moom, dad and dad are fighting over which of them is the most fucked up again :(
poolverine wip extend, ~7k. i have been confined to my tablet with a bluetooth keyboard so she is no doubt extremely messy and i am also too lazy to post in parts so we will all have to deal with that! skip to *** for the new stuff, follow-up to HER
The doorframe rattles when Logan slams it shut.
With a sigh, he shrugs off his jacket. He makes a half-hearted attempt at hanging it on one of the hooks off to the right before giving up and allowing it to slump onto the floor. His feet drag, toes catching clumsily against the transitional swell between his living room’s wood paneling and the kitchenette’s linoleum.
The world is already tolerably fuzzy as he slams open the cabinet door. Logan closes his eyes against the sound of one of his neighbors showering and crickets chirping in the distance. He pulls out a half-empty bottle of whiskey, pops out the cork, and tilts his head back to take a few slow glugs. The alcohol slides down his throat, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. The thunk of glass against the lacquered countertop echoes.
Today had not been a good day. The last few days hadn’t been good, really — although Logan’s not sure he’s ever had a good day. But the last few had been worse than usual. The kind of days that suck you dry, leave you nothing but a husk of a man at the end of ‘em. Logan glancces down at the bottle in his hand, wondering if he should down the whole thing now.
He squints. It looks significantly more full than he remembers.
It isn’t until the bathroom door swings open to release a cavalcade of barefoot footfalls and a cloud of hot steam, that Logan realizes it hadn’t been one of his neighbors showering.
“Logan Wolverine,” Wade Wilson announces, leveling an accusatory loofah brush towards him, “it’s time to resume our eternal battle.”
Drunk, Logan stares. The cloud of steam clears to reveal an expanse of marred skin interrupted only by the bright red kevlar of the Deadpool mask. A long beat passes wherein Logan stares directly at Wade’s bare cock dangling goofily between his legs before he jerks his head to the side.
“God damn, man, put some clothes on!” Logan turns, back to Wade. “And what the fuck are you doing here?”
“Not like it’s anything you haven’t seen before, lover.” The only warning Logan gets before a hot, wet body is pressed against his back is the damp slap of wet feet on linoleum. By reflex, he turns and shoves three ragged claws directly into Wade’s stomach. “Oh, should’ve expected that. Gonna take a second to get over that one.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Logan stares down at him, spread-eagled in the kitchenette with thin streams of blood puddling on the floor. “You are wet and naked. Get the fuck out of my house.”
“Well,” Wade responds. Completely shameless, he doesn’t even make an attempt to cover himself. Logan grinds his teeth and turns his back once again. “Considering that you just stabbed me. No! And besides, I have a job for you. Since you’re obviously done with your last one.”
Logan tips back the bottle of whiskey into his mouth. A few drops escape from the corner of his lips, which he doesn’t bother to wipe away. “What?”
“It’s something silly. A B-plot. Hijinks, if you will. The type suitable for some sort of one-shot. Maybe a two-shot if we get frisky.”
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” Logan stares out the window above the sink. The foggy, smudged surface prevents him from seeing much other than the glaring approach of oncoming cars down the highway.
“I’m talking about an adventure! Work for the good of the universe! The two amigos at it again to save the world — or at least a very specific suburb of Milwaukee — “
“Yeah, I don’t actually do that anymore.” He takes another swig. Bottle’s halfway empty.
“Okay. Well, if I am being honest, I did accept a payment for this one. About a milli, but if you play nice, I would be willing to split it between the two of us.”
Another drink. A car roars down the highway, lights blazing. A fly buzzes above, imprisoned against the glare of the LEDs.
“No.”
“Okay, fine.” Wade’s exasperated tone shatters the melancholy mood. Logan wishes he would give up and leave already. Wishful thinking, he supposes. Not even educated. “It was two milli.”
“No.”
Logan slides the whiskey back into the cabinet. Wade mutters something he doesn’t bother to listen to. Rather, Logan steps over Wade’s naked, wet, healing body, opens the fridge, and pulls out a mostly-intact six pack. With a sigh, he walks into the living room, collapses onto the couch, and turns of the TV.
“Fine!” Wade shouts from the floor of the kitchenette. “It was five milli, but if you’re actually going to take half of that, I expect a blowjob for my finder’s fee, mister!”
Logan doesn’t respond. Nothing good on at 3 AM. He should be asleep. No way he’s going to do so with Wade Wilson loose in his place. He’s too tired, drunk, and miserable to do anything meaningful about him right now. He pops open one of the beers. On screen, a lion eviscerates a zebra while the narrator drones calmly on.
Damp footfalls on carpet. Wade stands just inside of Logan’s line of sight. He isn’t bleeding any more. “Oh no, I’m bleeding all over your carpet! Whatever are you going to do!”
