Chapter Text
The move to the X-Mansion goes about as smoothly as the skin on Wade’s scarred-over, shiny bald head.
Which is to say, full of divots and rough patches.
The first issue is that Althea is attached to the apartment they’ve lived in for almost three years, her shriveled little heart seeming to seize any time anyone mentions moving.
“This place is close to bingo and the pot shop,” she argues when Logan brings up everyone permanently relocating to the X-mansion one Saturday night over meatloaf.
It’s just the four of them, Gambit and Kurt out on a date, and the tension around the table is thick. Laura turns her eyes from Logan to Althea then back again, her face that curious blank mask she wears when she has deep thoughts but doesn’t want to admit she does.
“Plus, it’s close to our cocaine dealer!” Althea continues, with just a hint of desperation in her voice.
“Ah, ah, ah!” Wade immediately cuts in, pointing his finger at her. “I’m pointing my finger at you! We stopped doing cocaine, remember? We’re trying to be good now!”
“Motherfucker,” she grumbles, shoving a forkful of mashed potatoes in her mouth.
Logan, with varying degrees of success, has been trying to wean Althea off the harder drugs for months now, and Wade has gone along in solidarity, limiting his indulgences to weed and hard liquor. But Althea is tenacious and a grumpy fucker when she’s coming down, so it’s been slow going.
Wade isn’t surprised she’s slipped a time or two. She’s been doing coke for probably as long as he’s been alive, if not longer.
Still, he at least promised Logan to abstain, and now mostly relies on weed to escape the world, more than happy to share his stash with Althea when the need for relief from everyday life becomes too much. The two of them like to sit on the couch while watching ridiculous TV shows and giggle.
With Logan spending a good portion of his week at the school now, dividing his time between his rooms there and the apartment, it’s often just Wade and Althea left to their own devices, like the bad old days before Logan joined their family.
Charles has given him a standing invitation, but Wade stays away from the mansion. Despite his friendship with Colossus, Ellie and Yukio, he still feels out of place and judged by the majority of the other X-Men and students.
The only one unphased by his presence outside of his core group of friends is Magneto.
That man makes a mean martini! Also, he’s fun to talk murder with.
It does make it hard to sleep on the nights Logan is away, though.
Deciding to keep a set of rooms at the mansion had more to do with Logan taking additional X-Men missions than a desire to live in his old home; there are still bruises that living there tends to poke at, and even though there are fewer panic attacks, it’s not always ideal.
But after the first few missions that ended just after the ass crack of dawn, they all realized it wasn’t practical for Logan to try to bike home, grab a change of clothes, and get back to the school for classes.
Thus, a set of permanent rooms for the Wolverine.
Wade hates it, if he’s being honest. He never says it, because he’s a good boyfriend who wants to be supportive, but he loathes it.
On the nights they aren’t together neither one of them is able to sleep well. One of them ends up calling the other, just to hear their voice. They talk nonsense, usually. Little things that are inconsequential, like the grocery shopping or what laundry needs to be done. They’ll leave the phones on all night, next to their heads on their pillows, unable to sleep without that small reminder they aren’t alone.
Remy and Laura still come back to the apartment on the weekends, often with Kurt accompanying them, but anyone with eyes can tell the tension is starting to stretch all of them a bit thin.
Something is going to break; they all know it.
None of them expects it to be Althea, quite literally breaking her ankle in two different places.
*
“Al!” Wade yells as he flings the door to the apartment open.
He cleaned up at the school, stealing Logan away from his mid-morning class for a quick fumble in his room as his suit spun in the industrial washing machine the X-Men used after missions. It had been a quick and dirty fuck, the two of them always a little more feral after Wade or Logan comes back from a fight, and now he’s humming with feelgood hormones and a few sanctioned murders under his belt.
Plus, his suit smells like lavender, and the scent of Logan’s shower gel still lingers on his skin.
Mary Puppins comes running to greet him, yarping her wheezing little bark while her nails skitter on the hardwood floors.
They tried trimming them once, but like the good Dogpool she is, they regenerated almost as fast as they were trimmed, so they’ve given up and have resigned themselves to paying for the scratch marks when they eventually move out.
“Hello, my little fluffy beef jerky girl!” he greets, bending down to pick up the barking dog as he usually does.
Unlike usual, however, she skitters away from him, still barking, and runs off towards Al’s room.
“Al?” Wade calls, his good mood fading when there’s no answer.
Dread starts to settle into his chest, heavy and thick as syrup, his throat tightening up with fear.
Blind Al is old, and delicate, but she’s also his and he’s not ready to see her gone yet, she can’t be gone, she has to stick around for years more to call him a lazy motherfucker and hit him in the shins with her cane.
