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The door slams shut from behind where Wade’s sat on the couch, eyes trained ahead, infatuated with the drama unfurling before him. Following the new company like a bad stench - like, actually - is the aroma of a bar; the thick sweep of alcohol and flat dig of tobacco assaulting his senses the mere second he enters the room. A smell so uniquely Logan, and just about any other bodily 50-something man with whopping amounts of self-loathing, that it stirs something in Wade, immediately putting his mouth to work, unfortunately not the world shattering pleasure kind. He wishes.
“Morning, Logie-bear,” Wade glances down to his sparkling new My Little Pony watch, fronted with Pinkie Pie’s brilliant, joyous face, depicting the time to be half past one in the morning. “You're home early! Boy, do I have something just for you. I started Home and Away, and truth be told I have no clue what the Aussie’s were cooking but I am eating it up, horrible performances and all. No shade.”
At the response of an absence of noise, not even a gruff hum to show Logan had heard him at all, and the sound of a door slamming shut shortly tailing small, hurried thuds from Logan’s feet, Wade twists around to sprawl over the back of the couch, catching an eyeful of- of nothing. The bitch had fled.
Wade tilts his head at the air where Logan once stood, glancing at the floor where there were a few fat swatches of liquid bleeding into the floorboards. If he had to guess it'd be booze, or blood, or piss come to think of it - wouldn't be the first shameful night of stripping The Wolverine’s piss drunk unconscious body of piss soiled clothes after a piss filled night, and Wade isn't one to judge Logan’s poor, abused bladder after the hardships its endured - but there's a distinct lack of urine smell, same goes with liquor, aside from what wafts off of Logan naturally. So blood.
Wade picks himself up, pausing Home and Away briefly to tip toe over to the bathroom door, leaning in with an ear pressed flat against it. He knows Logan probably knows he's there, being a peeping Tom with his ears, can probably smell the interest in Wade’s body pique at the sound of small pants, frenzied breaths on the other side.
“Jerking off alone, handsome?” Wade inquires, twisting in a feline manner to slant his back against the door now, eyes pinned at the ceiling as he pictures Logan’s hot body rippling with pleasure, blood flecked along his face and fists from the bar fights Wade knows he gets in. “Worry not, Mama Bear will gladly help you.”
“No!” Logan interjects, voice frayed and weirdly unstable as Wade reaches for the rickety old handle. “Don't- just.. fuck,”
The sound of shuffling, the mirror cabinet being ruffled and rummaged, the soft flutter of clothing hitting the tile. “You're right, poor taste calling myself Mama Bear. Won't happen again, but what I'm hearing in there sound suspiciously like undressing, and I'm coming in.”
“Wade, no! Fuck, I'm- I'm naked?”
“Cute you'd think that would stop me for realsies, fortunately not.”
Wade jostles the handle, the door whining as he opens it and slowly peers inward, expecting the glowing, angelic body of one such Huge Jackedman wrecked and ruined in front of him. What he sees instead rivals that image in a thousand different ways.
He's confronted by the frazzled face of Logan, deep bags sewed beneath his eyes, blood splattered against his hands, forearms, his chest and his face in a violent display of rose. He's leaning against the sink, watches it creak beneath his weight, claws wedged out by a few inches as his hands tremble where they're perched. To put it simply he looks- distraught.
Wade pauses in his step, straightening out as he analyses the 300 pounds of jittery energy in front of him, the sliver of his pupil that frantically pivots from Wade, to the floor, to the sodden mess of blood soaked clothes that rest at his feet. Logan himself is underdressed to just his boxers and go-to white tee, both of which grope his body under the moist weight of the blood soaked into them, clinging to his chest and hips where his breaths visibly come out sporadically.
“Um,” Wade huffs, puzzled, curiously eyeing the man in front of him as he slightly wilts. “Why does it look like you shoved a pipe bomb up someone's ass?”
Logan has the gall to look guilty, that kicked dog look of shame as his brows furrow and his bottom lip puckers at the sight of his shedded clothing wadded up at his feet. He lifts his weight from the sink, bringing his hands in front of him to observe the tremble, the blood caked into the lines of his hands, embedded in his nails.
“I, I don't..” He starts, voice fragile and nervous, the words drifting away from his tongue as he looks over his hands, flips them, then again. It's that same cadence of frailty beneath that subway, as he finalised his last moments. “Don't be mad.” Is what he says.
Kicking his head to the side, Wade drifts closer, noting the way Logan shifts his weight, scoots back the distance Wade attempts to gap. “You're acting weird, peanut. What happened? Who do I have to hurt?”