Logan ignores him. The lion is rooting through the zebra’s guts now.
“Come on, I know you can’t be that busy. You’ve been gone for four whole days.”
Logan’s brow furrows. His head snaps in Wade’s direction. “You’ve been in my house for four days.”
“This, Logan, is an apartment. And yeah, where do you think all those dirty dishes came from?” Wade gestures vaguely towards the kitchen. Logan hadn’t even noticed. “Also, you probably want to change your sheets. And don’t look in your second dresser drawer, please, unless you’re like, way more into me than I think.”
“Okay.” Logan sets down his beer, looking Wade dead in the eye. Very intentionally, he does not glance down to where Wade’s cock is still flopping pathetically about between his legs. “I’m being serious. I need you to get out now.”
“Ooh, it’s serious time, alright.” He bends his knees, turns to the side, and arches his back so his ass sticks out. “And what happens if I don’t?”
Logan stands up. He can’t fucking deal with this right now. He grabs his coat, stumbling over to the door. He squints against a blast of cold air.
“Come on, Logan.” Wade attempts to dramatically slam the door shut. Logan rips it right back open and steps outside. “I can’t be so repugnant you don’t want to work with me even just a tiny little bit — “
“No, you are,” Logan says, just before slamming the door in Wade’s face.
There are a few blessed moments of silence as Logan walks up the half-set of stairs leading to the parking lot. His shoulders tense when he hears his door creak open again.
“Even though I’m offering you two and a half million? This place is dingy as fuck, the X-men cannot be paying you that much.”
The door slams closed behind Wade. Logan keeps his gaze fixed ahead. He doesn’t speak until he senses Wade right behind him. “Pretty sure the X-Men don’t get paid, bub.”
“What the fuck, good ol’ Chuck — who is definitely alive by the way, don’t you even worry your sweet little heads about it — doesn’t even pay you.” Logan keeps walking forward, desperately hoping that the crunch of gravel beneath his boots will eventually drown Wade out. “That’s inhumane. Even the Avengers get paid. What the hell else is he doing with that seemingly infinite pool of money? Also, what do you mean you’re pretty sure? You are working with the X-Men, aren’t you.”
Logan takes a deep breath. Without a word, he continues walking forward.
Wade gasps. They cross into the street now, beginning to walk down the empty road. Logan’s car isn’t even here. He'd left it at the bar.
“Oh my god, you’re not. What the hell have you been doing for the last year then, man?”
“Didn’t I very specifically say that we would not be seeing each other around?”
“Yes, but then you waddled that cute little ass directly into my apartment, and held my dog, and made friends with my friends and your not-daughter, all strongly implying to the audience that we were going to live happily ever after in homoerotic bliss!”
The sound of skin smacking against skin echoes from behind Logan. Perhaps Wade smacking himself in the face. “I thought you were the reason they rejected me again, good ‘ol Logan wants nothing to do with Wade anymore for completely inscrutable reasons, but — “
Logan’s brow furrows. “They rejected you — ?”
The sentence dies a swift death to a cocktail of rage and embarrassment as he turns and realizes that Wade is still buck naked.
“ — sunuvabitch, put some damn clothes on!”
The emotionless white pits of the Deadpool mask stare back at Logan. “I will if you come back to your sad wolf boy apartment with me.”
Logan scowls. “No.”
Wade crosses his arms and waggles his hips. “I’m the one wearing the mask here. I have nothing to lose. You live here. And you have neighbors you care about. Apparently.”
Logan turns his head, gritting his teeth against the feeling of complete mortification. With a grunt, he clips Wade’s shoulder as he passes him on the way back to his apartment.
“There’s my peanut, always happy to see me!”
Logan throws his jacket onto the floor as soon as he re-enters his apartment. Wilson is such a fucking nut-case.
—
“Are you sure you don’t want to get down nasty style? If it’s just about the carpet, we can lay down a tarp or something. Or we can do it in the bathroom. Always keeps the ugly bumping tidy no matter the bodily fluids involved — I highly recommend it.”
Exhausted, Logan blinks very slowly as he stares at the TV. He sucks down another half a beer before responding. “Don’t you have a girl?”
“If by a girl,” Wade calls out from the bedroom, “you mean my fabulous new therapist Lisa, then yes. She is so dumb. Knows nothing about the horrific depths of the human spirit. Never been tortured, Logan, can you believe that? Not even once. She’s incredible. She has me using this new morality app — “
Logan shakes his head, rubbing at his eyes. “I mean a girlfriend, wife situation.”
“Not anymore!”
Wade arrives in Logan’s field of vision wearing a pair of jeans which come to an abrupt end at his mid-shin. A white t-shirt is tucked into Wade’s belt, dangling pouches failing to disguise how comically large the waistband is on him. Strips of discolored skin are visible on his arms and legs. He’s still wearing the mask. He makes jazz hands.
