❝ 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 ❞ V.C ( Weapon-X Team comics )
pairing victor creed & teen! daughter! reader 🪽.
synopsis 𖥧 you're Sabertooth's biologically engineered daughter, another Weapon X stray (just like Laura was). you're as much of an animal as your father is, except where he's a vicious lion you're just a very agressive feral stray cat with a mean streak.
content 𖥧 fem/afab reader, post-inversion! sabertooth, reader is very animalistic (in a cat/feline way), reader and victor are very wolf/pup coded.
💬 : i'm really really starting to like Sabertooth in this saga of comics guys..
🏷 : @mavixgirl , @luna-kait .
The Blackbird cut through the night sky like a silver shark, silent and lethal and humming with the kind of engine power that made Kitty Pryde sigh wistfully every time she lent it out. Old Man Logan had his hands on the controls, knuckles white, jaw set, eyes fixed on the horizon with the thousand-yard stare of a man who had seen too much and was too tired to blink.
Beside him, in the co-pilot's seat, Warpath was wrapping a bandage around his forearm with the kind of aggressive efficiency that suggested he was angry at the burn for existing.
"You're doing it too tight," Logan said, not looking over.
"I know," Warpath growled, pulling it tighter.
Logan sighed. "You're gonna cut off circulation."
"Good."
In the back, Lady Deathstrike sat with her back against the hull, a disassembled blade across her thighs. She was cleaning it with the kind of reverent attention most people reserved for religious icons. Domino, across from her, was doing the same with her sidearm, though with significantly less reverence and significantly more annoyance, because she kept getting gun oil on her gloves.
"That was a cluster," Domino said, not for the first time.
"Standard," Deathstrike replied, not looking up.
"Standard for us, yeah, but-" Domino gestured vaguely with her gun. "She blew herself up. Like, intentionally. With us standing right there."
"Warpath was about to get shot."
"So? Warpath gets shot all the time. It's his thing."
Deathstrike's lips twitched, the closest she ever came to a smile. "She disagreed."
Domino opened her mouth, closed it, then shook her head. "I'm not saying it wasn't effective. I'm just saying it was insane. Who carries a live explosive into a firefight and then jumps into the middle of the enemy formation?"
"Someone with a healing factor." Deathstrike said.
"Someone with a death wish." Domino corrected.
Neither of them mentioned the fact that, for about thirty seconds after the explosion, there hadn't been enough of you left to wish for anything. Just a skeleton. Some smoke. And a lot of very dead guards.
Warpath, for his part, had gone very quiet after you'd reassembled yourself. He hadn't said thank you—he wasn't sure he knew how—but he'd stopped glaring at you quite so hard. That was, for Warpath, practically a hug.
"She's not human," he said quietly.
Logan snorted. "None of us are, bub. Plus she's her father's daughter, so buckle up 'cause we've got two hours 'til home."
The cargo bay of the Blackbird was technically for equipment storage. Crates of ammunition, spare uniforms, emergency rations, the occasional decommissioned Sentinel head that Beast wanted for "research purposes." It was cold back here, and loud, and smelled like jet fuel and old sweat.
You loved it.
After a mission (especially after a mission where you'd died) you needed solitude the way other people needed water. The constant noise of the team, their heartbeats, their breathing, their smells, it was too much. Your senses were already dialed to eleven, and your healing factor was working overtime, and your brain was slowly, painfully rewiring itself from the base level up.
So you sat on the floor.
You sat on the metal floor, legs crossed, back against a supply crate. Your ash-blond hair hung in tangled curtains around your face. Your yellow eyes—still slightly unfocused, still rewiring—stared at nothing. And your claws, your beautiful, deadly, adamantium-laced claws, were extended to their full length.
You were licking them clean.
It was a habit. A compulsion. A need. The blood, enemy blood, your blood, it was all the same at this point, had dried in the grooves of your claws, and the taste was coppery and warm and right. You licked methodically, starting at the base of each claw and working your way to the tip, curling your tongue around the metal.
Click, click, click went your claws against your teeth.
You were loopy. You knew you were loopy. Your healing factor had been working overtime because regenerating from a skeleton took a lot out of a girl and your brain was still rebooting. The human parts, the parts that formed sentences and understood sarcasm and remembered that you weren't actually a cat, were currently offline, busy rebuilding neural pathways.
The animal parts, however, were thriving.
Your eyes kept drifting closed. Your head kept nodding. Your tongue kept moving, muscle memory taking over, because your higher brain functions were currently offline.
The metal was cold against your tongue. Nice. Calming.
You licked. You blinked. You licked again.
Lick. Lick. Lick.
Somewhere above you, the engines hummed. Somewhere behind you, the door to the cargo bay hissed.
You didn't turn around. You didn't need to. The scent hit you before the sound did: smoke and musk and grown and alpha and something spicy and warm that your hindbrain recognized as safe. Home. Father.
Victor.
He filled the doorway like he'd been carved out of it. Six-foot-something of muscle and metal and bad decisions, his uniform still singed in places where bullets had grazed him, not that you could tell by just looking at the pristine skin underneath. He'd already healed. He always healed fast. He was annoying like that.
His yellow eyes found you immediately. Sitting on the floor. Licking your claws. Looking like a cat who'd just been hit by a truck and was too dignified to admit it.
His nostrils flared. He scented the air: blood, healing, exhaustion, you, and something in his chest tightened.
Cub. Hurt. Fix it.
The Inversion had given him a conscience, but this wasn't conscience. This was older. Deeper. The kind of instinct that had kept wolves alive for millions of years. The pack was only as strong as its youngest member, and his youngest member had just detonated herself.
"Brat." he said, by way of greeting.
You didn't answer. Your tongue was busy with your index claw.
"You look like shit."
You didn't answer. You just kept licking your claws.
Victor walked toward you. His footsteps were heavy on the metal floor. Thud. Thud. Thud. He stopped directly in front of you, looking down with an expression that was half-scowl, half-something softer.
"You blew yourself up."
Lick. Lick.
"Warpath was about to get shot," you mumbled, not looking up.
"So?"
"So he's on the team."
Victor sighed. It was a heavy, put-upon sound, like he was the one who'd been blown up. Then he crossed the remaining distance and dropped to the floor beside you with all the grace of a sack of bricks.
Thud.
The Blackbird shuddered slightly. From the cockpit, Logan's voice echoed: "Watch the weight distribution, Creed!"
"Watch your mouth, old man!"
You ignored him. You kept licking.
For approximately three seconds.
His hands closed around your waist.
Massive hands. Warm. Calloused. Claws brushing against your ribs through the thin fabric of your uniform. He didn't ask permission, he never asked permission, and he didn't wait for you to protest. He just dragged you backward, across the cold metal floor, until your back hit his chest and your body was nestled between his legs.
You made a sound. It was not a dignified sound. It was somewhere between a squawk and a hiss, and it echoed off the cargo bay walls as he manhandled you into position: sitting between his legs, your back against his chest, his arms locked around you like a seatbelt made of muscle and spite.
"Hrrrrk- Victor!"
"Hush."
He was so warm. You hated it. You loved it. You were too tired to figure out which.
You made a huffing sound that he'd learnt to interpret as an 'I'm fine leave me the fuck alone' over time.
"You were sitting on a cold floor licking your own blood like a freak. That's not fine. That's weird."
You twisted in his grip, trying to face him, but he just tightened his arms and pulled you closer.
You hissed at him.
Full-on, fangs-bared, throaty hisssssss.
Victor didn't even flinch. He just waited, patient as a mountain, until the hiss ran out of steam. Then he reached up with one hand—the other stayed locked around your waist—and started grooming you.
