Teenage Wasteland: David & Wade | Wednesday Afternoon (backdated)

[x-deadpool.livejournal.com]

David and Wade case several hospitals and police stations in their search for Glorian, but then they get distracted. And then somebody gets shot.


“Nope, his name is not the system.”

“Ah,” Christophe nodded at the nurse, frowning a little at the nth negative response for the day. “My thanks.”

The whole afternoon was proving to be pointless, really. Turning to Wade, he sighed and nodded at the exit, making a beeline for it. Once they had exited the hospital, Christophe drew a map from his pocket and studied it for a while before offering it to his companion. “There’s a police station nearby.”

"Then I guess we're going to the police station," Wade said, taking the map and looking it over as they exited the hospital. He handed it back to David - or Christophe. Or whatever his name was - and tucked his hands into his jacket pockets. This wasn't anywhere near as cold as it was in Camrose, but it was still pretty nippy.

This entire situation was exasperating on top of being nearly unbelievable. He'd lost track of the number of places they'd checked out, the number of times they'd been told no, their friend wasn't there. "Maybe the next one.”

“Maybe,” Christophe agreed glumly, his mind already conjuring what had to be the gazillionth conspiracy theory as he tucked the nap back into his pocket. He lapsed back into silence, somewhat glad that he had been stuck with Wade of all people. The other ‘teenager’ was probably the most tolerable of the lot. Probably.

Wade wiggled his fingers inside his pockets, and scuffed the toes of his shoe against the pavement as they walked, head down and shoulders slightly hunched. He wasn't really used to being this tall. "Where're you from?" If they were going to have to wander around looking for somebody neither of them knew, they could at least talk a little. Maybe.

“East Germany.” Glancing around, Christophe noted that they had entered a shopping district and he tugged the map out again to have a second look. The station was some ways off. Maybe they should have taken a car. Then, before Wade could ask him more about that, asked: “Yourself?”

"Camrose - it's in Alberta, Canada. But none of my papers match up. It's weird." Wade shrugged that off, though, and then got thoroughly distracted. "Hey - hey, look at this!" He veered to his right and stared in the window of a thrift store. "Those bell bottoms are rad."

Christophe came up beside him and peered into the store, a grin – the first since this whole fiasco begin – spreading across his face. Subconsciously patting down his dark-coloured blazer and jeans, the German wondered if his older self had any self-respect or concern for his image. It was little wonder that he still (apparently) was unmarried and alone. “Let’s go in!”

Without waiting for Wade’s reply, he stuffed the map haphazardly back into his pocket and headed straight in the door, thoughts of finding Glorian having gone with the wind.

Wade grinned and followed Christophe inside. "We," he said, fingering the corduroy fabric on a particularly awesome pair of bell bottoms, "Are gonna look so cool." He pulled the pants off the rack and then followed his friend through the aisles. "What're you going to get? Seriously - these are some pretty slick threads, eh?"

Christophe’s reply was a garble of German that generally meant agreement with Wade. He tugged free a dark red outfit from the rack, shaking out the bell bottoms and its matching shirt and padded jacket. Flashing Wade a grin, he nodded at the pants his companion was carrying. “Why stop at pants?” He asked, a little mischievously, his eyes practically dancing. “We may as well go all out. After all, I found this sweet little thing in my pocket.”

With a great flourish, he pulled out ‘his’ wallet.

Because, seriously? His older self was loaded.

Wade grinned and pulled his own wallet free. "Me, too. I think I saw some pretty awesome band t-shirts over in a corner. I'm gonna see if I can find a couple that I like." The fact that he apparently had boatloads of money was something of a novelty for Wade and he planned to take full advantage of it.

Half an hour later and Wade walked away from the checkout counter with multiple bags of awesome clothing. "Dude, Chris, this place is amazing. We have to remember to come back here!"

Christophe laughed, and for a while, it seemed like the both of them forgot that they were sixteen year olds in the bodies of men. Hefting his own more modest two bags, brunette patted one a little gleefully.

