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2024-08-13
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put on the red light

Summary:

Wade arches away and waggles a finger in his face. "Uh-uh, big boy. That'll cost you extra."

Logan lets his hands fall back to his sides, raising his eyebrows. "Is that so."

"Honestly, Logan, it's like you've never been to a strip club before."

(In which two traumatic backstories enter, two slightly more processed traumatic backstories leave, and a bunch of rough shit goes down in the middle.)

Notes:

I really meant for my debut fic for this pairing to have at least one sex scene, but I got distracted and wrote another story about trauma instead. Next time for sure, though!

Thanks to Brave for giving me the idea and hashing it out with me, and to Petra for additional cheerleading and improvement.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Wade's writhing on his lap the first time it comes up, doing some vague approximation of a lap dance that Logan is frankly embarrassed to admit is working for him. Working well enough, at least, that he tosses the book he was reading aside and is ready to give Wade the attention he's clearly craving, except when he settles his hands on Wade's hips, Wade arches away and waggles a finger in his face.

"Uh-uh, big boy. That'll cost you extra."

Logan lets his hands fall back to his sides, raising his eyebrows. "Is that so."

"Honestly, Logan, it's like you've never been to a strip club before." He sticks up his thumb and counts off. "Regular dance is $25, no touching. Private dance is $125, also no touching. Panties on stuff will run you $250, and if you want the whole kit and caboodle it's a cool five hundred an hour." Wade leans forward, grinning, to murmur in Logan's ear. "I'm really hoping you stopped by the ATM on your way here. Daddy took me to Claire's for my birthday, and my Caboodle is full to bursting."

Jesus. Yeah, that's not working for him anymore. "I don't fucking pay for it, Wade," he snaps, scowling.

Wade sits back, giving Logan a look he can't figure out at all. "I'm sorry, did I impugn your masculinity by implying you can't snap your fingers and instantly summon enough free pusspuss to drown a litter of unwanted kittens? Which I guess wouldn't actually take that much pusspuss. You could probably do it with two, three tops."

Which is...so far off from Logan's actual objection to that bullshit that he doesn't even know how to reply. His masculinity. For christ's sake.

Before he can figure out a response, Wade lets out a dramatic sigh and rolls his eyes. "Fine, fine. No more exotic dancer roleplay. You're so unbearably vanilla." He rolls his shoulders back, cracks his neck from side to side, and his face settles into a less coquettish smile. "You know you've got free backstage passes for life to this show, sweet cheeks."

He's still watching Logan a little cautiously, though, and Logan really wishes he knew why. But he takes the out, cupping one hand around the back of Wade's neck to pull him down and kiss him, feeling Wade relax into his arms.

He files the jokes away as more dumb shit Wade says sometimes, and forgets about it for a while.

**

"Hang on, hang on," Wade says, veering left just as they start to cross the street. "Gotta make a detour, I almost forgot."

It's the opposite direction from their apartment, but Logan follows him easily. He's starting to get used to the feeling he gets when Wade does something unexpected, the warm flush of interest and fondness where there used to be irritation.

"So where are we headed?" he asks, after two right turns and another left take them into a neighborhood Logan's never been to before. Not a great neighborhood, even by comparison to the shitheap he shares with Wade. Though it's not like either of them needs to worry about getting mugged.

Wade looks back at him, and even through the mask Logan can tell he's beaming. "It's time to play Santa," he announces. He's clearly enjoying the mystery, so Logan plays along and doesn't ask anything else, and after a couple more blocks they're there.

'There' turns out to be the junction of Third and a narrow side street where about a half dozen people are gathered. They're young, mostly girls, one boy, dressed up like club kids, more or less, and a couple of them start grinning as Wade skips toward them and calls out, "How are my favorite streetwalkers doing tonight?"

Logan's a few steps behind, so Wade can't see his face, which is probably good. What the fuck.

"Fuck you, Wilson," says a girl with light brown skin, long platinum blonde hair, and a set of bright blue fake nails to rival Logan's. She slaps Wade upside the head--not particularly gently--and laughs at his indignant squeal. "You're early this month."

"I cleaned up big at the ponies, thought I'd share the wealth." He unzips the small bag at his hip and pulls out a thick roll of cash, wiggling it back and forth like he expects oohs and ahs.

Logan's stomach turns.

"Not bad," the boy says. He’s leaning against the bricks, cigarette in hand, shooting Wade a sideways smile. "I was just thinking I could go for some sushi."