His claws combed through your hair, untangling knots, scraping gently against your scalp. His thumb wiped a smear of something (ash? blood? both?) off your cheek. His fingers traced your jaw, your neck, your shoulders, checking for injuries that hadn't quite healed yet.
You huffed at him. It was not a hiss. It was softer. Hmph.
"Don't 'hmph' me, brat. You blew yourself up."
Hmph.
"You're not even denying it."
Hmph.
"You're being very vocal today. Two whole sounds. I'm impressed."
You bit his forearm. Not hard—just a warning nip, your fangs denting his skin without breaking it. Your toxins didn't release. You were being polite.
Victor looked down at your mouth on his arm. Then he looked at your face.
"Did you just… nibble me?"
You let go. You went back to licking your claws. They were already clean, had been clean for a while actually, but the adamantium was cold, and the cold felt good against your tongue, and you didn't want to stop.
Victor watched you for a moment. Then he sighed again, the long-suffering sigh of a parent who had somehow ended up with the weirdest cub in the litter, and resumed grooming.
His claws worked through a particularly stubborn knot in your hair. You leaned into the pull, just slightly. Your eyes half-closed. Your tongue kept moving, licking, licking, licking.
Your claws were already clean, Victor noticed. Of course he noticed.
"Claws are clean, brat."
Click, click, click went your claws against your teeth.
"You're going to file them down." Victor said.
You ignored him.
"You're going to give yourself a fucking damn hairball, you brat."
You ignored him harder.
"Okay, that's it. No more licking."
He grabbed your wrist—gently, for him, which meant he didn't break any bones—and pulled your hand away from your mouth. You growled at him, low in your throat, and tried to pull back. He held on.
"No," he said.
You growled again.
"No," he repeated. "You're done. They're clean. You're just being obsessive now."
You stared at him with your yellow eyes, pupils still huge and round from the regeneration, and you hated that he was right. Your claws were clean. You were just… enjoying the cold. The repetition. The sensation.
Victor stared back. His own eyes, yellow, like yours like father like daughter, were narrowed.
"You're loopy," he said.
Hmph.
"You're loopy and you're nonverbal and you're licking your claws like a cat with a mouse problem."
Hmph.
"I'm going to check you for injuries. Don't bite me."
You did indeed bite him again, just another nibble on his bicep.
He didn't even react. Just kept running his hands over your shoulders, your arms, your sides, searching for wounds that hadn't quite closed. Most of you had regenerated fully. Your healing factor was fast, adaptive, efficient. But there were patches where the skin was still pink and tender, still knitting itself together.
His fingers found one on your ribs. You flinched. He grunted.
"Healing." he said.
"'viously," you managed. Your voice was a rough and slurred rumble, barely there, like you'd forgotten how to use it.
"Don't talk. You sound weird when you're rebooting."
"Fuck you."
"There she is."
Victor's claws moved higher. Up your spine. Over your shoulders. Across the side of your neck.
And stopped.
His whole body went rigid behind you. His breathing changed, it went sharp, focused, predatory in a way that made your own hackles rise.
Victor's thumb brushed against it. You hissed—a real hiss, sharp and warning.
"Hold still."
A spot on the back of your neck, just below your hairline. A gash. Still knitting. Still wet. You'd forgotten about it, there'd been so many injuries, and your healing factor had prioritized organs and major blood vessels over surface wounds, but Victor hadn't.
You felt his breath against the back of your neck. Warm. Humid. And then-
His tongue.
Rough. Sandpaper. Wet. He licked the wound, a long, slow stripe from the base of your neck to your hairline, and you froze.
Every muscle in your body locked up. Your claws shot out to their full length.
And then the human parts of your brain, the ones that had been offline, the ones that formed sentences and understood social norms and remembered that your father was currently licking your neck like a wolf with a pup-
Came roaring back online.
The world stopped. The engines faded. Your brain, which had been slowly rewiring itself from animal to human, flipped a switch.
Your pupils, which had been huge and dilated and kitty-mode, snapped into sharp, vertical slits.
"What," you said, and your voice was ice, "the fuck."
Victor kept licking.
"Are you- Victor. What the fuck are you doing."
"Cleaning you."
"I'm healed-"
"It's still open."
"It's knitting, you animal-"
"Same thing."
His tongue dragged across your neck again, slower this time, more methodical. The rough texture scraped against your healing skin, and—horrifyingly—it didn't hurt. It actually felt kind of… good. Like scratching an itch you didn't know you had.
"Victor."
"Brat."
"The fuck you doing."
"Cleaning you."
"I'm healing. I don't need-"
"Your body is rebuilding tissue. My saliva has enzymes that speed up the process. It's basic biology."
"You're licking me! Stop licking my neck."
"Stop having a wound on your neck, then."
"That's not- that's not how anything works!"
He licked again.
You growled.
Not an angry growl (he could tell the difference, because he was insufferable like that) but an embarrassed growl. Low. Throaty. The kind of sound a cat makes when you pick it up in front of its friends and it's trying to pretend it doesn't like it.
Victor recognized the frequency immediately.
"Aw," he said, and you could hear the grin in his voice. "Is the widdle kitten embarrassed?"
"Shut the fuck up."
"I'm just grooming you. Don't be weird about it."
He was licking your wounds like a feral animal, and you were the one being weird about it. The audacity. The sheer, unbelievable audacity.
You growled at him again.
Victor's ear twitched. He recognized that frequency.
"Quit complainin', brat," he said, and his massive hand came up to cover your mouth.
His palm was warm. Calloused. It smelled like metal and blood and him. It covered the entire lower half of your face, muffling your protests, and his fingers curled around your jaw to hold you still.
"Mmph-!"
"I said quit. I'm cleaning ya. Hold still."
You bit him.
Hard.
Your fangs sank into the meat of his palm, and your toxins flooded his system, paralytic and hallucinogenic and nasty, and Victor's eyes went wide for a split second before his body went sluggish.
His hand dropped from your mouth. His arm hung heavy at his side. He blinked slowly, pupils dilating, and cursed under his breath. A long, creative string of words that would have made a sailor blush.
"You little shit." he said, but his voice was slow and syrupy and his tongue wasn't working quite right.
You grinned up at him, fangs bared, eyes still slit-pupiled. "Don't. Touch. My. Mouth."
He stared at you for a long moment. Then, incredibly, he laughed.
Low and rough and sluggish, his whole body shaking with it, his head lolling slightly as the toxins worked through his system. "You're definitely my kid."
"Unfortunately."
"Best thing I ever made."
"Gross."
He laughed again, and then, because he was Victor Creed and he had the stubbornness of a particularly aggressive barnacle, he went back to grooming you.
Slower now. More methodical. His tongue dragged across the back of your neck in long, lazy strokes, and the wound was already closed, had been closed for seconds now, but he didn't stop.
And neither did you.
Because your pupils were dilating again. Growing. Spreading. The vertical slits softening into wide, dark circles as your hindbrain took over and your human brain went offline.
Safe. Warm. Father. Grooming. Good.
You stopped squirming. Stopped growling. Stopped thinking, honestly, because your body was currently running on pure instinct and your instincts were telling you to curl up and sleep.
So you did.
You turned in his arms. Slowly, clumsily, like a cat resettling on a favorite blanket, and curled into his chest.
Your chin propped up on his shoulder. Your nose nuzzling at his neck. Your breath warm against his scent gland, and you were trying to get him to scent you, trying to get his pheromones all over your skin so everyone would know.
Victor went very still.
His heart, sluggish from your toxins but still pounding, thudded against your cheek. His hands hovered over your back, uncertain for once, because this was new. You'd never done this before. You'd let him groom you, let him herd you, let him bite you and tease you and call you names. But you'd never let him scent you.
"…Brat?" His voice was rough.
You nuzzled deeper into his neck.
