Cecilia & Wade | Tuesday Morning

[x-deadpool.livejournal.com]

Cecilia's cooking. Wade's an opportunistic eater.


Wade wasn't hungry per se, but as he passed through the corridor near the mansion's main kitchen, he smelled delicious things inside and veered in that direction. Late morning light came through windows shut tight and rimmed with frost, but Wade's attention snagged on the bacon cooking on the stove. "Mm... bacon," he said, giving a wide smile to the woman cooking said bacon. "Looks like you've got everything out for a real breakfast, too. Eggs, cheese, potatoes..."

"Mmhm," Cecilia said, without looking up from the bacon she was now frying. It'd been great to get back to a big (read: full-sized) kitchen like the one in the mansion. And a real stove. And potable water. She'd initially planned to make some eggs, but then she got a little giddy and carried away, and now she was apparently making enough food to feed half the X-Men.

"You want?" She turned around to look at the man in front of her. "Oh! I know you!" Which was a surprise because she felt like she barely knew anybody. "You made me a steak. And you play with swords. And you're..." Shit, she couldn't remember his name. "Wayne?"

"Close, but no cookie for you," he answered, grinning. "Yes, I want the bacon, but maybe like a pack more than that - I'll get it out of the fridge. And my name... you will have to guess."

Cecilia rolled her eyes, but grinned in spite of herself. "Will? Warren?" She turned around and grabbed the spatula to turn over some of the rashers of bacon. Then she spun back around, looking hopeful. "Wally?"

"No. No. Also no, but there is a Warren around here somewhere. He's a lawyer. And hot. You should check him out. Wings. Very nice." Wade said, waggling his eyebrows as he walked over to the refrigerator to get the extra package of bacon.

"Hm. I'll keep an eye out." Not like the wings would make it hard. Oh my God, it had been so long since she'd gotten laid. Or eaten wings. "Get me a paper towel or something so I can drain the grease off this. No heart disease." Some grease jumped out of the pan and onto her skin, and she let out a tiny yelp. "Not like you know my name either, " she pointed out.

Wade handed her the roll of paper towels, nifty wooden holder and all, before he set to work opening his bacon. "Do, too. Cecilia. I have my ways. Also, it was in your introduction post and I have a mind like a steel trap, mkay?"

"Ugh," Cecilia frowned. "I apparently don't." She grabbed a few sheets from the roll and laid them out on the counter, then started moving the bacon over to the pan with a spatula. "Not for names, anyway. Diseases? Cell types? Chromosomal mutations associated with genetic disorders? Check." She grabbed the last rasher and dropped it onto her makeshift drainer

"To be fair, I've been meeting a lot of people. Kind of." Cecilia turned and watched him struggle with the package. "Wade." She finally said.

"Yes! And it only took you like five or six tries. I lost count." Wade tilted his head to the side and asked, "Know anything about cancer?"

Cecilia wrinkled her nose and frowned. "Well, yeah." She turned and rested her hands on the counter behind her. "I mean, I'm not an oncologist or anything, but I'm familiar with it." She raised an eyebrow, studying him. "Why?"

"Cause I've got this Hairy Cell Leukemia and it won't go away even though I've got a healing factor. So all the other docs are stumped. I straight up refuse to do another treatment of chemo because it never works and I feel like ass afterward," Wade said, shrugging. "Thought maybe another pair of eyes on it would be good, but I don't want to put you in a weird position if it's not your thing."

"Not a weird position. That's my job." She considered what he was saying, unconsciously adopting a fairly businesslike demeanor with a guy whose name she just remembered. Hairy cell leukemia was rough. "Medical docs or mutant docs?" That sounded imperious. "You know what I mean. Obviously your -- what, healing factor? That complicates things." A bone marrow transplant might do him wonders, but it could be impossible to find him a match given how complicated his genetic makeup was. "What have they been doing? Just chemo?"

"Chemo a fair bit, but like I said, it doesn't work. Makes things worse and then I get back to level and the leukemia's still there. It doesn't usually impact my daily life a lot, I just get tired when other people with healing factors wouldn't. And I take longer to heal, which can be kind of irritating. It's just something that's been bugging me for decades." Wade grinned, then. "I turned 53 last year."

