warnings: Movieverse (as-yet unnumbered Earth version; NOT Earth-616/Main Comicverse) with bits of the Wolverine Gameverse and B&T ficverse mushed onto it. dorky 616 references. slash. pranks and the misappropriation of vehicles. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus s*** and f***).

pairing: Logan/Wade.

timeline: October 15th.

disclaimer: i doesn't owns the movies or the characters. fo shizzle.

notes: 1) title is a reference to the Foo Fighters song "Learn to Fly." 2) before you kill yourself trying to remember, Margot is not a reference to a real Marvel character. 3) a nap-of-the-earth maneuver (or NOE run) is an extremely-low-altitude flyby, intended to keep the aircraft below enemy radar. this is much easier for a helicopter, and can in fact be very difficult and dangerous for a jet. 4) Arclight was the chick in X3 who could do the nifty earthquake-clap. she had other cool powers in the comics. 5) haha, "Jeebus H. Cripes" is something that Moriarty says a lot. obviously, it's a substitute for "Jesus H. Christ." 6) i loved Buckaroo Banzai. one of my favorite movies. 7) sensei is Japanese for teacher.

Learn to Fly

Logan was not happy when Wade started pulling pranks with the electronics.

At first it had been harmless. Easy things like keeping a light off when the switch was flipped, so that Ororo went mad wondering what was burning the bulbs out so fast. None of that could be pinned on Wade, per se, but there were only three people in the house who could do something like play with the lightbulbs (and the Kaplan kid was too busy trying not to zap the shit out of his friends any time he touched them).

Then had come the still-harmless-but-far-more-annoying phase. Remotes and game controllers malfunctioned or stopped working. Lights switched on and off on their own. Clocks reset themselves (including the timer on the coffeemaker, which had nearly led to a riot from the girls). It was like Margot all over again, but Wade didn't have the excuse of being a frustrated pre-menstrual girl trying to figure out how her powers worked.

And then had come the far-less-harmless phase. Vehicles stopped obeying their drivers, or went joyriding without a driver. Laptops and fancy cell phones had their screens displayed on televisions (admittedly, the kids should know better than to surf porn or send dirty text messages in class, but the invasion of privacy was still a big deal).

That kind of shit was bad enough, but Logan damn well drew the line when the X-Jet pulled a panic-inducing nap-of-the-earth run over Wednesday's self defense group (at a speed high enough to knock even Logan off his feet).

"Somebody's in deep shit," Jubilee happily announces.

"Couldya see who was flying it?" asks another student.

"Nobody was flying it," replies a third.

Logan stands up and dusts grass and dirt off his jeans. "Oh, somebody was flyin' it all right, just not from inside the jet. You kids stay put—I'd hate for you to haveta see me beat the stupid outta Wade."

"That would be domestic abuse," Marie helpfully puts in.

"I'm pretty sure it don't count as domestic abuse if he beats me up worse than I ever beat him up," snorts Logan, stalking his way up the lawn.

He finds Wade stretched out unassumingly on the floor of the front hall, eyes closed and hands folded in a morbidly funereal fashion.

"Wade."

"Shush," Wade replies without opening his eyes. "It may not look like it, but flying takes a lot of concentration. There's a lot of blinky bits and a lot of numbers to balance. It's kinda Zen, once you get into it. Kinda Matrix. Y'know…blonde, brunette, redhead."

"You just knocked thirty kids on their asses in the grass. Using an expensive piece of machinery that happens to be pretty vital to the X-Men as a team."

Wade gives a disdainful snort. "I'm being careful. Just getting a feel for her, 's all. Never know, could be a day nobody on board can fly but me. Or somebody might end up stranded and need a ride. Or Arclight's hair could get weirder—how did she rate screen time before I did, anyhow? I am so hotter and cooler at the same time. Her name is pretty boss, though, I'll admit to that."

"Just land the damn thing."

"Yeah, about that…"

"Wade!"

"Kidding. Jeepers creepers. Landing's a liiiiiittle harder, for real…and that hangar door is kinda narrow…"

"Flip on the goddamn autopilot."