“You look stupid.”
“You, too!” Wade points an accusatory finger at Logan. “Oh, who am I kidding? You pull it off. Why was I cursed with this glorious, mutilated twink body?”
With a huff, Wade collapses onto the couch. He places a hand on Logan’s thigh, which Logan quickly removes.
“Sorry about your girl.” Wade’s hand continues to sit placidly on the couch. Logan takes another swig of his beer.
“It’s fine.”
On screen, a family of gerbils scurry out of their burrow in the middle of a flood. The narrator dully reports that, in these conditions, the little beasts make easy prey for opportunistic predators.
“Actually, it’s not fine. You know, the really fucked-up thing is that — according to her, at least — it wasn’t the loser-era stuff, or the putting her in constant danger, or the severe mental health problems. Sometimes, things just don’t work out.” Wade turns away from Logan and stares into the middle distance. “And that, dear, readers, is a weak plotline, but it’s also real life. We all know you just want to see his one-eyed snake disappear into my wet cave and you’ll take any excuse you can get. Fuck!”
Wade throws his head onto the back of the couch.
“It may also just have been the severe mental health problems,” he admits. “She was really nice. Probably wouldn’t have said that if it were true.”
Logan drink again. One of the gerbils gets snapped up by a hawk in slow motion. “She would have,” he says. “She would’ve just said it nice.”
Wade sighs. “Yeah.”
Wordlessly, Logan hands him a beer.
“You know, I’m not supposed to drink on my medication. But this is probably enough of a special occasion.” Logan’s not sure whether it’s a joke. He’d never known Wade — any iteration — to be particularly stable. In fairness, Logan has never been either.
When Wade takes the bottle, Logan pops the top off with one partially extended claw. Wade scoffs and takes a sad, quiet drink. Out of juice. Silence encroaches.
“So,” Logan starts. “You’re back on your merc shit, huh?”
“Kinda.” Wade slouches into the crevices of the couch. For a moment, he looks pathetically small. “I’m trying to incorporate my burgeoning moral compass into my work now. Man’s gotta eat.”
“Five million dollars ain’t grocery money.”
When Wade sits up, it’s like a switch flips on in his brain. “In this economy? You’d be lucky to get a loaf of bread for 50K!”
Logan ignores him. He finishes off his beer, then sets the empty bottle on the coffee table.
“So does this mean you’re gonna help me? Or fuck me? I was hoping for both but at this point I’d take either.” He leans closer, staring out at Logan from behind his mask.
Logan sighs. “I said I’m not doing that shit.”
“Logan.” Wade’s voice is deadly serious. “My bowels are clear. But if you’re really that worried about it, I can give myself an enema first.”
Logan reaches over and takes the beer back. Wade doesn’t flinch.
“Hey, come on. You literally save the multiverse, heroically switch timelines, sidestep the life-ruining consequences of your actions. You get to live in a world where you’re a hero, and not one where all of your friends are dead. That is literally once-in-thousands-of-lifetimes kind of luck. And you’re gonna use that ridiculous stroke of luck to sit on the couch all day?”
Shouldn’t be surprising. Logan was already familiar with Wade’s personal definition of heroism. With jaw tight, Logan keeps his gaze fixed forward. His grip tightens around Wade’s beer. Fingers twitching, he downs a third of it.
“I’m honestly shocked the TVA didn’t make you go home off-screen, just for continuity’s sake. I guess they want you to be in more — “
“In case you didn’t catch that,” Logan says, glaring at Wade out of the corner of his eye, “that was an invitation to leave.”
“But you did give me the beer. Invitation extended. And I bet if I ignore your grumpy mug and stay a little bit longer, I can get you to do it again!”
Logan doesn’t respond. He’s lost track of how much he’s had to drink. The whiskey from before is just now starting to hit him, thoughts growing sluggish, warmth crawling through his limbs. He downs the rest of Wade’s beer and cracks open another.
“For real, man.” Wade leans closer, squinting. “Why are you not chilling with the X-Men. They’re all alive here. Or, like, mostly. Probably.” His head turns, glancing around the room chaotically. “Those timelines were always really hard to follow. And our whole thing just didn’t make any sense at all, so it’s probably way easier to just show up and find out who’s alive, but like, it’s definitely most of them. I saw Kurt last week. Blue. Tail. All that fun stuff. You two are supposed to be buds.”
A black hole opens up in the pit of Logan’s stomach.
“You like reality TV, right? That seems like your kind of trash.” Logan flips through the channels. The warmth that radiates off of Wade as he leans in closer is probably Logan’s imagination.
“Logan.” Wade whispers. “Answer the question.”
