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Wade had thought living in the X-mansion again would feel weird. He'd lasted less than a week that first time, before Colossus had gotten sick of his shit.
Now, though...
Even if he made Colossus lose his shit again, Wade knew he wouldn't be kicked out — Logan wouldn't allow it, and neither would Laura.
(They were still using his labeling system in the fridges, and no, he did not cry when he'd found out again, thank you very much.)
He sat on the velvet-upholstered window seat in the upper hallway, resting his chin on his knees, watching the late-afternoon sun carve long, amber geometric shapes across the polished hardwood floor. Downstairs, someone was burning toast. Someone else — probably Shatterstar or Kurt, though it was hard to tell through the floorboards — was laughing with a boisterous, unfiltered joy that made Wade relax further into the seat.
They had saved the world, and now they were just… living here.
It was disgusting. It was gorgeous. It made Wade’s skin itch under his suit, because he spent every waking second waiting for the cosmic joke to hit the punchline, for God or maybe just Disney to reach down with a giant eraser and scrub out the domesticity.
Nice was a dangerous word. Nice was a trap.
And still: it was nice.
It was nice to be loved without it being a war. It was nice to have Logan’s mouth against his shoulder in the dark, teeth grazing skin not to hurt but to anchor. It was nice to wake up and not have to immediately run. It was nice, in the most terrifying way, to find your body beginning to believe it might survive long enough to get used to comfort.
Down in front of the seat, Laura was half-sprawled on the hallway floor, painting her nails the color of arterial blood because Wade had told her it was 'classic, chic, and also deeply on-brand.' Laura held the tiny brush like a weapon. Her tongue stuck out in concentration.
Wade watched her without moving. He didn’t want to interrupt the rare, normal thing, the fragile bubble of teenhood she was building one glossy layer at a time. She'd been enjoying doing all the normal, teenage girl things like sleepovers, mall shopping, gossipping. And painting her nails with Wade.
Laura was just like Logan. Wade thought about this often. She had his scowl, his hyper-vigilance, his stubborn, immovable center of gravity. But where Logan was a vault locked behind a hundred years of shame, Laura was smaller, sharper, and dangerously honest. She didn't hide behind grunts. If she thought Wade was being an idiot, she told him. If she thought Logan was being a coward, she spat it in his face.
She loved them both. She was making a home for herself, step by agonizing step, even if she refused to wear the blue-and-yellow uniform just yet.
"You’re staring," Laura said without looking up.
"Sorry," Wade replied, and meant it, and then immediately ruined it, "I’m just thinking about how you could absolutely kill a man with acetone."
She snorted. It wasn’t quite a laugh, but it was adjacent, which for Laura was a love letter.
From the far end of the hallway, Logan’s door opened. The sound was quiet, controlled — an old habit. He stepped out in a T-shirt that looked like it had survived several wars and a pair of sweatpants that would’ve looked ridiculous on anyone who didn't have his thighs.
He glanced at Wade first. Always Wade first. The glance was sharp, reflexive, like checking a wound to make sure it hadn’t reopened. And then it softened, because it always softened now. Because there were mornings where Logan woke with Wade’s legs tangled with his, Wade’s face pressed into his shoulder like he’d burrowed there for safety, and Logan felt something he didn’t have a word for except mine — a possessiveness that wasn’t about ownership but about protection.
Logan’s eyes flicked to Laura, and there was that other softness, the kind that came from having watched a child claw her way through hell and come out the other side still capable of trust.
"You two cause any trouble?" he asked.
"We are innocent baby angels," Wade said, "Also I taught your daughter how to do cut-crease eyeshadow, which is basically like teaching her to defuse a bomb in public."
Laura made a small noise of disgust. "He didn’t teach me. He showed me a video and then cried because the influencer said ‘you deserve joy.’"
"That influencer was right," Wade hissed, affronted, and his voice cracked on the last word like the truth had scraped him on the way out.
Logan’s mouth twitched. Not a smile, not fully, but it threatened.
"You eating?" he asked, because he’d started asking things like that. Domestic questions. Caretaking questions. Questions that said I’m here and you’re here and this is real.
"Someone’s burning toast," Wade told him. "I’m calling it now, it’s Shatterstar experimenting with Earth food again."
"I heard that," Shatterstar called from downstairs, voice bright as stained glass.
"You were meant to!" Wade shouted back, delighted and terrified by how at home his own voice sounded here.
Family didn’t arrive with fanfare. It arrived with routine.
