Hollow


Wade is nervous.

He hasn’t been this nervous since…okay, he’s never been this nervous, but the last time he was almost this nervous was the last time he tried to ask Terry to dinner, and that was ages ago.  Years, even.  Like, three.

He has Nate in his bedroom.

Nate being anywhere at this point is a frigging miracle (one Wade probably doesn’t deserve and isn’t about to start questioning too closely), but Nate being in his bedroom is so many shades of awesome that something very not-awesome has to be iminent.

Nevermind the fact that Nate is currently in his bedroom sleeping next to a seven-year-old kid of whom he is wayyyyy overprotective on Wade’s nice shiny new bed (that still has a faint new-furniture smell) in Wade’s very not-clean-enough-for-a-little-kid apartment because they just got back from the future and Nate was too tired to go anywhere farther away.

Nate came right over, as soon as he’d seen they were back, he said.  Wade was the only person in the world he wanted to see, Nate said.  He missed Wade so much, he said.

At that point, Wade shouted Bob and Weasel out of the apartment to hide the fact that he was crying like a teenage girl.

Hope roused a little at the noise, took one look at him, and smiled a big, dopey smile that Wade has never had a little kid direct at him.  “Hello again, Mister Wilson,” she yawned.  “You don’t remember me yet, but I met you about a couple thousand years from now.  You were really nice to me.”  And then she went right back to sleep on Nate’s shoulder.

All thoughts of being jealous and gripey and mean to the kid immediately fled Wade’s mind.

The kid likes him.  Nobody likes Wade.  Even the people he’s ‘friends’ with can barely stand him.  Sandi only thinks he’s funny, and Inez only likes his ass.  Nate and Terry are the only ones who approach some form of actual liking.

So he dragged a spare blanket from the closet and flapped a hand toward the bedroom and mumbled that Nate and Hope could have the bed.

At which point, he had Nate in his bedroom.  In his bed, even.  Clothed and accompanied by an adopted daughter, unfortunately (because Wade has kinks, but, ew, no thanks), but still much better than the last two years of depressing Lack of Nate.

The lights are out, he left the TV turned way down.  He’s jittery, and doesn’t want to sleep, in case it turns out he was dreaming all along and he wakes up to (once again) have no Nate.

A muted sound snaps him out of a doze, gun in hand before he’s even opened his eyes.

“Just me,” Nate says, turning off the TV and sitting down on the floor beside the couch.

Wade blinks.  “Thought you were ‘sleep,” he mutters, shoving the Uzi back under the couch cushion.

Nate shakes his head.  “It’s silly, I know…I kept worrying I’d wake up and you’d be…gone.”

The significant pause makes Wade think that Nate means some other word than gone.  Dead?  He raises an eyebrow, rearranges his skewed blanket so that it covers his feet again.  “Oh-kay.  So, uh…what?  Thought you’d come out and stare at me while I sleep or somethin’?  That’s a little controlling and creepy even for you, Nate.”

For a while, Nate doesn’t say anything.  He reaches out and tugs at the edge of Wade’s mask.  “Never used to wear that around me, when you weren’t on a job.”

Wade self-consciously swats Nate’s hand away.  “Don’t wanna freak out the kid if she wakes up before I do.”  Not when she likes him.  The longer he can keep her smiling that sweet little smile like he’s the coolest guy she ever met, the better.

“She’s seen worse.”

She hasn’t.  Wade scoffs bitterly, “People say that, but they always change their minds when they see my face.”

Nate grabs his hand and squeezes tightly.  “Wade.  She’s seen worse.  She may ask questions, but she will not scream.”

Wade just squirms.  He wants to get away, but he doesn’t.  Even before living two years thinking Nate was dead, he would’ve craved such simple physical contact from anyone let alone the big dork he was maybe-sort-of-probably in love with.

It seems like a very sudden thing, having Nate leaning above him and sliding a cool metal thumb under the mask.

“Um,” Wade squeaks, heart racing.  “Hi.”

The smile on Nate’s face is both pained and relieved at the same time.  “Hi,” he whispers back.  “Can I take it off and kiss you properly?”

He almost says something like ‘you can take off anything and kiss me however you want,’ but he abruptly remembers that Neena got a goodbye kiss and all he got was a handshake, and it stings so much he wants to knock Nate’s teeth out.  Instead, he pushes Nate’s hand away and rolls over, yanking the blanket tight around his shoulders.  “Yeah, well, why don’t you go find Neena, if you want someone to kiss?”

“I don’t want to kiss Dom right now, I want to kiss you,” Nate huffs, like Wade’s being stupid.  “Anyway, I saw her yesterday and I haven’t seen you in almost eight years.”

