Chapter 2
II
When Logan got out of the shower, Wade whispered something to Laura and they both giggled. He looked at them, sitting on the couch, with a frown and asked, “What?”
“Nothing,” Wade answered with a bright smile, putting his head on his fist. “You look good. Especially your hair.” Laura snorted. “I love how long they’re getting. You know, Origins hairstyle was always my favourite.”
Logan passed a hand through his hair. He never really did anything extra to them, just pushed them back with both his hands when wet, and they naturally formed themselves into what had become his signature hairstyle.
“We going now?” He asked, putting on a jacket over his suit.
Laura had borrowed some clothes from Domino (who luckily kept spare ones on the jet) and was wearing those. Wade had chosen to carry a backpack containing his suit instead of putting it on.
“Yeah, Dopinder will be here in a minute.” He said, looking at his phone and shrugging on the double scabbard.
“If he isn’t a taxi driver anymore, why do you keep calling him to drive us?” Logan asked.
“He insists!” Wade said. “And I like seeing him. He’s a soothing presence for me.”
Logan grunted. “And you’re gonna go out like that?”
Wade looked down at himself. He wore jeans, a white t-shirt, and a dark red jacket, with the strap of the scabbard over his shoulder, pinning the jacket to his chest. “What’s wrong with these clothes?”
“Not the clothes, the swords.”
“Oh, that’s fine, nobody minds. They think I’m a cosplayer. Unless I’m pointing the swords at them. Then they do mind, but only for a short while.”
Laura pointed at the backpack. “Where will you change? I mean, if you get into a situation.”
“Preferably in a phone booth, but restrooms work too. Don’t worry, I can change really quick, like Superman.”
The three left the apartment. Al was in the laundromat downstairs, where Wade told her about their plans for the day, along with instructing her to also put his underwear in the machine, to which she replied with a frown and a middle finger. She hugged and kissed Laura on the cheeks, telling her to return soon, and asked Logan if he was sure he was fine, and if he wouldn’t want to rest at home.
“He can go do whatever you guys do.” She pointed her thumb at the wall. Wade did a silent body wave to his side, so the thumb now pointed at him, making Laura slam a hand on her mouth to suppress the giggles.
“No, it’s fine. I’m fine.” Logan said. “Need to get the stiffness out of the body.”
“Oh, Althea knows all about stiff bodies. She’s halfway to full stiffness herself.” Wade said.
Al muttered something, but it was inaudible as a horn blared outside, signalling the arrival of the taxi. “Okay, we’ll be off now!” Wade gave her a quick side-hug and ran out. Logan, who noticed this last part, smiled to himself.
It was close to midday when they left. Traffic was already heavy. Wade sat in the passenger seat, as always, while Laura and Logan sat in the backseat. Hindi songs were coming through the speakers inside the taxi, and the volume was turned low. The slightly chilly air, mixed with all the smells of the city, came in through the half-open windows.
They stopped once in the city to get a new phone for Logan, his old one having been taken and possibly destroyed by his abductors. The shop sold both phones and their covers. While Logan and Dopinder looked at the phones, Wade and Laura browsed the covers’ section. Finding something, he gasped loudly and stretched himself to get to it. Bringing out a cover, he held it up for Logan to see. It was a black and yellow cover, with cat ears on top. The cat seemed to be winking, with the cutout for the camera lens acting as the cat’s open eye. “I found the perfect cover for your new phone!”
“Nope.” Logan said and turned away.
In the end, he did buy that cover, mainly due to Wade’s speech about a hundred reasons why it was perfect, and due to Laura and Dopinder agreeing with him on most of them. They resumed their journey with the cat-eared phone in Logan’s pocket.
Wade, unable to sit still for longer than five minutes, played with the window until Logan started growling. Then he put his hand outside and let it drift in the gentle cross-wind, until a delivery man running late smashed his bike’s handle into his fingers. For a few minutes, the song was drowned by Wade’s colourful words. Then his hand healed and he shook off the blood outside the taxi, wiping the remaining on his t-shirt, until he remembered that it was white, after which he cursed some more. Laura smiled through it all. Sometime in the middle, she felt her jaws getting tired from all the smiling, remembering how unused to it she was, which only made her smile more. Logan, though he didn’t really know this himself, had also grown weirdly fond of Wade’s restless goofy energy – it had become a sort of game: he would constantly be doing something, Logan would get mildly annoyed by it and express his annoyance, and Wade would react with his usual sarcastic comments, making Logan externally growl or release his claws but internally enjoy it nonetheless. He looked out the window, forcing himself to focus on the world outside instead of the mouthy merc inside.
Wade sighed, unable to find anything else to do. He suddenly noticed the volume dial and slowly turned it up.
“Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein
Khayal aata hai…”
He listened to it for a while, then said, “Don’t understand a word, but I like the vibes.”