It arrived with Wade arguing with Beast about the ethics of labeling the pantry shelves in three different languages 'for accessibility' while Logan stood there with his arms folded, scowling because Wade was right, his own daughter preferred Spanish sometimes.
It arrived with Laura sitting on the kitchen counter, swinging her legs like a kid would, watching Wade paint his own nails black — badly, messily — then taking the polish from him without asking and doing it right in three silent minutes, her tongue caught between her teeth in concentration like she’d decided this mattered, like she’d decided he mattered.
It arrived with Logan catching Wade watching Laura laugh — actually laugh, sharp and surprised like it escaped her — and Wade’s face would do this thing, this soft collapse of the usual performative noise into something quiet and astonished, like he couldn’t believe he’d been allowed to witness it.
Logan didn’t say those thoughts out loud. He didn’t give them air. He carried them the way he carried everything that mattered: silent, feral, close.
Wade, of course, talked enough for three people, which helped.
"I’m just saying," Wade announced one afternoon, lounging across the common-room couch, "if the X-Men insist on having a mansion, it should have a slide. Like, a spiral slide, from the third floor down to the kitchen. For emergencies. For dramatic entrances. For if you’re late to breakfast and the waffles are getting cold."
Laura didn’t look up from her phone. "You just want a slide."
"I need a slide, Laura. The world is bleak."
Logan grunted from his chair, pretending he wasn’t listening.
Laura’s mouth twitched. "So you’re late to breakfast on purpose."
"Because I like the chase," Wade said solemnly, "I like the thrill of hunting breakfast like our ancestors."
"Our ancestors hunted mammoths," Laura said. "You hunt syrup."
Wade pressed a hand to his chest like he’d been struck. "Laura Kinney, the disrespect."
Logan’s eyes flicked to her, quick, automatic. She was settling in. She’d never admit it. She still flinched at loud noises, still slept like she might have to run, still scanned exits without thinking — but she was making a place for herself in the cracks of the mansion’s old pain. She’d found the training rooms. She’d found the library. She’d found the roof.
She’d found Wade.
That part, Logan hadn’t expected.
She’d bonded with Logan the way a storm bonds with the earth — violent at first, inevitable, changing the shape of everything.
But Laura had bonded with Wade too, and that had been stranger, because Wade didn’t have the quiet discipline Laura respected; Wade had chaos and glitter and the kind of emotional bluntness he pretended was a joke until you realized it was the truest thing in the room. He treated Laura like a person, not a symbol, not a weapon, not a tragedy. He asked her what music she liked and then made up entire choreographed routines to it in the kitchen while she watched, expressionless, and then — when he wasn’t looking — she’d smirk.
They’d started hanging out in the spaces between things.
It made sense, in a way that made him want to laugh and snarl at the same time. Him and Laura were both blades, just forged differently. And if Wade had managed to fall in love with Logan, who was non-arguably worse between them, how could he not love Laura, too?
And Laura — who trusted almost nothing — trusted Wade enough to sit beside him and let him be loud near her.
That meant something.
Logan didn’t ask Laura about it. Logan didn’t ask Wade either. He just watched it happen, this small, odd orbit forming between them, and he tried not to be possessive about it because what was the point of family if you couldn’t let the people you loved love each other too?
Sometimes they did teenager things, or at least Wade’s version of them — gossiping about who in the mansion was secretly dating (apparently half of them, which Wade found vindicating), watching stupid movies, eating cereal straight from the box, ranking the Avengers by 'most likely to survive a haunted house.'
Still. Sometimes, when Wade and Laura disappeared for hours, Logan would feel a tightness in his ribs, an old reflex that said mine and careful and don’t take what’s left.
He hated that reflex.
Wade would come back smelling like sweat, mask stuffed in a pocket, or laden with plastic bags of clothes and trinkets, chattering about something Laura had said that was apparently hilarious, and Logan would pretend he didn’t care while his entire body relaxed at the sound of his voice.
He told himself it was good. He told himself Laura deserved someone who didn’t look at her and see blood. He told himself Wade deserved someone who didn’t flinch at his intensity. He told himself a lot of things while a quiet warmth settled in his chest, a warmth that frightened him because it felt like he was building something.
A family.
He’d had families before. He’d lost them all.
And yet, Wade kept trying anyway.
Wade was trying not to be a piece of shit. Not because of any of the numerous lectures Scott and Piotr liked giving, but, and this felt so fucking weird to realize, but because Wade wanted to be a good example for all the young kids in the mansion. If he was already here, if he was staying, he could have people like him.
