This is part of the fabulous "Time, Tide, and Trauma" series written by Timesprite, and was written as a companion piece to her "Neptune's Pull". I really appreciate the chance to play around in your world, Timey! *smooch* Feedback is worshipped and adored at ra_1013@yahoo.com.
All character's mentioned are the property of Marvel Comics, though these particular incarnations belong to Timesprite. I'm using them without Marvel's permission, but with hers, so nobody sue or throw tomatoes. On second thought, go ahead. I'll be happy to give you the three dollars in my bank account, and use the tomatoes for dinner. ;)
"Start Spreading the News,
or How to Disturb Your Friends and Family For Just the Cost of Postage!"
By Andrea1:24 pm Eastern Standard Time.
Anyone who'd been in the Xavier mansion for more than a day knew what that time meant.
Mail call.
Or, as a sane person might call it, "hide under your bed whimpering until all the crazy people go away" hour. Whichever you prefer.
From the very beginning of the X-Men, Bobby Drake had taken it as his sacred duty to retrieve the mail and distribute it to his teammates. Neither snow, nor rain, nor dark of night would keep the Iceman from his appointed rounds!
...Of course, the snow was usually his own fault, dark of night wasn't much of a concern when the mail came in the middle of the afternoon, and Storm had only tried to drown him once. He'd learned never to mess with her letters from Forge, and they were all much happier.
Nevertheless, whenever Bobby was in residence at the mansion, he collected and distributed the mail in his own highly public and, um, inimitable way. "MAIL'S HERE!!!!" he bellowed up the stairs, probably audible in neighboring time zones.
"Bobby, for the thousandth time," Scott sighed, coming out from the living room, bouncing his daughter on his hip, "we HAVE an intercom. I *installed* the intercom just for you. USE the intercom."
"Where's the fun in that?"
Scott briefly cast his eyes to the sky, behind his visor, and prayed for patience. He found himself doing that a lot when Bobby was around. He exchanged a rueful smile and a kiss with Jean as she walked over and took possession of Rachel. The toddler bounced happily and grabbed at her mother's hair. The rest of the X-Men in residence slowly took up their usual positions in the foyer, draped across the stairs, standing in doorways, and (in Rogue's case) sitting cross-legged in the air. "Get to it, Popsicle. We're busy," she called out to him. "Did mah books come in yet?"
Bobby held up a square package wrapped in garish pink paper. He studied the label and announced, "Bodice Rippers 'R Us, your monthly dose of mindless sex and Fabio covers, delivered straight to your door. Must be yours."
Rogue snorted and snatched it out of his hands. He grinned and moved on to the array of magazines. "_Guns & Ammo_, Bishop. _Journal of Human Molecular Genetics_, I'm guessing Hank. Ooh, Warren, it's your lucky day. _Victoria's Secret_ catalogue for Betsy!"
"Are you *ever* going to grow up, Bobby?" the purple-haired ninja asked with a faint smile as she took her magazine.
"What do you think?" Bobby retorted, grinning impudently as he flipped through the array of letters.
"Wolfmeister Supreme," he announced, tossing a letter addressed in Jubilee's familiar scrawl to Logan. "Someone with waaaay too many letters after his name to Hank. Junk, junk, junk, junk."
"Hey!" Warren protested, catching one of the letters Bobby tossed over his shoulder. "That's my stock report!"
"Yeah, that's what I said. Ooh, here's a fun one." Bobby hefted the heavy white envelope in his hand experimentally and read the address label. "Everyone, Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. Guess that means me." He ripped into the letter gleefully, pulling out a heavy piece of paper, decorated according to the principle that "more is more" as far as flowers are concerned, and the printer had never seen a shade of pink he didn't like.
"Sharing our love and happiness with you," he read aloud slowly, his eyebrows slowly creeping up to meet his hairline. "Congratulate us as we embark down the road of wedded bliss. Nathan and D-Dominique *Dayspring*."
He could barely get the last word out. There was a long moment of stunned silence, then Logan managed to say, "Yeah right. Nice joke, Frosty."
He snatched the announcement out of Bobby's hand, but couldn't deny that it was Dom's familiar handwriting at the bottom. "Yes, we're serious. No, we're not being mind-controlled. See you after the honeymoon!"
