Chapter Text
It was hard to tell the difference between the base falling apart around him and sharp, jagged memory flashing across his field of vision as it struggled to fit back into his head. Logan’s eyes were half-useless with it, projecting fields of shrapnel and long stretches of asphalt over the grim trigonometry of the crumbling facility until it all looked like a pile of cut-up film negatives, spinning, turning. His nose took charge - a thin, snaking thread of scent pulling him forward, dodging corners and debris he could barely see - following the sweet, wet rot of Wade, or at least the way he’d smelled in those last few months, weak with cancer, slipping into decay. It was stronger now than Logan had ever known it, and rounder, more even, like windfall apples just starting to turn, forest floor after a flash flood. It was distressing, stomach-churning, and heady, intoxicating, sticking to the roof of his mouth and triggering chromatic flashes of home at its most raw. Shaky smiles and hand-stitched quilts and pill bottles and soup by the gallon.
It was easy to lose himself in the steel-grey military memories; it was equally easy to slip into the warm, helpless agony of how things ended. He had to shake himself, feel the floor moving under his feet, the metal groaning of the walls bowing in and the pattering of distant footsteps, reaching out deliberately for Wade’s scent trail, noting the familiar in it, but also the new - gore-tex, burnt rubber, something warm and nutty, like coconut oil. It smelled like a car rally in the Swiss alps. Logan found himself snorting. It was a scent profile only Wade could achieve, let alone pull off.
Fixing his mind as much as possible in the present, he pressed on, taking blind turns, faith wholly in the promise of what lay at the end of this nightmare. It got easier in increments. His sight rationalised itself enough to recognise halls he’d traversed earlier. Other scents cut through the fug, Ororo, Jean, Scott, the Professor, a dozen kids all reeking of adrenaline - thank god. He remembered what it was they’d come here for. With a purpose in mind now, it became easy, as long as he allowed himself to move entirely on instinct - all complexity fell away, thought narrowing down to find friends. Find family. Find kids. Find Wade. His jarring muscles coalesced, finally back to moving as one, sleek and lethal as they always did - moreso, now, remembering themselves, their history; everything felt deeper, limbs moving on two hundred years of lived experience. Every time he’d torn and regrown this flesh was returning, all ache and stretch and snap. If he’d clipped a doorway on his way through, half the wall would have come down with him.
He reached the spillway they’d broken in through, its door nearly twenty feet tall and wide open. He could hear the lakewater pounding against the far end of the tunnel, feel it rattling the tiles under his feet. Barely understanding his own actions, he marched to the control panel beside the door and slammed a clawed fist into it, twisting until sparks rained out in a starburst around him and the door began rattling shut. Footsteps thundered down the passage behind him, and he heard gasps of dismay cut through the chaos. The group that came to a panicking stop at the door was satisfyingly large, little faces swimming in Logan’s field of vision.
“You don’t wanna go that way, trust me.” The words came from somewhere beyond his control. They all turned to him, and though it came from the very back of the crowd, a smear of bright red bloomed through the mist of the water as it fought to breach the slipway door, and a sharp pang like a heart attack kicked in Logan’s chest. Two little white dots stared right back at him. He smiled. Everything was going to be fine.
Another scent trail, soot-black and acrid, hummed fresh down an unassuming side-passage to their left. Logan tilted his head. “C’mon. There’s another way out of here.”
It was second nature to pick up the kid who slipped in the snow - he couldn’t even remember the boy’s name, just that they needed to get the fuck out of here, that he needed to keep them all safe. The rage that swelled in him when they reached the vacant helipad was barely related to the stolen vehicle - none of them had expected Magneto to play nice. Everything was dialed up to a hundred and a step away from sensical. Logan could barely tell what was going on. The plane arrived. Everyone raced on board. His nerves soothed, satisfied, seeing them reach a place of safety.
But the part of his consciousness controlling his movements wasn’t quite within reach, and his step faltered before he could join the queue. Stryker was still here. He stank like a petrol fire. He should put down the kid first- too late by the time the thought occurred to him, already stalking through the snow. Logan followed his nose. Couldn’t help it. Needed to know what shape the bastard was in. He couldn’t bear the thought of Stryker getting away - it wasn’t just a grudge, it made him feel physically sick, thinking of the things he’d done, not just for his own benefit but because the very act of cruelty gave him some sort of sick satisfaction - he’d told Logan Wade was dead - the thought of no true retribution - it was unacceptable.
The state he found Stryker in was pitiful. After such a long, prolific career, given free reign to commit an endless list of depraved atrocities on behalf of the US government, hand-crafting super-slaves who were supposed to make him invincible - here he was, chained to a rocky outcrop, shivering from the cold, bloody-nosed, powerless, glasses slipping from his face. Still, his eyes lit up when Logan stalked into view, smiling with all of his sinister little teeth.
“I knew you’d come back for me.”
“Only to make sure you won't make it out alive.”
“Ah ah, not so fast. What about your precious memories?” The man taunted, cheeks straining with the stretch of his smirk. “Who has the answers, Wolverine?”
He had no chips left to play. Logan snarled. “I do.”
Stryker raised a sardonic eyebrow. “You do?”
Logan tilted his head. “I know everything.”
Maybe it was that, or the look in his eye, the glassy horror-wonder of someone who’d just been linked into a hivemind, that gave it away. Stryker’s gaze flickered to the nick in Logan’s brow, just over his right eye. He grinned properly now, disbelieving, thrilled, for some reason. “Holy cow. You’re even more insane than I gave you credit for, Wolverine. How’d it feel?” Everything about this guy made Logan want to go berserk. He gritted his teeth, grounding himself via the weight of the child in his arms.