So, he decided to go back. To the worst thing he’d ever done.
He didn't tell Logan; he didn't want to see the flicker of grief in those eyes, the reminder of the man who died so others could live. But he told Laura.
"You want to clean up a grave?" she said more than asked, tone dry in a way that paralleled Logan so keenly, Wade nearly grinned.
"Yeah," he said, "I sort of, uh, made a mess, that day. With all the—" he stabbed at his own chest, "Yakety Sax hyper violence. Figured I owe the old man’s bones some dignity. And you, well, I mean— Do you want to come? He was your old man too."
"Oh my god," Laura said, and rolled her eyes, but she jerked her head for him to follow and started down the hall. "Bring gloves," like Wade didn't have a whole kit already ready.
Out on the road, Wade’s jokes filled the car in bursts, too loud, too fast, like he was trying to keep the air from turning into something heavy.
The road out was quiet. Trees. Sky. The world pretending it hadn’t almost ended. Wade drove like he did everything — too fast, too dramatic, one hand on the wheel and the other waving as he talked. Laura sat with her boots on the dashboard, unbothered by his speed, watching the passing landscape like she was cataloging it for later, like beauty was something you could store in case you needed it.
Wade parked and sat for a moment, hands on the wheel, mask of normalcy slipping.
Laura unbuckled first. She got out and waited, patient in the way only someone who’d been forced to grow up could be — patient not because she didn’t care, but because she understood that caring was complicated and sometimes took time.
Wade finally got out too, shovel in one hand, a small bag in the other with supplies. They walked the rest of the way.
When they reached the clearing, the silence of the forest felt heavy, expectant. The ground was still scarred from the fight, the grass matted and brown where blood had soaked into the soil.
Wade felt a wave of genuine, stomach-turning shame as he looked at the bones. He’d thrown them. He’d swung them. He’d treated the remains of a hero like a set of brass knuckles.
"I’m a piece of shit, aren’t I?" he whispered, his voice cracking. He started to pick up a humerus from a nearby bush, his gloved fingers trembling. "I mean, look at this. It’s a holy relic and I used it to perform a dance number. I’m going to hell."
Laura watched him, head tilted slightly, her expression unreadable but her body alert. She could feel his shame like a scent.
Wade crouched slowly. The ground was packed. Grass had grown in uneven patches.
Laura stepped up beside him. She wore a heavy corduroy jacket lined with shearling, her dark hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. She didn't have gloves on; her bare hands were shoved into her pockets. She stared at the grave, her face unreadable, her amber eyes reflecting the dull sky.
"I brought a shovel," Wade said, his voice small. It was strange hearing his own voice sound so stripped of theatrics. "I thought... I thought we should put him back together properly. Cover him up right. I kind of... ruined it."
Laura turned her head, squinting at him. "You used his skeleton to fight?"
Wade winced, pulling his head down into his shoulders like a scolded dog. "I was desperate, okay? The TVA was coming, my world was dying, and— and he was just there. I made a rib-cage accordion, Laura. I used his spine like a whip. It was horrifying. It was sacrilegious. I’m a terrible person, and if you want to gut me right now, I’ll stand still and let you."
Laura stared at him for three long, agonizing seconds.
Then, her lips twitched. A tiny, breathy huff of air escaped her nose.
"You used his spine as a whip?" she asked.
"Don't laugh! It's not funny! It's sacred!" Wade flailed his arms, his heart hammering against his ribs. "He died saving you! He was a hero!"
"He was a stubborn old bastard who would have thought it was hilarious if someone used his thigh bone to beat a guy to death," Laura said flatly, though the spark in her eyes was undeniably amused. She walked over to the disturbed earth, kicking aside a drift of snow to reveal a silvery bone half-buried in the dirt. "Come on. Help me pick up the pieces."
Bone by bone, they gathered him.
Laura didn’t flinch. Wade did. Wade flinched at the skull, at the curve of the jaw, at the empty sockets that looked too much like accusation. He flinched and then he kept going anyway, because love made you do things that felt impossible.
It was methodical, solemn work, but Laura made it bearable. She didn't weep. She didn't mourn in the way Wade expected. She handled the adamantium-coated bones with a quiet, casual reverence, like a mechanic putting familiar tools back into a toolbox. Wade found the femur; Laura retrieved the vertebrae. Together, they laid the skeleton out in the hollowed-out earth, arranging the silver-gray bones into the shape of the man who had given his life so she could have hers.
Wade reached into a shadow under a fallen pine tree where he'd caught a silvery glint, his gloved fingers brushing against something wrapped in string. He pulled it out, his heart dropping into his stomach.