Teeth grit, Logan hisses, “Or else what?”
“Or else.” Logan rolls his eyes when he feels the cool barrel of a gun press against his temple. He continues flipping through the channels. “We will have to continue our eternal — oh, Love Island, I love this shit.” Logan resists the urge to roll his eyes. “You know, the US version is so bland in comparison to the UK one — wait a second, you’re trying to distract me!”
With a sigh, Logan leans his head back on the couch. His thoughts are becoming delightfully fuzzy, now. He plays the game. “You ever get that ADHD testing done?”
Wade narrows his eyes. “No.”
If Wade had come here to commiserate — to play games — Logan can be fine with that. A few hours ago he’d lifted his cheek off of the bar with red in his mind’s eye. Her hair, her fire, her blood. The last few months had been lonely.
An unnatural silence fills the room when Logan closes his eyes. Wade moves, silent and fast. Thighs bracketing Logan’s, erratically-textured palms cradling his cheeks. Chest tight like he’d been strangled. Logan’s knuckles are pressed to Wade’s ribs, all reflex.
“Get off me.” The vision of his blades slicing through Wade’s soft stomach is clear in his mind’s eye.
“Logan.” Wade’s fingers on his cheek are patronizing. “My bro. My good boy. My homie. My personal hero. That would ruin your couch.”
Wade’s body going slack in Logan’s arms. Manic twinkles of laughter in his ear. Spilled blood sucked up by denim and upholstery. Logan grits his teeth. Silence ticks on.
“Which you care about, because you’re broke, because you’re not fucking around with Chuck — who definitely pays people, by the way.” Wade’s voice is loud and annoying. “So come help me, Obi Wan. You’re my only hope.”
The sharp snikt of Logan’s claws slicing through his own skin occurs not half a second after Wade rolls off of him.
“For the last fucking time,” Logan growls. He can feel his own throat rumble, his self-control slipping as the alcohol suffuses his cells. “No.”
Wade crouches in the middle of Logan’s living room, ready to pounce. The upturned corners of his lips are visible even beneath the mask. “It’s not even a hit job. More of a rescue, really. And it’s delightfully silly. And afterwards we can do a little horizontal — “
Logan scowls. “Stop.”
His muscles are heavy, drawing him further back into the couch. He shouldn’t have had so much to drink. Wilson is a clown, but he’s not incompetent. Logan’s heart races against an impending sense of danger.
All at once, Wade collapses onto his ass. He pulls out his phone, gaze fixed on the screen. Logan couldn’t relax if he wanted to.
“Okay, I hear that you’re setting a boundary. Lisa’s been telling me a lot about those. So I’m willing to stop talking about sex. If you come with me.”
“And yet you apparently didn’t hear me when I told you to leave.”
Logan leans forward. Moonlight stretches down the length of his claws in reflection.
“Come on, Logan, we all know you weren’t being serious then.” Wade flaps his wrist dismissively. He’d probably still be cracking jokes if Logan were to snap it. “Which is definitely how it works. And you can’t say otherwise because you don’t even go to therapy.”
Logan says nothing. Wade stares at him, as if waiting for a response.
“If you did, your therapist would definitely tell you that you should come with me. And also that you should probably go hit up your good ol’ bubs the — “
“No.”
Logan stands. His patience is running out. He’s wobbly, unsteady. Wade’s fast. A bloodthirsty cacophony clamors in the back of his mind. Two kicks would leave Wade’s brains splattered across a broken television screen, a left hook could snap his neck on the edge of the coffee table, triplet blades rending flesh from his heart down to his gut leaving him flopping like a fish out of water on the carpet —
“Fine.” Wade sighs. He stares down at his phone. Logan itches for violence. “I didn’t want to resort to this, but you leave me no choice.”
The sound of dice rolling fills the apartment. Wade gasps, turning his phone screen to display a mischievous-looking emoji with an angel halo. A beat passes with Logan’s head tilted in utter confusion.
“Chaotic heroic. I love this one. Always so weird.”
Swiftly, he pops open the velcro of one of his pouches. Logan’s eyes go wide as he pulls out a grenade.
“Wade,” Logan says. His voice is tense, pulse thundering in his ears. Wade’s attitude had felt strange — stranger — but he hadn’t anticipated this. “Put that down. This is an apartment building. There are innocent people here.”
With a giggle, Wade stands. He loops one finger through the pull ring, swinging it casually around his finger. “Oh, I know.”
Logan lunges at him. Wade sidesteps easily, laughing as Logan sprawls inelegantly across the floor. His limbs are heavy, the air baring down on him as he pushes himself up.
“I don’t know what kinda psycho fuckin’ meltdown you’re having because your girl dumped you, Wilson, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna let you — “
A hand held over his heart. “Wow. Last-named. The hurt. How would you feel if I called you — wait, what is your last name?”
