Disclaimer: "Elizabeth!" [to Gibbs] "Hide the rum." –Captain Jack Sparrow
A/N: Late, as usual.
Part III: Logan Howlett and the Great Floral Caper
So Betsy has a twin brother, as it turns out. Who knew?
Well, Betsy, presumably, but she never bothered to tell any of them about him. Or maybe just not Logan.
Why doesn't anyone tell him anything anymore?
"Brian Braddock," the young man announces, smiling a very pleased smile and sticking his hand out to shake Logan's. Logan shakes gingerly. Brian looks sort of like a Ken doll, which wouldn't impress Logan except that Logan knows better than to underestimate people just because they have symmetrically, aesthetically perfect faces.
Storm, for instance, looks like a goddess, and she inspires in Logan the same kind of admiration that an actual goddess might, should he ever meet one.
Namely, awe. With a little bit of terror, for flavor.
Brian looks all around the mansion, still shaking Logan's hand. Logan pulls away carefully.
"Logan," he says. Brian's face lights up.
"The best man!" he cheers. "Betsy has told me loads about you!"
Logan sputters. "I never agreed to that!" He hadn't. Probably? He had taken Wade out for his bachelor party a few nights ago. It had consisted of the two of them fighting with every anti-mutant paramilitary group they could find within five hundred miles of Bayville. There were a surprisingly large number of them.
Possibly, Logan should tell Chuck about that.
But taking the groom out for a night of murder and fancy drinks after (Wade likes those little blue cocktails) doesn't mean he signed up to be the best man!
Does it?
Aw, heck, he's gonna have to give a speech, isn't he?
"Spiffing place, this," Brian is saying. He's so British it's making Logan's eyes twitch. "Betsy told me that she'd taken up with some hero types, but I never expected it to be so fancy." His blue eyes twinkle at the cluster of young mutants watching him from behind Logan and Piotr's broad shoulders.
"Betsy invited you," Logan says slowly. Brian gives him a strange look.
"Of course!" he says. "I'm her twin brother. If she wouldn't have me, she wouldn't have anyone!" He laughs with his mouth, but his eyes are serious. Logan nods thoughtfully.
"Betsy!" he yelled over his shoulder. "Your brother's here!"
He hears her footsteps on the stairs almost before he's finished speaking and then she's flying past him to smack into the Adonis on the doorstep.
"Brian!" she screeches delightedly. "You came!"
"Of course I did, darling!" he says, hugging her tightly and twirling her around in circles. "I said I would!"
Her face falls. "Mum and Dad," she begins. Brian cuts her off with another hug.
"Don't you worry about it," he says firmly. "They're being ridiculous and they'll get over it. Or," he says, when Betsy makes a dubious sound, "they won't, and they'll miss out on all sorts of wonderful occasions with you and your new husband. Where is Wade, by the way?"
"On the roof," says Betsy, like that's a normal response to that question. "He wanted to give us some time to ourselves."
Actually, Logan is pretty sure, Wade wanted time to find a way to hide his face from his fiancée's brother. For all that Wade pretends not to mind about his scars, Logan knows that he gets incredibly self-conscious sometimes.
Not that Betsy's parents had helped any with their comments.
"Kind of him," Brian says. "Now, you'll have to introduce me to everyone. I feel like I know all you lovely people, but I can't say I've actually met any of you… except for dear Rogue, of course. Where is she?"
Logan growls and throws his hands up. "Don't remind me!" he shouts, and stomps away. Brian being here means that he doesn't have to worry about Betsy at least. She'll be distracted for a while with introductions and tours and all that other stuff that all of the mansion residents go through when their families come to visit the first time.
Which will give Logan time to find Rem– Gumbo and Rogue and skin them both for skipping out on him.
000
Of course, before Logan can do any skinning, he has bigger problems.
Well, not bigger, exactly, but more immediate, and by that he means, right here in front of him instead of in Louisiana or wherever.
Logan pinches the bridge of his nose and breathes very loudly. It's not a sigh. It's just breathing.
Loudly.
"You what?" he clarifies.
Jubilee's expression is sheepish, but also gleeful, because all of the children in this wretched school love to see Logan suffer. He's quitting as soon as this stupid wedding is over.
For real this time.
"I might have ordered like, a few more flowers than we actually need," Jubilee says again.
"How many is 'a few'?"
Jubilee tries her grin on him. "Oh, only like, three dozen?"
"Three dozen?"
Mistaking his shock for disbelief, she confesses. "Okay, so maybe more like five or six dozen…"
"Flowers?"
"Bouquets."
Her grin is cute, but it's not that cute. "Jubilation Lee!" he growls. Her eyes get very wide.