Wade moves quickly into the bedroom, knowing he isn’t going to like what he finds, but steeling himself for the worst.
“Al?” he asks as he enters, fumbling for the light switch.
It smells like muscle ointment and the product Al uses in her hair.
He sees her hand first, sticking out just past the corner of the bed on the floor, and runs over to her.
“Al!” he yells, his cries joining the yapping chorus of Mary Puppins’ frantic barks.
*
Logan smiles dopily as he watches the kids making pemmican, his body loose and relaxed after Wade had dragged him back to their room for a little mid-day delight after his mission.
No matter how many times they make love, or fuck, or just fool around, it always leaves him feeling a bit silly and too cheerful, like a kid getting laid for the first time.
He’s had too many partners to remember, but the ones that mattered he can count on one hand with fingers left over. Wade’s definitely joined that number, and seeing him covered in blood and sweat, grinning his irrepressible grin and chattering about the latest fight, gets Logan a little hot.
They don’t often get to see each other during the day, especially during the week, so it was nice to spend a little quality time with him.
“Mr. Howlett?” a voice interrupts his happy daydreaming.
He looks over to the cracked open door to see one of the teenage teaching assistants standing there, worry creasing her brow.
His good mood pops like a bubble, bringing him down to earth faster than a crashed plane.
He reaches out on instinct.
“Charles?” he sends and receives an immediate response.
Calm overlaid by stifled worry fills his mind.
“Logan,” Charles answers, and the seriousness of his voice drives home that something is very, very wrong. “Mr. Wilson left a message with Melody, but it was rather vague. He said Ms. Althea has had a fall and they were on their way to Memorial.”
“Fuck!” Logan thinks vehemently. “I’m heading out, I’ll let you know the details once I know what’s going on.”
Charles agrees wordlessly, and Logan turns to his teaching partner.
“Kurt?” he calls, interrupting his attempts to help a little girl assemble the mixed berries and ground meat into a patty.
Kurt looks up, grin slowly fading as he takes in Logan’s expression.
“There’s been an accident, I’m heading out for the rest of the day. I’ll let you know what’s going on, or Gambit will,” Logan says, keys already in hand.
“Go,” Kurt urges, and Logan wastes no time in doing so.
He digs his phone out of his pocket even as he makes his way towards the garage, dialing Wade’s number by memory.
It goes to voicemail immediately, something it almost never does.
People passing by in the hallway take one look at his face and scramble out of his way.
“Charles?” he asks, fear starting to make his brain feel staticky. “I can’t get through to Wade, can you contact him? Let him know I’m on my way?”
“I shall try,” Charles assures. “Mr. Wilson’s mutation makes it… difficult… to reach him.”
Logan doesn’t respond, just makes his way to his bike and tears out of the garage, rocks and dirt billowing into a cloud as he heads towards the highway.
He isn’t ready to say goodbye yet. (He never is.)
He pushes the bike as fast as it will go.
*
Wade is still wearing his suit, mask and gloves off, holding Althea’s hand tightly. She’s ashy and trembling slightly, but awake and answering the doctor’s questions.
The little room they put her in is barely big enough for the doctor and the two nurses doing nursey things, but it still feels too large and too empty.
Wade is barely listening, focused on the blood still covering the side of Al’s face from where she had scraped her temple on the carpet. It’s just a smear, but it seems to stand out in vivid color while the rest of the world is coated in grey.
He’s paying enough attention to understand no surgery is needed, just a cast and firm instructions to rest.
Althea trembles harder, and Wade breathes deep, trying to focus.
“Are you cold, ma’am?” one of the nurses asks, a tiny little Filipino woman with short, purple hair and dark blue scrubs, the corners of her eyes crisscrossed with lines.
“Yes,” Althea whispers, and the doctor pauses in his explanation while the nurse retrieves a warmed blanket, settling it with quick, practiced movements around Althea’s legs.
“Thanks,” Wade manages to say, and receives a gentle, understanding smile before the woman goes back to one of the beeping machines.
“Ma’am,” the doctor says, his tone softer, gentler than it was before. “You’re going to be fine, but this may be a signal that it’s time you started to look into different living –“
“She already has an alternate living arrangement planned,” Wade cuts in, desperate to head the man off.
This is not something Althea needs to deal with right now. They’ll discuss the details later, all of them, when she’s home.
She squeezes his hand tighter, almost bruising, and he squeezes back.
The doctor hesitates before he nods, eyeing Wade’s suit for several seconds with a conflicted expression on his face.
“Do you have any questions?” he finally asks, when nobody else breaks the silence.
“No, thank you,” Althea says, and her voice is wobbly and hoarse.
Wade hates it.
The doctor takes his leave, the nurses following shortly after, and it’s just the two of them.
