"So, here's the money shot, straight from the rat's scrotum," Weasel said. "I registered your place as X-Force HQ, because Wade made me, and also because he doesn't have a real permanent address. This is Wade's fault, and your evil lasers should focus entirely on him. But since I registered your place as X-Force HQ, and since it's technically a property you own with a lot of complex legacy tax law around it, basically you owe the state thousands of dollars unless some really weird tax-related stuff happens. Like, maybe two old ladies move into your place and it's their legal residence and they get married and get a huge tax break and immediately die, kind of weird stuff. So I hope you have a healthy savings account, is what I'm saying. Do not kill me. I am recording this conversation for posterity."

Later review would show that the camera caught Domino's scary-cool smile. "Guess we'd better hope I get lucky, then."

-

Nate didn't really know why he'd agreed to this.

Festivals weren't his thing. "Orgies of excess," he'd called them the first time Wade had asked.

"Ha! I could go for an orgy," Wade had said. "This is just drinking and wearing green beads. Maybe a little leprechaun dick, but I won't tell if you don't."

He'd declined the first two times, because he didn't want leprechaun dick and the idea of being around thousands of drunk people while they celebrated false heritage didn't appeal to him. Wade, however, loved to wheedle favors out of his friends (and enemies, and both-or-either), and so on his third try, Nate gave in to the inevitable and agreed.

Alcohol. A lot of it, in warm temperatures, with no breaks to speak of for hours. The world grew blurry after awhile.

It shouldn't have gone blank. It should have been impossible for Nate to lose his grip on reality, regardless of how many mind-altering substances he consumed. It should have been impossible for Wade to get, and stay, drunk enough to do something vitally important that neither of them remembered.

But at 9AM on Sunday morning, twenty-four hours to the second since he'd let Wade hand him his first beer, Domino stepped over Wade's prone form and picked a piece of paper up from her floor.

"Huh," she said. "Would you look at that."

The marriage certificate was printed on cheap copy paper. It was made out to "Nathan Terminator Summers" and "Wade -- Wilson :)". It was, Nate discovered as soon as he searched the Internet, 100% legally binding.

Domino no longer owed her mysterious back taxes. In the eyes of the State of New Jersey, he was now Nathan Summers-Wilson.

-

"Maybe I was just trying to do a really nice thing to help my good friend Domino, and I forgot about it," Wade said.

"Wade, you are very forgetful man, but I do not think you would forget this." Colossus' glare made it obvious that by 'this', he meant Nate - and the ring on Nate's hand.

Which he couldn't stop staring at. Where had Wade even gotten it...? It was nice. Tasteful. Nate might've picked it out for himself, except that it was a shiny symbol of their fucking marriage that he couldn't remember ever having seen before.

"This can't possibly be the only way out of Domino's tax issues," he said.

"Oh, it's definitely not. What?" Domino said when everyone looked at her. "I have an accountant. He was gonna deal with it. But since the marriage is already registered with the state, it would look a little - sketchy - if you guys changed anything now."

"How sketchy are we talking? On a scale of 'McDonald's handjob for extra sweet n sour sauce' to 'FIFA'?" Wade sounded almost scarily hopeful. "It's probably 'Mr Rogers erotica' sketchy, right? Weird but doable?"

"Um. No. High probability we all go to jail and Xavier has to bail us out, even me."

"Auuuugh," Wade said, and ripped a chunk of skin off the top of his hand.

Nate winced. "How long 'till the tax stuff blows over?"

"Well, you know, tax season." Domino shrugged.

When no one picked up on the hint after a few minutes of silence, Nate said, "I don't know about taxes."

"We are so fucked," Wade said. "Except me, tragically and ironically. If you try to make me give up my YouTube Red subscription, Cable, I'm filing for divorce. No one puts Baby in a corner!"

"Dude. YouTube Red is like, Logan Paul," Negasonic said. "Not porn."

"To some of us, Teenage Mutant Ninja Lesbian, those are the same thing."

"Tax season," Domino said loudly, "is in April. So, to answer the original, reasonable question, it's about eight months from now, if I file early."

Jesus. Eight months of this: Wade pantomiming something fucked-up to his teen non-protegé. Sharing a room. Letting everyone think he married Wade because, what, he was suddenly in love. It had to be believable. Who knew what kinds of people this time period had enforcing taxation?

