Chapter Text
The pancakes weren’t awful.
Eating them under Nathan’s watchful glare was, but it could’ve been worse. Evan found a shell fragment with his teeth. The crunch snapped loud enough to draw Wade’s valiant one-man conversation to a halt. “Missed a bit?” he inquired. Evan chewed thoughtfully.
“Adds texture,” he said. “I like it.”
Wade guffawed at that: a laugh which emanated from deep in his belly and gurgled up past diaphragm and lungs before being expelled in a giddy rush. “See Nate?” He pummelled the cyborg between the shoulders, hard enough to pound anyone who wasn’t seven foot and proportionally broad headfirst into their breakfast. “No villain would appreciate this delectable juxtaposition of eggshell and pancake. That’s the mark of true heroism.”
“Hm.” If not convinced, Nathan at least sounded amused. “It’s the mark of something, alright. Poor taste by my reckoning.”
Wade waved him off, scoffing as he shovelled more pancake into his mouth. He’d single-handedly polished off eight, and was only just starting to slow. His mask, rolled up to the bridge of his nose, was slathered liberally in pancake batter, bacon grease, and maple syrup. “Nonsense. You’d never had ice cream before I came to Providence – or Mexican. You don’t deserve an opinion.”
Nathan’s smirk squirmed into something resembling a smile, bought about by recollections of a time long passed. “I’d never had brainfreeze before either.”
Wade elbows him in the ribs. “Yeah well. There’s gotta be a first time for everything. You oughta be grateful that I gave up my valuable time to show you what you’d been missing –“
“You replaced all of my paperwork with takeaway menus until I agreed to have dinner with you.”
“Damn right I did. Because nothing gets through that thick skull of yours like messing with your work.” Evan, out-of-practice with human interaction, nevertheless sensed that the hitherto friendly bickering had taken a swift turn for the serious. Sure enough, not even the final sloppy bite of pancake could soften Wade’s scowl. “You always care so much about work,” he said, spitting flecks of half-chewed batter over the red ring of the stove hob. “Is it just the world you’d sacrifice yourself for? Or would you kill yourself over a pile of unfinished filing too?”
Evan, awkwardly perched at the dinner table, wondered if he was supposed to feign spontaneous deafness. He looked instead at the mess on the oven. Wade had wolfed through his courses so fast that the hob had yet to cool; the spat gobbets sizzled and hissed, drying onto the glass like smallpox scars.
Watching them crackle, Evan surrendered himself to an evening of scrubbing. He doubted Wade’d pitch in, and the idea of him and Nathan teaming up to tackle the aftermath of the whirlwind that was Deadpool was laughable. “Y’know what,” he said, before Nathan could spout some well-intentioned but short-sighted witticism that would stoke Wade further. “I’m full. Can I wash your plates?”
“Let Summers wash his own,” Wade grumbled. He took Evan up on the offer himself though. “Huh. Right pair we make. I wear the maid outfit, you do all the work.”
“I don’t mind,” Evan lied. He even said it with a smile. It was true in a way: he didn’t mind keeping house, if it meant longer in their company. However, for all his flaws – flightiness and dubious personal hygiene being the tip of the iceberg – Wade did have the uncanny ability to tell when an emotion ran deeper than its performance. It helped that Evan’s execution of cheerful servitude was probably faulty. After all, he’d only had the mirror to practice in front of for the past couple of months. But whatever the cause, Wade’s own expression crumpled.
“You’re not happy, are you?”
Evan should’ve known that his attempt to help would make things worse. Wasn’t that what he did best? Ducking his head, he snatched Nathan’s plate from under him and scurried off to the far end of the kitchen with his load. “I’m fine,” he told the faucet as he clunked it on to full. “Honestly, Wade. Of course I’m happy. After everything you’ve done for me… You took me in. You fed me pancakes. I’m more grateful than words can say.”
“Ha. Sap.” But despite the flippant retort, Evan sensed Wade’s eyes lingering on him. That gaze prickled his nape far longer than it ought to, belonging as it did to a man with a six-second attention span. Tugging at the insides of his cheeks with his teeth, Evan tried to focus on the task at hand. He ignored the voice in his head that chastised him for making Wade worry, and reminded him that the world would be a much simpler place – a better place – if he simply didn’t exist.