“We still have to check out that police station,” he reminded Wade after a while. “But I saw a room labelled ‘David North’ back at that Valley place.” Someone or the other had said that he should not go in because anyway it was only full of papers and a strange computer that he could not hope to comprehend. But it was ‘his’, wasn’t it? Christophe figured he could use it any way he liked. It was not as though his older self could come and beat him up.

Brows rising a little, Wade asked, "What're you saying we should do? Use your room as some kind of staging point? I'll bet we could really impress some people with the stuff we got today, eh?"

“Well,” Christophe laughed, throwing an arm around the other man. “I was thinking along the lines of changing into our new threads but if you want a staging point, I’m sure we can figure something out.”

Wade grinned. "Righteous," he said, nodding along as they left the shop. They did have to check that police station, but it was basically on the way and he sincerely doubted they'd be finding anything there that they hadn't found elsewhere - which meant a whole lot of nothing.

***
As it turned out, the last police station they'd asked at hadn't heard of their dear friend, Glorian, and so they'd done precisely what they'd discussed - gone back to Snow Valley. With a quick stop at a chocolate shop so Wade could pick up an apple covered in caramel and things because girls like chocolate, right? He'd had to confirm that with Chris, but they'd both been pretty sure that was a universal truth.

Now, of course, they were in the process of changing into their thrift shop purchases and Wade had to say - he was pretty impressed.

The other male had settled for a pair of brown suede pants and a matching jacket with a powder blue shirt. The dark red suit could be kept for when they were not being sneaky top secret agents doing questionable things for questionable people. Running his hands down the sides of his jacket, Christophe smiled, pleased with the way the material fell against him. Seeing that Wade had not finished changing, the blue-eyed German boy decided that he would have a look around his own office.

He sat in the swivel chair behind the desk and spun it around, thrilled at how the small room could spin around him. Then the desk drawers caught his eye and he began rifling through it. He opened the third drawer with a gasp as two black metal contraptions came into view.

“Wade,” he called, lifting them out of the drawers. “Look.”

Pulling on the light green shirt he'd gotten, Wade considered the brightly colored tie and then decided against it, heading over toward Chris instead. "What?" He asked, only to get close enough to see what the German was holding. "Whoa," he said, blinking. "Guns." His dad had guns, but Wade had never been allowed to touch them.

Sliding one across the table to Wade, Christophe turned the other one in his hands. It was heavy and frankly, looked really scary. But he held one up, finger against the trigger as he raised and aimed it at the door as though he were a cowboy. “How do these things work anyway?”

Wade picked up the one Chris had laid on the table in front of him, gingerly turning it over and over in his hands. "Um. I think there's a safety button you click and when you click it one way, the gun won't shoot. But then when it's off, you can shoot. And I'd guess a smartass would say you point the shooty end away from you and at whoever you want shot." Looking up, he half-grinned. "Not that I'm a smartass or anything."

“Huh.” Running his thumb across the base, Christophe brought it up to eye level and studied it. If asked, he wouldn’t be able to explain what happened next. Something clicked, something pushed and something pulled and there was suddenly a loud explosion right in his ears and his arms were shoved back from the recoil. Shouting a swear word in German, Christophe dropped it on the table and stared in horror at Wade.

It was the impact that registered first and then it took Wade a second to figure out just what had happened. He looked down at his arm, then up at Chris, then back at his arm again as the pain actually set in and blood started to well up out of the wound. Strangely, it didn't hurt nearly as bad as he would have thought something like that would hurt. There was certainly a good deal of pain involved, but the weirdest thing was that he could feel it... doing something.

"I ah..." He blinked. "I don't think you hit anything important?" He'd dropped the gun he'd been holding and he left it on the floor as he reached for a package of Kleenex and grabbed a handful. Stuffing that up against his arm, Wade took just a moment to check the wound itself - not a hole, at least. A long cut, sort of. Then he pressed the Kleenex against it again and sat down. He paused again, then looked at Chris and said, "You shot me!"