It was the forearms. The adamantium claws were still extended, gleaming dully through the mud, tied to the radius and ulna with crude, fraying strings — the very straps Wade had tied around his own forearms when he fought the TVA in the snow.
Wade froze, holding them in his lap like a cursed relic.
Laura walked over, kneeling in the dirt beside him. She looked down at the bone-and-metal arms, then up at Wade’s face. "Why are there strings on those?"
Wade couldn't look her in the eye. He stared at the bones, feeling an intense, suffocating shame wash over him.
"Oh, you know. I don't have the... the internal plumbing for these," Wade whispered. His hands trembled. "I had to improvise. I tied them to my wrists so I could swing them."
Laura’s face did the thing where she was deadpan but also amused and also weirdly tolerant, which must be a mutant gene, because it made Wade irrationally happy. She twitched the claws with a practiced little flick, testing weight and range.
"Show me," she said.
"Laura, I can’t— it’s weird, it’s like wearing your dead father’s shoes to a prom he wasn't invited to—"
"Show me, Wade."
Sighing, Wade slipped his hands into the crude loops. He tightened the strings around his forearms, the metal bones biting into his suit. He stood up and flexed, the three claws on each hand protruding from the top of his fists, held in place by nothing but grit and twine. He looked ridiculous. He looked like a budget cosplayer.
Laura’s gaze tracked the line of the metal. Her nostrils flared slightly, like she was smelling memory. She flexed her own hand, claws whispering out in answer, a sound like a promise.
Wade tried to joke. "Ta-da. Wolverine cosplay, but make it necromancy."
Laura stepped closer. She reached out and, very carefully, touched the adamantium with the pad of her finger. She didn’t flinch at the cold. She didn’t recoil from the idea.
Wade swallowed hard. "Laura—"
Then she looked at him, and in her eyes was something that cracked him open: acceptance, and recognition, and the blunt truth of someone who didn’t waste emotion on performative outrage.
"You should keep them," she said.
Wade’s heart stopped. "What? No. No, no, no. These are his. These are Logan’s."
"You should keep them," she repeated.
"No, I really, really shouldn’t."
"He doesn't need them anymore," Laura said, her eyes boring into his. "And Logan — our Logan — he has his own. But you... you’re part of this now. You’re family. And every Wolverine has claws, Wade."
Wade’s eyes filled so fast it embarrassed him. He tried to blink it away. He failed. He shook his head rapidly, like he could shake the tears away instead. "No, no, no, don’t— don’t do that. Don’t say that like it’s— like I—"
Laura’s gaze softened, almost imperceptible. "You do."
Laura reached out. She put her hand on his wrist where the string dug into skin. Her grip was careful. Strong. A grounding.
"You're one of us," she said, like it was obvious.
Wade’s sob broke loose, ugly and loud. He covered his face with his free hand, shoulders shaking, and Laura didn’t flinch from the mess of him. She sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder, and waited out the storm.
When Wade could breathe again, when he’d wiped his face with the heel of his hand like a kid, Laura handed him one of the claws and forearms.
"Take them," she said.
Wade stared at it, reverent, horrified. "Logan’s going to kill me."
Laura’s lips twitched. "He won’t."
Wade made a choked sound that might have been a laugh. "You don’t know that."
"I know him." Laura stood, brushed dirt from her hands.
Above them, the trees moved in the wind. The grave waited. The dead stayed dead.
But something shifted anyway.
They reburied the bones together, carefully, with the claws absent. Wade placed the skull in the earth with hands that trembled less. Laura covered it with dirt, patting it down firm, like tucking something in.
Wade stood at the end, staring at the marker.
Then he held the claws and forearm bones close to his chest, as if afraid the world would take them.
He didn’t understand what he was feeling, not fully.
It was grief, for a Logan he hadn’t known properly. It was guilt, for what he’d done. It was love, threaded through everything like a stubborn wire that refused to break.
It was belonging, and it terrified him.
"I’m sorry," he said again, softer, "And… thank you. For… being you."
Laura didn’t answer with words. She nudged his shoulder with hers, brief, almost awkward.
Then she walked back toward the car, and Wade followed, carrying the claws in his bag like contraband and inheritance all at once.
Back at the mansion, Wade hid the claws like a sinner hiding scripture.
He wrapped them in cloth. He shoved them into a locked case. He told himself he would tell Logan eventually. He told himself he would wait for the right moment, the safe moment, the moment when Logan wouldn’t look at him like he was a thief.
