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DAY 1
“What the fuck ,” Wade says with feeling.
Gwen blinks at him. “You’re not supposed to swear around me,” she informs him coolly, shifting her position to get a better grip on the wriggling, struggling creature in her arms. “Dad says you’re a bad influence.”
“He’s not wrong,” Wade agrees absently. “What the - what the eternal shitfuckery is that?”
“A land shark,” Gwen says baldly.
“A land shark.”
“He’s a shark. And he’s on land. Thus -”
Wade rubs his eyelids. “Where’d you find him, Gwen?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Gwen chirrups, dimpling.
“Alright, fuck, be like that.” Wade strides away to contemplate his life decisions, before turning on his heel and pacing right back with an accusatory finger held in Gwen’s direction. “ You’re a bad influence.”
“The worst,” Gwen agrees.
“You are a horrible motherfucking travesty of a niece.”
“That’s me,” Gwen nods, pressing the thing into his arms. “You gotta look after it until I’m back from school.”
Wade splutters. “Why me?”
“You don’t ask questions.”
“I think you’ll find ‘why me’ is a question, Gwennie,” Wade snarks. The land shark flops around in his arms like a terrible dancer at a silent rave disco. “I have kittens. The shark will eat my fucking kittens. My kittens will eat the fucking shark.”
“You don’t ask questions and expect answers,” Gwen amends, scooping her backpack up from the floor and turning away. “If you hurt him, I’ll hurt you!”
“You can fucking try,” Wade shouts after her retreating, very pink form, before squinting at the land shark creature monster thing in his arms.
“Do you have a name? I’ma name you Jaws.”
“Mrrr,” the land shark retorts.
“Are you fucking with me?” Wade demands of the universe. The universe laughs back. “Okay, fine. Meg.”
“Mrrrrrr.”
“Fucking Sharknado.”
The land shark meets Wade’s eyes and stares deep into his soul. Wade thinks he might cry. Or maybe he’ll pick Gwen up by the shoulders (she’s teeny tiny, only five four, can’t weigh much), shake her, and ask her what the hell she was thinking adopting a land shark . Or how she found a land shark. Or how she’s so totally unfased by the existence of land sharks that might be, y’know, aliens or mutants or government experiments or all the other things that Wade has never dealt with in his life and doesn’t plan to start fucking around with today.
“Mrrrr,” Fucking Sharknado says.
“Mrrr,” Wade sneers back, setting it down on the dirty tiled floor of his kitchen and regretting all his life decisions.
When Gwen returns from long division or pop quizzes or whatever the fuck goes on at a high school all day, Wade meets her at the door with a hundred and one angry shushing sounds and a finger held pointedly to his lips. “Your monster is asleep,” he hisses. “Don’t you dare wake it up or I will gut you.”
“Nice to see you too, uncle dearest,” Gwen whispers, rolling her eyes as she steps into his apartment. He holds the door for her. “Don’t call him a monster.”
“It’s a he?”
“Probably,” Gwen says breezily, dumping her pink schoolbag on his floor. He wants to tell her off, but has exactly zero (0) legs to stand on when it comes to leaving his shit on the ground rather than picking it up. “How is he?”
“Stan Lee tried to murder it, so I shut it in my bedroom.”
“You had one job, Wade.”
“Fuck you too, you dumped a land shark on me and ran right off to school!”
“You’re supposed to ask me how my day was, parental figure three point oh,” Gwen calls over her shoulder as she makes a beeline for his bedroom (or, as he’s begun referring to it, Jaws-Meg’s Cage).
Wade follows. “I’m not your dad.”
“You love me.” Gwen cracks the door to the bedroom and squeezes past. “Anyway. We need to keep Jeff hidden for like a week and after that you never have to see him again, okay?”
“Good riddance,” Wade agrees sanctimoniously through the door, “it’s a fucking monst - Jeff ?”
“I had to give him a name!”
“So you picked Jeff ?”
“As if you had any better ideas, asshole,” Gwen retorts.
