Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ellie

“Don’t be nervous.”

It was possibly the tenth time he’d said it that morning and she hadn’t been, but she was starting to think maybe she should be. 

“I’m not,” Ellie said anyway, hoping to calm both their nerves. 

The first day of a new school was always awkward and a little scary, at least until she got her bearings. 

She would know; this was her fourth First Day this year. 

“I was talking to myself,” her papi said, smiling afterward so she knew it was a joke. But he was nervous. She could tell. He was super quiet all morning — not like him at all — and he’d had to tie his shoes three times before the bows finally held. He kept dropping stuff too. Her papi was silly sometimes (most of the time) but he wasn’t clumsy for real. Not usually. 

He hadn’t been like this with the other schools, not since kindergarten days, but this one was apparently special. Full of kids just like her. 

Well, not just like. They all had lots of different mutations, they wouldn’t be the same as hers. She’d only ever met adults with mutations before (basically just Uncle Tony and that lady with the black circle around her eye that one time and maybe a handful of others), so she was way more excited than nervous at the idea of meeting more kids her own age who she didn’t have to hide around. 

This school was gonna be great. She had no idea why her papi was so nervous about it. 

Gabby

“It’s okay if you wanna go eat with your friends,” her dad said, nodding towards the open doorway that led out into the hall where a group of kids from her class were laughing and shoving each other. 

The mansion had a big dining room with four long tables for students to eat at, but the faculty had their own kitchen and dining room where she usually ate all of her meals with her dad and the other teachers. 

“They’re not my friends,” she muttered, stacking pancakes on her plate and layering bacon and syrup in between. 

“Weren’t you playing with them last week?” he asked, sliding the bowl of strawberries towards her after scoping out a spoonful for himself. 

Pancake, syrup, bacon, syrup. 

“Yep.”

Strawberry slices, syrup, pancake, syrup. 

“Something happen?”

Bacon, syrup, strawberry slices—  

Her dad grabbed the brown plastic bottle out of her hand. 

“Enough with the syrup. Your pancakes are gonna dissolve.” 

She huffed, added one more layer of bacon, then started working on carefully cutting it into triangles. 

“Gabs? What happened?”

She shrugged. 

“Nothing. They just don’t like me.”

“Why do you say that?”

Ugh, she didn’t want to talk about it!

He was staring at her, that look that said you’d better start talking or I’m gonna start talking and it’s gonna be a loooooong boring lecture. 

She sighed heavily, little shoulders moving up and down in an exaggerated motion. 

“I had to go to the bathroom and when I was walking back I heard them talking about me and saying…stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Said my code name should be Guinea Pig cuz I was made in a lab.” She looked up at the sound of scraping metal to see the fork in his hand bent nearly in half. His jaw was clenched in that “I’m about to tell you to close your eyes because I’m going to hurt someone” kinda way he got when there were bad guys around. 

She didn’t want to tell the rest — the part that was gonna get her in trouble — but if she didn’t it was basically lying and she wasn’t supposed to lie. 

“They were all laughing and then I kinda maybe popped their basketball with my claw and Imighthavethreatenedtosettheirhomeworkonfire,” she mumbled the last part super fast hoping her dad wouldn’t hear. 

Fat chance. He heard everything. 

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. That meant she wasn’t getting yelled at, but she was probably getting the “disappointed” talk which was way worse cuz it made daddy sad. 

She chewed her pancake without really tasting it, staring down at her plate. 

“Hey,” he tipped her chin up to look at him. “Those kids are idiots; you don’t wanna spend time with people like that anyway. Proud of you for not following through with the threat this time.” 

She beamed at him. 

“Really?”

“Really. I know how hard it is to stay in control, especially when people are being mean and deserve it. You did good, kid.” He kissed the top of her head. “You happen to remember all of their names?”

Ellie

The school was huge and fancy, way different from her other ones. It was basically a giant house on a bunch of land and she couldn’t wait to explore it all. 

The teachers were nice; they all seemed happier than her last ones. Way less grumpy, even the art history teacher who frowned a lot and had scary eyebrows. 

And the classes were fun. She already knew some of the stuff, but there was a whole class on mutations and the history of mutants! Her old school barely even mentioned them except the occasional anti-bullying sign or that one banner Mrs. Greene had of a bunch of kids holding hands and one of them was blue. 

Her first class of the day was math, which was boring but easy to catch up with. Starting in the middle of the semester meant she was on the back foot with everything, but never for long. She was good at figuring stuff out. 

There were a couple free seats, mostly around a girl with shoulder length black hair and scars on her face. They weren’t like her papi’s, they were long slashes straight across both eyes. They looked kinda badass. Maybe that was why she was sitting alone? That plus the scowl. 

Ellie wasn’t deterred in the slightest. 

Taking one of the desks next to her in the back of the room she stuck out her hand and introduced herself. 

“Hi. I’m Ellie.”

The girl blinked at her for a few seconds before giving her a toothy grin and replying. 

“I’m Gabby.” 

Turned out, there was a free seat next to Gabby in every class, which worked out perfectly for Ellie because she was pretty sure they were best friends now. 

Sure enough, by the end of the week she had decided Gabby was the coolest person in the whole school and fate had gotten her kicked out of all those other schools so that they could meet and become the coolest superhero duo to ever exist. 

When Friday rolled around she was actually sad to not have school the next day. 

Crazy. 

But that was easily solved by convincing her papi to take her to the park to meet up with Gabby so she could teach her how to roller skate. How was she a whole eight years old and she’d never been roller skating! Ellie was going to fix that. Stat.

Logan 

Logan watched Gabby brighten up over the last couple of days. He’d been worried about her after she’d told him about the incident with those kids; you’d think with all of them being mutants they’d be a little more accepting, but Logan knew all too well that cliques formed even in the smallest of groups and sometimes the only thing you needed to have in common was that you were less different than someone else. 

He’d taken the mature route and had a talk with Chuck about it — after ‘Roro had spent a couple hours talking him down. 

Since then, he’d kept an extra close eye on her, but she seemed to have bounced back. The new girl, Ellie, had a lot to do with that. 

They spent most of his class passing notes back and forth while he pretended not to notice, and apparently every other class too. Gabby talked about her nonstop at dinner and had even eaten lunch in the main hall the entire week, tucked away at the end of one of the tables, the two of them giggling and trading snacks back and forth. 

Most students who lived off campus were legacies; kids whose parents were mutants and had worked with or learned from the X-Men in some capacity. He knew most of them; he’d been around a while. But this one was different. He didn’t recognize the last name — Camacho — but there was something about her scent that he couldn’t quite place, but was deeply familiar. It was driving him crazy. He knew better than to ask though. Most of these kids — including his own — had a rough start in life. Many were living in single-parent homes, if they had parents at all. Plenty didn’t. That’s how most of them came to live at the school. 

No, he’d figure it out on his own eventually. Or he’d get frustrated enough and just go read her file. He avoided doing that whenever possible though because Chuck always editorialized in the margins and he didn’t want to be swayed on his opinion of any of them before they had a chance to show him who they were. 

As far as he was concerned, Ellie was a bright, polite little girl who didn’t so much as flinch when Gabby’s bone claws came out the first time, and that was enough to put her in his good books. And to have him waking up at eight in the morning on a Saturday to take his daughter to the store to buy roller skates before heading to the park. 

He’d barely put the truck in park before Gabby was jumping out, skates dangling from one arm. 

His phone rang the moment he opened the door, Laura’s name popping up on the screen along with a photo of her and Gabby sticking their tongues out at the camera. 

“I’ll be right there sweetie, your sister’s calling. Go on and find your friend.”

He answered the phone, watching Gabby run off in the other direction toward the paved skate area of the park. 

A few minutes into the conversation he froze, a familiar scent stinging his nostrils. 

“Hey, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.”

He hung up and spun around, body tense and ready for a fight. 

“The fuck’re you doing here, Wilson?”

The mercenary blinked, clearly startled by his presence. 

“That’s a rude way to greet an old friend,” he snarked, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked ridiculous in cargo pants and an eyesore of a Hawaiian shirt over long sleeves, somehow standing out more than if he’d been wearing his usual red and black leather getup. 

“We’re not friends.”

“You are old though,” Wade said, snapping finger guns and winking. 

Logan growled and let his claws slip out just a tiny bit. Just enough for Wade to see and no one else. They were in public. 

“Down boy, I’m not here for you. Swear on Stan Lee’s grave, I’m just as surprised to see you as you are to see me.” He held his hands up in a placating fashion. Logan wasn’t fully convinced. 

“Then why the fuck are you here?” He asked again. He wanted to look for Gabby, but he didn’t want to draw attention to her if this was some kind of ambush.

He was in the middle of assessing three different exit strategies when Wade’s response short circuited his brain. 

“I’m chaperoning my daughter’s play date, like a responsible parent. What are you doing lurking around a playground in broad day—  ohmyshitfuckingchrist. Please tell me you do not have a child named —”

Chapter Text

Wade

“Daddy!” 

Wade was cut off from his panicked ramble by a little girl with green eyes and black hair barreling towards them, tiny hand gripped firmly around Ellie’s. 

Fuck his life. 

“This can’t be happening,” he muttered under his breath. 

“You said you were gonna come watch,” she demanded of him. 

Logan. 

The Wolverine. 

Who she was calling daddy. 

Wade thought he might be having a stroke. 

“Papi, this is Mr. Logan, he’s my teacher. And Gabby’s dad, duh,” Ellie informed him.

Yup. Definitely having a stroke. 

“We’ve met,” Logan responded, like the words were being ripped from his throat. Wade didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. How was this his real? 

“Mr. Camacho you should let Ellie come live at the mansion cuz then we could see each other every day, even weekends and holidays and summer. Except some kids go home in the summer. But she could stay. And we could share a room or she could have the room right next to mine and we could cut a door through the wall — Daddy can build doors — and —“

“Take a breath sweetpea,” Wade interrupted, a little concerned she was going to make herself pass out. He bent down to be at eye level with her tiny self.  “It’s Mr. Wilson, but you can just call me Wade. And that all sounds very nice and fun, but Ellie has a home. Wouldn’t wanna take up space for a kid that really needs it. You guys still see each other plenty.”

The resemblance was truly uncanny. Same exact frown. Her eyebrows were even doing the angry grrrr thing that had been directed at Wade more times than he could count. Unfortunate for her, because he’d built up a tolerance to it over the years. 

“Living at the mansion does provide a stable learning environment for kids with… unpredictable home lives. Could be beneficial. Three square meals, routine, structure,” Logan added. 

So does prison, he resisted the urge to say. 

He straightened back up, jaw clenched, forcing himself to smile through the thinly-veiled dig. Who the fuck was he to comment on Wade’s parenting abilities? 

“Exactly. All things my Elliebear already has, so that would be redundant.”

Logan snorted derisively. 

“Last time I saw ya, y’couldn’t tell which of your personalities was real or not, let alone what day of the week it was. I doubt—“

“Lot’s changed in a decade,” he cut off what was surely gearing up to be a lovely trip down memory lane. “Ellie, sweetness, why don’t you guys go ahead and get back to skating. We’ll be over in a bit. The grown ups need to have a chat.”

As soon as both kids were out of sight Wade turned and swung, his punch landing square on Logan’s jaw. 

He was proud of himself for not flinching at the crack of his own bones. 

Fucking adamantium skeleton. 

He had about three seconds of smug satisfaction before he was impaled, three long blades straight through his side. 

Shoulda seen that coming.  

Good thing this shirt's mostly red. 

“Fine,” Wade wheezed, pulling a small, thin knife from his belt and lodging it in Logan’s gut up to the hilt. “I was gonna stick with bare knuckles, but since you asked so nicely.” He twisted the blade and the ones in his side retracted a few inches before sinking back in at a slightly different angle, tearing a new path through his abdomen. 

“The fuck is your problem, Wilson?”

“My problem? You’re the one spitting insults left and right.” 

Logan pulled the claws out and side-stepped, knocking Wade’s hand away where it still held his blade. He pulled the knife out and tossed it at Wade’s feet. 

He would’ve left it there out of principle but this was a park and if he got distracted and forgot to pick it up later some kid might come along and stab themselves and then it'd be a whole thing. 

Being a responsible adult blows.  

“Didn’t insult ya bub, just stating the facts—“

Another swing and hit, this time to the stomach (less bone shattering on Wade’s end). 

“Oh fuck off, you self-righteous prick. Who even let you off your leash long enough to procreate? Was it like when your cat gets out then comes back a couple months later with a litter and a bad attitude? Except in your case the attitude comes as the factory default.”

Okay, if he’s being honest, he deserved that throat punch. That was a shitty thing to say. But so was everything coming out of the other man’s mouth. And he started it. 

His back hit a nearby tree with enough force to knock the wind out of him. 

“S’miracle how anyone managed to tolerate your existence enough to have a kid with you,” he growled, face inches away and hand around Wade’s throat. 

At another time he might’ve found it erotic, as it was, he just found it annoying. 

“Fun fact: she didn’t. And then she died, so good job bringing that up. Guess Xavier’s doesn’t offer sensitivity training, huh?”

He hadn’t been planning to share that information, but the look on Logan’s face was worth it. 

Good. He should feel like an ass.

He took advantage of the moment of slipped concentration and headbutted him (again, bad idea. Adamantium skull, dumbass), and reversed their positions. He grabbed Logan by the front of his shirt, reaching for another knife, but the sounds of children laughing in the background reminded him where they were and what they were doing. 

He took his hand off the blade. 

“Say what you want about me to my face or behind my back, I don’t give a fuck, but don’t you ever say shit like that in front of my little girl again, do I make myself clear?”

Logan glanced down at where Wade was wrinkling his shirt then back up, adopting an unaffected air that made Wade want to headbutt him again, fuck the consequences. 

“Crystal. Now you wanna get your hands offa me before I cut ‘em off?”

Wade let go and took a step back. 

He ran a hand over his face and grimaced when it came back bloody. Must’ve split his head open on Logan’s thick-ass skull. Great. 

He looked down at the patch of blood on Logan’s torn tank top then at his own abdomen. 

Fuck. 

Logan seemed to notice the problem at the same time as him because he groaned, pushed off from the tree, and stripped his shirts off, using the white undershirt to wipe off his knuckles and abdomen before replacing the flannel and buttoning it up. 

Wade forced himself not to get distracted. He wasn’t that starry-eyed, obsessed fanboy anymore. Wolverine abs held no power over him. 

He focused on his own self, cleaning up what he could see and pulling his phone out to check for anymore blood on his face before going back to the girls. Logan followed, but stayed far enough away from Wade to make it clear they were walking to the same place but they weren’t walking together. 

Logan

“Put your shoes back on, we’re leaving,” he told his daughter as soon as he reached them. She tilted forward, breaking abruptly and nearly toppling over if it hadn't been for Ellie's hand grabbing her elbow.

“But daddy we just got here!” she argued, making no moves to do as he’d said. Wade motioned for Ellie and she let go, skating over to him while continuing to glance back at Gabby, no doubt trying to figure out what was happening.

“I have to go help your sister with something,” he lied, figuring she’d be a little more willing to cooperate if she thought it was for Laura and not just him. He'd figure out the details late, he just needed to be far, far away from that man before he did something that got them all on the news. 

“Okay? So go. I’ll stay here.” She went to skate past him but he put his hand out, stopping her in her tracks. She crossed her arms, pouting.  

“Gabby, go put your shoes on.” 

He could hear Wade having a similarly fruitless conversation with his own daughter a few feet away. Apart from that the park was, thankfully, nearly empty, probably due to it still being early. He picked up her bright yellow sneakers and handed them to her and she promptly threw them on the ground.   

“I don’t wanna! I wanna stay!”

He took a breath, then another for good measure. Tantrums were his least favorite part of parenthood. He had to constantly remind himself that emotional regulation didn’t come easy, and it seemed to be an especially difficult feat for his bloodline, but logic didn’t make dealing with a furious eight year old with claws and a penchant for firestarting any less frustrating. 

“Gabrielle Elizabeth we are leaving. Put your shoes on and go get in the truck. Right. Now.” He didn’t yell; the tone was enough to get his point across. 

Ellie was already sitting on the asphalt, shoving her socked feet angrily into her high tops. Gabby took a seat next to her and followed suit, even going so far as to tie her skate laces together to make them easier to hold – although Logan suspected that had a lot more to do with procrastinating than being helpful because that was definitely a knot he was going to have to cut. 

He waited while they hugged goodbye, clearing his throat pointedly after a full minute had passed. 

“Let’s go. You’ll see each other at school Monday,” he said, ready to be done with the whole disaster of a playdate. 

He made a mental note to start reading the student files, at least the ones of any students that wanted to hang out with his daughter. This could've all been avoided if he'd just done a little research.

“No, they won’t.”

Both girls turned, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, toward Wade. Logan was a little shocked too, if he was being honest. He didn't expect the merc to take it that far, but... it was probably for the best. Not that the girls would see it that way. He watched the intake of breath that was undoubtedly about to precede a tantrum of epic proportions and cut it off before it had a chance to start, snatching Gabby up and carrying her to the truck, roller skates dangling from her hand and banging painfully against his back the entire time. 

Gabby stayed silent the whole way home, staring out the passenger side window and refusing to look in his direction. 

She continued to avoid him while she stomped through the front doors and down the hall, but froze halfway to her room and turned on him slowly. 

Shit. 

He should’ve waited to toss the shirt until she was further away. It’d been tucked between his waistband and overshirt since the park and she hadn’t smelled it, but it came unfolded when he took it out to drop it in a nearby garbage can and filled the air with the undeniable smell of blood. His and Wade’s. 

He should’ve realized when he wiped his knuckles off the bastard’s scent was going to seep into his shirt. It was close enough to Ellie’s to be unmistakable to his daughter’s perceptive nose. 

She turned around and marched over to him, hands on hips, stomping her foot and demanding, “What did you do to Mr. Wade?!”

“Nothing,” he lied.

“You made him bleed!”

“He’s fine. Look, honey, it’s complicated. Mr. Wade,” he struggled with how to phrase it and eventually settled on a vague, “isn’t a good person."

“Yes he is!” She refuted, and started counting off on her fingers. “He buys the fancy paper and crayons and Ellie says he plays dress up and does all the voices at story time and he makes the best blueberry pancakes and doesn’t yell at her for using all the syrup and—“

“Enough Gabby. You’ve made your point, and I hear you, I do, and those are all fine traits, but it’s not that simple.”

“Yes it is! You just don’t like him and you hurt him and now Ellie’s gonna go back to normie school and I’m never going to see her again and it’s all your fault! You ruin everything!” She turned and ran into her bedroom, slamming the heavy oak door behind her and adding a shouted, “I hate you!” for good measure. 

Logan sighed. Wasn’t the first time she’d said it — she was at that age where every “no” felt like the end of the world — but it didn’t make it sting any less. And it wasn’t even his fault! Mostly. Wade threw the first punch. What was he supposed to do?

He knocked on her door a few hours later after giving her a little time to cool off. He wasn’t sure why he’d expected her to come out earlier; he was pretty sure his stubbornness had increased exponentially in the passing down of his genes. She could be even worse than Laura when she set her mind to it. 

“Gabby, honey, dinner’s ready.”

“I’m not hungry,” came the reply through the wood. 

“You have to eat,” he tried to explain. “I made spaghetti.” It was her favorite and a cheap trick that usually worked like a charm. 

“I’m on a hunger strike. Like Gandhi. I’m not eating until you apologize to Mr. Wade and he says Ellie can come back.”

Who was teaching her this stuff? He needed to have a talk with Kitty about the social studies curriculum. 

“Suit yourself. There’ll be a plate for you in the oven when you change your mind.”

Laura was in the kitchen when he returned, sitting on one of the barstools with her feet propped up on the island. He pushed them off as he walked by and sat the untouched plate down. 

“Can you please convince your sister to eat this?”

She looked up from her phone and eyed the food suspiciously. 

“Since when has she needed convincing to eat spaghetti? It’s her favorite.”

Logan sighed and started cleaning up so he had something to do with his hands aside from pulling his hair out. 

“Since she’s decided to go on a hunger strike.”

Laura snorted, fingers typing away again. 

“What the fuck did you do this time?”

“Why do you assume I did something?”

She raised an eyebrow. 

Rude. 

“Met her new best friend’s dad at the park today,” he started, already feeling the beginnings of a headache creeping in behind his eyes. He needed a fucking drink.

“Ellie?”

“Yup. Guess who it is.”

“I dunno, who?” 

“Wade fucking Wilson.”

Laura choked on the sip of water she’d just taken. Once she could breathe again she started laughing, loudly, drawing the looks of a few of the other facility having dinner. 

“Would you cut it out,” he hissed. “It’s not funny.”

Laura wiped a tear from her eye, pocketing her phone now that the conversation had gotten much more interesting to her apparently. 

“It’s hilarious. Like, she couldn’t have found a worse choice if she’d tried. Maybe like, if Victor has a spawn out there somewhere—“

“God forbid.”

“But damn. The universe really hates you, huh? I thought you were just being overdramatic the last time you said it.” 

She was still laughing at him. 

“Who knew he even had a kid? That’s kind of terrifying.”

“You’re telling me.”

Wade wasn’t a terrible person, and okay, he had saved Logan’s ass (and the rest of the world) on occasion. Rare occasion. But he’d betrayed him just as much, if not more. He was erratic and reckless and certifiably insane. And, based on every interaction Logan had ever had with the man, lived to annoyed the ever loving fuck out of him. 

Back in the early days, Logan had hated his starry-eye hero worship because he didn’t deserve it. He wasn’t someone anyone should be looking up to — especially back then. (He was trying nowadays, but he still wouldn’t suggest anyone picking him as a role model. There were plenty of other actual heroes out there to choose from.) Then, over time, it’d just gotten annoying. Almost a mockery. A constant reminder of all the ways he’d fucked up and all the things he wanted to forget. Wade was constantly bringing all of that to the surface — a metric ton of self-loathing and anger issues — and he’d hated it. 

He couldn’t reconcile the memory of that man with the one who’d socked him in the jaw earlier that day for insulting him in front of his kid. 

“So why the hunger strike?” Laura asked, pulling him out of his ruminations. “It’s not like you’re forbidding her from hanging out with Ellie because of who her dad is.”

He turned to the sink, sorting through the dishes and avoiding that statement. 

“Dad!”

He hunched his shoulders, flinching at the (rightfully) accusatory tone. In his defense, he wasn’t the one forbidding her to come back. 

“I’m not! We had a… disagreement earlier and he may have implied Ellie wouldn’t be coming back when they left.” 

“A disagreement.” 

“Yes.”

“That you started.”

“I didn’t start it! Look, I don’t control what he does with his kid. If he doesn’t want her here that’s his choice.” He dropped the pasta pot in the sink a little too aggressively, splashing sudsy water all over his shirt. Great. 

“This is why you’re not on the welcoming committee,” Laura pointed out unhelpfully. 

“Would you just take your sister the damn food.”

Wade

“You’re not going back there. We’ll find you a different school,” Wade said, tossing Ellie’s book bag and skates in the “shoe corner” by the door. 

The ride home had been tense and quiet, outwardly. Inwardly, his brain was having about twenty seven different conversations at once, all of them culminating in an unanimous what the fuck?! 

“But Papi, she's my best friend in the whole entire universe. And all the other universes. And I like my teachers and the classes don’t suck—“

“Watch your language.”

She rolled her eyes but he chose to pretend not to see, given the day she was having. 

“The classes aren’t booooring and Mr. Logan gives us art for homework! He’s the best and his class is so cool — way better than Mrs. Finley and her stupid worksheets. I didn’t learn aaaaanything from her. Did you know the first drawings are over fifty thousand years old? That’s older than Neanderthals! And that art is an expression of creative and abstract thought and humans didn’t always have the capa- casp– they couldn’t always do that.”

“You’ve been in that school for a week, what the fuck,” he muttered under his breath. Okay, so she was learning things. She learned new things all the time. They’d find another school with some kind of gifted program or something. So what if they were running out of options in New York? They could move; he was flexible. 

“You have to let me go back,” she demanded. 

“I don’t have to let you do anything,” he reminded her. 

“I’m not going back to my old school!” She shouted, firmly putting her foot down.  

“Yeah, no shit. They expelled you; going back’s not an option.” He cringed at himself. That wasn’t her fault and he didn’t want her feeling bad about it. He shouldn’t’ve brought it up. 

Luckily, she didn’t seem to care other than to use it as an excuse to have to stay at Xavier’s.  

“Then why can’t I stay there? I like it there.”

Why indeed. How to explain it to an eight year old? 

“The X-Men and I have a… complicated history. I’m not exactly on their Christmas card list.”

“That didn’t matter before,” she pointed out. Damn her simple logic. 

“I didn’t know you were gonna befriend the daughter of THE X-Man before.”

“Why don’t you like Mr. Logan? He’s sooooooo nice! He lets us eat snacks in class and answers every question and never tells me to put my hand down cuz I asked too many and Gabby says he makes up bedtime songs and makes the best spaghetti in world and—“

“Look, you don’t have to convince me. I like the guy; he’s the one who has a problem with me. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Could you be any more cliched?

