Wade and Cecilia: A Fraught Reunion

[x-barrier.livejournal.com]

Cecilia sees Wade for the first time since he left with North, and she feels all kinds of feelings.

The weather was nice-ish (well, compared to the last few months, anyway), and Cecilia wanted steak. And she wasn't waiting for certain friendships to thaw like the weather had. So she'd broken from tradition and taken it upon herself to find the grill, then cleaned it and nabbed a slab of meat from the fridge.

Everything felt wet, almost dank in the way that April sometimes was, but she wasn't letting that stop her. As PD looked on, she lifted the cover off the grill, glanced at the beef and placed it back on. Things were coming along.

Wade walked into the kitchen and rummaged around for a moment before catching sight of Cecilia through the door to the porch. She was grilling. She was grilling without him. He considered grabbing a microwavable burrito and heading off to avoid her anger, since he knew she was angry at him, but he figured he might as well get the upset part of things out of the way so they could go back to randomly texting one another about dildos hanging from the rear view mirrors of cars.

He headed for the door and, extra steak in hand, knocked from the inside to get her attention.

Cecilia jumped slightly at the sound, then turned toward the door. "Hey," she called out to him, her eyebrows raised by way of greeting. Then she turned back toward the grill, crouching down to scratch her dog on the head and grab the beer she'd placed next to him.

Wade pushed open the door, letting the late winter air hit him full-on, and asked, "Can I toss a steak on with yours?"

"Sure." Cecilia rose, being careful not to stand so quickly that her beer turned into foam. "Plenty of room." Without thinking much about it, she moved out of the way, defaulting to her usual position relative to the grill. She watched PD perk up at the smell of meat, his eyes fixed on Wade. "Welcome back," she added after a short bit of silence.

"Thanks," Wade said. "It's good to be back." He prepped his steak with a bit of salt and pepper, then lifted the lid and put it on the grill beside Cece's. He checked hers, then closed the lid again. "Anything new and exciting happen while I was elsewhere?"

"I dunno." Cecilia shrugged. She took a sip from the bottle and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Nothing stands out." Actually, she wasn't entirely sure what he knew or what he didn't, and it wasn't like life had been quiet. But she hardly thought it was her responsibility to catch him up. "The usual people coming and going, I guess."

"Yeah?" Wade asked, the word mostly there to fill the silence for a moment as he braced the small of his back against the railing. "And what about you? Anything new and exciting happen in the world of Cece, MD?"

"Nah." She turned to look at him finally, because she was curious if he looked like he knew that she was pissed at him. Or if he looked contrite in any way. "Not sure what qualifies as new and exciting." She couldn't tell. "Arthur had a little powers issue a few weeks back," she turned away, looking at the mansion's expanse of budding trees and wet grass. "I'm sure he's already filled you in."

"When is he ever not having a little powers issue?" Wade asked. "But no, he hasn't filled me in on anything. We haven't been back that long."

"Oh." If it was possible for a syllable to be very loaded, that one was. "He knew enough about your adventures that I thought you might know something about his."

And there it was. Wade let the silence linger for a moment before saying, "I did try to find you before I left. I was on a very tight schedule and it was leave or start blowing things in the mansion up, so I left."

"Yeah, no, I get it," Cecilia waved a hand, a lead-in to the passive-aggressive bomb she was dropping. "Travel plans are tough. And it's hard to make a phone call or send a text when you're running to catch a flight."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was leaving," Wade said. "Or where I was going. Or when I'd be back."

"It's not—" Cecilia's head whipped toward him. "You just left, Wade. You just left! You disappeared." She gesticulated a little too wildly and lost some of her beer to her sweater and the ground. "Fuck." She put the bottle down and tried to wipe some of the alcohol off her clothes. "I mean, what the shit, Wade?"

"I was angry, Cece." Wade left that for a second. Feelings weren't his thing. Never had been. Never would be. "So yes. I left. I packed a bag, made some phone calls, picked up a few contracts, and I killed people in South Sudan for money for a couple weeks. It was cathartic."

"So tell me that, you ass!" Anger she got, at least at the moment. That made sense to her. He hadn't said it, but at the mention of his blood money, she felt the implication that he thought she wouldn't understand. She didn't, not in the way he wanted, and that irked her even more. "You don't vanish like that! You can't just poof into thin air without a word, and like, one second you're just gone."

The sweater already smelled like booze, and now she'd need to have it dry-cleaned. Perfect. She looked up from it and glared at him. "You don't get to disappear like that anymore."

"Okay," he said, crossing his arms. "I won't disappear like that anymore."