He just stared at it, not moving except for the very rapid blinking of his eyes. The rest of the X-Men generally had their mouths open, eyes popped out, or both. Jean alone wore a tiny, satisfied smile as she played with Rachel's red curls. "Well," she murmured, "looks like you have a new sister-in-law, Rachel."
Logan looked up very slowly and locked eyes with Scott. "Your son married my little girl," he said, hoping that saying it would make it cease to be true.
"So that means you're sort of related now, right?" Rogue asked.
The two men stared at each other for a long moment, then said in disgusted chorus, "I need a drink."
*****
On the other side of the country, an identical envelope was being delivered to a fairly nondescript warehouse in San Francisco. This particular warehouse was well-known in the neighborhood.
The local grocery store knew to count on it for a monthly order of ten pounds of assorted potato chips, enough soda to fill a small swimming pool, three gallons of cookie dough ice cream, and precisely 12 ounces of wheat germ. (You tended to remember something like that.)
The drug store down the street knew to always stock plenty of bandages, ibuprofen, and ice packs for its residents. And during the summer, water balloons.
The cops knew it mostly in the being of a tall blond man with an earnest smile and a down-home accent who always swore that he didn't know *why* there were noise complaints coming in, but he'd be sure that it wouldn't happen again, so y'all have a good night, officers.
The criminals in the neighborhood just knew to give it a wide berth, after the one thief brave enough to dare it had come out gibbering and with half his pants burned off.
The residents, of course, just knew it as the only base they'd had that hadn't blown up within six months of residency. As such, it was simply "home".
Those residents were currently sitting around the large common room in varying stages of wakefulness. Roberto lounged off to one side in his blue silk pajamas, staring at a large cup of coffee as if it held the secrets to the mysteries of the universe. Tabitha sat in an oversized pink sleepshirt with a huge bowl of disgustingly sugary cereal balanced precariously on her knees. On the couch, Jimmy sat in smiley face boxers flipping through the channels on the tv, while Terry leaned half against him in green flannel pjs, painting her nails.
The only member of the team who actually had the poor taste to be awake and alert was Sam Guthrie, the farm-bred boy who considered seven am sleeping in to an absurd degree. He entered the room whistling cheerfully, tapping a newspaper against the day's mail. He frowned around the room at his teammates. "Y'all are *wasting* this beautiful day."
"Mmrphgralumple," Tabitha replied around her spoon, eyeing him blearily. "Too cheerful."
"Lazybones," Sam retorted, tugging a lock of her blonde hair with a wink. "Come on, folks, the sun is shinin'!" When that didn't work, he frowned and suggested, "If y'all can't get yourselves movin', Ah'm shore Ah could help with a little trainin' session."
"I'm awake!" Roberto shouted, standing up and almost spilling his coffee. He quickly whispered apologies to it as he sipped carefully.
Sam snorted and flopped on the couch, earning a dirty look from Terry as she rescued her nail polish. "One more hour," he announced direly. "Then we're getting something done."
At the mumbled agreements, Sam just shook his head and started flipping through the mail. Mostly junk and...some odd white envelope. Sam shrugged and slit it open curiously.
"What in--?"
He pulled out the floral pink announcement in some confusion, but when he read the words emblazoned amid the flowers, his boneless fingers suddenly dropped the newspaper.
"Sam? Ye look like ye've seen a ghost, lad," Terry asked, craning her neck to read over his shoulder. Her jaw dropped open. "Nathan and *Dominique* Dayspring? Cable and Dom got MARRIED?!"
"It's a joke, right?" Tab asked, scrabbling over to grab at the announcement. "I don't believe it. I don't believe it. I don't--"
"We got the idea the first time," Roberto interjected. "What's that at the bottom?" He peered over everyone else's shoulders and read the note scrawled at the bottom in Dom's hand. "No joke. So who won the bet?"
"Good question." Tab looked around, slightly recovered. "So where's the betting book?"
"Right here," Jimmy announced, pulling a blue notebook out from under the phone book. He flipped through the pages until he came to the one he wanted. "Okay, this is the closest we've got. 'How many times will Cable and Dom break up before the team does?'"
"We're an optimistic bunch, aren't we?" Terry laughed. "I guess there's no winner, then."