Dopinder began, “It basically means—”
“Hush, sweet child,” Wade put his hand behind the driver’s head, caressing his hair. “Let the readers at home find out for themselves. I’m taking the song with me, by the way. Is it on CD, or…”
“Why?” Logan asked.
Wade turned to him. “It’s none of my business if you use songs as laxatives, but usually people listen to them.”
“It’s alright, I have more of the same. It’s on a pen drive.”
“Perfect!” Wade turned the volume higher.
“Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein
Khayal aata hai,
Ke jaise tujh ko
banaaya gayaa hai mere liye…”
xxx
They stopped outside the front gate of the mansion. Two cars zoomed past them.
“Do you want to come inside?” Laura asked, getting out of the car.
“No, it’s okay. You go. I’ll come by later.” Logan said. Wade thought he seemed a little alarmed.
Slightly put out, Laura nodded and walked away. She turned towards them to wave goodbye, when Wade lowered his window and leaned out.
“Have fun at the school! Make Papa Logan proud!”
Her eyes widened for a second and red rushed into her cheeks. She quickly turned back and walked through the door.
Dopinder turned the taxi and they were on the way back to the city.
“Did you have to say that?” Logan said.
“What? Papa Logan? What else should I have said?” Wade asked innocently. “Daddy is just for me to say.”
Logan chose to ignore him.
“So Dopinder, what’s new?”
“Nothing much. Still the same job.”
“What is your job, though?” Wade looked at him. “I don’t think you ever told me what exactly it is you do now.”
Dopinder smiled uncomfortably. “Just…making deliveries.”
“Deliveries of what?”
“Just…this and that…you know…nothing big…knickknacks.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard knickknacks used in a sentence in a long time.”
Dopinder chuckled nervously, but Wade seemed to have forgotten the topic already. He looked outside, then looked back in. “One thing I always wonder about is who exactly came up with ‘shit-eating grin?’”
There was silence in the car.
Wade continued, “I mean, come on, at some point, you have to think. Who was this person who was so happy and proud eating shit that they were grinning in this super particular way, and then who was this other person who saw them and decided to coin this term?”
The rest of the way was spent in similar monologues by him. They reached Sister Margaret’s School for Wayward Girls about an hour later.
“I’ll have to run, DeePee, something came up at…uh, work.” Dopinder said, putting his phone back down.
“Sure, no problem.” He replied, getting out. “Go do whatever it is you do, my secretive brown friend.”
The man smiled weakly and drove off.
The bar was mostly empty at this time of the day. Only Buck sat in a corner, talking shadily to a shady man. He waved at the two newcomers when he saw them come in. The bartender was leaning against the counter, immersed into a bunch of papers. He looked up when Wade and Logan came closer and seemed startled to see them.
“Hey,” Wade said.
Jack nodded, staring at Logan whose eyes were on the various bottles on display behind him. “Get me one of those.” He pointed to a bottle.
Placing a glass and the bottle in front of him, Jack asked, “So, what can I do for you today?”
Wade rested his elbows on the counter. “We missed the shipment. Some shit happened. Any idea what we could do to get back on the job? The shipment was supposed to come two weeks ago, on a Saturday.”
“Oh, yeah, it did come in. The drugs are being sold to school and college kids.”
“What?” Logan slammed the glass down.
“Careful, Peanut, we’re paying.” Wade said, then turned back to the bartender. “Any idea about their base? Where they’re packaging it all?”
“No, but I know about the areas where they sell. You guys really spooked the higher-ups, so they changed the locations of everything, except the selling spots.”
“Can’t touch where the money comes from.” Logan said. “You don’t keep cigars, do you?”
Jack was somewhat confused, but said, “No, but I do have cigarettes, if you want.”
“Nah, it’s fine.”
“Okay, give us the locations, we’ll check that out.” Wade said.
“I can type those up in your phone.” Jack opened his palm, into which Wade deposited his unlocked phone. He then grabbed the bottle from Logan and took a swig.
Ten minutes later, they were on their way. Wade had changed into his suit in the bar’s bathroom. The locations were close to schools and colleges, mostly in relatively poorer neighbourhoods.
“Do you think you have an oral fixation?” Wade asked as they walked towards the location closest to them.
“A what?”
“An oral fixation. You know, always wanting something in your mouth.” He barely finished the sentence before pursing his lips and suppressing a grin.
“Fuck you.”
“Hey, I’m just asking. You can look into it. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
Logan walked faster.
They were lucky on the first location, mainly because it was time for the high schools to finish. An alleyway close to the back entrance of the school was filled with five people talking in low voices. Standing behind the broken dumpsters, one of them seemed to be giving the others instructions about how to distribute and sell. They had several backpacks by their feet. One had its zipper open, and transparent packets filled with a bunch of pills and powders were visible.