Mreow.
And Victor, Victor Creed, the Inverted Sabretooth, the man who had killed more people than most plagues, started purring.
Loud. Low. A motor engine of a sound, vibrating through his chest and into yours, so intense you could feel it in your teeth. He was purring like a lion, like a house cat, like a fucking freight train, and he couldn't seem to stop.
"Well, well, well," he said, his voice a lazy drawl. "What's this, runt? You want your old man to cover you in his scent?"
You didn't answer. You just nuzzled harder.
"Want 'em to smell me on you? Know you're mine?"
Mreow, you definitely didn't say.
"You want everyone to know whose cub you are, huh?"
Nuzzle, nuzzle.
"You want Logan to smell me on you and get all jealous?"
Nuzzle, nuzzle, nuzzle.
He laughed a low, rumbling sound that was half-purr, half-amusement, and released a flood of pheromones. His scent washed over you like a wave: smoke and musk and alpha and home. It coated your skin, your hair, your uniform. It was everywhere.
"There," he said, his hand coming up to rest on the back of your head. "Now everyone knows. You're my cub."
You were already asleep.
Your breathing evened out. Your body went limp against his chest. Your claws still extended always extended curled against his shoulders, not breaking skin, just holding on.
Victor kept purring.
He didn't stop. Couldn't stop. His body was running on instinct now too, and his instinct was telling him cub is sleeping, cub is safe, keep her warm, keep her close, don't let go.
So he didn't.
The Blackbird landed twenty minutes later.
Old Man Logan powered down the engines, stretched his back. It popped in three places, which was fine, he was fine, and stood up. Warpath was already heading for the ramp, his bandaged arm held stiffly at his side. Domino and Deathstrike were gathering their weapons.
"Where's the kid?" Logan asked.
Domino shrugged. "Cargo bay. She always hides after missions."
"Creed?"
"With her, probably. He's been weird since we pulled her out of that facility."
Logan sighed the long, weary sigh of a man who had been dealing with Creed's bullshit for multiple lifetimes and headed for the cargo bay.
The ramp lowered. The night air rushed in, cold and clean.
And Logan stopped.
Because there, in the middle of the cargo bay floor, surrounded by crates of ammunition and the faint smell of jet fuel, was Victor Creed.
He was sitting against a crate. His back was straight. His eyes were closed. His massive hands were wrapped around a sleeping teenager who was curled against his chest like a cat in a sunbeam.
And he was purring.
Not quietly. Not subtly. Loudly. The kind of purr that vibrated through the floor and made the crates rattle.
Logan stared.
Victor opened one eye.
He looked at Logan. Looked at the sleeping girl in his arms. Looked back at Logan.
And grinned.
It was the smuggest, most insufferable, most I-have-something-you-don't grin Logan had ever seen. And Logan had seen a lot of insufferable grins from Victor Creed.
"Hey, old man," Victor said, his voice a low rumble that didn't quite wake you. "Look what I've got."
Logan's eye twitched.
"I can see what you've got, Victor."
"I know." Victor's grin widened. His hand stroked your hair gently, almost reverently. "Just wanted to remind you. She's my daughter. Not yours. Mine."
"You're insufferable."
"I'm a father."
"You're a fucking idiot, that's what you are, Creed."
"As if we don't share blood."
Logan pinched the bridge of his nose. Behind him, he could hear Domino snickering. Deathstrike was watching with an expression of mild curiosity. Warpath looked like he'd swallowed a lemon.
"We need to debrief," Logan said.
"She's sleeping."
"We can wait until she wakes—"
"No." Victor's arms tightened around you. "She's sleeping. She died today. She gets to sleep the whole day."
Logan opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"…Fine."
Victor's grin became triumphant.
"One hour," Logan said, pointing a finger at him. "Then I'm waking her up."
"We'll see."
"Victor."
"Logan."
They stared at each other for a long moment. The purring continued. Youdidn't stir.
Finally, Logan sighed and turned away.
"One hour." he repeated over his shoulder.
"Sure thing, old man."
Logan walked back up the ramp. Behind him, he heard Victor's purring intensify. He heard the soft sound of claws carding through ash-blond hair. He heard a sleepy, grumbling mreow that was definitely not English and definitely not something he was going to think about ever again.
Domino fell into step beside him.
"So," she said, "are we just not going to talk about how Sabretooth is basically a giant feral cat with a baby?"
"No."
"Because I have so many questions-"
"No."
"And the purring-"
"Domino."
She held up her hands, grinning. "Fine, fine. But you have to admit it's kind of cute."
Logan stopped walking.
He turned. Looked back at the cargo bay. Listened to the purring. Thought about the girl who had blown herself up to save Warpath. Thought about the monster who was holding her like she was made of glass.
"…Don't tell anyone I said this." he said finally.
A/n: Requested by @creedslove it’s a day late and hopefully not a dollar short! I hope your day ended up good and that today was also good! All the love!
“Victor, please just put on the tie” (Y/n) threw the tie at Victor, huffing slightly as she turned back the mirror.
“You assume I remember how to tie this thing” Victor grumbled, moving into the bedroom to sit on the bed and finish buttoning his shirt.
“Victor Creed I swear to god if you are not dressed by the time I leave this bathroom, there will be hell to pay” (Y/n) put in her earrings, glancing at her phone. They needed to leave in 10 minutes if they were going to be on time.
“Don’t stress baby” (Y/n) walked out the bathroom, her eyes appreciatively looking over Victor. He cleaned up good.
“It’s just, I haven’t been to church in years and all of a sudden my mother is insisting we go to church and her house for the day...” (Y/n) stood in the doorway, fiddling with her phone in her hands as her worries all came out again.
“Don’t worry about, I’ll be right there with you” Victor smiled lightly, his hand wrapping around (y/n)’s waist.
“That doesn’t exactly ease my nerves” (Y/n) teased, looking up at Victor as his fangs just slightly peaked out in his crooked smile.
“It’s going to be fine I promise” Victor kisses (y/n)’s neck, soft and slow.
“Fine, I’ll trust you” (Y/n) smiled, pausing for just a moment before going to pull on her shoes.
“Good” Victor smirks offering his arm to (y/n) as they head out to the car.
Hello! (๑╹ω╹๑ ) I’ve requested platonic Yandere Logan twice so I thought it was time to give Wade a turn. I wish Wade had more screen time in Origins Wolverine but alas.
My request is for platonic Yandere Wade and fem teen reader who are both in the X-team. Wade likes the young girl and is very vocal about it as he is with everything. He also shows it in his actions because It’s rare he’s not following her around or dragging her around with him. He likes to take her hostage in his rooms at hotels and bases and it seems to be his mission to cling to her and give her as much affection as humanly possible. He’s overall possessive of her and reader doesn’t mind Wade’s company. She enjoys it most of the time, Wade is charming, funny and surprisingly a good cuddler for someone who can’t seem to stay still for more than a minute. All of this makes it easier to ignore the moments where he’s particularly hostile (not towards her) or seems a little more unhinged than usual. But she knows something darker lurks behind his puppy dog eyes and honeyed smiles. Something that wants to hold onto her tight and never let go.
I hope you enjoy this request and have a wonderful week!! ♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎
synopsis 𖥧 wade sees the girl behind the weapon, and you see the man behind the katanas. it's a win-win. and that's why he'd rather die, and kill, than let anyone or anything take you away from him.
content 𖥧 fem/afab reader, reader is a teen (15-18), not really dark so yeah.
