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Logan and Laura were up in Bear Mountain, one of their new favorite spots whenever they needed a break from city life. Their escape this time had been sudden, and they had nothing but the clothes on their backs and two ratty sleeping rolls between them.
The evening was cool, with autumn setting in, and they sat on stumps around a small campfire. Logan was already going a bit cross-eyed from all the empty bottles littered about his feet, but Laura was alert as ever, flipping through some trashy magazine she’d pulled from the backpack she always kept on her. Night was falling, and Logan figured they needed more firewood before it truly got dark. He couldn’t seem to get up, though; the weight of their conversation was still too heavy to do anything but stare at the flames and wish he were dead.
He got like this sometimes, and Laura was becoming good at recognizing when their talking of the past turned counterproductive. When it happened, she usually turned the conversation to something benign, or said something she knew would make Logan laugh, or something about Wade that was sure to distract Logan from his misery.
This time, however, she weaponized a new method to get Logan out of his funk.
“So,” she said casually, eyes skimming one of the pages of her damn magazine, “are you a boobs or a butt guy?”
Logan nearly choked on his beer.
“What?” he asked, doing his best to sound more like a judgmental parent than a growling monster. “What sort of garbage are you reading?”
Laura waved the magazine between them. “It’s a quiz. And it’s the sort of garbage that any normal girl would be reading at my age.”
“There is no such thing as normal,” he snapped, definitely sounding more threatening than parental now. “Give me that.”
She did, her expression lifting into one of naive excitement. “You have to fill it out left to right–”
Logan tossed the magazine into the fire.
“Hey!” she protested.
Logan sat back on his stump, pleased with himself as the pages of the magazine blackened and curled. He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a slow, satisfied swig.
Laura sighed. “Now we’ll never know what kind of person catches your eye.”
“That quiz is bullshit,” Logan found himself lecturing her. “Not everyone is going to be confined to only boobs or butts.”
In the low firelight, Laura rested her chin in her hand, looking glum. “Obviously. That’s not what makes the quiz fun, though. You have to choose.”
“I choose neither.”
Laura blew a raspberry against her palm.
Logan stood up. “Alright, I’m going to get more firewood.”
“Okay, mister boobless and buttless,” Laura said without missing a beat.
As Logan staggered drunkenly out into the darkening forest, away from the teenage daughter he never asked for (but loved to death), he couldn’t help but think more about the question.
—
“Good morning, kitty,” Wade said.
It was about one week since his last trip to the wilderness, and Logan was cranky, groggy, and quite frankly already tired of city life again. He was sitting with Laura at Blind Al’s table, watching Wade set a bowl of brown slop in front of his dog. The morning sun was filtering through the dusty window, the soft light accentuating Wade’s scars.
“You can’t call a dog kitty,” Logan pointed out over his black coffee. He let his gaze trail down a pale mark at the base of Wade’s throat.
“I wasn’t talking to her,” Wade replied. He turned away and reached up into a cabinet for a coffee mug of his own.
Logan’s eye caught on another scar beneath the hem of his sleep shirt, just above his ass.
“Butt guy,” Laura whispered beside him.
Logan shot her an unamused look.
Wade got the mug down, and the scar vanished from view. He poured himself a horrible concoction of coffee, milk substitute, and artificial sweetener, and then joined them at the table.
“Alright, show me what you got,” Wade said to Laura, who turned her weekend homework toward him. She didn’t mention anything more about butts, thank god, but she did give Logan one last smug smile.
Logan tuned them out while they worked through whatever Einstein-level algebra Laura had brought over, wondering when the hell Laura had become so astute. Was she always this perceptive? Or were Logan’s feelings toward Wade just pathetically obvious?
No, he knew they weren’t obvious. If they were, Wade would have said or done something about them by now. Laura was just an observational freak of nature.
Still, he wasn’t a butt guy.
If anything, he liked scars.
—
“Oh Wolverine,” Wade sang for his attention.
Logan, sweaty and still healing beneath his yellow suit, looked up from where he lay and saw Wade bouncing over to him in full Deadpool gear. The man passed the unconscious body of the corrupt prison warden they’d just beaten to a pulp, giving him a soft kick to the head before coming to lay beside Logan on the concrete.
“Whatcha thinkin’ about,” Wade asked, gazing up at the sky like they were on a date.
“My tibia knitting itself back together,” Logan answered.
Wade rolled to his side and gazed down at him. “You take longer than me. Is that a metal bone thing, or just an old man thing, do you recon?”
“It’s a shut up and leave me alone thing,” Logan grumbled. He was grateful Wade was wearing his mask, close as their faces were.
Wade flopped onto his back again, but his body remained pressed up against Logan’s side. Logan could feel the other man’s restlessness by the way his foot kept knocking against his own.
Logan laid a leg across both of Wade’s. “Stop.”
Wade went still.
They lay like that for a while, Logan fully healed now but pretending not to be, and Wade fighting the urge to fidget. Logan could feel the tendons in Wade’s shins moving as he wiggled his toes.
“Foot guy,” an imaginary Laura mocked him.
Logan sighed.
—
“So if it’s not boobs or butts,” Laura said relentlessly, “then my money’s on hips.”
Logan tore his gaze away from Wade, who was leaning against the kitchen counter while talking to two of his friends. His hips were cocked in a manner that demanded all of Logan’s attention, but Logan was stronger than that. He turned to look at Laura instead.
