Chapter Text
▪ crawl out through the fallout [to my loving arms] ▪
before
Logan’s in the middle of frying up some eggs and bacon for breakfast, still half-asleep as he yawns around his first cup of coffee, when the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stand up, his body instantly on high alert. The swoosh of something appearing behind him is barely loud enough to be heard over the sizzling hot pan, only just noticeable enough for Logan’s enhanced hearing to pick up. He puts his coffee down on the counter, not too quick and and not too slow, careful not to give away that he—
Wade’s startled, “What the fuck?” as he comes into the living room, however, is anything but quiet.
And neither is the yelp of pain that follows.
Logan whirls around, claws out, and takes two hurried steps out of the kitchen, ready for—
Well.
For something that isn’t two TVA agents in full gear, one pale and wide-eyed as her eyes flicker from her bleeding colleague to Wade and back, the other swearing and hissing as he pulls a knife out of his shoulder, demanding shrilly, “What is wrong with you?”
“We have a front door!” Wade yells back, as Logan turns back around to go grab some paper towels and turn off the stove. “You know, that big piece of wood covering that equally big hole in the wall, the one on which you’re supposed to fucking knock—”
The non-stabbed agent speaks up, sounding unsure, “We were advised that this approach has yielded unfavorable results in the past—”
“First of all, you were crashing my birthday party, which; rude much? Secondly,” Wade’s got his hands on his hips when Logan returns, which would probably have more of an effect if he was wearing anything other or more than a pair of too tight She-Ra pajama pants, “I only punched those guys a tiny little bit, there’s no reason to make such a huge deal about it, okay? Oh, and also, thirdly and lastly, calling’s always a fucking option, too!”
“This is somewhat of a time-sensitive issue,” the first agent grits out from between clenched teeth, snatching the towels out of the air when Logan lobs them in his general direction with minimal sympathy. He glowers at Wade when Wade wiggles his fingers at him, but ultimately makes the decision not to escalate the situation, and begrudgingly hands the knife back over before pressing some bunched up towels against the slash in his shoulder. “Orders came from high up.”
Wade throws his head back with a drawn-out whine. “I haven’t even had any coffee yet!”
He comes readily when Logan puts an arm around him, slumping into Logan as Logan kisses the side of his head. “Get dressed, I’ll fill up a travel mug. Yes, I know,” he adds, amused, “your glittery pink Stanley with the unicorns. Now go.”
“You’re the best.” Wade beams at him, and brushes a quick kiss over Logan’s mouth before heading for their bedroom, muttering under his breath, “How the fuck is something time-sensitive when you can literally time travel, fucking lying like that on a Sunday morning, the day of our good Lord Jesus Christ Allin, may he rest in peace—”
The slightly less irritating agent clears her throat. “Uhm, we were only told to come fetch Mr Wilson—”
Logan bares his teeth at her. “Tough shit.”
With that, he leaves both agents standing awkwardly where they are, and goes to start the process of making the teeth-rotting sweet concoction of a hundred flavors, except coffee, that Wade likes to poison himself with on a daily basis. Logan would be seriously concerned, about the amount of sugar alone, if Wade wasn’t as good as unkillable, although if something’s going to test his immortality, Logan’s sure it’ll be this.
“Is there any extra?”
Craning his neck to make eye-contact with the still frowning, still sluggishly bleeding agent, Logan dumps the rest of the pot down the sink. “No.”
After that, the journey back to TVA headquarters, fast as it may be through the timedoor, is incredibly tense. Wade, in his typical fashion, refuses to notice as he slurps loudly from his mug, and Logan’s just simply not awake enough yet to give a shit.
It’s Sunday, for fuck’s sake.
They’re led down to the lower levels with the containment cells, which makes Logan share a subtle, slightly concerned look with Wade. They’ve been on good terms with the TVA pretty much ever since the whole time ripper fiasco, and Wade’s worked with them, on and off, for years now, but the lack of information combined with the way people keep staring at them doesn’t exactly bode well.
The head of the agency impatiently waiting for them in front of a reinforced, highly secured cell is the final nail in the coffin.