💬 : so this scenario came out super fluffy and not really dark but i'm going to make up for that in an analysis i'm going to write about him so yup<333
🏷 : @mavixgirl , @luna-kait
The hotel is neither the worst they've stayed in nor the best. It occupies that nebulous middle ground of chains that aspire to comfort but settle for adequacy: threadbare carpets that have seen too many boots, wallpaper peeling slightly at the corners, heating systems that rattle and groan like dying animals. The hallway lights flicker with the irregular rhythm of a heartbeat that can't quite decide whether to keep going. It is, in short, exactly the kind of place Stryker favors: anonymous, forgettable, the kind of establishment where no one asks questions about the large men with weapons or the young girl who trails after them like a shadow seeking warmth.
Stryker has claimed the suite at the end of the hall. Of course he has. The biggest room, the one with the separate bedroom and the minibar that actually gets stocked and the windows that face the city instead of the parking lot. He is in there now, doing whatever it is Stryker does when he is not issuing orders or making phone calls or staring at maps with that particular intensity that suggests he is calculating the most efficient way to use every person in his orbit. Probably sitting in the dark, you think sometimes, because you have seen him do that too. Just sitting. Just thinking. Just deciding who lives and who dies and who gets sacrificed for the greater good, whatever that means on any given Tuesday.
The rest of you are scattered along the corridor like beads on a string. Logan has the room two doors down from Stryker, close enough to be summoned, far enough to pretend he doesn't hear the phone when it rings. Victor has the one across from Logan, because Victor refuses to have his back to any door that Logan might walk through, and Logan refuses to have his back to any door that Victor might walk through, and they have been doing this particular dance for longer than anyone in this hotel has been alive. Agent Zero has claimed the room next to Victor's, which puts him strategically positioned to cover both ends of the hallway, though he would never admit to caring enough about anyone's safety to position himself deliberately. He just likes the view from that side, he says. The light is better in the mornings.
Fred has the room between Agent Zero and the room that used to be yours. Chris, the newest addition, the one who still looks at the others with a mixture of awe and terror, has the room at the other end of the hall, as far from Stryker as possible without actually leaving the building. You have seen him watching you sometimes with a confusion that borders on concern. He does not understand yet. He will learn, or he will leave, or he will die. That is how these things work.
And then there is the room that should be yours. The room with the single bed and the window that sticks and the bathroom so small you'd have to turn sideways to close the door. The room that Stryker stopped paying for three hotels ago, because even a man who sees everything as a resource allocation problem eventually recognizes when a resource is being wasted.
You have not slept in a room of your own in months.
It started innocently enough, or as innocently as anything involving Wade Wilson can be said to start. You were cold. You are always cold, your body running perpetually a few degrees below normal, a side effect of the treatments or the training or simply the way your particular mutation expresses itself. You have never been warm. Not in the facilities, where the corridors were kept at the temperature most efficient for scientific equipment. Not in the safe houses, where the heating was always broken and the blankets were always thin. Not anywhere, not ever, until the first night Wade Wilson wrapped himself around you and you felt warmth for the first time in your life.
He runs hot. It is, you have learned, one of the side effects of his particular enhancements—the metabolism, the reflexes, the constant, humming energy that never quite settles. His body generates heat like a furnace, and when you press yourself against him, when you tuck your cold hands under his shirt and curl your freezing feet against his calves, he absorbs your chill like it is nothing, like he was made for it, like his body has been waiting for something to warm.
The first time you sneaked into his room, you told yourself it was practical. You told yourself you needed the sleep, that you had a mission in the morning, that you could not afford to lie awake shivering when there was warmth three doors down. Wade had laughed when you appeared at his door, had pulled you inside without a word, had tucked you against his side like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"You're like an ice cube with legs," he had said, his voice muffled by your hair, his arms tightening around you. "A very adorable ice cube. With psychic powers. Which is terrifying, now that I think about it. Please don't drop the ceiling on me while I'm sleeping."
You had, indeed, not dropped the ceiling on him. You had slept, finally, deeply, the kind of sleep that comes when the body stops fighting and simply surrenders. And in the morning, when you woke to find yourself still wrapped in his warmth, his heartbeat steady under your ear, his breathing slow and even, you had thought: This is what it feels like. This is what I have been missing my whole life.
The sneaking became routine. The routine became expectation. And finally, after the third hotel where Stryker's accountants noted a room that was never used, a room that was paid for and cleaned and prepared for an occupant who never appeared, the decision was made. You and Wade would share. It was practical. It was efficient. It was, Stryker said, a better allocation of resources.
No one mentioned the way you smiled when you heard. No one mentioned the way Wade's arm found your shoulders, pulling you against his side like he had been waiting for permission. No one mentioned the way Logan and Victor exchanged a look, a long look, a look that said more than words ever could.
And neither of the two brothers mentioned the way the scent of Wade Wilson changed in that moment. The way it wrapped around you like a second skin. The way it said, in a language older than English, older than any human tongue: Mine.
The mission briefing is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Stryker has made this clear, has emphasized it with the particular tone he uses when he expects to be obeyed, has closed himself in his suite with his maps and his phone and his plans that he shares with no one until he is ready. Tomorrow morning. Not tonight. Tonight is for rest, for preparation, for the quiet gathering of resources before the storm.
Which means tonight is for waiting.
And waiting, as the X-Team has learned through long and bitter experience, is the hardest part. Better to be moving, better to be fighting, better to be doing something than sitting in a hotel room watching the minutes crawl past like injured insects. The tension builds in the spaces between missions, coils around throats and settles in chests, makes men who have seen everything flinch at shadows and reach for weapons that are not there.
The team handles it differently. Logan sharpens his claws, running them against a whetstone in a ritual that is more meditation than maintenance, his eyes half-closed, his breathing slow and deliberate. Victor prowls, pacing his room like a caged animal, his restlessness a physical force that seems to vibrate through the walls. Agent Zero cleans his guns, stripping them down to their components and reassembling them with the mechanical efficiency of a man who has done this ten thousand times before. Fred eats, because Fred always eats when he is nervous, and he is always nervous, and the wrappers are piling up in his room like snowdrifts. Chris, the new one, simply sits on his bed and stares at the wall, his face a careful blank that does not quite hide the terror underneath.
And you and Wade?
You are playing tag.
It starts, as most things with Wade do, with boredom. He has been in your shared room for approximately four hours, and in that time he has rearranged the furniture three times, watched approximately seventeen seconds of six different television channels, built a small fortress out of the pillows and then knocked it down, and told you the plot of a movie you have never seen in such exhaustive detail that you feel like you have lived it yourself. He is vibrating with energy, with the particular restlessness that comes over him when there is nothing to fight and nothing to plan and nothing to do but wait.
You are sprawled across the bed, one of his shirts hanging loose on your frame, a faded gray thing with a hole in the collar, soft from too many washes, smelling like him, like warmth and something clean and something that is just Wade. You are watching him pace, your chin propped on your hands, your feet dangling off the edge of the mattress.
"You're going to wear a hole in the carpet," you say.
"I'm going to wear a hole in my brain," he counters, spinning on his heel and pacing back the other way. "I'm going to wear a hole in my brain and all my thoughts are going to leak out and then what? Then I'll just be a very handsome, very empty-headed man who runs warm and has excellent reflexes. Which, honestly, is probably still in the top percentile of human specimens, but I'd like to keep my thoughts. They're very good thoughts. Witty. Charming. Occasionally educational, depending on what kind of educational we're talking about-"
"Wade."
"-not that kind of educational, obviously, you're a child, I'm not a monster, I mean educational in the sense of-"
"Wade."
He stops. He turns to look at you, and there is something in his face that shifts when he sees you, something that settles, something that quiets. It happens every time. No matter how wound up he is, no matter how fast his thoughts are spinning, when he looks at you something in him slows down. Like you are the only thing in the world that can match his frequency without amplifying it.
