Alison & Wade | Friday Evening

[x-deadpool.livejournal.com]

Alison arrives at the mansion. Wade answers the doorbell when it rings. Wade should never answer the doorbell when it rings.


Alison tugged on a pigtail. This was it. A new start. A real start, to her real life. She was done being fake.

She glanced at her trio of suitcases, all clean and bright pink. Of course they were pink. What else would a cute idol like her use if not the pinkest monstrosities her manager could find?

They clashed horribly with her real hair color, a bright and fiery red.

So she hadn't completely shed her fake self. The blonde dye would grow out eventually, and she could buy a new set of luggage later. Still! She'd left her colored contacts and stage dresses back with Anna. This was it. This was going to be all her. Everything she wanted was going to be right behind that door. All she had to do was reach out and take it.

She reached out, rung the doorbell, and grabbed opportunity with both hands.

Wade was dancing to the beat of his own little drum - not a real on, the one in his head. It was currently rocking out the bass line for Jimmy Eat World's "The Sweetness" as he juked through the foyer of the mansion. He had two chimichangas in one hand and a three tacos in the other - it was a good day. He'd finished his kata and his afternoon routine of car restoration, so he was well on his way to dinner and movies with his peeps. All his peeps.

Then the doorbell rang.

It wasn't just any kind of doorbell, but a rich dude's doorbell, kind of a ding dong, ding dong, diiiiiing. Wade glanced around, checking to see if anyone else was about to do the honors of answering the door. Since there wasn't, he shifted the chimichangas into his taco-hand and moved forward. Just before he got to it, he flicked a throwing knife out of the sheath on his forearm, chided himself like he knew Marie-Ange would've chided him, and flicked it back up.

Opening the door, the merc smiled widely and said, "Hello, how can I help you?"

Apparently opportunity was a guy with tacos.

And despite every acting lesson Alison had ever had, and every minute she spent in the limelight or on stage, Alison froze. Was she at the wrong place? This was a mansion, after all. It hardly looked like a hospital or something. But this was definitely the address. What if they didn't want her? Or there wasn't room? Or maybe just nobody would like her when she got inside. Or what if—

"Alison," she said dumbly, powering through the white noise of her own doubt. "M-my name is Alison. I was told someone here could help me."

Wade, too, had frozen upon realizing who was on the front steps of the mansion. And then his brain started racing through variables - someone had to have known she was going to show up, she'd gotten through the ridiculous security, so why wasn't anyone here to meet her? Why was it that Wade was standing there with chimichangas and tacos and a stupid look on his face. This was Alison fucking Blaire and she was also all of sixteen, not the 80's pop icon he'd no-shit had a crush on that might have one day rivaled his love of Bea Arthur, and he really needed to say something intelligent. "Hi, hello, my name is Wade W. Wilson. Is this a scheduled appointment or are you going to need a tour?"

And then he wanted to bash his head against the door frame. He'd have been better off stuffing his face with two tacos at once

“Appointment? Oh… I… um… I didn’t realize it was that kind of place.” She almost seemed to shrink in on herself. Her head hung, and all the life seemed to have fallen out of her pigtails. “I was just told that someone here could help me. I looked you guys up online and it said you were a boarding school, so I figured that…”

What had she been thinking? Of course you needed an appointment! There was probably tests and fees and dues and all the things she never had to think of on tour! Why was she such a bubblehead?! Ugh, this was a terrible idea.

Her fist clenched on the handle of one of her pink suitcases. “I... am sorry I bothered you. I should just go.”

So much for a fresh start.

"Wait, no, I said that wrong," Wade said. "I meant like. Okay, have you talked to the Professor yet or is this one of those like. 'Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope' kinda deals? Cause either way, you're totally welcome to stay, it's just more of a like. The Prof will feed you tea and talk to you about things and make sure everything's set up or whatever if he hasn't already and if he has already then it's like. I should take you to someone who officially knows what they're talking about. I just live here. Please stop looking like I kicked your puppy, you're totally fine, you should come in. Let me help you with your luggage. We can absolutely help you."

"Really? Thank you sooo much! You're awesome!" She giggled and smiled before she realized what was happening. Dammit. She was back in idol mode. Bubbly lilt, her cutest smile. Still, she was in. Well, not yet. Not officially, anyway. But it just had to work out. The alternative wasn't an option, and the strange taco guy at the door (he still hadn't put them down yet either... did he even realize he was still holding them?) had said they could help! This was really going to happen!

She pulled one of the larger packs to the door. Her backpack (pink, of course. She really needed to go shopping soon...) was wrapped around the telescoping handle. She slung another back up around her shoulder. "Lead on, MacDuff!"

Wade grabbed the last piece of luggage with his free hand, waited until she'd gotten inside, and then nudged the door closed behind them. He found himself in a quandary. Tacos and chimichangas. Pinkpink luggage. Delicious food. Pop legend... sort of. Tacos. Idol. Tacos. Idol. "Hang on," he said, leaving the luggage on the floor for a second as he took his chimichangas back from his taco hand and quickly ate them. "Sorry, my priorities are automatically skewed toward tacos and chimichangas. It's a thing. But you didn't say - just for clarification, you haven't talked to the Prof yet?"

