Chapter Text
There are plateaux of time stretching over years when the faces of friends and acquaintances look virtually unchanged. Then time accelerates and within a week the metamorphosis takes place; he often feels like he's skipping through time, experiencing it in bursts and drags, watching the people around him age, build families, become injured or disabled, grow sick, succeed, and eventually fade, or go out with a bang.
It's surreal to see Wade like this. He's only known him very briefly, yes, but still, throughout that time he's come to perceive him as an extremely consistent type of guy. Unchanging. Wade Wilson is Wade Wilson. It's odd to see him, over the next two days, in a state of relative and incredibly frustrated helplessness.
And the arm is super weird and gross. He does yelp like a little boy, once, when the idiot touches him with it. The abrupt leap from the one being taken care of to caretaker was jarring, but he does admittedly find comfort in the restored agency of having his shit together more than the other guy in the room again. He spends a lot of time in the apartment doing mundane tasks, mostly just waiting it out, and occasionally offering Wade whatever help he can. It's a rare privilege to feel so breathtakingly normal.
His thoughts, when given room to move, do not arrange themselves into anything useful or clear. He's pacing a hole through the floor of his brain. Ever since what happened at the mansion, back in his world, Logan has regrettably become the type to fixate on small details and worry them into something larger than they ought to be. He is aware of this tendency, and yet awareness has never been sufficient to interrupt it. So he stews while Wade comes back to himself, fitted in his favorite soft fleece pants and matching socks, and a pink T-shirt he's always loved. Wears his little knitted beanie, the one he got from the cancer center, and lays in the fetal position on the sofa watching The Hangover.
“You’re gonna split somethin’ open laughing, dipshit,” Logan mutters, not looking up at the tv when Wade laughs his ass off at a scene he somehow found funny.
“Too late,” Wade manages, and there’s a grin in it, audible even now. “Way ahead of you.”
“Don't strain yourself, it'll just take longer.”
“Y'know I've died and exploded horribly in, like, a lot of ways. One of the worst literally right by your side.” Wade says, conversationally.
Logan snorts, quiet. “You were missin’ an arm with a half assed healing factor.”
“Yeah, but I pull it off.”
“Looks like somebody else did the pullin’....” he mutters.
That earns him an incredulous little laugh from Wade. Logan rests his chin on his fist against the side of the couch, looking sidelong at him. Wade has his feet up on Logan's lap, their limbs all entangled at opposite ends, wearing a mixture of one another's clothes. It feels comfortable, familiar, and safe. Again – a rare privilege.
Wade shifts a little deeper into the couch cushions with a low sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan, rearranging himself carefully. His arm has regrown, now, and is fully functional, but mostly he's just been dealing with random nerve pain all day, and a headache. He's told him all about it in frankly excessive detail, to the point that Logan wondered if he was trying to make the headache contagious to feel better about the whole thing. The blanket slips halfway off him in the process. Logan reaches over automatically to tug it back up without interrupting his own train of thought, fingers hooking the edge and pulling it over Wade’s waist again.
Wade goes still for a second.
“What?” Logan asks eventually, suspicious.
“Nothiiinggg,” Wade says, though there’s a strange expression on his face now, softened around the eyes in a way Logan doesn’t know what to do with.
He squints at him. “Spit it out.”
Wade scratches absently at the edge of his beanie with his freshly healed hand. “You’re being weirdly nice to me, Mrs. Doubtfire.”
Logan snorts. “You got blown up.”
“Yeah, but usually when that happens people react more like, ‘Jesus Christ, Wade.’” His voice slips upward into parody. “‘Can you not leave chunks of yourself in the mall again? It's Christmas!’”
“You did that?”
“Allegedly..”
“Freak.” Logan shakes his head faintly and looks back toward the television. Some idiot onscreen is yelling about a tiger. Wade laughs again, quieter this time, and his feet shift where they rest over Logan’s thighs. Warm through the layers of mismatched pajama pants and thick socks.
It occurs to Logan after a while that this is probably not normal roommate behavior. It's not unpleasant. Just… unfamiliar. Has he ever had a roommate…? He's not sure if bunking in the same shit hole with a bunch of other soldiers, or his brother, counts.