"I'm bored," you say, and you are surprised to find that it is true. You are never bored with Wade—he is too much, too loud, too present to ever be boring—but the walls are closing in, and the waiting is making your skin itch, and there is a restlessness building in your chest that has nowhere to go.
Wade's eyes light up. It is the expression he gets when he has an idea, and you have learned that Wade's ideas are approximately forty percent brilliant, forty percent catastrophic, and twenty percent something that will make Logan sigh and put his head in his hands.
"Tag," he says.
"Tag?"
"You're it."
He pokes you. Actually pokes you, right in the center of your forehead, with one finger, and then he is moving, and you are moving, and the bed is empty and the door is open and you are running down the hotel hallway in your socks, Wade Wilson's too-large shirt flapping around your thighs, laughter already bubbling up in your chest.
You are not thinking about the mission. You are not thinking about Stryker or the briefing or whatever violence tomorrow will bring. You are not thinking about the cold that usually lives in your bones or the weight of your powers or the way people look at you sometimes, like you are a weapon waiting to be aimed.
You are thinking about the carpet under your feet, rough and cheap and slightly sticky in places. You are thinking about the flickering lights overhead, the way they cast your shadow in strange shapes against the walls. You are thinking about the sound of your own breathing, fast and light, and the sound of Wade behind you, his footsteps heavier, his laughter already echoing down the corridor.
"You can't run forever!" he calls, and there is something in his voice that is not quite a threat, not quite a promise, something that makes you run faster even as it makes you smile.
You dodge past Logan's door, past Victor's open door, past the room where Fred is probably building a fortress of snack wrappers and anxiety. You are fast, faster than most people expect, and you have learned to use your powers in small ways: a little push here, a little lift there, nothing obvious, nothing that would draw attention, just enough to make your feet lighter, your movements quicker, your body easier to move through the world.
But Wade is faster. Wade is always faster. His reflexes are not enhanced in the way yours are, not trained and developed and pushed to their limits by scientists in white coats. His reflexes are his, honed by years of violence and instinct, and there is something in the way he moves that is not quite human, not quite natural, something that makes your breath catch even when you know he would never hurt you.
You round the corner past Victor's room and almost trip on your haste to run and run and run as fast as possible, and you see Chris's door at the end of the hall, closed, silent, and you think for a moment that you might make it, might reach the end and turn and loop back around, might keep running forever, might never stop, might live in this moment for the rest of your life-
And then you feel it. The brush of fingers against the back of your shirt. The tug. The sudden, inevitable physics of momentum meeting obstacle.
You are going to fall. You know it in the split second before it happens, feel the shift of balance, the ground rising up to meet you, the carpet rushing toward your face. It will not hurt, not really, nothing more than a bruise, nothing that will matter, but you are going to fall and Wade is going to catch you because Wade always catches you and—
He does not catch you.
He trips.
You hear it behind you, the stumble, the sharp intake of breath, the sound of a man who has misjudged his own momentum and is paying the price. And then you feel the weight of him, the sudden, surprising weight of Wade Wilson's entire body landing on top of yours as you both go down in a tangle of limbs and laughter.
You hit the carpet with a thump that knocks the breath out of you, but you are laughing, you cannot stop laughing, the sound coming out in gasps and wheezes, and Wade is laughing too, his face buried in the back of your neck, his arms wrapped around you, his whole body shaking with the force of it.
"Oh my god," he says, and his voice is muffled by your hair, by the collar of the shirt you are wearing, by the sheer ridiculousness of the moment. "Oh my god, that was—I was trying to catch you and I-"
"You tripped," you manage, and your voice is high and breathless and you cannot stop laughing, cannot stop, the laughter pouring out of you like water from a broken dam.
"I did not trip," he says, but he is laughing too hard to sound convincing. "I was-I was making a strategic decision to- to join you on the floor! It's called commitment to the bit. Very advanced. You wouldn't understand."
"You tripped over your own feet."
"I was distracted. There were- there were factors. Environmental factors. The lighting in this hallway is terrible, did you notice? Very poor visibility. A lawsuit waiting to happen, honestly. I'm probably going to sue. Wade Wilson versus the Holiday Inn Express, it's going to be huge, we're going to make millions, and by 'we' I mean 'me' but I'll buy you something nice with the settlement money, maybe a small country-"
You are on your chest on the carpet, and Wade is on top of you, his weight warm and solid, his arms still wrapped around you like he forgot to let go. You can feel his heartbeat against your back, fast and strong, and his breath is warm on your neck, and his laughter is vibrating through both of you, and you think: I want to remember this. I want to remember this forever.
Logan heard the squeak first. It was a young sound, a feminine sound, the kind of sound that does not belong in a hallway full of killers and mercenaries and men who have forgotten how to make anything but violence. It was a delighted sound, and it cut through the tension of the evening like a knife through silk, and Logan found himself turning toward the open door of Victor's room before he had consciously decided to move.
He was in Victor's room because the silence in his own was becoming unbearable, because Victor's restlessness was at least a familiar kind of noise, because there was something about being in the same space as his brother that settled something in him even when they were not speaking. Agent Zero was there too, leaning against the wall with a glass of something amber in his hand, his eyes half-closed, his body language carefully casual in a way that means he was cataloging every sound in the building.
They had been discussing the bar. Not whether they will go—that was a given, had been a given since the mission was pushed to tomorrow, since the waiting became too heavy to bear in these small rooms with their thin walls and their flickering lights. They had been discussing which bar, which is a different question entirely, one that requires consideration of factors that would seem trivial to anyone who has not spent decades learning how to survive.
The bar with the good whiskey is three blocks east, but it is also the bar where someone might recognize Victor, might remember a face from a job in a city he has not visited in years, might ask questions that lead to other questions that lead to blood. The bar with the pool tables is closer, safer, but the beer is warm and the lighting is too bright and there is something about the acoustics that makes every conversation sound like an argument. The bar on the corner has neither good whiskey nor pool tables, but it has a back door that leads to an alley and a bartender who does not look at faces and a clientele that has learned to mind their own business.
They were debating the merits of the corner bar versus the pool hall when the squeak happened.
It was small. Brief. A sound that might have been lost in the hum of the building, the distant traffic, the endless, ambient noise of a city that never sleeps. But these are men who have trained themselves to hear the click of a safety catch in a crowded room, the whisper of a blade drawn from a sheath, the particular silence that precedes violence. They heard the squeak.
And then they saw you.
You dashed past the open door so fast you were almost a blur, your hair flying behind you, Wade's shirt—definitely Wade's shirt, Logan noted, because he had seen that particular hole in the collar a hundred times—flapping around your legs, your bare feet slapping against the carpet. You are laughing. The sound of it followed you down the hallway like the tail of a comet, bright and impossible and completely out of place in this hotel full of men waiting to kill.
Logan was on his feet before he knew he was moving. It was instinct, the same instinct that has kept him alive for more than a century, the same instinct that makes his claws slide out when someone moves too fast in his peripheral vision. He saw you stumble, saw your foot catch on a seam in the carpet, saw the physics of the moment align in a way that means you were going to hit the ground, and he was already moving, already reaching, even though he knew he could not reach you in time, even though he knew the fall would not hurt you, even though he knew-
You did not fall. Your feet found the carpet again, your balance shifted, and you areweregone, racing toward the end of the hallway, and Logan was left standing in the middle of Victor's room with his hands half-raised and his claws threatening to break through his knuckles and a feeling in his chest that he refuses to name.
Victor was watching him. There was something in Victor's face that might be amusement, might be understanding, might be something older and stranger that has no name in any language Victor has bothered to learn.
"Sit down," Victor said, and his voice was low, even, the voice he used when he was talking to something that might spook. "She's fine."