“I’ve been calling it Jaws,” Wade says, narrowing his eyes. “And Meg. And ‘Fucking Sharknado’.” He follows her into the room to find her cuddling the land shark to her chest, sitting cross-legged on a clean patch of floor.
“You’re a menace,” Gwen declares, as if this is a new concept. “And Jeff is a pure baby land shark who doesn’t deserve to have to sit through your cussing.”
“Fuck shit ass.”
“I hate you.”
“I thought I was your ‘parental figure three point oh’.”
Gwen stares at him, unimpressed. “Don’t swear in front of my land shark.”
“It can’t understand you, Gwennie,” Wade says, as if he doesn’t habitually speak to his kittens and expect them to obey his instructions to the letter.
DAY 2
the fuck do land sharks eat , Wade texts Gwen at 9.28 am.
She responds immediately: i am learning school <3 <3 dont text me
family emergency. our pet is sick <3 <3
There’s ten or so minutes of radio silence, and Wade hisses in frustration, too close to throwing his phone across his bedroom as Jeff howls another mournful “MRRRRRRRRR”. Thankfully, his notification buzzes right as he’s raising his arm to overhand it. (He hasn’t had audible notifications on for years. Doesn’t get why people would do that to themselves. The buzzing, however, does the trick and he lowers his arm begrudgingly.)
i hate you, uncle dearest , Gwen has texted. what have u done to him
Wade scoffs, wishes this was an in-person conversation so he could give Gwen the full IRL effect of his scorn. [2] THE FUCK DO LAND SHARKS EAT
Apparently, land sharks eat anything and everything but mostly “possibly pizza like that hawk eye dog” (what) and “evil mobsters” (which is just worrying at this point, but Wade is trying very hard to quit letting Gwen worry him - it’s not like she’s his responsibility, anyway). Wade can’t provide the latter, but he can certainly fix a pizza order.
He debates if it’s worth texting Gwen to ask about Jeff’s preferred toppings, but decides she would gut him alive. What a fun and healthy uncle-niece friendship they have.
Post-pizza (anchovies and prawns and shit for Jeff - maybe it misses the ocean?), Wade shuts the kittens in his bedroom and lets Jeff out (after a saga of efforts to swap them that leaves Wade feeling like he’s in a logic puzzle trying to get the wolf and the goat across the river). Now that it’s free, Jeff will not leave Wade the fuck alone.
It pokes its face at his hand when he’s trying to scroll Twitter. It waddles after him when he gets up to go to the toilet. It mrrrr s at him sadly when he rattles around in his cupboard looking for coffee, and doesn’t shut up until Wade crouches down to get on eye level with it and regard it appraisingly.
“What d’you want, Jaws,” Wade deadpans.
Jeff stares back at Wade and holds his gaze. Wade waits, apprehensive. After a solid goddamn minute of staring into each others’ eyes and soul-searching or whatever, just as Wade’s about to call it quits and make his coffee, the shark chirrups at him, waddles closer, and jumps onto his knee.
“Why is this my life,” Wade states blandly as the land shark stretches upwards, grasping for the kitchen counter. It can’t reach. He lifts it into the air, its stubby legs (lazy character design, really, who was in charge of this?) churning wildly at nothing as it tries to find a solid surface, and places it on the counter to do what it will.
It chirrups, seeming pleased, and curls up to go to sleep.
“What the fuck,” Wade says again. It doesn’t seem right that it curls up like a cat (same position as his goddamn kittens - well, as Dryer Lint, anyway. Stan Lee seems determined to sleep in as many weird and unrealistic positions as possible just to fuck with him) but it’s a land shark , so who even knows.
“This is Stan Lee,” Wade tells the land shark, looking it in the eye so it knows he’s sincere. “She rules this apartment, not me. I would die for her and as long as you’re staying under this roof, her wish is your command.”
“Mrr,” the land shark replies, unimpressed.
“Rebelling against the establishment, are we, Katniss?” Wade frowns. “I will leave you out on the sidewalk for the scientists to find you.”
Stan Lee presses against the doorframe, pacing back and forth and lashing her tail. She pauses and stares balefully up at Wade (and the land shark in his arms). It’s at this moment that Wade realises: he fucked up.
