't need to be the guy on the client all the time but rather organize other guys who are those guys. Go into security management, so to speak. You could retire from work entirely and travel if you don't want to settle anywhere yet. Take off and see the world through a lens that has nothing to do with work. Find someone you love and take them with you or settle somewhere with them." Vanessa smirked a little. "Raise goats." Goats were so much more fun than sheep as far as she was concerned.

"Goats?" Wade snorted softly. "I'm not sure goats would like me. But maybe I could have an empire made of goat cheese or something. That'd be kind of cool." He laughed a little, softly, and shook his head. In a way... Wade was washed up. He'd kept up with the times, he knew all the modern weapons and techniques - and he could handle a rifle well enough to take long-range shots, though he'd never be a professional sniper. It was more in the feel of the job. He'd turned down more and more contracts for good people in the last five years than he'd have thought possible. But there you had it. Sometimes he missed the days when he didn't care who it was he was killing so long as he got paid.

That head of security position might be promising, but he was too tired and nauseated to contemplate it properly. "Not really interested in traveling..."

"Don't underestimate goats," she advised sagely. "With goats around you'll never mow the lawn again. And if you get a donkey they will defend the herd o' goats from danger like bears or bobcats." It was possible Vanessa knew just a little bit more about this than she should have being a girl from the city who spent her late teens and early to mid-twenties as a mercenary. The metamorph smiled fondly. "Goats, that's my retirement plan. Land in Wales with a herd of goats and maybe some horses."

As she spoke Vanessa watched Wade. He looked like hell, of course. She couldn't really picture this guy on the job. While she knew it was the treatment she also couldn't help comparing him to Thom. Thom was this unmovable force in her mind, like worn leather that might wear down but never tears. Vanessa remembered how tired Wade had looked at the pool that one time. He wasn't force Thom still was despite Wade's mutation advantage and their closeness in age. "If you don't want to travel then I suppose your options are to find another job or find somewhere you want to settle. Or find someone you want to settle with and let that determine where like my Da did."

"That's a fair plan," Wade said, tugging the blanket around himself a little tighter. He wasn't cold, he just felt like he needed some kind of shield. Opening up and talking about his feelings wasn't really something he did well. And, okay. So they weren't really talking about feelings. But this was close enough to have him shying away from it - again. He kind of wished he could get over that, at least where Vanessa was concerned. It was just so much easier to talk about guns and knives and the many varied ways you could kill a man, though, than your hopes and wants for the future. "The goats, I mean. Why horses and not donkeys, if donkeys will protect your herd of goats? What... constitutes a herd of goats? Like six? Twenty? Are you planning to build an empire on goat cheese and other things? I heard there's this gay couple around here somewhere that makes goat milk soap. They have a website and books. It's apparently not as profitable as all that, but if you enjoy it, you should go for it."

Vanessa shrugged. Her tone was casual and nonchalant despite how Wade seemed to be trying to bury himself in a hole at the moment. She was going to put that down to post-treatment misery. "Because I like horses. I made friends with some when I was in Wales who hung out and grazed up on a hill I liked hanging out on during the day to read. Warren's going to help me learn to ride, actually. It's part of my non-violent guide to living," she said wisely, nodding in agreement with herself. "Or, well, less violent anyway since you can't always kill or maim someone in order to cope with stress or what have you. Thus, horses and vegetable gardens. I'm getting downright domestic. It's a bit disturbing really." Vanessa smiled. "But I kind of like it so it's cool."

"Will horses protect your herd of goats?" Wade felt like he had something in common with the donkeys. He didn't really want to think about why.

"Probably not," she said with a shrug. "Suppose I could have a token donkey to act as guardian of the herd. I can't drive off all the threats with a shotgun, after all. Sometimes I sleep."

"A tokin' donkey," Wade said, tone contemplative. "I'm not sure letting your donkey smoke weed is legal. Plus, the goats might get jealous..."

Vanessa dug a pillow out from behind her and whacked him with it, perhaps a little harder than intended. "My mule will not be tokin' up. We will be a drug free ranch, farm thing. I don't condone or support the use of recreational drugs anyway. Can't change that for the mule."

"I'm not sayin'," Wade said, having tried to use the blanket as a shield from her pillow assault. "I'm just sayin'." He smiled a little, though. "Quit beating the invalid!"

She whacked him again for good measure. "You're more capable as an invalid than some people will ever be." Another whack. "Also, you were asking for it."

"Mercy!" Wade said half-laughing, half-coughing. "Uncle! Sanctuary! And other like things!"

Vanessa held the pillow aloft, ready to strike again, and narrowed her eyes. Her head tilted a little in a considering fashion. "If you renege on this the punishment shall be grave, sir."

"This what?" Wade asked, pulling his blanket down a little so he could peer over the edge at her. "What am I agreeing to? If I renege, I want to make sure I do it on purpose..."

"'This' being your surrender. Should you bring hostilities or aggressions against your conqueror anew you will only be inviting severe punishment to remind you of your place." She tried to make it sound as innuendo-less as possible considering his situation with Marie-Ange but Vanessa failed a little bit at the end there.