We’re one laugh track away from being a sitcom. 

“No! I won’t understand and I won’t forgive you. EVER!” She threw her shoes in the corner and turned, running off toward her bedroom shouting, “You’re the worst!”

Wade could handle a lot of things — stabbings, gunshots, explosions, dismemberment, etc— but that? All because he let his wounded pride and jealousy get the better of him? Absolutely not. He was not about to let this become her villain origin story. 

He would just have to suck it up and deal with the fact that his daughter was bffs with the kid of the guy he’d give his left nut to be considered even cordial acquaintances with. Who still saw him as no better than the dirt on the bottom of his shoe. 

Fan-fucking-tastic. 

He could do this. 

He had to do this. 

For Ellie. 

Maximum effort.  

Logan

The next morning Gabby was still refusing to eat, glaring wordlessly at Logan until he’d finished his omelette, her own growing cold on her plate. 

At least she’d eaten dinner. Laura had reported back that she’d finished her plate and two slices of garlic bread after swearing her sister to secrecy and making Laura promise she’d say it was her that ate the food if asked. She was an effective double-agent, but only when it came to Gabby's well-being. Any other type of secrets torture couldn't pry from her lips.

He caught sight of Gabby stuffing a muffin into her pocket on the way back to her room, so he wasn’t too concerned about the long term effects of her hunger strike. 

She’d get over it. 

Eventually. 

By the time Monday rolled around Logan was starting to think that might’ve been wishful thinking. Her longest silent treatment record before now had been eighteen hours (she wasn’t very good at not talking). As of ten minutes ago they’d just passed the thirty six hour mark and there was no end in sight. 

He knocked on her door, going to check on her after she failed to appear for breakfast. 

“Gabby, sweetheart, you need to come have breakfast before class starts. You’re gonna be late.”

A note slipped under the door, a jaggedly torn page with splotches where it looked like the ink had gotten wet and run. 

I’m not going. I’m sick. 

He sighed. He’d given her the weekend to sulk because he felt guilty, but he was going to have to put his foot down if it started bleeding into her school life. She couldn’t stay mad at him forever. Probably. And it certainly didn't preclude her from learning. She could do both.

“If you’re sick then you need to go see Hank,” he countered, hoping that calling her bluff would work. 

Laura spotted him talking to the closed door and came over. He tilted the paper to show her the message. 

“Just let her have the sick day. She cried herself to sleep last night.”

Logan blinked at her. 

“What?” 

She shrugged. 

“Asked me if this is what pain feels like.”

Jesus fucking Christ he’s a goddamn monster . 

He’d taken bullets that hurt less than hearing that did. He ran a hand through his hair. A fake hunger strike was one thing, he could handle a mad little girl, but a sad one? A heartbroken one? He wasn’t strong enough for that kind of torture.

“All right Gabs, you don’t have to go to class today,” he told her through the door. “Try to eat something and if you need me come get me, even if it’s the middle of class.” He waited but, as expected, there was no response. 

“I love you.”

Again, crickets. 

Laura patted him on the shoulder sympathetically and walked with him all the way to his class room. 

“You know you have to fix this, right?” She asked on the way.

“Yeah Laura, I know. I will.” 

He didn’t know how he was going to convince Wade to even speak to him after Saturday’s debacle, let alone be convinced to let Ellie come back, but he’d make it happen, somehow. 

There were still a few minutes before the start of class, off-campus students still trickling in, so he wandered over to the main area where he could see the new arrivals through the window, just in case. 

He didn’t expect to see her, but a dad could hope. 

Logan: Go tell your sister to get dressed and get to class. Her friend is here. 

He texted Laura. He’d missed Ellie getting dropped off, but he caught her scent on the way back to his classroom and turned just in time to see her going into math. 

If he believed in a merciful god he would’ve gotten down on his knees and thanked them. 

Laura: Seriously?! Omg she’s gonna be so happy. That was fast. Good job 

As much as he’d like to take credit for it, he couldn’t. 

Logan: Wasn't me. I didn’t do anything yet. 

Laura: You know you still have to, right? 

He knew that was going to be her reply before he read it, and yeah, technically, he should still make the effort.

Or maybe Wade was cool just forgetting it ever happened and moving on. Had she thought of that?

…

…

Laura: DAD

Laura: you HAVE to apologize

She didn’t have to be right all the time. It was goddamn annoying. 

Logan: I know. I will. 

Laura: you said that earlier 

Logan: I mean it. 

He did. He owed it to Gabby to do what he could to make up for Saturday. Sweeping it under the rug wasn’t an option — as much as he wished it was. He was over a century old, he could get the fuck over himself and apologize to the most annoying man in existence for the sake of his daughter’s happiness. It was a small price to pay. 

Logan: Go wake your sister. I’ve gotta work. 

The day dragged with the weight of what he needed to do hanging on him. At least Gabby was talking to him again. He caught her before class and had a heart to heart. The upside of childhood dramatics was that once they were resolved, they tended to be forgotten about quickly. One of these days he was gonna do something to actually make her hold a grudge, but he figured he probably had at least until her teenage years for that. 

He wasn’t exactly cut out for this – parenthood – but he was trying. 

The end of the school day found him loitering on the lawn, scanning the group of parents picking up their kids, looking for one in particular. He spotted him standing off to the side of the crowd, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans and hood pulled up over his head looking more like he was on the lamb from the government than waiting for his daughter to get out of school. 

Logan walked over to him. 

“Can we talk?” he asked, skipping over the pleasantries. 

“Not necessary,” Wade responded, not bothering to even glance his way.  

Logan huffed and turned to leave — if he didn’t want an apology it was no skin off Logan’s back — then caught sight of Gabby glaring at him from the entranceway. Her death stare coulda given Summers a run for his money. 

He held up his hands and sighed again, turning back around. 

“Apparently it is.” 

Wade moved subtly to look around him and he could tell Gabby was still there by the way the man pursed his lips, trying not to laugh. 

“Go on then.”

“I apologize for Saturday. What I said was out of line and the violence was uncalled for.”

Wade snorted, finally looking him in the face.

“Wow, how heartfelt and succinct. Did you rehearse that in the mirror this morning along with your growls and scary mean face? Yeah, that one, exactly.”

Logan took a step forward and Wade leaned to the side, looking around him with a grin and a wave, presumably at one of the girls. 

Right. 

They were in public. 

And he was supposed to be apologizing.  

Why did this man get under his skin so goddamn bad?

“Do you accept the damn apology or not?” He snapped, quickly losing his patience with the whole situation. 

“Well when you put it like that,” Wade said, tilting his head.

“Wilson.”

“Yes, okay, I accept. I don’t think I’ve ever been bullied into being apologized to,” he said, making Logan feel a little bit bad about it until he added, “not gonna lie, it’s kinda hot.”

“You’re disgusting,” Logan replied automatically, falling back into their old verbal routines as if no time had passed. It was easy and predictable and didn’t leave him feeling wrong-footed like kept happening with this new, parental version of Wade.  

“Kink shaming? In the year of our lord twenty twenty-five? What a boomer.”

Logan opened his mouth to respond — something along the lines of “shut the fuck up” — then closed it abruptly as something small and squealing came barreling into him at breakneck speed. He caught her before she could lose her balance on impact. 

Following closely behind was her newly reunited best friend, also talking too fast to understand, switching between Spanish and English nearly every other word.

He tuned her out to try to decipher what his own daughter was saying, getting nowhere trying to listen to them both at once. 

“—can I? Please, please, please, please, please ? I promise I’ll eat dinner and go to bed on time and —”

“Slow down. What are you asking?”

“Can I spend the night at Ellie’s? Please please pleeeeeaaase?”

“No,” was his gut response. He should’ve given it some thought though because as soon as the word left his mouth he could see the storm clouds brewing in her eyes. He’d just gotten back on her good side, he wasn’t trying to throw that away just yet. “It’s a school night,” he added, placatingly. 

“It woulda been the weekend if you’d’ve been nicer,” she grumbled. 

“Watch it,” he warned. Just because she was right didn’t mean she was entitled to backtalk. 

He heard Wade snort again and shot the man a glare. 

“Wow, the resemblance is striking. Guess we know who had the dominant gene for facial expressions,” he muttered under his breath. 

“Why does it matter anyway?” Gabby continued to argue, squirming in his arms. He let her down and she immediately linked arms with Ellie, presenting a united front. “She goes here too, we both have to get up early.”

“And you’ll both be exhausted because you stayed up late.”

“Nuh-uh,” they replied in unison.

“We won’t, Mr. Logan, I pinky-promise,” Ellie added, holding her pinky up and offering up a sweet, toothy smile. “Pleeeeeeaaaasssee ?”

She turned on Wade when Logan didn’t cave to the pressure.  

“Please Papi? Can she?”

Wade bit his lip, looking like he was close to crumbling under the heavy gaze of the two sets of pleading eyes. 

Yeah, Logan was not trusting that man to enforce a bedtime. 

“Why don’t you stay over here?” He offered before Wade could answer. “There’s plenty of extra room and you’ll be guaranteed to be on time for school in the morning.”

Wade made an annoyed noise. 

“You do know mercenary work pays, right? Like, a lot. Do you think I live in a van?”

For once, Logan hadn’t actually meant to insult him. He just thought it made more sense for a sleepover to be at the mansion if it was gonna be on a school night. Logically, that was the better choice. 

“I wasn’t implying—“

“You definitely were. Ow.” Wade rubbed his forearm, looking down at where Ellie had pinched him. They had a silent conversation in facial expressions that appeared to Logan like he lost. 

Wade forced a smile in place of his scowl. 

Well, at least Logan wasn’t the only one getting bullied by a child. 

“How about a compromise? Gabby can come over for dinner tonight and we can plan something longer for a weekend? Sometime. In the far-off future.”

There was a pause while the three of them thought about his suggestion. Logan’s gut response, again, was to say no, but then he was the bad guy, and it wasn’t like Wade was going to host a mercenary potluck with his kid present. 

Probably. 

The odds were low. Right? 

Besides, Logan had an entire mansion of mutants at his disposal, most of which owed him at least one favor. Wade was an idiot but he couldn’t be that stupid. 

He didn’t like the concept of letting her out of his sight in general, even with people he did trust, and Wade Wilson was certainly not on that very short list. 

He blamed the twin hopeful, imploring gazes for what he said next. 

“Why don’t we all go out to dinner tonight, then we’ll see about the rest.”

He flinched at the high pitched, in sync shrieks of excitement from the two girls.

He looked over at Wade when there was no response. He looked like he was having a mental crisis — actually, Logan had seen him having a mental crisis, this looked more like he’d just walked in on Beast taking a shower. His wide eyes were blinking at Logan, mouth slightly ajar.  

Deadpool shocked speechless? That was a fuckin’ first. 

He snapped his fingers in front of Wade’s face. 

“That good with you?”

Wade shook himself out of his stupor. 

“Yeah, yeah that’s fair. Uh,” he looked down at his watch, then tugged on the sleeves of his hoodie in what, if Logan didn’t know any better, he would’ve said was a nervous gesture. “I look like the unibomber right now so, uh, five o’clock?” He turned to address Gabby. “Whaddu like to eat? Burgers? Tacos? Sushi?”

“Sushi!”

“That. Was not the answer I was expecting, but I’m down. Elliebear?”

“Yes! Can we go to the place with the goldfish?” She turned to Gabby excitedly without waiting for a response. “They’re as long as your arm! And there’s biiiiig fountain right in the middle of the restaurant.”

“Our old house used to have a koi pond when I was little and the fish could fit my whole foot in their mouths.”

The girls traded fish facts while he and Wade finalized the details, then said goodbye for the hour they’d be separated as if they were each going off to war on different sides of the battle. You woulda thought they’d been separated for two years, not two days. 

It was good to see Gabby smiling again after the weekend they’d had. It wasn’t until after Wade and Ellie had left that it really sunk in what he’d done in order to put that smile on her face. 

He was about to have dinner, in public, voluntarily, with Wade fucking Wilson. 

What had he done to this universe to make it hate him so goddamn much?

Chapter Text

Wade

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.  

Why? Why did it have to be him? Wade's big fat stupid crush was back with a vengeance. Logan had gone from leather daddy to girl dad over the past decade and somehow it was a step up?! How was that fair?

The only thing parenthood had given Wade was an inferiority complex (and a new sense of purpose and a perfect little angel, yadda yadda yadda, but that was beside the point). 

The point was: Logan was a fucking DILF and Wade was going to lose his fucking mind pretending not to notice or care. Sure, he was still a grade A dick, but Wade liked dicks. Especially big, thick, hairy ones that had a proclivity for choking him. 

Also. Who in the fuck gave him the right to look that good in a goddamn tweed vest? He should look like a nerdy old man, not the kind of professor that had Wade hot for teacher, ready to get down on his knees and beg for extra credit. It. Wasn’t. Fair. 

He tore off his faded hoodie and ratty jeans and stared hopelessly into the void of his closet, still trying to get his bearings. 

He could be normal about this. He’d made some flirty remarks, sure, but he flirted with everybody. It woulda been weird if he hadn’t. Not like Logan took any of it seriously anyway. 

You brought up kinks on a school lawn. 

He… did do that. Yes. But! That’s the kind of behavior he’d expected from Wade anyway and Wade was never one to disappoint. 

Okay, lies, he disappointed people all the time, but again, beside the point. 

We’re supposed to be better than that now. Told him we’d changed but we’re still the same annoying, horny, piece of shit he despised a decade ago. 

Doesn’t matter what we do, he’s never gonna see us as anything else. 

He scrubbed his hands over his thighs a few times, slapped himself, then grabbed a pair of tight black jeans from the dresser. 

Get it together, Wilson. 

He opened another drawer and rummaged through his half folded shirts before returning to the closet, trying to narrow it down between a sweater or a cardigan. 

It’s not our body he doesn’t like, it’s our personality. Can’t hide that with a sweater. 

Probably our body too, though. 

Fuck. They were right. What was he doing giving a shit about what he was going to wear? Logan sure as hell wasn’t looking, he was too busy trying not to stab Wade in the face in front of his kid. 

He should just wear something comfortable since it was probably going to be the only thing that was during this disaster of a dinner. 

He’d eaten at tables with literal zombies and he was pretty sure this meal was going to be more unpleasant than that. 

It’s fine. You’ve survived actual torture. You can handle one measly dinner.  

Wade repeated that mantra silently over and over while they drove to the restaurant, again as they took their seats, and a few more times for good measure while they were handed their menus and brought their drinks. 

His foolproof strategy was to ignore Logan’s presence completely and focus solely on the girls. 

Thank Kirby for kids. There was no room for awkward silences or embarrassing faux pas with the two of them chatting about any and everything non-stop from the moment they saw each other in the parking lot.  

You got this. 

Easy peasy. Wolverine who? 

Ellie got up on her knees in the booth to lean over the table and see what her friend was pointing at on the menu. 

“Butt in the seat, please,” he gently scolded her. She turned her pout on him. 

“But I can’t see.”

Logan wrapped his arm around Gabby’s waist and scooted her closer to his side then nodded his head at Ellie to come over to their side of the table. 

She crawled into the booth next to Gabby and they got back to pouring over the menu, Gabby pointing out the Japanese characters and how they were pronounced, tugging on her father’s sleeve every now and then when she came upon a word she didn’t know. 

Wade’s chest tightened at the picture of it. 

Sonovabitch. He’d been doing so good. 

He wasn’t alone. 

He had plenty of friends and people he considered closer than family. When Ellie was a baby he’d had people around constantly — Preston and Adset, Tony, Neena and Inez — all the company a guy could ask for. He’d even had a partner for a few months there, but he and Rachel were destined to be a shooting star, not a sun, burning bright but short lasting. Wade still considered her a close friend. 

He wasn’t alone. 

But every now and then, he got lonely. 

It was one of the reasons he’d talked himself into enrolling Ellie in Xavier’s. She had some friends at her old schools, but she outgrew them so fast. It wasn’t their fault, but they just couldn’t keep up and she had to keep so many secrets. At least at Xavier’s she didn’t have to lie about what she was, even if she was still likely to breeze through the classes just the same as the public schools. 

She deserved friends who could understand her differences and now she had one and Wade wanted to be happy for her, he did. And he was. 

It was just…

Of all the parents, did it have to be him?

Wade wasn’t stupid; he had no illusions that he was going to find true love at a PTA meeting, but friendship? That was a reasonable expectation, wasn’t it? 

Wouldn't matter who she made friends with; none of those parents want to hang out with Deadpool. We’re lucky she found one that’s even letting his kid be near us. Half of them would run screaming. 

The other half would call the cops.  

“Papi?”

He tuned back into the conversation at the table, ignoring the frowny look Logan was directing at him. 

“Sorry pumpkin, what was that?”

“Nani ni shi—” she turned to Logan. 

“Shimasu ka,” he finished for her, slow and articulate so she could imitate. 

She tried again from the top. 

"Nani ni shimasu ka?” 

He wanted to melt into the floor. 

Goddamnit he refused to be charmed by this man and his stupid polyglot skills and gentle teaching style. Abso-fucking-lutely not. 

“That means “what would you like” in Japanese,” Ellie told him excitedly.  

“Does it?” He asked, pretending not to know so that she could take pride in teaching him. “How’re you gonna answer? Have you decided yet?”

“I like what I got last time, the one with the bananas. But the Hawaii roll has mango in it.”

“So try something new,” he suggested, though he knew exactly what her answer was going to be. They had this discussion every single time. 

“But what if it’s gross?”

“How ‘bout you get the ‘nanas and I’ll get the mango and we can split it so we each get half. That’s what me ‘n Laura do,” Gabby chimed in with a solution. 

Laura. He’d heard Logan say the name at the park, but he’d been too focused on everything else for it to sink in. Now though… now he had questions. 

“Laura; that’s your sister, right?” He directed the question at Gabby, still trying to uphold his vow to ignore Logan as much as possible. 

“Yeah. We're like, the same, but she’s old.”

“She’s eighteen,” Logan corrected in a tone that said this was also a familiar script. 

Gabby mouthed the word “old” to Wade behind her hand. 

He would’ve laughed if his brain wasn’t too busy trying to wrap itself around that number. Eighteen? He had missed that Logan had a kid for eighteen years??  

They’d crossed paths only a handful of times in the last eight years so it was reasonable he didn’t know about Gabby, and Wade had been out of the business entirely for the last five or so (not that he didn’t try to keep up with the gossip), but eighteen? He’d spent six months solid with the man in ‘09 chasing down a black market operation auctioning off mutant body parts and he hadn’t said a word about having a toddler at home. Or a partner to go back to. 

In fact, Wade distinctly remembered him whoring his way through half of Madripoor, because it was the first time he’d seen Logan leave a bar with a man. The confirmation that Logan’s vehement and constant rejection wasn’t because he was straight, but one hundred percent because he didn’t like Wade specifically had been a difficult pill to swallow. So he’d chased it with a bunch of others, and some inhalants, and a few injectables he wasn’t super proud of. (If he was being honest, he’d admit the mission itself might’ve fucked him up a bit — seeing all those mutilations and abuses — but he was rarely honest with himself if he could help it). Needless to say it’d been a rough six months. 

They’d completed the mission though. That counted for something. 

“It’s a long story,” Logan offered in explanation. Wade valiantly refrained from asking any more questions. 

Time and place. 

“What about you, Mr. Wade? What’re you getting?” 

He put on a smile and turned his attention back to the girls, where it was supposed to be. 

“You seem like you have good taste, what do you think I should get?” It was worth the risk of eating something disgusting for the look of pure joy on her face.

She studied the menu carefully for a minute, looking like a detective pouring over some case files, then started asking him questions, tapping her pointer finger against her little chin as she did so. 

“Sweet or spicy?”

“Spicy.”

“Crunchy or soft?”

“Crunchy.”

“Fish or crustacean?”

“Fish.”

“Pink or green?”

That one threw him, but he was nothing if not the king of improv; he could roll with it. Besides, she obviously knew what she was doing. 

“Green.” 

“Orchard roll,” she declared, folding her arms as if she’d just solved the case of the century. 

He scanned the menu for the choice she made. It actually sounded pretty good. He hadn’t tried that one before, usually content to order whatever two things Ellie wanted to try and eat the one she inevitably didn’t like. Nothing could beat the crazy monkey roll so far. Banana was her fruit of the month, and had been for the last four months in a row. No offense to bananas, but he really hoped she moved on soon. There were only so many ways one could include them into a meal and he was running out of novel recipes. 

He closed his menu and slid it under Gabby’s. 

“I trust your judgement, sensi.”

While the girls went to wash their hands, Logan flagged down their waiter — a young girl who couldn’t’ve been a day over twenty— to explain that his daughter was teaching her friend Japanese and was it possible for her to order in the language. The girl obviously found it as devastatingly attractive and endearing as Wade did, only she didn’t risk a broken jaw for saying so, so could appropriately coo and fawn while she promised to go get someone she called “Mama G” to take their order. 

Wade hoped she tripped on her way back, then felt bad about it and vowed to himself to tip an extra 10% for his pettiness; 15% if she actually did trip. 

Mama G turned out to be about three feet tall and one hundred years old with the sweet round face and kind eyes every grandmother should have. Wade kind of wanted to steal her. 

She was suitably impressed with Gabby’s near fluency when ordering, Ellie not falling too far behind. He was pretty sure she’d have the language mastered by the end of the month if she put her mind to it. He was lucky she hadn’t picked one he didn’t know yet. It was only a matter of time. 

"Arigatou gozaimasu," they said in unison, handing the old woman the menus.  

It was so fucking cute he could’ve died. 

And then he was pretty sure he did die because the waitress — also overcome by the two most precious and adorable creatures to ever live — looked over at Logan and told him in Japanese, “you have a beautiful family.” 

And he didn’t fucking correct her. 

The tips of his ears turned pink as he thanked her for the compliment — not that Wade was looking.

Yeah, sure, it’d be way more of a hassle to explain “no actually, this one is mine and the other one belongs to this guy I hate with every fiber of my being but am tolerating because I’m trying to be a good dad and also my eight year old bullied me into it,” but still. That was going to haunt his fucking dreams, he already knew it. 

Ellie came back over to his side of the table once the food arrived. He pretended it was because she missed him, but he knew it was really so she could more easily steal his edamame. 

The conversation lulled as they tucked in, but, as usual, Wade could only make it a few bites without needing to yap, otherwise his brain would keep vacillating between spiraling about being alone at the end of the world and weighing the pros and cons of spring vs. autumn weddings.  

“Where did you learn Japanese?” He asked Gabby, insanely curious but trying to stay nonchalant about it. 

“Japan.”

Wade smacked his forehead with his palm. 

“Of course. How silly of me to ask.”

“That’s where we lived when I was a baby.  We moved here when I started school.”

Well that made him feel a little better about not being in the loop on the baby gossip. He hadn’t taken a job on that side of the world in ages. 

He wanted to ask more, like who “we” was? Her and Logan? Her, Laura, and Logan? Where was her mother? Who was her mother? He wasn’t quite stupid enough to ask though. 

Instead, he bit his tongue while Ellie took the reins, steering the conversation towards what kinds of food and cartoons Gabby grew up with and how they were similar or different from her own experience. 

“Can we go look at the fishes pleeeease?” Ellie begged as soon as their plates were cleared. He’d been expecting it; they were her favorite part of the restaurant after all. 

“We look with our eyes not with our hands,” Wade told her at the same time he heard Logan instruct Gabby, “hands in pockets.”

He caught Logan’s eye then looked away quickly before he could do something stupid like swoon. 

Get a fucking grip. 

“Stay out of the way of the waiters,” he added as they started to skip off, hand in hand. 

“We will!” 

“So…” Wade started when the silence the girls’ absence brought shifted from comfortable to awkward. 

Logan grunted, taking a sip of his drink to avoid being the one to start a conversation. 

Fine. I’ll do it myself.

“They’ve got a math test coming up this Friday.” 

Another non-committal grunt. 

“Promised Elliebean I’d take her to get ice cream when she passes, and we both know she’s gonna ask to invite Gabby.”

This time Logan looked at him. No grunt, no hum, just a slow and trepidacious parting of his lips that told Wade everything he needed to know. (A yes isn’t a yes unless it’s enthusiastic and Logan looked anything but).

He still hates our guts. 

He’s not gonna trust us with his kid. Fucking idiot. 

“Right. Nevermind. Forget about it.” Wade shook his head, trying to clear it. 

“It’s not you,” he said, hesitantly. 

“Yeah, no, sure it’s not. Never heard that before.” Wade tried not to sound bitter but his mouth apparently didn’t get the memo. Even to his own ears that was pathetic.  

“Look–”

“It’s all good man,” he cut Logan off before he could say anything else. Wade was already on the verge of taking his Smith & Wesson out for a taste test. 

I’m so done with this fucking day. 

“She might not even ask. I would say maybe she won’t pass, but I think she’s already getting bored with the material, so fat chance. The ice cream budget is through the roof, let me tell you. Might as well change my name to congress for how often I have to increase the debt ceiling.”