“I’m not gonna let you kill a bunch of people for no goddamn reason.”
A swipe, dodged. Wade’s pressed flat against his front door. Logan throws his fist, embedding his claws in the wood instead of Wade’s skull. He screams as he yanks them out.
“Wow, Logan. It’s only been six months and you’ve gotten so slow! Or is it the alcohol?”
One last shot. Logan goes for his gut, but Wade’s too fast. He’s across the room before Logan’s halfway through the swing.
There’s no fanfare when he decided to stop playing games.
“Relax,” he calls from across the room. Logan watches in horror as he pulls the pin, tossing the grenade live across the living room. “This’ll only take a second.”
***
“Wakey-wakey, peanut.”
A finger taps his nose. Logan’s head throbs. His eyelids scrape like sandpaper. The sun is rising at the end of a long, thin stretch of highway.
Logan surges, movement stopped by the seatbelt.
Wade clicks his tongue in the driver’s seat. “I told you I didn’t wanna do this, Logan.”
“Sunuvabitch,” Logan mutters. His hands are bolted behind his back, ankles tied together. A thick chain secures the thick cuffs above his knees to a metal rod beneath the seat. “What the fuck — “
“Now, Logan.” Wade’s voice is chastizing, like he’s talking to a child. Logan seethes. “Before you extend those pretty little claws of yours — “
The upholstery of the passenger’s seat tears. Logan struggles only to find he doesn’t have enough leverage to slice through the metal holding the seat together. The seatbelt stretching across his chest locks his back flat against the back of the seat.
“That was literally what I just — “ Wade groans, smacking himself in he forehead. “This is why I can’t have nice things. You know I got this car from Spiderman, tricked the whole thing out, gave it a roof, and you just come in here with your little honey badger shit and just — “
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Logan screams.
“Calm down,” Wade says. “You’d think a little nap would make you less cranky. And before you ask, everyone is fine. It was just a little gas. I can’t believe you thought I would actually blow up an apartment building for fun.”
“I,” Logan rasps, “am going to fucking kill you.”
“Easier said than done,” Wade chirps. “Believe me, I’ve tried. Also, I’m driving this car on an incredibly busy highway so anything you do to me is likely to result in some random bystanders dying in a fiery car crash.”
Logan turns to look out the window. In the span of a few seconds, Wade blasts pasts one, two, three other cars on the right.
“How fucking fast are you — “
“Uh…” The car twists into the right lane, then back into the left. “110. Thereabouts.”
Logan grits his teeth. He doesn’t know what else he expected.
“You know I’m just going to kill you whenever I have the chance.”
“And in the meantime, we have the opportunity to get in some quality time together while I convince you that — “
“Kidnapping me is not starting off on a good foot.”
“We weren’t on a good foot in the first place, Logan. And you know whose fault that was?” Logan curses under his breath as the right side wheels of the car lift from the pavement as Wade rounds a curve in the highway. “You. And you know, it didn’t have to be this way. We had a good thing going for awhile, me and you. And you had that wholesome daddy-daughter dynamic going on with X-whatever — “
“Her name is Laura.”
“ — not to say that we don’t also have a daddy-daughter dynamic of a different flavor going on.”
“You’re a disgusting son of a bitch, you know that?” Anger coils in the pit of Logan’s stomach as Wade dodges around another car. The violent honking fades out quickly.
“Very aware, thank you! But you just had to do the same shit you always do — “
“You don’t know shit about me, bub.”
“ — and leave. And being me, I was going to go look for you, but Vanessa, she’s all he has his reasons and he has to go on his own journey to figure out who he is and you need to leave people alone if they want to be left alone — “
“So your girl dumped you again and that’s my problem, somehow?”
“Something like that!” He’s wearing his suit again, leather-gloved fingers strangling the steering wheel. “So the job is outside of Milwaukee, not too far from here actually, really low-level stuff but I tried to take ‘em out last week and it was somewhat of a comical failure.”
The car jerks from side to side as Wade weaves through traffic. The back of Logan’s head throbs with a hangover — from the bottle of whiskey or from whatever Wade had dosed him with, he’s not sure. He holds in a growl and resists the urge to scream. The desire to completely lose control bubbles up in the pit of his stomach. He struggles to come up with a good justification not to.
“And I know what you’re thinking, Logan - wow, can’t believe this guy is skipping right over the emotional trauma of losing his girlfriend for the third or fourth time, depending on how you count it, and he’s totally emotionally dodging all of the important feelings that he’s feeling right now.”
Logan closes his eyes, breathing in and out through his nose. Wade Wilson is a fucking shitstain of a human being. This isn’t new information to him.