Then days passed.
Then weeks.
And the claws became something else — not just relics, not just stolen remains, but a secret that made Wade feel powerful and close and terrified all at once.
Laura made it worse, because Laura didn’t treat it like a shameful thing.
Laura treated it like training.
They started meeting once a week in the Danger Room, because the Danger Room didn’t judge, it just adjusted difficulty based on how badly you got your ass kicked. Laura would show up with her hair tied back, expression focused. Wade would show up with a bag of snacks, a playlist, and a look in his eye that said he was trying to pretend this was just another bit.
It wasn’t.
Laura helped him build proper straps for the claws — actual harnesses Wade could wear, leather and reinforced material scavenged from the mansion’s supplies, adjusted and re-adjusted until the fit was snug and safe. He'd watched her, that mixture of awe and goofy pride that only grew as she tested tension, measured, fitted. It felt like some sacred family rite, like they were making more than mere tools. That felt… good. No. That felt perfect.
It was hidden beneath the sleeves of his suit, the claws deploying through reinforced slits Wade had cut into his gloves. It was professional. It was lethal.
The day they finished the right-hand brace, Laura had picked up a silver Sharpie. While Wade was distracted trying to figure out how to tuck the leather flap, she leaned over and drew a small, jagged heart on the inside of the strap.
(When Wade noticed it later, he had to go into the bathroom and breathe into a paper bag for ten minutes, except he didn't have a paper bag so he just cried into the toilet.)
"How does it feel?" she asked.
Wade swallowed. "Like I’m cheating."
Laura’s brow furrowed. "On who?"
Wade’s laugh was thin. "On Logan. On… on being myself. Like I’m trying to borrow his shape."
Laura stepped closer. She reached out and tapped his chest, right over his heart. "You’re still you," she said. Then she tapped the harness. "This is just… a tool."
Wade exhaled shakily. "Yeah. A tool made of my boyfriend’s dead alternate self’s forearms. A totally normal tool."
Laura’s mouth twitched. "Normal is boring."
Wade stared at her, then snorted, surprised. "Oh my God, you’re right. Normal is for people with intact childhoods."
Laura’s eyes sharpened, but she didn’t retreat. "C’mon," she said, and she popped her own claws with a soft snikt that vibrated in Wade’s bones like a memory.
She taught him how to hold his wrists so he didn’t strain tendons. How to angle the claws so the impact traveled through bone instead of ripping soft tissue. How to move his shoulders so the weapon became part of his body, not something dragging him down.
Wade learned fast, because Wade had always learned fast when it came to survival. He just usually dressed it up as slapstick. He lacked the muscle memory the Wolverines had, but made up for it with his own improvisational chaos. He was no Wolverine — never could be — but, god, he made a fantastic Deadpool-with-claws.
He was not Logan. He was not Laura. He didn’t have their discipline, their directness, their grim efficiency. He had a different kind of genius.
He used the claws for traversal, which made Laura pause the first time he did it — Wade stabbing them into a wall and hauling himself up like some obscene superhero squirrel.
Laura stared. "That’s not what they’re for."
Wade grinned, upside down on the wall. "Says who? I'm like Spider-Man, but with high-density metal and severe mental illness!"
Laura snorted, walking up to him and tugging gently on one of the leather straps to check the tension. "If you snap the leather on a sharp turn, you're going to break your arm."
"Healing factor, baby! It'll grow back, hopefully bigger and with better muscle symmetry." Wade flexed, making the claws catch the dim fluorescent light.
He began to play. He used the claws to swing around pillars, his body a pendulum of red and black. He would dive from heights, digging the claws into the ceiling to stop his fall, then dropping like a spider onto his target. He didn't slash horizontally; he used the claws to pivot, to change direction mid-air, to find angles that a grounded fighter like Logan would never even consider.
It was parkour with knives. It was beautiful and horrific.
He used them for surprise attacks, too — stabbing a drone to the hilt of his katana and then, because he couldn’t help himself, adding three more holes in rapid succession like punctuation.
Laura’s mouth twitched. "Show-off."
"Jealous," Wade shot back, and then got knocked on his ass by a simulated sentinel’s arm.
They laughed more than Wade expected.
Laura corrected his grip. Wade complained loudly about all the 'claw etiquette.' Laura rolled her eyes and demonstrated a disarm that left Wade staring at his own arm like it had betrayed him. Wade tried again. And again. And again.