Logan sat. He did not know when he started standing, did not know when his hands clenched into fists, did not know why his heart was beating too fast in his chest. He sat, and he forced his hands to relax, and he did not look at Victor, did not want to see what Victor is seeing in his face.
And then Wade ran past the door.
He was laughing. Of course he was laughing. Wade Wilson is always laughing, always talking, always filling the space around him with noise and chaos and the particular energy of a man who has never learned to be still. He ran past the door with his arms outstretched, his face lit up with something that looks almost like joy, and he did not see them watching, did not see anything but the girl who is running away from him, did not see anything in the world but the chase.
He was fast. Logan had seen Wade fight, had seen the reflexes that make him almost untouchable in combat, and there is something in the way he moved that was different, something that was not about violence or efficiency or the cold calculation of a man who had made death into an art form. He was moving like he was playing. Like he was a child again, like there was nothing in the world that mattered more than catching the girl, like tomorrow did not exist and yesterday had been forgotten and there was only that moment, that hallway, that chase.
Logan watched him go, and he did not know what he was feeling. He didn't know why his chest was tight. He didn't know why he was thinking about the past, about the people he had lost, about the years he had spent and would spend running from anything that might make him feel like that.
"Sit down," Victor said again. "They're fine."
Logan sat. He picked up his glass. He did not drink.
The thump came thirty seconds later. It was a solid sound, a heavy sound, the sound of two bodies hitting the floor with enough force to shake the walls. Agent Zero was on his feet immediately, his hand moving toward the weapon he was never without, his eyes sharp, his body already calculating the fastest route to the source of the sound.
"Sit," Victor said, and his voice was not loud, but it carried, and there was something in it that stops Agent Zero mid-motion.
"They could be hurt-"
"They're laughing. Can't you hear it?"
Agent Zero listened. And there it was: the sound of laughter, two voices tangled together, high and breathless and completely, utterly unconcerned with anything but the joy of the moment.
He sat. He did not pick up his glass. He looked at Victor, and Victor looked back, and for a moment there was something between them that was almost understanding.
"For god's sake, the girl is fine, you two" He sighed, rolling his eyes with disinterest. "And Wilson is… Wilson."
"He tripped," Logan said, and his voice was strange, rough, like he had forgotten how to use it.
"He tripped," Victor agreed. "On purpose, probably. Or not. Hard to tell with him."
"He never trips."
Victor looked at Logan, and there was something in his face that Logan had not seen in a long time. Under that raised eyebrow, so judgamental, there was something that might had been memory. Something that might had been understanding.
"He's got something to catch now," He hummed. "Makes a man clumsy."
The laughter continued down the hallway, bright and impossible, and the three men sat in Victor's room with the door open and the silence heavy between them, and none of them said what they were thinking. None of them said that they had not heard Wade Wilson laugh like that before. None of them said that they had not heard him laugh like he meant it. None of them said that the sound of it made something ache in their chests, something they thought was long dead.
Logan does not know why he gets up. He does not know why he walks to the door, why he looks down the hallway, why he needs to see with his own eyes that they are fine, that she is fine, that the sound of laughter is not a prelude to something worse.
He looks.
They are on the floor. You are on your chest, your face turned to the side, your hair spread across the carpet like dark water. Wade is on top of you, his arms wrapped around you, his face buried in the back of your neck, his whole body shaking with laughter. You are both laughing, laughing so hard you cannot breathe, cannot speak, cannot do anything but lie on the cheap hotel carpet and laugh until your stomachs hurt and your eyes water and the world shrinks down to this moment, this absurd, ridiculous, perfect moment.
Logan stands in the doorway of Victor's room, and he watches, and he does not know what to do with the feeling in his chest.
He should be annoyed. He should be angry. They are being loud, they are being disruptive, they are attracting attention that could compromise the mission, could alert the wrong people, could get them all killed. There is a time and a place for games, and the hallway of a hotel where they are supposed to be lying low is not it.
He should be annoyed. He should tell them to get up, to go back to their room, to act like the professionals they are supposed to be.
He stands in the doorway, and he watches, and he does not say anything.
You look young. That is what gets him, what makes his chest tight, what makes his hands curl into fists at his sides. You look young in a way you never look during missions, never look during briefings, never look when Stryker is in the room and you are being a weapon instead of a person. Your face is open, your smile is real, your laughter is the kind of laughter that belongs in backyards and playgrounds and summer afternoons, not in hotel hallways between missions that might kill you.
You look like a child. You are a child, and Logan has known this, has known it since the first time he saw you, has cataloged it in the part of his brain that files away information he does not know what to do with. But knowing something and seeing it are different, and right now, with your face pink from laughter and your hair tangled and Wade Wilson's too-large shirt falling off your shoulder, you look like what you are: a teenager who has never had a childhood, grabbing at the scraps of one wherever she can find them.
And Wade. Wade looks-
Logan does not know what Wade looks like. He has seen Wade in a hundred moods, a thousand faces, the constant performance of a man who has made himself into a character so he does not have to be himself. He has seen Wade crack jokes while bleeding out. He has seen Wade flirt with death like it was a pretty girl at a bar. He has seen Wade be annoying and infuriating and impossible, and he has seen Wade be terrifying in a way that makes something primal in Logan's hindbrain sit up and pay attention.
He has never seen Wade like this.
Wade is not performing. There is no audience, no one to impress, no one to convince. He is just lying on the floor with his arms around a teenager, laughing so hard he cannot breathe, and there is nothing in his face that Logan has ever seen before. No mask. No joke. No deflection. Just a man, just Wade, just someone who has found something that makes him forget to pretend.
Logan should tell them to get up. He should tell them to go back to their room, to be quiet, to remember what they are and what they are supposed to be doing.
He clears his throat.
Wade looks up. His face is still flushed with laughter, his eyes bright, his smile so wide it looks like it might split his face in two. He looks at Logan, and for a moment, just a moment, there is something in his expression that is almost defiant. Like he is waiting for Logan to say something, to tell them to stop, to remind them of the rules, to bring the real world crashing down on this moment that does not belong in either of their lives.
Logan does not say any of those things.
"Take this to your room," he says, and his voice comes out rougher than he intended, harder. "There are people here actually trying to have peace and quiet. Not just us. The whole fucking hotel."
Wade's smile does not falter. If anything, it gets wider, more real, and there is something in his eyes that might be gratitude, might be understanding, might be something that neither of them has words for.
"You heard the man," Wade says, and he is looking at you now, his voice soft, his hands already moving to gather you up. "We're disturbing the peace. We're public nuisances. We're menaces to society, and more importantly, to the beauty sleep of a very grumpy Canadian with metal in his bones."
He hoists you up, and you go easily, your legs wrapping around his waist, your arms around his neck, your face tucked into his shoulder. You are still chuckling, the sound muffled by his shirt, your whole body shaking with the remnants of laughter that has not quite finished running its course.
Wade carries you past Logan's door, past Victor's open door, past Agent Zero's carefully neutral expression. He is still talking, because Wade is always talking, but his voice is lower now, softer, meant only for you.
"and then we're going to have a proper slumber party, with snacks and movies and possibly a pillow fort, definitely a pillow fort, you can't have a slumber party without a pillow fort, it's in the Geneva Convention, I'm pretty sure-"
You wave. It is a small wave, a sleepy wave, your hand barely lifting from Wade's shoulder, but it is directed at Logan, at Victor, at the open door and the men inside it. You are smiling, and your eyes are bright, and for a moment, just a moment, you look like exactly what you are: a girl who has been given a gift she did not know she was allowed to want.
Logan raises his hand. It is not quite a wave. It is something else, something that might be acknowledgment, might be acceptance, might be a promise he does not know how to keep.
Wade carries you past, and his eyes meet Logan's for just a second, and in that second there is something that passes between them. Something that does not need words. Something that sounds, if Logan were to put words to it, like: I've got her. I've always got her.