“I should fuckin’ kill you for what you did to me.”
Stryker shook his head minutely, chuckling to himself. He shimmied his torso as if to straighten himself up. It was like he was trying to get back into business-mode; he fixed Logan with a cold stare, face crinkling with a fake smile. “You’ve seen what I can do. I can unlock your true potential. I did way worse to Wilson, you think he’s the same as he was before? No, he’s better - more ruthless. Less human. Like you. I changed him. You don’t know him anymore - what life are you going back to? With that?” Stryker nodded, as much as he could with heavy chains pinning his neck and forehead, at the kid who lay slouched in Logan’s grip. “Working at a school, is that what you think you were made for? How long can you play pretend? Come with me. Get me out of here, and we could change the world.”
Logan wanted to reduce Stryker to fucking atoms. He wanted the guy dead, flattened, eviscerated, so totally eradicated nobody would remember his name. But he was carrying this kid, someone who for all the cruelty in the world had never seen violence on the level Logan wanted to inflict; and wasn’t that what Xavier’s was all about, making a safer world for outcasts like them, putting the work in so kids would never have to fight for their lives like Logan had? He had no reason to save Stryker. He suspected he wouldn’t have chosen to, even if he hadn’t regained his memory. But this, chained to a rock in the path of an inevitable tidal wave, was enough. He’d have to sit with himself, listen to the groaning of the cracking rock, watch the water sweeping toward him in a mass more vast than anything the human mind can encompass. That was enough, finally, for Logan: This was enough.
He lifted the kid in his arms. “I’ll take my chances with him.” And he walked away. Ignored the man’s taunting yells, no performance convincing enough to mask the desperation in his voice - a voice Logan had never heard panicked before.
The moment Stryker left his sight, it was like he’d never been there. Because then they were rushing back to the plane, back to the best parts of two strange, detached lives, terrified and exhilarated and so overwhelmed at the thought of being in the same room as Wade, breathing the same air - just seeing him was enough to send Logan practically nonverbal with overwhelm.
He set the kid down with the rest of them, marched straight up to the pilot’s seat even though the red Deadpool suit hummed like a burn on his retina. Storm was panicking. He did what he could to engage. Every sense laser-focused on Wade, the way he took the first excuse available to get off the plane, practically ran to dodge Logan’s eye. He didn’t follow. Maybe Wade had the right idea. It was hard to get any sense of priority with so much happening in his own mind, but there was no time for a confrontation now, no matter that every inch of him was desperate to reach out and snag his wrist, feel the reassuring kick of a pulse, warm, frantic, alive. He still couldn’t believe it.
Wade was back as quickly as he'd left, a raging Jean in tow - Logan was paralysed, with the opportunity to see him move, hear him speak, oh, god, how long he’d gone without, and now every gesture he made was so obviously achingly Wade it made no sense that he’d ever not known it was him, how could he forget? When his hands swept in wide arcs that matched the dynamics of his speech, and he shook his head cartoonishly the moment anyone offered a counter-claim, a photo-montage flickered under Logan’s eyelids that flooded him with endorphins like he’d just outrun a bear. He had no clue what anyone was saying, the noise in his ears all chopped up and blending reality and memory, every vowel leaving Deadpool’s lips had a twin soundbite from the newly unlocked archive that repeated in a spiral until Wade addressed him directly - like a shot to the heart, the little eye whites, the Wolvie, Logan might fucking die - and he didn’t even get the chance to nod or shake, nevermind work out what he’d been asked, before Wade turned away and dove hands-first into the plane’s circuitry.
The blue-white arcs of electricity jumping across Wade’s goretexed body were so cartoonishly unreal that Logan didn’t really process it at all. He stood, dumbfounded, taking the chaos as a moment’s respite to get his bearings while everyone was too busy rushing around to notice him. This was probably some manifestation of his fractured mind, trying to translate the last few hours into a tangible, understandable visual. Did he believe that? No, Wade was putting himself in the line of fire to spare anyone else the pain as he always had, and Logan was just standing there like an idiot. He was frozen with the enormity of it all.
What did belief even mean now, when everything he’d known for the last decade had been rendered some sort of bleak imitation of a past which felt like the present? All he could think of was Wade, Wade, Wade on the floor, Wade pouring drinks, Wade clinging tight to his chest and shrieking with fake fear when he rode on the back of the bike, no matter how many times he’d done it before.
Wade had changed him so completely, you could argue for Logan's having to adjust to a fourth version of himself - pre-Wade. Wade had made him feel stupid for ever rolling his eyes and scoffing whenever someone brought up finding ‘The One’. Logan had been a stone-hearted stoic for a hundred-plus years, and six months with Wade had him writing poems. Wade had wrenched him out of the monotony of his caged mind, breathed life into him that he didn't think himself capable of - he didn't believe in soulmates, per se; he’d read some Plato, and thought the guy sounded like a total ass, but he could see where the concept had come from. That grotesque picture of humans as four-legged four-armed two-headed animals, split down the middle by some higher power, destined to piece themselves back together - if there was a force in the universe capable of such violence, Wade was his proof.
Here was another first Wade could take credit for - Logan was so emotionally cross-faded he didn't even feel motion sick as the plane shuddered to life beneath their feet. He felt emotion sick. So much so any external factors were being overpowered.
A dizzying, overwhelming cloud of rage and grief and yearning was smothering Logan's every synapse. All this time, all this time Wade had been out there and Logan had no idea. Fifteen years had passed - surely that was too much? His feelings had been effectively frozen, a time capsule of himself which was thawing as if it had all happened yesterday, but Wade had lived every second of it with his mind intact. He must have moved on, or soured on the thought, in all that time.
