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Wade Wilson is a collector of dangerous weapons.
Logan realizes this within minutes of entering the apartment Wade and Al share. In his time being their roommate, Logan finds (in no particular order) ninja stars, dozens and dozens of knives, entire assortments of guns ranging from the tiniest fucking gun ever made to machine guns, and exact replicas of popular anime katanas.
Logan doesn’t question the sentimental value of a white katana named Wado Ichimonji.
All of it makes sense: as attention-deficit Wade always is, it would get boring quickly if he only ever used the same handful of weapons. Variety is the spice of life, Wade often says, eager to describe the beauty of his newest toy to Althea.
Regardless, Logan never complains about it. Wade is surprisingly careful about keeping Althea or Mary Puppins from ever accidentally getting injured (even though Logan believes Dogpool’s regenerative abilities are far superior to her prior owner.) No one gets hurt, Wade treasures his collection, and everyone is happy. It was never a problem.
Until Wade and Logan are packing up for their move into their own apartment.
Wade is doing the majority of the heavy lifting, claiming that it’s his junk, and it’s not fair to ask Logan to carry his slack. Only wanting to be useful (and speed up the process), Logan sets to work packing up one of the least opened storage closets in the tiny apartment. Books and comics are arranged at the bottom of the boxes, tiny stuffed animals work as great cushions around some of the more delicate trinkets Logan finds. As he works his way to the very back corner of the space, his fingers wrap around a metal collar.
At first touch, Logan knows there’s no way it could ever be for Mary. He holds it in his hands, brow raising, turning it until he finds the keypad.
With a jolt, Logan throws it down to the ground, every nerve in his body lighting up in fear as his neurons connect the unassuming metal collar to the ground.
“What the actual fuck?” He asks finally, a gasping breath filling his lungs with just enough air to growl Wade’s name.
“I am so not responsible for any of the porn you may have found! Especially the fanart. The first rule of fight club is never to talk about Rule 34.” Wade replies instantly, voice carrying from the bathroom where Wade had been sorting through half empty toiletries to find the ones belonging to him (an overwhelming majority.)
“Wade, get the fuck out here right now.” Logan commands, standing on shaky legs as he pulls the metal object towards him in disdain.
Surely sensing the seriousness of Logan’s tone, Wade stumbles out of the bathroom, forearms shimmering with the body glitter found at the beginning of his sorting. “Uh, sugar plum, are we about to have an honest and heartfelt confession about my sex toy addiction?”
In a fraction of a second, Logan reaches down to grab the collar - wrong, wrong, wrong, danger, danger, danger, his mind unhelpfully screams. He throws the object violently towards Wade, powerless to his own instincts and anger. “Why do you have that fucking thing?”
The metal collar hits Wade like a bullet, knocking the wind from him as he looks frantically between the object and Logan until realization dawns across his features. “Baby, I can explain -“
“You have a fucking mutant collar. A fucking mutant collar.” Logan accuses, the muscles in his forearms tensing with already thin restraint. “You live with a fucking mutant, and you’ve just always kept a fucking mutant collar on hand?”
It feels like an attack, or a threat. How long has Wade been hiding this, he wonders frantically, shaken by the very idea that Wade had something like that in case of protection.
The idea that Wade would need to protect himself from Logan hurts. It’s more painful than he ever would have expected. But should he have expected it? After all, how many times has he attacked Wade? How many times has he hurt the man that saved Logan from himself? Going back to that very first fight in the Void, back when the burning hot sun dried the entire desert to fucking death, the air more full of dirt and debris than oxygen, and Logan’s claws made their first full appearance in ages. The first thing he had done in that encounter was hurt Wade, stabbing and clawing and growling out in feral confusion when Wade so easily blocked adamantium claws with an adamantium katana.
In front of him, Wade is stuck in confused silence, flinching as Logan prowls closer, spit flying from his mouth as he screams.
“How long have you been waiting to use this on me? Huh? How long have you been preparing on how to take out the fucking Wolverine?”
Briefly glancing down to the object in Wade’s hands, Wade throws it to the side, raising his hands up in defense. “Never! Logan, never! I would never use that on you! You have to believe me!”
Claws threaten to sink into flesh as Logan pushes Wade into the nearest wall, pinning him. “Why should I trust someone prepared to take out mutants? You’re not just a senseless killer, Wilson, you’re a fucking monster.”
It’s far from the worst thing Logan has called Wade, far less hurtful than that desperate, impassioned, speech in the Honda Odyssey that was every bit as true for him as it were for Wade, but Wade still seems to wither in Logan’s hold, under Logan’s fury. For some of the most painful seconds in Logan’s recent memory, he realizes just how right it was for Wade to fear him.
“When did you fucking get this? When did you think you needed to start protecting yourself from me?”
Wade’s back is still pressed to the wall, and Wade seems to cower more into it, flinching away from Logan’s accusations. In response, Logan’s voice strains, desperation and anger and self-hatred and pain.
“How fucking long, Wade?”