"Hold on." Jimmy ran a finger down the row of replies. "Marriage." He shook his head and looked at their team leader. "You ARE an optimist, aren't you, Sam?"
"So what if Ah am?" Sam laughed and pulled the book out of Jimmy's hand, tapping it with the wedding announcement. "Y'all owe me two hundred bucks for it."
*****
A flat in London.
To be more accurate, a very *dirty* flat in London.
Not that Pete Wisdom, its only resident, was messy, of course. He simply-- All right, he was messy. The ashtrays overflowed, rumpled black suits were spread all over the floor, and there was something in the fridge that appeared to have attained sentience on its own.
Pete didn't take any notice of any of this by now. He'd long since achieved indifference to the mess (and in the case of some of the odder messes, immunity). He was far more interested in rummaging through the cabinets for the aspirin he KNEW he'd left here somewhere than how clean the place was. A steady stream of curses followed in his wake.
"I knew I should've left the bloody Crown at two. Jus' askin' for trouble, stayin' 'til Dell and his cronies showed up."
He vaguely recalled the Black Air agent springing for the next round. Then it all went sort of...wobbly.
He pushed aside a moldering bag of fast food with a noise of disgust, then ferreted behind it for another minute until giving up in disgust. He'd just live with the hangover. It wasn't the worst he'd had, by any stretch of the imagination. All he really needed was a good fag and he'd be right as rain again. Or Rahne, as the case may be.
"All right, that's it, no more drinking for you, mate," he laughed to himself, pulling out the battered pack of Marlboros from his chest pocket. "It's messin' with your head. Wot's left of it."
Pete snorted and lit a cigarette with a flick of his lighter, then blew out a cloud of smoke. Yeah, right. He knew good and well that if Pete Wisdom ever stopped drinking, the world would stop spinning on its bloody axis and the gods themselves would come to Earth just to pour him a martini.
...That might be something to see.
Shaking off the vision of a shapely Greek goddess pouring him a drink -- he *really* needed to get out of the flat more often, and not just to the Crown! -- Pete slowly pulled himself to his feet and staggered off in the general direction of the pocket-sized kitchen in hopes that there was something vaguely edible there. Or at least coffee. You could face a hell of a lot in life as long as you had fresh coffee.
"There is no god," he muttered faintly after a search of his cupboards turned up nothing more than an empty milk carton, a brown-spotted banana, and (cruelest of them all!) a jar of coffee with only few hardened grains cemented to the bottom.
As he stood in the center of the dirty kitchen debating between eating the banana and braving the outside world for better food (and coffee), there was a knock at the door. "Aw, who the bloody hell would disturb a bloke at--" he glanced at the clock "--three in the sodding afternoon! It's inhuman!"
He flung the door open. "Wot the hell do you want?"
A pasty-faced teenager with red hair and buck teeth blinked at him. "S-s-special delivery, sir," he stammered, holding out an envelope. The second it touched Pete's fingers, the boy sprinted off down the hallway, not even waiting for the possibility of a tip. Pete wondered faintly if he looked *that* intimidating.
That took second place to the strange letter. It had a postmark from the United States. Now who in the States would be sending him special delivery to *this* address? All of the work-related correspondence went to a special box at the post office. Only a half dozen people across the pond even *had* this address. Pete shut the door again and slit open the envelope with some curiosity.
He flung it away from him with a cry of disgust at the sight of the sugary sweet pink floral design. What the hell kind of joke was THIS?
Pete crept back up to it with the caution one might use approaching a bomb or a rabid animal. "Niiiice little card. You don't want to infect me, do you?" he crooned to it, reaching out with a spare shoe to flip it over. No telling *what* sort of smarmy germs something that disgusting might have.
"Sharin' our love and happiness," he read aloud. Definitely a sick joke. Then he saw the names at the bottom. Nathan and...Dominique Dayspring? Who the bloody--
"Not a chance in hell," he breathed, then squinted at the hand-written note at the bottom.
"You're buying the next round, Wisdom."
"...Bloody hell. They actually did it."
Pete spent the next hour just sitting on his floor, a slightly dazed look on his face. When the clock struck four, he finally shook his head and pulled his mind out of the dazed stupor. He was heading back to the Crown. Drinks were on him tonight.