She bunches her legs and makes a leap for the land shark; Wade has to hold it above his head to save it from her claws and she lands on his stomach, leaving nasty rips in his shirt and also his flesh.
The scratches sting like a bitch. Wade informs her of this.
The land shark “mrrr”s angrily from where he’s holding it near the ceiling with both hands and flails about, like … like an idiot land shark that wants to fall to the ground and be eaten by a very angry kitten. Wade can’t be fucked searching for an analogy. He heads five steps to the bedroom - his apartment’s fucking tiny - and shuts it in.
Wade heads to the almighty saviour for guidance: he unearths his laptop from underneath his dirty laundry and opens Google. “How to introduce land shark to kitten” doesn’t yield many useful results. The Gwen-voice in his head reminds him bossily that Google is a keyword search engine, but “land shark kitten friendship” isn’t much better, though Wade does discover a) a very cute video of a cat wearing a shark costume and b) that there’s a whole-ass book about a shark detective searching for a missing cat with an average rating of three stars out of five.
After a moment of thought, “introduce kitten new animal” strikes gold, and Wade spends the next hour reading about how to let cats become accustomed to new animals’ scents, occasionally making accusatory comments towards the land shark about how he could be doing anything else right now. The land shark mrrr s at him and Wade decides it’s a sad, mournful sound.
“I’m sorry,” he says after a moment. “You’re right, it’s not your fault. FUCK YOU, GWENNIE.”
He hopes he can hear him from her school, wherever the fuck that is.
DAY 3
Wade wakes up to a land shark in his face. He almost backhands it across the fucking room, and he’s lucky he didn’t pull a knife or they might have a Situation on their hands. “Fuck you Jeff,” he calls, slumping.
God. Is there a time limit on this thing? Or is he just stuck with this creature indefinitely?
Google has instructed Wade to confine the new animal to one room (so he’s already fucked that up) and then orchestrate the first meeting between his pets (not that Jeff’s his pet, just his … tenant) through some kind of barrier. Wade dutifully orders a toddler fence from Amazon and shuts Jeff in the bathroom - better late than never, right?
Jeff does not like this, and makes its discomfort known. Wade tells it to shut up. The internet knows best.
Once Jeff’s shut away, Wade figures he can let Dryer Lint and Stan Lee have the run of the house again. They emerge suspiciously from his bedroom, and Stan Lee in particular jumps onto the kitchen counter (Wade would tell her off, but he’s given up on that specific type of hygiene at this point) and sniffs all around it before giving Wade a dirty look.
Wade tells her that if she hates his apartment that much, he can just give her back to Danvers. Stan Lee does not like this idea.
Dryer Lint does her fair share of poking around, too; she meows mournfully at the closed bathroom door before turning and giving Wade a very knowing stare. She, at least, only seems curious. Wade decides that he’ll take whatever he can get, so might as well count that as a victory.
Wade has three unread texts from Gwen; he’s saved her contact under one of her baby photos, which annoys her to no end. It’s brilliant.
the reports of my delinquency have been greatly exxaggerated , the saga begins. Wade grins and calls Stan Lee over, who’s been sniffing at the door curiously; she jumps up on the bed to appreciate his Gwen impression. He clears his throat and begins in a falsetto. Stan Lee mews disparagingly at his first attempt; he grumps at her about tough crowds and ungrateful kittens, giving her a scratch behind her ears for good measure, before realising she’s right. Gwen would defenestrate him in an instant if she caught a whiff of his stereotyping. Anyway, it’s less irritating on Stan Lee’s ears if he goes for a slightly lower pitch. Not that he cares or anything.
exxagerated* , ye saga continueth. Wade chuckles. The third is longer: exaggerated? YES THAT LOOKS RIGHT I DID IT anyway this is your fault youre a bad influence <//3
this was never in any doubt , Wade texts back. He breaks up his message because he knows it irritates Gwen if he makes every sentence a new text so that she gets a multitude of notifications when it could be conveyed in one. but i refuse to let this slander go uncontested
u are arguably just as bad an influence as i am
where did u even get a land shark
the point being: i know
get han solo’d u ass
Gwen’s unimpressed with his lacklustre reference. He doesn’t blame her.