"There must be other solution," Colossus said. "Perhaps I could speak to lawyers."

"No," Wade said, ripping his attention away from his miming. "No, seriously, don't give me that look, the X-lawyers are busy defending the kiddies from property damage suits. Baldness serum patent litigation. Trademarking 'Dickface Mcgillicutty' so Cyclops can start selling t-shirts. Suing -"

"Wade."

"Putting the State of New Jersey in a place where they can hurt a bunch of mutants just because of a little spontaneous marriage is really stupid," Wade said. "You know it, I know it, even Cable knows it, which is why he's not talking. Baby, I love you." He put his hand over Colossus'. His wedding ring glinted in the sunlight. "I know you want to protect me. But it's time to let me make my own mistakes with other rock hard metal -"

"Okay," Nate said. "Thanks for trying to help, everyone, but we have to go." He grabbed Wade's arm and hauled him to his feet.

"Marriage always robs one partner of agency," Wade said as Nate frog-marched him out of the room. "It's a hollow institution!"

-

Since they'd decided to go with the scam, they had to move all their stuff to Domino's. Luckily, she lived in an enormous four-bedroom apartment; he and Wade got the master bedroom with en-suite bathroom. Nate stared at the high ceilings and beautiful woodwork and thought about how long eight months could be.

Wade, for his part, was lying under the bed, only his feet visible. "Willer? Summerson?"

"Wade," Nate said, already dreading the answer.

"Nadeson?"

"Wade."

"For monograms, do you prefer all sixteen of your middle names, or just one?"

"We don't need monogrammed towels."

"True. You need world peace and I need magic Neosporin, but married life doesn't wait for such luxuries."

He was just saying garbage at this point. "I could buy a cot for the floor."

"And endanger Domino's credit score when the feds come a-knockin'? I don't think so, big boy." Wade pulled himself out from under the bed and stared at Nate, his mask inscrutable. "If this'll damage your game with the ladies -"

"I don't have ladies -"

"There's always blow-up dolls. And wigs. I make a gorgeous blond."

Nate could picture it. Well, maybe not what Wade was thinking of, and he wasn't gonna try for that, but he could picture Wade with a blond wig and some ridiculous outfit - heels, skimpy underwear. It should've made him laugh.

He felt the barest hint of heat below his collar. "I stayed back in this timeline to save the world. I don't give a shit about how often I'm getting laid."

Wrong response, he thought. Wade had been tapping his foot and shifting his shoulders back and forth, and now he did neither; he held perfectly still, like he'd been suspended in amber. "Well," he finally said, "I care about getting laid, and if you're not willing to pony up the goods, I'll just have to get a little creative."

Nate bit back a laugh. "You do that."

"Oh, I will. Bea? Arthur?" Wade cupped his pecs protectively. "Let's leave the sad man to his brooding."

God, it was gonna be a long eight months.

-

"The thing I don't get," Domino said, and paused to take a sip of her drink.

She'd found the Patron on the pavement: a whole fucking bottle, unopened. Now, she and Nate sat on her balcony, sipping their drinks and watching the sun set.

"The thing I don't get is why you're going along with him."

Nate glanced over at her. "You could just not think about it."

"I opened my silverware drawer today and there was a three-pack of condoms where I keep my tablespoons. It's hard not to think about."

"Wade's...special."

"Wade's a lunatic, which we both know, and which is why I don't understand why you're not reminding him that my luck would keep any warrant-toting feds away. You could at least have separate rooms."

Nate looked at the sunset and tried to form his thoughts into a shape another person might understand.

"I stayed here because I was scared to go back," he said, curling his hand around his glass. "I figured I'd fucked it up once, gotten Aliya and Hope killed. Easier to just...stay here, try to do something where no one could be killed just to fuck with me."

"Okay."

"Wade can't be killed." He risked a glance at Domino, but she was looking across the city, body angled away from him. "So. He can't - they can't kill him. Not sure I could, even. So it's easier, if he's closer."

"Wow. You can hear yourself, right?"

"You asked," Nate reminded her, to ease the panic in his gut.

"Yeah, I've got a couple regrets." Domino downed the rest of her tequila, poured another drink. "You know, he could still fuck it up. In so many different ways."