Logan looked like he wanted to argue, but the girls interrupted what was bound to be a paper thin excuse with demands for dessert and the subject was, thankfully, dropped. 

Logan

“Shouldn’t you be studying?” Logan asked, tapping his daughter’s Switch as he walked past later that night. She was in one of the X-Men Only common rooms that had kind of unofficially become the Howlett family room. And, somehow, the place Remy’s cats could be found anytime they were missing. Logan swore they kept the door shut but somehow the fuckers found a way. He suspected Kitty had a hand in it. She always laughed way too hard at him when he was tearing the kitchen apart looking for the lint rollers. 

He took a seat on the couch, moving one of the aforementioned devils out of the way to sit next to his kid. 

She pulled her headphones down around her shoulders and sat the console in her lap. 

“Why? I’m gonna fail anyway.”

“Come on, it can’t be that bad.”

She leveled him with a look that said “wanna bet?” 

“It is. Best I got on the practice tests was a D. I don’t get it. None of it makes any sense.” She picked the game back up, but he plucked it out of her hands and sat it on the coffee table before she could take the pause off. 

“Did you ask for help?”

She shook her head. 

“I bet if you asked, Summers could explain it in another way.”

She scoffed. 

“He never calls on me when I raise my hand and it doesn’t matter how he explains it. It’s too confusing.”

He flipped through the binder laying abandoned on the couch to see what they were working with. The worksheet instructions were a helluva lot different than how he learned it. Maybe if he showed her that way it’d make more sense. 

“How ‘bout we grab a snack and you give me one hour and see what we can get through, ‘kay bub?” He negotiated. It was worth a shot.

She looked longingly at her Switch, then back at the binder, eventually conceding with a long suffering sigh. 

“Fiiiiine. I want Cheetos.”

“Hey Ellie, can you hang back for a sec?” Logan caught her at the end of class the next day before she and Gabby could disappear for lunch. 

They both stopped at his desk, looking nervous. 

“No one’s in trouble,” he told them, and watched suspiciously as they both breathed a sigh of relief. 

Should someone be in trouble? 

He shelved the thought for later, wanting to deal with one issue at a time. He’d come back to that. 

“Go on, she’ll catch up,” he told his daughter, waiting until he heard her footsteps leaving down the hallway. She knew better than to listen in at doors. He turned his attention back to Ellie. 

“I heard you’re pretty good at math.”

Ellie shrugged the shrug of a kid who was used to downplaying her accomplishments. It was tough being at the bottom of the class, but his time teaching had shown him that it was just as hard, if not worse, for the kids who were at the top. Especially if it was every class. He knew part of her mutation was accelerated learning and skill acquisition; he’d witnessed it in action at the restaurant yesterday and he could tell she was catching on to his lessons a lot faster than the rest of the kids. 

He wondered how it’d been for her at her old school, if she’d been bullied or teased because of it. His heart ached at the thought of her dulling her shine just to fit in.   

“Gabby’s having a bit of trouble wrapping her head around the new stuff you guys’ve been learning. Thought you might be willing to study together and give her some tips?” Last night hadn’t been a total wash, but he could tell she was still struggling. He thought it might be more helpful coming from a peer. 

“Yeah, sure— wait,” she cut herself off, suddenly realizing she had negotiating power. “If I agree, can she come get ice cream with me and Papi on Friday?”

Most of the time it was impossible to imagine that she was Wilson’s kid, every now and then though…

He was tempted to say no, but those big brown eyes were working overtime and he’d already made a kid cry once this week, he wasn’t trying to do it again any time soon.  

“If you both pass, then yes, she can go.”

“Yes!” She pumped her fist in the air, bouncing up and down a few times before turning around, tripping, turning it into a pirouette, then skipping the rest of the way out the door. 

Yeah, definitely Wade’s. 

“And no cheating,” he hollered after her, just in case she’d inherited that tendency too. She turned around, clearly indignant at the suggestion. 

“‘Course not.”

Friday found his coffee break disrupted by two very excited children bursting into his office between classes to show off their grades. 

He’d been holding his breath all morning, dreading the disappointment if Gabby didn’t pass. He’d already half convinced himself to let her go regardless, considering how much work she’d put in over the past few days. Thankfully, it didn’t have to come to that. Looked like all the hard work paid off. 

Gabby waved three sheets of stapled paper in front of his face too close and too fast to see. He plucked it out of her hands. 

At the top, near her name, was a red C+ with a scrawled note: excellent improvement. Keep up the good work! 

He grinned and pulled her into his lap for a hug. 

“I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.” He let her go when she started squirming and turned his attention to her companion and the paper she held in her own hands. 

“How ‘bout you?”

“I passed,” she said dismissively, obviously trying not to steal Gabby’s thunder. Gabby was having none of it. 

“She got an A cuz she’s suuuuper smart. Probably smarter than Uncle Hank.”

Logan laughed. 

“Don’t let ‘em hear you say that. He’ll steal her to be his new lab assistant.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Ellie said, shaking her head. 

“It is. You should be proud of yourself. Can I see?”

He held out his hand and she passed over the test, big red A- circled at the top. He skimmed through it, noticing a much different set of equations than what he’d just looked at. Good. 

Summers could be shit a lot of things, but teaching wasn’t one of them. 

He handed it back to her. 

“Good job, kiddo. Looks like you guys earned your ice cream.”

Wade was easy to spot, standing just far enough away from the crowd to not be noticed but close enough not to stand out. 

Logan was sure ninety-nine percent of these parents had no idea who he was outside of the suit, but he guessed it wasn’t a chance he wanted to take. 

Deadpool wasn’t exactly a villain, but the name did carry some pretty negative connotations for a lot of people. Even when it wasn’t always warranted. Logan knew he’d gotten caught up with S.H.I.E.L.D. a while back and they’d exploited the fuck outta that “partnership,” pinning him with the kinds of jobs most superheroes didn’t want to get their hands (and reputations) dirty with. He’d even taken the fall for a few fuck ups Logan knew for a fact Wade’d had nothing to do with, but they guys who did had precious brand deals and lucrative endorsements to look out for.  

Logan got it. Sometimes there had to be a scapegoat, and as far as he knew, Wade had been a willing participant to the destruction of his own already pretty terrible reputation for the greater good. (Whatever the fuck that was). 

Didn’t make it right. 

He made his way over to Wade, ignoring the stares and whispers that usually kept him hidden away in his office during pick up time.   

“Ellie said you’re okay with Gabs coming over for a couple hours after the ice cream. That true, or is she just manifesting?” Wade asked, in lieu of greeting. The girls were still inside; Gabby had wanted to grab some stuff from her room before leaving. 

“An hour, but yeah. They earned it.” He still didn’t love the idea, but a deal was a deal. “Your girl’s quite the negotiator.”

Wade laughed, shaking his head. 

“Yeah, it’s terrible. Manipulative too; she can cry on command, don’t let her fool you. It’d be a problem if I wasn’t gonna just spoil her anyway.”

Logan bit his tongue. Wasn’t his job to tell someone else how to parent — even if he was setting himself up for failure when she entered the hellscape of teenagerhood. 

Logan had learned that through trial and a helluva lot of error with Laura. He’d wanted to give her everything she could possibly want after they’d rescued her, and he had, but in making up for others' mistakes he’d just made his own by letting her get away with murder (not literally, thank god — not that there hadn’t been some close calls). Eventually he’d learned that sometimes you really had to say no and stick to it. 

But not always. 

You had to know when to pick your battles. (He was still working on that part).

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and unlocked it, hitting the new contact icon and handing it to Wade, who took it while slapping a hand over his heart and gasping. 

“Why Wolvie, are you asking for my digits? How forward of you.”

Logan rolled his eyes. 

“Just put your fuckin’ phone number in there, asshole.” 

Wade smirked like it was his utmost joy in life to be annoying. 

“Should I text myself so I have yours too?”

“Gabs knows it if she needs to call,” he said, snatching the phone out of Wade’s hands before he could do anything else. It was Wade’s turn to roll his eyes. 

“Seriously? What if she’s having an allergic reaction or something and I need to get in touch with you?”

“She doesn’t have allergies. She has a healing factor,” he countered. 

“What if she gets kidnapped?”

Logan took an involuntary step forward. 

“Is there a fuckin’ chance you would get my daughter kidnapped, Wilson?” He asked, voice nearly a growl. Wade held up his hands and took a step back. 

“What? No. I’m being hyperbolic. Calm your hairy tits. It’s fine, whatever,” he rushed out. He put his hands down, stuffing them in his pockets and shrugging. “You’ll have to give it to me eventually. Unless you’d prefer all sleepovers to be held at casa del Deadpool.”

Logan narrowed his eyes at Wade, but the look had lost its effect a long time ago. 

He took his phone back out and sent a text with a single word Logan, rolling his eyes at the plethora of red and black heart emojis Wade had put next to his name.

He’d change it later. 

“Don’t fuckin’ abuse it.”

Wade widened his eyes and placed a hand on his chest, a caricature of innocence. 

“Me? I would never. Maximum three dick pics a day, scouts honor.” He held up three fingers in a boy scout salute. Logan resisted the urge to cut them off. Just barely. 

Snikt. 

The claws came out as a deterrent anyway and Wade quickly stuffed his hands back in his pockets. 

“Learn to take a fucking joke, you prude. I promise not to contact you unless it’s important. Cross my heart.”

The sound of two sets of running feet hit his ears and he quickly put the claws away before Gabby could see. 

It was decided that Logan would pick Gabby up. He wanted to see Wade’s place firsthand, not just from some satellite image — not that he’d used his access to top secret surveillance technology to look already. That would be illegal. And wrong. Definitely not something he would use a favor for… 

The house was big, but cozier than it had looked from the outside. It was set back a little ways down an inauspicious dirt road and appeared to be built on a few cleared acres – though Logan knew the actual property line stretched for some fifteen acres on every side. Which was 100% common knowledge that could be found AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC on file with the county courthouse.  

Wade hadn’t been lying about merc work being lucrative, apparently. 

Seemed a bit excessive for just two people, but Logan lived in a fuckin’ mansion, so who was he to judge? 

Wade opened the door before he could knock, courtesy, he assumed, of the elaborate security system Logan spotted when he walked in. The keypad by the door was distinctive in its design.

“STARK tech?” Logan nodded toward the door. 

“Friend of a friend, owed me a few favors. You should see the washing machine, it puts the Jetsons to shame.” 

Wade turned and walked further into the house, Logan following behind, taking in his surroundings. The walls were bright and warm, covered in framed photographs and crayon drawings, and little cork boards with keepsakes pinned in no discernible order. 

He led them to a large kitchen with yellow walls and white marble countertops. The long wooden kitchen table was covered in knick-knacks and papers with just the one end cleared enough for two people to eat at. 

“Can I get you something to drink?” Wade asked, nervously gesturing toward a fridge that was covered in artwork, flyers, and report cards, the test Logan had been shown earlier that day stuck right in the center of it all with a magnetic Captain America shield. 

“I’m good,” he answered distractedly, his brain trying to figure out how to fit this new information into the profile he already had of Wade Wilson. 

“Right. I’ll go grab Gabby.” He pointed his thumb in the direction of the hall, turning to leave. 

“Hang on.” Logan put a hand on his arm to stop him going. Wade stared down at it, then back at him. 

He let go, rubbed the back of his neck. 

“Look, I’m sorry. For real.” He looked around again, feeling like he was in some weird alternate reality. “I’m not the same person I was a decade ago, obviously neither are you. I shouldn’t’ve assumed the other day.”

Wade shrugged in that same self-deprecating way Ellie had when Logan had asked her if she was good at math. 

“It’s okay. I wouldn’t expect it of me either.”

Something annoyingly soft inside him wanted to say something nicer, but honestly, who would’ve expected he was capable of this? 

“Thanks for not pulling Ellie out of school,” he said instead. “Gabby was real torn up about it.”

“I’m sure there’s plenty of other ways we’re fucking them up, no need to put our past issues on them too.”

That was… a shockingly mature thing to hear coming out of his mouth. He couldn’t argue. 

“Agreed.”

“As far as I’m concerned, Gabby’s welcome here any time.”

“She’ll be happy to hear I didn’t ruin her life then.”

Wade laughed, tilting his head back, one arm around his stomach. 

“Oh man, they’re so dramatic at this age, aren’t they? Ellie legit packed a bag to run away before I told her I’d changed my mind. Don’t know how she thought she was gonna hoof it all the way to Westchester in her converse; those things are not meant for long distances, but I admire the determination.”

Logan chuckled a little too, glad to hear he wasn’t the only one who had to deal with the overdramatic consequences to their — admittedly a little excessive — reactions. 

“Gabs went on a hunger strike,” he offered in camaraderie.

Wade’s responding laugh echoed throughout the kitchen, eyes bright with mirth as he looked at Logan and shook his head. 

Did he always have those dimples? 

Logan frowned. Where the fuck had that thought come from? 

Luckily, Wade didn’t notice, already walking away from him to go grab the girls.

Chapter Text

Wade

After the dinner from awkward hell, things got less tense. Wade was still pretty sure Logan hated him, but he was trusted enough to watch Gabby for a few hours at a time, so that was something.

A win is a win. 

They’d been taking turns the past few evenings chaperoning trips to the skatepark after school to indulge the girls’ new favorite sport – sport? Did it count as a sport if they were just skating around in a circle for hours at a time? New favorite hobby? Wade didn’t know, nor did he care. He was too busy praying to whatever deity would listen that they would get sick of it soon and take up video games until the fucking cold front that was the whole month of February passed and gave way to some warm Spring weather. 

He was so sick of dry skin and driving through snow. Where were the teleporters Star Trek promised? He blamed Picard. 

He left the girls on their hundred and ninety-ninth lap to grab Ellie’s water bottle from the car, even though they were about to leave as soon as Logan showed up and then it would just be one more thing for him to carry back, but her wish was his command. He came back to a sight that made his blood freeze in his veins (even more than the frigid wind).  

The girls had stopped skating and were talking to a young woman with long dark hair in ripped jeans and a leather jacket. He watched in horror and panic as she knelt down in front of them and reached for Gabby. 

I was gone for two seconds. What the fuck!?

Logan’s going to kill us. 

Shut up shut up shut up. 

“Hey there, stranger danger. How ‘bout you back the fuck up before I’m forced to do something drastic,” he said as he reached them, putting a hand on Gabby’s shoulder and moving her behind him. She tugged on his arm. 

“But Mr. Wade—”

“Just a sec, pumpkin,” he interrupted, keeping his attention on the stranger. 

She cocked her head at him, looking him up and down with narrowed green eyes outlined in a thick layer of kohl. He’d compliment the bitchin’ smokey-eye, if she wasn’t a kidnapper. 

“What’re you gonna do, shoot me?” she asked, skepticism dripping from her words. 

Wade took a few steps forward, making her step back and putting more distance between her and the kids. 

He flashed a reassuring smile. 

“Of course not. I would never bring a firearm to a playground. That's irresponsible.” He lowered his voice, all mirth and levity leaving his tone. “And loud. Draws too much attention. Knives on the other hand…” he casually pulled the blade he affectionately referred to as “baby knife” from up his sleeve and twirled it between his fingers. “Those are quiet but just as effective, that’s why they’re my favorite (but don’t tell the guns).”

The girl smirked. Lifting her fist at him. 

“Mine too.” 

Snikt. 

Two long silver claws slid from between her knuckles. 

Wade immediately breathed a sigh of relief and put his knife away. 

“Christ on a motherfucking cracker. Laura, I presume?”

The smirk turned into a grin, or maybe it just seemed more friendly now that he knew she wasn’t trying to kidnap the girls. He knew those eyes were familiar. 

Actually, now that he really looked, it was kinda unnerving how much she and Gabby looked alike.  

“What gave it away?” She snarked, putting the claws back in. 

“Why didn’t you just say who you were? You almost gave me a heart attack. I could’ve killed you.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said with that same little chuffy laugh her father did when he thought he was being soooooo clever. 

Do they all have to be this way? 

It has to be genetic. 

“You know what I mean,” he grumbled. She just shrugged one shoulder.  

“Wanted to see what you were gonna do. And it was kinda funny.”

What the fuck? He wanted to throttle her. Instead, he just pointed a frustrated finger at her and snapped. 

“No. No it was not.”

“I tried to tell you,” Gabby interjected from behind him. He turned to her, properly chastised. She had in fact done that.  

“That you did, honeybadger. Next time, I give you full permission to interrupt me for relevant information like being related to your would-be kidnapper.”

“To be fair, we have some relatives you really shouldn’t trust, so probably good to start with the knife routine,” Laura added helpfully. 

This fucking family was going to be the death of him.

“Not that I don’t relish the opportunity to meet another fabulous Wolverine pup, but why’re you here?” He asked, changing the subject. 

“Kit.”

“What?”

“A young wolverine is called a kit, not a pup,” Laura corrected, like that was just totally common and relevant information to know. 

He slapped a hand to his chest, gasping. 

“Oh my god, what a faux pas; how embarrassing. That’s on me for not doing my research. Thank you for educating me about your culture, m’lady. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind for future taxonomic discussions.”

That earned him a giggle from Gabby and a glare from Laura, though he thought he saw her mouth twitch like she was trying not to smile, but that might’ve been wishful thinking. 

“Dad couldn’t make it.”

That made the joking grin drop from his face. 

“Is he okay? Did something happen?” He asked, his tone waaaaaaay too intense for casual concern. He blamed Laura for getting his damn adrenaline up. 

She looked at him, eyebrows pinched in that signature Wolverine way that said “I’m judging the fuck out of you right now.” 

“He’s fine,” she replied eventually. “Work stuff.”

Wade assumed she wasn’t talking about a PowerPoint emergency. She meant X-Men stuff. He was decidedly not jealous or interested in any way, no siree bob. 

“Papi, I'm hungry.” He was pulled back into the moment by Ellie, tugging at his sleeve incessantly. The whiny tone held that edge that told him they needed lunch STAT or there would be hell to pay. He refrained from reminding her that he’d told her to pack an extra snack for this exact reason this morning, mostly because it would just result in speeding along the pissy attitude that was heading their way, but also because he’d also forgotten to pack her an extra snack so that was on him too. 

(He was never much for gender roles, but every now and then the idea of having someone else be in charge of things like packing lunches every day and remembering to switch the laundry over was reallllly appealing). 

“Me too,” Gabby told her sister as she sat down on the ground to take her skates off. Ellie followed her lead. “Can we get dinner on the way home since Daddy’s working?”

There’s an idea. 

“Hey, how ‘bout we all go grab something together, my treat,” Wade offered, mouth working faster than he brain (what’s new?). 

“Why?” Laura asked, looking at him like he’d just suggested they all go skydiving. 

He shrugged and pointed at himself, then the girls.

“I’m hungry, they’re borderline hangry, it’s free food, why not?” 

There was a long pause, long enough for the girls to finish switching their shoes and gathering up their stuff. 

“You’re weird,” Laura finally said, staring at him like she was trying to read his aura or some shit. 

Fuck, do you think she has aura-reading powers? What would ours say, anyway? 

Nothing good, that’s for sure. 

What the fuck are aura-reading powers? 

Shut up.  

“Is that a no?” He asked, because it wasn’t technically a no, just a statement of fact. One he wasn’t denying. 

“I want pizza.”

Laura was an interesting mix between Logan and Gabby. He could tell her default around strangers was broody and aloof — signature Wolverine persona — but something sweet and bubbly slipped out when she was interacting with Gabby. Like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, but her sister made the burden a little bit lighter. 

Wade wondered if she’d been as carefree as Gabby at her age and if she had, what had changed. He’d only known the little girl for a short time, but it was devastating to imagine her losing her sparkle, of the darkness in this world blotting out her light. It didn’t bear thinking about because if he did, he’d start thinking about all of the ways the world was going to try to hurt and change his Elliebear and how, in the long run, he was helpless to do anything to stop it. He couldn’t keep her wrapped up in a bubble or locked away in a tower like Rapunzel, as appealing as the idea sounded some (most) days. 

“You’re not what I was expecting from the infamous Deadpool,” Laura told him, leaning against Logan’s truck, keys in one hand and leftover pizza box in the other. 

“Infamous huh? Guess I can cross that off the bucket list.” As far as monikers went, he’d had worse. 

Laura hummed. 

“The way dad talks about you, I thought you’d be more annoying.”

His stomach did something weird and fluttery at the acknowledgement that Logan talked about him to other people – to his kid – despite the fact that it was most definitely not in a good way. 

Fucking idiot. 

He was suddenly hyperaware of what his face was doing, and what it was doing was forgetting every normal expression ever. 

Get a fucking grip, man. 

How am I supposed to respond to that? 

“Oh, uh thanks? I think. Give it time; I get worse.” He offered her an awkward salute goodbye and shot Gabby fingers guns where she was already in the cab, buckled and ready to go, before turning on his heel and walking briskly back to his own car. 

That could’ve gone worse. 

Chapter Text

Wade

It took less than a month for Wade to get a call from Ellie’s principal (Scott freaking Summers) explaining that there had been an “incident” and asking could he please come by his office this afternoon. 

Only took two weeks last time. 

She’s making progress. 

Wade stood outside the giant wooden door, trying to psych himself up for whatever was to come. He was usually able to talk people down (or at least use his physical appearance to garner sympathy points), but that wasn’t an option here. Scott had always hated his guts. 

(Also, Wade might’ve engaged in some redband worthy polyamorous activities with his time-traveling son from the future and his (ex) lucky lady once upon a time, and while he was positive there was no possible way Scott knew about that, it felt like there was an extra, secret layer of hate piled onto him every time they were in the same room together.)   

Fuck. 

He did not see this going well, at all. 

Taking a deep gulp of air, he wiped his sweaty palms on his thighs, knocked on the door, and walked in. 

Scott was sitting in a gaudy, high-backed chair, a stack of folders sat neatly in front of him. The hideous brown sports coat really sold the whole “principal” shtick.  

“Mr. Wilson, welcome. Thank you for coming by on short notice.” He motioned for Wade to sit down at one of the two seats in front of his (unnecessarily) large desk, and that’s when he noticed the other occupant in the room, slumped down in his chair, arms crossed, looking for all the world like a moody teenager and not a grown ass adult in a position of authority.

Fuck. What is he doing here?

That can’t be good. 

A million and one thoughts raced through his brain at once, ranging from Logan being there to act as a bodyguard for Scott because he was about to tell Wade something that he thought would make him lose his shit, to him being there to gloat about the inevitable expulsion that was about to take place, to something terrible having happened to one or both of the girls. 

“What happened?” Wade demanded. He was too anxious to bother with niceties. 

“Please, take a seat,” Scott reiterated, motioning again to the chair, but Wade ignored him, his brain creating an unending supply of worst-case scenarios, each of them somehow worse than the other. His chest felt tight and he could hear the blood rushing in his ears.  

“Answer the question,” he demanded, jaw clenched tight as he tried to remember how to breathe like a normal person. 

Logan looked up at him, eyebrows pinched, interjecting before Scott could tell him to sit down again. 

“They’re fine. They’re in trouble, but no one’s hurt,” he informed Wade, saying the thing he needed to hear before allowing himself to calm down. 

“Should’ve led with that.” 

Wade flopped into the seat next to him, body feeling like lead. Whatever else was going on, no one was hurt, and that’s all that mattered.

“Someone is hurt, Logan,” Scott cut back in. Logan rolled his eyes.

“It’s a black eye. He’ll live.”

“Hold up.” Wade raised a hand to stop the back and forth before it got any more confusing. “Let’s rewind and play this fun game where we all start our conversations from the beginning with everyone in the room so we’re all on the same page. From the top.”

Scott sighed heavily, but conceded the point. 

“I got a call from the nurse’s office this afternoon.”

“Does Hank know you call him a nurse?” Wade couldn’t help interrupting. Scott ignored him, but it was like he could feel the annoyance coming off of him in palpable waves. 

“A boy came in with a black eye and one of your daughters gave it to him.” He looked from one of them to the other, hidden gaze heavy with judgement. 

“He doesn’t remember who? Jesus, how hard’d she hit him?”

Logan snorted beside him and Scott glared at them both. Or at least, Wade assumed it was a glare. He was frowning very hard and pointing the visor at them in turn. 

“He wouldn’t say who it was, but based on some very loud whispers from his classmates, I’ve narrowed it down to one of the two of them.”

“Hearsay!” Wade objected. Whispers. Who the fuck gets indicted on whispers ? No one, that’s who. 

“Why don’t you tell the whole story, Slim?” Logan said, clearly annoyed at Scott’s version of events. He turned his head to speak directly to Wade. “Kid’s got some kind of illusion ability; was going around scaring the shit outta his classmates, making ‘em think they had spiders crawling on ‘em an’ shit.” 

Wade recoiled. What kind of Freddy Kruger school of bitchcraft and douchery were they running here?! 

“Fucking fair. I’d punch him too. What’s the problem?” As far as he was concerned this was an open and shut case of fuck around and find out. Tit for motherfucking tat. 