Wade and Logan closed in on them. Before Logan could stop him, Wade jumped on top of the tilted bin and brought out his katanas.
“It’s over Anakins, I have the high ground!” He yelled at the people, who jumped when they heard him, then pulled out guns. “Aw fuck,” he said just as several bullets pierced his torso, making him fall back hard.
“You done?” Logan said, who was crouching behind the bin.
“Be my guest,” Wade replied from the ground, showing a thumbs up. Logan took a deep breath, and jumped towards the armed men. One by one, four of the men were thrown back towards him, with varying levels of cuts and deep slashes on them, all unable to move. Wade healed up and joined Logan on the other side of the dumpster, where he was holding the leader at claw-point. They easily got the location of the place where they got the drugs. Then they tied them up to the broken dumpster and called the police, leaving the backpacks open around them. Wade tried to take one of the bags, but Logan growled a little too loud with his claws out, making him keep it back.
The source location was a lone factory building. There were five armed men sitting outside it. On the inside, the central area was taken by long tables filled with a bunch of people packing up the drugs into little packets. Numerous crates and barrels were filled with pills, powders and leaves. Towards the back of the building were the different floors, with a staircase and an industrial elevator. The top floor was of the boss man. It took Deadpool and Wolverine around an hour to clear the place and reach the man in charge of the whole operation, who first threatened them, then offered them drugs and money, then pleaded for his life, then said that he knew of another operation and would tell them if they let him go.
“I-I don’t know who runs it.” The man said. Deadpool was holding him by his gold chain over the railing, and below him was fifty feet down to the bottom, where Wolverine stood with his claws out. “I just…I got to know where it…it is t-t-today.” He tried to keep his eyes on the hand that was holding him instead of the concrete floor below and the bloodied but still glinting blades of the man standing casually down there, and failed. “I-I was going to-to go there…tomorrow, to see wh-who runs it, t-to make a-a d-d-deal. I-I can t-tell y-you where it…where it is.”
“Keep talking.” Deadpool said, twisting the chain. “I have no idea how strong gold is, but going by this thing’s thickness – which by the way seems to be compensating for something,” he looked down at the man’s pants. “I doubt it’ll hold your weight for long.”
“Yes, y-yes, m-my left p-pocket, th-the ad-address is in th-there.” The man said between gulps and sobs.
“Not how I pictured my hand going into someone else’s pants.” He slowly put his fingers inside the pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it to read, and let go. “Oh, it’s far! Oof!” He looked down with his hand on his mouth as Logan jumped out of the way and the man fell on his feet, breaking them.
“You fucker!” Logan shouted. “You said you were only going to scare him.”
“I swear on Althea’s joints that this was an honest mistake.” Wade shouted back, then went into the man’s office to grab five thick wads of cash (out of around thirty). The man’s screams had subsided into whimpers of pain.
“Whooo, this will be a big day for the police.” He said, pulling free a backpack from under an unconscious man and emptying it. He shoved the money into it while Logan dragged the whimpering man to the side and called the police. They looked at the state of the factory. The elevator and the tables were broken, there was blood and bodies all over the floor and the walls.
“The fuckers were selling to kids.” Wade said. “Feels good to end it. I’m ready to go home.”
“Not yet.” Logan said. “We gotta check out that address he gave.”
“Not today, we don’t. It’s far. We can go tomorrow. I think I’m done for the day.”
“I’m not.” He snatched the paper from Wade and began walking to the door.
Wade followed him. “Okay, okay, don’t turn on the charm too much, heartbreaker, you’ve convinced me.”
The sky had darkened by the time they reached the place. They had to take a bus and a cab. Thankfully, they easily got a seat on the bus, as most people exited it hurriedly when they saw the two men wearing costumes with big red blots on them getting on. The bus driver drove faster than usual. Getting the cab was a bit more difficult, but eventually Wade waved around three green bills, and one guy stopped. It was a farm some distance away from the city, and looked normal from the outside. There were lights on inside.
Confused and curious, Wade and Logan silently approached the front door. It was locked from the inside, but one claw to the mechanism was all it could take. They were hit with sharp chemical smells the moment they entered. The living room was to their right, where a bunch of empty cartons were kept. To their left was the kitchen, where the countertops were lined with packets of white powder. In front, beyond a small corridor, was the dining room, where they could see part of a large table covered with beakers, test-tubes and bubbling liquids. “This is the place, alright.” Wade said after opening a packet and tasting the powder inside.
“And I told him—” A woman turned into the corridor at the other end. She saw them and stopped what she was about to say. Logan clenched his fists as Wade said, “Hello!”
Behind her, a familiar face came into view, and screamed when he saw them. Wade screamed with him. A second later, they both stopped screaming.
The man gave a grin that was more a grimace, lifted a hand and waved at them. In a voice thinner than usual, he said, “Hello,”
Wade couldn’t help but shout, “Dopinder!?”