Logan shakes his head, swallowing a breath as the speed of his heaving chest jackrabbits. Wade can't find any abrasions on his clothing, no slit cloth where a knife might have been jammed into Logan’s body, and obviously there's no physical harm done, his body makes sure to mend that up as soon as the punches have even been dealt. When it comes to him, to people like them, the wounds come mentally. Below the surface. Logan has his lesions, evident in the way he wakes most nights fighting ghosts or himself. In the way he drinks, the way he picks fights just so someone else can hurt him and spare the shame of him harming himself.
“Wade there's– there's no one to hurt. I already,” Logan’s eyes, slimmed into wild little slits now, like an animal, refuse to look at his face, instead demanding the attention of the floor. Flaked blood has dusted the tiles, whatever was still moist smudged along the floor like lipstick. “I killed someone and they. I shouldn't have.”
A pause as the words digest, simply looking at Logan condemn himself internally. Wade can see the cogs turning in there, knows Logan is thinking about what building to jump off of just so he can experience that numbing, distorting cold of death. Silence in its purest form, Wade would know. It's like diving headfirst into a tub of ice water and not resurfacing, until you're pulled out and thrusted back into life cruelly, heat licking at your limbs. It's fucking rough in other words, and if Logan is considering it, well..
“What happened?” Wade whispers now, his tone taking a more serious front as he properly assesses Logan. He's not shaking from drinking, from the walk home in cold weather while only wearing a flannel over his tee and jeans, or from the fact he's probably barely eaten. He's shaking, scratch that, quivering because he killed a person. “Logan?”
Sliding down the wall now, grunting as his ass plonks onto the ground with all his weight, Logan shudders, hands balanced atop his knees as he stares blankly ahead. There's no one subject he's looking at, eyes dazed and unfocused, pupils jittering in their place as they begin to fill out again, returning to their circle shape. Briefly, for one fleeting moment he meets Wade’s eyes, desperation glazing them like little shiny marbles, a thin veil of moisture settled over the top. Like he's reaching a hand out, looking at Wade to find the words for him.
For once Wade has no words, struggles to trudge them up out of his throat. This isn’t about him, or whatever wet dream he had last night, or about one of the few new sexual activities he discovered through vague terms. It's about Logan, the way his Adam's apple oscillates every few seconds, the short breaths he manages to suck in, about the elbow deep maroon on his forearms.
The blood is drying tacky and brown now, smudges along his brow line as Logan rubs it and sighs. Wade waits patiently.
“He was.. he was talking bad. About the X-Men. About..” Logan makes a noise best described as a whimper as his voice cuts out, thin and half the timbre as it usually is. Wade knows what name hangs on the precipice of his words, knows it's her. What's a Wolverine without his Jean Grey to pine over? “And I just..”
He can imagine what happened; holds the imagery of what Logan used to do in his universe. Beneath the stars some nights ago when he'd confided in Wade, told him what made him the Big Bad Wolverine. Wasn't just letting his team down, his family, but what came after, too. The rage fuelled killings, regardless of age or gender or role in the world. Logan was on a hair trigger back then, still plagued by the Weapon X program, wired by those frauds to be that weapon, the animal he was born.
“I looked him in the eyes and I just,” The tendons in Logan’s forearms that keep the claws contained flex as they shift out slowly, a subdued snikt noise emanating from where they now protrude. They glint, yellow tinged beneath the bathroom’s light, cold fury buried beneath his skin all the time. “I couldn't stop myself. I haven't done that in.. too long. I can't keep messing up. I can't fuck your world up too, Wade.”
“Think you did the exact opposite that day, babe,” Wade thrums beneath his skin at the nose crinkle Logan does, knows he's bringing His Logan back to the surface, pulling him from that sprawling heap of loathing, regret, misery. “Didn't just save me but everyone I know and love– everyone every version of myself knows and loves. You know how many X-Men you saved that day? Enough for them to be in debt to you, that's for sure. You should milk ‘em dry.”
Logan considers this, tastes the words and lets them sit with him. Wade’s on the floor now, too, legs splayed open and hands between his legs like a toddler. He appreciates Logan’s newfound ability to evaluate instead of fleeing at the first bump in his recovery, listening to that flight response like it does anything but reward him with solitude.
“I shouldn't have done that, though. She's not my.. Jean. My X-Men.” Logan mutters, attention focused on the blood along his arms, his voice taut like a guitar tuned too tightly, ready to snap. Wade thinks this is the most vulnerable he's been since that night of liquor laced breath, of the gentle simmer of stars reflecting back at Wade through his soft eyes. The way Logan had looked at him then, and even now, like he's the single most important thing in the moment, an anchor to his being, stability to his feelings.
