a little more Vicky/Wade interaction, for those of us who are Victor fans.

warnings: Movieverse (as-yet unnumbered Earth version; NOT Earth-616/Main Comicverse). mild violence. minor insanity. reference to slash and some slashy flirting. reference to 616 and other universes. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus s***).

pairing: post-Logan/Wade. implied Nate/Wade. slightly pre-Victor/Wade.

timeline: around ten years after the end of X-Men Origins: Wolverine (approximately 1992).

disclaimer: i doesn't owns the movies or the characters. fo shizzle.

notes: 1) title is a reference to Phase Two: Stillness. 2) october 12 is Hugh Jackman's birthday, lol. 3) Oak Bay is a real (small) town in NB. i made the truck stop up, though. 4) Meddybemps is a real town in Maine.

Motion

As a general rule, Victor stayed away from cities. Small towns were a necessary evil, places where he could find indulgences like whiskey, steak sauce, and pretty people.

He'd been ranging the coast of Nova Scotia for the summer, fishing and poaching livestock and emptying the occasional rustic cottage. With winter coming on, he was heading south, to warmer climes.

When he traveled, he always tread softly—made it possible to establish little waypoints and oases, places that he knew would serve his food and drink the way he liked it, places that wouldn't ask questions of a rough loner in a long coat.

The trouble with living wild was that he started to forget things.

It wasn't surprising to lose little things like the details of those first few decades on the run, way-back-when; it wasn't even that much of a surprise to lose parts of the interim days between wars.

But the longer Victor stayed away from people, the more he forgot important things like the exact shade of Jimmy's eyes…or those little faces he made when he was irritated.

And that brought him to one of his favorite little truck stops, just north of the border, washing down a very pink venison steak with a bottle of the local rotgut, when the vibe of the patrons started to feel off.

Truckers didn't run from most things, but they knew to keep their heads down when it came to some things. The fact that the men sitting at the bar all quickly looked to their plates and glasses and the waitress scurried past like a woman on a mission…it all sent up a red flag the size of the truck stop.

Then, over the smells of stale sweat, pine resin, and old grease, came a scent of danger…of blood and steel and candy.

"Whattaya mean 'where are you'?" the newcomer grumbled into a cell phone. "I don't know where I am, jackass. You send me up here on a wild goddamn goose chase with rumors about mysterious disappearances and shit, and you don't even have the decency to print me out a Googlemap! Don't take that tone with me, it's not my fault you don't know what the hell Google is! Next you'll tell me you've never heard of Stan Lee…"

Victor set down the unmarked bottle of liquor and leaned back in his chair. "Fancy meetin' you here, runt," he called.

For a man who'd had his head cut off, Wade Wilson looked remarkably hale. He stood there in jeans and a tee-shirt, ruined face shaded by a red ball cap and the upturned collar of a heavy surplus jacket. "Y'know, I'll call ya back once I figure out where the hell I am, and if it's even in the right storyline," he said, and flipped the phone closed.

"Have yerself a seat," Victor invited with a gesture.

Wade hugged him instead, like they were old friends…like nothing had happened.

Close-up, he smelled like all his favorite convenience-store goodies, like Slurpees and cheap donuts and generic cheese puffs. He was warm and calm, heartbeat settled at a low, even patter that thudded against Victor's collarbone. He smelled almost happy, and Victor didn't quite know what to make of that.

Wade plopped down in the seat Victor had offered, put his feet up on the table, grinned at a woman who stared too long (which was just a bit perturbing from that scarred mouth). "Vicky. Vicky, Vicky, Vicky. The years have not been kind, sugarplum. You look like you're about five years overdue for a shave and a haircut."

Annoyingly, it took some time for a retort to form in Victor's brain. He'd been too long without a verbal sparring partner, too long without someone on whom to sharpen his wit. "And you look like you're about ten years overdue for a pine box and a six foot drop."

"I hope that was an expression of surprise over the fact that I'm walking around after Jamie hacked my head off, because I'm a little sensitive about the tragic death of my boyish good looks. The first few years of women and children running away screaming left me with a reflexive need to stab anybody who comments on my Dawn of the Dead face."

And it took Victor longer than he would've liked to filter out the nonsense. "Huh. Well, I see gettin' yer head cut off ain't improved yer sanity."

"Oh, Vicky, you say the sweetest things to me. What's in the bottle?"

"Local stuff. Tastes like bad mead…or a bourbon that's gone too sweet."

Wade nodded slowly. "Does this podunk piece-of-shit part of the ass-end of New Brunswick have a name?"

He had to think.

That town I rest at before I skirt that city up from Meddybemps Lake. Somethin' to do with trees and water.