"Huh," Wade said, pondering that for a moment. He hadn't actually surrendered, per se, though his blanket was white and he'd been waving it around a bit in a sad attempt to ward off her malicious pillow attacks. "What constitutes bringing hostilities against you? And what's my punishment gonna be if I do it later on?"

"Attacks of any kind, of course. Surrender requires complete submission to my superior status." It was so very, very hard to keep a straight face while saying this. Threatening a sick man was so wrong but it was Wade so Vanessa figured it was okay. "Should you bring hostilities against me you will first be dressed as a little girl and paraded about in public. Wearing a diaper. Then there will be tea parties. Bamboo under the toe nails, then foot binding. Your spleen will be removed, cooked and fed to you as often as you can grow a new one back. When I tire of you I shall bequeath you to be the love slave of that Bieber kid."

"If you need me," Wade sang, voice ragged from the treatment and rough just in general, "I'll come running from a thousand miles away - when you smile, I smile, whoa..." Then he pointed over his knee at Vanessa again and said, "I hold no fear of the Bieber in my heart, dastardly damsel, and I have no shame. Thus the girlie baby clothing and the diaper are no real threat to me. I like tea. I like spleen. Serve me spleen with my tea and I will laugh. Laugh, I tell you!"

"Hm..." Her fingertips drummed against her chin as she considered this. Then her eyes lit up, literally, as her back straightened. She looked like she'd just had an epiphany. "A challenge! I love it! I shall have you put on my rack and I will explore all the delicious possibilities until I find one that makes you beg."

"Won't happen," Wade said, nodding as firmly as he could given how he'd cuddled into his blanket again. His voice was a little muffled. "But you're more than welcome to try. A little later, though. Putting me on the rack right now probably wouldn't make either of us very happy."

Vanessa frowned at him and, without the dastardly overlord voice she'd just been using, said, "I think you miss the point of the rack, love. It's not meant to make you happy."

"Right, but it was making you happy, and at this point, I'd probably just lay there staring at the ceiling going, 'Hm... wonder if my gimpy healing factor can restring my joints.' No fun for you."

She pouted. "It's no fun if you fake the pain either." Vanessa wilted and kept glancing over at Wade with big, sad eyes.

"Exactly," Wade said, nodding sagely. Like this conversation made any kind of sense. He shifted his toes out from under the cushion Vanessa was sitting on and poked her leg with them. All ten. All at once. "See, I've only got your best interests at heart here."

"Lies." She continued to pout. Vanessa couldn't very well agree with him now, could she?

"Lookit this face," Wade said, pointing at himself. "Is this the face of somebody who'd lie to you?"

An eyebrow artfully arched upward as an utterly unimpressed expression flourished on Vanessa's face. "That is the face of somebody who lies, buries truths and invents stories all the time. It's also the face of the man who has confirmed that. So, yes. Yes it is."

Wade opened his mouth to say something glib, but paused for a moment and said, "But I asked if you thought it was the face of somebody who'd like to you."

"Yes," she answered without pause.

"Seriously?"

One shoulder shrugged. "You've side stepped the truth often enough that I wouldn't put it past you to lie outright if you thought it was the better play for one reason or another. Or if you thought the lie was harmless. Everyone has the capability to lie and the tendency to do it to cover their own ass for a variety of reasons, some of which are very minor and mundane. So, yes, I think you would lie to me. Whatever your motivations or reasons for doing, I think you would. And I think you likely have already for things I haven't realized. You can't be a guy who hides behind masks and expect someone to expect the truth from you all or even most of the time. Half of life is making up stories for other people. You have more reason than most to keep them at arm's length. I get it, I did the same thing when I showed up here and planned to be gone once I was 'fixed.'"

"Fair enough," Wade said, nodding. And it was fair. When it came right down to it, what'd she know about him? And what'd he really know about her? Sure, things. Random tidbits here and there. But nobody really knew Wade and he preferred to keep it that way. For the most part, anyway. "I'm still too light sensitive at the moment to watch television or anything. Sorry you're probably gonna be bored for your visit."

"I was planning on reading to you about Little Bo Peep and her friend, Sheep," she told him in a total deadpan. Vanessa noted Wade didn't argue against her assertions, correct them or otherwise do anything other than passively confirm them. She took it as the confirmation it was that he was that sort of guy. He had the right to be if that's what he wanted, but for the first time she didn't feel quite so much like she had been the one to lose something when she had said she thought their whole increment arrangement was a bad idea.

"I thought you were into goats, buttercup," Wade said, letting his eyes close as he turned his head and pressed his cheek into the cushion behind him.

"Thus why I am not sharing goat stories with you. Those are mine and you can't have them. You get sheep."

Digging around under the couch with one hand, the blanket half falling off of him as he did, Wade pulled out one of the black sheep she'd brought him from Wales, the one that fit on his little finger, and arranged it before wiggling it at her. "I like sheep. Not the way Welsh people and West Virginians do, but I think they're cute. Tell me sheep stories, please."

Vanessa opened her book and pretended to read from it. "There was once a little girl named Bo Peep who some thought was a very strange girl. Bo had a fondness for all things white and fluffy and as such her best friend was a sheep named Sheep..."