https://archiveofourown.org/works/63787981 (it's not embedding 🙄 but it's beauty past change by citrusgothic)

There's a dead dog on his doorstep.

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The first time Logan killed an innocent, he was ten years old. He could name many moments in his life that felt monumental—'canon events', or whatever shit Wade calls it—but if he really had to name a point of no return for him, it would be then. All the way back then. He wonders about fate, often. If it was possible that things could ever be different. Then he remembers. His past comes back to him in flashes still, even after two hundred years. His ribbed, rough bones splintering the skin between his knuckles for the first time, the deafening quiet of the night broken by his howls and his mother’s screams, the gunshot before that, as if all the world had been contained in that one room. Her body underneath his, wounds gaping—maybe her throat, maybe her chest, or her stomach—and guzzling dark, dark wine. His grandfather’s mouth moving, the spit on his tongue. The words made no sound—he couldn’t remember what his grandfather had said, nor what he'd sounded like. But he'd known. So he'd run.

He'd had a decent childhood, before it all. Decent enough that he hadn't thought of life anywhere else, at least, or maybe that spoke of something that was the opposite of decency. Regardless, he'd felt… clean. He hadn't known about his claws then. How could he? His own mutant brother had been cast away, erased from the family legacy, with no explanation as to why. But now his claws resided in him like an itch under his skin, dead weight when he moved. He felt their presence in his fingertips even when they were retracted, and now when he thought back to the before, before he'd had the claws, he thought that maybe he'd felt them then too. He just hadn't known it.

It had been an accident, killing the mother he'd longed to see, the one he'd missed even when she was alive. But it being an accident changed nothing.

He'd been filled with a quiet sort of rage since then, the kind that simmered low in his blood, unnoticable on some days but intrinsically a part of him nonetheless. His anger was its own organ that kept his body running unprompted, and if he let himself accept that he was angry, let himself feel it, it took everything in him to not claw his way through the anger. To not claw at himself until he reached bone, to hear the unnatural, inhuman screech of metal against metal.

He'd released it in increments, chopping wood and lugging wheelbarrows and running with the wolves, and beating up the occasional man who deserved it. That was in the early stages, when every exhale released puffs of anger into the cold air.

On bad days—the bad days were the normal days—he wondered if he had been born defective. Not just in his claws, but born to be full of fear and hatred, to not know where to put any of it. Born to reap the consequences of his brother's failures in the form of neglect and frigid silences, of the bond of family only through blood and nothing more. In unleashing himself, he'd become his brother, maybe. A mantle of generational disappointment passed on for him to bear.

On worse days when he hated himself to the point of self-mutilation, he recognised that it may have been inevitable. A buildup of pressured anger in centuries-long microdoses that eventually forced its way through his fissures and burst out of him, destroying everything in its path.

He sits in this bar now, indistinguishable from all the others, unwanted again, always running. He bears the looks and the whispers like a wooden cross, dragging the weight of it on his back down Gethsemane streets—sacrificing himself for what the people feel it right give him, what he knows he deserves: contempt. The bartender pours him another drink with what looks like anger, but also pity. Pity is kinder than anything he’s been dealt for the past few years.

He holds the shot glass like a communion cup, imagines that in it is his mother’s blood. When he drinks it, he thinks forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me of my sins. But he knows he won’t be forgiven. He doesn’t know anymore if he even wants to be. Because his sins have been building up for two hundred years, clawing at each other to get to the insurmountable top. He is sin. Every inch of his body, from the roots of his hair to the skin under his fingernails, has been stained with blood that he has washed off over and over again but still feels. If he’s forgiven, if all his sins are taken away, he doesn’t know if there would be anything left of him but metal and a hardened heart.

It may absolve him of some guilt, he thinks, if he could say he remembers them all—all the people he’s killed, all the ways he killed them. He doesn’t. They hadn’t been important enough to him then, besides the life that they held in them that he starved to take away. And when his claws pierced through their flesh and muscle and bone, he drank up the lifelessness in their eyes like morphine. The high kept him alive, and rotted his insides. It quenched his thirst, but it didn't make him feel good. Then again, when does addiction ever?