“And you would be totally right — “ The image of Wade in blue, scrambling from rooftop to rooftop flashes across Logan’s mind. Bells jingling, laughter echoing, blood dripping from the sack thrown over his shoulder as he lobs a severed arm directly at Logan’s face. The car lurches as he skids around a little white sedan on the right, barely managing to avoid scraping the barrier on the right that stands between the car and the ditch below. “But that’s not even the point right now, because we have to break into a top-secret bse to stage a rescue mission for our comrade-in-arms — “
“Pull over.”
Logan’s head is pounding. Wade finally shuts up. The stench of his sweat is tangy in Logan’s nostrils.
“What?”
“Pull the fucking car over and untie me. I’ll help you.”
The seatbelt cuts into Logan’s chest when Wade slams on the breaks.
It’s a little scenic overlook. A car races past them, honking. Wade turns to stare at him for an unsettlingly silent moment.
“Damn, okay.”
The door slams behind him. He swings his hips exaggeratedly as he rounds the hood. Logan is overcome with the urge to rip out his throat.
“Not to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Wade starts as he opens the passenger-side door, “but why, exactly, would you agree to help me?”
Logan clenches his jaw. Wade unties his ankles first, then unlocks the cuffs around his thighs before he glances up expectantly. Logan tries to mask the seething violence raging just underneath his skin. Given the way that Wade winks flirtatiously at him, he suspects that he’s failed.
“I’m already here, aren’t I?” Logan speaks through gritted teeth.
Wade shrugs. He unbuckles Logan’s seatbelt. “Fair enou—”
Logan’s shoulder smacks into Wade’s nose with as much force as he can muster. Wade’s body sprawls back. His head thunks loudly against first the metal barrier, then the asphalt. The tip of Logan’s boot seeks out Wade’s windpipe and bears down just hard enough to cut off his air. Wade’s eyelids flutter.
“Oh, how I hate to lose,” Wade mutters. Logan crouches to pick up the key from the ground, quickly unlocking his own wrists. “But how I love to lose.”
“Don’t make any goddamn sense, bub.” He rolls Wade over with the toe of his boot, forehead scraping against the barrier once again. Wade is dazed, groaning. Logan scoffs when he feels Wade lift his own arms for Logan to lock them behind his back.
Logan doesn’t have time for this. Or at least not the damn energy. He fully intends to get back in the driver’s seat, book it back to his dingy little apartment just long enough to grab the few important items he has. Losing the damn car should really be the least of Wade’s problems.
But when Logan stares down at him, face-down in the gravel, moaning just a little too loudly as he writhes around on the ground — he feels bad. There have been more times than Logan can count that he’s looked far more pathetic than Wade has right now. Tried to pull himself up by his bootstraps every time, completely failed more often than not.
Logan sighs. He flips Wade back over, hauls him up by the nape of his suit, and tosses him into the passenger’s seat.
He’s about to slam the door shut when he thinks to unbuckle Wade’s belt. He tosses it — pouches, holsters, guns and all — into the back seat.
“Wow, daddy,” Wade mutters. “I didn’t know you were into bondage.”
Logan scowls at him. “Don’t make me regret not leavin’ you on the side of the road, Wilson.”
“Daddy, if you wanted to play rough, all you had to do was — “
Logan slams the door in his face.
“Ask.” Wade finishes his sentence as soon as Logan re-enters on the driver’s side.
“Tired of watchin’ you drive like a fuckin’ maniac.” Logan pulls the seat up, then adjusts the mirrors. Wade keeps his mouth shut about the difference in height — smart. “Gonna fucking kill someone.”
“Fair, but you didn’t need to tie me up. We should at least pull up Google Maps so we know where we’re going — “
Logan pulls back onto the highway as soon as he sees a break in traffic, then turns to shoot Wade an incredulous look.
“I’m no goin’ to help you. I’m goin’ home.” He pulls into a parking lot on the left and hangs a right. The dashboard flashes 6:33 AM at him. The bags under his eyes tug at his eyelids. He wishes he was drunk.
“Wow,” Wade says. “I cannot believe the X-Man, Wolverine, is a liar.”
“I can’t believe that known asshole, Deadpool, would kidnap a guy — oh, wait. I can believe that.”
Wade ignores him. “I come all the way out to bumfuck nowhere to magnanimously kidnap you to get you out of your sad wolf boy depressive slump, just as you once did for me — well, I also kidnapped you then, didn’t I?” Logan rubs at his face, trying to tune Wade out. He accelerates up to the speed limit. “And that totally got me out of a depressive slump. Ultimate message: kidnapping works.”
For a beat, Wade pauses as if waiting for a response. Logan ignores him.
“And at the end of the day, after everything I’ve done for you, you repay me by going directly back to where you came from?”
“Yes.”