"I'm sorry," she says in a small voice. "I messed up the order and it just seemed like it would confuse everything more if I canceled one of them and I didn't want to accidentally mess up even more."
She's sniffling by the end and Logan feels his heart melting. Jubilee's bright yellow coat sleeves are hiding her face from him, and he hates the thought that she doesn't want him to see her cry. Hates the thought that he might have made her cry.
"Aw, Sparky," he rumbles awkwardly. She peeks at him from behind her arm. He rubs the back of his neck with one hand. "I'll take care of it," he promises. "It'll be okay."
Jubilee swipes at her face and smiles at him. "Thanks, Logan," she says. She pats his arm and wanders off to meet Brian Braddock. She'll enjoy that, probably. She likes those British television shows so much, she'll probably love meeting someone who couldn't encapsulate the spirit of the country more if his name was actually Captain Britain or something.
Logan wonders suddenly how ol' Steve is doing and vaguely hopes that there will be some kind of national emergency that Captain America needs Wolverine to help with right now. He waits for a second just in case, but finally concedes that nothing is going to happen from that angle.
He stares at the flowers and almost wishes to be helping Wade write vows instead.
It takes an hour to move all of the flowers out of the foyer. Logan recruits Ray and Roberto and Kurt and they sort out the flowers that are supposed to be here and Logan tells Kurt to stuff the rest into a closet somewhere and they'll handle it later.
He walks out of the foyer and into an ambush.
"Logan!"
Logan glowers. It's very intimidating, because Logan is a frickin' professional and he never gives any half-hearted glares. "What," he says.
Brian Braddock doesn't appear to notice the glare, so Logan adds a quiet growl for good measure and makes a note to call the kid "bub" at least once in this conversation.
"How can I assist you, old chap?" Brian asks. "I'm at your service."
"First," says Logan, "stop callin' me 'old chap.'"
Brian nods seriously. "Of course."
"Second," Logan continues, "you could help with the dining room preparations, I guess. We're setting up for the rehearsal dinner in there and I ain't had time to even think about setting the table and making sure we've got enough silverware for the wedding tomorrow."
Brian salutes. It should look stupid, but he pulls it off flawlessly. "I shall do it immediately!"
"Yeah, okay, bub," Logan says. "And if you see Chuck in there, tell him I'm lookin' for him." He waves Brian off to the kitchens and moves onto the next disaster looming on the horizon.
Actually, it's just Bobby's garlands, but it looks like a disaster.
000
Rogue isn't exactly sure why she is in New Orleans, but there are worse places she could be, probably. At least this time she's been awake for the whole trip.
Remy, of course, is perfectly at home and utterly delighted with himself.
"Remy, what are we doing here?" she asks. He's towing her through the busy streets, gloved hands clasped tightly. She's sweating in her layers. Remy looks stupidly comfortable, despite the trench coat.
"Caterin'," says Remy absentmindedly. He looks like he's searching for something in the crowd. Rogue can't see anything but legumes.
"Is this a farmer's market?" she asks incredulously. Not that Remy knowing about farmer's markets is surprising. What is surprising is that they're in one. In New Orleans.
On the night of the rehearsal dinner.
Which is in New York.
"Remy," she says.
"Found it," Remy says, and pulls her down the street.
"Hold on! I gotta call Logan," she pants. Remy slows down and points out a payphone.
"Way ahead of you, chere," he says.
000
Three hours before the rehearsal dinner is due to start, Wade is on the roof.
Still.
Betsy finds him at 5:30, staring into space.
Literally, staring up into the sun. Well, squinting.
"Wade, why are you still up here?" she says exasperatedly. "We've been looking for you for hours!"
"Hey, honey bear," he says instead of answering. Betsy puts her hands on her hips.
"Don't think I don't notice when you do that," she says. "Cutesy nicknames don't get you out of answering my questions. Why are you sitting up here? Brian wants to see you."
"We've met before," Wade says.
"It's been a year or more!" Betsy exclaims. "Come on, Wade, please. Please help me make this one thing go right. Everything is really hectic right now, but we don't have to fall apart just because the wedding is driving everyone crazy."
"I've been there," Wade comments cheerfully. "It's pretty cool."
"Wade," says Betsy, "please come down."
"Betsy," says Wade, "my darling, my sweet, honey bear, sugar pie. Snookums. I think I'll stay here."
The following events all happen at approximately the same time:
Betsy drags Wade off the roof and they have a knockdown drag-out fight, complete with screaming and psychic katana; Rogue calls Logan to tell him that she and Remy are in New Orleans; Brian walks in on the fight between Betsy and Wade and sees Wade's scars for the first time; and Charles Xavier rolls his wheelchair into a sea of flowers and promptly gets stuck.