He wants to kiss Logan but he has known that.
Wade’s own heart is clenching inside his chest, aching with the admissions now, his fingers itch to grab Logan’s wrist and kiss it, kiss the rough slits where his claws come out, lick his skin free of the blood (sue him), because Wade is a sap deep down- behind the crude and distasteful jokes, his disregard of serious situations, behind his whole carefree porn addicted freak front he cares, most importantly about Logan. When he took him back here, when he'd stopped Logan from waltzing into the cesspool of people after the time ripper, invited him into his home and F-Word, he knew what baggage came with that. Accepted it.
It's why when Logan comes home in a drunken stupor, wobbly and half-lucid, Wade sleeps on the armchair and leaves the pullout to him. It's why when he doesn't come home at all he looks, it's why when Logan berates himself he's quick to dismiss it, to uplift him in his own unserious way.
“I'm going to admit that I'm having my, like, woah I'm in love with you moment right now so if I kiss you soon be prepared.” Wade spews, staring ahead at Logan wide eyed and buzzing with energy, with the discovery. He has known he wanted to kiss Logan, to fuck him god please, but this is deeper- and maybe it has predated this moment, for fucks sake of course it was pre-existent to this moment. He's felt it since their beings, entwined and white-hot, fused together for those few seconds in the grime filled subway. He's felt it since they were monumentally bound together on an atomic level. The wires of themselves tangling together like a ratking, except maybe a bit more poetic than a few rats ass-to-ass.
Logan cocks his head to the side, dog like, looks at Wade and waits, hangs on his words like they were a promise. “I just admitted to unjustly killing someone and you want to kiss me?”
Wade doesn't answer, not vocally anyway. Instead he surges forward, presses his lips to Logan’s so fast he nearly topples with the momentum. He holds himself up on Logan’s thighs, his legs now kicked out and spread around Wade’s mass. His lips are tight, uncertain for a few hesitant milliseconds before he melts into it, leaning into the kiss, into Wade, admitting him in.
Canting away, a hair's width between he and Logan’s noses, breath mingling softly as they hold one anothers gazes. Logan’s eyes are blazing now, frantically searching Wade for the punchline, for the slap in the face and laugh, for him to get up and leave him here in his own wrong doings like an owner abandoning his beloved pet because it bit. . None of it comes, of course not, and Logan lets the relief wash over his features, letting his shoulders sink with the realisation as he huffs a breath.
Wade smiles, a small pulsing warmth coming to fruition in his stomach, pouring out of him as he beams. “I'm not giving up on you, Logie-Bear. I haven't so far, and I never will. We'll fix this, okay? I know I’m no good for promises, but this I can guarantee.”
Logan nods, scratches at his little tuft of hair that Wade endearingly calls a kitty ear.
“Wanna clean up?”
“Not with you, you freak.” Logan replies with his usual playful snark, grunting as he creaks upwards. Wade considers it a win, abides by his wishes this time and leaves him to wash up. I've got a boyfrieeeennddd, he sings to himself internally, practically prancing around the living room as he plops back onto the decrepit old couch, resuming his show.
-
Come morning time, when the house is alive with Mary’s nervous energy and Blind Al’s bullying, the two eat breakfast together while Logan chuckles to himself at the TV.
Althea swallows down her bite of burnt toast, accomplished by Wade himself, yes he's proud, and settles, looking into Wade’s general direction.
“I heard that last night.” She begins, nearly threateningly, her words sound weirdly final, like that photo of the homophobic dog caption I know what you are. “You did good, you know. Logan’s surprisingly lucky to have you.” She amends, crossing her arms after pushing her plate away, a slice and a half of burnt toast still on top. “If you break his heart I'll snap you like a twig.”
Wade scoffs, rolls his eyes and leans back in his seat, staring at Al condescendingly, hoping she can sense the brainwaves he's sending her way. “Aren't you meant to protect me from him? I've known you longer!”
He can see Logan glance at the two through his peripheral vision, winks at him subtly alas he blinks too loud and alerts Al of their exchange.
“No. But also, Logan I know you can hear me so listen up, if the cops come knocking on my door and run rampant in my house you're both on the streets, understood? I can not have you two dillweeds compromising my cocaine stash.”
Logan nods frantically, forgetting she can't see, then verbalises his response: “Sure thing, Althea.”
“That means no more killing civilians.”
“Al! A little bit of Wolverine Etiquette? They're often very sensitive.” Wade quips, lightly smacking her on the arm as she just mumbles at him, dignifying him with no other reply.
Logan just grins, turns his attention back to the TV and hums softly as Mary comes to rest in his lap. Wade could get used to this.