He can't even remember the X-Men. When he had, when they'd crossed his thoughts in passing when they were alive, he could see them clear as day in his mind, vivid in saturation and detail. Now when he tries thinking of them, all he sees is questions written in blood.

He does remember one of them, vaguely, of those he's killed. All of his past is a blur now, memories seen through a fogged-up window or in a yellowing photo album. But this one he sees with slightly more clarity: a girl with dark skin and darker hair, a carbon copy of her mother. He'd killed them both twice over. It was the first time he killed a child.

And he remembers her because he’d liked it when he killed her. The tabooness of it, the special sanctity of a child's life that he had forced away, so easily. Something that people hardly dare to do. Look, he remembers yelling, to dead bricks and corpses in a dead-end alley. I'll fucking show you. They’d thought he couldn’t go lower than he already had. They'd thought they couldn't hate him more. They had no idea what he was capable of.

He remembers her screams, bloodcurdling but still unmistakably a child’s, and then her eternal silence. He remembers her mother's begging, his own mother's begging. He remembers that he had not felt an ounce of guilt in that moment, nor remorse, nor any of the gravity of her life.

Now whenever he drinks, he drinks enough to kill himself a little, in remembrance of her.

Not that that's the only reason. Because underneath it all, despite it all, through it all, he is nothing but a selfish bastard. And it's fucked up, he knows it is, but when he stopped killing people it had felt like withdrawal. More potent than any withdrawal he could get from drugs like a normal person. It was a withdrawal he's stuck with because he's more tired of kiling people than he is thirsty to sate his urge. Not the urge to kill—just the thought of it now makes him sick, clogs his throat with blood—but the urge to take all his despair and anger out on something. Everything. And oh, he's tried. Not even killing the world and filling oceans with blood was enough.

So he drinks, because nothing can satiate that urge, and the alcohol makes him forget that it even exists. You can't think about anything when you're blackout drunk. You can't see how other people look at you when you're passed out. But even in unconsciousness his body remains wound tight and tense, and he wakes up sore through every muscle.

He doesn’t believe in God, but he’s lived long enough to know enough. And he knows that God wouldn’t differentiate between the good and bad people he's killed. Blood is blood is blood. The blood of the innocent mixes with the blood of the evil, turning the lake a plagued, undrinkable scarlet all the same.

And this isn't a children's book, a bedtime story, a movie where everything gets wrapped up in a nice little bow and they all live happily ever after. He fucking wishes.

somno (with an edge of omegaverse).

Wade is a forever horny Omega who doesn't have a proper heat cycle, but does have a severe case of ADHD-induced insomnia.

Logan is an Alpha who sleeps like the dead.

You can see where this is going, right?

Rating: E Warnings: somno and associated consent issues

Prompted by this amazing thread. Shoutout to @ramblingautisticman and @desperatelyneedcoffee for inspiring me to write this.

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Most people expect Logan to be the more closed-off one. To hide his emotions behind a mask and keep them to himself.

But that's Wade's role.

Logan is honest about his emotions—when he's angry, he'll growl and thrash and let people know. When he's happy, he'll bark out a laugh and grin and let his eyes wrinkle at the edges. When he's sad, he'll cry and scream and drown himself in alcohol.

He may not be phased by smaller things, but he's honest about his feelings. (Something Wade could never do.)

Wade, on the other hand, isn't. He exaggerates trivial feelings, obvious situational ones—he'll cower in fear at a "scary enemy or pretend to be pissed over a minor inconvenience. He makes his outward, shallow emotions so loud that it turns everyone's attention away from what he's feeling inside.

(Because if people know how he feels inside, they'll see him and hate him. It's easier to be hated when you can chalk it up to "understandable" reasons, to being annoying or loud or inappropriate. It isn't easy when they hate you. When they look at you, bare and vulnerable and open, and hate who you are at your core.)

Wade has spent his entire life hiding his emotions. Even from himself.

