Chapter Text
Neena Thurman is sick to goddamn death of driving to Walmart. ‘Sure’, she’d said all those months ago, ‘I’ll take you there until you convince some backwards judge to give you your license back!’, and here she was, paying for it.
“And he smiled at me, Dom! He really smiled at me! Even though you were a complete fuckin’ spoilsport and told him all about me! He knows who I am, and he likes it! What the fuck did I even do to deserve this? Was it that time I killed that dictator dude? Or the time I killed that other asshole? Or-” Wade is slumped into the side window, hand bouncing against his knee, tapping over and over again, and if she wasn’t used to it by now, she would absolutely slap a hand down over his and tell him to stop it, but she was past that little phase, and it was more endearing than annoying now. There’s hearts in his eyes, and he sounds like he’s thirty seconds away from taking the wheel and turning them back around so he can go jump his half-metal husband here and now. She can’t allow this. And so she speaks up, in the hopes that it’ll cut him off at the pass.
“Wade, you’ve killed too many people to go down the whole list. Please don’t.” Neena peers at him from the corner of her eye, and he’s looking down at his lap again, and she doesn’t have to be a particularly handsome telepath to know what he’s thinking. “Is it so hard to believe that he doesn’t care? He works in customer service, Red, I bet he’s seen scarier people than you as his regular Friday.”
“He doesn’t work Fridays.” Is the muffled response into the sleeves of the hoodie, because Wade has his face in his hands now. “God, I need to move cities, I need to move back to Canada, this is the biggest mistake I’ve ever made, gettin’ involved with a goddamn telepath. Bet he’s a superhero wannabe with a dead-end job and some kinda X-Men blue ‘n yellow getup in his closet. God , he’d look good in that, though. Ugh.” He trails off, thoughts clearly elsewhere.
“I don’t think he is. He knew who I was and didn’t care. If he cared about our- well, mine now- kinda work, he would’ve stopped being nice to you and called the cops or something. He didn’t. He spent three days thinking about it, and he still liked you, enough to flirt and everything, right? And he smiled at you. Didn’t you say he smiled at you?” Neena really didn’t want to play this game, this ‘reminding Wade that he’s capable of loving and being loved after Ness’ game, but she also really needed him to stop making her drive him to Walmart, and she was sure Nate had a car with which to drive the both of them.
“Yeah. He did, didn’t he?” And he’s perking up again, brightening like a sunflower seeing the summer for the first time in months, and goddamn, he’s far gone. She’s tempted to move out here and now, given the noises she’s pretty sure she’s going to hear from Wade’s bedroom over the course of the next month (because now that he knew the feeling was mutual, he couldn’t possibly dawdle and dick about pretending it was all in his head, could he? No. He absolutely couldn’t) but he charges fair rent, and is honestly the best roommate she’s ever had if she falls asleep before his night terrors start.
“I gotta pull out all the stops, Neens, you’re gonna love it. Would you wingman for me? Sprinkle a little of that bullshit luck pixie dust on me before I go? All your luckiness could rub off and get me lucky.” She doesn’t even have to look at him to know he’s grinning like some kind of well-meaning demon, trying to seduce a corrupt businessman out of his soul, only this time it’s a tired looking half metal telepath, and he’s trying to seduce him out of his… heart? His dick? Both? She’s never sure with Wade.
“I’ll consider it. Only if you take out the trash every day until it’s done.” She knows he won’t do it, he hates taking out the trash almost as much as he hates having to clean the shower.
But he sounds so terribly earnest when he chirps, “Okay then! That’s settled. I’ll need to give my suit a little patch up, maybe practice a little dance. You think he’d appreciate a little musical number? I’m thinking Queen of the Desert style.”
“What is it with you and Priscilla, damn.” Neena jokes wryly, even as she turns onto their street.
“I dunno. It’s just always been near’n dear to my heart, I guess. The writer had to slip a reference in somehow, and wit ain’t quite their strong suit.” Wade shrugs fluidly, flashes a warm smile at nothing in particular. “I think they’re doin’ my baby right, though, if nothing else. Who says you can’t properly characterise without context?”
By this point, Neena has already left the car. She’s used to his tirades about writers and canon and scripts. He said something about it the first time they met. Something about her supposedly being white. She’d decked him, and he’d been kind enough to drop it until he saw someone else that apparently wasn’t ‘comic-accurate’. God only fucking knew what that meant.
He’s following behind now, butter bag swinging lazily from the crook of his elbow. “Hey Neens, could you go get the ice from the freezer? Imma make a butter sculpture of myself.”
“You’re… not actually gonna do that, right?” She asks, slow and a little confused.
“Of course I’m gonna do that. Why else would anyone buy butter ?” Wade scoffs, looking like he’s a moment away from clutching his pearls.
“.......Oooookay. I’m just gonna go get changed, you have fun with your butter.” Ignoring his whining protests about getting ice, Neena puts a palm to her forehead as she heads off into her little section of the house.
Every single Walmart trip went a little something like this, and she wished so badly that she’d just threatened a judge into giving Wade his license back. It wasn’t even as if he hit all of the geese, just enough geese to be considered a public menace.
The opening strains of ‘Closing Time’ ring through the house, and Neena gets the feeling that things are going to get better from here, somehow.