His furious scrubbing soon filled the sink in suds. Collecting the batter-stained bowl and pan, Evan added them to the frothing heap and pulled out his trusty wire scrubbie. If Nathan was perturbed by the image of the almighty Apocalypse snapping on pink washing up gloves, his only tell was a crooked eyebrow.
Wade meanwhile, deemed the sloshing loud enough for him to impart his next words to Nathan without being overheard. “We need to do something drastic, Nate. I fear this is beyond the powers even of my pancakes.”
Nathan nodded. “I agree. Pancakes aren’t going to keep the Apoca… Uh, Evan, tranquil for long. We need to look into more permanent solutions.”
Wade smacked his shoulder. The fleshy one. He’d learnt the hard way that hitting the other led to busted knuckles, and Nathan complaining that Wade’d dripped blood down his shirt. “I mean, numbnuts, that this calls for a proper intervention. We’ve got to give the kid a change of scenery. Get him out and about, into the world…” This time, his own palm was the recipient of the blow. “I’m taking Ellie to the park later. Let’s bring Evan along!”
Nathan’s eyebrows performed a sidewinder-esque wriggle up towards his browline. “You would take the Apocalypse. To play with your daughter.”
“Hey, invite Hope! Make it a threeway thing. Only not, y’know, threeway-threeway. Because they’re kids and that’s gross. And uh, speaking of threeways. How’s Dom?”
“Hope and Dom are fine.”
His reply came far too fast. Add to that that Nathan was appraising the far wall rather than Wade, and you had the perfect equation for a signature Summers-deflection. Wade sighed. “When was the last time you contacted them?”
Nathan quirked a corner of his mouth. “In my timestream, or yours?”
Scowling, Wade scooched off the counter and padded over, his bare feet silent on the tiles like the paws of a big hunting-cat. “Don’t you gobbledegook me, mister. I’m not in the mood. You can’t just ditch people like that, y’know? Dom and Hope deserve better.” A short pause. “Heck, I deserve better, and it’s not often I say that. Geez, Nate. Always running off to save the world, never looking back at those you leave behind. This is why nobody likes you.”
The well-worn argument bit as deep as it always did. Nathan ceased his contemplation of the cracked plasterboards, which still leaked insulation from the last time Wade’d lived here. Funny, the difference between this safehouse’s main two occupants: Wade, who marked his territory noisily and messily where ever he went, sometimes not just in the figurative sense; and Evan, who occupied the same space without really living in it. The Spartan, utilitarian simplicity of the apartment was broken by the odd domestic touch – cushions on the couch, personalized shower curtains, the occasional crayon doodle on the walls. But that was all Wade. If it weren’t for the textbooks, opened to a set of calculations more suited to Tony Stark than a schoolboy, Nathan would never have guessed that Evan stayed here at all.
He found Wade’s white masked eyes. Those blank circles thinned into tilted knife blades as he glared. “Are you angry at me for putting the world first?” Nathan asked, rich voice rumbling with the effort of staying soft. “You know I care. For Dom, for Hope, for Irene and Scott… And for you. I will prove it in a thousand ways. But if I have to forego everything I care about for the greater future good, I will.”
The fury percolating Wade’s mask was palpable, even as his scarred lips stretched into a grotesque smile. “Oh, I know. You’ve proved that often enough. Well, you can stay here and brood about whether the world’s worth saving if it means being alone. Me and Evan are gonna go out and enjoy it while it lasts.” He made to turn away. Nathan caught his wrist.
“Don’t ask me to be something I’m not, Wade.”
He could feel the muscles in Wade’s forearm, trembling under duress from the force with which he was clenching his fists. “Why not? You ask it of me all the time.”
“You’re a killer, Wade. It’s different.”
“I know I might call you ‘GI-Jesus’ sometimes, but honestly, you aren’t exactly God’s Great Gift to mankind yourself. Remember Six-Pack? Remember X-Force?”
Try as he might to prevent this conflict from escalating, Nathan was fast losing his patience. Dealing with Wade’s brand of incessant infuriation took the willpower of a saint, and despite his occasional claims to martyrdom, Nathan was – as Wade had pointed out – anything but. He gritted his teeth. “I remember, Wade. And I recognize my flaws – which is why I strive constantly to move past them.”
“And if you’d been around for the past couple of years, you’d know I’ve been doing the same!”