"Hell yeah." They exchange a high five. "Get that good fatty tuna. No more worm-riddled gas station shit."

Logan hangs back, tunes out the rest and just watches. They all seem genuinely fond of Wade, at least. One of them, a tall Black girl in a neon pink miniskirt, slings her arm around Wade's shoulders and plants a kiss on his masked cheek. Wade leans into it, resting his head on her shoulder and gesticulating enthusiastically. Nobody's tense, nobody's putting on a fake smile to impress the money. It makes Logan’s mouth taste sour anyway.

Eventually Wade hands off the cash to the blonde, hugs a couple of the others, and leaves, giving Logan a nod. "You could have said hi, you know," Wade says as Logan falls into step beside him. "Instead of lurking in the shadows. Sasha thinks you're cute."

Logan grunts vaguely, but waits until they're a block away before he speaks. "What the hell was that all about?"

Maybe he does too good a job of keeping his voice level, because all Wade does is glance at him and say, "I told you, I'm Santa," his voice through the mask as carefree and happy as a pig in shit.

"Yeah," Logan mutters as Wade looks away again. "You're fucking Santa."

Wade hums the rest of the walk home. As soon as they get inside, Logan grunts a goodnight and heads for the bedroom, feeling Wade's eyes on his back all the way there.

He doesn't say anything to Wade the next morning. With the distance of a night's sleep, he's not sure what he would say--not sure he even has a right to be pissed about it. It's not like Wade did anything...wrong, exactly. They'd all been happy to see him. God knows there's worse places he could be spending his money.

But he can't stop thinking, all day, about Wade waving that roll of bills around.

**

"Hey," Wade says one day on the couch, curled up against Logan's chest, as the girl on the TV misses another shot, "did I ever tell you about me and Vanessa's first date?"

Wade's ex is a fully closed wound, now, and a friend. But Wade still doesn't talk about her that much, at least not to Logan.

"No," Logan says. It's a slow, golden Sunday afternoon. Wade is warm and heavy in his arms, and Logan's trying not to think about how good he feels, with middling success.

"Well I'm gonna," Wade says. He raises his arm slowly to point at the screen and intones, "Skee-ball," like it's a mystical incantation.

When nothing else seems forthcoming, Logan says, "You gotta give me a little more than that."

"Than the whirlwind magic and romance of balls in holes? Logan, I'm disappointed in you. But I'll indulge you." He squeezes Logan's hand, waits for Logan to squeeze back. "Open the loading bay doors, boss, level five backstory drop in three...two...one..." The noise that comes out of his mouth is probably supposed to be some kind of explosion, based on the hand gesture that accompanies it. "Backstory drop now. So I was down at the neighborhood watering hole one night after a job well done, and the most beautiful hooker in the whole wide world walked up to me and said..."

He goes on, and Logan listens, frozen, cold creeping up his spine. It's a perfect fairytale. Hell, it's fucking textbook. Right down to the girl fucking him for free at the end of the night.

"And thus began the greatest and sexiest love story Hollywood has ever seen," Wade finishes, with a bizarre little flourish of his hand. "With the box office returns to prove it. The end." He smiles to himself, clearly basking in the warm glow of his precious memories. "Thoughts? Feedback? Commentary?"

"What do you want me to say? Nice work?" He doesn't have to try to sound disgusted. He just has to stop trying not to.

"You--what?" The confusion in Wade's voice would make his heart ache if it was about anything else. Wade twists his head around to look up at him. "What do you--"

"You want me to congratulate you on bagging your very own Pretty Woman?" Logan spits. The chill in his spine turns hot, flares out. "I thought--fuck, Wade, I thought better of you." And he had. He wouldn't feel this sick and furious, this fucking betrayed, if he’d ever believed Wade could be that specific kind of asshole.

Maybe--the thought crystallizes in his brain like shrapnel--maybe that's what's been going on between them, too. Maybe Logan is just one more fuckable charity case Wade's using to boost his own ego, the latest broken-winged bird he's scooped up off the street. He'd sure as hell fit the profile when Wade first invited him to move in, hadn't he? Homeless, penniless, low on options. Just his type.

Still pressed against Logan’s chest, Wade goes very, very still. Logan can feel his heartbeat jump and then keep jumping, fast as a jackrabbit. His own pulse isn’t far behind, breath coming short and shallow as his lungs ratchet tighter and tighter.

