I always wondered what happened between the X-Force leaving the crash site and the team meeting back up at Blind Al's pad.
Suffice it to say, I'm not wondering anymore. ;D
"Dom! We gotta go back! What if he's trapped under two tons of concrete LEGO freeway and running out of oxygen?!" Wade wailed as his bestest buddy in the entire planet walked farther and farther from the scene of the truly epic crash they'd both miraculously survived.
"Well, guess he'll die then," Domino breezed over her shoulder at Wade, where she was carrying him like he was your average everyday red, blood oozing, hundred pound backpack.
"No! Don't say such things! He's strong; he'll hold on for us!" Wade reprimanded. Shocked by his coworker's shocking words.
Granted—considering he'd just been ripped in half—there really wasn't much he could do if his Romeo had been buried alive. He couldn't lift with his back if only half his back was available, after all.
Man, Juggernaut was a real dick.
"That Fullmetal Alchemist lookin' mother just got through trying to kill you! And the Fire Fist kid. You do not want to be pulling that kind of trouble out of solid concrete. Trust me on this one," said the good sport who didn't seem to mind that Wade's big intestine kept slapping her achilles whenever she took a step.
"I don't think you understand the erotic nature of our death defying foreplay here, Dom. The guy is just waiting for the right moment to stick his tongue so far down my throat I die of asphyxiation, just so he can give me mouth to mouth until my heart restarts," Wade informed the last remaining member of his X-Force. May the departed Rest In Peace. If not in... pieces.
"If that's what you think is going on, then I don't want to know what you think Juggernaut meant by this," Domino said, hefting her fancy, half-a-costumed-human backpack to make her point clear. And painful.
"Oh, that guy?" Wade scoffed. "He's just miffed that I have a boyfriend and he doesn't!"
"Mmhm. Like I said: didn't want to know."
It wasn't until after sweet, thoughtful Domino had literally dropped Wade's upper half off on Blind Al's doorstep, going so far as to ring the doorbell when he insisted he couldn't reach it—even though he totally could—that the icky bits of internal organs grew a new protective layer of human skin over them.
Looked much better than all those loose bits of vertebrae and big and small intestines and even part of his stomach hanging out of his thoracic cavity for the world to see.
Wade was frankly impressed by Domino's continued unflappability through the trudge home.
It really was too bad not even one of the innumerable cabs they passed along the way would stop to pick them up. And all because Dom was covered in blood and he didn't have any legs.
Wade never would have guessed that such prejudice ran so deep in the veins of his fellow citizens.
He at least hoped Dom could cause some positive citywide change with her sway over at her day job. Whatever high powered position it turned out she held.
But Wade put the small minded citizenry out of his mind as he concentrated on not worrying about the cyborg he knew could be suffocating to death as Althea dragged him inside her apartment. Giving up about where the sofa was and saying she'd be back in a sec.
"Good thing you never came back for the last of your shit after I threatened to throw it out if you didn't. Found a button shirt under a fat stack of National Geographics."
"Yeah, those aren't National Geographics, Al; they're... let's just say adult porn."
"What other kind of porn is there?"
Hm, good point, Wade thought with a raise of his non-existent eyebrows, before going straight to answer Al's other burning question.
"And I knew that you'd never go through with the threat. Throwing all that 'shit' out would take way too much effort, and besides, it reminds you of your favorite roomy," Wade cooed as his ex-roomy helped him wiggle out of the upper half of his mangled Deadpool costume.
"My dead cat?"
"No. Me!"
"Huh. I don't recall ever saying I even liked your annoying ass. I only let you live here 'cause I was tight on funds," she ended with a huff as the Deadpool outfit finally popped off Wade's head.
"You've got several things wrong there, but I'm not gonna stress because I know seeing me like this is hard for you. Because you're blind. And because you hate to see me in so much pain."
"Mm, nope. You got the wrong blind person. You in pain does not brother me. Not one bit," Al insisted as she helped Wade get his arms into the short sleeves of his slightly musty, ancient, it-was-one-dollar-at-the-thrift-store splurge purchase Hawaiian shirt.
After Wade'd buttoned the shirt and helped Blind Al get him up on the sofa, grunting when it pulled at his sensitive, newly regrown skin, his favorite ex-roomy paused, hands on her hips as if deep in thought.