Cecilia frowned, because she was pretty sure he didn't get it, and she had spent weeks stewing. "Imagine what I thought, Wade. I woke up, and you were gone." She looked away from him, because she was starting to get more emotional than she wanted him to see. Everything that had happened had been so hard on him, and she figured it still was, and (aside from unloading her anger), she didn't want to add to his burden. "Imagine what I thought."

"Would've been a little late for me to die and reappear," Wade pointed out, though his voice was quiet because he did get where she was coming from. "Besides, I'm basically impossible to kill." He had some thoughts on that - had had thoughts on that since seeing his alternate self regenerating from the neck down before going poof. "I'm sorry, again, that I didn't tell you where I was going."

"Yeah, well." Her foot twisted in a patch of grass, digging into it. She stared down at the dirt. "I know all that," she said quietly. "But I'm so... sometimes I don't think straight." Between keeping it together and making sure she didn't inadvertently say something dumb, most of her energy was already spent.

Unfolding his arms, Wade reached over and wrapped one around Cecilia's shoulders so he could pull her into a loose hug. "You're allowed to not think straight, doc. Things suck a lot right now."

She tensed initially at his touch, but then leaned toward him. "Yeah," she said, his shirt muffling her voice. "I'm... you know, whatever."

"Eloquently put," Wade commented, quirking a smile.

"That didn't sound very apologetic," Cecilia said dryly, looking up at him. "And you know what I mean." She pulled away from his half-embrace. "Gotta be all solid and stoic and dependable, and keep the medlab going, and take care of this little devil," she gestured to the golden retriever, who was sniffing at Wade's shoes.

Wade crouched down to let the dog sniff his fingers before scratching behind his ears. "Doesn't seem too terribly devilish to me," he commented. Then he glanced up at Cecilia and said, "But seriously. The responsibility for the mansion doesn't fall on your shoulders, not all of it. I mean, if somebody needs their intestines sewn back together, yeah sure. That's all you. But everything else. Delegate."

She was quiet, choosing to sip from her beer at first while she considered her response. "I am delegating," she shrugged. "I've got Amelia. Keeping everyone healthy isn't the tough part." She stepped in front of him to lift the lid off the grill.

"Right, but like." Wade stopped as she stepped in front of him and then shook his head. He gave the dog a significant look before straightening up again and saying, "Would the medlab function without you if you walked away from the mansion tomorrow and didn't come back?"

"I wouldn't do that," Cecilia replied, the words sounding every bit as pointed as she intended, "so it hardly matters, does it?" She turned her steak, feeling his eyes on her. "Laurie lost an arm and a few friends. For weeks, Clarice was so on edge I expected one of her portals might swallow the Earth. And then there's Adrienne, and Arthur and..." She prodded his steak to see if it was ready to be moved, and the speed of her arm clued her in to how annoyed she was becoming again. "I'm not in a fucking vacuum, Wade."

"I never said you were a vacuum," Wade replied, looking at Cece in vague confusion. He shrugged to himself, though, and forged on. "But you're not delegating well enough if you don't think you can disappear for a bit and things will keep running. It doesn't matter if you plan on leaving or you don't - I noticed your really pointed 'I wouldn't do that' a minute ago."

"Oh, este maldito pendejo," Cecilia snapped. Pizza Dog's head popped up, but she paid it no mind. "Wade, this has nothing to do with the medlab, you..." She placed the lid back on the grill and returned the tongs to their resting place. "I'm staying here, and trying to keep my shit together so that I can help these people." She turned to face him, her arms crossed. "It's what I do, Wade. I help people. That is my responsibility."

"Right, a responsibility that's apparently driving you bonkers," Wade pointed out.

"I just meant that it's been hard, Wade."

"Yes, it has been. But it doesn't have to keep being hard."

"Yeah, well." Cecilia shrugged. "It is. I don't like seeing people in pain."

"There's this saying," Wade muttered. "About a brick wall and head bashing. I kinda feel like that's what I'm doing right now." He pointed at his forehead, then at Cece. "You're the brick wall, in case you were wondering."

"Gee." Cecilia glanced back down at Pizza Dog. "Don't you know how to make a girl feel special." She grabbed the hair tie that she'd put on her arm and started to gather her hair into a ponytail. "Forget it. I don't want to fight anymore. I missed you, which probably says more about me than about you, and you're back, so." She shrugged.

"Just don't work yourself to death," Wade said, shaking his head. He moved to the grill and lifted the lid, checking the steaks before pulling them both off the grill. His was medium-rare, just the way he liked it. Cece's was closer to medium-well but she'd let it sit on there while they talked.

"Yeah, I'll do my best." She drained the rest of her beer. "Don't disappear on me again."

"Boy Scout's honor," Wade said, holding up his hand and approximating the correct sign with his fingers.