"You're the one letting us stay. Why not kick us out, if we're that much of a liability?"

Her brows drew in and she actually turned to glare at him. He couldn't stop the smirk this time, raised his glass to her in a silent salute. "Thought so," he said, and drained his drink.

-

"It's a technomagnet scanner, capable of rendering typical boundary requirements for Spectre-class zero-day exploits obsolete," Yukio said.

"I'm so glad you'll be able to support Negasonic through her Guy In My MFA phase, you're doing amazing, sweetie," Wade said, "but I have no idea what any of that means."

Nate did, had read about it on the 'net, hundreds of years in the future. "She's saying, get the device, computer goes boom. Any networked device. No special virus necessary."

Wade held his hands up to his cheeks. "Yukio! Now you're talking! What's the reward and where's the device?"

"One million per team member," Yukio said. "Very respectable, paid from US government accounts - I checked."

"Sounds like X-Force material. But where? Tell me it's Budapest, please, all the cool kids get to do jobs in Budapest."

"The last known location was Winnipeg, actually. Sorry."

Wade sighed heavily and threw himself backwards. He bounced on the bed and his face mushed into Nate's thigh. Nate had practice with this by now: he didn't twitch, not a millimeter. "That's okay. Thanks for the tip. Send us the coordinates, we'll take care of the rest."

"Can do! Bye, Wade."

Wade tilted his head up just enough to wave at the webcam. "Bye, Yukio."

Wade wanted to fly them all up there first class, but Nate nixed it. "Think of how much you'll have to pay Weasel to get him off your dick about taking freelance jobs," he said.

"Weasel's never been on my dick. Most people haven't. Hey, Cable, why haven't you -"

Really. First class would've been better.

They got there and checked into the Moose Lodge Jaw Inn in downtown Winnipeg, rooms courtesy of the Saskatchewan municipal government. "No one over there's updated their systems in, like, thirty years," Russell had explained on the trip up. "Basically forever, so you know, they're willing to let you just raw them from behind if it means they don't get hacked."

"Thank you for the imagery, Russell. You are truly my progeny," Wade had said.

Apparently every Canadian in government work was a romantic, or they'd been misinformed, because he and Wade were the only two mercs sharing a room, and the room had a single king-sized bed. Wade had immediately flopped on it in delight, of course, which led to their current situation: Nate sitting at the suite's desk on one of this timeline's primitive laptops, searching for information on the scanner's theft, while Wade compared their current situation to the erotic novels he'd read.

"- but if you were going to be Christian Grey, you'd have tied me up by now, and you're obviously not a pirate, so -"

"Oil futures."

"- you could oil me up if you wanted - wait - what?"

Nate shook his head, the better to dislodge the image of Wade, lounging on the bed, slick and shiny and wanting. Pathetic. "What would you steal, if you could hop on any computer in the world and get all the info on it?"

"21 Guns. Marines and starring a Logan lookalike? Sign me up. Oooh, or Caydee Stanton's Google Docs, because the Kindle releases for 'Fivesome, Fivecum' haven't been updated in three years."

Nate closed his eyes. "Wade. What would you steal if you couldn't steal porn."

"...what else is there?"

He should've known better. "Anyone who knows what oil'll go for the next day stands to make millions. The info that turns into prices is stored on private drives, in private networks."

It was pleasant to watch understanding dawn on Wade's face. Probably a sign he had brain damage. "And this doohickey we're after can nab that info from anywhere."

"Tracelessly. Yes." Nate touched the laptop he'd been using and allowed his mind to access the Internet. It was an entirely different beast from the 'net of his day, both more organized and less edited. He sometimes worried it could overwhelm his implant - but the Internet contained everything he needed to know to reach a reasonable conclusion.

"There's an organization, looks like a shell company. Been shorting oil company shares for the last three weeks. If I had to bet, I'd bet on them."

"If you were a gambling man, you'd be a lot more interesting." Wade laughed, clearly distracted - all the better, Nate thought, turning his head so the pang of ridiculous hurt wouldn't show.

Wade didn't want to be married to him. For that matter, he didn't want to be married to Wade; why feel insulted when Wade just confirmed what they both knew?