"You want some ibuprofen, sweety?"
"Yes. A whole, family sized bottle, if you've got one lying around. That would be just... wonderful," Wade said with a triumphant grin.
"I got water boiling; your lazy ass want some hot cocoa too?"
"If it wouldn't be a bother!" He called after her retreating, somehow not tripping over the mess in there, form.
"Marshmallows?"
"You know it! You're the greatest, Al!"
"Fuck you, Wade!" He heard from over by the bathroom, where his unseeing-eye dog was fetching him a large bottle of crunchy, medicated bliss.
"I love you too!"
"You know, Al?! I'm starting to think maybe my boyfriend's still alive! They still haven't said anything about finding a Hunk'a Hunk'a Burnin' Cyborg Love anywhere in the crash! Or the rubble! Or the surrounding-"
"Wade, I will sew your mouth shut if you don't stop the running commentary this instant!" Althea warned from the dubious comfort of her circa 1995 mattress.
"I thought we agreed never to mention that again!" Wade shouted toward his ex-roomy's bedroom.
"...Sorry. But shut up and go to sleep!"
Though Wade had given Al his tacit agreement, Sleep didn't happen that night. Not with the news coverage of the biggest, most awesome crash in history going all night the way it did.
Every time the lady or the man or the dog—that was new—came on screen and told Wade specifically (by name) that all but two of the mutants were accounted for and that there appeared to be no other casualties, Wade shed a tear of gut-deep relief.
His honey bunny wasn't dead! Probably.
Well actually, nothing was being proven one way or the other, and by the time the sun started peeking at him through that one annoying slat on the blinds across the window that was just a little bit missing, Wade realized all he'd accomplished was a night of absolutely zero sleep.
And a whole heap of worrying. And he was pretty sure his urinary tract was finished stitching itself back together and that it was high time he thought about not wanting to drag himself all the way to the bathroom to handle that problem.
Good thing Al'd left him a handy dandy mug before he'd glued himself to the television for a marathon of watching nothing but mid quality local news coverage.
"Ahhhh," Wade sighed in relief before giggling at the thought that once again, in a rather roundabout way, his cup contained hot cocoa. Which, in turn, had him wondering whether it tasted the same the second time in his cup as it did the first.
That thought was discarded quickly though when he gave the liquid a sniff which made his soul's nose crinkle. So he set it on the coffee table and got ready for the morning addition of doom and gloom in your ex-housemate's living room.
AKA: The caffeine edition of the local news.
"Why does my living room smell like piss?"
"Uh, no reason."
So, Blind Al didn't like the piss in her second favorite mug thing, nor the fact that her deadbeat house'guest' still couldn't walk, on account of his having baby legs and all, but she kept it cool and handed over another family sized bottle of ibuprofen for him to munch on while she made some chocolate chip pancakes.
"I'm pretty sure you grabbed the raisins, Al. Wrong shelf. Wrong set of shelves, actually," Wade said from his seat by the coffee table.
"Right. Like you could see any of that from way over there," Al scoffed at him as she poured a few of the tasty morsels into the frying pan. Hopefully not missing the ever so slightly charred pancake. Which Wade could smell just fine from 'way over there'.
"I'm not blind, Al; I can see you forgetting to flip the pancake and to put the eggs back in the fridge."
"You wanna make breakfast?"
"Don't mind me, Al. You're an angel!" Wade backpedalled as sweetly as possible.
"As much as I love your famous charcoal and crouton pancakes-"
"-Told you they weren't raisins."
"I will vomit all over myself if you try to force another on me."
"'Force' nothin', jackass. It was you swallowed two without coming up for air, moaning and slurping all the syrup off your plate like you was Jesus at the last supper."
"That was ketchup, Al. You poured ketchup all over your Lovecraftian dog's breakfast and forced me—at gunpoint, might I remind—to 'shut my trap and eat my damn breakfast'. That, and I needed to make it sound good. 'Cause I'm not interested in regrowing my shoulder before I even eat. That's what you were aiming for, by the way," Wade tacked on at the confused expression. "You're welcome."
"No, Wade. You're welcome."
