You're more sensitive to scents than most normal people, and it just about always sucks. Hell, the only way you got through the sensory hell of raising Dirk up until potty training was with a handful of tricks Ambrose taught you to keep your gag reflex in check. You never quite asked where the fuck he learned them, though. Thankfully, you're a decade done with diapers now, and nearly as long done with the periodical experience of waking up to the faint but familiar scent of blood.
Well. Supposedly done with that. Doesn't mean you don't smell it now, half-awake as you are. "Aw...fuck."
Wait, no. God fucking damn it, some shit you never quite wake up expecting, huh? You groan, sit up, reach over to flip the light on, and see the current source of blood in the room—Wade, facedown on the rug in the middle of the floor.
Dammit. You liked that rug. You take a moment to wonder vaguely if Hal can track down where the hell you bought it from, then dismiss that train of thought in favor of sliding off the bed with a limited amount of grace and settling down on your knees next to your fucking idiot boyfriend, spending a moment just checking him out.
Yep, the rug's stained. Maybe bad enough to soak through to the floor, actually. He is breathing, right?
"Wade, hey." Yeah, he's breathing. You still slide your hand under the line of his jaw as you peel the mask off, feeling for the pulse under the scarred sking. It's there, you can stop panicking now, D. "C'mon, baby, wake up. You're bleeding on the rug."
"Mnnph." It's not an auspicious sound, but it does suggest that he's probably awake. Maybe not coherent, but not unconsious. That's a good sign to balance out the blood you see on his face when you get the stupid hood off.
God, he looks like he's been hit by a truck. You lean over to grab the shirt you dropped where you took it off last night and carefully wipe at the places that're the wettest from where leather kept the blood damper against his skin, trying to figure out if it's his or someone else's.
Probably his, if you had to guess. He still grins up at you as soon as he gets his eyes open, like you're not dragging dry cloth against fresh wounds. "You're high right now, aren't you."
"So high," Wade agrees, blinking up at you with eyes that don't quite focus. "The painkiller stash in your car needs refilling."
The fact that there's a painkiller stash in your car is new to you. Vaguely worrisome news, in fact. Your kids use that car. Then again, there's a good chance they might be the ones to go to for help restocking it. "I'll get on that later. What happened to you, baby?"
"Baby. I'm baby." Wade snorts, goes to sit up, and almost immediately drops the two inches he manages to push himself up with a surprised grunt. "Ooh—pretty colors. Maybe I'll stay here for a while, huh?"
"Hell no you're not staying here; you're still bleeding on my rug." You certainly can't lift him by yourself without regretting it for a week, though. Good thing you can reach your phone from here and shoot Ambrose a text without taking your other hand off Wade's chest. "Let's try this again: what happened?"
He thinks that over for a minute. Or maybe he forgets you asked a question, for a minute; you can't actually tell if there's any behind those pretty eyes. You have time to wonder exactly how many pills he took, and time to decide that it doesn't really matter before he answers.
"...I got hit by a truck."
You wonder why you're not even a little surprised. "Okay. Great. Was this something purposeful?"
"Uh-huh. Assholes tend to get angry when you shoot them in the ass."
Of course he did that. "Did you have fun?"
"Oh, yeah, definitely." Another loopy grin. This one disappears as Ambrose nudges the door open far enough to poke his head in. The look on your brother's face as he takes in the current situation is absolutely hilarious; the affectionate look on Wade's is possibly even better. "Ooh, it's the other hot Strider. Grunge flavored."
"Uhh. D, is he high?"
"He's very high," you confirm. "Come on, help me get him up and to the bathroom before the kids wake up and see him?"
"Oh, shit. Yeah, let's go."
In the end it takes all of ten minutes to get Wade twenty feet down the hall and into the tub, mostly because you have to keep threatening him into not trying to make the trip under his own power. The hard part is that he could make it on his own, if he had to—it'd hurt and he'd be bleeding way more than you're even remotely comfortable with in the end, sure, but you know his limits (and how far he's willing to push himself past them) well enough to know that he could get from here to there without you and Ambrose.
But you don't want him to, so you do it the hard way, and eventually Wade's sprawled out in the tub like a rag doll, and you banish Ambrose so you can start the messy work of getting the red and black leather suit off so you can see exactly what kind of damage you're dealing with. Probably all blunt-force trauma and internal bleeding this time—you can tell that before you even really get started on stripping him. There's no gashes in the material, no excuse to just cut him out of the damn thing and skip all the little sounds he can't hold in as you pull zippers and undo snaps, separating Wade from who he is when he's not with you little by little. Even with the painkillers this is hurting him, and you hate that. You hate it so much.