“Wait—yesterday?” Wade echoes, confused.  “No, nevermind, I can never understand all that tangled-up time-travel shit.  So what you’re saying is, you can get raspberry Icees any day of the week, but you’ve been craving a Cherry Slurpee, and the future doesn’t have Seven-Elevens.”

Nate looks totally lost.  “What?  What the hell do Slurpees have to do with anything?  And aren’t Icees and Slurpees the same thing?”

“Actually, there’s a subtle but noticeable difference in—stop trying to sidetrack me!”  Wade frowns fiercely and grabs the gun from under the cushion again.  “You.  Back in bed with the munchkin.”

“Are you really going to shoot me?” Nate asks evenly.  “I don’t heal like I used to.”

He doesn’t?  Wade files that away for later questioning and moves the barrel of the gun from between Nate’s eyes to a more harmless spot just under Nate’s clavicle.  “All the more reason to do what you’re told for once.”

“I don’t want any more misunderstandings coming between us,” Nate says, and leans closer.  “If it would make you happy, I’ll swear a notarized public oath that I’ll never sleep with Dom again.  I saw….a lot of things in the future that made me realize I’d taken something very important for granted.  How long have we known each other, minus the two years Hope and I were gone?”

Wade has to think for a bit.  “Uh…I guess…like, six years or something.”

Nate flinches like Wade punched him in the gut (and no, you distrustful readers, he didn’t).  “And how many times would you say I’ve abandoned you?”

That one hurts, and Wade jabs the muzzle of the gun against a pressure point beside Nate’s shoulder.  “If we count you running off into the future, four.  Almost five, if we count you tricking me into ‘porting off Providence.  Not exactly the best show of gratitude, by the way, when I went to all the trouble of betraying the X-Men while wearing yellow panties—”

“Yellow panties?”

“Long story.  Where was I?  I lobotomized you to save the world, found a baby alien to fix your arm, chased you across dimensions, raised you from bad-guy-induced infancy, solved a murder mystery—”

“You turned out to be the murderer.”

“—helped you take over a country—”

“Dom did that, actually.”

“You want me to fucking shoot you, don’t you?”

“Sorry, go on.”

“—played conscience so you’d save the world from that alien mind-eaty-thingy, and showed up heroically at the last minute to help get all the people off Providence.  Also?  Neena’s pointed guns at you way more times than I have.”

“And she’s only actually shot me twice.”

“Well, I only shot you…uh…let’s see, five, six, seven…twenty-two…twenty-eight…”  Wade trails off as he loses count (and steam).  He points the gun away, clicks the safety on.  “Okay, so maybe the abandoning thing was usually kind of justified,” he mumbles finally, feeling awful and hollow and useless like he has for almost two straight years.

But Nate hugs him.

Hugs him!

“No,” Nate chokes out.  “Never.”

“Um.  What?” Wade manages.

“You don’t deserve that.  What I did was wrong.”

Okay, stop.  Total Twilight Zone.

Wade thumbs the safety back off.  “Who are you, and what have you done with Priscilla?  I’ll warn you now, I shoot Skrulls.  I once shot a shit-ton of the little bastards, a bunch of which looked like handsome green versions of me.  The schmoopy stuff I could write off, because the Lemming King of Providence had his sappy moments, even with me—but if you utter a real apology, I’ll know for sure you’re some shapeshifting alien thing, and I swear on Bea Arthur’s grave, I’ll shoot you in all the worst places to shoot a man.”

Nate leans up with a sad little smile and doesn’t say anything.  He just sits there with that look like he’s thinking it instead.  Definitely the real Nate, then.  “Well,” he says softly.  “You swore on your dream girl’s grave, and I wouldn’t want to get shot in some of the imaginative places you probably have on your list.  I won’t say it.”

Wade subsides to a sulk and puts the gun away again.  “Damn right you won’t.  Now,  just assuming you’re really Nathan Askani’son Gesundheit and just assuming I’d be willing to let you kiss me after you left me here and let me think you were dead for two years…just assuming all that…”

“You let me kiss you before,” Nate points out.

“That’s different; I was in shock.  The point is, assuming all that, why the hell would you wanna kiss me, anyhow?  I’m sure you had yourself another smokin’ hot future-wife—is that the second, or the third?”

Nate folds his hands over Wade’s sternum and settles down like he means to wait as long as it takes.  He raises his eyebrows.  “Wade, are you asking me to make an honest woman of you?” he teases with a straight face.  “We’d have to drive to Connecticut.  It’s scenic, but I hear Connecticut is irrepressibly boring.”

And Wade can’t take it anymore.  He bursts out laughing and quickly covers his mouth to keep from waking Hope in the next room.  

And then Nate smiles at him, and he slowly starts to realize that he’s not laughing now—he’s crying.

“You’re a dork,” he sniffles, and shoves at Nate’s shoulder.  “It’s so not cool to joke about that.  I’ve read the back-issues—hideous things happen to your spouses.”