That gave Nathan pause. Wade, surprised by his own outburst, yanked out of his grip and stormed to the figure hunched over the sink, who half-heartedly pretended not to hear them. “Evan. C’mon, let’s head out for a walk. You must be going stir-crazy.”
“Y-you’re serious?” stuttered the boy. The monster-in-the-form-of-a-boy; Nathan couldn’t afford to think of him as anything less. “But… But, what if people see me?”
Wade gestured to his own face. The lower half was its usual poxy lava-flow of scabbing sores, teeth the only static part. Right now, bared as they were in the world’s most terrifying grin or grimace, he looked like an Escher painting brought to life: a hypnotic fusion of mutable, ephemeral impossibility and concrete reality. “I’ll take my mask off, give ‘em something else to stare at. Now c’mon. You’re gonna love Ellie – she’s just the cutest little bean. Got a smile that would melt Doctor Doom’s heart! Although for some reason Preston won’t let me take her to Latveria to test that theory…”
Nathan watched from afar. He and Wade were separated by the counter and approximately five paces of kitchen floor, but there might as well have been continents between them.
What was it Wade had said? I’ve been doing the same? And who knew – he might be telling the truth.
He had a daughter now: a reason to forge a more stable life than that offered by the mercenary business. And he worked with the Avengers – not just as a self-proclaimed member, as Nathan had first suspected. Nathan knew both these things. But until now, they’d just been superficial factoids, floating amorphous without any anchors to reality.
Nathan collected information on everything and everyone. It was what he did. There was a time when he was the strongest telepath in the world, able to read even Charles Xavier – and now his powers had been reduced, his data-collection methods had merged synthetic means with mutant ones to give him a similar semblance of omniscience. As such, he was aware of Wade’s new profession – just as he was aware of Evan’s disappearance, and what had happened at Genosha. But knowledge without application was about as useful as a gun without bullets. It could still be wielded, but only as a blunt instrument.
Perhaps Wade’s venture into heroism wasn’t going to be as short-lived a foray Nathan had assumed? Perhaps Wade’s pitiful attempts to be good, which usually led to him scuppering himself and falling further than ever before, were finally starting to pay off? Nathan was too intelligent to believe in karma, or even that effort by necessity reaped reward. But he could appreciate happy coincidences when they occurred, and the bubble of pride swelling in his chest was of a magnitude that it surprised even him.
Wade really was doing better.
He was also protecting the most dangerous creature ever known to humanity – but hey. Baby steps.
Nathan cleared his throat as Wade hustled Evan for the door, stripping the boy’s sopping gloves and flinging them haphazardly sinkwards. One splatted on the window; the other hit the stove and started to sizzle. Nathan rescued it before it could stick. “I’m coming,” he announced. Nodded to Evan, who looked peaky at the mere prospect of leaving the sanctuary-come-prison he’d been sequestered in for so long. “He requires adult supervision.”
“Oh, and what am I? A cactus?” Wade crossed his arms, pulling his mask down to his chin – then remembered his promise to Evan and stripped it off entirely, stuffing it into a pouch with a scowl. The accompanying shift in his mannerisms would’ve been too subtle for anyone but Nathan and Evan to notice; Wade hunched his shoulders slightly, as if to compress his bulk in on itself, then realized what he was doing and puffed up like a strutting cockerel instead. Once certain he’d hidden any sense of vulnerability or maskless nudity, he lifted his glare to pin on Nathan. “Preston’ll be there. We don’t need you.”
Four little words that could puncture the hardest of hearts. Luckily, Nathan’s techno-organics meant that any such holes were swiftly filled with living titanium. “I’m sure you don’t,” he said. “But I’m not doing this for your sake. I have to keep the boy in my sights - that’s all.” He meant it too. Because Wade had been his project as much as Providence had, and if his guidance had set Wade onto a positive path, the project could be considered a success. Further interference would add unnecessary obstacles.
What with their shared past, the bundle of the unspoken emotions that sizzled between them like electrical signals from a raw nerve, the memory of Wade’s flesh on his tongue… Cable and Deadpool’s pictures headed the dictionary definition of complex. Right now, that was the last thing Wade needed. He deserved the simplicity of the life he’d carved out for himself and his daughter. How unfair would it be for Nathan to sabotage Wade’s honest streak by outstaying his welcome, all because he missed him?
And so despite this internal conflict, Nathan couldn’t help but feel grateful to Evan. If it weren’t for him, he’d have no excuse to stay by Wade’s side at all.