Slowly, Wade squirms away from Logan and stands up, watching him the whole time. Not exactly like prey, but not quite like a predator either. It's only when there's a good three feet between them that Wade speaks, and his voice is a shard of ice. “Don't you ever talk about her that way again."

It's not what Logan's expecting at all. "I wasn't--"

"Actually," Wade says, talking over him, "you can just get her name out of your mouth for good. And mine, while you're at it. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Logan's not sure what the hell is happening, but the nausea and rage are boiling in his stomach too hard to stop and think. "With me?" he growls. "What's wrong with me?"

"Yeah!" Wade shouts. "With you, mister I-don't-fucking-pay-for-it. What the fuck gives you the right--you knew Vanessa was a sex worker! You made a fucking joke at my expense about it, actually, which, now that I think about it, that should have tipped me off right up front what kind of jizz-gargling prick you were going to be about this."

"'Sex worker,'" Logan repeats, disbelieving. "Is that what you fucking call it?"

Wade hauls him up off the couch and punches him in the face.

"Fuck you," Wade snarls, and hits him again. Logan lets him, stunned. Months, now, and he's never seen this kind of anger from Wade, searing and focused like a bright blue flame. "Fuck you, you arrogant shitwipe. I thought--I fucking--"

Logan blocks the next punch and Wade staggers, catches himself, and whirls around and puts his fist through the wall. His breath tears rough and ragged through the silence between them.

"I should have fucking known," Wade says, voice low. He's still facing away, his shoulders hunched up tight, shaking. "When you got so weird about me dragging you along to give the kids their allowance, but I thought--maybe you were just awkward, maybe--I hoped--" He laughs, short and bitter. "But no, you're just too good to hang out with a bunch of whores, huh?"

"Is that what..." Logan shakes off the shock, bile rising again. His pulse is pounding in his skull like a hammer. "You think I think I'm too good for them?" He shoves Wade hard, and feels a shiver of satisfied fury at the sharp crack his head makes when it snaps back against the wall. "I’m not the one bragging about how I rode in on my goddamn white horse and rescued some poor misguided kid off the street so I didn’t have to feel guilty about wanting to fuck her!"

"What?"

"I'm not the one who hands out stacks of cash on the corner so I can feel like a big man." Words ripping out of his throat. "I'm not the one who thinks having to sell my ass is some big fucking joke for me to get off to!"

Wade's staring at him, mouth open, eyes wide. Logan can't find any more words. There's a deep black hole opening up in his chest blocking everything else, wild and enormous. He could fall down that hole and never reach the bottom.

Fuck. Fuck, he hasn't felt like this since--

Since the last time he had someone left to lose.

"It was Vanessa’s money, you dumb fuck." Wade's voice cuts through the red haze like a searchlight.

"…what?" Logan says blankly.

"That was the first corner she worked," Wade says. His voice is steady, with a trembling note that means he's working hard to keep it that way. "Before she knew how to take care of herself so good. Some bad shit happened to her there, and she doesn't want it happening to anyone else. Best way to do that is to make sure nobody gets so desperate they can't say no."

It's just static, in Logan's head. When he doesn't say anything, Wade goes on.

"We used to go together, to drop off the cash. Now that she lives across the river, sometimes she's too busy to make the trip, so she asks me to do it." Sagging back against the wall, he rubs his face with both hands, quick and hard. "As for my supposed white knight complex..." He snorts. "You've met Vanessa, Logan. You really think she'd let an asshole like me pull some noble rescuer shit on her? Whisk her away to my castle and sing Roxanne at her like a dollar store Ewan McGregor till she quits her fucking job?"

"It's not a job," Logan says. It's the only thing Wade's said that he knows how to grab hold of. "It's not…there's a difference." A job is fair play, no matter how shitty the work. Show up, do whatever you agreed to do, take your pay and go home at the end of the day. It's not offering yourself up for whatever some prick with a wallet wants to take. At a job, when someone fucks you over, you can fight back.

He doesn't know how to say any of that out loud.

"Don't give me that Exodus Cry bullshit," Wade snaps, nonsensically. "Sex work is work, fucknugget. I know you just hopped over from another timeline, but I'm pretty sure it was the 21st century there too."

"And that makes it okay?"

"It makes it the best option a lot of people have," Wade says, his voice climbing almost to a shout, "and the least you can do is have the decency to spare them your fucking pity!" The word shoots out of his mouth like a bullet. "Jesus, and you have the chrome-plated balls to accuse me of being the guy who only--" Crooking his fingers into air quotes. "--wants to buy you dinner, so he can stare at you the whole time you’re eating like he’s storing your skinny fucking face away in his self-righteous spank bank? Don’t you dare call me that guy. I hated that guy."