"Nearest town's Oak Bay," he grunted.

Wade put his feet down and leaned forward, subjecting Victor to a long, measuring look. Steady, intelligent dark eyes. Eyes that had always seen too much for anyone's convenience.

"What's that look for, kid?" he growled, gulping from the bottle in his hand.

Wade reached out and poked him on the knee (the one he'd liked to break in fits of petulance, Victor suddenly recalled). "You're gettin' old on me, Vicky."

"It's only been ten years," scoffed Victor.

What was one more decade on top of fifteen? No, it wasn't just getting old. It was something else, and he was starting to think it was that thing the creepy bald guy had warned him about, a 'darkness' inside him that was driving him to hunt and wander, taking away memories and cleverness and giving back raw instinct and bloodlust.

But Wade shook his head, and his brow was wrinkled with something like concern under the shade of the red baseball cap. "It's not the years," he said shrewdly. "I talk to you and you're like a senile old fart, but I bet you'd know what to do if I drew a blade on you or hopped into your lap 'n kissed you."

Victor shifted, not liking the direction of the conversation or the familiar electric thrill from Wade's fingers on his knee. "Who cares? Not like truck-stop waitresses or wild animals ask for deep conversation."

Those pesky fingers drummed out a fitful rhythm on his leg, dredging up old, buried urges and memories of glorious violence. Conflicting messages bounced through his brain. Want, and not mine, and Jimmy walked away.

Wade spared him by sitting back and spreading his hands, palms up, as though he'd made his point. "You're right. You're completely right, Vicky. Only one teeny-tiny, itty-bitty problem with that, and I hate to bring it up, you know I'm not normally a stickler for the details, but this one's a speed bump even for you…what's Jamie's birthday?"

"What the hell does Jimmy's birthday haveta do…with…" He stopped.

He couldn't remember. His own baby brother's birthday—the most important day in the world for him for a hundred and fifty-some years—and he couldn't remember.

"Uh-huh," Wade said. "Still think it ain't a big deal, Vicky?"

Before he even knew what he was doing, he was on his feet and had a hand around Wade's throat. "Tell me," he hissed.

"Oh, please. What're you gonna do? Forget shit at me? Did you really go to all that trouble babysitting me back then just so you could threaten me over this?"

Again, it took a while for the words to make sense. When they did, Victor felt an unexpected sting of something like shame, both at his loss of control and at his lack of power over the situation. He let go, sat back down.

Wade just regarded him placidly. "I could lie," he said in a low tone, "and you'd never know the difference. Hell, in a year or two, you'll have forgotten again anyway, won't you?"

It was true, and it rankled. So he struck back. "And what about you?" Victor countered. "You must be livin' the high life by now…got yerself set up nice 'n cozy in a cabin in the mountains, just like Jimmy always wanted, right? Bet he's ecstatic, after the touching reunion where you tried to kill us and he clawed yer skull off yer neck."

Fwikt.

Oh.

He'd forgotten that there'd been a reason he never picked fights with Wade.

The blade through his thigh burned, and the cut bled like crazy. He'd never even seen it coming.

"Vicky, sweetie," Wade purred, twisting his fist so that the blade protruding from between his knuckles turned and widened the wound. "That's another sore spot, and I think you know it. One more mean remark like that…and we'll see if your favorite parts grow back."

He remembered fighting Wade a few times before Stryker's goons had 'fixed' him. He remembered never winning.

Stronger predator, his instincts screamed at him.

He stayed as still as possible, head ducked slightly.

The blade retracted, and Wade patted the mending wound. "Ah, don't worry about it, pumpkin. Does the date October twelfth mean anything to you?"

"Should it?"

There was a moment of silence while Wade seemed to consider something, finger doodling absent patterns in the blood on Victor's thigh. "Nah," he said with a careless half-shrug. "Just checkin'. Tellya what, Vicky—how's about you stick with me for a few days, get your rusty memory jogged a bit, mutilate a few random people here and there? And if you're real good, I might let you past second base like you've always wanted."

Victor snorted in reflexive dismissal.

Wade stole the bottle of rotgut and took a long pull. "Y'know, I always thought I'd know when I finally went crazy," he grumbled. "But I totally didn't notice it at first. What's up with that? I mean, you'd think the voices in my head woulda told me, but they must've been catching lunch someplace nice at the time. And they didn't even invite me! How rude is that?"

"I always thought you were crazy enough that even you couldn't refute it," Victor said.

"Har-de-har. I'm not talking colorful, senile-old-lady, freely homicidal crazy. I'm talking about seeing and hearing shit that feels as real as you 'n me. I'm talking about remembering shit that happened but didn't. Most nights, I dream about a city on the water, all steel and glass and trees…and there's no war there, Vicky. There's thousands of people from all over the world, and none of 'em are starving, none of 'em are tryin' to kill each other."