“The problem, Mr. Wilson, is that we don’t encourage or condone violence at this school,” Scott explained evenly. 

“But bullying is A-okay,” Logan added sarcastically. 

“No, it’s not, but there are proper channels to report—”

“Gabs did report it. Two weeks ago. And it was still happening,” Logan said, volume barely below what could be considered shouting. Not that Wade wasn’t 100% on board with shouting about this. He’d been expecting accusations of vandalism, maybe some petty theft, which was fine, whatever, he’d write a check and deal with Ellie at home, but this? This wasn’t worth interrupting his Golden Girls marathon for. Kid got what he deserved. 

“None of the children she said were getting bullied would corroborate it. At that point it was just he said/she said.”

Wade had to interrupt again. 

“Wait a sec, not to be that guy and all, but, the school is run by a telepath, no? Seems like an easy trial to me.”

“The school is run by me,” Scott corrected, at the same time Logan explained, “Chuck won’t interfere like that.”

Wade ignored Scott again and instead honed in on that other statement. 

“What? Why not?”

“Somethin’ about integrity and moral compasses. Wants ‘em to learn to tell the truth because it’s the right thing t’do, not because they can’t get away with a lie,” Logan grumbled, clearly not buying the BS. 

“Does that actually work?” Wade was skeptical too, especially because that’s all well and good for lying about the dog eating your homework, but something that is actually affecting other students negatively? Something that’s harmful? Fuck no. 

If the school has the resources, why not use them? Ellie might as well be back in public school with that kind of attitude. 

“Yet to be determined, but my money’s on no.”

Scott sighed heavily, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. 

“That’s because you always see the worst in people.”

Logan lifted one shoulder.   

“I see what they show me. No more, no less.”

“Well, if we weren’t for giving people second chances, this place would look a lot different, wouldn’t it?” Scott snapped. 

Wade held his breath. He could see the tendon in Logan’s jaw working overtime to keep his mouth shut. 

Fuuuuuuuuck that’s cold. 

Would it draw too much attention to start inching towards the door right now? 

“And speaking of second, and third, and forth chances, you’re right. They do have to stop sometime. I can’t keep looking the other way, Logan.”

Wade’s eyes widened. Whoa, whoa, whoa – hold the phone. There was some lore there that Wade desperately needed to explore. Was Gabby a little delinquent too?! He couldn’t say he was all that surprised – she had a teensy bit of a temper and even less of a brain to mouth filter than he did (which he found incredibly endearing, don’t get him wrong) – but he had assumed because of Logan’s position with the X-Men and as a teacher she would be a bit of a golden child. 

Actually, no, now that he laid it out like that, it made a lot more sense for her to take the other road and be a little rebellious troublemaker.

God he loved this kid. 

Logan did too, obviously, and the threat – as indirect as it was – was not received well. 

“That’s the whole goddamn point of this school, helpin’ them learn how to control their mutations,” he said, barely containing the shout this time.

Wade made the self-preserving choice not to point out that under that logic the spider kid (no, not that one) shouldn’t be punished either. 

“It’s not her mutation she can’t control,” Scott replied, cool as ever in the face of Logan’s ire. 

Probably as used to it as we are. 

Yeah, but he can’t heal.  

That scary vein in Logan’s forehead that got real visible when he was angry was starting to pop up. Wade opened his mouth to intervene before really thinking it through. 

“Maybe if you had a better handle on the bullying problem at your school, she wouldn’t have to take it into her own hands.”

Scott’s attention snapped to Wade, as if suddenly remembering he was also in the room. 

Whoops. 

Shoulda snuck out while we could. 

“Gabby’s weapon of choice has historically been matches or her claws, so I’m inclined to believe the blunt force trauma was Ellie’s doing.”

“Blunt — it was a freaking punch, not some bludgeoning in the mess hall with a candle stick. Give me a break,” Wade said, frustration and annoyance bubbling up at the unfounded (probably true) accusation pointed at his girl. 

How dare he talk about her like she was going around clubbing people in the head like some kind of brute. The kid had it coming, anyway. 

“Violence is violence, Mr. Wilson. I understand that might be difficult for you to grasp, you being you, but what your daughter did—”

“Allegedly,” Logan cut in. 

Scott sighed heavily, again, head thunking hard against the backrest of his stupid throne chair, probably regretting the decision to have this meeting with the both of them at once. Had he expected Logan to be on his side here? Wade? Laughable.  

“They both have detention for the next two weeks,” he told them, giving up on arguing his case anymore and moving straight on to sentencing. 

“Seriously?”

“I could be persuaded down to one week for the one that didn’t actually do the punching, but seeing as neither of them will come clean about it, they’re both going to have to face the consequences. And the mark on their record.”

Logan rolled his eyes. 

“Just put it on Gabby.”

Wade whipped his head around to look at him, shocked. 

“What? No, don’t do that. That’s not fair.”

Especially because it was definitely Ellie that did the punching. 

I mean, if he wants to give her a get out of jail free card, who are we to stop him? 

Ellie wouldn’t do that to her, and she’d hate us for letting it happen. 

“He’s not gonna expel my kid, Wilson,” Logan explained, logically — maybe even a smidge smugly. “Charles won’t let him.”

“There is a limit, Logan,” Scott reminded him. 

“Standing up for someone else ain’t it,” Logan snapped, though conceded, “even if she coulda gone about it differently.”

“This can’t become a habit.”

“It won’t,” Wade rushed to say. Because it wouldn’t. It couldn’t. Ellie didn’t have the luxury of nepotism; she had to swim against the not-insubstantial current of his reputation, as unfair as that was to her. “They’ll both do the detention. That’s only fair.”

“And they’ll both get a note in their records,” Logan opened his mouth to argue but Scott held up a hand to stop him. “ But it’ll come out at the end of the school year if there are no more infractions.”

That was honestly the best outcome he could’ve hoped for considering the situation and Scott’s insistence that a punishment be doled out. 

Speaking of which.

“What about the boy?”

“Similar terms, but the note stays in his record if my investigation turns up sufficient evidence of him using his powers to inflict harm on others and he’ll have more specialized counseling to make sure the behavior doesn’t continue.”

Wade was kind of annoyed how fair and responsible that sounded. 

Logan

“Who’da thought it’d be my kid getting yours in trouble. Fuck.” Logan ran a hand through his hair, feeling less defensive now that they were away from Scott and the reality of the situation really started to sink in. 

How many times was he going to have to have this conversation with her? And now she’d gotten her friend in trouble too –  a friend he knew Scott was already keeping an extra close eye on just because of who her father was. 

Fuck, he was going to have to explain that to her too at some point. How was he supposed to teach her to judge people based on their actions and not outside influences when that’s not how the world fuckin’ worked? 

Parenting was just one lie after another wrapped in the guise of hope and ideals. 

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Wade told him, shrugging it off. “This isn’t my first rodeo in the principal’s office – most fun one, for sure; I’ll cherish the memory of this impassioned, enlightening, and at parts terrifying, threesome forever and always, but it’s definitely not my first.”

Logan closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“I’m gonna choose to ignore everything you said after "principal's office.””

“Fair.” 

Logan gave it a second, let the rest of that absurd sentence kick in. 

“She got in trouble at her old school?” 

Wade let out a bark of laughter. 

“Which one? Trick question, the answer is yes to all of them. This is school number four this year. Kid’s too smart for her own good. Learns real fast then gets bored and starts acting up. The older she gets, the worse it gets. Used to just be notes on a report card and passive aggressive remarks from teachers, but this year’s been something else.”

“Sounds like someone I know.” 

He’d meant it lighthearted, but it obviously struck a nerve he hadn’t intended to poke at. 

“You think I don’t know that?” Wade snapped, crossing his arms over his chest and hunching his shoulder inward. “Do you know how hard it is to discipline someone for acting the exact same way you do?”

Logan looked meaningfully over at the door to the classroom where their girls were currently serving out their detention. 

Detention they'd earned for acting out violently and impulsively, for solving a problem with fists instead of words. 

“Yeah. I do.” 

Some of that defensiveness loosened in Wade’s posture and he slumped against the wall next to Logan, almost, but not quite, touching. Logan closed the distance, nudging his shoulder against Wade’s. 

“Heard somewhere if you’re worryin’ you’re doin’ it right,” he said, offering an olive branch he’d once been given, back when he was juggling raising a toddler and a teenager who’d been conditioned from birth to be a weapon, not a child. 

He still didn’t know how he made it through those first years. 

“I must be fucking acing it then,” Wade replied, a self-deprecating laugh belying the seriousness of his words. 

You are, he thought, but didn’t say, the words stuck somewhere behind his teeth. 

“She’s a good kid,” he managed to get out instead. 

“Despite the odds,” Wade muttered, wrapping his arms around his middle. 

Logan still couldn’t get over how different this version of Wade was to the one he knew. Only… it wasn’t that different, was it? This Wade – this vulnerable, insecure, self-defeating Wade – had always been there. He’d come out in the rare, quiet moments, usually in the aftermath of some mission gone wrong, in the wake of a corpse they’d been too late to save, over a beer or twelve in an empty hole-in-the-wall bar. He’d always start the night gagging for a fight, but by the end, slumped shoulder to shoulder in some alley, surrounded by blood and broken glass, the stench of stale beer and piss burning their nostrils, this is the Wade that would be there, going over and over all the ways they’d fucked up, what they could do better, how he could be better. 

He’d always disappeared from Logan’s view soon after, but he supposed that didn’t mean he wasn’t still there behind the boisterous, cocky mask he slid back on in the hazy grey of morning light. 

He supposed he had his own masks he’d hidden behind as well.

It hadn’t just been Wade looking for punishment and redemption in those late night brawls. 

He’d never known what to say back then, and he hadn’t gotten any better at it now. 

“Yeah well.” He shrugged, wishing he had a cigar or a drink, something to give him an excuse to not talk. “Guess they’ve kinda both been set up for failure, haven’t they?”

He could feel Wade’s eyes on him, but he continued staring at his own boots.

“I don’t know,” Wade finally said and Logan felt his shoulder move against his own. “Laura seems to have turned out all right.”

“Despite the odds.”

They stood against the wall, riding out the last six minutes of the girls’ detention in, if not comfortable, then at least not awkward, silence. 

The door opened and the two of them took a few more steps, engrossed in whatever conversation they were having, until they noticed Logan and Wade waiting for them. They immediately stopped talking. 

Gabby’s stance changed from loose and laughing to serious, chin out, shoulders back, ready to face her consequences. A good little soldier – a stance that had been programmed into her sister over years of conditioning, a stance she used to mimic as a toddler, all chunky kneed and wobbly chinned. It’d been almost cute back then. 

Now though… now she looked so much like Laura that it made him feel physically ill. 

Ellie took a different approach, head tilting ever so slightly as she assessed the situation, calculating her options, expression shifting from contrite to nonchalant and finally settling on self-righteous in the course of mere seconds. 

Wade hadn’t been kidding about her manipulation skills. Jesus . 

What a pair the two made. 

They walked up together, stopping right in front of him and Wade. 

“Which of you did it?” Logan asked, just to get it out of the way. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be getting an answer. 

They looked at each other and, as predicted, said nothing. 

“You’re both getting the punishment regardless; you can tell us,” Wade tried. 

“If we’re both getting punished, then it doesn’t matter, does it?” Ellie asked sweetly. Logan glanced at Wade, who was rubbing the spot between his eyes like he could get a headstart on staving off the headache they were both likely about to get from this conversation. 

Logan started to speak when a group of older students ran past, excited to get outside after a day of stuffy, boring classes. 

Right. They were in the middle of the hall. 

“We’re not doing this here.”

The family room was thankfully empty when they got there. He started in on his daughter as soon as the girls sat down. 

“You absolutely cannot do this again, do you understand me?”

She nodded. They both did. 

“If there’s a problem, come to me. I’m in the same building for fuck’s sake,” he reminded them, pacing the length of the coffee table then back. “Do not take it into your own hands. What happened to walking away?” He directed at Gabby, reiterating to her the promise she’d made the last time they’d had to have this discussion. 

“She was really scared, Dad,” she argued. 

“Who?”

“Jessie,” Ellie chimed in. “She was crying. Like ugly, snotty for reals crying.”

He looked over at Wade, who shrugged. 

“Who’s Jessie?” As far as he knew, Gabby had exactly one friend at this school and Ellie hadn’t gone out of her way to make any others either. They only ever hung out with each other. 

“The girl he was bullying,” Gabby supplied. 

Ah, that makes sense. He’d assumed they hadn’t attacked the kid out of the blue, but he figured the boy had made the mistake of picking on one of the two of them and then suffered the consequences. It hadn’t crossed his mind that it was about someone else. 

“That’s why you punched him?”

Gabby opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. 

“That’s why he was punched. Yes,” Ellie replied carefully. 

Logan cut his eyes over at Wade whose facial expression held a mixture of pride and exasperation. No help there.  

“So he wasn’t bullying you two?” he asked, just for clarification. Scott had been pretty light on the details leading up to the incident.

Ellie scooted back on her cushion, pulling her legs up to cross them, making herself comfortable.  

“He tried, but his imagination sucks. He made it look like there was a shark in the pool during gym, but my cousin has a landshark, which is waaaaaay scarier than a sea shark, ‘cept Jeff’s not even scary at all. But don’t tell him cuz he’ll get sad. Anyway, his sea shark didn’t even look like a sea shark. I think it was supposed to be one of those hammer face ones but its head was suuuuuper flat and it just looked like a doof.”

Logan let that entire sentence wash over him without a lick of comprehension as to what the fuck she was talking about. It was a feeling he was used to when dealing with a Wilson though so he didn’t sweat it, just powered through. 

“And when I told him his spiders weren’t scary he tried to make it look like the floor was covered in blood, but I don’t think he knows what a lot of blood looks like. It just looked like ketchup, not like the real thing at all. So I laughed and he got mad and left,” Gabby added, loosening up a little, following Ellie’s lead. 

They continued talking, ping-ponging the conversation back and forth. 

“But Chelsea’s really scared of snakes."

"And he’s really good at snakes.”

“He thinks it’s funny.”

“And it’s not funny.”

“He deserved it.”

Logan pressed the heel of his palms against his eyes. That headache he’d been anticipating was right on time. 

He couldn’t even fucking argue with that. 

“Uh, Logan. A word?” Wade nodded his head towards the door and Logan followed him out. Not like this conversation was going anywhere anyway. 

He waited for Logan to shut the door before speaking, quietly so prying ears wouldn’t overhear. 

“So… we agree they shouldn’t be punished for this, right?”

Did they? Logan didn’t even know if he agreed with himself about that. 

“I don’t know,” he hedged. Wade huffed. 

“If it were any other setting they’d be the good guys in this scenario and you know it.”

“Yeah, but it’s not. And they’re not budding vigilanties; they’re eight ,” he hissed, moving them further down the hall so he could speak like a normal person without worrying about Gabby hearing. 

“Yeah. Adolescent. Impulsive. Prone to temper tantrums and theatrics.” Wade said, counting off on his fingers. 

“And attacking their classmates, apparently.”

“You’re letting ol’ laser eyes get too inside your head. This is normal fucking behavior, especially for a kid whose dad’s a superhero. I don’t know where Ellie's getting it from, but you think that strong sense of justice you’ve got going on hasn’t rubbed off on Gabby? Bullshit. You can see it in how she carries herself; she knows they were in the right and she’s not gonna apologize for it. And she shouldn’t have to. The boy had it coming.”

“She punched a kid,” he reminded him. That couldn’t be overlooked. Wade made a face and held his hand out palm down, shifting it from side to side. 

“Eh… Ellie probably punched that kid, if we’re being honest.”

He seemed pretty confident about that, but Logan wasn’t so sure. It didn’t matter either way, they’d both been complicit. 

He ran a hand through his hair, tugging a little in frustration. 

“This fucking sucks. No matter what I do, it’s the wrong decision. I don’t want to punish her — I want to take her out for ice cream and tell her she did good, but I can’t fucking encourage violence.”

“There’s a difference between aggression and defense. I know you know that,” Wade said calmly. 

He didn’t get it. It wasn’t that simple. Maybe it was for Wade, for Ellie, but not for him. Whatever it was that made him go berserk, made him lose control, it was in his DNA. He didn't get to walk that line without consequences and neither did his offspring.

“It’s a slippery goddamn slope,” He said, willing Wade to hear what he couldn't put into words. 

“I think it’s more our job to equip them with the proper footwear than to stop them making the trek at all, ya know?” Wade offered unhelpfully. 

“That metaphor supposed to make sense, bub?” Because it absolutely goddamn did not. 

Wade tried again, his words careful and measured. 

“She didn’t lose control, she made a choice. Maybe not the best choice, but it was effective and, more importantly, not excessive.” Wade bit his lip like he wanted to say something else but was stopping himself. 

That’s a damn first.  

“Go ahead.” Logan motioned with his hand for Wade to continue. 

“What?”

“Say whatever it is you’re not saying.”

He chewed at his lip some more, obviously debating whether whatever he had to say was worth it, eventually deciding it was. 

“I think you’re making a bigger deal out of this than you need to because you’re afraid she’s on a path to becoming you. Pleasedontstabme.” He said it fast, especially the last part, like he was genuinely expecting Logan to do just that. 

He didn’t love what that said about him. 

I haven’t stabbed him that much, have I? 

“Your point?” he gritted out, because Wade was obviously not done if the look on his face was anything to go by. 

He stuffed his hands in his pockets, still keeping an arms length of distance between them, Logan assumed, just in case. 

“Just sayin’, I can think of worse people to become.”

Logan didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. 

“Look, I’m not gonna tell you how to parent your kid,” Wade said after a minute or two of awkward silence. “It’d be great if we were on the same page about this cuz it’s gonna be reeeeeaaal awkward for them when only one gets punished, but I’ve already made my decision and it’s not changing, so, you do you. What I' m gonna do is take Ellie for dinner wherever she wants and not yell at her for doing the right thing the wrong way. You and Gabby are more than welcome to join us.”

He walked back to the door, effectively ending the conversation. 

Despite his best efforts not to, Logan thought about what he said while he gathered Ellie up and left. 

He looked at Gabby, sitting alone on the couch, looking a little smaller, a little less confident, now that her friend had left. 

He sat down next to her. 

“Walk me through exactly what happened.”

She took a deep breath and began her story. 

“Billy got bored of scaring our class so he started picking on the first graders and I told Mr. Summers about it, but all the little kids were too scared that Billy would make the bugs come back if they told so they lied and then I looked like a liar but I wasn’t. I promise!” She blurted out, all in that one single breath. 

“I believe you, baby,” he reassured her, taking her tiny hand in his. “What happened today?”

“Me ‘n Ellie were drawing outside during lunch and we heard someone crying so we went to check it out and found Jessie curled up by the swings and Billy laughing and calling her names. We told him to stop and he got mad and shoved me and I shoved him and then he shoved me again and then e— then he got punched and he stopped.” 

Then Ellie punched him and he stopped, he filled in the pause for her. 

“Why didn’t you come tell me about it?”

Gabby shrugged and started picking at a loose thread on her jeans. 

He pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tightly to his chest. 

“What am I gonna do with you?” He mumbled, lips pressed against the crown of her head. 

“I’m sorry Daddy. But if you’d’ve seen her — she had her hands over her ears and her eyes squeezed shut like Laura used to do when she had her nightmares and I didn’t wanna leave her and I didn’t know how to make it stop. But I didn’t use my claws.” She added quietly, “even though I wanted to.”

“You remember the nightmares?” She’d shared a room with Laura for the first few years he had them — Laura refusing to let her out of her sight — but they’d split up when they moved into the mansion. Gabby had only been four. He had hoped… 

She nodded. 

His phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it, choosing instead to squeeze her a little tighter before making her sit back so he could look her in the eye. 

“As a teacher and a responsible adult I have to tell you that violence is never the answer and next time you need to come to me or another adult with this stuff instead of dealing with it yourself, okay?”

“Okay.”

She nodded again then looked back down at the thread she was slowly unraveling. He put his knuckles under her chin, lifting it up to look at him again. 

“But as your father I gotta tell you, I’m proud of you kiddo.”

Her eyes widened. 

“That was a difficult situation and you did what you thought was right for Jessie, regardless of the consequences for yourself or your friend. How is Jessie? She okay?”

“Think so. We’re gonna sit with her at lunch for the rest of the week to make sure he doesn’t try it again.”

He kissed her on the forehead. 

“You still have to do the detention.” 

She shrugged. 

“S’okay. Worth it.” 

God he loved this kid more than life itself. 

He felt his phone vibrate again and checked it when she hopped off his lap to go put her backpack away. 

Wade: Xena Warrior Princess has chosen McDonald’s. I’m thinking about changing my mind on the whole punishment thing. This is a Burger King household. I’ve never felt more betrayed. And by the fruit of my own loins!

Wade: We’ll be at the one on Franklin if u change your mind too…

“Hey bumblebee,” he called to her, making her turn around in the doorway on the way to her room. “You wanna go to McDonalds?”

“Yes!” she jumped up and down, fists in the air. He quickly added, as stern as he could manage (which honestly wasn’t very after the day they’d had):

“This is not a reward for your behavior today, are we clear?”

“Yes sir,” she replied, tossing her backpack into her room – thank fuck for tablets with shatterproof glass – and running over to him, linking their hands and practically dragging him to the door. 

He didn’t know if that was the right call, but it sat right in his stomach, and in his heart. His head would just have to catch up later. 

Chapter Text

Logan

“Anxious?” 

Wade had never been known for his ability to sit still, but this fidgeting was different than his usual hyperactivity. He was constantly twirling things around in his fingers like they were knives — pencils, rulers, his sunglasses, and at the moment, a twizzler — like he was preparing for a threat. 

Logan had noticed it a lot over the past week while Wade had been lingering around at the end of the day to wait out Ellie’s detention. 

(The first day he’d said he’d forgotten she had to stay late and spent the hour waiting for her wandering around the mansion touching things he wasn’t supposed to. 

The second day he’d been deposited in Logan’s office twenty minutes before the girls were due to get out by an irate Storm with the instructions to “deal with him or I will,” and the non-excuse of “whoops.” 

Since then, he’d been ushered straight to Logan’s office to kill time while they waited for the girls and Logan caught up on grading. 

It’d been a relief to the rest of the mansion’s inhabitants, but terrible for his own productivity.)

Wade looked down at his hands and abruptly halted the action, shoving the piece of candy into his mouth to stop himself doing it again. 

“Restless,” he said after he’d finished chewing. “Haven’t stabbed anything in a while. You know how it is.”

“You stabbed me at the park,” Logan reminded him.

“Yeah but that was like an itty bitty stab and over a month ago. And before that it’d been aaaaaages.” Wade dragged the last word out, tilting his head over the back of his chair dramatically, like not committing grievous bodily harm in the recent past was a thing to be upset about. Logan would love to have those kinda numbers.  

“Merc work drying up?” He asked, not all that interested, but a little curious why a mercenary who was known for his sword-work apparently hadn’t used them in “ages.” It didn’t seem likely. 

“I don’t do that anymore.”

Logan snorted, then caught the look on Wade’s face. 

“You’re serious.”

Logan never thought he’d see the day. The Merc with a Mouth no longer a merc? That was kinda his whole shtick. The fuck was he doing for a job now? 

He had a brief flash of the ridiculous image of Wade as a car salesman, waving a gun around threatening people into buying vehicles, like the opposite of a carjacker. 

Wade shrugged and started picking at his nails, feigning nonchalance. 

“Yeah. Not the safest line of work, y’know. The types of people who get hits put out on them are generally the type to hold grudges and have connections, and they usually aren’t too squeamish about tossing babies outta windows in retribution for a job well done.”

Logan felt his eyes widening. 

“Did that—”

“Yeah,” Wade cut him off, taking a deep breath before continuing. “Worst day of my life. And I’ve had some doozies.”

Logan couldn’t imagine what he’d do in that situation. Well. He could, unfortunately, and it wasn’t pretty. 

She was lucky she'd inherited his healing factor, although— 

“She presented that early?” They usually didn’t, not without some kinda trauma or “medical” intervention, like with his girls.

“No. She was just really fucking lucky I’m not actually the friendless loser I play on TV and I’d been working with a team that time. Telekinesis for the win, amirite?” He winked and made finger guns at Logan, fake smile plastered on his face. 

“Wade,” he started, unsure how he was planning to finish the sentence. I’m sorry? That’s terrible? There weren’t words that could convey how horrifying that must’ve been, or that could provide any sense of comfort after the fact. It’d been a long time ago, obviously, but Logan felt awful for bringing it up, like he’d cornered Wade into sharing something that he had no right to hear.

Wade kept talking over him. 

“It did kick the mutation into gear though. Apparently it's ramping up to be even stronger than mine—”

“Wade,” he tried again, unsuccessfully. 

“So yeah, I don’t do that kinda work anymore,” Wade swung the conversation back around to what’d gotten them there in the first place. Not allowing any time for Logan to dwell on the facts laid out so clinically before him. He didn’t try to interrupt again, taking the hint. He obviously didn’t want Logan’s sympathy or platitudes, he could respect that. 