"I can be more interesting after we've recaptured the device. This is our in." Nate turned the laptop to show Wade. "There's a bidding event tomorrow, 11PM. We should go."

"What do the illegally rich in Winnipeg even buy? Cows? Snow?"

"Money travels, Wade."

"So do selfies, and yet, I remain an Intsta-nobody." A pause. "Just tell me the plan. I can feel you thinking it."

Nate had evaluated Wade for telepathy before deciding to stay, and thus knew he couldn't feel shit. Still, he felt enough responsibility to be honest. "Whoever stole this will be the kind of person who can't hide their money. Local, or they'd've aimed higher; tacky, or they'd've gotten rich without the theft. Should be easy enough to find, as long as we make ourselves available."

"Is the future just an endless Russian Roulette of heist storylines enacted by hot people? Because your one charge could've brought us both forward, you know."

It was just a joke. Just a joke, but Nate found himself saying, "Ever seen the symptoms of scurvy? When everything around you turns to ash, and the only vitamins are whatever's left in your loved ones' flesh?"

A pause, long by Wade's standards. Then: "Jesus fuck, fine. I get it. Spoilsport."

Icy silence prevailed until the next morning, when Wade decided to practice being a society wife. Ensuite, that didn't mean much, but as soon as they went into public, he became a parody of himself. He hung all over Nate, like he didn't realize a real oil tycoon would have a catalog model wife. He kissed Nate when they stopped for Starbucks, loudly called Nate 'my HUSBAND' to whoever was listening at the Shell station. It was fucking stupid, didn't contribute to their cover or mission at all, but Wade had thrown himself into it, and Nate had some very specific Wade-related weaknesses: he thought it was funny, and Wade was happy when he went along with it, God help him. After a day palling around with visitors from Finland, Nate felt more than justified in dragging Wade back to the hotel and dumping them both in the sauna.

"Three days," Wade muttered. "You know, normally, three days in, I've killed the target and I'm rolling in dirty money."

"Marriage can be a calming influence."

"Or I'm getting old and stupid." Wade slumped down onto the slatted wood bench. "The dick can't possibly be bomb enough to justify this."

"Maybe you're just getting tired." Nate leaned forward and tossed some more water on the hot rocks in the grate.

Steam billowed up, enveloping them both. "Interesting thesis, but I'm already tired. I've been tired," Wade said. "Only difference is now I'm tired and celibate."

Don't do something stupid, Nate told himself.

Then he did it anyway. "Pretty sure I could fix that."

A sauna was already an inherently awkward place, given the humidity and nakedness. Wade's silence made it that much worse. "You're kidding."

He thought of pulling Wade closer in the steamy air. He'd feel even more fucked up with his skin slick with sweat, Nate was pretty sure. Somehow, that wasn't quite enough to put him off the thought. "You're right," he forced himself to say. "Tasteless joke. I apologize."

"Ha! If only you were really tasteless. It's just boring, you know, listening to men make promises they won't keep. If I wanted that, I'd go back down to the truck stop again - ooh, there's an idea."

Nate groaned and went back to tuning Wade out as he talked about truck stop blowjobs from men who, presumably, were more attractive to Wade than Nate himself.

The sauna killed a couple hours, but Nate still felt on edge when they showed up at the auction. Nate had wanted to leave Wade with Dopinder in the getaway car, especially after the display earlier in the day, but Wade refused: "You can't keep me from standing by my man! How dare you! Homewrecker!" It didn't make any damn sense, which didn't exactly advance the 'trust Wade undercover' case, but Domino had cocked her head and said, "Yeah, I think he should come."

Of the three of them, Domino's instincts were the best even before her freaky luck came into the picture. So Nate agreed to escort Wade.

"You guys look cute," Domino said. Wade had dug a tux out of who-knows-where and was hanging off Nate's arm like he thought he was a socialite. The effect was only slightly damaged by the mask he wore. It was good, looked real, but Nate couldn't stop seeing it out of the corner of his eye and thinking something was wrong.

Nate just looked like his normal self. So she must've mostly been talking about Wade. "You too," he said. Domino's dress was long and slinky and looked easy to run in. They weren't expect action, but -

Well. Like Wade had said: there wasn't a lot to do in Winnipeg. Probably weren't a lot of international visitors interested in the black market, either.