"What? Oh, right," she giggled again. Oh man, she was getting giddy. She couldn't help it! "No, sorry. Just Vimala—she's the one who told me about this place. She said it could help me. I guess... we should probably find this Professor, then?"

"Vimala?" Wade asked, giving her a blank look. "Who's Vimala?" Did they have a security breach? He shoved the last of his final chimichanga into his mouth and reached for his phone. "What's she look like? What'd she tell you exactly? Do you want a taco?"

Right. Mr. Opportunity liked his tacos. Weirdo. "Um... no, thank you. I'm full." Rule #1: Never accept food from strangers.

"And she just told me to come here to help with my... abilities. Um..." Why was she stuttering? She was a dignified actress and orator, for crying out loud. "She was Indian, I think. Oh, but she sounded British! She gave me this address and told me to come to get help controlling... whatever it is I can do."

The lightest of blushes dusted her cheeks and nose. "So... here I am."

British Indian. Wade considered that for a moment before hitting the speed dial for Kyle and holding the phone up to his ear. It rang a bit before the younger man answered. The exchange was brief, but that was all Wade needed. He ended the conversation and then snorted to himself. Topaz. Topaz's real name was Vimala. He didn't know what he was going to do with that information now that he had it, probably nothing, but at least he wasn't having a heart attack about security breaches.

"Right, sorry," he said, taking a bit out of a taco as he slipped his phone back into its little case on his belt. "Just had to confirm Vimala's identity. You might not want to go around calling her that, though. I don't think she likes the name. Or at least isn't inclined to share it with everybody here. We call her Topaz." He took another bit of taco and chewed contemplatively for a moment, then said, "I think a temp suite for now. I can give you the tour and drop you off at the Prof's, no problem."

"I'll try to keep it in mind." Topaz, eh? Well. She'd cross that bridge when she came to it. "So... who is this 'Professor' of yours, anyway?"

"Professor Charles Xavier," Wade said, quirking a smile as he led her toward an elevator. "Heads up the Xavier Institute. Old money. Good guy. Telepath, so don't lie. You'll probably like him. Pretty much everybody does. He runs this place kind of like a boarding school, but all the kids attend Bayside Charter, there aren't any actual classes taught here." When the elevator arrived, Wade stepped inside, waited for Alison to follow, and then pressed the appropriate button with one of his knuckles. Then he gave her a sideways glance and said, "Plenty of image inducers to go around."

Alison followed him in. The elevator started to move.

"Image... inducer?" She knew those words. Honest she did!

...They just didn't make any sense put together in that order like that.

Also, what was this about a telepath? Someone else in her head? Joy.

"Image inducers are just tech that changes your appearance - they can give you a whole different face or just your hair or eyes or... whatever. They're good for visible mutants but also for people who just don't want people to know who they are," Wade clarified. "They've been coming in really handy since M-Day."

For every answer there was another half dozen questions. How did they get such a machine? Who made them?

The elevator stopped. "...M-Day?"

At that, Wade paused halfway out of the elevator and looked at Alison askance. "Y'know, right around New Years'? When... when pretty much all of the mutants in the world... I dunno, exploded? Died? Caused the deaths of millions of baseline humans? Brought down the wrath of various governments upon us and made several different foreign governments push through registration legislation?" How insulated from the real world had she been? Wade had run protection details for girls her age who were equally cloistered, but she had to have access to the internet - she'd written a blog post, hadn't she?

Wait, she remembered hearing about that. "Was that what that was? I'd just come off my third show in three days; Tokyo to Kyoto to Osaka, and we'd blown out a speaker half way through the last show. Stupid lights were three times as hard to keep up, and I burnt myself out pretty bad. Spent the following week in and out of sleep.

"By the time I was over it," she explained, "I was back on tour and nobody in my record label was willing to talk about it. I still don't actually know what happened."

"Gotcha," Wade said with a nod, finally exiting the dinging elevator all the way and heading toward the suites. "It sucked. That's pretty much all you need to know about it for now. It sucked a lot." He shoved another taco into his mouth as he stopped in front of the door to one of the temporary suites. Keycard out, swipe in, hip-check the door open, and voila. "Feel free to leave your stuff here, I'll get you a temp keycard while you're with the Prof. It'll be keyed so only you can get in unless there's some kind of emergency." He put the piece of luggage he was carrying on the couch and then quirked a brow. "You wanna like. I dunno, freshen up or whatever before the tour?"

It was a nice suite. Alison smiled brightly. "I'd like that. Just... give me a few minutes, okay?"

"No problem," Wade said, giving her a small salute with his last taco as he headed for the door. "I'll be down the hall a bit." He needed to make sure the Professor was aware of Alison's presence. And, y'know. Whoever else might be around that needed to know. There really should've been somebody other than him there to greet the chick. Really, really.

As the door clicked shut, Alison let herself fall backwards into the bed. (Inner-spring. She'd need to see if they'd let her swap it with a memory-foam once she got a permanent room). He'd recognized her, clearly. He wasn't that good an actor.

At least he hadn't started gushing. (Yet, chimed the little pessimistic part of her mind). She sighed a little sadly, staring at the ceiling. She'd just have to make the best of it.