“Give it a rest,” he retorted. He and Laura were in the corner of the living room, away from most of the other dinner guests.
Laura laughed. “I think he’s doing it on purpose, you know.”
Logan lifted his beer to his lips. “Right. Sure.”
When he looked back at Wade, though, the other man was already watching him, smiling knowingly. Logan found he couldn’t look away.
Wade had a very nice smile.
“That is–” Logan belatedly corrected himself, eyes still on Wade’s lips, “Doing what on purpose?”
“Real smooth, good save,” Laura replied, and she stepped away when Yukio called to her.
Seeing a spot open up next to Logan, Wade excused himself from his friends and started over.
“No, no, please no,” Logan willed to the universe. His gaze was pulled down to those lithe hips again, which moved in sinful little tilts as Wade navigated the furniture. “You’re in a crowded room, dumbass. Everyone can see you.”
Wade couldn’t hear him, of course, but his pelvis paused as he was intercepted by Vanessa.
“Thank fuck,” Logan muttered, and he took his beer and fled to the roof.
—
Wade was cooking dinner for just the two of them. It had been his idea–something about Logan recently being in a perpetual state of hangriness, whatever that meant–and Logan had found it impossible to refuse, especially when those clever fingers (since when did Logan have a weakness for hands?) had pulled him into the apartment so imploringly.
The kitchen was about a million degrees, even with the small window open, and Logan sat at the table sweating miserably while he cut onions. As he sliced, he thought about the stupid quiz and all the ways he could destroy the magazine once and for all.
Across the kitchen, Wade rolled up his shirtsleeves.
“Fuckin’ hell,” Logan muttered, nearly cutting himself.
“No need to bully the onions, Wolvie,” Wade said from where he flaunted his forearms over the hot stove. “They’re not doing it on purpose.”
“I’m not crying,” Logan growled, and he turned away so he could no longer see Wade’s veins bulging beneath those scars.
—
“What are we doing here?” Wade asked.
It was the middle of the night, but the city was alive below them. They sat on the edge of some roof, both in full crime-fighting gear, and Logan peered through some nighttime binoculars he’d found at a pawn shop down the street.
“Arson,” he responded seriously.
“Ah,” Wade said. “Not that I’m complaining, but why are we burning down what looks like… a magazine warehouse?”
Logan lowered the binoculars. “You got a problem with this?”
“Not at all,” Wade said lightly, lying back against the roof. “But I wouldn’t call this much of a date. I was hoping we’d go to the movies. Or better yet, the arcade.”
Logan ignored him. He was being annoying on purpose.
“Or maybe we could go wherever you and Laura go. You know, whenever you disappear for days at a time.”
This time, Logan did turn to look at him. There was a billboard next to their building, and it cast a harsh light across Wade’s unreadable mask. It also cut shadows between his muscles.
Logan couldn’t help but let his eyes wander over the chiseled suit as he asked, “Does it bother you when we do that?”
Wade shrugged, his pecs bouncing almost imperceptibly.
Logan forced his mind to focus. Wade’s body language had changed, and even though he was still splayed across the roof lazily, his legs were wiggling nervously.
Logan set a hand on Wade’s thigh, and Wade relaxed. “What’s on your mind?” he asked.
Wade stared straight up at the black sky, his chest rising and falling slowly. Logan waited, keeping a grounding touch on his knee.
“It’s stupid,” Wade said after a moment.
Logan snorted. “I’m expecting stupid.”
Wade huffed out a small laugh, but when he spoke again, his voice was smaller still. “Whenever you leave… How do I know you aren’t leaving for good?”
Logan’s fingers reflexively tightened around Wade’s thigh.
“You’re right,” he answered. “That was stupid.”
Wade started to argue, but his words died in his throat as Logan leaned over him.
“I’ll always come back,” Logan said bluntly. “There are too many things here that I like.”
His scars.
His feet.
The way he fidgeted.
His smile.
His hips.
His hands.
His oil-splattered arms when he cooked.
The fear in his voice when he asked if Logan might abandon him.
…Maybe even his boobs and his butt.
“I’ll always come back,” Logan said again, leaving no room for doubt with his conviction.
Wade took a stuttering breath, and Logan knew he believed him. Even if he didn’t know that those “things” were all him.
—
Less than a month later, Laura flipped open another magazine.
“How to tell if he really likes you,” she read aloud, the firelight illuminating her gleeful expression.
Logan waited, staring into the small fire.
A moment of silence passed, and then Laura peeked over the top of the cover, her eyebrows raised. “Really? You’ll actually do this one with me?”
Logan grunted noncommittally, but he gestured for her to continue.
“Okay, great!” She cleared her throat. “Question one: How many times a day does he initiate physical contact?”
Logan thought of Wade’s body heat. He thought of Wade’s leg pressed against his on the couch the other night. He remembered him leaning in the doorway just that morning as Logan prepared to leave, his hands grabbing him by the–
“I changed my mind,” Logan said, and he grabbed the magazine and shredded it to pieces.
Laura boo’d. “Mister boobless and buttless strikes again, huh?”
“The less you know, the better," Logan growled, and he threw their bag of marshmallows at her head.
She punctured them with her claws and laughed.