The auction moved quickly. Halfway through it, their doohickey went up for sale. Wade bid increasingly extravagant amounts on it until a man wearing a leather cowboy hat stood up and started shooting at them.

"Wow, that was quick," Wade said, and ripped his mask off.

Two people screamed at his face, fucking fools. Wade just grinned, though, teeth bared in a ridiculous grimace, as he pulled his guns out. "Give us the money-stealing magic box and no one gets hurt," he said, then blinked and shot someone in the knee.

There was no chance of it being anything but a riot after that. The cowboy hat man attacked them first; Nate shot him before he got close to Wade. A woman wearing a ball gown turned out to have an AK stashed in a hollow leg; Nate pulled up his shield and got himself in front of Wade, returning fire until she fell to the floor.

Domino had been on the second story when Cowboy Hat started shit, and now she jumped down and snagged the tech. A security guard rushed her, but tripped on carpet; one of the other guests shot at her, but his bullets hit the brass doorknob at the far end of the room and took out the last two people between her and the door. It was, as always, fucking beautiful to watch, like a dance you'd pay through the nose to see performed.

"Come on, loverboy, let's get out of here!" Wade said. He grabbed Nate's wrist.

"Get the fuck off me and lay down cover fire," Nate said. Wade was more than happy to cause a little more carnage; that plus Nate's shield got them out safely.

Fewer than twenty-four hours later, a mountie had the tech, Nate had a million more in his Swiss bank account, and Wade had somehow wheedled flourless chocolate torte out of the flight attendants: "Everyone loves newlyweds," he explained, chocolate-filled spittle flecking everywhere.

"Disgusting," Nate said. But he shared the cake.

-

Wade had trouble sleeping and he didn't know it.

Well. Nate could never be sure how much he actually forgot. He claimed not to remember all kinds of shit, but at least half of that was Wade lying for the hell of it, and Nate'd caught him doing the opposite more than a few times: pretending to remember a conversation he'd had or a promise he'd made, when any half-competent telepath knew he was lying through his teeth.

So maybe he actually did know he had trouble sleeping. Or maybe he suspected, but forgot all those times he muttered in his sleep, expression twisted in unseeing agony, as he begged someone to stop hurting him.

Nate hoped to hell he forgot.

The night after they got back from the Winnipeg job was the worst Nate'd seen so far. He lay there on his back, hands clenched together, as Wade progressed from whispering, "Please, no, stop," to "Ness - Ness! No, no, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

He'd lain in trenches and felt his best friend's brain splatter on his cheek, but he couldn't take this, not now: the silent, luxurious room, and Wade's own mind torturing him. Nate reached out, jostled Wade's shoulder, and when that failed to wake him -

He put his hands on Wade's shoulders so that Wade couldn't gut him, then let himself lean in, weight pressing Wade into the bed. "Wade. Wade. Wake up."

He went still first. Then he opened his eyes, bright and wet with tears. "Get the fuck off of me."

Nate rolled to one side. "You were -"

"I know. Not enough Skinemax before bed, or I'd have dreamed of pretty pretty ponies with great big di -"

"Why was it worse this time?"

He expected Wade to keep deflecting, to say 'was what worse?' or make something up. But apparently even Wade had a limit. He didn't try to bullshit Nate, only said, "You were there. Blood flying, heads rolling. Sometimes it stirs things up. Like a martini made of childhood memories and sadness."

"You were calling for your girlfriend."

Silence stretched over the room, cellophane-thin and bleak as anything. Nate waited for an answer, and waited, until Wade started snoring and he realized he wasn't going to get one.

When Aliya had nightmares, he'd pulled her close, stroked her hair and whispered gentle words of comfort. She'd done the same for him. Wade didn't have hair to stroke and would probably try to bite his balls off if he offered comfort of any kind. But damn it, they were married, Nate thought. That was part of the point of being married: comfort. Companionship. Not lying alone in the dark, wracked with pain.

Wade started crying again around 3 in the morning. Nate didn't wake him up again, but he did move closer, pressing himself against the bulk of Wade's side and trying to believe that tiny amount of physical contact helped.

-

Two months of sleeping side by side translated to two months of semi-permanent insomnia.