Physical contact in his life has historically tended toward violence, necessity, or grief. Men clasping shoulders before battle. A medic holding him down while somebody dug shrapnel out of him. Jean’s hand in his hair while he bled onto her lap. Even affection had usually arrived attached to urgency or catastrophe. Very little of it had ever simply existed on its own, easy and unremarked upon.
Wade squirms again eventually, trying to adjust himself. His face pinches briefly.
“You alright?” Logan asks immediately.
“Mmhm.”
“You look constipated.”
“Thank you, Florence Nightingale.”
Another awkward wriggle against the couch cushions. Then Wade lets out a frustrated little noise through his nose. “It's just – the arm’s super sore. You're sure we're all out of that super mutant grade painkiller?”
A frown pulls at his face. They did have a lot of the stuff a while ago, but Logan had indulged a little too heavily, now and then, back before he got better about that shit, and he knows he's depleted the stock. It's not like Wade didn't help, throwing it back with zeal since he himself got dosed. He chews the inside of his cheek and grunts, “Hank should have more in a day or two.”
Before he can really think through what he’s doing, he shifts further down the couch, lifting Wade’s legs so his thighs are over his lap instead. Wade’s mouth actually stops moving for once, watching, stunned, as Logan reaches for his arm to begin rubbing the muscle of his bicep. Wade flinches in surprise.
“You keep twitchin’ around,” he says roughly, like this is practical. “Just stay still.”
Wade blinks at him. “You're not gonna whip the claws out or something?”
“No. Why the fuck would I?”
“I don't know,” Wade says. “You love impaling me with stuff.”
Then, cautiously, like approaching some easily startled animal, Wade inches closer, leaning into the massage.
The couch is too small for two grown men even under ordinary circumstances, and Wade’s all long limbs besides. He folds awkwardly against Logan’s side at first, trying very hard not to put too much weight on him despite the fact that that's completely stupid and irrelevant. Logan can feel the hesitation in every movement, the surprising restraint that overtakes Wade whenever he genuinely wants something.
“C’mere,” Logan mutters before he can overthink it. “Lemme get your wrist.”
Logan can feel everything now: the warmth of him through the layers of clothes and blankets, the slight trembling still lingering in his muscles from the strain of regeneration, the careful rise and fall of his breathing. Wade smells faintly like antiseptic, blood, and the cheap vanilla body spray he insists on using despite Logan repeatedly telling him it’s awful. It's growing on him. Wade – Wade is growing on him.
They still haven't talked about it. The cheek kiss, or the running off to go get rid of the bad guys so Logan didn't have to worry, any of it.
Wade tilts his head up slightly. Logan can practically feel the curiosity radiating off him, though he’s trying hard not to make a thing of it.
“…You sure?” Wade asks after a moment, very quietly.
The question catches Logan off guard; he frowns. “About what?”
“This.” Wade gestures vaguely with his hand between them. “Playing masseuse for the toxic sludge victim.”
Logan snorts.
“Youre not a...” he pauses, shaking his head. “You're fine. It's fine. Quit makin’ it weird.”
Wade’s mouth twitches at that, but he settles after a second, some last thread of tension easing out of him by degrees as Logan carefully rubs his arm and wrist. He tucks himself slowly closer and closer until his forehead rests near Logan’s collarbone, and Logan can't even keep rubbing his arm anymore, until all the pretext is gone. Just like that, the whole thing starts to feel dangerously natural. Logan stares at the television without seeing it. His hand slides down, broad and warm against Wade’s back beneath the blanket. Every so often he catches himself absently rubbing his thumb there in slow little passes before stopping, vaguely embarrassed, then eventually doing it again.
Wade hasn’t spoken in several minutes now. He’s gone quiet in that rare genuine way of his, breathing slow and even against Logan’s chest. He turns his face into his chest and then – and then –
A tender little kiss is pressed to his collarbone, over the fabric of his shirt.
Logan doesn't move. Can't. Immobilized, he stays where he is, his breathing quickening. He tenses, but not out of discomfort.
Wade turns his chin up to look at him. He says, a bit mournfully, “Too much?”
Logan's jaw clenches and he feels completely out of his element. There are so many defenses to pull up, walls to construct between him and the things that can hurt him. He's been sloppy. He's allowed himself to get comfortable, lazy, and vulnerable. His heart is lying open in his lap. Anything could crush it. Anything at all.
He shakes his head, slowly lifting his hand to stroke the base of Wade’s neck. “No.. no, it's not too much.”