“I heard you punched a kid at school,” Wade greets, opening the door and wincing at the heat that floods in; he’s lived in New York for years and he’s still not fucking used to the summer.
“I’m sure you did,” Gwen growls. “Where is my land shark.”
“I feel like I’m supposed to tell you that punching people is never the answer,” Wade calls as she storms past him.
“You spent how many years in the military again?”
“My next sentence was literally gonna be ‘shooting them is more effective’, sassy.” Wade picks up her schoolbag to put it on the counter and does a double-take at its weight. “The fuck is in here, rocks?”
“Textbooks. Where’s Jeff?”
“Textbooks,” Wade mouths incredulously. “I dunno, I think it’s hiding in the bathroom or something.”
“Ta.”
“Why’d you punch a kid?”
“Fuck off, Wade, I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“Sheesh.” Wade raises his hands in surrender. “Sorry, Jessica Jones.”
“Anyway! Dad says I’m spending too much time at your place,” Gwen says, returning to the cramped kitchen with Jeff in her arms, “and that you’re, quote, not ideal if I’m looking for a role model .”
“He’s right,” Wade says flippantly, setting her bag on the counter with a dull thud. “Plus you annoy me.”
Gwen leans against the wall and meets his eyes, unexpectedly vulnerable; he looks away. “Thanks for keeping Jeff at your place,” she says anyway. “I, uh, I just want him to be safe.”
Yeah, well. The fuck was Wade supposed to do, say no?
“You could’ve.”
Hm.
True.
But then he would never have gotten an explanation for the land shark.
“If you’re waiting for one,” Gwen says, scratching Jeff’s head, “don’t hold your breath.”
“Is that a challenge?” Wade snarls, and they’re off.
(He only passes out once. #worthit)
DAY 4
Wade sets up the toddler pen across the bathroom door and cautiously deposits Jeff on one side of it, so that the kittens can get used to his smell or whatever the fuck it is they do. He realises his mistake too late: Dryer Lint jumps three feet in the air and pounces nonchalantly over the fence. He can already imagine Gwen’s horrified shriek.
Upon landing, Dryer Lint does not shred Jeff with her claws. She takes a few curious paces closer before darting backwards, like a government trying to legislate protections for marginalised minority communities. She is, terrifyingly, about a quarter of Jeff’s size. Jeff mrrr s gently at her, and she takes four quick steps towards him, touching her nose to the tip of his snout.
Before. Sneezing .
Wade coos.
“I dunno, I just don’t think he’s a super social land shark,” Gwen muses. She’s lying on Wade’s couch, on her front with her chin resting on her hands and her legs kicked up and crossed behind her in the air, in that oh-so-cliche teenage girl pose.
Wade, from his position sitting on the counter, tries to muster a disappointed frown but can’t manage anything other than a generally pained expression. “I cannot believe. I cannot believe that we are discussing whether a land shark is super social based on its interactions with my kittens.”
“Oh don’t get me started on your kittens,” Gwen says dismissively.
“By all means,” Wade shoots back, gesturing expansively, “get started.”
She turns to look at him, chuckling when she meets his eyes.
“Don’t you fucking laugh about this,” Wade growls, aiming for something vaguely intimidating but ending up in the ballpark of disappointed dad. (Which. Ughhh. He doesn’t even want to think about that concept.) “Like, you owe me a lot of explanations, Gwennie.”
“You’re enjoying this,” Gwen grins at him. Too fucking perceptive for her own good.
“Me? Naaaaaah.”
“You aaare. You like sheltering a fugitive land shark in your shitty apartment.”