"You look," Wade says as you finish piling his clothes in the sink, slurring those two words together and then stopping to consider what he's trying to say. "Mm. You look like somebody pissed in your drink. Maybe me. Can I have another pill?"
"How many did you already take?" Not that his answer's going to affect anything; you're already feeling around on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet for the unlabeled yellow bottle.
"Uh...I dunno. Does it matter?" He makes a face and reaches up to tap the half healed patch of skin on his forehead that's probably the source of most of the stains on your bedroom rug. (You have to bite your lip to keep from laughing as he misses it not once but twice.) "The healing factor likes to go wheee, you ate poison! Let's get rid of it for you—and poof. Gone."
Wade illustrates the poof by spreading both hands, palms-out; you nudge them out of the way to shove three more painkillers into his mouth. It's probably a borderline overdose. It's also probably less than he'd take if he was the one in charge of dispensing.
Instead of dry-swallowing like you expected, Wade chews the damn things. You sit back on your heels and watch him spend a good two minutes grimacing his way through that process. "You know I would have gotten you water, right?"
"Nah, this is faster." Wade leans back, thunking his head against the wall and giving you a loving (if not totally focused) look. "How the hell are you not tired of me yet?"
"Stupid." His face is still pretty damn bloody, but you've managed to get a patch of his cheek clean back in the bedroom with your poor ruined shirt. Now you lean in and kiss him there, using the movement as a distraction to cover the act of reaching over to turn the water on. "You seduced me, remember? Got the innocent director to fall in love with you, corrupted him until you're all he thinks about—"
Wade's laughing, interrupting himself every couple seconds to gasp for air as the act does something inadvisable to his chest. Broken ribs, maybe. He really wasn't kidding about getting hit by a truck. You smile at him anyway and kiss him again, on the lips this time—you have to grab a washcloth to wipe blood off your own face afterwards—and check that the water's not going to hurt him worse than he is already, before pulling the sprayer down to start rinsing off the traces of blood, dirt, and ground-in sweat.
Jesus, that's a lot of bruises. If it was anyone else other than Wade—or maybe Ambrose—you'd be loading him into the car for a trip to the hospital right about now. Since it is one of the two men in your life with supernaturally accelerated healing abilities—well, three if you count Dave and four if you count Hal—you just bite your tongue and leave the sprayer on the gentlest setting. You're not even going to think about any kind of scrubbing or wiping right now; whatever doesn't rinse off can just wait until later for you to deal with it.
"You really think I corrupted you?" Wade asks, right about when you're starting to wonder if he just passed out. "I don't...I don't know. Something about...fucking lives up. I'm good at that."
"Shut up." You shouldn't have said that in the first place. "All you've done is make shit better for this family, idiot. Where would Dave be without you?"
"Here, duh?" Wade snorts and slides down a couple inches; you think about pulling him up and decide against it. Not like he's very likely to end up underwater even if you did put the stopper in the drain. "Dirk would have killed the creepy scumbag."
"Great, so if you weren't here my kids would've just directly traumatized themselves. Explain to me how that's an improvement?" When he just shakes his head and shrugs a bit, you let out a breath and make a conscious effort to tone down the irritation you're feeling right now. Why are you even irritated? You know he wouldn't make your kids do anything like that—you've got a suspicion Wade's stepped in more than once with the whole mutant helpline thing they have set up, even if neither your twins nor your boyfriend will tell you anything about it.
Maybe it's just the fact that you're always going to be a little outside the circles he moves in, the ones Hal and Dirk already step into from time to time. You're a metahuman as much as they are, sure, but there's...a difference. A degree of willingness and ability to get into the shit normal humans don't want to touch. You're here when they come back, but if they leave for good? Well. You're a bit fucked.
"Wade." His head's actually below the level of the tub at this point. You're glad you haven't started filling it yet, but it does mean that you have to set the sprayer head down to have both hands free so you can slide an arm around him and drag him up, close enough that you can kiss his forehead. "Hey—god fucking damn it you're heavy, don't whine at me if you're not going to help—"
"Help with what?"
That's a stupid answer and you're not going to answer it. What you are going to do is pull him up a few more inches, slide your free hand behind his head before he can just let it fall back like you've broken his neck, and kiss his forehead. "Stupid. I love you."
"You have bad taste."
"Keep telling yourself that, but no, I have amazing taste." God, he's heavy when he refuses to help support himself and is on a nearly frictionless surface. Asshole. "Are you going to kiss me or not?"
"Hmmm..." Wade thinks about the answer for a second, even though both of you already know it.
Then he tips his head back to kiss you without opening his eyes. That's more than good enough to make up for the rest of this mess, honestly.