Enjoy the Silence


Contrary to popular belief, Wade Wilson was perfectly capable of going without talking, singing, or even humming for several minutes on end while awake.  If he was completely focused on something, he didn’t have the attention to spare on making extraneous noise.  Of course, how long he was focused depended on a variety of factors, including the difficulty of the task at hand or the love of the television program.

Wade didn’t talk when he was shooting, when there were more than ten people to kill, when he was tailing someone.

Wade didn’t talk when he was watching the newest episodes of his favorite shows, when he was executing a prank, when he was counting the number of licks to the center of a tootsie pop (he was keeping an aggregated mean, something he considered a ‘sacred mission’).

And, much to Logan’s relief, Wade didn’t talk post-coitus for at least five minutes unless spoken to.

Wade was always at his most beautiful when he was being quiet—the lack of chatter made it easier to concentrate on dimples, puppy eyes, the perfect smile…a disarming, expressive face.

So Logan was going through the effort of training Wade to enjoy silence.

Negative reinforcement was a waste of time with Wade.  Threats of indignity or bodily harm were ignored outright.  Deprivation of toys, food, or television resulted in whining.  Actual violence always ended badly for everyone but Wade.

Positive reinforcement, however, worked like a charm.  Anything from the week’s preferred candy to kisses to a simple ‘yes, you can maim that guy now’ was seen as a reward; just like a particularly yappy canine, if Wade was quiet for two minutes or more, he got a treat.  Logan didn’t push for much more than about seven, because the ten minute mark was the point at which everyone else got antsy at the unusual lack of babble.

Precious moments of hush, slowly cropping up.  A little here, a little there.

Moments.

All he needed.

There was a tiny scar on Wade’s upper lip, on the left side, near the crease of his cheek; it was hard to see when he was talking.  Details like that, things Logan couldn’t inspect when Wade was in motion and gabbing, were adding to the mountain of reasons he was growing to adore the loudmouthed kid, and making him need those moments all the more.

Logan didn’t think much about love (tried not to, anyway), partly because of the line of work he always seemed to end up in, and partly because it looked like he’d probably outlive anyone he tried to court.  Investing emotion seemed to be, as Victor had always insisted, an exercise in futility.  But it was hard not to invest at least a little emotion in Wade, whether it was annoyance or humor or something deeper, because Wade had an uncanny knack for burrowing into people’s minds and making himself right at home in the center of their attention.

‘Love’ was just a word, full of vagaries and mixed connotations.  What he was starting to feel for this punk kid who was barely a quarter his age…it couldn’t be pinned down with one word, and he kind of liked it that way.  Too simple, too complex, too insignificant, and too profound for words, that’s what it was.  Primal.  Perfect.

A force of nature, just like Wade.

And in those almost-spiritual moments, those fragments of not-exactly-love, Logan was able to watch little nuances of behavior, as well.

If Wade wasn’t given an outlet for his excess energy, he had trouble sleeping.  There were (as far as Logan knew) only two ways to cure this insomnia:  let him burn off the energy somehow or sing him to sleep.  Logan would never have admitted it, but there were times when the kid’s stamina far outlasted his own, and he’d stumbled upon the singing thing out of self-defense.  Apparently, a few different songs would work, but Logan only knew the words to one of them.  He would never understand why Wade thought ‘Suicide Is Painless’ was a happy song (the reasons couldn’t be good), but it put him to sleep with a smile.

If there was junk food nearby, Wade would stare at it and pout.  More often than not, Stryker’s doctors had Wade on a strict diet.  He ate junk food because it was comfort food; it apparently interfered with the cocktail of vitamins, minerals, and God-knew-what that he was supposed to take every day, so they had a tendency to ban him from the stuff.  It was true that Wade was on a three-thousand-calorie diet that was meant to be high in proteins and saturated fats, but Wade was a worse nervous eater than Fred, and could put away five thousand calories in a day, if he could find them.

And if Wade went too long without talking, he started biting his nails.

“Stop that,” he chided, tugging Wade’s hand away from his mouth.

“Can’t help it,” Wade mumbled.  “Absent oral fixation, quoth Major Asshole’s freaky quacks.  If I’m not talking, I have to chew on somethin’.  Usually works out, ‘cause o’ the candy ‘n stuff.”

“Do it too much and you’ll make yer fingers bleed.”

Wade shrugged.