Wade leans forward. Probably trying to break out of those handcuffs — ain’t subtle. Logan hadn’t bothered to actually restrain him in any meaningful way. As annoying and insistent as Wade is, Logan can’t imagine he has much steam left for this ridiculous charade.
“You won’t even come with me to help me on an actually magnanimous quest?”
“No.”
The silence stretches out. Wade sighs.
“Come on, man. You gotta be real with me for a second. What gives? We had a good thing going for a couple of months. Little team-up here, over at my place for dinner every once in a while, making friends with my friends. And I know the drinking was getting pretty bad — which like, if I’m saying that, you know that’s real because I have literally a full pound of cocaine stashed away in my apartment — “
He doesn’t. Logan would’ve been able to smell it.
“And you had this whole ridiculous self-hating thing about how you’re not allowed to just cheat and be an X-man in this universe. But things were good. I thought that we were building something good together. And we were going to get past it.”
Logan feels the steering wheel creak under the force of his grip.
“Oh, buddy. There it is. Come on, hit me, baby. Let is all out.”
“You wanna know why I left, Wade?” Logan snaps.
“Yes. Very clearly. That’s why I asked.”
“Because wrecking your entire world, resulting in the deaths of thousands of people, is not the kind of shit you get to just brush off and pretend didn’t happen so you can go play house with alternate versions of the people that you got fucking killed.”
He’s panting. For a moment, Logan’s eyes go unfocused. Particles of his own spit have splattered across the windshield.
“Oh, boo-hoo. So Wolvie has to punish himself for being the big evil bad guy, as if saving literally every life in the multiverse didn’t absolve him.”
There’s a note of cruelty in his tone that makes Logan want to throw him out the window.
“Doing something good doesn’t make the bad shit you’ve done in the past okay.”
“Mm, pretty sure it does, actually.”
There’s sarcasm dripping from Wade’s tone. Mean, self-absorbed. Logan aches for Kurt — would’ve told him that sin is in the nature of being human, that he’d already more than proven himself worthy of his continued existence, then make a joke that was actually funny.
Unfortunately, that version of Kurt is long dead.
“You see all these cars around us?” Wade gestures at the vehicles zipping by. “I’m the reason they’re all alive. They all owe me. Which means it doesn’t matter if I kill that guy, or those people, or that old lady, or — “
“You’re worse than the last time I saw you.”
There was a spark in that little rant that reminds logan of Wade — the other one. He had still been alive when this Wade had kidnapped him, at least as far as Logan is aware. Guys like the two of them are hard to kill. The way Logan had heard it, he’d gotten cut to pieces a few months after shit started to really hit the fan. Took him five or six years to come back. Logan had always figured it was the pain that had sent him off the deep end. Now Logan wonders if it was the realization of just how alone he was.
“Yeah,” Wade agrees. “I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that my people keep leaving me.”
Logan breathes in. He waits for Wade to continue, for sarcastic comments. Nothing comes.
“You know this doesn’t have anything to do with you, right?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s not you, it’s me. Oldest trick in the book.”
Logan can’t hide his incredulous reaction. “We’re not dating. You know that, right?”
Wade squints. “Tell that to the Honda Odyssey. And Madonna. And my asshole.”
It occurs to Logan that crashing the car might not be an entirely undesirable experience.
“You have a girlfriend.”
“Had. Past-tense. She left, too.”
“You know you’re just gonna get right back together after you’ve gotten over whatever kind of breakdown this is, right? And your gal’s a pretty straight shooter. Just figure out whatever it is that she wants you to figure out — “
“Not this time. All-in-all, pretty good confirmation that I am actually worth dogshit despite my magnanimous multiverse-saving tendencies. And I’m not having a breakdown.”
Logan wonders if this is what it’s like talking to him.
“You understand that these two situations we’re talking about have literally nothing in common.” Wade kicks his feet. It feels like talking to a child.
“I don’t know, feels just about a gut-stabby from my perspective.”
“We are not dating. We’re — “ Logan hesitates over the word friend. “We don’t have a thing.”
“Oh, how the mind loves to rewrite history. We definitely have a thing, peanut. Or at least we did.”
Logan scoffs. At the end of his rope, he snaps, “You are such a fuckin’ narcissist.”
“Acknowledging that we had a good thing going which was then ruined by you leaving has nothing to do with my narcissism.” He thinks he’s so fuckin’ funny.
“No, thinking that me leaving is some reflection on you is narcissistic.”
Wade leans in over the center console, eyes narrowed. “‘Bout to throw you a curveball, peanut: thinking that I wouldn’t see you leaving as a reflection on my own self-worth is narcissistic. We are just the same, you and I. Two bloodthirsty little peas in a pod — “
Logan pushes Wade away, palm spanning most of the area of his face. “You think this is how you’re going to get me to help you out? Being an annoying fuckin’ asshole?”