Logan thought about their talk in the woods - Wade, the sharp line of his shoulders bowed in defeat, promising to leave if the memories were unsalvageable. The sincerity he'd been masking suddenly blindingly clear, his voice - what we had was the real deal… If there was a chance to get back to that, I had to try. He'd said it himself, clear as day.
But Wade couldn't possibly know what it would be, trying to make it work from their respective standings - they'd grown into totally different people. Fifteen years was a lifetime for some, two cycles of total cell regeneration. He couldn't know what it would mean, what it would take - whether it was possible at all.
But he was here, wasn't he? Was that all that mattered?
Logan didn't want to lump Wade with the burden of rehabilitating him - he'd caused enough grief as it was. Wade was still in the throes of getting them out of Alkali lake, electrocuting himself - sacrificing himself over and over, even when surviving wasn't guaranteed. Logan could just as easily pretend he'd been unable to salvage his memory, see if Wade was true to his word and disappeared.
God, who was he kidding? Even the thought of it made Logan nauseous.
He could see the shape of him through the suit, his silhouette almost unchanged aside from the shape of his head. His proportions were a golden ratio, humming harmony in Logan's field of vision - he'd know a mannequin had been modelled off of Wade with no head or hands or identifying features beyond the breadth of his shoulders, the slant of his waist. Could picture his sardonic little shit-eating smirk through the fabric, the big wet brown of his eyes, like soil after the first of the spring showers. His voice - his voice! how had Logan forgotten? How had it left him, how it felt to be called beautiful in Wade’s inside voice, the miracle of that warm, light trill?
It was an absurd line of thought, practically unthinkable, letting Wade leave now. What the future was from here was anybody’s guess, but there was a future, somehow, against all possible odds. If that wasn't a sign, he didn't know what was.
Rogue had to shake him out of his daze, and it took a while. He could feel the scraping of his shoulder as his metal-plated bones shifted against each other, and it felt as strange as it always had, except now he remembered what it was like to live without that feeling, and how it had gotten there - brutal flashes of impossible, searing pain crawling under his skin - god, that was going to take some adjusting to. He flinched with his eyes, trying to lose the weirdness of thinking and knowing and re-learning so much all at once, and Rogue shook him again.
“Logan, do something!”
He looked at her, then looked down. Deadpool was still shaking on the floor, his hands tensing violently around the plane’s wiring. Deadpool- Wade! Wade was right there, a foot away, it was really him, alive and bright and shaking with the force of - the energy needed to power the X-jet-
“Oh.” His own voice felt alien in his ears. He swallowed. “Uh. Right.”
“Don't just stand there!” Rogue hissed, and shunted him forward.
With a ludicrous amount of effort, Logan managed to collect himself enough to lean down over Wade's writhing body, looping an arm around his shoulders to wrench him backwards. Wade's hand was still tight around the wires and seemed to bounce back to the hole in the floor. Logan had to practically plaster himself to the merc's back, grit his teeth against the current jumping in little bolts from the red suit, and pry his fingers up one by one before finally the circuit was broken, and they both went flying with the force of it. Wade ragdolled like a sandbag. Logan laid him out flat enough to catch his shoulders and steady him. His muscles were still jumping with the aftershocks. It might have been the leftover energy stinging Logan’s hands as his grip tightened around the familiar shape of Wade’s corded deltoids, but it could just as well have been the ecstasy of being so close, after so long.
Getting his hands on Wade made the animal parts of him sing. The sun emerged, the fog lifted. It didn't matter that it had been over a decade, that they'd both thought the other was dead, that Wade was in this weird suit and had changed in ways Logan had yet to begin to understand - he was here. His senses kicked into overdrive, and it suddenly occurred to him that Wade had just been electrocuted to hell and back, and god knows what he could survive - he remembered with a rush of guilt and awe what he'd done to Deadpool in Bobby's kitchen, the shredding he'd bounced back from in no time - but would this sort of damage heal the same? Wade had regenerative abilities. It was too good to be true. Dizzying. Confusing. Concerning.
“Wade.” Just saying it felt like a prayer being answered. Wade was hiccupping words that slurred together into long lines of nothing, his breath making the mask dance, jaw flexing with it, head rolling around on the loose string of his neck. Logan shook, caught him as his disagreeing muscles sent him sliding further back down to the floor, clamped down on his shoulders, hard, urgent. The psychobabble went on and on, total gibberish as far as Logan could discern, not that his discernment was at its peak right now - it was all he could do to say his name, again, and again, the only word that coalesced in his mind, the four letters a glowing overlay that smothered everything else. Finally, tense as a bowstring, he barked it, and the chatter stopped as abruptly as it began. Wade went stiff. Head snapped back into alignment with his neck. Looked at Logan - looked and saw, and didn’t stop seeing.
“Jamie?”
The nickname alone in his voice was enough to stun Logan all over again. His heart was in his throat. Recognition pushed up the inner corners of the eye-whites, and Wade straightened up of his own accord, letting Logan’s hands slip down to the crooks of his elbows. Logan tried to respond. Nothing came out.
“Jamie? James? Logan? What do I call you? Fuck! Holy fuck. Do you remember me? Or did you just read it written down somewhere? Talk to me. Please.”
At a total loss, he got caught on the wrong thing. Who was he? Hearing the name ‘Jamie’ was a lot. Too much, maybe. He didn’t know if he was still Jamie. James still felt like another planet. “Logan.”
Deadpool’s face crumpled. “Oh, for fuck’s SAKE, don’t get my hopes up like that!” His voice was actually thick with emotion, the high-pitched whine of someone on the verge of tears. It mirrored Logan’s own state to a T, and he realised at once the implication of what he’d said.