“ Fugitive ?” Wade splutters, as if that changes anything. For fuck’s sake. (She’s right, though - he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on, is trying not to slip back into old habits of constant awareness and paranoia and all the jumpy instincts that made him a technically brilliant soldier and a shitty, shitty homebody, but something about it gives him … pause, at the very least. Like he’s circling back ‘round to everything he is and probably should avoid being at any cost.) “Okay, no, Gwen, you have to at least tell me for, uh, legal reasons -”
“Don’t bullshit me with fake laws, your friend Matt would have your head,” Gwen says sweetly. “Plausible deniability!”
“Matt would have my head for any number of tiny-ass vindictive reasons,” Wade shrugs, “and this fic isn’t about him anyway. What if I just kick you ‘n Jeff out, huh?”
“You still have medium-awareness?” Gwen says, narrowing her eyes. “I thought this was an AU -”
“What the fuck are you on about, Gwennie?”
“You wouldn’t understand anyway,” Gwen mumbles, waving her hand dismissively and looking away. “OK, so you get this, you’ve been in situations like this before, right?”
“Depends what you mean by ‘situations like this’,” Wade prevaricates.
“ Wade. ”
“... I mean, sure.”
“ Waaaaade. ”
“Okay, yup, definitely. Your point?”
Gwen gives him a double thumbs-up, kicking her legs back and forth. “You get that there’s some stuff I can’t tell you. Like, if I were to tell you why I can’t, it would fuck up the whole -”
“Yeah I get the general gist,” Wade interrupts. “Look, Gwen, I’m too tired to deal with this, Jeff keeps waking me up at ass o’clock and I’m running on about a pint of coffee -”
“That’s your natural state.”
Wade pauses. Fuck, she’s right, too. “What I’m tryna say is get to the point .”
She hums, twisting her fingers together, fidgeting. “Basically it’s an E.T.-type scenario.”
“THERE ARE LAND SHARKS ON OTHER PLANETS?”
Gwen glares, drumming a restless rhythm on the arm of the couch with her pink nails. “I don’t know. Fucking probably.”
“What happened to ‘don’t swear in front of my land shark’?” Wade grumbles.
“He’s in the other room,” Gwen points out ( logically , ew). “And he, uhh.”
Wade waits. Fuck what they say, he can totally be patient if he wants to. (Or: he has faith in Gwen’s inability to stay quiet being on a similar level to his own and reckons he can outlast her silence if it lasts less than a minute.)
“He, um, isn’t exactly my land shark?”
Wade bluescreens. “You stole a land shark.”
“I didn’t say that!”
“So that’s a yes then. God, you’re like Pinocchio.”
Gwen makes to argue but pauses, seeming intrigued. “What’s my nose then?”
“Your voice sounds like you’re going through puberty three times at once and you’re not particularly good at it,” Wade says sweetly.
“Fuck you!”
“See, there it is again.”
Gwen eviscerates him with a glare. Wade makes a heart shape with his hands.
DAY 5
Wade peers at Jeff contemplatively, assessing the creature. “What do you think would happen if I let you meet Stan Lee and Dryer Lint of your own accord?” he ponders. Gwen reiterated over text that she’d be ready to ‘ take jeff back 2 his own gwen ’ (which, what , but Wade has decided to leave that the fuck alone. Not his problem) in just a few more days, so he’s given up on the ‘gradually introduce their scents to each other’ plan that the Internet seems fond of. Definitely doesn’t have the time.
Stan Lee mews plaintively from outside the bedroom door. Wade’s lying on his bed, turned towards the ceiling, head dangling upside-down off the edge of the bed to meet Jeff’s eyes where he’s seated on the carpet. Jeff hears Stan Lee’s call and mrrrrr s long and curious, getting up and waddling over to the door to scratch at it.
That’s totally an answer.
Wade rolls off the bed and lands on the floor with a thump, picking himself up in a neat jump. Or so he plans, anyway. The space between his bed and the wall is too limited and he hits his head and elbow on the door handle; they smart, but he’ll be fine. He reaches for the door. Before he can open it, he has to nudge Jeff away with his foot to make some space for it to swing into; once he’s done that, he cracks it a barest inch.