Resolutions were made to be broken, after all.
*****
Back in San Francisco, on the other side of the city, there was an odd little dwelling that didn't have half the reputation of the X-Force warehouse. On the whole, it didn't have much of a reputation at all, which was how its occupant liked it.
Now, however, anyone with a block radius was shooting it a distinctly nervous look and walking quickly the other way. There was a caterwauling coming from it that sounded like a cross between a cat being skinned alive and an elephant sitting on a broken set of bagpipes. No one wanted to come near whatever was making that kind of noise, so the surrounding area was quickly deserted.
Inside, a man in a bright red and black spandex suit was bopping around the front room, waving a plastic spatula in front of his face. "Iiiiiiiin the juuuungle, the miiiiighty jungle, the liiiiiion sleeps toniiiiiiiiiight!"
Wade Wilson danced around the room, pausing for a quick bump and grind by the orange plaid sofa before bopping into the kitchen for a bottle of Yoohoo. "Oh yeah, baby, just like thaaaaaaaat," he crooned to it, tossing the spatula so it landed in the gaping mouth of a smiling piggy cookie jar.
"What are *you* looking at?" he snapped at a scruffy gray alley cat that peered in his window. It yowled and jumped away.
"Dumb cat," he muttered, looking around the room and tapping his fingers. "What to do, what to do, what to do? No one to kill, nothing to blow up -- boring!"
Whether it was the cat or the mention of death and destruction, Wade suddenly perked up. "LUNCH!" he bellowed loudly, followed by a gleeful cackling. "Ooooooh yeah, that's what I'm talking aBOUT!"
He downed the rest of his Yoohoo and swung open the fridge again to investigate the contents. "And today we're going to make a deLIcious creme brulee with a rich cream sauce, and for dessert -- apricot cobbler with homemade ice cream! Or for the mere mortals among us, Spaghetti-Os and Cheez-Wiz!"
He slammed the refrigerator shut and moved to the cupboards, pulling a steak knife off the counter and throwing it over his shoulder. It thudded point-first into the picture of Martha Stewart tacked up on a dartboard by the doorway.
After spraying his initials in Cheez-Wiz on top of the cold Spaghetti-Os, Wade headed back into the living room, singing "Wild Thing" at the top of his lungs between bites. In the middle of the chorus, he was interrupted by the loud squeal of a wildebeest in heat. He set the bowl down with a grin and announced gleefully, "Mail's here!"
Switching off the alarm, he cha-chaed out to the mailbox. "All right, my Pottery Barn catalogue!" He flipped through the pages happily as he headed back inside and flopped down on the couch. It was only then that he noticed the heavy white envelope mixed in with the take-out menus. "Okay, what's this?"
He rarely got mail at the Deadhut, besides junk and weird things he sent off for. Probably some joke of Weasel's. He whistled the theme song to "Dallas" as he slit the envelope open and pulled out the disgustingly pink and floral card. Yup, definitely Weasel's handiwork.
"Sharing our love...yadda yadda yadda...get to the joke, Weas--" He spewed out a mouthful of Spaghetti-Os. "Dayspring? Cable and DOMINO? Married?" He burst out into wild laughter. "Oh man, that's a good one, Weas!"
He was about to set the card aside when he noticed a hand-written note at the bottom. "Weasel only WISHES he could think of a joke this good, Wilson. Break out the champagne."
Wade fell off the couch.
A few minutes later, the few people who'd dared edge out on the street again looked up with wide eyes at the hysterical cackling that came from the odd building down the street. This time when they ran away, they didn't come back.
*****
Somewhere in the hills of Montana, a tiny cabin nestled into the forest, occupied by two people who wanted little more than to be left alone.
And some decent Chinese take-out, but there was a certain amount you just expected to give up when you moved out to the hills of Montana.
That didn't mean they'd forgone ALL the benefits of civilization, of course. Just inside, a black-haired man stood fiddling with the antenna on the big-screen tv while a pale-haired woman changed channels with the remote control.
"A little to the left," she instructed, studying the screen closely. "Down a bit. A little more...It's still not very clear." She frowned a bit, then suggested, "Hold your left arm out front. Up...up...there! Now don't move for half an hour."
"Vanessa." The man's voice was pained. "Are you using ME as your antenna?!"
