Marvel owns the X-men, no profit is to be made from this work.
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"So yer really Deadpool, been makin' a new name fer yerself haven't ya now?"
The name and the Merc behind it had been popping up enough just long enough after Three Mile Island, growing ever bolder and bolder with his stunts, but their paths hadn't crossed so it was just far enough below his suspicion to not get too curious. Sitting at the bar enjoying a brew with an eye on his little hellcat trying her hand at arm wrestling, Victor let her be for now if it meant he had a moment to hash things out with an old acquaintance that didn't have the decency to stay dead.
"I thought it was time to reinvent myself, new Merc for the new Millennium."
Having his own long line of names, myths and monsters them all strewn across the globe to get told over campfires and bar tops, he understood needing to get off the map now and again. More than once he got to listen to just how the stories had grown from one telling to the next on those missions that had him in the company of his own kind, the men and women driven to the fringe of society to make their living in blood.
"Couldn't be that they're still just enough folk out there that got a bone ta pick with ya from the ol' days, what with ya never bein' able to shut yer trap when ya should have?" Victor mused, smirking as he watched his little Lee slam knuckles to the hardwood and win a round.
"Enough about me, lets talk about whatever this is right here." Wade countered, pointing from Jubilee to his old teammate.
"Killing time."
"Killing time? Like waiting for Logan to show up? Wasn't that more leaving dead bodies around, not flowers and fruit baskets in a hotel suite?"
Turning his attention to Wade, Victor caught an undercurrent of something on the man's scent that told he knew more than he should. Ordering up a bottle and thinking it was time to hit the hard stuff, he turned his back to the bar, just keeping an eye on Jubilee by her reflections caught in the bottles that lined the wall.
"What do ya know?" Victor asked, his voice low and quiet and full of the promise of violence if he didn't like the answer.
"Just that Logan and me got a lunch date for chimichangas, oh and he's worried sick about Jubilee over there which means he doesn't know her as well as he thinks he does. Remind me that I gotta ask her about just where you hide a flash bang in a string bikini, because that's a trick I need to learn. Trust me, it can't be as easy as stuffing a sock down your briefs to impress the ladies, damn TSA let me tell you..."
Reading between the lines, by the sound of things his baby brother had gone calling to check up on their mutual friend and gotten Wilson on the line instead. If there was enough o' Jimmy rolling around in that thick skull to remember Wade, then that was likely enough for the man to be worried. And if there was one thing he knew about Jimmy getting his panties in a wad, it was that he was a dog with a bone, just like Stryker had counted on.
"You tell Jimmy where ta find you?" Victor asked, pouring a glass three fingers deep to slowly savour.
"Had to cut that call short, was around the time you came huffing and puffing at my door. Oh, she probably wants this back right?"
What was likely once an iPhone in a hot pink case was now busted up in ways that said Wade had it on him for that gun fight. At least it meant they were back off the grid, so long as his little Lee didn't get the inkling to go calling home anytime soon.
"What the hell did you do to my phone!?"
Turning back to the bar proper, Victor saw Wade with a face full of angry dressed in tight jeans and a bikini top. If the way the last challenger was rubbing his knuckles was anything to go by, his little Lee had won another match that just might be owed the victory to the kind of pissed off she was.
"This is exactly what extended warranties are for, you bought one right?"
"No extended warranty is going to cover damage from a shotgun slug you asshole!"
"Shotguns are for people overcompensating for something else."
"He was the one using the shotgun, and trust me, his dick ain't something he needs to be worried about!"
"How about mi..."
"I will fucking paff the next thing you pull out of your pants..."
Her voice had gone quiet, the kind of quiet that said the threat was real and Wilson could try his luck if he thought she was bluffing. Ambling up and prying her off the Merc, that something behind her eyes was back as he passed the bottle, a bright ember among cooling coals that had him throwing whisky on it just to watch it burn. Fire in her belly and spirits on her breath, cupping her ass in hand he hauled her up for a kiss just so he could enjoy it all nice and close.
"Tick tock, you off the clock?"
"I'm all yours babe."
Her smile held all the temptations one denied in a life, all the moments one said no when they should have said yes, gone left instead of right. But it was her hungry eyes Victor couldn't tear his gaze away from, lost to the sinful pleasure of her legs wrapping tight around him just so she could hoist herself higher. Whatever it was she saw in his own, her smile told him that she liked whatever lay there.
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Hightown had grown, there were more glittering towers than he remembered, but the moon still rose and the stars came out and Lowtown was just as noisy as ever. The days heat was a memory, hot and sticky, the cool breeze welcome against his sweaty back. Clipping the end of his cigar, Victor fumbled through his shirt for a box of matches when a crackling pop surprised him. It took a lot to surprise him, or just something he hadn't yet seen in all his years.