Wade abruptly sits up, both hands in the air. "Oh-fucking-kay! It's on, it's landed, are you fuckin' happy now? Jeebus H. Cripes, I have nothing to do in Weathergirl's happy mutant finishing school for maladjusted-but-basically-okay youths." Instead of even putting forth the effort to stand, he just teleports upward and lands on his feet. "I can't break shit, I can't kill shit, I can't hurt myself. Every time I watch TV my mind gets commandeered by fuckin' Buckaroo Banzai and friends. Nobody'll play video games with me anymore because they say it's cheating not to use the controller. Whattaya want me to do, go out and start a buncha barfights?"

"Do whatever the hell you want that doesn't involve any possibility of you ever piloting that jet again," Logan growls. "I have a hard enough time with Storm's flyin', and she's a pretty damn good pilot."

Wade flails at the back door. "And that—what the fuck was that, fucking lousy flying that some crop-dusting alcoholic has-been coulda pulled? Everywhere I go, I'm getting this shit—I'm a good driver, too, I can fuckin' power park in a hail of bullets while dodging ordnance, but nobody'll let me drive. I can thread a decent sport bike across Manhattan the long way in rush in under half an hour, but I get relegated to the back seat. I can fly a prop plane with my feet, I could set a full-sized medevac chopper down on that patio, I can make a Harrier do frigging cartwheels, but am I allowed to fly the jet a panicky teenage girl managed not to crash?"

Wade has made several good points, but it all gets hung up on the fact that he's been steadily turning most of the household against him. Sean hates him, Lorna is probably a little scared of him, Wanda and JP don't trust him, and now most of the student population loathes him for a million day-to-day practical jokes.

All at once, Wade calms down. "I miss Vicky," he says in an odd voice. "I don't guess you'd be willing to get me a blanket and a mug of chicken soup?"

"If you're feelin' sick, go to bed," Logan says, and immediately understands that he's said something wrong.

Wade's scent slides from petulant and wistful to desolate. He tips his chin up and stares fixedly at the front door, hands fisting in the hem of his T-shirt. "You didn't have to bring me here," he points out in a low, menacing sneer. "I told you what I'm like. You were all, 'Oh, I love you no matter what,' and I was all, 'Naw, I'm ugly and crazy and I think I even kill people in my sleep,' but you were like, 'Don't worry about it.'"

Logan makes himself move slowly, cups Wade's elbows gently in his palms. "If you're really that miserable here, I need you to tell me, darlin'. Say the word, and we're gone. Shit packed, on the bike, and headed for anywhere at all you wanna go."

But Wade quickly shakes his head. "You like it here. I can deal. I might go a little stir-crazy and start randomly patrolling the grounds or somethin'…but if it means I can sleep next to you every night and get yelled at by you every day, I can deal."

It's deeply flattering, and Logan counts himself lucky (incredibly, insanely lucky) to have such a sincerely self-sacrificing lover. The odds of finding Wade again and having him be so forgiving of everything and so willing to conform to the situation have to have been a million to one. If there's one thing Logan has learned from losing his memory, it's that you can never know for sure that you'll get another chance to tell someone what they mean to you.

"You're all I need in the world to be happy," Logan says firmly. "Sure, I like it here, but I'll like it a helluva lot less if you spend all your time bored and lonely just so I can play sensei to a bunch of brats who wanna know how to beat people up."

Wade still stares at the front door (still smells hurt and depressed), but the tension has drained from his stance. "Subject change, please. Before I go all weepy and girly."

So Logan clears his throat and slides his grip to Wade's hands. "How's the 'flyin' without wings' thing coming? Elf-boy have any good advice?"

"Sort of," Wade gratefully replies, looking at his feet. "I can float, if I concentrate real hard. He said floating's harder than flying, but it's a lot safer to start with. Less cracking of skulls into breakables."

"Look at you, a whole inch off the floor," Logan praises. "Pretty soon you won't have to worry about whether you're allowed to fly that fancy hunk o' junk out back."

"Ya don't have to sound that happy about it."

"Oh, I do. I can barely keep from clawing the seat with a pilot who goes in slow, straight lines. My stomach would get up and run away if I was along for the kinda stunts you pulled five minutes ago."

"Spoilsport."

.End.