“No, I mean I still - I dunno who I am, okay, it’s all so - but I remember, I remember you, I do.”
Deadpool snapped right back up. “Don’t fucking mess me around, this has been the LONGEST DAY of my LIFE and my brain just got COOKED. I can’t deal, okay?”
“I do, I swear it. Wade-” Deadpool tensed at the word, and Logan reached back up to circle his biceps, drawing him closer. “I remember everything. I’m so sorry.”
“Everything? What the hell are you sorry for?”
“Everything. S’far as I know. It’s so- there’s so much, I don’t see how there could be anything else.” He groaned, tilting his head back. It pounded like a drum. “Sorry for- you’ve been such a fuckin’ saint this whole time, I nearly killed you half a dozen times these past two days. You know I’d never- if I’d known, fuck, if I’d known, Wade…”
Wade was softening. The easing of the little crease between his brows betrayed the spark of hope lighting in him. He reached tentatively to cup Logan’s elbows, soothing the joint with his thumbs. Sparks of feeling ran up Logan’s arms, down to his fingers where they held Wade, a figure-eight of warm energy. “Nothing to apologise for, peanut. A saint I am not. Anyway, I begged you to turn me into kabob for YEARS, that was me finally reaping what I sowed. You can do it again if you want. Please. Please. Please.”
“Jesus.” It was all Logan could muster. He was soaking up the warmth trickling through the fabric layers that separated Wade’s hands from his skin. Yellow ink seeping into the blue of him. “It’s you.”
“That’s a stage name, really. Call me Christ. Rolls off the tongue wayyy better.”
Logan couldn’t even snap at him for making such an obvious, overdone joke. He was just staring. With no energy to regulate his expression, he had no idea how he was coming across, and was beyond caring. He looked, hard and unflinching, eyes boring holes into Deadpool’s forehead, trying to work out how to feel. His body was itching with urge, hands unsatisfied with their spot on Wade’s arms, willing themselves further up with the need to cup the back of his neck, chin drifting forward of its own accord, intent on tucking itself into Wade’s collar. His mind - god alone knew. It was a dryer full of roof shingles.
Wade was holding his breath. He didn’t dare hope for the best. He really had been an inch away from admitting defeat - half hoping the battery would finish him off before the broken heart got too much to bear. James was here - but not James, not exactly, something just out of reach in his eyes, something that was adrift and terrified.
“Look - I'm getting a little nervous here, peanut, I can't read you at all right now. Are you…. Happy to see me?” Wade batted his eyes. The lightness in his tone tripped some instant rage switch in Logan, something all James, and so familiar - Wade, mortal as any other man, floating through life with not one sensible bone in his body. How many times had they rowed over Wade’s blasé attitude, scaring James half to death and laughing it off like it was nothing? Here he was now, less mortal, sure, but all sugar and spice when the last time they’d knowingly interacted was that fucking suicide note - a cute little goodbye left like an afterthought on the coffee table -
“You- you piece of shit, I thought you DIED! Left in the middle of the fuckin’ day, you left the windows wide open- Stryker told me you were dead!” He had to consciously loosen the grip in each of his fingers, aware of the way they were clamping down on Wade’s arms with sheer stress. “Couldn’t say it to my face then, what about now? You got nothin’ to say for yourself, mouth?!”
Wade smiled. He couldn’t help it. He beamed under the mask. There was the James he knew. Maybe things were finally coming up Deadpool. “I was hoping that part might stay forgotten…”
“Fuck you!” Logan was fighting back tears, torn between the urge to shake Wade around and crush him in a hug. He opted for a sort of in between - wrapped his arms around Wade's head and pulled him into the crook of his neck so he could hide his own face against the top of the Deadpool mask, scratchy and familiar and smelling like home.
”Gettin’ some mixed signals here, honey badger,” Wade squeaked, muffled against Logan's cobra-grip. “I've had dreams about suffocating to death in your beautiful titties, but now's maybe not the time?”
Logan thought he was crying, and he was, wet tracks cutting through the dust and dirt and streaks of blood that had settled in a layer over his face, but the staccato convulsions wracking him grew and grew until they forced little puffs of air through the gaps in his teeth, and before long he was in hysterics, laughter shaking him like laundry in a storm. He smiled uncontrollably into the crown of Wade’s head. “You sound exactly the fuckin’ same,” he choked out, squeezing tighter for a moment before relaxing his grip enough to let Wade sit back upright. “Exactly the same. You coulda said that same sentence to me twenty years ago.” What he meant was you amaze me. He couldn’t tell if it came across. Even so, Wade shrugged, raising an eyebrow.
“Still got it. Gonna take more than a government torture program to dim my sparkle, peanut, don’t sound so surprised.”
He remembered everything all over again, but this time he was laughing at the madness of it, scoffing and wiping his eyes because of course this would happen to them, of all people.
“Fuck. Tell me about it.”
“Yeah, speaking of - what happened?? How'd you get it all back?”
Logan just laughed and laughed, breathy and delirious, clutching his head. “They put a sheet of graphene in my brain. I got it out.”
“You got it- what? How?”
“Drilled a hole in my skull. There's a robot in that facility that does pre-programmed lobotomies. well- there was. With any luck it's all underwater now.”
“You WHAT?”
“Look.” Logan dragged Wade’s gloved hand to his forehead, singling out an index finger to press along his brow bone, stopping over the divot where the machine had cracked him open. Up close, you could see the browning smears where blood had streamed down over his eye and down along his smile line to the corner of his mouth. The mask’s eye-whites grew impossibly wide.
“Jesus fucking christ. And I thought I'd got the worst of it.”
“What'd he do to you?”