"Guessin' that's a paff?"
Smiling as she stretched, her silhouette a tease in the sheets she was tangled up in, his little Lee wiggled her fingers at him. She looked wholly pleased with herself as he puffed away, feeding that ember born from a spark to glow bright in the dim light. Nothing more than an imposing shadow against the window, he walked up and let his eyes trail down every curve, devour her desirable peaks poking through the sheets that did little to have her play modest.
"Ever need a light, just ask..."
Snapping her finger, sparks danced and popped, casting the room in pinks and blues and yellow. Entwining his fingers through hers, he held her small hand against his and looked into her eyes to find that something he longed to see, something words were too cheap for as he played with them.
Needy, hungry, wanting. They were all wrong, she wasn't anything so cheap some of the women he'd taken to bed. Her price was too high, she didn't want money or protection or anything else. Staring into those eyes of hers, her price was something he had to wonder if he was ready to pay, him...everything, right down to the brass tacks.
"What else ya got...?"
A mess of doubt mixed in with some fear and an undercurrent of excitement washed off her, and still holding his hand she pulled herself up from her reclined pose to shed away her modesty as the sheet fell in the moonlight. Stealing her into his arms, carrying her to the window like the prize she was proving to be, he stood exposed with her and watched her point off to one of the early evening stars of the new night.
Fireworks was another word that didn't roll off his tongue right, a cheap substitution for what he saw explode over the ramshackle roofs of Lowtown. The air was alive like at the passing of a thunderstorm, heady with ozone and the tang of lightning, but the heavens were illuminated by sparkling bursts of pink, blue, yellow, and even gentle green. He could feel her heart hammering away against his breast as he held her, excited and exhilarated all at once.
"Got anything else?"
A skipped beat brought that answer, right along with a mess of shame that didn't smell right on her. She had her limits, at least as far as she was willing to go, but she had crossed that line once and it had scared her. No wonder Jimmy had taken a shine to her, he always drank to try and forget all the times he crossed those lines.
"Ace in the hole." Victor whispered, his voice the purr of a predator hidden in the shadows.
Falling into a chair and letting her curl in his arms, she was a welcome warmth against his chest, a needed softness to run his fingers over. His cigar burned as incense, forgotten between his fingers and just something to be enjoyed for the atmosphere it provided. It was something he could tell she enjoyed with every slow and long breath that had him hold her all the tighter against him.
"Somebody get a hurt real bad?" It was a question she'd been finding the courage to ask, to face the truth that most were too cowardly to look at.
"Quick and clean, just like they earned. Ran into some spooks that might not get that luxury, all depending on how they write their reports."
Anyone who knew better wouldn't have left him to die from the three in the chest, just maybe they would have tried to do what so many others hadn't so far accomplished, finally kill El Tigre once and for all. But just maybe those spooks had listened to one too many ghost story and thought that's what they all were, only time would tell.
He didn't like the smell coming off her or how her eyes looked out the window without seeing the dazzling lights of Hightown. Stryker had put that fear into her, but fear was something that had to be forged, tempered though all the pain and quenched in blood. Left raw, fear was brittle and sharp, it shattered when twisted too far.
Out in Alberta in an old woodshed he'd learned all he'd ever needed to know about fear, but killing a man, that had been a different lesson altogether. No one was born ready to kill, not even him, there was a whole mess of nasty that came before that. That was a road someone went down kicking and screaming, whether fighting or getting dragged it didn't matter because the destination was the same. But if there was one thing he knew about his little Lee, it was that she was a fighter, and had he been anyone else he would have had the scars to prove it.
"Still hungry?" Room service had been ordered with an eye to what could be enjoyed between bouts, and all through their suite there were the cast off plates and bowls of every morsel that had seen them through finding relief from all the hard wound tension that had them twisted up tight.
"That little red dress I like is back in Hightown."
"Go fix us a bath and I'll see what I can't do about getting us presentable."
Slipping her fingers through his, she lay there against him for an eternity between the beats of their hearts, walking away only when she found she could stand the chill that washed over her without him at her side. Something in him wanted to fight against her leaving, but watching her hips sway to and fro with his cigar dangling between her pretty little fingers he found the resolve to let her go.
"Get Rose on the line..."
Eventually names were meant to be dropped, and when it came to the Princess Bar none carried so much weight as Rose Wu. History and bad blood aside, at the end of the day everyone at the Princess was there to serve, and he was paying in cold hard cash. Rose could hide the grinding of her teeth behind a sweet little smile for all he cared, just so long as his little hellcat had a nice red dress to wear to dinner.
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