Stan Lee flies through the opening like the holy terror she is and launches herself at Jeff the Interloper - Wade barely puts himself in the way in time to save him from her tiny, terrifying claws. “NO, Stan Lee,” he snaps crossly. He’d just gotten upright and now he’s splayed on the floor again, with a kitten fuming on his chest and her claws dug through his shirt into his skin. Kinda hurts like a bitch, but he’ll be fine. Jeff is pressed up against his back, mrrrrr -ing faintly.
“Bad kitten,” Wade tells Stan Lee firmly. “In this house - uh, shitty tiny apartment - we do not attack our land shark guests.”
She makes a mrrrp noise of her own, eerily similar to Jeff’s.
“We don’t mock them either,” he frowns, sounding too much like a dad for his own comfort. “We are nice to our new friends. ”
Jeff does not like this, for whatever goddamn reason. Maybe it’s something in Wade’s tone. Maybe he’s on edge because of Stan Lee’s tactical assault. Doesn’t matter why - he sinks his fucking teeth into Wade’s right arm and mrrrr s angrily.
Wade pities the poor evil mobsters on the receiving end of that bite.
“I am so fucking sore,” Wade tells Gwen, blocking his apartment’s doorway with his body to keep her from entering. “Every part of my arm is in pain. This is your fault.”
“My fault?” she says, affronted. “What did I do?”
“Land shark. Creature. Monster.” He holds up his bandaged right arm. “Gwen, honey, did you know they fucking bite?”
She scoffs. “Of course he bites. He’s a shark. Are you going to let me in or not?”
“I hate you,” Wade says, coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that he would kill for this girl. And also, horrifyingly, this aggressive, ungrateful land shark. Aha. That’s where the fucked-up protection instincts were hiding!
Gwen dimples at him. “Sure you do. Let me through.”
Wade shifts begrudgingly to the side. “Does this make me the Drew Barrymore to your Henry Thomas?” he calls at her as she walks past him, searching for Jeff.
She snickers. “Sure, Mom. Where’s E.T.?”
“Hiding in the closet making things levitate,” Wade tells her. It takes her a second to realise he’s kidding.
Wade frowns in Jeff’s direction, looking away from his Tumblr dash to survey the interloper appraisingly, giving him a dirty look. “What do you want, Baby Yoda?”
Jeff makes a small, sad noise.
“Don’t be like that. Use your words,” Wade encourages, before reconsidering. “Word. Whatever.”
“Mrrrrrrr,” Jeff says predictably.
“Why are you like this,” Wade despairs.
Jeff makes another mournful squeak. Huh, turns out Wade does still have heart-strings to be tugged on. Who woulda thunk it. (Gwen would’ve. That’s uncomfortable. Gonna throw that memory in the trash real quick, heh.)
“Jesus, fine,” Wade groans, considering picking Jeff up by the scruff he doesn’t have before realising he hasn’t interacted with animals other than his kittens in fuck knows how long and doesn’t know how they … work. “How do I carry you anyway?”
Jeff gives Wade an unhelpful stare. “Mrrrrr.”
“Riveting contribution. Thank you Jeff,” Wade grumbles, scooping Jeff up bodily in the way he’s seen Gwen do. “A real, honest tear-jerker. Okay, what d’you want, anyway?”
“Mrrrr,” Jeff mrrr s sadly, blinking pitifully up at Wade.
“How dare you make me feel emotions,” Wade reprimands, taking Jeff to the kitchen (and hoping against hope Stan Lee and Dryer Lint haven’t figured their ways out of the bathroom). “The audacity of it.”
Jeff nudges his head against Wade’s chest. Ugh. Needy creature. “Do you want cuddles,” Wade deadpans as he strokes Jeff’s … skin? Sharks are mammals, right? No, they’ve got … cartilage … does that make ‘em fish? Does Jeff have scales? Also, what the fuck?
Jeff does, indeed, want cuddles.
Do fish purr? Or is that just a land shark thing?
DAY 6
“I cannot believe my niece stole you from a government facility,” Wade tells Jeff with gravitas, hitting him with the ole Stern Disappointed C.O. look - worked a trick back in the day, but doesn’t seem to have the same effect any more.
