David, Adrienne, & Wade | Wednesday Afternoon (backdated)

[x-deadpool.livejournal.com]

Adrienne and David didn't part on the best of terms the last time they spoke. The lack of harmony amongst his people his harshing Wade's well-deserved mellow. So Wade comes up with a cunning plan to make them be friends again. It involves mini golf and eventual car theft.

Note: This is so, so backdated...


"Is it wrong to bring one's own putter to mini golf?" Adrienne asked as she sauntered up to Wade in the parking lot at the miniature golf course, putter swinging at her side. "I still had my clubs in the trunk after Agent Lana and I had a tee time yesterday."

"I mean, if all you had were putters, probably not," Wade said, swinging his own club around and around in a circle for a moment before grinning. "Since you've probably got one that's worth like six grand or something. It'd be silly to bring that out here." He waggled his eyebrows.

"Pfft, I'd never pay that much for a putter," Adrienne scoffed with a smirk. "But a driver or a fairwaywood? Certainly." She adjusted her ponytail through her Boston ball cap and put on her sunglasses. "Are we ready to go?"

"Almost," Wade said, adjusting his on sunglasses before glancing around them. "We're almost ready." Where was the smarmy German?

Like the punchline to a joke, a German rode into the parking lot on his motorbike and the lifting of a helmet revealed one David North with helmet hair and a carefully neutral expression. "This was your urgent mission?"

"Now we're ready!" Wade said, tossing an extra putter in North's general direction even as he turned to Adrienne with his most charming smile. "Don't you just want to beat the pants off him at putt-putt?"

Adrienne glowered at North, then at Wade. "Yeah, something like that." She wanted to beat him, that part was right.

On his part, David turned from her less than friendly welcome to eye the putter he had caught with vague distrust. He dismounted with a sigh, stowing his helmet under his free arm. "I am not fond of mini golf, Wilson."

"What? Why? Why would you not be fond of mini golf? It's awesome," Wade said, waggling his eyebrows. "Besides, the two of you need to kiss and make up, cause my peeps not being harmonious is crimping my style. So let's get competitive and compete whatever issue you've got right out of your systems."

"I don't have an issue," Adrienne retorted defensively, taking a score card and a pencil and putting them in her back pocket. She jerked a thumb at North. "If that guy has an issue with me, it's his problem. He wants to act like a dick and give me the silent treatment or whatever when I'm trying to be his fucking friend, that's his damage, not mine."

"Yes, that kind of damage has a name," David actually sighed, absently rolling the shaft of the club between his fingers. "And I do not play--" mini golf? He had, actually, once. With a green-haired woman. Whilst inebriated. He turned to stow his gear away. "Fine."

"Yeah, I know what it's called," Adrienne shot back, "I used to have it myself, so excuse me for trying to fucking be there for you." She turned away from North to glance at Wade. "Let's do this thing. You guys are going down."

"What's that thing that famous dude wrote?" Wade asked the air in front of him as he led the way to the first hole. "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet? I'm here to facilitate some reconciliation. Can't we all just be friends? PTSD and addiction issues not withstanding? I mean, withstanding, but not impeding?" He dropped his little, very pink golf ball and lined up a shot he thought might make it through whatever gauntlet the brains behind this putt-putt operation had installed.

"There are no addiction issues," North said sharply, the look he sent the back of Wade's head more than a little frosty as he gestured for Adrienne to have the next turn.

Adrienne sized up the first hole and did some geometry in her head. She was actually better at putting than she was at driving, so she assumed she wouldn't embarrass herself too bad here, but she hadn't been mini golfing in a couple years and had never been to this particular course before, so it wasn't outside the realm of possibilities. "Yeah, no addiction issues. Plenty of other ones, but not that one at the moment." She squinted some more at the hole and set up her shot. Due to the blurriness of the figures- she couldn't tell if they were dinosaurs or frogs- at the far end of the hole her math was off slightly and her little yellow ball only made it halfway down the green astroturf before being impeded by some sort of log. "So, what did you guys do on your bromance trip to Africa?" she asked conversationally, hoping a change in topic would clear the air a bit.

"Killed people," Wade offered, tilting his head to the side as he waited for North to line up his shot. He managed to keep himself from snickering at the other man's ball, since it was blue. But then he got distracted by Adrienne's squinting. "They were bad people. Trafficking in children, supplying guns to anti-government groups who kidnapped women, awful warlords. That kind of thing."

Taking the shot without too much deliberation, North sent his blue ball skittering down the fake green with more force then necessary, and watched it bounce back a meter from impact with a bright plastic shape. "Rescued some people. Ate crap food. Drank shit beer."