"Of course not, Kane. Now be quiet. And don't move! Friends is on."
A long, exasperated sigh. "We *could* just pay for satellite."
"I'm saving up for that new foot spa. Stop complaining."
"...The one with all the little jets?"
"Yes, and I'll let you use it as long as you let me watch my show," she snapped tartly. "I can't *believe* who Rachel's sleeping with now!"
Kane closed his mouth on the observation that Rachel appeared to have slept with just about *everybody*, as that would prove he'd actually *watched* the show, and distracted himself with thoughts of a long, hot foot bath with massaging jets, keeping his arm up until the end credits began to play.
"You can move now," Vanessa suggested brightly, unfolding herself from the couch and stretching. "She'll dump him by the end of the month, mark my words," she predicted, waving her index finger in the air.
"Only when they need to boost ratings again," Kane retorted, flexing his arm several times until the feeling began to return to it.
"Ever the cynic."
"Look who's talking. So. Since I was nice enough to be your antenna tonight -- and don't think *that'll* happen again -- you'll make dinner tonight, right?"
"Dream on, babe. We flip for it."
"Oh, no we don't. You *always* win, and then I end up with the dishes too."
"You sure complain a lot for a big tough mercenary."
"I wouldn't complain so much if you'd play fair."
"If I played fair, we wouldn't have half so much fun," Vanessa countered with a wink. She pulled a quarter out of her pocket, flipped it, and called out, "Heads!" She caught the coin in mid-air and announced, "Hah! Heads it is. Have fun in the kitchen."
"Trick coin. It's got to be a trick coin. You cheat."
"See previous comment about playing fair." She winked, flipped off the tv, and sailed out of the room.
"At least get the mail while I'm cooking!" he called after her.
"Fine, fine," her voice drifted back to him, followed by the slam of the front door. Kane sighed and headed into the kitchen to find something he wouldn't burn *too* badly.
"Ah, Hamburger Helper, my old friend," he muttered, taking down the trusty box and getting out the ground beef. He was stirring the skillet when Vanessa returned, sitting on the counter to watch him and flip through their correspondence.
"I think we'd starve if that company went out of business," she commented, setting aside the bills to be paid later.
"Why do you think I bought stock?"
She snorted and flipped over a heavy white envelope to slit open. "This one looks weird. Who do we know who would willingly use this much pink?"
"*Pink*?" Kane asked, incredulously, half-turning to look at her and the odd card. "What is it?"
"Sharing our love and happiness with you...NATHAN AND DOMINIQUE DAYSPRING?!"
Vanessa half-jumped, half-fell off the counter, still clutching the announcement in her hands. Kane stared at her in shock. "You can't mean...Cable and DOM? *MARRIED*?"
Vanessa didn't answer. She was staring at the short handwritten note scrawled at the bottom of the card.
"I've got the REAL ring, bitch!"
Kane leaned over her shoulder to read it. He couldn't restrain a short laugh. "Yeah, that's Dom."
When she'd recovered the power to move, Vanessa resolved, she was going to kill him.
*****
About a week later.
Oregon.
Specifically, a small house just outside a small town that, just to follow the trend, should be beside a small mountain or something of the sort. No such luck. Life doesn't always follow such convenient literary conventions, you know!
Ahem. The house. It was very ordinary as such places go, with all the usual rooms -- kitchen, bedroom, living room, basement full of high-tech communications equipment and weaponry, and a spare bedroom decorated in pastel greens and yellows for no apparent purpose other than to disturb visitors who knew the house's residents well enough.
That those residents were not currently around was evidenced by the small pile of newspapers on the front step and the message light on the answering machine, which indicated they had received 132 messages since they'd last checked.
That wasn't counting the people who'd called the rather more advanced equipment downstairs.
There was also, while we're cataloguing such things, a medium-sized brown box tucked just out of sight past the pile of newspapers on the front step.
As the box was sitting merrily on the step, minding its own business, the quiet around it was suddenly interrupted by the noise of a car engine. Then car doors being slammed shut, bags being rattled, voices being raised, and any number of other noises that would indicate that whoever was gone had now returned.
"Oath, what did you put IN here, woman? Rocks?"