“tortured me for six months and then put me in an oxygen deprivation chamber until my body underwent enough stress to mutate.”
Logan barked out a sharp laugh, then clapped a hand over his mouth. “Sorry. Shit, sorry, it's just-”
“We make the Old Testament look like a fairytale, huh?”
Logan couldn't stop laughing, his whole torso jumping with it. “Oh, god. Oh my god.”
“Mm, yeah, that's me. Like I said, I prefer Christ, but you’re clearly going through something, so I’ll cut you some slack, sweet thang.”
“This is fucking crazy.” He kept remembering everything that had happened - too enormous to accept at once, rejecting and re-reading the disc, waiting for it to settle. His brain felt like it was pulsating. Logan groaned, cradling his head between his bunched up shoulders and rocking gently back and forth.
“You doing okay there, peanut?”
“It's- yeah. I'm just, having trouble… I don't know what's - well, it's all me, I guess, all of this is me but my head's… eugh.” He flicked his head to one side like he was loosening a muscle. “I dunno. Shrapnel. Still all over the place, some of it's like watchin’ a movie of someone else.”
“I can't imagine. Well, I make movies about myself in my head all the time, but those are probably way sexier than the crazy shit you've got going on right now.”
It was such standard Wade fare, tasteless innuendo totally unfit for the occasion, that it set Logan off laughing all over again. Wade lost it in turn, giggling helplessly, if only for the pure, bone-deep ease that the sound of Logan laughing triggered in him, and for a few seconds they were just holding each other and shaking with the force of their own delirious relief.
“That really is you, isn't it, Wade?” Logan knew. Nobody else could affect him the way Wade did, make the horror show of it all feel lighter, less doomed. It was just nice to hear it out loud, firming it-
“Yeah. It’s me. I promise.”
Everything was still a fucking nightmare, but it mattered less when Logan could look into Deadpool’s eyes and see Wade through the mask, the glowing structure of his face, hear the warm, light roundness of his voice. It was like getting hit with a tranquiliser dart - or the opposite, maybe - the muddy static of his mind dimmed suddenly, no match for the zap of right here, right now that Wade carried into every room he entered. The urge to see him in the flesh struck Logan like the first pang of a heart attack; he could see the shapes in abstraction, but it was no match for the real thing.
“Can I-?” He started, and raised a hand thoughtlessly to Wade’s face. The moment his fingertips made contact with coarse fabric, Wade yelped, and rolled backwards until he was standing perfectly upright. It happened so quickly Logan’s hand kept moving into the now empty space in front of him, echoing the cheekbone that he’d been reaching for. He looked up. Wade looked equally surprised, his whole body tense and unnatural.
“Um.” The merc’s voice was strained. He clenched and unclenched his hands at his sides, tapping his toes in a rapid, alternating rhythm. “Ah. Yeah. Um - about that. You don’t…”
“What’s wrong?” Logan murmured. He eased himself upright, following Wade without making any sudden movements - like he was approaching a wild animal, Wade noted with a pang of embarrassment. He’d said he’d take the mask off if Logan got his memory back - but that was back when he was shooting for a best-case scenario, and now it was here, and…
“Fuck, I did NOT think this would be so hard,” Wade hissed, spinning around on the spot.
“Look, you don’t - I’d like to see you, but I don’t wanna force you into anything.”
His wonderful, gentle, soothing tone was doing nothing to ease Wade’s agitation. Of course Logan would be endlessly understanding. It was the most reasonable thing in the world to see Wade’s face after so long, after all the shit they’d faced to get to this point, and still he was giving Wade the option to keep the mask on regardless of how weird it would be to stay hidden. But this was a Logan freshly reacquainted with the memory of the Wade from before, who was, at this point, a fragment of a bygone era. Coming to terms with his own appearance had been bad enough (like, he still wasn’t really there yet) and the thought of Logan’s expression, seeing what had become of a face he’d known so well - it made Wade want to cry.
“Really, Wade. It’s okay. You’re good.” Logan had crept closer, grounding Wade with a warm hand on his shoulder. “Your heart’s beatin’ like a tommy gun.”
“I’m being dramatic, I want-” I want you to see me, but I want you to see me. “It’s not… that I don’t want you to know what I look like, it’s - just, er. Now I’m here, I’m shitting my pants.”
“Bein’ nervous is understandable. The adrenaline hangover can’t be helpin’.”
Wade snorted, rolling his head from side to side. His body felt like a bag of ground beef. “That, and- well, this is a pretty big audience, too.”
Logan looked around blearily. Jesus, they were all just standing around, pretending not to watch. The kids weren't even pretending, wide-eyed and grinning awkwardly as he squinted at them. The plane was moving. Storm was in the pilot's chair, looking over her shoulder as she steered. They were airborne. Things had all gone to plan, oh, good. Reality re-emphasised itself - but Logan couldn't bring himself to feel self-conscious, too preoccupied with the sudden vastness of his own life. Fuck it. Everyone else had had their moment, the rescue and the Professor and whatever had caused the dam’s collapse.
“None of you got anythin’ better to do?” Logan growled, squinting at the rest of them. Rogue, Bobby and some of the other kids at least had the decency to look embarrassed and avert their eyes, and Storm smiled sheepishly with one eye on the sky. Pyro rolled his eyes from his spot cross-legged on the floor. Kurt was settled on a little ledge up in the ceiling, looking down on them encouragingly like a pleasant gargoyle, and Charles was watching through fatigue-lidded eyes, a knowing smile on his lips. Jean was fuming to herself, crumpled and worn in her seat, and Scott stood next to her with his arms crossed and his legs wide like he cut an intimidating silhouette. The sunglasses undid whatever tough-guy act he attempted, Wade really ought to tell him.