“Not for you! It was never for you!” Wade’s words are weak, spilling his response in a slur that takes precious few seconds for Logan to parse through. “God, Logan, it was never for you! I’d never do that to you! Please, Logan, it’s not for you.”
“Who the fuck would it be for then, you fucking dumbass?”
There’s a shine in Wade’s eyes now, too cloudy and wet with tears for Logan to try to read. He smells Wade’s fear, hears the desperate pounding of the man’s heart, feels the way Wade trembles under his grasp, sees Wade trying to disappear under Logan’s anger.
“Why fucking own this if it’s not for me?”
“It’s for me.” Wade finally sobs, reaching out to grasp Logan’s hands, his arms, his shoulders. Wade seems to claw at Logan’s upper body, desperate for something to grasp onto. “It’s only ever been for me.”
The truth, or Wade’s confession - Logan tries to remind himself bitterly - hangs in the air, stuck between the frantic panting coming from both of the men. Logan can’t make a single muscle relax, can’t let anything slack as he tries to work through the logic of it. It’s as though every muscle in his body has been meticulously tightened, pushed to their breaking point, bracing for some impact that never seems to come.
“Why the fuck would it be for you?”
Wade isn’t able to respond, chest heaving as he seems to desperately take in a breath, hyper-ventilating when the force of Logan’s fists pinning him into the wall. Logan knows he needs to calm down, knows that something is wrong - really, desperately wrong - with the situation and with Wade, but he can’t cool his rage. His grip on Wade only tightens, shaking him before finally lifting off the wall before throwing him to the floor.
He sees Wade’s head collide with the ground, watches his disorientation as he looks around, shoots a glance towards the collar.
Fury rushes through Logan once more, fear that he hasn’t felt in decades overwhelms him as all claws are violently deployed. Standing over Wade’s body, chest heaving, Wade’s panic only seems to worsen.
“Put it on me.” Wade finally manages to say, words nearly unintelligible. “Put the collar on me.”
“Why the fuck should I do what you say?” Logan replies in a growl, claws still raised. He doesn’t want to touch the damn thing again, doesn’t want to even see it. The idea of putting it on Wade is even more disturbing. Wrong. A betrayal.
“So you know I won’t use it on you.” Wade pleads, finally raising his torso up as he shifts his weight back onto his elbows, his chest still heaving. “Or I’ll do it. Put it on myself. Prove it’s not for you.”
Logan stares down at him, none of the options suitable, none of them something Logan wants to do.
Moving despite Logan’s hesitancy, Wade reaches out for the collar. On instinct, Logan swipes down, prepared for an attack. His claws sink into the flesh of Wade’s upper arm just as the metal collar clicks around Wade’s neck. Logan pulls back immediately, retracting his claws and staring in horror where blood begins to stream from the three open wounds.
“You dumbfuck -“ Logan begins, chills running down his spine as nothing begins to knit the torn flesh back together, no apparent end to the streams of blood slowly beginning to pool underneath his limb. Logan finally falls to his knees, reaching out for Wade’s injured right arm to assess the injury. Far from fatal, but the lack of healing was unsettling. It’s wrong. Wade always gets better. Wade can’t be killed. That simple fact had always brought Logan so much comfort, but now it only made guilt wash over him. All the time he’s known Wade from their hours long free-for-all all those months back to their petty disagreements around the apartment ending with claws and that damned baby knife.
Shaking, Logan reaches out, wiping the blood away from Wade’s injuries only for them to well back up…
He feels light-headed, the adrenaline in his system running out as he rips the wife beater from his torso to begin to tie around Wade’s arm. He tightens it roughly, earning a grunt and a muttered curse from Wade as he does so.
“I’m okay, peanut. It’s just a flesh wound. Seriously, I’ve gotten worse injuries recreating the knife game scene in Aliens when I was like 10.” Wade’s dismissal only serves to reignite Logan’s anger. Logan reaches out for the collar, ready to get it off and throw it as far away as possible.
With all the kindness in the world, Wade covers Logan’s hands with his own, stilling him. “We’ll take it off when we’re done talking. Then you can destroy it however you want. But keep it on. Please, Logan.”
The sound of Wade’s serious, patient voice is usually enough to cause hives to break out, but Logan relunctantly drops his hands, dropping the rest of his body to sit on the ground in front of Wade, no less confused than he had been since the very discovery of the damned object.
“It’s for you?” Logan repeats dumbly, in disbelief. “What the fuck does that even mean?”
It doesn’t look right to see Wade accepting the collar’s presence so easily, without anger. He wears it with a sort of grim acceptance Logan’s seen on too many damn mutant children, too many mutant prisoners. The voices of the mutant-hating scum of the Earth echo in his mind, and Logan can hear the voices of his past screaming in his head. His next few breaths are painful, no room in his chest for air when it’s filled with so much grief.
Wade doesn’t answer immediately, but he does crawl forward into Logan’s arms, mumbling some excuse about a ‘well-deserved group bonding session’ despite two elderly immortals hardly counting as a group.