It takes a beat for Logan to process, and then the world tilts. "You..."

He watches Wade's face twist for several seconds before settling into a stony mask. "Yeah. Me. Sorry if that’s a fucking disappointment."

"But you don't," Logan says. Tries again. "You're not..."

"Oh, I would love for you to finish that sentence."

He doesn't. He doesn't even know how, really, doesn't know exactly what he's objecting to except that it doesn't...it doesn't fit.

"You?" is what he gets out, finally, sounding about half as confused as he feels.

Wade flinches. So that was the wrong thing too. "I didn't always look like this."

"That's not what I meant."

"Really not sure what you did mean, big guy."

I'm not either, Logan doesn't say. Wade doesn't give him a chance, anyway.

"You want the whole story? Because it's not that long. There wasn't a lot of honest work available for a fourteen year old runaway with a record, and I like eating. Two plus two."

Fourteen. Jesus. Logan tries to imagine Wade that young, can't bring the image into focus.

"And I know you wouldn't have done it," Wade goes on, "but we weren't all born with a healing factor and an onboard weapons system. Some of us were late bloomers."

He's not looking at Logan anymore, and he barely even sounds angry. What he sounds is tired--the kind of exhaustion that crawls inside your bones and sets up house there--and his face makes Logan feel like he's being flayed.

"I'm not...judging you," he tries, stumbling, but he has to fucking say something. "For doing what you had to do to survive."

Wade barks out a nasty little laugh. "To survive. Right. What the fuck would you know about it."

He says it like Logan's a stranger. Like they're standing on opposite sides of a thick glass wall. It makes something snap in Logan's chest.

"I know." His words sound muffled in his own ears, like his head is wrapped in cotton.

"You don't--"

Louder, this time, "I know because I fucking did it too, all right?"

"You--" Wade turns toward him and stops dead, like he's skidded right over a cliff. For an endless second they just stare at each other. "I’m sorry," Wade says, finally. His voice cracks a little. "You’re going to have to repeat that for me, honeybutt."

The hell he will. "Fuck you. You heard."

"You..." The silence stretches out, and Logan doesn't try to fill it. "When?" Which is something he can answer, at least, but before he gets a chance Wade says, "Why?"

Of all the possible responses he was braced for, that wasn't even on the list. "Why the fuck do you think? Why did you?"

"For money," Wade says. "For food. Somewhere warm to sleep. Drugs, sometimes. Protection. To get a cop off my back. I’d say that about covers it."

Logan glares pointedly.

"Okay, but, see above re: invulnerability and your built in self-defense system. You don’t need to turn tricks to put food on your family. You can take what you want."

On the one hand, Wade's no longer looking at him like he's the lowest smear of dogshit Wade has ever scraped off his shoe, and the lack of contempt on his face hits hard and sweet as a heroin overdose. On the other hand...

There's that shine in his eyes, like a kid with a crush, that Logan knows means Wade is looking at him and seeing Wolverine. He doesn't always hate that look. They've had more than a few damn good nights that start with Wade looking at him like that. Those nights usually end with their shared blood puddled on the floor, enough of it that Logan had to get extra towels from Goodwill to reserve for mopping up.

Right now, though, that look means Wade's trying and failing to imagine any situation where Logan could possibly fail to come out on top, and it makes Logan want to strangle him.

"Walk me through that scenario," he says, his tone sharp enough that Wade frowns. "Some guy in filthy clothes shows up in your barn, smells like shit, doesn’t know his own name. Tells you to hand over all the cash you’ve got in the house."

"Or he’ll skewer you," Wade says, in the voice of a schoolteacher spelling out a very small word. "With the big scary claws that come out of his hands."

"Yeah," Logan says, "okay. So I skewer him. And then his wife screams and the neighbors come running. Then the neighbors call the cops, and some two-bit prick with a star on his chest shows up waving a gun. Maybe I get shot and don't go down, so now we've got a real fucking problem." He glances up at Wade, and yeah, it's starting to dawn on him. "You think I’m going to murder half a dozen people so I can raid their fridge and sleep in their bed? And then do it all again at the next town down the road?"

He had, once. He’d been so tired and starving that night that he’d even slept well after.

There’s no way to explain what it was like to be willing to do anything--anything--if it meant not leaving another pile of bodies in his wake. Or the way it had felt drifting loose with no anchor, no memory of any home or any human faces, or even a clue as to how he used to get by.