“You’re making a scene,” Jean managed to snipe, voice gravelly and sour. “What, you think we should just pretend you’re not there?”
Count on Jean to irritate him so much Wade forgot his own insecurity. “Oh, can it, strawberry shortcake, I’m sick to death of you. You look like shit, by the way, and your telekinesis was trying to undress me on the way back onto the plane - you’re WELCOME, BY THE WAY - you need to get that checked out. Or get a divorce. Both. I don’t care. Fix your kooky mutation and renew your vows before you try telling me what to do, how about that?”
Two of the kids smacked hands over their mouths in shock. Jean just scowled. Scott’s mouth twisted into a grimace, and he stepped forward as if to defend his lady’s honour, but stopped awkwardly when Logan broke out in spluttering laughter again - none of them had heard him let loose beyond a dry chuckle before, and it was alien enough to wrongfoot even Scott. Logan scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of a palm, oblivious to the wordless conversations bouncing around the rest of the cabin.
“The mouth on you. It’s like you never left.”
“Oh, it’s been so long since anybody called me Mouth.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Nobody else has ever called me Mouth, ‘cause every other person on the planet realises how gay it sounds.”
They’d had this exact conversation more times than either could remember, and it felt like stepping back in time. Logan recentered, looking at Wade with a tenderness that made him squirm. “It's OK whatever you look like, really, I’m not gonna freak out.”
Wade shook his head. “You can't say that. You haven't seen me yet.”
“I can, and I don't care.”
“Then you won't mind if I keep the suit on.” He was being difficult, pushing for some backlash that would give him a way out of this tender, vulnerable moment. Logan had known him for too long to take the bait.
“Wade…” If it really was a no-go, Logan would have to back off and drop the issue. But the thought that Wade was too scared to let Logan see his true self made him emotional in a whole new, devastating way. “Please. You got nothin’ to be scared of. Let me see you, please.”
Wade knew he was being petulant, that he couldn’t hide forever. But he knew it would change things, and to set off another chain of reactions when they’d only just reunited felt like pulling the pin all over again. There really was no rest for the wicked.
After a long pause, he sighed, letting his shoulders slump. “Okay. fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s Tumour Town in here. Ballsack Bayou. Picture ‘Sentient Scrotum’ - I have a movie script drafted with me as the lead, I was gonna send it in to whoever scouts for A24 but I’d love for you to give it a look-over.”
“There’s two dozen kids on this plane, Wade,” Logan hummed as he reached with gentle hands for the base of the mask.
Wade could tell Logan knew how big of a deal this was for him, despite the jokes; his touch was feather-light, teasing the mask away with the delicacy of an archivist peeling apart pages of a manuscript. Fresh air reached Wade’s skin millimetre by tense millimetre. He held his breath, uncharacteristically silent in the face of terror, biting his tongue with his eyes wide open as his second skin lifted slowly to expose the craggy, pithy underlayer. He stared forward, determined to meet Logan again without clenching his eyes shut. Let the one unchanged part of his face be the first that made contact. He ignored the gasps and suppressed exclamations from the rest of the peanut gallery, staring resolutely ahead, finally, the world brightening without the veil over his eyes, and he watched Logan take him in.
There was a pang of shock, Logan couldn't deny that. He wondered how much it must hurt, having the whole surface of yourself erupt like that. But there was also something organic, something eternal about the patterns that traced over Wade's skin; the veins of a dry riverbed, the arteries of an autumn leaf. Even the more gnarled patches brought to mind cracking clay, terracotta glazes and peeling bark. Regardless of what anyone else had to say, Wade was still the only thing Logan held in more reverence than nature.
He spent a little too long looking for Wade’s liking. The merc grimaced and gave in to the urge, pinching his eyes shut. “yeah. I know. Don’t be shy, you can speak your mind. I know it's bad.”
“Not bad. Just… different.”
“I look like a deep-fried doberman. I look like Freddy Kreuger's metrosexual cousin.”
Logan’s frown deepened. He was leaning in, following the pale edge of a runnel of scar tissue that danced like a drop of rain down the column of Wade’s neck. “No… It's softer. More like you slept on a doily. your skin's kinda lacy.”
Wade’s eyes flew open again out of sheer incredulity, surprised at the man’s sudden proximity. “Have you been drugged? Jesus, Wolvie, you don't have to sugar-coat shit with me. I'm hideous, it's coolio.”
“You're not.” He didn’t have the words to hand now, still taking it all in, but he meant it. “Really, you’re not.” He shook his head - hideous was a word that would never ever describe Wade Wilson. It just didn’t gel. Logan smirked, catching Wade’s nervous eye, and tilted his head to one side. “You were never known for your looks, anyway.”
To see the sheen of mirth in Wade’s eye took Logan’s breath away. The merc’s jaw dropped in indignation. “Fuck off, I used to be a total smokeshow! What else did you like me for, my personality?”
Logan was practically giggling now. He was giddy. Wade was here, and he was different, and he was beautiful. The world pulsed technicolour. It was all too good to be true. Wade was laughing along with him, intricately textured skin crinkling around his eyes, and Logan wanted to kiss him so badly he just did. Swooped forward and slotted himself against Wade with practiced ease.
Wade froze like he’d seen Medusa. His whole body ran ice cold in a second flat, paralysed at the immediacy of it, how casually Logan had leaned into him, like nothing had changed - was still kissing him - so suddenly the kick of his heart felt more like fear than excitement - Wade willed himself to snap out of it but it was too late, Logan had noticed and was pulling away, eyes upturned in the inner corners, confused and nervous-
Bile curdled in the back of Logan’s oesophagus. Had his memory tricked him? No they had absolutely, definitely been this close in the past. Wade had confessed it himself before Logan even remembered any of it, the depths of their love for eachother - but why was he pulling away now, lips cold and unresponsive? Logan stepped back, hands falling stiffly to his sides.