“I worked a couple last jobs — big, high-profile gigs that paid out the ass — and got an accountant like a fucking dweeb and here we are. Bored as fuck, but not painting a target on my kid’s back, so I’ll take it.”

“You could use the danger room.” The words were out of his mouth before his brain could catch up, far too eager to fix something he didn’t have a hand in breaking. 

“What?” 

“For the boredom,” Logan explained. In for a penny… “Stab as much as you want without worryin’ bout retribution.”

Wade gasped and clapped his hands together, dropping his feet to the floor loudly from where they’d been propped on the edge of Logan’s desk. 

“Oh emm gee. Are you serious? I’ve always wanted to play around in there.”

“Supervised,” he tacked on quickly. 

Fuck, what did I just do?  

“Aww come on! I wanna touch all the knobs and buttons. I’m really good at pressing buttons,” Wade informed him, like he didn’t already know. 

“That’s a fuckin’ understatement.”

He leaned back in the chair and put his hand up to the side of his mouth. 

“Good with the knob touching too, in case you were curious.” 

Logan ignored the wink thrown his way. 

“When can we do it? Can we go now?” Wade was half out of the chair before he finished speaking and Logan had to grab his arm and pull him back down before he could get far. 

God he sounded like one of the kids, practically vibrating at the prospect. 

(It would be cute, if Logan found things like that cute, or cared at all. Which he absolutely did not).

He looked at his watch. 

“They’re out in ten minutes.”

The instant frown that fell over Wade’s face made Logan feel irrationally bad about bringing it up at all. He shoulda kept his mouth shut, knowing Wade would jump on the suggestion immediately. 

“Tomorrow?” He asked, hopefully. 

Logan's first impulse, as usual, was to say no, but there wasn’t actually a reason they couldn’t do it tomorrow. Technically, he’d finished all of his grading over the weekend and was just getting a head start on lesson plans in between shooting the shit with Wade. He could skip his last class and spend a few hours in the training room.

That counted as work, right? 

“Ya know what, why not? I’m not getting shit done with you yapping anyway.”

Wade

“What’ll it be?” 

Logan motioned to the computer screen in front of him, a long index of opponents separated into subcategories like “Aliens - Aquatic” and “Robots - Non-Sentient” and “Slimes - Sentient.”

Wade’s fingers itched to scroll through them all, but Logan was proving too adept at blocking his attempts. 

“What are my options?” He asked, craning his neck to try and get a better look (and incidentally inching a little closer in the process). Logan sidestepped to prevent him getting within touching distance. 

Killjoy . 

“Anything.”

“Anything? Liiiiiiiiike, you could set it to have dinosaurs attack us?”

That suggestion was met with a heavy sigh. 

“I could, but I’m not gonna. Fuckin’ hate fighting dinosaurs.” Logan crossed his arms and leaned against the console, waiting for a better suggestion. Fine. Wade could do better than dinosaurs. That was just the warmup anyway. 

“Okay, so not anything,” Wade sassed before gasping and snapping his fingers. Perfect. “What about an army of you’s? Oooh! Or, or or oooooor, an army of meeeeeeee’s. That would be fun.”

This time he was met with a groan. 

“Sounds like a fuckin’ nightmare.”

“Just imagine it!” Wade spread his arms wide, hands framing the scene. “A hundred me’s running around, jumping off the walls, being unpredictable. It’d be a good training program. Even I don’t know what I’m going to do next.” 

Logan shook his head, rolling his eyes. 

“That’s a lie. You forget we’ve worked together? You know exactly what you’re doing — it’s everyone else that’s at a loss cuz nothing you do makes any goddamn sense to a person with a lick a’ sanity.”

“It makes plenty of sense to me,” Wade countered, ignoring the tight feeling in his chest. He wasn’t supposed to look that hard; nobody else ever did, that’s why the crazy idiot routine worked so well. 

Maybe that was why he could never keep the upper hand against the man in the past; Logan actually expected him to know what he was doing so he couldn’t use competence as a surprise tactic. 

Wade tucked those thoughts away to be analyzed later. Or possibly never.

Focus . 

“So that’s settled? An army of me?”

“Absofuckinglutely not.”

“C’mon! Imagine how much fun you could have with a hundred me’s.”

Logan’s left eye twitched and he went somewhere else; just for a second, but Wade noticed it all the same. 

Interesting. 

He’s thinking about killing you a hundred times . 

Or…

Or torturing. 

A girl can dream. 

“No. Pick something else.”

“Ugh fiiiiine, you’re no fun. Dealer’s choice then; I don’t wanna make any more decisions.”

“You haven’t even made one,” Logan argued, unfairly. Wade pointed out his hypocrisy.

“Yeah I did, but you vetoed dinosaurs and the Deadpool Corps so you gotta choose now. I don’t make the rules sweetpea, I just follow them (when they loosely serve my purposes).”

“Fine.” He stepped up to the console that Wade had been instructed in no uncertain terms to never ever touch under penalty of banishment and typed in a few things on the keyboard. 

“Slim’s been on a sentinel kick lately.”

Eww, boring. That's what he got for letting an X-Man choose the training program. Whatever. At least it was better than Doombots or something equally as predictable – but just barely. 

The room changed suddenly, walls melting away to an outdoor scene, rocky, mountainous terrain surrounded them and Logan grabbed him by the arm and pulled him behind an uprooted tree, keeping them out of the eye-line of the giant spaceship across from them. 

“Uh, I think you scrolled a little too far under “S” there, peanut. That’s a Skrull.”

“Yeah. I know.” Logan smirked, unsheathing his claws as he prepared for battle. “Fuckin’ sick of sentinels.”

Wade laughed, then covered his mouth, but it was too late. They’d been clocked. 

He pulled his guns out. 

“Forgot how much of a petty bitch you can be. I’ve missed it.”

“Fuuuuuuuck I’m so out of shape,” Wade wheezed, propping one foot up on a large imaginary(?) Holographic(?) (He didn’t actually know how this stuff worked) boulder and leaning forward to stretch. 

Logan looked over at him, scowling. 

“You just scaled a fucking mountain. The fuck you mean you’re out of shape?”

“Didn’t used to be able to feel my thighs burning afterwards,” he explained, patting his leg. Sure it would only last another minute or so, but it was the principle of the thing. There was a loud explosion and bits of shattered rock sprayed from the sky above them. Wade yelped and ducked for cover. 

Break’s over. 

He heard Logan’s bark of a laugh as he dove in the other direction, followed by a muttered, “fuck off.”

Wade rounded a corner at breakneck speed then skittered to a halt, nearly running into… himself?

Skrull. 

The imposter was trying to reason with a pissed off Wolverine (dumb move), hands up but still holding what Wade belatedly realized was one of his own guns that’d been tossed somewhere carelessly during a firefight earlier. 

Imposter!Wade took his entrance as an opportunity for escape. 

“It’s the Skrull! Kill him!” It shouted, bringing its hand down to aim Wade’s own gun at him. 

Logan growled and took a step forward and the Skrull quickly put its hands back up in a defensive gesture. 

Wade watched with mild fascination. They really were good at this copycat shit. He made to move closer, tilting his head to the side, looking for any little incongruities or mistakes. 

Logan growled again, this time aiming a set of claws at the real Wade too and adding “don’t fuckin’ move,” for good measure. 

“C’mon Wolvie, you’re better than that.”

“Don’t listen to him, he’s obviously the Skrull. Look, he’s even using a Skrull weapon. Rookie move, dickhead.”

Wade looked down at his hand. 

Oh yeah, forgot I picked that baby up. 

“Oh please, that doesn’t prove shit. You know me, I see a weapon all lonely and neglected and I just can’t help myself. I’m a bleeding heart like that. Can’t just leave a helpless gun all sad and afraid with nowhere to call home.”

“At least let me shoot him if you’re not going to, Wolvie.”

“Hey, nuh-uh. You don’t get to call him that, you shifty lizard-faced motherfucker,” Wade shouted, pointing the finger of his hand not holding a gun.  

“We’re wasting time,” the Skrull!Wade said, all snippy like he had somewhere better to be. 

Wade rolled his eyes. 

“Wasting time is a Deadpool’s favorite pastime. Do your research better.”

“Shooting is a Deadpool’s favorite pastime, you reject store-brand knockoff.”

Wade huffed. This was getting them nowhere, and he kinda hated this guy – and the fact that Logan hadn’t killed him yet. 

“Here, just gut us both. Can’t copy a healing factor, can you sweet cheeks? Or can you?” He turned towards Logan to ask. “Like, for real, can they? Oh god, now who didn’t do their research? This is so embarrassing—”

Wade’s ramble was cut off by the wet sound of his doppelganger being eviscerated. He looked back up in time to see Wolverine wiping his claws off in the imposter's clothes before sheathing them once more. 

“Hey! You got it right!” Wade did a little hop and clap for him. 

Logan threw his stolen gun at him. Luckily Wade’s reflexes were spot on and he caught it before it could catch him in the jaw. (He’d like to think he wasn’t actually aiming at Wade’s face, it was just his poor throwing skills). 

“Knew it wasn’t you the moment it showed up, you just wouldn’t stop fucking talking long enough for me to say.”

“You did not,” Wade said, the urge to argue almost automatic at this point. Logan growled.  

“They can change their faces but they never get the scents right.”

Oh.

Oh, that was not a tidbit of information his brain needed access to. Nope, no siree, not at all. Logan being able to tell him apart from another Deadpool by scent alone? Totally not some ABO scent kink fantasy material right there. Absolutely not. 

“I am so turned on right now,” he said out loud, only half joking – and “half” was being generous. 

Logan grunted, ignoring him, and stalked off in the opposite direction. 

“That’s so romantic!” Wade called after him, mouth running off the way it always did despite the jokes being a little too on the nose for his comfort. He couldn’t stop himself. “I’m putting this in our wedding vows!”

Wade collapsed heavily onto a flat-ish slab of rock, chest heaving, muscles aching, blood thrumming in his veins. 

“That was fun.” 

God, when was the last time we’ve moved like that? 

When was the last time we shot a gun? 

Months? How’d we let that happen? 

Wade loved his daughter, loved the life he’d built around her, but he could admit in the privacy of his own thoughts that he missed this. Just a little. The rush, the ache, the blood… it just felt good. None of it was worth the risk to Ellie, and he could wait it out until she was older – not like he was gonna die of old age or anything – but he could definitely get used to this. A fight with no consequences? Yes please. Sign him up for the deluxe membership package. 

“Yeah,” Logan panted, slouched on the ground across from him, a sea of dead Skrulls disappearing before their eyes as the room reset itself now that the threat was eliminated. The “rock” Wade had been sitting on transformed back into a metal crate underneath him. It was a little unnerving.

A thought crossed his mind as he looked at Logan sitting there, all sweaty, splattered with flecks of dried Skrull blood and dirt. 

(Not that thought, perv)

(That thought’s crossed and recrossed our mind so many times since we entered this room it’s basically just background noise at this point)

(Barely even worth acknowledging)

(He doesn’t even look that good)

(Fucking liar)

Wade shook his head, physically ridding himself of those annoying little asides before refocusing on Logan and his brilliant new idea. 

“Y’know what would be more fun?” Wade asked, unable to stop the grin spreading across his face.

Logan’s eyebrows knit together as he looked over at him questioning, then smoothed out as the realization hit. 

“Wade,” he said, clear warning apparent in his tone. 

Wade flicked the safety on then off again just so that he could hear the satisfying click of the gun being cocked as he pointed it straight at Logan. 

“Dare me?”

“Don’t.”

The shot echoed loudly through the danger room, followed instantly by Wade’s manic giggle as he sprung up and scampered away. 

“Whoops! Finger slipped. These things can be so finicky sometimes!” He shouted over his shoulder, zigzagging around random boxes and containers to put more obstacles between him and two sets of adamantium claws. 

“You motherfucker!” Logan roared from somewhere behind him. 

“It’s not my fault. Negligent discharges are common for mercs over forty. It happens more often than you’d think.”

He could hear the heavy footsteps behind him, the crash of furniture being thrown out of the way instead of navigated around. 

“I’m gonna kill you.”

Wade laughed, jumping from one crate to another, climbing to maintain higher ground.  

“Gotta catch me first, peanut!”

Wade yelped, arms flying out to try to maintain his balance as he teetered on the edge of a rocking crate. 

A roar rang out beneath him and the crate lurched forward as he fell backwards, losing the fight with balance and gravity all at once. He groaned and tried to stay still while his spine knitted itself back together slowly. The ringing in his ears receded and was replaced with the sound of heavy, booted footfalls headed towards him at a measured pace. 

“Good one,” he wheezed out, holding his thumb up. 

Snikt.

He took a running leap and kicked off one of the interior walls, using the leverage to land a solid blow to Logan’s jaw, definitely breaking a few toes in the process. 

Worth it. 

Logan spit, blood splattering the ground at his feet, and snarled at him, pearly white fangs stained red, crouching to prepare a charge at Wade, who was hopping on one foot while reloading his gun. 

He aimed and fired, getting off six shots that landed square in Logan’s chest before the man put six holes of his own into Wade’s, smug laugh echoing off the walls around them. 

Ouch. 

“Come out, come out wherever you are!” Wade sing-songed, twirling around corners looking for his elusive Wolverine. He’d switched tactics so instead of chasing he was stalking Wade like the predator he was. And he was annoyingly good at it. 

Wade had determined quickly that he sure as shit wasn’t going to out hunt him, so he was focusing on annoying him out of hiding instead, hoping it’d be enough to make him lose focus and slip up, leading to a mistake Wade could take advantage of. 

“Pspspsps heeeeere kitty kitty kit– oof. ”

Wade was knocked forward, slammed bodily into the wall in front of him. He turned his head just in time to avoid introducing the cartilage in his nose to his frontal cortex, but didn’t have any time to congratulate himself because his arms were suddenly wrenched back (ow fuck, that pop was definitely something important) and folded so that his wrists were over top of each other and before he could even process what was happening a sharp, stinging pain lit up his nerve endings making him scream, more in shock than in pain (though it did hurt like fuck). 

“What now?” Logan growled over his shoulder as he twisted his claws a few degrees, shredding through the tendons in Wade’s forearms. 

The pain wire in Wade’s brain (like most things in there) had never exactly been a straight line from point A to point B and over the years it’d become crisscrossed with the pleasure wire somewhere along the line. This moment was no different. The sparks that were lighting up his insides caught fire, something primal and urgent burning low in his gut.  

Fuuuuuuuuck. 

“I can think of a few things,” he said, breathlessly, “but you’re probably not gonna like my answers.” It was barely a joke. He had sooooo many ideas where this could go next. Each one more depraved than the other and sure to get him castrated — and not in a fun way. 

Didn’t help Logan was standing so close – close enough Wade could feel the heat radiating off the man’s chest, feel his breath hot and sticky against the back of his neck. 

He swallowed hard, waiting for the inevitable stab through the skull. 

Jesus Christ, is it normal to like the smell of someone’s sweat?

You have problems. 

About to have one very noticeable problem if he doesn’t back the fuck off. 

Shouldn’t we be getting our skull skewered right about now?

They were right. Logan hadn’t moved yet, hadn’t said anything either, was just panting heavily in Wade’s ear like the world's sexiest labrador retriever. 

(A labrador retriever that was no doubt about to sink his teeth into Wade’s throat as soon as he moved. Fuck! Why did even that sound good?)

An incessant beeping coming from Logan’s wrist interrupted the loaded silence. 

“What is that?” Wade risked asking when Logan made no move to turn it off, like he didn’t even hear the annoying alarm. 

A second passed, then Logan cleared his throat. 

"Detention's over.” His voice was so much closer to Wade’s ear than he’d realized, all raspy and deep, sending shivers up his spine. 

Fuck him. 

Now that was going to be in his brain forever. 

No. Nope. He was better than that. He absolutely refused to let his depraved imagination go down that road. Roleplaying hot teacher with his kid’s actual teacher was probably a step too far even for Wade. Probably. 

(Unless he’s into it too). 

No. Bad. Shut it. We don’t like him like that anymore. 

Yeah? Who’s gonna tell our dick? 

Logan stepped back, pulling his claws from Wade’s flesh too slow and deliberate to not feel some kind of intimate. Wade nearly bit his tongue in half to keep from making a sound he’d regret. 

They got cleaned up quickly, Logan throwing a grey sweatshirt on over his stained shirt while Wade shucked his off completely and tossed it in a nearby trashcan, grabbing a spare from his gym bag, He hadn’t really thought it through when he’d pointed his gun at Logan, but the claws did a lot more permanent damage to a wardrobe than Skrull energy weapons. Oh well. 

Worth it. 

He pulled on his own hoodie, zipping it up all the way to the top and pulling the hood over his head, minimizing the surface area visible to unsuspecting mansion dwellers. 

He was in a good mood, endorphins and endocannabinoids swirling around his nervous system giving him the kinda high he hadn’t felt in a really long time. No need to harsh it with whispered insults and horrified stares right off the bat. 

He wasn’t as insecure about it as he used to be, but he wasn’t delusional either. He knew what he looked like, didn’t need to be constantly reminded of it by the rest of the world’s lack of fucking tact and filter. 

At least he disgusted Logan with who he was and not how he looked. It was a subtle but distinct difference. Though he did sometimes get that prickly feeling on the back of his neck like he was looking a little too close for comfort, so far nothing had come of it. His insults historically had more to do with Wade’s personality deficits than where he was lacking in the looks department; a quality Wade appreciated in a frenemy. 

After all, beauty was only skin deep, but this unique combination of sarcasm, self-deprecation, and psychosis had been carefully cultivated over years ; it deserved a chance to be hated just as much – if not more – than his physical appearance did. 

“Can’t believe we coulda been doing this the whole week and you let me waste time sharpening your pencils all day,” he complained, halfway sincere, on their way back to Logan’s classroom. The halls were nearly empty, most students choosing not to linger around after the end of day except for one or two nerds and the occasional delinquent, like their own precious baby troublemakers angels.

Logan scoffed at his statement. 

“First of all, you didn’t sharpen shit; that woulda been useful and you’ve been anything but. Second of all, no, we couldn't because some of us have actual jobs.”

“Not my fault you chose passion over a paycheck, peanut. Bad move in this economy. Any financial advisor would tell you that,” Wade countered. “Anyway, I could just do it by myself,” he offered, knowing what the answer would be.

Sure enough, Logan barely let him get the words out of his mouth before he was shutting them down with a succinct, “No.”

Wade didn’t like the idea of going it alone either, but that was for an entirely different reason than Logan. The same reason he didn’t want a substitute chaperone; it just wasn’t the same. Sure, fighting the fake Skrulls had been fun, but fighting Logan? That had been exhilarating. 

No. He didn’t like the idea of it being someone else at all – but he did like riling Logan up, so he had to say it anyway. 

“Someone else could supervise me; doesn’t have to be you.”

“Fuck no.”

Wade had been expecting the response, but not the amount of force with which it was said. By the pinch of Logan’s eyebrows and clench of his jaw, it didn’t look like he had either. 

Which of course meant Wade couldn’t just let it slide. 

“Awwww Wolvie, you want me all to yourself?” He folded his hands under his chin and tilted his head towards Logan, which did mean he wasn’t watching where he was going and nearly tripped over the edge of one of the many long, ugly-ass carpets running down the middle of the hallways. 

Completely unnecessary safety hazard in Wade’s opinion – especially in a building as prone to invasions as this one. 

Logan (the bitch) snorted at his stumble, shaking his head. 

“Nah, just wouldn’t subject you on my worst enemy, let alone my friends.”

“Asshole.” Wade shoved him by the shoulder, barely even making him list to the left, and caught the hint of a smile on Logan’s lips before he schooled his expression back into his usual RBF. 

They reached the classroom just as the girls walked up, clasped hands swinging between them while they chattered rapidly, speaking over one another and seemingly carrying on three different conversations at once. 

Gabby suddenly stopped talking and whipped her head forward to look at him, little button nose twitching. Wade realized their mistake right as she turned on her father, crossing her arms with a scowl.  

“Daddy you promised to be nice to Mr. Wade.” She stomped her foot angrily at him. 

“I don’t think I said that,” he started to reply, but Wade cut in hoping to calm her righteous anger down before it got off the ground, since Logan was obviously just about to make it worse. 

“Hold up little honey badger. I appreciate your concern for my well-being, it’s very sweet, but not necessary. I’m okay. We were just play-fighting in the danger room and I got a coupla scrapes. No big deal. Old folks like us gotta stay moving or our joints get all creaky and locked up, 'specially in the cold weather.”

She narrowed her eyes, looking at one and then the other before apparently deciding he was telling the truth. 

“Okay?”

She nodded, satisfied. 

“Okay.”

“Great.” He clapped his hands together, happy to avoid a catastrophic meltdown (even though it was super duper cute that she cared). “Now. How was detention? Tell me all about it.”

Logan

It didn’t take much convincing for Logan to agree to “supervising” another danger room session, though he did refuse to skip another class to do it. 

He caught the girls at the end of class the next day to explain in case time got away from them. He had a feeling it was going to. 

“Gonna be in the danger room again after school today. If we’re not in here when detention's over, come find us.”

“Oooooor…” Ellie started, holding a finger up. Again with the negotiating. “We could play video games until you’re done? Since you’re old and need your exercise and everything.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. 

“Cute.”

He had half a mind to say no on principle, but an hour really wasn’t much time to spar– especially when it took him half that time to just catch the fucker anyway – so he caved, with a caveat. 

“If you finish up your homework first.”

“Yes!” Gabby jumped in excitement, high-fiving her friend.

“We totally will. Promise! Thanks Mr. Logan.” 

“You’re welcome.” They turned to go and he called after them. “And, Ellie, for future reference, leave out the age comments when you’re trying to butter someone up, it’ll go better for you.”

She looked like she was thinking about it for all of two seconds before replying. 

“I mean, you said yes.”

Logan closed his eyes and to counted to five. God help him if this friendship made it to highschool. 

“Get outta here, you’re gonna be late for English,” he shooed them away, not having the energy or inclination to argue with her. She was, unfortunately, correct. 

Gabby came around the desk and gave him a hug. 

“Thanks Daddy. Have fun playing!” She said on her way out. 

“Take your time!” Ellie tacked on. 

He could hear them chatting eagerly about that star-something farm game Gabs was obsessed with all the way down the hall until they disappeared into their next classroom. 

He made a mental note to ask Laura to check and make sure they actually did their homework before they started playing. 

Logan’s watch went off, rhythmic digital beeping interrupting their match and giving away his cover. 

He heard a high pitched whine like the helium in a balloon being let out slowly. 

“Fuck, that went by fast. I barely even broke a sweat. You shoulda played hooky,” Wade complained from his spot in the middle of the floor. He’d gone for taunting Logan out of his hiding spots again instead of giving him something to chase so they’d spent much of the last hour waiting each other out and getting in a few cheap shots but nothing noteworthy. 

“How would that’ve worked, dipshit? We’re a floor below the school. They know I’m here,” Logan argued, stepping out from his hiding spot. 

Wade spun around to face him, having been addressing the entirely opposite side of the room. 

“You know what I mean.” He swung his sword in a wide arc, twisting his wrist and sliding it back into the sheath strapped to his back. 

“Ever considered retirement? It’s super fun. You can do whatever you want whenever you want.”

“Super fun, huh? ‘Cept for the parts where you’re so bored out of your skull you’re usin’ licorice for knife practice, right? Didja forget why we’re here, bub?”

“I mean yeah, there’s that,” he huffed, clearly annoyed at Logan for not going with the bit. 

Logan chuckled and started to slowly circle, corralling Wade into the direction he wanted him pointed as he followed Logan’s movements seemingly automatically. 

“We can keep going if you want. Told the girls they could play video games til we’re done so they’re not in a hurry, trust me.”

Wade’s pout quickly morphed into a wide grin. 

“Devious. Knew I liked you for a reason. What’re you waiting for?” He pulled his sword back out —casting around for the other one which they both spotted at the same time, about equidistant from either of them off to Logan’s left. 

He caught Wade’s eye, clocking the way his weight shifted to support the sprint he was about to break into. Logan crouched, claws extending menacingly. 

Wade’s grin turned maniacal. 

“Let’s fucking go.”

Wade could only flit around for so long before he started to get bored of running; Logan just had to wait him out, giving chase then standing back and letting the man tire himself out, doing Logan’s work for him. It was an effective strategy that took him way too long to catch on to, long enough that when they did finally come together it was an explosion of blades and bullets that rivaled the day before tenfold. 

Logan was having a fucking blast. 

There was a reason he’d said yes to doing this again and it wasn’t because he was altruistic. He’d been operating as strictly intimidation these last few missions, situations either too delicate or too benign to need a heavier hand and as much as he tried to deny it, the beast inside of him craved the violence.  

He charged at Wade, claws sinking deep into his chest, and followed him down to the ground with the strength of it. The triumph only lasted a second because before he could register what was happening Wade’s legs were doing something, then there was a boot against his chest and he was propelled backwards with a force that didn’t seem to follow the laws of physics. 