Logan goes to push him away, but his palm finds the tied up fabric already soaked with blood around Wade’s arm and he shudders.
“What does it mean, Wade?”
When Wade’s face is firmly and obnoxiously buried against Logan’s neck, the man finally speaks. “It’s like an insurance policy, okay? I don’t want to die. I haven’t wanted to die. Not since -“ Wade cuts himself off, and the words cut Logan in turn.
“Since?” Logan hardly recognizes his own voice. Wade’s arms tighten around Logan’s torso, the warmth of his shaky exhale ghosting across Logan’s neck.
“Since I lost Vanessa.” It’s thanks to centuries of experience that Logan doesn’t let himself flinch at the words, but Wade trudges on. “Not pushed her away by being a useless fucking loser, but actually lost her. She died, peanut, and I couldn’t handle it.”
Wade’s building up to something, building up to some confession, and for a second, Logan thinks that he isn’t even ready to hear it.
But he needs to. And maybe Wade needs to say it just as much.
“Every time I killed myself, I’d see her in heaven. Just for a few fucking seconds, and I’d come back. I just wanted to see her again. But Colossus made me join the X-Men, made me follow all his stupid fucking rules, and I broke them, so the chrome-plated bag of dicks got me sent to the Ice Box where I got introduced to this little gadget.”
Head slightly clearing as the shock and anger leaves his system, Logan takes a slow breath in. He’s smelled Wade more times than he’d like to admit or remember. Blood, gunpowder, morning breath, everything. There had always been an undercurrent of something else, something he never bothered to investigate. But Logan recognizes it now. Cancer. Dying. Sickness. Worse now with the collar around his neck. Panic floods through him, wanting to pull at the collar until that smell finally disappates, but Wade’s arms tighten around him before he can bother reaching back up for it.
“You’re dying.” Logan says quietly.
“Cancer’s not a superpower when you’re mortal.” Wade mumbles, voice muffled against Logan’s skin. “Got the collar off eventually. Turned back time too. But even with Vanessa alive again, I couldn’t stop myself from getting a hold of one of these. Just..”
“Just in case.” Logan finishes for him, his own hands moving to Wade’s waist before sliding back to run up and down his back. Wade seems to relax under his touch, leaning into it. Wade’s heart rate picks up momentarily before slowing as Wade sinks into Logan’s embrace. “You kept it for an easy way out.”
Something wet slides down the side of Logan’s neck, and neither of them chose to mention it. Logan’s never been the type to wipe away someone’s tears, but fuck if he isn’t tempted now.
“I left mercenary work behind, found my place in that shitty car job. It wasn’t the best life, but I wasn’t putting anyone in danger. I didn’t need to worry about my family getting revenge killed by Karen, the soccer mom who was pissed that she couldn’t haggle down 10% just because there was a crack in the windshield.”
“Take the damn collar off.” Logan growls, eyes shut tightly as his brow pinches. “You don’t need this shit anymore.”
The silence lasts for maybe 45 seconds before Wade squeezes closer, nearly straddling Logan as he shifts in the man’s lap.
“And cut the cuddle time short?”
“Take. It. Off.”
“You never sound this passionate when I’m stripping to put on my pajamas-“
Logan wouldn’t dare stab Wade again without his healing factor, so he resorts to pinching the scarred skin across Wade’s back instead, Wade contorting at the pain.
“You’re no fun!” Wade hisses, reaching back with one arm to try to soothe the abused skin. Moping, complete with puppy dog eyes and a pout, Wade finally grumbles, “The code is 7.”
The collar clicks open at the push of the singular button, and Logan is quick to grab it and pelt the cursed object across the room, ignoring the sound of a shattering window. One more thing to patch up before they leave Althea by herself, he silently adds to the ever-growing to do list.
“Patrick Mahomes would be jealous, though I prefer Travis Kelce. If he ever leaves Taylor Swift, I’m next in line, you best believe -“
Wade is shoved off of Logan’s lap with a growl, though he can’t hold onto his anger at the sight of the bloodied fabric. Logan reaches out carefully to undo it, sighing in relief as the skin underneath is in it’s natural state of blemishment.
Blemishment. He’s spending so much time around Wade, he’s starting to think like him.
“That shit is never going inside our apartment, you got that, Bub?”
Wade only looks at him with a soft smile, nose scrunching up happily. “I love hearing you say our apartment. I’m asking you out when we move in tomorrow so there’s just one day to remember for anniversaries.”
“I can’t fucking stand you.”
“It’s a good thing we’re both still sitting. Come on, one more homoerotic hug. Your greasy tits have emotional healing properties.”
Claws sink in guiltlessly into Wade’s ribcage, but Logan makes no other movement to stop Wade from crawling back into his lap. Letting Wade draw out the hug wasn’t the worst use of the rest of Logan’s day, he decides, pressing his own nose into the warmth of the crook of Wade’s neck, reassured as smell of sickness faded into something far more familiar and comforting.