“You really need to stop trying to find ways to kill me, Al,” Wade manages to murmur, using his free hand to grab one of the washcloths that always seems to find its way onto hospital tables. He dabs it in the big cup of water they left behind and sets about cleaning up the blood on the side of her face.
Her sightless eyes gaze back at him, the iris mostly white and hazy. She doesn’t release his hand, and he doesn’t try to pull away.
When he’s done, he settles back in his chair, for once at a loss for words. He ends up turning on the TV and letting the sounds of canned laughter fill the room.
Neither one of them laughs with it.
*
Logan arrives forty minutes after leaving the mansion, the crisp November air helping him concentrate on the road and not the possible situation ahead.
Charles has been unable to reach Wade, and with so little information to go on, Logan isn’t certain what he’s walking into.
When he finally reaches Althea’s room, he has to take a few moments to just breathe.
Althea, grey and dwarfed under a pile of blankets, looks small on the hospital bed, Wade sitting beside her, still in his suit, holding her hand.
Both of them wear the same distressed, blank look on their faces, their eyes turned towards a TV showing a rerun of an old Western.
“Hey,” Logan greets, moving into the room.
Wade turns to him, his face pale and blotchy, red patches of sores appearing and then fading on the delicate skin of his neck and head.
A sign his cancer is reacting to his stress and raised cortisol levels.
Logan moves to his side, kissing his temple before turning to Althea.
“Hey, Al,” he greets, thankful to see she’s awake and aware.
There’s a scrape on the left side of her face, and a bruise in the crook of her elbow where the IV is placed, and her ankle is swathed in ice packs and bandages.
“Hey, sweetie,” she greets, her smile frail but there, and he takes her free hand in his, placing a kiss between her knuckles.
“Al decided to scare the shit out of us,” Wade begins, his tone filled with forced cheer. “I think literally for Mary Puppins, there may be some mess we have to clean up when we get back.”
“Fucker,” Al grumbles, the word lacking its usual fire. “I bumped into the dresser and lost my balance, that’s all.”
“We’ll take care of it when we get back,” Logan soothes. He shares a glance with Wade, sees his own concern and fear mirrored back at him tenfold. “You know, Al, there are easier ways to get us to wait on you hand and foot. You didn’t have to beak anything.”
She snorts, a little color coming back to her face, but Logan can tell she’s still shaken. She probably isn’t on strong enough pain killers, and older bones take longer to heal.
They’ll figure it out.
He reaches over and turns the TV off, since none of them are really listening to it, and the soundtrack is grating on his nerves.
“Wade, why don’t you call Laura and Gambit and let them know what’s going on?” he suggests gently. “I’ll stay with Althea, and you can get some hot chocolate for us all, huh?”
It takes a minute for Wade to process the words, and he’s clearly reluctant to leave Al’s side.
“Go on, hot chocolate sounds great,” she prompts, and Wade finally stands.
“I’ll be back shortly,” he promises, and kisses her cheek before heading out of the room, slower and less graceful than he usually is.
Logan squeezes Althea’s hand and pulls the blankets up closer to her chest.
*
Four days later, Logan carries Althea from the cab to the apartment, cradling her frail body close to his chest, Wade right beside him.
It’s been a rough few days, since it took a while for the swelling to go down enough for them to do a cast on Althea’s ankle. Most of their family had trickled in to visit, Peter bringing a fresh pair of clothes for Wade, who refused to leave the hospital.
Logan has been the one to send updates through phone calls and texts to everyone, leaving Wade to dote on Althea to his heart’s content. It’s only after she threatened to gut him with one of his baby knives that he seemed to relax and settle down.
Now, back at home with Laura, Remy and Kurt, it’s time for the house meeting that’s been put off.
“I don’t feel comfortable leaving you here by yourself,” Logan begins, taking one for the team.
Al glares, but doesn’t contradict him, her ankle resting on a small mountain of pillows, dressed in her granny pajamas.
“And it’s not practical for us to stop taking missions or going to school,” Logan continues.
He ignores the way her expression hardens behind her glasses.
“Al,” Wade says, his voice serious and almost too gentle. “It’s time.”
Laura scoots her chair closer, clearing her throat.
“Tia,” she begins, reaching out to rest her hand on Al’s shoulder. “Let us spoil you.”
“Cher,” Gambit’s soothing voice cuts some of the mounting tension. “Let ol’ Professor X set ye up in a room all yer own, so we don’ have to go far to kiss ye goodnight.”
“I promise, the school is very nice,” Kurt agrees.
Al sighs, her body visibly deflating, and Logan knows they’ve won the first battle.
All of them know that where Al goes, Wade will follow.
Thus, moving day.