Logan stops short, Wade doing the same less than a second later. To anyone else, Wade almost definitely looks his usual, cheerfully annoying self as he pronounces, “All this for little old me? Aw, babes, you shouldn’t have!” but Logan knows better; Wade’s got his shoulders squared, his bright smile is entirely fake, the hand he’s got pressed to his chest for dramatics is resting right over the knife holster he’s undoubtedly wearing, and the way he’s looking around at the assembled agents isn’t to include them in the conversation, but to check who’s got a TemPad easy enough to steal should they need to make a quick escape.
Selfishly, while quietly calculating how many agents he might be able to take out in a corridor as narrow as this one before he inevitably gets pruned again, Logan takes a moment to acknowledge how fucking hot Wade is when he decides to act as competent as Logan knows him to be. He'll have to do something to show his appreciation if they get out of here more or less unscathed, or even just in an intact enough state to fuck.
B-15, smart woman that she is, obviously notices that shit’s about to hit the fan. To Logan’s surprise, though, she orders, “Stand down, everyone. Now, Mr Wilson—”
“It wasn’t me, your honor, pinky swear and everything!”
“Don’t speak too soon,” B-15 says, in that ominous fucking manner that’s the reason Logan generally refuses to work with the TVA, gesturing for them to follow her. When neither Wade nor Logan make a move to do so, she glances back at them, brows raised. “You’re not in trouble. I promise.”
“Well, isn’t that just reassuring as fuck,” Wade mumbles, but does walk into the containment compartment after her, because really, what other choice do they have?
Here’s to hoping that being a combined anchor being gets them enough leniency to not be killed or shut away forever. Fingers crossed.
“Oh, fucking finally, what the fuck took you so long, are you aware that you can literally time-travel—”
Is there a name for an unexpected uncanny valley encounter mixed together with a hefty dose of déjà vu?
Because that is definitely Wade’s voice, and also definitely a version of Wade Logan’s staring at, only Wade’s standing right beside Logan, Logan knows that much, and yet, the person hunched over in the corner of the cell is absolutely Wade as well, if one’s to ignore—
“Okay, gorgeous, not to be insensitive or body shaming or anything,” Wade, Logan’s Wade, says, and twirls a finger in front of his own face, “but are you aware that—”
“Yeah,” the other Wade chuckles, even as a—gloop of skin and muscle slithers down and off his face, landing on the concrete floor with a wet, dooming splat, adding to the already considerable mess there, “that’s kind of why you’re here, honeybunch.”
Behind Other Wade, what looks like a bizzaro version of a timedoor flickers weakly, and Other Wade groans, stumbling forward. “Please,” he croaks, as he starts unbuttoning his coat, “it’s over for us, but—Wade, please, she’s not—she isn’t affected, she’s okay—”
Other Wade falls to what’s left of his knees, at which point Logan realizes he really could’ve lived without watching someone melt alive, especially another version of Wade, and Logan’s Wade rushes forward, onto his knees as well, carelessly dropping his mug as his hands hover uncertainly. “What can I do, what the fuck is happening—”
Wade has to steady Other Wade when he tilts over, and Logan can’t hear what they’re whispering to each other, or maybe he could if he tried, but all of his attention is trained on the small, squirming, quietly whimpering bundle of blankets Other Wade shoves at Wade’s chest before he scrambles back and away jerkily, twitching and moaning and—
Behind them, someone gags loudly.
Despite not holding any affection for the TVA in general, Logan feels for whoever’s trying very hard not to throw up, because it’s only the 200 plus years of war and violence he’s got under his belt that keep Logan from losing his fucking shit right now, at the sight of a man turned to nothing more than bones and goo.
The sickly looking timedoor vanishes.
In Wade’s arms, the bundle starts crying in earnest.
“No,” Wade chokes out, shaking his head, “no, I—no, no, no, no—”
He puts the bundle down on the floor, stands on trembling legs, and flees.
No one stops him.
Logan, heart heavy and throat tight, goes to pick up the baby.