Gabriel, Marie-Ange, & Wade | Monday Night (backdated)

[x-deadpool.livejournal.com]

Marie-Ange and Wade approach Gabriel about joining X-Force.


Nobody at Xavier's ever used the pool at night. At least, not that Gabriel had seen. Which is why he'd ended up here, his feet in the water, a cigarette in his lips and an ashtray at his side. The lights in the pool illuminated the surrounding area, but he wished it were darker.

This wasn't a place he'd been in a while. The last time, he'd been in another universe. There'd been a boy. And he didn't want to think too much about any of that.

But tonight, he'd wanted to be outside, and he'd wanted to be out of sight, and there were too few places in the mansion where he could achieve those two things while also smoking. He'd thought the pool was one of them, but a dark shadow cast across the pool deck and a smell he couldn't place let him know that wasn't the case.

Wade had a stack of what could have been pizza boxes held in front of him almost like a peace offering as he paced out to the pool with Marie-Ange. He'd been serious about getting cookies for doing good things. And also, Insomnia Cookies delivered until 3am and were delicious. He waggled his eyebrows at Marie-Ange, though, and tilted his head significantly in Gabriel's direction. You go first.

Marie-Ange made a face at Wade, and snorted - and then abruptly sat down, dangling her bare feet in the pool right alongside Gabriel. "Health and dental insurance, a salary that means you only have to bartend on holidays if you want, and semi paid vacations and a box of fake id's."

She paused.

"And all night access to Wade's cookie stash, apparently."

"Excuse me?" Gabriel pushed the butt end of his cigarette into the ashtray, grinding it out and letting it fall. He looked at Wade, pursed his lips at the pizza boxes and then turned to Marie-Ange, his eyebrow raised. "And this unsolicited list of perks comes with what strings, exactly?"

"Doing the same thing you did in Germany, not mouthing off to anyone who carries a gun, and possibly university." Marie-Ange answered. "You can share the pain of the last one with Wade, Emma is making him work through a doctorate in elephants."

"Battle elephants," Wade agreed, plopping down on Gabriel's other side, boxes of cookies still in hand. He sat cross-legged, though, rather than putting his feet in the pool, so he could better balance the boxes as he opened the top one and then offer it to Gabriel.

Gabriel took the box from Wade, grabbing a chocolate chip cookie from the front and putting the box behind him. He broke the cookie in half, sticking one side of it on the box lid and taking a bite from the other. "That all sounds nice. Generous, even." He turned to Marie-Ange after he'd swallowed. "But I don't do well with authority - surprise, surprise, I know - and I'm not sure I really understand what you people do." He pulled out a box of cigarettes from his pockets, using his powers to grab one and light it in a second. "And I definitely don't understand why you do it."

"We do most of the things you already do. We talk to people, we spend money, we travel, we steal sometimes." Marie-Ange took a cookie herself but only turned it around in her hands. "We steal a lot, actually, and sometimes... you saw most of it, when we helped David. We hurt people, and sometimes kill them."

She broke a piece off the cookie, tasted it and handed the rest to Wade. Espresso-chip cookies, not at all a wise idea for someone who rarely slept as it was. "We are supposed to act proactively. Most of the time we succeed."

"Like I told you when I asked you to go to Germany, you've got a skill-set we currently lack. A valuable skill-set. You're already kind of doing the stuff we'd need you to do, you might as well get paid for it. Which reminds me, I dropped your payment for Germany in your account." He took a bite of the cookie Marie-Ange had handed him and chewed contemplatively for a moment, then continued, "What happened in January. It's the kind of thing we try to stop. I mean, I'm brand new to X-Force, right? Just a wee baby spy. But what we do, it's... like the ladybird said, proactive. We want to prevent something like that from ever happening again. Or at least I do. Sydney might just want to steal everyone else's contact networks while he sits back looking mysterious and drinking too much liquor."

Gabriel turned toward the ashtray and tapped the cigarette against the side of it. "I don't want a desk job." It was somewhere between a question and a caution. "Seriously." Unsure who to face, he turned back to the pool. "I don't. And I mean, I'm not sure I want to give up my life. It's pretty fun."