Wade watched Al clear the dishes, then groped his way back onto the sofa from his eating off the coffee table spot on the floor, wishing all the while that regrowing half his skeleton wasn't such a pain in the-
Oh happy day! His ass was back!
After that, what with the massive intake of calories—which he'd somehow forgotten really helped with this sort of thing—his baby legs were toddler legs in the blink of an eye! And people were flooding the living room and giving him funny faces and commenting on the pants he didn't own that he should be wearing.
Life was complicated like that sometimes.
But, when a big, familiar, square jaw revealed itself behind Wade's gaggle of self-invited friends, his entire brain did one of the happiest happy dances in the history of interpretive dance.
Pretty sure he almost got a concussion from how hard the party in his skull was going, he fought to keep a straight face and started off casual. "So, big guy. Hot stuff. What brings you around? Couldn't keep away after our-"
"The name's Cable, I don't know what you're talking about, and I'm from- Are you crying?" The look that accompanied the question was equal parts disturbed and intrigued.
Wow. Guess for once, Wade thought with a sniffle, Cosmo actually got something right.
"Mmhm," Wade confirmed. Not bothering to wipe away the tears. "I'm just so happy you didn't end up on the ten o'clock news."
"Wade, why are you happy about that?" Demanded Weasel who was holding a large pistol up and inexpertly pointing it at the cybor- at Cable's face. "This freak tried to torture me to death for information about how to get you to leave him alone! And what your favorite color was- But I didn't tell him anything! ...Mostly because I don't know any of that weird shit!"
"That's because you're not a very good friend, Weasel." Dopinder informed in his sweet, thoughtful way. Earning himself a good glare from the only one holding a piece. With the safety engaged.
"I only asked that question because," Cable began, as he moved to 'retrieve something from his utility bag'.
"That's a fucking fanny pack!" Shouted an enraged Weasel.
Ignoring the rude interruption, the cyborg finished his approach of the sofa and stopped right in front of Wade. Pulling a little tube from his 'utility bag' and popping it open before continuing.
"You remind me of my wife."
Wade's eyes went wide. It was starting. He just knew it. There wasn't anything else it could possibly mean. 'Cause when the hottest time traveling cyborg you've ever met takes the time to apply lipstick and pay you a compliment, all while maintaining steady, heavy eye contact, you just know it's time to take things to the next level.
From exactly where he'd stood to put on his strange, clear, future lipstick, Cable cocked his head and cleared his throat. Bringing Wade's attention back to him. Well enough to get most of a story to go in one ear and half out the other.
The guy's lips were just so distracting it was hard to hear all the words that came out of them, all slicked up the way they were. Ready and primed for something a little more fun than just... a long, long flashback story.
Which Wade caught just enough of to insist they; under no circumstances, commit murdercide against a heretofore innocent child.
"Fine. Deal." Grouched the- Cable.
"So, it's official? We're partners for real now?" Wade asked. A snot bubble popping when he exhaled in disbelief. At which Cable stepped back with a grimace.
"Yeah. Call it what you want. We're helping each other out on this one. You help me get to the kid, and I give you thirty seconds to try and stop him from going dark side."
"Sounds good to me, partner," Wade said with far more jubilation than he'd had reason to feel in a long, long time.
Wow, Wade thought not so long later as he guzzled down every calorie Al had in her pantry, aside from Domino's true though hurtful comment about his face, this had been the best team meeting in the history of X-Force team meetings. And the fact that they'd really only ever had one other of them didn't detract one smidge from how 'best' it was, 'cause Cable had said it loud and proud in front of the whole team: He and Wade were going steady!
He needed to get them matching promise rings, he thought with an offhanded sigh as he licked the inside of a now empty peanut butter container 'clean'.
But, first things first, he decided, tossing the spotless jar into a handy dandy recycling receptacle. He could focus on jewelry later. Now he needed to focus on eating Al out of house and home, 'cause soon as he could get his adolescent legs grown out to 'yoked young adult' legs, he'd be ready and rarin' to kick some metal-helmeted Juggernaut ass!
Alongside his ever so slightly smaller X-Force of Domino and... himself. 'Cause everyone else was tragically, unavoidably dead.
And his shiny new, hotter than a two dollar pistol, ripped as shit, partner, of course.
Man this was gonna be one hell of a climax.