He shoves them so deep down that they become a slightly bitter taste in the back of his throat until it all becomes too much and he violently throws them up.

Wade is like a glass bottle: he can steadily hold all his emotions inside, pretending to be OK, until the glass shatters and explodes and the shards dig everywhere and he's left to pick up the pieces.

But Logan isn't like that. He lets himself feel. He lets others see how he feels.

the fight leading up to the time ripper took place right outside their apartment with barely any witnesses around, so the journey back home was short and quiet with no prying eyes. after that, it took a while for logan to get out of the house on the regular, but when he eventually did, it was just to walk or carry out errands, and in civilian clothes, he blended in with everyone else. it's different when they get called on a mission for the first time.

it's not a hard mission by any means, but it's brutal. he and wade subdue a dozen men on the streets, chase a final one down to the underground, and turn him over to the police. by the end of it all, the sun is going down, and people are travelling home from work. logan's suit is torn, and his bare arms are caked with dirt and dried blood.

a cab would be the typical mode of transport for them after a mission, but they're already at the station, anyway, so they decide to take the train. a busker sings at the platform with a guitar, a lulling, bittersweet thing, like the soundtrack to a life not deserving of such a melody. in the exhaustion and setting sun, it makes logan long for something he can't name. but they'll be home soon.

they board the train. he leans against one of the poles, feels the cool of the metal seep through his suit and into his spine. the music fades out, and what fades in in its place is the conversation and laughter of the others in the train car. a group of teenagers out having fun, businessmen in suits off work, older people with their grandkids or their shopping bags. wade's warmth opposite him, mask moving as he chatters.

he tries to listen, he really does, but as the train speeds through the tunnel, he feels stares turn slowly towards him from all sides. he smells their slight fear, their judgement, over the odour of him and wade. he realises all at once what he must look like, dirty and covered in blood that can't be his for his lack of open wounds. his exposed knuckles a darker red than the rest of his hands. he covers one hand with the other, unclenches his fists.

he's not one to care about what others think. not before, at least. he's used to glares of resentment and pity for what he did, eyes following him everywhere he went like the phantoms of those he killed. but these people don't know what he's done, and they stare at him all the same. it's almost worse.

for a brief moment, just a moment, he feels a stab of hopelessness. coming to this world felt like a second chance, a chance to start over without the world having to bear the knowledge of his inadequacies. but what if that isn't possible? what if this is all this world ever sees of him? the aftermath, the bloodstained hands, the aged lines of his face that tell them what they want to know. he's no one here, except when people remember him like this.

"peanut?"

wade's voice snaps him out of it, and when he looks up, wade has pulled his mask off. he's about to apologise for not listening when wade smiles slightly at him. it's enough to take the words out of his mouth. wade doesn't ask if logan's okay, but his eyes flicker almost imperceptibly over the other occupants of the train car. then he places a delicate hand on logan's waist and steps closer to him, until he can feel his breath ghosting his lips.

logan just looks up at him, breath caught in his throat. what? he thinks of asking. he doesn't.

wade's other hand trails up to cup his cheek. "let them stare," he says. "they don't know anything."

then he leans down and presses his lips against logan's. the train emerges out of the tunnel and bathes the car in golden light, and all the rest of it fades away.

wade steps back eventually, and logan wants to chase his lips, but instead watches as the shadows of his scars dance across his face with the path of the dying sun. he's so beautiful, logan thinks. he's home.

wade is right; let them stare. all he wants is to find his way home, just like everyone else. that's all anyone wants. and they're all on the same train home.

I really like the idea of him being really insecure about it but slowly accepting it more and being more open about it.

I also wrote from my experience, and I'm not officially diagnosed don't come at me, but I struggle alot with reading and writing so yeah!

Anyway, enjoy. Please. I hope everyone likes this as much as I do!

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It isn't that Wade can't read- or that he doesn't want to- it's more that it's a massive fucking struggle. Most of the time anyway.

He's always had trouble reading (and spelling, but he can avoid that with emojis now! How technology grows!) ever since he was a kid.