“Do you love me?” Nate asks, not budging an inch.

“Oh, God…”  Wade rolls his eyes, even though Nate can’t see through the mask.  “We’re not allowed to ask that question.  You made that rule, forever ago, and I said I’d be okay with it as long as it applied to you, too.”

“You can ask me, if you want.”

Wade sneers.  “No, thanks, I like being able to pretend the answer’s something I’d like.”

“How do you know you wouldn’t like the real answer more?”

“Because I know you,” Wade snaps.  “Remember?  Six years?  Almost five times?  That’s not a great ratio.  Add in multiple PDAs with Neena and multiple instances of ‘oh, it’s just Wade, shoot him in the head or something, he’ll be fine later,’ and the number you end up with is something close to ‘if you’ll believe that, I got a bridge I’d like to sell you.’”

Nate makes a face like he wants to cry—which is so not fair, all things considered—but just says, “You’re right.  Can I kiss you now?”

“Nuh-uh, you never answered my question.”

“And you just said you didn’t want to hear the answer.”

Wade’s head starts to ache while he works through that one.  When understanding sets in, he determines he’s definitely misinterpreting something, somewhere, but he chooses the optimistic possibility as his own private reality.  “Maybe just a little one,” he concedes.

And Nate slides the mask off and kisses him just right, exactly the way he always liked it, and Nate takes advantage of the distraction to slip his hands under other articles of Wade’s clothing (not that it matters much by that point, because Wade could be fully dressed and still feel naked without his mask), and does wicked, evil, beautiful things that make him moan so loud he’s sure he must have woken poor Hope (and ew, it’s not cool to wake up to the sounds of your dad sexing somebody up).

By the time they’re done, he feels awful again.  He feels like molestation victims must feel.  He feels like he was talked into something he wasn’t sure he really wanted, just because there was a shiny promise of something nice that he didn’t end up getting.  The fact that he enjoyed the sex is neither here nor there—the fact that Nate is always, always acting like Wade’s nothing to him and still had the balls to wax emo makes Wade feel used.

And not just used, but used up.  It’s like the day he found the paperwork on Sandi’s desk and read that nasty little phrase—paid time-off for bereavement—and suddenly Nate was really, officially, dead.  He feels too empty to feel.

Nate kisses him again, mumbles something that Wade can’t bring himself to pay attention to, gets up and goes back to bed (Wade’s bed).

Wade sits up and turns the TV back on and manages to fill the emptiness with numbness like always.

Hours later, someone tugs at his blanket.

“Are you okay, Mister Wilson?”

He frowns.  Bob’s hands aren’t that little.  Bob’s voice isn’t that high.  He glances over.

It’s Hope.  Her eyes are wide and concerned.  But Nate was right—she’s not screaming.  It’s like she doesn’t even notice his face.

“Huh?” he mumbles.

“Nathan made breakfast.  Pancakes, because he said you liked them.  He said your name lots of times, but you didn’t answer.  Are you hungry?”

He makes a face and turns his gaze back to the TV.  It’s the day’s reruns of violent old cartoons.  “I don’t think I want anything Nathan cooked.”

“I could make something for you instead, if you want,” Hope offers, and hops up onto the couch next to him.  “I don’t know how to make much, but if you’re mad at Nathan, I’m sure you’d want anybody else’s cooking.”

Incredulous, he looks at her.

She still has that same earnest look on her face.  “It’s okay,” she says.  “Sometimes Nathan makes me so mad I want to hit him.  He drives most people pretty nuts.”

The child is made of solid gold.  He already decided to like her, but now he’s sure he’s going to love her to bits.  He’s going to spoil her epically, and teach her everything a cute little mutant girl needs to know to get by (like where the best food stalls are, how to get a cab in rush hour, and how to break a man’s hand in five places with surprisingly minimal effort).

“Gimme a minute to go get clean clothes,” he says finally.  “We’ll leave Nate here with his yucky pancakes and go get some Belgian waffles down the street.  Way better than pancakes.”

“Really?  Could we?”  Her little face lights up, and shoves away Wade’s numbness.

He smiles at her.  “Sure.”

She hugs him tightly.  “Yay!  You’re the best, Mister Wilson!”

“Call me Wade.”

“Okay, Wade!”

And Wade tells himself it’s Nate’s own fault if he looks disappointed holding a big plate of pancakes all alone in the kitchenette.  He tells himself it doesn’t make him feel guilty or ungrateful.  He tells himself it doesn’t make him want to shoot himself (again).

Wade’s gotten very good at telling himself lies.

When he’s dressed, he comes back out to the living room to see Hope smiling that same ‘you’re so awesome!’ smile at him.  She takes his hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world.  “Let’s go eat waffles, Wade!”

Nate adopting a mutant messiah, Wade decides, may be the best thing that ever happened.


.End.