Ashen white and vaguely trembling, Christophe literally flopped back down on the chair like a boneless fish, staring in horrified silence at the spot where he had obviously shot Wade. Red was beginning to stain the shirt, spreading across the material from where the bullet had perforated the cloth. “Oh, mien Gott,” he breathed,

He repeated the phrase multiple times, sounding it out like a mantra before scrambling up and rushing for the door. Christophe was almost in tears. “I will get someone. A medic. You will be fine.” All of this was said in garbled German. “I’m so sorry.” Hunting rifles he was familiar with, but whatever strange type of pistol was hidden in his older counterpart’s drawer, he had no idea. He only hoped that David North did not possess guns for the purpose of killing because just the thought of Wade dying made his bones want to shrivel up on themselves.

Wade nodded for a moment, head going like a bobble doll's, and then pulled the Kleenex away from the wound out of a morbid sense of curiosity. It was obvious from the scars on him that he apparently didn't lead a placid life... he's just never really thought - but then he straightened up a little. "Wait - hey Chris. Chris, come look at this." He reached out and dropped the tissues in the bin, pulling the cloth of his shirt away from the wound which was healing before his eyes, how was that even possible?

Christophe had already been halfway out the door when Wade called him back. Uncertainly approaching the injured man, the German watched as skin began to knit back. That was… fucking hell, that was creepy. “Gott, you really are a mutant,” he breathed, completely amazed and feeling utterly overwhelmed and out of his depth. This entire place was an asylum for the mentally incapacitated, he was sure of it. But. “Don’t you think we should remove the bullet first?”

He was so sure that the whole racket would have at least alerted someone. But there were no footfalls beyond the open office door and so Christophe started looking around for a first-aid kit.

"Bullet's in your wall, Chris," Wade said, pointing over his shoulder. The pain was virtually gone now, the new tissue knitting itself together as he watched. It was minutes before whatever was going on with the healing stopped and, when it did, Wade had a brand new scar. "Dude," he said, flexing his arm. He tested his range of motion, then poked at the scar a bit. "I didn't - I didn't know I could do that."

Abandoning the search (and glancing dubiously at the wall where there was, indeed, a bullet embedded in it), Christophe came over to join in the poking, his panic having subsided now that it seemed like Wade was not about to drop dead. “You’re an alien,” he declared, grinning broadly now – an odd sight to see on David North’s face. “An unkillable alien.”

"Weird," Wade said, still looking at the healing cut. "Rad, but weird. And I don't think I'm an alien - everybody keeps saying they're mutants. This is probably just... my thing. Or something. What can you do?"

Relieved beyond words now that the other man was not about the drop dead from a gunshot wound, Christophe sagged against the desk, facing Wade with an uncomfortable expression on his face. He, too, had wondered this. Perhaps he was here in New York on his own because he was a ‘mutant’ that had been arrested and exiled by the Stasi? “I don’t know,” he admitted after a short pause. “Nothing special, actually. I’m probably don’t even have a… thing.” Another pause ensued as Christophe scratched at the stubble on his chin. “I can knock grown men out with my fists, though.”

Wade blinked at that. "Well, that's something, at least? All I really know how to do is dodge hits... and not very well, when you look at my track record." He shrugged. Having this healing thing would be really convenient when he got home - but then he remembered. He wasn't going home. He was apparently already home. A home about thirty-five years, two countries, and an entire continent away from where he remembered being last. "Dude, though - you ruined my shirt. You owe me a new one."

Well, considering that he had had personal defence classes since he could remember, Christophe was not really surprised at the difference in their skillsets. He waved away Wade’s demand and moved around to settle back in his comfortable swivelly office chair, propping both feet up on the messy table.

“I’ll buy you two when we’re next allowed out. Now hurry up and change,” he bossed without impatience, clearly already over the fact that he had just shot at someone. The bullet in the wall was fascinating, though. “Just don’t get any blood on the floor.”