Like maybe he was the kind of guy who did this shit, after all. Maybe the first man who looked him up and down and told him, take it or leave it, just knew something Logan didn’t yet.

"I get it," Wade says quietly. "Survival sex work beats serial killing. And if you make threats and don’t follow through..."

"Jail." Logan nods. "Ends the same way." Not to mention, after the first couple times he’d barely escaped being captured by what he didn’t need his memories to know were government agents, making any kind of a scene had been even more out of the question.

"Fuck." Wade lets out a shaky breath. "Yeah. All right. Fuck, I hate this heavy shit." He throws himself down on the couch, sprawling his limbs out until he takes up almost all of it. After an uncertain second, Logan sits down on the narrow slice of cushion left next to Wade's foot.

The foot immediately settles in his lap. It makes him pathetically grateful that Wade still wants to touch him.

"Insensitive personal question alert," Wade announces, after about two minutes of silence. In fairness, two minutes might be a new record for him. "During my short but brilliant tenure as an underage blowjob queen, I made a pretty careful study of what brought in the most customers. And girls, they have a lot of options, because they've got numbers on their side. Any given night, there'll probably be at least one guy who wants to party down on whatever kind of cupcakes you brought to the bake sale."

It's exactly the kind of tasteless joke that used to make Logan's skin crawl. Now...it's not comfortable, exactly. Probably it's never going to be. But it's not bad, either. It's just more dumb shit Wade says sometimes, like the rest of the nonsense that makes Logan roll his eyes and try not to smile too much, because it only encourages him. Though it's been harder, lately, to stop himself from playing along.

"But in the boy department," Wade continues, "much less creative freedom. There's only a few looks that sell well enough to make rent, and none of those looks could reasonably be described as 'ruggedly handsome.' So you've got me wondering, peanut..."

He trails off, raising his brows. It's disgustingly fucking endearing. Logan keeps his mouth shut anyway, and after about ten seconds of increasingly frantic brow-waggling Wade gives in.

"I'm wondering, what kind of john looks at this--" He points a finger at Logan. "--and thinks, fuck yeah, that's the aggressively masculine jawline that's gonna satisfy my fucked-up little power trip?"

It's strange how closely the words echo what Logan was thinking five minutes ago, without hurting at all. "I didn’t always look like this," he says, dry as a bone. When Wade laughs, a wave of dizzy relief slams into him so hard he thinks his heart might tear loose from his ribs and take off running. Making jokes, letting Logan touch him again, it's not enough to be sure--but that sound means it’s really okay. They’re going to be okay, despite Logan’s best efforts.

"Don’t tell me you used to be a twink," Wade says. Logan chokes out a rusty laugh.

"Not quite. But not so much--" He gestures vaguely at his face.

"Less daddy, more rough trade?"

"I age slow, but forty-five years ago..." He shrugs. "Couldn’t get away with it now."

"That’s us," Wade sighs, "too craggy and virile to be taken advantage of anymore. My dreams of becoming a high-powered international courtesan have scattered on the wind like so many dandelion seeds."

"Jesus," Logan mutters, grinning helplessly down at Wade's foot in his lap.

"On second thought, it's just as well. Billionaires are selfish lovers, and I'm lousy at faking it." His foot abruptly snakes around Logan's ribs and tugs, heel digging in hard. "Quit feeling up my piggies and get over here, Wikifeet. I just had a whole bunch of big feelings and I need to cuddle it out."

Logan doesn't need to be asked twice.

"Do people really call it ‘sex work’ now?" he asks, once they've figured out a comfortable arrangement of elbows and settled down. They could really use a larger couch.

"Logan," Wade says, with evident fondness. "My buddy, my man, my rainbow sprinkle sugar cookie. You have so much intersectional feminist theory to catch up on. We're going to have to start a book club."

"Fuck off," Logan says, unsurprised at this point how little 'sugar cookie' annoys him. "Just tell me what words I'm supposed to use so I don't make anyone else think I'm an asshole."

Wade drops a kiss on his forehead. It makes Logan's throat go tight, for no reason he can figure. "I will make you a color-coded list," he promises. "In alphabetical order. With an index."

He actually fucking might. Logan's kind of looking forward to it. "Five lines or less or I'm throwing it in the trash," he lies, and lets himself relax into the sound of Wade's offended gasps and the warm golden light through the windows.

Notes:

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