Logan’s head hit the pavement hard enough to crack it — the pavement, not his skull. The adamantium didn’t break so easy, but just because he wasn’t broken didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like a bitch. His ears were ringing and his vision went blurry for a few seconds, long enough for Wade to pop back into his line of sight. The maniac knelt on top of him, blood dripping onto Logan’s cheek as he put most of his weight onto the knee digging into his sternum and the rest of it into the momentum of his sword, driving it down into Logan’s shoulder and severing several muscles and arteries along the way. 

Logan roared in pain and anger, his body naturally arching up in response and only serving to injure himself more. Wade rocked forward, jostled by the movement, and suddenly it wasn’t just pain Logan was feeling. 

The hard line of Wade’s shin was pressed firmly against his groin, and every time he rocked forward to dig his knee further into the center of Logan’s chest and his sword deeper into his shoulder, he created a torturous friction that warred with the other sensations assaulting Logan’s broken brain, mixing in a delicious cocktail of painpleasurepain that had him fighting the urge to buck up into it. 

Which only made him angrier. 

Stupid fucking animal. 

He unsheathed his claws into Wade’s thigh and stomach, using the leverage to push him over into his back and switch their positions. Wade groaned in pain, grip faltering on his sword long enough for Logan to rip it out. The noise he made when the claws slid from his abdomen was long and loud and so fucking erotic that Logan couldn’t stand it. He had to get away from the scene before he did something stupid. And before Wade could see the glaringly obvious way that sound had affected him.

He frowned down at himself as he stalked away, willing his arousal to go the fuck away.

What kind of a goddamn monster gets turned on by evisceration? Was that better or worse than getting turned on by the feeling of metal slicing through his own body? 

“Fucking freak,” he muttered, sick to his stomach. This was what happened when he indulged the beast. Why couldn’t he just be fucking normal for once? 

Wade didn’t mention it, but he did keep his distance — as well as one can while trying to physically assault someone else — because if there was one thing Logan was good at, it was ruining a good time. 

It pissed him off, made him reckless and desperate to close the distance with a vicious determination he really wished surprised him. If Wade objected to the increased brutality, he didn’t show it at all, just upped his own game to match Logan at every turn. 

The scent of gunpowder and his own blood filled Logan’s nostrils, the eight bullets lodged inside his torso a stinging heat as his body worked to reject them. Shit hurt worse coming out than going in sometimes — every time when it was Wade shooting him. Bastard only used hollow points even during practice when a simple FMJ would do the job without rending Logan’s flesh to shit. 

He ignored the pain and focused instead on which soft spots would hurt the most when he stabbed them and how he could get to them without taking another clip to the chest. 

Logan felt the snap of Wade’s collarbone beneath his fist and paused, blinking back the rage that was always so close to the surface. He sat back on his heels, panting heavily, wiping Wade’s blood off on his shorts. 

“Are you done yet?” He sneered, knowing he was being crueler than he should, but unable to stop himself. 

Wade just licked the blood off his lips and looked up at Logan with punch-drunk eyes. 

“I can go all night, babydoll. How ‘bout you?”

“You’re fuckin’ insatiable.” Insufferable. He’d meant to say insufferable. 

“Dunno ‘bout that. Bet you could finish the job if you really put your back into it.”

This time when he felt the bone crack under his knuckles, he didn’t stop. 

“Goddamn. Feel like I’ve been run over by a fucking freight train. In the best possible way.” Wade stretched his arms up high, arching his back and rolling his neck until Logan heard something pop. He sighed, heavy with satisfaction. 

“Is there a good way to get run over by a freight train?” 

Wade dropped his head back and groaned loudly. 

“Ohmygod would you just go with it one time? I just let you break every bone in my body, it’s the least you could do.”

Logan raised an eyebrow.

“Let me?”

Logan must’ve scrambled his brain harder than he thought if he was remembering it that way. 

“Yup. Seemed like you needed a little stress relief, and I was happy to provide.”

“You sayin’ you were offerin’ yourself up as a human stress ball? How giving of you.”

“Mmm I do like to give. And receive. Honestly pretty versatile in the exchange department all around." Wade bowed at the waist, waving his hand around with a flourish. Logan batted it out of the way.  

"And I live to serve. Feel free to squeeze me any time you’re feeling pent up. The deluxe model comes with all sorts of advanced relaxation settings but you’ve gotta pay the subscription for access to those.”

Logan stopped listening somewhere around “free fourteen day trial” and tuned back in to muttered cursing under his breath. 

“Motherfucker.”

Logan looked over at him, half the contents of his gym bag laying scattered on the bench in front of him. 

“You good?”

“Forgot to replace my spare shirt last night. Can’t exactly wear this one.” He held up the tattered remains of what used to be his tee shirt. 

Logan laughed and Wade glowered at him. 

“Sorry ‘bout that,” he said, not sorry at all. If he didn’t want it shredded he shoulda taken it off at the beginning. He knew what Logan was working with. 

“The fuck am I supposed to do? Can’t go wandering the hall half-naked, the sight alone could cause irreversible trauma to the psyche of some unsuspecting kiddie unfortunate enough to walk past.” The joking wasn’t quite enough to cover the real distress underlying his tone. 

“They gotta stare at Scott’s ugly mug all day, think they could survive a bare chest with a few scars, bub.”

Wade scoffed. 

“A few— remind me never to trust your estimation skills.” He wrapped his arms around his chest self-consciously, the movement drawing Logan’s eyes to wander over the mottled landscape of scars and musculature. He didn’t really notice them anymore, not as anything weird or grotesque. Wade was just Wade. He supposed it could be jarring for someone who wasn’t used to it, but the mansion was filled with mutants with all sorts of physical adaptations that made them stand out in a crowd. Hell, his own daughter had facial scars and the only bad thing about those was how she’d gotten them. She wasn’t any less beautiful for their existence. Same went for Wade — not that he was beautiful, that wasn’t what Logan meant, just, that it didn’t detract from anything is what he was saying. 

Wade noticed him looking and turned away, digging through his bag again like a shirt might magically appear if he looked hard enough. 

Logan grabbed the jacket from his locker, the one with the stupid little “X” embroidered on the breast pocket they were supposed to wear when training the new recruits. Logan barely ever touched it, always feeling a little too gimmicky teaching in it. 

“Here.” He nudged Wade’s shoulder with the back of his hand, holding out the piece of clothing. 

Wade squinted at it at first like Logan was trying to hand him a concealed bomb, then took it, holding it spread out in front of him. 

His tone shifted. 

“Custom Xavier’s institute merch complete with authentic Wolverine musk? You could make a small fortune on eBay with this puppy.” 

“If I see that on the goddamn internet—”

Wade gasped in horror, clutching the clothing to his still bare chest. 

“How dare you. This is a priceless treasure and I will cherish it until the day I die.”

Logan rolled his eyes, secretly relieved Wade was back to behaving like an idiot, insecurities forgotten in the face of a chance to perform. 

“It’s just a fuckin’ hoodie.”

“One man’s trash, et cetera et cetera.”

“I expect it back.” He didn’t. He knew Wade well enough to know he was never seeing that jacket again. Not that it mattered. The institute would just issue him a new one to gather dust in his locker. 

“Of course,” Wade lied. “I’ll even wash it.”

Yeah, he wasn’t getting that back. 

The thought stoked something stupid and possessive inside of him that he refused to acknowledge. 

Dumb animal. 

Wade turned slightly to unzip the hoodie and as he did, a small flash of red caught Logan’s eye. 

“Hang on, wait.” 

Wade froze, arm through one sleeve.

Logan walked over and wiped the blood from his lower back with his own ruined shirt that was already his hand. There was a sharp intake of breath and Wade flinched at the unexpected touch. 

“Sorry,” Logan apologized, stepping back out of his space. “There was some blood,” he said in way of explanation.

Wade cleared his throat and resumed putting on the jacket. 

“Thanks.”

Logan turned back to his locker, grabbing his change of clothes and giving himself a cursory once over before changing quick and efficient, while Wade stumbled his way into a new topic to ramble about. 

It was white noise to Logan while his brain still tried to process why the fuck his body thought it was a good idea to act like that. 

He needed to get a fucking grip. 

Gabby

“What are you two whispering about over here?”

Gabby looked up from her notebook to see Laura walking into the family room, Oliver (Remy’s grey cat) curled up in her arms. 

Cripes. 

“Nothing!” She and Ellie said in unison, scrambling to cover up the Plan™ before Laura could see. 

She leveled them with an unimpressed stare. 

“Oh yeah, that wasn’t suspicious at allllllll. Spill.” She let Oliver hop down and slink away then snapped her fingers and pointed at Gabby’s folded arms where she was leaning over the paper to hide it. 

“Promise you won’t tell,” Gabby demanded. This was Top Secret material. They couldn’t trust just anybody with it. 

Laura held out both pinkies, long black nails shimmering in the strip of remaining daylight streaming through the open curtains. They linked their fingers, swearing her to secrecy. 

“Okay. Show her,” Ellie said, nodding once. 

Gabby uncovered the notebook and turned it toward Laura so she could read it. 

Operashun Operation Sisterhood

• Step 1: Papi and Daddy become friends ✔️
• Step 2: Papi and Daddy fall in love
• Step 3: Papi and Daddy get marryied and we become SISTERS. Operation compleet!!!

There was a colored pencil drawing of the five of them, Daddy and Mr. Wade holding hands standing behind her and Ellie holding hands and Laura standing off to the side waving. (Ellie had forgotten about her at first and she had to be added in afterwards, but she didn’t need to know that). 

Laura burst out laughing and Gabby snatched the notebook back from her. 

“It’s not done yet,” she defended, scowling at her sister. 

Laura wiped a tear from her eye. 

“No, it’s amazing. The best plan I’ve ever read.”

“You’re being mean,” Gabby accused. Normally this is where she’d threaten to tell Dad, but he couldn’t know what they were doing or the plan would be ruined (and she would probably be grounded until she was forty). 

Laura shook her head, holding her hands up. 

“No, I’m not, I promise. But like, come on. Have you seen them together? Dad’s got his claws out within five minutes every time they talk.”

“Not anymore. They’re friends now; kinda,” Ellie said, not not convincingly. 

“Probably,” Gabby added, trying to help.

“They hang out while we’re in detention.” Good point. Oh also! 

“And they’ve been playing in the danger room and yeah, they’re fighting, but like, in a fun way; daddy’s not angry.”

“Training, not playing,” Laura corrected. Like she knew. Adults used “training” to mean all sorts of things. Bobby said he was “training” playing Ace Combat 7 on the Xbox the other day when Gabby wanted to play Stardew Valley instead and she really didn’t think that counted as flight hours logged. 

“Whatever,” Ellie said, shrugging. “Point is, they’re friends now. Next step, we gotta get ‘em to fall in love.”

Laura rubbed her forehead in that same way Daddy did when spent the whole day teaching and someone asked a stupid question at dinner. 

“And how on earth do you plan on doing that?”

Gabby looked around the empty room, making sure no one was lurking in the doorway. She leaned forward and lowered her voice just in case. 

“A trap, like in the movies,” Gabby explained. They hadn’t actually gotten that far into the details yet. That’s what they were supposed to be doing today but Auntie ‘Roro was covering detention instead of Kitty and Gabby didn’t trust her not to blab to her dad if she overheard them. 

“A trap?” Laura asked, eyebrow raised skeptically. 

“Yeah, like two people who hate each other get stuck on an elevator and by the time they’re rescued they’ve fallen in love. Voila!” Ellie clapped her hands together then spread them out in an arch, wiggling her fingers. 

Laura didn’t look convinced. 

“They would break out of the elevator. Dad hates confined spaces.”

Ellie took the notebook back and crossed something out. 

“So does Papi, so that won’t work cuz one of them has to be all panicky so the other one can calm them down with a kiss.”

“What are you guys watching? Geeze,” Laura muttered under her breath. “Dad doesn’t panic anyway,” she added. 

Gabby was hearing a looooot of negative from her without any helpful ideas. She took the notebook back from Ellie and made a column, one side for Mr. Wade and one side for her dad, then starting listing out things they had in common that they might be able to exploit at a later date. 

Ellie kept arguing with Laura. 

“Papi panics all the time. Says it’s all part of the process.”

Gabby thought about it, perking up when she remembered. 

“Daddy panics in water sometimes. We could trick him into getting in the ocean and then your papi would have to rescue him like in the little mermaid.” Mr. Wade had long legs, she bet he was a really strong swimmer, he could definitely save her dad and who wouldn’t fall in love after getting rescued from jellyfish and sharks and probably sea monsters? It was the perfect plan. 

So of course Laura had to shoot it down. 

Spoilsport. 

“So you want to drown Dad and what? Hope he wakes up with brain damage?”

“Hey!” They cried in unison, Ellie probably in defense of her dad, and Gabby in defense of the plan. They’d been working really hard on these ideas and they were only just getting started so it wasn’t fair to be judged based on the preliminary work. The plan was still in its infancy! (She didn’t really know what all of that meant, but she’d heard the terms thrown around by various X-men in various stages of planning attacks and she could infer enough to know plans shouldn’t be judged until they were fully fleshed out). 

“Sorry, just offering some constructive feedback,” Laura apologized, her tone gentling, and finally started offering insight of her own. “I don’t think starting off with something one or both of them hates is gonna work. They can’t be miserable because then they’ll just blame it on the other one and it’ll make things worse.”

Gabby looked up from her list where she’d just started on the Foods in Common part of it. 

“Wait, are you gonna help?” Both she and Ellie let their mouths hang open in an (only slightly exaggerated) surprised expression. They were sure to succeed with Laura’s help. Daddy wouldn’t be suspicious at all and she could be part of grown-up conversations and stuff that they couldn’t. This was gonna be awesome! 

“Oh yeah, definitely. Because no matter how this ends up, it’s going to be hilarious . And I want a front row seat. Gimmie the notebook.”

Chapter Text

Logan

Logan scanned through the bulletin of available jobs, things that weren’t urgent, but still needed to get done in a timely manner. Usually the sorts of things newbies cut their teeth on, not the sort of jobs the Wolverine would waste his time on, and yet here he was, scrolling down the list sorted by distance. 

He needed to get the fuck away from here. Just for a day or two, nothing crazy. He just needed to clear his head. 

And get laid, his brain so helpfully supplied. 

Yeah, there was that, too. All this stuff with Wade was just transference. Had to be. He was pent up and he needed an outlet; the danger room stuff was just bad timing. 

Speaking of bad timing, there was still one day left before the weekend and he wasn’t about to ask someone to cover for him for something explicitly not urgent and entirely voluntary. He already knew Scott was gonna make a big deal out of him picking something up to begin with (he didn’t typically go out of his way to be helpful), he didn’t need to be grilled twice.  

He found a data drop scheduled for seven o’clock that night. A quick in and out, no-contact pickup about two hours away. He’d have to leave before Gabby was out of detention. As soon as he was done with his last class — actually, might be a good idea to end a little early in case of traffic or some unforeseen roadwork situation.

He clicked the button to accept the job and put his phone away before he could second guess it. 

He’d find something for the weekend later. 

Wade

Wade was looking forward to another danger room session, despite the few hiccups of the day before. He’d packed two extra shirts and made sure to jerk off recently enough to have a handle on his libido, but not recent enough for Logan to smell it on him. Probably. He didn’t have definitive proof Logan could smell it on him, let alone a timeframe for lingering eau du cum, but based on data collected over the years of snide comments and sneers, he felt pretty confident about his estimated window of opportunity. 

Which was a completely normal thing to know about an ex-coworker.   

Logan’s door was shut when he got there, which was weird, but didn’t stop Wade from barging in anyway. Knocking was for strangers. And teacher's pets. 

(Wouldn’t mind being this teacher’s pet)

Shut the fuck up, that’s not helpful. 

“So I was thinking today we could do werewolves—” he cut himself off, realizing he’d just walked into an empty room. 

He turned around slowly, holding out a sliver of hope that Logan would be hiding behind the door ready to jump out and yell “gotcha!”

“Or not…”

Maybe he went to the bathroom?

The lights are off and his stuff’s not here. 

Well fuck. 

He took a few steps towards the desk, then stopped and turned back around. He was at a bit of a loss as to what to do next. 

Leaving would make the most sense, but then what? Wait in his car like a soccer mom? Go sit in the fucking library? 

A gentle knock caught his attention and pulled him back to the present. 

A tall, slender figure appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed, giving Wade a toothy smile. 

“Hey, sugah, you lookin’ for Logan?”

“Uh, nope. Just taking the self-guided tour,” he lied, for some unknown reason. He’d had the same routine now every day for over a week, what the fuck else would he be doing in the man’s classroom?

Rogue looked at him a little funny before continuing as if he wasn’t inept at human interaction. 

“Mmhmm. He left early on assignment. Won’t be back til late,” she told him as he cringed internally and hoped his face and body were doing something remotely normal looking. He wished it’d been anyone else who walked by and caught him standing around like a loser who got stood up on prom night, then he wouldn’t have to see the pity in her eyes. For some reason, she liked him — well, she didn’t hate him — and was one of the only X-Men to treat him like an actual human being with feelings and shit. 

Right now, he wished she wouldn’t. 

It was fucking embarrassing. 

He soldiered on.

“Emergency X-assignment and they don’t take the best one? What’d you do to get on Scott’s shit list, rearrange his pocket protectors?”

She laughed, auburn curls bouncing around her shoulders and she shook her head. 

“Nah, it ain’t no emergency, just a little ol’ intel thing. Wolverine’ll be just fine on his own.”

He should’ve just left it at that, but his mouth wasn’t taking orders from his brain, so he kept poking. 

“Wow, sending in the big guns for a little intel thing? Seniority must count for nothing in this place. Private equity is truly a plague no matter the field, huh?”

She held her hands up in defense. 

“Hey, he‘s the one who volunteered,” she told him with a giggle. “Trust me, we all throw our seniority around plenty; some more than others.” 

Wade had stopped listening. 

Bingo. 

There it was, folks. 

Keep people talking long enough and they’ll tell you what you want to hear. Or in his case, don’t want to hear. 

The word rattled around in his brain – volunteered – like a pinball pinging around from memory to memory of things Wade probably did yesterday to make Logan hate him. Again.

If he ever even stopped. 

“You’re waitin’ out your baby girl’s detention, right?” Rogue asked, drawing his attention back. “You want some company?”

The offer was sweet, even if they both knew it wasn’t entirely altruistic. They didn’t trust Wade to be left unsupervised in the mansion (for some reason).

He shrugged it off. 

“Nah, I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than babysit little ol’ me. I’ll be just fine on my own.”

She leveled him with a scrutinizing look, making him feel like a bug under a microscope, before eventually conceding. 

“Promise you’ll behave?”

He held up three fingers and placed his other hand over his heart. 

“Scouts honor,” he lied. 

He tried not to let it bother him for the rest of the day, taking Ellie out to dinner so he wouldn’t have the quiet alone time cooking to dwell, helping her with her homework, watching a new bedtime movie so he actually had to try to pay attention. 

But eventually, it was time for bed, which meant quiet and stillness, two things his brain didn’t handle well on a good day. On a day like today, it could only mean one thing: time to spiral. 

Which part was the final straw ya think? The partial nudity? The writhing around on his claws like a whore? All the innuendos finally adding up? One of the voices mused as he wiggled around on his mattress trying to get comfortable. He tossed the blanket on the floor and climbed under the sheet instead. 

“Hey he’s the one who touched me in the locker room, not the other way around,” he replied out loud. 

To stop his shirt from getting ruined. 

It was definitely the claw thing. You heard him. 

Yeah, he’d heard him. His brain had replayed the words in Logan’s voice about a thousand times already and he doubted he’d be forgetting it anytime soon. 

Fuckin’ freak. 

It was too cold with just the sheet. He leaned off the bed and snatched the blanket back up, wrapping himself up in it like a burrito while he tried in vain to defend himself. 

“I didn’t do it on purpose! Trust me, I tried okay? I fucking tried. He was the one arching up into my sword and moaning like he was auditioning for the lead opposite Ewan McGregor in 2001’s Moulin Rouge. A eunuch would get a stiffy in the face of that. It’s not my fault!” 

He was moaning in pain and you were getting off on it. 

“I wasn’t!”

Absolutely were. 

And he knows it. 

All that progress. Gone. 

He buried his head underneath his mountain of character-shaped pillows and stuffed animals.

It wasn’t that big a deal. He’ll get over it. He replied in his head this time, not trusting himself to not scream if he opened his mouth. The urge was strong. 

Wade had done worse things. A poorly timed boner and a little moaning wasn’t Logan’s last straw. It couldn’t be. 

Right? 

Sure…

Maybe he just needed some space. We’ll try again tomorrow. 

By the next day he’d almost convinced himself he was making it all up, that he was overreacting and making the situation about himself when it probably had nothing to do with him. 

How conceited was that? 

Yeah, he was being silly. The world didn’t revolve around him, much as he tried to make it so, and Logan sure as shit didn’t care enough about anything Wade did or said for it to impact him like that.  

His fingers trembled just a little as he reached for the doorknob, and despite all of his false confidence that he’d overreacted, his body let out an actual, honest to god sigh of relief when he opened the door and saw Logan standing there behind the desk.

See? We were being stupid. 

He strolled over to his usual chair, determined to be cool about this. 

“Came by yesterday, but you weren’t here,” he said, just to go ahead and get it out of the way. “Had to go wandering. Did you know there’s a dragon behind one of those locked doors? Fun fact: he doesn’t like beef jerky. Funner fact: he does like fruit snacks though and will bite your fingers off for them if you’re not careful.”

Logan looked uncomfortable. 

Because of the dragon? Or the ghosting? Or just Wade’s general existence? The world may never know. 

He rubbed at the back of his neck, avoiding eye contact. 

“Uh, yeah, sorry. Last minute assignment, couldn’t get out of it.”

Oh. It’s gonna be like that, huh?

Wade didn’t let his perky demeanor falter, just barreled on. 

“All good man,” he lied. “So I was thinking— what’s with the bag?” He cut himself off, noticing for the first time the duffle bag in Logan’s hands. 

Logan looked down at it like he was just noticing it too. 

“Another job. Just had to grab some things.” He motioned vaguely to his desk. 

Coulda just told Wade to fuck off and saved himself the trouble, and the CO2 emissions. Message received, loud and clear. 

There was an awkward pause. Wade was usually the champion of filling those, but he wasn’t in the mood, and he certainly wasn’t feeling generous enough to fake it just to make it easier for Logan. 

“You’re welcome to hang out in here until detention’s out,” Logan offered. 

How generous. 

“Yeah, thanks.” He offered a closed-lipped smile – that “white people passing each other in a hallway” kind – the most he could manage given the circumstances. Not that it mattered, Logan barely looked at him, just checked his watch and started moving towards the door. 

“Don’t break anything,” he called over his shoulder, not even bothering to turn around. 

“No promises,” Wade muttered in reply, but the vague threat of destruction had no impact on the retreating form of the Wolverine. 

He waited until Logan was out the door, then took a seat at his desk and began shifting everything one inch to the left. 

He valiantly resisted the urge to snap all of the pencils in half for an entire thirteen minutes before caving to the little demons in his head. 

Logan obviously already hated him, what was a little petty vandalism on top of it?

Logan

Driving through Michigan in the middle of March was admittedly not his best idea, but he knew the contact and he’d recognized the town so he’d accepted the mission before really thinking it through. 

The drive there had been long and quiet. Too quiet. He’d tried drowning out his thoughts with an audiobook but his mind kept drifting too much to keep up with the plot. A phone call to his girls helped kill a bit of time, but he eventually had to hang up when it got to be past Gabby’s bedtime. After that had come six long hours of shifting radio station music that may as well have been white noise for all he heard of it. 

His thoughts kept coming back to what happened in the danger room, justifying it, rationalizing it. 

I don’t want him. I just want someone who can fuck me up and he’s the safest option. 

Logan laughed out loud at the idea of Wade being a safe anything. This was fucking ridiculous. 

It isn’t about him. 

Logan just needed to get laid, then he could tell his libido to calm the fuck down and stop acting up over things that it absolutely should not be acting up about. It’d been too long is all, the dry spell had given him a hair trigger.  

(He actively ignored the thoughts that tried to remind him that he routinely sparred with Hank and had never once gotten hard over it. Or how he’d walked in on Rogue coming out of the showers last Thursday and had left that encounter traumatized, not turned on. 

Irrelevant.)

This wasn’t about Wade. 

It couldn’t be about Wade. That would be insane. Absurd. Completely unhinged. 

Okay, sure, the man had some qualities people found objectively attractive. 

He was tall and broad, with strong hands and thighs Logan had literally seen crush a man’s skull. His proportions were… not lacking, particularly in the shoulder to waist ratio department, with a jawline sharper than his fucking katanas…

He digressed.

This wasn’t about any of that. This was about the fact that he had a healing factor and enjoyed beating Logan up and Logan’s stupid, horny subconscious had latched onto that and run wild, as if any of that translated into permission for Logan to act like a goddamn animal. 