"Souvenirs." Domino batted her eyes exaggeratedly at her new husband. "Can't the big strong man manage to carry a few little suitcases?"
"Don't make me come over there," Nathan warned, resorting to tk to close the trunk with his arms full of luggage. "How many flonqing souvenirs did you BUY, then? And *why*?"
"It's a time-honored tradition, you know," she assured him, slinging one small carryall over her shoulder and heading to the front door, keys in hand. "Since a certain someone didn't even bother picking up a present for his little sister..."
"Oath. Are you supposed to do that on vacation?"
Dom chuckled as she fit the key in the front door. "Yes, dear. Don't worry, I saved your hide. So stop complaining about my luggage!"
Nathan grumbled unintelligibly as he followed her inside. He started to set the bags down just inside the door, caught her look, and grumbled all the way back to the bedroom. He heard her laughing as he left them piled up on the bedroom floor and poked his head out to see what inspired it. She was bent over the answering machine, shaking her head and chuckling warmly. "I think our little announcements managed to cause a stir."
"Excuse me, 'our' announcements? Who's the one who sent them out without even *telling* me until we were in the middle of our vacation?"
"If it was up to you, we wouldn't have told anyone for a year, then you would've thrown it out in the middle of conversation with your parents and expected everyone to know what you were talking about," she retorted. "I like my way. If you're going to insist I marry you, you're going to put up with MY way of announcing it!"
"You make it sound like I tied you up or something."
"Well..." She smiled wickedly. "Not *then*."
"Hmm. Point. I think we should ignore the messages for a little while longer."
"Mmm. Fine by me." She let him pull in close, then suggested cheerfully (or at least as close as she came to it, anyway), "We can check out the package out front."
Nate frowned as she pulled away from him and headed back to the front door. "What package?"
"The one that was sitting on our front step," she replied, holding it up in illustration. She carried it into the kitchen and set it down on the table, peeling back the brown postal paper to reveal white and pink floral wrapping paper announcing "Congratulations!"
"That...is sickening," Nate decided after a moment. "Tell me it's not a *wedding present*."
"I think it is. I suspect your parents, personally. Your mother has some odd obsession with pink."
"Maybe X-Force trying to be cute," he suggested instead. "Those are pretty much the only suspects, at least."
"Oh, I sent out a *few* more announcements..." Dom mentioned casually, opening the paper and slitting open the box inside.
He eyed her suspiciously. "*How* many more?"
"A few." She smiled innocently at him -- he didn't buy it for a minute -- and looked into the box. And promptly died laughing.
"Tupperware. Someone actually sent us Tupperware!" She snorted and shook her head. "Oh yes, definitely your mother."
Nathan blinked and pulled out an assortment of plastic bowls, studying it like some odd and possibly dangerous animal. "Tupperware?" He was quiet for a moment longer, then chuckled. "Well, I suppose it *is* a traditional wedding present. Oath. There's something very, very *wrong* about this..."
"Ooh, there's a card." Dom spotted the white rectangle after Nathan moved some of the Tupperware out of the way and snatched it up.
Nate managed to transfer his amused but slightly stunned gaze from the Tupperware to the card when Dom pulled it out of the envelope. "Oath. I don't think I've ever seen that much pink and flowers in my life."
She smirked at him. "You should've seen the announcements."
He groaned slightly. Dom skimmed over the rather florid congratulations printed on the card and flipped it open. There at the bottom was a single bold signature. She stared at it without blinking for a long moment, then managed to shift her gaze up to Nate.
"...You sent HIM a wedding announcement?" he choked out.
"No. I...have no idea how he found out. Or why he sent..." she poked at the Tupperware gingerly, half-expecting it to explode "...this."
He was silent for several heartbeats, staring at the card. "One thing I learned a long time ago, Dom," he said at last. "He will do *anything* if it means disturbing me."
"...*I'm* disturbed." Dom studied the Tupperware for another few moments, then turned back to him and announced decisively, "Okay, I'm done being disturbed. Let's go...unpack."
She leered at him until he laughed and picked her up, carrying her off into the bedroom. "I'm sure we can think of something more interesting to do."
He carried her away and kept his mind occupied with much more pleasant things for a few hours than the odd wedding present sitting in the kitchen, topped with a card signed simply, "Stryfe."
**THE END**