Sighing, Logan pulled Wade into his lap.  “I guess that’s another bad habit to train you out of.”

At that point, it seemed to occur to Wade that he’d broken a pretty lengthy silence.  “You made me talk,” he accused with a pout.  “I was up to, like, eight minutes or something.”

“Yes, you were doing very well,” Logan praised.  “Whattaya want?”

A few more seconds of pouting, a slow, thoughtful grin, an energetic bounce.  “Lemme see your tags.”

Logan arched an eyebrow.  “Let you see somethin’ you coulda been staring at any time I take a nap?”

“Peeking is cheating,” Wade said philosophically.  “It’s more fun if you let me.”

It perplexed Logan, but he gave in.  “All right, darlin’.  Have yerself a look.”

Hot, callused fingers touched his chest, picked up his dogtags, held one up for inspection, traced almost reverently over the stamped letters and numbers.

And a silence blossomed into existence.

Logan felt a sense of meditative calm while staring at that pretty, down-turned face with his hands on Wade’s thighs.

“Logan, James,” Wade said at last, and Logan watched the words forming on soft lips.  “No middle initial?  Name like that, you’d think it’d be something nice ‘n boring like…T.  T for Thomas.  T for Tiberius, heh.”

Logan rolled his eyes and snorted.

“What, not a Trek fan?”  Wade looked up at him, grinning.  “You know this means I’ve gotta come up with a pet name.”

“‘Old man’ ain’t a pet name?” he said with mock-affront.

“How ‘bout Jimmy?”

He groaned.  “No.  God, no.”

“Too Vicky?  Yeah, guess so…  Jimbo?”

He gave Wade a stern look.  “Kid, don’t make me regret lettin’ you see those tags.”

“Don’t be such a sourpuss,” Wade chided, charming him with a smile and a kiss.  “Let’s see…Jim would be way too Star Trek.  I’d always be wondering if you had a Kirk Effect.  What about…Jamie?”

“Not where anybody can hear you,” he finally relented, knowing that if he didn’t grant permission for a nickname, Wade would start getting really creative, and churn out the same kind of nonsense that Victor had jokingly offered when naming the rats in their prison cell.

Wade laughed.  “Okay, old man.  You win.  Jamie in private, Honey-pie in public.”

“Brat,” he chuckled, taking the joke with good humor out of sheer contentment.

“You’re being agreeable.  I’m immediately suspicious.  We’re half-naked and on a bed, is the agreeability a prelude to wild sex?”

Logan rolled his eyes again.  “Kids…sex is th’only thing on yer mind, ain’t it?”

“I’ll have you know I think about food, sitcoms, and killing people, too.  Like this one time in Malaysia, when—”

Logan stemmed the unnecessary chatter with a finger over Wade’s lips.

Brief silence.  Then, “Totally five seconds from biting your finger.”

So Logan replaced the finger with his lips.

“I thought I only got treats for being quiet.”

“Consider that incentive to shut yer mouth and look pretty for a few minutes.”

Wade took up the challenge, slipping a tag between his teeth to chew on and going back to whatever bizarre contemplations he’d been entertaining earlier.

In turn, Logan went back to his new hobby of watching Wade.

Anything that could occupy Wade thoroughly enough to keep him quiet did not bear contemplating by the sane, but Logan couldn’t help being grateful for it.  Whatever it was, it let him concentrate on the set of Wade’s brows, the exact length of his eyelashes, the way the day’s stubble couldn’t manage to make him look less boyish…the fact that Wade was possibly the most beautiful person he’d ever met.

“Penny f’ y’ foughts?” Wade offered around the piece of metal in his mouth.

Logan arched an eyebrow.  “Wade, you already owe me twenty bucks from that hockey game.”

“And fifteen from poker, and firty-somefin’ from the other day, when Fred lost that rock-paper-scissors tournament…” Wade added with a shrug.  Then he dropped the tag and gave a wicked grin.  “Ain’t like you want me to ever be out from under you.”

He had a point.  “Was thinkin’ you’re beautiful,” Logan admitted.

Wade burst into giggles.  “Okay, that was so Barry Manilow.”

“You listen t’ Barry Manilow?”

“Least I don’t talk like ‘im.”

“If you shut up for the next five minutes, I’ll look the other way the next time Victor passes out drunk and you happen to have a permanent marker.”

Wade pouted at him.  “Three.”

“Four.”

“Three and a half?”

“Deal.”


.End.