And something that sounds, if Logan were to be honest with himself, like: This is mine.
Logan watches you go. He watches Wade kick the door to your room shut, watches the light from the hallway disappear, watches the silence settle back over the corridor like dust after a storm.
He stands there for a long time. He does not know what he is feeling. He does not know why his chest is tight, why his hands are shaking, why he cannot stop thinking about the sound of your laughter and the look on Wade's face and the way the two of you fit together like pieces of something that was always meant to be whole.
"Sit down," Victor says, it seems that's what he will be saying most times today. "They're fine."
"They're not fine," Logan says, and he does not know why he says it, does not know what he means by it, does not know why the words feel like a confession.
Victor looks at him. For a long moment, neither of them speaks.
"They're something," Victor says finally. "I don't know what. But they're something."
Logan sits. He picks up his glass. He drinks.
And somewhere in the hotel, in a room at the end of the hall, a girl is curled against a man who runs warm, and they are both still laughing, still smiling, still holding onto a moment that should not exist in their world but does.
The door closes behind you, and the world shrinks.
Wade's room is not large (none of the rooms are, except Stryker's, and you have never been in Stryker's room, do not want to go, do not want to see what kind of space a man like that creates for himself). But this room, this small room with its single bed and its flickering television and its window that looks out over a parking lot, this room is yours. It is yours because Wade is in it, and Wade is yours, and the space between you has become something that belongs to no one else.
He carries you to the bed, but he does not put you down. He stands there for a moment, holding you, your legs around his waist, your arms around his neck, your face pressed into the warm curve where his shoulder meets his throat. He smells like hotel soap and something underneath, something that is just him, something that has become as familiar to you as your own skin.
"Comfortable?" he asks, and his voice is light, teasing, but there is something underneath it, something that makes you hold on a little tighter.
"Mmhmm," you say, and you do not move, do not let go, do not want to be anywhere but here, wrapped around him, held against his warmth, hidden from the world that is waiting for you tomorrow.
He laughs, soft, and you feel it in his chest, in his throat, in the hands that are splayed across your back. "You're going to have to let go eventually. We have important slumber party business to attend to. Pillow forts don't build themselves, you know. I've tried. They're very resistant to self-construction. It's a whole thing. There's probably a union."
You shake your head against his neck. "No."
"No?"
"Don't want to."
He is quiet for a moment. You feel his hands move, one of them coming up to cradle the back of your head, his fingers tangling in your hair. His heartbeat is steady under your ear, faster than it should be, faster than it was in the hallway.
"Okay," he says, and his voice is different now, softer, stripped of the performance. "Okay. We can stay like this for a while."
He sits on the bed, still holding you, still wrapped around you, and you let him arrange you however he wants. You end up curled against his chest, your head tucked under his chin, your legs tangled with his, his arms wrapped around you so tightly that you cannot tell where you end and he begins. He is so warm. He is always so warm, and you are always so cold, and when you press yourself against him it feels like coming home to a place you did not know you had.
"You're so cute," he says, and his voice is a rumble in his chest, vibrating through you. "Do you know that? You're the cutest. The cutest little ice cube with psychic powers. The cutest weapon in the history of weapons. The cutest—"
"Wade."
"—assassin. The cutest assassin. The cutest girl in this hotel, in this city, in this country, in the whole world, in the whole universe, in the whole multiverse, if there is a multiverse, which there might be, and in every single one of them you're the cutest-"
"Wade."
"Yeah, baby girl?"
"Stryker looked stressed out this morning."
He stops. You know he knows you're referring to the mission you've got due to tomorrow, the one that has had to be rescheduled a day because of complications. You feel his arms tighten around you, feel his chin come to rest on top of your head, feel the shift in his breathing that means he is thinking about something, something he has not said yet.
"The mission tomorrow," he says, and his voice is quiet now, careful. "It's going to be dangerous."
You nod against his chest. You know. You always know. Every mission is dangerous, every mission could be the last, and you have learned to accept this the way you have learned to accept the cold in your bones and the weight of your powers and the truth of what you are. A weapon. A tool. Something to be aimed and fired and put away until the next time.
But you are not just that. Not anymore. Not with Wade.
"I'm going to keep you so safe," he says, and his voice is different now, darker, something shifting underneath the words. "The safest. No one is going to touch you. No one is going to hurt you. I won't let them. I won't-"
His arms tighten. It is not the comfortable tightness of before, not the easy, casual embrace of two people who fit together like puzzle pieces. This is something else. Something that holds you so close you cannot breathe, cannot move, cannot do anything but exist in the circle of his arms and feel the pressure building.
"You're squishing me," you breathe, and your voice is small, muffled by his shirt, and you are not afraid, you are never afraid of him, but your lungs are protesting and your ribs are aching and you need him to loosen his grip just a little, just enough to breathe.
He lets go.
It is instantaneous. One moment his arms are too tight, too much, too everything, and the next moment he is holding you like you are made of glass, like you might shatter if he holds too hard, his hands shaking, his breathing ragged, his face-
You look up. You need to see his face.
His eyes are doing the thing. The thing you have seen before, in the moments after you were hurt, in the moments when someone looked at you wrong, in the moments when the mask slips and you see what lives underneath. His eyes are empty, not in the way of someone who has checked out, but in the way of someone who has checked in, who has focused, who has narrowed the entire world down to one thing and one thing only: protect. keep safe. don't let go.
But you breathed out, and you said the words, and he heard you, and now he is looking at you and there is something in his face that might be terror, might be shame, might be the dawning horror of a man who has seen what he is capable of and does not know how to live with it.
"I'm sorry," he says, and his voice is not his voice, not the voice he uses for jokes and rambles and the constant stream of words that fills the space between you. This voice is small. This voice is scared. This voice belongs to someone who has not been Wade Wilson for a very long time. "I didn't- I wouldn't—I would never hurt you, I would never, I would die before I hurt you, I would-"
"I know," you say. And you mean it. You mean it with everything you are, with every cell in your body, with every scrap of trust you have ever been able to scrape together in a life that has given you very few reasons to trust anyone. "I know, Wade."
He looks at you. His eyes are not empty anymore. They are full of something else, something that might be love, might be fear, might be the desperate, aching need of a man who has finally found something he cannot bear to lose.
"You know," he repeats, and his voice is strange, wondering, like he is testing the words, trying to understand how they fit in his mouth.
"I know," you say again. And you lean forward, and you press your lips to his cheek, soft, brief, the kind of kiss you have given him a hundred times, a thousand times, the kind of kiss that means I am here, I am not afraid, and I choose you.
He breathes out. The tension leaves his body in a long, slow exhale, and he slumps against the headboard, and his arms come around you again, but this time they are gentle, careful, holding you like something precious instead of something to be protected.
"Okay," he says, and his voice is almost normal now, almost Wade again. "Okay. Good. Great. Fantastic. We're good. We're so good. We're the goodest. That's not a word, is it? Goodest. It should be a word. I'm going to make it a word. Wade Wilson, inventor of words, protector of small psychic teenagers, champion pillow fort builder—"
"Wade."
"Yes?"
"Shut up."
He laughs. It is a real laugh, a Wade laugh, the kind that shakes his whole body and makes his eyes crinkle at the corners and fills the room with warmth. "Bossy. So bossy. You know most people would be grateful for my brilliant conversation, my witty observations, my—"
You kiss his cheek again. Giving him the kind of affection that does not need words to say what it means.
He goes quiet. His hands find your face, cupping it gently, and he looks at you for a long moment, something shifting in his expression, something that might be wonder, might be gratitude, might be the first fragile threads of belief that someone could love him without wanting something in return.