Marie-Ange shook her head. "There is a good chance you may end up faking some of a desk job, part-time. Literally, you would sit at a desk and pretend to answer phones and scare off people who wander into the office. The front desk rotates - Mostly Cammie does it, but sometimes whoever else is available and young looking." She waved off the frown. "Really though - you work in an area we need, badly. Bartenders hear everything, yes? So I would expect you to keep your life, at least part time. We used to have a DJ onstaff, who still kept up his hosting duties, because it kept him in a network of people that none of the rest of us have access too."

Gabriel idly kicked his feet in the water and took another drag off his cigarette. He exhaled toward the pool. "I dunno," he said. "It sounds like you really need me - and way more than I need you," he smiled a bit, "which is nice, even if it's totally just posturing. I just..." He shrugged and looked up at Marie-Ange and Wade. "I dunno if I believe in any of this costume, codename, higher truths and bigger battles kinda stuff. Life's complicated enough."

"It's not... I mean, yeah, okay, it kind of can be that whole 'big picture' thing. But it's not always that. It's helping individuals as much as groups," Wade said. "Not so much with the costumes - I hear there used to be a trench coat thing, but that's not really my style. And a lot of the fights I've been in, at least so far, are pretty contained. The point is to fight whatever fight before it becomes a world changing, do-or-die battle."

Gabriel reached behind him, his fingers fumbling for the box lid until he managed to reach inside and wrap his hand around an M&M cookie. It broke apart in his hand as he pulled it out of the box, splitting along little fault-lines marked by round candy. He picked up a section and tossed it in his mouth.

"You know I'm not, like... anybody, right?" He shifted, turning to look at Marie-Ange. "I didn't finish high school, I'm not independently wealthy, and I don't kill people for a living. Not looking to a start." He cocked an eyebrow. "You know that?"

"Neither are half the people who work with me." Marie-Ange explained. "I know a lot more about you than you probably like. I am not so silly as to not background check the people I am trying to have work for me, so I know your educational history, and your income, and how old you really are." She shrugged and blindly reached backwards for a cookie. "I also know you survived being homeless at a young age, are an excellent liar and actor, if you are passing for the age you claim. And no one is going to ask you to assassinate anyone." That was her job.

Wade shoved the entire partial cookie in his hands into his mouth and chewed because otherwise he'd do something silly like ask how old Gabriel actually was, which wasn't the important part of this conversation at all. Finally swallowing, he continued, "You not having a rep makes you better for the kind of work you'd be doing, anyway. Subtle or something. I suck at that kind of thing."

"Shut up for a second." Gabriel didn't bother turning to address Wade, since he was still staring at Marie-Ange. "I'm not... I mean, like, you can't..." He was vacillating somewhere between defensive and mad, his face red but his eyes more deer-in-headlights than anything else. "That wasn't your business," he finally said after a few seconds, "and it's not like it matters or anything, but there's..." He puffed on the cigarette and closed his eyes. "For what it's worth, that was not a good part of what had been an admirable sales pitch."

Remarkably, even though she had a chocolate-dipped shortbread cat-shaped cookie in her hand, Marie-Ange managed to look like she was not even briefly considering taking Gabriel's shit. "If I am going to even think about giving you a job, yes, it is my business to know what you might be hiding. I do not care at all if you never tell anyone else, but my co-workers having secrets are a bad idea in my line of work. This way, when... I do not know, Magneto's dead wife comes calling and says she is going to blackmail us because our adorable angry speedster is really not his age, I can laugh in her face."

"Yeah," Gabriel muttered, "there's some great dirt." He closed his eyes, rubbing them with his thumb and forefinger. "So, what? I say yes, because you did a background check for a job that I didn't want or ask for, and now you get to hold it over my head? That seems fun for me. Great work environment."

"Oh goodness no. That information stays here, regardless of if you do or do not accept a job offer." Marie-Ange explained. "I was not intending it to be part of the sales pitch, it was educational. You say yes if you think you can make some sort of difference with the skills you have, and I hold nothing over your head because blackmailing co-workers to do anything but get me fancy coffee drinks is terrible."

Wade laid down, legs still crossed at the edge of the pool, and pulled one of the boxes of cookies over to him. It was full of sugar cookies. He took three of them and shoved them into his mouth all at once just to see if he could. Then he gave up on not being vaguely nosy and asked, cookies half-chewed, "Dude, Gabe, though. But like how old are you actually?"