It wasn't Wade. Nate would've just told him to fuck off if it was. No, this was all Nate, because he couldn't sleep next to someone without imagining they were Aliya, and he thought he might go insane if he had more of those dreams. So mostly he didn't sleep; he needed to do so less than a normal person, anyway. And in this comparatively peaceful past, he simply didn't need to be at his best all the time.

(He could've gotten a cot, but when he suggested it again, Wade looked over-the-top offended in that way that meant he was actually hurt. No cot, then.)

Wade's nightmares got better and then worse again. Nate didn't reach out again. He told himself it wasn't worth it and got used to just denying the impulse when Wade started to sound extra pathetic.

Really, he should've spotted the problem earlier. He'd learned to ignore Wade's nightmares, but it had never occurred to him that the opposite might happen, not until he woke up to Wade's arms around him, his dick pressing into Nate's hip.

"Vanessa," Wade whispered, and pressed his cock more firmly against Nate. "Fuck, you feel so good."

Nate's brain just - stopped, for a second. Vacated the premises. Move away, he told himself.

He cleared his throat. "Wade."

Wade moaned in response. "Harder, baby, please."

"Wade. Wake up." Nate jammed an elbow into Wade's side.

The too-familiar stillness, and then Wade was rolling away. "Fuckstick, I didn't - fuck fuck fuck fucking -"

Nate looked over to see Wade wiping his eyes. Tears. Christ, what was it like to live in a brain that made his loss new over and over?

"Hey. Wade."

"I would really. Appreciate you not talking right now. The oven's electric and we're only on the second floor."

Ah, fuck. Nate closed his eyes.

"I keep thinking I hear her. I keep - fuck. This is fucking pointless. I don't know why I ever thought -" Wade moved to get out of bed.

Nate put a hand on his hip. "Wait."

There was just enough light in the room for Nate to be able to make out Wade's frown, the glint in his eyes. "Really not in the mood."

And he wasn't, that much was obvious; his voice was scarily flat, entirely devoid of the personality that usually fucking fountained out of it. Nate felt something in him shift, close to breaking. Doing this would be cosmically stupid, and he'd regret it, and knowing all of that didn't stop him from saying: "I can make her real again. If it would help."

"What?"

He didn't need to go deep into Wade's fucked-up brain for this, barely even had to exert any effort at all. Wade's memories and dreams of Vanessa crowded the day and filled his nights. It was easy to call up her voice, her scent, her body, all as remembered by Wade. When he spoke, he sounded like her. "If this would help. Just once. So you can say goodbye."

"Jesus, that's fucked up."

Yeah, sure was. But Wade wasn't trying to leave the bed anymore. "Hey, baby," Nate said. "Just let me take care of you, okay?"

For a second he thought Wade might punch him, or just straight up try to kill him. He watched as Wade took a shaky breath, kept up the gentle psychic pressure that would mean Wade could touch him and feel someone else entirely, even as he put a hand out to summon his gun.

"God." Wade glanced at the ceiling and then down, like he wasn't sure who he was calling to. "Ness. Fuck. Ness, I missed you. I really did. You asshole."

Nate wasn't sure if that was meant for him, or - well. He knew how she'd react. "Nuh-uh. None of that. You've got one last shot here, don't disappoint me."

"Come here," Wade whispered, and the shame and love and terror wrapped around Nate like his own T-O virus, burrowing into him.

He went. He straddled Wade and kissed him, slowly and tenderly, then faster, biting at him like he knew Vanessa once had. He pressed Wade into the bed and sucked his dick - let Wade fuck his mouth, fingered his ass and balls with unearned familiarity. Wade went from self-conscious grimaces to chanting her name, utterly consumed by it, and Nate -

Nate let him. Nate held onto him after, stroked his hair, whispered sweet nothings of the life they'd have together after Wade finally kicked it. Wade fell asleep with a wistful smile on his face, turned towards Nate, more trusting than Nate'd ever seen him.

As soon as he felt Wade's last grip on consciousness slip, Nate disentangled himself and went into the bathroom. It took barely a touch, a tug on his cock, and then he was coming so hard he slammed his head into the brick wall, pain and pleasure sparking together. He'd fucked up. So fucking badly, but he'd do it again for the feeling of Wade trusting not-him, of Wade just giving in.

-

Wade disappeared. Nate didn't try to find him.