They sparred, too. Laura forced him to learn control, to stop swinging wildly, to stop relying on his healing factor like it was a permission slip. She stabbed him sometimes — not deep, not fatal, but enough to remind him that pain was real even if it didn’t last.
Wade learned to respect the edges. He learned to aim.
He loved them. God, he loved them.
When he wore them, he felt connected to something bigger than his own stupid, selfish life. He felt tied to Laura, who had handed him a piece of her history and said you belong. He felt tied to Logan — not just the grunted, living man sleeping down the hall, but the legacy of the weapon, the tragic hero, the survivor. It was a secret, sacred thing.
And that was precisely why he hadn't told Logan a single damn word about it.
Every time Wade thought about showing Logan, his stomach twisted into a knot of cold terror. Logan was soft with him now, yes, but Logan was still a wild, dangerous creature built on grief. If Logan saw the bones of his alternate self strapped to Wade’s body like a trophy — or worse, like a cheap gimmick — he’d be horrified. He’d think Wade was mocking him. He’d realize Wade was just a parasite clinging to the legend, and he’d leave.
So, Wade kept it secret. Once a week, late at night, he and Laura slipped into the subterranean levels of the mansion, running drills, perfecting the harnesses, laughing in low whispers while the rest of the world slept.
He told himself it was to protect Laura — for some reason, letting her have this, or maybe afraid she’d get scolded — but the truth was more embarrassing: he was scared.
After all, it was Logan’s bones. The best and worst version of the man Wade loved, literally at his fingertips.
He could imagine Logan telling him to get rid of them, to put them back, to stop playing at being something he wasn’t.
Wade didn’t think he could survive that.
And a part of him — quiet, selfish — didn’t want to give up the feeling the claws gave him. The way they made him feel like he wasn’t just Deadpool, not just a joke, but something older, fiercer.
Wolverine-adjacent.
A part of the family.
He told himself he didn’t need Logan’s blessing, but— who was he kidding? He wanted it, ache-deep.
Laura told him he should just tell Logan if he wanted. Promised up and down that he wouldn't get angry, which Wade called bullshit on every time.
But this was Laura asking him, his little baby honey badger, and Wade already felt awful telling her no once, much less over and over.
She really was just like Logan, able to wear Wade down with nothing but stubbornness.
Laura decided the reveal happened on a Tuesday.
Tuesdays were usually for tacos and bad movies, but she had dragged a grumbling Logan down to the Danger Room under the guise of ‘testing a new combat program.’ Somewhere on the way, they bumped into Remy, and since Laura couldn't really tell him they were going to be doing a very emotional, very personal thing, he invited himself along. He was chomping at the bit to make new things go boom.
Inside, the room was set to something like a collapsed parking structure — concrete pillars, twisted rebar, shadows pooling in corners.
"I don’t know why I’m here, kid," Logan said, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked tired, but the good kind of tired — the kind that came from a life that finally had a purpose. "Wade’s probably just gonna show me he learned how to do a backflip while eating a chimichanga."
"Just watch," Laura said, her voice uncharacteristically soft.
Wade stood in the center of the room. The lights dimmed. He felt the familiar weight on his forearms, the leather snug and warm. His heart was hammering a rhythm that felt like a funeral march, but as he looked at Logan — really looked at him — he saw the man who had saved him in every way a person can be saved. He didn't want to hide anymore.
"Okay, Big Bird," Wade called out, his voice trembling just a hair, "Don’t get mad. Or do get mad, actually, because you’re really hot when you’re angry and it makes your neck veins do that thing... but mostly, just look."
Wade flexed.
Snikt.
The sound was different. It wasn't the wet, tearing sound of Logan’s claws emerging from skin; it was the sharp, metallic clack of adamantium locking into a mechanical brace.
Logan froze. His entire body went rigid, his scent shifting from calm cedar to sharp, biting ozone. His eyes dropped to Wade’s hands, to the six blades of indestructible metal shimmering in the artificial light.
Wade didn't wait for a reaction. He couldn't. If he stopped, he’d lose his nerve. He signaled the computer, and the room erupted into a high-intensity combat trial.
And Logan watched.
He watched Wade move. He watched his boyfriend transform into something he’d never seen before — a whirlwind of acrobatic lethality. Wade didn't fight like a tank; he fought like a gale force wind. He used the claws to scale a vertical wall in seconds, his movements fluid and feline. He dove into a group of robot sentries, using the claws to hook their necks and swing his entire body around like a gymnast on a pommel horse, kicking heads off while the blades stayed buried in steel.
Remy let out a low whistle. "Cher been practice."