"You don't look it." Treating leukemia without chemo would be tough, but she was curious to know why his body couldn't fight the negative side effects. "So what's the prognosis? Like, do they think this will kill you?" Wow, that was blunt. But then again, Wade was the one who asked her to be Dr. Reyes instead of plain ol' Cecilia. "Who's treating you?"

"Hank McCoy did for a while. Moira MacTaggart before him. Hot Doc Jean now. It's not gonna kill me, we don't think. It's just not getting any better. Which, obviously - weird, given the healing factor. That's brought me back from the dead at least two times. Probably closer to five. Which is convenient when you're stuck in a war zone."

Cecilia closed her eyes and pursed her lips. Jean Grey again. She couldn't get over people referring to the woman as alive. Sooner or later she'd have to sit down with the redhead wonder girl and figure out what was up. Or at least ferret out if the woman knew the first thing about cancer.

She didn't say anything for a while, trying to visualize what she knew about hairy cell leukemia. "Well," she opened her eyes. "Dr. McCoy's a Ph.D. research kind of guy. But Moira's pretty knowledgeable. Couldn't tell you the first thing about Jean." She shrugged and met his gaze. "But what's one more person reading your charts? I'll take a look, and I know some actual oncologists, so maybe I can be some help."

"That'd be awesome," Wade said, grinning. "Want me to dice up the potatoes?"

"You're just gonna change the subject like that?" She clucked her tongue disapprovingly. "Unbelievable." Cecilia grabbed a slice of bacon and popped into her mouth, then she picked up a nearby potato and threw it at Wade's face. Not to him. At him. "Leave the skins on, though."

Wade could've caught the potato but he ducked instead because well - dramatic reactions. "Assault! I've been assaulted! Help! She might throw more potatoes at me and please never let her meet my weather gremlin because they'll be in cahoots and an endless rain of potatoes will come at me for the rest of my life."

Cecilia laughed. She tried to look disapproving, but she was too amused. "Shut up and help me!" She scooped up another spud and tossed it in his general direction. "I don't have to feed you, compinche."

He caught the second potato as it came at him. "But I like food," Wade said, mock-plaintive. Pulling Selma from her sheath at his belt, he checked her edge and then started slicing up the potato. "And you obviously like cooking despite your protestations otherwise. Gimme a piece of bacon."

"Here," she said mock-begrudgingly. Cecilia lifted the plate and brought it to him. "I've got to make another package anyway. Might as well let you use that one." She watched his smooth knife motions, well aware he hadn't been joking about killing people. "I hope you cleaned that thing."

Wade paused in his chopping and raised an eyebrow as he looked back at Cecilia. "What, you mean after the last time I stabbed somebody with it? Pssh. Why would I do that? It's not like it'd be unhygienic or, y'know, bad for the blade to leave it covered in blood and gore."

"Don't be like that!" She shoved him playfully. Hey, he was pretty muscular. "I may not have lived here that long the first time around, but gory hash browns sadly don't seem out of the question." Cecilia left him to it and grabbed the package of bacon he'd ripped open. "Not like I know much about stabbing anyway," she pointed out. "Just wanted to make sure I didn't have to dish out more potato justice."

"I live in fear of your potato justice," Wade deadpanned. He went back to chopping, making his way through eight potatoes before he realized he might be cutting up more than the both of them could eat. The potatoes were large, after all, and he planned to finish off the bag. "We're gonna need to tell people on the journals that we're cooking. Of course, Angel will probably show up on her own because she's got, like, a hollow leg or something and I swear Kyle can smell bacon from five miles downwind of wherever it's being cooked. Logan, too, for that matter. Actually, we might need more food," he said thoughtfully.

"Hm," Cecilia popped the bacon into the pan. As much as she wanted to get to know people, the prospect of making eggs for dozens was not appealing. "Can't we just like... make what we have out, and then tell people it's ready?" She drummed her fingers on the counter and listened to the bacon sizzle. "I mean, look, if I'm behind the stove, then people start making special requests. I'm not poaching egg whites for anyone."

"You raise a very valid point," Wade conceded. "So basically we'll cook and eat everything we want and if people have to come through and there happens to be something left, they can have that."

"Yes," Cecilia nodded, tapping her foot impatiently while bacon did its thing. All this talk of food had made her far more hungry than she'd been when she started. "Sounds like a solid plan. If maybe a selfish one."