xp_logs | Wade and Marie-Ange, post Teenage Wasteland

Just after everyone's Giant Psi Headache. Wade manages to get Marie-Ange back to the brownstone, where they are equal parts not entirely sane, quite miserable, and briefly adorable, although the jury is out on whether or not Marie-Ange is coherent at the end there.

Wade pried himself away from the wall where he'd been standing, shoulder blades pressed hard into the wood behind him, and took a slow breath as the world around him righted itself. Vertigo was a bitch, but he usually got over it pretty quickly. A headache lingered behind his eyes, throbbing in time with his heartbeat, and it was just sharp enough to have him wishing he could take a big enough dosage of pain killers to make it go away. Since that wasn't exactly feasible, he made sure he was steady on his feet and headed down the hall toward Marie-Ange's office. The mercenary had no idea how long he'd been standing there, trying to work his way through the pain in his head, but given his girlfriend was curled into a ball on the floor, he figured any length of time was too long.

Flipping the light off with the switch near the door, Wade walked as quietly as he could into the room and said, "Hey, Angie-girl. It's me, Wade. I know you'll probably never forgive me for these cords, but maybe I'll be able to make up for them a little." He kept his voice soft as he spoke, making his way to her desk and pulling open one of the drawers. He knew she kept some medication in there - funny colored pills number three and seven, to be exact. So he picked up the bottles and a glass of water that was sitting on the desk and knelt in front of her. "I know your head's probably killing you, but you gotta let me know which pills you want right now, okay? Then I'm gonna get you home."

The muffled reply sort of sounded like "All of them." but through a layer of sweater and shirt and knee. Marie-Ange didn't trust herself to lift her head, it was still screaming at her, and she was having some very serious problems with the fact that while her head felt like it had been compressed into a tiny ultra-dense ball of pain, her fingers and hands felt like they were huge, and while she could see Wade's feet if she pried open one eye and looked through her arms, his voice sounded miles and miles away. "Wan' go home." Which was unusually slurred and unexpressive for her, even with a headache.

"I know," Wade said, opening the bottles of medication and pouring two of each kind of pill into the palm of one hand. If he had to redose her sooner rather than later, he could handle that. Right now, he just needed the medication to get into her system. "Take these and I'll get you home. I promise." Pressing the glass of water from her desk into one hand, Wade tugged Marie-Ange's other until her palm was facing upward and he could put the pills into it.

Two of the pills went into Marie-Ange's mouth, the other two ... well, she meant to give them back but her hands shaking meant they went on the floor and rolled around for a bit. She dry-swallowed, and then got both hands around the glass of water and drank. She hadn't quite trusted herself to not spill the water with just one hand. "No subway." English was hard, all of it's idioms and stolen words and irregular everything. "I'll throw up if I have to get on the subway."

"Wouldn't dream of it, lady," Wade said, swiping up the pills that had fallen to the floor and tucking them in one pocket. "You're a first class passenger on the Wade express, right?" He waited until she'd swallowed some more water, then grabbed the lined trash bin just in case and put it on top of the desk. "Mind if I pretend to be all manly, though, and carry you around for a bit?"

"I can walk..." Marie-Ange got her hands under her, got up, and then sat right back down very quickly. "Maybe not." The room had tilted sharply when she'd started to stand, and hadn't un-tilted now that she had sat back down. "Why are you not throwing up or dying or trying to hide in the dark?" She knew she was supposed to know why he was up and able to be manly... she just couldn't remember what it was.

"Healing factor," Wade said, his tone just a little rueful as he bent to scoop her up into his arms. Straightening, he grabbed the trash bin and headed for the door. "Gimpy, but handy in these sorts of situations. We'll take the car. It'll be nice and quiet. I'll even drive slow." Attempting to jostle Marie-Ange as little as possible as he made his way downstairs, Wade tried to stay out of any kinds of direct light, since he wasn't exactly loving it at the moment - his headache wasn't nearly as bad as it could've been, but he suspected he could make it worse if he tried.

"I knew that..." Marie-Ange had buried her face in Wade's shoulder, and was clinging to him loosely. "I forgot. Because of my headache not because of the amnesia." Amnesia was so hard to say. Why was it so hard to say? Why had it taken so long to say, where had all the extra sounds come from?

"I could only wish for amnesia after the last couple days," Wade said, backing out of the front of the building and heading for the Xavier's car he'd driven over the night they'd gone to get sushi. He was pretty sure they made a weird picture, especially when he shifted Marie-Ange so she could stand while leaning against him so he could open the door and put the trash bin in the floorboard before she climbed inside. "Watch your head," he said, making sure she didn't smack it on the door or anything, because that was all they needed.

Marie-Ange was barely awake to get into the car, and fell into a uncomfortable drug-assisted doze as they traveled the city streets, thankfully quiet due to the late hour. She didn't notice stopping at red lights, or parking the car, or anything until Wade opened the passenger side door, and then she blinked at him in confusion several times, not quite sure how they'd gotten there.