"You're something else," he says, and his voice is soft, softer than you have ever heard it. "You know that? You're something else entirely."
You smile. You are still curled against him, still wrapped in his warmth, still wearing his shirt and breathing his air and existing in the small, safe space that belongs to the two of you and no one else.
"I'm cold," you say, which is not an answer, but it is the truth, because you are always cold, and he is always warm, and that is the simple physics of the two of you, the way the universe has arranged itself so that you fit together.
He pulls you closer. He pulls the blanket over both of you. He tucks your head under his chin and wraps his arms around you and holds you like you are the only thing in the world that matters, because for him, in this moment, you are.
"Better?" he asks.
"Better," you say.
And you close your eyes, and you listen to his heartbeat, and you let the warmth of him seep into your bones, and you do not think about tomorrow. You do not think about the mission or the danger or the thing that lives behind his eyes that wants to hold onto you so tight you cannot breathe. You do not think about anything but this moment, this room, this man who runs warm and laughs too loud and loves you in a way that scares you sometimes but never, ever hurts.
You are safe. You are warm. You are loved.
And for now, for tonight, that is enough.
But the night doesn't last forever, and so you wake, wondering if what was enough for yesterday to bleed into today, will be enough to let today bleed into tomorrow.
The light comes through the window too early, too bright, the kind of harsh morning light that does not care about the night before. You wake slowly, your face pressed into Wade's chest, your legs tangled with his, your fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt like you were afraid of being pulled away even in your sleep.
He is already awake. You can tell by his breathing, by the way his hand is moving in slow circles on your back, by the soft humming that vibrates through his chest and into your bones. He is humming something, some song you do not recognize, something that might be from a movie or might be something he made up, something that has no words and no purpose except to fill the quiet space between waking and the day.
"Morning," he says, and his voice is rough with sleep, still warm, still Wade.
"Mornin'," you mumble, and you do not open your eyes, do not want to see the light, do not want to acknowledge that the night is over and the day is here and the mission is waiting.
He laughs, soft, and his hand continues its slow movement on your back. "Not a morning person? Noted. I'll add it to the file. Wade Wilson's Official Notes on the Most Adorable Weapon in the World. Item one: runs cold. Item two: requires extensive cuddling to achieve optimal body temperature. Item three: not a morning person. Item four: has excellent taste in men whose shirts she steals. Item five-"
"Wade."
"Item five: is very bossy in the mornings, which is also adorable, so it's not really a negative, more of a feature, really, a built-in alarm system, very advanced-"
You open your eyes. You look up at him, and he is looking down at you, and his face is soft, open, the mask nowhere to be found. He looks younger in the morning light, you think, or maybe older, or maybe just human in a way he never lets himself be when other people are watching.
"We have to get up," you say, and you hate the words as soon as they leave your mouth, hate what they mean, hate the day that is waiting for you both.
"We have to get up," he agrees, but he does not move, does not loosen his arms, does not let you go.
You lie there for a long moment. You listen to his heartbeat. You breathe in the smell of him, hotel soap and something underneath, something that is just Wade, something that has become the smell of safety, of home, of the only place in the world where you are not a weapon.
"Tonight," he says, and his voice is quiet, serious, the voice he uses when he is making a promise. "After the mission. We're going to build the biggest pillow fort you've ever seen. We're going to raid the vending machines. We're going to watch terrible movies until we fall asleep. And I'm going to keep you so safe, so unbelievably safe, that you forget you were ever anything else."
You look at him. His eyes are doing the thing again, the thing that would scare you if it was anyone else, the thing that says I will burn the world down for you and I will not regret a single ash. But you are not scared. You have never been scared of Wade Wilson, not really, not where it counts.
"Promise?" you ask.
"Promise," he says.
And he kisses your forehead, soft, lingering, and you close your eyes, and for a moment, just a moment, you let yourself believe that the promise is enough, that the night will come again, that you will have your pillow fort and your terrible movies and your warmth against the cold.
You let yourself believe that you will survive this mission, and the next, and the one after that, and that there will always be a room at the end of the hall with a bed and a man who runs warm and the sound of laughter that belongs to no one but the two of you.
You let yourself believe that you are more than a weapon. That you are more than something to be aimed and fired and put away. That you are a girl who runs cold and a man who runs warm and the space between you is something that matters, something that is real, something that no mission can take away.
You let yourself believe.
And when Wade finally lets you go, when you stand and stretch and face the day, you carry that belief with you like a warmth in your chest, a warmth that has nothing to do with the temperature of your body and everything to do with the shape of the promise he made.
You are his. He is yours. And tonight, after the mission, there will be a pillow fort.
It is enough. It has to be enough. And you find out that for now, for today, it is.
Logan is in the hallway when you come out. He is leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, his face the careful blank that means he is thinking about something he does not want to think about. He looks at you, and you look at him, and for a moment neither of you speaks.
You are wearing your own clothes now, your mission clothes, the clothes that turn you from a girl into a weapon. But your hair is still tangled from sleep, and there is a crease on your cheek from the pillow, and you are wearing a pair of Wade's fluffy socks because your feet are cold and his fluffy socks are really really warm and he insisted.
Logan looks at you, and you see something in his face that might be recognition, might be understanding, might be the ghost of a memory that has nothing to do with you and everything to do with someone he lost a long time ago.
"You okay?" he asks. His voice is gruff, the way it always is, but there is something underneath it, something that sounds almost like care.
You nod. "Mmnh-mhn."
He looks at the door behind you, the door to the room you share with Wade, the door that has become something more than a door, something that means home in a way that has nothing to do with walls or roofs or the geography of a place.
"He's not so bad," Logan says, and his voice is strange, like he is admitting something he did not mean to admit. "Wilson. He's not so bad."
You smile. You do not know what to say to that, do not know how to explain that Wade is not "not so bad," that Wade is everything, that Wade is the warmth in your bones and the laughter in your chest and the only person in the world who has ever made you feel like you are more than a weapon. You do not know how to explain any of it, so you just smile, and Logan nods, and something passes between you that does not need words.
The door opens behind you. Wade comes out, already talking, always talking, his voice filling the hallway like water filling a cup. "and I'm telling you, the vending machine on the third floor has the good snacks, the ones with the chocolate and the peanut butter and the—oh, hey, Logan. You're lurking. That's a very impressive lurk. Very menacing. Very Wolverine. Are you practicing? Do you have a mirror in your room that you practice your lurking in front of? Because I would support that. Self-improvement is important. We should all strive to be the best versions of ourselves, and the best version of you is probably a very lurk-y version, so-"
"Shut up, Wilson," Logan says, but there is no heat in it, and Wade grins, and you slip your hand into his, and his fingers close around yours, warm and sure.
The three of you stand in the hallway for a moment. You do not know what the day will bring. You do not know if you will survive the mission, or the next one, or the one after that. You do not know if there is a future for a girl who was made to be a weapon and a man who has made himself into something that is not quite human.
But you have this moment. You have Wade's hand in yours and Logan's gruff acceptance and the memory of laughter in a hotel hallway. You have the promise of a pillow fort and terrible movies and warmth against the cold.
You have enough.
You have more than enough.
You have everything.
"Come on," Wade says, and he tugs your hand, and you follow him down the hallway, toward the stairs, toward the mission, toward whatever is waiting for you in the day ahead. "We've got a world to save. Or at least a mission to complete. Which is basically the same thing, if you think about it, which I do, all the time, constantly, it's exhausting being this philosophically minded, but someone has to do it, and-"
His voice fades as you turn the corner, as you leave the hallway behind, as you step into the day that is waiting for you both.
But his hand does not let go. His hand does not let go, and you are warm, and you are safe, and you are loved.
And for now, for today, for this moment that stretches out in front of you like an open road-