And maybe it's because he didn't grow up in a great environment, or maybe it's because he was never really encouraged, but Wade never ever mentions it. Not to anyone.

He never told anyone when he was in school that sometimes words didn't really make sense to him, and that he was behind in work because of it, not because he would sit and talk (though he did that too). He never told anyone that he preferred art over english because it was easier to understand a picture to him than it was words. He never told anyone that he struggled to spell simple words like "bakery" and "shopping" but could spell "because" and "beautiful" because of a stupid rhyme he had heard once.

It was just something he had grown up with- something he had assumed other kids dealt with- u til he got to high school. Suddenly, he was surrounded by people writing 3000 word essays like they were nothing and people reading 200 page books during lunch, all while Wade still hadn't finished a single book he owned. While Wade still struggled to understand words that weren't in a specific font or colour- something he had realised shortly after turning 10- and everyone around him could just do it. They didn't take 10 minutes to finish a page of a book. They didn't get headaches from the concentration he had to use while staring at a page trying to figure out if the word "wandering" was spelt correctly. They didn't struggle to read the teachers writing because of the cursive writing. They could all just do it and Wade had to just sit and try.

Naturally, people noticed that he would read slowly and awkwardly when they read aloud in class, or that his work always came back covered in red pen from where he had misspelled simple words. He quickly became a target for bullying. Honestly, he probably wouldn't feel as self conscious as he does if that hadn't happened. If teachers had just stepped in and helped- noticed that something was wrong- he would've gotten some help and grown up with accommodations that would've helped him succeed. But he didn't get any of that. He got bullied for reading slowly and being dumb. He got kicked and punched because he had been spotted reading a book meant for younger kids (big mistake).

Wade tried. He did. He read books as often as he could to try and make his brain click- and it never worked. He would try and spell random words- and sometimes he got them and sometimes he didnt- and eventually he gave up. Eventually he succumbed to the voice in his head telling him he was stupid and that he was just going to have to go through life suffering.

And as he got older, he figured out stuff that helped and stuff that didn't. He managed to find a few fonts that helped, a few overlays that made it easier, and a few things to remind him how to spell certain words he usually struggled with.

He also got better at hiding it. Wade would tell people he preferred calls over text. He would open birthday cards and smile at the writing even if he couldn't quiet make out what it said. He would avoid anything that involved him reading in public.

And again, not because he couldn't read, but because it might take him alittle longer than it should, and the idea people would notice made his stomach fill with anxiety, sending him right back to being that scrawny kid I high-school who got beaten up every lunch time.

All of that only got worse after his accident. Well, the cancer and the torture and the murders, but ya know.

Now people were staring at him anyway. People would look and gasp and gawk as he walked down the street or went to the store to get groceries. Everywhere he went people stared. Everywhere.

So instead of being slightly worried people would notice him focusing too hard on reading, he was fully aware people were staring at him constantly because of his skin, and he liked to avoid giving them anymore reasons to stare.

To his suprise though, moving in with Al had helped. She was the only person he had told, and she was the only person who seemed to understand, telling him about something called dyslexia and telling him that his brain just worked alittle different than his. Then proceeded to pass out after using the last of her cocaine- but the thought was still there.

And she didn't seem to mind that he read alittle slower sometimes, because she still asked him to read her mail to her, and sometimes write letters or cards. Wade would have to ask her how to spell the words, but she never seemed to get angry about it, and she always seemed to know how to spell them. Plus, if anyone noticed it wasn't spelt right, they could blame it on her being blind (how was the recipient to know this letter hadn't been writing by Al? She could probably write stuff if she wanted. She's blind, not stupid.).

When he started to gain friends and family- somehow gaining a little group of them- he didn't feel as bad about them noticing. He still didn't say anything- didn't make it obvious- but he wanted them to know he read there cards. Make sure they knew he read the group chat messages. Make sure they knew he did care (and for some reason, probably because the writer loves this headcannon, it seemed like alot of him showing his cared had to do with reading and spelling), writing them birthday cards and Christmas cards, and responding to every single message.