“Sorry. I should have - I just thought, you…”
Wade’s tongue was a wad of cotton. “Um. Wow. Wasn’t expecting that.”
“You weren’t?” Maybe he’d been misreading this whole situation. Logan was sweating bullets. “I mean - the way you spoke this mornin’, I thought- but I should have asked.”
“No! No, I do, oh my god, of course I - but, I mean, you only just got your memory back, I didn’t want to rush you into anything, y’know?”
“S'been fifteen years. Not rushin’.”
“I just mean, I don't want you to feel like you have to-”
Wade’s tiptoeing was getting on Logan’s nerves. “I'm perfectly capable of makin’ my own decisions.”
“Just- Look! Let me speak, okay? I have to - set the record straight. Clear the air. I don’t know. Just let me run my mouth for a minute and we can go from there, please?”
Logan’s brow was furrowed, still off-kilter from Wade’s awkwardness, but maybe his mind wasn’t the only one spinning at a hundred miles an hour. Wade had deep bags under his eyes. It pained Logan that he didn’t know whether it was indicative of his sleeping badly, or if that was simply the default colouration of his scarred skin. Things had changed. It was stupid to charge in like they hadn’t. Tense, Logan nodded, crossing his arms over his chest. Wade gulped. Wrung his hands together, chewed his lip, and tapped his left foot on the ground repeatedly, sighing into speech.
“Look, I don't mind if it’s been too long, if you don't wanna pick things back up. Ah. Who the hell am I kidding? I mind a whole fucking lot, but I'd understand. The thing I couldn't bear was the thought that I'd be the only person on the planet who knew us - how good we were. What we made together. Of each other.” That yellow air, the way the world grew fat and friendly when Wade and Logan were in the same room. The way the slightest brush of skin on skin made goosebumps bloom like wildflowers, young and bright and inevitable. Any sideways glance was the distant eye of a non-believer, laughable in the wake of the impossible godliness of a day spent together on the couch. “We made no sense, and still it was obvious. To me. I'm just… Whatever happens now, I’m just glad to know that you know how it felt. If nothing else, I want you to know that’s enough for me.”
Logan's brow relaxed in a way it rarely ever did. His gaze trailed slowly across the terrain of Wade's face, memory melding with the now. That sharp haze of joy - he knew it like it had been there all along. The ease of being so closely intertwined it sometimes felt like they were two halves of the same superorganism. The last fifteen years of blind survival made the contrast clearer than ever, and the warmth returned tenfold - that warmth which had been returning to him, ghostly, ever since Wade had first shown up in Bobby’s kitchen.
“I don't think we make no sense.” Wade's eyes glittered. The nerves in his face eased a little.
“Yeah? Are we Bonnie and Clyde? Thelma and Louise? Written in the stars? Meant to be?”
“Didn't say all that.”
Wade snorted, ready to get back into more familiar light-hearted territory, but Logan squeezed his arm a little and they locked eyes again.
“But I knew there was somethin’ about you - I don't think it was memories seepin’ through, though. I think I just knew you. Not like a person knows a person - like two trees sense each other. Like if I was deaf ‘n’ blind, I could still pick you out of a lineup. Like two rocks that always land on the same beach.”
Wade gasped. Logan got nervous - was that too strong a line? “Bit much. Sorry.” Wade shook his head incredulously, looping his arms around Logan’s neck.
“You WOULD love me if I was a worm!” He hummed, pulling Logan’s face into his shoulder and burying his nose in the shorter’s hair. Logan groaned, sliding his arms around Wade even so.
“Eugh. What kind of worm?”
“Flatworm.”
“No.”
“I wanna cake you in chicken liver pâté and watch you fight off two hundred komodo dragons.”
“That sounds more like the Wade I know. When’d you get into slam poetry?”
“Oh FUCK OFF! Two rocks that land on the same beach? Suck my fucking ass, Logan, you're ten times the sap I am.”
He didn’t deny it. But it was Wade’s fault, let it be known. He stayed in the warm nook of Wade’s neck for another few moments, before pulling back a little, studying the features that looked gently back, home in all the ways that mattered. “If I kiss you now, will you actually join in, or are we gonna have to do that whole script again?”
Wade snorted. “You have no appreciation for theatre. That was the monologue of a lifetime, baby, one of those kids better be filming for my showreel. I’m shooting for Broadway.” Logan just huffed with a smile, tugging Wade closer. The merc gasped, slipping a hand between their lips before they made contact. “Wait wait wait! Forgot something!”
“Are you serious?” Logan asked incredulously, jaw slack as Wade jumped backwards and turned around to fiddle with his belt.
“As a heart attack,” Wade replied, voice muffled as he tucked his chin to his chest to hide whatever he was doing. After a moment, he turned back with one arm hidden behind him, a shifty grin twisting his mouth.
“What the hell was that?”
“Just had to brace myself. Now kiss me, you great hairy ape.”
“Great hairy ape??” Logan hissed, but then Wade hooked his free arm around Logan’s neck and reeled him in until they were nose to nose. He sighed, melting despite himself. “You are impossible.”
Wade just beamed at him. Finally, he was close enough all Logan had to do was tilt his head to the side, and warmth bloomed across his face, down his neck, up into his hair follicles, pinpricks in each eyelash on his eye, and they were clinging to each other, breathing life into each other, sharing air underwater.