“No.” Logan can hear the smirk in his voice. “I think that being an annoying asshole is how I’m going to get you to fuck me. Hold on.”
To Logan’s complete and utter exhaustion, Wade takes his hands out from behind his back. He pulls his phone out of his pocket, pulling up that stupid fucking app again. He glances up at Logan, muttering, “Pretend you’re not seeing this, it made me pop a l’il half-chub when you tied me up. That shit was hot.”
The words, you know there’s a reason people keep leaving you, right? sit heavy on Logan’s tongue. He wants to punch Wade in the side of the head, drag him out of the car, slice and hack and cut until he finally shuts the fuck up. Shame immediately follows the thought. A hundred sets of lips curl around the word bloodthirsty in his mind’s eye.
Wade taps away at his phone, swearing. Logan watches him re-roll multiple times. He had really tried to tear Wade down in the Honda whatever. Wade had pissed him off, and Logan wanted to tear him down. Force him to end whatever stupid little delusion he had in his head about saving the world.
Wade hadn’t klet him. A fucked-up kind of stubborn that Logan can’t help but admire when he thinks about it. Logan wishes he had that same level of dedication.
“Okay, fuck yes. True neutral. Nice.”
Logan sighs. Can’t believe he’s developing a soft spot for Wade Wilson, of all people.
That soft spot melts away as soon as Wade sprawls across the front seat to set his head in Logan’s lap.
His leg jerks. Wade’s head bounces but remains firmly on Logan’s thigh. “What the fuck are you doin’, you want us to get in an accident?”
“No, I rolled true neutral. So obviously, I’m introducing you to the idea that I could give you road head. But I’m not pushing you strongly either way.”
Logan grits his teeth.
With barely-contained force, he shoves Wade’s head off of his lap and pulls the car off to the side of the road. Pines as far as the eye can see. He pulls the keys out of the ignition.
“Get outta the car.”
Wade pouts. “But daddy, I can’t. You tied me up.”
Logan watches as he tries to slide the handcuffs back onto himself. He grabs Wade by the front of his costume and spits in his face.
“You,” Logan hisses, “are bein’ fuckin’ ridiculous. Over here actin’ like this is a fuckin’ porno every chance you get cause you think that’s gonna make you feel better about your girl fuckin’ leaving. I am not your personal fuckin’ attention fountain, or your daddy, or whatever the fuck you think this is. Get out of the car.”
He throws Wade into the passenger’s side door.
Logan shoves the keys into his pockets as he walks away. He doesn’t look back. A few moments later, he hears the crunch of Wade’s boots against the pine needles. Without a word, he follows Logan.
“Oh,” Wade pipes up after they’ve walked a few hundred feet in silence. “This is like a game. We’re going to roleplay Twilight: New Moon? You know, in this universe there’s this weird tangential link between 9/11 and — “
“Shut up.”
Wade does. Logan takes a deep breath before he turns around.
There had been a lot of people in Logan’s life that he’d wanted to help only to completely and utterly fail. He remembers how proud he’d felt when he’d first heard Wade mention his ten people, that’s it. Logan had mattered. He had changed something for the better.
Wade stands in front of him, this ball of self-destruction, compulsively pushing and pulling the people around him with his stupid jokes, and Logan can’t help but feel as if he’s failed yet again.
“If I need to beat the fucking horny out of you before you can have a conversation like an adult, fine.”
Wade tilts his head. “Who’s saying I won’t beat the horny out of you first?”
“I’m not fuckin’ horny, Wade.”
The tension escalates. Logan swallows.
“That half-chub I sniffed earlier begs to differ.” Logan says nothing, jaw clenched. “How about this: winner gets to do whatever the fuck they want to the loser.”
Logan snorts. “Okay, bub.”
Wade taps his finger on his chin. He arches his back, teasing. “Just no teeth when I shove my cock in your mouth, okay? That’s no way to win a fight.”
He wags a chastising finger at Logan. It looks ridiculous. Logan desperately wishes he wasn’t into it.
“Don’t feel like that really even needed to be said.” Logan’s eyes flicker down to Wade’s belt. No idea when he had retrieved it from the back seat. “No guns.”
Wade throws his hands up dramatically. “What the fuck, come on!”
“This ain’t bumfuck nowhere. Unless you want the fuckin’ cops called, no guns.” Logan smirks. “As if they’re gonna do you any goddamn good.”
“Fine.” Wade squints. He pulls each gun out of its holster, releases the magazines onto the ground with a dull little thud, and tosses them off to the side. “No guns.”
Logan’s claws extend with a satisfying snikt.
“And my mask doesn’t come off.”
Quietly, Logan scoffs. “Whatever.”