Even if he was attracted to Wade — which he wasn’t — it didn’t make what he wanted right or normal any more than being with anyone else would. 

Normal people didn’t want their partners to stab them during sex. 

That. Was. Not. Okay. Period. 

He just needed a reset. He’d get the sex out of his system, then he could go back to just barely tolerating the man’s presence instead of craving it. 

He arrived in town around six in the morning, early enough to grab a motel room and a couple hours of sleep before his rendezvous. The man he was meeting didn’t keep early morning hours. He was ex-CIA turned anti-government conspiracy theorist. Though, Logan wasn’t sure if you could still call it being a conspiracy theorist if all your theories were right. 

The old cudgel was paranoid as hell — with reason — but always reliable. And he didn’t risk his neck unless it was important. Logan had met him a few times, the first being way back in the seventies. 

Technically, he’d talk to anyone with proof of official X-Men status, but he was a little rough around the edges and had a tendency to talk circles around people he thought he could get one over on. Especially when money was involved. It was why Scott hadn’t fought him on picking up the job. Gary knew better than to waste time trying to bullshit Logan. 

They met up in a diner that’d seen better days, drank coffee that coulda powered his truck while Logan ate one of the best damn burgers of his life, and exchanged nondescript envelopes.

Simple. 

Just the way Logan preferred. 

They spent a little while catching up, speaking around any concrete names or places, carving out sentences with vagueness and finding familiarity in the negative spaces. It was a type of language in and of itself, indirect and full of half-truths and partial lies, one that they were both adept at by this stage in their lives. You start to get a feel for it after so long in their line of work. 

After a few hours and a couple refills, they said their goodbyes and Logan headed back to his motel, newly acquired envelope tucked into a secret compartment under his bench seat, locked up tight, safe and sound with the highest of high tech security equipment. 

He sat his phone on the cheap plastic nightstand and powered it on while he riffled through his bag for his toothbrush. 

He kept his personal phone turned off most of the time when he was on missions. He knew the safest option would be to not take it with him at all. That, logically, Charles would be able to get in touch with him if something happened, phone or not, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that, not on simple trips like this one. Gabby still had nightmares – Laura too sometimes – what if they needed to talk? Telepathy was fine and all, but sometimes you just needed to hear a person’s voice to know that it’s going to be okay. 

He never wanted to be unreachable when they needed it. 

He nearly had a heart attack when his phone finally loaded and message alert after message alert came through. 

He rushed to pick it up, then collapsed onto the bed in relief when he saw it was just Wade. The adrenaline quickly turned to anger. He’d explicitly told the bastard not to use this number except in dire emergencies. He almost ignored them out of spite, but there was that tiny chance it actually was an emergency and whatever Logan was feeling towards him, he wouldn’t risk that.

Wade: hey, I kno I promised not 2 txt u (except for dire emergencies), but I took the girls 2 the art museum (Laura said u were fine with it???) and they were being stupid cute posing in front of all the big portraits so, photo dump. 

Wade: k sry bye 

What followed were about fifty pictures of Ellie and Gabby standing in front of different portraits and statues, posing like the subjects. There were even a few of them sitting on a bench in the middle of a statue garden with their sketchbooks out, a tin of colored pencils sitting between them. 

He saved them all, his favorite a close up of Gabby studying a renaissance painting, pencil pressed to the corner of her mouth and sketchbook in hand like a tiny art critic. 

He closed out of his messages and called her. 

“Daddy!!” 

He’d learned from experience to hold the phone away from his ear when she first picked up, always so excited to hear from him. It was crazy how different she and Laura were for being genetically the same. He was lucky if Laura said five words in the course of a conversation, which usually made their calls short, stilted, awkward things since his own phone etiquette could be considered lacking at best. 

Gabby though. 

“I had such a fun day today. Mr. Wade took us to the art museum and we walked around the whoooole entire building. It’s like forty hundred miles at least. And I brought my sketchbook and we sketched all the cool statues and paintings and even our lunch! Ellie’s really good at drawing. She showed me this thing where you make a whole bunch of lines in one direction then go back over them the other direction and it makes it look like a shadow. I’ll show you when you get home. When are you coming home? I hope it’s soon. Mr. Wade let us go to the gift shop and he said I could get whateeeeever I wanted, even if it was a million dollars – I didn’t get anything that ‘spensive though don’t worry. I got this supercool pen that can be like six different colors and a bunch of neat flip books with my favorite paintings and a poster to hang on my wall. Can you hang it up for me when you get back? When are you coming back?” 

That was probably more than his entire daily allotment of words. 

“I’ll be home tomorrow afternoon. M’glad you had a good time today. Did you remember to tell Mr. Wade thank you?”

“Yeah duh of course. Oh! We’re going to the science museum next weekend. Will you come too? Please please please please pleeeeeeeease?”

Two points there: nowhere in that sentence had she actually asked for permission to go, and the thought of spending an entire day with Wade right now was almost enough to make him text Scott and ask for an assignment next weekend just so he’d have an excuse not to. 

He managed to get away with a non-committal noise and a quick change of subject. They’d discuss it later. Or maybe she’d forget. 

He let her talk until it was nearly her bedtime and he could hear ‘Roro in the background calling for her to go brush her teeth. 

He thought about texting Wade back to say thanks, but a tiny, not insignificant part of him was feeling jealous and petty about his daughter having such a good time with someone else – especially since he was supposed to take her to the museum weeks ago, but the plans had fallen through day of and she hadn’t brought it up again so he’d assumed she wasn’t interested anymore. 

Look, he never said he was good at this shit. 

He put his phone away and got up. Goddammit. He was supposed to be getting Wade out of his head.

It was almost as easy to find a place to drink in Michigan as it was in New York. Not much else to do in that kind of weather.

The place he found himself in was busy enough for him to blend in, but not too packed to be obnoxious. He only had to wait a minute or two for the kid behind the bar to notice him, and then he was ready to sit back with his scotch and watch. 

Not that he was looking for anything in particular. 

If the man who approached him happened to be tall with broad shoulders and a slim waist, it wasn’t intentional. He just happened to be the first to offer to buy Logan a drink (and if that had been because Logan's scowl and cold shoulder had scared the others off, well, if Logan was good at one thing, it was lying to himself). 

They didn’t waste much time with pleasantries. After an initial refill of his scotch and a couple of shots for luck, they left the bar together. The man – whose name Logan immediately forgot – lived close enough to walk in some nondescript apartment that screamed average in every possible way. 

It all went exactly how he knew it would. The man was all cocky and confidence in the bar, but he’d picked Logan for a reason. 

He didn’t mind; he liked being on top (and it’s what people were expecting when they fucked him anyway) and control for him was a requirement, not an option. It wasn’t a hardship to lean into it. He didn’t have the luxury of being able to lose himself in pleasure the way most people could. When he fucked somebody, he had to be constantly aware, of his movements, his weight, his claws. 

The closest he could get was when they rode him, but he still couldn’t let himself go completely, he had to think about what his hands were doing – was he squeezing too tight? Were his claws about to come out? 

Even just kissing was a chore — one that was usually worth it, but it took effort. Had to watch his fangs, make sure they didn’t catch; don’t bite too hard, don’t growl too much. 

It took so much effort for him to just be normal. 

It’s why sex wasn’t a huge priority for him. He liked it, yeah, but most of the time he wasn’t going out of his way for it. One-night-stands in nameless towns with nameless bodies looking for something rough and dangerous who’d be gone by sunrise were his usual m.o. and it worked for him. 

It was enough. 

Even if he did find a partner who wouldn’t break if he lost control — at least not permanently— it didn’t mean he could. It wasn’t a risk he could take. Just because a bruise or broken bone healed didn’t mean it didn’t hurt; he would know.

He was just the freak who liked it that way. 

He left his motel shower a few hours later loose limbed and exhausted, and extremely satisfied with the outcome of this trip. That should do the trick. 

He stretched out on the stiff mattress, weighing the pros and cons of just sleeping in the truck cab for all the comfort the bed afforded, and checked his phone one last time out of habit before going to sleep. 

When he saw Wade’s name pop up again, he wished he hadn’t. 

Wade: realized I forgot 2 send these earlier. Jumpscare warning: I’m in some of them, but the girls are 2 cute 2 not share. And I cropped what I could 

Wade: ok sry bye again

This set was taken in a restaurant, action shots of the girls sketching their meals then holding their sketchbooks up for the camera to compare the likeness. Wade must’ve been in on it too because the last few photos were clearly taken by the waiter, the three of them holding up crayon drawings of an ice cream sundae that was visibly melting in front of them. The girls were on either side of him, which explained what he meant about the cropping. He couldn’t cut himself out of it and splice the ends of it together without cutting out the image of the dessert, which was integral to the scene. So instead, he’d simply marked himself out of it with black and red stripes, making a weird Wade-shaped void in the center of the photograph. 

Logan’s stomach twisted into knots looking at them, but he refused to dwell too heavily on why. 

He closed the messaging app and tossed his phone back on the nightstand. It’d been a long day, a long week, he didn’t want to deal with this shit anymore. He was over it. 

Laughter rings in his ears, melodic, beautiful, and just a little bit cruel, stoking the fire in his gut. 

“This what you want?” A sharp stinging starts at the base of his spine and trails upwards. “Don’t worry angel baby, I won’t make you beg. This time.”

The blade slips into his shoulder, smooth and slow, drawing out the moment so he feels every single place it slices him open. It’s sharp enough there’s very little resistance until he’s hilt deep and Logan’s panting, mewling at the burn, his body struggling to stay still. 

“Isn’t that a pretty sight? Never woulda guessed you'd be the type to just lay there and take it.”

Logan growls, tries to get his hands under him but is pressed roughly back down into the mattress by the knife in his back and a hand at the base of his neck. 

“Stay,” he commands, his honeyed tone turning to stone for just long enough for Logan to remember who's in charge here. “Good kitty.” 

Lips press kisses in between praise into Logan’s shoulder blades, licking up the bloody trail the knife left. 

“Fucking get on with it.” Logan’s voice sounds wrecked and his words come out slurred and whiny instead of demanding like he’s intending. 

Another laugh bubbles up from the man behind him, the vibration of it reverberating in Logan’s core. 

“I like you like this, needy little thing. But don’t you worry. I can go all night babydoll, no need to rush. You’ll get what you’re after, just gotta be patient.”

The scene shifts –  he’s on his back and there’s a tongue between his fingers, teasing, daring, reckless. 

Fingers slide over top of Logan’s, curling, folding them into a fist. Logan’s breath catches as his wrist is pulled and his knuckles brush against a solid stomach. 

A moan above him, loud and long, a hand grasping at the sheets next to his head, begging pants against the shell of Logan’s ear, “do it, please.”

He pulls out slowly then slams back in, startling a moan from Logan’s parted lips. The rhythm speeds and falters, body chasing release, mouth whining and begging for Logan’s claws to push him over the edge. 

There’s a knife in his chest that jostles with every thrust, small sparks of pain dancing across his nerves. The pressure against his fist increases as the body above him presses into it. “Need you inside me too, please baby, give ‘em to me.”

Logan jolted awake, panting like he’d just run a marathon, covered in sweat and hard as nails. He was so keyed up a slight breeze probably would’ve set him off. He didn’t think, just slid a hand beneath his waistband and gave in to the lingering fantasy, the rapidly fading ghost of fingers in his hair and his knuckles pressed flush against scar tissue; the phantom sticky slickness of blood between his fingers.

Fuck. 

So much for getting it out of his system. 

By the time Monday rolled around he was starting to wish he hadn’t let his sympathetic nervous system get the better of him. 

He was friends with plenty of people he’d thought about naked; hell, he was friends with a handful of people he’d been naked with. He was capable of maturing and moving on. And when those two options failed, compartmentalizing. 

It didn’t have to be a thing. 

Wade stopped by his classroom at the end of the day, unannounced. Logan caught his scent before he heard him, but carried on grading pop quizzes without glancing at the door. 

“Wow, you look like shit,” Wade told him, in lieu of greeting. He didn’t doubt it. He’d slept about a total of four hours in the last two days. 

“Thanks,” he muttered, not looking up. “Detention’s over.”

“Yeah I know, I uh, just wanted to return this.” He held up a messily folded piece of clothing and dropped it on the desk in front of Logan, then took a couple steps back, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Washed it and everything. Woulda got it dry cleaned, but I know how you feel about it ending up on eBay. Sooooooo, yeah. Anyway. I’ll get out of your hair.”

From anyone else it would’ve been a normal gesture — expected, even. But from Wade? A slammed door would’ve been more subtle. And Logan couldn’t even be mad about it. Wasn’t his fault Logan was a fucking monster who couldn’t handle his own shit. 

He shouldn’t’ve ghosted him; now he’d not only made it super fucking awkward for the foreseeable future — since the girls were unlikely to have a falling out any time soon — he’d also heralded the end of something that’d never even had a chance to start. 

Good fucking job him. 

Logan glared at the offending piece of clothing, not sure what he was more annoyed at: it, Wade, or himself. 

Goddammit, this is stupid. 

He ran a hand through his hair and glanced up to the sight of Wade walking silently away. 

“Wait. Um,” he started, not really sure where he was going but not wanting to leave it like that. Wade stopped with his hand on the doorframe, looking back over his shoulder in Logan’s direction. 

“The pictures,” he started, but Wade immediately cut him off, wincing. 

“I know, sorry. Shoulda just sent ‘em to Laura. It was a busy day; I wasn’t thinking.”

Logan frowned. 

“Was just gonna say thanks. And for taking her to the museum. Been meanin’ to go, just, busy.”

“Oh.” Wade’s face did something unreadable – at least to Logan – before settling back at his default. “Wasn’t a problem. Only one of us got yelled at by the rent-a-cop art gestapo and it wasn't either of the kids. Pro tip: if you have to sneeze while you’re standing near a portrait, just die instead; it’s less offensive.”

Logan chuckled. 

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

There was a pause where usually Wade would be filling the silence but wasn’t. It made his throat itch. He swallowed, wetted his lips, but no words came. He wasn’t good at this.

“That it?” Wade was already turning back around to go. 

“Yeah.” Logan looked back down at the stack of papers on his desk. What else was he supposed to do?

Wade gave him a closed mouthed smile and nod. 

“Cool. See ya ‘round.”

He didn’t wait for Logan to reply.

Chapter Text

Ellie

“Something’s wrong,” Ellie announced, slamming her stack of books down on the lunch table. It’d been two weeks since they’d shared The Plan™ with Laura and since then everything had gone to crud. 

Instead of waiting for her at the gate after school now, Papi waited in the car, same as when he picked her up from the park when it was Mr. Logan’s turn to watch them. And whenever she asked if they could all go out to dinner again he shot her down with some flimsy excuse about wanting some quality daddy-daughter time even though they had dinner together every night! 

She kept asking and he kept saying no. Papi hardly ever told her no. 

Something weird was going on. 

“I concur,” Gabby said with a single, sharp nod of her head, holding up her pointer finger. “Let’s go find Laura.”

Ellie grabbed her sweater, stopping her in her tracks. 

“But what if it’s her fault? Do you think she blabbed?” She wasn’t totally convinced Laura could be trusted. She was a grown-up, and grown-ups generally couldn’t be. (Except Papi. And Mr. Logan). But Gabby trusted her and if two out of three family members were cool, it was probably safe to assume the third was as well. 

Still, she had to be sure.  

“No way. Laura wouldn’t do that,” Gabby said with total certainty, shaking her head. “‘Sides, Daddy woulda grounded me if she told. C’mon, she’ll know what to do.”

They found Laura in the family room playing something on the Xbox and sat down on the table in front of her. 

She said a bad word then hit a bunch of buttons at once, before tossing the controller on the other side of the couch and glaring at them. 

“This better be important. I have to restart the entire thing now.” 

It was important. SUPER important. Their future was in jeopardy and she was complaining about a video game!?!

“Something happened,” Ellie said, seriously. “I dunno what, but Papi’s been moping since we got out of detention. I think we’re back to stair one.”

“Square one,” Laura corrected. Whatever, she’d heard it both ways. “Dad’s been acting weird too. Quieter than usual – which is saying something.”

“And grumpier,” Gabby added. 

“Yeah that too. Nearly bit my head off for drinking the last of the coffee this morning and it was hazelnut; he doesn’t even like hazelnut!” 

“So what do we do?” Ellie asked the room, hoping for some useful input. She’d been thinking about it all weekend and had come up with nothing. 

“We could get in trouble again, see if that helps,” Gabby suggested. Hey, that wasn’t a bad idea. It worked last time. 

Laura leveled her sister with an impressive glare. 

“Gabrielle Elizabeth don’t you fucking dare.”

Gabby rolled her eyes. 

“It was just a suggestion,” she muttered. Ellie patted her back supportively. 

“I still like the trap idea,” Ellie put out there. 

Laura opened her mouth (probably to shoot it down again) when the bell rang for the end of lunch. 

“Keep thinking about it,” she told them instead, reaching for the video game controller. “I’ll let you know if I figure something out.”

Laura

She didn’t think about it again until dinner time, when the solution practically fell in her lap. 

“Need your help on Saturday,” her dad announced as he walked into the kitchen and immediately pushed her feet off the counter where she was lounged back in the chair so that he could get dinner started. 

She was technically supposed to be helping. And she was. By not accidentally burning the kitchen down. There were a lot of things she was good at, and cooking was not one of them. Take-out existed for a reason, in her opinion. 

“What for?” she asked, propping her feet up on the barstool next to her instead. 

“Simple data extraction. Shouldn’t take more than a day.” 

He came back from the refrigerator with an armful of vegetables. He placed a cutting board and knife in front of her and slid a carton of mushrooms over, grabbing an onion for himself. 

“Go wash your hands.” 

She rolled her eyes, but did as she was told. 

“Why do you need backup if it’s simple?” She asked, wiping her hands on the dishtowel and returning to her cutting board. 

He tilted his hand from side to side. 

“Simple-ish. There’s explosives involved and a bypass code that takes two people working in tandem.” 

“And you need someone else with a healing factor in case we fuck up,” she finished for him. 

He huffed. 

“Just a precaution.”

A lightbulb went off in her brain. 

Oh my god, this is perfect. 

She couldn’t’ve planned it better herself. She carefully controlled her breathing, keeping her heart rate steady as she prepared her lie so her dad would be none the wiser. 

She couldn’t always get away with it, but she was getting better at it. She hoped this would be one of those times. 

It was for his own good. 

“Can’t. Me ‘n Gabby are having a girls day. I promised,” Laura lied, hoping down to grab a bowl for her veggies so that any change in heart rate could be attributed to the sudden movement. 

She waited a beat, then, as if it just occurred to her added, “why don’t you ask Wade?”

She watched his knife slip, just barely missing slicing through his thumb. She hid her grimace behind a faked cough. 

Whoops. Shoulda timed that better.  

“Why would I do that?” he asked through gritted teeth. 

She had to navigate this carefully or it was going to blow up in her face. 

She shrugged, feigning an air of nonchalance as she reached for the broccoli. 

“He’s got a healing factor and no job; why not? Ellie can hang with me and Gabby, I’m sure she won’t mind.”

It was soooooo perfect. And it made so much sense he couldn’t possibly fight it. 

“Or, you reschedule,” he suggested. 

“No way. She’ll throw a fit. Last time I broke a promise she lit my pillow on fire and dumped the ashes back on my bed, remember? I do. Once was enough, thanks.” It was right after they’d moved here and she was a lot more stable nowadays, but Laura wasn’t dumb enough to test it and neither was their dad. 

He sighed, chopping the peppers more aggressively than Laura thought necessary. 

Why did he always have to be so fucking stubborn? 

She tried again. 

“She’s been talking about this for weeks.” Guilt could be a powerful tool if wielded properly. 

“First I’ve heard of it,” he muttered, but she could see his resolve crumbling. “Fine. I’ll just go alone.”

Oh my fucking God. 

“You just said you need two people.”

“Maybe the elf—”

For fuck’s sake! 

“You’d risk Kurt’s life out of pettiness? Seriously?” 

“If you knew him you’d understand,” he grumbled, snatching the bowl from her and taking it over to the stove, turning his back to her. 

She threw a discarded carrot top at his head. 

“Oh my god, just ask Wade! You said it shouldn’t take more than a day. You can be civil for a day.” He growled, but offered no other argument as he started clearing up their mess. “Heard you guys are friends now anyway.”

His head snapped up, looking at her like she’d lost her mind. 

“From who?”

“Gabby. She’s over the moon about it.” Not technically a lie, just a creative truth. 

She watched the fight drain from his eyes, replaced with reluctant resignation. 

Ha! Bingo. 

She was so good at this. She should get an award. This was definitely going in her wedding speech. 

Her dad’s shoulders sagged and he rubbed at his forehead like he was trying to get rid of a headache. 

“Fine,” he said, sounding like he was agreeing to get on a plane to a scuba trip instead of asking a sort of friend for help. 

Why are men so dramatic? 

He pointed his spatula at her. 

“But if I get blown up because of him, you’re grounded.”

Laura found the girls at lunch the next day, not wanting to tell Gabby on her own since they were both so invested.

“I think I figured out how to fix it. That or I’ve fucked it up completely and we’re about to become orphans.”  

She’d agreed to help at first because she thought it was going to be a laugh, but honestly? She was getting kinda caught up in their enthusiasm. The idea of her dad and Deadpool becoming an item was still hilarious to her, but it also kinda made sense? They were weirdly perfect for each other. If only they could get their heads out of their asses and get over themselves long enough to see it. 

“What did you do?” Gabby asked, looking alarmed. 

“Dad’s gonna ask Wade to help with a job this weekend.”

“How?”

“Why?”

They asked at the same time. Laura looked around the lunchroom, making sure none of her dad’s friends were close enough to eavesdrop, then leaned in to her captive audience. 

“Dad asked me to help out on a two man job, but I lied and told him we have a girls day planned and you’re super excited about it so I couldn’t possibly get out of it. He needs someone with a healing factor so I casually suggested Wade. This is where you come in. You’ve gotta convince your dad to say yes when our dad asks him. Tell him how much you want to have a girls day with us or I don’t know, play up how happy you guys are that they’re getting along now. That definitely had an effect on our dad.”

They stared at her in awe and she sat back, tossing her hair over her shoulder and crossing her arms. 

She was so brilliant. 

“You’re kinda awesome for an old person,” Ellie finally said. 

Laura’s smirk vanished into a scowl. 

“I’m eighteen, mocosa,” she corrected. 

Ellie just shrugged and stuffed a handful of fries into her mouth. 

Brat.  

Logan

Logan’s fingers hovered over the phone keyboard, same as they had been for the last twenty minutes. 

He could do this. 

He began typing, then stopped, erased the two word sentence and put the phone down. 

You know what? Maybe he didn’t actually need another person for this job. There had to be some kind of remote drone something or other that could type in a passcode and turn a key. Isn’t that what the military paid Stark for? 

The bell rang and Gabby’s class started shuffling in. She and Ellie gave him matching smiles and waves as they walked to their desks hand in hand. 

Okay universe, he got the hint. He’d suck it up and text the man. He was probably gonna say no anyway and then Logan could figure something else out and still say he tried. 

He shoved his phone in one of his desk drawers. He’d get to it later. 

Logan: You busy this weekend? 

Not the most eloquent opener, but it got the job done. Logan sat his phone back down on his desk, not really expecting a reply. Other than maybe Wade (rightfully) telling him to fuck off. They hadn’t exactly been on the best of terms since the danger room stuff. He wasn’t outright hostile, but there was definitely a wall that hadn’t been there before. 

Before Logan fucked it up. 

And for what? Not a goddamn thing, that’s what. 

Bzzzzdt

Wade: we can b free. skate park?

That was a fair assumption to make. There was no precedent for what Logan was actually asking. He clarified. 

Logan: You. Specifically. 

Wade: …

Wade: …

Logan waited out the little dots that kept appearing and disappearing on his screen as Wade took longer than expected to reply. 

At least he was replying at all. Logan wouldn’t have blamed him if he hadn’t. 

Wade: For…?

Logan wondered what else he’d typed and deleted before settling on the terse reply. 

Logan: Job. Needs two people, ideally ones who can withstand an explosion, and Laura’s busy with Gabs. Said she’ll watch Ellie if you’re in. 

There was a long pause, long enough that Logan put his phone down and went back to grading homework so he had something to do other than stare at his phone like a teenager. 

The response came nearly twenty minutes later. 

Wade: Can I get back 2 u on that?

Well, it wasn’t a no, technically. Yet. 

Logan: Sure. Know you said you’re done with this kinda stuff, but if it helps, it’s low level shit — just high level security. Anything goes south it’ll be on the X-Men, not you.

Wade: Thx. I’ll let u know 

He put his phone away, annoyed that now that he’d had a chance to think about it, part of him actually wanted Wade to say yes. 

Didn’t matter. “I’ll let you know” was universal small talk code for “I already decided it’s not happening, but I’m gonna pretend to forget we had this conversation until after the event when it’s too late to do anything about it.”

Logan doubted he’d be hearing anything else from him until next Monday at the earliest. 

Which was fine. Honestly. He’d figure something else out.  