Logan couldn’t speak.
His chest felt too full, too tight, like something inside him had taken a sharp inhale and forgotten how to exhale.
He looked at Wade wearing those claws not like a man seeing a grave robbed, but like a man seeing his mate marked, claimed, and elevated into something terrifyingly holy.
A piece of him. Wade was wearing a piece of him. Wade had taken the brutal, bloody weapon of a Wolverine and bound it to his own wrists, weaving their identities together until there was no telling where the wild ended and the man began.
It was possessive. It was sick, maybe, but to a creature like Logan—a wild, solitary animal who had spent a century losing everything he touched — it was the most breathtaking thing he had ever seen. Wade wasn't just wearing an old weapon. Wade was wearing him. Wade was marking himself with Logan's shadow, claiming the pack, carrying the heavy, brutal weight of the metal right alongside him.
Wade belonged to him. Body, soul, scars, and steel.
Wade landed in a crouch, the claws sparking as they scraped the floor to slow his momentum. He was breathing hard, his chest heaving, his mask discarded on the floor somewhere. He looked up at Logan, waiting for the blow. Waiting for the rejection.
Logan was silent. He walked forward, his footsteps heavy and deliberate. He stopped inches from Wade, his shadow falling over him. Laura’s eyes flicked between them, tense. Remy straightened, suddenly less amused, like he’d realized he was standing too close to something intimate.
Wade flinched, but Logan didn't hit him. He reached down and took Wade’s right hand in his own. He traced the metal of the claws, his thumb lingering over the place where they met the harness. He looked at the leather, at the craftsmanship, and then he saw it — the little heart drawn in silver Sharpie on the underside, and his own heart squeezed.
"I told him to keep them."
Logan’s breath hitched. He looked at Laura, who was watching from the sidelines with a look of fierce pride, and then back at Wade. "You—"
"He’s family," Laura said, as if that settled it. "And every Wolverine has claws."
Wade made a broken sound, half-laugh, half-sob, because hearing it again made it real all over, and he hated how badly he needed it.
Logan stared at them both.
"I’m sorry, Logan," Wade said, his voice small, "I’m so sorry if this is weird, I’ll take them off, I’ll bury them again, I’ll—"
"Shut up," Logan commanded, but there was no heat in it.
He wasn't angry. He was... mesmerized. There was a raw, primal hunger in his eyes, a look of profound recognition. He looked at Wade and didn't see a mockery; he saw a completion.
The sight of his own legacy — his own literal bones — strapped to the man who was his entire future... it broke something inside Logan. It broke the last of the walls he’d built around his heart.
Remy made a soft sound like he was trying very hard not to be part of this. "Uh. I can… go."
Laura didn’t move. She watched Logan like she was watching a storm decide where to land.
He didn't kiss Wade. Not yet. He just stared into Wade’s eyes, his own welling with tears he refused to let fall. He felt a surge of possessiveness so strong it made his own claws ache in his housing. He wanted Wade to wear them forever. He wanted the world to see Wade and know exactly who he belonged to. He wanted everyone to know that this man — this beautiful, chaotic, indestructible man — was a Wolverine.
"Will you marry me?" Logan asked.
The room went silent in a way that felt physically impossible.
Wade froze like someone had hit pause. Laura’s eyes widened, sharp and startled. Remy’s eyebrows shot up so high they nearly left his forehead.
Logan stood there, breath heavy, heart pounding, staring at Wade like he’d just thrown himself off a cliff and was waiting to see if the ground would catch him.
"What?" Wade squeaked.
"I’m serious," Logan said, his grip tightening on Wade’s suit, his forehead leaning against Wade’s. Then, because he couldn’t stop, because the words were pouring out of a place he usually kept locked up, "Wade. I mean it. I’m—" He swallowed hard. His throat felt too tight for honesty. "I’m in it. With you. I’m tired of losin’ people. I’m tired of—" He stopped, breath shaking. "I want you. I want you here. For good."
Wade felt his knees buckle. He would have fallen if Logan wasn't holding him. He lifted a hand — careful, claws angled away — and touched Logan’s cheek with the back of his knuckles, a hesitant, almost disbelieving gesture.
"You’re asking me," Wade whispered, "in front of our murder daughter and the bayou magician."
Remy muttered, "I can leave."
Laura said, flat, "You should."
Remy opened his mouth, then apparently thought better of arguing with a Wolverine and a Wolverine-adjacent, and backed toward the door with exaggerated slowness. "Congratulations, mon amies," he said, voice dry, "Try not to stab each other too much."