The moment Logan began to really relax into it, a plastic click jarred the air, and something started to whirr. Tinny and strained, guitar notes quivered to life from behind Wade’s back, punctuated by cicada whines just about discernible through the crackle - and then Logan’s own voice, or James’, or both.
‘I am a lineman for the county…’
Logan leaned back in disbelief. Wade was holding his arm up now, lifting the walkman over his head like it was a boombox. The smile on his face showed all of his teeth, even the two slightly crooked ones at the front of his lower jaw that didn’t often peek over his lip.
“Is that-”
“GLEN CAMPBELL BABY! God, why aren’t you into Wham!? Glen Campbell is the most unsexy name in human fucking history. You’re lucky I’m so selfless or we’d be listening to I’m Your Man and breaking into a dance montage right now.”
The song continued - Logan could remember it now, sitting in his truck bed on a gravel track in the middle of Pennsylvania, tape recorder propped up against his boot, heart hammering with nerves. The song continued, the chords strange and discordant without any other instrumental and more ethereal for it - ‘I can hear you through the wires, I can hear you through the whine…’ He hadn’t heard it in years. Hadn’t heard his own recording since it was made. He looked at Wade, couldn’t take his eyes off him, awestruck, astonished all over again that he’d kept the tape for all these years.
“Wichita Lineman…”
“You always said it was the most romantic song ever written.”
Logan smiled incredulously. “I did. It is.”
“Trust you to think a song about an electrical engineer is the ballad of all time. I should’ve made you listen to more Madonna in the 80s.”
“You coulda picked a different song, I wouldn’t have minded.”
“Ehh. It’s grown on me. Maybe you had a point.”
The lyrics were still there in his head, inscriptions on a cave wall. It was the same tape player and everything, the same dents, the same paint chipping around the volume dial - another rush of affection nearly swept Logan over. How stunning it was to be remembered. To offer love and see it revered. He drew Wade back in, bumping their chests together, eyes almost closed with the strength of his smile. Besides the instrumentals, the chorus was the part that made him say it was the song to end all love songs; the simplicity of it. “And I need you more than want you,” Logan hummed along, his voice matching the one from the tape. “And I want you for all time…”
Wade's face suddenly fell, a can crumpling under pressure, and he pulled Logan into a hug so crushing he lost his balance and swayed where he stood. Wade's nose pressed hard into his neck, and he could hear the flutter of his breath, sobs rocking his body.
“Fuck, I've missed you. Missed you like I lost a fucking leg.”
The song faded into a slow guitar break. Logan wrapped Wade up tight in his arms. Muttered into the space above his ear. “Missed you too. I didn't know that's what it was, but I've been missin’ you this whole time.”
Logan really was settling back into his mind, now; the whitewater rapids had settled some, the novelty of his returning memory finally wearing off. Well, he was getting used to it, at least, and the real-world present was more tangible for it. He could feel the rapt, flabbergasted stares of pretty much everyone else on the jet, and knew at some point in the immediate future they’d have to give up this act of being the only people in the room and explain what the hell was going on. The grime he’d accumulated over the past several days sat on his skin like a foul cloak. He wasn’t exactly a neat freak but days-old blood mixed with underground bunker dust was a lot even for him, and he shivered.
Most of all, he felt the body heat of the man in his arms, alive - alive - and shaking with it and so clearly, reassuringly happy to be near him. He’d missed this more than anything.
Hot, wet tears landed on his neck above his high collar like dewdrops. He cupped the back of Wade’s head in his palm, soothing his scalp with his thumb in slow, careful strokes. “You okay?”
Wade was breathing thin, long breaths to try and stem his emotional overflow. There would be plenty of time for crying when they were off this plane. He didn’t want everyone’s first impressions of their relationship to be Wade sobbing like a baby. He was an ugly crier on top of everything else, and that was the last thing anyone needed an extended cut of. “Oh, just peachy, peanut, really. I am so stable and level and serene right now. Top of the world.”
Logan chuckled, and the bass of it rushed over Wade in a wave of pins and needles. “You sound it.”
“Oh, charming. Kick a guy while he’s all- snotty and sniffy,” Wade moaned, scrubbing his running nose shamelessly against Logan’s suit.
“Do I look like a tissue to you?”
“I’ll never not want to wipe myself off on you, babe, no matter the outfit.”
“Oh my god.” Wade leaned back. Logan was glaring at him with a mixture of disgust and admiration. It was an expression he’d seen a thousand times before. “I just got this fitted, y’know.”
“Mmm, my compliments to the chef. You look fucking edible. Like you’ve been dipped in dark chocolate. My little strawberry, awww… Imagine you as a strawberry. With leaf-green hair - oh, I’ll start crying all over again.”
Logan just shook his head fondly. Wade was going to more effort than necessary to pull himself together, but his smile was genuine even through bleary eyes and a running nose. He cocked his head and stepped back a little, holding his index fingers and thumbs out in two L shapes to frame Logan. “Gotta say, the frumpy bag is really cramping your vibe. But it’s subversive. It’s doing something for me. The bodysuit’s giving mugler darkroom motorcycle slay, and the bag’s saying ‘AND I’ve got shit to do!’ That’s functional fashion. You’re so hot. We should make out.”
Logan stared blankly back. “I understood about twenty percent of what you just said.”
“That success rate is wayyy too high. I need to get more niche.” Logan snorted, shaking his head. “What I MEANT to say is: where’d you get the bag from, peanut? You look like a lesbian on a second date.”
Wade was toying with the drawstring strap of the duffel Logan had taken from Stryker’s lab - and with his memory back, the thing suddenly glowed like a treasure chest. He gasped, reaching around to cradle it, tugging it open.
“Bub, you are not gonna believe what’s in here.”