Wade

“Hey mija, can I talk to you about something real quick?” He asked that night after dinner. He’d debated about it all day, whether to even bring it up at all, and had finally settled on his usual plan of seeing where things went. There was no use in him wasting time deciding if he wanted to do it if Ellie wasn’t okay with the idea, so asking her was step one. He’d figure the rest out later. 

He caught her by the waist as she got up to leave the table, pulling her to stand in front of his chair and taking both of her little hands in his. They were almost getting too big to fit in just his one hand. 

She's getting too big. Who authorized her to grow up? I want names. 

Can’t be stopped. 

I mean. There’s always time travel…

“What?” She asked, cocking her head to the side — a habit she was picking up from Gabby. 

He took a deep breath, working up the courage to ask what he wanted to ask. 

Right. I’ve got this. Maximum effort. 

“How would you feel about me doing a job again, as Deadpool?”

Her eyes widened and for a split second he thought she was going to shout, but she didn’t. 

“You’re gonna be superheroing again?!”

“Not exactly,” he rushed to clarify. “It’s just a small thing.”

“But it’s bad guys, right?” She asked, all serious-like. 

“Yeah, it’s bad guys. But I promise it’s lowkey, and a one-time thing. I’m just helping out—”

She cheered, throwing her hands up in the air and jumping up and down. That wasn’t the response he’d been expecting, then again, she didn’t know the reason he’d stopped in the first place. 

And never will. 

“This is so cool! You’re gonna be a superhero again!”

Wade didn’t have the heart (or balls) to correct her that he’d never been a superhero to begin with. Maybe an anti-hero; superhero-adjacent, at best. 

Maybe this was his chance to do something in the suit that she could be proud of. 

“Do you need backup? I could be your backup; I’m getting really good at throwing stuff. I’ve been practicing.” She mimed throwing a couple knives at the TV. 

“I know, I’ve seen your bedroom wall,” he teased. He was the one who’d hung up the dartboard, so really, he only had himself to blame for the holes in the drywall. “I appreciate the offer, but if you came with you’d miss hanging out with Laura and Gabby for a whole day.”

“But who’s gonna watch your back?” 

Wade smiled and pressed a kiss to her forehead. 

“It's my job to look after you, not the other way around.” 

“But we’re a team.”

Ooof. Right in the heartstrings. 

“Yeah, we are,” he said, with completely dry eyes and definitely no lump in his throat whatsoever. “Don’t worry bug, I’ll have Mr. Logan with me and he’s the best there is at what he does.”

She crinkled her eyebrows together. 

“Teaching?” 

Wade busted out laughing. That was possibly the funniest thing he’d ever heard. He wished he’d been recording this conversation for posterity so he could play that back whenever Logan was being particularly annoying. 

Ah, kids. 

“That, yes, and fighting bad guys.”

“Oh,” she said, taking a second to process before her demeanor changed right back to being excited. “That’s okay then, Mr. Logan can keep you safe. He can be pretty scary, like when he caught this one kid cheating and he sliced their whole test in half with his claws in front of the entire class. Bet he could slice a whole person in half if he tried.”

He can definitely do that. 

He wasn’t about to tell her that though. 

“Well, hopefully we won’t have to find out. Like I said, it’s just a little thing, probably won’t even need weapons. Nothing to worry your pretty little head about, okay?”

“Okay. But if Mr. Logan does have to slice somebody in half, can you take a picture for me?”

“Of course.”

He absolutely would not be doing that. 

Now that Ellie had given her blessing, he had to decide if he actually wanted to go through with it. As much as he tried not to let it bother him, he was having a hard time getting over the whole post-danger room situation. He was more angry at himself for caring than he was at Logan for running away. He’d told himself he wouldn’t do this; he wasn’t going to fall back into that stupid crush, he wasn’t going to pine.

But then Logan had to go and be all… nice and soft and perfect and for just a second he forgot. He forgot that this wasn’t some rom-com and his life didn’t work like that. He'd used up all his good karma points and then some when the universe had given him Ellie, and he was a-okay with that. It was more than he deserved to get to be her dad. It would be selfish to want more. 

He knew that. He knew better than to get his hopes up, it was just… there had been moments – few and far between, but moments all the same – that it’d felt like they were getting somewhere, like they understood each other. 

(Someone would have to be certifiably insane to understand us)

And sure even on his most delusional days he knew Logan would never think about him like that, but he thought they might be moving towards friendship at least. 

Maybe he was reading too much into it. 

It wasn’t exactly out of character for Logan to pull a Houdini instead of having a conversation. For someone who was so good at physical confrontation, he couldn’t have an emotional one to save his life. The man was clinically allergic to having a feeling, unless it was anger. 

At least, he used to be.

So if the option was blow up at Wade for his disgusting, inappropriate reactions or take a walk, he supposed it made sense that he’d taken off. Especially since Gabby didn't seem like she'd stand for the murder of her bestie’s dad - regeneration or no. 

Wade opened his messages and reread their last conversation. 

He should just say no.

What about Ellie? She’s so excited for us to be fighting bad guys. 

It’s low level crap. 

Bad guys are bad guys. And it’s X-Men adjacent. 

Did you see the look on her face? 

Gotta pick: her pride or yours?

Well, when put that way…

He couldn’t stay upset about it forever, and Wade’s cold shoulder certainly wasn’t impacting Logan’s day to day. His attitude towards Wade hadn’t changed, if anything he'd maybe seemed a little nicer in the cumulative ten minutes they’d spent together in the past two weeks.

If Logan was over whichever of the hundred and one things Wade could’ve done to piss him off and make him run, Wade could be over being mad at him about it. 

He’d just have to work harder at keeping himself in check. He’d worked with tons of people he wanted to fuck and it’d worked out fiiiiiiiine. He did possess some self restraint when the situation called for it. Besides, he’d spent ages keeping a lid on his massive boner for the Wolverine, not like this was new territory for them. 

(Okay, so some of it was new territory. He’d been a lot more interested in getting railed than holding hands back in the day, but those softer urges should be easier to resist, right?)

Logan

Wade: How far away? 

Logan was surprised to see the question come through the next day. Did that mean he was actually considering it?

Logan: 4hr drive. 

Wade: What no jet? 

Logan: I’m not getting on a fucking plane for a job 4hrs away. 

Wade sent back a laughing emoji, to which Logan replied with a middle finger. 

Dick. 

Wade: Same day?

Wade texted a few hours later. 

Logan: Unless we fuck up, should be simple in and out. Few hours tops+drive. 

A few more hours passed before Wade texted again. 

Wade: Laura def doesn’t mind watching El?

Logan put his fork down to reply. He’d already double checked with Laura, anticipating that question. 

Logan: Her and Gabs have a girls day planned. Ellie’s invited whether you say yes or not. 

Wade: Well she’s in for sure 

Logan: And you?

Wade: …

Wade: …

The little dots disappeared but this time no reply followed. Logan stared at the screen for a few more minutes before shoving it back in his pocket. 

A few minutes before midnight Logan’s phone buzzed, an obnoxious bzzzzzdt bzzzzzzdt against the wood of his nightstand. 

Wade’s reply was short and to the point. 

Wade: I’m in 

A tension he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying all day finally loosened in his shoulders, and for the first time in two weeks he managed to get an entire six hours of solid sleep. Things were looking up.   

The girls found him at the end of the day as he was leaving his classroom, Gabby running at full speed and jumping into his arms. 

“Woah there,” he said, catching her just in time. She was lucky he had fast reflexes. “Ooof you’re getting too big for that,” he teased.

Gabby stuck out her tongue, climbing around him like a jungle gym until she was situated on his shoulders. 

“Nuh-uh. You can lift like ten thousand pounds.”

“Not quite. Close though.” He tickled her knee, grabbing her tightly with his other hand so she wouldn’t squirm away and fall. 

He started walking toward the front door, Ellie skipping along next to them. 

“What time’s Ellie coming over on Saturday?” 

“Laura said the earliest she’s getting up is nine.”

“What about the mission?” Ellie “whispered” behind her hand right as they reached the gate where Wade was standing waiting for her. 

“It’s not time sensitive. We can leave whenever.”

He felt Gabby lean forward, bracing her boney elbows on the top of his head.

“That means you can stay for breakfast! Laura’s making pancakes,” Gabby told Wade. “She just doesn’t know it yet.”

Wade laughed. 

“Sounds like a blast.” He gave her outstretched fist a bump with his own. 

“Papi can make them. He makes the bestest pancakes in the whole world,” Ellie volunteered for him, staring up at her father like he was personally in charge of making the stars shine. 

“That's true. There was a contest and everything. Beat out Flapjack Willie and his gang of pâtissiers. It was a whole thing.”

Logan rolled his eyes, but felt the corner of his mouth raise regardless. 

“You don’t have to make them pancakes,” he said, trying not to think too hard about it. Wade just shrugged it off. 

“I don’t mind. It would be criminal to keep a talent like this all to myself.”

“Suit yourself,” he said over the growing clamor around them as more and more parents started to arrive. “See ya Saturday.” He and Gabby waved goodbye and he walked them back inside, still trying not to think about waking up to Wade in his kitchen making his family breakfast.

Chapter Text

Logan

Weekend mornings saw a much less crowded kitchen than the weekdays when everyone was awake at the same time grabbing coffee and various definitions of breakfast. Instead most of them usually chose to sleep in or get out of the mansion on their day off. 

“Everyone” meaning the X-Men and adjacent family (which currently only consisted of Gabby and Laura, though Laura was on her way to earning her official X-Man status any day now).  

Nine a.m. was still far too early to be up looking for breakfast on a Saturday for most of them.

Logan had been up since six, his requisite five hours of sleep met, his body had refused to rest any longer. 

He’d been meaning to deep clean the kitchen for a while now anyway. 

He was finishing up his second cup of coffee and the last chapter of his most recent Vonnegut when Ellie came bounding in, swinging a canvas bag from her arm. 

Logan put his book down, expecting a ruckus that didn’t follow. 

“Mornin’ chiquitina, where’s your dad?”

“Talking to the scary blonde lady at the door,” she explained, dropping her bag and sliding onto the bench next to Gabby. 

Logan furrowed his brow, trying to think who she might be talking about. 

“The scary— goddammit Illyana.” He put his mug down a little more forcefully than he’d meant, getting up to go rescue Wade. “I’ll be right back.”

He was right; it was Illyana standing in the middle of the doorway, blocking Wade from entering. She looked his way when she heard him approaching, a look of relief on her face. She tended to tire of dealing with people even quicker than he did. 

“Good, Wolverine’s here. Can you handle this, please? It’s too early, I don’t have the energy.” 

“Sure. Come on in bub, the kitchen’s that way.” He pointed over his shoulder in the direction he’d come from. 

Wade took a step forward but was stopped by Illyana's outstretched hand while she still stared at Logan like he’d lost his damn mind. 

He’d known that wasn’t gonna work, but it woulda been real nice if it had. 

“Excuse me, what the hell was that?”

Logan sighed. 

“Just let him in, Illyana. He’s helping with a mission. Didn’t you read the briefing?”

“Did you write a briefing?”

She had him there. He assumed Slim put it in an email somewhere. 

“Look, it doesn’t matter; he’s my guest. You have a problem with that, take it up with Chuck.” He looked pointedly from her face down to where her palm was planted firmly against Wade’s chest, then back up to her narrowed eyes. 

She crossed her arms, scowling. 

“Maybe I will,” she bluffed. 

“No you won’t.” He rolled his eyes, calling her on it. 

She spat a venomous handful of creative curses in Russian that Logan really hoped Wade didn’t understand, before storming off. 

Logan winced, rubbing the back of his neck. 

“Sorry about that.”

Wade just shrugged it off. 

“No one here likes me, but she’s always hated me just a little bit harder than everyone else. I admire the consistency.” 

Logan shook his head and stepped aside so Wade could finally come in. He was already exhausted of this day and it was only a quarter past nine. 

“Come on, kids are probably already makin’ a mess.”

The girls were not not making a mess, but they were trying to be helpful, so he couldn’t really be mad about it. They’d taken an alarming number of bowls and pans out of the cabinets, spreading them out on the counter along with the contents of the canvas bag Ellie’d brought in with her. 

“Wow!” Wade exclaimed, putting a hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh. 

“We got everything ready for you,” Gabby explained, spreading her arms out wide. “‘Cept the stove. ‘M not allowed to touch the stove.” 

“You certainly did. What a big help. Let’s see what we’ve got here.” Wade rolled up his sleeves and got to work sorting through the mess in front of him, keeping the things he needed and handing the rest off to the girls to put back. 

Once that was done he turned his attention to the cooking. 

“What kind of pancakes does everybody want? I know you want banana,” he said, pointing to Ellie with his spatula. 

“I don’t like bananas anymore. I want apple cinnamon.”  

Wade did a double take. 

“Since when?”

“Since yesterday. Gabby gave me half her apple cinnamon muffin and it’s soooooo much better than bananas. Why didn’t you tell me?!”

Wade looked like he wanted to slam his head against the counter. 

“I’ve been trying to get you off bananas for the past two months, what do you mean why didn’t I tell you?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t have any apples. Or cinnamon. Why didn't you mention this in the car so we could stop on the way here?”

“You didn’t ask.” 

Wade’s eye twitched as he looked pointedly at the bunch of bananas sitting on the counter between them. 

Logan clicked his tongue and tossed Wade an apple when he looked over, nodding to the full bowl of them on the counter. 

“Can you do apple cinnamon?”

Wade cut him a scathing look as if offended by the mere notion that there was something he couldn’t do. 

“Babe, I can do anything with the right ingredients and enough time; how dare you question the world-renown Chef Deadpool.” 

“Apologies, chef,” Logan replied sarcastically. “Cinnamon’s in the cabinet by the stove.”

Wade was, unsurprisingly, chatty while he cooked, mulling over last minute strategies and verifying floor plans while somehow managing to cook every pancake to golden perfection and not burn the bacon. 

Logan stayed out of his way after his initial attempt to help was met with the swat of a spatula, instead putting his efforts into cutting up fruit and being Wade’s sounding board. 

The girls had abandoned them pretty quickly to go play so he didn’t feel bad talking shop until it was time to call them back to eat. 

“This looks amazing,” Laura said, taking her seat and immediately reaching for a plate. Which was more of a compliment than she’d ever given anything he cooked for her, despite never leaving the table without seconds. He guessed he could take pride in the fact that he’d raised her with manners towards others at the very least. 

He helped Gabby get settled and by the time he was done getting his own food she’d half drown her entire plate in syrup. 

“Give it a rest kiddo, you’re not even gonna be able to taste the pancakes you begged for.”

“Yu-huh. They just taste better like this.”

Disintegrated? 

“How would you know? You didn’t even try them first. You’re gonna crash in the middle of your girl's day if you eat all that.” 

It was a battle every time, one he usually ended up losing. It was difficult to convince a kid with a healing factor who can’t feel stomach aches that something might be bad for her, even if only in the short term. Her factor might be accelerated, but she was still young, it took a few hours for things like sugar and caffeine to get out of her system and her brain chemistry was still susceptible to a short crash when it finally cleared the stuff. 

“No I won’t,” she argued, syrup dripping down her chin as she took a giant bite of her food. 

Something nudged his foot under the table and he looked around to see Wade subtly tap two fingers against his phone. 

Logan pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened the message he’d just received. 

Wade: it’s sugarfree. I’ve got a bottle of the real stuff I just wash out and put the fake stuff in. Saves a fight and El can’t tell the difference. Just thinks it’s fancy Canadian maple. 

Logan was a little awestruck at the simple brilliance of it. He glanced over at his daughter, happily munching away at her soggy pancakes, none the wiser. 

Logan: think you just changed my life. 

He watched a blush bloom across Wade’s cheeks as he read the response then quickly shoved his phone back in his pocket, turning his attention back to the story Ellie was telling. 

“Well? What’s the verdict?” Wade asked him once they’d all finished. 

A tiny, spiteful part of him wanted to lie just to deprive him of the ego boost, but he couldn’t. They were really fucking delicious. He’d never had a particularly strong opinion on pancakes one way or the other but he was starting to think that maybe he’d just never had ones that were any good. He’d just assumed they were all supposed to taste one step above soggy cardboard. 

“She wasn’t lying,” he conceded. 

“Yes!” Wade hissed to himself as if Logan wasn’t standing right there. He got himself under control then reached out and patted Logan on the back. 

“Don’t feel bad, Wolvie. We can’t all be world class pancake makers. Trust that I will never come for your Spaghetti King crown. I have been known to burn pasta a time or twelve.”

“How— Never mind, I don’t think I wanna know.” That seemed impossible, but if there was anyone that could do it, it’d be Wade. 

“You’ll have to come to dinner sometime and try it,” Laura suggested. 

Logan waited for Wade to turn around before glaring at Laura, eyebrows pinched, mouthing “what the fuck?” but she just shrugged like she didn't know what he was talking about and handed him a stack of dirty dishes. 

What the fuck is going on with her? 

He would finally find a way to actually kill himself if she’d developed some kind of insane teenage crush on the idiot. 

The girls finished cleaning up while Logan double checked his duffle. 

“Do you have snacks?” He asked Laura as she laced her boots up. 

“We literally just ate.”

“Yeah, and three hours from now when she starts sassing you because she’s hungry and you’re stuck in a chair getting your toes painted you’ll both thank me.” And the other way around. Laura was no peach when she was hungry either. 

“I got it!” Gabby said from behind him. He turned to see her climbing down from the counter with her hands full of something. 

“What did you just grab?”

“Nothing…” Gabby took off running down the hall, the cabinet that held Hank’s “secret” stash of candy bars still wide open. 

“Don’t you dare put something that’s gonna melt in my purse!” Laura shouted, jumping out of her chair to go chase her sister down. 

He shook his head at their antics, going over to close the cabinet before they came back in and someone bumped their head on it. 

“You too, mielita,” he told Ellie, catching her before she could get too engrossed in whatever game they’d been playing on Gabby’s tablet. “Go pick something from the pantry before you get distracted.”

When he looked away he saw Wade giving him a funny look. 

Shit. 

“Sorry, wasn’t tryna overstep—”

“Nonono, it's cool. I appreciate it,” he interrupted. “She’s definitely gonna be hungry again in an hour. Kid’s got the metabolism of a hummingbird.”

Logan was confused as to what the look was for then, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it. They really needed to get going. 

He grabbed his bag and nodded towards the hall. 

“We should head out. Probably gonna hit traffic as it is.”

The girls met them at the door, a whirlwind of excitement. 

“You be good for miss Laura,” Wade instructed, hugging Ellie tight for the sixth time. 

“Oh my god do not tell her to call me that. She already thinks I’m old,” Laura griped. 

“Fine, be good for your peer and fellow youth, Laura,” Wade corrected sarcastically. He turned to Laura. “Better?”

She snorted. 

“See that? That’s old,” she asked Ellie, pointing her thumb over her shoulder at Wade. She pulled on her jacket and gave Logan a rare unprompted hug. 

“By daddy, have fun.” 

“You too, punkin. Don’t let ‘em bully you too much.” Any other babysitter he might’ve worried about that, but Laura knew all of her sister’s tricks and she was almost as good at detecting bullshit as he was, so even Ellie’s little manipulations were unlikely to work on her. 

She turned to Wade, pointing, face all serious suddenly. 

“Don't get my dad blown up; I want to use the truck tomorrow.”

Wade seemed bewildered at what one had to do with the other, but he held up his fingers in a mock boy scout salute to her anyway. 

“I’ll do my best.”

Wade

Once he’d decided to give it a chance, he’d been determined to have a good time on Saturday. Did that mean he expected it to be anything but an awkwardfest extraordinaire? No, no he did not. 

And yet…

Somehow, it wasn’t. 

Aside from the little snafu with Magik, the morning had been, in a word? Perfect. 

Dreamy. 

Ideal. 

Unreal. 

He’d prepared for so many different (terrible) scenarios that a normal — dare he say pleasant? — breakfast hadn’t even been one of them. He just didn’t think it was a possibility. 

Then, on top of that, the FOUR HOURS of forced confinement in Logan’s truck was not akin to torture? At least not for him. He couldn’t speak for Logan, but there’d been no claws, only like ten “shut the fuck up”s and he’d even laughed once! 

(Wade was counting that in his top ten lifetime achievements). 

The mission itself was by and large a success. They got the package in one piece, no one got blown up, and there was only one minor scuffle with some hired goons that was over before it could really begin. Wade wasn’t allowed to use deadly force per the X-rules, but modern medicine was a marvel, nobody died of a little gunshot wound to the leg anymore, and you don’t need all five fingers to function, it’s honestly overkill if you ask him; a flawed design. And it’s an ice breaker! You’re welcome. 

Logan stood back while Wade did all the dirty work, playing on the computer (he called it hacking, but Wade knew he was just pretending to be a nerd so he didn’t have to mess up his perfectly styled hair). Which was fine by Wade because there were only six of them (shrinkflation hitting the henchmen market hard apparently), not exactly fair odds against even just one of them let alone both and fairness was very important to the Deadpool rebrand. 

(Probably. He was still workshopping it and this was totally never happening again, but if it did — which it wouldn’t — he had to make sure he was doing his little girl proud, within reason).

They found a nearby truck stop to change out of their gear and grab a bite to eat for the road. 

Wade checked his phone for the umpteenth time before getting back in the truck. 

“She’s in good hands. Laura’s probably both the safest and deadliest babysitter you’ll ever find,” Logan tried to reassure him as they pulled onto the highway. 

Wade huffed a laugh. 

No offense to the kid, but his baby girl had a whole gaggle of deadly assassins wrapped around her little finger. She wasn’t exactly wanting in the lethal babysitter department. He was sure Laura was good, but she was still just a teenager. 

“Her godfather’s Taskmaster.”

If Logan was surprised his face didn’t show it. 

“My money's still on Laura.”

Wade raised an eyebrow. That was a helluva bet and something told Wade it wasn’t just parental pride. 

“There a reason?” 

“Yeah.”

“You gonna tell me what it is?” He asked. Logan was the one who brought it up in the first place. 

“Maybe one day.”

He left it at that and Wade, through a godly force of will, didn’t continue to pry. 

“What do you think it is?” he asked, about halfway through the trip. He’d been mulling it over since they got on the road and he had a burning desire to know. 

“Data stick,” Logan answered unhelpfully. 

“No shit, Sherlock. But what do you think is on it?”

“Not my job to know what’s on it.” 

Wade deserved the Mr. Olympia title for all the conversational heavy lifting he was doing on this car ride. 

He banged his head against the headrest and tried again. 

“Yeah but like, you can speculate. C’mon, take a guess.”

Logan checked his mirrors to merge, pausing just long enough to give Wade hope he might play along, then opened his mouth and shattered that hope completely. 

“I dunno, probably something financial. I don’t care.”

“God you’re so boring. Use your imagination! I think it’s blueprints. To a secret underground lair. Oooo no, a pocket dimension lair, like Lex Luthor in the new Superman — I can talk about DC IP, I just had a Batman crossover, I’ve earned it.”

“The fuck are you talking about?”

“Nothing, that wasn’t for you. So, what do you think? Secret lair? List of stolen magic artifacts? Epstein list? Wait, is that black SUV following us?” Wade whipped around only to be smacked in the back of the head by Logan’s outstretched arm. 

“You wanna jump out the window yourself or you want me to throw you out?”

“You know I’d never say no to a chance to get your hands on me, peanut.”

Logan rolled the passenger side window down. 

Wade held up his hands in defeat. 

“Ugh fine! I’ll stop guessing.” Wade slumped down in his seat and crossed his arms, throwing his feet up on the dash just to be a dick. “You must be a riot at parties,” he muttered under his breath, knowing full well that Logan would hear it. 

“I don’t go to parties.”

“Really? I couldn’t’ve guessed.”

Logan reached across the cab and shoved him, hard enough to make him bump against the door and drop his feet down but not hard enough for Wade to take it seriously. 

He knew the difference between a playful Wolverine shove and one with intent. 

(Was that weird? That felt like it might be weird). 

They fell into a comfortable silence for a while after that, winding down from the adrenaline rush.

They pulled up to the mansion a little past ten. 

Logan unbuckled and reached for his door handle, but Wade put a hand on his arm to stop him going just yet. 

“Hey, I forgot to say it, but thanks for that.” 

“You were the one doin’ me a favor, bub.”

“Didn’t realize how much I’ve missed it. Does that make me a shitty parent? Feels like it makes me a shitty parent, that I miss doing the thing that almost got her killed.”

“Bad people doing bad shit almost got her killed. There’s still a lotta those out there; more without you in the field. It’s not your responsibility to take ‘em all out or try t’make the world a better place, but it sure as hell doesn't make you a shitty parent to want to.” 

Wade swallowed, not knowing how to respond for once in his life. 

Logan clapped him on the shoulder. 

“C’mon. It’s late; need to get the girls to bed.” 

Wade nodded, rubbed his hands over his thighs a couple times, then unbuckled and grabbed his stuff. 

Logan was right. Probably about more than he was ready to accept just yet.