Jeff mrrrr s back.
“Don’t try to deny it,” Wade says, wagging a finger. “I saw the news and I’m not stupid even if I am highkey an idiot.” (Or perhaps he’s neither, but he’s not stupid enough to admit that fact.) “What’s this about ‘Creature from another universe stolen from top-secret government facility’, huh? You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that. Right, Jee-T?”
“Mrrr.”
Wade glances at his laptop, so that he can pick a headline to read accusatorily to Jeff. “‘Mutant animal from universe 616 loose in continental US’,” he booms as dramatically as he can. “You a mutie, Jeff, my bro? Of course you are, you’re a fucking land shark.”
A noncommittal mrrrr . This kid really knows how to hold out under questioning. Maybe mrrr means “I want my lawyer” in 616-speak. Wade could call Matt, see what he thought of the fucking inter-universe teenage alien mutant ninja shark.
“Should I call my lawyer buddy and get him to represent you in apartment judgment court, Jeff?” Wade sing-songs. “He’s very pretty and very angry. You’d like him.”
Or he could, you know, not. Which is considerably less fun, but also a course of action that won’t result in Jeff’s immediate incineration-by-lawyer-glare.
“Mrrrrrrrrrrrr . ”
“True, true,” Wade grants. “I see your point. Mrrrrrr .”
Jeff blinks at the sound.
“What the fuck are you doing,” comes a voice from behind him, and Wade’s jumped up and whirled to press her against the wall before he processes that the very small intruder is, in fact, Gwen.
Uh.
So this is embarrassing.
“You could start by letting me out,” Gwen tries, grinning weakly, and Wade huffs an anxious breath as he releases the arm pinning her to his drywall. She slumps a little, but disguises the motion like a champ. “Dude. What was that.”
A stupid little laugh, sardonic. “Kid, you know I -”
“Well, sure, ex-military and all that,” Gwen brushes off. “But like. You didn’t notice me come in because you were doing … what now?”
“Talking to myself,” Wade says forcefully.
“You were talking to Jeff,” Gwen crows, delighted.
Wade clears his throat, straightens his posture, and turns his back on the insolent brat child that seems to have decided his apartment is hers to enter and exit when she pleases. “I was interrogating a suspect, asshole.”
Gwen snickers.
“So were you ever gonna … mention that you stole him from a government shitshow,” Wade points out, tone harsh, “or was I just supposed to read that on fucking CNN myself?”
She freezes up, like a rabbit or some shit. It’s kind of pitiful. “No idea what you mean,” she squeaks.
Shit, she really is a bad liar. He’s gonna have to teach her to do better at some point. Idiot.
( Fuck . That’s his idiot niece. He did not sign up for this.)
“Listen to me very carefully,” he says lowly.
She leans forward. Eyes wide. Face so open. If she had animal ears, they’d be pricked.
“You are an idiot,” he tells her, enunciating very clearly, “and I cannot believe you got me into this.”
“I didn’t get you into anything, I dunno what you’re on about,” she says, pitchy.
Wade has to admire her dedication if nothing else. Props for that. “Sure you didn’t,” he says gently. She narrows her eyes at him, the twist of her mouth is going the fuck is his game? It’s kinda hilarious in a pitiful way how easy she is to read, but maybe that’s just because he’s known her since she was teeny tiny, despite the slight touch of estrangement. Pipsqueak. She still is, really.
“My baby broke into a government facility to steal an alien,” Wade coos. “I’m so proud of you.”
“What the fuck,” she demands.
Wade laughs. “What, you thought I was pissed?”
“A tiny bit,” Gwen spits. Oooh, she’s angry. It’s adorable.
“Dude. Fuck, if they were keeping Jeff shut away I woulda broken in myself,” Wade grins, fighting the elision of his tone but he wants to do stupid little dances if he’s perfectly honest. He has successfully corrupted his niece, once and for all.
(Or maybe she corrupted him? Who knows. Either way, he finds he is surprisingly okay with it.)