"You're where?" Logan shouts into the phone.
"Well, this is slightly inconvenient," the Professor says.
"Those are new," says Brian. Betsy, despite the fact that she wanted to kill Wade a second ago, looks like she's about to punch her brother in the face. Wade just shrugs.
"Narrative ignorance," he says. "The author didn't know about my scars when she first started writing about me." He glances at Betsy. "Wasn't there something we were doing?" he asks.
Betsy glares. "The wedding is off!" she repeats, and storms away.
"Oh yeah," Wade says weakly. "That."
Logan hangs up the phone with a growled, "You and me ain't finished with this, Stripes!" and hurries over to where Wade is slumped against the wall looking up at the ceiling. "What was that?" Logan yells. "What just happened?"
Wade has a strange look on his face. This isn't unusual, so Logan is going to ignore it until something informs him that it is in some way relevant. "Betsy called off the wedding," he says.
"No," says Logan.
"Uh," says Kurt, who is hovering behind Logan like the chosen sacrifice. Probably they all picked him to have to stand within arm's reach and he's expecting to die. Logan can only assume what kind of crazy ideas go on in these youngster's heads.
Logan says, very calmly, "No, she is not calling off the wedding. That is not happening."
"Uh," Kurt says, urgently.
"Am I a difficult person?" Wade asks Brian, mournfully.
"Uh," says Brian.
"I don't mean to be," Wade continues. "Well, okay, yeah sometimes I do. But I thought she liked that about me!"
"Betsy does love a challenge," Brian says cautiously. Wade gives him a withering look.
"Shut up. God, who even are you?" he says snidely. "I'd swear the author had never heard of you before."
Brian is silent for a moment, trying to parse through Wade's particular brand of logic. "You mean… God?" he hazards after a beat. Wade has already moved on.
"How can I win her back, Jimmy?" he whines directly into Logan's ear. Logan is showing remarkable restraint in the face of Wade's recent heartbreak, in that he is not forcibly removing every bodily apparatus that allows Wade to make sounds at all.
"First of all," he says, shoving Wade into Brian, "you're going to stop lurking on the roof." Brian catches Wade before he can hit the floor, stands him back up, and brushes imaginary dust off of his shoulders.
Wade catches Logan's eye and they have a rare instance of shared thoughts: Brian is terribly nice.
Emphasis on terrible.
Logan is a pretty firm believer in the idea that people this nice are probably hiding something. Take Chuck for example. He's the nicest person Logan knows, and when he first brought Logan in from the literal frozen wasteland, he had been extremely nice.
And it turned out that he was hiding a mansion full of mutant children and somehow Logan ended up as one of the teachers.
Nice people are sneaky.
Wade's experiences with nice people are varied and few in nature. He gives Brian a few extra feet of space in case he turns into a brain-melting alien all of a sudden.
"What you're going to do," says Logan, "is go after Betsy and apologize to her."
Wade's face immediately lights up like Logan just solved every problem ever. This is more pressure than Logan thinks he deserves this early in the evening. They haven't even gotten to dinner yet.
"Will that work?" Wade asks hopefully.
Brian swoops in before Logan has to commit homicide, which, point for the Brit. "Of course it will, old chap," he soothes. "Betsy is very understanding."
That would not have been Logan's word choice, but whatever.
Wade goes after Betsy, who has disappeared in true psychic fashion, and Logan tries to call Rogue back to fix that problem.
She doesn't answer her phone. Remy doesn't answer his. Logan's contacts in New Orleans answer, but they haven't seen hide or hair of either of them. And Rogue's hair isn't easy to miss.
Logan thinks calm thoughts.
"Well," he says to Brian, who is standing at attention and letting Jubilee and Amara admire his muscles with good nature. "Let's see what you did with the table, I guess."
000
"Remy," says Rogue, dangerously, knee deep in a swamp and ten seconds away from a Bless Your Heart of vicious proportions.
"Chere?" Remy says.
"Your idea of caterin' leaves somethin' to be desired."
"Such as?" he asks, affronted. There is sunshine (sort of), fresh water (debatable), and delicious food is everywhere around them. Remy doesn't see how anything is lacking about the food situation.
Once they catch it.
"If an alligator eats me," Rogue threatens pleasantly, "then you're gonna be Betsy's maid of honor."
Remy considers this while sloshing bayou through his hands. "Fair," he says.
A/N: Chapter five still isn't done guys keep your fingers crossed that I finish in the next 2 weeks.
Next Chapter: The photographer challenges Piotr for Kitty's hand, Betsy's brother challenges Wade to a Bonding Session, and pretty much everything is a challenge for Logan at this point.