"So what happens in these Star Trek hippie dreams o' yers? Any flyin'? Y'know, Freud said if you dream about flyin', it really means you're dreamin' about sex."

"Freud was a goddamn fruitcake, but if it gives you happy thoughts, I can lie and say I dream about flying. Nah, the city goes up in flames and falls into the ocean, and I always have this feeling like there's someone important still trapped there and I should've saved him. I mean, it all makes sense and feels normal when I'm dreamin' it, but when I wake up it's like I'm a completely different person."

When Wade finally passed the bottle back, it was depressingly light.

"Shit, I dunno what I'm saying," Wade groaned, rubbing at his eyes. "Nevermind, Vicky. Crumple and discard. Or shred, if that's what squeaks your duck. So, where are we off to after this?"

"Thought you were on a job."

Wade waved a hand vaguely and went back to doodling in the blood on Victor's leg. "Ah, it's only money. You're more fun."

"You must be really bored."

"Don't be like that, pussycat. I don't have any other friends but you 'n Jamie, and I'm mad at Jamie right now for hacking my head off—I know it ain't much anymore, but as far as I can tell it's the only one I've got, and it took me six and a half minutes to make sure I didn't put it back on crooked."

Friends. Victor found it flattering (and a little silly).

All right, why not? As long as he watched what he said, it'd be smooth sailing. Wade would make sure he didn't forget things, and Victor couldn't pass up the possibility of a sturdy bedmate.

"Well, as long as you don't get whiny and start bitchin' about roughin' it…" Victor conceded. "Right now I'm going south, past Meddybemps."

Wade blinked. "Past what?"

Victor arched an eyebrow. "Meddybemps. The town. In Maine."

"Where do they get these names?"

"By slaughtering other languages."

"Oh. Well, that's okay then. I'd probably do the same thing."

There was a long silence, during which Wade just propped his elbow on the table and his cheek on his hand and looked at something over Victor's shoulder that may or may not have existed.

Victor—oddly—felt the need to speak. "So, how you sleepin' lately, runt?"

Wade's attention stirred back to him. "Meh," he mumbled with a half-shrug, and paused to put the finishing stroke on a very manic smiley-face in the drying blood on Victor's thigh. "Better. Worse. Who knows? Sometimes I think all the freakiness in my head takes the place of sleep, or maybe it mostly happens when I'm asleep, but there hasn't been anybody else around to let me know if I'm awake or not, so…meh," he said again, looking away while he started to draw something else.

On a whim, Victor caught Wade's hand. It startled him how different their hands had become. Oh, they were always different—his own big and clawed, Wade's slender and calloused—but now his hand didn't even look human, and Wade's palms were smooth from using the retractable blades instead of his precious swords. Of all the things Stryker did to Wade, that was what Victor hated the most, because Wade just didn't look right without those clever fingers curled around a hilt (and he knew it was at least half sexual, the same way he liked Wade's mouth best when it was full; but even Wraith and the guys would've agreed that Wade couldn't possibly be Wade without real swords).

Jimmy used to say that Wade was at his most beautiful when he was quiet and still.

Victor disagreed completely. He felt that Wade was at his most beautiful when he had swords in his hands and was in motion, quiet or not.

Wade smiled suddenly, looking every inch his youthful, charming self for a moment, and poked Victor's nose. "Whatcha starin' for?" he whispered.

He knew the answer Wade was fishing for, the one Jimmy would've given ('because you're beautiful'). He wasn't about to give it, because it would've been a lie. "Ya look funny without yer swords. Hands're too smooth."

And Wade's smile became something bittersweet and broken, and Victor found he was much more comfortable with that. "Yeah. Guess so. Hey, Vicky?"

"Hm?"

"I've fallen apart a lot. Y'know, just from the usual end-of-the-world, lost-another-lover, somebody-blew-up-my-favorite-strip-joint stuff that happens when you go through about three or four lives in a week when you're sleeping or whatever it is I do when my brain goes places. Is it weird that every time I fall apart, I think of you bringing me blankets?"

Weird, no. Embarrassing, maybe, but not weird. He shook his head. "Not so much."

Wade sagged against the table like a man who hadn't stopped to rest for months. "Okay," he said, wiggling the hand that Victor still held captive. "I really missed you. Thought you should know that."

Well, how about that…

Someone had missed him. He was an evil, bloodthirsty, antisocial bastard, but somebody had missed him.

Victor smirked, downed the last of the liquor, and stood. "C'mon, kid. Let's see if we can't find you a knife to fidget with."

.End.