He found a quick way around the messages. That was easy. Emojis, memes and gifs quickly became his best friend. They were easy to dichiper most of the time, and Wade loved them, so it was a win win! He did write things too, and auto correct usually helped if he was struggling that day, but he was getting better thanks to Al and her bossing about of writing letters to her grandkids.

Writing cards took a little longer, but he spent alot of time on each one, making sure everything look neat and was spelt well. It always made him proud giving someone a card that he knew he spent so much time on, perfecting every last word.

When Logan moved in, it was a topic Wade was trying to avoid. He knew he should tell him- they were getting closer and closer each passing day- but he always felt so stupid trying to explain it. It made him feel stupid, even if he knew he wasn't. Most of the time.

Luckily, it doesn't actually come up for awhile, not until they have moved into their own place and Wade is handing Logan a birthday card with a huge grin on his face, practically bouncing on his feet.

And Logan opens it and reads it, and smirks a little because "I don't think the word awesome is spelt like that" and suddenly Wade's smile is wiped off his face.

He really had tried- maybe he didn't read the word properly off his phone or something- because Wade is taking the card and trying his best to quickly read it but can't, and he let's out a grunt of frustration because rambling at Logan apologetically. "I really tried to fucking spell everything right- I'm the idiot for fucking trying to read the word to spell it- I mean, who does that when you can't even read properly? I can re-do it- gimme like an hour and a half to go get a new card and get Al on the phone to just ask her how to spell it and then I can give you one that isn't fucked up-"

And Logan shuts him up with a small kiss to the forehead, telling him that he "likes this one just fine, has more charm" and Wade wants that to feel reassuring but it somehow doesn't, and it just makes him more annoyed.

So after a small melt down and a good cry in the shower for fucking up Logan's birthday, he explains it to Logan. Tells him about how he sometimes struggles with reading and spelling, but he really did try with the card. He really does try to read and write properly but some days it's hard and some days he can do it easier, and that he never really told anyone until he met Al. He messily rambles about everything- including the bullying- and Wade expects to be met with some laugh or ridicule. Though, this is Logan- and somehow this man loves every other part of him- so why would he love this part too?

And Logan just apologises to Wade that he made him feel bad about misspelling the word awesome- makes a joke about how it's a hard word to spell- and that Wade shouldn't have been bullied for something he couldn't help. Tells him that it's nothing to be ashamed off, and that he shouldn't let it hold him back. Tells him that if he ever needs help with spelling something he can ask Logan, that if he ever can't figure out a word that he can ask Logan, asks if there are any accommodations he uses to help him.

And Wade tells him the things that help, the things that don't, thanks him for the offer of help, and suddenly it doesn't seem so terrifying that Logan knows. Suddenly he feels better about it. Sure, Al had helped, but hearing this from Logan made him feel less afraid to hide it. Made him feel better about telling his friends so they knew.

And Logan stays true to his words. He helps him when he is struggling with a word- never jumps in a reads stuff or spells things without being asked first- and even uses some of the accommodations. He has his phone set to a font Wade can read easier, and his next birthday card is in big bold writing (Logan's writing is normally really scribbly and hard to read) and on a colour that helps him focus on the words more.

And he tells his friends and they understand, they do the same. They help if asked, they don't rush him in reading their cards or messages- Yukio starts to use more emojis and Collosus tries his best to give Wade mission debriefs in person or voice messages- and it helps him immensely. He gets more confident about his reading and writing, and he starts to work on ut even more. And yeah, he can't get rid of his dyslexia, but he can try and find new ways that help him. He can find books in safe fonts and listen to the audio book as he reads to help (Though, he does prefer listening to Logan read to him, because his voice is so smooth and gruff somehow, and he could listen to it for hours).

Wade hated that stupid part of himself for so long, but now- even if he is 47- he doesn't really mind it anymore. He makes jokes about his spelling errors or words he missreads, and he works on finding new things to help with Logan, and everything is alittle bit easier knowing he isn't going to be ridiculed and judged.