The door slid shut behind him.
Laura didn’t move. She watched, still and intense, like this mattered in a way she didn’t have words for. Her claws had retracted, but her hands were clenched at her sides, tension held tight.
Wade looked at Laura, helplessly, like he didn’t know what to do with witnesses.
Laura met his gaze. "Say yes," she said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.
Wade’s laugh broke out, wet and disbelieving. "Laura!"
Laura’s expression didn’t change, but her eyes softened, just barely. "You love him," she said, "He loves you. You’re both stupid. Say yes."
Logan let out a rough sound that might’ve been a laugh if his throat hadn’t been full of fear. He didn’t look away from Wade.
Wade looked back at Logan, and the silence between them was thick with everything they’d survived, everything they hadn’t said, everything they’d been too scared to want.
Wade’s voice went small again, honest in a way that made Logan’s chest ache. "You’re not going to regret it?"
Logan’s eyes burned. "No," he said, "I’m gonna regret not askin’ sooner."
"Logan... I’m a mercenary. I’m a guy who kills people for money and talks to the ceiling. I’m wearing your dead self’s arms."
"And you look fucking beautiful in them," Logan growled, a tear finally escaping and tracing a path through the grit on his cheek. "I want to see you use them every day. I want to train with you. I want to fight beside you. I want to be the guy who sharpens them for you."
Wade let out a jagged, hysterical laugh that turned into a sob. He threw his arms around Logan’s neck, the claws carefully angled away, and buried his face in Logan’s shoulder.
"Yes," Wade choked out. "Yes, you grumpy, beautiful, Canadian bastard. Yes."
Logan’s shoulders sagged with relief so sharp it was almost pain. He stepped forward and grabbed Wade, pulling him in hard, mouth crashing against his, not caring about the teeth because the point wasn’t pleasure or pain, the point was contact, the point was mine and yours and ours.
Wade made a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob, and clung back, careful with his claws, pressing his forehead to Logan’s.
Laura watched them, and something in her face shifted — something like longing, something like peace. She didn’t smile exactly. But she looked… less alone.
Logan pulled back enough to breathe. His hand slid to Wade’s forearm, thumb brushing the harness.
"You keep ’em," Logan said, voice rough.
Wade blinked. "The claws?"
Logan nodded once. "You’re family."
Wade’s eyes filled again, ridiculous and immediate. "Stop making me have feelings in my face."
Logan huffed. "Too bad."
Laura, apparently deciding the moment was getting too soft, cleared her throat. "Training," she said.
Wade turned toward her, still clinging to Logan with one arm. "Laura, read the room. I just got engaged. I’m basically a princess now."
Laura’s eyes narrowed. "Training," she repeated, and popped her claws with a sharp snikt.
Wade’s entire body lit up with delighted fear. "Oh my god, she’s going to make me do push-ups as a wedding present. Laura, my darling future step-daughter, I'm not going to train with all these tears in my eyes."
"Ugh."
Logan’s laugh came out real this time, startled out of him by the absurdity of it all: the Danger Room, the claws, the proposal, the fact that his life had somehow become something almost normal, if you didn’t look too closely.
He leaned in and murmured into Wade’s ear, low enough that Laura wouldn’t hear, "Later," he said, voice thick with promise, "you can show me more of what you've learned."
Wade shivered, and the sound he made was not entirely innocent. "Sir," he whispered back, "this is a family establishment."
Logan bit his neck through the suit, gentle and claiming. "Yeah," he said. "Family."
Wade’s breath hitched again, and the word seemed to settle into him, heavy and warm. He looked at Laura, at Logan, at the simulated concrete around them, and for the first time in a long time, Wade didn’t feel like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
He felt like the shoes were his. Like the ground was his. Like the future — terrifying, tender, impossible — might actually hold.
"Come on," Logan said, hooking an arm around Wade’s waist. "Let’s go show the others. I want to see the look on Summers’ face when he realizes I’m marrying a man who can skewer him from a chandelier."
Wade beamed, his claws retracting into their housings with a sharp, final click. "Oh, Scottie’s gonna love it. We can have the wedding in the Prof's office! I’ll do a solo, Logan. A literal dance of death. It’ll be the most romantic thing the X-Men have ever seen."
"I’m sure it will be, Wade," Logan said, leading him out of the room. "Deadpool with claws," he muttered, almost inaudible, "That’s new."
"Wolviepool," Wade offered, whisper-quiet.
"Terrible."
"Yeah. I get that a lot."