"Nice," Adrienne nodded. "Well, except for the crap food and shit beer part." She walked along the path to get closer to her ball. Now that they'd all shot once and her ball was the farthest from the hole, she followed mini-golf protocol and took the next shot herself to try and get her yellow ball up to where the other two were. Despite her careful calculations, however, the blurriness of the blue and pink balls due to their distance from where she'd been standing led to another miscalculation and her yellow ball hit North's blue one, knocking it back another two feet. "Shit! Sorry," she said quickly, wincing a little. She hoped North wouldn't think it was deliberate on her part.

His expression was still as shuttered as a bank on Sundays, but there was a faint narrowing to his eyes as he eyed their respective balls for a moment before he slowly shook his head and waved her apology away. "Wilson was of the opinion that his company more than made up for it," he said, jerking his chin at their cluster of brightly-coloured balls. "And does that mean it is my turn?"

North did not wait for a response, hopping over an obstacle and past Adrienne. He brought his putter down on the ball the way one would use a chipper -- and, really, it was not like he even knew how to play golf -- and the ball jumped a short distance before rolling past Adrienne's to bump gently into Wade's. The spy frowned at it. "This is a game one should only play when drunk."

Cocking an eyebrow, Adrienne dug through her handbag and showed him her trusty flask. "Cognac?" she asked helpfully, offering it to him surreptitiously.

"Sharing is caring, guys," Wade said, ignoring the fact that North'd just skipped him. The rules weren't important. Mostly it was getting these two to stop making faces like they'd stepped in poo whenever someone mentioned them to one another. He walked down the green, tilted his head, and then picked up his very pink ball and just tossed it in the general direction of the hole. Bump that 'through the windmill tunnel' thing.

It was good cognac, and David politely said as much after taking a healthy drink from the flask -- more than he had drunk in a long while -- and returning it to Adrienne. As if the woman would drink anything but the good stuff. He crossed his arms across his chest, putter leant against his hip as they watched Wade and his antics. "It was not silent treatment," he finally said, quiet and gruff, not quite looking at her. "Just PTSD."

Sometimes when he closed his eyes, he could still feel the helplessness and hear the screaming he had only been able to do in his head as he watched the world being rent apart. David shook his head to dislodge the memory, blinking rapidly behind his aviators.

Surprised that North had circled back to her comment from earlier, Adrienne just blinked at him for several moments. "Well, how the fuck was I supposed to know that?" she asked him, sounding vaguely guilty rather than angry as she offered her flask to Wade.

"I think you're supposed to like. Ask or something," Wade said, taking Adrienne's proffered flask with a quirk of a smile before he knocked back a sip. "But then, I don't think any of us are actually good at the whole 'talk about our feelings' thing, y'know? But you two. I need my friends to be friends again. Cause there's a thing I wanna do and I need the both of you."

David's answer was, as usual, non-verbal -- another vague twist of his lips and a shrug -- because of his aversion to the whole talking thing in general. There was no anger on his part. Just avoidance. And to be absolutely fair to her, maybe Adrienne had asked. He just had not been in the right frame of mind to reply in a way she would understand. "What did you have in mind?"

Adrienne rolled her eyes at North's shrug, annoyed that he wasn't sharing his thoughts or feelings. But she wasn't a shrink. If he wanted to avoid talking, that was his problem, not hers. "Yeah, what's up Cowpoke?" she added.

Oh.

Wade looked from David to Adrienne and back again before coughing a little. "Okay, so the plan," he said, letting a very serious expression slide into place. "The plan..." He glanced between them again. "Is to demonstrate... the power of friendship via rowboats. Because friendship."

Giving him an incredulous look, Adrienne putted from the log and managed to sink her yellow ball this time. She was in fantastic shape, but she wasn't sure she wanted to go rowing. "Can't we just break into some place and steal something or deface something or borrow something and take it on a joyride and bring it back?"

"Wait, why're you returning it?" Wade asked, squinting a little.

Adrienne shrugged. "I dunno. It's just my thing. I always return whatever it is. Maybe because my boyfriend's a cop." She really didn't know why. It was just what she and Vanessa had always done.

Wade considered that for a moment, then shrugged and said, "Sure, okay. Let's go boost some cars after Adrienne finishes kicking our asses at putt-putt. Grand theft auto in the name of bonding and friendship. Pound it!" He held out one fist to each of them, eyebrows raised.

Adrienne raised an eyebrow back at him in a bemused fashion, but she offered him her fist and bumped it, then locked it and exploded it the way Tandy had shown her after she'd seen Big Hero 6.

The handle of a putter met his other fist when North none too gently swatted at it with an arched brow and a quirked corner of his lips. Could have been worse. The spy could have said 'thank you.' And where would that have left them?