Wade's lips quirked upward just a little at the look on Marie-Ange's face, but he just shook his head and offered her his hand. "Think you can stand now, or would you like me to demonstrate my manly prowess one more time? Cause I can." It wasn't that far of a walk to the Brownstone from where he'd parked, but he hadn't' been able to get one of the places right up close, either, so he figured it was probably a fifty-fifty chance she'd go either way.

"Uh-huh." Marie-Ange said, but shook her head in the negative, and rubbed at her face. "My feet are asleep and you have very ugly pants on." Which made total sense to her. "And you should never talk to the man with the x on his face, he is not your brother, and he will not bring you anything and he does not have your yellow boxes."

Blinking very slowly for a moment, Wade felt his eyebrows creeping upward but then decided to just let it go. Just let it go because his priorities involved getting his girlfriend upstairs and into bed before either of them fell over. The residual headache was still throbbing behind his eyes and he didn't want to even think about the migraine she must have. "Righto," he said, helping her out of the car and grabbing the trash bin again. He picked Marie-Ange up, closed the car door with his foot, and started up the sidewalk to the Brownstone. "I don't have a brother," he murmured. "Though I must admit, I'm pretty partial to yellow boxes."

"That's right!" Marie-Ange said, sleepily. "No brothers at all, and no sisters and no ladies wearing your red trousers." She patted his shoulder with one hand. "I like your yellow boxes, Wade, I want to put all my cards in them and then you can see what I can see and make it make sense."

Still smiling just a little, Wade said, "You can have all my yellow boxes, sweetheart. Any time you want." He wasn't sure the things she saw would make any more sense in his yellow boxes, but he was also pretty sure she was stoned out of her mind at the moment, so it didn't really matter. She did have a very valid point, though - he was wearing bell bottoms. Brown corduroy bell bottoms - they were pretty awful for the time, but if they'd still been in the 70's, he'd've been rocking some seriously high fashion. Or something.

Up the steps they went. It took a little shifting back and forth, but Wade managed to get the door open. Then the second door. And then it was upstairs for the two of them. "It's just a matter, really, of where I'd put all my yellow boxes."

"In the soup, with the eggs." Marie-Ange mumbled. Except that even thinking about eggs made her feel sick, and as soon as she said it, she regretted it, and fumbled with the hand that wasn't wrapped in Wade's shirt for the trashcan, dry heaving into it several times over.

Wade stopped halfway down the hallway so Marie-Ange could dry heave while stationary, then continued on to Amanda's apartment. He made sure Marie-Ange had hold of the trash bin, then set her on her feet again so he could dig his keys out of his pocket. Once they were inside, it didn't take much directing to get them both heading in the right direction, but he kept his arm around her waist just in case. "In the soup," he muttered, shaking his head a little. "I'll remember that. You probably won't, but I'll tell you about it later."

Marie-Ange had managed to walk, sort of, even if it was leaning heavily on Wade and despite that she still felt like her feet were twenty sizes too big and much too far away, but sitting down on her bed was a relief. "No, you should write it down. Mister Wilson in the coat closet with the big white surfboard." She managed to pry her shoes off with her toes, kicking them away from the bed. "I was such a good teenager, what happened?" She looked up and then shook her head slowly. "No, I know. Manuel happened, and Doctor Essex, and I should kick him."

"You were a good teenager?" Wade asked, smiling despite the ache in his skull. "You smelled kind of like liquor the other morning. Is that what they're defining as 'good'? And I saw Sammie's hair. Striped like a skunk." He toed his own shoes off and tugged the covers down so Marie-Ange could get in once she was ready. "I just played video games all night. God, I was useless."

Despite the headache that was only somewhat dulled by the pain pills, and the strange vertigo that had her unable to discern how far away anything was, Marie-Ange managed to get her pants and shirt off easily. Practice getting dressed quickly seemed to apply backwards as well. "Not useless..." she said, muffled by her shirt and then went sort of sideways into the bed. "Nobody's useless... All very useful, in the end."

"I was pretty useless," Wade said, tugging the covers up over Marie-Ange and then making his way over to the other side. "I got shot. In the office. Before we even did anything dangerous. Man, David's face was pretty much priceless, though." Laying down atop the covers, he let out a slow breath and closed his eyes.

Marie-Ange waited a few moments, and then picked her head up carefully, and tugged on the covers. "Stop being silly or I will put my feet on you and they are cold." They were too, she had made some poor shoe choices as her teen-aged self.

Cracking his eyes open a bit, Wade finally shifted around until he was under the covers, too. "You can put your feet on me, anyway. Otherwise I'll worry about your toes falling off. Just promise not to scream when we wake up later. I think that was more traumatizing for me than everything else."

"I promise not to scream, but do I have to pinky promise? Because being sixteen was so very..." She gave a quick glance at the alarm clock. "So very Wednesday."

"Nah," Wade said, shifting over so he could press a kiss to Marie-Ange's forehead. "No pinky promises. Just get some sleep, ladyfriend."

Marie-Ange's response was a barely audible, "Mkay. Love you," before she burrowed herself under the blankets, only the top of her head and some of her hair showing.

Caught slightly off guard, Wade couldn't help the half-grin that tipped up the corner of his lips. "You, too," he murmured. He always said he didn't really do feelings, but he'd decided that he didn't mind of other people did.