Gabriel turned to glance at Wade, an eyebrow raised and a sly smile on his face. He simply shrugged and turned back to Marie-Ange. "You didn't tell him?"

"No. As I said, blackmail is awful, and it stays here." Marie-Ange pointed to her mouth. "It is ... " She waved a hand in the air to emphasize the absurdity of her explanation. "That you are younger than you look and sound, I had to warn Wade. But Wade only, and only because it was that or make him to sit at the bottom of the pool with his fingers in his ears going 'la la la'." And then she passed Gabriel a post-it note that when unfolded said "If he jumps in the pool right now and does that, I will buy you dinner."

Gabriel looked at the Post-It and snorted. His brow furrowed, he crumpled it up and threw it in the ashtray. "If I'm saying yes - which, you know, if - I'd want to start part-time at first. See how things go. Figure out if it's a good fit. Keep my job, which by the by, I happen to like even though nobody seems to believe me. And flexible hours would be a plus, too. I'm not coming in at 9."

"Wanna be an intern?" Wade asked, fishing a couple more sugar cookies out of the box beside him.

Gabriel was quiet for a few seconds, considering the best way to cut Wade down. "And," he brightened, "he doesn't get to find out how old I am. Or no deal."

Marie-Ange nodded. "As far as I am concerned, the only way people find out is if you tell them, or if they do their own research. I do not talk in my sleep." Really she did not sleep that much anyway. She held up a finger. "It will come out, eventually. Tell people on your own time, before it does."

"Yeah, I'll keep that in mind," Gabriel answered in a way that suggested he probably wouldn't. He kicked his legs in the water slightly, staring at his feet. "Okay," he said after a long silence. He looked up, as if he were almost surprised he said that out loud. "I mean, you know, I need to – salary's important, and I'm thinking it's a trial basis at first, like I said."

Wade fistpumped silently from his prone position. "Seriously, though - intern? I'm not a terrible boss type person."

"Wade, I already do an extraordinary amount of shit for you for free." Gabriel turned to look at him. He spotted the box of cookies out of the corner of his eye and reached for one. "And it's already kind of annoying."

"Right, but if you were my intern, you'd actually get paid. Real money. Not just whatever you don't try to give back to me after I sneak it in your bank account," Wade reached for another few sugar cookies.

Gabriel stared at Wade for a second, then whipped back around to Marie-Ange. "If he's like this at work, is it too late to take back my yes?"

Marie-Ange swatted a cookie out of Wade's hand and handed it to Gabriel. "Shockingly, Wade is entirely professional in the actual office. He just cannot figure out the copier or the printer and needs help, because he is ancient." She leaned in as if to share a secret. "He is from a time when bell bottoms were fashionable. Corduroy bell bottoms."

"My corduroy bell bottoms are groovy," Wade insisted. "Totally rad. Also, I can make the printer work now that Doug set it up to do whatever syncing automatic thing, I don't even know. At least it's not a typewriter. You made one mistake on those and had to retype whole pages."

"God, really?" Gabriel smirked, an eyebrow raised, "Typewriters? How old are you?" He reached over his shoulder to hand the cookie back to Wade. He shifted his leg, and it nudged the ashtray, which he looked at for a bit, clearly contemplating another cigarette. His head snapped back to Marie-Ange.

"Seriously, though." His voice was all business. "If I want out, I get to be out, right? No Men in Black, Emma Frost mind-wiping or anything. I'm fucked up enough."

"Yes. If you hate it, or are terrible at it, or just decide you do not want to do it, yes. Quit. Un-motivated spies are terrible spies who end up going double-agent and I do not know, assume I made a reference to some fictional spy who did that." Marie-Ange answered. "And Wade is fifty-five, he is public about that. Wade is fifty-five, David is I think in his mid-forties, Cammie and Jubilee, are, shockingly, both adults, and Kevin is nine hundred, or ninety, or... I assume he is Methuselah."

Wade started laughing, the cookie Gabriel had returned to him half in his mouth. "Methuselah. Yes," he said, managing not to choke on baked, sugary goodness. Then he looked over at the younger man and continued, "Just email me or the ladybird your schedule and we'll figure out times that work best for you to do paperwork and like show up at the offices in the city. No dress code. Bring your own coffee if you don't want an ulcer from the sludge North keeps making in the break room." He offered Gabriel a double thumbs up and a grin. This was going to be fun.