DAY 7
Gwen breezes into his apartment (or maybe ‘breezes’ is the wrong word given she’s a bit like a hurricane the way she whirls aggressively about and leaves shit everywhere) and demands Wade return her land shark. Wade holds his hands up in mock-surrender, puts on a grin. “You sure you want him back, Gwennie? He’s a holy fucking terror.”
“Don’t swear in front of my land shark.”
“He’s not even in the room, asshole.” Wade pauses. Stan Lee and Dryer Lint both careen into the kitchen/living room/front room and make a beeline for Gwen, their new favourite cat sister; Wade, as the one true cat dad, is agonisingly betrayed and clutches his heart.
The kitten chaos abates somewhat. “Uh, yeah. He’s in my room,” Wade admits quietly.
Gwen peers more closely at him. “Oh my god, you wanna keep him.”
“Pfffft, don’t be stupid,” he snorts. “Why would I want to keep a land shark named Jeff from fuck knows what secret government facility?”
“He’s groooown on you,” Gwen sing-songs. “You’re his shark daaad.”
“What the fuck, Gwen, no I’m not. He hates me.”
“You loooove him,” she croons. “You’ve gone soooft.”
“I was always soft,” Wade pouts. “I love sharing my feelings and emotions. I have an incredibly healthy understanding of my own emotional tendencies and dialogues.”
A beat. He and Gwen crack up in unison.
“Seriously though,” Gwen murmurs after a minute. “I gotta take him.”
“I told you where he is,” Wade snaps. “Go find him yourself.”
Wade’s been not-so-accidentally postponing Gwen’s departure, offering her coffee (“Wade, it’s 4pm”), beer (“Wade, I’m sixteen”) and other assorted flavours of delaying tactics (“Wade, quit it, we both know you just want to keep Jeff here as long as you can”). Finally she snaps and tells him to cut the shit, that she’s working on a timeline, and disappears huffily into Wade’s room to fetch the land shark. She returns clutching him determinedly in her arms, despite his squirming, and demands that Wade say goodbye to his shark son.
He doesn’t even bother refuting the assertion, crouching to be eye-to-eye with Jeff where he’s splayed in Gwen’s grip. “I can’t believe you dumped a fucking land shark on me for a week with no explanation beyond ‘it’s kinda like E.T.’,” he grouches, but can’t quite find the adequate harshness of tone to give his reproachment the bite he was aiming for.
“Yeah,” she says gently. The softness to her voice makes Wade bristle. “Sorry I can’t tell you more. But. You know how it is.”
Wade shrugs, wishing for some alternate universe in which he doesn’t know exactly How It Is. “Sorry for being a bad influence. Y’know, a ‘less-than-idea’ role model.”
Gwen snorts. “Yeah, right.”
“Yeah, right,” Wade agrees. “You were well on your way to being a juvenile delinquent well before I got to you.”
Gwen cringes a little at the term. “I’m not a delinquent.”
Wade could argue that he’s pretty sure she literally stole an alien from a government facility. He doesn’t. “Sure you aren’t, Gwennie,” he says instead. “Not yet .”
Gwen sticks her tongue out at him, flips him a pink-nailed bird, and turns on her heel to storm out his door and into the corridor. Wade lets her go.
By the time she gets to the section of curb that Wade can see from his window, she’s managed to hide Jeff somewhere (presumably her very pink and very overstuffed backpack, though Wade hopes there are some goddamn airholes in there somewhere) and pauses, glancing up to meet his eyes. Wade reaches for his phone and texts her about the breathing holes.
He watches as she gets the message and texts back (at a frankly impressive speed, damn, and with long nails too). yes of course there are deus ex machina airholes the fuck kinda delinquent do you think i am , she tells him.
Wade decides that he will never admit he laughed at that; he’ll take this secret to his grave. you’ll be ok right? he texts back, surprised to find he actually does give one (1) shit.
He can see her laugh. Instead of texting back, she throws him up another set of thumbs-up.
Stupid Gwen Pooles. Stupid land sharks. Making him feel stupid warm fond feelings .
“You got this, Henry Thomas,” he yells down at his idiot goddamn niece. “Take him hooome!”